However this may be, I hold it to be most unnatural for the English student of Gothic architecture to plunge into the study of its productions in other lands before he has made himself perfectly acquainted with those of his own. Our language is _mainly_ derived from German and French, but who would wish his children to be taught those languages before they could speak correctly their mother tongue? We love Gothic architecture in the first instance, not because of the buildings we have heard of or seen pictures of as existing in foreign countries, but from those which we see around us--our own village churches, our own cathedrals, and a hundred objects which we have known from our childhood. From these we learn the native language of the art, and it behoves us to pursue the study of that language, and to perfect ourselves in it, before we turn our attention to foreign dialects, even though they may be of older date than our own. When, however, you are well grounded in our own architecture, nothing can be more delightful or more instructive than to follow up your studies in foreign countries; though here, again, you must ever keep a watch over yourselves--a guard to your patriotism--lest you should be tempted to forget or to undervalue your mother tongue.[78] The first country to visit is unquestionably France. A question may occur whether it is best to begin with the old royal domain--the great central province of the Pointed style, the fountain-head of our art--or with Normandy as the connecting link between ourselves and that fountain-head. On this question I would not offer any very strong opinion, though I incline towards the former. I do not think that, after the Romanesque period, the developments of the French came to us in any very great, or at least any very exclusive, degree through Normandy; and we know that very shortly afterwards that link of communication was cut off by our loss of that province, and that immediately after this the architecture of Normandy became more distinctly _French_, and that of England more exclusively _English_. I think, therefore, that you would be better prepared to understand the architecture of Normandy by having first studied that of the central province of France. This, however, is a secondary question. The great matter is, wherever you go, thoroughly to _study_, thoroughly to _sketch_; not to hasten over the ground to get through an extensive programme, but to seat yourselves down where you find good material, and work on patiently at it. Where you begin is comparatively of little matter, excepting that it is undesirable to take the abnormal before the normal--the mere dialect before the language.