Rouen and Troyes to anything that Paris can produce. Nevertheless there is a complete series of buildings in Paris, from the time of the Roman emperor Julian, down to the days of Henri IV., in which all the various characteristics of medieval architecture may be studied, and from which a tolerably complete idea may be obtained of the main features of French ecclesiastical architecture in general.
Thus we have in this city the remains of the Palais des Thermes, once the residence of the Emperor Julian; the early portions of the abbey churches of St. Germain des Prés, and Montmartre, of the heavy Romanesque (Romane) period; and the later portions of the same buildings, with the earlier ones of Nôtre Dame, St. Julien le Pauvre, and St. Sévérin, for the style contemporary with our earliest pointed; and then the later parts of the cathedral, with the Sainte Chapelle, equivalent to Salisbury; a blank occurs in the period corresponding to our Decorated, unless those portions of Nôtre Dame which were erected during the fourteenth century, may be considered as filling up the vacuum; and indeed it may be remarked that the complete pointed style, such as is developed in England at the east end of Lincoln cathedral, and in France at Amiens, is that which prevailed there until after the expulsion of the English in the fifteenth century, and the rise of the Burgundian or Flamboyant style. This latter style is well illustrated in Paris, from its earliest to its latest epoch, (being the French equivalent of our Perpendicular,) in the churches of St. Sévérin, St. Gervais, St. Méry, St. Germain l'Auxerrois, &c. The style of the Rénaissance is most splendidly exemplified in the churches of St. Eustache, and St. Laurent, while there are numerous civil buildings from the Hôtel de Sens, and the Hôtel de Cluny, to the Tuileries, and the Hôtel de Ville, tending to complete the series for the portions extending from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of the seventeenth centuries.
If we were to extend our researches beyond the walls of Paris, so as to include the medieval edifices of a circle of ten miles radius, a series quite as interesting and nearly as rich as that of the capital itself, would be found; for it would comprise many valuable specimens of the Romanesque and early pointed styles, and would number among its treasures the abbey church of St. Denis, to which Paris has nothing to compare. Without, therefore, by any means intending to say
