unlike the South Sea Scheme, or the railway system of our own time; except that in one case the energy was devoted to shortening the road to Heaven; in the other, to shortening the road to Paris; but no serious schoolman could have felt entirely convinced that God would enter into a business partnership with man, to establish a sort of joint-stock society for altering the operation of divine and universal laws.  The bourgeois cared little for the philosophical doubt if the economical result proved to be good, but he watched this result with his usual practical sagacity, and required an experience of only about three generations (1200-1300) to satisfy himself that relics were not certain in their effects; that the Saints were not always able or willing to help; that Mary herself could not certainly be bought or bribed; that prayer without money seemed to be quite as efficacious as prayer with money; and that neither the road to Heaven nor Heaven itself had been made surer or brought nearer by an investment of capital which amounted to the best part of the wealth of France.  Economically speaking, he became satisfied that his enormous money-investment had proved to be an almost total loss, and the reaction on his mind was as violent as the emotion.  For three hundred years it prostrated France.  The efforts of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry to recover their property, so far as it was recoverable, have lasted to the present day and we had best take care not to get mixed in those passions.

If you are to get the full enjoyment of Chartres, you must, for the time, believe in Mary as Bernard and Adam did, and feel her presence as the architects did, in every stone they placed, and every touch they chiselled.  You must try first to rid your mind of the traditional idea that the Gothic is an intentional expression of religious gloom.  The necessity for light was the motive of the Gothic architects.  They needed light and always more light, until they sacrificed safety and common sense in trying to get it.  They converted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, diminished their piers, until their churches could no longer stand.  You will see the limits at Beauvais; at Chartres we have not got so far, but even here, in places where the Virgin wanted it,—­as above the high altar,—­the architect has taken all the light there was to take.  For the same reason, fenestration became the most important part of the Gothic architect’s work, and at Chartres was uncommonly interesting because the architect was obliged to design a new system, which should at the same time satisfy the laws of construction and the taste and imagination of Mary.  No doubt the first command of the Queen of Heaven was for light, but the second, at least equally imperative, was for colour.  Any earthly queen, even though she were not Byzantine in taste, loved colour; and the truest of queens—­the only true Queen of Queens—­had richer and finer taste in colour than the queens of