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ARCHITECTURE
By W. R. LETHABY
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HSffi»
n n n
u u u
ARCHITECTURE
AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE HISTORY
AND THEORY OF THE
ART OF BUILDING
By W. R. LETHABY
" Man makes beauty of that which
he loves."
—
Renan.
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
£=

Richard Clay & Son3, Limited,
brunswick street, stamford street, 9.k.,
and bungay, suffolk.
THE 3
3^-07

CONTENTS
CHAP. PA OB
I ARCHAEOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND ORNA-
MENT 7
II ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE ... 18
III EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS . . . .34
IV EGYPTIAN BUILDING—METHODS AND IDEAS 53
V BABYLONIA AND CRETE—EARLY ART IN
ASIA AND EUROPE . . .07
VI BUILDING ART IN GREECE—THE EFFORT
AFTER PERFECTION .... 80
VII HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS—ENGINEER-
ING BUILDING 107
VIII EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE SCHOOLS 132
IX THE EASTERN CYCLE . . . .157
X ROMANESQUE ART—NEW BLOOD IN ARCHI-
TECTURE 169
XI SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS . .183
XII FRENCH GOTHIC—THE ARCHITECTURE OF
ENERGY , 200
XIII ENGLISH GOTHIC 211
XIV THE RENAISSANCE—ARCHITECTURE OF
RHETORIC AND ARCHITECTURE OF
FIRST PRINCIPLES .... 229
XV THE MODERN POSITION—CONCLUSION . 237
BIBLIOGRAPHY 253
INDEX 255

BYZANTINE CAPITAL
This capital is a work of the sixth century, and bears
the monogram of the Emperor Justinian on the abacus.
In the eleventh century it was brought to Venice and
re-used in the church of St. Mark.

AECHITECTUEE
CHAPTER I
ARCHAEOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND ORNAMENT
Two arts have changed the surface of the
world, Agriculture and Architecture. Perhaps
the scale of architectural activity is not
generally realized. The art of building is
concerned not only with single structures but
with cities, and hence with whole countries,
for Egypt, Greece, and Italy were groups of
cities rather than geographical spaces empty
of men and dwellings. Architecture is the
matrix of civilization. In this small volume I
wish, while outlining the larger facts of the
history of architecture, especially to bring out
its origins and to call attention to the great
contributions which from time to time have
been made to its powers by divers schools.
A history of architecture might be written
according to several schemes; it might be
a chronology and description of individual
works—a collection of biographies of build-
NA 7

8 ARCHITECTURE
ings; it might treat of the rise, fall and
interaction of different schools; or it could
trace out when and how each new thing
of value was brought into architecture, con-
sidered as a whole. In an exhaustive history
the great facts may be hidden by the detail,
so that one may not see the city for the houses.
A small book, which does not permit of dealing
with individual buildings, might better suggest
the onrush of perpetually changing art which,
while we try to grasp it, has already put on
another form. Although it may be convenient
to study the art historically, it must be remem-
bered that archaeology is not architecture, any
more than the history of painting is art;
archseology is history, architecture is the
practical art of building, not only in the past,
but now and in the future. Yet even in a
history the general scope and powers of
architecture might be suggested.
On the other hand, the wall, the pier, the
arch, the vault, are elements which should
be investigated like the lever and the screw.
Modern builders need a classification of archi-
tectural factors irrespective of time and
country, a classification by essential variation.
Some day we shall get a morphology of the
art by some architectural Linnaeus or Darwin,
who will start from the simple cell and relate
to it the most complex structures. In archi-
tecture more than anywhere we are the slaves

ARCHEOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 9
of names and categories, and so long as the
whole field of past architectural experiment
is presented to us accidentally only under
historical schedules, designing architecture is
likely to be conceived as scholarship rather
than as the adaptation of its accumulated
powers to immediate needs—the disposition
of its elements, walls, piers and arches, for
maximum efficiency relative to a given pur-
pose. The lack of such a true classification
is in part the reason why modern architects
swing from playing at Greek to playing at
Gothic, and then back again to Greek, with
pathetically ineffectual enthusiasm.
Even in an historical narrative it may be
possible to bring out principles and ideas
rather than to describe examples, and the
writer would, above all, like to suggest a
general theory of architecture as a result of
the survey of the past. To anticipate, it may
be said here that great art is not a question
of shapes and appearances which may be
copied, it is fine response to noble require-
ment; a living architecture is always being
hurled forward from change to change.
*X» 4fr %r %r %r
In the introduction to the great History of
Art in Antiquity by Perrot and Chipiez we are
told that " no satisfactory definition has ever
been given of the word architecture, and yet
when we use it every one knows what we

