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.  The facade of Rheims is the most significant example of the wonderful architecture of the thirteenth century.  In the church of Amiens you see the perfection of the so-called Gothic,—­so graceful are its details, so dazzling is its height.  The central aisle is one hundred and thirty-two feet in altitude,—­only surpassed by that of Beauvais, which is fourteen feet higher.  It was then that the cathedral of Rouen was built, with its elegant lightness,—­a marvel to modern travellers.  Soon after, the cathedral of Cologne appears, more grand than either,—­but long unfinished,—­with its central aisle forty-four feet in width, rising one hundred and forty feet into the air, with its colossal towers, grandly supporting the lofty openwork spires, five hundred and twenty feet in height.  The whole church is five hundred and thirty-two feet in length.  I confess this church made a greater impression on my mind than did any Gothic church in Europe,—­more, even, than Milan, with its unnumbered pinnacles and statues and its marble roof.  I could not rest while surveying its ten thousand wonders,—­so much lightness combined with strength; so grand, and yet so cheerful; so exquisitely proportioned, so complicated in details, and yet a grand unity; a glorious and fit temple for the reverential worship of the Deity.  Oh, how grand are those monuments which were designed to last through ages, and which are consecrated, not to traffic, not to pleasure, not to material wealth, but to the worship of that Almighty God to whom every human being is personally responsible!

I cannot enumerate the churches of Mediaeval Europe,—­projected, designed, and built certainly by men familiar with all that is practical in their art, with all that is hallowed and poetical.  I glance at the English cathedrals, built during this epoch,—­the period of the Crusades and the revival of learning.

And here I allude to the man who furnishes me with a text to my discourse,—­William of Wykeham, chancellor and prime minister of Edward III., the contemporary of Chaucer and Wyclif,—­who flourished in the fourteenth century, and who built Winchester Cathedral; a great and benevolent prelate, who also founded other colleges and schools.  But I merely allude to him, since my subject is the art to which he gave an impulse, rather than any single individual.  No one man represents church architecture any more appropriately than any one man represents the Feudal system, or Monasticism, or the Crusades, or the French Revolution.