purpose of arranging some difficult affairs on his eastern frontier, retired from his capital towards the Gulf of Lyons, and held, what was then called a cour plenière at his Castle of Beaucaire.

It is affirmed, that Henry King of England himself had appointed to meet the King of Arragon at that place, in order to mediate a reconciliation between him and the Count of Toulouse. The English King, however, was prevented from attending by the war in which he was engaged; and the time passed in festivities and sports. Nearly ten thousand knights are said to have been present on the occasion, one baron alone, named William de Martel, having three hundred knights in his train. Every one endeavoured to surpass the other in extravagance; the Count of Toulouse gave a hundred thousand solidi, or two thousand marks of fine silver, to a knight named Raymond d'Agout, who immediately distributed them amongst the other persons present. William de Martel required all his repasts to be cooked by the heat of wax candles. Bertrand Raimbaud ordered the fields in the neighbourhood of the castle to be ploughed, and sown with small coin, in which insane act he scattered thirty thousand solidi; and Raymond de Venous, to add brutality to folly, caused thirty of his finest horses to be burnt before the whole assembly.

Such were the amusements of the famous cour plenière of Beaucaire, as described by a contemporary; but as out of evil continually springs good,

VOL. II.

K

it would seem not at all improbable, that this extravagant meeting, by the multitude of merchants and dealers which it called together from all parts of the world, gave rise to the well-known annual fair of Beaucaire, which for so many years was one of the greatest commercial marts in the world.

The cour plenière of Beaucaire, however, afforded by no means a solitary example. In a thousand other instances, human vanity and pride, unchecked by accurate notions either in taste or morals, and acting in the free license of a state nearly approaching to barbarism, produced results scarcely less wild and extravagant. But although it is always to be lamented that men should fall into such absurdities, yet the consequences are not altogether so evil as they appear. Society has always hitherto vacillated between one excess and another; in some stages going backwards and forwards to the very extremes, and even in more refined and cultivated ages trembling like a finely balanced lever, at the slightest impulse, and continually passing to and fro over the accurately adjusted mark without ever pausing at the exact point. But from these continual fluctuations, and from the deviation from what is perfect in taste, in feeling and in thought, arises that boundless variety which in itself is admirable. One epoch may not always improve upon another; and it occasionally happens that, in consequence of some great convulsion, the world is cast back for many centuries. But

in the common course of events, each age, in its deviation from that which preceded it, produces new and beautiful combinations in its progress to the extreme opposite of that which went before.

To the extravagant splendour and ostentatious magnificence of these ages, may be attributed very many improvements in various arts, and in none more than architecture. Superstition, indeed, joined with the love of display; but superstition almost always derives its character from the circumstances that surround it, and though it acts upon the spirit of the age, it receives in return an impression from that spirit, which characterises all its efforts, in whatever direction they may be turned. Mere superstition would never have produced the crusades, had not other circumstances given to that impulse a great military development; and though, as some writers have asserted, superstition might have a share in producing the magnificent edifices which at this time rose thickly throughout every part of Europe, yet she might have restrained her efforts to raising the mighty stones of the Druids, or piling up the rubble temples of the early Saxons, if the ambition of exciting wonder by performing vast and extraordinary things in every course that presented itself to the human mind, had not brought about the second great change in the architecture of modern Europe.

Various splendid buildings had been erected in the time of Stephen, and some remains thereof are pro

bably to be seen in our own day; but towards the period to which we have now conducted this history, a catastrophe took place which produced one of the greatest efforts in this art that Europe had ever witnessed. The cathedral church at Canterbury, in the year 1174, was suddenly found to be on fire, and a considerable part of the building, though not the whole, was destroyed, to the grief of those who fondly believed it to be the most magnificent structure that human skill and diligence could produce. The choir was the part which suffered the most; and one of the monks who witnessed the conflagration has written a long and enthusiastic account of repairs, which occupied the next ten years to complete. A number of the columns were so injured that for some time a great difference of opinion existed as to whether it would or would not be necessary to pull down the whole of the building. All the great architects of France and England were called to consult upon the subject, and after much discussion, the plans of William of Sens were adopted, who declared it necessary to take down the choir, and every part of the edifice which had been affected by the fire. The work of reparation was then commenced with great activity; and day by day the monk Gervase noted down all that took place, and transmitted it to posterity, but in so tedious and discursive a manner, that although his account is invaluable as a source of information regarding our early architecture, it is perfectly im

possible to admit it into a work of a wider scope, or so to abridge it as to render it at all interesting to the general reader. We may mention, however, one or two points of difference between the choir as now rebuilt by the Archbishop Richard, and the former structure, erected by Lanfranc, in the year 1071; which alterations will serve, in some degree, to mark the progress that architecture had made at this period. The capitals of the ancient pillars, we are told, were plain; in the new building they were richly sculptured. The number of columns also was increased. The arches too, and every other thing, we are told, were previously plain, being cut with the axe and not with the chisel. In the new building every thing was fittingly sculptured. No marble pillars were formerly in the church; but in the structure built under Archbishop Richard they were numerous. In the church of Lanfranc, the vault was of wood, ornamented with extraordinary paintings; in that which was raised at the period of which we speak, it was of stone. Another change which is particularly mentioned, is not so easily understood, though it is evident that Gervase means to point out a great change in the forms of the arches. He declares that the arches in the circuit outside of the choir, were plain in the old building, but that in the new one just erected, they were bowed and keyed or studded. His exact meaning is certainly obscure; but I am inclined to believe that the arches he spoke of were those par