was
the period of its development, the fourteenth that of its perfection,
and the fifteenth that of its decline; while many examples of its
employment occur in the sixteenth.

In the following chapters the principal changes in the features of
buildings which occurred during the progress of the style in England
will be described. Subsequently, the manner in which the different
stages of development were reached in different countries will be
given; for architecture passed through very nearly the same phases in
all European nations, though not quite simultaneously.

It must be understood that through the whole Gothic period, growth or
at least change was going on; the transitions from one stage to
another were only periods of more rapid change than usual. The whole
process may be illustrated by the progress of a language. If, for
instance, we compare round-arched architecture in the eleventh century
to the Anglo-Saxon form of speech of the time of Alfred the Great, and
the architecture of the twelfth century to the English of Chaucer,
that of the thirteenth will correspond to the richer language of
Shakespeare, that of the fourteenth to the highly polished language of
Addison and Pope, and that of the fifteenth to the English of our own
day. We can thus obtain an apt parallel to the gradual change and
growth which went on in architecture; and we shall find that the
oneness of the language in the former case, and of the architecture in
the latter, was maintained throughout.

For an account of the Christian round-arched architecture which
preceded Gothic, the reader is referred to the companion volume in
this series. Here it will be only necessary briefly to review the
circumstances which went before the appearance of the pointed styles.

The Roman empire had introduced into Europe some thing like a
universal architecture, so that the buildings of any Roman colony bore
a strong resemblance to those of every other colony and of the
metropolis; varying, of course, in extent and magnificence, but not
much in design. The architecture of the Dark Ages in Western Europe
exhibited, so far as is known, the same general similarity. Down to
the eleventh century the buildings erected (almost exclusively
churches and monastic buildings) were not large or rich, and were
heavy in appearance and simple in construction. Their arches were all
semicircular.

The first rays of light across the gloom of the Dark Ages seem to
have come f