10 ARCHITECTURE
mean." That is rather a dangerous assump-
tion. The difficulty of defining the word
comes from the feeling that architecture is a
high and poetic word, while the mass of
building in our cities is not highly poetic.
Therefore there is a tendency to think that
architecture is only decorated or romantic
building. But what is a decorated building ?
A gin-palace at the next corner drips with
much decoration, while the pyramids had none.
What is a noble and romantic building ? Is
not an old cottage of cob and thatch, which
seems to have risen self-built out of the
ground, nobler and infinitely more touching
than the last new and expensive villa is likely
to be ? Some inquirers, not satisfied with
such a test as size and ornament—that is, of
cost—say that architecture should have an
expression over and above the mere essentials
of building. But here, again, a difficulty
arises—What is mere building ? Every build-
ing carries some sort of expression, some
essential appeal to the imagination. The
first definition of architecture which satisfied
me for a time—it was struck off in conversation
with a friend—was that architecture was
building touched with emotion. But what is
usually understood by such claims is that some
expressional content should be consciously
embodied in a building. Yet we cannot think
that old works of architecture thus had their

ARCHAEOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 11
expression given to them arbitrarily. The
cottage, the bridge, the castle,—were they
intended to look pathetic, bold, romantic,
—
or is the due expression inherent in the thing
itself, so far as it is right and true ? It would
be difficult to prove that the most superb
castle was designed to look romantic, it was
designed to be strong. The plough, the hay-
rick, the ship, are all highly poetic, but their
makers do not think of poetry. The more
real such a thing is, the closer to need and
nature, the more romantic it will be also. A
self-conscious aesthetic " appeal " is likely to
become a disease of art, the true appeal is
a fact. Barns, wagons and lighthouses do
not appeal, they are, or I should say, were,
for I saw a lighthouse some months since on
which no expense had been spared to make
it aesthetic, and it illuminated the whole
problem.
We cannot reach any satisfactory defini-
tion of architecture on the principle that
architecture is good building, and build-
ing itself is bad building—it embodies an
absurdity.
On the other side it is said, " Much building
is mean and poor, is that architecture ?
"
Not that, either. Every art must be judged
on its positive side, by its strength, not by its
weakness and defects. Yet to be real is not
all ; there is evidently a scale of realities.

12 ARCHITECTURE
All architecture is not great architecture.
The other day I passed a large group of well-
built factory chimneys—tall, daring struc-
tures that were real enough, and exemplified to
perfection the principle of balance. I should
have known them as beautiful if they had
been minarets in Persia, but here, it must be
confessed, they did not fill my mind with
unmixed joy ; the malign effect of their smoke
on the landscape was evidently a serious set-
off against their unaffected reality. The mind
unconsciously pierces far beyond mere shape
to the soul of a building.
We possess in Ruskin's Seven Lamps of
Architecture a most stimulating treatise on
modes of beauty in architecture, but with all
its power and insight it is only a fragment.
It is not concerned with building, the art of
making chambered structures, the rearing of
walls and balancing of vaults, but with the
added interests of painted and sculptured
stories. It is a treatise on the temper and
conditions from which noble architectural
ornamentation will spring. At the back of it
was an idea only clearly stated in a little note
added to a later edition of the work—" The
founding of all beautiful design on natural
form was the principle I had during the
arrangement of this volume most prominently
in mind . . . there is too much stress laid
throughout this volume on probity in pictur-

esque treatment, and not enough on probity
in material construction. " His concern being
with the decorative matter in architecture, he
identified this matter with architecture itself.
If, he says in effect, we isolate architecture
from mere building, however noble the mere
building may be, it is only sculpture with other
forms of story and decoration. This, of course,
is true, and if we are to approach architecture
as a whole it is plain it must not be so isolated
from the most of its very self.
It is impossible to differentiate architecture
from building, and probably we shall not find
any need for so doing if we realize how truly
interesting are building and buildings, and
that it is in all buildings throughout the ages,
not in a picked few, that we find the impress
of man and his aspirations. For us, in this
volume, architecture is the art of building and
of disposing buildings. Good architecture is
masterly structure with adequate workman-
ship; the highest architecture is likely to
have fit sculpture and painting integrally
bound up with it.
* * * * #
If architecture was born of need it soon
showed some magic quality, and all true
building touches depths of feeling and opens
the gates of wonder.
The men who first balanced one stone over
two others must have looked with astonish-

