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ELEVATION OF FAQADE OF COLOGNE CATHEDRAL, 
 AS IT AVIM. AIM^KAR AVHEX COMPLETKD. 
 
 Architectur Frontis. 
 
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 m ALL COUNTEIES. 
 
 FBOM THE EABLIEUT TIMES TO THE PBESENT DAY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES FERGUSSON, D.C.L., F.R.S., M.R.A.S., 
 
 FELLOW ROYAL INST. BRIT. ARCHITECTS, ETC., ETC. 
 
 SECTION OF THE PARTHENON, SHOWING THE MODE IN WHICH LIGHT WAS ADMITTED. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 DODD, MEAD, AND COMPANY. 
 Publishers. 
 
PEEFACE TO SECOISD EDITION. 
 
 DURING the period that has elapsed since the first edition of this 
 work was published,^ no important work on the History of Ar- 
 chitecture has appeared which throws any new light on either the 
 theory or practice of the art, and, except in India, no new buildings 
 have been discovered and no monographs published that materially 
 add to our general stores of knowledge. 
 
 The truth of the matter appears to be that the architectural pro- 
 ductions of all the countries mentioned in these two volumes have 
 been examined and described to a sufficient extent for the purposes 
 of the general historian. A great deal of course remains to be done 
 before all the information required for the student of any particular 
 style can be supplied, but nothing of any great importance probably 
 remains to be discovered in the countries of the Old World, nor any- 
 thing that is at all likely to alter any views or theories founded on 
 what we at present know. 
 
 The one exception to this satisfactory state of things is our knowl- 
 edge, or rather want of knowledge, regarding the history of the 
 ancient architecture of the New World, treated of in the last few pages 
 of this work. No important addition has lately been made to the 
 little we knew before, and it is now to be feared that Mr. Squier's long- 
 expected work on the Antiquities of Peru may never see the light, at 
 least not under the auspices of its author, and the Count de Waldeck's 
 work adds very little, if anything, to what we knew before.^ What 
 is really wanted is that some one should make himself personally ac- 
 quainted with all the various styles existing between the upper waters 
 of the Colorado and the desert of Atacama to such an extent as to be 
 able to establish the relative sequence of their dates and to detect 
 affinities where they exist, or to point out differences that escape the 
 
 1 The first volume was published in 1865; the second in 1867. 
 2 See note, vol. ii. p. 576. 
 
 iii 
 
iv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 casual observer. Photography may in the next few years do some- 
 thing towards enabling stay-at-home travellers to do a good deal 
 towards this, but photography will never do all, and local knowledge 
 is indispensable for the exact determination of many now obscure 
 questions. The problem is in fact identical with that presented to 
 Indian antiquaries some thirty years ago. At that time we knew less 
 of the history of Indian architecture than we now know of American, 
 but at the present day the date of every building and every cave in 
 India can be determined with almost absolute certainty to within 
 fifty, or at the outside one hundred, years ; the sequence is every- 
 where certain, and all can be referred to the race and religion that 
 practised that peculiar style. In America there are the same strongly- 
 marked local peculiarities of style as in India, accompanied by equally 
 easily detected affinities or differences, and what has been done for 
 India could, I am convinced, easily be accomplished for America, and 
 even with more satisfactory and more important results to the history 
 and ethnography of that great country. 
 
 The subject is well worthy of the attention of any one who may 
 undertake it, as it is the only means we now know of by which the 
 ancient history of the country can be recovered from the darkness 
 that now enshrouds it, and the connection of the Old World with the 
 New — if any existed — can be traced, but it is practically the only 
 chapter in the history of architecture which remains to be written. 
 
 Notwithstanding this paucity of new material, the completion of 
 M. Place's great work on Khorsabad, Wood's explorations at Ephesus, 
 Dr. Tristram's travels in Moab, with other minor works, and new 
 photographs of other places, have furnished some twenty or thirty 
 woodcuts to this work, either of new examples or in substitution for 
 less perfect illustrations. More than this, the experience gained in 
 the interval from reading, and personal familiarity with buildings not 
 before visited, especially in Italy, have enabled me to add consider- 
 ably to the text, and to correct or modify impressions based on less 
 perfect information. These, with a careful revision of the text 
 throughout, will, it is hoped, be found to render this edition an im- 
 provement to a considerable extent over that which preceded it. 
 
 As mentioned in the preface to the volume containing the History 
 of the Modern Styles of Architecture, the scheme of the present 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 V 
 
 edition is that the two vohimes novv^ published shall contain a descrij> 
 tion of all the ancient styles of architecture known to exist either in 
 the Old or New World, except India. 
 
 In the first edition the Indian styles occupied about 300 pages, 
 and were illustrated by 200 woodcuts. In the present one it is pro- 
 posed to double the extent of the text and to add such further illus- 
 trations as may be found requisite fully to illustrate the subject. 
 When this is done it will form a separate volume, either the third of 
 the general History of Architecture or a complete and independent 
 work by itself, and sold separately. If nothing imforeseen occurs to 
 prevent it, it is expected that the work will be published before the 
 end of next year (1875). 
 
 The History of the Modern Styles of Architecture,* published last 
 year, will then form the fourth and concluding volume of the work, 
 or may be considered as a complete and independent treatise, and, 
 like the volume containing the History of Indian Architecture, will 
 be sold separately. 
 
 As stated in the preface to the first edition, it was orginally intended 
 that chapters should be added on what were then known as Celtic or 
 Druidical remains. When, however, the subject came to be carefully 
 looked into for that purpose, it was found that the whole was such a 
 confused mass of conflicting theories and dreams, that no facts or 
 dates were so established that they could be treated as historical. 
 The consequence was that the materials collected for the purpose 
 were, in 1872, published in a separate volume, entitled " Rude Stone 
 Monuments," in the form rather of an argument than of a history. 
 
 As was to be expected, a work of that nature, and which attacked 
 the established faith in the Druids, has been exposed to a considerable 
 amount of hostile criticism, but nothing has yet appeared that at all 
 touches the marrow of the question or invalidates any of the more 
 important conclusions therein arrived at. On the other hand, every- 
 thing that has since come to light has tended to confirm them in a most 
 satisfactory manner. Colonel Brunon's researches, for instance, at and 
 around the Madras'en, in Algeria, have proved that the tumuli in that 
 cemetery belong to Roman times.^ In India sculptured and inscribed 
 dolmens have been dug up and photographed, so that their age is no 
 
 " Memoire sur les Fouilles execute au Madras'en," Constantine, 1873. 
 
vi 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 longer doubtful, and others, as archaic in form as any, are found 
 belonging to reigning families of chiefs, and still used by them. Last, 
 not least, Dr. Schliemann's explorations at Hissarlik have deprived 
 the prehistoric advocates of one of their most plausible arguments. 
 At a depth of 8^ metres fro.a the surface he found the remains of a 
 walled city, with paved streets, and rich in gold, silver, and copper, 
 with their alloys electron and bronze, and every sign of a high civil- 
 ization. Above this, through four or five metres of successive de- 
 posits, indicating probably a duration of twice as many centuries, no 
 trace of metal was found, but, as he expresses, an "ungeheure 
 menge," and, in another place, a "kolossale menge," an unlimited 
 number of rude stone implements of every sort. Above this again 
 the remains of the Greek city of Ilium Novum. 
 
 If this were the case in Asia Minor in historic times, it is in vain 
 to argue that, when the imported civilization of the Romans passed 
 away, the Britons may not have returned to their old faith and old 
 practices, and adhered to them till a new conquest and a new faith 
 led to their being finally abandoned. It may, or it may not, have 
 been so, but till some better argument than has yet been brought 
 forward is adduced to prove that it was not so, the d pno?'i argument 
 of improbability will not now avail much. Whenever the facts, as 
 stated in the " Rude Stone Monuments," are admitted, or any better 
 set of conclusions substituted for them, their history may be added as 
 a fifth volume to this work. Till then, people must be content with 
 the hazy nihilism of the prehistoric myth. 
 
FROM THE 
 
 PKEFACB TO THE FIRST EDITIOIST. 
 
 A LTHOUGH the present work may in some respects be considered 
 as only a new edition of the "Handbook of Architecture," still 
 the alterations, both in substance and in form, have been so extensive 
 as to render the adoption of a new title almost indispensable. The 
 topographical arrangement which was the basis of the " Handboook " 
 has been abandoned, and a historical sequence introduced in its place. 
 This has entirely altered the argument of the book, and, with the 
 changes and additions which it has involved, has rendered it practi- 
 cally a new work ; containing, it is true, all that was included in the 
 previous publication, but with a great deal that is new and little that 
 retains its original form. 
 
 The logical reasons for these changes will be set forth in their 
 proper place in the body of the work ; but meanwhile, as the Preface 
 is that part of it which should properly include all personal explana- 
 tions, I trust I may not be considered as laying myself open to a 
 charge of egotism, if I avail myself of this conventional license in 
 explaining the steps, by which this work attained its present form. 
 
 It was my good fortune to be able to devote many years of my life 
 to the study of Architecture — as a fine art — under singularly favor- 
 able circumstances : not only was I able to extend my personal obser- 
 vations to the examples found in almost all the countries between 
 China and the Atlantic shore, but I lived familiarly among a people 
 who were still practising their traditional art on the same principles 
 as those which guided the architects of the Middle Ages in the pro- 
 duction of similar but scarcely more beautiful or more original works. 
 With these antecedents, I found myself in possession of a considera- 
 ble amount of information regarding buildings which had not previ- 
 ously been described, and — what I considered of more value — of 
 an insight into the theory of the art, which was certainly even more 
 novel. 
 
 Believing this knowledge and these principles to be of sufficient 
 importance to justify me in so doing, I resolved on publishing a work 
 
 vii 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 in which they should be embodied ; and, in furtherance of this idea, 
 sixteen years ago I wrote a book entitled " The True Principles of 
 Beauty in Art." The work was not — nor was it intended to be — 
 popular in its form. It was an attempt of a young author to do what 
 he thought right and best, without consulting the wishes of the public 
 on the subject, and the first result, as might have been — and indeed 
 was — anticipated, was that no publisher would undertake it. In 
 consequence of this, only the first volume was published, by Long- 
 mans in 1849, and that at my own expense and risk. The event 
 proved that the booksellers were right. The book did not sell, and it 
 became a question whether it was worth my while to waste my time 
 and spend my money on a work which the public did not want, or 
 whether it would not be wiser to abandon it, and wait for some more 
 favorable opportunity. Various circumstances of no public interest 
 induced me at the time to adopt the latter course, and I felt I could 
 do so without any breach of faith, as the work, as then published, was 
 complete in itself, though it had been intended to add two more vol- 
 umes to the one already published. 
 
 Some years afterwards, a proposal was made to me by Mr. Murray 
 to utilize the materials collected for the more ambitious work in the 
 more popular form of a Handbook of Architecture. The work was 
 written in a very much more popular manner than that I had previ- 
 ously adopted, or than I then liked, or now think worthy of the sub- 
 ject ; but the result proved that it was a style much better suited to 
 the public demand, for this time the work was successful. Since its 
 publication in 1855 a large number of copies have been sold; the 
 work has now for some years been out of print, and a new edition is 
 demanded. Under these circumstances the question arose, whether 
 it would be better to republish the Handbook in its original form, 
 with such additions and emendations as its arrangement admitted of, 
 or whether it would not be better to revert to a form nearly ap- 
 proaching that adopted in the " True Principles," rather than that 
 followed in the composition of the Handbook, as one more worthy of 
 the subject, and better capable of developing its importance. 
 
 The immense advantages of the historical over the topographical 
 method are too self-evident to require being pointed out, whenevei 
 the object is to give a general view of the whole of such a subject as 
 that treated of in these volumes, or an attempt is made to trace the 
 connection of the various parts to one another. If the intention is 
 only to describe particular styles or separate buildings, the topo- 
 graphical arrangement may be found more convenient ; but where 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ix 
 
 anything beyond tliis is attempted, the historical method is the only 
 one which enables it to be done. Believing that the architectural 
 public do now desire something more than mere dry information with 
 regard to the age and shape of buildings, it has been determined to 
 remodel the work and to adopt the historical arrangement. 
 
 In the present instance there does not seem to be the usual 
 objection to such a rearrangement — that it would break the thread 
 of continuity between the old and the new publication — inasmuch as, 
 whichever method were adopted, the present work must practically be 
 a new book. The mass of information obtained during the last ten 
 years has been so great that even in the present volume a considerable 
 portion of it had to be rewritten, and a great deal added. In the 
 second volume the alterations will be even more extensive. The 
 publication of the great national work on Spanish antiquities,^ of 
 Parcerisa's " Beauties, etc., of Spain," ^ and, above all, Mr. Street's 
 work,3 have rendered Spanish architecture as intelligible as that of 
 any other country, though ten years ago it was a mystery and a 
 puzzle. Schulz's'* work has rendered the same service for Southern 
 Italy, while the publications of De Vogiie^ and Texier^ w^ill necessi- 
 tate an entirely new treatment of the early history of Byzantine art. 
 The French have been busily occupied during the last ten years in 
 editing their national monuments, so have the Germans. So that in 
 Europe little of importance remains to be described. In Asia, too, 
 great progress has been made. Photography has rendered us familiar 
 with many buildings we only knew before by description, and both 
 the Hindu and Maliomedan remains of India are now generally 
 accessible to the public. Colonel Yule's work on Burmah and M. 
 Mouhot's^ on Siam have made us acquainted with the form of the 
 buildings of those countries, and China too has been opened to the 
 architectural student. When the Handbook was written there were 
 many places and buildings regarding which no authentic information 
 Avas available. That can hardly be said to be the case now as respects 
 any really important building, and the time, therefore, seems to have 
 
 1 Monumentos Arquitectonicos de 
 Espana." Folio. Madrid, 1860, segg. 
 
 2 Parcerisa, " Recuerdos y Bellezas 
 de Espana." Folio. Madrid. In course 
 of publication. 10 vols, published. 
 
 ^ "Gothic Architecture in Spain," 
 by G. E. Street. Murray. 1865. 
 
 * " Denkmaler der Kunst des Mittel- 
 alters in Unter Italien," by H. W. 
 Schulz. Dresden, 1860. Quarto. Atlas, 
 folio. 
 
 5 " Syrie Centrale," by Count M. De 
 Yogiie. Paris. In course of publica- 
 tion. 
 
 ^ " Byzantine Architecture," byChev. 
 Texier. London, 1864. 
 
 ' " Mission to the Court of Ava in 
 1855," by Colonel Yule. 4to. London, 
 1858. 
 
 ^ "Travels in Siam and Cambodia," 
 by Henri Mouhot. London : John Mur- 
 ray. 1864. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 arrived when their affiliation can be pointed out, if it ever can be, and 
 the study of architecture may be raised from dry details of measure- 
 ments to the dignity of a historical science. 
 
 In the present work it is intended that the first two volumes shall 
 cover the same extent of ground as was comprised in the two volumes 
 of the " Handbook," as originally published, with such enlargement as 
 is requisite to incorporate all recent additions to our knowledge ; and 
 chapters will be added on Celtic — or, as they are vulgarly called, 
 Druidical — remains omitted in the " Handbook." The "History of 
 Modern Architecture " will thus form the third volume of the work ; 
 and when — if ever — it comes to be reprinted, it is intended to add 
 a Glossary of architectural terms, and other matters necessary to com- 
 plete the book. When all this is done, the w^ork will be increased 
 from 1500 pages, which is the number comprised in the three volumes 
 as at present published, to more than 2000 pages, and the illustrations 
 wall be augmented in at least an equal ratio. ^ Notwithstanding all 
 this, it is too evident that even then the work can only be considered 
 as an introduction to the subject, and it would require a work at least 
 ten times as large to do full justice even to our present knowledge of 
 the history of architecture. Any one at all familiar with the litera- 
 ture of the subject can see at once why this is so. Viollet le Due, for 
 instance, is now publishing a dictionary of French architecture from 
 the eleventh to the sixteenth century. The work will consist, when 
 complete, of ten volumes, and probably 5000 illustrations. Yet even 
 this will by no means exhaust the history of the style in one country 
 of Europe during the five centuries indicated. It would require at 
 least as many volumes to illustrate, even imperfectly, the architectural 
 history of England during the same period. Germany would fill an 
 equal number; and the mediaeval architecture of Italy and Spain 
 could not be described in less space. 
 
 In other words, fifty volumes and 20,000 woodcuts would barely 
 suffice to complete what must in the present work be compressed into 
 500 pages, with a like number of illustrations. 
 
 Under these circumstances it will be easily understood that this 
 book is far from pretending to be a complete or exhaustive history of 
 the art. It is neither an atlas nor a gazetteer, but simply a general 
 map of the architectural world, and, — if I may be allowed the small 
 joke — onMercator's projection. It might with propriety be called an 
 
 1 The number of illustrations in the 
 chapters of the Handbook comprised in 
 this first volume of the History was 441. 
 
 They now stand at 536 ; and in the 
 second volume the ratio of increase will 
 probably be even greater. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 abridgment, if there existed any larger history from which it could 
 be supposed to be abridged. At one time I intended to designate it 
 "An historical Introduction to the Study of Architecture, considered as 
 a Fine Art ; " but though such a title might describe correctly enough 
 the general scope of the work, its length is objectionable, and, like 
 every periphrasis, it is liable to misconstruction. 
 
 The simple title of "History" has therefore been adopted, under 
 the impression that it is entitled to such a denomination until at least 
 some narrative more worthy of the subject takes its place. Con- 
 sidering the limits it thus became necessary to impose on the extent 
 of the work, it must be obvious that the great difficulty of its com- 
 position was in the first place to compress so vast a subject into so 
 small a compass ; and next to determine what buildings to select for 
 illustration, and what to reject. It would have been infinitely easier 
 to explain what was necessary to be said, had the number of woodcuts 
 been doubled. Had the text been increased in the same ratio a great 
 many things might have been made clear to all, which will now, I 
 fear, demand a certain amount of previous knowledge on the part of 
 my readers. To have done this, however, would have defeated some 
 of the great objects of the present publication, which is intendecl to 
 convey a general view of the history and philosophy of the subject, 
 without extending the work so as to make it inconveniently large, or 
 increasing the price so as to render it inaccessible to a large number 
 of readers. The principle consequently that has been adopted in the 
 selection of the illustrations is, first, that none of the really important 
 typical specimens of the art shall be passed over without some such 
 illustrations as shall render them intelligible ; and, after this, those 
 examples are chosen which are remarkable either for their own 
 intrinsic merit, or for their direct bearing in elucidation of the 
 progress or affinities of the style under discussion ; all others being 
 sternly rejected as irrelevant, notwithstanding the almost irresistible 
 temptation at times to adorn my pages with fascinating illustrations. 
 The reader who desires information not bearing on the general thread 
 of the narrative must thus have recourse to monographs, or other special 
 works, which alone can supply his wants in a satisfactory manner. 
 
 It may tend to explain some things which appear open to remark 
 in the following pages, if I allude here to a difference of opinion 
 which has frequently been pointed out as existing between the views 
 I have expressed and those generally received regarding several points 
 of ancient history or ethnology. I always have been aware that this 
 
xii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 discrepancy exists ; but it has appeared to me an almost inevitable 
 consequence of the different modes of investigation pursued. Almost 
 all those who have hitherto written on these subjects have derived 
 their information from Greek and Roman written texts ; but, if I am 
 not very much mistaken, these do not suffice. The classic authors 
 were very imperfectly informed as to the history of the nations who 
 preceded or surrounded them ; they knew very little of the archaeology 
 of their own countries, and less of their ethnography. So long, there- 
 fore, as our researches are confined to what they had written, many 
 important problems remain unsolved, and must ever remain as unsolv- 
 able as they have hitherto proved. 
 
 My conviction is, that the lithic mode of investigation is not only 
 capable of supplementing to a very great extent the deficiencies of 
 the graphic method, and of yielding new and useful results, but 
 that the information obtained by its means is much more trust- 
 worthy than anytliing that can be elaborated from the books of that 
 early age. It does not therefore terrify me in the least to be told that 
 such men as Niebuhr, Cornewall Lewis, or Grote, have arrived at 
 conclusions different from those I have ventured to express in the 
 following pages. Their information is derived wholly from what is 
 written, and it does not seem ever to have occurred to them, or to any 
 of our best scholars, that there was either history or ethnography 
 ljuilt into the architectural remains of antiquity. 
 
 While they were looking steadily at one side of the shield, I fancy 
 I have caught a glim])se of the other. 
 
 It has been the accident of my life — I do not claim it as a merit — 
 that I have wandered all over the Old World. I have seen much that 
 they never saw, and I have had access to sources of information of 
 which they do not suspect the existence. While they were trying to 
 reconcile what the Greek or Eoman authors said about nations who 
 never wrote books, and with regard to whom they consequently had 
 little information, I was trying to read tlie history which these very 
 people had recorded in stone, in characters as clear and far more in- 
 delible than those written in ink. If, consequently, we arrived at 
 different conclusions, it may possibly be owing more to the sources 
 from which the information is derived than to any difference between 
 the individuals who announce it. 
 
 Since the invention of printing I am quite prepared to admit that 
 the " litera scripta " may suffice. In an age like the present, when 
 nine-tenths of the population can read and every man who has any- 
 thing to say rushes into print, or makes a speech which is printed next 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xiii 
 
 morning, every feeling and every information regarding a people may 
 be dug out of its books. But it certainly was not so in the Middle Ages, 
 nor in the early ages of Greek or Roman history. Still less was this 
 so in Egypt, nor is it the case in India, or in many other countries ; and 
 to apply our English nineteenth century experience to all these seems to 
 me to be a mistake. In those countries and times, men who had a hanker- 
 ing after immortality were forced to build their aspirations into the 
 walls of their tombs or of their temples. Those who had poetry in their 
 souls, in nine cases out of ten expressed it by the more familiar vehicle 
 of sculpture or painting rather than in writing. To me it appears 
 that to neglect these in trying to understand the manners and customs, 
 or the history of an ancient people, is to throw away one-half, and 
 generally the most valuable half, in some cases the whole, of the 
 evidence bearing on the subject. So long as learned men persist in 
 believing that all that can be known of the ancient world is to be 
 found in their books, and resolutely ignore the evidence of archi- 
 tecture and of art, we have little in common. I consequently feel 
 neither abashed nor ashamed at being told that men of the most 
 extensive book-learning have arrived at different conclusions from 
 myself — on the contrary, if it should happen that we agreed in some 
 point to which their contemporary works did not extend, I should 
 rather be inclined to suspect some mistake, and hesitate to put it down. 
 
 There is one other point in which I fancy misconception exists, of 
 a nature that may probably be more easily removed by personal expla- 
 nation than by any other means. It is very generally objected to my 
 writings that I neither understand nor appreciate the beauties of 
 Gothic architecture, and consequently criticize it with undue severity. 
 I regret that such a feeling should prevail, partly because it is 
 prejudicial to the dissemination of the views I am anxious to promul- 
 gate, but more because at a time when in this country the admiration 
 of Gothic art is so nearly universal, it alienates from me the best class 
 of men who love the art, and prevents their co-operating with me in 
 the improvement of our architecture, which is the great object which 
 we all have at heart. 
 
 If I cannot now speak of Gothic architecture with the same enthu- 
 siasm as others, this certainly was not the case in the early part of my 
 career as a student of art. Long after I turned my attention to the 
 subject, I knew and believed in none but the mediaeval styles, and was 
 as much astonished as the most devoted admirer of Gothic architecture 
 could be, when any one suggested that any other forms could be 
 compared with it. If I did not learn to understand it then, it was 
 
xiv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 not for want of earnest attention and study. I got so far into its 
 spirit that I thought I saw then how better things could be done in 
 Gothic art than had been done either in the Middle Ages or since ; and 
 I think so now. But if it is to be done, it must be by free thought, 
 not by servile copying. 
 
 My faith in the exclusive pre-eminence of mediaeval art was first 
 shaken when I became familiar with the splendid remains of the Mogul 
 and Pathan emperors of Agra and Delhi, and saw how many beauties 
 of even the pointed style had been missed in Europe in the Middle 
 Ages. My confidence was still further weakened when I saw what 
 richness and variety the Hindu had elaborated not only without 
 pointed arches, but indeed without any arches at all. And I was 
 cured when, after a personal inspection of the ruins of Thebes and 
 Athens, I perceived that at least equal beauty could be obtained by 
 processes diametrically opposed to those employed by the mediaeval 
 architects. 
 
 After so extended a survey, it was easy to perceive that beauty in 
 architecture did not reside in pointed or in round arches, in bracket 
 capitals or horizontal architraves, but in thoughtful appropriateness 
 of design and intellectual elegance of detail. I became convinced that 
 no form is in itself better than any other, and that in all instances 
 those are best which are most appropiiate to the purposes to which 
 they are applied. 
 
 So self-evident do these principles — which are the basis of the 
 reasoning employed in this book — appear to me, that I feel convinced 
 that there are very few indeed even of the most exclusive admirers of 
 mediaeval art who would not admit them, if they had gone through 
 the same course of education as has fallen to my lot. My own con- 
 viction is, that the great difference which seems to exist between my 
 views and those of the parties opposed to them arises almost entirely 
 from this accident of education. 
 
 In addition to this, however, we must not overlook the fact that 
 for three centuries all the architects in Europe concurred in believing 
 that the whole of their art began and ended in copying classical forms 
 and details. When a reaction came, it was not, unfortunately, in the 
 direction of freedom ; but towards a more servile imitation of another 
 style, which — whether better or worse in itself — was not a style of 
 our age, nor suited to our wants or feelings. 
 
 It is perhaps not to be wondered at, that after three centuries of 
 perseverance in one particular groove, men should have ceased to have 
 any faith in the possibility of reason or originality being employed in 
 
PREFAjUE. 
 
 XV 
 
 architectural design. As, however, [ can adduce in favor of my 
 views 3000 years of perfect success in all countries and under all 
 circumstances, against 300 years of absolute failure in consequence 
 of the copying system, though under circumstances the most favor- 
 able to success in other respects, there seems at least an a 2)riori 
 probability that I may be right and that tlie copyist may be 
 mistaken. 
 
 I may be deceiving myself, but I cannot help fancying that I per- 
 ceive signs of a reaction. Some men are becoming aware of the fact 
 that " archaeology is not architecture," and would willingly see some- 
 thing done more reasonable than an attempt to reproduce the Middle 
 Ages. The misfortune is, that their enlightenment is more apt to lead 
 to despondency than to hope. " If," they ask, " we cannot find what 
 we are looking for in our own national style, where are we to look 
 for it ? " The obvious answer, that it is to be found in the exercise 
 of common sense, where all the rest of the world have found it, seems 
 to them beside the mark. Architecture with most people is a mystery 
 — something different from all other arts ; and they do not see that it 
 is and must be subject to the same rules as they all are, and must be 
 practised in the same manner, if it is to be successful. 
 
 Whether the nation will or will not soon awaken to the impor- 
 tance of this prosaic anti-climax, one thing at least seems certain 
 and most hopeful. Men are not satisfied with what is doing ; a rest- 
 less, inquiring spirit is abroad, and if people can only be induced to 
 think seriously about it, I feel convinced that they will be as much 
 astonished at their present admiration of Gothic town-halls and 
 Hyde Park Albert Memorials, as we are now at the Gothic fancies 
 of Horace Walpole and the men of his day. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 Although eveiy possible care has been taken in selecting the best authorities for the 
 statements in the text of the work, as well as the subjects for illustration, still no one 
 acquainted with the state of the literature of architectui-e will need to be told that in many 
 branches few materials exist for a correct description of the style, and that the drawings 
 which are available are frequently so inexact and with scales so carelessly applied, that 
 it is impossible at times to avoid error. The plans throughout the book are on too small 
 a scale to render any minute errors apparent, but being drawn to a uniform scale of 100 
 feet to 1 inch, or one twelve-hundredth of the real size, they are quite sufficient as a 
 m.eans of comparison, even when not mathematically correct. They suffice to enable the 
 reader to judge of the relative size of two buildings by a mere inspection of the plans, as 
 correctly as he could by seeing the buildings themselves, without actually measuring them 
 in all their details. 
 
 As a general rule, the sections or elevations of buildings, throughout the book, are 
 drawn to a scale double that of the plans, viz., 50 feet to 1 inch, or one six-hundredth of 
 the real dimensions; !)ut, owing to the great size of man}- of them, it has been found im- 
 possible to carry out this in all instances : where it has not been elTected the departure from 
 the rule is always noted, cither below the woodcut or in the text. 
 
 No lineal dimensions are quoted in the text except such as it is believed can be rehed 
 upon, and in all instances these are reduced to English feet. The superficial measures 
 also in the text, like the plans, are quite sufficient for comparison, thougli not to be relied 
 upon as absolutely correct. One great source of uncertainty as regards them is the diffi- 
 culty of knowing at times what should be included in the building referred to. Should, 
 for instance, the Lady Chapel at Ely be considered an integral part of the Cathedral, or 
 the Chapel-house at Wells ? Should the sacristies attached to Continental cathedrals be 
 considered as part of the church ? or such semi-detached towers as the south-western one 
 at Bourges ? What constitutes the temple at Karnac, and how much of this belongs 
 to the Hypostyle Hall ? These and fifty other questions occur in almost every instance 
 which may lead two persons to very different conclusions regarding the superficial dimen- 
 sions of a building, even without the errors inherent in imperfect materials. 
 
 When either the drawino" from which the woodcut is taken was without a scale, or the 
 scale given could not be depended upon, " No scale " has been put under the woodcut, to 
 warn the reader of the fact. When the woodcut was either too large for the page or too 
 small to be distinct if reduced to the usual scale, a scale of feet has been added under it, 
 to show that it is an exception to the ride. 
 
 Capitals, windows, and details which are meant to illustrate forms or construction, and 
 not particular buildings, are drawn to any scale that seemed best to express the purpose 
 for which they are inserted ; but when they are remarkable for size, or as individual ex- 
 amples, a scale has been added ; but this is the exception, not the rule. 
 
 Every pains has been taken to secure the greatest possible amount of accuracy, and 
 in all instances the sources from which the woodcuts have been taken are indicated. 
 Many of the illustrations are from original drawings, and of buildings never before 
 published. 
 
 xvi 
 
CONTENTS OP VOL. L 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Page 
 
 Part I. — Section I. Intkoductory. — II. Beauty in Art. — III. 
 Definition of Architecture. — IV. Mass. — V. Stability. — 
 VI. Durability. — VII. Materials. — VIII. Construction. — 
 IX. FoRxMS. — X. Proportion. — XI. Carved Ornament. — 
 XII. Decorative Color. — XIII. Sculpture and Painting. — 
 XIV. Uniformity. — XV. Imitation of Nature. —XVI. Asso- 
 ciation. — XVII. New Style. — XVIII. Prospects .... 3 
 
 PART II. — ETHNOGRAPHY AS APPLIED TO ARCHI- 
 TECTURAL ART. 
 
 I. Introductory 
 
 II. Turanian Races — Religion, Government, Morals, Literature, 
 
 Arts, and Sciences 55 
 
 III. Semitic Races — Religion, Government, Morals, Literature, Arts, 65 
 
 and Sciences 64 
 
 IV. Celtic Races — Religion, Government, Morals, Literature, Arts, 
 
 and Sciences 70 
 
 V. Aryan Races — Religion, Government, Morals, Literature, Arts, 
 
 and Sciences 74 
 
 VI. Conclusion 83 
 
 PART I.— ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Introductory 85 
 
 Outline of Egyptian Chronology 88 
 
 BOOK L — EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Chap. Page 
 
 I. Introductory 89 
 
 II. The Pyramids and Contemporary Monuments — Tombs — 95 
 Temples 95 
 
 b xvii 
 
xviii 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 Chap. Page 
 III. First Theban Kingdom — The Labyrinth — Tombs — Shepherds . 107 
 VI. Pharaonic Kingdom — Thebes — Rock-cut Tombs and Temples — 
 
 Mammeisi — Tombs — Obelisks — Domestic Architecture . .114 
 
 V. Greek and Roman Period — Decline of art — Temples at Dendera — 
 
 Kalabsche — Philse I33 
 
 VI. Ethiopia — Kingdom of Meroe — Pyramids 140 
 
 BOOK II. — ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 I. Introductor\ c ... 144 
 
 11, Chaldean Temples 150 
 
 III. Assyrian Palaces — Wurka — Nineveh — Nimroud — Khorsabad — 
 
 Palace of Sennacherib, Koyunjik — Palace of Esarhaddon — 
 
 Temples and Tombs 160 
 
 IV. Persia — Persepolis — Susa Passargadte — Fire Temples — Tombs . 188 
 V. Invention of the Arch 204 
 
 VI. JuDEA — Temple of Jerusalem 209 
 
 VII. Asia Minor — Historical notice — Tombs at Smyrna — Doganlu — 
 
 Lycian Tombs 220 
 
 BOOK III. — GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 I. Greece — Historical notice — Pelasgic art — Tomb of Atreus — Other 
 
 remains 231 
 
 II. Hellenic Greece — History of the Orders — Doric temples in 
 Greece — Doric temples in Sicily — Ionic temples — Corinthian 
 temples — Dimensions of Greek temples — Doric order — Ionic 
 order — Corinthian order — Caryatides — Forms of temples — 
 Mode of lighting temples — Temple of Diana at Ephesus — 
 Municipal architecture — Theatres — Tombs — Cyrene 24i 
 
 BOOK IV. — ETRUSCAN, ROMAN, AND SASSANIAN 
 ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 I. Etruria — Historical notice — Temples — Rock-cut Tombs — Tombs 
 
 at Castel d' Asso — Tumuli — The arch 279 
 
 II. Rome — Introduction 292 
 
 III. Roman Architecture — Origin of style — The arch — Orders : 
 
 Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite — Temples — The Pantheon 
 
 — Roman temples at Athens — at Baalbec 295 
 
 IV. Basilicas, Theatres, and Baths — Basilicas of Trajan and Max- 
 
 entius — Provincial basilicas — Theatre at Orange — Colosseum — 
 Provincial amphitheatres — Baths of Diocletian .... 316 
 V. Triumphal Arches, Tombs, and other Buildings — Arches at 
 Rome; in France — Arches at Treves — Pillars of Victory — 
 Tombs — Minerva Medica — Provincial tombs — Eastern tombs — 
 Domestic architecture — Spalatro — Pompei i — Bridges — Aque- 
 ducts 335 
 
 VI. Sassanian Architecture — Historical notice — Palaces of Diarbekr 
 and Al Hadhr — Domes — Serbistan — Firouzabad — Tdk Kesra — 
 Palace at Mashita 377 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 xix 
 
 PART II. — CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 BOOK I. 
 
 Ohap. Paqb 
 
 I. Introductory 395 
 
 II. Western Romanesque Style — Basilicas at Rome — Basilicas of St. 
 
 Peter — St. Paul's — Basilicas at Ravenna — Torcello . . . 400 
 
 III. Circular Romanesque Churches — Circular Churches — Tomb of 
 
 Sta. Costanza — Churches at Perugia, Nocera, Ravenna, Milan — 
 Secular buildings 429 
 
 BOOK II. — FRANCE. 
 
 I. Division of subject — Pointed arches — Provence — Churches at 
 Avignon, Aries, Alet, Fontifroide, Maguelone, Vienne — Circular 
 churches — Towers — Cloisters 442 
 
 II. Aquitania — Churches at Perigeux, Souillac, Angouleme, Alby, 
 
 Toulouse, Conques, Tours — Tombs 466 
 
 III. Anjou — Cathedral of Angers — Church at Fontevrault — Poitiers — 
 
 Spires .483 
 
 IV. AuvERGNE — Church at Issoire — Puy — Fortified Church at Royat . 491 
 V. Burgundy — Church at Ainay — Cathedral at Puy — Abbeys of 
 
 Toumus and Cluny — Cathedral of Autun — Church of St. 
 
 Menoux 496 
 
 VI. Prankish Provence — Exceptional buildings — Basse CEuvre, Beau- 
 
 vais — Decoration 506 
 
 VII. Normandy — Triapsal Churches — Churches at Caen — Intersecting 
 
 vaulting — Bayeux 512 
 
 VIII. Prankish Architecture — Historical notice — The pointed arch — 
 
 Freemasonry — Mediaeval architects 522 
 
 IX. French Gothic Cathedrals— Paris — Chartres —Rheims— Amiens 
 
 — Other Cathedrals — Later style — St. Ouen's, Rouen . . .532 
 X. Gothic details — Pillars — Windows — Circular windows — Bays — 
 Vaults — Buttresses — Pinnacles — Spires — Decoration — Con- 
 struction — Furniture of churches — Domestic architecture . 563 
 
 BOOK III. — BELGIUM AND HOLLAND. 
 
 I. Historical notice — Old churches — Cathedral of Tournay — Antwerp 
 
 — St. .Jacques at Liege 588 
 
 II. Civil architecture — Belfries — Hall at Ypres — Louvain — Brussels — 
 
 Domestic architecture 600 
 
 III. Holland — Churches — Civil and domestic buildings .... 607 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. 
 
 NO. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NO. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 Elevation of Facade of Cologne Cathe- 
 
 
 40. 
 
 Plan of Temple at Kalabsche . 
 
 136 
 
 
 dral, as it will appear when com- 
 
 
 41. 
 
 Section of Temple at Kalabsche . . 
 
 137 
 
 
 
 42. 
 
 View of Temple at Philae 
 
 138 
 
 
 Section of the Parthenon, showing 
 
 
 43. 
 
 Plan of Temple at Pliilje 
 
 138 
 
 
 the mode in which light was ad- 
 
 
 44. 
 
 Pyramids at Meroe 
 
 141 
 
 
 mitted .... Vignette to Title-page. 
 
 45. 
 
 Obelisks at Axum 
 
 143 
 
 
 8-34 
 
 46. 
 
 Diagram of Elevation of Temple at 
 
 
 7. 
 
 Section of King's Chamber and of 
 
 
 
 Mugheyr 
 
 ^')2 
 
 
 Passage in Great Pyramid . . . 
 
 99 
 
 47. 
 
 Plan of Temple at Mugheyr .... 
 
 152 
 
 8. 
 
 
 101 
 
 48. 
 
 Diagram Elevation of Birs Nimroud 
 
 153 
 
 10. 
 
 Doorway in Tomb at the Pyramids . 
 
 102 
 
 49. 
 
 Diagram Plan of Birs Nimroud . . 
 
 153 
 
 11. 
 
 Sarcophagus of Mycerinus .... 
 
 103 
 
 50. 
 
 Observatory at Kliorsabad .... 
 
 155 
 
 12. 
 
 Sketch Plan of Temple near the 
 
 
 51. 
 
 Plan of Observatory, Kliorsabad . 
 
 155 
 
 
 
 104 
 
 52. 
 
 Tomb of C) rus 
 
 156 
 
 13. 
 
 Block Plan of the Labyrinth . 
 
 109 
 
 53. 
 
 Plan of Tomb of Cyrus, PassargadaB . 
 
 157 
 
 14. 
 
 
 109 
 
 54. 
 
 Section of Tomb of Cyrus .... 
 
 157 
 
 16. 
 
 
 110 
 
 55. 
 
 Representation of a Temple, Koy- 
 
 
 16. 
 
 Proto-Doric Pillar at Beni Hassan . 
 
 111 
 
 
 unjik 
 
 159^ 
 
 17. 
 
 Reed Pillar from Beni Hassan . . 
 
 111 
 
 56. 
 
 Elevation of a portion of the external 
 
 
 18. 
 
 Lotus Pier, Beni Hassan 
 
 111 
 
 
 Wall of Wuswus, at Wurka . 
 
 162 
 
 19. 
 
 
 116 
 
 57. 
 
 Plan of portion of Wuswus .... 
 
 162 
 
 20. 
 
 Central Pillar, from Rhamession, 
 
 
 58. 
 
 Elevation of Wall at Wurka 
 
 163 
 
 
 Thebes 
 
 117 
 
 59. 
 
 Plan of North-West Palace at Nim- 
 
 
 31. 
 
 Section of Palace of Thotmes III., 
 
 
 
 
 165 
 
 
 
 119 
 
 60. 
 
 Plan of Palace at Khorsabad . . . 
 
 166 
 
 22. 
 
 Plan of Hypostyle Hall at Karnac . 
 
 120 
 
 61. 
 
 Terrace Wall at Khorsabad .... 
 
 167 
 
 23. 
 
 Section of central portion of Hypo- 
 
 
 62. 
 
 Plan of the Palace at Khorsabad . . 
 
 168 
 
 
 
 120 
 
 62. 
 
 Existing remains of Propylsea at 
 
 
 24. 
 
 Caryatide Pillar, from the Great 
 
 
 
 
 169 
 
 
 Court at Medinet-Habou .... 
 
 121 
 
 64. 
 
 Enlarged Plan of the three principal 
 
 
 25. 
 
 South Temple of Karnac .... 
 
 122 
 
 
 
 170 
 
 26. 
 
 
 122 
 
 65. 
 
 Restored Section of principal Rooms 
 
 
 27. 
 
 
 123 
 
 
 at Khorsabad . . 
 
 171 
 
 28. 
 
 Plan and Section of Rock-cut Temple 
 
 
 66. 
 
 Restoration of Northern Angle of 
 
 
 
 
 125 
 
 
 Palace Court, Khorsabad .... 
 
 172 
 
 29. 
 
 Mammeisi at Elephantine .... 
 
 126 
 
 67. 
 
 City Gateways, Khorsabad .... 
 
 174 
 
 30. 
 
 Plan and Section of Tomb of Manep- 
 
 
 68. 
 
 City Gateway at Khorsabad . . . 
 
 175 
 
 
 
 128 
 
 69. 
 
 Interior of a Yezidi House at Bukra, 
 
 
 31. 
 
 
 139 
 
 
 
 176 
 
 32. 
 
 Pavilion at Medinet-Habou .... 
 
 131 
 
 70. 
 
 Hall of South- West Palace .... 
 
 179 
 
 33. 
 
 View of Pavilion at Medinet-Habou . 
 
 131 
 
 71. 
 
 Central Palace, Koyunjik .... 
 
 179 
 
 34. 
 
 Elevation of an Egyptian House . . 
 
 131 
 
 72. 
 
 Pavement Slab from the Central 
 
 
 35. 
 
 Plan of Temple at Edfou, Apollino- 
 
 
 
 
 180 
 
 
 
 133 
 
 73. 
 
 Pavilion from the sculptures at Nim- 
 
 
 36. 
 
 View of Temple at Edfou .... 
 
 134 
 
 
 
 182 
 
 37. 
 
 Bas-relief at Tell el Amarna . . . 
 
 135 
 
 74. 
 
 Assyrian Temple (North Palace, 
 
 
 38. 
 
 Facade of Temple at Dendera . . . 
 
 136 
 
 
 
 182 
 
 39. 
 
 Pillar, from the Portico at Den- 
 
 
 75. 
 
 Bas-relief representing fa9ade of 
 
 
 
 
 136 
 
 
 
 183 
 
 XX 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I. 
 
 xxi 
 
 NO. 
 
 79. 
 
 77. 
 
 78, 
 79. 
 80. 
 81. 
 
 82. 
 83. 
 
 84. 
 
 87. 
 
 99. 
 
 100. 
 101. 
 102. 
 103. 
 104. 
 
 105. 
 
 106. 
 107. 
 
 108. 
 
 110. 
 
 111. 
 112. 
 
 113. 
 114. 
 115. 
 116, 
 
 119. 
 130. 
 
 121. 
 122. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Exterior of a Palace, from a Bas- 
 relief at Koyunjik 183 
 
 King's Tent (Koyunjik) 184 
 
 Horse tent (Nimroud) 184 
 
 Elevation of Stylobate of Temple . 185 
 Section of Stylobate of Temple . . 185 
 Sacred Symbolic Tree of the Assy- 
 rians 185 
 
 Obelisk of Divanubara 187 
 
 View from top of Great Stairs at 
 
 Persepolis 190 
 
 Stairs to Palace of Xerxes .... 161 
 
 Propylaea (Persepolis) 194 
 
 Palace of Darius 193 
 
 Faf ade of Palace of Darius at Per- 
 sepolis ^194 
 
 Tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustam, 
 representing the fa5ade of his 
 Palace surmounted by a Talar . 195 
 Palace of Xerxes, Persepolis ... 196 
 Restored Plan of Great Hall of Xer- 
 xes at Persepolis 196 
 
 Pillar of Western Portico .... 197 
 
 Pillar of Northern Portico .... 197 
 
 Restored Section of Hall of Xerxes 198 
 Restored Elevation of Capital at 
 
 Susa 200 
 
 Plan of Platform at Passargadse . 201 
 Elevation of Platform at Passar- 
 
 gadse 201 
 
 Kaabah at Istakr 202 
 
 Section of Tomb near the Pyramids 
 
 of Gizeh 205 
 
 Vaulted Drain beneath the South- 
 
 East Palace of Nimroud .... 205 
 
 Arch at Der el Bahri 206 
 
 Arch of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome . 206 
 
 Arches in the Pyramids at Meroe 207 
 
 Diagram Plan of Solomon's Palace 210 
 Diagram Sections of the House of 
 
 the Cedars of Lebanon .... 211 
 The Tabernacle, showing one half 
 ground plan and one half as cov- 
 ered by the curtains 212 
 
 South-East View of the Tabernacle, 
 
 as restored by the Author . . . 213 
 Plan of Solomon's Temple, showing 
 the disposition of the chambers in 
 
 two stories 215 
 
 View of the Temple, from the East, 
 as it appeared at the time of the 
 
 Crucifixion 216 
 
 Roof of one of the Compartments of 
 
 the Gate Huldah -218 
 
 Elevation of Tumulus at Tantalais 221 
 Plan and Section of Chamber in 
 
 Tumulus at Tantalais .... 221 
 
 Section of Tomb of Alyattes ... 221 
 
 Rock-cut Frontispiece at Doganlu . 224 
 
 Lycian Tomb 225 
 
 117, 118. Rock-cut Lycian Tombs . 226, 
 
 [227, 228 
 
 Ionic Lycian Tomb 228 
 
 Elevation of the Monument and Sec- 
 tion of the Tomb at Amrith . . 229 
 West A'^iew of the Acropolis restored 231 
 Section and Plan of Tomb of Atreus 
 at Myceuae 234 
 
 NO. 
 123. 
 
 124. 
 125. 
 126. 
 127. 
 128. 
 129. 
 130. 
 131. 
 132. 
 133. 
 134. 
 
 135. 
 
 136. 
 137. 
 
 138. 
 
 139. 
 
 140. 
 
 142. 
 
 144. 
 145. 
 146. 
 147. 
 148. 
 149. 
 150. 
 151. 
 
 152. 
 153. 
 154. 
 
 155. 
 156. 
 
 157. 
 158, 
 159. 
 
 160. 
 161. 
 162. 
 
 163. 
 
 164. 
 165. 
 
 166. 
 167. 
 
 168. 
 160. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fragments of Pillar in front of 
 
 Tomb of Atreus at Mycenae . . . 235- 
 
 Gateway at Thoricus 236 
 
 Arch at Delos 237 
 
 Wall in Peloponnesus 237 
 
 Gateway at Assos 238 
 
 Doorway at Missolonghi 238 
 
 Gate of Lions, Mycenae 238 
 
 Plan of the Acropolis at Athens . . 241 
 
 Capital in Temple at Karnac . . . 242 
 
 Temple at ^gina restored .... 243 
 
 Ancient Corinthian Capital ... 247 
 Diagram of Doric construction, as 
 
 used in the East 248 
 
 Doric Columns of the Temple at 
 Delos, the Parthenon at Athens, 
 
 and the Temple at Corinth . . . 250 
 
 The Parthenon 252 
 
 Ionic oi-der of Erechtheium, at 
 
 Athens . *. 254 
 
 Ionic order in Temple of Apollo at 
 
 Bassae 255 
 
 Section of half of the Ionic Capital 
 
 at Bassae, taken through the volute 255 
 Order of the Choragic Monument of 
 
 Lysicrates 256 
 
 Order of the Tower of the Winds, 
 
 Athens 257 
 
 Caryatide Figure in the British 
 
 Museum 258 
 
 Caryatide Figure from the Erech- 
 theium 258 
 
 Telamones at Agrigentum .... 259 
 
 Small Temple at Rhamnus .... 260 
 
 Plan of Temple of Apollo at Bassae 260 
 
 Plan of Parthenon at Athens . . 260 
 
 Plan of the Great Temple at Selinus 260 
 
 Plan of Great Temple at Agrigentum 261 
 
 Section of the Parthenon .... 263 
 Part Section, part Elevation, of 
 
 Great Temple at Agrigentum . . 263 
 
 Plan of Temple of Ceres at Eleusis 264 
 
 Section of Temple of Ceres at Eleusis 264 
 Plan of Temple of Jupiter Olympius 
 
 at Athens 265 
 
 Plan of Erechtheium 265 
 
 Elevation of West End of Erech- 
 theium 265 
 
 View of Erechtheium 266 
 
 Restored Plan of Erechtheium . . 267 
 Plan of the Temple of Diana at 
 
 Ephesus 268 
 
 Choragic ]Monument of Lysicrates 270 
 
 Plan of Theatre at Dramyssus . . 271 
 View of the Mausoleum at Halicar- 
 
 nassus, as restored by the Author 273 
 Plan of the Mausoleum at Halicar- 
 nassus, from a Drawing by the 
 
 Author .273 
 
 Lion Tomb at Cnidus 275 
 
 Rock-cut and Structural Tombs at 
 
 Cyrene 276 
 
 Tombs at Cyrene 277 
 
 Plan and Elevation of an Etruscan 
 
 Temple 282 
 
 Tombs at Castel d'Asso 285 
 
 Mouldings from Tombs at Castel 
 
 d'Asso 285 
 
xxii 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I. 
 
 NO. PAGE 
 
 170. Plan of liegulini GaleassiToinb . . 287 
 
 171. Sections of Regulini Galeassi Tomb 287 
 
 172. Section of a Tomb at Caere ... 288 
 
 173. View of principal Chamber in the 
 
 Regulini Galeassi Tomb .... 288 
 
 174. Plan of Cocumella, Vulci .... 289 
 
 175. View of Cocumella, Vulci .... 280 
 
 176. Tomb of Aruns, Albano 290 
 
 177. Gateway at Arpino 290 
 
 178. Aqueduct at Tusculum 291 
 
 179. Doric Order 298 
 
 186. Ionic Order 299 
 
 181. Corinthian Order 300 
 
 182. Composite Order 302 
 
 183. Corinthian Base, found in Church of 
 
 St. Praxede in Rome 302 
 
 184. Doric Arcade 303 
 
 185. View in Court-yard of Palace at 
 
 Spalatro 304 
 
 186. Temple of Mars Ultor ' 306 
 
 187. Plan of Maison Carree at Nimes . . 307 
 
 188. Plan of Temple of Diana at Nimes .307 
 
 189. View of the Interior of the Temple 
 
 of Diana at Nimes 308 
 
 190. Plan of Pantheon at Rome .... 309 
 
 191. Half Elevation, half Section, of the 
 
 Pantheon at Rome 310 
 
 192. Plan of Temple at Tivoli .... 311 
 
 193. Restored Elevation of Temple at 
 
 Tivoli 311 
 
 194. Plan and Elevation of Temple in 
 
 Diocletian's Palace at Spalatro . 312 
 
 195. Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter 
 
 Olympus at Athens 313 
 
 196. Plan of Small Temple at Baalbec . 314 
 
 197. Elevation of Small Temple at 
 
 Baalbec 314 
 
 198. Plan of Trajan's Basilica at Rome . 317 
 
 199. Restored Section of Trajan's Basilica 317 
 
 200. Plan of Basilica of Maxentius . 319 
 
 201. Longitudinal Section of Basilica 
 
 of Maxentius 319 
 
 202. Transverse Section of Basilica of 
 
 Maxentius 319 
 
 203. Pillar of Maxentian Basilica ... 320 
 
 204. Plan of the Basilica at Treves . . 321 
 
 205. External View of the Basilica at 
 
 Treves 322 
 
 206. Internal View of the Basilica at 
 
 Treves 322 
 
 207. Plan of Basilica at Pompeii ... 323 
 
 208. Plan of the Theatre at Orailge . . 325 
 
 209. View of the Theatre at Orange . . 326 
 
 210. Elevation and Section of part of the 
 
 Flavian Amphitheatre, at Rome . 227 
 
 211. Quarter-plan of the Seats and 
 
 quarter-plan of the Basement of 
 
 the Flavian Amphitheatre . . . 327 
 212. Elevation of Amphitheatre at 
 
 Verona 329 
 
 21.J. Baths of Caracalla, as restored by 
 
 A. Blouet • . . 333 
 
 214. Arch of Trajan at Beneventunx . . 335 
 
 215. Arch of Titus at Rome 336 
 
 216. Arch of Septimius Severus . . . 336 
 
 217. Porte St. Andr^ at Autun .... 337 
 
 218. Plan of Porta Nigra at Treves . . 338 
 
 219. View of the Porta Nigra at Treves . 338 
 
 >"0. PAGE 
 
 220. Bridge at Chamas 339 
 
 221. Column at Cussi 341 
 
 222. Supposed Capital of Column at Cussi 341 
 
 223. Tomb of Cajcilia Metella .... 343 
 
 224. Columbarium near the Gate of St. 
 
 Sebastian, Rome 344 
 
 225. Section of Sepulchre at San Vito . 345 
 
 226. Section and Elevation of Tomb of 
 
 Sta. Helena, Rome .346 
 
 227. Plan of Minerva Medica at Rome . 348 
 
 228. Section of Minerva Medica ... 348 
 226. Rib of Roof of Minerva Medica . . 348 
 
 230. Tomb at St. Remi 349 
 
 231. Monument at Igel, near Treves . . 350 
 
 232. Khasn(i, Petra 352 
 
 233. • Section of Tomb at Khasne . . . .3.53 
 
 234. Corinthian Tomb, Petra 354 
 
 235. Rock-cut interior at Petra .... 355 
 
 236. Fa9ade of Herod's Tombs ... 356 
 
 237. So-called " Tomb of Zechariah " . . 356 
 
 238. The so-called Tomb of Absalom . . 357 
 
 239. Angle of Tomb of Absalom . ... 357 
 
 240. Fa9ade of the Tombs of the Judges . 358 
 
 241. Tomb at Mylassa 359 
 
 242. Tomb at Dugga 360 
 
 243. Plan of the Kubr Roumeia .... 361 
 244 View of the Madracen 361 
 
 245. Palace of Diocletian at Spalatro . 365 
 
 246. Golden Gateway at Spalatro . . . 366 
 
 247. House of Pansa at Pompeii, . . . 369 
 
 248. Wall Decoration at Pompeii ... 371 
 
 249. Aqueduct of Segovia 374 
 
 250. Aqueduct of Tarragona 374 
 
 251. Bridge of Trajan, Alcantara, Spain 375 
 
 Egyptian Vase 376 
 
 252. Plan of Palace at Al Hadhr ... 378 
 
 253. Elevation of part of the Palace of 
 
 Al Hadhr 379 
 
 "254. View in the Court of the Great 
 
 Mosque at Diarbekr 381 
 
 255. Plan of Palace at Serbistan . . . 383 
 
 256. Section on line A B of Palace at 
 
 Serbistan 383 
 
 257. Plan of Palace at Firouzabad ... 384 
 
 258. Doorway at Firouzabad 384 
 
 259. Part of External Wall, Firouzabad 385 
 
 260. Plan of Tak Kesra at Ctesiphon . . 385 
 
 261. Elevation of Great Arch of Tak 
 
 Kesra at Ctesiphon 386 
 
 262. Sketch Plan of Palace at Mashita . 387 
 
 263. Interior of ruined Triapsal Hall of 
 
 Palace 388 
 
 204. One compartment of Western Oc- 
 tagon Tower of the Persian Palace 
 
 at Mashita 389 
 
 265. Part of West Wing Wall of Exter- 
 
 nal Fagade of Palace at Mashita . 390 
 
 266. Elevation of External Fa9ade of the 
 
 Palace at Mashita, as restored by 
 
 the Author 392 
 
 267. Arch of Chosroes at Takt-i-Bostan . 393 
 
 268. Plan of Church at Djemla . . . . 404 
 
 269. Plan of Church at Announa ... 404 
 
 270. Plan of Church at Ibrim in Nubia . 405 
 
 271. Plan of Basilica at Orleansville . . 405 
 
 272. Plan of White Convent near Siout . 406 
 
 273. Plan of the Church of San Clemente 
 
 at Rome 408 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. 1. 
 
 xxiu 
 
 NO. 
 274. 
 
 275. 
 
 276. 
 
 277. 
 278. 
 279. 
 280. 
 281. 
 
 282. 
 283. 
 284. 
 285. 
 
 286. 
 
 290. 
 291. 
 292. 
 293. 
 294. 
 
 298. 
 299. 
 
 301. 
 302. 
 303. 
 304. 
 
 305. 
 
 307. 
 308. 
 309. 
 
 310. 
 311. 
 312. 
 
 313. 
 
 314. 
 315. 
 316. 
 317. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Plan of the original Basilica of St. 
 
 Peter at Kome 411 
 
 Basilica of St. Peter, before its de- 
 struction 413 
 
 View of tlie Interior of St. Paul's at 
 
 Rome, before the fire 415 
 
 Plan of Sta. Maria Maggiore ... 416 
 View of Sta. Maria Maggiore ... 417 
 
 Plan of Sta. Agnese 417 
 
 Section of Sta. Agnese 417 
 
 Restored View of the Interior of the 
 Basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le 
 
 Mura 418 
 
 Plan of Sta. Pudentiana 419 
 
 Section of Sta. Pudentiana .... 419 
 Capital of Sta. Pudentiana .... 420 
 Half Section, half Elevation, of the 
 Church of San Vincenzo alle Tre 
 
 Fontane 421 
 
 Plan of St, Appollinare Nuovo . . 422 
 Arches in Church of San Appolli- 
 nare Nuovo 422 
 
 Part of Apse in S. Appollinare in 
 
 Classe, Ravenna 423 
 
 S. Appollinare in Classe, Ravenna , 423 
 Church at Parenzo in Istria . . . 425 
 Capital of Pillar at Parenzo . . . 425 
 Plan of Church at Torcello ... 426 
 Apse of Basilica at Torcello . . . 427 
 Plan of the Baptistery of Constan- 
 
 tine 431 
 
 Plan of the Tomb of Sta. Costanza, 
 
 Rome 431 
 
 Plan of San Stephano Rotondo . . 432 
 Plan of Sti. Angeli, Perugia . . . 435 
 Section of Sti. Angeli, Perugia . . 432 
 Plan of Baptistery at Nocera dei 
 
 Pagan i 433 
 
 Section of Baptistery at Nocera dei 
 
 Pagani 434 
 
 Plan of St. Vitale, Ravenna . . . 435 
 Section of St. Vitale, Ravenna . . 435 
 Plan of S. Lorenzo at Milan . . . 436 
 Plan of Tomb of Galla Placidia, 
 
 Ravenna 438 
 
 Capital of Pillars forming peri, 
 style round Theodoric's Tomb, 
 Ravenna 439 
 
 Plan of Tomb of Theodoric . . . 
 
 Elevation of Tomb of Theodoric . . 
 
 Palazzo delle Torre, Turin .... 
 
 Diagram of the Architectural Divis- 
 ions of France 
 
 Diagram of Vaulting 
 
 Diagram of Dome pendentives . . 
 
 Section of Church at Carcassone, 
 with the outer aisles added in the 
 14th Century 
 
 Porch of Notre Dame de Doms, 
 Avignon 454 
 
 Porch of St. Trophime, Arlea . , . 455 
 
 Apse of Church at Alet 456 
 
 Internal Angle of Apse at Alet . . 457 
 
 Elevation of half one Bay of the 
 Exterior of St. Paul aux Trois 
 Chateaux 458 
 
 Half bay of Interior of St. Paul aux 
 Trois Chateaux 458 
 
 439 
 439 
 441 
 
 443 
 449 
 450 
 
 452 
 
 321. 
 322, 
 323. 
 324. 
 325. 
 326, 
 328. 
 329, 
 330, 
 331. 
 332, 
 333. 
 334. 
 335. 
 
 3.36. 
 337. 
 
 338. 
 
 339. 
 340. 
 341. 
 342. 
 343. 
 344. 
 345. 
 346. 
 347. 
 348. 
 .349, 
 350. 
 351. 
 352. 
 353. 
 354. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Longitudinal and Cross Section of 
 
 Fontifroide Church 459 
 
 Doorway in Church at Maguelone . 460 
 
 Plan of Cathedral, Vienna .... 461 
 
 Plan of Church at Planes .... 462 
 
 Tower at Puissalicon 462 
 
 Church at Cruas 463 
 
 Cloister at Fontifroide 464 
 
 327. Capitals in Cloister, Elne ... 465 
 
 Plan of St. Front, Perigeux ... 466 
 
 Part of St. Front, Perigeux ... 467 
 
 Interior of Church at Souillac . . 469 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Angoul§me . 470 
 
 One Bay of Nave, Angouleme . . . 470 
 
 Plan of Church at Moissac .... 471 
 
 Plan of Cathedral of Alby .... 471 
 Plan of Church of Cordeliers at 
 
 Toulouse 472 
 
 Section of Church of Cordeliers . . 472 
 View of Angle of Church of Cor- 
 deliers 472 
 
 Plan of Church of St. Sernin, 
 
 Toulouse 474 
 
 Section of the Church of St. Sernin 474 
 
 Plan of Church at Conques .... 475 
 
 Plan of St. Martin at Tours ... 475 
 
 Plan of Church at Charroux , . . 476 
 
 Plan of St. Benigne, Dijon . . . , 477 
 
 St. Sernin, Toulouse 478 
 
 Church at Aillas 480 
 
 Church at Loupiac 480 
 
 St. Eloi, Espalion 481 
 
 Tomb at St. Pierre, Toulouse ... 481 
 
 Planof Cathedral at Angers ... 484 
 
 Plan of St, Trinit(5, Angers . , , , 484 
 
 View of the Interior of Loches . . 485 
 
 Plan of Church at Fontevrault . . 485 
 
 View of Chevet at Fontevrault . . 486 
 Elevation of one of the Bays of the 
 
 Nave at Fontevrault 486 
 
 Fa9ade of Church of Notre Dame at 
 
 Poitiers 487 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Poitiers ... 488 
 
 Spire at Cunault 489 
 
 Plan of Church at Issoire , ... 491 
 Elevation of Church at Issoire . . 492 
 Section of Church at Issoire, look- 
 ing East 492 
 
 Elevation of Chevet, Notre Dame 
 
 du Port Clermont 493 
 
 Plan of Chevet, Notre Dame du 
 
 Port Clermont 494 
 
 Fortified Church at Royat .... 495 
 
 Fa9ade of Church of Ainay . . . 497 
 Cloister of Cathedral of Puy en 
 
 Velay 498 
 
 A^iew of Interior of Abbey at Tour- 
 
 nus 499 
 
 , Plan of Abbey Church at Chuiy . . 500 
 
 View in Aisle at Autun 501 
 
 View in Nave at Autun .501 
 
 . Section of Narthex at Vezelay . . 502 
 
 . East End, St. Menoux 503 
 
 , Chevet, St. Menoux 504 
 
 . Plan and Section of Basse CEuvre, 
 
 Beauvais 507 
 
 , External and Internal View of 
 
 CEuvre 508 
 
xxiv 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. 1. 
 
 NO. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NO. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 376. 
 
 Decoration of St. Gr^n^reux . . . 
 
 609 
 
 412. 
 
 Church of St. Ouen at Rouen, from 
 
 
 376. 
 
 Section of Eastern portion of Church 
 
 
 
 
 560 
 
 
 
 610 
 
 413. 
 
 Southern Porch of St. Ouen at 
 
 
 377. 
 
 Triapsal Church at Querqueville . 
 
 612 
 
 
 
 561 
 
 378. 
 
 Plan of the Church of St. Stephen, 
 
 
 414. 
 
 Diagram of Plans of Pillars . . . 
 
 564 
 
 
 
 514 
 
 415. 
 
 Window, St. Martin, Paris .... 
 
 565 
 
 379. 
 
 Western Fa9ade of St. Stephen, 
 
 
 416. 
 
 Window in Nave of Cathedral at 
 
 
 
 
 515 
 
 
 
 565 
 
 380. 
 
 Section of Nave of St. Stephen, Caen 
 
 516 
 
 417. 
 
 Window in Choir of Cathedral at 
 
 
 381. 
 
 Diagram of Vaulting 
 
 517 
 
 
 
 665 
 
 382. 
 
 Elevation of Compartment of Nave 
 
 
 418. 
 
 
 566 
 
 
 of St. Stephen, Caen 
 
 617 
 
 419. 
 
 
 566 
 
 383. 
 
 Compartment, Abbaye des Dames, 
 
 
 420. 
 
 
 567 
 
 
 
 518 
 
 421. 
 
 
 568 
 
 384. 
 
 East End of St. Nicolas, Caen . . . 
 
 519 
 
 422. 
 
 Transept Window, Chartres . . . 
 
 568 
 
 385. 
 
 Lower Compartment, Nave, Bayeux 
 
 620 
 
 423. 
 
 West Window, Rheims 
 
 568 
 
 386. 
 
 Plan of Cathedral of Notre Dame, 
 
 
 424. 
 
 West WindoAV, Evreux 
 
 568 
 
 
 
 534 
 
 425. 
 
 
 569 
 
 387. 
 
 Section of Side-aisles, Cathedral of 
 
 
 426. 
 
 
 571 
 
 
 
 535 
 
 427. 
 
 Abbey Church, Souvigny .... 
 
 572 
 
 388. 
 
 External Elevation, Cathedral of 
 
 
 428. 
 
 
 574 
 
 
 
 535 
 
 429. 
 
 Flying Buttress of St. Ouen . . . 
 
 574 
 
 389. 
 
 Plan of Chartres Cathedral . . . 
 
 536 
 
 430. 
 
 Flying Buttress at Amiens .... 
 
 575 
 
 390. 
 
 Plan of Rheiins Cathedral .... 
 
 537 
 
 431. 
 
 
 577 
 
 391. 
 
 Plan of Amiens Cathedral .... 
 
 537 
 
 432. 
 
 Lantern, St. Ouen, Kouen 
 
 578 
 
 392. 
 
 View of the Fa5ade of the Cathedral 
 
 
 433. 
 
 
 680 
 
 
 
 538 
 
 434. 
 
 
 580 
 
 393. 
 
 North-West View of the Cathedral 
 
 
 435. 
 
 Rood-Screen from the Madelaine at 
 
 
 
 
 639 
 
 
 
 683 
 
 394. 
 
 
 541 
 
 436. 
 
 
 584 
 
 695. 
 
 
 541 
 
 437. 
 
 
 585 
 
 396. 
 
 Bay of Nave of Beauvais Cathedral 
 
 544 
 
 438. 
 
 Portal of the Ducal Palace at Nancy 
 
 586 
 
 397. 
 
 Doorway, South Transept, Beauvais 
 
 645 
 
 439. 
 
 View of West End of Church at 
 
 
 398. 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Neyon . . . 
 
 546 
 
 
 
 591 
 
 399. 
 
 Spires of Laon Cathedral .... 
 
 547 
 
 440. 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Tournay . . 
 
 592 
 
 400. 
 
 View of Cathedral at Coutances . . 
 
 548 
 
 441. 
 
 Section of Central Portion of Church 
 
 
 401. 
 
 
 548 
 
 
 at Tournay, looking South . . . 
 
 598 
 
 402. 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Troves . . . 
 
 549 
 
 442. 
 
 West Front of Notre Dame de 
 
 
 403. 
 
 Fagade of Cathedral at Troyes . . 
 
 650 
 
 
 
 593 
 
 404. 
 
 Window of Cathedral at Lyons . . 
 
 551 
 
 443. 
 
 Spire of the Chapel of St. Sang, 
 
 
 405. 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Bazas . . . 
 
 551 
 
 
 
 
 406. 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Bourges . . 
 
 552 
 
 444. 
 
 Window in Church at Villiers, near 
 
 
 407. 
 
 Section of Cathedral at Bourges 
 
 653 
 
 
 
 593 
 
 408. 
 
 View in the Church of Charite sur 
 
 
 446. 
 
 Plan of the Cathedral at Antwerp . 
 
 594 
 
 
 
 
 446. 
 
 Plan of St. Jacques, Li^ge .... 
 
 598 
 
 409. 
 
 Chevet, Pontigny ...... 
 
 556 
 
 447. 
 
 
 601 
 
 410. 
 
 West Front of Ste. Marie de I'fipine 
 
 558 
 
 448. 
 
 
 602 
 
 411. 
 
 Plan of Church of St. Ouen at 
 
 
 449. 
 
 
 604 
 
 
 
 559 
 
 450. 
 
 Part of the Bishop's Palace, Lifege . 
 
 606 
 
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 VOL. T. — 1 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 PART 1. 
 Section I. 
 
 LIKE every other object of human inquiry, Architecture may be 
 studied from two distinct points of view. Either it may be re- 
 garded statically, and described scientifically as a thing existing, 
 without any reference to the manner in which it was invented; or it 
 may be treated historically, tracing every form from its origin and 
 noting the influence one style has had uj^on another in the j^rogress 
 of time. 
 
 The first of these methods is more technical, and demands on the 
 part of the student very considerable previous knowledge before it 
 can be successfully prosecuted. The other, besides being more popu- 
 lar and easily followed, has the advantage of separating the objects 
 of study into natural grou])s, and tracing more readily their connec- 
 tion and relation to one anotlier. The great superiority, however, of 
 the historical mode of study arises from the fact that, when so 
 treated, Architecture ceases to be a mere art, interesting only to the 
 artist or his employer, but becomes one of the most important 
 adjuncts of liistory, filling up many gaps in the written record and 
 giving life and reality to much that without its presence could witli 
 difficulty be realized. 
 
 A still more important use oi architecture, when followed as a 
 history, is found in its ethnographic value. Every different race of 
 men had their own peculiar forms in using the productions of this 
 art, and their own mode of expressing their feelings or aspirations by 
 its means. When properly studied, it consequently affords a means 
 as important as language for discriminating between the different 
 races of mankind, — often more so, and one always more trustwortliy 
 and more easily understood. 
 
 In consequence of these advantages, the historical mode is that 
 which will be followed in this work. But before entering upon the nar- 
 rative, it will be well if a correct definition of what Architecture 
 really is can be obtained. Without st^me clear views on the techni- 
 cal position of the art, much that follows will be unintelligible and 
 the meaning of what is said may be mistaken. 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Book I. 
 
 A great deal of the confusion of ideas existing on the subject of 
 Architecture arises from the fact that writers have been in the habit 
 of speaking of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as three similar 
 fine arts, practised on the same principles. This error arose in the 
 16th century, when in a fatal hour painters and sculptors undertook 
 also the practice of architecture, and builders ceased to be architects. 
 This confusion of ideas has been perpetuated to the present hour, and 
 much of the degraded position of the art at this day is o wing to the 
 mistake then made. It cannot therefore be too strongly insisted 
 upon that there is no essential connection between painting and 
 sculpture on the one hand and architecture on the other. 
 
 The two former rank among what are called Phonetic arts. Their 
 business is to express by color or form ideas that could be — generally 
 have been — expressed by words. With the Egyptians their hiero- 
 glyphical paintings were their only means of recording their ideas. 
 With us, such series of pictures as Hogarth's "Mariage a la Mode" 
 or "The Rake's Progress" are novels written with the brush ; and many 
 of our Mediaeval cathedrals possess whole Bibles carved in stone. 
 Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture are three branches of one form of art, 
 refined from Prose, Color, and Carving, and form a group apart, inter- 
 changing ideas and modes of expression, but always dealing with the 
 same class of images and appealing to the same class of feelings. 
 
 Distinct and separate from these Phonetic arts is another group, 
 gjenerally known as the Technic arts, comprising all those which 
 minister to the primary wants of mankind under such various heads 
 as food, clothing, and shelter. Between these two groups is a third 
 called the Esthetic arts, forming, as it were, a flux between the Tech- 
 nic and Phonetic arts, fusing the whole into one homogeneous mass. 
 They take their rise from the fact that to every want wliich the 
 technic arts are designed to supply. Nature has attached a gratifica- 
 tion which is capable of refining all the useful arts into fine arts. 
 Thus the Technic art of agricultnre is capable of supplying food in 
 its simple form ; but by the refinements of cookery and of wine- 
 making, simple meats and drinks are capable of affording endless 
 gratification to the senses. Simple clothing to keep out the cold re- 
 quires little art, but embroidery, dyeing, lace-making, and fifty other 
 arts employ the hands of millions, and the gratification afforded by 
 their use, the thoughts of as many more. Shelter, too, is easily pro- 
 vided, but ornamental and ornamented shelter, or in other words 
 architecture, is one of the most prominent of the fine arts. Music, 
 though hardly known as a useful art, is the most typical of the 
 Esthetic arts, and, " married to immortal verse," steps upwards into 
 the region of the Phonetic arts, just as building, when used for orna- 
 ment, is raised out of the domain of the Technic arts. 
 
 Like music, color and form may be so arranged as to afford 
 
Sect. U 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5 
 
 infinite pleasure to the senses without their having any phonetic 
 value; but when used as sculpture and painting are and have been 
 in all ages, to tell a tale or to express emotion, they rank high among 
 the Phonetic arts; and though able to express certain impressions 
 even more vividly than can be done by words, they cannot rise to the 
 high intellectual position that can be attained either by Poetry or 
 Eloquence when expressed only in that verbal language which is the 
 highest gift of God to man. 
 
 II. — Beauty in Art. 
 
 The term Beauty in Art is little else than a Synonym for Perfec- 
 tion, but perfection in these three classes of arts is far from being the 
 same thing, or of anything like the same value, as an intellectual 
 expression. The beauty of a machine, however complicated, arises 
 mainly from its adaptability to use ; while a mosaic of exquisite 
 colors, or an elevated piece of instrumental music, raises emotions of 
 a far higher class ; and a painting or a poem may appeal to all that is 
 great or noble in human nature. 
 
 If, for instance, we take a dozen arts at random, and divide them 
 into twelve equal component parts, as they belong to each of the three 
 divisions. Technic, Esthetic, or Phonetic. If we further assign one 
 as the relative intellectual value of the Technic element, two as that 
 due to the Esthetic, and three as the proportionate importance of 
 the Phonetic, we obtain the index number in the fourth column of the 
 table below, which is probably not far from expressing the true rela- 
 tive value of each. Of course there are adventitious circumstances 
 which may raise the proportionate value of any art very considerably, 
 and, on the other hand, neglect of cultivation may depress others 
 below their true value ; but the principles on which the table is formed 
 are probably those by which a correct estimate may be most easily 
 
 obtained, 
 t 
 
 
 Technic. 
 
 Esthetic. 
 
 Phonetic. 
 
 
 Heating-, Ventilation, etc. . . 
 
 . ... 11 
 
 1 
 
 
 = 13 
 
 
 ... 9 
 
 3 
 
 
 = 15 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 = 17 
 
 
 . . . 7 
 
 4 
 
 1 
 
 = 18 
 
 
 ... 5 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 = 20 
 
 
 ... 5 
 
 5 
 
 2 
 
 = 21 
 
 
 ... 4 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 = 22 
 
 
 . . . 4 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 = 24 
 
 
 ... 2 
 
 6 
 
 4 
 
 = 26 
 
 
 ... 3 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 = 27 
 
 
 ... 2 
 
 2 
 
 8 
 
 = 30 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 10 
 
 = 34 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 11 
 
 = 35 
 
 The first three arts enumerated in the above table are evidentl>' 
 
6 
 
 HISTORY OF AIICHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt I. 
 
 utterly incapable of Phonetic expression, and the first hardly even can 
 be raised to the second class, though air combined with warmth does 
 afford pleasure to the senses. Joinery may convey an idea of per- 
 fection from the mode in which it is designed or executed ; while 
 gastronomy, as above mentioned, does really afford important grati- 
 fication to the senses, approaching nearly in importance to the plain 
 food-supplying art of cookery. Jewelry may combine extreme me- 
 chanical beauty of execution with the most harmonious arrangement 
 of color, and may also be made to express a meaning, though only to 
 a very limited extent. Clothing depends on both color and form for 
 its perfection more than even beauty of material, and may be made 
 to express gaiety or sorrow, though perhaps more from association 
 than from any inherent qualities. The arts of the potter can exhibit 
 not only perfection in execution, but practically depend, both in color 
 and form, especially the latter, to raise their products out of the cat- 
 egory of mere Technic arts ; while the paintings on them, which are 
 indispensable to the highest class of ceramique, render them capable 
 of taking their place among those objects which affect a Phonetic- 
 mode of utterance. As mentioned above, floriculture and landscape 
 gardening may, besides their use, afford infinite pleasure to the senses 
 and even express gaiety or gloom, and from mere prettiness, may rise 
 towards something like sublimity of expression. 
 
 Architecture is, however, the central art of the group, which in its 
 highest form combines all the three classes in nearly equal propor- 
 tions, but not always necessarily so. The Pyramids of Egypt, for 
 instance, though Technically the most wonderful buildings in the 
 world, have very little Esthetic, and hardly more than one of Pho- 
 netic, value. The great temple at Baalbec, — and in fact all the Ro- 
 man temples, may be classed as containing six parts of Technic value 
 for mechanical excellence of size and construction, four for beauty of 
 form and detail, but certainly not more than two parts for any ex- 
 pression of religion or intellect they may exhibit, making up»twenty 
 for the index of their artistic value. Cologne cathedral takes very 
 nearly the same position in the scale, but Rheims, Bourges, and the 
 more perfect Gothic cathedrals may be classed higher, as five Technic, 
 three ^Esthetic, and four Phonetic, making twenty-three altogether 
 as their index ; and they are only surpassed by such a building as the 
 Par^benon at Athens, which, though not so large and imposing as 
 ROi^Lothers, is, so far as we know, the most perfect building yet 
 ere^pd by man. It owes this perfection mainly to the equal balance 
 of parts. There is nothing so difl^icult or startling in its construction 
 as there is in most Gothic cathedrals ; but what there is is mechani- 
 cally perfect, both in design and execution. Its form is nearly per- 
 fect, combining stability with simplicity, and at the same time 
 avoiding monotony or any appearance of greater strength than is 
 
Sect. II 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 absolutely necessary. Its details are all as exquisite in form as the 
 Temple itself, and it was at one time colored to an extent we can 
 hardly now realize, but which must, when complete, have made it one 
 of the most perfect examples of Esthetic art. The walls of the cella 
 were almost certainly covered with Phonetic paintings similar to those 
 in the Lesche at Delphi ; and the pediment, the metopes, the friezes, 
 were all sculptured to such an extent as to render the Phonetic ex- 
 pression of the building at least equal to either its Technic or its 
 Esthetic excellence. It is easy to conceive a building, such as a 
 trophy or a mausoleum, in which painting and sculpture shall be rel- 
 atively more important than they are in this instance, and in which 
 consequently the index may be raised above twenty-four ; but if this 
 were so, it ought probably to be classed among works of sculpture or 
 painting rather than as an object of architecture. 
 
 In music the Esthetic element naturally prevails over the other 
 two, but Technic cleverness of execution often affords to some as 
 much pleasure as the harmony of the sounds produced ; and, on the 
 other hand, in its power of expressing joy or sorrow and of exciting 
 varied emotions at will, it rivals frequently the more distinct and per- 
 manent power of words themselves, when unaccompanied by Esthetic 
 forms of art. It is of course, however, in the outpourings of his 
 imagination or in the logical products of his reason that man rises 
 highest, and stands most distinctly apart from the rest of created 
 beings ; and though all may not be capable of appreciating it, it is 
 when both Technic and Esthetic adjuncts are laid aside, and man 
 listens only to the voice of reason, that he reaches what, as far as we 
 can now see, is the highest form of his artistic development. 
 
 Of course there are many other forms in which this might be ex- 
 pressed, and many will be inclined to dispute the correctness of the- 
 figures assigned to each art. They are, in fact, only approximations, 
 and as a first attempt can hardly be expected to meet all the condi- 
 tions of the problem. The truth of the matter is, it would have 
 been better to use algebraic symbols, and to allow every one to trans- 
 late them into numbers according to his own fancy, but in the present 
 state of matters such an attempt would have savored of affectation. 
 The art of criticism is not sufficiently advanced for this, but if two 
 or three would follow up what is here indicated, it might be placed 
 on a basis from which to proceed higher. Meanwhile, perhaps the 
 annexed diagram may serve to explain the relation of the three classes 
 of art to one another, and the way in which they overlap and mix 
 together so as to make up a perfect art. Like the preceding table, it 
 will require several editions, the work of several minds, before it can 
 be perfected, but it probably is not far from representing the truth as 
 at present known. 
 
 There is still another relation of these arts to one another which 
 
8 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt 1. 
 
 must not be overlooked before proceeding further, as a knowledge of 
 it is indispensable in forming a correct judgment of their respective 
 merits. Like the Sciences, the Technic arts hardly depend, after the 
 
 Diagram No. 1. 
 
 first steps have been taken, on individual prowess for their advance- 
 ment. An astronomer, a chemist, or a natural historian, now starts 
 from the highest point reached by any of his predecessors, and he has 
 only to observe and calculate, to analyze and put together again, in 
 order to advance our knowledge. A giant may of course make a 
 rapid stride in advance, but a hundred dwarfs will, if they persevere 
 steadily in the right path, not only overtake him, but probably 
 advance far beyond anything the most gigantic intellect can accom- 
 plish in science. So it is also in the mechanical arts. The immense 
 strides that have of late years been made in improving all the 
 machines employed in manufactures have not been made by the 
 greatest intellects, but by thousands of men suggesting new con- 
 trivances and acquiring skill by steady improvement in manipulation. 
 In ship-building, for instance, one of the most complex of the useful 
 arts, no one can tell who the men were who converted the rude gal- 
 leys in which our forefathers sailed to Crecy and Agincourt into the 
 gigantic commercial steamers and war ships of the present day. It 
 was the result of thousands of intellects working steadily towards a 
 well-defined aim, and accomplishing a triumph by a process which 
 must always be successful in the Technic arts when persevered in 
 long enough. 
 
 The case is somewhat different with the Esthetic arts. Some men 
 are insensible to the harmony of color and are not offended by the 
 crudest contrasts. Others do not perceive concords in music, and 
 the most violent discords give them no pain ; others, on the contrary, 
 are endowed with the utmost sensibility on these points, and are 
 consequently not only able to appreciate the beauty of the arts arising 
 out of color or sound, but of advancing what to those who cannot 
 understand them is an inexplicable mystery. 
 
Sect. II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5 
 
 When from the Esthetic arts we turn to the Sciences and Technic 
 Arts, we find, as just pointed out, that the individual becomes much 
 less important and the process everything. Every astronomer now 
 knows more than Newton ; every chemist than John Dalton. Any 
 ordinary mechanic can start from a higher point than was reached 
 by a Watt or an Arkwright or a Stephenson, and can surpass them. 
 But no man can mount on the shoulders of such men as Handel or 
 Mozart or Beethoven, and surpass them ; and the higher we ascend 
 in the scale of arts the more important does the individual become 
 and the less so the process. A Phidias, a Raphael, a Shakespeare, 
 are yet unsurpassed, and possibly never may be. All men may be 
 taught to carve, to color, and to write mechanically, and may even 
 be instructed to practise these processes so as to afford pleasure to 
 themselves and others; but when from this we rise to Phonetic 
 painting, sculpture, or poetry, and the still higher region of philo- 
 sophy, the individual becomes all in all, and his special genius there 
 stamps the true value of the production. 
 
 In this respect, again. Architecture is singularly happy as a means 
 of study. As a Technic art it is practised in the same progressive 
 principles as all its sister arts, irresj^ective of individuality. As an 
 Esthetic art it is hardly so individual as music, because its forms and 
 colors are permanent and capable of being repeated with such 
 improvements as each experiment suggests in every subsequent build- 
 ing ; but when it attempts Phonetic forms of utterance, these are seldom 
 so absolutely integral that they cannot be separated from the building 
 and judged of apart. A Greek temple or a Mediaeval cathedral without 
 painting and sculpture may be poor and inanimate, but still so beautiful 
 in its form, so grand from its mass, and so imposing from its durability, 
 that in its Technic-^sthetic form alone it may command our admira- 
 tion, more perhaps than any other work of human hands, except of 
 course, as said before, the highest intellectual forms of Phonetic art. 
 Architecture thus combines in itself the steady progressive perfectibility 
 of a Technic art quite independent of the intellectual capabilities of 
 the architect, combined with the ^Esthetic appreciation of form and 
 color which is mostly universal, and can at all events be generally 
 inculcated and learned. But its greatest glory is that it can enlist in 
 its service the higher branches of Phonetic sculpture and painting, 
 which can be exercised only by specially gifted individuals. It is 
 difficult to conceive all these qualities being equally combined in the 
 person of any one architect, and in practice it is by no means necessary 
 for success that it should be so, though, if possible, the combination 
 would no doubt be advantageous. In criticizing, on the contrary, it is 
 always necessary to separate and distinguish between the mechanical, 
 the sensuous, and the intellectual part of a design. Without this an 
 intelligent appreciation of its merits or defects can hardly be obtained. 
 
10 
 
 IILSTORY OF AECHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Notwithstanding all that has been pointed out ah'eady, and the 
 advantages of its central position among the sister arts, combined with 
 its own intrinsic merits, Architecture would never have attained to 
 the high position it now occupies had it not been fitted with an aim 
 which raised it far above all utilitarian feelings. In all ages, though 
 certainly not among all nations, Architecture has been employed as 
 one of the principal forms of worship. The desire to erect a temple 
 to their Gods worthy to be their dwelling-place has exalted even the 
 rude arts of savages into something worthy of admiration, and when 
 such a nation as the Egyptians were inspired with the same desire, 
 they produced, even in the earliest ages, temples which still excite 
 feelings of admiration and of awe. Had the practice of architecture 
 been restricted to supj)lying only the ordinary wants of mortals, it 
 never would have risen to be the noble art it now is. Neither the 
 palaces of tlie greatest kings, nor the wants of the proudest munici- 
 palities, nor the cmporia of the richest commerce would have supplied 
 tliat lofty aim which is indispensable for any great intellectual effort. 
 But when freed from all trammels of use or expense, the object is to 
 erect a casket wortliy to enshrine the sacred image of a god whom 
 men feared but adored, the aspiration elevates the work far beyond its 
 useful purpose. It is when men seek to erect a hall in which wor- 
 shippers may meet to render that homage which is their greatest 
 privilege and their highest aspiration, when all that man can con- 
 ceive that is great and beautiful is enlisted to create something 
 worthy of the purpose, that temples have been erected which rank 
 among the most successful works man has yet produced. Had any 
 exigencies of use or economy controlled the design of the Parthenon, 
 or of any of our Mediaeval cathedrals, they must have taken a much 
 lower place in the scale than they now occupy. Their architects 
 were, however, in fact as free from any utilitarian influences as 
 the poets who composed the " Iliad " or " Paradise Lost." 
 
 III. — Definition op Architecture. 
 
 If what has just been said above is understood, it may be sufficient 
 to make it possible to give a more definite answer than has usually 
 been done to two questions to which hitherto no satisfactory reply has 
 been accorded in modern times. " WJiat,''' it is frequently asked, " is 
 the true definition of the loord Architecture, or of the Art to which it 
 applies " " Wh at are the principles which ought to guide us in designing 
 or criticizing Architectu7^al objects f " 
 
 Fifty years ago the answers to these questions generally were, that 
 Architecture consisted in the closest possible imitation of the forms and 
 orders employed by the Romans; that a church was well designed 
 
Sect. III. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 11 
 
 exactly in the proportion in which it resembled a heathen temple ; and 
 that the merit of a civic building was to be measured by its imitation, 
 more or less perfect, of some palace or amphitheatre of classic times. 
 
 In the beginning of this century these answers were somewhat 
 modified by the publication of Stuart's works on Athens ; the word 
 Grecian was substituted for Roman in all criticisms, and the few 
 forms that remain to us of Grecian art were repeated ad nauseam in 
 buildings of the most. heterogeneous class and character. 
 
 At the present day churches have been entirely removed from the 
 domain of classic art, and their merit is made to depend on their being 
 correct reproductions of mediaeval designs. Museums and town halls 
 still generally adhere to classic forms, alternating between Greek and 
 Roman. In some of our public buildings an attempt has recently been 
 made to reproduce the Middie ^<>r;s, w^hile in our palaces and club- 
 houses that compromise between classicality and common sense which 
 is called Italian is generally adhered to. These, it is evident, are the 
 mere chanajinsj fashions of art. There is nothinsj real or essential in 
 this Babel of styles, and we must go deeper below the surface to 
 enable us to obtain a true definition of the art or of its purposes- 
 Before attempting this, however, it is essential to bear in mind that 
 two wholly different systems of architecture have been followed at 
 different periods in the w^orld's history. 
 
 The first is that which prevailed since the art first dawned, in 
 Egypt, in Greece, in Rome, in Asia, and in all Europe, during 
 the Middle Ages, and generally in all countries of the world down to 
 the time of the Reformation in the 16th century, and still predominates 
 in remote corners of the globe wherever European civilization or its 
 influences have not yet penetrated. The othe/- being that which was 
 introduced with the revival of classic literature contemporaneously 
 with the reformation of religion, and still pervades all Europe and 
 wherever European influences has established itself. 
 
 In the first period the art of architecture consisted in designing a 
 building so as to be most suitable and convenient for the purposes 
 required, in arranging the parts so as to produce the most stately and 
 ornamental effect consistent with its uses, and in applying to it such 
 ornament as should express and harmonize with the construction, and 
 be appropriate to the purposes of the building ; while at the same time 
 the architects took care that the ornament should be the most elegant 
 in itself which it was in their power to design. 
 
 Following this system, not only the Egyptian, the Greek, and the 
 Gothic architects, but even the indolent and half civilized inhabitants 
 of India, the stolid Tartars of Thibet and China, and the savage Mexi- 
 cans, succeeded in erecting great and beautiful buildings. No race, 
 however rude or remote, has failed, when working on this system, to 
 produce buildings which are admired by all who behold them, and are 
 
12 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 well worthy of the most attentive consideration. Indeed, it is almost 
 impossible to indicate one single building in any part of the world, 
 designed during the prevalence of this true form of art, which was not 
 thought beautiful, not alone by those who erected it, but which does 
 not remain a permanent object of admiration and of study even for 
 strangers in all future ages. 
 
 The result of the other system is widely different from this. It has 
 now been practised in Europe for more than three centuries, and by 
 people who have more knowledge of architectural forms, more construc- 
 tive skill, and more power of combining science and art in effecting a 
 great object, than any people who ever existed before. Notwithstand- 
 ing this, from the building of St. Peter's at Rome to that of our own 
 Parliament Houses, not one building has been produced that is admitted 
 to be entirely satisfactory, or which permanently retains a hold on 
 general admiration. Many are large and stately to an extent almost 
 unknown before, and many are ornamented with a prof useness of which 
 no previous examples exist; but with all this, though they conform 
 with the passing fashions of the day, they soon become antiquated and 
 out of date, and men wonder how such a style could ever have been 
 thought beautiful, just as we wonder how any one could have admired 
 the female costumes of the last century which captivated the hearts of 
 our grandfathers. 
 
 It does not require us to go A^ery deeply into the philosophy of the 
 subject to find out why this should be the case ; the fact simply being 
 that no sham w^as ever permanently successful, either in morals or in 
 art, and no falsehood ever remained long without being found out, or 
 which, when detected, inevitably did not cease to please. It is literally 
 impossible that we should reproduce either the circumstances or the 
 feelings which gave rise to classical art and made it a reality ; and 
 though Gothic art was a thing of our century and of our own race, it 
 belongs to a state of society so totally different from anything that now 
 exists, that any attempt at reproduction now must at best be a masque- 
 rade, and never can be a real or an earnest form of art. The designers- 
 of the Eglinton Tournament carried the system to a perfectly legitimate 
 conclusion when they sought to reproduce the customs and warlike 
 exercises of our ancestors ; and the pre-Raphaelite painters were equally 
 justified in attempting to do in painting that which was done every 
 day in architecture. Both attempts failed signally, because we had 
 progressed in the arts of war and painting, and could easily detect the 
 absurdity of these practices. It is in architecture alone of all the arts 
 that the false system remains, and we do not yet perceive the impossi- 
 bility of its leading to any satisfactory result. 
 
 Bearing all this in mind, let us try if we can come to a clearer 
 definition of what this art really is, and in what its merits consist. Let 
 
Sect. III. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 US suppose the Diagram (Woodcut No. 2.) to represent a cotton-factory, 
 a warehouse, or any very commonplace utilitarian building. The first 
 division, a, is not only the most prosaic form of building, but is bad 
 building, as no attempt is made to strengthen the parts requiring it, 
 and no more thought is bestowed upon it than if it were a garden wall 
 or a street pavement. The second division, b, is better : the arching 
 of the upper windows binds together the weakest parts, and gives 
 mass where it is most needed to resist the pressure or thrust of the roof; 
 and the carrying down the piers between the windows gives strength 
 where wanted. In this stage the building belongs to civil engineer- 
 ing, which may be defined as the art of disposing the most suitable 
 
 No. 2. 
 
 materials in the most economical but scientific manner to attain a given 
 utilitarian end. In the third division, c, this is carried still farther; 
 the materials are better disposed than in the last example, and, ev^ 
 without the slight amount of ornament applied, . it is a better example 
 of engineering. The ornament is not more than would be considered 
 in some states of society indispensable for even the most utilitarian 
 buildings. The cornice may be said to be required to protect the 
 wall from wet ; the consoles to support it ; and the mouldings at 
 the springing of the arch may be insertions required for stability. 
 In the present day, however, even this slight amount of ornament is 
 almost suflficient to take it out of the domain of useful art into that of 
 architecture. The fourth division, d, is certainly within the limits 
 of the province of architecture ; and though it may be bad art, still 
 the amount of ornament applied, all other things remaining the same, 
 entitles this division to rank as a work of the fine art, architecture. 
 
14 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part I, 
 
 The fifth division, e, carries the advance still fartlier. In this instance 
 not only is a greater amount of ornament applied, but the parts are 
 so disposed as in themselves to produce a more agreeable effect ; and 
 although the height of the floors remains the same, and the amount of 
 light introduced very nearly so, still the slight grouping of the parts is 
 such as to produce a better class of architecture than could be done by 
 the mere application of any amount of ornament. 
 
 If it is admitted that the last division in the diagram is an object 
 of architecture, which the first is not, it follows from the analysis 
 that architecture is nothing more or less than the art of ornamental and 
 ornamented construction. 
 
 Recurring, for instance, to the Parthenon, to illustrate this principle 
 farther. The proportions of length to breadtli, and of height to both 
 these, are instances of carefully-studied ornamental construction ; and 
 still more so is the arrangement of the porticoes and the disposition of 
 the peristyle. If all the pillars were plain square piers, and all the 
 mouldings square and flat, still the Parthenon could not fail, from the 
 mere disposition of its j)arts, to be a pleasing and imposing building. 
 So it is with a Gothic cathedral. The })roportion of length to breadth, 
 the projection of the transepts, the different height of the central and 
 side aisles, the disposition and proportion of the towers^ are all instances 
 of ornamental construction, and beautiful even if without ornament. 
 Many of the older abbeys, esi)ecially those of the Cistercians, are as 
 devoid of ornament as a modem barn; but from the mere dispositio!\ 
 of their parts they are always pleasing, and, if large, are imposing 
 objects of architecture. Stonehenge is an instance of ornamental con- 
 struction wholly without ornament, yet it is almost as imposing an 
 architectural object as any of the same dimensions in any part of the 
 world. It is, however, when ornament is added to this, and when that 
 ornament is elegant itself and appropriate to the construction and to 
 the purposes of the building, that the temple or the cathedral ranks 
 among the highest objects of the art and becomes one of the noblest 
 works of man. 
 
 Even without ornamental construction, a building, may, by mere 
 dint of ornament, become an architectural object, though it is far 
 more diflicult to attain good architecture by this means, and in true 
 styles it has seldom been attempted. Still, such a building as the town- 
 hall at Louvain, which if stripped of its ornaments would be little 
 better than a factory, by richness and appropriateness of ornament 
 alone has become a very pleasing specimen of the art. In modern 
 times it is too much the fashion to attempt to produce architectural 
 effects not only without attending to ornamental construction, but 
 often in defiance of, and in concealing that which exists. When this 
 is done the result must be bad art ; but nevertheless it is architecture, 
 however execrable it may be. 
 
Sect. III. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 15 
 
 If these premises are correct, the art of the builder consists in 
 merely heaping materials together so as to attain the desired end in 
 the speediest and readiest fashion. The art of the civil or military 
 engineer consists in selecting the best and most appropriate materials 
 for the object he has in view, and using these in the most scientific 
 jnanner, so as to ensure an economical but satisfactory result. Where 
 the engineer leaves off, the art of the architect begins. His object is 
 to arrange the materials of the engineer, not so much with regard to 
 economical as to artistic effects, and by light and shade, and outline, 
 to produce a form that in itself shall be permanently beautiful. He 
 then adds ornament, which by its meaning doubles the effect of the 
 disposition he has just made, and by its elegance throws a charm over 
 the w^hole composition. 
 
 Viewed in this light, it is evident that there are no objects that 
 are usually delegated to the civil engineer which may not be brought 
 within the province of the architect. A bridge, an aqueduct, the 
 embankment of a lake, or the pier of a harbor, are all as legitimate 
 subjects for architectural ornament as a temple or a palace. They were 
 all so treated by the Romans and in the Middle Ages, and are so treated 
 up to the present day in the remote parts of India, and wherever true 
 art prevails. 
 
 It is not essential that the engineer should know anything of 
 architecture, though it is certainly desirable he should do so ; but, on 
 the other hand, it is indispensably necessary that the architect should 
 understand construction. Without that knowledge he cannot design ; 
 but it would be well if, in most instances, he would delegate the 
 mechanical part of his task to the engineer, and so restrict himself 
 entirely to the artistic arrangement and the ornamentation of his 
 design. This division of labor is essential to success, and was always 
 practised where art was a reality ; and no great work should be under- 
 taken without the union of the two. Perfect artistic and perfect 
 mechanical skill can hardly be found combined in one person, but it 
 is only by their joint assistance that a great work of architecture can 
 be produced. A building may be said to be an object of architectural 
 art in the proportion in which the artistic or ornamental purposes are 
 allowed to prevail over the mechanical ; and an object of engineering 
 skill, where the utilitarian exigencies of the design are allowed to 
 supersede the artistic. But it is nowhere possible to draw the line 
 sharply between the two, nor is it desirable to do so. Architecture 
 can never descend so low, nor need it ever be afraid of ornamenting 
 too mean objects; while, on the other hand, good engineering is abso- 
 lutely indispensable to a satisfactory architectural effect of any class. 
 The one is the prose, the other is the poetry of the art of building. 
 
 In addition, however, to the convenient arrangement and proper 
 construction of a building, which is the province of the engineer, or its 
 
16 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 ornamental or ornamented design, which belongs especially to the archi- 
 tect, there is still a third element which requires the special endow- 
 ment of an artist for its exercise. No architectural object can be 
 considered as complete, or as having attained the highest excellence 
 till it is endowed with a voice through the aid of phonetic sculpture 
 and painting. 
 
 In a few words therefore, a perfect building may be defined as one 
 that combines : — 
 
 1st, as Technic principles : 
 
 Convenience for arrangement in plan. 
 Proper distribution of materials in construction. 
 . 2d, as Esthetic principles of design : 
 
 Ornamental arrangement combined with 
 Ornamental construction, and 
 3d for Phonetic adjuncts : 
 Sculpture, or 
 
 Painting, employed as voices to tell the story of the building, 
 and explain the purposes for which it was designed, or those 
 to which it is dedicated. 
 Besides these, however, which are the principal theoretic charac- 
 teristics of architecture, there are several minor technical principles 
 which it may be convenient to enumerate before proceeding farther. 
 It may also be well to give such examples as shall make what has just 
 been indicated theoretically, clearer than can be done by the mere 
 enunciation of abstract principles. 
 
 IV. — Mass. 
 
 The first and most obvious element of architectural grandeur is 
 size — a large edifice being always more imposing than a small one ; 
 and when the art displayed in two buildings is equal, their effect is 
 almost in the direct ratio of their dimensions. In other words, if one 
 temple or church is twice or three times as large as another, it is twice 
 or three times as grand or as effective. The Temple of Theseus differs 
 very little except in dimensions, from the Parthenon, and, except in 
 that respect, hardly differed at all from the Temple of Jupiter at Elis; 
 but because of its smaller size it must rank lower than the greater 
 examples. In our own country many of our smaller abbeys or parish 
 churches display as great beauty of design or detail as our noblest 
 cathedrals, but, from their dimensions alone they are insignificant in 
 comparison, and the traveller passes them by, while he stands awe- 
 struck before the portals or under the vault of the larger edifices. 
 
 The pyramids of Egypt, the topes of the Buddhists, the mounds 
 of the Etruscans, depend almost wholly for their effect on their dimen- 
 sions. The Romans understood to perfection the value of this element 
 
Sect. Y. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 17 
 
 and used in its most unsophisticated simplicity to obtain the effect 
 they desired. In the Middle Ages the architects not only aspired to 
 the erection of colossal edifices, but they learnt how they might greatly 
 increase the apparent dimensions of a building by a scientific disposition 
 of the parts and a skilful arrangement of ornament, thereby making- 
 it look very much larger than it really was. It is, in fact, the most 
 obvious and most certain, though it must be confessed perhaps the 
 most vulgar, means of obtaining architectural grandeur ; but a true and 
 perfect example can never be produced by dependence on this alone, 
 and it is only when size is combined with beauty of proportion and 
 elegance of ornament that perfection in architectural art is attained. 
 
 V. — Stability. 
 
 Next to size the most important element is stability. By this is 
 meant, not merely the strength required to support the roof or to resist 
 the various thrusts and pressures, but the excess of strength over 
 mere mechanical requirement which is necessary thoroughly to satisfy 
 the mind, and to give to the building a monumental character, with an 
 appearance that it could resist the shocks of time or the violence of 
 man for ages yet to come. 
 
 No people understood the value of this so well as the Egyptians. 
 The form of the Pyramids is designed wholly with reference to sta- 
 bility, and even the Hypostyle Hall at Karnac excites admiration far 
 more by its massiveness and strength, and its apparent eternity of 
 duration, than by any other element of design. In the Hall all utili- 
 tarian exigencies and many other obvious means of effect are sacrificed 
 to these, and with such success that after more than 3000 years' duration 
 still enough remains to excite that admiration which even the most 
 unpoetical spectators cannot withhold from its beauties. 
 
 In a more refined style much of the beauty of the Parthenon arises 
 from this cause. The area of each of the pillars in the portico of the 
 Pantheon at Rome is under 20 feet, that of those of the Parthenon is 
 over 33 feet, and, considering how much taller the former are than the 
 latter, it may be said that the pillars at Athens are twice as massive 
 as those of the Roman temple, yet the latter have sufficed not only for 
 the mechanical, but for many points of artistic stability ; but the 
 strength and solidity of the porticoes of the Parthenon, without taking 
 into consideration its other points of superiority, must always render 
 it more beautiful than the other. 
 
 The massiveness which the Normans and other early Gothic builders 
 imparted to their edifices arose more from clumsiness and want of con- 
 structive skill than from design ; but, though arising from so ignoble 
 a cause, its effect is always grand, and the rude Norman nave often 
 surpasses in grandeur the airy and elegant choir which was afterwards 
 
 VOL. L — 2 
 
18 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 added to it. In our own country no building is more entirely satis- 
 factory than the nave at Winchester, where tlic width of the pillars 
 exceeds that of the aisles, and the whole is Norman in outline, though 
 Gothic in detail. On the other hand no building of its dimensions 
 and beauty of detail can well be so unsatisfactory as the choir at 
 Beauvais. Though it has stood the test of centuries, it looks so frail, 
 requires so many props to keep it up, and is so evidently an over- 
 strained exercise of mechanical cleverness, that though it may excite 
 wonder as an architectural ^oz^r deforce^ it never can satisfy the mind 
 of the true artist, or please to the same extent as less ambitious 
 examples. 
 
 Even when we descend to the lowest walks of architecture we find 
 this principle prevailing. It would require an immense amount of 
 design and good taste to make the thin walls and thinner roof of a 
 brick and slated cottage look as picturesque or so well as one built 
 of rubble-stone, or even with mud walls, and a thatched roof : the 
 thickness and solidity of the one must always be more satisfactory 
 than the apparent flimsiness of the other. Here, as in most cases, 
 necessity controls the architect ; but when fettered by no utilitarian 
 exigencies, there is no safer or readier means of obtaining an effect 
 than this, and when effect alone is sought it is almost impossible foi- 
 an architect to err in giving too much solidity to his building. Size 
 and stability are alone sufficient to produce grandeur in architectural 
 design, and, where sublhnity is aimed at, they are the two elements 
 most essential to its production, and are indeed the two without which 
 it cannot possibly be attained. 
 
 VI. — Durability. 
 
 As the complement to stability, the length of time during which 
 architectural objects are calculated to endure confers on them an 
 impress of durability which can hardly be attained by any of the 
 sister arts. Sculpture may endure as long, and some of the Egyptian 
 examples of that art found near the Pyramids are as old as anything 
 in that country, but it is not their age that impresses us so much as 
 the story they have to tell. The Pyramids, on the other hand, in the 
 majesty of their simple Technic grandeur, do challenge a quasi* 
 eternity of duration with a distinctness that is most impressive, and 
 which there, as elsewhere, is one of the most powerful elements of 
 architectural expression. 
 
 When Horace sang — 
 
 *' Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona 
 MuJti, sed omnes illacrimabiles 
 
 Urgentur ignotique longa 
 Noete, carent quia vate sacro," 
 
Sect. VII. 
 
 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 19 
 
 lie overlooked the fact that long before Troy was dreamt of, Egyptian 
 kings had raised pyramids which endure to the present day, and tlie 
 Piiaraohs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties had filled the 
 valley of the Upper Nile with temples and palaces and tombs which tell 
 us not only the names of their founders, but reveal to us their thoughts 
 and aspirations with a distinctness that no sacred poet could as well 
 convey. From that time onward the architects liave covered the 
 world with monuments that still remain on the spot where the}' 
 were erected, and tell all, who are sufficiently instructed to read their 
 riddles aright, what nations once occupied these spots, what degree 
 of civilization they had reached, and how, in erecting these monuments 
 on which we now gaze, they had attained that quasi-immortality after 
 which they hankered. 
 
 Sculpture and painting, when allied with architecture, may endure 
 as long, but their aim is not to convey to the mind the impression of 
 durability wdiich is so strongly felt in the presence of the more massive 
 works of architectural art. Even when ruined and in decay the build- 
 ings are almost equally impressive, while ruined sculptures or paintings 
 are generally far from being pleasing objects, and, whatever their other 
 merits may be, certainly miss that impression obtained from the dura- 
 bility of architectural objects. 
 
 VII. — Materials. 
 
 Another very obvious mode of obtaining architectural effect is by 
 the largeness or costliness of the materials employed. A terrace, or 
 even a wall, if composed of large stones, is in itself an object of con- 
 siderable grandeur, while one of the same lineal dimensions and of 
 the same design, if composed of brick or rubble, may appear a very 
 contemptible object. 
 
 Like all the more obvious means of architectural effect, the Egyp- 
 tians seized on this and carried it to its utmost legitimate extent. 
 All their buildings, as well as their colossi and obelisks, owe much 
 of their grandeur to the magnitude of the materials employed in their 
 construction. The works called Cyclopean found in Italy and Greece 
 have no other element of grandeur than the size of the stones or rather 
 masses of rock which the builders of that age were in the habit of 
 using. In Jerusalem nothing was so much insisted upon by the old 
 writers, or is so much admired now, as the largeness of the stones 
 employed in the building of the Temple and its substructions. 
 
 We can well believe how much value was attached to this when 
 we find that in the neighboring city of Baalbec stones were used of 
 between 60 and 70 ft. in length, weighing as much as the tubes of the 
 Britannia Bridge, for the mere bonding course of a terrace wall. Even 
 in a more refined style of architecture, a pillar, a shaft of which is 
 
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 of a single stone, or a lintel or architrave of one block, is always a 
 grander and more beautiful object than if composed of a number of 
 smaller parts. Among modern buildings, the poverty-stricken design 
 of the church of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg is redeemed by the grandeur 
 of its monolithic columns, whilst the beautiful design of the Madeleine 
 at Paris is destroyed by the smallness of the materials in which it is 
 expressed. It is easy to see that this arises from the same feeling 
 to which massiveness and stability address themselves. It is the 
 expression of giant power and the apparent eternity of duration 
 which they convey ; and in whatever form that may be presented 
 to the human mind, it always produces a sentiment tending towards 
 sublimity, Avhich is the highest effect at which architecture or any 
 other art can aim. 
 
 The Gothic architects ignored this element of grandeur altogether, 
 and sought to replace it by the display of constructive skill in the 
 employment of the smaller materials they used, but it is extremely 
 questionable whether in so doing they did not miss one of the most 
 obvious and most important principles of architectural design. 
 
 Besides these, value in the mere material is a great element in 
 architectural effect. We all, for instance, admire an ornament of pure 
 gold more than one that is only silver gilt, though few can detect the 
 difference. Persons Avill travel hundreds of miles to see a great 
 diamond or wonderful pearl, who would not go as many yards to see 
 paste models of them, though if the two were laid together on the 
 table very few indeed could distinguish the real from the counterfeit. 
 
 When we come to consider such buildings as the cathedral at 
 Milan or the Taje Mehal at Agra, there can be no doubt but that the 
 beauty of the material of which they are composed adds very much to 
 the admiration they excite. In the latter case the precious stones 
 with which the ornamental parts of the design are inlaid, convey an 
 imi^ression of grandeur almost as directly as their beauty of outline. 
 
 It is, generally speaking, because of its greater preciousness that we 
 admire a marble building more than one of stone, though the color of 
 the latter may be really as beautiful and the material at least as durable. 
 In the same manner a stone edifice is preferred to one of brick, and 
 brick to wood and plaster ; but even these conditions may be reversed 
 by the mere question of value. If, for instance, a brick and a stone edifice 
 stand close together, the design of both being equally appropriate to the 
 material employed, our judgment may be reversed if the bricks are so 
 beautifully moulded, or made of such precious clay, or so carefully laid, 
 that the brick edifice costs twice as much as the other ; in that case we 
 should look with more respect and admiration on the artificial than on 
 the natural material. For the same reason many elaborately carved 
 wooden buildings, notwithstanding the smallness of their parts and 
 their perishable nature, are more to be admired than larger and 
 
Sect. VII. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 21 
 
 more monumental structures, and this merely in consequence of the 
 evidence of labor and consequent cost that have been bestowed upon 
 them. 
 
 Irrespective of these considerations, many building materials are 
 invaluable from their own intrinsic merits. Granite is one of the best 
 known, from its hardness and durability, marble from the exquisite 
 polish it takes, and for its color, which for internal decoration is a 
 property that can hardly be over-estimated. Stone is valuable on 
 account of the largeness of the blocks that can be obtained, and be- 
 cause it easily receives a polish sufficient for external purposes. Bricks 
 are excellent for their cheapness, and the facility with which they can 
 be used, and they may also be moulded into forms of great elegance, 
 so that beauty may be easily attained ; but sublimity is nearly impos- 
 sible in brickwork, without at least such dimensions as have rarely 
 been accomplished by man. The smallness of the material is such a 
 manifest incongruity with largeness of the parts, that even the Romans, 
 though they tried hard, could never quite overcome the difficulty. 
 
 Plaster is another artificial material. Except in monumental erec- 
 tions it is superior to stone for internal purposes, iand ahvays better 
 than brick from the uniformity and smoothness of its surface, the 
 facility with which it is moulded, and its capability of receiving 
 painted or other decorations to any extent. 
 
 Wood should be used externally only on the smallest and least 
 monumental class of buildings, and even internally is generally infe- 
 rior to plaster. It is dark in color, liable to warp and split, and com- 
 bustible, which are all serious objections to its use, except for flooring, 
 doors, and such purposes as it is now generally applied to. 
 
 Cast iron is another material rarely brought into use, though more 
 precious than any of those above enumerated, and possessing more 
 strength, though probably less durability. Where lightness combined 
 with strength is required, it is invaluable, but though it can be 
 moulded into any form of beauty that may be designed, it has hardly 
 yet ever been so used as to allow of its architectural qualities being 
 appreciated. 
 
 All these materials are nearly equally good when used honestly 
 each for the purpose for which it is best adapted ; they all become 
 bad either when employed for a purpose for which they are not ap- 
 propriate, or when one material is substituted in the place of, or to 
 imitate another. Grandeur and sublimity can only be reached by the 
 more durable and more massive class of materials, but beauty and 
 elegance are attainable in all, and the range of architectural design is 
 so extensive that it is absurd to limit it to one class, either of natural 
 or of artificial materials, or to attempt to prescribe the use of some 
 and to insist on that of others, for purposes to which they are mani- 
 festly inapplicable. 
 
22 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 VIII. — Construction. 
 
 Construction has been shown to be the chief aim and object of the 
 engineer ; with him it is all in all, and to construct scientifically and 
 at the same time economically is the beginning and end of his en- 
 deavors. It is far otherwise with the architect. Construction ought 
 to be his handmaid, useful to assist him in carrying out his design, 
 but never his mistress, controlling him in the execution of that whicli 
 he would otherwise think expedient. An architect ought always to 
 allow himself such a margin of strength that he may disregard or 
 play with his construction, and in nine cases out of ten the money 
 spent in obtaining this solidity will be more effective architecturally 
 than twice the amount expended on ornament, however elegant or 
 appropriate that may be. 
 
 So convinced were the Egyptians and Greeks of this principle, 
 that they never used any other constructive expedient than a perpen- 
 dicular wall or pro23, supporting a liorizontal beam ; and half the sat- 
 isfactory effect of their buildings arises from their adhering to this 
 simple though expensive mode of construction. They were perfectly 
 acquainted with the use of the arch and its properties, but they knew 
 that its employment would introduce complexity and confusion into 
 their designs, and therefore they wisely rejected it. Even to . the 
 present day the Hindus refuse to use the arch, though it has long- 
 been employed in their country by the Mahometans. As they quaintly 
 express it, "An arch never sleeps ; " and it is true that by its thrust 
 and pressure it is always tending to tear a building to pieces ; in 
 spite of all counterpoises, whenever the smallest damage is done, it 
 hastens the ruin of a building, which, if more simply constructed, 
 might last for ages. 
 
 The Romans were the first who introduced a more complicated 
 style. They wanted larger and more complex buildings than had 
 been before required, and they employed brick to a great extent, even 
 in their temples and most monumental buildings. They obtained 
 both space and variety by these means, with comparatively little 
 trouble or expense ; but we miss in all their works that repose and 
 harmony which is the great charm that pervades the buildings of 
 their predecessors. 
 
 The Gothic architects went even beyond the Romans in this 
 respect. They prided themselves on their constructive skill, and 
 paraded it on all occasions, and often to an extent very destructive 
 of true architectural design. The lower story of a French cathedral 
 is generally very satisfactory; the walls are thick and solid, and the 
 buttresses, when not choked up with chapels, just sufficient for shadow 
 and relief; but the architects of that country were seized witli a mania 
 
Sect. VIII. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 23 
 
 for clerestories of gigantic height, which should appear internally 
 mere walls of painted glass divided by mullions. This could only be 
 effected either by encumbering the floor of the church with piers of 
 inconvenient thickness or by a system of buttressing outside. The 
 latter was the expedient adopted ; but notwithstanding the ingenuity 
 with which it was carried out, and the elegance of many of the forms 
 and ornaments used, it was singularly destructive of true architectural 
 effect. It not only produces confusion of outline and a total want of 
 repose, but it is eminently suggestive of weakness, and one cannot 
 help feeling that if one of these props were removed, the whole would 
 tumble down like a house of cards. 
 
 This was hardly ever the case in England : the less ambitious 
 dimensions employed in this country enabled the architects to dis- 
 pense in a great measure with these adjuncts, and when flying but- 
 tresses are used, they look more as if employed to suggest the idea of 
 perfect security than as necessary to stability. Owing to this cause 
 the French have never been able to construct a satisfactory vault : ui 
 consequence of the weakness of their supports, they were forced to 
 stilt, twist, and dome them to a most un pleasing extent, and to attend 
 to constructive instead of artistic necessities. With the English 
 architects this never was the case ; they were always able to design 
 their vaults in such forms as they thought would be most beautiful 
 artistically, and, owing to the greater solidity of their supports, to 
 carry them out as at first design ed.^ 
 
 It was left for the Germans to carry this system to its acme of 
 absurdity. Half the merit of the old Round arched Gothic cathe- 
 drals on the Rhine consists in their solidity and the repose they dis- 
 play in every part. Their walls and other essential parts are always 
 in themselves suflicient to support the roofs and vaults, and no construct- 
 ive contrivance is seen anywhere ; but when the Germans adopted 
 the pointed style, their builders — they can hardly be called architects — 
 seemed to think that the whole art consisted in supporting the widest 
 possible vaults on the thinnest possible i)illars, and in constructing the 
 tallest windows with the most attenuated mullions. The consequence 
 is, that though their constructive skill still excites the wonder of the 
 mason or the engineer, the artist or the architect turns from the cold 
 vaults and lean piers of their later cathedrals with a painful feeling of 
 unsatisfied expectation, and wonders why such dimensions and .such 
 details should produce a result so utterly unsatisfactory. 
 
 So many circumstances require to be taken into consideration, that 
 
 1 It may be suggested that the glory 
 of a French clerestory filled with stained 
 glass made up for all these defects, and 
 it may be true that it did so ; but in that 
 case the architecture was sacrificed to 
 
 the sister art of painting, and is not the 
 less bad in itself because it enabled that 
 art to display its charms with so much 
 brilliancy. 
 
24 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Fart I. 
 
 it is impossible to prescribe any general rules in such a subject as this, 
 but the following table will explain to a certain extent the ratio of the 
 area to the points of support in sixteen of the principal buildings of 
 
 
 Area. 
 
 Solids. 
 
 Ratio 
 
 Nearest 
 
 
 in Decimals. 
 
 Vulgar Fractions. 
 
 
 Feet. 
 
 Feet. 
 
 
 
 
 
 '±0,0o<!5 
 
 
 une-naii. 
 
 St. PBter's, RoniG 
 
 227 000 
 
 5Q 308 
 
 .261 
 
 ^ ^ n *i - f 11 V t Ti 
 
 1113 lU til lill. 
 
 Spires Ca.tlicd.rEil 
 
 56,737 
 
 12 076 
 
 .216 
 
 Vyllc~lll til. 
 
 Sta.. Mfiria, KlorencB 
 
 84 802 
 
 17 056 
 
 901 
 
 Onp fifth 
 v>'llc-lll til. 
 
 
 Ul ,(J<7V/ 
 
 
 . lOl 
 
 One-sixth. 
 
 KJlJm A. cVUlX vjj -M^KJll.y.HJlL • • 
 
 84,311 
 
 14,311 
 
 171 
 
 vylltJ-alX til. 
 
 OLC. vTCllC V IC V C J -L dl lo • 
 
 
 
 1 <^A 
 • lot 
 
 One-sixth. 
 
 T^QTf llPTl AH A tllAHG 
 
 
 '±,TtOU 
 
 
 v/llc-hc V ClltLI. 
 
 Chartres Cathedral . . 
 
 68,261 
 
 8,886 
 
 .130 
 
 One-eighth. 
 
 Sahsbury Cathedral . . 
 
 55,853 
 
 7,012 
 
 .125 
 
 One-eighth. 
 
 Paris, Notre Dame . . 
 
 64,108 
 
 7,852 
 
 • . .122 
 
 One-eighth. 
 
 Milan Cathedral . . . 
 
 108,277 
 
 11,601 
 
 .107 
 
 One-tenth. 
 
 Cologne Cathedral . . 
 
 91,464 
 
 9,554 
 
 .104 
 
 One-tenth. 
 
 York Cathedral . . . 
 
 72,860 
 
 7,376 
 
 .101 
 
 One-tenth. 
 
 Temple of Peace . . 
 
 68,000 
 
 6,928 
 
 .101 
 
 One-tenth. 
 
 St. Ouen, Eouen. . . 
 
 47,107 
 
 4,637 
 
 .097 
 
 One-tenth. 
 
 the world. ^ As far as it goes, it tends to prove that the satisfactory 
 arcliitectural effect of a building is nearly in the inverse ratio to the 
 mechanical cleverness displayed in its construction. 
 
 At the head of the list stands the Hypostyle Hall, and next to it 
 practically is the Parthenon, which being the only wooden-roofed 
 building in the list, its ratio of support in proportion to the work 
 required is nearly as great as that of the Temple at Karnac. Spires 
 only wants better details to be one of the grandest edifices in Europe, 
 and Bourges, Paris, Chartres, and Salisbury are among the most sat- 
 isfactory Gothic cathedrals we possess. St. Ouen, notwithstanding all 
 its beauty of detail and design, fails in this one point, and is certainly 
 deficient in solidity. Cologne and Milan would both be very much 
 improved by greater massiveness : at York the lightness of the sup- 
 ports is carried so far that it never can be completed with the vaulted 
 roof originally designed, for the nave at least ; and the Temple of 
 Peace is so clever a piece of engineering, that it must always have 
 been a failure as an architectural design. 
 
 1 The numbers in the table must be 1 4, 6, and 7, which are borrowed from 
 taken only as approximative, except 2, | Gwilt's ''Public Buildings of London." 
 
Sect. IX. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 25 
 
 The four great Renaissance cathedrals, at Rome, Florence, London, 
 and Paris, enumerated in this list, have quite sufficient strength for 
 architectural effect, but the value of this is lost from concealed 
 construction, and because the supports are generally grouped into a 
 few great masses, the dimensions of which cannot be estimated by the 
 eye. A Gothic architect would have divided these masses into twice 
 or three times the number of piers used in these churches, and by 
 employing ornament designed to display and accentuate the con- 
 struction, would have rendered these buildings far more satisfactory 
 than they are. 
 
 In this respect the great art of the architect consists in obtaining 
 the greatest j^ossible amount of unencumbered space internally, con- 
 sistent in the first place with the requisite amount of permanent 
 mechanical stability, and next with such an appearance of superfluity 
 of strength as shall satisfy the mind that the building is perfectly 
 secure and calculated to last for ages. 
 
 IX. — Forms. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to lay down any general rules as to the 
 forms best adapted to architectural purposes, as the value of a form 
 in architecture depends wholly on the position in which it is placed 
 and the use to which it is applied. There is in consequence no pre- 
 scribed form, however ugly it may appear at present, that may not 
 one day be found to be the very best for a given purpose ; and, in like 
 manner none of those most admired which may not become absolutely 
 offensive when used in a manner for which tliey are unsuited. In 
 itself no simple form seems to have any inherent value of its own. 
 and it is only by combination of one with another that they become- 
 effective. If, for instance, we take a series of twenty or thirty figures,, 
 placing a cube at one end as the most solid of angular and a sphere 
 at the other as the most perfect of round shapes, it would be easy to 
 cut off the angles of the cube in sucessive gradations till it became a 
 polygon of so many sides as to be nearly curvilinear. On the other 
 hand by modifying the sphere through all the gradations of conic 
 sections, it might meet the other series in the centre without there 
 being any abrupt distinction between them. Such a series might be 
 compared to the notes of a piano. We cannot say that any one of the 
 bass or treble notes is in itself more beautiful than the others. It is only 
 by a combination of several notes that harmony is produced, and gentle 
 or brilliant melodies by their fading into one another, or by strongly 
 marked contrasts. So it is with forms : the square and angular are 
 expressive of strength and power ; curves of softness and elegance ; 
 and beauty is prodi^ced by effective combination of the right-lined with 
 the curvilinear. It is always thus in nature. Rocks and all the harder 
 
26 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTUPvE. 
 
 Paut I. 
 
 substances are rough and angular, and marked by strong contrasts and 
 deep lines. Among trees, the oak is rugged, and its branches are 
 at right angles to its stem, or to one another. The lines of the willow 
 are rounded and flowing. The forms of children and women are round 
 and full, and free from violent contrasts ; those of men are abrupt, 
 hard and angular in proportion to the vigor and strength of their 
 frame. 
 
 In consequence of these j^roperties, as a general rule the square or 
 angular parts ought always to be placed below, where strength is 
 wanted, and the rounded above. If, for instance, a tower is to be built 
 the lower story should not only be square, but should be marked by 
 buttresses or other strong lines, and the masonry rusticated, so as to 
 conv^ey even a greater appearance of strength. Above this, if the 
 square form is still retained, it may be with more elegance and less 
 accentuation. The form may then change to an octagon, that to a 
 l)olygon of sixteen sides, and then be surmounted by a circular form 
 of any sort. These conditions are not absolute, but the reverse 
 arrangement would be manifestly absurd. A tower with a circular 
 base and a square upper story is what almost no art could render 
 tolerable, while the other pleases by its innate fitness without any 
 extraordinary effort of design. 
 
 On the other hand, round ])illars are more pleasing as supports 
 for a square architrave, not so much from any inherent fitness for 
 the purpose as from the effect of contrast, and flat friezes are preferable 
 to curved ones of the late Roman styles from the same cause. The 
 angular mouldings introduced among the circular shafts of a Gothic 
 coupled pillar, add immensely to the brilliancy of effect. Where 
 everything is square and rugged, as in a Druidical trilithon, the effect 
 may be sublime, but it cannot be elegant ; where everything is rounded, 
 as in the Chora'gic Monument of Lysicrates, the perfection of elegance 
 may be attained, but never sublimity. Perfection, as usual, lies 
 between these extremes. 
 
 X. — Proportion. 
 
 The properties above enumerated may be characterized as the 
 mechanical principles of design. Size, stability, construction, material, 
 and many such, are elements at the command of the engineer or 
 mason, as well as of the architect, and a building remarkable for 
 these properties only, cannot be said to rise above the lowest grade 
 of architectural excellence. They are invaluable adjuncts in the 
 hands of the true artist, but ought never to be the principal elements 
 of design. 
 
 After these the two most important resources at the command of 
 the architect are Proportion and Ornament ; the former enabling him 
 
Sect. X. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 27 
 
 to construct ornamentally, the latter to ornament his construction ; both 
 require knowledge and thought, andean only be properly applied by one 
 thoroughly imbued with the true principles of architectural design. 
 
 As proportion, to be good, must be modified by every varying 
 exigence of a design, it is of course impossible to lay down any 
 general rules which sliall hold good in all cases: but a few of its 
 principles are obvious enough, and can be defined so as to enable us to 
 judge how far they have been successfully carried out in the various 
 buildings enumerated in the following pages. 
 
 To take first the simplest form of the proposition, let us suppose a 
 room built, which shall be an exact cube — of say 20 feet each way — 
 such a proportion must be bad and inartistic; and besides, the height 
 is too great for the other dimensions, apparently because it is impos- 
 sible to get far enough away to embrace the whole wall at one view, 
 or to see the s])ringing of the roof, without throwing the head back 
 and looking upwards. If the height w^ere exaggerated to thirty or 
 forty feet, the disproportion would be so striking, that no art could 
 render it agreeable. As a general rule, a room square in plan is never 
 pleasing. It is always better that one side should be longer than the 
 other, so as to give a little variety to the design. Once and a half the 
 width has often been recommended, and with every increase of length 
 an increase of height is not only allowable, but indispensable. Some 
 such rule as the followino; seems to meet most cases : " Tlie height of a 
 room ought to be equal to half its width, plus the square root of its 
 length." Thus a room 20 feet square ought to be between 14 and 15 
 feet high ; if its length be increased to 40 feet, its height must be at 
 least 16^ ; if 100 certainly not less than 20. If we proceed further, 
 and make the height actually exceed the width, the effect is that of 
 making it look narrow. As a general rule, and especially in all 
 extreme cases, by adding to one dimension, we take away in appear- 
 ance from the others. Thus if we take a room 20 feet wide and 30 
 or 40 feet in height, we make it narrow ; if 40 wide and 20 high, we 
 make a low room. By increasing the length we diminish the other 
 two dimensions. 
 
 This, however, is merely speaking of plain rooms with plain walls, 
 and an architect may be forced to construct rooms of all sorts of 
 unpleasing dimensions, but it is here that his art comes to his aid, 
 and he must be very little of an artist if he cannot conceal, even 
 when unable entirely to counteract, the defects of his dimensions. A 
 room, for instance, that is a perfect cube of 20 feet may be made to 
 look as low as one only 15 feet high, by using a strongly marked 
 horizontal decoration, by breaking the wall into different heights, by 
 marking strongly the horizontal proportions, and obliterating as far 
 as possible all vertical lines. The reverse process will make a room 
 only 10 feet high look as lofty as one of 15. 
 
28 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Even the same wall-paper (if of strongly marked lines) if pasted 
 on the sides of two rooms exactly similar in dimensions, but with the 
 lines vertical in the one case, in the other horizontal, will alter the 
 apparent dimensions of them by several feet. If a room is too high, 
 it is easy to correct this by carrying a bold cornice to the height 
 required, and stopping there the vertical lines of the wall, and above 
 this coving the roof, or using some device which shall mark a distinc- 
 tion from the walls, and the defect may become a beauty. In like 
 manner, if a room is too long for its otlier dimensions, this is easily 
 remedied either by breaks in the walls where these can be obtained, 
 or by screens of columns across its width, or by only breaking the 
 height of the roof. Anything which will divide the length into 
 compartments will effect this. The width, if in excess, is easily 
 remedied by dividing it, as the Gotliic architects did, into aisles. 
 Thus a room 50 feet wide and 30 high, may easily be restored to 
 proportion by cutting off 10 or 12 feet on each side, and lowering 
 the roofs of the side compartments, to say 20 feet. If great stability 
 is not required, this can be done without encumbering the floor with 
 many points of support. The greater tlie number used the more easily 
 the effect is obtained, but it can be done almost without them. 
 
 Externally it is easier to remedy defects of proportion than it is 
 internally. It is easier than on the inside to increase the apparent 
 height by strongly marked vertical lines, or to bring it down by the 
 employment of a horizontal decoration. Turning, for instance, to the 
 diagram No. 2 (page 13) : if the two divisions c and d were on oppo- 
 site sides of a street, and not in immediate juxtaposition, it would be 
 difficult to make any one believe that c was not taller than d, and that 
 the windows in the latter were not farther apart and more squat than 
 those in the first division ; and the effect might easily be increased. 
 
 If the length of a building is too great, this is easily remedied by 
 projections, or by breaking up the length into square divisions. Thus, 
 A A is a long building, but b b is a square one, or practically (owing to 
 the perspective) less than a square in length, in 
 ^ any direction at right angles to the line of 
 vision; or, in other words, to a spectator at a' 
 the building would look as if shorter in the 
 direction of b b than in that of a a, owing to 
 the largeness and importance of the jiart 
 ^ nearest the eye. If 100 feet in length by 
 50 feet high is a pleasing dimension for a 
 certain design, and it is required that the 
 building should be 500 feet long, it is only 
 necessary to break it into five parts, and throw 
 three back and two forward, or the contrary, and the proportion 
 becomes as before. 
 
Sect. X. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 21) 
 
 The Egyptians hardly studied the science of proportion at all ; 
 they gained their effects by simpler and more obvious means. The 
 Greeks were masters in this as in everything else, but they used the 
 resources of the art with extreme sobriety — externally at least — 
 dreading to disturb that simplicity which is so essential to sublimity 
 in architecture. But internally, where sublimity was not attainable 
 with the dimensions they employed, they divided the cells of their 
 temples into three aisles, and the height into two, by placing two 
 ranges of columns one above the other. By these means they were 
 enabled to use such a number of small parts as to increase the appa- 
 rent size most considerably, and at the same time to give greater 
 apparent magnitude to the statue, which was the principal object for 
 which the temple was erected. 
 
 The Romans do not seem to have troubled themselves with the 
 science of proportion in the design of their buildings, though nothing- 
 can well be more exquisite than the harmony that exists between the 
 parts in their orders, and generally in their details. During the 
 Middle Ages, however, we find, from first to last, the most earnest 
 attention paid to it, and half the beauty of the buildings of that age 
 is owing to the successful results to which the architects carried their 
 experiments in balancing the parts of their structures the one against 
 the other, so as to produce that harmony we so much admire in 
 them. 
 
 The first great invention of the Gothic architects (though of Greek 
 origin) was that of dividing the breadth of the building internally into 
 three aisles, and making the central one higher and 
 wider than those on each side. By this means height 
 and length were obtained at the expense of width: this 
 latter, however, is never a valuable property artistically, 
 though it may be indispensable for the utilitarian exi- 
 gencies of the building. They next sought to increase 
 still further the height of the central aisle by dividing 
 its sides into three equal portions which by contrast 
 added very much to the effect ; but the monotony of 
 this arrangement was soon apparent : besides, it was 
 perceived that the side aisles were so low as not to come 
 into direct comparison with the central nave. To 
 remedy this they gradually increased its dimensions, 
 and at last hit on something very like the following 
 proportions. They made the height of the side aisle 
 half that of the central (the width being also in the 
 same proportion) ; the remaining portions they divided 
 into three, making the triforium one-third, the clerestory ^ 
 two-thirds of the whole. Thus the three divisions are 
 in the proportions of 1, 2, and 3, each giving value to the other, and 
 
30 
 
 HISTORY OF AIICHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 the whole addmg very considerably to all the apparent dimensions of 
 the interior. It would have been easy to have carried tlie system 
 further, and, by increasing the number of the pillars longitudinally 
 and the number of divisions vertically, to have added considerably 
 to even this appearance of size ; but it would then have been at tlie 
 expense of simplicity and grandeur : and though the building might 
 have looked larger, the beauty of the design would have been 
 destroyed. 
 
 One of the most striking exemplifications of the perfection of the 
 Gothic architects in this department of their art is shown in their 
 employment of towers and spires. As a general rule, placing a tall 
 building in juxtaposition with a low one exaggerates the height of 
 the one and the lowness of the other ; and as it was by no means the 
 object of the architects to sacrifice their churclies for their towers, it 
 required all their art to raise noble spires without doing this. In 
 the best designs they effected it by bold buttresses below, and the 
 moment the tower got free of the building, by changing it to an 
 octagon, and cutting it up by pinnacles, and lastly by changing its 
 form into that of a spire, using generally smaller i)arts than are found 
 in the church. By these devices they i)reA'ented the s])ire from com- 
 peting in any way with the church. On the contrary, a spire or 
 group of spires gave dignity and height to the whole design, without 
 deducting from any of its dimensions. 
 
 The city of Paris contains an instructive exemplification of these 
 doctrines — the fa9ade of the Cathedral of Notre Dame (exclusive of 
 the upper story of the towers), and the Arc de I'fitoile beiiig two 
 buildings of exactly the same dimensions ; yet any one who is not 
 aware of this fact would certainly estimate the dimensions of the 
 cathedral as at least a third, if not a half, in excess of the other. 
 It may be said that the arch gains in sublimity and grandeur what it 
 loses in apparent dimensions by the simplicity of its parts. The 
 fa9ade of the cathedral, though far from one of the best in France, is 
 by no means deficient in grandeur ; and had it been as free from the 
 trammels of utilitarianism as the arch, might easily have been made 
 as simple and as grand without losing its apparent size. In the other 
 case, by employing in the arch the principles which the Gotliic 
 architects elaborated with such pains, the apparent dimensions might 
 have been increased without detracting from its solidity, and it 
 might thus have been rendered one of the sublimest buildings in 
 the world. 
 
 The interior of St. Peter's at Rome is an example of the neglect of 
 these principles. Its great nave is divided into only four bays, and 
 the proportions and ornaments of these, borrowed generally from 
 external architecture, are so gigantic, that it is difficult to realize 
 the true dimensions of the church, except by the study of the plan ; 
 
Sect. XL 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 31 
 
 and is it not too much to assert, that had a cathedral of these 
 dimensions been built in the true Gothic style, during the IStli or 
 14th centu.y, it would have appeared as if from one-third to one-half 
 larger, and might have been the most sublime, whereas St. Peter's is 
 now only the largest temple ever erecterl. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply exam})les to show to what joerfection 
 the science of proportion was carried by the experimental processes 
 above described during the existence of the true styles of architecture, 
 and how satisfactory the result is, even upon those who are not aware 
 of the cause ; and, on the other hand, how miserable are the failures 
 that result either from the ignorance or neglect of its rules. Enough, 
 it is hoped, has been said to show that not only are the apparent 
 ])roportions of a building very much under the control of an architect 
 independent of its lineal dimensions, but also that he has it in his 
 power so to proportion every part as to give value to all those around 
 it, thus producing that harmony which in architecture, as well as in 
 music or in painting, is the very essence of a true or satisfactory 
 utterance. 
 
 XI. — Carved Ornament. 
 
 Architectural ornament is of two kinds, constriictive and decorative. 
 By the former is meant all those contrivances, such as capitals, brackets, 
 vaulting shafts, and the like, which serve to explain or give expression 
 to the construction ; by the latter, sucli as mouldings, frets, foliage, etc., 
 which give grace and life either to the actual constructive forms, or to 
 the constructive decoration. 
 
 In mere building or engineering, the construction being all in all, 
 it is left to tell its own tale in its own prosaic nakedness ; but in true 
 architecture construction is always subordinate, and as architectural 
 buildings ought always to possess an excess of strength it need not 
 show itself unless desired; but even in an artistic point of view it 
 always is expedient to express it. The vault, for instance, of a 
 Gothic cathedral might just as easily spring from a bracket or a 
 corbel as from a shaft, and in early experiments this was often tried ; 
 but the effect was unsatisfactory, and a vaulting shaft was carried 
 down first to the capital of the pillar, and afterwards to the floor : 
 by this means the eye was satisfied, the thin reed-like shafts being- 
 sufficient to explain that the vault rested on the solid ground, and 
 an apparent propriety and stability were given to the whole. These 
 shafts not being necessary constructively, the artist could make them 
 of any form or size he thought most proper, and consequently, instead 
 of one he generally used three small shafts tied together at various 
 intervals. Afterwards merely a group of graceful mouldings was 
 employed, which satisfied not onlv the exigencies of ornamental 
 
32 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 construction, but became a real and essential decorative feature of the 
 building. 
 
 In like manner it was good architecture to use flying buttresses, 
 even where they were not essential to stability. They explained ex- 
 ternally that the building was vaulted, and that its thrusts were 
 abutted and stability secured. The mistake in their employment was 
 where tliey became so essential to security, that the constructive 
 necessities controlled the artistic propriety of the design, and the 
 architect found himself compelled to employ either a greater number, 
 or buttresses of greater strength than he would have desired had he 
 been able to dispense with them. 
 
 The architecture of the Greeks was so simple, that they required 
 few artifices to explain their construction ; but in their triglyphs, 
 their mutules, the form of their cornices and other devices, they took 
 pains to explain, not only that these parts had originally been of wood 
 but that the temple still retained its wooden roof. Had they ever 
 adopted a vault, tliey would have employed a totally different system 
 of decoration. Having no constructive use whatever, these parts were 
 wholly under tlie control of the architects, and they consequently 
 became the beautiful things we now so much admire. 
 
 With their more complicated style the Romans introduced many 
 new modes of constructive decoration. They were the first to em- 
 ploy vaulting shafts. In all the great halls of their Baths, or of their 
 vaulted Basilicas, they applied a Corinthian pillar as a vaulting shaft 
 to the front of the pier from which the arch appears to spring, though 
 the latter really supported the vault. All the pillars have now been 
 removed, but without at all interfering with the stability of the 
 vaults ; they were mere decorative features to explain the construction, 
 but indispensable for that purpose. The Romans also suggested 
 most of the other decorative inventions of the Middle Ages, but their 
 architecture never reached beyond the stage of transition. It was 
 left for the Gothic architects freely to elaborate this mode of archi- 
 tectural effect, and they carried it to an extent never dreamt of before; 
 but it is to this that their buildings owe at least half the beauty they 
 possess. 
 
 The same system of course applies to dwelling-houses, and to the 
 meanest objects of architectural art. The string-course that marks 
 externally the floor-line of the different stories is as legitimate and 
 indispensable an ornament as a vaulting shaft, and it would also be 
 well that the windows should be grouped so as to indicate the size of 
 the rooms, and at least a plain space left where a partition wall abuts, 
 or better still a pilaster or buttress, or line of some sort, ought to mark 
 externally that feature of internal construction. 
 
 The cornice is as indispensable a termination of the wall as the 
 capital is of a pillar ; and suggests not only an appropriate support for 
 
Sect. XI. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 33 
 
 the roof, but eaves to throw the rain off the wall. The same is true 
 with regard to pediments or caps over windows : they suggest a 
 means of protecting an opening from the wet; and porches over 
 doorways are equally obvious contrivances. Everything, in short, 
 which is actually constructive, or which suggests what was or may be 
 a constructive expedient, is a legitimate object of decoration, and 
 affords the architect unlimited scope for the display of taste and skill, 
 without going out of his way to seek it. 
 
 The difficulty in applying ornaments borrowed from other styles 
 is, that although they all suggest construction, it is not the construc- 
 tion of the buildings to which they are applied. To use Pugin's 
 clever antithesis, "they are constructed ornament, not ornamented 
 construction," and as such can never satisfy the mind. However 
 beautiful in themselves, they are out of place, there is no real or ap- 
 parent use for their being there ; and, in an art so essentially founded 
 on utilitarian principles and common sense as architecture is, any 
 offence against constructive propriety is utterly intolerable. 
 
 The other class, or decorative ornaments, are forms invented for 
 the purpose, either mere lithic forms, or copied from the vegetable 
 kingdom, and applied so as to give elegance or brilliancy to the con- 
 structive decoration just described. 
 
 The first and most obvious of these are mere mouldings, known to 
 architects as Scotias, Cavettos, Ogees, Toruses, Kolls, etc. — curves 
 which, used in various proportions, either horizontally or vertically, 
 produce, when artistically combined, the most pleasing effect. 
 
 In conjunction with these, it is usual to employ a purely conven- 
 tional class of ornament, such as frets, scrolls, or those known as the 
 bead and reel, or egg and dart mouldings ; or in Gothic architecture 
 the billet or dog-tooth or all the thousand and one forms that were 
 invented during the Middle Ages. 
 
 In certain styles of art, vegetable forms are employed even more 
 frequently than those last described. Among these, perhaps the most 
 beautiful and perfect ever invented was that known as the honey- 
 suckle ornament, which the Greeks borrowed from the Assyrians, but 
 made so peculiarly their own. It has all the conventional character 
 of a purely lithic, with all the grace of a vegetable form ; and, as used 
 with the Ionic order, is more nearly perfect than any other known. 
 
 The Romans made a step further towards a more direct imitation 
 of nature in their employment of the acanthus leaf. As applied to a 
 capital, or where the constructive form of the bell beneath it is still 
 distinctly seen, it is not only unobjectionable, but productive of the 
 most pleasing effect. Indeed it is doubtful if anything of its class 
 has yet been invented so entirely satisfactory as the Roman Corinthian 
 order, as found, for instance, in the so-called Temple of Jupiter 
 
 VOL. I. — 3 
 
34 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Stator at Rome. The proportions of the order have never yet been 
 excelled, and there is just that balance between imitation of nature 
 
 and conventionality w^hich is indispen- 
 sable. It is not so pure or perfect as a 
 Grecian order, but as an example of 
 rich decoration applied to an architec- 
 tural order it is unsurpassed. 
 
 With their disregard of precedent 
 and untrammelled wildness of imagina- 
 tion, the Gothic architects tried every 
 form of vegetable ornament, from the 
 purest conventionalism, where the vege- 
 table form can hardly be recognized, to 
 the most literal imitation of nature. 
 
 While confining himself to purely 
 lithic forms, an architect can never sin 
 against good taste, though he may miss 
 many beauties ; with the latter class of 
 ornament he is always in danger of 
 offence, and few have ever employed it 
 without falling into mistakes. In the 
 first place, because it is impossible to 
 imitate jjerfectly foliage and flowers in 
 stone; and secondly, because if the pliant forms of plants are made 
 to support, or do the work of, hard stone, the incongruity is imme- 
 diately apparent, and the more perfect the imitation, the greater the 
 mistake. 
 
 In the instance (Woodcut No. 5), any amount of literal imitation 
 that the sculptor thought proper may be indulged in, because in it the 
 stone construction is so apparent everywhere, that the vegetable form 
 is the merest supplement conceivable ; or in a hollow moulding round 
 
 a doorway, a vine may be sculptured 
 with any degree of imitation that can 
 be employed ; for as it has no more 
 work to do than the object represented 
 would have in the same situation, it is 
 a mere adjunct, a statue of a plant 
 placed in a niche, as we might use the 
 statue of a man : but if, in the wood- 
 cut (No. 6) imitations of real leaves 
 were used to support the upper moulding, the effect would not be so 
 satisfactory ; indeed it is questionable if in both these last examples a 
 little more conventionality would not be desirable. 
 
 In too many instances, even in the best Gothic architecture, the 
 construction is so overlaid by imitative vegetable forms as to be con- 
 
>ECT. XII. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 35 
 
 cealed, and the work is apparently done by leaves or twigs, but in tlie 
 earliest and purest style this is almost never the case. As a general 
 rule it may be asserted that the best lithic ornaments are those which 
 approach nearest to the grace and pliancy of plants, and that the best 
 vegetable forms are those which most resemble the regularity and 
 symmetry of such as are purely conventional. 
 
 Although the Greeks in one or two instances employed human 
 figures to support entablatures or beams, the good taste of such an 
 arrangement is more than questionable. They borrowed it, with 
 the Ionic order, from the Assyrians, with whom the employment of 
 caryatides and animal forins was the rule, not the exception, in contra- 
 distinction from the Egyptians, who never adopted this practice. ^ 
 Even the Romans avoided this mistake, and the Gothic architects also 
 as a general rule kept quite clear of it. Whenever they did employ 
 ornamented figures for architectural purposes, they were either mon- 
 sters, as in gargoyles or griffins; or sometimes, in a spirit of cari- 
 cature, they used dwarfs or deformities of various sorts; but their 
 sculpture, properly so called, was always provided with a niche or 
 pedestal, where it might have been placed after the building was 
 complete, or from which it might be removed without interfering 
 with the architecture. 
 
 XII. — Decorative Color. 
 
 Color is one of the most invaluable elements placed at the com- 
 mand of the architect to enable him to give grace or finish to his 
 designs. From its nature it is of course only an accessory, or mere 
 ornament ; but there is nothing that enables him to express his mean- 
 ing so cheaply and easily, and at the same time with such brilliancy 
 and effect. For an interior it is absolutely indispensable ; and no 
 apartment can be said to be complete till it has received its finishing 
 touches from the hand of the painter. Whether exteriors ought or 
 ought not to be similarly treated admits of more doubt. 
 
 Internally the architect has complete command of the situation ; 
 he can suit his design to his colors, or his colors to his design. 
 Walls, roof, floor, furniture, are all at his disposal, and he can shut 
 out any discordant element that would interfere with the desired 
 effect. 
 
 Externally this is seldom, if ever the case. A facade that looks 
 brilliant and well in noonday sun may be utterly out of harmony with 
 a cold gray sky, or with the warm glow of a setting sun full upon it ; 
 
 ^ The Isis-headed or Typhonian capi- j this rule: they are affixes, and never ap- 
 tals cannot be quoted as an exception to | pear to be doing the work of the pillar. 
 
36 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. Part l. 
 
 and unless all other buildings and objects are toned into accordance 
 with it, the effect can seldom be harmonious. 
 
 There can be now no reasonable doubt that the Greeks painted 
 their temples both internally and externally, but as a general rule 
 they always placed them on heights where they could only be seen 
 relieved against the sky ; and they could depend on an atmosphere of 
 almost uniform, unvarying brightness. Had their temples been placed 
 in groves or valleys, they would probably have given up the attempt, 
 and certainly never would have ventured upon it in such a climate 
 as ours. 
 
 Except in such countries as Egypt and Greece, it must always be 
 a mistake to apply color by merely painting the surface of the build- 
 ing externally ; but there are other modes of effecting this which are 
 perfectly legitimate. Colored ornaments may be inlaid in the stone 
 of the wall without interfering with the construction, and so placed may 
 be made more effective and brilliant than the same ornaments would be 
 if carved on relief. Again, string-courses and mouldings of various 
 colored stones or marbles might frequently be employed with better 
 effect than can be obtained in some situations by depth of cutting and 
 boldness of projection. Such a mode of decoration can, however, only 
 be partial ; if the whole building is to be colored, it must be done 
 constructively, by using different colored materials, or the effect will 
 never be satisfactory. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the Italians carried this mode of decoration to 
 a considerable extent ; but in almost all instances it is so evidently 
 a veneer overlying the construction that it fails to please ; and a 
 decoration which internally, where construction is of less importance, 
 would excite general admiration, is without meaning on the outside 
 of the same wall. 
 
 At the same time it is easy to conceive how polychromy might be 
 carried out successfully, if, for instance, a building were erected, the 
 pillars of which were of red granite or porphyry, the cornices or string- 
 courses of dark colored marbles, and the plain surfaces of lighter 
 kinds, or even of stone. A design so carried out would be infinitely 
 more effective than a similar one executed in tnaterials of only one 
 color, and depending for relief only on varying shadows of daylight. 
 There is, in fact, just the same difficulty in lighting monochromatic 
 buildings as there is with sculpture. A colored painting, on the 
 other hand, requires merely sufficient light, and with that expresses 
 its form and meaning far more clearly and easily than when only one 
 color is employed. The task, however, is difficult ; so much so, 
 indeed, that there is hardly one single instance known of a complete 
 polychromatic design being successfully carried out anywhere, though 
 often attempted. The other mode of merely inlaying the ornaments 
 in color instead of relieving them by carving as seldom fails. 
 
Sect. XIII. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 37 
 
 Notwithstanding this, an architect should never neglect to select 
 the color of his materials with reference to the situation in which his 
 building is to stand. A red brick building may look remarkably well 
 if nestling among green trees, while the same building would be 
 hideous if situated on a sandy plain, and relieved only by the warm 
 glow of a setting sun. A building of white stone or white brick is 
 as inappropriate among the trees, and may look bright and cheerful 
 in the other situation. 
 
 In towns colors might be used of very great brilliancy, and if 
 done constructively, there could be no greater improvement to our 
 architecture ; but its application is so difficult that no satisfactory 
 result has yet been attained, and it may be questioned whether it will 
 be ever successfully accomplished. 
 
 With regard to interiors there can be no doubt. All architects in 
 all countries of the world resorted to this expedient to harmonize and 
 give brilliancy to their compositions, and have depended on it for 
 their most important effects. 
 
 The Gothic architects carried this a step further by the introduc- 
 tion of painted glass, which was a mode of coloring more brilliant 
 than had been ever before attempted. This went beyond all previous 
 efforts, inasmuch as it colored not only the objects themselves, but 
 also the light in which they were seen. So enamored were they of 
 its beauties, that they sacrificed much of the constructive propriety 
 of their buildings to admit of its display, and paid more attention 
 to it than to any other part of their designs. Perhaps they carried 
 this predilection a little beyond the limits of good taste ; but color 
 is in itself so exquisite a thing, and so admirable a vehicle for the 
 expression of architectural as well as of aesthetic beauty, that it is 
 difficult to find fault even with the abuse of what is in its essence 
 so legitimate and so beautiful. 
 
 XIII. — Sculpture and Paintixg. 
 
 Carved ornament and decorative color come within the especial 
 province of the architect. In some styles, such as the Saracenic, and in 
 many buildings, they form the Alpha and the Omega of the decoration. 
 But, as mentioned above, one of the great merits of architecture as an 
 art is that it affords room for the display of the works of the sculptor 
 and the painter, not only in such a manner as not to interfere with its 
 own decorative construction, but so as to add meaning and value to 
 the whole. No Greek temple and no Gothic cathedral can indeed be 
 said to be perfect or complete without these adjuncts ; and one of the 
 principal objects of the architects in Greece or in the Middle Ages was 
 to design places and devise means by which these could be displayed 
 
38 
 
 HISTORY OF AECHITECTUllE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 to advantage, without interfering either with the construction or con- 
 structive decoration. This was perhaps effected more successfully in 
 the Parthenon than in any other building we are acquainted with. 
 The pediments at either end were noble frames for the exhibition of 
 sculpture, and the metopes were equally appropriate for the purpose ; 
 while the plain walls of the cella were admirably adapted for paintings 
 below and for a sculptured frieze above. 
 
 The deeply recessed portals of our Gothic cathedrals, their galleries, 
 their niches and pinnacles, were equally appropriate for the exuberant 
 display of this class of sculpture in a less refined or fastidious age ; 
 while the muUion-framed windows were admirably adapted for the 
 exhibition of a mode of colored decoration, somewhat barbarous, it 
 must be confessed, but wonderfully brilliant. 
 
 The system was carried further in India than in any other country 
 except perhaps Egypt. Probably no Hindu temple was ever erected 
 without being at least intended to be adorned with Phonetic sculpture, 
 and many of them are covered with it from the j)linth to the eaves, in 
 strong contrast with the Mahomedan buildings that stand side by 
 side with them, and whicli are wholly devoid of any attempt at this 
 kind of decoration. The taste of tliese Hindu sculptures may be 
 questionable, but such as they are they are so used as never to inter- 
 fere with the architectural effect of the building on which they 
 are employed, but always so as to aid the design irrespective of the 
 story they have to tell. There is probably no instance in which 
 their removal or their absence would not be felt as an injury from an 
 architectural point of view. 
 
 It is difficult now to ascertain whether Phonetic painting was used 
 to the same extent as sculpture in ancient times. From its nature it is 
 infinitely more perishable, and a bucket of whitewash will in half an 
 hour obliterate the work of years, and, strange to say, there are ages, 
 both in the East and the West, where men's minds are so attuned that 
 they consider whitewash a more fitting decoration than colored 
 paintings of the most elaborate and artistic character. While this is 
 so we need hardly wonder that our means of forming a distinct opinion ♦ 
 on this subject are somewhat limited. 
 
 Be this as it may, it is still one of the special privileges 
 of architecture that she is able to attract to herself these Phonetic , 
 arts, and one of the greatest merits a building can possess is its 
 affording appropriate places for their display without interfering in 
 any way with the special department of the architect. But it is 
 always necessary to distinguish carefully between what belongs to the 
 province of each art separately. The work of the architect ought to 
 be complete and perfect without either sculpture or ])ainting, and 
 must be judged as if they were absent ; but he will not have been 
 entirely successful unless he has provided the means by which the 
 
Sect. XIV. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 39 
 
 value of liis design may be doubled by their introduction. It is only 
 by the combination of the Phonetic utterance with the Technic and 
 Esthetic elements that a perfect work of art has been produced, and 
 that architecture can be said to have reached the highest point of 
 perfection to which it can aspire. 
 
 Xiy . — Uniformity. 
 
 Considerable confusion has been introduced into the reasoning on 
 the subject of architectural Uniformity from the assumption that the 
 two great schools of art — the classical and the mediaeval — adopted 
 contrary conclusions regarding it, Formality being supposed to be the 
 characteristic of the former. Irregularity of the latter. The Greeks, of 
 course, wlien building a temple or monument, which was only one room 
 or one object, made it exactly symmetrical in all its parts ; but so did 
 tlie Gothic architects when building a church or chapel or hall, or any 
 single object: in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, a line drawm 
 down the centre divides it into two equal and symmetrical halves ; and 
 when an exception to this occurs, there is some obvious motive for it. 
 
