Simple, however, and obvious as were the means, the result was _magical_! It is not the _materials_ of art to which its expression is due, but the sentiment--the heart--the soul of those who use it. This particular form of arch had long been used without one hint at such expression resulting from it. It had been highly conducive to beauty, but little, if at all, to elevation of sentiment: when, however, it came into use as an aid to the upward strivings of the architects of Northern Christendom, as an element placed in the hands of men who had been labouring for centuries, with all their energy, to render their architecture expressive of the ennobling sentiments of religion--it became, in their hands, a means of perfecting that solemnity of expression which the Romanesque buildings possessed in so wonderful a degree, and of adding the most exalted sublimity to its hitherto stern and rigid grandeur; just as the simple action of gravity gives to the Niagara Falls a sublime and overwhelming majesty; such as the same cause acting under different conditions has no tendency to produce. I must apologise for having occupied so long a time on these merely preliminary and, perhaps, not very interesting topics. I hope in my next lecture to be able to give an outline of the transition as it showed itself in the different countries, and also to point out and illustrate the changes in the decorative and more purely artistic features of architecture by which it was accompanied. LECTURE III. The Transition. Gradual refinement of Romanesque--French architects the earliest to systematise the pointed arch--The English before the Germans--The Italians from the Germans--Fully acknowledged in France 1140--Suger’s work at St. Denis--Carving in French churches--Corinthianesque outline of capitals--Distinctly Byzantine capitals--A route by which Byzantine foliage may have reached France--The importation indisputable--Its effects seen in Early English capitals--West front of Chartres--Fluting on basement of doorways--Cathedral of Noyon--St. Germain des Pres, Paris--Cathedral of Sens, prototype of the Choir and Trinity Chapel at Canterbury--Notre Dame, Paris--A new kind of foliage--The capital “à crochet”--English transition--Incipient specimens--Refined Norman--Pointed style, with reminiscences of Romanesque--William of Sens--William the Englishman--Influence of French work--Oakham Castle--Glastonbury Abbey--Cathedral of St. David’s--Temple Church, London--Chichester Cathedral--Tynemouth Abbey--Hexham Abbey--Unfoliated capitals--Round moulded capitals--Characteristics of English and French transition--The German transition--Practical lessons from studying these changes--Principles to which the transition was pioneer.