The church and abbey of St Antoine, near Paris, the churches of Filles Dieu, the Jacobins, the Carmelites, and the Cordeliers of Fauxbourg St Marcel, were also built by order of the king ; and likewise the abbeys of Lio, near Milan ; of Longchamp, near St Cloud ; and St Mathieu, near Rouen ; the greater part of the abbey church of St Denis, the Hotel Dieu of Vernon, Pontoise, and Compeigne ; and the church and abbey of Manbuison. The church of Notre Dame des Unes, in Flanders, was begun by Pierre, the 7th abbot, and completed in 1262, by Theodoric : the whole church was built by the monks themselves, assisted by the lay brothers and their servants. Robert de Coucy completed the cathedral of Rheims, and the church of St Nicaise ; for boldness and symmetry he surpassed all his contemporaries. Jean Rauy, an architect and sculptor, was employed 26 years upon Notre Dame.
In the reign of Charles V. the monasteries of the Au gustines and Celestines were built at Paris ; a magnificent chapel, on the model of the Sainte Chapelle, at Paris ; and many important additions were made to the Louvre. Charles V. was the founder of the Royal Library of France ; he placed 120 volumes in one of the towers of the Louvre. The abbey of Bonport was erected about 1387.
The 14th century differed considerably from the last. The windows, instead of foils and roses, branched into leaves, and there were richer decorations upon the vault ings of the roof. Similar changes took place in Eng land, where they were carried to a higher degree of per fection.
The taste of the 15th century was inimical to architec ture; it resembled that in England and other countries in the present day. There were many instances of tracery, especially in chapels and sepulchral monuments. The chapel of Charles de Bourbon, archbishop of Lyons, in the cathedral of that city, is a fine instance, and one of the latest works in the Gothic style produced in France. Charles de Bourbon died in 1478. The distracted state of France at this period prevented them from equalling what was done in England.
The Italian artists about this time began to restore the Roman style, and painting and sculpture soon arrived at excellence ; but in architecture, though the Gothic was abandoned, there was little of the pure Roman style in that which was adopted. It consisted chiefly in imitations of the Abarasque designs of Raphael, which he had copied from the frescoes of the baths of Titus and Livia, and introduced into the galleries of the Vatican, which met with applause in a generation too much accustomed to profusion of ornament to relish simplicity.
Having thus traced the progress of this school of ar chitecture from its introduction ir.to France to the reign of Louis the XIIth, which marked a total abandonment of it, Mr Whittington next proceeds to comment upon the principal edifices, and compare their merits with those of buildings of the same age in England.
Of St Germain des Prez, it is remarked, that the in terior is low and gloomy, lighted by small windows, as in our Saxon buildings ; but in the arches and columns of the choir, which have remained since the time of Mo rard, the general proportions, and especially those of the capital to the shaft, approach very nearly to the Roman Corinthian, while others are a sort of Abarasque, com posed of birds and griffins, still retaining the Corinthian leaves and volutes. Here columns support a series of circular arches, excepting the circular arcade at the east end of the church, where they are pointed, in consequence of the arrangement of the pillars, which are placed nearer to each other than where the colonnade is a straight line. The same circumstance is found in the crypt at St Denis ; in the choir of the church of La Charite stir Loire, and at the cast end of Canterbury cathedral, built between 1180 and 1185, where " the arches are some circular, and some mitred, for the distances between the pillars here diminish gradually as we go eastward. The arches being all of the same height, arc mitred (pointed) to comply with this fancy, so that the angles of the eastern ones are very acute. See Gostling's Canterbury, p. 224.
With regard to the abbey of St Genevieve ; in the time of the Celts, an island in the river Seine, surrounded by forests, was first resorted to for shelter. The habitations did not extend beyond the L'Isle do In Cite, which still retains the metropolitan church and palace of justice. This place was enlarged by the Romans, especially Va lentinian and Grotian.
Clovis at first resided in the Roman palace, but after wards erected one on rising ground near the south su burbs, and added a church to St Peter and St Paul, which was not finished at his death in 511. This church was afterwards named St Genevieve, after a pious lady, in whom the Parisians had great faith.