THE STYLE OF HENRY II. 133 



some three hundred years. So completely did France come into 

 her definitive manner in architecture at this time that certain of its 

 buildings, as for instance the house known as du Cerceau's at Orleans 

 (Fig. 129), might with slight modifications have been the product of 

 almost any period from 1540 to 1870, while every reign from Henry III. 

 to the last Napoleon has produced work which, but for minutias, might 

 have been built when Henry II. was king. 



PARALLEL OF ARCHITECTURE AND LITERATURE. The work 

 accomplished in architecture finds a close parallel in that effected in 

 literature. Under classical influence the vocabulary was widened and 

 purged, mediaeval conventions eliminated and new types suited to a 

 more many-sided civilisation introduced. Poets set themselves to 

 reform the language by enriching it with the spoils of Greece and Rome 

 while rejecting the wilder neologisms ; they formed a stately and 

 gorgeous vocabulary, and by articulating the Alexandrine, definitely 

 fixed the mould for heroic verse. Amyot's translations of the classics 

 gave a model of lucid French narrative, while Calvin's works gave to 

 the language a new gravity and regularity, to the literature a form suit- 

 able for high themes, and to abstract discussion an example of con- 

 structive and logical thinking. 



THE ARTS UNDER HENRY II. In all the arts there was prolific 

 and brilliant performance. If native painters produced little beyond 

 portraiture, delicately wrought, but still stiff and formal, the Italian 

 decorators showed the way in breadth of treatment and wealth of 

 colour. Engraving found able exponents, including some of the leading 

 architects. The plastic arts were raised to a level hitherto unreached 

 by Goujon, Bachelier, Bontemps, Pilon, Cellini, and the stucco- 

 workers of Fontainebleau. Wood-carving was of exceptional vigour 

 and finish both in design and execution. The arts of the cabinet- 

 maker, the inlayer, the parquet worker, the goldsmith, the enameller, 

 the bookbinder, all reached the same pitch of perfection. Paris and 

 Lyons vied with each other in producing masterpieces of typography. 

 Palissy, a pioneer in scientific research, carried to a successful issue 

 experiments in the manufacture of artistic pottery. 



The characteristics of the new type of Renaissance design, which 

 was fully established by the last years of Francis I., may now be con- 

 sidered. The description will refer to the entire period of 1530-90, 

 the whole of which has much in common, but more particularly to 

 its most brilliant years, 1545-75. 



PLANS. Planning, in addition to the drift towards regularity, 

 symmetry and method, was marked by further disappearance of 

 mediaeval traditions. Round towers became the exception, square 

 pavilions the rule. Stairs were more seldom spiral or placed in pro- 

 jecting blocks. The plan of the great house in town or country, evolve 