14 ARCHITECTURE
ment at the work of their hands, and have
worshipped the stones they had set up. Any
primitive work of man was more than his
own, it was something found out; and who
can say how much wonder at the magic
of art was associated with the " worship of
images " ? In becoming fit every work
attains some form and enshrines some mys-
tery; to the shipwright his work was a
creature. If Stonehenge is so amazing to
us, what a wonder-work must it have been to
the men of our islands who reared up the
mighty stones. This element of wonder lasted
long through the ages, and it will persist
while work is done in the old way by keeping
close to nature and necessity. But there are
some elements which seem to have disappeared
for ever ; such are : ideas of sacredness and
sacrifice, of ritual rightness, of magic sta-
bility and correspondence with the universe,
of perfection of form and proportion. Wren,
philosopher as he was, decided that man's
delight in setting up columns was acquired
through worshipping in the groves of the
forest, and modern research has come to
much the same view, for Sir Arthur Evans
shows that in the first European age columns
were gods. All over Europe the early morning
of architecture was spent in the worship of
great stones.
# # * * *

ARCHAEOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 15
No recipes can be given for producing fine
architecture. In a noble living school, size,
splendour of material, accuracy of workman-
ship are graces, but the less there is of these
in an essentially mean building the better.
When we are going in the wrong direction the
right things are on the left. It is all a question
of the quality of the effort over a long period
of time.
The powers of all architecture are limited by
the materials in general use. If it be forest
country, wood would be the chief material;
if it be rocky, stone buildings would be early
developed; if these materials are difficult to
obtain, there is yet another to fall back on
—
this is clay, the importance of which in forming
architectural elements is often overlooked,
although in the shape of burnt brick it is still
to-day our chief material. These different
forms of matter give rise to three types of
construction : wooden, by beams jointed
together into framing; stone, by blocks
assembled together, either balanced only, or
linked by cramps or by cementing ; clay, by
continuous aggregation.
Ancient bricks were not burnt, they were
dry mud and they were bedded in wet mud, so
that the whole became one mass ; in modern
brickwork the cementing should be as strong
as the brick, so that the wall becomes con-
tinuous.

16 ARCHITECTURE
Even when wrought stone has been generally
used for ceremonial architecture, wood and
clay have remained in the background
as valuable materials useful for secondary
purposes.
The decorative elements of architecture find
their origin in delight in finish, colour and
variety ; in survivals from an earlier type of
building, as wooden details copied in stone;
or they were more or less pictorial. Such
decoration itself had a utili-
tarian purpose, generally
that of carrying over the
virtues of the things imitated
to the things made. As
Capart says, the recent dis-
coveries of prehistoric art
7^7~ in Egypt " enable us to
establish the utilitarian
origin of the manifestations which we group
together under the name of aesthetic. This
utilitarian purpose is in almost every case
confused with a religious or rather with a
magical purpose."
The earliest pottery carries forward either
the forms of gourds or of baskets. Even such
a rudimentary " pattern " as the spiral seems
to have originated as an imitation on clay
pots of the shells in the handsomer hard stone
vases. Generally speaking, a " pattern
9>
is
a simplified or repeated " picture/' Fig. 1

shows the decoration on a prehistoric pot from
NTagada restored from some fragments of
mine. The ornament consists of flamingoes
between two rows of mountains. The whole
may be a shorthand picture of the Nile.
B

CHAPTER II
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE
Only by searching out origins can we
discover the initial force which carried art
forward. In the main we find two great fac-
tors, response to need—the basis in utility
—
and, secondly, a magical and mystical element.
The need, of course, may go far beyond the
provision of daily bread and shelter; the
Egyptians, for instance, wanted an indestruct-
ible resting-place, and so made the pyramids.
The magical instinct, in seeking to re-create
types and to set up sympathetic relations, led
to imitation, to ideas of proportion, and to a
search after perfection.
The first great need of all architecture is
need itself, honest response to high necessity.
Taste, caprice, pomposity and make-believe
are no true art-masters. All formulas, codes
and grammars are diseases which only show
themselves in a time of impaired vitality.
Before the historical period made known to
us by chronicles and inscriptions long ages
shade off into the gulf of time ; ages which in
some degree may be reconstructed from the
18

ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 19
remnants of man's art. For Europe the
opening of the historical period may be put
at about 1000 B.C. The earliest examples of
prehistoric art known in Europe are the
drawings of animals made by the cave-men
at a time that must so long have preceded
writing that we must look on drawing as an
outcome of a desire to imitate and a natural
aptitude. Drawing, indeed, was the parent
of writing.
In the year 1832 the Danish scholar
Thomsen made a great generalization as to
the early history of the arts in determining
three periods which followed one another:
the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron
age. Iron only came into general use at a
time about coincident with the beginnings
of European history. Before this there was
a long period when tools and weapons were
made of bronze, and still earlier they were of
flints and stones. The farther we go back in
time the greater, we may assume, was the
relative importance of the arts. Here, as else-
where, there is a law of diminishing returns.
Early inventions must have seemed like revela-
tions, and skilled craftsmen were looked upon
as magicians. The art of building seems first
to have gathered power and to have arrived
at what we may call self-consciousness in the
valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris. The
relations between the arts of these great

