Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/468

4 24: A R C H I T E C T U R E [POINTED- place, the building of additional stories, which would soon be imitated in other places. But in whatever man ner the improvement tcok place, the fact that it was made is certain ; and we find it applied in all the works of the European nations, both ecclesiastical and civil, from the 9th and 10th centuries downwards. The com bination of masonry and carpentry in building tended greatly to the advancement of both ; for, it being required at times to make them act independently of each other, additional science and art were necessary, as tho propor tions must be retained that were given to similar works in which they co-operated. To this is to be traced the skill displayed in the vaulted roofs and ceilings, in the towers and lofty spires, of some of our Pointed cathedrals for the one, and such splendid examples of construction as the roof of Westminster Hall for the other. On this point Sir William Chambers, who was certainly no depredator of the merits of the Romans in architecture, says: "In the constructive part of architecture the ancients do not seem to have been great proficients" (Gwilt s Chambers s Civ. Arch., p. 128) ; then having referred many of what he calls the <! deformities observable in Grecian buildings " to want of skill in con struction, he continues, " neither were the Romans much more skilful ; the precepts of Vitruvius and Pliny on that subject are imperfect, sometimes erroneous, and the strength or duration of their structures is more owing to the quantity and goodness of their materials than to any great art in putting them together. It is not, therefore, from any of the ancient works that much information can be obtained in that branch of the art. To those usually called Gothic architects we are indebted for the first considerable im provement in construction. There is a lightness in their works, an art and boldness in their execution, to which the ancients never arrived, and which the moderns compre hend and imitate with difficulty. England contains many magnificent specimens of this species of architecture, equally admirable for the art with which they are built, the taste and ingemiity with which they are composed. " To this Mr Gwilt, in his edition of Sir William s work, adds, with much truth, in a note, " There is more constructive skill shown in Salisbury, and others of our cathedrals, than in all the works of the ancients put together." Pointed architecture took root and grew with almost equal vigour, though under different conditions, in almost every part of Europe. But the honour of having developed the style to the very highest perfection must undoubtedly be adjudged to France, or rather to the small portion of the country, including Paris, which formed the old He de France. In Germany there was much less natural develop ment. For a long period after the Lombard style had been perfected on the Rhine no variation of moment was adopted, until German architects attempted at Cologne to outvie and rival the magnificence of Amiens. In Spain the architects of some of the finest buildings were French men, and the style can hardly be said to have been deve loped there at all. In England, on the contrary, though our earliest Pointed buildings were undoubtedly to a great extent French in their origin, the developments of the art were soon entirely national, and were but little modified even by the influence of the foreign religious orders, which (as at Fountains Abbey) had so much power over many of our ecclesiastical foundations. From England the style was carried by Englishmen to Scotland, a poor country, with no style of its own, and no cultivation such as is necessary to produce an order of architects, and to Ireland, where the English architects followed the footsteps of the invading armies ; and finally, if we may trust the evidence of the stones themselves, to the coast of Norway, where the cathe dral of Trondhjem is as unmistakably English in much of its btyle and detail as any English cathedral. In England the development of the style is plainly marked, and its advances are easily traceable. We find in various portions of the same edifice, according to the period of its construction, exemplifications of the style, from the ingrafting of tho simple lancet arch on the Norman piers in the time cf Henry II., to the highly enriched groinings and ramified traceries of the age of Henry VII.; but the changes are so gradual, and are so finely blended, that the one in advance appears naturally to result from that which comes before it. Although the nations of the Continent never borrowed from us, but were themselves originators, it is very clear that after the first we did not borrow ; for our structures bear the strongest possible marks of originality, as the gradual advances can be traced from one feature to another in a way which is quite peculiar to this country. This, however, will be explained more in detail further on. The Pointed Architecture of Europe generally. There are so many local and national varieties of this style that it is quite impossible to dismiss it with an account of its features in one district or country only. To do this would be to give an entirely wrong and inadequate conception of the subject. It must be treated generally under the heads of the several countries in which it has flourished most as England, France, Germany, and Spain. It must certainly not be forgotten in talking of Italy. And in most of these countries it might properly be sab- divided according to the local varieties caused either by changes in the political geography, or by physical conditions which so largely affect the details and variations of style in architecture. For the origin of all these developments of the style we must go back to Rome. It is not only that in the Roman states we see the origin of Romanesque, architecture gradually developed out of the Roman buildings. The same process was going on at the same time all over Europe wherever the Roman empire extended. We have only to look at the Roman occupation of the south of France, as evidenced by the still magnificent remains of theatres and tombs at Aries, of the amphitheatre at Nismes^ of the theatre at Orange, or the aqueduct of Pont de Gard ; or at the similar works on the coast of Spain, at Tarragona, or in its very centre at Segovia ; or at the basilica, gateway, and theatre at Treves ; or in our own country at tho remains of Roman buildings in various directions, of which Silchester is surpassed in interest by none ; we have only to look at all these in order to see that, erected as they were in countries which at the time were little better than barbarous, they must of necessity have prepared men ali over Europe for the same sort of development. The Romans had shown them the use of the arch, the column, and the vault ; the conversion to Christianity gave them a great want to satisfy ; and finally, the revulsion of feeling when the supposed mystical year of our Lord 1000, with all its apprehended accompanying dangers, had passed in safety, gave such an impetus to buildings for religious purposes as the world had never before seen. It was a time for development, therefore, and nearly everywhere the development proceeded from the same premisses. Roman art, pure and simple, was the general foundation of all Romanesque building, and it was only slightly modified in certain districts by the introduction of the Byzantine influence from Constantinople to Venice, and thence in some degree to some other cities and towns, or, as in Pisan buildings, and in those of the south of Italy ami south of Spain, by the Greek and Arab influence which was so great down to the end of the 13th century. An examination of the earliest European churches such, for instance, as San Clemente and San Lorenzo at Rome w r iil show how entirely they were constructed on Roman modei.

From them we go in Italy to Ravenna or Toscanella, to