built a cell for himself in which he must abide, barred up for ever--
there is no more hope for him than for a sponge or a madrepore.

I shall not trace from this embryo the progress of Gothic art in Italy,
because it is much complicated and involved with traditions of other
schools, and because most of the students will be less familiar with
its results than with their own northern buildings. So, these two
designs indicating Death and Life in the beginnings of mediaeval art,
we will take an example of the _progress_ of that art from our
northern work. Now, many of you, doubtless, have been interested by the
mass, grandeur, and gloom of Norman architecture, as much as by Gothic
traceries; and when you hear me say that the root of all good work lies
in natural facts, you doubtless think instantly of your round arches,
with their rude cushion capitals, and of the billet or zigzag work by
which they are surrounded, and you cannot see what the knowledge of
nature has to do with either the simple plan or the rude mouldings. But
all those simple conditions of Norman art are merely the expiring of it
towards the extreme north. Do not study Norman architecture in
Northumberland, but in Normandy, and then you will find that it is just
a peculiarly manly, and practically useful, form of the whole great
French school of rounded architecture. And where has that French school
its origin? Wholly in the rich conditions of sculpture, which, rising
first out of imitations of the Roman bas-reliefs, covered all the
facades of the French early churches with one continuous arabesque of
floral or animal life. If you want to study round-arched buildings, do
not go to Durham, but go to Poictiers, and there you will see how all
the simple decorations which give you so much pleasure even in their
isolated application were invented by persons practised in carving men,
monsters, wild animals, birds, and flowers, in overwhelming redundance;
and then trace this architecture forward in central France, and you