refuse nothing to love.[2] Woman was no longer considered as flesh and blood like man, but was converted into a divinity; man was only too well compensated in the privilege of adoring: and serving her. Human love was regarded as a celestial sentiment leading to divine love and confounded with it. Poets transformed their mistresses into supernatural virtue, and implored them to guide them through the empyrean to the tabernacle of God. You can easily appreciate the hold the Christian faith derived from such sentiments. Disgust for the world, a tendency to ecstacy, habitual despair and infinite craving for tender sympathy, naturally impelled men to a doctrine representing the earth as a vale of tears, the present life a period of trial, rapturous union with the Divinity as supreme happiness, and the love of God as the first of duties. Morbid or trembling sensibility found its support in the infinitude of terror and of hope, in pictures of flaming pits and eternal perdition, and in conceptions of a radiant paradise and of ineffable bliss. Thus supported, Christianity ruled all souls, inspired art, and gave employment to artists. "Society," says a contemporary, "divested itself of its old rags in order to clothe its churches in robes of whiteness." Gothic architecture accordingly made its appearance. Let us observe the growth of the new Gothic edifice. In opposition to the religions of antiquity, which were all local, belonging to castes or to families, Christianity is a universal religion which appeals to the multitude, and summons all men to salvation. It was necessary accordingly for this new edifice to be very large and capable of containing the entire population of any one city or district--the women, the children, the serfs, the artisans, and the poor as well as the nobles and sovereigns. The small _cella_ which contains the statue of the Greek god, and the portico where the procession of free citizens was displayed, were not sufficient for this immense crowd. An enormous vault was required, lofty naves multiplied and crossed by others, and measureless arches and colossal columns; generations of workmen flocked in crowds for centuries to labor here for the salvation of their souls, displacing mountains before the monument could be completed.