There is, however, one important difference, and one which bears directly upon the foregoing observations:—The domes at St. Front, as well as the great arches which support them, are pointed instead of round, though all the minor arches retain the older form (Figs. 444, 445). This agrees with what I have stated in my earlier lectures, that the pointed arch was introduced, not so much as a matter of taste as of construction. Thus, in the buildings in which it first appears, we usually find it in the arches carrying towers, in the wider vaulting, and in other positions where great weight had to be sustained, before it made its appearance in minor features.

Here, at St. Front, we have it appearing at a date a century and a half earlier than in our own country, and used solely in the parts where the constructive necessities were the most urgent.

The style, once transplanted into this region, widely separated though it was from all its previous seats, seems to have seized powerfully upon the public mind, and to have become, within a century, the nucleus of a new form of architecture, of very great beauty and interest, uniting the domical construction of the East with the Romanesque and the Early Pointed architecture of the West.

The entire district, some 200 miles in extent, adopted the dome as its acknowledged form of vaulting, nearly always supported it by the pointed arch, and also employed it as the section of the cupola itself.

At Souillac we find a nave, apparently nearly as early as St. Front, covered by a series of pointed domes supported by massive transverse pointed arches, and terminated by a semi-domical apse, all carried out with scarcely an attempt at architectural detail.

At the church of St. Stephen, at Perigueux, commonly called La Cité, we have an imperfect early nave of simple character, with one of its domes remaining, but to the east of it stands a later compartment, in which the same construction is carried out with very fine architecture, agreeing in character with our own Transitional style (Fig. 446).

This brings us to the new development, for the style now ceases to be Byzantine. It is very noble Gothic, united with domical construction.

The sketches of this and St. Front serve to show the greatness of the change,—the one a rude transcript of St. Mark’s without its decorations,—the other a noble interior of the Transitional style, but with a pendentive dome; and it will be seen that this addition in no degree clashes with the style into which it is adopted.

At Angoulême we find this development carried out fully (Fig. 447). We have a complete cruciform church, precisely in the style of the work last named, the bays of the nave almost exactly like it, but the crossing rising to a far greater height, with a sort of drum forming a clerestory over the arches, and imperfect pendentives bearing the dome aloft (Fig. 448).

I may mention that this dome is not circular in plan, but that the middle of each side is flattened.

A very parallel arrangement exists in a church far more to the north, on the banks of the Loire, and one in which we, as Englishmen, are specially interested, as being the burial-place of our earlier Plantagenets. I refer to the Abbey Church of Fontevrault (Fig. 449).

This church has four domical bays to the nave almost identical with those at Angoulême. The church is now a prison, and in some obscure portion lie the beautiful effigies of King Henry II. of England and of Eleanor of Guienne, his queen; of Richard Cœur de Lion; and of Isabel of Angoulême, the queen of King John, and mother to the rebuilder of Westminster Abbey.

There are in this district of France fully forty domed churches, which I need not particularise, my main object being to show how perfectly compatible is the cupola with Gothic architecture.

The influence, however, of the dome extended, in France, far beyond the district in question; for we find it spreading eastward into Auvergne, and beyond that again to Lyons.

In Auvergne it usually covers the intersection of cross churches beneath the tower; at Le Puy it is used in a very unusual form to cover, not only this central space, but the bays of the vaulting.

The nave is divided into oblong bays by transverse arches, and the intervals are reduced to elongated octagons by corbels, doing duty for pendentives, and these octagons are domed over on the angular system. The same form of covering exists at Ainay, near Lyons.[68]

I may mention that the pendentives in many of these French churches give place to corbels of varied design, as at Monthron, near Angoulême, Nôtre Dame des Dons at Avignon, and very many others. The last named dome rises into a beautiful tower, and I may mention that small lantern turrets are common upon the Aquitanian domes.

I will not dwell upon the German domes, because they do not illustrate any special development. They seem to have been the offspring of those Italian domes which followed Roman traditions. They mostly cover intersections of cross churches beneath central towers. Those at Aix-la-Chapelle and Nimègue are of the ordinary type of domes covering octagonal buildings. That at Worms covers a square, but is by corbels brought out to an octagon, and then domed in that form.

In our own country I know of no nearer Mediæval approach to the cupola than the semi-dome covering the apse of the chapel in the Tower of London.[69]

The last form of dome which I will allude to is what may be called the modern type. It does not differ in essentials from what may be found among those of earlier periods, but is distinguished from them by several of the elements which it possesses in common with some of these, being developed on a larger scale and becoming more pronounced and more essentially characteristic.

This type of dome is:—1. Raised high in the manner of a tower; 2. The dome becomes an important external feature; 3. It is crowned by a smaller tower rising out of the dome; 4. It usually assumes internally the form of a lantern, with a range of windows beneath the dome; 5. In some instances the external and internal domes are independent structures, the former acting as a roof to the latter, with, perhaps, an intermediate structure to carry the culminating tower on its apex. Now, every one of these features is to be found in earlier domes.

The raising of a dome upon a drum or tower is common both in the East and West. In many instances, and especially in Mahometan buildings, the dome becomes an important external feature. The crowning of the dome by a small tower or lantern on its apex is frequent among the early domes of Northern Italy, and is seen on the five domes of St. Front at Perigueux, and, in a different form, on its prototype at Venice. The internal range of windows beneath the dome is found both in the true Byzantine districts, in Italy, in France, and in Germany; and finally, the independence of the external and the internal domes,—the former becoming the roof to the latter, with even the intermediate structure to support the culminating turret or lantern,—is found in its full integrity in St. Mark’s, at Venice, where its early date is proved by its being represented in the most ancient of the external mosaics.

