GIFT OF 
 
 SEELEY W. MUDD 
 
 and 
 
 GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER 
 
 DR. JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD 
 
 JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI 
 
 to Ike 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SOUTHERN BRANCH 
 
 JOHN FISKE
 
 ...
 
 r ^
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., 
 
 I, ATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. 
 
 "The surest test of the civilization of a people at least as sure as any afforded by 
 mechanical art is to be found in their architecture. ***** There is no object * * * 
 which calls out more effectually the inventive talent of the artist. The painter and the 
 sculptor may display their individual genius in creations of surpassing excellence, but it is 
 the great monuments of architectural taste and magnificence that are stamped in a peculiar 
 manner by the genius of a nation." Prkscott's Cuivjuest of Peru. 
 
 LON DON : 
 JOSEPH MASTERS, ALDERS GATE STREET, 
 
 AND 78, NEW II O N D STREET. 
 m rtcccxi IX.
 
 i.ovnov : 
 
 l'RINTKD BV JOSEPH MASTERS, 
 AI.DKRSGATK STRKET.
 
 Z GO 
 
 
 TO THE 
 
 REV. WILLIAM BASIL JONES, M.A., 
 
 FELLOW OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD, 
 (FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF T1UNITY COLLEGE,) 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
 IS INSCRIBED, 
 
 IN MEMORY OE THE PLEASURE AND INSTRUCTION 
 
 DERIVED FROM MANY HAPPY HOURS 
 
 SPENT IN HIS SOCIETY.
 
 P R E F A C E. 
 
 The present work was originally designed to form a volume in 
 " Burns' Select Library/' and was written at the suggestion 
 of the proprietor of that scries. Circumstances which have 
 since occurred have caused it to appear in another form, and be 
 transferred to another publisher. These would not have been 
 alluded to even in this brief manner, had it not seemed advisable 
 to account for the delay thus caused in the publication of a work 
 which was advertised full two years ago, and the manuscript of 
 which was actually complete in January, 1848. And still more, 
 the circumstances under which the work originated, and those 
 which have since occurred, have had a considerable effect upon 
 the character of the volume itself. 
 
 Had not its composition been proposed to me from a com- 
 pletely external source, without any suggestion or thought on 
 my part, I do not say that a work of this kind might not at 
 some time or other have appeared from my hand, but it might 
 not have been for many years, and would probably have been on 
 a somewhat different plan. Indeed it was not without delibera- 
 tion that I undertook a work that might seem presumptuous in 
 one who has indeed given his best attention to architectural 
 study, and lias some familiarity with the examples of his own 
 country, but to whom those of other lands are known by report 
 alone, and to whom several branches of the subject were total 
 darkness. To Hindoo, Egyptian, or Saracenic architecture I 
 had then given no attention whatever. A work projected by 
 myself would have probably contained no reference to the two
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 former, and regarded the latter only in its relation to the Gothic 
 style. These then I had, in familiar phrase, to get up for the 
 purpose, as some notice of every definite style of architecture 
 was required by the plan as proposed to me. But I considered 
 that there was probably no person familiar alike with every 
 branch of the subject ; any one would have had specially to get 
 up some part of the work ; the only difference would be as to 
 the extent and importance of the portions so to be treated. 
 
 This division of the subject, coinciding nearly with the First 
 Part of the First Book, will be found, I am afraid, not very satisfac- 
 torily treated. It was a wearisome task, as I had to search 
 through volume after volume 1 containing copious dissertations 
 on the antiquities of the different nations referred to, but with 
 very little direct information as to their architecture considered 
 in the point of view in which I regarded it. It is astonishing, 
 for instance, how little knowledge of Egyptian architecture is to 
 be gained from the numerous recently published travels in the 
 east. The information on the subject which they do contain is 
 involved in such a mass of historical and ritual speculation as to 
 be almost impossible to unravel. Not that I mention this in dis- 
 paragement of the authors, who were not bound to adapt their 
 works to my requirements, but simply to explain the difficulties 
 of my own position. And after all, the direct architectural infor- 
 mation which they contain appears immense, when we consider 
 what our knowledge of Gothic architecture would be, were we 
 left to derive it from books of travels in western countries. 
 In the case of Egyptian architecture, by far the most important 
 of the ante-Grecian forms, I should have been in great per- 
 plexity, but for the help afforded by the excellent little manual 
 of Egyptian Antiquities which will be found so often referred to. 
 
 1 Among these were many books most of the works will be found 
 
 of travels, &c, not especially de- quoted or referred to. "Stephens' 
 
 voted to architecture or antiquities, Researches in Central America'' 
 
 besides others, as the works of Sir is the only book occurring to me 
 
 C. Fellows and Mr. Fergusson, at this moment, from which I de- 
 
 and Professor Orlebar's Paper on rived much information, which is 
 
 Saracenic Architecture, more di- not directly alluded to in the text 
 
 rcctly connected with the subject or notes. 
 in hand. I have not made a list, as
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 This portion of the work was unavoidably written while I was 
 absent from Oxford, and had but few books at hand. I had in- 
 deed taken notes, of which the reader will occasionally see the 
 results, from Wilkinson, Eelzoni, and the great French work on 
 Egypt, but the other was the only one which I had actually with 
 me, and I found it indeed invaluable. 
 
 After all I must profess my opinion that researches into these 
 forms of art are of comparatively little value. 1 "The monu- 
 ments," says the author quoted in my title page, "of China, of 
 Hiudostan, and of central America" Egypt might fairly have 
 been added " are all indicative of an immature period, in which 
 the imagination has not been disciplined by study, and which 
 therefore, in its best results displays only the ill-regulated aspi- 
 rations after the beautiful which belong to a semi-civilized 
 people." But this is not all ; they are aspirations never to be 
 gratified ; these styles, like the nations among whom they arose, 
 stand isolated and disconnected from each other, scarcely at all 
 influencing the arts of other races. The true history, as a con- 
 tinuous stream, of architecture, just as of politics, philosophy, 
 and literature, commences with "immortal Greece." From that 
 source, traced on through Roman, Arab, and Goth, every event 
 influences every other that succeeds it, and the latter ones cannot 
 be understood without the study of those which preceded them. 
 But the preceding forms, excepting so far as they throw light on 
 the origin of the arch, excepting also the Pelasgian remains, 
 which are historically, though not artistically, in close connection 
 with Grecian architecture are little more than mere objects of 
 curiosity, with only an occasional and incidental bearing upon 
 the general history of architecture and of the human mind. 2 
 
 The other difficulty, that only a small portion of the subject 
 could be treated of from personal observation, is of the same 
 
 1 Of course I do not here mean field of research in this direction. 
 
 to include Arabian Architecture, I lis work I have not yet had an op- 
 
 vvithout which Gothic cannot be portunity of seeing ; the account of 
 
 understood. it in the Quarterly Review con- 
 
 - While this volume was passing tains a mass of information relating 
 
 through the press, Mr. Layard's to sculpture, but very little bearing 
 
 discoveries at Nineveh have opened directly upon architecture. 
 a most extensive and interesting
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 kind ; though I may have seen less than many others, no one 
 not even the late Mr. Hope could have seen everything to 
 which it would be necessary to allude in a work of this kind. 
 Of many even Christian 1 countries the architecture cannot be 
 said to be explored at all. But all the most important forms may 
 be well studied in engravings. And I have never hesitated to 
 criticize a building from engravings, with as little hesitation as if 
 I had myself seen it, because in the case of the very many English 
 churches which I have first studied in this manner, and after- 
 wards visited, I have never found the judgment which I had 
 formed by the more imperfect process, altered upon personal in- 
 spection. When I commenced this work, Lincoln and Exeter 
 were known to me only as Amiens and Cologne still are ; since 
 then I have visited both, and the result of the examination has 
 been the confirmation of the opinions which I had previously 
 formed. 
 
 The real difficulty is not in the criticism of particular build- 
 ings, but in the danger of not having the most typical struc- 
 tures, or a sufficient number of them, brought before the critic, 
 and of his consequently generalizing from insufficient premises. 
 But this applies equally to all information in every study not 
 derived from personal examination, to any opinion on an historical 
 character pronounced by one who has not himself laboured 
 through the treasures of the State Paper Office. I state the 
 facts say of German Romanesque on the authority of Mr. 
 Petit and Dr. Whewell ; if I differ from the former as to the 
 comparative merit of German and Norman architecture one of 
 the very few points in which I have the bad luck to differ from 
 the first of all architectural critics I form my opinion from the 
 testimony of him from whom I disagree, necessarily the most 
 favourable for his own side. 
 
 In one respect I find myself widely differing from the author 
 who has done most to elucidate the particular subject at issue. 
 I allude to Mr. Webb's favourable estimate of the Italian Gothic 
 contained in his Continental Ecclcsiology, 2 and in a paper on the 
 
 1 Of the buildings of Poland, obtain any information at all, and 
 
 Hungary, and even eastern Ger- of those of Russia and Scandinavia 
 
 many, (with the single exception of only a few disjointed fragments. 
 
 Vienna) I have not been able to - This work, as well as Mr.
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 adaptation of Gothic architecture to tropical climates previously 
 printed in the Transactions of the Cambridge Camden Society. 
 On my side I have Mr. Hope, whom I have quoted at length, 
 and implicitly Mr. Petit, who appears to have considered Italian 
 Gothic as hardly worthy of notice. The entire forsaking of the 
 principles of the northern Gothic which that style exhibits is 
 simply a matter of fact ; only Mr. Webb argues that it is 
 the necessary result of the climate. This is extremely proba- 
 ble ; but the inference which I should thence make is, not that 
 Italian Gothic is a legitimate style, to be approved, and even (in 
 our tropical colonies) to be imitated : but, that Gothic architec- 
 ture is a style only to be employed in northern countries, and 
 not to be introduced into lands where the necessities of the cli- 
 mate require a complete departure from its first principles. 
 
 And now, at the risk of repeating what I have said in the 
 General Introduction, I cannot help making a few remarks on 
 the principle which I have pursued in the treatment of what is 
 the real staple of the work, the parts devoted to Romanesque 
 and Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture. The general idea which 
 I have all along kept in my mind during the composition of 
 the present work is, briefly and simply, the Historical Study of 
 the Art of Architecture. This was the view which I have always 
 set before myself in my own studies, and as it is one which I 
 could not but see had been neglected, I was proportionably 
 glad of the opportunity offered me of drawing it out in a more 
 formal and public manner. Architecture, in some of its forms, 
 has been of late years a very popular study ; in fact I am by no 
 means clear that its popularity has not been injurious to it. 
 The other arts, from the very circumstance of their being less 
 popular, have been pursued in a way much more calculated to 
 evolve a genuine knowledge of their principles. Painting and 
 sculpture, among the comparatively few who have devoted their 
 attention to them, have never lost the character of arts, they 
 have never been reduced to matters of antiquarian or ecclesiolo- 
 
 Poole'a "History of Ecclesiastical ferred to them in several places. 
 
 Architecture in England," was Had they appeared sooner, my ob- 
 
 published alter my manuscript was ligations would have been very cx- 
 
 in the printer's hands. I have tensive, 
 however, as tin: reader will see, re-
 
 XU PREFACE. 
 
 gical research. Now architecture has ; of all the standard works 
 on the subject I can point to two only which at all approach to 
 that treatment of it for which I am contending. Mr. Hope's 
 " Historical Essay," with all the additional light which has been 
 since thrown upon the matter, and notwithstanding some ques- 
 tionable views, must undoubtedly remain the foundation of all 
 future architectural inquiries. Not only was it the earliest work 
 manifesting any grasp of the subject, but it manifested such a 
 grasp, so wide and enlightened, as but few who tread in the same 
 path can expect to rival. On a different plan, but equally valua- 
 ble to the architectural student, is the first volume of Mr. Petit' s 
 " Church Architecture." Mr. Petit has not taken altogether the 
 same broad view of the subject, nor so directly connected it with 
 other kindred studies, and with general history, but he is per- 
 fectly unrivalled in his appreciation of the real meaning and 
 principles of successive styles, and his skill in distinguishing 
 what is really an essential feature, what is merely accidental; a dis- 
 tinction requiring a keen philosophical eye, and which can never 
 be gained from the most complete collection of antiquarian facts. 
 And where Mr. Hope fails us, Mr. Petit supplies his place. The 
 strength of the former is in the history of Romanesque ; on the 
 subdivisions of Gothic architecture he supplies but little, and he 
 manifestly undervalues the contributions of our own country to 
 its development. In his treatment of the former branch lies the 
 first of Mr. Petit' s many excellences ; and the latter charge can 
 only have been brought against him by the merest insular pre- 
 judice. From these two authorities I have learned far more than 
 from all other architectural writers put together ; how conti- 
 nually they have been in my hands and thoughts the reader will 
 at once perceive from frequent references, and from the nume- 
 rous cases where I have preferred using their words rather than 
 my own. And I confess my obligations to Mr. Petit' s work 
 the more readily, because from most of the suggestions contained 
 in the second volume, I must, as an ecclesiologist, dissent. 
 
 These two great works I consider to form the sum and staple 
 of our direct architectural literature ; the labours of other 
 writers are often of immense subsidiary value, but do not in the 
 same way grapple with the subject itself. Next to Mr. Hope and 
 Mr. Petit, none can hesitate to place the elaborate productions
 
 PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 of Dr. Whewell and Professor Willis; but though of equal merit 
 in their own line, I cannot consider that line quite such a high 
 one ; at all events it is not the same, nor so directly connected with 
 my own view. Their writings treat as much of building as of 
 architecture; their aim is to exhibit the mechanical rather than 
 the artistic view. It may be that, such not having been the 
 direction of my own studies, I am not attracted by mathemati- 
 cal figures and diagrams ; but I hope every one will acquit me 
 of any wish to undervalue authors to whom the present work is 
 deeply indebted, though in a less degree than to the two great 
 masters of strictly architectural science to whom I have already 
 referred. 
 
 Of works dedicated to the elucidation of detail, as the Glos- 
 sary, and those of Rickman and Mr. Bloxam, it is almost need- 
 less to say, that while myself, in common with every other 
 architectural student, would have found it no easy task to ac- 
 quire much architectural knowledge without their aid, they do 
 not bear directly upon the present stage of my investigations. 
 Of Mr. Hickman no one can speak without respect ; I think 
 some late writers have undervalued the importance of his re- 
 searches ; but if so, it is but a natural re-action from the exag- 
 gerated praises of injudicious friends. To say, with his recent 
 Editor, that " notwithstanding the numerous works which have 
 appeared within the last five or six years, it is surprising to ob- 
 serve how very little real information has been added to that 
 which Mr. Hickman collected and digested/' almost implies 
 forgetfulness that the four distinguished authors enumerated 
 in the two last paragraphs had ever penned a line. On the 
 other hand, Mr. Palcy's " Manual of Gothic Architecture," 
 though somewhat unsystematic and ill-digested, has afforded 
 me many most valuable hints ; and I must not omit to mention 
 the collateral help afforded by many collections of examples, 
 and descriptions and illustrations of particular buildings, though 
 of course such works do not bear directly upon the main subject. 
 And there are also numerous works, relating to individual 
 branches of the study, whose aid, in the investigations of those 
 portions, has been invaluable. I would especially mention the 
 writings of Mr. Petrie and Mr. Gaily Knight. 
 
 I am persuaded that tin; Ecclesiological movement, deeply as 
 I sympathize with its most important bearings, has been in
 
 XIV PREFACE. 
 
 some respects prejudicial to the view of architecture for which 
 I am contending. Young as it even now is, it has gone through 
 many phases, and though it has now quite overgrown, at least 
 in the hands of its leading supporters, that narrow insular ex- 
 clusivcness with which it set out, the tendency of those times is 
 not yet altogether worn away. It was a natural re-action at 
 the time when it arose to carry the feeling in favour of Gothic 
 architecture too far, and almost to anathematize even the study 
 of any other ; Norman Romanesque happily escaping by being 
 considered as a Gothic form. But the mere historical study of 
 Grecian and Roman architecture is still viewed by some with 
 suspicion, although it stands to reason that an acquaintance with 
 it is absolutely necessary to any real knowledge of our own styles. 
 And as to the comparative merits of the different forms of Gothic, 
 much narrowness and prejudice still exists in many quarters. 
 Which style is the best is surely a matter of taste ; I have myself 
 a very strong opinion that on the whole Perpendicular is the best, 
 and I have given my reasons for that belief; but I have endea- 
 voured to do justice to every form of the art, and I flatter my- 
 self that I cannot be fairly charged with running down any 
 style. But I am often sorry to see writers for whom I have a 
 high respect, going out of their way to express their dislike of a 
 particular form of art, and appearing hardly capable of mention- 
 ing any one Perpendicular building without dragging in some 
 uncalled for expression of depreciation. 
 
 These evils are however entirely incidental ; and no one can 
 deny the direct and most important benefits conferred upon ar- 
 chitectural science by the Eeclesiological school. T do not think 
 they can be fairly charged with introducing into architectural 
 studies matters unconnected therewith ; architecture is only an 
 incidental feature in their pursuits, just as it is in those of ar- 
 clueologians. The two studies, differing in other respects, have 
 a common point, and each, viewing that common point from its 
 own position, treats it accordingly. If I consult the " Ecclesi- 
 ologist " on an architectural question, I have no right to com- 
 plain if I find the information I am searching for side by side 
 with an article on Gregorian Chants, any more than if a similar 
 search in the " Archaeological Journal " brings rne into the vi- 
 cinity of a discourse on bronze celts or Roman pottery. Neither 
 the chants nor the celts have any interest for myself personally,
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 but both are legitimate objects of study treated of in their proper 
 places. 
 
 For I would repeat, at the risk of weariness both to myself 
 and my reader, that it is not to archaeology or archneologians 
 that I object, but to the position which they assume. Their re- 
 searches are valuable and necessary : it is only to the hostile tone 
 which they often assume, the uneasiness and jealousy which 
 their organ invariably displays at any thing like the deduction 
 of a principle or a theory, that any objection can be brought. 
 And against this hardly any objection can be too strong. I 
 may allude to one subject in which I certainly have no sort of 
 personal bias. The nomenclature of the Ecclesiologists I neither 
 employ nor approve ; but the manner in which any use of it is 
 met with in certain quarters, the frivolous, contradictory, often 
 spiteful objections which I have seen and heard brought against 
 it, would be almost enough to make me introduce it even now 
 into every page of my book, had I not myself objections to it far 
 stronger, as I hope, than those to which I refer. 
 
 It is not archaeology in its right place, as something subordi- 
 nate and ancillary, but archaeology exclusive, assuming, claiming 
 a rank which docs not belong to it, which is at this present mo- 
 ment the bane not only of architecture, but of a yet nobler study, 
 of history itself, as relating to the times and people most deeply 
 interesting to us. A newly discovered Anglo-Saxon charter is 
 recorded as a curiosity side by side with a newly-discovered 
 " low-side window ;" contributions to early history which can- 
 not be too highly valued, daily accumulate ; documents, facts, 
 customs, are continually discovered and elucidated ; but that to 
 which these are but the means, the enlivening of the dry bones, 
 the connection of the scattered fragments, is yet wanting ; a 
 history in short of our own early days which may rank with 
 that first of all records of the past, Dr. Arnold's History of 
 Home, is not so much as promised. Indeed within the last 
 month or two its name has been monopolized by a treatise of 
 antiquities, most important indeed as such, but very far from 
 being a " History of the English Commonwealth." 1 
 
 1 Mr. Kcmble's " Saxons in Eng- the Norman Conquest." I ought in 
 land; a History of the English the above remarks to except the 
 Commonwealth till the period of name of Sir F. Palgrave, but even
 
 ritElACK. 
 
 Between these two views, the ccclesiological and the archaeo- 
 logical, I have endeavoured to steer clear. For a justification 
 of my view with regard to the former, I would again refer to the 
 first chapter of the work itself; hut I think that a few words 
 may perhaps be necessary with regard to the directly ecclesias- 
 tical tone adopted in these pages. The case is simply this ; 
 the subject was one which necessarily involved many ecclesias- 
 tical allusions ; and in the mode of making them it was alto- 
 gether repugnant both to my feelings and principles to affect 
 an indifference which did not exist, or in any way to conceal ray 
 real mind. But every expression of this kind which the work 
 contains, will be found to be merely in the nature of allusions; 
 controversy or dogmatic statement there is none ; and the allu- 
 sions are almost entirely to those broad facts of Church history 
 necessarily introduced by the subject, without reference to theo- 
 logical and ritual minutiae which would certainly have been 
 out of place. And, after all, I have done no more in speaking in 
 that way which I hold to be just of certain systems and indivi- 
 duals, than is done by w r riters of contrary opinions, who take 
 every opportunity of decrying and undervaluing them, often 
 going very far out of their w r ay for that purpose. 
 
 At the same time I must freely confess that, on reviewing my 
 book, I have found passages whose literal sense 1 should be 
 sorry to have pressed too far. I chiefly refer to expressions of 
 admiration for, perhaps even, in some degree, of regret for the 
 loss of, mediaeval systems and feelings. These come almost 
 naturally from an architectural student, who deals almost ex- 
 clusively with the brightest aspect of those days, and is strongly 
 tempted to look upon the times which witnessed the noblest de- 
 velopments of his own art, with a view which a calmer and more 
 extended view of history will not justify. I am inclined to 
 think that every age has its own virtues and its own vices; and 
 if the middle ages, ages in which every thing was on a grand 
 scale, exceeded us in the former, they did so in the latter also ; 
 if richer in deeds of heroism and saintliness, they are more pro- 
 
 his greatest work is hardly a his- Still it were almost better to err 
 tory, and many of his brilliant the- in his company than to be correct 
 ories are undoubtedly questionable. with the merely antiquarian school.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 lific also even after the events of the past year in blood, rapine, 
 and general disorder. If modern Europe hardly admits of a St. 
 Louis or an Alfred, neither is any Christian throue likely to be 
 now disgraced by a Rufus or a John. 
 
 The reader will probably remark that in the consideration of 
 Romanesque and Gothic architecture, nearly all the references 
 and examples are confined to ecclesiastical buildings. The cause 
 of this is to be traced to a process of abscission which it was 
 found necessary for the work to undergo before its appearance 
 in its present form. In order to reduce the size of the volume 
 some omissions were absolutely required. Accordingly, besides 
 smaller retrenchments, I expunged five whole chapters, which bore 
 the headings, " Of General Architectural Nomenclature," " Of 
 the Nomenclature of Churches/' " Of the Secular Architecture of 
 the Romanesque Period," " Of Gothic Churches," " Of Gothic 
 Secular Architecture." These chapters were, on the whole, less 
 connected with my design as a History of Architecture than any 
 others, though the two latter were upon some of the most inte- 
 resting subjects in its whole compass. They contained a review of 
 the general principles of the two classes of structures, regarded 
 directly as buildings, as to their outline, proportion, and general 
 effect, with as little reference as possible to considerations of 
 particular styles. This was a view which I thought was better 
 kept separate from the historical sequence of styles ; and it is 
 almost self-evident that this last must be studied in the churches 
 of each period. From these only can we learn the real princi- 
 ples of the style, as nowhere else, not in the most gorgeous 
 secular erections, is the same free scope afforded for their de- 
 velopment. This is true of Gothic, notwithstanding the stately 
 monuments of secular architecture which remain to us in that 
 style, the halls of our own royal palaces, and the more superb 
 Hotels dc Villc of the Netherlands. And much more it is the 
 ease with Romanesque, a style of which nearly all the existing 
 remains are either ecclesiastical or military, and from the latter 
 class of buildings, deeply interesting as they are on many other 
 grounds, scarcely any strictly architectural lessons can be derived. 
 If any one should ask why, instead of sacrificing these far more 
 interesting portions of the work, I did not rather decide on the 
 omission of those early chapters which 1 have already stated to 
 
 h
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 contain much less important matter, I can only answer that, had I 
 myself originally designed the book, such would probably have 
 been the arrangement adopted, but in the scheme of the treatise, 
 as actually written, these chapters formed an integral part, which 
 the others hardly did, and could not have been omitted without 
 changing the whole plan, and making far greater alterations in 
 detail than were involved in the course which I have followed. 
 
 Several of the views contained in this volume had been pre- 
 viously propounded by me in papers read before the Oxford 
 Architectural Society, and letters inserted in the "Ecclesiolo- 
 gist." In some cases, where I had seen no occasion to change 
 the sentiments thus expressed, I have embodied the entire pa- 
 ragraphs in the present work. One idea however which I had 
 imagined was here promulgated to the world for the first time, 
 either by myself or by any one else the view of rest and immo- 
 bility as the leading principle of Romanesque, in opposition to the 
 horizontal and vertical extension of Grecian and Gothic respec- 
 tively is, I have been informed, to be found in Lord Lindsay's 
 Letters on Christian Art, a work which I have not as yet read, 
 and from which I certainly did not borrow it directly or indi- 
 rectly. I will not add either the uncharitable Latin, or the 
 boastful English, proverb adapted to such occasions ; coincidences 
 of idea of this kind can hardly fail to arise among writers 
 treating on the same topics. One subject, one of the most inter- 
 esting branches of the study of Gothic art, is purposely omitted. 
 Of the tracery of windows, the point which has always most 
 especially attracted my own attention, I have said no more than 
 was absolutely necessary. This was because I have in hand, 
 and have nearly completed, a minute treatise on that subject, 
 the substance of several papers read before the Oxford Society, 
 which, but for the peculiar circumstances attending the publica- 
 tion of this volume, would probably have now been before the 
 world, and which, if the present undertaking prove in any de- 
 gree successful, may still, I hope, some day appear. 
 
 The present work is not illustrated ; there was at one time an 
 intention of adding engravings, but the idea was relinquished, as 
 to illustrate it completely was altogether out of the question, and 
 a partial and inadequate illustration seemed even more objec- 
 tionable than none at all. The public has thus lost, to my
 
 PREFACE. XIX 
 
 great regret, some of Mr. Petit's beautiful etchings, the use of 
 which he most kindly offered me, and which would have adorned 
 one of the omitted chapters. But, though a complete illustra- 
 tion of the work would have been highly desirable, the way in 
 which the subject is here treated renders its loss less objection- 
 able than it would be in a treatise of detail, or a record of existing 
 specimens. A single engraving has been retained as a frontispiece, 
 representing one of the noblest specimens of parochial Gothic 
 architecture in all England, and exhibiting, what is so rarely met 
 with in parish churches, even of great pretensions, a west front 
 really deserving the name of an architectural composition. 
 
 Besides my obligations to Mr. Petit, my acknowledgments are 
 also due to G. W. Cox, Esq., S.C.L., Scholar of Trinity College, 
 and Secretary of the Oxford Architectural Society, for many beau- 
 tiful and elaborate drawings made when the idea of illustrations 
 was entertained. And I must also express my best thanks to 
 the Rev. W. B. Jones, M.A., Fellow of Queen's College, for ac- 
 cess to the magnificent Library of that Society, without which I 
 should have been involved in great difficulties in the earlier part 
 of my undertaking. 
 
 My work is now done ; and if it be accepted as any contribu- 
 tion towards fostering the study of architecture in its proper posi- 
 tion as a branch of mental philosophy, it will have been effectually 
 done. I need not describe the anxiety with which I commit to 
 the world my first production of any consequence ; but, what- 
 ever be its destiny, I shall at least carry with me the satisfaction 
 of having honestly laboured, to the best of my powers, to pro- 
 mote an end which I believe to be of no slight importance to the 
 highest of all human sciences, that of the human mind. 
 
 Oaklands, Duuslky, 
 
 February 10, IS 10.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DESIGN AND SCOPE OF THE WORK. 
 
 1'AGE 
 
 Difference of origin between Architecture and the other fine arts Preva- 
 lent disinclination to allow it its due rank Different modes of its pursuit 
 the merely Archaeological the Ecclesiological neither directly view it 
 as Art Difference between Architecture and Building View of Architec- 
 ture as Art designed in the present work antiquarian speculations 
 avoided reasons for studying the Architecture of all ages and nations . . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 CAUSES of the diversity OF STYLES IN" ARCHITECTURE. 
 Different styles peculiar to different ages and nations effect of circum- 
 stances manners race Changes in architecture more easily traced than 
 in other arts influence of physical causes each style retains traces of 
 its first origin Character of Transitional periods . . . . . . . . 1 1 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 DIVISION OF STYLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Impossibility of dividing on a single principle comparative importance of 
 different styles Constructive division according to the use of the Entab- 
 lature or the Arch origin of the arch an occasional use of the arch does 
 not constitute an arched style Division of styles Celtic Pelasgian 
 Hindoo Central American Egyptian Grecia n Roman Romanesque 
 Saracenic Gothic Revived Italian .. .. .. .. ..17 
 
 BOOK I. ARCHITECTURE OF THE ENTABLATURE. 
 
 PART I. OF THE EARLIER AND RUDER FORMS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF PELASGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Interest of the Pelasgian monuments propriety of the name masonry 
 gateways approximations to the arch apparent domes Treasuries 
 style of ornament remains at Mycenae Grecian architecture not derived 
 from Pelasjnan connection of the latt.:r with Roman .. .. . . .'
 
 XX11 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF EARLY COLUMNAR ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Importance of the use of columns the same stages in architecture often re- 
 peated origin of columns Remains in Central America derived from 
 a stone construction approximations to the arch Chinese and Siamese 
 architecture . . . . . . . . . 43 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. 
 
 Supposed connection between India and Egypt Distinction between native 
 Hindoo and Mahometan architecture Hindoo columns roofs cave- 
 temples resemblance to Christian Churches Pagodas of northern India 
 of southern of the Jains Hindoo architecture derived from excavations 5 1 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Importance of the subject the Pyramids occasional use of the arch not 
 an arched style Egyptian porticos absence of the pediment sloping 
 sides intercolumniary walls use of sculpture the de columns and 
 capitals ground-plan of temples use of brick in civil architecture 
 Egyptian architecture derived from excavations traced out in detail 
 connection of the pyramidal form with excavations comparison of Hin- 
 doo and Egyptian buildings objections answered Later Egyptian Ar- 
 chitecture Greek influence . . . . . . . . . . 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF WESTERN ASIA. 
 
 Persian remains more valuable for sculpture than architecture Persepolis 
 character of the columns excavations timber origin of the style 
 character of the nation and their architecture Lycian remains rock 
 tombs intermixture of Grecian notions .. .. .. .. ..85 
 
 l/PART II. OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF THE ORIGIN OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Greece and her architecture all subsecpaent styles derived from it Grecian 
 architecture purely native not borrowed from Egypt origin in the tim- 
 ber construction objections answered Grecian architecture of Dorian 
 invention . . . . . . . . . . . . , , . . . . 95 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE THREE ORDERS OF COLUMNS. 
 
 The division not exhaustive the Doric order the most perfect of all the 
 Ionic its connection with the Ionian character its inferiority to the 
 Doric the Corinthian diversity of its forms its superiority to the 
 
 Ionic 
 
 105
 
 CONTENTS. XX1U 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF TEMPLES AND OTHER BUILDINGS OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Chief kinds of temples in antis peripteral dipteral Hypathral temples 
 Paestum engaged columns caryatides Choragic monument of Lysi- 
 crates of Thrasyllus tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes propylaea 
 theatres 114 
 
 CHAPTER IV. w 
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Simplicity of construction uniformity of design the two not identical, 
 though allied beauty of simplicity connection of Grecian architecture 
 wi th th e Grecian ch aracter and religion contrast of Grecian and Gothic 
 Rules of Grecian architecture its excellence not adapted to modern uses 1 23 
 
 it aaapw 
 
 z (0- 
 
 BOOK II. ARCHITECTURE OF THE ARCH. 
 
 PART I. OF THE ROUND ARCH, OR ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF THE CLASSICAL OR TRANSITIONAL ROMAN. 
 
 Roman architecture the first instance of a systematic use of the arch its 
 origin how far Etruscan the native Italian style without ornament 
 its excellence its expression of the Roman character existing Roman 
 architecture practically transitional from Grecian to Romanesque Roman 
 corruptions of the Grecian orders attempts to combine the arch and the 
 entablature Roman remains in the East excavations at Petra finest 
 Roman structures unadorned amphitheatres aqueducts .. ..135 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ORIGIN OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Office of Christian Rome as to religion as to architecture steps by which 
 Roman architecture cleared itself of inconsistencies value of later Ro- 
 man architecture .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 146' 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF HASILICAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Two forms of pier the mass of wall, and the pillar greater propriety 
 of the former greater importance of the latter Palace of Diocletian at 
 Spalatro the early Basilicas their interest their origin, and adaptation 
 to ecclesiastical uses late retention of the type in Italy its influence out 
 of Italy characteristics of Basilican architecture arcades apses St. 
 Paul at Rome imperfections of the style . . . . . . . . . . 151
 
 Xxiv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF OTHER EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. 
 
 FA OK 
 
 The Basilicas a style of themselves other buildings exhibit different stages 
 round and polygonal churches baptisteries St. Constantia Baptis- 
 tery of Constantine tomb of Theodoric Palace of Theodoric . . . . 1 61 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Its historical interest unique position of the Byzantine Empire its orien- 
 tal character necessity of a new style the dome first period of Byzan- 
 tine architecture second period St. Sophia other examples piers and 
 arches value of the style .. .. .. . .. ..164 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DIRECT INFLUENCE OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. 
 
 Churches at Ravenna St. Fosca, Torcello St. Mark St. Ciriacus, 
 Ancona .. ..174 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF ITALY OR LOMBARD STYLE. 
 
 Its introduction an era in art proportions of columns ornamental arcades 
 sculpture doorways ground plan and outline of churches campaniles 
 three periods of Lombard architecture .. .. .. .. ..176 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF GERMANY. 
 
 The Germanic Empire Carlovingian remains Lorsch Lombard origin of 
 the style Byzantine element outlines of churches apses vaults 
 piers triforia arcades different kinds of Romanesque surface ornament 
 value of the style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 80 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF THE EARLY ROMANESQUE OF IRELAND. 
 
 Researches of Mr. Petrie derivation of the Irish Romanesque from the 
 first Christian Churches small size of churches two ante-Norman 
 periods decorations of the second period not distinctively Norman 
 introduction of Norman architecture into Ireland . . .. .. .. 195 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF THE F.ARLY ROMANESQUE OF ENGLAND, OR ANGLO-SAXON STYLE. 
 
 Obsolete notions of Saxon architecture excessive reaction sophistical ar- 
 guments brought against the Saxon theory importance of Mr. Petrie's dis- 
 coveries Anglo-Saxon architecture of Lombard origin difficulties arising 
 from the paucity and rudeness of existing remains Anglo-Saxon architec-
 
 CONTENTS. XXV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ture has distinguishing characteristics piers arches style of ornament 
 doorways windows towers Saxon towers derived from the campanile, 
 Norman from the cupola Earl's Barton finish of towers difference be- 
 tween Saxon andNorman styles stone carpentry three periodsof Anglo- 
 Saxon art First, Debased Roman Brixworth Second, most purely 
 Saxon the Bartons Third period, designated by Mr. Paley, Ante- 
 Norman extent of Saxon remains. . . . . . . . . . . . 202 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF SOUTHERN FRANCE, OR PROVENQAL STYLE. 
 
 Romanized character of southern Gaul native development of its architecture 
 retention of classical notions outlines of churches piers and arches 
 early use of the pointed arch doorways Byzantine churches in France 
 their origin St. Front at Perigueux character of the style .. .. 219 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF NORTHERN FRANCE AND ENGLAND, OR NORMAN 
 
 STYLE. 
 
 Importance of the style extent of remains in England Norman architec- 
 ture not transitional its introduction into England Westminster 
 Waltham no essential difference between Early and Late Norman 
 Outlines of churches preserved by the Gothic builders of great 
 churches St. George Bocherville west fronts transept fronts apses 
 towers capping of towers spires internal arrangements piers cy- 
 lindrical piers in England not columns, but identical with the square 
 pier arches triforia rcofs shafts small interiors chancel arches 
 mouldings doorways windows decorative arcades shafts and 
 columns Note on Norwegian churches . . . . . . . . . . 228 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OF THE INFLUENCE OF LATE ARCHITECTURE IN THE EAST. 
 
 Latin conquest of Constantinople Venetian conquests Latin ideas in 
 later Greek Churches The Holy Sepulchre Church . . .. .. 251 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GENKRAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Romanesque Architecture, whether a perfect style questions to be distin- 
 guished from this Romanesque the perfection of the round-arched con- 
 struction no objection to be drawn from its history supposed " Pagan 
 origin" no difficulty incongruity between Romanesque and Modern Ita- 
 lian the cause chiefly ecclesiastical Romanesque not imperfect Gothic 
 leading idea of the style, Rest carried out in detail agreement of the 
 different forms of Romanesque their difference rather in outline than in 
 architecture Basilican Byzantine Lombard German Norman 
 comparison of the two last superiority of the Norman Symbolism and 
 teaching of Romanesque of Gothic of Revived Italian .. .. 25 1
 
 XXVI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Value of the style historical rather than artistic gorgeousness without 
 taste Byzantine influence inadequate supports Arabian architecture in 
 Egypt tendency to anticipate isolated Gothic features in Spain Mos- 
 que of Cordova the Alhambra the Giralda at Seville Architecture in 
 Hindostan its superiority to other Arabian styles use of the cupola 
 gateways Persian and Turkish architecture . . . . . . . . 270 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 OF THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN 
 CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 Pointed buildings in Sicily mixed origin of the people Norman con- 
 quest Byzantine remains Arabian Norman buildings in the Saracenic 
 style Palace Chapel at Palermo Cathedral of Cefalu of Palermo of 
 Monreale secular buildings intermixture of Norman forms the style 
 really Arabian Arabian influence elsewhere Venice Spain . . . . 286 
 
 PART II. OF THE POINTED ARCH, OR GOTHIC ARCHI- 
 TECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Gothic architecture its perfection its former contempt propriety of the 
 name Gothic Definition of the style the vertical principle develop- 
 ments of the principle First, the Pointed Arch its necessity to carry 
 out the style Second, the round or polygonal abacus its importance 
 Third, the clustered pillar its octagonal substitute Fourth, mouldings 
 chamfers Other vertical developments use of horizontal lines princi- 
 ple of contrast Vaulting its necessity imperfection of the timber roof 
 Origin of the style individuals at work in architectural developments 
 theories as to the origin of the Pointed Arch not the question at issue 
 the real question as to the origin of its systematic use probably from the 
 east difficulties answered other features followed the adoption of the 
 Pointed Arch Vegetable origin of the style how far correct ideas bor- 
 rowed both from natural and artificial combinations objections answered 
 general Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Opposition between the two styles length and severity of the struggle 
 the Pointed Arch the first feature introduced employed first as an arch 
 of construction then as one of decoration retention of the round arch, 
 especially in English doorways changes in abaci pillars mouldings 
 nse of classical capitals Attic base arcades windows Transition in
 
 CONTENTS. XXV11 
 
 PAGE 
 
 France an imperfect Gothic Transition .in Germany late retention 
 of Romanesque retention of the round pier-arch vaulting triforia 
 piers windows changes in outline polygonal forms German Transi- 
 tion " a modified Romanesque" Comparison of the Transition in Eng- 
 land, France, and Germany .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 321 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Difference between the subdivisions of Romanesque and of Gothic Three- 
 fold division nomenclature of the Ecclesiological Society its defects 
 Twofold division into Early and Continuous extract from Mr. Petit cha- 
 racteristics of the two destruction of separate existence in the Continu- 
 ous foliation shafts panelling window-tracery objections brought 
 against the Continuous really lie against late Decorated as well as against 
 Perpendicular horizontal line principle of contrast carried out in low 
 roofs towers four-centred arches where allowable points objected to 
 not essential to the style Fourfold subdivision Lancet Geometrical 
 Flowing Perpendicular Flamboyant no such thing as a Decorated style 
 in a philosophical sense the arrangement convenient in practice . . 338 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 
 
 Lancet or Early English its definition the lancet window composi- 
 tions of lancets east end of Ely western triplets other forms of win- 
 dows beauty of detail detached shafts mouldings Geometrical style 
 origin of tracery first in couplets retention of the triplet gradual 
 change in other details Early Gothic towers spires absence of clere- 
 stories even in large churches doorways interiors distinctiveness of 
 parts pillars triforia clerestories Comparison of Westminster and Ely 
 advantage of the large triforium Lincoln Lichfield York the nave 
 a transition to the Continuous -vaulting chapter-houses small churches 
 intermediate examples choirs of Stafford and Dorchester French 
 Early Gothic Romanesque features retained Continuous lines Geome- 
 trical traceryLancet style abroad only in Normandy German Early 
 Gothic superiority to the French their resemblances German tracery 
 outlines interiors Comparison of German, English, and French Early 
 Gothic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC 
 
 Difficulty of exact demarcation between this style and the last Perpendi- 
 cular element in Flowing tracery William of Wykeham, how fir the in- 
 ventor of Perpendicular transitional forms of tracery peculiarities of 
 Continuous windows mouldings pitch of gables buttresses clere- 
 stories - spires towers octagons doorways porches Interiors 
 Comparatively little difference between Collegiate and I'aroehial Churches
 
 XXV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 PACE 
 
 retention of Early ideas in pillars true Perpendicular form absence 
 of the triforium roofs elaborate vaults fan-tracery wooden roofs 
 trefoil roof low roof coved and flat roofs Winchester Cathedral 
 advantage of great length Gloucester its inferiority Canterbury 
 King's College Chapel French Flamboyant its capabilities its practi- 
 cal vices discontinuous imposts excessive richness windows door- 
 ways towers triforia vaulting St. Ouen's the first of all churches- 
 German Flamboyant its faults tracery fantastic steeples vaults St. 
 James, at Liege Comparison of Perpendicular and Flamboyant . . 37G 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 
 
 Gothic only native in the north Italian Gothic alien to national feeling 
 works of foreigners St. Andrew, Vercelli St. Francis, Assisi works of 
 Italians their imperfections want of Gothic outlines sham fronts 
 round arches wide span of pier-arches secular buildings Arabian in- 
 fluence especially at Venice Milan Cathedral a style of itself its 
 splendid interior Campaniles Spanish Gothic character of the people 
 Arabian influence Superiority of Spanish to Italian Gothic Spanish 
 architecture imitative Burgos Toledo Seville Arabian details in- 
 creased Arabian influence at the time of the Renaissance Church of 
 Batalha its importance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Henry VII. changes marked by his accession his Chapel his tomb 
 Italianisms first introduced on tombs causes for this perfection of the 
 earliest forms of sepulchral architecture its gradual declension The 
 suppression of monasteries its effects on architecture indirect The 
 Renaissance its origin in Italy gradual corruption of art struggle 
 even in Italy Cinque-cento Brunellesclii the dome of Florence Bra- 
 mante Michael Angelo severe struggle in northern countries in 
 France Beauvais Orleans Churches with Gothic outlines and Italian 
 details St. Eustace In England revived Gothic of Oxford its excel- 
 lence connection with the Laudian movement decline of art elsewhere 
 "Elizabethan" style furniture late examples of Gothic Lichfield 
 Revived Italian its worthlessness perverted skill of some of its profes- 
 sors School of Wren St. Paul's his appreciation of Gothic outlines 
 Revived Italian towers successors of Wren Radcliffe Library Revived 
 Grecian its absurdity Taylor Buildings at Oxford revival of Gothic 
 architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
 
 a 
 
 tstorp of architecture^ 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DESIGN AND SCOPE OF THE WORK. 
 
 It is a truth which seems at last to be generally admitted, that 
 every effort of human art must seek for richness and beauty, 
 not in extraneous sources, but in the due adorning of those 
 features which are required by the necessities of construction or 
 utility ; it is a principle grounded on the analogy of the natural 
 and moral world, and confirmed by the evidence of the greatest 
 works of every art. But it is architecture that has ever afforded 
 the widest scope for its development, and it is farther an art 
 whose very existence depends upon this principle ; on this ground 
 alone must architecture rest its claim to the place it holds 
 among the noblest arts. / Painting and sculpture owe their ori- 
 gin to the higher cravings of man's nature ; their bare existence 
 implies some sort of mental refinement, some feeling, how- 
 ever rude and uncultivated, of taste and elegance, in a word, 
 some appreciation of beauty. But these feelings, which to the 
 subordinate arts are the very sources of existence, arc to archi- 
 tecture only the causes of superadded excellence. Its primary 
 source is to be found in our merest physical wants, in those in- 
 deed which we share with the inferior animals. As most of these 
 seek out some dwelling, natural or artificial, so man, even in his 
 
 ii
 
 A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 most unpolished state, requires a shelter from the midnight chill 
 and the noon-day heat, though it be no better protection than 
 can be afforded by tjie. rudest tent or hut, or even by the natural 
 caves of the earth. [Architecture then, in its widest sense as the 
 building art, differs irom other arts, in being not merely essen- 
 tial to man for the full scope of his highest faculties, but required 
 for his physical comfort, almost for his very existence.! And surely 
 it is a wonderful application of the principle above'aTIuded to, that 
 from such an origin should arise the very first of arts, that which 
 has produced the most thrilling and awful works of human 
 genius; which at once requires the least technical knowledge for 
 its general appreciation, and opens the widest field for minute 
 inquiries and philosophical speculation. The art whose name 
 bespeaks it the chief and queen of all, which presses the noblest 
 of other arts into its service and bends them to its will, is thus 
 at once their beginning and their end ; the most lowly in its 
 origin, the most glorious in its perfection ; slowly and gradually 
 has it risen, enriched by the contributions of every age, and 
 creed, and nation, from the log-hut of the savage, we might say 
 from the lair of the wild beast, to the fairest works of mere 
 human and heathen beauty ; and by a more soaring flight has 
 attained to the unearthly majesty of the Christian Minster, to the 
 lordly tower of Canterbury, the heaven-bound spire of Freyburg, 
 and yet more glorious still, to the mighty canopy of pillar, and 
 arch, and vault, spread as though by angelic hands over the shrine 
 of England's royal Confessor. 
 
 It is however to this difference of origin between architecture 
 and the other fine arts, and to the practical consequences to 
 which it has given rise, that we must attribute the still pre- 
 valent disinclination to allow the art and its professors the 
 lofty place which they may rightly claim. The professors of 
 the art are commonly looked upon through an atmosphere of 
 bricks and mortar, estimates and contracts, which almost wholly 
 obscures their character as artists in the very highest sense. 
 And with architecture considered as a subject of amateur study, 
 it cannot be denied that it does not at all hold in public estima- 
 tion the position which is so justly allowed to painting and 
 sculpture. The latter are recognized as matters of taste and in- 
 tellect, as subjects of the higher powers of the mind, while
 
 DESIGN AND SCOPE OF THE WORK, 
 
 architecture is still looked upon as a mass of dry, technical de- 
 tail, a subject to be got up as a lesson, not to be taken in by the 
 noblest faculties of the understanding and the heart. The so- 
 called classical architecture which was so long exclusively in 
 vogue had been so incumbered by cramped and rigid rules that 
 it could offer but few charms to those who would embrace the 
 pursuit as an elegant accomplishment. And now that men's 
 eyes are beginning to be opened to the far higher beauties which 
 adorn the works of our own race and our own religion, archi- 
 tecture is still seldom looked upon in its true light. The pur- 
 suit has been almost exclusively confined to two classes, neither 
 of whose views has any necessary relation to its study as an art. 
 First come the mere antiquarians, who look on buildings 
 solely in the light of antiquities, with whom the most sumptu- 
 ous display of Grecian or Gothic art has, after all, scarcely any 
 other interest than that raised by a barrow or a kistvaen, a rusty 
 dagger, or an antique potsherd. Much has been said with great 
 justice as to the positive irreverence to which this treatment of the 
 subject has led, where consecrated buildings have formed the mat- 
 ter of inquiry. Antiquarianism certainly exposes its professors 
 to many temptations on this score, but they are merely tempta- 
 tions, and do not imply any inherent vice in the study. The 
 elder school of antiquaries numbered among its members many 
 of the best men of their days, those who cherished whatever 
 love and reverence remained for the mediaeval Church. It is 
 only in quite recent times that what deems itself a more 
 enlightened archreology has taken up a position which must 
 be looked upon as distinctly and formally hostile to religion. 
 And it is clear that this line of study must be equally void of 
 fruit, when we look to its influence on the scientific and artistic 
 study of architecture. It is manifest that to the mere arclneologian 
 the antiquity is everything and the art nothing; the charm is 
 not found in beauty of form or richness of execution, but in the 
 number of years which the specimen has existed; a modern 
 work, even of the most consummate excellence, is of course 
 looked on as valueless. I am far from attributing this feeling 
 to all who call themselves arclncologians, but I say without hesi- 
 tation that it is the natural tendency of simple archrcology thus 
 to confine its view ; wherever archrcologians rise above i(, it is 
 
 b 2
 
 4 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 not as archreologians, but by virtue of some other character which 
 is united therewith in their own individual persons. From those 
 then whose architectural studies are thus limited we cannot 
 look for the discovery of principles of art, but at best for an his- 
 torical science of detail, classified according to dates. And it 
 would be most ungrateful in the architectural student to deny 
 the immense benefits conferred on his pursuit by such diligent 
 inquirers as the late Mr. Bickman, and the author of the 
 Glossary of Architecture, who have with such perseverance 
 cleared away the difficulties from his path, and paved a way to 
 the highest summits of his inquiry. Our only ground of com- 
 plaint is, that some writers of this school forget that they have 
 only paved a way for others ; they not only stop short at a 
 certain point themselves, but grudge that any one else should go 
 farther ; they have supplied facts, and quarrel with those who 
 would thence develop principles ; they have provided a com- 
 plete but lifeless body, and look with suspicion on any attempt 
 to infuse a vital principle into the inert mass ; they are like a 
 dry plodding annalist shaking his head and looking grave at the 
 " fanciful" reflections of a Thucydides or an Arnold ; or a peda- 
 gogue whose mind had never taken a flight beyond accidence 
 and birch, looking aghast at the extended philology of the 
 Comparative Grammar. 
 
 On the other hand is a nobler race, the authors of the great 
 ccclesiological movement ; the men who have fought the battle 
 of the Church in her material sanctuaries, and have, amid sus- 
 picion and slander, stood forth so manfully to convert the modern 
 preaching-house into the Catholic temple of prayers and sacra- 
 ments. Nothing is farther from the thoughts of the present 
 writer, himself a humble fellow-labourer in the great work, than 
 to cast a moment's slur upon their high and holy cause. But 
 still it is manifest that their efforts do not necessarily tend to 
 promote the study of architecture as an art. The first phase of 
 ecclesiology was simple antiquarianism, raised indeed by the end 
 at which it aimed, and the objects with which it was conversant; 
 but still, in its theory a mere technical acquaintance with the sacred 
 buildings of a particular age, in its practice a careful reproduc- 
 tion of their features. The science has now taken a bolder flight ; 
 Christian temples of all ages and all countries are to be studied ;
 
 DESIGN AND SCOPE OF THE WORK. 5 
 
 painting, sculpture, music, history, are all pressed into its ser- 
 vice; a single period is no longer put forward as the necessary 
 standard of perfection, but new developments of Christian art 
 are confidently looked for. But it is manifest that this is not 
 the direct study of architecture, but one which I freely allow 
 has a much better and higher scope ; it is essentially religious, 
 and only incidentally artistical. It occupies a field at once too 
 wide and too narrow for our present purpose ; it of course ex- 
 cludes all direct attention to any but ecclesiastical architecture ; 
 and moreover includes a large variety of subjects which have no 
 place in our present investigation. Everything that can add 
 fresh solemnity to the Christian temple and its worship comes 
 within the natural and legitimate scope of the ecclesiologist ; 
 every fine art, almost every mechanical one, has there its place : 
 the painter, the sculptor, the glass-stainer, the goldsmith, the 
 worker in brass and iron, all contribute their share ; the pro- 
 prieties of Church-arrangement, the refinement of Church-sym- 
 bolism, the splendour of vestments, the harmony of music, the 
 deep treasures of ritual antiquity, are all appropriate branches 
 of his studies. But it is manifest that while our present design 
 opens on the one hand a wider field for investigation, as includ- 
 ing the architecture of all ages and nations, it is on the other 
 more narrowed in its range, as it has no connection whatever 
 with any of these latter pursuits unless when they happen inci- 
 dentally to affect the style and proportions of strictly architec- 
 tural works. 
 / I will now endeavour to define the view of architecture which 
 I propose to take in the present work. The origin of this art 
 being, as was before said, to be found in the simplest necessities of 
 life, it is at once brought in close connection with what are some- 
 times called the industrial, as opposed to the fine arts.J Tn 
 painting or sculpture these have no share, or if any, it is one 
 almost as purely subservient and as utterly lost sight of, as paper- 
 making or printing, considered as subsidiary to the production 
 of a poem or a history. But the architect's design, though 
 itself the creation of pure intellect, is carried out by mere 
 manual and mechanical labour, the designer himself has no 
 share in its execution, nor need he, as far as his art is concerned, 
 know anything of the means whereby it is effected. Though
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 from prudential reasons, it is expedient that an architect should 
 be at least a theoretical builder, though in point of fact he cannot 
 otherwise originate a good design ; still the two characters are in 
 idea entirely separate. I Hence then building and architecture are 
 totally distinct ; the former is mechanical, industrial, depend- 
 ing wholly on physical laws of construction ; the latter intellec- 
 tual, refined, depending on the laws of taste; the one is a 
 matter of bricks and mortar, strains and pressures ; the other of 
 grace, harmony, and proportion. Architecture then is itself, 
 like all fine art, the creation of the higher part of man's nature, 
 and subject to the influence of the intellectual and moral workings 
 of individuals, ages, and nations; there must therefore be a 
 science of architecture as a branch of the general science of the 
 human mind ; there is of course also a science of building, of 
 construction ; but while the science of architecture is mental 
 and even moral, that of building is merely mathematical and 
 physical. Architecture then is the soul, building the body ; and 
 as the body influences the soul, hs bodily health conduces to high 
 spirits, if not to intellectuaTvigour, while bodily sickness often 
 weighs down and paralyses its spiritual companion, so is the in- 
 tellectual art of the architect liable to be improved or deterio- 
 rated by the mechanical art of the builder. Without its aid he 
 cannot place his own conceptions before the eyes and minds of 
 others ; hence architecture is ever liable to be influenced by phy- 
 sical as well as by moral causes ; the requirements of the 
 particular use for which an edifice is designed, the necessities of 
 climate, the nature of materials, the state of physical and con- 
 structive science, even that of the mere mechanical skill of work- 
 men, all influence the architect, and produce most important 
 effects upon the nature of his composition. High moral causes, 
 political and religious circumstances acting on the mind of the 
 age as well as of the individual, give the quickening spirit of the 
 style ; to these we owe the mystic awe of Indian and Egyptian 
 art, the pure but still earthly beauty of the Grecian temple, the 
 solemn massiveness of the Romanesque Cathedral, the soaring 
 majesty of its Gothic successor : all these spring from the trea- 
 sures of the heart ; but lower causes may act either for good or 
 for evil upon their development in construction and detail. The 
 historical philosophy of the science, the arrangement of succes-
 
 DESIGN AND SCOPE OF THE WORK. 7 
 
 sive styles, not by mere dates, but by the pervading and animat- 
 ing principle of each, must be conversant with both classes, and 
 trace how their workings on the mind of successive peoples are 
 exhibited in their architectural works. 
 
 [Granting then the claim of architecture to rank among the 
 fine arts, and therefore of its science to have a place among the 
 branches of mental philosophy, it would appear to follow that 
 there is room for another mode of treating the subject, totally 
 distinct from both archaeological and ecclesiological researches, 
 and yet of course involving much that is common with both. 
 And it is this that I shall endeavour to carry out in the present 
 work ; it will be an attempt to trace, as simply and popularly as 
 the subject will admit, the history of the art of architecture in 
 its developments among all nations. It will look at once to the 
 artistic principles of successive styles, and the manner in which 
 they are carried out in their more prominent details, and will far- 
 ther seek to be a general contribution to the history of man and 
 his natureTJ For it will be at once concerned with the philosophy 
 of a most noble art, and with the effects produced on that art by 
 the events of history, as exemplifying the character and position 
 of nations, and the working of political and ecclesiastical cir- 
 cumstances. The former branch of the subject has been ably 
 treated with regard to the ecclesiastical architecture of west- 
 ern Europe, by Dr. Whewell, Mr. Petit, and the late Mr. Hope; 
 and the latter path has been opened, though not to any very 
 great extent, by the last clear-sighted and indefatigable author. 
 Still more has been drawn out incidentally in the works of 
 strictly ecclesiological writers ; but it is still merely incidental ; 
 the actual aim of their writings, as was stated above, is different 
 and indeed higher, and of course their speculations must be in 
 the main confined to Christian architecture. In the present 
 work, on the other hand, the aim will be to give in the strictest 
 sense a history of the science of architecture, as a contribution, 
 however humble, to the philosophy of art ; it will not be, unless 
 incidentally, either arch geological or ecclesiological ; its aim 
 will be in short to trace, with as little reference as possible to 
 extraneous matter, the historical sequence of styles as dis- 
 tinguished by their pervading principles, and the influence 
 wrought upon them by those circumstances which mould the
 
 8 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 mind and manners of a nation. Attention will be rather given 
 to the grand features of outline and composition than to 
 the minutiae of detail, unless when the latter really illustrate 
 principles of art. Detail has been already sufficiently treated of 
 in several works, all of which have their use, while no popular 
 work unless the thoughtful and truly original volumes of Mr. 
 Petit can be ranked under that head has yet paid much atten- 
 tion to the former. 
 
 It is intended to embrace, as far as possible, the architecture 
 of all nations which have any pretence to a regular or definite 
 style. But a few remarks will here be necessary, lest undue ex- 
 pectations should be raised from these words. It has been the 
 ecclesiastical architecture of western Europe, the Romanesque 
 and Gothic styles, to the elucidation of which the writer's time 
 and thoughts have ever been chiefly devoted. Both from this 
 cause, and from the greater interest which they possess to our- 
 selves, both on account of their supereminent merit, and of their 
 being the architectural language of our own race and religion, 
 the consideration of these forms of the art will form the most 
 prominent feature in the work. The author's remarks on other 
 styles which have engrossed comparatively little of his attention, 
 and whose monuments he has had no opportunity of investi- 
 gating personally, will be little more than a compilation from 
 other writers ; while the architecture of Christian and Teutonic 
 Europe will demand all that his own diligent observation and 
 reflection will afford. 
 
 On the same principle that I abstain from entering on the 
 fascinating field of pure ecclesiology, I endeavour to avoid di- 
 gressions to those subjects which stand in nearly the same rela- 
 tion to Pagan architecture as that science does to that of Christ- 
 endom. Where, as in Greece and Italy, the purposes of a religion 
 and habits with which we are generally familiar exercise a visible 
 effect upon architecture, a brief notice of those purposes mani- 
 festly comes within the scope of this treatise. But to involve 
 himself, as there is great temptation to do, in recondite and 
 doubtful speculations as to the exact nature and design of Celtic, 
 Egyptian, and Indian monuments, and in the mazes of those 
 distant mythologies which to the majority even of highly educated 
 people are almost entirely unknown, would be profitable neither
 
 DESIGN AND SCOPE OF THE WORK. 9 
 
 to the author nor to his readers. I must confess that though 
 these are subjects for which, as for all knowledge of the mind 
 and history of man, I entertain a high respect, I have as yet 
 been content to admire them at a distance ; mere allusions more- 
 over to matters not fully understood are profitless, and the ques- 
 tions themselves are such that a real explanation of them could 
 not be fairly looked for in a treatise on architecture, even were 
 the writer as competent to elucidate them in all their bearings 
 as he feels himself to be the reverse. In like manner I take the 
 main outlines of European history for granted, and allude to 
 events in their results ; as, though I have here the greatest pos- 
 sible temptation to diverge from my subject, the direct teaching 
 of history is clearly no part of my present province. 
 
 The author can imagine that some persons for whose opinion 
 he has a high respect, may object to the plan of combining hea- 
 then and Christian architecture in a single work, perhaps even 
 to any investigation whatever with regard to the former. But 
 the history of any art would be manifestly imperfect, were it con- 
 fined to one of its forms, even though that one be the noblest and 
 most sacred of all ; art does not cease to be art and to demand 
 investigation as such, because it has been sanctified to a higher 
 use ; any more than the new birth of the Christian precludes 
 the examination of his merely human nature in the science of 
 moral philosophy. The historian of a Christian state does not 
 consider himself precluded from treating of its secular affairs, 
 the universal historian is not debarred from recording the fate 
 of heathen nations, because the fortunes of the Church should 
 be the thought uppermost in the mind of every Christian writer. 
 A treatise of ecclcsiology is like a formal theological work, in 
 which secular affairs may indeed be alluded to, or even, under 
 some circumstances, occupy a prominent place, but arc still 
 something purely incidental, and subordinate to the main object; 
 a treatise of architecture is like a work of general history or phi- 
 losophy, which has no direct theological aim, but which, when- 
 ever it has occasion to allude to the history or dogmas of the 
 Church, will be careful to treat them with becoming reverence. 
 And this, or something analogous, will be the aim of the present 
 volume ; though not a treatise on religious buildings, but on 
 buildings generally, churches, when they have to be introduced,
 
 10 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 will have their holy use fully recognized. The one view cannot 
 be rightly made to exclude the other ; and farther, a perfect 
 knowledge of ecclesiology can hardly be obtained without a cer- 
 tain acquaintance with some at least of the Pagan styles ; the 
 development of Horn an and Gothic architecture is almost a ne- 
 cessary branch of ecclesiological science, and this cannot be 
 rightly understood without estimating the great importance of 
 Grecian art as in some sort the parent of both, and the probable 
 influence of Saracenic models on the formation of the Gothic 
 style. 
 
 There seems in truth to be some danger of the ecclesiological 
 movement leading in one class of minds to a narrowness not unlike 
 that which it has supplanted. As the last generation despised 
 all architecture except that of the Greeks and Romans, and was 
 content to abide in ignorance of what it despised ; there is now 
 a tendency at work to make the ecclesiastical architecture of the 
 middle ages the centre of an equally confined view. That Gothic 
 architecture is beyond all comparison the noblest effort of 
 the art, that it is the only style to be adopted for modern 
 structures in western Europe, the present writer would never 
 dream for a moment of calling in question ; but this surely does 
 not preclude us from looking on the architecture of other na- 
 tions as being at least as curious and valuable a study as other 
 researches of the like kind. It is only a very prejudiced eye 
 that can look with suspicion on the historical study of the 
 science, and the elucidation of its general principles ; the archi- 
 tectural monuments of every nation cannot fail to throw light 
 upon its history, institutions, and modes of thought ; of some 
 indeed, their architectural works are all that remain. Unless 
 the page of history is to be for ever closed, unless the classical 
 student is to be deemed a real restorer of the heathen world in 
 which he dwells; unless the works of Homer and iEschylus are 
 to be cast from us as an idolatrous defilement; the legitimate 
 study of the architecture of heathen nations, along with their 
 history, poetry, and philosophy, cannot be consistently pro- 
 hibited. We may gaze with awe on the mystic circles of Celtic 
 antiquity, and the gigantic piles of India and Egypt ; we may 
 contemplate the palmy days of Athens, and view in imagination 
 her agora thronged with heroes, bards, and sages, as we trace the
 
 CAUSES OF THE DIVERSITY OF STYLES. 11 
 
 parallel development of her intellect in the matchless grace, the 
 calm serenity of her Parthenon ; we may in contemplating the 
 magnificent though corrupted structures which Roman art has 
 scattered through so many lands, bring more vividly before us 
 the mighty power of the eternal city, we may dwell among her 
 consuls and her Cresars, her warriors and her orators ; without a 
 wish to deprive our own yet more glorious style of its para- 
 mount sway over Teutonic Christendom ; we may still hold that 
 all that Athens or Rome could rear must yield to the far higher 
 and holier splendours of Rouen and Cologne; and that the 
 portico of the virgin goddess, with all its stately columns and 
 living friezes, is to be admired, but not imitated, in a land which 
 has reared and consecrated the tall arcades and soaring vaults of 
 our Lady's church of Salisbury. 
 
 The general design then of the present work is an attempt at a 
 philosophical history of the science of architecture ; it will be its 
 aim to exhibit its artistic principles, and their political and reli- 
 gious symbolism the symbolism I mean of styles and whole 
 edifices, not that of mere details. Construction, detail, archaeo- 
 logy, ecclesiology, will only occur as subordinate and incidental ; 
 and technicalities will be avoided as much as possible. To form 
 cither a hand-book of details, or a catalogue of particular build- 
 ings, is no part of my design, but to exemplify the successive de- 
 velopments of the art ; to challenge for it a higher place in the 
 history of the human mind than can be claimed for mere anti- 
 quarian curiosity, and a more extended field than the philoso- 
 phically confined, though morally beautiful and ennobling, scope 
 of pure ecclesiology. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CAUSES OF THE DIVERSITY OF STYLES IX ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The most remarkable feature in the history of architecture, 
 and that which, more than any other, renders its study at once 
 a field for anticpiarian research and an important branch of
 
 12 HISTORY OP ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 mental philosophy, is the fixedness with which each age and 
 nation adhered to its own form of the art. At some periods, 
 indeed, as in the best days of Gothic skill, architecture was in 
 a state of almost incessant flux, new forms were continually 
 introduced, and each was consequently of short duration ; still 
 these forms were but developments and applications of a higher 
 and more widely extended principle, and each had a period of 
 predominant, if not universal, prevalence, however soon it may 
 have yielded to another. In short, every architectural work, 
 both in its general conception and in its remotest detail, bears 
 on it the stamp of its own age and country ; not only is it often 
 possible at once to recognise their impress with almost the cer- 
 tainty of historical testimony, but a deeper investigation will 
 show that these forms are not merely so many antiquarian facts, 
 but the exponents of some pervading principle, to be sought for 
 in the peculiar circumstances of the age and country whose stamp 
 they bear. 
 
 Not that this is at all peculiar to architecture ; it is common 
 to it with all works of imaginative, and some even of mechanical 
 art. The great works of the painter and the sculptor, the inspired 
 effusions of the poet and the orator, all bear the impress, not only 
 of his own mind, but of that of his age and nation. The ne- 
 cessities of climate and differences of geographical position pro- 
 duce no inconsiderable influence on manners, arts, and intellect ; 
 the mountaineer and the inhabitant of the plain, the rustic and 
 the dweller in cities, have each their distinguishing and unmis- 
 takeable characteristics. But, beyond all this, an unfathomable 
 law of Divine Providence has divided the offspring of our com- 
 mon parents into widely distinguished races : there are certain 
 definite marks stamped deep upon the physical and moral con- 
 stitution of each, upon their habits, their tone of thought, and, 
 above all, their language, by which individuals and nations may 
 be at once referred to their respective branches of the great 
 human family. And a yet more deep and mysterious decree 
 directs the fates of these several races and nations ; one great 
 law, indeed, of progress and decay marks out for the people, no 
 less than for the individual, the successive stages of existence, 
 its youth, its manhood, and its age, but the circumstances of 
 nations at different periods are almost infinitely varied ; habits,
 
 CAUSES OF THE DIVERSITY OF STYLES. 13 
 
 constitutions, religions, rise and fall; themselves the offspring of 
 national character, they strongly re-act upon the expression of that 
 character in philosophy and art. Many of the diversities in art 
 have, of course, a more direct and palpable source in intentional 
 adaptations to outward circumstances ; but deeper causes than 
 this are at work. We can trace in the arts and literature of a 
 nation the mysterious symbolism of its inner mind, the un- 
 conscious expression of its position and tone of thought, accord- 
 ing to the same hidden law which has caused those very 
 diversities of which these works become the visible and tangible 
 expression. 
 
 Thus far all that has been said is equally true of all intellec- 
 tual works ; and the history of architectural diversities is but 
 one instance among many of the working of a general law. 
 There are, however, one or two circumstances more peculiarly 
 connected with our present subject which may require a more 
 extended mention. 
 
 The successive changes in architect are are certainly more 
 easily traced than those of the kindred products of the human 
 intellect. The influences above described, although equally cer- 
 tain in all, and following in the main the same general laws, 
 cannot be so clearly and definitely marked in those productions 
 whose origin and seat are wholly in the mind, and of which the 
 senses are nothing more than conditions of their communi- 
 cation to others, as in those which are altogether confined to a 
 sensible expression. Such are the arts, and of these architec- 
 ture affords a more easy means for the recognition of this in- 
 fluence than painting or sculpture. Not that the changes and 
 their causes are known with less certainty to scientific students 
 of the two latter arts, but simply that in the case of architecture 
 the fact of their existence is more prominently brought before 
 the mind of an unscientific person of ordinary observation. The 
 public eye is necessarily far more conversant with works of 
 architecture than with either of the others, so that men cannot 
 fail to be more in the habit of observing and criticising them. 
 But besides this, the features of outline and proportion, and the 
 main character of a style as exemplified in a church or other large 
 building, are in themselves such as to strike more readily upon 
 the eye than the characteristics of the several schools of painting
 
 14 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and sculpture ; even the minute detail, I should imagine, is some- 
 thing more tangible and definite, and more readily reduced to 
 rule than the differences of tint and expression in a picture or a 
 statue. Hence, among other reasons, we find persons who have 
 given no special attention to the subject more inclined to form 
 opinions upon the merits of architectural designs, and even to 
 dictate to the professional artist, than is commonly the case with 
 regard to the other two branches of the fine arts. 
 T And farther, architecture is, partly from its being the only one 
 directly grounded upon utility, partly from its more close connec- 
 tion with purely material and mechanical processes, more liable 
 than the rest to be influenced by strictly physical causes, by mecha- 
 nical discoveries, and by the direct requirements, as distinguished 
 from the unconscious working, of habits and religion. To these 
 causes the more plain and tangible diversities in architecture 
 those by which the dates of buildings are generally ascertained 
 are in most cases to be referred. Let us take for instance two 
 purely physical causes, climate and material. It is manifest that 
 a hot and a cold, a moist and a dry climate require different 
 kinds of edifices ; so different kinds of materials wood, stone, 
 brick require different modes of construction. Climate has 
 thus a direct influence ; it also influences habits, and these again 
 have an effect on architecture. Religion again exercises a still 
 more powerful effect over the highest developments of the art, 
 as in almost every age and nation the temples of its worship 
 have been the buildings to which the noblest efforts of architec- 
 ture have been devoted. Different forms of worship require 
 different plans and arrangements ; and these not only exercise a 
 most powerful influence upon outline and proportion, but farther 
 tend to mould the actual style of architecture, by bringing for- 
 ward such forms as will best harmonise with their necessary re- 
 quirements. Mechanical discoveries also affect style ; they may 
 be first introduced from mere convenience, perhaps even with an 
 endeavour to engraft them on a style to whose principles they are 
 altogether repugnant ; yet the living plastic skill of the true archi- 
 tect soon seizes on them, works them into his system, clothes 
 utility with beauty, and makes the feature which is of the main 
 importance in construction contribute a proportionate share to the 
 decoration of the building. The old system, now worn out, falls
 
 CAUSES OF THE DIVERSITY OF STYLES. 15 
 
 to the ground, and the new one, just grown to maturity, springs 
 forward into perfect life, in all the freshness and brilliancy that 
 bespeaks the latest-born offspi-ing of the Divine spark within 
 the mind of man. 
 
 We see in the heart of man two discordant principles holding 
 his actions as it were in equal balance between them : the love 
 of novelty which ever gives so unspeakable a charm to the fresh, 
 the unknown, the wonderful ; and that power of habit and associ- 
 ation which is found sufficient to endear to us even objects which 
 otherwise would have but little claim upon our affections. And 
 this latter power has not been without its influence on architec- 
 ture ; combined with its antagonist it has even proved a fresh 
 source of variety. For every nation, as has been powerfully 
 traced out by Mr. Hope, 1 continues to reproduce under fresh 
 circumstances, with fresh materials, the one original type to 
 which it was at first habituated ; a process which produces a 
 third form, differing from that in which either material would 
 naturally be treated. Thus, after so many ages, the Chinese re- 
 produces in wood, stone, or porcelain, the tent of his nomad 
 ancestors ; the temples of Egypt and Ilindostan still recall the 
 subterraneous cavern ; Greece in her most glorious days, in her 
 most sumptuous temples, in all their stately columns of the 
 choicest marbles, amid the elaborate grace of their mouldings, 
 the living foliage of their capitals, the friezes where Lapithrc and 
 Centaurs are called to breath and motion by the chisel of a 
 Pheidias, did yet preserve unchanged, undisguised, the one un- 
 varying model, 2 the wooden hut of Pelasgus ; yet more, the 
 soaring nave of a Gothic minster, in the clustered and banded 
 stalks of its lofty pillars, the curling leaves of its capitals and 
 cornices, the interlacing arches of its fretted vault, the intermi- 
 nable entwinings of its tracery, the countless hues that sparkle 
 from roof, and chapiter, and wall, and window, recalls no work 
 of man indeed, no tent, or hut, or cavern, but the sublimcst 
 temple of natural religion, the awful gloom of the dee]) forests 
 of the North ; the aspiring height of the slender pine, the spread- 
 ing arms of the, giant oak, rich with the varied tints of leaf a7id 
 blossom, with the wild birds' song for its anthem, or the rustle 
 
 1 Historical Essay, Chap. IV. " Id., p. 27.
 
 16 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of the breeze in its waving branches for the voices of the mighty 
 multitude or the deep notes of the solemn organ. 
 
 These forms and associations naturally remain stamped upon 
 the mind of the art, till some great mechanical discovery, 
 some mighty revolution in politics or religion, some complete 
 revulsion in taste and feeling, brings its influence, whether 
 sudden or gradual, whether by violent change or slow develop- 
 ment, to bear alike upon outline and detail. Hence arise tran- 
 sitional styles, periods of progress from one principle to another, 
 which will in most cases be found to consist in an attempt to 
 engraft a new principle of construction on an old principle of 
 decoration. The building enjoys the mechanical advantages of 
 the new discovery, while the forms of ornamental detail remain 
 as before, until the new constructive principle has worked out 
 for itself a more harmonious system of decoration. The forms 
 produced by these transitional periods are generally, in an 
 sesthetical point of view, the most unsatisfactory of all : it is 
 only great size and magnificence, or great excellence of propor- 
 tion and detail, which can at all counterbalance the inharmonious 
 and inconsistent foundation on which they are reared. But in 
 an investigation of the history of the art no periods are so re- 
 plete with interest ; every stage, every minute detail, illustrates 
 the combat of antagonist principles ; the struggles of the de- 
 nying style, receding step by step from the scene of its ancient 
 sovereignty ; the sure though slow inroads of its successor, first 
 grasping the main features of construction, then gradually 
 bringing within its power the details of shaft, and capital, and 
 moulding, till all are fused into a perfect whole ; are at once a sub- 
 ject of most curious inquiry, and one tending to point out more 
 strongly than any other part of their history, the real animating 
 principles of successive styles, and to supply also a valuable 
 commentary on the two great rival principles in the human 
 mind itself. 
 
 Having thus endeavoured to point out the principal causes to 
 which the diversities of architectural styles are to be referred, I 
 shall next endeavour to divide and group together upon consis- 
 tent principles the styles employed by the chief nations of the 
 world, from the earliest works that can pretend to anything like an 
 architectural style to the ever-varying productions of our own day.
 
 17 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 DIVISION OF STYLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The term style is one in itself not very easy to define, and its use 
 in architecture is more especially vague, as it serves to denote alike 
 the most comprehensive and the most minute divisions under 
 which architectural works may be arranged. These classes too, 
 both great and small, may be considered under several aspects ; 
 they may be regarded as simple chronological and geographical 
 landmarks, merely denoting, as an archaeological fact, what sort 
 of buildings were erected in a particular country at a parti- 
 cular time ; or they may be looked upon as arrangements of such 
 facts according to some easily recognized circumstance of con- 
 struction or detail ; or finally as exemplifications of some per- 
 vading principle, of which details are merely more or less per- 
 fectly developed instances. These three principles of division 
 constitute a gradually ascending scale ; and the last is undoubt- 
 edly the highest and most scientific, and should, wherever it is 
 possible, be the only one employed. But it is equally cleai', 
 from a general view of the science of architecture, that none of the 
 thi*ee will admit of an universal application; we cannot make an 
 arrangement wholly philosophical, and it would be undesirable 
 to make one wholly historical and antiquarian. The architecture 
 of some ages and countries is far less known to us than that of 
 others ; for instance, we have not, and cannot have, the same in- 
 timate acquaintance with the details and historical sequence of 
 Indian or Egyptian architecture, as with those of Grecian, Ro- 
 man, or Gothic. Distance of time and place, want of records, 
 destruction of actual monuments, comparative ignorance of the 
 manners, feelings, and institutions of the ages and nations whose 
 works we arc examining, all tend to affect the accuracy of our 
 investigations into the varieties of architectural detail. But be- 
 sides this purely relative view, the respective characters of the 
 styles themselves make some far more valuable than others, as a 
 field for scientific investigation, and actually more capable of 
 being made so. In a survey of the world's history some periods, 
 
 c
 
 18 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 some nations, stand forth conspicuous above others for their in- 
 trinsic splendour, and their influence in moulding the minds and 
 institutions of other lands and peoples. Some nations draw at 
 once all eyes to them as the centres of political and moral learn- 
 ing; their history is full of life and activity, mighty events des- 
 tined to influence the fates of future ages crowd upon us in 
 every page ; others present a long dreary catalogue of men with- 
 out actions, or of actions without effects, and belong rather 
 to the ethnological and philological inquirer, than to the his- 
 torian or the moralist. What is the whole history of the 
 East, the countless dynasties of China, India, and Egypt, 
 with all their vast dominions, their early civilization, their 
 fixed and ancient institutions, but a barren catalogue of kings, 
 and priests, and conquerors, when it is viewed side by side . 
 with one living and stirring page of Greece, or Rome, or 
 mediaeval Europe ? One word from one man in a little town of 
 Greece or Italy, had ofttimes more effect on the future destinies 
 of the human race than all the laws and victories of a thousand 
 Shahs or Pharaohs. And thus too with their architecture ; all 
 styles are not of the same merit, all do not equally contain a 
 principle of life, all are not equally the expression of an idea ; 
 partly from these inherent differences, partly from external 
 causes, all have not the same historical importance in influencing 
 the arts of future ages. It hence follows that all do not present 
 the same facilities for an investigation of their pervading prin- 
 ciples of construction, decoration, and symbolism. The vivid, 
 piercing intellect of the Greek, his inherent perception of grace 
 and loveliness, have given birth to a style of art unrivalled for 
 simple elegance and dignity; the stern practical mind of the 
 Roman, his calm, deliberate, unyielding energy, could by the 
 moral power of his institutions, and the very name of his mighty 
 empire, mould alike the institutions and the arts of Europe for 
 ages after his political power had crumbled in the dust. These were 
 the works of heathendom, the breathings of unrenewed, though 
 not abandoned nature; the offspring of the keen intellect, and the 
 indomitable will. It was for other lands and another race to 
 manifest the influence of a higher and a holier principle, to give 
 birth to a style that speaks not of the things of earth, but whose 
 every stone should breathe of the religion of heaven. As the
 
 DIVISION OF STYLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 19 
 
 art of ancient Greece was the purest and loveliest child of mere 
 intellect and taste, of mere human aspirations after the noble 
 and the beautiful, that of mediaeval Christendom is the holiest 
 offspring of moral power, the yearnings of a heart renewed from 
 above, and in every thought and affection soaring heavenwards. 
 These then are the two points which irresistibly draw our 
 thoughts towards them ; the Greek, with his earthly loveliness, 
 the Teuton with his almost heavenly awe; the one faultless grace, 
 the other soaring majesty ; the one telling of the faint glimmer- 
 ings of heathendom, the other kindled by the full blaze of the 
 Church's light ; the one in a word human, the other divine. 
 
 These two styles then, as being beyond all others the true ex- 
 pression of a great pervading idea, must ever remain the centres 
 of deep and philosophical investigation in architecture ; and of 
 the two, Gothic, as the expression of the deeper and nobler idea, 
 even more so than its rival. The productions of other styles, as 
 being less full of thought and meaning, cannot be equally suscep- 
 tible of such an examination ; other forms of art strike rather from 
 the result of adventitious circumstances, from the bulk and pro- 
 portion, the grandeur of outline and richness of detail, displayed 
 in individual buildings, or even by some remarkable characteris- 
 tic of the style of itself, than directly as the produce of mind. 
 We must therefore in a general arrangement of styles of archi- 
 tecture, call in other considerations ; and the two great princi- 
 ples of mechanical construction which pervade all architectural 
 works, may be most conveniently taken as the types of the two 
 groups under which we may primarily arrange all styles of 
 architecture. These are the entablature and the arch, two 
 forms of construction which will be found to form an abso- 
 lutely exhaustive division; and of which the two great and 
 prominent styles before referred to arc respectively the most 
 perfect developments. As two straight lines cannot form a 
 mathematical figure, so two uprights, be they walls, posts, or 
 pillars, can hardly constitute an architectural work ; circum- 
 stances will continually occur, in which two points must be con- 
 nected, and that not by a third wall, but by something supported 
 by the points to be connected. The different ways of effecting 
 this constitute the grand distinction which is at the root of all 
 varieties of architectural style. The entablature effects the union
 
 20 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 by simply laying on the top of the two uprights, a third 
 horizontal mass, held together by mere cohesion; the up- 
 rights being placed, as Mr. Pugin says, 1 "just so far apart 
 that the blocks laid on them would not break by their own 
 weight/' It is manifest that this is totally independent of ma- 
 terial ; the construction is precisely the same, whether the 
 materials be beams of wood or blocks of stone. In the other 
 form, that of the arch, the connection is effected, not by a single 
 block kept together by cohesion, but by a series bound together, 
 without visible support, by a wonderful law of the mechanical 
 powers. This again is abstractedly independent of material ; we 
 might conceive an arch whose voussoirs should be wedges, not 
 of stone or its substitute brick, but of wood ; practically how- 
 ever it is confined to the former, as to employ timber in this 
 manner would be a useless expenditure of labour, when the en- 
 tablature construction offers so much greater facilities for the 
 employment of this material. For it must be remembered, that it 
 is not the form, but the construction, of the arch which we are here 
 considering; the arched form is common in timber-work, but it 
 will be found that such an arch is not formed of voussoirs, but 
 is merely cut out of one or two pieces of wood, supported by 
 their own cohesion ; so that what in the decorative construction 
 is treated as an arch, is in the mechanical, really an entablature. 
 As all buildings must be constructed on one of these two prin- 
 ciples, architectural styles may be most naturally divided accord- 
 ingly ; and I shall therefore make these two grand divisions the 
 basis of the arrangement to be pursued in the present work. Every 
 definite style of architecture has for its animating principle of 
 construction either the entablature or the arch ; its forms and de- 
 tails adapt themselves to this construction, and it is the differ- 
 ent ways in which this construction is sought to be decorated, 
 and the different degrees of excellence attained by each, which 
 constitute the subordinate distinctions among the members of 
 the two main groups. All architecture which does not disguise 
 its construction, but seeks for ornament in the enrichment of its 
 real mechanical features, is so far good ; it is honest and therefore 
 satisfactory, however rude may be the construction, however un- 
 comely the style of ornament. A transitional period, which 
 1 True Principles, p. 9.
 
 DIVISION OF STYLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 21 
 
 employs one system of construction and another of decoration, 
 is thus far inconsistent and unsatisfactory ; whether it be dis- 
 honest or not, depends on the question whether the inconsis- 
 tency arises from intentional deception, or from the mere force of 
 previous habit. 
 
 The question of the first introduction of the arch is one of 
 the very greatest interest, and at the same time of the greatest 
 difficulty. We are so accustomed to the employment of this 
 feature on all occasions, and have every day before us spaces of 
 such vast extent connected by its means, from the railway tunnel 
 to the vaulted roof of the Minster, that we find it hard to realise 
 the position of civilised nations, possessing a finished and 
 graceful style of architecture, employing it on the erection of 
 sumptuous and magnificent edifices, and yet totally ignorant of 
 any mode of connecting walls or pillars save by the mere hori- 
 zontal block of stone or timber. Still more incomprehensible 
 does it seem to us that any people should have been aware of so 
 great a mechanical advantage, and yet have but rarely employed 
 it, and never allowed it to become a leading feature of construc- 
 tion, or enter in the least degree into the system of decoration. 
 Yet our subsequent inquiries will show us that such was the 
 case with some of the most famous nations of antiquity ; the 
 bare knowledge both of the arched form and the arched con- 
 struction seems certain in Egypt, probable in Greece ; yet it 
 never entered into either style of architecture : it remained only 
 an occasional and incidental feature, never enriched, or in any 
 way wrought up into the decorative system. 
 
 The date of the first invention of the arch will probably never 
 be ascertained; we may indeed rest assured that it had no 
 one inventor, but that it arose in different countries at different 
 times, as circumstances occurred to require it. Thus the Egyp- 
 tian researches of Sir Gardner Wilkinson have discovered real 
 arches, both in form and construction, of a date anterior to the 
 Exodus. There are perhaps no existing structures in Greece of 
 so remote a period; in the earliest Pelasgian or Cyclopean 
 monuments of that country, wc see forms evidently exhibiting a 
 sort of yearning and striving after the arch principle, without ever 
 actually reaching to the arch itself. And these, one would think, 
 must be purely indigenous, as if the arch had been introduced from
 
 22 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 another country, it could hardly fail to be introduced in its perfect 
 form. And, what is still more remarkable, we find precisely the 
 same imperfect forms in those mysterious ruins in central Ame- 
 rica, which will probably long afford a subject for speculation to 
 the historian and the antiquary. Here, at least, whatever view 
 be taken as to the source from whence the population of that 
 vast continent was derived, we can hardly imagine these forms 
 to be owing to imitation of any erections of the old world. But 
 these instances, whether they did not go beyond this rude ap- 
 proximation to the arch, or attained its form without its mecha- 
 nical construction, or succeeded in developing the perfect shape 
 and construction, (of all of which stages examples will be found 
 in the course of the present history,) are still mere isolated facts, 
 of no importance in the general history of architecture. They 
 contributed nothing to the formation of an arched style ; one, 
 that is, in which the arch is at once a main feature of the con- 
 struction, and appears equally prominent in the decorative system. 
 Both the Grecian and the Egyptian architecture has its main fea- 
 tures, alike of construction and decoration, formed solely on the 
 principle of the entablature; it is not, like so much Roman 
 work, an entablatured mask cloking an arched body ; the arch 
 is so far from being the principal feature, that in Egyptian build- 
 ings it only occurs sufficiently often to prove its existence, while 
 in Greece its very existence is problematical. In neither does it 
 exercise the slightest influence upon the general style. 
 
 It is undoubtedly to the nations of ancient Italy, to the in- 
 habitants of Etruria, and the Romans to whom they communi- 
 cated their arts, that we owe the first regular and systematic 
 employment of the arch. It is now no occasional feature, but 
 the very life of the whole building, standing out in all its bold- 
 ness and majesty, unless where Grecian forms are introduced as 
 an incongruous mask. In the very earliest days of her existence, 
 when her name was scarcely known to the proud republics 
 of Greece, the barbarian state by the banks of the Tiber had 
 already, by means of the power given by this mightiest of mecha- 
 nical discoveries, displayed the greatest architectural boldness in 
 her public works, and roofed in vast spaces with stone or brick, 
 while, through ignorance or contempt of it, the most glorious 
 piles of Greece remained exposed to the passing shower and the
 
 DIVISION OF STYLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 23 
 
 noon-day heat, or were only sheltered by an awning, or at best 
 a covering of wood. The sewers of Home were a vast advance 
 in mechanical architecture over the temples of Athens; and had 
 not the denationalizing spirit of the later Romans striven, with 
 so egregious a failure, to engraft Grecian elegance upon Italian 
 vigour, a simple, noble, and majestic style would doubtless have 
 been speedily developed. As it was, their less ornamental build- 
 ings display those rudiments of excellence and consistency which 
 were denied to more enriched structures ; and Rome had the 
 honour of transmitting her great invention to other nations, and 
 thus mediately of giving birth to that architecture of the Medi- 
 aeval Church which may fairly claim to be considered as the 
 noblest and holiest offspring of the human mind. 
 
 We thus see the architecture of the entablature prevailing 
 among all nations until the days of the universal influence of 
 Rome ; from the Druidical circle to the portico of the Parthe- 
 non, the same great principle pervades all. The same forms are 
 found, under varieties not affecting this great rule, in the far 
 west and the remotest east ; but it is only in a very few countries 
 that they attained any considerable degree of excellence, 
 
 The first structures which may be reckoned under this division, 
 are the Celtic remains of north-western Europe, the wonderful 
 Druidical temples of Stonehenge, Avebury, and Carnac. These, 
 however, interesting as they are in an antiquarian point of view, 
 as connected with the history and religion of the earliest inhabi- 
 tants of Gaul and Britain, are altogether valueless in the regard 
 of an architectural historian. Mere stones piled together with- 
 out any attention to proportion or to any of the laws of design, 
 and merely adhering by their own weight, can barely challenge 
 the name of a building, and though exhibiting the mechanical 
 construction of the entablature in perfection, have no title to be 
 considered as works of architecture, and therefore cannot claim 
 a distinct consideration in the present volume. 
 
 Far more valuable to the historian of architecture, and equally 
 shrouded in the mysterious interest of unknown antiquity, are 
 the Pelasgic or Cyclopean monuments of Greece and Italy. 
 These manifest a very considerable advance in the art of con- 
 struction, and are far from being devoid of a rude majesty of 
 their own. They are also very valuable on account of the light
 
 24 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 they throw upon the invention of the arch; and, on these 
 grounds, combined with their high historical interest, though 
 they present but very little detail, they may fairly claim an atten- 
 tive examination. 
 
 The different nations of Asia, from the iEgean to the Pacific, 
 afford numerous scattered examples of distinct and apparently 
 indigenous styles of entablature architecture; though in the 
 western portion of that continent, the later examples are often 
 much affected by the direct influence of Grecian art. All these 
 will require a more or less extended notice, though, as not attain- 
 ing any very great perfection, and standing isolated, without 
 much influence on the history of art, the strictly architectural 
 interest attaching to them is comparatively small. Of these 
 forms the native architecture of the Hindoos is decidedly that 
 which has the greatest claims on our attention. 
 
 Even in the western world, as has been before hinted, a dis- 
 tinct and indigenous form of the entablature construction has 
 been discovered in the ruined cities of Yucatan. Their date, 
 and the history of the extinguished nations which reared them, 
 have yet to be explored. Still the very darkness in which they 
 are shrouded invests them with a romantic charm, and they will 
 be found to present several remarkable features and some 
 incidental similarities with buildings of the old world. 
 
 Passing by these styles, which, after all, are but imperfect and 
 isolated, we come, at the expense of chronological order, to the 
 nation among whom architecture appears to have first attained 
 any degree of perfection. In the mysterious land of Egypt 
 may be found regular erections, evincing a high development of 
 art, which are probably of equal antiquity with the very rudest 
 structures remaining in any other country. These astonishing 
 monuments contain, indeed, much to offend the critical eye of a 
 refined taste ; still there is nothing in them rude or imperfect. 
 Egyptian architecture is a regular and fully developed style of 
 art, designed and executed upon fixed principles ; and as it is 
 unquestionably the most ancient example of such a definite style, 
 the buildings of Egypt form a most important epoch in the his- 
 tory of architecture, and would possess a further interest could 
 we regard them as in any sense the parents of the immortal 
 fabrics of Greece.
 
 DIVISION OF STYLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 25 
 
 Our last words have brought us to the very noblest and purest 
 embodyings of mere human grace and loveliness. In Grecian 
 architecture we have the entablature system completely deve- 
 loped ; the mechanical structure, common to it with the rudest 
 cromlech or the most unadorned Cyclopean gateway, is now 
 enriched in the most simple and consistent manner ; a perfect 
 system of ornament embraces every feature, and refines all into 
 consummate dignity and beauty. The three orders of Grecian 
 architecture afford forms of perfection unsurpassed by mere 
 human skill; it was only the yearnings of the heavenward 
 spirit, the inspiration of the Church's ritual, that could conceive 
 aught more noble ; not purer, not lovelier, but vaster in concep- 
 tion, more majestic in execution, and holier in its end. Yet 
 even here we see the inherent incapacity of the entablature sys- 
 tem to attain the highest perfection either of building or archi- 
 tecture. The exceeding difficulty, verging on impossibility, of 
 roofing a large space by its means, unless with materials then 
 unknown, presents insuperable difficulties. Grecian archi- 
 tecture produced one form of the most perfect beauty, but it 
 could produce one only : every structure is cast in precisely the 
 same type, with the same outline, the same features both con- 
 structive and decorative. Diversities of detail, and, to a very 
 limited extent, of proportion, are the only sources whence variety 
 could be attained ; and it shows the consummate skill of that 
 wonderful nation that they could hinder such simplicity, or 
 rather poverty, of type, from degenerating into the most mono- 
 tonous and wearisome sameness. Yet such a charge would be 
 altogether futile ; though all arc cast in a single mould, still every 
 order, every building, expresses an idea of its own and is endeared 
 by a charm peculiar to itself. And this, too, in a style totally 
 horizontal, which absolutely creeps and grovels on the earth, with- 
 out a single upward aspiration ; which, when it has reared aloft 
 the majestic portico of its temples, has done all that it can ac- 
 complish, and has nothing left wherewith to produce that con- 
 trast which should strike the worshipper as he enters within the 
 hallowed walls. 
 
 These, then, are the principal forms which have been assumed 
 by the architecture of the entablature : we now turn to that of 
 the arch. The regular and systematic employment of the arch,
 
 26 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 originally of Etruscan or Roman birth, spread itself through all 
 the countries which were subject to the universal sway of Rome, 
 and it is from some of them that all subsequent developments 
 of architecture took their origin. We have first the classical 
 Roman, the style of Rome herself in her days of greatest 
 power, in which the aboriginal arch system of the Italians and 
 the entablature of the Greeks are mingled together in a style of 
 great boldness and splendour, but utterly devoid of architectural 
 consistency. The Romans, in the most splendid days of their 
 empire, were among the best builders the world has ever seen, 
 and among the worst architects. The magnitude of their great 
 works, the vastness of design, and the wonderful mechanical 
 skill and boldness of execution, displayed in their existing monu- 
 ments, must ever fill us with the deepest admiration ; at the same 
 time it is impossible to conceal our contempt for architects 
 who threw away the opportunity of completing a national round- 
 arched style, bold, simple, and majestic, for the sake of a fantastic 
 and incongruous debasement of the beautiful forms of Greece. 
 
 When towards the close of the empire, the entablature began 
 to be dropped, and the arch made the principal feature, a consist- 
 ent round-arched style at once reappears ; we have now the germ 
 of Romanesque, a style subsequently developed by the northern 
 nations into many forms of great splendour, and of the highest 
 interest equally for the Churchman and the antiquary. This 
 exhibits Roman architecture, corrupted according to pedantic 
 
 / classicalism, but, in an enlarged and philosophical view of the 
 subject, improved and developed, though possibly never brought 
 
 Vto an ideal perfection. This great family includes many national 
 varieties ; Byzantine, Lombard, German, Provencal, Saxon, Nor- 
 man : presenting great diversities among themselves, but agreeing 
 in several general features of Roman origin, of which the most 
 prominent, and the true badge of the style, is the round arch, 
 which is employed in all important positions, and made, as it 
 . should be, the chief feature of the decorative system. 
 
 The architecture of the Saracens, which from them has 
 
 spread, under certain modifications, into all countries which 
 
 have bowed to the faith of Mahomet, is of Roman origin, and 
 
 ' its earlier forms might in strictness be considered as varieties of 
 
 Romanesque. It is a style highly enriched and magnificent, yet
 
 DIVISION OF STYLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 27 
 
 mixed, fantastic, and incongruous, and not easily admitting of a 
 comprehensive definition. It is chiefly valuable from some of 
 its forms being a sort of dead Gothic, presenting the pointed 
 arch and other characteristics of that style, but without any trace 
 of its pervading spirit. AVe shall see however that many of 
 these dead forms were grasped by the Teutonic architects, and 
 by them endued with true life and vigour. 
 
 To the Romanesque, after a transitional period, succeeds the 
 Gothic architecture. We now feel at once that we have arrived 
 at the most perfect form which the art can assume. Our nomen- 
 clature and definitions, which have hitherto been unavoidably 
 somewhat vague, confused, and fluctuating from one principle of 
 division to another, now become, or might be made to become, 
 fixed, consistent, and philosophical. We have no occasion for 
 mere national or chronological landmarks, or for definitions 
 based only on some easily recognised external feature. All the 
 different forms of this matchless style, all the countless varieties 
 of outline and detail for which it is so conspicuous, aim, each of 
 them with greater or less success, at the carrying out of the one 
 idea which is the soul of all, that of vertical extension. To the 
 upward aspiration of every feature, we owe, not indeed the in- 
 vention, but the adaptation and general employment of the out- 
 ward badge of the style, the pointed arch ; from the same source, 
 as will be hereafter shown more at large, arise its accessories, the 
 round or polygonal abacus, the peculiar style of moulding, the 
 clustered pillar, the confirmed use of vaulting. Then again, 
 externally, the high gable, the spire, the pinnacle, the flying but- 
 tress, the pyramidal outline which in the best examples is given to 
 the whole structure, are all expressions of this one great idea. 
 And in the minuter subdivisions of the style, we shall have no 
 longer, as in the case of Romanesque, simply to recount the con- 
 temporary diversities of the style in different countries. The 
 different forms of Gothic architecture may be well and scientifi- 
 cally defined, as different modes, more or less nearly approaching 
 perfection, in which it is sought to express the one idea of the 
 style. National varieties, of the most curious and instructive 
 nature, will be found to exist, but they do not disturb the general 
 law of the identical, or at least analogous, sequence of the more 
 important forms which the style has assumed. The form
 
 28 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of architecture which should be endeared to us above every 
 other by its intrinsic beauty and its religious and national associa- 
 tions, will thus be found to afford the most perfect lesson in the 
 philosophy of art. But it must not be denied that even this, 
 the highest merit that a style can possess, not unfrequently 
 proves detrimental to the excellence of individual buildings. 
 The Grecian architect had but to produce certain forms of 
 beauty, well marked out and recognized ; his foliage might be 
 less boldly carved, his columns less smoothly hewn, than his 
 neighbour's, but he could hardly fail in the general proportions 
 either of the whole portico or of its component parts. But the 
 Gothic architect was bound by no such fixed rules : he was tied 
 down to no fixed proportion of pillar and arch, or even of nave 
 and chancel ; his structure might be as massive as Winchester, 
 or as soaring as Westminster ; aiming not at individual forms, 
 but at an idea not, doubtless, a fixed and defined one, but a dim 
 and shadowy conception of aspiring majesty his works were 
 but a series of experiments ; they might succeed, and surpass 
 every production of human art, on the other hand they might 
 egregiously fail. Hence the best Gothic structures do indeed 
 immeasurably surpass the noblest monuments of Greece ; yet, 
 on the other hand, every pure Grecian building is beautiful, 
 while the most sumptuous of our churches are sometimes abso- 
 lutely unsightly. Ictinus and Callicrates might have sunk to 
 the earth abashed at the littleness of themselves and their works, 
 before the overwhelming grandeur of Peterborough's soaring 
 portico, while their feeblest imitator might have laughed to 
 scorn the unutterable meanness of the sham facade of Lincoln. 
 With the gradual extinction of the Gothic style, the history 
 of good and consistent architecture terminates, or rather becomes 
 dormant till the happy revival of ecclesiastical art in our own 
 day. Not that great genius, sometimes real beauty, is not dis- 
 played in many specimens of the Revived Italian; but as a 
 style it is, except as a warning, completely valueless. It is, in 
 the first place, open to every objection to which the Classical 
 Roman is liable, and is besides loaded with every species of fan- 
 tastic vagary, of which imperial Rome, amid her worst corrup- 
 tions, had never dreamed. Then, as not being a real development, 
 but a violent re-action, a return to worn-out and abandoned
 
 DIVISION OF STYLES IN ARCHITECTURE. 29 
 
 forms, it lacks in this resembling even the best Gothic of our 
 own day, the interest which attaches to every natural and 
 original phase of the art. And, above all, when we consider 
 that this corrupted style was deliberately, by a formal purpose, 
 in contempt of all ancient precedent and tradition, and in despite 
 of every religious and national feeling, substituted for the most 
 glorious forms that Christendom has ever beheld, it is impossible 
 but that our admiration for the genius and skill of many of its 
 authors must be altogether overbalanced by a feeling approach- 
 ing to disgust at the utter perversion of their mighty powers. 
 St. Peter's at Rome and St. Paul's in London might, a thousand 
 years sooner, have commanded feelings of unmixed homage, and 
 might have ranked side by side with St. Sophia and St. Mark's ; 
 but when we know they were reared in contempt of Cologne, 
 and Westminster, and St. Ouen's, our feelings of admiration at 
 the vast conception of the whole, the wonderful mechanical skill 
 displayed, the real majesty and beauty which cannot be denied 
 them, are lost in the shock sustained by our best ideal of a 
 Christian temple, and in the moral condemnation which a high 
 view of Christian art must of necessity pronounce upon their 
 authors.
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE OF THE ENTABLATURE.
 
 PART I. 
 
 OF THE EARLIER AND RUDER FORMS OF THE ARCHITEC- 
 TURE OF THE ENTABLATURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF PELASGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Among the earliest human erections now remaining which have 
 any claim to be considered as examples of the art of architecture, 
 would seem to be those mysterious relics of dim antiquity, which 
 have been found scattered through Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor, 
 and on which the names of Pelasgian and Cyclopean have been be- 
 stowed. Without dogmatically asserting that they are abso- 
 lutely the most ancient structures in existence, an assertion 
 which, as relating to days anterior to historic record, can be 
 neither proved nor disproved, it is sufficient that they present 
 the art of architecture in its earliest conceivable form. Whether 
 any other country may have exhibited the same stage at a yet 
 more remote period, is a question which cannot be solved, and 
 which, if solved, would be of no importance in our present in- 
 quiry. These awful remains of the world's youth stand before 
 us as the relics of unrecorded days, of the dim times of poetic 
 legend, enveloped as they were in religious mystery for ages 
 before a line of what we deem ancient history was penned. 
 The historians and philosophers of the days of Pericles knew 
 no more of the authors of these gigantic fragments than our- 
 selves ; all that survived, even to them, were the shadows of 
 
 i)
 
 34 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 fallen greatness, the feeble echoes of a voice long since hushed in 
 death ; our ancients had to explore the remains of these far 
 earlier days by the same faint glimmerings of legend and tra- 
 dition as ourselves ; all that Thucydides himself could recover 
 would be a few scattered fables, a.Trl<TTwg stt) to jxu9j=j lxvsvxrj- 
 xo'ra, referring works that seemed beyond man's power to the 
 Titanic forgers of the thunderbolt, or in their humblest night to 
 races of men whose deeds were veiled in midnight, and of whose 
 being their giant fabrics alone remained as witnesses. 
 
 And to us, whose early youth is spent among the immortal 
 lays, w T hose living substance is called up by even the pictured 
 resemblance of those massive piles monuments, as we would 
 fain believe, of the days of Achilles and the Atreidse, and the old 
 time before them to us, every rugged stone seems vocal with 
 some old heroic legend. Each gateway may have seen the mar- 
 shalling of heroes, arrayed to man the thousand ships of Argos, 
 and wait upon their chariot wheels to whom Zeus 1 had consigned 
 her twofold throne and sceptre. We may ward off for a while 
 the stern grasp of historic inquiry from the piles whose names 
 bring thus personally before us the imperial house of Pelops, 
 and even in the dim picture deem ourselves 
 
 MvKtjvas Tas Tro\vxj>vaovs opav." 
 
 There yet stands, whole and perfect, that wondrous vault, alike 
 the treasury in which was gathered the wealth " of many islands 
 and of all Argos," and the tomb over which the " orphan brood 
 of the eagle father " raised the shrill voice of wailing for the 
 slaughtered king. Each mighty ruin brings crowding on our 
 sight the gathering hosts of the Achseans, the stern omen, and 
 its sterner cure, the " father's hands reeking with the streams of 
 virgin gore," and the dark avenging Curse thence rising to track 
 him back to the home and throne denied him; we see the 
 triumphal return of the conqueror, victims blazing around him, 
 his path strewed with purple, and his ears gladdened with the 
 pseans of victory ; we hear the wild shrieks and fearful predic- 
 tions of the doomed prophetess, and the thrilling groan of the 
 
 1 AiQpdvov AiSdev ko\ SiaKrjiTTpov ~ Soph. Elect. 9. 
 
 Ti/ifjs. Again. 43.
 
 OF PELASGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 35 
 
 murdered king : we see the stern form of his murderess standing 
 " like a raven " over the corpse of her bleeding lord, girt with 
 all the fearful majesty of the avenger, and calling on ancestral 
 Furies to share and vindicate her deed. 
 
 Without at all entering into the mysticism and misapplied 
 learning which has been expended upon the Pelasgians, a people 
 of whom, after all, we have no authentic history, and can ascer- 
 tain little beyond the name, it would appear that the title of 
 Pelasgian, as applied to these buildings, is by no means inap- 
 propriate. It seems clear that, long before the days of Italian 
 and Hellenic civilization, there was a race widely diffused 
 through the regions bordering on the Mediterranean, which 
 formed a common element in the mixed population of Greece 
 and Italy; and this race it is which we understand by the 
 name Pelasgian. And as these remains probably belong to a 
 similar early period, and have been traditionally ascribed to this 
 Pelasgian race, that name is certainly more appropriate than 
 any other which could now be substituted. 
 
 The monuments of these early days consist for the most part 
 of walls and gateways, the defences of those numerous inde- 
 pendent cities of early Greece and Italy, which form so striking 
 a feature in their political aspect, and whose history often affords 
 more instruction than that of the mightiest empires. Latium 
 now desolate, but once swarming with these little states, 
 and many widely distant parts of Greece, are full of these vene- 
 rable fragments. The walls are built of vast stones, in the 
 arrangement of which three varieties, most probably marking 
 distinct epochs, have been observed, and all three are found in 
 the acropolis of Myccna?. The first consists of large rude stones, 
 chiefly approaching to the rectangular form, but put together 
 without order or symmetry ; the joints of three or four courses 
 are often exactly vertical. The second period presents stones of 
 irregular polygonal forms, but fitting into each other with much 
 greater regularity. The third has good masonry, consisting of 
 rectangular stones built in horizontal courses, with the joints in- 
 terrupted in the same way as in modern erections. In some 
 Italian specimens, as at Terracina, the square stones are orna- 
 mented by a sort of groove round the rim, leaving a raised sur- 
 face in the middle. 
 
 i) 2
 
 36 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 But it is manifest that mere walls, in which this last feature 
 is the greatest attempt at ornament, can be of little value in 
 the history of architecture, and indeed have but a dubious claim 
 to be considered as genuine specimens of that art. The gate- 
 ways, of which numerous examples remain, are of course far more 
 valuable, and are indeed among the most interesting fragments of 
 antiquity which have been preserved to us. They exhibit the en- 
 tablature system in every stage, from the very rudest attempt, to 
 a form exhibiting considerable progress in the art of construction ; 
 and they are still more valuable from the light they throw upon 
 the origin of the arch. Some of the rudest, and probably earliest, 
 examples have advanced but very little beyond the cromlechs of 
 the Celt, being merely two upright stones of no great height, 
 with a third of vast length laid over them, as in one of the gates 
 at Mycense. Most of them are merely openings in the wall, the 
 jambs being formed by the terminations of the rude blocks of 
 which it is built, without any attempt at polish or decoration. 
 At Norba in Latium is one of the rudest construction ; and several 
 intermediate steps may be traced between these, and the square 
 masonry of the famous Lion Gate at Mycense, or the doorway 
 of the Treasury of Atreus, which has a recessed jamb and lintel, 
 built of smooth and regular stone. But even the other examples, 
 rude, massive, and unornamented as they are, possess not only 
 the awe inspired by the immense antiquity, and the majesty of 
 their gigantic proportion, but that real dignity, we might 
 almost say, beauty, which attaches to every construction treated 
 without disguise or pretence. And this, in the earlier stages of 
 art, before really graceful ornaments were introduced, is more 
 conspicuous in examples left, like these, in the grandeur of un- 
 adorned simplicity, than in walls and pillars overlaid with the 
 uncouth and unseemly decorations of Indian and Egyptian art. 
 
 The real arch seems never to occur ; but the approximations 
 to it are numerous and most interesting. In most of the Pelas- 
 gian gateways the jambs incline inward, so that the aperture is 
 narrower at the top than at the bottom. This was most probably 
 done in order to diminish the size of the lintel, without nar- 
 rowing the space required for passengers. It is easy to imagine 
 jambs of this sort inclining to a point without any lintel, and 
 this is actually an existing arrangement. It is found among
 
 OP PELASGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 37 
 
 the remains of Tiryns in the rudest possible form, being a mere 
 piling together of huge and shapeless stones. At Messalogion 
 in iEtolia are several examples of much better construction, the 
 gateways forming a sharp angle, and the straight-lined jambs 
 being well defined. But besides this, in an example at Thoricos the 
 jambs are not only inclined but curved ; so that we have the 
 form of the pointed arch as perfect as in the best Gothic 
 Cathedral. It was doubtless felt to be a more graceful shape 
 than the straight-lined sides just described, and one moreover 
 which allowed the diminution of width to be more gradual. We 
 have thus discovered the form of the pointed arch at a period of 
 unknown antiquity, apparently earlier than any instance in 
 Europe of the employment of its semicircular rival. This shows 
 at once how futile are the searches which have been made for the 
 origin of that shape in intersecting arcades, or the figure called 
 vesica piscis, and how little light the discovery of its origin, when 
 effected, can throw upon the history of Gothic architecture. But 
 in these examples we have not the arch at all in reality, but only 
 its form ; these pointed gateways are not formed of real voussoirs 
 supporting each other upon the principle of the arch, but merely 
 of overlapping stones 1 cut into the semblance of an arched form. 
 They are not arches, but there can be little doubt of their being 
 the parents of the arch ; they exhibit a dissatisfaction with 
 the mere posts and lintel of the entablature construction, and a 
 hankering after one more compact, and not involving the em- 
 ployment of such vast blocks. By what means, or at what period, 
 the full light broke in upon the authors of these experiments, 
 we know not ; there were, doubtless, many such successive at- 
 tempts made after some better construction ; many wearisome 
 failures, many close and yet unsuccessful approaches, may have 
 preceded the full completion of the discovery; till at last the 
 principle of mutual support was fully developed, and the 
 true arch sprang self-balanced from impost to impost. If 
 one may attempt to establish a chronological sequence among 
 these remains of mythical days, one might almost think that 
 
 1 Another form, less frequent, but cut into the pointed form, but left 
 
 analogous and probably contempo- like steps. There is such a one at 
 
 rary with the inclined gateway, has Caere or Agylla. 
 the stones actually overlapping, not
 
 38 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the first attempts had failed, and, in Greece at least, had not 
 been repeated. The rugged gateway at Tiryns is a nearer ap- 
 proach to a real arch than the better built examples at Messalo- 
 gion and Thoricos. It shows a visible attempt, though of course 
 a very rude and clumsy one, at mutual support among the stones ; 
 it has even something like a key-stone, though the endeavour to 
 place it as such has evidently failed. It is possible that such 
 failures may have discouraged future attempts ; and we may even 
 find here the cause of the non-appearance of the arch in Grecian 
 architecture. These circumstances may have hindered its native 
 development : and as the Grecian system had been brought to 
 perfection long before Greece had any intercourse with nations 
 employing the arch, no opportunity was afforded for its intro- 
 duction from external sources. But in Italy, as we all know, the 
 case was far different ; there the arch worked its way to supremacy, 
 and became the animating principle of the national architecture. 
 There can however be little doubt that it was developed by a 
 series of similar experiments out of the rude attempts of the old 
 Pelasgian builders. Arches frequently occur in connection with 
 Pelasgian work : sometimes indeed they are manifest additions, 
 sometimes the jambs of a Cyclopean gateway are taken to sup- 
 port a lloman arch ; but how great or how small an interval 
 elapsed between the two can hardly be ascertained. And we 
 find such rude and apparently early specimens of the arch in so 
 close a connection with the old masonry, that one is led to sup- 
 pose that we have here found its first appearance, its first com- 
 plete development out of the primitive inclining gateway. 
 
 We have seen at Tiryns something very like a pointed arch, 
 at least a manifest attempt at constructing one, and at Thoricos 
 we have the complete form, though with no attempt at its con- 
 struction. Indeed the old overlapping stones would suggest the 
 pointed form more readily than the round, and most of the early 
 false arches, or attempts at arches, are pointed ; a round example 
 however occurs at Assos, and we shall again meet them when 
 we come to the architecture of Egypt. But on the other hand, 
 the round form was certainly predominant among real arches in 
 early times. The greater perfection and security which it seems 
 to possess, might account for its being introduced, as soon as 
 the stones began really to be arranged on the principle of mu-
 
 OF PELASGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 39 
 
 tual support ; and the figure itself, the semicircle, is the simplest 
 and most likely to occur to the mind. More especially, if 
 ignorance and inexperience had caused failures in the attempt to 
 construct a pointed arch, this would be an additional reason for 
 the early prevalence of the round. 
 
 It would seem then that the Etruscans and other early inha- 
 bitants of Italy developed the arch for themselves out of the old 
 Pelasgian gateway, which the Achseans failed to do. We shall 
 soon find the same or a closely analogous process pursued in 
 other nations. A rude transition almost everywhere occurs be- 
 tween the timid lintel and the bold soaring arch, and in more 
 than one country the development has stopped short of the 
 latter. 
 
 But the Pelasgians of Greece, or their Achaean successors, or 
 the people, whoever they may be, to whom the Treasury at My- 
 cenae is to be attributed, must have made very great advances 
 in the use of the overlapping stones. They had learned to con- 
 struct not only an apparent arch, but an apparent dome. Such 
 a work implies not only a high degree of mechanical skill, but a 
 great confidence in the mode of construction which they prac- 
 tised ; one indeed which they carried to so great perfection as 
 quite to impart the general effect of the true vault ; it even 
 seems probable that Pausanias mistook its character, 1 and looked 
 upon it as a real cupola. But it is. really " formed by horizontal, 
 not radiated layers, which, advancing over each other, and 
 having the lower angle cut off, - gives the structure the appear- 
 ance of a Gothic dome." 2 The form differs from a spire or pyra- 
 mid in the curved shape into which the inner line of the masonry 
 is cut, and from which the domical appearance results. This 
 roof manifestly bears the same relation to the pointed gate at 
 Thoricos, as the true cupola does to the true arch, and shows 
 that the arts both of design and construction must have made 
 no contemptible progress at the time when it was erected. 
 
 The Treasury at Mycemc was by no means the only edifice of 
 the kind in Greece ; that of Minyas at Orchomcnos was of the 
 
 1 That is, if the Treasury at looked on the latter as a true dome. 
 
 Mycenae and that at Orchomenos 9, 38, 2. 
 
 were, as is most probable, of the - Dodwcll's Classical Tour, ii. 21. 
 
 same construction. He evidently
 
 40 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 like nature, and equally famous; and several others of less note 
 are also recorded. Their use has heen called in question, but 
 both tradition and antecedent probability unite in testifying to 
 their destination as treasuries ; they seem admirably adapted to 
 receive the wealth which all legends agree in attributing to the 
 early Grecian princes, and which they equally assure us was 
 stored in buildings of the kind. And as their possible use as 
 places of sepulture, which has been contended for, 1 does not 
 exclude their employment as treasuries ; so neither would their 
 primary destination as treasuries necessarily exclude their occa- 
 sional use as the sepulchres of kings. 
 
 There can be no doubt that a very considerable amount of 
 decoration was employed upon these later works of Pelasgian or 
 ancient Hellenic art. Brazen chambers are mentioned in nu- 
 merous legends, and the occurrence of nails of bronze, which 
 yet remain, would seem to show that the description was an- 
 swered by these treasuries being internally lined with plates of 
 brass. Fragments of marble of different colours have been 
 found, which show that the polychromatic effect obtained by* 
 their arrangement was sought after in these eai"ly times, no less 
 than in the Saracenic and Italian Romanesque, and in not a few 
 of our own churches. 
 
 Nor was sculpture neglected in these palaces of the house of 
 Pelops ; the famous Lipn-gate, the entrance to the Acropolis of 
 Mycenae, is well known. The triangular space over the lintel 
 is occupied by two mutilated lions standing on each side of a 
 small column, almost like supporters in modern heraldry. The 
 column thus curiously employed has the proportions of no Grecian 
 order, and is crowned with a capital of its own, with an orna- 
 ment of round knobs or pellets, more like what are found in 
 Romanesque architecture. A similar space over the entrance to 
 the Treasury is now left open, but is generally supposed to have 
 been filled with a composition of the same kind. It is therefore 
 clear that, even at so early a stage of architecture, the relations 
 of the subsidiary arts were already well understood. 
 
 But the fragments discovered at Mycense afford materials for 
 inquiries still more interesting to an historian of architecture. 
 
 1 Thirlwall's Greece, i. 225, note. Their twofold use is distinctly stated 
 by Pausanias, 2, 16, 6.
 
 OF PELASGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 41 
 
 Some of those mentioned above are covered with a sort of Ara- 
 besque sculpture ; and a fragment of a column has also been pre- 
 served, whose shaft and base are richly adorned with the chevron 
 or zigzag moulding. It might indeed, at first sight, be readily 
 mistaken for a specimen of Romanesque work. This and the 
 other sculptures are considered by Mr. Dodwell to be of "an 
 Egyptian rather than a Grecian character m " he goes on to connect 
 this supposed resemblance with the vague stories of Egyptian 
 immigrations in the early days of Greece, and thus endeavours, 
 as so many others have done, to refer all the arts and civilization 
 of Greece to an Egyptian origin. But we shall soon see that 
 these ornaments are common to almost every country, even in 
 cases where derivation from one to another is altogether out 
 of the question. They seem in fact to belong naturally to a 
 certain stage of art, the earliest in which ornament is sought for 
 in the simple and natural process of merely carving the surface 
 of the architectural members. That this system of ornament 
 attained its widest application and greatest perfection in the 
 Norman buildings of England is certain ; but to define the 
 zigzag as " a decoration peculiar to the Norman style of archi- 
 tecture," 1 is one of the most palpable fallacies ever put forth in 
 support of a favourite theory. 2 
 
 The whole character of the ornamental fragments found at 
 Mycense, the style of sculpture and enrichment, and the peculiar 
 construction of the false arch, appear to show that they belong 
 to a really distinct style, and arc not a mere barbarous germ of 
 the future Grecian. The subject has been investigated at some 
 length by the learned historian of the Doric race, to whom I 
 shall again have occasion to refer. The later style is essentially 
 wooden, while the earlier seems one essentially of stone. This 
 clearly appears both from the fragment of a column at Myccnse 
 being furnished with a base, and from the numerous attempts 
 at the formation of arches. The true Grecian architecture, as 
 we shall hereafter see, was not a development or improvement 
 of the old Pelasgian manner of building, but a distinct inven- 
 
 1 Glossary of Architecture. Christian buildings, as will be seen 
 
 2 The inclination of door jambs when we come to speak of the an- 
 is another feature in which the Pe- cient churches of Ireland, 
 lasgian remains coincide with early
 
 42 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 tion, as inferior in construction as it is superior in beauty. 
 " We have given/' says Muller, 1 " this description of a style of 
 architecture not strictly belonging to our subject, in order to 
 direct the reader's attention to these most remarkable remains of 
 Grecian sculpture, which are quite sufficient to convince us that 
 the building to which they belong, thus adorned with party- 
 coloured stones, and probably covered in the interior with plates 
 of bronze, may be reckoned as the monument of a time when 
 a semi-barbarous style of architecture prevailed throughout 
 Greece." 
 
 In conclusion, it may be remarked, that in the whole spirit and 
 air of these erections we may trace the impress of a character akin 
 rather to the unyielding energy of Rome, than to the light grace- 
 fulness of the Grecian mind. There is graven on these venera- 
 ble fragments the stamp of the same iron greatness, the same 
 indomitable will, the same perfection of physical and moral vigour, 
 combined with carelessness of intellectual grace and beauty, which 
 bent alike the physical and the political world beneath the yoke 
 of the old Roman. We see the vain striving after that great 
 invention which Rome brought to its perfection, but which re- 
 fined and intellectual Greece knew not or despised. As a Grecian 
 temple is the purest product of mind, a Gothic church the loftiest 
 creation of the heart, so is a genuine Roman structure the most 
 perfect development of mere power, the true offspring of the 
 never-yielding will. And similar, though far inferior in degree, is 
 the spirit of these remains, the monuments of a race closely allied 
 to an important element of the Roman nation. This character 
 may have been altogether latent among them, circumstances may 
 not have called it out ; but it is to be remembered that of their 
 history we know nothing. How much is Pelasgian, how much 
 Latin or Achaean, how far those names really express any im- 
 portant national distinction, we know not. All that we can 
 safely say is that both Greece and Italy still retain relics of an 
 age when the Dorian lance had not yet glimmered over the isle 
 of Pelops, and when the Seven Hills still remained the pasture- 
 ground of Alba, and the she-wolf made her unmolested lair 
 under the shadow of the fig-tree of the Palatine. 
 
 1 Dorians, ii. 268.
 
 43 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF EARLY COLUMNAR ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The employment of columns is the greatest step towards 
 bringing the architecture of the entablature into a definite 
 and artistic form. It is manifest that when anything like a 
 series of openings is required, it is not sufficient for them to 
 consist of mere breaks in a continuous wall ; the eye requires 
 some more graceful and finished support than the masses of 
 masonry left by such a process. The column is the appropriate 
 substitute, and we consequently find it in use even at a very early 
 stage of the art. The facts recorded in the last chapter leave 
 no doubt of the extensive use of columns in the architecture 
 designated as Pelasgian ; not only has a fragment of a highly 
 enriched one been discovered, but the employment of a column 
 as a merely decorative feature over the Lion-Gate at Mycense 
 seems to prove still more. Enrichments of this nature, minia- 
 ture representations of the great constructive features of the 
 building, can only reproduce those which belong to the style, 
 and moreover their appearance can hardly be expected till long 
 habit has induced a thorough familiarity with their employment. 
 But the columnar architecture of mythic Greece has its existence 
 simply proved ; as to the manner in which it was applied, its 
 rules, proportions, and general effect, we are totally in the dark. 
 For the earliest forms of columnar architecture we must look 
 elsewhere. 
 
 And I would here observe, that by earliest I do not at all 
 mean necessarily to imply earliest in actual chronological pre- 
 cedence. Architecture is so necessary an art, that it cannot fail 
 to arise, in some shape or other, among all nations, as soon as 
 they are established in settled abodes and present the very re- 
 motest approach to civilization. Those nations who have the 
 opportunity will derive it from some people more advanced in 
 the scale of humanity ; those who arc debarred from such inter- 
 course will be driven to invent and develop for themselves. The 
 first stages of architecture must therefore, almost in the nature 
 of things, have been gone through over and over again in
 
 44 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 different ages and countries, altogether independently of each 
 other. The entablature undoubtedly, and probably the arch 
 also, has been invented several times in distant corners of the 
 world. And as nations come upon the stage of history at differ- 
 ent periods of the world's existence, as the political and social 
 infancy of one coincides with the old age of another, so is it with 
 their progress in the building art. The Egyptian structures, to 
 be hereafter treated of, have probably stood for more years than 
 any that will be mentioned in the present chapter ; nevertheless 
 they do not exhibit the art in the same early form, but in one 
 very much developed and enriched. 
 
