EUGENE EMMANUEL VIOLLET-LE-DUC. 895 



part in the exercises and to share the distinctions of a school to which 

 the genius of Due, Vandoyer, Duban, and Labrouste were already 

 adding a new renown, he turned to the study of the buildings of the 

 Middle Age, the neglect with which they had so long been treated 

 giving to his investigations much of the interest of new discovery 

 together with the zest of a practical protest against that neglect, while 

 the paramount importance of constructive considerations in the devel- 

 opment of the mediaeval styles rendered them specially congenial to 

 the cast of his mind. 



In thus throwing himself out of the beaten track, and in maintain- 

 ing and defending the isolated position in which he placed himself, it 

 was almost inevitable that he should assume the tone and attitude of 

 a partisan, a relentless critic of commonly received opinions, an un- 

 compromising advocate of newly revealed truths; and this attitude 

 was not, on the whole, perhaps, uncongenial to his vigorous and com- 

 bative disposition. But if the tone of his numerous writings is pre- 

 vailingly polemical rather than judicial, if he too constantly turns aside 

 to decry what he stigmatized as " official art," or to enforce with pas- 

 sionate insistance the necessity of what he considered a " rational " 

 procedure, this must be imputed rather to the conditions of his life, 

 which was one of protest and controversy, than to narrowness of spirit 

 or deficiency of intellectual comprehension. Indeed, he was too truly 

 a man of science not to exhibit, as sooner or later he did not fail to do, 

 a truly catholic appreciation for every form of excellence. 



The somewhat solitary position thus assumed was maintained with 

 singular self-reliance and astonishing labor. For twenty years he 

 studied the monumental remains of France, of every period, bringing 

 to their illustration all the light that exhaustive researches among 

 contemporary documents could afford. In this he was greatly aided 

 by the establishment in 1837 of the Commission des Monuments His- 

 toriques, of which he was a member. During the next twenty years 

 he gave to the public, in rapid succession, the admirable literary works 

 which will render his name forever famous, in which he embodied the 

 results of these researches, the Dictionnaire Raisonnee del' Architecture, 

 in ten volumes ; the Dictionnaire du Mobilier, in six ; the Entretiens sur 

 I' Architecture, in two; and the Histoire de V Architecture Militaire du 

 Moyen Age, in one, this last being in part made up from the military 

 articles in the Dictionnaire. He also published a series of letters from 

 Sicily ; a collection of historical documents under the name of the 

 Album de Ste. Theodosie ; a work on the cities and ruins of Central 

 America ; descriptions of the city of Carcassonne, of the Chateau de 



