The churches of St. Wulfran, Abbeville; of Notre-Dame, Cléry-sur-Loire; of St. Riquier; of Corbeil; and the cathedrals of Orleans and of Nantes, may be cited as the principal specimens of the _Flamboyant_ style, and as the last notable manifestations of an art which thenceforward diverged more and more from its original inspiration. The middle of the fifteenth century is generally fixed as the limit beyond which the handsome Gothic buildings that still rose were no longer, in any degree, the normal productions of their period, but were felicitous copies or imitations of works already consecrated by the history of the art. A remark may here be made showing to what extent religious feeling predominated in the Middle Ages; it is that at the very moment when the Norman and Gothic architects were designing and producing so many marvellous habitations for the Deity, they seemed to bestow scarcely any attention on the construction of comfortable or luxurious dwellings for man, even those destined for the most exalted personages of the State. In proportion as this sentiment of original faith lost its intensity, Art occupied itself more and more with princely and lordly habitations. The middle class was the last favoured by this progress, and the feeling of their position as citizens had taken the place of a zeal exclusively pious; so we find the “town-halls” absorbing the splendour and elegance of which private houses remained destitute; these being generally built of wood and plaster, and in the heart of the towns, so close together that they seemed to be disputing for light and air. [Illustration: Fig. 313.--Saloon of the Schools, Oxford. (Fourteenth Century.)] Everywhere, during the Middle Ages, rose the church--the home of peace; but everywhere also towered up at the same time the castle, that characterised the permanent state of war in which feudal society lived, delighted, and gloried. “The castles of the richest and most powerful nobles,” says M. Vaudoyer, “consisted of irregular, uncomfortable buildings, pierced with a few narrow windows, standing within one or two fortified enclosures, and surrounded by moats. The donjon, a large high tower, generally occupied the centre, and other towers, more or less numerous, flanked the walls, and served for the defence of the place.” (Fig. 314). “These castles,” adds M. Mérimée, “generally present the same characteristics as the ancient _castellum_; but a certain ruggedness, a striking quaintness in plan and execution, bear witness to a personal will, and that tendency to isolation which is the instinctive sentiment of the feudal system.” [Illustration: Fig. 314.--Ancient Castle of Marcoussis, near Rambouillet. (Thirteenth Century.)]