 But where several buildings of different classes were to be grouped, 
 or even two temples placed near one another, the Greeks took the 
 utmost care to prevent their appearing parts of one design, or one 
 whole ; and when, a sin the instance of the Erechtheium,i three tem- 
 ples are placed together, no Gothic architect ever took such pains ta 
 secure for each its separate individuality as the Grecian architect 
 did. What has given rise to the error is, that all the smaller objects 
 of Grecian art have perished, leaving us only the great monuments- 
 without their adjuncts. 
 
 If we can conceive the task assigned to a Grecian architect of 
 erecting a building like one of our collegiate institutions, he would 
 without doubt have distinguished the chapel from the refectory, and 
 that from the library, and he would have made them of a totally dif- 
 ferent design from the principal's lodge, or the chambers of the fel- 
 lows and students ; but it is more than probable that, while carefully 
 distinguishing each part from the other, he would have arranged them 
 with some regard to symmetry, placing the chapel in the centre, the 
 library and refectory as pendants to one another, though dissimilar, 
 and the residences so as to connect and fill up the whole design. The 
 truth seems to be that no great amount of dignity can be obtained 
 without a certain degree of regularity ; and there can be little doubt 
 that artistically it is better that mere utilitarian convenience should 
 give way to the exigencies of architectural design than that the latter 
 
 See woodcuts further on. 
 
40 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Taut I. 
 
 should be constrained to yield to the more prosaic requirements of the 
 building. The chance-medley manner in which many such buildings 
 were grouped together in the Middle Ages tells the story as clearly, 
 and may be productive of great picturesqueness of effect, but not of 
 the same nobility as might have been obtained by more regularity. 
 The highest class of design will never be reached by these means. 
 
 It is not difficult to discover, at least to a certain extent, that the 
 cause of this is that no number of separate units will suffice to make 
 one whole. A number of jjebbles will not make a great stone, nor a 
 number of rose-bushes an oak; nor will any number of dwarfs make 
 up a giant. To obtain a great whole there must be unity, to which 
 all the parts must contribute, or they will remain separate particles. 
 The effect of unity is materially heightened when to it is added uni- 
 formity ; the mind then instantly and easily grasps the whole, knows 
 it to be one, and recognizes the ruling idea that governed and moulded 
 the whole together. It seems only to be by the introduction of uni- 
 formity that sufficient simplicity for greatness can be obtained, and 
 the evidence of design made so manifest that the mind is satisfied that 
 the building is no mere accumulation of separate objects, -but the pro- 
 duction of a master-mind. 
 
 In a palace irregularity seems unpardonable. The architect has 
 there practically unlimited command of funds, and of his arrangements, 
 and he can easily design his suites of rooms so as to produce any 
 amount of uniformity he may require : the different heights of the 
 different stories, and the amount of ornament on them, with the 
 employment of wings for offices, is sufficient to mark the various pur- 
 poses of the various parts ; but where the system is carried so far in 
 great public buildings, that great halls, libraries, committee-rooms, and 
 subordinate residences are all squeezed into one perfectly uniform de- 
 sign, the building loses all meaning, and fails from the opposite error. 
 
 The rule seems to be, that every building, or every part of one, 
 ought most distinctly and clearly to express not only its constructive 
 exigencies, but also the uses for which it is destined ; on the other hand, 
 that mere utility, in all instances where architectural effect is aimed 
 at, ought to give way to artistic requirements ; and that an architect is 
 consequently justified, in so far as his means will admit, in producing 
 that amount of uniformity and regularity which seems indispensable 
 for anything like grandeur of effect. In villas and small buildings 
 all we look for is picturesqueness and meaning combined with ele- 
 gance ; but in larger and more monumental erections we expect some- 
 thing more ; and this can hardly be obtained without the introduction 
 of some new element which shall tell, in the first place, that artistic 
 excellence was the ruling idea of the design, and in the next should 
 give it that perfect balance and symmetry which seem to be as in- 
 herent a quality of the higher works of nature as of true art. 
 
Sect. XV. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 41 
 
 XV. — Imitation of Nature. 
 
 The subject of tlie imitation of Nature is one intimately connected 
 with those mooted in the preceding paragraphs, and regarding which 
 considerable misunderstanding seems to prevail. It is generally as- 
 sumed that in architecture we ought to copy natural objects as we see 
 them, whereas the truth seems to be that we ought always to copy 
 the processes, never the forms of Nature. The error aj^parently has 
 arisen from confounding together the imitative arts of painting and 
 sculpture with the constructive art of architecture. The former have 
 no other mode of expression than by copying, no more or less literally, 
 the forms of Nature ; the latter, as explained above, depends wholly 
 on a different class of elements for its effect ; but at the same time no 
 architect can either study too intently, or copy too closely, the meth- 
 ods and processes by wliich Nature accomplishes her ends ; and tHe 
 most perfect building will be that in which these have been most 
 closely and literally followed. 
 
 To take one prominent instance: So far as we can judge, the 
 human body is the most perfect of Nature's works ; in it the ground- 
 work or skeleton is never seen, and though it can hardly be said to be 
 anywhere concealed, it is only displayed at the joints or more promi- 
 nent points of support, where the action of the frame would be other- 
 wise unintelligible. The muscles are disposed not only where they 
 are most useful, but so as to form groups gracefully rounded in out- 
 line. The softness and elegance of these are further aided by the 
 deposition of adipose matter, and the whole is covered with a skin 
 which with its beautiful texture conceals the more utilitarian con- 
 struction of the internal parts. In the trunk of the body the viscera 
 are disposed wholly without symmetry or reference to beauty of any 
 sort — the heart on one side, the liver on the other, and the other parts 
 exactly in those positions and in those forms by which they may most 
 directly and easily perform the essential functions for which they are 
 designed. But the whole is concealed in a perfectly symmetrical 
 sheath of the most exquisitely beautiful outline. It may be safely 
 asserted that a building is beautiful and perfect exactly in the ratio in 
 which the same amount of concealment and the same amount of dis- 
 play of construction is preserved, where the same symmetry is shown 
 as betweeen the right and left sides of the human body — the same 
 difference as between the legs and arms, where the parts are applied 
 to different purposes, and where the same amount of ornament is 
 added, to adorn without interfering with what is useful. In short, 
 there is no principle involved in the structure of man which may not 
 be taken as the most absolute standard of excellence in architecture. 
 
 It is in Nature's highest works that we find the symmetry of 
 
42 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 proportion most prominent. When we descend to the lower types 
 of animals we lose it to a great extent, and among trees and vege- 
 tables generally lind it only in a far less degree, and sometimes miss 
 it altogether. In the mineral kingdom, among rocks and stones, it is 
 altogether absent. So universal is this principle in Nature that we 
 may safely apply it to our criticism on art, and say that a building 
 is perfect as a whole in proportion to its motived regularity, and 
 departs from the highest type in the ratio in which symmetrical 
 arrangement is neglected. It may, however, be incorrect to say 
 that an oak tree is a less perfect work of creation than a human 
 being, but it is certain tliat it is lower in the scale of created beings. 
 So it may be said that a picturesque group of Gothic buildings may 
 be as perfect as the stately regularity of an Egyj)tian or chissic temple; 
 but if it is so, it is equally certain that it belongs to a lower and 
 inferior class of design. 
 
 This analogy, however, we may leave for the p^-esent. The one 
 point which it is indispensable to insist on here is, that man can pro- 
 gress or tend towards success only by following the principles and 
 copying, so far as he can understand them, the processes which Nature 
 employs in her works ; but he can never succeed in anytliing by copy- 
 ing forms without reference to ])rinciples. If we could find Nature 
 making trees like stones, or animals like trees, or birds like fishes, or 
 fishes like mammalia, or using any parts taken from one kingdom for 
 purposes belonging to another, it would then be perfectly legitimate 
 for us to use man's stature as the modulus for a Doric, or a woman's 
 as that of a-n Ionic column — to build cathedrals like groves, and 
 make windows like leaves, or to estimate their beauty by their resem- 
 blance to such objects; but all such comparisons proceed on an entire 
 mistake of what imitation of Nature really means. 
 
 It is the merest and most absolute negation of reason to apply to 
 one purpose things that were designed for another, or to imitate them 
 when they have no appropriateness ; but it is our highest privilege to 
 understand the processes of Nature. To apply these to our own 
 w\ants and purposes is the noblest use of human intellect and the 
 perfection of human wisdom. 
 
 So instinctively, but so literally, has this correct process of imitating 
 Nature been followed in all true styles of architecture, that we can 
 always reason regarding them as we do with reference to natural 
 objects. Thus, if an architect finds in any quarter of the globe a 
 Doric or Corinthian capital with a few traces of a foundation, he can, 
 at a glance, tell the age of the temple or building to which it belonged. 
 He knows who the people were who erected it, to what purpose it was 
 dedicated, and proceeds at once to restore its porticos, and without 
 much uncertainty can reproduce the whole fabric. Or if he finds a few 
 Gothic bases in situ, with a few mouldings or frusta of columns, by the 
 
Sect. XVI. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 43 
 
 same process he traces the age, the size, and the purposes of the building 
 before him. A Cuvier or an Owen can restore the form and predicate 
 the habits of an extinct animal from a few fragments of bone, or even 
 from a print of a foot. In the same manner an architect may, from a 
 few fragments of a building, if of a true style of architecture, restore 
 the whole of its pristine form, and with almost the same amount of 
 certainty. This arises wholly because the architects of former days had 
 correct ideas of what was meant by imitation of Nature. They added 
 nothing to their buildings which was not essential ; there was no detail 
 which had not its use, and no ornament which was not an elaboration 
 or heightening of some essential part, and hence it is that a true building 
 is as like to a work of Nature as any production of man's hands can 
 be to the creations of his Maker. 
 
 XVI. — AssociATiois-. 
 
 There is one property inherent in the productions of architectural 
 art, which, while it frequently lends to them half their charm, at the 
 same time tends more than anything else to warp and distort our critical 
 judgments regarding them. We seldom can look at a building of any 
 age without associating with it such historical memories as may cling 
 to its walls ; and our predilection for any peculiar style of architecture 
 are more often due to educational or devotional associations than to 
 purely artistic judgments. A man must be singularly ignorant or 
 strangely passionless who can stand among the fallen columns of a 
 Grecian temple, or wander through the corridors of a Roman amphi- 
 theatre, or the aisles of a ruined Gothic abbey, and not feel his heart 
 stirred by emotions of a totally different class from those suggested by 
 •the beauty of the mouldings or the artistic arrangement of the building 
 he is contemplating. 
 
 The enthusiasm which bursts forth in the 15th century for the 
 classical style of art, and then proved fatal to the Gothic, was not so 
 much an architectural as a literary movement. It arose from the 
 re-discovery — if it may be so called — of the poems ot^ Homer and 
 Virgil, of the histories of Thucydides and Tacitus, of the philosophy of 
 Aristotle and the eloquence of Cicero. It was a vast reaction against 
 the darkness and literary degradation of the Middle Ages, and carried 
 the educated classes of Europe with it for the next three centuries. 
 So long as classical literature only was taught in our schools, and 
 classical models followed in our literature, classical architecture could 
 alone be tolerated in our buildings, and this generally without the 
 least reference either to its own peculiar beauties, or its appropriateness 
 for the purposes to which it was applied. 
 
 A second reaction has now taken place against this state of affairs. 
 
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 The revival of the rites and ceremonies of the mediaeval Church, our 
 reverent love of our own national antiquities, and our admiration for 
 the rude but vigorous manhood of the Middle Ages, — all have com- 
 bined to repress the classical element both in our literature and our 
 art, and to exalt in their place Gothic feelings and Gothic art, to an 
 extent which cannot be justified on any grounds of reasonable 
 criticism. 
 
 Unless the art-critic can free himself from the influence of these 
 adventitious associations, his judgments lose half their value ; but, on 
 the other hand, to the historian of art they are of the utmost importance. 
 It is because architecture so fully and so clearly expresses the feelings 
 of the people who practised it that it becomes frequently a better 
 vehicle of history than the written page ; and it is these very asso- 
 ciations that give life and meaning to blocks of stone and mounds of 
 brick, and bring so vividly before our eyes the feelings and the 
 aspirations of the long-forgotten past. 
 
 The importance of association in giving value to the objects of 
 architectural art can hardly be overrated either by the student or 
 historian. What has to be guarded against is that unreasoning enthu- 
 siasm which mistakes the shadow for tlie reality, and would force us 
 to admire a rude piece of clumsy barbarism erected yesterday, and to 
 which no history consequently attaches, because something like it was 
 done in some long past age. Its reality, its antiquity, and its weather- 
 stains may render its prototype extremely interesting even if not 
 beautiful; while its copy is only an antiquarian toy, as ugly as it is 
 absurd. 
 
 XVII. — New Style. 
 
 There is still one other point of view from which it is necessary to 
 look at this question of architectural design before any just conclusion 
 can be arrived at regarding it. It is in fact necessary to answer two 
 other questions, nearly as often asked as those proposed at the beginning 
 of Section III. " Can any one invent a new style?" — " Can we ever 
 again have a^ew and original style of architecture ? " Reasoning from 
 experience alone, it is easy to answer these questions. No individual 
 has, so far as we know, ever invented a new style in any part of the 
 world. No one can even be named who during the prevalence of a 
 true style of art materially advanced its progress, or by his individual 
 exertion did much to help it forward ; and we may safely answer, that 
 as this has never happened before, it is hardly probable that it will 
 ever occur now. 
 
 If this one question must be answered in the negative, the other 
 may as certainly be answered in the afiirmative, inasmuch as no nation 
 in any age or in any part of the globe has failed to invent for itself a 
 
Sect. XVII. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 45 
 
 true and appropriate style of architecture whenever it chose to set 
 about it in the right way, and there certainly can be no great difficulty 
 in our doing now what has been so often done before, if we only set 
 to work in a proper spirit, and are prepared to follow the same pro- 
 cess which others have followed to obtain this result. 
 
 What that process is, may perhaps be best explained by such an 
 example as that of ship-building, before alluded to, which, though 
 totally distinct, is still so nearly allied to architecture, as to make a 
 comparison between the two easy and intelligible. 
 
 Let us, for instance, take a series of ships, beginning with those in 
 which William the Conqueror invaded our shores, or the fleet with which 
 Edward III. crossed over to France. Next take the vessels which trans- 
 ported Henry VIII. to his meeting with Francis I., and then pass on 
 to the time of the Spanish Armada and the sea fights of Van Tromp 
 and De Kuyter, and on to the times of William III., and then through 
 the familiar examples till we come to such ships as the " Wellington " 
 and " Marlborough " of yesterday, and the " Warrior " or " Minotaur" 
 of to-day. In all this long list of examples we have a gradual, steady, 
 forward progress without one check or break. Each century is in 
 advance of the one before it, and the result is as near perfection as 
 we can well conceive. 
 
 But if we ask who effected these improvements, or w^ho invented any 
 part of the last-named wonderful fabrics, we must search deep indeed 
 into the annals of the navy to find out. But no one has inquired, and 
 no one cares to know, for the simple reason that, like architecture 
 in the Middle Ages, it is a true and living art, and the improve- 
 ments were not effected by individuals, but by all classes — owners, 
 sailors, shipwrights, and men of science, all working together 
 through centuries, each lending the aid of his experience or of his 
 reasoning. 
 
 If we place alongside of this series of ships a list of churches or 
 cathedrals, commencing with Charlemagne and ending with Charles V., 
 we find the same steady and assured progress obtained by the same 
 identical means. In this instance, princes, priests, masons, and mathe- 
 maticians, all worked steadily together for the whole period, striving 
 to obtain a well-defined result. 
 
 In the ship the most suitable materials only are employed in every 
 part, and neither below nor aloft is there one single timber nor spar 
 nor one rope which is superfluous. Nor in the cathedral was any 
 material ever used that was not believed to be the most suitable for its 
 purpose ; nor any form of construction adopted which did not seem the 
 best to those who employed it ; nor any detail added which did not 
 appear necessary for the purpose it was designed to express ; the result 
 being, that we can look on and contemy^late both with the same un- 
 mitigated satisfaction. 
 
46 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCIIITECTUllE. 
 
 Paut 1. 
 
 The one point where this comparison seems to halt is, that ship- 
 building never became a purely fine art, which architecture really is. 
 The difference is only one of aim, which it would be as easy to apply 
 to tlie one art, as it has been to the other. Had architecture never 
 progressed beyond its one strictly legitimate object of house-building, 
 it never would liave been more near a fine art than merchant ship- 
 building, and pahaces would only have been magnified dwelling-places. 
 Castles and men-of-war advanced both one stage further towards a fine 
 art. Size and power were impressed on both, and in this respect they 
 stand precisely equal to one another. Here ship-building halted, and 
 has not progressed beyond, while architecture has been invested with 
 a higher aim. In all ages men have sought to erect houses more dig- 
 nified and stately than those designed for their personal use. They 
 attem2:)ted the erection of dwelling-places for their Gods, or temples 
 worthy of the worship of Supreme Beings ; and it was only when this 
 strictly useful art threw aside all sliadow of utilitarianism, and 
 launched boldly forth in search of the beautiful and the sublime, that 
 it became a truly fine art, and took the elevated position which it now 
 holds above all other useful arts. It would have been easy to supply 
 the same motive to ship-building. If we could imagine any nation 
 ever to construct ships of God, or to worship on the bosom of the 
 ocean, ships might easily be made such objects of beauty that the 
 cathedral could hardly compete with them. 
 
 It is not, however, only in architecture or in ship-building that this 
 process is essential, for the progress of every art and every science 
 that is worthy of the name is owing to the same simple process of the 
 aggregation of experiences ; whether we look to metallurgy or me- 
 chanics, cotton-spinning or coining, their perfection is due to the 
 same cause. So also the sciences — astronomy, chemistry, geology — 
 are all cultivated by the same means. When the art or science is 
 new, great men stand forth and make great strides ; but when once 
 it reaches maturity, and becomes the property of the nation, the indi- 
 vidual is lost in the mass, and a thousand inferior brains follow out 
 steadily and surely the path which the one great intellect has pointed 
 out, but which no single mind, however great, could carry to its 
 legitimate conclusion. 
 
 So far as any reason or experience yet known can be applied to 
 this subject, it seems clear that no art or science ever has been or can 
 be now advanced by going backwards, and copying earlier forms, or 
 those applicable to other times or other" circumstances ; and that 
 progress toward perfection can only be obtained by the united efforts 
 of many steadily pursuing a well-defined object. Whenever this is 
 done, success appears to be inevitable, or at all events every age is 
 perfectly satisfied with its own productions. Where forward progress 
 is the law, it is certain that the next age will surpass the present ; 
 
Sect. XVllI. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 47 
 
 but the living cannot conceive anything more perfect than what they 
 are doing, or they would apply it. Everything in any true art is 
 thoroughly up to the highest standard of its period, and instead of the 
 dissatisfied uncertainty in which we are wandering in all matters 
 concerning architecture, we should be exulting in our own produc- 
 tions, and proud in leaving to our posterity the progress we have 
 made, feeling assured that we have paved the way for them to advance 
 to a still higher standard of perfection. 
 
 As soon as the public are aware of the importance of this rule, and 
 of its applicability to architecture, a new style must be the inevitable 
 result ; and if our civilization is what we believe it to be, that style 
 will not only be perfectly suited to all our wants and desires, but also 
 more beautiful and more perfect than any that has ever existed before. 
 
 XYIII. — Prospects. 
 
 If we turn from these speculations to ask what prospect there is of 
 the public appreciating correctly this view of the matter, or setting 
 earnestly about carrying it out, the answer can hardly be deemed 
 satisfactory. 
 
 The clergy, not only in England but on the continent of Europe, 
 have arrived at the conclusion that the Gothic style is the one most 
 suited for church-building purposes ; and this has now become so 
 established a point that no deviation from Gothic models is tolerated. 
 Any architect who would attempt originality in plan, or introduce 
 even a new detail or moulding, is immediately set down as ignorant 
 of his profession, and the experiment is not repeated. Every year 
 that we continue in this path, and that our knowledge of the style 
 becomes greater, the heavier will our chains become, and anything 
 like originality or progress in this important branch of architecture 
 more absolutely impossible. 
 
 The study of the classical languages, to which so much importance 
 is attached in our public schools, and in our own and most foreign 
 universities, tended at one time in another way to draw attention 
 from the formation of a true style of architecture by fixing it exclu- 
 sively on Greek and Roman models. The Renaissance in the fifteenth 
 century, as pointed out above, arose much more from admiration of 
 classic literature than from any feeling for the remains of buildings 
 which had been neglected for centuries, and were far surpassed by 
 those which succeeded them. The same feelings perpetuated by early • 
 association are the great cause of the hold that classic art still has on 
 the educated classes in Europe. 
 
 In clubs and mixed societies the style usually adopted is the 
 Italian, out of which progress may come if common sense be allowed 
 
48 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 to prevail over classical precedents, or the contrary if the reactionary 
 element be allowed to obtain the preference. 
 
 Below these there is another class of men who have but little sym- 
 pathy with Greece or Kome, and still less with mediaBval monasticism 
 or feudalism, but who in their own strong sense seem inclined to take a 
 more reasonable view of the matter, and these men are now erecting 
 at Manchester and in other cities of the North a series of warehouses 
 and other buildings designed wholly with reference to their uses, and 
 ornamented only in their construction, and which consequently are — 
 as far as their utilitarian purposes will allow — as satisfactory as any- 
 thing of former days. Eastward of Temple Bar there are many 
 buildings arising on the same system, and with a little more experi- 
 ence they promise to be as satisfactory as those in the North. 
 
 In civil engineering, the lowest and most prosaic branch of archi- 
 tectural art, our progress has been brilliant and rapid. Of this no 
 better example can be given than the four great bridges erected over 
 the Thames. The old bridges of Westminster and Blackfriars, and 
 those of Waterloo and London, were erected at nearly equal intervals 
 during one century, and the steady progress which they exhibit is 
 greater than that of almost any similar branch of art during any 
 equal period of time. 
 
 In this department our progress is so undeniable that we saw old 
 London Bridge removed without regret, though it was a work of the 
 same age and of the same men who built all our greatest and best 
 cathedrals, and in its own line was quite as perfect and as beautiful 
 as they. But it had outlived its age, and we knew we could replace 
 it by a better — so its destruction was inevitable; and if we had 
 made the same progress in the higher that we have in the lower 
 branches of the building art, we should see a Gothic cathedral pulled 
 down with the same indifference, content to know that we could 
 easily replace it by one far nobler and more worthy of our age and 
 intelligence. ■ No architect during the Middle Ages ever hesitated to 
 pull down any part of a cathedral that was old and going to decay, 
 and to replace it with something in the style of the day, however 
 incongruous that might be ; and if we were progressing as they were, 
 we should have as little compunction in following the same course. 
 
 In the confusion of ideals and of styles which now prevails, it is 
 satisfactory to be able to contemplate, in the Crystal Palace at Syden- 
 ham, at least one great building carried out wholly on the principles 
 of Gothic or of any true style of art. No material is used in it which 
 'is not the best for its purpose, no constructive expedient employed 
 which was not absolutely essential, and it depends wholly for its effect 
 on the arrangement of its parts and the display of its construction. So 
 essentially is its principle the same which, as we have seen, animated 
 Gothic architecture, that we hardly know even now how much of the 
 
Sect. XVIII. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 49 
 
 design belongs to Sir Joseph Paxton, how much to the contractors, or 
 how much to the subordinate officers employed by the Company. Here 
 as in a cathedral, every man was set to work in that department which 
 it was supposed he was best qualified to superintend. There was room 
 for every art and for every intellect, and clashing and interference 
 were impossible. This, however, was only the second of the series. 
 The third was entrusted to an Engineer officer, who had no architectural 
 education, and Avho had never thought twice on the subject before he 
 was set to carry out his very inchoate design for the 1862 Exhibition. 
 He failed of course, for Architecture is not a Phonetic art depending on 
 inspiration but a technic art based on experience. As re-erected on 
 Muswell Hill the building was immensely improved, and far superior 
 to its predecessor, but was burnt down before the public had time to 
 realize its form. As being rebuilt, it probably will be still one step 
 further in advance, and if the series were carried to a hundred, with 
 more leisure and a higher aim, we might perhaps learn to despise 
 many things we now so servilely copy, and might create a style sur- 
 passing anything that ever went before. We have certainly more 
 wealth, more constructive skill, and more knowledge than our fore- 
 fathers ; and, living in the same climate and being of the same race, 
 there seems no insuperable difficulty in our doing at least as much 
 if not more than they accomplished. 
 
 Art, however, will not be regenerated by buildings so ephemeral 
 as Crystal Palaces or so prosaic as Manchester warehouses, nor by 
 anything so essentially utilitarian as the works of our engineers. The 
 one hope is that having commenced at the bottom, the true system 
 may extend upwards, and come at last to be applied to our palaces and 
 even to churches, and that the whole nation may lend its aid to work 
 out the great problem. So long, however, as CQclesiastical architecture 
 is no longer practised as a progressive art, but remains in the hands 
 of the archaeologist, the onward path is obstructed. In all ages it was 
 Temple or Church building — it was the desire to erect a dwelling 
 worthy of the Deity, or a place appropriate to high and solemn 
 worship, that filled architects with that high aim that enabled them 
 to elevate their art so high in the scale above its sister Technic arts. 
 Till Church building is again taken from those who only copy, and 
 put into the hands of those who think, it will be difficult to furnish 
 the profession with aspirations high enough to enable them to restore 
 their art to its pristine lofty position. The prospect of this being done 
 seems distant, but whenever this and the general significance of the 
 problem is rightly appreciated by the public, the result seems inevi- 
 table ; and with the means of diffusing knowledge which we now 
 possess, we may perhaps be permitted to fancy that the dawn is at 
 hand, and that after our long wanderings in the dark, daylight may 
 again enlighten our path and gladden our hearts with the vision 
 
 VOL. I. — 4 
 
50 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 of brighter and better things in art than a false svstem has hitherto 
 enabled us to attain. 
 
 These remarks might easily be extended to any desired length, and 
 in fact this part of the work ought to be enlarged till it equalled the 
 narrative part, if it had any pretension to be a complete treatise on 
 the Art of Architecture. In that case, the static or descriptive part of a 
 treatise on any art is equally important with the dynamic or narrative 
 part. In most instances more so ; but in tliis respect architecture is 
 exceptional, and the narrative form is by far the more important of the 
 two divisions into which the subject naturally divides itself. 
 
 If, for instance, any one were writing a treatise on Naval Archi- 
 tecture, it is more than probable tliat he would not allude to any 
 vessel not afloat at the time of his writing. If he mentioned the 
 triremes of the Romans or the galleys of the Venetians, it would be in an 
 introductory chapter intended for the amusement, not tlie instruction, 
 of his readers. In like manner, if an engineer undertakes to write on 
 the art of bridge-building, harl)or-making, or on roads or canals, he 
 is only careful to cite the best existing examples in use and would be 
 considered pedantic if he wasted liis tunc, or that of his readers, in 
 recounting what was done in these departments by the Romans or the 
 Chinese. If the fine art architecture was with us as well up to the 
 mark of the intelligence of the day as those more utilitarian branches 
 of the profession, the same course would be the proper one to pursue 
 in writing with regard to it. Unfortunately, however, we have no 
 architecture of our own, and it is impossible to make the various 
 styles in practice either intelligible or interesting, except by tracing 
 them back to their origin, and explaining the steps by which they 
 reached perfection. 
 
 If architecture was practised by us on the same princi])les that 
 guided either the Classic or Gothic architects in their designs, a 
 static treatise on it would not only be the most instructive but the 
 most pleasing form of teaching its elements. Owing, however, to 
 the system of copying which is now the basis of all designs, that is no 
 longer the case, and the consequently abnormal position of the art 
 renders the study of its principles almost impossible, and memory 
 must supply the place of pure reason for their elucidation, thus giving 
 to the narrative branch of the subject a somewhat exaggerated impor- 
 tance, even when looked at from a merely technic point of view. 
 
 Besides this, however, the narrative form as applied to Architecture 
 has advantages of its own greater than those of any other art of the 
 same class, inasmuch as it is a great stone book in which most of the 
 nations of the earth have recorded their annals, and written their 
 thoughts, and even expressed their feelings in clearer and truer 
 language than by any other form of utterance. The pyramids and 
 
Sect. III. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 51 
 
 temples of Egypt are a truer expression of the feelings and aspirarions 
 of their builders than we can obtain from any other source. The Par- 
 thenon at Athens brings the age of Pericles more clearly before our 
 eyes in all its perfection of art than any written page. The Flavian 
 Amphitheatre and the Baths of Carracalla enable us to realize imperial 
 Rome more vividly than even the glowing pages of Tacitus. Our 
 Mediaeval cathedrals are a living record of the faith and feelings of 
 peoples, who have left, besides these, but few materials by which one 
 could judge of their aspirations or of their civilization ; while, if we wish 
 to know in what India differed from Europe in those ages, and in what 
 respect she still resembled it, it is to her contemporary temples that we 
 must turn, and they tell us in a language not to be mistaken wherein 
 lay the differences, and still how nearly like the civilizations at one 
 time were. All this, and infinitely more, we may learn from a record, 
 which, though often ruined and nearly obliterated, never deceives. 
 Where it first was placed, there it still remains to tell to future gene- 
 rations what at that spot, at some previous time, men thought and felt; 
 what their state of civilization enabled them to accomplish, and to 
 what stage they had attained in their conception of a God. 
 
 Besides, however, the advantages to be obtained in an artistic point 
 of view from treating architecture in a narrative rather than in a static 
 form, there is, as pointed out above, still another, which, though of 
 minor importance, still adds immensely to tlie interest of the subject. 
 It is that, when so treated, the art affords one of the clearest and most 
 certain tests known of the ethnographic relations of people one to 
 another. It may, therefore, be as well before proceeding further to 
 explain as briefly as is consistent with intelligibility what is meant by 
 Architectural Ethnography. 
 
52 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 I. — Ethnography as applied to Architectural Art. 
 
 Ethnology, though one of the youngest, is perhaps neither the 
 least beautiful nor the least attractive of that fair sisterhood of sci- 
 ences, whose birth has rewarded the patient industry and inflexible 
 love of truth which characterizes the philosophy of the present day. 
 It takes up the history of the world at the point where it is left by 
 its elder sister Geology, and, following the same line of argument, 
 strives to reduce to the same scientific mode of expression the ap- 
 parent chaos of facts which have hitherto been looked upon as inex- 
 plicable by the general observer. 
 
 It is only within the limits of the present century that Geology 
 was rescued from the dreams of cataclysms and convulsions which 
 formed the staple of the science in the last century ; and that step by 
 step, by slow degrees, rocks have been classified and phenomena ex- 
 plained. All that picturesque wildness with which the materials seemed 
 at first sight to be distributed over the world's surface has been reduced 
 to order, and they now lie arranged as clearly and as certainly in the 
 mind of a geologist, as if they had been squared by the tool of a 
 mason and placed in order by the hand of a mechanic. So it is with 
 Ethnology. Race has succeeded race ; — all have been disturbed, some 
 obliterated — many contorted — and sometimes the older, apparently, 
 superimposed upon the newer. All at first sight is chaos and confusion, 
 and it seems almost hopeless to attempt to unravel the mysteries of 
 the long-forgotten past. It is true nevertheless, in Ethnology, aS in the 
 sister science, that no change on the world's surface has taken place 
 without leaving its mark. A race may be obliterated, or only crop up 
 at the edge of some great basin of population ; but it has left its traces, 
 either as fossil remains in the shape of buildings or works, or as im- 
 pressions on language or on the arts of those who supplanted the per- 
 ishing race. When these are read, — when all the phenomena are gath- 
 ered together and classified, we find the same perfection of Order, the 
 same beautiful simplicity of law pervading the same comj^lex variety 
 of results, which characterize all the phenomena of nature, and the 
 knowledo;e of which is the hig-hest reward of intellectual exertion. 
 
 Language has hitherto been the great instrument of analysis which 
 has been employed to elucidate the aflfiliation of races ; and the present 
 state of the science may be said to be almost entirely due to the acumen 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 53 
 
 and industry of learned linguists. Physiology has lent her aid ; but 
 the objects offered for her examination are so few, especially in remote 
 ages, and the individual differences are so small, as compared with 
 the general resemblance, that in the present state of that science, its 
 aid has not been of the importance which it may fairly be expected 
 hereafter to assume. In both sciences History plays an important 
 part : in Geology, by furnishing analogies witliout which it would be 
 hardly possible to interpret the facts; in Ethnology, by pointing out 
 the direction in which inquiries should be made, and by guiding and 
 controlling the conclusions which may have been arrived at. With 
 the assistance of these sciences. Ethnologists have accomplished a 
 great deal, and may do more ; but Ethnology, based merely on Lan- 
 guage ^ and Physiology, is like Geology based only on Mineralogy and 
 Chemistry. Without Palaeontology, that science would never have 
 assumed the importance or reached the perfection to which it has 
 now attained ; and Ethnology will never take the place which it is 
 really entitled to, till its results are checked, and its conclusions 
 elucidated, by the science of Archaeology. 
 
 Without the aid and vivifying influence derived from the study of 
 fossil remains. Geology would lose half its value and more than half 
 its interest. It may be interesting to the man of science to know what 
 rock is superimposed upon another, and how and in what relative 
 periods these changes occurred ; but it is far more interesting to watch 
 the dawn of life on this globe, and to trace its development into the 
 present teeming stage of existence. So it will be when, with the aid 
 of Archaeology, Ethnologists are able to identify the various strata in 
 which mankind have been distributed ; to fix identities of race from 
 similarities of Art ; and to read the history of the past from the 
 unconscious testimony of material remains. When properly studied 
 and understood, there is no language so clear, or whose testimony is 
 so undoubted, as that of those petrified thoughts and feelings which 
 men have left engraved on the walls of their temples, or buried with 
 them in the chambers of their tombs. Unconsciously expressed, but 
 imperishably written, they are there to this hour. Any one who likes 
 may read, and no one who can translate them can for one moment 
 doubt but that they are the best, and frequently the only, records 
 that remain of bygone races. 
 
 It is not difficult to explain why ethnographers have not hitherto 
 considered Archaeology of that importance to their researches to which 
 
 \ Max Miiller, who is the facile prin- 
 ceps of the linguistic school in this coun- 
 try — in an inaugural lecture which he 
 delivered when, it was understood, he 
 was appointed to a chair in the Strasburg 
 University — gave up all that has hither- 
 
 to been contended for by his followers. 
 He admitted that language, though an 
 invaluable aid, did not suffice for the pur- 
 poses of the investigation, and that the 
 results obtained by its means were not 
 always to be depended upon. 
 
54 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 it is undoubtedly entitled. We live in an age when all Art is a chaos 
 of copying and confusion ; we are daily masquerading in the costume 
 of every nation of the earth, ancient and modern, and are unable to 
 realize that these dresses in which we deck ourselves were once reali- 
 ties. Because Architecture, since the Reformation in the sixteenth 
 century, has in Europe been a mere hortiis siccus of dried specimens 
 of the art of all countries and of all ages, we cannot feel that, before 
 that time. Art was earnest and progressive ; and that men then did 
 what they felt to be best and most appropriate, by the same processes 
 by which Nature works. We do not therefore perceive tliat, though 
 in an infinitely lower grade, we may reason of the works of man before 
 a given date, with the same certainty with which we can reason of 
 those of Nature. When this great fact is once recognized — and it is 
 indisputable — Archaeology and Palaeontology take their places side 
 by side, as the guiding and vivifying elements in the sister sciences 
 of Ethnology and Geology, and give to each of these a value they 
 could never otherwise attain. 
 
 As may well be expected, however, when Archaeology is employed 
 to aid in these researches, results are frequently arrived at, which at 
 first sight are discrepant from those to wliich the study of language 
 alone has hitherto led scientific men. But this is no proof either of 
 the truth or falsehood of the conclusions arrived at, or of the value 
 or worthlessness of the processes employed. Both are essential to 
 the question of knowledge, and it is by a skilful balancing of both 
 classes of evidence that truth is ultimately arrived at. 
 
 It would be out of place to attempt in an introduction like the 
 present anything approaching to a complete investigation of this sub- 
 ject. Nor is it necessary. The various ethnographic relations of one 
 style to another will be pointed out as they arise in the course of the 
 narrative, and their influence traced to such an extent as may be neces- 
 sary to render tliem intelligible. But for the same reasons which made 
 it expedient to try, in the preceding pages, to define the meaning of 
 the term architecture, and to point out its position and limits, it is 
 believed that it will add to the clearness of what follows if the typical 
 characteristics of the principal races ^ of mankind with whom the narra- 
 tive deals, are first defined as clearly, though as succinctly as possible 
 
 As the object of introducing the subject here is not to write an 
 
 1 The term ''Persistent Varieties" 
 has recently been introduced, instead of 
 "race," in ethnological nomenclature, 
 and, if scientific accuracy is aimed at, 
 is no doubt an improvement. It is an 
 advantage to have a term which does 
 not even in appearance prejudge any of 
 
 the questions between the monogenists 
 and polygenists, and leaves undecided 
 all the questions how the variations of 
 mankind arose. But it sounds pedantic : 
 and " race " may be understood as mean- 
 ing the same thing. 
 
Part 11. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 55 
 
 essay on Ethnology, but to render the history of Architecture interest- 
 ing and intelligible, it may be expedient to avoid all speculation as to 
 the origin of mankind, or the mode in which the various races diverged 
 from one another and became so markedly distinct. Stretch the history 
 of Architecture as we will, we cannot get beyond the epoch of the 
 Pyramid builders (3500 b.c), and when these were erected the various 
 races of mankind had acquired those distinctive characteristics which 
 mark them now. Not long afterwards, when the tombs at Beni 
 Hassan were painted (2500 b.c), these distinctions were so marked 
 and so well understood, that these pictures might serve for the illus- 
 tration of a book on Ethnography at the present day. Nor will it be 
 necessary in this preliminary sketch to attempt more than to point 
 out the typical features of the four great building races of mankind, 
 the Turanian, the Semitic, the Celtic, and the Aryan. Even with 
 regard to these, all that will be necessary will be to point out the 
 typical characteristics without even attempting to define too accu- 
 rately their boundaries, and leaving the minuter gradations to be 
 developed in the sequel. 
 
 The one great fact which it is essential to insist on here is, that if 
 we do not take into account its connection with Ethnography, the His- 
 tory of Architecture is a mere dry, hard recapitulation of uninteresting 
 facts and terms; but when its relation to the world's history is under- 
 stood, — when we read in their buildings the feelings and aspirations of 
 the people who erected them, and above all through their arts we can 
 trace their relationship to, and their descent from one another, the 
 study becomes one of the most interesting, as well as one of the most 
 useful which can be presented to an inquiring mind. 
 
 n. — TURANIAN. 
 
 The result of recent researches has enabled the ethnographer to 
 divide and arrange prehistoric man into three great groups or periods, 
 which in Europe at least seem to have succeeded to one another ; 
 though at what time has not yet been determined even approximately ; 
 nor is it known how long any of the three subsisted before it was 
 superseded by the next, nor how far the one overlapped the other, or 
 indeed, whether, as was almost certainly the case, at some time all 
 three may not have subsisted together. 
 
 The first is called the Stone age, from the rude race who then 
 peopled Europe having no knowledge of the use of metals. All the 
 cutting parts of their implements were formed of flint or other hard 
 stones, probably fitted wdth wooden or bone handles, and used as tools 
 of these materials. 
 
 These were succeeded by a people having a knowledge of the use of 
 copper and tin, with the possession of gold, and perhaps silver. Their 
 principal weapons and tools were formed of a compound of the two 
 
56 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt II. 
 
 first-named metals ; and their age has consequently been called the age 
 of Bronze. 
 
 Both these were superseded, perhaps in historic times, by a people 
 having a knowledge of the properties and use of Iron. Hence their 
 epoch came to be distinguished by the name of that metal. 
 
 There seems no doubt but that the people of the Stone age were 
 generally, if not exclusively, of that great family which we now know 
 as the Turanian. 
 
 The race who introduced bronze seem to have been the ancestors of 
 the Celtic races who afterwards peopled so large a portion of Europe. 
 
 The Aryans were those who introduced the use of iron, and with it 
 dominated over and expelled the older races. 
 
 If any prehistoric traces of the Semitic races are to be found, they 
 must be looked for in Western Asia or in Africa : they certainly had 
 no settlements in Europe. 
 
 Further researches may perhaps at some future time enable us to 
 fix approximate dates to these various migrations. At present we 
 know that men using flint instruments lived in the valleys of the 
 Garonne and Dordogne when the climate of the south of France was 
 as cold as that of Lapland, or perhaps Greenland ; when the reindeer 
 was their ])rincipal domestic animal, and the larger animals of the 
 country belonged to species many of which had ceased to inhabit 
 those regions before the dawn of history. On the other hand, we may 
 assert with certainty that the climate of Egypt has not varied since 
 the age of the Pyramid builders ; and there is nothing in the history 
 of either Greece or Italy that would lead us to believe that any 
 remarkable alteration in the climate of these countries has taken place 
 in historic times. 
 
 These questions, however, hardly come within the scope of the 
 present work. The men of the Stone age have left nothing which can 
 be styled architecture, unless we include in that term the rude tumuli 
 of earth with which they covered the remains of their dead. It is 
 also extremely uncertain if we can identify any building of stone as 
 belonging certainly to the age of Bronze. All the rude cromlechs, 
 dolmens, menhirs, &c., which usher in the early dawn of civilization 
 in Europe, belong it is true to the earlier races, but seem to have been 
 erected by them at a time when the Aiyan races had taught them the 
 use of iron, and they had learnt to appreciate the value of stone as a 
 monumental record. This, however, was at a period long subsequent 
 to the use of iron in Egypt and the East, and long after architecture 
 had attained maturity ; and its history became easily and distinctly 
 legible in the Valley of the Nile.i 
 
 1 The whole of this subject has been 
 carefully gone into by the author in a 
 work entitled ' ' Rude Stone Monu- 
 
 ments," published in 1872, to which the 
 reader is referred. 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 57 
 
 The great feature in the liistory of the Turanian races is that they 
 were the first to people the wliole world beyond the limits of tlie 
 original cradle of mankind. Like the primitive unstratified rocks of 
 geologists, they form the substructure of the whole world, frequently 
 rising into the highest and most prominent peaks, sometimes over- 
 flowing whole districts and occupying a vast poi-tion of the world's 
 surface; — everywhere underlying all the others, and affording their 
 disintegrated materials to form the more recent strata that now over- 
 lie and frequently obliterate them, — in appearance, at least. 
 
 In the old world the typical Turanians were the Egyptians ; in 
 the modern the Chinese and Japanese ; and to these we are perhaps 
 justified in adding the Mexicans. If this last adscription stands 
 good, we have at three nearly equidistant points (120 degrees apart) 
 on the earth's surface, and under the tropic of Cancer, the three great 
 culminating points of this form of civilization. The outlying strata 
 in Asia are the Tamuls, who now occupy the whole of the south of 
 India, and all the races now existing in the countries between India 
 and China. The Turanians existed in the Valley of the Euphrates 
 before the Semitic or Aryan races came there. The Tunguses in the 
 north are Turanians, and so are the Mongols, the Turks, and all those 
 tribes generally described as Tartars. 
 
 In Europe the oldest people of this family we are acquainted with 
 are the Pelasgi and Etruscans, but the race also crops up in the Mag- 
 yars, the Finns, the Lapps, and in odd broken fragments here and 
 there, but everywhere overpowered by the more civilized Aryans, 
 who succeeded and have driven them into the remotest corners of 
 the continent. 
 
 In Africa they have been almost as completely overpowered by the 
 Semitic race, and in America are now being everywhere as entirely 
 overwhelmed as they were in Europe by the Aryan races, and in all 
 probability must eventually disappear altogether. 
 
 Even if the linguist should hesitate to affirm that all their lan- 
 guages can be traced to a common root, or present sufficient affinities 
 for a classification, the general features of the races enumerated 
 above are so alike the one to the other, that, for all real ethnographic 
 purposes, they may certainly be considered as belonging to one great 
 group. Whether nearly obliterated, as they are in most .parts of 
 Europe, or whether they still retain their nationality, as in the 
 eastern parts of Asia, they always appear as the earliest of races, 
 and everywhere present peculiarities of feeling and civilization easily 
 recognized, and which distinguish them from all the other races of 
 mankind. 
 
 If they do not all speak cognate languages, or if we cannot now 
 trace their linguistic affinities, we must not too readily assume that 
 therefore they are distinct the one from the other. It must be more 
 
58 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 I'Aur II. 
 
 philosophical to believe, what probably is the case, that the one in^ 
 strument of analysis we have hitherto used is not sufficient for the 
 purpose, and we ought consequently to welcome every other process 
 which will throw further light on the subject. 
 
 Religion of the Turanians. 
 
 It is perhaps not too much to assert that no Turanian race ever 
 rose to the idea of a God external to the world. All their ffods were 
 men who had lived with them on the face of the earth. In the old 
 world they were kings, — men who had acquired fame from the extent 
 of tlieir power, or greatness from their wisdom. Tlie Buddhist reform 
 taught the Turanian races that virtue, not power, w as true greatness, 
 and that the humblest as well as the highest might attain beatitude 
 through the practice of piety. 
 
 All the Turanians have a distinct idea of rewards and punishments 
 after deatli, and generally also of a preparatory purgatory by trans- 
 migration through the bodies of animals, clean or unclean according 
 to the actions of the defunct s|)irit, but always ending in another 
 world. AVith some races transmigration becomes nearly all in all; in 
 others it is nearly evanescent, and Heaven and Hell take its place ; 
 but the two are essentially doctrines of this race. 
 
 From the fact of their gods having been only ordinary mortals, 
 and all men being able to aspire to the godhead, their form of worship 
 was essentially anthropic and ancestral ; their temples were palaces, 
 where the gods sat on thrones and received petitions and dispensed 
 justice as in life, and wdiere men paid that homage to the image of 
 the dead which they would have paid to the living king. They were 
 in fact the iflolaters, ^^ar excellence. Their tombs were even more 
 sacred than their temples, and their reverence was more frequently 
 directed to the remains of their ancestors than to the images of their 
 gods. Hence arose that reverence for relics which formed so marked 
 a feature in tlieir ritual in all ages, and which still prevails among 
 many races almost in the direct ratio in which Turanian blood can be 
 traced in their veins. 
 
 Unable to rise above humanity in their conceptions of the deity, 
 they worshipped all material things. Trees with them in all times 
 were objects of veneration, and of especial w^orship in particular local- 
 ities. The mysterious serpent was with them a god, and the bull in 
 most Turanian countries a being to be worshij^ped. The sun, the 
 moon, the stars, all filled niches in their Pantheon ; in fact, whatever 
 they saw they believed in, whatever they could not comprehend they 
 worshipped. They cared not to inquire beyond the evidence of their 
 senses, and were incapable of abstracting their conceptions. To the 
 Turanians also is due that peculinr reverence for localities made 
 
Pakt II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 59 
 
 celebrated by great historical events, or rendered sacred by being 
 the scene of great religious events, and hence to them must be 
 ascribed the origin of pilgrimages and all their concomitant adjuncts 
 and ceremonies. 
 
 It is to this race, also, that we owe the existence of human sacrifices. 
 Always fatalists, always and everywhere indifferent of life, and never 
 fearing death, these sacrifices never were to them so terrible as they 
 appear to more highly organized races. Thus a child, a relative, or a 
 friend, was the most precious, and consequently the most acceptable 
 offering a man could bring to appease the wrath or propitiate the 
 favor of a god who had been human, and who was supposed to have 
 retained all the feelings of humanity forever afterwards. 
 
 It is easy to trace their Tree and Serpent worship in every corner 
 of the old world from Anuradhpura in Ceylon, to Upsala in Sweden. 
 Their tombs and tumuli exist everywhere. Their ancestral worship 
 is the foundation at the present day of half the popular creeds of the 
 world, and the planets have hardly ceased to be worshipped at the 
 present hour. Most of the more salient peculiarities of this faith were 
 softened down by the great Buddhist reform in the sixth century B.C., 
 and that refinement of their rude primitive belief has been adopted by 
 most of the Turanian people of the modern world, and is now almost 
 exclusively the appanage of people having Turanian^ blood in their 
 veins. Even, however, tlirough the gloss of their Buddhist refinements 
 we can still discern most of the old forms of faith, and even its most 
 devoted votaries are yet hardly more than half converted. 
 
 Government. 
 
 The only form of government ever adopted by any people of 
 Turanian race was tliat of absolute despotism, — with a tribe, a 
 chief, — in a kingdom, a despot. In highly civilized communities, 
 like those of Egypt and China, their despotism was tempered by 
 bureaucratic forms, but the chief was always as absolute as a Timour 
 or an Attila, though not always strong enough to use his power as 
 terribly as they did. Their laws were real or traditional edicts of 
 their kings, seldom written, and never administered according to any 
 fixed form of procedure. 
 
 As a consequence or a cause of this, the Turanian race are abso^ 
 lutely casteless ; no hereditary nobility, no caste of priests ever existed 
 among them ; between the ruler and the people there could be nothing, 
 and every one might aspire equally to all the honors of the State, or 
 to the highest dignity of the priesthood. " La carriere ouverte aux 
 talens," is essentially the motto of these races, or of those allied to 
 them, and whether it was the slave of a Pharaoh, or the pipe-bearer of 
 a Turkish sultan, every office except the throne is and always was 
 
60 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part H. 
 
 open to the ambitious. No republic, no limited monarchy, ever arose 
 among them. Despotism pure and simple is all they ever knew, or 
 are even now capable of appreciating. 
 
 Morals. 
 
 Woman among the Turanian races was never regarded otherwise 
 than as the helpmate of the poor and the plaything of the rich ; born 
 to work for the lower classes and to administer to the gratification of 
 the higher. No equality of rights or position was ever dreamt of, and 
 the consequence was polyandry where people were poor and women 
 scarce, and polygamy where wealth and luxury prevailed ; and with 
 these, it need hardly be added, a loss of half those feelings which en- 
 noble man or make life valuable. 
 
 Neither loving nor beloved in the bosom of his own family, — too 
 much of a fatalist to care for the future, — neither enjoying life nor 
 fearing death, — the Turanian is generally free from those vices which 
 contaminate more active minds ; he remains sober, temperate, truthful, 
 and kindly in all the relations of life. If, however, he has few vices, he 
 has fewer virtues, and both are far more passive than active in their 
 nature, — in fact, approach more nearly to the instincts of the lower 
 animals than to the intellectual responsibilities of the highest class of 
 minds. 
 
 Literature. 
 
 No Turanian race ever distinguished itself in literature, properly 
 so called. They all possessed annals, because they loved to record the 
 names, the dates, and the descent of their ancestors ; but these never 
 rose to the dignity of history even in its simplest form. Prose they 
 could hardly write, because none of the greater groups ever appre- 
 ciated the value of an alphabet. Hieroglypliics, signs, symbols, any- 
 thing sufficed for their simple intellectual wants, and they preferred 
 trusting to memory to remember what a sign stood for, rather than 
 exercise their intellect to compound or analyze a complex alphabetical 
 arrangement. Their system of poetry helped them, to some extent, 
 over the difficulty; and, with a knowledge of the metre, a few 
 suggestive signs enabled the reader to remember at least a lyric 
 composition. But without a complex grammar to express and an 
 alphabet to record their conceptions, it is hopeless to expect that either 
 Epic or Dramatic Poetry could flourish, still less that a prose narrative 
 of any extent could be remembered ; and philosophy, beyond the use 
 of proverbs, was out of the question. 
 
 In their most advanced stages tliey have, like the Chinese, invented 
 syllabaria of hideous complexity, and have even borrowed alphabets 
 from their more advanced neighbors. By some it is supposed that 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTIiODUCTlON. 
 
 61 
 
 they have even invented them ; but thougli they have thus got over 
 the mechanical difficulties of the case, their intellectual condition 
 remains the same, and they have never advanced beyond the merest 
 rudiments of a literature, and have never mastered even the elements 
 of any scientific philosophy. 
 
 Arts. 
 
 If so singularly deficient in the phonetic modes of literary expres- 
 sion, the Turanian races made up for it to a great extent in the 
 excellence they attained in most of the branches of aesthetic art. As 
 architects they were unsurpassed, and in Egyjjt alone have left 
 monuments which are still the world's wonder. The Tamul race 
 in Southern, the Moguls in Northern India, in Burmah, in China,^ 
 and in Mexico, wherever these races are found, they have raised 
 monuments of dimensions unsurpassed ; and, considering the low 
 state of civilization in which they often existed, displaying a degree 
 of taste and skill as remarkable as it is unexpected. 
 
 In consequence of the circumstance above mentioned of their gods 
 having been kings, and after death still only considered as watching 
 over and influencing the destiny of mankind, their temples were only 
 exaggerated palaces, containing halls, and chambers, and thrones, and 
 all the appurtenances required by the living, but on a scale befitting 
 the celestial character now acquired. So much is this the case in 
 Egypt that we hardly know by which name to designate them, and 
 the same remark applies to all. 
 
 Even more sacred, however, than their temples were tlieir tombs. 
 Wherever a Turanian race exists or existed, there their tombs remain; 
 and from the Pyramids of Egypt to the mausoleum of Hyder Ali, the 
 last Tartar king in India, they form the most remarkable series of 
 monuments the world possesses, and all were built by people of 
 Turanian race. No Semite and no Aryan ever built a tomb that 
 could last a century or was worthy to remain so long. 
 
 The Buddhist reform altered the funereal tumulus into a relic 
 shrine, modifying this, as it did most of the Turanian forms of 
 utterance, from a literal to a somewhat more spiritual form of ex- 
 pression, but leaving the meaning the same, — the Tope being still 
 essentially a Tomb. 
 
 Combined with that wonderful appreciation of form which charac- 
 terizes all the architectural works of the Turanians, they possessed 
 an extraordinary passion for colored decoration and an instinctive 
 knowledge of the harmony of colors. They used throughout the 
 primitive colors in all their elemental crudeness ; and though always 
 brilliant, are never vulgar, and are guiltless of any mistake in 
 harmony. From the first dawn of painting in Egypt to the last 
 
62 HISTOKY OF ARCHITECTURE. Pakt II. 
 
 signboard in Constantinople or Canton, it is always the same — the 
 same brilliancy and harmony produced by the simplest means. 
 
 In sculpture they were not so fortunate. Having no explanatory 
 literature to which to refer, it was necessary that their statues should 
 tell their whole tale themselves ; and sculpture does not lend itself to 
 this so readily as painting. With them it is not sufficient that a god 
 should be colossal, he must be symbolical ; he must have more arms 
 and legs or more heads than common men ; he must have wings and 
 attributes of power, or must combine the strength of a lion or a bull 
 with the intellect of humanity. The statue must, in short, tell the 
 whole story itself ; and where this is attempted the result can only 
 be pleasing to the narrow faith of the unreflecting devotee. So far 
 from being able to express more than humanity, sculpture must attempt 
 even less if it would be successful ; but this of course rendered it 
 useless for the purposes to which the Turanians wished to apply it. 
 
 The same remarks apply to painting, properly so called. This 
 never can attain its highest developement except when it is the 
 exponent of phonetic utterances. In Greek the painter strove only 
 to give form and substance to the more purely intellectual creation 
 of the poet, and could consequently dispense with all but the highest 
 elements of his art. In Egypt the picture was all in all ; it had no 
 text to refer to, and must tell the whole tale with all its adjuncts, in 
 simple intelligible prose, or be illegible, and the consequence is that 
 the story is told with a clearness that charms us even now. It is, 
 however, only a story ; and, like everything else Turanian, howevei 
 great or wonderful, its greatness and its wonder are of a lower clasf 
 and less intellectual than the utterances of the other great divisiom 
 of the human family. 
 
 We have scarcely the means of knowing whether any Turaniai 
 race ever successfully cultivated music to any extent. It is mon 
 than probable that all their families can and always could appreciate 
 the harmony of musical intervals, and might be charmed with simph- 
 cadences; but it is nearly certain that a peoj^le who did not possess 
 phonetic poetry could never rise to that higher class of music which 
 is now carried to such a pitch of perfection, that harmonic combina- 
 tions almost supply the place of phonetic expression and influence the 
 feelings and passions to almost the same extent. 
 
 There is also this further peculiarity about their arts, that they 
 seem always more instinctive than intellectual, and consequently are 
 incapable of that progress which distinguishes most of the works of 
 man. At the first dawn of art in Egypt, in the age of the Pyramid 
 builders, all the arts were as perfect and as complete as they were 
 when the country fell under the domination of the Romans. The 
 earliest works in China are as perfect — in some respects more so — 
 as those of to-day ; and in Mexico, so soon as a race of red savages 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 63 
 
 peopled a country so densely as to require art and to appreciate 
 magnificence, the arts sprang up among them with as much per- 
 fection, we may fairly assume, as they would have attained had they 
 been practised for thousands of years under the same circumstances 
 and uninfluenced by foreigners. It is even more startling to find that 
 the arts of the savages who inhabited the south of France, on the 
 skirts of the glacial period, are identical with those of the Esquimaux 
 of the present day, and even at that early time attained a degree of 
 perfection which is startling, and could hardly be surpassed by any 
 people in the same condition of life at the jjresent day. 
 
 Sciences. 
 
 There is no reason to su])pose that any people occupying so low 
 a position in the intellectual scale could ever cultivate anything 
 approaching to abstract science, and there is no proof of it existing. 
 Living, however, as they did, on the verge of the tropics, in tlie 
 most beautiful climates of the world, and where the sky is generally 
 serene and unclouded, it was impossible but that they should become 
 to some extent astronomers. 
 
 It is not known that any of them ever formed any theory to 
 account for the phenomena they observed, but tliey seem to have 
 watched the paths of the planets, to have recorded eclipses, and 
 generally to have noted times and events with such correctness as 
 enabled them to predict their return with very considerable pre- 
 cision ; but here their science stopped, and it is not known that they 
 ever attempted any other of the multifarious branches of modern 
 knowledge. 
 
 We have only very imperfect means of knowing what their 
 agriculture was ; but it seems always to liave been careful when 
 once they passed from the shepherd state, though whether scientific 
 or not it is not easy to say. On tlie jioint of artificial irrigation the 
 Turanians have always been singularly expert. Wherever you follow 
 their traces, the existence of a tunnel is almost as certain an indica- 
 tion of their j^re-existence as that of a tomb. It is amusing, as it is 
 instructive, to see at this hour an Arab Pacha breaking down in his 
 attempt to restol'e the irrigation works of the old Pharaohs, or an 
 English Engineer officer blundering in his endeavors to copy the 
 works instinctively performed by a Mogul, or a Spaniard trying to 
 drain the lakes of Mexico. Building and irrigation were the special 
 instincts of this old people, and the practical intellect of the higher 
 races seems hardly yet to have come up to the point where these arts 
 Avere left by the early Turanian races, while the perfection they attained 
 in them is the more singular from the contrast it affords to what they 
 did, or rather, did not do, in other branches of art or science. 
 
64 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 III. — SEMITIC RACES. 
 
 From the extraordinary influence the Semitic races have had in 
 the religious development of mankind, we are apt to consider them as 
 politically more important than they really ever were. At no period 
 of their history do they seem to have numbered more than twenty or 
 thirty millions of souls. The principal locality in which they developed 
 themselves was the small track of country between the Tigris, the 
 Mediterranean and the Red Sea ; but they also existed as a separate 
 race in Abyssinia, and extended their colonies along the northern 
 coast of Africa. Their intellectual development has been in all ages 
 so superior to that of the Turanian races, that they have subdued them 
 mentally wherever they came in contact with them ; and notwith- 
 standing their limited geographical extension, they have influenced 
 the intellect of the Aryan tribes to a greater extent than almost any of 
 their own congeners. 
 
 If anything were required to justify the ethnographer in treating 
 the various families of mankind as distinct and separate varieties, it 
 would be the study of the history of the Semitic race. What they 
 were in the time of Abraham, that they are at the present day. A large 
 section of them sojourned in Egypt, among peoj)le of a different race, 
 and they came out as unmixed as oil would do that is floated on water. 
 For the last two thousand years they have dwelt dispersed among the 
 Gentiles, without a nationality, almost without a common language, 
 yet they remain the same in feature, the same in intellectual develop- 
 ment and feeling, they exhibit the same undying repugnance to all 
 except those of their own blood, which characterized the Arab and the 
 Jew when we first recognize their names in history. So unchangeable 
 are they in this respect, that it seems in vain to try to calculate how 
 long this people must have lived by themselves, separated from other 
 races, that they should have thus acquired that distinctive fixity of 
 character nothing can alter or obliterate, and which is perhaps even 
 more wonderful intellectually than are the woolly hair and physical 
 characteristics of the negro, though not so obvious to the superficial 
 observer. 
 
 Religion. 
 
 From the circumstance of our possessing a complete series of the 
 religious literature of the Semitic race, extending over the two thousand 
 years which elapsed between Moses and Mahomet, we are enabled to 
 speak on this point with more precision than we can regarding the 
 doctrines of almost any other people. 
 
 The great and distinguishing tenet of this race when pure is and 
 always seems to have been the unity of God, and his not being born of 
 man. Unlike the gods of the Turanians, their Deity never was man, 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 65 
 
 never reigned or lived on earth, but was the Creator and Preserver of 
 the universe, living before all time, and extending beyond all space ; 
 tliough it must be confessed they have not always expressed this idea 
 with the purity and distinctness which might be desired. 
 
 It is uncertain how far they adhered to this purity of belief in 
 Assyria, where they were more mixed up with other races than they 
 have ever been before or since. In Syria, where they were super- 
 imposed upon and mixed with a people of Turanian origin, they 
 occasionally Avorshipped stones and groves, serpents, and even bulls ; 
 but they inevitably oscillated back to the true faith and retained it to 
 the last. In Arabia, after they became dominant, they cast off their 
 Turanian idolatries, and rallied as one man to the watchword of their 
 race, "There is no God but God," expressed with a clearness that 
 nothing can obscure, and clung to it with a tenacity that nothing 
 could shake or change. Since then they have never represented God 
 as man, and hardly ever looked upon Him as actuated by the feelings 
 of humanity. 
 
 The channel of communication between God and man has always 
 been, wdth all the Semitic races, by means of prophecy. Prophets are 
 sent, or are inspired, by God, to communicate His will to man, to pro- 
 pound His laws, and sometimes to foretell events ; but in all instances 
 without losing their character as men, or becoming more than mes- 
 sengers for the special service for which they are sent. 
 
 With the Jews, but with them only, does there seem to have been 
 a priest caste set aside for the special service of God ; not selected 
 from all the people, as would have been the case with the casteless 
 Turanians, but deriving their sanctity from descent, as would have 
 been the case with the Aryans ; still they differed from the Aryan 
 institution inasmuch as the Levites always retained the characteristics 
 of a tribe, and never approached the form of an aristocracy. They 
 may therefore be considered ethnographically as an intermediate insti- 
 tution, partaking of the characteristics of the other two races. 
 
 The one point in which the Semitic form of religion seems to come 
 in contact with the Turanian is that of sacrifice — human, in early 
 times perhaps, even till the time of Abraham, but afterwards only 
 of oxen and sheep and goats in hecatombs ; and this apparently 
 not among the Arabs, but only with the Jews and the less pure 
 Phcenicians. 
 
 From their having no human gods they avoided all the palatial 
 temples or ceremonial forms of idolatrous worship. Strictly speaking, 
 they have no temples. There was one holy place in the old world, 
 the Hill of Zion at Jerusalem, and one in the new dispensation, the 
 Kaaba at Mecca. Solomon, it is true, adorned the first to an extent 
 but little consonant with the true feeling of his race, but the Kaaba 
 remains in its primitive insignificance ; and neither of these temples, 
 
 VOL. I. — 5 
 
66 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 either then or now, derive their sanctity from the buildings. They are 
 the spots where God's prophets stood and communicated His will to 
 man. It is true that in after ages a Roman Tetrarch and a Turkish 
 Sultan surrounded these two Semitic cells with courts and cloisters, 
 which made them wonders of magnificence in the cities where they 
 existed ; but this does not affect the conclusion that no Semitic race 
 ever erected a durable building, or even thought of possessing more 
 than one temple at a time, or cared to emulate the splendor of the 
 temple-palaces of the Turanians. 
 
 Government. 
 
 Although no Semitic race was ever quite republican, which is a 
 purely Aryan characteristic, they never sank under such an unmitigated 
 despotism as is generally found among the Turanians. When in small 
 nuclei, their form of government is what is generally called patriarchal, 
 the chief being neither necessarily hereditary, nor necessarily elective, 
 but attaining his leadership partly by the influence due to age and 
 wisdom, or to virtue, partly to the merits of his connections, and some- 
 times of his ancestors; but never wholly to the latter without some 
 reference at least to the former. 
 
 In larger aggregations the difficulty of selection made thechiefship 
 more generally hereditary ; but even then the power of the King was 
 always controlled by the authority of the written law, and never sank 
 into the pure despotism of the Turanians. With the Jews, too, the 
 sacred caste of the Levites always had considerable influence in 
 checking any excesses of kingly power; but more was due in this 
 respect to their peculiar institution of prophets, who, protected by the 
 sacredness of their office, at all times dared to act the part of tribunes 
 of the people, and to rebuke with authority any attempt on the part 
 of the King to step beyond the limits of the constitution. 
 
 Morals. 
 
 One of the most striking characteristics in the morals of the Semitic 
 races is the improvement in the position of woman, and the attempt 
 to elevate her in the scale of existence. If not absolutely monogamic, 
 there is among the Jews, and among the Arabic races where they 
 are pure, a strong tendency in this direction ; and but for the example 
 of those nations among whom they were placed, they might have gone 
 further in this direction, and the dignity of mankind have been pro- 
 portionately improved. 
 
 Their worst faults arise from their segregation from the rest of 
 mankind. With them war against all but those of their own race is 
 an obligation and a pleasure, and it is carried on with a relentless 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cruelty which knows no pity. To smite root and branch, to nuirder 
 men, women, and cliildren, is a duty whicli admits of no hesitation, 
 and has stained the character of the Semites in all ages. Against this 
 must be placed the fact that they are patriotic beyond all other races, 
 and steadfast in their faith as no other people have ever been ; and 
 among themselves they have been tempered to kindness and charity 
 by the sufferings they have had to bear because of their uncompro- 
 mising hatred and repugnance to all their fellow-men. 
 
 This isolation has had the further effect of making them singularly 
 apathetic to all that most interests the other nations of the earth. 
 What their God has revealed to them through his prophets suffices for 
 them. "God is great," is a sufficient explanation with them for all the 
 M'onders of science. "God wills it," solves all the complex problems 
 of the moral government of the world. If not such absolute fatalists 
 as the Turanians, they equally shrink from the responsibility of 
 thinking for themselves, or of apj^lying their independent reason to 
 the great problems of human knowledge. They may escape by this 
 from many aberrations that trouble more active minds, but their vir- 
 tues at best can be but negative, and their vices unredeemed by the 
 higher aspirations that sometimes half ennoble even crime. 
 
 Literature. 
 
 In this again we have an immense advance above all the Turanian 
 races. No Semitic people ever used a hieroglyph or mere symbol, or 
 were content to trust to memory only. Everywhere and at all times — 
 so far as we know — they used an alphabet of more or less complicated 
 form. Whether they invented this mode of notation or not is still 
 unknown, but its use by them is certain ; and the consequence is that 
 they possess, if not the oldest, at least one of the very oldest literatures 
 of the world. History w^ith them is no longer a mere record of names 
 and titles, but a chronicle of events, and with the moral generally 
 elicited. The story and the rhapsody take their places side by side, 
 the preaching and the parable are used to convey their lessons to the 
 world. If they had not the Epos and the Drama, they had lyric poetry 
 of a beauty and a pathos wdiich has hardly ever been surpassed. 
 
 It was this possession of an alphabet, conjoined with the sublimity 
 of their monotheistic creed, that gave these races the only superiority 
 to which they have attained. It is this which has enabled them to 
 keep themselves pure and undefiled in all the catastrophes to which 
 they have been exposed, and that still enables their literature and 
 their creed to exert an influence over almost all the nations of the 
 earth, even in times when the people themselves have been held in 
 most supreme contempt. 
 
68 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part H. 
 
 Arts. 
 
 It may have been partly in consequence of their love of phonetic 
 literature, and partly in order to keep themselves distinct from those 
 great builders, the Turanians, that the Semitic races never erected a 
 building woi'thy of the name ; neither at Jerusalem, nor at Tyre or 
 Sidon, nor at Carthage, is there any vestige of Semitic Architectural 
 Art. Not that these have perished, but because they never existed. 
 When Solomon proposed to build a temple at Jerusalem, though plain 
 externally, and hardly so large as an ordinary parish church, he was 
 forced to have recourse to some Turanian people to do it for him, and 
 by a display of gold and silver and brass ornaments to make up for 
 the architectural forms he knew not how to apply. 
 
 In Assyria we have palaces of dynasties more or less purely 
 Semitic, splendid enough, but of wood and sunburnt bricks, and only 
 preserved to our knowledge from the accident of their having been 
 so clumsily built as to bury themselves and their wainscot slabs in 
 their own ruins. Though half the people were probably of Turanian 
 origin, their temples seem to have been external and unimportant till 
 Sennacherib and others learnt the art of using stone from the Egyp- 
 tians, as the Syrians did afterwards from the Romans. During the 
 domination of the last-named people we have the temples of Palmyra 
 and Baalbec, of Jerusalem and Petra : everywhere an art of the 
 utmost splendor, but with no trace of Semitic feeling or Semitic 
 taste in any part, or in any detail. 
 
 The Jewish worship being neither ancestral, nor the bodies of their 
 dead being held in special reverence, they had no tombs worthy of 
 the name. Tliey buried the bodies of their patriarchs and kings with 
 care, and knew where they were laid ; but not until after the return 
 from the Babylonish captivity did they either worship there, or mark 
 the s]:>ot with any architectural forms, though after that epoch we find 
 abundant traces of a tendency towards that especial form of Turanian 
 idolatry. But even then the adornment of their tombs with archi- 
 tectural magnificence cannot be traced back to an earlier period than 
 the time of the Romans ; and all that we find marked with splendor 
 of this class was the work of that people, and stamped with their 
 peculiar forms of Art. 
 
 Painting and sculpture were absolutely forbidden to the Jews 
 because they were Turanian arts, and because their practice might 
 lead the people to idolatry, so that these nowhere existed : though we 
 cannot understand a people with any mixture of Turanian blood who 
 had not an eye for color, and a feeling for beauty of form, in detail 
 at least. Music alone was therefore the one aesthetic art of the Semitic 
 races, and, wedded to the lyric verse, seems to have influenced their 
 feelings and excited their passions to an extent unknown to other 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 69 
 
 nations ; but to posterity it cannot supply the place of the more per- 
 manent arts, whose absence is so much felt in attempting to realize 
 the feelings or aspirations of a people like this.^ 
 
 As regards the useful arts, the Semites were always more pastoral 
 than agricultural, and have not left in the countries they inhabited 
 any traces of such hydraulic works as the earlier races executed ; but 
 in commerce they excelled all nations. The Jews — from their inland 
 situation, cut off from all access to the sea — could not do much in 
 foreign trade ; but they always kept up their intercourse with Assyria. 
 The Phoenicians traded backwards and forwards with every part of 
 the Mediterranean, and first opened out a knowledge of the Atlantic ; 
 'and the Arabs first commenced, and for long afterwards alone carried 
 on, the trade with India. From the earliest dawn of history to the 
 present hour, commerce has been the art which the Semitic nations 
 have cultivated with the greatest assiduity, and in which they con- 
 sequently have attained the greatest, and an unsurpassed success. 
 
 In Asia and in Africa at the present day, all the native trade is 
 carried on by Arabs ; and it need hardly be remarked that the mone- 
 tary transactions of the rest of the world are practically managed by 
 the descendants of those who, one thousand years before Christ, traded 
 from Eziongeber to Ophir. 
 
 Sciences. 
 
 Although, as before mentioned. Astronomy was cultivated with 
 considerable success both in Egypt and Chaldea, among the more 
 contemplative Turanians, nothing can be more unsatisfactory than the 
 references to celestial events, either in the Bible or the Koran, both 
 betraying an entire ignorance of even the elements of astronomical 
 science ; and we have no proof that the Phoenicians were at all wiser 
 than their neighbors in this respect. 
 
 The Semitic races seem always to have been of too poetical a 
 temperament to excel in mathematics or the mechanical sciences. If 
 there is one branch of scientific knowledge which they may be sus- 
 pected of having cultivated with success, it is the group of natural 
 sciences. A love of nature seems always to have prevailed with them, 
 
 1 All round the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean are found the traces of an art 
 which has hitherto been a stumbling- 
 block to antiquarians. Egyptian car- 
 touches and ornaments in Assyria, which 
 are not Egyptian; sarcophagi at Tyre, 
 of Egyptian form, but with Phoenician 
 inscriptions, and made for Tyrian kings ; 
 Greek ornaments in Syria, which are 
 not Greek; Roman frescoes or orna- 
 
 ments, and architectural displays at 
 Carthage, and all over Northern Africa, 
 which however are not Roman. In 
 short, a copying art something like our 
 own, imitating everything, understand- 
 ing nothing. I am indebted to my 
 friend Mr. Franks for tlie suggestion 
 that all this art may be Phoenician, in 
 other words, Semitic, and I believe he 
 is right. 
 
70 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 11. 
 
 and they may have known " the trees, from the cedar which is in 
 Lebanon to the hyssop that springeth out of the wall, and the names 
 of all the beasts, and the fowls, and the creeping things, and the 
 fishes ; " but beyond this we know of nothing that can be dignified by 
 the name of science among the Semitic races. They more than made 
 up however for their deficient knowledge of the exact sciences by the 
 depth of their insight into the springs of human action, and the 
 sagacity of their proverbial philosophy ; and, more than even this, by 
 that wonderful system of Theology before which all the Aryan races 
 of the world and many of the Turanian bow at the present hour, and 
 acknowledge it as the basis of their faith and the source of all their 
 religious aspirations. 
 
 IV.— CELTIC. 
 
 It is extremely diflScult to write anything very precise or very 
 satisfactory regarding the Celtic races, for the simple reason that, 
 within the limits of our historic knowledge, they never lived sufii.ciently 
 long apart from other races to develop a distinct form of nationality, 
 or to create either a literature or a i)olity by which they could be 
 certainly recognized. In this respect they form the most marked 
 contrast with the Semitic races. Instead of wrapping themselves up 
 within the bounds of the most narrow exclusiveness, the Celt every- 
 where mixed freely with the people among whom he settled, and 
 adopted their manners and customs with a carelessness that is 
 startling; while at the same time he retained the principal char- 
 acteristics of his race through every change of circumstance and 
 clime. 
 
 Almost the only thing that can be predicated of them with 
 certainty is, that they were either the last wave of the Turanians, or, 
 if another nomenclature is preferred, the first wave of the Aryans, 
 who, migrating westward from their parent seat in Asia, displaced 
 the original and more purely Turanian tribes who' occupied Europe 
 before the dawn of history. But^ in doing this, they seem to have 
 mixed themselves so completely with the races they were supplanting, 
 that it is extremely difl^cult to say now where one begins or where the 
 other ends. 
 
 We find their remains in Asia Minor, whence Ethnologists fancy 
 that they can trace a southern migration along the northern coast of 
 Africa, across the Straits of Gibraltar, into Spain, and thence to 
 Ireland. A more certain and more important migration, however, 
 crossed the Bosphorus, and following the valley of the Danube, threw 
 one branch into Italy, where they penetrated as far south as Rome; 
 while the main body settled in and occupied Gaul and Belgium, 
 whence they peopled Britain, and may have met the southern colonists 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 71 
 
 in the Celtic Island of the west. From this they are now migrating, 
 still following the course of the sun, to carry to the New World the 
 same brilliant thoughtlessness which has so thoroughly leavened all 
 those parts of the Old in which they have settled, and which so sorely 
 puzzles the purer but more matter-of-fact Aryan tribes with which 
 they have come in contact. 
 
 Religion. 
 
 It may appear like a hard saying, but it seems nevertheless to be 
 true, to assert that no purely Celtic race ever rose to a perfect con- 
 ception of the unity of the Godhead. It may be that they only 
 borrowed this from the Turanians who preceded them ; but whether 
 imitative or innate, their Theology admits of Kings and Queens of 
 Heaven who were mortals on earth. They possess hosts of saints 
 and angels, and a whole hierarchy of heavenly powers of various 
 degrees, to whom the Celt turns with as confiding ho])e and as earnest 
 prayer as ever Turanian did to the gods of his Pantheon. If he does 
 not reverence the bodies of the departed as the Egyptian or Chinese, 
 he at least adopts the Buddhist veneration for relics, and attaches far 
 more importance to funereal rites than was ever done by any tribe of 
 Aryans. 
 
 The Celt is as completely the slave of a casteless priesthood as 
 ever Turanian Buddhist was, and loves to separate it from the rest 
 of mankind, as representing on earth the hierarchy in heaven, to 
 which, according to the Celtic creed, all may hope to succeed by 
 practice of their peculiar virtues. 
 
 To this may be added, that his temples are as splendid, his cere- 
 monials as gorgeous, and the formula as unmeaning as any that ever 
 graced the banks of the Nile, or astonished the wanderer in the val- 
 leys of Thibet or on the shores of the Eastern Ocean. 
 
 Government. 
 
 It is still more difficult to speak of the Celtic form of government, 
 as no kingdom of this people ever existed by itself for any length of 
 time ; and none, indeed, it may be suspected, could long hold together. 
 It may, however, be safely asserted that no rejniblican forms are 
 possible with a Celtic people, and no municipal institutions ever 
 flourished among them. The only form, therefore, we know of as 
 peculiarly theirs, is despotism ; not necessarily personal, but rendered 
 systematic by centralized bureaucratic organizations, and tempered 
 by laws in those States which have reached any degree of stability 
 or civilization. 
 
 Nothing but a strong centralized despotism can long co-exist with 
 a people too impatient to submit to the sacrifices and self-denial 
 
72 
 
 HISTOHY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 inherent in all attempts at self-government, and too excitable to be 
 controlled, except by the will of the strongest, though it may also be 
 the least scrupulous among them. 
 
 When in small bodies they are always governed by a chief, gene- 
 rally hereditary, but always absolute ; who is looked up to with awe, 
 and obeyed with a reverence that is unintelligible to the more inde- 
 pendent races of mankind. 
 
 With such institutions, of course, a real aristocracy is impossible ; 
 and the restraints of caste must always have been felt to be intolera- 
 ble. "La carriere ouverte aux talens," is their boast ; though not to 
 the same extent as with the Turanians ; and the selfish gratification 
 of individual ambition is consequently always preferred with them to 
 the more sober benefit of the general advancement of the community. 
 
 Morals. 
 
 If the Celts never were either polygamic or polyandric, they cer- 
 tainly always retained very lax ideas with regard to the marriage- 
 vow, and never looked on woman's mission as anything higher than 
 to minister to their sensual gratification. With them the woman that 
 fulfils this quality best ' always commands their admiration most. 
 Beauty can do no wrong — but without beauty woman can hardly 
 rise above the level of the common herd. 
 
 The ruling passion in the mind of the Celt is war. Not like the 
 exclusive, intolerant Semite, a war of extermination or of proselytism, 
 but war from pure "gaiete de coeur" and love of glory. No Celt 
 fears to die if his death can gain fame or add to the stock of his 
 country's glory ; nor in a private fight does he fear death or feel the 
 pain of a broken head, if he has had a chance of shooting through 
 the heart or cracking the skull of his best friend at the same time. 
 The Celt's love of excitement leads him frequently into excesses, and 
 to a disregard of truth and the virtues belonging to daily life, which 
 are what really dignify mankind ; but his love of glory and of his 
 country often go far to redeem these deficiencies, and spread a halo 
 over even his worst faults, which renders it frequently difficult to 
 blame what we feel in soberness we ought to condemn. 
 
 Literature. 
 
 If love and war are the parents of song, the bard and the troubadour 
 ought to have left us a legacy of verse that would have filled the 
 libraries of Europe ; and so they probably would had not the original 
 Celt been too illiterate to care to record the expressions of his feelings. 
 As it is, nine-tenths of the lyric literature of Europe is of Celtic origin. 
 The Epos and the Drama may belong to the Aryan ; but in the art of 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 73 
 
 wedding music to immortal verse, and pouring forth a passionate 
 utterance in a few but beautiful words, the Celtic is only equalled by 
 the Semitic race. 
 
 Their remaining literature is of such modern growth, and was so 
 specially copied from what had preceded it, or so influenced by the 
 contemporary effusions of other people, that it is impossible accurately 
 to discriminate what is due to race and what to circumstances. All 
 that can safely be said is, that Celtic literature is always more epi- 
 grammatic, more brilliant, and more daring than that of the sober 
 Aryan ; but its coruscations neither light to so great a depth, nor last 
 8o long as less dazzling productions might do. They may be the most 
 brilliant, but they certainly do not belong to the highest class of 
 literary effort ; nor is their effect on the destiny of man likely to be 
 so permanent. 
 
 Arts. 
 
 The true glory of the Celt in Europe is his artistic eminence. It 
 is perhaps not too much to assert that without his intervention w^e 
 should not have possessed in modern times a church worthy of admi- 
 ration, or a picture or a statue we could look at without shame. 
 
 In their arts, too, — either from their higher status, or from their 
 admixture with Aryans, — w^e escape the instinctive fixity which makes 
 the arts of the pure Turanian as unprogressive as the works of birds 
 or of beavers. Restless intellectual progress characterizes everything 
 they perform ; and had their arts not been nipped in the bud by 
 circumstances over which they had no control, we might have seen 
 something that would have shamed even Greece and wholly eclipsed 
 the arts of Rome. 
 
 They have not, it is true, that instinctive knowledge of color 
 which distinguishes the Turanian, nor have they been able to give to 
 music that intellectual culture which has been elaborated by the 
 Aryans ; but in the middle path between the two they excel both. 
 They are far better musicians than the former, and far better colorists 
 than the last-named races ; but in modern Europe Architecture is 
 practically their owm. Where their influence was strongest, there 
 Architecture was most perfect; as they decayed, or as the Aryan 
 influence prevailed, the art first languished, and then died. 
 
 Their quasi-Tiiranian theology required Temples almost as grand 
 as those of the Copts or Tamuls; and, like them, they sought to 
 honor those who had been mortals by splendor which mortals are 
 assumed to be pleased with ; and the pomp of their worship always 
 surpassed that with which they honored their Kings. Even more 
 remarkable than this is the fact that they could and did build Tombs 
 such as a Turanian might have envied, not for their size but for their 
 
74 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECT UliE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 art, and even now can adorn their cemeteries with monuments which 
 are not ridiculous. 
 
 When a people are so mixed up with other races as the Celts are 
 in Europe, — frequently so fused as to be undistinguishable, — it is 
 almost impossible to si)eak with jorecision with regard either to their 
 arts or influence. It must in consequence be safer to assert that where 
 no Celtic blood existed there no real art is found ; though it is per- 
 haps equally true to assert that not only Architecture, but Painting 
 and Sculpture, have been patronized, and have flourished in the exact 
 ratio in which Celtic blood is found prevailing in any people in Eu- 
 rope ; and has died out as Aryan influence prevails, in spite of their 
 methodical efforts to indoctrinate themselves with what must be 
 the spontaneous impulse of genius, if it is to be of any value. 
 
 Sciences. 
 
 Of their sciences we know nothing till they were so steeped in 
 the civilization of older races that originality was hopeless. Still, in 
 the stages through which the intellect of Europe has yet passed, they 
 have played their part with brilliancy. But now that knowledge is 
 assuming a higher and more prosaic phase, it is doubtful whether the 
 deductive brilliancy of the Celtic mind can avail anything against the 
 inductive sobriety of the Aryan. So long as meta})hysics were science, 
 and science was theory, the peculiar form of the Celtic mind was 
 singularly well adapted oo see through sophistry and to guess the 
 direction in which truth might lie. But now that we have only to 
 question nature, to classify her answers, and patiently to record results, 
 its mission seems to have passed away. Truth in all its majesty, and 
 Nature in all her greatness, nnist now take the place of speculation, 
 with its cleverness, and man's ideas of what might or should be, must 
 be supplanted by the knowledge of God's works as they exist and the 
 contemplation of the eternal grandeur of the universe which we see 
 around us. 
 
 Though these are the highest, they are at the same time the most 
 sober functions of the human mind ; and while conferring the greatest 
 and most lasting benefit, not only on the individual who practises 
 them, but also on the human race, they are neither calculated to 
 gratify personal vanity, nor to reward individual ambition. 
 
 Such pursuits are not, therefore, of a nature to attract or interest 
 the Celtic races, but must be left to those who are content to sink 
 their personality in seeking the advantage of the common weal. 
 
 v.— ARYAN. 
 
 According to their own chronology, it seems to have been about 
 the year 3101 b.c. that the Aryans crossed the Indus and settled them- 
 
Pakt II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 75 
 
 selves in the country between that river and the Jumna, since known 
 among themselves as Arya Varta, or the Country of the Just, for all 
 succeeding ages. 
 
 More than a thousand years afterwards we find them, in the 
 age of the Raraayana, occupying all the country north of the 
 Yindya range, and attempting the conquest of the southern country, 
 — then, as now, occupied by Turanians, — and penetrating as far as 
 Ceylon. 
 
 Eiglit hundred years later we see them in the Mahabharata, having 
 lost much of their purity of blood, and adopting many of the customs 
 and much of the faith of the people they were settled amongst; and 
 three centuries before Christ we find they had so far degenerated as to 
 accept, almost Avithout a struggle, the religion of Buddha; which, 
 though no doubt a reform, and an important one, on the Anthrojnc 
 doctrines of the pure Turanians, was still essentially a faith of a 
 Turanian j^eople ; congenial to tliem, and to them only. 
 
 Ten centuries after Christ, when the Moslems came in contact with 
 India, the Aryan was a myth. The religion of the earlier people was 
 everywhere supreme, and with only a nominal thread of Aryanisni 
 running through the whole, just sufficient to bear testimony to tlie 
 prior existence of a purer faith, but not sufficient to leaven the mass 
 to any ap])reciable extent. 
 
 The fate of the western Aryans differed essentially from that of 
 those who wandered eastward. Theoretically we ought to assume, 
 from their less complex language and less pure faith, that they were 
 an earlier offshoot ; but it may be that in the forests of Europe they 
 lost for a while the civilized forms which the happier climate of Arya 
 Varta enabled the others to retain ; or it may be that the contact with 
 the more nearly equal Celtic races had mixed the language and the 
 faith of the Western races before they had the opportunity or the 
 leisure to record the knowledge they brought with them. 
 
 Be this as it may, they first appear prominently in the western 
 world in Greece, where, by a fortunate union with the Pelasgi, a people 
 apparently of Turanian race, they produced a civilization not purely 
 Aryan, and somewhat evanescent in its character, but more brilliant, 
 while it lasted, than anything the world had seen before, and, in certain 
 respects, more beautiful than anything that has illumined it since 
 their time. 
 
 They next sprang forth in Rome, mixed with the Turanian Etrus- 
 cans and the powerful Celtic tribes of Italy ; and lastly in Northern 
 Europe, where they are now working out their destiny, but to what 
 issue the future only can declare. 
 
 The essential difference between the eastern and western migration 
 is this, that in India the Aryans have sunk gradually into the arms 
 of a Turanian people till they have lost their identity, and with it all 
 
76 
 
 HISTOEY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 that ennobled them when they went there, or could enable them now 
 to influence the world again. 
 
 In Europe they found the country cleared of Turanians by the 
 earlier Celts ; and, mingling their blood with these more nearly allied 
 races, they have raised themselves to a position half way between the 
 two. Where they found the country unoccupied they have remained 
 so pure that, as their number multiplies, they may perhaps regain 
 something of the position they had temporarily abandoned, and some- 
 thing of that science which, it may be fancied, mankind only knew in 
 their primeval seats. 
 
 Religion. 
 
 What then was the creed of the primitive Aryans ? So far as we 
 can now see, it was the belief in one great ineffable God, — so great that 
 no human intellect could measure his greatness, — so wonderful that no 
 human language could express his qualities, — pervadmg everything 
 that was made, — ruling all created things, — a spirit, around, beyond 
 the universe, and within every individual particle of it. A creed so 
 ethereal could not long remain the faith of the multitude, and we early 
 find fire, — the most ethereal of the elements, — looked to as an emblem 
 of the Deity. The heavens, too, received a name, and became an 
 entity : — so did our mother earth. To these succeeded the sun, the 
 stars, the elements, — but never among the pure Aryans as gods, or as 
 influencing the destiny of man, but as manifestations of His power, 
 and reverenced because they were visible manifestations of a Being 
 too abstract for an ordinary mind to grasp. Below this the Aryans 
 never seem to have sunk. 
 
 With a faith so elevated, of course no temple could be wanted ; no 
 human ceremonial could be supposed capable of doing 'honor to a 
 Deity so conceived; nor any sacrifice acceptable to Him to whom all 
 things belonged. With the Aryans worshij) was a purely domestic 
 institution ; prayer the solitary act of each individual man, standing 
 alone in the presence of an omniscient Deity. All that was required 
 was that man should acknowledge the greatness of God, and his own 
 comparative insignificance ; should express his absolute trust and faith 
 in the beneficence and justice of his God, and a hope that he might 
 be enabled to live so pure, and so free from sin, as to deserve such 
 happiness as this world can afford, and be enabled to do as much good 
 to others as it is vouchsafed to man to perform. 
 
 A few insignificant formula served to mark the modes in which 
 these subjects should recur. The recitation of a time-honored hymn 
 refreshed the attention of the worshipper, and the reading of a few 
 sacred texts recalled the duties it was expected he should perform. 
 With these simple ceremonies the worship of the Aryans seems to have 
 begun and ended. 
 
Paut II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 77 
 
 Even in later times, when their blood has become less pure, and 
 their feelings were influenced by association with those among whom 
 they resided, the religion of the Aryans always retained its intellectual 
 character. No dogma was ever admitted that would not bear the test 
 of reason, and no article of faith was ever assented to which seemed to 
 militate against the supremacy of intellect over all feelings and 
 passions. In all their wanderings they were always prepared to 
 admit the immeasurable greatness of the one incorporeal Deity, and 
 the impossibility of the human intellect approaching or forming any 
 adequate conception of His majesty. 
 
 When they abandoned the domestic form of worship, they adoptea 
 the congregational, and then not so much with the idea that it was 
 pleasing to God, as in order to remind each other of their duties, to 
 regulate and govern the spiritual wants of the community, and to 
 inculcate piety towards God and charity towards each other. 
 
 It need hardly be added that superstition is impossible with 
 minds so constituted, and that science must always be the surest and 
 the best ally of a religion so j^ure and exalted, which is based on a 
 knowledge of God's works, a consequent appreciation of their great- 
 ness, and an ardent aspiration towards that power and goodness which 
 the finite intellect of man can never hope to reach. 
 
 Government. 
 
 The most marked characteristic of the Aryans is their innate 
 passion for self-government. If not absolutely republican, the tendency 
 of all their institutions, at all times, has been towards that form, and 
 in almost the exact ratio to the purity of the blood do they adopt this 
 form of autocracy. If kingly power was ever introduced among them, 
 it was always in the form of a limi^d monarchy ; never the uncon- 
 trolled despotism of the other races ; and every conceivable check 
 was devised to prevent encroachments of the crown, even if such were 
 possible among a people so organized as the Aryans always have 
 been. 
 
 With them every town was a municipality, every village a little 
 republic, and every trade a separate self-governing guild. Many of 
 these institutions have died out, or else fallen into neglect, in those 
 communities where equal rights and absolute laws have rendered each 
 individual a king in his own person, and every family a republic 
 in itself. 
 
 The village system which the Aryans introduced into India, is still 
 the most remarkable of its institutions. These little republican organ- 
 isms have survived the revolutions of fifty centuries. Neither the 
 devastations of war nor the indolence of peace seems to have affected 
 them. Under Brahmin, Buddhist, or Moslem, they remain the same 
 
78 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCIIITECTUIIE. 
 
 Pakt II 
 
 unchanged and unchangeable institutions, and neither despotism nor 
 anarchy has been able to alter them. They alone have saved India 
 from sinking into a state of savage imbecility, under the various hordes 
 of conquerors who have at times overrun her; and they, with the 
 Yedas and the laws afterward embodied by Menu, alone remain as 
 records of the old Aryan possessors of the Indian peninsula. 
 
 Municipalities, which are merely an' enlargement of the Indian 
 village system, exist wherever the Romans were settled, or where the 
 Aryan races exist in Europe ; and though guilds are fast losing their 
 significance, it was the Teutonic guilds that alone checked and ulti- 
 mately supplanted the feudal despotisms of the Celts. 
 
 Caste is another institution of these races, which has always more 
 or less influenced all their actions. Where their blood has become so 
 impure as it is in India, caste has degenerated into an abuse ; but where 
 it is a living institution, it is perhaps as conducive to the proper 
 regulation of society as any with which we are acquainted. The one 
 thing over which no man can have any control is the accident of his 
 birth ; but it is an immense gain to him that he should be satisfied with 
 the station in which he finds himself, and content to do his duty in the 
 sphere in which he was born. Caste, properly understood, never inter- 
 feres with the accumulation of wealth or power within the limits of the 
 class, and only recognizes the inevitable accident of birth ; while the 
 fear of losing caste is one of the most salutary checks which has been 
 devised to restrain men from acts unworthy of their social position. It 
 is an enormous gain to society that each man should know his station 
 and be prepared to perform the duties belonging to it, without the rest- 
 less craving of a selfish ambition that would sacrifice everything for the 
 sake of the personal aggrandizement of the individual. It is far better 
 to acknowledge that there is no s])here in life in which man ma}' not 
 become as like unto the gods as in any other sphere ; and it is every- 
 where better to respect the public good rather than to seek to gratify 
 personal ambition. 
 
 The populations of modern Europe have become so mixed that 
 neither caste nor any other Aryan institution now exists in its pristine 
 purity ; but in the ratio in which a people is Aryan do they possess an 
 aristocracy and municipal institutions ; and, what is almost of more 
 importance, in that ratio are the people prepared to respect the grada- 
 tions of caste in society, and to sacrifice their individual ambition to 
 the less brilliant task of doing all the good that is possible in the 
 spheres in which they have been placed. 
 
 It is true and so has been found, that an uncontrolled despotism is 
 a sharper, a quicker, and a better tool for warlike purposes, or where 
 national vanity is to be gratified by conquest or the display of power ; 
 but the complicated, and it may be clumsy, institutions of the Aryans 
 are far more lasting and more conducive to individual self-respect, and 
 
Part II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 79 
 
 far more likely to add to the sum of human happiness, and tend more 
 clearly to the real greatness and moral elevation of mankind, than any 
 human institution we are yet acquainted with. 
 
 So far as our experience now goes, the division of human society 
 into classes or castes is not only the most natural concomitant of the 
 division of labor, but is also the most beneficent of the institutions 
 of man ; while the organization of a nation into self-governing munici- 
 palities is not only singularly conducive to individual well-being, but 
 renders it practically indestructible by conquest, and even imperish- 
 able through lapse of time. These two are the most essentially 
 characteristic institutions of the Aryans. 
 
 Morals. 
 
 In morals the Aryans were always monogamic, and with them alone 
 does woman always assume a perfect equality of position ; mistress of 
 her own actions till marriage ; when married, in theory at least, the 
 equal sharer in the property and in the duties of the household. Were 
 it possible to carry out these doctrines absolutely in practice, they 
 would j^robably be more conducive to human happiness than any of 
 those enumerated above ; but even a tendency towards them is an 
 enormous gain. 
 
 Their institutions for self-government, enumerated above, have 
 probably done more to elevate the Aryan race than can well be a])pre- 
 ciated. When every man takes, or may take, his share in governing 
 the commonwealth — when every man must govern himself, and respect 
 the independence of his neighbor — men cease to be tools, and become 
 independent reasoning beings. They are taught self-respect, and with 
 this comes love of truth — of those qualities which command the respect 
 of their fellow-men ; and they are likewise taught that control of their 
 passions which renders them averse to war ; while the more sober occu- 
 pations of life prevent the necessity of their seeking, in the wildness of 
 excitement, that relief from monotony w])ich so frequently drives other 
 races into those excesses the world has had so often to deplore. The 
 existence of caste, even in its most modified form, prevents individual 
 ambition from having that unlimited career which among other 
 races has so often sacrificed the public weal to the ambition of an 
 individual. 
 
 Literature. 
 
 The Aryan races employed an alphabet at so early a period of their 
 history that we cannot now tell when or how it was introduced among 
 them ; and it was, even when we first become acquainted with it, a 
 far more perfect alphabet than that of the Semitic races, though appar- 
 ently formed on its basis. Nothing in it was dependent on memory. 
 
80 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 It possessed vowels, and all that was necessary to enunciate sounds 
 with perfect and absolute precision. In consequence of this, and of 
 the perfect structure of their language, they were enabled to indulge 
 in philosophical speculation, to write treatises on grammar and logic, 
 and generally to assume a literary position which other races never 
 attained to. 
 
 History with them was not a mere record of dates or collection 
 of genealogical tables, but an essay on the polity of mankind to 
 which the narrative afforded the illustration ; while their poetry had 
 always a tendency to assume more a didactic than a lyric form. It is 
 among the Aryans that the Epos first rose to eminence and the Drama 
 was elevated above a mere spectacle ; but even in these the highest 
 merit sought to be attained was that they should represent vividly 
 events which might have taken place, even if they never did happen 
 among men ; while the Celts and the Semites delight in wild imagin- 
 ings Avhich never could have existed except in the brain of the poet. 
 When the blood of the Aryan has been mixed with that of other races, 
 they have produced a literature eminently imaginative and poetic; 
 but in proportion to their purity has been their tendency towards a 
 more prosaic style of composition. The aim of the race has always 
 been the attainment of practical common sense, and the possession of 
 this quality is their pride and boast, and justly so; but it is unfortu- 
 nately antagonistic to the existence of an imaginative literature, and 
 we must look to them more for eminence in works on history and 
 philosophy than in those which require imagination or creative 
 power. 
 
 Art. 
 
 These remarks apply with more than double force to the Fine 
 Arts than to verbal literature. In the first place, a people possessing 
 such a power of phonetic utterance never could look on a picture 
 or statue as more than a mere subsidiary illustration of the written 
 text. A painting may represent vividly one view of what took place 
 at one moment of time, but a written narrative can deal with all the 
 circumstances and link it to its antecedents and effects. A statue of a 
 man cannot tell one-tenth of what a short biography will make plain ; 
 and an ideal statue or ideal painting may be a pretty Celtic plaything, 
 but it is not what Aryans hanker after. 
 
 With Architecture the case is even worse. Convenience is the 
 first thing which the practical common sense of the Aryan seeks, 
 and then to gain what he desires by the readiest and the easiest 
 means. This done, why should he do more? If, induced by a 
 desire to emulate others, he has to, make his building ornamental, 
 he is willing to copy what experience has proved to be successful in 
 former works, willing to spend his money and to submit to some 
 
Part 11. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 81 
 
 inconvenience ; but in his heart he thinks it useless, and he neither 
 will waste his time in thinking on the subject, nor apply those energies 
 of his mind to its elaboration, without which nothing great or good 
 was ever done in Art. 
 
 In addition to this, the immaterial nature of their faith has 
 always deprived the Aryan races of the principal incentive to archi- 
 tectural magnificence.! The Turanian and Celtic races always have 
 the most implicit faith in ceremonial worship and in the necessity of 
 architectural splendor as its indispensable accompaniment. On the 
 other hand, the more practical Aryan can never be brought to under- 
 stand that prayer is either more sincere or is more acceptable in one 
 form of house than in any other. He does not feel that virtue can 
 be increased or vice exterminated by the number of bricks or stones 
 that may be heaped on one another, or the form in which they may be 
 placed ; nor will his conception of tlie Deity admit of supposing that 
 He can be propitiated by palaces or halls erected in honor of Him, or 
 that a building in the Middle Pointed Gothic is more acceptable than 
 one in the Classic or any other style. 
 
 This want of faith may be reasonable, but it is fatal to poetry in 
 Art, and, it is feared, will prevent the Aryans from attaining more 
 excellence in Architectural Art at the present time than they have 
 done in former ages. 
 
 It is also true that the people are singularly deficient in their aj^- 
 preciation of colors. Not that actual color-blindness is more common 
 with them than with other races, but the harmony of tints is unknown 
 to them. Some may learn, but none feel it; it is a matter of mem- 
 ory and an exercise of intellect, but no more. So, too, with form 
 Other — even savage — races cannot go w^rong in this respect. If the 
 Aryan is successful in art, it is generally in consequence of education, 
 not from feeling ; and, like all that is not innate in man, it yields only 
 a secondary gratification, and fails to impress his brother man, or to 
 be a real work of Art. 
 
 From these causes the ancient Aryans never erected a single 
 building in India when they were pure, nor in that part of India which 
 they colonized even after their blood became mixed ; and we do not 
 now know what their style was or is, though the whole of that part 
 of the peninsula occupied by the Turanians, or to which their 
 influence ever extended, is, and always was, covered by buildings, 
 vast in extent and wonderful from their elaboration. This, probably, 
 also is the true cause of the decline of Architecture and other arts in 
 Europe and in the rest of the modern world. Wherever the Aryans 
 appear Art flies before them, and where their influence extends 
 
 1 Had there been no Pelasgi in Greece, there probably would have been no 
 Architecture of the Grecian period. 
 
 VOL. I. — 6 
 
82 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part XL 
 
 utilitarian practical common sense is assumed to be all that man 
 should aim at. It may be so, but it is sad to think that beauty 
 cannot be combined with sense. 
 
 Music alone, as being the most phonetic of the fine arts, has 
 received among the Aryans a degree of culture denied to the others ; 
 but even here the tendency has been rather to develop scientific excel- 
 lence than to appeal to the responsive chords of the human heart. 
 Notwithstanding this, its power is more felt and greater excellence is 
 attained in this science than in any other. It also has escaped the 
 slovenly process of copying, with which the inartistic mind of the 
 Aryans has been content to fancy it was creating Art in other 
 branches. 
 
 If, however, these races have been so deficient in the fine arts, 
 they have been as excellent in all the useful ones. Agriculture, man- 
 ufactures, commerce, ship-building, and road-making, all that tends to 
 accumulate wealth or to advance material prosperity, has been devel- 
 oped to an extent as great as it is unprecedented, and promises to 
 produce results which as yet can only be dimly guessed at. A great, 
 and, so far as we can see, an inevitable revolution, is pervading the 
 whole world through the devotion of the Aryan races to these arts. 
 We have no reason for supposing it will be otherwise tlian beneficial, 
 however much we may feel inclined to regret that the beautiful could 
 not be allowed to share a little of that worship so lavishly bestowed 
 on the useful. 
 
 Sciences. 
 
 It follows, as a matter of course, that, with minds so constituted, 
 the Aryans should have cultivated science with earnestness and suc- 
 cess. The only beauty they, in fact, appreciated was the beauty of 
 scientific truth ; the only harmony they ever really felt was that of the 
 laws of nature ; and the only art they ever cared to cultivate was that 
 which grouped these truths and their harmonies into forms which 
 enabled them to be easily grasped and appreciated. Mathematics 
 always had especial charms to the Aryan mind ; and, more even than 
 this, astronomy was always captivating. So, also, were the mechanical, 
 and so, too, the natural sciences. It is to the Aryans that Induction 
 owes its birth, and they probably alone have the patience and the 
 sobriety to work it to its legitimate conclusions. 
 
 The true mission of the Aryan races appears to be to pervade the 
 world with the useful and industrial arts, and so tend to reproduce 
 that unity which has long been lost, to raise man, not by magnifying 
 his individual cleverness, but by accumulating a knowledge of the 
 works of God, so tending to make him a greater and wiser, and at the 
 same time a humbler and a more religious servant of his Creator. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 83 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 When Augiiste Comte proposed that classification which made the 
 fortune of his philosophy, — when he said that all mankind passed 
 through the theological state in childhood, the metaphysical in youth, 
 and the philosophical or positive in manhood, — and ventured to extend 
 this discovery to nations, he had a glimpse, as others have had before 
 him, of the beauty of the great harmony which pervades all created 
 things. But he had not philosophy enough to see that the one great 
 law is so vast and so remote, that no human intellect can grasp it, 
 and that it is only the little fragments of that great scheme, which are 
 found everywhere, which man is permitted to understand. 
 
 Had he known as much of ethnographical as he did of mathemati- 
 cal science, he would have perceived that there is no warrant for this 
 daring generalization; but that nations, in the states which he calls 
 the theological, the metaphysical, and the philosophical, exist now and 
 coexisted through all the ages of the world to which our historical 
 knowledge extends. 
 
 What the Egyptians were when they first appeared on the scene 
 they were when they perished under the Greek and Roman sway; — 
 what the Chinese always were they now are; — the Jews and Arabs 
 are unchanged to this day; — the Celts are as daringly speculative and 
 as blindly superstitious now as we always found them ; — and the Aryans 
 of the Vedas or of Tacitus were very much the same sober, reasoning, 
 unimaginative, and unartistic people as they are at this hour. Progress 
 among men, as among the animals, seems to be achieved not so much 
 by advances made within the limits of the group, as by the supersession 
 of the less finely organized beings by those of a higher class; — and 
 this, so far as our knowledge extends, is accomplished neither by suc- 
 cessive creations, nor by the gradual development of one species out 
 of another, but by the successive prominent appearances of previously 
 developed, though partially dormant creations. 
 
 Ethnographers have already worked out this problem to a great 
 extent, and arrived at a very considerable degree of certainty, through 
 the researches of patient linguistic investigators. But language is in 
 itself too impalpable ever to give the science that tangible, local reality, 
 which is necessary to its success; and it is here that Archaeology comes 
 so opportunely to its aid. What men dug or built remains where it 
 was first placed, and probably retains the first im]:>ressions it received ; 
 and so fixes the era and standing of those who called it into existence; 
 so that even those who cannot appreciate the evidence derived from 
 grammar or from words, may generally see at a glance what the facts 
 of the case really are. 
 
84 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 It is even more important that such a science as Ethnology should 
 have two or more methods of investigation at its command. Certainty 
 can hardly ever be attained by only one process, unless checked and 
 elucidated by otliers, and nothing can therefore be more fortunate than 
 the possession of so important a sister science as that of Archaeology 
 to aid in the search' after scientific truth. 
 
 If Ethnology may thus be so largely indebted to Archaeology, the 
 converse is also true ; and she may pay back the debt with interest. 
 As Archaeology and Architecture have hitherto been studied, they, but 
 more especially the latter, have been little more than a dry record of 
 facts and measurements, interesting to the antiquary, to the profes- 
 sional architect, or to the tourist, who finds it necessary to get up a 
 certain amount of knowledge on the subject; but the utmost that has 
 hitherto been sought to be attained is a certain knowledge of the forms 
 of the art, while the study of it, as that of one of the most important 
 and most instructive of the sciences connected with the history of 
 man, has been as a rule neglected. 
 
 Without this the study of Architecture is a mere record of bricks 
 and stones, and of the modes in which they were heaped together for 
 man's use. Considered in the light of an historical record, it acquires 
 not only the dignity of a science, but especial interest as being one of 
 those sciences which are most closely connected with man's interests 
 and feelings, and tl\e one which more distinctly expresses and more 
 clearly records what man did and felt in previous ages, than any other 
 study we are acquainted witli. 
 
 From this point of view, not only every tomb and every temple, 
 but even the rude monoliths and mounds of savages, acquire a dignity 
 and interest to which they have otherwise no title; and man's works 
 become not only man's most imperishable record, but one of the best 
 means we possess of studying liis liistory, or of understanding his 
 nature or his aspirations. 
 
 Rightly understood, Archaeology is as useful as any other branch of 
 science or of art, in enabling us to catch such glinipses as are vouch- 
 safed to man of the great laws that govern all things ; and the knowl- 
 edge that this class of man's works is guided and governed by those 
 very laws, and not by the chance efforts of unmeaning minds, elevates 
 the study of it to as high a position as that of any other branch of 
 human knowledge. 
 
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 PAET I.-ANOIENT AROHITEOTUEE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 SO long as the geographer confines himself to mapping out the dif- 
 ferent countries of the world, or smaller portions of the earth's 
 surface, he finds no difficulty in making a projection which shall cor- 
 rectly represent the exact relative position of all the various features 
 of the land or sea. But when he attempts to portray a continent, 
 some distortion necessarily results ; and when he undertakes a hemi- 
 sphere, both distortion and exaggeration become inevitable. It has 
 consequently been found necessary to resort to some conventional 
 means of portraying the larger surfaces of the globe. These avow- 
 edly do not represent 'correctly the forms of the countries portrayed, 
 but they enable the geographer to ascertain what their distances or 
 relative positions are by the application of certain rules and formulae 
 of no great complexity. 
 
 The same thing is true of history. So long as the narrative is 
 confined to individual countries or provinces, it may be perfectly 
 consecutive and uninterrupted ; but when two or three nations are 
 grouped together, frequent interruptions and recapitulations become 
 necessary ; and when universal history is attempted, it seems impos- 
 sible to arrange the narrative so as to prevent these from assuming 
 very considerable importance. The utmost that can be done is to 
 devise some scheme which shall prevent the repetition from leading 
 to tediousness, and enable the student to follow the thread of any 
 portion of the narrative without confusion, or the assumption of any 
 special previous knowledge on his part. 
 
 Bearing these difficulties in mind, it will probably be found con- 
 venient to divide the whole history of Architecture into four great 
 divisions of parts. 
 
 85 
 
86 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Book I. 
 
 The first, which may be called "Ancient or Heathen Art," to com- 
 prehend all those styles which prevailed in the old world from the 
 dawn of history in Egypt till the disruption of the Roman Empire 
 by the removal of the capital from Rome to Constantinople in the 
 fourth century. 
 
 The second to be called either " Mediaeval," or more properly 
 " Christian Art." This again subdivides itself into three easily-under- 
 stood divisions. 1. The Romanesque, or Transitional style, which pre- 
 vailed between the ages of Constantine and Justinian ; 2. The Gothic, 
 or Western Christian ; and 3. The Byzantine, or Eastern Christian 
 style. Either of these two last might be taken first without incon- 
 gruity ; but on the whole, it will be convenient, first to follow the 
 thread of the history of Gothic art, and return to take up that of 
 the Byzantine afterwards. The Western styles form a complete and 
 perfect chapter in themselves, based directly on the Romanesque, but 
 borrowing very little and lending less to any other style during" their 
 existence. They also perished earlier, having died out in the 16th 
 century, while the Byzantine continued to be practised within the 
 limits of the present century in Russia and other Eastern countries. 
 
 Another reason for taking the Gothic styles first is that the 
 Saracenic spring directly from the Byzantine, and according to this 
 arrangement would follow naturally after it. 
 
 The third great division of the subject I would suggest might con- 
 veniently be denominated "Pagan." i It would comprise all tfhose 
 minor miscellaneous styles not included in the two previous divisions. 
 Commencing with the Saracenic, it would include the Buddhist, 
 Hindu, and Chinese styles, the Mexican and Peruvian, and lastly that 
 mysterious group which for want of a better name I have elsewhere 
 designated as "Rude Stone Monuments." ^ No very consecutive 
 arrangement can be formed of these styles. They generally have 
 little connection with each other, and are so much less important than 
 the others that their mode of treatment ia of far less consequence. 
 Nor is it necessary to attempt any exact classification of these at pres- 
 ent, as, owing to the convenience of publication, it has been, deter- 
 mined to form the Indian and allied Eastern styles into a separate 
 volume, which will include not only the Buddhist and Hindu styles, 
 but the Indian Saracenic, which, in a strictly logical arrangement, 
 ought to be classified with the Western style bearing the same name. 
 
 1 The derivation of the two words 
 Heathen and Pagan seems to indicate 
 the relative importance of these two 
 terms very much in the degree it is here 
 wished to express. Heathen is gener- 
 ally understood to be derived from edvo<;, 
 a nation or people; and Pagan from 
 Pagus, Pagani, a village, or villagers. 
 
 Both are iised here not as terms of re- 
 proach, but as indicative of their being 
 non-Christian, which is what it is wished 
 to express, and was the original inten- 
 tion of the terra. 
 
 2 "Rude Stone Monuments," 1 vol. 
 8vo. Murrav, 1872. 
 
Part I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 87 
 
 The styles of the New World, having as yet no acknowledged 
 connection with those of the Old, may be for the present treated of 
 anywhere. 
 
 The fourth and last great division, forming the fourth volume of 
 the present work, is that of the " Modern or Copying Styles of 
 Architecture," meaning thereby those which are the products of 
 the renaissance of the classical styles that marked the epoch of 
 the cinquecento period. These have since that time prevailed gene- 
 rally in Europe to the present day, and are now making the tour 
 of the world. Within the limits of the present century it is true that 
 the copying of the classical styles has to some extent been superseded 
 by a more servile imitation of those of mediaeval art. The forms have 
 consequently changed, but the principles remain the same. 
 
 It would of course be easy to point out minor objections to this or 
 to any scheme, but on the whole it will be found to meet the exigencies 
 of the case as we now know it, as well or perhaps better than any other. 
 The greatest difficulty in carrying it out is to ascertain how far the 
 geographical arrangement should be made to supersede the chrono- 
 logical and ethnographical. Whether, for instance, Italy should be 
 considered as a whole, or if the buildings of the eastern coast should 
 not be described as belonging to the Byzantine, and those of the 
 Avestern coast to the Gothic kingdom ? Whether the description of 
 the Temple at Jerusalem should stop short with the rebuilding by 
 Zorobabel, or be continued till its final completion under Herod ? If 
 the former course is pursued, we cut in two a perfectly consecutive 
 narrative ; if the latter, we get far in advance of our chronological 
 sequence. 
 
 In both of these instances, as in many others it is a choice of 
 difficulties, and where frequently the least strictly logical mode of 
 proceeding may be found the more convenient. 
 
 After all, the real difficulty lies not so much in arranging the 
 materials as in weighing the relative importance to be assigned to each 
 division. In wandering over so vast a field it is difficult to prevent 
 personal predilection from interfering with purely logical criticism. 
 Although architecture is the most mechanical of the fine arts, and 
 consequently the most amenable to scientific treatment, still as a fine 
 art it must be felt to be appreciated, and when the feelings come into 
 play the reason is sometimes in danger. Though strict impartiality 
 has been aimed at in assigning the true limits to each of the divisions 
 above pointed out, few probably will be of the same opinion as to the 
 degree of success which has been achieved in the attempt. 
 
88 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 OUTLINE OF EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY, 
 
 ACCORDING TO MANETHO AND THE MONUMENTS. 
 
 OLD KINGDOM OF PYRAMID BUILDERS. 
 
 1st dynasty, Thinite 
 2d 
 
 3d 
 4th 
 5th 
 6th 
 7th 
 8th 
 9th 
 10th 
 
 Memphite . 
 
 Elephantine 
 
 Memphite 
 
 " 70 days ? 
 >) 
 
 Heracleapolite . . 
 
 Years. 
 252 
 302 
 214 
 284 
 248 
 203 
 
 146 
 
 100? 
 
 185 
 
 Accession of Menes, 1st king . 
 
 Ten dynasties of kings, reigning 
 sometimes contemporaneously in 
 Upper and in Lower Egypt; at 
 other times both divisions were 
 miited under one king. 
 
 The total duration of their 
 reigns, as nearly as can be esti- 
 mated, was 1335 years. 
 
 B.C. 
 
 3906 
 
 11th 
 12th 
 
 FIRST THEBAN KINGDOM. 
 
 Thebans .... 43 Commenced 2571 
 
 " .... 246 over Upper, 188 over Lower Egypt. 
 
 13th 
 14th 
 15th 
 16th 
 I7th 
 
 Diospolites 
 Xoite . . 
 Shepherds 
 Hellenes . 
 Shepherds 
 
 SHEPHERD INVASION. 
 
 453 Five dynasties of Shepherd or 
 484 native kings reigning or existing 
 
 284 contemporaneously in four series 
 518 in different parts of Egypt during 
 
 151 511 years. 
 
 435 
 
 GREAT THEBAN KINGDOM. 
 
 18th 
 
 » 
 
 Theban . . 
 
 . . 393 
 
 19th 
 
 
 
 . . 194 
 
 20th 
 
 >> 
 
 >> 
 
 . 135 
 
 21st 
 
 )> 
 
 Tanite . . 
 
 . . 130 
 
 22d 
 
 )) 
 
 Bubastite . . 
 
 . . 120 
 
 23d 
 
 )) 
 
 Tanite . . 
 
 . . 89 
 
 24th 
 
 >> 
 
 Sa'ite . . . 
 
 . . 44 
 
 25th 
 
 jj 
 
 Ethiopian 
 
 . . 44 
 
 26th 
 
 5) 
 
 Saite . . . 
 
 » . 155 
 
 Over all Egypt 1819 
 
 1436 
 
 Exode of Jews, 1312. 
 
 1242 
 
 1107 
 
 977 
 
 Temple of Jerusalem plundered, 972. 
 
 857 
 
 768 
 
 724 
 
 680 
 
 Persian Invasion under Cambyses 526 ^ 
 
 1 The above scheme of Egyptian 
 Chronology was published by me in the 
 *' True Principles of Beauty in Art," in 
 1849; and the data on which it was 
 based were detailed in the Appendix to 
 that work. As there seems to be 
 
 nothing in the subsequent researches or 
 discoveries which at all invalidates the 
 reasoning on which the table was 
 founded, it is here reproduced in an 
 abridged form as originally set forth. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 89 
 
 BOOK 1. 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER 1. 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 IN any consecutive narrative of the architectural undertakings of 
 mankind the description of what was done in Egypt necessarily 
 commences the series, not only because the records of authentic history 
 are found in the Valley of the Nile long before the traditions of other 
 nations had assumed anything like tangible consistency, but because, 
 from the earliest dawn down to the time when Christianity struck 
 down the old idolatry, the inhabitants of that mysterious land were 
 essentially and pre-eminently a building race. Were it not for this we 
 should be left with the dry bones of the skeleton of her history, which 
 is all that is left us of the dynasties of Manetlio ; or with the fables 
 in which ignorant and credulous European travellers expressed their 
 wonder at a civilization they could not comprehend. 
 
 As the case now stands, the monuments of Egypt give life and reality 
 to their whole history. It is impossible for any educated man capable 
 of judging of the value of evidence, to wander among the Pyramids 
 and tombs of Memphis, the Temples of Thebes, or the vast structures; 
 erected by the Ptolemys or CaBsars, and not to feel that he has before 
 him a chapter of history more authentic than we possess of any nation 
 at all approaching it in antiquity, and a picture of men and manners 
 more vivid and more ample than remains to us of any other people 
 who have passed away. 
 
 As we wander among the tombs or temples of Egypt we see the 
 very chisel-marks of the mason, and the actual colors of the painter 
 which were ordered by a Suphis or a Rhamses, and we stand face to 
 face with works the progress of which they watched, and which 
 they designed in order to convey to posterity what their thoughts and 
 feelings were, and what they desired to record for the instruction of 
 future generations. All is there now, and all who care may learn what 
 these old kings intended should be known by their remotest posterity. 
 
90 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Immense progress has been made in unravelling the intricacies 
 of Egyptian history since the time when Champollion, profiting 
 by the discovery of Young, first translated the hieroglyphical in- 
 scriptions that cover the walls of Egyptian buildings. Of late years 
 it has been too frequently assumed that his works, Avith those of 
 Rosellini, of Wilkinson, and Lepsius, and the numerous other authors 
 wlio have applied themselves to Egyptology, had told us all we are 
 ever likely to know of her history. In so far as the epochs of the 
 great Pharaonic dynasties of Thebes are concerned this may be partially 
 true, but it is only since M. Mariette undertook the systematic 
 exploration of the great Necropolis of Memphis that we have been 
 enabled to realize the importance of the older dynasties, and become 
 aware of the completeness of the records they have left behind them. 
 Much as we have learned during the last forty years, recent explo- 
 rations have taught us that the soil of Egypt is not half exhausted yet ; 
 and every day our knowledge is assuming a consistency and complete- 
 ness as satisfactory as it is wonderful. 
 
 Although there are still minor differences of opinion with regard to 
 the details of Egyptian chronology, still the divergences between the 
 various systems proposed are gradually narrowing in extent. The 
 sequence of events is certain, and accepted by all. The initial date, 
 and the adjustments depending on it, are alone in dispute. - The truth 
 is that every subsequent step in the investigation has tended more and 
 more to prove the correctness of the data furnished by the lists of 
 Manetho, and the only important question is, "what is Manetho?" 
 His work is lost. The only real extracts we have from the original are 
 those in " Joseph us contra Apion." The lists in Eusebius and Syncellus 
 or Africanus have avowedly been adjusted to suit preconceived theories 
 of Biblical chronology ; but on the whole a great preponderance of evi- 
 dence seems in favor of assuming that he really intended to fix the 
 year 3906 as the initial year of the reign of Menes,^ or some year within 
 a very short distance of that date. Some years ago this would have 
 seemed to suffice, but so many new monuments have been disinterred of 
 late, so many new names of kings added to our lists, that the tendency 
 is now rather to extend than to contract this limit of dui-ation. 
 
 Be this as it may, what we really do know absolutely is that 
 there was an old kingdom of pyramid-builders, comprising the first 
 ten dynasties of Manetho, who reigned at Memphis. These, after 
 a period of decadence, were superseded by kings of a different race 
 coming from the south ; and that these, after a short j^eriod of glory, 
 were conquered by an Asiatic race of hated Shepherd Kings. 
 
 After five centuries of foreign domination, the Shepherds in their 
 turn were driven out, and the new kingdom founded. This, after 
 
 1 Syncellus, Chron. p. 98, ed. Dindorff, Bonn, 1829. 
 
Bk. I. Cn. I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 91 
 
 witnessing the glories of the 18th and 19th dynasties, declined during 
 the next seven dynasties till they were struck down by the Persian 
 Carnbyses. 
 
 A third period of architectural magnificence arose with the 
 Ptoleinys, and was continued by the Caesars on nearly the same scale 
 of magnificence as the second kingdom ; but wanting its exuberant 
 nationality, and far below the quiet grandeur of the earlier epoch. 
 
 In counting backwards the dates of these dynasties, the first 
 authentic synchronism we meet with is that of Shishak, the first king 
 of the 22nd dynasty, contempoi-ary with Rehoboam, about 970 b. c. 
 
 The next is the Exode of the Jews, which took place 1312 b. c, 
 under the reign of Amenoph, tlie third king of the 19th dynasty of 
 Manetho. Many would place it earlier, but none probably would bring 
 that event down to a more modern date. 
 
 From this date Josephus tells us that Manetho counted 518 years 
 to the expulsion of the Shepherds, and 511 for the duration of their 
 sojourn in Egypt, ^ we thus get back to 2340 for the first year of 
 Salatis. There then remain only fifteen centuries and a half, in which 
 we have to arrange the two great Theban dynasties (the 11th and 
 12th), which reigned for more than two centuries over the whole of 
 Egypt ; while the 12th seems to have extended some distance into the 
 period occupied by the Sliepherds. We are thus left with little more 
 than 1300 years over which to spread the ten first dynasties, notwith- 
 standing that some 60 or 70 of their royal sepulchral pyramids still 
 adorn the banks of tlie Nile ; and we have many names to which no 
 tombs can be attached, and many pyramids may have })erished during 
 the 5000 years which have elapsed since the greater number of tliem 
 were erected. 
 
 Long as these periods may to some appear, they are certainly the 
 shortest that any one familiar with the recent progress of Egyptian 
 research would be willing^ to assij^n to them. But in whatever lio-ht 
 they may be viewed, they sink into utter insignificance when compared 
 with the periods that must have elapsed before Egypt could have 
 reached that stage of civilization in which we find her when her 
 existence first dawns upon us. If one point in Egyptian history is 
 proved with more certainty than another, it is that the great Pyramids 
 of Gizeh were erected by the kings of the 4th dynasty ; and it seems 
 impossible to find room for the now ascertained facts of Egyptian 
 chronology, unless we place their erection between 3000 and 3500 
 years before the Christian era. 
 
 No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great Pyramid 
 without being struck with astonishment at the wonderful mechanical 
 skill displayed in its construction. The immense blocks of granite 
 
 ''Josephus contra Apion," i. 14, 16 and 26. 
 
92 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 brought from Syene — a distance of 500 miles — polished like glass, and 
 so fitted that the joints can hardly be detected. Nothing can be more 
 wonderful than the extraordinary amount of knowledge displayed in 
 the construction of the discharging chambers over the roof of the 
 principal apartment, in the alignment of the sloping galleries, in the 
 provision of ventilating shafts, and in all the wonderful contrivances 
 of the structure. All these, too, are carried out with such precision 
 that, notwithstanding the immense superincumbent weight, no settle- 
 ment in any part can be detected to the extent of an appreciable 
 fraction of an inch. Nothing more perfect, mechanically, has ever 
 been erected since that time ; and we ask ourselves in vain, how long 
 it must have taken before men acquired such experience and such 
 skill, or w^ere so perfectly organized, as to contemplate and complete 
 such undertakings. 
 
 Around the base of the pyramid are found numerous structural 
 tombs, whose walls bear the cartouche of the same king — Suphis — 
 whose name was found by Colonel Howard Yyse in one of the previously 
 unopened chambers of the Great Pyramid.^ These are adorned with 
 paintings so numerous and so complete, as to enable us to realize with 
 singular completeness the state of Egyptian society at that early ])eriod. 
 
 On their walls the owner of the tomb is usually represented seated, 
 offering first fruits on a simple table-altar to an unseen god. He is 
 generally accompanied by his wife, and surrounded by his stewards 
 and servants, who enumerate his w^ealth in horned cattle, in asses, in 
 sheep and goats, in geese and ducks. In other pictures some are 
 ploughing and sowing, some reaping or thrashing out the corn, while 
 others are tending his tame monkeys or cranes, and other domesticated 
 pets. Music and dancing add to the circle of domestic enjoyments, 
 and fowling and fishing occupy his days of leisure. No sign of soldiers 
 or of warlike strife, appears in any of these pictures ; no arms, no 
 chariots or horses. No camels suggest foreign travel. Everything 
 there represented speaks of peace at home and abroad,^ of agricultural 
 wealth and consequent content. In all these pictures the men are 
 represented with an ethnic and artistic trutli that enables us easily to 
 recognize their race and station. The animals are not only easily 
 distinguishable, but the characteristic peculiarities of each species are 
 seized with a power of generalization seldom if ever surpassed; and 
 the hieroglyphic system w^hich forms the legend and explains the 
 whole, was as complete and perfect as at any future period. 
 
 More striking than even the paintings are the portrait-statues 
 
 1 Yyse, " Operations on the Pyramids 
 at Gizeh in 1837," vol. i. p. 279, et seq. 
 
 2 At Wady Meghara, in the Sinaitic 
 peninsula, a king of the 4th dynasty is 
 
 represented as slaying an Asiatic en- 
 emy. It is the only sign of strife which 
 has yet been discovered belongiiig to this 
 ancient kingdom. Lepsius, Abt. ii. pi. 39. 
 
 ♦ 
 
Bk. I. Ch. 1. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 93 
 
 which have recently been discovered in the secret recesses of these 
 totnbs ; nothing more wonderfully truthful and realistic has been done 
 since that time, till the invention of photography, and even that can 
 hardly represent a man with such unflattering truthfulness as these 
 old colored terra-cotta portraits of the sleek rich men of the pyramid 
 period. 
 
 Wonderful as all this maturity of art may be when found at so 
 early a period, the problem becomes still more perplexing when we 
 again ask ourselves how long a people must have lived and recorded 
 their exj^terience before they came to realize and aspire to an eternity 
 such as the building of these pyramids shows that they sacrificed 
 everything to attain. One of their great aims was to preserve the 
 body intact for 3000 years, in order that the soul might again be 
 united with it when the day of judgment arrived. But what taught 
 them to contemjilate such periods of time with confidence, and, 
 stranger still, how did they learn to realize so daring an aspiration? 
 
 Nor is our wonder less when we ask ourselves how it happened that 
 such a people became so thoroughly organized at that early age as to 
 be willing to undertake the greatest architectural works the world has 
 since seen, in honor of one man from among themselves ? A king 
 without an army, and with no claim, so-far as we can see, to such an 
 honor beyond the common consent of all, which could hardly have 
 been obtained except by the title of long inherited services acknowl- 
 edged by the community nt large. 
 
 It would be difticult to find any other example which so fully 
 illustrates the value of architecture as a mode of writing history as 
 this. It is possible there may have been nations as old and as early 
 civilized as the Egyptians : but they were not builders, and their 
 memory is lost. It is to their architecture alone that we owe the j^res- 
 ervation of what we know of this old people. And it is the knowledge 
 so obtained that adds such interest to the study of their art. 
 
 In the present state of our knowledge it may seem an idle specula- 
 tion to suggest that the Egyptian and Chinese are two fragments of 
 one great i^rimordial race, widely separated now by the irruption of 
 other Turanian and Aryan races between them ; but this at least is 
 certain, that in manners and customs, in arts and polity, in religion 
 and civilization, these two people more closely resemble one another 
 than any other two nations wdiich have existed since, even when 
 avowedly of similar race and living in proximity to one another. 
 
 At the earliest period at which Chinese history open upon us, we 
 find the same amount of civilization maintaining itself utterly unpro- 
 gressively to the present day. The same peaceful industry and agri- 
 cultural wealth accompanied by the same outwardly pleasing domestic 
 relations and apparent content. The same exceptional mode of 
 
94 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTUllE. 
 
 Taut I. 
 
 writing. The same want of power to assimilate with surrounding 
 nations. Both hating war, but reverencing their kings, and counting 
 their chronology by dynasties exactly as the Egyptians have always 
 done. Their religions seem wonderfully alike, and both are charac- 
 terized by the same fearlessness of death, and the same calm enjoyment 
 in the contemplation of its advent.^ 
 
 In fact, there is no peculiarity in the old kingdom of Egypt that 
 has not its counterpart in China at the present day, though more or 
 less modified, perhaps, by local circumstances ; and there is nothing in 
 the older system which we cannot understand by using proper illus- 
 trations, derived from what we see passing under our immediate 
 observation in the far East. The great lesson we learn from the study 
 of the history of China, as bearing on that of Egypt is, that all idea of 
 the impossibility of the recorded events in the latter country is taken 
 away by reference to the other. Neither the duration of the Egyptian 
 dynasties, nor the early perfection of her civilization, or its strange 
 persistency, can be objected to as improbable. What we know has 
 happened in Asia in modern times may certainly have taken place in 
 Africa, though at an earlier period. 
 
 1 By a singular coincidence, Oliina 
 has been suffering from a Ilyksos domi- 
 nation of Tartar conquerors, precisely 
 as Egypt did after the period of the 
 Pyramid builders, and, strange to say, 
 for about the same period — five cen- 
 
 turies. Had the Taepings been success- 
 ful, we should have witnessed in China 
 the exact counterpart of what took place 
 in Egypt when the first native kings of 
 the eighteenth dynasty expelled the 
 hated race. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 95 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PYRAMIDS AND CONTEMPORARY MONUMENTS. 
 
 LEAVING these speculations to be developed more fully in the 
 sequel, let us now turn to the pyramids — the oldest, largest, and 
 most mysterious of all the monuments of man's art now existing. 
 All those in Egypt are situated on the left bank of the Nile, just 
 beyond the cultivated ground, and on the edge of the desert, and all 
 the principle examples within what may fairly be called the Necrop- 
 olis of Memphis. Sixty or seventy of these have been discovered 
 and explored, all which appear to be royal sepulchres. This alone, if 
 true, would suffice to justify us in assigning a duration of 1000 years 
 at least to the dynasties of the pyramid builders, and this is about 
 the date we acquire from other sources. 
 
 The three great pyramids of Gizeh are the most remarkable and 
 the best known of all those of Egypt. Of these the first, erected by 
 Cheops, or, as he is now more correctly named, Suphis, is the largest ; 
 but the next, by Chepheren, his successor, is scarcely inferior in dimen- 
 sions ; the third, that of Mycerinus, is very much smaller, but excelled 
 the two others in this, that it had a coating of beautiful red granite 
 from Syene, while the other two were reveted only with the beautiful 
 limestone of the country. Part of this coating still remains near the 
 top of the second; and Colonel Vyse^ was fortunate enough to dis- 
 cover some of the coping-stones of the Great Pyramid buried in the 
 rubbish at its base. These are sufficient to indicate the nature and 
 extent of the whole, and to show that it was commenced from the 
 bottom and carried upwards ; not at the top, as it has sometimes 
 been thoughtlessly asserted. 
 
 The dimensions of these three, as ascertained by the copings, are 
 as follows, according to the most recent determination by Professor 
 Piazzi Smyth and others : — 
 
 Side of base. Height. Area in Angle of Angle ot 
 
 Feet. Feet. square feet. side. passage. 
 
 Cheops . . 760 . . 484 . . 577,600 . . 51° 51' . . 26^27' 
 Chepheren. 707 . . 4.54 . . 499,849 . . 52 20 . . 25 55 
 Mycerinus. 354 . . 218 . . 125,316 . . 51 00 . . 26 20'^ 
 
 1 Col. H. Vyse, *' Operations carried ! 2 ^j^g measures quoted in the text are 
 on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837." j generally taken from the elaborate sur- 
 Lond. 1840-43. | veys made by Mr. Perring for Colonel 
 
9C) EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part I. 
 
 From this it will be seen that the area of the Great Pyramid (more 
 than 13 acres) is more than twice the extent of that of St. Peter's at 
 Rome, or of any other building in the world. Its height is equal to 
 the highest spire of any cathedral in Europe ; for, though it has been 
 attempted to erect higher buildings, in no instance has this yet been 
 successfully achieved. Even the third pyramid covers more ground 
 than any Gothic cathedral, and the mass of materials it contains far 
 surpasses that of any erection we possess in Europe. 
 
 All the pyramids (with one exception) face exactly north, and have 
 their entrance on that side — a circumstance the more remarkable, as 
 the later builders of Thebes appear to have had no notion of orientation, 
 but to have placed their buildings and tombs so as to avoid regularity, 
 and facing in every conceivable direction. Instead of the entrances 
 to the pyramids being level, they all slope downwards — generally at 
 angles of about 26° to the horizon — a circumstance which has led to 
 an infinity of speculation, as to whether they were not observatories, 
 and meant for the observation of the pole-star, etc.^ All these theories, 
 however, have failed, for a variety of reasons it is needless now to 
 discuss ; but among others it may be mentioned that the angles are 
 not the same in any two pyramids, though erected within a few years 
 of one another, and in the twenty which were measured by Colonel 
 Vyse they vary from 22° 35' to 34° 5'. The angle of the inclination 
 of the side of the pyramid to the horizon is more constant, varying 
 only from 51° 10' to 52° 32', and in the Gizeh pyramids it would 
 appear that the angle of the passage was intended to have been about 
 one-half of this. 
 
 One plausible theory seems to be, that the faces of the pyramid 
 were intended to be practically four equilateral triangles, laid against 
 one another, and meeting at the apex. For instance, in the three 
 great pyramids at Gizeh, the ratios of the sloping edges to the base 
 are as follows : — 
 
 Base. slo^pTnfeV/e. I^'^— ' 
 
 Great Pvramid 760 feet . . 723 feet . . 37 feet. 
 
 Second Pyramid .... 707 " . . 672 " . . 35 " 
 Third Pyramid 354 " . . 330 " . . 24 " 
 
 It will be observed that the difference is least — about 5 per cent— 
 in the second pyramid, the one which retains the greatest part of its 
 
 Yyse, which are by far the most com- 
 plete and correct which have yet been 
 pubHshed. It is necessary, however, to 
 warn the reader that Mr. Perring pub- 
 lished two sets of measurements, those 
 from actual observation, which are those 
 followed in the text, and another set 
 corrected according to his theory of what 
 
 they ought to have been, supposing every 
 part to have been set out of an even 
 number of Egyptian cubits. In most 
 instances his theory agrees pretty closely 
 with his observations, but is generally 
 more likely to mislead than guide the 
 reader. 
 
 1 They are situated in latitude 30° N. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. THE PYRAMIDS AND CONTEMPORARY MONUMENTS. 97 
 
 coping ; and there may be some error in the measurement of the others 
 derived from a single coping-stone. 
 
 Even, however, if this were mathematically correct for any one 
 pyramid — which it is not — it must, ipso facto^ be incorrect for all the 
 others, as no two follow the same system. Notwithstanding this, men 
 of high scientific attainments have of late claimed for these monu- 
 ments a degree of accuracy which no building — not even the Parthenon 
 — apparently ever attained to. It has been even asserted that God 
 revealed to Cheops the difference in the lengths of the polar and equar 
 torial diameters of the earth and a variety of interesting astronomical 
 information, and commanded him to build these facts into the Great 
 Pyramid in British inches — which did not then exist! ^ It is hardly 
 necessary to point out how utterly baseless all such speculations are, 
 nor to explain that the facts alluded to are only now being obtained 
 by careful measurements made with recently invented modern 
 appliances. When, however, we come to look a little more closely on 
 the Great Pyramid itself, its accuracy is by no means worthy of the 
 divine origin claimed for it. 
 
 According to a careful survey made by a party of Royal Engineers 
 returning from Sinai, and which is probably correct within an inch 
 or two, — 
 
 The four sides measure: East 9129*5 inches. 
 
 North 9127-5 " 
 West 9121-0 " 
 South 9140-5 " 
 
 Differences of more than one foot and a half in such a distance would 
 hardly occur in a modern building set out in a perfectly clear level 
 surface. Even the level of the sockets show discrepancies to about 
 the same extent. They are as follows : — 
 
 S.E. angle: 0-000 feet. 
 
 N.E. " +1-464 " • 
 S.W. " +1-458 " 
 N.W. +0-636 " 
 
 Practically these are of very little moment in setting out such a building, 
 but when perfection is claimed for it they become important, and are 
 in themselves quite sufficient to upset all the fine-drawn theories thai 
 have been based on the supposed perfection of the pyramid measures. 
 
 The one fact of value that we seem to have obtained from these 
 recent pyramid investigations is, that the side of the pyramid was 
 intended to be an even number of 500 Egyptian cubits; and as we 
 learn from Herodotus ("Euterpe," 168) that the Egyptian was the same 
 as the Greek cubit, or that of Samos, we have^ 18-2405 in. X 500, or 
 
 1 " Antiquity of Intellectual Man," 
 by Piazzi Smyth. Edin. 1868, p. 240 
 et passim. 
 
 2 Determined by Penrose in 1846 from 
 
 VOL. I. — 7 
 
 measurements of the Hecatompedon, 
 and since corrected by him in a letter to 
 Sir Henry James in 1869. — "Notes on 
 Great Pyramid," Southampton, 1869. 
 
98 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 9120 in. — or as nearly as may be the mean of the above measurements.' 
 In the same pamphlet Sir Henry James also suggests that the angle 
 of the pyramid was set out as 10 horizontal to 9 vertical. This would 
 give an angle of 41-59, which is very near the truth, and the angle of 
 the sides being 51-51 would give 483-66 feet for the total height. 
 Piazzi Smyth, however, makes the angle 51-51-14,2 and the total height 
 485, which is probably even more exact ; but whichever we adopt we 
 get the very common proportion that the height is to the circum- 
 ference as the radius is to the circumference of a circle ; tluis, taking 
 the mean height of 484 feet, we have 484 x2x8-1416 = 3041, 
 while 760 X 4 is equal to 3040 — so near a coincidence that it can 
 hardly be accidental, and if it was intended, all the other external 
 proportions' follow as a matter of course. 
 
 Even if this theory should not be accepted as the true one, it has 
 at least tlie merit of being nearer the truth than any other yet 
 proposed. I confess it appears to me so likely that I would hardly 
 care to go further, especially as all the astronomical theories have 
 signally failed, and it seems as if it were only to some numerical 
 fancy that we must look for the solution of the puzzle. 
 
 Be this as it may, the small residuum we get frotn all these 
 pyramid discussions is, that they were built by the kings of the early 
 dynasties of the old kingdom of Egypt as their tombs. The leading 
 idea that governed their forms was of durability — a quasi-eternity 
 of duration is what tliey aimed at. The entrances were meant to be 
 concealed, and the angle of the passages was the limit of rest at 
 which heavy bodies could be moved while obtaining the necessary 
 strength where they opened at the outside, and the necessary diffi- 
 culty for protection inside, without trenching on impossibility. By 
 concealment of the entrance, the difficulties of the passages, and the 
 Complicated but most ingenious arrangement of portcullises, these 
 ancient kings hoped to be allowed to rest in undisturbed security 
 for at least 3000 years. Perhaps they were successful, though their 
 tombs have since been so shamefully profaned. 
 
 To the principal dimensions of the Great Pyramid given above it 
 may be added that the entrance is about 47 ft. 6 in. above the base, on 
 the 15th step or platform. There are in all 203 such steps. Their aver- 
 age height is nearly 2 ft. 6 in., but they diminish in height — generally 
 speaking, but not uniformly — towards the top. The summit now consists 
 of a platform 32 ft. 8 in. square ; so that about 24 ft. is wanting, the 
 present actual height being 456 ft. It contains 2 chambers above-ground, 
 and 1 cut in the rock at a considerable depth below the foundations. 
 
 1 The result of these determinations 
 is that the English is to the Greek or 
 Egyptian foot, as 75 is to 76 exactly. 
 
 ^ " Astronomical Observations." Ed* 
 inburgh Observatory, 1872, p. 5. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. THE PYRAMIDS AND CONTEMPORARY MONUMENTS. 99 
 
 Fig. 1. 
 
 The passages and chambers are worthy of the mass ; all are lined 
 with polished granite ; and the ingenuity and pains that have been 
 taken to render them solid and secure, and to prevent their being 
 crushed by the superincumbent mass, raise our idea of Egyptian 
 science higher than even the bulk of the building itself could do. 
 
 Towards the exterior, where the pressure is not great, the roof is 
 flat, though it is probable that even there the weight is throughout 
 discharged by 2 stones, sloping up at a certain angle to where they 
 meet, as at the entrance. Towards the centre of the pyramid, how- 
 ever, the passage becomes 28 feet high, and assumes the form of in- 
 verted stairs, as shown in the section (fig. 1), till it contracts so much 
 at the top that no pressure can 
 hurt it. Nowhere, how^ever, is this 
 ingenuity more shown than in the 
 royal chamber, which measures 17 
 ft. 1 in. by 34 ft. 3 in., and 19 ft. in 
 height. The walls are lined and 
 the roof is formed of splendid slabs 
 of Syenite, but above the roof 4 
 successive chambers, as shown in 
 the annexed section (fig. 2), have 
 been formed, each divided from the 
 other by slabs of granite, polished 
 
 on their lower surfaces, but left No. 7. section of King's chamber and of Pas- 
 
 sage in Great Pyramid. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 rough on the upper, and above these 
 
 a 5th chamber is formed of 2 sloping blocks to discharge the weight 
 of the whole. The first of these chambers has long been known ; the 
 upper four were discovered and first entered by Colonel Vyse, and it 
 was in one of these that he discovered the name of the founder. 
 This was not engraved as a record, but scribbled in red paint on the 
 stones, apparently as a quarry-mark, or as an address to the king, and 
 accompanied by something like directions for their position in the 
 building. The interest that attaches to these inscriptions consists in 
 the certainty of their being contemporary records, in their proving 
 that Suphis was the founder of the Great Pyramid, and consequently 
 fixing its relative date beyond all possibility of cavil. This is the 
 only really virgin discovery in the pyramids, as they have all been 
 opened either in the time of the Greeks or Romans, or by the Maho- 
 metans, and an unrifled tomb of this age is still a desideratum. Until 
 such is hit upon we must remain in ignorance of the real mode of 
 sepulture in those days, and of the purpose of many of the arrange- 
 ments in these mysterious buildings. ^ 
 
 ^ It is understood that M. Mariette which throw great light on this subject; 
 has discovered some cliambers in tombs | but notliing lias yet been pubhshed. 
 
100 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 The portcullises which invariably close the entrances of the sepul- 
 chral chamber in the pyramids are among the most curious and inge- 
 nious of the arrangements of these buildings. Generally they consist 
 of great cubical masses of granite, measuring 8 or 10 ft. each way, and 
 consequently weighing 50 or 60 tons, and even more. These were 
 fitted into chambers prepared during the construction of the building, 
 but raised into the upper parts, and, being lowered after the body was 
 deposited, closed the entrance so effectually that in some instances it 
 has been found necessary either to break them in pieces, or to cut a 
 passage round them, to gain admission to the chambers. They gene- 
 rally slide in grooves in the wall, to which they fit exactly, and alto- 
 gether show a degree of ingenuity and forethought very remarkable, 
 considering the early age at which they were executed. 
 
 In the Second Pyramid one chamber has been discovered partly 
 above-ground, partly cut in the rock. In the Third the chambers are 
 numerous, all excavated in the rock ; and from the tunnels that have 
 been driven by explorers through the superstructures of these two, it 
 is very doubtful whether anything is to be found above-ground. It is 
 observable that the measurements of the Third Pyramid are as nearly 
 as possible the exact halves of those of the Second. This cannot 
 have been unintentional. 
 
 The exceptional pyramid above alluded to is that of Saccara, shown 
 in the annexed plan and section (Woodcuts Nos. 8 and 9), both to the 
 scale of 100 ft. to 1 in. It is the only pyramid that does not face 
 exactly north and south. It is nearly of the same general dimensions 
 as the Third Pyramid, or that of Mycerinus ; but its outline, the dis- 
 position of its chambers, and the hieroglyphics found in its interior, 
 all would seem to point it out as an imitation of the old form of 
 mausolea by some king of a far more modern date. Some, however, 
 of the more recent authorities seem inclined to consider this pyramid 
 as the oldest, instead of the most modern, and to ascribe it to Mnevis, 
 the 4th king of the First dynasty, assuming that the hieroglyphics, 
 etc., were added afterwards. Further research will be required to 
 settle this point. For the present it is sufficient to know that it lies 
 outside the regular series of pyramids, and is of a date either anterior 
 or posterior to them ; but most probably the latter. 
 
 All the old pyramids do not follow the simple outline of those of 
 Gizeh. That at Dashoor, for instance, rises to half its height with a 
 slope of 54° to the horizon, but is finished at the angle of 45°, giving 
 it a very exceptional appearance ; and that of Meydoon has more the 
 ■ appearance of a tower, its angle being 74° 10'. Two smaller towers 
 rise from its summit, in the manner in which it is supposed Assyrian 
 pyramids were usually constructed. It indeed seems not to have been 
 unusual to build pyramids in stories or stages, each less than the 
 other ; though it is possible that in this case it may have been only 
 
102 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 a temporary or preparatory stage, and that it was intended eventually 
 to smooth the whole down to the more orthodox form of a straight- 
 sided pyramid. 
 
 Tombs. 
 
 Around the pyramids, not only at Gizeh, but at Saccara — indeed, 
 wherever they exist — numberless smaller sepulchres are found, which 
 appear to have been appropriated to private individuals, as the 
 pyramids were — so far as we can ascertain — reserved for kings or, 
 at all events, for persons of royal blood. These have as yet been 
 only partially explored and still more imperfectly described. Their 
 general form is that of a truncated pyramid, low, and looking ex- 
 ternally like a house with sloping walls, with only one door leading 
 to the interior, though they may contain several apartments, and no 
 attempt is made to conceal the entrance. The body seems to have 
 been preserved from profanation by being hid in a well of con- 
 siderable depth, the opening into which was concealed in the thick- 
 ness of the walls. 
 
 Unlike the pyramids, the walls are covered with the paintings 
 above alluded to, and everything in tliis "eternal dwelling" ^ of tlie 
 
 dead is made to resemble the abodes 
 of the living ; as was afterwards 
 the case with the Etruscans. It 
 is owing to this circumstance that 
 we are able not only to realize so 
 perfectly the civil life of the 
 Egyptians at this period, but to 
 fix the dates of the whole series 
 by identifying the names of the 
 kings who built the pyramids with 
 those on the walls of the tombs that 
 surround them.^ 
 
 Like all early architecture, that 
 of these tombs shows evident symp- 
 toms of having been borrowed from 
 a wooden original. The lintels of the 
 doorways are generally rounded, 
 
 10. Doorway in Tomb^at^he Pyramids. ^ud the Walls mere SquarC pOStS, 
 
 grooved and jointed together, every 
 part of it being as unlike a stone architecture as can possibly be 
 
 1 Diodorus, i. 51. 
 
 2 When M. Mariette's recent discover- 
 ies in these tombs shall have been given 
 to the world in a tangible form, it will 
 enable this chapter of the history of art 
 
 to be written with a completeness and 
 a reality of which no one can well have 
 a conception who has not seen the build- 
 ings themselves. At present no sufficient 
 data exist to enable others to realize and 
 
Bk. I. Cu. 11. 
 
 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART. 
 
 103 
 
 conceived. Yet the pyramids themselves, and those tombs which 
 are found outside them, are generally far removed from the forms 
 employed in timber structures ; and it is only when we find the 
 Egyptians indulging in decorative art that we trace this more 
 primitive style. There are two doorways of this class in the British 
 Museum and many in that of Berlin. One engraved in Lepsius's 
 work (Woodcut No. 10) gives a fair idea of this style of decorative art, 
 in the most elaborate form in which we now know it. It is possible 
 that some of its forms may have been derived from brick architecture, 
 but the lintel certainly was of wood, and so it may be suspected were 
 the majority of its features. It certainly is a transitional form, and 
 though we only find it in stone, none of its peculiarities were derived 
 from lithic arts. Perhaps one of the best illustrations of the archi- 
 tectural forms of that day was the sarcophagus of Mycerinus, unfor- 
 tunately lost on its way to England. It represented a palace, with 
 all the peculiarities found on a larger scale in the buildings which 
 surround the pyramid, and with that peculiar cornice and still more 
 singular roll or ligature on the angles, most evidently a carpentry 
 form, but which the style retained to its latest day. 
 
 11. Sarcophagus of Myceriuus, fouud in Third Pyramid. 
 
 In many of these tombs square piers are found supporting the roof, 
 sometimes, but rarely, with an abacus, and generally without any 
 carved work, though it is more than probable they were originally 
 painted with some device, upon which they depended for their orna- 
 ment. In most instances they look more like fragments of a wall, of 
 which the intervening spaces had been cut away, than pillars in the 
 sense in which we usually understand the word ; and in every case in 
 the early ages they must be looked upon more as utilitarian expedients 
 than as parts of an ornamental style of architecture. 
 
 verify the extraordinary revelation it 
 presents to us. It is 2000 years older, 
 and infinitely more varied and vivid, 
 
 tlian tlie Assyrian pictures which re- 
 cently excited so much interest. 
 
104 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part I. 
 
 Temples. 
 
 Till very recently no temples had been discovered which could 
 with certainty be ascribed to the age of the pyramid builders ; one, 
 however was excavated a few years ago, from the sand close beside 
 the great Sphinx in front of the Second Pyramid, and others, it is said, 
 have since been found, at Saccara and elsewhere ; but no account of 
 them has yet been published. 
 
 That at Gizeh is not remarkable for its dimensions, the extreme 
 length being only about 100 feet, the extreme breadth the same.i 
 The principal chamber in the form of a cross is supported by piers, 
 simple prisms of syenite granite, without base 
 or capital, and supporting architraves as simple 
 in outline as themselves. The roof of this 
 chamber has entirely disappeared, but was no 
 doubt originally of the same material. The 
 walls are generally wainscotted with immense 
 slabs of alabaster, or of syenite beautifully 
 polished, but with sloping joints and uneven 
 beds — a form of masonry not uncommon in 
 
 12. Sketch plan of Temple near .1 . tvt i ^ • • c 
 
 the Sphinx (from Donaldson.) that age. JNo sculpturc or Hiscription ot any 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. ^^^.^ ^^^^^^^ ^j^^ ^^^^jj^ ^^^^^ temple,^ no 
 
 ornament or symbol, nor any image, in the sanctuary. Statues and 
 tablets of Cephrenes, the builder of the Second Pyramid, were how- 
 ever found in the well, and in places clearly showing that it be- 
 longed to his time. 
 
 The exterior of this temple has not yet been freed from the sand 
 in which it has so long lain buried, and there being no image and no 
 inscription, it remains somewhat doubtful to whom or to what purpose 
 it was dedicated. Its position, however, at a distance of 60 or 70 feet 
 from the great Sphinx, though placed unsym metrically alongside of 
 it, renders it probable that it was a part of that great group. 
 
 A tablet is said to have been discovered, in which Suphis, the 
 builder of the Great Pyramid, records some repairs he had done to 
 the Si^hinx.s If this is correctly read, it proves its existence before 
 
 1 These dimensions are taken from 
 Professor Donaldson's plan, published in 
 the Transactions of the Institute of Brit- 
 ish Architects, Feb. 1861. It, however, 
 cannot be implicitly relied upon, not 
 from any fault of the professor's, but be- 
 cause he was closely watched, and pre- 
 vented as far as possible from taking 
 measurements or notes. As it is the 
 only thing published, it must suffice for 
 the present. 
 
 2 Lucian, "De Syria Dea," ed. Reet- 
 zin, tom. iii. p. 451, alludes to the fact 
 of the old temples of the Egyptians hav- 
 ing no images. 
 
 3 *' Revue des Deux Mondes," 1st 
 April, 1865, p. 675, et seq. In this art- 
 icle M. Renan must be considered as the 
 mouthpiece of M. Mariette. It is not a 
 satisfactory form of publication, but it 
 is all we yet have. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART. 
 
 105 
 
 the pyramids, and long before, if it required renovation at that time. 
 As such it is not only the most colossal, but the oldest, idol of the 
 human race of wliicli we have now any knowledge. It does not 
 apparently represent a heavenly being, but seems intended to sym- 
 bolize the strength of an animal added to the intellect of a man; — a 
 combination we afterwards find repeated in so many forms in Assyria, 
 but hardly even there considered as a god.. 
 
 Whether or not the temple and the Sphinx belong to one another, 
 this at least seems certain, that they are the oldest examples of their 
 respective classes which now exist, and consequently so deeply inter- 
 esting as to make us long for a more complete illustration of them 
 than has yet been given to the world. The temple, which is being 
 recovered from oblivion, is a new form, and when made known may 
 lead to the most important rectificatign of our ideas on the subject. 
 
 In the present transitional state of our knowledge of the archi- 
 tectural art of the pyramid builders, it is difficult to form any distinct 
 judgment as to its merits. The early Egyptians built neither for 
 beauty nor for use, but for eternity, and to this last they sacrificed 
 every other feeling. In itself nothing can be less artistic than a 
 pyramid. A tower, either round or square, or of any other form, and 
 of the same dimensions, would have been far more imposing, and if 
 of sufficient height — the mass being the same — might almost have 
 attained sublimity ; but a pyramid never looks so large as it is, arid 
 not till you almost touch it can you realize its vast dimensions. This 
 is owing principally to all its parts sloping away from the eye instead 
 of boldly challenging observation ; but, on the other hand, no form is 
 so stable, none so capable of resisting the injuries of time or force, 
 and none, consequently, so well calculated to attain the object for 
 which the pyramids were erected . As examples of technic art, they 
 are unrivalled among the Avorks of men, but they rank low if judged 
 by the aesthetic rules of architectural art. 
 
 The same may be ^aid of the tombs around them ; they are low 
 and solid ; but possess neither beauty of form nor any architectural 
 feature worthy of attention or admiration, but they have lasted 
 nearly uninjured from the remotest artiquity, and thus have at- 
 tained the object their builders had principally in view in designing 
 them. 
 
