In 1822 thirty new sees were added to the prelature. To-day there are sixty-seven bishoprics and seventeen archbishoprics, not including the colonial suffragans, but including the diocese of Corsica, whose seat is at Ajaccio. Church and State are thus seen to have been, from the earliest times, indissolubly linked throughout French dominion. The king--while there was a king--was the eldest son of the Church, and, it is said, the Church in France remains to-day that part of the Roman communion which possesses the greatest importance for the governing body of that faith. This, in spite of the tendency toward what might be called, for the want of a more expressive word, irreligion. This is a condition, or a state, which is unquestionably making headway in the France of to-day--as well, presumably, as in other countries--of its own sheer weight of numbers. One by one, since the establishment of the Church in Gaul, all who placed any limits to their ecclesiastical allegiance have been turned out, and so turned into enemies,--the Protestants, the Jansenists, followers of the Bishop of Ypres, and the Constitutionalists. Reconciliation on either side is, and ever has been, apparently, an impossibility. Freedom of thought and action is undoubtedly increasing its license, and the clergy in politics, while a thing to be desired by many, is, after all, a thing to be feared by the greater number,--for whom a popular government is made. Hence the curtailment of the power of the monks--the real secular propagandists--was perhaps a wise thing. We are not to-day living under the conditions which will permit of a new Richelieu to come upon the scene, and the recent act (1902) which suppressed so many monastic establishments, convents, and religious houses of all ranks, including the Alpine retreat of "La Grande Chartreuse," may be taken rather as a natural process of curtailment than a mere vindictive desire on the part of the State to concern itself with "things that do not matter." On the other hand, it is hard to see just what immediate gain is to result to the nation. III THE CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF SOUTHERN FRANCE The best history of the Middle Ages is that suggested by their architectural remains. That is, if we want tangible or ocular demonstration, which many of us do. Many of these remains are but indications of a grandeur that is past and a valour and a heroism that are gone; but with the Church alone are suggested the piety and devotion which still live, at least to a far greater degree than many other sentiments and emotions; which in their struggle to keep pace with progress have suffered, or become effete by the way. To the Church, then, or rather religion--if the word be preferred--we are chiefly indebted for the preservation of these ancient records in stone.