20 ARCHITECTURE
river valleys has not yet been fully worked
out. It is certain that they resemble one
another closely in many respects; possibly
the art of Mesopotamia preceded that of
Egypt; but by the Nile a large class of pre-
historic works has been discovered which has
as yet no parallel in western Asia. Perhaps
the mud of the great rivers has been the most
precious of Nature's gifts to man. By the
Nile, as a result of its miraculous fertility, he
may first have learned agriculture and the
art of casting his bread upon the waters.
Herodotus says of the Egyptians, " They
gather the fruits of the earth with less labour
than any other people." With agriculture
and settled life came trade and the stored-up
energy which might essay by erections on the
face of the earth to improve on caves and pits
and other primitive dwellings. By the Nile,
perhaps, the people first aimed to overpass
the routine satisfaction of the barest need.
Long before dynastic Egypt was in being
a strong people inhabited the land who
developed many arts which they handed on
to the pyramid-builders. They formed a
wonderfully artistic stock, although they were
only semi-naked " savages,
55
using flint instru-
ments and painting their pottery and build-
ings in a style a good deal like bushman art.
They wrought most beautiful vases of fine
marbles " quite modern 55
in form; and they

appear to have invented square building. At
the British Museum and the Ashmolean are
excellent collections of this pre-dynastic art.
It will be necessary to give a disproportion-
ate space in this little book to early days in
Egypt, for here we shall best find the origins
of architecture as a whole, and origins are of
great importance for framing a theory of art.
As Prof. Petrie says, " We know more details
of the origins of the arts in Egypt than in
any other land. To-day we can show how every
feature arose, and we can date, to a single
generation, the adoption of stone for building."
A few years ago it was thought that nothing
Egyptian existed earlier than the Great
Pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty ; now many
works of art of the first three dynasties have
been identified, as well as large classes of
pre-dynastic and primitive art. The question
of Egyptian chronology is as yet troubled by
controversy. It is founded on ancient lists
of the kings with the terms of their reigns.
The sequence of the names is becoming sure,
but the length of the reigns is very uncertain.
Estimates vary from about 8000 to 5500 B.C.
for the beginning of the First Dynasty. The
system of Brugsch, adopted with modifica-
tions at the British Museum, opens the First
Dynasty at 4400. It has been found possible
to check the dates as far back as the beginning
of the Eighteenth Dynasty, with the result

22 ARCHITECTURE
that this has been reduced from about 1700
B.C. to about 1580 B.C. Again, German
scholars have brought to bear some astro-
nomical facts, and as a result they place the
beginning of the dynasties at 3315. This
estimate is known as the Berlin system. I
am incompetent to appreciate many of the
highly technical arguments involved, but
such rough tests as I have been able to apply
incline me to the view that the Berlin system
is likely to be right. Thus, taking the kings
as given by Dr. Budge in the official publica-
tion of the British Museum, we have eighty-
three kings in the 1260 years from 1600 (or
1580) to 340 B.C., giving an average of a little
over fifteen years. Now, the reigns given
for the early dynasties average much longer.
Prof. Petrie names twenty-seven kings as hav-
ing reigned during a period of 779 years—that
is, for the first three dynasties. This results in
an average of about thirty-three years, and it
looks as if the estimate had been framed on the
supposition that three kings filled a century,
the ordinary rough rule of the succession of
generations ; whereas, for the better-known
period they average less than half this.
American scholars adopt the German sys-
tem without question, and there are signs that
this chronology is being accepted by English
writers. In a volume published about four
years ago by Mr. King, of the British Museum,

although he avoids any set discussion of the
question, he incidentally dates works of the
early dynastic period as " about 4000," while
Mr. Griffiths, in the new Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica, approves with some small reservations
the shortened scheme. Prof. Petrie, on the
other hand, still adheres to the longer chron-
ology, but, with this great exception, we
may say the general view at the present time
is that the first dynasties fell in the period
4000-3000 B.C.
For Egyptian art, therefore, it will be neces-
sary to speak of dynasties, not of years. In
general terms it is usual to call the first three
dynasties the Archaic Period, dynasties four
to six the Old Kingdom, dynasties eleven and
twelve the Middle Kingdom, and the dynasties
later than the eighteenth the New Kingdom.
The history of the two intervals is extremely
uncertain.
The great era in Egyptian art, the time
when it was in its first maturity but still
eager and experimenting, covered the last
years of the pre-dynastic period and the first
four or five dynasties. All that is fresh and
vital was discovered before the Old Kingdom
came to an end. This was a time of passionate
activity, a period of unparalleled significance
in the development of culture. Writing was
introduced, the state was consolidated, the
arts flourished.