 Their temple architecture, on the other hand, may induce us to 
 modify considerably these opinions. The one described above — which 
 is the only one I personally have any knowledge of — is perhaps the 
 simplest and least adorned temple in the world. All its parts are 
 plain — straight and square, without a single moulding of any sort, 
 but they are perfectly proportioned to the work they have to do. 
 They are pleasingly and effectively arranged, and they have all 
 
106 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTUKE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 that lithic grandeur which is inherent in large masses of precious 
 materials. 
 
 Such a temple as that of the Sphinx cannot compete either in 
 richness or magnificence with the great temples of Thebes, with their 
 sculptured capitals and storied walls, but there is a beauty of repose 
 and an elegance of simplicity about tlie older example which goes far 
 to redeem its other deficiencies, and when we have more examples 
 before us they may rise still higher in our estimation. 
 
 Whatever opinion we may ultimately form regarding their archi- 
 tecture, there can be little doubt as to the rank to be assigned to 
 their painting and sculpture. In these two arts the Egyptians early 
 attained a mastery which they never surpassed. Judged by the 
 rules of classic or of modern art, it appears formal and conventional 
 to such an extent as to render it difiicult for us now to appreciate its 
 merits. But as a purely Phonetic form of art — as used merely to 
 enunciate those ideas which we now so much more easily express 
 by alphabetic writings, it is clear and precise beyond any picture 
 writings the world has since seen. Judged by its own rules, it is 
 marvellous to what perfection the Egyptians had attained at that 
 early period, and if we look on their minor edifices as mere vehicles 
 for the display of this pictorial expression, we must modify to some 
 extent tlie judgment we would pass on them as mere objects of 
 architectural art. 
 
 1 
 
Bk. I. Ch. III. 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 107 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 FIRST THEBAN KINGDOM. 
 
 XIlTH DYNASTY OF MANEITIO. 
 
 B. c. 2528 ? Lampares (Labyrinth) . reigned 8 years. 
 
 Sesonchosis .... reigned 46 years. His successors .... " 42 " 
 Ammenemes . ..." 38 " B.C. 2340? 
 
 Sesostris (Osortasen) . " 48 " 
 
 THE great culminating period of the old kingdom of Egypt is that 
 belonging to the 4th and 5th dynasties. Nine-tenths of the monu- 
 ments of the pyramid builders which have come down to our time 
 belong to the five centuries during which these two dynasties ruled 
 over Egypt (b. c. 3500-3000). 
 
 The 6th dynasty was of a southern and more purely African 
 origin. On the tablets of Apap^ (Apophis), its most famous mon- 
 arch, we find the worship of Khem and other deities of the Theban 
 period wholly unknown to the pyramid kings. The next four dynas- 
 ties are faineant kings, of whom we know little, not " Carent quia 
 vate sacro," but because they were not builders, and their memory is 
 lost. The 11th and 12th usher in a new state of affairs. The old 
 Memphite pyramid-building kingdom had passed, with its peaceful 
 contentment, and had given place to a warlike, idolatrous race of 
 Theban kings, far more purely African, the prototypes of the great 
 monarchy of the 18th and 19th dynasties, and having no affinity with 
 anything we know of as existing in Asia in those times. 
 
 Their empire lasted apparently for more than 300 years in Upper 
 Egypt ; but for the latter portion of that period they do not seem to 
 have reigned over the whole country, having been superseded in 
 Lower Egypt by the invasion of the hated Hyksos, or Shepherd 
 kings, about the year 2300 b. c, and by whom they also were finally 
 totally overthrown. 
 
 When we turn from the contemplation of the pyramids, and the 
 monuments contemporary with them, to examine those of the 12th 
 dynasty, we become at once aware of the change which has taken 
 place. Instead of the pyramids, all of which are situated on the 
 western side of the Nile, we have obelisks, which, without a single 
 exception, are found on its eastern side, towards the rising sun, 
 
 1 Lepsius, " Denkmaler," Abt. ii. pis. 115, 116. 
 
108 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 apparently in contradistinction to the valley of the dead, which was 
 towards the side on which he set. The earliest and one of the finest 
 of these obelisks is that still standing at Heliopolis, inscribed with 
 the name of Osortasen, one of the first and greatest kings of this 
 dynasty. It is 67 ft. 4 in. in height, without the pyramidion which 
 crowns it, and is a splendid block of granite, weighing 217 tons. It 
 must have required immense skill to quarry it, to transport it from 
 Syene, and finally, after finishing it, to erect it where it now stands 
 and has stood for 4500 years. 
 
 We find the sculptures of the same king at Wady Halfah, near 
 the second cataract, in Nubia; and at Sarabout el Kadem, in the 
 Sinaitic Peninsula. He also commenced the great temple of Karnac 
 at Thebes, which in the hands of his successors became the most 
 sjilendid in Egypt, and perhaps it is not too much to say the greatest 
 architectural monument in the whole world. 
 
 As might be expected, from our knowledge of the fact that the 
 Hyksos invasion took place so soon after his reign, none of his structural 
 buildings now remain entire, in which we might read the story of his 
 conquests, and learn to which gods of the Pantheon he especially 
 devoted himself. We must therefore fall back on Manetho for an 
 account of his " conquering all Asia in the space of nine years, and 
 Europe as far as Thrace."^ While there is nothing to contradict 
 this statement, there is much that renders it extremely probable. 
 
 The Labyrixth. 
 
 It is to this dynasty also that we owe the erection of the Laby- 
 rinth, one of the most remarkable, as well as one of the most myste- 
 rious, monuments of Egypt. All Manetho tells us of this is, that 
 Lampares, or Moeris, "built it as a sepulchre for himself;" and the 
 information we derive from the Greeks on this subject is so contra- 
 dictory and so full of the wonderful, that it is extremely difficult to 
 make out either the plan or the purpose of the building. As long ago 
 as 1843, the whole site was excavated and thoroughly explored by the 
 ofiScers of the Prussian expedition under Lepsius ; but, like most of 
 the information obtained by that ill-conditioned party, the results 
 have not yet been given to the world, except in the most unsatisfac- 
 tory and fragmentary form. 
 
 From such data as have been given to the public, we learn that 
 the Labyrinth was a building measuring about 1150 feet east and west 
 by 850 feet north and south, surrounding three sides of a courtyard, 
 about 500 feet in one direction by 600 in the other (Woodcut No. 13). 
 The fourth side was occupied — unsymnietrically, however — by a 
 
 1 Syncellus, p. 69; Euseb. Chron. p. 98. 
 
i3K. I. Ch. III. FIRST THEBAN KINGDOM. 109 
 
 pyramid measuring about 200 feet square, or somewhat less than the 
 dimensions ascribed to it by the Greeks. ^ 
 
 This pyramid was no doubt the tomb of the founder, and the name 
 
 too ^ ^ ^ soo "f 
 
 13. Block Plan of the Labyrinth. (From Lepsius's ''Deiiknialer.") 
 
 of Amenemhe, one of the kings of this dynasty, has been found on its 
 walls, showing that the fashion of erecting sepulchral pyramids had 
 not then quite gone out, though its 
 accompaniments were of a nature 
 previously unknown. 
 
 In the Labyrinth itself a num- 
 ber of small chambers were found, 
 two stories in height, as the account 
 of Herodotus leads us to expect, but 
 so small, being only four feet in 
 width at most, that we cannot 
 understand the admiration they 
 excited in his mind. As there are no hieroglyphics upon them, it is 
 difficult to determine whether they belong to the old Labyrinth, or 
 
 Chambers in Labyrinth. 
 Lepsius.) 
 
 (From 
 
 1 Herod, ii. 148. 
 
110 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 to that which Herodotus writes of as erected by Psammeticus and the 
 kings of his day. As, however, the materials for acquiring a far more 
 perfect knowledge of this building are said to exist at Berlin, it 
 is needless speculating on such imperfect data as we now possess, 
 while there is a hope that the mystery that still shrouds this singular 
 monument may before long be removed. 
 
 Tombs. 
 
 The most interesting series of monuments of this dynasty, which 
 have come down to our time, are the tombs of Beni Hassan in Middle 
 
 Egypt. Strange to say, they 
 are situated on the eastern 
 side of the Nile, and are 
 almost the only hypogea 
 that are so placed in Egy])t.' 
 Tlie character of the sculp- 
 tures which adorn their 
 walls approaches that found 
 in the tombs surrounding 
 the pyramids, but the archi- 
 tecture differs widely. They 
 are all cheerful-looking halls, 
 open to the light of day, many of them with pillared porches, 
 and all possessing pretensions to architectural ornament either internal 
 or external. 
 
 One of the most interesting of these possesses a portico of two 
 pillars, in architecture so like the order afterwards employed by the 
 Greeks as to be named with propriety the proto-Doric order. The 
 same class of pillar is also used internally, supporting a plain archi- 
 trave, from which spring two curvilinear roofs, which we cannot help 
 suspecting were so formed in imitation of arches. All the features of 
 this order indeed seem to be borrowed from brick architecture ; the 
 pillar is just wdiat we should expect in one built up of small materials. 
 The abacus is the tile or wooden capping which is indispensable in 
 that case to distribute the superincumbent weight over the whole 
 substance of the pier, and if bricks were so employed nothing is more 
 probable than that the arch should also have been introduced. The 
 form of the cornice also indicates a far more ephemeral and lighter 
 
 15. Tomb at Beni Hassan. 
 
 ^ Were they originally tombs? Were 
 they not, when first excavated, intend- 
 ed as dwelling-places for the living, to 
 be afterwards appropriated as sepulchres 
 for the dead ? That such should be the 
 case may appear strange to death-fear- 
 ing races like those that now inhabit 
 
 Europe ; but among the Moguls of India 
 the fashion always was for a king to 
 build his own sepulchre, and use it as a 
 pleasure palace during his life. It was 
 only after his death that it became the 
 tomb and monument of its founder. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. III. 
 
 FIRST TIIEBAN KINGDOM. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Style of architecture than could have been derived from stone 
 buildings. , 
 
 There is another form of pillar used at Beni Hassan at that early 
 age which is still further removed from stone than even the proto- 
 Doric. It imitates a bundle of four reeds or lotus-stalks bound 
 together near the top and bulging above the ligature so as to form a 
 
 capital. Such a pier must evidently have been originally employed 
 in wooden architecture only, and the roof which it supports is in this 
 instance of light wooden construction, having the slight slope requisite 
 
 in the dry climate of Egypt. In after 
 
 ages this form of pillar became a great 
 favorite with the Egyptian archi- 
 tects, and was employed in all their 
 great monuments, but with a far more 
 substantial lithic form than we find 
 here, and in conjunction with the 
 hollow — or, as we should call it, Co- 
 rinthian — formed capital, of which no 
 example is found earlier than the 18th 
 dynasty. 
 
 Where the square pier, so characteristic of the pyramid-building 
 age, is used at Beni Hassan, it is adorned on its face with a lotus-flower 
 and stems (Woodcut No. 18), so as to assimilate it with the more 
 
 Lotus Pier, Beni Hassan. (From 
 Lepsius). 
 
112 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTUiiE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 advanced free-standing pillars of the same order, and is interesting as 
 showing how the suggestion arose. It is by no means improbable 
 that at an earlier epoch the square prisms of the pyramid age were so 
 adorned in painting. In the new kingdom of the 12th dynasty they 
 were probably first so treated in relief. This done, the suggestion was 
 obvious, where wood could be used, to cut away the masses, leaving 
 only the stems. This again came to be reproduced in stone, which 
 after a while lost all trace of its wooden original. 
 
 These are meagre records, it must be confessed, of so great a 
 kingdom ; but when we come to consider the remoteness of the period, 
 and that the dynasty was overthrown by the Shepherds, whose rule 
 was of considerable duration, it is perhaps in vain to expect that 
 much can remain to be disinterred which would enable us to realize 
 more fully the architectural art of this age. 
 
 SHEPHERDS. 
 
 Till very recently our knowledge of the Shepherd kings was almost 
 entirely derived from what was said of them by Manetho, in the extracts 
 from his writings so fortunately preserved by Joseph us, in his answer 
 to Apion. Recent explorations liave, however, raised a hope that even 
 their monuments may be so far recovered as to enable us to realize to 
 some extent at least, who they were and what their aspirations. 
 
 Manetho tells us they came from the East, but fearing the then 
 rising power of the Assyrians, they fortified Avaris as a bulwark against 
 them, and used it during their sojourn in Egypt to keep up their 
 communications with their original seat. Recent explorations have 
 enabled M. Mariette to identify San, Zoan, or Tanis, a well-known 
 site on the Bubastite branch of the Nile, with this Avaris. And 
 already he has disinterred a sphinx and two seated statues which 
 certainly belong to the reign of the Shepherd King Apophis.i 
 
 The character of these differs w^idely from anything hitherto found 
 in Egypt. They present a physiognomy strongly marked with an 
 Asiatic type — an arched nose, rude bushy hair, and great muscular 
 development ; altogether something wholly different from everything 
 else found in Egypt either before or afterwards. 
 
 This is not much, but it is an earnest that more remains to be dis- 
 covered, and adds another to the proofs that are daily accumulating, 
 how implicitly Manetho may be relied upon when we only read him 
 correctly, and how satisfactory it is to find that every discovery that 
 is made confirms the conclusions we had hesitatingly been adopting. 
 
 It appears from such fragmentary evidence as has hitherto been 
 
 1 "Kevue Archaeologique," vol. iii. 1861, p. 97, and v. 1862, p. 297. 
 
Bk. 1. Ch. 111. 
 
 i-mST THEBAN KINGDOM. 
 
 gleaned from the monuments, that the Shepherds' invasion was 
 neither sudden nor at once completely successful, if indeed it ever 
 was so, for it is certain that Theban and Xoite dynasties co-existed 
 with the Shepherds during the whole period of their stay, either 
 from policy, like the protected princes under our sway in India, or 
 because their conquest was not so complete as to enable them to 
 suppress the national dynasties altogether. 
 
 Like the Tartars in China they seem to have governed the country 
 by means of the original inhabitants, but for their own purposes; 
 tolerating their religion and institutions, but ruling by the superior 
 energy of their race the peace-loving semi-Semitic inhabitants of the 
 Delta, till they were in their turn overthrown and expelled by the 
 more warlike but more purely African races of the southern division of 
 the Egyptian valley. 
 
 VOL. I.— 8 
 
114 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 PHARAONIC KINGDOM. 
 
 PFINCIPAL KINGS OF THE 
 
 XVIIlTH Dynasty. b, c. 1830 
 
 Amenophis I reigned 25 years. 
 
 Thothmosis I " 13 " 
 
 Amenophis II *• 20 " 
 
 Amense (Queen) ... " 21 " 
 
 Thothmosis II " 12 " 
 
 Thothmosis IJI, . . . «' 26 " 
 
 Thothmosis IV " 10 " 
 
 Amenophis 111 " 21 " 
 
 Interregnum of Sun-worshipping Kings. 
 
 GREAT THEBAN PERIOD. 
 
 Orus reigned 36 years. 
 
 Rhamses I " 12 " 
 
 Manephthah I. . . . " 32 " 
 
 Rhamses II " 68 " 
 
 Manephthah II. . . . " 5 " 
 
 XIXth Dynasty. 
 Sethos Rhamses ... *' 55 " 
 Rhamessitlje .... " 66 " 
 Amenophis .... " 20 " 
 
 Exode . . . B.C. 1312 
 
 THE five centuries ^ which elapsed between the expulsion of the 
 Shepherds and Exode of the Jews comprise the culminating period 
 of the greatness and greatest artistic development of the Egyptians. 
 It is practically within this period that all the great buildings of the 
 "Hundred pyloned city of Thebes " were erected. Memphis was adorned 
 within its limits with buildings as magnificent as those of the southern 
 capital, though subsequently less fortunate in escaj)ing the hand of the 
 spoiler ; and in every city of the Delta wiierever an obelisk or sculptured 
 stone is found, there we find almost invariably the name of one of 
 the kings of the 18th or 19th dynasties. In Arabia, too, and above 
 the Cataracts of the far-off Meroe, everywhere their works and names 
 are found. At Arban,^ on the Khabour, we find the name of the third 
 Thothmes ; and there seems little doubt but that the Naharaina or 
 Mesopotamia was one of the provinces conquered by them, and that all 
 Western Asia was more or less subject to their sway. 
 
 Whoever the conquering Thebans may have been, their buildings 
 are sufiicient to prove, as above mentioned, that they belong to a race 
 differing in many essential respects from that of the Memphite kingdom 
 they had superseded. 
 
 The pyramid had disappeared as a form of royal sepulchre, to be 
 replaced by a long gloomy corridor cut in the rock ; its walls covered 
 with wild and fetish pictures of death and judgment : a sort of magic 
 hall, crowded with mysterious symbols, the most monstrous and 
 complicated that any system of human superstition has yet invented. 
 
 1 518 years: " Josephus contra Apion." I. 26 
 
 2 Layard, "Nineveh and Babylon," 281. 
 
JiK. I. Ch. IV. 
 
 KINGDOM OF THE PHARAOHS. 
 
 115 
 
 Instead of the precise orientation and careful masonry of the old 
 kingdom, the buildings of the new race are placed anywhere, facing in 
 any direction, and generally affected with a symmetriphobia that it is 
 difficult to understand. The pylons are seldom in the axis of the 
 temples ; the courts seldom square ; the angles frequently not right 
 angles, and one court succeeding another without the least reference to 
 symmetry. 
 
 The masonry, too, is frequently of the rudest and clumsiest sort, 
 and would long ago have perished but for its massiveness ; and there 
 is in all tlieir works an appearance of haste and want of care that 
 sometimes goes far to mar the value of their grandest conceptions. 
 
 In their manners, too, there seems an almost equal degree of 
 discrepancy. War was the occupation of the kings, and foreign con- 
 quest seems to have been. the passion of the people. The pylons and 
 the walls of the temples are covered with battle-scenes, or with the 
 enumeration of the conquests made, or the tribute brought by the 
 subjected races. While not engaged in this, the monarch's time seems 
 to have been devoted to practising the rites of the most complicated and 
 least rational form of idolatry that has yet been known to exist among 
 any body of men in the slightest degree civilized. 
 
 If the monuments of Memphis had come down to our times as 
 perfect as those of Thebes, some of these differences might be found 
 less striking. On the other hand, others might be still more apparent ; 
 but judging from such data as we possess — and they are tolerably 
 extensive and complete — we are justified in assuming a most marked 
 distinction ; and it is indispensably necessary to bear it in mind in 
 attempting to understand the architecture of the valley of the Nile, 
 and equally important in any attempt to trace the affinities of the 
 Egyptian with any other races of mankind. So far as we can now 
 see, it may be possible to trace some affinities with the pyramid builders 
 in Assyria or in Western Asia ; but if any can be dimly predicated of 
 the southern Egyptian race, it is in India and the farther East ; and 
 the line of communication was not the Isthmus of Suez, but the Straits 
 of Babelmandeb and the Indian Ocean. 
 
 THEBES. 
 
 Altliough, as already mentioned, numerous buildings of the great 
 Pharaonic dynasties are to be found scattered all along the banks of 
 the Nile, it is at Thebes only that the temples are so complete as to 
 enable us to study them with advantage, or to arrive at a just appre- 
 ciation of their greatness. That city was practically the capital of 
 Egypt during the whole of the 18th and 19th dynasties and has been 
 fortunate in having had no great city built near it since it fell into 
 decay ; unlike Memphis in this respect, which has been used as a 
 quarry during the last 14 or 15 centuries. It has also had the advantage 
 
116 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 
 
 
 w ^ 
 
 OO ©o 
 oo ©o 
 
 
 oo 
 oo 
 
 OOI 
 
 ooi 
 
 oo©oO 
 iooooo 
 oo ooo 
 oooo© 
 oooog 
 ooooo 
 
 oo©oo 
 
 3 fe 
 
 Goooo 
 ooooo 
 ooooo 
 ooooo 
 ooooo 
 ooooo 
 
 3Z 
 
 ooooo 
 
 of a barrier of rocky hills on its western limits, which has prevented 
 the sand of the desert from burying its remains, as has been the case 
 at Abydos and elsewhere. 
 
 The ruins that still remain are found scattered over an area 
 
 extending about 2i miles 
 north and south, and Si- 
 miles east and west. The 
 principal group is at Kar- 
 nac on the eastern bank of 
 the Nile, consisting of one 
 great temple 1200 feet 
 long, and five or six 
 smaller temples grouped 
 unsym metrically around 
 it. About two miles far- 
 ther south is the temple at 
 Luxor 820 feet long, and 
 without any dependencies. 
 
 On the other side of the 
 river is the great temple 
 of Medinet-Habou, built 
 by the first king of the 
 19th dynasty, 520 feet in 
 length ; the Rhamession, 
 ■570 feet long, and the 
 temple at Gournou, of 
 which only the sanctuary 
 and the foundations of the 
 Propyla now exist. Of 
 the great temple of Tlioth- 
 mes and Amenophis very 
 little remains above- 
 ground — it liaving been 
 situated within the limits 
 of the inundation — ex- 
 cept the two celebrated 
 colossi, one of which was 
 known to the Greeks as 
 the vocal Memnon. When 
 complete it probably was 
 next after Karnac, the 
 most extensive of Theban 
 temples. There are several others, situated at the foot of the Libyan 
 hills, which would be considered as magnificent elsewhere, but sink 
 into insignificance when compared with those just enumerated. 
 
 CO 
 
 oo 
 oo 
 oo 
 oo 
 
 oo 
 oo 
 oo 
 
 o o 
 o o 
 o o 
 o o 
 o o 
 
 o o 
 o o 
 o oui 
 
 ^ illllllllllllllllllllll I 111., 
 
 19. Khamession at Thebes. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in 
 
Bk. I. Cu. IV. 
 
 KINGDOM OF THE PIIAKAOIIS. 
 
 117 
 
 Most of these, like our mediaeval cathedrals, are the work of suc- 
 cessive kings, who added to the works of their ancestors without much 
 reference to congruity of plan ; hut one, the Rhamcssion, was built 
 wholly by the great Rhamses in the 15th century b. c, and though 
 the inner sanctuary is so ruined that it can hardly be restored, still the 
 general arrangement, as shown in the annexed woodcut, is so easily 
 made out that it may be considered as a typical example of what an 
 Egyptian temple of this age was in- 
 tended to have been. Its fagade is 
 formed by two great pylons, or i)yra- 
 midal masses of masonry, which, like 
 the two western towers of a Gothic 
 cathedral, are the appropriate and 
 most imposing part of the structure 
 externally. Between these is the 
 entrance doorway, leading, as is al- 
 most invariably the case, into a great 
 square courtyard, with porticoes al- 
 ways on two, and sometimes on three, 
 sides. This leads to an inner court, 
 smaller, but far more splendid than 
 the first. On the two sides of this 
 court, through whicli the central 
 passage leads, are square i)iers with 
 colossi in front, and on the riglit and 
 left are double ranges of circular 
 columns, which are continued also 
 behind the square piers fronting the 
 entrance. Passing through this, we 
 come to a hypostyle hall of great 
 beauty, formed by two ranges of 
 larger columns in the centre, and 
 three rows of smaller ones on each 
 side. These hypostyle halls almost al- 
 ways accompany the larger Egyptian 
 temples of the great age. They de- 
 rive their name from having, over 
 the lateral columns, what in Gothic 
 architecture would be called a clere- 
 story^ through which the light is admitted to the central portion of 
 the hall. Although some are more extensive than this, the arrange- 
 ment of all is nearly similar. They all possess two ranges of columns 
 in the centre, so tall as to equal the height of the side columns 
 together with that of the attic which is placed on them. They are 
 generally of different orders, the central pillars having a bell-shaped 
 
 20. Central Pillar, from Khamession, Thebes. 
 
118 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 capital, the under side of which was perfectly illuminated from the 
 mode in which the light was introduced, while in the side pillars the 
 capital was narrower at the top than at the bottom, apparently for the 
 sake of allowing its ornaments to be seen. 
 
 Beyond this are always several smaller apartments, in this instance 
 supposed to be nine in number, but they are so ruined that it is diffi- 
 cult to be quite certain what their arrangement was. These seem to 
 have been rather suited to the residences of the king or priests than 
 to tlie purposes of a temple, as we understand the word. Indeed, 
 Palace-Temple, or Temple-Palace, would be a more appropriate term 
 for these buildings than to call them simply Temples. They do not 
 seem to have been appropriated to the worship of any particular god, 
 but rather to the great ceremonials of royalty — of kingly sacrifice to 
 the gods for the people, and of worship of the king himself by the 
 people, who seems to have been regarded, if not as a god, at least as 
 the representative of the gods on earth. 
 
 Though the Rhamession is so grand from its dimensions, and so 
 beautiful from its design, it is far surpassed in every respect by the 
 palace-temple at Karnac, which is perhaps the noblest effort of archi- 
 tectural magnificence ever })roduced by the hand of man. 
 
 Its principal dimensions are 1200 ft. in length, by about 360 in 
 widtli, and it covers therefore about 430,000 square ft., or nearly twice 
 the area of St. Peter's at Rome, and more than four times that of any 
 mediaBval cathedral existing. This, however, is not a fair way of 
 estimating its dimensions, for our churches are buildings entirely 
 under one roof ; but at Karnac a considerable portion of the area was 
 uncovered by any buildings, so that no such comparison is just. The 
 great hypostyle hall, however, is internally 340 ft. by 170, and, with 
 its two pylons, it covers more than 88,000 square ft., a greater area 
 than the cathedral of Cologne, the largest of all our northern cathedrals ; 
 and when we consider that this is only a part of a great whole, we 
 may fairly assert that the entire structure is among the largest, as it 
 undoubtedly is one of the most beautiful, buildings in the world. 
 
 The original part of this great group was, as before mentioned, the 
 sanctuary or temple built by Osortasen, the great monarch of the 12th 
 dynasty, before the Shepherd invasion. It is the only thing that seems 
 to have been allowed to stand during the five centuries of Shepherd 
 domination, though it is by no means clear that it had not been pulled 
 down by the Shepherds, and reinstated by the first kings of the 18th 
 dynasty, an operation easily performed with the beautiful polished 
 granite masonry of the sanctuary. Be this as it may, Amenophis, the 
 first king of the restored race, enclosed this in a temple about 120 ft. 
 square. Thothmes I. built in front of it a splendid hall, surrounded 
 by colossi, backed by piers ; and Thothmes III. erected behind it a 
 palace or temple, which is one of the most singular buildings in 
 
Bk. I. Ch. IV. 
 
 KINGDOM OF THE PHARAOHS. 
 
 119 
 
 Egypt. The hall is 140 ft. long by 55 in width internally, the roof is 
 supported by two rows of massive square columns, and two of circular 
 pillars of most exceptional form, the capitals of which are reversed, 
 and somewhat resembling the form usually found in Assyria, but 
 nowhere else in Egypt. Like almost all Egyptian halls, it was 
 lighted from the roof in the manner shown in the section. With all 
 these additions, the temple was a complete whole, 540 ft. in length 
 by 280 in width, at the time when the Sun-worshippers broke in upon 
 the regular succession of the great 18th dynasty. 
 
 21. Section of Palace of Thothmes III., Thebes. 
 
 When the original line was resumed, Manephthah commenced the 
 building of the great hall, which he nearly completed. Rhamses, the 
 first king of the 19th dynasty, built the small temple in front ; and 
 the so-called Bubastite kings of the 22nd dynasty added the great 
 • court in front, completing the building to the extent we now find it. 
 We have thus, as in some of our mediaeval cathedrals, in this one 
 temple, a complete history of the style during the whole of its most 
 flourishing period ; and, either for interest or for beauty, it forms such 
 a series as no other country, and no other age can produce. Besides 
 those buildings mentioned above, there are other temples to the north, 
 to the east, and more especially to the south, and pylons connecting 
 these, and avenues of sphinxes extending for miles, and enclosing- 
 walls, and tanks, and embankments — making up such a group as no 
 city ever possessed before or since. St. Peter's, with its colonnades, 
 and the Vatican, make up an immense mass, but as insignificant in 
 extent as in style when compared with this glory of ancient Thebes 
 and its surrounding temples. 
 
 The culminating point and climax of all this group of building is 
 the hypostyle hall of Manephthah. The plan and section of its central 
 portion on the next page, both to the usual scale, will explain its general 
 arrangement; but no language can convey an idea of its beauty, and 
 no artist has yet been able to reproduce its form so as to convey to 
 those who have not seen it an idea of its grandeur. The mass of its 
 central piers, illumined by a flood of light from the clerestory, and 
 
120 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 the smaller pillars of the wings gradually fading into obscurity, are 
 so arranged and lighted as to convey an idea of infinite space; at the 
 same time, the beauty and massiveness of the forms, and the brilliancy 
 of their colored decorations, all combine to stamp this as the greatest 
 
 22. Plan of Hypostyle Hall at Karnac. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 23. Section of central portion of Hypostyle Hall at Karnac. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 of man's architectural works ; but such a one as it would be impos- 
 sible to reproduce, except in such a climate and in that individual 
 style in which, and for which, it was created. 
 
 On the same side of the Nile, and probably at one time connected 
 
Bk. I. Ch. IV. 
 
 KINGDOM OF THE PHARAOHS. 
 
 121 
 
 witli it by an avenue of sphinxes, stands the Temi)le of Luxor, hardly 
 inferior in some resi)ects to its great rival at Karnac ; but either it 
 was never finished, or, owing to its proximity to the Nile, it has been 
 ruined, and the materials carried away. The length is about 830 ft., 
 its breadth ranging from 100 to 200 ft. 
 Its general arrangement comprised, 
 first, a great court at a different angle 
 from the rest, being turned so as to 
 face Karnac. In front of this stand 
 two colossi of Rhamses the Great, its 
 founder, and two obelisks were once 
 also there, one of which is now in 
 Paris. Behind this was once a great 
 hypostyle hall, but only the two cen- 
 tral ranges of columns are now stand- 
 ing. Still further back were smaller 
 halls and numerous apartments, evi- 
 dently meant for the king's residence, 
 rather than for a temple or place ex- 
 clusively devoted to worship. 
 
 The palace at Luxor is further re- 
 markable as a striking instance of how 
 regardless the Egyptians were of I'egu- 
 larity and symmetry in their plans. 
 Not only is there a considerable angle 
 in the direction of the axis of the build- 
 ing, but the angles of the courtyards 
 are in scarcely any instance right 
 angles ; the pillars are variously 
 spaced, and pains seems to have been 
 gratuitously taken to make it as irreg- 
 ular as possible in nearly every respect. 
 All the portion at the southern end was 
 erected by Ameno|)his III., the north- 
 ern part completed by Rhamses tlie 
 Great, the same Avho built the Rhames- 
 sion already described as situated on 
 the other bank of the Nile. 
 
 Besides these there stood on the 
 western side of the Nile the Memno- 
 
 nium, or great temple of Amenophis III., now almost entirely 
 ruined. It was placed on the alluvial plain, within the limits of the 
 inundation, which has tended on the one hand to bury it, and on 
 the other to facilitate the removal of its materials. Nearly the only 
 remains of it now apparent are the two great seated colossi of its 
 
 mm 
 
 24. 
 
 Caryatide Pillar, from the Great 
 Court at Mediiiet-Habou. 
 
122 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 founder, one of wliicli, when broken, became in Greek, or rather 
 Roman times, the vocal Memnon, whose plaintive wail to the rising 
 sun, over its own and its country's desolation, forms so prominent an 
 incident in the Roman accounts of Thebes. i 
 
 Not far from this stands the great temple known as that of 
 Medinet-Habou, built by the first king of 
 the 19th dynasty. Its dimensions are only 
 slightly inferior to those of the Rhamession, 
 being 520 ft. from front to rear, and its pro- 
 pylon 107 ft. wide. Its two great courts are, 
 however, inferior in size to those of that build- 
 ing. The inner one is adorned by a series of 
 Caryatide figures (Woodcut No. 24),which are 
 inferior both in conce})tion and execution to 
 those of the previous reigns ; and indeed 
 throughout the whole building there is an 
 absence of style, and an exaggeration of de- 
 tail, which shows only too clearly that the 
 great age was passing away when it 
 
 Avas 
 
 erected. The roof of its hyi)ostyle hall, and 
 of the chambers beyond it, is occupied by an 
 Arab village, which would require to be cleared 
 away before it could be excavated ; much as 
 this might be desired, the details of its courts 
 would not lead us to expect anything either 
 very beautiful or new from its disinterment. 
 Further down the river, as already mentioned, 
 stood another temple, that of Gournou, built by 
 the same Manephthali who erected the great 
 hall of Karnac. It is, however, only a frag- 
 ment of what may be called the residential 
 part of a temple. The hypostyle hall never 
 was erected, and only the foundations of two 
 successive pylons can be traced in front of it. 
 In its present condition, therefore, it is one of the least interesting of 
 
 the temples of Thebes, though 
 elsewhere it would no doubt be 
 regarded with wonder. 
 
 Another building of this 
 age, attached to the southern 
 side of the great temple of 
 Karnac, deserves especial at- 
 tention as being a perfectly regular building, erected at one time, and 
 
 25. 
 
 Soutli Temple of Karnac. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 Section on A B of above. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 1 Tacitus, Ann. II. 60. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. IV. 
 
 KINGDOM OF THE PHARAOHS. 
 
 123 
 
 according to the original design, and strictly a temple, without any- 
 thing about it that could justify the supposition of its being a palace. 
 
 It was erected by the first king of the 19th dynasty, and consists 
 of two pylons, approached through an avenue of sphinxes. Within 
 this is an liyjisethral court, and beyond that a small hypostyle hall, 
 lighted from above as shown in the section (Woodcut No. 26). Within 
 this is the cell, surrounded by a passage, and with a smaller hall 
 beyond, all apparently dark, or very imperfectly lighted. The gate- 
 way in front of the avenue was erected by the 
 Ptolemys, and, like many Egyptian buildings, 
 is placed at a different angle to the direction of 
 the building itself. Besides its intrinsic beauty, 
 this temple is interesting as being far more like 
 the temples erected afterwards under the Greek 
 and Roman domination, than anything else be- 
 longing to that early age. 
 
 At Tanis, or Soan, near the mouth of the 
 Nile, the remains of a temple and of 13 obelisks 
 can still be traced. At Soleb, on the borders of 
 Nubia, a temple now stands of the Third Ameno- 
 |)his, scarcely inferior in beauty or magnificence 
 to those of the capital. 
 
 At Sedinga, not far below the third cataract, 
 are the remains of temples erected by Amenophis 
 III., of the 18th dynasty, which is interesting as 
 introducing in a completed form a class of pillar 
 that afterwards became a great favorite with 
 Egyptian architects (Woodcut No. 27). Before 
 this time we find these Isis heads, either painted 
 or carved on the face of square piers, but so as 
 not to interfere with the lines of the pillars. 
 Gradually they became more important, so as 
 to form a double capital, as in this instance. In 
 the Roman times, as at Dendera (Woodcut No. 39, 
 p. 136), all the four faces of the pier were so 
 adorned, though it must be admitted in very sedinga^*^'" 
 questionable taste. 
 
 It would be tedious to attempt to enumerate without illustrating 
 all the fragments that remain of temples of this age. Some are so 
 ruined, that it is diflScult to make out their plan. Others, like those 
 of Memphis or Tanais, so entirely destroyed, that only their site, or at 
 most only their leading dimensions, can be made out. Their loss is 
 of course to be regretted ; but those enumerated above are sufficient to 
 enable us to judge both of the style and the magnificence of the great 
 building epoch. 
 
124 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 At Abydos the remains of two great temples have been partially 
 disinterred from the sand which has overwhelmed them. In respect 
 of architectural magnificence they are inferior to those of the capital, 
 and have not yet been uncovered to such an extent as to enable their 
 plans to be quite made up ;i but they have a special interest to the 
 Egyptologer, as it was on the walls of one of these that the so-called 
 tablet of Abydos was discovered — now in the British Museum — which 
 first gave a connected list of kings, the predecessors of Rhamses, and 
 sufiiciently extensive to confirm the lists of Manetho in a manner 
 satisfactory to the ordinary inquirer. A second list, far more com- 
 plete, has recently been brought to light in the same locality, and 
 contains the names of 76 kings, ancestors of Manephthah, the father of 
 Rhamses. It begins, as all lists do, with Menes ; but even this list is 
 only a selection, omitting many names found in Manetho, but in- 
 serting others which are not on his lists.^ Before the discovery of 
 this perfect list, the longest known were, that of the chamber of the 
 ancestors of Thothmes III., at Karnac, containing, when perfect, 61 
 names, of which however nearly one-third are obliterated ; and that 
 recently found at Saccara, containing 68 names originally, but of 
 which several are now illegible. 
 
 It is the existence of these lists which gives such interest and such 
 reality to tlie study of Architecture in Egypt. Fortunately there is 
 hardly a building in that country which is not adorned with the name 
 of the king in whose reign it was erected. In royal buildings they 
 are found on every wall and every pillar. The older cartouches are 
 simple and easily remembered ; and when we find the buildings thus 
 dated by the builders themselves, and their succession recorded by 
 subsequent kings on the walls of their temples, we feel perfectly 
 certain of our sequence, and nearly so of the actual dates of the 
 buildings; they are, moreover, such a series as no other country 
 in the world can match either for historic interest or Architectural 
 magnificence. 
 
 RocK-cuT Tombs and Temples. 
 
 Both in Egypt Proper and in Nubia the Egyptians were in the 
 habit of excavating monuments from the living rock, but with this 
 curious distinction, that, with scarcely an exception, all the excava- 
 tions in Egypt Proper are tombs, and no important example of a 
 rock-cut temple has yet been discovered. In Nubia, on the other 
 hand, all the excavations are temples, and no tombs of importance are 
 
 ' Since the first edition of this work 
 was published, some plans of these tem- 
 ples have reached this country, but in 
 too imperfect and too fragmentary a 
 state to be available for our purpose. 
 
 We must wait the publication of M. 
 Mariette's great Avork before they can be 
 used as illustrations of Egyptian art. 
 
 "Kevue Archeologique," vol. x., 
 1864, p. 170, and vol. xiii., 1866, p. 73. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. IV. KINGDOM OF THE PHAKAOHS. 125 
 
 to be found anywhere. This distmction may hereafter lead to im- 
 portant historical deductions, inasmuch as on the western side of India 
 there are an infinite number of rock-cut temples, but no tombs of any 
 sort. Every circumstance seems to point to the fact that, if there 
 was any connection between Africa and India, it was with the prov- 
 inces in the upper part of the Valley of the Nile, and not with 
 Egypt Proper. This, liowever, is a subject that can hardly be entered 
 on here, though it may be useful to bear in mind the analogy 
 alluded to. 
 
 Like all rock-cut examples all over the world, these Nubian 
 temples are copies of structural buildings, only more or less modified 
 to suit the exigencies of their situation, whicli did not admit of any 
 very great development inside, as light and air could only be intro- 
 duced from the one o]:)ening of tlie doorway. 
 
 The two princi])al examples of this class of monuments are the two 
 at Ipsamboul, the largest of which is the finest of its class known to 
 
 28. Plan and Section of Rock-cut Temple at Ipsamboul. Scale for plan 100 ft. to 1 in.; 
 
 section 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 exist anywhere. Its total depth from the face of the rock is 150 ft., 
 divided into 2 large halls and 3 cells, with passages connecting 
 them. 
 
 Externally the fa9ade is about 100 ft. in length, and adorned by 4 
 of the most magnificent colossi in Egypt, each 70 ft. in height, and 
 representing the king, Rhanjses II., who caused the excavation to be 
 made. It may be because they are more perfect than any others now 
 found in that country, but certainly nothing can exceed their calm 
 majesty and beauty, or be more entirely free from the vulgarity and 
 
EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 exaggeration which is generally a characteristic of colossal works of 
 this sort. 
 
 The smaller temple at the same place has six standing figures of 
 deities countersunk in the rock, and is carved with exceeding richness. 
 It is of the same age with the large temple, but will not admit of 
 comparison with it owing to the inferiority of the design. 
 
 Besides these, there is a very beautiful though small example at 
 Kalabsche, likewise belonging to the age of Rhamses II., and remark- 
 able for the beauty of its sculptural bas-reliefs, as well as for the bold 
 proto-Doric columns which adorn its vestibule. There are also smaller 
 ones at Derri and Balagne, at the upper end of the valley. At 
 Essabua, Girsheli, and Dandour, the cells of the temple have been 
 excavated from the i-ock, but their courts and propylons are structural 
 buildings added in front — a combination never found in Egypt, and 
 very rare anywhere else, although meeting the difficulties of the case 
 better than any otiier arrangement, inasmuch as the sanctuary has 
 thus all the imperisliability and mystery of a cave, and the temple at 
 the same time has the space and external appearance of a building 
 standing in the open air. 
 
 This last arrangement is found also as a characteristic of the 
 temples of Gibel Barkal, in the kingdom of Meroe, showing how far 
 the rock-cutting ])ractice prevailed in the Upper Valley of the Nile. 
 
 As all these temples are contemporary Avith the great structures in 
 Egypt, it seems strange that the eternity of a rock-cut example did not 
 recommend this form of temple to the attention of the Egyptians 
 
 themselves. But with the exception of a 
 small grotto, called the Speos Artemidos, 
 near Beni Hassan, and two small caves at 
 Silsilis, near the cataract, the Egyptians 
 seem never to have attempted it, trusting 
 apparently to the solidity of their masonic 
 structures for that eternity of duration they 
 aspired to. 
 
 Mammeisi. 
 
 In addition to the temples above de- 
 scribed, which are all more or less complex 
 in plan, and all made up of various inde- 
 pendent parts, there exists in Egypt a class 
 of temples called mammeisi^ dedicated to the 
 mysterious accouchement of the mother of 
 the gods. S^all temples of this form are 
 common to all ages, and belong as well to 
 the 18th dynasty as to the time of the Ptolemys. One of them, built by 
 Amenophis III. at Elephantine, is represented in plan and elevation 
 
 ■■ . ■ '» -sa an att ^a .j^ 
 29. Mammeisi at Elephantine. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. IV. 
 
 KINGDOM OF THE PHARAOHS. 
 
 127 
 
 in the annexed cut. It is of a simple peristylar form, with columns 
 in front and rear, the latter being now built into a wall, and seven 
 square piers on each flank. These temples are all small, and, like the 
 Typhonia, which somewhat resemble them, were used as detached 
 chapels or cells, dependent on the larger temples. What renders them 
 more than usually interesting to us is the fact that they were 
 undoubtedly the originals of the Greek peristylar forms, that people 
 have borrowed nearly every peculiarity of their architecture from the 
 banks of the Nile. We possess tangible evidence of peristylar temples and 
 proto-Doric pillars erected in Egypt centuries before the oldest known 
 specimen in Greece. We need, therefore, hardly hesitate to award the 
 palm of invention of these things to the Egyptians, as we should 
 probably be forced to do for most of the arts and sciences of the Greeks 
 if we had only knowledge sufficient to enable us to trace the connect- 
 ing links which once joined them together, but which are now in most 
 instances lost, or at least difficult to find. 
 
 Tombs. 
 
 Of the first 10 dynasties of Egyptian kings little now remains but 
 their tombs — the everlasting pyramids — and of the people they 
 governed, only the structures and rock-cut excavations which they 
 prepared for their final resting-places. 
 
 The Theban kings and their subjects erected no pyramids, and 
 none of their tombs are structural — all are excavated from the living 
 rock ; and from Beni Hassan to the cataract, the plain of the Nile is 
 everywhere fringed with these singular monuments, which, if taken 
 in the aggregate, perhaps required a greater amount of labor to 
 excavate and to adorn than did even all the edifices of the plain. 
 Certain it is that there is far more to be learnt of the arts, of the 
 habits, and of the history of Egypt from these tombs than from all 
 the other monuments. No tomb of any Theban king has yet been 
 discovered anterior to the 18th dynasty ; but all the tombs of that 
 and of the subsequent dynasty have been found, or are known to 
 exist, in the Valley of Biban-el-Melouk, on the western side of the 
 plain of Thebes. 
 
 It appears to have been the custom with these kings, so soon as 
 they ascended the throne, to begin preparing their final resting-place. 
 The excavation seems to have gone on uninterruptedly year by year, 
 the painting and adornment being finished as it progressed, till the 
 hand of death ended the king's reign, and simultaneously the works 
 of his tomb. All was then left unfinished ; the cartoon of the painter 
 and the rough work of the mason and plasterer were suddenly broken 
 off, as if the hour of the king's demise called them, too, irrevocably 
 from their labors. 
 
128 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Pakt I. 
 
 1 Now in Sir John Soane's Museum, in Lin- 
 coln' s-Inn-Fields. 
 
 The tomb thus became 
 an index of the length of 
 a king's reign as well as of 
 his magnificence. Of those 
 in the Valley of the Kings 
 the most splendid is that 
 opened by Belzoni, and now 
 known as that of Maneph- 
 thah, the builder of the 
 hypostyle hall at Karnac. 
 It descends, in a sloping 
 direction, for about 350 ft. 
 into the mountain, the 
 upper half of it being 
 tolerably regular in plan 
 and direction; but after 
 progressing as far as 
 the unfinished hall with 
 two pillars, the direction 
 changes, and the works 
 begin again on a lower 
 level, probably because 
 they came in contact with 
 some other tomb, or in 
 consequence of meeting 
 some flaw in the rock. It 
 now terminates in a large 
 and splendid chamber with 
 a coved roof, in which 
 stood, when opened by 
 Belzoni, the rifled sarcoph- 
 agus ; ^ but a drift-way 
 h.^s been excavated beyond 
 this, as if it had been in- 
 tended to carry the tomb 
 still further had the king 
 continued to reign. 
 
 The tomb of Rhamses 
 Maiamoun, the first king 
 oi the 19th dynasty, is 
 more regular, and in some 
 respects as magnificent as 
 this, and that of Ameno- 
 pliis III. is also an excava- 
 tion of great beauty, and 
 is adorned with jjaintings 
 
Bk. I. Ch. IV. 
 
 KINGDOM OF THE PHARAOHS. 
 
 129 
 
 of the very best age. Like all the tombs, however, they depend for 
 their magnificence more on the paintings that cover the walls than 
 on anything wiiich can strictly be called architecture, so that they 
 hardly come properly within the scope of the present work ; the same 
 may be said of ])rivate tombs. Except those of Beni Hassan, already 
 illustrated by Woodcuts Nos. 15 to 18, these tombs are all mere 
 chambers or corridors, without architectural ornament, but their walls 
 are covered with paintings and hieroglyphics of singular interest and 
 beauty. Generally speaking, it is assumed that the entrances of these 
 tombs Avere meant to be concealed and hidden from the knowledge 
 of the people after the king's death. It is hardly conceivable, how- 
 ever, that so much pains should have been taken, and so much money 
 lavished, on what was designed never again to testify to the magnifi- 
 cence of its founder. It is also very unlike the sagacity of the 
 Egyptians to attempt what was so nearly impossible ; for though the 
 entrance of a pyramid might be so built up as to be unrecognizable, 
 a cutting in the rock can never be repaired or disguised, and can only 
 be temporarily concealed by heaping rubbish over it. Supposing it 
 to have been intended to conceal the entrances, such an expedient 
 was as clumsy and unlikely to have been resorted to by so ingenious 
 a people as it has proved futile, for all the royal tombs in the valley 
 of Biban-el-Melouk have been opened and rifled in a past age, and 
 their sites and numbers were matters of public notoriety in the times 
 of the Greeks and Romans. Many of the private tombs have archi- 
 tectural facades, and certainly never were meant to be concealed, so 
 that it is not fair to assume that hiding their tombs' entrances was 
 ever a peculiarity of the Thebans, though it certainly was of the 
 earlier Memphite kings. 
 
 Obelisks. 
 
 Another class of monuments, almost exclusively Egyptian, are the 
 obelisks, which form such striking objects in front of almost all the 
 old temples of tlie country. 
 
 Small models of obelisks are found in the tombs of the age of the 
 pyramid builders, and represented in their hieroglyphics; but the 
 oldest public monument of the class known to exist is that at Heliop- 
 olis, erected by Osortasen, the great king of the 12th dynasty. It is, 
 like all the others, a single block of beautiful red granite of Syene, 
 cut with all the precision of the age, tapering slightly towards the 
 summit, and of about the average proportion, being about 10 diameters 
 in height ; exclusive of the top it is 67 ft. 4 in. 
 
 The two finest known to exist are, that now in the piazza of the 
 Lateran, originally set up by Thothmes III., 105 ft. in height, and 
 that still existing at Karnac, erected by Thothmes I., 93 ft. 6 in. in 
 
 VOL. L — 9 
 
130 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 A 
 
 height. Those of Luxor, erected by Rhamses the Great, one of which 
 is now in Paris, are above 77 ft. in height ; and there are two others 
 in Rome, each about 80 ft. 
 
 Rome, indeed, has 12 of these monuments within her walls — a 
 greater number than exist, erect at least, in the 
 country whence they came; though judging from 
 the number that are found adorning single temples, 
 it is difficult to calculate how many must once have 
 existed in Egypt. Their use seems to have been 
 wholly that of monumental pillars, recording the 
 style and title of the king who erected them, his 
 piety, and the proof he gave of it in dedicating 
 these monoliths to the deity whom he especially 
 wished to honor. 
 
 It has been already remarked that, with scarcely 
 an exception, all the pyramids are on the west side 
 of the Nile, all the obelisks on the east ; with regard 
 to the former class of monuments, this probably arose 
 from a law of their existence, the western side of the 
 Nile being in all ages preferred for sepulture, but 
 
 ^ l__ with regard to the latter it seems to be accidental. 
 
 — Memphis doubtless possessed many monuments of 
 
 31. Lateruii Obelisk. Scale . n i • i t 
 
 60ft. to 1 in., tor com- this class, and there is reason to believe that the 
 St\'er"LSgs'''''' western temi)les of Thebes were also similarly 
 adorned. They are, however, monuments easily 
 broken ; and, from their form, so singularly useful for many building 
 purposes, that it is not to be wondered at if many of them have dis- 
 appeared during the centuries that have elapsed since the greater 
 number of them were erected. 
 
 Domestic Architectuee. 
 
 Except one small royal pavilion at Medinet Habou, no structure 
 now remains in Egypt that can fairly be classed as a specimen of the 
 domestic architecture of the ancient Egyptians ; but, at the same time 
 we possess, in paintings and sculptures, so many illustrations of their 
 domestic habits, so many plans, elevations, and views, and even models 
 of their dwellings of every class, that we have no difficulty in forming 
 a correct judgment not only of the style, but of the details of their 
 domestic architecture. 
 
 Although their houses exhibited nothing of the solidity and monu- 
 mental character which distinguished their temples and palaces, they 
 seem in their own way to have been scarcely less beautiful. They 
 were of course on a smaller scale, and built of more perishable materials, 
 but they appear to have been as carefully finished, and decorated with 
 
Bk. I. Ch. IV. 
 
 KINGDOM OF THE PHARAOHS. 
 
 131 
 
 equal taste to that displayed in the greater works. We know, also, 
 from the tombs that remain to us, that, although the government of 
 Egypt was a despotism of the strictest chiss, still the wealth of the 
 land was pretty equally diffused among all classes, and that luxury 
 and splendor were by no means confined either to tlie royal family 
 or within the precincts of the palace. There is thus every reason to 
 believe that the cities which have passed away were worthy of the 
 temples that adorned them, and that the streets were as splendid and 
 as tasteful as the public buildings themselves, and displayed, though 
 in a more ephemeral form, the same wealth and power which still 
 astonish us in the great monuments that remain. 
 
 No building can form a greater contrast with the temple behind it 
 than does the little pavilion erected at Medinet Habou by Rhamses, 
 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 33. View of Pavilion at Medinet Habou. 
 
 the first king of the 19th dynasty. As will be seen by the annexed 
 plan (Woodcut No. 32), it is singularly broken and varied in its out- 
 line, surrounding a small court in the shape of a cross. It is 3 stories 
 in height, and, properly speaking, consists of only 3 rooms on each 
 floor, connected together by long winding passages. There is reason, 
 however, to believe that this is 
 only a fragment of the building, 
 and foundations exist which render 
 it probable that the whole was 
 originally a square oi the width 
 of the front, and had other cham- 
 bers, probably only in wood or 
 brick, besides those we now find. 
 This would hardly detract from 
 the playful character of the 
 design, and when colored, as it 
 
 originally was, and with its Elevation of a House. From an Egyptian 
 
 J. flpllltlllg. 
 
 battlements or ornaments ' com- 
 plete, it must have formed a composition as pleasing as it is unlike 
 our usual conceptions of Egyptian art. 
 
132 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 The other illustration represents in the Egyptians' own quaint 
 style a three-storied dwelling, the upper story apparently being like 
 those of the Assyrians, an open gallery supported by dwarf columns. 
 The lower windovv^s are closed by shutters. In the centre is a staircase 
 leading to the upper story, and on the left hand an awning supported 
 on wooden pillars, which seerns to have been an indispensable part of 
 all the better class of dwellings. Generally speaking, these houses 
 are shown as situated in gardens laid out in a quaint, formal style, 
 with pavilions, and fishponds, and all the other accompaniments of 
 gardens in the East at the present day. 
 
 In all the conveniences and elegances of building they seem to 
 have anticipated all that has been done in those countries down to 
 the present day. Indeed, in all probability, the ancient Egyptians 
 surpassed the modern in those respects as much as they did in the 
 more important forms of architecture. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. V. 
 
 GREEK AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 133 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 GREEK AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Decline of art — Temples at Dendera 
 
 Kalabsche-Philse. 
 
 THE third stage of Egyptian art is as exceptional as the two which 
 preceded it, and as unlike anything else which has occurred in 
 any other lands. 
 
 From the time of the 
 19th dynasty, with a slight 
 revival under the Bubastite 
 kings of the 22d dynasty, 
 Egypt sank through a long 
 period of decay, till her mis- 
 fortunes Avere consumma- 
 ted by the invasion of the 
 Persians under Cambyses, 
 525 B. c. From that time she 
 served in a bondage more 
 destructive, if not so galling 
 as that of the Shepherd 
 domination, till relieved by 
 the more enlightened pol- 
 icy of the Ptolemys. Under 
 them she enjoyed as great 
 material prosperity as un- 
 der her own Pharaohs; and 
 her architecture and her 
 arts too revived, not, it is 
 true, with the greatness or 
 the purity of the great na- 
 tional era, but still with 
 mucli richness and material 
 splendor. 
 
 This was continued un- 
 der the Roman domination, 
 and, judging from what we 
 find in other countries, we 
 would naturally expect to find traces of the influence of Greek and 
 
 35. 
 
 Plan of Temple at Edfou, Apolloiiopolis Magna. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
134 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 2. 
 
 Roman art in the buildings of this age. So little, however, is this the 
 case, that before the discovery of the reading of the liieroglyphic signs, 
 the learned of Europe placed the Ptolemaic and Roman temples of Den- 
 dera.and Kalabsche before those of Thebes in order of date ; and could 
 not detect a single moulding in the architectural details, nor a single 
 feature in the sculpture and painting which adorned their walls, which 
 
 gave them a hint of the truth. Even Cleopatra the beautiful is repre- 
 sented on these walls Avith distinctly Egyptian features, and in the same 
 tight garments and conventional forms as were used in the portrait of 
 Nophre Ari, Queen of Rhamses, or in those of the wives of the possessors 
 of tombs in the age of the pyramids, 3000 years before. Egypt, in fact, 
 conquered her conquerors, and forced them to adopt her customs and 
 
Bk. I. Ch. V. 
 
 GEEEK AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 135 
 
 her arts, and to follow in the groove she had so long marked out for 
 herself, and followed with such strange pertinacity. 
 
 Some of the temples of this age are, as far as dimensions and rich- 
 ness of decorations are concerned, quite worthy of the great age, 
 though their plans and arrangements differ to a considerable extent. 
 There is no longer any hesitation as to whether they should be called 
 temples or palaces, for they all are exclusively devoted to worship, — 
 and to the worship of a heavenly God, not of a deified king. 
 
 What these arrangements are will be well understood from the 
 annexed plan of that of Edfou (Woodcut No. 35), which, though not 
 
 37, Bas-relief at Tell el Amarna. 
 
 the largest, is the most complete of those remaining. It is 450 ft. m 
 length and 155 in width, and covers upwards of 70,000 ft. ; its dimen- 
 sions may be said to be equal to those of the largest of our medi- 
 aeval cathedrals (Cologne or Amiens, for instance). Part only of the 
 whole structure (that which is shaded in the plan) is roofed, and 
 therefore it can scarcely be compared with buildings entirely under 
 one roof. 
 
 In front of the tem])le are two large and splendid pylons, with the 
 gateway in the centre, making up a fa9ade 225 ft. in extent. Although 
 this example has lost its crowning cornice, its sculptures and orna- 
 ments are still very perfect, and it may altogether be considered as a 
 fair specimen of its class, although inferior in dimensions to many of 
 those of the Pharaonic age. Within these is a court, 140 ft. by 161, 
 surrounded by a colonnade on three sides, and rising by easy steps, 
 the whole width of the court, to the porch or poitico which, in Ptole- 
 maic temples, takes the place of the great hypostyle halls of the 
 Pharaohs. It is lighted from the front over low screens placed be- 
 tween each of the pillars, a peculiarity scarcely ever found in temples 
 of earlier date, though apparently common in domestic edifices, or 
 those formed of wood, certainly as early as the middle of the 18th 
 dynasty, as may be seen from the annexed woodcut (No. 37), taken 
 
13(3 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut I. 
 
 from a tomb of one of the sim-worsliipping kings, who reigned between 
 Amenophis III. and Horus. From this we pass into an inner and 
 
 38, Fagade of Temple at Dendera. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 smaller porch, and again through two passages to a dark and myste- 
 rious sanctuary, surrounded by darker passages 
 and chambers, well calculated to mystify and 
 strike with awe any worshipper or neophyte 
 who might be admitted to their gloomy pre- 
 cincts. 
 
 The celebrated temple at Dendera is similar 
 to this, and slightly larger, but it has no fore- 
 court, no propylons, and no enclosing outer 
 walls. Its fayade is given in the woodcut (No. 
 38). Its Isis-headed columns are not equal to 
 those of Edfou in taste or grace, but it has the 
 advantage of situation, and this temple is not 
 encumbered either by 
 sand or huts, which still 
 disfigure so many Egyp- 
 tian temples. Its effect, 
 consequently, on travel- 
 lers is always more 
 striking. 
 
 The Roman temple 
 at Kalabsche (Woodcuts 
 N"os. 40 and 41), above 
 the Cataract, is a fair 
 specimen of these tem- 
 ])les on a smaller scale. 
 The section (Woodcut 
 No. 41) shows one of the 
 modes by which a scanty 
 light was introduced into 
 the inner cells, and their 
 gradation in height. The 
 position, too, of its propylons is a striking instance of the irregularity 
 
 39. Pillar, from the Portico 
 at Dendera. 
 
 Plan of Temple at 
 
 Kalabsche. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk I. Ch. V. 
 
 GREEK AND ROMAN PERIOD. 
 
 137 
 
 which distinguishes all the later Egyptian styles from that of the 
 rigid, proportion-loving pyramid builders of Memphis. 
 
 This irregularity of plan was nowhere carried to such an extent 
 as in the Ptolemaic temple on the island of Philae (Woodcut No. 43). 
 Here no two buildings, scarcely any two walls, are on the same axis or 
 parallel to one another. No Gothic architect, in his wildest moments, 
 ever played so freely with his lines or dimen- 
 sions, and none, it must be added, ever produced 
 anything so beautifully picturesque as this. 
 It contains all the play of light and shade, all 
 the variety of Gothic art, with the massiveness 
 and grandeur of the Egyptian style ; and as 
 it is still tolerably entire, and retains much of 
 its color, there is no building out of Thebes 
 that gives so favorable an impression of 
 Egyptian art as this. It is true it is far less 
 sublime than many, but hardly one can be 
 quoted as more beautiful. 
 
 Notwithstanding its irregularity, this tem- 
 ple has the advantage of being nearly all of 
 the same age, and erected according to one 
 plan, while the greater buildings at Thebes 
 are often aggregations of parts of different 
 ages ; and though each is beautiful in itself, 
 the result is often not quite so harmonious as 
 might be desired. In this respect the Ptol- 
 emaic temples certainly have the advantage, 
 inasmuch as they are all of one age, and all 
 completed according to the plan on which they 
 were designed ; a circumstance which, to some 
 extent, at least, compensates for their marked 
 inferiority in size and style, and the littleness 
 of all the ornaments and details, as compared 
 with those of the Pharaonic period. It must 
 at the same time be admitted that this inferi- 
 ority is more apparent in the sculpture of the 
 Ptolemaic age than in its architecture. The 
 general design of the buildings is frequently 
 grand and imposing, but the details are always 
 inferior ; and the sculpture and painting, which in the great age add 
 so much to the beauty of the Avhole, are in the Ptolemaic age always 
 frittered away, ill-arranged, unmeaning, and injurious to the general 
 effect, instead of heightening and improving it. 
 
 Strange as it may at first sight appear, we know less of tlie man- 
 ners and customs of the Egyptian people during the Greek and Roman 
 
138 
 
 EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 domination, than we do of them during the earlier dynasties. All 
 the buildings erected after the time of Alexander which have come 
 down to our time, are essentially temples. Nothing that can be called 
 a i^alace or pavilion has survived, and no tombs, except some of 
 Roman date at Alexandria, are known to exist. We have conse- 
 
 Vievv of Temple at i'hila' 
 
 quently no pictures of gardens, with their villas and fish-ponds ; no 
 farms, with their cattle ; no farmyards, with their geese and ducks ; 
 no ploughing or sowing ; no representations of the mechanical arts ; 
 no dancing or amusements; no arms or campaigns. Nothing, in 
 short, but worsliip in its most material and least intellectual iorm. 
 
 It is a cui-ious inversion of the usually received dogmata on this 
 subject, but as we read the history of 
 Egypt as written on her monuments, 
 we find her first wholly occupied with 
 the arts of peace, agricultural and 
 industrious, avoiding war and priest- 
 craft, and eminently practical in all 
 her undertakings. In the middle period 
 Ave find her half political, half religious ; 
 sunk from her early happy position to 
 a state of affairs such as existed in 
 Europe in the Middle Ages. In her 
 third and last stage we find her fallen 
 under the absolute influence of the 
 most degrading superstition. We know 
 from her masters that she had no po- 
 litical freedom and no external influ- 
 ence at this time ; but we hardly 
 expected to find her sinking deeper 
 and deeper into superstition, at a time 
 
 when the world was advancing forward with such rapid strides in 
 the march of civilization, as was the case between the ages of Alexander 
 and that of Constantine. It probably was in consequence of this retro- 
 grade course that her civilization perished so absolutely and entirely, 
 under the infl.uence of the rising star of Christianity ; and that, long 
 
 43. Plan of Temple at Pliilse. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. V. 
 
 GKEEK AND llOMiVN PERIOD. 
 
 139 
 
 before the Arab conquest, not a trace of it was left in any form. What 
 had stood the vicissitudes of 3000 years, and was complete and stable 
 under Hadrian, had vanished when Constantine ascended the throne. 
 
 If, however, their civilization passed so suddenly away, their build- 
 ings remain to the present day ; and taken altogether, we may perhaps 
 safely assert that the Egyptians were the most essentially a building 
 people of all those we are acquainted with, and the most generally 
 successful in all they attempted in this way. The Greeks, it is true, 
 surpassed them in refinement and beauty of detail, and in the class of 
 sculpture with which they ornamented their buildings, while the 
 Gothic architects far excelled them in constructive cleverness ; but 
 with these exceptions no other styles can be put in competition with 
 them. At the same time, neither Grecian nor Gothic architects under- 
 stood more perfectly all the gradations of art, and the exact character 
 that should be given to every form and every detail. Whether it was 
 the plain flat-sided pyramid, the crowded and massive hypostyle hall, 
 the playful pavilion, or the luxurious dwelling — in all these the 
 Egyptians understood perfectly both how to make the general design 
 express exactly what was wanted, and to make every detail, and all 
 the various materials, contribute to the general effect. They under- 
 stood, also, better than any other nation, how to use sculpture in com- 
 bination with architecture, and to make their colossi and avenues of 
 sp.Jnxes group themselves into parts of one great design, and at the 
 same time to use histoi-ical paintings, fading by insensible degrees 
 into hieroglyphics on the one hand, and into sculpture on the other — 
 linking the whole together with the highest class of phonetic utter- 
 ance. With the most brilliant coloring they thus harmonized all 
 these arts into one great whole unsurpassed by anything the world 
 has seen during the thirty centuries of struggle and aspiration that 
 have elapsed since the brilliant days of the great kingdom of the 
 Pharaohs. 
 
140 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECURE. 
 
 Pakt L 
 
 ' CHAPTER VI. 
 ETHIOPIA. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Kingdom of Meroe — Pyramids. 
 
 IT was long a question with the learned whether civilization ascended 
 or descended the Nile — whether it was a fact, as the Greeks evi- 
 dently believed, that Meroe was the parent State whence the Egyptians 
 had migrated to the north, bringing with them the religion and the arts 
 which afterwards flourished at Thebes and Memphis — or whether 
 these had been elaborated in the fertile plains of Egypt, and only in 
 later times had extended to the upper Nile. 
 
 Recent discoveries have rendered it nearly certain that the latter is 
 the correct statement of the facts — within historic times at least — that 
 the fertile and easily cultivated Delta was first occupied and civilized ; 
 then Thebes and afterwards Meroe. At the same time it is by no 
 means improbable that the Ethiopians were of the same stock as the 
 Thebans, though differing essentially from the Memphites, and that 
 the former may have regarded these remote kindred with respect, 
 perhaps even with a degree of half-superstitious reverence, due to 
 their remote situation in the centre of a thinly-peopled continent, 
 and have in consequence invented those fables which the Greeks 
 interpreted too literally. 
 
 If any such earlier civilization existed in these lands, its records 
 and its monuments have perished. No building is now found in Meroe 
 whose date extends beyond the time of the great King Tirhakah, of the 
 25th Egyptian dynasty, b. c. 724 to 680, unless it be those bearing the 
 name of one king, Amoun Gori, who was connected with the intruding 
 race of sun-worshippers, which broke in upon the continuous succession 
 of the kings of the 18th dynasty. Their monuments were all purposely 
 destroyed by their successors ; and almost the only records we have of 
 them are the grottoes of Tell el Amarna, covered with their sculptures, 
 which bear, it must be confessed, considerable resemblance in style to 
 those found in Ethiopia. Even this indication is too slight to be of 
 much value ; and we must wait for some further confirmation before 
 founding any reasoning upon it. 
 
 The principal monuments of Tirhakah are two temples at Gibel 
 Barkal, a singular isolated mount near the great southern bend of the 
 river. One is a large first-class temple, of purely Egyptian form and 
 
Bk. I. Ch- VI. 
 
 NUBIA — PYRAMIDS. 
 
 141 
 
 design, about 500 ft. in length by 120 or 140 in width, consisting of 
 two great courts, with their propylons, and with internal halls and 
 sanctuaries arranged much like those of the Rhamession at Thebes 
 (Woodcut No. 19), and so nearly, also, on the same scale as to make 
 it probable that the one is a copy of the other. 
 
 The other temple placed near this, but as usual unsymmetrically, 
 consists of an outer hall, internally about 50 ft. by 60, the roof of 
 which is supported by four ranges of columns, all with capitals repre- 
 senting figures of Typhon or busts of Isis. This leads to an inner 
 cell or sanctuary, cut in the rock.i 
 
 There are smaller remains strewed about, indicating the existence 
 of a city on the spot, but nothing of architectural importance. 
 
 The most remarkable monuments of the Ethiopian kingdom are 
 the pyramids, of which three great groups have been discovered and 
 
 44. Pyramids at ]\Ierue. (From Hoskins' " Travels iii Ethiopia.") 
 
 Fig. 1. — Plan of the Principal Group. Scale I FiG. 2. — Section and Elevation of that marked 
 100 ft. to 1 in. I A. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 described. The principal group is at a place called Dankelah, the 
 assumed site of the ancient Meroe, in latitude 17° north. Another is at 
 Gibel Barkal ; the third at Nourri, a few miles lower down than the 
 last named, but probably only another necropolis of the same city. 
 
 Compared with the great Memphite examples, these pyramids are 
 •most insignificant in size — the largest at Nourri being only 110 ft. by 
 100 ; at Gibel Barkal the largest is only 88 ft. square ; at Meroe none 
 exceed 60 ft. each way. They differ also in form from those of Egypt, 
 
 1 The information regarding these 
 temples is principally derived from Hos- 
 kins' "Travels in Ethiopia," which is 
 
 the best and most accurate work yet 
 published on the subject. 
 
142 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 being much steeper, as their height is generally equal to the width 
 of the base. They also all possess the roll-molding on their angles, 
 and all have a little porch or pronaos attached to one side, generally 
 ornamented with sculpture, and forming either a chapel, or more pro- 
 bably ih ' place where the coffin of the deceased was placed. We know 
 from the Greeks that, so far from concealing the bodies of their dead, 
 the Ethiopians had a manner of preserving them in some transparent 
 substance, which rendered them permanently visible after death. i 
 
 To those familiar with the rigid orientation of tliose of Lower 
 Egypt? perhaps the most striking peculiarity of the pyramids is the 
 more than Theban irregularity with which they are arranged, no 
 two being ever placed, except by accident, at the same angle to the 
 meridian, but the Avhole being grouped with the most picturesque 
 diversity, as chance appears to have dictated. 
 
 Among their constructive peculiarities it may be mentioned that 
 they seem all to liave been first built in successive terraces, each less 
 in dimensions than that below it, something like the great pyramid 
 at Saccara (Woodcut No. 9), these being afterwards smoothed over 
 by the external straight-lined coating. 
 
 Like the temples of Gibel Barkal, all these buildings appear to 
 belong to tlie Tirhakah epoch of the Ethiopian kingdom. It is ex- 
 tremely improbable that any of them are as old as the time of Solo- 
 mon, or that any are later tlian the age of Cambyses, every indication 
 seeming to point to a date between these two great epochs and to the 
 connection of African history with that of Asia. 
 
 Tlie ruins at Wady el-Ooatib, a little further up the Nile than 
 Meroe, should perhaps be also mentioned here, if only from the 
 importance given to them by Heeren, who thought he had discovered 
 in them the ruins of the Temple of Jupiter Ammon. They are, how- 
 ever, all in the debased style of the worst age of Ptolemaic or Roman 
 art in that country. They are wholly devoid of hieroglyphics or any 
 indication of sanctity or importance, and there can be little doubt that 
 they are the remains of a caravansera on the great commercial route 
 between Egypt and Axum, along which the greater part of the trade 
 of the East arrived at Alexandria in the days of its magnificence. 
 
 Although widely differing in date from the monument just de- 
 scribed — except the last — this may be the place to mention a group 
 of the most exceptional monuments of the world — the obelisks of 
 Axum. It is said they were originally 55 in number, four of them 
 equal to that shown in the annexed woodcut, which represents the 
 only one now standing ; but there are fragments of several of these 
 lying about, and some of the smaller ones still standing, all of the 
 
 1 Herodotus, iii. 24. Diodorus, ii. 15. 
 
Bk. LOh. VI. NUBIA. \ 
 
 same class and very similar in design to the large one. Its height, 
 according to Lord Valentia, is 60 ft., its width at base nearly 10, and 
 it is of one stone. The idea is evidently Egyptian, but the details are 
 Indian. It is in fact an Indian nine-storied pagoda, translated in 
 Egyptian in the first century of the Christian era! 
 
 The temple most like it in India is probably that at Budh Gya. 
 That, in its present form, is undoubtedly more modern, but probably 
 retains many of its original features. 1 1 also resembles the tower at 
 Chittore,! but towers are from their form such frail structures, that 
 
 io. Obelisks at Axum. (From Lord Valentia's *' Travels.") 
 
 certainly nine-tenths of those that once existed have perished; and 
 it is only because they are so frequent still in China and other 
 Buddhist countries that we are sure that the accounts are true 
 which represent them as once as frequent as in tlie country of their 
 birth. Be this as it may, this exceptional monolith exactly repre- 
 sents tliat curious marriage of Indian with Egyptian art which we 
 would expect to find in the spot where the two people came in con- 
 tact, and enlisted architecture to symbolize their commercial union. 
 
 Woodcuts 982 and 1091 in the first edition of this History. 
 
HISTORY OF ARCHriECTUflE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 BOOK 11. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 IT is by no means impossible that the rich alluvial plain of Shinar 
 may have been inhabited by man as early as the Valley of the 
 Nile ; but if this were so, it is certain that the early dwellers in the 
 land have left no trace of their sojourn which has yet rewarded the 
 research of modern investigators. So far, indeed, as our knowledge at 
 present extends, we have proof of the existence of the primitive races 
 of mankind in the valleys of France and England at a far earlier 
 period than we trace their remains on the banks of either the 
 Euphrates or the Nile. It is true these European vestiges of pre- 
 historic man are not architectural, and have consequently no place 
 here, except in so far as they free us from the trammels of a chro- 
 nology now admitted to be too limited in duration, but which has 
 hitherto prevented us from grasping, as we might have done, the 
 significance of architectural history in its earliest dawn. 
 
 Unfortunately for our investigation of Chaldean antiquity, the 
 works of Berosus, the only native historian we know of, have come 
 down to us in even a more fragmentary state than the lists of 
 Manetho, and the monuments have not yet enabled us to supply 
 those deficiencies so completely, though there is every prospect of 
 their eventually doing so to a considerable extent. In the mean- 
 while the most successful attempt to restore the text which has 
 been made, is that of Herr Gutschmid,i and it is probable that the 
 dates he assigns are very near the truth. Rejecting the 1st dynasty 
 of 86 Chaldeans and their 34,080 years as mythical, or as merely 
 expressing the belief of the historian that the country was inhabited 
 
 * Published in the Rheinischer Museum," vol. viii. p. 252, et seq. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 145 
 
 by a Chaldean race for a long time before the Median invasion, he 
 places that event 2458 b. c. His table of dynasties then runs thus: — 
 
 
 
 Years. 
 
 II. . 
 
 . 8 Medes . . . 
 
 . . 224 . 
 
 III. . 
 
 . 11 Chaldeans . . 
 
 . . 258 . 
 
 lY. . 
 
 .49 
 
 . . 458 . 
 
 V. . 
 
 . 9 Arabians . . 
 
 . . 245 . 
 
 VI. . 
 
 . 45 Assyrians . . 
 . 8 
 
 . . 526 . 
 
 VII. . 
 
 . . 122 . 
 
 VIII. . 
 
 . 6 Chaldeans . . 
 
 . . 87 . 
 
 Persian conquest 
 
 commencing 
 
 B. c. 
 
 . 2458 
 . 2234 
 . 1976 
 . 1518 
 . 1273 
 . 747 
 . 625 
 . 538 
 
 As every advance that has been made, either in deciphering the 
 inscriptions or in exploring the ruins since this reading was proposed, 
 has tended to confirm its correctness, it may fairly be assumed to 
 represent very nearly the true chronology of the country from Nim- 
 rod to Cyrus. Assuming this to be so, it is interesting to observe 
 that the conquest of Babylonia by the Medes only slightly preceded 
 the invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos, and that the fortification of 
 Avaris "against the Assyrians"^ was synchronous with the rise of the 
 great Chaldean dynasty, most probably under Nimrod, b. c. 2234. If 
 this is so, the whole of the old civilization of Egypt under tlie pyra- 
 mid-building kings had passed away before the dawn of history in 
 Babylonia. The Theban kings of tlie 12th dynasty had spread their 
 conquests into Asia, and thus it seems brought back the reaction of 
 the Scythic invasion on their own hitherto inviolate land, and by 
 these great interminglings of the nations Asia was first raised to a 
 sense of lier greatness. 
 
 What we learn from this table seems to be that a foreign invasion 
 of Medes — whoever they may have been — disturbed the hitherto 
 peaceful tenor of the Chaldean kingdom some twenty-five centuries 
 before the Christian era. 
 
 They, in their turn, were driven out to make place for the Chal- 
 dean dynasties, whicli we have every reason to suppose were those 
 founded by Nimrod about the year 2235 b. c. 
 
 This kingdom seems to have lasted about seven centuries without 
 any noticeable interruption, and then to have been overthrown by an 
 invasion from the west about the year 1518 b. c. Can this mean the 
 Egyptian conquest under the kings of the great 18th dynasty? 
 
 The depression of the Chaldeans enabled the Assyrians to raise 
 their heads and found the great kingdom afterwards known as that 
 of >jineveh, about the year 1273. For six centuries and a half they 
 were the great people of Asia, and during the latter half of that 
 period built all those palaces which have so recently been dis- 
 interred. 
 
 1 " Josephus contra Apion," i. 14. 
 VOL. I. — 10 
 
146 
 
 BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 They were struck clown in their turn by the kings of Babylonia, 
 who established the second Chaldean kingdom about the year 625, 
 but only to give place to the Persians under Cyrus in the year 538, 
 after little more than a century of duration. 
 
 As in the Valley of the Nile, the first kingdom was established 
 near the mouths of the Euphrates, and flourished there for centuries 
 before it was superseded by the kingdom of Nineveh, in the same 
 manner as Thebes had succeeded to the earlier seat of power in the 
 neighborhood of Memphis. 
 
 Owing to the fortunate employment of sculptured alabaster slabs 
 to line the walls of the palaces during the great period of Assyrian 
 prosperity, we are enabled to restore the plan of the royal palaces of 
 that period with perfect certainty, and in consequence of the still more 
 fortunate introduction of stone masonry during the Persian period — 
 after they had come into contact with the Greeks — we can understand 
 the construction of these buildings, and restore the form of many parts 
 which, being origmally of wood, have perished., The Phiins of Shinar 
 possessed no natural building material of a durable nature, and even 
 wood or fuel of any kind seems to have been so scarce that the 
 arcliitects were content too frequently to resort to the use of bricks 
 only dried in the sun. The consequence is that the buildings of the 
 early Chaldeans are now generally shapeless masses, the plans of 
 which it is often extremely difficult to follow, and in no instance 
 has any edifice been discovered so complete that we can feel quite 
 sure we really know all about it. Fortunately, however, the temples 
 at Wurka and Mugheyr become intelligible by comparison with the 
 Birs Nimroud and the so-called tomb of Cyrus, and the palaces of 
 Nineveh and Khorsabad from the corresponding ones at Susa and 
 Persepolis. Consequently, if we attempt to study the architecture of 
 Chaldea, of Assyria, or of Persia, as separate styles, we find them so 
 fragmentary, owing to the imperfection of the materials in which 
 they were carried out, that it is difiicult to understand their forms. 
 But taken as the successive developments of cne great style, the 
 whole becomes easily intelligible ; and had the southern excavations 
 I)een conducted with a little more care, there is perhaps no feature 
 that would not have been capable of satisfactory explanation. Even 
 as it is, however, the explorations of the last fifteen years have 
 enabled us to take a very comprehensive view of what the archi- 
 tecture of the valley of the Euphrates was during the 2000 years it 
 remained a great independent monarchy. It is a chapter in the 
 history of the art which is entirely new to us, and which may lead 
 to the most im])ortant results in clearing our ideas as to the origin 
 of styles. Unfortunately, it is only in a scientific sense that this is 
 true. Except the buildings at Persepolis, everything is buried or 
 heaped together in such confusion that the passing traveller sees 
 
JJK. 11. CH. I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 147 
 
 nothing. It is only by study and comparison that the mind eventually 
 realizes the greatness and the beauty of the most gorgeous of Eastern 
 monarchies, or that any one can be made to feel that he actually sees 
 the sculptures which a Sardanapalus set up, or the tablets which a 
 Nebuchadnezzar caused to be engraved. 
 
 Owing to the fragmentary nature of the materials, it must perhaps 
 be admitted that the study of the ancient architecture of Central Asia 
 is more difficult and less attractive than that of other countries and 
 more familiar forms. On the other hand, it is an immense triumph 
 to the philosophical student of art to have penetrated so far back 
 towards the root of Asiatic civilization. It is besides as great a gain 
 to the student of history to have come actually into contact with the 
 works of kings whose names have been familiar to him as household 
 words, but of whose existence he had until lately no tangible proof. 
 
 In addition to this it must be admitted that the Assyrian explora- 
 tion commenced in 1843 by M. Botta, at Khorsabad, and brought 
 to a temporary close by the breaking out of the war in 1855, have 
 added an entirely new chapter to our history of architecture ; and 
 with the exception of that of Egypt, probably the most ancient we 
 can ever now hope to obtain. It does not, it is true, rival that of 
 Egypt in antiquity, as the Pyramids still maintain a preemineiTce 
 of 1000 years beyond anything that has yet been discovered in the 
 valley of the Euphrates, and we now know, approximately at least, 
 what we may expect to find on the banks of tliat celebrated river. 
 There is nothing certainly in India that nearly approaches these 
 monuments in antiquity, nor in China or the rest of Asia; and in 
 Euroj)e, whatever may be maintained regarding primaeval man, we 
 can hardly expect to find any building of a date prior to the Trojan 
 war. All our histories must therefore begin with Egypt and Assyria 
 — beyond them all is sj^eculation, and new fields of discovery can 
 hardly be hoped for. 
 
 The Assyrian discoveries are also most important in supplying 
 data whicli enable us to understand what follows, especially in the 
 architectural history of Greece. No one now probably doubts that 
 the Dorian Greeks borrowed the idea of their Doric order from the 
 pillars of Beni Hassan (Woodcuts Nos. 16 and 17) or Nubia — or rather 
 perhaps from the rubble or brick piers of Memphis or Naucratis,i from 
 which these rock-cut examples were themselves imitated. But the 
 origin of the Ionic element was always a mystery. We know, indeed, 
 that the Greeks practised it principally in Asia Minor — hence its 
 name; but we never knew how essentially Asiatic it was till the 
 architecture of Nineveh was revealed to us, and till, by studying it 
 through the medium of the buildings at Persepolis, we were made to 
 
 If the Greeks traded to Naucratis as early as the 1st Olympiad. 
 
148 
 
 BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. 
 
 Pakt I. 
 
 feel how completely the Ionic order was a Grecian refinement on the 
 wooden and somewhat Barbaric orders of the Euphrates valley. 
 
 It is equally, or perhaps almost more, important to know that in 
 Chaldea we are able to trace the origin of those Buddhist styles of 
 art which afterwards pervaded the whole of Eastern Asia, and it 
 may be also the germs of the architecture of Southern India.^ These 
 affinities, however, have not yet been worked out, hardly even hinted 
 at ; but they certainly will one day become most nnportant in tracing 
 the origin of the religious development of the further East. 
 
 In these researches neither the literature nor the language of the 
 country avail us much. If the affinities are ever traced, it will be 
 through the architecture, and that alone ; but there is every prospect 
 of its proving sufficient for the purpose when properly explored. 
 
 It will hardly be necessary even to allude to the decipherment of 
 the mysterious written characters of the Chaldeans. There is pro- 
 bably no one now living, who has followed up the course of the 
 inquiry with anything like a proper degree of study, who has any 
 doubt regarding the general correctness of the interpretation of the 
 arrow-headed inscriptions. Singularly enough, the great difficulty is 
 Avith regard to proper names, which as a rule were not spelt pho- 
 nc*tically, but were made up of symbols. This is provoking, as these 
 names afford the readiest means of comparing the monuments with our 
 histories ; and the uncertainty as to their pronunciation has induced 
 many to fancy that the foundation of the whole system is unstable. 
 But all this is becoming daily less and less important as the history 
 itself is being made out from the monuments themselves. It may 
 also be true that, when it is attempted to translate literally meta- 
 physical or astrological treatises, there may still be differences of 
 opinion as to the true meaning of a given passage ; but plain his- 
 torical narratives can be read with nearly as much certainty as a 
 chapter of Herodotus or of Plutarch ; and every day is adding to 
 the facility with which they can be deciphered, and to the stock of 
 materials and facts with which the readings may be checked or 
 rectified. 
 
 From the materials already collected, combined with the chro- 
 nology above sketched out, we are enabled to divide the architectural 
 history of the Middle Asiatic countries, during the period of their 
 ancient greatness, into three distinct and well-defined epochs. 
 
 1st. The ancient Babylonian or Chaldean period, ranging from 
 
 1 When the " Handbook of Architec- 
 ture" was published in 1855, there ex- 
 isted no data from which these affinities 
 could be traced. It is to the explorations 
 
 of Sir Henry Rawlinson and Messrs. 
 Taylor and Loftus that we owe what we 
 now know on the subject; but even that 
 is only an instalment. 
 
Bk. 11. Ch. 1. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 149 
 
 B. c. 2234 to 1520, comprising the ruins at Wurka, Mugheyr, Abu 
 Shahrein, Niffer, Kaleh Sherghat, etc. Temples, tombs, and private 
 dwellings, all typical of a Turanian or Scythic race. 
 
 2nd. The Assyrian and second Chaldean kingdoms, founded about 
 1290 B. c, and extending down to the destruction of Babylon by 
 Cyrus, 538 b. c, comprising all the buildings of Nimroud, Koyunjik, 
 Khorsabad, and those of the second Babylon. An architecture essen- 
 tially palatial, without tombs, and few temples, betokening the 
 existence of a Semitic race. 
 
 3rd. The Persian, commencing Avith Cyrus, 538 b. c, and ending 
 with Alexander, b. c. 333, comprising Passargadae, Susa, and Perse- 
 polis. An architecture copied from the preceding: palatial, with 
 rock tombs and small temples. Aryan it may be, but of so strangely 
 mixed a character that it is almost impossible to distinguish it from 
 its sister styles. Either it seems to be that Cyrus and his descendants 
 were of Turanian blood, governing an Aryan people, or that they 
 were Aryan, but that there was so strong an infusion of Turanians 
 among their subjects that they were forced to follow their fashions. 
 Perhaps a little of both ; but taking the evidence as it now stands, it 
 seems as if the first hypothesis is that nearest the truth. These rock- 
 cut tombs, and the splendor of their sepulchral arrangements generally, 
 savor strongly of Scythic blood ; and their gorgeous palaces, their 
 love of art, the splendor of their state and ceremonial, all point to 
 feelings far more prevalent among the Turanians than to anything 
 ever found among kings or ])eople of the Aryan race. 
 
 None of these styles, however, are perfectly pure, or distinct one 
 from the other. Tlie three races always inhabited the country as 
 they do now. And as at this hour the Turkish governor issues his 
 edicts in Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, so did Darius write the 
 history of his reign on the rocks at Behistun in Persian, Assyrian, 
 and the old Scythic or Median tongue. The same three races occupied 
 the country then as they do now. But each race was supreme in the 
 order just given, and the style of each predominated during the period 
 of their sway, though impregnated with the feelings and peculiarities 
 of the other two. It is this, indeed, which gives the architecture of 
 the country in that age its peculiar value to the archaeologist. The 
 three great styles of the world are here i)laced in such close juxta- 
 position, that they can l)e considered as a whole, illustrating and 
 supplementing each other, but still sufficiently distinct never to lose 
 their most marked characteristics. The materials are still, it must be 
 confessed, somewhat scanty to make all this clear; but every day is 
 adding to them, and, even now, no one familiar with architectural 
 analysis can be mistaken in recognizing the leading features of the 
 investigation. 
 
150 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 CHALDEAN TEMPLES. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Nimrod . , . n. c. 2234 ? 
 
 Urukh. Bowariyeh, Wurka .... 2093 
 
 Ilgi 2070 
 
 Chedorlaomer 197G 
 
 Ismi Dagon 1850 
 
 ShamasVul. Kaleh Sherghat . 
 Sin Shada. Wuswus?. . . . 
 
 Sur Sin 
 
 Purna Puryas 
 
 Arab conquerors 
 
 DATES. 
 B. c. 1800 
 . . 1700 
 . . 1660 
 . . 1600 
 . . 1500?! 
 
 ALREADY the names of fifteen or sixteen kings belonging to these 
 old dynasties have been recovered, and the remains of some ten 
 or twelve temples have been identified as founded by them ; but 
 unfortunately none of these are in a sufficiently perfect state to 
 afford any certainty as to their being entirely of this age, and all are 
 in such a state of ruin that, making use of all the information 
 we possess, we cannot yet properly restore a temple of the old Chal- 
 dean epoch. 
 
 Notwithstanding this, it is a great gain to the history of archi- 
 tecture to have obtained so much knowledge as we have of temples, 
 which were only known to us before from the vague descriptions of 
 the Greeks, and which are the earliest forms of a type of temples 
 found afterwards continually cropping up in the East. 
 
 It would be contrary to all experience to suppose that a people of 
 Turanian origin should be without temples of some sort, but, except 
 the description by the Greeks of the temple or tomb of Belus, we have 
 nothing to guide us. We have now a fair idea of what the general out- 
 line of their temples was, and even if we cannot trace their origin, we 
 can at least follow their descendants. There seems now no doubt but 
 that many, perhaps most, of the Buddhist forms of architecture in 
 India and further eastward, were derived from the banks of the 
 Euphrates. Many of the links are still wanting; but it is something 
 to know that the Birs Nimroud is the type which two thousand years 
 afterwards was copied at Pagahn in Burmah, and Boro Buddor in 
 
 • The chronology here given is based 
 on the various papers communicated by 
 Sir Henry Rawlinson to the "Journal 
 of the Royal Asiatic Society," vol. x. et 
 seq., and to the Athenaeum" journal. 
 
 The whole has been abstracted and con- 
 densed in his brother's "Five Great 
 Monarchies of the Ancient World"; 
 from which work the tables here given 
 are taken in an abridged form. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. II. 
 
 CHALDEAN TEMPLES. 
 
 151 
 
 Java ; and that the descent from these can easily be traced in those 
 countries and in China to the present day. 
 
 The principal reason why it is so difficult to form a distinct idea 
 of this old form of temple is, that the material most employed in their 
 construction was either crude, sun-dried, or very imperfectly-burnt 
 bricks ; or, when a better class of bricks was employed, as was pro- 
 bably the case in Babylon, they have been quarried and used in the 
 construction of succeeding capitals. A good deal also is owing to the 
 circumstance that those who have explored them have in many cases 
 not been architects, or were persons not accustomed to architectural 
 researches, and who consequently have failed to seize the peculiarities 
 of the building they were exploring. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it is fortunate that the Persians did 
 for these temples exactly what they accomplished for the palace forms 
 of Assyria. They repeated in stone in Persia what had been built in 
 the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris with wood, or w^th crude 
 bricks. It thus happens that the so-called tomb of Cyrus in Passar- 
 gadae enables us to verify and to supply much that is wanting in the 
 buildings at Babylon, and to realize much that would be otherwise 
 indistinct in their forms. 
 
 The oldest temple we know of at present is the Bowariyeh, at 
 Wurka (Erek), erected by Urukh, at least 2000 years b. c. ; but now so 
 utterly ruined, that it is difficult to make out what it originally was 
 like. It seems, however, to have consisted of two stories at least ; 
 the lowest about 200 feet square, of sun-dried bricks; the upper is 
 faced with burnt bricks, apparently of a more modern date. The height 
 of the two stories taken together is now about 100 feet, and it is 
 nearly certain that a third, or chamber story, existed above the parts 
 that are now apparent. ^ 
 
 The Mugheyr Temple ^ is somewhat better preserved, but in this 
 case it is only the lower story that can be considered old. The 
 cylinders found in the angles of the upper jDart belong to Nabonidus, 
 the last king of the later Babylonian kingdom ; and the third story 
 only exists in tradition. Still, from such information as we have, we 
 gather that its plan was originally a rectangle, 198 feet by 133, with 
 nine buttresses in the longer, and six m the shorter faces. Tlie walls 
 slope inwards in the ratio of 1 in 10. Above them was a second 
 story, 119 feet by 75, placed as is usual nearer one end of the lower 
 story, so as to admit of a staircase being added at the other. It is 
 47 feet distant from the south-eastern end, and only 28 or 30 from 
 the other ; but whether the whole of this was occupied by a flight of 
 
 * Loftus, "ChakUeaand Babylonia," p. 167. 
 2 Journal R. A. S., vol. xv. p. 260, et seq. 
 
152 
 
 BABYLONIA. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Steps or not is by no means clear. Taken altogether, the plan and 
 probable appearance of the building when complete, may have been 
 something like that represented in Woodcuts Nos. 46 and 47, though 
 there are too many elements of uncertainty to make it a restoration 
 which can altogether be depended upon. 
 
 46. Diagram of Elevation of Tempi* at Mughuyr. .Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 47. Plan of Temple at :Mugheyr. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 The typical example of this class of temples is the Birs Nimroud,* 
 near Babylon. It is true that as it now stands every brick bears the 
 stamp of Nebochadnassar, by whom it was repaired, perhaps nearly 
 rebuilt ; but there is no reason for supposing that he changed the 
 original plan, or that the sacred form of these temples had altered in 
 the interval. It owes its more perfect preservation to the fact of the 
 upper story having been vitrified, after erection, by some process 
 we do not quite understand. This now forms a mass of slag, which 
 has to a great extent protected the lower stories from atmospheric 
 influences. 
 
 In so far as it has been explored, the lower story forms a perfect 
 square, 272 feet each way. Above this are six stories, each 42 feet 
 less in horizontal dimensions. These are not placed concentrically on 
 those below them, but at a distance of only twelve feet from the south- 
 eastern edge, and consequently 30 feet from the N". W., and 21 feet 
 from the two other sides. 
 
 * Journal R. A. S., vol. xvili. p. 1, et I which all the information here given re- 
 seq., Sir Henry Rawlinson's paper, from | garding the Birs is obtained. 
 
Bk. II Ch. II. 
 
 CHALDEAN TEMPLES. 
 
 153 
 
 The height of the three upper stories seems to have been ascer- 
 tained with sufficient correctness to be 15 feet each, or 45 feet 
 together. Unfortunately no excavation was undertaken to ascertain 
 
 48. Diagram Elevation of Birs Nimroud. Scale 100 ft. to 4 in. 
 
 ixxxmxTxxxxxxxx 
 
 tXIXIXXIXXlU 
 
 49. Diagram Plan of Birs Nimroud. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 the height of the lowest and most important story. Sir Henry 
 Rawlinson assumes it at 26 ; and I have ventured to make it 45, 
 from the analogy of the tomb of Cyrus and the temple at Mugheyr. 
 The height of the two intermediate stories, instead of being 22 feet 
 
154 
 
 BABYLONIA. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 6 inches, as we might expect, was 26, which seems to have resulted 
 from some adjustment due to the chambers which ranged along their 
 walls on two sides. The exact form and dimensions of these chambers 
 were not ascertained, which is very much to be regretted, as they 
 seem the counterpart of those which surrounded Solomon's Temple 
 and the Viharas in India, and are consequently among the most inter- 
 esting peculiarities of this building. 
 
 No attempt was made to investigate the design of the upper 
 story, though it does not seem that it would be difficult to do so, as 
 fragments of its vaulted roof are strewed about the base of the tower- 
 like fragment that remains, from which a restoration might be effected 
 by any one accustomed to such investigations.^ What we do know is 
 that it was the cella or sanctuary of the temple.- There probably also 
 was a shrine on the third platform. 
 
 This temple, as we know from tlie decipherment of the cylinders 
 which were found on its angles, was dedicated to the seven planets or 
 heavenly spheres, and we find it consequently adorned with the colors 
 of each. The lower, which was also richly panelled, was black, the 
 color of Saturn; the next orange, the color of Jupiter; the third, 
 red, emblematic of Mars ; the fourth, yellow, belonging to the sun ; 
 the fifth and sixth, green and blue respectively, as dedicated to Venus 
 and Mercury ; and the upper probably white, that being the color 
 belonging to the Moon, Avhose place in the Chaldean system would be 
 uppermost. 
 
 Access to each of these stories was obtained by stairs, probably 
 arranged as shoAvn in the iilan ; these have crumbled away or been 
 removed, though ])robably traces of them might still have been found 
 if the explorations had been more complete. 
 
 Another temple of the same class was exhumed at Khorsabad, about 
 twenty years ago, by M. Place. It consisted, like the one at Borsippa, 
 of seven stories, but, as in this instance, each was placed concentrically 
 on the one below it : and instead of stairs on the sloping face, a ramj) 
 wound round the tower, as we are told was the case with the temple 
 of Belus at Babylon. The four lower stories are still perfect : each 
 of them is richly panelled and colored as above mentioned, and in 
 some parts even the parapet of the ramp still remains in situ. The 
 three upper stories are gone, but may easily be restored from those 
 
 1 Flandin and Coste, "Voyage en 
 Perse," vol. iv. pi. 221. 
 
 2 I have ventured to restore the roof 
 of the cella with a sikra (ziggur or zig- 
 gurah, according to Rawlinson's "Five 
 Ancient Monarchies," vol, 1. p. 395, et 
 passim), from finding similar roofs at 
 Suza, Bagdad, Keffeli, etc. These are 
 
 certainly indigenons, and borrowed from 
 some older type, whether exactly what 
 is represented here is not clear, it must 
 be confessed. It is offered as a sugges- 
 tion, the reason for which will be given 
 when we come to speak of Buddhist or 
 Saracenic architecture. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. II. 
 
 CHALDEAN TEMPLES. 
 
 155 
 
 below, as was done by M. Place, as shown in the annexed woodcut. 
 According to him, it was an observatory, and had no cella on its 
 
 Yellow 
 
 Black 
 
 '^JIIIllBillU 
 
 50. Observatory at Khorsabad, from Place's " Ninive et I'Assyrie." Scale 50 ft. to %. in. 
 
 summit. If this was the case it was a Semitic temple, and belongs 
 to a quite different religion from that whose temples we have been 
 describing. But unfortunately there is no direct evidence to deter- 
 mine whether it had such a chamber or not. My own impressions on 
 the subject are decidedly at variance 
 with those of M. Place, but until 
 some bas-reliefs are discovered con- 
 taining representations of these tem- 
 ples and of their cells, we shall 
 probably hardly ever know exactly 
 what the form of the crowning 
 member really was. From the imi- 
 tations in modern times we seem to 
 see dimly that it was conical, and 
 possibly curvilinear. The dimen- 
 sions of this tower at Khorsabad 
 
 were 150 feet square at the base, 51. Plan of Obsprvatorv. Khorsabad. Scale 
 
 and 135 high from the pavement to ' '''' 
 
 the platform on its summit. Its base, however, was at a considerable 
 elevation above the plain, so that when seen from below it must have 
 been an imposing object. 
 
 The inscriptions at Borsippa and elsewhere, mention other temples 
 
156 
 
 BABYLONIA. 
 
 Part I 
 
 of the same class, and no doubt those of Babylon were more magnifi- 
 cent than any we have yet found ; but they must always have been 
 such prominent objects, and the materials of which they were com- 
 posed so easily removed, that it is doubtful if anything more perfect 
 will now be found. 
 
 The Mujelibe, described by Rich and afterwards explored without 
 success by Layard, is probably the base of the great temple of Belus 
 described by the Greeks; but even its dimensions can hardly now be 
 ascertained, so completely is it ruined. It seems, however, to be a 
 parallelogram of about 600 feet square, ^ and rising to a height of about 
 140 feet ; but no trace of the upper stories exist, nor indeed anything 
 which would enable us to speak witli certainty of the form of the base- 
 ment itself. If this is the height of the basement, however, analogy 
 would lead us to infer tliat the six stories rose to a height of about 
 450 feet ; and witli tlie ziggurah or sikra on their summit, the whole 
 height may very well have been the stadium mentioned by Strabo.^ 
 
 As before mentioned, we have fortunately in the tomb of Cyrus at 
 Passargadae (Woodcuts Nos. 5'2 to 54) a stone copy of these temples ; in 
 
 52. Tomb of Cyrus. (From Texier's *' Armenie et la Perse.") 
 
 this mstance, however, so small that it can hardly be considered as more 
 than a model, but not the less instructive on that account. Like the Birs 
 Nimroud, the pyramid consists of six stories : the three upper of equal 
 height, in this instance 23^ inches ; the next two are equal to each 
 other, and as in Birs Nimroud, in the ratio of 26 to 15, or 41 inches. 
 The basement is equal to the three u])per put together, or 5 ft. 9 in., 
 
 1 Rich gives its dimensions: On the 
 north, 600 feet; south, 657; east, 546; 
 and west, 408. But it is so ruinous that 
 
 only an average guess can be made at its 
 original dimensions. 
 '2 Strabo, xvi. p. 738. 
 
54. Section of Tomb of Cyrus. (From Texier.) 
 
158 
 
 BABYLONIA. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 making a total of 18 ft. 4 in.^ The height of the cella is equal to the 
 height of the basement, but this may be owing to the small size of the 
 whole edifice, it being necessary to provide a chamber of a given 
 dimension for the sepulchre. In the larger temples, it may be surmised 
 that the height was divided into four nearly equal parts : one being 
 given to the basement, one to the two next stories, one to the three 
 upper stories, and the fourth to the chamber on the summit. 
 
 This building is now called the tomb of Cyrus, and most probably 
 was so, though copied from a form which we have just been describing 
 as a temple. But it must be borne in mind that the most celebrated 
 example of this form is as often called the tomb as the temple of Belus,^ 
 and among a Turanian people the tomb and the temple may be con- 
 sidered as one and the same thing. 
 
 Another peculiarity worth observing is that instead of the walled 
 enclosure that surrounded the Birs Nimroud,^ we have here an open 
 screen of pillars standing 14 feet apart, but certainly not part of a 
 cloister, nor probably even supporting an entablature, being mere steles 
 to mark the boundary of the sacred enclosure. The interest of this 
 will be ap])arent when we come to speak of Buddhist art; all that is 
 required is to direct attention to it here. 
 
 There is one other source from which we may hope to obtain in- 
 formation regarding these temples, and that is the bas-reliefs on the 
 walls of the Assyrian palaces. They drew architecture, however, so 
 badly, that it is necessary to be very guarded in considering such 
 representations as more than suggestions ; but the annexed woodcut 
 (Ko. 55) does seem to represent a four-storied temple, placed on a 
 mound, with very tolerable correctness, and if the upper story had 
 not been broken away the drawing might have given us a valuable 
 hint as to the form and purposes of the cella, which wa sthe principal 
 object of the erection. Its coloring, too, is gone ; but the certain 
 remains of symbolical colors at Borsippa and Khorsabad confirm so 
 xiompletely the Greek accounts of the seven-colored walls of Ecbatana 
 that, with the other indications of the same sort extant, that branch of 
 the inquiry may be considered as complete. 
 
 It is to be hoped that now that the thread is caught, it will be 
 followed up till this form of temple is thoroughly investigated ; for to 
 the philosophical student of architectural history few recent discoveries 
 are of more interest. There hardly seems a doubt but that many tem- 
 ples found further eastward are the direct lineal descendants of these 
 
 * There is a slight discrepancy in the 
 measures, owing to the absence of frac- 
 tions in the calculations. 
 
 2 It is called tomb by Strabo, lib. xvi., 
 and Diodorus, xvii. 112, 3; temple, He- 
 
 rodotus, i. 181, Arrian, vii. 17, 2, Pliny, 
 vi. 26. 
 
 3 See plan by Ker Porter, vol. ii. p. 
 323. 
 
Bk.II. Ch. II. CIIALDEAN TEMPLES. . 15y 
 
 Babylonian forms, though we as yet can only pick up here and there 
 the missing links of the chain of evidence which connects the one with 
 the other. We know, however, that Buddhism is essentially the re- 
 ligion of a Turanian people, and it has long been suspected that there 
 was some connection between the Magi of Central Asia and tlie priests 
 of that religion, and that some of its forms at least were elaborated in 
 
 55. Representation of a Temple. (From a 13as relief from Koyuiijik.) 
 
 the valley of the Euphrates. If the architectural investigation is fully 
 carried out, I feel convinced we shall be able to trace back to their 
 source many things which hitherto have been unexplained mysteries, 
 and to complete the history of this form of temple and of the religion 
 to which it belonged, from the Bowariyeh at Wurka, built 2000 years 
 p.. c, to the Temple of Heaven, erected in the city of Pekin within 
 the limits of the present century. 
 
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 ASSYRIAN PALACES. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Shalmenaser I. formded Nimroud . u. c. 1290 
 Tiglathi Nin, his soil (Ninus?) . . . .1270 
 
 Tiglath Pileser 1150 
 
 Asshur-bai)i-pal (nortli-west palace, Nim- 
 roud) 886 
 
 Shalmeiieser II. (central jjalace, do.). . 859 
 
 Shanias Iva 822 
 
 Iva Lush IV 810 
 
 Iiiterreguum. 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Tiglath Pileser IT. (south-eastern palace, 
 
 Nimroud) B. c. 744 
 
 Shalnieneser IV 726 
 
 Sargon (palace, Khorsabad) 721 
 
 Sennacherib (palace, Koyunjik) .... 704 
 Esarhaddon (south-western palace, Nim- 
 roud) 680 
 
 Sardanapalus (central palace, Koyunjik) 667 
 Destruction of Nineveh 625 
 
 ALL the knowledge wliicli we in reality possess regarding the ancient 
 jialatial architecture of the Euphrates valley^ is derived from the 
 exploration of the palaces erected by the great Assyrian dynasty of 
 Nineveli during the two centuries and a half of its greatest prosperity. 
 Fortunately it is a period regarding the cin-onology of wliich there is 
 no doubt, since the discovery of the Assyrian Canon by Sir Henry 
 Rawlinson,2 extending up to tlie year 900 n. c; this, combined with 
 Ptolemy's Canon, fixes the date of every king's reign with almost 
 absolute certainty. It is also a period regarding which we feel more 
 real interest tlian almost any other in the history of Asia. Almost all 
 the kings of that dynasty carried their conquering arms into Syria, and 
 their names are familiar to us as household words, from the record of 
 their wars in the Bible. It is singularly interesting not only to find 
 these records so completely confirmed, but to be able to study the 
 
 ^ This chapter and that next follow- 
 ing may be regarded as, in all essential 
 respects, an abridgment or condensation 
 of the information contained in a work 
 published by the author in 1851, en- 
 titled, "The Palaces of Xineveh and 
 Persepolis Kestored," the only real dif- 
 ference being that the more perfect de- 
 cipherment of the inscriptions since that 
 work was published has caused some of 
 the palaces and buildings to be ascribed 
 to different kings and dynasties from 
 
 those to whom they were then assigned, 
 and proved their dates to be more mod- 
 ern than was suspected, for the oldest at 
 least. The order of their succession, 
 however, remains the same, and so, con- 
 sequently, do all the architectural infer- 
 ences drawn from it. Those readers 
 who may desire further information on 
 the subject are referred to the work al- 
 luded to. 
 
 2 Published in 1862 in the " Athe- 
 najum " journal, No. 1812. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 ASSYRIAN PALACES. 
 
 161 
 
 actual works of these very kings, and to analyze their feelings and 
 aspirations from the pictures of their actions and pursuits which they 
 have left on the walls of their palaces. 
 
 From the accounts left us by the Greeks we are led to suppose 
 that the palaces of Babylon were superior in beauty and magnificence 
 to those of Nineveh; and, judging from the extent and size of the 
 mounds still remaining there, it is quite possible that such may have 
 been the case ; but they are so completely ruined, and have been so 
 long used as quarries, that it is impossible to restore, even in imagina- 
 tion, these now formless masses. 
 
 One thing seems nearly certain, which is, that no stone was used in 
 their construction. If, consequently, their portals were adorned with 
 winged bulls or lions, they must have been in stucco. If their walls 
 were covered with scenes of war or the chase, as those of Nineveh, 
 they must have been painted on plaster ; so that, though their dimen- 
 sions may have been most imposing and their splendor dazzling, tliey 
 must have wanted the solidity and permanent character so essential 
 to true architectural effect. 
 
 It is tlie employment of stone which alone has enabled us to un- 
 derstand the arrangements of the Assyrian palaces. Had not their 
 portals been marked by their colossal genii, we should hardly have 
 known where to look for them ; and if the walls of their apartments 
 had not been wainscoted with alabaster slabs, we never should have 
 been able to trace their form with anything like certainty. Practi- 
 cally, all we know of Assyrian art is due to the fact of their having 
 so suitable a material as alabaster close at hand, and to the skill with 
 which they knew how to employ it. Had their walls only been plas- 
 tered, the mounds of Khorsabad and Nimroud would have remained 
 as mysterious now as they were before Layard and Botta revealed to 
 us their splendors. 
 
 The only exception to these remarks, which has yet come to light, 
 is the so-called Wuswus ruin at Wurka.^ Whether it is a palace or 
 not is by no means clear, as the interior is too much ruined for its 
 plan to be traced with certainty ; and its date cannot be fixed -from 
 any internal evidence. Some of the bricks used in its construction 
 bear the name of Sin Shada, 1700 b. c. But it is suspected they may 
 have been brought from an older edifice. Nor does the style of its 
 architecture help us at present. The same sort of panelling was used 
 by Sargon at Khorsabad 1000 years after the assumed date ; and 
 panelling very like it is used even in the age of the Pyramids (Wood- 
 cuts Nos. 9 and 10) 1000 years at least before that time. With more 
 knowledge, we may recognize minor features which may enable us to 
 discriminate more exactly, but at present we only know that this class 
 
 ' Loftus, "Chaldeaand Babylonia," p. 188. 
 
 VOL. 1. — 11 
 
162 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 of panelling was used for the adornment of external walls from tte 
 earliest ages down at least to the destruction of Babylon. It was 
 probably used with well-marked characteristics in progression of 
 style ; but these we have yet to ascertain. Externally the Wuswus 
 is a parallelogram 256 ft. by 173. Like almost every building in the 
 Euphrates valley in those ancient times, instead of the sides facing 
 the cardinal points of the compass, as was the case in Egypt in the 
 Pyramid age, the angles point towards them. In this case the entrance 
 is in the north-east face. The centre apparently was occupied by a 
 court ; and opposite the entrance were two larger and several smaller 
 apartments, the larger being 57 ft. by 30. The great interest of the 
 building lies in the mode in which the external walls were ornamented 
 (Woodcuts Nos. 56 and 57). These were plastered and covered by 
 
 
 1 
 
 1^1 
 
 111 
 
 
 
 
 
 11 
 
 i 
 
 1 
 
 
 II 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 f 
 
 
 ^o. Eievatiou o£ a portion of the external Wall of Wuswus, at Wurka. (From Loftus.) 
 
 TERRACE I 
 
 10 5 10 20 3p *p 50 FI 
 
 57. Plan of portion of Wuswus. 
 
 an elaborate series of reedings and square sinkings, forming a beauti- 
 ful and very appropriate mode of adorning the wall of a building 
 that had no external openings. 
 
 This system is carried still further in a fragment of a wall in the 
 same city, but of uncertain date. In this instance these reedings — 
 there are no panels in the smaller fragment — and the plain surfaces 
 are ornamented by an elaborate mosaic of small cones about 3 or 3^ 
 in. long. . The butt, or thicker end of these, is dipped in color, and they 
 are then built up into patterns as shown in the woodcut No. 58. It is 
 probable that the walls of the Wuswus were adorned with similar 
 patterns in colors, but being executed in less durable materials, have 
 perished. Indeed, from the accounts which we have, as well as from 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 ASSYRIAN PALACES. 
 
 163 
 
 the remains, we are justified in asserting that this style of archi- 
 tecture depended for its effect on color as much, at least, if not more, 
 than on form. Could color be made as permanent, this might fre- 
 quently be wise, but too great dependence on it has deprived us of 
 half the knowledge we might otherwise possess of the architectural 
 effects of other times. 
 
 Nineveh. 
 
 Notwithstanding the wonderful results that were achieved in the 
 ten or twelve years during which the Assyrian explorations were pur- 
 sued with activity, it is by no means impossible but that much more 
 
164 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECT UIIE. 
 
 Paut I. 
 
 Still remains to reward an energetic and skilful research in these 
 mounds. Still, seven palaces have been more or less perfectly exhumed ; 
 four at Nimroud, two at Koyunjik, and one at Khorsabad. Among 
 these w^e have the palaces of Sennacherib and Sardanapalus, of 
 Esarhaddon, Sargon, Shalmaneser, and probably of Tiglath Pileser. 
 Consequently the palaces of all the great kings, wliose names are so 
 familiar to us, are laid bare. Beyond these, the palace of Asshur- 
 bani-pal worthily commences the series before the kings of Assyria 
 came into contact with the inhabitants of Syria, and consequently 
 before their Biblical record begins. It may be that other works of 
 the same kings may be discovered, or the buildings of some less cele- 
 brated monarch. But if we do not know all that is to be known, we 
 may rest assured that we already have acquired the greater part of 
 the knowledge that is to be obtained from these explorations. 
 
 Nimroud. 
 
 The oldest of the buildings hitherto excavated in Assyria is the 
 North- West Palace at Nimroud, built by Asshur-bani-pal, about the 
 year 884 b. c. Though not the largest, it more than makes up for this 
 deficiency by the beauty of its sculptures and the general elegance of 
 its ornaments. As will be seen by the annexed woodcut (No. 59), the 
 excavated portion of the palace is nearly a square, about 830 ft. each 
 way. The principal entrance was on the north, at the head of a noble 
 flight of steps leading from the river to the level of the terrace on 
 which the palace stood. From this, two entrances, adorned with 
 winged bulls, led to a great hall, 152 ft. in length by 32 in width, at 
 the upper end of which was situated the throne, and at the lower a 
 smaller apartment or vestibule opened on the terrace that overlooked 
 the river. Within the great hall was one of smaller dimensions, open- 
 ing into the central court of the palace, the entrance of which was so 
 arranged as to ensure privacy, proving that it partook of the nature of 
 the private apartments or hareem of the palace. To the eastward of 
 this was a suite of apartments, three deep, decreasing in width as 
 they receded from the light, but so arranged that the inner apart- 
 ments must have been entirely dark had the walls been carried to the 
 ceiling. As will, however, be presently explained in describing Khors- 
 abad, it is more than probable that the walls extended to only half 
 the height of the rooms, and formed terraces with dwarf pillars on 
 their summits, between which light was introduced, and they, in fact, 
 formed the upper story of the building. To the south was a double 
 suite, apparently the banqueting-halls of the palace ; and to the west- 
 ward a fourth suite, more ruined, however, than the rest, owing to its 
 being situated so near the edge of the terrace. As far as can be made 
 out, the rooms on this face seem to have been arranged three deep : 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 PALACE AT NIMROUD. 
 
 165 
 
 the outer opening on the terrace by three portals, the central one of 
 which had winged bulls, but the lateral seem to have been without 
 these ornaments ; the whole fa9ade being about 330 ft. in extent, 
 north and south. 
 
 All these apartments were lined with sculptured slabs, represent- 
 ing mostly either the regal state of the sovereign, his prowess in war, 
 or amusements during peace, but many of them were wholly devoted 
 to religious subjects. Beyond these apartments were many others, 
 
 59. North-West Palace at Nimroud.i Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 covering at least an equal extent of ground, but their walls having 
 been only plastered and joainted, the sun-burnt bricks of which they 
 were built have crumbled again to their original mud. It is evident, 
 however, that they were inferior to those already described, both in 
 form and size, and applied to inferior purposes. 
 
 The mound at Nimroud was so much extended after this palace 
 was built, and so covered by subsequent buildings, that it is now im- 
 possible to ascertain either the extent or form of this, which is the only 
 palace of the older dynasty known. It will, therefore, perhaps be as 
 well to turn at once to Khorsabad, which, being built wholly by one 
 king, and not altered afterwards, will give a clearer idea of the position 
 
 1 This plan, with all the particulars 
 here mentioned, are taken from Layard's 
 work, which is the only authority on the 
 subject, so that it is not necessary to 
 refer to him on every point-. The plan is 
 
 reduced to the usual scale of 100 ft. to 
 1 inch, for easy comparison with the di- 
 mensions of all the other edifices quoted 
 throughout this work. 
 
166 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 and arrangements of an Assyrian palace than we can obtain from any 
 one on the Nimroud mound. It has besides this the advantage of 
 being the only one so complete and so completely excavated as to 
 enable us to form a correct idea of what an Assyrian palace really was 
 and of all its arrangements. 
 
 60. Plan of Palace at Khorsabad, showing the excavations as they were left by M. Botta. 
 
 No scale. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 PALACE AT KHORSABAD. 
 
 167 
 
 KlIORSABAD.l 
 
 The city 'of Khorsabad was situated about fifteen miles from Nineveh, 
 in a northerly direction, and was nearly square in plan, measuring 
 about an English mile each way. Nearly in the centre of the north- 
 western wall was a gap, in which was situated the mound on which 
 the palace stood. It seems to have been a peculiarity common to all 
 Assyrian palaces to be so situated. Their builders wisely objected to 
 being surrounded on all sides by houses and Avails, and at the same 
 time sought the protection of a walled enclosure to cover the gateways 
 and entrances to their palaces. At Koyunjik and Nimroud the outer 
 face of the 23alace was covered and protected by the river Tigris ; and 
 here the small brook Kausser flows past the fort, and, though now an 
 insignificant stream, it is by no means improbable that it was 
 dammed up so as to form a lake in front of the ])alace when inhab- 
 ited. This piece of water may have been further deepened by 
 excavating from it the earth necessary to raise the mound on which 
 the palace stood. 
 
 That part of the mound in this instance which projected between 
 the walls, was a square of about 650 ft. each way, raised about 30 ft. 
 above the level of the plain, and protected on every side by a su])porting 
 wall cased with stone of very beautiful masonry (Woodcut No. 61). 
 Behind this, and inside the city, was a somewhat lower mound, about 
 
 61. Terrace Wall at Kliorsabad. 
 
 300 ft. in width and 1300 or 1400 ft in length, on which were situated 
 the great portals of the palace, together with the stables and ofiices, 
 and, outside the walls of the palace properly so-called, the Hareem. 
 All the principal apartments of the palace properly so-called were 
 
 1 The whole of the information regard- 
 ing Khorsabad is taken fromM. Eotta's 
 great work on the subject, and its con- 
 
 tinuation, "Ninive ct I'Assyrie," by M. 
 Victor Place. 
 
168 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 reveted with sculptural slabs of alabaster, generally about 9 ft. in 
 height, like those at Nimroud. These either represent the wars, or the 
 peaceful amusements of King Sargon, commemorate his magnificence, 
 or express his religious feelings. 
 
 The great portals that gave access to the Palace of Khorsabad from 
 the city were among the most magnificent of those yet discovered. 
 The facade in which they stood presented a frontage of 330 ft., in which 
 were three portals ; the central one flanked by great human-headed 
 
 50 tOD 200 300 400 500 Fl 
 
 SCALE. 
 
 62. Plau of Palace at Khorsabad, as completely excavated by M, Place. The parts black 
 and tinted were actually found. Those in outline are conjectural. 
 
 bulls 19 ft. in height, and on each side two other bulls 1.5 ft. high, 
 with a Q-iant stranHins: a lion between them, as shown in the woodcut 
 (No. 63), representing what still remained of them when uncovered by 
 M. Botta, and now forming one of the principal ornaments of the British 
 Museum. These portals were reached from the city by a flight of steps, 
 
Bk. 11. Ch. III. 
 
 PALACE AT KHORSABAD. 
 
 169 
 
 now entirely destroyed, but which there can be little difficulty in restor- 
 ino; from what we find at 
 Persepolis and elsewhere. 
 
 These portals led to the 
 great outer aourt of the 
 palace, measuring 315 ft. 
 by 280 between the but- 
 tresses with which it was 
 adorned all round. On the 
 right hand were six or seven 
 smaller courts surrounded 
 by the stables and out- 
 houses of the palace, which 
 were approached by a ramp 
 on the outside, at the head 
 of which was a block of 
 buildings containing the 
 cellarage, and generally 
 the store of eatables. On 
 the left hand of this court 
 were the metal stores, each 
 room having been appro- 
 priated to iron, copper or 
 other such materials, and 
 behind them, outside the 
 palace, was the Hareem.^ 
 
 In the northern angle 
 a rather insignificant pass- 
 age formed a means of com- 
 munication between this 
 great outer court and the 
 next, which was 360 ft. 
 long by 200 wide, and 
 probably open to the coun- 
 try, at least in front of 
 the great portals. On the 
 inner side of this second 
 court a magnificent portal 
 opened into what appears 
 to have been the residential 
 portion of the palace, mea- 
 suring nearly 300 by 500 
 ft. over all. 
 
 The proper entrance to 
 
 1 These particulars are all borrowed from M. Place's great work, 
 I'Assyrie," folio. Paris, 1865. 
 
 "Ninive ef 
 
170 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 tliis court was by the ramp before alluded to, which was indeed the 
 only access to the palace for chariots and horsemen. From the second 
 court, through the only vaulted passage in the palace, access was 
 obtained to the state apartments looking over the country. The three 
 principal of these are shown to a larger scale in the woodcut (Ko. 64), 
 
 / 
 
 84. Enlarged Plan of tlie Tliree Principal Koonis at Kliorsabad. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 with their dimensions figured upon them. The next woodcut (No. 65) 
 is a restored section of these apartments, showing what their arrange- 
 ment was, and the mode in which it is conceived they were roofed, 
 according to the information gathered on tlie spot, and what we find 
 afterwards practised at Persepolis and elsewhere. ^ 
 
 It will be observed that the area covered by the walls is of nearly 
 the same extent as that of the rooms tliemselves, so that the galleries 
 formed, in fact, an upper story to the palace ; and thus, in the heat of 
 the day, the thickness of the walls kept the inner apartments free from 
 heat and glare, while in the evenings and mornings the galleries 
 formed airy and light apartments, affording a view over the country, 
 
 1 Space will not admit of my entering 
 into all the reasons for tliis restoration 
 here. If any one wislies for further infor- 
 mation on the subject, I must refer liim 
 to my " Palaces of Nineveli and Persepo- 
 lis Restored," published in 1851. Notli- 
 inghas occurred during tlie twenty-three 
 years that have elapsed since that work 
 
 was publislied that has at all shaken my 
 views on the correctness of the data on 
 wliich tliese restorations were based. On 
 the contrary, every subsequent research 
 has served only more and more to con- 
 vince me of their general correctness, 
 and I cannot now suggest any improve- 
 ment even in details. 
 
15k. II. Ch. III. 
 
 PALACE AT K110HSAI3AD. 
 
 173 
 
 and open on every side to the breezes that at times blow so refresh- 
 ingly over the plains. It will also be observed that by this arrange- 
 ment the direct rays of the sun could never penetrate into the halls 
 themselves, and that rain, or even damp, could easily be excluded by 
 means of curtains or screens. 
 
 The whole of these state-rooms were reveted with sculptured ala- 
 baster slabs, as shown in the section ; above which the walls were 
 decorated with conventional designs painted on stucco, remains of 
 which were found among the debris. 
 
 The external face of this suite, as seen from the north-eastern 
 court, was probably something very like what is shown in the wood- 
 cut (No. 66), though there are less materials for restoring the exterior 
 than there are for the internal parts of the palace. The arched 
 entrance to the court, shown on the left, is certain : so also, I conceive, 
 is the mode in which the light was introduced into the apartments. 
 The details of the pillars are not so certain, though not admitting 
 of much latitude of doubt. 
 
 As before mentioned, outside the palace stood the Hareem, of a 
 somewhat irregular form, but measuring 400 ft. by 280, distinguished 
 in the plan (Woodcut No. 62) by being tinted by hatching. The 
 whole of its external walls are adorned with reeded pilasters, and 
 panels like those of the Wuswus at Wurka (Woodcut No. 56), which 
 is not the case with any other part of the palace. It has only one 
 small external opening from the terrace, and another which may be 
 called a concealed one from the great outer court. Internally its 
 arrangements are very remarkable. First there is an outer court, into 
 which these two entrances open, and within that two other courts, on 
 whose side are extended what may be called three complete suites of 
 apartments, very similar to each other in arrangement, though varied 
 in dimensions. It looks as if each was appropriated to a queen, and 
 that their relative magnificence accorded with the dignity of the 
 person to whom it was assigned. But are we justified in assuming 
 that Sargon had three queens, and only that number of legitimate 
 wives ? Assuming this, however, there is still room in this Hareem 
 for any number of concubines and their attendants. 
 
 The central court of the Hareem is one of the richest discoveries 
 that rewarded M. Place's industry. It was adorned with six free- 
 standing statues — the smaller court with two — and the walls were 
 wainscoted with enamelled tiles representing the king, his vizier, lions, 
 eagles, vines, and fruits, and other objects in a bright yellow color 
 on a blue ground. The whole is in fact one of the most curious and 
 interesting discoveries yet made in these palaces. 
 
 As it can hardly admit of a doubt that this was really the Hareem 
 of the palace, it is curious that such a building as the observatory 
 described above (p. 155), should have been erected in its immediate 
 
174 
 
 HISTORY OF AKCIlITECTL'llE 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 proximity. Every one ascending the ramp or standing on its summit 
 must have looked into its courts, unless they were covered with awn- 
 ings or roofs in some manner we do not quite understand ; and we 
 can hardly assume that such a tower was intended as the praying 
 place of tlie king and the king only. The fact is undoubted, however 
 we may explain it. 
 
 From the above description it will be observed that in every case 
 the principal part, the great mass, of the palace was the terrace on 
 which it stood, whicli was raised by artificial means to a height of 
 30 ft. and more, and, as shown in the illustration (Woodcut No. 61), 
 carefully reveted with stone. On this stood the palace, consisting 
 principally of one great block of private apartments situated around 
 an inner square court. From this central mass two or three suites 
 of apartments projected as wings, so arranged as to be open to the 
 air on three sides, and to give great variety to the outline of the pal- 
 ace as seen from below, and great play of light and shade in every 
 aspect under which the building could be surveyed. So far also as 
 w^e can judge, the whole arrangements were admirably adapted to the 
 climate, and the ornaments not only elegant in themselves, but singu- 
 larly expressive and appropriate to the situations in which they are 
 found. 
 
 Another most important discovery of M. Place is that of the great 
 arched gates of the city. These were apparently always constructed 
 
 SCALE 
 
 67. City Gateways, Khorsabad. (From M. Place.) 
 
 in pairs — one for the use of foot-passengers, the other for wheeled 
 carriages, as shown by the marks of wheels worn into the pavement 
 in the one case, while it is perfectly smooth in the other.i 
 
 1 From the discovery of these arches, 
 M. Place jumped instantly to the con- 
 clusion that because the Assyrians could 
 construct an arch 18 feet span with kiln- 
 burnt bricks for a city gate, therefore 
 they vaulted all the rooms of their pal- 
 
 aces with sww-dried bricks, though some 
 of these apartments were upward of 40 
 feet in width ! 
 
 It would have been quite as logical to 
 reason that because all the gates of all 
 the walled cities in Europe are arched, 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 KHOESABAD. 
 
 175 
 
 Those appropriated to carriages liad plain jambs rising perpen- 
 dicularly 12 or 15 ft. These siii)ported a semi-circular arch, 18 ft. in 
 diameter, adorned on its face with an archivolt of great beauty, 
 
 City Gateway at Khorsabad. (From M. Place.) 
 
 formed of blue enamelled bricks, with a pattern of figures and stars 
 of a warm yellow^ color, relieved upon it. 
 
 therefore all the rooms of the houses in- 
 side are arched also ; and far more logical 
 to reason that, because we can construct 
 arches 100 or 150 feet span for our 
 bridges, we should construct equally 
 wide vaults for our room. We do not, 
 however; nor did the Assyrians. 
 
 In the first place, a mud-brick vault 
 40 feet in span would crush with its own 
 weight ; and if employed in such rooms, 
 for instance, as v., vi,, andvii.of Botta's 
 plan, they nuist have been in absolute 
 darkness. The truth of the matter is, 
 that I foresaw and announced M. Place's 
 discovery long before he went to Khors- 
 abad.* What he has done since does not 
 induce me to alter any feature in the 
 restoration I then proposed. 
 
 The Rev. Geo. Rawlinson's proposal to 
 cover the halls with flat roofs of timber. 
 
 * " Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Re- 
 stored," p. 259. 
 
 \vithout any supports, is equally unten- 
 able.! If he had asked any practical 
 builder what extent he would roof in this 
 manner without any framing, and with 
 no other protection above than a heavy 
 flooring of mud, he would probably have 
 found 20 feet more than most men would 
 like to undertake, and some of the halls 
 require roofs 42 and 43 feet in span. In 
 India we cannot roof spans beyond 25 or 
 20 feet, though we have saul and teak 
 t imber: at best, the Assyrians had cedar. 
 In India also we have perfectly burnt tiles 
 and exquisite chunam; neither of which 
 the Assyrians possessed, or at least used 
 for this purpose, or their remains would 
 have been found on the floors. If Mr. 
 Kawlinson will show the Indians how to 
 accomplish 40 feet with even these per- 
 fect materials, he would be the greatest 
 
 t Ancient Monarchies, vol. i. p. 385. 
 
176 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 The gateways for foot-passengers were nearly of the same dimen- 
 sions, about 14 or 15 ft. broad, but they were ornamented by winged 
 bulls with human heads, between which stood giants strangling lions. 
 In the example illustrated in the annexed woodcut (No. 68), the arch 
 sprang directly from the backs of the bulls, and was ornamented by 
 an archivolt similar to that over the carriage entrances, and which is 
 perhaps as beautiful a mode of ornamenting an arch as is to be found 
 anywhere. 
 
 Other arches have been found in these Assyrian excavations, but 
 none of such extent as these, and none which show more completely 
 
 69. Interior of a Yezidi House at Burka, in the Sinjar. 
 
 how w^ell the Assyrians in the time of Sargon (I'll b, c.) understood 
 not only the construction of the arch, but also its use as a decorative 
 architectural feature. i 
 
 architectural benefactor tliey have seen 
 for a very long time. 
 
 It may, however, be asked, If this is 
 so clear as here assumed, why should 
 men put aside a reasonable, feasible, and 
 beautiful mode of roofing, to propose 
 impossible arches, and still less feasible 
 flats ? The answer seems easy and ob- 
 vious, but too controversial and personal 
 to be entered upon here. 
 
 ^ These gateways are extremely inter- 
 esting to the Biblical student, inasmuch 
 as they are the only examples which en- 
 able us to understand the gateways of 
 the Temple at Jerusalem, as described by 
 Ezekiel. Their dimensions are nearly the 
 same, but the arrangement of the side 
 chambers and of gates generally are al- 
 most identical. These gates had been built 
 100 years, at least, before Ezekiel wrote. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. 111. 
 
 PALACE AT KOYUNJIK. 
 
 177 
 
 There must always be many points, even in royal residences, which 
 would be more easily understood if we knew the domestic manners 
 and usages prevalent among the common people of the same era and 
 country. This knowledge we actually can supply in the present case, 
 to a great extent, from modern Eastern residences. Such a mode of 
 illustration in tlie West would be out of the question ; but in tlie East, 
 manners and customs, processes of manufacture and forms of building, 
 liave existed unchanged from the earliest times to the present day. 
 This immutability is the greatest charm of the East, and frequently 
 enables us to understand what in our own land would have utterly 
 faded away and been obliterated. In the Yezidi House, for instance, 
 borrowed from Mr. L^fyard's work, we see an exact reproduction, 
 in every essential respect, of the style of building in the days of 
 Sennacherib. Here we have tlie wooden pillars with bracket capitals, 
 supporting a mass of timber intended to be covered with a thickness 
 of earth sufficient to prevent the rain or heat from penetrating to the 
 dwelling. There is no reason to doubt that the houses of the humbler 
 classes were in former times similar to that here represented ; and 
 this very form amplified into a palace, and the walls and pillars 
 ornamented and carved, would exactly correspond Avith the principal 
 features of the palace of the great Assyrian king. 
 
 Palace of Sennacherib, Koyunjik. 
 
 Having said so much of Khorsabad, it will not be necessary to say 
 much about the palace at Koyunjik, built by Sennacherib, the son of 
 the Khorsabad king. 
 
 As the great metropolitan palace of Nineveh, it was of course of 
 far greater extent and far more magnificent than the suburban palace 
 of his father. The mound itself on which it stands is about 1^ mile 
 in circumference (7800 ft.) ; and, as the whole was raised artificially 
 to the height of not less than 30 ft., it is in itself a work of no mean 
 magnitude. 
 
 The principal j^alace stood at the south-western angle of this mound, 
 and as far as the excavation has been carried seems to have formed a 
 square of about 600 ft. each Avay — double the lineal dimensions of that 
 at Nimroud. Its general arrangements were very similar to those at 
 Khorsabad, but on a larger scale. It enclosed within itself two or three 
 great internal courts, surrounded with sixty or seventy apartments, 
 some of great extent. The principal fayade, facing the east, sur])assed 
 any of those of Khorsabad, both in size and magnificence, being adorned 
 by ten winged bulls of the largest dimensions, with a giant between 
 each of the two principal 2xternal ones, in the manner shown in the 
 woodcut (No. 63), besides smaller sculptures — the whole extending 
 to a length of not less tlian 350 ft. The principal facade at Khorsabad, 
 
 VOL. L — 12 
 
178 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 as above mentioned, extended 330 ft., but the bulls and the portals 
 there were to those at Koyunjik in the proportion of 30 to 40, which 
 nearly, indeed, expresses the relative magnificence of the two palaces. 
 Inside the great portal at Koyunjik was a hall, 180 ft. in length by 42 in 
 width, with a recess at each end, through which access was obtained to 
 two courtyards, one on the right and one on the left ; and beyond these to 
 the other, and apparently the more private apartments of the palace, 
 which overlooked the country and the river Tigris, flowing to the 
 westward of the palace — the principal entrance, as at Khorsabad, being 
 from the city.^ 
 
 It is impossible, of course, to say how much further the palace 
 extended, though it is probable that nearly *all the apartments which 
 were reveted with sculptures have been laid open ; but what has been 
 excavated occupies so small a portion of the mound that it is impos- 
 sible to be unimpressed with the conviction that it forms but a very 
 small fraction of the imperial palace of Nineveh. Judging even from 
 what has as yet been uncovered, it is, of all the buildings of antiquity, 
 alone surpassed in magnitude by the great palace-temple at Karnac ; 
 and when we consider the vastncss of the mound on which it was 
 raised, and the richness of the ornaments with which it was adorned, 
 a doubt arises whether it was not as great, or at least as expensive, a 
 work as the great palace-temples of Tliebes. The latter, however, were 
 built with far higher motives, and designed to last through ages, while 
 the palace at Nineveh was built only to gratify the barbaric pride of 
 a wealthy and sensual monarch, and perished with the ephemeral 
 dynasty to which he belonged. 
 
 Palace of Esarh addon. 
 
 Another Assyrian palace, of which considerable remains still exist, 
 is that of Esarhaddon, commonly known as the South-West Palace at 
 Nimroud. Like the others, this, too, has been destroyed by fire, and 
 the only part that remains sufficiently entire to be described is the 
 entrance or southern liall. Its general dimensions are 165 ft. in length 
 by 62 ft. in width, and it consequently is the largest hall yet found in 
 Assyria. The architects, however, either from constructive necessities 
 or for purposes of state, divided it down the centre by a wall supporting 
 dwarf columns, forming a central gallery, to which access was had by 
 bridge galleries at both ends, a mode of arrangement capable of great 
 
 1 Layard's excavations here furnish 
 us with what has not been found, or has 
 been overlooked elsewhere, e. {/., a ramp, 
 or windinc: staircase leadinqj to the upper 
 story ("Nineveh and Babylon," 4(51 ). 
 As explained above, I believe the tops of 
 the walls, which are equal to the floor 
 
 s]iace below, formed such a story. This 
 ramp at Koyunjik -would just suffice to 
 lead to them, and goes far to prove the 
 theory. If it was similarly situated at 
 Khorsabad, it would be in the part fallen 
 away. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 ASSYRIAN PALACES. 
 
 179 
 
 variety and picturesqueness of effect, and of which there is little doubt 
 that the builders availed themselves to the 
 fullest extent. This led into a courtyard of 
 considerable dimensions, surrounded by apart- 
 ments, but they are too much destroyed by 
 fire to be intelligible. 
 
 Another great palace, built, as appears from 
 the inscriptions, by a son of Esarhaddon, has 
 been discovered nearly in the centre of the 
 mound at Koyunjik. Its terrace-wall has been 
 explored for nearly 300 ft. in two directions 
 from the angle near wliich the principal entrance 
 is placed. This is on a level 20 ft. lower than 
 the palace itself, which is reached by an inclined 
 passage nearly 200 ft. in length, adorned with 70. Haii of south-West Palace, 
 sculpture on both sides. The palace itself, as Scale 100 ft. to 1 in, 
 far as its exploration has been carried, appears similar in its arrange- 
 ments to those already described ; but the sculptures with which it 
 is adorned are more minute and delicatej and show a more perfect 
 
 71. Central Palace, Koyunjik. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
180 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Tart I 
 
 imitation of nature, than the earlier examples, though inferior to them 
 in grandeur of conception and breadth of design. 
 
 The architectural details also display a degree of elegance and an 
 amount of elaborate finish not usually found in the earlier examples, 
 as is Avell illustrated by the Woodcut No. 72, representing one of the 
 pavement slabs of the palace. It is of the same design, and similarly 
 ornamented, but the finish is better, and the execution more elaborate, 
 than in any of the more ancient examples we are acquainted with. 
 
 72. Pavement Slab from the Central Palace, Koyunjik. 
 
 Besides these, there were on the mound at Nimroud a central palace 
 built by Tiglath Pileser, and one at the south-eastern angle of the 
 mound, built by a grandson of Esarhaddon ; but both are too mucli 
 ruined for its being feasible to trace either their form or extent. 
 Around the great pyramid at the north-west angle of the mound, 
 were buildings more resembling temples than any others on it — 
 all the sculj^ures upon them pointing ajjparently to devotional pui- 
 poses, though in form they differed but little from the palaces. At the 
 same time there is certainly nothing in them to indicate that the 
 mound at the base of which they Avere situated was appropriated to 
 the dead, or to funereal purposes. Between the north-west and south- 
 west palaces there was also raised a terrace higher than the rest, on 
 which were situated some chambers, the use of which it is not easy to 
 determine. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 ASSYRIAN PALACES. 
 
 181 
 
 Notwithstanding tlie impossibility that now exists of making out 
 all the details of the buildings situated on the great mounds of Nimroud 
 and Koyunjik, it is evident that these great groups of buildings must 
 have ranked among the most splendid monuments of antiquity, sur- 
 rounded as they were by stone-faced terraces, and approached on every 
 side by noble flights of stairs. When all the palaces vvdth their towers 
 and temples were seen gay with color, and crowded with all the state 
 and splendor of an Eastern monarch, they must have formed a scene 
 of such dazzling magnificence that one can easily comprehend how the 
 inhabitants of the little cities of Greece or Judea were betrayed into 
 such extravagant hyperbole, when speaking of the size and s2:>lendor 
 of the great cities of Assyria. 
 
 The worst feature of all this splendor was its ephemeral character 
 — though perhaps it is owing to this very fact that we now know so 
 much about it — for, like the reed that bends to the storm and recovers 
 its elasticity, while the oak is snapped by its violence, these relics of 
 a past age have retained to some extent their pristine beauty. Had 
 these buildings been constructed like those of the Egyptians, their 
 remains would probably have been applied to other purposes long ago, 
 but having been overwhelmed so early and forgotten, they have been 
 preserved to our day; nor is it difficult to see how this has occurred. 
 The pillars that supported the roof being of wood, probably of cedar, 
 and the beams on the under side of the roof being of the same material, 
 nothing was easier than to set fire to them. The fall of the roofs, which 
 were probably composed, as at the present day, of five or six feet of 
 earth, and which is requisite to keep out heat as well as wet, would 
 alone suffice to bury the building up to the height of the sculptures. The 
 gradual crumbling of the thick walls consequent on their unprotected 
 exposure to the atmosphere would add three or four feet to this : so that 
 it is hardly too much to suppose that green grass might have been grow- 
 ing over the buried palaces of Nineveh before two or three years had 
 elapsed from the time of their destruction and desertion. When once 
 this had taken place, the mounds afforded far too tempting positions 
 not to be speedily occupied by the villages of the natives; and a few 
 centuries of mud-hut building would complete the process of entomb- 
 ment so completely as to protect the hidden remains perfectly for the 
 centuries during which they have lain buried. These have now been 
 recovered to such an extent as enables us to restore their form almost 
 as certainly as we can those of the temples of Greece or Rome, or of 
 any of the great nations of antiquity. 
 
 It is by no means improbable that at some future period we may 
 be able to restore much that is now unintelligible, from the represent- 
 ations of buildings on the sculptures, and to complete our account of 
 their style of architecture from illustrations drawn by the Assyrians 
 
182 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 themselves. One or two of these have already been published. The 
 annexed woodcut, for instance (No. 73), of a bas-relief representing a 
 
 73. Pavilion, from the Sculptures at Kliorsabad. 
 
 little fishing-pavilion on the water's edge, exhibits in a rude manner 
 all the parts of an Assyrian order with its entablature, and the capital 
 
 74. Assyrian Temple, North Palace, Koyunjik. (From Rawlinson.) 
 
 only requires to be slightly elongated to make it similar to those found 
 at Persepolis. 
 
Bk II. Ch. III. ASSYRIAN PALACES. 183 
 
 Another from the Central Palace, Koyunjik, repeats the same ar- 
 rangement, with pillars which must be considered as early examples 
 
 75. Bas-relief, representing fayade of Assyrian Palace. (From British Museum.) 
 
 of the Corinthian order, and, if we may trust the drawing, it likewise 
 represents an aqueduct with horizontally constructed arches of pointed 
 form. 
 
 A third representation (No. 75) from the same palace seems intended 
 to portray a complete palace fa9ade, with its winged bulls in the en- 
 
 76. Exterior of a Palace, from a Bas-relief at Koyunjik. 
 
 trance and its colossal lions on the front. Above these animals, but not 
 apparently meant to be represented as resting on them, are pillars in 
 
184 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 aiitis, as in the two previous ilhistrations.^ Unfortunately the cornice 
 is broken away, and the whole is more carelessly executed than is usual 
 in these sculptures. 
 
 Another curious representation (Woodcut No. 76) is that of a 
 l^alace of two stories, from a bas-relief at Koyunjik, showing a range 
 of openings under the roof in both stories, each opening being divided 
 into three parts by two Ionic columns between square piers, and are 
 probably meant to represent such an arrangement as that shown in 
 Woodcuts Nos. 73 and 74. On the right the upper story is a correct 
 representation of the panelled style of ^rnamentation above alluded to 
 as recently discovered at Khorsabad and elsewhere, and which we 
 know from recent discoveries to have been so favorite a mode of 
 decorating walls in that age. 
 
 The most remarkable fact, however, that we gather from all these 
 illustrations, is that the favorite arrangement was a group of pillars 
 
 " distyle in antis," as it is 
 technically termed ; viz., two 
 circular pillars between two 
 square piers. It is frequently 
 found elsewhere in the fayade 
 of tombs, but here it seems to 
 have been repeated over and 
 over again to make up a com- 
 plete design. For a temple 
 such an arrangement would 
 have been inadmissible ; for a 
 palace it seems singularly ap- 
 propriate and elegant, 
 no doubt, do much to complete the 
 subject ; and when the names 
 written over these bas-reliefs 
 are definitively deciphered, we 
 may find that we really possess 
 contemporary representations, if 
 not of Jerusalem, at least of 
 Lachish, Susa, and other cities 
 familiar to us both from ancient 
 and from modern history. 
 
 We have no representation 
 of the dwellings of private in- 
 dividuals so complete as to enable 
 Horse-Tent (Nimrou 1). iq understand them, but there 
 
 77. King's Tent. (From Bas-relief , British Museum.) 
 
 Further comparisons wi 
 
 1 This facade, as I read it, is identical I ace as a representation of an Assyrian f a- 
 with the one I erected at the Crystal Pal- 1 pade, long before this slab was exhumed. 
 
bk. II. ch. in. 
 
 ASSYRIAN TEMPLES. 
 
 185 
 
 are several of royal camps which are interesting. Among the most 
 curious of these are the i-epresentations of the tents of the king and 
 his nobles. One of these is shown in Woodcut No. 77, though how it 
 was constructed is by no means clear. It seems to have been open in 
 the centre to the air, but covered at either end by a sort of hood so 
 arranged as to catch the passing breeze, and afford protection from 
 rain at the same time. The annexed woodcut (No. 78), representing 
 the front and one side of the royal horse-tent, gives a good idea of 
 the luxury and elegance that was carried into the detail even of sub- 
 ordinate structures. 
 
 Elevation of Stylobate 
 of Temple. 
 
 Temples and Tombs. 
 
 Except the Chaldean-formed temples, which have been described 
 in the previous chapter, there are no religious edifices sufficiently 
 complete to enable us to form a distinct idea 
 of what the architectural arrangements of these 
 temples were. As belonging to a Semitic people 
 we should expect them to be few and insignificant. 
 
 So little remains of the temple at Khorsabad 
 that it is difficult to say what its original form 
 may have been ; the terrace, however, w hich sup- 
 ported it is interesting, as it shows almost the 
 only instance of a i)erfect Assyrian moulding or 
 cornice betraying a similarity to the forms of 
 Egyptian architecture which we do not find else- 
 where. The curve, however, is not exactly that 
 of an Egyptian cornice, being continued beyond 
 the vertical tangent; but this may have arisen 
 from the terrac^being only six feet in height, which 
 placed the curve below the line of sight, and so 
 required a different treatment from one placed so 
 high above it as is usually the case in Egypt. 
 
 The bas-relief on the next page is perhaps the best sculptured rep- 
 resentation that exists of what we might fancy an Assyrian temple to 
 have been. The emblem so enshrined is probably the Asheerah, or 
 grove, to the worship of which the Israelites at all times showed 
 such a tendency to relapse, and is one of the most frequent objects of 
 adoration among the Assyrians. 
 
 As a Semitic people we should hardly expect to find any tombs 
 among them, and indeed, unless the pyramid at the north-west angle 
 of the Nimroud mound is the tomb of Sardanapalus, mentioned by the 
 Greeks,! it is not clear that a single Assyrian sepulchre has yet been 
 discovered. Those that crowd and choke the ruins of Warka and 
 
 80. 
 
 Section of Stylobate 
 of Temple. 
 
 1 See Rawlinson, ''Ancient Monarchies," vol. i. p. 398. 
 
186 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Mugheyr and other cities of Babylonia are the remains of a Turanian 
 people who always respected their dead, and paid especial attention 
 to the preservation of their bodies. The pyramid at Nimroud seems 
 to have been explored with sufficient care to enable us to affirm that 
 no stairs or inclined plane led to its summit, and without these it 
 certainly was not one of those observatory temples before alluded to. 
 Still it is so singular to have one monument, and one only, of its class, 
 that it is difficult to form a satisfactory opinion on the subject. 
 
 It stands at the north-west angle of the mound, and measures 167 
 ft. each way ; its base, 30 ft. in height, is composed of beautiful stone 
 masonry, ornamented by buttresses and offsets, above which the wall 
 
 81. Sacred Symbolic Tree of the Assyrians. (From Lord Aberdeen's Black Stone.; 
 
 was continued i)crpendicularly in brickwork. In the centre of the 
 building, and on the level of the base or terrace, a long vaulted gallery 
 or tunnel was discovered, but it contained no clue to the destination 
 of the building. 
 
 The whole now rises to a height of about 120 ft. from the plain, 
 and is composed of sun-dried bricks, with courses of Kiln-burnt bricks 
 between them, at certain intervals towards the summit, which render 
 it probable that it originally was not a pyramid in the usual sense of 
 the term, but a square tower, rising in three or four stories, each less 
 than the lower one, as in the traditional temple of Belus at Babylon, 
 or like the summit of the obelisk represented in the woodcut (No. 82), 
 which most probably is a monolithic reproduction of such a sepulchral 
 tower as this, rather than an obelisk like those of Egypt. 
 
 Other obelisks have since been discovered, some of which look 
 even more like miniature models of structural buildings than this 
 one does. 
 
 Till further information is obtained, it will hardly be possible to 
 say much that is satisfactory with regard to either the tombs, temples, 
 or minor antiquities of the Assyrian people. Their architecture was 
 essentially Palatial — as that of the Greeks was Templar — and to that 
 alone our remarks might almost be confined. Fortunately, however, 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 187 
 
 sculpture was another art to which they were specially addicted, and 
 to their passion for this we owe most of our knowledge of their man- 
 ners and customs. To this art also we are indebted for our ability to 
 restore many details of their palaces and buildings, which without its 
 aid would have been altogether unintelligible. 
 
 Judged by the same rules of criticism which we apply to Classic or 
 
 82. Obelisk of Divanubara. (From Layard's " Nineveh.") 
 
 Mediaeval art, the architecture of the Assyrians must, it is feared, 
 rank very low. But for gorgeous barbaric splendor of effect it seems 
 difficult to imagine anything that could well have been grander or 
 more imposing than the palaces of Nineveh must have been when 
 entire and filled with the state and magnificence of the monarchs of 
 the Assyrian empire. 
 
188 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 PERSIA. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Cyrus founds Passargadse . . , . b. c. 560 
 
 Cambyses' buildings at ditto 525 
 
 Darius builds palace at Persepolis . . 521 
 Xerxes builds halls at Persepolis and Susa 485 
 Artaxerxes I.onginianus 465 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Darius Nothus b. c. 424 
 
 Artaxerxes Mnemon repairs buildings 
 
 at Persepolis and Susa 405 
 
 Dtstruction of Persian Empire by Alex- 
 ander 331 
 
 THERE still remains a third cha])ter to write before the survey of the 
 architecture of the central region of Asia is complete — before in- 
 deed a great deal which has just been assumed can become capable of 
 proof. By a fortunate accident the Persians used stone where the Assy- 
 rians used only wood, and consequently many details of their architec- 
 ture have come down to our day w^iich would otherwise have passed 
 away had the more perishable materials of their predecessors been 
 made use of. 
 
 Whatever else the ancient world may owe to the learning of the 
 Egyptians, it seems certain that they were the first to make use of 
 stone as a constructive building material. As before mentioned, the 
 Egyptians used a stone proto-Doric pillar at least 1000 years before 
 the Greeks or the Etruscans, or any other ancient people we know 
 of, dreamt of such a thing. The Babylonians and Assyrians never 
 seem to have used stone constructively, except as the revetment of 
 a terrace wall ; and it was not till after the conquest of Egypt by 
 Cambyses that we find any Asiatic nations using a pillar of stone in 
 architecture, or doing more than building a w^all, or heaping mass on 
 mass of this material without any constructive contrivance. The 
 Indians first learned this art from the Bactrian Greeks, and many 
 civilized Asiatic nations still prefer wood for their palaces and 
 temples, as the Assyrians did, and only use stone as "a heap." It 
 must have been difticult, however, for any intelligent people to visit 
 the wonderful stone temples of Thebes and Memphis without being 
 struck by their superior magnificence and durability ; and we con- 
 sequently find the Persians on their return, though reproducing their 
 old forms, adopting the new material, which, fortunately for them and 
 for our history, was found in abundance in the neighborhood of their 
 capitals. 
 
DK. II. ClI. IV. 
 
 PERSIvVN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 189 
 
 Even, liowever, on the most cursory inspection, it is easy to see 
 how little the arts of the Assyrians were changed by their successors. 
 The winged lions and bulls that adorn the portals at Persepolis are 
 practically identical with those of Nineveh. The representations of 
 the king on his throne with his attendants are so similar that but 
 for the locality it would require considerable knowledge to discrimi- 
 nate between Sennacherib and Xerxes. The long procession of tribute 
 bearers — the symbolical animals slain by the king; the whole orna- 
 mentation, in fact, is so slightly altered from what existed in Assyria, 
 that we are startled to find how little change in these sculptures the 
 new dynasty had introduced ; and if this is the case with them, and 
 their position and arrangement is nearly identical, we may feel ver} 
 , certain that the .architecture was also the same. 
 
 It apj)ears, at first sight, to have been otherwise; but, on closer 
 examination, it appears quite certain that this even is due more to the 
 material employed than to any alteration in form. Something may 
 be due to the fact that the buildings we now find on the platform at 
 Persepolis may have been dedicated to somewhat different purposes 
 than were those of Nineveh ; but even this is not quite clear. If 
 the great square courts of the Ninevite palaces were roofed over, 
 as Layard suggested — and as probably was the case — they would 
 exactly represent the square halls of Persepolis. But as all the 
 intermediate buildings of sun-dried brick have been washed off the 
 bare rock by the winter rains of Persia, we can only speculate on 
 what they might have been, without daring to lay too much stress on 
 our convictions. 
 
 Persepolis. 
 
 At Nineveh, as we have seen, all the pillars, the roofs, and the 
 constructive parts of the building, which were of wood, have dis- 
 appeared, and left nothing but the massive walls which, falling and 
 being heaped the one on the other, have buried themselves and their 
 ornaments till the present day. At Persepolis, on the contrary, the 
 brick walls, being thinner and exposed on the bare surface of the 
 naked rock, have been washed away by the storms and rains of 2000 
 years, leaving only the skeletons of the buildings. In the rocky 
 country of Persia, however, the architect fortunately used stone ; and 
 we have thus at Persepolis, if the expression may be used, all the 
 bones of the building, but Avithout the flesh ; and at Nineveh, the 
 flesh, but without the bones that gave it form and substance. 
 
 The general appearance of the ruins, as they at present stand, will 
 be seen from the woodcut (No. 83). ^ The principal mass in the fore- 
 
 1 The woodcuts in this chapter, except i ami Coste's " Voyage en Perse," except 
 the restorations, are taken from Flandin | where the contrary is mentioned. 
 
190 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. Part I. 
 
 ground on the left is the Propylaea of Xerxes, and behind that and to 
 the right stand the pillars of the Chehil Minar, or Great Hall of 
 Xerxes. Between these are seen in the distance the remains of the 
 smaller halls of Darius and Xerxes. 
 
 The most striking features in this view are the staircases that led • 
 from the plain to the platform, and from the lower level to that on 
 
Bk. II. Ch I\^ 
 
 PERSEPOLIS. 
 
 191 
 
 which the great hall stood. Indeed, among these ruins, nothing is 
 more remarkable than these great flights of stej^s. The builders of 
 those days were, so far as we know, the only people who really 
 
 understood the value of this feature. The Egyptians seem wholly 
 to have neglected it and the Greeks to have cared little about it ; 
 but it was not so at Nineveh, where, so far we can understand 
 
192 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 from the indistinct traces left, the stairs must have been one of the 
 most important parts of the design. But they were so situated that 
 they were not buried when the buildings were ruined, and conse- 
 quently have been removed. At Jerusalem, too, we read that when 
 the Queen of Sheba saw "the ascent by which Solomon went up to 
 the house of the Lord, there was no more spirit in her." Indeed, in 
 all the ancient temples and palaces of this district, more attention 
 is paid to this feature than to almost any other; and from their 
 favorable situation on artificial terraces, the builders were enabled 
 to apply their stairs with far more effect than any others in ancient 
 or in modern times. 
 
 The lower or great staircase at Persopolis is plain, and without any 
 sculpture, but is built of the most massive Cyclopean masonry, and of 
 great width and very easy acclivity. That in front of the great hall 
 is ornamented with sculpture in three tiers, representing the people of 
 the land bringing presents and the subject nations tribute, to lay at 
 the feet of the monarch, combined with mythological rejjresentations ; 
 the whole bearing a very considerable resemblance to the sculptures on 
 the walls of the Assyrian palaces, though the position is different. The 
 arrangement of these stairs, too, is peculiar, none of tliem being at 
 I'ight angles to the buildings they approach, but all being double, 
 apparently to permit of processions passing the tlirone, situated in the 
 porches at their summit, without interrui)tion, and without altering 
 the line of march.t 
 
 One of these flights, leading to the platform of Xerxes' palace, is 
 shown in the woodcut (No. 84). In arrangement it is like the stairs 
 leading to the great terrace, but very much smaller, and is profusely 
 adorned with sculpture. 
 
