Ecclesiastical architecture led the way--there is no disputing that, whatever opinions may otherwise be held by astute archæologists, historians, and the antiquarians, whose food is anything and everything so long as it reeks of antiquity. The planning and building of a great church was no menial work. Chief dignitaries themselves frequently engaged in it: the Abbot Suger, the foremost architect of his time--prime minister and regent of the kingdom as he was--at St. Denis; Archbishop Werner at Strasbourg; and William of Wykeham in England, to apportion such honours impartially. Gothic style appears to have turned its back on Italy, where, in Lombardy at all events, were made exceedingly early attempts in this style. This, perhaps, because of satisfying and enduring classical works which allowed no rivalry; a state of affairs to some extent equally true of the south of France. The route of expansion, therefore, was northward, along the Rhine, into the Isle of France, to Belgium, and finally into England. No more true or imaginative description of Gothic forms has been put into literature than those lines of Sir Walter Scott, which define its characteristics thus: "... Whose pillars with clustered shafts so trim, With base and capital flourished 'round, Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound." In modern times, even in France, church-building neither aspired to, nor achieved, any great distinction. Since the Concordat what have we had? A few restorations, which in so far as they were carried out in the spirit of the original were excellent; a few added members, as the west front and spires of St. Ouen at Rouen; the towers and western portal at Clermont-Ferrand; and a few other works of like magnitude and worth. For the rest, where anything of bulk was undertaken, it was almost invariably a copy of a Renaissance model, and often a bad one at that; or a descent to some hybrid thing worse even than in their own line were the frank mediocrities of the era of the "Citizen-King," or the plush and horsehair horrors of the Second Empire. Most characteristic, and truly the most important of all, are the remains of the Gallo-Roman period. These are the most notable and forceful reminders of the relative prominence obtained by mediæval pontiffs, prelates, and peoples. These relations are further borne out by the frequent juxtaposition of ecclesiastical and civic institutions of the cities themselves,--fortifications, palaces, châteaux, cathedrals, and churches, the former indicating no more a predominance of power than the latter.