reflection, that the materials for
forming the city were originally supplied out of the forests that
inclosed it; so that, not only the houses of individuals, but the public
edifices, were merely of wood. St. Gregory of Tours, speaking, in his
fifth book, of a church at Rouen, dedicated to St. Martin, uses the
following expression:--'_Quae super muros civitatis ligneis tabulis
fabricata est._'--Indeed, the few stone-buildings then at Rouen, were
almost exclusively devoted to the purposes of fortification, and were of
flint or sand-stone, rather than of free-stone. Every thing too tends to
prove that architecture was then in its infancy in the capital of
Neustria; or, if it ever had been more advanced there, which could have
been only under the Roman sway, that it had retrograded into a barbarous
state.--Moreover, the _Gothic style_, mentioned by Fridegode, was no
other than a degeneration of the Roman, or, more properly, of the
Lombardic architecture, distinguished by the circular arch, by insulated
columns, by a paucity of ornaments, and by a general massiveness. It is
by no means to be confounded with the style which has since passed under
the same name, a style introduced about the beginning of the twelfth
century, immediately after the crusades, with its ogee forms, slender
clustered columns, and every portion of the building characterized by
extreme lightness, yet still loaded with a profusion of crowded
ornaments. If, however, this Lombardic style was practised as early as
the fifth or sixth century, in a town so backward in the science of
architecture as Rouen, what date is to be assigned for its introduction
into other parts of France, where the knowledge of the fine arts
disappeared for a much shorter period?--It must be left to the decision
of antiquaries, whom this passage in Fridegode seems to have escaped, to
determine how far the foregoing observations are just, and may serve to
throw light upon the history of the style of architecture called
_Gothic_, the origin of which in France has always been attended with
great obscurity."

[174] St. Ouen was born A.D. 600, at the village of Sanci, near
Soissons. He was of a noble family, and was educated in the abbey of St.
Medar, at Soissons, whence he was removed, at an early age, to the court
of Clothair II. At the court, he contracted an intimate friendship with
St. Eloi; and, under Dagobert, became the favorite of the monarch, as
well as his chancellor and min