 The principal apartment in all the buildings situated on the plat- 
 form is a central square hall, the floor of which is studded with pillars 
 placed equidistant the one from the other. The smallest have 4 pillars, 
 the next 16, then 36, and one has 100 pillars on its floor; but to avoid 
 inventing new names, we may call them respectively, distyle, tetrastyle» 
 hexastyle, and decastyle halls, from their having 2, 4, 6, or 10 pillars 
 on each face of the phalanx, and because that is the number of the 
 pillars in their porticoes when they have any. 
 
 The building at the head of the great stairs is a distyle hall, having 
 4 pillars supporting its roof. On each side of the first public entrance 
 stands a human-headed winged bull, so nearly identical with those 
 found in Assyrian palaces as to leave no doubt of their having the same 
 origin. At the opposite entrance are two bulls, without wings, but 
 drawn with the same bold, massive proportions which distinguish all 
 the sculptured animals in the palaces of Assyria and Persia. The other, 
 or palace entrance, is destroyed, the foundation only remaining; but 
 this, with the foundations of the walls, leaves no room to doubt that 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IV. 
 
 PEKSEPOLIS. 
 
 193 
 
 the annexed woodcut (No. 85) is a true representation of its ground- 
 plan. i Nor can it be doubted that this is one of those buildings so 
 frequently mentioned in the Bible as a " gate," 
 not the door of a city or buildings, but a gate 
 of justice, such as that where Mordecai sat at 
 Snsa — where Abraham bought his field — where 
 Ruth's marriage was judged of — and, indeed, 
 where public business was generally transacted. 
 
 There are three other distyle halls or gates 
 on the platform : one to the westward of tliis, 
 very much ruined ; one in the centre of the whole 85. rropyiaa. «<;aie looft. 
 group, which seems to have had external i)or- 
 
 ticoes ; and a third on the platform in front of the palace of Xerxes. 
 
 There are two tetrastyle halls, one of which, erected by Darius 
 (Woodcut No. 86), is the most interesting of the smaller buildings on 
 the terrace. It is the only building that faces the south, and is 
 
 ). Palace of Darius. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 approached by a flight of steps, represented with the whole facade of the 
 palace as it now stands in the woodcut (No. 87). These steps led to a 
 tetrastyle porch, two ranges in depth, wdiich opened into the central 
 hall with its 16 columns, around which v/ere arranged smaller rooms 
 or cells, either for the occupation of the king, if it was a palace, or of 
 the priests if a temple. In the western side a staircase and doorway 
 were added, somewhat unsymmetrically, by Artaxerxes. 
 
 These remains would hardly suffice to enable us to restore the ex- 
 ternal appearance of the palace ; but fortunately the same king who 
 built the palace for his use on this mound, repeated it in the rock as 
 
 ^ It is curious tliat neither Ker Por- 
 ter, nor Texier, nor Flandin and Coste, 
 though measuring this building on the 
 
 VOL. T. — 13 
 
 spot, could make out its plan. Yet 
 nothing can well be more certain, once 
 it is pointed out. 
 
194 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 an "eternal dwelling" for himself after death. The tomb known as 
 that of Darius at Naksh-i-Rustam (Woodcut 88), is an exact reproduc- 
 tion, not only of the architectural features of the palace, but to the 
 
 same scale, and in every respect so similar, that it seems impossible to 
 doubt but that the one was intended as a literal copy of the other. 
 Assuming it to be so, we learn what kind of cornice rested on the 
 double bull capitals. And what is still more interesting, we obtain a 
 
Bk. 11. Ch. IV. 
 
 PERSEPOLIS. 
 
 195 
 
196 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 representation of a prayer platform, which we have described else- 
 where as a Talar/ but the 
 meaning of which we should 
 hardly know but for this 
 representation. 
 
 The other tetrastyle hall 
 is similar to this, but plainer 
 and somewhat smaller. 
 
 Turning from these to 
 the hexastyle halls, the 
 smallest but most perfect 
 (Woodcut No. 89) is that 
 standing on the southern 
 edge of the upper platform, 
 the inscriptions on which 
 certainly prove it to have 
 been built by Xerxes. 
 
 The i^latform on which 
 it stands is approached by 
 two flights of steps, that 
 on the east being the one represented in the Woodcut No. 84, — there 
 
 I. Palace of Xerxes. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 90. Restored Plan of Great Hall of Xerxes at Persepolis. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 1 ''Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored," p. 126. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IV. 
 
 PERSEPOLIS. 
 
 197 
 
 are also indications of a tetrastyle hall, or gate, having existed on its 
 summit, — while that to the west is much simpler. The hall itself 
 had a portico of twelve 
 columns, and on each 
 side a range of smaller 
 apartments, the two 
 principal of which had 
 their roofs supported by 
 four pillars each. 
 
 The building is one 
 of great beauty in itself, 
 but its greatest value 
 is that it enables us to 
 understand the arrange- 
 ment of the great Hall 
 of Xerxes — the Cheliil 
 Minar — the most splen- 
 did building of which 
 any remains exist in 
 this part of the world. 
 From the annexed plan 
 (Woodcut No. 90) it 
 will be seen that the ar- 
 rangement of the whole 
 central part is identical 
 with that of the building 
 just described. There 
 can be no possible doubt 
 about this, as the bases 
 of all the 72 columns 
 still exist in situ, as 
 well as the jambs of 
 the two principal door- 
 ways, which are shaded 
 darker in the plan. The 
 side and rear walls only 
 are restored from the 
 preceding illustration. 
 The only difference is that, instead of the two distyle halls on either 
 side, this had hexastyle porticoes of twelve pillars each, similar to that 
 in front ; the angles between which were, in all probability, filled up 
 with rooms or buildings, as suggested in the plan.i 
 
 91. Pillar of Western Portico. 92. Pillar of Northern Portico. 
 
 1 It is very strange that this similarity, 
 like the plan of the square halls, should 
 hitherto have escaped observation. Had 
 any one looked at the matter as a whole, 
 
 we should have been spared some restora- 
 tions which are too absurd even to merit 
 exposure. 
 
198 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Two orders of pillars were employed to support the roof of this 
 splendid building ; one, represented in Woodcut No. 91, with double 
 bull capitals, like those of the porch of Darius's palace. They are 
 67 ft. 4 in. in height from the floor to the back of the bull's neck, or 
 64 ft. to the under side of the beam that lay between the bulls. The 
 other order, with the Ionic volutes (Woodcut No. 92), was also that 
 employed in the northern portico, and generally in the interior 
 throughout this building, and is nearly identical, as far as the base 
 and shaft are concerned, except in the height of the latter. The 
 capital, however, differs widely, and is 16 ft. 6 in. in height, making 
 an order altogether 9 ft. 7 in. less than that used externally, the 
 difference being made up by brackets of wood, which supported the 
 beams of the roof, internally at least, though externally the double 
 bull capital probably surmounted these Ionic-like scrolls. 
 
 There is no reason to doubt that these halls also had platforms or 
 talars like the smaller halls, which would also serve to shelter any 
 opening in the roof ; though in the present instance it seems very 
 doubtful if any such openings or skylights existed, or were indeed 
 required. 
 
 Thus arranged, the section of the buildings would be as shown in 
 the woodcut (No. 93) ; and presuming ihis structure to have been 
 sculptured and painted as richly as oth( [-s of its age and class, which 
 
 93. Restored Sectiou of Hall of Xerxes. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 It no doubt was, it must have been not only one of the largest, but 
 one of the most splendid buildings of antiquity. In plan it was a 
 rectangle of about 300 ft. by 350, and consequently covered 105,000 
 square ft. ; it was thus larger than the hypostyle hall at Karnac, or 
 any of the largest temples of Greece or Rome. It is larger, too, than 
 any mediaeval cathedral except that of Milan ; and although it has 
 neither the stone roof of a cathedral, nor the massiveness of an 
 Egyptian building, still its size and proportions, combined with the 
 lightness of its architecture and the beauty of its decorations, must 
 have made it one of the most beautiful buildings ever erected. Both 
 in design and proportion it far surpassed those of Assyria, and though 
 possessing much of detail or ornament that was almost identical, its 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IV. 
 
 PERSEPOLIS. 
 
 199 
 
 arratigement and proportions were so superior in every respect that 
 no similar building in Nineveh can be compared with this — the 
 great architectural creation of the Persian Empire. 
 
 There is no octastyle hall at Persepolis, and only one decastyle. 
 In this instance the hall itself measured about 225 ft. each way, and 
 had 100 pillars on its floor ; still it was low in proportion, devoid of 
 lateral porticoes, and consequently by no means so magnificent a 
 building as the great hall of Xerxes. The portico in front was two 
 ranges in depth, and flanked by gigantic bulls ; but as the whole height 
 was barely 25 ft., it could not have been a remarkable or pleasing 
 object. The sculptures on the jambs of the doorways are the most 
 interesting part of this building; these represent the king on his 
 throne, and various mythological subjects, on a more extensive scale 
 than those similarly situated in the other buildings of the platform. 
 Indeed, it is probable that in the other palaces these subjects were 
 painted on the internal walls, as was done in those Assyrian halls 
 which were not reveted with slabs. With an appropriateness that 
 cannot be too much praised, sculpture seems always to have been used 
 in parts of the building exposed to atmospheric injury, and, because of 
 the exposure, to have been employed there in preference to painting. 
 
 Besides these buildings on the platform, there are the remains of 
 several others on the plain, and within the precincts of the town of 
 Istakr is a building still called the Hareem of Jemsheed, and which 
 may in reality have been the residence of the AchaBrjienian kings. It 
 certainly belongs to their age, and from the irregularity of its form, 
 and its general proportions, looks very much more like a residence, 
 properly so called, than any of the monumental erections on tlie 
 neighboring platform of Persepolis. 
 
 Looked at from an architectural point of view, the principal defect 
 of the interior arrangement, especially of the smaller Persepolitan 
 halls, is that their floor is unnecessarily crowded with pillars. As 
 these had to support only a wooden roof, some might have been dis- 
 pensed with, or a more artistic arrangement have been adopted. This 
 would no doubt have been done but for the influence of the Assyrian 
 style, in which frequent pillars were indispensable to support the 
 heavy, flat roofs, and as they were of timber, a greater number were 
 required than would have been the case if of stone. Those of Avood 
 also looked less cumbersome and less in the way than those made of 
 more durable materials. 
 
 It is also a defect that the capitals of the pillars retain at Perse- 
 polis so much of the form of their wooden prototypes. In wood, such 
 capitals as those depicted (Woodcuts No. 92 or No. 94), would not be 
 offensive. In stone they are clumsy ; and the Greeks showed their 
 usual discrimination when they cut away all the volutes but one pair, 
 and adopted a stone construction for the entablature. 
 
200 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut I. 
 
 Notwithstanding these defects, tliere is a grandeur of conceiftio'n 
 a1)oiit the Persepolitan halls which entitles them to our admiration. 
 Their greatest point of interest to the architectural student consists 
 probably in their being examples of a transition from a wooden to a 
 stone style of art, and in their enabling us to complete and under- 
 stand that art which had been elaborated in the valley of the 
 Euphrates during previous centuries, but which, owing to the perish- 
 able nature of the materials employed, has almost wholly passed 
 away, without leaving sufficient traces to enable all its characteristics 
 to be understood or restored. 
 
 SUSA. 
 
 The explorations of Mr. Loftus at Susa, in 1850, have laid bare the 
 f<Mindntions of a palace almost identical both in plan and dimensions 
 with the Chehil Minar at Persepolis. It is, how- 
 ever, much more completely ruined, the place 
 having long been used as a quarry by the inhabi- 
 tants of the neighboring plains, so that now only 
 the bases of the pillarc ..c^mali: in situ, with frag- 
 ^|LjAi4_|jv<^ ments of the shafts and capitals strewed every- 
 ii o^LiLiJMliLJ where about, but no walls or doorways, or other 
 architectural members to enable us to supply 
 wliat is wanting at Perseiwlis. 
 
 The l)ases seem to be of the same form and 
 style as those at Persepolis, but rather more richly 
 carved. The capitals are also more elaborate, 
 but more essentially wooden in their form, and 
 betray their origin not only in the exuberance of 
 their carving, but also in the disproportion of the 
 capital to the shaft. In wood so large a capital 
 does not look disproportioned to so slender a 
 shaft ; in stone the effect is most disagreeable, 
 and was to a certain extent remedied at Perse- 
 polis so soon as the result was perceived. Whether 
 the Persians would ever have been able to shake 
 off entirely the wooden original is not quite (dear, 
 but the Greeks, being bound by no such associa- 
 tion, cut the knot at once, and saved them the trouble. 
 
 Inscriptions round the bases of the pillars inform us that the hall 
 was erected by Darius and Xerxes, but repaired or restored by Arta- 
 xerxes Mnemon, who added the inscriptions. In all probability it is 
 the identical hall in which the scenes described in the Book of Es- 
 ther took place. The foundations of other parts of this palace might 
 be no doubt laid bare by further excavations ; but the ruin of the 
 place has been so complete, that little of interest in an architectural 
 
 y-l. Kestored Elevation of ' 
 I'apitalatSusa. (From Loftus.) 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IV. 
 
 PASSARGAD^. 
 
 201 
 
 point of view can be looked for. Below these Persian ruins are 
 probably buried the remains of long-preceding dynasties, which deeper 
 excavations would lay bare, and Avhich would, in all probability, afford 
 a rich harvest to the historical explorer. 
 
 Passargad^. 
 
 In their present state the remains at Passargadse are, perhaps, 
 more interesting to the antiquary than to the architect, the palaces on 
 the plain being so ruined that their architectural arrangements cannot 
 be understood or restored. 
 
 On the side of a hill overlooking the plain is a platform of masonry 
 (Woodcut No. 95) which originally supported either a temple or fire- 
 altar, but this has now entirely disappeared, and the structure is only 
 remarkable for the beauty of its masonry and the large dimensions of 
 the stones with which it is built. These are bevelled (Woodcut No. 96), 
 not only at their joints, but often on their faces, with the same flat 
 
 95. Plan of Platform at Passargadse. 96. Elevation of Platform at Passargiidfe. 
 
 sinking as is found in all the Jewish works at Jerusalem, and 
 sometimes in Greek buildings of the best age. Thus an ornament of 
 great beauty and elegance is formed out of what would otherwise be 
 merely a plain mass of masonry. 
 
 On the plain are the foundations of several large buildings, probably 
 palaces, temples, or basilicas, but all so completely destroyed that it is 
 now impossible to say what their original form or destination may 
 have been. One pillar only is now standing — a plain shaft, without 
 capital or base, and more like an Indian Idt than a column destined to 
 support a roof. 
 
202 
 
 HISTORY OF AECHITECTURE. 
 
 Past I. 
 
 Fire Temples. 
 
 Near the town of Istakr, and opposite the tombs of Naksh-i- 
 Rustam, stands a small tower-like building, represented in Woodcut 
 Ko. 97. The lower part is solid ; the upper contains a small square 
 ^ apartment roofed by two great flat slabs of 
 
 stone. Access to this chamber is obtained 
 by a doorway situated at sortie distance 
 from the ground. 
 
 Botli the traditions of the place and 
 the knowledge we have of their religious 
 ])ractices, point to this as one of the fire 
 tem})les of the ancient Persians. Its roof is 
 internally still black, probably with the 
 smoke of ancient fires, and though simple 
 and insignificant as an architectural monu- 
 ment, it is interesting as the only form of 
 a temple apart from regal state which the ancient Persians possessed. 
 
 Another, almost identical in form, is found at Passargadae. The 
 celebrated Kaabah at Mecca, to which all the Moslem world now 
 bow in prayer, is probably a third, while the temple represented in 
 Woodcut No. 81, from Lord Aberdeen's Black Stone, may be a repre- 
 sentation of such a temple as these, with its curtains and paraphernalia 
 complete. It is too evident, however, that the Persians were not a 
 tem])le-building people, and the exami)lcs that have come down to our 
 lime are too few and too insignificant on which to found any theory. 
 
 Kaabah at Istakr. No scale. 
 
 Tombs. 
 
 Little requires to be said of the tombs of the Persians ; that of 
 Darius is represented in plan and elevation in Woodcut No. 88, and, as 
 before remarked, it is a literal copy on the rock of the fa9ade of his 
 palace. Internally, three small cells contained the remains of the 
 king, with those of the persons, probably his favorite wife or wives, 
 for whom he had destined that honor. Close by this, at Naksh-i- 
 Rustam, are four others, and in the rock behind Persepolis are three 
 more tombs of the Achaemenian kings, identical with these in all 
 essential respects; but still with such a difference in workmanship 
 and detail as would enable a careful architectural student easily to 
 detect a sequence, and so affix to each, approximately at least, the name 
 of the king whose sepulchre it is. Unfortunately that of Darius only 
 is inscribed ; but his position in the dynasty is so well known that, 
 starting from that point, it would be easy to assign each of these tombs 
 to the king who excavated it for his own resting-place. 
 
 Although these tombs of the Achaemenians are not remarkable for 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IV. 
 
 PERSIAN AUCHITECTURE. 
 
 203 
 
 their magnificence, they are interesting in an architectural point of 
 view, inasmuch as — as pointed out above — they enable us to restore 
 their structural buildings in a manner we would hardly be able to do 
 without their assistance. They are also interesting ethnographically, 
 as indicating that these kings of Persia were far from being the pure 
 Aryans the language of their inscriptions would lead us to suspect they 
 might be. There are not, so far as is yet known, any series of rock-cut 
 sepulchres belonging to any dynasty of pure Aryan blood. Nor would 
 any king of Semitic race attempt anything of the sort. Their evidence, 
 therefore, as far as it goes, and it is tolerably distinct, seems to prove 
 that the Achaemenian kings were of Turanian race. They only, and 
 not any of their subjects in Persia, seem to have adopted this style 
 of grandeur, which, as we shall presently see, was common in Asia 
 Minor, and other countries subject to their sway, but who were of a 
 different race altogether. 
 
204 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTUKE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 INVENTION OF THE ARCH. 
 
 BEFORE leaving this early section of architecture, it may be as well 
 briefly to refer to the invention of the true arch, regarding which 
 considerable misconception still exists. 
 
 It is generally supposed that the Egyptians were ignorant of the 
 true principles of the arch, and only employed two stones meeting one 
 another at a certain angle in the centre when they wished to cover 
 a larger space than could conveniently be done by a single block., 
 Tliis, however, seems to be a mistake, as many of the tombs and 
 chambers around the pyramids and the temples at Thebes are roofed 
 by stone and brick arches of a semicircular form, and perfect in every 
 respect as far as the principles of the arch are concerned. 
 
 Several of tliese have been drawn by Lepsius, and are engraved in 
 ^is work; but, as no text accompanies them, and the drawings are not 
 on a sufficient scale to make out the hieroglyphics, where any exist, 
 their date cannot now be ascertained. Consequently these exam])les 
 cannot yet be used as the foundation of any argument on the subject, 
 though the curved form of the roofs in the Third Pyramid would alone 
 be suflicient to render it more than probable that during the period of 
 the 4th dynasty the Egyptians w^ere familiar Avith this expedient. 
 
 At Beni Hassan, during the time of the 12th dynasty, curvilinear 
 forms reappear in the roofs (Woodcut No 15), used in such a manner as 
 to render it almost certain that they are copied from roofs of arcuate 
 construction. Behind the Rhamession at Thebes there are a series of 
 arches in brick, which seem undoubtedly to belong to the same age as 
 the building itself ; and Sir G. Wilkinson mentions a tomb at Thebes, 
 the roof of which is vaulted with bricks, and still bears the name of 
 Amenoph I., of the 18th dynasty.^ 
 
 The temple at Abydos, erected by Rhameses II., shows the same 
 peculiarity as the tombs at Beni Hassan, of a flat segmental arch 
 throwm across between the stone architraves. In this instance it is 
 also a copy in stone, but such as must have been originally copied from 
 one of brick construction. There is also every reason to believe that 
 the apartments of the little pavilion at Medinet Habou (Woodcuts 
 
 1 Wilkinson's " Egypt and Thebes," pp. 81 and 126. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. V. 
 
 INVENTION OF THE ARCH. 
 
 205 
 
 Nos. 32 and 33) were covered with semicircular vaults, though these 
 have now disappeared. ^ 
 
 In Ethiopia Mr. Hoskins found stone arches vaulting the roofs of 
 the porches to the pyramids, perfect in construc- 
 tion, and, what is still more singular, showing both 
 circular and pointed forms {ante^ p. 141). These, 
 as before remarked, are probably of the time of 
 Tirhakah, or at all events not earlier than the age 
 of Solomon, nor later than that of Cambyses. 
 
 In the age of Psammeticus we have several 
 stone arches in the neighborhood of the pyra- 
 mids ; one, in a tomb at Saccara, has been fre- 
 quently drawn ; but one of the most instructive 98. section of Tomb 
 is that^ in a tomb discovered by Colonel Campbell Pyramids of Gizeh. 
 (Woodcut No. 98), showing a very primitive form of an arch com- 
 posed of 3 stones only, and above which is another arch of regular con- 
 struction of 4 courses. 
 In his researches at 
 Nimroud, Layard dis- 
 covered vaulted drains 
 and chambers below the 
 north-west and south- 
 east edifices which were 
 consequently as old as 
 the 8th or 9th century 
 before our era, and con- 
 temporary with those in 
 the pyramids of Meroe. 
 They were of both cir- 
 cular and pointed forms, 
 and built apparently 
 with great care and at- 
 tention to the principles 
 of the arch (Woodcut 
 Ko. 99). 
 
 The great discovery 
 of this class is that of 
 the city gates at Khors- 
 abad, which, as men- 
 tioned at p. 175, were 
 spanned by arches of 
 semicircular form, so perfect both in construction and in the mode in 
 which they were ornamented, as to prove that in the time of Sargon 
 
 Vaulted Drain beneath the South-east Palace at 
 Nimroud. 
 
 Manners and Customs of the Egyptians," vol. iii. p. 263. 
 
206 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 100. Arch at Der el Baliri. (Lepsius.) 
 
 the arch was a usual and well-understood building expedient, and one 
 consequently which we may fairly assume to have been long in use. 
 On the other hand, we have in the temple at Der el Bahri in 
 
 Thebes, built by Thothmes III., a 
 curious example of the retention of 
 the old form, when at first sight it 
 would appear as though the true 
 arch would have been a more cor- 
 rect expedient. In this example, 
 the lower arch is composed of 
 stones bracketing forward horizon- 
 tally, though the form of the arch 
 is semicircular ; and above this is a 
 discharging arch of two stones used 
 as in the Pyramids. The upper 
 arch is so arranged as to relieve the 
 crown of the lower — which is its 
 weakest jiart — of all weight, and 
 at the same time to throw the whole pressure on the outer ends of the 
 arcli stones, exactly where it is wanted. The whole thus becomes 
 constructively perfect, though it is a more expensive way of attaining 
 the end desired than by an arch. 
 
 The truth seems to be, the Egyptians had not at this age invented 
 voussoirs deeper in the direction of the radii of the arch than in that 
 of its perimeter ; and the arch with them was consequently not 
 generally an appropriate mode of roofing. It was the Romans with 
 their tiles who first really understood the true employment of the 
 arch. 
 
 So far as we can now understand from the discoveries that have 
 been made, it seems that the Assyrians used the pointed arch for 
 tunnels, aqueducts, and generally for underground work where they 
 feared great superincumbent pressure on the apex, and the round 
 arch above-ground, where that was not to be dreaded ; and in this 
 they probably showed more science and discrimination than we do in 
 such works. 
 
 In Europe the oldest arch is probably that of Cloaca Maxima at 
 Rome, constructed under the early kings. It 
 is of stone, in 3 rims, and shows as perfect a 
 knowledge of the principle as any subsequent 
 example. Its lasting uninjured to the pres- 
 ent day proves how well the art was then 
 understood, and, by inference, how long it 
 must have been practised before reaching 
 Rome. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. tjiat degree of perfection. 
 From all this it becomes almost certain that the arch was used as 
 
 Arch of the Cloaca Maxima, 
 in. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. V. 
 
 INVENTION OF TIIE ARCH. 
 
 207 
 
 early as the times of the pyramid-builders of the 4th dynasty, and was 
 copied in the tombs of Beni Hassan in the 12th ; though it may be 
 that the earliest existing example cannot be dated further back than 
 the first kings of the 18th dynasty ; from that time, however, tliere 
 can be no doubt that it was currently used, not only in Egypt, but 
 also in Ethiopia and Assyria. 
 
 It would, indeed, be more difficult to account for the fact of such 
 perfect builders as the Egyptians being ignorant of the arch if such 
 were the case ; though, at the same time, it is easy to understand why 
 they should use it so sparingly as they did in their monumental 
 erections. 
 
 Even in the simplest arch, that formed of only two stones, such as 
 is frequently found in the pyramids, and over the highest chamber 
 [Woodcut No. 7), it will be evident that any weight placed on the 
 apex has a tendency to lower the summit, and press the lower ends of 
 the stones outwards. Where there was the whole mass of the pyramid 
 to abut against, this was of no consequence, but in a slighter building 
 it would have thrust the walls apart, and brought on inevitable 
 ruin. 
 
 The introduction of a third stone, as in the arch (Woodcut No. 98), 
 hardly remedied this at all, the central stone acting like a wedge to 
 thrust the two others apart ; 
 
 and even the introduction of 
 2 more stones, making 5 as 
 in Woodcut No. 102, only dis- 
 tributed the pressure without 
 
 T . ^, T p ^ 1 102. Arches in the Pyramids at Meroe. (From Hoskins.) 
 
 remedymg the detect ; and 
 
 without the most perfect masonry every additional joint was only an 
 additional source of weakness. 
 
 This has been felt by the architects of all ages and in all countries: 
 still the advantage of being able to cover large spaces with small 
 stones or bricks is so great, that many have been willing to run the 
 risk ; and all the ingenuity of the Gothic architects of the Middle Ages 
 was applied to overcoming the diflSculty. But even the best of their 
 buildings are unstable from this cause, and require constant care and 
 attention to keep them from falling. 
 
 The Indian architects have fallen into the other extreme, refusing 
 to use the arch under any circumstances, and preferring the smallest 
 dimensions and the most crowded interiors, to adopting what they 
 consider so destructive an expedient. As mentioned in the Introduc- 
 tion (page 22), their theory is that "an arch never sleeps," and is con- 
 stantly tending to tear a building to pieces ; and, where aided by 
 earthquakes and the roots of trees, there is only too much truth in 
 their belief. 
 
 The Egyptians seem to have followed a middle course, using arches 
 
208 
 
 HISTORY OF AECHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 either in tombs, where the rock formed an immovable abutment ; or 
 in pyramids and buildings, where the mass immensely overpowered 
 the thrust ; or underground, where the superincumbent earth prevented 
 movement. 
 
 They seem also to have used flat segmental arches of brickwork 
 between the rows of massive architraves which they placed on their 
 pillars ; and as all these abutted one another, like the arches of a 
 bridge, except the external ones, which were sufficiently supported by 
 the massive walls, the mode of construction was a sound one. This is 
 exactly that which we have re-introduced during the last 30 years, in 
 consequence of the application of cast-iron beams, between which flat 
 segmental arches of brick are thrown, when we desire to introduce 
 a more solid and fire-proof construction than is possible with wood 
 only. 
 
 In their use of the arch, as in everything else, the building science 
 of the Egyptians seems to have been governed by the soundest prin_ 
 ciples and the most perfect knowledge of what was judicious and 
 expedient, and what should be avoided. Many of their smaller edifices 
 have no doubt perished from the scarcity of wood forcing the builders 
 to employ brick arches, but they wisely avoided the use of these in all 
 their larger monuments — in all, in fact, which they wished should 
 endure to the latest posterity ^ 
 
fiK. II. Ch. VI 
 
 JEWISH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 209 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 JUDEA. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA CONNECTED WITH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 DATES. I DATES. 
 
 Moses B. c. 1312 Zerubbabel b. c. 520 
 
 Solomon 1013 Herod 20 
 
 Ezekiel 573 | Titus . . . . , A. D. 70 
 
 THE Jews, like the other Semitic races, were not a building people, 
 and never aspired to monumental magnificence as a mode of per- 
 petuating the memory of their greatness. The palace of Solomon 
 was wholly of cedar wood, and must have perished of natural decay 
 in a few centuries, if it escaped fire and other accidents incident to 
 such temporary structures. Their first temple was a tent, their second 
 depended almost entirely on its metallic ornaments for its splendor, 
 and it was not till the Greeks and Romans taught them how to apply 
 stone and stone carving for this purpose, that w^e have anything that 
 can be called architecture, in the true sense of the term. 
 
 This deficiency of monuments is however by no means peculiar to 
 the Jewish people. As before observed, we should know hardly any- 
 thing of the architecture of Assyria but for the existence of the 
 wainscot slabs of their palaces, though they were nearly a purely 
 Semitic people, but their art rested on a Turanian basis. Neither 
 Tyre nor Sidon have left us a single monument ; nor Utica nor Car- 
 thage one vestige that dates anterior to the Roman period. What is 
 found at Jerusalem, at Baalbec, at Palmyra, or Petra, even in the 
 countries beyond the Jordan, is all Roman. What little traces of 
 Phoenician art are picked up in the countries bordering on the Medi« 
 terranean are copies, with Egyptian or Grecian details, badly and 
 unintelligently copied, and showing a want of appreciation of the 
 first principles of art that is remarkable in that age. It is therefore 
 an immense gain if by our knowledge of Assyrian art we are enabled, 
 even in a moderate degree, to realize the form of buildings which 
 have long ceased to exist, and are only known to us from verbal 
 descriptions. 
 
 The most celebrated secular building of the Jews was the palace 
 which Solomon was occupied in building during the thirteen years 
 
 VOL. I. — 14 
 
210 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut I. 
 
 which followed his completion of the Temple. As not one vestige of 
 this celebrated building remains, and even its site is a matter of 
 dispute, the annexed plan must be taken only as an attempt to apply 
 
 the knowledge we have acquired in Assyria and Judea to the elucida- 
 tion of the descriptions of the Bible and Josephus,i and as such may 
 
 1 Kings vii. l-]2. Josephus, B. J. viii. 5. 
 
Bk. 11. Ch. VI. 
 
 SOLOMON'S HOUSE. 
 
 211 
 
 be considered of sufficient interest to deserve a place in the History of 
 Architecture. 
 
 The principal apartment here, as in all Eastern palaces, was the 
 great audience hall, in this instance 150 feet in length by 75 in width; 
 the roof composed of cedar, and, like the Ninevite palaces, supported 
 by rows of cedar pillars on the floor. According to Josephus, who, 
 however, never saw it, and had evidently the Roman Stoa Basilica of 
 the Temple in his eye, the section would probably have been as shown 
 in diagram A. But the contemporary Bible narrative, which is the 
 real authority, would almost certainly point to something more like 
 the diagram B in the annexed woodcut. 
 
 A. B 
 104. Diagram Sections of tlie House of the Cedars of Lebanon. 
 
 Next in importance to this was the Porch, which was the audience 
 or reception hall, attached to the private apartments. These two 
 being the Dewanni Aum and Dewanni Khas of Eastern palaces at 
 this day. The Hall of Judgment we may venture to restore with con- 
 fidence, from what we find at Persepolis and Khorsabad ; and the courts 
 are arranged in the diagram as they were found in JSTinevite palaces. 
 They are proportioned, as far as we can now judge, to those parts of 
 which the dimensions are given by the authorities, and to the best 
 estimate we can now make of what would be most suitable to Solomon's 
 state, and to such a capital as Jerusalem was at that time. 
 
 From Josephus we learn that Solomon built the walls of this palace 
 " with stones 10 cubits in length, and wainscoted them with stones 
 that were sawed and were of great value, such as are dug out of the 
 earth for the ornaments of temples and the adornment of palaces." ^ 
 These were ornamented with sculpture in three rows, but the fourth 
 or upper row was the most remarkable, being covered with foliage in 
 relief, of the most exquisite workmanship ; above this the walls were 
 plastered and ornamented with paintings in color: all of which is 
 the exact counterpart of what we find at Nineveh. 
 
 From the knowledge we now possess of Assyrian palaces it might 
 indeed be possible to restore this building with fairly approximate 
 
 Josephus, Ant. viii. 5, § 2. 
 
212 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 correctness, but it would hardly be worth while to attempt this except 
 in a work especially devoted to Jewish art. For the present it must 
 suffice to know that the affinities of the architecture of Solomon's age 
 were certainly Assyrian ; and from our knowledge of the one we may 
 pretty accurately realize the form of the other. 
 
 Temple of Jerusalem. 
 
 Although not one stone remains upon another of the celebrated 
 Temple of Jerusalem, still the descriptions in the Bible and Josephus 
 
 are so precise, that now that we are able 
 to interpret them by the light of other 
 buildings, its history can be written with 
 very tolerable certainty. 
 
 The earliest temple of the Jews was the 
 Tabernacle, the plan of which they always 
 considered as divinely revealed to them 
 through Moses in the desert of Sinai, and 
 from which they consequently never depart- 
 ed in any subsequent erections. Its dimen- 
 sions were for the cella, or Holy of Holies, 10 
 cubits, or 15 ft. cube; for the outer temple, 
 two such cubes or 15 ft. by 30. These were 
 covered by the sloi)ing roofs of the tent, 
 which extended 5 cubits in every direction 
 beyond the temple itself, making the Avhole 
 40 cubits or 60 ft. in length by 20 cubits or 
 30 ft. in width. These stood within an en- 
 closure 100 cubits long by 50 cubits wide.i 
 When Solomon (b. c. 1015) built the 
 Temple, he did not alter the disposition in 
 tains.''" ''''''^'^'^ manner, but adopted it literally, only 
 
 doubling every dimension. Thus the Holy 
 of Holies became a cube of 20 cubits ; the Holy place, 20 by 40 ; the 
 porch and the chambers which surrounded it 10 cubits each, making 
 a total of 80 cubits or 120 ft. by 40 cubits or 60 ft., with a height of 
 30 as compared with 15, which was the height of the ridge of the 
 Tabernacle, and it was surrounded by a court the dimensions of which 
 were 200 cubits in length by 100 in width. 
 
 Even with these increased dimensions the Temple was a very insig- 
 nificant building in size : the truth being that, like the temples of 
 
 105. The Tabernacle, showing one 
 half ground plan and one 
 
 1 The details of this restoration are 
 given in the "Dictionary of the Bible," 
 sub voce " Temple," and repeated in my 
 
 work entitled "The Holy Sepulchre 
 and the Temple at Jerusalem." Mur- 
 ray, 1865. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VI. 
 
 TEMPLE AT JEKUSALEM. 
 
 213 
 
 Semitic nations, it was more in the character of a shrine or of a treasury 
 intended to contain certain precious works in metal. 
 
 The principal ornaments of its fa9ade were two brazen pillars, 
 Jachin and Boaz, which seem to have been ivonders of metal work, 
 and regarding which more has been written, and it may be added, 
 more nonsense, than regarding almost any other known architectural 
 objects. The truth of the matter appears to be that the translators of 
 our Bibles in no instance were architects, and none of the architects 
 who have attempted the restoration were learned as Hebrew scholars ; 
 and consequently the truth has fallen to the ground between the two. 
 A brazen pillar, however, 18 cubits high and 12 cubits in circumfer- 
 ence — 6 ft. in diameter — is an absurdity that no brass-founder ever 
 could have perj^etrated. In the Hebrew, the 15th verse reads: "He 
 
 106. Soutli-East View of the Tabernacle, as restoied by the Author. 
 
 cast two pillars of brass, 18 cubits was the height of the one pillar, and 
 a line of 12 cubits encompassed the other pillar." ^ The truth of the 
 matter seems to be that what Solomon erected was a screen (chapiter) 
 consisting of two parts, one 4 cubits, the other 5 cubits in height, and 
 supported by two pillars of metal, certainly not more than 1 cubit in 
 diameter, and standing 12 cubits apart : nor does it seem difficult to 
 perceive what purpose this screen was designed to effect. As will be 
 observed, in the restoration of the Tabernacle (Woodcut No. 106), the 
 whole of the light to the interior is admitted from the front. In the 
 Temple the only light that could penetrate to the Holy of Holies was 
 from the front also ; and though the Holy place was partially lighted 
 from the sides, its principal source of light must have been through the 
 
 1 "Speaker's Commentary on the Bible," vol. ii. p. 520; note on verse 15c 
 chap. vii. 1 Kings. 
 
214 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. Part I. 
 
 eastern facade. In consequence of this there must have been a large 
 opening or window in this front, and as a window was a thing that 
 they had not yet learned to make an ornamental feature in archi- 
 tectural design, they took this mode of screening and partially, at 
 least, hiding it. 
 
 It becomes almost absolutely certain that this is the true solution 
 of the riddle, when we find that when Herod rebuilt the Temple in the 
 first century b. c, he erected a similar screen for the same purpose in 
 front of his Temple. Its dimensions, however, were one-third larger. 
 It was 40 cubits high, and 20 cubits across, and it supported five 
 beams instead of two ; ^ not to display the chequer-work and pome- 
 granates of Solomon's screen, but to carry 
 the Golden Vine, which was the principal 
 ornament of the fayade of the Temple in its 
 latest form.2 
 
 Although it is easy to understand how 
 it was quite possible in metal work to in- 
 troduce all the ornaments enumerated in 
 the Bible, and with gilding and color to 
 make these objects of wonder, we have no 
 examples with which we can compare them, 
 and any restoration must consequently be 
 somewhat fanciful. Still we must recollect 
 that this was the "bronze age" of archi- 
 tecture. Homer tells us of the brazen house 
 of Priam, and the brazen palace of Alcinous ; 
 the Treasuries at Mycenae were covered in- 
 ternally with bronze plates; and in Etrus- 
 can tombs of this age metal was far more 
 essentially the material of decoration than 
 carving in stone, or any of the modes after- 
 wards so frequently adopted. The altar of the Temple was of 
 brass. The molten sea, supported by twelve brazen oxen ; the bases, 
 
 107. Plan of Solomon's Temple, 
 showing the disposition of 
 the chambers in two stories. 
 
 ^ For a restoration of tliis screen see 
 * Tree and Serpent Worship,' Appendix 
 i., p. 270. 
 
 2 Since the article on the Temple in 
 Smith's Dictionary of the 'Bible' was 
 written, from which most of the wood- 
 cuts in this chapter are taken, I have had 
 occasion to go over the subject more 
 than once, and from recent explorations 
 and recently discovered analogies have, 
 I believe, been able to settle, within 
 very narrow limits of doubt, all the out- 
 standing questions with reference to this 
 celebrated building. I have in conse- 
 quence written a monograph of the 
 
 Temple, which I may probably one day 
 publish, but, pending this, it seems more 
 expedient to leave the illustrations as 
 they are. To produce new ones without 
 writing a dissertation to explain why the 
 changes were made, would only lead to 
 confusion, and it would be absurd to in- 
 sert such an essay in a history like this. 
 Besides this the alterations are not so ob- 
 vious that they could be made apparent 
 on the small scale of these cuts, and are 
 hardly such as to interest the general 
 reader, though very important to the 
 special student of Jewish architectural 
 art. 
 
Bk, II. Ch. VI. 
 
 TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 215 
 
 the layers, and all the other objects in metal work, were in reality 
 what made the Temple so celebrated ; and very little was due to the 
 mere masonry by which we should judge of a Christian church or 
 any modern building. 
 
 No pillars are mentioned as supporting the roof, but every analogy 
 derived from Assyrian architecture, as well as the constructive neces- 
 sities of the case, would lead us to suppose they must have existed, 
 four in the sanctuary and eight in the pronaos. 
 
 The temple which Ezekiel saw in a vision on the banks of the 
 Chebar was identical in dimensions with that of Solomon, in so far as 
 naos and pronaos were concerned. But a passage round the naos was 
 
 COURT OF CENTILES 
 
 STOA BASILICA 
 
 108. Plan of Temple at Jerusalem, as rebuilt by Herod. Scale 200 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 introduced, giving access to the chambers, which added 10 cubits to 
 its dimensions every way, making it 100 cubits by 60. The principal 
 court, which contained the Altar and the Temple properly so called, 
 had the same dimensions as in Solomon's Temple ; but he added, in 
 imagination at least, four courts, each 100 cubits or 150 ft. square. 
 That on the east certainly existed, and seems to have been the new 
 court of Solomon's Temple,i and is what in that of Herod became the 
 court of the Gentiles. The north and south courts were never apparently 
 carried out. They did not exist in Solomon's Temple, and there is 
 
 1 2 Chronicles xx. 5. 
 
13k. II. Ch. VI. 
 
 TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 217 
 
 evidence to show that they were not found in Zerubbabel's.i That on 
 the north-west angle was the citadel of the Temple, where the treasures 
 were kept, and which was afterwards replaced by the Tower Antonia. 
 
 When the Jews returned from the Captivity they rebuilt the 
 Temple exactly as it had been described by Ezekiel, in so far as 
 dimensions are concerned, except that, as just mentioned, they do 
 not seem to have been able to accomplish the northern and southern 
 courts. 
 
 The materials, however, were probably inferior to the original 
 Temple ; and we hear nothing of brazen pillars in the porch, nor of 
 the splendid vessels and furniture which made the glory of Solomon's 
 Temple, so that the Jews were probably justified in mourning over its 
 comparative insignificance.^ 
 
 In the last Temple we have a perfect illustration of the mode m 
 which the architectural enterprises of that country were carried out. The 
 priests restored the Temple itself, not venturing to alter a single one 
 of its sacred dimensions, only adding wings to the facade so as to make 
 it 100 cubits wide, and it is said 100 cubits high, while the length 
 remained 100 cubits as before. ""^ At this period, however, Judea was 
 under the sway of the Romans and under the influence of their ideas, 
 and the outer courts were added with a magnificence of which former 
 builders had no conception, but bore strongly the impress of the 
 architectural magnificence of the Romans. 
 
 An area measuring 600 feet each way was enclosed by terraced 
 walls of the utmost lithic grandeur. On these were erected porticoes 
 unsurpassed by any we know of. One, the Stoa Basilica, had a 
 section equal to that of our largest cathedrals, and surpassed them all 
 in length, and within this colonnaded enclosure Avere ten great gate- 
 ways, two of which were of surpassing magnificence : the whole 
 making up a rich and varied pile worthy of the Roman love of 
 architectural display, but in singular contrast with the modest 
 aspirations of a purely Semitic people. 
 
 It is always extremely difiicult to restore any building from mere 
 verbal description, and still more so when erected by a jieople of whose 
 architecture we know so little as we do of that of the Jews. Still, the 
 woodcut on the opposite page is probably not very far from 
 representing the Temple as it was after the last restoration by Herod, 
 barring of course the screen bearing the Vine mentioned above, which 
 IS omitted. Without attempting to justify every detail, it seems such 
 a mixture of Roman with Phoenician forms as might be expected and 
 IS warranted by Josephus' description. There is no feature for 
 which authority could not be quoted, but the difl^iculty is to know 
 
 ^ Hecateus of Abdera, in Miiller's i « Josephus, Ant. xi. 4, § 2. 
 Fragments," ii. 394. | 3 Josephus, B. J. v. 5, § 4. 
 
218 
 
 HISTORY OF AECHITECTURE. 
 
 Tari I. 
 
 whether or not the example adduced is the right one, or the one which 
 bears most directly on the subject. After all, perhaps, its principal 
 defect is that it does not (how can a modern restoration?) do justice 
 to the grandeur and beauty of the whole. 
 
 Of all this splendor only one little fragment is now left. Beneath 
 the platform of the Temple proper, one gateway still remains, which 
 may certainly be taken as an example of what Jewish art became 
 Tinder Roman influence. It is the Gate Huldah, and consists of a long 
 passage measuring 41 ft. in width. At the distance of 38 ft. from 
 the face of the outer wall a splendid monolith supports four arches, 
 dividing the vestibule into four equal compartments, each surmounted 
 by a flat dome. All were originally covered with ornament, but one 
 alone now retains it in anything like completeness. It would be 
 diflicult to find a more curious illustration of what is sure to happen 
 when people are employing a style which is new to them, and which 
 they do not understand. The ornamentation is of a class that does 
 
 lin. Roof of one of the Compartments of the Gate Huldah. (From De Vogu^.) 
 
 not belonir to domed or curved surfaces at all. What is Roman is 
 wholly misplaced, but the vines and the foliage, which are Jewish, run 
 throucrh the whole and bind together a design which without them 
 woulrl be ridiculous. As the only specimen of a class it is curious. It 
 is not, however, Jewish, and is so nearly Roman, that we cannot but 
 feel that it is introduced here before its time in a history of the suc= 
 cessive developments of architectural art. 
 
 As it has been necessary to anticipate the chronological sequence 
 of events in order not to separate the temples of the Jews from one 
 another, it may be as well befo^-e proceeding further to aHude to 
 several temples similarly situated which apparently were originally 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VI. 
 
 TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 219 
 
 Semitic shrines but rebuilt in Roman times. That at Palmyra, for 
 instance, is a building very closely resembling that at Jerusalem, in 
 so far at least as the outer enclosure is concerned.^ It consists of a 
 cloistered enclosure of somewhat larger dimensions, measuring exter- 
 nally 730 ft. by 715, with a small temple of an anomalous form in the 
 centre. It wants, however, all the inner enclosures and curious sub- 
 structures of the Jewish fane; but this may have arisen from its 
 having been rebuilt in late Roman times, and consequently shorn of 
 these peculiarities. It is so similar, however, that it must be regarded 
 as a cognate temple to that at Jerusalem, though re-erected by a 
 people of another race. 
 
 A third temple, apparently very similar to these, is that of Kan- 
 govar in Persia.^ Only a portion n»w remains of the great court in 
 which it stood, and which was nearly of the same dimensions as those 
 of Jerusalem and Palmyra, being 660 ft. by 568. In the centre are 
 the vestiges of a small temple. At Aizaini in Asia Minor ^ is a fourth, 
 with a similar court; but here the temple is more important, and 
 assumes more distinctly the forms of a regular Roman peristylar 
 temple of the usual form, though still small and insignificant for so 
 considerable an enclosure. 
 
 The mosque of Damascus was once one of these great square 
 temple-enclosures, with a small temple, properly so called, in the 
 centre. It may have been as magnificent, perhaps more so, than any 
 of these just enumerated, but it has been so altered by Christian and 
 Moslem rebuildings, that it is almost impossible now to make out 
 what its original form may have been. 
 
 None of these are original buildings, but still, when put together, 
 and compared the one with the other, and, above all, when examined 
 by the light which discoveries farther east have enabled us to throw 
 on the subject, they enable us to restore this style in something like 
 its pristine form. At present, it is true, they are but the scattered 
 fragments of an art of which it is feared no original specimens now 
 remain, and which can only therefore be recovered by induction 
 from similar cognate examples of other, though allied, styles of art. 
 
 » Dawkins and Wood, " The Ruins of Palmyra," Lond. 1753. 
 
 2 Texier, " Armenie et la Perse," vol. i. pi. 62 and 68. 
 
 3 Texier, Asie Mineure," pi. 10 to 21. 
 
220 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 ASIA MINOR. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Historical notice — Tombs at Smyrna — Doganlu — Lycian tombs. 
 • 
 
 IT is now perhaps in vain to expect that any monuments of the 
 most ancient times, of great extent or of great architectural 
 importance, remain to be discovered in Asia Minor ; still it is a store- 
 house from which much information may yet be gleaned, and whence 
 we may expect the solution of many dark historical problems, if ever 
 they are to be solved at all. 
 
 Situated as that country is, in the very centre of the old world, 
 surrounded on three sides by navigable seas opening all the regions 
 of the world to her commerce, possessing splendid harbors, a rich 
 soil, and the finest climate of the whole earth, it must not only have 
 been inhabited at the earliest period of history, but must have risen 
 to a pitch of civilization at a time preceding any written histories 
 that we possess. We may recollect that, in the time of Psammet- 
 icus, Phrygia contended with Egypt for the palm of antiquity, and 
 from the monuments of the 18th dynasty we know what rich spoil, 
 what beautiful vases of gold, and other tributes of a rich and luxuri- 
 ous people, the Pout and Roteno and other inhabitants of Asia Minor 
 brought and laid at the feet of Thothmes and other early kings, 
 eighteen centuries at least before the Christian era. 
 
 At a later period (716 to 547 b. c.) the Lydian empire was one of 
 the richest and most powerful in Asia ; and contemporary with this, 
 and for a long period subsequent to it, the Ionian colonies of Greece 
 surpassed the mother country in wealth and refinement, and almost 
 rivalled her in literature and art. Few cities of the ancient world 
 surpassed Ephesus, Sardis, or Halicarnassus in splendor ; and Troy, 
 Tarsus, and Trebizond mark three great epochs in the history of Asia 
 Minor which are unsurpassed in interest and political importance by 
 the retrospect of any cities of the world. Excepting, however, the 
 remains of the Greek and Roman periods — the great temples of the 
 first, and the great theatres of the latter period — little that is archi- 
 tectural remains in this once favored land. It happens also, unfortu- 
 nately, that there was no great capital city — no central point — where 
 
Bk. 11. Ch. VII. 
 
 ASIA MINOR. 
 
 221 
 
 we can look for monuments of importance. The defect in the pliysical 
 geography of the country is that it has no great river running through 
 it — no vast central plain capable of supporting a population sufficiently 
 great to overpower the rest and to give unity to the whole. 
 
 So far as our researches yet reach, it would seem that the oldest 
 remains still found in Asia Minor are the Tumuli of Tantalais, on the 
 northern shore of the Gulf of Smyrna. They seem as if left there 
 most opportunely to authenticate the tradition of the Etruscans having 
 sailed from this port for Italy. One of these is represented in Wood- 
 cuts Nos. Ill and 112. Though these tumuli are built wholly of stone, 
 
 111. Elevation of Tumulus at Tantalais. (From 
 Texier's " Asie Mineure.") 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 112. Plan and Section of Cham- 
 ber in Tumulus at Tantalais. 
 
 no one familiar with architectural resemblances can fail to see in them 
 a common origin with those of Etruria. The stylobate, the sloping- 
 sides, the inner chamber, with its pointed roof, all the arrangements, 
 indeed, are the same, and the whole character of the necropolis at 
 Tantalais would be as appropriate at Tarquinii or Caerse as at 
 Smyrna. 
 
 Another tumulus of equal interest historically is that of Alyattes, 
 near Sardis, described with such care by Herodotus,^ and which has 
 
 113. Section of Tomb of Alyattes. (From Spiegelthal.) No scale. 
 
 recently been explored by Spiegelthal, the Prussian consul at Smyrna.^ 
 According to the measurements of Herodotus, it was either 3800 or 
 
 1 Herodotus, i. 93. ^ Lydischen Konigsgraber^ I. F. M. Olfers, Berlin, 1859. 
 
222 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 4100 ft. m circumference; at present it is found to be 1180 ft. in 
 diameter, and consequently about 3700 ft. in circumference at the top 
 of the basement, though of course considerably more below. It is 
 situated on the edge of a rocky ridge, which is made level on one side 
 by a terrace-wall of large stones, 60 ft. in height; above this the 
 mound rises to the height of 142 ft. : the total height above the plain 
 being 228 ft. The upper part of the mound is composed of alternate 
 layers of clay, loam, and a kind of rubble concrete. These support a 
 mass of brickwork, surmounted by a platform of masonry; on this one 
 of the steles described by Herodotus still lies, and one of the smaller 
 ones was found close by. 
 
 The funereal chamber was disco^'ered resting on the rock at about 
 160 ft. from the centre of the mound. Its dimensions were 11 ft. by 
 7 ft. 9 in., and 7 ft. high ; the roof flat and composed of large stones, 
 on which rested a layer of charcoal and ashes, 2 ft. in thickness, evi- 
 dently the remains of the offerings which had been made after the 
 chamber was closed, but before the mound had been raised over it. 
 
 There are in the same locality an immense number of tumuli of 
 various dimensions, among which Herr Spiegelthal fancies he can 
 discriminate three classes, belonging to three distinct ages ; that of 
 Alyattes belonging to the most modern. This is extremely probable, 
 as at this time (b.c. 561) the fashion of erecting tumuli as monuments 
 was dying out in this part of world, though it continued in less 
 civilized parts of Europe till long after the Christian era. 
 
 The tumuli that still adorn the Plain of Troy are probably contem- 
 porary with the older of the three groups of those around the Gygean 
 Lake. Indeed there does not seem much reason for doubting that 
 they were really raised over the ashes of the heroes who took part in 
 that memorable struggle, and- whose names they still bear. 
 
 The recent explorations of these mounds do not seem to have 
 thrown much light on the subject, but if we can trust the account 
 Chevalier gives of his researches at the end of the last century, the 
 case is clear enough, and there can be very little doubt but that the 
 Dios Tope on the Sigsean promontory is really the tomb of Achilles. ^ 
 Intensely interesting though they are in other respects, Schliemann's 
 discoveries on the site of Troy have done very little to increase our 
 
 » " Toward the centre of the monu- 
 ment two large stones were found leaning 
 at an angle the one against the other, and 
 forming a sort of tent like in Woodcut 
 122, under which was presently discov- 
 ered a small statue of Minerva seated on 
 a chariot with four horses, and an urn of 
 metal filled with ashes, charcoal, and 
 burnt bones. This urn, which is now in 
 the possession of the Comte de Choiseul, 
 
 is enriched in sculpture with a vine 
 branch, from which is suspended bunch- 
 es of grapes done with exquisite art." — 
 "Description of the Plain of Troy," 
 translated by Dalzel, Edin. 1791, p. 149. 
 
 If this is so, this is no doubt the vessel 
 mentioned, "Iliad," xvi. 221, xxiii. 92: 
 "Od.," xxiv. 71, and elsewhere. But 
 where is it now? and why has not the fact 
 of its existence been more insisted upon ? 
 
Bk. 11. Cu. Vil. 
 
 ASIA MINOR. 
 
 223 
 
 knowledge of the architecture of the period. This may partly be 
 owing to his ignorance of the art, and to his having no architect with 
 him, but it does not appear that any architectural mouldings were 
 discovered earlier than those of "Ilium Novum," two or three 
 centuries before Christ. The so-called Temple of Minerva was with- 
 out pillars or mouldings of any sort, and the walls and gates of the 
 old city were equally devoid of ornament. What was found seems 
 to confirm the idea that the Trojans were a Turanian-Pelasgic people, 
 burying their dead in mounds, and revelling in barbaric splendor, but 
 not having reached that degree of civilization which would induce 
 them to seek to perpetuate their forms of art in more permanent 
 materials than earth and metals.^ 
 
 It is not clear whether any other great groups of tumuli exist in 
 Asia Minor, but it seems more than probable that in the earliest times 
 the wiiole of this country was inhabited by a Pelasgic race, w^io were 
 the first known occupants of Greece, and who built the so-called 
 Treasuries of Mycenae and Orchomenos, and who sent forth the 
 Etruscans to civilize Italy. If this be so, it accounts for the absence 
 of architectural remains, for they would have left behind them no 
 buildings but the sepulchres of their departed great ones ; and if their 
 history is to be recovered, it must be sought for in the bowels of the 
 earth, and not in anything existing above-ground. 
 
 N"ext to these in point of age and style comes a curious group of 
 rock-cut monuments, found in the centre of the land at Doganlu. 
 They are placed on the rocky side of a narrow valley, and are uncon- 
 nected apparently with any great city or centre of j^opulation. 
 Generally they are called tombs, but there are no chambers nor any- 
 thing about them to indicate a funereal purpose, and the inscriptions 
 which accompany them are not on the monuments themselves, nor do 
 they refer to such a destination. Altogether, they are certainly among 
 the most mysterious remains of antiquity, and, beyond a certain 
 similarity to the rock-cut tombs around Persepolis, j^resent no features 
 that afford even a remote analogy to other monuments which might 
 guide us in our conjectures as to the purpose for which they were 
 designed. They are of a style of art clearly indicating a wooden 
 origin, and consist of a square frontispiece, either carved into certain 
 
 ^ One of the most interesting facts 
 brought to hght in Dr. SchHemann's 
 excavations is that between the age of 
 the " lUum Yetus " of Homer, rich in 
 metals and in arts, and the " Ilium Nov- 
 um " of Strabo, a people ignorant of the 
 use of the metals, and using only bone 
 and stone implements, inhabited the 
 mound at Hissarlik which covered both 
 
 these cities. This discovery is sufficient 
 to upset the once fashionable Danish 
 theory of the three ages Stone, Bronze, 
 and Iron — but unfortunately adds 
 nothing to our knowledge of architec- 
 ture. These people, whoever they were, 
 built nothing, and must consequently be 
 content to remain in the *' longa nocte " 
 of those who neglect the Master Art. 
 
224 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 geometric shapes, or apparently prepared for painting ; at each side is 
 a flat pilaster, and above a pediment terminating in two scrolls. Some 
 — apparently the more modern — have pillars of a rude Doric order, 
 and all indeed are much more singular than beautiful. When more 
 of the same class are discovered, they may help us to some historic 
 data: all that we can now advance is, that, judging from the inscrip- 
 tions on them, and the traditions in Herodotus, they would appear to 
 belong to some race from Thessaly, or thereabouts, who at some 
 remote period crossed the Hellespont and settled in their neighbor- 
 hood ; they may be dated as far back as 1000, and most probably 
 700 years at least before the Christian Era. 
 
 114. Rock-cut Frontispiece at Doganlu. (From Texier's " Asie Mineure.") 
 
 There are other rock-cut sculptures farther east, at Pterium and 
 elsewhere ; but all these are figure sculptures, without architectural 
 form or details, and therefore hardly coming within the limits of this 
 
 work. - . A • Tvf 
 
 The only remaining important architectural group m Asia Mmor 
 is that of Lycia, made known in this country since the year 1838, by 
 the investigations of Sir Charles Fellows and others. Interesting 
 though they certainly are, they are extremely disheartening to any 
 one looking for earlier remains in this land,— inasmuch as all of them, 
 and more especially the older ones, indicate distinctly a wooden origin 
 more strongly perhaps than any architectural remains in the Western 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VII. 
 
 LYCIAN TOMBS. 
 
 225 
 
 world. The oldest of them cannot well be carried farther back than 
 the Persian conquest of Cyrus and Harpagus. In other words, it 
 seems perfectly evident that up to 1:hat period the Lycians used only 
 wood for their buildings, and that it was only at that time, and prol)- 
 ably from the Greeks or Egyptians, that they, like the Persians them- 
 selves, first learnt to substitute for their frail and perishable structures 
 others of a more durable material. 
 
 115. Lycian Tomb. (From British Museum.) 
 
 As already observed, the^same process can be traced in Egypt in 
 the earliest ages. In Central Asia the change was effected by the 
 Persians. In India between the 2nd and 3rd centuries b. c. In Greece 
 — in what was not borrowed from the Egyptians — the change took 
 place a little earlier than in Lycia, or say in the 7th century b. c. 
 What is important to observe here is that, wherever the process can be 
 detected, it is in vain to look for earlier buildings. It is only in the 
 infancy of stone architecture that men adhere to wooden forms ; and 
 as soon as habit gives them familiarity with the new material, they 
 
 VOL. I. — 15 
 
226 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part X. 
 
 abandon the incongruities of the style, and we lose all trace of the 
 original form, which never reappears at an after age. 
 
 All the original buildings of* Lycia are tombs or monumental 
 erections of some kind, and generally may be classed under two 
 heads, those having curvilinear and those having rectilinear roofs, 
 of both which classes examples are found structural — or standing 
 alone, — as well as rock-cut. The woodcut (No. 115) represents a 
 perfectly constructed tomb. It consists first of a double podium, 
 which may have been in all cases, or at least generally, of stone. 
 
 Above this is a rectangular 
 chest or sarcophagus, cer- 
 tainly copied from a wood- 
 en form; all the mortises 
 and framing, even to the 
 pins that held them to- 
 gether, being literally ren- 
 dered in tlie stonework. 
 Above this is a curvilinear 
 roof of pointed form, which 
 also is in all its parts a copy 
 of an original in wood. 
 
 When these forms are 
 repeated in the rock, the 
 stylobate is omitted, and 
 only the upper part repre- 
 sented, as shown in the an- 
 nexed woodcut (No. 116). 
 
 When the curvilinear 
 roof is omitted, a flat one 
 is substituted, nearly simi- 
 lar to those common in the 
 country at the present day, 
 consisting of beams of un- 
 squared timber, laid side by 
 side as close as they can be 
 laid, and over this a mass 
 of concrete or clay, sufliiciently thick to prevent the rain from pene- 
 trating through. Sometimes this is surmounted by a low pediment, 
 and sometimes the lower framing also stands out from the rock, so as 
 to give the entrance of the tomb something of a porch-like form. Both 
 these forms are illustrated in the two woodcuts (Nos. 117 and 118), 
 and numerous varieties of them are shown in the works of Sir Charles 
 Fellows and others, all containing the same elements, and betraying 
 most distinctly the wooden origin from which they were derived. 
 The last form that these buildings took was in the substitution of 
 
 116. Rock-cut Lycian Toin'>. (From Forbes and 
 Spratt's " Ljcirf..") 
 
228 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt r. 
 
 an Ionic fayade for these carpentry forms : this was not done apparently 
 at once, for, though the Ionic form was evidently borrowed from the 
 
 neighboring Greek cities, it 
 was only adopted by degrees 
 and even then betrayed more 
 strongly the wooden forms 
 from Avhich its entablature 
 was derived than is usually 
 found in other or more purely 
 Grecian examples. As soon 
 as it had fairly gained a 
 footing, the wooden style was 
 abandoned, and a masonry 
 one substituted in its stead. 
 The whole change took place 
 in this country probably 
 within a century ; but this 
 is not a fair test of the time 
 such a process usually takes, 
 as here it w as evidently done 
 under foreign influence and 
 with the spur given by the 
 example of a stone-building 
 people. We have no knowledge of how long it took in Egypt to effect 
 the transformation. In India, where the form and construction of the 
 older Buddhist temj)les resemble so singularly these examples in 
 Lycia, the process can be traced through five or six centuries ; and 
 in Persia it took ])erhaps nearly as long to convert the wooden 
 designs of the Assyrians into even the imperfect stone architecture 
 of the AchcTinenians. Even in their best and most perfect buildings, 
 however, much remained to be done before the carpentry types were 
 fairly got rid of and the style became entitled to rank among the 
 masonic arts of the world. 
 
 The remaining ancient buildings of Asia Minor were all built by 
 the Greeks and Romans, each in their own style, so that their classi- 
 fication and description belong properly to the chapters treating of the 
 architectural history of those nations, from which they cannot properly 
 be se])arated, although it is at the same time undoubtedly true that 
 the purely European forms of the art were considerably modified by the 
 influence on them of local Asiatic forms and feelings. The Ionic order, 
 for instance, which arose in the Grecian colonies on the coast, is only 
 the native style of this country Doricised, if the expression may be used. 
 In other words, the local method of building had become so modified and 
 altered by the Greeks in adapting it to the Doric, which had become the 
 typical style wdtli them, as to cause the loss of almost all its original 
 
 119. Ionic Lyciaii Tomb. (From Texier' s ' Asie 
 Miueure.") 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VII. 
 
 LYCIAN TOMBS. 
 
 229 
 
 Asiatic forms. It thus became essentially a stone architecture with ex- 
 ternal columns, instead of a style indulging only in wooden pillars, and 
 those used internally, as there is every reason to suppose was the earlier 
 form of the art. The Ionic style, thus composed of two elements, 
 took the arrangement of the temples from the Doric, and their details 
 from the Asiatic original. The Roman temples, on the contrary, which 
 have been erected in this part of the world, in their columns and other 
 details exactly follow the buildings at Rome itself : while, as in the 
 instances above quoted of Jerusalem, Palmyra, Kangovar, and others, 
 the essential forms and arrangements are all local and Asiatic. The 
 former are Greek temples with Asiatic details, the latter Asiatic 
 temples with only Roman masonic forms. The Greeks in fact were 
 colonists, the Romans only conquerors ; and hence the striking differ- 
 ence in the style of Asiatic art executed under their respective influ- 
 ence. We shall have frequent occasion in the sequel to refer to this 
 difference. 
 
 120. Elevation of the Monument and Section of the Tomb at Amrith. (From Renan.i) 
 
 Though not strictly within the geographical limits of this chapter, 
 there is a group of tombs at Amrith — the ancient Marathos, on the 
 coast of Syria — which are too interesting to be passed over ; but so 
 
 ^ In reality the monument stands ex- 
 actly over the centre of the rock-cut 
 sepulchre. The section-line must there- 
 
 fore, be understood to be carried back 
 about 10 feet from the face of the monu- 
 ment. 
 
230 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 exceptional in the present state of our knowledge, that it is difficult 
 to assign them their proper place anywhere. 
 
 The principal monument represented in Woodcut No. 120 is 
 31 ft. 8 in. in height, composed of very large blocks of stone and 
 situated over a sepulchral cavern. There is no inscription or indi- 
 cation to enable us to fix its date with certainty. The details of its 
 architecture might be called Assyrian ; but we know of nothing in 
 that country that at all resembles it. On the other hand there is a 
 moulding on its base, which, if correctly drawn, would appear to be 
 of Roman origin ; and there is a look about the lions that would lead 
 us to suspect they were carved under Greek influence — after the age 
 of Alexander at least. 
 
 The interest consists in its being almost the only perfect survivor 
 of a class of monuments at one time probably very common ; but 
 which we are led to believe from the style of ornamentation were 
 generally in brick. It is also suggestive, from its close resemblance to 
 the Buddhist topes in Afghanistan and India ; the tall form of those, 
 especially in the first-named country, and their universally domical 
 outline, point unmistakeably to some such original as this : and 
 lastly, were I asked to point out the building in the old world which 
 most resembled the stele which Herod erected over the Tombs of the 
 Kings at Jerusalem, in expiation of his desecration of their sanctity,^ 
 this is the monument to which I should unhesitatingly refer. 
 
 1 Joaephus, Ant. xvi. 7, § 1. 
 
121- West View of the Acropolis, (iroin Wordsworth s •■ Athens." 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 GREECE. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Historical notice — Pelasgic art — Tomb of Atreiis — Other remains — Hellenic 
 Greece — History of the orders — Doric order — The Parthenon — Ionic order 
 — Corinthian order — Caryatides — Forms of temples — Mode of lighting — 
 Municipal architecture — Theatres. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA. 
 
 DATES. 
 
 AtridsB at Mycenfe, from . B. c. 1207 to 1104 
 Return of the Heraclidse to Peloponnese 1104 
 
 Olympiads commence 776 
 
 Cypselidae at Corinth — Building of tem- 
 ple at Corinth, from .... 655 to 581 
 
 Selinus founded, and first temple com- 
 menced 626 
 
 Ascendency of .^gina — Building of tem- 
 ple at ^gina, from 508 to 449 
 
 Battle of Marathon 490 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Battle of Salamis b. c. 480 
 
 Theron at Agrigentum. Commences 
 
 great temple 480 • 
 
 Cimon at Athens. Temple of Theseus 
 
 built 469 
 
 Pericles at Athens. Parthenon finished 438 
 Temple of Jupiter at Olympia finished . 436 
 Propylgea at Athens built, from . 437 to 432 
 Selinus destroyed by Carthaginians . . 410 
 Erechtheium at Athens finished . . . 409 
 Monument of Lvsicrates at Athens . . 335 
 Death of Alexander the Great .... 324. 
 
 TILL within a very recent period the histories of Greece and Rome 
 have been considered as the ancient histories of the world ; and even 
 now, in our universities and public schools, it is scarcely acknowledged 
 
 ' Beule's excavations have proved 
 that the outer gate of the Acropolis was 
 in front, not at the side as here shown. 
 
 "Acropole d'Athenes." Paris, vol. i. 
 pi. i. and ii. 
 
232 
 
 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut I. 
 
 that a more ancient record lias been read on the monuments of Egypt 
 and dug out of the bowels of the earth in Assyria. 
 
 It is nevertheless true that the decipherment of the hieroglyphics 
 on the one hand, and the reading of the arrow-headed characters on the 
 other, have disclosed to us two forms of civilization anterior to that 
 which reappeared in Greece in the 8th century before Christ. Based 
 on those that preceded it, the Hellenic form developed itself there with 
 a degree of perfection never before seen, nor has it, in its own peculiar 
 department, ever been since surpassed. 
 
 These discoveries have been of the utmost importance, not only 
 in correcting our hitherto narrow views of ancient history, but in 
 assisting to explain much that was obscure, or utterly unintelligible, 
 in those histories with which we were more immediately familiar. 
 We now, for the first time, comprehend whence the Greeks obtained 
 many of their arts and much of their civilization, and to what extent 
 the character of these was affected by the sources from which they 
 were derived. 
 
 Having already described the artistic forms of Egypt and Assyria, 
 it is not difficult to discover the origin of almost every idea, and of 
 every architectural feature, that was afterwards found in Greece. 
 But even with this assistance we should not be able to understand the 
 phenomena which Greek art presents to us, were it not that the monu- 
 ments reveal to us the existence of two distinct and separate races 
 existing contemporaneously in Greece. If the Greeks were as purely 
 Aryan as their language would lead us to believe, all our ethnographic 
 theories are at fault. But this is precisely one of those cases where 
 archaeology steps in to supplement what philology tells us and to 
 elucidate what that science fails to reveal. That the language of the 
 Greeks, with the smallest possible admixture from other sources, is 
 pure Aryan, no one will dispute ; but their arts, their religion, and 
 frequently their institutions, tend to ascribe to them an altogether 
 different origin. Fortunately the ruins at Mycenae and Orchomenos 
 are sufficient to afford us a key to the mystery. From them we learn 
 that at the time of the war of Troy a people were supreme in Greece 
 who were not Hellens, but who were closely allied to the Etruscans 
 and other tomb-building, art-loving races. Whether they were purely 
 Turanian, or merely ultra^Celtic, may be questioned ; but one thing 
 seems clear, that this people were then known to the ancients under 
 the name of Pelnsgi, and it is their presence in Greece, mixed up with 
 the more purely Dorian races, which explains what would otherwise 
 be unintelligible in Grecian civilization. 
 
 Except from our knowledge of the existence of a strong infusion 
 of Turanian blood into the veins of the Grecian people, it would be 
 impossible to understand how a people so purely Aryan in appearance 
 came to adopt a religion so essentially Antliropic and Ancestral. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. I. 
 
 GREECE. 
 
 233 
 
 Their belief in oracles, their worship of trees,^ and many minor 
 peculiarities, were altogether abhorrent to the Aryan mind. 
 
 The existence of these two antagonistic elements satisfactorily 
 explains how it was that while art was unknown in the purely 
 Dorian city of Sparta, it flourished so exuberantly in the quasi- 
 Pelasgic city of Athens ; why the Dorians borrowed their archi- 
 tectural order from Egypt, and hardly changed its form during the 
 long period they employed it ; and how it came to pass that the eastern 
 art of the Persians was brought into Greece, and how it was there 
 modified so essentially that we hardly recognize the original in its 
 altered and more perfect form. It explains, too, how the different 
 States of Greece were artistic or matter-of-fact in the exact pro- 
 portion in which either of the two elements predominated in the 
 people. 
 
 Thus the poetry of Arcadia was unknown in the neighboring 
 State of Sparta; but the Doric race there remained true to their 
 institutions and spread their colonies and their power farther than 
 any other of the little principalities of Greece. The institutions of 
 Lycurgus could never have been maintained in Athens ; but, on the 
 other hand, the Parthenon was as impossible in the Lacedemonian 
 State. Even in Athens art would not have been the wonder that it 
 became without that happy admixture of the two races which then 
 prevailed, mingling the common sense of the one with the artistic 
 feeling of the other, which tended to produce the most brilliant 
 intellectual development which has yet dazzled the world with its 
 splendor. 
 
 The contemporary presence of these two races perhaps also ex- 
 plains how Greek civilization, though so wonderfully brilliant, passed 
 so quickly away. Had either race been pure, the Dorian institutions 
 might have lasted as long as the village-systems of India or the arts 
 of Egypt or China ; but where two dissimilar races mix, the tendency 
 is inevitably to revert to the type of one, and, though the intermixture 
 may produce a stock more brilliant than either parent, the type is less 
 permanent and soon passes away. So soon was it the case, in this in- 
 stance, that the whole of the great history of Greece may be said to be 
 comprehended in the period ranging between the battle of Marathon 
 (b. c. 490) and the peace concluded with Philip of Macedon by the 
 Athenians (b. c. 346) : so that the son of a man who was born before 
 the first event may have been a party to the second. All those 
 wonders of patriotism, of poetry, and art, for which Greece was 
 famous, crowded into the short space of a century and a half, is a 
 phenomenon the like of which the world has not seen before, and is 
 not likely to witness again. 
 
 For details of this see Botticher, Baumkultus der Hellenen." 
 
 Berlin, 1856. 
 
234 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Pelasgic Art.1 
 
 As might be expected, from the length of time that has elapsed 
 since the Pelasgic races ruled in Greece, and owing to the numerous 
 changes that have taken place in that country since their day, their 
 architectural remains are few, and comparatively insignificant. It 
 has thus come to pass that, were it not for their tombs, their city 
 walls, and tlieir works of civil engineering, such as bridges and 
 tunnels — in which they were pre-eminent — we should hardly now 
 possess any material remains to prove their existence or mark the 
 degree of civilization to which they had reached. 
 
 The most remarkable of these remains are the tombs of the kings 
 of Mycenae, a city which in Homeric times had a fair title to be con- 
 sidered the capital of Greece, or at all events to be considered one of 
 the most important of her cities. The Dorians described these as 
 
 5 10 20 30 40 50 ft. 
 
 122. Section ai d Plan of Tomb of Atreiis at Mycenae. Scale of plan 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 treasuries, from tlie number of precious objects found in them, as in 
 the tombs of the Etruscans, and because they looked upon such halls 
 as far more than sufficient for the narrow dwellings of the dead. 
 The most perfect and the largest of them now existing is known as 
 the Treasury or Tomb of Atreus at Mycenae, shown in plan and section 
 in the annexed woodcut. The principal chamber is 48 tt. 6 in. in 
 diameter, and is, or was when pei-fect, of the shape of a regular 
 equilateral pointed arch, a form well adapted to the mode of con- 
 struction, which is that of horizontal layers of stones, projecting the 
 
 1 Writers who derive their knowledge 
 of Grecian art from books only are ex- 
 tremely indignant when any archaeolo- 
 gist ventures to suggest that he knows 
 something of the Pelasgi, or of their af- 
 finities. Their language has entirely 
 perished; and the written accounts are 
 so conflicting and unsatisfactory, tliat 
 no clear ideas on the subject can be ob- 
 
 tained from them. It is not, therefore, 
 to be wondered at that authorities should 
 hitherto have differed so much regard- 
 ing them. The testimony of their works 
 is, however, so clear and distinct, that 
 the bookworms would do well to keep 
 their tempers till at least they have mas- 
 tered the evidence and can refute It. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. I. 
 
 PELASGIC ART. 
 
 235 
 
 one beyond the other, till one small stone closed the whole, and made 
 the vault complete. 
 
 As will be explained further on, this was the form of dome adopted 
 by the Jaina architects in India. It prevailed also in Italy and Asia 
 Minor wherever a Pelasgic race is traced, down to the time when the 
 pointed form again came into use in the Middle Ages, though it was 
 not then used as a horizontal, but as a radiating arch. 
 
 On one side of this hall is a chamber cut in the rock, the true 
 sepulchre apparently, and externally is a long passage, leading to a 
 doorway, which, judging from 
 the fragments that remain 
 (Woodcut No.l23), must have 
 been of a purely Asiatic form 
 of art, and very unlike any- 
 thing found subsequent to 
 this period in Greece. 
 
 To all appearance the 
 dome was lined internally 
 with plates of brass or bronze, 
 some nails of which metals 
 are now found there ; and the 
 holes in which the nails were 
 inserted are still to be seen 
 all over the place. Another 
 of these tombs, erected by 
 Minyas at Orchomenos, de- 
 scribed by Pausanias as one 
 of the wonders of Greece,^ 
 seems from the. remains still 
 existing to have been at least 
 
 20 ft. wider than this one, 123. Fragment of Pillar in front of Tomb of Atreus 
 
 and proportionably larger in at Mycena?. 
 
 every respect. All these were 
 
 covered with earth, and many are now probably hidden which a 
 diligent search might reveal. It is hardly, however, to be hoped that 
 an unritied tomb may be discovered in Greece, though numerous 
 examples are found in Etruria. The very name of treasury must 
 have excited the cupidity of the Greeks ; and as their real destination 
 was forgotten, no lingering respect for the dead could have restrained 
 the hand of the spoiler. 
 
 As domes constructed on the horizontal principle, these two are 
 the largest of which we have any knowledge, though there does not 
 appear to be any reasonable limit to the extent to which such a 
 
 1 Pausanias, ix. 38. 
 
236 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 form of building might be carried. When backed by earth, as 
 these were, it is evident, from the mode of construction, that they 
 cannot be destroyed by any equable pressure exerted from the 
 exterior. 
 
 The only danger to be feared is, what is technically called a rising 
 of the haunches ; and to avoid this it might be necessary, where large 
 domes were attempted, to adopt a form more nearly conical than that 
 used at Mycenae. This might be a less pleasing architectural feature, 
 but it is constructively a better one than the form of the radiating 
 domes we generally employ. 
 
 It is certainly to be regretted that more of the decorative features 
 of this early style have not been discovered. They differ so entirely 
 from anything else in Greece, and are so purely Asiatic in form, that 
 it would be exceedingly interesting to be able to restore a complete 
 decoration of any sort. In all the parts hitherto brought to light, an 
 Ionic-like scroll is repeated in every part and over every detail, rather 
 rudely executed, but probably originally heightened by color. Its 
 counterparts are found in Assyria and at Persepolis, but nowhere 
 else in Greece. V 
 
 The Pelasgic races soon learnt to adopt for their doorways the 
 more pleasing curvilinear form with which they were already 
 
 familiar from their interiors. The 
 
 annexed illustration (Woodcut No. 
 124) from a gateway at Thoricus, 
 in Attica, serves to show its sim- 
 plest and earliest form ; and the 
 illustration (Woodcut No. 127) 
 from Assos, in Asia Minor, of a 
 far more modern- date, shows the 
 most complicated form it took in 
 
 124. Gateway at Thoricus. (FromDod- ancicnt times. In this last mstance 
 
 well's "Greece.") . , t i • i 
 
 it IS merely a discharging arch, 
 and so little fitted for the purpose to which it is applied, that we can 
 only suppose that its adoption arose from a strong predilection for 
 this shape. 
 
 Another illustration of Pelasgic masonry is found at Delos (Wood- 
 cut No. 125), consisting of a roof formed by two arch stones, at a 
 certain angle to one another, similar to the plan adopted in Egypt, 
 and is further interesting as being associated with capitals of pillars 
 formed of the front part of bulls, as in Assyria, pointing again to the 
 intimate connection that existed between Greece and Asia at this early 
 period of the former's history. 
 
 ' The same scroll exists at New I near Malta, and generally wherever 
 Grange in Ireland, in the island of Gozo | chambered tumuli are found. 
 
Bk. hi. Ch. I. 
 
 PELASGIC ART. 
 
 237 
 
 In all these instances it does not seem to have been so much want 
 of knowledge that led these early builders to adopt the horizontal in 
 preference to the radi- 
 ating principle, as a 
 conviction of its great- 
 er durability, as well, 
 perhaps, as a certain 
 predilection for an 
 ancient mode. 
 
 In the construction 
 of their walls they ad- 
 hered, as a mere matter 
 of taste, to forms which 
 they must have known 
 to be inferior to others. 
 In the example, for in- 
 stance, of a wall in the 
 Peloponnesus (Woodcut No. 126), we find the polygonal masonry of 
 an earlier age actually placed upon as perfect a specimen built in 
 regular courses, or what is technically called ashlar work, as any 
 to be found in Greece ; and on 
 the other side of the gateway 
 at Assos (Woodcut No. 127) 
 there exists a semicircular arch, 
 shown by the dotted lines, 
 which is constructed horizon- 
 tally, and could only have been 
 copied from a radiating arch. 
 
 Their city walls are chiefly 
 
 remarkable for the size of the 126. Wall in Peloponnesus. (From Blouet's 
 
 blocks of stone used, and for the " ^^"^^^^ ^" ^^'^^^''^ 
 
 beauty with which their irregular joints and courses are fitted into 
 one another. Like most fortifications, they are generally devoid of 
 ornament, the only architectural features being the openings. These 
 are interesting, as showing the steps by which a peculiar form of 
 masonry was perfected, and which, in after ages, led to important 
 architectural results. 
 
 One of the most primitive of these buildings is a nameless ruin 
 existing near Missolonghi (Woodcut No. 128). In it the sides of the 
 opening are straight for the whole height, and, though making a very 
 stable form of opening, it is one to which it is extremely difiicult to fit 
 doors, or to close by any known means. It was this difiiculty that led 
 to the next expedient adopted of inserting a lintel at a certain height, 
 and making the jambs more perpendicular below, and more sloping 
 above. This method is already exemplified in the tomb of Atreus 
 
 125. Arch at Delos. (From Stuart's "Athens.") 
 
238 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 (Woodcut No. 122), and in the Gate of the Lions at Mycenae (Wood- 
 cut No. 129) ; but it is by no means clear whether the pediments were 
 
 always filled up with 
 sculpture, as in this 
 instance, or left open. 
 In the walls of a town 
 they were probably 
 always closed, but left 
 open in a chamber. 
 In the gate at Mycenae 
 the two lions stand 
 against an altar ^ 
 shaped like a pillar, 
 of a form found only 
 in Lycia, in which 
 the round ends of 
 the timbers of the 
 
 Gateway at Assos. (From Texier's "Asie Mineure.") 
 
 roof are shown as if projecting into the frieze. 
 
 These are slight remains, it must be confessed, from which to 
 reconstruct an art which had so much influence on the civilization of 
 
 128. Doorway at Missolonghi. (From Dodwell.) 
 
 129. Gate of Lions. Mycense. 
 
 Greece; but they are sufficient for the archaeologist, as the existence 
 of a few fossil fragments of the bones of an elephant or a tortoise 
 suffice to prove the pre-existence of those animals wherever they have 
 been found, and enable the palaeontologist to reason upon them with 
 
 J It is to be resjrptted that no cast of 
 these, the oldest sculptures of their class 
 in existence, has reached this country. 
 One is said to exist at Berlin, but it is 
 inaccessible to science. The drawings 
 
 hitherto made of them are so inexact 
 that it is impossible to reason on them, 
 whilst as types of a style they are among 
 the most interesting known to exist any- 
 where. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. I. 
 
 PELASGIC ART. 
 
 239 
 
 almost as much certainty as if he saw them in a menagerie. Nor is it 
 difficult to see why the remnants are so few. When Homer describes 
 the imaginary dwelling of Alcinous — which he meant to be typical of 
 a perfect palace in his day — he does not speak of its construction or 
 solidity, nor tell us how symmetrically it was arranged ; but he is 
 lavish of his praise of its brazen walls, its golden doors with their 
 silver posts and lintels — just as the writers of the Books of Kings and 
 Chronicles praise the contemporary temple or palace of Solomon for 
 similar metallic splendor. 
 
 The palace of Menelaus is described by the same author as full of 
 brass and gold, silver and ivory. It was resplendent as the sun and 
 moon, and appeared to the eye of Telemachus like the mansion of 
 Jupiter himself. 
 
 No temples are mentioned by Homer, nor by any early writer; but 
 the funereal rites celebrated in honor of Patroclus, as described in the 
 XXin. Book of the Iliad, and the mounds still existing on the Plains 
 of Troy, testify to the character of the people whose manners and 
 customs he was describing, and would alone be sufficient to convince 
 us that, except in their tombs, we should find little to commemorate 
 their previous existence. 
 
 The subject is interesting, and deserves far more attention than 
 has hitherto been bestowed upon it, and more space than can be 
 devoted to it here. Not only is this art the art of people who warred 
 before Troy, but our knowledge of it reveals to us a secret which 
 otherwise might for ever have remained a mystery. The religion of 
 the Homeric poems is essentially Anthropic and Ancestral — in other 
 words, of Turanian origin, with hardly a trace of Aryan feeling 
 running through it. When we know that the same was the case 
 with the arts of those days, we feel that it could not well be 
 otherwise ; but what most excites our wonder is the power of the 
 poet, whose song, describing the manners and feelings of an extinct 
 race, was so beautiful as to cause its adoption as a gospel by a people 
 of another race, tincturing their religion to the latest hour of theii 
 existence. 
 
 We have very little means of knowing how long this style of art 
 lasted in Greece. The treasury built by Myron king of Sicyon at 
 Olympia about 650 b.c. seems to have been of this style, in so far as 
 we can judge of it by the description of Pausanias.i It consisted of 
 two chambers, one ornamented in the Doric, one in the Ionic style, not 
 apparently with pillars, but with that kind of decoration which appears 
 at that period to have been recognized as peculiar to each. But the 
 entire decorations seem to have been of brass, the weight of metal em- 
 ployed being recorded in an inscription on the building. The earliest 
 
 1 Pausanias, vi. 19. 
 
240 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 example of a Doric temple that we know of — that of Corinth — would 
 appear to belong to very nearly the same age, so that the 7th century 
 B.C. may probably be taken as the period when the old Turanian form 
 of Pelasgic art gave way before the sterner and more perfect creations 
 of a purer Hellenic design. Perhaps it might be more correct to say 
 that the Hellenic history of Greece commenced with the Olympiads 
 (B.C. 776), but before that kingdon bloomed into perfection an older 
 civilization had passed away, leaving little beyond a few tombs and 
 works of public utility as records of its prior existence. It left, how- 
 ever, an undying influence which can be traced through every subse- 
 quent stage of Grecian history, which gave form to that wonderful 
 artistic development of art, the principal if not the only cause of the 
 unrivalled degree of perfection to which it subsequently attained. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 HELLENIC GREECE. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE ORDERS. 
 
 THE culminating j^eriod of the Pelasgic civilization of Greece was at 
 the time of the war with Troy — the last great military event of that 
 age, and the one which seems to have closed the long and intimate 
 connection of the Greek Pelasgians with their cognate races in Asia. 
 
 Sixty years later the irruption of the Thessalians, and twenty years 
 after that event the return of the Heracleidae, closed, in a political 
 sense, that chapter in history, and gave rise to what may be styled the 
 Hellenic civilization, which proved the great and true glory of Greece. 
 
 Four centuries, however, elapsed, which may appropriately be 
 called the dark ages of Greece ; before the new seed bore fruit, at least 
 in so far as art is concerned. These ages produced, it is true, the laws 
 of Lycurgus, a characteristic effort of a truly Aryan race, conferring as 
 they did on the people who made them that power of self-government, 
 and capacity for republican institutions, which gave them such 
 stability at home and so much power abroad, but which were as 
 inimical to the softer glories of the fine arts in Sparta as they have 
 proved elsewhere. 
 
 When, after this long night, architectural art reappeared, it was at 
 Corinth, under the Cypselidae, a race of strongly-marked Asiatic ten- 
 dencies ; but it had in the meantime undergone so great a transforma- 
 tion as to wellnigh bewilder us. On its reappearance it was no longer 
 characterized by the elegant and ornate art of Mycenae and the cognate 
 
 VOT.. I. — 16 
 
242 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 forms of Asiatic growth, but had assumed the rude, bold proportions of 
 Egyptian art, and Avith ahnost more than Egyptian massiveness. 
 
 Doric Temples in Greece. 
 
 The age of the Doric temple at Corinth is not, it is true, satis- 
 factorily determined ; but the balance of evidence would lead us to 
 believe that it belongs to the age of Cypselus, or about 650 b. c. The 
 pillars are less than four diameters in height, and the architrave — the 
 only "part of the superstructure that now remains — is proportionately 
 heavy. It is, indeed, one of the most massive specimens of architec- 
 ture existing, more so than even its rock-cut prototype at Beni Hassan, ^ 
 from which it is most indubitably copied. As a work of art, it fails 
 from excess of strength, a fault common to most of the efforts of a rude 
 people, ignorant of the true resources of art, and striving, by the 
 expression of physical power alone, to attain its objects. 
 
 Next in age to this is the little temple at ^Egina.^ Its date, too, 
 is unknown, though, judging from the cliaracter of its sculpture, it 
 probably belongs to the middle of the sixth century before Christ. 
 
 We know tliat Athens ad a great temple on the Acropolis, con- 
 temporary with these, and the frusta of its columns still remain, which, 
 after its destruction by the Persians, were built into the Avails of the 
 citadel. It is more than probable that all the principal cities of 
 Greece had temples commensurate with their dignity before the Per- 
 sian War. Many of these were destroyed during that struggle ; but it 
 also happened then, as in France and England in the 12th and 13th 
 centuries, that the old temples were thought unworthy of the national 
 greatness, and of that feeling of exaltation arising from the successful 
 
 If the examples at Beni Hassan and 
 
 131. Capital in Temple at Karnac. 
 E. Falkener.) 
 
 (From 
 
 elsewhere are not considered sufficient 
 to settle the question, it will be difficult 
 to refuse the evidence of this one (Wood- 
 cut No. 131) taken from the southern 
 temple at Karnac, built in the age of 
 Thothmosis III. and Amenophis III. — 
 say 1600 years before Christ, or 1000 years 
 before the earliest Grecian example 
 known. In this instance the abacus is 
 separated from the shaft; there is a bold 
 echinus and a beaded necking; in fact all 
 tlie members of the Grecian order, only 
 wanting the elegance wliich the Greeks 
 added to it. 
 
 In the memoir by Mr. Falkener (" Mu- 
 seum of Classical Antiquities," vol. i. p. 
 87), from which the woodcut is bor- 
 rowed, 27 proto-Doric columns are enu- 
 merated as still existing in eight dif- 
 ferent buildings, ranging from the Third 
 Cataract to Lower Egypt. 
 
 2 The dimensions are 94 feet by 45, 
 covering consequently only 4230 feet. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 DORIC TEMPLES. 
 
 24a 
 
 result of the greatest of their wars, so that almost all those which 
 remained were pulled down or rebuilt. The consequence is, tliat 
 nearly all the great temples now found in Greece were built in the 
 forty or fifty years which succeeded the defeat of the Persians at 
 Salamis and Platsea. 
 
 132. Temple at ^gina restored. No scale. 
 
 The oldest temple of this class is that best known as the Theseium, 
 or Temple of Theseus, at Athens, though it is nearly certain that it 
 ought more properly to be considered the temple of the god Mars. It 
 constitutes a link between the archaic and the perfect age of Grecian 
 art ; more perfect than the temple at JEgina or any that preceded it, 
 but falling short of the perfection of the Parthenon, its near neighbor 
 both in locality and date. 
 
 Of all the great temples, the best and most celebrated is the Par- 
 thenon, the only octastyle Doric temple in Greece, and in its own class 
 undoubtedly the most beautiful building in the world. It is true it 
 has neither the dimensions nor the wondrous expression of power and 
 eternity inherent in Egyptian temples, nor has it the variety and 
 poetry of the Gothic cathedral ; but for intellectual beauty, for perfec- 
 tion of proportion, for beauty of detail, and for the exquisite perception 
 of the highest and most recondite principles of art ever applied to 
 architecture, it stands utterly and entirely alone and unrivalled — the 
 glory of Greece and a reproach to the rest of the world. 
 
 Kext in size and in beauty to this was the great hexastyle temple 
 of Jupiter at Olympia, finished two years later than the Parthenon. 
 Its dimensions were nearly the same, but having only six pillars in 
 front instead of eight, as in the Parthenon, the proportions were 
 different, this temple being 95 ft. by 230, the Parthenon 101 ft. 
 by 227. 
 
 To the same age belongs the exquisite little Temple of Apollo 
 
244 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 Epicurius at Bassae (47 ft. by 125), the Temple of Minerva at Sunium, 
 the greater temple at Khamnus, the Propylsea at Athens, and indeed 
 all that is greatest and most beautiful in the architecture of Greece. 
 The temple of Ceres at Eleusis also was founded and designed at this 
 period, but its execution belongs to a later date. 
 
 Doric Temples in Sicily. 
 
 Owing probably to some local peculiarity, which we have not now 
 the means of explaining, the Dorian colonies of Sicily and Magna 
 Graecia seem to have possessed, in the days of their prosperity, a 
 greater number of temples, and certainly retain the traces of many 
 more, than were or are to be found in any of the great cities of the 
 mother country. The one city of Selinus alone possesses six, in two 
 groups, — three in the citadel and three in the city. Of these the oldest 
 is the central one of the first-named group. Its sculptures, first dis- 
 covered by Messrs. Angel and Harris, indicate an age only slightly sub- 
 sequent to the foundation of the colony, b. c. 636, and therefore probably 
 nearly contemporary with the example above mentioned at Corinth. 
 The most modern is the great octastyle temple, which seems to have 
 been left unfinished at the time of the destruction of the city by the 
 Carthaginians, b. c. 410. It measured 375 ft. by 166, and was conse- 
 quently very much larger than any temple of its class in Greece. 
 The remaining four range between these dates, and therefore form 
 a tolerably perfect chronometric series at that time when the arts 
 of Greece itself fail us. The inferiority, however, of provincial art, 
 as compared with that of Greece itself, prevents us from applying 
 such a test with too much confidence to the real history of the art, 
 though it is undoubtedly valuable as a secondary illustration. 
 
 At Agrigentum there are three Doric temples, two small hexastyles, 
 whose age may be about 500 to 480 b. c, and one great exceptional 
 example, differing in its arrangements from all the Grecian temples of 
 the age. Its dimensions are 360 feet long by 173 broad, and conse- 
 quently very nearly the same as those of the great Temple of Selinus 
 just alluded to. Its date is perfectly known, as it was commenced by 
 Theron b. c. 480, and left unfinished seventy-five years afterwards, 
 when the city was destroyed by the Carthaginians. 
 
 At Syracuse there still exist the ruins of a very beautiful temple of 
 this age; and at Egesta are remains of another in a much more perfect 
 state. 
 
 Paestum, in Magna Graecia, boasts of the most magnificent group of 
 temples after that at Agrigentum. One is a very beautiful hexastyle, 
 belonging probably to the middle of the fifth century b. c, built in a 
 bold and very pure style of Doric architecture, and still retains the 
 greater part of its internal columnar arrangement. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. 11. 
 
 IONIC TEMPLES. 
 
 245 
 
 The other two are more modern, and far less pure both in plan 
 and in detail, one having nine columns at each end, the central pillars 
 of which are meant to correspond with an internal range of pillars, 
 supporting the ridge of the roof. The other, though of a regular 
 form, is so modified by local peculiarities, so corrupt, in fact, as 
 hardly to deserve being ranked with the beautiful order which it 
 most resembles. 
 
 Ionic Temples. 
 
 We have even fewer materials for the history of the Ionic order in 
 Greece than we have for that of the Doric. The recent discoveries 
 in Assyria have proved beyond a doubt that the Ionic was even more 
 essentially an introduction from Asia than the Doric was from Egypt : 
 the only question is, when it was brought into Greece. My own im- 
 pression is, that it existed there in one form or another from the 
 earliest ages, but owing to its slenderer proportions, and the greater 
 quantity of wood used in its construction, the examples may have 
 perished, so that nothing is now known to exist which can lay claim 
 to even so great an antiquity as the Persian War. 
 
 The oldest example, probably, was the temple on the Ilissus, now 
 destroyed, dating from about 484 b. c. ; next to this is the little gem 
 of a temple dedicated to Nike Apteros, or the Wingless Victory, built 
 about fifteen years later, in front of the Propylsea at Athens. The last 
 and most perfect of all the examples of this order is the Erechtheium, 
 on the Acropolis ; its date is apparently about 420 b.c, the great epoch 
 of Athenian art. Nowhere did the exquisite taste and skill of the 
 Athenians show themselves to greater advantage than here ; for though 
 every detail of the order may be traced back to Nineveh or Persej^olis, 
 all are so purified, so imbued with purely Grecian taste and feeling, 
 that they have become essential parts of a far more beautiful order 
 than ever existed in the land in which they had their origin. 
 
 The largest, and perhaps the finest, of Grecian Ionic temples was 
 that built about a century afterwards at Tegea, in Arcadia — a regular 
 peripteral temple of considerable dimensions, but the existence of 
 wiiich is now known only from the description of Pausanias.^ 
 
 As in the case, however, of the Doric order, it is not in Greece 
 itself that we find either the greatest number of Ionic temples or 
 those most remarkable for size, but in the colonies in Asia Minor, 
 and more especially in Ionia, whence the order most properly takes 
 its name. 
 
 That an Ionic order existed in Asia Minor before the Persian 
 War is quite certain, but all examples perished in that memorable 
 struggle; and when it subsequently reappeared, the order had lost 
 
 * Pausanias, viii. 45. 
 
246 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 much of its purely Asiatic character, and assumed certain forms and 
 tendencies borrowed from the simpler and purer Doric style. 
 
 If any temple in the Asiatic Greek colonies escaped destruction in 
 the Persian wars, it was that of Juno at Samos. It is said to have 
 been built by Polycrates, and appears to have been of the Doric order. 
 The ruins now found there are of the Ionic order, 346 ft. by 190 ft., 
 and must have succeeded the first mentioned. The apparent archaisms 
 in the form of the bases, etc. which have misled antiquarians, are 
 merely Eastern forms retained in spite of Grecian influence. 
 
 More remarkable even than this was the celebrated Temple of 
 Diana at Ephesus, said by Pliny to have been 425 ft. long by 220 ft. 
 wide. Recent excavations on the site, however, carried out by Mr. T. 
 Wood, prove that these dimensions apply only to the platform on which 
 it stood. The temple itself, measured from the outside of the angle 
 pillars, was only 348 ft. by 164, making the area 57,072 ft., or about 
 the average dimensions of our mediaeval cathedrals. 
 
 Besides these, there was a splendid decastyle temple, dedicated to 
 Apollo Didymaeus, at Miletus, 156 ft. wide by 295 ft. in length ; an 
 octastyle at Sardis, 261 ft. by 144 ft. ; an exquisitely beautiful, though 
 small hexastyle, at Priene, 122 ft. by 64 ft. ; and another at Teos. 
 and smaller examples elsewhere, besides many others which have no 
 doubt perished. 
 
 Corinthian Temples. 
 
 Tlie Corinthian order is as essentially borrowed from the bell- 
 shaped capitals of Egypt as the Doric is from their oldest pillars. 
 Like everything they touched, the Greeks soon rendered it their own 
 by the freedom and elegance with which they treated it. The acanthus- 
 leaf with which they adorned it is essentially Grecian, and we must 
 suppose that it had been used by them as an ornament either in their 
 metal or wood work, long before they adopted it in stone as an archi- 
 tectural feature. 
 
 As in everything else, however, the Greeks could not help be- 
 traying in this also the Asiatic origin of their art, and the Egyptian 
 order with them was soon wedded to the Ionic, whose volutes became 
 an essential though subdued part of this order. It is in fact a 
 composite order, made up of the bell-shaped capitals of the Egyptians 
 and the spiral of the Assyrians, and adopted by the Greeks at a time 
 when national distinctions were rapidly disappearing and when true 
 and severer art was giving place to love of variety. At that time also 
 mere ornament and carving were supplanting the purer class of forms 
 and the higher aspirations of sculpture with which the Greeks 
 ornamented their temples in their best days. 
 
 In Greece the order does not appear to have been introduced, or at 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. CORINTHIAN TEMPLES. 247 
 
 least generally used, before tlie age of Alexander the Great ; the 
 oldest authentic example, and also one of the most beautiful, being the 
 Clioragic Monument of Lysicrates (b. c. 335), which, notwithstanding 
 the smallness of its dimensions, is one of the most beautiful works of 
 art of the merely ornamental class to be found in any part of the 
 world. A simpler example, but by no means so beautiful, is that of 
 the porticoes of the small octagonal building commonly called the 
 Tower of the Winds at Athens. The largest example in Greece of the 
 Corinthian order is the Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens. This, 
 however, may almost be called a Roman building, though on Grecian 
 soil — having been commenced in its present form under Antioclius Epi- 
 phanes, in the second century b. c, by the Roman architect Cossutius, 
 and only finished by Hadrian, to whom probably we may ascribe the 
 greatest part of what now remains. Its dimensions are 171 ft. by 354 
 ft., or nearly those of the interior of the great Hypostyle Hall at 
 Karnac ; and from the number of its columns, tlieir size and their 
 beauty, it must have been when complete the most beautiful Corin- 
 thian temple of the ancient world. 
 
 Judging, howevei', from some fragments found among tlie Ionic 
 temples of Asia Minor, it appears that the Corinthian order was 
 introduced there before we find any trace of it in Greece Proper. 
 Indeed, d priori^ we might expect that its introduction into Greece 
 Avas part of that reaction which the elegant and luxurious Asiatics 
 exercised on the severer and 
 more manly inhabitants of 
 European Greece, and which 
 was in fact the main cause 
 of their subjection, first to 
 the Macedonians, and finally 
 beneath the iron yoke of 
 Rome. As used by the Asi- 
 atics, it seems to have arisen 
 from the introduction of the 
 bell-shaped capital of the 
 Egyptians, to which they applied the acanthus-leaf, sometimes in 
 conjunction with the honeysuckle ornament of the time, as in Wood- 
 cut No. 133, and on other and later occasions together with the 
 volutes of the same order, the latter combination being the one which 
 ultimately prevailed and became the typical form of the Corinthian 
 capitals. 
 
 Dimensions of Greek Temples. 
 
 Although differing so essentially in plan, the general dimensions 
 of the larger temples of the Greeks were very similar to those of the 
 
 133. Ancient Corinthian Capital. (From 
 Brancliidai.) 
 
248 
 
 GKECIAN ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 mediaeval cathedrals, and although they never reached the altitude of 
 their modern rivals, their cubic dimensions were probably in about 
 the same ratio of proportion. 
 
 The following table gives the approximate dimensions, rejecting 
 fractions, of the eight largest and best known examples : — 
 
 Jimo, at Samos . . . 
 
 . . 346 feet long 
 
 190 feet wide 
 
 = 65,740 feet. 
 
 Jupiter, at Agrigentnm 
 
 . . 360 
 
 
 173 " 
 
 = 62,280 " 
 
 Apollo, at Brancliidje 
 
 . . 362 
 
 
 168 
 
 = 60,816 " 
 
 Jupiter, at Atliens 
 
 . . 354 
 
 55 
 
 171 
 
 = 60,534 " 
 
 Diana, at Ephesus . . 
 
 . . 348 
 
 
 164 
 
 = 57,072 " 
 
 Didymseus, at Miletus 
 
 . . 295 
 
 55 
 
 156 
 
 = 45,020 " 
 
 Cybele, at Sardis . . 
 
 . . 261 
 
 55 
 
 144 
 
 = 37,884 " 
 
 Parthenon, at Atliens 
 
 . . 228 
 
 55 
 
 101 
 
 = 23,028 " 
 
 There may be some 
 
 slight discrepancies in this 
 
 table from the 
 
 figures quoted elsewhere, and incorrectness arising from some of 
 the temples being measured on the lowest step and others, as the 
 Parthenon, on the highest ; but it is sufficient for comparison, which 
 is all that is attempted in its compilation. 
 
 Doric Order.' 
 
 The Doric was the order which the Greeks especially loved and 
 cultivated so as to make it most exclusively their own ; and, as used 
 
 1 The fact of a proto-Doric order 
 having existed in Egypt a thousand years 
 before it is found in Greece ought to 
 suffice as explaining the origin of the 
 style. Still it may be worth while to try 
 and make this a little clearer, as those 
 who are not familiar with examples of 
 
 this mode of building, or have not prac- 
 tically employed it — as it has been my 
 fate to do — feel a difficulty in realizing 
 how a brick pier came to be used with a 
 wooden superstructure. 
 
 The annexed woodcut illustrates a 
 mode of roofing very usually employed 
 
 134. Diagram of Doi'ic construction, as used in the East. 
 
 in the East at this day. Generally a 
 square pier of brickwork is employed; 
 and then an abacus of wood or tiles is 
 indispensable to distribute the pres- 
 sure of a narrow beam over a wider 
 pier. When the pillar is made octag- 
 onal this is even more necessary. 
 
 Where a wooden post is employed 
 it is always of the same thickness 
 as the beam, and is generally mor- 
 ticed into it ; or a bracket may be 
 employed, and is particularly ad- 
 vantageous when a junction takes 
 place between two lengtjis of 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 DORIC ORDER. 
 
 249 
 
 in the Parthenon, it certainly is as complete and as perfect an archi- 
 tectural feature as any style can boast of. When first introduced from 
 Egypt, it, as before stated, partook of even more than Egyptian 
 solidity, biit by degrees became attenuated to the weak and lean form 
 of the Roman order of the same name. Woodcut No. 135 illustrates 
 the three stages of progress from the oldest example at Corinth to the 
 order as used in the time of Philip at Delos, the intermediate being 
 the culminating point in tlie age of Pericles : the first is 4-47 diameters 
 in height, the next 6-025, the last 7 015; and if the table were 
 filled up with all the other examples, the gradual attenuation of the 
 shaft would very nearly give the relative date of the example. This 
 fact is in itself sufiicient to refute the idea of the pillar being copied 
 from a wooden post, as in that case it would have been slenderer at 
 first, and would gradually have departed from the wooden form as 
 the style advanced. This is the case in all carpentry styles. With 
 the Doric order the contrary takes place. The earlier the example the 
 more unlike it is to any wooden original. As the masons advanced 
 In skill and power over their stone material, it came more and more 
 to resemble posts or pillars of wood. The fact appears to be that, 
 either in Egypt or in early Greece, the pillar was originally a pier of 
 brickwork, or of rubble masonry, supporting a wooden roof, of which 
 the architraves, the triglyphs, and the various parts of the cornice, all 
 bore traces down to the latest period. 
 
 Even as ordinarily represented, or as copied in this country, there 
 is a degree of solidity combined with elegance in this order, and an 
 exquisite proportion of the parts to one another and to the work they 
 have to perform, that command the admiration of every person of 
 taste ; but, as used in Greece, its beauty was very much enhanced by 
 a number of refinements whose existence was not suspected till lately, 
 and even now cannot be detected but by the most practised eye. 
 
 the architrave. But even then it is only 
 of the same thickness as the beam. In 
 fact there is no difficulty in recognizing 
 the difference between a carpentry and 
 a masonry form. An abacus is as absurd 
 with the former as it is indispensable 
 with the latter ; and of course those who 
 used squared timbers for the roof would 
 not employ unhewn trunks of trees for 
 the supports. 
 
 On the architrave beam rest the raft- 
 ers, and on these the purlins — in India 
 generally 3 inches square, and spaced a 
 foot or 18 inches apart, according to the 
 length of the tiles used. Sometimes one 
 thickness of tiles is employed, and a lay- 
 er of concrete above; sometimes two, 
 sometimes three thicknesses of tiles, but 
 the timber construction is the same in 
 
 all cases. The one great point to insist 
 upon, however, is that an abacus never 
 was used, and never could have been sug> 
 gested from a timber post or pillar. Tim- 
 ber forms are generally very easily 
 traced, as they are in the roof^ but not 
 in the pillars of Doric temples. 
 
 The base which was afterwards ap- 
 plied by the Romans, probably was sug- 
 gested by the shoe, which in certain sit- 
 uations is a necessary part of a wooden 
 post; but the origin of this feature is 
 probably to be found in Assyria, though 
 in a very different form to that of the 
 Roman order. Its absence in the Grecian 
 Doric is another argument in favor of the 
 masonry origin of the pillar in that or- 
 der. 
 
250 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 The columns were at first assumed to be bounded by straight lines. 
 It is now found that they have an etitasis, or convex profile, in the 
 Parthenon to the extent of -^^^ of the whole height, and are outlined 
 
 135. Temple at Delos. 
 
 Partlienon at Athens. Temple at Corinth, 
 
 by a very delicate hyperbolic curve ; it is true this can hardly be 
 detected by the eye in ordinary positions, but the want of it gives 
 that rigidity and poverty to the column which is observable in modern 
 examples.! 
 
 In like manner, the architrave in all temples was carried upwards 
 so as to form a very flat arch, just sufiicient to correct the optical 
 delusion arising from the interference of the sloping lines of the 
 
 ^ These facts have all been fully elu- i searches on the Parthenon and other 
 cidated by Mr. Penrose in his beautiful | temples of Greece, published by the 
 work containing the results of his re- i Dilettanti Society. 
 
Bk. 111. Cii. II. 
 
 JX)RIC ORDER. 
 
 251 
 
 ])ediinent. This, I believe, was common to all temples, but in the 
 Parthenon the curve was applied to the sides also, though from what 
 motive it is not so easy to detect. 
 
 Another refinement was making all the columns slope slightly 
 inwards, so as to give an idea of strength and support to the whole. 
 Add to this, that all the curved lines used were either hyperbolas or 
 parabolas. With one exception only, no circular line was employed, 
 nor even an ellii)se. Every part of the temple was also arranged 
 with the most unbounded care and accuracy, and every detail of the 
 masonry was carried out with a precision and beauty of execution 
 which is almost unrivalled, and it may be added that the material of 
 the whole was the purest and best white marble. All these delicate 
 adjustments, this exquisite finish and attention to even the smallest 
 details, are well bestowed on a design in itself simple, beautiful, and 
 appropriate. They combine to render this order, as found in the best 
 Greek temples, as nearly faultless as any work of art can possibly be, 
 and such as we may dwell upon with the most unmixed and unvarying 
 satisfaction. 
 
 The system of definite proportion which the Greeks employed in 
 the design of their temples, was another cause of the effect they pro- 
 duce even on uneducated minds. It was not with them merely that 
 the height was equal to the width, or the length about twice the 
 breadth; but every part was proportioned to all those parts with 
 which it was related, in some such ratio as 1 to 6, 2 to 7, 3 to 8, 4 to 9, 
 or 5 to 10, etc. As the scheme advances these numbers become unde- 
 sirably high. In this case they reverted to some such simple ratios 
 as 4 to 5, 5 to 6, 6 to 7, and so on. 
 
 We do not yet quite understand the process of reasoning by which 
 the Greeks arrived at the laws which guided their practice in this 
 respect; but they evidently attached the utmost importance to it, 
 and when the ratio was determined upon, they set it out with such 
 accuracy, that even now the calculated and the measured dimensions 
 seldom vary beyond such minute fractions as can only be expressed in 
 hundredths of an inch. 
 
 Though the existence of such a system of ratios has long been 
 suspected, it is only recently that any measurements of Greek temples 
 have been made with suflicient accuracy to enable the matter to be 
 properly investigated and their existence proved. i 
 
 The ratios are in some instances so recondite, and the correlation 
 of the parts at first sight so apparently remote, that many would be 
 
 1 For measurements we depend on Pen- 
 rose, "Principles of Athenian Architec- 
 ture," etc., fol.; and Cockerell, "The 
 Temples of Egina and Bassse," Lond. 
 1860. The details of the system were first 
 
 publicly announced by Watkiss Lloyd, in 
 a paper read to the Institute of British 
 Architects in 1859: afterwards in an ap- 
 pendix to Mr. Cockerell's work, and in 
 several minor publications. 
 
252 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 inclined to believe they were more fanciful than real.* It would, 
 however, be as reasonable in a person with no ear, or no musical edu- 
 cation, to object to the enjoyment of a complicated concerted piece of 
 music experienced by those differently situated, or to declare that the 
 pain musicians feel from a false note was mere affectation. The eyes 
 of the Greeks were as perfectly educated as our ears. They could 
 appreciate harmonies which are lost in us, and were offended at false 
 quantities which our duller senses fail to perceive. But in spite of 
 ourselves, we do feel the beauty of these harmonic relations, though 
 we hardly know why; and if educated to them, we might acquire 
 what might almost be considered a new sense. But be this as it 
 may, there can be no doubt but that a great deal of the beauty which 
 all feel in contemplating the architectural productions of the Greeks, 
 arises from causes such as these, which we are only now beginning 
 to appreciate. 
 
 To understand, however, the Doric order, we must not regard it 
 as a merely masonic form. Sculpture was always used, or intended to 
 be used, with it. The Metopes between the triglyphs, the pediments 
 of the i^orticoes, and the acroteria or pedestals on the roof, are all 
 unmeaning and useless unless filled or surmounted with sculptured 
 figures. Sculpture is indeed, as essential a part of this order as the 
 acanthus-leaves and ornaments of the cornice are to the capitals and 
 entablature of the Corinthian order; and without it, or without its 
 
 place being supplied by 
 painting, we are merely 
 looking at the dead skele- 
 ton, the mere framework 
 of the order, without the 
 flesh and blood that gave 
 it life and purpose. 
 
 It is when all these 
 parts are combined toge- 
 ther, as in the portico of 
 the Parthenon (Woodcut 
 No. 136), that we can 
 understand this order in all its perfection ; for though each part was 
 beautiful in itself, their full value can be appreciated only as parts 
 of a great w^hole. 
 
 Another essential part of the order, too often overlooked, is the 
 
 136. The rartheuoii. Scale 50 It. to 1 in. 
 
 1 The pyramid-building kings of 
 Lower Egypt seem to have had some 
 distinct ideas of a system of definite 
 proportions in architectural building, 
 and to have put it into practice in 
 the pyramid, and possibly elsewhere, but 
 
 it has not yet been sought for in the other 
 buildings of that age. 
 
 At times I cannot help suspecting more 
 affinity to have existed between the in- 
 habitants of Lower Egypt and those of 
 Greece than is at first sight apparent. 
 
i^K. III. Ch. II. 
 
 IONIC ORDER. 
 
 253 
 
 color, which was as integral a part of it as its form. Till very lately, 
 it was denied that Greek temples were, or could be, painted : the 
 unmistakable remains of color, however, that have, been discovered 
 in almost all temples, and the greater knowledge of the value 
 and use of it which now prevails, have altered public opinion very 
 much on the matter, and most people now admit that some color 
 was used, though few are agreed as to the extent to which it was 
 carried. 
 
 It cannot now be questioned that color was used everywhere 
 internally, and on every object. Externally too it is generally ad- 
 mitted that the sculpture was painted and relieved by strongly 
 colored backgrounds ; the lacunaria, or recesses of the roof, were 
 also certainly painted ; and all the architectural mouldings, which at 
 a later period were carved in relief, have been found to retain traces 
 of their painted ornaments. 
 
 It is disputed whether the echinus or carved moulding of the 
 capital was so ornamented. There seems little doubt but that it was • 
 and that the walls of the cells were also colored throughout and 
 covered with paintings illustrative of the legends and attributes of 
 the divinity to whom the temple was dedicated or of the purposes 
 for which it was erected. The plane' face of the architrave was pro- 
 bably left white, or merely ornamented with metal shields or inscrip- 
 tions, and the shafts of the columns appear also to have been left plain, 
 or merely slightly stained to tone down the crudeness of the white 
 marble. Generally speaking, all those parts which from their form 
 or position were in any degree protected from the rain or atmospheric 
 influences seem to have been colored ; those particularly exposed, to 
 have been left plain. To whatever extent, however, painting may 
 have been carried, these colored ornaments were as essential a part 
 of the Doric order as the carved ornaments were of the Corinthian, 
 and made it, when perfect, a richer and more ornamental, as it was a 
 more solid and stable, order than the latter. The color nowhere 
 interfered with the beauty of its forms, but gave it that richness and 
 amount of ornamentation which is indispensable in all except the 
 most colossal buildings, and a most valuable adjunct even to them. 
 
 Ionic Order. 
 
 The Ionic order, as we now find it, is not without some decided 
 advantages over the Doric. It is more complete in itself and less 
 dependent on sculpture. Its frieze was too small for much display of 
 human life and action, and was probably usually ornamented with 
 lines of animals,^ like the friezes at Persepolis. But the frieze of the 
 
 ^ It was called Zoophorus {life or figure bearer). 
 
254 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut I. 
 
 little temple of Nike Apteros is brilliantly ornamented in the same 
 style as those of the Doric order. It also happened that those details 
 and ornaments which were only painted in the Doric, were carved in 
 the Ionic order, and remain therefore visible to the present day, which 
 gives to this order a completeness in our eyes which the other cannot 
 boast of. Add to this a certain degree of Asiatic elegance and grace, 
 
 and the whole when put 
 ■ together makes up a sin- 
 
 gularly pleasing architec- 
 tural object. But not- 
 withstanding these advan- 
 tages, the Doric order will 
 probably always be ad- 
 mitted to be superior, as 
 belonging to a higher class 
 of art, and because all its 
 forms and details are bet- 
 ter and more adapted to 
 their purpose than those of 
 the Ionic. 
 
 The principal charac- 
 teristic of the Ionic order 
 is the Pelasgic or Asiatic 
 spiral, here called a volute, 
 which, notwithstanding its 
 elegance, forms at best 
 but an awkward capital. 
 The Assyrian honeysuckle 
 below this, carved as it is 
 with the exquisite feeling 
 and taste which a Greek 
 alone knew how to impart 
 to such an object, forms as 
 elegant an architectural 
 detail as is anywhere to 
 be found ; and whether 
 used as the necking of a 
 column, or on the crowning member of a cornice, or on other parts 
 of the order, is everywhere the most beautiful ornament connected 
 with it. Comparing this order with that at Persepolis (Woodcut 
 No. 89), the only truly Asiatic prototype we have of it, we see how 
 much the Doric feeling of the Greeks had done to sober it down, by 
 abbreviating the capital and omitting the greater part of the base. 
 
 This process was carried much farther when the order was used in 
 conjunction with the Doric, as in the Propylaea, than when used by 
 
 luuuuuuuuyit 
 
 1 
 
 137. Ionic order of Ereclitheium at Athens. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 IONIC ORDER. 
 
 255 
 
 itself, as in the Erechtheium ; still in every case all the parts found 
 in the Asiatic style are found in the Greek. The same form and 
 feelings pervade both ; and, except in beauty of execution and detail 
 it is not quite clear how far even the Greek order is an improvement 
 on the Eastern one. The Persepolitan base is certainly the more 
 beautiful of the two; so are many parts of the capital. The perfection 
 of the whole, however, depends on the mode in which it is employed ; 
 and it is perfectly evident that the Persian order could not be com- 
 bined with the Doric, nor applied with much propriety as an external 
 order, which was the essential use of all the Grecian forms of pillars. 
 
 When used between antas or square piers, as seems usually to have 
 been the case in Assyria, the two-fronted form of the Ionic capital was 
 appropriate and elegant ; but when it was employed, as in the Erech- 
 theium, as an angle column, it presented a difficulty which even 
 Grecian skill and ingenuity could not quite conquer. When the 
 Persians wanted the capital to face four ways they turned the side 
 outwards, as at Persepolis (Woodcut No. 89), and put the volutes in 
 the angles — which was at best but an awkward mode of getting ovei 
 the difficulty. 
 
 The instance in which these difficulties 
 have been most successfully met is in the 
 internal order at Bassse. There the three 
 sides are equal, and are equally seen — the 
 fourth is attached to the wall — and the 
 junction of the faces is formed with an 
 elegance that has never been surpassed. 
 It has not the richness of the order of 
 the Erechtheium, but it excels it in ele- 
 gance. Its widely spreading base still 
 retains traces of the w^ooden origin of the 
 order, and carries us back towards the 
 times when a shoe was necessary to sup- 
 port wooden posts on the floor of an 
 Assyrian hall. 
 
 Notwithstanding the amount of carving 
 which the Ionic order displays, there can 
 be little doubt of its having been also 
 ornamented with color to a considerable 
 extent, but probably in a different manner 
 
 from the Doric. My own impression is, that the carved parts 
 were gilt, or picked out with gold, relieved by colored grounds, 
 varied according to the situation in which they were found. The 
 existing remains prove that colors were used in juxtaposition, to 
 relieve and heighten the architectural effect of the carved ornaments 
 of this order. 
 
 Ionic order in Temple of 
 Apollo at BassjB. 
 
 139. 
 
 Section of lialf of the Ionic 
 Capital at Bassse, taken 
 through the volute. 
 
256 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 In the Ionic temples at Athens the same exquisite masonry was 
 used as in the Doric ; the same mathematical precision and care is 
 bestowed on the entasis of the columns, the drawing of the volutes, 
 and the execution of even the minutest details; and much of its 
 beauty and effect are no doubt owing to this circumstance, which we 
 miss so painfully in nearly all modern examples. 
 
 Corinthian Order. 
 
 As before mentioned, the 
 Corinthian order was only 
 introduced into Greece on the 
 decline of art, and never rose 
 during the purely Grecian 
 age to the dignity of a temple 
 order. It most probably, how- 
 ever, was used in the more 
 ornate specimens of domestic 
 architecture, and in smaller 
 works of art, long before any 
 of those examples of it were 
 executed which we now find 
 in Greece. 
 
 The most typical specimen 
 we now know is that of the 
 Choragic Monument of Lysi- 
 crates (Woodcut No. 140), 
 which, notwithstanding all its 
 elegance of detail and exe- 
 cution, can hardly be pro- 
 nounced to be perfect, the 
 Egyptian and Asiatic fea- 
 tures being only very indif- 
 ferently united to one another. 
 The foliaged part is rich and 
 full, but is not carried up 
 into the upper or Ionic por- 
 tion, which is, in comparison, 
 lean and poor; and though 
 separately the two parts are 
 irreproachable, it was left to 
 the Romans so to blend the 
 two together as to make a perfectly satisfactory whole out of them. 
 In this example, as now existing, the junction of the column with. 
 
 140. Order of the Choragic Moniiment of Lysicrates. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 CORINTHIAN ORDER. 
 
 257 
 
 the capital is left a plain sinking, and so it is generally copied in 
 modern times ; but there can be little doubt that this was originally 
 filled by a bronze wreath, which was probably gilt. Accordingly this 
 is so represented in the woodcut as being essential to the completion 
 of the order. The base and shaft have, like the upper part of the 
 capital, more Ionic feeling in them than the order was afterwards 
 allowed to retain ; and altogether it is, as here practised, far more 
 elegant, though less complete, than the Roman form which super- 
 seded it. 
 
 The othei- Athenian example, that of the Tower of the Winds, 
 (Woodcut No. 141), is remarkable as being almost purely Egyptian in 
 
 1 1 
 
 II 1 II II II II II 1 1 
 
 -1 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 141. Order of the Tower of the Winds, Athens. 
 
 its types, with no Ionic admixture. The columns have no bases, the 
 capitals no volutes, and the water-leaf clings as closely to the bell as it 
 does in the Egyptian examples. The result altogether wants rich- 
 ness, and, though appropriate on so small a scale, would hardly be 
 pleasing on a larger. 
 
 The great example of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius differs in no 
 essential part from the Roman order, except that the corners of the 
 VOL. I. — 17 
 
258 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 abacus are not cut off ; and that, being executed in Athens, there is a 
 degree of taste and art displayed in its execution which we do not find 
 in any Roman examples. Strictly speaking, however, it belongs to 
 that school, and should be enumerated as a Roman, and not as a 
 Grecian, example. 
 
 Caeyatides. 
 
 It has been already explained that the Egyptians never used cary- 
 atide figures, properly so called, to support the entablatures of their 
 
 architecture, their figures being 
 always attached to the front of 
 the columns or piers, which were 
 the real bearing mass. At Per- 
 sepolis, and elsewhere in the East, 
 we find figures everywhere em- 
 ployed supporting the throne or 
 the platform of the palaces 
 of the kings ; 
 not, indeed, on 
 their heads, as 
 the Greeks used 
 them, but rather 
 in their uplifted 
 hands. 
 
 The name, 
 however, as well 
 as their being 
 only used in con- 
 junction with the 
 Ionic order and 
 with Ionic de- 
 tails, all point to 
 an Asiatic ori- 
 gin for this very 
 questionable 
 form of art. As 
 employed in the 
 little portico at- 
 tached to 
 E r e c h th eium, 
 
 these figures are used with so much taste, and all the ornaments are 
 so elegant, that it is difticult to criticize or find fault ; but it is never- 
 theless certain that it was a mistake which even the art of the Greeks 
 could hardly conceal. To use human figures to support a cornice is 
 
 142. Caryatide Figure In the British Museum. 
 
 +V,p 143. Caryatide Figure 
 from the Erectheiuni. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 FORMS OF TEMPLES. 
 
 unpardonable, unless it is done as a mere secondary adjunct to a 
 building. In the Erechtlieiura it is a little too prominent for this, 
 though used with as much discretion as 
 was perhaps possible under the circum- 
 stances. Another example of the sort 
 is shown in Woodcut No. 142, which, 
 by employing a taller cap, avoids some 
 of the objections to the other; but the 
 figure itself, on the other hand, is less 
 architectural, and so errs on the other 
 side. 
 
 Another form of this class of sup- 
 port is that of the giants or Telamones^ 
 instances of which are found supporting 
 the roof of the great temple at Agri- 
 gentum, and in the baths of the semi- 
 Greek city of Pompeii. As they do not 
 actually bear the entablature, but only 
 seem to relieve the masonry behind 
 them, their employment is less objectionable than that of the female 
 figures above described ; but even they hardly fulfil the conditions of 
 true art, and their place might be better filled by some more strictly 
 architectural feature. 
 
 Forms of Temples. 
 
 The arrangements of Grecian Doric temples show almost less 
 variety than the forms of the pillars, and no materials exist for tracing 
 their gradual development in an historical point of view. The temples 
 at Corinth, and the oldest at Selinus, are both perfect examples of the 
 hexastyle arrangement to which the Greeks adhered in all ages ; and 
 though there can be little doubt that the peripteral form, as well as 
 the order itself, was borrowed from Egypt, it still was so much modi- 
 fied before it appeared in Greece, that it would be interesting, if it 
 could be done, to trace the several steps by which the change w^as 
 effected. 
 
 In an architectural point of view this is by no means difficult. 
 The simplest Greek temples were mere cells, or small square apart- 
 ments suited to contain an image — the front being what is technically 
 called distyle in antis^ or with two pillars between antce^ or square 
 pilaster-like piers terminating the side walls. Hence the interior 
 enclosure of Grecian temples is called the cell or cella, however large 
 and splendid it may be. 
 
 The next change was to separate the interior into a cell and 
 porch by a wall with a large doorway in it, as in the small temple at 
 
 14-1. Telaiuoues at Agrigeiituiu. 
 
260 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Scale for Plan 
 
 M 20 iO A 
 
 4 io /rf zo ;ts 
 
 Scale for Elevation. 
 
 Rhamnus (Woodcut No. 145), where the opening liowever can scarcely 
 be called a doorway, as it extends to the roof, 
 A third change was to put a porch of 4 pillars 
 in front of the last arrangement, or, as appears 
 to have been more usual, to bring forward the 
 screen to the positions of the pillars as in the 
 last example, and to place the 4 pillars in 
 front of this. None of these plans admitted 
 of a peristyle, or pillars on the flanks. To 
 obtain this it was necessary to increase the 
 number of pillars of the portico to 6, or, as it 
 is termed, to make it hexastyle, the two outer 
 pillars being the ^first of a range of 13 or 15 
 columns, extended ' along each side of the 
 temple. The cell in this arrangement was a 
 complete temple in itself — distyle in antis, 
 most frequently made so at both ends, and 
 the whole enclosed in its envelope of columns, as in Woodcut 
 
 145. Small Temple at Rhamnus. 
 
 • ft a a a 
 
 146. Plan of Temple of Apollo at Bassae. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 7. Plan of Parthenon at Athens. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 148. Plan of the great Temple at Selinus. 
 (From Hittorf , " Arch. Antique en 
 Sicile.") Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 FORMS OF TEMPLES. 
 
 No. 146. Sometimes the cell was tetrastyle or with four pillars in 
 front. 
 
 In this form the Greek temple may be said to be complete, very 
 few exceptions occurring to the rule, though the Parthenon itself is 
 one of these few. It has an inner hexastyle portico at each end of 
 the cell ; beyond these outwardly are octastyle porticoes, with 17 
 columns on each flank. 
 
 The great temple at Selinus is also octastyle, but it is neither so 
 simple nor so beautiful in its arrangement ; and, from the decline of 
 style in the art when it w^as 
 built, it is altogether an inferior 
 example ; still, as one of the 
 largest of Greek Doric temples, 
 its plan is w^orthy of being 
 quoted as an illustration of the 
 varying forms of these temples. 
 
 Another great exception is 
 the great temple at Agrigen- 
 tum (Woodcuts Nos. 149 and 
 151), wiiere the architect at- 
 tempted an order on so gigantic 
 a scale that he was unable to 
 construct the pillars with their 
 architraves standing free. The 
 interstices of the columns are 
 therefore built up with walls 
 pierced wdth windows, and alto- 
 gether the architecture is so bad, 
 that even its colossal dimensions 
 must have failed to render it at 
 any time a pleasing or satisfac- 
 tory w^ork of art. 
 
 A fourth exception is the 
 temple at Paestum before re- 
 ferred to, wdth 9 pillars in front, 
 a clumsy expedient, but which 
 arose from its having a range of columns down the centre to 
 support the ridge of the roof by a simpler mode than the triangular 
 truss usually employed for carrying the roof between tw^o ranges of 
 columns. 
 
 With the exception of the temple at Agrigentum, all these w^ere 
 peristylar, or had ranges of columns all around them, enclosing the cell 
 as it were in a case, an arrangement so apparently devoid of purpose, 
 that it is not at first sight easy to account for its universality. It will 
 not suflSce to say that it was adopted merely because it w^as beautiful, 
 
 149. Plan of Great Temple at Agrigentum. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
262 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part I, 
 
 for the forms of Egyptian temples, which had no pillars externally, 
 were as perfect, and in the hands of the Greeks would have become as 
 beautiful, as the one they adopted. Besides, it is natural to suppose 
 they would rather have copied the larger than the smaller temples, if 
 no motive existed for their preference of the latter. The peristyle, 
 too, was ill-suited for an ambulatory, or place for processions to circu- 
 late round the temple ; it was too narrow for this, and too high to 
 protect the procession from the rain. Indeed, I know of no suggestion 
 except that it may have been adopted to protect the paintings on the 
 walls of the cells from the inclemency of the weather. It hardly 
 admits of a doubt that the walls were i)ainted, and that without pro- 
 tection of some sort this would very soon have been obliterated. It 
 seems also very evident that the peristyle was not only practically, 
 but artistically, most admirably adapted for this purpose. The 
 paintings of the Greeks were, like those of the Egyptians, composed 
 of numerous detached groups, connected only by the story, and it 
 almost required the intervention of ])illars, or some means of dividing 
 into compartments the surface to be so painted, to separate these 
 groups from one another, and to prevent the whole sequence from 
 being seen at once ; while, on the other hand, nothing can have been 
 more beautiful than tlie white marble columns relieved against a 
 richly-colored plane surface. The one appears so necessary to the 
 other, that it seems hardly to be doubted that this was the cause, or 
 that the effect must have been most surpassingly beautiful. 
 
 Mode op Lighting Temples. 
 
 The arrangement of the interior of Grecian temples necessarily 
 depended on the mode in which they w^ere lighted. No one will, I 
 believe, now contend, as was once done, that it was by lamplight 
 alone that the beauty of th?'r interiors could be seen; and as light 
 certainly was not introduced through the side walls, nor could be in 
 sufficient quantities through the doorways, it is only from the roof 
 that it could be admitted. At the same time it could not have been 
 by a large horizontal opening in the roof, as has been supposed, as 
 that would have admitted the rain and snow as well as the light ; 
 and the only alternative seems to be one I suggested some years 
 ago — of a clerestory,! similar internally to that found in all the great 
 
 1 The reasons which induced me to 
 suggest an "opaion" or clerestory instead 
 of an " hypiBthron " or skylight, were 
 fully set forth in the " True Principles of 
 Beauty in Art," in 1849. I afterwards 
 submitted a paper on the same subject to 
 the Institute of British Architects in 
 
 1861. On this occasion a considerable 
 amount of discussion took place ; but no 
 valid objection was brought forward 
 against my views, except, of course their 
 novelty, and their being opposed to 
 authority. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 MODE OF LIGHTING TEMPLES. 
 
 263 
 
 Egyptian temples,^ but externally requiring such a change of arrange- 
 ment as was necessary to adapt it to a sloping instead of a flat roof. 
 This seems to have been effected by countersinking it into the roof, 
 so as to make it in fact 3 ridges in those parts where the light was 
 admitted, though the regular slope of the roof was retained between 
 these openings, so that neither the ridge nor the continuity of the 
 lines of the roof was interfered with. This would effect all that was 
 required, and in the most beautiful manner ; it moreover agrees with 
 all the remains of Greek temples that now exist, as well as with all 
 the descriptions that have been handed down to us from antiquity. 
 
 This arrangement will be understood from the section of the Par- 
 thenon (Woodcut No. 
 150), restored in ac- 
 cordance with the above 
 explanation, which 
 agrees perfectly with 
 all that remains on the 
 spot, as well as with all 
 the accounts we have 
 of that celebrated tem- 
 ple. The same system 
 
 *■ . 150. Sectiuu ot the Parthenou. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 applies even more 
 
 easily to the great hexastyle at Pjestum and to the beautiful little 
 
 151. Part Section, part Elevation, of Great Temple at Agrigentuni. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in.. 
 
 Twenty-five years is probably not long 
 enough time to allow of a new theory 
 being adopted ; but as my proposal cer- 
 tainly does meet both the artistic and 
 literary exigencies of the case better 
 than any other that has been put for- 
 
 ward, in another quarter of a century it 
 may probably find its way into books on 
 architecture, or earlier if I die in the 
 meanwhile. 
 
 1 See Woodcuts Nos. 21, 23, 26., 
 
264 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTUKE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Temple of Apollo at Bassae, in Phigaleia (Woodcut No. 146), and 
 in fact to all the regular Greek temples. Indeed it seems impossible 
 to account for the peculiarities of that temple except on some such 
 theory as this. Any one who studies the plan (Woodcut No. 146) 
 will see at once what pains were taken to bring the internal columns 
 exactly into the spaces between those of the external peristyle. The 
 effect inside is clumsy, and never would have been attempted were 
 it not that practically their position was seen from the outside, and 
 this could hardly have been so on any other hypothesis than that 
 now proposed. An equally important point in the examination of 
 this theory is that it applies equally to the exceptional ones. The 
 side aisles, for instance, of the great temple at Agrigentum were, as 
 before mentioned, lighted by side windows; the central one could 
 only be lighted from the roof, and it is easy to see how this could be 
 effected by introducing openings between the telamones, as shown in 
 Woodcut No. 151. 
 
 Another exceptional temple is that at Eleusis, which we know to 
 
 have had windows and shutters 
 above, used in admitting or exclu- 
 ding the light during the cele- 
 bration of the mysteries. The 
 arrangements of this temple lend 
 themselves admirably to this mode 
 of introducing light, as shown in 
 the plan and section annexed 
 (Woodcuts Nos. 152 and 153). 
 
 The great Temple of Jupiter 
 Olympus (Woodcut No. 154) was 
 apparently lighted according to 
 another system, owing probably to 
 its immense height, and other pecu- 
 liarities of its construction. The 
 light seems to have been intro- 
 duced into what may be considered 
 
 152. Plan of Temple of Ceres at Eleusi 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 153. Section of Temple of Ceres at Eleusis. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. 11. 
 
 MODE OF LIGHTING TEMPLES. 
 
 265 
 
 a court, or hypcethron^ in front of the cell, which was lighted through 
 its inner wall. This seems to have been the temple mentioned 
 by Vitruvius,! whose description has 
 given rise to such confusion on this 
 subject. It is decastyle, and the only 
 one to which his words ai)ply, or to 
 wliich it is possible to adapt such a 
 mode of lighting as he describes. 
 
 Tlie Ionic temples of Asia are all 
 too much ruined to enable us to say 
 exactly in what manner, and to what 
 extent, this mode of lighting was 
 applied to them, though there seems 
 no doubt that the method there 
 adopted was very similar in all its 
 main features. 
 
 The little Temple of Nike Apteros 
 and the temple on the Ilissus, were 
 both too small to require any compli- 
 cated arrangement of the sort, but the 
 Ionic temple of Pandrosus was lighted 
 by windows wliich still remain at the 
 west end, so that it is possible the 
 same expedient may have been adopted 
 to at least some extent in the Asiatic 
 examples. The latter, however, is, 
 with one exception, the sole instance 
 of windows in any European-Greek temple, the only other example 
 being in the very exceptional temple at Agrigentum. It is valuable, 
 besides, as showing how little the Greeks were bound by rules or by 
 any fancied laws of symmetry. 
 
 As is shown in the plan, elevation, and view (Woodcuts Nos. 155, 
 
 154. Plan of Temple of Jupiter Olyuipius 
 at Athens. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 155. Plan of Erechtheium. (From 
 Stuart.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 156. Elevation of West End of Erechtheium. 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 156, 157), the Erechtheium consisted, properly speaking, of 3 temples 
 grouped together; and it is astonishing what pains the architect 
 
 ^ Yitruvius, lib. i. ch. 1. 
 
266 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 took to prevent their being mistaken for one. The porticoes of two 
 of them are on different levels, and the third or caryatide porch is of a 
 different height and different style. Every one of these features is 
 perfectly symmetrical in itself, and the group is beautifully balanced 
 and arranged ; and yet no Gothic architect in his wildest moments 
 could have conceived anything more picturesquely irregular than the 
 whole becomes. Indeed there can be no greater mistake than to 
 suppose that Greek architecture was fettered by any fixed laws of 
 formal symmetry: each detail, every feature, every object, such as 
 a hall or temple, which could be considered as one complete and 
 separate whole, was perfectly symmetrical and regular ; but no two 
 buildings — no two apartments — if for different purposes, were made 
 
 157. VieAV of Erechtheium. (From In wood.) 
 
 to look like one. On the contrary, it is quite curious to observe what 
 pains they took to arrange their buildings so as to produce variety 
 and contrast, instead of formality or singleness of effect. Temples, 
 when near one another, were never placed parallel, nor were even 
 their propylaea and adjuncts ever so arranged as to be seen together 
 or in one line. The Egyptians, as before remarked, had the same 
 feeling, but carried it into even the details of the same building, 
 Avhich the Greeks did not. In this, indeed, as in almost every other 
 artistic mode of expression, they seem to have hit exactly the happy 
 medium, so as to produce the greatest harmony with the greatest 
 variety, and to satisfy the minutest scrutiny and the most refined 
 taste, while their buildings produced an immediate and striking effect 
 on even the most careless and casual beholders. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. 11. 
 
 MODE OF LIGHTING TEMPLES. 
 
 267 
 
 Owing to the Erechtheium having been converted into a Byzantine 
 church during the Middle Ages, ahnost all traces of its original 
 internal arrangements have been obliterated, and this, with the 
 peculiar combination of three temples in one, makes it more than 
 usually difficult to restore. The an- 
 nexed plan, however, meets all the re- 
 quirements of the case in so far as they 
 are known. To the east was a portico 
 of 6 columns, between two of which 
 stood an altar to Dione, mentioned in 
 the inscription enumerating the re- 
 pairs in 409 B.C. ; ^ inside, according to 
 Pausanias, ^were three altars, the prin- 
 cipal dedicated to Neptune, the others 
 to Bata and Vulcan. From its form, 
 it is evident the roof must have been 
 supported by pillars, and they probably 
 also bore a clerestory, by which, I be- 
 lieve, with rare exceptions, all Greek 
 temples were lighted. 
 
 The Temple of Pandrosus was on a lower level, and was approached 
 by a flight of steps, corresponding with which was a chamber, 
 containing the well of salt water, and which apparently was the 
 abode of the serpent-god Erecthonios, mentioned by Herodotus.^ 
 The central cell was lighted by the very exceptional expedient 
 of three windows in the western wall, which looked directly into it. 
 Beyond this on the south, was the beautiful caryatid e porch, where, 
 if anywhere within the temple, grew the olive, sacred to Minerva. 
 Unfortunately, our principal guide, Pausanias, does not give us a 
 hint where the olive tree grew, and on the whole I am inclined to 
 believe it was in the enclosure outside the western wall of the temple,* 
 and to which a doorway leads directly from the Temple of Pandrosus, 
 
 1 Boeckh, Corpus Iiiscript. Grsec. 
 No. 109. 
 
 2 Attica, xxvi. 
 
 ^ Historia, viii. 41. 
 
 4 Among the many attempts made to 
 restore the interior of this temple, the 
 last and most elaborate is that by the 
 late E. Beule, " Acropole d'Athenes," 
 1854, vol. ii. pi. ii. ; but it is also one of 
 the worst. Indeed it is quite painful to 
 see how the author twists his authorities 
 to meet a preconceived theory. With- 
 out going into it, there is one objection 
 which seems fatal to the whole. 
 
 Like most antiquaries when in diffi- 
 culties for lighting Greek temples, he 
 
 takes off the roof and makes the Temple 
 of Pandrosus an open courtyard, in 
 which he plants the olive. This is so 
 opposed to the whole spirit of Greek art 
 as to be inadmissible on general grounds, 
 but in this instance it introduces the fur- 
 ther absurdity that the Greeks opened 
 three windows in the west wall of the 
 temple to light this courtyard which was 
 already open to the sky! The mode of 
 lighting a temple by vertical windows is 
 so exceptional that it would not have been 
 introduced here had any other means ex- 
 isted of lighting the interior, and con- 
 sequently the combination sliown by M. 
 Beule seems simply impossible. 
 
268 
 
 GEECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 as well as one under the north portico, the use of which it is impos- 
 sible to explain unless we assume that this enclosure was really of 
 exceptional importance. 
 
 Temple of Diana at Ephesus. 
 
 A history of Grecian architecture can hardly be considered as 
 complete without some mention of the great Ephesian temple, which 
 
 was one of the largest 
 and most gorgeous of all 
 those erected by the 
 Greeks, and considered 
 by them as gne of the 
 seven wonders of the 
 world. Strange to say, 
 till very recently even 
 its situation was utterly 
 nnknoAvn ; and even now 
 that it has been revealed 
 to us by the energy and in- 
 telligence of Mr. Wood, 
 scarcely enough remains 
 to enable him to restore 
 the plan with anything 
 like certainty. This is 
 the more remarkable, as 
 it was found buried 
 under 17 to 20 feet of 
 mud which must )iave 
 been the accumulation 
 of centuries, and might, 
 one would have thought, 
 have preserved consid- 
 erable portions of it from 
 the hand of the spoiler. 
 Till Mr. Wood pub- 
 
 159. Plan of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, embody- i i.i ^^ j: ^ • 
 
 fng Mr. T. Wood's discoveries. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. lishes the rCSUlt OT hlS 
 
 researches, we shall not 
 know all we desire of what remains of the once celebrated temple ; 
 but in the meanwhile the annexed plan, compiled from preliminary 
 sketches by him, embodies, I believe, all the information he has been 
 able to obtain up to this time. The dimensions of the double peristyle, 
 and the number and position of its 96 columns are quite certain. So are 
 the positions of the north, south, and west walls of the cella ; so that 
 
Bk, III. Ch. II. TEMPLE OF DIANA AT EPHESUS. 
 
 269 
 
 the only points of uncertainty are the positions of the four columns 
 necessary to make up the 100 mentioned by Pliny, ^ and the internal 
 arrangement of the cella itself and of the o])isthodomus. 
 
 With regard to the first there seems very little latitude for choice. 
 Two must have stood between the antae. The position of the other 
 two must be determined either by bringing forward the wall enclosing 
 the stairs, so as to admit of the intercolumniation east and west being 
 the same as that of the other columns, or of spacing them so as to 
 divide the inner roof of the pronaos into equal squares. I have pre- 
 ferred the latter as that which appears to me the most probable. 
 
 The west wall of the cella and the position of the statue having 
 been found, the arrangement of the pillars surrounding this apartment 
 does not admit of much latitude. Fragments of these pillars were 
 found, but not in situ^ showing that they were in two heights and 
 supported a gallery. I have spaced them intermediately between the 
 external pillars, as in the Temple of Apollo at Bassa? (Woodcut No. 146), 
 because I do not know of any other mode by which this temple could 
 be lighted except by an opaion, as suggested for that temple ; and if 
 this is so they must have been so spaced. Carrying out this system it 
 leaves an opisthodomus which is an exact square, which is so likely 
 a form for that apartment that it affords considerable confirmation to 
 the correctness of this restoration that it should be so. The four 
 pillars it probably contained are so spaced as to divide it into nine 
 equal squares. 
 
 Restoi-ed in this manner the temple appears considerably less in 
 dimensions than might have been su23posed from Pliny's text. His 
 measurements apply only to the lower step of the platform, which is 
 found to be 421 ft. by 238. But the temple itself, from angle to angle 
 of the peristyles, is only 342 ft. by 164, instead of 425 ft. by 220 of Pliny. 
 
 Assuming this restoration to be correct there can be very little 
 doubt as to the position of the thirty-six columnae ca?lat{B, of which 
 several specimens have been recovered by Mr. Wood, and are now in 
 the British Museum. They must have been the sixteen at either end 
 and the four in the pronaos, shown darker in the woodcut. 
 
 From the temple standing on a platform so much larger than 
 appears necessary, it is probable that pedestals with statues stood in 
 front of each column, and if this were so, the sculi)tures, with the 
 columnae caelatae and the noble architecture of the temple itself, must 
 have made up a combination of technic, aesthetic, and phonetic art 
 such as hardly existed anywhere else, and which consequently the 
 ancients were quite justified in considering as one of the wonders of 
 the world. 
 
 1 "Universo Templo longitude est | regibus factse, Ix. pedum altitudine: ex 
 ccccxxv. pedum, latitude cexx. Col- i iis xxxvi. cselatse, una a Scopa." — H. 
 umnse centum viginti septem a singulis ! N. xxxvi. 14. 
 
270 
 
 GKECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 Municipal Architecture. 
 Very little now remains of all the various classes of municipal and 
 domestic buildings which must once have covered the land of Greece, 
 and from what we know of the exquisite feelings for art that per- 
 vaded that people, they were certainly not less beautiful, though more 
 ephemeral, than the sacred buildings whose ruins still remain to us. 
 
 There are, however, two buildings in Athens which, though small, 
 give us most exalted ideas of their taste in such matters. The first, 
 already alluded to, usually known as the Tower of the Winds, is a 
 plain octagonal building about 45 ft. in height by 24 in width, orna- 
 mented by 2 small porches of 2 pillars each, 
 of the Corinthian order, the capitals of 
 which are represented in Woodcut No. 141. 
 Its roof, like the rest of the building, is 
 of white marble, and of simple but very 
 elegant design, and below this is a frieze 
 of 8 large figures, symbolical of the 8 
 winds, from which the tower takes its 
 name, they in fact being the principal ob- 
 jects and ornaments of the building, the 
 most important use of which appears to 
 have been to contain a clepsydra or water- 
 clock. 
 
 The other building, though smaller, is 
 still more beautiful. It is known as the 
 Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, and 
 consists of a square base 12 ft. high by 
 9 ft. wide, on which stands a circular 
 temple adorned by 6 Corinthian columns, 
 which, with their entablature and the roof 
 and pedestal they support, make up 22 ft. 
 more, so that the whole height of the 
 monument is only 34 ft. Notwithstanding 
 these insignificant dimensions, the beauty 
 of its columns (Woodcut No. 140) and of 
 their entablature — above all, the beauty 
 of the roof and of the finial ornament, 
 which crowns the whole and is imrivalled 
 for elegance even in Greek art — make up 
 that nothing in any other style or age 
 If this is a fair index of the art that was 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 160. Choragic Monument of 
 Lysicrates. No scale. 
 
 a composition so perfect 
 can be said to surpass it.^ 
 
 1 The capital is triangular in plan, and 1 mortises in them, showing that something 
 there are three scrolls on the roof with | must have stood on them to support the 
 
Bk. III. Cn. II. 
 
 THEATRES. 
 
 271 
 
 lavished on the smaller objects, the temples hardly give a just idea 
 of all that have perished. 
 
 Theatres. 
 
 In extreme contrast with the buildings last described, which were 
 among the smallest, came the theatres, which were the largest, of the 
 monuments the Greeks seem ever to have attempted. 
 
 The annexed plan of one at Dramyssus, the ancient Dodona, will 
 give an idea of their forms and arrangements. Its dimensions may 
 
 161. Plan of Theatre at Dramyssus. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 be said to be gigantic, being 443 ft. across; but even this, though 
 perhaps the largest in Greece, is far surpassed by many in Asia 
 Minor, What remains of it, however, is merely the auditorium, and 
 consists only of ranges of seats arranged in a semicircle, but without 
 architectural ornament. In all the examples in Europe, the pro- 
 scenium, which was the only part architecturally ornamented, has 
 perished, so that, till we can restore this with something like cer- 
 tainty, the theatres hardly come within the class of Architecture as a 
 fine art. 
 
 In Asia Minor some of the theatres have their proscenia adorned 
 with niches and columns, and friezes of great richness ; but all these 
 
 projecting angles. Dolphins and various 
 other objects have been suggested. My 
 own conviction is that they were winged 
 
 genii, most probably in bronze, and gilt 
 like the neckings of the capitals. 
 
272 
 
 GRECli^JS" ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 belong to the Roman period, and, though probably copies of the mode 
 in which the Greeks ornamented theirs, are so corrupt in style as to 
 prevent their being used with safety in attempting to restore the 
 earlier examples. 
 
 Many circumstances would indeed induce us to believe that the 
 proscenia of the earlier theatres may have been of wood or bronze, or 
 both combined, and heightened by painting and carving to a great 
 degree of richness. This, though appropriate and consonant with the 
 origin and history of the drama, would be fatal to the expectation of 
 anything being found to illustrate its earliest forms. 
 
 Tombs. 
 
 Like the other Aryan races, the Greeks never were tomb-builders, 
 and nothing of any importance of this class is found in Greece, except 
 the tombs of the early Pelasgic races, which were either tumuli, or 
 treasuries, as they are popularly called. Tliere are, it is true, some 
 headstones and small pillars of great beauty, but they are monolithic, 
 and belong rather to the department of Sculpture than of Architecture. 
 In Asia Minor there are some important tombs, some built and others 
 cut in the rock. Some of the latter have been described before in 
 speaking of tlie tombs of the Lycians. The built examples which 
 remain almost all belong to the Roman period, though the typical and 
 by far the most splendid example of Greek tombs was that erected by 
 Artemisia to the memory of her husband Mausolus at Halicarnassus. 
 We scarcely know enough of the ethnic relations of the Carians to be 
 able to understand what induced them to adopt so exceptional a modfe 
 of doing honor to their dead. With pure Greeks it must liave been 
 impossible, but the inhabitants of these coasts were of a different race, 
 and had a different mode of expressing their feelings. 
 
 Till Mr. Newton's visit to Halicarnassus in 1856 the very site of 
 this seventh wonder of the world was a matter of dispute. We now 
 know enough to be able to restore the principal parts with absolute 
 certainty, and to ascertain its dimensions and general appearance 
 witliin very insignificant limits of error.i 
 
 The dimensions quoted by Pliny ^ aye evidently extracted from a 
 larger work, said to have been written by the architect who erected it 
 and which existed at his time. Every one of them has been confirmed 
 in the most satisfactory manner by recent discoveries, and enable us to 
 put the whole together without much hesitation. 
 
 Sufficient remains of the quadriga, which crowned the monument, 
 
 ^ It will not be necessary to enter here 
 into all the details of this restoration. 
 They will be found in a separate work 
 
 published by me on the subject, to which 
 the reader is referred. 
 2 Hist. Nat. xxxvi. 5. 
 
Bk. IIJ. Ch. II. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 273 
 
274 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Fart L 
 
 have been brought home to give its dimensions absolutely. All the 
 parts of the Ionic order are complete. The steps of the pyramid have 
 been found and portions of the three friezes, and these, with Pliny's 
 dimensions and description, are all that are required to assure us that 
 its aspect must have been very similar to the form represented in 
 Woodcut No. 162. There can be little doubt with regard to the upper 
 story, but in order to work out to the dimensions given by Pliny 
 (411 ft. in circumference) and those found cut out in the rock 
 (462 ft.), the lower story must be spread out beyond the upper to 
 that extent, and most jDrobably something after the manner shown in 
 the woodcut. 
 
 The building consisted internally of two chambers superimposed 
 the one on the other, each 52 ft. 6 in. by 42 ft. — the lower one being 
 the vestibule to the tomb beyond — the upper was surrounded by a 
 peristyle of 36 columns. Externally the height was divided into three 
 equal portions of 37 ft. 6 in. each (25 cubits), one of which was allotted 
 to the base — one to the pyramid with its meta — and one to the order 
 between them. These with 14 ft., the height of the quadriga, and 
 the same dimension belonging to the lower entablature, made up the 
 height of 140 Greek feet^ given it by Pliny. 
 
 Thougli its height was unusually great for a Greek building, its 
 other dimensions were small. It covered only 13,230 feet. The ad-^ 
 miration therefore which the Greeks expressed regarding it must 
 have arisen, first, from the unusual nature of its design and of the 
 purpose to which it was applied, or perhaps more still from the 
 extent and richness of its sculptured decorations, of the beauty of 
 w^hich we are now enabled to judge, and can fully share with them 
 in admiring. 
 
 Another, but very much smaller, tomb of about the same age was 
 found by Mr. Newton at Cnidus, and known as the Lion Tomb, from 
 the figure of that animal, now in the British Museum, which crowned 
 its summit. Like many other tombs found in Asia and in Africa, it 
 follows the type of the Mausoleum in its more important features. 
 It possesses a base — a peristyle — a pyramid of steps — and, lastly, an 
 acroterion or pedestal meant to support a quadriga or statue, or some 
 other crowning object, which appropriately terminated the design 
 upwards. 
 
 Several examples erected during the Roman period will be illus- 
 trated when speaking of the architecture of that people, all bearing 
 the impress of the influence the Mausoleum had on the tomb archi- 
 
 ^ The figures given in the text are all 
 Greek feet : the difference between them 
 and English feet, being only l^- per cent., 
 is hardly perceptible in chese dimensions. 
 
 without descending to minute fractions, 
 and disturbing the comparison with 
 Pliny's text. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 CYRENE. 
 
 275 
 
 tecture of that age ; but unfortunately we cannot yet go backwards 
 and point out the type from which the design of the Mausoleum itself 
 was elaborated. The tombs of Babylon and Passargadae are remote 
 
 both geographically and artistically, though not without ceitain 
 essential resemblances. Perhaps the missing links may some day 
 reward the industry of some scientific explorer. 
 
 Cyrene. 
 
 At Cyrene there is a large group of tombs of Grecian date and 
 with Grecian details, but all cut in the rock, and consequently 
 differing widely in their form from those just described. It is not 
 clear whether the circumstance of this city possessing such a necro- 
 polis arose from its proximity to Egypt, and consequently from a 
 mere desire to imitate that people, or from some ethnic peculiarity. 
 
276 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Pakt I. 
 
 Most probably the latter, though we know so little about them that 
 it is difficult to speak with precision on such a subject. ' 
 
 1 The circumstance of Asoka, the such a conchision, even if nothing else 
 Buddhist king of India b.c. 250, having did. — "Journal Asiatic Society of Ben- 
 formed an alliance with Megas of Cyrene gal," vii. p. 261; J. R. A. S. xii. p. 223 
 for the succor of his co-religionists in et seq 
 the dominions of the latter, points to 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 CYRENE. 
 
 277 
 
 These tombs are chiefly interesting from many of the details of the 
 architecture still retaining the color with which they were originally 
 adorned. The triglyphs of the Doric order are still painted blue,i as 
 appears to have been the universal practice, and the pillars are outlined 
 by red lines. The metopes are darker, and are adorned with painted 
 groups of figures. The whole making up one of the most perfect 
 examples of Grecian colored decoration which still remain. 
 