 We have already observed to how great an extent each style 
 of architecture retains the character of the material in which its 
 first examples were constructed : a fact of itself sufficient to 
 prove their independent origin. But the column, in some form 
 or other, pervades all ; the cave, the tent, the wooden hut, alike 
 develop into it ; each leaves its impress upon some of its nume- 
 rous varieties. The column indeed is the most natural shape 
 for any attempt at an ornamental support ; a decorative imitation 
 of a trunk or a tent-pole could hardly assume any but the cylin- 
 drical form ; and when the rock was hewn out, or when the 
 mass of wall between two openings began to be reduced into 
 more graceful proportions, the same form is equally the most 
 natural for such a diminished mass to assume. It might, indeed, 
 at first be square, 1 but beautyand convenience alike would suggest 
 chamfering or roun ding-off the angles, and by this process the 
 genuine column is at once produced. The capital and base are 
 such natural finishes, that they could hardly fail soon to be added, 
 and that without doubt at a much earlier stage of a style originally 
 stone, than in those which are to be traced up to erections of 
 timber. Such an one, as we shall hereafter see, is the architec- 
 ture of Greece ; the earliest form of its column was a post driven 
 into the ground or floor ; consequently a base for it to rest on 
 could have no place until the original type was somewhat oblite- 
 rated. We consequently find that the simplest and purest of 
 the ancient orders is worked without that feature. Similarly in 
 the Chinese architecture, which reproduces a tent just as the 
 Grecian does a hut, (though an apology is due to the shades of 
 
 J See below, pp. 53, 71, 79.
 
 OF EARLY COLUMNAR ARCHITECTURE. 45 
 
 Pericles and Pheidias for mentioning the two in one sentence,) 
 the capital is wanting, the wooden pillar being actually pierced, 
 as in the original construction, by the beam, which must in 
 courtesy be looked upon as an entablature. In an original stone 
 construction, whether of erection or excavation, there would be 
 nothing to hinder the introduction of features so needful to com- 
 plete the finish of the whole, and to effect a due cohesion between 
 the several parts. 
 
 The extensive ruins which late researches have brought to light 
 in central America, will afford as good a notion of a very early 
 stage of columnar architecture as any monuments which have 
 been preserved. Their history, and that of the race by whom 
 they were erected, is shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Of the 
 fragments recorded in the last chapter we have indeed no cer- 
 tain dates, no records on which we can implicitly rely, but we 
 have at least legend and tradition to occupy their place. If we 
 cannot repeople them with their real founders and inhabitants, 
 we can at least people them with those whom successive ages 
 have regarded in that light ; at all events we have, or suppose 
 that we have, a tolerably correct general notion of the race, lan- 
 guage, and social condition of those who reared them. But here 
 all is midnight : the structures themselves exist, but their 
 authors are as though they had never been. Not only their his- 
 tory and institutions, but their very race and name have 
 vanished ; and the imagination is left to wander unrestrained 
 among the mighty fragments of an unknown world. Many 
 deep thoughts might be raised in the breast of the poet or the 
 moralist, at the contemplation of these sumptuous structures 
 now untrodden by the foot of man, but which may perchance have 
 once rivalled the wealth of Sardis, or Babylon, or Persepolis, cities 
 which have perished with them, but have left a name behind. 
 
 The ruins however do not say much for the state of art among 
 the people, whoever they may have been, to whom they owe 
 their origin. They are essentially barbarous, and like all barba- 
 rous structures, seek to supply by cumbrous magnificence and 
 superfluous ornament, the want of the higher beauties of grace 
 and proportion. And we cannot fail to remark, even at the 
 onset, that the same system of ornament which everywhere 
 marks this stage of art is found here in great abundance. The
 
 46 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 ubiquitous chevron, which we have already seen at Mycenae, 
 meets us again at Uxmal and Chichen, where the presence of 
 the followers of William the Norman is no less problematical 
 than in the halls of the Atreidse. 
 
 The general notion conveyed by these remains is decidedly 
 that of a stone construction, although some of the details appear 
 to point to a wooden origin. There seems indeed no absurdity 
 in supposing a simultaneous employment among a rude people 
 of the cave and the hut ; and if so, the ideas borrowed from 
 the two constructions would doubtless be intermingled in their 
 attempts to bestow somewhat of an ornamental character upon 
 their buildings. Many of the larger erections exhibit long and 
 rich facades with many columns, but the genuine colonnade 
 hardly occurs ; the columns are merely incidental, not occurring 
 in continuous ranges, but merely here and there, just as one or 
 two openings were wanted, which might be most conveniently 
 treated in this manner. The wall is the essential feature ; the 
 intercolumniations, if we may dignify them with such a name, 
 are merely certain of its apertures, which happen to be divided 
 by a column instead of by a mere mass of wall. The two modes 
 of division are used in the very same facade, and other fronts occur 
 without any columns, none of their openings having advanced be- 
 yond the character of doorways. The entablature too, if it may 
 be so called, is preposterously heavy, and its form is in no de- 
 gree influenced by the pillars below, or regulated by their pro- 
 portions. It occurs indeed equally whether its supports are 
 columnar or not. This might almost look as if the arrange- 
 ments of a colonnade had been transferred to a wall, as in so 
 many facades of Italian architecture, yet the whole appearance 
 of the style seems to countenance the idea of an original mural 
 construction. The notion is rather that of a continuous mass, 
 occasionally interrupted by apertures and pillars, than of the 
 genuine portico, where the columns are conceived as first 
 existing, and the entablature as laid upon them. Of course such 
 a style as this does not employ a feature so essentially wooden 
 as the pediment; and thus additional heaviness is procured. 
 How different is all this disproportion and confusion from the 
 perfect and harmonious symmetry which pervades the simplest 
 Doric temple.
 
 OF EARLY COLUMNAR ARCHITECTURE. 47 
 
 And in the details the same unskilfulness prevails throughout, 
 its only disguise being the lavish employment of every kind of 
 uncouth and barbarous enrichment. The columns by them- 
 selves might recal for a moment that glorious conception of 
 simple unadorned majesty, the uncorrupted Doric; but it is 
 only in simplicity that they agree, and simplicity without 
 grace is mere rudeness. These pillars are mere perpendicular 
 masses, not only without fluting, which may be excused, but 
 without any diminution of diameter. Some of the ornaments, 
 as was before said, seem to bear about them traces of a timber 
 origin, being very like what we see among ourselves in summer- 
 houses and such like structures of wood, where ranges of small 
 cylindrical logs are placed close together. Some of these are 
 furnished with what may be called bases, Capitals, and bands ; 
 though their air is rather that of an elongated baluster than of 
 a genuine banded shaft. 
 
 But the circumstance of most real interest connected with 
 these ruins is, that w r hile the arch does not occur in a pure state, 
 far less enter into the decorative system, we find the same at- 
 tempts at it which we have traced among the early inhabitants 
 of Greece and Italy. It is certainly most remarkable to see 
 exactly the same process, the same strivings after the ad- 
 vantages of an arched construction, going on in two such distant 
 regions, where the idea of borrowing one from another is alto- 
 gether out of the question, even were it not antecedently pre- 
 cluded by the improbability of a mere fruitless experiment being 
 imitated. These, and other instances which we shall have to 
 mention, show that architecture is in most countries a plant of 
 indigenous birth, and has everywhere passed through the same, 
 or at least analogous, stages. The want of the arch was almost 
 universally felt, though it was not every nation that had the 
 ability, or the good fortune, to bring their endeavours after it to 
 a successful issue. 
 
 Such at least was not the case with the people of Yucatan, 1 
 who seem to have remained at even a greater distance from suc- 
 
 1 Similar strivings after the arch arches, hardly deserves a separate 
 
 appear also in the architecture of place in the present history. See 
 
 the ancient Peruvians, which, as Prescott's Conquest of Peru, i. 
 
 affording neither columns nor 142.
 
 48 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 cess than the old Pelasgians. The form most usual in their 
 structures is an opening with inclining jambs, straight or curved, 
 not joining in a point, though approaching very nearly to it, but 
 with a lintel laid across the top. This mode of construction 
 is here, as well as in Greece, applied to the erection of quasi- 
 vaulted roofs. In other cases the roofs are supported on square 
 pillars. 
 
 From these remains, which, rude and uncouth as they are, are 
 not without interest, both on architectural grounds, and from 
 our very ignorance as to their history, we will turn to the oppo- 
 site quarter of the globe, and take a brief view of the architec- 
 ture of the nation which may fairly lay claim to a greater 
 antiquity and an earlier civilization, than any other now existing 
 as a distinct people. * Not that there is any resemblance whatever 
 between Chinese and primitive American architecture ; but simply 
 that it is a convenient arrangement to dispose of these forms of 
 less beauty and importance, before we commence the series 
 which will lead us by a gradually ascending scale to the full glo- 
 ries of Poseidonia and of Athens. 
 
 The buildings of the celestial empire have but very little 
 claim to architectural beauty or propi'iety; and in this case, as 
 in all the other institutions of that extraordinary race, it is not 
 owing to mere rudeness and barbarism, but to a fixed depravity 
 of taste. Their erections are not the huts of savages, but the 
 dwelling-places of a people whose civilization is older than that 
 of Greece or Italy, and whose architecture, like their other arts, 
 laws, and manners, has stiffened for thousands of years in 
 the same mould of rigid immobility. China seems to occupy in 
 the modern world a position analogous to that of Egypt in the 
 ancient ; both nations up to a certain point had made greater 
 and more rapid advances than any other people, and had 
 from some unknown cause become fixed at that point for ever. 
 The two civilizations were probably contemporary, and that 
 the Egyptian has not been handed down to our own days as 
 a living system, as well as the Chinese, appears to be wholly 
 the result of external circumstances. 
 
 The Chinese are acquainted with the arch, and use it in their 
 bridges ; and, when we consider that they alone possessed for 
 ages three of the great discoveries of modern Europe, there is
 
 OF EARLY COLUMNAR ARCHITECTURE. 49 
 
 no improbability in supposing that they boldly threw it over their 
 great rivers in all its mechanical perfection, before the Pelasgian 
 builder had even ventured to make his overlapping stones pre- 
 sent some feeble approximation to its outward form. But they 
 have never made it a decorative feature, nor does it seem to be 
 at all introduced into those structures which are designed to be 
 ornamental, with the exception of what are called triumphal 
 arches, though their claim to that title is not always very valid. 
 
 The general outline of Chinese buildings is tolerably familiar 
 to us : the manner of building in stages, often diminishing in 
 size, and each furnished with a roof and balcony, as well as 
 the extraordinary hooked form given to the angles of the roofs. 
 This is found both in the larger houses and in the towers or pa- 
 godas. These erections can certainly make no claim to the 
 smallest share of beauty ; indeed their outlines must be consi- 
 dered as positively ugly, and the bright colours and decorations 
 in which their builders delight must be but a poor substitute for 
 graceful composition and harmonious proportions. 
 
 The columns employed by the Chinese have been incidentally 
 mentioned in a former part of this chapter. They are com- 
 monly of wood, fixed on stone or marble bases. Their being 
 pierced with the beam most incontestably proves their direct 1 
 origin from the tent ; such an arrangement would never have 
 occurred in an original stone architecture, nor yet in the repro- 
 duction of a timber hut. Their height is from eight to twelve 
 diameters ; and they gradually diminish towards the top. Their 
 bases exhibit a variety of profiles, but none of any great elegance. 
 
 Another form of architecture in Eastern Asia presents some 
 analogy with the Chinese, though with considerable diversities. 
 These are the buildings of Siam ; 2 whose outlines partake of the 
 same character as the Chinese, so far as that both possess that re- 
 markable pyramidal rising of the whole structure to a crowning 
 and, as it were vanishing, point. But instead of the balconies 
 and curling angles of the Chinese roofs, the Siamese struc- 
 tures display a profusion of peaked roofs and gables. When a 
 number of the latter, gradually ascending, encompass a sort of 
 spire perched on the ridge, as is sometimes the case, the outline, 
 barbarous as it is, must be confessed to be something very supe- 
 
 1 See Ileeren's Asiatic Nations, ii. 87. : See Crawfurd's Siam, p. 112. 
 
 E
 
 50 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 rior to anything in Chinese architecture. On the other hand a 
 high roof over a colonnade, which is also seen, must be confessed 
 to be not a little out of place. 
 
 The outward resemblance which the religion of Buddha " a 
 diabolic mimicry of Christianity," as Frederick Schlegel ex- 
 presses it 1 bears to some of the doctrines and ceremonies of 
 the true faith, (rendering it thereby a more thoroughly hostile 
 system than any other false worship,) has been often remarked, 
 sometimes with evil purposes. But it may be allowable to 
 compare the undoubted fact with the circumstance that some 
 features in the Buddhist temples of Siam present an exactly 
 similar resemblance to the architecture of the Christian Church. 
 The gables just mentioned may be considered as an instance; 
 and it is still more strikingly shown in the sacred spires. 
 These are of divers forms and outlines, but all of the same 
 aspiring tendency, and all seem to cry aloud for the cross as 
 their natural finish. The most remarkable is that of a tem- 
 ple called Wata-naga, which in its general outline most vividly 
 recalls the appearance of such erections as the Eleanor crosses 
 or the market cross at Winchester, its open character assimilat- 
 ing it more closely to the latter. But upon examination it will 
 be found, as I have heard it expressed, literally living with 
 demons. Pointed arches, or their appearance, occur in two 
 stages, but the lower range, as if in direct mockery, are actually 
 formed by the extended legs of some monstrous portent of de- 
 praved idolatry. If Buddhism really be a Satanic burlesque of 
 our religion, one might be almost tempted to consider such erec- 
 tions, of the age of which I can give no information, though there 
 are reasons 2 for supposing none of the Siamese buildings to be 
 very ancient, to be in truth a similar burlesque upon Christian 
 architecture and Christian emblems. 
 
 All these structures, Chinese and Siamese, show a very low 
 state of real art. Mere rudeness in execution is a necessary 
 stage in its development among any nation, and does not exclude 
 majesty of proportion, or even a kind of beauty ; but we here 
 see a manifest attempt at architectural splendour, without any per- 
 ception of beauty whatever, but with a taste thoroughly depraved 
 alike in composition, detail, and decoration. Real art is sacri- 
 
 1 Philosophy of History, p. 137. 2 Crawfurd, ut supra.
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. 51 
 
 ficed to gaudy frippery, and, in China at least, fixed laws have 
 for ever bound down every effort of genius, so that no improve- 
 ment or development can be looked for. Our next chapters will 
 open to us a much wider scope for contemplation, in the works 
 of nations with whom architecture had made infinitely greater 
 advances, though we shall still find the art very far removed 
 from the perfection of Grecian or Teutonic skill. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. 
 
 In no part of the present work shall we have more need of the 
 caution given in the Introduction, than now that the course of 
 our history has brought us to the mysterious remains of ancient 
 Hindostan. It is no part whatever of the author's design to 
 plunge for a single moment into those depths of controversial 
 speculation which seem to involve the remotest approach to the 
 antiquities of that wonderful land. Even into the inquiries which 
 have been raised as to the connection between the ancient 
 Indians and Egyptians, and the derivation of learning and phi- 
 losophy from one to the other, this is not the place to enter ; 
 but a question intimately connected with them is of the greatest 
 consequence in our present inquiry ; namely, what amount of 
 connection may be supposed to exist between the architectui-e of 
 the two countries. This connection has by some writers been 
 exaggerated almost into identity, while on the other hand, Mr. 
 Fergusson denies, with every appearance of truth, any such 
 resemblance between Indian and Egyptian architecture as could 
 justify a supposition of either being borrowed from the other, 
 and asserts, what cannot be reasonably doubted, that the former 
 is an original production of the country. 1 There is clearly no such 
 resemblance as exists between Grecian architecture and the divers 
 styles which have borrowed from it, or even such as that, whether 
 accidental or otherwise, which may be found between our own 
 Gothic and the style transplanted into India by its Mahometan 
 conquerors. But surely a more subtle resemblance may be traced 
 
 1 Ancient Architecture of Hindostan, p. 11. 
 E2
 
 52 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 between the buildings of these two extraordinary nations ; one 
 not of detail, but of character, not to be assigned to imitation, 
 but to analogous origin. Without dogmatically asserting that 
 either people has borrowed from the other, still less pretending 
 to decide which civilization is the more original of the two, it can 
 hardly be denied that a general resemblance exists between the 
 character and institutions of the two peoples, and the same vague 
 sort of resemblance evidently appears in their architecture. But 
 besides this, another extensive source of similarity may be found 
 in their mechanical origin. Both have their probable origin in 
 excavations, the effect of which origin on the styles themselves 
 will be presently entered into more at length. The Persian 
 monuments on the other hand, which Mr. Fergusson connects 
 with the Indian, have as I shall hereafter attempt to show, a 
 totally different origin, one derived from timber structures ; 
 consequently, while any amount of resemblance might exist in 
 detail, any expressions of symbolical or religious notions which 
 might be supposed common to the two nations, any marks 
 of their connection as members of the great Indo- Germanic 
 family, the same similarity in composition and general architec- 
 tural effect could not be looked for as between the Egyptian and 
 Indian monuments. Persian and Grecian architecture have, 
 just like Egyptian and Indian, a common origin, and conse- 
 quently have the same sort of general resemblance, one which 
 would be sought for in vain in the details of the two styles. 
 
 A caution may here be necessary, which, if not attended to, would 
 involve the most inextricable confusion ; namely, as to the wide 
 and total difference between the native Hindoo style of architec- 
 ture, which is the subject of the present chapter, and the Maho- 
 metan style in India just now alluded to, which will be treated of 
 in a more advanced stage of the work. It is the more needful, 
 as the two stand side by side, and are often contemporary ; indeed 
 their features have, in not a few cases, been actually intermingled. 
 It will here be sufficient to remark that the one is a native style of 
 entablature architecture of unknown antiquity, the other an arched 
 style, a distant offshoot of the great Romanesque family, and not 
 introduced into India till many centuries after the Christian era. 
 
 It is highly interesting to find the two great forms of archi- 
 tecture thus placed side by side and actually maintaining a hostile
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. 53 
 
 position. The arch, as a construction, is utterly unknown 1 in the 
 genuine Hindoo style, though its form, or an approximation to it, 
 is not uncommon ; apparently the same overlapping of stones 
 which we have already so often met with, and which Mr. Fer- 
 gusson not inaptly calls " the horizontal arch." But more than 
 this, it seems that the Hindoos retain to this day what he calls 
 their " abhorrence of an arch." He mentions several buildings of 
 different dates, from a.d. 1210 to within the last fifty years, in 
 which buildings have been erected by Hindoo architects, for their 
 Mahometan masters or in imitation of the forms employed by them, 
 in which apparent arches and even apparent vaults are common, 
 but whose real construction is always formed on the horizontal 
 principle. 
 
 Of the antiquity of the Hindoo buildings much has been said, 
 some authors being desirous of tracing it up to some almost im- 
 measurably distant period. Mr. Fergusson considers the cave tem- 
 ples, which he conceives to have belonged to the Buddhist religion, 
 to be the oldest remains in India, the earliest dating from the 
 second or third century B. C, and continuing in an uninterrupted 
 series for several centuries. The earliest structural monuments 
 now existing he assigns to the seventh century of our era, but as he 
 supposes the caves to have been excavated in imitation of struc- 
 tural and even of wooden buildings, the style is carried backward 
 into an almost illimitable antiquity. And though this view of 
 their origin is one to which the present writer cannot accede, 
 there is no reason for supposing these caves to be the earliest 
 monuments that ever were produced in Hindostan. Buildings 
 infinitely ruder must have preceded them ; and though excavated 
 temples are free from many causes of destruction which affect 
 structures above ground, yet they are exposed to other sources 
 of decay, and are not a whit more imperishable than the others. 
 
 In the Indian architecture of every kind we find the con- 
 struction of the entablature prevailing throughout. The column 
 is for the most part heavy and massive ; its original form is a 
 square block, a shape which it sometimes retains ; but it is more 
 frequently subdivided into eight, sixteen, or even thirty-two 
 sides ; sometimes it has its angles actually rounded off. The 
 bases and capitals however always retain the square form. 
 1 See Ileeren, ut supra.
 
 54 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 These pillars were not used, like those of the Greeks, in the 
 construction of extensive and airy porticoes as external orna- 
 ments to their temples ; these are indeed sometimes fronted by 
 small open porches with columns : but the principal use of the 
 Hindoo pillar is for the internal support of ponderous roofs of 
 stone. They are therefore arranged in numerous rows at small 
 distances from each other, and consequently branch out in every 
 direction in an interminable perspective. In order the better to 
 support the enormous weights laid upon them without bringing 
 the colonnades into an inconvenient proximity to one another, 
 a strange invention is employed, which Mr. Fergusson aptly calls 
 the " bracket-capital ;" the capital consisting, in the most com- 
 plete and decorative form, of four brackets diverging from a 
 centre, each being of the diameter of the column. This allows 
 the supporting masses to be brought nearer to each other by 
 two diameters, without diminishing the actual intercolumniation. 
 Sometimes a series of these are placed on one another, so that 
 the horizontal arch is substituted for the genuine entablature ; 
 for in such a case the successive bracket-capitals are in truth 
 the overlapping stones of a Pelasgian gateway, with each indivi- 
 dual stone cut into what is looked upon as a decorative form. 
 
 The roofs are sometimes flat and sometimes arched; the 
 former kind appear to be enriched with a sort of panelling, of 
 this the more strongly marked lines immediately over the 
 columns, the horizontal ribs, so to speak have been considered 
 as imitations of the beams of a wooden roof. Yet there seems 
 to be no necessity for this supposition ; it is evidently much more 
 natural to mark the lines of the colonnades by this sort of pro- 
 jection, than to place an unrelieved flat roof immediately upon 
 the columns. The arrangement seems exactly analogous to that 
 of vaulted roofs ; a flat expanse having the same relation to a 
 simple entablature which a vault has to a simple arch. As 
 in cross-vaulting the line of each arch is generally marked by a 
 rib, and in a barrel-vault a rib frequently rises from each pillar 
 or pilaster below, it is but natural that in the kind of roof 
 which occupies an analogous place in the other system, some 
 similar decoration should mark out the more immediate en- 
 tablature, the portion namely directly over the columns. 
 This panelling seems quite the same in principle as the ribs in
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. 55 
 
 the arch-roofed temple 1 at Ellora, which differ in nothing from 
 those of a barrel-vault. And if these features should occur in 
 other parts of the roofs besides those directly over the colon- 
 nades, it may be accounted for by the usual custom of intro- 
 ducing decorative imitations of the larger constructive features. 
 
 By far the most interesting of the Indian monuments, and 
 those presenting the finest architectural display, are to be found 
 among the rock-cut temples of Ellora and Elephanta. Besides 
 the idea of immense labour which it involves, there is something 
 striking and awful in the very conception of this kind of architec- 
 ture, where the materials are provided by the hand of nature, 
 and the building is not reared by the work of man, but hewn 
 in the living stone. Nowhere do the domains of nature and of 
 art trench so closely upon one another. The character of the 
 process seems to remove us more than any other from the ordi- 
 nary world, and make us feel as if penetrating into the dominion 
 of beings of another race. Any excavation, natural or artificial, 
 an ordinary mine or cave, is not without a degree of awe ; the 
 removal from the broad glare of day and the vault of heaven 
 above us, into the bowels of the earth or the heart of the solid 
 rock, is in itself a solemn thing, and one which seems to bring 
 us into an unusual proximity to the world of spirits. And much 
 more, when the excavation is one not designed for the common 
 purposes of life, but the very shrine of evil beings, replete 
 with their images, and set off with all the effect of a strange and 
 wild, yet awful and solemn architecture. Truly these were places 
 where the actual presence of the demons of hell might have been 
 looked for among the dark rites of their deluded worshippers. 
 
 The cave-temples of Hindostan derive a great advantage over 
 the analogous excavations at Petra and Nakshi-Rustam, from 
 their style of architecture being one which probably owes its 
 origin to this mode of construction, or at least one which is 
 well and completely adapted to it. We here see rock-architecture 
 in its genuine and natural form, and not, as in those instances, 
 the mere application of a style nurtured and brought to perfec- 
 tion by a quite different process. 2 The strange pillars in the cave 
 of Elephanta are just what such a mode of construction demands. 
 Their uncouth and fantastic forms would be equally out of place 
 1 See p. 5G. - See Hccren's Asiatic Nations, i. 74.
 
 56 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 as supports to the frieze of a Greek portico or to the tall arches 
 of a Gothic church, but the wit of man could not have devised 
 anything more thoroughly appropriate for an idol-temple hewn 
 in the rock. The pillars have, just as they should, a sort of 
 stalactite character ; they do not seem built there to support a 
 weight laid upon them, but, as they are, of a piece with the roof. 
 Their form is rather that of balusters than of columns, and they 
 are supported by vast pedestals ; or, to speak more accurately, 
 the operation of cutting into what was held to be an ornamental 
 form was not extended to the lower part of the square mass, 
 which was probably first disengaged. The capital, though 
 formed merely of mouldings, is complicated, and not easily 
 described. But we must remark the stilt or de above the capi- 
 tal, and the manner in which it spreads into the roof; this would 
 seem to be the rudest and most primitive form of the bracket- 
 capital, though it has less projection, and extends only in two 
 directions. The pillars or balusters are fluted, a very natural 
 source of decoration for any monolith or quasi-monolith column, 
 whether excavated or structural. 
 
 One of the temples at Ellora is on some grounds a more re- 
 markable production than that of Elephanta, though the latter 
 seems more typical of excavated architecture. Instead of the 
 multiplied and flat roof colonnades of Elephanta, we have here 
 the entire arrangements of a Christian Church ; the remark be- 
 fore made, that Buddhism presents in its buildings, as well as in 
 its tenets, a Satanic mimicry of the coming Gospel, applies with 
 still more force to the long aisles and apsidal termination of the 
 present temple ; even so minute an arrangement as the two de- 
 tached pillars in front find their like in the plan of many an 
 early Basilica. The nave, for so one cannot help speaking, is 
 divided from its aisles by tall and massive octagonal pillars, 
 without bases or capitals, but with a sort of band of sculpture 
 placed rather higher than the centre. These pillars immediately 
 support a kind of entablature of very bold projection ; from 
 this rises the roof, which is exactly of the pointed-barrel form, 
 and marked by ribs. The apse is filled with the shrine of the 
 deity of the place, covered with diabolical sculptures, and 
 crowned with the bulbous top to be hereafter mentioned. This, 
 which is manifestly the centre-point of devotion, occupies ex-
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. 57 
 
 actly the position of the high altar in a Christian temple. The 
 two detached pillars are different from the last; the upper part 
 only is octagonal, and richly sculptured ; the lower portion is 
 left square and plain, with a curious finish at the point where 
 the chamfer, as one may call it, commences. Another Basilican 
 temple occurs at Salsette, which appears designed in a more en- 
 riched style, the pillars being described as fluted, with sculp- 
 tured capitals, and representations of elephants on the abaci. At 
 Karli is another example of an arched roof supported by 
 columns ; their capitals are described 1 as surmounted by a well 
 sculptured male and female figure with their arms encircling one 
 another ; these are seated on the backs of elephants which 
 are represented as if crouching under the weight which they 
 sustain. 
 
 Of structural remains in Hindostan, the principal are those 
 temples with which we are familiar under the name of Pagodas. 
 It will not be needful to enumerate their several classes and 
 varieties which will be found enumerated in Mr. Fergusson's 
 work, as they are for the most part rather "naological" than archi- 
 tectural. A general character runs through all ; great massive- 
 ness of outline, relieved chiefly by external sculpture, a lack of 
 windows, and a general want of all feeling of the beautiful. In- 
 deed, if the Greeks be truly said to be worshippers of the ku\6v, 
 it must be confessed that the Hindoos were equally devout vota- 
 ries of the alaxgov. As long as the Taylor Building at Oxford is 
 not the type of a genus, the pagodas of Northern Hindostan must 
 be allowed to present, in their external lines, the most perverse 
 and unsightly form of any class of human erections; and those 
 of the southern provinces may fairly rank second in the scale. 
 The Chinese buildings have at least the merit of being grotesque, 
 the Indian are simply ugly. And this utter want of taste of 
 outline is the more remarkable in a people who in their internal 
 architecture, their colonnades and roofs, had certainly made no 
 mean progress. At the same time the hideous shape of the 
 temple must be allowed to be highly appropriate to the uncouth 
 and monstrous images to whose service it is dedicated. 
 
 The most apparent difference between the temples of Northern 
 and Southern India, consists in the form given to the Vimana, a 
 square building or tower which forms their most important 
 1 Seeley's Wonders of Eliora, p. 71.
 
 58 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 portion. In the former this is perpendicular for a very small 
 portion of its height, the rest consisting of what has been some- 
 times dignified with the name of a spire, a preposterous thing 
 with curved sides, but which yet retains its square section. In 
 the older examples the diminution at the top is inconsiderable ; 
 in more modern structures the spire, if we are so to degrade 
 that name, becomes more and more pointed. It is finished with 
 a kind of bulbous cupola. 
 
 In the pagodas of southern India, the form is essentially a 
 pyramid, although broken into numberless little stages, so that 
 the pyramidal outline is more or less lost, according to the ex- 
 tent of their projection. Moreover, it does not rise directly 
 from the ground, the lower part being perpendicular, as in the 
 northern temples. In fact the pyramidal portion answers to the 
 spire of the northern vimana, and assuredly has the better claim 
 of the two to that title. The difference between the uninter- 
 rupted ascending line at the angle of an Egyptian pyramid, and 
 the perpetually broken one of a Tamul pagoda, is exactly analo- 
 gous to that between the bold sharp outline of the spires of 
 Salisbury or Freyburg, and the broken, jagged, uncertain line 
 which has usurped its place at Strasburg and Antwerp. The 
 stages are marked by bold horizontal cornices, and are richly 
 decorated with statues in niches, columns which often support 
 the cornices, and other ornaments, which bring before our mind 
 the general effect of the cinque-cento style. 1 There is the same 
 multiplicity of parts, the same system of small decorative 
 columns and entablatures, the same imposing, though barbarous 
 richness. The whole is finished with the same domical ornament 
 as in the northern variety, to receive which the pyramid is 
 truncated. 
 
 To the Vimana is attached a Mantapa, usually square, of 
 about equal size, but of less height, and diminishing towards 
 the top, not by curved lines, but in successive ranges of little 
 terraces. These structures seem at first sight to have somewhat 
 of a Chinese aspect ; but the buildings of the latter people have 
 not the same excessive multiplication of parts ; their divisions 
 are really the roofs of different stories : and the Hindoo erection, 
 
 1 This is not infrequent in Hindoo has quite the effect of a large 
 buildings ; the Kailasa at Ellora cinque-cento chest.
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. 59 
 
 happily for itself, wants the strange treatment of the angles of 
 the roof, which distinguishes the architecture of the Celestial 
 Empire. These little projections are rather to be considered as 
 a carrying out of the same principle as the bracket-capital. 
 
 Another variety of Hindoo architecture, that of the Jains, 
 presents a remarkable feature in the employment of the apparent 
 dome. The prevalence of this form, especially when we take 
 into consideration the Indian dislike to the arch, appears a most 
 curious phenomenon. An objection to a form may be easily un- 
 derstood when it rests either on sesthetical or on symbolical 
 grounds; but a rooted antipathy to the most natural, appropri- 
 ate, and secure method of constructing a favourite form is some- 
 thing unintelligible, and apparently irrational. But be this as 
 it may, the apparent dome, precisely the same form, it would 
 seem, as that of the treasury at Mycenae, is a most popular 
 feature of this architecture. 1 These domes occupy the centre of 
 their halls or mantapas, being supported on eight columns placed 
 so as to form an equilateral octagon ; their entablatures support 
 a story of sixteen sides, on which in most cases the dome imme- 
 diately rests, though sometimes another stage of thirty-two sides 
 is interposed. 
 
 The doorways of all these structures seem to be square-headed, 
 with jambs and lintels more or less richly adorned. But a very 
 curious feature, and one which again brings cinque-cento to our 
 mind, is the very frequent occurrence of a decorative pair of 
 columns, one on each side the aperture, and evidently intended 
 to be taken in connection with it. In some cases the stilt, or 
 something analogous, appears, and calls up the notion of the 
 little bit of entablature which architects of that date (as, indeed, 
 others too, both before and since,) were so fond of inserting over 
 columns in similar situations. 
 
 It has been implied in several places of the present chapter, that 
 this ancient Indian architecture 2 owes its origin to that excavation 
 of the solid rock b ywhich so many of its noblest monuments 
 are actually formed. If so, the caves of Elephanta, Salsette, and 
 
 1 Fergusson, p. 18. scarcely be maintained that a people 
 
 2 This view is confirmed by the who had already been accustomed 
 authority of Ileeren, (Asiatic Na- to build in the open air. should sub- 
 tions, ii. 55,) who says, with every sequently begin to lodge their di- 
 appearancc of probability, " It can vinities in under-ground temples."
 
 60 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Ellora, though probably far from being the earliest executed, must 
 be considered as the prototypes, or representatives of the proto- 
 types, of the structural remains. This opinion is contested by Mr. 
 Fergusson and also in the work on Egyptian Antiquities published 
 by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, both of 
 which writers suppose the cave architecture of India to be merely 
 a reproduction of anterior structural buildings. The grounds 
 on which I maintain the contrary view will be more largely dis- 
 cussed, after that an examination of the style which is more gene- 
 rally allowed to have a similar origin, that of ancient Egypt, shall 
 have enabled us to class together those common features in the 
 two forms which seem to refer them to this excavatory parentage. 
 A few remarks, however, which have especial reference to Hindo- 
 stan, will not be out of place at the present stage of our 
 subject. 
 
 The fact of a style having one particular origin is very far 
 from preventing forms and details borrowed from other sources 
 being incorporated with it. Wooden structures must have ex- 
 isted among almost every nation, and, as was observed in the last 
 chapter, 1 may coexist with the employment of caves. An archi- 
 tecture then, which borrowed its principal forms, and above all, its 
 general effect and character, from the one source, might, in the 
 gx*adual progress of its development, derive both ornamental and 
 constructive features from the other. Thus in Egyptian architec- 
 ture, details, and even forms of columns, are found manifestly 
 traceable to a totally different origin from that which gave birth 
 to the general style. And in the Indian monuments also several 
 details are clearly wooden. Mr. Fergusson mentions what he 
 calls a flying buttress, a sort of twisted twig leaping to the en- 
 tablature from a bracket-capital placed some way down the 
 column ; nothing can be more wooden than the whole notion, 
 and it has pendants which look in his engraving as if they had 
 absolutely been turned in wood. So too, the appearance of 
 beams at Elephanta, though it has been otherwise accounted for, 
 need be no obstacle to our theory, if we suppose that, between 
 the time of the earliest excavations and of those at Elephanta, 
 structures had been reared in which the wooden roof had been 
 introduced. The old cave architecture might have returned to 
 its original material, bringing with it some features of the build- 
 Page 46.
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA. 61 
 
 ings which had in the meanwhile been raised above ground. At 
 the same time it is difficult to see how, under any circumstances, 
 the wooden origin of the Elephanta roof is compatible with the 
 universal prevalence of stone roofs in Hindoo structures. 
 
 Still less extraordinary is it that the outlines of buildings 
 should receive new forms unconnected with the original source 
 of their architecture. Grecian architecture is not less truly to 
 be referred to a timber origin, because there is nothing distinc- 
 tively wooden about its theatres, or about the choragic monu- 
 ment of Lysicrates. Forms of outline do not necessarily depend 
 upon styles of architecture ; intimate as is their connection, con- 
 stant and extensive as is their mutual influence, they are still in 
 themselves independent, and the origin even of those of each 
 class which are most intimately bound together, may yet be al- 
 together distinct. Many other circumstances have at least as 
 much sway over the outline of a structure as the direct require- 
 ments of the style in which it happens to be built. This must 
 take place even when, as in Chinese and Grecian architecture, the 
 origin of the style supplies an outline for the building, as well 
 as a particular system for its construction. But much more 
 would the necessity be felt in a style whose origin was that which 
 we attribute to the architecture of Egypt and India. Excavation 
 can supply little more than an internal system ; it may give a 
 facade cut in the rock, but it cannot supply an outline ; such a 
 work as the Kailasa, where the rock is cut away all round, seems 
 to belong to a later stage, and almost implies the previous existence 
 of structural buildings. The excavatory architecture then, when 
 it came up into daylight, brought with it the elements of a style 
 of architecture, the columns, architraves, roofs, &c. ; but its 
 subterranean sojourn had not provided it with a system of exter- 
 nal outlines : for those it had necessarily to seek above ground. 
 And it is therefore not to be wondered ;it, if the architects 
 adopted any outline which suited their requirements, whether by 
 drawing upon their own imagination, or by imitating any objects, 
 natural or artificial, which were most adapted to their purpose. 
 We may therefore grant the form of the vimana to be, as has been 
 supposed, an exaggerated altar, or a copy of the native hut, 
 without at all impugning the excavatory origin of its architectural 
 style.
 
 62 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 With regard to the pyramidal form, it is admitted even 
 by authors 1 opposed to our view, that it is probably derived 
 from artificial mounds of earth, an origin which seems at once 
 to connect that kind of outline with excavatory architecture. 
 For if we conceive excavations to have been the real origin of 
 the style, if we suppose its construction and internal system to 
 have been developed in the cave temple, it is almost a part of the 
 same process, that, as soon as it was released from its imprison- 
 ment in the bowels of the earth, it should adopt for its favourite 
 outline an imitation of the external appearance of its former 
 dwelling-place, the rocky hill. Without, we have an artificial 
 mountain; within, we have a representation of that mountain 
 scooped out, as in the first form of the architecture, into inter- 
 minable colonnades and passages. No better analogy can be 
 wished for to defend the theory here maintained as to the origin 
 of Indian architecture. 
 
 But even granting every variety of outline which Indian 
 buildings assume to have an origin totally irreconcilable with 
 the idea of excavations, it would prove nothing. We are now 
 concerned with the origin, not of the outlines of Indian pagodas, 
 but of the forms of Indian architecture. Those who, with the pre- 
 sent writer, see in the interlacing arches and vaults of a Gothic 
 minster a stone copy of a Northern forest, do not attribute to 
 that source its outline and proportion, its cruciform shape, its 
 high roofs, its transepts, chapels, and apses. And though many 
 arguments have been brought against that theory, I am not 
 aware that this has been alleged as any inconsistency in its sup- 
 porters. And it is no more than is here assumed with regard 
 to the architecture of India. Its distinguishing architectural 
 features are traceable to one source, its outlines are borrowed 
 from many others. 
 
 Such are the remains of ancient Hindostan : structures which 
 indeed exhibit a vast improvement on the rude forms described in 
 the last chapter, but which are still essentially barbarous, devoid 
 of fixed principles, and lacking all perception of beauty. Our 
 next inquiries will introduce us to a style which, though neither 
 its parent nor its offspring, is undoubtedly kindred, and in which 
 
 1 Egyptian Antiquities, i. 200. See Heeren, ii. 87.
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 63 
 
 its leading idea, so far as it has one, is far better and more artis- 
 tically carried out. The Indian monuments, those at least which 
 now exist, appear to be of much more recent date than the 
 Egyptian ; their chronological series begins about the point 
 where that of Egypt ends, and reaches down to our own day. 
 Yet in a scientific inquiry they claim an earlier place ; they re- 
 present an analogous style in a less advanced stage, so that the 
 temples and palaces of the Pharaohs will form the appropriate 
 sequel to buildings many ages their juniors. Such is the diver- 
 sity of the fate which art experiences ; in one nation it springs 
 at once to perfection, in another it drags on a lingering exist- 
 ence for centuries, and never attains any high degree of merit. 
 The Hindoo and the Chinese still labour on models which 
 were essentially the same when the architecture of the Dorian 
 was yet in its infancy, while the fluted column was still a post, 
 and its architrave a horizontal beam. In the mean time Europe 
 has seen the frieze of the Parthenon, the dome of the Pantheon, 
 the endless arcades of the Basilica of St. Paul, the cupola of St. 
 Sophia and the minarets which profane it, the lantern of Worms, 
 the dome of Florence, the spires of Coventry and Freyburg ; and 
 all these the types of styles, the models of countless other 
 edifices. The arts and institutions of the East were found 
 essentially the same by Alexander, by Mahmoud, and by the 
 conquerors of our own day. Who can trace the countless revo- 
 lutions which have been experienced by those of nations west of 
 the Euphrates ? 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The architecture of the ancient Egyptians, as was remarked in 
 the General Introduction, is one that marks a most important 
 epoch in the history of the art. Taken merely as representing 
 a stage in the development of architecture, it is highly interest- 
 ing, being the first mode of building which is really deserving 
 the name of a style ; the earliest form constructed on definite
 
 64 HISTORY OP ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and scientific principles, or seeking to realize an ideal of its own. 
 Compared with the Indian monuments, the difference is immense. 
 The Hindoo architecture has no meaning, no idea, no leading 
 principle ; it is a wild product of mere fancy, unchastened by 
 any certain laws of taste. But the Egyptian buildings, barba- 
 rous and uncouth as they seem beside the meridian splendours 
 of Athens, and disfigured by sculptures hardly less monstrous 
 than those of the Hindoos themselves, are manifestly the 
 work of no despicable intellect. An Egyptian temple has its 
 type as truly as a Grecian one, it is the carrying out of an 
 idea to which all the parts subserve, it is a genuine whole, a great 
 harmonized creation. Hindoo architecture is hardly a style at 
 all in the highest sense ; Egyptian is as truly a style as a Grecian, 
 though one of infinitely inferior merit. 
 
 But when we consider the history of these monuments, their 
 claim to our study and admiration grows immeasurably upon us. 
 Among their number are found the most ancient of existing 
 buildings; the cities of Egypt supply examples betokening a 
 matured style of art, and exhibiting the greatest richness and 
 magnificence, at a period when the rest of the world can afford 
 nothing beyond a few scattered and uncertain fragments. The 
 sumptuous and highly finished temples of Thebes are possibly 
 of higher antiquity than the rudest fragment of wall at Tiryns 
 or Messalogion. And when we further reflect upon the charac- 
 ter and history of the extraordinary nation by w T hom they were 
 reared ; their early learning and civilization ; their institutions 
 and philosophy, combined with their strange and degrading 
 idolatry ; when we remember the prominent and awful position 
 w T hich Egypt occupies in Holy Scripture, the land of Ham the 
 outcast and accursed, the very type of all darkness and spiritual 
 bondage, and the scene of the most awful judgments which 
 revelation has recorded ; when we pursue the investigation 
 through profane history, and see Egypt the central point of 
 Grecian wonder and speculation, a nation marked out from all 
 others as the very land of marvels in nature, art, and manners ; 
 retaining too its arts and its worship under the successive domi- 
 nation of Persian, Macedonian, and Roman lords ; when we look 
 on still further to Christian days, to Alexandria with its famous 
 Patriarchs, and the desert blooming like the rose with the virtues
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 65 
 
 and miracles of saintly hermits, and reflect how many of the 
 temples of the old idolatry were consecrated to a holier worship ; 
 when finally we see how all alike have perished, how the idol 
 temple and the Christian church have alike fallen beneath the 
 wasting grasp of the False Prophet, and behold a few wandering 
 Arabs the only tenants of the palaces of the Pharaohs and the 
 mighty shrines of their dark idols : when we thus compare 
 ancient grandeur and present desolation, ancient empire and 
 present slavery, the picture is one which no other land can rival, 
 and the imperishable monuments of Egyptian art remain as 
 witnesses of more and mightier changes than any work that 
 human power has ever reared. 
 
 The first idea raised in the mind at the mention of Egyptian 
 architecture is probably that of the pyramids ; those marvellous 
 productions of human labour which will probably afford food for 
 curious speculation as long as the world remains. But though 
 they have their value in elucidating several points to which we 
 shall soon have to refer, they are hardly, in the strictest 
 sense, specimens of Egyptian architecture ; they are the most 
 gigantic efforts of building that the world has ever seen, but the 
 process which reared them could scarcely be, in the highest view, 
 an architectural one. As in almost every other country, the 
 buildings dedicated to religious worship afford the most extensive 
 and the most typical specimens of the art as practised in ancient 
 Egypt. 
 
 It is very remarkable that, although the construction of the 
 entablature is the only one practised in the enriched Egyptian 
 structures, which indeed exhibit that mode of building on a 
 vaster and bolder scale than any others, there can be no doubt 
 but that the architects of that country were well acquainted with 
 both the form and principle of the arch. The apparent or hori- 
 zontal arch, both semicircular and segmental, is found at Thebes 
 and Abydos ; and at Syout or Lycopolis arc several segmental 
 arches cut in the rock. But besides this, Sir Gardner Wilkin- 
 son gives an engraving of a genuine arch of stone of the date 
 GOO B.C., and considers that arches and vaults were constructed 
 of brick as early as 1540 B.C. The country possesses but little 
 timber; a want which led to a common employment of brick, 
 and especially of brick vaulting, in domestic architecture. A true 
 
 T
 
 66 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 arcli of the horse-shoe form, and another of the common semi- 
 circular kind, both constructed of bricks, exist at Thebes. The 
 pointed arch, 1 of stone put together without cement, and without 
 a key-stone, is found at Djebel-el-Barkal. And more than one 
 pyramid exhibits that substitute for an arch, constructed of two 
 inclined stones, which is familiar to the students of the first 
 ecclesiastical architecture of our own island. 
 
 The invention of the arch in Egypt was doubtless an effect of 
 the use of brick ; in that material, it is impossible to unite dis- 
 tant points without some such contrivance ; so that its want is 
 more felt than in a stone architecture, where blocks of almost 
 any size may be employed as architraves. In the latter the arch 
 is merely a convenience, as dispensing with the vast labour re- 
 quired to move and adjust such masses ; in a brick architecture 
 it is absolutely necessary, if anything beyond mere walls is to 
 be erected. We may thus easily account for the peculiar position 
 of the arch in Egyptian architecture. The great temples are 
 built of stone ; and their style was, probably matured, or at least 
 greatly advanced, before the introduction of bricks as a building 
 material ; and this style was doubtless one that was at once prized 
 and admired as mere art, and consecrated by religious symbolism 
 and associations. We can, therefore, readily imagine that the 
 kings and priests of Egypt, to whom the diminution of their 
 subjects' labour was certainly no very important consideration, 
 might forbear to innovate upon the accustomed forms of their 
 temples by the introduction of even so great an improvement as 
 the arch. Hence it is that the arch, though known in its per- 
 fect development, remained only in occasional use as convenience 
 might dictate, but never became a feature in the decorative sys- 
 tem of Egyptian architecture. 
 
 That architecture is, on the contrary, as complete a carrying 
 out of the rival construction as can be imagined ; and shows a 
 thorough grasp of its capabilities, both mechanical and ornamen- 
 tal. It is only the immeasurable difference in point of taste 
 that at once places it so far below the products of Grecian skill. 
 Boldness, vigour, and consistency are there in no less perfection, 
 but the refined and delicate perception of beauty is absent. 
 
 1 Itainee, Histoire de l'Architecture, i. 306.
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 67 
 
 As in all entablature styles, the fullest development of Egyp- 
 tian architecture is to be found in the portico ; and as the gene- 
 ral outline of that feature, as exhibited in perfection by the 
 Greeks, is so familiarly known, I may be perhaps allowed to an- 
 ticipate in some measure a subsequent chapter, in order to com- 
 pare the less known and less perfect forms of Egypt with the 
 typical productions of Hellas. 
 
 The character of an Egyptian portico is heavy and massive ; it 
 has indeed been 1 shown by admeasurements that its proportions 
 arc not actually more so than some of the earlier and more mas- 
 sive specimens of the Doric order; but the Grecian examples 
 are merely firm and substantial, in the Egyptian both the compo- 
 sition and the details seem not only massive, but actually clumsy 
 and uncouth. The first great difference in the main outline is, 
 the entire absence of that most beautiful and necessary finish of a 
 Grecian portico, the pediment, which of itself gives a flat and 
 unfinished appearance to the building. Grecian architecture is 
 indeed horizontal, and rendered so by the very principles and 
 genius of the style, but there is never any feeling of incom- 
 pleteness ; an Egyptian portico without a pediment is an object 
 to which the eye can never be reconciled ; the flat line is so pain- 
 fully and abruptly marked, that wc can never divest ourselves of 
 the idea that a pediment has been destroyed. The sides present 
 also a most important difference. The most satisfactory form of 
 a Grecian temple is certainly the peripteral, which has colon- 
 nades all round ; but even in the form called in antis, when 
 the columns do not extend along the whole front, the ends 
 of the side walls are brought into harmony with the colon- 
 nade by being made to assume the form of pilasters. But 
 the Egyptian portico is terminated by the ends of two im- 
 mense walls, without any attempt to harmonize them with the 
 pillars ; and these walls moreover in many cases slope inwards 
 at a very perceptible angle, in a manner very far from agreeable 
 to the eye, or satisfactory upon any principle of taste. The result 
 is simply the entire destruction of the genuine idea of a portico. 
 This we conceive as composed of an entablature and pediment, 
 resting on a colonnade, which forms the predominant feature of 
 
 1 Egyptian Antiquities, i. 101.
 
 68 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the whole ; but in an Egyptian portico, the colonnade is some- 
 thing secondary, and seems merely a relief or interruption to the 
 wall, which exists above and on each side. 
 
 And as if the Egyptian architects endeavoured of set purpose to 
 hinder their colonnades from standing out as bold and prominent 
 objects, a still more perverse and barbarous method of effecting 
 this intention did not fail to occur to them. This was no other than 
 actually building up the intercolumniations, sometimes up to 
 more than two-thirds of the height of the pillars. Thus while the 
 Grecian column stands forth, free and unencumbered from base 
 to abacus, in all its pure and simple grandeur, the lower part of 
 the Egyptian shaft peeps forward with difficulty from out of the 
 mass of wall by which it is choked. And this uncouthness leads 
 to another ; as a passage is necessarily required to the interior 
 of the portico, we might have expected that, though not allowed 
 equally by every intercolumniation, one at least might have been 
 left free to supply the necessary opening ; but no, the wall has 
 taken possession of every thing, the central intercolumniation is 
 filled up with a doorway, with its jambs built up against the pillars. 
 Sometimes this would seem to arise from simple perverseness, 
 for " the doorway of the portico of Denderah, and of other tem- 
 ples similarly constructed, is formed by two upright jambs, with- 
 out a lintel to unite them at the top." 1 The judgment of 
 charity, in one who has had no opportunity of observing 
 whether they exhibit any signs of mutilation, would be that such 
 a lintel may have been destroyed. At all events, this strange 
 practice helps very much to produce the apparently desired effect 
 of giving the portico the look of a perforated mass of masonry, 
 and reducing the intercolumniations to little better than holes 
 in the wall. 
 
 From this insertion of a doorway results yet another violation 
 of beauty and proportion. An entrance becomes a central point, 
 and must be treated as such ; it requires to be marked out as 
 something conspicuous, around which the other features may 
 group ; hence the central intercolumniation, as containing the 
 doorway, is made of much greater width than the rest. Now 
 the whole idea of a portico absolutely repudiates any such cen- 
 
 1 Egyptian Antiquities, i. 100.
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. G9 
 
 tral point ; its whole beauty is derived from a quiet and equal 
 harmony, admitting no commanding centre, but rather requir- 
 ing a democratic equality among its members ; its unity does 
 not consist in the predominance of any one point, but in the 
 accurate adjustment of all. And after all, this attempt of the 
 Egyptian architects to provide the portico with such a central 
 point is eminently unsuccessful ; all that their device effects is 
 separation rather than unity ; they do but divide their colon- 
 nade into two unconnected parts with an awkward gap between 
 them. 
 
 Another important difference between the buildings of the 
 Greeks and the Egyptians will be found in the habit indulged in 
 by the latter of covering almost every foot of their structures with 
 sculptures, human, animal, and otherwise. Not only does the 
 frieze, the seat of so many glorious emanations of the Grecian 
 chisel, come in for its share, though merely in an incidental 
 manner, as one portion of the wall; but the very pillars are 
 loaded with these preposterous and hideous representations. 
 This again is a sign that the portico is merely a perforated wall ; 
 even the columns are merely a part of it, w r hich happen indeed 
 to stand to a certain extent detached, and to have an approach to 
 the cylindrical form, but which have no distinct existence, and 
 are consequently brought under the same general laws as the 
 other portions of the masonry. If a Grecian architect had chosen 
 thus to enrich his external w r alls, we may still be sure that he 
 would never have thought of extending this source of decoration 
 to the detached and totally " self-contained " blocks of his 
 colonnade. 
 
 To look further into details, we find the beautiful gradations 
 and projections of the Grecian entablature quite absent; we have 
 little more than a piece of the wall assuming its form. This is 
 crowned with a rude cornice, a large round moulding, which at 
 Denderah is actually continued down the sloping sides of the 
 facade, (once more identifying the wall and the entablature,) and 
 finally finished with a vast projecting hollow, which again occurs 
 at the top of the intercolumniary walls. JJut, what is perhaps 
 strangest of all, a large block, called the de, is inserted above the 
 capital, forming a distinct and prominent member, and utterly 
 destroying the connection between the column and its architrave.
 
 70 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 It seems almost to forestall the barbarism of Roman and Revived 
 Italian architecture, 1 by which a detached fragment of entablature 
 is stuck upon a column, with no purpose but to outrage propor- 
 tion, and, moreover, if it chance to be in an arcade, to separate 
 the column from its arch. It would appear however that this 
 strange perversity, which appears altogether unaccountable, has 
 met with admirers. Denon, as quoted in the little work from 
 which we have borrowed so much, observes, " This architectu- 
 ral member, which I have never seen but in the Egyptian 
 column, gives freedom to the capital, prevents it from appearing 
 crushed by the architrave, and produces so good an effect to a 
 person who approaches the pillar, that I am surprised it has 
 never been imitated." This arrangement has its parallel, one 
 perhaps not altogether accidental, in the stilting of arches, which 
 is in most cases almost equally unsightly. 
 
 The forms of Egyptian columns and their capitals are very 
 various. In the latter, which certainly in many instances pos- 
 sess no small degree of beauty, the architect seems to have been 
 altogether unrestrained, and to have given no less scope to his 
 fancy than the designers of our own Gothic buildings. Especially 
 does every form of vegetable life seem to have been called 
 into requisition ; the capitals of the Egyptian temples might al- 
 most serve as a hortus siccus for the botanical traveller, as 
 scarcely any plant of the country has failed to obtain admission 
 among those called upon to add richness to the temples of its 
 divinities. And though they can seldom or never be put in com- 
 petition with the luxuriant richness of the Corinthian acanthus- 
 leaf, or with the exquisite grace and delicacy of early Gothic 
 foliage, the vegetable capitals of Egypt are very far from despi- 
 cable. The usual form is nearly the same, namely the reversed 
 bell, evidently borrowed from the calyx or cup of a flower. But, 
 while in the Gothic capital this is merely the nucleus from which 
 the foliage projects with such free and luxuriant elegance ; in 
 the Egyptian it is the whole capital, the representations of leaves 
 and fruit being simply carved in relief upon its surface ; at most 
 the circular outline of the rim is broken up into a scolloped 
 form by a series of large leaves bending outwards. The lotus is 
 
 1 Compare, for a sort of acciden- Martin's church, in Egyptian An- 
 tal testimony, the remarks on St. tiquities, i. 116.
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 71 
 
 one of the chief sources of these enrichments, and occurs in 
 every conceivable variety of bud, flower, and leaf; the palm, the 
 bulrush, the vine, also occur in every stage of their development. 
 In their whole character, and especially in exhibiting little 
 beyond surface-carving, they bear some analogy to the capitals 
 of the Romanesque style, to which they sometimes present a 
 strong incidental resemblance. 
 
 But the representations on the capitals are by no means all 
 of this nature ; they are indeed almost infinitely varied. In one 
 form which frequently occurs, though under several varieties, 
 some inquirers have ventured to recognize the original of the Doric 
 order. 1 The de in this form is much smaller than usual, being 
 more of an abacus, and indeed not more heavy than many Ro- 
 manesque abaci. Another form, occurring in the magnificent 
 temple of Denderah and several others, is what is called the 
 Isis-headcd capital ; this is quadrangular, and represents in each 
 face the head of that goddess. 
 
 The capitals however, with all their diversities, agree in one or 
 two very important points, which at once distinguish them from 
 the Grecian and its derivative forms. They have not that sepa- 
 rate character of their own, as distinct parts of the order, which 
 is possessed by the latter. The de comes immediately down 
 upon the capital in a very awkward manner; in some examples, 
 where the capital is of foliage, and consequently an abacus es- 
 pecially necessary, the de, of less diameter than the capital, rises 
 out of the midst of the leaves in a most unsightly way. 
 
 The pillars themselves arc in some instances square, especially 
 in excavated buildings, and when they have caryatid figures at- 
 tached ; in this latter case they appear to be simple square masses 
 without any pretence to the character of a regular column. 
 They seem to exist solely for the sake of the figures, 2 to employ 
 which as the actual supports of the entablature would hardly 
 have been in accordance with so massive an architecture. 
 
 Most of the columns however arc round, though not worked 
 to their form with much accuracy. They have round or square 
 
 1 Sec Belzoni, p. ITS. Egypt. occur, though rarely. Sec Egyp- 
 
 Ant. i. 1G8. Rarru'e, Histoire de tian Antiquities, i. 10.3. Cf. Diod. 
 
 1' Architecture, i. 288. i. 47. "T-nripuaOui. avj\ rwv ki6vwv 
 
 - Actual caryatides do however v'5ia.
 
 72 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 bases, and strange to say, the shaft is in many cases narrower 
 just above the base than in its upper part, and is united to 
 it by a kind of reversed capital, curving outward from the base 
 like the Doric echinus. Another form of columns presents a 
 rude resemblance to the clustered pillars of Gothic architecture. 
 The effect, however, is little more than that of convex fluting, if 
 I may be allowed the expression ; as these are crossed by a num- 
 ber of concentric rings, they may be considered as an imitation 
 of palm trees bound together. 1 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to explain the principal points to be 
 remarked in the elevation of an Egyptian portico, as contrasted 
 with the purer and more graceful forms of Greece. It may not 
 be out of place to give a brief description of such other parts of 
 a temple as throw light upon the style of architecture, avoiding 
 all ritual and symbolical speculation. 
 
 The sacred precinct, which is sm*rounded by a wall, is entered 
 by an enormous gateway or propylsea, sometimes of greater 
 height than the temple itself, and extending in breadth on either 
 side beyond the extremities of the precinct. This is composed 
 of two huge artificial mountains of oblong form, with all their 
 sides inclining; but at a more obtuse angle than the pyramids; 
 and they are truncated at the top so as to present a long horizontal 
 line. Between them is the actual doorway, of comparatively 
 small size, and square-headed. Above it is an enormous lintel, 
 if we may so call it, nearly in the same plane as the rest of the 
 front ; it is of immense depth, and finished with a very project- 
 ing cornice. The whole of the facade is covered with colossal 
 figures. The outline is, of course, most barbarous and uncouth, 
 as nothing can well be more unpleasing than the sloping walls 
 in such a position, but the general effect of such a prodigious 
 bulk of masonry living with images must be awfully magnificent. 
 These propylsea lead into a large open court in front of the tem- 
 ple, calling to mind the western cloisters of the early basilicas, 
 to which it is exactly analogous ; this is hypostyle or surrounded 
 by columns, on three sides, the portico itself forming the fourth. 
 The central part is hypsethral, but the pillars support a stone 
 
 1 Egyptian Antiq. i. 103. So Hero- SeVSpea /j.eixip.ri/j.evoi(n ko.1 tjJ' &\\tj 
 dotus speaks of waa-Tat KiQlv r\ [xcyaX-q tio.Ttd.vri. ii. 169. 
 ko\ i)(TKr]fx4vTi (TTv\otui re (poiftKas ra
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 73 
 
 roof connected with the surrounding wall, so as to form a covered 
 passage all round. 
 
 At the end of this court rises the portico itself; besides the 
 colonnade forming the grand facade of the temple, there are 
 several rows of pillars behind it, supporting a fiat roof of stone. 
 The combination of the huge columns in different points of view 
 is magnificent in the extreme ; heightened as the effect must 
 have been by the lavish profusion of sculptured and coloured 
 decorations. One of the magnificent engravings in the great 
 French work on Egypt gives a vivid idea of what an Egyptian 
 temple must have been in the days of its glory ; representing 
 the whole architecture and enrichments accurately restored. 
 From the portico we come to the cella or actual temple, divided 
 into several apartments ; but the only one of any importance in 
 our present view is that next to the portico and entered from it 
 by a doorway ; this is a hypostyle hall with columns supporting a 
 fiat roof of stone. The others, divided from each other by dead 
 walls, afford but little scope for architectural embellishment, 
 though a wide one for the kindred arts of sculpture and 
 painting. 
 
 In the civil architecture of Egypt, the most important fact to 
 be remarked is the constant use of crude brick ; the scarcity of 
 timber, as was observed above, 1 occasioned its employment in the 
 construction of the roofs, many chambers having barrel-vaulting 
 of that material. The ceilings were much enriched with coloured 
 ornaments, among which we again meet with the chevron and 
 other decorations similar to those which arc so familiar to us 
 in ltomanesque architecture. 
 
 Such was the architecture of ancient Egypt, the style both of 
 the gigantic remains of the hundred-gated Thebes, where we may 
 best learn what Egypt was in the clays of her might, before Per- 
 sian or Macedonian had crossed her border, and of the compara- 
 tively modern, but no less magnificent, piles of Dcnderah and 
 Edfou. All these, with those of Phihe, Esneh, Syout, Elephan- 
 tine, and numberless others, are made known to us in their 
 minutest details by those superb volumes which owe their birth 
 to the wild expedition of revolutionary France, and would seem to 
 be almost the only recompense made to the scientific world for the 
 
 Page 65.
 
 74 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 crimes and follies of an outbreak, which at first proclaimed a no 
 less deadly war against intellect and learning, than against 
 religion and civil government. 
 
 Our next inquiry must be into the origin and history of the 
 style of architecture in which these wonderful monuments are 
 reared ; one which can scarcely fail to induce the conclusion that 
 it is derived 1 from those excavations in the rock, of which 
 Egypt itself, and Nubia still more extensively, presents so 
 many examples substantially the same in style as the structural 
 buildings. All the distinctive features of the architecture 
 point to this origin, and we may more especially observe 
 that we here find the key to all those peculiarities which 
 stamp upon it a character of barbarism. First of all, its great 
 massiveness may be well derived from this source. In a con- 
 structed building, such massiveness implies a greater expenditure 
 of time, labour, and material, than is required in a lighter style; 
 in a mechanical view at least it is a sign of rudeness and imperfec- 
 tion, occasioned either by the mistaken idea that greater strength 
 is thus necessarily obtained, or by an actual want of sufficient skill 
 to produce the same strength with a less amount of material. 
 Hence in the development both of Grecian and Gothic architec- 
 ture there is a constant tendency towards increased lightness, 
 both as giving, when not carried to an extravagant excess, addi- 
 tional elegance, and as actually saving materials, and thereby 
 time and labour. In an excavated building the sesthetical con- 
 sideration might indeed possibly have some weight, but the 
 others would have an exactly contrary effect. Where a building 
 is raised from the ground, the more massive its style, the more 
 laborious is its construction ; but where the material is a rock to 
 be excavated, the greater massiveness is the product of the less 
 labour ; the greater the lightness obtained, the moi*e of the solid 
 rock has to be hewn away. Here we at once have the explana- 
 tion of the enormous heaviness which the Egyptian architecture 
 always retained ; the excavator cut away as little of the rock as 
 was necessary for his purpose; the constructor who reproduced 
 his work naturally exhibited the same massiveness of compo- 
 sition in his first efforts ; and moral causes sufficient to account for 
 its retention during the whole continuance of the style, may be 
 1 See Heeren's Asiatic Nations, i. 152.
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 75 
 
 found in the appropriateness of such an architecture, both to 
 the "scale of the country around, presenting no features but 
 monotony and extent/' and to " the unchangeable rules of the 
 Egyptian religion." x 
 
 To the same source we may also trace most of the peculiari- 
 ties in the elevation of the portico. It was observed above, that, 
 while the Grecian portico is an assemblage of architectural mem- 
 bers having a distinct existence, the Egyptian is a wall of which 
 parts are left unfinished or perforated, the pieces of wall between 
 the openings happening to assume the form of columns. This 
 is exactly what we might naturally look for in a style owing its 
 origin to excavations. It is not like the structural building, an 
 assemblancc or alliance of distinct parts ; it is an essential unity, 
 wall, pillar, entablature, are all physically one thing, parts of 
 one natural block. The temple is not peripteral, for an excava- 
 tion can rarely have sides ; only so much of the rock is cut away 
 as is necessary, hence the colonnade does not extend along the 
 whole length of the fa9ade ; a portion of the solid rock is left 
 at each end, which remains in the form of the structural imitation 
 a piece of wall, without any attempt to harmonize it with the 
 columns. And as a piece of rock is left at the sides, so is another 
 piece of the same rock left above ; this in the structure becomes 
 an entablature, but still remains a piece of wall, with no 
 particular reference to the columns, but left continuous with 
 the rest of the wall, just as it had been before with the rest of 
 the rock. Hence again the intercolumniary walls ; the Greek 
 brought his columns one by one, and set them up as a colon- 
 nade ; to build a wall between them was not only ugly, but, 
 unless some crying necessity demanded it, a foolish expenditure 
 of labour and material ; the Egyptian hewed his columns out of 
 the one solid rock ; to leave them free during their whole height, 
 unless it were absolutely necessary, would liave been in his case 
 an equally foolish extravagance. He only made such apertures 
 as were necessary for light and entrance, and for the production 
 of something like a decorative front. 
 
 And we may even carry out the same line of reasoning into 
 the minuter details of the style. We can in this way account 
 for that otherwise unaccountable feature, the de. It may have 
 1 Gau, quoted in Egypt. Ant. i. 149.
 
 76 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 been found more easy to carve out the capital, if it were first made 
 comparatively free, than if the whole mass were left immediately 
 above it. A square block would probably be first hewn out, and 
 afterwards carved into the capital, and it is clear that its upper 
 part, left in the block, would not form the same impediment 
 to so delicate an operation as if the entablature itself were 
 close at hand. To the same source is probably owing the omis- 
 sion of the abacus, a feature which marks the division of mem- 
 bers distinct both physically and in idea. The capital is a sepa- 
 rate block, so is the abacus, it is a tile or flat piece of wood laid 
 upon the capital. But where the building is hewn out of one 
 mass, there is no junction of parts, and consequently no occa- 
 sion to mark that junction ; hence the members which serve 
 that purpose in a structural building do not appear. We may 
 go on to mark the absence of diminution, or rather the strange 
 perversion of it by which the lowest part of the column is often- 
 times made also the most slender. Now though this does not 
 result immediately from the process of excavation, but from some 
 principle of taste, however unintelligible ; it is difficult to con- 
 ceive how it could have arisen in a style having any other origin. 
 In a structural building it violates the great rule that every por- 
 tion should have a support both mechanically and apparently 
 sufficient ; it substitutes an appearance at least of weakness 
 where strength is most requisite. But in an excavation, where the 
 members do not support each other, but are kept together by cohe- 
 sion, this is a consideration which would have but little weight. 
 The connection of two other peculiarities of Egyptian archi- 
 tecture with the origin here assigned to it hardly needs to be 
 pointed out ; these are the square pillars, and the absence of the 
 pediment. The origin of the former is at once shown by 
 the fact that they are of frequent occurrence in the cave tem- 
 ples, and comparatively rare in structures. The square form is 
 naturally that which would be produced by the first efforts to 
 hew a building out of the rock, but it is in the great majority of 
 positions so manifestly unsightly, that to round or chamfer its 
 angles, and thereby produce the cylindrical or polygonal shape, 
 is one of the first processes that would occur in any attempt to 
 form an ornamental style. The lack of the pediment is yet 
 more obviously derived from the same source ; as that feature
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 77 
 
 results from the inclination of the rafters in a timber buildin 
 
 b> 
 
 there could of course be no place for it in one hewn out of the rock. 
 
 It has been said, that " Egyptian architecture had its origin 
 in two types which were combined the pyramidal form and 
 the excavation in the rock." 1 A little reflection will show 
 that these two types are in reality identical, that the pyramid 
 is itself the offspring of the excavation. The connection of 
 the mere pyramidal form with this kind of architecture has been 
 alluded to in the last chapter ; 2 but the Egyptian pyramid must 
 not be taken alone, it is but the most perfect development of a 
 tendency which pervades the whole style, namely that of sloping 
 every surface that can by any possibility be made to slope. Thus 
 we have the slanting walls at the side of the portico, the pro- 
 pyls with their four converging walls ; we may even add the 
 doorway, whose jambs so frequently incline inwards. The pyra- 
 mid is only one application of this principle, though doubtless 
 its most complete carrying out. The author just quoted reverses 
 this opinion, and looks on the pyramid itself as the origin of 
 the other instances of slanting lines. 
 
 On the other hand, these lines may be fairly looked upon as 
 one of the earliest and most natural features of an original rock 
 architecture. To excavate a facade of any kind a plane surface 
 is required ; so that before the architectural decorations are 
 commenced, the portion of the rock where they are to be cut 
 must be smoothed down to receive them. Now few rocks arc 
 absolutely perpendicular, most of them have sufficient inclina- 
 tion to suggest that such a plane surface should be made in a 
 slanting direction, both as requiring less labour, and as better 
 harmonising with the external form of the mountain side itself. 
 This, then, seems to be the most natural way of accounting for 
 the great predilection shown by the Egyptian architects for the 
 inclined plane; and "the facade of Ipsambul," or an earlier one 
 of similar character, may be looked upon not only as the "type 
 of the propyla of Luxor," but of the pyramids themselves. 
 The numerous instances of slanting walls an; all referable to this 
 one source, which seems to have had a most indelible influence 
 on Egyptian architecture; the only part escaping is the front of 
 
 1 Egypt. Ant. i. 202. Page 62.
 
 78 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the portico. A colonnade with its pillars sloping inwards would 
 be too ludicrous, and too great a violation of apparent, and per- 
 haps real, safety even for Egyptian taste. In the positions where 
 it does occur, the inclination, unsightly as it is, seems rather to 
 give the idea of additional security. 
 
 We thus see how every feature of Egyptian architecture may 
 be most naturally derived from excavations in the rock. We 
 may even go a step further. The diversities to be observed in 
 styles of sculpture, and the peculiar character of that prevalent 
 in ancient Egypt, are subjects which do not come within the 
 scope of the present volume ; but the manner in which that art 
 is applied to architecture is an important part of our investiga- 
 tion, and may in this case be easily referred to the same origin 
 as the architecture itself. The number of statues in relief which 
 load an Egyptian temple, and their application to the columns 
 as well as to the walls, have been already alluded to. May we 
 not trace this whole system to the rock temples ? Figures, large 
 and small, carved in the rock naturally abound among their 
 adornments, and these of course do not stand detached, but are 
 still part of the rock. Consequently the architect who loaded 
 his wall with imagery in relief did in this respect also only re- 
 produce the features of the elder excavator. In Greece, on the 
 contrary, where images were not, any more than columns, hewn 
 out of the rock, this kind of ornament is chiefly confined to one 
 portion, namely the frieze ; here, if statuary were to be employed 
 at all, it could hardly be introduced in any other way. And we see 
 the same in the fact that caryatid figures, when they occur, are 
 generally found attached to square pillars, instead of standing free, 
 as they do in Grecian architecture. There the statue, like the 
 column, exists of itself, and its burden is laid upon it ; and if it be 
 sufficient for support, no particular object would be gained by 
 building a piece of wall just behind it to destroy the perfection 
 of its outline. With the Egyptian excavator, on the other hand, 
 it was manifestly an important economy of labour to leave such 
 a square mass, instead of finishing the statue all round. The 
 actual caryatides already mentioned may either have been an ex- 
 periment which failed to meet with general approbation, or an 
 instance of that Greek influence which affects so many of the 
 later monuments of Egypt.
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 79 
 
 This theory of the origin of Egyptian architecture is one 
 which, as far as I am aware, is not generally contested. The 
 subject is, however, so interesting and important as to demand 
 a somewhat more lengthened examination, the more so as the 
 origin of the analogous Hindoo architecture has been a good deal 
 disputed. In this, as stated in the last chapter, no less than in 
 the more advanced structures of Egypt, I recognize a similar de- 
 velopment of rock architecture. We have a similar massiveness of 
 construction, and the same square columns, the infallible marks 
 of an excavated style. For the square form, though so much mo- 
 dified by infinite ehamferings, is even more completely the source 
 of the Hindoo pillar than of the Egyptian. It is the germ of 
 the Elephantan balusters, the whole extent of whose height has 
 not been set free from it. And these balusters might afford an 
 argument that the caves in India exhibit a genuine excavated 
 architecture, and not an imitation of structures. They show 
 the same unity between the supporters and the supported mass, 
 and the same consequent disregard of the laws which ordinarily 
 regulate their relations. This was shown in the reverse dimi- 
 nution of the Egyptian column, of which form the baluster 
 is only a fuller development. The bracket-capital, too, re- 
 tains traces of the like principle ; to leave such a projection 
 would be much more natural in an excavatory than in a structu- 
 ral architecture. Nothing can be more completely built upon 
 the idea of original cohesion between the support and the mass 
 supported ; making the break gradual tends greatly to diminish 
 the notion of a " huge body ready to fall and crush the occu- 
 pants," 1 which seems inherent in the vast flat roof of an exca- 
 vated chamber. In a constructed style, on the contrary, where 
 the weight simply rests on the pillar, it does not add to the 
 appearance of security, but rather the contrary, by seeming to 
 throw an additional and unnecessary weight upon the shaft. 
 And in Hindoo, as well as Egyptian, architecture, the whole 
 building, including the pillars, is treated as a block for the hew- 
 ing out of sculpture. The application of this enrichment 2 to 
 the pillars seems an incontestable mark of this origin ; it so 
 
 1 Egypt. Ant. i. 142. first call to mind, are of a different 
 
 - The decorations of Romanesque character, and seem derivable from 
 shafts, which this remark might at fluting.
 
 80 HISTORY OP ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 completely destroys their separate existence and reduces them 
 to mere portions of the aggregate mass. 
 
 In one respect however the probable origin of the two styles 
 presents a slight difference. E gyptian architecture, at least as 
 a decorative art, is wholly derivable from artificial excavations in 
 the rock ; that of India retains at least one important feature 
 which appears to be borrowed from natural caves. The two are 
 of course closely connected, as artificial excavations were doubt- 
 less suggested by natural ones, and were probably in many cases 
 improvements or enlargements of them : still they are distinct 
 in idea, and especially with regard to the feature where the pre- 
 sent difference is found, namely the roof. The genuine roof of 
 the Egyptian style is flat ; the arched examples are referable to 
 the introduction of brick, and besides do not occur in the most 
 typical edifices. But the arched roof, in the form of the appa- 
 rent barrel vault, is found in some of the most splendid excavated 
 temples of Hindostan. 1 Now this is a manifest imitation of na- 
 tural caves : most natural perforations exhibit an approach to the 
 arched shape, and the deep rocky cavern, the 7rsrg>]o<t>j cx.vtox.tit' 
 civTgct, might well supply the rude conception of at least the form 
 of vaulting, But in an artificial excavation, the roof is most 
 naturally made flat, as hewing out the rock so as to produce such 
 a vault implies a great additional outlay of labour. This doubt- 
 less accounts for Indian flat roofs as well as for Egyptian, as the 
 form would naturally be soon introduced ; but the simultaneous, 
 though probably more ancient, occurrence of the arched roof 
 points to the natural cavern as its origin. These excavated vaults 
 might easily give birth to the dome, which, as we have seen, is 
 very frequent in at least one style of Indian architecture. At 
 the same time the dome is so natural a representation of the con- 
 cave heaven, that it may as naturally be referred to that source. 
 
 We may therefore conclude that Egyptian and Indian archi- 
 tecture are two separate products of the excavatory process ; 
 historically distinct, neither being imitated from or influenced 
 by the other, but presenting only that analogy and resemblance 
 which might be looked for in two styles of similar origin, how- 
 ever far removed from each other in point of time and place. 
 
 The birth-place of Egyptian architecture is certainly to be 
 1 See Heeren, ii, 8/.
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 81 
 
 looked for in the rock excavations of Nubia, which stretch from 
 the frontier of Egypt as far as the ancient Meroe. Without 
 attempting to plunge into the early history of Egypt, and the 
 interminable series of its kings, it is clear that there was suffici- 
 ent connection between that country and the kindred land of 
 Ethiopia to allow of an easy transmission of a style of architec- 
 ture from one to the other. Some of the Nubian monuments are 
 marked with the names of the Egyptian Rameses, and we also 
 know that Ethiopian princes ruled in Egypt. We might even 
 suppose that the original seats of the Egyptian nation had been 
 higher up the Nile, and that they had gradually descended to 
 the lower part of its course. At all events, it is certain that 
 Nubia contains monuments of every style and date of Egyptian 
 art, as well as those excavated temples which are its first originals. 
 Some of these are of the rudest character, and may be considered 
 as among the very earliest attempts at excavated architecture. 
 Others manifest a great advance in art ; in some cases it is even 
 clear that improvements have taken place in the fabric since the 
 period of its original excavation. In others the structures which 
 usually surround an Egyptian temple have been built around the 
 primitive excavated shrine. 
 
 No difficulty in the way of receiving this subterranean theory 
 need be found in the fact that the details of Egyptian architec- 
 ture not only lay all nature under contribution, but even some- 
 times appear to imitate artificial constructions of other kinds. 1 
 Those who sought to add decorations, either to the excavations 
 themselves, or to the structures afterwards reared in imitation of 
 them, would naturally seek for ornament wherever it could be 
 found. The native rock might be hewn into an imitation of any 
 natural or artificial object which struck the artist's fancy as appro- 
 priate for a column or a capital, as naturally as were the blocks de- 
 signed for a constructed building, when architecture had ascended 
 from its original dwelling in the rock. No perplexity need be 
 caused by such forms as pillars directly imitating the group of 
 palm trees connected with hoops, and other apparent borrowings 
 from tents or huts. The belief that an architecture originated in 
 excavations docs not imply that even while it was confined to opc- 
 
 1 Compare above, p. 01.
 
 82 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 rations of that kind, the nation who practised it possessed no other 
 dwelling-places than such holes in the rock. 1 Excavated architec- 
 ture has been often practised by nations in a high state of civiliza- 
 tion, while dwelling in caves seems expressive only of the most 
 utter and degraded barbarism. The tomb, the treasury, the 
 temple, whatever was designed for duration, security, or beauty, 
 would be hewn in the mountain, while the people themselves 
 would dwell around in such huts and sheds as they could 
 provide. And if any forms which might arise in such structures, 
 any groupings of natural objects, or shapes given to artificial 
 ones, appeared to the artist to be adapted for his purpose, they 
 would be as unhesitatingly transferred to the excavated rock as 
 flowers, fruit, and leaves, or representations of human and animal 
 life. 
 
 The development of Egyptian architecture appears to have 
 been rapid, though probably not more so than that of our own 
 Gothic, which endured but three centuries and a half. When 
 we consider that Earls Barton is separated from Whiston by a 
 space of no more than seven centuries, we need not be surprised 
 at the former part of Sir J. G. Wilkinson's assertion that 
 about B.C. 1740, six hundred years after the flood, "the 
 style of architecture was grand and chaste, and the fluted 
 columns of Beni- Hassan are of a character calling to mind the 
 purity of the Doric, which indeed seems to have been derived 
 from Egypt." 2 At this time it is clear from Scripture that 
 Egypt was a powerful and civilized state, with a regular govern- 
 ment under kiugs and priests, officers whose existence among 
 a civilized people seems to imply, as its necessary consequence, 
 the existence of palaces and temples. The sacred writings also 
 
 1 See above, pp. 46, 60. apparently Romanesque shaft at 
 
 2 Ancient Egyptians, i. 44. As Mycenae, for example than to look 
 to the Doric columns, see above, p. upon Doric or other Grecian forms 
 71. The author must of course as borrowed from Egypt. Still less 
 decline any controversy as to the is the explanation to be sought for 
 dates of individual buildings. But in the wild and infinitely more im- 
 admitting those given by Sir J. G. probable theory of M. Ramee, 
 "Wilkinson, it seems more reason- (i. 291,) of Grecian colonies in 
 able to suppose an accidental resem- Egypt at some interminably distant 
 blance, such as we have already period. 
 
 met with in several instances the
 
 OF EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 83 
 
 throw some light upon Egyptian architecture at a somewhat later 
 period, when the Israelites are described as building " treasure- 
 cities/' besides which it has been generally held that some at 
 least of the existing pyramids are the fruits of their compulsory 
 labour. The use of brick at this time in Egypt is also distinctly 
 mentioned. The invention of that material was certainly older j 
 as it is described as that of the tower of Babel, which, from the ex- 
 pressions made use of, would seem to have been the first instance 
 of its employment. It is then very possible that the arched 
 architecture of brick employed by the Egyptians for those com- 
 mon purposes out of whose necessities it grew, may be as old 
 and more strictly of native growth than the more sumptuous 
 style of their sacred and royal buildings. The period of the 
 greatest splendour attained by the latter appears to include from 
 about 1600 to 800 B.C., which includes the most brilliant 
 epochs of Egyptian history, and those to which writers who have 
 given their attention to the inscriptions and other points of 
 national archaeology assign most of the great monuments of 
 Thebes. The series of the native Pharaohs continues much longer, 
 down to the Persian conquest under Cambyses ; but with Psam- 
 metichus, B.C. 650, a Greek influence commences, which may 
 possibly have had some effect upon architecture. 
 
 With Psammenitus the line of native kings ceases, and since 
 that time, with the exception of a few revolts against the Persian 
 government, Egypt has always been subject to rulers of foreign 
 race. With the invasion of Cambyses, who consumed many of 
 the Theban buildings by fire, the destruction of Egyptian monu- 
 ments commences, unless we accept the rumour, certainly un- 
 contradicted by Scripture, which lays an earlier devastating 
 invasion to the charge of Nebuchadnezzar. But the Persian 
 monarchs who succeeded the frantic son of Cyrus pursued 
 a more liberal policy towards Egypt and other conquered 
 countries ; no further interference appears to have taken 
 place with the institutions, religion, or arts of the van- 
 quished people. A few remains of Persian antiquities have 
 indeed been discovered in Egypt, which only proves that the 
 Persians who might be resident in the country, like Europeans 
 in India, followed their own fashions, and allowed the natives to 
 follow theirs. 
 
 a 2
 
 84 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 With the conquests of Alexander the Great, a new state of 
 things commences. The foundation of the Greek city Alexan- 
 dria, and the establishment of the Greek, or rather Macedonian, 
 dynasty of the Ptolemies, brought Egypt within the compass of 
 the Hellenic world. The Greek language and Greek arts now 
 extended not only throughout Egypt, but even to the remotest 
 parts of Nubia. Many Grecian buildings were doubtless erected, 
 and the proximity of their faultless details and proportions was 
 not without influence on the ruder architecture of the country. 
 Both Egypt and Nubia afford examples in which Grecian notions 
 are unquestionably mingled with the pure Egyptian forms. The 
 island of Philse, which is full of ancient remains, affords, in a 
 temple imitating the peripteral form, a very remarkable instance 
 of the imitation of Greek models being extended even to the ar- 
 rangement of sacred structures. But neither the Ptolemies nor 
 the Iloman emperors interfered with the Egyptian creed ; and 
 they probably promoted, certainly they did not hinder, the 
 erection of temples to the native gods in the native style. 
 The superb temple of Denderah or Tentyra, pronounced by 
 Belzoni 1 to be "the most magnificent in Egypt," is a memo- 
 rable instance, being erected under one of the Ptolemies, and 
 repaired under Tiberius Csesar. Its style is Egyptian through- 
 out, unless a Greek tinge is to be seen in the columns, which 
 rise without diminution from their bases. As long as the Egyp- 
 tian idolatry survived, the form of architecture to which it gave 
 birth survived also. With the predominance of Christianity it 
 fell ; and when the Patriarchate of Alexandria took the place of 
 the hierarchies of Thebes and Memphis, the Roman architecture 
 of the early Church succeeded in all new religious structures to 
 the forms which for two thousand years had been reared in 
 honour of the gloomy heathenism of Egypt. Many ancient 
 buildings were however converted into churches ; several tem- 
 ples have been found where the demon form has been erased to 
 make room for the triumphant cross and the saintly effigy. And 
 now the candlestick is removed from the church of St. Mark 
 and St. Athanasius ; and the wandering Arab desecrates, and the 
 traveller gazes with amazement, on the shrines which have wit- 
 nessed a false and a true religion alike perish from among them. 
 
 1 Page 34.
 
 85 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 OF THE ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF WESTERN ASIA. 
 
 There is no part of the world in which more splendid remnants 
 of antiquity might naturally have been looked for, than in the 
 regions which beheld the rise and fall of the mighty empires of 
 the East. There it was that man first stepped forth upon the 
 renewed earth, when the waters of the deluge had retired ; there 
 arose the first kingdoms the world beheld, and their imperial 
 cities, the most ancient and the mightiest of the works of man. 
 While Sparta, and Argos, and Athens had as yet no being, the 
 kings of the East dwelt in palaces on which the spoils of nations 
 were lavished ; and reared temples to the service of their idols, 
 whose erection might have drained the wealth and the labour of 
 the whole Hellenic world. But Nineveh, and Babylon, and 
 Tyre, have vanished like a dream beneath the stroke of ven- 
 geance ; they are become " heaps " for the halls of Sennacherib 
 and Nebuchadnezzar, for the tower whose summit was to reach 
 unto heaven, there is now only desolation without an inhabitant, 
 where the visible witnesses of heaven's truth and justice, 
 
 u(jjwva arj^uivoixjiv ofifiuat fipojwv, 
 
 w<? ov'x, v~cpcf)cv Ovipbu bura XP 1 ] tf>poveiv. 
 
 But if " the golden city has ceased," the race to which it 
 yielded, and which founded a wider and nobler empire, called 
 down no such utter extermination ; princely ruins remain to tell 
 of the splendour of the Great King, who " reigned from India 
 even unto Ethiopia." As we have seen the vast remains of early 
 Greece, the everlasting ruins of Argos and Mycenae, so enough 
 is yet left to witness the greatness of their fabled kinsmen ; the 
 " harbour of wealth " 3 may still be traced in the palaces and 
 temples of the race sprung, like them, from the golden shower, 
 
 1 The author fears that he has Indus, as opposed to India, China, 
 
 employed this phrase in a sense Sec. 
 more extended than its usual accep- - JEsch. Pers. 815. 
 
 tation ; but he knows of no other ' lb. 2-1G, no\bi tt\ovtov Aij^v. 
 
 to express the regions west of the
 
 86 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and where gold 1 still glittered in untold profusion wherever the 
 sons of Achamienes had fixed their throne. 
 
 It is not however so much in an architectural point of view, 
 as in their bearings on general archaeology, and especially philo- 
 logy, that the monuments of ancient Persia are valuable. The re- 
 mains of sculpture are far more extensive than those of architec- 
 ture ; and some of them are of the highest historical interest, 
 having been recently proved to belong to the first Persian dynasty, 
 and to commemorate such events as the accession of the first Da- 
 rius. These sculptures, carved for the most part in relief upon the 
 rocks, betoken no contemptible progress in the art, perhaps 
 greater than they had attained to in architecture. In that art, 
 the Persian taste, though very far advanced above that of China, 
 India, or even Egypt, still retains much of that fantastic charac- 
 ter which seems to affect all the Oriental nations ; it is as far re- 
 moved from the purity of the Greek, as the barbaric splendours 
 which dazzled Pausanias after the fight of Plataea, were from the 
 simple fare and habits in which he had been bred among the 
 people of Lycurgus. 
 
 It appears probable that the arch was very early known in at 
 least some parts of western Asia. Mr. Petit says most truly, 
 "We know that brick was used in the construction of the 
 tower of Babel, and in the cities built by Pharaoh during the 
 bondage of the Israelites in Egypt ; and it is not easy to con- 
 ceive a brick building of any importance that does not in some 
 part or other involve the principle of the arch/' 2 It has also been 
 stated that arches actually occur in abundance among the re- 
 mains of Nineveh. But from what we have seen of the second 
 instance referred to by Mr. Petit, we may learn how little is implied 
 in the mere knowledge and occasional constructive employment of 
 the arch. There is no evidence whatever to show that the Assy- 
 rians or Babylonians 3 at all anticipated Rome in carrying out the 
 arched construction as the basis of a style of architecture. 
 
 And in the Persian monuments, of which so much more ex- 
 tensive remains have been preserved to us, the arch does not 
 seem to appear at all. We might indeed reckon as exceptions 
 
 1 JEseh. Pers. passim. the complete absence of evidence as 
 
 2 Church Architecture, i. 17. to the characteristics of Babylonian 
 :i On the supposed vaults of the architecture, see Ramee, i. 144, 147. 
 
 hanging gardens at Babylon, and
 
 ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF WESTERN ASIA. 87 
 
 some arched excavations at Nakshi-Ptustam, and a window among 
 the ruins of Shah-poor, in which an apparent arch occurs, the 
 head being formed by cutting the upper stone into an arched 
 form. But how little value is to be attached to the former case, 
 our investigations into the cave-temples of India have already- 
 shown ; and the latter, though a nearer approach, and probably 
 implying a knowledge of the arch, is not in truth an arch at all, 
 and certainly cannot be brought to prove the existence of an 
 arched style. Besides, it belongs to a later period, Shah-poor 
 having been founded by the Sassanid prince of that name, whose 
 erections can throw no light on the state of the arts under the 
 immediate successors of Cyrus. 
 
 Persepolis, the most ancient seat of Persian dominion, re- 
 tained together with Pasargada3 1 its place as the religious centre 
 of the monarchy and the burial place of kings, after the seat of 
 empire had been removed to the conquered cities of Susa and 
 Ecbatana. Here it is that we find the most extensive and mag- 
 nificent remnants of the splendour of ancient Persia, which 
 have indeed been spoken of as "the most magnificent re- 
 mains of a palace or temple that are to be found through- 
 out the world." 2 Here we "have no arches, but fiat gateways 
 of immense height, and of a very rude form, the gateway 
 itself being merely an aperture in a tall mass of masonry ; but 
 the whole is enriched with a profusion of sculptures and inscrip- 
 tions, and crowned with a singular projecting cornice, formed by 
 a sort of prodigious cavetto. But the most striking features 
 of these ruins are the numerous lofty columns from which 
 they derive their present name of Tschil-Minar, or the Forty 
 Pillars, the numeral being used indefinitely, according to the 
 Persian habit, as in fact they greatly exceed that number. 
 These possess a character quite their own, both their propor- 
 tions and their details bearing but little resemblance to any other 
 known style of architecture. The height of the column is much 
 greater than in any of the Grecian orders ; the part especially 
 which must be considered as the capital is of enormous altitude, 
 assuming in some eases a sort of bulbous form, in others that of 
 
 1 Grote's History of Greece, iv. - Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art. 
 
 2S9. Sec Ilccrcn's Asiatic Nations, Persepolis. 
 i 1 '5.3 et seqij.
 
 88 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 several capitals ranged one upon another. In fact it is hardly a 
 capital in the Grecian sense of a distinct member placed upon 
 the shaft, but is rather a portion of the shaft itself assuming 
 these fantastic forms. In others again animal life is introduced, 
 and the capital consists of two bulls. Besides pillars, ornamen- 
 tal balusters with a single swell are found : both these and the 
 columns are richly fluted. 
 
 The principal ruins at Persepolis are attributed to the reign 
 of Xerxes. Besides architectural remains, they are rich in 
 sculpture, both human and animal. The occurrence of colossal 
 sphinxes has been often noticed, but they do not seem to have 
 any connection with the Egyptian sphinxes, with which they are 
 not identical in form : such monstrous combinations of animal 
 forms are altogether in the oriental taste, and were in general 
 use among the ancient Persians, not only in their architecture, 
 but in decorations of other kinds. Thus Aristophanes 1 compares 
 the animals mentioned by iEschylus in his tragedies with those 
 wrought on Median tapestries. 
 
 The chief remains of Persian art, beside the ruins of Perse- 
 polis, are the royal tombs hewn in the neighbouring rocks, 
 among which recent inquiries have discovered the actual resting- 
 places of the kings most famous in the Grecian wars, Darius, 
 Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. The facade of one of the tombs at 
 Nakshi-Rustam exhibits a style of columns somewhat different 
 from those at Persepolis, and approaching more nearly to Grecian 
 ideas ; the pillars being shorter, and having something more like 
 a distinct capital, but one still very heavy, and formed of two 
 horses. The entablature is here preserved, which does not seem 
 to be the case with any of the Persepolitan fragments. It is very 
 plain, and, according to Grecian notions, far too heavy for the 
 supporting colonnade. The upper part of the composition, above 
 the entablature, is loaded with sculptures both human and mon- 
 strous. It should be remarked that this is not, like the front of 
 the cave at Elephanta, a genuine open colonnade, itself the ap- 
 proach to the excavations, but a mere mask in the Italian fashion, 
 the real entrance being a doorway placed between the two central 
 pillars ; this is flat-headed, and crowned by a heavy cornice of 
 the same sort as those already mentioned at Persepolis. 
 1 Frogs, 937.
 
 ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF WESTERN ASIA. 89 
 
 With regard to the origin of this style of architecture, there 
 is no reason to suppose it otherwise than in the main indigen- 
 ous, though, like the arts of all other nations, it may have been 
 in some degree affected by external influences. More especially 
 might this be expected from the national character of the people, 
 who, according to Herodotus, 1 were of all men the most given to 
 adopt foreign customs. Yet besides this antecedent probability 
 that a Persian architecture might be of other than native design, 
 there does not seem any cause for supposing that it was so in 
 point of fact. M. Ramee mentions, and refutes, an opinion 
 which derives the airy and slender columns of Persepolis from 
 the massive piles of the Pharaohs ; 2 but he gives some counte- 
 nance to one hardly less extravagant which seeks their prototype 
 in the temple and palace of Solomon, and supposes that the arts 
 were derived into Persia from the captive Hebrews, found by 
 Cyrus on his conquest of Babylon. This is the more singular 
 as in another part of his work 3 he shows that the most essential 
 features of the Hebrew architecture, were, as might be expected, 
 of Egyptian origin. There seems no reason to suppose that this 
 Persian style is, as he expresses it, 4 composed of Phoenician, 
 Egyptian, and Indo-Persian elements. How far it may be 
 Median 5 rather than Persian, and what exact amount of national 
 distinction is expressed by those two names, is another question, 
 and one more difficult to answer. " That which is certain," as M. 
 Ramee says, "is that the architecture of ancient Persia seems de- 
 rived from a timber construction, like the Grecian architecture. 
 The arts of the eastern provinces of central Asia, of Media es- 
 pecially, have served to give a character to the style of the palace 
 of Tschil-Minar." 
 
 The timber origin of this style seems highly probable; it 
 must be considered as a development parallel and analogous to 
 the Grecian architecture ; each starting from the same primitive 
 original, but one of which derived from the superior genius of 
 the people an elegance and sublimity which it never attained 
 among the other. The Persian architecture seems to occupy a 
 middle place in the scale of merit between what we must consi- 
 
 1 I. 115.3. 4 I. 127. 
 
 2 So Heeren, i. 148. 5 Ileeren, ut supra. 
 :i I. 1GS. 177.
 
 90 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 der the barbaric edifices of India and Egypt, and the full perfec- 
 tion of Grecian art. If they are very far removed from the 
 uncouthness and clumsiness of the former, the entire want of 
 taste which is clearly distinguishable among all their splen- 
 dour; they still remain equally remote from the perfect re- 
 finement of the Greek, the mind attuned to grace and harmony, 
 the sensibility which detects in a moment the slightest violation 
 of their laws. The Persian character, comprising as it did 
 much that was noble, was still, in the Greek sense, essentially 
 barbarous ; it belongs to a state of society distinct at once from 
 the civilization of modern Europe, and from the elder forms of 
 ancient Greece and Italy. The Persians were not, like so many 
 Asiatic nations, mere destroyers, mere momentary conquerors, 
 either sweeping over lands like a flight of locusts, or founding tran- 
 sient empires like Babylon and Nineveh. The people of Cyrus, 
 unresisting slaves of a despot as they may have been, had in them 
 a spirit of national vigour and independence which led to that 
 phenomenon, almost unique in history, the restoration of their 
 monarchy after a foreign domination of nearly six hundred 
 years. After a period of Macedonian and Parthian oppression 
 lasting for more than double the time which elapsed between the 
 first Cyrus and the last Darius, the old Persian empire sprang 
 up afresh to renewed existence, with its government, feelings, 
 and religion as unchanged as if no Grecian torch had ever been 
 hurled against the palace of Persepolis, and no Parthian horse- 
 man had ever trod the people of Achsemenes under foot. And 
 in modern days, after the further invasions of Saracen, Mongol, 
 and Tartar, we still see Persia remaining a distinct and indepen- 
 dent kingdom, after Sardis, and Nineveh, and Babylon have for 
 ages vanished from the earth. 
 
 But though the Persian people is certainly not to be con- 
 founded with the ordinary rabble of Oriental despots and con- 
 querors, they were very far from having attained a position equal 
 to that of the nations of Greece and Italy. In what the differ- 
 ence consisted, to what causes the superiority was owing which 
 those two lands exercised, each in its own way, over the other 
 nations of antiquity, is a difficult question to determine ; still 
 something there is, undefined it may be, but clearly marked and 
 easily to be recognized, which invests them from their very earliest
 
 ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF WESTERN ASIA. 91 
 
 days with a marked character of superiority even over nations, like 
 the Egyptians and Phoenicians, far more advanced in actual skill 
 and knowledge. And this at once separates Greece from Persia 
 also, though I cannot but think less widely than some have 
 thought, or than actually was the case even with regard to nations, 
 like the two mentioned above, whose formal aspect was much 
 higher than that of Cyrus and his conquering followers. Not to 
 pursue this digression further, the same distinction maybe at once 
 perceived in the architecture of the two nations. The Persian 
 monuments lack that perfect purity of taste, that refined and 
 chastened intellect, which distinguishes those of Greece. Yet 
 they must be considered as presenting a close approach to it, 
 when compared with the Indian and Egyptian remains. The 
 genuine column 1 has been drawn out more purely and completely 
 than in either of those styles. It is not the fragment of rock 
 left when the rest is hewn away, nor yet the massive piece of 
 wall, almost as much a turret as a pillar ; but the real column, 
 the shaft, with its diminution, and all the other elements of the 
 Grecian architecture, are present, only wanting the genius of that 
 wonderful people to work them into perfection. Persian archi- 
 tecture has not the same unity, the same fixed principles, the 
 same carrying out of an idea in a word, it is not so completely 
 a definite style as Egyptian ; but it surpasses it in delicacy and in 
 general rcsthetical beauty. The remains of Persepolis, fantastic, 
 irregular, unchastened as is the style they represent, must, when 
 in their full splendour, have been only second in general effect 
 to the faultless structures of Greece. 
 
 Their approximation to the Grecian style is doubtless owing, 
 not to any imitation on either side, but to their common timber 
 origin. Though employed in rock excavations, the Persian ar- 
 chitecture does not seem, like the Hindoo, thoroughly at home in 
 works of that kind. The facade at Nakshi-llustam is, as was ob- 
 served above, a mere mask, an application of the principles of 
 another construction, such a front as an original rock architecture 
 would hardly have produced, but which is perfectly natural, if we 
 suppose a style already matured by a totally different process to 
 
 1 "The columns of Persepolis of the stems of the lotus and palm, 
 shoot upwards with a slender, yet from which they were prohahly 
 firm elevation, conveying a fit image copied.'' Hceren, i. lu'2.
 
 92 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 have been applied to an unwonted material. The style then of 
 these excavations is not to be classed with the original excavatory 
 architecture of Ipsambul or Elephanta, but with that of the re- 
 mains of Petra, where the Grseco-Roman architecture, which had 
 grown up under other circumstances, and out of other materials, 
 is similarly applied as a mere mask to excavations in the solid rock. 
 The occurrence of bases throughout the Persepolitan remains, 
 and the very great proportion given to them, might seem at first 
 sight to militate against any theory of their timber origin ; as it 
 is manifest that the first development of a wooden architecture 
 would be, like the true Doric, without a base. But the progress 
 of Grecian architecture itself is sufficient to show that it will not 
 always continue so ; as the style advances, and the original ma- 
 terial is gradually forgotten, it 1 provides itself with a feature 
 which appears to be so necessary a finish to a stone construction. 
 And we must remember that we are not acquainted with the 
 first beginnings of Persian architecture ; 2 we have no trace or 
 knowledge of the first rude efforts to reproduce the features of 
 the timber erection in the new material. Our knowledge of the 
 style is confined to a period when it had probably attained its 
 greatest perfection ; the existing ruins belong to the most pros- 
 perous days of the Persian empire. We know not what was the 
 form of the rude dwellings of the shepherd princes who may 
 have preceded the great Cyrus ; we see only the palaces and tem- 
 ples of the religious meti'opolis of the greatest empire which the 
 world had seen; fabrics which rose at the command of a prince 
 whose word was law from the Indus to the iEgean, and who 
 boasted of sovereignty 3 from lands uninhabitable by cold, to re- 
 gions which heat rendered as inaccessible to man. What may have 
 been the earliest state of the art, what details were exhibited in 
 its first glimmerings of decoration, and by what steps it arrived 
 at its full development, are subjects upon which we can pretend 
 to no information whatever. 
 
 From the home and palace of the Great King, " the rich and 
 all-golden seats " of his immediate dominion, we have to turn to 
 
 1 See above, p. 44. higher degree of perfection than 
 
 2 " The arts of architecture and men have been generally disposed 
 sculpture must, long before the Per- to admit." Heeren, i. 151. 
 
 sian dynasty, have attained a much 3 Xen. Anab. i. 7.
 
 ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE OF WESTERN ASIA. 93 
 
 the western extremity of his realm, and take a brief survey of 
 the monuments which recent discoveries have brought to light 
 in the land of Glaucus and Sarpedon. The investigations of Sir 
 Charles Fellows and, still more recently, of Messrs. Spratt and 
 Forbes, are, as far as concerns philological and ethnographical 
 science, among the most interesting researches of our age. But 
 in an architectural point of view, their value is but small ; 
 the remains which may be most safely attributed to the native 
 Lycian people, have but little artistic character. The opinion of 
 Messrs. Spratt and Forbes that no such exist, and that the whole 
 of the rock tombs and inscriptions of Lycia are to be ascribed to 
 its Persian conquerors, has been refuted with a profusion of his- 
 torical and philological learning in an able review of their 
 volumes. 1 It is there satisfactorily shown that the native Ly- 
 cians were an original Pclasgian people, and that the inscriptions 
 found in their country are in an independent Pelasgian language 
 and character. Besides this convincing proof, there is no reason 
 to suppose that the Persian residents ever formed a population 
 of any extent either in Lycia or in any of their western conquests ; 
 and, above all, the rock tombs of Lycia at once strike us as some- 
 thing totally different from the undoubtedly Persian works in 
 the same material. It is impossible to believe that the same 
 age and nation could have produced the tombs at Nakshi- 
 Piustam and those of which so many examples are given by Sir 
 Charles Fellows. We do not here find a whole colonnade trans- 
 ferred bodily to the side of a rock; the forms are totally different ; 
 more adapted to the material, and yet at the same time bear- 
 ing no less distinct traces of being borrowed from another spe- 
 cies of construction. Some of them arc, as the author remarks, 
 directly imitative of the timber construction. The most re- 
 markable varieties are of two kinds, of which one exhibits the 
 form of the pointed arch as a finish, while the other has a sort of 
 panelling of horizontal and perpendicular lines crossing : some- 
 times it exactly resembles a modern door, and is crowned with 
 a pediment of Greek proportions. These two Sir C. Fellows 
 respectively designates Gothic and Elizabethan, terms cer- 
 tainly inadmissible in any formal treatise, but which may serve to 
 
 1 The Ecclesiastic for January, 1817. Art, Lycian Antiquities.
 
 94 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 express the incidental resemblances occasionally to be found in 
 the works of distant ages and countries. 
 
 Besides the excavated tombs, Pelasgian walls are also found in 
 Lycia and the adjacent countries. One of the Pamphylian ex- 
 amples exhibits the two in close juxtaposition. One can hardly 
 fail to take this fact in connection with the occurrence of the ap- 
 parent arch, especially as its form is so constantly pointed. The 
 strivings and yearnings of the Pelasgian builders after both the 
 form and the construction have been already spoken of; it would 
 seem that in this country they lighted upon the most graceful 
 variety of the mere shape, without ever attaining to the construc- 
 tion, and were content to apply the form as a source of decoration. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to state that the whole of western Asia 
 Minor contains many splendid monuments of Grecian and 
 Roman architecture, which have only a local connection with 
 the original inhabitants or their erections. The most interest- 
 ing for our present purpose are those which have the least claim 
 on the score of real merit, namely, those where Grecian architec- 
 ture is exhibited in a debased form, corrupted by intermixture 
 with native styles. The works of Sir C. Fellows exhibit many 
 specimens of this sort, which we may most probably attribute to 
 the rude attempts of the native tribes to reproduce the statelier 
 forms of their more polished neighbours. Columns occur in 
 which Greek proportion is violated both by excess and by defect, 
 and capitals in which the genuine forms of the several orders are 
 but clumsily imitated. An example occurs in a tomb at Mylasa, in 
 Caria, the upper part of which is adorned with quasi-Corinthian 
 pillars of very low proportion, which would really be far from 
 out of place as the piers of an early Romanesque church. 
 
 We have now traced the comparatively rude and unformed ar- 
 chitecture of early times through nearly the round of the world, 
 and have concluded, as we set out, with that mysterious and 
 ubiquitous Pelasgian race who seem to have been the precursors, 
 if not progenitors, of so many nations, and are yet unthankfully 
 rejected by all. We must now turn to the most illustrious of their 
 successors, and behold heathendom, in its most glorious days, 
 enthroned over the twin harbours of Corinth, and on the Acro- 
 polis whence the virgin goddess of Athens looked yet more 
 proudly over her subject seas and islands.
 
 PART IT. 
 
 OF GRECIAN .ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF THE ORIGIN OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Hitherto we have traced the progress of architecture among 
 nations whose influence has been comparatively slight upon the 
 arts and institutions of the world. We have seen empires of 
 vast extent, political and religious systems of almost immeasura- 
 ble antiquity, architectural works which for vastness and magni- 
 ficence, for awful and unearthly grandeur, have seen no rivals; 
 piles which seem to surpass the utmost exertions of human 
 strength and skill, and which we might almost deem the workman- 
 ship of the demon powers to whose worship they were reared. The 
 pervading idea of all is that of mere physical power; they tell 
 of the inexhaustible wealth and lavish munificence of the rulers 
 at whose bidding they arose ; they tell of the unresisting, un- 
 reasoning submission of thousands to the caprice of a single 
 despot ; they breathe the spirit of gloomy and mysterious su- 
 perstitions, of ancient and powerful hierarchies rich in hidden 
 and wondrous learning ; but the soul of art is wanting. They 
 exhibit man's sway over external nature, calling into his service 
 the proudest trees of the forest, and the mountain rock of the 
 desert, putting forth every mechanical energy, and sparing no 
 riches that human power could supply. But they show not his
 
 96 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 sway over the intellectual world, that creative power which needs 
 not the wealth of kings or the labour of slaves, which aims not 
 at mere size and gorgeousness, nor is fettered by the lack of 
 costly materials ; but which works from the treasures of its own 
 mind, and brings forth order, harmony, proportion, in a word, 
 Beauty. Indian, Egyptian, even Persian art, is grand, striking, 
 awful, but it is not, in the highest sense, beautiful : it exhibits 
 power, and even genius, but genius coarse and unrefined, unfet- 
 tered by the laws of taste and the perception of elegance ; its 
 ornaments are grotesque and fanciful, its magnificence cumbrous 
 and excessive. For grace, simplicity, and loveliness, we have sfeiit- 
 to look to that wonderful people, jwho, after the revolutions of so 
 many ages, yet remain the centre of all intellectual greatness, 
 whose history still furnishes the best lessons in the science of 
 man's political and social being ; whose literature must remain to 
 every age as the ground-work of every intellectual study ; from 
 whose poets we derive our first ideas alike of all that is lovely, 
 and all that is sublime : from whose philosophers we learn the 
 first principles of the first of sciences, the laws of thought, and of 
 the passions which stir the human breast. Such was the glorious 
 land of Greece, the land where The Poet yes, after all the cavils 
 of philosophical inquiry, the real blind minstrel that we dreamed 
 of in our childhood, the living personal Homer, breathed forth 
 those songs to which six and twenty centuries have not produced 
 a rival; where Pericles ruled supreme in the first of her cities, 
 not by the spears of mercenaries but by the magic influence of 
 mind ; where Aristotle first looked into the heart of man, and 
 learned to analyze its deep and mighty workings ; and whence 
 his royal scholar, the best and greatest of universal victors, went 
 forth on the errand of conquest, not to plunder and destroy, but 
 to spread the arts, and language, and manners of immortal 
 Greece to the utmost limits of the civilized earth. The three 
 centuries of Grecian greatness, the single century of its meridian 
 splendour, have had more effect upon the subsequent destiny of 
 the world than all the countless dynasties of Egypt and the 
 East. The latter have fallen, and have left their names alone 
 behind them. Greece is no less fallen, but her possessions have 
 become the inheritance of the world throughout all time. And 
 this is especially true of her admirable architecture ; as it was in
 
 OF THE ORIGIN OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 97 
 
 Greece that tlie art first attained perfection, it was in Greece 
 too that it first acquired a character worthy to be transmitted to 
 other lands. The styles which we have hitherto considered are, 
 on the whole, isolated ; they have but little connection with each 
 other, and have had still less influence upon the architecture of 
 more recent times. As our civilization and literature is in no 
 degree borrowed from China, India, or Egypt, so neither is any 
 form of architecture which has ever prevailed in Europe ; but as 
 a Greek influence has in other respects pervaded the intellect of 
 every European nation, so in architecture it has been especially 
 pervading ; every succeeding form of the art is to be traced up to 
 the Grecian model as its primary source. Its character indeed 
 has been totally changed ; new ideas and principles, constructive, 
 pesthetical, and religious ; have been continually introduced, till all 
 trace of the original pattern has vanished from the most essential 
 features. Still all has been gradual and gentle development and 
 improvement ; dissimilar as are the colonnades and horizontal 
 entablatures of the Parthenon to the clustered shafts and soaring 
 arches of Westminster, the steps between them may be dis- 
 tinctly traced ; the resemblance becomes gradually fainter, but is 
 not effaced by any sudden or violent shock. To trace the course 
 of this mighty development is the object of the remainder of this 
 volume. 
 
 Are we *to believe that the architecture of ancient Hellas was a 
 native or a borrowed possession ? Many authors of note assert 
 the latter, and look upon the graceful forms of the Grecian 
 portico as derived from the clumsy and cumbrous architecture of 
 the Pharaohs. This belief is attributable to two causes. Men 
 who have devoted themselves to the study of one particular 
 nation, and have made really great discoveries in its history and 
 archaeology, are frequently disposed to exaggerate its importance 
 in the general history of mankind, and to look upon it as the one 
 centre from which all improvement has been derived to the re- 
 mainder of the world. Some who have plunged deep into 
 Indian antiquities have traced up all human knowledge to the 
 votaries of Brahma, and others have done the like by the equally 
 wonderful people of ancient Egypt. There is something very 
 tempting about this latter view, when we consider the immense 
 antiquity and early civilization of that nation, and the eminence 
 
 ii
 
 98 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 which it had acquired in the arts, perhaps even before the Pelas- 
 gian period of Greece. And nowhere did the wonderful charac- 
 ter of the Egyptian civilization effect a deeper and more lasting 
 impression than upon the minds of the Greeks themselves. 
 From the first moment that the land of marvels became ac- 
 cessible to them, they became possessed with a regular passion for 
 attributing their own civilization and religion to an Egyptian 
 origin. The second book of Herodotus bears ample witness to 
 the open-mouthed credulity with which his countrymen swallowed 
 down any tale that traced a Grecian custom to the banks of the 
 Nile, and to the effrontery with which the Egyptian priests 
 palmed upon them the most palpable inventions, and artfully 
 wrought in the authorized mythology of Greece to attract more 
 credence to their fraud. The unsuspecting innocence with which 
 the good-hearted old traveller received the most manifest prac- 
 tising upon his powers of belief, and the simple good faith with 
 which he throws himself into the system, honestly labouring to 
 show that Greece had nothing of her own, nothing unborrowed 
 from some barbarian source, must totally disqualify the mere 
 statement or opinion of Herodotus, though himself the most 
 trustworthy of men, from being adduced in evidence of the 
 Egyptian origin of any Grecian rite or institution. 
 
 Herodotus nowhere distinctly states that Grecian architecture 
 was borrowed from Egypt ; but the idea has been frequently de- 
 fended in modern times in a purely Herodotean spirit. Egypt 
 has been assumed as the necessary civilizer of Greece, and the 
 tales of Danaus and Cecrops pressed into the cause as so much 
 authentic history. But an investigation into the real facts and 
 probabilities of the case, apart from any preconceived notions, 
 can hardly fail to show that Egypt contributed nothing whatever 
 towards the formation of the architecture of Greece. 
 
 First of all, there does not appear to be any resemblance between 
 the two styles, beyond that which cannot fail to exist between any 
 two which employ the same construction. The pervading spirit 
 of each, and all their leading features, are totally distinct from 
 each other. From the general outline of a portico to the presence 
 or absence of an abacus, the two forms of architecture are as 
 completely dissimilar as can be imagined. A few details, com- 
 mon in Greece, rare in Egypt, make up the sum of the resem-
 
 OF THE ORIGIN OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 99 
 
 blance, and have been already considered. But it is not even 
 pretended that the distinctive features of Egyptian architecture 
 can be traced in that of Greece. Every principle of Grecian art 
 is violated in the Egyptian structure; and to suppose such an 
 opposite style to have grown up out of a direct and formal imi- 
 tation, without any great innovation, like the arch, to revolu- 
 tionize the whole, is contrary to all probability. The construc- 
 tive origin and the sesthetical expression of the two styles are 
 altogether foreign to each other : the one is the offspring of a 
 religion 1 whose essence consisted in dim and mysterious specula- 
 tions into the processes of the natural world ; in the other we hail 
 the light and brilliant emanation of the worship of pure beauty. 
 
 This leads to a second consideration, that there never was a 
 people whose whole institutions more completely bore the stamp 
 of national originality than the ancient Greeks. They possessed 
 a most strongly marked national character, 2 which, among all 
 diversities of government and dialect, never failed to bind Greek 
 to Greek as fellow-countrymen, in distinct opposition not only 
 to Phoenicians or Egyptians, but to the kindred inhabitants of 
 Lydia, Italy, or Macedonia. Their poetry, their philosophy, 
 their politics, are all the pure growth of the soil ; the least tinge 
 of foreign influence is at once discernible. No one can for in- 
 stance confound the strange mysticism which was imported from 
 Asia in later times with the pure theology of Homer. Grecian 
 architecture, like Grecian poetry, was the natural expression of 
 the national mind ; the development of which was influenced 3 in 
 many respects by the character of the land in which it rose. It 
 is more than national, it is local, it is bound to the soil and sky 
 of Hellas ; Greeks in other lands had their day of splendour, but 
 they never preserved 4 cither their political or their intellectual 
 independence so undehled as the inhabitants of the mother 
 country. 
 
 Finally, genuine history affords not one tittle of evidence in 
 favour of the supposition, and hardly admits its possibility. 
 
 1 See Maurice's ISoyle Lectures, :i II). ii. 203 et seqq. 
 
 p. 112, and the review of them in < See Mr. Grote's Chapters on 
 
 the" Ecclesiastic," forAugust,1847. the Grecian Colonies. 
 
 2 See Grote's History of Greece, 
 ii. 337 ct seqq. 
 
 ii :i
 
 100 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Now that ancient history is really beginning to be understood, 
 but little weight will be attached to reasonings based on the 
 myth of Danaus, or on the tale of Cecrops, whose Egyptian 
 origin is not even so much as a myth. The intercourse between 
 Greece and Egypt dates only from the reign of Psammetichus 
 in the seventh century B.C., and for some time was as jealously 
 guarded on the Egyptian side as that of modern Europeans 
 with China. It is impossible to suppose that the very first 
 rudiments of Grecian architecture are of later date than this 
 epoch ; indeed this has never been pretended by either ancient 
 or modern supporters of the Egyptian theory. They invariably 
 go up to mythical antiquity, and suppose Egyptian colonies to 
 have settled in Greece when its inhabitants were in a half-savage 
 state ; an idea which was the mere dream of speculative phi- 
 losophers, and finds not the slightest authority in the Homeric 
 poems. The effect of the intercourse between Greece and 
 Egypt was all on the Egyptian side ; a slight Hellenic tinge was 
 infused into the really inferior nation, to which we may probably 
 attribute some at least of the few approximations to Grecian 
 architecture which have been found in Egypt. 
 
 We may then unhesitatingly conclude that the architecture of 
 the Greeks is not to be ascribed to an Egyptian, or to any other 
 foreign origin, but that it is the genuine, unborrowed creation of 
 Grecian intellect. Such an expression as that which commences 
 the article on Grecian Architecture in the Glossary " The Greeks 
 undoubtedly derived much of their skill in architecture from 
 Egypt/' is peculiarly unfortunate. Whatever the Greeks derived 
 from Egypt, their skill was surely their own ; if any one can sup- 
 pose, against all evidence, that the Greeks learned from the 
 Egyptians the bare notion of columns supporting an entabla- 
 ture, or even some rude conception of the Doric order, the skill 
 with which they worked their borrowed materials into order, 
 harmony, and beauty was at least as unborrowed as it was un- 
 rivalled. But in reality the Greeks learned nothing from the 
 Egyptians ; they had neither the necessity nor the opportunity of 
 so doing ; their architecture is their own, and is not only not 
 derived from Egyptian models, but has its origin in a totally 
 different material. The one is derived from an excavated rock, 
 the other from a wooden hut. Notwithstanding all the fanciful
 
 OF THE ORIGIN OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 101 
 
 nonsense which has been written upon Grecian architecture, 
 from the days of Vitruvius downward, the class of writers of 
 whom he is the great ancestor have at least preserved to us the 
 most important and indisputable fact of its timber origin. E very- 
 circumstance of the style distinctly proves it ; the features in 
 which Grecian architecture differs from Egyptian as evidently 
 point to this origin, as the corresponding Egyptian forms do to 
 their own totally different source. 
 
 The distinctive nature of the parts in Grecian architecture alone 
 affords conclusive proof of its non-Egyptian origin, but would 
 hardly be sufficient to demonstrate its derivation from the timber 
 construction. But such evidence as it supplies decidedly tends 
 that way. A building constructed of stone preserves more dis- 
 tinctness in its parts than one formed by excavation, but less than 
 is found in one constructed of timber. The latter allows an exact 
 coincidence of the physical and the decorative parts; the shaft 
 may be a single post, the architrave a single beam ; it is indeed 
 most convenient to make them so. But to provide a block of 
 stone of sufficient length for a column involves much additional 
 labour and expense, while to construct a whole architrave of 
 such a single stone would appear to be altogether beyond the 
 power of man. The tendency of a genuine stone architecture is 
 to diminish the size of its blocks ; hence the physical and the 
 decorative parts cease to coincide ; one of the latter is continually 
 composed of many stones ; and it often happens that the same 
 block may most conveniently form a part of two decorative por- 
 tions. One can hardly conceive that an architecture thus pro- 
 duced could ever have attained, much less have palpably sought 
 for, that marked distinctness of parts, that completeness of each 
 part in itself, which pervades alike the severest Doric and the 
 most florid Corinthian. 
 
 A pillar originally built of small stones would probably have 
 been square, and might not have assumed the distinctive form 
 of the capital ; it would most likely have been a less massive form 
 of the Roman pier, and, like that, have been bounded by a mere 
 impost. At any rate it could hardly have failed to remain a 
 detached portion of the wall, and would never have assumed the 
 individuality of the Greek column, which, in idea at least, is so 
 essentially monolithic. The round form alone is not sufficient ;
 
 102 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the square pier may become round, like those of Egyptian and 
 Norman architecture/ but it does not thereby become a column, 
 it still retains its own character. But in Grecian architecture 
 the true column is everything ; instead of the column being a 
 rounded mass of wall, the square support or pilaster, whenever it 
 does occur, is a flattened column, imitated from, and harmonized 
 with the genuine cylindrical one. 
 
 The true column then is a post, it is a trunk driven into the 
 ground, and consequently remains, in its first and purest form, 
 without a base ; it also tapers towards the top, as the trunk of a 
 tree does ; it retains the severe individual unity betokening such 
 an origin ; it stands of itself, totally independent of wall or en- 
 tablature. Another long beam laid on the top of the posts, or 
 rather several such placed over each other, form the entablature ; 
 it therefore becomes a distinct portion of the building, and is 
 not, as in Egyptian architecture, merely the piece of wall which 
 happens to be over the columns ; and it is farther divided into 
 parts of its own, architrave, frieze, and cornice. From these 
 elements we speedily arrive at the simplest form of the Doric 
 temple ; the order which arose first in point of time, and which 
 consequently exhibits the wooden construction in its greatest 
 purity. " It appears certain," says the historian of the Doric 
 race, "that the first hints of this order were borrowed from 
 buildings constructed of wood, a fact which I cannot reconcile 
 with the supposition of a foreign origin. For we should thus 
 lose sight altogether of the gradual and regular progress by 
 which it advanced to maturity, and suppose that the improve- 
 ments of foreign artificers, with their peculiar principles, and 
 those of native architects, looking only to the original structure 
 of wood, were blended, or rather violently confused together. 
 Could anything be more natural than that the long surface of 
 the principal beams should be imitated in stone, that the cross- 
 beams with the Doric triglyph should be laid over these, the in- 
 tervals or metopes being by degrees covered with marble, whilst 
 the cornice, in imitation of carpenter's work, was allowed to 
 project in bold relief?" 2 ) 
 
 The pediment just mentioned is an essentially wooden feature : 
 
 1 See the Chapter on Norman 2 Miiller's Dorians, ii. 270. 
 
 Architecture.
 
 OF THE ORIGIN OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 103 
 
 like the Gothic gable, it marks the inclination of the rafters of a 
 timber roof; but, as such a roof may be, as in our own build- 
 ings, supported by stone walls, it would not of itself prove the 
 wooden origin of the whole style. 
 
