Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres

By Henry Adams

With an introduction by Ralph Adams Cram



Editor's Note

From the moment when, through the courtesy of my friend Barrett
Wendell, I came first to know Mr. Henry Adams's book, Mont-Saint-
Michel and Chartres, I was profoundly convinced that this privately
printed, jealously guarded volume should be withdrawn from its
hiding-place amongst the bibliographical treasures of collectors and
amateurs and given that wide publicity demanded alike by its
intrinsic nature and the cause it could so admirably serve.

To say that the book was a revelation is inadequately to express a
fact; at once all the theology, philosophy, and mysticism, the
politics, sociology, and economics, the romance, literature, and art
of that greatest epoch of Christian civilization became fused in the
alembic of an unique insight and precipitated by the dynamic force
of a personal and distinguished style. A judgment that might well
have been biased by personal inclination received the endorsement of
many in two continents, more competent to pass judgment, better able
to speak with authority; and so fortified, I had the honour of
saying to Mr. Adams, in the autumn of 1912, that the American
Institute of Architects asked the distinguished privilege of
arranging for the publication of an edition for general sale, under