Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I HISTORICAL, BY French sculpture is meant sculpture that is distinctly French; practiced by Frenchmen, within the limits of France or where foreign influences did not disturb French talent. Both France and Frenchmen are at times vague and varying terms. Since 1871 the inhabitants of Alsace and Lorraine have ceased to be Frenchmen and have become Germans; while since 1860 the inhabitants of Nice and Savoy have ceased to be Italians and have become Frenchmen. Political changes are followed by changes in habits, disposition and character. Though along boundaries changes may be slight and slow, back of them, and perpetually working, are racial differences which are strong, permanent and uncompromising. Every decade Paris, London and Berlin grow further apart in spirit. The original home of the ancestors of the French was bounded on the west by the Atlantic, on the northwest by the English Channel, on the northeast and east by the Rhine and the Alps, and on the south by the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. After the disruptions that followed the death of Charlemagne, it was over a hundred and seventy years before Hugues Capet appeared and modern France was started. It was two hundred years more before Philip Augustus had so strengthened and enlarged royal authority that the kingdom of France had solid foundation and recognized boundaries. During the time, however, that France was weak politically, the French church was strong and united. Particularly strong were the monasteries. They were centers of financial and political, as well as of ecclesiastical, power. They were the sources of the literary, commercial and artistic activities of the day. The most powerful of them all was Cluny,1 near Macon, founded in 909 by William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine. It had un…