24 ARCHITECTURE
The most primitive works of man found
in Egypt are flint weapons, rude pottery,
and some graves. The first dwellings v/ere
probably round huts covered by a cone of
reeds. Although the circular form passed
out of use in more formal works, it always
remained in the background for granaries.
Pottery was made round long before it was
thrown on the wheel, and it is as natural that
the hut for holding people should be
round as it is for pots, baskets, and
nests.
The materials most ready to hand
for the construction of primitive
dwellings were reeds, river-mud, and
Fig. 2. palm-branches. Huts built of reeds
seem to be represented on some early
relief carvings, as, for instance, on a slate
palette in the British Museum (fig. 2). The
earliest structure actually discovered, a pre-
dynastic tomb found in the sands at Hiera-
conpolis, is already right-angled. Modern
people take squareness very much for granted
as being a self-evident form, but the discovery
of the square was a very great step in geometry.
The square hieroglyph of a later time repre-
sents a mat, or other woven thing, and doubt-
less the square arose in weaving. May we not
suggest that at first square rooms were built
for mats ?
The tomb at Hieraconpolis is sunk in a pit,

and the walls lean outwards against the sand.
Many early tombs of about the First Dynasty
have been explored at Abydos, and the
earliest of these were of much the same form as
the tomb at Hieraeonpolis. From the First
Dynasty onwards it became more customary
for the tombs to be built above the ground as
almost solid masses of crude brick. These
bricks were only dried in the sun, their use was
a developed form of mud building. In these
"mastabas," as such tombs are called, the
walls also lean against the mass of material,
which in this case, of course, is within
—
and very reasonably—for they are practically
"retaining walls." This battered wall later
passed into stone structures and became
typical in Egyptian architecture. Some im-
mediately pre-dynastic tombs had their
chambers neatly lined with wooden planks,
or, rather, a chamber of wood was first built,
and it was then enclosed with brickwork;
these crude brick walls around the pit " were
only a protective shell around the wooden
chamber which contained the body." Doubt-
less houses for the living as well as those for
the dead were at this time constructed of
wrought timber. Some representations of
shrines and buildings on early objects appear
to show wooden structures, and it seems in
the nature of things that woodwork would be
accurately wrought long before any buildings

26 ARCHITECTURE
were made of cut stone. In these representa-
tions we already find posts which are the
prototypes of later stone columns, having
swelling projections at the top like capitals.
On inscriptions from
the First Dynasty we
often find a sign (read
"tent") like m except
that the horizontal
bar is curved. The
same symbol on many
monuments of the
Fourth Dynasty shows
that the central up-
right was a slender
pillar and that the
side walls and curved roof were made of bundles
of reeds bound together in rolls, and such a
construction would well explain the curved
roofs (fig. 3). Compare a shrine on the late
papyrus of Ani at the British
Museum. The walls and roof
would have been embedded in
a daubing of clay. In any
case, the central upright was a wooden post,
and in some carefully executed hieroglyphs
it is shown with the shaft shaped into a
baluster form and having a slightly projecting
capital. Such a wooden tent pole was the first
column; except, of course, the mere rough
post (fig. 3). They were circular, and the
Fig. 4.

" capital " was not a separate member but
only a projection on the post, probably to
prevent the horizontal reed bundles from
slipping. These early indications of the
forms of the first Egyptian pillars have been
very fully studied by Foucart, who shows that
the later stone columns derive from such
wooden originals.
Decoration, as we have seen, is frequently a
survival of what had a function which has
been forgotten. The beautiful
archaic carved mace-head in the
British Museum (fig. 5) obvi-
ously imitates the way in which
earlier clubs were made. The
pattern carved upon it later
became well known as the guil-
loche. Even before the dynasties
f .
•
. • i
Fig. 5.
it was usual to construct rich
furniture with legs like those of bulls, of
carved ivory, a fashion which has persisted
ever since. A class of archaic rock-hewn
tombs at Gizeh and Sakkara had their ceilings
cut " to resemble small palm trunks," that
is, I suppose, into a series of half-rounds
like a fragment in the British Museum. This
fragment seems to be a projecting eaves, or
cornice ; if so, it is the prototype of all dentilled
cornices.
A very curious type of wall ornamentation
characterized the first architectural style.