 There is another tomb at the same place — this time structural — 
 which is interesting not so much for any architectural beauty it pos- 
 sesses as from its belonging to an exceptional type. It consists now 
 only of a circular basement — the upper part is gone — and is erected 
 
 IGf). Tombs at Cyreiie. (From Hamilton's " North Africa.") 
 
 over an excavated rock-cut tomb. There seem to be several others of 
 the same class in the necropolis, and they are the only examples known 
 except those at Marathos, one of which is illustrated above (Woodcut 
 No. 120). As before hinted, the Syrian example does not appear to 
 be very ancient, but we want further information before speaking 
 positively on this subject. Ko one on the spot has attempted to fix 
 with precision the age of the Cyrenean exam.ples ; nor have they been 
 drawn in such detail as is requisite for others to ascertain the fact. 
 They may be as late as the time of the Romans, but can hardly be 
 dated as prior to the age of Alexander the Great. 
 
 * Beechy's "Journey to Cyrene," p. 444; see also Smith and Porcher, pi. 37. 
 
278 
 
 GRECIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 Domestic Architecture. 
 
 We have nothing left but imperfect verbal descriptions of the 
 domestic, and even of the palatial architecture of Greece, and, conse- 
 quently, can only judge imperfectly of its forms. Unfortunately, too, 
 Pompeii, though but half a Greek city, belongs to too late and too 
 corrupt an age to enable us to use it even as an illustration ; but we 
 may rest assured that in this, as in everything else, the Greeks dis- 
 played the same exquisite taste which pervades not only their monu- 
 mental architecture, but all their works in metal or clay, down to the 
 meanest object, which have been preserved to our times. 
 
 It is probable that the forms of their houses were much more irre- 
 gular and picturesque than we are in the habit of supposing them to 
 have been. They seem to have taken such pains in their temples — in 
 the Erechtheium, for instance, and at Eleusis — to make every part tell 
 its own tale, that anything like forced regularity must have been offen- 
 sive to them, and they would probably make every apartment exactly 
 of the dimensions required, and group them so that no one should under 
 any circumstance be confounded with another. 
 
 This, however, with all the details of their domestic arts, must now 
 remain to us as mere speculation, and the architectural history of Greece 
 must be confined to her temples and monumental erections. These 
 suffice to explain the nature and forms of the art, and to assign to it the 
 rank of the purest and most intellectual of all the styles which have 
 yet been invented or practised in any part of the world. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. I. 
 
 ETRUSCAN ARCHITECT LTRE. 
 
 279 
 
 BOOK ly. 
 
 ETRUSCAN AND EOMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 ETRURIA. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Historical notice — Temples — Rock-cut Tombs — Tombs at Castel d'Asso — 
 
 Tumuli. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA. 
 
 Migration from Asia Minor about 12th cent. B. c. 
 
 Tomb of Porsenna about b. c. 500 
 
 Etruria becomes subject to Rome " 330 
 
 THE ethnographical history of art in Italy is in all its essential feat- 
 ures similar to that of Greece, though arriving at widely different 
 results from causes the influence of which it is easy to trace. Both are 
 examples of an Aryan development based on a Turanian civilization 
 which it has superseded. In Greece — as already remarked — the traces 
 of the earlier people are indistinct and difficult to seize. In Italy 
 their features are drawn with a coarser hand, and extend down into 
 a more essentially historic age. It thus happens that we have no 
 doubt as to the existence of the Etruscan people — we know very 
 nearly who they were, and cannot be mistaken as to the amount 
 and kind of influence they exercised on the institutions and arts of 
 the Romans. 
 
 The more striking differences appear to hav^e arisen from the fact, 
 that Greece had some four or five centuries of comparative repose 
 during which to form herself and her institutions after the Pelasgic 
 civilization was struck down at the time of the Dorian occupation of 
 the Peloponnesus. During that period she was undisturbed by foreign 
 invasion, and was not tempted by successful conquests to forsake the 
 gentler social arts for the more vulgar objects of national ambition. 
 Rome's history, on the other hand, from the earliest aggregation of a 
 
280 
 
 ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 robber horde on the banks of the Tiber till she became the arbiter of 
 the destinies of the ancient world, is little beyond the record of con- 
 tinuous wars. From the possession of the seven hills, Rome gradually 
 carried her sway at the edge of the sword to the dominion of the 
 whole of Italy and of all the then known world, destroying every- 
 thing that stood in the way of her ambition, and seeking only the 
 acquisition of wealth and power. 
 
 Greece, in the midst of her successful cultivation of the arts of 
 commerce and of peace, stimulated by the wholesome rivalry of the dif- 
 ferent States of which she was composed, was awakened by the Persian 
 invasion to a struggle for existence. The result was one of the most 
 brilliant passages in the world's history, and no nation was ever more 
 justified in the jubilant outburst of enthusiastic patriotism that fol- 
 lowed the repulse of the invader, than was Greece in that with which 
 she commenced her short but brilliant career. A triumph so gained 
 by a people so constituted led to results at which we still wonder, 
 though they cause us no surprise. If Greece attained her manhood on 
 the battle-fields of Marathon and Salamis, Rome equally reached the 
 maturity of her career when she cruelly and criminally destroyed 
 Corinth and Carthage, and the sequel was such as might be expected 
 from such a difference of education. Rome had no time for the culti- 
 vation of the arts of peace, and as little sympathy for their gentler 
 influences. Conquest, wealth, and consequent power, were the objects 
 of her ambition — for these she sacrificed everything, and by their 
 means she attained a pinnacle of greatness that no nation had reached 
 before or has since. Iler arts have all the impress of this greatness, 
 and are characterized by the same vulgar grandeur which marks 
 everything she did. Very different are they from the intellectual 
 beauty found in the works of the Greeks, but in some respects they 
 are as interesting to those who can read the character of nations in 
 their artistic productions. 
 
 In the earlier part of her career Rome was an Etruscan city under 
 Etruscan kings and institutions. After she had emancipated herself 
 from their yoke, Etruria long remained her equal and her rival in 
 political power, and her instructress in religion and the arts of peace. 
 This continued so long, and the architectural remains of that people 
 are so numerous, and have been so thoroughly investigated, that we 
 have no difficulty in ascertaining the extent of influence the older nation 
 had on the nascent empire. It is more difficult to ascertain exactly 
 who the Etruscans themselves were, or whence they came. But on the 
 whole there seems every reason to believe they migrated from Asia 
 Minor some twelve or thirteen centuries before the Christian era, and 
 fixed themselves in Italy, most probably among the Umbrians, or some 
 people of cognate race, who had settled there before — so long before, 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. I. 
 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 281 
 
 perhaps, as to entitle them to be considered among the aboriginal 
 inhabitants. 
 
 It would have been only natural that the expatriated Trojans 
 should have sought refuge among such a kindred people, though we 
 have nothing but the vaguest tradition to warrant a belief that this was 
 the case. They may, too, from time to time have received other acces- 
 sions to their strength ; but they were a foreign people in a strange 
 land, and scarcely seem ever to have become naturalized in the country 
 of their adoption. But what stood still more in their way was the fact 
 that they were an old Turanian people in presence of a young and am- 
 bitious community of Aryan origin, and, as has always been the case 
 when this has happened, they were destined to disappear. Before doing 
 so, however, they left their impress on the institutions and the arts of 
 their conquerors to such an extent as to be still traceable in every 
 form. It may have been that there was as much Pelasgic blood in the 
 veins of the Greeks as there was Etruscan in those of the Romans ; 
 but the civilization of the former had passed away before Greece had 
 developed herself. Etruria, on the other hand, was long contemporary 
 with Rome — in early times her equal, and sometimes her mistress, 
 and consequently in a position to force her arts upon her to an extent 
 that was never effected on the opposite shore of the Adriatic. 
 
 Temples. 
 
 Nothing can prove more clearly the Turanian origin of the Etrus- 
 cans than the fact that all we know of them is derived from their 
 tombs. These exist in hundreds — it may almost be said in thousands 
 — at the gates of every city ; but no vestige of a temple has come 
 down to our days. Had any Semitic blood flowed in their veins, as 
 has been sometimes suspected, they could not have been so essentially 
 sepulchral as they were, or so fond of contemplating death, as is proved 
 by the fact that a purely Semitic tomb is still a desideratum among^ 
 antiquaries, not one having as yet been discovered. What we should 
 like to find in Etruria would be a square pyramidal mound with 
 external steps leading to a cella on its summit ; but no trace of any 
 such has yet been detected. Their other temples — using the word 
 in the sense in which we usually understand it — were, as might be 
 expected, insignificant and ephemeral. So much so, indeed, that except 
 from one passage in Vitruvius,! and our being able to detect the influ- 
 ence of the Etruscan style in the buildings of Imperial Rome, we should 
 hardly be aware of their existence. The truth seems to be that the 
 religion of the Etruscans, like that of most of their congeners, was 
 essentially ancestral, and their worship took tlie form of respect for the 
 
 ^ Vitruvius, iv. 7. 
 
282 
 
 ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut J. 
 
 remains of the dead, and reverence for their memory. Tombs, con- 
 sequently, and not temples, were the objects on which they lavished 
 their architectural resources. They certainly were not idolaters, in 
 the sense in which we usually understand the term. They had no dis- 
 tinct or privileged priesthood, and consequently had no motive for erect- 
 ing temples which by their magnificence should be pleasing to their 
 gods, or tend to the glorification of their kings or priests. Still less 
 were they required for congregational purposes by the people at large. 
 
 The only individual temple of Etruscan origin of which we have 
 any knowledge, is that of Capitoline Jupiter at Rome.i Originally 
 small, it was repaired and rebuilt till it became under the Empire a 
 splendid fane. But not one vestige of it now remains, nor any de- 
 scription from which we could restore its appearance with anything like 
 certainty. 
 
 From the chapter of the work of Vitruvius just alluded to, we 
 learn that the Etruscans had two classes of temples : one circular, 
 like their structural tombs, and dedicated to one deity ; the other class 
 rectangular, but these, always possessing three cells, were devoted to 
 the worship of three gods. 
 
 The general arrangement of the plan, as described by Vitruvius, was 
 that shown on the plan below (Fig. 1), and is generally assented to by 
 
 167. Plan and Elevation of an Etruscan Temple. 
 
 all those who have attempted the restoration. In larger temples in 
 Roman times the number of pillars in front may have been doubled, 
 and they would thus be arranged like those of the portico of the 
 Pantheon, which is essentially an Etruscan arrangement. The resto- 
 ration of the elevation is more difficult, and the argument too long to 
 be entered upon here; 2 but its construction and proportions seem to 
 have been very much like those drawn in the above diagram (Fig. 2). 
 Of course, as wooden structures, they were richly and elaborately 
 carved, and the effect heightened by colors, but it is in vain to attempt 
 
 * Dionysius, iv. 61. 
 
 2 For more detail, see " The True Principles of Beauty in Art," p. 446 et eeq. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. I. TEMPLES. 283 
 
 to restore them. Without a single example to guide us, and with 
 very little collateral evidence which can at all be depended upon, it 
 is hardly possible that any satisfactory restoration could now be made. 
 Moreover, tlieir importance in the history of art is so insignificant, that 
 the labor such an attempt must involve would hardly be repaid by 
 the result. 
 
 The original Etruscan circular temple seems to have been a mere 
 circular cell with a porch. The Romans surrounded it with a peristyle, 
 which probably did not exist in the original style. They magnified 
 it afterwards into the most characteristic and splendid of all their 
 temples, the Pantheon, whose portico is Etruscan in arrangement and 
 design, and whose cell still more distinctly belongs to that order ; nor 
 can there be any doubt that the simpler Roman temples of circular 
 form are derived from Etruscan originals. It would therefore be of 
 great importance if we could illustrate the later buildings from existing 
 remains of the older ; but the fact is that such deductions as we may 
 draw from the copies are our only source of information respecting the 
 originals. 
 
 We know little of any of the civil buildings with which the cities 
 of Etruria were adorned, beyond the knowledge obtained from the 
 remains of their theatres and amphitheatres. The form of the latter 
 was essentially Etruscan, and was adopted by the Romans, Avith whom 
 it became their most characteristic and grandest architectural object. 
 Of the amphitheatres of ancient Etruria only one now remains in so per- 
 fect a state as to enable us to judge of their forms. It is that at Sutri, 
 which, however, being entirely cut in the rock, neither affords informa- 
 tion as to the mode of construction nor enables us to determine its age. 
 The general dimensions are 295 ft. in its greatest length by 265 in 
 breadth, and it is consequently much nearer a circular form than the 
 Romans generally adopted ; but in other respects the arrangements are 
 such as appear to have usually prevailed in after times. 
 
 Besides this we have numerous works of utility, but these belong 
 more strictly to engineering than to architectural science. The city 
 walls of the Etruscans surpass those of any other ancient nation in 
 extent and beauty of workmanship. Their drainage works and their 
 bridges, as well as those of the kindred Pelasgians in Greece, still 
 remain monuments of their industrial science and skill, which their 
 successors never surpassed. 
 
 On the whole, perhaps we are justified in asserting that the 
 Etruscans were not an architectural people, and had no temples or 
 palaces worthy of attention. It at least seems certain that nothing 
 of the sort is now to be found, even in ruins, and were it not that 
 the study of Etruscan art is a necessary introduction to that of 
 Roman, it would hardly be worth while trying to gather together 
 and illustrate the few fragments Pad notices of it that remain. 
 
284 ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE Part I. 
 
 Tombs. 
 
 The tombs of the Etruscans now found may be divided into two 
 classes — first, those cut in the rock, and resembling dwelling-houses ; 
 secondly, the circular tumuli, which latter are by far the most numer- 
 ous and important class. 
 
 Each of these may be again subdivided into two kinds. The rock- 
 cut tombs include, firstly those with only a fa9ade on the face of the 
 rock and a sepulchral chamber within ; secondly, those cut quite out 
 of the rock and standing free all round. To this class probably once 
 belonged an immense number of tombs built in the ordinary way ; but 
 all these have totally disappeared, and consequently the class, as now 
 under consideration, consists entirely of excavated examples. 
 
 The second class may be divided into those tumuli erected over 
 chambers cut in the tufaceous rock which is found all over Etruria, and 
 those wliich have chambers built above-ground. 
 
 In the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say which 
 of these classes is the older. We know that the Egyptians buried in 
 caves long before the Etruscans landed in Italy, and at the same time 
 raised pyramids over rock-cut and built chambers. We know too that 
 Abraham was buried in the cave of Machpelah in Syria. On the other 
 hand, tlie tombs at Smyrna (Woodcut No. Ill), the treasuries of 
 Mycenae (Woodcut No. 122), the sepulchre of Alyattes (Woodcut 
 No. 113), and many others, are proofs of the antiquity of the tumuli, 
 which are found all over Europe and Asia, and apj^ear to have existed 
 from the earliest ages. 
 
 The comparative antiquity of the different kinds of tombs being thus 
 doubtful it will be sufficient for the purposes of the present work to 
 classify them architecturally. It may probably be assumed with 
 safety that all the modes which have been enumerated, were practised 
 by the Etruscans at a period very slightly subsequent to their migra- 
 tion into Italy. 
 
 Of the first class of the rock-cut tombs — those with merely a fayade 
 externally — the most remarkable group is that at Castle d'Asso. At 
 this place there is a perpendicular cliff with hundreds of these tombs 
 ranged along its face, like houses in a street. A similar arrangement 
 is found in Egypt at Beni Hassan, at Petra, and Gyrene, and around all 
 the more ancient cities of Asia Minor. 
 
 In Etruria they generally consist of one chamber lighted by the 
 doorway only. Their internal arrangement appears to be an imitation 
 of a dwelling chamber, with furniture, like the apartment itself, cut 
 out of the rock. Externally they have little or no pretension to archi- 
 tectural decoration. It is true that some tombs are found adorned with 
 frontispieces of a debased Doric or Ionic order ; but these were exe- 
 cuted at a much later period and under Roman domination, and 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. I. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 285 
 
 cannot therefore be taken as specimens of Etruscan art, but rather 
 of that corruption of style sure to arise from a conquered people 
 trying to imitate the arts of their rulers. 
 
 The general appearance of the second class of rock-cut tombs will 
 be understood from the woodcut (No. 168), representing two monu- 
 ments at Castel d'Asso. 
 Unfortunately neither 
 is complete nor is there 
 any complete example 
 known to exist of this 
 class. Perhaps the apex 
 was added structurally 
 and that these, like all 
 such things in Etruria, 
 have perished. Possi- 
 bly, if cut in the rock, 
 the terminals were 
 slender carved orna- 
 ments, and therefore 
 liable to injury. They 
 are usually restored 
 by antiquaries in the 
 shape of rectilinear pyramids, but so far as I know, there is no author- 
 ity for this. On the contrary, it is more in accordance with what 
 we know of the style and its affinities to suppose that the termination 
 of these monuments, even if added in masonry, was curvilinear. 
 
 One remarkable thing about the rock-cut tombs is the form of their 
 mouldings, wdiich differ from any found 
 elsewhere in Europe. Two of these are 
 shown in the annexed woodcut (No. 169). 
 They are very numerous and in great 
 variety, but do not in any instance show 
 the slightest trace of a cornice, nor of any 
 tendency towards one. On the contrary, 
 in place of this, we find nothing but a 
 reverse moulding. It is probable that 
 similar forms may be found in Asia Minor, 
 while something resembling them actually 
 occurs at Persepolis and elsewhere. It is remarkable that this 
 feature did not penetrate to Rome, and that no trace of its influence 
 is found there, as might have been expected. i 
 
 Tombs at Castel d'Asso. (From the " Annale del In- 
 stituto.") 
 
 Mouldings from Tombs at 
 Castel d'Asso. 
 
 ^ Even in more modern times I know 
 of no building showing a trace of these 
 forms except the tomb of Theodoric at 
 
 Ravenna. This, however, is Etruscan 
 botli in form and detail, as will be seen 
 farther on. 
 
286 
 
 ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Tumuli. 
 
 The simplest, and therefore perhaps the earliest, monument which 
 can be erected over the graves of the dead, by a people who rever- 
 ence their departed relatives, is a mound of earth or a cairn of stones, 
 and such seems to have been the form adopted by the Turanian or 
 Tartar races of mankind from the earliest days to the present hour. 
 It is scarcely necessary to remark how universal such monuments were 
 among the ruder tribes of Northern Europe. The Etruscans improved 
 upon this by surrounding the base with 2, podium^ or supporting wall 
 of masonry. This not only defined its limits and gave it dignity, but 
 enabled entrances to be made in it, and otherwise converted it from a 
 mere hillock into a monumental structure. It is usually supposed 
 that this basement was an invariable part of all Etruscan tumuli, 
 and when it is not found it is assumed that it has been removed, or 
 that it is buried in the rubbish of the mound. No doubt such a 
 stone basement may easily have been removed by the peasantry, or 
 buried, but it is by no means clear that this was invariably the case. 
 It seems that the enclosure was frequently a circle of stones or monu 
 mental steles, in the centre of which the tumulus stood. The monu- 
 ments have hitherto been so carelessly examined and restored, that it is 
 difficult to arrive at anything like certainty with regard to the details 
 of their structure. Nor can we draw any certain conclusion from a 
 comparison with other tumuli of cognate races. The description by 
 Herodotus of the tomb of Alyattes at Sardis (Woodcut No. 113), those 
 described by Pausanias as existing in the Peloponnesus, and the 
 appearance of those at Mycenae and Orchomenos, might be inter- 
 preted either way; but those at Smyrna (Woodcut No. Ill), and a 
 great number at least of those in Etruria, have a structural circle 
 of stone as a supporting base to the mound. 
 
 These tumuli are found existing in immense numbers in every 
 necropolis of the Etruscans. A large space was generally set apart 
 for the purpose outside the walls of all their great cities. In these 
 cemeteries the tumuli are arranged in rows, like houses in streets. 
 Even now we can count them by hundreds, and in the neighborhood 
 of the largest cities — at Vulci, for instance — almost by thousands. 
 
 Most of them are now worn down by the effect of time to nearly 
 the level of the ground, though some of the larger ones still retain an 
 imposing appearance. Nearly all have been rifled at some early period, 
 though the treasures still discovered almost daily in some places show 
 how vast their extent was, and how much even now remains to be done 
 before this vast mine of antiquity can be said to be exhausted. 
 
 One of the most remarkable among those that have been opened in 
 modern times is at Cervetere, the ancient Caere, known as the Regiilini 
 Galeassi tomb, from the names of its discoverers. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. I. 
 
 TUMULI. 
 
 287 
 
 Like a Nubian pyramid or Buddhis 
 older tumulus, around and over whi 
 outer mound are five tombs either 
 of dependent or inferior personages. 
 These were rifled long ago ; but the 
 outer pyramid having effectually 
 concealed the entrance to the prin- 
 cipal tomb, it remained untouched 
 till very lately, when it yielded to 
 its discoverers a richer collection 
 of ornaments and utensils in gold 
 and bronze than has ever been 
 found in one place before. 
 
 The dimensions and arrange- 
 ments of this tumulus will be under- 
 stood from Woodcuts Nos. 170, 171, 
 and from tlie two sections of the 
 
 tope, it consists of an inner and 
 1 another has been added. In the 
 
 170. Plan of the Kegulini Galeassi 
 Tomb. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 171. Sections of the Kegulini Galeassi Tomb. (From Canina's "Etruria Antica.") 
 Scale for large section, 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 principal tomb which are annexed to them. These last display an 
 irregularity of construction very unusual in such cases, for which no 
 cause can be assigned. The usual section is perfectly regular, as in the 
 annexed woodcut (No. 172), taken from another tomb at the same 
 place. 
 
 These chambers, like all those of the early Etruscans, are vaulted 
 on the horizontal principle, like the tombs at Mycenje and Orchomenos, 
 
288 
 
 ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Part I. 
 
 172. Section ol a J omh at 
 Caere. No scale. 
 
 though none are found in Italy at all equal to those of Greece m 
 dimensions or beauty of construction. 
 
 Woodcut No. 173 is a perspective view of the principal chamber in 
 the Regulini Galeassi tomb, showing the position of the furniture 
 found in it when first opened, consisting of biers 
 or bedsteads, shields, arrows and vessels of various 
 sorts. A number of vases are hung in a curious 
 recess in the roof, the form of which would be 
 inexplicable but for the utensils found in it. 
 With this clue to its meaning we can scarcely 
 doubt that it represents a place for hanging such 
 vessels in the houses of the living. 
 
 All the treasures found in this tomb are in 
 the oldest style of Etruscnn art, and are so similar 
 to the bi-onzes and ornaments brought by Layard from Assyria as to 
 lead to the belief that they had a common origin. -The tomb with 
 
 its contents probably dates 
 from the 9th or 10th cen- 
 tury before the Christian 
 era. 
 
 The largest tomb hither- 
 to discovered in Etruria is 
 now known as the Cocu- 
 mella, in the necropolis at 
 Vulci. It is rather more 
 than 240 ft. in diameter, 
 and originally could not 
 have been less than 115 or 
 120 ft. in height, though 
 now it only rises to 50 ft. 
 
 Near its centre are the 
 remains of two solid tow- 
 ers, one circular, the other 
 square, neither of them 
 actually central, nor are 
 they placed in such a way 
 that we can understand 
 how they can have formed 
 a part of any symmetrical 
 design. A plan and a view of the present appearance of this 
 monument are given in Woorlcuts 174 and 175. 
 
 This tumulus, with its principnl remaining features thus standing 
 on one side of the centre, may possibly assist us to understand the 
 curious description found in Plinyi of the tomb of Porsenna. This 
 
 the lieguliui Galle- 
 
 1 Plin. ''Hist." xxxvi. 13. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. I. 
 
 TUMULI. 
 
 289 
 
 description is quoted from Varro, being evidently regarded by Pliny 
 himself as not a little apocryphal. According to this account it con- 
 sisted of a square basement 300 ft. each way, from which arose five 
 pyramids united at the 
 summit by a bronze circle 
 or cupola. This was again 
 surmounted by four other 
 pyramids, the summits of 
 which were again united 
 at a height of 300 ft. from 
 the ground. From this 
 point rose still five more 
 pyramids, w^hose height 
 Varro (from modesty, as 
 Pliny surmises) omits to 
 state, but which was esti- 
 mated in Etruscan tradi- 
 tions at the same height 
 as the rest of the monu- 
 ment. This last statement, 
 which does not rest on any real authority, may well be regarded 
 as exaggerated ; but if we take the total height as about 400 ft., 
 it is easy to understand that in the age of Pliny, when all the 
 buildings were low, such a structure, as high as the steeple at Salis- 
 bury, would appear fabulous ; but the vast piles that have been erected 
 by tomb-building races in other parts of the earth render it by no 
 means improbable that Yarro was justified in what he asserted.^ 
 
 174. Plan of Cocumella, Vulci. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 175. View of Cocuiuella, Vulci. 
 
 Near the gate of Albano is found a small tomb of five pyramidal 
 pillars rising from a square base, exactly corresponding with Varro's 
 description of the lower part of the tomb of Porsenna. It is called by 
 tradition the tomb of Aruns, the son of Porsenna, though the character 
 
 1 A diagram is given in "The True 
 Principles of Beauty in Art," p. 459. 
 which shows at least that there is no 
 difficulty in designing a monument in 
 
 perfect accordance with the text. 
 Whether the latter is to be depended 
 upon on or not is another matter. 
 
290 
 
 ETRUSCAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 in. 
 
 Scale 100 ft. to 
 176. Tomb of Aruns, Albano. 
 
 of the mouldings with which it is adorned would lead us to assign to 
 it a more modern date. It consists of a lofty podium, on which are 
 placed five pyramids, a large one in the centre and four smaller ones 
 
 at the angles. Its present appearance is 
 shown in the annexed woodcut (No. 176). 
 
 There are not in Etruria any features 
 sufficiently marked to characterize a style 
 of architecture, nor any pillars with their 
 accessories which can be considered to 
 U - T^C 'K^K^r'"''' ■ ^ constitute an order. It is true that in 
 'V"'^"'"""^i' ^'''^'""^ '^"^""I'J/ ijit some of the rock-cut tombs square piers 
 
 support the roof ; and in one or two 
 instances rounded pillars are found, but 
 these are either without mouldings or 
 ornamented only with Roman details, 
 betraying the lateness of their execution. 
 The absence of built examples of the 
 class of tombs found in the rock pre- 
 vents us from recognizing any of those 
 peculiarities of construction which some- 
 times are as characteristic of the style and as worthy of attention as 
 the more purely ornamental parts. 
 
 From their city gates, their aqueducts and bridges, we know that 
 the Etruscans used the radiating arch at an early age, with deep vous- 
 
 soirs and elegant mouldings, 
 giving it that character of 
 strength which the Romans 
 afterwards imparted to their 
 works of the same class. The 
 Cloaca Maxima of Rome 
 (Woodcut No. 101) must be 
 considered as a work exe- 
 cuted under Etruscan super- 
 intendence, and a very per- 
 fect specimen of the class. 
 
 At the same time the 
 Etruscans used the pointed 
 arch constructed horizon- 
 tally, and seem to have had the same predilection for it which 
 characterized the cognate Pelasgian race in Greece. A gateway at 
 Arpino (Woodcut No. 177) is almost identical Avith that at Thoricus 
 (Woodcut No. 124), but larger and more elegant; and there are 
 many specimens of the same class found in Italy. The portion of an 
 aqueduct at Tusculum, shown in Woodcut No. 178, is a curious transi- 
 tion specimen, where the two stones meeting at the apex (usually 
 
 Gateway at Arpino. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. L 
 
 THE ARCH. 
 
 291 
 
 called the Egyptian form, being the first step towardc the true arch) 
 are combined with a substructure of horizontal converging masonry. 
 
 In either of these in- 
 stances the horizontal arch 
 is a legitimate mode of 
 construction, and may 
 have been used long after 
 the principle of the radiat- 
 ing arch was known. The 
 great convenience of the 
 latter, as enabling large 
 spaces to be spanned even 
 with brick or the smallest 
 stones, and thus dispens- 
 ing with the necessity for 
 stones of very large di- 
 mensions, led ultimately 
 to its universal adoption, 
 the radiatins: arch was 
 
 178. Aqueduct at Tusculum. 
 
 Subsequently, when the pointed form of 
 _ introduced, no motive remained for the 
 
 retention of the horizontal method, and it was entirely abandoned. 
 
292 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Fart L 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ROME. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 E now approach the last revohition that completed and closed the 
 
 f ? great cycle of the arts and civilization of the ancient world. We 
 have seen Art spring Minerva-like, perfect from the head of her great 
 parent in Egypt. We have admired it in Assyria, rich, varied, but un- 
 stable ; aiming at everything, but never attaining maturity or perfec- 
 tion. We have tried to trace the threads of early Pelasgic art in Asia, 
 Greece, and Etruria, spreading their influence over the world, and laying 
 the foundation of other arts which the Pelasgi were incapable of devel- 
 oping. We have seen all these elements gathered together in Greece, the 
 essence extracted from each, and the whole forming the most perfect 
 and beautiful combinations of intellectual power that the world has yet 
 witnessed. We have now only to contemplate the last act in the great 
 drama, the gorgeous but melancholy catastrophe by which all these 
 styles of architecture were collected in wild confusion in Rome, and 
 there perished beneath the luxury and ci'imes of that mighty people, 
 who for a while made Rome the capital of Europe. 
 
 View them as we will, the arts of Rome were never an indigenous 
 or natural j)roduction of the soil or people, but an aggregation of foreign 
 styles in a state of transition from the old and time-honored forms of 
 Pagan antiquity to the new development introduced by Christianity. 
 We cannot of course suppose that the Romans foresaw the result to 
 which their amalgamation of previous styles was tending ; still they 
 advanced as steadily towards that result as if a prophetic spirit had 
 guided them to a well-defined conception of what was to be. It was not 
 however permitted to the Romans to complete this task. Long before 
 the ancient methods and ideas had been completely moulded into the 
 new, the power of Rome sank beneath her corruption, and a long pause 
 took place, during which the Christian arts did not advance in Western 
 Europe beyond the point they had reached in the age of Constantine. 
 Indeed, in many respects, they receded from it during the dark ages. 
 When they reappeared in the 10th and 11th centuries it was in an 
 entirely new garb and with scarcely a trace of their origin — so distinct 
 indeed that it appears more like a re-invention than a reproduction of 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. II. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 293 
 
 forms long since familiar to the Roman world. Had Rome retained 
 her power and pre-eminence a century or two longer, a style might 
 have been elaborated as distinct from that of the ancient world, and 
 as complete in itself as our pointed Gothic, and perhaps more beautiful. 
 Such was not the destiny of the world ; and what we have now to do 
 i's to examine this transition style as we find it in ancient Rome, and 
 familiarize ourselves with the forms it took during the three centuries 
 of its existence, as without this knowledge all the arts of the Gothic 
 era would forever remain an inexplicable mystery. The chief value 
 of the Roman style consists in the fact that it contains the germs of 
 all that is found in the Middle Ages, and affords the key by which its 
 mysteries may be unlocked, and its treasures rendered available. Had 
 the transition been carried through in the hands of an art-loving and 
 artistic people, the architectural beauties of Rome must have surpassed 
 those of any other city in the world, for its buildings surpass in scale 
 those of Egypt and in variety tliose of Greece, while they affect to 
 combine the beauties of both. In constructive ingenuity they far 
 surpass anything the world had seen up to that time, but this cannot 
 redeem offences against good taste, nor enable any Roman productions 
 to command our admiration as works of art, or entitle them to rank 
 as models to be followed either literally or in spirit. 
 
 During the first two centuries and a half of her existence, Rome 
 was virtually an Etruscan city, wholly under Etruscan influence ; and 
 during that period we read of temples and palaces being built, and 
 of works of immense magnitude being undertaken for the embellish- 
 ment of the city ; and we have even now more remains of kingly 
 than we have of consular Rome. 
 
 After expelling her kings and shaking off Etruscan influence, Rome 
 existed as a republic for five centuries, and during this long age of 
 barbarism she did nothing to advance science or art. Literature was 
 almost wholly unknown within her walls, and not one monument has 
 come down to our time, even by tradition, worthy of a city of a tenth 
 part of her power and magnitude. There is probably no instance in 
 the history of the world of a capital city existing so long, populous 
 and peaceful at home, prosperous and powerful abroad, and at the 
 same time so utterly devoid of any monuments or any magnificence 
 to dignify her existence. 
 
 When, however, Carthage was conquered and destroyed, when 
 Greece was overrun and plundered, and Egypt, with her long-treasured 
 art, had become a dependent province, Rome was no longer the city of 
 the Aryan Romans, but the sole capital of the civilized world. Into her 
 lap were poured all the artistic riches of the universe ; to Rome flocked 
 all who sought a higher distinction or a more extended field for their 
 ambition than their own provincial capitals could then afford. She 
 
294 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 thus became the centre. of all the arts and of all the science then known ; 
 and, so far at least as quantity is concerned, she amply redeemed her 
 previous neglect of them. It seems an almost indisputable fact that, 
 during the three centuries of the Empire, more and larger buildings 
 were erected in Rome and her dependent cities than ever were erected 
 in a like period in any part of the world. 
 
 For centuries before the establishment of the Roman Empire, pro- 
 gressive development and increasing population, joined to comparative 
 peace and security, had accumulated around the shores of the Medi- 
 terranean a mass of people enjoying material prosperity greater than 
 had ever been known before. All this culminated in the first centuries 
 of the Christian era. The greatness of the ancient world was then 
 full, and a more overwhelming and gorgeous spectacle than the Roman 
 Empire then displayed never dazzled the eyes of mankind. From the 
 banks of the Euphrates to those of the Tagus, every city vied with 
 its neighbor in the erection of temples, baths, theatres, and edifices 
 for public use or private luxury. In all cases these display far more 
 evidence of wealth and power than of taste and refinement, and all 
 exhibit traces of that haste to enjoy, which seems incompatible with 
 the correct elaboration of anything that is to be truly great. Not- 
 withstanding all this, there is a greatness in the mass, a grandeur in 
 the conception, and a certain expression of power in all these Roman 
 remains which never fail to strike the beholder with awe, and force 
 admiration from him despite his better judgment. These qualities, 
 coupled with the associations that attach themselves to every brick 
 and every stone, render the study of them irresistibly attractive. It 
 was with Imperial Rome that the ancient world perished ; it was in 
 her dominions that the new and Christian world was born. All that 
 was great in Heathendom was gathered within her walls, tied, it is 
 true, into an inextricable knot, which was cut by the sword of those 
 barbarians who moulded for themselves out of the fragments that 
 polity and those arts which will next occupy our attention. To 
 Rome all previous history tends ; from Rome all modern history 
 springs : to her, therefore, and to her arts, we inevitably turn, if not 
 to admire, at least to learn, and if not to imitate, at any rate to won- 
 der at and to contemplate a phase of art as unknown to previous as to 
 subsequent history, and, if properly understood, more replete with 
 instruction than any other form hitherto known. Though the lesson 
 we learn from it is far oftener what to avoid than what to follow, still 
 there is such wisdom to be gathered from it as should guide us in the 
 onward path, which may lead us to a far higher grade than it was 
 given to Rome herself ever to attain. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. iu. 
 
 ORIGIN OF STYLE. 
 
 2db 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Origin of style — The arch — Orders: Doric, Ionic, Corintliian, Composite — 
 Temples — The Pantheon — Roman temples at Athens — at Baalbec. 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL MEMORANDA. 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Foundation of Rome B. c. 753 
 
 Tarquinius Priscus — Cloaca Maxima, 
 foundation of Temple of Jupiter 
 
 Capitolinus 616 
 
 Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus dedicated 507 
 
 Scipio — tomb at Literium 184 
 
 Augustus — temples at Rome .... 31 
 Marcellus — theatre at Rome— died . . 23 
 Agrippa — portico of Pantheon —died . 13 
 Nero — burning and rebuilding of Rome 
 
 — died A. D. 68 
 
 Vespasian — Flavian amphitheatre built 70 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Titus — arch in Forum A. D. 79 
 
 Destruction of Pompeii 79 
 
 Trajan — Ulpian Basilica and Pillar of 
 
 Victory 98 
 
 Hadrian builds temple at Rome, Temple 
 
 of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, etc. . 117 
 Septimius Severus — arch at Rome . . .194 
 
 Caracalla — baths 211 
 
 Diocletian — palace at Spalatro .... 284 
 Maxentius — Basilica at Rome .... 306 
 Constantine — transfer of Empire to Con- 
 stantinople 328 
 
 THE earliest inhabitants of Rome were an Aryan, or, as they used to be 
 called, Indo-Germanic race, who established themselves in a country 
 previously occupied by Pelasgians. Their principal neighbor on one 
 side was Etruria, a Pelasgian nation. On the other hand was Magna 
 Graecia, which had been colonized in very early ages by Hellenic 
 settlers of kindred origin. It was therefore impossible that the archi- 
 tecture of the Romans should not be in fact a mixture of the styles 
 of these two people. As a transition order, it was only a mechanical 
 juxtaposition of both styles, the real fusion taking place many long- 
 centuries afterwards. Throughout the Roman period the two styles 
 remain distinct, and there is no great difficulty in referring almost 
 every feature in Roman architecture to its origin. 
 
 From the Greeks were borrowed the rectangular peristylar temple, 
 with its columns and horizontal architraves, though they seldom if ever 
 used it in its perfect purity, the cella of the Greek temples not being 
 sufficiently large for their purposes. The principal Etruscan temples^ 
 as we have already shown, were square in plan, and the inner half 
 occupied by one or more cells, to the sides and back of which the 
 portico never extended. The Roman rectangular temple is a mixture 
 of these two : it is generally, like the Greek examples, longer than its 
 breadth, but the colonnade never seems to have entirely surrounded the 
 building. Sometimes it extends to the two sides as well as the front, 
 
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 rART 1. 
 
 but more generally the cella occupies the whole of the inner part, 
 though frequently ornamented by a false peristyle of three-quarter 
 columns attached to its walls. 
 
 Besides this, the Romans borrowed from the Etruscans a circular 
 form of temple unknown to the Greeks, but which to their tomb-build- 
 ing predecessors must have been not only a familiar but a favorite 
 form. As applied by the Romans it was generally encircled by a 
 peristyle of columns, though it is not clear that the Etruscans so used 
 it ; this may therefore be an improvement adoj^ted from the Greeks on 
 an Etruscan form. In early times these circular temples were dedi- 
 cated to Vesta, Cybele, or some god or goddess either unknown or not 
 generally worshipped by the Aryan races ; but in later times this 
 distinction was lost sight of. 
 
 A more important characteristic which the Romans borrowed from 
 the Etruscans was the circular arch. It was known, it is true, to the 
 Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks; yet none of these people, perhaps 
 excepting the Assyrians, seem to have used it as a feature in their 
 ornamental architecture ; but the Etruscans appear to have had a pecul- 
 iar predilection for it, and from them the Romans adopted it boldly, 
 and introduced it into almost all their buildings. It was not at first 
 used in tcmjilcs of Grecian form, nor even in their peristylar circular 
 ones. In the civil buildings of the Romans it was a universal feature, 
 but was generally placed in juxtaposition with the Grecian orders. In 
 the Colosseum, for instance, the whole construction is arched ; but a 
 useless network of ill-designed and ill-arranged Grecian columns, with 
 their entablatures, is spread over the whole. This is a curious instance 
 of the mixture of the two styles, and as such is very characteristic of 
 Roman art ; but in an artistic point of view the place of these columns 
 would have been far better supplied by buttresses or panels, or some 
 expedient more correctly constructive. 
 
 After having thoroughly familiarized themselves Avith the forms of 
 the arch as an architectural feature, the Romans made a bold stride in 
 advance by applying it as a vault both to the circular and rectangular 
 forms of buildings. The most perfect examples of this are the rotunda 
 of the Pantheon and the basilica of Maxentius, commonly called the 
 Temple of Peace, strangely like each other in conception, though 
 apparently so distant in date. In these buildings the Roman archi- 
 tects so completely emancipated themselves from the trammels of 
 former styles as almost to entitle them to claim the invention of a new 
 order of architecture. It would have required some more practice to 
 invent details appropiate to the purpose ; still these two buildings 
 are to this hour unsurpassed for boldness of conception and just appre- 
 ciation of the manner in which the new method ought to be applied. 
 This is almost universally acknowledged so far as the interior of the 
 Pantheon is concerned. In simple grandeur it is as yet unequalled ; 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. IIL 
 
 ORDERS. 
 
 297 
 
 its faults being principally those of detail. It is not so easy, however, 
 to form an opinion of the Temple of Peace in its present ruined state; 
 but in so far as we can judge from what yet remains of it in boldness 
 and majesty of conception it must have been quite equal to the other 
 example, though it must have required far more familiarity with tlie 
 style adopted to manage its design as appropriately as the simpler 
 dome of the Pantheon. 
 
 These two buildings may be considered as exemplifying the extent 
 to Avhich the Romans had progressed in the invention of a new style 
 of architecture and the state in which they left it to their successors. 
 It may however be worth while pointing out how, in transplanting 
 Roman architecture to their new capital on the shores of the Bos- 
 phorus, the semi-oriental nation seized on its own circular form, 
 and, modifying and moulding it to its purpose, wrought out the 
 Byzantine style ; in which the dome is the great feature, almost to the 
 total exclusion of the rectangular form with its intersecting vaults. 
 On tlie other hand, the rectangular form was appropriated by the 
 nations of the West with an equally distinct rejection of the circular 
 and domical forms, except in those cases in which we find an Eastern 
 people still incorporated with them. Thus in Italy both styles con- 
 tinued long in use, the one in baptisteries, the other in churches, 
 but always kept distinct, as in Rome. In France they were so com- 
 pletely fused into each other that it requires considerable knowledge 
 of architectural analysis to separate them again into their component 
 parts. In England we rejected the circular form altogether, and so 
 they did eventually in Germany, except when under French influence. 
 Each race reclaimed its own among the spoils of Rome, and used it 
 with the improvements it had acquired during its employment in the 
 Imperial city. 
 
 Orders. 
 
 The first thing that strikes the student in attempting to classify 
 the numerous examples of Roman architecture is the immense variety 
 of purposes to which it is applied, as compared with previous styles. 
 In Egypt architecture was applied only to palaces and tombs. In 
 Greece it was almost wholly confined to temples and theatres ; and in 
 Etruria to tombs. It is in Rome that we first feel that we have not 
 to deal with either a Theocracy or a kingdom, but with a great people, 
 who for the first time in the world's history rendered architecture sub- 
 servient to the myriad wants of the many-lieaded monster. It thus 
 happens that in the Roman cities in addition to temples we find 
 basilicas, theatres and amphitheatres, baths, palaces, tombs, arches of 
 triumph and pillars of victory, gates, bridges, and aqueducts, all 
 equally objects of architectural skill. The best of these, in fact, are 
 those which from previous neglect in other countries are here stamped 
 
298 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 with originality. These would have been noble works indeed had it 
 not been that the Romans unsuccessfully applied to them those orders 
 and details of architecture which were intended only to be applied to 
 temples by other nations. In the time of Constantine these orders 
 had nearly died out, and were only subordinately used for decorative 
 purposes. In a little while they would have died out altogether, and 
 the Roman would have become a new and complete style ; but, as 
 before remarked, this did not take place, and the most ancient orders 
 therefore still remain an essential part of Roman art. We find the 
 old orders predominating in the age of Augustus, and we see them 
 gradually die out as we approach that of Constantine. 
 
 Doric. 
 
 Adopting the usual classification, the first of the Roman orders is 
 the Doric, which, like everything else in this style, takes a place 
 about half-way between the Tuscan wooden posts and the nobly simple 
 
 order of the Greeks. It no doubt was 
 a great improvement on the former, 
 but for monumental purposes infinitely 
 inferior to the latter. It was however 
 more manageable ; and for forums or 
 courtyards, or as a three-quarter column 
 between arcades, it was better adapted 
 than the severer Greek style, which, 
 when so employed, not only loses almost 
 all its beauty, but becomes more un- 
 meaning than the Roman. This fact 
 was apparently recognized ; for there 
 is not, so far as is known, a single Doric 
 temple throughout the Roman world. 
 It would in consequence be most unfair 
 to institute a comparison between a 
 mere utilitarian prop used only in civil 
 buildings and an order which the most 
 refined artists in the world spent all their ingenuity in rendering the 
 most perfect, because it was devoted to the highest religious purposes. 
 
 The addition of an independent base made the order much more 
 generally useful, and its adoption brought it much more into harmony 
 with the other two existing orders, which would appear to have been 
 the principal object of its introduction. The keynote of Roman 
 architecture was the Corinthian order ; and as, from the necessities of 
 their tall, many-storied buildings, the Romans were forced to use the 
 three orders together, often one over the other, it was indispensable 
 that the three should be reduced to something like harmony. This 
 
 Doric order. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. III. 
 
 ORDERS. 
 
 299 
 
 was accordingly done, but at the expense of the Doric order, which, 
 except when thus used in combination, must be confessed to have 
 very little claim to our admiration. 
 
 * Ionic. 
 
 The Romans were much more unfortunate in their modifications- 
 of the Ionic order than in those which they introduced into the Doric. 
 They never seem to have either liked or understood it, nor to have 
 employed it except as a mezzo termine between the other two. In its 
 own native East this order had originally only been used in 
 porticoes between piers or ant(je^ where ^ 
 of course only one face was shown, 
 and there were no angles to be turned. 
 When the Greeks adopted it they used 
 it in temples of Doric form, and 
 in consequence were obliged to intro- 
 duce a capital at each angle, with two 
 voluted faces in juxtaposition at right 
 angles to one anotlier. In some instances 
 — internally at least — as at Bassie 
 (Woodcut No. 138) they used a capital 
 with four faces. The Romans, impatient 
 of control, eagerly seized on this modifi- 
 cation, but never quite got over the ex- 
 treme difficulty of its employment. With 
 them the angular volutes became mere 
 horns, and even in the best examples 
 the capital wants harmony and meaning. 
 
 When used as a three-quarter column these alterations were not 
 required and then the order resembled more its original form ; but 
 even in this state it was never equal to the Greek examples, and 
 gradually deteriorated to the corrupt application of it in the Temple 
 of Concord in the Forum, which is the most degenerate example of 
 the order now to be found in Roman remains. 
 
 180. Ionic order. 
 
 COKINTHIAN. 
 
 The fate of this order in the hands of the Romans was different 
 from that of the other two. The Doric and Ionic orders had reached 
 their acme of perfection in the hands of the Grecian artists, and seem 
 to have become incapable of further improvement. The Corinthian, 
 on the contrary, was a recent conception ; and although nothing can 
 surpass the elegance and grace with which the Greeks adorned it, the 
 new capital never acquired with them that fulness and strength so 
 
300 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 requisite to render it an appropriate architectural ornament. These 
 were added to it by the Romans, or rather perhaps by Grecian 
 artists acting under their direction, who thus, as shown in Woodcut 
 Ko. 181, produced an order which for richness combined with propor- 
 tion and architec- 
 
 111 
 
 L 
 
 1 ■ 1 
 
 
 
 J] 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tural fitness has 
 hardly been sur- 
 passed. The base 
 is elegant and 
 appropriate ; the 
 shaft is of the most pleasing 
 proportion, and the fluting 
 gives it just the requisite 
 degree of richness and no 
 more ; while the capital 
 though bordering on over- 
 ornamentation, is so well 
 arranged as to appear just 
 suited to the work it has to 
 do. The acanthus-leaves, it 
 is true, approach the very 
 verge of that degree of direct 
 imitation of nature which, 
 though allowable in architec- 
 tural ornaments, is seldom 
 advisable ; they are, how- 
 ever, disposed so formally, 
 and there still remains so 
 much that is conventional in 
 them, that, though perhaps 
 not justly open to criticism 
 on this account, they are 
 nevertheless a very extreme 
 example. 
 
 The entablature is not so 
 admirable as the column. The 
 architrave is too richly 
 carved. It is evident, how- 
 ever, that this arose from the 
 artist having copied in carv- 
 ing what the Greeks had only 
 
 painted, and thereby produced a complexity far from pleasing. 
 
 The frieze, as we now find it, is perfectly plain ; but this un- 
 doubtedly was not the case when originally erected. It either must 
 have been painted (in which case the whole order of course was also 
 
 181. Corinthian Order. From the Temple of Jupiter 
 Stator. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. III. 
 
 ORDERS. 
 
 301 
 
 ])ainted), or ornamented with scrolls or figures in bronze, which may 
 probably have been gilt. 
 
 The cornice is perhaps open to the same criticism as the archi- 
 trave, of being over-rich, though tliis evidently arose from the same 
 cause, viz., reproducing in carving what was originally only painted ; 
 which, to our Northern eyes at least, appears more Mi)propriate for 
 internal than for external decoration, though, under the purer skies 
 where it was introduced and used, this remark may be hardly 
 applicable. 
 
 The order of the portico of the Pantheon is, according to our 
 notions, a nobler specimen of what an external pillar should be than 
 that of the Temple of Jupiter Stator. The shafts are of one block, 
 unfluted ; the capital plainer; and the whole entablature, though as 
 cori-ectly proportional, is far less ornamented, and more suited to the 
 greater simplicity of tlie whole. 
 
 The order of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina is another 
 example intermediate between these two. The columns are in this 
 instance very sindlar to those of the Pantheon, and the architrave is 
 plain. The frieze, however, is ornamented with more taste than any 
 other in Rome, and is a very pleasing example of those conventional 
 representations of plants and animals which are so well suited to 
 architectural purposes — more like Nature than those of the Greeks, 
 but still avoiding direct imitation sufficiently to escape the affectation 
 of pretending to appear what it is not and cannot be. 
 
 The Maison Carree at Nimes ]n'esents an example of a frieze orna- 
 mented with exquisite taste, while at Baalbec, and in some other 
 examples, we have them so over-ornamented that the effect is far more 
 offensive, from utter want of repose, than the frieze in the Temple of 
 Jupiter Stator ever could be from its baldness. 
 
 Besides these there are at least fifty varieties of Corinthian capitals 
 to be found, either in Rome or in various parts of the Roman Empire, 
 all executed within the three centuries during wdiich Rome continued 
 to be the imperial city. Some of them are remarkable for that elegant 
 simplicity which so evidently betrays the hand of a Grecian artist, 
 while others again show a lavish exuberance of ornament which is but 
 too characteristic of Roman art in general. Many, however, contain 
 the germs of something better than was accomplished in that age; 
 and a collection of them would afford more useful suggestions for 
 designing capitals than have yet been available to modern artists. 
 
 Composite Order. 
 
 Among their various attempts to improve the order which has 
 just been described, the Romans hit upon one which is extremely 
 characteristic of their whole style of art. This is known by the 
 
302 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 liiuuuuuuijm 
 
 182. Composite Order. 
 
 distinguishing name of the Composite order, though virtually more 
 like the typical examples of the Corinthian order than many of those 
 
 classed under the latter denomination. 
 
 The greatest defect of the Corinthian 
 capital is the weakness of the small volutes 
 supporting the angles of the abacus. A 
 true artist would have remedied this by 
 adding to their strength and carrying up 
 the fulness of the capital to the top. The 
 Romans removed the whole of the upper 
 part, and substituted an Ionic capital 
 instead. Their only original idea, if it 
 may be so called, in art was that of 
 putting two dissimilar things together 
 to make one which should combine the 
 beauties of both, thougli as a rule the one 
 generally serves to destroy the other. In 
 the Composite capital they never could 
 hide the junction ; and consequently, 
 though rich, and in some respects an 
 improvement on the order out of which it grew, this capital never 
 came into general use, and has seldom found favor except amongst 
 
 the blindest admirers of 
 all that the Romans did. 
 
 In the latter days of 
 the Empire, the Romans 
 attempted another inno- 
 vation which promised 
 far better success, and 
 with very little more elab- 
 oration would have been 
 a great gain to the prin- 
 ciples of architectural 
 design. This Avas the 
 introduction of the Per- 
 sian or Assyrian base, 
 modified to suit the de- 
 tails of the Corinthian or 
 Composite orders. If they 
 had always used this in- 
 stead of the square pedes- 
 tals on which they mounted their columns, and had attenuated the 
 pillars slightly when used with arcades, they would have avoided 
 many of the errors they fell into. This application, however, came 
 too late to be generally used ; and the forms already introduced con- 
 
 183. 
 
 Corinthian Base, founti in Church of St. Praxede in 
 Kome. 
 
:bk. IV. ch. III. 
 
 COMPOSITE ARCADES. 
 
 303 
 
 tinued to prevail. At the same time it is evident that a Persepolitan 
 base for an Ionic and even for a Corinthian column would be amongst 
 the greatest improvements that could now be introduced, especially 
 for internal architecture. 
 
 Composite Arcades. 
 
 The true Roman order, however, was not any of these columnar 
 ordinances we have been enumerating, but an arrangement of two pil- 
 lars placed at a distance from one another nearly equal to their own 
 height, and having a very long entablature, which in consequence 
 required to be supported in the centre by an arch springing from 
 piers. This, as will be seen from the annexed woodcut, was in fact 
 merely a screen of Grecian architecture placed in front of a construc- 
 tion of Etruscan design. Though not 
 without a certain richness of effect, 
 still, as used by the Romans, these 
 two systems remain too distinctly dis- 
 similar for the result to be pleasing, 
 and their use necessitated certain 
 supplemental arrangements by no 
 means agreeable. In the first place, 
 the columns had to be mounted on 
 pedestals, or otherwise an entablature 
 proportional to their size would have 
 been too heavy and too important for 
 a thing so useless and so avowedly a 
 mere ornament. ^ A projecting key- ^^^.^ 
 stone was also introduced into the 
 
 arch. This was unobjectionable in itself, but when projecting so far 
 as to do the duty of an intermediate capital, it overpowered the arch, 
 without being equal to the work required of it. 
 
 The Romans used these arcades with all the three orders, frequently 
 one over the other, and tried various expedients to harmonize the con- 
 struction with the ornamentation, but without much effect. They 
 seem always to have felt the discordance as a blemish, and at last got 
 rid of it, but whether they did so in the best way is not quite clear. 
 The most obvious mode of effecting this would no doubt have been 
 by omitting the pillars altogether, bending the architrave, as is usually 
 done, round the arch, and then inserting the frieze and cornices into 
 the wall, using them as a string-course. A slight degree of practice 
 would soon have enabled them — by panelling the pier, cutting off 
 its angles, or some such expedient — to have obtained the degree of 
 lightness or of ornament they required, and so really to have invented 
 a new order. 
 
304 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 This, however, was not the course that the Romans pursued. 
 What they did was to remove the pier altogether, and to substitute 
 for it the pillar taken down from its pedestal. This of course was not 
 effected at once, but was the result of many trials and expedients. 
 One of the earliest of these is observed in the Ionic Temple of Con- 
 cord before alluded to, in which a concealed arch is thrown from the 
 head of each pillar, but above the entablature, so as to take the whole 
 weight of the superstructure from off tlie cornice between the pillars. 
 When once this was done, it was perceived that so deep an entablature 
 
 185. View in Courtyard of Palace at Siialatro.' 
 
 was no longer required, and that it might be either wholly omitted, 
 as Avas sometimes done in the centre intercolumniation, or very much 
 reduced. There is an old temple at Talavera in Spain, which is a 
 good example of the former expedient ; and the Church of the Holy 
 Sepulchre, built by Constantine at Jerusalem, is a remarkable instance 
 of the latter. There the architrave is cut off so as merely to form a 
 block over each of the pillars, and the frieze and cornice only are 
 carried across from one of these blocks to the other, while a bold 
 arch is thrown from pillar to pillar over these, so as to take any weight 
 from off a member which has at last become a mere ornamental part 
 of the style. 
 
 In Diocletian's reign we find all these changes already introduced 
 
 1 It has recently become the fashion 
 to spell the name Spalato or Spelato. 
 The mode of writing it adopted in this 
 
 work is that used by Adams, which has 
 consequently become classical among 
 architects. 
 
Bk. TV. Ch in. 
 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 305 
 
 into domestic architecture, as shown in Woodcut No. 185, representing 
 tlie great court of his pahice at Spalatro, where, at one end, the 
 entablature is bent into tlie form of an arch for the central inter- 
 columniation, while at the sides the arches spring directly from the 
 capitals of the columns. 
 
 Had the Romans at this period been more desirous to improve 
 their external architecture, there is little doubt that they would have 
 adopted the expedient of omitting the entire entablature; but at this 
 time almost all their efforts were devoted to internal improvement, 
 and not unfrequently at the exj^ense of the exterior. Indeed the whole 
 history of Roman art, from the time of Augustus to that of Constan- 
 tine, is a transition from the external architecture of the Greeks to 
 the internal embellishment of the Christians. At first we sec the 
 cells of the temple gradually enlarged at the expense of the peristyle, 
 and finally, in some instances, entirely overpowering them. Their 
 basilicas and halls become more important than their porticoes, and 
 the exterior is in almost every instance sacrificed to internal arrange- 
 ments. For an interior, an arch resting on a circular column is 
 obviously far more appropriate than one resting on a pier. Externally, 
 on the contrary, the square pier is most suitable, because a pillar 
 cannot support a wall of sufficient thickness. This defect was not 
 remedied until the Gothic architects devised the plan of coupling two 
 or more pillars together ; but this point had not been reached at the 
 time when with the fall of Rome all progress in art was effectually 
 checked for a time. 
 
 Temples. 
 
 There is perhaps nothing that strikes the inquirer into the archi- 
 tectural history of Rome more than the extreme insignificance of her 
 temples, as compared with the other buildings of the imperial city 
 and with some contemporary temples found in the provinces. The 
 only temple which remains at all worthy of such a capital is the 
 Pantheon. All others are now mere fragments, from which we can 
 with difficulty restore even the plans of the buildings, far less judge 
 of their effect. We have now no means of forming an opinion of the 
 great national temple of the Capitoline Jove, no trace of it nor any 
 intelligible description, having been preserved to the present time. 
 Its having been of Etruscan origin, and retaining its original form to 
 the latest day, would lead us to suppose that the temple itself was 
 small, and that its magnificence, if any, was confined to the enclosure 
 and to the substructure, which may have been immense. 
 
 Of the Augustan age we have nothing but the remains of three 
 temples, each consisting of only three columns ; and the excavations 
 that have been made around them have not sufficed to make even 
 their plans tolerably clear. 
 VOL. I. — 20 
 
306 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I.. 
 
 The most remarkable was that of Jupiter Stator in the Forum, the 
 beautiful details of which have been already alluded to and described.. 
 This temple was octastyle in front. It was raised on a stylobate 22 ft. 
 in height, the extreme width of which was 98 ft., and this corresponds 
 as closely as possible with 100 Roman ft. The angular columns were 
 85 ft. from centre to centre. The height of the pillars was 48 ft., and 
 that of the entablature 12 ft 6 in.i It is probable that the whole 
 height to the apex of the pediment was nearly equal to the extreme 
 width, and that it was designed to be so. 
 
 The pillars certainly extended on both flanks, and the temple is 
 generally restored as peristylar, but apparently without any authority.. 
 From the analogy of the other temples it seems more probable that 
 there were not more than eight or ten pillars on each side, and that 
 the apse of the cella formed the termination opposite the portico. 
 
 The temple nearest to this in situation and style is that of Jupiter 
 Tonans.2 The order in this instance is of slightly inferior dimensions 
 to that of the temple just described, and of very inferior execution. 
 The temple, too, was very much smaller, having only six columns in 
 front, and from its situation it could not well have had more than that 
 number on the flanks, so that its extreme dimensions were probably 
 about 70 ft. by 85. 
 
 The third is the Temple of Mars Ultor, of which a plan is annexed ;: 
 
 for though now as completely decayed as 
 the other two, in the time of Ant. Sabacco 
 and Falladio there seem to have been 
 sufiicient remains to justify an attempt 
 at restoration. As will be seen, it is 
 nearly square in plan (112 ft. by 120). 
 The cella is here a much more important 
 part than is usual in Greek temples, and 
 terminates in an apse, which afterwards^ 
 became characteristic of all places of wor- 
 ship. Behind the cella, and on each side 
 was a lofty screen of walls and arches, 
 part of which still remain, and form 
 quite a new adjunct, unlike anything hitherto met with attached to 
 any temple now known. 
 
 186. 
 
 Temple of Mars Ultor. 
 Creasy's "Rome.") 
 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 (From 
 Scale 
 
 * These dimensions, with all those 
 that follow, unless otherwise specified, 
 are taken from Taylor and Creasy's 
 "Architectural Antiquities of Rome," 
 London, 1821. They seem more to he 
 depended upon than any others I am 
 acquainted with. 
 
 These two temples, like almost all 
 the others of Rome, have recently heen 
 
 renamed by the Roman or rather Ger- 
 man antiquaries. The Jupiter Tonans- 
 is now the Temple of Saturn, and the 
 Jupiter Stator is decreed to have heen a 
 Temple of Minerva. I have preferred 
 the names by which they are currently 
 known, as the architecture is of more 
 importance here than the archaeology. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. III. 
 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 307 
 
 The next class of temples, called pseudo-peripteral (or those in 
 which the cella occupies the whole of the after-part), are generally 
 more modern, certainly more completely Roman than these last. One 
 of the best specimens at Rome is the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, 
 a small building measuring 72 ft. by 120. There is also a very elegant 
 little Ionic temple of this class called that of Fortuna Virilis ; while 
 the Ionic temple at Concord, built by Vespasian, and above alluded to,, 
 appears also to have been of this class. So was the temple in the forum 
 at Pompeii ; but the finest specimen now remaining to us is the so-called 
 Maison Carree at Nimes, which is indeed one of the most elegant 
 temples of the Roman world, owing probably a great deal of its beauty 
 to the taste of the Grecian colonists long settled in its neighborhood. 
 It is hexastyle, with 11 columns in the flanks, 3 of which stand free,. 
 
 and belong to the portico ; the remaining 8 are 
 
 attached to the walls of the cella. The temple 
 is small, only 45 ft. by 85 ; but such is the beauty 
 of its proportions and the elegance of its details 
 that it strikes every beholder with admiration. 
 
 The date of this temple has not been satis- 
 factorily ascertained. From the nail-holes of the 
 inscription on the frieze it has been attempted 
 to make out the names Caius and Lucius Caesar, 
 and there is nothing in the style of its architecture 
 to contradict this hypothesis. Even if the build- 
 ings in the capital were such as to render this date ambiguous, it 
 would scarcely be safe to apply any argument derived from them 
 to a provincial example erected in the midst of a Grecian colony. 
 But for their evidence we might almost be inclined to fancy its style 
 represented the age of Trajan. 
 
 The Temple of Diana in the same city is another edifice of singular 
 beauty of detail, and interesting from the pecu- 
 liarity of its plan. Exclusive of the portico it is 
 nearly square, 70 ft. by 65, and is divided into 
 three aisles, which are all covered with ribbed 
 stone vaults of a larger and bolder design in de- 
 tail than those of Gothic form and singularly 
 interesting as the origin of much that we find 
 afterwards. There are some of the arrangements 
 of this building which in its ruined state it is dif- 
 ficult to understand, but these are not important. 
 
 Throughout this building the details of the architecture are unsur-. 
 passed for variety and elegance by anything found in the metrop- 
 olis, and are applied here with a freedom and elegance bespeaking 
 the presence of a Grecian mind even in this remote corner of the 
 empire. Another interesting feature is the porch. This was supported 
 
 187. Plan of Maison 
 Carree at Nimes. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 188. Plan of Temple 
 of Diana at Nimes. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
308 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 189. View of the Interior of the Temple of Diana at Nimes. (From Laborde.) 
 
 by four sleiuler columns of singularly elegant design, but placed so 
 widely ai)art tliat they could not have carried a stone entablature. It 
 is difKcult to guess what could have been the form of the wooden 
 ones ; but a mortice which still exists in the walls of the temple shows 
 that it must have been eight or ten feet deep, and therefore probably 
 of Etruscan form (Woodcut No. 167) ; though it may have assumed 
 a circular arched form between the pillars. ^ 
 
 Another jieculiarity is, that the light was introduced over the 
 portico by a great semicircular window, as is done in the Buddhist 
 caves in India; which, so far as I know, is the most perfect mode of 
 lighting the interior of a temple which has yet been discovered. 
 
 Not far from the Colosseum, in the direction of the Forum, are 
 still to be seen the remains of a great double temple built by the 
 Emi)eror Hadrian, and dedicated to Venus and Rome, and consisting 
 of the ruins of its two cells, each about 70 ft. square, covered with 
 tunnel-vaults, and placed back to back, so that their apses touch one 
 another. These stand on a platform 480 ft. long by 330 ft. wide ; and 
 it is generally supposed that on the edge of this once stood 56 great 
 columns, 65 ft. in height, thus moulding the whole into one great 
 peripteral temple. Some fragments of such pillars are said to be 
 found in the neighborhood, but not one is now erect, — not even a 
 
 1 Laborde, " Monumens de la France," vol. i. pis. xxix. xxx. p. 68. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. III. 
 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 309 
 
 base is in its place, — nor can any of its columns be traced to any 
 other buildings. Tliis part, therefore, of the arrangement is very i)rob- 
 lematical, and I should be rather inclined to restore it, as Palladio 
 and the older architects have done, with a corridor of ten small 
 columns in front of each of the cells. If v^^e could assume the plan 
 of this temple to have been really peripteral, as supposed, it must 
 have been a building worthy of the imperial city and of the magni- 
 ficence of the emperor to whom its erection is ascribed. 
 
 More perfect and more interesting than any of these is the Pantheon, 
 which is undoubtedly one of the finest temples of the ancient world. 
 Externally its effect is very much 
 destroyed by its two parts, the 
 circular and the rectangular, being 
 so dissimilar in style and so incon- 
 gruously joined together. The por- 
 tico especially, in itself the finest 
 which Rome exhibits, is very much 
 injured by being prefixed to a mass 
 which overpowers it and does not 
 harmonize with any of its lines. 
 The pitch, too, of its pediment is 
 perhaps somewhat too high, but, 
 notwithstanding all this, its sixteen 
 columns,the shaft of each composed 
 of a single block, and the simple 
 grandeur of the details, render it 
 perhaps the most satisfactory ex- 
 ample of its class. 
 
 The pillars are arranged in the Etruscan fashion, as they were 
 originally disposed in front of three-celled temples. As they now stand, 
 however, they are added unsynimetrically to a rotunda, and in so 
 clumsy a fashion that the two are certainly not part of the same design 
 and do not belong to the same age. Either it was that the portico 
 was added to the pre-existing rotunda, or that the rotunda is long 
 subsequent to the portico. Unfortunately the two inscriptions on the 
 ])ortico hardly help to a solution of the difiiculty. The principal one 
 states that it was built by M. Agrippa, but tlie " it "may refer to the 
 rotunda only, and may have been put there by those who in the 
 time of Aurelius' repaired the temple which had " fallen into decay 
 from age." This hardly could, under any circumstances, be predicated 
 of the rotunda, which shows no sign of decay during the last seventeen 
 
 190. Plan of Pantheon at Rome. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 ^ IMP. C^S. M. AVRELIVS ANTONINVS 
 PIVS FELIX AVG. TRIB. POTEST V. COS. 
 PROCOS. PANTHEVM VETVSTATE COR- 
 
 RVPTVM CVM OMNI CVLTV RESTITVER- 
 
 VNT. Isabelle, ":^ldifices Circulaires," 
 p. 37, pi. xii. 
 
310 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 centuries of ill-treatment and neglect, and may last for as many more 
 without injury to its stability, but might be said of a portico which, 
 if of wood, as Etruscan porticoes usually were, may easily in 200 years 
 have required repairs and rebuilding. From a more careful examina. 
 tion on the spot, I am convinced that the portico was added at some 
 subsequent period to the rotunda. If by Agrippa, then the dome 
 must belong to Republican times ; if by Severus it may have been, as 
 is generally supposed, the hall of the Baths of Agrippa. i Altogether 
 I know of no building whose date and arrangements are so singular 
 
 191. Half Elevation, half Section, of the Pantheon at Rome. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 and so exceptional as this. Though it is, and always must have been, 
 one of the most prominent buildings in Rome, and most important 
 from its size and design, I know of no other building in Rome whose 
 date or original destination it is so difficult to determine. 
 
 Internally perhaps the greatest defect of the building is a want of 
 height in the perpendicular part, which the dome appears to overpower 
 and crush. This mistake is aggravated by the lower part being cut 
 up into two stories, an attic being placed over the lower order. The 
 
 ' AVhen the first edition of this work 
 was written I beheved the rotunda to 
 have been added to the portico by Sev- 
 erus; and if this were so it would get 
 over many of the difficulties arising from 
 its size and the character of its brick- 
 
 work. My personal examination, how- 
 ever, has forced me very unwillingly to 
 give up this hypothesis. It certainly 
 is, however, very astonishing that such 
 a vault should have been attempted at 
 so early an age. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. III. 
 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 311 
 
 former defect may have arisen from the architect wishing to keep tlie 
 walls in some proportion to the portico. The latter is a peculiarity 
 of the age in which I suppose this temple to have been remodelled, 
 when two or more stories seem to have become indispensable requi- 
 sites of architectural design. We must ascribe also to the practice of 
 the age the method of cutting through the entablature by the arches 
 of the great niches, as shown in the sectional part of the last woodcut. 
 It has already been pointed out that this was becoming a characteristic 
 of the style at the time when the circular part of this temple was 
 arranged as it at present appears. 
 
 Notwithstanding these defects and many others of detail that might 
 be mentioned, there is a grandeur and a simplicity in the proportions 
 of this great temple that render it still one of the very finest and most 
 sublime interiors in the world, and the dimensions of its dome, 145 ft. 
 6 in. span by 147 in height, have not yet been surpassed by any subse- 
 quent erection. Though it is deprived of its bronze covering and of 
 the greater part of those ornaments on which it mainly depended for 
 effect, and though these have been replaced by tawdry and incongruous 
 modernisms, still nothing can destroy the effect of a design so vast and 
 of a form so simply grand. It possesses moreover one other element 
 of architectural sublimity in having a single window, and that placed 
 high up in the building. I know of no other temples which possess 
 this feature except the great rock-cut Buddhist basilicas of India. In 
 them the light is introduced even more artistically than here ; but, 
 nevertheless, that one great eye opening upon heaven is by far the 
 noblest conception for lighting a building to be found in Europe. 
 
 Besides this great rotunda there are two other circular temi>les 
 in or near Rome. The one at Tivoli, shown 
 in plan and elevation in the annexed Avood- 
 cuts (Nos. 192 and 193), has long been known 
 and admired ; the other, near the mouth of 
 the Cloaca Maxima, has a cell surrounded 
 by twenty Corinthian columns of singularly 
 slender proportions. Both these probably 
 stand on Etruscan sites ; they certainly are 
 Etruscan in form, and are very likely sacred 
 to Pelasgic deities, either Vesta or Cybele. 
 
 Both in dimensions and design they form 
 a perfect contrast to the Pantheon, as might 
 be expected from their both belonging to 
 the Augustan age of art : consequently the 
 cella is small, its interior is unornamented, 
 and all the art and expense are lavished on 
 the external features, especially on the peristyle ; showing more 
 strongly than even the rectangular temple the still remaining 
 
 192. 
 
 Plan of Temple at Tivoli. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 193. 
 
 Restored Elevation of 
 Temple at Tivoli. 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
312 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut 1. 
 
 predominance of Grecian taste, which was gradually dying out during 
 the whole period of the Empire. 
 
 It is to be regretted that the exact dates of both these temples are 
 unknown, for, as that at Tivoli shows the stoutest example of a 
 Corinthian column known and that in Rome the slenderest, it might 
 lead to some important deductions if we could be certain which was 
 the older of the two. It may be, however, that this difference of style 
 has no connection with the relative age of the two buildings, but that 
 it is merely an instance of the good taste of the age to which they 
 belong. The Roman example, being placed in a low and flat situation, 
 required all the height that could be given it ; that at Tivoli, being 
 placed on the edge of a rock, required as much solidity as the order 
 would admit of to prevent its looking poor and insecure. A Gothic 
 or a Greek architect would certainly have made this distinction. 
 One more step towards the modern style of round temples was 
 
 taken before the fall of the Western 
 Empire, in the temple which Diocletian 
 built in his palace at Spalatro. Inter- 
 nally the temple is circular, '28 ft. in 
 diameter, and the height of the per- 
 pendicular part to the springing of 
 the dome is about equal to its width. 
 This is a much more pleasing propor- 
 tion than we find in the Pantheon ; 
 perhaps the very best that has yet 
 been employed. Externally the build- 
 ing is an octagon, surrounded by a 
 low dwarf peristyle, very unUke that 
 employed in the older examples. This 
 194. Plan and Elevation of Temple iu angularity is Certainly a great im- 
 
 Diocletian's Palace at Spalatro. . . . , 
 
 Scale for Plan 100 ft. to 1 in.; for Eleva- i)rovement, giving cxprcssiou and 
 
 tion 50 ft. to 1 iu. .i i -it i i?f> i 
 
 character to the building, and afford- 
 ing flat faces for the entrances or porches ; but the peristyle is too low, 
 and mars the dignity of the whole. ^ 
 
 To us its principal interest consists in its being so extremely simi- 
 lar to the Christian baptisteries which were erected in the following 
 centuries, and which were copies, but very slightly altered, from 
 buildings of this class. 
 
 Athens. 
 
 Even assuming that Hadrian completed the great Temple of Venus 
 at Rome in the manner generally supposed, it must have been very 
 
 1 This building is commonly called a | pression is that it was a tomb, or at 
 temple, though it is not known to what j least a funereal monument of some sort, 
 deity it was dedicated. My own im- I 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. III. 
 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 313 
 
 far surpassed by the great Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, 
 which, though probably not entirely erected, was certainly finished, l)y 
 that emperor. It was decastyle in front, with a double range of 20 
 columns on each flank, so that it could not well have had less than 
 120 columns, all about 58 ft. in height, and of the most elegant 
 Corinthian order, presenting altogether a group of far greater mag- 
 nificence than any other temple we are acquainted with of its class 
 in the ancient world. Its lineal dimensions also, as may be seen 
 from the plan (Woodcut No. 154), were only rivalled by the two great 
 Sicilian temples at Agrigentum and Selinus (Woodcuts Nos. 148, 149). 
 
 195. Kuinsof the Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens. 
 
 It was 171 ft. wide by 354 in length, or nearly the same dimensions as 
 the great Hypostyle Hall at Karnac, from which, howcA^er, it differs 
 most materially, that being a beautiful example of an interior, this 
 depending for all its magnificence on the external arrangement of 
 its columns. Nothing now remains from which to restore its internal 
 arrangement with anything like certainty; but it appears probable 
 that the outer part of the cella was arranged as a peristylar court 
 open in the centre, as shown in the plan (Woodcut No. 154), probably^ 
 of two stories, so as to admit light into the interior. This arrange- 
 ment became so common in the early Christian world that there must 
 have been some precedent for it ; which, in addition to other reasons,^ 
 
 ^ See " The True Principles of Beauty j this arrangement will be found stated at 
 in Art," p. 392, where the reasons for | length. 
 
3U 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Paut i. 
 
 Strongly inclines me to believe that the arrangement shown in the 
 l)lan is correct. 
 
 B 
 
 AALBEC. 
 
 lyti. Plan of Small Temple at 
 Baalbec. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 The temples of Palmyra and Kangovar have been already men- 
 tioned in speaking of that of Jerusalem, to 
 which class they seem to belong in their general 
 arrangements,thougli their details are borrowed 
 from Roman architecture. This, however, is 
 not the case with the temples at Baalbec, 
 which, taken together and with their accom- 
 paniments, form the most magnificent temple 
 group now left to us of their class and age. 
 The great temple, if completed (which, how- 
 ever, it probably never was), would have been 
 about 160 ft. by 290, and therefore, as a 
 Corintliian temple, only inferior to that of 
 Jupiter Olympius at Athens. Only nine of 
 its colossal columns are now standing, but the 
 bases of most of the others are m situ. Scarcely 
 less magnificent than the temple itself was the 
 court in which it stood, above 380 ft. square, 
 and surrounded on three sides by recessed 
 porticoes of most exuberant richness, though in 
 perhaps ratlier questionable taste. In front of 
 this was a hexagonal 
 court of very great 
 beauty, with a noble 
 portico of 12 Corin- 
 thian columns, with 
 two square blocks of 
 masonry at each end. 
 The whole extent of 
 the portico is 260 ft., 
 and of its kind it 
 is perhaps unrivalled, 
 certainly among the 
 buildings of so late a 
 date as the period to 
 which it belongs. 
 
 The other, or 
 smaller temple, stands 
 close to the larger. 
 Its dimensions, to the 
 usual scale, are shown in the plan (Woodcut No. 196). It is larger 
 
 197. Elevation of Small Temple at Baalbec. 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk IV. Ch. III. 
 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 315 
 
 than any of the Roman peripteral teraples, being 117 ft. by 227 ft. 
 or rather exceeding the dimensions of the Parthenon at Athens, and 
 its portico is both wider and higher than that of the Pantheon at 
 Rome. Had this portico been applied to that building, the slope 
 of its pediment would have coincided exactly with that of the upper 
 sloping cornice, and would have been the greatest possible improve- 
 ment to that edifice. As it is, it certainly is the best proportioned 
 and the most graceful Roman portico of the first class that remains 
 to us in a state of sufficient completeness to allow us to judge of its 
 effect. 
 
 Tlie interior of the cella was richly ornamented with niches and 
 pilasters, and covered with a ribbed and coffered vault, remarkable, 
 like every part of this edifice, rather for the profusion than for the 
 good taste of its ornaments. 
 
 One of the principal jieculiarities of this group of buildings is the 
 immense size of some of the stones used in the substructure of the great 
 temple : three of these average about 63 ft. in length, 10 ft 5 in. in 
 breadth, and 13 feet in height. A fourth, of similar dimensions, is 
 lying in the quarry, which it is calculated must weigh alone more 
 than 1100 tons in its rough state, or nearly as much as one of the 
 tubes of the Britannia Bridge. It is not easy to see why such masses 
 were employed. If they had been used as foundation stones their use 
 would have been apparent, but they are placed over several courses of 
 smaller stones, about half-way up the terrace wall, as mere binding 
 stones, apparently for show. It is true- that in many places in the 
 Bible and in Josephus nothing is so much insisted upon as the im- 
 mense size of the stones used in the building of the temple and the 
 walls of Jerusalem, the bulk of the materials used appearing to have 
 been thought a matter of far more importance than the architecture. 
 It probably was some such feeling as this which led to their employ- 
 ment here, though, had these huge stones been set upright, as the 
 Egyptians would have placed them, we might more easily have under- 
 stood why so great an expense should have been incurred on their 
 account. As it is, there seems no reason for doubting their being of 
 the same age as the temples they support, though their use is certainly 
 exceptional in Roman temples of this class. 
 
^16 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 BASILICAS, THEATRES, AND BATHS. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Basilicas of Trajan and Maxentius — Provincial basilicas — Theatre at Orange — 
 Colosseum — Provincial amphitheatres — Baths of Diocletian. 
 
 Basilicas. 
 
 WE have already seen that in size and magnificence the temples of 
 Rome were among the least remarkable of her public buildings. It 
 may be doubted whether, in any respect, in the eyes of the Romans 
 themselves, the temples were a3 important and venerable as the 
 basilicas. The people cared for government and justice more than 
 for religion, and consequently paid more attention to the affairs of the 
 basilicas than to those of the temples. Our means for the restoration 
 of this class of buildings are now but small, owing to their sliglit 
 construction in the first instance, and to their materials having been 
 so suitable to the building of Christian basilicas as to have been 
 extensively used for that purpose. It happens, however, that the re- 
 mains which we do possess comprise what we know to be the ruins of 
 the two most splendid buildings of this class in Rome, and these are 
 sufficiently complete to enable us to restore their plans with consider- 
 able confidence. It is also fortunate that one of these, the Ulpian or 
 Trajan's basilica, is the typical specimen of those with wooden roofs ; 
 the other, that of Maxentius, commonly called the Temple of Peace, is 
 the noblest of the vaulted class. 
 
 The rectangular part of Trajan's basilica was 180 ft. in width and 
 a little more than twice that in length, but, neither end having yet 
 been excavated, its exact longitudinal measurement has not been ascer- 
 tained. It was divided into five aisles by four rows of columns, each 
 about 35 ft. in height, the centre being 87 ft. wide, and the side-aisles 
 23 ft. 4 in. each. The centre was covered by a wooden roof of semi- 
 circular form, covered apparently with bronze plates richly ornamented 
 and gilt. Above the side aisles was a gallery, the roof of which was 
 supported by an upper row of columns. From the same columns also 
 sprang the arches of the great central aisle. The total internal height 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. IV. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 317 
 
 198. Plan of Trajan's Basilica at Rome. Scale 100 ft to 1 in. 
 The part shaded darker is all that is uncovered. 
 
 199. Restored Section of Trajan's Basilica. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
318 
 
 KOMAM ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 was thus probably about 120 ft., or liiglier than any English cathedral, 
 though not so high as some German and French churches. 
 
 At one end Avas a great semicircular apse, the back part of which 
 was raised, being approached by a semicircular range of steps. In 
 the centre of this platform was the raised seat of the quaestor or other 
 magistrate who presided. On each side, upon the steps, were places 
 for the assessors or others engaged in the business being transacted. 
 In front of the apse was placed an altar, where sacrifice was performed 
 before commencing any important public business.-^ 
 
 Externally this basilica could not have been of much magnificence. 
 It was entered on the side of the Forum (on the left hand of the 
 plan and section) by one triple doorway in the centre and two single 
 ones on either side, covered by shallow j^orticoes of columns of the 
 same height as those used internally. These supported statues, or 
 rather, to judge from the coins representing the building, rilievos, 
 which may have set off, but could hardly have given much dignity to, 
 a building designed as this was. At the end opposite the apse a 
 similar arrangement seems to have prevailed. 
 
 This mode of using columns only half the height of the edifice 
 must have been very destructive of their effect and of the general 
 grandeur of the structure, but it became about this time rather the 
 rule than the exception, and was afterwards adopted for temples and 
 every other class of buildings, so that it was decidedly an improve- 
 ment when the arch took tlie place of the horizontal architrave and 
 cornice; the latter always suggested a roof, and became singularly 
 incongruous when applied as a mere ornamental adjunct at half the 
 height of the fa9ade. The interior of the basilica was, however, the 
 important element to which the exterior was entirely sacrificed, a 
 transition in architectural design which we have before alluded to, 
 taking place much faster in basilicas, which w^ere an entirely new 
 form of building, than in temples, whose conformation had become 
 sacred from the traditions of past ages. 
 
 The basilica of Maxentius, which was probably not entirely finished 
 till the reign of Constantine, was rather broader than that of Trajan, 
 being 195 ft. between the Avails, but it was 100 ft. less in length. The 
 central aisle was very nearly of the same width, being 83 ft. between 
 the columns, and 120 ft. in height. There was, hoAvever, a vast dif- 
 ference in the construction of the two; so much so, that we are 
 startled to see hoAv rapid the progress had been during the interval, 
 of less than two centuries, that had elapsed between the construction 
 of the two basilicas. 
 
 In this building no pillars were used with the exception of eight 
 
 ^ This basilica is generally repre- 
 sented as having an apse at either end ; 
 but there is no authority Avhatever for 
 
 this, and general analogy would lead us 
 rather to infer that it Avas not the case. 
 
Bk. IV. Cu. IV. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 319 
 
320 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 great columns in front of the piers, employed merely as ornaments, or 
 as vaulting shafts were in Gothic cathedrals, to support in appearance, 
 
 though not in construction, 
 the springing of the vaults.^ 
 The side-aisles were roofed 
 by three great arches, each 
 72 ft. in span, and the centre 
 by an immense intersecting 
 vault in three compartments. 
 The form of these will be un- 
 derstood from the annexed 
 sections (Woodcuts Nos. 201 
 and 202), one taken longi- 
 tudinally, the other across 
 the building. As will be seen 
 from them, all the thrusts are 
 collected to a point and a 
 buttress placed there to re- 
 ceive them ; indeed almost all 
 the peculiarities afterwards 
 found in Gothl; vaults are 
 here employed on a far grand- 
 er and more gigantic scale 
 than the Gothic architects 
 ever attempted; but at the 
 same time it must be allowed 
 
 203. Pillar of Maxeiitian Basilica. (From an old that the latter, witll smaller 
 print quoted by Latarouilly.) dimensions, ofteu COUtrivcd 
 
 by a more artistic treatment of their materials to obtain as grand an ef- 
 fect and far more actual beauty than ever were attained in the great tran- 
 sitional halls of the Romans. The largeness of the parts of the Roman 
 buildings was indeed their principal defect, as in consequence of this 
 they must all have api)eared smaller than they really were, whereas 
 in all Gothic cathedrals the repetition and smallness of the component 
 parts has the effect of magnifying their real dimensions. 
 
 The roofs of these halls had one peculiarity which it would have 
 been well if the media3val architects had copied, inasmuch as they 
 were all, or at least might have been, honestly used as roofs without 
 any necessity for their being covered with others of wood, as all 
 Gothic vaults unfortunately were. It is true this is perhaps one of 
 
 1 One of the pillars of this basiUca re- 
 mained in situ till the year 1614, when 
 it was removed by Carlo Maderno, by 
 order of Paul V., and re-erected in the 
 piazza of St. M. Maggiore, where it now 
 
 stands as a monumental column, support- 
 ing a statue of the Virgin. The column, 
 with its base and capital, is as nearly 
 as maybe 60 ft. in height; the whole 
 monument, as it now stands, 140 ft. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. IV. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 321 
 
 the causes of their destruction, for, being only overlaid with cement, 
 the rain wore away the surface, as must inevitably be the case witli 
 any composition of the sort exposed liorizontally to the weather, and, 
 that being gone, the moisture soon penetrated through the crevices of 
 the masonry, destroying the stability of the vault. Still, some of 
 these in Rome have resisted for fifteen centuries, after the removal of 
 any covering they ever might have had, all the accidents of climate 
 and decay, while there is not a Gothic vault of half their dimensions 
 that would stand for a century after the removal of its wooden 
 protection. The construction of a vault ca2>able of resisting the 
 destructive effects of exposure to the atmosphere still remains a prob- 
 lem for modern architects to solve. Until this is accomplished we 
 must regard roofs entirely of honest wood as preferable to the decep- 
 tive stone ceilings which were such favorites in the Middle Ages. 
 
 The provincial basilicas of the Roman Empire have nearly all 
 perished, probably from their having been con- 
 verted, first into churches, for wdiich they were so 
 admirably adapted, and then rebuilt to suit the 
 exigencies and taste of subsequent ages. One ex- 
 ample, how^ever, still exists in Treves of sufiicient 
 completeness to give a good idea of what such 
 structures were. As will be seen by the annexed 
 plan, it consists of a great hall, 85 feet in width 
 internally, and rather more than twice that dimen- 
 sion in length. The walls are about 100 feet in 
 height and pierced with two rows of windows > 
 but whether they were originally separated by 
 a gallery or not is now by no means clear. At 
 one end was the apse, rather more than a semi- 
 circle of 60 ft. in diameter. The floor of the apse 
 was raised considerably above that of the body 
 of the building, and was no doubt adorned by a 
 hemicycle of seats raised on steps, with a throne 
 in the centre for the judge. The building has been used for so many 
 purposes since the time of the Romans, and has been so much altered, 
 that it is not easy now to speak with certainty of any of its minor 
 arrangements. Its internal and external appearance, as it stood before 
 the recent restoration, are well expressed in the annexed woodcuts ; and 
 though ruined, it was the most complete example of a Roman basilica to 
 be found anywhere out of the capital. A building of this description 
 has been found at Pompeii, which may be considered a fair example 
 of a provincial basilica of the second class. Its plan is perfectly 
 preserved, as shown in Woodcut No. 207. The most striking 
 difference existing between it and those previously described is the 
 square termination instead of the circular apse. It must, however, be 
 
 VOL. I. — 21 
 
 . Plan of the Basilica 
 
 at Treves. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Taut 1. 
 
 Dbserved that Pompeii was situated nearer to Magna Grajcia than to 
 Rome, and was indeed far more a Greek than a Roman city. Very slight 
 traces of any Etruscan designs have been discovered there, and scarcely 
 
 205. External View of the Basilica at Tr^ives. 
 
 any buildings of the circular form so much in vogue in the capital. 
 Though the ground plan of this basilica remains perfect, the upper 
 
 parts are entirely destroyed, 
 and we do not even know for 
 certain whether the central 
 portion was roofed or not ; my 
 own impression is, however, 
 that it certainly was so, and 
 lighted by a clerestory like the 
 cellae of Greek temples ; as, 
 however, it had no peristyle, 
 it may possibly have had win- 
 dows in the upper gallery, and 
 the clerestory windows were 
 probably not countersunk like 
 those in the Greek temples. 
 
 There is a small square 
 building at Otricoli, which is 
 generally supposed to be a 
 basilica, but its object as well 
 as its age is so uncertain that 
 nothing need be said of it 
 here. In the works of Vitruvius, too, there is a description of one 
 built by him at Fano, the restoration of which has afforded employ- 
 ment for the ingenuity of the admirers of that w^orst of architects. 
 
 206. Internal View of the Basilica at Treves. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. IV. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 323 
 
 Even taking it as restored by those most desirous of making tlie best 
 of it, it is difficult to understand how anything so bad could have 
 been erected in such an age. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to trace the origin of these basilicas, owing 
 principally to the loss of all the earlier examples. Their name is Greek, 
 and they may probably be considered as derived from 
 the Grecian Lesche, or perhaps as amplifications of 
 the cellse of Greek temples, appropriated to the pur- 
 poses of justice rather than of religion ; but till we 
 know more of their earlier form and origin, it is use- 
 less speculating on this point. The greatest interest 
 to us arises rather from the use to which their plan was 
 afterwards applied, than from the source from which 
 they themselves sprang. All the larger Christian 
 churches in the early times were copies, more or less 
 exact, of the basihcas of which that of Trajan is an 
 example. The abundance of pillars suitable to such 
 an erection, that were found everywhere in Rome, 
 rendered their construction easy and cheap ; and 
 the wooden roof with which they were covered was 
 also as simple and as inexpensive a covering as 
 could well be desisfned. The very uses of the Chris- 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ 100 It. to 1 111. 
 
 tian basilicas at first were by no means dissimilar to 
 those of their heathen originals, as they were in reality the assembly 
 halls of the early Christian republic, before they became liturgical 
 churches of the Catholic hierarchy. 
 
 The more expensive construction of the bold vaults of the Maxentian 
 basilica went far beyond the means of the early Church, established in 
 a declining and abandoned capital, and this form therefore remained 
 dormant for seven or eight centuries before it was revived by the 
 mediaeval architects on an infinitely smaller scale, but adorned with a 
 degree of appropriateness and taste to which the Romans were stran- 
 gers. It was then used with a completeness and unity which entitle 
 it to be considered as an entirely new style of architecture. 
 
 Theatres. 
 
 The theatre was by no means so essential a part of the economy of 
 a Roman city as it was of a Grecian one. With the latter it was quite 
 as indispensable as the temple ; and in the semi-Greek city of Hercu- 
 laneum there was one, and in Pompeii two, on a scale quite equal to 
 those of Greece when compared with the importance of the town itself. 
 In the capital there appears only to have been one, that of Marcellus, 
 built during the reign of Augustus. It is very questionable whether 
 what we now see — especially the outer arcades — belong to that age, or 
 
324 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTUllE 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 whether the theatre may not have been rebuilt, and these arcades 
 added at some later period. It is so completely built over by modern 
 houses, and so ruined, that it is extremely difficult to arrive at any 
 satisfactory opinion regarding it. Its dimensions were worthy of the 
 capital, the audience part being a semicircle of 410 ft. in diameter, 
 and the scena being of great extent in proportion to the other part, 
 which is a characteristic of all Roman theatres, as compared with 
 Grecian edifices of this class. 
 
 One of the most striking Roman provincial theatres is that of 
 Orange in the south of France. Perhaps it owes its existence, or at 
 all events its splendor, to the substratum of Grecian colonists that 
 preceded the Romans in that country. Its auditorium is 340 ft. in 
 diameter, but much ruined, in consequence of the Princes of Orange 
 having used this part as a bastion in some fortification they were 
 constructing. 
 
 The stage is very tolerably preserved. It shows well the increased 
 extent and complication of arrangements required for the theatrical 
 representations of the age in which it was constructed, being a con- 
 siderable advance towards the more modern idea of a play, as distin- 
 guished from the stately semi-religious spectacle in which the Greeks 
 delighted. The noblest part of the building is the great wall at the 
 back, an immense mass of masonry 340 ft. in extent and 116 ft. in 
 height, without a single opening above the basement, and no ornament 
 except a range of blank arches, about midway between the basement 
 and the top, and a few projecting corbels to receive the footings of 
 the masts that supported the velarium. Nowhere does the architec- 
 ture of the Romans shine so much as when their 2:i2:antic buildino^s 
 are left to tell their own tale by the imposing grandeur of their 
 masses. Whenever ornament is attempted, their bad taste comes 
 out. The size of their edifices, and the solidity of their construction, 
 were only surpassed by the Egyptians, and not always by them ; and 
 when, as here, the mass of material heaped up stands unadorned in 
 all its native grandeur, criticism is disarmed, and the spectator stands 
 awe-struck at its majesty, and turns aw^ay convinced that truly "there 
 were giants in those days." This is not, it is true, the most intellec- 
 tual way of obtaining architectural effect, but it has the advantage of 
 being the easiest, the most certain to secure the desired result, and at 
 the same time the most permanent. 
 
 AmphitheJatres. 
 
 The deficiency of theatres erected by the Romans is far more 
 than compensated by the number and splendor of their amphi- 
 theatres, which, with their baths, may be considered as the true types 
 of Roman art, although it is almost certain that they derived this class 
 
209. View of the Theatre at Orange. 
 
326 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I, 
 
 of public buildings from the Etruscans. At Sutri there is a very noble 
 one cut out of the tufa rock, which was no doubt used by that people 
 for festal representations long before Rome attempted anything of the 
 kind. It is uncertain whether gladiatorial fights or combats of wild 
 beasts formed any part of the amusements of the arena in those days, 
 though boxing, wrestling, and contests of that description certainly 
 did ; but whether the Etruscans actually proceeded to the shedding of 
 blood and to slaughter is more tlian doubtful. 
 
 Even in the remotest part of Britain, in Germany and Gaul, 
 wherever we find a Roman settlement, Ave find the traces of their 
 amphitheatres. Their soldiery, it seems, could not exist without the 
 enjoyment of seeing men engaged in doubtful and mortal combats — 
 either killing one another, or torn to pieces by wild beasts. It is not 
 to be wondered at that a people who delighted so much in the bloody 
 scenes of the arena should feel but very little pleasure in the mimic 
 sorrows and tame humor of the stage. The brutal exhibition of the 
 amphitheatre fitted them, it is true, to be a nation of conquerors, and 
 gave them the empire of the world, but brought with it feelings 
 singularly inimical to all the softer arts, and was perhaps the great 
 cause of their ultimate debasement. 
 
 As might be expected, the largest and most splendid of these 
 buildings is that which adorns the capital ; and of all the ruins which 
 Rome contains, none have excited such universal admiration as the 
 Flavian Amphitheatre. Poets, painters, rhapsodists, have exhausted 
 all the resources of their art in the attemj)t to convey to others the 
 overpowering impression this building produces on their own minds. 
 With the single exception, perhaps, of the Hall at Karnac, no ruin 
 has met with such universal admiration as this. Its association with 
 the ancient mistress of the world, its destruction, and the half- 
 prophetic destiny ascribed to it, all contribute to this. In spite of 
 our better judgment we are forced to confess that 
 
 " The gladiators' bloody circus stands 
 A noble wreck in ruinous perfection," 
 
 and worthy of all or nearly all the admiration of which it has been the 
 object. Its interior is almost wholly devoid of ornament, or anything 
 that can be called architecture — a vast inverted pyramid. The ex- 
 terior does not possess one detail which is not open to criticism, and 
 indeed to positive blame. Notwithstanding all this, its magnitude, its 
 form, and its associations, all combine to produce an effect against 
 which the critic struggles in vain. Still all must admit that the pillars 
 and their entablature are useless and are added incongruously, and 
 that the upper story, not being arched like the lower, but solid and 
 with ugly pilasters, is a painful blemish. This last defect is so 
 striking, that in spite of the somewhat dubious evidence of medals, I 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. IV. 
 
 AMPHITHEATRES. 
 
 327 
 
 should feel inclined to suspect that it was a subsequent addition, and 
 meant wholly for the purpose of supporting and working the great 
 velarium or awning that covered the arena during tlie representation, 
 which may not have been attempted when the amphitheatre was first 
 erected. 
 
 210. Elevation and Section of part of the Flavian Amphitheatre at Rome. Scale 50 ft. to 1 lu. 
 
 211. Quarter-plan of the Seats, and quarter-plan of the Basement of the Flavian Amphi- 
 theatre. No scale. 
 
 Be this as it may, it certainly now very much mars the effect of 
 the building. The lower stories are of bad design, but this is worse. 
 But notwithstanding these defects, there is no building of Rome where 
 the principle of reduplication of parts, of Avhich the Gothic architects 
 
328 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 afterwards made so mucli use, is carried to so great an extent as in 
 this. The Colosseum is i)rincipally indebted to this feature for the 
 effect which it produces. Had it, for instance, been designed with only 
 one story of the height of the four now existing, and every arch had 
 consequently been as wide as tlie present four, the building would 
 have scarcely ap])eared half the size it is now seen to be. For all this, 
 however, when close under it, and comparing it with moving figures 
 and other objects, we could scarcely eventually fail to realize its won- 
 derful dimensions. In that case, a true sense of the vast size of the 
 building would have had to be acquired, as is the case with the fayade 
 of St. Peter's. Now it forces itself on the mind at the. first glance. It 
 is the repetition of arch beyond arch and story over story that leads 
 the mind on, and gives to tliis amphitheatre its imposing grandeur, 
 which all acknowledge, though few give themselves the trouble to 
 inquire how this effect is produced. 
 
 Fortunately, too, though the face of the building is much cut up 
 by the order, the entablatures are unbroken throughout, and cross the 
 building in long vanishing lines of the most graceful curvatures. 
 The oval, also, is certainly more favorable for effect than a circular 
 form would be. A building of this shape may perhaps look smaller 
 than it really is to a ])erson standing exactly opposite either end ; 
 but in all other j)Ositii)ns the flatter side gives a variety and an 
 aj)j)earance of size, which the monotonous equality of a circle would 
 never produce. 
 
 The length of the building measured over all along its greatest 
 diameter, is G20 ft., its breadth 518, or nearly in the ratio of 6 to 5, 
 which may be taken as the general proportion of these buildings, the 
 variations from it being slight and apparently either mistakes in 
 setting out the work in ancient times, or in measuring it in modern 
 days, rather than an intentional deviation. The height of the three 
 lower stories, or of what I believe to have been the original building, 
 is 120 ft.; the total height as it now stands is 157 ft. The arena 
 itself measures 287 ft. in length by 180 in breadth. The whole area 
 of the building has been calculated to contain 250,000 square feet, 
 of which the arena contains 40,000, then deducting 10,000 for the 
 external wall, 200,000 square feet will remain available for the 
 audience. If we divide this by 5,* which is the number of square 
 feet it has been found necessary to allow for each spectator in modern 
 places of amusement, room will be afforded for 40,000 spectators : at 
 4 feet, which is a possible quantity, with continuous seats and the 
 scant drapery of the Romans, the amphitheatre might contain 50,000 
 spectators at one time. 
 
 1 At the Crystal Palace it has always been found necessary to allow six square 
 feet to each person. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. IV. 
 
 AMPHITHEATRES . 
 
 329 
 
 The area of the supports has also been calculated at about 40,000 
 square feet, or about one-sixth of the whole area ; which for an unroofed 
 edifice of this sort is more than sufficient, though the excess accounts 
 for the stability of the building. 
 
 Next in extent to this great metropolitan amphitheatre Avas that 
 of Capua ; its dimensions were 558 ft. by 460 : its height externally 
 95 ft. It had three stories, designed similarly to those of the Colos- 
 seum, but all of the Doric order, and used with more purity than in 
 the Roman example. 
 
 Next in age, though not in size, is that at Nimes, 430 ft. by 378, 
 and 72 in height, in two stories. Both these stories are more profusely 
 and more elegantly ornamented with 23illars than those of either of the 
 amphitheatres mentioned above. The entablature is however broken 
 over each column, and pediments are introduced on each front. All 
 these arrangements, though showing more care in design and sufficient 
 elegance in detail, make this building very inferior in grandeur to the 
 two earlier edifices, whose simplicity of outline makes up, to a great 
 extent, for their faults of detail. 
 
 A more beautiful example than this is that at Verona. Its dimen- 
 sions are 502 ft. by 401, and 98 ft. high, in three stories beautifully 
 proportioned. Here the 
 order almost entirely 
 disappears to make way 
 for rustication, showing 
 that it must be consid- 
 erably more modern 
 than either of the three 
 examples above quoted, 
 though hardly so late 
 as the time of Maxi- 
 mianus, to whom it 
 is frequently ascribed.^ 
 
 The arena of this am- 212. Elevation of the Amphitheatre at Verona, Scale 
 1.,, . . -, 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 phitheatre is very nearly 
 
 perfect, owing to the care taken of it during the Middle Ages, when 
 it was often used for tournaments and other spectacles ; but of its 
 outer architectural enclosure only four bays remain, sufficient to enable 
 an architect to restore the whole, but not to allow of its effect being 
 compared with that of more entire examples. 
 
 The amphitheatre at Pola, which is of about the same age as that 
 of Verona, and certainly belonging to the last days of the Western 
 Empire, presents in its ruin a curious contrast to the other. That 
 at Verona has a perfect arena and only a fragment of its exterior 
 
 ' Maffei, "Verona Illustrata," vol. vii. p. 84 et seq. 
 
330 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Pakt I 
 
 decoration, while the exterior of Pola is perfect, but not a traoe 
 remains of its arena, or of the seats that surrounded it. This is prob- 
 ably owing to their having been of wood, and consequently having 
 either decayed or been burnt. Like that at Verona, it presents all the 
 features of the last stage of transition ; the order is still seen, or 
 rather is everywhere suggested, but so concealed and kept subordinate 
 that it does not at all interfere with the general effect. But for 
 these faint traces we should possess in this amphitheatre one specimen 
 entirely emancipated from incongruous Grecian forms, but, as before 
 remarked, Rome perished when just on the threshold of the new 
 style. 
 
 The dimensions of the ampliitheatre at Pola are very nearly the 
 same as of tliat at Nimes, being 436 feet by 346. It has, however, 
 three stories, and thus its lieiglit is considerably greater, being 97 ft. 
 Owing to the inequality of tlie ground on which it is built, the 
 lower story shows the peculiarity of a sub-basement, which is very 
 ])leasingly managed, and appears to emancipate it more from conven- 
 tional forms than is tlie case with its contemporary at Verona. The 
 third story, or attic, is also more pleasing than elsewhere, as it is 
 avowedly designed for the support of the masts of tlie velarium. The 
 pilasters and all Greek forms are omitted, and there is only a groove 
 over every column of the middle story to receive tlie masts. There is 
 also a curious sort of 02)en battlement on the top, evidently designed to 
 facilitate the working of the awning, though in what manner is not 
 quite clear. There is still one other peculiarity about the building, 
 inasmuch as the curvature of its lines is broken by four projections, 
 intended apparently to contain staircases. They appear, however, to 
 have been subsequent additions, the stones of which they are built 
 being of a different color from those of the body of the building. 
 In a building so light and open as this one is in its present state 
 there can be no doubt but that the projections give expression and 
 character to the outline, though such additions would go far to spoil 
 any of the great examples above quoted. 
 
 At Otricoli there is a small amphitheatre, 312 feet by 230, in two 
 stories, from which the order has entirely disappeared ; it is therefore 
 possibly the most modern of its class, but the great flat pilasters that 
 replace the pillars are ungraceful and somewhat clumsy. Perhaps 
 its peculiarities ought rather to be looked on as provincialisms than 
 as genuine specimens of an advanced style. Still there is a pleasim: 
 simplicity about it that on a larger scale would enable it to stand 
 comparison with some of its greater rivals. 
 
 Besides these, which are the typical examples of the style, there 
 are the " Castrense" at Rome, nearly circular, and possessing all the 
 faults and none of the beauties of the Colosseum ; one at Aries, very 
 much ruined ; and a great number of provincial ones, not only in 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. IV. 
 
 BATHS. 
 
 331 
 
 Italy and Gaul, but in Germany and Britain. Almost all these were 
 principally, if not wholly excavated from the earth, the part above 
 ground being the mound formed by the excavation. If they ever 
 possessed any external decoration to justify their being treated as 
 architectural objects, it has disappeared, so that in the state at least 
 in which we now find them they do not belong to the ornamental 
 class of works of which we are at present treating. 
 
 Baths. 
 
 Next in splendor to the amphitheatres of the Romans were their 
 great thermal establishments: in size they were perhaps even more 
 remarkable, and their erection must certainly have been more costly. 
 The amphitheatre, however, has the great advantage in an archi- 
 tectural point of view of being one object, one hall in short, whereas 
 the baths were composed of a great number of smaller parts, not 
 perhaps very successfully grouped together. They were wholly built 
 of brick covered with stucco (except perhaps the pillars), and have, 
 therefore, now so completely lost their architectural features that it 
 is with difficulty that even the most practised architect can restore 
 them to anything like their original appearance. 
 
 In speaking of the great Thermae of Imperial Rome, they must 
 not be confounded with such establishments as that of Pompeii for 
 instance. The latter was very similar to the baths now found in 
 Cairo or Constantinople, and indeed in most Eastern cities. These 
 are mere establishments for the convenience of bathers, consisting 
 generally of one or two small circular or octagonal halls, covered by 
 domes, and one or two others of an oblong shape, covered with vaults 
 or wooden roofs, used as recej^tion-rooms, or places of repose after 
 the bath. These have never any external magnificence beyond an 
 entrance-porch; and although those at Pompeii are decorated in- 
 ternally with taste, and are well worthy of study, their smallness 
 of size and inferiority of design do not admit of their being placed 
 in the same category as those of the capital, which are as charac- 
 teristic of Rome as her amphitheatres, and are such as could only 
 exist in a capital where the bulk of the people were able to live on 
 the spoils of the conquered world rather than by the honest gains 
 of their own industry. 
 
 Agrippa is said to have built baths immediately behind the 
 Pantheon, and Palladio and others have attempted restorations of 
 ^hem, assuming that building to have been the entrance-hall. Noth- 
 ing, however, can be more unlikely than that if he had first built 
 the rotunda as a hall of his baths, that he should afterwards have 
 added the portico, and converted it from its secular use into a temple 
 dedicated to all the gods. 
 
332 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part I, 
 
 As before remarked, the two parts are certainly not of the same 
 age. If Agrippa built the rotunda as a part of his baths, the portico 
 was added a century and a half or two centuries afterwards, and it 
 was then converted into a temple. If Agrippa built the portico, he 
 added it to a building belonging to Republican times, which may always 
 have been dedicated to sacred purposes. As the evidence at present 
 stands, I am rather inclined to believe the first hypothesis most 
 correctly represents the facts of the case. 
 
 Nero's baths, too, are a mere heap of shapeless ruins, and those 
 of Vespasian, Domitian, and Trajan in like manner are too much 
 ruined for their form, or even their dimensions, to be ascertained 
 with anything like correctness. Those of Titus are more perfect, 
 but the very discrepancies that exist between the different systems 
 upon which their restoration has been attempted show that enough 
 does not remain to enable the task to be accomplished in a satis- 
 factory manner. They owe their interest more to the beautiful 
 fresco paintings that adorn their vaults than to their architectural 
 character. These paintings are invaluable, as l)eing the most ex- 
 tensive and perfect relics of the painted decoration of the most 
 flourishing period of the Empire, and give a higher idea of Roman 
 art than other indications would lead us to expect. 
 
 The baths of Constantine are also nearly wholly destroyed, so 
 that out of the great Thermae, two only, those of Diocletian and of 
 Caracalla, now remain sufficiently perfect to enable a restoration to 
 be made of them with anything like certainty. 
 
 The great hall belonging to the baths of Diocletian is now the 
 Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, and has been considerably altered 
 to suit the changed circumstances of its use ; while the modern 
 buildings attached to the church have so overlaid the older remains 
 that it is not easy to follow out the complete plan. This is of less 
 consequence, as both in dimensions and plan they are extremely 
 similar to those of Caracalla, which seem to have been among the 
 most magnificent as they certainly are the best preserved of these 
 establishments.! 
 
 The general plan of the whole enclosure of the baths of Caracalla 
 was a square of about 1150 ft. each way, with a bold but graceful 
 curvilinear projection on two sides, containing porticoes, gymnasia, 
 lecture-rooms, and other halls for exercise of mind or body. In the 
 rear were the reservoirs to contain the requisite supply of water 
 and below them the hypocaust or furnace, by which it was warmed 
 with a degree of scientific skill we hardly give the Romans of that 
 age credit for. Opposite to this and facing the street was one great 
 
 1 These baths have been carefully j is, oh the whole, certainly the best ac- 
 measured by M. Blouet, who has also j count we have of any of these establish- 
 published a restoration of them. This I ments. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. IV. 
 
 BATHS. 
 
 333 
 
 portico extending the whole length of the building, into which 
 opened a range of apartments, meant apparently to be used as private 
 baths, which extend also some way up each side. In front of the 
 hypocaust, facing the north-east, was a semicircus or theatridium^ 
 530 ft. long, where youths performed their exercises or contended 
 for prizes. 
 
 213. Baths of Caracalla, as restored by A. Blouet. 
 
 These parts were, however, merely the accessories of the estab- 
 lishment surrounding the garden, in which the principal building was 
 placed. This was a rectangle 730 ft. by 380, with a projection cov- 
 ered by a dome on the south-western side, which was 167 ft. in diam- 
 eter externally, and 115 ft. internally. There were two small courts 
 (a a) included in the block, but nearly the whole of the rest appears 
 to have been roofed over. 
 
 The modern building which approaches nearest in extent to this 
 is probably our Parliament Plouses. These are about 880 ft. in 
 length, with an average breadth of about 300, and, with Westminster 
 Hall, cover as nearly as may be the same area as the central block of 
 these baths. But there the comparison stops ; there is no building of 
 modern times on anything like the same scale, arranged wholly for 
 architectural effect as this one is, irrespective of any utilitarian purpose. 
 On the other hand, the whole of the walls being covered with stucco, 
 
334 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt I. 
 
 and almost all the architecture being expressed in that material, must 
 have detracted considerably from the monumental grandeur of the 
 effect. Judging, however, from what remains of the stucco ornament of 
 the roof of the Maxentian basilica (Woodcut No. 202), it is wonderful 
 to observe what effects may be obtained with even this material in 
 the hands of a people who understand its employment. While stone 
 and marble have perished, the stucco of these vaults still remains, 
 and is as impressive as any other relic of ancient Rome. 
 
 In the centre was a great hall (b), almost identical in dimensions 
 with the central aisle of the basilica of Maxentius already described, 
 being 82 ft. wide by 170 in length, and roofed in the same manner by 
 an intersecting vault in three compartments, springing from eight 
 great pillars. This opened into a smaller apartment at each end, of 
 rectangular form, and tlien again into two other semicircular halls, 
 forming a splendid suite 460 ft. in length. This central room is gen- 
 erally considered as the tejndarium., or warmed apartment, having 
 four warm baths opening out of it. On the north-east side was the 
 natatio, or plunge-bath (c), probably tepid, a room of nearly the same 
 dimensions and design as the central one. On the side opposite to this 
 was the circular apartment (d), covered by the dome above mentioned, 
 which, from its situation and the openness of its arrangements, must 
 have contained a cold bath or baths. There are four other rooms on 
 this side, whicli seem also to have been cold baths. None of these points 
 have, however, yet been satisfactorily settled, nor the uses of the smaller 
 subordinate rooms ; every restorer giving them names according to his 
 own ideas. For our pur])ose it suffices to know tliat no groups of state 
 a])artments in such dimensions, and wholly devoted to purposes of 
 display and recreation, were ever before or since grouped together under 
 one roof. The taste of many of the decorations would no doubt be 
 faulty, and the architecture shows those incongruities inseparable from 
 its statq of transition ; but such a collection of stately halls must have 
 made up a whole of greater splendor than we can easily realize from 
 tlieir bare and weather-beaten ruins, or from anything else to which 
 we can compare them. Even allowing for their being almost wholly 
 built of brick, and for their being disfigured by the bad taste inseparable 
 from everything Roman, there is nothing in the world which for size 
 and grandeur can compare with these imperial places of recreation.^ 
 
 1 St. George's Hall at Liverpool is the 
 most exact copy in modern times of a 
 part of these baths. The Hall itself is 
 a reproduction both in scale and design 
 of the central hall of Caracalla's baths, 
 but improved in detail and design, 
 having five bays instead of only three. 
 With the two courts at each end, it 
 
 makes up a suite of apartments very 
 similar to those found in the Roman 
 examples. The whole building, how- 
 ever, is less than one-fonrth of the size 
 of the central mass of a Roman bath, 
 and therefore gives but little idea of the 
 magnificence of the whole. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch.V. triumphal AllCHES. 355 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 TRIUMPHAL ARCHES, TOMBS, AND OTHER BUILDINGS. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Arches at Rome ; in France — Arch at Treves — Pillars of Victory — Tombs — 
 Minerva Medica — Provincial tombs — Eastern tombs — Domestic arcliitectm-e 
 — Spalatro — Pompeii — Bridges — Aqueducts. 
 
 TRIUMPHAL arches were among the most peculiar of the various 
 forms of art which the Romans borrowed from those around 
 tliem, and used with that strange mixture of splendor and bad taste 
 Avhich characterizes all their works. 
 
 These were in the first instance no doubt borrowed from the Etrus- 
 cans, as was also 
 the ceremony of 
 tlie triumph Avith 
 which they were 
 ultimately asso- 
 ciated. At first 
 they seem rather 
 to have been used 
 as festal entrances 
 to the great pub- 
 lic roads, the con- 
 struction of which 
 was considered 
 one of the most im- 
 portant benefits a 
 ruler could confer 
 upon his country. 
 There was one 
 erected at Rimini 
 in honor of an im- 
 portant restora- 
 tion of the Flami- 
 
 nian Way by Augustus ; another at Susa in Piedmont, to commemo- 
 rate a similar act of the same Emperor. Trajan built one on the 
 pier at Ancona, when he restored that harbor, and another at Bene- 
 ventum, wiien he repaired the Via Appia, represented in the woodcut 
 
 214. Arcli of Trajan at rieiieventuin. (From a plate in Gailabaud's 
 " Architecture.") 
 
3:^6 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 215. Arch of Titus at Rome 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 here given (No. 214). It is one of the best preserved as well as most 
 graceful of its class in Italy. The Arch of the Sergii at Pola in Istria 
 seems also to have been erected for a like purpose. That of Hadrian 
 at Athens, and another built by him at Antinoe in Egypt, were 
 monuments merely commemorative of the benefits which he had con- 
 ferred on those cities by the architectural works he had erected within 
 their walls. By far the most important application of these gateways, 
 in Rome at least, was to commemorate a triumph which may have 
 passed along the road over which the arch was erected, and perhaps 
 in some instances they may have been erected beforehand, for the 
 triumphal procession to pass through, and of which they would re- 
 main memorials. 
 
 The Arch of Titus at Rome is well known for the beauty of its de- 
 tail, as well as from the extraordinary interest which it derives from 
 having been erected to commemorate the con- 
 (\UGSt of Jerusalem, and consequently repre- 
 senting in its bassi-rilievi the spoils of the 
 Temple. From the annexed elevation, drawn 
 to the usual scale, it will be seen that the 
 building is not large, and it is not so well pro- 
 portioned as that at Beneventum, represented 
 in the preceding woodcut, the attic being over- 
 poweringly high. The absence of sculpture on 
 each side of the arch is also a defect, for the real merit of these build- 
 ings is their being used as frameworks for the exhibition of sculptural 
 representations of the deeds they were erected to commemorate. 
 
 In the later days of the Empire two side-arches Avere added for 
 
 foot passengers, in addition to the 
 carriage-way in the centre. This 
 added much to the splendor of the 
 edifice, and gave a greater opportu- 
 nity for sculptural decoration tlian 
 the single arch afforded. The Arch 
 of Septimius Severus, represented to 
 the same scale in Woodcut No. 216, 
 is perhaps the best specimen of the 
 class. That of Constantine is very 
 similar and in most respects equal to 
 this — a merit which it owes to most of its sculptures being borrowed 
 from earlier monuments. 
 
 More splendid than either of these is the arch at Orange. It is not 
 known by whom it was erected, or even in what age : it is, however, 
 certainly very late in the Roman period, and shows a strong tendency 
 to treat the order as entirely subordinate, and to exalt the plain masses 
 into that importance which characterizes the late transitional period. 
 
 Arch of Septimius Severus. 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V . 
 
 TRIUMPHAL ARCIIES. 
 
 337 
 
 Unfortunately its sculptures are so much destroyed by time and vio- 
 lence that it is not easy to speak with certainty as to their age; but 
 more might be' done than has hitherto been effected to illustrate this 
 important monument. 
 
 At Kheims there is an arch whicli was probably much more mag- 
 nificent than this. When in a perfect state it was 110 ft. in width, and 
 had three openings, the central one 17 ft. wide by 40 ft. high, and those 
 on each side 10 ft. in width, each se])arate(l by two Corinthian columns. 
 From the style of the scul])ture it certainly was of the last age of the 
 Koman Empire, but having been built into the walls of the city, it has 
 been so much injured that it is difficult to say what its original form 
 may have been. 
 
 Besides these there is in France a very elegant single-arched gate- 
 way at St. Kemi, similar to and ])robably of the same age as that at 
 Beneventum; another at Cavallon, and one at Carpentras, each with 
 
 217. Porte St. Andre at Autuii. (From Laborde's " Monumens ile la France.) 
 
 one arch. There is also one with two similar arches at Langres; and 
 one, the Porta Nigra at Besan9on, which shows so complete a transi- 
 tion from the Roman style that it is difhcult to believe that it does 
 not belong to the Renaissance. 
 
 There still remains in France another class of arches, certainly not 
 triumphal, but so similar to those just mentioned that it is difhcult 
 to separate the one from the other. The most important of these are 
 two at Autun, called respectively tiie Porte Arroux and the Porte St. 
 Andre, a view of which is given in Woodcut No. 217. Each of these 
 has two central large archways for carriages, and one on each side for 
 foot-passengers. Their most remarkable peculiarity is the light arcade 
 VOL. 1. — 22 
 
338 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 218. 
 
 Plan of Porta Nigra at 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 or gallery that runs across the top of them, replacing the attic of the 
 Roman arch, and giving a degree of lightness combined with height 
 that those never possessed. These gates were certainly not meant for 
 defence, and the apartment over them could scarcely be applied to utili- 
 tarian purposes ; so that we may, I believe, consider it as a mere orna- 
 mental appendage, or as a balcony for display on festal occasions. It 
 appears, however, to offer a better hint for modern arch-builders than 
 any other example of its class. 
 
 Even more interesting than these gates at Autun is that called the 
 Porta Nigra at Treves ; for though far ruder in style and coarser in 
 detail, as might be expected from the remoteness of the province where 
 it is found, it is far more complete. Indeed,. it is the only example of 
 its class which we possess in anything like its original state. Its front 
 
 consists of a double archway surmounted 
 by an arcaded gallery, like the French 
 examples. Within this is a rectangular 
 court which seems never to have been 
 roofed, and beyond this a second double 
 archway similar to the lirst. At the ends of 
 the court, projecting each way beyond the 
 face of the gateway and the gallery sur- 
 mounting it, are two wings four stories in height, containing a series 
 of apartments in the form of small basilicas, all similar to one another, 
 
 and measuring about 
 55 ft. by 22. It is not 
 easy to understand 
 how these were ap- 
 proached, as there is 
 no stair and no place 
 for one. Of course 
 there must have been 
 some mode of access, 
 and perhaps it may 
 have been on the site 
 of the apse, shown in 
 the plan (Woodcut 
 No. 218), which was 
 added when the 
 building was con- 
 verted into a church 
 
 in the Middle Ages. These apartments were probably originally used 
 as courts or chambers of justice, thus realizing, more nearly than any 
 other European example I am acquainted with, the idea of a gate of 
 justice. 
 
 Notwithstanding its defects of detail, there is a variety in the out- 
 
 219. 
 
 View of the Porta Nigra at Treves, 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 GATES. 
 
 339 
 
 line of this building and Ji boldness of profile that render it an ex- 
 tremely pleasing example of the style adopted; and though exhibiting 
 many of the faults incidental to the design of the Colosseum, it pos- 
 sesses all that repetition of parts and Gothic feeling of design which 
 give such value to its dimensions, though these are far from being- 
 contemptible, the building being 115 ft. wide by 95 in height to the 
 top of tlie wings. 
 
 There probably were many similar gates of justice in the province, 
 but all have perished, unless we except those at Autun just described. 
 I am convinced that at that place there were originally such wings 
 as these at Treves, and that the small church, the apse of which is 
 seen on the right hand (Woodcut No. 217), stands upon the foundation 
 of one of these. A slight excavation on the opposite side would settle 
 this point at once. If it could be proved that these gateways at Autun. 
 
 220. Bridge at Chamas. (From Laborde's " Monuments de la France.") 
 
 had such lateral adjuncts, it would at once explain the use of the 
 gallery over the arch, which otherwise looks so unmeaning, but would 
 be intelligible as a passage connecting the two wings together. 
 
 Another form also is that of an arch at tlie entrance of a bridae, 
 generally bearing an inscription commemorative of its building. Its 
 purpose is thus closely connected with that of the arches before men- 
 tioned, which commemorate the execution of roads. Most of tlie great 
 bridges of Italy and Spain were so adorned; but unfortunately they 
 have been either used as fortifications in the Middle Ages, or removed 
 in modern times to make room for the increased circulation of traflic. 
 That built by Trajan on his noble bridge at Alcantara in Spain is well 
 known ; and there exists a double-arched bridge at Saintes^ in the south 
 of France. The most elegant and most perfect specimen, however, of 
 
340 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut I. 
 
 this class is that of St. Chamas in Provence, represented in Woodcut 
 No. 220. It consists of two arches, one at each end of the bridge, of 
 singular elegance of form and detail. Although it bears a still legible 
 inscription, it is uncertain to what age it belongs, probably that of the 
 Antonines : and I would account for the purity of its details by refer- 
 ring to the Greek element that pervades the soutli of France. Whether 
 this is so or not, it is impossible not to admire not only the design of 
 the whole bridge with its two arches, but the elegance with which 
 the details have been executed. 
 
 Used in this mode as commencements of roads or entrances to 
 bridges, or as festal entrances to unfortified towns, there are perhaps 
 no monuments of tlie second class more appropriate or more capable 
 of architectural exjiression than these arches, though all of them have 
 been more or less spoiled by an incongruous order being applied to them. 
 Used, however, as they were in Rome, as monuments of victory, witli- 
 out offering even an excuse for a passage through them, the taste dis- 
 played in them is more than questionable : the manner, too, in which 
 they were cut up by broken cornices and useless columns placed on 
 tall pedestals, with other trivial details highly objectionable, deprive 
 them of that largeness of design which is the only true merit and 
 peculiar characteristic of Roman art, while that exquisite elegance 
 with which the Greeks knew so well how to dignify even the most 
 trivial objects was in them almost entirely lost. 
 
 Pillars of Victory. 
 
 Pillars of Victory are a class of monuments which seem to have 
 been used in the East in very early times, though their history it must 
 be confessed is somewhat fragmentary and uncertain, and they seem to 
 liave been adopted by the Romans in those provinces where they had 
 been employed by the earlier inhabitants. Whatever the original may 
 liave been, the Romans w^ere singularly unsuccessful in their applica- 
 tion of the form. They never, in fact, rose al)ove the idea of taking a 
 column of construction, magnifying it, and placing it on a pedestal, 
 without any attempt to modify its details or hide the original utilita- 
 ]"ian purpose for which the pillar Avas designed. When they attempted 
 more tlian this they failed entirely in elaborating any new^ form at all 
 worthy of admiration. The Columna Rostrata, or that erected to cele- 
 brate naval victories, Avas, so far as we can judge from representations 
 (for no perfect specimen exists), one of the ugliest and clumsiest forms 
 of pillar it is })ossible to conceive. 
 
 Of those of Victory, one of the most celebrated is that erected by 
 Diocletian at Alexandria. A somewhat similar one exists at Arsinoe 
 erected by Alexander Severus ; and a third at Mylassa in Caria. All 
 
Bk. IV. CHo V. 
 
 PILLARS OF VICTORY. 
 
 341 
 
 these are mere Corinthian pillars of the usual form, and with the details 
 of those used to support entablatures in porticoes. Ilovvever beautiful 
 these may be in their proper place, they are singularly inappropriate 
 and ungraceful when used as minarets or single columns. 
 
 There are two in Rome not quite so bad as these, both being of the 
 Doric order. Had the square abacus in these been cut to a round form, 
 and ornamented with an appropriate railing, we might almost have for 
 gotten their original, and have fancied that they really were round 
 towers with balconies at the top. The great object of their erection was 
 to serve as vehicles for sculpture, 
 though as we now see them, or as 
 they are caricatured at Paris and else- 
 where, they are little more than in- 
 stances of immense labor bestowed 
 to very little purpose. As originally 
 used, these pillars were placed in small 
 courts surrounded by open porticoes, 
 whence the spectator could at two or 
 perhaps at three different levels ex- 
 amine the sculpture at his leisure and 
 at a convenient distance, while the 
 absurdity of the pillar supporting 
 nothing was not apparent, from its 
 not being seen from the outside. This 
 an-angement is explained in Woodcut 
 No. 199, which is a section through 
 the basilica of Trajan, showing the 
 position of his column, not only with 
 reference to that building, but to the 
 surrounding colonnade. The same was 
 almost certainly the case with the 
 pillar of Marcus Aurelius, which, with 
 slight modifications, seems to have 
 been copied from that of Trajan ; but 
 even in the most favorable situations 
 no monuments can be less worthy of 
 admiration or of being copied than 
 these. 
 
 A far better specimen of this class is 
 tliat at Cussi, near Beaune, in France. 
 It probably belongs to the time of 
 Aurelian, but it is not known either by 
 whom it was erected or what victory it was designed to celebrate; still 
 that it is a pillar of victory seems undoubted ; and its resemblance 
 to pillars raised with the same object in India is quite striking. 
 
 (From La- 
 borde s " Mouuiiieus de la France.") 
 
 222. 
 
 Supposed Capital of Column at 
 Cussi. 
 
342 
 
 ROMAN" ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 The arrangement of the base serving as a pedestal for eight statues 
 is not only elegant but appropriate. The ornament which covers the 
 shaft takes off from the idea of its being a mere pillar, and at the same 
 time is so subdued as not to break the outline or interfere with con- 
 structive propriety. 
 
 The capital, of the Corinthian order, is found in the neighbor- 
 hood used as the mouth of a well In its original position it no 
 doubt had a hole through it, which being enlarged suggested 
 its application to its present ignoble purpose, the hole being no 
 doubt intended either to receive or support the statue or emblem 
 that originally crowned the monument, but of that no trace now 
 remains. 
 
 There cannot be a more natural mode of monumental expression 
 than that of a simple upright stone set up by the victors to comme- 
 morate their prowess and success. Accordingly steles or pillars erected 
 for this purpose are found everywhere, and take shapes as various as 
 the countries where they stand or the people who erected them. 
 In Northern Europe they are known as Cath or' battle-stones, and as' 
 r^de unhewn monoliths are found everywhere. In India they are as 
 elegant and as elaborately adorned as the Kutub Minar at Delhi, but 
 nowhere was their true architectural expression so mistaken as in 
 Rome. There, by ])erverting a feature designed for one purpose to a 
 totally different use, an example of bad taste was given till then 
 unknown, though in our days it has become not uncommon. 
 
 Tombs o 
 
 In that strange collection of the styles of all nations which mingled 
 together makes up the sum of Roman art, nothing strikes the architec- 
 tural student with more astonishment than the number and importance 
 of their tombs. If the Romans are of Aryan origin, as is generally 
 assumed, they are the only people of that race among whom tomb- 
 building was not utterly neglected. The imj)ortance of the tombs 
 among the Roman remains proves one of two things. Either a con- 
 siderable proportion of Etruscan blood was mixed up with that of the 
 dominant race in Rome, or that the fierce and inartistic Romans, having 
 no art of their own, were led blindly to copy that of the people among 
 whom they were located. 
 
 Of the tombs of Consular Rome nothing remains except perhaps 
 the sarcophagus of Scipio ; and it is only on the eve of the Empire that 
 we meet with .the well-known one of C^ecilia Metella, the wife of 
 Crassus, which is not only the best specimen of a Roman tomb now 
 remaining to us, but the oldest architectural building of the imperial 
 city of which we have an authentic date. It consists of a bold square 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 343 
 
 basement about 100 ft. square,^ which was originally ornamented in 
 some manner not now intelligible. From this rose a circular tower 
 about 94 ft. in diameter, of very bold 
 masonry, surmounted by a frieze of 
 Ox-skulls with wreaths joining them, 
 and a well-profiled cornice: two or 
 three courses of masonry above this 
 seem to have belonged to the original 
 work; and above this, almost cer- 
 tainly, in the original design rose 
 a conical roof, which has j3erishedo 
 The tower having been used as a 
 fortress in the Middle Ages, battle- 
 ments have been added to supply 
 the place of the roof, and it has 
 been otherwise disfigured, so as to 
 detract much from . its beauty, as 
 now seen. Still we have no tomb of 
 the same importance so perfect, nor one which enables us to connect 
 the Roman tombs so nearly with the Etruscan. The only addition in 
 this instance is that of the square basement or podium, though even 
 this was not unknown at a much earlier period, as for instance in the 
 tomb of Aruns (Woodcut No. 176). The exaggerated height of the 
 circular base is also remarkable. Here it rises to be a tower instead 
 of a mere circular base of stones for the earthen cone of the original 
 sepulchrCo The stone roof which probably surmounted the tower was 
 a mere reproduction of the original earth. 
 
 Next in age and importance was the tomb of Augustus in the 
 Campus Martins. It is now so completely ruined that it is extremely 
 difficult to make out its plan, and those who drew and restored it in 
 former days were so careless in their measurements that even its 
 dimensions \cannot be ascertained : it appears, however, to have con- 
 sisted of a circular basement about 300 ft. in diameter, and about 60 
 ft. in height, adorned with 12 large niches. Above this rose a cone 
 of earth as in the Etruscan tombs, not smooth like those, but divided 
 into terraces, which were planted with trees. We also learn from 
 Suetonius that Augustus laid out the grounds around his tomb and 
 planted them with gardens for public use during his lifetime. More 
 like the practice of a true Mogul in the East than the ruler of an 
 Indo-Germanic people in Europe. 
 
 This tomb, however, was far surpassed, not only in solidity but in 
 splendor, by that which Hadrian erected for himself on the banks of 
 the Tiber, now known as the Mole of Hadrian, or more frequently the 
 
 1 I am extremely uncertain about the dimensions of this building : these are 
 the best I can find. 
 
 223. Tomb of Cajcilia iletella. 
 
344 
 
 HOMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part T. 
 
 Castle of St. Angelo. The basement of this great tomb was a square, 
 about 340 ft. each way and about 75 ft. high. Above this rose a cir- 
 cular tower 235 ft. in diameter and 140 ft. in height. The whole was 
 crowned either by a dome or by a conical roof* in steps, which, with 
 its central ornament, nmst have risen to a height of not less than 300 
 ft. The circular or towerdike part of this splendid building was 
 ornamented witli columns, but in what manner restorers have not 
 been quite able to agree ; some making two stories, both with pillars, 
 some, one of pillars and the upper one of pilasters. It would require 
 more Qorrect measurements than we have to enable us to settle this 
 point, but it seems probable that there was only one range of columns 
 on a circular basement of some height surmounted by an attic of at 
 least equal dimensions. The order might have been 70 ft., the base 
 and attic 35 ft. each. 
 
 Internally the mass was nearly solid, there being only one sepul- 
 chral aj^artment, as nearly as may be in the centre of the mass, 
 approached by an inclined plane, winding round the whole building, 
 from the entrance in the centre of the river face. 
 
 Besides these there was another class of tond^s in Rome, called 
 columbaria, generally oblong or square rooms below the level of the 
 ground, the walls of wliich were i)ierced with a great number of little 
 uigeon-lioles or cells just of sufficient size to receive an urn containing 
 
 the ashes of the 
 
 adorned internally with pilasters and painted ornaments of consid- 
 erable beauty. 
 
 In the earlier ages of the Roman Empire these two forms of tombs 
 characterized with sufficient clearness the two races, each with their 
 distinctive customs, which made up the population of Rome. Long 
 before its expiration the two were fused together so thoroughly that 
 we lose all trace of the distinction, and a new form of tomb arose 
 compounded of the two older, which became the typical form with 
 the early Christians, and from them passed to the Saracens and other 
 ]:astern nations. 
 
 body, which had 
 been burnt ac- 
 cording to the 
 usual Roman 
 mode of disposing 
 of the dead. Ex- 
 ternally of course 
 they had no archi- 
 tecture, though 
 some of the more 
 important fam- 
 ily sepulchres of 
 this class were 
 
 224. Columbarium near th'^ Gate of St. Sebastian, Rome. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 345 
 
 The new form of tomb retained exterii.ally the circular form of tlie 
 Pelasgic sepulchre, though constructive necessities afterwards caused 
 it to become polygonal. Instead, however, of being solid, or nearly so, 
 the walls were only so thick as was necessary to support the dome, 
 which became the universal form of roof of tliese buildings. 
 
 The sepulchres of Rome have as yet been far too carelessly examined 
 to enable us to trace all the steps by which the transformation took 
 place, but as a general rule it may be stated that the gradual enlarge- 
 ment of the central circular apartment is almost a certain test of the 
 age of a tomb ; till at last, before the age of Constant ine, they became 
 in fact representations of the Pantheon on a small scale, almost always 
 with a crypt or circular vault below the principal apartment. 
 
 One of the most curious transitional specimens is that found 
 near San Vito, represented in Woodcut No. 225. Here as in all tlie 
 earlier specimens, the principal apartment is the lower, in the scpiare 
 basement. The upper, Avhich has lost its decoration, has the appearance 
 of having been hollowed out of the frustum of a gigantic Doric column, 
 or rather out of a solid tower like the central one of the Tomb of Aruns 
 (Woodcut No. 176). Shortly after the age of this sepulchre the lower 
 apartment became a mere crypt, and in such examples as those of the 
 sepulchres of the Cornelia and Tossia families we have merely miniature 
 Pantheons somewhat taller in 
 proportion, and with a crypt. 
 This is still more remarkable 
 in a building called the Torre 
 dei Schiavi, which has had a 
 portico attached to one side, 
 and in other respects looks 
 very like a direct imitation 
 of that celebrated temple. It 
 seems certainly, however, to 
 have been built for a tomb. 
 
 Another tomb, very similar 
 to that of the Tossia family, is 
 called that of Sta. Helena, the 
 mother of Constantine. If it 
 is not hers, it belongs at any 
 rate to the last days of the 
 Empire, and may be taken as 
 a fair specimen of the tombs 
 of that age and class. It is a vast transition from the tomb of Caecilia 
 Metella, thougli,like all the changes introduced by the Romans, it shows 
 the never-failing tendency to transfer all ai-cliitectural embellishments 
 from the exterior to the interior of every style of building. 
 
 It consists of a basement about 100 ft. square, containing the crypt. 
 
 225. Section of Sepulchre at Sau Vito. No scale. 
 
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 Oil tills stands a circular tower in two stories. In the lower story is a 
 circular apartment about 66 ft. in diameter, surrounded by eight 
 niches ; in the upper the niches are external, and each is pierced with a 
 window. The dimensions of the tomb are nearly the same as those of 
 Ciecilia Metella, and it thus affords an excellent opportunity of com- 
 paring the two extremes of the series, and of contrasting the early 
 Roman with the early Christian tomb. 
 
 The typical example of a sepulchre of this age is the tomb or bapti- 
 tery of Sta. Costanza, the daughter of Constantine (Woodcut No. 295). 
 In this building the pillars that adorned the exterior of such a mauso- 
 leum, for instance, as that of Hadrian, are introduced internally. Ex- 
 ternally the building never can have had much ornament. But the 
 
 226. Section and Elevation of Tomb of Sta. Helena, Rome. No scale. 
 
 breaks between the lower aisle and the central compartment, pierced 
 with the clerestory, must have had a very pleasing effect. In this 
 example there is still shown a certain degree of timidity, which does 
 not afterw^ards reappear. The columns are coupled and are far more 
 numerous than they need have been, and are united by a fragment of 
 an entablature, as if the architect had been afraid to ])\ace his vault 
 directly on the capitals. Notwithstanding these defects, it is a pleasing 
 and singularly instructive example of a completed transformation, and 
 is just what we miss in those secular buildings for which the Chris- 
 tians had no use. 
 
 Another building, ^^'llicll is now known as the Lateran Baptistery 
 (Woodcut No 294), was also undoubtedly a place of sepulture. Its 
 erection is generally ascribed to Constantine, and it is said was in- 
 tended by him to be the place of his own sepulture. Whether this is 
 correct or not, it certainly belongs to his age, and exhibits all the 
 characteristics of the architecture of his time. Here the central apart- 
 ment, never having been designed to support a dome, is of a far lighter 
 construction, an upper order of pillars being placed on the lower, with 
 merely a slight architrave and frieze running between the two orders, 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 347 
 
 the external walls being slight in construction and octagonal in plan.i 
 We must not in this place pursue any further the subject of the transi- 
 tion of style, as we have already trespassed within the pale of Chris- 
 tian architecture and passed beyond the limits of Heathen art. So 
 gradual, however, was the change, and so long in preparation, that it is 
 impossible to draw the line exactly where the separation actually took 
 place between the two. 
 
 Temple of Minerva »Medica. 
 
 One important building remains to be mentioned before leaving 
 this part of the subject. It commonly goes by the name of the Temple 
 of Minerva Medica, though this is certainly a misnomer. Recently it 
 has become the fashion to assume that it was the hall of some bath ; 
 no building of that class, however, was known to exist in the 
 neighborhood, and it is extremely improbable that any should 
 be found outside the Servian walls in this direction; moreover, 
 it is wanting in all the necessary accompaniments of such an 
 establishment. 
 
 It is here placed with the tombs, because its site is one that would 
 justify its being so classed, and its form being just such as would be 
 applicable to that purpose and to no other. It is not by any means cer- 
 tain, however, that it is a tomb, though there does not seem to be any 
 more probable supposition. It certainly belongs to the last days of the 
 Roman Empire, if indeed it be not a Christian building, which I am 
 very much inclined to believe it is, for, on comparing it with the 
 Baptistery of Constantine and the tomb of Sta. Costanza, it shows a 
 considerable advance in construction on both these buildings, and a 
 greater similarity to San Vitale at Ravenna, and other buildings of 
 Justinian's time, than to anything else now found in Rome. 
 
 As will be seen from the plan and section (Woodcuts Nos. 227 and 
 228), it has a dome, 80 ft. in diameter, resting on a decagon of singu- 
 larly light and elegant construction. Nine of the compartments con- 
 tain niches which give great room on the floor, as well as great variety 
 and lightness to the general design. Above this is a clerestory of ten 
 well-proportioned windows, which give light to the building, perhaps 
 not in so effective a manner as the one eye of the Pantheon, though by a 
 far more convenient arrangement, to protect from the elements a people 
 who did not possess glass. So far as I know, all the domed buildings 
 erected by the Romans up to the time of Constantine, and indeed long 
 afterwards, were circular in the interior, though, like the temple built 
 by Diocletian at Spalatro, they were sometimes octagonal externally. 
 
 * These two buildings are described further on (p. 431) as Christian edifices. 
 
348 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 227. 
 
 Plan of Minerva Medica at Rome, as restored in Isabelle's 
 " Edifices Circulaires," on the theory of its being a Bath. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 This, however, is a polygon both internally and on the outside, and 
 the mode in which the dome is placed on the polygon shows the first 
 
 rudiments of the 
 pendentive system, 
 which was after- 
 wards carried to 
 such perfection by 
 the Byzantine archi- 
 tects,but is nowhere 
 else to be found 
 in Rome. It prob- 
 ably was for the 
 purpose of some- 
 wiiat diminishing 
 the difficulties of 
 this construction 
 that the architect 
 adopted a figure 
 with ten instead of 
 eight sides. 
 
 This, too, is, I 
 believe, the first 
 building in which 
 buttresses are ap- 
 plied so as to give 
 strength to the 
 walls exactly at the 
 jDoint where it is 
 most wanted. By 
 this arrangement 
 the architect was 
 enabled to dispense with nearly one-half the quantity of material that 
 was thought necessary when the dome of the Pantheon was con- 
 structed, and which he must have employed 
 had he copied that building. Besides this, 
 the dome was ribbed Avith tiles, as shown 
 in Woodcut No. 229, and the space between 
 the ribs filled in with inferior, perhaps 
 lighter masonry, bonded together at certain 
 heights by horizontal courses of tiles where 
 necessary. 
 
 Besides the lightness and variety which 
 the base of this building derives from the 
 niches, it is 10 ft. higher than its diameter, which gives to it that 
 proportion of height to width, the want of which is the principal 
 
 228. 
 
 Section of Minerva Medica. (From Isabelle.) 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 29. Rib of the Roof of the 
 Minerva Medica at Rome. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 349 
 
 defect of the Pantheon. It is not known what the side erections 
 are which are usually sliown in the ground-plans, nor even whether 
 they are coeval with the main 
 central edifice. I suspect they 
 have never been very correctly 
 laid down. 
 
 Taking it altogether, the 
 building is certainly, both as 
 concerns construction and pro- 
 portion, by far the most scientific 
 of all those in ancient Rome, and 
 in these respects as far superior 
 to tiie Pantheon as it is inferior 
 to that temple in size. Indeed 
 there are few inventions of the 
 Middle Ages that are not at- 
 tempted here or in the Temple 
 of Peace — but more in this than 
 in the latter ; so much so, indeed, 
 that I cannnot help believing 
 that it is much more modern 
 than is generally supposed. 
 
 As might be expected from our 
 knowledge of the race that inha- 
 bited the European provinces of the Roman Empire, there are very few 
 specimens of tombs of any importance to be found in them. One very 
 beautiful example exists at St. Remi, reiiresented in the annexed wood- 
 cut (No. 230). It can hardly, however, be correctly called a tomb, but is, 
 rather a cenotaph, or a monument, erected, as the inscription on it tells 
 us, by Sextus and Marcus, of the family of the Julii, to their parents, 
 whose statues appear under the dome of the upper story. There is noth- 
 ing funereal either in the inscription or the form, nor anything to lead us, 
 to suppose that the bodies of the parents rejiose beneath its foundation. 
 
 The lower portion of this monument is the square basement which 
 the Romans always added to the Etruscan form of tond). Upon this 
 stands a story pierced with an archway in each face, with a three- 
 quarter ])illar of the Corinthian order at every angle. The highest 
 part is a circular colonnade, a miniature copy of that which we know 
 to have once encircled Hadrian's Mole. 
 
 The open arrangement of the arches and colonnade, ivhile it takes 
 off considerably from the tomb-like simplicity appropriate to such 
 buildings, adds very much to the lightness and elegance of the whole. 
 Altogether the building has much more of the aspiring character of 
 Christian art than of the more 'solid and horizontal forms which 
 were characteristic of the style then dying out. 
 
 230. Tomb at St. K6ini. (From Laborde's 
 " Monumens de la France.") 
 
350 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 Another monument of very singular and exceptional form is found 
 
 at Igel 
 
 near Treves, in Germany. It is so unlike anything found 
 in Italy or indeed anything of the Roman 
 age, that were its date not perfectly known 
 from the inscription upon it, one might 
 rather be inclined to ascribe it to the age of 
 Francis I, than to the latter days of the 
 Roman Empire. 
 
 The form is graceful, though the pilasters 
 and architectural ornaments seem somewhat 
 misplaced. It is covered with sculptures 
 from top to bottom. These, however, as is 
 generally the case with Roman funereal 
 monuments, have no reference to death, nor 
 to the life or actions of the person to whom 
 the monument is sacred, but are more like 
 the scenes painted on a wall or ornamental 
 stele anywhere. The principal object on the 
 face represented in the woodcut is the sun, 
 but the subjects are varied on each face, and, 
 though much time-worn, they still give a 
 very perfect idea of the rich ornamentation 
 of the monuments of the last age of the 
 Empire. 
 
 The Tour Magne at Nimes is too im- 
 portant a monument to be passed over, 
 though in its present ruined state it is 
 almost more difficult to explain than any 
 ..^..^..j,,:,..,. Other Roman remains that have reached our 
 
 times. It consists of an octagonal tower 
 50 ft. in diameter, and now about 120 ft. 
 y - u -H^SSJ high. The basement is extended beyond 
 
 this tower on every side by a series of arches 
 supporting a terrace to which access was 
 obtained by an external flight of steps, or 
 rather an inclined plane. From the marks 
 in the walls it seems evident that this 
 terrace originally supported a pei-istyle, or, 
 possibly, a range of chambers. Within the 
 basement is a great chamber covered by a 
 dome of rubble masonry, to which no access could be obtained from 
 without, but the interior may have been reached through the eye 
 of the dome. From the terrace an important flight of steps led 
 upwards to — what ? It is almost impossible to refrain from answering, 
 to a cella, like those which crowned the tomb temples of Assyria. 
 
 231. Moiiuiuent at Igel, 
 Treves. (From Schmidt's 
 tiquities of Treves.") 
 
 near 
 "Au- 
 
£iK. IV Ch. V. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 351 
 
 That, the main object of the building was sepulchral seems liardly 
 doubtful, but we have no other instance in Europe of a tomb with 
 such a staircase leading to a chamber above it. 
 
 That Marseilles was a Phoenician and then a Phocian colony long 
 before Roman times seems generally to be admitted, and that in tlie 
 temple of Diana (Woodcuts Nos. 188 and 189) and in this building 
 there is an Etruscan or Eastern element which can hardly be mis- 
 taken, and may lead to very important ethnographical indications 
 when more fully investigated and better understood. 
 
 Eastern Tombs. 
 
 This scarcity of tombs in the western part of the Roman Empire 
 is to a great extent made up for in the East ; but the history of those 
 erected under the Roman rule in Jhat part of the world is as yet so 
 little known that it is not easy eitlier to classify or to describe them ; 
 and as nearly all those which have been preserved are cut in the rock, 
 it is sometimes difficult — as wdth other rock-cut objects all over the 
 world — to understand the form of building from which they were copied . 
 
 The three principal groups of tombs of the Roman epoch are those 
 of Petra, Cyrene, and Jerusalem. Though many other important 
 tombs exist in those countries, they are so little known that they must 
 be passed over for the present. 
 
 From the time when Abraham was laid in the cave of Machpelah 
 until after the Christian era, we know that burying in the rock was not 
 the exception but the general practice among the nations of this part 
 of the East. So far as can be known, the example was set by Egypt, 
 which was the parent of much of their civilization. In Egypt the 
 fagade of their rock-cut totnbs were — with the solitary exception of 
 those of Beni Hassan i — ornamented so simply and unobtrusively as 
 rather to belie than to announce their internal magnificence. All the 
 oldest Asiatic tombs seem to have been mere holes in the rock, wholly 
 without architectural decorations. 
 
 We have seen, however, how the Persian kings copied their palace 
 fa9ades to adorn their last resting-places, and how about the same time 
 in Lycia the tonib-builders copied, first their own wooden structures, 
 and afterwards the architectural fa9ades which they had learned from 
 tlie Greeks how to construct. But it was not till the Roman period 
 that this species of magnificence extended to the places enumerated 
 above ; when to such an extent did it prevail at Petra as to give to that 
 now deserted valley the appearance of a petrified city of the dead. 
 
 The typical and most beautiful tomb of this place is that called 
 
 1 See p. 110, and Woodcut 15. 
 
352 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1 
 
 the Khasne or Treasury of Pharaoli — represented in elevation and 
 section in the annexed woodcuts, Nos. 232 and 233. As will be seen, 
 it consists of a square basement, adorned with a portico of four very 
 
 232. Kliasne. (From Laborde's " Petra and Mount Sinai.") 
 
 beautiful Corinthian pillars, surmounted by a pediment of low Greciar 
 pitch. Above this are three very singular turrets, the use and appli- 
 cation of which it is extremely difficult to understand. The central 
 one is circular, -and is of a well-understood sepulchral form, the use 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 353 
 
 of which, had it been more important, or had it stood alone, would 
 have been intelligible enough; but what are the side turrets? If ouo 
 might hazard so bold a conjec- 
 ture, I would suggest that the 
 original from which this is de- 
 rived was a five-turreted tomb, 
 like that of Aruns (Woodcut 
 No. 176), or that of Alyattes at 
 Sard is, wdiich in course of time 
 became translated into so foreign 
 a shape as this ; but where are 
 the intermediate forms ? and by 
 w^hom and when was this change 
 effected ? Before forming any 
 theories on this subject, it wiW 
 be well to consider whether all 
 these buildings really are tombs. 
 Most of them undoubtedly are 
 so ; but may not the name el 
 Deir^ or the Convent, applied by 
 the Arabs to one of the principal 
 rock-cut monuments of Petra, be 
 after all the true designation? 
 Are none of them, in short, cells 
 for jjriests, like the viharas found 
 in India? All who have hitherto 
 visited these spots have assumed 
 at once that everything cut in tlie rock must be a tomb, but I am 
 much mistaken if this is really the case with all. 
 
 To return, however, to the Khasne. Though all the forms of the 
 architecture are Roman, the details are so elegant and generally so 
 well designed, as almost to lead to the suspicion that there must have 
 been some Grecian influence brought to bear upon the work. The 
 masses of rock left above the wings show how early a specimen of 
 its class it is, and how little practice its designers could have had in 
 copying in the rock the forms of their regular buildings. 
 
 A little further within the city is found another very similar 
 in design to this, but far inferior to it in detail and execution, and 
 showing at least a century of degradation, though at the same time 
 presenting an adaptation to rock-cut forms not found in the earlier 
 examples. 
 
 A third is that above alluded to, called el Deir. This is the 
 same in general outline as the two former — of an order neither 
 Greek nor Roman, but with something like a Doric frieze over a 
 very plain Corinthian capital. In other respects it presents no new 
 VOL. I. — 23 
 
 233. Section of Tomb at Khasn6. (From La- 
 borde's "Mount Sinai," p. 1750 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 355 
 
 feature except the apparent absence of a door and on the whole, it 
 seeins, if finished, to deserve its name less than either of the other 
 two. 
 
 Perhaps the most singular object among these tombs, if tombs they 
 are, is the flat facade with three stories of pillars one over the other 
 — slightly indicated on the left of the Corinthian tomb in Woodcut 
 No. 234. It is like the proscenium of some of the more recent Greek 
 theatres. If it was really the frontispiece to a tomb, it was totally 
 unsuitable to the purpose, and is certainly one of the most complete 
 misapplications of Greek architecture ever made. 
 
 Generally speaking, the interiors of these buildings are so plain that 
 
 235. Rock-cut interior at Petra. (From Laborde's " Sinai," p. 198.) 
 
 travellers have not cared either to draw or measure them ; one, how- 
 ever, represented in the annexed woodcut (No. 235), is richly orna- 
 mented, and, as far as can be judged from what is published, is as 
 unlike a tomb as it is like a vihara. But, as before remarked, they all 
 require re-examination before tlie purpose for which they were cut can 
 be pronounced upon with any certainty. 
 
 The next group of tombs is that at Jerusalem.' These are 
 undoubtedly all sepulchres. By far the greater number of them are 
 wholly devoid of architectural ornament. To the north of the city 
 is a group known as the Tombs of the Kings, with a fa9ade of a 
 
356 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt I. 
 
 corrupt Doric order, similar to some of the latest Etruscan tombs. i 
 These are now very mucli ruined, but still retain sufficient traces of the 
 
 original design to fix their date 
 ~ within or subsequently to the 
 
 Herodian period without much 
 possibility of doubt. A some- 
 what similar fa9ade, but of a 
 form more like the Greek Doric, 
 found in the valley of Jehosha- 
 phat bears the name of the 
 Sepulchre of St. James. 
 
 Close to this is a square tomb, 
 known as that of Zechariah, cut 
 
 free. 
 
 ;r - --^ m the rock. 
 
 but standing 
 
 236. Fn^ade ut ii^^ i , iuiabj^, truiii a 
 Photograph. 
 
 Each face is adorned with Ionic 
 pillars and square piers at the 
 angles, the whole being crown- 
 ed with a pyramidal roof. Per- 
 haps this building should prop- 
 erly be called a cenotaph, as 
 it is perfectly solid, and no cave 
 or sepulchral vault has been 
 found beneath it, though judg- 
 ing from analogies one might 
 yet be found if properly looked 
 for. A tomb with an architect- 
 ural ffl9ade, similar to that ol 
 of the so-called Tomb of the 
 Judges, does exist behind it cut 
 in rock, and is consequently of 
 more modern construction. It 
 may be to mark this that the 
 architectural monolith was left. 
 
 Close to this is another iden- 
 tical with it in as far as the 
 basement is concerned, and Avhich is now popularly known as the 
 Tomb of Absalom ; but in this instance the pyramid has been rej^laced 
 with a structural spire, and it is probable when this was done that 
 the chamber which now exists in its interior was excavated. 
 
 So-called " Tomb of Zechariah. 
 
 ^ M. deSaulcy has recently attempted 
 to prove that these tombs are those of 
 the kings of Judah from David down- 
 wards. Their architecture is undoubt- 
 edly as late as the Christian era, and the 
 
 cover of the sarcophagus which is now 
 in the Louvre under the title of that 
 of David is probably of the same date 
 as these tombs, or if anything more 
 modern. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 357 
 
 The so-called Tomb of Absalom. 
 
 One of the remarkable points in these tombs" is tlie curious jumble 
 of the Roman orders which they j^resent. The pillars and pilasters 
 are Ionic, the architrave and 
 frieze Doric, and the cornice 
 Egyptian. The capitals and 
 frieze are so distinctly late 
 Roman, that we can feel no hesi- 
 tation as to their date being 
 either of the age of Herod or 
 subsequent to that time. In an 
 architectural point of view the 
 cornice is too plain to be pleas- 
 ing if not painted ; it probably 
 tlierefore was so treated. 
 
 Another class of these tombs 
 is represented by the so-called 
 Tomb of the Judges (Woodcut 
 No. 240). These are ornamented 
 by a tympanum of a Greek or 
 Roman temple filled with a 
 scroll-work of rich but debased 
 l^attern, and is evidently de- 
 rived from something similar, 
 tliough Grecian in design. In 
 age it is certainly more recent 
 than the so-called Tomb of 
 Zechariah, as one of precisely 
 similar design is found cut into 
 the face of the rock out of which 
 that monument was excavated. 
 
 The third group is that of 
 Cyrene, on the African coast. 
 Notwithstanding the researches 
 of Admiral Beechey and of 
 M. Pacho,! and the still more 
 recent explorations of Messrs. 
 Smith and Porcher, above re- 
 ferred to (p. 277), they are still 
 much loss perfectly known to 
 us than they should be. Their 
 number is immense, and they 
 almost all have architectural 
 
 
 m 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Si 
 
 Angle of Tomb of Absalom. 
 De Saulcy.) 
 
 (From 
 
 fa9ades, generally consisting of two or more columns between pilasters, 
 1 " Voyage dans la Marmarique, la Cyrenaique, etc." Didot, Paris, 1827-29. 
 