Why, then, if all its essential characteristics are to be found in ancient examples, do we call this form of dome “modern”? I would reply that, though its elementary ideas were old, their systematic combination, and the vast scale on which they were worked out, is due to the architects of the Renaissance. It is, in my opinion, their greatest achievement, being the union of the Classic with the Byzantine and the Mediæval ideals, and the working them into a feature which no previous style had produced in so complete a manner or on so noble a scale. In saying this, however, I do not intend to praise this as being as an internal feature superior to the true Byzantine dome; on the contrary, I think it a less reasonable and an even less beautiful covering, because it is raised to so vast an elevation as not to be visible at any natural angle of vision, nor to become a part of the general internal view of the building. It must, however, be confessed that, when seen, it is of wonderful and almost magical aspect; while externally it produces a nobler form of tower than is to be found in any previous development. I do not think it in any degree belongs essentially to the Renaissance, though it chanced to be developed under its influence. On the contrary, the first complete type of this form of dome (though happening not to be pendentive) was designed as the completion of a Gothic structure, and its only serious fault is that it was not carried out with more perfectly Gothic detail. I refer of course to that of the Cathedral at Florence (Fig. 451).

The Cathedral at Florence had been carried out during the fourteenth century—all but its cupola—from the design of Arnolpho and his successors. A dome equal in space to that now existing was prepared for, but various causes delayed for a century its actual erection, so that, when it was at length undertaken, the prevailing style had changed. It is probable that Arnolpho intended to have sprung his dome at a far lower level, and to have made it like that of the adjoining baptistery; perhaps not exhibiting externally its domical form. Brunelleschi raised the drum to a considerable height, exhibited his dome as a vast external feature, and crowned it with a culminating lantern, thus giving us at once the leading features—and that on a scale never since exceeded—of what I have called the modern type of dome. Had he made its details more accurately to harmonise with those of Arnolpho’s structure, his work would have been perfect. Not only is his dome erected on Gothic walls and arches, but its own section is a pointed arch, so that in all but its decorative features—and in these in some degree—it is essentially a Gothic dome. It is not, however, pendentive, nor is it circular in plan; and, though opening by arches into the arms of the cross, it is after all merely the covering of an octagonal chamber, so that its claims rest more on its size, its height, and its external beauty, than any novelty of development.

Of its successors the name is legion. It would be useless for me to attempt to enumerate even the most successful of them. I will therefore content myself with a brief description of the two most typical—those of St. Peter’s, at Rome, and of our own St. Paul’s.

I am not aware of any dome of great scale erected in the interval between Brunelleschi’s dome at Florence and that of Michael Angelo at Rome. The latter, however, was the crowning result of the efforts of successive architects, especially of Bramante and Sangallo. In one sense it does, and the other it does not, show evidence of this lengthened period of development.

Its unity of design would bespeak it as the work of one master-mind, while its perfection may mark it as the result of oft-repeated trials.

Though founded in idea on the dome at Florence, that of St. Peter’s differs from it in many most important and essential particulars (Fig. 452). In the first place,—while that at Florence is supported from the very floor upon an octagonal wall merely pierced by comparatively narrow arches, that at St. Peter’s is essentially a pendentive dome, rising from four colossal piers which give it a square base, and united with the four arms of the church by arches, or rather vaults of vast span. These arches, it is true, are not so wide as to reduce the pendentives which rise from between them to triangular forms, but are set so far apart as to leave a portion of the ideal circle between them, and to give the pendentives a horizontal base.

This was necessary to give strength to the piers for the support of so gigantic a structure, but in no degree interferes with the pendentive character of the dome.

Again, at Florence the octagonal wall rises to the very base of the dome, while at Rome the drum, from the pendentives upwards, is circular. At Florence it is pierced only by rather ungainly circular windows, while at Rome it is colonnaded within and without, and beautifully decorated within. At Florence the dome is of that doubtful kind which has straight sides, carrying up the octagonal form to the very top, while at Rome the dome is circular and perfect. Both are in some degree alike in construction, being double, with a space between, not two domes, as at our St. Paul’s, but one dome formed of two shells partially connected; a mode of construction well suited to the support of the crowning lantern.

Both domes are founded in their section on the pointed arch. Their internal span is nearly the same, but their proportions differ greatly; for while that at Florence is internally only two of its diameters in height, that at Rome is two and a half; and while the former is externally one and three quarters of its diameter in height, the latter is two diameters—each irrespective of the lantern. Strangely enough, however, the great external defect of the dome of St. Peter’s is its want of height. It is so encumbered by the surrounding building that its height, from near points of view, is greatly lost. Like the mountain—which seems to be its prototype—though towering nobly in the distant view, it becomes as you approach it entangled among the nearer though smaller heights. This is obviated at Florence—at least from the eastern points of view—by the more favourable distribution of the subordinate buildings.

The boast attributed to Michael Angelo—that he would raise the Pantheon upon the top of the Temple of Peace—has more meaning than at first appears. The Temple of Peace (so called), now known to have been the Basilica of Maxentius, consists of a vast nave with aisles. The nave is divided into three square bays of between 80 and 90 feet in width, and these bays are groined. Had the pendentive dome been then known, each bay might have been covered by such a dome as that which spans the central bay of St. Sophia, and in such a case the dome of the Pantheon might, in

loose language, have been said to be placed upon four piers and four arches of the Temple of Peace. But Michael Angelo aimed at much more than this. It was not the dome only, but the whole structure of the Pantheon, which (in a figure of speech) he thus intended to raise upon a square substructure open on all sides to view from other parts of the interior. Thus he raised upon his pendentives what he compared to the circular wall of the Pantheon, and on that he raised its dome. This was not, however, the whole of his task, for over the eye of the dome (as of the Pantheon) he erected again another structure—a domed rotunda—into which the eye reaches from below, and through whose windows the light penetrates into the dome. And, more than all this, instead of allowing his dome, as in the Pantheon, to be half buried within the walls of the building, he made it rise boldly from their upper surface, and gave it such a proportion as to render it an august and beautiful object from every reasonably distant point from which it is visible.

The task was indeed one of which the greatest genius might fairly boast!

Nearly every subsequent dome of any magnitude seems to have been founded, more or less, upon St. Peter’s; and, so far as I can judge, our own St. Paul’s is the noblest of them all.

