The student, as he approaches either of these interesting buildings, has to remember that the style of the earlier one, Plate L, was compelled to make room for the newer style, as that in its turn was soon out of fashion and was replaced by the more severely classical buildings which are mentioned below. The evolution was not perfect, the growth was not merely natural and inevitable, the style did not ripen, growing slowly from point to point of development, from simpler to richer, from less to greater pitch of complication. It was the constant influx of fresh appeals from Italy and from Italianized travellers, sometimes nobles of the great court, like the Constable of Montmorency, sometimes princes of the church, like the two cardinals of Amboise, and sometimes scholars only, humble students of Greek and Latin,
[Illustration: CHATEAU AT BLOIS (LOIR ET CHER), FRANCE, WING OF FRANCOIS I. FRANCE.]
[Illustration: CHATEAU OF ECOUEN (SEINE ET OISE), FRANCE, COURTYARD.]
[Illustration: WOLLATON HALL, NOTTS, ENGLAND.]
like Rabelais and La Boétie. The next step was taken by that very Constable of Montmorency, who, being then at the height of his wealth and influence in the State, began the new château of Écouen, after 1540--an early date, but the work was put into the hands of an uncompromising classicist, Jean Bullant. Plate LII shows a part of this château, the flank on the right hand as one enters the great court by the chief gateway. Here the classical orders are more at home, and although the high roof, the monumental chimneys, and the huge and towering dormers are still of the French Renaissance proper, with but little direct Italianate influence, it is easy to see how everywhere in the mouldings, in the larger details, the classical feeling of the architect has had its way. Even his dormer windows, picturesque, and, in a way, mediæval as they are in design, have pilasters and a Doric frieze, all approximated in their proportion to the classical standard. As for the main wall, it only needs a glance at the portico of columns in the middle of it, to see how the proportions of those two orders have swayed the design from end to end. This front, except the two dormers in the middle, which are later, is very nearly of the same date as that building which is shown in Plate LI. But the transition to neo-classic art is much farther advanced. The student will see in these disciplined details, this systematic spacing and shaping, the beginning of that tranquil and rather slow evolution which is seen again in Chapter VIII.