358 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 like the grottoes of Beni Hassan, or the Tomb of St. James at Jeru- 
 salem. Many of them show powerful evidence of Greek taste, while 
 
 some may be as old as the 
 Grecian era, though the greater 
 part are undoubtedly of Roman 
 date, and the paintings with 
 which many of them are still 
 adorned are certainly Roman 
 in design. Two of them are 
 illustrated by Woodcuts Nos. 
 165 and 166; one as show- 
 ing more distinct evidence of 
 Greek taste and color than 
 is to be found elsewhere, though it is doubtful if it belongs to the 
 Grecian period any more than the so-called Tomb of St. James at 
 Jerusalem ; the other, thougli of equally uncertain date, is interesting 
 as being a circular monument built over a cave like that at Amrith 
 Woodcut (No. 120), and is tlie only other example now known. None 
 of them have such splendid architectural facades as the Khasne at 
 Petra ; but the number of tombs which are adorned with architectural 
 features is greater than in that city, and, grouped as they are 
 together in terraces on the hill-side, they constitute a necropolis 
 which is among the most striking of the ancient world. Altogethe; 
 this group, though somewhat resembling that at Castel d'Asso, is more 
 extensive and far richer in external architecture.^ 
 
 240. ra9ade of the Tomb of the Judges. 
 
 Time has not left us any perfect structural tombs in all these 
 places, though there can be little doubt but they were once numerous. 
 Almost the only tomb of this class constructed in masonry known to 
 exist, and which in many respects is perhaps the most interesting of all, 
 is found in Asia Minor, at Mylassa in Caria. In form it is something 
 like the free-standing rock-cut examples at Jerusalem. As shown in 
 the woodcut (No. 241), it consists of a square base, which supports 
 twelve columns, of which the eight inner ones support a dome, the 
 outer four merely completing the square. The dome itself is con- 
 structed in the same manner as all the Jaina domes are in India (as 
 will be explained hereafter when describing that style), and, thougli 
 ornamented with Roman details, is so unlike anything else ever built 
 by that people, and is so completely and perfectly what we find 
 
 ^ Though the dates of all these tombs 
 at Cyrene are so uncertain, there seems 
 little doubt that if any one thoroughly 
 versed in the style were to visit the 
 place, he could fix the age of all of them 
 with approximate correctness. The one 
 
 difficulty is, that a chronometric scale 
 taken from the buildings at Rome, or 
 even in Syria, will not suffice. Local 
 peculiarities must be taken into account 
 and allowed for, and this requires both 
 time and judgment. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. TOMBS. 359 
 
 reappearing ten centuries afterwards in tlie far East, that we are 
 forced to conclude that it belongs to a style once prevalent and long 
 fixed in these lands, though this one now stands as the sole remaining 
 representative of its class. 
 
 241. Tomb at Mylassa. (From "Antiquities of Ionia/' published by the Dilettanti Society.) 
 
 Another example, somewhat similar in style, though remotely dis- 
 tant in locality, is found at Dugga, near Tunis, in Africa. This, too, 
 consists of a square base, taller than in the last example, surmounted 
 by twelve Ionic columns, which are here merely used as ornaments. 
 There were probably square pilasters at the angles, like that at 
 Jerusalem (Woodcuts Nos. 237, 238), while the Egyptian form of 
 the cornice is similar to that found in these examples, though with 
 the omission of the Doric frieze. 
 
 It apparently originally terminated in a pyramid of steps like the 
 Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and a large number of structural tombs 
 which copied that celebrated model. Nothing of this now remains 
 but the four corner-stones, which were architecturally most essential to 
 
360 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Taut I. 
 
 accentuate the weak lines of a sloping pyramid in such a situation. 
 Taken altogether, perhaps no more graceful monument of its class 
 
 has come down to 
 jBj\ our days than this 
 
 them forming a cross, which has consequently been assumed to be the 
 Christian symbol. The building itself, which is circular, and as 
 nearly as may be 200 ft. in diameter, stands on a square platform 
 measuring 210 ft. The perpendicular part is ornamented by 60 
 engaged columns of the Tonic order, and by the four false doors 
 just mentioned ; above this rose a cone — apparently in 40 steps — 
 making tlie total height about 130 ft. It is, however, so ruined 
 that it is very difficult to feel sure about its exact dimensions or 
 form. 
 
 From objects and scribblings of various kinds found in the in- 
 terior, it appears to have remained open till nearly the time of the 
 Moslem conquest, but shortly afterwards to have been closed, and to 
 have defied all the ingenuity of explorers till a passage was forced in 
 1866 by Messrs. MacCarthy and Berbrugger, acting under the orders 
 and at the expense of the late Emperor Napoleon HI. ^ The entrance 
 
 ' " Le Tombeau de la Cliretienne," par A. Berbrugger, Alger, 1867, from which, 
 the above particulars are taken. 
 
 Besides these there 
 are in Algeria two 
 tombs of very great 
 interest, both from 
 their size and the 
 peculiarity of their 
 forms. The best 
 known is that on the 
 coast a short dis- 
 tance from Algiers 
 to the westward. It 
 is generally known 
 as the Kubr Rou- 
 meia, or Tomb of 
 the Christian Virgin 
 — a name it acquired 
 from its having four 
 false doors, each of a 
 single stone divided 
 into four panels, and. 
 the stile between 
 
 must have been when 
 complete. 
 
 242. Tomb at Diigga. (From a drawing by F. Calherwood.) 
 
361 
 
 TOMBS. 
 
 Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 was found passing under the sill of the false door on the cast from 
 a detached building standing outside the platform, and which seems 
 
 to have been originally constructed to cover and protect the entrance. 
 From this a winding passage, 560 ft. in length, led to the central 
 chamber where it is assumed the royal bodies were once deposited, 
 but when opened no trace of them remained, nor anything to indicate 
 who they were, nor in what manner they were buried. 
 
 The other tomb, the Madracen, is very similar to this one, but 
 smaller. Its peristyle is of a sort of Doric order, without bases, and 
 
3G2 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 surmounted by a quasi-Egyptian cornice, not unlike that on the 
 Tomb of Absalom at Jerusalem (Woodcut No. 239), or that at 
 Dugga (Woodcut No. 242). Altogether its details are more elegant, 
 and from their general character there seems no reason for doubting 
 that this tomb is older than the Kubr Roumeia, though they are so 
 similar to each other that tlieir dates cannot be far distant.^ 
 
 There seems almost no reason for doubting that the Kubr Roumeia 
 was the " Monumentum conmiune Regise gentis " mentioned by Pom- 
 ponius Mela, 2 about the middle of the first century of our era, and if 
 so, this could only apply to the dynasty that expired with Juba II., 
 A. D. 23, and in that case the oldest monument most probably belonged 
 to the previous dynasty, which ceased to reign with Bocchus III., 33 
 years before the birth of Christ. 
 
 One of the most interesting points connected with these Mauri- 
 tanian tombs is their curious similarity to that of Hadrian at Rome. 
 The square base, the circular colonnade, the conical roof, are all the 
 same. At Rome they are very much drawn out of course, but that 
 arose from the " Mole " being situated among tall objects in a town, 
 and more than even that, perhaps, from the tendency towards height 
 whicli manifested itself so strongly in the architecture of that 
 age. 
 
 The greatest similarity, however, exists in the interior. The long 
 winding corridor terminating in an oblong apartment in the centre is 
 an identical feature in both, but has not yet been traced elsewhere, 
 though it can be liardly doubted that it must have existed in many 
 other examples. 
 
 If we add to these the cenotaph at St. Remi (Woodcut No. 230), 
 we have a series of monuments of the same type extending over 400 
 years ; and, though many more are wanted before we can fill up the 
 gaps and complete the series, there can be little doubt that the 
 missing links once existed which connected them together. Beyond 
 this we may go still further back to the Etruscan tumuli and the 
 simple mounds of earth on the Tartar steppes. At the other end of 
 the series we are evidently approaching the verge of the towers and 
 steeples of Christian art ; and, though it may seem the wildest of 
 hy])otheses to assert that the design of the spire of Strasbourg grew 
 out of the mound of Alyattes, it is nevertheless true, and it is 
 only non-apparent because so many of the steps in the progress 
 from the one to the other have disappeared in the convulsions of 
 the interval. 
 
 1 It is understood that it, too, has 
 been explored, but no account of the re- 
 sult has yet reached this country, and 
 such runiors as have readied are too 
 
 vague to be quoted. Even its dimen- 
 sions are not known. 
 
 •2 "De Situ Orbis," I. vi. p. 38, edit. 
 Leyden, 1748. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 363 
 
 Domestic Architectuee. 
 
 We know, not only from the descriptions and incidental notices 
 that have come down to us, but also from the remains found at 
 Pompeii and elsewhere, that the private dwellings of the Romans were 
 characterized by that magnificence and splendor which we find in all 
 their works, accompanied, probably, with more than the usual amount 
 of bad taste. 
 
 In Rome itself no ancient house — indeed no trace of a domestic 
 edifice — exists except the Palace of the Caesars on the Palatine Mount; 
 and this even is now merely a congeries of shapeless ruins, so com- 
 pletely destroyed as to have defied even the most imaginative of 
 restorers to make much of it except a vehicle for the display of 
 his own ingenuity. The extent of these ruins, coupled with the 
 descriptions that have been preserved, sufiice to convince us that, of 
 all the palaces ever built, either in the East or the West, this was 
 probably the most magnificent and the most gorgeously adorned. 
 Never in the world's history does it appear that so much wealth and 
 power were at the command of one man as was the case with the 
 Caesars ; and never could the world's wealth have fallen into the 
 hands of men more inclined to lavish it for their own personal 
 gratification than these emperors were. They could, moreover, 
 ransack the whole world for plunder to adorn their buildings, and 
 could command the best artists of Greece, and of all the subject 
 kingdoms, to assist in rendering their golden palaces the most gor- 
 geous that the world had then seen, or is likely soon to see again. 
 The whole area of the palace may roughly be described as a square 
 platform measuring 1500 ft. east and west, with a mean breadth of 
 1300 ft. in the opposite direction. Owing, however, to its deeply 
 indented and irregular outline, it hardly covers more ground than 
 the Baths of Caracalla. 
 
 Recent excavations have laid bare nearly the whole of the western 
 portion of this area, and have disclosed the plan of the building, but 
 all has been so completely destroyed that it requires considerable 
 skill and imagination to reinstate it in its previous form. The one 
 part that remains tolerably perfect is the so-called house of Livia, 
 the wife of Augustus, who is said to have lived in it after the death 
 of her husband. In dimensions and arrangement it is not unlike the 
 best class of Pompeian houses, but its paintings and decorations are 
 very superior to anything found in that city. They are, in fact, as 
 might be expected from their age and position, the finest mural 
 decorations that have come down to us, and as they are still wonder- 
 fully perfect, they give a very high idea of the perfection of art 
 attained in the Augustan age, to which they certainly belong. 
 
364 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I, 
 
 That part of the palace on the Palatine which most impresses the 
 visitor is the eastern half, which looks on one hand to the Amphi- 
 theatre, on the other to the Baths of Caracalla, and overhangs the 
 Circus Maximius. Though all their marble or painted decorations 
 are gone, the enormous masses of masonry which here exist convey- 
 that impression of grandeur which is generally found in Roman 
 works. It is not of Esthetic beauty arising from ornamental or 
 ornamented construction, but the Technic expression of power and 
 greatness ai*ising from mass and stability. It is the same feeling 
 with which we contemplate the aqueducts and engineering works of 
 this great people ; and, though not of the highest class, few scenes 
 of architectural grandeur are more impressive than the now ruined 
 Palace of the Caesars. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this splendor, this palace was probably as an 
 architectural object inferior to the Thermae. The thousand and one 
 exigencies of private life render it impossible to impart to a residence 
 — even to that of the world's master — the same character of grandeur 
 as may be given to a building wholly devoted to show and public 
 purposes. In its glory the Palace of the Caesars must have been the 
 world's wonder ; but as a ruin deprived of its furniture and ephemeral 
 splendor, it loses much that would tend to make it either pleasing 
 or instructive. We nmst not look for either beauty of proportion or 
 perfection of construction, nor even for appropriateness of material, in 
 the hastily constructed halls of men whose unbounded power was only 
 equalled by the coarse vulgarity of their characters. 
 
 Spalatro. 
 
 The only palace of the Roman world of which sufficient remains 
 are still left to enable us to judge either of its extent or arrange^ 
 ments is that which Diocletian built for himself at Spalatro, in Dal- 
 matia, and in which he spent the remaining years of his life, after 
 shaking off the cares of empire. It certainly gives us a most exalted 
 idea of what the splendor of the imperial palace at Rome must have 
 been when we find one emperor — certainly neither the richest nor the 
 most powerful — building, for his retirement, a villa in the country 
 of almost exactly the same dimensions as the Escurial in Spain, and 
 consequently surpassing in size, as it did in magnificence, most of the 
 modern palaces of Europe. 
 
 It is uncertain how far it resembles or was copied from that in 
 Rome, more especially as it must be regarded as a fortified palace, 
 which there is no reason to believe that at Rome was, while its model 
 would seem to have been the praetorian camp rather than any habita- 
 tion built within the protection of the city walls. In consequence of 
 
Bk. IV. Cii. V. 
 
 DOMESTIC ARCIIITECTURE. 
 
 3G5 
 
 this its exterior is plain and solid, except on the side next the sea, 
 where it was least liable to attack. The other three sides arc only 
 broken by the towers that flank them, and by those that defend the 
 great gates which open in tlie centre of each face. 
 
 Scale 150 ft. to 1 in. 
 245. Palace of Diocletian at Spalatro. (From Adams.) 
 
 The building is nearly a regular parallelogram, though not quite 
 so. The south side is that facing the sea, and is 592 ft. from angle to 
 angle ; the one opposite being only -570 in length ; i while the east and 
 west sides measure each 698 ft., the whole building thus covering 
 about 9^ English acres. 
 
 The principal entrance to the palace is on the north, and is called 
 
 By an oversight, this difference is not expressed in the woodcut. 
 
■^^6 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. P^^t I. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V 
 
 DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 367 
 
 the Golden Gate, and, as represented in the annexed woodcut (No. 246) 
 shows all the peculiarities of Roman architecture in its last stage. 
 The horizontal architrave still remains over the doorway, a useless 
 ornament, under a bold discliarging arch, which usurps its place and 
 does its duty. Above this, a row of Corinthian columns, standing on 
 brackets, once supported the archivolts of a range of niches — a piece 
 of pleasing decoration, it must be confessed, but one in which the 
 original purpose of the column has been entirely overlooked or 
 forgotten. 
 
 Entering this portal, we pass along a street ornamented with 
 arcades on either side, till exactly in the centre of the building this 
 is crossed at right angles by another similar street, proceeding from 
 the so-called Iron and Brazen Gates, which are similar to the Golden 
 Gate in design, but are far less richly ornamented. 
 
 These streets divided the building into four portions : those to the 
 north are so much ruined that it is not now easy to trace their plan, 
 or to say to what purpose they were dedicated ; but probably the one 
 might have been the lodgings of the guests, the other the residence of 
 the principal officers of the household. 
 
 The whole of the southern half of the building was devoted to the 
 palace properly so called. It contained two temples, as they are now 
 desio-nated. That on the ris^ht is said to have been dedicated to 
 Jupiter, though judging from its form, it would appear to have 
 been designed rather as the mausoleum of the founder than as a 
 temple of that god. On the assumption that it was a temple it has 
 been illustrated at a previous page.i Opposite to it is another small 
 temple, dedicated, it is said to ^sculapius. 
 
 Between these two is the arcade represented in Woodcut No. 185, 
 at the upper end of which is the vestibule — circular, as all buildings 
 dedicated to Vesta, or taking their name from that goddess, should 
 be. This opened directly on to a magnificent suite of nine apart- 
 ments, occupying the principal part of the south front of the palace. 
 Beyond these, on the right hand, were the private apartments of the 
 emperor, and behind them his baths. The opposite side is restored 
 as if it exactly corresponded, but this is more than doubtful ; and, 
 indeed there is scarcely sufficient authority for many of the details 
 shown in the plan, though they are, probably, on the whole, suf- 
 ficiently exact to convey a general idea of the arrangements of a 
 Roman Imperial palace. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the most splendid feature in this palace was the 
 great southern gallery, 515 ft. in length by 24 in width, extending 
 along the whole seaward face of the building. Besides its own in- 
 trinsic beauty as an architectural feature, it evinces an appreciation 
 
 1 See p. 312. 
 
368 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1. 
 
 of the beauties of nature which one would hardly expect in a 
 Roirian. This great arcade is the principal feature in the whole 
 design and commands a view well worthy the erection of such a 
 gallery for its complete enjoyment. 
 
 \ 
 
 Pompeii and Herculaneum. 
 
 Failing to discover any example of domestic architecture in Rome, 
 we return to Pompeii and Herculaneum, where we find numerous and 
 most interesting examples of houses of all classes, except, perhaps, 
 the best ; for there is nothing there to compare with the Laurentian 
 villa of Pliny, or with some others of which descriptions have come 
 down to us. Pompeii, moreover, was far more a Grecian than a Roman 
 city, and its buildings ought to be considered rather as illustrative of 
 those of Greece, or at least of Magna Graecia, than of anything found 
 to the northward. Still these cities belonged to the Roman age, and 
 except in taste and in minor arrangements, we have no reason to 
 doubt that the buildings did resemble those of Rome, at least to a 
 sufficient extent for illustration. 
 
 With scarcely an exception, all the houses of Pompeii were of one 
 story only in lieight. It is true that in some we find staircases 
 leading to the roof, and traces of an upper story, but where this 
 latter is the case the apartments would appear to have been places for 
 washing and drying clothes, or for some such domestic purpose rather 
 than for living or even sleeping rooms. All the principal apartments 
 were certainly on the ground floor, and an almost inevitable corollary 
 from this, they all faced inwards, and were lighted from courtyards or 
 atria^ and not from the outside ; for, with a people who had not glass 
 with which to glaze their windows, it was impossible to enjoy privacy 
 or security without at the same time excluding both light and air, 
 otherwise than by lighting their rooms from the interior. Hence it 
 arose that in most instances the outside of the better class of houses 
 was given up to shops and smaller dwellings, which opened on to the 
 street, while the residence, with the exception of the principal entrance, 
 and sometimes one or two private doors that opened outwards, was 
 wholly hidden from view by their entourage. 
 
 Even in the smallest class of tradesman's houses which opened on 
 the street, one apartment seems always to have been left unroofed to 
 light at least two rooms on each side of it, used as bedrooms ; but as 
 the roofs of all are now gone, it is not always easy to determine 
 which were so treated. 
 
 It is certain that, in the smallest houses which can have belonged 
 to persons at all above the class of shopkeepers, there was always a 
 central apartment, unroofed in the centre, into which the others 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. V. 
 
 DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 369 
 
 opened. Sometimes this was covered by two beams placed in one 
 direction, and two crossing them at riglit angles, framing the roof 
 into nine compartments, generally of unequal dimensions, the central 
 one being open, and with a corresponding sinking in the floor to 
 receive the rain and drainage which inevitably came through it. 
 When this court was of any extent, four pillars were required at 
 the intersection of the beams, or angles of the opening, to support 
 the roof. In larger courts, eight, twelve, sixteen, or more columns 
 Avere so employed, often apparently more as decorative objects than 
 as required by the constructive necessities of the case, and very 
 frequently the number of these on either side of the apartment 
 did not correspond. Frequently the angles were not right angles, 
 and the ])illars were placed unequally with a careless disregard of 
 symmetry that strikes us as strange, though in such cases this may 
 have been preferable to cold and formal regularity, and even more 
 ])roductive of grace and beauty. Besides these courts, there generally 
 existed in the rear of the house another bounded by a dead wall at 
 the further extremity, and which in 
 the smaller houses was ])ainted, to re- 
 semble tlie garden Avliicli the larger 
 mansions |)ossessed in tliis direction. 
 The apartments looking on this court 
 were of course perfectly private, wliicli 
 cannot be said of any of those looking 
 inwards on the atrium. 
 
 The house called that of Pansa at 
 Pompeii is a good illustration of tliese 
 l)eculiarities, and, as one of the most 
 regular, has been frequently chosen for 
 the purpose of illustration. 
 
 In the annexed plan (Woodcut No. 
 247) all the parts that do not belong 
 to the principal mansion are shaded 
 darker except the doubtful part marked 
 A, which may either have been a sepa- 
 rate house, or the women's apartments 
 belonging to the principal one, or, Avhat 
 is even more probable, it may have been 
 designed so as to be used for either 
 purpose. B is certainly a separate 
 house, and the whole of the remainder 
 of this side, of the front, and of the third side, till we come opposite 
 to A, was let off as shops. At c Ave have the kitchen and servants' 
 apartments, with a private entrance to the street, and an opening 
 also to the principal peristyle of the house. 
 VOL. I. — 24 
 
 247. House of Pansa at Pompeii. 
 
 (From Gell's "Pompeii.") 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 iu. 
 
370 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. Part I. 
 
 Returning to the principal entrance or front door d, you enter 
 through a sliort passage into the outer court e, on each side of whicli 
 are several small apartments, used either by the inferior members of 
 the household or by guests. A wider passage than the entrance leads 
 from this to the peristyle, or principal apartment of the house. On 
 the left hand are several small rooms, used no doubt as sleeping 
 apartments, which were probably closed by half-doors open above and 
 below, so as to admit air and light, while preserving sufficient privacy, 
 for Roman tastes at least. In front and on the right hand are two 
 larger rooms, either of which may have been the triclinium or dining- 
 room, the other being what we should call the drawing-room of the 
 house. A passage between the kitchen and the central room leads to 
 a verandah, which crosses the whole length of the house, and is open, 
 to the garden beyond. 
 
 As will be observed, architectural effect has been carefully studied 
 in this design, a vista nearly 300 ft. in length being obtained from the 
 outer door to the garden wall, varied by a pleasing play of light and 
 shade, and displaying a gradually increasing degree of spaciousness 
 and architectural ricliness as we advance. All these points must have 
 been productive of tlie most pleasing effect when complete, and of 
 more beauty than has been attained in almost any modern dwelling 
 of like dimensions. 
 
 Generally speaking, the architectural details of the Pompeian houses 
 are carelessly and ungracefully moulded, though it cannot be denied 
 that sometimes a certain elegance of feeling runs through them that 
 pleases in si)ite of our better judgment. It was not, however, on form 
 that they depended for their effect ; and consequently it is not by that 
 that they must be judged. The whole architecture of the house was 
 colored, but even this was not considered so important as the paintings 
 which covered the flat surfaces of the Avails. Comparing the Pompeian 
 decoration with that of the baths of Titus, and those of the House of 
 Livia, the only specimens of the same age and class found in Rome, it 
 must be admitted that the Pompeian examples show an equally correct 
 taste, not only in the choice but in the application of the ornaments 
 used, though in the execution there is generally that difference that 
 might be expected between paintings executed for a private individual 
 and those for the Emperor of the Roman Avorld. Notwithstanding 
 this, these paintings, so wonderfully preserved in this small provincial 
 town, are even now among the best specimens we possess of mural 
 decoration. They excel the ornamentation of the Alhambra, as being- 
 more varied and more intellectual. For the same reason they are 
 superior to the works of the same class executed by the Moslems in 
 Egypt and Persia, and they are far superior to the rude attempts of 
 the Gothic architects in the Middle Ages ; still they are probably as 
 inferior to what the Greeks did in their best days as the pillars of the 
 
Bk. IV. Cii. V. 
 
 DOMESTIC ARCIIITECTUIIE. 
 
 371 
 
 Ponipeian peristyles are to the porticoes of the Parthenon. But though 
 doubtless far inferior to their originals, those at Pompeii are direct 
 imitations of true Greek decorative forms; and it is through them 
 alone that we can form even the most remote idea of the exquisite 
 beauty to which polychromatic architecture once attained, but which 
 we can scarcely venture to hope it will ever reach again. 
 
 One curious point which has hitherto been too much overlooked 
 is, that in Pom})eii there are two perfectly distinct styles of decoration. 
 
 248. Wall Decoration at Pompeii. (From Rosengarten.) 
 
 One of these is purely Etruscan, both in form and color, and such as 
 is only found in the tombs or on the authentic works of the Etruscans. 
 The other is no less essentially Greek, both in design and color ; it is 
 far more common than the Etruscan form, and is ahvays easily to be 
 distinguished from it. The last-mentioned or Greek style of decoration, 
 may be again divided into two varieties ; one, the most common, con- 
 sisting of ornaments directly copied from Greek models ; the other with 
 a considerable infusion of Roman forms. This Romanized variety of 
 Greek decoration represents an attenuated and lean style of architecture, 
 
372 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 wliich could only Imve come into fashion from the continued use of iron 
 or bronze, or other metallic substances, for pillars and other archi- 
 tectural members. Vitruvius reprobates it ; and in a later age Cassio- 
 (lorus speaks of it in a manner which shows that it was practised in his 
 time. The general ado})tion of this class of ornament, botli at Pompeii 
 and in the baths at Titus, proves it to have been a very favorite style 
 at that time. This being the case, it must have either been the repre- 
 sentation of metallic pillars and other architectural objects then in use, 
 or it ]nust have been copied from painted decorations. This is a new 
 subject and cannot be made clear, except at considerable length and 
 with the assistance of many drawings. It seems, however, an almost 
 undoubted fact that the Romans did use metal as a constractive 
 material. Were it only that columns of extreme tenuity are repre- 
 sented in these paintings, we might be inclined to ascribe it to mere 
 incorrect drawing; but the whole style of ornament here shown is 
 such as is never found in stone or brick j)illars, and which is only 
 susceptible of execution in metal. Besides this, the pillars in question 
 are always shown in the decorations as though simply gilt or bronzed, 
 while the representations of stone pillars are colored. All this evidence 
 goes to prove that a style of art once existed in wliich metal was gene- 
 rally employed in all the ])rinci})al features, all material traces of 
 which are now lost. The disapi)earance of all remains of such a style 
 is easily accounted for by the ])erishable nature of iron from rust, and 
 the value and consequent peculation induced by bronze and similar 
 metals. We are, moreover, aware that much bronze has been stolen, 
 even in recent days, fi-om the Pantheon and other buildings which are 
 known to have been adorned with it. 
 
 Another thing which we learn from these paintings is, that though 
 the necessities of street arcliitecture compelled these city mansions to 
 take a rectilinear outline, Avhene\'er the Roman architects built in the 
 country they indulged in a picturesque variety of outline and of form 
 which they carried perhaps as far as even the Gothic architects of the 
 Middle Ages. This indeed we might have expected, from their care- 
 lessness in respect to regularity in their town-houses; but these were 
 interiors, and, were it not for the painted representations of houses we 
 should have no means of judging how^ the same architects would treat 
 an exterior in the country. From this source, however, we learn that 
 in the exterior arrangements, in situations where they were not 
 cramped by confined s])ace, their plans were totally free from all stiff- 
 ness and formality. In this resi)ect Roman taste coincided Avith that 
 of all true architecture in all parts of the world. 
 
 Each part of the design was left to tell its own tale and to express 
 the use to which each apartment was applied though the Avhole were 
 probably grouped together with some reference to symmetry. There 
 is certainly nothing in these ancient examples to justify the precise 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. Y. 
 
 BRIDGES AND AQUEDUCTS. 
 
 373 
 
 regularity which the arcliitects of the Renaissance introduced into 
 their classical designs, in which they sought to obliterate all distinction 
 between the component parts in a vain attempt to make one great 
 whole out of a great number of small discordant fragments. 
 
 Bridges and Aqueducts. 
 
 Perhaps the most satisfactory works of the Romans are those which 
 we consider as belonging to civil engineering rather than to archi- 
 tecture. The distinction, however, was not known in those earlier 
 days. The Romans set about works pf this class w^ith a purpose-like 
 earnestness that always ensures success, and executed them on a scale 
 which leaves nothing to be desired ; while at the same time they 
 entirely avoided that vulgarity which their want of refinement allowed 
 almost inevitably to appear in more delicate or more ornate buildings. 
 Their engineering works also were free from that degree of incom- 
 pleteness which is inseparable from the state of transition in which 
 their architecture was during the whole period of the Empire. It is 
 owing to these causes that the substructions of the Appian Way strike 
 every beholder with admiration and astonishment ; and nothing 
 impresses the traveller more, on visiting the once imperial city, than 
 tlie long lines of aqueducts that are seen everywhere stretching across 
 tlie now deserted j^lain of the Campagna. It is true they are mere 
 lines of brick arches, devoid of ornament and of every attempt at 
 architecture proi)erly so called : but they are so well adapted to the 
 purpose for which they were designed, so grand in conception, and 
 so perfect in execution, that, in spite of their want of architectural 
 character, they are among the most beautiful of the remains of Roman 
 buildings. 
 
 The aqueducts were not, however, all so devoid of ai'chitectural 
 designs as those of the Campagna. That, for instance, known as the 
 Pont du Gard, built to convey water to the town of Nimes in France, 
 is one of the most striking works of antiquity. Its height above the 
 sti-eam is about 180 ft., divided into two tiers of larger arches sur- 
 mounted by a range of smaller ones, giving the structure the same 
 finish and effect that an entablature and cornice gives to a long range 
 of columns. Without the introduction of one single ornament, or of 
 any member that was not absolutely wanted, this arrangement converts 
 what is a mere utilitarian work into an architectural screen of a beauty 
 hitherto unrivalled in its class. 
 
 The aqueducts of Segovia and Tarragona in Spain, though not 
 l)erhaps so grand, are quite as elegant and appropriate as this ; and if 
 they stood across a line of well wooded and watered valleys, might 
 form as beautiful objects. Unfortunately the effect is much marred by 
 the houses and other objects that crowd their bases. Both these rise to 
 
374 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 about 100 ft. above the level of their foundation in the centre. That of 
 Segovia is raised on light piers, the effect of which is perhaps somewhat 
 spoiled by numerous offsets, and the upper tier is if anything too light 
 for the lower. These defects are avoided at Tarragona, the central 
 arches of which are shown in Woodcut No. 250. In this example the 
 proportion of the upper to the lower arcade is more perfect, and the 
 whole bears a character of lightness combined with constructive 
 solidity and elegance unrivalled, so far as I know, in any other work 
 of its class. It wants, however, the grandeur of the Pont du Gard ; 
 for though its length is about the same, exceeding 800 ft., it has 
 neither its height nor the impression of power given by the great 
 arches of that building, especially when contrasted with those that 
 are smaller. 
 
 The Roman bridges were designed on the same grand scale as their 
 aqueducts, though from their nature they of course could not possess 
 the same grace and lightness. This was, however, more than com- 
 pensated by their inherent solidity and by the manifestation of strength 
 imparted by the Romans to all these structures. They seem to have 
 been designed to last for ever ; and but for the violence of man, it 
 would be hardly possible to set limits to their durability. Many still 
 remain in almost every corner of the Roman Empire ; and wherever 
 found are easily recognized by the unmistakable impress of Roman 
 grandeur which is stamped upon them. 
 
 One of the most remarkable of these is that which Trajan erected 
 at Alcantara, in Spain, represented in the annexed woodcut. The 
 roadway is perfectly level, as is generally the case in Roman bridges, 
 though the mode by which this is obtained, of springing the arches 
 from different levels, is perhaps not the most pleasing. To us at least 
 it is unfamiliar, and has never, I think, been adopted in modern times. 
 In such a case we should either have made the arches all equal — a 
 
Bk. IVo Ch. V. 
 
 BRIDGES AND AQUEDUCTS. 
 
 375 
 
 viistake considering their different lieights — or have built solidly 
 over the smaller arches to bring up the level, which would have been 
 
 251. Bridge of Trajan, at Alcantara, in Spain. 
 
 a far cjreater error in construction than the other is in taste. The 
 bridge consists of six arches, the whole length of the roadway being 
 650 ft. ; the two central arches are about 100 ft. span ; the roadway is 
 140 ft. above the level of the stream which it crosses. The piers are 
 well proportioned and graceful ; and altogether the work is as fine and 
 as tasteful an example of bridge-building as can be found anywhere, 
 even in these days of engineering activity. 
 
 The bridge which the same Emperor erected over the Danube was 
 a far more difficult Avork in an engineering j^oint of view but the 
 superstructure being of wood, resting only on stone piers, it would 
 necessarily have possessed much less architectural beauty than this, or 
 indeed many others. 
 
 These examples of tnis class of Roman works must suffice ; they are 
 so typical of the style that it was impossible to omit them altogether, 
 though the subject scarcely belongs in strictness to the objects of this 
 work. The bridges and aqueducts of the Romans richly deserve the 
 attention of the architect, not only because they nr^ in fact the only 
 works which the Romans, either from taste or from social position, 
 were enabled to carry out without affectation, and with all their 
 originality and power, but also because it was in building these works 
 that the Romans acquired that constructive skill and largeness of 
 proportion which enabled them to design and carry out works of such 
 vast dimensions, to vault such spaces, and to give to their buildings 
 generally that size and impress of power which form their chief and 
 frequently their only merit. It was this too that enabled them to 
 originate that new style of vaulted buildings which at one period of 
 the Middle Ages promised to reach a degree of perfection to which 
 no architecture of the world had ever attained. The Gothic style, 
 it is true, perished at a time when it was very far from completed; 
 but it is a point of no small interest to know where and under what 
 
376 
 
 ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 circumstances it was invented. We shall subsequently have to trace 
 how far it advanced towards that perfection at which it aimed, but 
 to which it never reached. Strangely enough, it failed solely because 
 of the revival and the pernicious influence of that very parent style 
 to which it owed its birth, and the growth and maturity of which we 
 have just been describing. It was the grandeur of the edifices reared at 
 Rome in the first centuries of the Empire which so impressed the 
 architects of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that they abandoned 
 their own beautiful style to imitate that of the Romans, but with an 
 incongruity which seems inevitably to result from all imitations, as 
 contrasted with true creations, in architectural art. 
 
 Egyptian Vase. From a paiutinp-. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. VI. 
 
 SASSANIAN AllClIITECTURE. 
 
 377 
 
 t 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Historical notice — Palaces of Diarbekr and Al Hadhr — Domes — Serbistan 
 Firouzabad — Tak Kesra. 
 
 iHERE still remains one other style to be described before leaving 
 
 X the domain of Heathendom to venture into the wide realms of 
 Christian and Saracenic art with which the remainder of these two 
 volumes is mainly occupied. Unfortunately it is not one that was of great 
 importance while it existed, and it is one of which we know very little 
 at present. This arises partly from the fact that all the principal 
 buildings of the Sassanian kings were situated on or near the alluvial 
 plains of Mesopotamia, and were therefore built either of sun-burnt 
 or imperfectly baked bricks, which consequently crumbled to dust, or, 
 where erected with more durable materials, these have been quarried 
 by the succeeding inhabitants of these fertile regions. Partly also it 
 arises from the Sassanians not being essentially a building race. Their 
 religion required no temples and their customs repudiated tlie splendor 
 of the sepulchre, so that their buildings were mainly palaces. One of 
 these, that at Dustagird, is described by all contemporary historians' 
 as one of the most gorgeous palaces of the East, but its glories were 
 ephemeral ; gold and silver and precious hangings rich in color and 
 embroidery made up a splendor in which the more stable arts of archi- 
 tecture had but little part, and all perished in an hour when invaded 
 by the victorious soldiers of Heraclius, or the more destructive hosts of 
 Arabian invaders a few years afterwards. Whatever the cause how- 
 ever, never was destruction more complete. Two or three ruined palaces 
 still exist in Persia and Mesopotamia. A fragment known as the Tak 
 Kesra still remains to indicate the spot where Ctesiphon once stood. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 Ardeshir, or Artaxerxes, establishes 
 
 Fii-ouzabad (about) A. D. 450 
 
 Khosru Nusliirvan begins to reign . . 531 
 
 builds palace at Ctesiphon (about) . 550 
 
 Khosru Purviz Chosroes 591 
 
 Palace at Mashita 614-627 
 
 Battle of Cadesia . , 636 
 
 Sassanian dynasty A, 
 
 Al Hadhr built (about) 
 
 Tiridates : 
 
 Serbistan (about) 
 
 Bahram Gaur begins to reign . . . 
 
 A. D. 226 
 . . 250 
 . 286-342 
 . . 350 
 . . 420 
 
 These are well epitomized by Gibbon, Book xlvi. vol. v. p- 528. 
 
378 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 but tlie site of Dustagird is still a matter of dispute. So little in fact 
 remains that we should hardly be able to form an idea of what the 
 style really was, but for the fortunate discovery of a palace at Mashita 
 in Moab, whicli seems undoubtedly to have been erected by the last 
 great king of tliis dynasty, and which is yet unsurpassed for beauty 
 of detail and richness of ornament by any building of its class 
 and age. 
 
 As nearly as may be, one thousand years had elapsed since the 
 completion of the palaces at Persepolis and Susa and the commencement 
 of this building, and for the great part of that period the history of 
 Persian or Central Asian architecture is a blank. The Seleucidse built 
 nothing that has come down to our times. The Parthians too, have left 
 us little, so that it is practically only after a hiatus of nearly six 
 centuries, during which no building now known to exist can be quoted, 
 that we again begin to feel that the art had not entirely perished in 
 the populous countries of Central Asia ; but even then our history 
 recommences so timidly and with buildings of such uncertain dates as 
 to be very far from satisfactory. 
 
 One of the oldest buildings known as belonging to the new school 
 is the palace of Al Hadhr, situated in the plain, about 30 miles 
 from the Ti<xris, nearly west from the ruins of Kaleli Shergat. 
 
 252. Plan of Palace at Al Hadhr. (From a Sketch by Mr. Layard.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 The city itself is circular in plan, nearly an English mile in 
 diameter, and surrounded by a stone wall with towers at intervals, in 
 the centre of which stands a walled enclosure, nearly square in plan, 
 about 700 ft. by 800. This is again subdivided into an outer and inner 
 court by a wall across its centre. The outer court is unencumbered 
 by buildings, the inner nearly filled with them.i The principal of 
 
 1 Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, ix. pi. 9, p. 476. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. VI. 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 379 
 
 tliese is that reiDresented in plan on Woodcut No. 252. It consists 
 of three large and four smaller halls placed side by side, with various 
 Bmaller apartments in the rear. All these halls are roofed by semi, 
 circular tunnel-vaults, without ribs or other ornament, and they are 
 all entirely oj^en in front, all the light and air being admitted from 
 the one end. 
 
 There can be very little doubt that these halls are copies, or in 
 tended to be so, of the halls of the old Assyrian palaces ; but that 
 strange mania for vaulted roofs which seized on all the nations of the 
 East as well as on those of the West during the Middle Ages led the 
 architect on to a new class of arrangements, which renders the resem- 
 blance by no means apparent at first sight. 
 
 The old halls had almost invariably their entrances on the longer 
 side ; but with a vault this would have required immense abutments ; 
 and without in- 
 tersecting vaults, 
 which had not 
 then come into 
 general use, would 
 even in that case 
 have been diffi- 
 cult. The most 
 obvious mode of 
 meeting the diffi- 
 culty was that adopted here of using the halls as abutments the one to 
 the other, like the arches of a bridge ; so that, if the two external arches 
 were firm, all the rest were safe. This was provided for by making the 
 outer halls smaller, as shown in the elevation (Woodcut No. 253), or 
 by strengthening the outer wall. But even then the architect seems 
 to have shrunk from weakening the intermediate walls by making too 
 many openings in them. Those which do exist are small and infre- 
 quent ; so that there is generally only one entrance to each apartment, 
 and that so narrow as to seem incongruous with the size of the room 
 to which it leads. 
 
 It is by no means clear to what use the square apartment in the 
 rear, with the double wall, was applied. It may have been a temple, 
 but more probably contained a stair or inclined plane leading to the 
 roof or upper rooms, which almost certainly existed over the smaller 
 halls, at least. 
 
 All the details of the building are copied from the Roman — the 
 archivolts and pilasters almost literally so, but still so rudely executed 
 as to prove that it was not done under the direct superintendence of a 
 Roman artist. This is even more evident with regard to the griffins 
 and scroll-work, and the acanthus-leaves which ornament the capitals 
 and Mezes. The most peculiar ornament, however, is the range of masks 
 
 253. Elevation of part of the Palace of Ad Hadhr, 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
3m 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 carried round all the archivolts of the arches. The only thing known 
 at all similar is the celebrated arch at Volterra with three masks ; but 
 here these are infinitely more numerous over all the arches, and form, 
 in fact, the principal features of the decorations. 
 
 Even tradition is silent regarding the date of these remarkable ruins. 
 The style of architecture, however, certainly points to a period anterior 
 to the age of Constantine, but not so early as the time of Aurelian 
 and the flourishing days of Palmyra. It is difficult, however, to speak at 
 all confidently, as we are so entirely ignorant of the local circumstances 
 of the place at the time the buildings were erected ; and local peculi- 
 arities often influence a style as much as the age in which it flourished. 
 
 Another building which merits more at! jntion than has hitherto 
 been bestowed upon it is now used as the great mosque at Diarbekr. 
 Neither its history nor even its date is correctly known ; but judging 
 from its style, in so far as it can be made out from such drawings as 
 exist, it may originally have been erected as early as the age of Tiri- 
 dates (a.d. 286-342). The palace — for such it was originally — consists 
 of an oblong courtyard, at either end of which a building with open 
 arcades in two stories facing one another — as in the palace of the 
 Hebdomon at Constantinople — and between the two, facing the en- 
 trance, is the fa9ade of a church standing on the east side of the court.^ 
 
 The ])rincipal of the two wing-buildings is represented on Woodcut 
 No. 254. The framework of a debased Roman style of architecture 
 similar to parts of the buildings of Diocletian or Constantine at Spalatro 
 or Jerusalem, but, being far removed from the influence of the capital, 
 the details display a wildness wliich is not to be found in any contem- 
 porary example in Italy or the further west. One of the most puzzling 
 eccentricities connected with this building is that the architecture of 
 the upper story is much more classical than that of the lower. There 
 is no feature in it — .barring the Cufic inscription — that indicates an age 
 subsequent to the time of Constantine. With the lower story, however, 
 the case is different. The pointed arches and the details of the openings 
 generally are those of a much later period, though of course from their 
 position they must have been erected before the upper. On the whole 
 there seems little doubt that the building we now see was erected, as 
 it now stands, at the age of the Cufic inscriptions,^ whatever that may 
 be, but that the remains of some more ancient edifice was most skilfully 
 worked up in the new. Till, however, the building is carefully 
 examined by some thoroughly competent person, this must remain 
 
 * For the principal part of the infor- 
 mation regarding this building I am in- 
 debted to M. C. Texier, He possessed 
 detailed drawings of every part, but they 
 Jhave never been piiblislied. 
 
 2 These inscriptions were all copied 
 
 by Consul Taylor, and brought home to 
 this country. I never could learn, how- 
 ever, that they were translated. I feel 
 certain they were never published, and 
 cannot find out what has become of 
 them. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. VI. GREAT MOSQUE AT DIAIIBEKR. 381: 
 
 doubtful. The building is rich, and so interesting that it is. 
 to be hoped that its history and peculiarities will before long be 
 investigated. 
 
 With the accession of the Sassanians, a. d. 223, Persia regained. 
 
 much of that power and stability to which she had been so long a . 
 stranger. The capture of the Roman Emperor Valerian by the 2d 
 king of the race, a. p. 260, tlie conquest of Armenia and victories over 
 Galerius by the 7th (290), and the exploits of the 14th, Bahrain Gaur, 
 
382 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 and his visit to India and alliance with its kings, all point to extended 
 power abroad ; while the improvement in the fine arts at home indi- 
 cates returning prosperity and a degree of security unknown since the 
 fall of the Achaemenid^e. 
 
 These kings seem to have been of native race, and claimed descent 
 from the older dynasties : at all events they restored the ancient reli- 
 gion and many of the habits and customs with which we are familiar 
 as existing before the time of Alexander the Great. 
 
 As before remarked, fire-worship does not admit of teinples, and 
 we consequently miss that class of buildings which in nil ages best 
 illustrates the beauties of architecture ; and it is only in a few 
 scattered remains of i)alaces that we are able to trace the progress of 
 the style. Such as they are, they indicate considerable originality and 
 power, but at the same time point to a state of society when attention 
 to security hardly allowed the architect the free exercise of the more 
 delicate ornaments of his art. 
 
 The Sassanians took up the style where it was left by tlie builders 
 of Al Hadhr ; but we only find it after a long interval of time, during 
 which changes had taken place which altered it to a considerable 
 extent, and made it in fact into a ncAv and complete style. 
 
 They retained the great tunnel-like halls of Al Hadhr, but only as 
 entrances. They cut bold arches through the dividing walls, so as to 
 form them into lateral suites. But, above all, they learnt to place 
 domes on the intersections of their halls, not resting on drums, but on 
 ]jendentives,i and did not even attempt to bring down simulated lines 
 of support to the ground Besides all these constructive i)eculiaritie8, 
 they lost all trace of Roman detail, and adopted a system of long reed- 
 like pilasters, extending from the ground to the cornice, below which 
 they were joined by small semicircular arches. They in short adopted 
 all the peculiarities which are found in the Byzantine style as carried 
 out at a later age in Armenia and the East. We must know more of 
 this style, and be able to ascribe authentic dates to such examples as 
 we are acquainted with, before we can decide whether the Sassanians 
 borrowed the style from tlie Eastern IJomans, or whether they them- 
 selves were in fact the inventors from whom the architects of the 
 more Avestern nations took the hints which they afterwards so much 
 improved upon. 
 
 The various steps by which the Romans advanced from the con- 
 struction of buildings like the Pantheon to that of the church of 
 Sta. Sophia at Constantino])le are so consecutive and so easily traced 
 
 1 These are expedients for filHng up 
 the corners of square lower stories on 
 which it is intended to place a circular 
 superstructure. They somewhat re- 
 semble very large brackets or corbels 
 
 placed in an angle. Examples of them 
 have been given in speaking of Byzan- 
 tine architecture, and others will be 
 found in the chapter on Mahomedau 
 Architecture in India, further on. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. VI. 
 
 SERBISTAN. 
 
 383 
 
 as to be intelligible in themselves without the necessity of seeking 
 for any foreign element which may have affected them. If it really 
 was so, and the architecture of Constantinople was not influenced from 
 the East, we must admit that the Sassanian was an independent and 
 simultaneous invention, possessing characteristics well worthy of study. 
 It is quite certain, too, that this style had a direct influence on the 
 Christian and Moslem styles of Asia, which exhibit many features not 
 derivable from any of the more Western styles. 
 
 A few examples will render this clearer than it can be made in 
 words. The plan and section (Woodcuts Nos. 255 and 256) of a 
 small but interesting ])alace at Serbistan, will explain most of the 
 peculiarities of the style. The entrances, it will be observed, are deep 
 tunnel-like arches, but the centre is covered by a dome resting on 
 pendentives, not filling up the angles by a great bracket, as was usual 
 
 bistau. Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. Flandin and Coste's " Voyage en Perse.") Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 with the Romans, but constructed by throwing a series of arches 
 across them, as shown in the woodcut, so as to convert the square into 
 the circular form required. The dome, too, is elliptical, not semi- 
 circular, and is the next step to the pointed or conical dome, which was 
 necessarily introduced in the more rainy climates further north. 
 Being of brick, the building depended externally on stucco for its 
 ornamentation ; and this having perished, w^e are left without the 
 means of judging of its details. 
 
 In the lateral halls, pillars are placed at some distance from 
 the walls, from which heavy transverse ribs spring. The builders 
 thus obtained the means of counteracting the thrust of the vault, 
 without breaking the external outline by buttresses, and without 
 occupying much room on the floor, while at the same time these 
 projections added considerably to the architectural effect of the 
 interior. The date of the building is not correctly known, but it 
 most probably belongs to the age of Shapour, in the middle of the 
 fourth century. 
 
 The palace at Firouzabad is probably a century more modern, and 
 
384 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I 
 
 is erected on a far more magnificent scale, being in fact the typical 
 building of the style, so far at least as we at present know. 
 
 As will be seen in the plan, the 
 great central entrance opens late- 
 rally into two side chambers, and 
 the inner of these into a suite of 
 three splendid domed apartments, 
 occupying the whole width of the 
 building. Beyond this is an inner 
 court, surrounded by apartments all 
 opening uj^on it. 
 
 As will be perceived from Wood- 
 cut No. 258, representing one of 
 the doorways in the domed halls, 
 the details have nothing Roman 
 about them, but are borrowed di- 
 rectly from Persepolis, with so little 
 change that the style, so far as we 
 can now judge, is almost an exact 
 reproduction. The portion of the 
 exterior represented in Woodcut No. 
 259 tells the same tale, though for 
 its prototype we must go back still 
 further to the ruins at Wurka — the 
 building called Wuswus at that 
 place (see p. 161) being a palace 
 arranged very similarly to these, and 
 adorned externally by panellings and 
 reeded pilasters, differing from these 
 buildings only in detail and arrange- 
 ment, but in all essentials so like 
 them as to prove that the Sassanians 
 borrowed most of their peculiarities 
 from earlier native examples. 
 
 The building itself is a perfectly 
 regular parallelogram, 332 ft. by 
 180, without a single break, or even 
 an opening of any sort, except the 
 one great arch of the entrance ; and 
 externally it has no ornament but 
 the repetition of the tall pilasters 
 and narrow arches represented in 
 Woodcut No. 259. Its aspect is thus 
 simple and severe, but more like a gigantic Bastile than the palace 
 of a gay, pavilion-loving people, like the Persians. 
 
 Plan of Palace at Firouzabad. 
 (From Flandin and Coste.) Scale 
 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 258. 
 
 Doorway at Firouzabad. (From 
 Flaudiu aud Coste.) 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. VI. 
 
 TAK KESRA. 
 
 385 
 
 Internally the arrangement of the halls is simple and appropriate, 
 and, though somewhat too formal, is dignified and capable of consider- 
 able architectural display. On 
 the whole, however, its formal- 
 ity is perhaps less pleasing 
 than the more picturesque 
 arrangements of the palace at 
 Serbistan last described. 
 
 Another century probably 
 elapsed before Khosru (Nushir- 
 van) commenced the most dar- 
 ing, though certainly not the 
 most beautiful, building ever 
 attempted by any of his race ; 
 for to him we must ascribe the well-known Tak Kesra (Woodcuts 
 Nos. 260, 261), the only important ruin that now marks the site 
 of the Ctesiphon of the Greeks — the great Modain of the Arabian 
 conquerors. 
 
 As it is, it is only a fragment of a palace, a fa9ade similar in 
 arrangement to that at Firouzabad, but on a much larger scale, its 
 Avidth being 370 ft., 
 its height 105. In- 
 stead of the plain 
 circular arch of the 
 earlier example, the 
 architect has here at- 
 tempted the section 
 of one of his domes — 
 hoping thus to avoid 
 some, at least, of the 
 lateral thrust — to ob- 
 tain, in short, by an 
 ellipse what the Gothic architects managed by the pointed arch. As 
 a mere scientific point of construction it is not clear that the Sassanian 
 did not take the best mode of attaining his end ; but to our eyes, at 
 least, it appears fortunate that the Gothic architects had other models 
 before them, or they might have copied what perhaps even their ability 
 would never have rendered a beauty. 
 
 Another detail in which this building contrasts most painfully 
 with the last described is that, instead of the tall, simple, and elegantly- 
 shaped pilasters which adorned its exterior, we here find a number of 
 stories of blind arches superimposed the one on the other without any 
 apparent motive, and certainly without any compensating accession of 
 elegance. The foiling of seventeen small arches above the great arch is 
 interesting, as containing the germ of much that was found afterwards 
 VOL. I. — 25 
 
 259. Part of External Wall, Firouzabad. No 
 scale. 
 
 260. Plan of Tak Kesra at Ctesiphon. (Fi 
 Coste.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in 
 
 lin and 
 
386 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part L 
 
 in both Eastern and Western styles. Here it arose from an attempt 
 of the arcliitect to carry his third story round the top of the great 
 arch. This is not so evident in the small, as in Flandin and Coste's 
 large drawings,^ but the arches in fact are the same and spaced in the 
 same manner over the arch as in the wings; but being in brick 
 shafts could not be introduced, and altogether the whole is so clumsy 
 and so tentative that numberless anomalies are everywhere apparent. 
 The design is novel, and too ambitious to be successful. 
 
 261. Elevation of Great Arcli of Tak Kesra at Ctesiphon, Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 Though it may not perhaps be beautiful, there is certainly some- 
 thing grand in a great vaulted entrance 72 ft. wide by 85 ft. in 
 height and 115 in depth, though it makes the doorway at the inner 
 end and all the adjoining parts look extremely small. It would have 
 required the rest of the palace to be carried out on an unheard-of 
 scale to compensate for this defect. The Saracenic architects got over 
 the difficulty by making the great portal a semi-dome, and by cutting 
 it up with ornaments and details, so that the doorway looked as large 
 as was required for the space left for it. Here, in the parent form, 
 all is perfectly plain in the interior, and painting alone could have 
 been employed to relieve its nakedness, which, however, it never would 
 have done effectually.^ 
 
 The ornaments in these and in all the other buildings of the Sassa- 
 nians having been executed in plaster, we should hardly be able to 
 form an idea of the richness of detail they once possessed but for the 
 
 1 Flandin and Coste, " Voyage en 
 Perse," vol. iv. pi. 218. 
 
 2 These four buildings probably date 
 as near as may be one century from each 
 other, thus — 
 
 Al Hadhr .... A. d. 250 
 Serbistan 350 
 
 Firouzabad . . . A. D. 450 
 Ctesiphon 550 
 
 To which we may now add 
 
 Mashita 620 
 
 A bare skeleton, which it will require 
 
 much time and labor to clothe with 
 
 flesh and restore to life. 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. VI. 
 
 PALACE AT MASHITA. 
 
 387 
 
 fortunate discovery of a palace erected in Moab by Kliosru Purviz, tlie 
 last ofreat monarch of this line.i 
 
 As will be seen from the annexed woodcut, the whole building is 
 a square, measuring above 500 ft. each way, but only the inner por- 
 tion of it, about 170 ft. square, marked e e, has ever been finished or 
 
 262. Sketch Plan of Palace at Mashita. 
 
 inhabited. It was apj^arently originally erected as a hunting-box on 
 the edge of the desert for the use of the Persian king, and preserves 
 all the features we ai-e so familiar with in Sassanian palaces. It is wholly 
 in brick, and contains in the centre a triapsal hall, once surmounted 
 by a dome on pendentives like those at Serbistan or Firouzabad. On 
 either side were eight vaulted halls with intermediate courts almost 
 identical with those found at Eski Bagdad^ or at Firouzabad. So 
 
 1 "The Land of Moab," by H. B. 
 Tristram, M. A. , etc. Murray, 1873. As 
 all the information respecting the pal- 
 ace is contained in that book, pp. 195 to 
 215, and all the illustrations here used 
 are taken from it, it will not be neces- 
 
 sary to refer to it agani. For further 
 information on the subject the reader is 
 referred to that work. 
 
 2 Rich, "Residence in Koordistan," 
 ii. 251 et seq. 
 
388 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 far there is nothing either remarkable or interesting, except the 
 pecuUarity of finding a Persian building in such a situation, and in 
 the fact that the capitals of the pillars are of that full-curved shape 
 which are first found in the works of Justinian, which so far helps to 
 fix the date of the building. 
 
 It seems, however, that at a time when Chosroes possessed all Asia 
 and part of Africa, from the Indus to the Nile, and maintained a camp 
 for ten years on the shores of the Bosphorus, in sight of Constantinople, 
 tliat this modest abode no longer sufficed for the greatest monarch of 
 the day. He consequently determined to add to it thfe enclosure 
 above described, and to ornament it with a portal which should exceed 
 in richness anything of the sort to be found in Syria. Unfortunately 
 
 263. Interior of ruined triapsal Hall of Palace. 
 
 for the history of art, this design was never carried out. When the 
 walls were raised to the height of about twenty feet, the workmen were 
 called off, most probably in consequence of the result of the battle of 
 Nineveh in 627 ; and the stones remain half hewn, the ornament 
 unfinished, and the whole exactly as if left in a panic, never to be 
 resumed. 
 
 The length of the fayade — marked a a in plan. Woodcut No. '262 — 
 between the plain towers, which are the same all round, is about 
 170 ft.,1 the centre of which was occupied by a square-headed portal 
 flanked by two octagonal towers. Each face of these towers was or- 
 
 1 The plan made by Dr. Tristram's | a hurried sketch, and cannot be depended 
 party, which is all we yet have, was only | upon for minute details. 
 
Bk. IV. Cn. YI. 
 
 TALACE AT MASIIITA. 
 
 389 
 
 namented by an equilateral triangular pediment, filled with the richest 
 sculpture. In that shown in Woodcut No. 264, two large animals are 
 
 •Mi. One Coiupartiiieut of Western Octagon Tower of the Persian Palace at Masliita. 
 
 represented facing one another on the opposite . sides of a vase, on 
 which are two doves, and out of which springs a vine which spreads 
 over the whole surface of the triangle, interspersed with birds and 
 
390 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 bunches of grajjes. In another panel one of tlie lions is represented 
 with wings, evidently the last lineal descendant of those found at 
 Nineveh and Persepolis, and in all are curions hexagonal rosettes, 
 
 carved with a richness far exceeding anything found in Gothic 
 architecture, but which are found repeated with very little variation 
 in the Jaina temples of Western India. 
 
 The wing walls of the fayade are almost more beautiful than the 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. VI. 
 
 PALACE AT MASHITA. 
 
 391 
 
 central part itself. As on the towers, the ornamentation consists of a 
 series of triangles filled with incised decorations and with rosettes 
 in their centres ; while, as will be observed in Woodcut No. 265, the 
 decoration in each panel is varied, and all are unfinished. The cornice 
 only exists at one angle, and the mortice stones never were inserted 
 that were meant to keep it in its place. Enough however remains to 
 enable us to see that, as a surface decoration, it is nearly unrivalled 
 in beauty and appropriateness. As an external form I know nothing 
 like it. It is only matched by that between the arches of the inte- 
 rior of Sta. Sophia at Constantinople, which is so near it in age that 
 they may be considered as belonging to the same school of art. 
 
 Notwithstanding the incomplete state in wliicli this facade was left 
 there does not seem much difticulty in restoring it witliin very narrow 
 limits of certainty. The elevation cannot have differed greatly from 
 that shown in Woodcut No. 266, on tlie following x)age. In the first 
 place there must have been a great arch over the entrance doorway — 
 this is de rigueur in Sassanian art, and this must liave been stilted, or 
 horse-shoed, as without that it could not be made to fit on to the 
 cornice in the towers, and all the arches in the interior take, as I am 
 informed, that shape. Besides this there is at Takt-i-Gero i a Sassanian 
 arch of nearly the same age and equally classical in design, which is, 
 like this one, horse-shoed to the extent of one-tenth of its diameter, 
 and at Urgub, in Asia Minor, all the rock-cut excavations which are 
 of this or an earlier age have this peculiarity in a marked degree.^ 
 
 Above this, the third story is a repetition of the lowest, on lialf 
 its scale — as in the Tak Kesra, — but with tliis difference, that here the 
 angular form admits of its being carried constructively over the great 
 arch, so that it becomes a facsimile of an arch at Murano near Venice,^ 
 which is adorned with the spoils of some desecrated building of the 
 same age, probably of Antioch or some city of Syria destroyed by the 
 Saracens. Above this the elevation is more open to conjecture, but it 
 is evident that the whole fa9ade could not have been less than 90 ft. in 
 height, from the fact that the mouldings at the base (Woodcut No. 265) 
 are the mouldings of a Corinthian column of that height, and no archi- 
 tect with a knowledge of the style would have used such mouldings, 
 four and a half feet in height, unless he intended his building to be 
 of a height equal at least to that proportion. The domes are those of 
 Serbistan or of Amrith (Woodcut No. 120) ; but such domes are fre- 
 quent in Syria before this age, and became more so afterwards. 
 
 The great defect of the palace of Mashita as an illustration of Sas- 
 sanian art arises from the fact that, as a matter of course, Chosroes 
 
 » Flandin and Coste, vol. iv. pis. 214, chitecture." 4to. 1864. PI. iv. p. 4Q 
 215. et seq. 
 
 2 Texier and Pullan, " Byzantine Ar- ^ Ruskin, "Stones of Venice," voK 
 
 ' ii. pis. 3, 4, and 5. 
 
392 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. Pakt I. 
 
 did not bring with him architects or sculptors to erect this building. 
 
 He employed the artists of Antioch or Damascus, or those of Syria, as 
 he found them. He traced the form and design of what he wanted, 
 
Bk. IV. Ch. VI. 
 
 PALACE AT MASIIITA. 
 
 393 
 
 and left them to execute it, find they introduced the vine — which had 
 been the principal " motivo " in such designs from the time of Herod 
 till the Moslem invasion — and other details of the Byzantine art with 
 which Justinian had made them familiar from his buildings at Jeru- 
 salem, Antioch, and elsewhere. Exactly the same thing happened in 
 India six centuries later. When the Moslems conquered that country in 
 the beginning of the thirteenth century they built Mosques at Delhi and 
 Ajmere which are still among the most beautiful to be found anywhere. 
 The design and outline are purely Saracenic, but every detail is Hindu, 
 
 267. Ai-ch of Chosroes at Takt-i-Bostan, (From Flantliii and Coste.) 
 
 but, just as in this case, more excpiisite than anything the Moslems 
 ever did afterwards in that country. 
 
 Though it thus stands singularly alone, the discovery of this palace 
 fills a gap in our history such as no other building occupies up to the 
 present time. And when more, and more correct, details have been 
 procured, it will be well worthy of a monograph, which can hardly 
 be attempted now from the scanty materials available. Its greatest 
 interest, however, lies in the fact that all the Persian and Indian 
 
394 
 
 SASSANIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part I. 
 
 mosques were derived from buildings of this class. The African 
 mosques were enlargements of the atrim of Christian basilicas, and 
 tliis form is never found there, but it is the key to all that was 
 afterwards erected to the eastward. 
 
 In the deartli of Sassanian buildings there is one other monument 
 that it is worth while quoting before closing this chapter. It is an 
 archway or grotto, which the same Chosroes cut in the rock at Takt- 
 i-Bostan, near Kermanshah (Woodcut No. 267 on the previous page). 
 Though so far removed from Byzantine influence it is nearly as 
 classical as the palace at Mashita. The flying figures over the arch 
 are evident copies of tliose adorning the triumphal arches of the 
 Romans, the mouldings are equally classical, and though the costumes 
 of the principal j^ersonages, and of those engaged in the hunting scenes 
 on eitlier liand, partake more of Assyria than of Rome, the whole 
 betrays the influence of his early education and the diffusion of 
 AVestern arts at that time more than any other monument we know of. 
 The statue of himself on his favorite black steed " Shubz diz," is 
 original and interesting, and, with many of the details of this monu- 
 ment, it has been introduced into the restoration of Mashita. 
 
 Tliis, it must be confessed, is but a meagre account of the archi- 
 tecture of a great people. Perhaps it may be that the materials do not 
 exist for making it more complete, but what is more likely is that 
 they have not yet been looked for, but will be found when attention 
 is fairly directed to the subject. In the meanwhile what lias been 
 said regarding it will be much clearer and better understood when 
 we come to speak of the Byzantine style, which overlapped the 
 iSassanian, and was to some extent contemporary with it. 
 
PART 11. 
 CHRISTIAN AROHITEOTUKE. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 IF a line were drawn north and south from Memel on the shores of 
 the Baltic to Spalatro on the Adriatic, it would divide Europe into 
 nearly equal halves. All that part lying to the west of the line 
 would be found to be inhabited by nations of Celtic or Teutonic 
 races, and all those to the eastward of it by nations of Sclavonic 
 origin, if — as we must do — we exclude from present consideration 
 those fragments of the effete Turanian races which still linger to 
 the westward, as well as the intrusive hordes of the same family 
 which temporarily occupy some fair portions to the eastward of the 
 line so drawn. 
 
 This line is not of course quite straight, for it follows the boundary 
 between Germany on the one hand, and Russia and Poland on the 
 other as far as Cracow, while it crosses Hungary by the line of 
 the Raab and separates Dalmatia from Turkey. Though Sclavonic 
 influences may be detected to the westward of the boundary, they are 
 faint and underlie the Teutonic element ; but to the eastward, the 
 little province of Siebenburgen, in the north-east corner of Hungary, 
 forms the only little oasis of Gothic art in the desert of Panslavic 
 indifference to architectural expression. Originally it was a Roman, 
 afterwards the German, colony, and maintained its Gothic style through- 
 out the Middle Ages.^ 
 
 ^ In the Museum at Pesth are a num- 
 ber of objects of Egyptian art, said to 
 have been found in tbis quarter. Is it 
 
 too much to assume the pre-existence 
 of a Phoenician or Egyptian colony here 
 before the Roman times ? 
 
396 
 
 CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 11. 
 
 From Spalatro the line crosses the Adriatic to Fermo, and then 
 following very closely the 43rd parallel of latitude, divides Italy into 
 two nearly equal halves. The Gothic tribes settled to such an extent 
 to the northward of this boundary as to influence the style of archi- 
 tecture in a very marked degree ; while to the southward of it their 
 presence can with difticulty be detected, except in a few exceptional 
 <;ases, and for a very limited time. 
 
 Architecturally all the styles of art practised during the Middle 
 Ages to the westward and northward of this boundary, may be cor- 
 rectly and graphically described as the Gothic style. All those to the 
 eastward may with equal propriety be designated as the Byzantine 
 style of art. 
 
 Anterior, however, to tliese, there existed a transitional style, 
 properly called the Romanesque, which may be desci'ibed as that 
 modification of the classical Roman form, wiiich was introduced 
 between the reigns of Constantine and Justinian, and was avowedly 
 an attempt to adapt classical forms to Christian i)urposes. To the 
 eastward of the line of demarcation the transition was perfected 
 under the reign of Justinian (a. d. 527 to 504), when it became 
 proi)erly entitled to the name of Byzantine. To the westward, in 
 Italy and the south of France, the Romanesque continued to l)e 
 practised till the 6th or 7th centuries ; but about that time occurs 
 an Iiiatus in tlie arcliitectural history of Western Europe, owing 
 to the troubles which arose on the dissolution of the Roman Empire 
 and the irruption of the Barbarian hordes. When the art again 
 reappeared, it was strongly tinctured by Barbarian influences, and 
 may with propriety be designated the Gothic style, the essential 
 characteristic being that it is tlie arcliitecture of a people differing 
 from the Romans or Italians in blood, and, it need liardly be added, 
 differing from them in a like ratio in their architectural conceptions. 
 
 Tliis nomenclature differs slightly from that usually employed in 
 modern architectural works. This arises from the fact that the ])resent 
 names Avere introduced by persons writing monographs of the styles of 
 their native countries, and not by any one w^ho, taking a larger view 
 of the subject, was attempting to classify all styles. It is of little 
 consequence, for instance, to inquire why the Germans should call 
 the architecture of such catheclrals as those of Spires, Worms, etc., 
 by the absurd name of ' Byzantine, or to ask them what feature had 
 been borrowed from the Eastern capital, or in what one particular 
 they resembled the buildings of that division of Europe. They 
 adopted a name, and so long as they did not extend their purview 
 beyond the Rheinland, no harm was done. But with a general 
 historian it is different ; he has a definite use for the term, and he 
 cannot admit within its limits any style or details which cannot 
 establish their aflinity to it. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The same is equally true of the Romanesque. There is in Italy 
 and in the south of France a style which is only modified Roman, 
 without any extraneous influence — and to which the term moi'e 
 properly applies, and to use it to designate the early attempts of 
 the antagonistic nations is to mistake, not only the meaning of the 
 term, but the whole meaning of the ethnography of art. There is, 
 for instance, less classical feeling in the naves of Peterborough or 
 Ely Cathedrals, than in those of Canterbury or York; and our 
 Norman buildings, in all essential respects, are far less like those of 
 Rome than the Decorated Pointed buildings which superseded them. 
 If the change of a simple detail or the substitution of a pointed for 
 a round arch is sufficient to necessitate a change of name, the new 
 style should have been called Saracenesque,^ or have had some such 
 name conferred upon it. 
 
 The term Gothic, as applied to all the styles invented and used by 
 the Western Barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire and settled 
 within its limits, is a true and expressive term both ethnographically 
 and architecturally. It is true it was originally invented and applied 
 as a term of reproach, but that meaning has long since passed away 
 and been forgotten, so that it has become unobjectionable in that 
 respect ; and, unless the several styles be grasped as a whole, and 
 comprehended under one denomination — whatever that may be — they 
 can never be classified or be ])roperly understood. 
 
 The first great subdivision of this that occurs, is between the early 
 and later Gothic styles — which may generally be characterized as the 
 Round and Pointed Arched Gothic styles. In France, however, a 
 pointed style preceded the round-arched, so that this characteristic 
 must not be too rigidly insisted upon. Beyond this general classifica- 
 tion, the use of local names, when available, will always be found most 
 convenient. First, the country, or architectural province, in which 
 an example is found should be ascertained, so that its locality may be 
 marked, and if possible with the addition of a dynastic or regal name 
 to point out its epoch. When the outline is sufficiently marked, it 
 may be convenient, as the French do, to speak of the style of the 
 13th century as applied to their own country. The terms they 
 use always seem to be better than 1st, or 2d, Middle Pointed, or 
 even ^'Geometric," "Decorated," or "Perpendicular," or such general 
 names as neither tell the country nor the age, nor even accurately 
 describe the style, though when they have become general it may 
 seem pedantic to refuse to use them. The system of using local, 
 combined, and dynastic names has been followed in describing all 
 the styles hitherto enumerated in this volume, and will be followed 
 
 1 If Romanesque is to be applied to 1 ought to be called Egyptianesque, and 
 our Norman architecture, the Parthenon | the Temple at Ephesus Assyrianesque. 
 
398 
 
 CHRISTIAN ARCHITECT UEE. 
 
 Paut XL 
 
 in speaking of those which remain to be described; and as it is 
 generally found to be so convenient, whenever it is possible it will 
 be adhered to. 
 
 In order to carry out these principles, the division proposed for 
 this part of the subject is — 
 
 1st. To treat of the Western Romanesque as it prevailed in Italy 
 between the ages of Constantine and Justinian or down to the age 
 of Gregory the Great, say about the year 600. So long in fact as 
 it remained an original, independent style, unmixed with foreign or 
 extraneous influences. 
 
 2d. To take up the Gothic style in France, and follow it from the 
 time it emancipated itself from the Romanesque till it perished under 
 Francis I. If this arrangement is not quite logical, it is certainly 
 convenient, as it enables us to grasp the complete history of the 
 style in the country where most of the more important features were 
 invented and perfected. Having once mastered the history of Gothic 
 art in the country of its birth, the sequence in which the other 
 branches of the style are followed becomes comparatively unim- 
 portant. The difficulty of arranging them does not lie so much 
 in the sequence as in the determination of what divisions shall 
 be considered as separate architectural provinces. In a handbook, 
 subdivision could hardly be carried too far ; in a history, a wider view 
 ought to be taken. On the whole, perhaps, the following will best 
 meet the true exigencies of the case : 
 
 3d. Belgium and Holland should be taken up after France as 
 a separate ])rovince during the Middle Ages, while at the same time 
 forming an intermediate link between that country and Germany. 
 
 4th. Though not without important ethnographical distinctions, it 
 will be convenient to treat all the German-speaking countries from the 
 Alps to the Baltic as one province. If Germany were taken up before 
 France, such a mode of treatment would be inadmissible ; but following 
 tlie history of the art in that country, it may be done without either 
 confusion or needless repetition. 
 
 6th. Scandinavia follows naturally as a subordinate and unfor- 
 tunately not very important architectural subdivision. 
 
 6th. From this we pass by an easy gradation to the British 
 Islands, which in themselves contain three tolerably well defined 
 varieties of style, popularly known as the Saxon, the Norman, or round- 
 arched, and the Gothic, or pointed-arched style of Architecture. 
 
 7th. Spain might have been made to follow France, as most of its 
 architectural peculiarities were borrowed from that country ; but some 
 too own a German origin, while on the whole the new lessons to be 
 learned from a study of her art are so few, that it is comparatively 
 unimportant in what sequence the country is taken. 
 
 8th. There then only remains Italy, from which our history 
 
Bk. I. Ch. I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 39Q 
 
 sprang, and to which it returns. After treating of the imperfect 
 Gothic of the north, we pass easily to the imperfect Byzantine of 
 the southern division of the peninsula. 
 
 9th. From Italy, by an easy gradation, we cross the Adriatic, and 
 begin again the history of Christian art by tracing up the successive 
 developments of the Byzantine style of architecture in the countries 
 lying to the eastward of the boundary line, with the description of 
 which this cha})ter commenced. Owing to the greater uniformity of 
 race, the thread of the narrative is far more easily followed to the 
 eastward than to the westward of the line. The Byzantine Empire 
 remained one and undivided during the Middle Ages ; and from that 
 we pass by an easy gradation to Russia, where the style continued to 
 be practised till Peter the Great superseded it by introducing the styles 
 of Western Europe. 
 
4C0 
 
 CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part U. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 WESTERN ROMANESQUE STYLE. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Basilicas at Rome — St. Peter's — St. Paul's — Basilicas at Pvavenna — Torcello. 
 
 CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Honorius A. D. 395 
 
 Valentinian 425-435 
 
 Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths . 493-525 
 Justinian • 527 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Alboin Longinianus, King of Lom- 
 
 bardy A. D. 56» 
 
 Gregory 1 590 
 
 Charlemagne 768 
 
 IjASILTCAS. 
 
 LIKE the study of all modern history, that of Christian architec- 
 ture commences with Rome; and not, as is sometimes supposed, 
 where the history of Rome leaves off, but far back in the Emj^ire, if 
 not, indeed, almost in the Republic. 
 
 As has already been pointed out, the whole history of the art in 
 Imperial Rome is tliat of a style in course of transition, beginning 
 with a purely Pagan or Grecian style in the age of Augustus, and 
 passing into one almost wholly Christian in the age of Constantine. 
 
 At the first epoch of the Empire the temple architecture of Rome 
 consisted in an external arrangement of columns, without arches or 
 vaults, and was wholly unsuited to the purposes of Christian worship. 
 Towards the end of the period it had become an internal architecture, 
 making use of arches and vaults almost entirely to the exclusion of 
 the columnar orders, except as ornaments, and became so perfectly 
 adapted to Christian requirements, that little or no essential change 
 in it has taken place from that time to the present day. A basilica 
 of the form adopted in the first century after Constantine is as 
 suited now as it was then to the forms and ceremonies of the 
 Christian ritual. 
 
 The fact seems to be, that during the first three centuries after 
 the Christian era an immense change was silently but certainly 
 working its way in men's minds. The old religion was effete : the 
 be,st men, the most intellectual spirits of the age, had no faith in 
 it; and the new religion with all its important consequences was 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 401 
 
 gradually supplying its place in the minds of meu long before it 
 was generally accepted. 
 
 There is thus no real distinction between the Emilian or Ulpian 
 basilicas and those which Constantine erected for the use of the early 
 Christian republic. Nor is it possible, in such a series as the Pan- 
 theon, the Temple of Minerva Medica, and the Church of San Vitale 
 at Ravenna, to point out what })art really belongs to Pagan and what 
 to Christian art. 
 
 It is true that Constantine fixed the epoch of completed transition 
 and gave it form and substance ; but long before his time Paganism 
 was impossible and a reform inevitable. The feeling of the world had 
 changed — its form of utterance followed as a matter of course. 
 
 Viewed in this light, it is impossible to se})arate the early history 
 of Christian art from that of Imperial Rome. The sequence is so 
 immediate and the change so gradual, that a knowledge of the first is 
 absolutely indispensable to a riglit understanding of the second. 
 
 One of the most remarkable facts connected with the early history 
 of the Christian religion is, that neither its Founder nor any of His 
 more immediate successors left any s])ecific directions either as to the 
 liturgical forms of worship to be observed by His followers, nor laid 
 down any rules to be observed in the government of the newly 
 established church. Under these circumstances it was left almost 
 wholly to those to whose care the infant congregation was entrusted 
 to frame such regulations for its guidance as the exigencies of the 
 occasion might dictate, and gradually to appoint such forms of 
 worship as might seem most suitable to express the purity of the 
 new faith, but at the same time with a dignity befitting its high 
 mission. 
 
 In Judea, these ceremonies, as might naturally be expected, were 
 strongly tinctured with the forms of the Mosaic dispensation ; but it 
 appears to have been in Africa, and more esjDCcially in the pomp-loving 
 and ceremonious Egypt, that fixed liturgies and rites first became an 
 integral part of the Christian religion. In those countries far from 
 the central seat of government, more liberty of conscience seems to 
 have been attained at an early period than would have been tolerated 
 in the capital. Before the time of Constantine they possessed not only 
 churches, but a regularly established hierarchy and a form of worship 
 similar to what afterwards obtained throughout the whole Christian 
 world. The form of the government of the church, however, was 
 long unsettled. At first it seems merely to have been that the most 
 respected individuals of each isolated congregation were selected to 
 form a council to advise and direct their fellow-Christians, to receive 
 and dispense their alms, and, under the simple but revered title of 
 Presbyters, to act as fathers rather than as governors to the scattered 
 communities by which they were elected. The idea, however, of such 
 VOL. I.— 26 
 
402 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 a council naturally includes that of a president to guide their deliber- 
 ations and give unity and force to their decisions ; and such we soon 
 find springing up uiider the title of Bishops, or Presbyter Bishops, as 
 they were first called. During the course of the second century the 
 latter institution seems gradually to have gained strength at the 
 expense of the power of the Presbyters, whose delegate the Bishop 
 was assumed to be. In that capacity the Bishops not only took 
 upon themselves the general direction of the affairs of the church, 
 but formed themselves into separate councils and syno Is, meeting 
 in the provincial capitals of the provinces where they were located. 
 These meetings took place under the presidency of the Bishop of 
 the city in which they met, who thus assumed to be the chief or 
 metropolitan. These formed a new presbytery above the older insti- 
 tution which was thus gradually superseded — to be again surpassed 
 by the great councils which, after the age of Constantine, formed the 
 supreme governing body of the church ; performing the functions of 
 the earlier provmcial synods with more extended authority, though 
 with less unanimity and regularity than had characterized the earlier 
 institution. 
 
 It was thus that during the first three centuries of its existence the 
 Christian community was formed into a vast fe(^eral republic, governed 
 by its own laws, administered by its own oflicers, acknowledging no 
 community with the heathen and no authority in the constituted 
 secular powers of the state. But at the same time the hierarchy 
 admitted a participation of rights to the general body of the faithful 
 from whom they were chosen, and whose delegation was still admitted 
 to be their title to oflice. 
 
 AYhen, in the time of Constantine, this persecuted and scattered 
 church emerged from the Catacombs to bask in the sunshine of Im- 
 perial favor, there were no buildings in Rome which could be found 
 more suited for their purpose than the basilicas of the ancient city. 
 They were designed and erected for the transaction of the affairs of 
 the heathen Empire, and were in consequence eminently suited for the 
 convenience of the Christian republic, which then aspired to supersede 
 its fallen rival, and replace it by a younger and better institution. 
 
 In the basilicas the whole congregation of the faithful could meet 
 and take part in the transaction of the business going on. The bishop 
 naturally took the place previously occupied by the praetor or quaestor, 
 the presbyters those of the assessors. The altar in front of the apse, 
 where the pious heathen poured out libations at the commencement 
 and conclusion of all important business, served equally for the cele- 
 bration of Christian rites, and with the fewest possible changes, either 
 in the form of the ceremonies or in the nature of the business trans- 
 acted therein, the basilica of the heathen became the ecclesia or place 
 of assembly of the early Christian community. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 40a 
 
 In addition, however, to the rectangular basilica, which was 
 essentially the place of meeting for the transaction of the business of 
 the church, the Christian community early adopted a circular-formed 
 edifice as a ceremonial or sacramental adjunct to the basilica. These 
 were copied fi-om the Roman tombs above described, and were in fact 
 frequently built for the sepulchres of distinguished persons ; but they 
 were also used at a very early date as baptisteries, as well as for the 
 performance of funereal rites. It does not appear that baptism, the 
 marriage rites, or indeed any of the sacraments, were performed in 
 the earliest ages in the basilica, though in after ages a font was intro- 
 duced even into cathedrals. The rectangular churcli became ulti- 
 mately the only form used. In the earlier ages, however, a complete 
 ecclesiastical establishment ^consisted of a basilica and a baptistery,, 
 independent of one another and seldom ranged symmetrically, though 
 the tendency seems to have been to place the round church opposite 
 the western or principal entrance of the basilica. 
 
 Though this was the case in the capital and other great cities, it 
 was otherwise before the time of Constantine in the provinces. There 
 the Christian communities existed as members of a religious sect long 
 before they aspired to political power or dreamt of superseding the 
 secular form of government by combination among themselves. In 
 the remote ])arts of the Em])ire, in the earliest ages, they consequently 
 built for themselves churches whicli were temples, or, in other words, 
 houses of prayer, designed for and devoted wholly to the celebration 
 of religious rites, as in the Pagan temples, and without any reference 
 to the government of the community or the transaction of the business 
 of the assembly. If any such existed in Italy or any other part of 
 Europe, they either perished in the various persecutions to which the 
 Christians were exposed when located near the seat of government, or 
 they became hallowed by the memories of the times of martyrdom, 
 and were rebuilt in happier days with greater magnificence, so that 
 little or no trace of the original buildings now remains. So long, 
 therefore, as our researches were confined to European examples, tlie 
 history of Christian arcliitecture began with Constantine ; but recent 
 researches in Africa have shown that, when properly explored, we 
 shall certainly be able to carry the history of the Romanesque style 
 in that country back to a date at least a century before his time. In 
 Syria and Asia Minor, so many early examples have come to light that 
 it seems probable that we may, before long, carry the history of 
 Byzantine art back to a date nearly approaching that of the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem by Titus. It is, however, only so recently that the 
 attention of ecclesiologists has been directed to the early examples of 
 Christian architecture, that it is not yet possible to grasp completely 
 the whole bearing of the subject ; but enough is known to show how 
 nmch the progress of research may modify the views hitherto enter- 
 
404 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Plan of C'hui 
 
 Djeinla. Scale ;">() 
 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 taiiied on tlie subject. Meaiivv^hile too much attention can hardly be 
 bestowed upon it, as it is by means of these early specimens of archi- 
 tectural art that we shall probably be best able to recover the primi- 
 tive forms of the Christian liturgical observance. 
 
 One of the most ancient as well as interesting of the African 
 churches which has yet been brought to light is 
 that at Djemla. It is a sim})le rectangle, inter- 
 nally 92 ft. by 52, divided longitudinally with 
 three aisles, the centre one of which terminates 
 in a square cella or choir, which seems to liave 
 been enclosed up to the roof ; but the building 
 is so ruined that this cannot be known for a cer- 
 tainty. Though so exceptional, it is not difficult 
 to see whence the form was derived. If we take 
 such a ])lan, for instance, as that of the Maison 
 Carre, at Nimes (AVoodcut No. 187), and build a 
 wall round and put a roof over it, so as to make 
 a building whicli was originally appropriated to 
 external worshi]) suitable for internal religious 
 purposes, we should have exactly such a result as this. The cella 
 must be diminished in extent, the pillars more widely spaced, and the 
 front row converted into a wall in which the entrances would -be 
 usually placed. In this instance the one entrance, for some local 
 reason, is lateral. The whole floor of the church is covered with a 
 mosaic so purely classical in style of execution as to leave no doubt 
 as to its early date. 
 
 A more common form is shown in the annexed woodcut, repre- 
 senting a small church at Announa, like- 
 wise in Algeria, about 45 ft. square, 
 divided into three aisles, and with a pro- 
 jecting apse. If we turn to the plan of 
 the Temple of Mars Ultor (Woodcut No. 
 186), we see at once whence this form 
 was derived . It only requires the lateral 
 columns to be brought slightly forward 
 to effect the requisite change. When the 
 building was to be used by a congrega- 
 tion, and not merely for display, the 
 pillars would require to be more widely 
 spaced. 
 
 A third form, from Ibrim in Nubia, 
 shows the peculiarity of the apse being 
 internal, which became very fashionable in the Eastern, though not 
 60 much so in the Western, churches, but still sufficiently so to make 
 its introduction at this early age worthy of notice. The building 
 
 269. Plan of Church at Announa. 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 405 
 
 270. Plan of Church at 
 Ibrim iii Nubia. No 
 scale. 
 
 is small, being only 57 ft. in Icngtli externally, but is remarkable 
 for being built with something of the solidity of the Egyptian edi- 
 fices among which it stands. 
 
 The next example whicli it may be necessary to quote to make 
 this early form intelligible, is that of the church 
 of St. Keparatus, near 
 Orleansville — the ancient 
 Castellum Tingitanum. 
 According to an inscription 
 
 still existing, it was erected 
 A. D. 252. but the second 
 apse seems to have been 
 added afterwards, about 
 the year 403, to contain 
 the grave of the saint. As 
 it now stands, it is a double- 
 
 apsed basilica 80 ft. long by 271. Plan of Basilica at 
 
 52 broad, divided into five sca??50^frto I'in. 
 aisles, and exhibiting on a 
 miniature scale all the peculiarities of plan which we have hitherto 
 fancied were not adopted until some centuries later. In this in- 
 stance both the apses are internal, so that the side-aisles are longer 
 than the centre one, no portion of them appearing to have been 
 cut off for calcidica or vestries, as was very generally the case in this 
 age. 
 
 Another example, very much like this in arrangement, but on a 
 larger scale, is found at Ermet, the ancient Hermonthis in Egypt. 
 It measures over all 150 ft. by 90, and, if the plan in the great French 
 work ^ is to be depended upon, is one of the most complete examples 
 of its class. It has four ranges of columns, taken apparently from 
 more ancient examples, and two apses with all the usual appur- 
 tenances. 
 
 Another two-aisled and single-apse church, measuring 100 feet by 
 65, called Dyer Abou Taneh, as represented in the same work ; 2 but 
 ])erhaps the most interesting of these churches is that known as the 
 White Convent, situated on the edge of the Libyan Desert, above 
 Siout. Externally it measures 215 ft. by 122, and is enclosed in a 
 solid wall, surmounted by an Egyptian cornice, so that it looks much 
 more like an ancient temple than a Christian church. Originally it 
 had six doors, but all are now walled up, except one in the centre of the 
 southern face ; and above, a series of small openings, like loopholes, 
 admitted light to apartments which apparently occupied the upper 
 story of lateral corridors. Light to the church was, of course, 
 
 1 " Antiquites," vol. i. pi. 97. 
 
 2 Eodem, vol. iv. pi. 67. 
 
406 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 admitted through the clerestory, which could easily be done ; and 
 altogether as a fortified and mysterious abode, and place of 
 worship of ascetics, it would be difficult to find a more appropriate 
 example. 
 
 The age of this church is not very well ascertained ; popularly 
 it is, like so many others, ascribed to Sta. 
 Helena, and the double aisles and triapsal 
 arrangements are so like her church at 
 Bethlehem, that there is no a priori improl)- 
 ability in the assumption. The plan, how- 
 ever, is more complicated and complete, and 
 its external form bespeaks of troublous times, 
 so that altogether it is probably a century or 
 two (the monks say 140 years) more modern. 
 Like other churches of its class, ancient mate- 
 rials have been so used up with those pre- 
 pared at the time, that it is extremely difficult 
 to ascertain the dates of such buildings. If, 
 however, any one with sufficient knowledge 
 would make a special study of these Egyptian 
 churches, he would add one of the most 
 interesting chapters to our history of early 
 Christian Architecture, and explain many 
 ritual arrangements whose origin is now involved in mystery ; but 
 for this we must wait. The materials are not at present available, 
 all travellers in Egypt being so attracted by the surpassing interest 
 of the Pagan remains of that country, as liardly to find time for a 
 glance at the Christian antiquities. 
 
 272. White Convent near 
 Siout. (From a plan by the 
 Hon. Sir Arthur Gordon.) 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 It was ])robably in a great measure owing to the influence of these 
 provincial examples that the arrangements of the metropolitan basi- 
 licas were not long allowed to retain the form above described, tliougli 
 more was probably due to the change which was gradually taking 
 place in the constitution of the governing body of the Chui'ch. The 
 early arrangements of the Christian basilica, as copied from the secular 
 forms of the Pagan places of assembly, soon became unsuited to the 
 more exclusively religious purposes to which they were to be appro- 
 priated. The now dominant hierarchy of Rome soon began to repudiate 
 the republicanism of the early days of the Church, and to adopt from 
 the East the convenient doctrine of the absolute separation of the con- 
 gregation into clergy and laity. To accommodate the basilica to this 
 new state of things, first the apse was railed off and appropriated 
 wholly to the use of the clergy : then the whole of the dais, or raised 
 part in front of the apse on which the altar stood, was separated by 
 pillars, called cancelli, and in like manner given up wholly to the 
 
Bk. I. Ch. IL 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 407 
 
 clergy, and was not allowed to be profaned by the presence of the 
 unordained multitude. 
 
 The last great change was the introduction of a choir, or enclosed 
 space in the centre of the nave, attached to tlie bema or presbytery^ as 
 the raised space came to be called. Round three sides of this choir the 
 faithful were allowed to congregate to hear the Gospels or Epistles 
 read from the two pulpits or ambones^ which were built into its 
 enclosure, one on eitlier side ; or to hear the services which were 
 read or sung by the inferior order of clergy who occupied its 
 precincts. 
 
 The enclosure of the choir was kept low, so as not to hide the view 
 of the raised presbytery, or to prevent the congregation from witnessing 
 the more sacred mysteries of the faith which were there performed by 
 the higher order of clergy. 
 
 Another important modification, though it entailed no architec- 
 tural change, was the introduction of the bodies of the saints in whose 
 honor the building was erected into the basilica itself, and depositing 
 them in a confessional or crypt below the high altar. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that a separate circular building, 
 or proper tomb, was originally erected over the grave or place of mar- 
 tyrdom, and the basilica was sanctified merely by its propinquity to 
 the sacred spot. Afterwards the practice of depositing the relics of the 
 saint beneath the floor became universally the rule. At about the same 
 time the baptistery was also absorbed into the basilica ; and instead 
 of standing opposite the western entrance, a font placed within the 
 western doors supplied its place. This last change was made earlier 
 at Rome than elsewhere. It is not known at what exact period the 
 alteration was introduced, but it is probable that the whole was coui- 
 })leted before the age of Gregory the Great. 
 
 It was thus that in the course of a few centuries the basilicas 
 aggregated within themselves all the offices of the Roman Church, and 
 became the only acknowledged ecclesiastical buildings — either as j^laces 
 for the assembly of the clergy for the administration of the sacraments 
 and the performance of divine worship, or for the congregation of the 
 faithful. 
 
 None of the basilican churches, either of Rome or the provinces, 
 possess these arrangements exactly as they were originally established 
 in the fourth or fifth century. The church of San Clemente, however, 
 retains them so nearly in their primitive form that a short description 
 of it may tend to make what follows more easily intelligible. This 
 basilica seems to have been erected in the fourth or fifth century 
 over what was supposed to be the house in which the saint of 
 that name resided. Recently a subterranean church or crypt has 
 been discovered, which must of course be more ancient than the 
 
408 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 present remains.^ Above this subterranean church stands the edifice 
 shown in the accompanying plan (Woodcut No.273), nearly one-third 
 less in size, being only 65 ft. wide internally, against 
 93 of the original church, though both were about the 
 same length. 
 
 It is one of the few that still possesses an atrium 
 or courtyard in front of the principal entrance, though 
 there can be but little doubt that this was considered 
 at that early age a most important, if not indeed 
 an indispensable, attribute to the church itself. As 
 a feature it may have been derived from the East, 
 where we know it was most common, and where it 
 afterwards became, with only the slightest possible 
 modifications, the mosque of the Moslems. It would 
 seem even more probable, however, that it is only a 
 rej)etition of the forum^ which was always attached 
 to the Pagan basilica, and through which it was 
 always entered ; and for a sepulchral church at least 
 273. Plan of the notliino' could be more ap])ropriate, as the orisinal 
 
 Church of San . ^ . Ill' & 
 
 cieiiK-iiteatRoine. application of the word forum seems to have been 
 
 (From (iutensoliu ^ ^ . . 
 
 and Knapp.)2 to the opcn area that existed in front of tombs as well 
 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. ^ . i • 
 
 as of other im])ortant buildings.^ 
 
 In the centre of this atrium there generally stood a fountain or 
 tank of water, not only as an emblem of purity, but that those who 
 came to the churcli might wash their hands before entering the holy 
 ])lace — a custom which seems to have given rise to the practice of 
 dip])ing the fingers in the holy water of the piscina, now universal in 
 all Catholic countries. 
 
 The colonnade next the church was frequently the only represent- 
 ative of the atrium, and then — perhaj)s indeed always — was called the 
 ')UArthex, or place for penitents or persons who had not yet acquired the 
 rialit of enterinsf the church itself. 
 
 1 The older cluircli lias been so altered 
 and ruined by the subsequent rebuildings 
 that it is extremely difficult to make out 
 its history. It seems, however, to have 
 been built originally above the site of an 
 old Mithraic temple, which has recently 
 been cleared out, and probably before the 
 time of Gregory the Great. It was ap- 
 parently rebuilt, or nearly so, by Adrian 
 I., 772, and burnt by Robert Guiscard, 
 1084. The upper church seems to have 
 been erected by Paschal, 1099-1118. The 
 question is, to what age do the frescoes 
 found on the walls of the older church 
 belong ? Some of the heads and single 
 figures may, I fancy, be anterior even to 
 
 the time of Adrian; but the bulk of the 
 paintings seems certainly to have been 
 added between his age and 1084, and 
 nearer the latter than the former date. 
 If it had not been entirely ruined in 1084 
 Paschal would not have so completely 
 obliterated it a centuiy afterwards. A 
 considerable quantity of the materials of 
 the old church were used in the new, 
 which tends further to confuse the 
 chronology. 
 
 2 Gutensohn and Knapp, "Die Basil- 
 iken des Christlichen Roms." 
 
 3 Cicero de Legg., ii. 24; Festus, s. 
 V. ; Smith's " Dictionary of Classical 
 Antiquities." 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 409 
 
 From this narthex three doorways generally opened into the church, 
 corresponding with the three aisles; and if the building possessed a 
 font, it ought to have been placed in one of the chapels on either the 
 right or the left hand of the principal entrance. 
 
 The choir, with its two pulpits, is shown in the plan — that on the 
 left-hand side being the pulpit of the Epistle, that on the right of the 
 Gospel. The railing of the heyna or presbytery is also marked, so is 
 the position of the altar with its canopy supported on four pillars, and 
 behind that the throne of the bishop, with the seats of the inferior 
 clergy surrounding the apse on either side. 
 
 Besides the church of San Clemente there are at least thirty other 
 basilican churches in Rome, extending in date from the 4th to the 14th 
 century. Their names and dates, as far as they have been ascertained, 
 are set forth in the accompanying list, which, though not altogether 
 complete, is still the best we possess, and is sufficient for our present 
 purpose.! 
 
 BASILICAS OF ROME. 
 
 FOURTH CENTURY. 
 
 St. Peter's Constantine (5 aisled) . . . about 330 
 
 San Giovanni Laterano .... Ditto founded 333 ? 
 
 St. Paul's Theodosius and Honorius( 5 aisled) 38(5 
 
 St A. Pudentiana 335 ? 
 
 FIFTH CENTURY. 
 
 Sta. Sabina Pope Celestine about 425 
 
 Sta. Maria Maggiore Pope Sixtus III 432 
 
 St. Pietro ad Vincula Eudoxis (Greek Doric pillars) . . 442 
 
 SIXTH CENTURY. 
 
 San Lorenzo (old part) Pope Pelagius (galleries) . . .580 
 
 Sta. Balbina Gregory the Great (no side-aisles) 600 
 
 SEVENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Sta. Agnese Honorius I. (galleries) .... 625 
 
 QuATTRo CoRONATi Honorius 1 625 
 
 St. Giorgio in Velabro Leo II 682 
 
 San Chrisogono Gregory III 730 
 
 EIGHTH CENTURY. 
 
 S. GioVANNA A PORTA Patina . . . Adrian 1 790 ? 
 
 S. Maria in Cosmedin 790 
 
 S. ViNCENZO ALLE TRE FoNTANE 790 
 
 S. Lorenzo (nave) about 790? 
 
 1 It is copied, with slight alterations, 
 from the work of the Chevalier Bunsen 
 on the Roman Basilicas, which, with the 
 illustrations of Gutensohn and Knapp, 
 forms by far the best work on the sub- 
 ject that has yet been given to the world ; 
 
 though some of the dates assigned to 
 the buildings are still matters of dispute, 
 but not to any material extent. Those 
 here given generally refer to the building 
 now existing or known, and not always 
 to the original foundation. 
 
410 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 NINTH CENTURY. 
 
 SS. Nereo ED AcHiLLEO Leo III about 800 
 
 8. Praxede Paschal 1 820 
 
 JS. Maria in Dominica 820 
 
 8. Martino ai Monti Sergius and Leo 844, 855 
 
 S. NicoLO in Carcere about 900 
 
 8. Bartolomeo in Isola 900 
 
 TENTH CENTURY. 
 S. Giovanni in Laterano .... Rebuilt by Sergius III 910 
 
 ELEVENTH CENTURY. 
 Nothing, 
 
 TWELFTH CENTURY. 
 
 S. Clemente Paschal 1118 
 
 8. Maria in Trastevere .... Innocent II 1135 
 
 8. Croce Lucius 1144 
 
 8. Maria in Ara Celi uncertain 
 
 THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 
 Nothing. 
 
 FOURTEENTH CENTURY. 
 S. Maria sopra Minerva .... Gothic about 1370 
 
 FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 
 8. AoosTiNo Renaissance ? about 1480 
 
 Three of these, St. Peter's, St. Paul's, and the Lateran church, have 
 five aisles, all the rest three, witli only one insignificant exception, Sta. 
 Balbina, which has no side-aisles. Two, Sta. Agnese and the old part 
 of St. Lorenzo, liave their side-aisles in two stories, all the rest are 
 only one story in height, and the side-aisles generally are half the 
 width of the central aisle or nave. Some of the more modern churches 
 have the side-aisles vaulted, but of tliose in the list all except the two 
 last have flat wooden ceilings over the central compartment, and 
 generally speaking the plain unornamental construction of the roof is 
 exposed. It can scarcely be doubted that originally they were ceiled 
 in some more ornamental manner, as the art of ornamenting this new 
 style of open construction seems to have been introduced at a later 
 date. 
 
 Of the two last-named, the Sta. Maria sopra Minerva might perhaps 
 be more properly classed among the buildings belonging to the Italian 
 Gothic style ; but as it is the only one in Rome that has any claim to 
 such a distinction, it is hardly worth while making it an exception 
 to the rest. The San Agostino might also be called a Renaissance 
 specimen. It certainly is a transitional specimen between the pillared 
 and pilastered styles, which were then struggling for mastery. It 
 may either be regarded as the last of the old race or the first of the 
 new style, which was so soon destined to revolutionize the architectural 
 world. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 411 
 
 274. Plan of the original Basilica of St. Peter at Rome. (From Gutensohn and Knapp.) 
 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
412 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt IL 
 
 St. Peter's. 
 
 Of the other examples the oldest was the finest. This great 
 basilica was erected in the reign of Constantine, close to the circus 
 of Nero, where tradition affirmed that St. Peter had suffered martyr- 
 dom. It unfortunately was entirely swept away to make room for 
 the greatest of Christian temples, which now occupies its site ; but 
 previous to its destruction careful measurements and drawings were 
 made of every part, from which it is easy to understand all its 
 arrangements — • easier perhaps than if it had remained to the 
 present day, and four centuries more of reform and improvements 
 had assisted in altering and disfiguring its venerable frame. 
 
 As will be seen in the plan (Woodcut No. 274), drawn to the 
 usual scale, it possessed a noble atrium or forecourt, 212 ft. by 235, in 
 front of which were some bold masses of building, which during the 
 Middle Ages were surmounted by two belfry-towers. The church itself 
 was 212 ft. in width by 380 in length, covering, without its adjuncts, 
 an area of above 80,000 English feet, which, though less than half 
 the size of the present cathedral, is as large as that covered by any 
 mediaeval cathedral except those of Milan and Seville. The cen- 
 tral aisle was about 80 ft. across (about twice the average width of 
 a Gothic nave), and nearly the same as that of the basilica of Maxentius 
 and the principal halls of the greater thermae. For some reason or 
 other this dimension seems to have been a modulus very generally 
 adopted. The bema or sanctuary, answering to the Gothic transept, 
 extended beyond the walls of the church either way, which was un- 
 usual in Romanesque buildings. The object here seems to have been 
 to connect it with the tombs on its north side. The arrangement of 
 the sanctuary was also peculiar, having been adorned with twelve 
 pillars supporting a gallery. These, when symbolism became the 
 fashion, were said to represent the twelve apostles. This certainly 
 was not their original intent, as at first only six were put up — the 
 others added afterwards. The sanctuary and choir were here singu- 
 larly small and contracted, as if arranged before the clergy became so 
 numerous as they afterwards were, and before the laity were excluded 
 from this part of the church. 
 
 The general internal appearance of the building w^ill be understood 
 from the following woodcut (No. 275), which presents at one view all 
 the peculiarities of the basilican buildings. The pillars separating the 
 central from the side aisles appear to have been of uniform dimensions, 
 and to have supported a horizontal entablature, above which rose a 
 double range of panels, each containing a picture — these panels thus 
 taking the place of what was the triforium in Gothic churches. Over 
 these was the clerestory, and again an ornamental belt gave sufficient 
 elevation for the roof, which in this instance showed the naked 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 413 
 
 construction. On the whole perhaps the ratio of height to widtli is 
 unexceptionable, but the height over the pillars is so great that they 
 are made to look utterly insignificant, which indeed is the great defect 
 in the architectural design of these buildings, and, though seldom so 
 offensive as here, is apparent in all. The ranges of columns dividing 
 the side-aisles were joined by arches, which is a more common as welL 
 
 as a better arrangement, as it not only adds to the height of the pillarsy, 
 but gives them an apparent power of bearing the superstructure. At 
 some period during the Middle Ages the outer aisles were vaulted, 
 and Gothic windows introduced into them. This change seems to 
 have necessitated the closing of the intermediate range of clerestory 
 windows, which probably was by no means conducive to the general; 
 architectural effect of the building. 
 
414 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Externally this basilica, like all those of its age, must have been 
 singularly deficient in beauty or in architectural design. The sides 
 were of plain unplastered brick, the windows were ])lain arch-headed 
 openings. The front alone was ornamented, and this only with two 
 ranges of windows somewhat larger than those at the sides, three in 
 each tier, into which tracery was inserted at some later period, and 
 between and above these, various figures and emblems were painted in 
 fresco on stucco laid on the brickwork. The whole was surmounted 
 by that singular voxed cornice which seems to have been universal 
 in Roman basilicas, though not found anywhere else that I am 
 aAvare of. 
 
 The two most interesting adjuncts to this cathedral were the two 
 tombs standing to the northward. According to the mediaeval tra- 
 dition the one was the tomb of Honorius and his wives, the other the 
 church of St. Andrew. Their position, however, carefully centred on 
 the spine of the circus of Nero, Avhere the great apostle suffered mar- 
 tyrdom, seems to j)oint to a holier and more important origin. My 
 own conviction is that they were erected to mark the places where the 
 apostle and his companions suffered. It is besides extremely improb- 
 able that after the erection of the basilica an emperor should choose 
 the centre of a circus for the burying-j)lace of himself and his family, 
 or that he should be ])ermitted to choose so hallowed a spot. They are 
 of exactly the usual tomb-form of the age of Constantine, and of the 
 largest size, being each 100 ft. in diameter. 
 
 The first was destroyed by Michael Angelo, as it stood on the site 
 required for his northern tribune, the second by Pius VI., in 1770, 
 to make way for the ])resent sacristy, and Rome thus lost, through 
 pure carelessness, the two oldest and most sacred edifices of the 
 Christian period Avhich she possessed. 
 
 The most eastern had been so altered and overlaid, having been 
 long used as a sacristy,' that it might have been diflJcult to restore it ; 
 but its position and its antiquity certainly entitled it to a better fate. 
 
 St. Paul's. 
 
 Tlie church of San Paolo fuori le Mura was almost an exact 
 counterjmrt of St. Peter's both in design and dimensions. The only 
 important variations were that the transept was made of the same 
 width as the central nave, or about 80 ft., and that the pillars sepa- 
 rating the nave from the side aisles were joined by arches instead of by 
 a horizontal architrave. Both these were undoubted improvements, 
 the first giving space and dignity to the bema, the latter not only 
 adding height to the order, but giving it, together with lightness, 
 
 1 "II Vavicano discritto da Pistolesi," vol. ii. pis. xxiv. xxv. 
 
bK. I. Ch. II. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 415 
 
 that apparent strength requisite to support the high wall placed over 
 the pillars. 
 
 The order, too, was finer and more important than at St. Peter's, 
 twenty-four of the pillars being taken from some temple or building 
 (it is generally said the mausoleum of Hadrian) of the best age of 
 Rome, though the remaining sixteen were unfortunately only very 
 bad copies of them. These pillars are 33 feet in height, or one-third 
 of the whole height of the building to the roof. Tn St. Peter's they 
 were only a fourth, and if they had been spaced a litth' farther apart, 
 
 276. View of the Interior of St. Paul's, at Rome, before the fire. 
 
 and the arch made more important, the most glaring defect of these 
 buildings would in a great measure have been avoided. 
 
 Long before its destruction by fire in 1822 this church had been 
 so altered as to lose many of its most striking peculiarities. The 
 bema or presbytery was divided into two by a longitudinal wall. 
 The greater number of its clerestory windows were built up, its 
 atrium gone, and decay and whitewash had done much to efface its 
 beauty, which, nevertheless, seems to have struck all travellers with 
 admiration, as combining in itself the last reminiscence of Pagan 
 Rome with the earliest forms of the Christian world. It certainly 
 was the most interesting, if not quite the most beautiful, of the 
 Christian buildings of that city.^ 
 
 ' 1 The new church which superseded this one is described in the author's 
 Modern Architecture," page 89, woodcut 4.5. 
 
41G 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt IL 
 
 The third five-aisled basilica, that of San Giovanni Laterano, differs 
 in no essential respect from those just described except in dimensions;, 
 it covers about 60,000 feet, and consequently is inferior in this respect 
 to the other two. It has been so completely altered in modern times 
 that its primitive arrangements can now hardly be discerned, nor can 
 their effect be judged of, even assuming that they were peculiar to it,, 
 which, however, is by no means certain. 
 
 Like the other two, it appears to have been originally erected by 
 Constantine, who seems especially to have affected this five-aisled 
 form. The churches which he erected at Jerusalem and Bethlehem 
 both have this number of aisles. From the similarity which exists in 
 the design of all these churches we might easily restore this building, 
 if it were worth while. Its dimensions can easily be traced, but 
 beyond this nothing remains of the original erection. 
 
 Of those with three aisles by far the finest and most beautiful is 
 that of Sta. Maria Maggiore, which, notwithstanding the comparative 
 sraallness of its dimensions, is now perhaps the 
 best specimen of its class remaining. Internally 
 its dimensions are 100 feet in width by 250 to the 
 front of the apse ; the whole area being about 
 32,000 feet ; so that it is little more than half the 
 size of the Lateran church, and between one- 
 third and one-fourth of that of the other two 
 five-aisled churches. 
 
 Notwithstanding this there is great beauty 
 in its internal colonnade, all the pillars of which 
 are of one design, and bear a most pleasing pro- 
 portion to the superstructure. The clerestory, 
 too, is ornamented with pilasters and panels, 
 making it a part of the general design ; and 
 with the roof, which is panelled with constructive 
 propriety and simplicity, combined with sufii- 
 cient richness, serves to make up a whole w^hich 
 gives a far better and more complete idea of 
 what a basilica either was originally, or at least 
 might have been, than any other church at Rome. 
 It is true that both the pilasters of the clerestory 
 toiin- and the roof are modern, and in modern times 
 
 the colonnade has been broken through in two places ; but these 
 defects must be overlooked in judging of the whole. 
 
 Another defect is that the side-aisles have been vaulted in modern 
 times, and in such a manner as to destroy the harmony that should 
 exist between the different parts of the building. In striving to avoid 
 the defect of making the superstructure too high in proportion to the 
 columns, the architect has made the central roof too low either for th'e- 
 
 
 
 
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 277. Plan of Sta. Maria 
 Maggiore 
 
 Scale 100 ft. 
 
Bk. 1. Ch. II. 
 
 BASILICAS. 
 
 417 
 
 width or length of the mam aisle. Still the building, as a whole, is 
 — or rather was before the completion of the rebuilding of St. PauPs 
 
 278. View of Sta. Maria Maggiore. (From Guteusohu and Knapp.) 
 
 — the very best of the older wooden-roofed churches of Christendom, 
 and the best model from which to study the merits and defects of this 
 style of architecture. 
 
 279. Plan of Sta. Agnese. 280. Section of Sta. Agnese. (From Guteusohn and 
 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. Knapp.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 Another mode of getting over the great defect of high walls over 
 the pillars was adopted, as in Sta. Agnese and St. Lorenzo, of using a 
 vol.. I. — 27 
 
418 
 
 ROISrANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 gallery corresponding with the triforium of Gothic churches. In both 
 these instances it seems to have been suggested, if not required, by the 
 peculiarity of the ground, which was higlier on one side than on the 
 other ; but whether this was tlie true cause of its adoption or not, 
 the effect was most satisfactory, and had it been persevered in so as- 
 to bring the upper colonnade more into harmony of proportion with 
 the other, it would have been attended with the happiest results on the 
 
 L'Sl. Restored View of the Interior of the Basilica of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura. 
 (From Lenoir's " Architecture Monastique.") 
 
 style. Whether it was, however, that the Romans felt the want of 
 the broad plain space for their paintings, or that they could not bring 
 the upper arches in proportion with the classical pillars which they 
 made use of, the system was abandoned almost as soon as adopted, 
 and never came into generaj use. 
 
 It is not now easy to judge what the effect of this was in the 
 original church of St. Lorenzo, owing to the numerous alterations it 
 has undergone, for the original church of Constantine seems to have 
 been entirely swept away. That of Pelagius which we now see is in 
 plan somewhat like that of Sta. Agnese, only with five pillars on each 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 STA. PU DENT! AN A. 
 
 419 
 
 side of the nave, borrowed from some ancient edifice, instead of seven, 
 and these support a horizontal architrave instead of arches. 
 
 In the thirteenth century the apse was destroyed and a long- 
 nave added in that direction, so that the altar was placed where the 
 entrance was originally situated. Making due allowance for these 
 changes, it is probable that the annexed woodcut faithfully represents 
 the arrangements of the buildhig as it stood in the sixth century, and 
 is interesting, not only for its own sake, but as representing the class 
 of church erected at Jerusalem and elsewhere at this age, of which so 
 very few specimens now exist. It contains also the germs of much 
 that was afterwards reproduced in Gothic churches. The upper 
 gallery, after many modifications, at last settled into a triforium, and 
 the pierced stone slabs in the windows became tracery — but before 
 these were reached a vaulted roof was introduced, and with it all the 
 features of the style were to a great extent modified. 
 
 The church known as that of Sta. Pudentiana is one of the very 
 oldest and consequently one of the most interesting of those in Rome. 
 It stands on substructions of ancient Roman date, which probably 
 formed part of the Thermae of Novatus or the house of the Senator 
 Pudens, who is mentioned by St. Paul at the end of his Second 
 Epistle to Timothy, and with whom he is traditionally said to have 
 resided during his sojourn in Rome. The vaults beneath the church 
 certainly formed part of a Roman mansion, so apparently do those 
 buildings, shown on the plan, and placed behind and on one side of 
 the sanctuary ; but whether these were used for Christian purposes 
 before the erection of the church in the fourth century is by no means 
 certain. In plan the church remains in all probability very much as 
 
 
 
 \ f- H 1 
 
 1 ^4 
 
 
 1 h ^' n 
 
 
 i 1 
 
 -m P. 
 
 1 
 
 m-::'Mi:z—-z::i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 282. Plan of Sta. Pudentiana. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 283. Section of Sta. Pudentiana. (From 
 Hubsch.i) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 originally designed, its most striking peculiarity being the segmental 
 form of the apse, which may possibly have arisen from some peculiar 
 
 ^ *' Altchristlichen Kirchen nach Baudenkmalen und alteren Beschreibungen," 
 von D. Hubsch. Carlsruhe. 1862. 
 
420 
 
 KOMANESQUE AKCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 arrangement of tlie original building. It was not, however, found to 
 be pleasing in an architectural point of view, and was not conse 
 quently again employed. 
 
 The annexed section probably represents very nearly the original 
 
 form of the nave, though it has been 
 so encrusted w^ith modern accretions as 
 to render it difficult to ascertain what 
 the first form really was. The shafts 
 of the pillars may have been borrowed 
 from some older edifice, but tlie capitals 
 were clearly designed to support arches, 
 and must therefore be early Christian 
 (fourth century?), and are among the 
 ^^'^(p^^m mxbsdiy ''^^ niost elegant and appropriate specimens 
 
 of the class now extant. 
 In some instances, as in San Clemente, above alluded to, in San 
 Pietro in Vincula, and Sta. Maria in Cosmedin, the colonnade is 
 divided into spaces of three or four intercolumniations by blocks of 
 solid masonry, which give great apparent solidity and strength to 
 the building, but at the expense of breaking it up into compartments 
 more than is agreeable, and these destroy that beauty of perspective 
 so j)leasing in a continuous colonnade. This defect seems to have 
 been felt in the Santa Praxedf, where three of these blocks are intro- 
 duced in the lengtli of the nave, and support each a bold arch thrown 
 across the central aisle. The effect of this might have been most 
 happy, as at San Miniato, near Florence ; but it has been so clumsily 
 managed in the Koman example, as to be most destructive of all 
 beauty of proportion. 
 
 Some of the principal beauties as well as some of the most remark- 
 able defects of these basilican churches arise from the employment of 
 columns torn from ancient temples : where this has been done, the 
 beauty of the marble and the exquisite sculpture of the capitals and 
 friezes, give a richness and elegance to the whole that go far to 
 redeem or to liide the rudeness of the building in which they are 
 encased. But, on the other hand, the discrepancy between the pillars 
 — Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns being sometimes used side by 
 side — destroys all uniformity, and the fragmentary character of the 
 entablatures they support is still more prejudicial to the continuity of 
 the perspective, which should be the greatest charm of these churches. 
 By degrees, the fertile quarries of ancient Rome seem to have become 
 entirely exhausted ; and as the example of St. Paul proves, the 
 Romans in the fourth century were incapable of manufacturing even 
 a bad imitation, and were at last forced to adopt some new plan of 
 supporting their arcades. The church of SS. Nereo ed Achilleo is, 
 perhaps, the most elegant example of this class, the piers being light 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 SAN VINCENZO ALLE TRE FONTANE. 
 
 421 
 
 octagons ; but the most charficteristic, as well as the most original, is 
 the San Vincenzo alle Tre Fontane, shown in section and elevation 
 in Woodcut No. 285. It so far deviates from the usual basilican 
 
 285. Half Section, half Elevation, of the Church of San Vincenzo alle Tre Fontane. 
 (From Gutensohn and Knapp.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 arrangements as almost to deserve the appellation of Gothic. It has 
 the same defect as all the rest — its pier arches being too low, and for 
 which there is no excuse here — but both internally and externally 
 it shows a uniformity of design and a desire to make every part 
 ornamental that produces a very pleasing effect, notwithstanding 
 that the whole is. merely of brick, and that ornament is so sparingly 
 applied as barely to ])revent the building sinking into the class of 
 mere utilitarian erections. 
 
 Among the most pleasing architectural features, if they may be 
 so called, of these churches, are the mosaic pavements that adorn the 
 greater number. These were always original, being designed for 
 the buildings in which they are used, and following tlie arrangement 
 of the architecture surrounding them. The patterns too are always 
 elegant, and appropriate to the purpose ; and as the colors are in 
 like manner generally harmoniously blended, they form not only a 
 most appropriate but most beautiful basement to the architecture. 
 
 A still more important feature was the great mosaic picture that 
 always adorned the semi-dome of tlie apse, representing most generally 
 the Saviour seated in glory surrounded by Saints, or else some scene 
 from the life of the holy personage to whom the church was dedicated. 
 These mosaics were generally continued down to nearly the level of 
 the altar, and along the whole of the inner wall of the sanctuary in 
 which the apse was situated, and as far as the triumphal arch which 
 separated the nave from the sanctuary, at which point the mosaic 
 blended with the frescoes that adorned the upper walls of the central 
 nave above the arcades. All this made up an extent of polychro- 
 matic decoration which in those dark ages when few could read, the 
 designers of these buildings seem to have considered as virtually 
 of more importance than the architectural work to which it was 
 attached. Any attempt to judge of the one without taking into 
 consideration the other, would be forming an opinion on hearing but 
 
422 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 half the evidence: but taken in conjunction, the paintings go far to 
 explain, and also to redeem, many points in which the architecture 
 is most open to criticism. 
 
 Ravenna. 
 
 During the wdiole period when the Romanesque style was most 
 flourishing, the city of Ravenna almost rivalled in importance the old 
 capital of the Avorld, and her churches were consequently hardly less 
 important either in number or in richness than those we have just 
 been describing. It is true she had none so large as the great metro- 
 politan basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul. The one five-aisled church she 
 possessed — the cathedral — has been entirely destroyed, to make way 
 for a very contemptible modern erection. From the plans, however, 
 which we possess of it, it seems to have differed very considerably 
 from the Roman examples, Tnost especially in having no trace of a 
 transept, the building being a i)erfectly regular parallelogram, half 
 as long again as its breadth, and with merely one great a})se added at 
 the end of the central nave. Its loss is the more to be regretted, as it 
 was, besides being the largest, the oldest church 
 in the city, having been erected about the year 
 400, by Archbishop Ursus. The baptistery tliat 
 belonged to it has been fortunately preserved, 
 and will be described hereafter. 
 
 Besides a considerable number of other 
 churches which have either been lost or de- 
 stroyed by repair, Ravenna still possesses two 
 first-class three-aisled 
 basilicas— the San Ai)ol- 
 linare Nuovo, originally 
 an Arian cluirch, built |[ 
 by Theodoric, king of m 
 the Goths (A. I). 493- WP^S^flt 
 525) ; and the S. Ai)ol- ft^ffi 
 linare in Classe, at the 
 Port of Ravenna, situ- 
 ated about three miles 
 from the city, com- 
 menced A. D. 538, and 
 dedicated 549. Of the 
 
 286. Plan of St. ApoUinare tWO, the first named is ^sj. Arches in Church of San 
 Nuovo. (From Hubsch.) r r xy. ■n^(^r(^ r>nn- ApoUinare Nuovo. (From 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. ^^J ^^^^ moie Lon Quast.i) 
 
 siderable, being 315 ft. 
 long by 115 in width externally, while the other only measures 
 
 1 A. F. von Quast, "Die Altchristliclien Bauwerke von Kavenna." 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 RAVENNA. 
 
 423 
 
 289. S. Apolliiiare in Classe, Kaveiuia. (From Quast.) 
 
424 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut II. 
 
 21(1 feet in length by 104. It is now called S. Mnrtino in Cielo d'Oro, 
 from its having been decided in the twelfth century that the other 
 church in Classe possessed the true body of the saint to which botli 
 churches were dedicated. As will be seen by the plan, it is a per- 
 fectly regular basilica, with twenty-two pillars on each side of the | 
 nave, which is 51 feet in widtli. The benia is well raised, and forms 
 a sort of incipient transept in front of the apse, and it possesses a 
 liandsoine narthex with light ])illars in front. 
 
 Tlie great merit of these two basilicas, as compared with those of 
 IJome, arises from the circumstance of Ravenna having possessed no 
 ruined temples whose spoils could be used in the construction of new 
 buihlings. Consequently the architects, being obliged to think for 
 themselves and design every detail, introduced a degree of harmony 
 into their proportions utterly unknown in the Roman examples. 
 From Woodcut No. 287, representing three arches of the nave of 
 S. Apollinare Nuovo, it will be seen that the pillars are pleasingly 
 spaced ; their capitals, surmounted by a block representing the archi- 
 trave, suffice for the support of the arches that spring from them; the 
 triforiuni belt is adorned with figures, and is of pleasing proportions ; 
 and the window over each arch fills up the remaining height to the 
 roof, without either overcrowding or leaving any space that is not 
 easily filled up by ttie decorations applied. It is true the parts do not 
 all quite harmonize, but the entire architecture of the building is an 
 immense stride in advance of the Roman style. All this is still 
 more apparent in Woodcut 'No. 288, taken from the angle where the 
 nave joins the aj^se in the Apollinare in Classe, which shows a still 
 further advance towards forming a new style out of the classical 
 elements : a little more and the transition would be almost complete. 
 It is still easy, however, not only to trace the derivation of every 
 detail from the classical model, but also to see that the architect was 
 trying to adhere to that style as far as his means and his purposes 
 would allow. 
 
 Externally these buildings appear to have remained to the present 
 liour almost wholly without architectural embellishment. It was con- 
 sidered "sufficient for ornamental purposes to make the brick arches 
 necessary for the construction slightly more prominent and important 
 than was actually required. As if impelled by some feeling of antag- 
 onism to the practice of the heathens, the early Christians seem to 
 ha\ e tried to make the external appearance of their buildings as 
 unlike those of their predecessors as was possible. Whether this was 
 the cause or not, it is certain that nothing can well be less ornamental 
 than these exteriors ; and even the narthex, which in the Apollinare in 
 Classe afforded an excellent opportunity for embellishment, could not be 
 less ornamental if it were the entrance to a barn instead of to a church 
 of such richness and beauty as this in all its internal arrangements. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. II. 
 
 PARENZO. 
 
 425 
 
 P 
 
 At Parenzo in Istria there is a basilica, built in the year 542 by 
 the Bishop Euphrasius, and consequently contemporary with these 
 examples at Ravenna. This church still retains 
 its atrium, baptistery, and other accompani- 
 ments, which those at Ravenna have lost. It 
 consists of a basilica in tliree aisles, with an 
 apse at the end of each, and an atrium in front, 
 beyond which is situated the baptistery ; and 
 in front of this again a tower, with a circular 
 chamber in it, tliougli tliis latter feature seems 
 to be of more modern date. On one side at 
 the east end is a chapel or crypt ; but it is by 
 no means clear to what age it belongs, and for 
 what purpose it was erected. It is apparently 
 an excrescence, while all the other parts belong 
 to the original design. Internally the church 
 is 121 feet in length by 32 in width, and 
 possesses all the usual arrangements of a 
 church of that date. Some of its pillars are 
 of the Corinthian order and are borrowed from 
 some older edifice, but others are of pure 
 Byzantine type (Woodcut No. 291), and were 
 they all like this, would oblige us to defer 
 the description of the building to a later 
 page. It may, however, be regarded as a tran- 
 sition specimen, but one of such beauty as to 
 make us regret that the barbarians on the 
 other side of the Adriatic had not studied or 
 appreciated its beauty. Externally the facade 
 retains some of the painted decorations which 
 seem to have been so fashionable at the time 
 it was erected, but internally they have been 
 entirely peeled off the nave, and though the 
 apse is rich in marbles, mosaic and paintings, 
 they are of a much later date than the build- 
 ing itself. As an edifice of the age of Jus- 
 tinian, and as showing the relative position 
 of the various parts that made up an ecclesi- 
 astical establishment in those early times, it is singularly deserving 
 of the attention of those to whom the history of art is a matter of 
 interest. 
 
 290 
 
 Church at Parenzo in 
 Istria. (From Agincourt.) 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 291. Capital of Pillar at 
 Parenzo. 
 
426 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part n 
 
 TOKCELLO. 
 
 The church at Torcello, in the Venetian Lagune, is the last example 
 it will be necessary to quote in order to make the arrangements of the 
 
 Romanesque basilicas intelligible. It 
 was originally erected in the seventh 
 century ; and though altered, perhaps to 
 some extent rebuilt, in the first year of 
 the eleventh century, it still retains much 
 of the arrangement and character of 
 the original edifice — few churches prob- 
 ^ ably possess the old arrangements in such 
 completeness as this, or impress the be- 
 
 292. Plan of Church at Torcello, 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 holder with an air of greater antiquity. 
 The whole width of the church is 71 ft. 
 internally by 125 in length. One of its 
 most striking peculiarities is the dispro- 
 portional width of the central as com- 
 j^ared with the side aisles, the latter 
 being only 7 ft. wide. A screen of six 
 pillars divides the nave from the sanctu- 
 ary. Perhaps, however, the most inter- 
 esting part of this church is the interior 
 of its apse, which still retains the bisliop's throne, surrounded by six 
 ranges of seats for his i)resbytery, arranged like those of an ancient 
 theatre. It presents one of the most extensive and best preserved 
 exam])les of the fittings of the apse, and gives a better idea of the 
 mode in wliicli the apses of churches were originally arranged than 
 anything that is to be found in any other church, either of its age 
 or of an earlier period. 
 
 Like Sta. Pudentiana (Woodcut Ko. 282) and Parenzo, this church 
 joossesses a small side chapel, a vestry or sanctuary, on the Gospel side 
 of the altar, and the remains of a very perfect baptistery may still be 
 traced in front of the west dooi-. This was a square block, externally, 
 measuring 37 ft. eaph way; internally an octagon, with the angles 
 cut in hemispherical niches. In the rear of the church stood the 
 campanile, and across a narrow passage the conventual buildings ; in 
 front of which now stands the beautiful little church of Sta. Fosc'a, 
 the whole making up a group of nearly unrivalled interest considering 
 its small dimensions. 
 
 Other examples might be quoted differing in some slight respect 
 from those just given, but the above are probably sufficient to explain 
 the general arrangements of the early basilican churches and the 
 style of their architecture, so long as it remained pure Romanesque ; 
 in other words, so long as it continued in Italy to be a direct deduc- 
 
Bk. 1. 6n. 11. 
 
 TORCELLO. 
 
 427 
 
 tioii from the lioman style, without any foreign admixture or reaction. 
 It might be instructive to speculate on what the style might have 
 become if left alone to develope itself on its native soil, but it would 
 be extremely difficult to make the subject clear without a much 
 larger amount of illustration than is admissible, and which in such a 
 history as this would be out of place. Simultaneously with the elab- 
 oration of the rectangular form of church by the Italians, the Byzan- 
 tines were occupied with the same task ; but, being freer from the 
 trammels of tradition and less influenced by examples, they early 
 
 293. Apse of Basilica at Torcello. 
 
 arrived at forms much more divergent from those of the classical 
 period than those of Italy, and their style, reacting on the Italian, 
 ])roduced that very beautiful combination of which Pisa Cathedral is 
 a type, and St. Mark's at Venice an extreme example. This style 
 generally pervaded the whole south of Italy, with the exception of 
 Rome ; and, from the elements of which it was composed, may fairly 
 be designated Byzantine Italian. 
 
 While this was going on in the south, the Longobards, the Goths, 
 and other Barbarians who invaded the north of Italy, seized on this 
 type and worked it out in their own fashion. They, however, had 
 
428 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECT UEE. 
 
 Part 11. 
 
 a mama for stone vaulted roofs, which led to most important modifi- 
 cations of the style. It may probably be correct to assert that no 
 Romanesque or Byzantine Italian church has, or ever had, a vaulted 
 nave. On the other hand, there is hardly a Barbarian church which 
 the builders did not aspire to vault, though they were frequently 
 unable to accomplish it. It was this vaulting mania which led to the 
 invention of compound piers, pointed arches, buttresses, pinnacles, 
 and all the numerous peculiarities of the Gothic style ; and which, 
 reacting on northern Italy, produced the Ghibeline or Italian Gothic 
 style. 
 
 No exact boundary can be drawn between these two : modifica- 
 tions of style varied, as Byzantine or Gothic influences ebbed or 
 flowed, during the Middle Ages. Venice and Pisa, and all Calabria, 
 were generally influenced by their intercourse with the East, while 
 the whole of the north of Italy and away from the coast as far down 
 as Sienna and Orvieto the strong hand of the Teuton made itself 
 felt. 
 
 Yet Italy cannot be said to have been successful in either style. 
 Her superior civilization enabled her to introduce and use an elegance 
 of detail unknown north of the Alps ; but she did not work out the 
 basilican type for herself : she left it to others to do that for her, and 
 consequently never perfectly understood what she undertook, or why 
 it was done. The result is that, though great elegance is found in 
 parts, Italy can hardly produce a single church which is satisfactory 
 as a design ; or which would be intelligible without first explaining 
 the basework of those true styles from which its principal features 
 have been borrowed. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. III. 
 
 CIRCULAR CHURCHES. 
 
 429 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 CIRCULAR ROMANESQUE CHURCHES. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Circular Churches — Tomb of Sta. Costanza — Churches at Perugia, Nocera, 
 Ravenna, Milan — Secular Buildings. 
 
 IN addition to the Pagan basilicas and temples, from which the 
 arrangements of so many of the Christian edifices were obtained, 
 the tombs of the Romans formed a third type, from which the forms 
 of a very important class of churches were derived. 
 
 The form Avhich these buildings retained, so long as they remained 
 mere sepulchres appropriated to Pagan uses, has been already described 
 (pp. 342 to 346). That of Csecilia Metella and those of Augustus 
 and Hadrian were what would now be called "chambered tumuli ; " 
 originally the sepulchral chamber was infinitesimally small as com- 
 pared with the mass, but we find these being gradually enlarged till 
 we approach the age of Constantine, when, as in the tombs of the 
 Tossia Family, that called the Tomb of Helena (Woodcut No. 226) and 
 many others of the same age, they became miniature Pantheons. The 
 central apartment was all in all ; the exterior was not thought of. 
 Still they were appropriated to sepulchral rites, and these only, so 
 long as they belonged to Pagan Rome. The case was different when 
 they were erected by the Christians. No association could be more 
 appropriate than that of these sepulchral edifices, to a religion nursed 
 in persecution, and the apostles of which had sealed their faith with 
 their blood as martyrs ; and when the Sacrament for the dying and 
 the burial service were employed, it was in these circular churches 
 that it was performed. But besides the viaticum for the departing 
 Christian, the Church provided the admission sacrament of baptism 
 for those who were entering into communion, and this was, in early 
 days at least, always performed in a building separate from the 
 basilica. It would depend on whether marriage was then considered 
 as a sacrament or a civil contract, whether it was celebrated in the 
 basilica or the church : but it seems certain that the one was used 
 almost exclusively as the business place of the community, the other 
 as the sacramental temple of the sect. This appears always to have 
 been the case, at least when the two forms existed together, as they 
 
430 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Tart II. 
 
 almost always did in the great ecclesiastical establishments of 
 Italy. When the church was copied from a temple, as in the 
 African examples above described, it is probable it may have 
 served both purposes. But too little is known of the architecture 
 of this early age, and its liturgies, to speak positively on the 
 subject. 
 
 The uses and derivation of these three forms of churches are so 
 distinct that it would be extremely convenient if we could appropriate- 
 names to distinguish them. The first retains most appropriately the 
 name of basilica, and with sufficient limitation to make it generally 
 applicajple. The word ecclesia, or eglise, would equally suffice for the 
 second, but that it is not English, and has been so indiscriminately 
 applied that it could not now be used in a restricted sense. The 
 word kirk, or as we soften it into church, would be apjoropriate to 
 the third, ^ but again it has been so employed as to be inapplicable. 
 We therefore content ourselves with employing the words Basilica, 
 Church, and Round Church, to designate tlie three, employing some 
 expletive when any confusion is likely to arise between the first two 
 of the series. 
 
 The most interesting feature of the early Romanesque circular 
 buildings is that they show the same transitional progress from an 
 external to an internal columnar style of architecture which marked 
 the cliange from the Pagan to the Christian form of sacred edifice. It 
 is perhaps not too much to assert tliat no ancient classic building 
 of circular form lias any pillars used constructively in its interior. 
 Even the Pantheon, tliough 143 ft. 6 in. in diameter, derives no 
 assistance from the j)illars that surround it internally — they are mere 
 decoi'ative features. The same is true of the last Pagan example we 
 are acquainted with, — tlie temple or tomb which Diocletian erected in 
 his ])alace at Spalatro (Woodcut No. 194). The pillars do fill up the 
 angles there, but the building would be stable without' them. The 
 Byzantine architects also generally declined to avail themselves of 
 pillars to support tlieir domes, but the Romanesque architects used 
 them almost as universally as in their basilicas. 
 
 Another very striking peculiarity is the entire abandonment of 
 all external decoration. Roman circular temples had peristyles, like 
 those at Tivoli (Woodcut No. 193) and that of Vesta in Rome. Even 
 the Pantheon is as remarkable for its portico as its dome, so is that 
 
 ^ That is on the supposition that the 
 word kirk is derived from the Latin 
 word "circus," "circular," as the 
 French term it, " cirque." My own 
 conviction is that this is certainly the 
 case. The word is only used by the 
 Barbarians as applied to a form of build- 
 
 ing they derived from the Romans. 
 Why the Germans should employ hvqIov 
 ohog, when neither the Greeks nor the 
 Latins used that name, is a mystery 
 which those who insist on these very 
 improbable names have as yet failed to 
 explain. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. III. 
 
 CIRCULAR CHURCHES. 
 
 known as the Torre dei Schiavi,^ but it is only in the very earliest of 
 the Christian edifices that we find a trace of the portico, and even in 
 them hardly any attenij)t at external decoration. The temples of the 
 Christians were no longer shrines to contain statues, and to which 
 worshi]) might be addressed by people outside, but had become halls to 
 contain the worshippers themselves while engaged in acts of devotion. 
 
 The tomb of the Empress Helena (Woodcut No. 226) is one of the 
 earliest examples of its class. It has no pillars internally, it is true, 
 but it likewise has none on the exterior — the transition was not then 
 complete. The same is the case with the two tombs on the Spina of 
 the Circus of Nero (Woodcut No. 274). They too were astyler, and 
 their external appearance was utterly neglected. 
 
 Wlien from these we turn to tlie Tomb or Ba])tistery of Constantine, 
 built some time afterwards (Woodcut No. 294), we find the roof sup- 
 ported by a screen of eight columns, two stories 
 in height, and through all its alterations can detect 
 the effort to make. the interior ornamental. It 
 has, however, a portico, but this again is practi- 
 cally an interior, both ends being closed with 
 apsidal terminations, so that it really forms a 
 second apartment rather than a portico. In both 
 these respects it is in advance of the buildino-next 294. Baptistery of Con- 
 
 ^ ^ stantine. (From Isa- 
 
 to it in ao^e that we know of — the Octas^on at Spa- beiie.) Scale 100 ft. 
 
 ° _ ^ ^ to 1 in. 
 
 latro — which it otherwise very much resembles. 
 Tlie eight internal pillars instead of being mere ornaments have become 
 essential parts of the construction, and the external peristyle has dis- 
 appeared, leaving only the fragment of a porch. 
 
 The tomb which the same Emperor erected to contain the re- 
 mains of his daughter Constantia, is another example of the same 
 transitional style. The intei'ior in this 
 instance is vaulted, but so timidly that 
 twenty-four pillars are employed to sus- 
 tain a weight for which half that number 
 Avould have been amply sufhcient. In the 
 square niche opposite the entrance stood 
 the sarcophagus of the princess, now in 
 the Vatican. The roof of the aisle is 
 adorned with paintings of the vintage 
 and scenes of rural life, which, like all 295. Plan of the Tomb of sta. Costan- 
 
 ■ I , 1 « -r~» za, at Rome. (From Isabelle, " Edi- 
 
 tnose on the tombs or Pairan Rome, have *ices Circuiaires.") Scale 100 ft.to 1 
 
 p ^ in. 
 
 no reterence to the sepulchral uses to 
 
 which the building was dedicated. The whole internal diameter of 
 the tomb is 73 feet, that of the dome 35. 
 
 * Isabelle, " Edifices Circuiaires," plates 26 and 27. 
 
432 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 In front of the building is a small crypto-porticus similar in 
 arrangement to that of her father's tomb, and beyond this is an ob- 
 long space with circular ends, 
 and surrounded on all sides by 
 arcades ; its dimensions were 
 535 feet by 130, and, though 
 so ruined as hardly to allow of 
 its arrangements being res- 
 tored, it is interesting as behig 
 perhaps tlie only instance of 
 the ''\forum " which it is prob- 
 able was left before all tombs 
 in those times, and traces of 
 which may perhaps be found 
 elsewhere, though as yet tliey 
 have not been looked for. 
 
 The only other important 
 circular building within the 
 Avails of Rome of this early age is that known as 8. Stephano Rotondo. 
 Though there is nothing to fix its date with any precision, it is almost 
 
 certain that it belongs to the fifth and sixtli 
 centuries of the Christian era. It is 210 ft. in 
 diameter, and its roof was supported by two 
 ranges of columns circularly disposed in its 
 interior; and on the first or inner range rested 
 a horizontal architrave like that of St.Peter's. 
 In the outer one the pillars support arches 
 like those of St. Paul's. All the pillars are 
 taken from older buildings. The outer aisle 
 was divided into eight compartments ; but in 
 what manner, and for what purpose, it is not 
 now easy to ascertain, owing to the ruined state of the building, and 
 
 296. Plan of San Stephano Eotondo. (From 
 Gutensohn and Knapp.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 297. Plan of Sti.Angeli.Perugia. 
 (From Isabelle.) Scale 100 ft. 
 to 1 in. 
 
 298. Section of Sti. Angeli, Perugia. (From Isabelle, " Edifices Circulaires.") No scale. 
 
Bk. 1. Ch. III. 
 
 CIllCULAK CHURCHES. 
 
 433 
 
 to its having been so much and so frequently altered since it was first 
 erected. Nor can it be determined exactly how it was roofed, though it is 
 probable that its arrangements were identical with those of the great five- 
 aisled basilicas, Avhich it closely resembles, except in its circular shape. 
 
 This is more clear in another church of the same age, that of Sti. 
 Angeli, at Perugia, which is very similar in its disposition. Of this 
 building a section is here shown, as given by M. Isabelle — perhaps 
 not quite to be depended upon in every respect, but still affording a 
 very fair representation of what the arrangements of the circular 
 wooden-roofed churches were. Its dimensions are much less than 
 those of San Stephano, being only 115 feet in diameter ; but it is more 
 regular, the greater part of its materials being apparently original, 
 and made for the })lace they occu])y. In the church of San Stephano, 
 the tomb-shaped circular form was probably used as symbolical of his 
 martyrdom. That at Perugia was most likely originally a baptistery, • 
 or it may also have been dedicated to some martyr ; but in the heart 
 of Etruria this form may have l)een adopted for other reasons, the 
 force of which we are hardly able at the present day to appreciate, 
 though in all cases locality is one of the strongest influencing powers 
 in so far as architectural forms are concerned. 
 
 At Nocera dei Pagani, on the road between Naples and Salerno, 
 there is an extremely beautiful circular church built undoubtedly for 
 the purpose of a baptistery, and very 
 similar in i)lan and general arrange- 
 ment to the tomb of Constantia, now 
 known as tlie Baptistery of Sta. Agnese, 
 though somewhat larger, being 80 feet 
 in diameter. Its principal merit is 
 the form of its dome, which is not 
 only correct in a scientific point of 
 view, but- singularly graceful inter- 
 nally. Externally this building for the 
 first time introduces us to a peculiar- 
 ity which had as much influence on the 
 Western styles as any of those pointed 
 out above. As before observed (p. 428 ) 
 the Romanesque architects never at- 
 tempted to vault their rectangular soft, to i in. 
 buildings, but they did frequently construct domes over their circular 
 edifices. But here again they did not make the outside of the dome 
 the outline of their buildings, as the Romans had always done before 
 the time of Constantine, and as the Byzantines and Saracens in- 
 variably did afterwards ; but they employed their vault only as a 
 ceiling internally, and covered it, as in this instance, with a false 
 wooden roof externally. It may be difiicult to determine how far 
 VOL. I. — 28 
 
 299. Plan of Baptistery at Nocera dei Pa- 
 gani. Double the usual scale, or 
 
434 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 this was a judicious innovation ; but this at least is certain, that it 
 had as much influence on the development of the Gothic style as the 
 vaulting mania itself. In the tenth and eleventh centuries many 
 attempts were made to construct true roofs of stone, but unsuccess- 
 fully ; and from various causes, which will be pointed out hereafter, 
 
 300. bc'olioii of liiipusu TV ;a tloi raj^aiii. (J-roiii Isabellf, " I'aIiIicc.s UircuUiires.") 
 
 >io scale. 
 
 the idea was abandoned, and the architects were forced to content them- 
 selves with a stone ceiling, covered by a wooden roof, though this be- 
 came one of the radical defects of the style, and one of the jDrincipal 
 causes of the decay and destruction of many beautiful buildings. 
 
 Raven^^a. 
 
 Ravenna possesses several circular buildings, almost as interesting 
 as those of the capital ; the first being the baptistery of St. John, 
 belonging to the original basilica, and consequently one of the oldest 
 Christian buildings of the place. Externally it is a plain octagonal 
 building, 40 ft. in diameter. Internally it still retains its original 
 decorations, which are singularly elegant and pleasing. Its design is 
 somewhat like that of the temple at Spalatro, but with arcades sub- 
 stituted everywhere for horizontal architraves ; the century that 
 elapsed between these two epochs having sufficed to complete the 
 transition between the two styles. 
 
 Far more interesting than this is the great church of St. Vitale, 
 the most complicated, and at the same time, perhaps, the most beau- 
 tiful, of the circular churches of that age. In design it is nearly 
 identical with the Minerva Medica at Rome,i except in its being an 
 octagon instead of a decagon, and that it is wholly enclosed by an 
 
 See page 348. 
 
13k. I. Ch. III. 
 
 CIRCULAR CHURCHES. 
 
 435 
 
 octagonal wall, whereas the Roman example has in addition two 
 curvilinear wings, enclosing its sides. There are also some minor 
 alterations, such as the introduction of galleries, and the prominence 
 given to the choir ; but still nothing at all to justify the title of 
 Byzantine, usually applied to this church. It is in reality a bad copy 
 from a building in Rome, and very unlike any building in the East 
 we are acquainted with, though no doubt there are certain forms of 
 similarity, as indeed must be found in all the buildings of the age 
 before the final separation of the two churches took place. 
 
 As will be seen from the annexed plan, the diameter of the external 
 octagon is 110 ft., of the internal one only 50, so that the dome here is a 
 third less than that of its prototy})e, and 
 so completely had the architects degen- 
 erated from the dome-builders of 
 Rome, that instead of the scientific 
 construction of the Minerva Medica, 
 this is wholly composed of earthen pots, 
 and protected by a wooden roof. It is 
 said these pots have been used in the 
 East for domes and roofs from the ear. 
 liest ages, that they form as stable and 
 as permanent a mode of covering as 
 stone itself, and that they ifiight with 
 facility be so used as to surpass the 
 heavier material for this purpose. But 
 such is not the case here ; and though 
 it appears invidious to blame that 
 
 which has stood the wear and tear of thirteen centuries, and has wit- 
 nessed the fall of so many of its younger and more aspiring rivals, the 
 
 Plan of St, Vitale, Ravenna. 
 (From Isabelle.) 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 302. Section of St. Vitale, Ravenna. (From Isabelle.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 : 
 
 construction of this dome serves rather to show how excellent the 
 expedient is, than the method by which it can best be applied. 
 
436 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Internally a good deal has been done in modern times to destroy 
 the simplicity of the original effect of the building ; but still there is a 
 pleasing result produced by alternating the piers with circular columns, 
 and a lightness and elegance about the whole design that render it 
 unrivalled in the Western world among churches of its class. This 
 seems to have been admitted by its contemporaries as much as it is 
 in modern times. Charlemagne at all events copied it for his own 
 tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle, and the architects of many other circular 
 buildings of that age appeared to have derived their inspiration from 
 this one. 
 
 The church of San Lorenzo at Milan, had it not been so much 
 altered in modern times, ould take precedence of San Vitale in almost 
 
 303. Plan of S. Lorenzo at Milan. (From Quast, "Altcliristlichen," etc.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 every respect. The date of its erection is not known, though it 
 certainly must be as early, if not earlier, than the time of Justinian. 
 Down to the 8th century it was the cathedral of that city. It was 
 burnt to the ground in 1071, and restored in 1119 ; the dome then 
 erected fell in 1571, on which it underwent its last transformation 
 from the hands of Martino Bassi and Pellegrini, who so disfigured its 
 ancient details as to lead many modern inquirers to doubt whether it 
 was really so old as it was said to be. 
 
Bk. I. Ch. III. 
 
 CIRCULAR CHURCHES. 
 
 437 
 
 Its plan, however, seems to have remained unchanged, and shows a 
 further progress towards what afterwards became the Byzantine style 
 than is to be found either in the Minerva Medica or in San Vitale. It 
 is in fact the earliest attempt to amalgamate the circular cliurch with 
 one of a square shape ; and except that the four lateral colonnades are 
 flat segments of circles, and that there is a little clumsiness in the 
 angles, it is one of the most successful designs handed down from that 
 early age. 
 
 The dome as it now stands is octagonal, which the first dome 
 certainly could not have been. Its diameter is 70 ft., nearly equal to 
 that of the Minerva Medica, and the whole diameter of the building is 
 internally 142 ft. 
 
 In front of the church, in the street is a handsome colonnade of 
 pillars, borrowed from some ancient temple — it is said from one dedi- 
 cated to Hercules ; this leads to a square atrium, now wholly deprived 
 of its lateral arcades ; and this again to a fa9ade, which has been 
 strangely altered in modern times. Opposite this, to the eastward of 
 the church, is an octagonal building, apparently intended as a tomb- 
 house ; and on the north side a similar one, though smaller. On the 
 south is the baptistery, about 45 ft. in diameter, approached by a ves- 
 tibule in the same manner as that of Constantine at Rome, and as in 
 the tomb of his daughter Constantia ; all these, however, have been 
 so painfully altered, that little remains besides the bare plan of the 
 building ; still there is enough to show that this is one of the oldest 
 and most interesting of the Christian churches of Italy. 
 
 The building now known as the baptistery at Florence is an 
 octagon, 108 ft. in diameter externally. Like the last-mentioned 
 church, it was originally the cathedral of the city, and was erected to 
 serve as such apparently in the time of Theodelinda, queen of the 
 Lombards. If this was so, it certainly had not originally its present 
 form, and most probably those columns which now stand ranged round 
 the walls, at that time stood in the centre, as in the Roman examples. 
 If the original roof was of wood, it was probably in two stories, like 
 that of the baptistery of Constantine, or it may have been a dome of 
 more solid materials, like that of the Sta. Costanza. 
 
 At the same time when the new cathedral was built, the older 
 edifice appears to have been remodelled both internally and externally 
 by Arnolpho da Lapo, and both its form and decoration so completely 
 changed, that it must now be considered rather as a building of the 
 13th century than of the 6th, in which it seems originally to have 
 been erected. i 
 
 ^ In this building they now show <i 
 sarcophagus of ancient date, said to be 
 that of Galla Placidia, daughter of Theo- 
 dosius. She, however, was certainly 
 
 buried at Ravenna ; but it may be of her 
 time, and in these ages it is impossible 
 to distinguish between baptisteries and 
 tombs. 
 
438 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 There can be little doubt that many other similar buildings 
 belonging to this age still exist in various parts of Italy; for it is 
 more than probable that, at a time when the city was not of sufficient 
 importance, or the congregation so numerous as to require the more 
 extended accommodation of the basilica, almost all the earlier churches 
 were circular. They either, however, have perished from lapse of 
 time, or have been so altered as to be nearly unrecognizable. We here, 
 in consequence, come again to a break in the chain of our sequence, 
 and when we again meet with any circular buildings in Italy, their 
 features are so distinctly Gothic or Byzantine, that they must be 
 classed with one or other of these modifications. The true Romanesque 
 had nearly come to an end when Alboin the 
 Lombard had made himself master of the 
 greater part of Italy about the year 575. 
 
 Before leaving this branch of the subject 
 there are two small buildings at Ravenna which 
 it is impossible to pass over, though their direct 
 bearing on the history of this subject is not so 
 apparent as it is in the case of other buildings 
 just described. 
 
 The first and earliest is the tomb of Galla 
 Placidia, now known as the church of SS. Na- 
 zario and Celso, and must have been erected 
 before the year 450. It is singular among all the tombs of that age 
 from the abandonment in it of the circular for a cruciform plan. Such 
 forms, it is true, are common in the chambers of tumuli and also among 
 the catacombs, while the church which Constantine built in Constanti- 
 nople and dedicated to the Apostles, meaning it however as a sepulchral 
 church, was something also on this plan. Notwithstanding, however, 
 these examples, this must be considered as an exceptional form, though 
 its diminutiveness (it being only 35 ft. by 30 internally) might perhaps 
 account for any caprice. Its great interest to us consists in its retain- 
 ing not only its original architectural form, but also its polychromatic 
 decorations nearly in their original state of completeness.^ The three 
 arms of the cross forming the receptacles for the three sarcophagi 
 is certainly a pleasing arrangement, but is only practicable on so small 
 a scale. Were the building larger, it would lose all appropriateness 
 as well as all effect. 
 
 Far more interesting than this — architecturally at least — is 
 the tomb of Theodoric, the Gothic king, now known as Santa Maria 
 Rotunda. The lower story is a decagon externally, enclosing a cruci- 
 form crypt. It is 45 ft. in diameter, each face being ornamented 
 
 304. Tomb .,1 Calla Placidia, 
 Kaveiina. 
 (From Quast.) No scale. 
 
 1 These are well illustrated in Quast, " Altchristlichen Bauwerke zu Ravenna.'* 
 Also by Hubsch and others. 
 
bk. 1. ch. iii. circular churches. 439 
 
 by a deep niche. These support a flat terrace, on which originally 
 stood a range of small pillars supporting arches which surrounded 
 the upper story. These have all been removed, though their form 
 can be restored from fragments found, and as shown in Woodcut 
 No. 305. On the face of the tomb itself are the sinkings for the 
 
 305. Capital of Pillars forming Peristyle round 
 Tlieodoric's Tomb. (From Hubsch.) 
 
 306. 
 
 Plan of Tomb of Theodorlc 
 Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 architraves and vaults which they supported. The most singular part 
 of the building is the roof, which is formed of one great slab, hollowed 
 out into the form of a flat dome — internally 30 ft. and externally 
 35 ft. in diameter, and which certainly 
 forms one of the most unique and ap- 
 propriate coverings for a tomb perhaps 
 anywhere to be found. Near the edge 
 are a range of false dormer windows, 
 which evidently were originally used 
 as handles, by means of which the 
 immense mass was raised to its present 
 position. In the centre of the dome is 
 a small, square pedestal, on which, it is 
 said, once stood the urn which con- 
 tained the ashes of its founder. 
 
 The model of this building seems 
 probably to have been the Mole of 
 Hadrian, which Theodoric saw, and 
 must have admired, during his celebrated visit to Rome. The polygonal 
 arrangements of the exterior, and the substitution of arcades for 
 horizontal architraves, were only such changes as the lapse of time 
 had rendered indispensable. But the building of the ancient world 
 which it most resembles is the Tour Magne at Nimes. In both cases 
 we have the polygonal basement containing a great chamber, and 
 above this externally the narrow ledge, approached by flying flights 
 of steps. We cannot now tell what crowned the French example, 
 though the fact of an urn crowning the tomb at Ravenna points to an 
 identical origin. But we must obtain a greater number of examples 
 before we can draw any positive conclusions as to the origin of such 
 forms. Meanwhile, however, whether we consider the appropriateness 
 of the forms, the solidity of its construction, or the simplicity of its 
 
 307. 
 
 Elevation of Tomb of Theodoric, 
 Ravenna. (From Isabelle, " Edi- 
 fices Circulaires.") 
 
440 
 
 ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 11. 
 
 ornaments and details, this tomb at Ravenna is not surpassed by an}- 
 building of its class and age. 
 
 Though the investigation of the early history of these circular 
 forms of churches is not so important as that of the rectangular 
 basilicas, it is extremely interesting from the influence they had on 
 the subsequent development of the style. In Italy it is probable that 
 one half of the early churches were circular in plan ; and one such is 
 still generally retained attached to each cathedral as a baptistery. 
 Except for this purpose, however, the form has generally been super- 
 seded : the rectangular being much easier to construct, more capable 
 of extension, and altogether more appropriate to the ritual of the 
 Christian community. In France the circular form was early absorbed 
 into the basilica, forming the chevet or apse. In Germany its fate 
 was much the same as in Italy, but its supersession was earlier and 
 more complete. In England some half dozen examples are known to 
 exist, and in Spain they have yet to be discovered. 
 
 Had the Gothic architects applied themselves to the extension and 
 elaboration of the circular form with the same zeal and skill as was 
 displayed in that task by their Byzantine brethren, they might prob- 
 ably have produced something far more beautiful than even the best 
 of our mediaeval cathedrals ; but when the Barbarians began to build, 
 they found the square form with its straight lines simpler and easier 
 to construct. It thus happened that, long before they became as 
 civilized and expert as the Easterns were when they commenced the 
 task, the Westerns had worked the rectangular form into one of con- 
 siderable beauty, and had adapted it to their ritual, and their ritual 
 to it. It thus became the sacred and appropriate form, and the cir- 
 cular or domical forms were consequently never allowed a fair trial 
 in Western Europe. 
 
 Secular Buildings. 
 
 Very few remains of secular buildings in the Romanesque style 
 are now to be found in Italy. The palace of Theodoric at Ravenna, 
 though sadly mutilated, is perhaps the best and most perfect. In all 
 its details it shows a close resemblance to that of Diocletian at 
 Spalatro, but more especially so to the Porta Aurea and the most 
 richly and least classically decorated parts of that edifice, but much 
 intermixed with mouldings and details belonging properly to the 
 Gothic styles, which were then on the eve of being introduced into 
 general use. 
 
 Another building, perhaps slightly more modern, is that which is 
 now called the Palazzo delle Torre at Turin, which still retains the 
 architectural ordinance of the exterior of a Roman amphitheatre, but 
 so modified by Gothic feeling that the pilasters are even more useless 
 
Bk. I. Ch. III. 
 
 SECULAR BUILDINGS. 
 
 441 
 
 and unmeaning than in its classical prototypes. In this example the 
 style is evidently beginning to feel its own strength and learning to 
 dispense with the traditional forms tliat 
 had so long governed it. In this building, 
 to whicii no more precise date can be as- 
 signed than that of the age between Jus- 
 tinian and Charlemagne, is probably seen 
 the last expiring effort of Romanesque 
 architecture in a Gothic country, though 
 the paucity of contemporary examples ren- 
 ders it extremely difficult to trace the exact 
 history of the style at tliis age. 
 
 In so progressive an art as architecture 
 it is always very difficult, sometimes impos- 
 sible, to fix the exact date when one style 
 ends and another begins. In an art so 
 pre-eminently ecclesiastical as architecture 
 was in those days, it will probably be safer 
 to look in the annals of the Church rather 
 than in those of the State for a date when 
 the Romanesque expired, giving birth, 
 Phoenix-like, to the Gothic. Viewed from 
 this point there can be little doubt but 
 that the reign of Gregory the Great (a.d. 308, 
 590 to 603) must be regarded as that in 
 which the Latin language and the Roman 
 
 style of architecture both ceased to be generally or even conimon-y 
 employed. 
 