 The only argument having any appearance of weight, which 
 I have ever seen adduced against the wooden origin of Grecian 
 architecture, is one contained in the article " Civil Architec- 
 ture," in the "Penny Cyclopaedia," and which at first sight 
 certainly appears to have considerable force, namely that a tim- 
 ber style would have been much lighter, with wider intercolum- 
 niations, and in fact more like the later Corinthian than the 
 primaeval Doric. The answer to this however is manifest ; the 
 architect of the earliest stone portico would be compelled 
 greatly to diminish the width of his intercolumniations, from, 
 the difficulty, or rather impossibility, of procuring blocks of 
 stone of sufficient length to allow the columns to remain at 
 the same distance from each other as while their material was 
 timber. The greater beauty thus attained, as well as the notion 
 of security which leads almost every eai*ly style to affect consi- 
 derable massivcness, would also tend to the same result. A 
 similar cause would also account for the production or retention 
 of the massive columns which distinguish the first Doric ; their 
 heaviness does not really seem greater than might be reasonably 
 expected in a wooden column. The subsequent increase in 
 lightness proves nothing to the contrary ; it is a natural result 
 of the discovery that constructive necessity docs not really re- 
 quire such massive forms, for when the choice is open between 
 them, rcsthetical reasons will usually decide in preference of the 
 lighter proportion. 
 
 If the timber construction be allowed to be the origin of Gre- 
 cian architecture, it necessarily follows that that style is essentially 
 distinct from the anterior Pclasgian architecture. The latter, with 
 its apparent arches and apparent domes, is as purely and essen- 
 tially a stone architecture as the Grecian is a timber one. The 
 Pclasgian buildings, moreover, appear to have been distin- 
 guished by a barbaric excess of ornament, and by the greatest 
 splendour that the rude arts of those early times could produce. 1 
 " In direct contrast with the above," says M tiller, " is the 
 
 1 Muller, ii. 2G0.
 
 10-1 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 simple unornamented chavacter and unobtrusive grandeur of the 
 style unanimously called by the ancients the Doric/' 1 It is in- 
 deed difficult to believe that the plain, sturdy, baseless column of 
 the latter order could have been developed out of the Mycenrean 
 shaft, adorned with the chevron, and resting on a fully developed 
 base. The latter betokens at least an equal progress in the de- 
 velopment of its own principles, but it also shows that those 
 principles were altogether distinct. To omit the base, where it 
 had been previously known, would be an unaccountable retro- 
 gression ; to omit, or rather not to introduce it, is the natural 
 course of an original timber development. And it is hard to 
 conjecture in what position of a Doric structure the Romanesque- 
 looking ornaments of the preceding style could find an appro- 
 priate resting-place. 
 
 The earlier Pelasgian style of Greece was then in no sense the 
 parent of the glorious forms which afterwards adorned its cities ; 
 these were the native invention of that race which so worthily 
 became the ruling spirit of her historical ages. The Dorians, 
 says Herodotus, 2 were the true Hellenes, the Ionians were Pe- 
 lasgian; and if so, the mythic genealogies justify us in adding 
 that the Achseans were Pelasgian likewise. The Doric architecture 
 is confessedly the oldest of the Grecian styles ; it is that of which 
 the others were modifications, we may add, corruptions. The 
 Dorians, whom Miiller has so successfully rescued from the 
 charge of neglect of literature and art, were the first parents of 
 genuine Grecian architecture, and brought this their own crea- 
 tion to perfection, without borrowing any ideas from the fallen 
 palaces of the Atreidte. The only question is as to the date of 
 the glorious invention. Without attempting to dig detailed 
 history out of the mythical mine, still less to assign exact 
 dates to King Pelasgus and King Hellen, or even to Aristodemus, 
 Temenus, and Cresphontes, it certainly implies a degree of 
 scepticism which the evidence of architectural remains alone 
 would be sufficient to refute, to doubt that the Dorian migration, 
 however disguised by poetry and tradition, is a true and most 
 important event in early Grecian history. The Dorian stone 
 architecture can hardly be much later than the time of the 
 conquest of Peloponnesus ; we cannot conceive that the invaders 
 1 Miiller, ii. 269. ~ In the famous passage, i. 56.
 
 OF THE THREE ORDERS OF COLUMNS. 105 
 
 would continue to ex*ect wooden edifices alongside of the great 
 and sumptuous works which the vanquished had reared in stone. 
 If in none of their previous habitations they had learned to 
 convert their wooden architecture into a stone one, the sight of 
 the great Achaean monuments must have been sufficient to im- 
 press upon their minds the constructive advantages of the latter 
 material. At the same time they may have preferred, and, as the 
 event proved, wisely, to apply the principles of their existing tim- 
 ber architecture to the new material, rather than proceed by a ser- 
 vile imitation of the monuments of a foreign and conquered race. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 b 
 OF THE THREE ORDERS OF COLUMNS. 
 
 
 
 > 
 ^ 
 
 There is perhaps no subject upon which more unreasonable 
 writing has been given to the world than upon " the Orders of 
 Architecture." So many and so stringent rules have been laid 
 down for the exact dimensions of the minutest moulding, so many 
 theories have been propounded to account for observances existing 
 only in the imagination of the theorist ; above all, such infinite 
 confusion has been produced by not distinguishing between the 
 purity of Greek architecture and the innumerable corruptions of 
 ancient and modern Italy ; that, were it not for the intrinsic 
 charm of the subject, the superstructure with which it is overlaid 
 would be almost enough to make the historian of architecture 
 revolt altogether from this portion of his undertaking. Oue 
 point however at least has been gained within comparatively late 
 years ; both theoretical and practical architects have, since the 
 days of Stuart, devoted themselves to the study of true Grecian 
 art, and we are now enabled to set before us its pure concep- 
 tions, unmarred by the corrupting and enervating touch of a 
 Vitruvius or a Palladio. The true Doric and the true Ionic are 
 now as familiarly known as the degraded substitutes which had 
 so long usurped their titles; and we have learned that Tuscan 
 and Composite were names and things of which Phcidias re- 
 mained in that ignorance which is bliss. But it is only in a
 
 106 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 theoretical view that this increase of knowledge can be consi- 
 dered an advantage. One had rather see the deluded votaries of 
 pagan art load their shop-fronts or their palaces with the per- 
 versions of Italy than with the pure conceptions of Greece. The 
 products of Grecian heathenism neither can nor ought to be re- 
 produced in Teutonic Christendom ; and every lover of art must 
 mourn to see the noblest creation of mere human nature made 
 ludicrous by some villainous abuse ; the columns of the Parthe- 
 non forming a mask for a chandler's shop, or " sash-windows 
 and Prcstum," as a traveller somewhere exclaims in indignation. 
 It is only as one of the loveliest pages in the history of the art, 
 without a wish to reproduce a single architrave or capital other- 
 wise than on paper, that we must give ourselves up for a while 
 to the passing beauty of the shrines where Leonidas and iEschy- 
 lus breathed forth the pure outpourings of an erring yet not 
 unfaithful heart. 
 
 It must first of all be premised that the binding laws which 
 generation after generation of paganizers have set down for the 
 proportions of columns, are, as far as regards Grecian architec- 
 ture, utterly worthless. The old Hellenic builders had as little 
 notion of fettering their genius by such pedantic stiffness, as their 
 brother poets had of shaping the scheme of their tragedies by 
 the laws of the " three unities," or bending their versification 
 beneath the yoke of the canons of Porson. A dilettante of the 
 last century summoning a Grecian architect before the Palladian 
 tribunal would be a fit companion-piece for a French critic, " in 
 the style of Louis Quatorze," sitting in judgment upon Homer. 
 The Grecian genius certainly tended more to rule and order than 
 the Teutonic, but the pedantry of minute accuracy was un- 
 known to both ; both were too much the free children of nature 
 to crouch beneath the unnatural shackles of such an artificial 
 bondage. The three orders themselves are by no means an ex- 
 haustive division ; the luxuriance of Grecian imagination indulged 
 itself in many forms of beauty which cannot be strictly classed 
 under any of them. 
 
 I shall now endeavour to give, with as little technicality as 
 possible, a view of the three principal phases of grace to which 
 the consummate taste of the Greek gave birth. 
 
 The Grecian Doric, the eldest, the plainest, and yet the most
 
 OF THE THREE ORDERS OF COLUMNS. 107 
 
 thoroughly faultless and beautiful of all, is the very masterpiece ^ 
 of dignified simplicity. A shaft of massive proportions, without 
 a base, crowned with the simplest of capitals and the heaviest of 
 abaci, supports an entablature massive like itself, and composed 
 of a very few bold members. Yet out of these few and severe 
 elements a composition is produced, not merely sublime, but the 
 very perfection of vigorous and manly beauty. It thoroughly 
 realizes the Aristotelian conception of the latter, the rfiv psra. 
 <zo(3sooty\to$. Nothing is weak, nothing frittered away ; simple, 
 but never rude ; unadorned, but never bare ; severe, and yet in the 
 highest degree attractive, the iEschylcan majesty of the Doric 
 order is* the very highest conception that even Grecian art could 
 realize. The contemplation, even in the meanest engraving, 
 of one of its matchless porticoes, in all the stern grace of 
 column, capital, and cornice, is absolutely overwhelming. And 
 this climax of pure dignity, this expression of heathendom in 
 its noblest form, this embodied xuXov, such as the Hellenic mind 
 alone could compass, we are gravely told was borrowed from the 
 hideous and unmeaning monstrosities of the race who paid divine 
 honours to the lowest vermin, and whom their gardens supplied 
 with appropriate objects of veneration. 
 
 The Doric column varies in height from four diameters to six 
 and a half, the measurement being taken at the base. The older 
 examples, as the temples of Zeus and Hercules at Agrigcntum, 
 are the most massive, having the intercolumniations small, and 
 the entablature proportionably heavy. The base is never added ; 
 the post driven into the ground had no means of suggesting 
 such a finish ; and besides this, the omission would seem alto- 
 gether in the spirit of the style. The capital is equally simple, 
 and is wonderfully effective. It is a simple ovolo under a plain, 
 square, heavy abacus, a genuine tile, without moulding or orna- 
 ment of any kind, which preserves most strictly the character of 
 a distinct member rather than a mere finish to the capital, and 
 calls to mind some of our own Romanesque abaci. 
 
 The Doric entablature is as remarkable and as distinct from 
 those of the other orders as the columns which support it. It is, in 
 conformity with the general character of the style, remarkably 
 deep ; and the architrave, which is quite plain, occupies a much 
 greater proportion of the height than is the case in the other
 
 108 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 orders. But the great characteristic is the triglyphs, origi- 
 nally the ends of the cross-beams appearing through the entab- 
 lature. These in the pure Greek style commence at the 
 comer of the entablature, so that there is not necessarily a tri- 
 glvph over the centre of each column. The spaces between them, 
 called metopes, are sometimes left plain, sometimes occupied by 
 compositions of sculpture, such as the famous Elgin marbles, 
 removed by a mistaken and barbarous antiquarianism from the 
 only position in which they could possess value or interest. The 
 cornice which crowns the whole continues in its few bold mem- 
 bers and broad shallow mutules the same idea of strength and 
 simplicity. 
 
 Such are the principal details of the pure Doric architecture. 
 No elements can be more simple, but its simplicity is not in 
 the least akin to rudeness ; it admits the highest degree both 
 of elegance of composition and delicacy of detail, and it more- 
 over clearly owes its origin to the deliberate preference of a 
 highly refined taste. It is plain that the Dorians of Peloponne- 
 sus at least, might have produced a style of much greater rich- 
 ness by imitating the anterior Pelasgian or Achaean structures. 
 And farther, we must remember that the Grecian orders do not, 
 like the styles of Gothic architecture, each represent the exclu- 
 sive architecture of a single period. The invention of new forms 
 did not exclude the use of the elder ones ; and the three orders 
 were employed simultaneously. Consequently there were many 
 cases in which the architect who adopted the stern grandeur of 
 the Doric order chose it in actual preference to the elegant 
 Ionic and florid Corinthian, which were in contemporary use. 
 
 The later Doric buildings diminish somewhat of the massive- 
 ness of the earlier, without forsaking the general principles of 
 the style or its characteristic ornaments. But all examples com- 
 bine to prove that this, the purest of all forms of classical archi- 
 tecture, was bound by no pedantic stringency of proportion, but 
 admitted almost as much variety as mediaeval art itself. The 
 genius of the designer was not thus cramped ; it was allowed, 
 within the limits of some general rules, well understood, though 
 probably never expressed, to enjoy full scope of adapting the pro- 
 portions of each individual building to the requirements of the 
 particular case. Besides the differences which must ever arise
 
 OF THE THREE ORDERS OF COLUMNS. 109 
 
 from the diversity of individual ideas of beauty, it is clear that 
 these proportions might be further affected by the natural 
 scenery and other objects with which the structure had to be 
 kept in harmony, or by the requirements of the peculiar wor- 
 ship to which the temple was dedicated. Different proportions 
 might well be felt to be most appropriate for the shrines of 
 different deities ; the same architectural language would hardly 
 suit the service of the stern Hercules and the mirthful Dionysus, 
 of the soft Aphrodite and the martial Athena. But amid all this 
 diversity, the most marked unity of conception still prevails ; the 
 character of the Doric architecture, its grave simplicity and awful 
 beauty, is indelibly impressed upon all. It still expresses the 
 mind of the race among whom it originated, the calm dignity 
 and unpretending greatness of the uncontaminated Dorian. " The 
 Doric character," as Miiller observes, " created the Doric archi- 
 tecture." 1 
 
 Just as the Doric architecture was the appropriate product of 
 the Dorian mind and temper, so does the second of the great 
 forms of Grecian architecture equally retain the impress of the 
 people among whom it arose. The exquisite climate of Asia, the 
 wealth and luxury of its Toning inhabitants, (the natural result 
 of their extended commerce,) combined to produce a character 
 whose softness and refinement bordered on effeminacy; one which 
 at once distinguishes them from the inhabitants of old Greece, al- 
 most as much indeed from their own kinsmen in Attica as from the 
 tribes of Dorian extraction. This difference of character strikes 
 us in every page of Herodotus which brings them into contact 
 with the Greeks of the mother country, and it is plainly marked 
 equally in their language and their architecture. The vigour, 
 sublimity, and simplicity of the Doric is gone, and its place has to 
 be supplied by mere delicacy and refinement. The feminine soft- 
 ness of Ionic architecture is a* far removed from the manly bold- 
 ness of the old Dorian, as the flowing liquid dialect of Herodotus, 
 the melting softness of the open vowels, and the flexible smooth- 
 ness of every syllabic, is from the rugged strength, the broad 
 vowels and rough consonants, of a Lacedaemonian inscription. 
 
 The great characteristic of the Ionic column is the capital, 
 
 1 Dorians, ii. 270, where the character of the order is most ahly treated.
 
 HO HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 which, among much diversity in the smaller ornaments, always 
 preserves one outline strongly marked by the spiral projections at 
 each an-le called volutes. These are sometimes said to have been 
 suffucstcd by the curling down of bark at the top of a wooden co- 
 lumn; others more probably consider them to have arisen from the 
 suspension of a ram's horn in a similar position. In the best 
 Grecian examples the volutes are set straight, so that only two 
 sides of the capital are voluted ; the other two, which are shorter, 
 having only the backs of the volutes turned to them. Yet there 
 seems reason to believe that the earliest form approached nearer 
 to the Roman Ionic; thus in the temple of Apollo at Bassse are 
 columns, which while in other respects they exhibit a kind of tran- 
 sition from the Doric to the Ionic, have capitals with four voluted 
 faces. " In its detail," says the article quoted in the last chapter, 
 " this capital is so plain that it looks very much like one of the 
 earliest essays at a voluted capital ; nor is it improbable that at 
 first the design was to make such capitals perfectly square, like 
 the Doric abacus, and to produce four uniform voluted faces." 
 
 The neck-moulding now becomes a conspicuous and orna- 
 mented feature, and much decoration is often bestowed on the 
 lower part of the surface of the capital. Lightness, ornament, 
 and delicacy begin to affect the whole composition ; minuter 
 mouldings everywhere prevail, boldness being sacrificed to 
 enrichment. The column becomes much more slender, vary- 
 ing from eight and a quarter to nine and a half diameters ; it is 
 now furnished with a base, its flutings are increased to twenty- 
 four, and are separated by fillets. The sudden tapering of the 
 Doric shaft is mitigated by the gentle entasis or swell, and by not 
 commencing immediately at the base. In the entablature the 
 same ideas prevail ; the cornice is richer and more complicated, 
 the architrave is divided into two members, and the wooden or- 
 naments of the Doric frieze are gradually dispensed with. In 
 this respect, as well as in the admission of the base, the Ionic 
 manifestly recedes, as was to be expected, farther than the Doric 
 from the original timber construction. Some Sicilian examples 
 exhibit the triglyphed frieze above columns of this order, being 
 as genuine instances of a transition as any thing in Romanesque 
 or Gothic. But in the fully developed type the triglyphs are 
 lost, and by their omission the frieze becomes a plain surface
 
 OF THE THREE ORDERS OF COLUMNS. Ill 
 
 which, unless decorated by sculpture, is unpleasingly bare. This 
 is a clear declension from the Doric in point of art, as in that 
 order the triglyphs prevent the plainest composition from be- 
 coming meagre. Architecture may rightly call in the aid of 
 sculpture to add increased beauty to a structure already beautiful, 
 but it ought never to be so dependent upon it as for any member 
 to be actually unsatisfactory without its aid. 
 
 The third and last of the Grecian orders is the magnificent 
 Corinthian, with its tall slender columns, its elaborate cornice, 
 and, above all, its exquisite capitals 
 
 "With many a woven acanthus-leaf divine.'' 
 
 The characteristics of this style are the direct opposite of the 
 original Doric; the utmost lightness of proportion and the 
 most florid gorgeousness of detail have utterly banished the 
 sterner graces of the elder architecture : so completely had 
 commerce, and the wealth and luxury which attended it, changed 
 the spirit of the famous city whose name it bears, since the clays 
 when her two harbours were first added to the conquests of the 
 invading Dorian. But it is a glorious conception ; if it has de- 
 parted from the original type of beauty, it has provided another 
 of its own, which is carried out no less completely than the 
 opposite one is by the elder style. In this respect the Corinthian 
 is certainly far superior to the Ionic, which can hardly be said to 
 be the development of any idea. The latter hangs midway 
 between the two other orders without attaining the beauties of 
 cither, remaining equally distant from the simple majesty of the 
 Doric and the elaborate luxuriance of the Corinthian. 
 
 Unhappily we have but little knowledge of Corinthian archi- 
 tecture in the days of its purity, as very few monuments of the 
 independent times of Greece afford examples of the distinguish- 
 ing features of this order. The great majority of Corinthian 
 buildings are of Roman date ; it was the order most frequently 
 employed in classical Roman architecture, and thereby set the 
 model for most of the enriched capitals of the Romanesque 
 styles. Enough however remains to show that when the Greek 
 artists had once learned to apply to their capitals an ornament 
 like foliage, one so beautiful in itself, and affording such a count- 
 less variety of graceful forms, their iuventive faculty was too
 
 112 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 vivid to be tied down to any particular use of so inexhaustible a 
 source of enrichment. The variety which, as being that which 
 the Romans adopted in a slightly modified form, is most familiar 
 to us as the Corinthian capital, seems incontestably to have been 
 only one among several kinds of foliaged capitals, in diversifying 
 whose forms the taste of the Grecian architect may have luxuri- 
 ated with hardly less freedom than that of his Teutonic successor. 
 
 The shape of the Corinthian capital, which is much taller than 
 either the Doric or Ionic, is, like the foliaged capitals of Egyptian 
 and Gothic architecture, a reversed bell. The usual form, as exhi- 
 bited in the two principal Greek examples, the Choragic monu- 
 ment of Lysicrates at Athens, and the temple at Jackly near 
 Mylasa in Asia, has two rows of acanthus-leaves round the 
 lower part of the capital, gracefully curling over from the bell. 
 The abacus is supported by a small diagonal volute at each 
 angle,- and two still smaller ones in the centre are attached to 
 the bell, and turn inwards so as to meet one another : these or- 
 naments themselves rest upon a third row of leaves. But 
 beyond this general resemblance, even those capitals which may 
 be considered as examples of the ordinary Corinthian form, 
 do not agree with each other. Different degrees of ornament, 
 different dispositions and turns given to the foliage, even 
 widely different proportions given to the capital itself, show how 
 pliable a thing pure Grecian art was, and how totally removed 
 from the unnatural stiffness to which its unappreciating copiers 
 would so harshly tie it down. The earliest Corinthian remnant 
 in Greece, the solitary and mutilated capital found in the temple 
 at Bass?e, must have differed considerably from the usual model ; 
 and those of the Temple of the Winds at Athens are still farther 
 removed from it. These have but one row of acanthus-leaves, 
 and even the volutes are absent, their place being supplied by 
 flat leaves carved upon the bell. 
 
 The flowing character of the Corinthian capital, and especially 
 the diagonal volutes, could hardly have been brought into harmony 
 with the hard square abacus of the earlier styles. It is there- 
 fore exchanged for one whose hollow sides appear more in unison 
 with the form of the bell, and produce an excellent contrast by 
 the opposite direction of the two curves. The projecting angles 
 produced by this arrangement fuse admirably together with the
 
 OF THE THREE ORDERS OF COLUMNS. 113 
 
 projecting volutes which support them, the actual angle itself 
 being chamfered off, as the effect of so acute a point, in so pro- 
 minent a position, would have been far from agreeable. 
 
 The entablature of this order differs but little from the Ionic, 
 except in the increased richness given to the cornice, which now 
 becomes one of the most important and magnificent features of 
 the composition. In many of the more adorned Ionic buildings, 
 especially in Asia, the dentils introduced just under the cornice, 
 if not actually rich in themselves, are a great source of richness, 
 by reason of the great scope they give for varieties of light and 
 shade. The highly decorated Corinthian examples not only re- 
 tain this ornament, but in a higher stage of the cornice have the 
 soffit of the corona, or lower member of the projecting finish, sup- 
 ported by a row of small brackets or modillions, themselves admit- 
 ting of any amount of enrichment. This, together with the 
 increased richness given to the mouldings themselves, at once dis- 
 tinguishes the Corinthian cornice from either of its predecessors. 
 The frieze appears liable to the same objection as the Ionic, that 
 of being architecturally bare, and deriving its whole decoration 
 from the subsidiary arts. But the increased magnificence of the 
 cornice, giving an air of enrichment to the whole entablature, 
 and producing a rich variety of shadow, would take off some- 
 what from the meagreness of even a totally naked frieze. We 
 may perhaps add that the decorative character of the rest of the 
 order, by making sculpture more imperative than in the plainer 
 Ionic, would at once render its omission less frequent, and, when 
 it did occur, would transfer the blame from the general style 
 of architecture to the design of that particular example. And to 
 view it with the eye of a sculptor rather than of an architect, a 
 position which I cannot assume without great trepidation, it 
 may be that the long continuous surface of an Ionic or Corin- 
 thian frieze affords more scope for the production of extensive 
 and elaborate composition in sculpture than the confined space 
 which the intervention of the triglyphs allows to the Doric 
 metope. But in a view recognizing the subsidiary position of 
 the other arts, there can be no hesitation as to the infinite supe- 
 riority of the Doric frieze as a production of pure architecture. 
 The Corinthian column is by far the tallest of the three, being 
 on an average ten diameters ; yet the shaft itself is but little 
 
 i
 
 114 IIISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 longer than that of the Ionic, the difference in height being 
 chiefly owing to the elongated form of the capital. It is there- 
 fore very light and elegant ; perhaps its slenderness is almost 
 excessive ; the entablature seems well nigh insignificant at the 
 height to which it is raised, and yet any considerable addition 
 of depth would appear to crush the delicate supports on which 
 it rests. With all the elegance and richness of the Corinthian, 
 the eye still turns for unmixed satisfaction to the truer beauty 
 and more solemn majesty of the uncorrupted Doric. 
 
 Such are the three chief classes into which the remains of 
 pure Grecian architecture resolve themselves. Their columns 
 and entablatures have been here considered as single features ; 
 our next business will be to regard these elements when grouped 
 together in architectural combinations. This investigation will 
 bring before us several fresh details and arrangements, arising 
 out of the plan and construction of individual buildings, and 
 not necessarily involved in a distinct examination of the three 
 classes of columns. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF TEMPLES AND OTHER BUILDINGS OF GRECIAN 
 ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 A Grecian temple is among the simplest of human construc- 
 tions ; it consists merely of a walled space of rectangular shape 
 more or less completely surrounded by pillars. This space com- 
 prizes the cella, the actual temple, and supposed dwelling-place, 
 of the patron deity, which is walled off from the pronaos or ante- 
 temple in front, and from the opisthodomus or pwsticum in the 
 rear. According to the different ways in which the columns are 
 disposed, temples have been divided into several classes, which, 
 however, do not supply a completely exhaustive division. Of 
 the principal of these a brief sketch may not be out of place. 
 
 The simplest form of a Greek temple is that called sv wapae- 
 rurriv, or in antis. This has no actual projecting portico, but 
 merely a range of pillars in front between the terminations of
 
 OF BUILDINGS OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 115 
 
 the side walls, which were finished with anta. These are square 
 pilasters, in the treatment of which the perfect taste of the 
 Greeks, as distinguished from the Roman corrupters of their 
 system, is conspicuously displayed. The latter treated pilasters 
 in exactly the same way as columns, giving them the same capi- 
 tals, and even the same diminution. The Greeks more truly and 
 judiciously held that what was not a column ought not to be 
 made to assume the appearance of one. At the same time it 
 was clear that the antse ought to be brought into harmony with 
 the general system of the colonnade. This was effected by 
 giving them a different capital from that of the columns, one 
 usually composed of mere mouldings, as most adapted to the 
 rectangular form, and by making them of the same diameter 
 throughout. A wall, whether of wood or stone, has no occasion 
 for diminution, nor is it a beauty ; and antse are but parts of a 
 wall, harmonized indeed and adapted to the adjoining columns, 
 but which the great law of reality forbids to assume their entire 
 likeness. Such is the temple of Wingless Victory at Athens, a 
 Doric structure, which has the entablature of that order con- 
 tinued along the side walls. This might at first sight seem a 
 violation of reality, but it is clear that where there were no posts 
 to support the beams, they must necessarily be thrust into the 
 log wall at the side, and the triglyph be thus formed in precisely 
 the same way as over a colonnade. 
 
 Hitherto the side walls have necessarily been left bare and 
 incapable of ornament, except that derived from the source just 
 mentioned. Grecian architecture had no means of applying 
 strict architectural decoration to such a surface, and still less was 
 it in accordance with Grecian taste to cover a vast external space 
 with sculptures, after the Egyptian fashion. The bareness of 
 these side-walls suggested the magnificent idea of carrying the 
 colonnade all round the cella, in which case it is called a 
 'peristyle. To this plan most of the highest efforts of Grecian 
 art owe their chief beauty. 1 This arrangement admits of several 
 varieties. That called peripteral has a single row of columns 
 
 1 When the Ionic order is em- nally, so that the capital presents a 
 ployed in a temple of this kind, the perfect face to both elevations, 
 volutes at the angles are set diago- 
 
 i 2
 
 116 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 surrounding the whole building. But still greater magnificence 
 was attainable by surrounding the temple with a double row of 
 columns, according to the form known as dipteral, as in the 
 immense Corinthian temple reared at Athens by the Emperor 
 Adrian in honour of the Olympian Zeus. 
 
 The natural result of the absence of the arch was that no 
 means were afforded for covering in such large spaces as were 
 required for the interior of the large temples. Either the space 
 must be contracted, or the building left open to the sky. The 
 latter alternative is often chosen, and the cella remains roofless, 
 or hypcethral \ in which case it is itself furnished with an inter- 
 nal peristyle. This, according to Wilkins, is especially common 
 in temples consecrated to Zeus. It might have been deemed an 
 impiety to confine the sovereign deity within the same narrow 
 limits as his subordinates ; and the dwellmg-place of the ruler 
 of the elements, the gatherer of the clouds and wielder of the 
 thunder, would-be with peculiar propriety left open to his 
 external empire. 
 
 The sublime remains at Poseidonia, the Latin Psestum, pre- 
 sent several singularities of arrangement. These are among the 
 earliest existing monuments of Grecian art, exhibiting a form of 
 the Doric order which is more commonly found among the re- 
 mains of the Grecian colonies of Italy and Sicily than in the mo- 
 ther country itself. The era at which the Italian, as well as the 
 Asiatic, Greeks attained their highest pitch of splendour, was 
 much earlier than the days of Athenian and Spartan supremacy. 
 At this latter period, while the inhabitants of old Greece were 
 introducing successive improvements into architecture, the glory 
 of the western Greeks had departed, and there was small chance 
 of the ancient structures of the first colonists being replaced by 
 others of later character. And we may be allowed to rejoice at 
 this or any other circumstance which has preserved to us the 
 glorious remains of pure Doric architecture at Poseidonia, 
 Selinus, Acragas, and Egesta. We here behold low columns 
 with small intercolumniations, echini and abaci of the boldest 
 projection, entablatures and pediments of wonderful heaviness ; 
 everything exhibiting Grecian architecture in its sternest and 
 most ponderous form. 
 
 The great hypsethral temple, commonly called that of Poseidon,
 
 OF BUILDINGS OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 117 
 
 but which Wilkins, 1 solely on the ground of its being hypsethral, 
 considers to have been dedicated to Zeus, is peripteral, being 
 surrounded by a Doric colonnade of amazing massiveness. 
 Within the cella is a range of columns, whose entablature sup- 
 ports a second smaller range, an arrangement which is unique, as 
 far as I am aware, among existing Grecian remains, though it is 
 recorded to have been occasionally employed in other instances. 
 But the effect is so bad, and so contrary to every principle of the 
 style, that it is not surprising that the arrangement never came 
 into general use. The pseudo-dipteral temple, which has been 
 called a basilica, ahd which Wilkins considers to be posterior to 
 the Roman conquest, has its cella divided down the middle by a 
 single row of columns, which apparently supported the roof. 
 The resemblance of this former arrangement to the nave, aisles, 
 and clerestory of a Christian church has been often remarked ; 
 the latter finds its counterpart in such churches as Caythorpe 
 and Godshill, which have a single arcade down the centre of the 
 nave. 
 
 The desire of relieving the blank surfaces occurring in the 
 simpler forms of temples led to the use of engaged columns. 
 These must have been employed at a very early period of Grecian 
 architecture, as they occur in the temple of Zeus at Acragas. 
 But the most familiar instance of their use is in the temple of 
 Athena Polias at Athens, where a range of Ionic columns are em- 
 bedded in the wall, and windows, a rare feature in the pure Grecian 
 style, peep out between them. These latter consist simply of 
 a lintel supported by jambs inclining inwards after the Egyptian 
 fashion. It is impossible to defend such an abuse of the colon- 
 nade ; it only proves that Grecian taste itself was not always 
 perfect, and that even an Athenian architect might produce a 
 building absolutely unsightly, if he once deviated from the one 
 unsurpassable form of beauty to which the spirit of his style 
 confined him. It must be confessed that this temple is as great 
 an absurdity as anything that Vitruvius or Palladio could have 
 produced. Engaged columns are in any case unreal ; with win- 
 dows between them they are ugly. Still the columns do support 
 a continuous entablature; the weak and broken line of the 
 
 1 Magna Gra?cia, p. 60.
 
 118, HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Roman architrave was as yet unknown to the fabrics of immortal 
 Greece. 
 
 There arc also other instances, even during the best clays of 
 Grecian art, of forms which can only be looked upon as mere 
 vagaries. Among these I cannot but reckon the employment of 
 caryatides in the place of columns, as in the front of the temple 
 of Pandrosus. The use of sculpture in a rchitecture is certainly 
 to embellish the architectural design, not to supersede it ;~conse- 
 quently the substitution of a piece of sculpture for an architec- 
 tural member must be at once condemned as contrary to the 
 due relations between the two arts. It is a palpable confusion ; 
 and transforms what ought to be an architectural composition 
 into a mere exhibition of statues. Again, human figures sup- 
 porting an entablature have anything but a pleasing appear- 
 ance ; there is an apparent disproportion between the support 
 and the weight supported, which latter seems but too likely to 
 crush the delicate forms beneath it. In statues of large size, 1 a 
 certain degree of deception is intended ; they are direct repre- 
 sentations of the human figure, and are not adapted to situa- 
 tions in which a real human figure would be impossible or 
 shocking. Statues may be represented in human positions, 
 or discharging human actions, standing, sitting, fighting, ha- 
 ranguing ; but human forms acting as architectural members, 
 and supporting an entablature, appear incongruous, because we 
 cannot imagine the realities in any position at all approach- 
 
 1 I say large statues, because in full-sized statues. And farther, in 
 them alone does this deception exist. the decorative construction of Go- 
 The small figures which in Gothic thic architecture, there is no -weight 
 buildings are often placed under at all to be sustained. The super- 
 great weights, are not liable to the structure is not (in idea,) laid upon, 
 same objection as to the caryatides. or supported by, the lower part, as 
 The small size, and their frequently is the Grecian entablature, but 
 representing only a part of the grows out of it; and consequently 
 figure, at once reduce them to mere much greater lightness may be 
 decorations ; they are not works of given to the sustaining portion, 
 direct mimetic sculpture, but are Actual figures instead of shafts are 
 rather mere carvings, analogous to sometimes found in Romanesque 
 the representations of foliage which portals, but are never satisfactory ; 
 often tahe their place. No one and the same may be said of shafts 
 looks on them as real figures, nor resting on the bodies of animals, 
 applies the same rules to them as to
 
 OF BUILDINGS OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 119 
 
 ing to it. We know that were the figures what they pro- 
 fess to be, their situation would be painful and impossible. 
 It might be a question whether the capitals upon the heads of 
 the images increase or diminish the feeling of incongruity ; on 
 the one hand, the sense of oppression is not so great as if the 
 ponderous entablature had rested immediately upon them ; on 
 the other, human statues finished with capitals are a still more 
 palpable confusion of sculpture and architecture, and when re- 
 flected on, almost approach the ludicrous. Mr. Dodwell truly 
 remarks, that " the female figure cannot well be placed in a 
 more ungraceful attitude than that in which it is seen under the 
 pressure of a ponderous mass of entablature. The drapery of 
 the caryatides towards the base, seems to have been made with 
 a certain degree of straightness and formality, in order to ap- 
 proach to the appearance of fluted columns. This peculiarity is 
 too marked to be accidental." 1 It may be remarked that neither 
 the capitals nor the entablature of this portico belong to any of 
 the three orders. 
 
 A similar misapplication of statuary occurred in several an- 
 cient buildings, but they seem generally to have formed a 
 second story, being placed over the genuine colonnade in the 
 same manner as the upper order already described at Psestum. 
 This was the case in the temple of Zeus at Acragas, and in the 
 Persian portico at Sparta. 2 The like is the case in the building 
 called the Incantada at Thessalonica, but here the figures, which 
 are of different sexes, and are most assuredly neither Caryatides 
 nor Persians, but represent several mythological personages, are 
 not the supports of the upper entablature, which rests on dwarf 
 pilasters to which the statues are attached. This more closely 
 
 1 Tour in Greece, i. 355. though they are extremely beauti- 
 
 - Female figures in this position ful, and admirably sculptured, yet 
 
 were called Caryatides ; the male they have not the smallest charac- 
 
 vvere known as Persians, Telamones, teristic of the Graces, but figura- 
 
 and Atlantes. tively represent the weight of 
 
 Mr. Dodwell, arguing against slavery and the severe forms of 
 
 Spor, who had conjectured these Caryan females,* rather than the 
 
 figures to be the identical Graces light freedom and easy elegance of 
 
 which Socrates is said to have exc- the daughters of Venus." 
 cutcd, reasons very truly, " that 
 
 * According to the well-known talc in Vitruvius, lib. i. can. i.
 
 120 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 resembles the mode in which such statues are employed in Egyp- 
 tian architecture, and, as this building certainly belongs to no 
 period of pure Grecian architecture, they might even have been an 
 imitation of that style. The Greeks of modern times, anxious 
 probably to save the credit of the architect from the stigma of 
 having placed them in so extraordinary a position, have devised a 
 legend, which may be seen at length in Stuart's Athens, accord- 
 ing to which they are in truth no ordinary statues, but a King 
 and Queen of Thrace, with their attendants, converted into stone 
 by magic arts; hence the name of Incantada. 
 
 Several smaller Grecian buildings, not of the temple form, re- 
 main, which are highly interesting, as showing how completely 
 Grecian architecture was bound to that form, and how impossible 
 it is to preserve its genuine characteristics when anything further 
 is attempted. Besides this, they demonstrate, even more clearly 
 than larger structures, 1 the complete freedom of Grecian genius 
 from the degrading fetters with which Italian pedantry would fain 
 enslave it. They are pretty, but odd, and decidedly not Gre- 
 cian in idea ; the general idea of each could have been far better 
 carried out in Romanesque or Gothic; Such are the choragic 
 monument of Lysicrates at Athens, (commonly called the lantern 
 of Demosthenes,) the choragic monument of Thrasyllus, and the 
 tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, or temple of the Eight Winds. 
 The first of the three, erected in commemoration of a theatrical 
 victory in the year B.C. 330, when the glory of Greece was be- 
 ginning to decline, is a small circular structure with six engaged 
 columns supporting an entablature, on which is appropriately 
 carved the adventure which forms the subject of the Homeric 
 hymn to Dionysus. The columns are fluted, and have Corin- 
 thian capitals, but differing very widely from the Roman type. 
 The cornice is finished by a battlement not unlike that used in 
 Arabian architecture ; and the roof is formed of an apparent 
 cupola, of small elevation, and wrought out of a single stone. 
 The whole is crowned with a large finial of foliage, like what the 
 
 " The Greeks seem never to rity of the several orders, and in 
 
 have bound themselves by any very small works they sometimes throw 
 
 settled rules in the erection of their off even these restrictions." Glos- 
 
 larger buildings, beyond what were sary, Art. Grecian Architecture, 
 necessary to preserve the intcg-
 
 OF BUILDINGS OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 121 
 
 acanthus-leaf of the capital might be supposed to grow into, 
 were there no abacus to keep it down. Graceful as it is, the 
 engaged columns, the circular form, the domical top, are all de- 
 viations from the pure Grecian principle ; the horizontal line has 
 not, and from the plan of the building cannot have, any marked 
 predominance. 
 
 Twelve years later than the monument of Lysicrates, that of 
 Thrasyllus was erected. The front of this building consists of 
 three flat pilasters, two being anta?, and a smaller one in the 
 centre occupying the place of a column. These support an 
 entablature, with a character of its own, but more nearly ap- 
 proaching the Doric than any other ; the characteristic triglyph is 
 however omitted, its place being supplied by wreaths. There is no 
 pediment, but the structure is, or rather was, crowned by a seated 
 figure, which has raised some controversy as to the identity, and 
 even the sex, of the person represented. Dodwell appears to in- 
 cline to the opinion that it represents Dionysus, which from its 
 connection with the theatre would appear highly probable ; others 
 say Niobe, and Stuart argues that it is Demus, not, as its beauty 
 might lead one to suppose, the son of Pyrilampes, an opinion 
 which he strenuously opposes, but he of the bean and the oyster- 
 shell, the 
 
 u~jpoiico? op"mv, Kva/norpivg, uKpifX_o\o9, 
 
 Alj/H09 HVKVITT]9. 
 
 The octagonal tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes is otherwise 
 known as the temple of the Eight Winds, but it was clearly no 
 temple, but designed to serve several astronomical 1 purposes. 
 Its form is as little adapted as the circle to convey pure Grecian 
 ideas, and would be far more appropriately adorned with Gothic 
 details, just as the monument of Lysicrates would be with 
 Romanesque. Indeed the cornice adorned with heads at inter- 
 vals is thoroughly Gothic in its general effect. This building 
 has not even the small pretence to a peristyle which the monu- 
 ment of Lysicrates retains in its engaged columns, but boldly 
 dispenses with it altogether. The result is a design, certainly 
 of great beauty, but in which no one principle of Grecian archi- 
 tecture is predominant. The chief ornaments arc emblematical 
 figures of the winds sculptured on a sort of band or frieze sur- 
 1 See Diet, of Ant., art. Horologium.
 
 122 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 rounding the building, each figure being placed on the face of 
 the tower opposite the wind which it represents. There is no 
 portico, but two of the faces have doors, covered with genuine 
 porches, each consisting of two columns supporting an entabla- 
 ture and pediment; they are fluted and without bases; the 
 capitals 1 are formed of foliage, but can hardly be called examples 
 of the Corinthian order. 
 
 Other Grecian remains, however interesting as matters of 
 archaeology, throw but little light upon architecture. The mag- 
 nificent propylaea of Athens are simply a Doric portico, differ- 
 ing in no essential respect from those forming the fronts of 
 temples. The vast theatres, whether constructed or hewn in the 
 rock, teach us no new lesson, and can hardly be called works of 
 architecture in the strictest sense. Still less can we look for 
 domestic architecture among the Greeks ; it was an art not likely 
 to be cultivated among a people who looked with envy on any in- 
 dividual display of magnificence as betokening designs against 
 their liberties. In short Grecian architecture produced one form 
 of the most perfect beauty, but only one ; and when it attempted 
 any other, it at once failed, as no other form could express its 
 animating principles. When it deserted the simple form of the 
 portico, it invariably failed to produce anything else in harmony 
 with its grand idea, and even in carrying out that one glorious 
 conception, the art of Greece itself occasionally exemplified the 
 liability of all things human to error. But this was only when it 
 strayed more or less from the one pattern ; within those bounds, 
 the sternest Doric and the most florid Corinthian are but dif- 
 ferent forms of perfect beauty ; all is simple, graceful, harmoni- 
 ous, faultless as the strains of the Attic Bee ; the pure and 
 glorious heritage of the adorers of stainless and unruffled love- 
 liness. 
 
 1 See above, p. 112.
 
 123 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 In contemplating the remains of Grecian skill, almost the first 
 feeling raised in the mind is one of wonder at the excessive sim- 
 plicity which pervades the whole. It seems strange that ele- 
 ments so few, and admitting of so little diversity, should be 
 capable of producing those exquisite forms of beauty which still 
 remain the admiration of the world. True it is that many 
 varieties have been observed, and all regularly defined and 
 named ; but this very fact only shows the smallness of their 
 number as compared with those to be seen in other styles. Who 
 could attempt to draw up a nomenclature expressing the different 
 proportions of Romanesque and Gothic buildings, in the same 
 way that every variety in a Grecian intercolumniation is accu- 
 rately measured, and has its own appropriate designation ? How 
 uniform are the parts of a Grecian temple, its columns, entabla- 
 ture, and pediment ; one unbroken, unvaried elevation, the same 
 in the heaviest Doric, and the most soaring Corinthian ; east, 
 west, north, and south, all present the same system, the only 
 alternative being an unbroken wall. How utterly different is all 
 this from the ever-shifting gables, and spires, and chapels of a 
 Gothic Church ; now spreading itself along the earth in the vast 
 unbroken length of St. Alban's, now soaring in the one compact 
 mass of St. Maclou or our own St. Cross. 
 
 Yet these two features of simplicity of construction and uni- 
 formity of design arc not identical. One might conceive a plan 
 as complex as that of Cologne having been the unvaried type of 
 a Christian Church, or the simple construction of the entabla- 
 ture having been applied to buildings of every variety of form. 
 The two are however closely allied, they arc the application of one 
 principle to different aspects of a bi'ilding; the same general 
 notion of simplicity tends at once to the employment of but few de- 
 signs, and causes those designs to be composed of only a few parts. 
 
 Tins sim plicity is the grand characteristic of Grecian archi - 
 tecture, and seems peculiar to it. Even in Egypt and India,
 
 124 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 where everything had stiffened in the mould of caste, we 
 find greater variety than on the free soil of Greece ; the forms 
 are more diversified, and the designs more complicated. To 
 bring into the comparison those countless forms both of out- 
 line and detail which Gothic art has produced were altogether 
 needless. And this simplicity and uniformity is the more re- 
 markable when we consider the diversity which lurks below; 
 proportions are not unvaried, nor ornaments confined to one de- 
 sign. Both the simplicity and the diversity of the Grecian 
 architecture have a common source ; they are both the pure work 
 of nature; men striving to carry out a single conception of 
 beauty, unfettered by stringent rules, would necessarily produce 
 buildings of one general character, and yet exhibiting an unli- 
 mited amount of diversity in details. 
 
 And it is clear that the Grecian architects did set before them 
 such a single notion of beauty in a sense in which those of our 
 own race did not ; or perhaps we may rather say that the single 
 notion of Gothic beauty did not hinder the existence of count- 
 less diversities of proportion and outline. So that the building 
 was vertical, its other features might be settled according to 
 taste, caprice, convenience, or ecclesiastical order. And as ver- 
 tically itself may admit of various ways of expression, much 
 more is it consistent with almost any variety of ground-plan, 
 outline, and proportion. Not so the predominant horizontal 
 line, which can only be carried out by means of a long unbroken 
 surface, and consequently at once reduces the building in which 
 it prevails to the one unvarying form of the simple parallelogram. 
 Any but this must in some point or other exhibit a deviation 
 from pure horizontality. And it should be remembered that 
 though Grecian is by no means the only style constructed on 
 the mechanical principle of the entablature, it is the only one 
 which thoroughly carries out the sesthetical notion suggested 
 by that principle. Egyptian architecture can hardly be said to 
 suggest the idea of horizontality, or indeed any idea at all; it 
 would come nearer to the mere rest and solidity of the Roman- 
 esque than to the horizontal extension of the Grecian. ) 
 
 There is then one mechanical system and one type of outline 
 which pervade the whole style, and both of these the most simple 
 that can be imagined. Posts supporting beams are arranged in the
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 125 
 
 form of a parallelogram. No mechanical construction can be 
 simpler than that of the entablature ; none requires so few com- 
 ponent parts, or so small an exertion of any but the merest 
 physical powers of mechanism. The arch, on the other hand, is 
 something complex ; its very construction requires many com- 
 ponent parts, and calls forth a much greater exertion of mecha- 
 nical skill ; its curved form too at once breaks in upon the 
 uniform system of straight lines and angles which is the essence 
 of a horizontal style. Hence a greater variety of outline, a freer 
 combination of parts, and generally a more complicated system 
 both of construction and composition, is in harmony with an 
 arched style. And this alone would be sufficient proof that the 
 arch and the entablature can never form parts of one harmonious 
 system* The variety and boldness of the one will ever remain 
 at variance with the uniformity and simplicity of the other. 
 
 But though this simplicity of design and construction renders 
 Grecian architecture one of small mechanical importance, it does 
 not in the least degree detract from its beauty. It precludes, 
 indeed, the beauty of diversity, that of outline and grouping; 
 the bold combinations of a Rhenish cathedral, its multiplicity of 
 parts, its ever-shifting clusters of steeples and octagons, are de- 
 nied to the plain Grecian temple ; but the latter has its own 
 beauties which are in return denied to the more complicated 
 structure. Simplicity has a charm of its own, as well as diver- 
 sity ; the uncomposed whole, as well as the combination of parts. 
 For a Grecian building has, strictly speaking, no parts ; it is not 
 composed ; it is a simple mathematical figure, the simplest that 
 could well be introduced as a form of ground- plan or elevation. 
 Pleasure may arise from the contemplation of objects which our 
 faculties grasp at once, as well as of those which require a longer 
 and more difficult process before they are fully mastered. And 
 mere beauty, as distinguished from the notions of grandeur, 
 richness, and what may be called the awful in art and compo- 
 sition, is perhaps more closely allied to simplicity than to diver- 
 sity. It is more manifestly earthly and human, it comes more 
 within our own grasp, not soaring above us, and overwhelming us 
 with a superhuman majesty. Grecian art is definite, local, per- 
 sonal, lovely ; Gothic glories in being infinite, unfettered, spiri- 
 tual, majestic ; it is the expression of something not to be com-
 
 126 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 prchcnded within the ordinary limits of humanity, or indeed of 
 aught of the material world. 
 
 And this simplicity, this definiteness, this tendency to clothe 
 everything with a garb of sensible humanity, is most thoroughly 
 in unison with the Grecian character) In all the best Greek w r riters 
 we observe the same simplicity, the almost childlike outpouring 
 of nature, which distinguishes their architecture. There is no 
 fear of speaking of common things, or calling them by common 
 names. There is not the same conventionality of phrase, the 
 same artificial dignity and elaborateness of expression, which 
 attach more or less to almost every modern composition. 
 Sentences are less artificially constructed ; the laboured periods 
 of Thucydides, which attempt something more resembling modern 
 diction, commonly break down, and after all, they not unfrequently 
 display the same simplicity of expression as the rest. The Greek 
 tongue is indeed capable of expressing the very subtlest distinc- 
 tions of thought, it is in truth the very language of metaphysics ; 
 still the Greek mind was not, in the same degree as the Oriental, 
 naturally speculative or abstract. Even the very abstract ideas of 
 philosophy are clothed in concrete language; and the same turn 
 of mind, combined with their ignorance of any foreign language, 
 palpably tends to that confusion of words and things, that invest- 
 ing the former with a sort of essential reality, which perpetually 
 occurs in their philosophy, and reduces many of their most ab- 
 struse arguments to the merest quibbling. 
 
 But the true Greek was no abstract philosopher; the son of 
 the old uncorrupted Hellas stood not, like the Oriental sage, 
 upon a lofty watch-tower far above his fellow-men and their 
 pursuits, to trace out the shadowy forms of contending princi- 
 ples, and muse upon the struggle between good and evil, light 
 and darkness. His mind could not rest upon the dim imagina- 
 tions of impersonal powers ; it was utterly incapable of all con- 
 ception of the spiritual and the infinite. jnis world was man ; 
 it was among the scenes of common humanity that he found 
 his truest element; every portion of our nature came forth into 
 full play; the battle-field witnessed his valour; the public 
 assembly drew forth his eloquence ; social life called out the 
 sympathies of pure and enduring friendship ; the song, the 
 feast, the dance, every allurement of the senses, every gratifica-
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 127 
 
 tion of refined taste, were alike welcome to his heart./ Every 
 human emotion swayed him in its fullest power ; he fought for 
 his friends, his party, his country ; not for any abstract rights of 
 man, but for the land on which he trod, the hearth where he 
 dwelt, the shrine where he worshipped, the agora where he him- 
 self personally witnessed and enjoyed the glorious heritage of 
 freedom. He went forth to battle, not at another's bidding in a 
 quarrel for which he recked not, but for all that came home to 
 his own heart, all that bore upon his personal existence, 
 
 7ra?8a9, <*(vvaiica.9, Ocwv re Trarpwwv eSrj, 
 
 OlJKO.9 76 7rpO"jOV(VV. 
 
 He looked indeed beyond the grave, but to a world of men, 
 men indeed pure, and good, and noble, but men with human \J 
 passions, and capable of human enjoyments. He looked not to 
 an existence of shadowy contemplation, to clearer views of what 
 on earth was dark and mysterious, he dreamed not of merging 
 his personal humanity by absorption into the bosom of an ab- 
 stract Infinite ; his very paradise was local and human. His 
 thoughts of another world turned to the calm splendours of the 
 West, where the setting sun seemed to descend to light another 
 and a purer earth. The giant stream of ocean severed the 
 world of care and toil from the bright realm of rest and happi- 
 ness ; on its other shore was the brighter land where the sun 
 was never clouded, where the earth needed not the toil of man 
 to yield fairer and purer fruits than the eastern side of the 
 mighty river might behold. But they were still men who dwelt 
 there ; it was to dwell among those of whom his poets had 
 sung, who had here been just and valiant, with them to lead a 
 toilless and a careless life, with the festive crown for ever on his 
 brow, that the Greek dreamed of as his highest and holiest as- 
 piration. And yet more ; to his imagination all nature was full of 
 life ; sky, sea, and earth, woods, mountains, rivers swarmed with 
 beings higher than man, but still beings of human form, and 
 swayed by human passions. He bowed indeed in adoration to 
 one mightier and more enduring than himself, but still to one 
 like himself personal and human. The deity to whom he 
 prayed was the ancestor from whose blood he was descended ;
 
 128 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 he was one who dwelt in his temple and animated his statue ; he 
 could feel love and hatred, gratitude and resentment ; offering 
 and incense would propitiate his wrath ; unbroken prosperity 
 and too aspiring haughtiness brought down his envy rather than 
 his justice. Such a godhead might be circumscribed within 
 bounds, might take up his abode within the four walls of a Gre- 
 cian temple, dwelling in the seclusion of an Oriental king, un- 
 seen indeed, but locally present ; bounded, like an earthly ruler, 
 by the restraints and limits of material and human being. 
 
 For such a worship no shrine could be so fitting as those 
 which Grecian art reared to these its human idols. A structure 
 whose extent was measured, and could be grasped at a single 
 glance, well suited a deity who was subject to the accidents of 
 humanity, and dwelt in his temple as a mortal prince within his 
 palace. There was no need of aspiring forms to raise the soul 
 of the worshipper above the earth on which he trod, while that 
 very earth was one of his most venerated deities ; and while the 
 rest had their beloved spots upon its bosom, which they delighted 
 to haunt in mortal guise. He needed no spire to point out a 
 heavenward path, while his very heaven was on earth, far away 
 indeed, and in lovelier regions, but still within the bounds of this 
 lower world ; and where the existence that he hoped for was but 
 a brighter form of that which he led in his own city. It was 
 but a removal from the Greece of the present to the Greece of 
 the old heroic time, a translation from the busy scenes of the 
 Pnyx and the Peirseeus to the plains of Troy whitened by the tents 
 of the Achseans, and to the festive banquet of the King of Men, 
 
 iva irep 7rowK7]s 'A\i\ev<}, 
 TvSetBijv tg (fiaai ^.lofiijiea. 
 
 Contrast this mere human beauty, this local, definite, circum- 
 scribed temple, with the embodying of the infinite that uvstpov 
 which the Greek deemed a form of evil, in the interior of a 
 Christian minster, especially in its noblest form, the soaring and 
 heaven-pointing Gothic. Place yourself where you will, the 
 view is boundless, nothing occurs to force a limit on the eye in 
 any direction ; interminable rows of columns branch away to 
 every point, arch is seen through arch, every feature suggests
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 129 
 
 something beyond itself. Stand a little west of the roodscreen ; 
 you see into the transepts, but you see not their full length ; 
 the eye is caught by their eastern arcades, suggestive of the 
 aisles and chapels beyond. If the roodscreen is pierced, you 
 see the choir stretching before you, the slim arches beyond the 
 high altar giving a faint glimpse of chapels yet far away, or the 
 mighty reredos proclaiming, while concealing, their existence; 
 or if all this is completely hidden, you at least see the roof-line 
 stretching on till it is lost in the distant perspective. Above, 
 the roof must bound your vision ; but here the whole temple 
 seems rising heavenwards ; and beneath the lantern a glimpse is 
 given of a still loftier height, a glimpse only of a height which 
 might be absolutely boundless. Even the apertures of the tri- 
 forium, and the narrow passages of the highest range, give a hint 
 of something yet further, of interminable mazes leading you 
 know not whither. May we not deem such a pile, vast 1 and 
 boundless, whose whole extent no human eye can comprehend at 
 a single glance, to be the chosen, the living and speaking shrine 
 of the God of the Christian, Who dwelleth not in temples made 
 with hands, the Incomprehensible, the Infinite ? 
 / Grecian architecture then is horizontal, definite, rectangular, 
 with one unvaried construction, and one unvaried outline. From 
 these characteristics we may now proceed to make some more 
 particular inferences. 
 
 First then, it is, when used in its purity, utterly precluded 
 from attaining any comparative height. A Grecian temple may 
 be actually of colossal loftiness, but, unless it totally gives up its 
 proper character, elevation cannot be its predominant dimen- 
 sion. A building in which it prevailed would lose the horizontal 
 ascendancy, and yet not substitute any other, as the whole sys- 
 tem is opposed to the vertical line. 
 
 Secondly, Grecian architecture docs not allow of any division 
 of the height into stages ; as the single order does not admit of 
 elevation, still less can it be gained by raising another order 
 upon it. To pile portico upon portico is absurd, if it were only 
 
 1 Vast and boundless by its form of infinity than the comparatively 
 and conception, even when actually small cathedral at Oxford : the north 
 of no great dimensions. No church view out of the choir is literally 
 conveys more thoroughly the notion boundless. 
 
 K
 
 130 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 because the lower order presents a dilemma ; if the pediment 
 be omitted, it is imperfect ; if inserted, it is at once unreal and 
 
 ugly, nothing being more ludicrous than a sham pediment 
 
 against a wall. To rest a solid story upon an open portico is 
 still worse; besides the objection just made, 1 it presents an ap- 
 pearance of insecurity and heaviness, and moreover destroys the 
 predominance which properly belongs to the colonnade. Besides, 
 all division into stages, though not necessarily involving the 
 vertical principle, must give the idea of comparative height, and 
 thus destroy the ascendancy of the entablature. 
 
 Thirdly, Grecian architecture has no means of enriching a 
 large blank surface. It does not admit the repetition of the con- 
 structive features as sources of decoration. They cannot be 
 repeated of the full size, because this is unreal ; for in this case 
 they appear to be constructive when they are not, and the im- 
 pression conveyed is that of a portico walled up between the pil- 
 lars. To repeat them of smaller size, to load the surface with 
 little decorative colonnades, after the manner of the Romanesque 
 and Gothic arcades, would not be unreal, (for no one can suppose 
 them to be constructive,) but such a course would be altogether 
 repugnant to Grecian principles. It would make a division into 
 stages, annul the supremacy of the entablature, and bring in the 
 former dilemma about the pediment. 
 
 Fourthly, the Grecian system, by requiring a long unbroken 
 extent for the development of its horizontal idea, cannot admit 
 of outlines broken up by projections, or even of circular or 
 polygonal forms. 
 
 Fifthly, the whole end and aim of Grecian architecture is to 
 produce an exterior; in no internal view can its long rows of 
 stately columns with their grand pediments come out in their 
 full beauty, nor can the full ascendancy be given to the hori- 
 zontal line. 
 
 Sixthly, the want of the arch at once precludes any boldness 
 of mechanical construction ; distant spaces cannot be connected, 
 
 3 Surely nothing can be more their modern imitators have for the 
 
 hideous than those churches whose most part had at least taste enough 
 
 colonnades support a continuous to avoid this. See however below, 
 
 entablature with a clerestory above. p. 156. 
 But both the debased Romans and
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 131 
 
 nor any. system of roofing allowing a large internal area be 
 adopted. 
 
 Not that these are in the slightest degree objections to the 
 style as used by the Greeks themselves. They did what every good 
 architect does, and more than which none can do, namely, to erect 
 a building that will best answer his ends, and to adorn it in 
 a beautiful and consistent manner. The impossibility of attain- 
 ing comparative height was no difficulty where it was neither 
 morally nor aesthetically needed ; where there was no occasion 
 to erect buildings in stages, the architecture which could not 
 effect it was not felt to be imperfect. There was no occasion to 
 embellish blank walls, when it was at once more stately and 
 more convenient to continue the colonnade all round the temple. 
 To a people, a great portion of whose life was spent in the open 
 air, and in whose worship the congregation was external to the 
 actual temple, the interior was of comparatively little importance. 
 No extensive area called for the vault ; it was sufficient to pro- 
 vide a majestic front to command admiration from afar, and a 
 pillared space where the worshippers might be at once sheltered 
 from the sun and accessible to the breeze. If then the Grecian 
 style of architecture answered the ends of those by whom it was 
 employed, it cannot be blamed for not answering certain other 
 ends which never occurred to them. / I grant that in domestic 
 architecture their style must have failed ; l but important political 
 reasons forbad any extensive application of it to such uses; 
 it was judged inconsistent with republican equality for the 
 dwelling of a private citizen to assume to itself that splendour 
 which was held to be fitting only for the temples of the Gods, 
 and the public edifices of the state. Grecian architecture_an- 
 swered the ends of Grecian worship, and expressed the mind of 
 the people and their religion in forms of the most perfect loveli- 
 ness J ToTTeny this^canonly be the result of the merest preju- 
 dice, and can do nothing to further the cause of Gothic architec- 
 ture among ourselves. That glorious style has sufficient merit 
 of its own, without decrying other styles whose beauty we must 
 
 1 It is clear (See Diet, of Ant. to understand how the true spirit of 
 
 art. Columna and Domus) that the the style could have been carried 
 
 Greeks did employ columns in the out. 
 interior of houses ; but it is difficult 
 
 k2 
 
 y
 
 >\ 
 
 132 niSTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 willingly admit, while we pronounce them utterly inappropriate 
 to our country, our race, and our religion. 
 
 For the reasons just given distinctly prove that the Grecian 
 architecture is one which cannot be adopted in any modern build- 
 ing. National feeling, if we had any left, any real love for the 
 true glories of Teutonic England, would repudiate it even for 
 secular buildings ; united national and religious feeling pro- 
 nounce it unfit for a Christian temple. A pure Grecian build- 
 ing cannot be made to serve any purpose, ecclesiastical or civil, 
 in our country ; it would be a mere toy, a model for study, a 
 mere gratification of the eye. It cannot be adapted to any 
 of our uses without utterly losing its own nature and beauty. 
 In our northern land our main design is not to walk about under 
 colonnades ; whether we assemble for prayer, for legislation, or 
 for merchandize, we need an interior; we want walls and roofs, 
 doors and windows. These we must have, and consequently all 
 V that any Grecian structure can do is but to surround them with 
 \ a peristyle, which serves little or no purpose, and which is 
 after all a mere mask ; whereas the real Grecian portico was not 
 only a source of external splendour, but the most important fea- 
 \ ture of the fabric. J
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 ARCHITECTURE OF THE ARCH.
 
 PAET I. 
 
 OF THE ROUND ARCH, OR ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF THE CLASSICAL OR TRANSITIONAL ROMAN. 
 
 We have now arrived at the era when the great invention of the 
 arch began gradually to assert its claims to predominance in 
 architectural designs. Hitherto we have found its existence barely 
 proved, we have seen it occasionally employed where construc- 
 tive necessity required it, but never made a prominent feature, 
 far less introduced into the decoration of the building. In 
 lloman architecture we find the arch the predominant mechanical 
 feature, but it is still merely mechanical, and does not assert its 
 full rights till the time when, as we are commonly told, the art 
 began to decline, but when in truth it began for the first time to 
 display a simple and consistent construction according to the 
 principles involved in the employment of the arch. 
 
 The origin of Roman architecture is involved in inextricable 
 obscurity ; the chief difficulty being whether anything like a 
 native Italian style existed at a time when Grecian influences were 
 unknown. A strictly Roman style there hardly could have been, 
 as direct Grecian colonization in the West had commenced long 
 before Rome attained to any importance among the states of 
 Italy. And besides this, how much is to be attributed to the 
 common element in the population of Greece and Italy, and 
 is consecpicntly to be considered, if not Grecian, at least not dis- 
 tinctively Italian, would be a very difficult question to unravel.
 
 136 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The mysterious Etruscan race have also had their share in adding 
 confusion to confusion; there is great probability that Rome 
 borrowed much from Etruria, but till we know for certain who 
 the Etruscans were, and whence they came, this fact can add but 
 little to our stock of real information. 
 
 The probability would certainly seem to be in favour of 
 Niebuhr's opinion that much that we call Etruscan does not 
 belong to the real Rasena, the conquering and dominant race in 
 Etrnria, but to their subjects the Tyrrhenians. The acceptance 
 of this theory will perhaps clear up several points in the history 
 of Roman architecture. These Tyrrhenians were a branch of the 
 great Pelasgian race, kinsmen both of the Latins and of the 
 Pelasgians of Peloponnesus ; and we have seen the same forms 
 of architecture prevail amongst the whole race, especially the 
 numberless attempts at the form and construction of the arch. 
 Nothing can be more probable than that these attempts were 
 at last successful, and that the arch was discovered at some 
 very early period among the Pelasgians of Italy. Etruria may 
 well have been the locality of the invention, and yet its authors 
 have been, not the Rasena, but their Tyrrhenian subjects, whether 
 before or after the time that they passed into subjection. If 
 this be correct, the arch belongs to the Pelasgian element which 
 Greece and Italy had in common, and a genuine Roman building 
 must be looked upon as owning a kindred origin with the 
 remains of Tiryns and Mycenae. 1 
 
 But whether anything that can be called a style, any consistent 
 system of construction and decoration, had been formed anterior 
 to the introduction of Grecian architecture, is another question, 
 and which is probably to be answered in the negative. That 
 such was the case in Greece is clear ; we know that the ante- 
 Dorian inhabitants had an ornamental style, and one that ad- 
 mitted of the column, though how harmonized with the arch 
 does not appear. But we have seen that this style had no 
 influence whatever on the subsequent Doric architecture, which 
 was substituted for it as a whole, and in no degree inter- 
 mingled with it. But the native Italian style had a most 
 powerful influence upon the later Roman, which retained 
 nothing less than its whole system of construction. Had it 
 possessed any system of decoration, it is probable that some traces 
 1 See above, p. 42.
 
 OF THE CLASSICAL OR TRANSITIONAL ROMAN. 137 
 
 of it would have survived, at least in application to its great con- 
 structive feature. The only architectural member which has the 
 remotest claim to be considered as of native growth in Italy, is 
 the Tuscan column ; but of this order we have no ancient ex- 
 ample, and can say nothing as to its origin. It may be an un- 
 borrowed Italian feature, analogous to the Pelasgian columns at 
 Mycenae, or it may be merely an uncouth perversion of the 
 matchless Boric. 1 
 
 We may then safely conclude that an original arched style did 
 exist in Italy at a period earlier than the general direct imitation 
 of Greek art, but that it was a style without ornament, such as 
 we see in those Roman structures which are designed simply for 
 use ; a style pure and vigorous, and of the greatest mechanical 
 boldness, but which had not wrought out for itself any system 
 of ornamental details. Grecian details, belonging to a totally 
 different system, were subsequently introduced as an ornamental 
 mask; an unnatural bondage which had to be shaken off, and 
 which at last was shaken off, and a legitimate system of orna- 
 ment devised. The period of classical Roman architecture is 
 therefore one of retrogression, it is an unnatural state}; consist- 
 ent round-arched architecture took a leap from Etruria to Ger- 
 many and England. Brixworth church, strange as it may seem, 
 better represents the architecture of primeval Italy than the 
 structures of the Csesars ; and the palace of the Conqueror was a 
 true development from those of King Latinus and Lars Porsena. 
 
 Such an architecture as this, however void of decoration, is 
 grand in the highest degree. Few human productions are 
 nobler than a genuine Roman building altogether free from 
 Grecian ideas, such, for instance, as the Pont du Gard in Lan- 
 guedoc, or the Aqueduct of Segovia. We here sec only the 
 square pier and the round arch standing forth, tier upon tier, in 
 all their native boldness and purity. And the bold, unbroken 
 sweep of the round arch is in itself exceedingly striking, and 
 can better dispense with decoration than any other architectural 
 form. Roth Grecian and Gothic buildings require a certain 
 degree of ornament, the mere unadorned mechanical construction 
 will not suffice ; but a Roman arch is perfectly satisfactory, 
 
 1 "The Tuscan . . . was cvi- of its ornaments." Diet, of Ant. 
 dently nothing more than a modifi- art. Columna. 
 cation of the ltoman Doric, stripped
 
 138 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 though not a particle of moulding or other enrichment is be- 
 stowed upon itself or its pier. 
 
 This genuine Roman architecture is essentially and pre-emi- 
 nently the architecture of strength, the material expression of 
 the steady, undaunted, unyielding willy But it is the architec- 
 ture of strength in another and a higher sense than that in 
 which we have asserted the like of Indian and Egyptian monu- 
 ments. These tell of mere physical power, of the mere sub- 
 mission of slaves, but they convey no great moral lesson ; they 
 are the mere piling together of vast masses at the caprice 
 of a royal or sacerdotal despot ; they do not express mind. 
 The difference between them and the Roman architecture is 
 at once manifest in the circumstance that, while they are 
 overloaded with a superabundance of what would fain be 
 ornament, the Roman builder rejects all ornament what- 
 soever with a contempt worthy of his own Curius or Fabricius. 
 No style better speaks the mind of its authors ; the whole course 
 of Roman history is but an expression of the one idea of the 
 indomitable will. What our own land has occasionally seen in 
 an individual William or Edward was the animating spirit of 
 the great republic during the whole period of its existence. The 
 destiny of Rome was one simple but magnificent, the effectual 
 conquest of the world. It was not to overrun it in one sudden 
 assault, like a Jenghiz or a Tamerlane, an individual conqueror, 
 whose conquests more or less died with him, but to subject all na- 
 tions to the gradual advance of a single one destined to universal 
 empire. From the first moment that Rome appears on the political 
 stage, this one great purpose is manifest in all her actions. Never 
 was any greatness so truly national ; Rome has no Alexander, 
 or Charlemagne, or Napoleon ; with a longer list of great men 
 than any other nation, their personal being is lost in that of the 
 state : Camillus, and Curius, and Scipio had no end or aim of 
 their own ; they existed but to further in their generation the 
 one great purpose of Rome, and to transmit the like calling to 
 their successors. The greatness of other lands centres round some 
 one period, often round some one man ; Carthage has her Hanni- 
 bal, Athens her Pericles, Thebes her Epaminondas, on whom 
 her hopes rested, and in whose fall she perished. But Rome is 
 an animating genius, the state has a personal existence; her 
 bravest sons might fall, but herself, the eternal city, is unmoved ;
 
 OF THE CLASSICAL Oil TRANSITIONAL ROMAN. 139 
 
 others arise to take their part in the work of seven centuries, the 
 subjugation of a world. Not even Sparta herself could return 
 thanks to a vanquished general for not having despaired of the 
 republic. Little, in the days of her true dignity, did she reck 
 of mere art and beauty ; her later elegance and refinement were 
 a borrowed gift which she knew not how to exercise ; her great- 
 ness was her own. The familiar words of her own poet cannot 
 be too often borne in mind : 
 
 " Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera, 
 Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus ; 
 Orabunt caussas melius, ccelique meatus 
 Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent ; 
 Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento." 
 
 Truly did such an architecture befit such a nation ; it is in the 
 physical world what Rome herself was in the moral, the display 
 of that unyielding energy which overcomes every obstacle by the 
 mere force of the indomitable will. The works of Roman archi- 
 tecture were, in point of mere greatness, of vastness of size, of 
 difficulties overcome, of mechanical and constructive daring, in- 
 comparably beyond all that had preceded them. Compare the 
 Grecian pillars, cowering close together to support the dead 
 weight of the entablature, with the massive piers of a Roman 
 building, boldly throwing out arch, and vault, and cupola, to 
 distances which a Greek would as soon have thought of connect- 
 ing by a supported mass as of bridging the stream of ocean. 
 
 But after all, with the exception of a few structures in which 
 utility was more aimed at than beauty, this true Roman architec- 
 ture has only an ideal existence. Its remains are just numerous 
 enough to make us wish to know what it would have been, if the 
 mad desire of imitating Greece had never taken possession of the 
 Roman mind, and extinguished alike national poetry and na- 
 tional architecture. To have rejected the immense mechanical 
 advantages of their own style for the mere resthetical superiority 
 of the Greek, would have been simple folly ; the attempt to 
 combine the two gave rise to a style, not without its merits, but 
 absurd and inconsistent to the last degree. 
 
 Hence, whatever may have been the true origin of this futile 
 attempt to combine the arch and the entablature, the Roman
 
 140 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 style is practically a transitional one; paradoxical as it may 
 seem, the architecture of the palmy and splendid days of the impe- 
 rial city is but a transition to one which arose in the days of 
 its decline, and came to its perfect development among nations 
 of whom the Caosars had scarcely heard. It is a transition from 
 Grecian to Romanesque, from the consistent system of the en- 
 tablature to the consistent system of the round arch. It strives 
 to engraft its own principle of construction upon that of Greece, 
 the latter being consequently reduced to a mere source of adventi- 
 tious decoration. The decorative, merely decorative, entablature 
 is thrust prominently forward, and the arch, the real construction, 
 is obscured, and thrust, as far as was possible, out of sight. 
 
 No architecture can, as mere art, be more thoroughly worth- 
 less than such a hopeless confusion as the Roman style hence- 
 forth presented. It is simply the exceeding excellence of the 
 two elements the perfect loveliness of Grecian detail, corrupted 
 as it was by its Roman imitators, and the magnificent boldness 
 of the genuine Roman construction that saves any of its pro- 
 ductions from absolute hideousness. It will therefore be unneces- 
 sary to treat of it at the same length either as the pure styles, or 
 as those transitions, which are not a commixture of two ready- 
 made systems, but a real development of one style out of another. 
 I shall only briefly allude to some of the strange 1 and often ludi- 
 crous ways in which the two principles are sought to be com- 
 bined. 
 
 The Grecian column, except in such rare instances as the 
 temple of Athena Polias, had always been a real support. It 
 was now converted into a mere decoration. The arch springs 
 from its own massive piers, while a column, perhaps a pair of 
 columns, is set up on each side, supporting a merely decorative 
 entablature, and sometimes even a pediment. And even these 
 columns were not allowed to stand simply on the ground, but 
 are cut off from it by a thing called a pedestal, the use or beauty 
 of which it is not easy to understand. These pillars were some- 
 times free, sometimes engaged, in other cases they sank into mere 
 pilasters. Sometimes, by way of diversity, as in a structure at 
 Pompeii, a kind of pilaster adorns the pier of the arch below the 
 
 1 They will be found more fully Mr. Hojie's Historical Essay on 
 drawn out in the eighth chapter of Architecture.
 
 OF THE CLASSICAL OR TRANSITIONAL ROMAN. 141 
 
 impost, while another supported on its capital, bears the entabla- 
 ture. But the strangest device of all was to destroy the continuity 
 of the entablature, the bold horizontal line of Grecian architec- 
 ture, and break it up into a number of ins and outs most fo- 
 reign to its spirity The entablature becomes a mere string 
 against the wall, unsupported by the columns which stand out 
 in front, and over each of which a small portion of entablature 
 projects, to lengthen the column at the upper end, as the pe- 
 destal had already done at the other. Then come pediments 
 stuck here and there without meaning, pediments too broken 
 and curved, and jagged into divers fantastic forms. And com- 
 bined with all this is the most utter confusion and corruption of 
 the minuter details. 
 
 It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the striking boldness 
 and simplicity of their own construction, the Romans did not, 
 even in supplanting it by other forms, appreciate in the least 
 the purity and simplicity of the Greeks, but everywhere substi- 
 tuted florid, and yet often meagre, ornaments for the chaste 
 elegance of their boasted models. This is most manifest in the 
 transformations which the Grecian orders received at their 
 hands. . The sturdy Doric, though not capable of being harmo- 
 nized with the members of another constructive system, was at 
 least in some sort analogous to the Roman pier and arch, as 
 possessing a common element of dignified and masculine simpli- 
 city. But this noble order received but little favour at the hands 
 of the Roman builders. The remains of Pompeii indeed exhibit it 
 in something like its original purity, but these can hardly be con- 
 sidered as fair Roman examples, being rather vestiges of the better 
 times of Magna Gratia. The pure form was not employed by 
 the Romans, who substituted for it a thing which they ventured 
 to call Doric, but from which every characteristic of the old 
 Greek form has vanished. The magnificent boldness of the 
 abacus and echinus is frittered away in a scries of petty mould- 
 ings, and the shaft, ruthlessly elongated and attenuated, is made 
 to rest on a base, which is often, according to the Roman 
 fashion, further stilted on a pedestal. 
 
 The Ionic order suffered in like manner ; the volutes being 
 now set diagonally. There is indeed, as we have seen 1 reason to 
 believe that this was the earliest form which the voluted capital 
 
 1 Page 110.
 
 142 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 assumed ; still it was one which the better taste of the Greeks 
 rejected ; and the effect was that in Roman hands, " the Ionic 
 had in its capital the beautiful variety and contrast between the 
 front and sides of the volute changed into perfect sameness." 1 
 The Corinthian was the order which they most usually employed, 
 and not having that inventive power by which the Greeks were 
 enabled to diversify the forms of its foliage, they attempted va- 
 riety by a monstrous combination of the Ionic volute and the 
 Corinthian acanthus. This, under the name of Composite, 
 stands last in the array of " the five orders of architecture," as 
 if even Roman perversity could go no farther. 
 
 The utmost that can be said in favour of this mixed style is 
 that, when the incongruity of its component parts is not carried 
 to such a degree as to be painfully thrust upon the eye, it pos- 
 sesses a sort of wild and fantastic richness, and is consequently 
 capable of producing a striking effect. It is something like 
 Arabian architecture, a display of capricious and whimsical forms, 
 combined together with the most lavish splendour, but disdain- 
 ing to be bound by any laws of just taste. But it will not, like 
 Grecian or Gothic architecture, bear the test of a minute exami- 
 nation. It must be taken as a whole, and, if subjected to detailed 
 criticism, it fails at once. And though a building is meant to be 
 viewed as a whole, yet that cannot be considered as good archi- 
 tecture which is not also satisfactory in its parts. Roman 
 architecture can only take its stand on the ground of mere vast- 
 ness and magnificence ; it cannot even claim so high a place as 
 those specimens of cinquecento and debased Gothic, which often 
 exhibit the most perfect grouping combined with the most barba- 
 rous detail. 
 
 Even where Grecian buildings were more directly imitated, and 
 as no arches were introduced, there was consequently no room for 
 any attempt to combine them with the entablature, the immense 
 difference between Grecian and Roman art is still most percep- 
 tible. The declension in point of skill is worthy of that moral 
 declension by which the frieze, once the receptacle for the sculp- 
 tured deeds of gods and heroes, is defaced by the fulsome titles of 
 some deified monster. 2 If we take two of the most favourable 
 specimens of Grseco-Roman art, the temple of Fortuna Virilis at 
 Rome, and the Maison Carree at Nismes, the most fastidious 
 
 1 Hope, p. 75. 2 Witness the temple of Faustina !
 
 OF THE CLASSICAL OR TRANSITIONAL ROMAN. 143 
 
 taste could hardly find any grounds of objection in the architec- 
 ture of their porticoes ; the latter is an exquisite example of 
 Corinthian, the former of Ionic, preserving too the Grecian form of 
 the volutes. But in a lateral view the rows of engaged columns are 
 but poor substitutes for the majestic peristyle, and are in point 
 of reality inferior to the honest blank wall of the temple in antis. 
 
 The Romans introduced much greater variety of outline than 
 the Greeks, and as thejscendancy of the horizontal line was de- 
 stroyed by their system of building, this must certainly be con- 
 sidered as an improvement. The circular form, employed by the 
 Greeks only in such toys as the monument of Lysicrates, 1 now be- 
 gan to be used in structures of great extent. The bold sweep of the 
 outline in a Roman amphitheatre harmonizes well with that of 
 the arcades which pierce its walls, And it is even found to har- 
 monize with the use of columns, as in the temple of Vesta or of 
 the Sibyl at Tibur, where the very great beauty of the circular 
 peristyle cannot be denied. The great Pantheon however, with 
 its portico stuck on to a circular body, seems somewhat difficult 
 to defend ; and the portico itself, much as it has been admired, 
 will be found altogether wanting, when judged by the true prin- 
 ciples of Grecian art. Unfiuted Corinthian columns, an entablature 
 of meagre elevation, with its frieze devoted to a mere inscription, 
 and all crushed by a bare pediment of preposterous height, are 
 a sad falling off from the Parthenon and the temple of Theseus. 
 
 But the structures which, after all, serve to set before us in the 
 most vivid manner the wonderful extent of the dominion of 
 Rome, and the spirit of energy and magnificence which she 
 communicated to every portion of her empire, are not to be 
 sought for in Rome herself or in the neighbouring lands which 
 she had completely imbued with her system, but in her depen- 
 dencies in the farthest east. The fallen cities of Syria, the 
 wonderful remains of Palmyra and Baalbec, still tell in their 
 most splendid monuments, not of their own ancient rulers, but 
 of the undying power of the mighty city of the west. The 
 palaces of Solomon and Benhadad have vanished, but the works 
 
 1 With this we may class the has a miniature circular peristyle, 
 
 monument at St. ltemi, figured by really open, and not, like the Athe- 
 
 Mr. Petit, a gem even prettier than nian example, engaged, 
 that of Lysicrates, as the upper part
 
 144 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of the C.xsars still remain, rivalling in extent and magnificence 
 the proudest fabrics of their own imperial home. Everywhere 
 that the Roman power was established, from the shores of the 
 ocean to the banks of the Euphrates, we shall find the same 
 spirit impressed upon its gigantic works ; the same sumptuous 
 gorgeousness, regardless of cost and labour, and we must add, 
 the same incapacity for grasping the highest beauty. 
 
 Of these remains by far the most interesting, as exhibiting 
 the phases taken by the style when applied to an unwonted mode 
 of construction, are the wonderful excavations at Peti"a. They 
 are not indeed exclusively Roman, their architecture being in many 
 cases, like that of the Grecian structures in Asia Minor, inter- 
 mingled with oriental ideas. Thus we find many deviations from 
 the established forms of the west in the proportions and enrich- 
 ments of columns and entablature, especially several species 
 of capitals which cannot be referred to any of the regular orders. 
 Indeed M. Leon de Laborde states that those monuments are 
 " far the most numerous, which do not owe their origin to the 
 domination or the taste of the Romans." 1 Some on the other 
 hand, including the most magnificent of all, called the Khasne, 
 are undoubtedly Roman, and there are several points of resem- 
 blance between these and the native structures. In all we see, 
 as in the Persian excavations, a style applied to a purpose for 
 which it was not originally intended, and which consequently 
 evaporated in flat, though gorgeous, external decoration ; utterly 
 opposed to the free and bold treatment of the Egyptian and 
 Indian excavations. There is but little beyond a superficial 
 imitation of the forms of constructed buildings; facades of the 
 greatest magnificence being carved in an unmeaning manner upon 
 the surface of the rocks. There is a great tendency to pile 
 order upon order, and thus to accumulate almost innumerable 
 rows of columns and pilasters, often intersected by strongly 
 
 1 Page 164. The author does not Some of the buildings which are 
 distinctly state whether he looks on otherwise decidedly Roman, exhibit 
 these monuments as being actually nondescript columns, and, even 
 anterior in point of time to the Ro- when the classical orders are em- 
 man domination, or as simply re- ployed, they are frequently shorn of 
 taining an elder style. In some cases their full proportions, 
 there is a palpable intermingling.
 
 OF THE CLASSICAL OR TRANSITIONAL ROMAN. 145 
 
 marked entablatures and other horizontal lines. These produce 
 an effect very much resembling cinque-cento, a style of which we 
 have already seen somewhat analogous foreshadowings among 
 the remains of Lycia and Hindostan. 
 
 But even the most distinctively Roman works at Petra exhibit 
 the inherent faults of the style as fully as those by the banks 
 of the Tiber. Broken and projecting entablatures, useless 
 columns, porticoes cut in halfj and all the other perversities of 
 the Roman mind, appear in full force. An engaged representa- 
 tion of the Choragic monument of Lysicrates, or something 
 similar, appears to be a favourite ornament. It appears in the 
 Khasne, over the great portico which forms the entrance to the 
 excavation, with a second half portico on each side of it. 
 
 After all, for the really grandest monuments of Roman art, 
 we must turn to those structures whose style most nearly 
 approaches to the naked arched construction, where the Grecian 
 features are cast away, or made entirely secondary. In the' ex- 
 terior of amphitheatres the importance of the Grecian members 
 is very small, the arches are decidedly the main features, the 
 columns and entablatures being quite secondary. This is to a 
 certain extent the case with the great Colosseum itself, and 
 much more with the provincial structures at Aries and Nismes; 
 Flat Tuscan or Doric pilasters very soon sink into the pilas- 
 ter-buttress of the Romanesque. In the lower stage of the 
 amphitheatre of Nismes this is decidedly the idea which they 
 present ; at Bourdeaux the courses of masonry in the wall are 
 carried through the pilasters, which consequently lose all separate 
 existence, and are no longer columns in any sense, but mere 
 projections from the wall, buttresses with quasi-capitals. From 
 this the transition to the genuine pilaster-buttress is easy, and 
 we sec it without any capital, and with all trace of classical 
 proportion vanished, in the palace of Constantine at Treves. 
 / From these examples we easily come back to the most truly 
 Roman of all structures, their aqueducts. Here we have no 
 Grecian members at all, but arches supported by square piers. 1 
 
 1 Architecture nowhere presents the sublime arcades, and the cas- 
 a more striking contrast than in tellum,* assuming the form of a 
 the aqueduct at Evora, between circular temple. 
 * See Diet, of Ant., Art. Aqweductus. 
 L
 
 146 HISTORY OF AIICHITECTURE. 
 
 Sometimes, as in that at Luynes, these are of an extravagant 
 height, which is avoided in the noble Pont du Gard, by raising 
 tier upon tier, In the words of Mr. Petit, 1 "as in Roman 
 buildings the Grecian members of the system often took the 
 character of mere ornament, the arch with its piers and imposts 
 constituted the real framework of the fabric ; so when strength 
 and solidity alone were required, the Grecian members altoge- 
 ther vanished, and a pure system of arches was retained." These 
 instances are certainly to be regarded as examples of a pure 
 and perfect style of architecture, and are among the most suc- 
 cessful developments of the great idea of that style. Construc- 
 tively they present no deficiency ; every mechanical feature stands 
 forth complete and undisguised. What is wanting in Roman 
 architecture is an appropriate system oFclecoration. This was not 
 needed for a bridge or an aqueduct; consequently in such erections 
 the style is left to develop itself naturally. In its ornamental 
 structures the enrichment is not part of the natural architecture : 
 wherever this latter is preserved, it is only by the absence of all 
 ornament. Under whose hands, and by what process, the 
 Roman construction was provided with such an appropriate 
 system of decoration, must be the subject of our next investi- 
 gations. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ORIGIN OP ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Thus far have we traced the history of architecture through the 
 different ages and nations of what is commonly known as the 
 ancient world ; the old world of heathendom in all its countless 
 forms, from the dark mysteries of Egypt, to the sunny bright- 
 ness of Greece ; from the low and grovelling idolatry that bowed 
 before an ape or an onion, to the soul of art and poetry that 
 kindled the glittering splendours of Olympus ; from the dim 
 and awful vastness of the shrines of an Apis or an Anubis, to 
 the living grace that befitted the pure Apollo and the Athenian 
 
 1 1.47.
 
 ORIGIN OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 147 
 
 Maid. We have also seen how conquered Greece led captive her 
 conquerors : how, while the Pnyx no longer echoed to the voice 
 of Pericles, and the groves of Colonus were no longer vocal with 
 the song of Sophocles, the spirit of Homer and Callicrates had 
 found an empire in the land of their bondage, in the forum of Ro- 
 mulus, and by the banks of the yellow Tiber. "We have seen too 
 how little kindred was the soil on which they had lighted ; how the 
 grace and buoyancy of the Greek proved but an incongruous garb 
 for the stern greatness of Roman energy ; how his poetry was but 
 the feeble echo of the harp of Chios and the lute of Lesbos, his 
 architecture a vain attempt to bring the massive piers and pon- 
 derous vaults of his own land into harmony with the tall columns 
 of the matchless shrines he vainly sought to imitate. The beau- 
 tiful forms of Grecian art were a mere yoke, which kept the 
 genuine spirit of Roman building from its legitimate expression. 
 It is, as we have seen, in the buildings least affected by it that 
 the real Roman construction, the pier and the round arch, comes 
 out in all its purity and majesty, and it was by these elements, 
 more than by the Grecian system unnaturally united to them, 
 that Rome has exercised so wide and lasting an influence upon 
 the architecture of the whole civilized world. 
 
 But it was not the old Rome of Pontiffs and Augurs, of Con- 
 suls and Emperors, that was to mould the arts of Teutonic 
 Christendom. Before she could influence the race on whom the 
 spirit of the Church was to take the firmest hold, she had her- 
 self to bend before the Cross. The greatness of Rome is indeed 
 exclusively heathen; the adherents of the old pagan creed might 
 truly say, that when the altars of Victory ceased to smoke on 
 the Capitol, she herself ceased to wait on the imperial eagles ; 
 the existence of the Eternal City seemed bound up in the worship 
 of the Gods to whom the Tarquins had bowed, and under whose 
 auspices Camillus and Scipio had marched forth to conquest. 
 Emperors might preside in the Councils of the Church ; holy 
 Fathers might exhort the successors of Augustus in the tongue of 
 Cicero; bishops, and monks, and virgins might adorn their pro- 
 fession with every virtue that could grace the Christian name ; 
 no victim throughout the Roman world might bleed on an idol 
 altar ; but the life of the nation, its history, its greatness was still 
 heathen ; its Christianity was but the precursor of its fall. It 
 
 l2
 
 148 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 endured but to pass the torch of truth to a race springing into 
 life with all the fervency of youthful vigour, whose greatness 
 might be cradled in the lap of the Church, and during its his- 
 toric being have known no other faith. This was the work of 
 Christian Home, to lay the foundation among another people of 
 a truly Christian commonwealth ; and, this its work accom- 
 plished, it passed away. Constantine and Theodosius might be 
 Kings and Christians ; it was reserved for Charlemagne and St. 
 Louis to be truly Christian Kings. 
 
 And so too in art; Christian Rome gave only the faint 
 foreshadowing of a style, which herself had not vigour to bring 
 to perfection ; a germ which other nations developed into its full 
 glory. The long arcades of her basilicas contained an element 
 which other lands wrought into all the splendours of Spires and 
 Peterborough, we may add even of the tall aisles of Westmin- 
 ster, and the peerless nave of Canterbury ; but on the soil where 
 they first arose the germ was lifeless and unexpansive ; her own 
 noblest piles are but the tribute which Teutonic or Byzantine 
 art paid back to the land of their birth ; while Rome herself, 
 amid the glories that others had built on her foundation, was 
 like the beacon that points out the path which itself may never 
 tread ; like her own poet, whose profession was, 
 
 . . . fungar vice cotis, acutum 
 Reddere qua? ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi. 
 
 We have already seen that the classical Roman style is a 
 mere transition, an inconsistent jumble of contrary principles. 
 The first dawnings of better things are to be looked for in 
 times on which the classical purist looks down with unmiti- 
 gated contempt. The architects who, in the later days of the 
 empire, cast aside the useless entablature altogether, brought 
 the arch forward into notice, and made it and its pier whether 
 a square mass of wall or a Corinthian column, it matters not, 
 the chief features of the building in appearance as well as in 
 reality, were those who gave to Roman architecture its first ap- 
 proach to a consistent form. It may be true that the art of 
 detail was then miserably debased, or rather lost, that the sculp- 
 tures of one building were often actually removed to ornament
 
 ORIGIN Or ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 149 
 
 new ones ; still the building itself was constructed on a rational 
 and consistent principle. 
 
 But the style was as yet far from being brought to perfection ; 
 a reluctance still existed utterly to forsake the beautiful forms of 
 Grecian art, incongruous as they were with the principles of 
 Roman building. As long as anything like a lloman empire 
 lasted, and even still later, the influence of Grecian skill 
 yet lingered ; the buildings of Home itself never quite cast it 
 off; it is to the Romanesque styles that we are to look for the 
 perfect development of the round-arched form of architecture. 
 Thrown back as were the arts by the incursions of the Northern 
 tribes, fallen as may have been the minutiae of detail, the ele- 
 gancies of sculpture and painting, yet most certainly the true 
 principles of architecture, superior to any such minuter conside- 
 rations, revived after a season under the hands of the northern 
 builders ; and the Romanesque style, under the different forms 
 which it assumed in different lands, was developed into its full 
 excellence in the majestic piles which bear witness to the skill 
 and munificence of the builders of the eleventh and twelfth cen- 
 turies. Beautiful as were many of the churches already pro- 
 duced in Italy by the Lombard builders, they were far surpassed 
 by those of Rhenish Germany ; and I apprehend we must go on 
 still farther, and that it is in our own Norman structures that 
 we are to look for the perfection of the round-arched style; the 
 piers and arches stand forward boldly as the main features, and 
 a system of ornament is introduced which, whatever be its ori- 
 gin, and whatever opinion may be held as to the beauty of its 
 individual parts, must be allowed to harmonize well with the 
 forms of the building, and to add greatly to its general effect. 
 
 Such is a rapid sketch of the progress of the Roman or round- 
 arched style from the time when its legitimate system of orna- 
 ment supplanted the incongruous combination of arch and 
 entablature, to that when it had itself to yield in turn to the 
 pointed arch and the ornamental forms adapted to that construc- 
 tion. We shall, in subsequent chapters, trace out at greater 
 length the various and, as they have been well called, Protean 
 forms, which architecture assumed during this most important 
 period. The greater part of its duration extends through a 
 period too commonly neglected as a mere chaos of darkness
 
 150 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and barbarism ; but it was a darkness out of which a self- 
 born light was soon to arise, a healthy, vigorous barbarism 
 containing the latent seed of civilization. Wherever the two 
 races are brought into contact with each other, the stern and 
 hardy virtues of the Northern conquerors bespeak a far higher 
 standard, physical, intellectual, and moral, than the worn out 
 and enervated system of Home could supply. It was a con- 
 tused mass indeed, not however of dead matter, but of living 
 and moving germs ready to rise into full being at the first 
 touch of creative power. As from the primeval chaos the light, 
 and life, and order of the universe gradually arose, so the poli- 
 tical and religious institutions of the Teutonic race, the mighty 
 fabric of mediaeval Christendom, the manners, government, and 
 languages of modern days, sprung from the inborn vigour of 
 these times of noble barbarism. So too in their palaces and 
 temples, the style which Home had just vigour enough to free 
 from absurdities, but not to bring to real perfection, was seized 
 by the plastic hand of the Northman, and soon gained in real 
 grandeur and majesty, in true artistic and religious feeling, far 
 more than it lost by casting to the winds the pedantic precepts 
 of an effete and incongruous system. 
 
 But though we must boldly challenge the perfection of the 
 Roman style as belonging to the buildings of England, France, 
 and Germany, rather than to those of its parent Italy, it must not 
 be concealed that even in Rome itself, the light of Christianity 
 kindled anew for a moment the embers of its decaying greatness. 
 \Vhen the lord of the lloman world bowed beneath the crozier of 
 St. Ambrose, a nobler example of moral dignity was shown than 
 the mightiest deeds of Manlius or Fabius could boast ; so when 
 once the breath of truth had touched the falling pile, the rude 
 structures of a decaying and degraded style of art gained from 
 the holy inspiration a truer beauty than had adorned even the 
 proudest works of heathendom. " The early basilicas, generally 
 little more than a patchwork of odd fragments, agreeing neither 
 in material, colour, substance, form, proportion, nor workman- 
 ship, eked out next to that which was most elegant by that 
 which was most rude they yet, through the simplicity of the 
 general form, and the consistency of the general distribution, 
 display a grandeur produced neither by the last architecture of
 
 OF BASILICAN ARCHITECTURE. 151 
 
 Pagan Rome, after it had, in that architecture, dismissed all its 
 Grecian consistency ; nor, above all, by what has been called the 
 later restoration of that architecture, loaded with all the addi- 
 tional extravagance of modern Italy." 1 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF BASILICAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 In tracing the several transmutations of the round-arched style, 
 we can at once class them under two great divisions, according to 
 a very important difference in their decorative construction, 
 namely the form assumed by the pier 2 on which the arch is sup- 
 ported. This may either be a mere mass of wall, whether left 
 square or otherwise decorated, or a real pillar, whether actually 
 assignable to one of the classical orders or not. The two forms 
 will be often found co-existing in the same age and country, but 
 their origin is quite distinct. The first is the natural and legiti- 
 mate treatment of the arch, and best harmonizes with the solidity 
 and sturdiness of a round-arched style; the other is adopted 
 from the Grecian system, and we shall consequently find that it 
 is only under great modifications that it becomes really imbued 
 witli the spirit of the style. Yet, as the piers and arches of the 
 less ornate Roman structures had received but little change from 
 the imitation of Grecian forms, it is to columnar architecture 
 that we must look for the most instructive lessons in the process 
 by which those forms were gradually cast aside. 
 
 It is to an edifice which to the mere classical eye is simply the 
 work of a degenerate age, and a thoroughly debased style of art, 
 that the historian of architecture must look for the earliest ex- 
 isting specimen of the legitimate combination of the column 
 and the round arch. The architecture of Diocletian's Palace at 
 
 1 Hope on Architecture, p. 112. which "column" is a subordinate 
 
 2 I use this term as one of con- variety, namely a pillar belonging 
 struction, to express any support or approximating to one of the Gre- 
 for an arch ; that of " pillar " to ex- cian orders. 
 
 press one of its decorative forms, of
 
 152 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Spalatro cannot be called faultless, or even good ; but it is, on 
 the whole, consistent and intelligible, and has in many parts 
 worked itself entirely clear of absurdities. In almost all its ar- 
 cades, the arch and its column arc the prominent feature ; the 
 arch springs boldly from the capital ; the entablature has nearly 
 vanished ; a mere cornice over the arcade, channelled with its 
 members, is quite harmless. The arches too are channelled with 
 architrave mouldings, which are of course incongruous ; the 
 forms which suit the horizontal entablature cannot in such a po- 
 sition display their peculiar beauty, and become meagre and 
 unmeaning. Still the circumstance is valuable ; it shows how 
 fully the architect had grasped the great fact that the arch must 
 be to the new style what the entablature had been to the old ; that 
 the arch is a curved entablature, the entablature a straight arch ; 
 as the arch had not yet worked out a system of decoration of its 
 own, he naturally enough transferred to it the decorations of the 
 entablature. 
 
 The general style of this building does not differ materially 
 from that of the early basilicas. The mention of these buildings 
 at once brings before us the first triumphs of our religion, the 
 days when the powers of the world first bowed before the Cross. 
 It was not merely that one religious system displaced another ; 
 it was not the temple of idols that became the Temple of the 
 True God ; but the hall of the imperial palace, the throne of this 
 world's power, the judgment-seat of Caesar, that became the 
 shrine of His worship Who at that judgment-seat had been con- 
 demned. There, in the very tribune where the proud heathen had 
 so often sat to deliver over the patient martyr to the sword or to 
 the lions, was upreared the altar where the holy gifts were offered 
 over that martyr's relics. Foreshadowing, indeed, of the days 
 when the Church should lead captive every earthly power, when 
 Kings and Caesars received from her their crowns, and the sword 
 of the earthly warrior was blessed at her altars and bared for the 
 ransom of the Holy Tomb. The lordliest pile that Christians 
 ever reared could not raise such a throb of triumphant gratitude 
 as when the Church first entered upon the treasures of vanquished 
 heathendom ; when the might, the learning, the art of the Pagan 
 world became her servants to .do her will, and the halls of her 
 oppressors were sanctified by her holiest worship. It is this
 
 OF BASILICAN ARCHITECTURE. 153 
 
 spoiling of the adversary, this entering into other men's labours, 
 that makes Cologne and Ely names less dear to Christendom 
 than the first fruits of its triumph in the palace of the Lateran, or 
 than those more glorious spoils of Gothic victories, than proud 
 Seville with her " tower of giants old," or the wondrous " forest " 
 of innumerable pillars in the rescued mosque of Cordova. 
 
 " It was a fearful joy, I ween, 
 To trace the heathen's toil, 
 The limpid wells, the orchards green 
 Left ready for the spoil, 
 The household stores untouched, the roses bright 
 Wreathed o'er the cottage walls in garlands of delight." 1 
 
 And as with the fabric itself, so with the style wherein it was 
 reared ; as long as Imperial Home was in moral influence the 
 ruling centre of Christendom a period extending very long- 
 after the days when Herulan, and Goth, and Lombard had swept 
 away her political power ; as long as the aspect of Christendom 
 was that of a triumphant conqueror enthroned in the dwellings 
 of a vanquished foe, so long was it natural that Christian 
 builders should cling to the very forms and details that told of 
 the conquered Paynim. 
 
 " The olive wreath, the ivied wand, 
 ' The sword in myrtles drest,' 
 Each legend of the shadowy strand, 
 Now wakes a vision blest." 
 
 The grace of the curling volute, the richness of the acanthus- 
 leaf, which once had decked the shrines of idols, now uplifted 
 the canopy that overshadowed the altar of the Most High. 
 The very symbols of the fallen worship received a holier mean- 
 ing ; 2 the sculptured harvest and vintage now told not of Eleu- 
 sinian mysteries and Bacchanalian revelry, but of the bloodless 
 sacrifice to which the cornfield and the vineyard supplied the 
 pure oblation. The beasts of the forest charmed by the min- 
 strel's lyre, the Thunderer's eagle bending in homage to the 
 soothing power of song, told no longer of Phoebus, of the Muse, 
 or of their Thracian son; but of Him of Whom the "pure 
 
 1 Christian Year. Sec Hope, chap. xvi.
 
 154 HISTORY OP ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 God " may without irreverence be deemed a dim foreshadowing, 
 "Whose power can curb the wild passions and bend the savage 
 will, and in "Whose kingdom "the wolf shall dwell with the 
 lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid." 
 
 Not shame then should we deem it, but the glory of the 
 Church, that she bends to her will every feeling, and art, and 
 institution that human power may devise ; that the triple splen- 
 dours of her long-drawn nave and aisles, the branching tran- 
 septs, the mighty apse canopying the gorgeous altar, are but the 
 spoils of her enemies ; that each and all are but developed be- 
 neath her living breath from the colonnades, chalcidica, and tri- 
 bune of the heathen hall of judgment. 
 
 At Rome, during the reigns of Constantine and his immediate 
 successors, Christianity was indeed the religion of the sovereign, 
 and had all the weight of royal influence and example, but it 
 was as yet only his personal religion, supportedby his personal in- 
 fluence, and could not be in any sense considered as an established 
 or national worship. Victims still bled to the gods of heathen- 
 dom, and Christian Emperors scrupled not to wear the insignia 
 of the high pontiffs of the old religion. When, therefore, Con- 
 stantine first looked around his capital for edifices to consecrate 
 to his new faith, the temples of the still prevalent idolatry could 
 not, for this reason alone, that they were still frequented by their 
 former worshippers, be the structures assigned for that purpose. 
 But reasons of deeper import would have prevented a gene- 
 ral metamorphosis of heathen temples into churches. Pagan 
 worship did not seek to throng the interior of its holy places 
 with adoring crowds ; their position was within the sacred pre- 
 cinct indeed, but only within its courts, or beneath its spacious 
 porticoes. Hence it was without that its splendours were dis- 
 played, the rich extended facade is all that the heathen shrine 
 can boast ; the actual temple itself, pent in by four blank walls, 
 was of small extent, dark or hyprethral, and accessible to the 
 priesthood alone. But the very essence of Christian worship 
 requires, as a general rule, the presence of the worshippers within 
 the temple ; it is inside that all the holiest things are placed, 
 and here accordingly the full glories of its architecture are deve- 
 loped. The outside is but the shell and husk of the material 
 symbol of her " who is all glorious within ;" the tower is but
 
 OF BASILICAN ARCHITECTURE. 155 
 
 the guiding landmark, the west front the mere portal, to the 
 glorious vista of pillar, arch, and vault, leading gradually onward 
 to the crowning point of all, the altar. Hence the basilica 
 offered far greater facilities for conversion to ecclesiastical uses 
 than could be found in any idolatrous temple. It already pos- 
 sessed the long nave separated by arcades from its smaller aisles, 
 sometimes a single one, sometimes two on either side ; in some 
 cases a kind of transept, called chalcidica, crossed them at one 
 end ; in most cases the central avenue was terminated by a se- 
 micircular apse, which in those which were still employed as 
 courts of justice, (for some had been applied to mercantile uses,) 
 contained the seat of the presiding magistrate. In all this it is 
 plain that we have the complete type of a Christian Church ; 
 " the transept," says Mr. Hope, " already in heathen times 
 seeming, by its disposition with regard to the nave, to have fore- 
 told the future triumph of the cross." 1 The necessary arrange- 
 ments for Christian worship were readily made ; the altar was 
 placed at the end of the nave, on the chord of the apse ; the 
 Bishop's throne behind it took the place of that of the judge, 
 while the subordinate seats of the presbytery were ranged on 
 either side of him along the walls of the semicircle. The choir for 
 the inferior ministers, not marked in the construction, was formed 
 in the nave by screening off a sufficient space in front of the 
 altar ; while the long nave and aisles accommodated the congre- 
 gation, the lateral division maintaining the requisite separation 
 of the sexes. 
 
 To the west end to use the most familiar nomenclature, for 
 of course the basilicas of heathen construction pointed divers 
 ways, and orientation, 2 in our sense, was not the universal rule 
 of the Church till a later period was attached a portico. This 
 in Christian churches was the place for catechumens and peni- 
 tents, and as the place of discipline, was called the narthex, that 
 is scourge or ferule. This seems to have soon developed into a 
 cortile, or cloister, an open square surrounded by pillars, which 
 is found in many early churches. 
 
 The two basilicas converted into churches by Constantine, and 
 
 1 Page 89. cussed at some length in Webb's 
 
 2 See this curious question dis- Continental Ecclesiology, p. 480.
 
 156 HISTORY OE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the churches which lie erected at Home ou the same type, and 
 bearing the same name, were soon demolished. The series of 
 existing basilican churches in Italy extends from the reign of 
 Theodosius to the Lombard invasion ; in some instances they are 
 found even of later date. Home itself never fully adopted the 
 Lombard style, but constantly adhered with more or less success 
 to her classical models. So late as 1139, 1 we find in the church 
 of St. Mary in Trastavere, at Home, built by Pope Innocent II., 
 an actual return to all the absurdities of the combined arch 
 and entablature. We see here the colonnade of a Grecian tem- 
 ple transferred to the interior of a church, only to show how 
 utterly inappropriate it is in such a position ; and, after all, the 
 entablature is a mere pretence, as a row of low segmental brick 
 arches peeps out through the frieze. And even in other parts of 
 Italy we find many churches adhering to the old tradition, in spite 
 of all the splendid innovations of the northern builders. St. Mi- 
 niato 2 near Florence, (1013,) St. Nicolas at Bari in Apulia, (1103,) 
 and the very beautiful church of St. Mary at Toscanella, (1216,) 
 are all rather Basilican than pure Romanesque. They deviate in 
 many respects from the purity of the elder basilicas, but still they 
 completely belong to them ill spirit, and stand totally distinct 
 both from the more fully developed Romanesque of Northern Italy, 
 and from the revived Italian of later days. It is the old classical 
 and imperial feeling surviving after the lapse of so many ages 
 and so many revolutions in art, politics, and religion. 
 
 Even out of Italy strong traces of basilican influence are often 
 to be found. The student of ecclesiology will recognize its in- 
 fluence in the ritual arrangements 3 of many Cathedral and Con- 
 ventual Churches ; while the architectural inquirer will readily 
 perceive its traces in not a few scattered edifices of early Roman- 
 esque date. Indeed even the Norman of not a few of our own 
 smaller churches is in many respects a return to it. The cele- 
 brated Church of St. Peter at Northampton, did it but termi- 
 nate in an apse which may probably have been the case at first, 
 
 1 So Mr. Knight. Mr. Webb much altered since as to plan and 
 
 (Continental Ecclesiology, p. 530,) shell." 
 
 says, "This very ancient basilica was 2 See Webb, p. 346. 
 
 rebuilt by St. Gregory III., between :! See the " Ecclesiologist," Vol. 
 
 731 and 741, and has not been V., p. 137.
 
 OF BASILICAN ARCHITECTURE. 157 
 
 as its east end has been long destroyed presents in its long co- 
 lonnades of slender pillars a plan and idea completely basilican, 
 though its details are of course of a quite different and much 
 later character. 
 
 But omitting these later structures, and confining ourselves 
 to those Italian churches which have the best claim to the title 
 of basilicas, we shall find that among an immense variety of de- 
 tail, their essential features correspond most remarkably to one 
 unvarying type. The plan and arrangement of the Christian 
 basilica remained identical with that of its heathen predecessor ; 
 little or no change was introduced in architecture, that art 
 being naturally far less open than painting and sculpture to in- 
 novations directly originating in the new faith. The exterior 
 of these primitive churches has little to attract, not one of the 
 features which give majesty or elegance to the external out- 
 lines of other styles being allowed by the basilican type. The 
 spreading dome of the Byzantine, and the soaring spire of the 
 Gothic minster are alike unknown ; instead of the wonder- 
 ful groupings of the Rhenish churches, we have nothing but 
 a long dead wall, unbroken by porch or buttress,, by cupola 
 or tower; for the tall campanile of later Italy was not yet. 
 "The walls," says Mr. Gaily Knight, (p. iii.) "were sub- 
 stantially built of thin bricks, mostly put together with little 
 cement, but they were left perfectly plain. The only attempt 
 at external ornament was a low portico, which did not 
 ascend above half the height of the front. Above this portico 
 there were usually three long, round-headed, undivided windows, 
 symmetrically arranged, and, above these, a round window in 
 the pediment/' Yet it is clear that in this arrangement we mav 
 find the rude element which was afterwards developed into the 
 richest fronts. " Windows," he continues, " of the same kind 
 were introduced on either side of the church, immediately under 
 the eaves, and if they added little to the appearance of the 
 building, they admitted abundance of light. The portals, like 
 those of the classical models in their neighbourhood, were uni- 
 formly square-headed, and were often enriched with sculptured 
 architraves taken from earlier buildings." 
 
 Such were the external features of an ancient basilica; rude, 
 mean, and unornamentcd, but still honest and consistent. In
 
 158 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the above description we read of nothing paltry or deceptive ; 
 no sham facades or unmeaning columns. Its own system of 
 decoration not being as yet developed, the new style at all events 
 scorned an incongruous borrowing from the old, and exhibited 
 its own constructive features in a garb of simple reality, on 
 which after ages might superinduce an appropriate form of 
 decoration. 
 
 Within, however, the new form of building possessed much 
 greater capabilities ; the long rows of columns are always strik- 
 ing, and often really beautiful. They were generally taken from 
 the numerous buildings of heathen Rome, which by the triumph 
 of the new faith were rendered useless. Being of different sizes 
 and orders, they were shortened, stilted on pedestals, or other- 
 wise by Procrustean violence brought to the requisite height ; 
 and their bases and capitals were frequently replaced by others 
 in the debased style of the times. Still however the classical 
 models and proportions are always aimed at, and more or less 
 successfully followed. 
 
 The original form of the heathen basilica was an " insulated 
 portico," 1 with a peristyle, and remained open to the air. The 
 columns of course supported a continuous entablature : and over 
 them was a second similar tier, as appears from the representa- 
 tion on a medal pf Lepidus, of the iEmilian Basilica. Subse- 
 quently a wall was substituted for the peristyle, and the use of 
 columns was confined to the interior ; when they still supported 
 an entablature. In this form it came under the influence of 
 Christian requirements, as is shown in the Church of the Nativity 
 at Bethlehem erected by Constantine at the request of his 
 mother, St. Helena. But the employment of the entablature 
 was not likely to be of long continuance, while the arch offered 
 so much greater advantages. Besides its direct constructive 
 advantages, it would diminish the requisite number of columns, 
 and consequently present a less impervious barrier between 
 the nave and its aisles. Hence in the Christian basilicas of 
 Italy the columns support round arches ; and the construction 
 is treated with infinitely greater good taste than in most 
 churches of the "Revival." The arches retain the purity of 
 
 1 Diet, of Ant., Art. Basilica.
 
 OP BASILICAN ARCHITECTURE. 159 
 
 their continuous sweep, unbroken by the fantastic and sense- 
 less key-stone; and rest, simply and naturally, on the capi- 
 tals of the pillars ; the thousand shifts by which modern archi- 
 tects endeavour to thrust in an entablature are altogether 
 dispensed with. A few mouldings occasionally found above the 
 regular capital hardly contradict the above general rule, and 
 amount only to a heavier abacus. The arches are of one order, 
 channelled generally with but few and not very decided mould- 
 ings ; the square section being retained, and ornament found in 
 surface carving or colour. The soffits also are frequently panelled 
 or painted. 
 
 Above the arcades the wall rises to a considerable height ; the 
 gallery, though occasionally introduced, is more frequently ab- 
 sent, and the space immediately above, answering to the triforium 
 of later churches, is not pierced. It most commonly has a kind 
 of entablature running along it, but not so marked as to inter- 
 fere with the due prominence of the arcade. Its frieze is often 
 superbly decorated with painting and sculpture ; the compart- 
 ments of which are sometimes divided by flat pilasters. The 
 clerestory consists of round-headed windows simply pierced 
 where they are wanted ; in some cases, as in the later styles, 
 two are grouped under a single arch. 
 
 A wall of any height supported by columns of classical pro- 
 portions could hardly be of thickness sufficient to sustain a vault; 
 hence that most beautiful and appropriate covering for a church 
 does not appear in the ancient basilica, except in the conch of 
 the apse, which could hardly be otherwise treated. " In the 
 churches built by Constantino, and some other of the earlier 
 churches, the beams and rafters were concealed by a flat ceiling 
 of gilt panels. This however was soon discontinued, and the 
 wooden roofs of ancient churches, neither concealed nor carved, 
 as are the roofs of buildings in the Pointed style, became, and 
 for long continued, an unsightly part of the fabric." So Mr. 
 Gaily Knight ; and nothing certainly can better answer the de- 
 scription than the bare low-pitched rafters and tie-beams of even 
 the most magnificent basilicas figured in Lis splendid work. 
 
 The apse is naturally entered by an arch, a feature eagerly seized 
 upon for decoration, under the name of the Arch of Triumph; 
 in transeptal churches two such, like tin" nave and chancel arches
 
 1G0 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of our own lanterns, arc necessarily introduced. The apse is 
 generally enriched with every kind of decoration that the acces- 
 sory arts can supply, and is often surrounded by pilasters. The 
 altar, on its chord, is surmounted by a tall canopy on four pillars, 
 known as the ciborium. 
 
 The pride of basilican architecture is doubtless the glorious 
 Church 1 of St. Paul without the walls of Rome, the work of the 
 fifth century. Its unbroken rows of columns rival in length our 
 vastest Cathedral naves, with the additional splendour and spaci- 
 ousness of the double aisles. The immense number of the pil- 
 lars, and the consequent small span of the arches, produce a degree 
 of richness unsurpassable, and which perfectly disarms all criti- 
 cism. Perhaps, however, it might almost seem to be the work 
 of an architect whose thoughts were hardly weaned from the old 
 construction, and who did not wholly realize the capabilities of the 
 arch. And this circumstance is the more remarkable, as the 
 later Italian churches are in so many instances distinguished by 
 the disproportionately wide span of their pier-arches. 
 
 On a general review of Basilican architecture we shall find that 
 it contains all the main elements, both ritual and architectural, of 
 the most perfect Gothic Minster. All the essential parts of a church 
 nave, choir, sacrarium are as clearly found in the Basilica of 
 St. Clement at Rome as in the Abbey of St. Peter at Westmin- 
 ster. Architecturally too, w T e have the complete elevation of pier- 
 arch, triforium, and clerestory. What then is wanting ? w r hat 
 so widely distinguishes these early buildings from our own 
 Gothic, or even Romanesque, churches ? Simply that these 
 essential parts do indeed exist, but in a mere lifeless juxtaposi- 
 tion ; they are connected physically, but not artistically ; there is 
 no attempt to combine them into an harmonious whole. The 
 triforial entablature surmounts the arcade, is itself surmounted 
 by the clerestory, and the whole by the roof, simply because each 
 of these was required by the necessities of the building ; but they 
 are in no degree fused together ; all are independent, and might 
 be conceived apart. The division is purely horizontal; a bay of 
 a basilica is a thing which cannot be imagined. Size, splendour, 
 
 1 This magnificent church was unsatisfactory manner. See Webb, 
 nearly destroyed by fire in 1823, p. 53S; Pictorial Hist, of Eng. i. 
 and is now being rebuilt in a most 311.
 
 EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. 161 
 
 even proportion, may make basilican architecture pleasing to the 
 eye, and no other style has associations which can speak so 
 powerfully to the heart ; but the living soul of art is wanting. 
 It has freed itself from the absurdities and inconsistencies of 
 heathen Rome, and has become constructively honest, simple, and 
 natural. This was indeed no mean step in the right direction, 
 but it was all that Rome could effect ; combination, harmony, 
 and unity were to come from another source. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF OTHER EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. 
 
 The Basilica so soon worked out for itself a completely distinct 
 type that its name may be legitimately given to a style of archi- 
 tecture. Basilicas however were not the only ecclesiastical build- 
 ings erected in Italy during the prevalence of that style ; and 
 upon secular erections its influence seems to have been compa- 
 ratively trifling. In some buildings of this kind we find the 
 style more advanced, in others less so, than in the basilican 
 churches. 
 
 The oblong and the cross, in their several varieties, have been 
 in all ages the ordinary forms of churches ; some however, at all 
 times, have been circular. Such was the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre at Jerusalem, erected by St. Helena; and such has 
 been in most ages the form of a few occasional erections, having 
 by dedication or otherwise, an especial connection with that 
 sacred spot, or "directly intended for sepulchral chapels." 1 
 
 The round and polygonal forms are closely connected, so much 
 so that the clerestory of a round church sometimes becomes oc- 
 tagonal without greatly altering the general effect ; and we shall 
 soon see how the two shapes run into each other in the case of an 
 almost identical feature, the dome. We may therefore class to- 
 gether the round sepulchral chapel and the polygonal baptistery. 
 
 The last was in the early ages of the Church a distinct build- 
 ing in which the baptismal service was performed, and many 
 
 1 Hope. 
 M
 
 \(Y2 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Bplendid examples of such structures of all dates still remain in 
 Italy. In more northern countries this practice does not seem 
 to have been at any time very prevalent. 
 
 Anions: circular Christian buildings the precedence is due to 
 what is now the Church of St. Constantia at Rome, 1 originally 
 erected by the Emperor Constantine as a baptistery, but employed 
 as a sepulchral chapel for his daughter. Its architecture is by 
 no means so advanced as that of the basilicas, the absurdities 
 of the classical Roman being retained in full force. The piers are 
 each formed of two detached Composite columns placed in the 
 direction of the radii of the circle, and supporting an entabla- 
 ture, from which rise the arches, which, being absurdly stilted and 
 cut off from their supports, have a painful appearance of inse- 
 curity. Above is a range of clerestory windows; the roof is 
 domical within, with an external cone ; the aisles arc vaulted. 
 It is hardly necessary to remark the exact correspondence be- 
 tween this building and our own round churches. 
 
 The building at Rome usually known as the baptistery of 
 Constantine, but attributed by Mr. Gaily Knight and Mr. Webb 
 to the Pontificate of Sixtus III., who died in 440, is of a character 
 still more classical; eight porphyry columns of the Ionic order 
 divide the inner octagon from the surrounding aisle, and 
 support an entablature without any arches. Above these is now 
 another smaller tier supporting the dome and the flat ceilings 
 of the aisles ; but these are supposed by Mr. Knight to be an 
 addition of the time of Pope Anastasius III., who is recorded to 
 have raised the walls and added a new roof, in the year 1153. 
 
 To these we may add a building slightly analogous and equally 
 classical in design, the circular mausoleum of the great Theo- 
 doric, near Ravenna, now also a church ; 2 it is famous for that 
 wonder of mechanical skill, its monolith dome. 
 
 On the other hand we may quote the remains of the palace 
 of the same monarch in the same city, 3 as infinitely in advance 
 of their age. It may indeed be true that this illustrious prince 
 encouraged in every way those arts which he found already exist- 
 
 1 See Webb, 504. this building to the Lombard kings. 
 
 Ditto, 4.'54. The inference is in either case the 
 
 It should however be men- same. 
 tinned, that Mr. Hope attributes
 
 EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. 163 
 
 ing : but that can be no proof that new life was not given to 
 them by their first contact with the Teutonic stock. A Gothic 
 king, the head of a free and victorious people, revelling in all 
 the youthful vigour of their national existence, must have been a 
 very different patron of art from the degraded Caesars of the worn- 
 out empire. 1 In this first of Teutonic buildings, every mind not 
 quite warped by the pedantry of classicalism must at once recog- 
 nize not only a wonderful change, but a wonderful improvement. 
 The architect at once grasped the great law that the construc- 
 tion and the decoration must be derived from the same source. 
 The chief constructive principle of Roman architecture is the 
 round arch ; here it becomes for the first time the great source 
 of decoration. We have here no ancient or modern Italian mock 
 facade, with useless colonnades, unmeaning entablatures, and 
 sham pediments, but a front which at first sight might be the 
 work of Gundulph or Walkelyn. The ornamental arcades, the 
 double window divided by the shaft, the shallow buttress with 
 its pcdimental finish, are almost identical with what we are fa- 
 miliar with in the Romanesque of our land. Let us again hear 
 Mr. Knight, a judge not disposed to look too favourably on any 
 departure from the antique. " It was the first time that small 
 pillars, supported by brackets, had been used in Italy as exter- 
 nal decorations : and the first time that small pillars had been 
 introduced as divisions of windows. The great change however, 
 is in the doorway, which, in classical buildings, had always been 
 square-headed, and which, in this building, is round." 
 
 In fact, this building, and this doorway, notwithstanding its 
 awkward impost, perhaps a lingering vestige of the entabla- 
 ture, form an epoch in the history of architecture. We do not 
 here see the five orders in their purity, cither alone or separate, 
 but we have for the first time a simple and consistent form of 
 decoration. The designer of this doorway might contradict the 
 pedantic stringency of would-be classic rules, but he first ap- 
 plied to that feature the great laws of consistency and reality; 
 he planted a germ which was to fructify into the western door- 
 way of Rochester, and the more glorious portals of Rheims and 
 Reauvais. 
 
 1 Sen Schlegol's History of Literature, p 189. English Translation.
 
 10-t HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 We have now to contemplate architecture in an entirely differ- 
 ent land, and developing, under its changed circumstances, into 
 forms altogether dissimilar from what we have hitherto beheld. 
 Basilican and Byzantine architecture are two starting points 
 from which almost all subsequent forms may be derived ; their 
 influence runs in two streams, sometimes remaining parallel and 
 distinct, sometimes converging and commingling. Indeed the 
 chief value of Byzantine art is derived from the results of this 
 commixture as seen in the later buildings of Italy and Germany. 
 As a form of art, it cannot claim a place equal to those of west- 
 ern Europe ; its chief, we might say its only, glory is the general 
 and successful application of that splendid feature, the cupola. 
 
 Yet Byzantine architecture has an historical interest peculiar 
 to itself, as exhibiting the forms assumed by ecclesiastical art 
 among a people separated from the great family of European 
 Christendom. Every other form that we shall have to consider 
 belongs to the system formed by a commingling of the Roman 
 and Teutonic elements. The Byzantine empire derived nothing 
 from the latter source, and little more than a name from the 
 former. It is the only great Christian power that has as yet 
 arisen under similar circumstances ; it possessed therefore a cha- 
 racter of its own, distinct from every other, alike in government, 
 literature, and art. 
 
