CHAPTER XI
CONCLUSION
The foregoing examination and comparison of the pointed architectures of the different countries of Europe will be seen, I think, to afford a serviceable, though it be not an exhaustive illustration of the peculiar nature of Gothic architecture, and to throw light upon its origin. The true nature of this architecture has not been generally understood, mainly because the fact was not recognised that its distinctive characteristics were not arbitrary inventions but were based on principles deduced from practice, and determined by the laws of mechanics governing the structure. Our examination of these principles reveals the existence of a great class of buildings which display a perfectly distinctive character, and are confined, for the most part, to one closely circumscribed region. In this region a logical growth, from the earliest germs, of the principles of Gothic art may still be traced. Elsewhere we find buildings, in all cases later in date of erection, which exhibit many apparently kindred features, but which, in hardly any case, completely display in their structure the same distinctive system, and in many cases do not display it at all. In France, and in France alone, is the system complete and the development apparent. There alone are the successive steps of change spontaneous and connected, and there only does the inventive spirit of the builders manifest the character of a general movement.
And what the architecture itself shows is borne out by the inferences which the respective conditions of the different countries, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, naturally suggest. In France, as I have before remarked, the ethno-
