annals, before the days of the printing-press: have written their
thoughts, expressed their aspirations, and embodied their feelings as
clearly and truly as by any other form of utterance. We know Egypt as
vividly by its pyramids, the age of Pericles by the Parthenon of Athens,
Imperial Rome by the Flavian Amphitheatre and the Baths of Caracalla, as
from the pages of their respective literature. The mediaeval cathedrals,
monasteries, and churches are a living record of the faith and devotion
of mediaeval men, who have left besides them but little else whereby we
can know their aspirations and civilisation; we find in them an
expression of the deepest life that characterised the periods to which
they belong, and a record which, though often mutilated, and sometimes
nearly obliterated, never deceives. Wherever these architectural
creations are found, there also a voice ought to be heard, telling what
at that spot and at some previous time men thought and felt; what their
civilisation enabled them to accomplish, and to what state they had
attained in their conception of God. In a very true sense it can be said
that the architecture of a country is the history of that country, and
that the record of the architecture is the record of its civilisation.

"Mediaeval architecture," said Sir Gilbert Scott, "is distinguished from
all other styles as being the last link of the mighty chain which had
stretched unbroken through nearly 4000 years--the glorious termination
of the history of original and genuine architecture....[2] It has been
more entirely developed under the influence of the Christian religion,
and more thoroughly carried out its tone and sentiment, than any other
style. It is _par eminence_ Christian.... Its greatest glory is the
solemnity of religious character which pervades the interior of its
temples. To this all its other attributes must bend, as it is this which
renders it so pre-eminently suited to the highest uses of the Christian
Church. It was this, probably, which led Romney to exclaim, that if
Grecian architecture was the work of glorious men, Gothic was the
invention of gods."[3] This architecture was perfected by the mediaeval
builders--the round arch in the twelfth and the pointed arch in the two
succeeding centuries. Its progress was the realisation of three great
aims, towards which the Romanesque architects were ever striving--the
perfecting of the arcuated and vaulted construction, the increase of th