 In describing this we must desex"t the national for the geo- 
 graphical mode of speech. We have not to deal with Greeks or 
 Romans, Celts or Teutons, but with the East. It is a character 
 not marking a single race or creed, but all who chance to fix 
 their abode within a certain extensive portion of the globe. In 
 these lands nations seem to desert their own character and as- 
 sume that of the soil. In Europe a more marked distinction 
 exists between the Teuton, the Celt, the Slave, almost between the 
 mere national forms of each, than can be found in the East be-
 
 OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 165 
 
 tween the primary divisions of the human race. It is a charac- 
 ter fixed, staid, and immutable; it is not Persian or Arabian, 
 not even Caucasian or Mongolian ; it is not ancient, modern, or 
 mediaeval ; but, a term of all ages and races, it is Oriental. 
 
 Such an Oriental character the Byzantine empire had from its 
 very beginning ; and it became gradually stronger, as its connec- 
 tion with Western Christendom was constantly weakened. At 
 last Byzantium stood by itself, Christian indeed, and locally 
 European, but hardly a member of the system of the European 
 and Christian states ; esteemed heretical in faith, and alien in 
 language, government, and general feeling. Of the two stocks 
 of Western Europe, the Teuton appeared only as a foreign 
 guard or a foreign conqueror ; Borne contributed the lofty 
 titles of her empire, but could not even communicate her 
 language. The government established by Constantine in the 
 New Borne was the very opposite to that which Romulus 
 was deemed to have founded in the old. Dioclesian had swept 
 away the feeble relics of the old commonwealth ; Constantine 
 gave the empire the consistent form of an Oriental despotism, i 
 One feature alone is wanting of the courts of Nineveh or Susa ; 
 Christianity forbad the open seraglio ; but in every other respect 
 the Eastern Caesar was a counterpart of his Persian antagonist, 
 or his Turkish conqueror. Like him he had viziers, slaves, and 
 eunuchs, holding sovereign and subject alike in thrall. The 
 family feuds, the murderings and Windings of sons and brothers, 
 the perpetual change of the tyrant, without the slightest inter- 
 mission of the tyranny, the fixed unmoveable character of litera- 
 ture, science, and art, the utter moral and political vacancy of 
 the thousand years of the Byzantine empire, mark it as Roman, 
 us European, in name only, but as in truth one of the countless 
 dynasties which, from the earliest times have risen and fallen in 
 Eastern lands. 
 
 Byzantium then founded an architecture of its own under its 
 peculiar circumstances, it would have been wonderful had it not 
 and transmitted it to the whole East ; but kept and trans- 
 mitted it unchanged in its most essential forms. On an art so 
 liable to mutations as architecture, fourteen centuries must pro- 
 duce many diversities, even in the East ; but the structures 
 reared to this dav bv the Mahometans in India exhibit far less
 
 l(i() HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 deviation from the type of St. Sophia, than exists between the 
 Basilica of St. Clement and the Cathedral of Sarum. 
 
 The condition and circumstances of the city founded by Con- 
 stantine were such as almost inevitably to produce a style of 
 ecclesiastical architecture peculiar to itself. The spot was prac- 
 tically new, for the small provincial town of Byzantium was as no- 
 thing in the plan of the vast city designed as the new metropolis 
 of the world ; it had none of the political, religious, and artistic 
 associations of the Eternal City ; the field was open for the carry- 
 ing out of a new government, a new religion, a new style of art. 
 The two first would be the result of design, the latter developed 
 by circumstances. The system of government, covertly intro- 
 duced by Augustus, and fully organized by Dioclesian, could be 
 better carried oixt in a new and an Eastern city than under the 
 once free sky of Rome ; the spirit whose last expiring flashes 
 blazed forth under Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Bienzi, could 
 hardly have been quite extinct while the old republican forms 
 existed. Constantine had in his eye both the facilities which a 
 new position would afford for the full establishment of despot- 
 ism, and the superior advantages of the Eastern capital in the 
 struggle with the restored power of Persia ; and his conduct 
 also was probably further influenced by what Mr. Hope suggests 
 as his only motive, namely " to evade the restraints with which 
 in his old capital, paganism still surrounded his new creed, and 
 to afford Christianity, in his new creation, more room for deve- 
 lopment." 1 At Byzantium there was no such feeling as at Borne 
 must have induced conformity to the elder form; nor was there 
 the same store of elder edifices which at Borne supplied both 
 materials and models for Christian churches ; there were neither 
 basilicas enough to convert unchanged to ecclesiastical uses, nor 
 yet temples whose columns might supply the increasing want of 
 " church accommodation " in the first Christian city. The By- 
 zantine builders were then, in the words of the author just 
 quoted, " disencumbered of the restraints which accompanied 
 the superior resources they could command in Rome " they were 
 not only at liberty, but were absolutely driven, to find their own 
 materials and their own architecture ; and a style arose, which 
 lacks indeed the simplicity and elegance of heathen Greece, the 
 1 Page 121.
 
 OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 1G7 
 
 awful majesty and vastness of mediaeval France and England, 
 but which must be allowed to possess in the highest degree a cha- 
 racter both original and enduring, vigorous alike in intellectual 
 conception and mechanical execution. 1 
 
 The oifspring of the arch is the vault; of the vault the cupola ; 
 and this majestic ornament is the very life and soul of Byzantine 
 architecture, to which every other feature is subordinate. Its 
 use had hitherto been mainly confined to circular buildings ; to 
 make it the central point of a Christian temple was a grand and 
 bold idea, and one which involved a complete revolution in the 
 existing principles of architecture. Avast rotunda of this kind 
 could find no place in the basilica ; let it occupy the crossing of 
 the transepts it has neither due mechanical support, nor can 
 any principle of Aesthetics endure its position, when thus thrust 
 to one extremity of the building. It must be the centre, the 
 crowning point of all, to which every other portion of the pile 
 converges, and rests under the shadow of its majestic canopy. 
 The western limb of the basilica is too long, the others too short ; 
 its oblong form is therefore rejected, and the church assumes a 
 square or octagonal form ; the surrounding portions only radiat- 
 ing around, and supporting the vast central cupola ; nave, choir, 
 transepts, chapels, being little more than its supports and acces- 
 sories, existing only to lift it soaring above them. And not only 
 did the grand cupola crown the whole pile, but the smaller 
 portions are often covered with smaller domes and semi-domes, 
 so as to render the outline of a large Greek church totally un- 
 intelligible to one accustomed only to the buildings of the west. 
 The eye habituated to the long naves and triple towers of our own 
 great churches is totally bewildered in contemplating so huge a 
 pile, with apses and semi-domes " sprouting out," to use the ex- 
 pression of Mr. Hope, in every direction, and all circling round 
 the vast central cupola, swelling its majesty, like tributary rulers 
 encircling an imperial throne. Such was what Frederick Schlcgcl 2 
 calls " that first model of all Christian architecture, the Creek 
 church of St. Sophia;" not surely that later erections did not far 
 
 1 The existence of several Basili- tinoplc, p. 002; Bourasse, Archeo- 
 
 can churches in the East only proves logic Chrcticnne, pp. 100, 1. 
 the rule by the exception. See - History of Literature, p. 188. 
 
 Hope, p. 124; Dallaway's Constan-
 
 1G8 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 surpass it in grace and splendour, or that, even among buildings 
 of its own class, its low and spreading covering does not sink into 
 utter insignificance before that matchless glory of domical 
 architecture, the soaring cupola of Florence : but because the 
 style of which it is the type was the first truly Chi'istian archi- 
 tecture that the world had seen. The emblem of our faith, 
 which the basilica half concealed in its comparatively insignificant 
 tribune and chalcidica, is boldly displayed in the four vast arms 
 which, in the most perfect churches of this style, rear the dome 
 on high, hanging, as it were, self-balanced on its centre. All this 
 is the creation of Christian minds; the traces of heathenism 
 remain but in insignificant details ; it is the first great tribute 
 which the arts laid at the feet of the Church, the glorious and 
 royal offering of the first of Christian commonwealths. 
 
 M. Couchaud, whose work 1 contains the most lucid, though a 
 very brief, account of Byzantine architecture with which I am 
 acquainted, divides the churches of this style into three classes, 
 chronologically arranged ; the two first of which will come within 
 our present scope ; the third, as having been affected by Western 
 influences, will be more appropriately treated of at a somewhat 
 later stage of the work. 
 
 Of the first period, extending from the time of Constantine 
 to that of Justinian, but few examples remain. The churches 
 were at first universally round or octagonal, for which the square 
 form was afterwards substituted. The nave was but little ex- 
 tended in length. Four columns, occupying the centre of the 
 building, served to support the cupola, the use of which is 
 universal. Being raised on a square ground plan, the angles 
 were connected by pendentives, whose ingenious and varied 
 combinations are especially remarkable. The lower part of the 
 dome was* pierced with a great number of small openings for 
 light. The extremities of the nave were covered with hemi- 
 spherical cupolas. The facades are square, without gables, 
 terminated by a cornice of stone or brick, with salient and re- 
 entrant angles. Apses were in use, more usually semicircular 
 than polygonal, and often three in number. Doorways were 
 square-headed, with an arch of construction to relieve the lintel. 
 
 1 Choix d'Eglises Bysan tines en Grece. Paris, 1842. His arrangement 
 U followed by Ilamee, ii. 81.
 
 OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 169 
 
 The second period of Byzantine architecture extends from the 
 sixth to the eleventh century, and exhibits the improvements in- 
 troduced into architecture under the patronage of the great 
 Justinian. The domes are now multiplied, and finally occupy 
 the summit even of the porch. Those which belong to the 
 latter part of this period differ from those which precede them, 
 in the circumstance that the arches of the windows which sur- 
 round them penetrate into the spherical part of the cupola. 
 In many cases, to judge by M. Couchaud's specimens, these 
 domes are not of a very commanding character, being often 
 hardly more than a round central tower with a domical roof. 
 The apses become polygonal ; in the interior square piers gradu- 
 ally supplant the use of columns. 
 
 The great type of this period, and of the whole Byzantine 
 style, is of course the mighty cathedral dedicated by Justinian to 
 the Divine Wisdom, and which, whatever may have been the errors 
 of its builders, hardly deserves the severe remark of Mr. Hope 1 
 that it was erected u on a plan in which that of man shone but 
 little." St. Sophia has perhaps had more influence on architec- 
 ture than any other single building ; as the first great example of 
 a central lantern, all styles have borrowed more or less from its 
 example. While it is the direct parent of all the subsequent 
 architecture, Christian and heathen, of the whole eastern world, 
 from Delhi to Moscow, its influence on Western buildings had 
 been equally sure, though less immediate. 
 
 " The first attempt," says Dallaway, " to construct a dome of 
 so vast an expanse was unsuccessful ; in 558, twenty-one years 
 after the dedication, an earthquake nearly destroyed it. The 
 Emperor Justinian, still reigning, employed another Isidorus, 
 nephew of the former, to repair it. The new architect gave the 
 dome an elevation of twenty feet more than it had before its fall, 
 and changed the originally circular into an elliptical form. In 
 order to give security to it, he set up on the north and south 
 sides four columns of granite, each of a shaft forty feet long. By 
 means of arches he placed a wall on them, and over it six shorter 
 columns ; and by this arrangement he destroyed the effect of the 
 Greek cross, by shortening two of its extremities. The piers are 
 encrusted with marble, but no pilaster is seen in the whole church, 
 
 1 Page 120.
 
 ]70 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 nor is the slightest attention paid to the rules of ancient architec- 
 ture. The dome is constructed with so small a curve, that the 
 perpendicular concavity docs not exceed one-sixth of the diameter, 
 which measures one hundred and fifteen feet, and one hundred 
 and eighty in the centre above the floor. The flatness, to which 
 many critical objections are made, has, it must be acknow- 
 ledged, a most imposing effect ; and. if the great vault of 
 heaven be the idea intended, with a happier imitation than at 
 
 St. Peter's at Rome Certain critics allow to the 
 
 dome of St. Sophia the merit only of superior mechanism. The 
 idea of placing a cupola in the centre of a Greek cross they 
 admire in general, but contend that it was adopted four cen- 
 turies too late to hare reached its highest perfection. They 
 remark many solecisms in the architecture, uncorrected by the 
 Grecian or Roman schools, and that the columns are irregularly 
 disposed, having capitals without style or entablature. Procopius 
 says that 'such is the lightness of the dome that it appears to be 
 suspended by a chain from heaven.' . . . Beside the grand 
 cupola arc two larger and six smaller semi-domes. The whole 
 ground-plan describes the figure of a Greek cross within a quad- 
 rangle, but on the inside is oval/' 1 
 
 Among the smaller examples in M. Couchaud's work, perhaps 
 the most striking are St. Nicodemus at Athens a fine lofty pile, 
 with a low spreading cupola, no gables, three trigonal apses, and 
 massive piers within and the Thcotocos at Constantinople, 2 a 
 structure of the ninth or tenth century, which has a magnificent 
 facade, with a domical tower at each end, another over the chief 
 entrance, and some fine open arcades. 
 
 The type of the Greek Church is one that appears very singular 
 to western eyes ; it presents such an extraordinary union of con- 
 tending principles ; in its ground-plan usually a mere square, flat, 
 same and uniform, it nevertheless preserves the cross form as dis- 
 tinctly as the finest Latin Cathedral. The square is broken up by 
 the four limbs rising above the portions which fill up its angles : 
 these again converge and support the circular cupola crowning 
 the whole. In minor features this principle of cutting up the 
 fiat outline is as diligently carried out, curved lines are sought 
 
 1 Dallaway's Ancient and Modern 2 Gailhabaud's Ancient and Mo- 
 
 Constantinople, p. 52. dern Architecture.
 
 OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 171 
 
 for everywhere,, till even the outline of the cupola itself becomes 
 interrupted in this manner. The Byzantine style is perhaps the 
 purest offspring of the arch that ever existed, as if in actual op- 
 position to the purely horizontal forms which had once adorned 
 the same regions. 1 
 
 As far as I can gather from M. Couchaud's work, and from 
 the few other engravings of Byzantine churches to which I have 
 had access, the minuter forms of the architecture do not differ 
 very materially from the Romanesque of other parts of Europe. 
 The windows, arcades, &c. might be found almost unaltered in any 
 Norman church in England ; it is the peculiar system of group- 
 ing and arrangement that constitutes the great distinction. The 
 entablature is quite cast away ; decorative columns occasionally 
 support a cornice without arches, but the like may occasionally 
 be seen in our own buildings. If in any particular they are less 
 advanced, it is in the doorways, where the square head is often 
 strongly marked; in our own the actual opening is often square- 
 headed, but the arch above is always the predominant feature. 
 
 The pillars and arches arc far more like Romanesque than 
 Italian. It was before stated that the square pier (which is often 
 decorated with tiers of arches) gradually supplanted the column ; 
 even where the latter form is retained, the shafts gradually lose 
 their classical proportions, and settle down into the sturdy pillars 
 of our own Romanesque. This change is one which naturally fol- 
 lows from the real requirements of an arched architecture. In 
 such a style the piers have no separate existence like the Grecian 
 columns ; they are simply the piece of masonry between two 
 arches, and can no more be conceived alone than any other part 
 of the walls. The impost of an entablature is a sharp angle 
 where two lines cut one another; that of an arch in its purest 
 form, whether round or pointed, is a gentle and gradual change 
 in direction, the exact turning point of which is hardly to be 
 recognized, unless marked in the decoration. Hence the column, 
 which can never lose its separate existence, is a less proper sup- 
 port for the arch than the rectangular pier; it belongs to another 
 system, and is only tolerable, as possessing in itself a degree of 
 actual grace sufficient to counterbalance a considerable amount of 
 inconsistency. If is from this cause that we find that the most 
 1 See Hope, !:>!).
 
 \J2 HISTORY ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 truly Roman buildings employ the pier and not the column, and 
 that the tendency throughout the Romanesque and Gothic periods 
 has always been to discard the column, and to substitute the pier, 
 moulded indeed in the best examples into graceful forms and en- 
 riched with decorative shafts, but still essentially a mass of wall. 
 And in Byzantine, that purely domical architecture, there would 
 be an additional tendency to substitute the pier for the column. 
 The latter can hardly form an appropriate support for cupolas, and 
 the same feeling which led to their importance and multiplication 
 might also be expected to introduce a similar prevalence of their 
 appropriate support. From a like cause, where the column is 
 employed, the classical proportions are soon disregarded. The 
 arch being but a curved entablature, it would seem most 
 natural that its apex should be taken as the determining 
 point. Hence the proportion of column which suits the flat 
 entablature is not adapted to the arch, whose summit is thereby 
 unnaturally stilted. This was perhaps the reason why among 
 the Roman attempts to combine the two forms, the most 
 common device is that of placing an entablature supported by 
 columns of due elevation over an arch rising from piers of lower, 
 and usually very just, proportions. Basilican architecture, in 
 resting its arches on classical columns, sacrificed proportion to 
 consistency. The proportion of a columnar pier which is most 
 in accordance with the rule above stated, and which, I imagine, 
 will be found pretty nearly that of the most satisfactory Roman- 
 esque specimens, is attained by diminishing the elevation of the pil- 
 lar by the height occupied by the curve of the arch. The capitals 
 of these pillars also gradually deserted the earlier models : in St. 
 Sophia they still retain " a poor imitation of the Corinthian and 
 its acanthus ; in most Greek buildings they become a still poorer 
 squared block, with unmeaning scroll or bracket work." 1 
 
 The arches in the Byzantine style do not by any means adhere 
 so closely to the pure semicircular form as in the Basilican. The 
 stilted arch is common, the horse-shoe not unfrequent, and even 
 the pointed arch appears in many cases as an isolated detail, 
 though never influencing the general style of the building. 
 
 It were greatly to be wished that the architecture of Byzan- 
 tium, so important in itself, and still more so in its influence 
 1 Hope, 135.
 
 OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. 173 
 
 upon that of other nations, were made more known to us, and 
 the labours of M. Couchaud followed up by the publication of a 
 greater number of examples. But unfortunately the great ma- 
 jority of those who investigate what is called " classic ground " 
 devote their whole attention to the remains of heathen antiquity, 
 to the utter exclusion of monuments which are of the highest 
 importance in architectural history, and which may in many 
 cases have been the actual seat of some of the most renowned 
 fathers of the Church. The way in which the Christian relics 
 of the east are overlooked by most of our tourists and antiqua- 
 ries makes one almost inclined to exclaim, 
 
 " Let others sing thy heathen praise, 
 Fallen Greece, the thought of holier days 
 
 In my sad heart abides ; 
 For sons of thine, in Truth's first hour, 
 Were tongues and weapons of His power, 
 Born of the Spirit's fiery shower, 
 Our fathers and our guides." 1 
 
 The associations which bind us to the early Eastern Church, the 
 names of her great Bishops and Doctors, seem to be held as no- 
 thing compared with the smallest fragment of worn-out heathen- 
 dom. This exclusive care for what is pagan is at once a mark of 
 an irreligious tendency, and of a forgetfulness of the real nature 
 and value of art. A broken capital or a shivered bull's head 
 is disinterred, and preserved with reverential care ; while examples 
 which might throw light on some of the most important questions 
 in the whole history of architecture, and thereby in the philosophy 
 of the human mind, arc passed by unnoticed, or alluded to with a 
 sneer. An author to whom the present writer, as well as all 
 interested in these subjects, is most deeply indebted for his dis- 
 coveries in a new and untrodden field of heathen antiquity, can 
 thus express himself with regard to remains whose sacred charac- 
 ter has a claim upon our reverence, and which belong to a style 
 of art which has produced the majesty of St. Sophia, the graceful 
 outline of the Theotocos, and the varied wonders of St. Mark's. 
 " How much it is to be regretted that the introduction of a divine 
 religion should have unnecessarily put to night all the divinity of 
 
 1 Lyra Apostolica.
 
 17-i HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 art. The language of Demetrius of Ephcsus was prophetic. In 
 architecture and in sculpture, the cross is a brand always attended 
 bv deformity in proportion and total want of simplicity in orna- 
 ment." 1 Yet this very brand has itself produced nobler forms of 
 outline than Ictinus and Callicrates could bestow on their most 
 sumptuous works, its spreading arms rear aloft the airy steeple 
 of Sarum and the mighty lantern of Worms; it once was lifted 
 in triumph over the gorgeous cupola of St. Sophia, and still it 
 soars, far above shaft, and architrave, and pediment, on the match- 
 less dome of Florence, and the heaven-bound spires of Freyburg 
 and Vienna. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DIRECT INFLUENCE OF BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. 
 
 In future chapters we shall have to trace the gradual and less 
 direct influence of Oriental architecture upon the structures of 
 Italy and other western countries. I will now mention a few 
 examples in which there is reason to believe that Grecian archi- 
 tects were employed, or direct imitation of Grecian buildings 
 intended. The pure style of the east must not be looked for ; 
 in all, with perhaps one exception, we shall trace more or less of 
 the contemporary forms which prevailed in more strictly Italian 
 structures, so that chronological and artistic propriety is somewhat 
 violated by throwing them together here. Still, as they cannot 
 be called pure examples of any other style, it appears most 
 natural to place them as an appendix to the last chapter. 
 
 At Ravenna is the Chapel of St. Nazario and St. Celso, erected 
 in the fifth century as a sepulchral chapel by Galla Placidia, a 
 pleasing specimen in itself, and remarkable, as Mr. Knight ob- 
 serves, for containing " the only tombs which remain in their 
 places of the whole line of Ca3sars, whether oriental or occiden- 
 tal." It is not a pure Greek cross, 2 the western limb being 
 double the length of the others ; there are no aisles, and the four 
 arms support a cupola. 
 
 1 Fellows' Asia Minor, p. 1C9. - Webb, p. 428.
 
 BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY. 175 
 
 Far more decidedly Byzantine is the noble Church of St. Vital 
 in the same city, consecrated in A.D. 5 17, in the presence of the 
 Emperor Justinian. This is perhaps the most completely orien- 
 tal building in western Europe, and may be taken as the best 
 existing specimen of the octagonal churches erected during the 
 first period of Byzantine art. Eight arches on rectangular piers 
 support the clerestory. The roof is a magnificent cupola, with 
 a low external cone. Round the arcade arc a succession of 
 small apses, divided, 1 after the Oriental manner, into galleries 
 supported by columns of a completely Byzantine character. 
 
 St. Fosca, at Torcello, in the Venetian territory, belongs to 
 the second period of Byzantine architecture. It is in the form 
 of a Greek cross, but with the eastern limb prolonged, so as to 
 form a complete chancel with aisles and three apses. The cen- 
 tral dome is very plain externally, and covered with a cone. It 
 is difficult to recognize at first the true plan of this church, by 
 reason of an octagonal portico a development of the narthex 
 surrounding it on all sides except the east. This is formed 
 of pillars, most of whose capitals have the scmare block and low 
 carving of the Byzantine school, and support stilted arches. 
 
 The magnificent cathedral of St. Mark at Venice, commenced 
 at the end of the tenth century, can hardly be referred to any 
 one style ; without, its perfectly anomalous, though gorgeous, 
 facade, in its pointed arches and pinnacles seems to forestall the 
 Gothic age; within are the noble basilican columns and arches; 
 but above all soar conspicuous the five cupolas, placed over the in- 
 tersection of the Greek cross, and over each of the four great limbs. 
 Such a form is completely Byzantine, and as it is certain that 
 Grecian architects and Grecian materials were employed to a 
 great extent, we cannot fail to acknowledge a strong Oriental 
 influence. The domes of St. Mark's arc however very different 
 from thai of St. Sophia, and, if we may not actually refer them 
 to a Saracenic origin, we must allow the Western Christian and the 
 Eastern infidel to have developed in the same path from the com- 
 mon Bvzantine source. The external domes of wood covered 
 with lead, rise to a vast height, and assume a fantastic and bul- 
 bous outline, approaching to those which wc shall soon have to 
 trace among the Mahometan nations. Developments of the 
 1 See Mr. Webb's plan, p. 433.
 
 176 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 same great principle, they arc totally different either from the 
 spreading cupola of St. Sophia, the domical towers of the Theo- 
 tocos and the pointed dome of Florence. 
 
 The cathedral of St. Ciriacus at Ancona, erected in the 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries, might be fairly expected to possess 
 much Byzantine character, as that city was the last possession 
 retained in Italy by the Emperors of the East. It is in the 
 shape of a Greek cross, so far at least as that the arms are equal, 
 but it has not the squareness of the genuine Byzantine church ; 
 the arms are longer than usual, and their angles not filled up. 
 They are also treated quite on the Latin method, with low roofs, 
 -ablcs, a genuine clerestory and aisles ; there are no smaller 
 cupolas or conchs. In short, none of the genuine Eastern pe- 
 culiarities appear ; it is merely a Latin church with an unusually 
 short nave, and a central dome, and therefore hardly answers the 
 description of Mr. Knight, that " it is Greek in all its parts." 
 The dome is not the one commanding feature, but only a cen- 
 tral lantern assuming that form. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF ITALY OR LOMBARD STYLE. 
 
 Justinian the Great destroyed the Gothic kingdom in Italy, 
 and set his restored dominions the example of a new, and in 
 many respects excellent, style of architecture. He was hardly in 
 his grave before a new race of conquerors came to overthrow his 
 political institutions, and to give Italian architecture yet another 
 and a more perfect form. These were the Lombards, who in A.D. 
 568, five years after the death of that famous emperor, crossed 
 the great Alpine barrier, and remained possessed of the greater 
 part of the peninsula for two centuries, till the empire of the 
 West rose with renewed splendour in the person of the first 
 Teutonic Csesar, the ever-memorable Charlemagne. 
 
 As before under the rule of Theodoric and his Goths, (though 
 the Lombards were a race in every respect inferior to that noble 
 people,) there can be no doubt that Italy, could she have recon-
 
 OF LOMBARD ARCHITECTURE, 177 
 
 ciled herself to the idea of a barbarian sovereign, might have en- 
 joyed far more real happiness under the royal house of Alboin 
 than the turbulent, unsettled days of her own later emperors had 
 ever afforded. And when the Lombard kings, to vigour in war 
 and just government in peace, added, under their fourth prince 
 Agilulfus and his famous wife Theodolinda, an adhesion to the 
 orthodox faith, a new era in ecclesiastical architechire could 
 hardly fail to arise, and the glimpse of Teutonic vigour given 
 under the brief empire of the Goths became a brighter and more 
 enduring day under the more lasting power of the Lombards. 
 
 " The Lombards/' says Mr. Knight, " had no architecture of 
 their own ; they imported no architects from the north ; they 
 employed the architects and masons of the conquered country ; 
 and, if they required them to introduce any thing which was not 
 of Italian growth, it was only in details. The style was still an 
 imitation of the Roman, though, by this time, it had assumed 
 some new features." That is, they inspired new life into the 
 dying embers, and added harmony to the yet disjointed parts ; 
 Basilican and Byzantine architecture each contributed its 
 choicest beauties to form a style, which in Italy itself produced 
 far from despicable fruits, and gave birth to a yet more glorious 
 offspring in the wondrous churches of Rhenish Germany. 
 
 The chief characteristics of Lombard architecture are the new 
 forms given to the pillars, and their more extended application 
 as decorative features ; a new style of sculpture ; a more ex- 
 tended use of vaulting ; an entirely new ground-plan and out- 
 line of churches; and finally, by no means the least important 
 innovation, the introduction of steeples or belfries. 
 
 The classical proportions of the column arc disregarded, and 
 pillars are now met with of any length required by their posi- 
 tion ; those which act as piers are shorter than the Roman 
 models, while purely decorative ones arc prolonged to an indefinite 
 length, becoming mere slender stalks. 1 In the interior of 
 churches, piers formed of clustered columns are often introduced; 
 these of course exhibit both these processes ; the whole pier 
 being lower, while each separate shaft is frequently longer, than 
 was allowed by classical precedent. The capitals are sometimes 
 
 1 Sec Moller's German Architecture, p. 20, English translation. 
 
 N
 
 178 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 imitations of the antique, but are more commonly blocks covered 
 with imagery of various kinds ; representations of grotesque 
 monsters, of scriptural scenes, sometimes of devices apparently 
 derived from the northern mythology. Decorative shafts, as 
 those of doorways and of ornamental arcades, not unfrequently 
 rest upon the backs of monsters. 
 
 These ornamental arcades are perhaps the greatest of the im- 
 provements introduced by the Lombard architects. Hitherto the 
 exterior of the Basilica had been bare and unsightly ; the incon- 
 gruous Grecian ornaments had been rejected, but no consistent 
 system substituted. The Lombards carried out to a great extent 
 the idea which had already appeared in the palace of Theodoric, and 
 applying the great constructive features as a source of decora- 
 tion, covered the exterior of their richer buildings with an infi- 
 nity of small arcades resting on ornamental shafts of various 
 forms and proportions. In many cases these are detached, and 
 form actual galleries, but they are often merely decorative enrich- 
 ments of a blank surface. This latter class might at first sight 
 appear open to the same objection as the sham columns, pedi- 
 ments, and porticoes of Roman and modern Italian. But in 
 truth the great fault of the latter is, not that they are merely 
 ornamental, but that they are of such an importance in the general 
 effect as to look like the main features of the building, and so 
 are really deceptive. This fault is shared by some of the Byzan- 
 tine churches in M. Couchaud's work, which exhibit ornamen- 
 tal arcades on so large a scale as to look like a constructive portion 
 walled up. But when the ornamental features are at once seen 
 to be intended for ornament and nothing more, and do not in 
 any v/ay mask the real construction, no way of relieving a blank 
 wall can be more appropriate than this ornamental imitation of 
 the constructive members. 
 
 The number, richness, and variety of these arcades with 
 which the Lombard architects decorated their sumptuous 
 churches is perfectly astonishing. A whole facade is sometimes 
 covered with row upon row, enriched with an infinity of sculp- 
 tured ornament, and resting on shafts, single or double, detached 
 or engaged, plain, fluted, twisted, as suited the taste and caprice 
 of the designer. The eaves, and often the stringcourses mark- 
 ing the stages of the building, rest commonly on small arcades
 
 OF LOMBARD ARCHITECTURE. 179 
 
 or corbel-tables without shafts, but among which ever and anon 
 there shoots up from the ground, now a fiat broad pilaster, now a 
 tapering reed-like shaft, to bear a part in their decorative sup- 
 port, and to break the uniformity of the front by dividing it into 
 narrow vertical compartments. Now and then, as in the bap- 
 tistery at Parma, instead of arcades, rows of small shafts support 
 the strings of the different stages after the manner of an en- 
 tablature. 
 
 The arch is commonly round, in pier-arches perhaps univer- 
 sally so, and the flatness of the broad soffit begins occasionally 
 to be relieved, not by mere flat panelling or painting, but 
 by making the arch of two orders, which alone takes off 
 greatly from its uniformity, and affords a great contrast of light 
 and shade. In the vaulting, pointed arches occur at a very early 
 period ; and in decorative arcades sometimes the straight- sided 
 arch. The horse-shoe and stilted arches are not unknown, 
 as well as that curious form, half-arch, half-entablature, with a 
 flat head, and shoulders bowing outwards. But the common 
 semicircular arch is decidedly the arch of the style, and is 
 generally used in the more important features of construction. 
 
 The Lombard builders seem absolutely to have revelled in the 
 use of sculpture in every form. The outside of the church is 
 loaded with imagery \ saints, founders, scenes of history or 
 legend, are strangely intermixed with all the strange beasts 
 of the natural creation, and others passing any that Herodotus 1 
 records as infesting the Libyan desert, not only lions, peacocks, 
 serpents, but sphinxes, griffins, chimeras, xocl ol uyqioi avlqsg 
 x.'A y'jvuix.?; oiygicti, xu) AA -nXr^ii 7roAAa 0]fli'a xaT4>?ua"T. 
 These arc found both independently, and as bas-reliefs on walls, 
 capitals, and wherever else a void space was found to receive 
 them. And not only doorways, but windows, strings, abaci, 
 arc loaded with numberless varieties of surface ornament, as 
 medallions, foliage, chevrons; all of that kind which marks no 
 particular style, but seems in its general character, and often in 
 its actual details, to belong to a particular stage of almost all. 
 
 The Lombard windows arc generally small, narrow, round- 
 headed openings, placed either singly, or in combination ; but the 
 
 1 IV. 191. 
 N 2
 
 180 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 genuine triplet with the higher central light seems hardly to be 
 found in Italy. Their jambs and archivolts are often richly or- 
 namented with the small shafts and other decorations of the 
 style. But large wheel-windows are common in the west fronts 
 of churches, perhaps, as Mr. Hope suggests, to represent the 
 setting sun. They present of course the simplest form of this 
 kind of window, that of " spokes radiating from a centre, con- 
 nected at their extremities by arches." 1 
 
 The doorways are perhaps, of single features, the most re- 
 markable instance of the improvements effected by the architects 
 of this period. We have seen how the square portal with an 
 arch of construction over it burst forth, in the palace of Theodo- 
 ric, into a real round-headed doorway ; but this was a very rude 
 example, and in this respect the Byzantine builders effected but 
 little, as they still made the square opening predominant. But the 
 Lombards, while they retained the square opening, (probably 
 because the semicircular stone, called the tympanum, afforded 
 such an opportunity for sculpture) made the arch the conspicu- 
 ous feature. It now stands boldly forward as a gradually reced- 
 ing arch of many orders, each adorned with all the gorgeous 
 decorations of the style, and resting on shafts often themselves 
 greatly enriched. They greatly resemble our own Norman door- 
 ways, but are of more lofty proportion ; and of the forms of 
 ornament common to both the Norman specimens have a greater 
 tendency to mere surface ornament, the Lombard to bas-reliefs, in 
 the decorations of the receding arches and jambs. Some doorways, 
 as the magnificent example at St. Zeno, Verona, retain much 
 more of classical character, the square portion being strongly 
 marked, and the arch made to form a sort of canopy supported 
 by two detached columns. In the eleventh century, according 
 to Mr. Knight, porches in our modern sense, as opposed to the 
 ancient narthex, were introduced into Lombard architecture. 
 
 The sturdy piers of the Lombard churches were able to bear 
 a greater weight than could be supported on the slender columns 
 of the Basilicas; hence stone vaulting was resumed, but though de- 
 cidedly a characteristic of the style,it occurs only just often enough 
 to show that it is so. Many of the finest Italian churches of this 
 
 1 Page 267.
 
 OF LOMBARD ARCHITECTURE. 181 
 
 time are covered with wooden roofs, but they are oftenflat, or other- 
 wise panelled, ceilings instead of the barn-like frames of the old 
 Basilicas. The first form of the stone roof was plain barrel- 
 vaulting ; afterwards cross-vaulting with groined ribs was intro- 
 duced. These roofs, often supported by tall shafts rising directly 
 from the ground, would alone assign to the Lombard churches a 
 great superiority in internal effect over their Basilican prede- 
 cessors. 
 
 The ground-plan ordinarily combines the Basilican and By- 
 zantine forms, engrafting the central dome of the latter on the 
 long nave of the former. The shape of the Latin cross is com- 
 pletely carried out ; four arms, of which the western is conside- 
 rably the longest, meet and support a variety of the dome more 
 suited than that of St. Sophia to the general proportions of the 
 church. The commonest form is an octagon reared on a square 
 base, which forms an internal dome, but has in most instances 
 merely a conical roof without. The actual external dome is sacri- 
 ficed, and that with good judgment, as the length of the nave pre- 
 cludes it from that overwhelming predominance over the whole 
 building which alone can give it a good effect. The Lombard 
 octagon is not the whole soul of the building, for the sake of which 
 alone every other part exists; it is but one feature among many, 
 though by far the most conspicuous and commanding one. Still, 
 as the base is square, a great width in the four arms is required 
 to give the lantern its due prominence; hence the Lombard 
 churches arc precluded from that predominance of height over 
 the other proportions which adds so much majesty to even the 
 Romanesque, and much more the Gothic, structures of other 
 lands. 
 
 At the cast end is an apse, sometimes three apses, which are 
 generally semicircular; they arc distinct buildings, inferior in 
 height and breadth to the chancels to which they are attached. 
 A gallery of open arches often runs round the upper part, which 
 is frequently a predominant, as it is always a very beautiful, 
 feature. 
 
 The triple elevation of the nave is more distinctly marked 
 than in the Basilicas, but is not always fully developed. Some- 
 times, as in the two noble churches of St. Michael at Pavia and 
 St. Ambrose at Milan, there is no clerestory, but only a trifo-
 
 182 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 rium-gallcry over the arcade; in others, as in St. Zeno 1 at 
 Verona, there is a clerestory, but the space which should be 
 occupied by the triforium is left quite blank, to the great dis- 
 figurement of the building. Perhaps that feature was only in- 
 troduced when it was designed for actual use as a gallery. 
 
 The roofs are low; hence the churches have no prominent 
 gables, and buttresses and pinnacles being hardly in use, aud the 
 towers not being integral parts of the building, the facades are 
 flat, and the whole outline not very marked or varied. Still the 
 more complete development of the cross form, and especially the 
 central lantern, give these churches a very great superiority 
 over the basilicas, even without taking into consideration the 
 gorgeous details. The west fronts are generally much laboured 
 and decorated, but, from the want of projection, they are not very 
 pleasing as compositions. When there is no clerestory, and 
 a single low gable includes both nave and aisles, the effect is still 
 less satisfactory. 
 
 The round or octagonal nave, with a projecting chancel, is a 
 form far from uncommon ; some noble examples are given by 
 Mr. Knight ; amongst which the Cathedral of Brescia is re- 
 markable for a majestic boldness of design. 
 
 But the feature for the introduction of which the Lombard 
 architects, great as were their excellencies in other respects, most 
 deserve the gratitude of posterity, is undoubtedly that noble 
 addition to a Christian temple, the campanile, bell-tower, or 
 steeple. They do not indeed seem to have developed all the 
 capabilities which even their own style of architecture allowed, 
 much less those additional ones which it received when the 
 splendid inventions of Gothic art were brought to bear upon it. 
 Still the introduction of so sticking and characteristic a feature 
 m any form was a very great step. It is one which owes its 
 origin to Christianity ; a campanile was never attached to an 
 idol-temple, and is equally forbidden at this day to the proudest 
 mosques of the false prophet. It is to Christian worship alone 
 that the joyful sound of bells gathers the multitude of the faith- 
 ful ; it is therefore to Christian temples only that the lofty towers 
 
 For an account of this extra- vast independent arches spanning 
 ordinary church, remarkable for the the nave, see Webb, p. 252.
 
 OP LOMBARD ARCHITECTURE. 183 
 
 are attached which rear them on high to convey their clear voice 
 more distinctly and uninterruptedly. The use of bells involved 
 that of belfries as a matter of necessity : having thus its 
 origin in real use, and no classical models existing to mislead 
 the architects, the belfry, unlike most other features, rose at 
 once, not indeed to its full perfection, but to a very considerable 
 degree of excellence. Indeed there is no kind of edifice on which 
 more care was bestowed throughout the Romanesque and Gothic 
 periods, or in which the respective peculiarities and beauties of 
 the successive styles are more clearly marked. It is not merely 
 in details that this is shown, but every period, every country, 
 almost every district, has its own peculiar form of steeple, and 
 that, in nearly every case, its most beautiful and most distinguish- 
 ing feature. 
 
 The Lombard campanile usually stands apart from the church, 
 or is at least merely connected with it as an adjunct, not an in- 
 tegral part ; it never rises from the crossing, or forms the cen- 
 tral compartment of a facade. Even flanking towers to a front, 
 as at St. Ambrose, are rare. It is ordinarily square that of 
 Pisa and those at Ravenna, which are round, being the prin- 
 cipal exceptions and always tall, thin, and unbroken by but- 
 tresses. These characteristics are common to all, but many, 
 especially local, peculiarities, may be observed among them. 
 They are usually covered with a pyramidal capping, which some- 
 times swells into a low quadrangular spire; octagonal stages 
 crowned with spires are often found, but are in many cases later 
 additions. It is an invariable rule, with the single exception of 
 that at Pisa, that the " quantity of decoration and aperture is in- 
 creased in the upper part " sometimes the only windows of any 
 importance arc quite at the top ; in others each stage has a win- 
 dow, or a row of three or four united by shafts, or sometimes two 
 distinct pairs in a stage. 
 
 This style, which is rightly called Lombard, was one of very 
 long duration in Italy ; the shortest computation would reckon 
 from the Lombard invasion till the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century, when the forms, though not the spirit, of Gothic archi- 
 tecture were partially introduced into Italy. 
 
 During this long period Mr. Knight makes three epochs. 
 The first extends from the invasion of the Lombards till the
 
 184 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 extinction of their dynasty by Charlemagne at the end of the 
 cightli century. During this time the Lombard style, as it has 
 been above described, became predominant in many parts of 
 Italy. The chief exception is Home, where there is but one ac- 
 tually Lombard church, that of St. John and St. Paul, 1 though 
 campaniles of that style were added to many of her existing 
 ones. Of this period are numerous churches at Pavia, the seat 
 of the Lombard kings, and other cities of northern Italy. Of 
 those given by Mr. Knight, St. Michael at Pavia 2 is perhaps the 
 most striking cruciform specimen ; the cathedral of Brescia, and 
 St. Julia in the same city, of the round and octagonal respectively. 
 
 The ninth and tenth centuries may be considered as continua- 
 tions of this period, but the state of Italy was not such as to 
 allow of much attention to the arts, and consequently there is a 
 positive dearth of churches of this date. The chief structure of 
 this period is St. Ambrose at Milan, completed before 861, 
 which has been already alluded to, and which is farther remark- 
 able as retaining the atrium or cortile before its west front, a 
 noble cloister of the purest Lombard architecture. 
 
 The second period comprises the eleventh century, during 
 which, especially at Florence and more to the south, there was a 
 considerable return to the antique. " There and then," says Mr. 
 Knight, " a return to good taste evinced itself in a return to 
 greater simplicity. The grotesque images and crowded orna- 
 ments were rejected. Single pillars, instead of piers, again 
 made their appearance, and capitals that sought to imitate the 
 capitals of better times." This, which of course, with our view 
 of the subject, is in every respect a retrogression, extended itself 
 in some degree to northern Italy also, and for a while obscured, 
 though by no means obliterated, the genuine Lombard style. 
 " The pillars," says the same author, " were less stunted ; 
 the wild and monstrous imagery, if not altogether discarded, was 
 kept within bounds. In some instances the dragons and the 
 demons gave way to groups of figures in low relief, that at- 
 tempted something more in the Roman way." In the same 
 
 1 See Webb, 511. of the seventh century. I should 
 
 2 " A church of extreme interest. have fixed a much later date." 
 Mr. Gaily Knight considers it to be Ditto, 227.
 
 OF LOMBARD ARCHITECTURE. 185 
 
 century a custom commenced of decorating the exterior of 
 churches with courses of stone or marble of different colours. 
 
 The glory of this form of Italian architecture is that from 
 which Professor Willis 1 seems to have given a name to the style, 
 the cathedral of Pisa, erected by Busketus, between 1063 and 
 1113; though the rich western facade, probably the last finish 
 to the building, belongs rather to the next period. Its archi- 
 tecture is a mixture of classical and Lombard forms ; the tall 
 Corinthian columns, many of them antique, support plain round 
 arches, above which is a string so prominent and so evidently 
 copied from the antique, as almost to deserve the name of an en- 
 tablature. Above is a triforium, and a clerestory ; with a blank 
 space awkwardly intervening between them, and not even relieved 
 by a string. The proportionate height is much greater than usual, 
 almost forestalling the Gothic of the north ; the roof is a flat 
 ceiling. "There is no large west window in the Pisan style, 
 but merely small round-headed lights, like those in the west of 
 the church." 2 
 
 The third epoch of Lombard architecture includes the twelfth 
 century, and beginning of the thirteenth. This style Mr. 
 Knight calls the Florid Lombard, its chief characteristic being 
 " external decoration carried to excess." The fronts are either 
 overloaded with arcades, frequently as detached galleries, to a 
 prodigious extent, or, with an equal amount of decoration, have 
 fine wheel-windows. " The use of brick was very generally re- 
 sumed, but the bricks alternated with stone or marble, and the 
 walls continued to exhibit stripes of different colours." The cam- 
 paniles were generally of this material. Of the many rich facades 
 of the kind, St. Michael at Lucca may be cited as one of the most 
 admirable. The two fine baptisteries of Pisa and Parma are also 
 mainly of this period, though finished in the Italian Gothic. 
 And the grand campanile at Pisa, the famous leaning tower, 
 commenced in 1 1 74, must not be omitted ; it is round, covered 
 with arcades, and crowned with a small circular lantern. 
 
 Such is a rapid view of the Romanesque of Italy, certainly one 
 of the most interesting pages in the history of architecture. We 
 learn from it how readily a consistent and beautiful form might 
 
 1 Architecture of the Middle Ages, p. 2G. - Webb, 354.
 
 186 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 be wrought out of the classical elements ; the Byzantines were 
 the bolder innovators, the Lombards the more diligent develop- 
 ers. Still, besides the ever-recurring stumbling-block of classi- 
 cality, the style has not reached perfection ; even within, the parts 
 arc not well arranged and harmonized, and amid all its gorgeous- 
 ness of decoration, there is extreme flatness and poverty of exter- 
 nal outline. We shall now have to trace its rapid and wonder- 
 ful improvement when transplanted to a more genial soil, where 
 the great race who were to develop all the most glorious forms 
 of Christian architecture, were not only politically dominant, but 
 dwelling in their own land, cradled among the free institutions 
 and chivalrous associations of the North. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF GERMANY. 
 
 Amidst all the confusions which immediately followed the over- 
 throw of the old Western Empire, while the city of Rome itself 
 had utterly fallen to decay, and the name of Roman was a by- 
 word of contempt among the Lombard lords of Italy ; still the 
 prestige of a thousand years of glory, the wide-spread influence 
 of her laws and language, the power, mightier than that of her 
 Caesars, which gradually gathered round her as she became the 
 ecclesiastical centre of Christendom, all combined to keep up the 
 remembrance of the Eternal City and of the universal empire of 
 which she had been the head. Hence, when Charles, truly 
 called the Great, conceived the vast idea of restoring that em- 
 pire, not amidst the ruins of the worn-out system, the shadowy 
 relics of classic heathendom, but with all the stability that 
 Northern vigour and a thoroughly Christian basis could bestow, 
 when in conformity with this glorious conception, the first Teu- 
 tonic, we may almost add the first Christian, Caesar of the West 
 received his imperial crown from the hands of the common 
 Father of Christendom, it was not felt as an aggression or an 
 usurpation ; the three ages during which Italy had seen no Em- 
 peror were held as a mere blank, an interruption of settled
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF GERMANY. 187 
 
 order ; the Roman Empire was again revived, not indeed on its 
 old heathen and classic foundation, but on the more holy and 
 more glorious basis of Christian brotherhood and Northern 
 freedom. 
 
 This mighty conception was indeed never fully realized, or 
 only in the person of Charlemagne himself; his Frank succes- 
 sors inherited not even his warlike vigour, far less that capacious 
 mind with which he held together the various elements of his 
 great political and religious creation. The idea however long 
 survived him, and was the animating spirit of those illustrious 
 Emperors of the Saxon race, who were, in the words of the great 
 writer quoted in a former chapter, " princes distinguished for 
 their religious and virtuous sentiments, their great and upright 
 character, and whose reigns, exhibiting as they do the paramount 
 influence of religion on public life, constitute the happiest era, 
 and the truly golden period of the annals of Germany." 1 
 
 "Whether there are any considerable existing monuments of the 
 Carlovingian period, or of any other anterior to that of the Saxon 
 Emperors, is very doubtful ; and indeed many well versed in the 
 antiquities of Germany hold that even of their days we have little 
 more than few and uncertain remains. Thus the dates in the tenth 
 and eleventh centuries usually assigned to the great Rhenish 
 cathedrals are controverted, and with every appearance of proba- 
 bility, by M. dc Lassaulx, 2 who looks on them as being for the 
 most part at least a century later, and as belonging to the last 
 days of Romanesque. We know the prevalent tendency to make 
 out every building as old as possible, and to assign to an existing 
 structure the date of the first that has occupied its site. And 
 that the style of these magnificent churches is the latest form of 
 Romanesque which prevailed in Germany is certain, as it is that 
 on which the Gothic elements are engrafted in the period of 
 Transition. One considerable fragment only remains to bear 
 witness to the state of art under the mighty Charlemagne him- 
 self. The vestibule of the Abbey of Lorsch is usually consi- 
 dered to be of a date as early as 774, a view confirmed by the 
 eminent authority of Moller. Its style exhibits several pecu- 
 
 1 Schlcgcl, Philosophy of History, - In the remarks appended to Dr. 
 
 p. 349. See also pp. 339, 47. Whewcll's German Churches.
 
 188 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 liaritics, which at once distinguish it from later buildings, and 
 connect it with the classical Roman on the one hand and with our 
 own Anglo-Saxon on the other. Of its two arcades, the lower has 
 round arches rising from piers with Corinthian columns attached, 
 and supporting a kind of entablature ; the upper, straight-sided 
 arches on Ionic pilasters. But this structure stands alone, and 
 we arc hardly justified in inferring from a single edifice what was 
 the state of the art at any period. We know not what other build- 
 ings of the Carlovingian, or even of the Saxon, era were ; but the 
 existing style is one so replete with Lombard and Byzantine ele- 
 ments, such as were introduced by the earlier Emperors, that it 
 can hardly have differed essentially from that in which they built. 
 The existing buildings may have supplanted earlier buildings, 
 but the existing style can hardly have supplanted an earlier 
 style. It may however have developed some of its features in 
 greater perfection, as can hardly fail to have been the case with 
 the varied and wonderful outlines of these sumptuous piles. 
 
 The first origin of the German Romanesque is in all proba- 
 bility to be sought for in Italy. " It is impossible not to see," 
 says Mr. Knight, " in the Lombard churches of Pavia, the ori- 
 ginals of the churches on the Rhine. The Lombard style was 
 introduced into the Rhenish provinces by the Carlovingian so- 
 vereigns of Italy, who resided at Aix-la-Chapelle, in the imme- 
 diate ncighboui'hood of the Rhine, and who, passing sometime, 
 as they frequently did, at Pavia, could not fail to remark the 
 churches with which it had been enriched by the Lombard 
 kings." But though the Lombard style supplied the chief ele- 
 ment, a rival one was also at work. Charlemagne was closely 
 connected with the court of Byzantium ; he is even said to have 
 employed Grecian workmen on the cathedral church of his capi- 
 tal. 1 Nor did this Oriental influence cease with his race. 
 "Under the dynasty of the Saxon Caesars," says Frederick 
 Schlegel, 2 " who were perpetually connected by marriages with 
 the court of Constantinople, the north of Germany was adorned 
 with a profusion of beautiful churches, all more or less in imita- 
 tion of that first model of all Christian architecture, the Greek 
 church of St. Sophia." Though this expression may perhaps 
 
 1 See Rame'e, ii. 129. Hist# L ; t 188#
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF GERMANY. 189 
 
 be too strong, there can be no doubt that Byzantine art exer- 
 cised a considerable influence on the German Romanesque, so 
 much so that Mr. Hope could say, 1 "that on beholding the east 
 end of the Apostles' Church at Cologne, immediately on entering 
 its ancient gates, I almost thought myself at Constantinople." 
 
 The German Romanesque seems to borrow from the Lombard 
 its general style and arrangement, though worked more free from 
 classical elements ; the cupolas also retain much of the Lombard 
 character, though with somewhat of a Byzantine tinge. In the 
 general employment of vaulting, and the tendency to square 
 piers, it resembles the latter style ; but the grouping of its 
 towers, spires, and domes, producing a beauty and variety of 
 outline surpassed by no age or country, are purely its own. 
 
 The towers, which in Italy stood alone apart from the church, 
 are now made an essential part of the fabric, and indeed become 
 its most conspicuous features. Architects seem to have vied with 
 each other in introducing these beautiful appendages in the great- 
 est number and variety ; of every size and shape, square, round, 
 octagonal ; with every variety of capping, from the low pyramidal 
 roof to the lofty spire ; they flank every front, and fill up every 
 angle of the larger buildings. We should remember that many 
 of these churches present what to us appears the anomaly of 
 double choirs, and consequently double apses ; each being com- 
 monly flanked by towers. The towers sometimes have octagonal 
 spires of wood with dripping caves ; sometimes they are gabled 
 over each side, sometimes covered with a cupola, which again is 
 sometimes gabled. The gables in such positions are remarked 
 by Dr. Whewcll as being of lower pitch, and having the cornice 
 beneath them more strongly marked, in the pure Romanesque 
 than in the Transition. The large churches are usually cruci- 
 form, with long naves and short choirs ; an octagonal lantern 
 occupies the crossing, rising immediately from the roof without 
 any square base ; two tall towers occupy the angles of the choir 
 and transepts, flanking the eastern apse, and grouping with, 
 and as it were supporting, the central lantern. The west end 
 has sometimes a single tower in the centre, sometimes two 
 flanking towers ; sometimes, especially where there is a western 
 
 1 Page 143.
 
 190 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 apse, the arrangement of the east end is repeated, a second tran- 
 sept appearing, with another octagon of more slender and lofty 
 proportions in the centre, and smaller turrets at the ends. The 
 grouping of these numerous steeples comes out in all its glory in 
 the three great Romanesque cathedrals of Spires, Worms, and 
 Mentz, and the abbey church of Laach. Sometimes, as at Arn- 
 stcin Abbey, the church is not cruciform, but has an eastern and 
 western pair of towers. In all cases the general rule seems to 
 be that the eastern pair should be the more conspicuous in size 
 and height. The towers are usually very much enriched with 
 arcading ; the east end of Bonn Cathedral is certainly the most 
 graceful and magnificent specimen of this and the other beauties 
 of this glorious style with which the engravings and descriptions 
 of my authorities have made me acquainted. 
 
 Many churches however, especially those of smaller size, and 
 apparently later in the style, have not this complexity of outline 
 which, as Dr. Whewell remarks, 1 "was not imitated by the 
 architects of the Transition style." They have often only a single 
 square tower over the intersection, with a low capping or spire ; 
 it is usually low and massive, but sometimes, as at Schwartz 
 Rheindorf, tower and sprre shoot up to a prodigious elevation, 
 and attain an outline perfectly Gothic. The square tower at 
 the crossing is manifestly the legitimate successor of the dome 
 and the central octagon, though, as architecture advances, it ap- 
 proaches more and more to the form and use of a campanile. 
 The low central towers of our own Romanesque churches were ori- 
 ginally mere lanterns, the whole elevation being greatly enriched, 
 and left open to the church; they are the dome in another form. 
 Numberless are the instances in which they have been blocked 
 off and converted into belfries long after their erection. A re- 
 markable instance of the connection between the dome and the 
 central tower is to be found in the church of St. Sulpice, near 
 Lausanne, mentioned by Mr. Petit. 2 
 
 The round or octagonal form of churches, was, as well as the 
 cruciform, introduced into Germany by Charles the Great. He 
 adorned his imperial residence at Aix-la-Chapelle, with a magni- 
 ficent cathedral of that form, and though this was destroyed 3 or 
 
 1 German Churches, p. 97. 2 1. 75. 3 Hope, 350 ; Ramee, ii. 128.
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF GERMANY. 191 
 
 desecrated by the Northmen, and afterwards rebuilt by Otho III., 
 about 983, and though it has received many later alterations, we 
 may fain hope that the general mass represents with tolerable 
 faithfulness the original structure of the great Emperor. It con- 
 sists of a circular aisle around an octagonal centre forming a 
 clerestory, roofed with a high cupola of the same form sur- 
 rounded with gables. 
 
 The roofs and gables are generally high, compared at least 
 with those of Italy, though they by no means invariably follow 
 the equilateral canon, the two sides often having no sharper in- 
 clination than a right angle. 
 
 The apse is a very prevalent feature ; it is usually semicircular, 
 though, as the style advances towards the Transition, the poly- 
 gonal form begins to be introduced. Indeed the German archi- 
 tects seem to have taken quite as much delight in the varied 
 grouping of apses as in that of towers. They are not only intro- 
 duced at both ends of a large church, according to the extraor- 
 dinary arrangement mentioned above, but are often attached both 
 to the fronts and to the eastern faces of the transepts. The latter 
 position, which is by no means unknown to our own Norman, is 
 a vestige of the triapsal termination of the basilicas ; for the 
 German choirs are so short, and the angles so filled in with 
 towers, that there can scarcely be genuine chancel aisles at the 
 ends of which the arrangement might be introduced. During 
 the period of pure Romanesque the apse was always a distinct 
 part of the church, attached to a front, but inferior in height 
 and width. St. Martin's at Cologne has 1 no proper chancel or 
 transepts, but gabled projections only just sufficient for the three 
 apses to be attached to them and not to the actual faces of the 
 tower. The cathedral of Worms is remarkable for its polygonal 
 western apse, approaching to the Transition, and the singula- 
 rity of its cast end, which is fiat without and apsidal within. 
 
 The character of the interior is very much influenced by the 
 use of vaulted roofs, with which most of the greater buildings 
 are now covered, though the flat timber ceiling is by no means 
 excluded, even from churches of great size and importance. 
 The subject of vaults has been almost exhausted by Dr. Whewell, 
 
 1 Webb, 40. See Petit, ii. 48, 207.
 
 192 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and the different forms in use in the buildings we are now con- 
 sidering carefully explained. In the purest Romanesque speci- 
 mens both the nave and aisles have ordinary lloman vaulting ; 
 but in order to preserve the square form, which was thought 
 necessary while the round arch was employed, the nave is made 
 exactly double the width of the aisles, so that each bay of the 
 roof answers to two pier-arches, and is just double the size of a 
 bay of the aisle. This difficulty is avoided by the use of the 
 pointed arch, which accordingly appears in the vaulting when no 
 transitional features occur elsewhere ; yet it is very remarkable 
 that in the two great cathedrals of Worms and Mentz, which 
 have pointed vaulting, the arrangement just mentioned is re- 
 tained, although no longer necessary ; a fact which must be con- 
 sidered as militating to some extent against the theory so ingeni- 
 ously and elaborately drawn out by Dr. Whewell. 
 
 The vault, to be really part of the whole design, connected 
 in the decorative construction with the rest of the fabric, must 
 spring from shafts rising from the ground. This is usually the 
 case, except where stalls would have interfered, when the shafts 
 often rise from brackets. It is manifest that, with the vault- 
 ing arrangements just mentioned, the shafts must neces- 
 sarily influence the character of the alternate piers. Those to 
 which the vaulting-shafts are attached, called by Dr. Whewell 
 the principal piers, must of course be larger and of a different 
 section from the intermediate ones, which simply support their 
 own arches without any connection with the roof. The pier 
 most usually employed is a rectangular mass with imposts, to 
 which the shafts or pilasters which support the vaulting are at- 
 tached ; and which exhibits, as is natural, a great variety of 
 forms. The intermediate piers also assume divers shapes ; some- 
 times they are left quite square and plain, sometimes shafts are 
 attached, which run up to the triforium and clerestory, or support 
 the pier arches. 
 
 But though the square pier is that most characteristic of the 
 style, and which distinguishes it both from Lombard and Nor- 
 man Romanesque, it must not be supposed that columns 
 are at all excluded. In churches which are not vaulted, they 
 are especially common, and they occur also as intermediate piers 
 in vaulted churches. On the other hand the square pier is found
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF GERMANY. 193 
 
 in some of those which have flat roofs. St. James at Ratisbon, 1 
 a fine example of this latter class, has both kinds in different 
 parts of the church ; the pillars are tall, with very rich capitals; 
 at Schwartz-Rheindorf 2 are columns approaching still nearer to 
 classical proportions. These, according to Dr. Whewell, 3 are 
 usually observed to some extent in the earlier specimens, where 
 we sometimes even find " a classical diminution of diameter 
 upwards." 
 
 The capitals are often of the cushion form, probably as the 
 same author supposes, an imitation of the Grecian Doric ; these 
 may be either left plain, or enriched with carving. Other capitals 
 have very beautiful foliage, often approaching to the Corinthian 
 type. The heavy abacus is frequently richly moulded and 
 carved. 
 
 The triforium is by no means a necessary feature even in 
 great churches, nor very conspicuous when it occurs. Not being 
 used as a gallery, it appears to have been omitted, or treated as a 
 subordinate feature. In the splendid Abbey of Laach the space 
 between the pier arch and the clerestory is left quite bare, and 
 even in the three great Cathedrals of Worms, Mcntz, and Spires, 
 the triforium is not at all important or dignified. Towards the 
 Transition, this part of the church becomes more ornamented, as 
 in some of the churches of Cologne. 
 
 The peculiar arrangement which groups two bays under one 
 vaulting arch has, in some instances, the effect of ranging the 
 clerestory windows in pairs. They are usually small and round- 
 headed, as are all the windows during the prevalence of pure 
 Romanesque. 
 
 There is the same tendency in the German as in the Lombard 
 Romanesque to enrich the external surface with arcades and pil- 
 lars. The bays are often divided by fiat pilaster-strips, or more 
 rarely by shafts, running into the corbcl-tablc. The blank ar- 
 cades sometimes rest on pilaster-strips, but more commonly 
 on shafts ; sometimes again, as at St. James, Ratisbon, on 
 figures like the Greek caryatides ; the arch is usually semicir- 
 cular, but sometimes of the round-head trefoil form. As 
 in Lombardy, small shafts are not uncommonly found sup- 
 
 1 Webb, 121. - Petit, i. 87. ^ l> ag0 101. 
 
 o
 
 194 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 porting strings without any arches, a manifest vestige of the 
 entablature system. 
 
 This style of decoration is not however confined to blank 
 arcades, but the open gallery of the Lombards is retained ; in 
 one position indeed, namely when circulating immediately under 
 the roof of the apse, it forms one of the most beautiful and 
 characteristic features of the German Romanesque. The shafts 
 are usually set two deep, an arrangement common also in Italy, 
 and yet more so in the Saracenic buildings of Spain. It is 
 manifestly derived from the use of two detached columns with 
 their entablature for the support of an arch, as in St. Constan- 
 tia at Rome. They occur in some of the cloisters of this style, 
 of which several instances remain ; as at Laach, where, notwith- 
 standing the western apse, they occupy the position of the 
 ancient atrium ; and in the celebrated example at Zurich. The 
 shafts in this last example are extremely curious, being very 
 slender, but with their wide-spreading capitals quite out of pro- 
 portion, though rendered necessary by the broad soffit of the arch. 
 
 The German, like all other Romanesque styles, is rich in sur- 
 face ornament, and that of a peculiar kind. There seem to be 
 three kinds prevalent in Romanesque buildings ; animal figures, 
 chiefly grotesque ; foliage and other vegetable details ; and that 
 style of ornament which merely enriches, without representation 
 of other objects, by means of the chevron and similar decorations. 
 All these are common to all the forms of the style, but each of 
 the three principal varieties of Romanesque would seem to have its 
 favourite kind of enrichment, used to a greater extent, though by 
 no means to the exclusion of the others. The first seems especi- 
 ally to mark the Lombard Romanesque, the last the Norman ; 
 the second, and decidedly the most graceful, that of Germany. 
 Besides the beautiful capitals of its columns and vaulting-shafts, 
 the deeply recessed doorways afford still greater scope for this kind 
 of ornament. Not only are the capitals of the shafts thus richly 
 adorned, but in some cases the shafts themselves ; and thus the 
 whole jamb is sometimes covered with decorations in which, though 
 others are not excluded, foliage is decidedly predominant. The 
 arch itself is sometimes less decorated than the jambs, contrary 
 to the practice of our own examples ; a heavy roll moulding is 
 very common. These doorways have usually a tympanum,
 
 OF THE EARLY ROMANESQUE OF IRELAND. 195 
 
 either enriched with the same kind of ornament, or, more com- 
 monly and appropriately, containing a sculptured group. I men- 
 tioned above the prominence which the arch obtained over the 
 square opening, even in Italian doorways. In the German build- 
 ings, as in our own, the whole is fused together ; the arch is not 
 placed over the square aperture, but the tympanum is inserted 
 beneath the arch. 
 
 The Romanesque of Germany is a form which deserves most 
 attentive consideration, if it were only from the elaborate man- 
 ner in which it has been treated by Dr. Whewell, and still more 
 from the high praise which it has received from so judicious an 
 observer as Mr. Petit, who manifestly considers this German 
 style as the form of Romanesque most nearly approaching to 
 perfection. Certainly it is the only form which can be put into any 
 competition with the Norman of England and Northern France. 
 But, before comparing these two noblest forms of the style, our 
 course will naturally lead us to an English form of Romanesque, 
 earlier, ruder, and rarer than that on which the burthen of 
 competition with that of our foreign brethren must rest ; to the 
 buildings of the free and comparatively isolated days of Teuto- 
 nic independence in England, before the establishment of the 
 Romanized Norman had introduced a new influence into our 
 language, manners, government, and art. And even before we 
 fully enter on the disputed question of Anglo-Saxon architecture, 
 it will be necessary to make a digression to another form, a field of 
 the greatest interest but just opened to us, which, though having 
 no essential connection with this point of the argument, 
 affords a valuable collateral support to the views which I 
 shall have to defend with regard to the erections of our Saxon 
 forefathers. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 OF TIIF, EARLY ROMANESQUE OF IRELAND. 
 
 While other inquirers into the architecture and antiquities of 
 the earlier days of Christianity have investigated every country 
 
 o2
 
 196 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 in which temples have been reared to the service of our religion ; 
 while nearly all the magnificent cathedrals and abbeys of Europe 
 have been subjected to such minute investigation, that without 
 leaving our own fire-side, we may bring before us, with nearly 
 all the vividness of personal knowledge, the spires of Burgos and 
 the domes of Byzantium, the basilicas of Italy and the log- 
 churches of Norway ; one patient, enterprizing, and zealous in- 
 quirer has by his own single exertions opened to us a field 
 hitherto untrodden, and the glory of whose discovery is wholly 
 his own. The magnificent volume of Mr. Petric on the Architec- 
 ture of Ireland forms indeed an epoch in ecclesiological research ; 
 it brings the Church and her material fabrics before us in a new 
 garb ; one less gorgeous indeed than that which we are used to 
 contemplate ; one not gleaming with the gold of Tartessus, or 
 the jewels of the Eastern land, but unsoiled by the touch of the 
 world, severely arrayed in the sterner holiness of her earliest 
 days, in all the immaculate whiteness of her virgin purity. In 
 that far island of the west, in whose air the Roman eagle never 
 fluttered, and from whose shore no captive was dragged to en- 
 rich a Caesar's triumph with his combats and his agonies, we 
 have most vividly brought before us the estate of the Church 
 when her temples were but the damp cave or the rude hut, when 
 she dwelt not as yet in the halls of the patrician and the palace 
 of the emperor, and when the outcry of a populace, or the frown 
 of a tyrant, hurried away her Pontiffs from their lowly thrones 
 and altars to seal their witness in the reeking amphitheatre. 
 These buildings, themselves of the most venerable antiquity, the 
 earliest existing Christian temples in northern Europe, are the 
 representatives of others more venerable still ; they derived not 
 their origin from the gorgeous basilicas of Constantine and 
 Theodosius, but in them we behold the direct offspring of the 
 lowly temples of the days of persecution, the humble shrines 
 where Cyprian bent in worship, and which Valerian and Diocle- 
 tian swept from off the earth. 
 
 " It is, indeed," says Mr. Petrie, " by no means improbable, 
 that the severe simplicity, as well as the uniformity of plan and 
 size, which usually characterizes our early churches, was less the 
 result of the poverty or ignorance of their founders than of their 
 choice, originating in the spirit of their faith, or a veneration for
 
 OF THE EARLY ROMANESQUE OF IRELAND. 197 
 
 some model given to them by their first teachers ; for that the 
 earliest Christian churches on the continent before the time of 
 Constantine were, like these, small and unadorned, there is no 
 reason to doubt." And this position seems to be strongly cor- 
 roborated by the fact that the apse is unknown, which manifestly 
 points to a type anterior to the basilican model, as otherwise we 
 can hardly account for the omission of that characteristic and 
 almost universal feature. 
 
 The type of an early Irish church is something quite peculiar to 
 itself ; it is a simple quadrangular chamber, entered by a single 
 doorway at the west end, and in the larger churches connected 
 by an arch with another chamber to the east forming the chancel. 
 Such is the form preserved with little change down to the Nor- 
 man invasion, and always used to the exclusion of the circular, 
 octagonal, and cruciform plans to be found in other countries. 
 The small size of many of them appears at first sight almost in- 
 credible, sixty feet being the greatest length, and some being 
 under thirty. Hence most probably, as this small size was 
 fixed by a canon attributed to St. Patrick, arose the custom of 
 erecting numerous small churches near together, when larger 
 accommodation was required, instead of building a single large 
 one. Though the apse does not occur, the altar-arrangements 
 are identical in principle with those of the apsidal basilica, as 
 Mr. Petrie has found in some examples a bench-table along the 
 east wall, and the altar detached in front. 
 
 These ante-Norman churches readily resolve themselves, when 
 architecturally considered, into two classes ; the very rude and 
 early structures, some of them dating from the fifth century, which 
 can scarcely be said to belong to any definite style, and the later 
 and more enriched ones which may claim a place, and very far 
 from a contemptible one, among the many ramifications of the 
 great Romanesque family. The peculiar stamp impressed on them 
 by the traditions of the Irish Church hinders indeed the higher 
 beauties of outline and proportion, and the majesty of great 
 size and height; but whatever richness of detail was allowed by 
 the nature of the fabric is found in a degree surpassed by the 
 Romanesque of no other country. 
 
 The first impression conveyed by the contemplation of Mr. 
 Petrie's specimens of the first class, is one which he himself not
 
 198 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 unfrcqucntly refers to, the remarkable similarity between these 
 structures and the Pelasgian remains in Greece. The inclining 
 iambs of many of the doorways transport us at once from St. 
 Patrick and St. Kevin to the acropolis of Hercules and the 
 tomb of Agamemnon. There is however no reason to suppose 
 that the coincidence is more than accidental ; it is simply the 
 square-headed doorway in an unornamented form, and we have 
 seen that doorways were invariably square-headed in Italy till 
 the days of Theodoric. Other doorways have an arched head, 
 with or without imposts ; with one exception, they are not re- 
 cessed, and are quite plain, excepting in some cases a plain torus 
 moulding down the jambs. Others have only an arch of con- 
 struction above the flat lintel, but as the space is filled in with 
 several stones, it can hardly aspire to the name of a tympanum. 
 The triangular-headed doorway does not occur in these early 
 times, the only two instances discovered by Mr. Petrie being 
 referred by him to as late a period as the twelfth century. The 
 windows however, which are very small, with only an internal 
 splay, and which appear to have been in no instance glazed, are 
 very frequently of that form, being constructed of two inclining 
 stones. They often however have square or round heads, the 
 latter being the almost invariable form of the eastern windows. 
 Of an equally plain character, though very well wrought, are the 
 chancel arches, when they occur. They are always semicircular, 
 and usually spring from inclining jambs without any decorative 
 impost. 
 
 The roofs are high-pitched; in the churches furnished with 
 distinct chancels, they were usually of timber ; but the chancels 
 were sometimes covered with an inclining roof wholly of stone, 
 which appears to have been the usual covering of the smaller 
 churches. Long and short work is common, but in its usual 
 position in the Saxon buildings of England, the quoins of the 
 walls, it is comparatively rare, being more commonly found in 
 the sides of doorways and windows, A flat pilaster is also often 
 found at the angles, which is sometimes continued along the 
 gable. 
 
 But still more interesting and important in the history of ar- 
 chitecture is the fact, distinctly proved by historical testimonies 
 collected and sifted with the most extensive and patient learning,
 
 OF THE EARLY ROMANESQUE OF IRELAND. 199 
 
 that an ornamented Romanesque 1 style existed in Ireland anterior 
 to the eleventh century, one moreover which exhibited many of the 
 identical decorations which some of our archseologians would fain 
 make us believe were hardly known till the twelfth. This style, 
 which seems to have been in use from a period anterior to the 
 ninth down to the twelfth century, is by no means identical with 
 our Norman, although strongly resembling it in general cha- 
 racter. 
 
 But even after the introduction of the enriched style, the 
 ancient Irish builders still did not venture to depart from 
 the small dimensions and simple ground plan which had 
 the prescriptive authority of their earliest traditions. The 
 smallest and rudest village churches of England ordinarily sur- 
 pass in size and complication of plan even the cathedrals of 
 primitive Ireland. Few positions are afforded for the introduc- 
 tion of ornament, but in those few, namely the chancel arches, 
 doors, and windows, every kind of decoration known to the ar- 
 chitect was lavished with an unsparing hand. This style of 
 ornament, as far as mere surface decoration goes, is not very 
 different from the Norman ; the chevron and other ornaments 
 of that style are common, and there is abundance of that inter- 
 mixture of animal figures with basket, fret, and scroll work, which 
 appears common to all early northern architecture. Some forms 
 however occur which are not commonly seen in Norman archi- 
 tecture, though not differing greatly from it in principle. 
 
 The jambs for instance are treated in a manner by no means 
 excluded from that style, but certainly not characteristic of it. 
 An enriched Norman jamb, like a Lombard or German one, 
 generally presents a scries of shafts, standing boldly out from the 
 jamb, crowned with their own capitals, and supported by dis- 
 tinct and bold bases. In the richest Irish archways, shafts are 
 the exception, and, when they occur, arc far more massive than is 
 usual in other forms of Romanesque. In most cases each order 
 of the arch rests on a jamb, which instead of having shafts at- 
 tached, is itself channelled into bowtels of little projection. 
 These very often have no pretension at all to the character of a 
 shaft, and, even when they have, present but little boldness of 
 projection, and of course there arc several of these to a space 
 1 Sec especially p. 23G of Mr. Pctrie's work.
 
 200 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 which in the other arrangement would be occupied by a single 
 shaft. These are united under a single capital, or rather entab- 
 lature, the most prevalent ornament of which is a human head at 
 the angle, which Mr.Petrie aptly compares to the Isis-headed capi- 
 tal of Egyptian architecture. These groups of bowtels are finished 
 at the bottom with what must be in courtesy called a base, though 
 seldom preserving much resemblance to the bases of regular shafts, 
 except where actual shafts are intermingled. These jambs seem 
 to be a transitional stage between the enrichment of the jambs 
 of a square doorway, and the employment of actual shafts. They 
 are accidentally more advanced than the latter, having manifestly 
 more continuity with the arch mouldings ; and the assemblage of 
 small members of little projection under a single architrave 
 meets with its parallel even in the latest days of Gothic. It 
 should not be omitted that the inclination of the jambs, charac- 
 teristic of the earliest Irish buildings, is also continued in the 
 more enriched style. 
 
 The mouldings of the arch, which appears to be always semi- 
 circular, are, singularly enough, far more affected with roll and 
 other sectional mouldings than is usual in early Norman work, 
 a peculiarity which they share with the Saxon remains in Eng- 
 land. These circumstances seem, among many others, to point 
 out both the Irish and Anglo-Saxon styles as distinct varieties of 
 Romanesque, having their own independent developments. The 
 surface ornaments of Norman or similar character are usually 
 neither so boldly worked as in England, nor so completely 
 extended over the whole arch, being often confined to the label. 
 One of the most curious, as w r ell as the nearest approach to Nor- 
 man work, of the numerous examples given by Mr. Petrie, is the 
 round window in the church of Rahin or Ptathain, in the King's 
 County, which lights a chamber above the chancel. Though at- 
 tributed by Mr. Petrie to so early a period as the eighth century, 
 it is richly adorned with the chevron and bead mouldings, though 
 carved in very low relief. There can be little doubt that it is, 
 as he says, " not only the most curious of its kind remaining in 
 the British isles, but also the most ancient." 
 
 But contemporary with the prevalence of Norman architecture 
 in England, we find it introduced into Ireland also. The build- 
 ings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries are quite distinct from
 
 OF THE EARLY ROMANESQUE OF IRELAND. 201 
 
 the earlier ones, and exhibit the Norman system in all its fulness, 
 differing only in some trifling peculiarities, such as are found in the 
 contemporary buildings of different districts. Cormac's Chapel 
 on the rock of Cashel, of which a circumstantial account, with 
 numerous illustrations of all its principal details, is supplied by 
 Mr. Petrie, is a manifest proof of this, and might take its place 
 by the side of Iffley and Barfreston as a specimen of a rich 
 Norman building on a small scale. We have here elaborate 
 ornamental arcades, a groined chancel, rich doorways with sculp- 
 tured tympana. Perhaps some traces of the earlier styles may be 
 here and there discerned ; and the use of square pilasters for 
 shafts in some of the blank arcades, and of small shafts without 
 arches as an exterior decoration, may be noticed as singularities ; 
 but the former is sometimes the case in Norman buildings, and 
 the latter we have seen occurring both in Lombard and German 
 churches. 
 
 Besides the churches, many other buildings of equal antiquity 
 and similar architecture remain in Ireland, especially small ora- 
 tories, and houses supposed in many cases to be the dwelling- 
 places of the earliest saints. But the most interesting arc the 
 famous round towers, on which so much fanciful and ingenious 
 speculation has been wasted. These Mr. Petrie convincingly 
 shows to be simply detached campaniles, though also used, as 
 church towers often were in all parts, and would especially be in 
 a rude unsettled country like Ireland, for many other purposes 
 connected with the Church, as beacons and as places for refuge 
 in case of a sudden assault. They are never found apart from 
 churches, they frequently possess Christian symbols, and their 
 architecture always corresponds with that of the churches of 
 their own date, namely, according to Mr. Petrie, from the sixth 
 to the twelfth centuries. After his learned, diligent, and judi- 
 cious investigations, the question may be considered as entirely 
 set at rest, and the theories of their Danish, Phoenician, or 
 Buddhist origin consigned to oblivion. 
 
 An Irish round tower is a tall, thin structure, proportionally 
 taller and thinner even than an Italian campanile, and covered 
 with a low conical capping. The doorways arc placed at a consi- 
 derable height, thereby showing that the towers were intended for 
 defence, on the same principle by which many English steeples,
 
 302 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 especially when designed for similar uses, have no external 
 entrance. 
 
 I have perhaps treated these early Irish remains at greater 
 length than their intrinsic merit would claim in a general history 
 of architecture. But the field is so new and so interesting, and 
 there is such a fascination about Mr. Petrie's book, that it would 
 have been difficult to dismiss the subject hastily. And they will 
 besides be found, as I hope to show in the next chapter, to throw 
 much light upon the disputed question of Saxon and Norman 
 architecture in England. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 OF THE EARLY ROMANESQUE OF ENGLAND, OR ANGLO-SAXON 
 
 STYLE. 
 
 "Within the memory of man every ancient structure in England 
 which exhibited round arches was indiscriminately considered as 
 Saxon ; and the round and the pointed arch were respectively 
 distinguished as Saxon and Gothic. Writers who had progressed 
 somewhat further in such inquiries than was usual in their age, 
 soon discovered that many of these edifices were shown by do- 
 cumentary evidence to be posterior to the Norman Conquest ; 
 but even these had the old theory so embedded in their minds 
 as to consider these as being still examples of the Saxon style, 
 supposing that the style employed by the vanquished was con- 
 tinued or imitated by the new possessors of our island. Thus 
 an inquirer, perhaps the most laborious, acute, and reverential of 
 his time, the late Bishop Milner, speaks of the "heavy Saxon 
 pillar " as retained in St. Cross ; and similar language is em- 
 ployed by one who did more than any other to revive a feeling 
 for the poetry of ancient architecture, as of every other feature 
 of the middle age : 
 
 "In Saxon strength that abbey frowned 
 On massive arches, broad and round." 
 
 This theory, fascinating as it must be to the mind of every true-
 
 OF ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE. 203 
 
 hearted Englishman, is now completely exploded, and we need 
 not stop to show that by far the greater proportion of our Ro- 
 manesque edifices not only belong historically to a period sub- 
 sequent to the Conquest, but are specimens of a style which is 
 most accurately and appropriately known as Norman. But 
 some writers, not satisfied with this undoubted fact, seem 
 animated with a desire to prove, in the teeth of all probability 
 and all evidence, that every fragment of Saxon architecture has 
 been swept from the earth, or rather that some physical or moral 
 incapacity prevented our Saxon forefathers from putting stone 
 and mortar together. The event of the field of Senlac is held to 
 have introduced, by some mystic influence, a previously unknown 
 power of constructing buildings into the British Isles ; sometimes 
 they seem inclined to add, into the whole of Europe. The year 
 1066 becomes an archonship of Eucleides, before which things 
 cither existed not or may not be remembered ; the slightest hint 
 that ought can have survived causes a kind of uneasiness to the 
 propounders of these theories ; theories " which," to apply the 
 words of one of the strongest impugncrs of Saxon capability of 
 building, " were founded on little else than their own preconceived 
 ideas of what Saxon architecture ought to be," 1 namely a mem- 
 ber of the important class known by some logicians as oux oWa. 
 It is an objection frequently made by this class of writers that 
 it is impossible to prove the existence of any Saxon remains ; 
 that is, to bring documentary evidence of their erection at a cer- 
 tain period. Now in the first place this assertion is by no means 
 universally true. In several cases where supposed Saxon build- 
 ings exist, history mentions the erection of some structure at a 
 corresponding time, which is as much evidence as is generally to 
 be had for the date of any ancient building whatever. But this 
 kind of objection might be brought with equal force against all 
 classifications of this kind. It is not to be supposed that Mr. 
 Hickman had documentary evidence for the date of every village 
 doorway or window which he referred to the thirteenth, four- 
 teenth, or fifteenth century. He simply observed certain pecu- 
 liarities in buildings of one ascertained date, and concluded, 
 naturally and rightly, that other structures in which he observed 
 
 1 Glossary, Art. Saxon Architecture, note 1.
 
 20-1' HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the same peculiarities were of the same date. All architectural 
 investigations must be based on inductions of this kind, or we 
 shall be involved in the most inextricable uncertainty. 
 
 The facts arc simply these. A number of buildings of a par- 
 ticular kind are found, by evidence, to have been erected in the 
 eleventh and twelfth centuries ; and a further number of the 
 same kind arc naturally concluded to be of the same date. 
 Another class is found, differing from these in several respects, 
 which cannot be later, (if only because the forms of all the later 
 periods arc equally well known,) and which are therefore natu- 
 rally concluded to be earlier. History tells us that some struc- 
 tures were erected at this earlier period, which must either be 
 those in question, or else have utterly vanished from the earth ; 
 an assumption as gratuitous as to suppose all the recorded struc- 
 tures of any other period to have been universally destroyed, and 
 to refer the existing buildings of that epoch to some earlier or later 
 time. The Norman date and the Norman style are well under- 
 stood ; these buildings are not Norman in style ; why persist in 
 referring them to a Norman date, rather than to a Celtic, a 
 Roman, a Decorated, or a Cinque-cento ? To any one who at- 
 tentively considers the question without prejudice, it must be 
 clear, not only that buildings still exist which were erected during 
 the Saxon period, but that an Anglo-Saxon style does exist, 
 marked by its own peculiar features, and as distinct from the Nor- 
 man as from any other form of Romanesque. Fresh instances are 
 almost daily added to the list of such buildings, and it would 
 seem probable that much more of what is so hastily and arbitra- 
 rily assumed to be Norman may really belong to the days of the 
 Saxon saints. 
 
 The researches of Mr. Petrie into the antiquities of Ireland have 
 of course thrown a very great corroborative light upon the sub- 
 ject. We there see a distinct, and very far from rude, style ex- 
 isting in that country long before the Norman era ; we find, 
 among other characters totally different, not a few of those fea- 
 tures and ornaments which arc arbitrarily supposed to be infalli- 
 ble marks of a Norman date. We can hardly suppose that 
 structures reared by the great monarchs of our Saxon days, the 
 Emperors of all Britain, were inferior to those erected by a petty 
 prmce of Ireland ; and we have here demonstrative proof, were
 
 OF ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE. 205 
 
 any required, that the chevron and other similar ornaments arc 
 not necessarily a sign of date later than the Conquest. The an- 
 tecedent objection, utterly unfounded and unreasonable as it was, 
 is thus demonstratively overthrown. The Saxon churches, we 
 are told, were small and insignificant, an argument which in it- 
 self proves nothing, and is again met by the analogy of the 
 sister island ; the Irish churches were still smaller and more 
 insignificant; yet they exist and present distinctive features. 
 That they were invariably, or even usually, of wood is a mere 
 assertion without proof; to collect instances of such does but 
 prove, what no one ever doubted, that churches were occasionally 
 built of wood at all times, and that the practice was more fre- 
 quent during the Saxon period than afterwards. 1 And to add to 
 actual evidence an argumentum ad reverentiam of no small force, 
 it is only necessary to refer to the distinct avowal of an author 
 certainly not undervalued by antiquaries of this class, Professor 
 Willis, who has incontrovertibly shown that large Saxon churches 
 did exist, built on the same general type as those reared in sub- 
 sequent ages, and farther gives a full description, gathered from 
 ancient records, of the main features exhibited by the Metro- 
 politan church of St. Dunstan and St. Alphege. 2 
 
 But as these facts scarcely required external argument, Mr. 
 Petrie's discoveries are more valuable as showing that orna- 
 mental work, and the particular kinds of enrichment which wc 
 arbitrarily call Norman, are not necessarily a mark of a date sub- 
 sequent to the Conquest. A wide field is thus open for adding 
 to our stock of existing Saxon remains, if this, hitherto consi- 
 dered an inviolable restriction, be removed. And I may venture 
 to state that I had been myself inclined to attribute a Saxon 
 date to several such instances before the appearance of Mr. 
 Petrie's work exhibited those positive proofs of analogous cases 
 which have of course greatly confirmed me in such a supposition.' 5 
 
 See this subject well treated in collected by Mr. Poole, in the 
 
 a paper on Wooden Churches in second and third Chapters of his 
 
 the Ecclesiologist for August, 1848. recently published History of Eccle- 
 
 2 See the second Chapter of his siastical Architecture in England. 
 History of Canterbury Cathedral, 3 " We shall be rather disposed 
 
 and his Winchester, p. 34. A mass to attribute some part of what is 
 
 of information with regard to other usually called Norman work, from 
 
 Anglo-Saxon buildings has been the great skill it evinces, to the
 
 20(J HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 We may then venture, in opposition to these purely destructive 
 theories, to assume thccxistencc of Saxon buildings as a certain fact; 
 and an examination will show that they were erected in a style 
 possessing totally distinct characters of its own. Let us attend 
 to a hint cursorily thrown out by a really acute and philosophical 
 observer, into whose plan a minute examination of the contro- 
 versy did not enter. " What may be the extent of Saxon remains 
 in England will probably remain a question among antiquaries. 
 If the style differed essentially from the Norman, it might be 
 considered an offset from the German Romanesque ; but I am 
 not aware of anything that leads us to suppose it ever acquired 
 the purity and marked character of the latter." 1 Whether it be 
 in historical truth an actual offset from the German Roman- 
 esque may be questioned, as it was more probably a direct Italian 
 importation, and so would rather be a sister than a daughter. 
 At the same time it can hardly be doubted that it belongs to the 
 same family as the Romanesque of Lombardy and Germany, 
 rather than to the other forms of Byzantine, Proven gal, or Norm an. 
 
 In investigating these most interesting questions, it must be 
 borne in mind that no inquiry in the whole history of architec- 
 ture is attended with greater difficulty, on account of the pau- 
 city and rudeness of existing examples. No perfect Saxon 
 Cathedral or Abbey remains to bear witness to the effect of the 
 style in those cases where richness and beauty were mostly to be 
 expected ; only a few portions, small and in several cases un- 
 certain, are to be found scattered among our Minsters ; we are 
 left to derive our knowledge of our most truly national architec- 
 ture from the rude, patched, and mutilated examples afforded by 
 obscure parish-churches, which owe doubtless to their poverty 
 and obscurity the preservation of their most valuable portions. 
 It will be at once seen how difficult it is to determine the princi- 
 ples and features of an architectural style from such examples 
 as these, possibly among the rudest of their own class. And 
 this at once accounts for the great difference in point of orna- 
 ment and general merit of execution apparent between the Irish 
 and the Saxon remains ; among the former we have the relics 
 
 Saxons, than to deny them the be- to any existing edifice. Poole, ut 
 nefit of any evidence which may supra, p. 69. 
 seem to assign an ante-Norman date ' Petit, i. 99.
 
 OF ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE. 207 
 
 of the most enriched and most dignified churches of the country, 
 though from a peculiar tradition even these were kept of small 
 size. Hence we can judge of this style in its perfection, which 
 in the case of our own Saxon we cannot do, as it would be 
 manifestly unfair to argue from the rugged structures of the 
 hamlet that nothing better was to be found in the Cathedral and 
 the mitred Abbey. And it is indeed remarkable that a style of 
 which so few and so rude examples alone remain, should still 
 have such an entirely distinct character, as to render them recog- 
 nizable at the first glance. 
 
 And we may here meet a sophism in which the opponents of 
 the Saxon theory are extremely fond of indulging, namely that 
 not one of the features supposed to mark the style are absolutely 
 peculiar to it. The balusters 1 at St. Albany's, and any example of a 
 triangular-headed opening, or of long and short work, which they 
 can rake up at any other date, are pointed out with an almost 
 childish glee, as irrefragable arguments that no building anterior 
 to A.D. 1066 can possibly exist. As if this process could not 
 be applied to any other style whatsoever. An author intent on 
 demolishing Perpendicular might proceed with equal success ; 
 the four-centred arch proves nothing, being found in work of 
 the thirteenth century in Stanwick church and in Oxford Cathe- 
 dral ; the square label over the arch is one of the commonest 
 features of Arabian architecture ; the low gable is common to 
 New College Chapel and the Temple of Theseus ; and a hun- 
 dred other fallacies might be raised, which it requires no great 
 acquaintance with the " Solutio Sophismatum" to unravel. Any 
 one but an arclueologian knows that there is an indescribable 
 something about buildings, as about everything else, call it air, 
 character, what you please, which stamps their style and date better 
 than all the technicalities from one end of the Glossary to the 
 
 1 I had always looked on St. work on the Ahhey just published by 
 
 Alban's as in some sense a Saxon the Messrs. Buckler, they incline to 
 
 church built after the Conquest, the belief that many of its features 
 
 just as Waltham and Westminster are even chronologically Saxon, and 
 
 were Norman churches built before ; that the church for which Abbot 
 
 the retention of a few Saxon forms, Frederick braved the wrath of the 
 
 where most of the workmen at least Conqueror was not utterly swept 
 
 were doubtless English, being re- away by the contumelious stranger 
 
 ally no difficulty. In the elaborate who usurped his seat.
 
 208 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 other. And notwithstanding the astonishing fact that "the 
 absence of buttresses is no evidence of date j buildings of all 
 nges are to be found without them -," 1 the Anglo-Saxon unbut- 
 trcsscd tower has as distinct and peculiar a character of its own 
 as any class of edifices in the world, and one which no accurate 
 eye can confound with the equally unbuttresscd tower often 
 found of Norman, or even of later, date. 
 
 The internal arrangement of the Saxon churches is the point 
 with regard to which we have the smallest store of examples to 
 guide us. As far however as we can judge, they followed the 
 usual type of the Latin Church, the chancel, nave, and aisles, 
 with their arcades and clerestory ; but the apse, though not 
 excluded, is not of frequent occurrence. The piers seem to 
 have been square ; such is the case in the very rude and early 
 church of Brixworth, the most ancient parts of which, (for two 
 ante-Norman dates may be distinctly traced,) exhibit the Saxon 
 Romanesque in its most primitive condition. The piers here 
 are gigantic masses, chiefly of lloman brick, left perfectly square, 
 with only a rude impost, and supporting arches of the same 
 construction. The other arches of the same date (circ. 680,) 
 throughout the church are of similar character. St. Michael's 
 at St. Alban's, a much later structure, being attributed by Mr. 
 Bloxam to A.D. 940, has also plain square piers, with a 
 heavy impost ; but these, as well as the arches, are chamfered at 
 the edges. Pier arches of Anglo-Saxon date are very rare, but 
 chancel and belfry arches are not uncommon, and among several 
 diversities preserve one general character, having the semicircular 
 arch and rectangular pier. The impost is commonly strongly 
 marked, plain and very heavy, being a square block, with the 
 lower edge sometimes left plain, sometimes chamfered. Some- 
 times more mouldings occur; and at Corhampton, and still 
 more at Barnack, they are quite complicated, and are evidently 
 rude imitations of classical architraves, bearing a most remark- 
 able similarity to the doorway in the Palace of Theodoric. There 
 is also a remarkable tendency to the employment of a heavy roll 
 moulding both in the arch and jamb, in contradistinction to the 
 square section of the early Norman. This has been remarked 
 as a characteristic of the Irish Romanesque, but the Saxon spe- 
 1 Glossary, ut supra, Note N.
 
 OF ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE. 209 
 
 cimens are greatly deficient in the richness and elegance of the 
 examples of the sister island. Those seem to betoken a style which 
 had really developed towards Gothic faster than those of other 
 nations ; here they are merely rude excrescences: it is not so much 
 that the arch is channelled into mouldings as that these unsightly 
 rolls are attached to it ; it is in fact the application to the arch 
 of the same principle by which the shaft is attached to the 
 jamb ; though in this case in a very rude form. The Saxon 
 arch, even though, as at Wittering, it may present an actual 
 hollow, does not, in its general effect, exhibit any approximation to 
 verticality. A most valuable example of this style is to be found 
 in the lantern arches of the ancient cathedral church of Stow, in 
 Lincolnshire, assigned by Mr. Atkinson, in his paper read before 
 the Lincolnshire Society, to as early a period as 678, and which 
 he shows must be earlier than 870. The piers are square, with 
 the usual heavy impost, interrupted by a huge bowtel, attached 
 to the external faces, but without shaft or capital ; three smaller 
 rolls are attached to the arch, which is of one order. This 
 church, which exhibits 1 four Romanesque dates, three of them 
 anterior to the Conquest, is most valuable, as containing authen- 
 tic portions of a Saxon minster, and showing how widely re- 
 moved the architecture of such a church, even at that early period, 
 was from the rugged masonry of Brixworth. 
 
 The genuine jamb-shaft hardly occurs in Saxon architecture, 
 except in the tower arch at Sompting, where a sub-shaft, with 
 capital and base, supports the heavy roll attached to the soffit, 
 which is in fact a continuation of the shaft, interrupted only by its 
 capital. This last portion is adorned with rude foliage, interrupt- 
 ing a series of scrolls on the impost of the arch, like a frieze. The 
 air of the whole is rather Irish than Anglo-Saxon. An exception to 
 the rule of square piers occurs in the crypt under Repton church. 
 Yet we here have in the " slender" 2 column a resemblance to the 
 Lombard style, with its light and lofty subterranean chapels, 
 rather than to the heavy proportions of the Norman crypt. 
 
 1 Here, as in many other cases, Brigstock to the same style as the 
 
 we find Anglo-Saxon and Norman north arcade ? No sophism about 
 
 work side by side, as if purposely to " early " and " late " can evade the 
 
 show the diversity. AVlio could difficulty, 
 ever attribute the belfry arch at liloxam, p. 71, seventh ed.
 
 210 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 But there is a mode of treating arches, and their jambs, both 
 constructive and decorative, at once more frequent and more 
 characteristic of the style; that namely of facing them with a kind 
 of Hat rib of very small projection. This is evidently analogous to 
 those vertical strips with which the Saxon architects delighted to 
 cover their churches, and which form one of their chief sources of 
 ornament, if a series of flat, narrow, square-edged projections can 
 deserve the name. These strips, pilaster-strips as they may be 
 called, though hardly answering Dr. "YVhewell's definition of that 
 term, seem to take the place of shafts as external decorations; they 
 are to the decorative shaft what the rectangular pier is to the co- 
 lumn, and are thus quite in harmony with the other features of the 
 style. And this view is confirmed by those at the angles of Somp- 
 ting tower being treated as genuine pilasters with capitals, and by 
 actual shafts occurring in juxtaposition with them. Connected with 
 the treatment of jambs is the manner in which both they and the 
 quoins of buildings were frequently, though far from universally, 
 treated in this style. I allude to stones placed alternately in 
 a horizontal and a vertical position, known as long-and- short 
 work; this is evidently a wooden construction imitated in stone. 
 
 Doorways are mostly round-headed; that at Brixworth is of 
 brick, as rude as the remainder of that wonderful, but most un- 
 sightly church. This example has no attempt at decollation what- 
 ever, but in others we find the characteristic impost, and the 
 still more characteristic flat rib. Some are of two orders, as at 
 Barton-on-Humber, and at Wenden, Essex. The latter, which 
 is figured by Mr. Paley, 1 has its arch of brick, and has a tym- 
 panum perfectly plain. He gives another 2 from Little Abingdon, 
 Cambridgeshire, where the impost is ornamented with the star 
 and billet mouldings. The substitute for the arch, composed of 
 two inclined stones, which we have seen occasionally occurring in 
 other early forms of Romanesque, is also much used in this style. 
 It is sometimes employed for the smaller and simpler doorways, 
 in which the impost and rib often occur. 
 
 Windows also are sometimes of this last form, as the double one 
 
 atDeerhurst,where the quasi-arches, which have the characteristic 
 
 rib, are divided by a massive fluted pilaster, with a very heavy 
 
 impost, moulded more like a rude architrave ; this impost and the 
 
 1 Gothic Architecture, p. 202. 2 Ditto, p. 38.
 
 OF ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE. 211 
 
 fluting are also repeated on the jambs. Some of the smaller win- 
 dows, as at the tower at Brixworth, are square-headed, or rather 
 shapeless; but the head is usually round, though sometimes of al- 
 most incredible rudeness. A feature peculiar to the style, but by no 
 means universal in it, is the double splay, both internal and exter- 
 nal. The arches and jambs of windows are treated in the manner 
 usual in the style for arched openings ; some of those at Sompting 
 have a roll moulding running all round, without any impost. 
 
 But the most characteristic window of the style is that which 
 so frequently occurs in belfries, the compound window divided 
 by a shaft ; this is usually double, but at Earl's Barton as many 
 as five occur together. The shaft is in some examples a complete 
 baluster ; the rudest example of this appears to be that at Monks- 
 wearmouth, engraved by Mr. Bloxam, where the baluster has 
 but a single swell, and has no moulding in any part. Most 
 commonly however they have a double or triple swell, and are 
 encircled by bands ; the capitals being formed in a similar man- 
 ner. Sometimes again, as in Wyckham church, Berks, the 
 shaft is not a baluster, but a genuine pillar of short proportion, 
 but with a capital of this kind. In others, which appear to be 
 of later date, the shafts quite lose the character of balusters, 
 are sometimes much longer, and have rude capitals more nearly 
 approaching the Norman, as at St. Mary-le-Wigford 1 and 
 St. Peter-le-Gowts, in Lincoln, and at Hale, near Heckington. 
 These shafts or balusters support a long heavy impost, running 
 nearly through the thickness of the wall, and consequently 
 overlapping the shaft on both sides; this impost ought really to 
 be considered as an entablature, as the shaft is often furnished 
 with a distinct abacus beneath. The impost occurs again on the 
 jambs, which never have any shaft attached. The arches are 
 round, usually quite plain, without even the pilaster-strip of the 
 style. Almost equally plain are the jambs, which are sometimes, 
 but by no means always, constructed of long-and-short work. 
 At St. Mary-le-Wigford, the arches have a very plain and simple 
 chevron. All these windows possess a very marked expression, 
 
 1 When this chapter was written, they have been since mentioned in 
 
 these two churches had not, to the the Hand-book of Ecclesiology. 
 
 best of my knowledge, been re- Hale I have never seen noticed, 
 marked as containing Saxon work;
 
 212 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and that one totally different from the familiar type of the Nor- 
 man double belfry window ; they are much ruder, it is true, but 
 the difference is not that they are ruder specimens of the same cha- 
 racter ; they have an entirely different character of their own. It 
 may be remarked that the genuine containing arch, usually found 
 over a Norman double window, is hardly to be seen in the Saxon 
 style, unless we except those at Monkswearmouth, and St. Mary 
 Junior, York, which are surmounted by a flat semicircular strip. 
 The towers in which these windows occur are by far the most 
 remarkable and characteristic features of the style, and the only 
 ones which give us much opportunity of judging of its general 
 effect. They have a very marked character, totally distinct from 
 that of their Norman successors. The latter, low, heavy, mas- 
 sive, are essentially designed to occupy the centre of a church, 
 and never appear to so much advantage elsewhere. Many Saxon 
 towers were central, and one or two such still remain ; in min- 
 sters and other large churches it was doubtless, no less than 
 in after ages, the ordinary position. But the genuine type of 
 the parochial Saxon tower, as transmitted to us in extant exam- 
 ples, is totally different, and is at once distinguishable by its far 
 superior height. In fact the Norman tower is the legitimate suc- 
 cessor of the cupola, 1 the Saxon is a rude imitation of the Italian 
 campanile. The extant examples present many differences among 
 themselves, some rising from the ground without so much as a 
 string-course, others tapering in stages, and admitting of different 
 degrees of ornament. Still no one can fail to recognize the hard, 
 unmistakeable outline of the tall, unbuttressed Saxon tower ; it 
 possesses a barbaric grandeur altogether its own, and breathes in 
 its fulness the spirit of England's ancient days of freedom and iso- 
 lation. Earl's Barton is evidently loaded with every species of 
 decoration known to the architect, and the effect of plainer ex- 
 amples is always striking, both from the severity of the style, and 
 from their usually faultless proportions. 2 The view of the city 
 of Lincoln from the neighbourhood of the Minster is one which 
 should raise a thrill of patriotism in the heart of every genuine 
 Englishman; the prominent objects being the tall Saxon steeples 
 
 1 See above, p. 189. has displaced the original belfry 
 
 I cannot help suspecting that windows; otherwise it would be 
 at Barnack the later octagonal stage quite anomalous.
 
 OP ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE. 213 
 
 of St. Mary's and St. Peter's, with their sharp outlines cutting 
 through the sky, and soaring as commandingly over the neigh- 
 bouring buildings as if no Norman king or prelate had ever held 
 sway over the race that bade them rise. These two, with the ex- 
 ception of some rude sculpture at St. Peter's, 1 are without any 
 attempt at enrichment, as are many others, as St. Michael's at 
 Oxford, St. Benet's at Cambridge, Hale, and Dunham Magna, 
 figured in the Glossary. This last is a central tower, but has quite 
 the air of a western one, and is far taller than Norman steeples 
 usually are in its position ; it is not divided by strings, but ap- 
 pears to batter from the ground. But many are enriched with the 
 pilaster-strips and arcades. Such is the case at Stowe, Northamp- 
 tonshire, a tower more altered by the insertion of windows than is 
 usual, as these venerable relics would almost seem to have been 
 treated with a religious reverence for their age and associations, 
 not common in the best days of church building. Barton on the 
 Humber is enriched to a much greater extent than Stowe with 
 these strips and straight-lined arcades. But foremost among all 
 our Anglo-Saxon monuments must rank the splendid tower of 
 Earl's Barton ; the decorations are here so numerous, and in their 
 way so elaborate, as to produce an effect of rude magnificence which 
 can hardly be surpassed. Both the round and the straight-sided 
 arch occur in the decorative arcades ; and there are some curious 
 examples of decorative segmental arches on balusters, over small 
 cruciform openings. The bold long-and-short work, the strongly 
 marked strings, the gradual tapering of the tower itself, the in- 
 terlacing of the pilaster-strips, the heavy, solemn belfry windows, 
 the west doorway, one of the finest of the style, with its cavern-like 
 recess, all combine to give this steeple, amid the utter rudeness 
 of its architecture, a striking and even awful character; even the 
 graceful loveliness of its neighbour of Whiston commands less 
 interest than the barbaric splendour of the stern old Saxon pile. 
 Long may it stand to remind us of the days of our earliest freedom, 
 of the long roll of our native saints and heroes, of holy bishops 
 and no less holy princes, of Ina, and Alfred, and iEthelstan; 
 of Bcdc, anil Dunstan, and martyred Alphcgc ; of Harold, and 
 Gurth, and Leofwine ; of St. Wulfstan and Abbot Frederick ; of 
 
 1 In this tower a distinctively Nor- modern times, to the possible future 
 man doorway has been erected in confusion of all history.
 
 214 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the battle-axe of Hereward and the martyr-block of Waltheof ; 
 and all the glorious train of the " England of saints," ere yet 
 she bowed beneath the yoke of a foreign lord. 
 
 One question yet remains with regard to these towers; 
 namely, as to their original finish. This is retained in one in- 
 stance only, that at Sompting, which has a termination common 
 in Germany, but excessively rare in English architecture of all 
 dates, namely, a low quadrangular spire, with a gable over each 
 face. In all the others a parapet of later date disguises the 
 original finish. There does not however appear any reason to 
 suppose that Sompting gives us the universal, or even usual, type 
 of the capping of a Saxon steeple ; that building is so anomalous 
 in other respects that it is hardly safe to argue from it, and 
 we can scarcely suppose that terminations of this kind would 
 have been so universally destroyed. The process is one quite differ- 
 ent from the substitution of a parapet for a wooden capping or 
 spire, and could not fail to leave perceptible traces on the 
 tower. The composition of the whole tower, and especially the 
 position of the belfry windows, must be different in a steeple of 
 this description from one whose masonry is designed to have a 
 horizontal finish. To lower the gables at Sompting would in- 
 volve cutting through the upper windows, a process which cer- 
 tainly has not been undergone by our other Saxon towers, which 
 evidently retain the original proportion and elevation of their 
 masonry. To judge from the analogy of contemporary build- 
 ings on the continent, where cappings of all ages are so much 
 more frequently preserved than in England, as well as from the 
 representations in contemporary illuminations, we may suppose 
 that they were usually covered with conical roofs or low spires of 
 timber with dripping eaves ; a remark which may be extended 
 to many of our Norman towers also, whose original capping has 
 been tampered with as universally as in the case of their Saxon 
 predecessors. 
 
 Such are the Saxon buildings of England, a class which, from 
 the lack of examples on a large scale, cannot be investigated 
 with the same accuracy and completeness as the subsequent 
 style, but which still possess a distinctive and strongly marked 
 character of their own. The greatest points of distinction to be 
 remarked in individual features are that Saxon architecture does 
 not admit of the heavy cylindrical pier, nor, except in a single
 
 OP ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE. 215 
 
 anomalous instance, of the engaged shaft, and but very rarely of 
 the arch of two orders. The division of the Romanesque styles 
 according to the form of the pier, namely whether it is a rect- 
 angular mass or a column, now recurs with advantage ; Saxon 
 architecture is an example of the first class, Norman of the second. 
 The Norman pier is either itself actually columnar, or constructed 
 on a principle which allows great predominance to the columnar 
 element, each order of the arch resting on its own shaft set in the 
 angles of the rectangular mass. The Saxon arch is usually of 
 one order, and, as well as its support, remains in its essence per- 
 fectly rectangular, not itself channelled or divided, but simply 
 having roll mouldings attached to its square surface. The single 
 instance of the shaft is merely such a roll attached to a square 
 mass, and furnished with a capital and base. This alone marks the 
 style as constructed on a different principle from the Norman, and 
 approximating nearer to the German Romanesque. The towers 
 are far more Italian than Norman, both in their general concep- 
 tion and iu their peculiar windows; 1 there can be little doubt to 
 which branch of the Romanesque family the whole style belongs. 
 But the style of ornament is its own, and is doubtless owing to 
 the imitation in stone of forms previously employed in wooden 
 erections. The long-and-short work evidently comes from this 
 source ; the use of the straight-sided arch, though the form oc- 
 curs in styles of other derivation, may well have the same origin ; 
 the baluster looks like something originally turned in wood; the 
 peculiar pilaster-strips are just what might be expected in a 
 wooden structure, an origin which docs not preclude even direct 
 imitation from the genuine pilasters and shafts of the foreign 
 styles. A Saxon tower, in short, is an Italian campanile copied 
 in timber, and then turned into stone. 
 
 When we consider that the period over which the existing 
 Saxon remains are scattered is one of greater extent than the 
 whole duration of Gothic architecture, it is naturally to be ex- 
 pected that many changes and diversities should take place in a 
 style of such long continuance. Had we sufficient examples of 
 Saxon minsters, it is by no means improbable but that we might 
 
 1 "That the Saxons did imitate dows, which are directly borrowed 
 Roman models is shown by the very from the Roman campanili." Wil- 
 midwall shafts of the Saxon win- lis' Canterbury, p. 30.
 
 216 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 be able to mark the changes, and their sequence, with at least as 
 much accuracy as in the contemporary forms of Romanesque. 
 But with the rude and scattered structures which are our only 
 "uides, this is of course i impossible. Still differences of date 
 maybe detected, and the consideration of the timber construction 
 just mentioned may perhaps enable us to divide the structures 
 of the Saxon period into three classes, the chronological order 
 of which, although not the exact duration of each, seems to be 
 ascertained with probability. 
 
 We have then, first of all, the very rude and primitive struc- 
 tures constructed out of Roman remains, and imitating the 
 Roman manner of building, though in a way so uncouth as hardly 
 to present any definite architectural forms. These, of course, not 
 being erected in imitation of wooden buildings, exhibit no marks 
 of the timber construction. Of this order Brixworth is the great 
 type, a church which, there is every reason to believe, was built 
 in the latter part of the seventh century. Buildings of this 
 kind exhibit few or none of the Saxon peculiarities, and although 
 erected or altered after the Saxon Conquest, should rather be 
 considered as very degenerate Roman, than as genuine Saxon. 
 During this period we may suppose that few original structures 
 of masonry were reared, except where Roman remains supplied 
 materials at hand, and in the case of cathedrals and other large 
 churches, of which the earliest parts of Stow afford such a valu- 
 able example. Even in minsters the style was often very rude, 
 as is shown by the remains at Jarrow and Monkswearmouth late 
 in the seventh century. Smaller churches were probably for the 
 most part built of wood. 
 
 In the second age of Saxon architecture, the most truly 
 and purely Saxon, we find the use of masonry extended to 
 churches of smaller consideration, which are naturally stone imi- 
 tations of the earlier timber structures. This is the time most 
 prolific of those distinctive peculiarities of Saxon buildings 
 which so strongly mark their wooden origin ; it is the age of 
 long-and-short work, pilaster-strips, balusters, and straight-sided 
 arches. To this period belong most of the best-defined exam- 
 ples of the style, and we may take the noble towers of the two 
 Bartons as types of the Saxon style in its greatest richness and 
 purity.
 
 OF ANGLO-SAXON ARCHITECTURE. 217 
 
 The last period seems to answer to what Mr. Paley, who has 
 treated this question with great care, and brought forward seve- 
 ral examples not before mentioned, calls "Ante-Norman," as 
 distinguished from the " Early British or Saxon." I must con- 
 fess that I do not quite see the force or propriety of the name. 
 In a view simply chronological, Ante-Norman would of course 
 include the antecedent style, and is improperly confined to this 
 period ; and if it be meant to express a foreshadowing of Nor- 
 man, either by anticipation, or by clumsy imitation anterior to 
 the full introduction of the style, it may be doubted both 
 whether the term clearly expresses its meaning, and whether 
 the fact is sufficiently ascertained. This style certainly belongs 
 to a period when there was an increasing connection between 
 England and the Continent, and when a great denational- 
 izing process seems to have gone on. On the other hand, 
 the general character of the age, for at least a century pre- 
 ceding the Conquest, was not such as to lead us to expect 
 any great improvements in art. Nor do we see in this later 
 Anglo-Saxon style much direct approximation to Norman archi- 
 tecture. The general character and the main features remain 
 the same as in the earlier style ; but the distinctive features of 
 the timber construction 1 gradually sink into desuetude. This is 
 only what was to be expected, as the habit of stone building be- 
 came more confirmed, and the builders brought their ideas into 
 closer conformity with the new material. Thus the long-and- 
 
 1 Since this was written, two ar- the different classes of Saxon build- 
 ticles have appeared in the " Eccle- i"gs. If St. Wilfrid employed an 
 siologist," for August and October, Italian architect, however much the 
 18*17, in which several Saxon towers inefficiency of the native workmen 
 in the North of England are men- might interfere with the production 
 tioned, which would appear, from of a good Lombard design, his pre- 
 the descriptions given by the writer, sence would at least hinder the in- 
 to belong to the class described in troduction of any " stone-carpen- 
 this paragraph, but which he attri- try," and thus would accidentally 
 butes to St. "Wilfrid in the seventh forestall the later buildings in which 
 century. He does not bring any that construction had been worn 
 very conclusive evidence for this out. At the same time the erec- 
 opinion,but its admission would not tion of so many stone towers at so 
 alter the general view that I have very early a period would seem to 
 taken of the respective anticpuity of require some strong direct evidence.
 
 218 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 short work and the pilaster-strips are now less frequent, and less 
 prominent when they arc retained ; the straight-sided arch be- 
 comes less usual, 1 and the baluster gives way to the shaft. It is 
 only this last change, and the occasional introduction of the 
 chevron and other similar ornaments, that can be considered as 
 a direct approach to foreign Romanesque ; and the features 
 in question are by no means distinctively Norman. Up to the 
 days when the Normanizcd Confessor introduced the complete 
 style of his adopted country, Saxon architecture remained, as 
 before, pre-eminently flat and square, in complete opposition to 
 Norman principles. 
 
 Still it is clear that Saxon of this date, and very plain 
 Norman work where the distinctive features of the style are 
 not exhibited, must often be almost identical ; and I am 
 inclined to believe, with Mr. Paley, that many plain, rude 
 chancel and belfry arches, perhaps even other features, ordinarily 
 considered as Norman, may, with equal or more probability, be 
 referred to the later days of the Saxon period. 2 The arch with a 
 plain broad soffit, rising from a mere impost without shafts or 
 mouldings, is indeed often undoubtedly Norman, sometimes late 
 Norman; but there seems no reason to suppose that it is invariably 
 posterior to the Conquest, and in some cases it can hardly fail to 
 be genuine Saxon. Thus the chancel arch of St. Peter-le-Gowts 
 would at first sight be called plain Norman, but it exactly cor- 
 responds with the clearly Saxon belfry arch, and may therefore be 
 safely set down as part of the Saxon church. 3 Similar examples, 
 which may very probably be Saxon, are of frequent occurrence. 
 And doubtless further investigation may bring to light many re- 
 mains of this style lurking among our ancient churches, even 
 those of cathedral or conventual rank. Indeed it appears not 
 
 1 It occurs at Deerhurst, built in noticed as containing Saxon work, 
 the time of Edward the Confessor. Ave have long-and-short work at the 
 
 2 This seems admitted by Rick- west end, and a chancel arch of this 
 man, App. p. vi., new edition. kind with a rude chevron moulding ; 
 
 3 A Norman aisle of very differ- which I may mention as having been 
 rnt character has been added, and the first instance which led me to 
 since destroyed. At Pateshull in doubt whether that and similar or- 
 Northamptonshire, a church which naments were indisputable signs of 
 I do not remember to have seen Norman date.
 
 OF PROVENCAL ARCHITECTURE. 219 
 
 impossible that no less a church than the present cathedral of Ox- 
 ford 1 may be, in the main portions of its fabric, a monument of the 
 later days of Saxon architecture, notwithstanding the extensive 
 metamorphosis which it underwent at the end of the twelfth cen- 
 tury. If so, we have a complete minster, of comparatively small 
 size, but of the fullest cathedral type, belonging to the early part 
 of the eleventh century. It seems to have had arches of one order, 
 with immensely broad soffits, rising from square piers. These 
 would almost appear to have had shafts at the angles, which 
 however in that position would scarcely detract more from the 
 genuine square Saxon type than the attached roll mouldings. 
 There was a clerestory and high-pitched roof, but no triforium. 
 All this differs very much from the usual Norman forms, and the 
 evidence between the conflicting statements which would assign 
 it, some to the days of iEthelred II., others to those of Henry I. 
 seem very evenly balanced. But without introducing these du- 
 bious examples, we may rest assured, from what has been above 
 adduced, that our Saxon forefathers had a national architecture 
 of their own, differing essentially from the subsequent Norman, 
 and having equal claims to be considered as a genuine and dis- 
 tinct branch of the great Romanesque family. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF SOUTHERN FRANCE, OR PROVENCAL 
 
 STYLE. 
 
 Southern Gaul, held so long under Roman sway, was probably 
 almost as completely Romanized as Italy itself; and this charac- 
 ter it preserved for many centuries. Far down into the middle ages 
 this region was distinguished from the more purely Frankish 
 provinces to the north by a difference in its language that espe- 
 cially known as Romance its habits, and general system of 
 civilization, all of them retaining a strong impress of the fallen 
 empire. Hence no country afforded a wider scope for the develop- 
 ment of a Romanesque style, and we shall accordingly find that 
 
 1 See the " Ecclesiologist " for February, 1847.
 
 OOQ HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 nowhere, except in Italy, did the direct influence of the antique 
 so Ion" continue. And with the exception of some apparently 
 Byzantine elements, the style appears quite indigenous ; it would 
 not seem, like the early styles of Germany and England, to have 
 been imported from Italy after classical rules had begun to be 
 disregarded, but to have grown up on the soil, from imitation and 
 adaptation of the Roman remains of the country, so many of 
 which still remain to attest the wealth, civilization, and tho- 
 roughly Romanized character of its ancient population. 
 
 In this, as in most other countries, the ascertained structures 
 of early date are but few, and most of the examples are as late as 
 the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But their character is quite 
 distinct from any other edifices of the same date ; their outline 
 and their detail are alike their own, and the latter at least retains 
 a much stronger classical tinge than is to be found in Norman, or 
 German, or even pure Lombard structures. 
 
 The nature of this classical element is very singular, and quite 
 different from that pervading the architecture of Italy; the 
 latter retains the forms and details of classic art by direct and 
 formal imitation, by a distinct wish to adhere, or return, to an- 
 cient precedent, and to withstand prevalent innovations. But in 
 this Provencal style there is no such deliberate intention, but 
 rather a working up of classical ideas, and clothing them with 
 the spirit of the new forms and combinations which the pro- 
 gress of art had developed. It is thus far analogous to cinque- 
 cento, but with this important difference, that in the latter 
 style there was a deliberate purpose to introduce a new and 
 incongruous element, so that, as was to be expected, the effect 
 is generally unsatisfactory ; here it is merely a vestige of former 
 days clinging to the style, and adapting itself to its new re- 
 quirements, probably without any formal intention either to 
 innovate or to resist innovation : so that it is at least not 
 more objectionable than any other Transition style. This 
 cannot be better exemplified than in the church of St. Gilles in 
 Languedoc figured in the Moyen Age Pittoresque. We have 
 here three magnificent round-headed doorways, with tympana; 
 the transom takes the complete form of an entablature, that of 
 the central and larger doorway being continued along the 
 wall till it meets the arches of the other two ; but these entab-
 
 OF PROVENCAL ARCHITECTURE. 221 
 
 latures are neither Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian, but Provencal ; 
 rich indeed, and perfectly living with statuary, but of a form 
 more adapted to the style than any of the regular orders would 
 have allowed. These entablatures rest on columns, boldly de- 
 tached from the wall, and of tolerably classical character. Behind, 
 in the intermediate spaces, are other merely decorative entabla- 
 tures, of a character perfectly barbarous to a Vitruvian eye, rest- 
 ing on fluted pilasters, a translation of the blank arcade of the 
 period into quasi-Grecian language. An Italian, wishing to intro- 
 duce an entablature, would have made it the prominent feature, 
 and thrown the arch into insignificance ; the Provencal architect, 
 even in A.D. 111G, the date assigned to the building, had not 
 quite cast the entablature aside, 1 but he clothed it in Romanesque 
 form, and made it subordinate to the main design. 
 
 This adaptation of classical notions runs through the whole 
 style. The classical columns are not commonly employed as 
 piers, the compound pier being found so much more appropriate 
 to the style, but " pilasters are used in the interior, of so classical 
 an appearance, that if these were not pretty universal, one should 
 be tempted to believe them subsequent interpolations. They 
 are fluted, sometimes with zig-zag flutes, or each decorated with 
 arabesques or sculptured mouldings." 2 Again, there is a great 
 tendency to retain the entablature, as in the doorways 3 just 
 mentioned above. The use of shafts, sometimes real engaged 
 columns of considerable size, to support external cornices, is far 
 more frequent than elsewhere ; actual decorative colonnades 
 often take the place of the small arcades of other styles ; and 
 nowhere do we so commonly find the shafts set two deep, as in 
 the cloisters of Aries and Aix, where an entablature, but of totally 
 unclassical character, rests on the capitals of the small pillars. 
 
 All these things point to an indigenous style, and to a feeling 
 
 1 In Bourges Cathedral is a door- ings on cacli side the central 
 
 way with an entablature enriched shaft. 
 
 with a decorative arcade. * This is very strongly shown in 
 
 - Willis, Architecture of the the splendid front of St. Cross at 
 
 Middle Ages, 152. Bordeaux, where ranges of pillars 
 
 3 These would seem to be the piled on each other, occur in the 
 
 parents of the great French double utmost profusion. See the plate in 
 
 doorways, with flat-headed open- the Moyen Age Monumental.
 
 ooo HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 with regard to classical art very different from blind imitation or 
 retention ; it is an endeavour to retain certain forms which are 
 felt to be graceful, and yet to keep them in their proper relation 
 to others which it was felt must be predominant. It is a feeling far 
 more refined and delicate than any that can be traced in the Re- 
 naissance, or even in the Pisan school ; there is no affectation, no 
 thrusting forward of the classical forms to the hindrance of the 
 consistency of the Romanesque whole. The omission of the co- 
 lumnar pier is a most remarkable instance ; no feature would have 
 been so readily grasped by a mere common-place imitator ; yet it 
 is surrendered, while fluted pilasters, which seldom occur in 
 Romanesque buildings elsewhere, are retained in abundance. 
 The architect preferred, cceteris paribus, a classical form, but not 
 to the prejudice of general consistency. And in matters more 
 purely of detail, the adaptation of the small decorative entabla- 
 tures to the Romanesque style of ornament is still more curious ; 
 a row of triglyphs would at once have struck the eye as incon- 
 gruous, but an entablature covered with Romanesque sculpture, 
 is lost in the general Romanesque effect. 
 
 This kind of architecture is briefly described by Professor 
 Willis as being "of all the Romanesque styles, that which ap- 
 pears to possess the most simplicity and plainness of decoration, 
 and yet the greatest complication of parts." The outlines of 
 the great churches of this style are peculiar to themselves, and 
 at once distinguish them from Italian, German, and Norman 
 buildings. Low roofs and gables, sometimes very long tran- 
 septs, their intersection marked sometimes by an octagonal, 
 sometimes by a square tower, either low and massive, or rising 
 to a great height. This is sometimes coupled with one at the 
 west end, but the variety of grouping which so distinguishes 
 the German churches is never found. The towers are sometimes 
 covered with spires, sometimes with low roofs. But the most 
 characteristic feature is the apse, which has an aisle, from which 
 diverges a series of radiating chapels, commonly themselves 
 apsidal. These do not join each other, as in the analogous 
 Gothic arrangement, but leave space for windows in the aisle 
 between them. Even large churches are sometimes without clere- 
 stories ; hence, as the gables are commonly low, the west fronts, 
 when not occupied by a tower, have a monotonous outline.
 
