Think of the loveliest story or poem you have ever read, the most entrancing music you have ever heard, or the most beautiful paintings you have ever seen, and think how, at the end, you experienced a wonderful glow of enchantment with the concept as a whole, apart from specialising any particular character or event in the story, phrase in the music, or subject in the pictures; then do the same with one of those wonderful cathedrals of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, the epoch of that beautiful Gothic style which I shall show was founded upon the highest mystical form of Symbolism possible to those who lived at the then zenith of Mystical Thought in the history of the world. The number of cathedrals built during those three centuries was so prodigious that, without the documentary evidence which we have, it would be absolutely incredible. Every part of those buildings, even to the smallest decorations, was, as shown by any of the old writers on Religious Symbolism, such as Durandus, planned to symbolise some beautiful thought, aspiration, tradition, or religious belief. The highest Thinkers, Artists, Poets, Philosophers, and Mystics in those centuries became Architects, and, in pure contemplation of and love for the Divine, helped to beautify design by giving up their lives and energies to the work without reward. It was, in fact, at that period the surest means by which they could record their ideals and aspirations. Before the advent of the printing press, with its facilities for spreading knowledge broadcast, they appreciated that Tectonic Art and Iconography were the means by which they could best permanently record and teach their aspirations to the masses. Every beautiful thought found its expression in some symbol of artistic design. Each Cathedral was, in fact, a beautiful complete _story_, and, when this has been fully grasped, the enchantment of the whole, the thread of gold running through the whole of that wonderful pile, is what may be called the Glamour of Symbolism.