 After this date we wander on through five centuries of tentative 
 efforts to form a new style, and in the age of another Gregory — the 
 VII. — we find at last the Gothic style emancipated from former tra- 
 ditions, and marching steadily forward with a well-defined aim. 
 What had been commenced under the gentle influence of a Theode- 
 linda at Florence in the year 600, was completed in the year 1077 
 under the firmer guidance of a Matilda at Canossa. 
 
 Palazzo delle Torre. Turin. 
 (From Osten's " Bauwerke in der 
 Lombardei.") 
 
442 
 
 FRENCH ARCPIITECTLTilE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 BOOK IL 
 
 FRANCE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Division of subject — Pointed arches — Provence — Churches at Avignon, Aries, 
 Alet, Fontifroide, Magiielone, Vienne — Circular churches — Towers — 
 Cloisters. 
 
 CHEONOLOGY. 
 
 DATES. 
 
 Charlemagne a.d. 768-813 
 
 Kollo, first Duke of Normandy ... 911 
 
 Hugh Capet 987 
 
 William II. of Normandy, or the Con- 
 queror 1055-1086 
 
 Henry I. of France 1031 
 
 Philip I., or I'Amoureux 1060 
 
 Louis Vr., or le Gros 1108 
 
 I^ouis VII., or le fleune 1137 
 
 St. Bernard of Clairvaux . . . 1091-1153 
 
 Philip II., or I'Auguste 1180 
 
 I.ouis VIII., or the Lion 1223 
 
 Louis IX., or the Saint 1226 
 
 Philip nr., the Hardy a.d. 1270 
 
 Philip IV., or the Fair 1285 
 
 Philip VI. of Valois 1328 
 
 Battle of Crecy 1346 
 
 John II., the Good 1350 
 
 Charles V., the Wise 1364 
 
 Charles VI., the Beloved 1380 
 
 Charles VII., the Victorious .... 1422 
 
 Joan of Arc 1412-1431 
 
 Louis XI 1461 
 
 Charles VIII 1483 
 
 Louis XII 1498 
 
 Francis 1 1515 
 
 TO tliose who do not look beyond tlie present, France appears to 
 be one of the most homogeneous of all the countries of Euroj^e, 
 inhabited by a people speaking one language, professing one religion, 
 governed by the same laws, and actuated by the same feelings and aspi- 
 rations; yet it certainly is not so in reality, and in the Middle Ages 
 the distinctions between the various races and peoples were strongly 
 marked and capable of easy definition. Wars, persecutions, and rev- 
 olutions have done much to obliterate these, and the long habit of 
 living under a centralized despotism has produced a superficial uni- 
 formity which hides a great deal of actual diversity. The process of 
 fusion commenced apparently about the reign of Louis the Saint 
 (a.d. 1226), and has gone on steadily ever since. Before his time 
 France was divided into six or eight great ethnographic provinces, 
 which might now be easily mapped out, though their boundaries fre- 
 quently differed widely from the political division of the land. 
 
 No systematic attempt has yet been made to construct an ethno- 
 graphic map of the country from the architectural remains, though it 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 DIVISION OF SUBJECT. 
 
 443 
 
 is easy to see how it might be done. What is wanted is that some 
 competent archaeologist should do for the ethnography of France what 
 
 309. Diagram of the Architectural Divisions of France.^ 
 
 Dr. W. Smith did at the end of the last century for the geology of 
 England. Like that early pioneer of exact knowledge in his peculiar 
 department, he must be content to wander from province to province, 
 
 ^ A small chart of the same sort has 
 been published by M. de Caumont,* 
 which, though an improvement, still 
 leaves much to be desired; but until 
 every church is examined, and every 
 typical specimen at least published, it is 
 
 * ** Ab^cMaire d' Architecture," p. 174. 
 
 impossible to mark out more than the 
 general features of the chart. Imper- 
 fect, however, as they are in this one, 
 they are still more numerous and more 
 detailed than it will be easy for us to 
 follow and to trace out in the limited 
 space of this work. ^ 
 
444 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 from village to village, visiting every church, and examining every 
 architectural remain, comparing one with another, tracing their 
 affinities, and finally classifying and mapping the whole. It is 
 probable that the labor of one man would hardly suffice for this 
 purpose. Monographs would be required to complete the task, but 
 it is one of such singular interest that it is hoped it may soon be 
 undertaken. 
 
 One of the great difficulties in attempting anything of the sort at 
 present is the nomenclature. When the science is further advanced, 
 such names as Silurian, Cambrian, etc., will no doubt be invented, but 
 at present we must be content with the political name which seems 
 most nearly to express the ethnograj)hical distribution ; though in 
 scarcely a single instance will these be found strictly correct, all in 
 consequence being open to adverse criticism. In France it frequently 
 happened that two or more ethnograpliic provinces were united under 
 one sceptre — eventually all were merged into one — and during the 
 various changes tliat took place in the Middle Ages, it M^as only by 
 accident that the political boundary exactly agreed for any great 
 length of time Avith the ethnogra])l)icah 
 
 In Germany, on the contrary, a single race is and was cut up into 
 numerous political divisions, so that it becomes, from the opposite 
 cause alone, equally difficult to apply a nomenclature which shall 
 correctly represent the facts of the case. 
 
 In such a work as this it would be manifestly absurd to attempt to 
 adjust all this with anything like minute accuracy, but the principal 
 features are so easily recognized that no great confusion can arise in 
 the application of such names as are usually employed, and it is to be 
 hoped that before long a better system of nomenclature will be 
 invented and applied. 
 
 We may rest assured of one thing, at all events, which is, that the 
 architectural remains in France are as sufficient for the construction 
 of an ethnographic map of that country as the rocks are for the com- 
 pilation of a geological survey. If the one opens out to the student 
 an immense expanse of scientific knowledge, the other is hardly of 
 less interest, though in a less extended field. There are few studies 
 more pleasing than that of tracing the history of man through his 
 works, and none bring the former condition of humanity so vividly 
 back to us as those records which have been built into the walls of 
 their temples or their palaces by those who were thus unconsciously 
 recording their feelings for the instruction of their posterity. 
 
 The first thing that strikes the student in examining architecturally 
 the map of France is the recurrence of the same phenomena as was 
 remarked in that of Italy, a division into two nearly equal halves by 
 a boundary line running east and west. In both countries, to the 
 ** southward of this line the land was occupied by a Romanesque people 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 DIVISION OF SUBJECT. 
 
 who, though conquered, were never colonized l)y the Barbarians to 
 such an extent as to alter their blood or consequently the ethnographic 
 relations of the people. North of the line the Goths and Lombards in 
 Italy, and the Franks in Gaul, settled in such numbers as to influence 
 very considerably the status of the races, in some instances almost to 
 the obliteration of their leading characteristics. 
 
 In France the boundary line follows the valley of the Loire near 
 its northern edge till it passes l)ehind Tours; it crosses that river 
 between that city and Orleans, follows a somewhat devious course to 
 Lyons, and up the valley of the Rhone to Geneva. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the two races were roughly designated as 
 those speaking the Langue d'oc and the Langue d'oeil — somewhat 
 more correctly those to the south were called Romance, ^ those to the 
 north Frankish ; but the truth is the distinction is too broad to be 
 now clearly defined, and we must descend much more into detail 
 before any satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at. 
 
 On the south of the line, one of the most beautiful as well as 
 the best defined architectural provinces is that I have ventured to 
 designate as Provence or Provenyal. Its limits are very nearly 
 coincident with those of Gallia Narbonensis, and "Narbonese " would 
 consequently be a more correct designation, and would be adopted if 
 treating of a classical style of art. It has, however, the defect of 
 including Toulouse, which does not belong to the province, and 
 consequently the name affects an accuracy it does not possess. It 
 may, therefore, be better at present to adopt the vague name of 
 the " Provence " />ar excellence, especially as Provenyal is a word 
 applied by French authors to literary matters much in the sense 
 it is here used to define an architectural division. The whole of the 
 south coast of France from the Alps to the Pyrenees belongs to 
 this province, and it extends up the valley of the Rhone as far as 
 Lyons, and is generally bounded by the hills on either on side of that 
 river. 
 
 Perhaps the best mode of defining the limits of the Aquitanian 
 province would be to say that it includes all those towns whose 
 names end with the Basque article ac, consequently indicating the 
 presence at some former period of a people sj^eaking that language 
 or something very closely allied to it, or at all events differing from 
 those of the rest of France. It is only on the eastward that the 
 line seems difficult to define. There are some towns, such as Barjac, 
 
 1 The use of this term is a little awk- 
 ward at first from its having another 
 meaning in English; it has, however, 
 long been used by English etymologists 
 to distinguish the Romance languages, 
 such as Italian, Spanish, and French, 
 
 from those of Teutonic origin, and is 
 here used in precisely the same sense as 
 applied to architecture — to those styles 
 derived from the Roman, but one de- 
 gree more removed from it than the 
 Romanesque. 
 
446 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Quissac, Gignac, in the valley of the Rhone, in situations that would 
 seem to belong to Provence, and until their churches are examined it 
 is impossible to say to which they belong. On the south Aquitania is 
 bounded by the Pyrenees, on the west by the sea, and on the north 
 by a line running nearly straight from the mouth of the Garonne to 
 Langeac, near to Le Puy en Velay. 
 
 The third is designated that of Anjou, or the Angiovine, from its 
 most distinguished province. This includes the lower pare of the 
 Loire, and is bounded on the north-east by the Cher. Between it and 
 the sea is a strip ot' land, including the Angoumois, Saintonge, and 
 Vendee, which it is not easy to know where to place. It may belong, 
 so far as we yet know, to either Aquitania or Anjou, or possibly may 
 deserve a separate title altogetlier ; but in the map it is annexed for 
 the present to Poitou or the Angiovine provmce. 
 
 In Brittany the two styles meet, and are so mixed together that it 
 is impossible to sej)arate them. In that district there is neither pure 
 Romance nor pure Frankish, but a style partaking of the peculiarities 
 of each without belonging to either. 
 
 Besides these, there is the small and secluded district of Auvergne, 
 having a style peculiarly its own, which, though certainly belonging 
 to the southern province, is easily distinguished from any of the 
 neighboring styles, and is one of the most pleasing to be found of an 
 early age in France. 
 
 Beyond this to the eastward lies the great Burgundian province, 
 jiaving a well-defined and well-marked style of its own, influenced by 
 or influencing all those around it. Its most marked characteristic is 
 what may be called a mechanical mixture of the classical and medijeval 
 styles without any real fusion. Essentially and constructively the 
 style is Gothic, but it retained the use of Corinthian pilasters and 
 classical details till late in the Middle Ages : Burgundy was also in the 
 Middle Ages the country of monasticism par excellence — a circum- 
 stance which had considerable influence on her forms of art. 
 
 Taking, then, a more general view of the Southern province, it 
 will be seen that if a line were drawn from Marseilles to Brest, it 
 Avould pass nearly through the middle of it. At the south-eastern 
 extremity of such a line we should find a style almost purely 
 Romanesque, passing by slow and equal gradations into a Gothic 
 form at its other terminal. 
 
 On turning to the Frankish province the case is somewhat differ- 
 ent. Paris is here the centre, from which everything radiates ; and 
 though the Norman invasion, and other troubles of those times, with 
 the rebuilding mania of the 13th century, have swept away nearly 
 all traces of the early buildings, still it is easy to see how the Gothic 
 style arose in the Isle of France, and how it spread from thence to all 
 the neighboring provinces. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 DIVISION OF SUBJECT. 
 
 447 
 
 In consequence, however, of the loss of its early buildings, and 
 of its subsequent pre-eminence and supercession of the earlier styles, 
 the description of its features natui'ally follows that of the subor- 
 dinate provinces, and concludes the history of the mediaeval styles in 
 France. 
 
 Not to multiply divisions, we may include in the Northern province 
 many varieties that will afterwards be marked as distinct in maps of 
 French architecture, especially at the south-east, w^here the Nivernois 
 and Bourbonnois, if not deserving of se])arate honors, at least consist 
 of such a complete mixture of the Frankish and Burgundian with the 
 Southern styles, that they cannot strictly be said to belong to any one 
 in particular, though they partake of all. The Northern, however, is 
 certainly the predominant element, and with that therefore they should 
 be classed. 
 
 "J'o the westAvard lies the architectural province of Normandy, one 
 of the mo«t vigorous offshoots of the Frankish style : and from the 
 power of the Norman dukes in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the 
 accidental circumstance of its prosperity in those centuries when 
 the rest of France was prostrate from their ravages and torn by 
 internal dissensions, the Round Gothic style shows itself here with a 
 vigor and completeness not found elsewhere. It is, however, evidently 
 only the Frankish style based remotely on Roman tradition, but which 
 the Barbarians used with a freedom and boldness which soon converted 
 it into a purely national Gothic form. This soon ripened into the 
 complete Gothic style of the 13th century, which was so admired that 
 it soon spread over the whole face of Europe, and became the type of 
 all Gothic architecture. 
 
 Alsace is not included in this enumeration, as it certainly belongs 
 architecturally to Germany. Lorraine too is more German than French, 
 and if included at all, must be so as an exceptional transitional prov- 
 ince. French Flanders belonged, in the Middle Ages, to the Belgian 
 ])rovinces behind it, and may therefore also be disregarded at present ; 
 but even after rejecting all these, enough is still left to render it diffi- 
 cult to remember and follow all the changes in style introduced by 
 these different races, and which marked not only the artistic but the 
 political state of France during the Middle Ages, when the six terri- 
 torial peers of France, the Counts of Toulouse, Aquitaine, Normandy, 
 Burgundy, Champagne, and Flanders, represented the six principal 
 provinces of the kingdom, under their suzerain, the Count or King of 
 Paris. These very divisions might now be taken to represent the 
 architectural distinctions, were it not that the pre-eminence of these 
 great princes belongs to a later epoch than the architectural divisions 
 which we have pointed out, and which we must now describe some- 
 what more at length. 
 
448 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Pointed Arches. 
 
 Before proceeding to describe these various styles in detail, it may 
 add to the clearness of what follows if the mode in which the pointed 
 arch was first introduced into Christian architecture is previously 
 explained. It has already been shown that the pointed arch with 
 radiating voussoirs was used by the Assyrians as early as the time of 
 Sargon in the 8th century b.c, and by the Ethiopians as early as that 
 of Tirhakah. The Etrurians and Pelasgi used the form probably twelve 
 centuries before the Christian era, but constructed it with horizontal 
 courses. To come nearer, however, to our own time, the Saracens cer- 
 tainly adopted it at Cairo in the first century of the Hegira, and em- 
 ployed it generally if not universally, and never apparently used a round 
 arch after the erection of the mosque of Ebn Touloun, a.d. 885. 
 
 The Romanesque traditions, however, prevented the Christians 
 from adopting it in Europe till forced to do it from constructive 
 necessities ; and the mode of its introduction into the early churches in 
 Provence renders them singularly important in enabling us to arrive 
 at a correct solution of this much mooted question. ^ 
 
 It is hardly worth while discussing whether the form was borrowed 
 from the East, where it had been used so long before it was known — 
 or at least before we are aware of its being known — in Europe. It 
 may be that the Pelasgic Greeks left examples of it in Provence, or 
 that persons trading to the Levant from Marseilles became familiar 
 Avith its uses ; or it may be, though very unlikely, that it was really 
 re-invented for the purposes to which it was a})plied. 
 
 In whatever way it was introduced, it at least seems certain that 
 all the churches of Provence, from the age of Charlemagne to that of 
 St. Louis, were vaulted, and have their vaults constructed on the 
 principle of the pointed arch. It has nevertheless long been a received 
 dogma with the antiquaries of France, as well as with those of England, 
 that the pointed arch was first introduced in the 12th century — the 
 first example being assumed to be the work of Abbot Suger at St. 
 Denis(1144-5'2), the result of which is that all who have written on 
 the subject of Proven9al architecture have felt themselves forced to 
 ascribe the age of the churches in question, or at least of their roofs, 
 a date subsequent to this period. 
 
 The use to which the Provencal architects applied the pointed arch 
 will be evident from the annexed diagram, the left-hand portion of 
 which is a section of the roof of one of the churches at Vaison. The 
 object evidently was to lay the roof or roofing-tiles directly on the 
 
 1 For the detail of the argument I 
 must refer the reader to a paper read by 
 me to the Institute of British Architects 
 on June 18th, 1849, and published in the 
 
 " Builder," and other papers of the time. 
 See also a paper read in the same place 
 in the following month (July, 1849), by 
 Sir (xardner Wilkinson. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 POINTED ARCHES. 
 
 U9 
 
 vault, as the Romans had done on their domes, and also, so far as we 
 know, on those of their therm{]e. Had they used a circular vault for 
 this purpose, it is evident, from the right-hand side of the diagram, 
 that to obtain a straight-lined roof externally, and the necessary water- 
 shed, it would have been requisite to load the centre of the vault to a 
 most dangerous extent, as at a ; whereas with the pointed arch it only 
 required the small amount of filling up shown at b, and even that 
 might have been avoided by a little contrivance if thought necessary. 
 
 310. Diagram of Vaulting. South of France, 
 
 By adopting the pointed form the weights are so distributed as to 
 ensure stability and to render the vault self-supporting. It has already 
 been observed that the Gothic architects everywhere treated their 
 vaults as mere false ceilings, covering them with a roof of wood — an 
 expedient highly objectionable in itself, and the cause of the destruc- 
 tion, by fire or from neglect, of almost all the churches we now 
 find in ruins all over Europe ; whereas, had they adhered either 
 to the Roman or Romance style of roofing, the constant upholding 
 hand of man would not have been required to protect their buildings 
 from decay. 
 
 The one obstacle in the way of the general adoption of this mode 
 of roofing was the difficulty of applying it to intersecting vaults. The 
 Romans, it is true, had conquered the difficulty ; so had the Byzantine 
 architects, as we shall hereafter see, displaying the ends of the vaults 
 as ornaments ; and even at St. Mark's, Venice, this system is adopted, 
 and with the additional advantage of the pointed arch might have 
 been carried further. Still it must be confessed that it was not easy — 
 that it required more skill in construction and a better class of masonry 
 than was then available to do this efficiently and Avell. The consequence 
 is, that all the Romance pointed vaults are simple tunnel-vaults without 
 intersections, and that the Gothic architects, when they adopted the 
 form, slurred over the difficulty by hiding the upper sides of their 
 vaults beneath a temporary wooden roof, which protected them from 
 the injuries of the weather. This certainly was one of the greatest 
 VOL. I. — 29 
 
450 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. Part II. 
 
 mistakes they made : had they carefully profiled and ornamented the 
 exterior of the stone roofs in the same manner as they ornamented 
 the inside, their buildings would have been not only much more 
 beautiful, but much more permanent, and the style would have been 
 saved from the principal falsity that now deforms it. Even as it is, if 
 we wished intelligently to adapt the Gothic to our purposes, instead 
 of merely co})ying it, this is one of the points to which we ought first 
 to turn our attention. 
 
 Another circumstance which may be alluded to here, when speak- 
 ing on this subject, which led to the adoption of the pointed arch at 
 an early age in the southern provinces of France, was the use of domes 
 as a roofing expedient. These, it is true, are not found in Provence, 
 but they are common in Aquitaine and Anjou — some of them certainly 
 of the 11th century ; and there can be little doubt but that these are 
 not the earliest, though their predecessors have perished or have not 
 yet been brought to light. 
 
 There is no one who has studied this subject who is not aware how 
 excellent, as a constructive expedient, the pointed arch is as applied to 
 intersecting vaults, but it is not so generally understood why it was 
 equally necessary in the construction of domes. So long as these 
 rested on drums rising from the ground the circular form sufficed ; but 
 when it became necessary to rest them on pendentives in the angles 
 of square or octagonal buildings, the case was widely different. The 
 early Byzantine architects — in Sta. Sophia for instance — did fit pen- 
 dentives to circular arches, but it was with extreme difficulty, and 
 required very great skill both in setting out and in execution. But 
 the superiority of the pointed form was perceived at an early date ; 
 and the Saracens, who were trammelled by no traditions, adopted 
 it at once as a doming expedient and adhered to it as exclusively as 
 the Gothic architects did in the construction of their vaults — and 
 for the same reason — simply because it was the best mode of con- 
 struction. 
 
 It is easy to explain why this should be so. In the annexed 
 diagram, fig. 1 represents the pendentives of a dome resting on circular 
 
 311. Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 
 
 arches. At a they become evanescent, and for some distance from the 
 centre are so weak that it is only by concealed construction that they 
 can be made to do their work. When the pointed arch is introduced, 
 as in fig. 2, not only is great freedom obtained in spacing, but the 
 whole becomes constructively correct ; when, as in fig. 3, an octagonal 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 POINTED ARCHES. 
 
 451 
 
 arrangement is adopted, the whole becomes still more simple and easy, 
 and very little adjustment is required to lit a dome to an octagon ; and 
 if the angles are again cut off, so as to form a polygon of 16 sides, all 
 the exigencies of construction are satisfied. 
 
 At St. Front Perigeux, at Moissac, and at Loches, we find the 
 pointed arch, introduced evidently for this purpose, and forming a class 
 of roofs more like those of mosques in Cairo than any other buildings in 
 Europe. It is true they now look bare and formal — their decorations 
 having been originally painted on stucco, which has peeled off ; but 
 still the variety of form and perspective they afford internally, andtlie 
 character and truthfulness they give to the roof as seen from without, 
 are such advantages that we cannot but regret that tliese two ex])e- 
 dients of stone external roofs and domes were not ado})ted in Gothic. 
 Had the great architects of that style in the 13th century carried out 
 these with their characteristic zeal and earnestness, they might have 
 left us a style in every respect infinitely more perfect and beau- 
 tiful than the one they invented, and which we are copying so servilely, 
 instead of trying, with our knowdedge and means of construction, to 
 repair the errors and omissions of our forefathers, and out of the 
 inheritance they have left us to work out something more beautiful 
 and more worthy of our greater refinement and more advanced civil i- 
 ization. 
 
 The practice of the Greeks in respect to their roofs was a curious 
 contrast to that of the Mediaeval architect. Their architecture, as 
 before remarked, being essentially external, while that of the Middle 
 Ages, was internal, they placed the stone of their roof on the outside, 
 and took the utmost pains to arrange the covering ornamentally ; but 
 they supported all this on a framework of wood, which in every 
 instance has perished. It is difficult to say which was the greater 
 mistake of the two. Both were wa-ong without doubt. The happy 
 medium seems to be that which the Romance architects aimed at — a 
 complete homogeneous roof, made of the most durable materials and 
 ornamented, both externally and internally ; and there can be little 
 doubt but that this is the only legitimate and really artistic mode of 
 effecting this purpose, and the one to which attention should now be 
 turned.^ 
 
 This early mode of employing the pointed arch is so little under- 
 stood generally that, before leaving this branch of the subject, it may 
 be well to quote one other example with a perfectly authentic date. 
 
 The Church of St. Nazaire at Carcassone was dedicated by Pope 
 
 1 The Scotch and Irish Celts seem to 
 have had a conception of this truth, and 
 in botli tliese countries we find some 
 bold attempts at true stone roofs: the 
 
 influence, however, of the Gothic races 
 overpowered tliem, and the mixed roof 
 became universal. 
 
452 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Urban II. in 1096. It was not then quite complete, but there seems 
 no doubt but that the nave, as we now find it, was finished by the year 
 1100. As will be seen from the annexed section, the side-aisles and all 
 the openings are constructed with round arches ; but the difficulty of 
 vaulting the nave forced on the architects the introduction of the 
 pointed arch. It is here constructed solid, with flat ribs over each 
 pillar, and without any attempt to pierce it for the introduction of 
 light ; and as the west end is blocked up — fortified in fact — the result 
 is gloomy enough. 
 
 This example is also interesting when looked at from another point 
 •of view. If we turn back to Woodcuts Nos. 188 and 189, and compare 
 ithem.with this section, we shall be able to gauge exactly the changes 
 
 312. Section of Church at Carcassone, with the outer Aisles added in the 14th Century. 
 
 No scale. 
 
 which were introduced, and the progress that was made, during the 
 1000 years that elapsed between the erection of these two buildings. 
 In the plan of the Temple of Diana at Nimes, we have the same three- 
 aisled arrangement as at Carcassone. Their dimensions are not very 
 dissimilar; the nave at Mmes is 27 ft. wide, the aisles 7|- ft. in the 
 clear. At Carcassone th^s becomes 25 ft. and 10 ft. respectively. The 
 aisles are in the early e^:amples separated from the nave by screen 
 walls, adorned with pillars which are mere ornaments. In the later 
 example the pillars have become the main support of the roof, the wall 
 being omitted between them. 
 
 The roof of the nave in both instances is adorned with flat ribs, one 
 over each pillar ; but at Nimes the rib is rather wider than the space 
 between. At Carcassone the rib occupies only one fourth of the 
 width of the bay. One of their most striking differences is, that Nimes 
 ■displays all that megalithic grandeur for which the works of the 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 PROVENCE. 
 
 453 
 
 Romans were so remarkable ; while at Carcassone the masonry is little 
 better than rubble. It need hardly be added that the temj)le displays 
 an elegance of detail which charms the most fastidious taste, while 
 the decoration of the church is rude and fantastic, though no doubt 
 picturesque and appropriate. The last remark must not, however, be 
 understood as a reproach to Gothic art, for the choir of this very church, 
 and the two outer arches shown in the woodcut No. 312, were rebuilt 
 in the year 1331, with an elegance of detail which, in a constructive 
 sense, would shame the best classical examples. The nave is a tentative 
 example of a rude age, when men were inventing, or trying to invent, 
 a new style, and before they quite knew how to set about it. The 
 biulders of Carcassone had this temple at Nimes standing, probably 
 much more complete than it is now, within 120 miles of them, and 
 they were attempting to copy it as best they could. It is probable, 
 however, they had also other models besides this one, and certain that 
 this was not the first attempt to reproduce them. The differences are 
 considerable ; but the similarities are so great that we ought rather to 
 be astonished that ten centuries of experience and effort had not shown 
 more progress than we find. 
 
 Provence. 
 
 There are few chapters in the history of mediaeval architecture 
 which it would be more desirable to have fully and carefully Avritten 
 than that of the style of Provence from the retirement of the Romans 
 to the accession of the Franks. This country, from various causes, 
 retained more of its former civilization through the dark ages than 
 any other, at least on this side of the Alps. Such a history, however, 
 is to be desired more in an archaeological than in an architectural point 
 of view ; for the Provencal churches, compared with the true Gothic, 
 though numerous and elegant, are small, and most of them have 
 undergone such alterations as to j^revent us from judging correctly of 
 tlieir original effect. 
 
 Among the Proven9al churches, one of the most remarkable is 
 Xotre Dame de Doms, the cathedral at Avignon (Woodcut No. 313). 
 Like all the others, its dimensions are small, as compared with those in 
 the northern province, as it is only 200 ft. in length, and the nave about 
 20 ft. in width. The side-aisles have been so altered and rebuilt, that 
 it is difficult to say what their plan and dimensions originally may 
 have been. 
 
 The most remarkable feature and the least altered is the porch, 
 which is so purely Romanesque that it might almost be said to be 
 copied from such examples as the arches on the bridge of Chamas 
 (Woodcut No. 220). It presents, however, all that attenuation of the 
 horizontal features which is characteristic of the Lower Empire, and 
 
454 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 cannot rank higher than the Carlovingian era ; though it is not quite 
 so easy to determine how much more modern it may be. The same 
 ornaments are found in the interior, and being integral parts of the 
 ornamentation of the pointed roof, have led to various theories to 
 account for this copying of classical details after the period at which 
 it was assumed that the pointed arch had been introduced. It has 
 been sufficiently explained above, how early this was the case as a 
 
 313. Porch of Notre Dame de Doms, Avignon. (From Laborde's " Monuments de la France.") 
 
 vaulting expedient in this quarter ; and that difficulty being removed, 
 we may safely ascribe the whole of the essential parts of this church 
 to a period not long, if at all, subsequent to the age of Charlemagne. 
 
 Next perhaps in importance to this, is the church of St. Trophime 
 at Aries, the nave of which, with its pointed vault, probably belongs 
 to the same age, though its porch (Woodcut No. 314), instead of being 
 the earliest part, as in the last instance, is here the most modern, 
 having been erected in the 11th century, when the church to which it 
 is attached acquired additional celebrity by the translation of the body 
 of St. Trophime to a final resting-place within its walls. As it is, it 
 forms a curious and interesting pendent to the one last quoted, showing 
 how in the course of two centuries the style had passed from debased 
 Roman to a purely native form, still retaining a strong tradition of 
 its origin, but so used and so ornamented that, were we not able to 
 
Bk. II. Ch. L 
 
 PROVENCE. 
 
 455 
 
 trace back the steps one by one by which the porch at Avignon led 
 to that of Aries, we might almost be inclined to doubt the succession. 
 
 Porch of St. Trophiiiie, Aries. (From Cliapuy, " Moyen Age Monumental.") 
 
 The porches at Aix, Cuxa, Coustonges, Prades, Valcabre, Tarascon, 
 and elsewhere in this province, form a series of singular interest, and 
 of great beauty of detail mixed with all the rich exuberance of our own 
 Norman doorways, and follow one another by such easy gradations 
 that the relative age of each may easily be determined. 
 
 The culminating example is that at St. Gilles, near the mouths of 
 the Rhone, w^hich is by far the most elaborate church of its class, but 
 so classical in many of its details, that it probably is somewhat earlier 
 than this one at Aries, which it resembles in many respects, though 
 far exceeding it in magnificence. It consists of three such porches 
 placed side by side, and connected together by colonnades — if they 
 may be so called — and sculpture of the richest class, forming altogether 
 a frontal decoration unsurpassed, except in the northern churches of 
 the 13th century. Such porches, however, as those of Rheims, Amiens,, 
 and Chartres, surpass even these in elaborate richness and in dimeii* 
 sions, though it may be questioned if they are really more beautiful in 
 design 
 
456 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 r*AUT II. 
 
 Tliere is another clmrcli of tlie Carlovingian era at Orange, and one 
 at Nimes, probably belonging to the 9th or 10th century ; both hovv- 
 e vei- very much inj ured by alterations and repairs. In the now deserted 
 city of Vaison there are two churches, so classical in their style, that 
 we are not surprised at M. Laborde, i and the French antiquaries in 
 general, classing them as remains of the classical period. In any 
 other country on this side of the Alps such an inference would be in- 
 evitable; but here another code of criticism must be applied to them. 
 The oldest, the chapel of St. Quinide, belongs probably to the 9th or 
 
 315. Apse of Church at Alet. (From Taylor and Nodier, " Voyages dans I'Ancienne France.") 
 
 10th century. It is small, but remarkably elegant and classical in the 
 style of its architecture. The apse is the most singular as well as the 
 most ancient part of the church, and is formed in a manner of which 
 no other example is found anywhere else, so far as I know. Exter- 
 nally it is two sides of a square, internally a semi-circle ; at each angle 
 of the exterior and in each face is a pilaster, fairly imitated from the 
 Corinthian order, and supporting an entablature that might very well 
 mislead a Northern antiquary into the error of supposing it was a 
 Pagan temple. 
 
 The cathedral, though larger, is more Gothic both in plan and 
 
 1 Laborde, Monuments de la France," vol. i. p. 92. plates cxv. and cxvi 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 mOVP^NCE. 
 
 457 
 
 detail, though not without some classical features, and is entirely fi'ce 
 from the bold rudeness of style we are so accustomed to associate witli 
 the architecture of the 11th century, to which it belongs. Its system 
 of vaulting has already been explained (Woodcut No. 810), but neither 
 of these buildings has yet met with the attention they so richly merit 
 from those who are desirous of tracing the progress of art from the 
 decline of the pure Roman to the rise of the true Gothic styles. 
 
 Taking it altogether, perhaps the most elegant specimen of the 
 style is the ruined — now, I fear, nearly destroyed — churcli of Alet, 
 which, though belong- 
 ing to the 11 til century, 
 was singularly classical 
 in its details, and won- 
 derfully elegant in every 
 ])art of its design. Of 
 this the a|>se, as having 
 undergone no subse- 
 quent transformation, 
 was by far the most in- 
 teresting, though not 
 the most beautiful por- 
 tion. Externally the 
 upper part was adorned 
 with dwarf Corintliian 
 pilasters, surmounted 
 by a cornice that would 
 not discredit the build- 
 ings of Diocletian at 
 Spalatro ; the lower part 
 was ornamented by 
 forms of more Medic^e val 
 character, but of scarce- 
 ly less elegance. In the sic. internal Angle of Apse at Alet. (From Taylor and 
 
 interior the triumphal ^^^'^ 
 arch, as it would be called in a Roman basilica, is adorned by two 
 Corinthian pillars, designed with the bold freedom of the age, though 
 retaining the classical forms in a most unexpected degree. 
 
 The rest of the cliurch is as elegant as these parts, though far less 
 classical, the necessities of vaulting and construction requiring a dif- 
 ferent mode of treatment, and a departure from conventional forms, 
 which the architect does not seem to have considered himself at lib- 
 erty to employ in the apse. 
 
 Another singularly elegant specimen of this style is the cliurch of 
 St. Paul au Trois Chateaux, near Avignon (Woodcuts Nos. 317, 318). 
 Its details are so eles^ant and so classical that it mig^ht almost be 
 
458 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Tart II. 
 
 mistaken for a building of the Lower Empire anterior to Justinian's 
 time. Its plan, however, and the details of its construction, prove that it 
 belongs to a much more modern date ; Yiollet le Due would even bring 
 
 it down as low as the 12th cen- 
 
 ' -------^ tury. It hardly seems possible 
 
 that it should be so modern as 
 this ; but the truth is, the whole 
 history of the Romance style 
 in this province has still to be 
 written. It has not yet been 
 examined with the care it de- 
 serves by any competent author- 
 ity, and till it is we must be con- 
 tent with the knowledge that, in 
 I he neighborhood of the Bouches 
 du Iwhone, there exists a group 
 of churches whieli, drawing 
 their inspiration from the clas- 
 sical remains with which the 
 (country is studded, exhibit an^ 
 elegance of design as exquisite 
 as it is in strange contrast with 
 the rude vigor — almost vul- 
 garity — which characterized' 
 the works of the Normans in 
 the opposite corner of the land 
 at the same period. 
 
 Passing from the round-arched 
 to the pointed modifications of 
 this style, the church at Fonti- 
 froide, near Narbonne, shows it 
 in its completeness, perhaps 
 better than any other example. 
 There not only the roof is 
 pointed, but all the constructive 
 openings have assumed the 
 same forms. The windows and 
 doorways, it is true, still retain 
 their circular heads, and did 
 retain them as long as the native 
 style flourished — the pointed^ 
 headed opening being only introduced by the Franks when they 
 occupied this country in the time of Simon de Montfort. 
 
 The section across the nave (Woodcut 319) shows the form of the 
 central vault, which the longitudinal section shows to be a plain 
 
 317. Klevatiou of half one Bay of the Exterior of 
 St. Paxil au Trois Chateaux. 
 
 318. Half Bay of Interior of St. Paul au Trois 
 Chateaux. (From the " Archives des 
 Monuments Historiques.") 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 PROVENCE. 
 
 459 
 
 tunnel-vault unbroken by any intersection througliout the whole 
 length of the nave. The side-aisles are roofed with half vaults, form- 
 ing abutments to the central arches — the advantage of this construc- 
 tion being, as before explained, that the tiles or paving-stones of the 
 roof rest directly on the vault without tlio intervention of any car- 
 pentry. Internally also the building displays much elegant simplicity 
 and constructive propriety. Its chief defect is the darkness of the 
 vault from tlie absence of a clerestory, which, though tolerable in the 
 bright sunshine of the South, could not be borne in the more gloomy 
 North. It was to correct this, as we shall afterwards ])erccive, that 
 in the North the roof of the aisles was first raised to the height of that 
 of the central nave, light being admitted through a gallery. Next 
 the upper roof the aisles were cut away, with the exception of mere 
 
 .'US). Longitudinal and Cross Section of Fontifroide Church. (From Taylor and Nodier.) 
 
 strips or ribs left as flying buttresses. Lastly, the central vault was 
 cut up by intersections, so as to obtain space for windows to the very 
 height of the ridge. It was tliis last expedient that necessitated the 
 adoption of the pointed-headed window. It might never have been 
 introduced but for the invention of painted glass, but this requiring 
 larger openings, compelled the architects to bring these windows close 
 up to the lines of the constructive vaulting, and so follow its forms. 
 In the South, however, painted glass never was, at least in the age of 
 which we are now speaking, a favorite mode of decoration, and the 
 windows remained so small as never to approach or interfere in any 
 way with the lines of the vault, and they therefore retained their 
 national and more beautiful circular-headed termination. The modes 
 of introducing light are, however, undoubtedly the most defective part 
 of the arrangements of the Provengal churches, and have given rise 
 to its being called a " cavern-like Gothic," i from the gloom of their 
 
 1 Wood's "Letters of an Architect," vol. i. 163. 
 
460 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part H. 
 
 interiors as compared with the glass walls of their Northern rivals. 
 Still it by no means follows that this was an inherent characteristic of 
 the style, which could not have been remedied by further experience ; 
 but it is probable that no ingenuity would over have enabled this 
 style to display these enormous surfaces of painted glass, the intro- 
 duction of which was, if not the only, at least the principal motive of 
 all those changes which took place in the Frankish provinces. 
 
 It w^ould be tedious to nttem])t to describe the numerous churches 
 of the lltli and 12th centuries which are found in every considerable 
 
 town in this province : some 
 of them, however, such as Elne, 
 St. Guillcm ]o Desert, St. Martin 
 de Landres, Vignogoul, Val- 
 magne, Lodeve, etc., deserve 
 particular attention, as exem])li- 
 fying this style, not only in its 
 earlier forms, but after it had 
 passed into a pointed style, 
 though differing very consider- 
 ably from that of the North. 
 Among these there is no church 
 more interesting than the old 
 ft)rtalice-like church of Mngue- 
 lone, which, from its exposed 
 situation, open to the attacks 
 of Saracenic corsairs as well as 
 Christian robbers, looks moi-e 
 like a baronial castle than a 
 
 320. Doorway in Church at Magueloiie. (From peaceful church. One of its 
 Reiiouvier, " Monuments de Bas Languedoc") ^ 
 
 doorways shows a curious ad- 
 mixture of classical, Saracenic, and Gothic taste, which could only 
 be found here; and as it bears a date (1178), it makes an epoch in the 
 style to which it belongs. 
 
 Had it been completed, the church of St. Gilles would perhaps 
 have been the most splendid of the province. Its portal has already 
 been spoken of, and is certainly without a rival ; and the lower church, 
 wdiich belongs to the 11th century, is worthy of its magnificence. It 
 was, however, either never finished, or was subsequently ruined along 
 with the upper church, which was commenced in the year 1116 by 
 Raymond lY., Co ant of St. Gilles. This too was probably never com- 
 pleted, or, if it was, it was ruined in the wars with the Huguenots. 
 Even in its present state, and though wanting the richness of the 
 
 1 These are all illustrated more or less completely by Renouvier, " Monuments 
 de Bas Languedoc," Montpelier, 1840. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 PROVENCE. 
 
 461 
 
 earlier examples, it perhaps surpasses them all in the excellence of its 
 masonry, and the architectural propriety of all its jiarts. 
 
 Besides these, there is an important church at Valence of the 11th 
 century, which seems to be an almost expiring effort of the " cavern- 
 like " style. In other respects it resembles the Xorthern styles so 
 much as almost to remove it from the rroven9al class. This is even 
 more true of the cathedral at Vienne, which is nevertheless the largest 
 and finest of the churches of Provence, but which approaches, both in 
 style and locality, very closely to the Burgundian churches. 
 
 Its plan is extremely simple, having no transept and no aisle trend- 
 ing round the apse, as is the case with most of the Northern churches. 
 It consists of three aisles, the central one 
 35 ft. wide between the piers, the others 
 14 ft. The buttresses are internal, as 
 was usual in the South, forming chapels, 
 and making up the whole width exter- 
 nally to 118 ft. by a length over all of 
 300, so that it covers somewhere about 
 30,000 sq. ft. This is only half the di- 
 mensions of some of the great ISTorthern 
 cathedrals, l)ut the absence of transepts, 
 and its generally judicious proportions, 
 make this church look much larger than 
 it really is. 
 
 The west front and the three western 
 bays are of the 16tli century ; the next 
 seven are of an early style of pointed 
 architecture, with semi-Roman pilasters 
 which will be described in s|)eaking of 
 Burgundian architecture, and which be- 
 long probably to the 11th or beginning 
 of the 12th century. The aj)se is ascribed 
 to the year 952, but there are no drawings 
 
 on wliich sufficient dependence can be ])laced to determine the date. 
 
 Besides this, there is another church, vSt. Andre le Bas at Vienne, 
 belonging to the 11th century, whose tower is one of the most pleasing 
 instances of this kind of composition in the province, and though 
 evidently a lineal descendant of the Roman and Italian campaniles, 
 displays an amount of design seldom met with beyond the Alps. 
 
 321. ('atli<Mli;il. \ 
 
 From ^^ le- 
 100 U. to 1 111. 
 
 CiKCULAR Churches. 
 
 The round shape seems never to have been a favorite for sacred 
 buildings in Provence, and consequently was never worked into the 
 apses of the churches nor became an imj^ortant adjunct to them. One 
 
462 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part H. 
 
 322. Plan of Church at Phmes. 
 (From Taylor and Nodier.) 
 
 of the few examples found is a small baptistery attached to the cathe- 
 dral at Aix, either very ancient or built with ancient materials, and 
 
 now painfully modernized. At Riez there 
 is a circular detached baptistery, usually, 
 like the churches at Vaison, called a pagan 
 temple, but evidently of Christian origin, 
 tliough the pillars in the interior seem un- 
 doubtedly to have been borrowed from 
 some more ancient and classical edifice. But 
 the finest of its class is the church at Rieux, 
 probably of the 11th century. Internally the 
 \'dn]t is supported by 4 piers and 3 pillars, 
 producing an irregularity far from pleas- 
 ing, and without any apparent motive. 
 At Planes is another church the plan of which deserves to l)e quoted, 
 if not for its merit, at least for its singularity : it is a triangle with an 
 
 apse attached to each side, and sup- 
 porting a circular part terminating 
 in a ])lain roof. As a constructive 
 puzzle it is curious, but it is doubtful 
 how far any legitimate use could be 
 made of such a ccq^riccio. 
 
 There is, so far as I know, only 
 one triapsal church, that of St. Croix 
 at Mont Majour near Aries. Built as 
 a sepulchral chapel, it is a singularly 
 gloomy but appropriate erection ; but 
 it is too tall and too bare to rank 
 high as a building even for such a 
 purpose. 
 
 Towers. 
 
 Provence is far from being rich 
 in towers, which never seem there 
 to have been favorite forms of arch- 
 itectural display. That of St. Andre 
 le Bas at Vienne has already been 
 alluded to, but this at Puissaiicon 
 (Woodcut No. 232) near Beziers is 
 even mare typical of the style, and 
 standing as it now does in solitary 
 grandeur among the ruins of the 
 church once attached to it, has a 
 dignity seldom possessed by such monuments. In style it resembles 
 the towers of Italy more than any found farther north, but it is not 
 
 323. Tower at Puissaiicon. (From 
 Ketiouvier.) 
 
Bk. II. Ch. I. 
 
 PROVENCE. 
 
 463 
 
 without peculiarities that point to a different mode of elaborating this 
 peculiar feature from anything found elsewhere. As a design its 
 principal defect seems to be a want of lightness in the upper story. 
 The single circular opening there is a mistake in a building gradually 
 growing lighter towards its summit. 
 
 These towers were very seldom, if ever, attached symmetrically to 
 the churches. When height was made an object, it was more fre- 
 (juently attained by carrying up the dome at the intersection of the 
 clioir with the nave. At Aries this is done by a lieavy square tower, 
 gradually diminishing, but still massive to the top ; but in most in- 
 stances the square becomes an octagon, and this again passes into a 
 
 324. Church at Cruas. (From Taylor and Nodier.) 
 
 circle which terminates the composition. One of the best specimens 
 of this class of domes, if they may be so called, is the church of Cruas 
 (Woodcut No. 324), where these parts are pleasingly subordinated, 
 and form, with the apses on which they rest, a very beautiful com- 
 position. The defect is the tiled roofs or offsets at the junction of 
 the various stories, which give an appearance of weakness, as if the 
 upper parts could slide, like the joints of a telescope, one into the 
 other. This could easily be avoided, and probably was so in the orig- 
 inal design. If this were done, we have here the principle of a more 
 pleasing crowning member at an intersection than was afterwards 
 used in pointed architecture, and capable of being applied to domes 
 of any extent. 
 
464 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Cloisters. 
 
 Nearly all, and certainly all the more important churches of which 
 we have been speaking, were collegiate, and in such establishments 
 the cloister forms as important a part as the church itself, and fre- 
 quently the more beautiful object of the two. In our own cold wet 
 climate the cloisters lose much of their appropriateness; still they 
 
 always were used, and 
 always with a pleasing 
 effect ; but in the warm 
 sunny South their 
 charm is increased ten- 
 fold. The artists seem 
 to have felt this, and to 
 have devoted a large 
 share of their attention 
 to these objects — cre- 
 ating in fact anew style 
 of architecture for this 
 special purpose. 
 
 With us the arcades 
 of a cloister are gener- 
 ally, if not always a 
 range of unglazed win- 
 dows, presenting the 
 same features as those 
 of the church, which, 
 though beautiful when 
 filled with glass, are 
 somewhat out of place 
 without that indispen- 
 sable adjunct. In the 
 South the cloister is 
 never a window, or any- 
 thing in the least ap- 
 proaching to it in de- 
 sign, but a range of small and elegant ])illars, sometimes single, some- 
 times coupled, generally alternately so, and supporting arches of light 
 and elegant design, all the features being of a character suited to the 
 place where they are used, and to that only. 
 
 The cloister at Aries has long occupied the attention of travellers 
 and artists, and perhaps no building, or part of one, in this style has 
 been so often drawn or so much admired. Two sides of it are of the 
 same age and in the same style as the porch (Woodcut No. 314), and 
 equally beautiful. The other two are somewhat later, the columns 
 
 325. Cloister at Foiitifroido, (From Taylor and Nodier.) 
 
Bk. 11. Ch. I. 
 
 PROVENCE. 
 
 465 
 
 supporting pointed instead of round arclies. At Aix tliere is anothei% 
 similar to that at Aries, and fi-agnionts of such colonnades are found 
 in many places. That of Fontifroide (Woodcut No. 825) is one of the 
 most complete and perfect, and some of its capitals are treated with a 
 freedom and boldness, and at the same time with an elegance, not 
 often rivalled anywhere. They even excel — for the purpose at least 
 — • the German capitals of the same age. Those at Elne are more 
 curious than those of any other cloister in France, so far as I know 
 — some of them showing so distinct an imitation of Egy])tian work as 
 instantly to strike any one at all familiar witli that style. Yet they 
 are treated with a lightness and freedom so wholly mediaeval as to 
 show that it is possible to copy the spirit without a servile adherence 
 to the form. Here, as in all the examples, every capital is different 
 — the artists revelling in freedom from restraint, and si)aring neither 
 time nor pains. We tind in these examples a delicacy of handling 
 and refinement of feeling far more characteristic of the South than of 
 the ruder North, and must admit that their architects have in these 
 cloisters produced objects with which nothing of the kind we have in 
 England can compete. 
 
 VOL. I. — 30 
 
466 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 AQUITANIA. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Churches at Perigeiix, Souillac, Angoiileme, Alby, Toulouse, Conques, 
 Tours. — Tombs. 
 
 npHE moment you pass the hills forming the watershed between the 
 
 rivers flowing to the Mediter- 
 ranean and those which de- 
 bouch into the Bay of Biscay, 
 you become aware of having 
 left the style we have just 
 been describing to enter upon 
 a new architectural ])rovince. 
 This province i)ossesses two 
 distinct and separate styles, 
 very unlike one another both 
 in character and detail. The 
 flrstof these is a round arched 
 tunnel-vaulted Gothic style, 
 more remarkable for the 
 grandeur of its conceptions 
 than for the success with 
 which those conceptions are 
 carried out, or for beauty 
 of detail. The second is a 
 pointed-arched, dome-roofed 
 style peculiar to the province. 
 The existence of this peculiar 
 form of art in this part of 
 France, where it is alone 
 found, is quite suflicient to 
 establish the pre-existence in 
 this province of a race differ- 
 ing from that inhabiting the 
 rest of the country, though 
 it is not at present easy to 
 determine their origin. From the prevalence of Basque terminations 
 to the names of the principal towns in the district, and from the 
 
 Plan of St. Front, Perigeux. (From F. de 
 Verneilh, "Architecture Byzantine en 
 France.") Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
JiK. II. Ch. II. 
 
 AQUITANIA. 
 
 467 
 
 fragments of that people still existing on its southern frontier, it 
 would appear most likely that they were the influencing race. If so, 
 their love of domes would be almost sufficient to establish their claim 
 to a Turanian origin, for though domes are found, no doubt, farther 
 north, it is in a modified form. These phenomena are, however, 
 sufficient to induce us to include for the present in the province of 
 Aquitaine the doubtful districts of the Angoumois and Vendee, though 
 it is possible that these provinces may eventually turn out to belong 
 more properly to Anjou. 
 
 In describing them, it may be convenient to take the domical 
 style first, as its history 
 — w:ith one or two excep- 
 tional examples in the 
 neighboring provinces 
 — begins and ends here. 
 It will, no doubt, be 
 found beyond the Pyre- 
 nees so soon as it is look- 
 ed for; but in a country 
 whose architecture has 
 been so imperfectly in- 
 vestigated as has been 
 the case in Spain, fifty 
 different styles might 
 exist without our being 
 cognizant of the fact. 
 
 The principal and 
 best preserved example 
 of the domical style of 
 Aquitaine is the church 
 of St. Front, Perigeux. 
 As will be seen from the 
 woodcut No. 328, its 
 plan is that of a Greek 
 cross, 182 ft. each way 
 internally, exclusive of 
 the apse, which is com- 
 paratively modern, and 
 of the ante-church and 
 
 porch, shaded darker, extending 150 ft. farther west, which are the 
 remains of an older church, now very much mutilated, and to which 
 the domical church appears to have been added in the 11th century. 
 
 Both in plan and dimensions, it will be observed that this church- 
 bears an extraordinary and striking resemblance to that of St. Mark's, 
 Venice, illustrated further on. The latter church, however, has the 
 
 320. Part of St. Front, Perigeux. (From Venieilh.) 
 
468 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 angles so filled up as to reduce it to the more usual Greek form of a 
 square, while its front and lateral porches are additions of a magnifi- 
 cence to which the church of St. Front can lay no claim. The five 
 cupolas are of nearly the same size, and are similarly placed, in both 
 churches ; and the general similarity of arrangement points certainly 
 to an identity of origin. Both too would seem to be of about the 
 same age, as there is no reason to doubt the data on which M. Felix de 
 Verneilh i arrives at the conclusion that the church we now see was 
 erected in the very beginning of the lltli century. There is, however, 
 one striking difference — that all the constructive arches in St. Front 
 are pointed, while those of St. Mark's are round. The form too of the 
 cupolas differs ; and in St. Front the piers that support the domes, 
 having been found too weak, have been cased to strengthen them, 
 which gives them an awkAvard appearance, from which St. Mark's is 
 free. The difference that would strike a traveller most is, that St. 
 Mark's retains its frescoes and decorations, while St. Front, like almost 
 all the churches of its age, presents notliing now but naked bare 
 walls, though there cannot be a doubt that it was originally painted. 
 This indeed was the legitimate and appropriate mode of decoration of 
 all the churches of this age, till it was in a great measure superseded 
 by the invention of painted glass. 
 
 The cupolas are at the ])resent day covered with a wooden roof ; 
 but their original api)earance is rejiresented with tolerable correctness 
 in the woodcut No. 329, which, though not so graceful as Eastern 
 domes usually are, are still a far more picturesque and permanent 
 finishing for a roof than the wooden structures of the more Northern 
 races. Its present internal appearance, from the causes above men- 
 tioned, is singularly bare and gloomy, and no doubt utterly unworthy 
 of its pristine splendor. 
 
 The tower stands at the intersection between the old and new 
 churches, and its lower part at least is so classical in its details, 
 that it more probably belongs to the older Latin church than to 
 the domical one. Its upper part seems to have been added, and its 
 foundation strengthened, at the time the eastern part was built. 
 
 St. Front is perliaps the only existing specimen of a perfect Greek 
 cross church with cupolas. That of Souillac is a good example of a 
 modification of a form nearly shnilar, except that the cupola forming 
 the eastern branch is here transferred to the western, making it thus a 
 Latin instead of a Greek cross, which is certainly an improvement, as 
 the principal space and magnificence is thus concentrated about the 
 high altar, which is, or should be, the culminating point of effect. 
 An opinion may be formed of its internal appearance, and indeed of 
 all the churches of this style, from the view (Woodcut No. 330), 
 
 1 "Journal Archeologique," de M. Didroii, vol. xi. p. 88 et seq. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IL 
 
 AQUITANIA. 
 
 469 
 
 which ill reality gives it mucli more the appearance of tlie interior 
 of a mosque in Cairo than of a Cliristian chnrch of tlie Middle 
 Ages. The building is not large, being only 205 ft. in length 
 internally, including the porch, and 110 across the transepts. Its 
 age is not accurately known, nnti(piaries having insisted on placing 
 it in the 12th century on account of its pointed arches, whereas 
 the probability rather seems to be that it belongs to the llth 
 century. 
 
 330. Interior of Church at Souillac. (From Taylor and Nodier.) 
 
 The cathedral at Angouleme (Woodcut No. 331) is another and 
 still more extended example of this class, having three domes in the 
 nave; the first with the facade belonging certainly to the llth, thts 
 rest to the 12th century. The form of these domes, with the arrange- 
 ment of the side walls, will be understood from the Woodcut No. 332, 
 The method adopted in this church may be considered as typical of 
 
470 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 331. Plan of Cathedral at Aiiffouleme. 
 (From Verneilh.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 all this class ; and, except in the mode of lighting the upper part, 
 is by no means inferior in architectural effect to the intersecting 
 vaults of after ages. The transepts here are shortened internally 
 so as only to give room for two small lateral chapels ; but exter- 
 nally they are made very imposing by 
 the addition of two towers, one at the 
 end of each. This was another means 
 of solving a difficulty that everywhere 
 met the Mediaeval architects, of giving 
 the greatest dignity to the most holy 
 place. The proper and obvious mode 
 of doing this was of course to raise a 
 tower or dome at the intersection of 
 the nave and transe})ts, but the diffi- 
 culties of construction involved in tliis 
 mode of procedure were such that 
 they seldom were enabled to carry it 
 out. This can only be said, indeed, to 
 have been fairly accomplished in Eng- 
 land. At Angouleme, as will be ob- 
 served in the plan, there is no passage 
 round the altar, nor is the choir se])a- 
 arated from the body of the church. 
 In Italy, and, indeed, in Germany, this does not seem to have been 
 considered of importance ; but in France, as we shall presently see, 
 
 it was regarded as the 
 ■/yA^i^. Tuost indispensable part 
 of the arrangement of 
 the church, and to meet 
 this exigency the South- 
 ern architects were 
 afterwards obliged to 
 invent a method of isola- 
 ting the choir, by carry- 
 ing a lofty stone railing 
 or screen round it, 
 wholly independent of 
 any of the constructive 
 parts of the church. 
 This, there is little doubt 
 was a mistake, and in every respect a less beautiful arrangement than 
 that adopted in the North ; still it seems to have been the only means 
 of meeting the difficulty in the absence of aisles, and in some 
 instances the richness with which the screen was ornamented, and 
 the unbroken succession of bassi-relievi and sculptural ornaments, 
 
 332. One Bay of Nave, Angouleme. 
 
 No scale. 
 
 (From Verneilh.) 
 
Bk. II. Ch. II. 
 
 AQUITANIA. 
 
 471 
 
 Plan of Church at Mois- 
 sac. (From Taylor and 
 Nodier.) Scale loO ft. 
 to 1 in. 
 
 make us forget that it is only a piece of church furniture, and not an 
 integral part of the design of the building. 
 
 One of the earliest examples of this arrangement which has been 
 preserved is in the church at Moissac, remark- 
 able for its strange mythical sculpture and 
 rude pointed architecture, both belonging to 
 the 11th century, and as unlike anything to be 
 found in any other part of France as can well 
 be conceived. 
 
 At a later age we find in the cathedral at 
 Alby the same system carried to its acme, and 
 still adhered to in all essential parts in spite 
 of the influence and predominance of the pure 
 Gothic styles, which had then so generally 
 superseded it. The foundation of the church 
 was laid only in the year 1282, and it was not 
 so far completed as to admit of its dedication 
 till 1476. Its choir and fresco decorations 
 were added by the celebrated Louis d'Amboise, 
 who completed the whole in 1512. As will be seen from the plan 
 (Woodcut No. 334), the church is one immense unbroken vaulted 
 hall, 55 ft. in width by 262 in 
 length ; or adding the chapels, 
 the internal width is 82 ft., 
 and the total length upwards 
 of 300 ft. 
 
 As will be observed, the 
 whole of the buttresses are in- 
 ternal, as is very generally the 
 case in the South ; and where 
 painted glass is not used, and 
 fresco painting is the principal 
 mode of decoration, ^ch a sys- 
 tem has many advantages. The 
 outer walls are scarcely ever seen 
 and by this arrangement great 
 external extent and an appear- 
 ance of gigantic strength is im- 
 parted, while the whole space 
 covered by the building is avail- 
 able for internal use. But where 
 painted glass is the principal 
 mode of decoration, as was the 
 case to the north of the Loire, 
 such a system was evidently inadmissible. Then the walls were inter- 
 
 334. Plan of Cathedral at Alby. (From 
 Chapuy, *' Cathedrales Fran9aises.") 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
472 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II 
 
 nally kept as flat as possible, so as to allow the windows to be seen in 
 every direction, and all the mechanical expedients were placed on the 
 outside. Admirably as the Northern architects 
 managed all this, I cannot help thinking, if we 
 leave the painted glass out of the question, that 
 the Southern architects had hit on the more artistic 
 arrangement of tlie two ; and where, as at Alby, 
 the lower parts of the recesses between the inter- 
 nal buttresses were occupied by deep windowless 
 cliapels, and the upper lights were almost wholly 
 concealed, the result was an extraordinary appear- 
 ance of repose and mysterious gloom. This char- 
 acter, added to its simplicity and the vastness of 
 its vault, render Alby one of the most impressive 
 cliurches in France, and a most instructive study 
 to the 2)liiloso})hical inquirer into the principles of 
 effect as being a Gothic cliurch built on principles 
 not only dissimilar from, but almost diametrically 
 opposed to nliose which we have been usually 
 accustomed to, consider as indispensable and as 
 inherent requisites of the style. 
 
 The church of the Cordeliers at Toulouse is 
 another remarkable example of this class, and exhib- 
 iting its peculiarities in even a clearer light than that at Alby. Exter- 
 nally its dimensions in i)lan are 273 ft. by 87. Those of King's College 
 
 335. Plan of Church 
 of Cordeliers, at 
 Toulouse. Scale 
 100 ft. to 1 ill. 
 
 336. Section of Church of Cordeliers at Toulouse. 337. View of Angle of Church of Cor- 
 50 ft. to 1 in. (From King's " Study Book.") deliers at Toulouse. (From King.) 
 
 Chapel, Cambridge, which is the building we possess most resembling 
 it in plan, are 310 ft. by 84. But the nave of the chapel is only 
 
Bk II. Ch. II. 
 
 AQUITANIA. 
 
 473 
 
 41 ft. 6 in. clear between the piers, while in the church of Cordeliers it 
 is 53 ft., and except the thickness of the outer wall — about 4 ft. — the 
 whole of the floor-space of the span is utilized in the interior. In so 
 far as internal effect is concerned, this is no doubt judicious; but, as 
 may be seen from the view (Woodcut No. 337), the absence of any 
 delineation of the line of buttresses externally produces a flatness and 
 want of accentuation in the lower part that is highly objectionable. 
 As will be observed from the section, the whole of the width of the 
 buttresses is included in the interior on the one side. On the other 
 it is excluded above the roof of the aisle, but a gallery (Woodcuts 
 Nos. 336 and 337) joins the buttress at the top, giving the effect of a 
 cornice and a gallery above. The church is of brick, and all tJie 
 peculiarities of the style are here found exaggerated ; but there are 
 few churches on the continent which contain so many valuable sug- 
 gestions for a Protestant place of worship, and no features that could 
 not easily be improved by judicious handling. It was built in a 
 country where Protestant feeling existed before the Reformation, and 
 where (Consequently architects studied more how they could accom- 
 modate congregations than provide show-places for priests. 
 
 Besides those which are built wholly according to this plan, there 
 are a great number of churches in this province which show the 
 influence of its design in more respects than one, though, having 
 been rebuilt in a subsequent age, many of the original features are 
 necessarily lost. The cathedral at Bordeaux is a remarkable example 
 of this, its western portion being a vast nave without aisles, 60 ft. 
 wide internally, and nearly 200 ft. in length. Its foundations show 
 that, like that at Angouleme, it was originally roofed by three great 
 domes ; but being rebuilt in the 13th century, it is now covered by 
 an intersecting vault of that age, with two stories of windows, and 
 an immense array of flying buttresses to support its thrust, all which 
 might have been dispensed with had the architects retained the origi- 
 nal, simpler, and more beautiful form of roof. The cathedral of Tou- 
 louse shows the same peculiarity of a wide, aisleless nave, leading to 
 a choir of the usual construction adopted in this country in the 13th 
 and 14th centuries ; and many other examples might be quoted where 
 the influence of the earlier style peers through the Northern Gothic 
 which succeeded and nearly obliterated it. 
 
 Chevet Churches. 
 
 The Gothic churches of this province are neither so numerous nor 
 so remarkable as those of the domical class we have just been 
 describing ; still there are several examples, far too important to be 
 passed over, and which will serve besides in enabling us to inti'oduce 
 the new form of church building which became prevalent in France, 
 
474 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 to the exclusion of all others, and which cliaracterized the French 
 style in contradistinction to that of other countries. 
 
 The typical example of the style in this province is the great 
 
 church of St. Saturnin, 
 or St. Sernin, at Tou- 
 louse, dedicated in the 
 year 1096. The church 
 is 375 ft. in length and 
 217 in width across the 
 transept externally. It 
 is five-aisled, the nave 
 being 95 ft. in the 
 interior, though the 
 central aisle is only 25 
 ft. wide and is further 
 contracted at the inter- 
 section by masses i)f 
 masonry subsequently 
 added to support the 
 central tower. It has five 
 apsidal and four tran- 
 septal chapels, and may 
 therefore be considered 
 as possessing a complete 
 chevet; but the church 
 at Conques (Woodcut 
 No. 340), in the same 
 style and of almost 
 similar date, illustrates 
 even more ])erfectly the arrangement of which we are now speaking. 
 The nave of St. Seniin, as will be observed (Woodcut No. 339), has 
 
 double side-aisles, above 
 the inner one of which 
 runs a grand gallery. The 
 roof of this gallery — in 
 section the quadrant of 
 a circle — forms an abut- 
 ment to the roof of the 
 nave, which is a bold 
 tunnel-vault ornamented 
 by transverse ribs only. 
 So far the constructive ar- 
 rangements are the same as 
 in the transitional church 
 Passing from the nave to the 
 
 338. Church of St. Sernin, Toulouse. (From the "Ar- 
 chives des Alonunients Historiques.") Scale 100 
 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 339. Section of the Church of St. Sernin, Toulouse. 
 "Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 of Fontifroide, quoted above (p. 464). 
 
Bk. II. Ch. II. 
 
 AQUITANIA. 
 
 475 
 
 340. 
 Conques. 
 
 Plan of Church at 
 (From Taylor and 
 Nodier.) 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 Styles we have been 
 
 *clioir, both at Toulouse and at Conques, we come upon 
 extended and complicated arrangement than 
 we have hitherto met with. It will be recol- 
 lected that the Romanesque apse was a simple 
 large niche, or semi-dome ; so we shall find 
 it in the Lombard and German styles when 
 they come to be described, and generally even 
 in the neighboring Provenyal style, and 
 always — when unaltered — in the domical 
 style last described. In the present instance 
 it will be seen that a semi-circular range of 
 columns is substituted for the wall of 
 the apse, an aisle bent round them, and 
 beyond the aisle there are always three, five, 
 or even seven chapels opening into it, which 
 give it a complexity very different from the 
 simple apse of the Roman basilicas and the other 
 describing, and at the same 
 time a perspective and a play 
 of light and shade which are 
 unrivalled in any similar in- 
 vention of the Middle Ages. 
 The apse^ properly speaking, 
 is a solid semi-cylinder, sur- 
 mounted by a semi-dome, but 
 always solid below, though 
 generally broken by windows 
 above. The chevet on the con- 
 trary is an apse, always en- 
 closed by an open screen of 
 columns on the ground-floor, 
 and opening into an aisle, 
 which again always opens 
 into three or more apsidal 
 chapels. This arrangement 
 is so peculiarly French that 
 it may properly be cliarac- 
 terized by the above French 
 word, a name once commonly 
 applied to it, though latterly 
 it has given way to the more 
 classical, but certainly less 34i. 
 suitable, term of apse. Its 
 origin, too, is worth inquiring into an ^ 
 explanation. 
 
 a more 
 
 Plan of St. Martin at Tours 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 eems to be capable of easy 
 
476 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 1L 
 
 The uses which the various nations of Christendom made of the 
 circular form of building left them by the Romans have been more 
 than once adverted to in this work. The Italians used it almost 
 always standing alone as a tomb-house or as a baptistery; the 
 Germans converted it into a western apse, while sometimes, as at 
 Bonn and elsewhere, they timidly added a porch or nave to it ; 
 but the far more fi-equent ])ractice with the Germans, and also in 
 England, was to build first the circular church for its own sake, as 
 in Italy : then the clergy for their own accommodation added a choir, 
 that they might pray apart from the people. 
 
 The French took a different course from all these. They built 
 circular churches like other nations, appar- 
 ently, in early times at least, Avhich were 
 intended to stand alone ; but in no in- 
 stance do they appear to have applied 
 them as naves, nor to have added choirs to 
 them. On the contrary, the clergy always 
 retained tlie circular building as the sacred 
 (lepositoiy of the tomb or relic, the Holy 
 of Holies, and added a straight-lined nave 
 for the people. Of this class was evidently 
 the church which Perpetuus built in the 
 fifth century over the grave of St. Martin 
 at Tours. There the shrine was sur- 
 rounded by seventy-nine pillars arranged 
 in a circular form : the nave was lined 
 by forty-one — twenty on each side, with 
 one in the centre of the west end as in 
 Germany. When the church required re- 
 building in the 11th century (1014?), the 
 architect was evidently hampered by find- 
 ing himself obliged to follow the outline of 
 the old basilica of Perpetuus, and having 
 to labor on the same foundation so as not 
 to disturb either the shrine of the saint or 
 any other place which had become sacred in this, which was the most 
 celebrated and revered of the churches of Gaul. All this is made 
 clear in the plan of the new church (Woodcut No. 341). The 
 arrangement of the circular part and the nave exactly accord with 
 the description of the old church, only that the latter has been 
 considerably enlarged according to the fashion of the day. But the 
 juxtaposition of the two shows how nearly the chevet arrangement 
 was completed at that time. 
 
 Another church, that of Charroux on the Loire, looks as though it 
 had been built in direct imitation of the church of Perpetuus. The 
 
 342. Cliurcli of C harroux 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 iu. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. II. 
 
 AQUITANIA. 
 
 477 
 
 round church, here retains its pre-eminence over the nave, as was the 
 case in the older examples, and thus forms an intermediate link 
 between the old church of St. Martin, which 
 we know only by description, and the more 
 modern one, of whicli a plan is given (Woodcut 
 No. 341). 
 
 St. Benigne, Dijon, is another transitional 
 example which may serve to render this arrange- 
 ment still more clear. It was erected in the 
 first year of the 11th century, and was pulled 
 down only at the Revolution ; but before that 
 catastrophe it had been carefully measured and 
 described in Dom Plancher's " History of Bur- 
 gundy." As seen by him, the foundations only 
 of the nave were of the original structure, for 
 in the year 1271 one of its towers fell, and so 
 damaged it that the whole of that part of the 
 church was then rebuilt in the perfect pointed 
 style of the day. Without entering too much 
 into detail, it will suffice to state that the part 
 shaded lightly in the woodcut (No. 343) is taken 
 literally from Dom Plancher's plan, regarding 
 which there can be no doubt, and the contem- 
 porary descriptions are so full that very little 
 uncertainty can exist regarding the dimensions 
 and general disposition of the nave. 
 
 The bodies of the confessors SS. Urban and 
 Gregory were, it appears, originally buried in the church of St. John 
 the Baptist, which seems to have been the name most properly applied 
 to this circular building; they were afterwards transferred to the 
 crypt below the high altar, in the rectangular part of the church. 
 Above the lower story, which retained its name as a baptistery and 
 burial-place, was the upper church, which was dedicated to the Virgin 
 Mary ; above that was the church of the Holy Trinity ; and on the 
 top of the round toAvers, on one side the altar of St. Michael, on the 
 other probably that of Gabriel. 
 
 The little church of Neuvy St. Sepulchre, near Bourges, which 
 was erected between the years 1042 and 1046, presents precisely the 
 same arrangements as the church of Charroux, though on a smaller 
 scale, there being only one range of ten pillars in the centre. The 
 ancient nave having been destroyed, was replaced by a more ex- 
 tended one in the 12th century, but the old arrangement can easily 
 be traced. 
 
 In all these old churches — and they seem to have been very common 
 in France before the 12th century — tlie circular part was the most 
 
 343. Plan of St, Benigne, 
 Dijon. (From Dom Plan- 
 cher's " Histoire de Bour- 
 gogne.") Scale 100 ft. to 
 1 in. 
 
FRENCH ARCHITECT UKE. Part H. 
 
 important, but they have most of them been rebuilt ; and where this 
 lias been the case, even when the outline of the circular form was 
 retained, the lines of the nave were made tangents of the circle, and 
 thus became j^arts of one design. All these arrangements were perfect 
 
 344. St. Seniiii, Toulouse. (From Tfiylor and Nodier.) 
 
 before the church of Coiiques (Woodcut No. 340) was erected. There 
 the architect, not being hampered by any previous building, was 
 allowed free scope for his design. The plan so produced was never 
 lost sight of by the French, but was developed into a vast variety of 
 beautiful forms, which we shall shortly have to examine. 
 
 When once this transformation of the round church into the chevet 
 
Bk. II. Ch. II, 
 
 AQUITANIA. 
 
 479 
 
 termination of a basilica was effected, the French adliered to it with 
 singular constancy. I am not aware of their ever having built a 
 circular church afterwards which was intended to stand alone ; and 
 there are very few instances of basilicas of any importance without 
 this form of apse. Some, it is true, have been rebuilt on old founda- 
 tions, with square eastern ends, but this is rare and exceptional, the 
 chevet being the true and typical termination. 
 
 The church at Conques and that at Toulouse both show it fully 
 and beautifully developed, though externally the chapels hardly fit 
 pleasingly into the general design, and look more as though their 
 addition were an afterthought. This, however, was soon afterwards 
 remedied, and the transformation made complete. 
 
 The solidity with which these churches were built, and the general 
 narrowness of their proportions as compared Avith the domical churches 
 of the same time and district, enabled the architects occasionally to 
 attempt some splendid erection on the intersection of the nave and 
 transepts, which is the spot where height should always be aimed 
 at. The dome at Cruas in the Proven9al district has already been 
 described (Woodcut No. 324). The church at Conques has one as 
 important, though dissimilar ; but the finest is that of St. Sernin at 
 Toulouse (Woodcut No. 344), which rivals the designs of our spires at 
 Salisbury, Norwich, and elsewhere, but its height being only 230 ft. 
 from the ground, it cannot be compared with them in that respect. 
 The 3 lower stories only are of the age of the church ; the 2 upper 
 were added long afterwards, but were adapted with remarkably good 
 taste. Though differing in design and detail, their general form and 
 outline is such as to accord most happily with the older structure on 
 which they are placed ; there is nevertheless a sameness of design in 
 placing so many similar stories one over the other, merely diminishing 
 in size, which is not altogether pleasing. The general effect, however, 
 is good, and for a central object it is, if not the finest, certainly one 
 of the very best which France possesses. 
 
 As in all French styles, the western fa9ades of the Southern 
 cluirches are the parts on which the architects lavished their orna- 
 ments with the most unsparing hand. Generally they are flat, and 
 most of them now terminate squarely, with a flat line of cornice of 
 slight projection. Beneath this there is generally a range of arches 
 filled with sculpture or intended to be so — the central one, and that 
 only, being used as a window. Beneath tliis is the great portal, on 
 which more ornament is bestowed than on any other feature of the 
 building. Some of these gateways in this province, as in Provence, 
 are wondrous examples of patient labor, as well as models of beauty. 
 They possess more than the richness of our own contemporary 
 Norman portals, with a degree of refinement and delicacy which 
 our forefathers did not attain till a much later age. Some of these 
 
480 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 345. Clmrch at Aillas. 
 
 346. Cliurcli at Loupiac. (From Leo Drouyn, 
 "Architecture au Moyen-Age.") 
 
 church-portals m Aquitaine 
 are comparatively simple, 
 but even they make up for 
 the want of sculpture by the 
 propriety of theii- design and 
 the elegance of their composi- 
 tion. 
 
 The church at Aillas pre- 
 sents a fair specimen, on a 
 small scale, of the class of 
 design which is peculiar to 
 the fayades of Aquitania, 
 though it is doubtful if the 
 original termination of the 
 gable has not been lost and 
 replaced by the one shown 
 in the drawing. The fayade 
 of Angouleme is 
 designed on the 
 same plan, though 
 it is much richer. 
 Those of Civray,. 
 Parthcnay, and of 
 many others, show 
 the same character- 
 istics. They appear 
 to have been de- 
 signed not to ex- 
 press the form and 
 construction of the 
 interior, but, like 
 an Egyptian pro- 
 pylon, as a vehicle 
 for a most exten- 
 sive series of sculp- 
 tures exhibiting the 
 whole Bible his- 
 tory. Sometimes, 
 however, the design 
 is more strictly 
 ? architectural, as in 
 the facade of the 
 church at Loupiac, 
 where sculpture is 
 made wholly sub- 
 
Bk. II. Ch. II. 
 
 AQUITAXIA. 
 
 48J 
 
 347. St. Eloi, Espaliou. (From Taylor and Nodier.) 
 
 ordinate, and the archi- 
 tectural members are so 
 i^rouped as to form a pleas- 
 ing and effective design, 
 not unlike some instances 
 found farther north, and 
 in our own country. 
 
 The varieties of these, 
 however, are so endless 
 that it would be in vain 
 to attempt either to ])ar- 
 ticularize or to describe 
 them. Many of these ar- 
 rangements are unusual, 
 though almost always 
 pleasing, as in the church 
 at Espalion (\yoodcut No. 
 347), where the belfry is 
 erected as a single wall 
 Over the chancel-arch, and 
 groups well with the apsi- 
 dal termination, though, 
 as in almost every instance 
 in this country, the west- 
 ern fa9ade is wanting in 
 sufficient feature and char- 
 acter to balance it. 
 VOL. I. --31 
 
 348. Tomb at St. Tierre, Toulouse. (From Taylor 
 and Nodier.) 
 
482 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt II. 
 
 Generally speaking, the cloisters and other ecclesiastical adjuncts 
 are so similar to those at Provence, as given in the last chapter, 
 that a separate description of them is not needed here. They are 
 all of the columnar style, supporting small arches on elegant capitals 
 of the most varied and elaborate designs, evincing that delicate feeling 
 so prevalent in the south, which prevented any approach to that 
 barbarism so common farther north whenever the architects attempted 
 anything beyond the common range of decoration. 
 
 The same feeling pervades the tombs, monuments, and domestic 
 architecture of this part of France, making them all far more worthy 
 of study in every minute detail than has yet been attempted. The 
 woodcut (No. 348) represents one small example of a tomb built into 
 a wall behind the church of St. Pierre at Toulouse. It is one of 
 those graceful little bits of architecture which meet one at every turn 
 in the pleasant South, where the people have an innate feeling for art 
 Avhich displays itself in the smallest as well as in the most important 
 works. 
 
Be. II. Ch. III. 
 
 ANJOU. 
 
 483 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 A N J O IT. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Cathedral of Angers — Church of Fontevraiilt — Poitiers — Spires. 
 
 rpHE architectural province of Aiijoii cannot, perhaps, be so distinctly 
 JL defined as the two ah-eady described. On the north, indeed, it is 
 separated by the clearest line both from Normandy and from tlie 
 Frankish province. But in the south, as before remarked, it is not 
 easy to say, in the present state of our information, what works 
 belong to Aquitaine and what to Anjou. Not that there is any want 
 of sufficient marks to distinguish between the styles themselves, but 
 a large portion of examples appear to belong to a sort of debatable 
 ground between the two. This, however, is true only of the buildings 
 on the borders of the province. The two capitals of Angers and 
 Poitiers are full of examples peculiar to them alone, and as a rule the 
 same remark applies to all the principal churches of the province. 
 
 The age of the greatest splendor of this province is from the 
 accession of Foulques Nerra in the year 989 to the death of Henry H. 
 of England, 1190. During these two centuries its prosperity and inde- 
 pendent power rose to a height which it subsequently neither main- 
 tained nor ever regained. Prior to this period the buildings found 
 scattered here and there are few and insignificant, but during its 
 continuance every town was enriched by some noble effort of the 
 piety and architectural taste peculiar to the age. After its conclusion 
 the completion of works previously commenced was all that was 
 attempted. The rising power of the northern provinces, and of the 
 English, seems to have given a check to the prosperity of Anjou, 
 which it never thoroughly recovered ; for when it did to a certain 
 extent again become prosperous and wealthy, it was under the 
 influence and dominion of the great central Frankish power which 
 ultimately absorbed into itself all the separate nationalities of France, 
 and obliterated those provincial distinctions which are so strikingly 
 prominent in the earlier part of her history. 
 
 The plan of St. Maurice (Woodcut No. 349), the cathedral of Angers, 
 may be considered as a typical example of the Angiovine style, and will 
 serve to explain in what it differs from the northern and in wliat it re- 
 sembles the southern styles. On comparing it with the plan of Souillac, 
 
484 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut 11. 
 
 and more especially with that of the cathedral at Angouleine, it will be 
 seen how nearly it resembles them — the great difference being that, in- 
 stead of cupolas over each square 
 compartment, it has the intersecting 
 vai4t of the northern styles. Its 
 buttresses too are external, but less 
 in ])rojection than might be gene- 
 rally considered necessary to sup- 
 l^ort a vault 52 ft. in span. They 
 moreover show a tendency towards 
 a northei-n style of construction ; 
 but the absence of free-standing 
 pillars or of aisles, and the general 
 arrangement of the whole building 
 are rather Southern peculiarities. 
 Externally the facade has been suc- 
 cessively piled up at various times 
 from the I'ith century, when the 
 body of the church was commenced 
 and nearly finished, to the 16th, 
 when it was completed in the style 
 of the Renaissance. 
 
 Another church in the same city, 
 of equal interest, though not so large 
 or important, is that of the Trinite. 
 It consists of one nave without 
 transepts, 52 ft. wide measuring 
 into the recesses, though it is only 
 32 ft. wide between the piers. It is 
 roofed with an intersecting vault in 
 eight compartments, of somewhat 
 northern pattern, but with a strong 
 tendency towards the domical forms 
 of the Southern style. It possesses, 
 moreover, a peculiarity rather fre- 
 quently attempted, viz., that of try- 
 ing to obtain a greater appearance 
 of length by lowering the vaults 
 from the entrance towards the altar. 
 Thus at the entrance the building 
 is 80 ft. in height, but it gradually 
 sinks to 65 at the eastern end. This 
 contrivance is a mere trick, and, like 
 all such in architecture, is a failure, 
 rich and good throughout, and 
 
 -349. Cathedral at Angers. (From Faultrier, 
 "Anjou et ses Monuments.") Scale 
 100 ft. tolin. 
 
 350. St. Trinite, Angers. (From Faultrier.) 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 The details of this church are 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 ANJOU. 
 
 485 
 
 View of the Interior of Loches. 
 sketch by the author.) 
 
 (From 
 
 altogetlier the effect of the 7 recesses on each side is ])leasing and 
 satisfactory. Indeed it may be considered as the typical and best ex- 
 ample of that chiss of churches, 
 of which a later specimen was 
 the cathedral at Alby, described 
 in the last chaj )ter, and whicli are 
 so beautiful as to go far to shake 
 our absolute faith in the dogma 
 that aisles are indispensably nec- 
 essary to the proper effect of a 
 Gothic church. 
 
 Even more interesting than 
 either of these in an archaeo- 
 logical ])oint of view, is the little 
 castle chapel at Loches, com- 
 menced by Geoffrey Grise Go- 
 nelle. Count of Anjou, in the 
 year 962, and continued by his 
 son, Foulques Nerra,to whom the 351. 
 nave must be ascribed ; while the 
 western tower is probably the only part now remaining of the older 
 church. The eastern portion was rebuilt in tlie r2th century by 
 Thomas Pactius, the prior, and completed 
 in 1180 — the latter part being in the well- 
 known Norman style of that age. An in- 
 teresting point in this church is that the 
 Norman round-arch style is built over and 
 upon the pointed arches of the nave,which 
 are at least a century older, having been 
 erected between the years 987 and 1040. 
 It will be seen from the view given of this 
 chapel that the pointed style here used has 
 nothing in common with the pointed archi- 
 tecture of the North of France, but is that 
 of the South, such as we have seen in the 
 churches of Perigeux and Souillac. It 
 is used here, as there, to support domes. 
 These, however, in this instance, instead 
 of being circular,are octagonal, and rise ex- 
 ternally in octagonal straight-lined cones 
 of stone work, giving a very peculiar but 
 interesting and elegant outline to the 
 building. They also point out a method by 
 which roofs at least as high as those which afterwards prevailed could 
 have been obtained in stone if this mode of vaulting had been persevered 
 
 352. Plan of Church at Foute- 
 vrault. (From Venieilh.) 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
486 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II 
 
 353. 
 
 View of Chevet at Fontevrault. 
 
 (From Faultrier.) 
 
 in. The Church of St. Sergius at Angers has pointed arches certainly 
 of an early date, but whether so old as this is not quite certain. 
 
 It has already been suggested that all circular churches were 
 originally sepulchral or intended to be so. There can also be little 
 doubt but that the halves of round churches, which, as explained above, 
 
 were adopted as the 
 chevet termination of 
 French basilicas, were 
 also intended either 
 to symbolize a tomb- 
 house or relic shrine,, 
 or actually to serve 
 as the sepulchres of 
 distinguished person- 
 ages. This certainly 
 appears to have been 
 the case in the earlier 
 French examples, and 
 among these one of 
 the most splendid in this province, indeed almost the only one of any 
 real importance, is that of Fontevrault, where repose, or rather reposed, 
 the remains of two of our Plantagenet kings, Henry II. and Richard T , 
 with others of their family. As will be seen from the woodcut (No. 
 353), it is a mausoleum worthy of them, and a i)leasing example of the 
 
 style of the age, and though cer 
 tainly not so peculiarly Angiovino 
 as the apsidal churches of Angers 
 and Poitiers, has still distinguishing 
 characteristics which are not found 
 in any other province of France. 
 The nave is surmounted by four 
 domes, as is usual in this and the 
 more southern provinces, and it is 
 only in having an aisle trending 
 round the apse tliat it differs from 
 the ordinary churches. It may be 
 seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 
 i^F„Mevfar.1F;L^^^enS.^™ 352) how awkwardly tliis is done, 
 
 and how its ill narrow dimensions^ 
 agree with the spaciousness of the nave. 
 
 Woodcut No. 354 demonstrates how similar the domes of its nave 
 are to those of Angouleme, Souillac, and those of the South — this 
 domical arrangement being in fact as characteristic of this age and 
 locality as the intersecting vault afterwards became of the Northern 
 provinces. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. III. 
 
 ANJOU. 
 
 481 
 
 If the apse or clievet of this church is not so strictly Angiovinc as 
 other examples, the fagade of the church of Notre Dame de Poitiers 
 (shown in Woodcut No. 355) is not open to the same remark, being 
 strictly local in all its parts. Originally the one window it possessed 
 was circular ; but in the 15th century, as may be seen from the mouldings 
 
 355. Facade of Notre Dame at Poitiers. (From Cliapuy, " Moyen-Age Monumental.") 
 
 then introduced, it was cut down to its present form, no doubt to make 
 more room for painted glass, which at that age had superseded all other 
 modes of decoration : whereas in the 12th century, to which the church; 
 belongs, external sculpture and internal mural j^aintings were thc' 
 prevailing modes of architectural expression. It will be observed from 
 the above woodcut that sculpture is used in a profusion of which no- 
 example belonging to a later age exists ; and though we cannot help 
 admiring the larger proportions and broader masses of subsequent 
 
488 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 11. 
 
 builders, still there is a richness and a graphic power in the exuberant 
 sculpture of the earlier fa9ades which we miss in after ages, and of 
 which no mere masonic excellence can ever supply the place. 
 
 This, though not the largest, is probably the best and richest 
 church of its class in this province. The border churches of Parthe- 
 nay, Civray, and Ruffec, all show traces of the same style- and forms 
 all more or less richly carried out ; but none have the characteristic 
 corner towers, nor do they retain their pedimented gable so perfect as 
 Notre Dame at Poitiers. 
 
 Besides this one there are four churches in Poitiers, all which were 
 certainly erected in the 11 th century, and the greater part of them 
 
 still retain unaltered the fea- 
 tures of that age. The oldest, 
 St. Hilaire (a.d. 1049), is re- 
 markable for an irregularity 
 of plan sufficient to puzzle all 
 the antiquaries of the land, 
 and which is only to be ac- 
 
 £i^n ftiiiiiii ii i counted for on the supposition 
 
 ^ ^P^^^B having been built on 
 
 W the foundation of some earlier 
 @) @ ^^^^sJwi c^i^^^'ch, which it has replaced. 
 H P^^H Moutierneuf (1066) pos- 
 
 sesses in its nave a circular- 
 headed tunnel-vault, orna- 
 mented with transverse ribs 
 only, but resting on arches 
 which cut slightly into it. It 
 has no string-course or plain 
 wall, as is usual in the South, 
 and in this shows a tendency 
 towards intersecting vault- 
 ing, indicative of an approach 
 to the Northern style. 
 
 The most remarkable part 
 of St. Porchaire and St. Rada- 
 gonde are their western towers, which are fine specimens of their 
 class, especially that of the latter, which changes pleasingly into an 
 octagon before terminating in a short spire. Altogether this church 
 shows that elegance of feeling the want of which is a chief defect of 
 the contemporary Norman style. 
 
 The cathedral of Poitiers was founded in the year 1161. Its eastern 
 end belongs to a transitional period, while its western front was not 
 completed till the pointed Gothic style had reached its utmost per- 
 fection, 200 years later. Its plan, however, probably belongs to the 
 
 jm. Plan of Cathedral at Poitiers. (From Coulter 
 " Histoire de la Catliedrale de Poitiers.") 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. hi. 
 
 ANJOU. 
 
 489 
 
 earlier period, and presents so strong a contrast to the Nortliern 
 churches of the same date that it may be quoted liere as belonging to 
 the style which we are describing. The east end is square externally, 
 but internally it contains 8 shallow niches like those on each side of 
 St. Trinite at Angers. Its transepts are mere chapels ; but its most 
 remarkable feature is the convergence of its sides towards the east ; and 
 as its vault sinks also towards that end, a false perspective is attained 
 Avhich certainly at first sight gives the church an ai)pearance of greater 
 length than it really possesses. The 3 aisles, too, being of the same 
 height, add to the effect of space; so that, taken as a whole, this church 
 may be quoted as the best example known of the system of attaining 
 a certain effect by these means, and is well worthy of study on this 
 account. It, however, I think, admits of no doubt that the Northern 
 architects were right in rejecting all these devices, and in basing their 
 efforts on better understood and more honest principles. 
 
 It is in this province that, proceeding from the South, spires are first 
 found in common use. The characteristic of the South is the square 
 flat-roofed tower or octagonal dome. 
 In Anjou, towers standing by them- 
 selves, and crowned by well-propor- 
 tioned spires, seem early to have 
 been introduced, and to have been 
 considered almost essential parts of 
 church architecture. The represen- 
 tation (Woodcut No. 357) of that 
 attached to the interesting church 
 of Cunault on the Loire is of the 
 most common type. There is an- 
 other at Chemille, almost exactly 
 like it, and a third on the road be- 
 tween Tours and Loches, besides 
 many others which but slightly dif- 
 fer from these in detail. They all 
 want the aspiring lightness after- 
 wards attained in Gothic spires ; 
 but their design and ornaments are 
 good, and their outlines w^ell suited 
 to the massive edifices to which 
 they are attached. 
 
 Most of the conventual ' build- 357. Spire at Cmmult. (From Faultrier. , 
 
 ings attached to the churches in 
 
 this province have disappeared, either during the struggle with the 
 Huguenots, or in the later and more disastrous troubles of the Revolu- 
 tion^ so that there is scarcely a cloister or other similar edifice to be 
 found in the province. One or two fragments however still exist, such 
 
490 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II, 
 
 as the Tour d'Evrault.^ This is a conventual kitchen, not unlike that 
 at Glastonbury, but of an earlier age, and so far different from any- 
 thing else of the kind that it was long mistaken for a building of a 
 very different class. 
 
 Another fragment, though probably not ecclesiastical, is the screen 
 of arches recently discovered in the hotel of the Prefecture at Angel's. 
 As a specimen of elaborate exuberance in barbarous ornament, it is 
 unrivalled even in France, but it is much more like the work of the 
 Normans than anytliing else found in the neighborhood. Owing to 
 its having been so long built up, it still retains traces of the coloring 
 with which all the internal sculjjtures of this age were adorned. 
 
 The deficiency in ecclesiastical buildings in tliis province is made 
 up in a great measure by the extent and preservation of its Feudal 
 remains, few of the provinces of France having so many and such 
 extensive fortified castles remaining. Those of Angers and Loches 
 are two of the finest in France, and tliere are many others scarcely less 
 magnificent. Few of them, however, have features strictly architec- 
 tural; and tliougli the artist and the poet may luxuriate on their 
 crumbling time-stained towers and picturesque decay, they hardly 
 belong to such a work as this, nor afford materials which would 
 advance our knowledge of architecture as a fine art. 
 
 ^ This buildiiiii is well illustrated in Turner's Domestic Architecture.' 
 
hK. it. Ch. IV. 
 
 AUVERGNE. 
 
 491 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 AUVERGNE. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Church at Issoire — Puy — Fortified Church at Royat. 
 
 I'^HE last of the Southern provinces wliich requires to be distinguished 
 is that of Auvergne, one of the most beautiful as well as one of the 
 most complete of the round Gothic styles of France. The country in 
 which it is found is as distinctly marked out as the style, for no 
 iiaturalist can cross the frontier of the territory without at once being 
 struck by the strange character of its scenery. It is a purely volcanic 
 country, to which the recently extinguished craters impart a character 
 not found in any other province of France. Whether its inhabitants 
 are of a different race from their neighbors has not yet been investi- 
 gated. At all events, they retain their original characteristics less 
 changed than any other people inhabiting the South of France. Their 
 style of architecture is distinct, and early reached 
 a degree of perfection which no other in France 
 had then attained; it has, moreover, a greater re- 
 semblance than we have hitherto found in France 
 to the Lombard and Rhenish styles of architec- 
 ture. The other styles of Southern France — 
 whatever their beauties may be — certainly never 
 reached that degree of independent completeness 
 which enables us to class that of AuverQ^ne anions^ 
 tlie perfected styles of Europe. 
 
 In the department of Puy de Dome there are 
 at least four churches of the typical form of this 
 style, which have been edited by M. Mallay — 
 those of Issoire, of N. D. du Port at Clermont, of 
 Orcival, and of St. Nectaire — which only differ 
 from one another in size, and in the arrangement 
 of their apsidal chapels. That of Issoire has a 
 square central chapel inserted, which is wanting at Clermont and 
 Orcival, while St. Nectaire has only three instead of four apsidal 
 chapels. 
 
 The largest of these is that of Issoire, of which a plan is here given, 
 from which it will be seen that, though small, it is beautifully arranged. 
 
 358. Cliurch at Issoire. 
 (From Mallay.) Scale 
 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
492 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paht II. 
 
 They all possess central towers, raised on a mass of masonry ex- 
 tending to the wliole width of the church, which gives them a breadtli 
 
 of base found in no other 
 style. The want of this is 
 painfully felt in most of our 
 own central spires, all of 
 which need something more to 
 stand upon than the central 
 roof, out of which they seem 
 to grow ; but I do not know 
 that any attempt was ever 
 made to remedy the difficulty 
 anywhere but in Auvergne. 
 All these churches were in- 
 tended to liave western tow- 
 ers, the massive foundations, 
 for which are found in every example, though there does not 
 appear to be a single instance in which these exist in a complete 
 state. 
 
 The side-aisles are always covered by intersecting vaults, but that 
 of the nave is invariably a simple tunnel-vault, as in the Southern 
 styles, ornamented by occasional transverse ribs, and which in the 
 church at Issoire is slightly pointed. 
 
 To support this great vault, a semi-vault is carried over the side. 
 
 3G0. Section of Church at Issoire, looking East. 
 (From Mallay.) Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IV. 
 
 AUVERGNE. 
 
 4113 
 
 aisles — ns shown in the section — whicli forms a massive and perfect 
 abutment to the thrust of the great arch, besides, as before pointed out, 
 rendering the vault independent of a wooden covering, which, though 
 in some instances supplied, was certainly not originally intended. 
 The defect of this arrangement is of course evident, as compared with 
 the northern styles, inasmuch as a clerestory was impossible, and the 
 only effective light that could be admitted was through the side-aisles. 
 These churches, however, have an approach to a clerestory not found 
 in that at Fontifroide, before quoted, in having a triforium or range 
 of arches oi^ening into the gallery, which gave a lightness of character 
 to the superstructure, and admitted to a certain extent a borrowed 
 light. 
 
 361. Elevation of Chevet, Notre Dame du Port Clerinoiit. (^Froiii Chapuy.) No scale. 
 
 Externally, the projection of the buttresses is slight, and they are 
 connected by arches, struck from the same centres as the windows, 
 above which three small arches relieve and ornament the upper part of 
 the nave. The central arch of these is pierced with the small window 
 which lights the upper gallery. Above this is a cornice of more 
 elegance and of greater projection than is usually found in churches of 
 this age. 
 
 The most beautiful and most admired feature of the style is the 
 arrangement of the chapels of the chevet externally. 
 
 In the view given above of St. Saturnin, Toulouse (Woodcut No. 
 344), as in almost all the churches of that style, it will be observed 
 iiow awkwardly these chapels are stuck on, ns if they were after- 
 thoughts, and altogether foreign to the nuiin lines of the building. 
 
494 
 
 FRENCH AECHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Here, however, all the parts are pleasingly subordinated one to the 
 other, and the whole are so grouped as to form a design equal, if not 
 superior, to the galleried apses of the German and Lombard churches. 
 The place of these galleries is here supplied by a mosaic decoration 
 formed with the different colored lavas of the extinct volcanoes of 
 the district, which gives not only a pleasing local character to the 
 style, but is interesting as the only specimen of external polychro- 
 matic decoration now to be found so far to the north. In effect, this 
 is perhaps hardly equal to the open galleries of the German churches ; 
 but the expense must have been considerably less and the variety of 
 tlie outline of the chevet arrangement, as compared with the simple 
 apse, gives to these churches some advantages over the contemporary 
 buildings on the Rhine. Indeed, as far as external decoration is con- 
 cerned, it may be questioned whether the French ever surpassed these ; 
 
 362. Plan of Chevet, Notre Dame dn Port Clermont. (From Cliapuy.) No scale. 
 
 and had they been carried out on tlie same scale as those of Amiens 
 and Chnrtres, they would ]:)robably be thought more beautiful. It is 
 true the flying buttresses and j)innacles of the pointed style enabled 
 tlie architects to introduce far larger windows and gorgeous decora- 
 tions of painted glass, and so to improve the internal effect of their 
 churches to an immense extent ; but this was done at the sacrifice of 
 much external simplicity of outline and propriety of effect, which ^ve 
 cannot but lament could not be reconciled with the requisite internal 
 arrangements. 
 
 The age of these churches is not very well ascertained. M. Mallay 
 is inclined to place them principally in the 10th century, though the 
 pointed form of the vault at Issoire induces him to bring that down to 
 the 12th century ; but we have seen enough to know that such a 
 ])ointed form, on the contrary, is more likely to be ancient than the 
 rounded one, which requires better construction, although in that age 
 it was thought more beautiful. My own impression is that they 
 belong generally to the 11th century, though some were no doubt 
 
^K. 11. Ch, IV. 
 
 ATTVEBGNE. 
 
 495 
 
 commenced in the 10th, and probably continued to the 12th ; but their 
 uniformity of style is such, that not more than one century could have 
 elapsed between the first and the last. Only one circular church, so 
 far as I know, is found in the district. It is a sepulchral chapel in the 
 cemetery at Chambon, small in size, being only 26 ft. wide over all, 
 but elegant in its proportions, and showing the same style of decora- 
 tion as the apses of the larger churches. 
 
 Among the exceptional churches of this district, one of the most 
 interesting is that of Royat, illustrated in Woodcut No. 363, being a 
 
 3G;j. Fortitied Cliurcli at Koyat. (From Gailhabaud.) 
 
 specimen of a fortified church, such as are sometimes, though not fre- 
 quently, found in France. That at Maguelonne, quoted above, (p. 460), 
 is another, and there are several others in the south of France; but 
 non3 probably either so complete or showing so many castellated 
 fealdres as this. In its ruined state we lose the western, or possibly 
 the central tower, which might have somewhat restored its ecclesias- 
 tical character ; but even as it is, it is a singularly picturesque and 
 expressive building, though it speaks more of war and bloodshed than 
 of peace and good will to all men. 
 
496 
 
 FRENCH AKCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II, 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 BURGUNDY. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Church at Ainay — Cathedral at Puy — Abbeys of Tournus and Cluny — Cathe- 
 •dral of Autun — Church of St. Menoux. 
 
 rpHE province of Burgundy was architecturally one of the most 
 X important in France during the Middle Ages, but one the limits 
 of which it is difficult to define. This is partly owing to the extreme 
 fluctuation of the political power of the kingdom or dukedom, or 
 whatever it might be, but more to the presence of two distinct peoples 
 within its limits, the one or other of which gained the ascendancy at 
 various intervals, and according as each was in power the architec- 
 tural boundaries of the province appear to have changed. In Pro- 
 vence the Roman or Classical element remained superior down to the 
 time when Paris influenced that province as it did all the rest of 
 France ; but this event did not take place till very nearly the end of 
 the Gothic period. In Burgundy, on the other hand, the Classical 
 and Barbarian streams flowed side by side — at times hardly mingling 
 their waters at all, but at others so amalgamated as to be undistin- 
 guishable, while again in remote corners either style is occasionally 
 found to start up in almost perfect purity. 
 
 It would add very much to the clearness of what follows if we 
 could tell who the Burgundians were and whence they came : neither of 
 which questions appears as yet to have received a satisfactory solution. 
 That they differed in many respects from the other Barbarians who 
 assisted in overthrowing the Roman Empire will probably be admitted ; 
 but in the present state of ethnographic knowledge it may seem too 
 daring to assert that they had Turanian blood in their veins, and were 
 Buddhists in religion, or belonged to some cognate faith, before they 
 settled on the banks of the Saone or the Rhone. Yet if this were not 
 so, it appears impossible to account for the essentially monastic foi-m 
 which characterized this province during the whole Gothic period. 
 
 From the time at least wheir St. Gall and Columban settled them- 
 selves at Luxueil till late in the Middle Ages, this country was the 
 first and principal seat of those great monastic establishments which 
 had so overwhelming an influence on the faith and forms of those 
 times. We must go either to India in the flourishing period of 
 Buddhism, or to Thibet in the present day, to find anything analogous 
 
Bk. II. Ch. V. 
 
 BURGUNDY. 
 
 497 
 
 to the monastic establishments of the 11th centnry in this district. 
 All these monasteries have now passed away, and few liave left even 
 any remains to attest their former greatness and magnificence. The 
 great basilica of Cluny, the noblest church of the 11th century, has 
 been wliolly removed witliin tlie present centnry. Clairvaux was first 
 rebuilt in the style of the Renaissance, but has been finally swept away 
 within the last few years. Citeaux })erished earlier, and little now 
 remains to attest its former greatness. Luxueil is an obscure village. 
 The destruction of the church of St. Benigne, at Dijon, has already 
 been referred to, and it would be easy to swell the catalogue of similar 
 consequences of the great Revolution. 
 
 Tournus still remains, and at Vezelay fragments exist. Charlier, 
 Avallon, Autun, Langres, and Besan9on, still possess in their cathe- 
 drals and churches some noble remnants of Burgundian architecture. 
 Besides these, there are numer- 
 ous parish churches and smaller 
 edifices which would easily ena- 
 ble us to make up a history of tjie 
 style, were they carefully exam- 
 ined and drawn. The architec- 
 ture of Burgundy, however, has 
 not yet been examined with the 
 attention it deserves, and it 
 would require long and patient 
 personal investigation to eluci- 
 date its peculiarities. 
 
 The church of Ainay at Lyons 
 is an early and beautiful speci- 
 men of the style when used with- 
 out any classical influence ; yet 
 four Roman pillars support the 
 intersection of the nave and 
 transept. Its western front 
 (Woodcut No. 364) was erected 
 probably in the 10th century, and 
 is decorated with colors and pat- 
 terns which are characteristic of 
 the style. Nor does there seem 
 any reason for doubting but that 
 the pointed arch of the entrance 
 doorway belongs to the period to which the church is assigned. 
 
 The cathedral at Puy en Velay is another example of the same 
 style. 1 The east end and the two first bays of the nave belong to the 
 
 ' See a paper on this church by Mr. Street, read to the Institute of British 
 Arcliitects. 
 
 VOL. I. —32 
 
 364. Fa9ade of Church of Ainay. (From a 
 drawing by J. B. Waring.) No scale. 
 
498 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part it. 
 
 10th century. The church progressed westwa»'i at the rate of two 
 bays in a century till the last two were completed, with the won- 
 derful cavernous porch under them, about the year 1180. The whole 
 length of the church is 215 ft., and its width across the nave is a little 
 over 80. Externally its most remarkable feature is the fa9ade of the 
 south transept, which is perhaps the richest and most elaborate speci- 
 men of the Ainay style of decoration existing. On the north side is the 
 
 365. Cloister of CatViedral of Puy en Velay. (From . . *^ * 
 
 a Photograph.) tliis cloistcr they support 
 
 the arches, and are veritable parts of the construction. It would be 
 difficult to find any apter illustration of Pugin's famous antithesis 
 than these examples of Roman and Burgundian architecture — the one 
 is constructed ornament, the other ornamented and ornamental con- 
 struction — and notwithstanding its rudeness, the Burgundian exam- 
 ple is far more pleasing tlian the Roman, and, if used with classical 
 details, this arrangement might now be introduced into any Italian 
 design with the most satisfactory effect. 
 
 The church of St. Benigne at Dijon, mentioned above, was one of 
 the oldest in Burgundy, and was probably an excellent type of the 
 style of that country. But its total destruction, and the insufficiency 
 of the i^lates published by Dom Plancher^ preclude anything like a 
 
 1 " Histoire Generale de Bourgogne," 4 vols, fol., Dijon, 1739; p. 81. 
 
 cloister, which is a sin- 
 gularly elegant specimen 
 of the style, but very 
 classical in detail. The 
 pillars are almost Corin- 
 thian in outline (Wood- 
 cut No. 365), but the 
 blunder the Romans made 
 when using- pillars with 
 arches has in this case 
 been avoided. If refer- 
 ence is made to Woodcuts 
 210 and 212, or to any 
 others representing the 
 classical form, the differ- 
 ence will be at once per- 
 ceived. In both instances 
 the pillars were used 
 merely as ornaments, but 
 with the Romans they 
 were nothing but useless 
 additions, without even 
 the pretence of utility. In 
 
Bk. II. Ch. V. 
 
 BURGUNDY. 
 
 499 
 
 satisfactory study of it. The abbey churcli of Tourniis (Woodcut No. 
 366) is perhaps nearly as old, its antiquity being manifested by the 
 rudeness both of its design and execution. Tlie nave is separated from 
 the aisles by plain cylindrical columns without bases, the capitals of 
 which are united by circular arches at the height of the vaults of the 
 aisle. From the capitals rise dwarf columns supporting arches tlirown 
 across the nave. From one of these arches to the other is thrown a 
 transverse tunnel-vault, whicli thus runs the cross w\ay of the build- 
 ing ; being, in fact, a series of arches like those of a bridge extending 
 the whole len^^tli of the nave. This is, I believe, the only known in- 
 stance of this arrangement, and is interesting as contrasting with tlie 
 longitudinal tunnel-vaults so common both in this province and in 
 the South. 
 
 It is a curious instance of an ex])eriment, the object of which 
 was the getting over those difficulties afterwards removed by the 
 invention of the inter- 
 secting vault. In the 
 mean time this Tour- 
 nus roof offered some 
 ad vantages well worthy 
 of consideration. The 
 first of these Avas that 
 the thrust of the vault 
 was wholly longitudi- 
 nal, so that only the 
 supporting arches of 
 the transverse vaults 
 required to be abutted. 
 These being low and in 
 a well-defined direction 
 were easily provided 
 for. Another advantage 
 was, that it allowed of a 
 large and well-defined 
 clerestory, which, as we 
 have seen, was impos- 
 sible with the longitu- 
 dinal vaults. On the 
 other hand, the artistic 
 awkwardness of the 
 plan was a fatal objec- 
 tion, for, instead of con- 
 ducting the eye pleas- 
 ingly along the vault, it offered nothing but a succession of interrup' 
 tions to the perspective. 
 
 366. 
 
 View of Fiiterior of Abbey at Tournus. 
 (From Taylor and Nodier.) 
 
500 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 In the nave of this church all the arches are circular ; in the choir, 
 
 which dates early in 
 the 11th century, if 
 not before,ancl M^hicli 
 is perhaps older than 
 the nave, the great 
 transverse arches are 
 slightly pointed, and 
 support at the in- 
 tersection a dome, 
 which forms the 
 most beautifiil fea- 
 ture in the church. 
 
 The pride of 
 Burgundy was the 
 great abbey churcli 
 of Cluny, whicli, 
 with its narthex or 
 ante-churcl,, meas- 
 ured 580 ft. in 
 length, or consider- 
 ably more than any 
 other church erected 
 in P^'rance in any 
 age. Its nave was 
 throughout 37 ft. 
 6 in. in width, and 
 it had double side- 
 aisles, making tlie 
 total internal width 
 120 ft., while the 
 whole area covered 
 by it was ui)\vards 
 of 70,000 ft. Bnt 
 colossal as these di^ 
 mensions are, they 
 convey no adequate 
 idea of its magni- 
 ficence. The style 
 throughout was sol- 
 id and grand, and 
 it must have pos- 
 sessed a degree of 
 massive magnifi- 
 cence which we so 
 
 367. Plan of Abbey Churcli at Cluny, (From Lorain's " His- 
 toire de I'Abbaye.") Scale 200 ft. to 1 in.) 
 
bk. II. ch. y. 
 
 BURGUNDY. 
 
 501 
 
 frequently miss among the more elegant beauties of subsequent 
 erections. 
 
 The semi-dome of the chevet was supported by eight noble columns, 
 through which was seen in perspective a circle of five apsidal chapels. 
 Externally the roof was crowned by five larger and three smaller 
 towers ; and the whole was carried up solidly to a height unrivalled 
 among the buildings of this age. Wliat added to its interest was, 
 that the church at least was at the time of its destruction an almost 
 unaltered s])ecinien of the architecture of the 11th and Titli centuries, 
 having been commenced in 1089 by St. Hugues, and dedicated in 
 1121. The narthex or ante-chapel, though somewhat more modern, 
 
 3G8. View in Aisle at Autun. (From 369. View in Nave at Autiin. 
 
 Chapuy, " Cathedrales Fran9aises.") (From Chapuy.) 
 
 was probably comjdeted within the limits of the 12th century. These 
 dates have been disputed, but principally on account of the theories 
 prevalent regarding the origin of the pointed arch. This feature was 
 nsed here, as it is found elsewhere, in all the ])ier arches separating 
 the nave from the aisles — the vaulting of the aisles having probably 
 been also pointed, while the great vault of the church is a plain 
 tunnel-vault with transverse ribs on its surface. That of the narthex 
 is a transverse vault of a later datej but of singularly clumsy con- 
 struction. Whether it had a clerestory or not, is not quite clear from 
 such drawings as we possess ; but if not, it undoubtedly had' a double 
 gallery throughout, the upper range of which, if not both, served to 
 admit light. 
 
 We should hardly be able to make out, from the representations 
 
502 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 we possess, what the exact ordinance of this church was were it not that 
 some other contemporary churches in the same style still remain to 
 us. Among these, one of the most perfect is the cathedral at Autun, 
 formerly the chapel of the dukes of Burgundy, commenced about the 
 year 1060, and consecrated 1132. The arrangement of its nave is 
 extremely similar to that of Cluny, with these differences, that at 
 Autun the great vault is slightly pointed, and attached to the piers 
 of the nave are pilasters instead of three-quarter columns. In the 
 ante-church, however, at Cluny, the same pilastered arrangement 
 occurs. This is the characteristic of the true Burgundian style, and 
 so peculiar is it, and so classical, that some antiquaries have not hesi- 
 tated to consider it as a bad imitation of Gothic forms belonging to 
 the 15th or 16th centuries. In fact the fluted columns or pilasters, 
 their Corinthian capitals, and the whole arrangements are so emi- 
 nently classical as almost to justify the doubt in those who are not 
 familiar with the history of the southern styles of France. There 
 can, however, be no doubt as to the age of these examples, and as 
 little as to the models from which they are copied, for in this very 
 city of Autun we have two Roman gateways (one of which is repre- 
 sented in Woodcut No. 217), and there are others at Langres and 
 elsewhere, Avhich, exce])t in the jWnted arch and other constructive 
 peculiarities, are almost identical with the style of these churches. 
 Whether from want of familiarity with this style, or from some other 
 cause, it certainly is not pleasing to our eyes, and we therefore turn 
 with pleasure to the ruder but more purpose-like inventions of tlie 
 purely Gothic architects of the same age. 
 
 Among these the province affords no more beautiful specimen than 
 the nave of the church of Vezelny, which possesses all the originality 
 
 of the Norman com- 
 bined Avith the ele- 
 gance of the Southern 
 styles. In this speci- 
 men the ])ier arches- 
 are w^ide and low, there 
 is no triforium of any 
 sort, and the windows 
 are small. The vault 
 is formed by immense 
 transverse ribs, cross- 
 ing from pier to pier, 
 and forming square 
 compartments, each 
 divided by plain inter- 
 secting arches without 
 This certainly is an im- 
 
Bk. II. Cm. V. 
 
 BURGUNDY. 
 
 503 
 
 provement on tlie vault at Cluiiy, though it cuts tlie roof too uuich 
 up into divisions. Perhaps its greatest defect is its want of lieight, 
 being only 60 ft. in the centre, while the total width is 8G ft. from 
 wall to wall. But the details of the whole are so elegant as in a great 
 measure to redeem these faults. 
 
 The narthex, or ante church, resembles that at Cluny both in its 
 importance and in being somewhat more modern than the church 
 itself. At Vezelay (Woodcut No. 370) it dates from the beginning of 
 the 12tli century, while the nave seems wholly to belong to the 11th. 
 It is an extremely instructive example of the progress of vaulting. 
 
 -.c has the bold transverse ribs, and the ])lain intersecting vaults, wliich 
 are here, in accordance Avith the Southern practice, abutted by the 
 arches of the galleries. In the walls of the galleries are windows 
 large enough to admit a considerable amount of light. But the vaults 
 are here fast losing their original purpose. The arched construction 
 supports the solid external roof over the side-aisles, but the central 
 vault is covered by a w^ooden roof, so that the stone vault has become 
 a mere ceiling, leaving only one easy step towards the completion of 
 the plan of Gothic roofing. This step was to collect the vaults of the 
 side galleries into a mass over each pier, and use them as flying but- 
 tresses, and to employ wooden roofs everywhere, wholly independent 
 of the vaults which they covered. 
 
504 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Vezelay is one of the most beautiful of the remaining churches of 
 its age in Burgundy, notwithstanding that the choir, which is a chevet 
 in the early pointed style, like those in the northern province, rather 
 <listurbs the harmony of the whole. 
 
 Among the remaining churches of this class, the cathedral at 
 Besangon is one of the few double-apse churches of France, and is, in 
 
 372. Chevet, St, Meiioux. (From Allier.) 
 
 plan at least, very much more like those we find on the banks of the 
 Rhine. 
 
 The cathedral at Vienne, mentioned above, might from some of its 
 details, particularly the form of the pier arches, be fairly classed with 
 this style, showing, as it does, the fluted pilasters and other classical 
 adjuncts found here. These peculiarities are common both to this 
 and the Proven9al style, but the boundary between them is by no 
 means .clearly defined. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. V. 
 
 BURGUNDY. 
 
 505 
 
 On the northern border of the province we find tlie church of St. 
 Menoux (Woodcut No. 371), belonging certainly in many of its details 
 to the style we are now describing. This is most distinctly observable 
 in the exterior of the apse of the chevet, a feature which is seldom 
 found unaltered ; here it is surrounded by a series of pilasters of rude 
 classical design, which give to it a peculiar local character. Internally, 
 too, its Chevet (Woodcut No. 372) is remarkably elegant, though less 
 Burgundian in style. It shows to what an extent the stilting of round 
 arches could be used to overcome the difhculty of combining arches 
 of different spans, but all requiring to be carried to the same height. 
 Like all the old churches of the province, it possesses a large and im- 
 portant narthex, here the oldest part of the church, and a rude and 
 characteristic specimen of a style of architecture that can hardly be 
 later than the 10th century. 
 
 These few specimens must suffice to define a style which well 
 deserves a volume to itself, not only on account of its own architect- 
 ural merit, but from the enormous influence exercised both by the 
 order itself and by its monastic founders on the civilization of Europe 
 in the age to which it belongs. During the 11th and 12th centuries 
 Cluny was more important to France than Paris. Its influence on 
 the whole of Europe was second only to that of Rome — civilizing 
 barbarians by its missionaries, withstanding the feudal nobility, and 
 in many ways counteracting the ferocity of the times.. 
 
506 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 PA.R'r II 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 FRANKISH PROVINCE. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Exceptional buildings — Basse CEuvre, Beauvais — Decoration. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 rpHE arcliitecture of the Northern division of France is certainly 
 J- the most interesting subject in the whole history of the Mediaeval 
 styles, inasmuch as it comprehends the origin and progress of that 
 form of pointed architecture which in the 13th century extended from 
 Paris as a centre to the remotest corners of Europe, pervading the 
 wliole of Germany, Britain, and even Spain and Italy. In these 
 eounti-ies it generally obliterated their own peculiar styles, and usurped 
 tlieir ])laces, so that it became the Gothic style par eminence^ and the 
 only one ordinarily understood under that name. It has gained this 
 distinction, not per}ia])s so much from any inherent merit of its own, 
 as because it M as tlie only one of all the Mediaeval styles which was 
 carried beyond the simple rudiments of the art, and enjoyed the 
 advantage of being perfected by a powerful and united people who 
 had advanced beyond the first elements of civilized society. It is 
 needless now to inquire whether the other styles might not have 
 been made as perfect, or more so, had the same amount of talent 
 and of time been bestowed upon them. All we can say is, that no 
 other style was so carried out, and it is impossible to attempt it 
 now; the pointed Gothic had therefore the opportunity which the 
 others Avere deprived of, and became the prevalent style in Europe 
 during the Middle Ages. Its history is, therefore, that to which 
 attention must always be principally directed, and from which 
 all lessons and all satisfactory reasoning on the subject must be 
 ])rincipally derived. 
 
 The great divisions into which the early history of the style 
 naturally divides itself have already been pointed out. The great 
 central province I have ventured to call the Prankish. It was 
 there that the true Gothic pointed style was invented, and thence 
 that it issued in the middle of the 12th century, first pervading 
 the two great subordinate divisions of Normandy on the one hand, 
 and Burgundy on the other. In Normandy, before this time, a 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VI. 
 
 FRANKISH PROVINCE. 
 
 507 
 
 warlike race had raised themselves to power, and, with an incon- 
 sistency characteristic of their state of civilization, devoted to sacred 
 purposes the wealth they had acquired by rapine and plunder, 
 covering their province with churches, and perfecting a j-ude style 
 of architecture singularly expressive of their bold and energetic 
 character. 
 
 In Burgundy, as we have just seen, both the style and iCs history 
 differed considerably from this. FroHi some cause, which has not 
 ■yet been explained, this country became early the favorite resort of 
 hermits and of holy men, who founded here those great monastic 
 establishments which spread their influence, not only over France, 
 but over the whole of Europe, controlling to an immense extent all 
 the relations of European society in the Middle Ages. The culmi- 
 nating epoch of the architecture 
 of Normandy and Burgundy wa^ 
 the 11th century. In the 12th, 
 the monarchical sway of the cen- 
 tral province was beginning to 
 be felt in them. In the 13th it 
 superseded the local character 
 of both, and gradually fused 
 them with the whole of France 
 into one great and singularly 
 uniform architectural province. 
 
 Latin Style. ^ 
 
 Before proceeding to describe 
 the local forms of architecture in 
 Central France it is necessary 
 to say a few words regarding a 
 class of buildings which have 
 not hitherto been mentioned, 
 but which must not be passed 
 over. These cannot be included 
 in any other style, and are so 
 nearly devoid of architectural 
 features, properly so called, that 
 they might have been omitted 
 
 Plan and Section of Basse CEuvre, Beau 
 vais. (From Woillez, " Monuments Re- 
 ligieux de Beauvais.") 
 
 l)ut for one consideration. They bear so remarkable a resemblance to 
 the earliest Christian churches of Rome on the one hand, and to the 
 true Gothic on the other, that we cannot doubt their being the channel 
 
 ' "Style Latin" is the name generally adopted for this style by the Frencb 
 Architects. 
 
508 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 through which the latter was derived from the former. They are 
 moreover, the oldest churches in Northern France, which is sufficient 
 to confirm this view. 
 
 The character of this style will be understood from the plan and 
 internal and external view of one of its typical examples, the Basse 
 (Euvre at Beauvais (Woodcuts Nos. 373 and 374). It will be seen 
 that this building consists of a nave and side-aisles, separated from 
 each other by a range of plain arches resting on piers without either 
 bases or capitals ; on one side the angles are cut off, so as to give a 
 slightly ornamental character; on the other they are left square. 
 
 374. External aud Internal View of Basse CEuvre. (ilom W oilicz.y 
 
 The central aisle is twice the width, and more than twice the height, 
 jf the lateral aisles, and has a well-defined clerestory ; the roof, 
 both of the central and side-aisles, is a flat ceiling of wood. The 
 eastern end has been destroyed, but, judging from other examples, 
 it probably consisted of three apses, a large one in the centre and 
 a smaller one at the end of each aisle. 
 
 The similarity of the form of this church to the Roman basilicas 
 will be evident on referring to the representations of those buildings, 
 more especially to that of San Vincenzo alle Tre Fontane (Woodcut 
 Ko. 285), though the details have nothing in common except in the 
 use of flat tiles between the cornices of the arches, which is singularly 
 characteristic of Roman masonry. The points in which this example 
 is most evidently the source of some of the important peculiarities of 
 the true Gothic, are the subordination of the side-aisles to the central 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VI. 
 
 FRANKISH PROVINCE 
 
 501)' 
 
 one, and the perfectly developed clerestory. These are not found in. 
 any of the styles of France hitherto described. 
 
 Eventually, as we shall shortly see, stone became the material 
 used in the interior ceiling of Gothic vaults, but protected externally 
 by a wooden roof. This stone vault was not, I believe, attempted 
 before the 11th century. In the meanwhile wooden-roofed churches, 
 like that at Beauvais, seem to have been usual and prevalent all 
 over the North of France, though, as may he supposed, both from 
 the smallness of their dimensions and the perishable nature of their 
 materials, most of them have been either superseded by larger 
 structures, or have been destroyed by fire or by the accidents of 
 time. 
 
 M. Woillez describes five or six as existing still in the diocese 
 of Beauvais, and varying in age from the 6th or 7th century, which 
 probably is the date of the Basse CEuvre, to the beginning of the 
 11th century; and if other districts were carefully examined, more 
 examples would probably be found. Normandy must, perhaps, be 
 excepted, for there the rude Northmen seem first to have destroyed 
 all the churches, and then to have rebuilt them with a magnificence 
 they did not previously possess. 
 
 Churches of the same class, or others at least extremely similar to- 
 them, as far as we can judge from such representations as have l)een 
 
 published, exist even beyond the r— ^-^ 
 
 Loire. There is one at Savonieres 
 in Anjou, and a still more curious 
 one at St. Genereux in Vienne, not 
 far from Poitiers, which shows in 
 great perfection a style of decora- 
 tion by triangular pediments and 
 a peculiar sort of mosaic in brick- 
 work. 
 
 The same style of decoration is 
 carried out in the old church of St. 
 Jean at Poitiers, which probably is even older than the Basse O^uvre 
 of Beauvais. The old church, which now forms the ante-church to- 
 St. Front at Perigeux (Woodcut No, 328), seems also to belong to 
 the same class ; but, if M. Felix de Verneilh's restoration is to be 
 trusted, it approaches nearer to a Romanesque style than any other of 
 its class, of which it may nevertheless possibly be the most southern, 
 example. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting example of the style is- the nave 
 of the church of Mortier en Der, near Vassy, almost due east from 
 Paris. It is perfectly plain, very like San Vincenzo (Woodcut No. 
 285), and is a perfect Romanesque example Avith a wooden roof;; 
 the design for which was probably brought direct from Rome when 
 
 375. 
 
 Decoration of St. G6iiereux. 
 Gailliabaud.) 
 
 (From 
 
510 
 
 FKENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 this clnircli was erected in this remote village. What, however, 
 gives it its greatest interest for our present purpose arises from 
 the fact that the apse or choir was rebuilt in the 13th century, and 
 Ave have consequently in immediate juxtaposition the Romanesque 
 model as it was introduced to the Barbarians, and the result of their 
 elaboration of it — the germ of the Gothic style and the full-blown 
 flowei*. 
 
 As before pointed out (p. 453), the progress was slow in the 
 formation of a new style during the 1000 years that elapsed between 
 the building of the Temple of Diana at Nimes and the Church at 
 Carcassone; but here within the limits of two or at most three 
 
 37G. Secti jn of Eastern I'ortioii of ( huich of INIortier en Der. (From the " Archives 
 (les Monuments," etc.) 
 
 centuries, tlie progress made was so rapid as to be startling. The 
 inhabitants of Central France appear at once to have compreliended 
 the significance of the problem, and to have worked it out with a 
 steadiness and energy of w^hicli it must be difficult to find another 
 example. The nave of the church is as poor and as lean as it can 
 Avell be, but every part of the choir is ornamented, while nothing 
 is overdone ; and there is not one single ornament which is not 
 appropriate to its place, or which may not fairly be considered as 
 a part of the ornamented construction of the building. It was an 
 entirely new style invented on the spot, and complete in all its 
 parts. Some of its ornaments were afterwai-ds made more elegant, 
 and more might have been done in this direction ; but as here 
 represented the style was completed, and it is certainly one of the 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VI. 
 
 FKANKISH PROVINCE. 
 
 511 
 
 most beautiful creations of the class which ever emanated from the 
 activity of the human brain. It is also interesting as being one of 
 the few where every step in the progress can be traced and every 
 result understood. 
 
 What we have now to attempt, is to point out — as clearly as 
 our limits will admit of — the steps by which the rude architecture of 
 the western half of the chuxch of Mortier en Der was converted into 
 the perfected style of the cboir as shown in the woodcut on the pre- 
 vious page. 
 
512 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. Part IL 
 
 CHAPTEH VIL 
 NORMANDY. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Triapsal churches — Churches at Caen — Interesting vaulting — Bayeux. 
 
 WITH one or two slight exceptions, the whole history of the Round' 
 arched Norman Gothic is comprehended within a period of less than 
 a century. No building in this style is known to have been even com- 
 menced before the year 1050, and before 1150 the pointed style had 
 superseded it in its native province. Indeed, practically speaking, all 
 the great and typical examples are crowded into the last fifty years 
 of the 11th century. This was a period of great excitement and pros- 
 perity with the Northmen, who, having at last settled themselves in 
 tliis fertile province, not only placed their dukes on an equality with 
 any of the powers then existing in France, but by their conquest of 
 England raised their chief to an importance and a rank superior 
 
 to that of any other 
 potentate in Europe, 
 except the German 
 emperors of that day, 
 with whose people 
 they were in fact, both 
 by race and policy, 
 more closely allied 
 than they were with 
 those among whom 
 they had settled. 
 
 There are two ex- 
 ceptional churches in 
 Normandy Avhich 
 should not be passed 
 over in silence : one 
 is a little triapsal 
 oratory at St. Wandrille ; the other a similar but somewhat more 
 important church at Querqueville, near Cherbourg, on the coast of 
 Brittany. Both are rude and simple in their outline and ornaments ; 
 they are built with that curious herring-bone or diagonal masonry 
 indicative of great age, and differing in every essential respect from 
 the works of the Normans when they came into possession of the- 
 
 Triapsal Church at Querqueville. (From Dawson 
 Turner's "Normandy.") 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VII. 
 
 NORMANDY. 
 
 513 
 
 province. Indeed, like the transitional churches last described, these 
 must be considered as the religious edifices of the inhabitants before 
 that invasion ; and if they show any affinity to any other style, it is 
 to Belgium and Germany we must look for it rather than anywhere 
 within the boundaries of France. 
 
 Amongst the oldest-looking buildings of pure Norman architecture 
 is the church of Lery, near Pont de I'Arche. It is the only one, so far 
 as is known, with a simple tunnel-vault, and this is so massive, and 
 rests on piers of such unusual solidity, as to give it an appejirance of 
 immense antiquity. There is no good reason, however, for believing 
 that it really is older than the chapel of the Tower of London, which 
 it resembles in most respects, though the latter is of somewhat lighter 
 architecture. 
 
 Passing from this we come to a series of at least five important 
 churches, all erected in the latter half of the 11th century. The first 
 of these is the church of Jumieges, the western end of which was 
 principally erected by Robert, afterwards Bishop of London, and 
 finally Archbishop of Canterbury. Its precise date is not very well 
 known, though it was probably begun before 1050, and certainly 
 shows a far ruder and less complete style of architecture than any of 
 the later churches. It is doubtful whether it was ever intended to 
 throw a vault over the nave ; yet the walls and piers are far more 
 massive than those of the churches of Caen, or that of Bocherville 
 in its immediate neighborhood. This last we know to have been 
 commenced in the year 1050, and completed in 1066. This church 
 still retains in a wonderful state of completeness all the features 
 of a Norman church of that age — the only part of it which is of a 
 more modern date being the two western turrets, which are at least 
 a century later. 
 
 The next of the series is the well-known Abbaye aux Hommes, or 
 St. Stephen's, at Caen (Woodcut No. 378), commenced by William 
 the Conqueror, 1066, in gratitude for his victory at Hastings, and 
 dedicated eleven years afterwards. Then follow the sister church 
 of the Trinite, or Abbaye aux Dames, commenced in 1083, and the 
 parish church of St. Nicolas at Caen, begun in the following year. 
 These two last were almost certainly completed within the limits of 
 the 11th century. 
 
 Of all these the finest is St. Stephen's, which is a first-class 
 church, its extreme length being 364 ft. It was not originally so 
 long, having terminated with an apse, as shown in the plan. Fig. 1, 
 which was superseded about a century afterwards by a chevet, as 
 shown in Fig. 2. This, however, was an innovation — all the round 
 Gothic churches in Normandy having originally been built with 
 apses, nor do I know of a single instance of a chevet in the province. 
 This circumstance points rather to Germany than to the neighboring 
 VOL. I. — 33 
 
514 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part 11. 
 
 districts of France for the origin of the Norman style — indeed, all 
 the arrangements of this church are more like those of the Rhenish 
 basilicas, that of Spires for example, than any of those churches 
 we have hitherto found within the limits of France itself. This 
 is more remarkable at Jumieges than even here. None of them, 
 however, has two apses, nor are latei-al entrances at all in use ; on 
 the contrary, the western end, or that opposite the altar, is always, 
 as in the true basilica, the principal entrance. In Normandy we 
 generally find this flanked by two towers, which give it a dignity 
 and importance not found in any of those styles we have been 
 These western towers became afterwards in France 
 the most important features of the ex- 
 ternal architecture of churches, though 
 it is by no means clear whence they 
 were derived. They are certainly of 
 neither Italian 
 nor German de- 
 rivation, nor do 
 they belong to 
 any of those 
 styles of the 
 Southern prov- 
 inces of France 
 which we have 
 been describing. The churches of Au- 
 vergne are those which perhaps show the 
 nearest approach to them. 
 
 On the whole it appears most probable 
 that the western fronts of the Norman 
 churches were taken from the facades of 
 Germany, and the towers added to give 
 dignity to them . As will be seen from the 
 view (Woodcut No. 379) in St. Stephen'^ 
 at Caen the feature is well marked and 
 defined ; for though the spires were ap- 
 parently added at the same time as the 
 chevet, the towers which support them 
 evidently belong to the original design. They may be regarded as 
 the prototype of the fafades of nearly all the Gothic cathedrals of 
 France. These western towers eventually superseded the attempt 
 made to raise the principal external feature of the churches on the 
 intersection of the nave with the transepts, as had been done in the 
 South, and they made the western front the most important part, not 
 only in decoration, but in actual height. Here and throughout the 
 North of France, with the exception of the churches at Rouen, the 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ► --J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Fig.l. Original Eastern 
 Termination. 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 378. Plan of the Cliurch of St. 
 Stephen, Caen. (From Kam^e, 
 "Histoire de I'Architecture.") 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VII. 
 
 NORMANDY. 
 
 515 
 
 central tower is low and comparatively insignificant, scarcely even 
 aspiring to group with those of the western facade. 
 
 Intersecting Vaulting. 
 
 As there are few churches in France which illustrate so completely 
 the difficulties of intersecting vaulting, and the struggle of the Medi- 
 aeval architects to conquer them, as St. Stephen's, Caen it may add to 
 the clearness of what 
 follows if we pause in 
 our narrative to ex- 
 plain what these were. 
 
 The churches de- 
 scribed hitherto pos- 
 sessed simple tunnel- 
 vaults, either of round 
 or pointed forms, or, 
 having no side-aisles, 
 were roofed with square 
 intersecting vaults of 
 equal dimensions each 
 way. The former plan 
 was admissible in the 
 briofht South, where 
 light was not so much 
 required ; but the 
 latter expedient de- 
 prived the churches of 
 several things whicli 
 were always felt to be 
 the powerful requisites 
 of an internal style of 
 architecture. Without 
 the contrast in height 
 between the central 
 and side aisles, the true 
 effect of the dimen- 
 sions could not be ob- 
 tained. Without the in- 
 ternal pillars no poetry 
 of proportion was pos- 
 sible, and without an ambulatory, processions lost their meaning. 
 The compartments of the aisles being square, no difficulty was 
 experienced as regards them ; but the central aisle being both 
 higher and wider, it became necessary either to ignore every alternate 
 
 379. 
 
 Western Facade of St. Stephen, Caen. (From Pugin 
 and Britten's "Normandy.") 
 
516 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt 11. 
 
 C'ive it at least 
 
 pillar of the aisle, and to divide the central roof equally into squares, 
 or to adopt some compromise. This difficulty was not got over till 
 the pointed arch was introduced; but, in the meanwhile, it is 
 very instructive to watch the various attempts that were made to 
 obviate it. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the Norman architects, with true 
 Gothic feeling, always intended that their churches should eventually 
 be vaulted, and prei)ared them accordingly, though in many instances 
 they were constructed with wooden roofs, or compromises of some 
 sort. Even at Jumieges, the alternate piers were made stronger, and 
 the intention there and in other instances seems to have been to throw 
 a stone arch across the nave so as to break the flat line of the roof, and 
 a certain amount of permanent character. In the 
 Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen, 
 even this does not appear to 
 have been attempted in the 
 first instance. The vaulting 
 shafts were carried right up 
 and made to support wooden 
 trusses, as shown on the right 
 hand of the diagram (Wood- 
 cut No. 380). i The intention, 
 however, may have been to 
 cut these away when the 
 vault should come to be 
 erected. In England they 
 frequently remain, but rarely, 
 if ever, in Normandy. The 
 next step was to construct a 
 quadripartite vault over the nave, and a sim])le arch supporting its 
 ci'own over the intermediate shaft. This was soon seen to be a mis- 
 take, and in fact Avas only a makeshift. In consequence at Caen a 
 compromise Avas adopted, Avhich the Woodcut No. 382 will explain, — 
 a sort of intermediate vault was introduced springing from the alter- 
 nate piers.2 Mechanically it was right, artistically it was painfully 
 wrong. It introduced and declared a number of purely constructive 
 features without artistic arrangement or ])leasing lines, and altogether 
 
 i'jy. 1, after Vaulting; Fig. i', bcloix- \ ;u 
 Section of Nave of St. Stephen, Caen. 
 
 ^ From a paper by Mr. Parker on this 
 subject read to the Institute of British 
 Architects. 
 
 2 This arrangement is known by the 
 name of hexapartite, or sexapartite, be- 
 cause the compartment of the vault 
 having been divided into four by the 
 great diagonal arches crossing one an- 
 other in the centre (which was the quad- 
 
 ripartite arrangement), two of the four 
 quarters were again divided by the arch 
 thrown across from one intermediate 
 pillar to the other, thus making six 
 divisions in all, though no longer all of 
 equal dimensions, as in the quadripartite 
 method. Both these arrangements are 
 shown in plan on Woodcut No. 378. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VII. 
 
 NORMANDY. 
 
 517 
 
 381. Diagram of Vaulting. 
 
 showed so plainly the mere mechanical structural wants of the roof 
 as to be most unpleasing. Before, however, they could accomplish 
 even this, the side-aisles had to 
 be re-vaulted with pointed arches 
 so as to carry the centre of gravity 
 higher. A half vault was thrown 
 over the gallery, as shown in Fig. 
 1, on the left side of the Woodcut 
 No. 380, and the whole upper 
 structure considerably strength- 
 ened. When all this was done 
 they ventured to carry out what ' 
 was practically, as will be seen 
 from the plan (Woodcut No. 378), 
 and elevation (Woodcut No. 
 382), a quadripartite vault with 
 an intermediate insertion, which 
 insertion was, however, neither 
 quite a rib, nor quite a compart- 
 ment of a vault, but something 
 between the two ; and in si^ite 
 of all the ingenuity bestowed 
 upon it in Germany, France, and 
 England, in the 11th and be- 
 ginning of the 12th centuries, 
 it never produced an entirely 
 satisfactory effect until at last 
 the pointed arch came to the 
 rescue. It is easy to see from 
 the diagram (Woodcut No. 381) 
 how the introduction of the 
 pointed arch obviated the diffi- 
 culty. In the first place, sup- 
 ])0sing the great vault to remain 
 circular, two segments of the same 
 circle, a b, a c, carry the inter- 
 secting vault nearly to the height 
 of the transverse one, or it could 
 as easily be carried to the same 
 height as at d. When both were 
 pointed, as at e and f, it was easy 
 to make their relative heights 
 
 , , . ^ . , 382. Elevation of Compartment of Nave of 
 
 anything the architect chose, St. Stephen, Caen. (From Pugin.) 
 
 without either forcing or intro- 
 ducing any disagreeable curves. By this means the compartments 
 
518 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE, Pakt II. 
 
 of the vaults of the central nave were made the same width as those 
 of the side-aisles, whatever their span might be, and every compart- 
 ment or bay w^as a complete design in itself, without reference to 
 those next to it on either side. 
 
 The arrangement in elevation of the internal compartments of the 
 nave of this church will be understood from Woodcut No. 382, where 
 it will \ e seen that the aisles are low, and above them runs a great 
 gallery, a feature common in Italy, but rare in Germany. Its intro- 
 luction may have arisen either from a desire for increased accommo- 
 dation, or merely to obtain height, as it is evident that an arch the 
 whole height of the side-aisles and gallery would be singularly narrow 
 and awkward. This was one of those difficulties which were only 
 got over by the introduction of the pointed arch ; but which, when- 
 ever attvjmpted in the circular style, led to very disagreeable and 
 stilted effects. It may, however, have been suggested by the abutting 
 galleries we find so frequently used in Southern churches. Be this as 
 it may, the two stories of the aisles fill up the height far more pleas- 
 ingly than could be done by one, and bring an abutment up to the 
 very springing of the main vault of the nave. 
 
 The worst feature in this elevation is the 
 clerestory, where the difficulties of the vault- 
 ing introduced a lop-sided arrangement very 
 destructive of true architectural effect, and 
 only excusable here from the inherent diffi- 
 culties of a first attempt. 
 
 During the twenty or thirty years that 
 elapsed between the building of St. Stephen's 
 church and that of the Abbaye aux Dames, 
 immense progress seems to have been made 
 towards the new style, as will be seen from 
 the annexed elevation of one compartment 
 of the nave of the latter. The great gallery 
 is omitted, the side-ai(^,les made higher, the 
 piers lighter and more ornamental. The tri- 
 foriura is a mere passage under the upper 
 windows, and so managed as not to intercept 
 their light from any part of the church. Even 
 the vaulting, though in some parts hexapartite, 
 in others shows a great approach to the 
 quadripartite vaulting of the subsequent age ; 
 this, however, is obtained by bringing down 
 the main vault to the level of the side vault, 
 ^Lme^.^cfer^'cFr'^m^^^^ and not by raising the side arches to the level 
 of the central, as was afterwards done. The 
 greatest change is ia the richness and elegance of the details, which 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VII. 
 
 NORMANDY. 
 
 51^ 
 
 show great progress towards the more ornamental style that soon 
 afterwards came into use. 
 
 The parochial church of St. Nicolas at Caen is naturally plainer than 
 either of these royal abbeys. It shows considerable progress in con- 
 struction, and deserves far more attention tlian it has hitherto met 
 with. It is the only church, so far as I know, in Normandy, that 
 retains the original external covering of its apse. This consists, as 
 shown in the woodcut (No. 384), of a high, pyramidal roof of stone, 
 
 ^ 
 
 384. East End of St. Nicholas, Caeu. (From Dawson Turner's " Normandy.") 
 
 following to tlie eastward the polygonal form of the apse, and extend- 
 ing one bay towards the west. From an examination of the central 
 tower, it is clear that this was not the original ])itch of the church 
 roof, which was nearly as low in all Norman churches as in those of 
 AuvergnCo In this instance the roof over the apse was a sort of semi- 
 spire placed over an altar, to mark externally the im])ortance of the 
 portion of the church beneath it. In apj)earance it is identical with 
 the polygonal cones at Loches, before mentioned. At Bourges, and 
 elsewhere in France, similar cones are found over chapels and altars; 
 but in most instances they have been removed, probably from some 
 
520 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt IL 
 
 defect in constructioD, or from their not harmonizing with the wooden 
 roofs of the rest of tlie church. They were, in fact, the originals of 
 the spires which afterwards became so much in vogue, and as such 
 their history would be interesting if j^roperly inquired into. 
 
 The cathedral of Bayeux, as now standing, is considerably more 
 inodern than either of these ; no part now remains of the church of 
 Odo, the brother of the Conqueror, except the lower portion of the 
 western towers, and a crypt which is still older. The pier arches of 
 the nave belong to the first half of the 12th century, the rest of the 
 churcli to tlie rebuilding, which was commenced 1157, after the town 
 had been burnt, and the cathedral considerably damaged by the sol- 
 diers of Henry I. At this time the apse was removed to make way for 
 a die vet, which is one of the most beautiful specimens of early pointed 
 Gotliic to be found in France, and far surpasses its rival in the Abbaye 
 anx Homnies at Caen. In the church at 
 Caen the alteration was probably made to 
 receive the tomb of the Conqueror, when that 
 veneration began to be shown to his remains 
 which was denied to himself when dying. 
 Here, however, the same motive does not 
 seem to have existed, and it is more probable 
 that the extension was caused by the im- 
 mense increase of the priesthood in the course 
 of the 11th and 12th centuries, requiring a 
 larger choir for their accommodation. We 
 know, from the disposition of the choir, that 
 pai tment, Nave, the navc originally had a great gallery over 
 (From Pugin.) side-aislcs, and consequently a low clere- 
 story. But before it was rebuilt, in the end of the 12th or beginning 
 of the 13th century, the mania for painted glass had seized on the 
 French architects, and all architectural propriety was sacrificed to 
 this mode of decoration. In the present instance we cannot help 
 contrasting the solid grandeur of the basement with the lean and 
 attenuated forms of the superstructure, although this attenuation was 
 in other examples carried to a still greater extent afterwards. 
 
 The diapering of the spandrils of the lower arches (Woodcut No. 385) 
 is another feature worthy of remark, as illustrating the history of the 
 style. Before painted glass was introduced, the walls of all churches 
 in Northern Europe were covered with fresco or distemper paintings, 
 as was then, and is to the present day, the case in Europe. But when 
 colored windows came into use, the comparative dulness of the former 
 mode of decoration was immediately felt, and the use of color confined 
 to the more brilliant transparent material. It was necessary to find a 
 substitute for the wall painting, and the most obvious expedient was 
 that of carving on the stone the same patterns which it had been 
 
 Lower Co 
 Bayeux 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VII. 
 
 NORMANDY. 
 
 521 
 
 customary to paint on them. An attempt was made, indeed, to 
 heighten the effect of this carving by inlaying the lines with colored 
 mastic or cement ; but the process was soon found to be not only 
 very expensive but very ineffective, and gave way afterwards to 
 sculptured figures in traceried panels. These ornaments easily filled 
 up the very small spaces of wall that were not occupied either by the 
 windows, which were greatly enlarged, or by the constructive sup- 
 ports of the building. Now, however, that color is gone, both from 
 the walls and the windows, this diapering gives a singularly rich and 
 pleasing effect to the architecture of the lower story, and, combined 
 with the massiveness and varied richness of the piers themselves, 
 renders this a nearly unique specimen of a Norman arcade, and one 
 of the most beautiful that has come down to us. 
 
 These examples are, it is hoped, sufficient to make known the general 
 characteristics of a style which is at the same time of great interest 
 to the English reader from its proximity to our shores, and from its 
 influence on our own, although it is comparatively so familiar as to 
 require less information than many others. Besides the examples 
 above described, many other specimens of Norman architecture might 
 have been given, filling up the details of the series, from the rude 
 simplicity of Jumieges to the elaborate richness of the nave of Bay- 
 eux, and showing a rapidity of progress and boldness in treating the 
 subject hardly surpassed in the succeeding age ; but still, with all its 
 developments, it can only be considered as a first rude attempt to 
 form a style of architecture which was superseded before its principles 
 began to be understood, and lost before it had received any of those 
 finishing touches which form the great element of beauty in all the 
 more perfect styles. 
 
n22 
 
 FEENCH ARCHITECTUKE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 FRANKISH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Historical notice — Tlie pointed arcli — Freemasonry — Mediaeval arcliitects. 
 
 THE architectural history of the Central or Prankish province is 
 widely different from that of any of those we have yet examined. 
 At the end of the 5th century the whole of the North of France was 
 overrun by Clovis and his Franks, and on his death, in 511, his domin- 
 ions were divided into four kingdoms, of which Metz, Paris, Soissons, 
 and Orleans were the capitals. If we take these cities as centres, 
 and add their districts together, they correctly represent the limits of 
 the architectural province we are now entering upon. With various 
 fluctuations, sometimes one kingdom, sometimes two or even three 
 being absorbed in one, they were at last united under Pepin in 748, 
 only to make way for the accession of Charlemagne and his universal 
 empire over the whole Gothic districts of Europe, with the exception 
 of England and Spain. 
 
 With the Merovingian kings we have nothing to do ; they have 
 not left one single building from which to judge of the state of the 
 art during their ascendency — (they must have been Aryans pier 
 sang) — nor can our history with propriety be said even to begin in 
 France with Charlemagne. His accession marks the epoch towards 
 which an archa3ologist may hope to trace back the incunabula of the 
 style, but as yet no single building has been found in France which 
 can with certainty be ascribed to his reign. The nave at Mortier en 
 Der, the Basse QEuvre at Beauvais and other buildings may approach 
 his age in antiquity, but we must travel down to the time of Capet 
 (987) ere we find anything that can be considered as the germ of 
 what followed. 
 
 This may in a great measure be owing to the confusion and anarchy 
 that followed on the death of Charlemagne ; and to the weakness of the 
 kings, the disorganization of the people, and the ravages of the North- 
 men and other barbarians, from which it resulted that no part of France 
 was in a less satisfactory position for the cultivation of the arts of peace 
 than that which might have been expected to take the lead in all. 
 Thus, while the very plunder of the Central province enabled the 
 Normans to erect and sustain a powerful state on the one side, and to 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VIII. 
 
 CENTRAL FRANCE. 
 
 523 
 
 adorn it witli monuments which still excite our admiration, and the 
 organization of the monks of Burgundy on the other hand promoted 
 the cultivation of arts of peace to an extent hardly known before their 
 time in Northern Europe, Central France remained incapable even of 
 self-defence, and still more so of raising monuments of permanent 
 splendor. 
 
 There must no doubt have been buildings in the round-arched 
 Gothic style in this province, but they were few and insignificant 
 compared with those we have been describing, either in the South or 
 in Normandy and Burgundy. Even in Paris the great church of St. 
 Germain des Pres, the burial place of the earlier kings, and apparently 
 the most splendid edifice of the capital, was not more than 50 feet in 
 width by 200 in length before the rebuilding of its chevet in the 
 pointed style, and it possessed no remarkable features of architectural 
 beauty. St. Genevieve was even smaller and less magnificent ; and if 
 there was a cathedral, it was so insignificant that it has not been 
 mentioned by any contemporary historian. 
 
 Several of the provincial capitals probably possessed cathedrals of 
 some extent and magnificence. All these, however, were found so un- 
 suited to the splendid tastes of the 12th and 13th centuries, that they 
 were pulled down and rebuilt on a more extended scale ; and it is only 
 from little fragmentary portions of village churches that we learn that 
 the round Gothic style was really at one time ])revalent in the pro- 
 vince, and possessed features according to its locality resembling more 
 or less those of the neighboring styles. So scanty, indeed, are such 
 traces that it is hardly worth while to recapitulate here the few obser- 
 vations that might occur on the round Gothic styles as found within 
 the limits of the province. i 
 
 This state of affairs continued down to the reign of Louis le Gros, 
 1108-1136, under whom the monarchy of France began to revive. 
 This monarch, by his activity and intelligence, restored to a consider- 
 able extent the authority of the central power over the then inde- 
 pendent vassals of the crown. This was carried still further under the 
 reign of his successor, Louis le Jeune (1137-1179), though perhaps 
 more was owing to the abilities of the Abbe Suger than to either of 
 these monarchs. He seems to have been one of those great men who 
 sometimes aj^pear at a crisis in the history of their country, to guide 
 and restore what otherwise might be left to blind chance and to perish 
 for want of a master mind. Under Philip Augustus the country 
 advanced with giant strides, till under St. Louis it arrived at the 
 
 1 The Church of St. Eemi at Rheims 
 ought perhaps to be treated as an excep- 
 tion to this assertion: it has, however, 
 been so much ahered in more modern 
 ♦^^imes as almost to have lost its original 
 
 character. It nevertheless retains the 
 outlines of a vast and noble basilica of 
 the early part of the 11th century, pre- 
 senting considerable points of similarity 
 to those of Burgundy. 
 
624: 
 
 FKENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt II. 
 
 summit of its power. For a century after this it sustained itself by 
 the impulse thus given to it, and with scarcely an external sign of 
 that weakness which betrayed itself in the rapidity with which the 
 whole power of the nation crumbled to pieces under the first rude 
 shock sustained in 1346 at Crecy from the hand of Edward III. 
 
 More than a century of anarchy and confusion followed this great 
 event, and perhaps the period of the English wars may be considered 
 as the most disastrous of the whole history of France, as the previous 
 two centuries had been the most brilliant. When she delivered herself 
 from these troubles, she was no longer the same. The spirit of the 
 Middle Ages had passed away. The simple faith and giant energy of 
 the reigns of Philip Augustus and St. Louis were not to be found 
 under Louis IX. and his inglorious successors. With the accession of 
 Francis I. a new state of affairs succeeded, to the total obliteration 
 of all that had gone before, at least in art. 
 
 The improvement of architecture, keeping pace exactly with the 
 improved political condition of the land, began with Louis le Gros, 
 and continued till the reign of Philip of Valois (1108 to 1328). It 
 was during the two centuries comprised witliin this period that pointed 
 architecture was invented, which became the style, not onl}^ of France, 
 but of all Euroi)e during the Middle Ages ; and is, ^xw excellence, the 
 Gothic style of Europe. The cause of this pre-eminence is to be found 
 partly in the accident of the superior power of the nation to which 
 the style belonged at this critical period, but more to the artistic 
 feelipgs of their race ; and also because the style was found the most 
 fitted to carry out certain religious forms and decorative principles 
 which were prevalent at the time, and which will be noted as we 
 proceed. 
 
 The style, therefore, w^ith which this chapter is concerned is that 
 which commenced with the building of the Abbey of St. Denis, by 
 Suger, A.D. 1144, which culminated with the building of the Sainte 
 Chapelle of Paris by St. Louis, 1244, and which received its greatest 
 amount of finish at the completion of the choir of St. Ouen at Rouen, 
 by Mark d'Argent, in 1339. There are pointed arches to be found in 
 the Central province, as well as all over France, before the time of the 
 Abbe Suger; but they are only the experiments of masons struggling 
 with a constructive difficulty, and the pointed style continued to be ^ 
 practised for more than a century and a half after the completion of 
 the choir of St. Ouen, but no longer in the pure and vigorous style 
 of the earlier period. Subsequent to this it resembles more the 
 efforts of a national style to accommodate itself to new tastes and new 
 feelings, and to maintain itself by ill-suited arrangements against 
 the innovation of a foreign style which was to supersede it, and the 
 influence of which was felt long before its definite appearance. 
 
 The sources from which the pointed arch was taken have been 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VIII. 
 
 CENTRAL FRANCE. 
 
 525 
 
 more than once alluded to in the preceding pages. It is a subject on 
 which a great deal more has been said and written than was at all called 
 for by the real importance of the question. Scarcely anything was 
 done in pointed architecture which had not already been done in the 
 round-arch styles. Certainly there is nothing which could not have 
 been done, at least nearly as well, and many things much better, by 
 adhering to the complete instead of to the broken arch. The coupling 
 and compounding of piers had already been carried to great perfec- 
 tion, and the assignment of a separate function to each shaft was 
 already a fixed principle. Vaulting, too, was nearly jierfect, only that 
 the main vaults were either hexapartite or six-celled, instead of quad- 
 ripartite, as they afterwards became ; an improvement certainly, but 
 not one of much importance. Ribbed vaulting was the greatest im- 
 provement which the Mediaeval architects made on the Roman vaults, 
 giving not only additional strength of construction, but an apparent 
 vigor and expression to the vault, which is one of the greatest beauties 
 of the style. This system was in frequent use before the employment 
 of the pointed arch. The different and successive planes of decoration 
 were also one of the Mediaeval inventions, which was carried to greater 
 perfection in the round Gothic styles than in the pointed. Indeed, it 
 is a fact, that except in window tracery, and perhaps in pinnacles and 
 flying buttresses, there is not a single important feature in the pointed 
 style that was not invented and in general use before its introduction. 
 Even of windows, which are the important feature of the new style, by 
 far the finest are the circular or wheel windows, which have nothing 
 pointed about them, and which always fit awkwardly into the pointed 
 compartments in which they are placed. In smaller windows, too, by 
 far the most beautiful and constructively appropriate tracery is that 
 where circles are introduced into the heads of the pointed windows. But, 
 after hundreds of experiments and expedients had been tried, the difli- 
 culty of fitting these circles into spherical triangles remained, and the 
 unpleasant form to which their disagreement inevitably gave rise, proved 
 ultimately so intolerable that the architects were forced to abandon 
 the beautiful constructive geometric tracery for the flowing or flam- 
 boyant form ; and this last was so ill adapted to stone construction, 
 that the method was abandoned altogether. These and many other 
 difiiculties would have been avoided, had the architects adhered to the 
 form of the unbroken arch ; but on the other hand it must be confessed 
 that the pointed forms gave a facility of arrangement which was an 
 irresistible inducement for its adoption ; and especially to the French, 
 who always affected height as the principal element of architectural 
 effect, it afforded an easy means for the attainment of this object. Its 
 greatest advantage was the ease with which any required width could 
 be combined with any required height. With this power of adapta- 
 tion the architect was at liberty to indulge in all the wildness of tlie 
 
526 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II 
 
 most exuberant fancy, hardly controlled by any constructive necessi- 
 ties of the work he was carrying out. Whether this was really an 
 advantage or not is not quite clear. A tighter rein on the fancy of 
 the designer would certainly have produced a purer and severer style, 
 though we might have been deprived of some of those picturesque 
 effects which charm so much in Gothic cathedrals, especially when 
 their abruptness is softened by time and hallowed by associations. 
 We must, however, in judging of the style, be careful to guard our- 
 selves against fettering our judgment by such associations. There is 
 nothing in all this that might not have been as easily applied to round 
 as to pointed arches, and, indeed, it would certainly have been so applied 
 had any of the round-arched styles arrived at maturity. 
 
 Far more important than the introduction of the pointed arch was 
 tlie invention of painted glass, which is really tie important formative 
 principle of Gothic architecture ; so much so, that there would be more 
 meaning in the name, if it were called the '-'■painted-glass styled'' instead 
 of the pointed-arch style. 
 
 In all the earlier attempts at a pointed style, which have been 
 alluded to in the preceding pages, the pointed arch was confined to 
 the vaults, pier arches, and merely constructive parts, while the deco- 
 rative parts, especially the windows and doorways, were still round- 
 headed. The windows were small, and at considerable distances, a 
 very small surface of openings filled with plain white glass being 
 sufficient to admit all the light that was required for the purposes of 
 the building, while more would have destroyed the effect by that 
 garish white light that is now so offensive in most of our great cathe- 
 drals. As soon, however, as painted glass was introduced, the state 
 <jf affairs was altered : the windows were first enlarged to such an 
 extent as was thought possible without endangering the safety of the 
 l)ainted glass, with the imperfect means of supporting it then known. ^ 
 All circular plans were abandoned, and polygonal apses and chapels 
 of the chevet introduced ; and lastly, the windows being made to 
 occupy as nearly as was possible the whole of each face of these poly- 
 gons, the lines of the upper part of the window came internally into 
 such close contact with the lines of the vault that it was almost im- 
 possible to avoid making them correspond the one with the other. 
 Thus the windows took the pointed form already adopted for con- 
 structive reasons in the vaults. This became even more necessary 
 when the fashion was introduced of grouping two or three simple 
 windows together so as to form one; and when those portions 
 of wall which separated these windows one from the other had 
 become attenuated into muUions, and the upper part into tracery. 
 