 OF PROVENCAL ARCHITECTURE. 223 
 
 The internal features are even more peculiar to the style than 
 those of the exterior ; compound arches rest on tall rectangular 
 piers, which either support the orders on attached shafts, or else 
 themselves follow the same section, and have merely an impost. 
 Shafts or pilasters attached to these piers, rising either from the 
 ground or from the impost of the pier-arches, support the ribs 
 of the vault, which is of the barrel shape, with or without a 
 cornice at its spring. The tall arcades thus formed in the cathe- 
 drals of Valence and Avignon, which are without either clerestory 
 or triforium, are totally unlike anything in German or English 
 Romanesque. In other examples one or both of those features 
 occur. 
 
 Columnar piers, as was before said, are usually excluded ; the 
 apses form an exception, as the narrowness of the arches in that 
 position requires a lighter pier, and columns are therefore gene- 
 rally in use. The church of Ainay at Lyons, described by Mr. 
 Petit, has however its pier-arches supported throughout by Co- 
 rinthian columns, whose proportions seem pretty nearly to answer 
 the rule given in a former chapter as most appropriate for co- 
 lumnar piers. 1 The smaller details similarly show the strong 
 classical feeling which was retained, though kept quite in subor- 
 dination to the general Romanesque conception. The small shafts 
 are often more classical than in other forms of Romanesque, 
 both in their proportions and in their capitals ; strange vagaries 
 are however sometimes to be found, as the extraordinary twisted 
 columns in the cloister at Aries. In this structure arc many 
 other curious details, as figures, like the ancient caryatides, sup- 
 porting capitals or entablatures, on which, in some cases, rest 
 the pilasters supporting the vaulting, which is of the usual 
 barrel form. The heavy Corinthian pilasters, without arch or 
 entablature, which serve as buttresses, have been particularly 
 noticed by Mr. Petit. 
 
 The arches, both constructive and decorative, are of course 
 commonly round ; the straight-sided arch alternates with the 
 round in a decorative arcade at Valence ; but it is remarkable 
 that in so classical a style we find a systematic use of pointed 
 arches probably of earlier date than in any other form of Ro- 
 manesque. Yet these examples arc not Transitional ; the pointed 
 1 See page 172.
 
 OO J, HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 arch is accompanied by no other Gothic feature, and occurs only 
 in certain fixed positions where, from constructive reasons, it was 
 found to be preferable to the round. This is in the barrel-vaulting 
 of the roof. " In the south of France," says Mr. Petit, 2 "nothing 
 is more common than a barrel-vault, that is, one without lateral 
 cells, above which is a low-pitched external roof of stone. Now 
 it is clear that the connection between the two for support is 
 stronger and more easily effected the nearer their ridges approach 
 together ; and hence it is advantageous that the internal roof 
 should be pointed instead of round. This is frequently the case." 
 He then proceeds to mention some of the most classical buildings 
 of the Provencal style as exhibiting this feature, such as St. 
 llonorat at Aries, and Aix and Avignon cathedrals. The latter 
 has an additional instance in the pointed arches under the 
 octagon ; to employ the pointed form in this position is only 
 natural when the vault is of that shape, to avoid the un- 
 pleasant effect of their contrast. May we suppose that the small 
 elevation of the lantern arches which he mentions at Aix, and 
 which appears very strongly in his cut of St. Honorat, is owing to 
 a feeling of this incongruity ? This arrangement avoids a di- 
 rect contrast between the two forms, though at the expense of 
 an unmeaning piece of blank wall between them. The cornice 
 of the roof is manifestly the natural point for the impost of the 
 lantern arches. The pointed arch does not occur, except in 
 these two positions, which shows distinctly that the instances 
 in which it is found are mere detached examples arising from 
 constructive reasons, or from assthetical ones so manifest as to be 
 equally powerful, and that they have nothing to do with the 
 formation of the Gothic style. In the words of Mr. Petit, 
 they " can hardly be looked upon as having introduced the 
 general use of the pointed arch, though we may possibly be in- 
 debted to them for some of the earliest specimens we know." 
 
 The mouldings of enriched arches, as of doorways, &c. are of 
 various kinds ; the Norman ornaments occur side by side with 
 mouldings evidently borrowed from classical architraves, while 
 the rich sculptured representations of animal and vegetable life 
 assimilate them to the German examples ; imagery is everywhere 
 lavishly introduced. The doorways present several forms, but 
 
 1 I. 114.
 
 OF PROVENCAL ARCHITECTURE. 225 
 
 all displaying a much closer adherence to classical models than 
 is found either in German or Norman buildings. In the ex- 
 ample given by Mr. Petit from Aix Cathedral the details are quite 
 classical, though put to an entirely novel application. This ex- 
 hibits a peculiar transition between the rectangular classical door- 
 way with an arch of construction over it, and the complete Ro- 
 manesque form, where the square head is made quite subordinate 
 to the arch. Here the arch is but of one order, consequently there 
 is but one shaft on each side ; these are Corinthian columns, with 
 pedestals below, and the unmeaning piece of entablature belong- 
 ing to the corrupt Roman style above. On these rests the 
 transom, which entirely cuts off the arch from its jamb ; this 
 arch is more than a mere arch of construction, and yet has not 
 the prominence which it would have received in more complete 
 Romanesque. Above is a sort of canopy, consisting of two en- 
 gaged columns, with the same fragments of entablature and a 
 cornice across. This whole example is most valuable as indica- 
 tive of the manner in which classical ideas, and probably, as Mr. 
 Petit suggests, actual classical fragments, were retained in the 
 architecture of this district. A square-headed doorway with 
 jamb-shafts is, as far as I know, peculiar to this style, but it 
 would seem to be a natural development, exactly analogous to 
 the small decorative shafts and entablatures. The west porch of 
 Avignon Cathedral is even more completely Roman, but this 
 is said to be a portion of an ancient temple. 
 
 The French antiquarians are fond of tracing an oriental cha- 
 racter in the early Romanesque of their country, and often call 
 the style which seems better denominated Provencal, by the 
 names Byzantine or Romano-Byzantine. This theory, as ap- 
 plied to the whole class, seems unfounded, or, at least, exagge- 
 rated; but it is certain that several detached instances of churches 
 occur, which in other respects approach more nearly to this 
 style than to any other, but whose main outline and arrange- 
 ment are evidently borrowed from Constantinople. One of the 
 most remarkable is the Cathedral of St. Front at Perigucux, 
 which is attributed by M. Ramee to the eleventh century, and of 
 which several views are given by M. Gailhabaud. It is built in 
 the form of a Greek cross, without aisles, with a cupola of the 
 spreading Byzantine form over the crossing, and another over 
 
 <l
 
 226 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 each limb. They are supported by pointed arches resting on per- 
 fectly plain square piers, themselves perforated with a tall round 
 arch in each face. The apses, attached to the east end of the choir, 
 and to the eastern faces of the transepts, are much lower than the 
 body of the church; the principal one is entered by a pointed arch, 
 the others by round arches on Corinthian columns. The prin- 
 cipal apse is decorated with an arcade of stilted round arches 
 on columns, the others with a colonnade of two orders. At 
 the west end is a circular tower, mounted on a singular square 
 base, very tall and slender, adorned with pilasters and engaged 
 columns, and crowned with an ogee cupola. M. Ramee enume- 
 rates several other examples, in some of which pointed arches 
 occur ; one of them, Notre Dame du Puy, has as many as eight 
 bays, each crowned with a cupola, it being the usual practice to 
 place one over each bay, when the Greek cross is not employed. 
 
 The same writer observes 1 that " the history of these churches 
 is unknown. Perhaps in time we may be enabled to learn their 
 origin, which, it is possible, is connected with some schism, some 
 protest on the part of their authors against the authority of the 
 Church of Rome, against the monks and abbots who were the 
 architects of the day. Perhaps they are further owing to a 
 rivalry between the artists who followed the ancient traditions, 
 and some others of an innovating spirit, and jealous of creating 
 new forms. Thus much is certain, that these domical churches 
 are an imitation of the advanced times of architecture among 
 the Byzantines. For, as we have said .... it was only during 
 the second epoch of the lower Greek architecture that the domes 
 multiply, and that it is further during the third, from the tenth 
 century to the twelfth, that the plan of the churches begins 
 again to approach to that of the Roman basilicas." 
 
 The above remarks are at least ingenious ; when we consider 
 the numerous worn-out heresies which took refuge in the south 
 of France, and the new ones which were there developed, as in 
 the very birth-place of every kind of dangerous and erroneous 
 speculation, it would seem byno means improbable that so marked 
 a diversity from the architecture of the rest of the Latin Church, 
 one involving far more neglect of ancient precedent, than is 
 
 1 II. 221.
 
 OF PROVENCAL ARCHITECTURE. 227 
 
 implied in a mere difference of style, may have originated in some 
 such spirit of opposition to Church authority as M. Ramee sug- 
 gests. Architecturally considered, there can be little doubt that 
 this diversity is to be traced, as M. Ramee himself has just 
 stated, to a direct imitation of oriental models. 
 
 The genuine Provencal architecture is, in point of beauty, inferior 
 both to the German and the Norman form of Romanesque, and 
 does not occupy the same prominent position with them, either 
 as a separate development of the style, or as influencing those of 
 other times and nations ; still it is very far from being devoid 
 of interest in a general view of the art. The tenacity with which 
 it adhered to classical ideas and details, after northern Europe had 
 completely rejected them, marks the firm, undying hold of the 
 giant power of Rome upon those portions of her empire which 
 had thoroughly imbibed the spirit of her manners and institu- 
 tions, and the proud feeling with which they still clung to the 
 majestic shadow of her fallen power. But on the other hand 
 the living, plastic manner in which these classical elements are 
 worked up into harmony with the requirements of another sys- 
 tem, marks no mere adherents to antiquated models, but en- 
 lightened admirers of the monuments of antiquity, fully sensible 
 at the same time of the requisitions of their own age, country, 
 and religion. This character is quite in harmony with the ge- 
 neral spirit of the people, the great intellectual activity and 
 refinement displayed in their social and political systems, their 
 elegant language and literature ; all of which were marked by 
 so broad and easily defined a line of demarcation from the more 
 purely Teutonic systems of northern France, 1 a line which in 
 architecture is equally to be recognized in the two distinct forms 
 of French Romanesque, the Provencal and the Norman. 
 
 1 On this line of demarcation, chitectural boundary, sec the ad- 
 
 and the extraordinary phenomenon mirable remarks of Mr.Petit, vol. ii. 
 
 of Tournus Abbey, which marks at 244. 
 once the geographical and the ar-
 
 228 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OF THE ROMANESQUE OF NORTHERN FRANCE AND ENGLAND, 
 OR NORMAN STYLE. 
 
 We now come to a form of Romanesque which for an English 
 writer must possess a charm with which no other can compete, 
 as being the style of so many of the most glorious churches of 
 his own land. To one especially who knows the splendours of 
 foreign lands by report alone, but who can speak from personal 
 knowledge of Winchester and Peterborough, of Ely and Roches- 
 ter, of Southwell and Romsey, it will be allowable to dwell with 
 greater minuteness upon the architecture of so splendid a period, 
 when if art had not reached the same zenith of perfection as in 
 the palmy days of Gothic skill, yet the number, vastness, and 
 magnificence of its works attest alike the bounty of founders and 
 the genius of architects. Within one hundred years, or little more, 
 all the Cathedral, and probably most of the existing Conventual, 
 churches in England were reconstructed, sometimes more than 
 once, while many Abbeys were newly founded, and parochial 
 churches innumerable built or rebuilt. And notwithstanding the 
 transmutations which our churches have since undergone, the re- 
 mains of this period are yet scattered profusely throughout our 
 country, and in many of our most superb buildings it is the 
 prevalent style. Majestic and awful, rather than beautiful, no 
 style is more truly religious, more imbued with the spirit and 
 position of the Church in its own day, the day when St. Anselm 
 braved spoliation and banishment, and St. Thomas sealed his 
 witness with his blood. 
 
 The intrinsic merits of the Norman style, and the historical 
 associations which should render it perhaps dearer to us than 
 any other purely Northern creation, can hardly be called in 
 question, but its true position in the history of the art may be 
 open to some controversy. Without at present entering upon 
 the disputed claims of Romanesque in general to be considered 
 as a definite and perfect style of architecture, we are met at
 
 OP NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. * 229 
 
 starting by the fact that one of the most diligent observers of 
 facts, and at the same time the most acute discerner of prin- 
 ciples, 1 to be found in the whole list of architectural writers, 
 denies its Norman form to be genuine Romanesque at all, but 
 rather incipient Gothic. 
 
 I am not prepared to deny that many of our finest Norman 
 churches do exhibit signs of the approaching style; but this 
 does not hinder the Norman style itself from being, in idea at 
 least, a pure Romanesque development. No Norman building 
 might exist in which some individual feature might not show a 
 Gothic tendency, and yet an ideal type might be recovered even 
 from existing buildings. But there is no necessity for such an 
 inquiry, as certainly Norman structures do exist which exhibit 
 a Romanesque style in its utmost purity. 
 
 The feature in which this tendency is first to be perceived is 
 in the breaking 2 up of the rectangular section of the arch ; 
 it would indeed be extremely difficult to discover any number of 
 enriched buildings which are entirely free from mouldings affect- 
 ing the profile. Yet it may be doubted whether even this fea- 
 ture, which is not peculiar to the Norman Romanesque, is so es- 
 sentially an approach to Gothic as might be supposed. When 
 rolls are merely attached to the surface, as in the Saxon style, 
 no approach at all is to be inferred ; and scarcely more so when 
 they are merely fitted into angles, just as the shafts are to the 
 jamb below ; it is only late in the style, when the hollow becomes 
 prevalent as well as the round, that we discern a real approxima- 
 tion to the Gothic system of moulding. At the same time the 
 presence of these rolls, whether in Norman or other buildings, is 
 certainly a deviation from the purity of the Romanesque ideal, 
 which clearly is best answered by receding arches retaining the 
 square section, and enriched only with surface ornament. 
 
 The introduction of the Norman style into England is a mat- 
 ter of history ; as St. Edward is recorded to have rebuilt the 
 Abbey of Westminster in a new style. This innovation was 
 quite in character with his Norman predilections, and the 
 thoroughly denationalized tone of his whole government. At 
 the same time we have a sufficient testimony to the great supe- 
 
 1 See Petit, Church Architecture, 2 See Whewell, p. 280. 
 
 vol. i. chap. v.
 
 230 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 riority of the Norman style, even at that early period, over the 
 architecture of the native structures, in the fact that King Harold 
 himself employed it in the erection of his magnificent Collegiate 
 Church at Waltham. And even in Normandy itself, the native 
 country of the style, hardly any recorded buildings remain of ear- 
 lier date than the eleventh or twelfth century ; still this does not 
 incontestably prove that the Norman Romanesque may not have 
 assumed a distinctive form at an earlier period. The works from 
 which an English writer has to derive his knowledge of foreign 
 buildings confine their examples almost exclusively to Minsters, 
 or other churches remarkable for size or splendour, or for some 
 distinguishing peculiarity. Little notice is taken of the rude and 
 obscure piles in which, as in our own land, an earlier style might 
 be expected to lurk. But how little we are entitled to decide 
 that the well-known Norman is the only form of Romanesque 
 even now existing in Normandy, without an examination of 
 buildings of this kind, is clear from the analogous fact that the 
 inspection of our Cathedrals alone would have led no one to 
 suspect the existence of an ante-Norman style in England. 
 
 A great deal has been said with regard to the wide difference 
 between early and late Norman architecture in England ; but, 
 except where the latter begins to exhibit actually transitional 
 features, no difference in principle can be detected. 1 The only 
 distinction that can be established is that the characteristic orna- 
 ments of the style are found in greater profusion in the more 
 recent structures, and that the massiveness of building is some- 
 what diminished. As to the decorations, it has been shown 
 that they are not distinctively Norman ; and, if not often found 
 in England during the first days of the Conquest, they are com- 
 mon enough in Normandy. And the inferiority in point of 
 ornament, as well as the comparative rudeness in masonry and 
 sculpture, may be readily accounted for by the state of things 
 soon after the Conquest ; by the precarious position of the con- 
 querors, and the probable inferiority of the native workmen 
 whom they were doubtless, in many cases, constrained to employ. 
 In fact we ought rather to wonder at the energy with which the 
 Bishops and Abbots of that period set to work to rebuild their 
 churches, and that they were enabled to build them at all, than 
 Compare Whewell's German Churches, p. 280 et scqq.
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 231 
 
 at their lacking the richness of the contemporary buildings of 
 Normandy, and of those subsequently raised in England. It is 
 consequently an unfair way of arguing, to look to the Chapel 
 of the Tower of London as a proof of the non-acquaintance of 
 its architect with the richer style, which, it is argued, would, if 
 then known, have been certainly introduced in all its fulness 
 into the Chapel of a royal palace. When it is considered 
 that this royal palace was a fortress hastily erected for a 
 military invader to control a half-conquered city, no reason- 
 able person would look even in its Chapel for such elaborate 
 beauty as adorned the subsequent royal Chapels of Westminster 
 and Windsor. We may therefore safely treat the Norman style 
 both in England and Normandy, both of the eleventh and twelfth 
 centuries, as a unity; though smaller diversities, both local and 
 chronological, may of course be observed, and it is not to be 
 denied that, as a whole, the style, both in England and Nor- 
 mandy, gradually advanced in richness and excellence. 
 
 The most Gothic feature about the Norman style is, after all, 
 the outline given to its churches, which, with all its differences 
 from the pure Gothic type, approaches nearer to it than to those 
 employed in any other form of Romanesque. But this is an 
 ecclesiastical rather than an architectural resemblance ; it only 
 shows that the Norman architects had the high privilege of de- 
 veloping that most perfect and appropriate form of a Catholic 
 temple which future ages retained. Still this is quite indepen- 
 dent of mere detail and style, and might be reproduced with 
 German, Provencal, or pure Roman details. This outline will at 
 once distinguish a Norman church from one of any other form 
 of Romanesque. 
 
 The type of a great Norman church, though every individual 
 example will by no means agree with it, is of course, as in every 
 other style, cruciform ; the nave is often of a very great length, 
 as at Ely, Peterborough, AVinchestcr, Norwich, and above all, St. 
 Alban's, where its vast unbroken extent, wonderful as is its 
 effect, is almost a deformity. The transepts arc shorter than at 
 a later date ; the choir, though still comparatively small, is no 
 longer, as in the German Romanesque, almost hidden by tur- 
 rets, but stands boldly out as a distinct part of the church ; it is 
 usually apsidal, but is generally without diverging chapels, and
 
 232 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 often without a surrounding aisle. A tower rises from the in- 
 tcrscction, which is almost always short and massive, sometimes 
 no higher than the ridge of the roof, but generally rising one, 
 or at most two, short stages above it ; it is sometimes gabled, 
 but more commonly, when unaltered, covered with a conical 
 roof or spire. The west front is usually flanked by two lighter 
 towers terminating the aisles ; smaller turrets occasionally occur 
 in other positions, but towers of any consequence are not found 
 at the east end, as in Germany ; the whole outline being con- 
 centrated upon the magnificent composition of the central and 
 western towers. The shape of the towers is almost invariably 
 square, and the genuine cupola is quite unknown. 
 
 Yet, with the vast remains which we possess of Norman ar- 
 chitecture, no English minster exhibits the type pure and un- 
 mixed ; we have far more examples of splendid internal naves, 
 than of exteriors exhibiting the outline of the style. Even 
 Southwell, whose three towers give it more character than 
 any other, is only Norman up to its chancel arch, and even in 
 the rest of the building, the roofs and spires have perished, and 
 the west front has been grievously tampered w r ith. And in Nor- 
 mandy itself but few great churches remain as they came from 
 the hands of the Romanesque builder. But here the change has 
 been effected rather by later rebuildings of whole parts, than by 
 alterations in detail. Less frequently than in England does the 
 Flamboyant window cut through the Norman facade, or the 
 pointed clerestory and vaulting overtop the solid arcade and 
 triforium; and further, the roofs, which always give so much 
 character, generally remain. Thus we can learn much more of 
 the general effect of a Norman church from foreign than from 
 English examples. Perhaps the Abbey of St. George Bocher- 
 ville, in Normandy, figured by Mr. Petit, and described and 
 illustrated more in detail by Mr. Cotman, is the most complete 
 example of an unmixed Norman Minster remaining. Though 
 not of the first size, and lacking western towers, it is a perfect 
 specimen of a church of the style. The apse, forming a 
 separate building, and including a considerable portion of 
 the straight side of the choir, the transept ends, the low 
 central tower and wooden spire, the long nave, the high roof 
 throughout, arc all pure Norman.
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 233 
 
 Aii unaltered Norman west front on a large scale hardly exists 
 in England. Some of the French examples have been more for- 
 tunate; and we can from them recognize the general type. Two 
 rows of small round-headed windows occupy the end of the 
 nave below the gable; the gable itself is left very plain: the 
 towers, comparatively plain till the point where they become clear 
 of the church, are, in their upper portion, profusely decorated 
 with arcades ; they are usually relieved at the angles by the flat 
 pilasters of the style. The west front of St. Stephen's Abbey 
 at Caen is perhaps the most valuable in existence, as showing 
 the contrast between plain and enriched Norman work. The 
 original portion seems to include the end of the nave, and the 
 towers up to the springing of the gable. The compartments of 
 the composition arc divided by fiat pilasters of unusual projec- 
 tion. It is very remarkable for the unity which pervades the 
 whole design. In many cases, as at Southwell and St. Nicholas 
 at Caen, the lower part of the towers is left comparatively bare ; 
 or where, as in the Abbey of the Holy Trinity, they are enriched, 
 they often do not harmonize with the decoration of the nave, nor 
 even correspond with its stages. But here, where the plainness 
 is so great that the stages are not even marked by strings, and 
 where the windows are not relieved by a single shaft or mould- 
 ing, the towers are brought into complete unison with the termi- 
 nation of the nave ; the rows of windows being continued along 
 them, and a doorway placed in each division. The upper parts 
 of the towers arc doubtless part of the original design, though 
 carried out with much more richness of detail, and probably with 
 a greater loftiness of proportion, than was at first contemplated. 
 But this portion will be considered with more propriety, when 
 we come to speak of the capping of Norman towers. 
 
 The usual type of west front for a small church includes a 
 doorway, often of great richness, below ; a single row of arches 
 above, one or more of which arc pierced as windows ; and a 
 gable left plain, or pierced with one or more windows. Pilasters 
 formed by projection, or by recessing the ornamental parts, 
 usually flank the sides, but pinnacles or turrets scarcely occur. 
 
 The transept fronts of large Norman churches are generally 
 better preserved than the western ones. Such a front seldom 
 exhibits an arcade along its whole breadth. They are in fact 
 treated on exactly the same principle as the lateral elevations ;
 
 23-t HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 when a transept has no aisles, its front and sides will usually 
 be found to be repetitions of the same design. The front is 
 commonly divided vertically into two or three compartments by 
 pilasters, and horizontally by strings into three ranges, an- 
 swerin <r to the arcade, triforium, and clerestory of the in- 
 terior ; each of the divisions thus formed being occupied by a 
 window. "When there are aisles, they generally follow the same 
 rule, making a fourth and fifth vertical division, and having 
 the two lower ranges of windows continued across them. With 
 such an arrangement it is impossible that a doorway should 
 form a conspicuous feature ; when one occurs, whether original 
 or inserted, it is necessarily but an insignificant part of the 
 design. The gable does not usually form part of the main 
 composition, but has its own arcades or other decorations, de- 
 signed without reference to the arrangement of the lower parts. 
 Turrets and pinnacles often flank the angles. Magnificent 
 transept fronts of this description remain in several of the great 
 Norman churches. 
 
 In cathedral and other great churches the east end was com- 
 monly apsidal ; this is the case with the principal examples in 
 Normandy, and was so with all the Norman cathedrals in 
 England, except Old Sarum, together with many conventual, 
 and some parochial edifices. But subsequent adaptations to the 
 strange insular tradition of the flat end have, in the great majo- 
 rity of instances, destroyed the main apses of the superstruc- 
 ture; though in the crypts the apsidal form often remains. In 
 great churches not cathedral the apse was less universal, many fine 
 examples, as Romsey, St. Cross, and the present Cathedral and 
 St. Peter's church in Oxford, have always had flat ends. St. 
 Cross has an east end conceived on the model of a transept front, 
 with the aisles prolonged the whole way. Oxford cathedral 
 appears to have had a circular east window. The great churches 
 of Normandy afford several fine examples of apses ; they are 
 usually divided vertically by tall slender shafts finishing under 
 the cornice ; horizontally, they usually have three stages, the 
 two upper forming windows, and the lower an ornamental arcade ; 
 the open gallery of the Rhenish churches is wanting. The 
 apse is generally a distinct building, of somewhat less elevation 
 than the choir. 
 
 In small churches in England the east ends have been frc-
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 235 
 
 quently altered and rebuilt, but from the existing examples and 
 the vestiges of the destroyed ones, the apse appears, though far 
 from uncommon, not to have been the prevalent termination of 
 the Norman chancels. Many of the finest of our small examples 
 have flat ends ; they commonly exhibit three windows of equal 
 height, splayed inwardly so as to form a triplet; sometimes there is 
 only a single window, sometimes two below and one above, of which 
 arrangement a very plain, though good, example occurs at Bar- 
 ming, near Maidstone. In Normandy the apse is more prevalent 
 in parochial buildings than in England, but still is not universal. 
 
 In large churches, the apse was by no means confined to the 
 cast end of the chancel, but is frequently attached to the eastern 
 faces of the transepts. The article " Apse," in the Glossary, 
 mentions two churches at Falaise as having western apses, and 
 one at Angers as having both sides occupied by a series of semi- 
 circular apses. 
 
 The lateral arrangements of great churches do not present 
 much variety, having little else, either in the aisles or the clere- 
 story, than rows of windows between pilasters. The nave is of 
 course almost always furnished with aisles, which are usually 
 narrow in proportion ; the choir has commonly aisles, though 
 less universally ; in their application to the transepts there is 
 much variety. The clerestory is almost universal in large 
 churches; Cheux, in Normandy, has a triple chancel with dis- 
 tinct gables, and is a fine example of that arrangement. 
 
 Norman parochial churches in England exhibit several plans; 
 their original outline is rarely preserved, and the most unaltered 
 specimens are usually of small size. But few perfect cross 
 churches remain ; though the existing remains are amply suffi- 
 cient to prove that this form was more commonly employed for 
 small buildings at this period than in later days. In some of 
 the finest instances, as at Ifflcy, Cassington, and Stewkelcy, a 
 central tower is placed between the constructive chancel and the 
 nave, without either aisles or transepts. That many Norman 
 churches had aisles is plain from the numerous internal arcades 
 which remain, even when the external walls have been rebuilt; 
 but even cruciform churches were often without them ; Porches- 
 ter in Hampshire is well known as an excellent example. Small 
 churches with aisles seem to have commonly been without
 
 236 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 clerestories, but St. Peter's, Northampton, and St. Margaret's- 
 at-cliff, near Dover, 1 retain beautiful examples of that feature. 
 
 The position of Norman towers in large churches has been 
 already described. The only exception in England to the gene- 
 ral rule is Exeter cathedral, whose two Norman towers form the 
 transepts of the present fabric. It has however been doubted 
 whether this was their original destination, and it has been sup- 
 posed that they were originally western towers, and that the 
 church has been prolonged westwards. But even aswestern towers, 
 they would have been anomalous, as projecting beyond the line of 
 the aisles. Both central and western towers are in most cases com- 
 paratively plain up to the ridge of the roof, but the part that 
 stands free is richly decorated with arcades, pierced at intervals 
 for windows, two being sometimes grouped under one arch, 
 though this is less common in central towers. Winchester 
 cathedral has a noble example of a central steeple rising only 
 one stage above the roof; Southwell has a somewhat taller one, 
 but still remarkable, even among structures of its own date, for its 
 immense breadth and massiveness. That of St. Alban's, on the 
 contrary, is of much greater height than usual, in conformity 
 with the Saxon character of that church. 
 
 Western towers, as standing so much more detached from the 
 main building, have a lighter appearance than those that are 
 central, but they do not often rise actually higher in proportion. 
 They are therefore in fact, allowing for their smaller width, a little 
 lower than the central, but even if they are of equal height, the 
 greater bulk of the latter preserves to it its due "predominance. 
 The grouping and proportion of the three towers of Southwell 
 Minster could hardly be surpassed, though as scarcely any other 
 church retains three unaltered Norman towers, it is hardly fair 
 to put it into a competition where it can meet with no rival. 
 
 Our own Norman towers in small churches are usually either 
 central or western according to the nature of the building. Of 
 central towers in cross churches, Castor, near Peterborough, is a 
 fine example, the whole surface being covered with ornamental 
 mouldings; that at East Meon, in Hampshire, has two low 
 stages, the lower containing three round-headed windows, the 
 
 1 Petit, ii. 106.
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 237 
 
 upper three circular ones. Of towers at the west end, one of 
 the most remarkable is that of St. Peter's, Northampton. Here 
 the Romanesque portion rises no higher than the roof line, the 
 upper story being of later date, but it may have supplanted a 
 Norman stage, especially as the existing portion supplies no belfry- 
 stage, or belfry windows at all. There are some very extraor- 
 dinary buttresses at the western angles, in the form of clustered 
 shafts, which are continued in the later superstructure. The 
 whole is sumptuously enriched with arcades and other ornaments ; 
 a decorative arch is formed on the west wall by broad rows of 
 flat surface mouldings in a very singular manner. The richer 
 towers have arcades, or groups of windows, as in several of those 
 just mentioned ; in plain examples the lower windows are little 
 more than loopholes ; the belfry stage has most commonly two 
 lights grouped under a containing arch. Mr. Cotman gives two 
 fine examples of Norman towers at the side. That at Tamer - 
 ville is square at the base, but octagonal during the greater part 
 of its height, which is greater than usual. 
 
 The shape of this example is rare, as Norman towers, especially 
 in large churches, are, in remarkable contrast to the varied forms 
 of the German Romanesque, almost invariably square. The oc- 
 tagonal terminations of the western towers of Jumieges Abbey 
 are an exception, but this church, as both Dr. Whewell 1 and 
 Mr. Petit 2 remark, " has many features rather of a German than 
 a Norman character," and these tall slender towers certainly 
 resemble more nearly Laach and Worms, than Southwell and 
 St. George Bochcrville. The octagonal lantern of the Rhenish 
 churches has a noble substitute in the heavy central tower, whose 
 square shape is evidently better adapted to the intersection of 
 four arms. And in smaller buildings, with one remarkable class 
 of exceptions, deviations from the square form are equally un- 
 common. 3 These arc the towers found in Norfolk and Suffolk, 
 and occasionally elsewhere, which arc built in a round form, evi- 
 dently to save the ashlar which would otherwise have been re- 
 
 1 German Churches, p. 281. octagonal stage in the ruined tower 
 
 2 I. 94. at Swaffham Priors, (Petit, ii. 21,) 
 
 3 This of course docs not exclude and the extraordinary hexagonal 
 a few occasional anomalies, as the tower at Swindon.
 
 238 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 quired for the quoins. A few are perhaps earlier, 1 and a few 
 later, but most of them are of Norman date. 
 
 The capping of towers in this style is a very interesting sub- 
 ject, the more so as in this country the original terminations have 
 been so generally destroyed to make room for the embattled 
 parapet. From the evidence of ancient representations, and the 
 analogy of continental structures, it would seem probable that 
 our Norman, as well as our Saxon towers, were originally covered 
 with hanging roofs of stone, or more commonly of timber. 
 These, like the German examples, vary from a low pyramid of 
 four sides to a lofty spire. The former sometimes remains, or 
 has at least been replaced by one of the same design, as in the 
 central tower at Porchester. In Normandy they are found of 
 every pitch, both of stone and timber, gradually swelling into 
 quadrangular spires, which are common in Jersey. The towers 
 of Haute Allemagne and of St. Michael at Caen have stone 
 roofs exemplifying the transition, the latter being a genuine spire 
 with spire lights, but as low as a spire can be; while Haute 
 Allemagne, which is more strictly a high roof, has but a very 
 small opening. The octagonal towers at Jumieges and Tamer- 
 ville are finished in an analogous manner. A wooden spire, 
 square at the base, but immediately becoming octagonal, is com- 
 mon abroad ; such an one exists at East Meon. 2 The gabled tower 
 of the German churches does not seem to occur ; but we meet 
 with the form usually called a saddle-back, in which the tower 
 is treated like any other part of the church, and finished with 
 an east and west gable, and a ridge between them. Nor is the 
 fully developed octagonal spire excluded ; the upper stages of the 
 western towers of St. Stephen's Abbey were added in the last 
 days of llomanesque, and their richness contrasts wonderfully 
 with the plain work below ; care however seems to be taken not 
 to render the transition too violent, by the insertion of a story 
 that ranging with the gable of the nave of an intermediate 
 character as to decoration. The towers rise two complete stages 
 above the roof, and are crowned with rich octagonal spires. The 
 northern one is still Romanesque, with tall and rich octagonal 
 turrets with pinnacles rising from the angles; the southern, 
 
 1 Paley'a Gothic Architecture, p. 43. - Petit, ii. 111.
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 239 
 
 with some diversities in their arrangement, presents the same 
 general aspect, but belongs to an early stage of Gothic. A Nor- 
 man octagonal spire of stone, preserving the same main out- 
 line, but of course on a much smaller and plainer scale, crowns 
 the tower of St. Mary's church in Jersey. The use of the 
 embattled and pinnacled tower is undoubtedly one of our many 
 insular peculiarities, and its complete development is of much 
 later date. Yet it may be doubted whether its origin cannot 
 be traced even to this early period. The towers of Southwell, 
 it is well known, were formerly crowned with spires I know 
 not of what date or style, as the plates in Dugdale can hardly 
 be considered evidence still they are manifestly complete with- 
 out them, which few foreign towers would be. The parapet and 
 pinnacles furnish a satisfactory termination which the Continen- 
 tal examples do not supply ; the magnificent pinnacles at St. 
 Stephen's exist only for the sake of the spires, and would be in- 
 tolerable as mere terminations to a tower. 
 
 To turn to the interior features of Norman churches, we shall 
 find the threefold horizontal division of arcade, triforium, and 
 clerestory occurring in the best specimens of great churches ; 
 and even where the triforium is omitted, there is not usually that 
 wide unoccupied space which offends the eye in some of the Ger- 
 man churches. The composition is usually very effective, and 
 the parts well fitted and harmonized to each other. In fact a 
 long row of Norman arches, tier upon tier, as in the naves of 
 our vast Romanesque cathedrals, is one of the most striking and 
 solemn objects that architecture has ever produced . There are 
 however some important diversities to be observed between the 
 usual type of a French and English church. The most remark- 
 able is to be found in the shape of the piers. The variety of form 
 and proportion allowed to this feature is exceedingly great, and 
 will be found to include almost every phase which the two great 
 classes, the rectangular and the columnar, can afford. The square 
 pier without farther ornament is rare ; it occurs in a slightly mo- 
 dified form in the Abbey of Jumicgcs, having merely half 
 columns attached : these alternate with columns of considerable 
 height. Rectangular piers of several orders, with shafts attached 
 to the faces, or inserted in the angles, are frequent in the 
 churches of Normandy, but are less commonly met with in
 
 210 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 England. It is treating the pier arch on the principle of a door- 
 way, and tends to give the bay an unity in itself, which the 
 column, as belonging equally to two arches, cannot give. It thus 
 promotes vertical effect, and may so far be considered as a dim 
 foreshadowing of Gothic ; wherever the columnar pier is used, 
 the horizontal division decidedly predominates over the vertical, 
 and the building cannot be so well divided into bays. 
 
 The columnar pier is common in the smaller buildings of 
 Normandy, and appears not unfrequently in great churches, but 
 usually in a more light and graceful form than those to which 
 we are accustomed in our own cathedrals. The latter have 
 generally enormous cylindrical piers sometimes plain, some- 
 times enriched with vertical or zigzag fluting the vast bulk of 
 which is truly astonishing. These form one of the main distinc- 
 tions between English and foreign churches. Not however, as 
 Mr. Knight seems to suppose, " from that having been the Saxon 
 manner of imitating the Roman." 1 We have seen that the Saxon 
 pier was probably rectangular ; and in the great Norman church 
 which retains the greatest traces of Saxon character, St. Al- 
 ban's, we find vast rectangular piers of several orders, without 
 shaft or ornament. Mr. Knight proceeds to mention "the in- 
 expertness of workmen " as another cause. This may have had 
 some influence at the first introduction of the style this kind of 
 pier occurs even in King Harold's church at Waltham as the 
 square pier undoubtedly requires far more decoration and more 
 skilful workmanship to render it a satisfactory feature. This would 
 fully account for its employment in the early days of the style in 
 England ; and as the art advanced, architects may have chosen 
 to elaborate and develop the form to which they were attached 
 in preference to introducing its rival. The short and heavy pro- 
 portions of these piers have drawn on them much unfavourable 
 criticism from the adherents to classical proportions. The rule 
 for obtaining the most appropriate proportion for a Romanesque 
 column has been already given. But how far even this is 
 applicable to the vast cylindrical piers of Malvern and South- 
 well is another question. Are they in any proper sense columns 
 at all ? And if not, can they be rightly arraigned for want of 
 
 1 Tour in Normandy, p. 229.
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 241 
 
 due columnar proportions ? In Mr. Paley's words, 1 " the thick- 
 ness of the piers only gives the notion of an isolated piece of 
 wall/' This exactly expresses their true character ; they are of 
 precisely the same nature as the square pier, the cylindrical 
 form being employed instead of the rectangular. In this view, 
 it can hardly be denied that they are a great improvement, as 
 the square pier in its simplest form is decidedly ugly, and even 
 when recessed, it remains rude and meagre ; it requires decora- 
 tive shafts to give it any degree of architectural propriety. But 
 the vast cylindrical pier is always satisfactory. And that this 
 is their true nature further appears from another consideration. 
 The application of a round abacus to a decorative shaft or a de- 
 tached column is justly considered as one of the most important 
 steps towards Gothic. But in these heavy piers it occurs from 
 the earliest times, where there is no other mark of transition ; 
 and, what is of more importance, its occurrence in this position 
 does not produce the least degree of that vertical effect to which . 
 it so strongly contributes when employed elsewhere. The fact 
 is that it is not an abacus, not a capital, in any proper sense, 
 but a mere impost, which, as the pier is round, is naturally 
 round also, with as much propriety as a rectangular impost to a 
 rectangular pier. The best examples have no attempt at a real 
 capital. The noble piers at Great Malvern have merely a few 
 mouldings, those at Southwell have little more ; the impost 
 does not overlap like a genuine square abacus, nor is there 
 usually anything like space for a real capital of foliage or any 
 other kind; such an one is at once felt to be incongruous. 
 When it occurs with a square abacus, as by an excusable con- 
 fusion of ideas is sometimes found, the objection really applies ; 
 instead of a cylindrical pier it has become a column, and, as a 
 column, its want of due proportion is immediately felt. An im- 
 mense unbroken abacus of this kind has a very unsatisfactory 
 effect, and when, as is sometimes the case, it is cut up into four 
 or more imperfect abaci, though the unpleasant heaviness is re- 
 moved, it appears open to the charge of unreality, as we natu- 
 rally look for the shafts corresponding to each. 
 
 These massive cylindrical piers must, to carry out their own 
 idea, be low, about the proportion of the square pier which they 
 1 Gothic Architecture, p. HG 
 R
 
 242 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 replace. " Norman piers," says Mr. Paley, 1 " are not always 
 low ; they are sometimes of almost extravagant height." At 
 Gloucester and Tewkesbury the piers, which, in proportion to the 
 width of the arches, are very massive, are, in proportion to the 
 other parts of the elevation, of decidedly extravagant height ; 
 they reduce the triforium to complete insignificance. This is a 
 great fault ; but we might conceive the nave being of much loftier 
 elevation, so as to allow due size to the triforium. Still these piers 
 are in themselves unsatisfactory ; they are of a height of which 
 no one would build a plain square pier, and consequently not a 
 cylindrical one of this kind ; their proportion is suited only to 
 the clustered form. They are neither columns, nor clusters, nor 
 legitimate cylindrical piers, but are totally unsatisfactory, and, 
 independently of inharmonious alterations, render the nave of 
 Gloucester Cathedral positively unpleasing. The old arrange- 
 ments of the choir can still be discerned through the airy net- 
 work of Perpendicular panelling which is woven over it ; here 
 we have the low pier and large triforium, and the effect, even in 
 this partial glimpse, is incomparably superior. 2 
 
 Again, how completely the English architects regarded the 
 heavy round pillar, not as a column, but as a substitute for the 
 square pier, is shown by the way in which, at a later period, they 
 began to cluster their piers. This is more often effected by at- 
 taching smaller shafts to a circular than to a rectangular pier. 
 Massive pillars formed in this way are common, and show how 
 the two forms were felt to be identical and treated in the same 
 manner. Indeed the two modes of formation often occur in the 
 same range of pillars, and even in the same pillar. The im- 
 mense variety of shapes which the Norman pier thus assumes is 
 perfectly astonishing. In some instances we find two or more 
 shafts on the same plane supporting a single abacus, the effect of 
 
 1 Page 70. mediately above the arcade, as in 
 
 1 The piers at Durham also are what is called the Conventual 
 
 perhaps somewhat too lofty, but church at Ely, the pier is at once 
 
 the excess in proportion is less con- taller and slenderer, and is a sort 
 
 spicuous, and there is a true trifo- of intermediate form between the 
 
 num. In some of the examples cylindrical pier and the genuine 
 
 where that feature is really want- column, 
 ing, and the clerestory appears im-
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 243 
 
 which is never good. When genuine clusters of equal shafts 
 are introduced, as in the Galilee at Durham, a most important 
 step has been taken towards the development of Gothic. 
 
 The octagonal pier of like proportion is manifestly to be classed 
 with the cylindrical ; it is not commonly found till late in the 
 style, and might be almost considered a transitional feature. 
 
 The semicircular arches supported by the piers are in the 
 simplest examples perfectly square in section. The Collegiate 
 Church of Gournay in Normandy has some of one order only, 
 and consequently of enormous breadth, without any ornament 
 whatsoever ; but this mode of construction is so manifestly 
 unsatisfactory when the wall is of the thickness required in a 
 large church, that it is very rare, and the arches are generally 
 made of two or three orders. And this seems to be the perfection 
 of the style ; they may of course be enriched to any degree by the 
 application of surface moulding, which however is not usually 
 found to any great extent in the pier-arches of large churches. 
 We find instead roll- mouldings introduced at an early period of 
 the style, and they gradually become predominant. Sometimes 
 large roll-mouldings occupy the place of a soffit, which, when 
 they stand alone, and are not, as is so often seen in late Norman 
 vaulting-ribs, coupled with hollows, seems like a retention of a 
 Saxon idea. This is very conspicuous in the early Norman nave 
 of Christ Church, Twynham. In most of our great Norman 
 churches of the twelfth century the pier arches will be found 
 very much moulded ; but we shall still find examples, even in 
 decidedly transitional buildings, as Buildwas Abbey and Roth- 
 well church, where the pure square section is retained even in 
 conjunction with the pointed arch. 
 
 The triforium is occasionally omitted, as at Gournay, where 
 a void space is left, greatly to the detriment of the effect ; but 
 it is generally a very important feature, being usually equal in 
 width to the pier-arch and frequently not very much inferior to it 
 in height. One large arch generally occupies the whole space, be- 
 neath which two, or occasionally more, smaller ones are grouped, 
 rising commonly from a detached shaft or cluster of shafts, which 
 sometimes, as at Peterborough, are unpleasantly slender. Most 
 of the remarks made above with regard to the pier arches will 
 apply equally to the triforium range ; except that the bays are 
 
 r2
 
 244 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 commonly more distinct ; the triforium is not so much a conti- 
 nuous arcade on pillars, as a series of independent arches cut 
 through the wall. The columnar pier can hardly occur ; and 
 each arch is best described as rising from two responds. One 
 reason of this is that the roof-shafts, which, even where the pier 
 is columnar, generally spring immediately above it, effect in most 
 cases a strong vertical division. But even where they do not 
 occur, as at Southwell and in the choir of Norwich, a greater or 
 less blank space is generally left between the bays. 
 
 The Holy Trinity Church at Caen is a remarkable exception to 
 the ordinary rule of Norman triforia. There is merely a small 
 arcade, and that without shafts, running continuously along the 
 nave, except where it is interrupted by the vaulting-shafts. 
 
 The most common, though not universal, type of the clere- 
 story has a single round-headed window in each bay, not splayed, 
 and with a smaller arch on each side its rear-arch, opening into 
 the small passage or upper triforium made in the thickness of 
 the wall. 
 
 With regard to the roofs of Norman Minsters, the question 
 at once arises how far vaulting over large spaces was in use 
 during the period of the prevalence of that style. It is cer- 
 tain that no vaulted roof over a large space, such as the nave or 
 choir of a Cathedral, exists in England until the Transitional 
 period. On the other hand, as such vaulting is common in the 
 German llomanesque, it is not unknown in Normandy. Both 
 the great Abbeys of Caen have cellular vaulting. That at St. 
 Stephen is complete sexpartite vaulting, at the Holy Trinity a 
 sort of transition from quadripartite to that form. In both a 
 bay of vaulting covers two bays of the building. These vaults 
 are decidedly Norman, but there seems reason to believe that in 
 neither case are they of equal antiquity with the rest of the 
 church. This however does not prove that a stone roof may 
 not have formed a part of the original design, as few things are 
 more common at all times than to find preparations for vaulting 
 which have never been carried into effect. Indeed at St. Stephen's 
 the clerestory shows manifest indications of being designed with 
 reference to a vaulted roof such as at present exists. We may 
 then conclude that the absence of vaulting, which was at all times 
 a characteristic of English churches, was more especially so during
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 245 
 
 the Norman period. In after times we find many English 
 churches without vaulting, which in France or Germany would 
 certainly have had a stone roof ; and our country alone produced 
 a form of timber-roof which is at least an endurable substitute 
 for the more appropriate covering. It is almost impossible to 
 suppose that the builders of Ely and Peterborough naves of 
 purely Romanesque style, though of Transitional date were ig- 
 norant of the art of vaulting large spaces, any more than that 
 Abbot Whethampstede was when he added the gorgeous flat ceil- 
 ing to the nave of St. Alban's in the fifteenth century. It doubt- 
 less arose from some principle of taste, and perhaps an intelligible 
 one ; it may have been thought that a Romanesque nave derived 
 an air of greater majesty and solidity from the absence of vaulting, 
 perhaps even, as Mr. Petit suggests, of greater height. It must 
 have been some such feeling as this which made them reject the 
 mode of roofing adopted in other churches at the same time. 
 That no intention of subsequent vaulting was entertained is 
 manifest from the shafts which support the roof running up to 
 the wall-plate. 
 
 These shafts are not universal in Norman minsters, but they 
 are found in the greater number of the best examples, and mani- 
 festly add very much to the effect of the church, which without 
 them has an unfinished and too horizontal air. I cannot however 
 allow that, as Mr. Petit seems to consider, they show the Nor- 
 man style to be one of transition. They seem to be required by 
 the great law of decorative construction, which requires every 
 member of a building to have a support satisfactory to the eye, 
 and it is clear that a shaft is in this respect far more effectual 
 than a mere corbel. Where the roof is vaulted they are almost 
 necessary, and in other cases they are most assuredly a great im- 
 provement. In the nave of St. Alban's Abbey, where the shaft 
 does not occur in the piers, the roof is consistently supported by 
 pilasters similar to those used externally. It is probable that 
 these shafts in most cases supported flat wooden ceilings, but no 
 indisputable example remains, as Mr. Palcy has thrown a doubt, 
 though apparently without sufficient reason, upon the antiquity 
 of the famous ceiling at Peterborough. The art of ornamenting 
 the construction of open roofs was not introduced till long after, 
 and we can hardly suppose that all our Norman cathedrals were
 
 246 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 meant to receive no nobler covering than the barn roof over the 
 nave of Ely, or that which, till the insertion of the present ceil- 
 ing, disfigured Walkelyn's transepts at Winchester. 
 
 Vaulting however was, even in England, extensively used over 
 smaller spaces, during the whole of the Norman period. Many 
 noble specimens remain in the crypts of large churches, which 
 indeed hardly admitted of any other kind of roofing. The pil- 
 lars supporting it are usually, even in French churches, very low 
 and massive, though sometimes, as at Canterbury, they almost ap- 
 proach to the graceful elegance of the Italian examples. Crypts, 
 however, are by no means the only parts of churches, either 
 large or small, which exhibit specimens of Norman vaulting. 
 The aisles of large churches are almost always covered with 
 plain quadripartite vaulting. In the earliest examples the groins 
 are without ribs ; these are however soon added, and gradually 
 assume the richness of the later style, and sink into Gothic 
 forms by a transition even more gradual and imperceptible than 
 in the other members. The aisles of Oxford cathedral afford 
 examples of almost every stage of this transition, though no por- 
 tion appears to be of at all early date. In small churches the 
 chancel, and the chancel alone, is often vaulted in the same man- 
 ner ; in both cases the vaulting usually springs from shafts. 
 
 I have thus described the principal features of the elevation 
 of the nave or choir of a Norman minster, the piers, pier-arches, 
 triforium, clerestory, and roof; and I have done this at greater 
 length, because the triple division of height is most constantly 
 observed, and comes out with the greatest prominence, in this 
 style, which may therefore be taken as the groundwork to which 
 to refer in describing analogous Gothic features. A few more 
 remarks will conclude the subject of great Norman interiors. 
 
 The arches under the central towers are commonly among the 
 most striking features of a large Norman church ; the immense 
 height of the slender shafts attached to the rectangular masses, 
 and the strongly marked angles formed by their distinct square 
 abaci, have a very characteristic effect. The severity and indi- 
 viduality of parts produced by the latter feature counteract the 
 notion of inchoate Gothic, which the former alone might have 
 suggested. 
 
 The central towers themselves afford in their interior some of
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 247 
 
 the most splendid specimens of Romanesque arcading and its 
 accompanying ornaments. As the natural and legitimate suc- 
 cessors of the dome, their chief end was the more majestic 
 crowning of the central space, and they were consequently 
 open at least to the level of the ridge of the roof, and sometimes 
 through the whole height. But in most instances bells have 
 been hung in the towers, and a roof accordingly thrown across 
 at the level of the other roofs, to the great prejudice of the in- 
 ternal effect. 
 
 A perfect Norman interior is but rarely to be found among 
 small churches, especially where there are aisles. It is not un- 
 common however to find portions, a single arcade for instance, 
 where there is nothing externally to indicate a Norman date, 
 just as on the other hand there are, as Mr. Petit remarks, 1 
 churches of an outline completely Norman, which on near ex- 
 amination possess no detail whatever of that date, and others, 
 in which, after numerous alterations, the original effect is still 
 preserved. The arches usually spring from columnar piers by no 
 means so massive as in larger structures ; they are almost always 
 treated as genuine columns with a proper capital and square aba- 
 cus. This is doubtless owing to the much smaller, even compara- 
 tive, weight which they have to support than in great minsters, 
 so that the square pier and its cylindrical substitute 2 are less fre- 
 quently met with. From the same reason the arches better ad- 
 mit of being left in their original section, as not involving the 
 same enormously broad soffits. They are most frequently of one 
 order only, but sometimes of more ; as a general rule they have 
 less sectional and more surface moulding than in large churches. 
 The chancel arches are usually much more ornamented than the 
 lantern arches in larger structures, whose beauty is rather derived 
 from their bold and lofty proportions than from any great degree 
 of enrichment. In smaller churches the piers project far more 
 boldly, being often of many orders, so that the arch is compara- 
 tively narrow, sometimes even to a fault, as tending to cut off 
 the chancel too completely from the nave. Every species of or- 
 
 i I. 110. exception, in a row of cylindrical 
 
 2 Grendon church, Northampton- piers of amazing hulk, 
 shire, contains a very remarkable
 
 )248 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 nament is lavished on these arches, all the immense variety of 
 mouldings and enrichments afforded by the style adorn the arch 
 itself; and numerous shafts, often grooved and fluted in divers 
 ways, arc attached to the piers. In churches which are without 
 aisles, these arches naturally form the chief internal source of 
 ornament. Where there is a central tower, as at Iffley, the view 
 of the two magnificent arches beneath it is sublime in the ex- 
 treme. Others, again, are quite plain ; though, as was stated 
 above, it is by no means improbable but that some of these may 
 be really of Saxon date. 
 
 Of the roofing of small churches we know even less than in the 
 case of larger ones. The chancels, and the apses where they occur, 
 are frequently vaulted, but of the covering of the nave and aisles 
 scarcely any satisfactory examples remain. The chapel in the 
 White Tower, if it be fair to class it here, retains its original 
 barrel-vaulting. In most examples the roof has been completely 
 altered, and the addition of a clerestory to so many examples 
 renders it still more difficult to ascertain the original form. At 
 St. Peter's, Northampton, and at Iffley, the nave would seem to 
 have had a flat ceiling, a feature which was perhaps at all times a 
 more frequent substitute for vaulting than is usually supposed. 
 
 The surface-mouldings of the Norman style, to which such 
 frequent allusions have necessarily been made throughout this 
 chapter, present an almost infinite variety, but are very easily 
 recognized. To enter into a minute description of their details 
 would be inconsistent with the plan of the present work, and 
 they have been illustrated at large by Mr. Bloxam, and in the 
 Glossary. The most common is the chevron or zigzag, which is 
 applied in the utmost profusion to almost every feature of Nor- 
 man architecture. The beak-head is commonly employed to 
 grasp, as it were, one of the heavy roll-mouldings of the style ; 
 in an example at St. Cross it developes into the complete form 
 of a bird. 
 
 On no portion of a church are these ornaments lavished to a 
 greater excess than on the doorways, which are often of most 
 sumptuous character, and are in very many instances preserved 
 in churches where every other vestige of the Romanesque fabric 
 has completely perished. They usually recede several times, 
 and all the orders but the inner one arc most frequently sup-
 
 OF NORMAN ARCHITECTURE. 249 
 
 ported by a shaft. The arch-mouldings and the spaces between 
 the shafts are decorated with all the richest ornaments of the 
 style. In some instances the shafts are omitted, and all the 
 orders and their mouldings are continuous from the ground. 
 
 The richest doorways are universally allowed to be found in 
 England, though many fine examples will be seen in Mr. Cot- 
 man's work. The tympanum often occurs, as in the west front 
 of St. Stephen's, where it has more the character of a square 
 doorway under a round arch than in the English examples, 
 where in most cases it is essentially a stone in the head of a 
 round-arched doorway. The superb western portal at Rochester 
 Cathedral is by far the finest example of this kind, if not the 
 finest of all Norman doorways. The transom supporting the 
 tympanum is not always straight. 
 
 The windows were comparatively small, yet in large buildings 
 they sometimes attain a positive size sufficient to allow of the 
 subsequent insertion of tracery, as may be seen at Peterborough 
 and Romsey. They are of very different proportions, being some- 
 times very long and narrow, and at other times of great breadth ; 
 and they afford equal diversities in the amount of enrichment. 
 Within, they have commonly a considerable splay, making the 
 inner opening much higher and wider than the outer; this is 
 less conspicuous in the larger examples. The double window 
 grouped under a single arch, with a single shaft in the centre, 
 and two on each side, is very characteristic of the style, and is 
 easily to be distinguished from the analogous Saxon window. 
 It is in fact identical with the most usual arrangement of the 
 triforium. As the shafts and capitals render it inconvenient for 
 the reception of glass, it is ordinarily confined to belfries. Cir- 
 cular windows also occur, but usually of no great size, and with- 
 out tracery ; examples will be found in the eastern transept at 
 Canterbury, and the clerestory of the nave at Southwell. In 
 these latter the inner opening is merely a round arch on shafts, 
 and their circular form is almost lost in the interior. But their 
 external effect cannot be considered pleasing. 
 
 The enrichment of buildings by decorative arcades is as fre- 
 quent a feature in Norman structures as in the other varie- 
 ties of the Romanesque family. Towers, fronts, wherever in 
 short a blank surface needed enrichment, are covered with this
 
 250 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 beautiful and never-failing source of ornament. Their variety is 
 almost endless ; they usually spring from shafts, but sometimes 
 from square pilasters, and sometimes again the impost is merely 
 continuous ; the arches of course are usually round : they often 
 intersect; a curious example occurs at St. Augustine's, Canter- 
 bury, in which the intersecting arches are straight-sided. The 
 mouldings of the arches, their proportions, and those of the 
 shafts supporting them, afford an almost endless series of di- 
 versities. 
 
 Shafts and columns, both decorative and otherwise, are very 
 various, and occur of almost every imaginable proportion. They 
 are usually round, but sometimes octagonal, and are often fluted 
 and twisted in divers ways, or again covered with the chevron 
 or other surface mouldings. The capitals are a square block, 
 sometimes left plain, or adorned with painting only, but more 
 usually sculptured. The cushion capital is the simplest, and 
 perhaps the most common form, but imitations of the Ionic, 
 Corinthian, and Composite capitals also occur, and also many 
 forms of foliage which cannot be considered as even an attempt 
 at any of them. Fret or basket-work, representations of men 
 and animals in divers attitudes, the signs of the zodiac, histori- 
 cal or legendary compositions, are also common ; the sagittary, 
 or mounted archer, the badge of King Stephen, is not unfre- 
 quently met with in examples of his reign. The abacus is com- 
 monly square ; early in the style it is very heavy, with merely its 
 under surface chamfered off; afterwards it becomes lighter, and 
 its section more complicated ; it is not unfrequently found with its 
 surface richly sculptured. The square abacus is a most charac- 
 teristic feature, and one retained longer than any other, as the 
 massive cylindrical piers, which might be cited to the contrary, 
 have been shown not to be a real exception. Nothing is more com- 
 mon than for the abacus to be continued as a string. The base 
 has usually a few mouldings following the form of the shaft, set 
 on a square plinth : an ornament like a tongue, a piece of foliage, 
 sometimes an animal crushed by the pillar, often fills up the 
 angles, and always has a good effect. 
 
 Such are the principal features of our venerable Norman 
 churches ; the general merits of the style will be discussed here- 
 after, but enough has been said to show that no age has pro-
 
 INFLUENCE OF LATIN ARCHITECTURE IN THE EAST. 251 
 
 duced structures whose number, size, splendour, and richness 
 bear more honourable testimony to the zeal and bounty of their 
 founders. 1 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 OF THE INFLUENCE OF LATIN ARCHITECTURE IN THE EAST. 
 
 While the influence of Byzantine art so powerfully affected the 
 architecture of Western Christendom, not only in the provinces 
 of Italy which so long formed, or professed to form, a portion of 
 the Eastern Empire, but in the more distant regions of Germany 
 and even France ; there is little reason to doubt that the con- 
 quest of Constantinople by the Latins, and the intimate connec- 
 tion of the Venetians with the East both before and after that great 
 
 1 As the series of Romanesque 
 styles terminates here, I will add a 
 brief account of an interesting class 
 of churches which exhibit the treat- 
 ment of that style when applied to 
 an unwonted material. These are 
 the wooden churches of Norway, 
 which exhibit an infinity of rich 
 Runic, and sometimes distinc- 
 tively Romanesque and Byzantine 
 carving. The interiors, in two in- 
 stances, Borgund and Urnes, are 
 evidently imitated from stone 
 churches, having arches, and a wag- 
 gon roof, constructions which would 
 hardly appear in an original timber 
 architecture. Though even here 
 the arches are not laid on the pil- 
 lars, but rise from their sides, while 
 the pillars themselves rise up and 
 support the string, if we may so call 
 it, above. In a third, at Hitterdal, 
 the greater beauty of these forms is 
 sacrificed to the natural treatment 
 of the material, and the flat roof is 
 simply laid on the pillars, being a 
 complete return to the Grecian hut. 
 
 The exteriors are very singular, and 
 have somewhat of a Chinese aspect ; 
 a cloister runs round the lowest 
 stage, above which rise the aisles 
 and clerestory, crowned with a sort 
 of square louvre. As all these parts 
 have high roofs and gables, soar- 
 ing over each other, the effect is 
 most curious, the whole church 
 seeming to rise pyramidally to an 
 apex. In fact this outline, though 
 totally different in effect, is closely 
 analogous to the similar centre of 
 unity given by the Byzantine cu- 
 pola. The detached tower at Urnes 
 is a truncated pyramidal structure, 
 with a gable of sharper pitch rest- 
 ing on an open arcade. The pecu- 
 liar outline of this church is much 
 less strongly marked than in the 
 other two. See a fuller description 
 in the Proceedings of the Oxford 
 Architectural Society for Michael- 
 mas Term, 1843, communicated by 
 the Rev. J. L. Patterson, M.A., 
 Trinity College.
 
 252 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 event, tended in return considerably to modify the traditional 
 type of the Byzantine churches by an infusion of western ideas. 
 The change was in some respects an approximation not only to 
 Latin, but to Gothic architecture, and the period of its duration 
 actually embraces the whole time during which that style pre- 
 vailed. But though the western element in the later Byzantine 
 erections is sufficiently extensive to deserve a separate notice, 
 it was never so strong as to remove any native structure for 
 actual Gothic churches were in some instances erected by the 
 crusaders out of the great Romanesque family. A few pointed 
 arches, not affecting the main features of the building, do not 
 constitute a Gothic edifice. 
 
 In the Byzantine architecture of this period, as described by 
 M. Couchaud, we find the plan approach somewhat to the plan 
 of the Latin Basilicas ; and in the facades the inclinations of the 
 roofs are indicated by gables. But where this external influence 
 is especially perceptible, is in the profusion and richness of the 
 ornaments which accompany the different architectural details. 
 Barrel-vaults prevail throughout the whole length of the build- 
 ing ; the windows are filled with tablets of stone or marble 
 pierced with circular holes ; and the jambs of the doors become 
 of more elaborate workmanship. This last period, which the 
 author formally terminates at the conquest of Greece by the 
 Turks, he considers as in some sense still prolonged by several 
 centuries, up to the moment of the last war of independence. 
 
 M. Couchaud' s engravings afford many examples of this kind, 
 especially among the churches of Athens: one, that of Kapnicarca, 
 has a long heavy facade, with four low gables, quite unlike the 
 genuine Byzantine forms. St. John, in the same city, has the 
 basilican plan without any cupola, and instead of an apse has a 
 square projection ; most of the arches are pointed, which is not the 
 case in the other. At Chalcis in Eubcea is a good double pointed 
 window, with moulded jambs, and divided by a shaft. The city 
 of Mistra, near the ancient Sparta, was founded, according to 
 M. Couchaud, in 1207, and, as might naturally be expected, con- 
 tains much of this mixed style. The Church of the Virgin is a fine 
 pile, of a general outline thoroughly Byzantine, with a central 
 cupola and smaller ones clustering round it, and most of the 
 constructive arches round, including those of a fine open portico, 
 a complete translation of the old Grecian portico into the lau-
 
 INFLUENCE OF LATIN ARCHITECTURE IN THE EAST. 253 
 
 guage of an arched style. Over these arches, however, as well 
 as in other parts of the building, gables occur. The ground- 
 plan, though allowing of domes, is longer than the usual Ori- 
 ental type. In the apses there are pointed arches of decoration. 
 A tower, probably as being a Western feature, is treated with 
 less regard to Byzantine precedent than the rest of the church, 
 being gabled, with heavy pinnacles at the angles, but finally 
 crowned with a pointed cupola. The windows of this tower even 
 exhibit some faint approaches to tracery. In the ramparts of 
 Mistra we find both the pointed and the round arch ; and the tre- 
 foiled spherical triangle in the windows. A chapel at Andronosa 
 in Peloponnesus is a mere oblong with an apse, there is no dome 
 or tower, but a bell-gable at one side ; both round and pointed 
 arches occur. 1 
 
 The church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, rebuilt after 
 its destruction by the Caliph Hakem in the eleventh century, is 
 cited by Mr. Hope as an example of the Lombard i.e. Roman- 
 esque style, but might perhaps rather be considered Byzantine 
 with some mixture of Western and Arabian ideas. It consists 
 of two parts, a round church of the usual form with an aisle 
 and cupola, open at the top, to the east of which, instead of the 
 chancel attached to western buildings of this kind, is a complete 
 church in the form of a Greek cross, with a pointed dome of con- 
 siderable elevation. There is no other cupola except over one 
 of the small chapels which crowd round the main fabric, both 
 filling up the angles of the cross and stretching beyond it. 
 There is only a single apse, though several small apsidal projec- 
 tions radiate from it. The details are mixed; the shaft sup- 
 porting an entablature appears as an external ornament in the 
 drum of the central dome and in the apse ; the quatrcfoil is a 
 
 1 In Dodwell's engravings of Pe- an octagonal tower rising from the 
 
 lasgic remains a small church at centre, which has, externally at 
 
 Delphi is incidentally introduced least, no dome, but the low conical 
 
 (having part of its walls formed by roof of the Romanesque style. The 
 
 a Cyclopean ruin) which approaches windows are all round-headed, very 
 
 yet more nearly to the architecture small, except those in the tower, 
 
 of Western Europe. It appears to and a double one in the apse. There 
 
 have aisles and yet the whole is is no appearance of arcades or other 
 
 comprised under a single low gable, mural decoration, 
 with a single semicircular apse, and
 
 254 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 frequently recurring decoration, and the apse is finished with a 
 battlement of Saracenic character. The pointed arch seems to 
 occur only in the campanile, which stands to the south-west, and 
 in some adjoining buildings. This tower, with its buttresses, 
 arcades, and windows, quite corresponds with the early Gothic 
 of Western Europe, and must be a later addition. The windows 
 in the rest of the church are small and round-headed, and the 
 coupled window seems not to occur. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Is Romanesque architecture a perfect or an imperfect style ? 
 This is one of the most interesting and important questions 
 within the whole scope of the science, and its due consideration 
 will require considerable attention, as several others may at first 
 sight seem involved in it, which must be carefully distinguished 
 from the real point at issue, which in fact they only serve to 
 confuse. 
 
 First then, the question has no connection with one which 
 may be raised, whether Romanesque is a fit style for adoption 
 at the present day. Pure Grecian is as perfect a style, as pure 
 and complete a decoration of a certain construction, as can be 
 imagined, yet it is manifestly unfit for our adoption. Yet- as 
 this confessedly does not hinder Grecian from being a perfect 
 style, so neither can it hinder Romanesque. 
 
 Secondly, theories as to the preservation or destruction of 
 ancient buildings have still less connection with the question. 
 The " Conservative" would preserve Romanesque, though he 
 considered it imperfect ; the " Destructive," though he consi- 
 dered it perfect in its kind, would replace it by something which 
 he held to be of a higher kind. 
 
 Thirdly, by asserting a style to be perfect, we do not assert that 
 it is either mechanically, aesthetically, or morally, the best that 
 has been produced. It may be the worst in all three respects, 
 and yet be the legitimate adorning of a certain construction, and
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OP ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 255 
 
 the expression of a certain idea. The construction may be mecha- 
 nically contemptible, the decoration meagre, the idea poor and 
 worthless, yet the style is still perfect in its own kind. 
 
 Fourthly, the merit of existing specimens does not affect the 
 question. Ideal perfection cannot be reached by any human 
 skill, nor are we bound to suppose that the nearest possible ap- 
 proaches to it have been already made. Whatever building 
 any one looks upon as the nearest existing approximation, there 
 are probably respects in which he considers some other as superior 
 to it. And the degree of failure can make no difference. We 
 may conceive that Grecian and Gothic buildings exist, which are 
 a more perfect expression of their respective ideas than any 
 Romanesque building is of its own : and yet that such a distinct 
 leading idea exists at which all Romanesque buildings aim. 
 It may be true that in point of fact no period existed in which no 
 Grecian idea remained, and no Gothic idea had been introduced, 
 and yet that there is a Romanesque perfection, existing in idea, 
 but in point of fact unattained, entirely distinct from both. 
 
 Fifthly, whether Romanesque be or be not truly a Christian 
 style is equally off the question. Its Christianity does not prove 
 it perfect ; its non-Christianity would not prove it a style in itself 
 imperfect, but only one inapplicable for ecclesiastical purposes. 
 
 The sole question is this. Is there an ideal perfection of the 
 round-arched construction, in the same sense as there confes- 
 sedly is of the entablature and of the pointed arch ? and stripped 
 of extraneous considerations, I can hardly conceive any diffi- 
 culty being felt in the admission that there is. It may be 
 answered that there is an ideal perfection of the arch, but 
 that it is to be found in the Pointed style, and that the 
 round arch is in itself imperfect. But this would be a mere 
 arbitrary assumption ; the more philosophical process is to take 
 the facts as we find them. The round arch does exist as a 
 construction, it is as mechanically excellent as any other, and 
 few would say that the form is essentially unsightly, especially 
 as it is a portion of a figure the circle confessedly beautiful. 
 Though in mechanical construction it is nearly the same as the 
 pointed, to the eye it is completely distinct ; the notion conveyed 
 by it is one purely its own. It has its own aisthetical character, 
 distinct alike from the entablature and from the pointed arch.
 
 2")() HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 May we not then expect that it has its appropriate style of deco- 
 ration, that a certain support is most fitting for it, a certain style 
 of moulding most in harmony with its leading notion ? Now 
 surely, without reference to association, the Romanesque system of 
 ornament is consistent with the round arch and inconsistent with 
 the pointed, while the Gothic forms are the reverse. In like 
 manner the round arch harmonizes not with the soaring clus- 
 tered pillar, and the pointed arch is equally out of place when 
 supported by the massive pier. And every minor detail may be 
 carried out in like manner. All this shows that the round arch 
 has its appropriate treatment parallel to that of the pointed, and 
 consequently has an ideal perfection in which this treatment 
 shall be most completely and consistently carried out. This 
 perfection may be altogether inferior to that of Gothic, and yet 
 parallel to it ; it may be capable of attaining an equal degree of 
 merit in its own kind, even though that kind should be con- 
 sidered inferior to the other. It is plain moreover that the con- 
 nection between the construction and its decoration is a true 
 and philosophical one, not arising from mere arbitrary associa- 
 tion; transitional specimens exist in sufficient numbers to render 
 our eyes perfectly habituated to any degree of confusion of 
 Romanesque and Gothic principles. Yet such intermingling is at 
 once felt to be altogether incongruous ; it is only extraneous cir- 
 cumstances, size, splendour, proportion, which can at all recon- 
 cile us to the inconsistent admixture of discordant elements. 
 
 The history of Romanesque, as traced in our former chapters, 
 may seem inconsistent with the theory of its perfection, and 
 has led both classical and Gothic exclusiveness to despise it. 
 To the former it is a mere bungling corruption, introduced by 
 men who knew not how to work architraves or preserve the pro- 
 per proportions of columns ; it is not classical, and is therefore 
 worthless. To the latter, it is classical, and therefore worthless ; 
 it is Pagan, horizontal, at best only valuable as a groundwork on 
 which Gothic was built up. The one cannot conceive how 
 northern barbarians, ignorant of the principles of Vitruvius, 
 could introduce improvements in the fine arts ; to the other a 
 round arch or an acanthus leaf appears altogether profane, and 
 is a subject for absolute loathing. But those who allow that 
 good architecture is not the exclusive property of any one age or
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 257 
 
 nation will perceive that a style may be neither classical nor 
 Gothic, and yet have principles and merits of its own, distinct 
 from both. And in this view it will appear nothing wonderful 
 that the destroyers of the Roman power might be the improvers 
 of Roman art. More skilful hands might have perpetuated the 
 old system of ornament in all its incongruous splendour ; with 
 builders who could raise the pier and turn the arch, but not 
 measure the column and enrich the frieze, the ornamental 
 features died away, and the mere skeleton, the unadorned con- 
 struction, remained ready for more appropriate forms to be en- 
 grafted upon it. Architecture was brought back to the point 
 which we may conceive it had gained among the ancient nations 
 of Italy when the splendid inventions of Grecian art were first 
 made known to them. The pier and arch stood ready for the 
 German or Norman architect to adorn alike with the creations 
 of his own genius, and with such of the spoils of heathendom 
 as might be fitly pressed into the Church's service. The arch 
 began to be recessed, its square section to be enriched with gor- 
 geous mouldings ; the pier has the taper shaft, with its rich capital, 
 attached to relieve the heavy mass, and to support each receding 
 order. The column is now reduced within the limits of the 
 small arcade, now soars uninterruptedly from the floor to the 
 roof. The laws of classical proportion are sacrificed as only 
 cramping the energies of the style ; but the construction which 
 the classical architect was content to disguise now stands forth 
 in all its majestic simplicity, its immoveable solidity, its severe 
 individuality of parts, admitting alike of the naked plainness of 
 Jumicges and the lavish gorgeousness of Bayeux. Surely the 
 adorning of this construction in a manner so harmonious and so 
 splendid is as much the mark of a pure and perfect style as ought 
 that Grecian or Gothic skill has reared, and may fairly challenge 
 a place parallel to theirs, among the noblest developments of the 
 art of architecture. 
 
 Many have found a stumbling-block inwhat is called the Pagan 
 origin of Romanesque; not that this can directly affect its claims 
 to be considered a perfect style, but because it has been a fertile 
 source of prejudice and misconception. It is clear that its claims 
 as a creation of art must be exactly the same whether its origin 
 be Pa^an or Christian. Considered as a form of ecclesiastical
 
 258 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 architecture it is rather, as was above shown at length, a glori- 
 ous example of that leading captive all the brightest creations 
 of heathendom in which the Church has ever delighted. The 
 outline of the Gothic, no less than the Romanesque, Min- 
 ster is bat a development of the heathen Basilica; the most 
 distinctively Gothic enrichments of Lincoln and St. Ouen's may- 
 be traced by lineal descent up to the shrines of the old idolatry. 
 If Romanesque be of heathen parentage, so is Gothic ; the latter 
 is only a few generations further removed from the common an- 
 cestor. But what there is distinctively Pagan in Romanesque 
 it is difficult to perceive ; the grand outlines, within and without, 
 retain no trace of heathenism ; the round arch can hardly have 
 contracted defilement under the hands of the Pagan Romans, if 
 its pointed rival issues uncontaminated from the shrines of the 
 impostor of Mecca ; indeed it is not easy to perceive the moral 
 pollution which attaches even to a fluted column or a Corinthian 
 capital, while the Attic base is allowed to support the tall pillars 
 of the purest Gothic temple. It is only the lifeless skeleton of 
 Romanesque which is of Pagan origin, and the lifeless skeleton 
 of Gothic is equally so ; in both the life, the spirit, the animating 
 genius of the style, is essentially Christian, bringing whatever of 
 heathenism lurks about it into bondage to the faith. The awful 
 majesty of Peterborough's glorious nave is as truly Christian, as 
 far removed from the spirit of a false worship, as the matchless 
 portico itself; the portals of Tffley and Malmsbury would stand 
 self-closed against the entry of an idol's pomp ; the spirit of the 
 Church reigns no less supreme among their massive piers and 
 ponderous arches, than in the unmeasured height of Amiens 
 and the faultless grace of Lichfield ; it is the Church, 
 
 " One and the same through all advancing time," 
 
 but varying her material as well as her oral teaching, according 
 to the internal and external condition of her children ; now ex- 
 horting to firmness amidst the storms of persecution, now 
 warning against corruption in the days of earthly triumph. 
 
 In a word, the Romanesque style, adopting the bare forms of 
 heathen art, but giving them, under the Church's holy inspiration, 
 a life, a harmony, and a reality which they never before pos- 
 ^">*r(l, i but acting in an analogous manner to the Fathers of
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 259 
 
 the early Church, when the whole scheme of the secular govern- 
 ment of the Roman Empire, the divisions of provinces and the 
 gradual subordination of magistracies, were taken into her sys- 
 tem, and the seat of the civil governor became also that of the 
 Bishop, the Primate, and the Patriarch. 
 
 It is, I should suppose, sufficiently plain to any one that a 
 debased classical insertion is felt to be as truly incongruous, as 
 utterly repugnant to the spirit and associations of the style, in 
 a Norman as in a Gothic church. The hideous doorway in the 
 north transept at Ely is as complete a stranger as if it had been 
 cut through the superb Gothic of the choir. And yet the con- 
 struction of such a doorway is identical with that of the best 
 Norman, and the steps between them so gradual that it is im- 
 possible to draw a hard line of demarcation. The difference is 
 not so much architectural as ecclesiastical. We at once perceive 
 that both Romanesque and Gothic have a common clement which 
 the other does not possess ; something in which they agree and 
 harmonize together, notwithstanding the total dissimilarity of 
 their forms. It must then be an clement of a higher character 
 than anything of mere aesthetics, and can therefore be only the 
 moral power of Christianity brought to bear upon art, no less than 
 upon manners, literature, and politics. The Church has marked 
 Romanesque and Gothic alike for her own, and her influence 
 causes them to blend more harmoniously together than forms 
 which in a merely artistic view have a far nearer affinity. 
 
 It is probably a feeling of this kind which has made so many 
 writers look upon Romanesque as only a sort of imperfect Gothic. 
 He who truly honours the Christianity of art as displayed in the 
 latter, can hardly fail to recognize its earlier and sterner de- 
 velopment in Romanesque. On the other hand, the despiscr of 
 Gothic will usually be found to despise Romanesque yet more, 
 as a more palpable corruption of ancient rules and forms. The 
 two are thus classed together in the minds equally of friends and 
 foes ; Christian and Gothic, as relates to architecture, become 
 co-extensive terms ; the principles of Gothic architecture are 
 esteemed the only ones which can be rightly applied to ecclesi- 
 astical structures. Romanesque, as possessing an affinity, but a 
 remote one, an approach to those principles, but not their com- 
 plete development, is looked on not as a distinct style, but as an 
 
 s2
 
 2C)0 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 imperfect form of Gothic, containing the same elements, but in 
 a rude and undeveloped form. And the same elements in one 
 sense it does contain, the same great principles of reality, and 
 the farther influence which renders both pre-eminently Christian 
 styles. Hence their general outlines will be the same, as being 
 affected by the great laws of ecclesiastical arrangement, operating 
 both through their immediate requirements, and through that more 
 indirect influence which at once stamps every church conceived 
 in a truly ecclesiastical spirit as a member of the same great 
 family, amidst the countless diversities of merely artistic features. 
 
 But as mere styles of architecture the two are essentially dis- 
 tinct ; the Romanesque is the development of the round-arched 
 construction, and as such has totally different principles from 
 Gothic, the development of the pointed. While the whole soul 
 of Gothic architecture is the vertical line, and while the horizon- 
 tal stands in a like relation to that of Greece, the distinguishing 
 feature of Romanesque is that neither is allowed to obtain a marked 
 predominance. The other two imply extension, almost motion, in 
 their respective directions ; the Gothic minster seems absolutely 
 to rise from the ground, the Grecian temple seems to stretch 
 away to some distant point of the horizon. But in Romanesque 
 the great characters are rest and solidity, an enduring and im- 
 moveable firmness, which seems inconsistent with any very 
 strong carrying out of either of the other notions. The eye is 
 neither carried up an infinite series of vertical lines, nor yet does 
 it run along the long line of entablature; it rests on the support- 
 ing piers and supported arches, not growing out of their support 
 as in the arborescent Gothic, not laid on them as something dis- 
 tinct, like the long beam of the entablature ; neither idea comes 
 out forcibly ; the arch simply exists in its immoveable firmness, 
 resting on its support, without raising any inquiries as to how it 
 came there. All this is the natural character of the round arch ; 
 channel it with the continuous mouldings of the pointed, or place 
 it on the gracefully clustered shaft, and its own purity is gone, 
 without its acquiring the distinct and opposite purity of the 
 other forms. It desiderates its own square section, and its own 
 massive pier. 
 
 It is to this predominant idea of rest and solidity, so carefully 
 excluding whatever may disturb it, that the details of Roman-
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 261 
 
 esque may be traced. Every feature must be solid, and furnished 
 with its due support ; the parts must retain a strougly-marked 
 individuality, so that each may of itself be sufficient to arrest the 
 eye, and not be a mere link in a horizontal or vertical series. 
 The light and airy character of Gothic is therefore a total 
 stranger to its predecessor ; the former endeavours to render 
 the supporting masses as slight as is consistent with real and 
 apparent security, it connects every part with every other, and 
 fuses all into one harmonious whole. Romanesque on the other 
 hand delights in the appearance of strength afforded by the 
 massive pier and round arch, and the vast unbuttressed wall. 
 The use of buttresses seems a confession that the wall alone 
 would be insufficient ; their absence in a style where real inse- 
 curity cannot be imagined seems to arise from a consciousness 
 of inherent strength. All the parts retain their separate exist- 
 ence ; the pier of every form has a strongly marked impost or 
 capital ; the compound pier is not fused into one composition, like 
 the fully developed clustei-, but at most has independent shafts 
 attached as something extraneous ; and each of these has its own 
 well defined boundary in the square abacus. The square sec- 
 tion, it is clear, brings the arch, as a distinct feature, far more 
 forcibly upon the eye ; it at once shows more plainly its con- 
 struction, hinders the continuity of the Gothic architrave, and 
 retains a separate existence for each of its orders. And the 
 same principle will be found carried out in the triforium, the 
 clerestory, and all the other features of the building ; all remain 
 distinct, there is no attempt at subordination of parts to more 
 comprehensive parts or to the whole, or at making one fit into 
 another. Rest and immobility are the ideas impressed upon 
 every stone. 
 
 And that these are ideas whose material expression is no mean 
 work of intellect, and that the style in which they are realized 
 must be one of exceeding merit, will be clear to any one who 
 will attentively consider the subject, without reference to a fixed 
 standard either of Grecian or Gothic excellence. Such an inquirer 
 cannot fail to confess that Romanesque is not an imperfect Gothic, 
 but a distinct form of Christian architecture, with its own prin- 
 ciples, its own beauties, its own moral teaching; and so far from 
 being a corrupted Roman, it is the full development of a con-
 
 202 HISTORY Or ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 struction which Home did but disfigure and disguise ; a style to 
 which her most sumptuous edifices were but a step, an imperfect 
 and bungling transition. 
 
 We will now proceed to look briefly at the different forms of 
 Romanesque as more fully described above, and consider how far 
 each approaches to a complete carrying out of the general idea of 
 the style. All of these present a remarkable agreement in several 
 points, the shortening of the columnar pier, the introduction of 
 its rectangular substitute, the discarding of the entablature from 
 any prominent position ; to which most of them add the formation 
 of compound piers and arches, and the indefinite prolongation 
 of decorative shafts. And it is singular that the several national 
 forms are far more readily distinguished by their peculiarities of 
 outline and arrangement, than by any purely architectural fea- 
 tures. Their details would probably be found to be more closely 
 identical than those of contemporary Gothic styles in different 
 countries, while, widely different as are the outlines of an 
 English and a French cathedral, there is not the same utter dis- 
 similarity as exists in this respect between the different forms of 
 Romanesque. 
 
 Basilican architecture can maintain only a dubious claim to 
 the title of Romanesque ; it has indeed got rid of the actual 
 entablature, but ideas derived from it are perpetually thrusting 
 themselves forward. The ornaments are classical, the pillars re- 
 tain proportions designed for the entablature, but too lofty for 
 their position as the members of an arcade. It is still Roman 
 rather than Romanesque, it is still a transition, though in a very 
 advanced stage ; the chief inconsistencies of the earlier stages 
 have departed, but the style is still feeble and lifeless, and no 
 attempt has yet been made to provide an appropriate form 
 of ornament. 
 
 The splendid conceptions of Byzantine art, like the empire in 
 which they originated, stand by themselves, in utter distinction 
 from the grouping and outline prevalent in the rest of Christen- 
 dom. The one centres everything on the majestic crown of the 
 cupola, and thus renders the rest flat, square, and heavy; the 
 ^ estern church, amid all its various forms, everywhere preserves 
 the long, narrow, lofty, nave and aisles as its principal feature. 
 Hence Byzantine architecture, which otherwise is as truly Roman-
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 263 
 
 esque as any other, seems quite cut off from the other branches 
 of that family, and possesses a distinct character of its own. 
 The dome is excluded from most forms of Romanesque, and, I 
 am persuaded, from Gothic 1 also, not as inconsistent with the 
 style, but as inconsistent with the traditional notion of a church. 
 Such a centre, whose tendency is to make itself the one predo- 
 minant feature and throw the rest of the building into com- 
 plete subordination, would be inconsistent with the length and 
 prominence which the western architects delighted to give to 
 their sumptuous naves and choirs. The dome cannot be made, 
 like the central tower, merely the first feature among many ; it 
 is essentially the whole, the centre and keystone on which every- 
 thing else depends. 
 
 Hence we find the dome sinking by degrees into the square 
 central tower, whenever the long ground-plan, derived from the 
 basilica, was retained. The octagon of the Lombard and German 
 styles is a transition between the two, and it is remarkable how 
 gradually that more domical form loses its predominance ; the 
 square tower is common in Germany, in Normandy and England 
 universal. The latter provides a central point to which the other 
 portions are to a certain extent subordinate, but still retain their 
 existence and importance, and are not utterly swallowed up in 
 the overwhelming greatness of a single feature. 
 
 The Lombard is the first which can be called a genuine Ro- 
 manesque style ; all the great features of the building, internally 
 at least, begin to be designed according to Romanesque principles, 
 and yet even within there is something which shows that they 
 are not fully carried out. And without they are still more im- 
 perfect ; their flat, unvaried outlines have little or no grouping 
 or picturesque effect. Still, even as to the exterior, architecture 
 owes much to the Lombard architects; they at once grasped the 
 true manner of decorating plain surfaces, and they added that 
 germ of all that is grand and beautiful, the Campanile. Dis- 
 tinctively Lombard buildings, those where there is no deliberate 
 return to the Roman models, present a Romanesque pure but 
 
 1 A Gothic dome would of'courso thus he, like that of Florence, even 
 he octagonal, like those of the more easily introduced at the cross- 
 German Romanesque, and would ing.
 
 2G4 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 not perfect, a wonderful advance on preceding structures, but 
 still affording great scope for the genius of development to work 
 upon. 
 
 The Byzantine and Lombard styles may be considered as 
 parallel developments, the one working on the domical, the 
 other on the basilican form of churches. This shows how 
 much more the divisions rest upon outline than upon detail, not 
 that differences in the latter do not exist or are unimportant, 
 but that the others thrust themselves much more forcibly upon 
 the mind. 
 
 The German Romanesque seems to be the full carrying out of 
 the Lombard idea. Between this and the Norman must ever rest 
 the claim of the nearest approach to ideal perfection ; the Pro- 
 vencal, deeply interesting as it is on other grounds, can hardly for 
 a moment be put into competition with either. The origin of 
 the Norman style is uncertain ; such early specimens as Jumieges 
 approximate to the German, and might lead us to consider it an 
 offshoot of the latter ; but it seems more natural to suppose that 
 it was developed, like the Provencal, mainly from the antecedent 
 llomanesque of northern France, of which few or no specimens 
 now remain. Its boldness and vigour it owes to the inborn genius 
 of the conquering race who brought it to perfection, and dis- 
 dained the classical shackles which confined the Lombard and 
 the Provencal builders. Looking to the respective outlines of 
 the German and Norman buildings, the superiority of the former 
 in mere picturesque effect and variety of outline is at once 
 manifest ; Southwell and St. George Bocherville, even did the 
 former retain its roofs and spires, can hardly compete with the 
 wonderful grouping and shifting of Laach or the Apostles' Church. 
 Yet it may be doubted whether the Norman outline is not after 
 all, though less rich and varied, more satisfactory even to the eye. 
 The complete German type has two octagons and four towers, or 
 four towers only, all pretty much of the same height, and forming 
 two groups balancing each other ; there is no centre, no one 
 point of unity around which the other portions of the building 
 circle. In the Norman outline there is no such distracting equa- 
 lity ; the tower at the crossing forms at once a centre of unity, 
 while the western towers rising above the rest of the church, and 
 themselves subordinate to the central, produce by their combina-
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 265 
 
 tion with it, a pyramidal outline of the greatest beauty. The nu- 
 merous small towers of the German outline are replaced on the 
 one hand by the more commanding steeples flanking the west 
 front, on the other by the smaller turrets which mark the apse and 
 transepts. Taking in more purely ecclesiastical considerations, 
 the double choir, upon which the German outline depends, is 
 altogether at variance with our notions of church arrangement both 
 ritual and sesthetical. The idea of a church of any date or style 
 seems to imply a western portal and an eastern altar ; the double 
 choir and apse both destroys the majesty of a western entrance, and 
 leaves it uncertain which is the east and which is the west end. It 
 precludes the cross form and the legitimate chancel from that pro- 
 minence which they always possess even in case of the shortest 
 Norman choir. Within, that glorious feature, the triforium, as- 
 sumes in the Norman style the importance which it lacks in the 
 German, and there is more unity in the lateral elevations. The 
 pier receives greater variety and capability; while the column 
 and the rectangular pier are retained, the massive cylindrical 
 pillar is also introduced. The use of the shaft is more fully de- 
 veloped, and we less commonly find flat surfaces treated as 
 columns or pilasters. If the Norman must yield in any point, 
 it is in its frequent lack of vaulting ; and yet, after all, it may be 
 doubted whether the flat roof is not at least as much in harmony 
 with the solidity and individuality of the style. 
 
 In speaking of German outlines I of course refer to that which 
 is at once most distinctively German, and employed in the most 
 remarkable buildings of the style. Many, as we have seen, ap- 
 proach much nearer to the Norman outline, having the pre- 
 dominant central tower; but the question is, how far the latter 
 is preferable, and consequently how far the Norman architects 
 judged rightly in employing it to the exclusion of the other. 
 
 We may then consider the Norman style as the most perfect 
 and fully developed form of Romanesque, one, in idea, pre- 
 senting no transition to its more glorious successor. A pagan 
 block vivified by the breath of the Church, casting off its heathen 
 trammels, accepting her yoke, and answering all her require- 
 ments of size and splendour and solemnity, Romanesque is the 
 first-born of Christian art; the language of her earliest days of 
 triumph, the first glorious offering of that northern race which
 
 266 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 she won to her fold to be the boldest defenders of her cause, 
 alike with the pen of the divine and the battle-axe of the Cru- 
 sader. 
 
 At this point, having traced ecclesiastical architecture to its 
 first stage of perfection, the first point at which it became the 
 complete development of an idea artistic and moral, we may not 
 inaptly pause to consider the moral teaching of this its first and 
 magnificent creation, as compared with the lessons taught by it 
 in other days, and by means of a yet more glorious style. I have 
 all along endeavoured to show that Romanesque is as truly, and 
 in as strict a sense, a Christian architecture as Gothic itself; the 
 difference being that they are respectively the language of the 
 Church at distinct periods, and under distinct circumstances. 
 The one is the type of the domination of the mighty people 
 whose name it bears, the other the pure, the glorious, the pecu- 
 liar heritage of our own northern race. The one is the type of 
 the Church imperfectly recognized and developed, cramped in her 
 energies equally from within and from without, the language of 
 an age of martyrs and confessors, when the moral lesson re- 
 quired, and set forth in its massive walls and piers seemingly 
 beyond human power to overthrow, was a warning against des- 
 pondency in days of affliction, a living teaching of the everlast- 
 ingness of the Church on earth so long as the world itself 
 remains. The other is the language of the Church, when she 
 throws off her mourning, and going forth in triumph over her 
 persecutors, arrays herself with a victor's wreath of the fairest 
 foliage ; then was the lesson needed, and set forth in the tall 
 shaft, the soaring arch, the airy spire, not to be corrupted by 
 prosperity, not to rest in a worldly triumph, but to rise in all 
 things heavenward. Cold must be his heart or warped by pre- 
 judice indeed, who can walk under the soaring vaults of Canter- 
 bury or Westminster, and gaze on column, arch, and window, 
 alike pointing heavenward, without feeling under the influence 
 of a moral spell, " a petrified teaching," bidding him " in heart 
 and mind thither ascend ;" or who can gaze on the 
 
 Massive arches broad and round 
 "Which rise alternate, row on toav, 
 From ponderous columns short and low,"
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 267 
 
 and not see wrought into the very stone the promise of his 
 Lord that " the gates of hell shall not prevail against " His 
 Church. 
 
 Now, bearing in mind that architectural peculiarities may be 
 reasonably expected to survive the religious or political circum- 
 stances in which they had their first origin, let us see how far 
 the condition of Europe during the respective periods of Roman- 
 esque and Gothic architecture justifies the view given just above 
 of their symbolical teaching. 
 
 During the Romanesque period then, the influence of Rome 
 still remained paramount. Politically enslaved, her moral power, 
 her system of civilization, yet remained ; that is, whatever traces 
 of civilization yet existed were fragments of the old state of 
 things. The system of chivalrous and feudal Europe was not 
 yet developed ; the Northern tribes, politically conquerors, had 
 not arrived at an intellectual supremacy, but in arts, and laws, 
 and all that enlighten and humanize the mind, were content to 
 be the followers of those over whom they bore sway. We have 
 seen how studiously the idea of a Roman Empire was still kept 
 up, and not without a show of reality, under the Carlovingian 
 and Saxon Caesars ; and the Civil Law, the inheritance of all 
 Europe, shows how deeply the moral power of Rome was im- 
 pressed on her conquerors. Much of Europe was still pagan ; 
 during a long portion of this period the Church among many 
 Teutonic nations retained a missionary aspect ; and even in 
 Christian countries the Church had not arrived at her full in- 
 fluence ; finally, towards the end of the period the civil and 
 spiritual powers came into open collision, the dispute on investi- 
 tures roused Europe to its very centre, and the war-cry of the 
 Caesar was met with the thunder of the Pontiffs spiritual arms. 
 
 Rut the fully developed mediaeval spirit is that of the Church 
 triumphant over the world in its own strong-holds ; not so much 
 that of the hermit or ascetic forsaking it, as rendering it subser- 
 vient to its own purposes. It equally invests what is naturally 
 temporal with a sacred, and what is sacred with a temporal cha- 
 racter; it brings religion into ordinary and worldly matters ; it 
 uses for its every-day salutation a benediction which to modern 
 cars, might seem irreverent; it throws a sanctity over common 
 places, relations, offices, by making them the occasion of religi-
 
 208 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 ous ceremonies; and in return does not look on the consecrated 
 place as profaned by the performance of secular affairs, but 
 rather as investing them with sanctity. It is a spirit which with 
 the one hand poured the Church's unction on the brow of the 
 ruler, and decked his crown and sceptre with the lily and the 
 cross, and with the other girt the Bishop and the Abbot with 
 ensigns of earthly power, and placed the Fathers of the Church 
 foremost in the Great Council of the land. Hence, while Ro- 
 man architecture is the language of the Church in bondage, its 
 glorious successor speaks of days when the Church had leavened 
 the world, and, instead of missionaries labouring and dying 
 among Pagan Danes and Saxons, sent forth from those very 
 lands the warriors of the Cross to fight for the holiest spots of 
 their religion. It is the artistic embodying of the spirit of 
 northern lands and northern peoples, the soul of chivalry and 
 romance, the days of faith, and love, and valour. It tells us not 
 of the persecuted martyr and the lonely anchorite, but of the 
 lordly Prelate and the consecrated knight; of Tancred and 
 Richard grappling with the Saracen ; of Wykeham chief in rank 
 beside the throne of Edward ; of Bayard dying with his latest 
 glance fixed on his cross-handled sword. It lifts on its airy spires 
 the once despised Cross, now triumphant over every earthly 
 power; and marks the tomb of the great and noble, not with 
 the memorials of a fleeting world, with signs of hopeless grief, or 
 of extinguished existence, but with the symbols of faith and hope, 
 the cross budding into immortality, the hand still clasped in 
 prayer, the eye still fixed on the altar of God. 
 
 And completely to follow out this symbolism, this expression 
 of the spirit of the age in its material works, let us forestall for a 
 moment the melancholy time when the literature and art of our 
 Northern blood and Christian faith had to yield to the baneful 
 influence of a foreign and a heathen taste ; an infection which 
 was to fill our poetry with the pedantry of a mythology whose 
 beauty its imitators understood not ; which was to defile our 
 churches with heathen idols, or with angels imitating their ges- 
 tures, which for the cross, the lily, the holy legend, could only 
 substitute the ox-scull and garland of a pagan sacrifice. How 
 completely the mediaeval spirit of Christianizing the world had 
 fled during the last two centuries, every book, every building,
 
 GENERAL REVIEW OF ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 269 
 
 every public act, will too abundantly bear witness. Religion 
 had become something distinct from daily life, something con- 
 fined to its own stint and bound, with its own time and place, 
 whose limits it might not exceed, or trespass upon those of 
 others. Exalted piety indeed remained in many cases, but as 
 something private and esoteric, not put boldly forward as the 
 consecrator of every action. Our expressions, whether in ordi- 
 nary discourse or in graver writings, ceased to be those of 
 Christians, unless when formally treating of religious topics ; 
 moral abstractions or heathen idols usurped the place of God 
 and His Saints. Added to this was a spirit of unbounded con- 
 tempt for everything bearing the stamp of former days; the 
 remains of ancient heathendom became the sole standards of lite- 
 rature and art ; the glories of mediaeval poetry and architecture, 
 even the remembrance of the mighty deeds of old, the lofty 
 courage, the pious humility of Godfrey, the holy fervour of Ber- 
 nard, the spotless royalty of the sainted Louis, were all passed 
 over in an indiscriminating scoff at the ignorance and supersti- 
 tion of the dark ages. And is not this spirit legibly impressed 
 on the architecture of our churches of that period ? in their con- 
 tempt of ancient Christian precedent first in style, then in ar- 
 rangement and the imitation of heathen art alone; and above all, 
 in the monuments of the dead, where the urn, the poppy, the 
 inverted torch, the broken column, perchance the very idols of 
 the heathen world, instead of the clasped hand and face of holy 
 calmness ; the long and pompous epitaph substituted for the 
 humble prayer for mercy ; all tell of a time when the spirit of 
 the age was one that had cast the mind of former days to the 
 winds, and had enthroned the eagle of Jove in the place of the 
 Holy Dove. 
 
 And be it ever remembered that this style was literally raised 
 on the ruins of the former. The first building of this class 
 erected on a large scale in England was the palace of the des- 
 troyer of Glastonbury, itself reared out of the fragments of dese- 
 crated churches. AVell might a style which could tell of no 
 associations but those of the heathen or the infidel be inaugu- 
 rated amid the plunder of God's House, out of the very ruins of 
 His consecrated dwelling. 
 
 With such a style as this the Romanesque has no community
 
 2/0 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of feeling;, and hardly any of detail ; they agree only in a con- 
 struction which the one decorates, the other disguises. The re- 
 vived Italian is indeed thoroughly Pagan, and is historically the 
 deliberate expression of Pagan notions. In northern lands where 
 it is also anti-national, the line between it and the native Ro- 
 manesque is as broad as between either and Gothic. In countries 
 where Italian art was at least indigenous, the two converge more 
 closely to a common point. But the difference in spirit and 
 meaning, in every thing which can give life to art, remains 
 equally impassable. The men who reared the Basilicas of Borne, 
 or the Lombard churches of Pavia, throwing off some Pagan 
 fetter at every step, would have felt but little sympathy with 
 those who deliberately re-imposed the hateful bondage upon the 
 Mother Church of Christendom. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 I have, at the expense of strict chronological arrangement, 
 treated consecutively of all the Christian architecture of the 
 Romanesque style and period. But in the meanwhile another 
 form was growing up among the enemies of the Faith, which is 
 at least of kindred origin, and which, as I shall hope to show 
 hereafter, contained the lifeless seed, which, never destined to 
 arrive at perfection in its native soil, grew up under more genial 
 influence into the pillared forest of the Gothic minster. At all 
 events, even were it without so great a claim upon our attention, 
 the wide-spread architecture of the Mahometan nations cannot 
 be other than an important page in the history of the art. It is 
 curious as a Romanesque development, and perhaps even more 
 remarkable if we look upon it as merely an accidental fore- 
 shadowing of Gothic, than if we really attribute to it the in- 
 fluence in the formation of that style which I am fully persuaded 
 is its due. 
 
 But the architecture of the Saracens, valuable though it be in 
 this historical point of view, is of very little artistic value. Its
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 271 
 
 charm consists in the excessive richness and gorgeousness of its 
 buildings, and in the romantic associations with which we invest 
 the Moorish conquerors of Spain and the heroes of the Thou- 
 sand and One Nights, which make their structures seem rather 
 like fairy palaces than the creations of men like ourselves. But 
 considered as a real work of architecture, any second-rate produc- 
 tion of Grecian, Romanesque, or Gothic art, must rank far above 
 their most splendid monuments. Their splendour is mere barbaric 
 magnificence superadded to fantastic and inconsistent forms, 
 lifeless germs which existed for ages without developing into the 
 features which would seem to be their natural results. A style 
 of architecture which has possessed the pointed arch for twelve 
 hundred years, using it systematically as a favourite form, and 
 yet has not superadded one of the mouldings which can alone 
 render it even tolerable to the eye, cannot be assigned a high 
 place in a philosophical view of the art. 
 
 Saracenic architecture has been, perhaps, looked upon too ex- 
 clusively by Mr. Hope and others as a mere offshoot from that 
 of Byzantium. That much was borrowed, and the whole style 
 much influenced by the architecture of the Eastern empire, can- 
 not admit of a doubt ; but this influence, though much greater 
 in degree, seems only analogous to that which Eastern and 
 Western Christendom exercised upon each other's works. And 
 the degree of Byzantine influence seems to have differed in dif- 
 ferent, countries ; where Greek art had been prevalent it is natu- 
 rally more strongly felt than in distant countries. Perhaps it 
 would be more correct to say that where Byzantine edifices were 
 at once seized upon for the use of the new faith, they were re- 
 produced in subsequent erections ; where the case was otherwise 
 the style was more independent. But everywhere original genius 
 we cannot add taste was at work ; new forms were introduced, 
 rare ones brought into constant employment, and all received a 
 certain fantastic tinge from the character of the people. This is 
 at once manifest in the excess of mere ornament, and in the 
 strange forms given to arches and cupolas. Saracenic fancy, 
 moreover, contrary to all just principles of aesthetics, delighted 
 in astonishing the eye with a vast superstructure raised on a 
 support apparently quite inadequate to sustain it. The style is 
 rich, wonderful, calculated to enchant at first sight ; but it is
 
 272 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 one that will not bear critical investigation ; the chaste graceful- 
 ness of the Grecian, the soaring majesty of the Gothic, are ab- 
 sent, and arc ill supplied by the exuberance of a fancy, vivid and 
 fertile to the last degree, but uncontrolled by any law of taste or 
 consistency. 
 
 The features which most decisively stamp the character of any 
 style are undoubtedly its arcades or colonnades. And here we 
 must at once pronounce this form of architecture to be entirely 
 unsatisfactory ; the relation between the arch and its support is 
 worse maintained than in the most incongruous specimens of 
 Roman architecture. Stilted arches cannot be always avoided 
 when openings of different breadth are required to be of the same 
 height ; they occur under such circumstances in the best Gothic 
 buildings ; in the architecture of Byzantium they abound to a 
 fault. But the Saracens systematically surmounted the capital 
 with a mass of masonry, plain or decorated, commonly overlap- 
 ping the abacus, and only serving to crush the column, and cut 
 it off from all connection with the arch. When the arch, as is 
 often the case, again overlaps the stilt, the whole seems void of 
 any proper support, and liable to fall to the ground the next 
 moment. The frequent use of the horse-shoe arch is another 
 blot on the style ; all sesthetical principles require that the lines 
 of the arch should rise gently and gradually from the pier, and 
 that the space above the latter should gradually widen. By the 
 use of this form, the pier seems simply thrust in at an arbitrary 
 point of the circle ; the pier docs not support the arch, but the arch 
 seems crushing or falling off the pier, and the space above the 
 pier suddenly contracts in a manner which in a continued arcade 
 is unsightly and absolutely ridiculous. And these two faults, so 
 glaring, and so destructive to all beauty, occur in the earliest, 
 and continue in the latest, edifices of those countries where this 
 style of architecture assumed the most independent and original 
 forms. 
 
 The chief of these are Egypt and Spain ; in the latter, cut off 
 from the other Mahometan states, one might naturally have 
 looked for new developments of art amid the splendours of the 
 illustrious Caliphs of the West ; but in Egypt, an integral part 
 of the Eastern empire, the case is not so clear. The reason 
 seems to be found in a single circumstance. When Amru con-
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 273 
 
 quered Egypt, his first care was to provide a temple for the new 
 worship, "the first building," says Professor Orlebar, 1 "which 
 was erected in any country by the disciples of Mahomet for the 
 general duties of their faith." This word " erected " contains 
 the explanation : he did not, like Constantine at Rome, or 
 Mahomet at Constantinople, employ an existing building for his 
 new use, and so impress an existing type upon future structures, 
 but erected a new one from the ground in such a manner as 
 might be expected from a horde of invaders animated by the fa- 
 natical spirit of their new religion of lust and bloodshed, under 
 a chief whose name is mainly remembered as the destroyer of 
 the noblest library the world had hitherto beheld. 
 
 Hence any improvements on Byzantine art were not likely to 
 be found in the Arabian architecture of A.D. 643, especially if, 
 as Professor Orlcbar supposes, and as is by no means inconsistent 
 with the character of the armed apostles of Islam, they delibe- 
 rately laboured to avoid Christian forms and destroy Christian 
 erections. This seems quite natural in the first days of a new 
 religion, and that one propagated by the sword. Hence the 
 mosque of Amru cannot boast of the clustering cupolas which 
 crowned the temples erected by his later co-religionists in imita- 
 tion of Byzantine churches ; and a tradition was thereby formed ; 
 the cupola remained unknown to the mosques of Cairo for many 
 ages. The omission of this most distinctive characteristic of 
 Byzantine architecture alone gives a distinctive aspect to this 
 new Egyptian style ; one diametrically opposite to that of the 
 Pharaohs and Ptolemies; while that is heavy, massive, resting 
 every weight on a sustaining mass of even unnecessary solidity, 
 the new form deigns not to give its superincumbent masses the 
 least semblance of adequate support. 
 
 The mode in which not only Amru, but the Saracens in general 
 for some ages, found materials for their erections, w r as the same 
 as that employed by the early Christian architects, the destruc- 
 tion of elder edifices. 2 Whole cities were destroyed to construct 
 new ones out of their ruins in spots which better suited the con- 
 
 1 Journal of the Bombay Branch ' Sec Murphy's Mahometan Em- 
 
 of the Royal Asiatic .Society, for pire in Spain, p. 280. 
 January, 184;>, p. 1 1!J.
 
 274 HISTORY or ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 veniencc or caprice of the conquerors. The mosque of Amru, like 
 the Basilicas of Thcodosius, was constructed out of fragments of 
 previous structures ; columns of all sizes and orders were inter- 
 mingled, and to keep the brick arches the same height, stilts of 
 different sizes were erected, which are sometimes actually longer 
 than the columns ; when one column was not thought sufficient 
 to support the weight two are placed under a single stilt : the 
 pillars are mostly without bases, but in some instances ancient 
 bases are constrained to do duty as capitals. Nothing can be 
 worse than the effect of the stilts, which have an existence of 
 their own quite distinct both from the column and the arch, 
 overlapping the capitals, and being again overlapped by the horse- 
 shoe arch. It is enough to make one sigh for the grossest ab- 
 surdities of Roman arches and entablatures. The coupled pillars 
 in St. Constantia are elegance itself compared with the barbarous 
 arcades of the mosque of Amru. 
 
 The horse-shoe, however, is not the only arch employed in 
 this building ; pointed arches occur both in the mehrab (a niche 
 to which the worshippers are directed in their devotions) and in 
 some other portions. But, as far as I can understand from Pro- 
 fessor Orlebar's description, it is not found in the main arcades, 
 the very position where one would have looked for its earliest ap- 
 pearance ; as it would regulate unequal proportions as easily, and 
 with more elegance, than the bungling contrivances of the horse- 
 shoe and the stilts. 
 
 As the use of bells to summon a Christian congregation neces- 
 sitated the erection of the campanile, the Mahometan worship, 
 to which the worshippers are gathered by the sound of the 
 human voice, originated the tall slender minarets which form so 
 conspicuous a feature in the general prospect of an oriental city, 
 and which are so necessary an appendage to a temple of Islam, 
 that St. Sophia itself has been encumbered with these badges of 
 its desecration. These occur in the mosque of Amru, though not 
 of Amru's own erection, but added by Mouslima-bin-Mokhad 
 within the same year. They are here covered with conical caps, 
 which afterwards in many instances developed into small cupolas. 
 The form of the minaret is usually octagonal, 1 with circular 
 balconies for the muezzin or crier. 
 
 1 Orlebar, p. 129.
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 275 
 
 In 876, Ahmed-bin-Toulon erected a mosque in which he 
 purposely abstained from employing ancient materials, and, ac- 
 cording to Professor Orlebar, diligently endeavoured to give its 
 architecture a character totally different from that of Pagan or 
 Christian structures. Instead of employing columns, he raised 
 his arches of the pointed horse-shoe form on rectangular 
 piers of brick, with engaged shafts of very slight projection 
 at the angles. They arc without bases; "but they have ca- 
 pitals of foliage which is quite flat, being worked in plaistcr, 
 and hence lose the object of capitals for want of depth of sha- 
 dow." 
 
 These principles were of no long duration, and subsequent 
 architects reverted to the use of columns, employing both those 
 despoiled from other buildings, and new and very inelegant 
 forms of their own invention. These are chiefly octagonal, and 
 in some instances formed by merely chamfering the angles of a 
 square pier, so as to dispense with bases and capitals. The use 
 of the stilt was continued, and we see it in the mosque of Al 
 Mowaiyad, crushing equally the Corinthian columns plundered 
 from antique buildings, and the new pillars of octagonal form, with 
 things of a corresponding shape which, according to which way 
 they are turned, serve indifferently for bases and capitals. This 
 mosque was erected in 1415, so little had nearly eight centuries 
 done to improve Mahometan taste. One example however, the 
 mosque of Muiz, the fourth Fatimite Caliph, who first about A.D. 
 973 fixed his seat of empire at Cairo, ought to be cited as exhi- 
 biting rather better taste. The stilt is indeed employed, and over- 
 laps the capital of the column ; but it is not marked in any con- 
 spicuous manner, being continuous with the curve of the arch, 
 which is obtusely pointed, and not at all horse-shoed. The ar- 
 rangement is thus identical with, and not more unsightly than, 
 the stilted arches which are necessarily introduced in the apses of 
 many Gothic Cathedrals. 
 
 The arches in other examples are commonly more, or less 
 horse-shoed, but the pointed form, which in the earlier monu- 
 ments appears only sufficiently often to prove that it was recog- 
 nized as a legitimate shape, becomes from the time of Ahmed 
 equally predominant with the round; neither having, according 
 to Professor Orlebar's account, a decided preponderance. lf The 
 
 T 2
 
 276 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 pointed arch/' he adds, " is either equilateral or obtuse. I re- 
 member no instance of an acute arch." 
 
 The form of Amru's mosque, which was preserved in most of the 
 later ones in Cairo, being a mere quadriporticus round an open 
 space, did not, any more than a Christian cloister, admit of the 
 dome. They are usually covered with a flat roof ; but that of Sul- 
 tan Bakok, A.D. 138.2, has a series of small cupolas, each bay of 
 four arches supporting one on transverse arches. That of 
 Sultan Hassan, A.D. 1310, has, by some caprice, a form of its 
 own different from all others, being in the shape of a Greek 
 cross. Here however, by a further perversity, the natural crown 
 of the cupola is absent ; " the central square is open to the 
 sky, but the four arms are roofed by a simple pointed vault." 
 
 The cupola however, though excluded from the predominant 
 type of the mosque, is frequent enough in other structures ; and 
 crowns alike the tomb, the fountain, and the minaret. The 
 earlier specimens are plain and hemispherical; in later times 
 they assume divers fantastic forms, as the ogee and the horse- 
 shoe ; they appear however to be always semicircular at the 
 base, the splendours of the octagon of Florence are un- 
 known to the temples of the false prophet and the tombs of his 
 disciples. 
 
 The windows partake of the same character as the larger fea- 
 tures of the building; they have either round or pointed arches, 
 sometimes rising from shafts, and two are not un frequently 
 grouped under a single arch and divided by a shaft. A circle 
 sometimes occurs in the head, giving the first rude hint of tra- 
 cery. Sometimes three round-headed windows occur near to- 
 gether, with three circles placed pyramidally over them, which, 
 if brought into closer connection, would at once produce one of 
 the most familiar types of the early Geometrical window. 
 
 In the minor ornaments we cannot fail to remark the constant 
 tendency to anticipate isolated Gothic features ; such as panelling, 
 filled with quatrefoils, or with other figures either actually found 
 in that style, or not incompatible with it. But mouldings are 
 never found : the arch, even when pointed, retains the square 
 Iloman section ; so utterly lifeless is the style. Some of the 
 ornaments are more Romanesque than Gothic, and the ubi- 
 quitous chevron does not fail to make its appearance.
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 277 
 
 We must now trace the flood of Moslem conquest to a far dis- 
 tant and a very different realm, to the mountains and rivers of the 
 most western land over which the eagle of Rome and the crescent 
 of Mahomet had waved. We must now see the followers of the 
 false prophet parting among them the broad lands of romantic 
 Spain, and the Caliphs of Arabia seated on the thrones of the 
 Gothic kings. We must look upon the gorgeous temples and 
 palaces reared by the heathen as but in trust for the faithful who 
 should win back, step by step, the land of their fathers from the 
 iron grasp of the infidel, and once more rear the cross upon the 
 hallowed sites which the crescent of the Paynim had dishonoured. 
 When the Last of the Goths turned from the hard-fought strug- 
 gle which for a while cut off from Christendom the realm which 
 his vices had lost, and which his sword might not regain ; when, 
 as the legends of his nation tell, 
 
 " He climbed into a hill-top, the highest he could sec, 
 Whence all about of that wide rout one long last look took he, 
 He saw his royal banners '\vhcrc they lay drenched and torn, 
 He heard the cry of victory, the Arab's shout of scorn :"> 
 
 but he saw not in the dim future the glorious day of retribu- 
 tion ; the turban and scimitar of the infidel failing before the 
 Gothic spear; the proud gates of Cordova once more opening to 
 welcome the triumph of a Christian king, and his armed war- 
 riors chanting the hymn of victory within the gorgeous temple 
 where the notes of the false worship were hardly hushed ; 
 the dee]) notes of the vesper bell falling from Seville's proud 
 Giralda to bid the faithful to the wondrous church to which the 
 proudest monument of the heathen is " chained in captivity;" 2 
 and farther still, the last day of the battle of seven hundred 
 years rising in triumph over the ransomed palaces of Granada, 
 the last prince of the heathen marching forth to exile, and not a 
 foot of Spanish earth defiled by the bondage of the infidel. 
 
 Such are the associations which at once crowd upon the mind in 
 contemplating even in representation the gorgeous works of the 
 Spanish Arabs, the wonderful mosque of Cordova and the fairy 
 
 1 Lockhart's Spanish Ballads: - Ecclesiologist, Vol. V. 197. 
 
 the Lamentation of Don Roderick.
 
 278 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 palaces of the Alhambra. And besides the romantic visions of 
 song and legend which they call upland the more real gratitude 
 which such trophies of hard-won conquest should raise in every 
 Christian bosom, they are by no means void of intrinsic claims 
 on our attention. Vast, wonderful, unique both in the nature and 
 the extent of their decorations, reckoning among them the most 
 magnificent, as far as mere enrichment is concerned, of all hu- 
 man erections, they at once attract and enchant the eye ; but the 
 critical ordeal at once pronounces them no less faulty than the 
 rude structure of Amru. Lavish splendour, tinsel decoration, 
 walls where not an inch is left unadorned with sumptuous carv- 
 ing, remind us of the subject genii that reared the palace of 
 Aladdin; but the true soul of art, the inspiration which can make 
 the plainest pile of Greece or England replete with the truest 
 beauty, never found themselves a home among the followers of 
 the impostor of Arabia. 
 
 Three periods are said by M. Laborde, as quoted in Murphy's 
 History of the Mahometan Empire in Spain, to be discernible 
 in the Arabian architecture of that country ; the first from the 
 invasion to the ninth century, while Roman and Byzantine 
 models were still imitated ; the second from the ninth to the 
 thirteenth, which is considered to be the purest Spanish develop- 
 ment of Arabian art ; the third from the thirteenth century to 
 the expulsion of the Saracens from Spain, during which foreign 
 ideas were again infused. 
 
 The great monument of the first period, though some por- 
 tions of it seem to be with more propriety referred to the 
 second, is the great Mosque for the last six centuries happily 
 the Cathedral Church of Cordova. The general aspect of this 
 wonderful pile is well known ; the countless rows of columns 
 crossing each other in all directions are striking in the highest 
 degree ; but it would seem that pure wonder is the only feeling 
 that can be excited by them. The columns placed on one another 
 in so unsightly a manner, and the interlacing of the fantastically 
 formed arches, can never approve themselves to a correct taste, 
 much as they serve to keep up the marvellous and unique cha- 
 racter of the building. The piers are partly antique columns, 
 partly imitations, without bases; they support arches, partly of 
 the round horse-shoe form, partly of the strange multifoil shape
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 279 
 
 which is a peculiarity of the Arabian architecture of Spain. 
 This arcade stands quite free, not supporting any wall; but 
 another similar range of arches rests on columns and pilasters 
 supported by the capitals of the lower range. The effect of the 
 two alone is sufficiently extraordinary, but in some parts it is 
 enhanced by an intermediate range, uniting the apices of the 
 lower range, and cut through by the pillars of the upper, and as 
 both the lower ranges are multifoil, the interlacings are alto- 
 gether interminable. The exterior has no pretensions whatever, 
 with no outline, and very slight elevation ; there are merely 
 four walls, broken by doors and windows of the horse-shoe form. 
 The mosque was commenced by Abderrama, the first Ommiad 
 Caliph of Spain, in 786, and completed by his son Hesham ; 
 but great additions were made by the Caliph Almanzor in 988, 
 to which may probably be attributed the diversity of style per- 
 ceptible in the building, as we can hardly fail to assign an earlier 
 date to the plain horse-shoe arches than to the multifoil speci- 
 mens. The latter are farther adorned with rich surface-mould- 
 ings and voussoirs of different colours. 
 
 The name of the palace of the Alhambra is almost synony- 
 mous with magnificence, and if mere decoration were all that is 
 required, no edifice in the world could for a moment compare 
 with its stately halls ; every inch of wall being covered with ara- 
 besque and fret-work, and the ceilings dripping with gorgeous 
 ornaments. But is the eye satisfied with those slender columns 
 as supports to arches so far overlapping their capitals ? No 
 amount of mere enrichment can atone for the violation of the great 
 law which requires every weight to have, in appearance as well 
 as reality, an adequate sustaining mass. Nowhere is this rule 
 less regarded than in the palace of the Moorish Kings of Gra- 
 nada. A slender column supports a capital of far too great 
 projection, this again supports an overlapping stilt or fragment 
 of entablature, and as if this were not enough to destroy all no- 
 tions of mechanical support, the arch itself in many cases docs 
 not spring immediately even from this entablature, but from 
 corbels overlapping again ; it is thus cut off from all decorative 
 connection with the column below, and appears suspended in the 
 air without any sustaining power at all. Nor is the effect at all 
 improved when, as is sometimes the case, this stilt or cntabla-
 
 280 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 turc is supported by coupled columns ; as their separation, by 
 dividing the apparent support, even adds to the idea of inse- 
 curity. In the Alcazar at Seville the entablature is still more 
 strongly marked, and of course with a further deterioration of 
 appearance. The architects of the Alhambra had however the 
 discretion to discard the horse-shoe arch from the continued 
 arcades ; it is principally confined to single arches, where its 
 effect is somewhat less unsightly. The pointed arch occurs, but 
 not frequently, the form usually employed being the common 
 round arch, either plain or enriched with those foliations hang- 
 ing free like lace-work, which add so much of gorgeousness to 
 this style. Sometimes the arch is not merely foliated, but itself 
 assumes a multifoil shape. The arches are usually set in rec- 
 tangular panels, like those which we are familiar with in our own 
 Perpendicular structures, the divisions being marked by a vertical 
 prolongation of the stilts forming a kind of pilaster. The spandrils 
 are filled with those fantastic devices which, from the nation which 
 first employed them, are known as arabesques, though that name 
 has been incorrectly extended so as to take in many forms of 
 ornament having the same general effect, but by no means 
 identical, including even representations of animated life, which 
 are prohibited by their religion to the followers of Mahomet. 
 These decorations, so lavishly spread over the magnificent struc- 
 tures of Arabian art, give them an air of sumptuous splendour, 
 which, with any but the most critical eye, must go very far to 
 counterbalance their flagrant violations of every principle of 
 decorative construction. 
 
 But the Arabian structure which perhaps after all is the most 
 interesting to a Christian reader, is the gigantic tower of the 
 Giralda at Seville, now serving as the campanile of the vast 
 cathedral church which later ages have reared close to this proud 
 monument of the vanquished heathen. The date of this erec- 
 tion is supposed to be about 1195, 1 and one can hardly help sus- 
 pecting some Italian influence to have been at work, so great is 
 the analogy which its vast, unbroken, unbuttressed height bears 
 to the campaniles of that country, and especially to the grand 
 contemporary structure at Venice. There is great lavishness 
 
 1 llamee, ii. 440.
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 281 
 
 of decoration, but very little real architectural design ; the 
 windows being small, and not treated with any skill of compo- 
 sition. There is much elaborate tracery, a good deal like Flam- 
 boyant work, arranged in long rectangular panels, and there is 
 much fretting of arches ; but there are no bold and striking 
 features, like our Gothic belfry-windows, or even the arcades of 
 an Italian campanile. Above all, one is indignant that Christian 
 architects could ever have disfigured so precious a monument of 
 the triumph of their race and faith by a paltry Pagan addition 
 in the shape of an Italian cupola, which has not even the excuse 
 of being in harmony with the original structure. This dates 
 from the year 1568. 
 
 We must now retrace our steps to the far regions of the East, 
 and observe what forms architecture took among the nations not 
 of Arabian origin, who embraced the faith of Mahomet. It is 
 in these Eastern structures that we must look for the greatest pre- 
 ponderance of Byzantine influence ; Mr. Hope has pointed out 
 the intimate connection and interchange of artistic influence 
 which, notwithstanding their constant wars, existed between the 
 Caesars of Constantinople and the Sassanide Kings of Persia. 
 This has continued ever since the Mahometan invasion in the 
 countries formerly subject to those powers ; and Byzantine forms 
 have been thence carried through the vast realms of India under 
 its Mogul victors. There are few countries where the votaries of 
 Islam maintained a more uninterrupted reign, or where its princes 
 were surrounded by greater magnificence than in Ilindostan. 
 Even the Caliphs of Bagdad and Cordova might yield to the Mogul 
 Princes of Delhi in the splendid pageantries of an Oriental court. 
 From these rulers we might naturally look for architectural works 
 of the greatest splendour and gorgcousness ; and such an expecta- 
 tion will not be disappointed. The vast realms which have been 
 transferred from the line of Tamerlane to the merchants of 
 England yield to no country in the number and costliness of 
 their palaces and temples. The splendid style introduced by the 
 Mahometan conquerors has preserved itself to our own day 1 by 
 the side of the totally different architecture of the original in- 
 habitants, and occasional interchanges of ideas appear to have 
 taken place between them. 
 
