That the taste was French, you can see in the architecture, or you will see if ever you meet the Gothic elsewhere; that it seized and developed an idea quickly, you have seen in the arch, the fleche, the porch, and the windows, as well as in the glass; but what we do not comprehend, and never shall, is the appetite behind all this; the greed for novelty:  the fun of life.  Every one who has lived since the sixteenth century has felt deep distrust of every one who lived before it, and of every one who believed in the Middle Ages.  True it is that the last thirteenth-century artist died a long time before our planet began its present rate of revolution; it had to come to rest, and begin again; but this does not prevent astonishment that the twelfth-century planet revolved so fast.  The pointed arch not only came as an idea into France, but it was developed into a system of architecture and covered the country with buildings on a scale of height never before attempted except by the dome, with an expenditure of wealth that would make a railway system look cheap, all in a space of about fifty years; the glass came with it, and went with it, at least as far as concerns us; but, if you need other evidence, you can consult Renan, who is the highest authority:  “One of the most singular phenomena of the literary history of the Middle Ages,” says Renan of Averroes, “is the activity of the intellectual commerce, and the rapidity with which books were spread from one end of Europe to the other.  The philosophy of Abelard during his lifetime (1100-42) had penetrated to the ends of Italy.  The French poetry of the trouveres counted within less than a century translations into German, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Flemish, Dutch, Bohemian, Italian, Spanish”; and he might have added that England needed no translation, but helped to compose the poetry, not being at that time so insular as she afterwards became.  “Such or such a work, composed in Morocco or in Cairo, was known at Paris and at Cologne in less time than it would need in our days for a German book of capital importance to pass the Rhine”; and Renan wrote this in 1852 when German books of capital importance were revolutionizing the literary world.

One is apt to forget the smallness of Europe, and how quickly it could always be crossed.  In summer weather, with fair winds, one can sail from Alexandria or from Syria, to Sicily, or even to Spain and France, in perfect safety and with ample room for freight, as easily now as one could do it then, without the aid of steam; but one does not now carry freight of philosophy, poetry, or art.  The world still struggles for unity, but by different methods, weapons, and thought.  The mercantile exchanges which surprised Renan, and which have puzzled historians, were in ideas.  The twelfth century was as greedy for them in one shape as the nineteenth century in another.  France paid for them dearly, and repented for centuries; but what creates surprise to the point of incredulity