Having thus only this resource, masonry, in order to make its way to the light, flung itself upon it from all quarters. Hence the immense quantity of cathedrals which have covered Europe — a number so prodigious that one can hardly believe it even after having verified it. All the material forces, all the intellectual forces of society converged towards the same point: architecture. In this manner, under the pretext of building churches to God, art was developed in its magnificent proportions.

Then whoever was born a poet became an architect.

Genius, scattered in the masses, repressed in every quarter

under feudalism as under a testudo of brazen bucklers, finding no issue except in the direction of architecture, — gushed forth through that