 1 See above, pp. o2, >')'6.
 
 282 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Arabian architecture, as it appears in Hindostan, presents 
 several points of superiority over the forms which prevailed in 
 Spain and Egypt. Though very far from approaching to the 
 standard of a pure taste, it is not quite so fantastic in its charac- 
 ter, and takes less delight in violating the ordinary laws of con- 
 struction. The common pointed form is prevalent in all large 
 arches, instead of the unsightly horse-shoe ; and above all, the 
 frequent and varied use of the cupola adds greatly to the beauty 
 of their outlines. Consequently they approximate more nearly 
 to the buildings which we are ourselves familiar with, though 
 the Gothic arch and the Roman cupola do not to our eyes appear 
 consistent or harmonious features. The appearance of many of 
 the mosques, mausolea, and other monuments of the magnificent 
 Emperors of Delhi, is, to say the least, excessively striking. The 
 cupolas sometimes a single one of gigantic dimensions, some- 
 times a cluster of smaller ones forming the crown of the whole 
 structure, the tall slender minarets, the arcades and gateways, 
 combine to produce a picture which, if fantastic and law- 
 less, must be allowed to be gorgeous and truly royal. To the 
 splendour of outline must be added that of material. "The 
 domes were supported by elegant columns, their concaves richly 
 ornamented, and the tesselated marble pavement, beautifully ar- 
 ranged, vied with those of ancient Rome in the Museum of 
 Portici ; the tracery in the windows resembles the Gothic speci- 
 mens in European cathedrals." 1 "The finest marbles that could 
 be procured were the most common materials in these superb 
 buildings ; for the ornamental parts, consisting of the most 
 elegant borders in a sort of arabesque pattern with festoons of 
 fruit and flowers in their natural colours, were composed entirely 
 of agates, cornelians, turquoises, lapis-lazuli, and other valuable 
 gems." 2 
 
 1 Forbes, India, iii. 101. One actual tracery, it would be a striking 
 
 could -wish for some more definite corroboration of the view that Ara- 
 
 description of this tracery, to which bian architecture contained the ele- 
 
 the author refers in another place, ments of Gothic, though they for 
 
 saying that it is " extremely neat the most part remained latent. In 
 
 and filled with stained glass from Egypt we have seen an approach, 
 
 Europe after the manner of our though a rude and distant one, to 
 
 cathedrals." If the Mahometan the use of tracery, 
 builders in India really developed " Forbes, India, iii. 103.
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 283 
 
 The cupola is undoubtedly the main external feature of this 
 architecture ; it not only roofs in the main structure, but forni3 
 a capping for the tall minaret, and is even used to fringe the 
 outline of enriched structures in a manner analogous to our own 
 use of pinnacles. They appear to be sometimes hemispherical, 
 sometimes even quite low, as in the early structures of Byzan- 
 tium, but are more frequently horse-shoe, or bulbous and termi- 
 nating in an ogee. This is remarkable from the rare occur- 
 rence of the analogous form of arch. Long ai-cades running 
 round buildings are frequent, the arches springing from square 
 piers which send up pilasters to the cornice. Foil arches are 
 also common, and the ogee is found even on a large scale, as in 
 the Grand Mosque of Ahmedabad. The round arch does not 
 seem very usual ; it occurs in a stone bridge near Brodera, on 
 which the author quoted above observes, 1 " I do not mention this 
 construction as very curious or elegant in its architecture, but 
 as the only bridge I ever saw in India." It is however a grand 
 structure, consisting of two large tiers of arches, and a smaller 
 one over them, and strikingly calls to mind the famous Pont du 
 Gard in Langucdoc, though it is certainly very inferior to that 
 noble aqueduct. The hanging foliations are also found in an 
 even more delicate and elaborate form than in Spanish architec- 
 ture, and there is the same tendency to enclose the arch in a 
 square panel. I cannot but consider the interior of the Mosque 
 at Juanpore, which forms the frontispiece of the " Oriental 
 Annual " for 1835, though infinitely less gorgeous, as a really 
 finer display of Arabian architecture than anything in the Al- 
 hambra. Everything is solid and satisfactory to the eye; there 
 are no stilts, no insufficient supports, no horse-shoe arches ; and 
 the cupola, though comparatively unornamentcd, is a sublime 
 finish which may well atone for the loss of the dripping ceilings 
 of the western building. 
 
 The character of the climate, which renders breeze and shade 
 inestimably precious, naturally led to the use of open and shady 
 verandahs, as in the gateway at Chunar Giir, where we sec a 
 profusion of projecting canopies supported on pillars, which re- 
 mind one of the bracket-capitals of native Hindostan, from 
 
 1 Forbes, India, ii. 272.
 
 281 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 which they may possibly have been borrowed. Something very 
 like an oriel window is also not of unfrequent occurrence. The 
 parapets arc often finished with a sort of battlement assuming 
 the form of a pointed arch, and with scarcely any embrasure. 
 
 The minarets are, as in every Mahometan style, very important 
 features, and from them seems to have been derived a general 
 taste for tall and slender turrets in other positions, as they are 
 frequently placed at the angles of buildings. The minarets arc 
 generally polygonal, with numerous projecting cornices, and are 
 crowned with cupolas supported on small open peristyles ; some- 
 times a very projecting canopy gives this part of the building 
 very much the air of a broad-brimmed hat. The grand mosque 
 of Ahmedabad has two of these turrets, of gigantic height and 
 the most fantastic form, the vast numbers of projecting galleries 
 giving them the appearance of a huge shaft encircled by many 
 bands. 
 
 The gateways are among the finest monuments of Mahome- 
 tan art in India. They often form large erections like the gate- 
 houses of our abbeys or castles, the actual aperture forming but 
 a small part of the structure; turrets of the form just mentioned 
 often occupy the angles. In the Agra gate at Chauter Serai, which 
 is figured and described in the Oriental Annual, the actual gate- 
 way is much of the same proportion as in our own, and the arch 
 appears to be four- centred. In most cases, however, the aper- 
 ture appears to be much taller : I do not refer to the gorgeous 
 gateway at Chunar Gur, where the grand arch is no more the real 
 gateway than one of the arches in the west front of Peter- 
 borough is the doorway of the church ; but to such, structures 
 as the Kutwhuttea gate at Rhotas Gur, and the Kutwallee 
 gate at Gour. The former, which is described as situated 
 among some of the subliinest scenery in Ilindostan, appears 
 quite in character with such a position. Mr. Daniell's sketch 
 represents a series of gigantic bastions, square and circular, 
 with loop-holes, and with the very effective battlement of this 
 style, rising one behind the other. Among these stands the 
 gateway itself, a plain pointed arch of vast height with a simi- 
 lar one, blank and of still greater height, projecting in front, the 
 real gateway being thus recessed from the surface of the wall. 
 Even in the engraving there is an awfulness about this frowning
 
 OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE. 285 
 
 gate and the massive fortifications which surround it, which no 
 European castle can surpass. It seems well described as " every- 
 where protected by a lofty wall of immense thickness, except 
 where the precipice presents a natural barrier to an invading 
 army. Wherever the mountain upon which the fort stands ori- 
 ginally appeared in the slightest degree accessible, the wall towers 
 above it with an union of massiveness and strength that seems 
 to bid defiance to every human assault/'' 
 
 The other gateway was originally a principal entrance to the 
 ruined city of Gour, once capital of Bengal. It is indeed a 
 grand fragment, the arch alone rising to a height of more than 
 fifty feet. There is a good deal of sculptured ornament on the 
 walls, and a gigantic semicircular projection on each side one 
 hardly knows whether to call them turrets or columns gives 
 much character to the composition. They run up the whole 
 height of the structure, battering towards the top ; being tall 
 and slender, and compassed with several ranges of bands, they 
 have very much the air of engaged minarets. I must confess 
 that these two gateways seem to me utterly to throw into the 
 shade, as far as majesty of conception is concerned, any of our 
 own structures of a like nature ; the vast height giving them 
 such an increase of grandeur above those of our finest castles. 
 
 There can be little doubt but that this architecture was im- 
 mediately introduced into Ilindostan from Persia, from the bor- 
 ders of which country the Mahometan princes first penetrated into 
 India. Unfortunately I have not had access to such definite 
 accounts of Persian buildings since the Arabian conquest, as of 
 the works of the misbelievers in other hinds. However it is 
 clear that Persian buildings retain the same general character 
 which is impressed upon all Mussulman structures. " The 
 oldest mosque," says Mr. Hope, 1 " mentioned by Chardin, at 
 Ispahan, supposed to have arisen in the second, or at most, in 
 the third century of the Ilegira, possessed a central cupola of 
 more than a hundred feet in diameter, and other smaller sur- 
 rounding cupolas, all, like that of St. Sophia and the other early 
 churches at Constantinople, low and spreading. Whoever con- 
 siders at Ispahan its later public ediiices, can as little mistake, in 
 
 ' I'ago 14.3.
 
 286 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 their more pointed arcades and more elongated cupolas, the later 
 forms of which Constantinople set the fashion to Venice and 
 other places that owed her vassalage." 
 
 The Turks, the least polished of the great Mahometan nations, 
 seem to have adhered more closely than any other to Byzantine 
 models, as was indeed natural when they were possessed of the 
 very countries in which it had flourished. To this day, as St. 
 Sophia in its desecrated condition is itself one of their most 
 honoured mosques, it still remains the great model for all others. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 OF THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE IN 
 WESTERN CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 It will be my endeavour in another part of this work to trace 
 the indirect influence which the Mahometan architecture exer- 
 cised in the formation of the Gothic style. At present we may 
 not unprofitably consider a class of buildings erected under 
 Christian sovereigns, but whose character is derived from a more 
 direct imitation of Arabian models. In these the Saracens have 
 not merely communicated ideas to be wrought up into a new style, 
 the style is itself thoroughly Arabian ; they are the work of 
 Arabian architects, or copies of their works ; in style they are 
 mosques, in arrangement and dedication only are they churches. 
 
 These are the Pointed buildings of Sicily, undoubtedly the 
 earliest Latin edifices in which we find a systematic use of the 
 pointed arch. In Sicily it is used, perhaps not quite universally, 
 but certainly as a general feature, while in Northern Europe it 
 was just beginning to creep stealthily in. But this Sicilian style is 
 not therefore Gothic, nor even a transition to Gothic : it does not 
 combine with its pointed arches a single distinctively Gothic 
 feature, and is far more classical than much earlier buildings 
 in France, Germany, and England. It is hardly Romanesque : 
 it is lloman with pointed arches. 
 
 Of all countries in the world Sicily has had the greatest nura-
 
 INFLUENCE OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE WEST. 287 
 
 ber of nations commingled among her inhabitants. Not to 
 mention Cyclopes and Lsestrygonians, about whom modern 
 readers might be sceptical, we have Sicels, Sicanians, Tro- 
 jans, or persons claiming that name, Phoenicians, Greeks of 
 all kinds, Romans, Byzantines, Saracens, Normans, French, 
 and Spaniards. Nowhere might we more reasonably look for 
 a mixed architecture, and our expectations will not be disap- 
 pointed. 
 
 But while the two last nations on this list did not appear in the 
 island till a period too late for our purpose, some of the others 
 are too early. This mixed Sicilian style, and mixed enough it is, 
 does not present any marked Trojan or Phoenician elements, and 
 the influence of Greece and Rome is common to Sicily with the 
 rest of Christendom ; the three great elements to which we are to 
 look in the composition of this style arc the Byzantine, the 
 Arabian, and the Norman. The island had formed a portion of 
 the Eastern empire till its conquest by the Saracens in the ninth 
 century. Prom that time it remained under the yoke of the in- 
 fidels, till in 1072 Palermo yielded to the conquering arms of the 
 Normans of Apulia, and the illustrious Roger, the first Count of 
 Sicily, made his entry into the capital together with his brother 
 and superior lord, Duke Robert, "and sending for Nicodcmus, 
 the Greek Archbishop, who, during the sway of the Saracens, 
 had been restricted to a miserable chapel, they reinstated him in 
 his own Cathedral, which had been turned into a mosque." 1 No 
 worthier object can be conceived as the first care of a Christian 
 conqueror. In 1 1 30 his son Roger the Second assumed the 
 royal title. 
 
 Under the reigns of these princes, who seem to have been in 
 every way models of brave and politic rulers, the country was 
 enriched with the beautiful clmrcbcs, for beautiful they must be 
 allowed to be. to which allusion lias already been made, and 
 which Air. Knight's magnificent volume of plates sets so vividly 
 before us. 
 
 The population of the island was a mixture of Greeks and 
 Saracens; but as the architecture of the latter was in all cases 
 to so great an extent an offshoot from Byzantium, one can 
 
 1 Knight's Normans in Sicily, p. 2.
 
 288 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 hardly distinguish the two as distinct elements in Sicilian archi- 
 tecture. Almost the only distinctively Byzantine monument re- 
 maining in Sicily appears to be the little chapel of Malvagna, 
 engraved by Mr. Knight. " It is a square building, roofed with 
 a stone cupola, and, on three of its sides, has a semicircular 
 apse. In this building all the arches are circular, and its four 
 little windows are round-headed." 1 The Arabian remains, though 
 not very extensive, are more numerous, and exhibit that style 
 of architecture to greater advantage than it appears in most 
 other countries. Of those figured by Mr. Knight, the baths at 
 Cefala seem the best example ; still the pointed arches rest upon 
 classical columns certainly too slender for them, but exhibiting 
 no approach to that monstrous and apparently intentional dis- 
 proportion which is so conspicuous among the Arabian edifices 
 of Spain. The roof of the building is a good pointed barrel- 
 vault, and all the arches which appear in the drawing are 
 also pointed. The Ai'abian palaces of La Cuba and La Ziza, 
 near Palermo, have for the most part the pointed arch, though 
 the latter in its gi'eat hall exhibits coupled Corinthian columns 
 supporting an Arabian entablature, from which springs a 
 round segmental arch. The same structure has parts of its 
 roof adorned with the magnificent dripping ornament which we 
 have already seen in the Alhambra. 
 
 Now, if we turn from these to the undoubted Christian re- 
 mains of the Norman period, we shall find a large class of them 
 differing in no important respect whatever. For an important local 
 difference may be traced among these Sicilian buildings ; in the 
 neighbourhood of Messina, the first point captured, the conque- 
 rors employed a form of Romanesque ; in that of Palermo, they 
 built from the first in the style of the conquered Saracens. The 
 Cathedral of Messina is Romanesque, with round 2 arches, and 
 some distinctively Norman details, though much modified by 
 southern notions. It has no central tower, and the arches rest 
 upon granite columns taken from earlier buildings, but with 
 
 1 Page 178. might be considered as derived 
 
 2 Mr. Knight mentions a " slight from the Saracens, but, as far as we 
 inclination to the horse-shoe in the can see, those of Sicily preferredthe 
 form of those of the nave." This pointed arch.
 
 INFLUENCE OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE WEST. 289 
 
 capitals of the time in imitation of classical models. This 
 church was commenced in 1093. 
 
 But at Palermo the principal buildings erected during the 
 early days of Norman rule are of a decidedly Saracenic charac- 
 ter, and utterly unlike the contemporary ones of Normandy, or 
 indeed of any other part of Christendom. The pointed arch 
 prevails throughout, but it is a pointed arch without any Gothic 
 mouldings, and accompanied by no other Gothic or even Transi- 
 tional detail. These churches are probably the first Christian 
 structures which exhibit the systematic use of the pointed arch ; 
 but they are not therefore themselves Gothic, and it may be 
 doubted , whether they could alone, any more than the pointed 
 buildings of Italy, have been developed into a pure and consist- 
 ent Gothic style. Some of these buildings follow the Greek 
 distribution, having been, in several cases at least, erected for 
 the use of the Greek religion, but the Latin plan is usually 
 employed. 
 
 The church of St. John degli Eremiti at Palermo, is the most 
 oriental of the latter class, having a congeries of cupolas alto- 
 gether in the eastern taste. Western notions made a tower an 
 essential part of the fabric, but, by an eastern development, its 
 summit is crowned by a cupola. This church, and the monas- 
 tery attached to it, were founded by King lloger, before 1132; 
 but, in the words of Mr. Knight, 1 " it has so oriental an appear- 
 ance, that, if its history were not so accurately known, it might 
 have been mistaken for one of the moscpies of the Saracens con- 
 verted to Christian uses/' 
 
 But this architecture is to be studied in its perfection in the 
 superb Cathedrals of Ccfalu, Palermo, and Monrealc, and in 
 the gem of the style, the magnificent Chapel of the Palace 
 at Palermo, whose superb paintings and mosaics render it one 
 of the most interesting studies of church-decoration in all 
 Christendom. All these are on the Latin plan, though in the 
 last mentioned the intersection is marked by a cupola. Like 
 the earliest temples both of Christian and Mahometan worship, 
 they have drawn largely upon the spoils of earlier buildings; the 
 arches rest upon antique columns of different forms and mate- 
 rials, some plain, others fluted. They are usually fitted with 
 
 1 Page 2.37. 
 u
 
 290 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Corinthianizing capitals of the time, but having quite the general 
 effect of the antique ; at Monreale the capitals more nearly re- 
 semble those of northern buildings, admitting representations 
 of animal life, and historical, chiefly Scriptural, scenes. The 
 arches are pointed, of one or two orders, but altogether without 
 mouldings ; they slightly overlap the abaci of the columns, but 
 have nothing of the unpleasant bracketing of Spanish buildings. 
 They are often very much stilted ; but the stilt does not appear 
 as an architectural member. The choir at Cefalu has pointed 
 vaulting from shafts, the nave a poor low-pitched timber roof. In 
 the Palace Chapel the ceiling of the nave is also of wood, but 
 quite flat, and thoroughly Arabian. Its dripping ornaments recal 
 those of the Alhambra, or, to speak with more chronological exact- 
 ness, anticipate its future splendours ; it has also Arabic inscrip- 
 tions in honour of the founder, King Roger, by whom it was com- 
 pleted in or before 1132. The Cathedral of Cefalu was the 
 work of the same munificent prince, and was commenced in the 
 same year in which the Chapel at Palermo was completed. The 
 Cathedral of Palermo was built by Archbishop Walter in 1170, 
 and that of Monreale by King William the Good in 1174. 
 The dates are worth recording, on account of their utter diver- 
 sity from the contemporary Norman structures of the north. 
 Turning to the exterior, we find there also equal traces of Ara- 
 bian influence. At Cefalu the west front has two plain towers, 
 exhibiting both round and pointed arches ; these project beyond 
 the west wall of the nave, and the space between them has been 
 filled up by a portico, to which Mr. Knight assigns a date so 
 late as the fourteenth century. It retains much of Arabian 
 character, as its three arches, the central one round, the others 
 pointed, rest upon columns exhibiting the stilt as a distinct 
 member above the capital. Palermo Cathedral has two thin 
 turrets, almost minarets ; but its most remarkable feature is the 
 magnificent open porch on the south side, which might be 
 almost deemed a foreshadowing of our own matchless front at 
 Peterborough. It has a vast triplet of stilted arches on slender 
 columns, and is gorgeously adorned with arcades and arabesques. 
 If the Norman kings did not scruple to employ forms bor- 
 rowed from the infidels, even in their religious structures, it was 
 only natural that the same style should be employed in secular
 
 INFLUENCE OF ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE WEST. 291 
 
 buildings. In these the Arabian taste might come out, if pos- 
 sible, yet more free and unimpeded than in their churches. This 
 is most conspicuously shown in the view of a room in the Palace 
 at Palermo, given by Mr. Knight. It breathes the most tho- 
 roughly Arabian spirit, and calls up the same dreamy and 
 romantic notions of Eastern splendour as the habitations of the 
 Spanish Caliphs. One really feels that a stern-visaged, iron-clad 
 Norman was out of place in such a light, sunny, lofty abode ; as 
 opposed as any thing can well be to the stem and gloomy dwell- 
 ings of our northern rulers. 
 
 It must not however be supposed that the predominance of 
 Arabian ideas in these Sicilian buildings altogether excludes 
 the presence of Christian Romanesque, or even distinctively 
 Norman forms. We have seen the Romanesque capitals at Mon- 
 rcale, and others occur in the otherwise Arabian cloisters at 
 Cefalu. The grotesque heads and corbel-tables of our Norman 
 often occur, and decorative arcades, usually adapted to the 
 pointed form of the constructive ones, are liberally employed on 
 the exteriors. The doorways too, even in such a thoroughly 
 Arabian building as Cefalu Cathedral, are round-headed, and 
 certainly to be called Romanesque, though, to judge from Mr. 
 Knight's specimens, not distinctively Norman. They are rather, 
 as he says, a mixture of Greek and Norman; they differ much 
 from our own Norman doorways, manifesting a much nearer 
 approach to the classical type, and a great tendency to treat fiat 
 surfaces as pillars. 
 
 That these buildings are Arabian in style, that is, that the 
 Norman kings copied a previously existing Arabian architecture, 
 can hardly admit of a doubt. When we find the Sicilian Arabs 
 using the pointed arch, and their Norman successors also using it 
 without any other approximation to Gothic, one cannot resist the 
 natural inference as to the source from whence it was borrowed by 
 the latter. The only difficulty is as to the exact amount and nature 
 of the influence which Byzantine forms may have exercised upon 
 the style; namely, whether the Normans borrowed from two dis- 
 tinct contemporary sources, Greek and Arabian. The question is 
 however purely an antiquarian one, as in any case a Greek 
 element exists ; whether directly or indirectly borrowed is of 
 comparatively little consequence. These buildings indeed ex- 
 
 u 2
 
 292 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 liibit but few Arabian peculiarities, and scarcely any of the more 
 glaring instances of bad taste. But many reasons may be con- 
 ceived why the architecture of the Saracens should assume a more 
 pure and classical character in Sicily than in other lands. In 
 none of the countries which they had previously subdued could 
 they have found so large a store of Greek and Roman buildings, 
 which might serve at once as models for future erections, and 
 but too often as materials for their construction. Arches, which 
 must be constructed anew, might be built after their favourite 
 pointed form ; but while classical columns could be removed en- 
 tire, there was no occasion to task the fancy for new forms of 
 support, and to run into all the magnificent absurdities of the 
 Alhambra. And we might even conceive that from the contem- 
 plation of classical remains a certain purity and simplicity of 
 taste might be imbibed, which might keep them back from dis- 
 tinct stilts and horse-shoe arches, and even from any extensive 
 use of foliation. At the time when the Mahometans became 
 possessed of Sicily, the first fervour of their enthusiasm had 
 cooled down, and there was less likelihood of such direct and 
 formal opposition to preceding styles as we have seen in some 
 other of their erections. We may thus fairly conceive that the 
 style of Cefalu and Palermo is essentially the style of the pre- 
 ceding Arabian structures, and that however much Greek minds 
 and Greek hands may have contributed to their erection, they 
 did not then introduce any element foreign to the works of their 
 Arabian masters, but that whatever Greek character they possess 
 is of far earlier infusion. 
 
 These Sicilian structures are very interesting, from being proba- 
 bly the only instance in Europe of the deliberate retention of Ara- 
 bian forms, and from the length of time which the borrowed style 
 endured. "The Saracenic pointed style," says Mr. Knight, 1 
 " lasted in full force in Sicily till the end of the fourteenth century, 
 as is proved by the Tribunali and the Ospcdale Grande. 2 In the 
 course of that time, under the Arragonese sovereigns, 3 more and 
 
 1 Page 344. 3 The Arragonese dynasty in 
 
 2 The dates of these buildings Sicily commenced in 1282, after the 
 at Palermo are 1 307 and 1330 re- destruction of the French power by 
 spectively. the famous Sicilian Vespers.
 
 INFLUENCE OP ARABIAN ARCHITECTURE IN THE WEST. 293 
 
 more enrichment was added to the mouldings, but enrichment 
 of a Greek character. The Norman [?] zig-zag, however, still 
 kept its ground. In the fifteenth century a change began to 
 creep in, but taste had not yet taken any decided direction. 
 Various novelties were attempted : sometimes the forms were 
 circular, sometimes square, and sometimes elliptic. Amongst 
 other novelties, the Pointed style of the north was introduced, 
 with its projecting mouldings and a little of its tracery, but later 
 in Sicily than anywhere else ; and, though something of its true 
 spirit is caught in the reconstructions in the castle of Maniaces 
 at Syracuse, yet in Sicily it always appears an exotic." These 
 facts seem to prove incontestably that the Pointed style of Sicify 
 is not Gothic, even in the sense of being the most distant tran- 
 sition to that style. The part of Christendom in which the 
 systematic use of the pointed arch first appeared was the very 
 last to receive anything like true Gothic architecture, and even 
 then only as an exotic. 
 
 But though no other country so strictly retained a complete 
 Arabian style, there seems good reason to believe that Sicily 
 was not the only Christian land in which architecture was 
 subject to direct Arabian influences. One can hardly help sus- 
 pecting that a good deal of the pointed work of Italy comes 
 from the same source, and that the odd phrase of " Gotico 
 Arabo " really contains more truth than might at first sight ap- 
 pear. Pointed arches occur in Italy at a very early period, as in 
 the Cathedrals of Pisa and Venice ; and yet Gothic architecture 
 in its purity was never naturalized in Italy any more than in 
 Sicily. In A r enice especially a strong oriental tinge appears 
 both in other buildings, and in the magnificent Cathedral, whose 
 cupolas are altogether Saracenic in their outlines. In Spain too, 
 where the Arabs remained so long, and reared such superb 
 monuments, it would have been strange if their architecture -had 
 in no degree affected the subsequent Christian style. We shall see 
 when wc come to consider the Spanish Gothic, that it possesses 
 a certain fantastic character, a want of due relation between 
 the support and the thing supported, and sometimes a direct re- 
 tention of Arabian forms. As Mr. Hope says, 1 "the richest 
 
 1 Pa?e 456.
 
 294 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and most southern parts of Spain long remained occupied by 
 the Moors, who boasted their own architecture, different from 
 the Christians, but which the Christians, as they drove them back, 
 disdained not to convert to their own uses, or to imitate." Still 
 neither Spanish nor Italian Pointed architecture can be called 
 Arabian in the same sense as that of Sicily ; it is Gothic, though 
 imperfect ; it is an imitation or importation of the true Gothic 
 of the north, however mingled with Arabian notions. How far 
 the Arabian element pervades all Gothic architecture is a ques- 
 tion which we shall presently have to consider.
 
 PAET II. 
 
 OF THE POINTED ARCH, OR GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 We have now traced the course of the first form of architecture 
 which the Church pressed into her service, as it gradually cast 
 away its pagan fetters, and developed a form and beauty of its 
 own, at once the perfection of its own mechanical construction, 
 and of the symbolical teaching which the circumstances of the 
 Church in that day called for. We have now to see it yield to 
 another and a yet nobler style, to mark the architecture of rest 
 and solidity give place to that of lightness and heavenward ex- 
 tension, and the forms that had their root in an age of persecution 
 joyfully surrender their supremacy to those which breathed the 
 spirit of a Church triumphant alike over heathendom without, 
 and secular oppression within. We shall sec how they built who 
 bore alike the spear and the crozier in her holy cause ; when 
 " the praises of God were in their mouth and a two-edged sword 
 in their hands ;" when the lied Cross gleamed over the plains 
 of Palestine, and the ranks of the heathen quailed at the name 
 of Plantagenet, and the war-cry of " St. George for merry 
 England." 
 
 We have now come to the Gothic style, that noblest offspring
 
 296 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of human art, a style hallowed by every association of national 
 and religious feeling, the pure and undisputed possession of our 
 Teutonic lineage and Christian faith. We have at last ap- 
 proached to the ?era when mere skill such as heathen Greece never 
 surpassed, and vastness of conception with which the most 
 splendid piles of antiquity could not for a moment compete, 
 were alike devoted to the honour of God and the service of His 
 Church ; when our land was covered with those wondrous and un- 
 earthly temples, where even among man's most glorious works, 
 we most feel his littleness ; where the tall shaft, and soaring 
 arch, and the vault spread over us like the canopy of heaven, 
 make us feel ourselves in the immediate presence of Divinity, 
 where angels themselves might tread with awe. And yet there 
 was a time when men could walk through the solemn aisles of 
 Canterbury or Winchester, perhaps when the very shades of 
 night were creeping over the mighty walls, with the last notes 
 of the organ dying away through the long series of arch 
 and vault, with Kings and Bishops and saintly founders still 
 joining from their tombs in the worship of the faithful, and 
 not feel the inspiration of the gorgeous temple; when men of 
 refined taste and upright life could decry these our noblest 
 monuments as the work of barbarians, and prefer not only the 
 stern and chaste simplicity of Greece, but the gaudy and incon- 
 gruous structures of Rome ; when Addison could talk of " mean- 
 ness of manner " as the characteristic of Gothic Cathedrals, and 
 Evelyn speak of them as " dull, heavy, monkish, piles, without 
 any just proportion, use, or beauty." These days are happily 
 gone by, may it be for ever. 
 
 That such a state of feeling could ever have existed seems to 
 us almost incredible ; it is difficult to understand that our 
 grandfathers looked upon sash-windows as something far sur- 
 passing the barbarous invention of tracery, and deemed a board 
 adorned with a few cherubs and vases, an ox-skull or two, and 
 a couple of would-be Corinthian pilasters, as something which 
 cpaite deserved the sacrifice of a reredos where rows of canopied 
 niches, with crocket, and finial, and pinnacle of sumptuous foli- 
 age, had once held the venerable effigies of the martyrs of the 
 cross. Truly, without any very great degree of self-exaltation, 
 we may, as we gaze on the rood-screen of Kilndown and the
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 297 
 
 eastern window of Dorchester, join in the boast of the Greek of 
 old, 
 
 y/Lic? 1 } 701 7ra~cpifi> pierf a/Licii'Oi'es evjfOf.ieff' eivai. 
 
 It is no easy matter to understand how even the most igno- 
 rant rustics could endure to see tall arcades choked up by gal- 
 leries, and gorgeous windows decapitated by plaister ceilings ; it 
 requires no slight acquaintance with the depth of human wicked- 
 ness, with the blinding, deadening, power of avarice and self- 
 worship, to conceive beings in human shape, apparently without 
 remorse, lifting up the hand of the destroyer against St. An- 
 drew's or Glastonbury, levelling at one stroke the fairest works 
 of man, and the hallowed dwelling-place of his Maker; but 
 more incredible still is the intellectual and moral blindness of 
 men calling themselves lovers of art, admirers of beauty, who 
 could deliberately examine the wonders of Christian and Teuto- 
 nic art, and pronounce them to be rude, unmeaning, and abso- 
 lutely void of beauty, and turn away from the clustered shafts, 
 and foliaged capitals, and soaring arches of the Angels' choir, to 
 gaze with renewed admiration on the dull walls and senseless 
 porticos of our only pagan Minster. 
 
 Even those " men of taste " who did not go so far as to es- 
 teem Gothic architecture as absolutely hideous, and who even 
 honoured it so far as to examine into its origin and pile together 
 an abundance of theories respecting it, do not seem to have 
 been aware that they were studying real productions of art. A 
 Gothic church, especially if consigned to ruin and desecration, 
 was something strange, romantic, picturesque, calculated to 
 awake a great deal of sentimental rapture, perhaps even allowed 
 to possess a sort of irregular and fantastic beauty. But it was 
 not looked upon as a work of architecture ; its builders were at 
 best spoken of in a patronizing tone as men whose productions 
 were very creditable for their dark state, unenlightened by the 
 rules of Vitruvius or Palladio ; the idea that their works were 
 the result of real scientific and philosophical principles seems 
 never to have occurred ; these were still looked for only among 
 the relics of heathendom, which retained their place as the only 
 standard of art and beauty in the highest sense. 
 
 One thing, however, was done in these miserable times, for
 
 298 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 which we have to be thankful. I allude to the name Gothic, 
 which a self-sufficient age bestowed on the highest of all forms 
 of architecture, alike in contempt of its beauties and ignorance 
 of its origin. Yet here, as in many other cases, we may be well 
 content to adopt a name bestowed originally by the malice of 
 enemies. We need not suppose, with the author of the " Church- 
 man's Theological Dictionary," that Gothic architecture was " a 
 method of building introduced by the Goths, when they had en- 
 tirely overrun the Roman Empire, on the decline of the archi- 
 tectural art among the latter people ;" nor exactly bind ourselves 
 to the fuller explanation of this curious position which will be 
 found in the note j 1 and yet we may consider the name " Gothic," 
 to be on the whole the most appropriate title that can be given to 
 the style. " Christian " architecture is incorrect, as involving the 
 position that Bonn and Peterborough are not Christian build- 
 ings ; it is besides, if it were to be made a general term, not a 
 little affected and pedantic. And the term "Pointed," now 
 frequently used, does not describe either the history, or the 
 meaning, or the principles of the style, but simply certain of its 
 details; besides it requires Romanesque to be called, for consis- 
 tency's sake, the " Round " style, which has been defended in 
 theory, 2 but which no one yet has ventured upon in practice. 
 But Gothic does most certainly express better than any other 
 name the fact that the style so called was, in a stricter sense than 
 any other, the peculiar heritage of the Teutonic race, that it 
 came to its perfection among them alone, never flourishhig among 
 the Romance nations of the South; that it is the style of 
 feudal and ecclesiastical Europe, of the days when the Gothic or 
 Teutonic spirit animated all Western Christendom. The author 
 
 1 "When the empire was entirely selves however a little by the models 
 
 overrun by the Goths, the conquer- of the Roman edifices which they 
 
 ors very naturally introduced their saw before them ; but these models 
 
 own method of building. Like the themselves were faulty : and the 
 
 ancient Egyptians, the Goths seem Goths being totally destitute of 
 
 to have been more studious to genius, neither architecture nor any 
 
 amaze people with the greatness other kind of art could be improved 
 
 of their buildings, than to please by them." Encyclopaedia Britan- 
 
 the eye with the regularity of their nica, II. 221, Ed. 1797. 
 
 structure, or the propriety of their 2 Ecclesiologist, V. 229, note, 
 ornaments. They corrected them-
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 299 
 
 whose definition we have just given is probably the only person 
 who, in the year 1845, either antedated Gothic architecture by 
 seven centuries, or when he heard the phrases " Gothic archi- 
 tecture/' " Gothic languages/' " Gothic mythology," thought 
 only of the national Goths, and piously believed Alaric and 
 Theodoric to have been great patrons of vertical architecture. 
 The use of the word in this sense is so well recognized both by 
 friends and enemies, that it is not liable to be misunderstood. 
 If we substituted " Teutonic/' we should gain nothing, except 
 perhaps an article in the next edition of the Theological Dic- 
 tionary, attributing the invention of the pointed arch to the an- 
 tagonists of Marius, instead of those of Stilicho. " Gothic" is 
 now better understood than " Teutonic " would be, and the 
 latter term is more purely and merely one of national distinc- 
 tion, 1 while "Gothic" seems to express something more ; a thou- 
 sand religious and chivalrous associations centre around it, which 
 hardly do as yet around the other. The difference is analogous 
 to that which theological controversy would find between " Eng- 
 lish" and "Anglican," "French" and "Gallican." The one merely 
 expresses a fact ; the other includes its bearings and associations. 
 We may therefore safely continue the nomenclature now ordi- 
 narily received, according to which Romanesque expresses the 
 style in which the influence of Roman art is still predominant, 
 and which is in fact, as we have shown, the perfect development 
 of the Roman construction; and Gothic that which arose 
 among the Teutonic nations when their own system of civiliza- 
 tion was approaching its perfection, and which most completely 
 expresses the spirit which those nations impressed upon mediaeval 
 Christendom. Wc have now to define this latter, or Gothic 
 style. And fortunately there is no style which admits of so 
 easy and philosophical a definition ; none is so completely the 
 carrying out of one grand principle, of which all its features 
 of construction and decoration arc but the exhibition in detail. 
 This has been already defined to be the upward tendency of the 
 whole building and of its minutest details; in a word, the ver- 
 tical principle, which, when fully carried out, renders a Gothic 
 cathedral one harmonious whole, seeming actually to risehcaven- 
 
 1 See Whewell's German Churches, p. 40.
 
 300 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 wards. The eye is guided upwards throughout ; the whole build- 
 ing rises from the floor to the roof; no part seems" an after-thought, 
 as something unavoidably put on, but each portion grows out of 
 that beneath ; all is light, airy, and soaring. " The universal 
 tendency," says_ Dr. Whewell, 1 " is to the predominance and pro- 
 longation of vertical lines ; for instance, in the interior, by con- 
 tinuing the shafts in the arch-mouldings ; on the exterior by 
 employing buttresses of strong projection, which shoot upward 
 through the line of parapet, and terminate in pinnacles." We 
 shall presently trace the application of this pervading principle 
 in these and many other details ; at present we cannot do better 
 than quote the splendid passage in which the same universal 
 genius describes its general effect as developed in man's noblest 
 work, a perfect Gothic minster. ' ' It would hardly be too fanci- 
 ful to consider the newer religious architecture as, bearing the 
 impress of its Christian birth, and exhibiting in the leading lines 
 of its members, and the aspiring summit of its edifices, forms 
 'whose silent finger points to heaven/ And this idea becomes 
 more striking still when we compare our religious buildings with 
 the graceful but low and level outline of the temples of heathen 
 antiquity, whose favourite purpose seems to be to spread along 
 and beautify the earth which their worshippers deified. We 
 may thus, with the poet's as well as the artist's pleasure, image 
 to ourselves 
 
 < the bulk 
 Of ancient minster lifted above the cloud 
 Of the dense air which town or city breeds 
 To intercept the sun's glad beams ;' 
 
 and leaving far below it the pillared front and long entablature 
 of the Grecian portico : while the buttressed clerestory, with its 
 spiry pinnacles and woven tracery, hangs over the altar and the 
 sanctuary, like a coronal upheld by the stony arms which the 
 Christian architects learnt to make powerful and obedient for 
 this purpose." 2 
 
 The first instance of the carrying out of this vertical prin- 
 ciple, first alike in date and in importance, is the general 
 adoption of the Pointed Arch. I say its general adoption, 
 as its invention may be traced up to the remotest times of 
 
 1 German Churches, p. 49. 2 Ibid. p. 127.
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF* GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 301 
 
 Egyptian and Pelasgian mystery, and its occasional use, as 
 caprice or convenience might dictate, was, as we have seen, 
 far from unknown during the whole duration of Roman archi- 
 tecture. But these were mere detached instances, and not a 
 systematic use of this form ; this last we have indeed seen 
 among the Mahometan nations ; they made a systematic use of 
 the pointed arch, but they never made it part of a system ; 
 not being accompanied by other vertical details, it is merely a 
 solitary feature, and not a development of the vertical principle. 
 This latter use of the pointed arch is peculiar to Gothic archi- 
 tecture, and is its distinguishing and most easily recognized sign. 
 It is the most appropriate and natural form for the arch to as- 
 sume in a vertical structure. Such an one requires the pointed 
 arch ; in viewing a round arch the eye travels up one side and 
 down the other ; but in the pointed both sides seem to rise at 
 once, and joining at the apex, to unite in the general ascending- 
 tendency of the whole. Hence the round arch, the sign of the 
 old architecture of rest, was abandoned, and the pointed, the 
 chief mark of the architecture of vertical extension, assumes its 
 place. As Mr. Petit truly observes, though his words to a cer- 
 tain extent imply the quasi-Gothic character of the Norman 
 Romanesque, a point on which I have the misfortune to differ 
 from him : " The truth is, the pointed arch was found out to 
 be, simply because it was, the fittest for the style now expanding 
 into perfection ; it had been gradually familiarized to the eye, 
 and thus, as the other members of the system became ready for 
 its reception, it assumed its proper place, where it asserted and 
 steadily maintained its sovereignty without an effort." 1 
 
 In estimating the importance of the pointed arch as a Gothic 
 feature there are two errors to be guarded against. The one is 
 the old notion that the pointed arch is the sum and substance of 
 the whole question, and that for a building to be Gothic it is 
 quite sufficient if it exhibit arches of this form. In this sense 
 we find Bishop Ileber applying the name to the Pointed 
 erections of the Mahometans in India. This notion is pretty 
 well exploded. There can hardly be any occasion now-a-days to 
 go about to prove that the pointed arch is not the essence of 
 Gothic architecture. It is generally recognized to be but one 
 
 i I. 118.
 
 30.2 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 development among others of a principle, though I hesitate not 
 to say, the most important of its applications. The danger now is 
 rather lest the full value of this most important feature should not 
 be recognized. There seems a disposition now at work among 
 that class of antiquarians who proceed not on any philosophical 
 principle, but on mere induction of ancient examples, to throw 
 away all reference to the form of the arch, because forsooth an 
 occasional caprice employed the round arch now and then during 
 the best periods of Gothic. Now, although the pointed arch is 
 not the essence of Gothic architecture, it is the application of the 
 pervading principle of the style to the most important features 
 of the structure ; consequently no Gothic building can be con- 
 sidered perfect without its employment in its main portions, the 
 pier-arches and the vaulting; a Gothic building with round 
 arches and a Roman with pointed are equally incongruous. We 
 may hence learn to estimate at its true value such an assertion as 
 the following in the Glossary under the article Arch. " In in- 
 vestigating Gothic architecture, it is important to distinguish 
 between forms and principles ; an arch is only a form, and may 
 be changed without affecting the principles of the style. How- 
 ever startling it may sound, it is true that it would be very pos- 
 sible to erect a building in any style of Gothic architecture in 
 perfect purity without a single pointed arch 1 in any of its parts ; 
 it would be a singularity, from the absence of the usual forms in 
 the leading features, but they would not affect the principles" 
 Now as it is the general tendency of the Glossary to provide 
 the most diligent and accurate collections of forms without any 
 regard to theories or principles, it can hardly be thought unchari- 
 table or disrespectful to hint that the author is rather out of his 
 element in speaking of principles at all. The position is utterly 
 untenable. It must mean one of two things ; either that a Gothic 
 building may exist without arches at all, or that it may have arches, 
 and yet all of them be of other forms than pointed. In the 
 former case it would be but a lame and imperfect specimen, and 
 
 1 This strange assertion is re- a thoroughly good Gothic church 
 peated in an article on Mr. Paley's taken entirely from ancient ex- 
 Gothic Architecture, in the Archa?o- amples without a single pointed 
 logical Journal for February, 1847. arch throughout." 
 " It would be very possible to build
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 303 
 
 could hardly be an ecclesiastical building, even of the very hum- 
 blest description ; it could never be a typical Gothic structure. 
 In the latter sense I should unhesitatingly deny, whatever its 
 date, were it the work of Wykeham himself, that it had any 
 right to be called a Gothic building at all. A structure which 
 failed to apply its leading principle to the great and conspicuous 
 feature of construction, would be a miserable abortion, unworthy 
 of the name of an architectural work. The author talks as if 
 forms were something utterly independent of principles, and 
 which might be put on or cast off at pleasure. But though 
 forms are not principles, they are tbe development and applica- 
 tion of principles, and the principle of Gothic architecture is as- 
 suredly not fully developed or applied in any building where 
 every important arch does not assume the pointed form. 
 
 The pointed arch then is the first and greatest carrying out 
 of the vertical principle, and gives the construction of a Gothic 
 building. We must now see how the principal features of de- 
 coration follow the same great law, and assume forms in harmony 
 with tbe animating principle of the style. 
 
 Next to the use of tbe pointed arch, the most important of sin- 
 gle tangible features is the change in the form of the abacus, which 
 now becomes round or octagonal instead of square. This, though 
 at first sight it might appear a matter of very minute detail, is a 
 development of the highest importance ; it arises from a deeper 
 source, and is of far more consequence as an effect, than 
 might at first be supposed. In order to produce a perfect 
 vertical effect, the eye must be prevented from resting on 
 any point in the ascent. We have seen that in the classical 
 orders, adopted under the requisite modifications in the Roman- 
 esque style, the column retains a veal separate existence, and 
 the square abacus properly remains as the boundary of the pier 
 or column, and lias indeed a farther existence of its own. But 
 to produce the true vertical effect, the separate existence of the 
 parts must be destroyed, they must be subordinated to the whole ; 
 the column, whether a pier or a mere decorative shaft, must be 
 such as not to exist without the arch above it; it must not be a 
 post with a weight laid on it, or even a wall merely supporting 
 it, but a trunk with its branches growing inseparably out of it. 
 The square abacus then, the boundary of the separate existence
 
 304 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of the column, must be discarded, and sink into a mere mould- 
 ing corresponding with the form of the column, and forming a 
 relief, without being a stoppage, to the eye in its vertical pro- 
 gress. 
 
 A third feature, not indeed essential to the existence of Gothic 
 architecture, but most certainly essential to its ideal perfection, 
 is the Clustered Pillar. To this form Romanesque affords very 
 close approximations, but seems never to have produced its per- 
 fect form. The idea of the complex piers of that style is a rect- 
 angular mass with shafts attached to its surface, or set in its 
 angles. But the Gothic pillar is either an assemblage of shafts 
 brought into close juxtaposition, or else a mass channelled with 
 mouldings, though still commonly retaining the shaft as an ad- 
 junct. Now of all conceivable architectural features the column is 
 the most complete unity ; there is none so incapable of being fused 
 in among other members. And the rectangular pier, though 
 possessing less distinct existence, has certainly no vertical ten- 
 dency whatever, and its square edges contradict another law of 
 the Gothic style. But by clustering and channelling pillars, each 
 order of the arch above may have its own source in the pier below ; 
 the shaft is more or less perfectly continued in the mouldings of 
 the architrave. The clustered shaft and the moulded architrave 
 go together ; one seems out of place without the other ; both are 
 required for the highest perfection, though both have their ad- 
 missible substitutes. The substitute for the clustered pillar is 
 the columnar pier of octagonal form ; its shape hinders it from 
 having the same distinct existence as the cylindrical column, and 
 as presenting a number of tall narrow faces, it possesses a degree 
 of verticality, which is more apparent, as they may be, to a cer- 
 tain extent, considered as prolonged in the chamfered edges of 
 the arch. The octagonal pillar is not a high or perfect develop- 
 ment of the Gothic principle, but it contains no contradictory 
 element, and is consequently an allowable substitute for the 
 more perfect form. This cannot be said of the cylindrical pier, 
 though a feature infinitely more beautiful in itself, and retained 
 in numberless examples of good Gothic. Whether slender or 
 massive, it has still the same unmanageable, independent exist- 
 ence, which can by no process be made to harmonize with the 
 lines of the arch. It is a significant fact that it is not
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 305 
 
 found in the main arcades of any purely Gothic cathedral in 
 England. 
 
 We now come to the Gothic principle as carried out in mould- 
 ings, one of the most important features of the style. The 
 square section, the perfection of Romanesque, is utterly aban- 
 doned, and not a single edge allowed to remain ; in the very 
 simplest form they are chamfered off. The orders of an arch 
 have commonly so large a chamfer as to make them parts of a 
 regular polygon ; bases, abaci, 1 sometimes even the angles of 
 buildings, lose their sharp, square edge in like manner. The 
 chamfering of an arch is a decided Gothic development, and quite 
 sufficient to carry out the principle. A Gothic building with no 
 moulding beyond chamfers is not imperfect or incorrect, but sim- 
 ply very plain ; while to retain square edges is an actual solecism. 
 But where greater richness, and a more complete development of 
 the style, arc sought for, the same principle of cutting away the 
 section is manifested in excavating the surface with hollows. I 
 speak thus, because no Gothic moulding, except labels and string- 
 courses, no member of a moulded architrave, ever projects from 
 the surface ; all will be found contained within the line of the 
 chamfer. The rounds are not, like the heavy rolls of the Ro- 
 manesque, attached to a surface, but arc merely the spaces left 
 between hollows, which are themselves again to avoid any 
 squareness worked up into this form. The Gothic mouldings 
 are not only exquisitely beautiful in themselves, but are, in more 
 ways than one, a remarkable development of the Gothic principle. 
 The square edge, a hard boundary of two planes, is a mark of 
 distinctness ; so is the distinction of orders in an arch when 2 
 strongly marked ; these signs of separate existence are therefore 
 to be swept away. But more than this, the chamfer to a certain 
 
 1 The omission of the square rather a relief to the eye in follow- 
 abacus is of course an exemplifica- ing the sweep of an arch ; and we 
 tion of this principle, but its ini- consequently find Gothic mouldings 
 
 portancc in another point of view is for a long time grouping themselves 
 amply sufficient to justify its being according to the orders, and after- 
 assumed as a distinct development, wards substituting divisions, thus 
 as I have done above. far analogous to the orders, between 
 
 2 That is, when the section is still the groups, 
 square ; the orders are otherwise 
 
 X
 
 306 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 extent, and the hollow moulding more completely, do themselves 
 form strongly marked vertical lines ; a deep hollow in a moulded 
 arch forms a strong line of shade along which the eye runs 
 with the utmost facility ; so too does a round, but in a less de- 
 gree, unless a fillet be added as a guide along its smooth surface. 
 Hence we may see why this kind of moulding is felt to be in- 
 congruous when applied to a round arch. The line of moulding 
 tempts the eye to commence a vertical journey, which it cannot 
 conclude, being cut short in its progress and brought downwards 
 again by the form of the arch. 
 
 The above may be considered as the principal instances in 
 which the Gothic or vertical principle is carried out in the 
 architectural members ; those which must exist in some form or 
 other, but which have a new one given to them in accordance 
 with the principles of the new style. But the principle has a 
 much wider extent of application, ruling every part of the build- 
 ing, from the boldest features of construction to the minutest 
 portions of detail. From the tall spire forming the crowning 
 point of a vast cathedral to the sharp canopy over a diminutive 
 niche, the same soaring tendency is displayed. But it must be 
 remembered that this by no means excludes the use of strong 
 horizontal lines, deeply marked string-courses, transoms, division 
 of height into stages. Where there is no strife, 1 there is no vic- 
 tory : the vertical line cannot be called predominant, unless the 
 horizontal exist in a visible condition of subjection and in- 
 feriority. Hence arises the principle of contrast a very im- 
 portant element in Gothic architecture, and of which wc shall 
 have to speak more at length when we come to consider that 
 style in its subdivisions. 
 
 But we must beware of attributing to features which may or 
 may not exist, but which, when they do, are exemplifications of 
 the Gothic principle, the same importance as to the essential 
 forms which it has impressed upon architectural members. High 
 roofs, spires, pinnacles, flying buttresses, all help to produce 
 . vertical effect, but they are the luxuries of Gothic architecture 
 
 1 Compare the Ecclesiastic, IV. ford Society by the Rev. W. B. 
 
 78, and a paper on " Uniformity Jones, M.A., and printed in their 
 
 considered as a principle in Gothic Report for Easter and Act Terms, 
 
 Architecture," read before the Ox- 1845.
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 307 
 
 rather than its necessaries. A church may be Gothic purely 
 and beautifully Gothic in which they do not exist, or at all 
 events in which they are not predominant features. But one 
 that exhibited all these in the same fulness as Cologne or West- 
 minster, and retained round arches, columnar piers, square 
 abaci, and square edges, would have no claim to the title of a 
 Gothic church. I cannot but think, dangerous as it is to enter 
 the lists with such an antagonist, that Dr. Whewell has in some 
 degree fallen into this error, when he considers 1 the flying but- 
 tress as of more importance in the development of Gothic than 
 the pointed arch. The latter is the application of the main 
 principle of the style to its main feature of construction \ the 
 flying buttress, as Dr. Whewell seems to confess, is only a 
 mechanical help for producing greater height, and thereby inci- 
 dentally giving greater scope to the principle of verticality ; 
 though by the consummate skill of the Gothic architects it be- 
 comes itself a vertical feature in the external view. 
 
 We must now consider another feature which I cannot but 
 look upon as of equal importance to the ideal perfection of 
 Gothic architecture with any of those which have been already 
 mentioned. This is vaulting. But vaulting itself is not an ema- 
 nation from the vertical principle, but simply that particular 
 form of it employed in the Gothic style, that namely which ex- 
 hibits the Gothic forms of arches and mouldings. The use of 
 vaulting is analogous to that of the arch ; Gothic architecture 
 requires, first, the use of arches, and secondly, that those arches 
 be of a particular form ; and the like is the case with vaulting. 
 That vaulting is required for the ideal perfection of the style 
 must, I think, be plain to any one who will consider the question 
 in its abstract bearings, without reference to the fact that so 
 many noble churches arc to be found in England without vault- 
 ing, an insular peculiarity as unaccountable, and as little worthy 
 of approbation, as the substitution of flat east ends for apses. 
 Without vaulting it is impossible to carry the idea of the style 
 into one of the most important features. It is in fact the only 
 means by which the vertical principle can be carried out in one 
 continued ascent from the floor to the apex of the roof. With 
 
 1 German Churches, p. 1 26. 
 x 2
 
 308 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 any other form of roof, the vertical progress of the eye is checked 
 hy the horizontal line of the cornice, and the roof seems like an 
 after-thought, something put on because of physical requirements, 
 but not contemplated in the decorative construction of the whole. 
 The high-pitched open roof is certainly a very noble feature, but 
 even here there is no such continued vertical ascent as in the vault. 
 The eye is indeed carried vertically to the wall-plate, but there it 
 is suddenly stopped, and has to set out on a new journey, a ver- 
 tical one indeed as the high pitch of the roof is certainly in it- 
 self an exemplification of the principle but not the same as that 
 which it commenced from the floor. Disguise it as you will with 
 the arched beam at intervals, the roof remains something adven- 
 titious, put on because physically necessary, but not architectu- 
 rally connected with the building below. And further, in no form 
 of wooden roof can the side windows be made thoroughly to har- 
 monize with the roof ; their pointed arches ill agree with the 
 square compartments above them. This seems to be acknow- 
 ledged by the fact that in some fine wooden roofs there is an arch 
 thrown over the windows; but this is no development of the 
 wooden roof, it is an idea borrowed from vaulting, and a mani- 
 fest confession of the superiority of the latter. And even the 
 east and west windows can never harmonize so perfectly with a 
 timber roof as with a vault, even when the former deals 
 much in arches under the rafters, which again is an idea bor- 
 rowed from the stone construction. But in a vaulted church 
 supposing of course the vaulting to spring from shafts, not from 
 corbels the eye ranges uninterruptedly from the pavement to 
 the keystone of the vault, which, itself formed of pointed arches, 
 seems soaring into infinity. The pointed cells of the vaulting 
 answer to the pointed arches of the windows, and, as the style 
 advances, we find them fitting more and more closely into them. 
 In short, the timber roof is a necessary addition, but still an 
 addition, a distinct design from the walls : the vault and the walls 
 are both portions of the same design ; they unite together and 
 constitute one whole, the walls forming but one vast impost for 
 the vaulting-arch. 
 
 Such then is Gothic architecture, the noblest form of the art 
 which combined genius and piety ever produced. But having 
 seen what it is, and contemplated its wonderful beauties, the
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 309 
 
 question of its origin conies upon us with redoubled interest. 
 Whence came so grand and glorious a conception ? what age, 
 what country, what single mind of man, had the honour of 
 giving birth to this sublimest emanation of the human intellect ? 
 There is good ground for believing that Gothic architecture 
 may be traced to more sources than one, as if a style which culls 
 for itself all the choicest beauties of art and nature were too 
 great and too diversified for a single origin. And the belief that 
 Gothic architecture derived some details from natural objects, 
 others from its Roman predecessors, others even from the ene- 
 mies of the faith, is in no way incompatible with regarding all 
 as applications of the vertical principle. We talk of develop- 
 ment and expansion till we almost fancy a style of architecture 
 to be something really existing, endued with vital powers, like a 
 tree which grows and throws out branches without the interven- 
 tion of human aid. I fully grant that the development is for the 
 most part an unconscious one ; architects did not sit down with 
 a deliberate intention to construct a vertical building, and then 
 cast about for details which might be vertical. But still the 
 details did not come spontaneously. Wc cannot suppose that the 
 working of the vertical notion in the mind of the architect caused 
 him accidentally to build pointed arches without any thought of 
 their form ; that square abaci, mouldings, foliage, all came of 
 themselves; and that the Gothic cluster appears at last with all 
 its full complement of flowers and leaves, but is still ignorant 
 that it is not a square pier or an Ionic column, 
 
 " Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma." 
 
 The architect must have seen and admired his principal forms 
 before he adopted them for his own use; they were presented to 
 his eye, and he felt them to be both beautiful in themselves and 
 agreeable to his preconceived notions. Some of the smaller mat- 
 ters may have been produced by a series of experiments after forms 
 which might be congruous to the principal lines when it was felt 
 that the old ones were not so. This may account for square 
 abaci and clustered columns; and moulding clearly arose from 
 the desire to relieve the heaviness of the Romanesque rolls, by 
 making a hollow between. But no such process would account
 
 310 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 for the pointed arch ; this must have been seen in its full per- 
 fection before it was adopted as a feature of the style. And 
 hence the old antiquaries who reduced the inquiry into the 
 origin of Gothic architecture into an inquiry into the origin of 
 the pointed arch, were accidentally not so far wrong as might be, 
 and often has been, supposed. 
 
 It would be useless to recount the thousand and one theories 
 put forth by ingenious men to account for this origin ; inter- 
 woven branches, intersecting arcades, the figure called " vesica 
 piscis," and countless others. I believe all these to be equally 
 true, and equally false. They are all equally false if put forth 
 as the one solvent, if supposed to show the actual origin of the 
 form; all equally true as expressing different circumstances 
 which brought the form more and more before the eyes of the 
 architects of the twelfth century. That none were the actual 
 source of the form is clear, as the mere form is indisputably as 
 old, and probably older, than the round ; nor were they even 
 the means by which the builders of that day became first ac- 
 quainted with it, the form being, as we have seen, in occasional use 
 during the whole Romanesque period. A common workman of 
 the eleventh century would probably have been disconcerted at a 
 command to construct a pointed arch, just as some might be at 
 the present moment. But we cannot doubt that Bishop Gun- 
 dulph and Bishop Walkelyn were tolerably familiar with its shape, 
 and would not have scrupled to use it, had the necessities 
 of any particular position rendered it necessary or even conve- 
 nient. The mere knowledge of the pointed arch is not enough ; 
 we see that, so far from this knowledge necessarily introducing 
 Gothic architecture in all its fulness and purity of detail, it did 
 not even lead to the general use of the pointed arch in its soli- 
 tary state. People knew the pointed arch, and actually preferred 
 the round ; a fact of course producing additional difficulty. The 
 real question is, When and why did Western architects substitute 
 the pointed arch for the round in the principal arcades of their 
 churches ? a question as distinct as possible from that of the 
 mere origin of the pointed arch. It was not antecedently im- 
 probable, and facts prove it to have been the case, that the form 
 might remain dormant, used only now and then when occasion 
 might require, for ages before it became a prominent feature of
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 311 
 
 construction, and still less of decoration. It is only a repetition 
 with regard to a particular form of arch of the process which 
 took place with regard to the arch itself. The Egyptians con- 
 structed occasional arches for two thousand years, but they never 
 produced an arched architecture ; and what the Egyptians did 
 with the arch in general, the Lombards and Normans did with 
 its pointed form. 
 
 Where then did the Teutonic builders of the twelfth century / 
 learn this systematic application of the pointed arch ? The only/ 
 theory, short of spontaneous development, which affords an 
 answer to this question, is that which traces the origin of Pointed 
 architecture to the East, and sees in the long arcades of the 
 Gothic minster another triumph over the enemies of the faith, 
 another glorious spoil wrested from the infidel, and kindled into 
 new and holier being beneath the life-giving breath of our holy 
 Mother. What the Pagan basilica is to Caen and Southwell, 
 the mosque of the False Prophet is to Altenberg and Lichfield ; 
 the lifeless body without the quickening soul, the mere form of 
 a style as yet unenlivened by its spirit. The resemblance be- 
 tween Arabian and Gothic architecture cannot be denied : 
 pointed arches, foliation, an attempt at tracery, some of the 
 most important of the points distinguishing Gothic from Ro- 
 manesque, are all found in the works of the Mahometans. The 
 era of their first systematic appearance in the West coincides 
 most remarkably with the times when a closer communication 
 with the East was opened by the swords of the Crusaders. Im- 
 perishable as must be the fame of these soldiers of the Cross as 
 long as faith, and zeal, and valour are honoured among men, it 
 must add to the veneration in which we hold even their memories, 
 to deem that to their victories we owe the holiest form of the first 
 of arts, that the architecture of Lincoln and St. Ouen's is the 
 hard-won and precious guerdon of the saintly warfare of God- 
 frey and the sterner courage of the Lion-hearted King. Little 
 indeed need we blush to see the Church again arrayed in the 
 spoils of captive heathendom ; it is but the chosen people going 
 forth enriched with the gold of Egypt, or the crown of the Am- 
 monite set upon the head of David ; the faithful heart should 
 beat higher in gazing on the signs of conflict and of victory ; and 
 as we stand by the silent tomb of one who fought at Jaffa or at
 
 312 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Ascalon, we may behold with increased rapture the arch and 
 vault that soar over the mailed effigy, if we deem their glorious 
 forms to be an heritage won for us by the cross-handled sword 
 which the soldier of God still sheaths before the altar of his 
 Maker. 
 
 And viewing the subject with a calmer eye, scarcely any valid 
 objection can be brought against the eastern origin of Gothic 
 architecture. I am fully aware that the position is open to a 
 difficulty like that of the Indian cosmogony, in which the ele- 
 phant indeed stands upon the tortoise, but the question of the 
 tortoise's own standing-place is left unanswered. The point at 
 issue is only shifted; the Teuton learned the systematic use of the 
 pointed arch from the Saracen, but whence did the Saracen learn 
 it ? If however we suppose the Teutonic nations to have de- 
 veloped the pointed arch independently of any oriental influence, 
 the source whence it came to the Arabs has still to be sought ; so 
 that at all events by looking to the East for its introduction 
 among ourselves, we have but one difficulty instead of two. It 
 would be indeed a strange thought, yet it is by no means impro- 
 bable, that the early Arabian architects may have actually adopted 
 pointed forms as a badge of their faith in opposition to those of 
 the Christian architecture of their age and country. But however 
 the Saracens may have acquired their systematic, although far 
 from invariable, use of pointed arches, there seems no difficulty 
 in supposing that their architecture was the source from which 
 its use came into western Europe. The difficulty would rather 
 be in attributing to any other cause such a phamomenon as 
 the appearance in France, England, and Germany, of forms 
 strikingly resembling those employed by the Saracens, at the 
 moment when communication became more frequent between 
 the natives of these countries and those very Saracens. "We 
 have seen that in one country at least, the Arabian architecture 
 incontestably grew into a Christian Pointed style ; a style cer- 
 tainly not pure Gothic, but which had it fallen into the hands 
 of architects qualified to develop its capabilities, might have 
 become so. Allowing for a greater leaning to classic forms, 
 which was naturally to be looked for in that country, the Sicilian- 
 Arabian-Norman style is as near an approach to Gothic as our 
 earliest Transition. The massive piers of Malmsbury Abbey are
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 313 
 
 not more Gothic than the Corinthian columns of Palermo ; hoth 
 must have been got rid of before a pure Gothic style could be 
 developed out of either. And if any one should choose to de- 
 rive Gothic architecture in general from these Sicilian structures 
 rather than directly from those of Palestine and Egypt, the point 
 would be hardly worth contesting, though the balance of pro- 
 bability is certainly in favour of the latter. 
 
 An objection might possibly be drawn from the fact that the 
 only other country of Europe in which Arabian architecture was 
 ever prevalent, and in which it has left its most splendid remains, 
 contributed little or nothing to the development of the Gothic 
 style. There are many Gothic churches in Spain, and some 
 few of great merit, but, as we shall hereafter see, the style always 
 remained an exotic. But there are two circumstances to be 
 taken into consideration. The Arabian architecture in Spain 
 does not present so close an approximation to Gothic forms as 
 that of the east ; to go no farther, the round arch is retained in 
 its most sumptuous buildings. The Spaniard then had not the 
 same opportunities for learning Pointed forms in his own country 
 as were possessed by the French or English pilgrim to the 
 east. And secondly, it by no means follows that proximity to 
 Arabian buildings, or direct imitation of them, would at all 
 conduce to excellence in the Gothic style. All that could be 
 learned from the infidels was one or two very important forms, 
 of which they had the nrrpi; rather than the p^crij; elements 
 which they kept in a dead unproductive state, and which re- 
 quired great development before a perfect style could be pro- 
 duced. Arabian architecture was so far from containing the 
 Gothic principle, that it cannot be said to have any leading prin- 
 ciple at all; its best form is but an absurd incongruity, a Pointed 
 Romanesque. Hence while it supplied many admirable hints, it 
 would have furnished the worst possible models; and a constant 
 view of the structures in which they were at first so imperfectly 
 carried out, could only have tended to check the progress of their 
 development. 
 
 The Crusaders then imported, not Gothic architecture as a 
 complete style, but certain forms thrown away on their posses- 
 sions, but which northern genius at once felt itself capable of 
 employing to some better use. It must have been a yearning
 
 314 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 after something more aspiring than the existing Romanesque 
 could supply, some dim conception of ideal beauty beyond any- 
 thing which the world had yet seen, which made them feel in- 
 stinctively that the pointed arch would serve their purpose. It 
 could not be mere admiration of existing beauty. A grand 
 Norman arch is immeasurably more beautiful than a pointed 
 one as used by the Arabs, bare of mouldings, and hideously 
 stilted or horse-shoed. A mere dilettante love of elegant forms 
 could have led no man to substitute the latter for the former. 
 But they felt that they could, we may literally say, mould the 
 dead form into something more noble. The immediate result 
 was that from about the middle of the twelfth century the pointed 
 arch began gradually to supersede the round in the main arcades 
 of northern churches. 
 
 And this being accomplished, I hesitate not to say that the bat- 
 tle was won j 1 the doom of Romanesque was irrevocably sealed ; 
 it remained only for the conqueror to take full possession ; a 
 process slow but certain. It was as when the Norman first 
 reared his banner on Saxon ground ; a single battle decided the 
 fate of England, her native liberty fell for ever on the field of 
 Hastings : yet many a long year, many a fierce and deadly 
 struggle, had yet to come before the stranger had full and undis- 
 turbed possession of the length and breadth of the land. The 
 pointed arch once firmly established, every other detail followed 
 as a matter of course ; the fine taste of a mediaeval architect 
 could not but observe how inconsistent with his soaring arch 
 was the ponderous column on which it rested, and the square 
 
 1 "The Pointed arch contains style of the north." Gaily Knight's 
 
 within itself the germ of the verti- Italy. Introduction, p. 9. 
 cal principle, but the germ lay dor- " The Pointed arch is only one 
 
 mant, till it was observed by the element of the Pointed style, though 
 
 genius of the great Trans-Alpine it is the chief one. Verticality, as 
 
 architects of the thirteenth century. opposed to horizontality, was the 
 
 It Mas they who perceived what the real principle, and this seems to 
 
 pointed arch contained, it was they have been suggested by the pointed 
 
 who awakened the latent principle, arch. But the mere use of the 
 
 applied it to their buildings, taught pointed arch alone Avould not make 
 
 all their parts to shoot upwards, ob- a Gothic building." Paley's Gothic 
 
 tained elevation, lightness, grace, Architecture, p. 65. 
 and in fact created the Pointed
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 315 
 
 section and surface ornament which it still retained. He had to 
 develop other and more harmonious forms, and those mostly out 
 of his own stores ; for his Arabian stock could supply nothing 
 beyond foliation, chamfers, octagonal pillars, and the rudest ap- 
 proach to tracery. And even of these the first would be rather 
 an incumbrance ; until an appropriate form of moulding had 
 been devised, foliation would be rather ludicrous than ornamen- 
 tal. The others certainly contain the germ of many of the best 
 Gothic forms, but only the germ : the architect had to provide 
 developments and applications of them utterly unknown to the 
 infidel owners of the treasure. What these developments and 
 applications were I have already attempted to show ; how, when 
 the construction was once firmly established, they gradually sup- 
 planted the old Romanesque system of detail, will be the sub- 
 ject of the next chapter. The buildings in which this conflict is 
 carried on are neither Romanesque nor Gothic, but the history 
 of the Transition is manifestly a part of the history of Gothic 
 architecture. It exhibits its early stages, when as yet it did not 
 exist as a fully developed whole ; its first beginnings affected 
 one part of the structure, its next steps another, till the whole 
 has ceased to retain any trace of the Roman leaven, and stands 
 forth a purely Gothic building, carrying out in every part that 
 vertical principle which is the soul of Gothic architecture. 
 
 Another source from which, not indeed the construction, or 
 many of the details, but much of the general effect and character 
 of the style appears to have been derived, is the imitation of 
 natural forests, and of artificial structures of posts and twigs. 
 This opinion in different forms was very prevalent among the 
 antiquarians of the last century, and has been enshrined in 
 the poetry of one who, even in their own pursuit, might 
 rank among the first of them. Sir Walter Scott's picture of 
 Romanesque as exhibited at Lindisfarne describes that Abbey 
 as being 
 
 " Built ere the art was known, 
 By pointed aisle, and shafted stalk, 
 The arcades of an alleyed walk 
 
 To emulate in stone." 
 
 And again in the still more famous description of Melrose,
 
 316 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 " The pillars with clustered shafts so trim, 
 With hase and with capital flourished around, 
 Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound." 
 
 And 
 
 " The moon on the east oriel shone 
 Through slender shafts of shapely stone, 
 
 By foliaged tracery combined ; 
 Thou wouldst have thought some fairy's hand 
 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand, 
 
 In many a freakish knot had twined. 
 Then framed a spell, when the work was done, 
 And changed the willow wreaths to stone." 
 
 And this testimony is the more valuable, as it is clear that the 
 great poet took a very different view of the matter from the mass 
 of those who have advocated an opinion nominally the same. He 
 was not one who considered Gothic architecture as a method of 
 building introduced by the Goths, or that the said Goths simply 
 reproduced therein the gloom of the consecrated groves of Odin. 
 Nor yet did he hold that the Gothic church immediately followed 
 upon the wattled buildings of early times. He clearly under- 
 stood and appreciated the difference between Romanesque and 
 Gothic, and the intervention of the former style between the 
 supposed originals and the copies, which Mr. Paley 1 truly con- 
 siders to be the great difficulty in the way of such theories. 
 
 To look to the facts ; it is impossible to deny the resemblance 
 between the long vista of a thick grove and a Gothic nave with 
 its clustered pillars, its arches and ribs stretching forth in every 
 direction and interlacing one with another, the tracery of its win- 
 dows doing the like, all its choicest details imitating the vege- 
 table world. No one probably contemplated a perfect Gothic 
 interior without being reminded of such a grove, and no one 
 who has ecclesiastical architecture much in his thoughts can 
 enter such a grove without having a vision of some fair church 
 instantly called up. The tall forest trees represent the nave, 
 those of smaller growth aisles and cloisters. This resemblance 
 is a phenomenon too striking to be merely accidental. If it 
 
 1 Gothic Architecture, p. 89.
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 317 
 
 occurs to us, much more must it have done so to the builders of 
 those days, when such groves and forests were objects far more 
 frequently set before their eyes in all parts of the country than 
 they are at the present day. 
 
 Nor is the position that Gothic architecture was very much 
 influenced by ideas of this sort at all contrary to the views which 
 have been already drawn out. To suppose that "all Gothic art is 
 merely stone wicker-work," 1 in the same sense that Grecian art is 
 stone timber-work, rests uoon no solid foundation, and it is indeed 
 absolutely repudiated by the facts of history. The real state of 
 the case seems very clearly and concisely put by Mr. Petit; 2 
 " Though we cannot look to groves or artificial structures of twigs 
 and branches, as giving an origin to the style, they may have 
 furnished ideas during its progress : the architect observed and 
 was pleased with the resemblance as it grew upon him, and to 
 this we may owe the intricate tracery of our windows, and the 
 minute ramifications of our fan-vaultings." These however, it 
 must be remarked, are among the portions of a building which 
 go farthest to determine its general character. 
 
 We must therefore suppose that the architect, when he had 
 established the pointed arch, and was in search of forms adapted 
 to his new construction, turned his mind to the vegetable world, 
 and there observed many appearances which he felt would 
 harmonize with this design. If we grant the undeniable fact 
 that foliaged capitals have a vegetable origin, why may we not 
 assign the same to the clustered pillars which support them ? 
 Such a belief no more involves assent to the notion of vegetable 
 life being the sole origin of Gothic architecture, than the exactly 
 analogous fact that the Egyptians erected not only capitals, but 
 whole columns, in imitation of the palm tree can be brought to 
 show that their architecture was not originally derived from ex- 
 cavations in the rock. And this view, while it fully accounts for 
 the undeniable resemblance between the artificial and the na- 
 tural object, is not open to the serious objections which lie 
 against the old view of forests or wicker huts being the immedi- 
 ate and only source whence the most perfect form of architec- 
 ture was derived. 
 
 1 As quoted from Sir . James Hall by Mr. Paloy, ut supra. 2 I. 118.
 
 318 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 First, it is plain that both natural forests and artificial struc- 
 tures of wicker have contributed ideas to Gothic architecture. 
 The clustered and banded pillar more closely represents a num- 
 ber of rods fastened together than any natural object whatever. 
 On the other hand, the ramifications of vaulting, and still more 
 several forms of tracery, are more easily derived from the natural 
 grove. Some kinds of the latter indeed can have hardly any 
 other origin. In the famous window at Dorchester, the artist 
 indeed had a peculiar reason for imitating the branches of a tree ; 
 but the fact that he preferred to execute his representation of 
 the Root of Jesse in the stone-work of the window rather than, 
 as was usual, in the stained glass, proves at least that he did not 
 consider imitation of vegetable life to be an inappropriate source 
 for forms of tracery. But more than this, we shall find a whole 
 class of windows of the best period of tracery, whose type is es- 
 sentially vegetable, so strikingly so that one cannot doubt that 
 they are a direct imitation of the branches of a tree. We have then 
 two sources of vegetable detail, which, though closely connected, 
 are yet in fact totally distinct. If we believe Gothic architec- 
 ture to be a mere copy of either, it must be of one only, it can- 
 not be derived from both ; and consequently each has found 
 advocates to put it forward as the sole origin of the style. But 
 if we accept either in this capacity, the imitations of the other 
 are left unaccounted for, while in the view I am endeavouring 
 to draw out, the architect might naturally draw ideas from both 
 of these, as indeed from the whole range of nature and art. 
 
 Secondly, the intervention of Romanesque is, as Mr. Paley 
 hints, altogether fatal to the belief that the Gothic church is a 
 reproduction either of the native forest or the structure of 
 wattles, in the same sense as the Grecian temple is of the timber 
 hut. A style which was such a mere copy must have followed 
 immediately upon the original ; we cannot conceive a distinct 
 and opposite style intervening between the wooden hut and the 
 earliest Doric temple, nor yet on this view between the wattled 
 church and some form of Gothic. But to draw ideas from any 
 class of objects, in order to develop and enrich rather than to 
 form a style, is a process which may surely take place at any 
 time : and we have seen that the first introducers of the pointed 
 arch were actually under a necessity of searching for details
 
 DEFINITION AND ORIGIN OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 319 
 
 which might harmonize with their design, which did not affect 
 the builders of the previous style. Hence, it is not wonderful 
 that the signs of vegetable origin are so much more strongly 
 marked in Gothic buildings than in the antecedent Romanesque. 
 Thirdly, an objection, less strong than the last, but not with- 
 out weight, has been alleged against the vegetable theory, that 
 if such had been the origin of the style, the resemblance would 
 have been most exact in the earlier specimens ; whereas the 
 forest is not so closely represented in the simple roof and plain 
 lancets of Sarum, as in the woven ribs and branching tracery of 
 York. It may be indeed answered, that one feature which has 
 been already alluded to as one of the best instances of " stone 
 wicker-work," the banded pillars, is chiefly confined to the earliest 
 specimens. And it does not always follow that the earliest imi- 
 tation should be the most exact, provided that the intention of 
 imitation be continued in the later examples. Even without 
 this cause of perpetuity, we have seen that the wide interco- 
 lumniations of the later Grecian edifices probably came nearer 
 to the primitive model than the old Doric pycnostyle. Yet the 
 general truth of the proposition must be admitted. The later 
 Gothic is, as a whole, more forest-like than the earlier ; and it 
 certainly is the general tendency of styles of architecture as 
 they advance to depart further from the sources to which they owe 
 their origin. A Doric portico is, as a whole, more essentially 
 wooden in its notion than a Corinthian one ; Earl's Barton is a 
 better specimen of " stone carpentry," than the Saxon towers at 
 Lincoln. And the cause is plain, that such kinds of architecture 
 resemble their wooden prototypes, not from a deliberate choice 
 or preference, but from the want of other models and the archi- 
 tect's ignorance of any other way of building. Hence, what- 
 ever we say of Bishop AVarburton's silvan architecture, where 
 we might perhaps look for more deliberate imitation, and conse- 
 quently for later improvements, with regard to Sir James Hall's 
 stone wicker-work, its first estate would probably have been the 
 most accurate copy, and would not have needed developing into 
 a nearer resemblance to its model. But against the view I am 
 supporting the objection has no force at all ; the brief outline of it 
 which I have adopted from Mr. Petit implies deliberate choice and 
 deliberate imitation; and consequently nothing could be more
 
 320 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 natural than that successive ages should both suggest new features 
 for imitation, and develop into greater exactness of resemblance 
 those which were imitated from the first. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to answer the principal objections 
 which I have seen advanced by others, or which have occurred to 
 myself, against the combined Ostror/othic 1 and vegetable theory, 
 as well as to state the probabilities on which it rests. But of 
 course no theory can be found which will explain every detail of 
 the style, far less the singularities of particular buildings. The 
 architects, or rather the workmen, always drew largely on their 
 own imaginations for the smaller details as well as for the gene- 
 ral conception ; and no system can be made to dovetail in with 
 all their individual vagaries. While no style has greater unity 
 than Gothic in its grand idea, none allows greater licence alike 
 in outline and in detail. But certainly the present theory seems 
 to explain more of the features of Gothic art, and that with less 
 difficulty, than any other which I have met with. 
 
 We may then define Gothic architecture as a style whose main 
 principle is vertically, a principle suggested by the pointed arch 
 and carried out in its accompanying details ; and give as a sum- 
 mary of its origin, that the pointed arch, together with some 
 other details, was borrowed from Arabian architecture ; while 
 others were developed in harmony with them, some of the most 
 important, and those most affecting the general character of 
 buildings, being derived from imitations of natural and artificial 
 combinations of vegetable objects ; and finally that the style 
 thus formed was not introduced as a whole, but was gradually 
 engrafted on the preceding Romanesque. We have now to 
 examine the process by which this was effected. 
 
 1 " Some traced the pointed arch goths. They have always been a 
 to the countries of the East ; and powerful body, and I perceive that 
 these persons were, by their brother Mr. Willis himself joins this East- 
 antiquaries, playfully termed Ostro- ern horde." Whewell, p. 6.
 
 321 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OF THE TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC ARCHI- 
 TECTURE. 
 
 After the long period during which Romanesque architecture 
 had prevailed throughout the whole of Western Europe, and had 
 been brought by the labours of so many eminent, though too 
 often nameless, men, to the perfection which we sec in our great 
 Norman cathedrals, it was not to be expected that it would, with- 
 out a struggle, resign its supremacy to a style founded on totally 
 different principles, and whose ideal of beauty was altogether at 
 variance with its own. For such, with all its resemblances, we 
 cannot but consider the Gothic to be ; massiveness and lightness, 
 undisturbed rest and the most rapid extension, a severe indivi- 
 duality of parts and their most entire subordination to the whole, 
 arc no less discordant as principles of art than the moral teach- 
 ing of the two styles is altogether different in its origin and ex- 
 pression. The resemblance consists in the affinity which two 
 genuine and consistent forms of arched architecture could 
 hardly fail to possess, in a certain impress of nationality, and, 
 above all, in the essentially Christian character of both. The 
 highest efforts of each were bestowed to reproduce the same type of 
 building, and devoted to the same use, and we are therefore accus- 
 tomed to class them together; but the thoroughly different, and 
 even contradictory character of the two, considered as styles of 
 architecture, cannot be too constantly borne in mind. 
 
 Gothic architecture, in its complete development, was not a 
 ready-made style which might be at once introduced by mere imi- 
 tation, as any foreign form of art might be introduced at present, 
 or as we see Egyptian and Chinese buildings occasionally imi- 
 tated as toys for the amusement of a wayward and perverted 
 taste. It existed only in idea ; its great principles had taken 
 root in the minds of its inventors, but their application had to 
 be worked by a series of experiments out of the materials 
 afforded by the existing style. Practice only could reveal the 
 
 Y
 
 322 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 method by which each feature of detail could he brought into 
 harmony with the necessarily indistinct conception which they 
 were endeavouring to carry out. 
 
 Even where there is direct imitation of existing models, and di- 
 rect contempt of a preceding style, the force of habit is such that 
 ideas borrowed from the latter continue to prevail. Long after 
 buildings began to be reared in direct imitation of the Italian 
 style, the Gothic principle retained a powerful influence over the 
 minds of the very men who were striving to eradicate its glories. 
 But much stronger must this influence be where there are no 
 such models, where all that the architect can do is to endeavour 
 to engraft his new principles upon the old style, and gradually 
 develop something that may realize his idea. And when we fur- 
 ther consider that then, as at all times, there must have been 
 artists of inferior powers, content to follow in the wake of 
 the master minds of the age, and to copy their forms without a 
 full appreciation of their spirit, we can readily account for every 
 degree of confusion of the principles and details of Romanesque 
 and Gothic architecture. 
 
 How far the vertical notion had entered into the minds of the 
 later Romanesque architects is an extremely difficult question. 
 But it is clear that their opportunities of expressing it must 
 have been small before the introduction of the pointed arch al- 
 lowed them to apply its dictates to the most important of all 
 constructive features. The introduction of the new form into the 
 main arcades at once changed the character of the style, for the 
 Gothic architects, unlike the Saracens, immediately clothed the 
 new construction with an appropriate form of detail. The 
 struggle between the new and old forms, both of detail and 
 construction, continued in full force during the whole latter half 
 of the twelfth century, and the period might be extended both 
 ways. The first germ of the Gothic appears earlier, the dying- 
 throes of Romanesque were prolonged much later : for a build- 
 ing that exhibits a single pointed arch has ceased to be pure Ro- 
 manesque, while one that retains a single round one, in any im- 
 portant position, has no claim to be considered as pure Gothic. 
 The various combinations of the two, spread over so long a 
 period, form one of the most interesting points of our whole 
 history; every conceivable juxtaposition of the two is found,
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC. 323 
 
 not only every intermediate stage, but unmixed details of both 
 intermingled with each other ; whole buildings, exhibiting the 
 two styles in tolerable purity, will be found nearly contemporary 
 with one another. The finest of our Romanesque naves, those 
 of Ely and Peterborough, are actually later in date than the ad- 
 vanced Transition of Canterbury choir, and but very little earlier 
 than the pure Lancet architecture of the eastern chapels at Win- 
 chester. It is manifest then that, in some cases at least, the 
 decaying style was retained in deliberate preference to the new. 
 
 There can be little doubt but that the pointed arch was the 
 first, as it is the most important, Gothic feature which was intro- 
 duced. I mean its regular employment in the principal arcades, 
 which is something altogether different from its incidental use 
 when dictated by some particular convenience or caprice. It is 
 not unusual to find the pointed arch when no other Gothic feature 
 occurs. In the rudest possible Romanesque, that of the Jersey 
 churches, the pointed arch prevails, but as it occurs almost ex- 
 clusively in barrel-vaults and in lanterns adapted to their form, 
 it is hardly fair to adduce them as examples of genuine Tran- 
 sition. But abundant examples remain in English churches of 
 the pointed arch occurring where everything else is thoroughly 
 Romanesque. In the abbeys of Buildwas and Malmsbury, and 
 elsewhere, the pointed arch, perfectly plain and retaining the 
 square section, is supported by purely Romanesque cylindrical 
 piers. The magnificent ruins of Glastonbury exhibit the same 
 stage of development in a more light and ornate form, but the 
 ornaments lavished on the pointed arches are still Romanesque. 
 But, above all, the Transitional parts of Canterbury Cathedral 
 afford the most superb examples of this period in all England ; 
 the round and pointed arches are here mixed, though the latter 
 predominates, and the details are of an equally mixed character. 
 
 All these arc instances of the general rule that the pointed 
 pier-arch is the earliest Gothic feature that was introduced. 
 There arc however some notable examples to the contrary, as 
 sometimes even pier-arches are round when otherwise they might 
 have been called Gothic. In the beautiful nave of Barnack 
 church 1 two of the arches are of an almost classical Romanesque, 
 
 1 The continued use of the round where, is a local peculiarity of Nor- 
 arch, both in pier-arches and else- thamptonshire. 
 
 \ J 
 
 y
 
 324 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 while the remainder, though round, have Early Gothic mouldings, 
 and rise from genuine clustered pillars of that style. But the 
 greatest example is Romsey Abbey, 1 in the nave of which the 
 gradual introduction of every Gothic feature may be distinctly 
 traced, and here the round arch is retained after the mouldings 
 are very far advanced towards the perfect Gothic. 
 
 The pointed arch is applied to arches of construction before it 
 is extended to arches of decoration. In all transitional styles 
 the new principle of construction is brought into play before it 
 had developed for itself an appropriate system of ornament, and 
 consequently the old principle of decoration is retained. Almost 
 all the churches of the Transition are entered by round-headed 
 doorways, and over the pointed pier-arches is usually a clere- 
 story of round-headed windows. The exception in Oxford 
 Cathedral is doubtless to be accounted for by the fact that the 
 pier-arches were retained from an elder church. But where 
 there was no such special reason, the reverse order is the usual 
 progress of the development. The windows in the Temple 
 Church and in St. Sepulchre, Northampton, are round-headed; at 
 St. Cross, 2 every pier- arch, every vaulting-arch, is pointed, but 
 the pointed form does not occur in the windows till they are 
 completely Gothic in other respects. 
 
 And this is still more strongly the case with regard to door- 
 ways. There was no feature on which more care and ornament 
 was bestowed by our English architects of the Romanesque 
 period, and none which attained a higher degree of beauty at 
 their hands. The Romanesque doorway therefore stood its 
 ground longer than the Romanesque pier or window ; not only 
 was it often retained when the rest of the contemporary church 
 was destroyed, but it continued to be reproduced in nearly all its 
 fulness after the days of pure Gothic had set in. Our Transitional 
 churches afford numerous examples of beautiful round-headed 
 doorways, whose mouldings exhibit a mixture of Romanesque 
 and early Gothic details, the chevron for instance and the tooth- 
 ornament side by side, with a great predominance of sectional 
 mouldings; Cuddesden church affords two excellent examples. 
 
 1 See Mr. Petit's description in 2 See the author's description of 
 
 the Proceedings of the Archseolo- St. Cross, in the same volume of 
 gical Institute for 1845. Proceedings.
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC. 325 
 
 Others again retain the round arch with purely Gothic mould- 
 ings, a feature prevalent throughout the whole of the Lancet 
 style, though certainly a lingering trace of Romanesque. 
 
 In some foreign countries the development took a contrary 
 stage, the pointed doorway appearing, long before the introduc- 
 tion of any other Gothic feature, in the Lombard and Provencal 
 forms of Romanesque. "The round-headed doorways/' ob- 
 serves Mr. Petit, " of St. Michele and other churches of Pavia, 
 which are much higher than our Norman ones, might have been 
 considered ungraceful in their proportions, while the architect 
 was not willing to dispense with height, nor able, without spoil- 
 ing the whole front, to obtain greater width : the resource was a 
 pointed arch." 1 These examples however, which have simply a 
 pointed arch introduced for convenience in one particular kind 
 of position, without affecting the general character of the style, 
 are hardly to be reckoned as genuine Transition. In England, 
 where we may fairly say that the Romanesque doorway attained 
 a much higher degree of perfection than in any other country, 
 and was built, moreover, of a proportion far better adapted to 
 the form of arch employed, the round arch, as we have seen, 
 long maintained its supremacy, and the pointed arch with 
 Romanesque details, so common as a pier-arch, is comparatively 
 seldom found in doorways. 2 
 
 The next of the Gothic features enumerated in the last chap- 
 ter was the new form of abacus, round or octagonal instead of 
 square. As the pointed arch was the first, the round abacus 
 was the last feature of the new style to come into general use ; 
 the Romanesque form survived all the other details of that style. 
 Even in England we find it where every arch is pointed, and 
 every moulding Early Gothic, and this not, like the continued 
 use of the round arch, confined chiefly to a single architectural 
 feature or to a few geographical localities ; its continuance is uni- 
 versal. It prevails in the nave of Wells Cathedral ; and even in 
 Romsey Abbey, where the pointed arch is not the first Gothic 
 feature to appear, its first appearance is still accompanied with 
 
 1 Church Architecture, i. 117. the finest, studies of the Transition: 
 3 The west dr or at Rothwell is a others occur at Sleaford, Brack- 
 well knowt and splendid excep- ley, &c. 
 tion the whole church is one of
 
 326 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the square abacus, the Gothic form of this last feature being a 
 still later development. Every student will remember number- 
 less instances of the kind, while, on the other hand, examples of a 
 round abacus preceding other Gothic features are excessively rare. 
 A few may occur in pillars, as in the destroyed Church of St. 
 Thomas at Winchester; but in that portion of the building, an 
 opening had been made for its introduction, by the incidental 
 similarity of the round impost of many cylindrical piers. 1 The 
 octagonal abacus, though much less frequently employed than 
 the round in Early Gothic, may probably have been actually the 
 earlier form. The abaci in the Roman Ionic and Corinthian 
 orders are quasi-octagonal, the angles of the square being cham- 
 fered off; and similar examples occur in the choir of Canter- 
 bury ; the step from this to the genuine octagonal abacus with 
 equal sides is very easy. 
 
 The square abacus appears to have prevailed in doorways 
 longer than elsewhere ; probably because it is so often the con- 
 tinuation of a string following the angles of the rectangular 
 mass on which the shafts are set. To round it off in such a 
 position is manifestly a farther development than the similar 
 treatment of a shaft standing detached, or projecting from the 
 surface of a wall. 
 
 "With regard to the pillars, the course of the Transition runs 
 almost parallel with the development of the Gothic abaci. A 
 thoroughly Norman pillar is but rarely found with a round 
 abacus, or a true Gothic one with a square ; the long continuance 
 of the latter is, in England at least, chiefly confined to the 
 smaller decorative shafts. Thus wherever the square abacus oc- 
 curs, it will be found that the pier itself still retains strong 
 traces of Romanesque ; it is not the true Gothic cluster, but the 
 rectangular mass with shafts in the angles. And where these 
 forms are intermingled, as in the chancel of St. Sepulchre's, 
 Northampton, the square abacus still crowns the Romanesque 
 respond, while it is a true clustered pillar which alone is finished 
 with the round. But before this great change had come over 
 the style, the approaching Gothic had already exercised no slight 
 influence over the forms assumed by the piers. The massive 
 cylindrical pier seems to have gradually gone out of fashion 
 1 See above, page 24 1 .
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC. 327 
 
 during the Transitional period; it is common enough at its 
 commencement, but it is not usual to find examples like the 
 nave of St. Cross, where this form of pier is continued with 
 Early Gothic detail. The rectangular pier becomes much less 
 massive, the shafts attached more numerous, and the spaces be- 
 tween them little more than projecting angles, so that a great 
 step is made towards the true clustered column. The columnar 
 pier too becomes more elongated, as at Barnack and Polebrook. 
 The only instance of its occurring to any great extent in an 
 English cathedral of this date is found in the Corinthianizing 
 columns of the Metropolitan church. This is essentially a foreign 
 feature, and may doubtless be attributed to the Continental birth 
 of William of Sens. The octagonal form also becomes more 
 common ; in the nave of Oxford Cathedral, and some parts of 
 Peterborough, we have round and octagonal piers alternately. 
 
 We now come to the introduction of the fourth Gothic feature, 
 the mouldings. The introduction of mere rounds, attached to 
 surfaces and set in angles, like shafts, presents of itself no ap- 
 proximation to the Gothic system of breaking up the original 
 section. But though not in themselves Transitional, and actu- 
 ally adding heaviness to the heavy Romanesque, they seem to 
 have prepared the way for Gothic mouldings. The heaviness of 
 the rounds is removed by inserting a hollow between ; and when 
 this is done, the plane of the arch is now cut into, its section 
 is altered, and Gothic mouldings have begun. This process seems 
 to have commenced, in buildings at least of any richness, soon 
 after the introduction of the pointed arch ; the mouldings have 
 made considerable advances at Canterbury, Romsey, and St. 
 Cross. In the first stage the new system is made only to affect 
 each order of the arch, so that the mouldings do not take in the 
 whole arch at one sweep, but form strongly marked groups ac- 
 cording to the orders of the arch. Thus sometimes, especially 
 in doorways, one order will be channelled with a series of sec- 
 tional mouldings, while another is left square, and its enrich- 
 ment derived from surface-carving. 
 
 We shall also find important changes affecting capitals and 
 bases. It is very remarkable that the first step towards the de- 
 velopment of the foliaged Gothic capital should also have been a 
 marked return towards classical models. The capitals at Canter-
 
 328 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 bury, and those figured in the Glossary from Soissons and 
 Blois, are much more accurate imitations of the Corinthian than 
 those of the earlier days of Romanesque. But the reason is 
 clear ; the Romanesque capital is a sculptured mass, the Corin- 
 thian and the Early Gothic are alike a bell with projecting 
 foliage ; so that an approach to the one must necessarily be so 
 far an approach to the other. The change in the form of capital 
 was a necessary portion of the Gothic development ; and it is 
 not to be wondered at if its first application should approximate 
 to the forms which had always hitherto been more or less objects 
 of imitation. The true Gothic foliage however differs widely 
 from the Corinthian, and, though infinitely diversified, retains a 
 character of its own. It is a distinction rather to be at once 
 perceived by the eye than explained by description. The earliest 
 form, with which alone we are at present concerned, is remark- 
 able for the profuse use of stalks with trefoil leaves, which at 
 once distinguishes it from Classical and Romanesque sculpture. 
 The cushion capital, especially in its multiplied form, survived 
 through the Transitional period, and has left traces of itself in 
 the Early Gothic, both on the ponderous columns of St. Cross, 
 and the soaring clusters of St. Cuthbert's at Wells. 
 
 In the bases also there is a return, whether accidental or 
 designed it might be difficult to determine, to the models 
 afforded by Classical antiquity. That the Early Gothic 1 base is 
 identical with the Attic has often been observed ; its mouldings 
 are the same, a hollow between two rounds, though, as the 
 Grecian examples differ greatly from one another in the propor- 
 tions given to these mouldings, the Gothic bases vary still more, 
 and an infinite improvement is effected in the scotia, or hollow, 
 "being contracted in width and cut much deeper, which pro- 
 duces a strongly marked and very effective shadow." 2 In 
 another respect, however, there is a deviation from classical pre- 
 cedent ; the plinth had hitherto been usually square, but now it 
 becomes of a form more adapted to the mould'ngs above, and 
 to the shaft itself, namely round or octagonal. This, of course, 
 tends to the fusing of parts together, and, as far as regards the 
 
 1 That namely which is distinc- any means universally found in it. 
 tive of the style, not that it is by 2 Glossary, Art. Base.
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC. 329 
 
 column itself, is strikingly analogous to the change in the form 
 of the abacus, although of much less importance in the general 
 aspect of a building. These changes commence during the 
 period of Transition, but the square plinths extended into the 
 Early Gothic. 
 
 The use of decorative arcades is continued to a great extent 
 during this period. The west front of Ely Cathedral is a superb 
 example of this kind. We here find the round, pointed, and tre- 
 foil arches used promiscuously, and a frequent use of quatrefoils 
 as ornaments. 
 
 ^The windows differ from those of the pure Romanesque 
 chiefly in the form of the arch, preserving the short and broad 
 proportions of the common Norman shafted window. They 
 appear to be more frequently preserved in towers than elsewhere. 
 The arches are often very obtusely pointed, and are sometimes 
 not struck from two centres at all, but are merely semicircular 
 arches with the apex somewhat raised. In Canterbury Cathedral 
 the round, the pointed, and the trefoil arch, all occur in Tran- 
 sitional windows, as well as some of circular form. The occur- 
 rence of these last, at least of any size and with diverging shafts 
 or mullions, is, in English llomancsquc, looked upon as a sign of 
 Transition. It is, however, merely a sign of date, as they do 
 not seem suggestive of any Gothic principle, and had been long 
 before commonly used in the llomancsquc of Lombardy. 
 
 We will now turn our view to other countries. The Transition 
 in France would seem, from the accounts of Dr. Whcwell and Mr. 
 Petit, not to have been continued during so long a period, or to 
 have presented so severe a struggle as in England. The develop- 
 ment far outran us in some respects, and in others fell far short 
 of us ; hence the peculiar character of the French Karly Gothic 
 to be hereafter spoken of. The traccricd window especially 
 seems to have been known almost from the first introduction of 
 the pointed arch ; and a building which systematically employs 
 such windows, together with the pointed arch, can hardly be called 
 anything but Gothic, though strong traces of Romanesque may 
 linger about it in other respects. No one would call Amiens a 
 Transitional church. French architecture passed gently from 
 Romanesque to complete Geometrical Gothic, effecting to a cer- 
 tain extent a compromise with the preceding style. Hence, as the
 
 330 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 pure Lancet style barely exists, so the Transition, as we have it irf 
 England, occurs less extensively, and is for the most part a kind 
 of Lancet style retaining generally the square abacus. 
 
 To this class may be referred most of the French churches 
 enumerated by Mr. Petit in his chapter on the Transition style. 
 Geneva, Lausanne, Dijon, Lisieux, St. John at Brussels, seem 
 mostly to answer this description. Many of these are exceed- 
 ingly splendid buildings, and in general effect differ but little 
 from our Lancet style ; still the Romanesque leaven lurks about 
 them in sufficient strength to prevent their being altogether 
 classed with it. Some have splendid fronts, which, as generally 
 exhibiting the arcade as their chief ornament, instead of the pro- 
 minent rose- window and the gigantic doorway, approach very near 
 to our Lancet compositions. Still a squai'e abacus, a Romanesque 
 moulding, an intermingled round arch, show that we are hardly 
 yet in the region of pure Gothic. . The abaci are intermixed, 
 round, octagonal, and square, the latter seeming to prevail ; and 
 columns of semi-classical character, of which Canterbury affords 
 almost a solitary instance in England, are frequently employed. 
 Lancet windows, of various proportions, but often very short 
 and broad, are most usual ; but circular windows, with or without 
 tracery, and occasionally large pointed windows without tracery, 
 occur. The tooth-moulding is rare, and, when it occurs, is not 
 cut with the same boldness as in England. 
 
 It is perhaps in outline that the change from Romanesque is 
 most perceptible. Sometimes, as at Lisieux, the heavy Norman 
 grouping is preserved, but in other cases tall towers begin to 
 shoot up, and it is perhaps in their details that we may, with 
 Dr. Whewell, best trace the gradual development of the style. 
 In all we may see a feature which marks them as greatly ad- 
 vanced over our Transitional buildings, the liberal use of boldly 
 projecting, and even flying, buttresses. In short these are Gothic 
 churches ; they are a very severe vai'iety of our Lancet style, re- 
 taining some Romanesque features, especially in the shafts and 
 piers. 
 
 The German Transition, so elaborately drawn out by Dr. 
 Whewell, and so beautifully illustrated by Mr. Petit, appears to 
 be a style of much greater interest and importance. The only 
 point in which the course of development in Germany at all ap-
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC. 331 
 
 proximates to the French is that both pass from Romanesque to 
 Geometrical, without stopping to produce, as in our own country, 
 a complete Gothic style with lancet windows. Otherwise the 
 aspect of the Transition is totally different in the two countries ; 
 in France it is Gothic with a lingering trace of Romanesque, in 
 Germany, Romanesque with a slight approximation to Gothic. 
 It must not however be supposed that Germany was at all be- 
 hind the rest of Western Christendom in architectural develop- 
 ment ; the reverse is notoriously true, as no country sooner pro- 
 duced complete and beautiful Gothic buildings. It would seem 
 that a fact which we have observed 1 to a certain extent in England 
 was of wider application in Germany, namely the simultaneous 
 employment of Romanesque and Gothic. There is little doubt 
 that Romanesque was used in Germany during the first part 
 of the thirteenth century, contemporary with the earliest Gothic 
 buildings of that country ; Romanesque, if not altogether pure, 
 yet still, if a hard line is to be drawn, certainly to be called 
 Romanesque and not Gothic. It is easily to be conceived 
 that, if a direct contest between the two styles took place 
 in England, much more might it be looked for in those parts 
 of Germany where the arts and civilization of Rome had left 
 traces so much more enduring and extensive. It would seem 
 that in Germany Gothic architecture rose much more sud- 
 denly, and presented itself in an almost complete form, while 
 Romanesque was still in being ; it was not, as in England, de- 
 veloped out of Romanesque, but appeared as an antagonist 
 style. Hence the hard struggle between the two forms, and the 
 Romanesque character of the German Transition ; which does 
 not so much approximate to the Gothic, as borrows a few of its 
 forms, such as might be adapted to its own principles and its 
 own construction. In the beautiful words of Mr. Petit, " while 
 in other countries the Romanesque features faded gradually 
 away before the new style of architecture, Rhenish Germany 
 clung to them to the last, and abandoned them with manifest 
 reluctance ; as if that mighty river, that bore the tide of Roman 
 civilization into the heart of Europe, had infused into the nations 
 through which it flowed, a veneration of Roman memorials; 
 with a wish to preserve and perpetuate them, by establishing 
 1 See above, page 323.
 
 332 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 according to the principles of their construction, a kindred and 
 lasting style of their own." 1 
 
 While examining its features more at length, we shall be 
 struck with its utter diversity from our own Transition ; with us 
 the pointed pier-arch is the very first Gothic feature introduced ; 
 in Germany it often remains round, as at Bonn, while in 
 other respects the building has made some progress towards 
 Gothic. In England again the pier for the most part gains in 
 height, in Germany it becomes broader and lower than hereto- 
 fore. These circumstances however may be easily explained ; 
 pointed vaulting having been already introduced from reasons of 
 convenience, a similar feeling 2 to that which introduced the 
 pointed lantern arches of the Provencal churches, might dic- 
 tate the use of the pointed arch in the clerestory at Bonn, while 
 there was no such reason for altering the accustomed form of 
 the pier-arches. This is of course a cause which in England, 
 where vaulting large spaces was hardly practised before the 
 Transitional period, could have no influence to disturb the natu- 
 ral progress of the development. The shortening the pier arises 
 from another source, the introduction of the triforium, which 
 had maintained a dubious existence in the pure Romanesque of 
 Germany, but during the Transition came into extensive use, not 
 only as an architectural feature, but as an actual gallery to receive 
 part of the congregation. The natural effect of this was to shorten 
 the pier, as it was manifestly desirable to have the gallery as 
 little exalted as might be consistent with the general character of 
 the building. The same cause might also tend to continue the use 
 of the round arch, as the pointed must either have raised the whole 
 arcade, or still farther diminished the height of the piers. 
 
 The rectangular mass of the Romanesque pier is preserved, 
 but it is more and more broken up by shafts in the angles ; 
 and the columns and pilasters lose their classical proportions. 
 Still the tendency to flat pilasters and the general treating of 
 flat surfaces as shafts prevails ; it is very manifest at Bonn. 
 ^ here columns are employed, as in apses, they arc often clus- 
 tered in twos and threes. The windows become larger than in 
 the pure Romanesque, and exhibit a great intermixture of round 
 and pointed arches. A disposition to group windows in triplets 
 1 I. 150. See above, page 224.
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC. 333 
 
 prevails to a certain extent ; the clerestory at Bonn hardly differs, 
 except in the square abaci, from those of our own Early Gothic. 
 Circular windows are also found, and a very characteristic form 
 is introduced, namely the German fan-light, a multifoil with its 
 lower part squared off, or, as Dr. Whewell 1 describes it, " the 
 upper part of a circle (more than half) of which the circumfer- 
 ence is cut into round notches." Decorative arches have, like 
 our own, the round, pointed, and trefoil forms intermingled. 
 The doorways are usually round-headed, retaining the sculp- 
 tured tympanum. 
 
 It is however in the external outline that we may most plainly 
 discern the change which had come upon German architecture 
 since the days of Spires and Laach. Not that this has anything 
 directly to do with the introduction of the Gothic style ; though 
 it would seem only reasonable that the approach of the most 
 perfect form of architecture, the noblest and most genuine 
 creation of the Church, should be attended by a confor- 
 mity in the plan of the buildings themselves to the general 
 practice of the rest of Christendom. The varied and pictu- 
 resque outline of the earlier German Minster was the result of 
 as great an ecclesiastical anomaly, not to say corruption, as can 
 be imagined ; the double choir is the mainspring of the whole 
 system. This now gradually vanishes, and with it its natural ac- 
 companiments, the western apse and octagon, though a trace of 
 the old resemblance of the east and west ends is to be found in 
 the frequent retention of the pair of eastern towers, especially 
 in such cases as Andernach, where there are two at each end 
 without any central lantern. But most commonly the churches 
 of the Transition exhibit the central and western towers of our 
 own churches, the eastern pair shrinking into mere turrets; 
 this order however, is sometimes reversed, and the principal 
 lowers arc found at the east end. 
 
 The towers exhibit the same diversity of capping which is so 
 remarkable in the German Romanesque, but the pitch of the 
 gables becomes higher, and the cornice under them lighter. 
 Both the towers and the spires which crown them gain in height 
 and lightness. To judge from those churches of which I have seen 
 engravings, the central lantern seems to be usually octagonal 
 
 1 Paec 110.
 
 33-1 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 and the subordinate towers square. The octagon itself becomes 
 higher and lighter, losing the character of the cupola in that 
 of the tower. Nothing can surpass the combination of that of 
 Bonn with its lofty spire, soaring over the smaller steeples flank- 
 ing the apse. 
 
 The apse itself exhibits one of the most remarkable changes 
 introduced by the Transition. From semicircular, it now becomes 
 polygonal. This is a necessary result of the employment of the 
 pointed arch, which, as Mr. Petit 1 observes, " can scarcely be said 
 to be perfect while it exhibits a double curvature, which must be 
 the case if it be placed in a convex wall." It would appear that 
 this very important development is due to the architects of 
 llhenish Germany, where it appears in chm*ches where the style 
 differs but little from Romanesque. In France, on the contrary, 
 churches far more advanced retain the semicircular termination. 
 
 It may however admit of a question, whether the explanation 
 above given, although undoubtedly true, contains the whole of the 
 truth. The use of the polygonal form is itself a Gothic develop- 
 ment, apart from any consideration of its being better adapted to 
 a particular form of arch. The continuous sweep of the circle is 
 better adapted to Romanesque, and, as a general rule, to some- 
 what massive and squat proportions, and to unbroken, and if it 
 be not a contradiction in terms flat surfaces. But the polygo- 
 nal form is altogether in harmony with the aspiring character of 
 Gothic architecture ; the angles afford a strong vertical line, 
 and the tall narrow faces are exactly what the style delights in ; 
 besides the opportunity given for buttresses, pinnacles, and a 
 form of roof more aspiring than the loftiest cone. That the 
 polygon is not suited for a structure of very great height, and is 
 therefore more frequently used as a finish for a square tower 
 than as the form of the tower itself, is owing to the very fact 
 that this shape gives so much greater apparent height and slen- 
 derness than any other, that a tower which is octagonal from the 
 base ought to cover a greater extent of ground-plan than a square 
 one of the same elevation. For this reason a polygonal respond 
 or decorative shaft is seldom pleasing, though of course the 
 application of the form to such features, as well as to pillars, 
 bases, abaci, fonts, pulpits, &c, are all applications of the same 
 
 1 I. 139.
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC. 335 
 
 principle. In most of these the form of the arch can have no 
 influence whatever. 
 
 That the German Transitional apse is an example of this as- 
 piring character of the polygon there can he no doubt. It 
 becomes loftier, often equalling the choir in height, and begins 
 to be, like those of complete Gothic churches, rather a termina- 
 tion of the choir than a distinct attached building. The 
 gables with which the sides are finished, though clearly bor- 
 rowed from the accustomed finish of towers, point in the 
 same direction, and as far as regards the compartments them- 
 selves, with admirable effect. But with regard to the gene- 
 ral outline, they are not desirable, as the manner in which they 
 require to be joined to the main roof of the apse is decidedly 
 clumsy, and too much like domestic work. Hence they seem to 
 have gone out of fashion in their own country, and not to have 
 been introduced to any great extent elsewhere. It is in these 
 apses also that the buttress first makes its appearance ; it has a 
 pedimental capping, but is for the present of very modest pro- 
 jection. 
 
 As was to be expected, the polygonal form is not confined to 
 the apse, but is generally substituted for the circular on all oc- 
 casions on which the latter was employed in the unmixed Ro- 
 manesque. Thus the round turrets which had been previously 
 common seem at least to become more rare. But the most 
 important application of this new form is in polygonal churches, 
 which arc the manifest successors of the old round ones ; 
 and it shows most strikingly the great and necessary in- 
 fluence of this change, that it should have affected buildings 
 so rare and of so peculiar a character. The most remarkable in- 
 stance is the polygonal church of St. Gcreon, at Cologne, which 
 is a late example of Transition, (being built, according to M. de 
 Lassaulx, 1 between 1212 and 1227,) and has flying buttresses. 
 Another is St. Matthew's Chapel on the Moselle, also of the 
 thirteenth century. It is built on the general plan of a round 
 church, but both aisles and clerestory are hexagonal ; a semi- 
 circular apse however is attached. The, pier-arches are pointed, 
 but the doorway and the arch into the apse are round-headed, 
 
 1 Whcwell, p. 211.
 
 36 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 aud without " not a pointed arch is to be seen ; the trefoil arches 
 appear to have been adopted as an appropriate Romanesque or- 
 nament, rather than as having a tendency towards Gothic; and 
 the round-headed window and corbel-table prevail." 1 There are 
 also some examples of the fan-light. We may also observe that 
 this change to the polygon affected round churches even in 
 England. St. Sepulchre at Northampton has its piers arranged 
 on an octagon, which form is of course preserved in the clere- 
 story ; Little Maplestead, like St. Matthew's, with which Mr. 
 Petit compares it, has a similar use of the hexagonal form ; but 
 in both these cases the outer walls are semicircular. Nowhere 
 is the character of the German Transition better exemplified 
 than in the magnificent Cathedral of Limburg. 2 One could 
 hardly have supposed that a church so visibly belonging to 
 an imperfect style could have been capable of such a sublime 
 effect. But the reason is manifestly to be found in its very 
 slight deviation from the old Romanesque model, upon the 
 type of which it is conceived throughout. Though all the 
 constructive, and most of the decorative arches, are pointed, 
 and there is something very like tracery in the west front, yet 
 the whole effect is Romanesque; the outline is one of the finest 
 of that class, and in the magnificent interior the arches are per- 
 fectly plain, and the piers square masses with tall vaulting-shafts 
 attached to the principal pairs. 
 
 The more the several features are examined of the German 
 Transition, the more clearly does it appear to be, as Mr. Petit 
 says, only a " modified Romanesque." It is not even a lifeless 
 Gothic, its whole character and conception belong to the elder 
 style. Within, the change is really little more than an occasional 
 use of the pointed arch ; without, the appearance is more altered, 
 but is still essentially Romanesque and not in any degree Gothic. 
 The outline is somewhat different, but it is still one of essentially 
 the same kind; the towers retain the marked character of the 
 German Romanesque ; the numerous small stages and divisions 
 remain as before; the windows may occasionally be pointed, but 
 they are not elongated, so as to give an essentially different as- 
 pect to the tower, as in the contemporary French style. The 
 
 1 Petit, i. 14j. - Illustrated in detail in Moller's Denkmaler.
 
 TRANSITION FROM ROMANESQUE TO GOTHIC. 337 
 
 parts both of arrangement and detail are the same; windows, 
 pilasters, corbel-tables, preserve the same character, modified per- 
 chance in minuter respects ; there are the same short choirs, the 
 same central octagons, the same love of apses and turrets. Even 
 the changes introduced at this time are by no means invariably 
 approximations to Gothic, some of them "are in themselves," as 
 Mr. Petit 1 observes, " by no means of a Transition character, 
 that is, calculated to advance the completion of Gothic, but 
 rather improvements and refinements on the Romanesque. I 
 
 may instance the fan-window, and even the foliated circle 
 
 Whether these are really improvements, .... need not now to 
 be discussed : they clearly were meant to be so ; and showed a 
 disposition to preserve and complete, rather than to abandon, the 
 Romanesque." 
 
 We see then the entirely different course taken by the Transi- 
 tion in the three principal abodes of Gothic architecture. In 
 France the Gothic style accomplished its victory too hastily for 
 it to be quite complete; the conquest was but superficial; the 
 old element still remained, no longer indeed predominant, but 
 by no means eradicated. Germany exhibits a hard struggle be- 
 tween two equal powers, and for some time a divided empire ; 
 the capacities of the victor have therefore time to mature them- 
 selves before the fall of the rival style ; there is no interregnum, 
 but the vacant throne is at once filled naturally and gracefully. 
 In England the Gothic principle arises as it were within the very 
 camp of its adversary, and advances gradually and stealthily, 
 winning some point at every step, till the process of encroach- 
 ment is complete, and the rival forms have vanished oik; after 
 another. France was the first to produce tall clerestories, flying 
 buttresses, and traceried windows, while the pillars on which they 
 rest arc still more than half Romanesque. Germany, in her still 
 Romanesque churches, developed the polygonal ground plan. 
 But England did more; not only is her transition more gradual 
 and consistent than that of either of her neighbours, she has a 
 yet higher praise. Both of them passed at once from Roman- 
 esque to Geometrical Gothic; the struggle is between these two: 
 the Romanesque pier often supports the Geometrical window ; the 
 Lancet window is everywhere a mark of transition. England has 
 
 1 I. 80.
 
 338 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 her Romanesque and her Geometrical in no less perfection than 
 Germany or France, but, while they had but an intermingling 
 of discordant elements, she produced a style of her own, inferior 
 to none in purity of Gothic principle, and surpassing every other 
 in the matchless beauty of its detail. Against the Romanesque 
 of Bonn, and Sinzig, and the Church of the Apostles, against 
 the imperfect Gothic of Lausanne and Notre Dame de Dijon, we 
 have to set the pure and perfect Gothic of our first national ar- 
 chitecture, that of Sarum, and Lincoln, and Ely's unrivalled 
 Presbytery. This style is our own, but produced, not instead 
 of, but in addition to Romanesque and Geometrical surpassed 
 by no other country. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 It has been remarked in an earlier chapter, 1 that the superiority 
 of Gothic architecture, considered as an intellectual production, 
 over all other forms of the art is nowhere more distinctly shown 
 than in the nature of its subdivisions or subordinate styles. In 
 treating of Romanesque, the divisions which we established were 
 for the most part little more than national or geographical ; we 
 showed what particular variety of a style prevailed in such a 
 country at such a time, but each had to be defined by details, 
 there is no general idea pervading each. German and Norman 
 Romanesque are very different, and we can, by attending to the 
 peculiarities of outline and detail, readily distinguish them, but 
 one could hardly define the distinction in a philosophical man- 
 ner. It may be that Romanesque, as the architecture of rest, 
 could not admit of different ways of expressing its idea, at least 
 not of such as might be defined in this manner, while Gothic, 
 the style of vertical extension, might allow several ways of at- 
 taining that extension. At all events we can define the different 
 forms of Gothic architecture in a more perfect manner than by 
 enumerating the details of each. 
 
 1 See p. 27.
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 339 
 
 The forms of Gothic architecture, as they occur in this coun- 
 try, are usually stated as three, Early English, Decorated, and 
 Perpendicular. The absurdity of the names has been already suffi- 
 ciently exposed, and another nomenclature, namely First-Pointed, 
 Middle-Pointed, and Third-Pointed, has been latterly used in the 
 publications of the Ecclesiological Society. This is intended to 
 be applied not only to English architecture, but to Gothic in 
 general. In this I cannot but think that it fails. " First- 
 Pointed," in any form worthy the name of Gothic, is exclusively 
 English ; " Third-Pointed " must denote two such different 
 styles as Flamboyant and Perpendicular; to yoke which under 
 one title is clearly inconsistent in writers 1 who assert the former, 
 and deny the latter, to be a legitimate development of the Gothic 
 principle. 
 
 On the other hand the division which will be here adopted, 
 one practically identical with that drawn out by Mr. Petit, and 
 which has, implicitly at least, the further sanction of Dr. 
 Whewell, 2 will recognize but two distinct forms of Gothic archi- 
 tecture, those namely which Mr. Petit has described as the Early 
 Complete and Late Complete Gothic. These I call the Early 
 and the Continuous Gothic, the former answering to the Early 
 English and Geometrical Decorated of the common nomcncla- 
 ture, the latter including Flowing Decorated, Flamboyant, and 
 Perpendicular. An objection has been made that the two names 
 do not exactly harmonize or balance each other, and I quite feel 
 that a descriptive name for the Early style, could I have found 
 an appropriate one, would have rendered it less imperfect. Yet 
 Early may be taken as being to a certain extent a descrip- 
 tive term ; it may very well imply a period when the architecture 
 is actually complete, having the Gothic principle sufficiently de- 
 veloped to mark it as not belonging to an imperfect style, and 
 yet when it has not fully developed all its capabilities. Put 
 however this may be, I will no longer detain the reader from Mr. 
 Petit's masterly description of the characters of the two styles. 
 " We now come to the full development of the style, in what 
 
 1 Ecclcsiologist, V. 2.'3o, 211. Churches, especially in the original 
 
 2 Unless I greatly misunderstand Preface, and in chapter ii., sect. 3. 
 many indications in his Gorman 
 
 z 2
 
 340 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 may be called the Early Complete Gothic. In this we find 
 shafts of great height clustered together, with delicately flowered 
 capitals, and a round or polygonal abacus : lofty pointed arches, 
 with rich and deep mouldings ; ribbed vaults, and windows 
 formed of a combination of lights with geometrical tracery. 
 Flying buttresses, elegant pinnacles, and angular canopies, 
 which arc often crocketed, enrich the exterior. Foliation is used 
 freely, but is not essential. The shaft is introduced abundantly, 
 and may be said to mark the style in large buildings. Some of 
 our most finished Early English and Early Decorated churches 
 represent this style in perfection ; and fine examples abound 
 on the Continent. We might name Cologne, the nave of 
 Strasburg, parts of Freyburg, Amiens, and many others. 
 
 " Yet, complete and beautiful as this style is, it was perhaps felt 
 to have a certain degree of severity, which might lead it into the 
 danger of becoming monotonous. A new element was therefore 
 introduced a prevalence of angular edges, instead of convex or 
 cylindrical surfaces : by means of these, with narrow flat faces 
 and bold concavities, a rich effect is produced, at less expense 
 and in greater variety. Shafts with capitals, though often used, 
 were no longer the same prominent feature ; foliation became 
 much more necessary. A great alteration took place in the tra- 
 cery, which, instead of being formed of geometrical figures touch- 
 ing each other, branched out into ramifications, either in free 
 and bold curves, as in our Late Decorated and the continental 
 Flamboyant, or in lines preserving the vertical direction of the 
 mullions, as in our Perpendicular. The mullion itself also had a 
 more decided character, and not only appeared in the window, 
 but was often repeated in panelling over a large surface of the 
 building. The form of the arch, too, was more varied, especially 
 at a late period ; and transoms, and even square heads to win- 
 dows, were admitted, by which they might be more easily adapted 
 to the space they were designed to occupy. This style we will 
 call the Late Complete Gothic, which both in England and on 
 the Continent comprehends a very extensive range of buildings." 1 
 
 Such are the chief characteristics of the two styles as exhi- 
 bited in their details. We must now see how far those details 
 
 1 I. 2022.
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISION'S OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 341 
 
 are but the index of a pervading principle in each ; or, more 
 strictly, of two distinct ways of carrying out the general Gothic 
 principle. In Romanesque architecture, as was natural, and 
 even necessary, in a style whose chief aim was the negation of 
 all extension, the parts, even to the minutest detail, retain a 
 severe separate existence, each may be contemplated as some- 
 thing by itself. Now as these separate points are stoppages to 
 the vertical progress of the eye, it is the natural tendency of 
 Gothic architecture to destroy this separate existence of the parts, 
 and to subordinate them to the whole, so that they cannot be 
 contemplated apart from it. And the extent which is allowed 
 to this principle seems to mark the distinction between the two 
 great divisions of Gothic. The Early is marked by the applica- 
 tion of the principle of destroying the separate existence of parts 
 only to the construction of the primary parts of the building 
 that is, it subordinates the shaft and capital and arch to the 
 whole formed by them, the pier-arch, the triforium, the window, 
 &c., without completely subordinating these to the whole ; the 
 secondary parts lose their separate existence, but the primary 
 ones retain theirs. They stdl remain distinct, united by har- 
 monious juxtaposition, but not actually fused into a single exist- 
 ence. The Continuous on the other hand effects the subordina- 
 tion of the secondary parts more completely, while it extends 
 the application of the principle to the farther subordination of 
 the primary parts to the whole, so that the parts sink into nothing 
 of themselves, but exist merely as parts of the whole. The 
 beauty then of the Early is that of parts ; the slim and delicate 
 shaft, the graceful foliage of the capital, the bold rounds and 
 hollows of the mouldings, not only exist, but are brought into 
 prominent notice, they are forced on the eye at the first glance ; in 
 the Continuous they are not noticed, if they exist, but it is the 
 whole alone that is seen and contemplated. Hence of course; the 
 details of the Early style are in themselves far more graceful ; the 
 nave of Canterbury cannot boast of the rich foliage or toothing 
 of the presbytery of Kly ; its beauty is that of the perfect 
 whole, whose parts exist but in and through that which they 
 constitute. 
 
 Let us now see how this principle is really carried out in 
 buildings of the Continuous styles, the late Decorated and Per-
 
 342 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 pendicular ; and first as to the primary parts. One of the most 
 remarkable instances is in the disposition to do away with any- 
 thing like an unoccupied surface, a mere wall ; this is accom- 
 plished by making the parts as much as possible fit into one 
 another. A fully developed building of the Continuous style 
 will have its window-arches correspond as nearly as possible with 
 those of the vaulting, so that the window fits into the roof; the 
 triforium will sink into a mere panelling, so that scarcely any- 
 thing will be left unoccupied but the spandrils of the pier-arches, 
 which, if ornamented in the usual manner, will form a whole 
 together with the arch; and the lines of panelling being continued 
 in the window tracery, and the vaulting springing from shafts 
 rising from the ground, every part will be connected and fit in 
 with every other part, and the general effect will be that of a 
 perfect unbroken whole, where no individual part is allowed to 
 break the order of subordination. 
 
 The carrying out of the Continuous principle is manifest in 
 all the details ; everything that could hinder the vertical progress 
 of the eye is omitted ; the panel is substituted for the arcade, 
 the shaft is no longer necessary for the jamb of the richest 
 window, and a new form of pier arises more consistent with the 
 style ; even in the cusping of windows, though now become, not 
 a mere addition to the richness of a building, but an actual es- 
 sential to the production of any degree of beauty, we may ob- 
 serve the more complete subordination of parts, as the cusps do 
 not now stand out individually and distinctly, as is often the 
 case in the Early style. 
 
