to a glory never equalled before or after. In France alone between the
years of 1180 and 1270 eighty great cathedrals and five hundred abbey
houses were constructed. It was in this century that Notre Dame, Paris,
arose, "the only un-Greek thing" said R.M. Stevenson, "which unites
majesty elegance and awfulness." But it was not alone. Other Notre Dames
sprung up in Germany, Italy and Spain. In England also, in that period
there were more than twenty cathedrals in the course of construction,
some of them in places as small as Wells, whose population never
exceeded four thousand.

To look today upon Wells with its facade of nearly three hundred
statues, one hundred and fifty-three of which are life size or heroic
and then to realize that this magnificent poem in stone was composed by
villagers unknown to us and unhonored and unsung, is to open our eyes
to the wonders accomplished by the foremost age of architecture.

So wonderful are those cathedrals that Ferguson, the standard English
authority on Gothic architecture, does not hesitate to say; "If any one
man were to devote a lifetime to the study of one of our great
cathedrals, assuming it to be complete in all its medieval
arrangements--it is questionable whether he would master all its details
and fathom all the reasonings and experiments which led to the result
before him.

"And when we consider that not only in the great cities alone, but in
every convent and in every parish, thoughtful men were trying to excel
what had been done and was doing by their predecessors and their
fellows, we shall understand what an amount of thought is built into the
walls of our churches, castles, colleges and dwelling houses. My own
impression is that not one-tenth part of it has been reproduced in all