Although "Jacopo" left a very substantial mark of his genius upon the Umbrian hill-side, he came and went like a shadow, leaving his designs and plans to be carried on by his young disciple Fra Filippo Campello, whom we shall meet with again in the chapter on Santa Chiara. Little, therefore, as we know of this earlier portion of its history, San Francesco at least remains to us in all its first prime and glory to tell its own tale, and endless should be the hymn of praise sung by the Assisans for the chance which brought so beautiful a creation within their walls. It seems indeed strange that a style so new and so admired, was not more faithfully adhered to at a time when cathedrals and churches were being erected in every Italian city. Perhaps the Romanesque and Byzantine influences from the south so tempered the Gothic tendencies of Lombard architects, that they were unable to attain the true ideal, and succeeded only in creating a style of their own, to be found at Florence, Siena and Orvieto, known as Italian Gothic. Thus it happens that the Assisans are the proud possessors, not only of the first Gothic church built in Italy during the dawn of the new era, but of a church which is unique, as recalling less dimly than those of other cities the splendour of the northern cathedrals. * * * * * The rapidity with which the Assisan Basilica progressed is one of the most wonderful results of the love inspired by St. Francis among mediæval Christians. The generosity of the Catholic world was so stirred that donations poured in without ceasing from Germany and France, and even from Jerusalem and Morocco. "Cardinals, bishops, dukes, princes, counts and barons," write the chroniclers, helped Elias in his work, while the people of Umbria, too poor to give money, came in numbers, out of the reverence they bore the Saint, to work for small and often for no wages. It was a busy time; and Assisi awoke to a sense of her importance. Under the vigilant eye of Elias, armies of masons and labourers worked as unremittingly as ants at a nest, while processions of carts drawn by white oxen, went ever to and fro upon the road leading to the quarries, bringing creamy-white, rose and golden-coloured blocks of Subasian stone.