28 ARCHITECTURE
This is the recessing of the wall-surfaces in a
succession of vertical channels. This tradi-
tion was constant during the first five or six
dynasties, and left its mark in long subsequent
time. It was elaborated and fixed in struc-
tures built of crude brick, but the idea of
vertical division may have been taken over
from reeds or timber ; in any case this method
of building is likely to be used in dealing with
fixed units of material such as brick, as, for
instance, old English chimneys. Fig. 6
gives the plan of the exterior of a fine first-
dynasty mastaba at Gizeh. Later, in the
Fourth Dynasty, these
walls got copied into
stone on the exterior of
other mastabas, also on
the walls of the chamber in the Third Pyramid,
and even to miniature scale on sarcophagi.
One reason for the popularity of the treat-
ment may have been that each recess became
a " false door," and false doors seem to have
had an important significance in tombs. Each
recess of this kind in the Third Pyramid is
crossed by a roller-like member near the top,
which appears to represent a pole to which
a curtain would be attached in a real doorway.
The series of recessed fasciae of the classical
door-jamb possibly derives from the Egyptian
" false doors."
The earliest-known moulding is a " roll
"

used horizontally, or up the angles of struc-
tures. It is usually crossed by lines like
binding-cords, and it must derive from the
stiffening rails and angle pieces to which reeds
were bound. This original source seems to be
represented on the small relief of a hut on
the slate palette in the British Museum (fig. 2).
In the Fourth Dynasty the typical Egyptian
" gorge " cornice appears, which is the oldest
of all moulded cornices. The lid of the
sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid
was of this form (fig. 7). Accord-
ing to Prof. Petrie, this gorge
derives from the nodding crest of
a palm-branch hedge, but this
explanation hardly seems to ac-
count for the fact that works of
the Fourth Dynasty are usually
finished along the top by a band
of vertical " reeding " with an
XXX pattern beneath it. This may be traced
back on the representation of buildings on
objects of the first dynasties, and when we
find on the earliest example known of the
gorge that the vertical divisions do not suggest
leaves, but are rounded like the " reeding," it
seems that the only new feature is the pro-
jecting curve in place of the vertical band.
Perhaps the vertical strip of " reeding " was
a perspective representation of an eaves of
pole-ends, and that the gorge is a com-
Fig. 7,

30 ARCHITECTURE
promise between the horizontal and the
vertical.
In the pre-dynastic age hard stone had been
cut with wonderful precision into vases of
various forms. In building wrought stone
seems to have been first used during the First
Dynasty ; a pavement of fair stone slabs has
been found of this age. During the Second
Dynasty the erection of buildings throughout
of hewn stone began. This was a
remarkable innovation.
Representations of columns have
been found on objects which date
from the first dynasties. In the early
tombs of Abydos models of fluted and
reeded circular pillars were found, and
the hieroglyphs of the third and fourth
dynasties show fluted posts and other
columns of a tent-pole type having
Fick8. a swelling profile something like a
baluster (fig. 3). Amongst the hiero-
glyphs at Meydum—third or fourth dynasties
—is one of a column-like object having the
baluster form, a spreading capital, and the
lower part of the shaft wrapped with triangular
leaves. It is the "papyrus sceptre," and it is
so exactly like later columns, and so fit to be
adopted as a column, that we may hardly
doubt that even at this early time the tent-
pole columns were completed by painting in a
similar way (fig. 8). Indeed, is it not probable

that the papyrus sceptre is a model of a tent-
pole column ? The German excavations at
Abousir have recently brought to light several
stone columns of the Fifth Dynasty which
have swelling profiles, their lower ends
wrapped with leaves, and papyrus-
blossom capitals which are stone
renderings of the same type. Many
fifth-dynasty capitals, somewhat similar
to these last, but formed of groups of
lotus-buds, have recently been dis-
covered. Prof. Petrie brought one back fI(
T q#
two years ago which is now at Man-
chester (fig. 10). A very simple capital of
this type now at Dresden is shown in fig. 9.
Another form of stone column, also of the
Fifth Dynasty, was in general use. The cir-
cular shaft of this diminished up-
wards to the upper quarter, which
spread again in a graceful curve
which was carved into palm leaves.
Several capitals of this kind have
been found at Abousir, and there is
an example of this type of column
from the pyramid of Unas in the
British Museum (fig. 1 1 ) . The whole
is a monolith, the capital not being yet divided
from the shaft except by a carved band repre-
senting a binding of rope, the prototype of the
necking moulding under later capitals. This
binding-cord suggests an ultimate source for
Fig. 10.

82 ARCHITECTURE
such capitals in a fashion of tying flowers to
the posts of huts and shrines, or at least
of painting flowers and bindings on the
"capitals" of the wooden columns. Stone
columns required no bases, but wooden posts
rested on low, round, stone blocks, and these
were later brought into stone-building.
In the Fourth Dynasty the Egyptian archi-
tectural style was fully formed. Works of
this time are more intelligible
and more universal than later
ones, in which the hieratic
quality—the especial Egyptian
flavour—is more in evidence.
Sculpture was an advanced art
in the first dynasties. At the
British Museum is a fine ivory
of a first-dynasty king. As
Prof. Petrie says, " the civiliza-
tion that we find before us
in the earliest-known history
appears elaborate and perfect. • . . Few
discoveries of importance were made during
thousands of years which ensued." The
hieroglyphs at Meydum showed that at the
beginning of the Fourth Dynasty " nearly
all the conventions were already perfected."
Representations of the Uraeus and the Winged
Disc, which became so characteristic in later
days, are found on works of the early dynas-
ties. From prehistoric days buildings were
Fig. 11.

whitened and painted. The interior of the
tomb at Hieraconpolis had its walls painted
with ships on the river, and with hunting
scenes on its banks. The exteriors of crude
brick buildings were plastered and coloured
in bands. Such colouring appears on a
fourth-dynasty " false door " in the British
Museum.