The dome of St. Paul’s is clearly founded on that of St. Peter’s, though subject to extensive changes (Fig. 453). The object of these changes seems to have been threefold: 1. to render it more conspicuous externally, especially from near points of view; 2. to avoid disproportionate internal height, which was the more desirable from the smaller size of the openings through which the interior is viewed; and 3. a desire to substitute eight arches and pendentives for the four at St. Peter’s. Thhe two former motives acting together led to the greatest peculiarity which this dome possesses, viz.—it being in fact, two domes, one to be seen internally, and the other externally, with the consequent necessity for providing some independent means for the support of the culminating lantern. In this case, the proportions of the interior and exterior are alike, each having two of its own diameters from the base to the top of the dome. The external height is consequently equal in proportion to that of St. Peter’s, while its internal height is half a diameter less.

We have seen at Florence and St. Peter’s that the domes consist of a double shell, connected at intervals by ribs—a very excellent method of supporting a lantern when necessity demands so difficult a piece of construction as its direct support by the dome itself. The space, however, which Sir Christopher Wren left between his external and internal domes rendered this constructional effort needless. He accordingly provided for the load on the apex by a mere cone of brick intervening between his domes, giving it a threefold structure—a dome proper within forming the covering of the church below; a cone of brick above this, carrying the lantern; and a dome of timber over that, to give comeliness to the exterior, and to serve as its roof.

This expedient (certainly rather complicated), has been very differently dealt with by critics; some have extolled it as an original effort of genius, while others have decried it as artificial and false. Neither party have, as I think, full justice on their side. In the first place, it is not original, the same principle having been, centuries before, acted on at St. Mark’s, Venice. It is true that, in that case, not the external dome alone, but the lantern with its supports, are all of timber. This does not, however, alter the principle in the least; for we have the threefold structure—the dome proper, the supports of the lantern, and the external dome—just as at St. Paul’s, as a glance at the sections of the two will at once prove.[70] In more recent structures, iron supports for the lantern have been substituted for the brick cone, bringing it still more nearly to the type given by St. Mark’s. In the second place, I hardly think, with this Mediæval precedent before us, we need be so squeamish about the expedient being artificial. We constantly find double coverings to our ancient churches—the vault to be seen within and the roof without—and if we desire to place a flèche riding upon the roof, we support it by constructions concealed between the two. This is precisely what Wren has done. The only difference against him is, that his roof is domical, and suggests to the thoughtless observer that it is the same which he sees within—a mere peccadillo, after all—and amply atoned by the fact that you gain by it the power of giving due height both within and without, and avoid the difficulty and danger of supporting a massive structure of stone, as large as some church steeples, upon the apex of a dome. Anyhow, public opinion has decided in favour of the expedient, for a majority of subsequent domes are constructed on the same principle; while I almost defy an architect now designing a dome and experiencing these two difficulties—(1.) the artistic difficulty of making the same dome look well from within and without; and (2.) the constructive difficulty of balancing a steeple on the top of his dome—to resist the temptation presented by this simple expedient; and the more so when conscious of having for it a Mediæval precedent.

The dome of St. Paul’s is, externally, perhaps more successful than any other. Internally, it is good from the supporting arches upwards, excepting that it is damaged by the unreasonable system on which its painted decorations have been designed.

The arches below are, however, an exception to its claims on our praise.

The scheme on which the plan of the dome and its accompaniments is set out in St. Paul’s is totally different from that in St. Peter’s (Figs. 454, 455). In the latter the space beneath the dome is penetrated by the nave and transept alone, irrespective of their aisles, which stop dead against the piers of the dome. In the former the same space is penetrated both by the nave and transept, and their aisles. To take another view. In St. Peter’s, the square occupied by the dome and its piers is surrounded on all sides by an aisle, low in the angles and lofty in the centres of the sides; or, in other words, the aisles failing to penetrate the dome, branch round its angles, while those of Sir Christopher Wren pierce directly through it.

St. Paul’s has, externally, the advantage of the great corner piers rising from the ground, unencumbered by surrounding buildings; but internally, grandeur is sadly lost through the reduced span of the large supporting arches, by the want of bold simplicity in the piers, the meanness and irregularity of the smaller arches, and the confusion caused by the mode in which the portion above them is arranged.

Externally, however, the outline of this dome is perhaps unequalled; and, even internally, if you look at general effect, and close your eyes to defects in detail, the impression produced is grand in the extreme.

I have used up all the time at my disposal without having even reached one of the greatest classes of domical structures—those of the different Mahometan nations, from Morocco and Southern Spain, by Egypt and Turkey, to Persia and India.

I the less regret this because I leave it wholly untouched for some one better acquainted with it than myself to take up: I will only offer two remarks upon it. The first is, that it is wholly an offshoot of the Byzantine style which was first adopted, and then developed by the infidel conquerors. The second is, that it is throughout, or nearly so, carried out with the pointed arch, and most usually with corbels instead of pendentives, giving in these two directions an extension to the developments which took place in Western Europe. I may also mention that, in splendour of decoration, it is impossible to conceive anything to go beyond it; though it is a style which seems alien to our Western and Christian prepossessions.

We have seen that the cupola—the noblest of all architectural features—belonged by right to Roman architecture; was continued in the same style when it became Christian; was wonderfully developed in the Eastern and Christian Roman Empire; was continued in the Middle Ages in Italy, and transplanted into Germany and France; that it was taken up during the early days of the Renaissance from the unfinished Gothic cathedral at Florence and, through that semi-Mediæval, semi-Renaissance graft, was thoroughly adopted into the revived Classic styles. What I now want

to press upon you is, that it should be equally welcomed into our revived Gothic architecture. That revival needs but such a welcoming of all that is good and noble to render it complete, and no feature possesses these qualities in a higher degree than the cupola. Let us, therefore, make it our own.

I have myself made some few attempts at this, which I venture to submit to you.[71]

The dome, however, without its appropriate decorations, is but the body without the soul. It is the sister art of painting which breathes life into the otherwise breathless form. This painting must, however, be adapted to its position with skill, knowledge, and study. I have not time left to dilate on this subject, but commend it to the students of that art, only begging them to remember that, while exercising their art upon an object like the dome, which has an essential form on which its very stability, real or apparent, depends, they must keep it in such subordination as not to disturb that essential, but rather to bring out and emphasise it; otherwise, what I am urging will not prove a loving union, but a hostile collision, of the two sister arts.

