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THE FIELD OF ARTTHE DEVASTATED ART OF FRANCEBY A. KTNGSLEY PORTERSpecial Commissioner of the French Government andthe Commission des Monuments HistoriquesIMY first impression of the mediaevalart of France, I think, and I am' quite certain the one that subsequentlystamped itself most indelibly uponmy mind, was a feeling of delight (not,however, I confess,entirely untingedwith bewildermentandeven fatigue) at itsinexhaustibility.Inexhaustibility, Imean, not only inthe thought hiddenbeneath thoughtartistic, mystic andpoetic in everycreated thing, butin the sheer quantityof the masterworksthat, havingdefied the sacrilegioushands of blindiconoclasm andeven blinder restoration,still, untilyesterday, preservedto us essentiallyunaltered themediaeval vision inits serenity and inits exaltation.Indeed, the MiddleAges showeredupon France artistic creativeness with a prodigalitythe twentieth century in its dulnesswould scorn as wasteful; for in those daysmen perceived, what we do not, that thelamp of sacrifice in art is not lighted in vain.And it was precisely upon just those portionsof the Soissonnais and neighboringregions now laid waste that Gothic artstruck deepest and most prolific root. Itsblossoms, it is true, were often seen by fewappreciative eyes, at least in modern, moredegenerate, days; yet their sweetness wasVOL.LXVI.—IONoyon Cathedral.Noyon has been consecrated with fire. But the soulof the cathedral still lives.not lost. And even from their smokingruins, as from the funeral-pyre of thephoenix, there arises an incense which shall,I like to think, one day renew the youth ofarchitecture. For a sin-stained world and asin-stained art, redeemed by the holocaustof what was loveliest and what was best,ma>' now, it seems, and if they will—but thetragedy of that if!—exchange their shacklesof materialism for wings of imagination.Even Italy, inher moments andprovinces of mostintense artistic production,has hardlyflowed over withsuperaboundingjoy in creation asdid mediaevalFrance. Aside fromthe great abbeysand cathedrals,known to everyone, each villageand each hamlet ofnorthern Francepossessed a church,and this church wascommonly of realartistic value. Itwas, moreover,very rare that itdid not containsome object of artof striking beauty—an altarpiece ora painting or astatue or stainedglassor a tomb-stone or a bit of wood-carving or a bell orwrought ironwork. I have often sympathizedwith Didron, who was one of thefirst to attempt to explore the mediaeval artof the country districts. He was commissionedby the government in the first halfof the nineteenth century to compile themonumental statistics for the departementof the Marne. He returned at the end of thetime allotted to him in comic despair, obligedto report to his superiors that despite themost assiduous efforts he had been able to125