What were the habits of conception and of action
that gave the middle age characteristic coherence
throughout western Europe? The most conspicuous
medieval artistic achievement is Gothic architecture,
a structural system meeting in beautiful forms the
medieval demand for light in great churches, and
for height. But this system of thrusts and counter-
thrusts, with its soaring towers and roofs and its wide
windows of colored story, was not pervasive. Italy
cultivated it little. England, adopting it late and not
always consistently, turned it rather to picturesque-
ness. Gothic in its great thirteenth century and in
its architectural harmony is French. The art that
preoccupied all western Europe throughout the
middle age is narrative, especially verse romance.
Narrative was the pervasive medieval art.

The ancient habit of statute law, widely learned in
Italy and in France, gained less hold in the north.
The rising Germanic peoples were tenacious of their
own habits of customary law. England conspic-
uously depended on that body of traditions still
known as common law. The Roman Law, then,
though it was indeed a bond, was limited geographi-
cally. More widespread was the habit of feudalism,
a system of tenure binding each man to his overlord.
In political theory this centered in the king. So-
cially it fostered the virtue of loyalty. The English
word truth in the middle age usually meant loyalty.
But here again the binding force was limited by the
fact that feudalism in practical operation was local.
Nations in the modern sense being not yet born,

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