With regard to the English Abbeys too much cannot be said in praise of their architecture and it has been the model for large educational and municipal buildings ever since. St. Mary's Abbey at York, though only a few scattered fragments of its beauties are to be seen and very little, of its walls still stand, is almost as interesting as Yorkminster, the great Cathedral itself. There were many such abbeys as this built in England during the Thirteenth Century--more than a dozen of them at least and probably a full score. All of them are as distinguished in the history of architecture as the English Cathedrals. It will be remembered that what is now called Westminster Abbey was not a Cathedral church, but only a monastery church attached to the Abbey of Westminster and this, the only well preserved example of its class furnishes an excellent idea of what these religious institutions signify in the Thirteenth Century. They meant as much for the art impulse as the Cathedrals themselves. One feature of these monastic establishments deserves special mention. The cloisters were usually constructed so beautifully as to make them veritable gems of the art of the period. These cloisters were the porticos usually surrounding a garden of the monastery within which the Monks could walk, shaded from the sun, and protected from the rain and the snow. They might very easily have been hideously useful porches, especially as they were quite concealed from the outer world as a rule, and those not belonging to the order were not admitted to them except on very special occasions. The name cloister signifies an enclosed place and lay persons were not ordinarily admitted to them. Those who know anything about them will recall what beautiful constructive work was put into them. Certain examples as that of St. John Lateran in Rome and the Cloister of St. Paul's without the walls some five miles from Rome, constructed during the {122} Thirteenth Century and under the influence of the same great art movement as gave the Cathedrals, are the most beautiful specimens that now remain. The only thing that they can be compared with is the famous Angel Choir at Lincoln which indeed they recall in many ways.