rom the energy and ability of Charlemagne in the eighth
century.

In the succeeding century, this activity received a check; an idea
became generally prevalent that the year one thousand was to see the
end of the world; men's minds were overshadowed with apprehension; and
buildings, in common with other undertakings of a permanent nature,
were but little attempted.

When the millennium came and passed, and left all as it had been, a
kind of revulsion of feeling was experienced; many important
undertakings were set on foot, such as during the preceding years it
had not been thought worth while to prosecute. The eleventh century
thus became a time of great religious activity; and if the First
Crusade, which took place 1095, may be taken as one outcome of that
pious zeal, another can certainly be found in the large and often
costly churches and monasteries which rose in every part of England,
France, Germany, Lombardy, and South Italy. Keen rivalry raged among
the builders of these churches; each one was built larger and finer
than the previous examples, and the details began to grow elaborate.
Construction and ornament were in fact advancing and improving, if not
from year to year, at any rate from decade to decade, so that by the
commencement of the twelfth century a remarkable development had taken
place. The ideas of the dimensions of churches then entertained were
really almost as liberal as during the best period of Gothic
architecture.

An illustration of this fact is furnished by the rebuilding of
Westminster Abbey under Edward the Confessor. He pulled down a small
church which he found standing on the site, in order to erect one
suitable in size and style to the ideas of the day. The style of his
cathedral (but not its dimensions) soon became so much out of date
that Henry III. pulled the buildings down in order to re-erect them of
the lofty proportions and with the pointed arches which we now see in
the choir and transepts of the Abbey; but the size remained nearly the
same, for there is evidence to show that the Confessor's buildings
must have occupied very nearly, if not quite, as much ground as those
which succeeded them.

At the beginning of the twelfth century many local peculiarities, some
of them due to accident, some to the nature and quality of the
building materials obtainable, some to differences of race, climate,
and habits, and some to other causes, had begun to make their
appearance in the bui