The thirteenth century knew more about religion and decoration than the twentieth century will ever learn. - Henry Brooks Adams

Chicago asked in 1893 for the first time the question whether the American people knew where they were driving.

One sees instantly that neither Francis of Assisi nor Bacon of Verulam could have hoped for peace with the Schools; twelfth-century ecstasy felt the futility of mere rhetoric quite as keenly as seventeenth-century scepticism was to feel it.

The outburst of the first crusade was splendid even in a military sense, but it was great beyond comparison in its reflexion in architecture, ornament, poetry, color, religion and philosophy. Its men were astonishing, and its women were worth all the rest.