more cheerful and intelligent.  More calm is the imposing facade, with its mighty towers and lofty spires, tapering like a pyramid, with its round oriel window rich in beautiful tracery, and its wide portal with sculptured saints and martyrs.  And in all the churches you see geometrical proportions.  “Even the cross of the church is deduced from the figure by which Euclid constructed the equilateral triangle,” The columns present the proportions of the Doric, as to diameter and height.  The love of the true and beautiful meet.  The natural and supernatural both appear.  All parts symbolize the passion of Christ.  If the crypt speaks of death, the lofty and vaulted roof and the beautiful pointed arches, and the cheerful window, and the jubilant chants speak of life.  “The old church reminds one of the Christ that lay in the tomb; the new, of the Christ who arose the third day.”  The old fosters meditation and silence; the new kindles the imagination, by its variety of perspective arrangement and mystic representation,—­still reverential, still expressive of consecrated sentiments, yet more cheerful.  The foliated shaft, the rich tracery of the window, the graceful pinnacle, the Arabian gorgeousness of the interior,—­as if the crusaders had learned something from the East,—­the innumerable shrines and pictures, the variegated marbles of the altar, with its vessels of silver and gold, the splendid dresses of the priests, the imposing character of the ritualism, the treasures lavished everywhere, all speak greater independence, wealth, and power.  The church takes the place of all amusements.  Its various attractions draw together the people from their farms and shops.  They are gaily dressed, as if they were attending a festival.  Their condition is so improved that they have time for holidays.  And these the Church multiplies; for perpetual toil is the grave of intellect.  The people must have rest, amusement, excitement.  All these things the Catholic Church gives, and consecrates.  Crusader, baron, knight, priest, peasant, all resort to the church for benedictions.  Women too are there, and in greater numbers; and they linger for the confessional.  When the time comes that women stay away from church, like busy, preoccupied, sceptical men, then let us be on the watch for some great catastrophe, since practical paganism will then be restored, and the angels of light will have left the earth.

Paris and its neighborhood was the cradle of this new development of architecture which we wrongly call the Gothic, even as Paris was the centre of the new-born intelligence of the era.  The word “Gothic” suggests destructive barbarism:  the English, French, and Germans descended chiefly from Normans, Saxons, and Burgundians.  This form of church architecture rapidly spreads to Germany, England, and Spain.  The famous Suger, the minister of a powerful king, built the abbey of St. Denis.  The churches of Rheims, Paris, and Bourges arose in all their grandeur.