Norman churches in this period which have been explained by reference to the distant influence of the Scandinavian north or the Farther East, there are perhaps traces of Lombard architecture in their plan, but their structure as a whole is as Norman as the stone of which they are built, distinguished by local traits from the other varieties of French Romanesque to which this period gave rise. Not the least Norman feature of these buildings is the persistent common sense of design and execution; the Norman architects did not attempt the architecturally impossible or undertake tasks, like the cathedral of Beauvais, which they were unable to finish in their own time and style. “What they began, they completed,” writes the Nestor of American historians in his sympathetic interpretation of the art and the spirit of _Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres_. In Norman art, as in other phases of Norman achievement, the last word cannot be said till we have followed it far beyond the borders of the duchy, northward to Durham, “half house of God, half castle ’gainst the Scot,” and the other massive monuments which made ‘Norman’ synonymous with a whole style and period of English architecture, and southward to those more ornate structures which Norman princes reared at Bari and Cefalù, Palermo and Monreale. “No art--either Greek or Byzantine, Italian, or Arab--” says Henry Adams,[60] “has ever created two religious types so beautiful, so serious, so impressive, and yet so different, as Mont-Saint-Michel watching over its northern ocean, and Monreale, looking down over its forests of orange and lemon, on Palermo and the Sicilian seas.” BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE There is no general account of Norman life and culture in any period of the Middle Ages, and no general study of Norman feudalism. For conditions in France generally, see Luchaire, _La société française au temps de Philippe-Auguste_ (Paris, 1909), translated by Krehbiel (New York, 1912); for England, Miss M. Bateson, _Mediæval England_ (New York and London, 1904). On castles, see C. Enlart, _Manuel d’archéologie française_, II (Paris, 1904, with bibliography), and Mrs. E. S. Armitage, _The Early Norman Castles of the British Isles_ (London, 1912). For William the Marshal, see Paul Meyer’s introduction to his edition of the _Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal_ (Paris, 1891–1901); the poem has been utilized by Jusserand for his account of tournaments, _Les sports et jeux d’exercice dans l’ancienne France_ (Paris, 1901), ch. 2. * * * * * The work of Delisle, _Études sur la condition de la classe agricole et l’état de l’agriculture en Normandie au moyen âge_ (Évreux, 1851), is a classic.