§ 62. At a later date, Wren built parish churches with an extraordinary elasticity of style and plan. But the study of Wren's plans is simply the study of the plans of an individual architect: they are the outcome of his relation to the fashions of his day, and his unrivalled capacity for dealing with them. He established firmly the use of a modified Palladian style in church architecture, which his successors imitated until nothing further could be done with it. But, when we look at his churches, we never can forget the architect behind them. St Martin's-in-the-Fields and St Mary-le-Strand, by Gibbs; St Philip's at Birmingham, by Archer, fine churches though they are, fall short of his designs; and we instinctively compare and contrast their plan and elevation with the models supplied by Wren. In the medieval parish church, on the other hand, the individual architect had no place; the whole artistic activity of an age was represented; the builder was an original artist, and a member of a nation of artists; and the development of the parish church was the work of a national interest, not merely confined to one highly specialised profession. When the Gothic revival came in the early nineteenth century, it was thought that medieval art was once more re-born. But, when we look to-day at the scholarly and often extremely beautiful work of artists like Pugin, Sir Gilbert Scott, Street, Pearson, Butterfield, Bodley, or the younger Gilbert Scott, we still feel the force of individual design and style rather than the force of a great collective movement. All these, like Wren, have added individual contributions to church planning and decoration; but their art is a by-path of national life, and is merely the result of a purely individual type of thought. § 63. At the same time, to say this is not to belittle post-Reformation church architecture. It is simply to point out the contrast between the work of the architect and the work of the medieval mason, between a sporadic development of art, and a development which was general in every part of the country.