LECTURE XVIII.

The Transition.

I have to express my regret that it has never been in my power, owing to the press of other engagements, to give the full complement of six lectures in each season; and that in some years I have been prevented by circumstances—wholly beyond my own control—from lecturing at all. I may further mention that my earlier lectures were only pro-professorial, and were coupled with a parallel course on Classic Architecture by Mr. Smirke, who subsequently, on being appointed professor, took for five years the whole duty upon himself; so that, as I said before, my own lectures have been but fitful and non-continuous.

I have further to confess that these lectures have been for the most part limited to the particular phase of our art in which I am myself most deeply interested; for I do not see much utility in artificially forcing myself to appear as a teacher in a phase which is not that which I view as my special mission.

I trust, however, that on my own special subject I may have been useful; anyhow, I believe I have done more than has been done before, and I am sure that I have at least taken an infinity of pains.

My lectures have been non-continuous, not only as to their periods of delivery, but as to their subjects. I think, however, they will be found to contain a fairly clear account of the rise and development of our Mediæval architecture, with some useful digressions extending somewhat beyond this range.

I have not continued this history of Mediæval architecture beyond the period of its perfect development; because, beautiful though are its late phases, their history does not maintain the same interest with that of the noble enthusiasm which urged on its earlier growth.

On now closing my lectures I think I may become, for once, rather more discursive, and may venture a little to the right and left, and in other directions, in search of matters bearing generally upon architectural art as viewed in reference to the past, the present, and the future, and (which concerns yourselves more nearly) in reference to your own individual studies.

Our art, as has so often been remarked, differs from the sister arts of painting and sculpture in this, that whereas they arise directly from the artistic aspirations of our nature, apart from practical necessities and utility, ours arises first from these necessities, and then from the desire to clothe the results with beauty. It may be said that the yearning after abstract beauty unlinked with utility is the higher and more spiritual sentiment; but, on the other hand, if we look around us throughout the creations of nature, we are prompted to reply that, in linking beauty with utility, we are more directly imitating Him who made man in His own image, and in whose works this union of the useful and the beautiful is one of the most universal characteristics.

Architecture, then, as distinguished from mere building, is the decoration of construction. If I were lecturing on architecture, in the broadest form of the expression, I must treat throughout of construction, and of its decoration, pari passu, as the latter has but little meaning if severed from the former, which is its groundwork. And, even in lectures from this chair, where architecture is viewed specially in its character as a Fine Art, it is still impossible—as indeed it would be undesirable—wholly to sever that higher characteristic from the more practical phase to which it owes its origin.

Now, the history of this concurrence of art with construction is the History of Architecture; and, to an architectural historian who is capable of taking at once an artistic, a philosophical, a political, and a religious view of the facts which he chronicles, nothing can be more interesting than to follow out from the earliest ages to which we can carry back our researches, firstly, the practical changes in building, arising from the exigencies of climate, the stage of civilisation, the traditions of race, and the varied influences of political and religious circumstances; and to connect with these the changes, the progress, and perhaps the decline and degradation of the art made use of in the decoration of their buildings; and to trace out the causes which led to these changes.

Let us not, however, suppose that a knowledge, however intimate or accurate, of architectural history, is of necessity a part of the study of architecture itself. On the contrary, at no period when a genuine, unborrowed style of architecture has prevailed, has any knowledge whatever existed of the history of art; nor at any period previous to our own has the history of architecture—beyond a very limited knowledge of that of Greece and Rome—been viewed as an object of study.

From the dawn of civilisation to what is known as “the revival of letters,” the leading nations of the world possessed each a genuine architecture of their own; all growing, by a natural growth, from an original stem—unborrowed and unimitated—and practised by artists highly skilled in their art, but ignorant of its history.

The “revival of letters” was followed by a revival also of the architecture of those races whose literature was resuscitated; and with this revival came a certain, though scanty, knowledge of its history; but the investigation of the entire history of architectural art, and the constituting it into a branch of our literature, has been reserved for a period which possesses no architectural style of its own, excepting as the result of revival or imitation.

Is, then, this study to be viewed as a thing to be avoided? Certainly not. Our predecessors worked honestly, and with perfect success, in accordance with the conditions of their times; those of our times are wholly different, though, I fear, the reverse of favourable; but, nevertheless, they are the conditions to which we have succeeded in the due course of events which we could but little control. It may be that this historical and archæological tendency of our time is the saving clause in our position, which, in its absence, might have been an utter blank. Let us not, then, throw away that which, for aught we know, may be our solitary birthright, in the vain hope of recovering conditions long since passed out of our reach. It is ours rather to use well and wisely what we possess, regulating, controlling, and guiding it; striving earnestly after better things by whatever means; but without rejecting those suggested by the circumstances of our period.

Nevertheless, let it ever be remembered that art history is not art, nor architectural history architecture. They may, like the syren’s song, lead us wide of our mark, though they may, perhaps, if rightly used, be made to guide or aid us in a right path.

The study, however, of architectural history has many and wholly differing phases. It may, for example, be followed purely from an historical and archæological point of view, or it may be pursued mainly with an artistic sentiment. Both are interesting, but, I need hardly say, the latter is the spirit in which our studies as artists should be followed up.

It may, again, even if artistic in its purpose, be followed up generally, and through the whole course of the history of the art; or it may, while not neglecting the main line of history, be concentrated and intensified upon those styles, or that style, which we desire to be the guide and foundation of our own artistic productions. I need not say that here, again, the latter is the course most profitable to ourselves.

The great danger of the study is the dissipation and unfocussing of our own artistic thoughts; just as the great strength of the days when this study was unknown, was the absolute concentration of all architectural thought upon the matter actually in hand; an advantage which in our day is absolutely, and, I fear, irrecoverably lost.

