The early transitional style, though gloriously noble and vigorous, could not reasonably be re-adopted as a groundwork inasmuch as it _was_ a transition, and that from a state of things with which we have a little or nothing in common. The developed Early Pointed had very strong claims, but failed of being what Dr. Whewell calls “_complete_ Gothic.” Its fault was that there were certain features which, once known, could not be rejected, but which the Early Pointed _had not_. Its merits were _positive_ and of the highest order; its defects were purely _negative_. The later Pointed had been pretty generally voted to be the production of the decline of the style, and the later half of the Middle Pointed showed unquestionable evidences that during its period the way for that decline had been preparing. The _Early_ Middle Pointed was thus come to by an exhaustive process, as being at once “_complete_” and _not_ on the decline, though some felt (and I confess to being of the number) that it might with advantage be invigorated by importing into it a good deal of the detail, and, even, perhaps, some whole features of the earlier style. This general conclusion having been tacitly consented to, people naturally came to think that we ought to adhere to it as closely as might be, and for this reason: that the principle of a _revival_ was only defensible in an extreme case, and nothing could defend it from the charge of frivolity if the revivers went on the principle of now reviving one style and now another; but that if all by general consent should determine on reviving _one and the same_ style, as the groundwork for the future development of a style of our own, the revival would become invested with _reality_, _reason_, and _vigour_. The choice, then, of one style, and the adherence to it _as a groundwork_, seems to me to have been _right_, and I am very much disposed to believe that the choice come to, though its enforcement at that time bordered on fanaticism, was _right_ also; at least in the _main_. This promising theory, not to mention occasional tokens of rebellion at the somewhat tyrannical way in which it was attempted to be pressed, received a rude shock some ten years back through the competition for the erection of the cathedral at Lille. We had been in the habit in this country of speaking rather pityingly of the error of the French revivalists in selecting an earlier type for their groundwork than we had adopted; but the programme of this great European competition _prescribed_ this early style, and our talented countrymen who won the palm leaped over the traces to such an extent, as absolutely to luxuriate in the till now forbidden art, even beyond what was demanded by the conditions, and beat the French out of the field in the intensity of their following out of the Early French style.