its own imprimatur. The result is the volume now made available for
public circulation.

In justice to Mr. Adams, it should be said that such publication is,
in his opinion, unnecessary and uncalled-for, a conclusion in which
neither the American Institute of Architects, the publishers, nor
the Editor concurs. Furthermore, the form in which the book is
presented is no affair of the author, who, in giving reluctant
consent to publication, expressly stipulated that he should have no
part or parcel in carrying out so mad a venture of faith,--as he
estimated the project of giving his book to the public.

In this, and for once, his judgment is at fault. Mont-Saint-Michel
and Chartres is one of the most distinguished contributions to
literature and one of the most valuable adjuncts to the study of
mediaevalism America thus far has produced. The rediscovery of this
great epoch of Christian civilization has had issue in many and
valuable works on its religion, its philosophy, its economics, its
politics, and its art, but in nearly every instance, whichever field
has been traversed has been considered almost as an isolated
phenomenon, with insufficient reference to the other aspects of an
era that was singularly united and at one with itself. Hugh of Saint
Victor and Saint Thomas Aquinas are fully comprehensible only in
their relationship to Saint Anselm, Saint Bernard, and the
development of Catholic dogma and life; feudalism, the crusades, the
guilds and communes weave themselves into this same religious
development and into the vicissitudes of crescent nationalities;
Dante, the cathedral builders, the painters, sculptors, and music
masters, all are closely knit into the warp and woof of philosophy,
statecraft, economics, and religious devotion;--indeed, it may be