 1 These generally consisted of strong iron bars, wrought into patterns in accord- 
 ance with the design painted on the glass. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. VIII. 
 
 CENTRAL FRANCE. 
 
 527 
 
 until in fact the entire wall was taken up by this new species of 
 decoration. 
 
 So far as internal architecture is concerned, the invention of painted 
 glass was perhaps the most beautiful ever made. The painted slabs 
 of the Assyrian palaces are comparatively poor attempts at the same 
 effect. The hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were far less splendid and 
 complete ; nor can the painted temples of the Greeks, nor the mosaics 
 and frescoes of the Italian churches, be compared with the brilliant 
 effect and party-colored glories of the windows of a perfect Gothic 
 cathedral, where the whole history of the Bible was written in the 
 hues of the rainbow by the earnest hand of faith. 
 
 Unfortunately no cathedral retains its painted glass in anything 
 like such completeness ; and so little is the original intention of the 
 architects understood, that we are content to admire the plain surface 
 of white glass, and to consider this as the appropriate filling of tra- 
 ceried window^s, just as our fathers thought that whitewash was not 
 only the purest, but the best mode of decorating a Gothic interior. 
 What is worse, modern architects, when building Gothic churches, lill 
 their sides with large openings of this glass, not reflecting that a 
 gallery of picture-frames without the pictures is after all a sorry ex- 
 hibition ; but so completely have we lost all real feeling for the art 
 that its absurdity does not strike us now. 
 
 It will, however, be impossible to understand what follows, unless 
 we bear in mind that all windows in all churches erected after the 
 middle of the 12th century were at least intended to be filled with 
 painted glass, and that the principal and guiding motive in all the 
 changes subsequently introduced into the architecture of the age was 
 to obtain the greatest possible space and the best-arranged localities 
 for its display. 
 
 Freemasonry. 
 
 The institution of freemasonry is another matter on which, like the 
 invention of the pointed arch, a great deal more has been said than the 
 real importance of the subject at all deserves. Still this subject has 
 been considered so all-important that it is impossible to pass it over 
 here without some reference, if only to explain why so little notice 
 will be taken of its influence, or of the important names which are 
 connected with it. 
 
 Before the middle of the 12th and beginning of the 13th century, 
 it is generally admitted that the corporation of freemasons was not 
 sufliciently organized to have had much influence on art. At that time 
 it is supposed to have assumed more importance, and to have been 
 the principal guiding cause in the great change that then took place 
 in architecture. Those who adopt this view, forget that at that time 
 all trades and professions were organized in the same manner, and 
 
528 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 that the guild of masons differed in no essential particulars from 
 those of the shoemakers or hatters, the tailors or vintners — all had 
 their masters and past-masters, their wardens, and other officers, and 
 were recruited from a body of apprentices, who were forced to undergo 
 years of probationary servitude before they were admitted to practise 
 their arts. 
 
 But though their organization was the same, the nature of their 
 pursuits forced one very essential distinction upon the masons, for 
 inasmuch as all the usual trades were local, and the exercise of them 
 confined to the locality where the tradesmen resided, the builders 
 were, on the contrary, forced to go wherever any great work was to 
 be executed. 
 
 Thus the shoemakers, tailors, bakers, and others, lived among their 
 customers, and just in such numbers as were required to supply thei^ 
 usual recurring wants. It is true the apprentices travelled to learn 
 their profession and see the world before settling down, but after tiiat 
 each returned to his native town or village, and then established him- 
 self among his friends or relatives, where he was known by all, and 
 where he at once took his station without further trouble. 
 
 With the mason it was different: his work never came to him, 
 nor could it be carried on in his own house : he was always forced 
 to go to his work ;• and when any great church or building was to 
 be erected in any town, which was beyond the strength of the ordi- 
 nary tradesmen of the place to undertake, masons were sent for, 
 and flocked from all the neighboring towns and districts to obtain 
 employment. 
 
 At a time when writing was almost unknown among the laity, 
 and not one mason in a thousand could either read or write, it was evi- 
 dently essential that some expedient should be hit upon by which a 
 mason travelling to his work might claim the assistance and hospitality 
 of his brother masons on tlie road, and by means of which he might 
 take his rank at once, on reaching the lodge, without going through 
 tedious exaipinations or giving practical proof of his skill. For this 
 purpose a set of secret signs was invented, which enabled all masons to 
 recognize one another as such, and by which also each man could make 
 known his grade to those of similar rank, without further trouble than 
 a manual-sign, or the utterance of some recognized pass-word. Otlier 
 trades had something of the same sort, but it never was necessary 
 for them to carry it either to the same extent nor to practise it so 
 often as the masons, they being for the most part i-esident in the same 
 place and knowing each other personally. The masons, who thus from 
 circumstances became more completely organized than other trades, 
 were men skilled in the arts of hewing and setting stones, acquainted 
 with all recent inventions and improvements connected with their 
 profession, and capable of carrying out any work that might be en- 
 
Bk. 11. Cii. A'lII. 
 
 CENTRAL FRANCE. 
 
 529 
 
 trusted to tliem, though tliey never seem to have attempted to exercise 
 their calling except under the guidance of some superior personage, 
 either a bishop or abbot, or an accomplished layman. In the time of 
 which we are speaking, which was the great age of Gothic art, there is 
 no instance of a mason of any grade being called upon to furnish the 
 design as well as to execute the work. 
 
 It may appear strange to us in the 19th century, among whom the 
 great majority really do not know wdiat true art means, that six cen- 
 turies ago eminent men, not specially educated to the ijrofession of 
 architecture, and qualified only by talent and good taste, should have 
 been capable of such vast and excellent designs ; but a little reflection 
 wall show how easy it is to design when art is in the right path. 
 
 If, for instance, we take a cathedral, any one of a series — let us say 
 of Paris; when completed, or nearly so, it was easy to see that though 
 an improvement on those which preceded it, there were many things 
 in its construction or design which might have been better. The side- 
 aisles were too low, the gallery too large, the clerestory not sufficiently 
 spacious for the display of the painted glass, and so on. Let us next 
 • suppose the Bishop of Amiens at that period determined on the erec- 
 tion of his cathedral. It was easy for him or his master-mason to make 
 these criticisms, and also to perceive how these mistakes might be 
 avoided ; they could easily see where wadth might be spared, especially 
 in the nave, and wliere a little additional height and a little additional 
 length would improve the effect of th^ whole. During the progress of 
 the Parisian works also some capitals had been designed, or some new 
 form of piers adopted, which were im])rovements on preceding examples, 
 and more confidence and skill would also have been derived from the 
 experience gained in the construction of arches and vaults. All these, 
 of course, would be adopted in the new cathedral; and, without making 
 drawings, guided only by general directions as to the plan and dimen- 
 sions, the masons might proceed with the work, and, introducing all 
 the new^ improvements as it progressed, they w^ould inevitably produce 
 a better result than any that preceded it, without any especial skill 
 on the part either of the master-mason or his employer. 
 
 If a third cathedral were to be built after this, it would, of course, 
 contain all the improvements made during the progress of the second, 
 and all the corrections which its results suggested ; and thus, while 
 the art was really progressive, it required neither great individual 
 skill nor particular aptitude to build such edifices as we find. 
 
 In fine arts we have no illustration of this in modern times; but all 
 our useful arts advance on the same principles, and lead consequently 
 to the same results. In ship-building, for instance, as mentioned in 
 the Introduction (page 45), if we take a series of ships, from those in 
 which Edward III. and his bold w^arriors crossed the channel to the 
 great line-of-battle ships now lying at anchor in our harbors, we find 
 VOL. I.— 34 
 
530 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt II. 
 
 a course of steady and uninterrupted improvement from first to last. 
 Some new metliod is tried : if it is found to succeed, it is retained ; if 
 it fails, it is dropped. Thus the general tendency constantly leads to 
 progress and improvement. And, to continue the comparison a little 
 further, this progress in the art is not attributable to one or more 
 eminent naval architects. Great and important discoveries have no 
 doubt been made by individuals, but in these cases we may generally 
 assume that, the state of science being ripe for such advances, had the 
 discovery in question- not been made by one man it soon would have 
 occurred to some other. 
 
 The fact is, that in a useful art like that of ship-building, or in an 
 art combining use and beauty like that of architecture — that is, when 
 the latter is a real, living, national art — the progress made is owing, 
 not to the commanding abilities of particular men, but to the united 
 infiuence of the whole public. An intelligent sailor who discusses the 
 good and bad qualities of a ship, does his part towards the advance- 
 ment of the art of ship-building. So in architecture, the merit of any 
 one admirable building, or of a high state of national art, is not due 
 to one or to a few master minds, but to the aggregation of experience, 
 the mass of intellectual exertion, which alone can achieve any practi- 
 cally great result. Whenever we see any work of man truly w^orthy 
 of admiration, we may be quite sure that the credit of it is not due to 
 an individual, but to thousands working together through a long series 
 of years. 
 
 Tlie pointed Gothic architecture of Germany furnishes a negative 
 illustration of the view which we have taken of the conditions neces- 
 sary for great architectural excellence. There the style was not 
 native, but introduced from France. French masons were employed, 
 who executed their work with the utmost precision, and with a per- 
 fection of masonic skill scarcely to be found in France itself. But in 
 all the higher elements of beauty, the German pointed Gothic cathe- 
 drals are immeasurably inferior to the French. They are no longer 
 the exj^ression of the devotional feelings of the clergy and people, and 
 are totally devoid of the highest order of architectural beauty. 
 
 The truth of the matter is, that the very pre-eminence of the great 
 masonic lodges of Germany in the 14th century destroyed the art. 
 When freemasonry became so powerful as to usurp to itself the 
 designing as well as the execution of churches and other buildings, 
 there was an end of true art, though accompanied by the production 
 of some of the most wonderful specimens of stone-cutting and of con- 
 structive skill that were ever produced. This, however, is " building," 
 not architecture ; and though it may excite the admiration of the 
 vulgar, it never will touch the feelings of the true artist or the man 
 of taste. 
 
 This decline of true art had nowhere shown itself during the 13th 
 
Bk. II Cn. YIIL 
 
 CENTRAL FRANCE. 
 
 531 
 
 century, witli which we are concerned at present. Then architecture 
 was truly progressive : every man and every class in the country lent 
 their aid, each in his own department, and all worked together to pro- 
 duce those wonderful buildings which still excite our admiration. The 
 masons performed their parts, and it was an important one ; but neither 
 to them nor to their employers, such as the Abbe Suger, Maurice de 
 Sully, Robert de Lusarches, or Fulbert of Chartres, is the whole merit 
 to be ascribed, but to all classes of the French nation, carrying on 
 steadily a combined movement towards' a well-defined end. 
 
 In the following pages, therefore, it will not be necessary to recur 
 to the freemasons nor their masters — at least not more than incident- 
 ally — till we come to Germany. Nor will it be necessary to attempt 
 to define who was the architect of any particular building. The 
 names usually fixed upon by antiquaries after so much search are 
 merely those of the master-masons or foremen of the works, who had 
 nothing whatever to do with the main designs of the buildings. The 
 simple fact that all the churches of any particular age are so like to 
 one another, both in plan and detail, and so nearly equal in merit, is 
 alone sufficient to prove how little the individual had to do with their 
 design, and how much was due to the age and the progress the style 
 had achieved at that time. This, too, has always proved to be the 
 case, not only in Europe, but in every corner of the world, and in every 
 age when architecture has been a true and living art. 
 
532 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt II. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Paris — Chartres — Eheims — Amiens — Other Cathedrals — Later Style — 
 St. Ouen's, Rouen. 
 
 THE great difficulty m attempting to describe the architecture of 
 France during the glorious period of the 13th century is really 
 tlie emharras de richesse. There are even now some thirty or forty 
 cathedrals of the first class in France, all owing their magnificence 
 to this great age. Some of these, it is true, were commenced even 
 early in the 12th, and many were not completed till after the 14th 
 century; but all their principal features, as well as all their more 
 important beauties belong to the 18th century, which, as a building 
 e])och, is perliaps the most brilliant in the whole history of architect- 
 ure. Not even the gi-eat Pharaonic age in Egypt, the age of Pericles 
 in Greece, nor the great period of the Roman Empire, will bear com- 
 parison with the 13th century in Europe, whether we look to the 
 extent of the buildings executed, their wonderful variety and con- 
 structive elegance, the daring imagination that conceived them, or 
 the power of poetry and of lofty religious feelings that is expressed 
 in every feature and in every part of them. 
 
 During the previous age almost all the greater ecclesiastical 
 buildings were abbeys, or belonged exclusively to monastic establish- 
 ments — were, in fact, the sole property, and built only for the use, of 
 the clergy, though the laity, it is true, were admitted to them, but 
 only on sufferance. They had no right to be there, and took no part 
 in the ceremonies ])erformed. In the 13th century, however, almost 
 all the great buildings were cathedrals, in the erection of which the 
 laity bore the greater part of the expense, and shared, in at least an 
 equal degree, in their ])roperty and purposes. In a subsequent age 
 the parochial system went far to supersede even the cathedral, the 
 people's church taking almost entirely the place of the ])riest's church, 
 a step which was subsequently carried to its utmost length by the 
 Reformation. Our present subject requires us to fix our attention on 
 that stage of this great movement which gave rise to the building of 
 the principal cathedrals throughout Europe from the 12th to the 15th 
 century. 
 
 The transition from the round Gothic to the true pointed Gothic 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 533 
 
 Style in the centre of France took place with the revival of the 
 national power under the guidance of the great Abbe Suger, about 
 the year 1144. In England it hardly appeared till the rebuilding 
 of Canterbury Cathedral, under the guidance of a French architect, 
 A.D. 1175; and in Germany it is not found till, at all events, the 
 beginning of the 13th century, and can hardly be said to have taken 
 firm root in that country till a century at least after it had been 
 fairly established in France. 
 
 The development of particular features will be pointed out as 
 we proceed ; but no attempt will be made to arrange the cathedrals 
 nnd great buildings in chronological order. Such an attempt would 
 merely lead to confusion, as most of them took a century at least to 
 erect — many of them two. 
 
 In France, as in England, there is no one great typical building 
 to which we can refer as a standard of perfection — no Hypostyle 
 Hall or Parthenon which combines in itself all the excellencies of the 
 style adopted ; and we are forced, therefore to cull from a number of 
 examples materials for the composition, even in imagination, of a 
 perfect whole. Germany has in this respect been more fortunate, 
 possessing in Cologne Cathedral an edifice combining all the beauties 
 ever attempted to be produced in pointed Gothic in that country. 
 But even this is only an imitation of French cathedrals, erected by 
 persons who admired and understood the details of the style, but 
 were incapable of appreciating its higher principles. The great 
 cathedrals of Rheims, Chartres, and Amiens are all early examples 
 of the style, and as they were erected nearly simultaneously, none 
 of their architects were able to profit by the experience obtained in 
 the others ; they are consequently all more or less experiments in a 
 new and untried style. The principal parts of the church of St. 
 Ouen at Rouen, on the contrary, are of somewhat too late a date ; and 
 beautiful though it is, masonic perfection was then coming to be more 
 considered than the expression either of poetry or of power. 
 
 Still in Rheims Cathedral we have a building possessing so many 
 of the perfections and characteristic beauties of the art that it may 
 almost serve as a type of the earlier style, as St. Ouen may of the 
 later; and though we may regret the absence of the intermediate 
 steps, except in such fragments as the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, still 
 between them we may obtain a tolerably clear idea of the form to 
 w^hich French art aspired during its most flourishing age. 
 
 To avoid as far as may be possible the tediousness of repetition 
 necessary if the attempt were made to describe each building sepa- 
 rately, and at the same time not to fall into the confusion that must 
 result from grouping the whole together, the most expedient mode 
 will, perhaps, be to describe first the four great typical cathedrals of 
 Paris, Chartres, Rheims, and Amiens, and then to point out briefly tli« 
 
534 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 principal resemblances and differences between these and the other 
 cathedrals of France. 
 
 Of these four, that of Paris is the oldest ; the foundation-stone 
 having been laid 1163, and the work carried on with such activity by 
 the bishop, Maurice de Sully, that the high altar w^as dedicated 1182, 
 the interior completed 1208, and the west front finished about the 
 year 1214. 
 
 The history of the cathedral of Chartres (Woodcut No. 389), is 
 not so easily traced. An important church was erected there by 
 
 Bishop Fulbert in the beginning of 
 the 11th century, of which building 
 scarcely anything now remains but 
 the piers of the Avestern doors. 
 
 The building of the present church 
 seems to have been commenced about 
 a century after the completion of the 
 older building, for the great western 
 towers were in progress in the year 
 1145, and tlie new choir must have 
 been commenced very shortly after- 
 wards. Indeed, the greater part of 
 the building belongs to the latter half 
 of the 12th century, or very early in 
 tlie 13th ; but it was not completed 
 till the year 1260. 
 
 The cathedral of liheims (Wood- 
 cut No. 390) was commenced in the 
 vear 1211, immediately after a fire 
 wliich consumed the preceding build- 
 ing, and under the auspices of Arch- 
 bishop Alberic de Humbert, — Robert 
 deCouci acting as trustee on the part 
 of the laity. It was so far com])leted 
 in all essential parts as to be dedicated 
 in 1241. 
 
 Amiens Cathedral (Woodcut No. 
 391) was commenced in 1220, and com- 
 pleted in 1257; but being partially 
 destroyed by fire the year after- 
 wards, the clerestory and all the 
 upper parts of the church were rebuilt. The whole appears to 
 have been completed, nearly as we now find it, about the year 1272. 
 From this period to the building of the Choir of St. Ouen, at Rouen, 
 1318-1339, there is a remarkable deficiency of great examples in 
 France. The intermediate space is very imperfectly filled by the 
 
 386. Plan of Cathedral of Notre Dame, 
 Paris. (From Cbapuy, " Moyen-Age 
 Mouumeutal.") Scale'^100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
I3k. II. Cn. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATIIEDRAL8. 
 
 5o5 
 
 examples of St. Urbaiii at Troyes, St. Benigne at Dijon, and a few 
 others. These are just sufficient to show how exquisite the style 
 then was, and what we have lost by 
 almost all the cathedrals of France hav- 
 ing been commenced simultaneously, 
 and none being left in which the expe- 
 rience of their predecessors could be 
 made available. 
 
 Though the plans of these cathe- 
 drals differ to some extent, their dimen- 
 sions are very nearly the same ; that 
 nt — 
 
 Paris, covering about . . 64,108 feet. 
 
 Chartres 68,260 " 
 
 Kheims 67,475 " 
 
 Amiens 71,208 " 
 
 These dimensions, though inferior to 
 those of Cologne, Milan, Seville, and 
 some other exceptional buildings, are 
 
 still as lar^e as those of any erected 387. Section of side Aisles, Cathedral 
 ^ of Pans. (From Gailhabaud, "Archi- 
 
 in the Middle Ag^es. 
 
 tecture.") Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 The cathedral of Paris was designed 
 at a time when the architects had not obtained that confidence in 
 their own skill which made them afterwards complete masters of the 
 constructive difficulties of the design. As 
 ^hown in the plan (Woodcut No. 386), the 
 points of support are far more numerous and 
 are placed nearer to one another than is usu- 
 ally the case ; and as may be seen from the 
 section, instead of two tall stories, the height 
 is divided into three, and made up, if I may 
 so express it, of a series of cells built over and 
 beside each, so as to obtain immense strength 
 with a slight expenditure of materials. 
 
 It must at the same time be confessed 
 that this result was obtained with a con- 
 siderable sacrifice of grandeur and sim])licity 
 of effect. Even before the building was com- 
 pleted, the architects seem to have become 
 aware of these defects ; and as is shown in 
 the woodcut (No. 388), the simple undivided 
 windows of the clerestory were cut down so 
 
 Original I Improved 
 
 Design, | Design. 
 
 388. External Elevation, 
 as to give them the greatest possible height. Cathedral of Paris. (From 
 
 and the roof of the upper gallery made flat 
 to admit of this. Subsequently larger windows were introduced 
 
 Gailhabaud.) 
 
536 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Part II. 
 
 between the buttresses, witli a view to obtaining fewer and larger 
 parts, and also of course to admit of larger surfaces for painted glass. 
 With all these improvements the cathedral has not internally the 
 same grandeur as the other three, though externally there is a very 
 noble simplicity of outline and appearance of solidity in the whole 
 design. Internally it still i-etains, as may be seen from the plan, the 
 
 hexapartite arrange- 
 ment in its vaults 
 over the central 
 aisle, and the quadri- 
 partite in the side- 
 aisles only. This 
 causes the central 
 vault to overpower 
 those on each side, 
 and makes not only 
 the whole church, 
 but all the parts, 
 look much smaller 
 would have 
 the case had 
 oof been cut 
 smaller divi- 
 sions, as was always 
 subsequently the 
 case. 
 
 At Chartres most 
 of thesfc defects were 
 avoided ; there is 
 there a simplicity of 
 design and a grand- 
 eur of conception 
 seldom surpassed. 
 The great defect of 
 proportion in that 
 building arises from 
 the circumstance 
 that the architect 
 included the three 
 aisles of the old 
 church in the central aisle of the present one. At that time the 
 architects had not attained that daring perfection of execution which 
 afterwards enabled them to carry the vaults to so astonishing a height. 
 At Chartres the proportion of width to height is nearly as 1 to 
 2, the breadth of the central nave being nearly 50 ft., and the 
 
 389. 
 
 Plau of Chartres Cathedral. (From Chapuy.) 
 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 Scale 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 537 
 
 height only 106. With the great length of such buildings found in 
 England such proportions were tolerable, but in the shorter French 
 cathedrals it gives an appearance of depression which is far from 
 being pleasing; and, as the painted glass has been almost entirely 
 removed from the nave, a cold glare now pervades the whole, which 
 renders it extremely difficult to form an opinion of the original 
 effect. 
 
 300. Plan of Rheims Cathedral. 391. Plan of Amiens CathedraL 
 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. (From Chapuy.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 iu. 
 
 Most of those defects were avoided by the builders of the cathedral 
 at Rheims, and nothing can exceed the simple beauty and perfection 
 of the arrangement of the plan, as well as of the general harmony of 
 all the parts. The proportion, both in width and height, of the side- 
 aisles to the central nave, and the absence of side chapels and of any 
 subsequent additions, render the nave one of the most perfect in. 
 
538 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut II. 
 
 France. The mode in wliicli tlie cliurcli ex])an(ls as yon approacli 
 the choir, and the oenoral arrangement of the eastern part as shown 
 in the plan (Woodcut Xo. 390), ai-e equally excellent, and are sur- 
 passed by no building of the Middle Ages. The piers are perhaps 
 a little heav}^, and their capitals want simplicity ; the triforium is if 
 anything too plain ; and at the present day the effect of light in the 
 church is in one respect reversed, inasmncli as the clerestory retains 
 its painted glass, wliicli in the side-aisles has been almost totally 
 
 3'J2. View of the Fagade of the Cathedral at Paris. (From Chapuy.) 
 
 destroyed, making the building appear as though lighted from below 
 — an arrangement highly destructive of architectural beauty. Not- 
 withstanding all this, it far surpasses those buildings which preceded 
 it, and is only equalled by Amiens and those completed afterwards. 
 Their superiority, however, arose from the introduction just at the time 
 of their erection of complicated window-tracery, enabling the builders to 
 dispense almost wholly with solid walls, and to make their clei*estories 
 at least one blaze of gorgeous coloring. By the improvement in 
 
Bk. II. Cii. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 539 
 
 tracery tlien introduced, they were able to dispose the glass in the 
 most beautiful forms, and framed in stone, so as to render it, notwith- 
 standing its extent, still an integral part of the whole building. In 
 this respect the great height of the clerestory at Amiens, and its 
 exceeding lightness, give it an immense advantage over the preceding 
 
 churches, although this is gained at the sacrifice, to a certain extent, 
 of the sober and simple majesty of the earlier examples. There is, 
 nevertheless, so much beauty and so much poetry in the whole effect, 
 that it is scarcely fair to apply the cold rules of criticism to so fanciful 
 and fascinating a creation. 
 
 Externally the same progress is observable in these four cathedrals 
 as in their interior arrangements. The fayade of the cathedral at 
 
540 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Paris (Woodcut No. 392) is simple in its outline, and bold and ma- 
 jestic in all its parts, and though, perhaps, a little open to the charge 
 of heaviness, it is admirably adapted to its situation, and both in 
 design and proportion fits admirably to the church to which it is 
 attached. Tlie flanks, too, of the building, as originally designed, 
 must have been singularly beautiful, for, though sadly disfigured 
 by the insertion of the chapels, which obliterate the buttresses and 
 deprive it of that light and shade so indispensable to architectural 
 effect, there yet remains a simplicity of outline, and an elegance in 
 the whole form of the building, that has not often been excelled in 
 Gothic structures. 
 
 The lower part of the facade at Chartres (Woodcut No. 393) is 
 older than that of Paris, and so plain (it miglit almost be called 
 rude) as hardly to admit of comparison with it ; but its two spires, of 
 different ages, are unsurpassed in France. Even in the southern or 
 older of the two, which was probably finished in the 12th century, we 
 find all the elements which were so fully develoi)ed in Germany and 
 elsewhere in the following centuries. The change from the square to 
 the octagon, and from the perpendicular part to the sloping sides of 
 the spire, are managed with the most perfect art; and were not the 
 effect it produces destroyed by the elaborate richness of the other 
 spire, it would be considered one of the most beautiful of its class. 
 The new or northern spire was erected by Jean Texier between the 
 years 1507 and 1514, and, notwithstanding the lateness of its date, it 
 must be considered as on the whole the most beautifully designed 
 spire on the continent of Europe; and, though not equal in height, ^ 
 certainly far surpassing in elegance of outline and appropriateness of 
 design those at Strasburg, Vienna, or even at Antwerp. If it has rivals 
 it is that at Friburg, or those designed for the cathedral at Cologne ; 
 but were its details of the same date, it can hardly be doubted that it 
 would be considered the finest spire of the three. 
 
 The transepts at Chartres have more projection than those of 
 Paris, and were originally designed with two towers to each, and 
 tM'o others were placed one on each side of the choir ; so that the 
 cathedral would have had eight towers altogether if completed ; but 
 none except the western two have been carried higher than the 
 springing of the roof; and though they serve to vary the outline, 
 they do not relieve, to the extent they might have done, the heavy 
 massiveness of the roof. In other respects the external beauty of the 
 cathedral is somewhat injured by the extreme heaviness of the flying 
 buttresses, which were deemed necessary to resist the thrust of the 
 enormous vault of the central nave; and, though each is in itself 
 a massive and beautiful object, they crowd the clerestory to an 
 
 ^ The height of the old spire is 342 ft. 6 in. with the cross ; of the new, 371 ft. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 541 
 
 incQiivenient extent; the effect of which is also somewhat injured 
 by the imperfect tracery of the windows, each of which more 
 resembles separate openings grouped together than one grand and 
 simple window. 
 
 The progress that took place between this building and that at 
 Rheims is more remarkable on the exterior than even in the interior. 
 The fa9ade of that church, though small as compared with some 
 others, was perhaps the most beautiful structure produced during 
 the Middle Ages ; and, though it is difficult to institute a rigorous 
 comparison between things so dissimilar, there is perhaps no fa9ade,, 
 either of ancient or of modern times, that sur- 
 passes it in beauty of proportion and details, or 
 in fitness for the purpose for which it was de- 
 signed. Nothing can exceed the majesty of its 
 deeply-recessed trij^le ])ortals, the beauty of the rose- 
 window that surmounts 
 them, or the elegance of 
 the gallery that completes 
 the fa9ade and serves as 
 a basement to the light 
 and graceful towers that 
 crown the composition. 
 These were designed to 
 carry spires, no doubt as 
 elegant and appro]3riate as 
 themselves ; but this part 
 of the design was never 
 completed. The beautiful 
 range of buttresses which 
 adorn the flanks of the 
 building are also perhaps 
 the most beautiful in 
 
 FT ,1 395. BvittressesatRlieiius. 
 
 ranee, and carry the (FromChapuy.) 
 
 design of the facade back 
 
 to the transepts. These are late and less ornate than the western. 
 
 front, but are still singularly beautiful, though wanting the two 
 
 towers designed to complete them. On the intersection of the 
 
 nave with the transepts thei-e rose at one time a spire of wood, 
 
 probably as high as the intended spires of the western towers, 
 
 and one still crowns the ridge of the chevet, rising to half the 
 
 height above the roof that the central one was intended to attain. 
 
 Were these all complete, we should have the beau ideal externally 
 
 of a French cathedral, with one central and two western spires,. 
 
 and four towers at the ends of the transepts. All these perhaps 
 
 never were fully completed in any instance, though the rudiments 
 
 394. Buttress at Chartres. 
 (From Batissier, " Histoire de 
 I'Art.") . 
 
542 
 
 FRENCH 
 
 ARCIHTECTUIIE. 
 
 Paut II. 
 
 of tlie arrangement are found in almost all the principal French 
 cathedrals. In some, as for instance at Rouen, it was carried 
 out in number, though at such different periods and of sucl) 
 varied design as to destroy that unity of effect essential to perfect 
 beauty. 
 
 The external effect of Amiens may be taken rather as an example 
 of the defects of the general design of French cathedrals than as an 
 illustration of tlieir beauties. The western facade presents the same 
 general features as those of Paris and Rheims, but the towers are so 
 small in proportion to the immense building behind as to look mean 
 and insignificant, while all the parts are so badly put together as to 
 destroy in a gi'eat measure the effect they were designed to produce. 
 The northern tower is 223 ft. high, the southern 205 ; both therefore 
 are higher than those at York, but instead of being appropriate and 
 l)eautiful adjuncts to the building they are attached to, they only 
 serve in this instance to exaggerate the gigantic incubus of a roof, 
 208 ft. in height, which overpowers the building it is meant to 
 adorn. 
 
 Tlie same is the case with the central spire, which, though higher 
 than that at Salisbury, being 422 ft. high £i-om the pavement, is 
 reduced from the same cause to comparative insignificance, and is 
 utterly unequal to the purjiose of relieving tlie heaviness of outline 
 for which this cathedral is remarkable. Tlie filling up of the spaces 
 between the buttresses of the nave with chapels prevents the tran- 
 septs from having their full value, and gives an unpleasing fulness and 
 flatness to the entire design. 
 
 All French cathedrals are more or less open to these objections, 
 and are deficient in consequence of that exquisite variety of outline 
 and i^lay of light and shade for which the English examples are so 
 remarkable; but it still remains a question how iar the internal 
 loftiness and the glory of their painted glass compensate for these 
 external defects. The truth, perhaps, may be found in a mean 
 between the two extremes, which has not unfortunately been attained 
 in any one exami)le ; and this arises mainly from, the fact that, 
 besides the effect of mass or beauty of outline, there were many 
 minor considerations of use or beauty that governed the design. We 
 must consequently look closely at the details, and restore, in imagina- 
 tion at least, the building in all its completeness, before we can 
 discover how far the general effect was necessarily sacrificed for 
 l)articular purposes. 
 
 What painted glass was to the interior of a French cathedral, 
 sculpture was to the exterior. Almost all the arrangements of tlie 
 facade were modified mainly to admit of its display to the greatest 
 possible extent. The three great cavernous porches of the lower 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 543 
 
 part would be ugly and unmeaning in the highest degree without the 
 sculptures that adorn them. The galleries above are mere ranges of 
 niclies, as unmeaning without their statues as the great mullioned 
 windows without their " storied panes." In such lateral porches, too. 
 as those for instance at Chartres, the architecture is wholly subordinate 
 to the sculpture ; and in a perfect cathedral of the 13th century the 
 buttresses, pinnacles, even the gargoyles, every "coin of vantage," 
 tells its tale by some image or representation of some living thing, 
 giving meaning and animation to the whole. The cathedral thus 
 became an immense collection of sculptures, containing not only the 
 whole history of the world as then known and understood, but also of 
 an immense number of objects representing the arts and sciences of the 
 Middle Ages. Thus the great cathedrals of Chartres and Rheims even 
 now retain some 5,000 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 1st chapter of Genesis, and 
 thence continuing the history through the whole of the Old Testa- 
 ment. 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 j:>opular 
 potentates carry on the thread of j^rofane history to the period of the 
 erection of the cathedral itself. In addition to these we have, inter- 
 si)ersed with them, a whole system of moral philosoj^hy, as illustrated 
 by the virtues and the vices, each represenied by an appropriate sym- 
 bol, and the j-eward 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 handi- 
 craft 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. 
 
 In the Middle Ages, when books were rare, and those who could 
 read them rarer still, this sculpture was certainly most valuable as a 
 means of jwpular education ; but, as Victor Hugo beautifully expresses 
 it, " Ceci tuera cela : le livre tuera I'Eglise." The printing-press has 
 rendered all this of little value to the present generation, and it is 
 only through the eyes of the artist or the antiquary that we can even 
 dimly appreciate what was actual instruction to the less educated 
 citizens of the Middle Ages, and the medium through which they 
 learned the history of the world, or heard the glad tidings of 
 salvation conveyed from God to man. All this few, if any, can 
 fully enter into now; but unless it is felt to at least some extent, 
 it is impossible these wonderful buildings can ever be appreciated. 
 
544 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part ir. 
 
 In the Middle Ages, the sculpture, the painting, the music of the 
 people were all found in the cathedrals, and there only. Add to 
 this their ceremonies, their sanctity, especially that conferred by the 
 relics of saints and martyrs which they contained — all these things 
 
 made these buildings all in all to those 
 who erected and to those who wor- 
 ship23ed in them. 
 
 The cathedral of Beauvais is gene^ 
 rally mentioned in conjunction with 
 that of Amiens, and justly so, not only 
 in consequence of its local proximity, 
 and from its being so near it in date, 
 but also from a general similarity in 
 style. Beauvais is in fact an exaggera- 
 tion of Amiens, and shows defects of 
 design more to be expected in Germany 
 than in France. It was commenced 
 five years later than Amiens, or in 1225, 
 and the works were vigorously pursued 
 between the years 1249 and 1267, 
 though the dedication did not take 
 place till 1272. The architects, in 
 their rivalry of their great neighbor, 
 seem " to have attempted more than 
 they had skill to perform, for the 
 roof fell in in 1284, and when re- 
 built, additional strength was given 
 by the insertion of another pier be- 
 tween every two of those in the old 
 design, which served to exaggerate 
 the apparent height of the pier-arches. 
 Emboldened by this, they seem to 
 have determined to carry the clerestory 
 to the unprecedented height of 150 
 ft., or about three times the width, 
 the centre of one 
 pier to that of the next. This, with 
 a very long nave, a very acute vault, wide pier-spaces, and bold 
 massive supports, might have been not only tolerable, but sublime ; 
 but as this cathedral wants all these qualities, the effect now 
 is only that of a most extraordinary masonic tour de force^ which ^ 
 though productive of considerable astonishment among the gap 
 ing vulgar, is defective in taste, and by no means pleasin 
 desiixn. 
 
 Bay of Nave of Beauvais Cathe- nicasurino" from 
 dral. No scale. 
 
 m 
 
Ek. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 545 
 
 These defects, moreover, were considerably increased by the late 
 period at whith the greater part of the cathedral was built. The 
 south transept was commenced only in 1500 ; the northern one thirty 
 years later, and was only finished in 1537 ; but even this hardly gives 
 
 397. Doorway, South Transept, Beauvais. (From Chapuy.) 
 
 the date of the details, for in 1555 the architects of the building, being 
 seized with a desire of rivalling the dome of St. Peter's at Rome, 
 which was then the object of universal admiration, undertook the 
 construction of a spire on the intersection of the transepts, which 
 
 A'OL. T. — 30 
 
 ♦ 
 
546 
 
 FRENCH AllCIIITECTURE. 
 
 they completed in thirteen years, but which stood only five yeai^ 
 from that time, having fallen down on the day of the Ascension in 
 the year 1573. This accident so damaged the works under it as to 
 require considerable reconstruction, which is Avhat we now see. This 
 spire, of which the original drawings still exist, was 486 ft. in height ; 
 and although, as might be expected from the age in which it was 
 erected, not of the purest design, must still have been a very noble 
 and beautiful object, hardly inferior to that of Chartres, which was 
 built only half a century earlier. 
 
 Taken altogether, the cathedral of Beauvais may be considered as an 
 example of that " vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself." Every prin- 
 ciple of Gothic art is here carried 
 to an extreme which destroys 
 the object with which it was de- 
 signed, and not only practically 
 has caused the ruin of the build- 
 ing and prevented its completion, 
 but has so far destroyed its ar- 
 tistic effect as to make it an ex- 
 ample of what should be avoided 
 rather than of what should be 
 followed. It has all that want 
 of repose and solidity which has 
 often been made the reproach 
 of Gothic architecture. Not- 
 withstanding its size, it has no 
 majesty: and though it has 
 stood so long, it has a painful 
 appearance of instability : its 
 whole construction looks like 
 props applied to prevent its 
 falling, rather than, as in the 
 earlier buildings, suggesting ad- 
 ditional strength and insuring 
 durability. Even its details, as 
 shown in the Woodcut No. 397, 
 representing one of the tran- 
 septs, show an attenuation and meagreness very unusual in French 
 architecture, and which, though graceful, have neither the power 
 of the earlier nor the richness characteristic of contemporary 
 buildings. 
 
 The cathedral of Noyon is an earlier example, and one of the best 
 and most elegant transition specimens in France, having been com- 
 menced about the year 1137, and completed, as we now see it, in 1167. 
 Here the circular arch had not entirely disappeared, which was owing 
 
 i. Plan of Cathedral at Noyon. 
 Ramee's " Moiiographie.") 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 (Froi 
 
Bk. 11. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 547 
 
 to its early date, and to its situation near tlie ( jcrman border, and its 
 connection with the See of Tournay, with whicli it was long united. 
 Like the sister church at that place, it was triapsal, which gave it 
 great elegance ox arrangement. The one defect of this form seems to 
 be, that it does not lend itself easily to the combination of towers 
 which were then so much in vogue. 
 
 In singular contrast to this is the neighboring cathedral of Laon, 
 one of the very few in France which have no chevet. It terminates 
 with a square east end, like an English church, except that it has 
 there a great circular window only, instead of the immense wall of 
 
 399. Spires of Laoii Cathedral. (From Dusomerard.) 
 
 glass usually adopted in this country. In style it more resembles tlie 
 cathedral of Paris than any other, though covering less ground and 
 smaller in all its features. Its great glory is its crowning group of 
 towers. The two western (with the exception of their spires) and 
 the two at the end of the northern transept are complete. On the 
 southern side only one has been carried to its full height, and the 
 central lantern is now crowned by a low pyramidal roof instead of 
 the tall spire that must once have adorned it ; but even as they 
 now are, the six that remain, whether seen from the immediate 
 neighborhood of the building or from the plain below — for it 
 
o48 
 
 FRENCH AECHITECTUKE, 
 
 I'ABT II 
 
 400. View of Cathedral at (,'outaiices. (From Transactions of Institute of British Architects.) 
 
 Stands most nobly on the flfit top of a high isolated hill — have a 
 
 highly picturesque and pleasing 
 effect, and notwithstanding the 
 rudeness of some of its details, 
 U and its deficiency in sculpture, it 
 is in many respects one of the 
 most interesting of the cathedrals 
 of France. 
 
 One of the eai'liest of the com- 
 ])lete pointed Gothic churches of 
 France is that of Coutances (Wood- 
 cut No. 400), the whole of which 
 belongs to the first half of the 13th 
 century, and though poor in sculp- 
 ture, makes up for this to some 
 extent by the elegance of its archi- 
 tectural details, which are unri- 
 iiapuy.) vailed or nearly so in France. 
 
 401. Lady Chapel, A uxer 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH <TOTniC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 549 
 
 Externally it possesses two western spires, and one octagonal 
 lantern over the intersection of the nave and transe])t, which, both 
 for beauty of detail and appropriateness, is the best sp;ecinien of its 
 class, and only wants the crowning spire to make this group of towers 
 equal to anything on this side of the Channel. 
 
 Notre Dame de Dijon is another example of the same early and 
 elegant age, but possessing the Burgundian ])eculiarity of a deeply 
 recessed jwrch or nar- 
 thex, surmounted by a 
 fa9ade of two open 
 galleries, one over the 
 other, exactly in the 
 manner of the churches 
 of Pisa and Lucca of 
 the 11th and 12th cen- 
 turies, of which it may 
 be considered an imita- 
 tion. It is, however, 
 as unsatisfactory in 
 pointed Gothic, even 
 with the very best de- 
 tails, as it is in the 
 l)seudo-classical style of 
 Pisa, forming in either 
 case a remarkably un- 
 meaning mode of deco- 
 ration. 
 
 The cathedrals of 
 Sens and Auxerre 
 are pure examples 
 of pointed architecture. 
 The latter (a.d. 1213) 
 internally rivals per- 
 haps even Coutances. 
 Nothing can be more 
 elegant than the junc- 
 tion of the lady chapel 
 here with the chevet; for though this is almost always pleasingly 
 arranged, the design has been unusually successful in this instance. 
 The two slender shafts, shown in the Woodcut No. 401, just suffice 
 to give it pre-eminence and dignity, without introducing any feature 
 so large as to disturb the harmony of the whole. 
 
 In the great church at St. Quentin, the five chapels of the chevet 
 have each two pillars, arranged similarly to these of the lady chapel 
 at Auxerre ; and though the effect is rich and varied, the result is not 
 
 402. Plan of Cathedral at '1 royes. (From Arnaud, " Voyage 
 dans le Departeinent de I'Aube.; scale loO ft. to 1 in. 
 
550 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 quite so happy as in this instance. Taken altogether, however, few 
 chevets in France are more perfect and beautiful than this almost 
 unknown example. 
 
 The cathedral of Troyes, commenced in 1206, and continued steadily 
 for more tlian three centuries, is one of the few in France desio-ned 
 originally Avith five aisles and a range of chapels. The effect, however, 
 is far from satisfactory. The great width thus given makes the whole 
 appear low, and the choir wants that expansion and dignity which is 
 
 403. Fa9a(le of Cathedral at Troyes. (From Ariuiud.) 
 
 SO pleasing at Rheims and Chartres. Still the details and design of 
 the earlier parts are good and elegant ; and the west front (Woodcut 
 No. 403), though belonging wholly to the 16th century, is one of the 
 most pleasing specimens of flamboyant work in France, being rich 
 without exuberance, and devoid of the bad taste that sometimes dis- 
 figures works of this class and age. 
 
 The cathedral at Soissons is on o of the most pleasing of all these 
 churches. Nothing can surpass the justness of the proportions of the 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 551 
 
 404. Window of Cathedi iil 
 at Lyons. (From Pey- 
 ree's "Manuel de I'Arcii- 
 itecture.") 
 
 central and side aisles both in themselves and to one another. Though 
 the church is not large, and principally of that age — the latter half of 
 the 13th century — in which the effect depended 
 so much on painted glass, now destroyed or 
 disarranged, it still deserves a place in the hrst 
 rank of French cathedrals. 
 
 The two cathedrals of Toul and Tours present 
 many points of great beauty, but their most re- 
 markable features ai-e their western facades, both 
 of late date, each ])ossessing two towers termi- 
 nating in octagonal lanterns, with details verging 
 on the style of the Renaissance, and yet so Gothic 
 in design and so charmingly executed as almost 
 to induce the belief, in spite of the fanciful extrav- 
 agance which it displays, that the architects 
 were approaching to something new and beautiful 
 when the mania for classical details overtook 
 them. 
 
 The two cathedrals of Limoges and Dijon 
 belong to the latter half of the 13th century, and, will, consequently 
 when better known fill a gaj) pain- 
 fully felt in the history of the art. 
 
 It would be tedious to enumerate 
 all the great cathedrals of the country, 
 or to attempt to describe their pecu- 
 liarities; but we must not omit all 
 mention of such as Lisieux, remark- 
 able for its beautiful facade, and 
 Evreux, for the beauty of many of its 
 parts, though the whole is too much 
 a patchwork to produce an entirely 
 pleasing effect. Nevers, too, is re- 
 markable as being one of the only 
 two double-apse cathedrals in France, 
 Besan9on being the other. At Nevers 
 this was owing to the high altar 
 having been originally at the west, 
 a defect felt to be intolerable in 
 I ance in the 16th century, when 
 the church was rebuilt, when it was 
 done without destroying the old sanc- 
 
 . -r> 1 IT • -. Plan of Cathedral at Bazas. (From 
 
 tuary. J^ordeaux, already mentioned Lamothe.i) scale loo ft to i in. 
 
 1 "Compte Rendu des Travaux de la Commission des Monuments," etc.: 
 Rapport presente au Prefet de la Gironde, 1848 et seq. 
 
552 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 for its noble nave without aisles, possesses a chevet worthy of it, and 
 two spires of great beauty at the ends of the transepts, the only spires 
 so placed, I think, in France. Autun has a spire on the intersection 
 of the nave with the transepts as beautiful as anything of the same 
 class elsewhere. The cathedral of Lyons is interesting, as showing- 
 
 style and adopt tliatof their Northern neighbors. 
 
 how hard it was for the Southern people of France to shake off their old 
 
 With much grand- 
 eur and elegance 
 of details, it is still 
 so clumsy in de- 
 sign that neitlier 
 the whole nor any 
 of its parts can 
 be considered as 
 satisfactory. The 
 windows, for in- 
 stance, as shown in 
 the woodcut (No. 
 404), look more like 
 specimens of the so- 
 called carpenter's 
 Gothic of modern 
 times than exam- 
 ples of the art of 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 There still re- 
 mains to be men- 
 tioned the cathe- 
 dral at Rouen. 
 This remarkable 
 building possesses 
 parts belonging to 
 all ages, and ex- 
 hibits most of the 
 beauties, as also, it 
 must be confessed, 
 most of the defects of each style. It was erected with a total 
 disregard to all rule, yet so splendid and so picturesque that 
 we are almost driven to the wild luxuriance of nature to find 
 anything to which we can compare it. Internally its nave, 
 though rich, is painfully cut up into small parts. The undivided 
 piers of the choir, on the contrary, are too simple for their 
 adjuncts. Externally, the transept towers are beautiful in them- 
 selves, but are overpowered by the richness of those of the west front. 
 The whole of that fa9ade, in spite of the ruin of some of its most 
 
 406. 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Bourges. (From Girardot, 
 tiou de la Cathedrale.") Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 Descrip- 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 
 
 553 
 
 important features, and the intrusion of much modern vulgarity, may 
 be called a romance in stone, consisting as it does of a profusion of the 
 most playful fancies. Like most of the cathedrals near our shores, 
 that of Rouen was designed to have a central spire ; this, however, 
 was not completed till late in the cinque-cento age, and then only in 
 vulgar woodwork meant to imitate stone. That being destroyed, an 
 attempt has lately been made to replace it by still more vulgar iron- 
 work, leaner and poorer than almost anything else of modern times. 
 
 In the preceding pages, all mention of the cathedrals of Bazas and 
 Bourges has been purposely omitted, because they belong to a different 
 type from the above. The first (Woodcut No. 405) is one of the most 
 
 perfect specimens of the pure Gothic style in the South of France. 
 Its noble triple portal, filled with exquisite sculpture, and its exten- 
 sive chevet, make it one of the most beautiful of its class. It shows 
 no trace of a transept, — a peculiarity, as before pointed out, by no 
 means uncommon in the South. This, though a defect in so far as 
 external effect is concerned, gives great value to the internal dimen- 
 sions, the appearance of length being far greater than when the view 
 is broken by the intersection of the transept. 
 
 This is still more striking at Bourges, where the cathedral, though 
 one of the finest and largest in France, covering 73,170 square feet, is 
 still one of the shortest, being only 405 ft. in extreme length; yet 
 owing to the central aisle being wholly unbroken, it appears one of 
 
554 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 the longest, as it certainly is one of the most majestic of all. This 
 cathedral possesses also another Southern peculiarity of more ques- 
 tionable advantage, in having five aisles in three different heights- 
 The section (Woodcut No. 407) will explain this. The central aisle is 
 117 ft. in height, those next to it 66 ft. high, the two outer only 28. 
 These last appear to destroy the harmony of the whole, for on an 
 inspection of the building, tlie outer aisles do not apj^ear to belong to 
 the design, but look more like afterthoughts. At Milan, Bologna, and 
 other places in Italy, where this gradation is common, this mistake is 
 avoided, and the effect proportionably increased ; and except that this 
 arrangement does not admit of such large window spaces, in other 
 respects it is not quite clear that, wiiere double aisles are used, it 
 would not always be better that they should be of different heights. 
 This arrangement of the aisles was never again fairly tried in France ; 
 but even as it is the cathedral of Bourges must rank after the four 
 first mentioned as the finest and most perfect of the remaining edifices 
 of its class in that country. It is singularly beautiful in its details, 
 and happy in its main propoilions : for owing to the omission of the 
 transept, the length is exquisitely adapted to the other dimensions^ 
 Had a transei)t been added, at least 100 ft. of additional length 
 would have been required to restore the harmony ; and though 
 externally it would no doubt have gained by such an adjunct, this, 
 gain would not have been adequate to the additional expense so 
 incurred. 
 
 The greater part of the western facade of this cathedral is of a latei 
 date than the building itself, and is extended so much beyond the pro- 
 portions required for effect as to overpower the rest of the building, se 
 that it is only from the sides or the eastern end that all the beauty of 
 this church can be appreciated. 
 
 As far as regards size or richness of decoration, the cathedral of 
 Orleans deserves to rank as one of the very first in France, and is 
 remarkable as the only first-class Gothic cathedral erected in Eurone 
 since the Middle Ages. The original church on this site having b^, 
 destroyed by the Calvinists, the present cathedral was commenced in 
 the year 1601 by Henry IV. of France, and although the rebuilding 
 proceeded at first with, great vigor, and the work was never wholly 
 discontinued, it is even norw hardly completed. 
 
 Considering the age in which it was built, and the contemporary 
 specimens of so-called Gothic art erected in France and England, it 
 is wonderful how little of classical admixture has been allowed to 
 creep into the design of this building, and how closely it adhered to 
 every essential of the style adopted. In plan, in arrangement, and, 
 indeed, in details, it is so correct, that it requires considerable knowl- 
 edge to define the difference between this and an older building of the 
 snme class. Still there is a wide difference, which makes itself felt 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 COLLEGIATE CHUIICHES. 
 
 555 
 
 though not easily descrioe^, and consists in the fact tliat the o^d cathe- 
 drals were built by men who had a true perception of their art ; while 
 the modern example only bears evidence of a well-learnt lesson, dis- 
 tinctly repeated, but without any real feeling for tlie subject. This 
 want betrays itself in an unmeaning repetition of parts, in a deficiency 
 of depth and richness, and in a general poverty of invention. 
 
 Collegiate Churches. 
 
 It would not oe difficult to select out of the collegiate churches 
 Oi France as complete a series as of the cathedrals, though of inferior 
 size. But having al- 
 ready gone through 
 the one class of build- 
 ings, we must confine 
 ourselves to a brief 
 notice of the other. 
 The church of Charite 
 sur Loire was one of 
 the most picturesque 
 and beautiful in 
 France. It is now 
 partially ruined, 
 though still retaining 
 enough of its original 
 features to illustrate 
 clearly the style to 
 wdiich it belongs. 
 Originally the church 
 was about 350 feet in 
 length by 90 in 
 breadth. One tower 
 of the western front, 
 one aisle, and the 
 whole of the choir still 
 remain, and belong 
 without doubt to the church dedicated in ,1106 by Pope Pascal. The 
 presence of the pointed form in the pier-arches and vaults has induced 
 some to believe that this church belongs to the reign of Philip Augustus, 
 about a century later, and when the church was restored after a great 
 fire. Its southern position, however, the circumstance of its being 
 the earliest daughter church of the abbey of Cluny, and the whole 
 style of the building, are proofs of its earlier age. All the decora- 
 tive parts, and all the external openings, still retain the circular fornr 
 as essentially as if the pointed had never been introduced. 
 
 408. 
 
 View 111 the Church ot Cliarite sur Loir( 
 by the Author.) 
 
 (b roiu a Sketch 
 
556 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II, 
 
 The most remarkable feature in this church is the exuberance of 
 tne ornament with which all the parts are decorated, so very unlike 
 the massive rudeness of the contemporary Norman or Northern styles. 
 The capitals of the pillars, the arches of the triforium, the jambs of 
 the windows and the cornices, all show a refinement and love of orna- 
 ment characteristic of a far more advanced and civilized people than 
 those of the Northern provinces of France. 
 
 Among those who were present at the dedication of this church 
 
 was the Abbe Suger, then 
 a gay young man of 
 twenty years of age, who 
 about thirty years later, in 
 the plenitude of his power, 
 commenced the building 
 of the abbey of St. Denis, 
 near Pnris,thc west front of 
 which was dedicated in the 
 year 1140, and the rest of 
 the church built " stupenda 
 celeritate," and dedicated 
 in 1144. Though certninly 
 not the earliest, St. Denis 
 may be considered as the 
 typical example of the 
 earliest pointed Gothic in 
 France. It terminated the 
 era of transition, and fixed 
 the epoch when the Nor- 
 thern pointed style became 
 
 supreme. 
 
 to the total ex- 
 
 Chever, Pontigiiy 
 
 11 riiaillou ties Barres.) 
 
 elusion of the round-arched 
 style tliat preceded it. The 
 effect of Suger's church is 
 now destroyed by a nave 
 of the 14th century — of 
 ^reat beauty, it must be confessed — which is interpolated between 
 the- western front and the choir, both which remain in all essentials 
 as left by him, and enable us to decide without hesitation on the state 
 of architectural art at the time of the dedication of the church. 
 
 A few years later was commenced the once celebrated abbey of 
 Pontigny, near Auxerre, probably in 1150, and completed, as we now 
 find it, within 15 or 20 years from tliat date. 
 
 Externally it displays an almost barn-like simplicity, having no 
 toAvers or pinnacles — plain undivided windows, and no ornament of 
 any sort. The same simplicity reigns in the interior, but the varied 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 COLLEGIATE ClIUllCIIES. 
 
 557 
 
 form and play of light and. shade here relieve it to a sufficient extent, 
 and make it altogether, if not one of the most cliarming examples of 
 its age, at least one of the most instructive, as showing how much 
 effect can be obtained by ornamental arrangement with the smallest 
 possible amount of ornament. In obedience to the rules of the Cister- 
 cian order, it neither had towers nor painted glass, which last circum- 
 stance, perhaps, adds to its beauty, as we now see it, for tlie windows 
 being small, admit just light (enough for effect without the painful 
 p'lare that now streams throuG^h the laro-e muUioned windows of the 
 cathedral of Auxerre. 
 
 To the Englishman, Pontigny should be more than usually inter- 
 esting, as it was here tliat tlie three most celebrated archbishops of 
 Canterbury — Becket, Langton, and Edmund — found an asylum when 
 driven by the troubles of their native land to seek a refuge abroad, 
 and the bones of the last-named sainted prelate are said still to remain 
 in the chdsse^ represented in the woodcut, and are now an<l have been 
 for centuries the great object of worship here. 
 
 About a century after the erection of these two early specimens we 
 have two others, the dates of which are ascertained, and which exhibit 
 the pointed style in its greatest degree of perfection. The first, the 
 Sainte Chapelle in Paris, w^as commenced in 1241 and dedicated in 
 1244 ; ^ the other, the church of St. Urban at Troyes, was begun in 1262, 
 and the choir and transept completed in 1266. Both are only frag- 
 ments — choirs to which it was originally intended to add naves of 
 considerable extent. The proportions of the Sainte Chapelle are in 
 consequence somewhat too tall and short ; but the noble simplicity of 
 its design, the majesty of its tall windows, and tlie beauty of all its 
 details, render it one of the most perfect examples of the style at its 
 culminating point in the reign of St. Louis. N'ow that the whole of 
 the painted glass has been restored, and the walls repainted according 
 to what may be assumed to have been the original design, we are 
 enabled to judge of the effect of such a building in the Middle Ages. 
 It inay be that our eyes are not educated up to the mark, or that the 
 restorers have not quite grasped the ancient design; but the effect as 
 now seen is certainly not quite satisfactory. The painted glass is 
 glorious, but the effect would certainly have been more pleasing if all 
 the structural parts of the architecture had been of one color. There 
 is no repose about the interior — nothing to explain the construction. 
 The flat parts may have been painted as they now are ; but surely 
 the shafts and ribs could only have been treated as stone. 
 
 The other was founded by Pope Urban IV., a native of Troyes, 
 and would have been completed as a large and magnificent church, 
 
 1 A plan of the Sainte Chapelle will he found in Book VI. Chap. XL, when 
 comparmg it with St. Stephen's Chapel, Westminster. 
 
558 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II 
 
 but for the opposition of some contumacious nuns, who had sufficient 
 power and influence even in those days to thwart the designs of the 
 Pope himself. Its great perfection is the beauty of its details, in 
 which it is unsurpassed by anything in France or in Germany ; its 
 worst defect is a certain exaggerated temerity of construction, which 
 tends to show how fast, even when this church was designed, archi- 
 tecture was passing 
 from the hands of 
 the true artist into 
 those of the mason, 
 whose attempts to 
 astonish by wonders 
 of construction then 
 and ever afterwards 
 completely marred 
 the progress of the art 
 which was thought 
 to be thereby jrro- 
 moted. 
 
 About seventy 
 years after this we 
 come to the choir o^. 
 St. Ouen, and to an- 
 other beautiful little 
 church, Ste. Marie 
 del'Epine (Woodcut 
 No. 410), near Cha- 
 lons sur Marne, com- 
 menced apparently 
 about 1329, though 
 not completed till 
 long afterwards. ^ It 
 is small — a minia- 
 ture cathedral in fact 
 — like our St. Mary 
 
 410. West Front of ste. Marie I'Epine. (From Dusomerard.) Redcliffe, which in 
 
 many respects it re- 
 sembles, and is a perfect bijou of its class. One western spire 
 remains — the other was destroyed to make room for a telegraph — and 
 
 1 Mr, Beresford HoDe, in his "Eng- 
 lish Cathedral of the XlXth Century," 
 contends that this church was only com- 
 menced in 1419; and also maintains that 
 the west front was completed by an Eng- 
 lish architect named Patrick in 1429. If 
 this were so, we must abandon all our 
 
 chronology founded on style. It is all a 
 mistake if the east end is not a century 
 earlier. I am, however, unwilling to go 
 to school again on the faith of a little 
 pamphlet, published by a French cure 
 in a remote village. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 COLLEGIATE CHURCHES. 
 
 559 
 
 is not only beautiful in itself, but interesting as almost the on^y 
 example of an open-work spire in France. 
 
 The church of St. Ouen, at Rouen, was beyond comparison the 
 most beautiful and perfect of the abbey edifices of France. This was 
 commenced by Marc d' Argent in the year 1318, and was carried on 
 uninterruptedly for twenty-one years, and at his death the choir and 
 transepts were completed, or very 
 nearly so. The English wars inter- 
 rupted at this time the progress of 
 this, as of many other buildings, 
 and the works of the nave were 
 not seemingly resumed till about 
 1490, and twenty-five yp.ars later 
 the beautiful western front was 
 commenced. 
 
 Except that of Limoges, the 
 choir is almost the only perfect 
 building of its age, and, being 
 nearly contemporary with the choir 
 at Cologne (1276 to 1321), affords 
 a means of comparison between 
 the two styles of Germany and 
 France at that age, entirely to the 
 advantage of the French example, 
 which, though very much smaller, 
 avoids all the more glaring faults 
 of the other. 
 
 Nothing, indeed, can exceed the 
 beauty of proportion of this most 
 elegant church ; and, except that it 
 wants the depth and earnestness of 
 the earlier examples, it may be con- 
 sidered as the most beautiful thing 
 of its kind in Europe. The propor- 
 tion, too, of the nave, transepts, and 
 choir to one another is remarkably 
 happy, and affords a most striking 
 contrast to the very imperfect 
 proportions of Cologne. Its three towers also would have formed 
 a perfect group as originally designed, but the central one was 
 not completed till so late that its details have lost the aspiring 
 character of the building on which it stands, and the western spires, 
 as rebuilt within the last few years, are incongruous and inappro- 
 priate ; whereas, had the original design been carried out according 
 to the drawings which still exist, it would have been one of the most 
 
 411. Plan of Church of St. Oueii at Koueu 
 (From Peyree's " Manuel.") 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
560 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. Part IL 
 
 beautiful fa9ades known anywhere. The diagonal position of tlie 
 towers met most happily the difficulty of giving breadth to the fa9ade 
 without placing them beyond the line of the aisles, as is done in the 
 
 412. Cliurcli ot bt. Ouen at lioueii, from the S. E. (From Chapuy.) 
 
 cathedral of Rouen, and at the same time gave a variety to the per^ 
 spective which must have had the most pleasing effect. Had the idea 
 occurred earlier, few western towers would have been placed other- 
 wise; but the invention came too late, and within the last few years 
 we have seen all traces of the arrangement ruthlessly obliterated. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 COLLEGIATE CHURCHES. 
 
 561 
 
 The style of the choir of this church may be fairly judged from the 
 view of the southern porch (Woodcut Xo. 41o). This has all that 
 perfection of detail 
 
 fere with it. This is a somewhat rare merit in French portals. In 
 most of them it is evident that the architect has been- controlled 
 in his design in order to make room for the immense quantity of 
 sculpture which usually crowds them. On the other hand, the position 
 of the figures is often forced and constrained, and the bas-reliefs nearly 
 unintelligible, from the architects having been unable to give the 
 sculptor that unencumbered sjoace which was requisite for the full 
 development of his ideas. 
 
 It would be easy to select numerous examples from the collegiate 
 and parish churches of France to extend this series. Our limits will 
 not, however, admit of the mention of more than one other instance. 
 The sepulchral church of Brou en Bresse was erected between 1511 and 
 1536, by Margaret of Austria, daughter of Maximilian, and aunt of 
 Charles Y., Emperor of Germany. It was therefore nearly contem- 
 porary with Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster, and thus affords the 
 means of comparison between the English and French styles of the 
 day, which is wholly in favor of our own ; both are the most florid 
 VOL. I. — 36 
 
 which we are accus. 
 tomed to admire in 
 Cologne Cathedral, 
 and the works of the 
 time of our Second 
 Edward, combined 
 with a degree of light- 
 ness and grace pecu- 
 liar to this church. 
 The woodcut is too 
 small to show the 
 details of the sculp- 
 ture in the tympa- 
 num above the doors, 
 but that too is of 
 exquisite beauty, and 
 being placed where 
 it can be so well 
 seen, and at the same 
 time so perfectly pro- 
 tected, it heightens 
 the architectural de- 
 sign without in any 
 way seeming to inter- 
 
 413. Soutliei'ii Jr'orcli of bt. Oueii at Rouen. (From Cliapuy.) 
 
562 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 specimens of their class in either country, but at Brou, both externally 
 and internally, all majesty of form and constructive propriety are lost 
 ■^ight of; and though we wonder that stone could be cut into such a 
 marvellous variety of lace-like forms, and are dazzled by the splendor 
 of the whole, it is with infinite pleasure that we turn from these 
 elaborate specimens of declining taste to an earlier and purer style. 
 Fascinating as some of these late buildings undoubtedly are from the 
 richness of decorative fancy that reigns in every detail, still they can 
 only be regarded as the production of the stone-mason and carver, and 
 not of the arts of the architect or sculptor properly so called. 
 
 In the city of Rouen we also find the beautiful church of St. Maclou 
 (1432-1500), a gorgeous specimen of the later French style, presenting 
 internally all the attenuation and defects of its age; but in the five 
 arcades of its beautiful western front it displays one bf the richest 
 and most elegant specimens of flamboyant work in France. It also 
 shows what tlie fa9ade of St. Ouen would have been if completed as 
 designed. This church once possessed a noble central tower and spire, 
 destroyed in 1794. When all this was complete, few clmrches of its 
 age could have competed with it. 
 
 St. Jacques at Diejjpe is another church of the same age, and pos- 
 sessing the same lace-like beauty of detail and elaborate finish, which 
 charms in spite of soberer reason, that tells us it is. not in stone that 
 such vagaries should be attempted. Abbeville, St. Riquier, and all 
 the principal towns throughout that part of France, are rich in speci- 
 mens of the late Gothic, of which we are now speaking. These 
 specimens are in many respects beautiful, but in all that constitutes 
 true and good art they are inferior to those of the glorious epoch 
 which i^receded them. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. X. 
 
 PILLAES. 
 
 563 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Gothic details — Pillars — Windows — Circular windows — Bays — Vaults — But- 
 tresses — Pinnacles — Spires — Decoration — Construction — Furniture of 
 churches — Domestic architecture. 
 
 ALTHOUGH in the preceding pages, in describing the principal 
 churches of France, mention has been made of the various 
 changes of derail which took place from the time of the introduction 
 of the pointed style till its abandonment in favor of the revived 
 classical, still it seems necessary to recapitulate the leading changes 
 that were introduced. This will be most fitly done before we leave 
 the subject of French architecture, that being on the whole the most 
 complete and harmonious of all the pointed styles, as well as the 
 earliest. 
 
 Pillars. 
 
 Of these details, the first that arrests the attention of the inquirer 
 is the form of the pillars or piers used in the Middle Ages, inasmuch 
 as it is the feature that bears the most immediate resemblance to the 
 typical forms of preceding styles. Indeed, the early pillars in the 
 round-arched style were virtually rude imitations of Roman originals, 
 made so thick and heavy as to bear without apparent stress the whole 
 weight of the arches they supported, and of the superincumbent wall. 
 This increase of the weight laid upon the pillars, and consequently in 
 their strength and heaviness, was the great change introduced into 
 the art of building in the early round Gothic style. With the same 
 requirements the classic architects either must have thickened their 
 pillars immensely, or coupled them in some way. Indeed, the Romans, 
 in such buildings as the Colosseum, placed the pillars in front and 
 a pier behind, which last was the virtual support of the wall. The 
 Gothic architects improved on this by adding a pillar, or rather a half 
 pillar, on each side, to receive the pier arches, and carrying up those 
 behind and in front to support the springing of the vault or roof, 
 instead of the useless entablature of the Romans. 
 
 By this Ineans the pier became in plan what is represented in Figs. 
 1 and 2 in the diagram (Woodcut No. 414). Sometimes it was varied, 
 as represented in Fig. 3, where the angle-shafts were only used to 
 lighten the apparent heaviness of the central mass ; in other examples 
 both these modes are combined, as in Fig. 4, which not only construct- 
 
564 
 
 FKENCH AECHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 ively but artistically is one of the most beautiful combinations which 
 the square forms are capable of, combining great strength with great 
 lightness of appearance, and variety of light and shade. 
 
 These four forms may be said to be typical in the South, where the 
 style was derived so directly from the Roman square pier combined 
 with an attached circular pillar. 
 
 In the North the Normans, 'and, generally speaking, all the Frankish 
 tribes used the circular pillar in preference to the square pier, and 
 consequently the variations were as shown in Figs. 5, 6, 7, and 8 ; 
 which, though forming beautiful combinations, wanted the accentua- 
 tion produced by the contrast between the square and round forms. 
 
 414. Diagram of Plaus of Pillars. 
 
 The architects after a time seem to have felt this, and tried to 
 remedy it by introducing ogee forms and sharp edges, with deep 
 undercut shadows, thus applying to the pillars those forms which had 
 been invented for the mouldings of the ribs of the vaults, and for the 
 tracery of the windows. The expedient was perfectly successful at 
 first, and, so long as it was practised in moderation, gave rise to some 
 of the most beautiful forms of pillars to be found in any style. It 
 proved, however, too tempting an opportunity for the indulgence of 
 every sort of quirk and quibble ; and after passing through the shapes 
 shown in Figs. 9 and 10, where the meaning of all the parts is still 
 sufficiently manifest, it became as complicated as Fig. 11, and sometimes 
 even more cut up, so that all meaning and beauty was lost. It became 
 moreover very expensive and difficult to execute, so that in later times 
 the architects reverted either to circular pillars, or to such a form as 
 that shown in Fig. 12, which was introduced in the 16th century. The 
 change may have been partly introduced from motives of economy, 
 and also to some extent from a desire to imitate the flutings of classical 
 pillars : but from whatever motive it arose, it is singularly unmeaning 
 and inartistic ; and as the capital was at the same time omitted, the 
 
Bk. II. Ch. X. 
 
 WINDOWS. 
 
 565 
 
 Window, St. Martin, 
 Pans. 
 
 whole pillar took an appearance of cold poverty entirely at variance 
 with the true spirit of Gothic art. This last change showed, per- 
 haps more clearly than those introduced into 
 any other feature, how entirely the art had 
 died away before the classical styles super- 
 seded it. 
 
 Windows. 
 
 Before painted glass came into use, very 
 small apertures sufficed to admit the re- 
 quired quantity of light into the churches. 
 These openings retained their circular-arched 
 heads long after the pointed form pervaded 
 the A'aults and pier arches, because the archi- 
 tects still thought them the most beautiful ; 
 they moreover occupied so small a portion of 
 the wall spaces that their lines neither came 
 in contact nor interfered with the constructive 
 lines of the building itself ; but when it was 
 required to enlarge them for the purpose of 
 receiving large pictures the retention of the 
 circular form was no longer practicable. 
 
 The Woodcut No. 388, showing the side 
 elevation of Notre Dame at Paris, illustrates 
 well three stages of this process as practised 
 in the 12th and 18th centuries. It exhibits 
 first the large undivided window without 
 muUions, the glass being supported by strong- 
 iron bars ; next, that with one mullion and 
 a circular rose in the head ; and lastly, in the 
 lower story, a complete traceried window. 
 The transition from the old small window 
 to the first of these is easily explained, and 
 the Woodcut No. 415, representing one of the 
 windows in St. Martin at Paris, will ex])lain 
 the transition from the firs't to the second. 
 Instead of one large undivided opening, it was 
 often thought more expedient to introduce two 
 lancets side by side; but as these never filled, 
 nor could fill, the space of one bay so as to 
 follow its principal lines, it became usual to 
 introduce a circular window of greater or less 
 size between their heads. This, with the rude 
 
 construction of the age, presented certain difficulties, which were 
 obviated by carrying the masonry of the vault through the wall so a* 
 
 416. Window of Nave of 
 Cathedral at Cliartres. 
 
 417. AVindow in Choir of 
 Cathedral at Chartres. 
 
566 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 418. 
 
 to form a discharging arch. When once this was done it required 
 only a glance from an experienced builder to see that if the dis- 
 charging arch were strong enough, the whole of the wall between 
 the buttresses might be removed without endangering the safety 
 of the building. This was accordingly soon 
 done. The pier between the two lancets be- 
 came attenuated into a mullion, the circle lost 
 its independence, and was grouped with them 
 undei- the discharging arch, which was carried 
 down each side in boldly splayed jambs, and 
 the whole became in fact a traceried window. 
 
 In the cathedral at Chartres we have ex- 
 ani))les of the two extremes of these transi- 
 tional windows. In the windows of the aisles 
 of the nave (Woodcut No. 416) the circle is 
 small and insignificant, and only serves to join 
 together the two lancets. In the clerestory 
 (AVoodcut No. 417), which is somewhat later, 
 the circle ^s all im])ortant and quite over- 
 
 il powei-s the lower ])aTt. flere it is, in fact, a 
 J c'ii-cular window, su})j)orted by a rectilinear 
 substructure. In both these instances the dis- 
 charging arch still retains its circular form, 
 and the tracery is still imperfect, inasmuch as 
 all the openings are only holes of various forms 
 cut into a flat surface, whereas to make it per- 
 fect, it is necessary that the lines of two con- 
 tiguous ojienings should blend together, being 
 sej)arated by a straight or curved moulded 
 mullion, and not merely pierced as they are 
 in this instance. This may, perhaps, be better 
 illustrated by one of the windows of the side- 
 aisles at Rheims, where the pointed Gothic 
 window has become comj)lete in all its essential 
 parts. Even here, it will be observed how 
 awkwardly the circle fits into the s])herical 
 ti'iangle of the upj:)er part of the window. 
 Indeed, there is an insuperable awkwardness 
 in the small triangles necessarily left in 
 fitting circles into the spaces above the lancets, and beneath the 
 pointed head of 'the openings. When four or five lights were used 
 instead of two, this defect became more apparent ; and even in the 
 exam])le from St. Ouen (Woodcut No. 419), one of the most beautiful 
 in France, the architect has not been able to obviate the discordance 
 between the conflicting lines of the circle and spherical triangle. At 
 
 ^\ mdow at St. Oueii. 
 
bk. n. ch. X. 
 
 CIRCULAR WINDOWS. 
 
 567 
 
 420, Window at Chartres. 
 
 last, after two centuries of earnest trial, the builders of those days 
 found themselves constrained to abandon entirely these beautiful con- 
 structive geometric forms, for tracery of a more manageable nature, 
 and in place of the circle they invented first a flowing tracery, of 
 which the window at Chartres (Woodcut No. 
 420) is an exquisite examj^le ; and then having 
 shaken off the trammels of constructive form, 
 launched at once into all the vagaries of the 
 flamboyant style. In this style stone tracery 
 was made to look bent and twisted, as willow 
 wands. Its forms, it must be confessed, were 
 always graceful, but constructively weak, and 
 frequently extravagant, showing a complete con- 
 trast to the contemporary perpendicular style 
 followed in England. That failed from the stiff- 
 ness of its forms ; this from the fantastic pliancy 
 with which so rigid a material as stone was 
 used. Greatness or grandeur was as impossible 
 in flamboyant tracery, as grace and beauty were 
 with the perpendicular style ; still for domestic 
 edifices, and for the smaller churches erected in 
 the 16th century, it must be confessed the flamboyant style has a 
 charm it is impossible to resist. It is so graceful and so fantastically 
 brilliant, that it captivates in spite of our soberer reason, lending as 
 it does an elegance to every edifice where it is found, and finding its 
 parallel alone among the graceful fancies of the Saracenic architects 
 of the best age. 
 
 Circular Windows. 
 
 By far the most brilliant examples of this class in France are to be 
 found among the great circular windows with which the west ends 
 and transepts of the cathedrals were adorned. There is, I believe, no 
 instance in France of the great straight-mull ion ed windows of which 
 our architects were so fond, and even where the east end terminates 
 squarely, as at Laon, it has a great rose window. There can be little 
 doubt that the circle, so long as it was wholly adhered to, was the 
 noblest form architecturally, both externally and internally ; but when 
 the triforium below it was pierced, and the lower angles outside the 
 circle were filled with tracery, making it into something like our great 
 windows, the result was a confusion of the two modes, in which the 
 advantages of neither were preserved. 
 
 Of the earlier circular windows, one of the finest is that in the 
 western front at Chartres (Woodcut No. 421), of imperfect tracery, like 
 the greater part of that cathedral, but of great size and majesty. Its 
 diameter is 39 ft. across the openings, and 44 ft. 6 in across to the 
 
568 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IT 
 
 outer mouldings of the circle. Those of the transepts are smaller, 
 being only 33 ft. across the opening, but show a considerable advance 
 in the art of tracery, which by the time they were executed was be- 
 coming far better understood. 
 
 If space admitted, it would be easy to select examples to trace the 
 progress of the invention between these early efforts and the almost 
 perfect window that adorns the centre of the west front at Rheims 
 (Woodcut No. 423) ; and again from this to that at Evreux (Woodcut 
 No. 424). In the latter instance, the geometric forms have given way 
 
 423. West AVindow, Klieims. 424, West Window, Evreux. 
 
 to tlie lace-work of flowing tracery, of which this is a pleasing example. 
 It is further remarkable in respect that all the parts of the tracery 
 or mullions are of the same thickness, whereas it is usual in flowing or 
 flamboyant tracery to introduce a considerable degree of subordination 
 into the parts, dividing them into greater or smaller ribs, thus avoid- 
 ing confusion and giving to the whole a constructive appearance which 
 it otherwise would not possess. This is very apparent in such a 
 window as that which adorns the west front of St. Ouen, at Rouen, 
 
Bk. II. Ch. IX. 
 
 BAYS. 
 
 569 
 
 where the parts are distinctly subordinated to one another, and liave 
 consequently that strength and character which it is so difficult to 
 impart. It also exemplifies what was before alluded to, viz., the mode 
 in which the lower external angles of the circle were tilled up, and 
 also, in a far more pleasing manner than usual, the mode in which 
 the pierced triforium is made to form part of the decoi-ation. Owing 
 to the strong transom bar here employed, there is strength enough to 
 support the superstruc- 
 ture ; but as too often is 
 the case, when this is 
 subdued and kept under, 
 there is a confusion be- 
 tw^een the circular and 
 upright parts, which is 
 not pleasing. It is then 
 neither a circular nor 
 an upright window, but 
 an indeterminate com- | 
 pound of two pleasing 
 members, in which both 
 suffer materially by jux- -i,^;' 
 taposition. 
 
 I believe it is safe to 
 assert that out of at 
 least a hundred first- 
 class examples of these 
 circular windows, which 
 still exist in France, no 
 two are alike. On the 
 contrary, they present 
 the most striking dissimilarity of design. There is no feature on 
 which the FrencL architects bestowed more pains, or in which they 
 were more successful. They are, indeed, the chefs-cVmimre of their 
 decorative abilities, and the most pleasing individual features of their 
 greater churches. At the same time, they completely refute the idea 
 that the pointed form is at all necessary for the i)roduction of beauty 
 in decorative apertures. 
 
 Bays. 
 
 It may be useful here to recapitulate what has been said of the sub- 
 division of churches into bays, or, as the French call them, trcwees.. 
 The two typical arrangements of these are shown in Woodcuts Xos.. 
 382 and 383, as existing before the introduction of the })ointed forms. 
 In the first a great gallery runs over the whole of the side-aisle, 
 introduced partly as a constructive expedient to serve the purpose for 
 
 425. West Window, St. Ouen. (From Pugin.) 
 
570 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Takt il. 
 
 which flying buttresses were afterwards employed, partly as enabling 
 the architect to obtain the required elevation Avithout extraordinarily 
 tall pillars or wide pier-spaces, both which were beyond the con- 
 structive 2)owers of the earlier builders. These galleries were also 
 useful as adding to the accommodation of the church, as people were 
 able thence to see the ceremonies performed below, and to hear the 
 mass and music as well as from the floor of the church. These 
 advantages were counterbalanced by the greater dignity and archi- 
 tectural beauty of the second arrangement (Woodcut No. 383), where 
 the wdiole height was divided into that of the side-aisles and of a clere- 
 story, separated from one another by a triforium gallery, which repre- 
 sented, in fact, the depth of the wooden roof requisite to cover the 
 side-aisles. When once this simple and beautiful arrangement w^as 
 adopted, it continued with very little variation throughout the Middle 
 Ages.^ I he j^roportions generally used were to make the aisles half 
 the height of the nave. In other words, the string-course below the 
 triforium divided the height into two equal parts; the space above that 
 was divided into three, of which two were allotted to the clerestory, 
 and one to the triforium.^ It is true there is perhaps no single instance 
 in which the proportions here given are exactly preserved, but they 
 sufficiently represent the. general division of the parts, from which the 
 architects only deviated slightly, sometimes on one side, sometimes on 
 the other, according to their taste or caprice. The only really important 
 cliange afterwards introduced was that of glazing the triforium gal- 
 lery also, by ado])ting a flat roof, or one nearly so, over the side-aisles, 
 as the nave in the church of St. Ouen at Rouen, or by covering each 
 bay by a pyramidal roof not seen from the interior, as is shown in the 
 Woodcuts Nos. 385 and 392. The whole w-alls of the church, with 
 the slight exception of the spandrils of the great pier-arches, having 
 thus become walls of glass, the mass of the vault being supported 
 only by the deep and bold constructive lines of which the framework 
 of the glazed surfaces consists. 
 
 In England we have not, as far as I am aware, any instance of a 
 glazed triforium, but it is one of the most fascinating features in the 
 later styles of the French architects, and where it retains its colored 
 glass, which is indisj)ensable, produces the most fairy-like effects. It 
 is, however, questionable whether the deep shadow and constructive 
 propriety of the English practice is not, on the whole, more satisfactory. 
 In a structure of glass and iron nothing could be more appropriate than 
 the French practice ; but in a building of stone and wood more solidity 
 is required to produce an effect which shall be permanently pleasing. 
 
 1 The earlier form is found retained 
 at Noyon, at Paris, as shown in Wood- 
 vut No. 360. and in most of the churches 
 of tlie 12th century ; but in the first years 
 
 of the 13th it gave place to the second, 
 and was not afterwards revived. 
 
 2 See Introduction, page 29, Wood- 
 cut No. 4. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. X. 
 
 VAULTS. 
 
 571 
 
 Vaults. 
 
 It has ah-eady been explained how essential a part of a Gothic 
 church the vault was, and how completely it was the governing power 
 that gave form to the art. We have also seen the various steps by 
 which the architects arrived at the intersecting vault, which became 
 tlie typical form in the best age. In France especially the stone vault 
 was retained throughout as a really essential feature, for though the 
 English were so successful in the art of constructing ornamental 
 wooden roofs, the practice never prevailed in France. 
 
 In the best age the arrangement of the French vaults was extremely 
 simple. The aisles were generally built in square compartments, the 
 vaults of which were first cir- 
 cumscribed, each by four equal 
 arches (Woodcut No. 426), of 
 which A A were transverse ribs, 
 or «7'c.9 doubleaux as the French 
 called them, and were used, as 
 we have seen, in the old tunnel- 
 vaults. These arches, as spring- 
 ing from the main points of 
 support, were the principal 42c. jDiagram of vaulting. 
 
 f>;trengtheners of the vault, b 
 
 was called former et^ and was a rib built into the Awnll, of the same 
 form as the transverse ribs, and so called because, being the first con- 
 structed, it gave the form to the vault. Lastly, there were two more 
 ribs springing from angle to angle, and intersecting one another at v. 
 These were called ogives^ from the Latin word augere, to strengthen,^ 
 which was the object of their employment — and every builder knows 
 how essential is the strength given by them. In modern vaults — in 
 cellars or dock-vaults for instance, if built of brick — it is usual to in- 
 sert a course of stone on the edge of the intersection, for bricks used 
 there would be liable to be crushed or fall out. But tliougli this is now 
 done flush with the brickwork, the Medijeval architects allowed this 
 course to project, not only because such a form was stronger in itself, 
 but because it gave the appearance as well as the reality of strength. 
 
 The roof of the nave was composed of precisely the same parts, only 
 that, being twice as wide as each compartment was broad, the length 
 of the transverse ribs and of the intersecting ogives was greater in 
 proportion to the formerets than in the aisles. Another addition, and 
 certainly an improvement, was the introduction of ridge-ribs (d d) 
 
 The Frencli antiquaries employ tliis that the word has nothing to do with 
 
 word as if it signified a pointed arch, the form of the arch or the ogee, but is 
 
 whence they designate tlie style itself as the name of a rib common to the round- 
 
 offival. There is no doubt, however, arched as well as to the pointed style. 
 
572 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 marking the point of the vault. These could not of course be used 
 with circular arches, where there was no central line for them to mark ; 
 and it jDrobably was from this cause that the French seldom adopted 
 them, having been accustomed to vaults not requiring them. Another 
 reason was that all tlieir f arlier vaults were more or less domical, or, 
 in other words, the ]^oint v was higher than the points a or b, though 
 this is moi-o a])])arent in liexapartite vaults, or where one compart- 
 ment of the nave-vaults takes 
 in two of the aisles, than in 
 quadripai'tite, like those now 
 under consideration. Still all 
 French vaults have this pecu- 
 liurity more or less, and con- 
 sequently the longitudinal 
 ridge-rib, where used, has an 
 up and down broken appear- 
 ance, which is extremely dis- 
 agreeable, and must in a great 
 measure ha.ve prevented its 
 adoption. There is, howevei-, 
 at least one exception to this 
 rule in France, in tlio abbey 
 church of Souvigny, repre- 
 sented in the woodcut No. 
 427, where this rib is used 
 with so pleasing an effect 
 that one is surprised it was 
 not in more general favor. 
 
 These are the only features 
 usually employed by French 
 architects : but we do some- 
 times find tiercerons, or 
 secondary ogives, used to 
 strengthen as well as to orna- 
 
 427. Abbey Cliui-cli, Souvigny. (From " L'Aiicieii , , . f i 
 
 Bourbomiais.' ) ment the plain races or the 
 
 vaults, one or two on each 
 face, as at e e (in Woodcut No. 426) ; small ribs or Hemes, r r, 
 from Her, to bind, were also occasionally used to connect all these at 
 the centre, where they formed star patterns, and other complicated 
 but beautiful ornaments of the vault. These last, however, are rare 
 and exceptional in French vaulting, though they were treated by the 
 English architects with such success that we wonder they were not 
 more generally adopted in France. The most probable explanation 
 appears to be that the French architects depended more on color 
 than on relief for the effect of their vaults, while in England color 
 
Bk. 11. Ch. X. 
 
 BUTTRESSES. 
 
 573: 
 
 was sparingly used, its place being supplied by constructive carving. 
 Whatever may have been the comparative merits of the two methods 
 when first used, the English vaults have a great advantage now, 
 inasmuch as the carving remains, while the paintings of the others 
 have perished, and we have no means left of judging of their original 
 effect. 
 
 One of the most beautiful features of French vaulting, almost 
 entirely unknown in this country, is the great polygonal vault of the 
 semi-dome of the chevet, which as an arcliitectural object few will be 
 disinclined to admit is, with its walls of painted glass and its light 
 constructive roof, a far more beautiful thing tlian the i)lain semi- 
 dome of the basilican apse, notwithstanding its mosaics. Still, as 
 the French used it, they never quite surmounted the difficulties of 
 its construction ; and in their excessive desire to do away with all 
 solid wall, and to get the greatest possible surface for painted glass, 
 they often distorted these vaults in a very unpleasing manner. 
 
 The chevet of Pontigny (Woodcut No. 409) presents a good ex- 
 ample of the early form of vault, which, owing to the small size of 
 the windows and -general sobriety of the composition, avoids the 
 defects above alluded to. Of the latter examples there are few, 
 except that of Souvigny, represented in Woodcut No. 427, where the 
 difficulty has been entirely conquered by constructing the spandrils 
 with pierced tracery, so that tlie vault virtually springs from nearly 
 the same height as the arch of the windows, and a very sliglit 
 improvement would, have made this not only constructively, but 
 artistically perfect. This is -a solitary specimen, and one which, 
 though among the most beautiful suggestions of Gothic art, has found 
 no admirers or at least no imitators. 
 
 Notwithstanding this difficulty of construction!, these pierced semi- 
 domes are not only tlie best specimens of French vaulting, but are 
 among the most beautiful inventions of the Middle Ages, and form 
 a finer termination to the cathedral vista than either the great 
 windows of the English, or the wonderful rose windows of the 
 French cathedrals. 
 
 Buttresses. 
 
 The employment of buttresses was a constructive expedient that 
 followed almost indispensably on the use of vaults for the roofing of 
 churches. It was necessary either to employ enormously thick walls to 
 resist the thrust, or to support them by some more scientific arrange- 
 ment of- the materials. The theory of the buttress will be easily under- 
 stood from the diagram (Woodcut No. 428), representing seven blocks 
 or masses of masonry, disposed first so as to form a continuous wall, 
 but which evidently affords very little resistance to a thrust or push 
 tending to overturn it from within. The left-hand arrangement is,. 
 
574 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt ir. 
 
 ^ -J 
 
 Diagram of But- 
 tresses. 
 
 from the additional breadth of base in the direction of the thrust, 
 n'luch less liable to fall outwards, provided the distance of the blocks 
 from one another is not too great, and the mass 
 of the vault does not press heavily on the inter- 
 mediate space. This last difhculty was so mucli 
 felt by the earlier French architects that, as we 
 have seen in the South of France especially, they 
 used the roof of the side-aisle as a continuous 
 bu^ttress to resist the thrust of their tunnel-vault. 
 It was surmounted also by the introduction of 
 intersecting vaults, inasmuch as by this expedient 
 all the thrusts were collected together at a point 
 over each pier, and a resisting mass applied on 
 that one point was sufficient to give all the stability required. This, 
 and the desire of raising the lights as high as possible into the 
 roof, were the principal causes that brought this form of vaulting 
 
 into general use ; still it has not yet been 
 sliown that the continuous vault is not 
 artistically the more beautiful of the two 
 forms, if not constructively so also. 
 
 There w^as yet another difficulty to be 
 mastered, which was that the principal 
 vault to be abutted was that over the 
 nave or central part of the church, and 
 buttresses of the requisite depth would 
 have filled up the side-aisles entirely. The 
 difficulty first j)resented itself in the build- 
 ing of the basilica of jNfaxentius (Woodcut 
 No. 20'J), and was there got over in some- 
 thing like the manner practically adopted 
 in the Middle Ages, except that the arch 
 was there carried inside, whereas the 
 Gothic architects threw the abutting arch 
 across on the outside and above the roof. 
 
 Several of tlie i)revious woodcuts^ show^ 
 the system of flying buttresses in various 
 stages of advancement. The view of one 
 of those of the choir of St. Ouen (No. 429) 
 exhibits the system in its greatest degree 
 of development. Here there are two ver- 
 tical and two flying buttresses, forming a 
 system of great lightness, but at the same time of immense construct- 
 ive strength, and when used sparingly and with elegance as in this 
 
 42St. Flying Buttress ol 8t. Oueii. 
 (From Batissier. " Kistoire 
 ilel'Art.") 
 
 * See Woodcuts Nos. 387, 395, 407, etc. 
 
Bk. 11. Cii. X. 
 
 BUTTRESSES. 
 
 575 
 
 instance, constituting an object of great beauty. Tlie abuse of tliis 
 expedient, as in the cathedral at Cologne and elsewhere, went very 
 far to mar the proper effect. 
 
 The cathedral at Chartres presents a singular l)ut very beautifii 
 instance of an earlier form of flying buttress ; there the immense span 
 of the central vault put the architects on their mettle to provide a 
 suflicient abutment, and they did it by building what was literally 
 an open Avail across the aisle (see Woodcut No. 394), strongly arched, 
 and the arches connected by short, strong pillars radiating with the 
 voussoirs of the arch. Nothing could well be stronger and more 
 scientific than this, but the absence of perpendicularity in the pillars 
 was unpleasing to the eye then as now, and tlie contrivance was never 
 repeated. 
 
 A far more pleasing form was that adopted afterwards at Amiens 
 (Woodcut No. 430) and elsewhere, where a series of small traceried 
 arches stand on the lower flying 
 buttress, and su])port the upper, 
 which is straight-lined. Even 
 here, however, the difficulty is 
 not quite got over ; the unequal 
 height of these connecting 
 arches, and the awkward angle 
 which the lower supports make 
 Avitli the curvilinear form on 
 which they rest, deprive them 
 of that constructive propriety 
 which alone secures a perfectly 
 satisfactory result in architect- 
 ure. The problem, indeed, is one 
 which the French never thor- 
 oughly solved, though they 
 bestowed immense pains upon it. 
 Brilliant as the effect sometimes 
 is of the immense mass of pin- 
 nacles and flying buttresses, they 
 
 are seldom so put together as to leave an entirely satisfactory result on 
 the mind of the spectator. Taken all in all, perhaps the most pleasing 
 example is that of Rheims (Woodcut No. 395) — those on each side of 
 the nave especially — where two bold simple arches transmit the 
 pressure from a bold exquisitely pinnacled buttress to the sides of the 
 clerestory, and in such a manner as to leave no doubt whatever either 
 as to their purpose or their sufficiency to accomplish their object. 
 
 Notwithstanding the beauty Avhich the French attained in their 
 flying buttresses, it is still a question whether they did not carry this 
 feature too far. It must be confessed that there is a tendency in the 
 
 430. Flving Buttres, 
 
 at Amiens. ( From Chapuy.^ 
 
576 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 abuse of the system to confuse the outlines and to injure the true 
 architectural effect of the exterior. Internally it no doubt enabled 
 them to lighten their piers and increase the size of their windows to 
 an unlimited extent, and to judge fairly we must balance between the 
 gain to the interior, and tlie external disadvantages. This we shall 
 be better able to do when considering the next constructive expedient, 
 which was that of the introduction of pinnacles 
 
 Pinnacles. 
 
 The use of pinnacles, considered independently of their ornamental 
 purposes, is evident enough. It is obvious that a wall or pillar which 
 has to resist the thrust of a vault or any other power exerted laterally, 
 depends for its stability on its thickness, its solidity, and generally 
 on its lateral strength. A material consideration, as affecting this 
 solidity, is that of weight. The most frequent use of pinnacles by the 
 French was to surmount the piers from whicli the flying buttresses 
 sprang. To these piers weight and solidity were thus imparted, 
 rendering them a sufficiently steady abutment to the flying arches, 
 which in their turn abutted the central vaults. 
 
 It must be understood that these expedients of buttresses and 
 pinnacles were only employed to suj^port the central roof of the 
 nave. The vaults of the aisles were so narrow as not to require any 
 elaborate system of abutments for their support — the ordinary thick- 
 ness of the walls would have sufiiced for that purpose ; but they also had 
 the advantage of the use of the supports designed for the larger vaults. 
 
 As a general rule the English architects never hesitated to Aveight 
 their walls so as to apply the resistance directly on the point required, 
 and not only adorned the roofs of their churches with pinnacles, but 
 raised towers and lanterns on the intersections on all occasions. The 
 French, on the other hand, always preferred placing these objects, not 
 on their churches, but rather grouped around them, and springing 
 from the ground. This, it is true, enabled them to indulge in height 
 and lightness internally to an extent unknown in England. This 
 extravagance proved prejudicial to the true effect even of the interior, 
 while externally the system was very destructive of grace and har- 
 mony. A French cathedral is generally solid and simple, as high 
 as the parapet of the side-aisles, but above this base the forest of 
 pinnacles and buttresses that spring from it entirely obscure the 
 clerestory, and confuse its lines. Above this again the great mass and 
 simple form of the high steep roof, unbroken by pinnacles or other orna- 
 ments, contrasts unpleasingly with the lightness and confused lines im- 
 mediately below it. This inconsistency tends to mar the beauty of 
 French cathedrals, and even of their churches, though in the smaller 
 buildings the effect is less glaring owing to the smallness of the parts. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. X. 
 
 SPIRES. 
 
 577 
 
 Spires. 
 
 An easy transition leads from pinnacles to spires, the latter being 
 but the perfect development of the former, and each requiring the 
 ^issistance of the other in producing a thoroughly liarmonious effect. 
 
 431. St. Piei-re, Caen. (From Cliapuy.) 
 
 ^till their uses were widely different, for the spire never was a con- 
 structive expedient or useful in any way. Indeed, of all architectural 
 features, it is the one perhaps to which it is least easy to apply any 
 utilitarian rule. 
 
 Towers were originally introduced in Christian edifices partly as 
 VOL. I. — .37 
 
578 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Fakt II, 
 
 bell-towers, partly as symbols of power, and sometimes perhaps as 
 fortifications, to which may be added the general purpose of orna- 
 menting the edifices to which they were attached, and giving to them 
 that dignity which elevation always conveys. 
 
 From the tower the spire arose first as a wooden roof, and as 
 
 height was one of the 
 great objects to be at- 
 tained in building the 
 tower, it was natural 
 to eke this out by 
 giving the roof an 
 exaggerated elevation 
 beyond what was actu- 
 ally required as a mere 
 protection from the 
 weather. Wlien once 
 the idea was conceived 
 of rendering it an or- 
 namental feature, tlie 
 architects were not 
 long in carrying it out. 
 The first and most ob- 
 vious step was tliat of 
 cutting off the angles, 
 making it an octagon, 
 and carrying up the' 
 angles of the tower by 
 pinnacles, with a view 
 to softening the transi- 
 tion between the per- 
 pendicular and sloping 
 part, and reducing it 
 again to harmony. 
 
 One of the earliest 
 examples in whicli this 
 transition is success- 
 fully accomplished is 
 in the old spire at 
 Chartres (Woodcut 
 No. 393) ; the change 
 from the square to the octagon, and from the tower to the pyramid, 
 being managed with great felicity. The western spires of St. Stephen's 
 abbey at Caen (Woodcut No. 379); though added in the age of pointed 
 Gothic to towers of an earlier age, are also pleasing specimens. But 
 perhaps one of the very best in France, for its size and age, is that 
 
 432. Lantern, St. Onen, Kouen. (From a print by Cliapuy.) 
 
Bk. II. Ch. X. 
 
 SPIRES. 
 
 of St. Pierre ut Caen (Woodcut No. 431), uniting in itself all tlie 
 properties of a good d'esign without eitlier poverty or extravagance. 
 The little lantern of Ste. Marie de I'Epine (Woodcut No. 410), though 
 small, is as graceful an object as can well be designed ; and the new 
 spire at Chartres (Woodcut No. 393), as before remarked, is, except 
 as regards the defects inherent in its age, one of the most beautiful in 
 Europe. 
 
 This feature is nevertheless, it must be confessed, rarer in France 
 than might be expected. This is perhaps owing to many spires having 
 been, of wood, to their having been allowed to decay, and to their 
 removal ; while, in other instances, it is certain that the design of 
 erecting them has been abandoned in consequence of the tower, when 
 finished, having been found insufficient to bear their weight. 
 
 The ruined church of St. John at Soissons has two, which are still 
 of great beauty. At Bayeux are two others, not very beautiful in 
 themselves, but which group pleasingly with a central lantern of the 
 Renaissance age. And at Coutances there are two others of the best 
 age (Woodcut No. 400), which combined with a central octagonal 
 lantern make one of the most beautiful groups of towers in France. 
 Here the pitch of the roof is very low, and altogether the external 
 design of the building is much more in accordance with the canons of 
 art ])revalent on this side of the Channel than with those which found 
 favor in France. 
 
 Of the earlier French lanterns, this at Coutances is perhaps the 
 best specimen to be found : of the latter class there is none finer than 
 that of St. Ouen (Woodcut No. 43:^) ; and had the Avestern towers 
 been com])leted in the same charactei-, in accordance with the original 
 design, the towers of this church would ])robably be unrivalled. 
 Even alone the lantern is a very noble architectural feature, and 
 appropriate to its position, though some of the details mark the 
 lateness of the age in which it was erected. 
 
 Notwithstanding the beauty of these examples, it must be con- 
 fessed that the French architects Avere not so happy in their designs 
 of spires and lanterns as they were in many other features. 
 
 It would be in A'ain to attem])t to enumerate all the smaller 
 decorative features that crowd every j^art of the Gothic churches 
 of France, many of which, indeed, belong more to the department of 
 the sculptor than to that of the architect, though the two are so 
 intimately interwoven that it is impossible to draw^ the line between 
 them. It is, however, to the extreme care bestowed on these details 
 and their extraordinary elaboration that the Gothic churches of the 
 best age owe at least half their effect. There are many churches in 
 Italy of the Gothic and Renaissance ages, larger and grander in their 
 proportions than some of the best French examples, but they fail to 
 
580 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt II, 
 
 produce a similar effect because these details are all — if the expression 
 may be used — luachine-made. The same foriiis and ornaments are 
 
 repeated throughout, and too frequently 
 borrowed from some other place without 
 any evidence of thought or fitness in 
 their application, and consequently call 
 up no responsive feeling in the mind 
 of the spectator. On this side of the 
 Alps, in the best age, every moulding, 
 every detail, exhibits an amount of 
 thought combined with novelty, and is 
 always so appropriate to the place or 
 use to which it is applied, that it never 
 fails to produce the most pleasing effect, 
 and to heighten to a great extent the 
 beauty of the building in which it is 
 found. The corbel, for instance, repre- 
 sented in Woodcut No. 433 is as much a 
 niche for the statue as a bracket to 
 support the ends of the ribs of the vaults, 
 and is one of the thousand instances 
 which are met with everywhere in Gothic art of that happy mixture 
 of the arts of the mason, the carver, and tlie sculptor, which, when suc- 
 cessfully combined, 
 })roduce a true artistic 
 effect. These combina- 
 tions are so numerous 
 and so varied that it 
 would be hopeless to 
 attempt to classify 
 them, or even to at- 
 tempt to illustrate the 
 varieties found in any 
 single cathedral. J 
 The same may be 
 said of the capitals of the pillars, which in all the best buildings vary 
 with every shaft, and appear to have been executed, after the archi- 
 tect had finished his labors, by artists of a very high class. In the 
 best age, in France at least, as in the examples from Rheims, shown in 
 
 433. Corbel. (From Didron. 
 " Annales Arch^ologiques.") 
 
 Capitals from Klieims. 
 
 ' M. Viollet Le Due's Dictionnaire 
 [V Architecture " contains several hun- 
 dred examples of these minor architect- 
 ural details of French Mediaeval archi- 
 tecture. All are there drawn with skill, 
 -and engraved with exquisite taste. They 
 
 form a wonderful illustration of the ex- 
 uberance of fancy and fertility of inven- 
 tion of the French architects in those 
 days. The limits of this work do not 
 admit of more than a mere passinsj allu- 
 sion to this most fascinating subject. 
 
13k. 11. Ch. X. 
 
 CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 581 
 
 Woodcut No. 434, they would appear to have retained a reminiscence 
 of the Roman Corinthian order, but to have used it with a freedom 
 entirely their own. 
 
 Construction. 
 
 It has been shown that the exigencies of a Gothic cathedral were 
 a stone roof, a glass wall, and as great an amount of space on the 
 floor, as little encumbered with pillars and points of support, as could 
 be obtained. The two first of these points have been sufficiently 
 insisted upon in the preceding pages ; the last, however, demands a 
 few more remarks, as the success achieved by the masons in the 
 Middle Ages in this respect was one of their chief merits, though it 
 was but a mechanical merit after all, and one in which they hardly 
 surpassed their masters, the Romans. The basilica of Maxentius, for 
 instance, covers a space of 68,000 square feet, or about the average 
 size of a French cathedral, and the points of support, or, in other 
 words, the piers and wall, occupy only 6900 square feet, or between a 
 ninth and a tenth part of the whole area. If we turn to the great 
 cathedral of St. Peter's at Rome, we find the points of support occu- 
 pying more than one-fourth of the whole area, though built on the 
 model, and almost a copy, of the Roman basilica. At St. Mary's at 
 Florence they occupy one-fifth ; and in St. Paul's, London, and the 
 Pantheon at Paris, the walls and pillars occupy, in the first rather 
 tnore, in the other rather less, than one-sixth. If from these we turn 
 to some of the Mediaeval examples, we find for instance at 
 
 Tlie whole area. Solid. 
 
 Bourges . . . 61,591 . . . 11,908 . 
 
 Chartres . . 68,261 . . . 8,888 . 
 
 Paris . . . . 64,108 . . . 7,852 . 
 
 St. Ouen . . 47,107 . • . . 4,637 . 
 
 Ratio. 
 
 . . 0-181, or between l-5th and 1-6 th. 
 . . 0-130, " l-8th. 
 . . 0-122, " l-8tli and l-9tli. 
 . . 0-090, " 1-lOthand 1-11 th, 
 
 The figures, however, at Bourges, include a heavy and extended 
 porch not belonging to the original design, which if omitted would 
 reduce the fractional proportion considerably ; and if the unbuilt 
 towers of St. Ouen were excluded, the proportion of the points of 
 support to the area would be less than one-twelfth. 
 
 Our best English examples show a proportion of rather less than 
 one-tenth, and though they have not the great height and wide- 
 spreading vaults of the French cathedrals, their spires and pinnacles 
 externally perhaps more than counterbalance this. Taken altogether 
 it may generally be stated that one-tenth is about the proportion in 
 the best Gothic churches of the best age. When we find it exceed 
 this, it is obvious that the lightness of the walls and pillars has been 
 carried to excess, and even in St. Ouen, if there is an error, it is on 
 this side. There can be no question that to produce a satisfactory 
 effect a church requires solidity, and apparent as well as real strength ; 
 
582 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 for, without affecting the extreme massiveness of Egyptian art, witli 
 its wonderful expression of power and durability, there is an opposite 
 extreme far more prejudicial to true architectural effect in parading, 
 as it were, mechanical contrivances of construction, so as to gain the 
 utmost utilitarian effect with the least possible expenditure of means. 
 This the Egyptians utterly despised and rejected, and heaped mass 
 on mass, even at the expense of any convenience or use for which 
 the building might have been designed. The French architects, on 
 the other hand, made it their study to dispense with every ton of 
 stone they could possibly lay aside. This system they undoubtedly 
 carried too far, for, without looking at such extreme examples as the 
 nave of Beauvais or St. Ouen, everywhere in France we find a degree 
 of airy lightness and tenuity of parts destructive of many of the 
 most important conditions of architectural excellence. 
 
 Furniture of Churches. 
 
 Little less thought and expense were ])robably bestowed upon what 
 we may call the furnishing of Gothic cliurches than upon the fabrics 
 themselves. Thougli the objects included in this denomination were 
 altogether of a lower class of art, they were still essential parts of 
 the whole design, and we cannot fairly judge of the buildings them- 
 selves without at least endeavoring to supply their minor arrange- 
 ments. 
 
 It is not easy to do this in France, nor, indeed, in any part of 
 Europe, as no one church or chapel displays at the present day all the 
 wealth and ornament which once belonged to it. 
 
 There is scarcely a single church in France with its original altar, 
 the most sacred and therefore generally the most richly adorned part 
 of the whole. These have either been plundered by the Huguenots, 
 rebuilt in the execrable taste of the age of Louis .XIV., or destroyed 
 during the Revolution. 
 
 The cathedrals of Amiens and Rouen are among the few which 
 retain their original stalls ; and the enclosure of the choir at Chartres 
 is one of the most elaborate pieces of ornamental sculpture to be 
 found. That at Alby has been before alluded to, and fragments of 
 this feature still exist in many cathedrals. 
 
 The Rood-screens; or Juhes^ which almost all French churches once 
 possessed, are rarer than even the other parts of these enclosures. 
 A good example of them is found in the church of the Madelaine at 
 Troyes (Woodcut No. 435), which gives a favorable idea of the ricli- 
 ness of decoration that was sometimes lavished on these parts. Though 
 late in age, and aiming at the false mode of construction which was 
 prevalent at the time of its execution, it displays so much elegance as 
 to disarm criticism. It makes us, too, regret the loss of the rood-screens 
 
Bk. II. Ch. X. 
 
 FUilNITURE OF CHURCHES. 
 
 583 
 
 of St. Ouen's (of whicli we can alone judge from drawings) and of the 
 larger cathedrals ; though of these we are able to form some idea by 
 following out the design of the lateral screens, of which they formed 
 a part. 
 
 If to these we add the altars of the minor chapels, with the screens 
 that divided them from the nave, the tombs of wealthy prelates and 
 nobles, the organ galleries, with their spiral stairs and richly-carved 
 
 435. Kood-Screeii fi'Oiu the Madelaiiie at Ti'oyes. (From Ai'uaud, " Voyage dans rAube."X 
 
 Instrument cases, and all the numberless treasures of art accumulated 
 by wealth and piety, Ave may form some idea of what a Mediaeval 
 cathedral really was, though scarcely one now exists in any part of 
 Europe in an entire state. 
 
 Domestic Architecture. 
 It is probable that specimens remain sufficient to elucidate in an 
 archaeological point of view the progress of domestic architecture in 
 
584 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 takt n. 
 
 France, and tliereby to illustrate the early manners and customs of 
 tlie people ; but these remains are much less magnificent and are 
 less perfectly preserved than the churches and cathedrals, and have 
 consequently received comparatively little attention. 
 
 Had any of the royal palaces been preserved to our day, or even 
 any of the greater municipal buildings, the case might have been 
 different. The former have, however, perished, without an exception ; 
 and as regards the latter, France seems always to have presented a 
 remarkable contrast to the neighboring country of Flanders. 
 
 No town in France proper seems to have possessed in the Middle 
 Ages either a municipality of importance or a town-hall of any note. 
 Those found within its present boundaries belonged to Flanders or 
 Germany at the time of their erection. 
 
 In a work like the present, which is barely sufficient in extent to . 
 admit of all the great typical examples of architectural art being 
 enumerated, much less described, it is evident that to domestic art 
 a very subordinate position must be assigned. Perhaps it ought to 
 be omitted altogether. There are, however, so many beauties in even 
 the most insignificant productions of the great ages, that it may be 
 ex2:)edient at least to direct attention to the subject, and the three 
 examples here given may serve to illustrate the forms of the art at 
 the tliree great epochs of the French Gothic style. 
 
 The first (Woodcut No. 436) is from a house at Cluny, and ex- 
 hibits the round-arched arcade with its alternate single and coupled 
 
 columns, Avhich arrangement 
 was usual at that period, and 
 of wliich examples are found all 
 over the South of France, and 
 as far north at least as Auxerre. 
 
 The second (Woodcut No. 
 437) represents a house at Yrieix, 
 and shows the pointed Gothic 
 style in its period of greatest de- 
 velopment ; and although the 
 openings are of larger extent 
 than would be convenient in this 
 climate, they are not . more so 
 than would be suitable, while 
 they give, in the South of France, 
 great lightness and elegance to 
 the facade. The third example 
 is from the portal of the Ducal Palace at Nancy (Woodcut No. 438), 
 and is an instance of the form the style took when on the verge 
 of the Renaissance. It is not without elegance, though somewhat 
 strange and unmeaning, and, except as regards the ba^enies^ the 
 
 436. House at Cluuy. (From Gailhabaud.) 
 
Bk. II. Cii. X. 
 
 DOMESTIC ARCIIITECTUIIE. 
 
 585 
 
 parts generally seem designed solely for ornament without any con- 
 structive or utilitarian motive. 
 
 One of the most extensive as well as one of the best specimens 
 of French domestic architecture is the house of Jacques Cceur, at 
 Bourges, now used as the town-hall. It was built by the wealthy 
 but ill-used banker of Charles VII., and every part of it shows 
 evidence of careful design and elaborate execution ; it was erected, 
 too, at an age before the style had become entirely debased, and as 
 a private residence situated in a town, and therefore without any 
 attempt at fortification, is the best that France now possesses. 
 
 437. House at Yrieix. (From Gailliabaud.) 
 
 The chateau of Meillan (Clier) is nearly a repetition of the same 
 design, but at least a hundred years more modern. 
 
 Rouen possesses several examples of domestic architecture of a late 
 date ; so does Paris — and among others, the celebrated Hotel de Cluny. 
 Few of the great towns are, however, without fragments of some sort, 
 but hardly any are of sufficient importance to deserve se2:>arate notice 
 or illustration. 
 
 France is not so rich as either Germany or England m specimens 
 of castellated architecture. This does not apparently arise from the 
 fact of no castles having been built during the Middle Ages, but rather 
 from their having been pulled down to make way for more convenient 
 dwellings after the accession of Francis I., and even before his time, 
 when they had ceased to be of any use. Still the chateaux of Pierre- 
 fonds and Coucy are in their own class as fine as anything to be found 
 elsewhere. The circular keep of the latter castle is perhaps unique. 
 
58G 
 
 FRENCH ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Taut II. 
 
 both from its form and dimensions ; but being entirely gutted inside, 
 its architectural features are gone, and it is now difficult to under- 
 stand how it was originally arranged, and by what means it was 
 lighted and rendered habitable. ^ 
 
 Tancarville still retains some of the original features of its fortifi- 
 cations as do also the castles of Falaise and Gaillard. 
 
 438. Portal of the Ducal Palace at Nancy. (From Dusomerard.) 
 
 The keeps of Vincennes and Loches are still remarkable for their 
 height, though they hai'dly retain any features which can be called 
 strictly architectural. In the South, the fortified towns of Carcassonne 
 and Aigues Mortes, and in the North, Fougeres, retain as much of their 
 
 1 Viollet leDuc, in liis Architecture | no means explains how the interior was 
 Militaire," p. 96, gives a section of the | lighted, nor does it accord with what I 
 Donjon at Coucy, whicii, however, by i believe I saw there. 
 
Bk. II. Ch. X. 
 
 DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 587 
 
 walls and defences as almost any place in Euroi)e. The former in 
 jjarticular, both from its situation and the extent of its remains, gives 
 a singularly favorable and impressive idea of the grave majesty of an 
 ancient fortalice. But for alterations and desecrations of all sorts, 
 the palace of the popes at Avignon would be one of the most remark- 
 able castles in Europe : even now its extent and the raassiveness of its 
 walls and towers are most imposing. 
 
 These are all either ruins or fragments ; but the Castle of Mont St. 
 Michel, in Normandy, retains nearly all the features of a Mediaival 
 fortress in sufficient perfection to admit of its being restored, in 
 imagination at least. The outer walls still remain, encircling the 
 village, which nestles under the protection of the castle. The church 
 crowns the whole, and around it are grouped the halls of the knights, 
 the kitchens and offices, and all the appurtenances of the establish- 
 ment, intermingled with fortifications and defensive precautions that 
 must have made the place nearly impregnable against such engines of 
 war as existed when it w^as erected, even irrespective of its sea-girt 
 position. 
 
588 
 
 BELGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 BELGIUM AND HOLLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Historical Notice — Old Churches — Cathedral of Tournay — Antwerp — St. 
 
 Jacques at Liege. 
 
 THE little kingdom of Belgium forms an architectural province as 
 distinct and in many respects as interesting as any in Europe. 
 Its style does not, it is true, possess that simplicity, combined with 
 grandeur, which characterizes the one great united effort of Central 
 France, but it is more varied and picturesque, and as fully expressive 
 of the affinities and aspirations of the people. 
 
 As we may learn from their language, the dominant race during 
 the Middle Ages spoke a dialect very closely allied to the pure Ger- 
 man, which proclaimed their affinity to their neighbors on the Rhine; 
 but what their architecture tells us, though their language does not, 
 is that there was a very strong infusion of Celtic blood in their veins 
 which expresses itself in almost every building they erected. 
 
 Shortly after the departure of the Romans the German immi- 
 grants seem to have completely overpowered the original Belgae, and, 
 like true Aryans, to have divided themselves into a number of separate 
 and independent municipalities, with no established capital and 
 acknowledging no central authority. At times these communities 
 did submit themselves to the rules of Dukes and Counts, but only to 
 a very limited extent ; and for particular purposes they occasionally 
 even sought the protection of some powerful monarch ; but they 
 never relinquished their right of self-government nor fell under the 
 power of feudal chiefs, or of a dominant hierarchy, to the same extent 
 as prevailed throughout nearly the Avhole of the rest of Europe. This 
 spirit of independence was sustained throughout the Middle Ages by 
 the immense extension of commercial industry which the fortunate 
 position of Belgium, combined with the energy which her inhabitants 
 
Bk. III. Ch. I. 
 
 HISTORICAL NOTICE. 
 
 58^ 
 
 enabled her to develop. While the "rest of Europe was engaged in 
 feudal wars and profitless crusades, the peaceful burghers of the 
 Belgian cities were quietly amassing that wealth which gave them 
 individually such importance as free citizens of independent com- 
 munities, and raised their towns, and eventually their country, to the 
 state of pro'sperity it maintained till the destruction of their liberties 
 by the Spaniards in the 16th century. 
 
 These historical circumstances go far to explain the peculiar 
 character observable in the architectural remains of this country, 
 in which we find no trace of any combined national effort. Even tlie 
 epoch of Charlemagne passed over this province without leaving any 
 impress on the face of the country, nor are there any buildings that 
 can be said to have been called into existence by his influence and 
 power. The great churches of Belgium seem, on the contrary, to have 
 been raised by the individual exertions of the separate cities in which 
 they are found, on a scale commensurate with their several require- 
 ments. The same spontaneous impulse gave rise to the town-halls 
 and domestic edifices, which present so peculiar and fascinating an 
 aspect of picturesque irregularity. 
 
 Even the devastation by the Normans in the 9th and 10th 
 centuries seems to have passed more lightly over this country thafi 
 any other in the north of Europe. They burned and destroyed, 
 indeed, many of the more flourishing cities, but they did not occupy 
 them, and when they were gone the inhabitants returned, rebuilt 
 their habitations, and resumed their habits of patient self-supporting 
 labor ; and when these inroads ceased there was nothing to stop the 
 onward career of the most industrious and commercial community 
 then established in Europe. 
 
 In a historical point of view, the series of buildings is in some 
 respects even more complete than the wonderful group we have just 
 passed in review in France. In size the cathedrals of Belgium are at 
 least equal to those that have just been described. In general interest, 
 no cathedral of France exceeds that of Tournay, none in gorgeousness 
 that of Antwerp ; and few surpass even those of Louvain, Mechlin, 
 Mons, Bruges and Ghent. Notwithstanding their magnificence, how- 
 ever, it must be confessed that the Belgian cathedrals fail in all the 
 higher requisites of architectural design when compared with those 
 on their southern border. This was owing partly to the art never 
 having been in the hands of a thoroughly organized and educated 
 body of clergy like that of France, but more to the ethnographic 
 difference of race, which in the first place prevented centralization, 
 and also rendered them less keen in their appreciation of art, and 
 less influenced by its merits. From these and other causes, their 
 ecclesiastical buildings do not display that elegance of proportion, and 
 that beauty of well-considered and appro])riate detail, which every- 
 
590 
 
 BELGIAN ARCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 where please and satisfy the mind in contemplating the cathedrals of 
 France. 
 
 These remarks apply solely to ecclesiastical art. In specimens oi 
 the civil and domestic architecture of the Middle Ages, Belgium 
 surpasses all the other countries of Europe, on this side the Alps, 
 put together. Her town-halls and markets, and the residences 
 of her burghers, still display a degree of taste and elegance unsur- 
 passed by anything of the age, and remain to tliis day the best index 
 of the wealth and independence of the communities to which they 
 belonged. 
 
 All this is, of course, only what might be expected from what we 
 know of the ethnograpliic relations of the people. An Aryan race, 
 ioving independence, cultivating self-government, and steadily fol- 
 lowing those courses which lead to material well-being and wealth ; 
 and underlying these a Celtic race, turbulent at times, loving art, 
 appreciating its beauties, and clothing the municipal requirements 
 with the picturesque graces of architectural design. 
 
 The difference between this country and Central France appears to 
 be that in the latter country the Celtic element was in excess of the 
 Aryan, while in Belgium this condition was reversed, and this at least 
 imprecisely w^hat we find expressed in her art. 
 
 Of the oldest churches of Belgium, a large proportion are known to 
 us only by tradition, they having been pulled down to make way for 
 the larger and more splendid buildings which were demanded by the 
 continually increasing wealth and population of the cities. Of those 
 which remain, one of the oldest and most interesting is that of St. 
 Vincent at Soignies, built in 965 by Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne, 
 and though probably not quite finished within that century, it still 
 retains the features of the 10th century more completely than almost 
 any church in Europe. This church, that of St. Michele at Pavia, 
 and the Minster at Zurich, constitute a trio very similar to one another 
 in design and in size, and differing principally in the degree of finish 
 they display, this being by far the rudest in construction of the three. 
 It possessed originally a western tower and a central lantern, the 
 upper parts of both w^iich are modernized. The east end was square, 
 though possessing a shrine, the tomb of the saint whose name it bears. 
 It may have been altered, and is built up on the outside so as to render 
 examination impossible. 
 
 Another church, only slightly more modern, that of St. Gertrude at 
 Nivelles (Woodcut No. 439), presents the same peculiarity, of having 
 a square termination towards the east, though it seems originally to 
 have had an apse at the west end, where the facade was carried up to 
 a considerable height, and adorned in the centre by a square towei-, 
 flanked by a circular one on each side. The latter retain their 
 
Bk. III. Ch. I. 
 
 CATHEDRAL OF TOURNAY. 
 
 51)1 
 
 original form, though the central tower was rebuilt in the 15th century. 
 This church was built in the earliest years of the 11th century, and was 
 dedicated in 1045, the 
 Emj)eror Henry IV. 
 assisting at the cere- 
 mony. It is a first- 
 class church with two 
 transe})ts, and remains 
 externally in all essen- 
 tial particulars as then 
 built. The interior was 
 entirely des-troyed in 
 the middle of the last 
 century, which is a 
 very great loss, al- 
 though the new ar- 
 rangement which has 
 r'ei^laced it is in itself 
 remarkably well de- 
 signed. 
 
 Passing over some 
 minor examples, we 
 come to the cathedral 
 of Tournay, to the architect and artist the most interesting of the 
 province. It is a first-class cathedral, more than 400 ft. in length 
 internally, and covering with its dependencies an area of 62,525 ft. 
 It consists of a nave, dedicated in 1066 ; of a transept, built about the 
 year 1146; the choir, which formed part of this arrangement, was 
 dedicated in 1213, but gave place about a century afterwards to that 
 now standing, which was dedicated in 1338, so that within itself it 
 contains a complete history of the style ; and though there is no 
 doubt considerable incongruity in the three specimens here brought 
 together, as they are the best of their respective classes in Belgium, 
 the effect is not unpleasing, and their arrangement fortunate, inas- 
 much as, entering by the western door, you pass first through the 
 massive architecture of the 11th to the bolder and more expanded 
 features of the 12th century, a fitting vestibule to the exaggerated 
 forms which prevailed during the 14th. In the woodcut (No. 441) 
 the three styles are represented as they stand ; but it would require 
 far more elaborate illustration to do justice to the beauty of the 
 deeply galleried nave, which surpasses any specimen of Norman 
 architecture, but which is here eclipsed by the two remaining apses 
 of the transept. These, notwithstanding a certain rudeness of detail, 
 are certainly the finest productions of their age, and are as magnifi- 
 cent pieces of architecture as can be conceived. The choir is the 
 
 439. View of West End of Church at "Nivelles. (From a 
 Sketch, by the Author.) 
 
592 
 
 ELGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut IL 
 
 least satisfactory part of the whole ; for though displaying a certain 
 beauty of proportion, and the most undoubted daring of construction, 
 its effect is frail and weak in the extreme. Still, if the tracery were 
 restored to the windows, and these filled with painted glass, a great 
 part of this defect might be removed. At the best, the chief merit 
 of this choir is its clever and daring construction, but even in this 
 the builder miscalculated his own strength, for it was found necessary 
 
 to double the thickness of 
 all the piers after they were 
 first erected. This addition 
 would have been an im- 
 provement if it had been 
 part of the original design, 
 but as it now is it appears 
 only to betray the weakness 
 which it was meant to 
 conceal. 
 
 It is by no means clear 
 that originally there were 
 any entrances at the west 
 front ; at least tliere cer- 
 tainly was no central door- 
 way ; and probably the 
 principal entrances were, as 
 in most German churches, 
 under lateral porches. 
 
 Externally, the west 
 front had neither the flank- 
 ing towers of the Norman 
 church, nor the frontispiece 
 usual in Germany, but ter- 
 minated in a gable the 
 height of the wooden roof 
 of the nave. The original 
 church was triapsal, and a 
 large square tower adorned 
 the intersection of the nave 
 and transept, which was originally surrounded by six tall square 
 towers, two belonging to each of the apses. Four of these still exist, 
 and with the remaining part of the central tower form as noble a 
 group as is to be found in any church of this province. In its triapsal 
 state, its superior dimensions and the greater height of its towers 
 must have rendered it a more striking building than even the 
 Apostles' Church at Cologne, or indeed any other church of its age. 
 Besides the churches already described, there are a considerable 
 
 Plan of Cathedral at Tournay. 
 Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. I. 
 
 BELGIAN CHURCHES. 
 
 51)3 
 
 441. 
 
 Section of Central Portion of Cliurcli at ToiU'nay, 
 looking South. Scale 50 ft. to 1 in. 
 
 number in Belgium belonging to tlio lltli century, such as St. 
 Bartholomew at Liege; 
 3t. Servin's, Maestricht; 
 the church at Ruremonde 
 (almost an exact coun- 
 terpart of the Ajwstles' 
 Church at Cologne), and 
 others of more or less 
 importance scattered 
 over the country. They 
 almost all possess the 
 peculiarity of having no 
 entrance in their west 
 fronts, but have instead 
 a massive screen or front- 
 ispiece surmounted by 
 two or three towers. 
 This was the arrange- 
 ment of the old church 
 of St. Jacques at Liege. 
 The church of Notre 
 Dame de Maestricht pre- 
 sents a somewhat ex- 
 aggerated example of 
 this description of front 
 (Woodcut No. 442). It 
 is difficult to explain the 
 origin of this feature, nor 
 have we any reason to 
 regret its abandonment. 
 There can be no doubt 
 that the j^roper j^lace for 
 the principal entrance to 
 a church is the end op- 
 ])osite the altar, where 
 this screen prevented its 
 being placed. 
 
 Among the smaller 
 antiquities of this age, 
 none are perhaps more 
 interesting than the little 
 chapel of St. Sang, at 
 Bruges, built by Thierry 
 of Alsace, on his return 
 from the Holy Land, a.d. 
 
 1150 ; it is a small double chapel, of a form very common in Germany, 
 
 West Front of Notre Dame de Maestricht. 
 (From Schaye's " Belgium.") 
 
594 
 
 BELGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Pakt II 
 
 but less ornate than these generally were. At one angle of it are 
 two spires, represented in Woodcut No. 443 ; the more slender of these 
 
 would not excite remark if found in Cairo 
 or Aleppo, so exactly does it take the 
 Eastern form ; the other, on the contrary, 
 seems to belong to the 16th or 17th cen- 
 tury : it is only one, however, of the 
 numerous instances that go to prove how 
 completely it returned, at the period 
 called the Renaissance, to the point from 
 which it started some four or five cen- 
 turies earlier. It returned with something- 
 more of purity of detail and better con- 
 struction, but unfortunately without tliat 
 propriety of design and grandeur of con- 
 ception which mark even the rude build- 
 ings of the llenaissance of Gothic art. 
 
 Belgium is rich in small specimens of 
 transitional architecture, and few of her 
 more extensive ecclesiastical establish- 
 443. Spire oi the ciiapei of St. Sang, mcnts are without some features of this 
 sketehlJy'tiie Author.) class, oftcn of o'reat bcautv. Th 
 
 (From 
 
 class, often of great beauty, l lieir age 
 has not yet, however, been determined 
 with anything like precision by the Belgian antiquaries ; but, on 
 the whole, it seems that in this, as in most other respects, this 
 country followed the German much more closely than the French 
 type, hesitating long before it adopted tlie pointed arch, and cling- 
 ing to circular forms long after it had 
 been employed elsewhere, oscillating 
 between tlie two in a manner very 
 puzzling, and rendering more care 
 necessary in determining dates than 
 in most other parts of Europe. Be- 
 sides this, none of the Belgian build- 
 ings have yet been edited in such a 
 manner as to afford materials for the 
 establishment of any certain rule. 
 Perhaps the most interesting specimen 
 of the transitional period, and cer- 
 tainly one of the mosH beautiful ruins 
 in the country, is the abbey church 
 of Villers, near Genappe, a building 338 ft. in length by 67 in width, 
 built with all the purity of what we would call the early English 
 style, but with a degree of experimental imperfection in the tracery 
 of which I hardly know an example elsewhere. The representation 
 
 444. Window in Church at Villers, near 
 Genappe. 
 (From a Sketcli by the Author.) 
 
r.K. 111. ch. I. 
 
 TRANSITIONAL PERIOD. 
 
 595 
 
 here given (Woodcut No. 444) of one of the windows of the transept 
 will explain this; throughout it the tracery consists of holes cut into 
 slabs ; yet this churcli is said to have been commenced in 1225, and 
 only finished in 1276. In Germany such a date would be probable ; 
 in France a similar specimen would be assigned to a period from 70 
 to 100 years earlier. 
 
 Among the many efforts made in Belgium to get rid of the awk^ 
 Avardness of the pointed form for windows, was that in the choir of 
 Notre Dame de la Chapelle, at Brussels (1216?), where the circular 
 tracery is inserted in a circular-headed window, producing a much 
 more pleasing effect, both internally and externally, than the pointed 
 form, except with reference to the vault, with which it is so little in 
 accordance that the experiment seems to have been abandoned, and 
 no attempt made afterwards to renew it. 
 
 Besides those already mentioned, Belgium possesses about twenty 
 first-class churches of pointed architecture, all deserving attentive 
 consideration, some of them being almost unrivalled edifices of their 
 class. Among the earliest of these is the cathedral of Liege, begun in 
 1189, exhibiting the style in great purity. It has no western entrance, 
 but, like St. Croix, St. Jacques, and all the principal churches of this 
 city, is entered by side porches. 
 
 A little later we have the eastern parts of St. Gudule, Brussels 
 (a.d. 1220), and two other very beautiful churches ; Notre Dame de 
 Tongres (1240), and St. Martin, Ypres (1254). The latter is perhaps 
 the purest and best specimen of the Gothic of the 13th century in 
 Flanders ; and of about the same age is the beautiful church of N. D. 
 de Dinant. These are almost the only important specimens of tlie 
 contemporary art of the 13tli century, which still excites our admira- 
 tion in all the principal cities of France. Almost all the great cathe- 
 drals in that country belong to this age, which was also so jDrolific 
 of great buildings in England. But Belgium does not seem to have 
 shared to any great extent in the impulse then given to church archi- 
 tecture. Her buildings are spread pretty evenly over the whole 
 period from the 10th to the 16th century, as the steadily growing 
 wealth of the country demanded them, and but little influenced by 
 the great political oscillations of her neighbors. 
 
 In the next century we have N. D. de Huy (1311), the beautiful 
 parish church at Aerschot (1337), and N. D. de Hal (1341), — small but 
 elegant places of worship. The two crowning examples, however, of 
 this age are N. D. of Antwerp (1352-1411), and St. Rombaut, Malines. 
 The choir of this latter church was dedicated in the year 1366, having 
 been commenced about the same time as that at Antwerp, but the 
 nave was not erected till a century afterwards (1456-1464), and the 
 tower was not carried even to its present height till the 16th century. 
 
 Antwerp cathedral is one of the most remarkable churches in 
 
596 
 
 BELGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Paut II. 
 
 Europe, being 390 feet long by 170 in width inside the nave, and cover- 
 ing rather more than 70,000 square feet. As will be seen by the plan. 
 (Woodcut No. 445), it is divided into seven aisles, which gives a vast 
 intricacy and picturesqueness to the perspective ; but there is a want 
 
 of harmony among the parts, 
 and of subordination and 
 proportion, sadly destruc- 
 tive of true architectural 
 effect; so that, notwith- 
 standing its size, it looks 
 much smaller internally 
 than many of the French 
 cathedrals of far smaller 
 dimensions. If the length 
 of the nave had been divided 
 into ten bays instead of only 
 six, and the central aisle had 
 been at least 10 feet wider, 
 which space could easily 
 have been spared from the 
 outer one, the apparent size 
 of the church would have 
 been greatly increased ; but 
 besides this it wants height, 
 and its details show a deca- 
 dence which nothing can 
 redeem. 
 
 Its magnificent portal, 
 with its one finished tower, 
 406 feet in height, Avas com- 
 menced in 1422, but only fin- 
 ished in 1518, and is more in accordance with the taste of the 16th cen- 
 tury than of the original design. Although from the lateness of its date, 
 it is impossible to be satisfied either with the outline or the detail, it is 
 still so gorgeous a specimen of art, and towers so nobly over the build- 
 ings of the city, as to extort our admiration, and a man must have very 
 little feeling for the poetry of art who can stop to criticise it too closely. 
 
 The spire at Chartres (Woodcut No. 393) is more elegant in out- 
 line, but the design of its base does not accord with that of the upper 
 part, and its effect is injured by the great height of the building to 
 which it is attached. That at Strasburg is very inferior in outline, 
 so is St. Stephen's at Vienna, and it is not quite clear that the open- 
 work spires of Friburg and Cologne are not mistakes. The base of 
 the Antwerp spire is perfect in proportion, and good in detail ; the 
 caprice begins only when near the top, where it constructively can do 
 
 445. Plan of the Cathedral at Antwerp. Scale 100 
 feet to 1 in. 
 
Bk. 111. Cu. I. 
 
 CATHEDRAL AT ANTWERP. 
 
 597 
 
 no harm, and is nuich less offensive than it would be lower down. It 
 is not perfect, but taking it altogether it is perhaps the most beautiful 
 thing of its kind in Europe. 
 
 It is a great question if the second spire, were it completed as 
 originally designed, would add to, or detract from, the beauty of the 
 composition. An unfinished design is always unpleasing, but, on the 
 whole, twin spires, without a very prominent central object, do not 
 seem a j^leasing form of design. 
 
 The church of St. Rombaut at Malines, though very much smaller 
 than that at Antwerp, being only 300 ft. in length internally, and 
 including the tower, only 385 ft. over all externally, is still a far more 
 satisfactory chur^^h in every respect. Indeed, it is one of the finest 
 of those which have round pillars in the nave instead of the clustered 
 columns which give such beauty and such meaning to most of the 
 churches of this age. It was originally designed to have one western 
 spire, which, if completed, would have risen to the height of nearly 
 550 English feet. It was never carried higher than to the commence- 
 ment of the spire, 320 ft., and at that height it now remains. Even 
 as it is, it is one of the noblest erections of the Middle Ages, the 
 immense depth of its buttresses and the boldness of its outline giving 
 it a character seldom surpassed. 
 
 St. Pierre's of Louvain, is a worthy rival of these two ; for though 
 perhaps a century more modern, or nearly so, it seems to have been 
 built at once on a uniform and well-digested jjlan, which gives to the 
 whole building a congruity which goes far to redeem the defects in 
 its details. The fayade, which would have rendered it the noblest 
 building of the three, has never been completed. It was designed on 
 the true German principle of a great western screen, surmounted by 
 three spires, the central one 535 ft. in height, the other two 430 ft. 
 each.^ 
 
 Where suflScient width can be obtained, this seems a legitimate 
 and pleasing form of composition. Twin towers like those designed 
 from Cologne, Strasburg, and Antwerp, would overpower any church, 
 and are wanting in variety. Two small towers, with one taller 
 between, is a more pleasing composition, though equally destructive 
 to the effect of the building behind. The English plan of three spires, 
 as at Litchfield, is by far the most pleasing arrangement ; but this 
 form the continental architects never attempted on an extensive scale, 
 and consequently the single spire, as at Malines or Ulm, is perhaps 
 the most satisfactory solution of the difficulty. If not that, then the 
 triple spired facade designed for Louvain would probably be the best. 
 
 Those above enumerated are certainly the finest specimens of 
 
 A beautiful drawing of this facade 
 to a very large scale still exists in the 
 town-hall in the city, as well as a model 
 
 in stone, from which the intended eflfeof 
 may be seen. 
 
598 
 
 BELGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 Belgian ecclesiastical art. Almost all the churches erected afterwards, 
 though some of them very beautiful, are characterized by the elaborate 
 weakness of their age. Among these may be mentioned St. Gommaire 
 at Lierre, commenced a. d. 1425, but not completed till nearly a cen- 
 tury afterwards ; and St. Jacques at Antwerp, a large and gorgeous 
 church, possessing size and proportion worthy of the best age, but 
 still unsatisfactory from the absence of anything like true art or design 
 pervading it. The same remarks do not apply to St. Waudru at Mons, 
 1450-1528, one of the very best specimens of its age — pleasing in pro- 
 portion and elegant in detail. Internally a charming effect of poly- 
 chroniy is produced by the cold blue color of the stone, contrasted 
 with the red-brick filling-in of the vault ; this contrast being evidently 
 a part of the original design. By some singular freak of destiny it 
 has escaped whitewash, so that we have here one instance at least of 
 a true mode of decoration, and to a certain extent a very good one. 
 The exterior of this church is also extremely pleasing for its age. Its 
 tower and spire are unfortunately among those that we know only 
 from the original drawings, which are still preserved, and show a very 
 beautiful design. 
 
 Of about the same age (1522-1558) is St. Jacques at Liege (Wood- 
 cut No. 446), a church of the second class in point of size, being only 
 
 254 feet in length internally, by 92 ft. 
 across the nave. At the west end it still 
 retains the screen of the old church, 
 marked darker on the plan. The prin- 
 cipal entrance is a splendid porch of 
 flamboyant design on the north. The 
 east end may be said to be a compromise 
 between the French and German methods, 
 for it is not a chevet, inasmuch as it has 
 not the circumscribing aisle, while its 
 circlet of chapels prevents its being con- 
 sidered as a German apse. Altogether 
 the plan is characteristic of its locality, 
 on the borders of France and Germany, 
 for in it we find mixed together most of 
 the peculiarities of both countries. For 
 its age too the details are generally good, 
 but as construction was no longer the 
 ruling motive, confusion is the result. 
 446. Plan of stT Jacques, Li^^ (From The most remarkable thing about the 
 ^'^'"''sclSwo'r^^^^^^ church is, that it is one of the very few 
 
 churches in Europe which retain their 
 polychromatic decorations in anything like completeness, especially 
 on the roof. The paintings, however, are of late date, bordering on 
 
Bk. III. Ch. L 
 
 GOTHIC CIIUIK^IIES. 
 
 599 
 
 the cinque-cento period ; yet the effect produced, though gorgeous, 
 is remarkjil)ly pleasing and beautiful, and is in itself sufficient to set 
 at rest the question as to the expediency of painting the vaults of 
 churches, or leaving them plain. My own conviction is, that all 
 French vaults were once painted to as great an extent as in this case. 
 Our English architects often probably depended only on form and 
 carving for effect, but on the Continent it was otherwise. 
 
 Of the remaining churches, St. Bavon's at (Tlient, and St. Martin's 
 at Liege, both commenced, as they now stand, in the middle of the 
 16th century, are among the most remarkable, and for their age are 
 wonderfully free from any traces of the Renaissance. At the same 
 age in France, or even in England, they would liave been Italianized 
 to a far greater extent. 
 
 There is scarcely a second-rate town or even a village in Belgium 
 that does not j^ossess a church of more or less importance of the 
 Gothic age, or one at all events possessing some fragment or detail 
 worthy of attentive study. This circumstance is easily explained 
 from the fact that during the whole of the Mediaeval period, from the 
 10th to the 16th century, Belgium was rich and prosperous, and since 
 that time till the present comparatively so poor as to have had neither 
 ambition to destroy nor power to rebuild. Considering its extent, 
 the country is indubitably richer in monuments than France, or per- 
 haps than any other country in Europe ; but the architecture is neither 
 so good or satisfactory nor of so high a class. 
 
600 
 
 BELGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Civil Architecture — Belfries — Hall at Ypres — Louvain — Brussels — Domestic 
 
 Architecture. 
 
 WHATEVER opinion we may form as to her ecclesiastical edi- 
 fices, the real architectural pre-eminence of Belgium consists in 
 her civil, or rather her municipal buildings, which surpass those of any 
 other country. None of these are very old, which is easily accounted 
 for. The rise of commercial enterprise in Belgium, though early 
 compared with other European nations, was more recent than the age 
 of military and ecclesiastical supremacy, and men were consequently 
 obliged to erect castles to protect their property against robbers, and 
 churches for their religious wants, before they could think of council- 
 halls or municipal edifices. 
 
 In the 12th century, when the monarchy of France was consoli- 
 dating itself, the cities of Belgium were gradually acquiring that 
 wealth and those rights and privileges which soon placed them among 
 the independent and most prosperous communities of Europe. One 
 of the earliest architectural expressions of their newly-acquired inde- 
 pendence was the erection of a belfry. The right of possessing a bell 
 was one of the first privileges granted in all old charters, not only as 
 a symbol of power, but as the means of calling the community 
 together, either with arms in their hands to defend their walls, to 
 repress internal tumults, for the election of magistrates, or for delib- 
 eration on the affairs of the commonwealth. The tower, too, in which 
 the bell was hung was a symbol of power in the Middle Ages, and, 
 whether on the banks of the Scheldt or the Po, the first care of every 
 enfranchised community was to erect a "tower of pride" propor- 
 tionate to their greatness. 
 
 The tower, moreover, was generally the record-office of the city, 
 the place where the charters and more important deeds were pre- 
 served secure from fire, and in a place sufficiently fortified to protect 
 them in the event of civic disturbances. 
 
 All these uses have passed away, and most of the belfries have 
 either fallen into neglect or been removed or appropriated to other 
 purposes. Of those remaining, the oldest seems to be that of Tour- 
 nay, a fine tower, though a good deal altered and its effect destroyed 
 by more modern additions. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 BELFRIES — MUNICIPAL HALLS. 
 
 601 
 
 The belfry at Ghent was commenced in 1183, but the stone-work 
 was only completed in 1337. In 1376 a wooden spire was placed 
 upon it, making up the height to 237 ft. Tliis has 
 been recently taken down in order to complete the 
 tower according to tlie original design, which, like 
 that of most of the unfinished buildings of Belgium, 
 has been carefully preserved. When finished it will 
 be about 300 ft. in height, and one of the finest bel- 
 fries in the country. The Woodcut No. 447 is a re- 
 duction of the original drawing, which, though not 
 so perfect as some others, gives a fair idea of what 
 it is intended to be. 
 
 The belfry of Brussels was one of the finest in 
 the country, but after various misfortunes it fell in 
 1714, and is only known now by a model still pre- 
 served in the city. 
 
 At Ypres and Bruges the belfries form part of tlie 
 great halls of the city. Those at Lierre, Nieuport, 
 Alost, Furnes, and other cities, have been all more 
 or less destroyed by alterations, and are more in- 
 teresting to the antiquary than to the arcliitec-t • 
 moreover, like the cities themselves, they never could 
 have been of the first class, or remarkable for any 
 extraordinary magnificence. 
 
 Belfry at Glieiit. 
 (From the origiuul 
 drawing.) 
 
 The great municipal halls, which are found in all 
 the principal cities of Belgium, are of three classes : 
 — 1. Town-halls — the municipal senate-houses and 
 courts of justice. 2. Trade-halls or market-houses, 
 the principal of which were cloth-halls, cloth having 
 been the great staple manufacture of Belgium during 
 the Middle Ages. And lastly Guildhalls, or the 
 separate places of assembly of the different guilds or associated trades 
 of the cities. 
 
 As far as existing examples go, it would appear that the trade- 
 halls were the first erected. The cloth-hall at Ypres is by far the 
 most magnificent and beautiful of these, as also the earliest. The 
 foundation-stone was laid in 1200 by Baldwin of Constantinople, but 
 it was not finished till 104 years afterwards. The facade is 440 ft. in 
 length, and of the simplest possible design, being perfectly straight 
 and unbroken from end to end. The windows of each story, all of 
 one design, are repeated, not only along the whole front, but at each; 
 end. Its height is varied by the noble belfry which rises from its. 
 centre, and by a bold and beautiful pinnacle at each end. The whole 
 is of the pure architecture of the 13th century, and is one of the most 
 
602 
 
 BELGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 majestic edifices of its class to be seen anywhere. It might perhaps 
 have been improved by the greater degree of expression and the 
 bolder shadows which lines brought down to tlie ground would have 
 
 t 
 
 I 
 
 ■148. Clotli-liall at Ypres. 
 
 given to it, but us it is, it is extremely pleasing from its simplicity 
 and the perfect adaptation of its exterior to its internal arrangements. 
 These consist of one vast hall on the ground-floor, supported by several 
 
Bk. III. Ch. II. 
 
 TOWN-HAI.LS. 
 
 603 
 
 ranges of columns, with long galleries and great halls above it for the 
 Mse of the trade to which it was aj)|)ropriated. 
 
 The town-hall at Bruges is perhaps the oldest building erected 
 especially for that purpose in Belgium, the foundation-stone having 
 been laid in 1377. It is a small building, being only 88 ft. in front by 
 65 in depth, and of a singularly pure and elegant design. Its small 
 size causes it to suffer considerably from its immediate proximity to 
 the cloth-hall and other trade-halls of the city. These, grouped with 
 the belfry in their centre, occupy one end of the great Place, and, 
 though not remarkable for beauty, either of design or detail, still 
 form a most imposing mass. The belfry is one of the most picturesque 
 towers in the country. Its original height was 356 ft., which was 
 diminished by about 60 ft. by the removal of the spire in 1741, though 
 it still towers above all the buildings of the city, and in that flat 
 country is seen far and wide. 
 
 The finest of the town-halls of Belgium, built originally as such, 
 is that of Brussels (Woodcut No. 449), commenced in 1401, and finished 
 in 1455. In dimensions it is inferior to the cloth-hall at Ypres, being 
 only 264 ft. in length by about 50 in depth, and its details, as may be 
 supposed from its age, are less pure ; but the spire that surmounts its 
 centre, rising to the height of 374 ft., is unrivalled for beauty of 
 outline and design by any spire in Belgium, and is entitled to take 
 rank among the noblest examples of the class in Europe. NotAvith- 
 standing its late age, there is no extravagance, either in design or 
 detail, about it ; but the mode in which the octagon is placed on the 
 square, and the outline broken and varied by the bold and important 
 pinnacles that group around it, produce a most pleasing variety, 
 without interfering with the main constructive lines of the building. 
 The spire, properly so called, is sinall, so that its open-work tracery 
 is pleasing and appropriate, which is more than can be said of some 
 of its German rivals, in which this mode of ornamentation is quite 
 unsuited to the large scale on which it is attempted. 
 
 Next in importance to this is the well-known and beautiful town- 
 hall at Louvain (1448-1463), certainly the most elaborately decorated" 
 piece of Gothic architecture in existence. Though, perhaps, a little 
 overdone in some parts, the whole is so consistent, and the outline 
 and general scheme of decoration so good, that little fault can be 
 found with it. In design it follows very closely the hall at Bruges, 
 but wants the tower, which gives such dignity to those at Brussels 
 and Ypres. 
 
 Towards the end of the same century (1481) the inhabitants of 
 Ghent determined on the erection of a town-hall, which, had it ever 
 been finished, would have surpassed all the others in size and richness, 
 though whether it would have equalled them in beauty is more than 
 doubtful. After a century of interrupted labor the design was aban- 
 
604 
 
 BELGIAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Part IL 
 
Bk. hi. Ch. II. 
 
 TOWN-HALLS. 
 
 605 
 
 doned before it was more than two-thirds completed, and now tliat 
 age has softened down its extravagances, it is a pleasing and perhaps 
 beautiful building. Nothing, however, can exceed the extent of tor- 
 mented and unmeaning ornament that is spread over every part of it, 
 showing great richness certainly, but frequently degenerating into 
 very bad taste. The architecture of the hall at Ypres, though only 
 half or one-third as costly in proportion to its extent, is far nobler and 
 more satisfactory than this ever could have been. But when erected 
 the day of true art was past, and its place was sought to be supplied 
 by extent of ornament. 
 
 The same remarks apply to the town-hall at Oudenarde, a building 
 evidently meant as a copy of that at Louvain, but having combined 
 with it a belfry in imitation of that at Brussels. The result is 
 certainly rich and pleasing in general effect ; but the details inci- 
 dental to its age (1525) have marred the execution, and given to the 
 whole a clumsiness and a flimsiness that greatly detract from its 
 beauty. Even the effect of the belfry is spoiled by the temptation to 
 exhibit a masonic trick, and make it appear as if standing on the two 
 slight pillars of the porch. It is clever, but apparent stability is 
 as necessary to true architectural beauty as real stability is to the 
 dignity of art. 
 
 Among the smaller halls that of Mons is perhaps the most elegant, 
 and is very similar to that of St. Quentin, which, though now in France, 
 was a Flemish city at the time of its erection. 
 
 In the days of her magnificence Mechlin attempted the erection 
 of a splendid hall, which was intended to rival those of any of the 
 neighboring towns. Civic troubles, however, put a stop to the work 
 befoi-e it was carried so far as to enable us now even to determine 
 what the original design may have been. 
 
 Among minor edifices of the same class may be mentioned the 
 cloth-halls of Louvain and Ghent, both of the best age, though small ; 
 and the Boucheries or meat-markets of Diest, Ypres, Antwerp, and 
 other towns — the boatmen's lodge at Ghent, and the burgesses' lodge 
 at Bruges, besides numerous other scattered memorials of civic magni- 
 ficence that meet one everywhere in this great emporium of Mediaeval 
 industry. 
 
 Of palaces, properly so called, little remains m Belgium worthy of 
 notice, unless it be the palace of the Bishop of Liege (Woodcut No. 
 450), which, as far as size and richness of decoration are concerned, 
 almost deserves the reputation it has attained. It was, however, 
 unfortunately commenced at an age (1508) when the Gothic style, 
 especially in civil buildings, was all but extinct, and it is impossible 
 to admire its stunted columns and flat arches in such immediate 
 proximity to the purer works of the preceding centuries. 
 
 Of the same age and style was the Exchange at Antwerp (1515). 
 
606 
 
 BELGIAN AUCHITECTUEE. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 This building was more pleasing in its details : and, though com- 
 menced a few years later, its simpler and more monumental character 
 
 seems to have preserved it from 
 the individual caprices which are 
 apparent in tlje palace, and which 
 became the fatal characteristic 
 of all future designs. Neither of 
 these buildings can, however, be 
 called in strictness Gothic designs, 
 for the true spirit of that art had 
 perished before they were com- 
 menced. 
 
 Many of the private dwelling- 
 houses in the Flemish cities are 
 ]:>icturesque and elegant, though 
 hardly rising to the grade of 
 specimens of fine art; but when 
 grouped together in tlie narrow 
 winding streets, or along the 
 banks of the canals, the result is 
 so varied and charming that we 
 are inclined to ascribe to them 
 
 450. I'art of Bishop's Palace, Liege. No scale. - u. • • i 4. *i „ +1 
 
 ^ more intrinsic beauty than they 
 
 really possess as individual designs. Most of them are of brick, 
 and the brick being used undisguisedly, and the buildings depending 
 wholly on such forms as could be given to that material, they never 
 offend our taste by shams ; and the honest endeavor of tlie citizens 
 to ornament their dwellings externally, meets here with the success 
 that must always follow such an attempt. To exhibit this class of 
 structures adequately would require far more illustration than is 
 com])atible with a work like the present, and would occupy the space 
 tliat more properly belongs to buildings of a larger and more monu- 
 mental class, and of higher pretensions to architectural effect, both 
 in their design and the manner in which it is carried out. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. III. 
 
 CHURCHES. 
 
 607 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 HOLLAND. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Churches — Civil and Domestic Buildings. 
 
 THE moment we pass the boundary line which separates Belgium 
 from Holland, we feel that we have stepped at once into a new 
 architectural province. At last we have got among a people of pure 
 Aryan or Teutonic race, without one trace of Turanian or Celtic 
 blood in their veins, and who, consequently, carry out their architect- 
 ural designs with a matter-of-fact simplicity that is edifying, if not 
 charming. It is not that the kingdom of Holland is deficient in the 
 possession of Mediaeval churches — far from it — she possesses as 
 many Gothic cathedrals as we do, and their average dimensions are 
 equal to those which adorn this island ; they belong also to the same 
 age : but the result is wonderfully different. 
 
 The Dutch did not work out any part of the style for themselves ; 
 they attempted no novelties, and did not even give themselves the 
 trouble to understand perfectly the style they were employing. 
 They were then, as now, a religious people, and wanted churches, 
 and built them according to the only pattern then available. No one 
 can say that their cliurclies were not pei'fectly adapted to the form 
 of worship then prevalent, and in dimensions and dignity perfectly 
 suited to the wants of the communities who erected them. Notwith- 
 standing all this, they are only vast warehouses of devotion, and are 
 utter failures as works of art. 
 
 If any one wishes to perfectly realize the difference between mere 
 ornamental construction and ornamental construction which is also 
 ornamented, he cannot do better than study carefully the design of 
 these Dutch churches. Their dimensions are frequently grand, their 
 proportions generally pleasing, and the subordination of the parts to 
 each other often most judicious. On the other hand, the pillars of the 
 pier arches are almost always round — the vaulting shafts poor, and 
 never carried to a sufficient resting-place — the windows want mullions 
 and tracery — the vaults are domed and stilted — the ribs lean — and 
 everything, in fact, is pared down as closely to mere utility as is pos- 
 sible in sucli a style. In France or in England, in the same age, 
 every stone would have spoken out and had a meaning ; and every 
 
HOLLAND. 
 
 Part IL 
 
 detail would not only have been in its right place, but would have 
 expressed the reason of its being there, and the purpose to which it 
 was applied. 
 
 To the want of artistic feeling, or real knowledge of the style, 
 which is shown in the designs of the Dutch churches, must be added 
 the inferiority of the material in which they were carried out. Some 
 are wholly of brick, and few are entirely of stone, though most of 
 them have an admixture of the nobler material — and where brick 
 is employed, without great care and artistic feeling, the result is 
 generally poor and unsatisfactory. 
 
 Judged by their dimensions alone, the churches of Holland ought 
 to be almost as interesting as those of Belgium, for they are generally 
 large, with lofty and well-proportioned aisles, and transepts which 
 project boldly. They have frequently tall and not ungraceful western 
 towers, and sometimes large windows filled with good tracery, though 
 mostly of a late age. Notwithstanding all these requisites of a per- 
 fect Gothic church, there is not one of them that must not be consid- 
 ered a failure, from the causes just mentioned. 
 
 These remarks apply especially to the great churches at Haai-lem, 
 Leyden, and Rotterdam, two at Amsterdam, and the two at Delft,, 
 the older of which contain some details worthy of attention. That 
 at Gouda is remarkable for tlie beauty of its painted glass, though 
 the architecture of the church is very unworthy of so brilliant an 
 ornament. 
 
 The church at Dort is older than most of these, and has a venera- 
 ble look about it that hides many of the faults of its architecture, but 
 it will not bear examination. 
 
 The churches of Utrecht and Bois le Due are to some extent 
 exceptions to the general poverty of design which characterizes the 
 churches of Holland. This is owing, probably, to the situation of these 
 two churches on the verge of the province, and their jiroximity to 
 Belgium and Germany. That at Utrecht consists at the j)resent day 
 of merely two fragments — a choir and a tower, the nave that joined 
 them having been destroyed by a storm and never replaced. What 
 remains is good late German, though it is much disfigured by modern 
 additions. The church at Bois le Due is still a large and richly orna- 
 <iiented church, with a good deal of stone-work about it ; but being 
 too large for the decaying town in which it stands, it has suffered 
 much from neglect, and is now in a very ruinous condition. 
 
 The church at Kampen, on the Zuyder Zee, is better than most 
 others, and many of the smaller churches on the borders of the prov- 
 ince are worthy of more attention than they have received. There 
 are few abbeys or monastic buildings of any importance to be found, 
 such establishments never having been suited to the industrious 
 character of the Dutch people. 
 
Bk. III. Ch. III. CIVIL AND DOMESTIC BUILDINGS. 
 
 609 
 
 Bad as are the churches of Holland, the town-halls and civic 
 buildings are even worse. There is not, in the whole of the 
 Netherlands, one that can be classed as a work of fine art. Even 
 age has been unable to render them tolerably picturesque ; nor are 
 there m the province any belfries with their picturesque forms, nor 
 any palaces worthy of note, which belong to the Middle Ages. The 
 older dwelling-houses are sometimes picturesque and pleasing, but 
 less so than those of Belgium. Most of them are unpretending 
 specimens of honest building, the result of which is often satisfac^ 
 tory ; and combined, as they generally are in Dutch towns, with water 
 and trees, and with the air of neatness and comfort which pervades 
 the whole, we sometimes scarcely feel inclined to quarrel with the 
 absence of higher elements of art when so pleasing a result has been 
 produced without them. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, it might be well worth while to give one 
 or two examples of the plans and illustrations of some of the churches 
 in Holland in a work like the present, not so much for their own sake, 
 as for comparison with other buildings ; but the materials do not exist. 
 The Dutch have shown the same indifference to the conservation of 
 their Mediaeval monuments which their forefathers exhibited in their 
 erection, and not one has been edited in modern times in such a 
 manner as to admit of being quoted. ^ The history of this variety 
 remains for the present to be written, but fortunately it is one of the 
 least important of its class. 
 
 * A large work was commenced a few 
 years ago on the church at Bois le Due ; 
 but after the first numbers it seems to 
 
 VOL. I. — 39 
 
 have been discontinued, and has not 
 been since heard of — in this country at 
 least. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.