 One or two of the details mentioned in the above rapid sketch 
 may be worthy of a more particular notice. I allude especially 
 to the use of foliation and of decorative shafts, features which 
 in practice occupy a somewhat analogous position in the two 
 systems. Foliation was observed just above to be in the Early 
 a mere luxury, the omission of which 1 never ruins a design, and 
 sometimes improves it, in the Continuous style it is absolutely 
 necessary both in panelling and tracery. Similarly in a rich 
 Early building we naturally look for shafts in almost every 
 
 J I mean in arches, whether in upon as of the same nature, and 
 windows or in decorative arcades; its omission always involves mea- 
 the foliation of tracery I do not look greness.
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 343 
 
 position, in a Continuous structure they are of little conse- 
 quence, and in windows and surface decorations they are not 
 required even in the most sumptuous structure. 
 
 The employment of the distinct shaft and arch in decoration 
 seems one of the strongest conceivable instances of that reten- 
 tion of distinctness in the parts which marks the Early Gothic. 
 A unity is thus given to the minutest details, every part of the 
 main arcades of a church is paralleled in the decorative ones 
 which run along its walls. We can at once distinguish the shaft 
 from the arch which it supports, and capital, abacus, band, and 
 base, increase the distinctness. Even the niullions of windows 
 have shafts attached ; and in windows not glazed, and in fencstri- 
 form apertures, as triforia, the shaft itself often forms the mullion. 
 But in the former position, as the mullion had another origin, 
 namely in the piece of wall between two windows, the shaft was 
 never so \mivcrsal as elsewhere, and probably went soonest out 
 of use. In no position does it more hinder continuity ; not only 
 is the tracery quite unconnected with the lights, but even the 
 arches of these are cut off from their support. On the other 
 hand the internal rear-arch of a window would probably be 
 the last place where the shaft would retain its ground. As 
 long as this opening was very much wider than that of the 
 window, as in Early windows with a dee]) splay, the rear-arch 
 was something distinct from that of the window, and often 
 studiously received a different form. It was, except in the 
 rare instances where it was filled with a second plane of 
 tracery, an arch totally independent, leading to the window, 
 but no more ; no arch could more properly rest on a shaft, 
 not a mere jamb-shaft, but an important decorative feature. 
 Here again is a piece of separate existence to be destroyed; 
 as the Continuous style advanced, windows grew larger, and 
 their mullions became placed more in the centre of the wall; by 
 these two means the splay and the distinct rear-arch are abolished, 
 and we find only a small internal and external jamb, requiring 
 merely to be moulded. 
 
 Panelling is the correlative to arcading, and the one gradually 
 sunk into the other. The shaft gradually disappears, first, be- 
 cause the tlow of the mullion and the arch is rendered more, 
 continuous, but mainly because a wider held is thus given for
 
 344 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 carrying out an uniform design. Any number of decorative 
 arcades may be placed one over another, but they have no con- 
 nection with each other ; they are so many horizontal bands. 
 Substitute the mullion for the shaft, and a whole wall may be 
 combined in one design ; the mullion runs up the whole height, 
 throwing off successive arches at different heights. Blank 
 panelling, tracery, screen work, all present the same idea, under 
 different modifications. 
 
 But the Continuous style was far from entirely rejecting the 
 decorative shaft. Where distinctness could not be altogether 
 destroyed, it was not disguised, but boldly marked. The arches 
 of windows and of decorative arcades can be utterly fused into 
 a whole; the doorway, and, still more, the pier-arch, do not 
 admit of this treatment. Hence in these positions the shaft is 
 still prevalent. The pier is no longer an assemblage of shafts, but 
 becomes again, as in Romanesque, a mass with shafts attached, 
 though now a mass carved, and channelled, and moulded. Hence 
 the beautiful form of pier with continuous hollows, and shafted 
 projections, the latter marking the constructive distinction of 
 pier and arch, while continuity is preserved in the hollows ; and 
 above all, allowing one of its members to run up to the roof, 
 without breaking in on the idea of the pier ; which the Early 
 pier, as an assemblage of shafts of equal height, cannot do. 
 
 Foliation is an important element of Gothic decoration, and 
 in its perfect state, peculiar to the style ; but as not being essen- 
 tial, nor a development of the vertical principle, it did not seem 
 necessary to mention it among the characteristics of Gothic 
 architecture. Foil arches are doubtless one of the Arabian 
 features of the style ; both these and foil figures occur, and were 
 probably introduced together, and that very early, for, as we have 
 seen, they occur in Transitional work. The Arabs also fretted 
 arches with cusps dripping from their soffits ; but real foliation 
 seems to be a Gothic development from these elements. It ori- 
 ginates, as Professor Willis, and after him Dr. Whewell and 
 Mr. Paley have shown, from placing one plane of decoration 
 behind another : that is from the arch of two orders and similar 
 combinations. If the outer order be pointed, and the inner of 
 a foil shape, foliation is at once produced ; we have a foliated 
 arch.
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 345 
 
 As applied to the two styles ; in the Early, foliated arches 
 are common, but the foil arch is far more appropriate in decora- 
 tive arcades. At all events no one ever missed foliation in such 
 an arcade ; and indeed, unless a clustered shaft is employed, the 
 effect is unsatisfactory. The foil order requires its proper decora- 
 tive support, but is too completely subordinated to the pointed 
 to obtain it. In the Continuous panelling it has a more intelli- 
 gible position ; it is something between a mere projecting 
 fretting and a separate order of another form ; it has its appro- 
 priate support in a distinct moulding. And this foliation is 
 necessary to richness in this style, for this reason. The panel 
 with its mullion and arch has ceased to be the distinct impor- 
 tant feature that the old decorative arcade was ; it is not felt as 
 a real constructive or decorative arch, but merely as a curve, 
 like any other part of the tracery. Thus much moulding or 
 other ornament cannot well be bestowed upon it, and the only 
 enrichment of which it was capable was the variety afforded by 
 foliation. And further, as Mr. Petit has drawn out at length, 1 in 
 the Early style the circle predominates in tracery and in sections 
 of mouldings ; in the Continuous, the point or angle. 
 
 But the feature in which after all the principles of the styles 
 are most readily to be discerned is the tracery of windows. 
 Here they are earliest carried out, as the progress of develop- 
 ment is almost always quicker in them than in any other portion 
 of a building, and is withal more regular and steady, for though 
 the debatable ground between the two styles exhibits great con- 
 fusion in the article of tracery, yet it is trilling compared with 
 what wc find in the other members. And above all, the distinc- 
 tions as seen in tracery are brought more palpably and intelligibly 
 before us; they are more readily discerned, and admit of more 
 satisfactory definition and nomenclature. Hence they seem to 
 be the feature on which a nomenclature of the subordinate styles 
 may be most safely constructed. 
 
 In the Early style then, the separate existence of parts is most 
 strongly marked in the windows;'- they are either actually dis- 
 tinct lancets, or windows with tracery in which the most severe 
 
 i I. 17,3. out than in the Ecclcsiologist, V. 
 
 I cannot wish this better drawn p. 2:j0 2.
 
 34-6 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 distinctness still prevails. Two, three, or more independent 
 lights, like the members of an arcade, support certain figures, 
 thrust in to fill up a gap between the heads of the lights and 
 the window arch ; but each light and each figure in the head is 
 a complete unit, which may be conceived apart. The circles, 
 the quatrefoils, touch one another, and touch the lights, but 
 they only touch, they do not spring out of the lights, nor are 
 they fused into one another. The desecrators of Tintern and 
 INetley might, if it had so pleased them, have carried off every 
 figure in their windows separately as a distinct whole, and there 
 would have been nothing in the figure, as such, to show that it 
 had ever been in connection with anything else. In a Continu- 
 ous window, on the other hand, every part is brought into rela- 
 tion with, and is fused into, every other part ; there is no break 
 between the lights and the tracery ; the latter is but a continua- 
 tion of the mullions, whether such continuation be made by 
 straight or by curved lines. It would be impossible to conceive 
 any portion separate : each exists only as a part of the whole, 
 and as connected with every other part. Instead of geometrical 
 figures touching one another, we have piercings with a long tra- 
 cery-bar common to more than one, and which consequently 
 cannot exist apart. All these characters are common alike to its 
 Flowing, Flamboyant, and Perpendicular varieties. 
 
 There are, however, a few points in which it might at first 
 sight seem that the Continuous style is really less vertical than 
 the Early, as bringing in a degree of horizontally. These 
 are, the low gables and roofs, the use of towers without spires, 
 and the employment of depressed arches and squai-e-headed 
 windows. I may first of all mention that most of these are 
 really objections to the Continuous style in my definition of it, 
 and not, as generally stated, merely to its Perpendicular variety. 
 Almost all the points objected to the last are to be found indi- 
 vidually and accidentally in the Early style ; thus Stanwick 
 church has four-centred pier-arches of the thirteenth century, 
 Oxford Chapter-house the same form under transoms in lancet 
 windows; the Perpendicular line running straight up into the 
 arch is not uncommon in Geometrical windows. But all these 
 are merely incidental, and as they do not affect the principles 
 of the style, no induction can be made from them. But in the
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 347 
 
 later " Decorated " we find not only in detached examples, but 
 in common use, and evidently as real parts of the style, most of 
 the points objected to in Perpendicular. Square-headed windows 
 are common, as well as continuous mouldings, and the gradually 
 prevailing omission of the shaft. An examination of the 
 churches of Northamptonshire will show that roofs were lowered 
 and clerestories added, and churches originally built in that man- 
 ner, in the reign of Edward III. as well as of Henry VII. ; and the 
 exquisite Decorated church of Wymmington in Bedfordshire, 
 exhibits, with hardly any mixture of Perpendicular details, all the 
 great characteristics of that style. "We may now see how far 
 some of these points do admit of being shown to be really con- 
 sistent with vertically. The first point would seem to be the 
 lower pitch of many, though by no means all, of the roofs of 
 this style. A wooden roof of any kind is at least but an in- 
 ferior covering, an apology 1 or a substitute for vaulting ; and 
 the prevalent use of such roofs at all dates, and in churches 
 whose size and sumptuousness would naturally lead us to 
 expect a stone vault, can only be considered as a blot upon our 
 national architecture. .No Gothic church, certainly no Early 
 Gothic church, can ever be considered as really complete in all 
 its parts without vaulting. But granting that the vault is not 
 to be had, the question remains, what is the best substitute. 
 And here I imagine the testimony of antiquity will be in favour 
 of the low roof. There is not a high-pitched wooden roof of 
 ornamental character remaining in any Early Gothic church what- 
 soever. Whenever an ornamental timber roof was used, we 
 have reason to believe it was perfectly fiat, or at most canted. 
 And so in after times, when rich timber roofs became general, 
 they are generally low-pitched/- both in the ruder attempts in late 
 Decorated work, and the more elaborate productions of the fully 
 developed Perpendicular. And in both these cases I believe 
 that the architect judged rightly in making his roof low, even 
 when he was not actually compelled to do so in the addition of 
 
 1 " The early roofs seem to have namcntal character." Palcy, page 
 
 been regarded merely as an apo- 12'6. 
 
 lojjv for stone-vaulting, while those - The splendid wooden roofs in 
 
 of later date are made substitutes the Diocese of Norwich are the prin- 
 
 for it by their rich effect and or- cipal exceptions, and these are local.
 
 348 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 that noble and most necessary feature, the clerestory. The low- 
 pitched roof, I fully believe, is the better substitute of the two ; 
 I have never missed vaulting so little as in some noble Perpen- 
 dicular church, like Newark or Fotheringhay. The reason would 
 seem to be that as vaulting, the full development of the Gothic 
 principle, is absent, and consequently that principle cannot be 
 carried out in perfection, the later form of roof brings it out by 
 the force of contrast, boldly adding a horizontal covering to the 
 vertical walls. Mr. Petit 1 has remarked that the absence of 
 vaulting at Peterborough adds greater height to the tall, narrow, 
 divisions of the nave ; without altogether asserting this, I can- 
 not say with Mr. Neale after contemplating that gorgeous ceiling, 
 " Give me a barn-roof rather, so it had a good pitch." 2 But 
 the fair comparison is not between a low and a high pitch of 
 roof springing from walls of the same height in which case the 
 greater positive height would be so much in favour of the high- 
 roofed building but between a high and a low pitch where 
 the apices of the two pretty nearly agree, as in many of our 
 churches where clerestories have been added. And in these in- 
 stances, even setting aside the superior magnificence of the clere- 
 story, I cannot think that any one could seriously wish to restore 
 the old pitch to the nave of St. Cuthbert's at Wells, or St. 
 Mary's at Stafford, or what would be essentially the same process, 
 to substitute a high roof springing immediately from above 
 the pillars for the present covering of St. Mary's Oxford, of 
 Wrington, or of St. John's at Glastonbury, or could desire that 
 other proportions of wall and roof had been given to the noble 
 chancel at Adderbury. 
 
 The low gable, where the roof is of timber, arises from the 
 lowness of the latter ; over a vault it may have partly arisen 
 from a wish to avoid the immense waste of material involved by 
 the high roof. But the high gable is not excluded in this style, 
 witness Canterbury and Winchester cathedrals ; and its external 
 effect is on the whole preferable. The high gable is the wall 
 itself carried up to a point, and consequently preferable to the 
 low gable, which only carries out the vertical principle by con- 
 trast. That the high roof viewed laterally at all carries out the 
 
 1 I. 95. See above, p. 245. 2 Hierologus, p. 38.
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISION'S OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 349 
 
 vertical principle, I cannot believe ; nothing surely is less vertical 
 than the long, unbroken, horizontal line of roof at Ely or Win- 
 chester viewed at a little distance. And yet it is felt to be a 
 beauty ; but a beauty I think arising from a source quite inde- 
 pendent of the vertical principle, and not, like that, a peculiarity of 
 Gothic architecture, but common to it with all good architecture 
 of every style, I mean reality. AVc feci that a roof standing 
 boldly out has more truth in it than one hidden behind a para- 
 pet. But as for mere vertical effect, which is of course imper- 
 fect where there must be a horizontal line somewhere, surely it 
 is better consulted by an outline broken up with battlements, 
 and fringed with soaring pinnacles, as at King's College Chapel, 
 or Penkridge church, than by the unbroken roof line before 
 alluded to. 
 
 Now may we not consider the magnificent towers of the Per- 
 pendicular style as a similar development ? In the Early style 
 we shall see that the spire is necessary to any approach to ideal 
 perfection ; the tower is not a whole and perfect design in itself, 
 but requires a covering of some sort. Later examples, such as 
 the Decorated of our village churches often affords, began to 
 finish the tower with battlements and pinnacles, so as to make it 
 a whole, while the spire rose unconnectedly from the middle of 
 the tower. To connect the tower and spire is the great diffi- 
 culty ; the broach is a mere roof, and always retains a degree of 
 severity ; the other form requires great and elaborate grouping 
 of pinnacles and flying buttresses to fuse the two together. The 
 spire itself is undoubtedly the very finest external development 
 of the vertical principle ; but there is always danger lest the 
 whole composition should fail to be so, lest the vertical line be 
 broken up, and have to commence again in the spire. Surely 
 then it was a grand idea to develop the tower itself into a pro- 
 minent feature, and thus, to say the least, to provide two forms 
 of beauty instead of one. And J can never believe that the 
 genuine Perpendicular tower is other than a most beautiful and an 
 essentially vertical feature. There is a commanding majesty 
 about such steeples as Canterbury, and Gloucester, and Wol- 
 verhampton, soaring royally over the surrounding city, which no 
 other composition can equal. A spire is the more graceful, a 
 tower the more dignified feature. And as to vertically, of course
 
 350 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 a mere horizontal finish is bad, but in what good Perpendicular 
 tower do we find it ? The horizontal line is brought out just 
 strongly enough to mark the triumph of the vertical. This last 
 is equally predominant, the only difference being, that instead of 
 concentrating its whole vertically in one point, it sends up four, 
 eight, twelve, or sixteen vertical points, in its pinnacles, each of 
 these being in the best examples the crowning point of long un- 
 broken vertical lines of turret, or buttress, or panelling. Mr. 
 Pugin's objection 1 that the tower does not afford room for a 
 predominant cross may perhaps be worth taking into considera- 
 tion on ecclesiastical grounds, but cannot have any possible 
 weight in determining the merit of a structure considered as an 
 architectural composition. 
 
 And as to the four-centred arch ; it must be remembered that 
 it was not a Perpendicular invention, and that though this par- 
 ticular form was rare before that style, others as depressed were 
 commonly used. Mr. Paley 2 has well shown the intimate con- 
 nection between this and the pointed segmental, which, as well 
 as the round segmental, 3 was abundantly used even during the 
 Early style. The state of the case is simply this, that in many 
 positions, such as windows placed in low walls, it is desirable to 
 increase the width without increasing the height; the result is a 
 depressed head. Surely then the segmental arch, which springs 
 from the jamb at a sharp angle, is both more horizontal and less 
 elegant than the four-centred, in which the angle is rounded off, 
 and the arch in the best specimens rises as gracefully and grad- 
 ually as the simple pointed. Above all things it cannot be con- 
 sistent in Mr. Pugin, 4 who in his own buildings employs the seg- 
 
 1 In a letter to the President of and Byfield occur to me as exhibit- 
 Trinity College, published in the ing long series of Geometrical win- 
 Oxford Society's Proceedings for dows with flat heads, and in Oxford 
 Easter and Act Term, 1843, p. 20. Cathedral the four-centred arch it- 
 
 2 Gothic Architecture, 128. self occurs as the containing arch 
 
 3 As in the rear-arches of doors, of a triplet. 
 
 to allow of the door opening, and 4 Mr. Pugin says somewhere that 
 
 of windows to obtain more effect of even the semicircular arch is better 
 
 shadow in the heads. But these than the four-centred, as the latter 
 
 are by no means the only applica- does not rise so much above the 
 
 tions ; without searching for ex- impost. Does he consider the dome 
 
 amples, the churches of Barnack of St. Paul's more vertical than
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 351 
 
 mental arch usque ad nauseam, to speak of the four-centred as a 
 sign of debasement. At the same time it is undeniable that the 
 four-centred arch was in the last days of Perpendicular applied 
 where it should not have been Just as the segmental was some- 
 times, though less frequently, at an earlier time. The four-centred 
 pier-arches of Bath Cathedral and St. Michael's, Coventry, are 
 Eesthetical 1 errors just as great, and no greater, than similar uses of 
 the segmental arch at Romsey and Salisbury. Mr. Petit mentions 
 a constructive objection to both forms, namely that they throw a 
 lateral instead of a vertical thrust on the piers ; hence as pier- 
 arches they should be avoided ; but in apertures in walls, such 
 as doors and windows, it is simply a question of composition. 
 It is only when a low broad space, such as frequently occurs in 
 aisles and clerestories, has to be filled, that they are advisable, 
 or when they have to fit into a roof of the same form, as at 
 King's College Chapel. One cannot defend tall narrow windows 
 with depressed arches of either form, as in the chancels of By- 
 field and Adderbury. 
 
 I have now only to make two observations on these points 
 which arc objected to the Perpendicular style. I would remark, 
 First, that, though it admits, it does not require any of the 
 
 the spire of Sarum, because it is height, which trenched upon the 
 higher from the ground ? due proportions of the pier-range ; 
 1 I say sosthetical, because, not the four-centred arch then was a 
 being versed in mechanics, I am less evil than such stunted pillars 
 always apprehensive that there may as a taller arch with the same ge- 
 be some constructive reason for neral height would have produced ; 
 much that is contrary to theories that it was no abstract love of four- 
 made merely by the eye. I have no centred arches is shown by the west 
 means of ascertaining, but it always window. The segmental arches at 
 strikes me that there must be some liomsey arise, as Mr. Petit has 
 such reason for the almost univer- shown in his account of that Abbey, 
 sal occurrence of the four-centred from the wish of the designer to 
 arch in fan-tracery vaulting. As to adapt their proportions to those 
 the examples just quoted, one can of the adjoining Romanesque bays, 
 see in two of the instances how Perhaps something may bo said for 
 the arches came to be of their four-centred pier-arches when the 
 respective forms. At Path, it is arcades are rendered of little impor- 
 clear that the great aim of the tance by stalls, as in Henry YIPs 
 architect, right or wrong, was to Chapel. 
 dazzle by a clerestory of enormous
 
 352 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 points objected to. It simply, as Mr. Petit says, gives a greater 
 licence to the architect, which was in some cases undoubtedly 
 abused. Arches may be, and as often are, simple as four- 
 centred, the most splendid open as well as low roofs are of 
 this date, the gable may be as high as any at Ely or Lincoln, 
 the parapet need not be embattled, and though the spire is 
 less common, yet some of the most magnificent spires are ex- 
 amples of this decried style. 
 
 Secondly, objections against a style resting on points not 
 arising from its principles, are of no weight ; they are not against 
 the style, but against the architect. It is very possible that cor- 
 ruptions may have been brought into the style : it is even possible 
 that the principle of the style may have been never fully worked 
 out though I am far from allowing that such was the fact 
 so that the Continuous may be a less perfect development of 
 its own idea than the Early style ; and yet that idea have been 
 one containing greater capabilities of perfection than the other. 
 
 Having thus marked out the chief points of distinction be- 
 tween the two great forms of Gothic architecture, we will endea- 
 vour to trace the subordinate shapes which they assumed, which 
 may be best named from the windows, as the feature in which 
 the principles appear earliest, and are most clearly developed. 
 
 The first form of the Early Gothic then is the Early English 
 or First-Pointed, which I would, by the revival of an old name, 
 designate as the Lancet style. In this the window is single, 
 often grouped into combinations, but not divided by mullions 
 and tracery. This style in all its details exhibits the fullest de- 
 velopment of distinctness of parts : Salisbury Cathedral and the 
 Presbytery of Ely may be considered as its most perfect types. 
 
 The second variety of Early Gothic has tracery in its windows, 
 consisting of Geometrical figures filling up the head, but not 
 springing from the mullions, or fused into each other. This may 
 be called Geometrical. In its earliest examples, some of which 
 arc contemporary with the prevalence of the Lancet style, its 
 minor details hardly differ from it, as in Westminster Abbey, and 
 the Presbytery of Lincoln. The nave of Lichfield is very little, if 
 any, advanced beyond these. Gradually the tracery, though still 
 Geometrical, becomes more complicated, and the details lose the 
 great distinctness of the Lancet style, being in some sort a tran-
 
 OF THE SUBDIVISIONS OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 353 
 
 sition to the next style. Of this period Exeter Cathedral is the 
 great example, exhibiting, in the successive additions which it has 
 received from east to west, every stage of Geometrical tracery 
 and other detail, from the earliest to the latest which deserve the 
 name. 
 
 The Continuous style appeared first in a form which, from the 
 lines of its window tracery, I denominate Flowing. The 
 mullions are continued in the tracery, which may be said to con- 
 sist of figures melted together and completely foliated. 1 The 
 other details gradually approximate to the next style, but no 
 hard line can be drawn between them and those of the last. 
 The octagon, choir, and Lady chapel of Ely are among our best 
 specimens. 
 
 The fully developed Continuous styles of England and France 
 are respectively known by the familiar and appropriate names of 
 Perpendicular and Flamboyant. Among many points of 
 diversity, the best specimens of both present the same great 
 features of continuity. The tracery no longer consists of 
 figures, but is merely a prolongation of the mullions, in the one 
 case in straight, in the other in curved lines, the sjmces between 
 being foliated at one or both ends. But both in tracery and 
 in other respects Flamboyant often ran wild, and sometimes 
 quite forsook its own principles. St. Maclou and the nave of St. 
 Ouen's, at Rouen, arc among its best specimens. Of our num- 
 berless Perpendicular buildings we may select Winchester Cathe- 
 dral and King's College Chapel, as respectively exhibiting the 
 earliest and latest forms of the, style in their fullest perfection. 
 
 It will be thus seen that I completely ignore the existence of a 
 Decorated or Middle-Pointed style as a philosophical division. 
 At the same time, in describing churches, it is almost necessary 
 to retain some such name; for distinct as are the fully deve- 
 loped Flowing and the pure Geometrical, Ely choir and Lichfield 
 nave, totally opposite as are their principles, it is utterly impos- 
 sible to draw a hard line of demarcation between one and the 
 other. Even the two forms of windows are much confused, and 
 much more the other details. One sees that the earliest J)eeo- 
 
 1 That is, the whole figure is Flamhoyant foliation obtruded it- 
 i affected by the foliations. This is self during the whole 
 i only ideally true; in practice (he period, perhaps earlier. 
 
 A A 
 
 lOWllli
 
 354 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 rated churches are essentially Early, the latest essentially Con- 
 tinuous ; where one style overcomes the other, it is impossible 
 to say. In fact, if we retain a Decorated style, it can only be 
 as one of transition, but of course not a transition of the 
 same kind as that from Grecian to Roman, or lloman to Gothic. 
 Those were attempts to combine a new principle of construction 
 with an old principle of decoration ; the present transition is 
 not between two principles, but between two applications of the 
 same principle. And it is to the constant commingling of the 
 two applications, both being for a time in simultaneous use, and 
 indeed often employed in the same structure, that I attribute the 
 notion of the Decorated as a definite style : a class of buildings 
 is marked negatively, as being neither Lancet nor Perpendicular, 
 and which agree pretty much in some points of detail. But if 
 we are to divide, not merely by date and detail, but by some 
 pervading principle or application of a principle, we shall surely 
 see that two very different ones are at work in buildings of this 
 class. It is very difficult in individual instances to separate 
 Geometrical from Flowing tracery : they are sometimes palpably 
 of the same date, sometimes part of a window is Geometrical, 
 part Flowing ; yet this commingling in fact does not prevent an 
 entire diversity in principle. And surely a pure Flowing win- 
 dow is as simply Continuous as though its mullions were con- 
 tinued in straight instead of curved lines. So too in other parts 
 of the building ; the details are mingled up in the individual in- 
 stances, yet we can trace out two types ; the one with Geometri- 
 cal windows, deeply hollowed mouldings, jamb-shafts, clustered 
 columns, arcades, parts retaining a strongly marked individuality ; 
 the other with Flowing tracery, channelled piers, panelling, parts 
 subordinate to the whole. It may be that no perfectly pure ex- 
 ample can be found of either, yet even this would not hinder the 
 existence of the two models in idea ; and clearly one must rank 
 with Lancet, the other with Perpendicular. Their union in one 
 style is most convenient in practice, as avoiding the necessity of 
 attempting a most painful and often fruitless discrimination of 
 detail ; but investigated on philosophical principles, the unity of 
 the Decorated style falls to the ground. It has been objected, 
 that " the principle of Continuity, which, for a while one of de- 
 velopment, changed into a corruption, was ever at work from the
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 355 
 
 first ; and consequently its greater or less prevalence can be no 
 test in fixing the number of styles." 1 With this reasoning I can- 
 not agree ; its greater or less prevalence, if marked only, as it 
 were, by convenient stages, can of course be no test ; but if there 
 was a moment when it became not only more fully carried out in 
 the particulars to which it had been previously applied, but began 
 to be applied to a new class of particulars ; if, as was above 
 stated, 2 architecture before a certain time applies the principle of 
 destroying the separate existence of the parts, only to the con- 
 struction of the primary parts, while after that period it extends its 
 application to the further subordination of the primary parts to 
 the whole; the moment, I presume, when the "development" 
 became a " corruption " I cannot but think the change is one 
 calculated to be " a test in fixing the number of styles." Con- 
 tinuity does not merely become more prevalent in degree, but 
 has a new kind of application brought within its reach; the 
 principle on which hitherto parts only were constructed, is now 
 extended to the whole ; and detail is modified accordingly. The 
 existence of the change is a fact; whether it were a change for 
 good or for evil, a development or a corruption, is an entirely 
 distinct question. No such broad change in principle separates 
 the Lancet from the Geometrical, or the Flowing from the Per- 
 pendicular, as divides pure Geometrical from pure Flowing. 
 These two last cannot be called in any sense one style with defi- 
 nite marks ; the mere induction of instances, without reference 
 to principles, could only bring them together negatively as a 
 transition stvle. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 or THE EARLY GOTHIC. 
 
 The grand definition of this style having been already given, we 
 have now to consider it in its varieties and in its minuter details. 
 01' its two great divisions, the Lancet or Early English will de- 
 mand our first consideration, as being at once the earliest both 
 1 Ecclesiologist, V. .71. - Sec above, page 311. 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 in idea and in chronological order, and moreover all but exclu- 
 sively confined to our own country. 
 
 Two of its forms may be first mentioned, as being, so to speak, 
 its boundaries on either side; namely the round abacus, which 
 distinguishes it from the antecedent Romanesque ; the Lancet 
 window, which forms its chief difference from the succeeding 
 Geometrical. These at once define and mark off the style from 
 all others ; as far as details can define a style, this is marked by 
 the simultaneous use of the round abacus and the lancet window. 
 It is thus distinguished from the otherwise very similar French 
 buildings, which have the lancet window in combination with 
 the square abacus, and from the Geometrical, which has the 
 round abacus in combination with the traceried window. 
 
 The lancet windows, the chief distinction of the style, are 
 certainly a feature of the greatest elegance. Even the plainest 
 example is always pleasing, and in large and rich churches they 
 are adorned with the utmost sumptuousness of detail. But as 
 long as the lancet window remained a single and detached 
 feature, the style, as Mr. Petit says, cannot be considered as 
 having arrived at perfection. Yet it is perhaps going too far to 
 say that such instances cannot be considered as "aspiring to a 
 higher rank than that of Transition." 1 They are still Gothic, 
 though Gothic with its capabilities not yet fully developed. 
 However, no one can doubt that the perfection of the style is to 
 be looked for in those examples where the lancet window " forms 
 part of a composition, and can no more be considered without 
 reference to others in the same front or compartment than if it 
 were one of the lights of a large mullioned window." 2 
 
 Hence, in all the best examples of Lancet Gothic, the windows 
 are brought near together, and become members of one compo- 
 sition ; we have couplets, triplets, quintuplets, gradually coming 
 into closer proximity to one another. But as long as they are, 
 however close, of equal height, the Gothic principle may be de- 
 veloped in each severally, but does not influence the whole com- 
 position. The parts are vertical, but the whole is horizontal : 
 some member must therefore soar above the rest, to give the re- 
 quired pyramidal outline. In a couplet this is impossible, and 
 hence we find its place supplied by the expedients which will be 
 1 I. 152. * Ibid. p. 153.
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 357 
 
 hereafter described as forming the germs of tracery. Tn the triplet 
 this is provided by raising the central light above the rest, as in 
 most of the best examples. Similarly in a series of five or seven 
 lights, there may be a progressive rise ; a composition of four is 
 necessarily imperfect in this respect, as the two central ones, 
 though raised above the rest, still remain of the same height as each 
 other, so that the complete pyramidal effect cannot be obtained. 
 
 The compound lancet windows which are earliest in idea, and 
 probably in date also, have their lights externally distinct, though 
 set near to one another ; so that there is a real, though very 
 small, portion of wall between them. Within, however, the 
 splay makes them essentially one window. Later, the three 
 lights become more closely connected, so that, even externally, 
 the space between the wall sinks into a mere mullion ; a further 
 step groups them under a single label. Triplets in a lateral ele- 
 vation, which are seldom found but in large churches, 1 become 
 even more completely single windows than when they arc placed 
 in a front. 
 
 As an example of the grouping of lancet windows in a large 
 front, the east end of Ely Cathedral is doubtless the most mag- 
 nificent composition in the world. The gradual diminution of 
 its stages produces a wonderfully aspiring effect, and the details 
 are among the most exquisite in England. The cast end of 
 Southwell Minster is in detail fully ecpial to that of Ely, though 
 greatly inferior in composition, as both stages consist of four 
 lancets, and the interior especially shows how impossible it is to 
 produce a pyramidal effect with that number. 
 
 Tn smaller churches triplets arc generally found at the east 
 end, but occasionally in transept fronts and elsewhere. They 
 are not common at Hie west end, even in the comparatively few 
 churches which afford an opportunity. The real reason for their 
 infrcquency in that position is that the triplet, as the finest de- 
 velopment of the style, was set apart for the east end, and, as 
 Mr. Palcy observes, "evident reasons both of construction and 
 propriety, will account for the eastern window being generally 
 superior to the western."- In many cases, especially when there 
 
 1 The well-known examples at Warmington are a splendid exception. 
 
 2 Gothic Architecture, p. 168.
 
 358 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 is a western tower, the west window is a single lancet. But the 
 most appropriate composition for a small west front without a 
 tower is certainly two distinct and tall lancets, with a buttress 
 between, which, if necessary, may run up and support a bell gable. 
 Such fronts are found in several churches near Oxford, and the 
 same composition is continued even when the windows on each 
 side contain tracery. In some examples in other neighbourhoods, 
 the arrangement is with much less propriety transferred to the cast 
 end : perhaps even the wonderful east end of Dorchester may be 
 considered as a carrying out of the same notion. 
 
 The square-headed window was not altogether unknown at 
 this period, and circular windows of large size, and filled with 
 wheel-tracery, occur in great churches ; in smaller churches a 
 circle, sometimes plain, but more usually foliated, is often found, 
 but seldom in any very prominent position. 
 
 The mere detail of the Lancet style possesses the most exqui- 
 site loveliness of any style of architecture whatever. We might 
 ransack all the edifices in the world, from the Treasury of Atreus 
 to Henry VII /s Chapel, and find nothing which can be for a 
 moment compared to the perfect beauty of its detached mar- 
 ble shafts, with their deep cut bases, their bands, their capitals 
 of the richest and most graceful foliage ; of the wonderfully 
 deep mouldings, forming the finest contrasts of light and shade ; 
 of the long rows of the most elegant and always satisfactory 
 tooth-ornament; of the corbels, and bosses, and knots of foliage, 
 the profusion of arcades, on which all this beauty is lavished. 
 Succeeding styles carried out the Gothic principle more effectu- 
 ally, and formed a more perfect whole ; but the Lancet style, as 
 exemplified in its noblest production, the divine presbytery of 
 Ely, must stand unrivalled for the grace and purity bestowed 
 upon the minutest fragments of detail. 
 
 The use of detached shafts is peculiar to this style, and cer- 
 tainly one of the most graceful of its graceful features. It is 
 the extreme development of the principle of distinctness of parts, 
 which in this respect is carried beyond anything which we have 
 seen in Romanesque ; it is a result of that principle combined 
 with the extreme lightness and delicacy which pervades the 
 Lancet style. The shaft has not only an ideal separate existence, 
 but becomes physically distinct, it is a separate piece of stone
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 359 
 
 standing free, and only united by the bonds of capital, base, and 
 band. And the beautiful, though unfortunately perishable, 
 material of which they are so often wrought, the Purbeck mar- 
 ble, adds fresh richness to the grace of form. In the formation 
 of piers this feature shows itself in its full perfection, the jambs 
 of doors and windows not giving the same opportunity for 
 its display. Nothing can be more lovely than the pillars at 
 Salisbury and Ely, in which the small detached shafts cluster 
 round a large central column, distinct yet united, springing 
 from one root and returning to one head, and bound together 
 even in the centre of their course. One might almost compare 
 it to the Church surrounded by her sons, sent forth from her 
 one bosom to their several posts, again to return and claim the 
 one reward of the one body ; each distinct and free, waging his 
 own conflict with his own foes, yet all one, bound fast together 
 in one inseparable company, losing all strength and life if sepa- 
 rated from the single centre of animation and of unity. 
 
 Shafts in other positions have very great beauty, from their 
 own elegant form, and their exquisite bases and capitals. The 
 undercut bell of the capital is itself a graceful form, but it re- 
 quires the beautiful foliage of which this style is so lavish to 
 bring it to the highest excellence. And this we constantly find 
 in doorway, and pier-arch, and niche, alike in the most costly 
 Minster and the humblest chapel. The undercut and over- 
 hanging abacus, the deep hollow of the base, arc among the best 
 of the wonderful mouldings of this style. 
 
 Every one must have admired the sweep of the elaborate archi- 
 traves in which those mouldings are best displayed, with rounds 
 and hollows succeeding in an almost endless scries, wave over 
 wave; hollows cut with such careful and laborious workmanship, 
 that the round is attached only by a narrow isthmus. When we 
 come to two or three such hollows Idled with the hold projecting 
 tooth-ornament, and the same exquisite decoration filling up the 
 space bewcen the marble shafts below, standing forth in the perfect 
 beauty of band, and base, and floriated capital, all distinct and 
 yet combining together: we may safely say that we have found 
 the perfection of mere workmanship and detail, among the count- 
 less forms of grace which art has supplied for the admirer of pure 
 loveliness to revel in. The distinction of orders is quite lost in
 
 360 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 the general effect of these enriched architraves ; but the mouldings 
 " are very commonly so arranged that if they are circumscribed 
 by a line drawn to touch the most prominent points of their con- 
 tour, it will be found to form a succession of rectangular re- 
 cesses i" 1 an arrangement which is manifestly a vestige of the re- 
 cessed arch. Of course where mere chamfers without further 
 mouldings are employed, the orders of the arch are much more 
 strongly marked. 
 
 The second or Geometrical variety of the Early Gothic can 
 hardly be distinguished from the Lancet by any one marked fea- 
 ture except the introduction of tracery. And this can scarcely be 
 called a chronological distinction. Tracery was in other coun- 
 tries used from the first in all buildings deserving the name of 
 pure Gothic, and the like was the case, though less universally, 
 even in England. The lancet light was more in use ; but the 
 traceried window kept up an existence 2 by the side of the other. 
 Thus at Netley Abbey all the smaller lights are lancets, while 
 the famous east window exhibits fully developed though very 
 early tracery. 
 
 The necessity for tracery appears to have been first and most 
 strongly felt in couplets. When two lancets are joined together 
 under one label, or when they fill up the space under a pointed 
 vaulting arch, a blank space is left in the head which is by no 
 means pleasing. This want had been felt even in Romanesque 
 times, as the head of a triforium has occasionally a circle or such 
 like ornament pierced in it : the Transitional windows at St. 
 Giles's, Oxford, have in like manner a pointed light above the 
 two larger ones. We therefore find in Early Gothic the head of 
 a couplet filled with a circle, a quatrefoil, or other figure. As 
 these gradually approach the lights below, and cease to be dis- 
 tinct figures pierced in the wall, but allow their mouldings to 
 flow into those of the lights, the simplest form of tracery is pro- 
 duced. 
 
 On the other hand, the triplet would naturally be one of the 
 last features retained by the style, both on account of its intrin- 
 sic beauty, and because it is so far from affording any such void 
 space, that it is rather one of the most beautiful developments 
 of the pyramidal form. Still the triplet, from the very fact of its 
 1 Glossary of Architecture, Art. Moulding. 2 See Petit, i. 134.
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 3G1 
 
 being a more complete whole than any other combination of lan- 
 cets, held out an additional temptation to unite its parts still more 
 closely into one window. This was done by opening the span- 
 drils under the label, which at once produces a form of window 
 by no means uncommon, and a similar process applied to a quin- 
 tuplet produces an analogous form with five lights. Thou-h 
 these belong to quite the later days of Early Gothic, they are 
 continually found without foliations, a fact which clearly marks 
 their origin. 
 
 The other details were very little altered by the first introduc- 
 tion of tracery : but rather later in the style, nearly simulta- 
 neously with the introduction of more elaborate forms in win- 
 dows, we find the details wavering, and though they manifest no 
 signs of approximation to the principles of the Continuous style, 
 there is a falling off from the purity of Early Gothic detail, and 
 an approach to many of the forms of the Flowing style. This 
 is what is known as Early or Geometrical Decorated. Wc begin 
 to lose the detached and banded shafts ; the tooth-ornament 
 gradually loses its boldness and projection, and sinks into the 
 four-leaved flower ; the ball-flower appears ; the mouldings be- 
 gin to lose their peculiar character ; though rounds and hollows 
 still prevail, they are not always so deep, and arc not so regu- 
 larly arranged in groups, nor so strict in answering to each 
 other, and they are more frequently channelled with the fillet ; the 
 foliage loses its stalks and trefoils, and assumes a freer and yet 
 less bold character, with more imitation of individual plants. 
 But the main principles still remain unaltered ; we have the 
 same distinctness of parts, the shafts, the capitals, the piers still 
 partaking of a columnar character. So small is the change that 
 one description of the main features of a church will serve for 
 both forms of Early Gothic, while the most certain distinctions 
 are to be found in the smallest minutia:. 
 
 Wc will now endeavour briefly to trace out the chief charac- 
 teristics of the Early Gothic style as a whole, as affecting the 
 several parts of churches. 
 
 The towers are mostly very noble features, but are rather to 
 be studied in the parish church than in the minster. The form 
 is of course usually square, but octagonal examples are occasion- 
 ally found, as at Stanwick, Northamptonshire, and sometimes an 
 octagon crowns a square tower, as the Lancet addition to the
 
 362 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Saxon tower at Barnacle. The arcade is, as was to be expected, 
 the main source of decoration. Some are surrounded by many 
 stages of this ornament, such as St. Mary's, Stamford, the whole 
 surface of which is covered by arcades, quite down to the bot- 
 tom. This I can hardly think a beauty, as it is always desirable 
 for a tower to increase perceptibly in lightness and decoration 
 towards the top. In towers not arcaded, we sometimes find three 
 detached lancets, but more frequently couplets, and, as the style 
 advances, two-light windows. 
 
 Towers were seldom or never left flat with parapets, but to 
 say that all Early Gothic towers had spires is an unnecessary 
 confusion of terms. The spire grew out of the pyramidal cap- 
 ping, but is no more the same thing, than a Gothic cathedral is 
 the same as a Basilica. Many churches doubtless had originally 
 wooden roofs or wooden spires, which were destroyed at a later 
 period ; nothing is more common than to find an Early tower with 
 a later battlement, or less commonly a later story, added. The 
 battlement seems never to have been used, and the pierced pa- 
 rapet scarcely ever, during the Early Gothic period. We know 
 that many large churches, as Bipon and Lincoln, had formerly 
 wooden spires covered with lead. Those of the latter were how- 
 ever not essential features, being very small and rising within 
 the parapet. 
 
 Very different is the genuine spire of this period, whether of 
 wood or of stone. It overhangs the tower with eaves like a 
 dripping roof, and commonly rests upon a corbel table. A few 
 however, as at Brading, rise within the parapet. There are two 
 chief forms, the one square at the base, and connected by a slope 
 with the octagonal part ; this is most appropriate for a timber 
 spire, but sometimes occurs in masonry. In the other, called 
 most frequently the broach-spire, the square tower is united to 
 the octagonal spire by half-pyramids inclining from the angles. 
 The proportions of these greatly affect the character of the 
 spire ; when very lofty, they tend best to connect the tower 
 and spire together, but make the whole composition heavy. At 
 the same time, as the broach spire is necessarily a somewhat mas- 
 sive erection, it is by no means out of character. When they 
 are small, the spire may be more taper, but -it loses its close con- 
 nection with the tower, which may however be obviated by the 
 addition of pinnacles at the angles. This beautiful addition
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 3G3 
 
 soon developed into that most noble method of connecting the 
 tower and spire familiar to all at St. Mary's in Oxford. The 
 spire-lights are set in projections, often of great boldness, with 
 gabled heads; which when jutting forth from a low broach have a 
 very singular effect. There are one, two, or three ranges of these 
 lights, diminishing in size, according to the height of the tower. 
 
 In small churches a high roof and a clerestory are not often 
 found together at any date ; and at this period the high roof is an 
 almost invariable feature. Every one knows the steep pitch of Lin- 
 coln and Ely, and one of considerable elevation was in general use, 
 though the equilateral rule will not hold. Shiffnal church has a 
 high roof and a low clerestory not pierced ; in such cases we some- 
 times find small foliated circles, but a clerestory of lancets, as at 
 Chelveston, near Higham Ferrers, is of very rare occurrence. 
 Even large churches of Conventual or Collegiate rank were some- 
 times without a clerestory ; Stafford church had originally none ; 
 and Dorchester is to this day without a clerestory in any part of 
 its enormous length. The finish of the aisles, whether with 
 distinct or lean-to roofs, appears to have been to a great extent 
 a matter of local custom. 
 
 Many forms of doorways appear, but the use of the shaft may 
 be observed in almost all the rich examples. Some doorwavs 
 have trefoiled heads, a form not uncommonly assumed by the 
 inner order, and the form known as the square-headed trefoil is 
 very common for small openings. Those with round arches, 
 but otherwise belonging to this style, have been mentioned in a 
 former chapter. Double doorways, that is, divided by a shaft, 
 just like a two-light window, have usually foliated heads to the 
 small arches, with tracery or sculpture in the tympanum. These 
 are generally confined to minsters; Lincoln Cathedral has one in 
 the presbytery of overwhelming gorgeousness of detail. The 
 western doorway of Higham Ferrers is a rare example in a parish 
 church for it dates much earlier than the foundation of the 
 Collegiate body and has a very foreign air. 
 
 Turning our attention to the interior, the first point demand- 
 ing our notice is of course the lateral elevations of the nave and 
 choir, and we shall here find how little, amid all its beauty of 
 detail, the Early Gothic effected in subordinating parts to the 
 whole. The vertical principle is seldom very strongly brought
 
 364 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 forward, and in some instances the horizontal line prevails over it. 
 Thus the Early Gothic part of the nave of St. Alban's presents only 
 three continuous horizontal ranges, with no more vertical division 
 into bays than in a Basilica. And here it is more striking, as in 
 the Romanesque portion the divisions of the compartments are 
 strongly marked by pilasters. The reason for this is to be found 
 in the decided separate existence of the pillars, which requires 
 all their members to be united under one abacus, and conse- 
 quently cannot allow one of them to run up to support the 
 vaulting. In the nave of Lichfield this is done, and of course 
 the general appearance infinitely improved, but with regard to 
 the pillars themselves it has the effect of cutting each into two 
 responds, a process not in harmony with the style. In the later 
 architecture, where the pier is not a column or cluster of columns, 
 but a shafted and channelled piece of wall, there is no such bar 
 to its shafts rising to the roof; but in the Early style the cha- 
 racter of the pillars precludes this necessary feature 1 of a 
 thoroughly vertical design. Hence in this style the vaulting- 
 shaft is generally corbelled off a little above the pillar. 
 
 The pillar is always more or less an assemblage of columns. 
 As the peculiar details of the Lancet style went out of use, 
 the shafts cease to be detached, but they still remain clustering 
 together, united by their abaci and bases. The variety of their 
 section is very great ; the idea of a large central pillar round 
 which the rest cluster long remains predominant, but gradually 
 loses its hold. 
 
 The proportions of the pillars and arch, and indeed of the 
 whole compartment, are mainly regulated by the size of the trifo- 
 rium. In some churches we still find a single arch the full 
 width of the bay, as at Romsey and Ely, where the piers are 
 little less massive, and the arches but little higher, than in Ro- 
 manesque, though of course far lighter in effect. But two arches 
 in the triforium more commonly answer to each one in the lower 
 range, and as the height which the triforium thus loses is taken into 
 the arcade, the pillars become more lofty; hence the greater light- 
 ness of the nave of Lincoln as compared with the presbytery of Ely. 
 
 1 Of course I do not mean to in- requires the corbelling off of vault- 
 elude choirs, -where stall-work often ing-shafts.
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 305 
 
 At Exeter, the diminished size of the triforium is a mark of 
 the approach of the next style. Occasionally the triforium is 
 omitted, in which case the clerestory usually comes down imme- 
 diately upon the arcade, but Tintern has the capital fault of a 
 triforium-space left totally blank. St. Cross has only an occa- 
 sional arch pierced in the wall. At Southwell the choir has no 
 triforium as a distinct architectural member, the openings of the 
 clerestory windows being brought down much below the part 
 actually glazed, and a passage formed in them. 
 
 There is, among considerable variety of detail, a great general 
 similarity in the treatment of Early Gothic triforia, and a great 
 analogy with that of windows. They almost always resemble a 
 window of two, three, or four lights, and exhibit both the com- 
 plete Geometrical tracery, and the same imperfect and transitional 
 forms as the windows. Indeed it would appear that the develop- 
 ment of tracery was more speedy in the triforium than in the 
 windows, because arches were here of necessity brought into the 
 closest juxtaposition, whereas in windows more liberty of dis- 
 tinction and combination is allowed. 
 
 The clerestory during the Lancet period often has a triplet 
 in each bay, as at Ely and Salisbury, or a single lancet forming 
 the central member of an arcade of three, as at Romsey. South- 
 well has a couplet in each bay ; St. Alban's has two lancets over 
 each arch, but they are not to be called couplets ; they are members 
 of a range, of which each window is distinct, and of which all 
 that can be said is that two happen to coincide with each pier- 
 arch. When tracery was introduced, one window of course is 
 to be found in each bay, gradually increasing in size, from the 
 two-light openings at Westminster to the large and elaborate 
 Geometrical windows at Exeter. 
 
 In these noble churches a great diversity of detail and of 
 merit may be observed. For general majesty of internal effect 
 there can be no doubt that the royal Abbey of Westminster is 
 beyond comparison the first of English churches of this or of 
 any other style. Its immense height, unparalleled among us 
 islanders, and the surpassing glory of the apsidal termination, 
 alone suffice to place it above all our other churches. Yet if 
 one were inclined to enter on so ungracious a task, it would be 
 easier to iiud defects in this unrivalled building than in the low-
 
 3GG HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 lier beauties of Ely, Lichfield, and Lincoln Presbytery. The 
 pillars might be said to be less gracefully clustered, the arches 
 painfully acute, the triforium not sufficiently prominent, the 
 windows too large for their simple form, the attempt at com- 
 bining clusters of columns and continuous vaulting-shafts far 
 from successful. Yet several of these faults, if such they be, are 
 the necessary consequences of its glorious height ; and they afford 
 another proof that the beauty of parts may frequently interfere 
 with the general splendour of a design. A compartment of 
 Ely is far more beautiful than a compartment of Westminster ; 
 the proportions of arcade, triforium, and clerestory are infinitely 
 more satisfactory, and for beauty and richness of detail, for 
 foliage and mouldings, Westminster cannot be put in competi- 
 tion for a moment. But to have given Westminster the propor- 
 tion of Ely must have involved an unsightly width of arch 
 which would at once have ruined the whole. The question lies 
 between the utmost purity and beauty of proportion and detail, 
 and the sublimity of effect given by an increase of thirty feet in 
 elevation. Ely is the more perfect model of a style, the more 
 valuable study for an architect ; Westminster is the grander 
 whole, the sublimer temple of our faith. 
 
 I have taken for granted that the great size of the triforium 
 at Ely is to be reckoned among the beauties of that noble pres- 
 bytery. Of course I hold that the later architects judged rightly 
 in completely abolishing the triforium ; but the principles of the 
 Early Gothic require its presence, and if it is present, it surely 
 should be a grand feature in the elevation, one of equal import- 
 ance with the pier-arch and clerestory. Hence the single arch 
 of Ely and Romsey is superior to the double one of Lincoln 
 and Lichfield, as strongly bringing out each bay of the triforium 
 as a whole distinct in itself, and not merely one or two members 
 of a continuous arcade. Of course height is lost in the pillar, 
 but this loss in the present style is rather a gain ; I cannot but 
 prefer the arcades of Ely and Southwell to those in the nave of 
 Lincoln. 
 
 The presbyteries of Ely and Lincoln respectively exhibit the 
 two forms of the Early Gothic in their utmost perfection. The 
 details in both are beyond all praise, and the proportions are 
 equally faultless ; as perhaps the vast triforium of Ely, which
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 3G7 
 
 we certainly desiderate in the nave and choir of Lincoln, mhdit 
 not have agreed with the more advanced style of the presbytery, 
 where it must have been a mere double of the clerestory above. 
 Lincoln presbytery exhibits the Geometrical window in its highest 
 perfection, with the system of tracery fully developed, and still 
 preserving the beautiful simplicity which is lost in the later forms 
 at Exeter or Merton College. And the details differ but little 
 from the pure Lancet, the most graceful of any. But we must 
 not omit to do homage to the exquisite beauty of the smaller 
 nave of Lichfield. Its scale hardly admits of majesty, but for 
 loveliness nothing can surpass it. We cannot but admire the 
 extreme skill and delicacy of feeling with which every feature of 
 the largest cathedral has room found for its most exquisite pro- 
 portion in a comparatively small height. Yet it is not fair to 
 call Lichfield low; its compartments are comparatively lofty. 
 The triforium resembles that of Lincoln, and it may be made a 
 question whether its toothing is not a more graceful decoration 
 than the foliage of the latter. The spherical triangle in the 
 clerestory admirably suits its proportions, filling up the whole 
 space allowed, and fitting completely into the vaulting. 
 
 The nave of York Minster may be cited as a superb example 
 of the transition between this style and the Continuous. The 
 windows are decidedly Geometrical, and the piers are clusters of 
 columns, though their separate existence is much broken in upon 
 by the Continuous vaulting-shafts, which are far more prominent 
 than at Lichfield. The piers however retain their old propor- 
 tions, and have not assumed the lightness of the later style. 
 The triforium has vanished, the arrangement of Southwell being 
 employed; a row of panels within the window-jamb is all that 
 remains. This I cannot but look upon as an important fact; at 
 Southwell the elevation may not have been deemed sufficient to 
 admit of the triple division of height ; in the immense pile of 
 the Metropolitan church the omission can only show the ap- 
 proach of a style whose principles rejected tin; triforium. Hence 
 what at Southwell is a decided fault, is at York a manifest 
 beauty; it is in short a Continuous arrangement with Early details. 
 
 It is needless to state, (hat the great majority of Early Gothic 
 minsters had stone vaulted roofs. The vaulting is usually 
 quadripartite, but sometimes scxpartite ; ridge-bands and merely
 
 368 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 decorative ribs are gradually introduced. Salisbury exhibits a 
 vault of the simplest kind, without any of these features ; those 
 at Ely and Westminster are more complicated, but very different 
 from those of the succeeding style. The transepts of York 
 Cathedral exhibit an imperfect attempt to gain greater internal 
 height by taking in the gable stage ; but the effect is only that 
 of a distorted barrel-vault. Romsey and St. Alban's are vault- 
 less, on account of the Romanesque work adjoining ; and it 
 would seem that Whitby Abbey, without any such reason, was 
 designed for a flat roof. In small churches the roof is generally 
 the least satisfactory part ; vaulting is exceedingly rare, and the 
 ornamental open roof was not yet developed. Perhaps in this 
 style also flat roofs were not unusually employed ; ledges are often 
 seen against towers and over chancel-arches, which would serve 
 excellently for their support, and do not seem adapted to any 
 other purpose. 
 
 Before quitting the subject of Early Gothic minsters, we may 
 mention that the most perfect form of chapter-house is peculiar 
 to this date. The Romanesque examples, as Durham and 
 Bristol, were merely large oblong rooms ; and the late ones at 
 Canterbury and Exeter are of the same form. The like is 
 the form of that most exquisite gem of Lancet architecture, 
 the chapter-house of Oxford Cathedral. But the Geometrical 
 age produced the admirable polygonal chapter-houses at Lin- 
 coln, Sarum, Wells, Lichfield, Southwell, and York. All are con- 
 ceived on one type, but with striking differences in detail. With 
 two exceptions, York and Southwell, all have that exquisite fea- 
 ture, the central pillar, from which the vaulting diverges. Its 
 absence at York is sufficiently accounted for by its vaulting being 
 of wood ; at Southwell, partly from its small size, partly from the 
 example of the Metropolitan church. The details of all these, 
 their doorways, and the vestibules leading to them, are all of the 
 most exquisite beauty. Lichfield is remarkable from being of two 
 stories, a library being built over the actual chapter-house, and 
 being in its architecture a plainer copy of the sumptuous struc- 
 ture below ; the clustered pillar being replaced by a single column, 
 and the other details receiving an analogous treatment. These 
 beautiful edifices seem all to have been originally covered with 
 high-pitched roofs almost like spires, which have generally been
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 3G9 
 
 removed, but remain at York and Lincoln, to the great improve- 
 ment both of the chapter-houses and of the general effect of the 
 cathedral buildings. Sarum and Lincoln too retain beautiful 
 cloisters of this date, as also Canterbury, where however the 
 original arcades are very much injured by the addition of Perpen- 
 dicular vaulting. The simplest Geometrical tracery, as at Sarum, 
 seems admirably suited for this latter kind of building. 
 
 To turn to smaller churches, we shall find pillars and arches of 
 very different kinds, but as a general rule the pillars are low 
 compared with what they were afterwards, and the arches at 
 once tall and wide ; sometimes indeed absolutely sprawling. 
 The arches arc most commonly of two chamfered orders, but are 
 occasionally elaborately moulded. The pillars are of various 
 forms, clustered, round, and octagonal. The capitals arc some- 
 times plain, and sometimes adorned with foliage ; but the exten- 
 sive use of the floriated capital in small buildings hardly con- 
 tinued after the termination of the Lancet style. Occasionally 
 however pillars assume a very great height, as the octagonal ones 
 at Steeple Barton, Oxon, and the clusters in the magnificent 
 nave of St. Cuthbert's at Wells. These, though hardly clear of 
 the Transition, afford a perfect foreshadowing of the superb Per- 
 pendicular of the district, and harmonize admirably with the 
 later additions in this very church. 
 
 Tor examples of the pier and arch of the Geometrical style 
 worked with great delicacy, and which, as being on a large scale, 
 and yet not supporting any great weight, possess a bold and 
 soaring character, alike beyond the ordinary minster and the 
 ordinary parish church, I would refer to the choirs of Stafford 
 and Dorchester. The splendour of the three noble arches in the 
 latter is wonderful, and derived solely from proportion, the rich- 
 ness of detail not being remarkable. Stafford has the advantage 
 of a longer vista, and of that restored beauty, to which Dor- 
 chester is only progressing by slow, though we may hope sure, 
 degrees. The churches of St. Martin and St. Margaret at Lei- 
 cester have also Early Gothic naves but very little inferior in 
 effect. 
 
 In turning to Trench churches it is exceedingly difficult to 
 know what is to be called Transition and what Early Gothic; the 
 Gothic principle became completely triumphant at so very early 
 
 I, i!
 
 370 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 a period, while lingering features of Romanesque survived so 
 very late. Thus we find pillars hardly clear of Romanesque, 
 and a systematic use of the square abacus, in connection with 
 windows filled with complete Geometrical tracery, and even with 
 features bordering on the Continuous style, as the unbroken vault- 
 ing shaft and the ttiforium banished or reduced to complete subor- 
 dination. In their general effect Amiens, and Strasburg, and 
 the Early part of St. Oucn's, have far more affinity with the 
 nave of York than with Ely and Lincoln, while their details are 
 hardly so advanced as those of Sarum. The chief feature in 
 which this is shown is the very small prominence given to the 
 triforium. This peculiarity is of course connected with the 
 immense excess in the proportion of height conspicuous in the 
 French churches. As was above observed of Westminster, very 
 tall and narrow compartments are inconsistent with a prominent 
 triforium ; it must sink into comparative insignificance ; and 
 much more so in such a church as Amiens, whose height is to 
 our tallest Minster as three to two. Hence we have two forms 
 of triforium in the great French churches. In the earlier stages 
 of the style, as at Rhcims, Paris, and elsewhere, it is a not very 
 prominent arcade, sometimes grouped under containing arches, 
 but often without any attempt at tracery. In all these churches 
 the Romanesque leaven is still very strong, and the Geometrical 
 tracery is not yet quite fully developed in the windows, and, 
 quite contrary to the progress of the style in our own country, 
 it is still less so in the triforium. In the later developments at 
 Amiens and Beauvais, the triforium is merged in the clerestory ; 
 the principal mullions of the latter being continued from it. As 
 the style advances it gradually resigns all character as an arcade 
 or a distinct member of the building, and openly confesses itself 
 to be merely panelling underneath the windows of the clerestory. 
 The lower range of the double triforium at Rouen seems to be 
 the nearest approach to the English arrangement, but in Nor- 
 mandy, as we shall see presently, English ideas probably pre- 
 vailed, as was but natural, to a considerable extent, 
 
 The piers of these grand churches are very various, but as a 
 general rule, they arc by no means so advanced in character as 
 those of the contemporary erections in England. Churches 
 which maintain but a dubious claim to the title of complete
 
 OF TFIE EARLY GOTHIC. 371 
 
 Gothic, as Notre Dame de Paris and Dijon, retain columnar 
 piers of considerable elegance, and from which classical character 
 has by no means entirely departed ; in the apse especially this fea- 
 ture is retained to a still more advanced period. And even in those 
 which have clustered pillars, we miss the depth and boldness of 
 combination to which we are accustomed in those of our own 
 land. The pillars at Rouen and Coutances are simply shafts set 
 in the angles of a rectangular mass, exactly like the compound 
 pier of the Romanesque style, but such as we see in no English 
 Cathedral which has a reasonable claim to be called Gothic, with 
 the single exception of Wells. In others, as Amiens, and St. 
 Denis, the pillars approach nearer to our notions, being composed 
 of a large shaft surrounded by smaller ones, but the attached 
 shafts are often of very inconsiderable dimensions. And we 
 cannot but fail to remark the universal retention of the square 
 abacus in the smaller shafts, and the strong classical tinge which 
 even now pervades the foliage of the capitals. In fact the piers, 
 taken alone, are some of them thoroughly Romanesque, and 
 scarcely any can rank higher than Transition. 
 
 As might be expected from the Romanesque character of the 
 piers, the mouldings of the arches which they support arc very 
 far from being so advanced as in England; the square section 
 has by no means vanished. 1 
 
 Yet with all this the continuous line prevails almost as com- 
 pletely as at York or Winchester. In some examples, as at St. 
 Denis, the vaulting-shaft soars uninterruptedly from the ground ; 
 at Amiens it is only broken by bands corresponding with the 
 stages of the building. Even where continuity is least complete, 
 the base of the vaulting-shaft rests upon the capital of the 
 pier. In all cases the division into bays by a marked vertical 
 line seems everywhere rigidly preserved. Yet it must be 
 remembered that the Geometrical tracery is fully developed 
 in many of the churches which retain the strongest traces 
 of Romanesque. Nowhere do we, find more perfect examples 
 than at Amiens and lieauvais; and even where the tracery is not 
 thus complete, we find forms more advanced than at, Kly and 
 Sariim ; thus at Louviers, Dr. Whcwell 2 says, "the clerestory 
 windows are not threes or fives of lancets, nor do the French 
 1 Sec Whewell's German Churches, p. 111. 2 Page 1 75. 
 
 it u 2
 
 372 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 appear ever to have had these combinations ; they are two-light 
 windows struggling towards tracery by means of circles in the 
 head of the pair ;" such forms as are common enough in our 
 own small churches, though they do not prevail to any great 
 extent in English Cathedrals. 
 
 The true Lancet architecture of our own land, the glorious 
 stvle of Sarum and Ely, seems abroad to be peculiar to Nor- 
 mandy ; thus much at least I infer from Dr. Whewell's remarks. 
 The chief examples he mentions are the famous church of 
 Norrey, the Abbey church of Ardenne, and the Seminary chapel 
 at Bayeux. In all these, and in several smaller churches of the 
 same province, all the peculiarities of our own style are to be 
 found ; the lancet window grouped in triplets and couplets, with 
 all its accompaniments of mouldings, tooth-ornament, abaci, 
 bases, even detached shafts ; in short the pure Lancet style trans- 
 ported beyond the Channel. They present, what the great French 
 Cathedrals do not present, a thoroughly Gothic style, free from 
 Romanesque on the one hand and from Geometrical on the 
 other. One can hardly doubt that these buildings are French 
 only by geographical position ; when we consider the intimate 
 connection which then existed between Normandy and England, 
 and that the Lancet style was developed in England before their 
 political separation, we cannot fail to consider them either as 
 direct imitations of English structures, or at least as the work- 
 ing of a common element in the Norman mind on both sides 
 the water. We know that the architecture of the two countries 
 retained points of affinity in other respects, especially in the use 
 of the central tower, which must be assigned to one or other of 
 these causes. Perhaps in this case we may best suppose a simul- 
 taneous growth, for Norrey at least is as little like an English 
 parish church as any building one can imagine ; it is only in 
 architecture, not in outline, that we find the resemblance. 
 
 The Early Gothic of Germany is a very great advance on that 
 of France in purity and consistency, and every feature of a good 
 style of architecture. German Gothic stood the conflict with 
 Romanesque well, and came out whole and perfect, without any 
 fragmentary relics of the former style clinging to her ; Cologne, 
 Oppenheim, Marburg, and Freyburg, are higher efforts of Gothic 
 art than the most celebrated churches of France. In several res-
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 373 
 
 pects indeed French and German Gothic may be classed together 
 in opposition to English ; the main lines of both present a much 
 nearer approximation to the Continuous than is found in the 
 English ; there is in both greater comparative height, and conse- 
 quently less importance is given to the triforium ; and to come to 
 a very important feature, though one not directly bearing upon 
 the question of style, the doorways are of greater size and more 
 frequently divided by a shaft. But the German Geometrical 
 style has worked itself free from Romanesque ideas in detail, a 
 fact the more remarkable as it retained in occasional use several 
 of the old national peculiarities of the previous style, for instance 
 the central octagon, as at Oppenheim ; apsidal transepts, as at 
 St. Elizabeth at Marburg; even double choirs, as at Oppenheim. 
 But the best buildings have got rid of square abaci, and substi- 
 tuted octagonal ; foliage, mouldings, everything in short, is pure 
 Gothic, which cannot be said of Coutances or even Amiens. In- 
 deed, as Mr. 1'etit 1 says, "this style, as exhibited in Germany, 
 seems to be worked with greater sharpness, and, in fact, to fore- 
 stal more of the character of the next, than with ourselves.'" 
 This in a certain sense, the French buildings did, but not in 
 the same way as the famous church at Oppenheim, whose Geo- 
 metrical portion, commenced in 1262 and finished in 1317, 
 " almost approaches to the next style in the sharpness of its 
 mouldings, and the flowing lines of its tracery." 2 
 
 The windows of the German Early Gothic differ in several 
 points from our own. The spherical square, a figure of less ele- 
 gance in itself, but more easily managed, often takes the place of 
 the circle in the centre-pieces of large windows, of which we have 
 a rare example in the west front at Ilowden. The circular win- 
 dow is less common than in France; the noblest transept-fronts, 
 Cologne, Oppenheim, and Altcnbcrg, have merely pointed win- 
 dows. Yet, notwithstanding these two facts, the influence of 
 the circle in the formation of tracery is much greater in German 
 than in English Geometrical ; the wheel tracery diverging from a 
 centre is very frequent, and that in a purer form than in Kngland. 
 Some of the aisle windows at Oppenheim are little more than 
 rose windows set under pointed arches. There is a great pre- 
 valence of very long narrow windows, of the proportions of the 
 1 I. 170. 2 Ibid. 10S.
 
 374 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 slenderest lancets, but with tracery in their heads. Such occur in 
 the towers at Marburg, the transepts at Oppenheim, and the ap- 
 sidal chapels of Cologne, but the tall narrow faces of an aislelcss 
 apse afford them their greatest play. We have an approxima- 
 tion at home in that of Lichfield, but their full slcnderness and 
 narrowness is reserved for the apse at Oppenheim. In these 
 cases the tracery often commences, indeed it is almost driven 
 to commence, lower than the spring of the arch. One re- 
 markable feature is the absence of the dripstone; Mr. Petit 1 
 remarks that the omission of this, which is deemed almost an 
 essential member in our architecture, takes away but little from 
 the richness of the German Gothic. In rich buildings its place 
 is often supplied by tall gabled canopies, as at Cologne and 
 the nave of Oppenheim. Another feature of very enriched 
 buildings, as Cologne and Strasburg, is the double plane of 
 tracery. 
 
 Though the German Gothic churches retain somewhat of the 
 old national arrangements, the Romanesque variety of outline is 
 gone ; and it is in this respect that the great superiority of Eng- 
 land appears. Many of the grandest churches lack the central 
 tower ; Cologne has but an insignificant lantern ; Ulm, Prey- 
 burg, Strasburg, Marburg, all have their steeples at the west 
 end ; the two first having a single western tower, a feature un- 
 known to English Gothic churches of that size. All the towers 
 of this date seem designed for spires of the noblest class, and 
 would be imperfect without ; there is no tower, like Lincoln, 
 complete in itself. Of spires the first place is due to Freyburg 
 and Cologne, which for the splendour of their open tracery, and 
 the admirable joining with the square tower, must be allowed to 
 surpass anything in England. And they are real spires, stand- 
 ing out in the full majesty of the pyramidal outline, not dis- 
 guised and confused as at Antwerp, Strasburg, and Vienna. 
 The towers at Oppenheim and Seligenstadt are finished with 
 bulbous, oriental-looking cupolas ; I know not their date, but 
 the effect of the latter in Mr. Petit's etching is very far from 
 unpleasant. 
 
 Prom the great height of the clerestory, the height of the 
 pier-arches is hardly so great as in Prance ; the pillars are mostly 
 
 1 1. 171.
 
 OF THE EARLY GOTHIC. 375 
 
 very boldly clustered, but at Altenberg they are cylindrical. The 
 Continuous vaulting-shaft seems universal, as might be expected 
 from its prevalence in the national Romanesque. The vaulting 
 itself is usually of the simplest form. The great western arch 
 of Cologne one cannot help speaking as if the church were 
 complete is a remarkable anticipation of the next style, all 
 capitals having disappeared. 
 
 On comparing the different forms of Early Gothic, I think 
 we may assume that the palm must lie between England and 
 Germany; the palm, I mean, as to style; for in grandeur and 
 general effect Erance is not a whit behind cither. But the Ro- 
 manesque elements which still linger about French churches 
 must prevent their being compared with either the English or the 
 German as examples of the style. And between these it might 
 be difficult to decide, each having its own merits. England 
 may perhaps however be allowed to boast of having produced 
 the examples which exhibit the style most thoroughly carried 
 out, and that in two distinct forms. Germany has nothing to 
 balance against our Lancet buildings, which arc yet as truly and 
 perfectly Gothic as Cologne or Oppcnheim ; we must be allowed 
 to possess two forms of beauty, where they can claim but one. 
 And German Gothic anticipated from the beginning many fea- 
 tures of the Continuous style. From its birth it possessed continu- 
 ous vaulting-shafts, panelling, pinnacles, canopies, which do not 
 belong to our earliest Gothic. The German buildings contem- 
 porary with the Presbytery of Lincoln, or even that of Ely, have 
 much greater affinity with the nave of York. " In fact," says Mr. 
 Petit, 1 "the German architect seems at an early period to have 
 combined the sharp-edged mouldings of the one [style] with 
 the Geometrical tracery of the other, and thus to have produced 
 a peculiar and very pleasing kind of Transition." He instances 
 Freyburg and Strasburg steeples, and continues ; " Oppcnheim 
 church may also be considered as belonging rather to a transition 
 between the two styles, than wholly to either. Such Transition, 
 as we have observed, if the styles are of equal excellence, may 
 rival both : undoubtedly it does so in the present instance." 
 
 AVe may then conclude that the Marly Gothic churches of 
 Germany, as possessing in so great a degree the higher beauties 
 
 1 I. lO).
 
 376 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 of the Continuous style, approach nearer to the ideal perfection 
 of Gothic architecture, while the English more thoroughly carry 
 out the peculiar character of its Early form. In Germany 
 Gothic architecture leaped at once to its highest actual perfec- 
 tion no one can call German Flamboyant anything but a 
 debasement; it has but one form of the highest beauty; we 
 gained the same point by a more circuitous path, but, both before 
 and after, developed other forms of excellence unknown to any 
 other country. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 
 
 The difficulty of drawing any accurate line between this and 
 the previous style, different as they are in principle, has been 
 already remarked. The change, as was to be expected from its 
 nature, was one so very gradual, that even in tracery it is diffi- 
 cult to establish any fixed boundary, and still less can it be done 
 in the other portions of the building. Still we can distinctly 
 observe the gradual advance of the Continuous principle to the 
 supremacy which at last it fully established. 
 
 We will first of all briefly consider the windows of this style. 
 In all the forms of Flowing tracery there is a tendency to Per- 
 pendicular, an element not introduced ab externa, but latent in 
 the style itself, which gradually grew up into the complete Per- 
 pendicular window. Whether the tendency was a good or a bad 
 one, whether the evolution of Perpendicular was a development 
 or a corruption, is a matter of taste, with which we are here not 
 concerned. Our only business is with the question of fact, whether 
 Perpendicular was or was not a natural offspring of Flowing De- 
 corated. This the writer in the "Ecclesiologist " already 1 quoted, 
 maintains is the case with Flamboyant, though he looks upon 
 that style as a very degenerate descendant ; while Perpendicular 
 he considers as no development at all, but a distinct invention 
 1 Sec above, p. 339.
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 377 
 
 which sprang at once to life and to maturity, from the brain of 
 the greatest of English architects, prelate, statesman, founder, 
 William of "Wykeham of famous memory. I apprehend that 
 the only ground for this supposition is the ease with which that 
 immortal name can he fixed upon for the purpose. We happen 
 to know in whose erections the style was first brought to perfec- 
 tion, and we not only know his name, but are familiar with his 
 character and history, and know that his buildings form an im- 
 portant epoch in the history of the art. We cannot make so 
 probable a guess at the author of Geometrical or of Flowing 
 forms, yet they must have each had an author ; we must not so 
 talk of development as to forget that every improvement in 
 architecture must have been devised in some human brain ; 
 some one must have first thought of piercing the space above a 
 couplet, some one else of fusing a number of Geometrical 
 figures together ; and I apprehend that William of Wykeham, 
 if he really invented the Perpendicular style, did nothing more 
 than they had done. Whether what he did was as judiciously 
 designed, whether his innovation was as great an improvement 
 as theirs, is a consideration altogether alien to our present 
 question of fact. But if I am correct in supposing that Flow- 
 ing tracery contained a Perpendicular element in itself, it is clear 
 that the illustrious Bishop of Winchester could not have been 
 the inventor of Perpendicular in the sense intended by the "Ec- 
 clesiologist." lie may have deteriorated the style, he may have 
 converted a defect to which it was liable into an animating fea- 
 ture ; all I here contend for is that he, or whoever else was the 
 author of Perpendicular, could have introduced no new principle 
 even in tracery, but simply called into greater, it may be undue, 
 prominence one which he found already at work. 
 
 Flowing tracery in strictness admitted of no intermediate 1 
 form between Geometrical and itself, yet the forms of the two 
 styles might be mingled together to any extent. And we accord- 
 ingly continually find, not only contemporary Geometrical and 
 Flowing windows even in the same building, but the two styles 
 combined in the same window, in a variety of ways of greater 
 or less skill of combination. So in the Transition between the 
 two English forms of Continuous tracery, besides the actual ap- 
 1 Paley's Architecture, p. 1 TJi.
 
 378 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 proximation to Perpendicular in the Flowing lines, we meet with 
 many examples in which portions of the two forms are mingled 
 in the same window. These instances are altogether different 
 from the more imperceptible form of Transition ; and there can 
 indeed be little doubt that these are, as the supporters of the 
 antagonist theory maintain, 1 posterior to the introduction of the 
 complete Perpendicular, the work of artists endeavouring to 
 produce perfect specimens of the latter, but who were not en- 
 tirely emancipated from the influence of earlier forms. At the 
 same time this fact expresses nothing peculiar to the particular 
 Transition between Plowing and Perpendicular ; it is a cha- 
 racter common to all Transitions. One cannot doubt that some 
 of the instances of intermingled Geometrical and Flowing tra- 
 cery are in like manner owing to artists habituated to the 
 former endeavouring to imitate windows of the latter kind. And 
 this stage is not, as has been sometimes implied, confined to rude 
 country churches; it occurs in at least three 2 cathedrals, in- 
 cluding IVykeliam's own church ; a fact which appears fatal to 
 the notion of his being the inventor of the style, in the sense 
 intended. 3 
 
 The whole class of Continuous windows exhibit several peculi- 
 arities distinguishing them from the Geometrical, which are, for 
 the most part, introduced daring the Flowing period, and become 
 only more predominant during the Perpendicular. One of these 
 is the gradual loss of splay and of shafts. Shafts are common 
 enough in Flowing windows, and are not excluded from Perpen- 
 dicular, but their absence is never missed as it is in Geometrical. 
 In large Perpendicular windows the mullions are commonly set 
 in the centre of the wall. Small ones, continually in Flowing, 
 and often in Perpendicular, retain a wide splay and rear-arch, 
 but this is not the genius of the style. 
 
 1 Ecclesiologist, v. 24-1. during the episcopacy of his pre- 
 
 2 York, Canterbury, and "Win- decessor Edington ; an' opinion 
 Chester. which I have already heard ques- 
 
 a This also throws great doubt tioned by competent antiquaries ; 
 
 upon the opinion of Professor especially in an article in the 
 
 Willis, that the west part of Win- " Archaeological Journal," signed 
 
 Chester nave is early Perpendicular, E. B, 
 erected by Wykeham as architect,
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 379 
 
 A greater licence is given as to the form of the window head ; 
 besides the simple pointed and segmental arches, both of which 
 continue in use, the ogee is often found in Flowing windows, 
 especially in Northamptonshire. And a plain pointed arch is 
 often finished with an ogee canopy. Square -headed windows, so 
 rare before, are now very frequent ; they were in common use 
 throughout the period of Flowing tracery, especially in clere- 
 stories, of which Northamptonshire affords numberless instances. 
 Indeed the extensive use of the square head at this time was a 
 local peculiarity in that district, not only in clerestories, but in 
 aisles and chancels. 
 
 But the application of the four-centred arch is the great pe- 
 culiarity of the Perpendicular style. Its best forms exhibit a 
 very graceful curve, and where the window is of no great com- 
 parative height, the effect is very good ; in a very tall window- 
 it always seems out of place, but in such positions the best ex- 
 amples commonly avoid it. In some cases the upper segments are 
 much flattened, and hardly differ from straight lines, as in the 
 immense windows of the Divinity School at Oxford ; sometimes 
 again, especially in the case of lofty and comparatively narrow 
 windows, (as if to obviate the defect just mentioned,) they arc 
 acutely pointed, as in the chancel at Adderbury, and All Souls' 
 College Chapel. It is hardly necessary to mention the various 
 depressed forms employed when architecture began to decline, 
 though they are to be found in such gorgeous examples as Henry 
 VII/s Chapel, and the choir- roof of Oxford Cathedral. The four- 
 centred arch with an ogee head is found in the large window in- 
 serted in the west front of Canons' Ashby Priory-church, and has 
 a very curious effect. But, after all, the simple pointed arch is the 
 most predominant in the largest and finest Perpendicular build- 
 ings, as in Canterbury Cathedral and all Wykcham's buildings, 
 and even in Path Abbey and King's College Chapel it is more used 
 than the other. Mr. Palcy truly remarks, 1 that in large windows 
 under gables it is almost always employed. The east and west 
 windows of King's Chapel are exceptions, owing to the form of 
 the vault. 
 
 There is also a tendency more or less prominently at work 
 throughout the Continuous style, to extend the ornamental stonc- 
 i Gothic Architecture, p. 180.
 
 380 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 work below the springing of the arch. In the Early style it is 
 almost exclusively confined to the actual window head, except 
 when the arch is segmental, and consequently sufficient room not 
 afforded. But now the continuation of the tracery below the 
 spring of the arch is very frequent, not only when involved by 
 the employment of very depressed arches, but where there was 
 no such restraint, sometimes even during the prevalence of 
 Flowing tracery, as in a window in Oxford Cathedral, and, above 
 all, in the eastern window of Dorchester, where the whole open- 
 ing is filled with tracery. 
 
 But the way in which this tendency is chiefly carried out is in 
 the increased frequency of transoms. Tn Early Gothic churches 
 these are scarcely ever found, except in unglazed apertures, 1 and 
 even there not commonly ; such an example as those in the 
 chapter-house at Oxford is probably unique. 2 But now they gra- 
 dually become prevalent ; during the Flowing period they are less 
 common, 3 but when the Perpendicular style was fully developed 
 they came very extensively into use, and were often repeated 
 several times, as in the west window of Winchester Cathedral. 
 
 The mouldings of the complete Perpendicular are very easily 
 recognized, there being one or two very palpable peculiarities, 
 besides smaller and more recondite differences. One is the use 
 of a very broad and shallow cavetto, which in the best examples 
 is very boldly worked, and casts an excellent shadow. Others 
 are the greater prevalence of angles, the frequent use of ogees, 
 and especially double ogees, the absence of fillets, the more com- 
 mon hollowing of chamfers, and the more frequent uninterrupted 
 fusing of rounds and hollows together. The distinction of 
 orders too is lost, the mouldings being worked on a single 
 chamfer. Generally, as Mr. Petit observes, 4 the architects of 
 this period " substituted for that roundness which prevailed as 
 well in the sections of the mouldings and in the forms of tracery, 
 a certain sharpness and angularity, which might produce with 
 greater ease, both to the designer and workman, the contrasts 
 
 1 With these we must reckon 2 That in the west window at 
 
 architecturally the mysterious open- Howden is an insertion, 
 
 ings called " lychnoscopes." Their 3 See Paley's Gothic Architec- 
 
 use or symbolism is another mat- ture, 1S3, 4. 
 
 tor. 4 I. 173.
 
 Or THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 381 
 
 of light and shade, and the varieties of line, so necessary to give 
 richness and effect." 
 
 Nowhere is the transitional character of Decorated work so 
 clearly shown as in these mouldings, which sink gently from 
 the pure Lancet to the complete Perpendicular, without ever 
 assuming any distinctive character. And this notwithstanding 
 the prevalence of several very distinctive details, as the scroll 
 moulding and the ball-flower. During the predominance of the 
 Flowing line in the tracery, the mouldings exhibit a gradual ap- 
 proximation to Perpendicular forms ; the hollows become less 
 bold, ogees more frequent, fillets less common. The mouldings are 
 more commonly found continuous between shafts, and the shafts 
 themselves, where retained, become of less importance, sinking 
 into mere bowtels with a capital and base. Still the Flowing 
 style retained these comparatively insignificant shafts in great 
 abundance, both in window-jambs, and even against mullions. 
 In Perpendicular they are very rarely found in this last position, 1 
 and when used in jambs, arc usually confined to the interior. 
 We sometimes find such shafts or bowtels, with bases, but 
 without capitals, which is more usual abroad. 
 
 Turning to the contemplation of whole churches in the Con- 
 tinuous style, we shall find that the chief changes in outline result 
 from the greater licence given in the form of gables. The low 
 gable appears to have been originally introduced for the purpose 
 of introducing a clerestory without affecting the general propor- 
 tions of the building. Most of the low gables of the Flowing 
 period occur when a clerestory has been added to an existing 
 church, or when the church has been rebuilt without any other 
 departure from the old proportions. But it gradually extended it- 
 self so as to be a characteristic of the style ; at last we not only find 
 churches originally so built, but roofs have often been lowered 
 without any elevation being given to the walls, manifestly to the 
 great detriment of the building. The nave of ltomsey Abbey, 
 the transepts of Ely Cathedral, and the chancel 2 of St. (ides' 
 
 1 There is an exception in the Perpendicular, though, as is often 
 
 magnificent seven-light east win- found, introducing a considerable 
 
 (low of St. John's Glastonbury. return to earlier forms. 
 where the arch is four-centred, and The present pitch is much later 
 
 the tracery decided, probably late, and lower.
 
 382 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Northampton, all had their roofs considerably lowered in Deco- 
 rated times, though not so completely flattened as afterwards. 
 But as a general rule, when there was no special reason to the 
 contrary, roofs remained high till the full development of Per- 
 pendicular. Then they are generally low, so as to be hidden by 
 the parapet, but sometimes, though not high-pitched, they rise 
 above it, as at Yatton and Fotheringhay. The high gable was 
 however freely used when occasion required ; thus at Canterbury 
 and Winchester Cathedrals the same high pitch is preserved 
 throughout ; at Winchester this is the more remarkable an 
 adaptation to the old work, as Wykeham's original structures 
 are all low-pitched. The result of this change was the more com- 
 mon employment of lead as a covering, and the use of parapets 
 plain, pierced, or embattled, even in the smallest churches. 
 
 In the side elevations, the buttresses attain a greater projection 
 and a larger number of stages, while the windows occupy the 
 whole, or nearly the whole, of the space between them. Tn the 
 Flowing style this is less palpably the case, though many of the 
 finest buildings differ but little from the alternation of window 
 and buttress in the complete Perpendicular. There are some 
 excessively fine chancels in this style, (including some which have 
 the same general effect, though the windows are not free from 
 Early tracery, 1 ) in which the alternation is very conspicuous, 
 though the windows are usually not quite so large as in complete 
 Perpendicular ; the roofs arc high-pitched, the east window com- 
 monly of five lights, with three or four windows of three 
 lights on each side, between bold buttresses, all well furnished 
 with strings, and exhibiting that regularity and finish which 
 generally distinguishes Continuous from Early buildings. Some- 
 times, either from being originally so built, or from alterations 
 in the latter, they exceed the nave in height, or even in every 
 proportion, as at Claybrook and Aylestone, Leicestershire, and 
 above all in the superb choir of Cotterstock. 
 
 But in the complete Perpendicular, the bold projecting but- 
 tresses, and the vast windows occupying the space between, have 
 an effect altogether overwhelming. The majesty of such a range 
 stretching far away is essentially architectural splendour as op- 
 
 1 As Chartham, Norbury, (see Petit, i. 177, ii. 102,) and Bushbury, 
 near Wolverhampton.
 
 OF THE LATJK OR CONTINUOUS GOTUIC. 383 
 
 posed to mere picturesque beauty. Large churches of the Early 
 style may often rival it, but the great merit of Perpendicular is 
 that it carries its principles into the parish church as well as the 
 cathedral, and the same regularity of design and splendour of 
 execution are bestowed on both. The aisles of Wrington church 
 afford a prospect fully equal in every respect but size to those of 
 Canterbury Cathedral or King's College Chapel. As other 
 splendid examples of this complete rilling up the external sur- 
 face with the alternate buttress and window, I may refer to New 
 College Chapel, the chancel of Adderbury, and the "diaphanous" 
 aisles of Fotheringhay. I know of no church which more im- 
 pressed me with the majesty of the Perpendicular arrangement 
 in this respect, than that glorious fragment, notwithstanding 
 the glaring faults of other portions of the design. 
 
 The clerestory is almost universal in the best specimens of 
 aisled churches, but its proportions are very various, both in 
 large and small buildings. At Canterbury it is of moderate 
 height, and the aisles arc the most prominent feature ; at Bath, 
 as we have already seen, 1 the clerestory is almost everything, the 
 church being clearly designed with reference to it as the pre- 
 dominant object. Here of course arc immense flying buttresses, 
 which occur also at Canterbury : but at Winchester, Gloucester, 
 York, and other large churches, they are entirely absent, or of 
 very limited application. One hardly knows how to account for 
 their presence at Fotheringhay, which has a wooden roof and an 
 elevation of but forty feet. 
 
 In parochial churches the clerestory is not often of very great 
 height, the additional elevation being commonly taken out in 
 the aisles; the generality of Perpendicular clerestories are not 
 much higher than the Geometrical examples at Warmhigton and 
 Barnwell St. Andrew's. 
 
 In the great churches which are Perpendicular from the 
 ground we commonly find the arrangement of hays strictly car- 
 ried out, though each bay of the clerestory often contains, as at 
 Newark, two windows placed close together, so as to form, exter- 
 nally at least, a continuous range. The magnificent churches of 
 Somerset have commonly one pointed window over each bay, and 
 that often of no great size, so that the clerestory is not nearly 
 1 See above, p. ''>'>} , note.
 
 384 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 so much of a u glass-house " as the aisles. The Somersetshire 
 churches are often finished with beautifully pierced parapets 
 without a battlement ; in the smaller examples the clerestory is 
 sometimes absent. The "fringing the outline with pinnacles" 1 
 is one of the greatest advantages of the low roof and Perpen- 
 dicular style. 
 
 There seems to have been no part of a church which the Per- 
 pendicular architects were more anxious to bring under the do- 
 mination of their own style than the clerestory ; they not only 
 added it to small churches where it had previously no existence, 
 but reconstructed it on their own principles in large ones ; as 
 at llochester, Oxford, and Gloucester. Indeed it cannot be de- 
 nied that Perpendicular builders often ran wild in their love of 
 clerestories ; for to add them to buildings without aisles, or to 
 the aisles themselves, is a simple barbarism. Two ranges of 
 windows in the same wall never look well under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances. The intrusion has most frequently taken place 
 in chancels, when ihe high roofs have been destroyed, and the 
 walls raised to the height, or nearly the height of the nave, as 
 at Towcester and Market-Harborough. 
 
 But the noblest external feature of the Continuous style is 
 undoubtedly its magnificent steeples, both with and without 
 spires. To quote the words of an opponent, "Even in the most 
 brilliant period of Middle-Pointed, spires became ornamental 
 appendages to the tower : and this, it may be said, was the first 
 symptom of the decline of Christian art. Instead of being 
 broach, they began to spring out of the middle of the tower, and 
 were sometimes abutted on by small flying buttresses from the 
 angles. The first instance of this is said to be at St. Michael, 
 Langtoft, Lincolnshire ; and that is as early as 1330. But 
 the corruption did not make much progress for thirty years 
 after : and then it very suddenly obtained." 2 The broach con- 
 tinues throughout the Decorated period, of which we have such 
 examples as Irchester, the magnificent crocketed spire at Market- 
 Harborough one of the most perfect steeples of its size in 
 existence and above all, the famous one at Newark ; but in 
 Perpendicular it is rare and local, nearly all the few exam- 
 ples existing being confined to the borders of Leicestershire and 
 1 Petit, ii. 77. ~ Handbook of Ecclesiology, p. 197.
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 385 
 
 Northamptonshire. The other form is the typical one of the 
 Continuous style, and when well carried out far surpasses the 
 broach in richness and symmetry. Its ruder form, 1 where it 
 rises unconnectedly from the centre of an embattled tower, is 
 decidedly inferior, but when it exhibits its full array of pierced 
 parapet, pinnacles, and flying buttresses, nothing can surpass 
 it. The same general character pervades both varieties of the 
 style, and it is only by the minutest details that they can 
 generally be distinguished, as the Perpendicular belfry-window 
 was introduced very early, and the Decorated spire-light always 
 prevailed ; the spires are usually very taper and lofty, and mostly 
 crocketed. There cannot be a more perfectly beautiful ex- 
 ample than Rushden, whether for outline or detail. The 
 magnificent structure at Louth is familiar to all. I ought also 
 to mention the well-known flying spire of St. Nicholas, New- 
 castle, but I cannot bring myself to admire it. 
 
 The spire is now more frequently set on an octagon ; the 
 grand example is of course St. Michael's at Coventry, which 
 may fairly claim to rank with Sarum and Freyburg. Nothing 
 can surpass its graceful sublimity of outline, and its grouping 
 with the other two spires of the city is admirable. When the 
 cathedral church was in being, which is described as resembling 
 the most graceful of Minsters, its sister Lichfield, on a grander 
 scale, few scenes in the world could have equalled the effect of 
 the already glorious precinct. Northamptonshire will supply 
 several examples of smaller size. 
 
 The spire having been thus reduced to an ornamental appen- 
 dage, and the tower being often of such a character as to be 
 complete without it, it was an easy development to omit the spire 
 altogether, and work up the tower alone into a prominent feature. 
 "The square tower witli its capping of battlements and pin- 
 nacles (I cannot name a better example than that of Magdalen 
 College, Oxford,) is one of the noblest features of Gothic archi- 
 tecture, and is peculiarly our own : nor is it confined to one class 
 of buildings; the town, the village, the episcopal city, alike 
 boast it as their chief ornament. It appears of every degree of 
 plainness or richness, and appears to have been in general use 
 from the late Decorated to the very extinction of Gothic." 2 
 1 See above, p. 340. -' Petit, I. 21)!). 
 
 c c
 
 386 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The simplest and plainest form of tower which can have any 
 pretence to architectural design may be found in some parts of 
 Kent; these have an octagonal turret at one corner, and at the 
 others diagonal buttresses, for the most part terminating under 
 the belfry windows, which are square-headed, and the battle- 
 ment quite plain, without pinnacles. The form which differs 
 from these mainly in the omission of the turret, the substitution 
 of a pointed window, and the occasional addition of pinnacles, is 
 common everywhere. 
 
 But the land of enriched Perpendicular towers is the west. 
 They begin to make their appearance in an undeveloped form in 
 Gloucestershire, Wilts, and Dorset; attain their culminating 
 point in the unrivalled glories of Somerset ; and appear again to 
 die away in Devonshire. So many and so various are the in- 
 stances that I will principally confine myself to those which I 
 have myself seen. The larger and most splendid examples divide 
 themselves into two classes ; those which are simply a series of 
 stages placed one upon another without much connection ; 
 and those in which the whole upper part of the tower is one 
 mass of panelling, like two belfry windows of gigantic height, 
 repeatedly transomed, and the upper part being actually 1 open 
 as such. Among the first class Taunton is allowed to take the 
 first rank ; but its arrangement for unity and vertically can- 
 not be for a moment compared with the other kind. The 
 belfry windows are commonly double or treble, often richly 
 adorned with canopies and pinnacles, but having no connection 
 with the work below. A corner turret, often crowned with a 
 tall pinnacle, frequently occurs. The parapets are various, some- 
 times flat and pierced, sometimes with a rich open battlement ; 
 pinnacles, sometimes swelling into open lanterns, are general. 
 
 Still more grand and lovely are the other class, in which the 
 whole tower rises from the ground in one harmonious design, 
 the very triumph of Gothic architecture. Such are the three 
 stately and magnificent steeples of St. John, Glastonbury, St. 
 Cuthbert, Wells, and St. Mary, Wrington, among which it would 
 be difficult to assign a scale of precedency. Glastonbury is the 
 
 1 They are usually filled with rich perforated stone-work instead of 
 luffer-boards.
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 387 
 
 loftiest, Wells has in the octagonal lanterns at its angles a more 
 agreeable form than the square ones of the others, while Wring- 
 ton is unsurpassed for graceful beauty. No village tower which 
 I know can be compared to it for a moment, and the nave and 
 aisles are, so far as I have seen, only rivalled by Ban well. It is 
 much to be regretted that both in this, and in many other 
 churches of the neighbourhood, the chancels, retained from 
 earlier fabrics, are so unworthy of the gorgeous creations to 
 which they are attached, and which doubtless owe their existence 
 to the skill and piety of the mighty house of Glastonbury, some 
 even perhaps to its last and martyred abbot. 
 
 The tendency of Perpendicular is decidedly to western towers, 
 which is much to be regretted, as the immense length of such 
 buildings as Tamworth, Newark, and Coventry, demands the 
 break afforded by the central tower. Still we have several line 
 Perpendicular central towers, both of churches originally de- 
 signed in that style, and reconstructions of others. The finest 
 form is unquestionably where the tower is surrounded by octa- 
 gonal turrets at each corner, as in the glory of all towers, that 
 of Canterbury ; which is of two stages, with two windows in 
 each, and is beyond all praise for the manner in which they are 
 combined into a most superb and harmonious whole. The same 
 arrangement occurs at Ashford in Kent, and at St. Sampson's, 
 Crieklade, a tower of faultless proportions and most striking in a 
 distant view, but which disappoints on a nearer approach by the 
 strange fact that it has no belfry windows, the whole upper stage 
 being simply covered with panelling. Gloucester Cathedral has 
 a famous tower, but I cannot rank it with Canterbury; its sur- 
 face seems rather frittered away, it lacks the majestic corner tur- 
 rets, and its square pinnacles cannot compare with the octagonal 
 ones of its rival. 
 
 Of detached campaniles 1 need only mention that of Magda- 
 len College; every one is familiar with its height, its plain 
 lower stage, its splendid upper portion, its turrets, pinnacle-, 
 inches, and open battlements. 
 
 The octagon, before chiefly used ;i> a base for a spire, a use of 
 which however we have seen that the most splendid examples 
 occur in this style, is now made into a finish for a square tower. 
 And surely no form can be more elegant or more thoroughly 
 
 cc2
 
 388 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 vertical than sucli a lantern when it has attained the full Per- 
 pendicular development, and rises in the forest of pinnacles which 
 crowns the stupendous height of Boston, and the lowlier, but 
 still stately tower of Fotheringhay. The campanile at Irthling- 
 borough is detached and of late Decorated date, having square- 
 headed windows with Reticulated tracery ; the octagon is of re- 
 markable height, without pinnacles, and has a half-military look. 
 The upper part of a low central tower all indeed that is free 
 from the church is also occasionally octagonal, as at Nantwich, 
 Stafford, and Tong. Stafford did, and Tong still does, carry a 
 spire, but of no great height and not forming a necessary part of 
 the design. 
 
 Continuous doorways are of various forms, and manifest the 
 gradual development in their shafts and mouldings which has been 
 already described. Everdon church, Northamptonshire, has a 
 splendid shafted doorway of that period of Decorated which 
 may be considered as transitional from the Early Gothic to this 
 style. There are a good many late Decorated doorways in the 
 southern parts of Northamptonshire, with a pinnacle on each 
 side, and a crocketed ogee canopy to the arch. The effect is 
 very good, and is continued in the Perpendicular tower of Chip- 
 ping Wardon. But the most typical form has a square label 
 with divers ornaments in the spandrils; originally the label only 
 is square, but afterwards many of the mouldings follow the 
 same form. The west doorway at Middleton Cheney is a splen- 
 did example, richly adorned with niches, panelling, and foliage, 
 but still retaining a trace of the other arrangement in the ogee 
 form of the inner label. 
 
 Porches now grow in importance, though they do not often 
 attain to the gigantic scale of that at Cirencester : the best are 
 commonly of two stories, of the full height of the aisle, with the 
 lower or entrance story vaulted. The west front of Magdalen 
 Chapel has a curious shallow porch, if it deserves the name, an 
 arch with open spandrils being thrown across in front of its 
 magnificent western doorway. The like arrangement is found 
 in the great gateway. 
 
 Turn we now to the interior ; the first point that strikes us is 
 that the difference between Collegiate and Parochial churches 
 has nearly vanished. This position has been denied, on the
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 389 
 
 ground that no Perpendicular building can be perfect which is 
 not one mass of panelling. This is indeed a feature of very 
 great splendour when it occurs ; but it surely cannot be con- 
 sidered as any more essential to this style than the analogous 
 enrichment of arcading is to its predecessor. And certainly, just 
 as the regular windows and buttresses of the exterior make the 
 parish church approximate to the Minster, so the like is the ease 
 in many of their internal features. St. Mary Redcliffc is assuredly 
 to be reckoned architecturally as a member of the latter class, yet 
 it is only the carrying out of the Somersetshire parish churches. 
 In both we have the same tall pillars and small arches supporting 
 a clerestory without a triforium, and the same shafts running up 
 to the roof. Make the pillars rather stouter, and add vaulting, 
 less essential as it now becomes, and the difference between 
 Winchester and Canterbury, and Wrington and Yatton, is pretty 
 well reduced to one of size and ornament. Such a nave as St. 
 Mary's Oxford might stand as part of a Cathedral almost without 
 change. The prevailing presence of the clerestory in the one 
 class of churches, and the absence of the triforium from the other, 
 so that they thus meet one another half-way, together with the 
 substitute for vaulting afforded in the rich timber roof common 
 to both, of course contribute greatly to this change. 
 
 It was in the pillars that Early ideas prevailed latest ; a large 
 pier still remained for the most part a cluster of columns, and a 
 small one octagonal or even cylindrical, after the window had de- 
 veloped into confirmed Flowing tracery ; the octagonal column 
 indeed is retained during the whole prevalence of the Perpendi- 
 cular style. But even in Decorated times we find occasional traces 
 that Continuity was busy here also. The pillars in the choir of 
 Ely are channelled with mouldings continued round the arches, 
 the shafts being simply attached to the cardinal faces; an essen- 
 tially Perpendicular arrangement. Several small parish churches 
 possess Decorated arches channelled from base to apex with 
 continuous mouldings, unbroken by shaft, capital, or impost. 
 This is indeed continuity run wild, and is rarely found even in 
 Perpendicular buildings. 
 
 The genuine Perpendicular pillar is generally of a lozenge 
 form, its greatest length ranging north and south ; in many 
 cases the capital does not embrace the whole pier, some of the
 
 390 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 mouldings being continuous, as in those at Ely just mentioned. 
 Even when this is not the case, as at St. Mary's, Oxford, it still 
 preserves the character of a channelled mass with shafts attached, 
 rather than a cluster of shafts. Shafts commonly run up to 
 support the roof, even when of wood. At Canterbury the pier- 
 arches are thrust into quite a secondary position, the vaulting 
 and vaulting-shafts being the main features, hardly less than in 
 King's College Chapel. They have but one order of mouldings 
 supported by a single shaft, while at Winchester there are two. 
 There can be little doubt as to the great superiority of the lat- 
 ter ; the prominence given to the pier-arch does not in the least 
 interfere with that of the vaulting. 
 
 The pillars are now very much taller, and the arches propor- 
 tionably narrower, than before. This is nowhere so conspicu- 
 ously shown as in the belfry-arches, the height of which is often 
 most striking. In the arcades, the shafts running up to the roof 
 divide the church into tall narrow compartments, as is especially 
 seen at Yatton. Shafts are sometimes banded as in the Early 
 style ; this has been often remarked at Canterbury, but it occurs 
 also at Bath, Wrington, and Yatton. 
 
 The capitals are most frequently octagonal, and composed 
 simply of mouldings ; still there are many examples, especially 
 in Somerset, of round capitals adorned with foliage. Similar 
 ones crown the vaulting-shafts at Winchester. The bases are 
 usually octagonal, and set upon very high plinths. One might 
 almost imagine this practice was caused by the growing use of 
 fixed seats in churches, which, even in their lowest and most 
 inoffensive form, would conceal the low bases of the earlier styles. 
 Of course, as in all other cases, the fashion, when once set, would 
 be applied in positions where the original reason did not apply. 
 The clustered or channelled pier is much more common in small 
 churches than it had previously been, but the octagonal form is 
 freely used. Enormous piers of this form have been inserted 
 under the Romanesque arches in the choir of St. Cross. 
 
 The only distinct and large triforium which can be called 
 Continuous is that in the choir of Ely ; where it is of the full 
 size, and is a manifest adaptation to the magnificent Lancet work 
 in juxtaposition with it. One can hardly think such an one 
 would have found a place in a strictly original design, after the
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 391 
 
 insignificance to which the triforium had been reduced at York 
 and Exeter, and even in the adjoining contemporary octagon of this 
 very Cathedral. But this Ely triforium is an attempt to clothe 
 an Early outline in Continuous details, and as such, with all its 
 beauty of workmanship, it must be pronounced an architectural 
 failure. A triforium has an idea of its own, but an idea which 
 cannot be clothed in Continuous forms ; it is the creation of the 
 shaft and arch, and cannot be translated into the language of the 
 mullion and panel. At Ely we have only a two-light window 1 
 with Flowing tracery employed as a triforium. As a window its 
 lights are too broad : as a triforium it is cpiite out of character; 
 a triforium requires an air of solidity, and consequently the mul- 
 lion and tracery, which in a window are graceful, are in a trifo- 
 rium simply flimsy. And the whole elevation is completely 
 Perpendicular in idea ; the continuous mouldings of the pier- 
 arches have been already mentioned ; both these and the trifo- 
 rium have the square 2 label and foliated spandril of the complete 
 Perpendicular; the very jambs of the triforium have continuous 
 mouldings between shafts of small projection; all forming the 
 most utter contrast with the Lancet Presbytery. No church 
 more completely shows the identity of late Decorated and Per- 
 pendicular than the work of Alan of Walsingham. 
 
 In the complete Perpendicular the triforium, as a distinct 
 architectural member, has vanished. Canterbury and Win- 
 chester retain an arrangement analogous to that of Southwell 
 choir, the passage being formed in the decorative clerestory, 
 the lower part of which is solid and panelled. Fotheringhay 
 has the cill of the clerestory window brought down in a similar 
 manner, but without a passage or panelling. At Path the clere- 
 story is brought down to the string over the arcade, which is 
 the arrangement of the best parish churches. 
 
 We now come to the roofs of this style, which both in wood 
 and stone arc more gorgeous than any other. .Many of the 
 latest stone roofs, though very gorgeous in point of ornament, 
 
 1 In some bays it is actually open small churches the space is gene- 
 
 as a window. No one would think rally left bare, in large it is occupied 
 
 of glazing that of the Presbytery. with panelling connected with that 
 
 - This is not very common even above, 
 in Perpendicular pier-arches ; in
 
 392 HISTORY OV ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 exhibit very depressed arches, pendants, 1 and a general want of 
 harmonious design. Excluding these, which must be considered 
 as debasements, we may divide the vaulted roofs of this style 
 into two elasses, those which still retain the quadripartite con- 
 struction, however lost in the profusion of decorative ribs ; and 
 those to which the gorgeous invention of fan-tracery is applied. 
 In the former class it is impossible to draw any marked line ; the 
 simplicity of Sarum and the elaborate magnificence of Canter- 
 bury are separated by gradations so gentle that they can hardly 
 be marked even into stages, unless we so call the point at which 
 ribs began to break and diverge in a way showing them even to 
 the eye to be merely decorative panelling applied to the roof 
 and probably giving the germ of fan-tracery. 
 
 But while the simple vaulting attained a more complete de- 
 velopment, Perpendicular also brought forward its own creation 
 of fan-tracery. Taking the inverted semi-cones alone, nothing 
 can be more vertical or more vegetable than the multiplicity of 
 divergent ribs spreading from the top of the vaulting-shaft. 
 But the spaces necessarily left between them afford a difficulty 
 analogous to that in Geometrical tracery, as they can hardly be 
 brought into connection with the other parts. Still the effect is 
 very noble. It is perhaps more commonly used for small build- 
 ings, as cloisters and small chapels, than over wider spaces ; but 
 it also occurs on a gigantic scale in King's College Chapel and 
 the choir of Bath Cathedral. 
 
 The substitute for vaulting in the form of enriched wooden 
 roofs was, like most Continuous features, conceived in the Flowing 
 age, and carried to its greatest perfection in Perpendicular. The 
 best example I know of the former is the famous one at Adder- 
 bury, of medium pitch, and with bold foliations cut in the solid. 
 There is another of somewhat similar character at Thurcaston, 
 Leicestershire. 
 
 To describe the infinite variety of Perpendicular wooden roofs 
 would both require greater space than I can afford, and greater 
 mechanical knowledge than I can pretend to, especially as the 
 East-Anglian examples of high pitch are known to me only by 
 
 1 These seem an application of a over the choir of Oxford Cathedral, 
 wooden notion to stone; this is which is very much like a timber 
 manifestly shown in the vaulting roof.
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 393 
 
 report and engravings. As far as I can thus judge, I cannot 
 but think the hammer-beam or trefoil roof, magnificent as it is, 
 far more suited for a hall than a church. But the most distinc- 
 tively Perpendicular roof is low-pitched, with tie-beams sup- 
 ported by an arch, usually four-centred, which generally rise 
 from figures of angels with outspread wiugs, either as corbels or 
 as the capitals of shafts; the spandrils, cornices, and bosses 
 allow of any amount of enrichment. Somersetshire affords 
 magnificent examples at Wrington, Wells, and Glastonbury. 
 On a still larger scale we may refer to the two University 
 churches, St. Mary's, Stafford, and the Cathedrals of Rochester 
 and Oxford. The former is plain and heavy, the latter very rich, 
 and remarkable for the arches below the tie-beams being semi- 
 circular, evidently to adapt them to the Romanesque arches of the 
 lantern, with which they come in close contact. Others, especially 
 in the west, and under a higher external roof, arc ribbed, being 
 composed of a series of wooden arches, round or pointed, close 
 together. A richer variety of the same form is the coved roof, 
 with a series of similar arches at greater distances, and boarded 
 between, as at Yatton and Banwell, being in fact very nearly a 
 wooden barrel-vault. Sometimes a roof is flat or nearly so, or 
 there is a flat wooden ceiling, as that most gorgeous one over 
 the nave of St. Alban's Abbey-church. 
 
 Among the superb monuments of the complete Perpendicular 
 style, the first place is undoubtedly due to the nave of Winches- 
 ter. Making every allowance for the feelings with which one 
 approaches the Cathedral -church of that mighty bishopric, 
 whose long line of prelates boasts so many of the most famous 
 names of Christendom, and the greatest of all, its own illustrious 
 builder; within whose walls so many saints and heroes, and that 
 builder himself, still repose and endeavouring to pass a calm 
 judgment upon a work hallowed by such associations, and far- 
 ther allowing every due merit to those who first designed the 
 pile which Wykeham did but re-model, no one can deny to that 
 glorious temple a place in the very first rank, even in the land 
 of Westminster and Lincoln. Nothing among all the products 
 of architecture can be more overpowering than the series of tall 
 shafts and arches, all pointing heavenwards, and extending along 
 its interminable length a succession of the same glorious forms,
 
 394 HISTORY OK ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 broken only by an occasional remnant of the former pile, and 
 by the gorgeous tomb of the illustrious founder. St. Alban's ex- 
 ceeds in mere length, but there the general effect is broken by the 
 varieties of architecture, none of which can pretend to the same 
 excellence in their own kind as the one form at Winchester. It 
 is the grandest example of a church of such vast length carried 
 out in one consistent style of Gothic ; the slight variety in the 
 western part makes no difference whatever in a general view. 
 Great length internally is not at all opposed to verticality, it is 
 only excess in breadth which has to be guarded against. To the 
 eye gazing along its whole expanse the two lines which bound the 
 eastern or western termination are, as Dr. Whewell says, the real 
 centre of the whole ; the sides, of whatever length, sink into 
 mere strips, and consequently the longer their range, the more 
 numerous 1 is the close array of vertical lines of which they are 
 composed. And the nave of Winchester has the advantage of 
 combining the solemnity of the massive Romanesque with the 
 buoyancy of the aspiring Perpendicular ; its pillars are at once 
 solid and lofty, being the original Romanesque piers raised with- 
 out any diminution of diameter. And if it be argued that these 
 merits are in a great degree to be ascribed to Walkelyn rather 
 than to Wykeham, it may be fairly answered that they show his 
 judgment in the exact amount of retention on which he decided, 
 one which allowed him all the excellence to be derived from 
 the proportions of the elder fabric, while it did not in the least 
 cramp his energies in carrying out the full resources of his own 
 style. He did not utterly destroy, as at Canterbury, or merely 
 overlay, as at Gloucester. The latter magnificent choir, loftier 
 and more richly decorated than Wykeham's nave, and as striking 
 in general effect, will not bear the same minute examination; it 
 is but a web of tracery woven over the Romanesque structure, 
 whose two lower stories remain in their full integrity within. 
 With Canterbury I am not so familiar as with Winchester, 
 and my recollections of it are more distant ; it is more airy 
 and soaring, but hardly possesses the same awful solemnity. 
 What the nave of Winchester is to the early Perpendicular, 
 
 1 It is probably to a desire of the chancel-arch in this style is to 
 obtaining these in greater perfec- be ascribed, 
 tion, that the frequent omission of
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 395 
 
 the chapel of King's College is to the late ; a most glorious ex- 
 ample of the vigour and purity which English Gothic retained 
 to its latest day. The form, size, and destination of this build- 
 ing render it perfectly unique. If Oxford has her many glorious 
 fabrics, Cambridge has her one, infinitely beyond them all. 
 King's Chapel most successfully avoids all the errors of the con- 
 temporary buildings, it has no sign of debasement, no overload- 
 ing of ornament ; it is especially vigorous, nothing being frittered 
 away upon petty detail, as in Henry VII.'s Chapel. The exist- 
 ence of so gigantic a structure without aisles is a remarkable 
 fact, and it is wonderful how little the want of arcades is felt, 
 the lines of the vaulting-shafts and windows fully supplying 
 their place. Here too, as well as at Winchester, we perceive the 
 sublime effect of a vast unbroken length. 
 
 The Continuous style of France is not Perpendicular, but 
 Flamboyant ; the Flowing form hardly exists as a distinct style, 
 Geometrical tracery having been retained much later than in 
 England. The name is derived from the flame-like forms as- 
 sumed by its panelling and tracery. Like the Perpendicular, 
 this tracery is formed by the simple continuation of the mullions, 
 and the foliation of the spaces between, the only difference being 
 in the direction in which the lines are prolonged. Flamboyant 
 tracery docs certainly produce forms of the most extreme ugli- 
 ness ; but on the other hand, when really well wrought, perhaps 
 no other is so thoroughly satisfactory. It leaves no part of the 
 window-head, or only the most insignificant parts, unoccupied ; 
 and its peculiar curves combine the freedom of Flowing tracery 
 with the thorough continuity of Perpendicular. In short the 
 best Flamboyant tracery is decidedly better than the best Per- 
 pendicular ; but the very stiffness and sameness of the latter 
 prevented the designer, unless he totally forsook the principle 
 of formation, from running into all the wild extravagances of 
 the worst Flamboyant, where unmeaning curves run heedlessly 
 over the window, and are often without foliations. Genuine 
 Flamboyant tracery is very rare in England, but principles and 
 notions derived from it are perpetually obtruding themselves 
 upon the Flowing forms ; a perfect Flamboyant window of the 
 most beautiful and absolutely faultless design occurs at Salford 
 in Warwickshire, and is figured in the Glossary.
 
 396 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The other details of Flamboyant agree with the tracery ; with 
 greater capabilities for excellence than any other form of Gothic, 
 there is none that exhibits so much extravagance and utter de- 
 reliction of the principles of the style. Thus the natural pier of 
 the style is the channelled pier with continuous mouldings, 
 shafts being attached or not. This occurs in all its glory in the 
 matchless nave of St. Ouen's, the nearest approach to an ideal 
 Gothic that Christendom has ever seen ; yet it is continually for- 
 saken, even in that very church, for the most preposterous per- 
 versions, such as pillars circular or otherwise, with the mould- 
 ings 1 dying into them, without so much as a capital to conceal 
 the discrepancy; being what is most truly called a tfocontinu- 
 ous impost. The mouldings too are perhaps the worst of any 
 style of Gothic; they exhibit extravagant hollows combined with 
 extravagantly thin and projecting members ; and in short have 
 no character or meaning whatever. 
 
 The rich buildings of this style, fascinating even among its 
 wildest corruptions, affect a more than Arabian gorgeousness. 
 E very inch is covered with tracery of the richest kind ; every 
 pointed canopy, a feature in which the style delights, is loaded 
 with crockets, distant, but large and elaborate; every arch drips 
 with foliations hanging free like laccwork. The Alhambra itself 
 does not surpass the gorgeous web of ornament spread over the 
 west front of the Cathedral at Troyes. Yet, sometimes, as may 
 
 1 " The prevailing vice of these this practice ; the Discontinuous 
 two styles [the late Gothic of Impost is another. This in England 
 France and Germany] is the exces- consists in little more than the ad- 
 sive use of interpenetration amongst dition of a few mouldings to the 
 the mouldings : no moulding is al- arch of a plain archway, without 
 lowed to stop or rest firmly upon a disturbing the course of the original 
 surface, but must always appear to lines, and therefore without break- 
 pierce it, and, if possible, to make ing the connections between the 
 its appearance on the other side. arch and its piers ; in Germany and 
 The German and French have two France, on the contrary, the lines 
 different modes even of using this of the pier are always studiously 
 method, so destructive of all appa- interrupted, * * * and the arches 
 rent stability, and of which some appear ready to slip down the sides 
 insignificant traces may be found of the pier, having nothing to rest 
 in our own country. * * * The on or unite them with it." Willis's 
 German * * stump tracery * * * Remarks, p. 155. 
 [see below, p. ;J09] is one branch of
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 397 
 
 be also observed of some examples of the German Geometrical, 
 gorgeousness and baldness are united in the same design. Such 
 is the case with the west front of St. Martin's at Pont a Mous- 
 son ; two towers of noble outline, with the upper stage octago- 
 nal, project in front of the nave, and their lower stages are bare 
 even to meanness. 
 
 The windows and doorways of the best churches are usually 
 simple-pointed; the very flat and elliptical arches, sometimes 
 called Burgundian, are characteristic of the style, but are gene- 
 rally a sign of late date, and are more frequently met with in 
 domestic than in ecclesiastical edifices. The doorways retain the 
 same general outline as those of the preceding style, and conse- 
 quently differ widely from those of the English Perpendicular. 
 Beauvais Cathedral exhibits them on the most magnificent scale 
 of size and gorgeousness. 
 
 The rose window is a most favourite ornament ; in many cases 
 however, the circular figure is but a part of the design, being set 
 under a pointed arch, and having tracery below it. It is in this 
 feature that the first approaches of this style make their appear- 
 ance ; rose windows often manifesting a tendency to Flamboy- 
 ancy in churches whose general character is Geometrical. 
 
 As in our own Perpendicular, the spire becomes less neces- 
 sary, though the genuine embattled and pinnacled tower seems 
 hardly ever to have been naturalized out of England. One of 
 the most English towers is at the west end of the ruined Abbey 
 of St. Bertin, at St. Omer. The noblest form of the Flamboyant 
 is the octagonal lantern, as in the splendid examples at Rouen, 
 both in the Cathedral and the inimitable St. Ouen's. Both 
 Perpendicular and Flamboyant delight in octagonal turrets, and 
 in both they are sometimes topped with small cupolas, as at 
 King's Chapel and St. Ouen's, though the details of the two 
 are very different. In France they arc sometimes round, as in 
 the transepts of Beauvais and Seulis. 
 
 Within, one may remark the frequent retention of the trifo- 
 rium, in the same subordination to the clerestory as in the 
 French Early Gothic. As it, never assumed the same promi- 
 nence as in the Early Gothic of England, it was not so utterly 
 abolished in its later forms. Vaulting sometimes preserves, as 
 at St. Ouen's, a dc ree of simplicity, which in England had
 
 398 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 vanished much earlier : but the same tendency to increased com- 
 plexity and ornament was at work, and very intricate vaults are 
 common. Several forms are enumerated by Professor Willis, 
 but he seems to imply that pure fan-tracery, by far the best 
 and in every way most satisfactory form of intricate vaulting, 
 does not occur among them. 
 
 The Flamboyant never seems to have had the same fixedness 
 as other styles ; it ran wild in quest of ornament, and adopted 
 it wherever it could be found, whether appropriate or not. It 
 frequently reverts to Geometrical forms, and even to plain lan- 
 cets. On the other hand, it often Italianizes, and introduces forms 
 alien to the true Gothic, even when it cannot be called actual 
 llenaissance or cinque-cento. And even when later additions in 
 that style, or even one of confirmed Italian character are made, 
 they do not seem so utterly incongruous as elsewhere. The splen- 
 did octagon of Bayeux Cathedral finishes not unnaturally in its 
 cupola, and that of Troyes has a north-west tower in cinque- 
 cento, evidently intended to harmonize with the rest of the front, 
 and which does not altogether fail. All these circumstances are 
 remarkable, and show most plainly that " corruptio optimi est 
 pessima :" no other style has the capabilities of Flamboyant, no 
 other has so grievously abused them ; it has on the one hand 
 reared the very noblest temple of our faith, on the other it has 
 run into all the perverse extravagances of an exuberant and un- 
 disciplined fancy. 
 
 Truly the Abbey of St. Ouen may claim the first place among 
 all the edifices that human skill has ever reared. What the por- 
 tico of Peterborough is among single portions, this glorious pile 
 is among whole churches. Yet while the portico stands per- 
 fectly alone, with no rival before or after, a church, if it retain 
 the old Catholic forms, cannot be so totally unique, it can be 
 but the most perfect carrying out of what has often previously 
 been attempted. And such indeed is this peerless church ; 
 without, it combines the vast height so conspicuous in French 
 churches with the more majestic outline of the English ; the 
 cross form nobly developed, no dimension stunted, and all cir- 
 cling round, what Amiens, and Cologne, and Freyburg cannot 
 boast, the true predominant central tower, and that one mass of 
 superb tracery, and crowned with the lovely lantern. Within,
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 399 
 
 it is the very triumph of verticality ; the long array of continu- 
 ous lines is not inferior to Winchester, while in height and 
 lightness it of course far exceeds it. The choir has Geometrical 
 windows, and is altogether Early Gothic, but its internal lines 
 harmonize completely with the later work. It dates from 1318 
 to 1339. The transept was commenced in 1400 and completed 
 in 1439 ; the nave took from 1464 to 1515 ; and its front is not 
 finished yet, the diagonal western towers never having been 
 erected ; one can hardly judge of the effect which their curious 
 position would have had upon the whole design. 1 Dr. Whewell 
 mentions numerous adaptations in detail to the earlier part ; the 
 general proportions are identical ; the nave retains the same 
 subordinate triforium, and with Geometrical tracery between the 
 strong vertical mullions of its panelling. Still nothing is in- 
 troduced at all inconsistent with the style, or which derogates 
 from its claim to be the noblest of Gothic churches, and conse- 
 quently of all human creations. 
 
 Other magnificent examples abound in France. The model 
 front is doubtless Abbeville ; the doorways and west window are 
 grand, and the whole most richly panelled, though without the 
 almost painful gorgeousness of Troycs. The height is prodigious; 
 the towers though very lofty, scarcely reach above the gable. 
 This facade seems exactly to balance Amiens; I must think it 
 surpasses it. 
 
 The Late Gothic of Germany also displays many signs of de- 
 basement as well as that of France ; the strange vagaries of its 
 tracery arc most astonishing. The examples given by Professor 
 "Willis of " stump tracery," where different bars intersect one 
 another, and come to nothing, and the other utterly meaningless 
 forms, some without any idea whatever, others simply repro- 
 ducing Geometrical shapes utterly corrupted, should really make 
 us thankful for the introduction of the Perpendicular line into 
 our national style, which, as Mr. Petit 2 says, " saved the English 
 Gothic; from debasement." And this ineffectual search after 
 beauty by ransacking nature and art for every kind of fantastic 
 shape is shown in every other feature of this architecture. "To 
 a severe regularity of forms succeeded arbitrary petty decora- 
 tions; and whereas the best examples of the thirteenth ccn- 
 ' Petit, I. lS'J. - 1.207.
 
 400 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 tury are ornamented with fruits and flowers, the edifices of the 
 fifteenth century were themselves frequently in the form of 
 plants, a freak which seems to overstep the bounds of architec- 
 ture. This style of building, having outlived its prosperity, was 
 the more easily superseded in the sixteenth century by a more 
 modern Italian style." 1 
 
 This fantastic style of building is nowhere more conspicuous 
 than in the towers of this style, gorgeous as they are. For 
 instance, the noble outline of the real spire, boldly showing its 
 pyramidal outline, as in the most perfect of all steeples, that of 
 Freyburg, is deserted for a combination of unmeaning turrets 
 and pinnacles, masking its real form, and giving the structure 
 rather the air of a number of towers piled one upon another, 
 than of a real spire. It is a square at the base, and comes to a 
 point at the top, but one hardly knows how or why. This form is 
 preferred by Mr. Hope, 2 because the spires " seem, from the very 
 foundation of the building, to have been considered as integral 
 parts of the design, to grow out of the very base, and to begin 
 that pyramidizing which is only to end at their highest apex." 
 Yet the steeples of Cologne, of Freyburg, Sarum, and St. Mary's 
 at Oxford, in the exquisite manner in which the base of the spire 
 is treated, show that real skill can combine the square tower and 
 the pyramidal spire into one harmonious whole, without in the 
 least diminishing or masking the simple and noble effect of the 
 latter in its native form. 
 