CHAPTER III
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS—TOMBS, PYRAMIDS,
OBELISKS, TEMPLES, HOUSES, TOWNS
As Egyptian architecture matured, the
people, or rather their rulers, more and more
magnified the tombs where they were to lie
and to be worshipped after their death. The
art which had been developed joyously
was too soon imprisoned by ritual rigidity
and frozen by a dead hand. I remember
a drawing of an archaeologist turning away
from the Great Pyramid with the remark,
" It's too late," and, indeed, these colossal
works seem to have crushed the fresh life
out of the people. Before the pyramids were
built the tombs had become large and
splendid. Each contained a strongly con-
structed tomb-chamber, hidden in the midst
of a great mass of brickwork, often upwards
of 200 feet long, sometimes 300 feet long and
150 feet wide.
The finest tombs of this—the mastaba—type
were explored at Meydum, first by Mariette,
and then, more carefully, by Prof. Petrie.
The tomb of Nefermatt had its walls covered
34

EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 85
with scenes and hieroglyphics, which were
carved into the stones and then filled level
with coloured mastics, so that all the detail
appears as in a painting. One of the stones,
on which a flying duck is wonderfully ren-
dered, is in the British Museum, and at
South Kensington are fragments of paintings,
also a full-sized copy of six geese, which are
strangely like a fine Japanese drawing. (See
the woodcut in Lottie's A Ride in Egypt.)
Near by, in another mastaba of the same age,
the end of the Third or early years of the
Fourth Dynasty, wr
ere found the two marvel-
lously life-like statues of Ra-Hotep and his
wife Nefert, works wonderfully bright and
sweet which retain the dew of art's morning.
It had been the custom to enlarge these
mastabas by successive thick coatings of
brickwork, each sloping at a steep angle,
usually of 4 to 1. It is now well understood
that the pyramids are practically great
mastabas, and it is held that the actual stages
of transformation are left for our instruction
in the " Stepped Pyramid " at Sakkara, and
the curiously built pyramid at Meydum.
Although a whole library of books on the
Great Pyramid exists there is no good com-
plete study of the entire subject, and as these
are the earliest great architectural monuments
it will be well to discuss them at some length.
In the Third Dynasty two or more neighbour-

3G ARCHITECTURE
ing mastabas at Sakkara had been buried
in a great mass which not only enclosed but
surmounted them, falling back by degrees in
a series of terraces. This is known as the
Stepped Pyramid. It is not even square on
plan, being upwards of forty feet longer in
one direction than the other. It is a colossal
mastaba rather than u pyramid, although
obviously it wr
as the parent of pyramids.
There is no doubt that it is of earlier date
than the other pyramids. It is the only one
which does not face the cardinal points accu-
rately, being about four and a half degrees out
in its lines. It was built by a king of the
Third Dynasty, whose name was many times
repeated on the jamb and lintel of a doorway
in the inner chamber. The walls of this
chamber were covered by small green glazed
tiles about 2x3 inches slightly convex on the
face. A few of these tiles are in the British
Museum, and many others, with the stonework
of the doorway, are in the Berlin Museum.
The soffit of the doorway is carved into a
representation of stars; and other fragments
found suggested that the ceiling of the chamber
had had similar decoration. This scheme of
making the ceiling a sky has persisted ever
since. Similar green tiles have been found
at early sites, and it is not now doubted that
this remarkably beautiful chamber really
belongs to the Third Dynasty. Of similar

tiles found at Hieraconpolis, Mr. Quibell
remarks that
%c
their position showed beyond
doubt that they were not later than the Old
Kingdom. 55
The exterior of this pyramid is built of
roughly squared stones " set to the angle of
the face," that is, declining inwards. The
mass is of rubble masonry in a series of coat-
ings contained by walls nine feet thick of
the better masonry, which lean inwards at the
mastaba angle (here 73° 30'). These walls rise
from the foundation, but each one decreases
in height the farther it is from the central
core, so that the several terraces are succes-
sively about thirty-four feet lower each than
the other. It is 351*2 feet from east to west,
and 398-9 from north to south. Perring says,
" the breadth from north to south has appar-
ently been increased by an additional wall
on those sides," but no evidence for this
appears. It is now generally agreed that it
was not designed as a true pyramid.
A ruined structure at Meydum seems to
have been the first pyramid proper; it was
built at the end of the Third Dynasty or by
the first king of the Fourth. It also was
built in inclined layers, but it was square and
was completed by a continuous casing sloping
from the base to a point. Prof. Petrie in
his latest study of the subject considers that
he has found sufficient evidence to show that