Be this, however, as it may, it has become a part of the necessary education of a gentleman to know something of the past history of our great art; and, a fortiori, it is necessary to an architect, if only as a matter of literary culture. We must, however, take care that our thoughts and tastes are not led away by it into a state of objectless dissipation, having no concentration on any one guiding form of art, but viewing all forms of beauty with equal pleasure, and free from any strong and healthy preference.

The most natural course for the student of architectural history is to limit himself mainly and firstly (though not eventually, perhaps) to those styles from which our own architecture, whether native or borrowed, whether living or revived, is lineally descended—“to look to the rock whence we were hewn.” And truly it is a right glorious genealogy which we can boast.

The history of architecture is the history of civilisation, for architecture unites and embraces the sister arts, and art is the visible exponent of civilisation.

Our more Western civilisation is distinct from that of the far East; and, without disparagement to the latter, its study may be viewed as separate from it.

Our own branch of civilisation and art may be said to have arisen on the banks of the Euphrates, of the Tigris, and of the Nile, and to have moved westward with a quiet course along the genial shores of the Mediterranean; while the Eastern branch took a contrary direction by India and China, reaching Japan, and perhaps the opposite continent of America. Let us, however, confine our attention to our own branch.

Though the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris were the nursery of our traditions, and though recent discovery has made us in some degree familiar with their architectural monuments, we, nevertheless, fail to trace them back to a period which will compare with the antiquity of the remains on the banks of the Nile. In studying the one we long for relics carrying us back to a date even approaching that of the known history of the inhabitants, while in the other we are perplexed to find chronological room for works stretching back into such unknown regions of the past.

Egypt must, we may fear, ever remain a land of mystery. Its chronology seems inscrutable; its painting, its sculpture, and its architecture alike wonderful and mysterious. One flash of historical light shines upon its early days—like the lightning upon the midnight landscape—in the Scriptural history of those three centuries during which the people of Israel sojourned there, and helped in their slavery to prepare materials for its structures. After this it seems again involved in indistinctness till the period of its decline. Its monuments seem continuous through all these ages, and even onwards to the days of the Roman Empire; but how early they commenced no antiquary has yet been able to show; while the earliest and latest monuments—those preceding Greek architecture by, perhaps, fifteen hundred years, and those erected when that art was in decay—as clearly belong to one and the same style as do the earlier and later of our own Mediæval buildings.

Their character may be said to be threefold. The imitation almost of mountains in the pyramids, the rock-cut tombs, and the architecture proper, which is columnar in its most stupendous form, and whose greatest remaining monument is the mighty Hall of Karnac, with its hundred and thirty columns, perhaps the most impressive of all the works of antiquity. All these were accompanied by painting and sculpture of a highly mythic but most marked and characteristic kind.

An art like this, existing in full perfection in its ancient monuments, and also as a still living art, side by side with the rise of Grecian architecture, could not fail to exercise some influence upon it; yet the evidences of that influence are far from being clear. The genius of the two peoples was absolutely distinct, and Egypt was already a conquered nation while Greece was making its early strides towards fame. They were, too, of wholly different races, so that, though the young nation—during those brilliant strivings which led to its surpassing all races of men in its culture—was familiar with Egypt, and must have looked with wonder at its almost appalling structures, it is, after all, but little that we can trace of actual imitation, and that, strangely enough, not of the productions of its living art, but of a phase which had been extinct fully a thousand years. The inner and earliest sanctuaries at Karnac, and an obscure rock-cut tomb at Beni Hassan, contain pillars to which we trace some resemblance in the Grecian Doric, but whether that resemblance was intentional or accidental no one can say. Curiously, the tomb at Beni Hassan evinces proof of the imitation of timber construction, which gives it an additional alliance with the Doric; but can we conceive of a new art, founded on wood construction, being imitated from an art of a thousand years back, which chanced to evince the same conditions? As reasonable would it be for timber constructors in our own colonies to make pilgrimages to Anglo-Saxon churches which happen to suggest a timber prototype, in search of types for their new structures.

More reasonable, however, it may be to suppose that the latest type of Greek art, the Corinthian capital, may have been suggested by the foliated and bellshaped capitals of Egyptian columns.

Passing, for a moment, from the Nile to the Tigris, we find buried under the Assyrian mounds an architecture as different as possible from the Greek, yet containing a few almost accidental foreshadowings of some of its details. This architecture seems, however, to have influenced firstly that of Babylon (now almost wholly lost), and subsequently that of the Persian monarchy, which brings us again in contact with the Greeks.

Here we find, at last, a direct similarity in taste; for, different as are their capitals, no one can look at drawings of the columns of the Chehil Minar—the great hall or temple built by Xerxes at Persepolis—without being convinced that there was a near relationship in their style to that of Greece. This resemblance, however, is not to the earliest phase of Greek—the Doric—which was its contemporary, but to its second phase—the Ionic—which, putting aside the chronological difficulty, need not be wondered at, as the Ionian cities had long lain within the Persian monarchy. Yet it goes to prove that the influence of Persian architecture was unconnected with the origin of that of Greece, and only affected its more advanced stage.

I view Greek architecture, then, in the main, as an art of spontaneous growth. Its first form, the Doric, as strictly and absolutely Greek; the second, the Ionic, as Greek in the main, but with a few suggestions from the land of the Great King; and the third, the Corinthian, as equally Greek, but with one single suggestion, perhaps from Egypt; the whole as the spontaneous creation of that most wonderful, in intellectual power, of all the races of man—that race, inspired as it would almost seem, of God, to be our instructors in literature and art, and our initiators in science, just as was another people to be the teachers of His holy religion.

