There are in this district of France fully forty domed churches, which I need not particularise, my main object being to show how perfectly compatible is the cupola with Gothic architecture. The influence, however, of the dome extended, in France, far beyond the district in question; for we find it spreading eastward into Auvergne, and beyond that again to Lyons. [Illustration: Fig. 450. Nôtre-Dame du Pont, Clermont.] In Auvergne it usually covers the intersection of cross churches beneath the tower; at Le Puy it is used in a very unusual form to cover, not only this central space, but the bays of the vaulting. The nave is divided into oblong bays by transverse arches, and the intervals are reduced to elongated octagons by corbels, doing duty for pendentives, and these octagons are domed over on the angular system. The same form of covering exists at Ainay, near Lyons.[68] I may mention that the pendentives in many of these French churches give place to corbels of varied design, as at Monthron, near Angoulême, Nôtre Dame des Dons at Avignon, and very many others. The last named dome rises into a beautiful tower, and I may mention that small lantern turrets are common upon the Aquitanian domes. I will not dwell upon the German domes, because they do not illustrate any special development. They seem to have been the offspring of those Italian domes which followed Roman traditions. They mostly cover intersections of cross churches beneath central towers. Those at Aix-la-Chapelle and Nimègue are of the ordinary type of domes covering octagonal buildings. That at Worms covers a square, but is by corbels brought out to an octagon, and then domed in that form. In our own country I know of no nearer Mediæval approach to the cupola than the semi-dome covering the apse of the chapel in the Tower of London.[69] The last form of dome which I will allude to is what may be called the _modern_ type. It does not differ in essentials from what may be found among those of earlier periods, but is distinguished from them by several of the elements which it possesses in common with some of these, being developed on a larger scale and becoming more pronounced and more essentially characteristic. This type of dome is:--1. Raised high in the manner of a tower; 2. The dome becomes an important external feature; 3. It is crowned by a smaller tower rising out of the dome; 4. It usually assumes internally the form of a lantern, with a range of windows beneath the dome; 5. In some instances the external and internal domes are independent structures, the former acting as a roof to the latter, with, perhaps, an intermediate structure to carry the culminating tower on its apex. Now, _every one_ of these features is to be found in earlier domes.