mployment of it had ceased to be the fashion elsewhere.

This, then, is the first distinctive feature of the ecclesiastical
edifices erected in Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when
the new Gothic forms were elsewhere budding into their utmost beauty.

One strong constructive note ever rings out, and that is that, while the
Gothic was ringing its purest sound in France and even in England, at
least three forces were playing their gamut in Germany, producing a
species quite by itself which was certainly not Gothic any more than it
was Moorish, and not Romanesque any more than was the Angevin variety of
round-arched forms, which is so much admired in France.

One notably pure Gothic example, although of the earliest Gothic, is
found in Notre Dame at Treves, with perhaps another in the abbey of
Altenburg near Cologne; but these are the chief ones that in any way
resemble the consistent French pointed architecture which we best know
as Gothic.

The Rhenish variety of Romanesque lived here on the Rhine to a far
later period, notably at Bonn and Coblenz, than it did in either France
or England.

German church architecture, in general, is full of local mannerisms, but
the one most consistently marked is the tacit avoidance of the true
ogival style, until we come to the great cathedral at Cologne, which, in
truth, so far as its finished form goes, is quite a modern affair.

In journeying through Northeastern France, or through Holland or
Belgium, one comes gradually upon this distinct feature of the Rhenish
type of church in a manner which shows a spread of its influence.

All the Low Country churches are more or less German in their motive;
so, too, are many of those of Belgium, particularly the cathedral at
Tournai and the two fine churches at Liege (Ste. Croix and the
cathedral), which are frankly Teutonic; while at Maastricht in Holland
is almost a replica of a Rhenish-Romanesque basilica.

At Aix-la-Chapelle is the famous "Round Church" of Charlemagne, which is
something neither French nor German. It has received some later century
additions, but the "octagon" is still there, and it stands almost alone
north of Italy, where its predecessor is found at Ravenna, the Templars'
Church in London being of quite a different order.

Long years ago this Ravenna prototype, or perhaps it was this
eighth-century church of Charlemagne's, gave rise to numerous circular
and octagonal edifices erected throughout Ge