The actual origin of Greek architecture is buried in impenetrable obscurity. If the building called the Treasury of Atreus, or the Tomb of Agamemnon, was really of that period, it would distinctly prove that what we now know as Grecian architecture was unknown to the heroes in the “Iliad,” inasmuch as over its entrance remains a little piece of highly-decorative columnar work, bearing no resemblance to the subsequent architecture of Greece, and going far to prove that these early inhabitants of Greece had a style of building which did not evince a timber but a stone original. Of these early structures, including the Cyclopean walls of the Pelasgian cities, Mr. Freeman eloquently remarks:—“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 ourselves; all that survived, even to them, were the shadows of 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 tradition as ourselves ... and to us, whose early youth is spent among the immortal lays, whose living substance is called up by even the pictured resemblance of these massive piles—monuments, as we would fain believe, of the days of Achilles and the Atridæ, and the old time before them—to us every rugged stone seems vocal with some old heroic legend. Each gateway may have seen the marshalling of heroes arrayed to man the thousand ships of Argos, and to wait upon their chariot-wheels, to whom Zeus had consigned her twofold throne and sceptre.”

The difficulty is to explain how, in a country where a distinctly stone architecture (stone not only in fact but in idea) had for ages existed, it could be suddenly changed for an architecture evidently based upon a timber ideal. Were it only the Cyclopian walls of the old cities which remained, the perplexity would be less. Such walls exist also in Etruria; yet we gather from Vitruvius that the Etruscan temples had a construction founded upon timber. It is that little scrap of actual columnar architecture at Mycenæ which defies explanation, but which is thought to point to an Assyrian original.

The Dorians, however, were a different (how different is not known) and an invading race. It may be that their former seat had been in a specially timber country, and their former architecture actually of wood; and that, on migrating into a stone country, they translated their architecture into its prevailing material.

The intrinsic marvel, however, is their power to invest an art, so homely in its origin and so simple in its character, with such sublimity of aspect and such refined beauty of detail. But why should we wonder at this? Look for a moment at their figure-sculpture even in its first archaic simplicity, and we need not wonder at what such men could do. But, oh! look at it again, after the desolating Persian had been driven from their shores, when the shattered institutions of Greece had been re-established, and her ruined temples restored; when national glory, self-gratulation, and thankfulness had given a new and generous impulse to every feeling of the great mind and soul of Greece; and see then what art they produced (you know it right well in the Elgin-room at our own museum), and you need not wonder at any other miracles of art that they performed!

I am not going to drag you through all the changes in ancient architecture: you will see for yourselves how the majesty of the Doric Temple was succeeded by the greater refinement and elegance of the Ionic, and the richness of the Corinthian, though their developments were not exclusive of one another like those of Mediæval art, but cumulative and practised side by side.

I confess that, so far as capitals are concerned, I agree with Mr. Ruskin in thinking the first and the last each more reasonable than the second. The moulded capital and the foliated capital are things of all time. The voluted capital was an accidental introduction from the East, and has no permanent meaning, wonderful though it be.

The special features, however, for artistic study in Grecian architecture, of whatever order, are the exquisiteness of its proportions, the purity of its lines, the refinement of its mouldings and enrichments, and the superhuman instinct it evinces for delicacy and almost spirituality in the refinement and perfection of every line; but above all these is the manner in which it welcomes, indeed presses, into its service—or rather devotes itself to the service of—the all-glorious sculpture of which it was at once the dutiful handmaid and the loving mistress. Nor need we doubt that it treated the painter’s art one whit less lovingly.

As a style, the sentiment of Greek architecture may be said to be a quiet, calm solidity and repose, free from all question as to its stability, because it admits of no pressure but what is vertical. This quality, however, it shares with the Egyptian; but the Greek unites with it the most studied symmetry of proportion, the greatest purity of line, the most refined detail, and the noblest allied art.

When the Greek orders were adopted by the Romans—a most natural alliance, seeing that the Greeks built within a comparatively short distance from Rome on the south, and that the Etruscans in the north borrowed Greek decorative art—we find that they united with it an element in itself discordant with the simple static principle which gave such calm dignity to the Greek. It is, as I have heard, a saying among the Moslem builders in India that the arch “never sleeps;” it is always night and day pushing outward. Thus, purely trabeated architecture sleeps in safety, while arcuated architecture never ceases to exert force. The one is a static, the other a dynamic style—only becoming static when its abutments are of undoubted sufficiency. Thus, repose belongs of a right to one, but has to be purposely secured in the other.

We know next to nothing of the early architecture of the Romans. Recent excavations show the walls of the time of the kings to have been pretty much like those of Etruscan cities; and it is probable that, like the Etruscans, they early introduced the arch as a leading principle of construction. When they superadded to their own architecture (whatever it was) that of Greece, the latter became in many cases an artistic veil, concealing more or less the actual construction; and even where the artistic effect was purely trabeated, we find arches used behind it to aid the apparent construction. The two systems were thus used together and side by side, gradually uniting themselves into one. In purely engineering works the arch became boldly predominant. In purely architectural works it was often wholly concealed; while in works of an intermediate kind the two were used together, naturally and with perfect freedom. Nor were these or the purely arcuated structures open to the objection of presenting any apparent instability, for their massiveness was such as to defy all suspicion of want of strength.

It is true that the Romans, from a want of that delicacy of taste and eye which characterised the Greeks, failed to treat their details with the same refinement, though this was not always the case; but, in spite of this defect, the Roman style greatly amplified and extended the capabilities of classic architecture, rendering it capable of meeting every possible emergency and demand, whether of material or of construction, and giving it a cosmopolitan character suited to a people which had conquered the world, and which, if itself a race of iron, united under its world-wide sway the brass, the silver, and the gold of the older rulers of mankind.

Of Egyptian architecture we have little but of vast tombs and colossal temples; of Assyrian and Persian structures much the same may be said. Of Greek we have little but the temples, and a few public works of a monumental character; while of Roman architecture we have works of every possible description, meeting every demand, necessity, or wish. Such works must have existed during older periods, but were probably on an inferior scale and of ephemeral construction; but those of Rome were marked and permanent in their structure, and have thus been handed down to our own day, so that we may say that the whole range of their architecture is perfectly known to us; and, so far as we are concerned, it is the first of ancient styles which can be called complete.

As time went on, we find the arch, the vault, and the dome asserting, ever more and more, their supremacy. The influence of the Christian Church followed this on in the most marked manner; and, when the seat of empire was removed to a new, an Eastern and Christian metropolis, where no great monuments of older or Pagan art existed, this change would appear to have gone on with yet increased rapidity.

