367 
the revilers of the style are only those who from prejudice 
have been disinclined, or from ignorance unable, to investi- 
gate its real principles. In the twelfth century, the learning 
which had characterised the centuries immediately preceding 
the Crusades, and had gradually dwindled away, was in the 
course of revival ; the ray of light which first gleamed in 
the east, had diffused itself over the whole of Europe ; and in 
the reign of Henry the Second (1 154-1 189) our language 
assumed a new character. " The Eno^lish lano^uao'e was, in 
fact, then formed. A style of architecture founded upon the 
Saxon and Norman (but differing from both) was, if not 
invented, at least practised extensively in England, and by 
English artists."* Amidst surrounding ignorance and bar- 
barism, the inmates of our monasteries devoted their lives to 
the service of religion, the preservation of literature, and the 
cultivation of the fine arts, whose bland and genial influence 
became apparent among the higher orders of society. 
" ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes 
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros." — Ovid. 
It is not necessary for us to lay claim to pointed architecture 
as peculiarly our own ; but the style having varied in every 
country, in its minuter features, in correspondence with the 
character of its inhabitants, we may proudly refer to England 
as that country in which the union of the sublime and beau- 
tiful has been fully carried out. In the time of Henry the 
Second, when the pointed style arose, Normandy was in our 
possession, and this Duchy contained Caen, Rouen, Bayeux, 
Abbeville, and other cities and towns in which the early 
pointed style was carried to great perfection. Anjou, Maine, 
Bretagne, and Guienne, were also held in fief of Lewis, King 
* It has been recently discovered by means of some long-hidden records, that 
nearly the whole of the beautiful menaorial crosses of Queen Eleanor, the beloved 
wife of Edward the First, were the work of Englishmen : they have hitherto been 
ascribed to foreign artists — See Gentleman's Magazine, 1841, 
N 
