§18,19. FRENCH CATHEDRALS. 199 



for design, we cannot be blind to their deficiency in that 

 purity of feeling which marks the taste of Greece, or of Italy. 

 They have the desire to excel, and the full conviction of their 

 success ; both useful in their way, for too great diffidence 

 impedes exertion ; and if their works often err in overwrought 

 ornament, they may find an excuse in the injury received by 

 their taste from the splendid monstrosities of Louis XIV. 

 (especially those of the latter part of his reign), and the 

 rococo of his successor, when false refinement and affectation 

 led to mannerism in figures and to corruption of form.] 



19. The French, indeed, began at a very early period to 

 give notable signs of talent in design; and the statues at 

 Eheims, Chartres, and other cathedrals, show that sculpture 

 was quite as advanced there in the 1200 as in Italy. 

 Nor is this to be ascribed to the "body of masons," who 

 were of every country, and worked wherever they found em- 

 ployment ; and France gave evident proofs of native genius at 

 that period, which are established by the glass windows of her 

 cathedrals and other decorative work, as well as by a compa- 

 rison of the style of her sculptures with that of other coun- 

 tries. And though France, like Germany and Italy, had been 

 indebted to Byzantine artists for many centuries, even to 

 the middle of the 1100, for the best models, the French, in 

 the following century, already attempted to throw off some of 

 the formality of the Byzantine school, and form a style of 

 sculpture independent of it. Some figures, it is true, retained 

 much of the old stiff drawing, in the early part of the 1200, 

 while others displayed greater freedom and truth ; and at the 

 middle of that and the beginning of the next century, they 

 had not only attained to an independent character, but were re- 

 markable for elegance and correctness of design. Such are the 

 best statues at Eheims and Chartres : (for some of them differ 

 in point of excellence ; and probably date a few years later than 

 the rest) ; and such are many at our Wells Cathedral, where, 



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