We have of late years become better acquainted with the course of this change through the discovery of the ancient cities of Central Syria, and their illustration by the Count de Vogüé, which show us what the late Roman and early Byzantine buildings of every class were on a scale suited to provincial towns, though influenced by the local tendency to megalithic construction which pervades the old architectures of Syria. I have not time to dwell upon these most instructive remains, which, beginning in Pagan and going on into Christian times, culminate in the vast and splendid dome erected over the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites. I, however, commend De Vogüé’s work to your attention.

In my lectures on the Dome I have said almost as much on Byzantine architecture as is perhaps needful for the purpose of this rapid sketch. I may add, however, that it was a purely or almost purely arcuated style, though yet more pre-eminently a domed style, and most of all a purely Christian style; that it rejoiced in surface decoration, in painting and mosaic, and in marble incrustation and inlay, though, from religious scruples, it discouraged sculpture. It delighted in every form of Oriental splendour, and the representation which its mosaics afford us of its secular buildings, when in full perfection, shows us that, though splendid solemnity characterised its churches, gaiety was a marked element in its more ordinary architecture. It is true that the gradual decay of the Empire caused a decline in the artistic quality of its buildings; yet we must admit its architecture to be one of the boldest and most original of developments; and we owe to Byzantium a heavy debt of gratitude for having kept alight the lamp of art during the long and dreary ages when Western Europe was trampled down by barbarian hordes, its arts destroyed, and its civilisation well-nigh forgotten.

It was from this still glimmering lamp that Charlemagne nobly attempted, though almost in vain, to rekindle that of the Western Empire. It was from the same that the three first Othos made a second and more successful effort; it was from thence that the revived art was further aided at the time of the Crusades; and to this source we, in a large degree, owe our modern civilisation. All thanks and honour, then, be to the unfortunate Eastern Empire, which, having performed its work, has now so long been trodden under foot of the Gentiles!

As architectural art recovered itself, after the ages of darkness, the later works of old Christian Rome, the still living architecture of Byzantium, and the half-living architecture of the day in Rome itself, formed together the groundwork of the revival. This architecture was all mainly arcuated; and the increased difficulty of obtaining and transporting large blocks of stone tended to render this the necessary element in the reviving style. We know the style which thus rose in Italy. I do not believe myself that much of this is so old as the time of the Lombard kings, but that it was in a much greater degree the work of the Othos—emperors at once of Italy and of Germany—and thus extending the same style from the south of the Alps, across into Germany, and onwards almost to the Baltic. I cannot, in this short lecture, follow up the details of this early Romanesque style; but I beg you to do so for yourselves, and at the same time to make yourselves acquainted with the contemporary architecture of France, in which, subject to many variations, the same feeling will be found to prevail.

I have, in my last lecture, mentioned the introduction of purely Byzantine architecture at Venice, as especially illustrated in St. Mark’s and the churches at Torcello, etc., and, I may add, in secular buildings. I mentioned also its transference, apparently by the Venetians, into the south-west of France, where and whence it exercised a very decided influence on the subsequent architecture, and I have, in one of my early lectures, shown the extension of that influence at a later date—in the form of architectural sculpture—into the north of France, and thence into our own country. I will here add that parallel, though not exactly similar, evidences of Byzantine influence pervade the Romanesque of Germany, whose rulers were in constant communication with the Eastern Empire—an influence greatly promoted in decorative art by the importation of woven fabrics, metal-work, jewellery, and illuminations from the East into the West.

From such united influences, added to and aiding the earnest strivings after refined and improved art, arose the Romanesque architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, becoming at length a perfectly original, consistent, and artistic development of arcuated architecture.

I have, in my previous lectures, gone much into detail in recording and explaining the history of the development of this Romanesque into the subsequent pointed-arch style. It is, perhaps, mockery to refer you back to lectures which probably no one now present heard; but time will not allow me to do more, and should they be published, you may perhaps think it worth your while to refer to them.

As the Byzantine was the Christian architecture of the East, so was the Pointed style the culminating Christian architecture of our own group of nations in the West; and, while the former had the disadvantage of being developed during ages of gradually declining civilisation, the young and vigorous shoot which grew from it in the West had the immense advantage of developing itself during the vigorous upstriving of a new and better civilisation.

To ourselves it is incomparably more interesting, inasmuch as it became the architecture, par excellence, of our own and immediately neighbouring countries. It grew up in this country with our institutions; it is of the same age with our constitution and our system of laws, and in many respects with our ecclesiastical polity. It adapted itself to our climate, our materials, and our scenery. In this style are the monuments of our kings and of our forefathers; and, above all, in its original and identical temples do we still celebrate the offices of our holy religion. Well, then, may we say—in common with each nation of Western Europe—that this is our own, our natural and our national style!

And well may we glory in this assertion, for look at the monuments of that style! I have not been stinting or cold-hearted in my eulogy of the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome, so I may call you to witness that I am not narrow or one-sided if I give way to a generous enthusiasm now I come to speak of that which we may proudly call our own.

The architecture which produced our glorious cathedrals and abbeys; our churches of every scale, from these down to that of the humblest hamlet; which produced the colleges of our universities, with their noble chapels and halls; which produced the stately municipal buildings of the great manufacturing cities of Mediæval Europe; with every form of structure needed, for whatever purpose; and united true and appropriate art with every form of building, from the humblest to the most stately. An architecture, too, which decorated its edifices with such a form of art as our ancient painted glass; and which carried on its influences over metal-work, jewellery, painted decorations, and every collateral art in the same spirit of exquisite and original taste, may well claim to stand side by side with the most glorious productions of antiquity; but to ourselves, as the inhabitants of the countries where it prevailed, and the descendants of the artists who produced it, it has pre-eminent claims to our most loving and enthusiastic admiration; while the more closely, constantly, and carefully we study its remains, the more entirely shall we be convinced that our love and admiration cannot exceed what is due to its intrinsic excellencies.