 Many of these towers occur both in Germany and the Nether- 
 lands ; in many cases they are left unfinished. Thus Frankfort 
 Cathedral has its great western tower at present crowned with 
 a cupola, but it appears from the original design preserved by 
 Moller to have been intended for a sort of flying spire hardly 
 less unpleasing. Ulm, Ratisbon, and others were never finished, 
 and at Antwerp and Strasburg, we have only one of an intended 
 pair. The two last may well be compared together; but the 
 difference is very apparent. Strasburg has, just at the top, a 
 real spire, though strangely disguised, Antwerp has positively 
 none ; an octagon is set on a square, and itself supports a com- 
 position of open tracery and flying buttresses which does not 
 even pretend to the pyramidal shape. 
 
 1 Moller, p. 30. 2 Page 405.
 
 OF THE LATE OR CONTINUOUS GOTHIC. 401 
 
 The German Flamboyant has the same characteristics as the 
 French with regard to the interpenetration of mouldings and 
 discontinuous imposts. Some of the finest churches, as Freyburg 
 and St. Sebaldus at Nuremburg, have channelled piers without 
 capitals, with imposts continuous or discontinuous. As in all 
 late Gothic, we find in this German Flamboyant the same ten- 
 dency to increased decoration in vaulting. Freyburg exemplifies 
 this to a certain extent, but the climax in this respect, as indeed 
 of every other form of complicated internal ornament, is to be 
 found in the magnificent, though certainly somewhat debased, 
 church of St. James at Liege. It is an example of that un- 
 pleasant kind of vault, like the choir of "Wells, where the dis- 
 tinctions of groins and cells are almost lost, and the multiplied 
 ribs run unmeaningly over the roof, as if nailed or glued to it, 
 being a manifest transition from the old Gothic stone vault to 
 the coved plaister ceiling of later times. This seems to be what 
 Professor Willis calls a stellar vault ; of which kind he observes 
 
 that " vaults on this principle are commonly to be met 
 
 with in the German churches. I suspect most of them/' he 
 continues, "arc of wood and plaister, and in many of them the 
 ribs are only surface ribs laid on to a waggon vault with Welsh 
 vaulting-cells, exhibiting examples of very simple vaults con- 
 verted by surface ribs into very intricate 01108." l This produces 
 in the vaulting of the apse of St. James, an effect something 
 like a wooden roof; thus there are projections having the 
 general appearance of hammer-beams, and with the character- 
 istic angels. This apse with its low arches, like those of tombs, 
 leading to the surrounding chapels, and its lofty transomed 
 windows, is very fine, as indeed is the whole church, though 
 deficient in height ; the pillars and vaulting-shafts have capitals, 
 the former somewhat resembling our Perpendicular arrange- 
 ments. The pier-arches have each order foliated, or rather 
 fringed with lace-work ; the effect is very rich, but I must think 
 the ornament out of place in that position. 
 
 Certainly when we compare these edifices with our own con- 
 temporary ones, we can have but little hesitation in esteeming 
 England to have been, during the fifteenth century at least, the 
 
 1 Remarks, p. 84. 
 i)
 
 402 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 chosen abode of Christian art. If we have nothing to compare 
 to that one matchless pile of St. Ouen's, to which York and Win- 
 chester and Canterbury alike must yield ; if we have nothing 
 like the stately transept of Beauvais, or the almost painful mag- 
 nificence of Troyes j if we miss the rose window from our fronts, 
 and the glorious apse has not returned to our altars ; still our 
 Perpendicular possesses a general vigour and harmony to 
 which the contemporary foreign styles cannot pretend. If the 
 best Flamboyant surpasses the best Perpendicular, still even the 
 worst Perpendicular that has any right to the name is far 
 preferable to some specimens of the French, and still more 
 the German, style. Our buildings never run into the same 
 senseless extravagance, where nothing but mere excess of or- 
 nament is left to supply the place of real art. The simple prin- 
 ciple on which Perpendicular panelling and tracery is composed 
 at once precludes the wild forms, not a whit more Continuous 
 than Geometrical, for which the Flamboyant so often forsook 
 its simple and noble beauty. In our mouldings interpenetration, 
 that absurd display of useless labour, but seldom occurs, and a 
 discontinuous impost 1 is hardly to be found in any prominent 
 position. And England produced that most glorious creation, 
 the square embattled tower, which in its purity is almost con- 
 fined to our own country. Continuing the use of the spire in 
 all the beauty of Louth and Coventry and Ptushden, we added 
 another form, the most majestic of all. And further, our style 
 might, without forsaking its principles, adopt whatever is most 
 attractive in the foreign forms. We might freely transplant 
 those magnificent portals to which most certainly Perpendicular, 
 even less than any other style, can oppose no rivals ; and the 
 rose window, so glorious at Lincoln, might be the chief, instead 
 of the subordinate ornament of future Minsters. For such we 
 trust the England of Saints may yet rear ; temples that may 
 surpass St. Ouen's itself, where the height of Amiens and the 
 richness of Beauvais may be linked to the more harmonious 
 
 1 The most striking instance I stilt placed above the capitals, 
 
 know is in the nave of Dursley which, with the pillars, are of the 
 
 Church, Gloucestershire ; the cham- same form; the effect is anything 
 
 fcrs of the arches, which are seg- but good, 
 mental, die into a regular octagonal
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 403 
 
 wholes, the more faultless outlines, which grace the vale of Lich- 
 field and the height where the church of St. Hugh still soars 
 in triumph ; fit emblem of the spiritual temple, that city set on 
 a hill which cannot be hid. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 
 
 We have hitherto been considering Gothic architecture as prac- 
 tised among those nations where it was really native ; where, 
 if it was not actually invented by all of them, or produced in 
 all alike by spontaneous and simultaneous development, it at 
 least took root in each soil with equal firmness, and in all bore 
 fruit of such extraordinary merit, that it is almost a vain ques- 
 tion to discover in which it made the nearest actual approaches 
 to an ideal perfection. In England, France, and Germany, to 
 whichever of the three the actual invention may be due, Gothic 
 architecture was equally at home ; in all it was thoroughly 
 native, it expressed both national and religious feelings, and an- 
 swered the requirements of a northern climate. Each exhibited its 
 own peculiarities ; Germany, by a process at once slow and rapid, 
 passed almost at once from perfect Romanesque to perfect Gothic. 
 France dazzles by the most stupendous designs, and often leaves 
 them unfinished; similarly the actual development of the style 
 is swift, brilliant, and superficial. England, with less of gigan- 
 tic grandeur in particular buildings, and less of rapid develop- 
 ment in styles, gives to all a harmony and purity which is pecu- 
 liarly her own, and in the course of her slower progress, calls 
 forth forms of beauty unknown toother lands. Yet in all it is 
 the same style, founded on the same principles, and in all pure 
 and native, without any foreign admixture ; nowhere is it an 
 imitation or an exotic. 
 
 In southern Europe the ease was very dim-rent ; neither in 
 Spain nor in Italy was Gothic a native style, called forth by the 
 genius of the country and nation. In both it partakes more or 
 less of an imitative character, and never approaches the full per-
 
 404 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 fection of more northern lands. And in Italy, as further re- 
 moved in blood and feeling from the Teutonic stock, the case is 
 more conspicuous than in Spain ; Spanish Gothic, though con- 
 taining incongruous elements, has attained more excellence as a 
 style, and produced finer edifices than that of Italy. 
 
 Italy, though overrun by Teutonic tribes, never became Teu- 
 tonic. She indeed beheld Gothic Kings at Ravenna, and Lom- 
 bai'ds at Pavia, and saw the line of her old Csesars restored in 
 the person of the Frank Charlemagne. Yet the full system of 
 Teutonic civilization never took root ; the influence, one might 
 almost say the magic power, of Rome, fallen as it was, always 
 remained too great for the " barbarian " element to obtain more 
 than the barest political supremacy. The shadow of ancient 
 glory still haunted the scenes where the old Roman had been 
 dominant ; in art and literature the classic element was never 
 discarded, as it hardly could be while nobles of Teutonic blood 
 passed by their real descent from Gothic and Lombard heroes to 
 rejoice in a fabled pedigree tracing them up to some fallen pa- 
 trician house of the elder day. 
 
 In such a land, where the old system was still looked back 
 upon as something of which it was unjustly deprived, and where 
 the national feeling occasionally burst forth in a Consulate or 
 Tribunate, unreal indeed and almost ludicrous, but still showing 
 the national feeling ; where the language, after all the infusion 
 of Teutonic elements, still remained essentially Roman ; where 
 art and literature still clung to the imitation of the models 
 which Roman power had left ; it could not be expected that the 
 glorious offspring of the North, the fruit of Teutonic genius, the 
 language of the Teutonic soul, should ever become thoroughly 
 dominant. It ever remained an exotic, introduced by German 
 influence, and chiefly in buildings in which German architects 
 had a greater or less share. It ever remained a feeble imitation, 
 copying a few Gothic forms, without realizing their spirit; it: 
 was never pure ; classical ideas, classical forms, perpetually recur, 
 so that it is hard to say how much has been merely retained all 
 along, and how much is the direct offspring of a formal Renais- 
 sance. 
 
 Even Italian churches erected by French or German archi- 
 tects, such as St. Andrew at Vercelli, St. Francis at Assisi, and
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 405 
 
 the great Cathedral at Milan, have caught somewhat of the taint 
 of the country, and are very different from what we may suppose 
 they would themselves have erected on this side of the Alps. 
 Not that for this they lay open to any reasonable blame ; Italian 
 tastes, Italian prejudices, the very necessities of the climate, may 
 have constrained them to depart from the purity of the style ; 
 it may be that a complication of causes of this nature must for 
 ever prevent a pure Gothic church from being built in Italy ; 
 certain it is that such an one has never yet been seen. So far 
 as it is Italian it is not Gothic ; so far as it is Gothic it is not 
 Italian. 
 
 Of the three churches just mentioned, St. Andrew at Vercelli 
 was the first in Italy in which anything like Gothic architecture was 
 attempted. It was erected in 121 9 as the church of a monastery 
 founded by Cardinal Guala, who had been Papal Legate in France 
 and England, 1 and who brought back with him one Thomas, a 
 native of Paris, whom he made the first Abbot, and who was 
 architect of the church. Here we have a direct foreign influence. 
 Yet Mr. Knight's description will show how little of good French 
 architecture Abbot Thomas was able to introduce. " San An- 
 drea," he observes, " is far from pure. In parts of the exterior, 
 perhaps from compliance with the habits of the native masons, 
 round forms are repeated. The facade itself is Romanesque ; 
 but the interior 2 of the church presents the exact appearance of 
 a French or English building in the Early Pointed style. The 
 arches arc pointed. Light pillars, with foliage capitals, run up 
 
 1 To this fact we may attribute able from those of the vaulting ; 
 the circumstance that the church is and the composition at the east end, 
 without an apse. an equal triplet with a rose above, 
 
 2 From Mr. Knight's engraving does not sufficiently fill up the 
 1 should take a much less favour- space. Still, with all these defects, 
 able view of this interior ; the clus- the general etl'ect is good ; and Mr. 
 tering of the pillars seems very Webb (Continental Ecclesiology, p. 
 awkward, the abaci are square, or 401) testifies to much better detail 
 rather something between square in some points than the engraving 
 and octagonal, the foliage hardly displays. The outline, with two 
 Gothic; and there is a general lack western towers, a central octagon, 
 of mouldings. The trif'orium-rango and " a massy one south-east of the 
 is nothing but a blank space; the south transept," seems to belong to 
 lantern-arches are not distinguish- the German Romanesque.
 
 406 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 to support the roof; the roof is vaulted and groined; the win- 
 dows in the chancel are lancet. If, however, we behold in San 
 Andrea the earliest introduction of the Pointed style on the 
 south side of the Alps, yet it had no effect upon the habitual 
 style of the country. No change followed its appearance. It 
 was situated in a remote corner. 1 It was considered as the in- 
 sulated whim of a travelled man. Vercelli possessed no school 
 of architects and sculptors, who might have carried the new 
 fashion into other districts. It is to another example that we 
 must look for the real origin of a change of style in Italy; an 
 example which will show that the change of style in Italy pro- 
 ceeded from Germany." 
 
 This is no other than the famous double church of St. Francis 
 at Assisi, built by Jacobus, a German architect, in ] 229, the 
 year after the canonization of the great founder of the Mendi- 
 cant orders, for the express purpose of receiving his relics. Mr. 
 Knight speaks of it as one in which " the Pointed style appears 
 complete in all its parts;" but his own engravings exhibit flat 
 soffits, square abaci, Corinthian capitals, and such like foreign 
 elements, and the view of the exterior in the " Moyen Age Pit- 
 toresque " displays a Lombard campanile, and a flat, heavy, 
 utterly un-Gothic facade. The best feature is the very elegant 
 early Geometrical tracery in the windows. 
 
 When we turn from these works of foreigners to the build- 
 ings erected by Italians in their pointed style, we shall see a 
 still further departure from the pure forms of the north. " Where 
 Italians," says Mr. Hope, "were the architects, the rounded 
 archways maintained their ground, and obtained intermixture 
 with the pointed. In the palace called of the Lombard Kings 
 at Pavia ; in the Palazzo Publico at Piacenza ; and at Como, and 
 in many other edifices, the round arches rise above, or intervene 
 between the pointed ones, so as to show themselves contempo- 
 raneous, or younger ; and most of the Italian cathedrals, vaunted 
 as fine examples of the pointed style, wholly want its essential 
 characteristics. They show not the higher, as in Germany and 
 France, insensibly growing out of, and intimately connected with, 
 the lower parts. The celebrated Churches of Monza, Sienna, 
 
 1 " Vercelli is in Piedmont, at about an equal distance from Turin and 
 Milan."
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 407 
 
 Orvieto, and Spoleto, offer a mere jumble, which displeases 
 through the inconsistency of the forms, while it dazzles through 
 the richness of the materials ; the white and various coloured 
 marbles mixed with mosaics, with bronze, with painting, and 
 with gilding. The scpiare parts arc awkwardly inserted, and the 
 pointed gables are mere screens, which have no connection either 
 with the front or with the roof. A fine pointed steeple is no- 
 where beheld in Italy ; and even in the Italian churches, most 
 decidedly in this fashion, so rarely arc pillars not round, but 
 angular, and formed of clustered shafts, that they appear in no 
 place, even in the more numerous pointed churches of Milan and 
 Venice; and that the only exceptions I remember are in the 
 dome of Verona, the church of St. Anthony at Padua, and that 
 of St. Petronius at Bologna. 
 
 " Indeed we hardly see Italian architects adopt the Pointed 
 style, before they again revert to the round, even previous to the 
 revival of the antique; witness at Milan, the tower of the small 
 church of St. Gothard, built in 1336, entirely woven over with 
 small columns, some supported by its body, others projecting on 
 brackets, all crowned by round-headed arches ; and, what was 
 esteemed a marvel in its day, at Florence, the Loggia di Lanzi, 
 built by Andrea Orcagna, in 1355, whose immense round-headed 
 arches were deemed at the time a most happy suggestion ; and 
 at Como, the new dome, which was built so late as 139(5, has 
 round-headed porches ; and whatever churches, or other monu- 
 ments are found in the north and central parts of Italy, are all, 
 as we have before remarked, not only in what is called the stile 
 Tedesco, but actually, as far as can be ascertained, built by Ger- 
 man architects; witness the dome of Milan, tin: Church of St. 
 Francis at Assisi, and the ciboria of old St. Peter, and of St. 
 Paul, at Home." 1 
 
 In no one respect does the Italian Gothic exhibit any attention 
 to the leading and necessary features of the style. Take an ex- 
 terior view : in the first place you find no outline, or not a Gothic 
 one; hardly anywhere does Italy exhibit a church of which every 
 part gathers around the magnificent central tower, soaring pyra- 
 midally above its subordinate western ones. The utmost that may 
 be hoped for is a central dome, a feature noble indeed in itself, 
 1 Hope, pp. 4.09-01.
 
 408 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 but altogether inconsistent with the type of a Gothic church. 
 Nor yet do the fronts exhibit the sublime outline of the nave 
 gable between its supporting steeples, or even the less magni- 
 ficent, but still always satisfactory composition of the same 
 "able rising above the terminations of the aisles. All that we 
 have is the old Lombard type, with its character quite lost by 
 the incongruous intermixture of the pointed arches. One low, 
 dull, heavy gable comprises all the aisles, perhaps just sufficiently 
 broken, as at Monza, to render its ugliness more conspicuous ; 
 or perhaps a goodly show is made, as at Sienna and Orvieto, by 
 three lofty gables, which you might fancy finished a nave with 
 aisles of equal height, but a view from the east dispels the illu- 
 sion ; they are the genuine street front of the modern Early 
 English. No bold projecting buttress breaks the flatness 
 of the facade, which nothing but the most lavish display of or- 
 nament can hinder from being absolutely ugly. Windows, filled 
 indeed with tracery, but almost as often round-headed as pointed, 
 peep through the wall without any particular reason for their 
 position, or any reference to the unity of the whole. Gigantic door- 
 ways, sometimes not masking their Roman origin, but retaining 
 the whole apparatus of a Lombard portal, sometimes deigning to 
 assume a pointed head, but otherwise not departing from the 
 character of the preceding style, are rendered more palpably out 
 of place by the addition of pointed canopies. Nor is the matter 
 mended when an attempt is made to gain something of Gothic 
 character by loading a design in another style, or no style at all, 
 with all the Gothic frippery that unappreciating imitators could 
 devise. Such is the portentous structure called St. Mary della 
 Spina at Pisa, 1 crowded with open canopies containing statues, 
 such canopies being, like ciboria, supported on pillars, and even 
 these, which are meant to be excessively Gothic, twisted and 
 curled, and finished with capitals altogether unlike any northern 
 examples. Below all these are round-headed windows, a kind 
 of triplet with the self-same twisted pillars acting as mullions. 
 In short the classical element obtrudes itself at every step, unless 
 indeed it is the Pointed which is to be considered the intruder; 
 
 1 " The fault of the exterior is a real. They mask in a delusive 
 number of false gables and pedi- way one of the simplest of roofs." 
 ments, which could not possibly be Webb, p. 363.
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 409 
 
 for in such a confusion of contrary elements it is difficult to say 
 which is predominant. At Venice the style is perhaps a little 
 better than elsewhere; the apse of Santa Maria Gloriosa has 
 caught a little of the Gothic spirit in its tall narrow compart- 
 ments and lofty windows, strange as is their tracery : it only wants 
 buttresses and a high roof to rank as a third-rate Gothic design. 
 The Duomo at Asti has an apse of still better character, especially 
 as it has a nearer approach to projecting buttresses ; the height 
 is very great, and the tall lancets have a fine effect, but seem to 
 want shafts. 
 
 Nor do the interiors present any improvement upon the ex- 
 ternal features ; there is the same confusion in point of style, 
 the same want of harmony in design. Instead of the tall nar- 
 row compartments of the true Gothic, we find only arches of l 
 excessively wide span, often without a pretence at moulding, and 
 usually of one order only ; and these springing from piers of 
 every strange form, clusters with Corinthian capitals, as in the 
 boasted 2 Cathedral of Sienna, or such indescribable vagaries as 
 those given in Professor Willis' plates from St. Pctronius at Bo- 
 logna. Then above these is a space, without horizontal divisions, 
 or with a quasi-classical cornice, as at Sienna ; usually without 
 a triforium, and with no clerestory as a genuine architectural 
 member, often merely a circular aperture in the vaulting-space. 
 
 The secular buildings of Italy are very numerous and impor- 
 tant. As in the free cities of the north, the liberal public spirit 
 of the countless republics into which the country was divided 
 adorned every town with a Town-IIall of the best architecture 
 they could produce ; and as in such structures Gothic architec- 
 ture has not, even under the best circumstances, the same scope 
 as in churches for its highest developments, the loss of the nobler 
 
 1 This characteristic anil its bad man and French examples, and yet 
 
 effects are most ably drawn out these magnificent pier-arches are 
 
 by Professor Willis, Remarks, p. entirely destructive of the effect of 
 
 13033. lie gives a calculation of the whole as a Gothic composition." 
 
 four cathedrals, Florence, Hologna, 2 This church has in its centre an 
 
 Ulm, and Amiens, of which the hexagonal dome, a form involving 
 
 result is " that, with equal dimen- the strangest crossings and twistings 
 
 sions in every other point, the of arches imaginable. The lower 
 
 Italian cathedrals have pier-arches stage of this dome within has a re- 
 
 of three times the span of the Ger- gular colonnade and entablature.
 
 410 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 forms of the art is not so acutely felt as where there was more 
 reason to expect their presence. And more than this, the Sara- 
 cenic influence, which was before hinted at as having a great, 
 though undefined, share in the formation of the Italian Gothic, 
 is more conspicuous in these and other secular buildings than 
 in the churches. And though the Arabian style is itself far from 
 a good one, it has sufficient merit to render an approximation to 
 it a source of improvement in one so thoroughly debased as 
 the Italian Gothic. This is especially perceptible in Venice ; 
 many of the strange, and rich, and wildly beautiful forms of 
 architecture exhibited in the elder buildings of that wonderful 
 city have a manifest savour of that orientalism to which, whether 
 Byzantine or Arabian, we owe the glorious cathedral of St. 
 Mark. There is the same love of fantastically rich forms, of 
 ogee and multifoil arches, and there is a general oriental charac- 
 ter about the style, which is of more importance than detail. 
 One might almost expect to see a bearded and turbaned caliph 
 appear on the hanging balconies of the Foscari palace, or the 
 wild, grotesque, yet inexpressibly grand, dwelling-place of the 
 Doges. The low pillars, which might almost have served for a 
 Norman crypt, supporting pointed arches, and above, that mar- 
 vellous gallery, with its small pillars and gigantic quasi-reticu- 
 lated tracery; all manifest, if not purity of taste, at least rich- 
 ness of fancy, which is more than can be said of the simple 
 bungling of some of the grandest Italian churches. 
 
 The hand of the Saracen is also traced, with every probability, 
 by Mr. Knight, in the forked battlements, so thoroughly Ara- 
 bian, and the fretted arches of the Palazzo Publico at Sienna. 
 No less oriental are the plain pointed arches resting on simple 
 columns with huge abaci almost amounting to a stilt, in the 
 cloister of St. Anthony at Padua, that strange mosque-like 
 church, whose minarets and clustering cupolas at least produce 
 that variety of outline from which the Italian Gothic is commonly 
 debarred. 1 
 
 Of other secular erections the Palazzo Publico at Sienna is 
 
 1 While speaking of cloisters, enobles the name of that city. Its 
 
 the Campo Santo at Pisa must not openings are round-headed with 
 
 be forgotten, a part of that won- very fair Geometrical tracery from 
 
 derful group of buildings which shafts.
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 4H 
 
 one of the noblest, though we lack the tracery and the grand 
 high roofs of the north, and the tall tower, which can only be 
 compared to a machicolated factory-chimney, is a poor substitute 
 for the noble steeples of those cities where commerce and freedom 
 had no less power, and a purer taste in art shed additional 
 lustre over them. The Mercanzia at Bologna is one of the most 
 favourable examples of this corrupt Gothic, its forms being quite 
 m that style, and the detail of great richness, but greatly wanting 
 adequate mouldings. 
 
 But the glory of the Italian Gothic, the one structure which 
 it has contributed to the list of great European churches, has 
 been hitherto only the subject of an incidental allusion. I 
 allude of course to the superb Cathedral at Milan, which has 
 drawn forth such enthusiastic admiration from no less tasteful 
 an observer than Mr. Petit, and which, with all its faults, many 
 and grievous as they are, must be allowed a high place among 
 Christian temples. Widely as it differs from the purity of 
 the northern Gothic, no one can refuse assent to the position 
 that " the Cathedral of Milan, whether from its noble dimensions, 
 the precious materials of which it is entirely composed, or the 
 richness of its ornaments, is one of the most splendid temples 
 in Christendom, and without comparison, the most successful 
 building in the Pointed style to the south of the Alps." 1 Yet the 
 balance of probability appears to be in favour of the belief that 
 this magnificent erection is the work of Teutonic and not Italian 
 genius ; of the numerous architects employed upon the church 
 between the year 1387, when it was commenced by Giovanni 
 Galeazzo Visconti, first Duke of Milan, and 1805, when it was 
 brought to a lame and imperfect conclusion under the auspices 
 of Napoleon, those nearest to the time of the foundation were 
 almost all French or German, and to one of the latter, Henry 
 Arler of Gemiinden, appears to belong the honour of having 
 given the original designs. After the warning of Mr. Petit,' 2 
 
 1 Gaily Kni ,r ht. cription ; but the more accurately 
 
 2 " We often say, that an object it is described, the less favourable 
 must be seen to lie appreciated; will be the impression on the mind 
 this applies in its fullest extent to of cither architect or artist; wliere- 
 the Cathedral of Milan. Not that as, if he visit the building lie cannot 
 language is inadequate to its des- but be lost in admiration."' II. 218.
 
 412 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 one can hardly venture to speak with the same certainty of this 
 as of other distant churches ; still it has peculiarities of so re- 
 markable a nature that an historian of architecture cannot alto- 
 gether pass it by. It is something perfectly unique, and not 
 to be referred to any style ; it cannot be said, in its general lines 
 at least, to retain any vestiges of the classical taint ; it is mani- 
 festly superior to the mass of Italian attempts at Gothic, 
 and to judge from Mr. Petit' s and other engravings as mani- 
 festly inferior to the Gothic of the north. Yet it is not to be 
 reckoned as an example of either ; it cannot be called the best 
 specimen of Italian, or the worst of German art ; its merits do 
 not differ in degree, but in kind ; it is a class in itself, it must 
 be judged as such, and enter the field on equal terms with whole 
 bodies of erections in other styles. It is then manifestly a 
 structure which can only owe its origin to genius of the very 
 highest order ; whether that genius was one guided by the laws 
 of pure taste and the principles of art, is altogether another 
 question. The exterior I cannot admire ; both Mr. Petit' s rough 
 but spirited wood-cut and Mr. Knight's tamer, though more 
 elaborate, lithograph, represent it as utterly destitute of outline, 
 a mere congeries of pinnacles and statues, crowned by one pin- 
 nacle and one statue greater than the rest. But the great fault 
 is the low clerestory combined with the flat roof; the latter 
 is tolerable in connection with the tall clerestory, the former 
 when surmounted by a high-pitched roof; but if the clerestory 
 be low and the roof fiat, no source of elevation is left. The 
 buttresses 1 are massive, and yet have no bold projection, and 
 the pinnacles are also heavy; their statues are an idea so purely 
 Italian, that it will not do to criticize them from this side the 
 Alps. They are, I imagine, on such a scale, and to such an ex- 
 tent, unique in any building professedly Gothic, for in the most 
 analogous example with which I am acquainted, that most ex- 
 quisite and lovely retrochoir at Peterborough, the statues are 
 not thus perched on pinnacles, as they are in one or two smaller 
 instances, such as the tower of Highworth church. The windows 
 
 1 " The aisle-buttresses are deep chanically further than those in the 
 
 and massive, without slopes.'' front of York, would have no artis- 
 
 Petit, I. 203. Here is the fault; tic projection at all. 
 such a buttress, if it projected me-
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 413 
 
 do not seem to be harmoniously inserted, or to have any con- 
 nection with the panelling ; one hardly dares criticize their tracery, 
 a mixture of Geometrical and Flamboyant. But the lantern, 
 whether beautiful or not, is certainly wonderful ; it stands by it- 
 self, and is equally unlike Canterbury, Sarum, Ely, Mayence, or 
 Florence; it is neither tower, spire, nor cupola; a gigantic 
 turret and spire a single vast central pinnacle is carried up 
 from the midst of a low octagon. Of the west front, the atro- 
 cious barbarisms of Pellegrini, and the worse barbarism of those 
 who retained it at the last repair, one need not speak ; they are 
 no part of the conception of Arler, and are utterly foreign to 
 that one glorious whole, the Duomo of Milan. 
 
 But, if the exterior be wonderful, the internal prospect is yet 
 more so, and has much fairer claims to be considered beautiful. 
 Marvellous indeed are those gigantic columns really fair Gothic 
 clusters, with that wonderful band of niched statues above 
 the capitals ; they cannot be fairly censured as cutting off the 
 arch from its pier, like an Italian entablature or an Arabian 
 stilt ; they are themselves the real capitals, and a noble form of 
 capital they are. The fault, if there be any, is not in the pillars, 
 but in the insignificant shallowness of the arches themselves, and 
 the poor clerestory, without even a string between it and the 
 arcade. Would not the effect have been yet more sublime, if 
 there had been no clerestory at all, and the glorious columns had 
 reached the full height of the building, as at Marburg ? But the 
 present vaulting-shafts are not to be regretted, as affording the 
 consolatory presence of a round abacus in Italy. The least satis- 
 factory part seems to be the cupola, which should surely have been 
 supported by piers better distinguished from those of the nave ; 
 and it would have been nobler, had it been octagonal from the 
 base, like Florence or Ely. 
 
 I have scarcely mentioned Campaniles, as during the whole 
 period of the Italian Gothic they for the most part deviate 
 scarcely at all from the previous Lombard type, They almost 
 always retain the old form and proportions, so that the occasional 
 introduction of a pointed arch makes but little difference. 
 Giotto's tower at Florence, fit companion for the matchless dome, 
 is a noble exception ; its outline with the corner turrets is very 
 fine, but it is unfinished, the intended spue having never been
 
 414 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 added. The details arc of course mixed and impure, but are at 
 least as good Gothic as any in Italy. 
 
 Turn we now to the other southern frontier of the Western 
 Church, where every temple is a trophy of Christian victory, 
 and where the whole life of the nation was for seven ages one 
 continued crusade against the infidel. The Christian archi- 
 tecture of Spain is Gothic in the literal and national sense, 
 yet there is no reason to suppose that Teutonic art was there 
 of native birth. The Goths of Spain, as their language shows 
 to this day, must have been almost as completely Romanized 
 as Italians or Provencals ; it is to their long struggles with 
 heathen invaders, which made every Christian a noble, and every 
 Spaniard a brother, that we owe the lofty points of the old Cas- 
 tilian character, that noble development of Christian chivalry. 
 But on the other hand, this continued Christian warfare, while 
 it drew forth so much that is admirable, could hardly fail to im- 
 pede any native development in the arts. The Arabs in Spain 
 were for a long time unquestionably the intellectual superiors of 
 the native Goths ; and in architecture, if they had wandered far 
 away from pure taste, they had at least produced much that was 
 striking both from its originality and its magnificence. In a 
 land which had beheld the Alhambra and the Mosque of Cor- 
 dova, the architecture of those wonderful piles could hardly 
 fail to have a very deep and lasting effect upon the future taste 
 of the nation. And the Arabian taste would more naturally 
 mingle itself with the Gothic architecture afterwards introduced, 
 from there being no real discrepancy between the two. No fea- 
 ture of the northern style was at variance with the principles, or 
 rather want of principles, which marked the architecture of the 
 Saracens. Hence we find Spanish architecture coming far nearer 
 to the true Teutonic model than that of Italy ; many of the 
 finest buildings of Spain, including the stupendous Cathedral of 
 Seville, were indeed the work of foreigners, but they did not, as 
 in Italy, lose their powers from some pernicious influence of the 
 soil ; they imported the grand idea of a Gothic temple whole 
 and undefiled, though in its carrying out it was marred by the 
 continual introduction of fantastic forms borrowed from an Ara- 
 bian source. Still it was not, like Italian Gothic, a mere point- 
 ing of a body really in another style or no style at all ; it is
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 415 
 
 genuine Gothic, though only imitative. Its imitative character 
 is shown by the fact that it does not appear to have gone through 
 the same transmutations and developments as in those coun- 
 tries where it was native. Features of the Early Gothic will be 
 found repeated at a very late date, intermixed with those more 
 characteristic of the time. This may be seen very conspicuously 
 in the celebrated leaning tower at Saragoza, erected about 1594, 
 but exhibiting in its architecture a sort of Lancet stvle, inter- 
 mingled with Arabian notions. It is a tall octagonal steeple, a 
 form apparently very usual in Spam. 
 
 Such a front as that of the Cathedral at Burgos at once proves 
 the infinite superiority of Spanish over Italian Gothic. AVe have 
 seen that no strictly Italian church presents the true Gothic out- 
 line ; we have no grouping of steeples, no west fronts of any merit, 
 no glorious central towers like Canterbury and St. Ouen's. But 
 this Spanish church of the thirteenth 1 century has a front which 
 would do honour to any city of Germany or England. Two 
 noble towers, with bold niched buttresses and pinnacles, support 
 magnificent spires of open work ; they are not lofty, and rise 
 from the middle of the towers, which have open parapets, like 
 our later English spires. The general architecture of the front 
 is decidedly Early Gothic, with lancet arches, couplets, and a noble 
 rose window with Geometrical tracery ; but I cannot help suspect- 
 ing that the spires are of later date. Of the towers, the belfry- 
 stage only is free, though they rise two stories above the fiat 
 roof; one stage being filled by a solid screen, a piece of pretence 
 highly censurable, but not more so than similar examples at 
 Sarum, Lincoln, Paris, and, what is a nearer analogy, Strasburg, 
 and far less so than the sham gables of Sienna and Orvicto. 
 Besides its unreality, its absence would have brought out the 
 beautiful towers with much finer effect, and have greatly im- 
 proved the general outline of the front. 
 
 The immense Cathedral of Toledo, said to have been com- 
 menced about 1227, has all the features of a true Gothic Min- 
 ster; its interior presenting arcade, triforium, and clerestory, 
 of tolerable, though not the very best proportions, together with 
 clustered pillars and vaulting-shafts. The triforium and clcrc- 
 
 1 It was built in 1221, Ly Don Ferdinand II J . Hope.
 
 416 HISTORY OP ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 story exhibit only the rudiments of tracery, and most of the shafts 
 have the square abacus. The front is irregular and incomplete, 
 with a grand portal ; one tower only is finished, and is of great 
 height and richness, with an octagon and low spire ; the other, 
 which contains a chapel, has an immense square base, and then be- 
 comes octagonal, with pointed windows, up to about the height of 
 the church, but at that point it has received the fatal extinguisher 
 of an Italian cupola. The Chapel of St. James in this Cathedral 
 is a superb example of Flamboyant, not unmixed with Saracenic ; 
 interpenetration, gorgeous panelling, and tall fretted arches, 
 produce a rich, though fantastic whole. 
 
 The world-famous church of Seville, built between 1401 and 
 1506, at sacrifices on the part of its chapter which have been 
 lately 1 held up to the English Church as an example for imita- 
 tion as well as admiration, is Flamboyant, and of very great size ; 
 but I am not acquainted with its details beyond a noble door- 
 way, with a tympanum beautifully sculptured with a representa- 
 tion of our Lord's entry into Jerusalem. The church has many 
 cinque-cento additions, and has no tower, but the Giralda. The 
 peculiar arrangement of the Spanish Church which places the 
 choir in the constructive nave, renders the eastern limb, as being 
 merely the presbytery, 2 very short. The roof, as in most Spanish 
 buildings, is flat. This latter circumstance is painfully shown 
 in the front of Santa Maria del Mare at Barcelona, which has 
 two lofty octagonal turrets, and some good features, especially a 
 rose-window. The Cathedral of Valencia has a fine, but appa- 
 rently unfinished, central tower of octagonal form, with Geomet- 
 rical tracery. The cloisters of St. Domingo in the same city, 
 have tracery which, though exhibiting some peculiarities, must 
 be called Geometrical; the mullions are slender shafts with 
 square abaci ; with somewhat of an Arabian character. It is 
 however attributed to so late a date as the sixteenth century. 
 
 The Arabian intermixture is mostly seen in the smaller de- 
 tails, though sometimes whole features on a large scale retain 
 manifest traces of the heathen influence. Thus the Audien- 
 
 1 In Mr. R. B. Phillipps' Letter 2 See Neale's Hierologus, p. 
 
 to the Landowners of the Diocese 266. 
 of Hereford.
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 417 
 
 cia Real at Barcelona, a structure of the fifteenth century, has a 
 pointed arcade resting on wonderfully slight columns, with 
 heavy abaci or stilts. Above, in total contrast, is a range of the 
 flat arches of the French Flamboyant, a form which seems to 
 have been early introduced into Spain, and to have attained 
 great prevalence. Though not actually an Arabian feature, it is 
 quite in harmony with the fantastic character of that style. The 
 fretting of arches is a feature derived from the Arabs to every 
 form of Gothic architecture, still in Spain one can hardly fail to 
 attribute it to a more direct Saracenic influence than elsewhere. 
 It may be seen in the beautiful Early cloisters of the Cathedral 
 of Barcelona, and in the rich, yet simple, Flamboyant ones at 
 Segovia. The like fantastic taste, though here it has hit upon a 
 much less elegant form, appears in the pillars of the Silk Hall 
 at Valencia, which have flat spiral bands with bases twisted 
 round them, and going off into the ribs of the vaulting. In the 
 cloisters of St. Paul at Barcelona, coupled columns on a large 
 scale support trefoil and cinquefoil arches, savouring strongly of 
 the Saracenic taste. 
 
 For Arabian influence in smaller details, we may mention the 
 tower of St. Mark at Seville, figured in the Moyen Age Monu- 
 mental, and there defined as " Architecture Mauresque et 
 Ogivale" of the fourteenth century. It is indeed difficult to say 
 which is " Mauresque " and which " Ogivale." The tower is 
 thoroughly Arabian, with many fretted arches in square panels, 
 and tracery similar to that on the Giralda. But exactly the 
 same sort of tracery occurs in close connection with the door, 
 which is decidedly Early Gothic, and has an ornament much re- 
 sembling tooth-moulding. 1 The retention of the square abacus 
 is so common elsewhere that it is uncertain to trust to it, but 
 under the peculiar circumstances of Spanish architecture, we may 
 not unfairly consider this also, especially as it so often occurs 
 in a very heavy shape, almost like the genuine Arabian stilt, as an- 
 other example of the enduring iniluence of Saracenic forms. 
 
 But stdl closer approximations may be found, as appears from 
 two plates of details in the Moyen Age Monumental, in the 
 
 1 Something of the same sort is Michael in the sam.' city, of the 
 mentioned by Mr. Neale, (Ilierolo- date JUOl. 
 gus, p. 27),) as occurring at St. 
 
 i; i:
 
 418 HISTORY OV ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 house of Ablala at Valencia, and St. Denis at Xeres, both of 
 the fifteenth century. The details of the latter are essentially 
 Arabian, with the characteristic fretwork on the wall, the cinque- 
 foil, and even the actual pointed horse-shoe arch. The former 
 has a window of three trefoil arches of most fantastic shape, 
 resting on shafts almost ludicrously slender, and with abaci as 
 disproportionably heavy. This affectation of insufficient support 
 will be remembered as one of the chief disfigurements of the 
 Alhambra and other Arabian structures. 
 
 But the most curious fact of all is that the renaissance in 
 Spain appears to have assumed, to a certain extent, the character 
 of a closer return to Saracenic forms. This appears conspicu- 
 ously in several instances both ecclesiastical and civil. The Casa 
 de Ninos has very slender columns, meant for Ionic, but attenuated 
 far beyond Corinthian proportions, supporting round arches of 
 enormous width, which manifest the same bad taste as the win 7 
 dow just mentioned. But this strange mixture, this leaguing of 
 Mahomet and Apollo, to say nothing of Termagaunt, to destroy 
 the purity of Christian art, is most conspicuous in what my 
 French authorities call the " Chapelle Marquise " in the 
 Cathedral of Murcia. Here we have Flamboyant panelling, 
 pinnacles, arabesques, arches of all sorts, both actually mul- 
 tifoil and fretted, round, pointed and elliptical canopies, with 
 the most incredibly large crockets, would-be classical shafts, 
 and columns indescribable. The whole is a wonderful monu- 
 ment of magnificent barbarism. The central octagon of Burgos 
 Cathedral also reveals an Arabian influence in its wide fretted 
 arches without tracery. The Hospital of St. Cross at Toledo, 
 as fine or finer after its own fashion than its namesake at Win- 
 chester, was built by the Cardinal- Archbishop Mendoza, between 
 1504 and 1514. Its front is in an indescribable style, with 
 some fretted round arches ; but its general character is cinque- 
 cento, and its doorway seems an attempt to translate the old 
 Romanesque portal into that style, and really would not be out 
 of place at Aix or Avignon. It has a tympanum, its round arch 
 is fretted, and rests on shafts and balusters with entablatures, 
 and the whole is loaded with arabesques. It really seems as if 
 that generation were satisfied with anything, provided it were 
 a departure from the style of their forefathers.
 
 OF THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 419 
 
 In Portugal, the royal monastery of Batalha is universally 
 stated to be the finest Gothic monument, and a noble building 
 it undoubtedly is, and abundantly illustrates the position that 
 Gothic architecture in Spain, although not more native than in 
 Italy, attained nevertheless a far higher degree of perfection. As 
 it has been fully illustrated by Murphy, it may not be out of 
 place to give a fuller description of it, as I have not elsewhere 
 found such an exact account of a Spanish church of the first 
 rank. 
 
 Thi3 monastery, like many others, owes its origin to a vow 
 made in time of need, having been erected by John the First, 
 King of Portugal, in memory of a victory obtained with very 
 inferior numbers over John, King of Castile, when, in the 
 words of Father Louis de Sousa, the historian of the foun- 
 dation, " at the time he resolved to give battle, he implored the 
 victory of Him Who alone has the disposal of it, whence He is 
 called the Loud of Hosts. He also invoked the mediation of the 
 Virgin Mary, because the battle was on the eve of her glorious 
 assumption; and made a vow, if he came off victorious, to build 
 a magnificent monastery in honour of her." This he accordingly 
 did, and erected this stately building on the nearest convenient 
 site to the actual scene of the engagement, whence it derives its 
 name of Batalha, being an exact parallel to our own Battle 
 Abbey. The establishment was of the Dominican order, and the 
 first charter of foundation was dated in 1388, 1 three years after 
 the victory. Father Louis informs us that the King was " de- 
 sirous of building a temple and monastery, which should sur- 
 pass the most stupendous, not only in Spain, but throughout all 
 Christendom," and that "he invited from distant countries the 
 most celebrated architects that could be found, and collected 
 from all parts the most dexterous and skilful stone-cutters," cir- 
 cumstances which seem sufficiently to account lor the varied style 
 of the edifice. 
 
 The size of the church is considerable, being about 2~>o feet 
 long, 71 broad across nave and aisles, and 10.'} feet in internal 
 height, exhibiting a vast preponderance of the latter proportion, 
 
 1 The account is extracted by Murphy from Father Louis' History of 
 the Dominicans, published in KVl'l. 
 
 K K 2
 
 420 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 if a church not very much longer than Romsey has a greater 
 height than Westminster. The good father expresses himself 
 curiously on this head, saying " that the height is such, that an 
 athletic slinger can scarce cast a stone to the vault of the nave." 
 It is cruciform, with the short eastern limb of the Spanish 
 churches, and a nave of eight bays ; but no tower, except a mere 
 turret attached to the north transept. It is therefore clearly a 
 building of very great pretensions, and it is essentially Gothic, 
 but altogether unlike any particular stage of the Northern Go- 
 thic, and in fact it commingles the features of all its varieties. Of 
 the windows, some are Geometrical, some the wildest Flamboy- 
 ant, others are so like some forms of our own Flowing, that one 
 is tempted to suppose that among " the distant lands/' which 
 contributed architects, England was not excluded. Those in the 
 chapter-house have two planes of tracery, one simple Geometri- 
 cal, the other of the most extravagant Flamboyancy; on the 
 other hand those in the apse are single lancets. The west front 
 would be handsome, if it had a gable, the top being perfectly 
 flat, with a rich open parapet, which is continued throughout the 
 church ; the flying buttresses being set very high require 
 something to carry up their pyramidal lines. The doorway 
 is very large, and though not double, has a sculptured tym- 
 panum ; the west window is pointed, and completely filled 
 with tracery of rather an English character. Does it own 
 any kindred to the east window of Dorchester ? The great 
 doorway in the transept much resembles English Transition, 
 having four shafts, and a trefoiled head with the chevron 
 moulding on some of the orders ; the window above is an 
 intersecting skeleton filled up with foliated circles in the head, 
 and thus far might be purely English. Between the mullions it is 
 filled up with Reticulated tracery, being the same idea, though 
 not the same design, which is so often found in the belfry-window 
 of our Perpendicular towers. The interior is certainly very grand, 
 from its vast height and its bold vaulting-shafts rising from 
 the ground; these have a great projection, a notion apparently 
 borrowed from German structures. The pillars are clustered of 
 the very best Early Gothic section, with floriated capitals, but 
 with square bases and abaci. There is no triforium nor string 
 above the arcade ; one is however continued from the abaci of
 
 OK THE GOTHIC OF SOUTHERN EUROPE. 421 
 
 the vaulting-shafts, and cat through by the clerestory win- 
 dows. 
 
 But the greatest interest of Batalha, both in an historical and 
 architectural point of view, is derived from the magnificent tombs 
 of the kings and princes of Portugal. The Mausoleum of the 
 founder, a large chapel containing the tombs of King John, his 
 Queen Philippa, and their four sons, adjoins the south-west side 
 of the church, with which it is connected by an arch with con- 
 tinuous mouldings. The chapel is square, but from its centre 
 rises an octagonal clerestory on eight pillars ; this has on the out- 
 side flying buttresses and a spire covered with tracery, and pre- 
 sents the general idea of a round church, supposing the quadrature 
 of the circle to have been experimentally proved in such a case. A 
 still greater curiosity is the Mausoleum of King Emmanuel the 
 Great, commenced about 1509, and still unfinished. This, like 
 our own contemporary and analogous, though very different, 
 structure at Westminster, stands to the east of the church, with 
 which it is connected by an oblong loggia. The chapel itself is 
 octagonal, surrounded with smaller apsidal chapels ; the architec- 
 ture is very different from the pure, though mixed Gothic of the 
 church, and is another example of the tendency of the Spanish 
 renaissance to revive Arabian features. Its arches, which rise 
 from piers, are fretted, the ornaments throughout are of a non- 
 descript character, exhibiting shafts with chevron and other sur- 
 face mouldings, strange arabesque cornices disposed after the 
 manner of a barbaric entablature, pots and vases, and many 
 other incongruous decorations. The doorways especially are per- 
 fectly indescribable, consisting of cinquelbil and trefoil arches 
 intersecting one another in the strangest way, and loaded with 
 arabesques. The upper part of the octagon is unfinished, and 
 has neither roof nor windows. The design for its comple- 
 tion, as given by Murphy, includes large Flowing windows, the 
 lower parts of whose apertures only exist, and exhibits the 
 whole surrounded with round turrets with open spires. The win- 
 dows in the small chapels have similar tracery, but are very tall 
 and narrow, quite of the proportions of lancets. The refectory 
 has simple square windows without tracery of any kind. 
 
 I have delayed long on this building, which as a contribution 
 to the historv of architecture is of very great value. Not in-
 
 422 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 deed on account of its own merits, for though a really fine 
 church, it is neither a good example of any existing style, nor 
 yet does it possess the unique character of Milan; but because 
 it incontestably shows that in 1388 Portugal possessed no na- 
 tional architecture which was thought worthy of being employed 
 in a church designed to be the sepulchre of her* kings and the 
 finest of her ecclesiastical structures. It is a confusion of Gothic 
 forms of all ages and countries, and yet, if we except the square 
 abaci, every feature is pure, and most of them good, in their re- 
 spective styles : and after all there is no such real inconsistency 
 between any two styles of Gothic as to render their mixture 
 offensive to any but a technical eye. To deny the church of 
 Batalha to be beautiful, because it confuses forms which in 
 France or England belong to different centuries, would be the 
 merest pedantry ; no one but the driest archseologian would 
 quarrel with a building for a skilful application of some not in- 
 congruous feature, though it might historically belong to some 
 other age or country. At the same time this very confusion shows 
 a lack of original genius, and proves Batalha to be, what antiqua- 
 ries are fond of calling modern churches, " imitation Gothic." 
 It is not the spontaneous effort of native skill, but the mere 
 result of eclecticism. If we compare Batalha with Milan, the 
 former is better Gothic, its forms are purer, more like the true 
 Gothic of the north, it is all in one language, though it con- 
 founds its dialects. But it is only a borrowed language, and 
 one imperfectly learned ; Milan has a language of its own, it is a 
 style of itself. It may have borrowed both from northern Gothic 
 and from the native Italian forms, but their fusion is effected by 
 that chemical process which out of two elements produces a third 
 different from both. Sienna is mere juxtaposition and confusion ; 
 its style is pied like its material, its different elements alternate 
 without fusion ; but in Milan they are wrought up together, 
 like a compound colour, in which neither of the component hues 
 appears. But with that one exception, Italian Gothic must really 
 be considered as the most lifeless, and, as far as art is concerned, 
 the most worthless, of all styles : Spanish is equally imitative, 
 but with this wide difference that, while Italy had a positively 
 contrary element constantly recurring to corrupt its purity, 
 Spain presented an open field, and consequently its style has
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 423 
 
 chiefly negative defects ; it simply wants that life and vigour 
 which distinguish a native from an imitative style. Consequently 
 a foreign architect, or a native who had imbibed the foreign spirit, 
 had no such impediments and prejudices to contend with in 
 Spain as in Italy ; he might rear unmolested the stately front of 
 Burgos, while in Italy he must have contented himself with the 
 inanities of Orvieto and Sienna, unless his individual genius had 
 sufficient creative power to produce a Milan. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 It was the first Tudor monarch of England, the first whose blood 
 was traced only by an indirect and illegitimate source from the 
 line of her ancient rulers, and whose conquest moreover marks the 
 overthrow of the old feudal power, and the final substitution of 
 the new influence of the plotting head and the cunning tongue, 
 for the old power of the bold heart and the strong arm ; it was 
 this prince, whose reign, and that of others like him, forms such 
 an epoch in constitutional and political history, who reared, as 
 the intended sepulchre of his race, the most gorgeous, though far 
 from the most beautiful, creation of Northern art that England, 
 perhaps that the world, had ever seen, and overshadowed the 
 older resting-place of the Confessor, by the new magnificence of 
 the shrine that was to canopy the sepulchres of the new imperial 
 race. None but a very prejudiced eye can discern in the 
 Chapel of Henry VII. only a debased and corrupted structure, 
 completely repugnant to the principles of Gothic building; still 
 its lavish and almost fantastic ornaments, the labyrinthal re- 
 cesses of its outer walls, the mighty turrets of its aisles and the 
 weak pinnacles of its clerestory, and abo\c all its huge pen- 
 dants, trilling with every law alike of reality and of decorative 
 security, cannot claim from its most fervent admirers the same 
 silent wonder that is called forth by the contemplation of Wyke- 
 ham's all-perfect nave, or by its own contemporary, the comple- 
 tion of the devout aspirings of the second Confessor, that " meek
 
 424 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 usurper," the weakest of princes, but most resigned and placable 
 of individual sufferers. 
 
 But the chapel itself, though no longer the same realization of 
 chaste and perfect loveliness, is still pure, though declining, 
 Gothic; it is, no less than the mighty Abbey whose proportions 
 it destroys, the creation of Teutonic minds and the work of 
 Teutonic hands ; like the sister pile of Windsor, it is the ex- 
 pression not indeed of pure, unworldly, hierarchical saintliness, 
 but of the splendours of Christian royalty; fitting homes for 
 the devotions of crowned and sceptered monarchs, and of the 
 noble and sacred brotherhoods of the proudest chivalry of 
 Christendom. 
 
 Very different is the tomb of which all this splendour is the 
 canopy, the last dwelling-place of the cold and crafty despot to 
 whose glory, as much as to that of the Almighty, the whole 
 seems dedicated. This was designed by no Northern mind and 
 executed by no Northern chisel. Not that the mere contribution 
 of southern lands to England's fairest temple was an unheard of 
 thing. The monarch who commenced the reconstruction of St. 
 Edward's Church committed his relics to a shrine wrought by 
 Italian artists, and himself reposes in a tomb of the like origin. 
 But then the designers of the South strove to frame their own 
 more costly materials into at least some approximation to 
 Northern and more truly Christian forms ; the tomb of the first 
 Tudor is purely Italian, and speaks plainly enough that the days 
 of Gothic art were doomed ; nay, more, that the ages whose 
 spirit it embodied had passed away, and that the mighty fabric of 
 Teutonic Christendom was for ever shattered. 
 
 It is significant that architectural taste should exhibit its first 
 corruptions in monumental structures. It can hardly be denied 
 that in sepulchral architecture at least, no age can be for a mo- 
 ment compared with the very earliest period of Gothic art. 
 In this respect at least the thirteenth century stands unri- 
 valled, not of course for the mere splendour of the architectural 
 accessories of the tomb, but for the purity and simplicity of the 
 religious lesson conveyed by the tomb itself. The successive 
 changes of Gothic art introduced the respective beauties of their 
 own periods, panelling became more gorgeous, niches and imagery 
 more abundant and more splendid, canopies loftier and more
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 425 
 
 magnificent, till they at last swell into vast surrounding screens. 
 Yet, after surveying the most splendid monumental remains 
 of later days, the costly splendours of Arundel and Ewelme, 
 the pontifical chapels of Winchester, even the royal tombs of 
 Westminster, the mind still returns to rest with more unalloyed 
 satisfaction on the effigies of the nameless crusader reposing 
 neglected and forgotten in the most obscure corner of some 
 desolate village church, or on the lowly tombs of the monastic 
 lords of Peterborough, where the staff and mitre tell of the holy 
 calling of men of whom uncertain tradition hands down names 
 which are unrecorded on their monuments. 
 
 No other period breathes so completely the spirit of the old 
 inscription, "Homo Christianusfuit;" 1 none speak so completely 
 of renunciation of self, none are so retiring and unobtrusive, 
 slightly raised from the floor, or concealed in the thickness of the 
 massive wall; the tombs of knight and prelate never disturb the 
 harmony of the fabric, or in the least degree convert the house 
 of Goo into the mausoleum of man. Yet none are so purely 
 beautiful, so awful in their unadorned simplicity ; the eye fixed 
 on the altar is enough to crave the prayers of the faithful for 
 one who fed the ilock of Christ, or battled for His sepulchre; 
 what need then to tell of his lineage or his name ? 
 
 The alterations of succeeding ages, improvements in point of 
 mere architectural splendour, did but destroy this beautiful ideal. 
 The tomb becomes too prominent, too much the centre of attrac- 
 tion, the Church becomes almost as much the place for the post- 
 humous celebration of the dead as for the worship of the living. 
 Inscriptions become more frequent, more lengthy, more lauda- 
 tory and secular ; even on the tomb of Wykeham a long rhyming 
 epitaph needlessly records the good deeds which have won the 
 heritage of eternal fame, graven on the memory of the universal 
 Church. From no part of a church had the old spirit, further 
 departed than from the monuments of the dead ; no wonder then 
 that they were the first to yield to the new corruptions; that the 
 arched and fretted canopy soon made way for the heathen column 
 and entablature, and that the attitude of prayer was gradually 
 changed for that of strife and debate, and attendant angels 
 
 1 See Nellie's Ilitrologn.s, p 2'j'i.
 
 426 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 made way for the demons of a fallen superstition. The foul 
 spirits which St. Guthlac expelled from the marshes of Croyland 
 took up their abode in the royal fane of Westminster, and the 
 pagan nudities of Mars or Minerva, Fame or Victory, the 
 Gallic cock or the British lion, draw forth the applause and the 
 pence of a gaping crowd beside the tombs of the mightiest heroes 
 of our land, and the very shrine of its royal founder. 
 
 I cannot but think that too much importance has been at- 
 tached to the religious changes of the sixteenth century, and 
 more especially to the dissolution of monasteries, as direct causes 
 of that change in architecture which in England happened to be 
 nearly contemporaneous with those events. That they cannot be 
 the universal solvent is clear, from the fact that the change com- 
 menced in Italy a hundred years before the Reformation, and 
 that architecture became fully as much corrupted in Roman 
 Catholic, as in Protestant countries, or in England. St. Peter's 
 is a wider departure from the ancient type of a cathedral than 
 our own St. Paul's. The results of the dissolution of the mo- 
 nasteries upon art were very important, but altogether indirect. 
 The direct stroke was rather aimed at church-building than at 
 architecture. When sacrilege had devastated the abodes of an- 
 cient piety and munificence, had levelled our most glorious 
 temples with the ground, or at best substituted a single half- 
 starved curate for the princely abbot and his monastic choir, and 
 when the revenues which had been disposed in hospitality and 
 pious works were scattered among the basest flatterers of an 
 ungodly king ; the chiefest source from which ancient bounty 
 had flowed was at once stopped, and abundant evidence was 
 given that the subsidiary sources had stopped also. And besides 
 the mere ungodliness which destroyed the sanctuary, the mere 
 sacrilegious selfishness of a Cromwell and a Somerset, another 
 principle was at work, which such men turned to their own 
 ends, in the sour fanaticism which considered church-decoration 
 as arrant superstition, and church-building itself as very little 
 better. We must do justice to all men, and there can be little 
 doubt that while these mere worldlings, in their own greed of 
 filthy lucre, destroyed abbeys, plundered cathedrals, and did 
 not spare the very homes of sick and aged poverty, many a grim 
 Puritan looked on with honest satisfaction at the means thus
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 427 
 
 afforded for the promotion of the "pure Evangell." These 
 causes struck a deadly blow at all church arts, but with a mere 
 change of style they cannot have any direct connection whatever. 
 Protestantism, as a theological system, cannot have any direct 
 affinity with a style of art which most certainly arose under the 
 auspices of Popes. 
 
 The change of religion then checked the old spirit of church- 
 building, and as the chief seats both of skill and liberality were 
 suppressed, the natural result was that the little that was done, 
 was done in a poor and meagre style. But it is probable that 
 had the monasteries remained with their old wealth and their 
 old spirit of liberality, more direct injury would have been done 
 to Gothic architecture than was, otherwise than by the destruction 
 of individual buildings, the consequence of their suppression. 
 There is no reason to suppose indeed the experience of other 
 lands proves the direct contrary that monasteries would have 
 escaped the infection of the new taste any more than Kings, 
 Bishops, Chapters, Colleges, and private men. Their rich and 
 bountiful Abbots would have as sedulously fostered the new " im- 
 provements " in art, just as they had done in former ages; their 
 minsters and dependent churches would have been disfigured by 
 Corinthian altar-pieces, perhaps with pagan emblems; and when 
 reconstructions were required, Reading, and Selby, and Dor- 
 chester would have risen again in the guise of St. Paul's or 
 Queen's College Chapel. The overthrow of the abbeys has pro- 
 bably preserved to us by the preservation of neglect many 
 noble Gothic structures which would otherwise have been re- 
 placed by Italian ones. Their suppression hindered the forma- 
 tion of a school of art, which might have more extensively 
 altered our ancient churches. 
 
 The cause then of the substitution of Italian for Gothic archi- 
 tecture as the prevalent and fashionable style of western Kuropc 
 is to be sought for elsewhere. It is simply a part of what is 
 called the Renaissance, the Revival of Letters, in other words, 
 the Revival of Heathenism. This was a system which infected 
 men's ideas on every subject, and only tended to views the most 
 false and prejudiced. Great and glorious as is the fame oj 
 Greece and Rome, they are, after all, but two nations out of 
 nianv, great in arts, and arms, and letters, but not possessed of
 
 428 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 such an exclusive monopoly of greatness, as that their rules and 
 tastes should be bound as an eternal yoke upon all ages and all 
 nations. This our age has at last learned ; we have discovered 
 that Northern Christianity is as fruitful in immortal names as 
 Southern Paganism; that great deeds have been done, and 
 mighty ecclesiastical and political systems developed, on this side 
 the Alps ; that poetry may be composed without the invocation 
 of the Muse, and that the architecture of the Greek was only 
 one among many forms of beauty. But to the Italians of the 
 fifteenth century, the countrymen of Alfred, of Charlemagne, of 
 Otto the Great, were but hordes of rude barbarians ; the relics 
 of heathendom were not only admired as among the choicest 
 forms of beauty, but set up as its only form, as the one model, 
 all deviation from which was proscribed. And we must add 
 that Christianity was all but openly rejected, when a heathen 
 sage was made the object of homage which the Christian would 
 hardly bestow upon the greatest saint, and the initiated addressed 
 each other as ' c Fratrcs dilectissimi in Platone." 
 
 From Italy this spirit gradually infected all Europe. Political 
 circumstances were tending to break up the old system of West- 
 ern Europe, that system of Christian government, of which some 
 traces yet lingered on from the days of the old Germanic Em- 
 pire, and the West- Saxon dynasty in England. Popes were 
 sinking into Italian princes ; Emperors and Kings, from conse- 
 crated sons of the Church into secular magistrates and wily 
 politicians. And so with art ; the heavenly forms of the old 
 masters, the divine beauty which beamed from their pencils who 
 went from the Bread of life to pourtray its Giver, gave place to 
 the mere earthly loveliness which was all that could be expected 
 from the labours of men who clothed the Blessed among women 
 in the likeness of the unchaste of this world. The severe forms 
 of the elder sculpture, the long draperies and motionless sere- 
 nity of the saint in his niche, or the warrior on his tomb, gave 
 place, even in subjects still more sacred, to the display of ana- 
 tomical knowledge in the studied contortions of the naked 
 figure. How then should architecture escape ? The old forms 
 were gradually becoming meaningless to a generation with 
 whom the Faith was losing step by step its ancient hold alike on 
 public and private actions. And when the old heathenish sys-
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 429 
 
 tern was beginning to assume that influence which has been at 
 last happily overthrown ; when Italy, its chosen land, was looked 
 to as the exclusive abode of all art and refinement, and the 
 greatest minds of that country were sedulously devoted to the 
 restoration of classic forms ; what wonder was it that the apos- 
 tate Teuton, crouching at the feet of fallen Italy, should seize 
 with avidity on the new light, and eagerly substitute the arts of 
 the heathen for the once honoured forms which no longer 
 spoke, as of old, to every national and religious feeling ? 
 
 Still however, not even in Italy itself was the triumph of re- 
 novated heathenism achieved at a single stroke. Italy had 
 indeed never received Gothic architecture in its purity, nor even 
 the more perfect forms of Romanesque ; still during the preva- 
 lence of her own Lombard style, that germ of so much that is 
 grand and beautiful, she had learned many a lesson of real, 
 honest, and consistent architecture, which could not be eradi- 
 cated in a moment. The countless ranges of arcades, the 
 deeply recessed portals, the tall campaniles, of the old Italian 
 churches possessed a beauty and reality which could not yield at 
 once to the classical infection. Both styles might use round 
 arches and Corinthian columns, but community of spirit there 
 was none. Hence we find an intermediate or transitional style 
 between Gothic and Italian prevailing both in Italy and elsewhere 
 at the time of the first attempts to restore classical architecture. 
 Even the great masters who devoted their energies to that resto- 
 ration could not at once accomplish what they desired, even in 
 their own works. 
 
 This transitional style is called from the century in which it 
 arose in Italy, the Cinque-cento, its English variety being 
 usually known as Elizabethan, two denominations which suffici- 
 ently show how long a period elapsed before the new product of 
 Italy had fully established itself in our northern isle-. This 
 Transition presents some differences from those already described 
 as paving the way from Grecian architecture to Romanesque and 
 from Romanesque to Gothic. It could hardly be the union of a 
 new system of construction with an old one of decoration, as 
 the revived Italian can scarcely be said to have any system or 
 principle at all. It is however an analogous stage to the elder 
 Transitions, and may be roughly defined as combining Gothic
 
 130 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 principles, and, in northern countries at least, Gothic outlines, 
 with details which are partly revived classical and partly nonde- 
 script. 
 
 We have already seen that classical architecture had no way 
 of decorating a blank wall without a sacrifice of reality; the 
 repetition of the constructive features on a small scale as decora- 
 tions was first introduced by the Lombards, and thence pervaded 
 almost every form of Romanesque and Gothic. The actual 
 forms thus employed could not of course be pressed into the 
 service of the new style, but the same principle of decoration 
 might avail, and we consequently find the distinguishing mark 
 of cinque-cento to be an application of classical detail according 
 to Gothic principles. " Even when the style became really ex- 
 tinct, the taste was not quite subdued. Architects had been 
 accustomed to enrich their buildings with innumerable small 
 compartments of panelling and minute ornament : thus their 
 successors, instead of the simple colonnade and expansive arch, 
 used a profusion of small columns, entablatures, pediments, and 
 arches, encrusting the face of the building with classical detail, 
 as the former architects had done with Gothic. The style thus 
 
 formed has a rich and magnificent effect. Witness 
 
 Heidelberg castle, and many of our own domestic edifices ; in 
 some of which, even where a profusion of ornament is not used, 
 the character is preserved by lofty proportions and a division 
 into different stages." 1 
 
 Such a style as this cannot but be pronounced an utter bar- 
 barism ; it has no language, no meaning of its own, but owes 
 all its splendour to the borrowed light of the very style which it 
 is sedulously labouring to eradicate. Cinque-cento buildings exist 
 of great magnificence, and even great beauty, but all their beauty 
 is derived from the Gothic vestiges which linger about them, 
 and give them at a distance the appearance of pure Gothic struc- 
 tures. It is clear that could their details be at once converted 
 into others more harmonizing with the prevailing idea, their 
 beauty would be infinitely enhanced. Cinque-cento, though by 
 virtue of its Gothic element far more beautiful, is even less satis- 
 factory than confirmed Italian ; the latter is at least consistent 
 in its Paganism, and suggests nothing better, it conveys no 
 
 1 Petit, I. 23.
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 431 
 
 idea of contrast, struggle, or victory. Cinque-cento has just 
 sufficient excellence to make us feel more acutely the deficiency 
 of greater excellence ; it suggests the existence of a severe strug- 
 gle, in which the better cause has been defeated. 
 
 The men who won such a victory, the Italian builders of the 
 fifteenth century, were not adversaries to be despised. Great as 
 we hold the misapplication of their powers to have been, it 
 would be folly to attempt to deny their existence. In fact the 
 thorough corruption of the taste of an age or nation if indeed 
 the substitution of the antique in its first Italian form for such 
 a style as the local Gothic could be called a corruption is an 
 achievement requiring no less mental vigour than its direction 
 in a better path. No sane person ever denied the intellectual 
 powers, whatever we may think of their application, of Euri- 
 pides, Ennius, Raphael, or Milton ; and in like manner no name 
 in architectural history can claim a higher place on the score of 
 mere genius than that of Philip Brunelleschi. To him is owing 
 that glorious and wonderful monument of the sublimcst powers, 
 the dome of Florence, which for vastness and grandeur, for 
 greatness of conception and skill of execution, must rank among 
 the very noblest of human achievements. I speak not of its 
 degraded details, but of the stupendous majesty of that vast 
 octagon, with the subordinate apses and domes at once support- 
 ing it and cowering beneath its shadow. As spreading as St. 
 Sophia, and almost as soaring as a Gothic spire, the cupola 
 of Florence remains literally " the roof and crown of tilings," 
 being in all dimensions the largest mass ever reared upon piers 
 and arches, and rearing the triumphant cross to a height equal 
 to that of the proudest steeples of the north. Before so glori- 
 ous a pile one stops not to inquire whether Greek columns, 
 Lombard arcades, or Flamboyant panelling, enrich its vast cir- 
 cumference ; it stands in its own unrivalled sublimity, the 
 first and foremost of buildings of its own class, before which 
 the boasted St. Peter's sinks n to insignificance. Greater in 
 every proportion, and with the superadded richness of the octa- 
 gonal form, it is the most wonderful exhibition of mechanical 
 skill, and one of the most glorious products of architectural 
 genius, that tin; world has ever seen. 
 
 The admissibility of the grand cupola is in fact the single
 
 43.2 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 point in which the modern Italian style can compete with the 
 Gothic. It is its one truly glorious offspring, one from which 
 we are debarred, but it is but one against countless forms of 
 majesty and beauty. Even the dome of Florence alone cannot 
 contend with the varied splendours of the spire of Sarum, the 
 tower of Canterbury, and the lantern of St. Ouen's. 
 
 Brunelleschi died in 1444. The same cinque-cento style, 
 with all its multiplicity of small columns and infinitesimal 
 divisions of parts, and the barbaric richness which is thus de- 
 rived to its best specimens, continued in use in Italy throughout 
 the century from which it takes its name. Towards its close 
 Bramante, another instance of the misapplication of splendid 
 powers, employed the same style, and reared in 1496 the magni- 
 ficent polygonal dome of Santa Maria della Grazie at Milan, 
 whose drum is decorated with arcades. Michael Angelo was 
 the first to discard the cinque-cento, and with it the multiplying 
 principle, and return to the single colossal order. 
 
 In Northern countries, and generally wherever Gothic archi- 
 tecture had taken anything like a firm root, the struggle was na- 
 turally a much harder one. Italy, though a fashion rather than 
 a taste had induced a partial approximation 1 to the forms of 
 Northern architecture, never really loved or even understood it ; 
 to the Italian it spoke of nothing that was dear to his heart or 
 cherished by the recollections of past ages ; all his fondest as- 
 sociations were connected with the antagonist style, and its 
 restoration seemed to be, and indeed really was, the rejection of 
 an unnatural bondage. Far different was the case in our own 
 and other more purely Teutonic lands. " In Northern countries 
 Gothic was a favourite style, hallowed by religion, chivalry, and 
 
 1 See above, pp. 405, 6, the quo- best Italian Romanesque. AVithin 
 
 tation from Hope, and also pp. 413 it has many Gothic features, though 
 
 5 of the same work. One might the pier-arches are round. Mr. 
 
 also allude to that truly magnificent Petit gives no internal view, which 
 
 though utterly incongruous church, is much to be regretted ; he men- 
 
 the Certosa near Pavia, so elabo- tions that the pier-arches " have 
 
 rately described by Mr. Petit. Gothic mouldings ;" this is very 
 
 Though commenced in 1396, by remarkable, mouldings being the 
 
 Gamodia, one of the many archi- very feature in which the Italians 
 
 tects employed at Milan, its ex- so rarely succeeded, even when they 
 
 terior is but little different from the made their arches pointed.
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 433 
 
 art ; and the inroads; of any principle at variance with it could 
 not work its overthrow without a severe struggle." 1 The race 
 that had reared Cologne and Freybuvg, Lincoln and Winchester, 
 Amiens and Beauvais, could not at once surrender the dee]) 
 moulding, the luxuriant foliage, the waving tracery, the cluster- 
 ing trunks and stony branches of their own pillared forest for 
 the dull monotony of the " five orders," the stiff forms and hard 
 outlines of the round arch and unmalleable entablature. The 
 style which had won to itself the fairest spoils of heathendom, 
 and wrought the combined tribute of the Greek, the Roman, the 
 Saracen, of all art and nature, the trees of the forest, the flowers 
 of the field, and almost every form of animated life, into that 
 one living unity, whose every form did but guide the Christian 
 worshipper to his home above ; the style which had taught the 
 kindred yet subject arts to pay their due homage, and yield their 
 tribute to the farther harmony and splendour of the sub- 
 lime whole ; the stvle which had been reared to perfection 
 anions: the greatest deeds that the world had ever witnessed, 
 whose first germs had been brought from the birth-place of the 
 Faith by that burst of burning zeal which the thunders of Ilil- 
 debrand had wakened, and which drove Tancred, and Godfrey, 
 and one greater and better still, to redeem that birth-place from 
 its foes; the style whose infant forms had been watered by the 
 blood of St. Thomas, 2 and fostered by the bounty of St. Louis, 
 which had grown up to its full splendour under the hands of the 
 immortal Wykeham, whose choicest forms had enshrined the 
 relics of countless saints and martyrs, and even in the strong- 
 hold of its antagonist, in the Eternal City itself, had been chosen 
 to canopy the holiest things of all; 3 whose every form breathed 
 alike of Teutonic greatness and Christian sanctity, could not fall 
 an unresisting prey before the inroads of the race whose political 
 power had fallen beneath the sword of the Northman, and whose 
 creed had vanished before the preaching of the Cross. For the 
 
 i p el i( J 23. 'i' 1 ' stately chapel erected to en- 
 
 2 It must never he forgotten that shrine his hoily. 
 the earliest instance of anything : ' Kven in Koine the ciboria over 
 
 like (iothic in England is to be the altar were continually Gothic 
 found in the choir of Canterbury, when the rest of the church was in 
 rebuilt after the death of that mar- the national style. 
 tyr in his honour, and still more in 
 
 I' F
 
 431 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 revival of Italian architecture is not connected with any theo- 
 logical differences whatever; it is the simple heathenism of art. 
 To attribute a change which arose in Italy in the fifteenth century 
 to the Reformation in the sixteenth, is simply belied by facts ; 
 the Reformation promoted, but did not cause, a change which, 
 as it so happened, had been fostered by Popes, not however as 
 Popes, but as Italians. Yet the two are connected, but by a 
 subtler chain than that of direct cause and effect ; it was one 
 and the same spirit, working in different channels, which raised 
 a Borgia and a Medicis to the throne of Hildebrand and Inno- 
 cent, which reared a Brunelleschi to corrupt the taste, a Henry 
 to destroy the fabrics, and a Luther and a Socinus to assault the 
 faith, of the Church ; heartily as many of them cursed and 
 hated one another, all were doing the same work, and all sprung 
 from the same source, the fall of the old faith and glory of 
 Teutonic Christendom before the self-will, the faithlessness, the 
 heathenism of the Renaissance. 
 
 The struggle in France was very severe. In some cases the 
 two styles came into actual opposition. Thus the generous en- 
 thusiasm of the Bishop and Chapter of Beauvais in the very 
 middle of the sixteenth century, entered with a deliberate pur- 
 pose upon the task of proving that Gothic architecture might 
 produce something that should surpass, both in size and mag- 
 nificence the mighty fabric, of St. Peter's; and more especially 
 might with its soaring steeples exceed the elevation of the 
 Roman cupola. And, had not zeal outrun discretion, they might 
 have succeeded in their noble design. The present superb tran- 
 septs were reared, and for every reason the nave ought to have 
 come next ; instead of which they erected a tower ; thus violat- 
 ing both ecclesiastical and mechanical principles in their eager 
 desire to display the perfections of the style which depended 
 upon them. A church is complete without a tower, but not 
 without a nave ; and I should suppose that a central tower of 
 great size would require the pressure of the nave for its support. 
 But forgetful of both these considerations, they postponed their 
 nave, and proceeded to rear that gigantic and magnificent steeple, 
 whose fall within a few years after its erection showed the error 
 of its construction, and probably discouraged its authors from 
 proceeding further in their design.
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 435 
 
 In like manner the Cathedral of Orleans, which was continued 
 during two centuries of the very worst times, in a style which, if 
 not good, is certainly pure, Gothic, cannot be considered in any 
 other light than as a direct protest against the corrupt taste of 
 the age. The mere notion of rebuilding so vast a pile accord- 
 ing to the ancient tradition, shows that the ancient spirit did sur- 
 vive in the French Church even in the days of Henri Quatre and 
 his successors, and that even the rule of Richelieu and Mazarin 
 could not utterly debase the land of Charlemagne and St. 
 Louis. 
 
 And even where greater inroads were made upon mere style, 
 and the parity of Gothic detail is altogether lost, the old Catho- 
 lic type of a church is often preserved, and even the sublime 
 proportions of mediaeval art remain uninjured. Many fine 
 French churches are simply translations from Gothic into cinque- 
 cento. Such especially is the magnificent fabric of St. Eustace 
 at Paris, erected between 1532 and IG18, which retains every 
 feature of the noblest Gothic Minster, simply substituting the 
 minute details of the new style for those appropriate to its out- 
 line. We have here the same vast height, the same tall clustered 
 piers, the vaulting-shafts, triforium, and clerestory, the same 
 magnificent apse and arcade, which distinguish the elder French 
 Cathedrals; the very vaulting is in its plan most thoroughly 
 Gothic. But we have arches mostly, though not exclusively, 
 round, classical capitals, heavy imposts, the general squareness 
 and flatness of the Italian style. Such too is the truly grand 
 front of St. Michael at Dijon, which is conceived entirely on the 
 old outline, with two towers of noble proportions, with buttresses 
 of the boldest projection, staircase turrets, and nothing whatever 
 of Italian flatness. Above all, it has an advanced porch with 
 three entrances on the old plan, and covered with niches. But all 
 the details are Italian ; the fretted arches of the portal are round, 
 and agrotesque entablature lias taken the place of their canopies. 
 The whole facade is crowded with small columns, entablatures, 
 and pediments; the windows are all round-headed, and almost 
 all without tracery; and the octagonal lanterns on the two 
 steeples terminate in cupolas. St. I'eter at Caen has been already 
 mentioned; its east end is one of the best examples of this cor- 
 rupt style, having a polygonal apse and apsidal chapels, with 
 buttresses, pinnacles, flying buttresses, niches, and open para-
 
 436 IIISTOHY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 pets, all cinque-cento, the Italian element being shown rather in 
 the strange character of these ornaments than in the actual pre- 
 sence of classical members. 
 
 In England the progress of the new taste was exceedingly 
 gradual, and many and hard were the struggles of the expiring 
 Gothic. We have seen that its first inroads were made upon 
 tombs, it next attacked furniture ; but Gothic, though in a very 
 corrupt form, continued to be employed in ecclesiastical buildings 
 at least down to the Restoration, when the importation of French 
 tastes struck a further blow at English architecture, as at every 
 thing else that was English. 
 
 The Collegiate buildings in Oxford afford, as might reason- 
 ably be expected, an excellent study of the progressive decay 
 of Gothic architecture. At the same time it must be allowed 
 that this view is one which exhibits the declining architec- 
 ture of England to the best advantage, and moreover the late 
 Gothic of Oxford was rather a return to, than an actual conti- 
 nuance of, the older forms. Yet in this point of view it is still 
 more interesting; a deliberate return to Gothic architecture is a 
 fact more valuable for our purpose than a mere lifeless retention 
 of its forms. 
 
 The reign of James the First beheld not a few erections, both 
 ecclesiastical and secular, which are deserving of considerable 
 commendation. Great part of Exeter, Wadham, Jesus, Merton, 
 and Trinity Colleges, together with the Schools, are of this date. 
 The chapels of the three first foundations axe of this date, 
 and are very tolerable examples of Perpendicular. 1 The choir of 
 Wadham Chapel is indeed so good an example of the style that 
 it has often been mistaken for a portion of the Augustinian 
 monastery which originally occupied the site. It is very re- 
 markable that the architect should have succeeded so well in his 
 Perpendicular designs, and yet so egregiously failed in his at- 
 tempts at Flowing tracery in the windows of the antechapel. 
 All these chapels are studious imitations of the earlier styles, 
 and I have no hesitation whatever in preferring them to the 
 Chapels of Corpus Christi and Balliol 2 Colleges, which are 
 
 1 As to style ; I speak not of the ture; it is very low and heavy, and 
 
 mechanical construction of Exeter. on the south side has round-headed 
 
 - This Chapel, built in 1521, is an windows. 
 early instance of debased architec-
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 437 
 
 nearly a century older. The ball of Exeter College is also fair 
 Perpendicular, though the details of the noble open roof will 
 not bear examination. All these buildings affect high gables ; 
 the Chapels and Halls have roofs of lofty pitch, and the domestic 
 buildings exhibit a multiplicity of sharp pediments, having in- 
 variably a beautiful and picturesque outline. In fact Wadham 
 College, built entirely at this time, is in general appearance 
 decidedly one of the best in the University, and the Jacobsean 
 quadrangle at Merton is wonderfully picturesque, though per- 
 haps rather more like a private mansion than a College. 
 
 We have not hitherto seen the intrusion of any distinctively 
 foreign clement ; the idea is generally completely Gothic, and 
 often of great merit, the corruption is to be traced in the poor 
 and inaccurate details, in some cases retained by corrupt tradi- 
 tion from the latest Perpendicular, in others traceable to an 
 eclectic imitation of earlier styles. Thus the mouldings of the 
 great gate of the Schools are palpably intended as a copy of 
 Early Gothic forms ; they are neither Italian nor Perpendicular. 
 Yet even in these buildings there is an Italian intermixture of the 
 most curious kind. Every one has heard of the building of 
 which the gate just mentioned forms a part; the famous Schools 
 tower, with its display of "the five orders of architecture." 
 That is, it has stuck to it, without any meaning or connection, 
 a couple of columns on each side, dividing it into five stages, each 
 stage exhibiting an order. These might, without disturbing 
 the outline of the building, or any essential feature, be removed, 
 and would leave a Gothic tower of tolerable proportions, with a 
 corner turret and a pierced parapet, and in no detail, except the 
 round arch of its doorway, presenting any distinctively foreign 
 mixture. The same strange composition may be also seen on a 
 smaller scale at Merton and Wadham. They are so utterly in- 
 nocent of any share in the general composition of the building, 
 that one might almost fancy that their sole end was to show that 
 the architect, though working in the (Jot hie style, was by no 
 means ignorant of the other. If so we cannot congratulate him 
 on his success, as his orders are anything but pure specimens 
 even of the corruptions of Italy. 
 
 It is a most remarkable fact that the revived Gothic of Ox- 
 ford, a truer and better Renaissance than that which usually
 
 438 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 monopolizes the name, actually improved and developed as it 
 went on. Laud's buildings at St. John's College arc indeed an 
 exception. Even these are in general outline Gothic, but in 
 their Gothic features much more Italian or rather nondescript 
 detail has intruded itself than in the structures already men- 
 tioned ; and, farther than this, the cloister, though supporting a 
 Gothic upper story, consists of round arches on single columns. 
 Yet even this is Basilican rather than Italian, it is the very 
 arrangement against which classical pedants so bitterly cry out 
 in the first Christian Churches. But this erection was rather 
 extraneous than native, it was not the genuine production of the 
 Oxford school, but an intrusion of the court architect, Inigo 
 Jones. The local school continued on the whole to improve. 
 Oriel and University, the latter of which was not completed till 
 after the Restoration, have hardly the same merit as designs 
 as Wadham, but they are free from the monstrosities of the 
 Schools tower. One circumstance is especially worthy of notice, 
 that the tracery of their larger windows entirely forsakes the 
 Perpendicular line, and reverts to the Flowing forms, though but 
 clumsily imitated. The ogee gables have certainly a fantastic 
 air, and a pure taste will not compare them with the genuine 
 straight-lined forms; still they were probably intended as a 
 Gothic development, and certainly cannot in any sense be looked 
 upon as distinctively Italian. 
 
 But the strongest point of this after-Gothic of Oxford is de- 
 cidedly in the vaulting, of which many admirable specimens 
 exist. The fan-tracery under the gateways of University Col- 
 lege is fully equal in effect to any ancient example; but unques- 
 tionably the finest specimen is the magnificent staircase to the 
 Hall of Christ Church, which, though erected as late as 1640, 
 must be allowed to take its place among the noblest monuments 
 of Gothic architecture. It is a real idea, a genuine work of 
 original genius ; nothing can be finer than the great central 
 pillar, an idea taken of course from the Early Chapter-houses, 
 but which has here found a most bold and original application. 
 The details throughout are so pure, that it is next to impossible 
 to distinguish the original work of Wolscy from the additions of 
 this period ; and we may fairly say, that in greatness of concep- 
 tion it far surpasses anything that the Cardinal has left behind
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 439 
 
 him. The only point liable to objection is, that the clusters of 
 overlapping corbels, from which the vault springs at the sides, 
 do not altogether satisfy the strict laws of decorative construc- 
 tion. 
 
 After the Restoration Italianisms become far more frequent. 
 A large part of the great quadrangle at Christ Church was indeed 
 built or rebuilt at this time in exact, or rather ludicrously servile, 
 imitation of Wolsey's work, and the gateway tower must be allowed 
 the name of Gothic, impure as it is. This was finished by Sir 
 Christopher Wren in 1682, and, as a mere work of architecture, 
 apart from considerations of the purity of particular styles, must 
 be allowed to be a fine conception, fully worthy of the great, 
 though perverted, genius to whom it is due. It strikes the 
 mind at once, and not unpleasingly, by the boldness and singu- 
 larity of its outline ; the cupola can hardly be called inconsist- 
 ent with the style, and is a noble carrying out of the idea 
 suggested by the smaller ones clustering round its base. It is 
 St. Sophia in the garb of a Gothic gateway. 
 
 But other instances are less pure : Brasenose Chapel is about 
 as daring a piece of eclecticism as was ever perpetrated. Corin- 
 thian pilasters act as buttresses between pointed windows in 
 awkward imitation of Geometrical forms, and the whole is over- 
 loaded with strange and fantastic ornaments. This bears date in 
 1606; after this we have but small traces of Gothic even in 
 Oxford. The spire of All Saints' Church has round-headed 
 windows with intersecting tracery ; and the peculiar style of 
 the later buildings at All Souls' includes some Gothic ele- 
 ments ; this last however is mere fancy-work, and not, like the 
 others I have mentioned, a genuine relic of the; old tradition. 
 The subsequent buildings, up to our own day, arc all Ita- 
 lian, though even here Oxford may boast of possessing souk; 
 of the best specimens of a bad style. The warmest detestcr 
 of Paganisms may hesitate between such Italian as the glo- 
 rious mass of the Radcliffe Library, the solemn apse of Queen's 
 College Chapel, and its yet more stately Hall, and such 
 Gothic as we have seen added, not only to the nondescript 
 erections of Pembroke College, but to the venerable front of 
 University. 
 
 Now is it too much to suppose that this decided revival and
 
 140 HISTORY OK ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 strong adherence to the oM Northern and Christian forms is but 
 the material reflection of that Catholic movement in the English 
 Church, which has immortalized the names of Andrewes and 
 Laud, and a host of inferior worthies ? Of course we are not to 
 look for any direct influence ; the very structure raised in Ox- 
 ford by the martyred Archbishop paganizes, as we have seen, 
 more than any contemporary building in the University, and it 
 was under his auspices that the most fatal changes were inflicted 
 upon old St. Paul's. But under the notion which I have all 
 along taken of the deeper meaning of architecture, there is no 
 absurdity in supposing an unconscious influence to have ema- 
 nated from a source which would have actually disclaimed it. 
 "We might even suppose, though I know not of any actual 
 authority for the supposition, that Laud despised Gothic archi- 
 tecture, and yet that its revival was owing to the spirit which he 
 kindled. The most remarkable feature of this page in the history 
 of architecture is its being so strictly a revival. Its date exactly 
 coincides with the period when there was so eminent a revival of 
 Catholic feeling and doctrine ; the age of Elizabeth, in Oxford 
 emphatically the age of Puritanism, produced no building of any 
 consequence ; the revived Gothic dates, as we have seen, from 
 the reign of James the First. And it was a real revival of the 
 old spirit ; it was not a mere dry antiquarian copying, a loading 
 a meaningless outline with detail rigidly copied from some exist- 
 ing structure. Its fruits are really fruits of architecture, the 
 design, the outline, is almost always good, and sometimes, as in 
 the staircase of Christ Church, great original genius is at work. 
 It is wonderful how little the corruption of detail affects the ex- 
 cellence of the whole. And it is not a mere effete Perpendicular ; 
 it is a living, developing, eclectic style, pressing old forms of 
 different dates into its service, and calling forth new ones of its 
 own. If any one would estimate the merit of this revived 
 Gothic, and judge how far architecture without archaeology, 
 outline without detail, surpasses detail without outline, how far 
 the rudest efforts of the real artist transcend the most finished 
 productions of the mere antiquary, he has only to compare the 
 old and new buildings of University College to which I have 
 already alluded. 
 
 Out of the Universities for Cambridge too has its late struc-
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 441 
 
 tures of great merit, 1 though in this 1 case owing less to revival 
 than to retention the inroads of Paganism were far stronger. 
 Nowhere else was there cither such a store of ancient models, or 
 what was yet more valuable, so much of the spirit of former 
 times still abiding, in spite of individual errors, in the very soil 
 and atmosphere of the old Catholic foundations. Yet every- 
 where the struggle was a long and tierce one ; Gothic ele- 
 ments long survived, and even remained supreme. Of course they 
 remained longest where they were least exposed to the influ- 
 ences of prevalent taste and fashion. 'Die simple village church, 
 the retired country mansion, the house in the obscure town, arc 
 the places where we are to look for the last traces of Gothic art, 
 and here manifestly, not from any studied revival, but from a 
 faint and lingering tradition of better days. The inroads of the 
 foreign style were staved off by the mere vis inertia'. The out- 
 line is mostly Gothic ; the varied groupings of the gables,' 2 tur- 
 rets, and porches of the great mansions of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, fully equal in general effect any thing 
 which preceded them. They have corrupted the taste of many, 
 who have set up what they have called " Elizabethan " architec- 
 ture as a real style, sometimes actually for imitation, forgetful 
 that the same beauties, combined with purity of detail, may be 
 found in the true Gothic structures of the preceding age. Of 
 directly Italian features we occasionally find balustrades, mean- 
 ingless pillars and entablatures piled over one another, and espe- 
 cially doorways which often have Italian mouldings, and nonde- 
 script scroll and arabesque work in the spandrils, besides being 
 continually furnished with marked keystones, whether the arch be 
 round or depressed pointed. 3 Yet many doorways are also found 
 of unmixed, though very corrupt, Gothic. The windows scarcely 
 ever show any Italian features; they are usually square, even in 
 
 1 Some portions of St. John's :i The doorways in Jersey through- 
 College, erected in the reign of out the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 Klizabeth, are most exquisite in centuries, aie round-headed, but 
 outline and very tolerable in detail. otherwise Gothic, and generally 
 What a contrast to the barbarisms without keystones. The earlier ours 
 of Hickman ! are often superb sp< ciniens of l'"lam- 
 
 2 These are mostly of the true boyatit work. 
 Gothic form, but sometimes ogee, or 
 
 even round.
 
 442 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 churches ; in houses they are often of immense size ; they arc 
 furnished with mullions and transoms, but are usually without 
 tracery, having at the most a row of unfoliated arches. These 
 are usual in churches and colleges, but in houses the arches are 
 generally absent, and nothing left but the intersecting horizon- 
 tal and vertical bars. In churches we sometimes find pointed 
 windows with meagre attempts at tracery. Stone and brick 
 houses of this kind continued to be built quite down to the end 
 of the seventeenth century. Even the class which succeeded 
 them, ugly as they were, were something very superior to those 
 of our day; they were both substantial and unpretending; they 
 often had high roofs and dormers, and in their doorways and 
 windows, though without arches or mullions, the stone cases 
 still imparted an air of solidity and finish very different from 
 the meagre apertures which give light and ingress to a genuine 
 nineteenth century dwelling, wherever the almost more detes- 
 table phase of the modern Elizabethan with wooden mullions 
 has not taken its place. 
 
 But it is in the accessories and decorations of buildings 
 that we can trace the inroads of Cinque-cento in England 
 better than in their actual architecture. In architecture it did 
 little more than engraft a few incongruous details upon outlines 
 of the old form ; in wood-work and furniture of every kind, both 
 ecclesiastical and domestic, it effected a complete revolution. So 
 sudden and effectual was the change that King's College Chapel 
 itself was fitted up with a roodscreen and stalls of this character. 
 This kind of work is very easily recognized, but is very difficult 
 to describe. It is neither Gothic nor Italian, but a fantastic 
 style of itself. The Gothic wood-work was mainly imitation 
 stone-work ; it was panelling and tracery, blank or open as the 
 case required. It therefore chiefly consists in the representation 
 of architectural features, and has but little surface- carving, ex- 
 cept in cases where it occurs in stone-work also, such as cor- 
 nices and spandrils, and even there the foliage is, after all, in 
 idea at least, rather inserted than carved out of the mass. But 
 Cinque-cento carving delights to cover the whole surface with 
 decorations in shallow relief, cut out of the mass like the enrich- 
 ments of an early Norman capital. Foliage, figures, and more 
 frequently meaningless arabesques, are employed in profusion,
 
 OK THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 443 
 
 and produce a magnificent, though barbarous, effect. Even when 
 architectural features are introduced, as is not uncommon, 
 (round arches resting on indescribable imposts often appear- 
 ing,) even these are not, like the Gothic panelling, a distinct 
 composition fastened on to the surface, but are hewn out of the 
 mass in the same low relief as the rest. The first appearance 
 of this new kind of carving is to be found in the linen 
 pattern so common in late Perpendicular work. Real classical 
 features as rarely appear as pure Gothic ones, except in very 
 large compositions, as screens, where columns are often intro- 
 duced, though usually departing very far from Palladian accuracy. 
 There is however a great fondness for capitals, chiefly Ionic, but 
 they are frequently employed where nothing that can be called a 
 shaft supports them. In smaller works there is a great tendency to 
 Caryatid figures, generally of a very grotesque character. Indeed 
 the tendency to grotesque figures is so great as almost to assimi- 
 late the style to Romanesque, to which it has a considerable 
 affinity in several respects. In the manor-house at Charvvelton, 
 Northamptonshire, is a singular cornice of about the middle of the 
 sixteenth century, representing hunting and other scenes, which, 
 in the grotesque misproportions of the figures and the general 
 character of the carving, has a strong Romanesque air, and might 
 almost stand side by side with the capitals in St. Peter's, 
 Northampton. 
 
 In churches this style of wood- work is very common, that being 
 the feature of which the age to which it belongs has left the most 
 abundant specimens. Pulpits are often met with of great richness: 
 I cannot name a finer example than the magnificent one in Ox- 
 ford Cathedral : communion-tables with bulging legs covered 
 with carving; sometimes altar-rails, as at Yardlcy Hastings, 
 Northamptonshire ; occasionally also stalls, and more frequently 
 pews, all exhibit this fantastic style of ornament. It is more rare 
 to find it intermingled with Gothic features, 1 as in the roodscreen 
 of Oxford Cathedral, or on the other hand sinking into men; 
 meagre paganism, as in the stalls of the same church. Of roofs 
 of this date I may refer to that over the chancel of Towccster 
 Church, which is low-pitched, and has both panelling and ara- 
 
 1 The stalls at Duiham arc fair [Yrpeiulicnlar work subsequent to the 
 Restoration.
 
 444 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 besque work in the spandrils, and the chancel-roof at Shiffnal, 
 which is high-pitched, and on the whole handsome, but more 
 suited to a hall than to a church. 
 
 But alongside of these corruptions, the true Gothic style was 
 not altogether lost ; if it seldom found place in newly erected 
 structures, it was by no means excluded from the reparation of 
 elder ones. Thus the magnificent steeple of Higham Ferrers 
 Church was nearly rebuilt in the reign of Charles I. ; though 
 its rebuilders are not so much to be commended for any actually 
 new work, as for a careful working up again of the ancient frag- 
 ments. And the like may have been the case with the restora- 
 tion of the transepts of Westminster Abbey, quite at the close 
 of the same century. But a higher praise must be allowed to 
 Bishop Hacket, whose admirable restoration of Lichfield Cathe- 
 dral after the Restoration was the greatest work of that age. 
 No one who gazes on the consummate loveliness of its triple 
 spires can realize the day when the great steeple crushed the choir 
 in its fall, or the twelve years or more during which the most 
 graceful of all English churches remained little better than a 
 roofless ruin. The hand of "VVyatt has left more enduring traces 
 than that of the elder spoiler. Nor can we fail to mention the 
 tomb, which, though a lengthy epitaph disfigures its side, retains 
 the old form in all its purity, and on which reposes, in the garb 
 of Poore and Wykeham, the last emulator of their deeds, the last 
 English Bishop whose name has come down to posterity as the 
 restorer and adorner of his own cathedral church. 
 
 But, as a general rule, the confirmed Italian style had by this 
 time obtained that supremacy in Northern countries which it 
 had achieved a century earlier in its own country. Now, con- 
 sidered as a style, as a matter of architectural history, this form 
 of architecture must be looked upon as simply detestable. 
 Great was the genius of many, and the piety of some, who prac- 
 tised or favoured it ; consequently we have many beautiful, and 
 a few really religious structures of Italian architecture; but the 
 fact that supereminent abilities can produce a good effect out of 
 bad materials proves nothing as to the character of the latter. 
 Besides, many Italian buildings are large, well-proportioned, and 
 richly decorated, characters which, utterly irrespective of style, 
 cannot fail, if not to generate real beauty, at least to produce a
 
 Or THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 145 
 
 striking and attractive effect. We are not bound to pronounce 
 every individual building to be ugly, because the style in which 
 they are reared is, both in a moral and an artistic view, tho- 
 roughly contemptible. As noble thoughts and striking images 
 may burst the trammels of a rude and inharmonious lan- 
 guage, so faith and genius cannot be utterly bound down even 
 by a Palladian bondage. We may freely admit that the very 
 best Italian is better than the very worst Gothic, Queen's College 
 Hall than Balliol College Chapel, the Radcliffc Library than the 
 Schools ; but this very best Italian is immeasurably behind the 
 best Gothic, and the worst Italian has only this advantage over 
 the worst Gothic that it does not so painfully suggest the lack of 
 something better. 
 
 The fact is that there is in strictness, in England at least, no 
 such thing as an Italian style. By Italian architecture we do 
 not understand a definite type of building, which, however 
 various may be the forms which it assumes, still retains a per- 
 vading character, which unites them as members of one family, 
 expressions of one idea. It is a heap of forms which are not 
 Gothic, nor, in the highest sense, Christian, but which beyond 
 this negative element have no common character. Classical pe- 
 dants arc fond of declaiming against the variety, the irregularity, 
 the fantastic character of Gothic architecture ; but much more 
 is the brain bewildered by an attempt to classify the shifting 
 forms of the revived Italian. One building has a real Grecian 
 colonnade and entablature, and may even go the length of a 
 pediment ; another has one or more such stuck against a wall, 
 and windows pierced between ; another has no columns at all, 
 but sturdy square piers and round arches ; another has only pi- 
 lasters, perchance of forms unrecognized by Vitruvius ; in 
 another all these have vanished, and we have nothing left hut 
 windows and doors. All Gothic churches, from York .Minster 
 to St. Bartholomew's Chapel, have a certain resemblance ; they 
 have the same essential parts, and a certain analogy of proportion 
 but what one class can include the truly ecclesiastical outline of 
 St. Paul's Cathedral, and the half-temple, half-conventicle form of 
 St. Paul's at Oxford; the mass, with more breaks than ShiU'nal 
 or Purton, of All Saints, Northampton, and the square room 
 forming its Oxonian namesake; not to mention the prison of 
 Banbury or the theatre of Shrewsbury ? If Gothic is an undo
 
 446 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 vcloped idea, much more so is Italian ; it is impossible to read 
 the writings of any classical traveller or critic without finding 
 almost as many complaints against modern Italian as against 
 ancient Gothic buildings. They talk a great deal of purity, 
 simplicity, &c, but do not seem to have found the outward ex- 
 pression of those ideas in any existing fabric. They long for a 
 realization of their classical ideal, but, to judge from their own 
 showing, the site of the model Italian building must be looked 
 for in Utopia, and the funds for its erection be discovered at the 
 impost of the rainbow. 
 
 In considering this architecture, the mind of an Englishman 
 naturally reverts to the greatest work of the kind that his coun- 
 try has beheld, and the sublime, though perverted, genius to 
 whom it is owing. I trust it is no renunciation of the most 
 devoted admiration of the glories of our elder architecture, I 
 trust that Walsingham and Wykeham would pardon the belief, 
 that St. Paul's Cathedral is a great work, and that Sir Christo- 
 pher Wren was a great architect. Wretched as is its style, glaring 
 and even ludicrous as are its individual defects, bitterly as its 
 cold walls and naked windows cry for colour and gilding, St. 
 Paul's is still a grand and majestic temple; its porches are 
 worthy of having the cry of the greedy money-changer hushed 
 within them, and its lofty nave and spreading cupola deserve a 
 better fate than to be the dwelling-place of the demons of hea- 
 thendom. But to what does it owe its splendour ? Most un- 
 doubtedly to the fact that the whole idea of the building is that, 
 not only of a Catholic, but of a Romanesque or Gothic church. 
 The ground-plan is thoroughly that of an old Cathedral ; nave, 
 choir, transepts, aisles, eastern apse, western towers, central 
 lantern. So too in internal elevation, piers, arches, clerestory; and 
 those, but for the hideous shape of the windows, and the unmean- 
 ing entablature thrust in above the arcade, of by no means bad 
 arrangement and proportion. It is a Gothic conception ex- 
 pressed in Italian details. Not that for this we have to thank 
 the architect, who would, if unshackled, have allowed us nothing 
 of the kind ; it is simply owing to the traces of the old tradition, 
 and to the Catholic feelings of the Caroline divines, who might 
 be ignorant or careless about architectural detail, but were not 
 men to allow the new Cathedral to depart from the ecclesiastical 
 model of the elder one.
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 44-7 
 
 What the Italian style produced when left to itself we see 
 in the great St. Peter's, where the whole nave consists only of 
 four yawning arches without a clerestory, supporting a barrel- 
 vault ; a tunnel with its sides perforated by a series of railway 
 bridges. Add to this a front without the slightest approach to 
 ecclesiastical character. No one could mistake that of St. Paul's, 
 of the Annunciata or the Carignana at Genoa, for anything 
 but the facade of a church ; but that of St. Peter's, if it 
 stood by itself, might really be anything else. Yet of course 
 no one can deny that St. Peter's is grand, majestic, and over- 
 poweringly sublime. But it is rather a triumph of building 
 than of architecture ; with the exception of the dome, that glo- 
 rious crown which adds majesty to the most worthless pile, the 
 majesty of St. Peter's is rather that of vastness and daring than 
 of grace and harmony, the fruit of power rather than of art ; 
 it is the grandeur of an Egyptian temple or a Pioman acpicduct 
 rather than the true beauty of the Parthenon or of St. Ouen's. 
 
 We need not delay very long over the details of the Italian 
 style as exhibited in England ; over the vagaries attempted in 
 the formation of piers, the fantastic combinations of the old 
 Romans with the addition of some new ones, or on the prctcr- 
 naturally ugly forms of its windows. Tracery was of course 
 usually despised as a bungling contrivance for shutting out the 
 light; and when it was attempted, as in All Saints, Northamp- 
 ton, it is of such a character as not to cause much regret for its 
 absence elsewhere. One may however observe that in the 
 steeples there is always more or less of a Gothic leaven inter- 
 mingled. The simple form of the old Lombard Campanile is 
 scarcely ever attempted; we commonly meet with fantastic com- 
 positions in stages of different forms, open turrets, etc., attempts 
 to clothe the varied outlines of the later Gothic steeples in the 
 details of the now fashionable style. The results are various, 
 most commonly ludicrously unsuccessful, but occasionally a good 
 outline is attained, which, at a distance too great to perceive the 
 details, has a striking effect. All Saints in Oxford is a fine 
 example of the more fantastic kind of spire, and, barbarous as 
 its architecture is found to be on a closer examination, forms no 
 despicable point in the distant view of the city. Simpler ex- 
 amples of spires are not uncommon ; of towers Warwick has
 
 448 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 doubtless the pre-eminence, but that of Woodstock, and, on a 
 smaller scale, Badby in Northamptonshire, are very handsome 
 in a distant, and very hideous in a near view. 1 Indeed many 
 towers and spires were built or rebuilt with fair outlines in yet 
 worse times, such as Greens Norton, Northamptonshire, a most 
 striking and beautiful object for miles round. Such examples, in 
 which the spirit of the old masters is caught among utter igno- 
 rance and even contempt of their details, must rank much higher 
 in the estimation of the architectural critic than the examples 
 which we too often see in the present day, crowded with mis- 
 applied detail, but of outline and proportion utterly starved and 
 meagre. 
 
 The school of Wren indeed was one which might in several 
 points furnish an example to modern architects. The Italian 
 churches of the Metropolis, bad as we may consider their 
 style, were, from the Restoration to the accession of the Hano- 
 verian dynasty, evidently the best offerings which their founders 
 knew how to make. " Though generally in an impure style of 
 architecture, sometimes of a Palladian character, sometimes per- 
 fectly indescribable, they are built in a most expensive manner, 
 with great solidity and a certain grandeur of proportions, that 
 cannot fail to excite some admiration, in spite of architectural 
 solecisms and deficient arrangement. And there is in almost 
 all the churches built in the Metropolis, about this time, some 
 sort of recognition of chancel internally, and in some instances, 
 as at St. Peter, Cornhill, and Allhallows the Great, a roodscreen 
 actually exists/' 2 
 
 1 With the details of Warwick tion and attempting appropriate de- 
 tower I am not acquainted; the tail, the latter (circ. 1709) far from 
 others do not attempt anything in unsuccessfully. This last is very 
 the way of Gothic detail, though like the tower at Sherston, Wilts, 
 the outline is of this kind. This (circ. 1680) figured in Petit's Ar- 
 distinguishes them from those chitectural Character, 
 towers of the same character in '- Ecclesiologist for February, 
 which there is a manifest attempt 1847, p. 43. A real chancel with 
 at carrying the imitation of Gothic chancel arch and roodscreen exists 
 into the smaller features as well as in All Saints, Northampton, though 
 into the main outline. Such is the rendered useless by the aggregation 
 detached campanile at Berkeley, of " Pclion, Ossa, and Olympus" 
 and the tower of Dursley church, immediately to the west thereof, 
 both of good Perpendicular propor-
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 449 
 
 But architecturally speaking, the greatest merit of Wren, 
 and which shows what his powers might have effected, had they 
 been turned in a right direction, is his thorough appreciation 
 of Gothic outlines. We shall remember that in his Gothic 
 erections he was working thoroughly against the grain, and yet, 
 what speaks as highly for his moral as for his artistic feelings, 
 he always gave the style full play. This indeed renders his con- 
 tempt for Gothic architecture yet more unintelligible ; to reject 
 it, when he showed so thorough a power of entering into its 
 higher principles, is more extraordinary than if he had simply 
 despised through ignorance. Still, account for it as we may, the 
 fact cannot but greatly increase our admiration for his architec- 
 tural powers. As in the towers lately mentioned, where there is 
 no attempt at Gothic detail, so here, where the building is de- 
 signed to be wholly Gothic, the outline is almost always excel- 
 lent. The towers of Westminster Abbey are exceedingly good 
 in general effect ; they strongly recall those of Lincoln, and have 
 the same defect in the pinnacles. And some of Wren's Gothic 
 churches in the city quite rival ancient buildings in their general 
 appearance. The details of course are often wretched ; for, 
 while, by the mere force of his architectural genius, he at once 
 grasped the general conception of a Gothic edifice, he had not 
 given to the minutia^ of a style which he despised that diligent 
 and critical study without which excellence of detail cannot be 
 looked for. In a word, Sir Christopher Wren was no antiqua- 
 rian, but he was a very great architect, and, had not his taste 
 been warped by the infection of the day, he might have been the 
 restorer of Gothic architecture instead of the dealer of its death- 
 blow. 
 
 With the school founded by this great man, and his successors 
 Hawksmoor and Gibbs, our history of architecture must close. 
 The greater part of the last age is an entire blank in eccle- 
 siastical art, the great mass of the churches erected during 
 that period being in no style at all, but simply hideous 
 and unmeaning, as alien from the principles of I'alladio as oi 
 Wykeham. And the same may be said of secular buildings, both 
 public and domestic; none but tho^e of the most sumptuous 
 character can at all pretend to the name of architectural works. 
 For Italian architecture trusts entirely to size and richness of
 
 450 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 ornament ; by the aid of these it often produces an effect which 
 disarms technical criticism ; but it has not that exquisite power 
 and versatility by which the Gothic architect can impart a high 
 degree of beauty even to the smallest and plainest structure. 
 The last great work, the last really noble product of architectu- 
 ral genius, bequeathed to us by this school is the sublime llad- 
 cliffe Library at Oxford, the work of Gibbs, and completed 
 in 1747. One cannot conceive a grander mass than the cir- 
 cular substructure and cupola without, or a grander interior, 
 could it be seen without obstruction, that the same form, including 
 a massive arcade, presents within. It completely recalls the idea 
 of an old Italian Baptistery ; and were its circumference belted 
 with Lombard arcades instead of engaged Corinthian columns, 
 it would be marvellously to its advantage. 
 
 Those who, like Wilkins, turned their attention to the study 
 of the pure Grecian orders instead of their Italian corruptions, 
 must be considered as having greatly benefited the study of ar- 
 chitectural history, but as having done nothing whatever for the 
 improvement of architectural practice. Palladian architecture 
 had been for some centuries applied to secular buildings, and, 
 with all its faults, had been moulded into certain forms which 
 were at all events familiar, and consequently, by association at 
 least, adapted to their use. But pure Grecian architecture, 
 with its one inflexible form, the portico, is utterly incapable of 
 adapting itself to the requirements of a modern building 
 of any kind ; and the only practical result of Stuart and 
 Wilkins' labours, has been the creation of a class of buildings 
 infinitely more incongruous and unmeaning than the old type of 
 the Palladian palace, and, what that usually is not, thoroughly 
 shapeless and meagre. To attach an advanced portico to a rectan- 
 gular room with no lateral ornament whatever, was a bright idea, 
 and one that serves equally for church, concert-room, or anything 
 else. But to mingle up the eternal portico with the wildest fan- 
 tasies that Italianism had previously devised ; the said portico 
 attached to a dead wall, with two loftier projecting wings ; those 
 wings adorned with columns copied from a solitary example, 
 the least graceful that Grecian art had produced, and these 
 columns having no end but to support vases and images, which 
 vases and images again have no end but to form a finish to the
 
 OF THE DECAY OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. 451 
 
 columns ; and this composition diversified by windows of the 
 most portentous ugliness that human perversity ever imagined; 
 all this we have seen arise in our own day in venerable Oxford, in 
 close proximity to one of the noblest creations of ancient, and the 
 very noblest creation of modern days. Such is the chastity and 
 simplicity, the purity and harmony, of Grecian architecture in 
 the nineteenth century, as carried out by the most eminent of its 
 professors, in a city which had beheld not only some of the 
 noblest efforts of Romanesque and Gothic art, but the most 
 successful productions even of revived Italianism ; which has 
 seen Queen's College Hall, and the Radcliffe Library, as well as 
 St. Fridcswide's and St. Mary's. For the opposite to every prin- 
 ciple which Pheidias and Ictinus, no less than Walkelyn and 
 Wykeham, cherished and obeyed, we have only to look to those 
 pursued by the authors and abettors of the Taylor Buildings, 
 the very Mosyncecians 1 of architecture. 
 
 The revival of Gothic art in our own day is a subject at once 
 too recent and too extensive to form a mere Chapter in the 
 History of Architecture. It is as yet not a matter of history, 
 but of aspiration. And we must carefully distinguish the study 
 of Gothic archaeology from the revival of Gothic art, and the re- 
 vival of Gothic art from the revival of that spirit which alone 
 can give it value. As yet we have much to grieve for; our own 
 land cries in vain for the erection of new churches and the 
 restoration of her old ones; the fabric of Ely and Westminster 
 may be renewed, but while the laity throng the choir, and Pagan 
 nudities stand unrebuked, the Church is unrestorcd. In other 
 lands, 2 we have seen the walls of mighty Minsters renewed only 
 to emblazon the glories of rulers whom the Church can regard 
 only as persecutors. And in the pure Teutonic land, the very 
 birth-place of all art, we find the mightiest creation of antiquity 
 
 1 See Xenophon, Anal). K, iv. of the buildings or restorations al- 
 
 tovtovs [Moo-woi'kous] iKryov ol arjia- hided to are now likely to lie con- 
 
 Tivaantvoi 3o|^a|ia)Ta:ou! SifAflui/ koI tinned, 1 know not. I have altered 
 
 Khdnov iwv 'Y.KKi)y^wv v6fMwv Kt X oo- one or two expressions from their 
 
 purtfvoos. original form, as they might nther- 
 
 - These remarks were written he- wise have nppeared like an insult to 
 
 fore the great events of the last fallen greatness, 
 year : how, or to what extent, any
 
 452 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 advancing to completion under the auspices of one whom its an- 
 cient guardians would, like St. Ambrose of old, have turned back 
 from its glorious portals. And more mournful still, we behold its 
 modern rival, 1 the noblest work that three ages have produced, 
 the pile whose lofty spire would seem to call adoring crowds to the 
 Church's most gorgeous worship, a Church only in name, de- 
 signed for a teaching alien to her fold. We must work as church- 
 men if we would succeed even as architects ; we must seek and 
 pray for the spirit in which Godfrey fought and Fra Angelico 
 painted ; we must work as for God and His Church, and we 
 shall soon outstrip the bonds of imitation and archaeology, and 
 starting from the principles of the mighty workers of old, may 
 trust in time to surpass even the glorious creations that they 
 have left us. 
 
 1 St. Nicholas at Hamburg.
 
 ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA. 
 
 Page 15, line 10 from bottom ct seqq. I find not only the gene- 
 ral sentiment, but even some of the expressions, forestalled in a 
 passage of Washington Irving, which, if it presented itself at all to 
 my recollection at the time, certainly did so unconsciously ; " We 
 were overshadowed by lofty trees, with straight smooth trunks, 
 like stately columns ; and as the glancing rays of the sun shone 
 through the transparent leaves, tinted with the many-coloured hues 
 of autumn, I was reminded of the effect of sunshine among the 
 stained windows and clustering columns of a Gothic cathedral. In- 
 deed, there is a grandeur and solemnity in some of our spacious 
 forests of the west, that awakens in me the same feeling that I have 
 experienced in those vast and venerable piles, and the sound of the 
 breeze sweeping through them supplies, occasionally, the deep breath- 
 ings of the organ." Tour on the Prairies, p. 1/. 
 
 Page 50, line 13. For this very expressive word "stilt" lam 
 under an obligation to a paper by Professor Orlebar, which will be 
 found several times referred to in a subsequent ( 'hapter. It expresses 
 a portion of masonry above the regular column, which is construc- 
 tively part of the pier, but in the decoration assumes the form either 
 of a portion of the arch, or of a distinct member. The Egyptian 
 tie is an analogous insertion between the column and the entablature. 
 See below, pp. (if), /(), where it is remarked that the parallel between 
 the two is "perhaps not altogether accidental." The first confirmed 
 use of the stilt occurs in the Arabian buildings at Cairo, (sec below, 
 ]. 27'2) where it may possibly have been suggested by the dc of the 
 elder Egyptian style. 
 
 Page 1 OH, line 3. In the Roman stvle a trh'lvph is placed over 
 the centre of each column. This would appear to he a deterio- 
 ration, ami is clearlv analogous to the Roman fashion of breaking up 
 the entablature into a series of projections over the columns. 
 
 Page 117, line .">. ~>> '" <'> ' Y.\< vi'in ~t \i mi'n>ioi> '/'/v','" 7 " /"'' 
 Ko/ioifios- iiih'if iik'i v Kfii to/ s i'~ ' t'a'ir/)iiin ki'ovi is tlh/Kri' oi'iov Kin 
 7/iis- f*jriffTi'\/o/v ''-'> '"' I' - UTTo0l'll'nmO\ << TnvTov MlTH-/! I'/V O 
 2ii-i't(OS to ( ui'Ciriin hiii tbi'v orir Ki'itras i-iniiyn. I'lllt. I'lT. \'A. 
 
 Was the second range of columns an afterthought .' 
 
 Pa"-e Il'2, line 7. One of the most interesting of Grecian build- 
 ings, were it in existence, would be the Athenian Odeum, built in
 
 454 ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA. 
 
 imitation of the royal tent of Xerxes. See Diet, of Ant., Art. Odeum. 
 This imitation, however, would effectually preclude it from being a 
 work of true Grecian architecture. The account given by Plutarch 
 (lit supra) is ir\ fiev cinbs tiaOecrei iroXveSpov kcu 7ro\va-rv\ov, 
 tT] h' cpcyjsci 7rcpiK\ive<} kcu K<nav7e<s e/c /luu9 Kopvcpfj 1 } ttcttoiiulcvov . 
 This must have been a conical roof, but there is nothing to imply any 
 approximation to a real, or even an apparent, vault, and it may very 
 probably have been of wood. One would be well pleased to know 
 the exact construction of the 66\oi at Athens and elsewhere. See 
 Diet, of Ant., Art. Tholus. If they had domes, real or apparent, 
 as, from the example of the monument of Lysicrates, is certainly 
 possible, still the form is not purely Grecian ; it could not have been 
 derived from the principles of Greek architecture, but copied from 
 Pelasgian remains. 
 
 Page 239, line 5 from the bottom. This distinction into princi- 
 pal and alternate piers is doubtless one of the German features at 
 Jumieges alluded to by Dr. Whewell, (p. 281) and Mr. Petit, (i. 94, 
 see below, p. 264) as the octagons are another. 
 
 Page 241, line /. This observation must of course be confined to 
 the arcades of churches. In external situations where strength alone 
 is required, as in bridges and aqueducts, nothing is so appropriate as 
 the massive square pier. If the arch be pointed, a chamfer is all 
 that is wanted. There cannot be worse taste than wasting decoration 
 on structures of this kind, as in those of the London bridges which 
 have columns attached. 
 
 Page 2-1 o, line 7- There are manifest preparations for Roman- 
 esque vaulting over the transepts of Oxford Cathedral, whose stvle 
 agrees pretty well with these buildings, as well as the vaults at Can- 
 terbury and St. Cross. (See below, p. 323.) 
 
 Page 246, line 7 from bottom. At Southwell the transept arches 
 are greatly spoiled by the massive responds, half-columns, like the 
 piers at Gloucester and Tewkesbury, and still more objectionable 
 from their position. 
 
 Page 256, line 3 from bottom. "Few perhaps will sympathize 
 with the Ecclesiologist in the positive aversion with which it regards 
 a sketch of an Ionic volute or a fluted pillar in juxta-position with 
 the sacred details of Christian art." Ecclesiologist, IV. 1/8. Few 
 indeed. What if the "sketch" be taken from a Basilica? and what 
 are the " sacred details?" how can one sort of detail be more sacred 
 than another? ' 
 
 Page 318, line 15. Sec Ecclesiologist, V. p. 231 -14. 
 
 Page 323, line 22. Malmsbury was cited inadvertently ; it has 
 rich Komanesque mouldings, and consequently belongs to the same
 
 ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA. 455 
 
 class as Glastonbury, except in its massiveness. St. Sepulchre's, 
 Northampton, in the circular part, is a case in point. 
 
 Page 324, line 20. This form of window, with the round arch, 
 but with otherwise confirmed Gothic detail, is by no means usual as 
 a single lancet. It occurs in the superb foliated quintuplet in the 
 west front of Berkeley church ; and as a containing arch over two 
 lancets, the round form is far from uncommon in the Northampton- 
 shire towers, and occurs both in the tower and west front of the 
 splendid church of Felmersham, Bedfordshire, figured in Petit's 
 Architectural Character. 
 
 Page 325, line 5. Lest the expression in the text should seem 
 invidious, I think it right to mention that this destroyed church 
 has given way, though on another site, to a modern one of consider- 
 able merit, and far surpassing its predecessor in general effect. Still 
 we must regret the loss of these valuable details. 
 
 Page 346, line 8. Tintern is hardly a case in point, some of the 
 windows having intersecting lines, to which the remark in the text does 
 not apply, but it is eminently true of Netley. 
 
 Page 357, note l . I might add those in the choir of the Temple 
 church, which is hardly conventual in its architecture. 
 
 Page 358, line 12. The square-headed window, in the form of a 
 decapitated lancet, occurs in the chancel of Cowley church, Oxon ; 
 square-headed windows of two or more lights of Geometrical date 
 occur at Congresbury, Somerset, and St. Kenelm's, Salop, and are 
 not uncommon in Northamptonshire, where the use of the square 
 head at all times is a localism. (See below, p. 379.) The circular 
 window containing tracery, of a size intermediate between the small 
 foliated circle and the great wheel window, and also the triangular 
 window of the same character, are far more usual in Early Gothic 
 than afterwards. 
 
 Pa "-e 307, line 17. For "graceful" 1 should rather have said 
 "appropriate." Nothing can be more graceful than the foliage at 
 Lincoln, but the toothing at Lichfield is certainly better adapted to 
 the position. 
 
 Page 30!"), line 3 from bottom. The nave of Berkeley church 
 should also be mentioned as a specimen of Marly Gothic arcades of 
 earlier date and a different character, but fully equal in beauty to 
 either Stafford or Dorchester. 
 
 Pa^e 37S, note 2. The clerestory windows at Canterbury and 
 Winchester cannot be called true Perpendicular. The transitional 
 character of the choir of York has often been observed. 
 
 l\i"v 382. line II. The equal hi^ii pitch of Canterbury and 
 Winchester gives them a great advantage over York and Gloucester, in
 
 456 ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA. 
 
 both of which the variations of height both in wall and roof produce 
 a very unpleasant irregularity. The nave of York ought to have been 
 mentioned as a Decorated specimen originally built with a low roof. 
 
 Page 383, line 22. The entire want of flying buttresses at 
 Gloucester and in the nave of Winchester is doubtless to be 
 attributed to the massiveness of the Romanesque walls : their very 
 partial appearance at York, to the vaulting there being of wood. 
 They occur in the choir of Winchester, where the roof is also of 
 wood ; perhaps the extreme lightness of the pillars and great height 
 of the clerestory may account for both facts. 
 
 Page 386, line 10. It is remarkable that Northamptonshire, 
 where spires and octagons of such splendour abound, has, to the 
 best of my knowledge, only one square tower of much excellence, 
 at least of any size. This is at Titchmarsh ; it is much more mas- 
 sive than those in Somerset, and cannot be referred to either of the 
 classes in the text, but for general excellence might rank with the 
 best of them. 
 
 Page 389, line If). It is clear that an Early Gothic Minster is in- 
 complete without a triforium, while that feature is rigorously excluded 
 from small churches, the anomalous character of St. Sepulchre's, Cam- 
 bridge, as a round church, rendering it hardly a fair exception. Yet 
 in many large parish churches a triforium would be an improvement. 
 
 Page 434, line 20. See Whewell, p. 260. 
 
 Page 447, note. The date of the campanile at Berkeley is about 
 1 750, when it succeeded a former one on the same spot. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 16, line 1 , for voices read voice 
 
 ,, 59, ,, 2 from bottom,, for b yw Inch read by which 
 
 ,, 85, note 3 ,for \ifj.7jv read \ijxi)v 
 
 ,, 97, ,, 14, after religious for (;) read (,) 
 
 ,, 117, line 14, for this read the 
 
 ,, 158, ,, 25, for interior ; when read interior, where 
 
 ,, l^S, ,, 1 7, for Dioclesian read Diocletian 
 
 ,, 1G6, ,, 13, for ditto read ditto 
 
 ,, 188, ,, 24, for sometime read some time 
 
 ,, 198, ,, 20, for being read having the head 
 
 ,, 213, note, for erected read inserted 
 
 ,, 221, line 1 , for or read nor 
 
 ,, 234, ,, 27, after universal for (',) read (;) 
 
 ,, 317, ,, 24, for this read his 
 
 JOSEPH MASTERS, PRINTER, AMlKRSnATK STREET, LONDON.
 
 
 ^0* %*-*>
 
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