But the baneful hour came when a foreign influence and heathen taste obliterated many of these suggestive charms. The same infection which filled literature with the pedantry of a mythology whose beauty its imitators did not understand, defiled Christian churches with heathen idols, and for the cross, the lily, the holy legend, substituted the ox-scull, naked cupids, and the garland of a pagan sacrifice. Another spirit ruled in the realms of art, and had enthroned the eagle of Jove in the place of the Holy Dove. In Spain, the Netherlands, and in Scotland, there had been executed much clever building, but when the blow fell which destroyed further progress in this department, all excellence existed in English architecture alone. It is significant that not one four-centred arch was produced even so near as Scotland, while the last bloom of monumental art unfolded to perish forever in the frigid extravagance of Tudor Gothic. The budding forth of living architecture was cotemporaneous with one of the grandest augmentations of religious sentiment the world has ever known, and was signalized by the crusades and the organization of the great monastic orders. The first germination of this creative energy appeared about 1050, and chiefly among the Normans of France and England, where it swelled forth with extraordinary power and vividness. While this inspiration lasted, monumental art continued constantly to improve, and reached its highest excellence in the remotest West. After passing from a Herculean infancy to a graceful youth, and through a ripe maturity, a superannuated old age was reached, and it became extinct before the year 1550: so completely dead, that, since then, no architect in Europe has invented a new feature or composed a new beauty in that medium. The finest monuments, and the final goal of Gothic architecture are together illumined at sunset in western England, nearest to that wonder, Stonehenge, which was an antique, probably, long before Pericles ruled or Christ was born.