My object in going over this well-beaten path is to draw your attention to three very marked _primâ facie_ claims which Gothic architecture has upon our study. Firstly, that, though we are in the habit of considering it antiquated, it is in fact the architecture of the modern as distinguished from the ancient world--that, just as the architecture of the earlier half of the world’s history culminated in that of Greece, which must ever be viewed as its most perfect and most glorious representative, so did the indigenous architecture of the newer world reach its culminating point in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries among the nations of Western Europe--the depositaries of a new civilisation. Secondly, that it is the architecture of the Germanic nations, through whose land the main stream of civilisation now runs, as of old it did through Greece, Egypt, and Rome. And, thirdly, that it is the latest original style of architecture which the civilised world has produced; that the chain of architectural styles, commencing in Egypt, and passing on in continuous course through Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, and thence taken up by the infant nations of modern Europe, and by them prolonged through successive ages of continuous progress, terminated in the style which we are treating of, and has never since produced another link of its own. As, then, the architecture of Egypt claims our respect as the earliest link in the history of architecture, so are our own Mediæval styles especially marked out from all others as being its latest creation. That continuous stream of indigenous art which from the earliest ages of the world had unceasingly flowed onwards--now through this country, and now through that; now smoothly flowing on through a deep and copious channel, and now choked up with rocks, or spreading itself sluggishly and unhealthily through marshes and morasses, but ever progressing--seemed at the end of the period we are speaking of to turn back upon its course, and, instead of creating as heretofore ever new beauties of its own, to content itself with reproducing those of bygone periods: instead of illustrating, as it were, the collateral stream of civilisation which flowed on so mightily by its side, it accompanied it by images of that of an older world--of another family of nations--of another religion; and since then, though civilisation has rolled on in a continuous course, it has failed to produce any style of architecture of its own. Mediæval architecture, then, is distinguished from all other styles as being the _last_ link of the mighty chain which had stretched unbroken through nearly 4000 years--the glorious termination of the history of _original_ and _genuine_ architecture. The next claim to which I will direct your attention is, that our style is, _par excellence_, Christian architecture.