This architecture, though a lineal descendant of those of the old world, was, when in the fulness of its development, so absolutely diverse from them that they can in no way be compared by likeness, but only by contrariety. It was an absolutely new phase of art, bearing no kind of resemblance to its early progenitors. Where their characteristics were horizontality of line, directly downward pressure, a clinging closely to mother-earth, and an imperturbable repose,—we may almost say an eternal sleep,—those of this new creation were an upward soaring, an apparent inversion of gravitation into a striving towards heaven, and a vivacious wakefulness in every feature. Constructively, instead of the mere support of dead weight, its principle is the systematic balancing of an infinity of diagonal pressures; yet this, though a constructive fact, is not an artistic characteristic, for in its more spiritual effects, weight and thrust seem to be annihilated, and converted into upward striving, so that the archivolt, the flying buttress, and the ribs of the vaulted roofs, seem rather the medium of upward than of downward pressure. In elegance and expressiveness of detail, no previous style had surpassed it; in endless variety of imagination or in spirituality of sentiment, none had ever approached it. It was the greatest marvel that architectural art had produced, and it united all these magic qualities with a gravity and solemnity in the temple, a stern solidity in the castle, an asceticism in the monastery, a quiet, retiring sentiment in the seat of learning, a cheerfulness in its civic and domestic structures, and a deeply touching expression in its sepulchral monuments, which no style could possibly go beyond, and none have yet equalled.

It presented, too, during its course, a beautiful series of variations. Its earliest phase stern and precise, with details rivalling the Greek in the studiousness of their contour; in its second, lighter and less severe; in its third, branching off into an infinity of charming lines, suggestive almost of vegetable growth; and in its last, while returning rather to earlier rigidity, indulging in new developments scarcely foreshadowed by its earlier forms. Thus, at Glastonbury, at Salisbury, in the choir of Westminster, in the naves of York and Winchester, and in the Chapels of King’s College and of Henry VII. we have a series of works, all belonging to the same general type of architecture, yet presenting diversities the most marked and beauties the most varied.

Nor was it alone in its successive periods that varied phases were produced. Each country in which it flourished had its own series of national and provincial types. Thus, in France, in England, in Germany, in Spain, and in Italy, and even in far-off Scandinavia, we find it adopting ever-changeful forms, though all belonging to the same great stem.

Mr. Fergusson, though an opponent of its revival, thus speaks of Gothic architecture:—“Not even the great Pharaonic era in Egypt, the age of Pericles in Greece, nor the great period of the Roman empire, will bear comparison with the thirteenth century in Europe, whether we look to the extent of the buildings executed, their wonderful variety and constructive elegance, the daring imagination that conceived them, or the power of poetry and lofty religious feeling that is expressed in every feature and in every part of them.”

And again, while speaking of its sculpture, which is not usually considered as its strongest point, he remarks:—“The great cathedrals of Chartres and Rheims even now retain some 5000 figures scattered about or grouped together in various parts, beginning with the history of the creation of the world and all the wondrous incidents of the first chapter of Genesis, and then continuing the history through the whole of the Old Testament. In these sculptures the story of the redemption of mankind is told, as set forth in the New, with a distinctness and at the same time with an earnestness almost impossible to surpass. On the other hand, ranges of statues of kings of France and other popular potentates, carry on the thread of profane history to the period of the erection of the cathedral itself. Besides these, we have, interspersed with them, the whole system of moral philosophy, as illustrated by the virtues and vices, each represented with an appropriate symbol, and the reward or punishment its invariable accompaniment. In other parts are shown all the arts of peace, every process of husbandry in its appropriate season, and each manufacture or handicraft in all its principal forms. Over all these are seen the heavenly hosts, with saints, angels, and archangels. All this is so harmoniously contrived and so beautifully expressed, that it becomes a question even now whether the sculpture of these cathedrals does not excel the architecture.”

Noble and exquisite, however, as it was, it at length ran its course; and, by some uncontrollable movement of the human mind, it gave way to what the world had, till then, never witnessed—a resuscitated style.

I will not attempt to philosophise on this new phenomenon in art. It seems to have originated in a double cause; firstly, the very natural pride felt by the Italians in the antique monuments of their own land and their own race; and, secondly, in the appreciation of these antique monuments which was engendered and fostered by the revived love of classical literature.

It is not difficult to understand how this tended to the revival in Italy of old Roman art; and, once revived there, the centre of ecclesiastical and, in a great degree, of literary influence, the centre, too, of the revival of painting in its highest form, it need not be wondered that it spread itself as a fashion into more northern countries where the same literary tastes had taken root. However this may be, the fact is undoubted, that from this time forward original art ceased, and borrowed or resuscitated art took its place.

My predecessor, Mr. Smirke, in one of his lectures, gave a highly interesting description of the noble enthusiasm which inspired the early architects of the Renaissance in Italy; and I can quite appreciate this feeling in a land where the Mediæval styles were less deeply rooted, where classical traditions had never been extinct, and where the reminiscences of ancient Rome were a subject of national exultation. The revival of the noble literature of their mighty ancestors could scarcely fail, in such a country, to prompt a wish to revive their arts; and I am convinced that such a revival became a spontaneous and irresistible movement, wholly unconnected with any premeditated plan.

Anyhow, whether for good or for ill, the revival was a great and potent fact; and its results have now lasted as long as the whole period of the ascendancy of Pointed architecture, and have extended their sway to all parts of the globe where European influence is felt; nor can its opponents deny that, on its native soil especially, its productions were often of the most masterly description and exquisite beauty; enriched as they are by decorative painting which has never been excelled; by sculpture of which antique artists would not have been ashamed; and by other arts of proportionate merit. In other lands, it has produced works of which no one would venture to dispute the value; and, though a borrowed style, it has developed anew many marked chronological and national varieties, and has produced, as we have seen in my last lecture, works and types scarcely even foreshadowed by its antique originals.

Nevertheless, in the opinion at least of many, it had, by the close of the last century or early in the present, so far run its course, at least in this country, as to have lost its old artistic power. Art had become enfeebled, while art-history had risen more prominently into view; and the decay of the one was promoted by the distraction of thought occasioned by the other.