Between the seventh and tenth centuries these institutions flourished and developed in all of the provinces which go to make up modern France. But the eleventh and twelfth centuries were the golden days of these institutions. They rendered unto the land and the people immense service, and their monks studied not only the arts and sciences, but worked with profound intelligence at all manner of utile labour. Their architecture exerted a considerable influence on this growing art of the nation, and many of their grand churches were but the forerunners of cathedrals yet to be. After the twelfth century, when the arts in France had reached the greatest heights yet attained, these religious establishments were--to give them historical justice--the greatest strength in the land. In most cases where the great cathedrals were not the works of bishops, who may at one time have been members of monastic communities themselves, they were the results of the efforts of laymen who were direct disciples of the architect monks. The most prolific monastic architect was undoubtedly St. Bénigne of Dijon, the Italian monk whose work was spread not only throughout Brittany and Normandy, but even across the Channel to England. One is reminded in France that the nation's first art expression was made through church-building and decoration. This proves Ruskin's somewhat involved dicta, that, "architecture is the art which disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man ... a building raised to the honour of God has surely a use to which its architectural adornment fits it." From whatever remote period the visible history of France has sprung, it is surely from its architectural remains--of which religious edifices have endured the most abundantly--that its chronicles since Gallo-Roman times are built up. In the south of France, from the Gallic and Roman wars and invasions, we have a basis of tangibility, inasmuch as the remains are more numerous and definite than the mere pillars of stone and slabs of rock to be found in Bretagne, which apocryphally are supposed to indicate an earlier civilization. The _menhirs_ and _dolmens_ may mean much or little; the subject is too vague to follow here, but they are not found east of the Rhône, so the religion of fanaticism, of whatever species of fervour they may have resulted from, has left very little impress on France as a nation. After the rudest early monuments were erected in the south, became ruined, and fell, there followed gateways, arches, aqueducts, arenas, theatres, temples, and, finally, churches; and from these, however minute the stones, the later civilizing and Christianizing history of this fair land is built up. It is not possible to ignore these secular and worldly contemporaries of the great churches. It would be fatal to simulate blindness, and they could not otherwise be overlooked.