On its first commencement no advance was made upon the Byzantine carving of St. Denis; indeed, the capitals in the eastern gallery look almost more archaic than their predecessors of twenty or thirty years’ earlier date. It is curious, however, that the capitals of the large columns below these galleries are in a decidedly more advanced style. This M. le Duc ingeniously attributes to the employment of artists of different ages, and to the preference given (in an age of advancement) to the younger ones, leading to the more important capitals being committed to their hands. I should, however, be inclined to account for it differently, by supposing the smaller and more detached capitals to have been carved before they were fixed, and those of the great pillars left to the last thing before the removal of the scaffolding. I can appreciate this by my own experience, for in the church I am building at Hamburg there will be some ten years’ interval between the carving of the triforium and of the pillars which support it; during which interval I am horrified when I recollect that _all but one_ of the artists have died from the destructive effects of the stone dust, and that one has been saved only by my having requested him to relinquish carving and to content himself with making models for others to work from--a system which, under other circumstances, is one of the advisableness of which I entertain doubts. The capitals, however, in the _nave_ are those which best display the enormous advance now being made. I should not have dwelt so long on the merely antiquarian fact of the importation of the Byzantine [Illustration: Figs. 44, 45, 46.--Nôtre Dame, Paris.] Corinthian into France, had it not led to this glorious result. In the nave of Nôtre Dame every vestige of this _Greekesque_ foliage is got rid of, its general outline alone excepted;[23] and a kind perfectly new and most truly noble is subtituted, founded slightly on reminiscences of the true Romanesque foliage previous to the Oriental importation, retaining the outline suggested by the acanthus leaf, but worked up into a form which had never before been hinted at, and which was destined to effect a great revolution in this branch of art. From this time forward (till the end of the thirteenth century) the French carving is noble and effective in the very highest degree--at first gradually approaching natural forms without directly imitating them, but eventually adopting frankly the productions of nature as its guide, but so far conventionalising them as to fit them perfectly to their position, and to make them produce a contour [Illustration: Figs. 47, 48.--Nôtre Dame, Paris.] [Illustration: Fig. 49.--St. Leu, near Creil. Capital from the apse.] [Illustration: Fig. 50.--Nôtre Dame, West Front.] [Illustration: Fig. 51.--St. Eusèbe, Auxerre.]