Cellini, Primaticcio, or any of the other Italian artists who were settled in France; that they combined in the best possible way the mythological expression of the ancients with our modern ideas, and that, thanks to them, France is enabled to point with pride to a natural art, original and independent, which has been handed down to our days in direct succession by Sarrazain, Puget, Girardon, and Coysevox. [Illustration: Figs. 293, 294.--Gargoyles on the Palace of Justice, Rouen. (Fifteenth Century.)] ARCHITECTURE. The Basilica the first Christian Church.--Modification of Ancient Architecture.--Byzantine Style.--Formation of the Norman Style.--Principal Norman Churches.--Age of the Transition from Norman to Gothic.--Origin and Importance of the _Ogive_.--Principal Edifices in the pure Gothic Style.--The Gothic Church, an Emblem of the Religious Spirit in the Middle Ages.--Florid Gothic.--Flamboyant Gothic.--Decadency.--Civil and Military Architecture: Castles, Fortified Enclosures, Private Houses, Town Halls.--Italian Renaissance: Pisa, Florence, Rome.--French Renaissance: Mansions and Palaces. When the Christian family, humble and persecuted, was beginning to form itself into congregations; when it was forbidden to consecrate any special edifice to the performance of the services of its religion--a religion which opposed to the gorgeous ceremonies of polytheism the most austere simplicity--any refuge might have seemed good enough which offered to the faithful the means of assembling themselves together in security; any retreat must have appeared sufficiently ornamented which would recall to the disciples of the crucified Saviour the mournful events preceding the glorification of that Divine sacrifice. But when the religion proscribed one day found itself on the next the religion of the State, things changed.