to readers already more or less familiar with the subject an extravagant position that Gothic architecture, as I define it, was never practised elsewhere than in France. Yet from this position I can see no escape.
The French origin of Gothic is, indeed, now pretty generally admitted on the continent of Europe; but the exclusive claim of the architecture of France, in the Middle Ages, to be called Gothic has not thus far, so far as I know, been advanced. This being the case, nothing short of a close analysis and comparison of the different pointed styles of Europe—a work which, strange as it may seem, appears not before to have been undertaken—could be expected to establish a view so different from that which commonly prevails. I have, therefore, been impelled to undertake an examination of the architecture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Europe, and I have endeavoured in this essay to illustrate the results of this examination in a clear and intelligible manner, and in such a way that, so far as might be, the monuments should speak for themselves. This examination I have made, for the most part, at first hand, except in regard to the architectures of Germany and Spain, my acquaintance with which is through books and photographs only.
The main conclusions of the book may, I fear, be unwelcome to many English readers who have regarded Gothic architecture as a no less English than continental product. But though, as I believe, the English claim to any share in the original development of Gothic, or to the consideration of the pointed architecture of the Island as properly Gothic at all, must be abandoned, there is yet abundant reason for English satisfaction in English architecture, as one of great nobleness and beauty, whose monuments can hardly be too highly prized or too zealously protected. And if the French monuments are found to be still more marvellous and beautiful, and to be the result of an earlier and more independent development, and even to have furnished the chief