33 ARCHITECTURE
it was only after several coatings had been
completed in preparation for finishing it as
a stepped structure that a change of scheme
was made with a view of completing it as a
pointed pyramid. Thus the faces of the several
terrace walls are finely dressed masonry.
Prof. Petrie discovered the external sloping
casing of fine masonry several years ago. In
his recent re-examination of the base of this
pyramid he found several of these stones
marked with a rough sketch of a stepped
pyramid. This suggests that even when
these stones for the casing of a true pyramid
were prepared, the monument where they
were to be used was known by an ideogram
representing a " stepped pyramid."
The method followed at Sakkara and
Meydum of building in inclined coatings
seems to be a reasonable one for the erection
of pyramids proper, for it was followed at
Abousir and Lisht. The angle made by the
casing of the completed pyramid of Meydum
resulted in giving a ratio, between the sum of
the four sides and the height, of 44 to 7—that
is, the ratio between the radius and the
circumference of a circle. The Great Pyramid
of Gizeh, which followed that of Meydum,
has exactly the same angle, and Prof. Petrie
considers that the coincidence with the ratio
of the radius to the circumference of a circle
is intentional. That the Great Pyramid has

exactly the same angle shows that it was
copied from the finished work at Meydum,
but it does not show that there was any
meaning attached to the ratio of height to
base.
The simplest supposition would be that
the angle was given by considering the
general slope which would include the several
terraces with just a little adjustment to allow
of the use of whole numbers, as seven of height
to eleven of base. The tendency of pyramid
design seems to have been to attain height, to
build a structure that should reach to heaven,
At Sakkara terrace was piled on terrace, at
Meydum and the Great Pyramid the finished
angle was nearly 52°. The ideal pyramid,
as depicted in the hieroglyphs, was very
acute from the earliest time. OVviously, in
a progression from the pyramid of Sakkara
to the Second Pyramid at Gizeh, which rises
at an angle of over 53°, the angle giving
the ratio of the radius to the circumference
of a circle was reached accidentally. The
general angle of the Sakkara pyramid, which
would include the terraces, is about 49°;
Meydum and the Great Pyramid, 51° 52';
the Second Pyramid, 53° 10'; Dahsur, steep
part at bottom, 55°, flatter part at top, 45°.
Again, it would have been curious to make
this particular ratio subsist between the
height and the square measure round about

40 ARCHITECTURE
the base ; it would have been a more striking
coincidence if the correspondence had been
with the inscribed or circumscribed circles of
the base—that is, there are three chances for
those who would find just this ratio in the
pyramid. If we consider all the chances of
relation between the half base, the base, the
diagonal base, the vertical height, the slope
height, the diagonal height, we should prob-
ably be justified in assuming that this
particular ratio is fortuitous.
Given the twr
o conditions of desire for great
size and for the utmost durability, the pyra-
mid form was the most perfect solution
possible.
The Great Pyramid at Gizeh, named " the
glory of Khufu," " the greatest and most
accurate structure ever built," is about 480 feet
high and seems more like a hill of stone, rising
as it does from a base of over thirteen acres,
than like an architectural work. When it
was new and sharp it must have gleamed
cold and white like the peak of an alp rising
above the burning golden sand. Some casing
stones were found around the base by Howard
Vyse. They were large blocks, the one of
which he gives the dimensions being 4 feet
11 inches high, 8 feet 3 inches on the bed,
and 4 feet 3 inches on the top from back to
front, showing 6 feet 3 inches on the slanting
face. Of these stones there are some fragments

at the British Museum. The pyramids stood
within large square paved courts, surrounded
by walls, and each one had a temple attached
to it on the east side, where offerings were
made to the dead Pharaoh.
The effort required for the erection of such
works seems incredible. According to Hero-
dotus an inscription on the Great Pyramid
told that 16,000 talents had been spent on the
radishes, onions and garlic eaten by the work-
men. This must be an example of the
myth of cost, and is, indeed, explained by his
own comment, " If this be so, how much
besides," etc. A similar story is told of Rome:
Heliogabalus, it is said, gathered and weighed
all the cobwebs in the city, so that its size
might thus be inferred.
Another myth concerning construction is
accepted by many writers, including Perrot
and Maspero. The sloping casing, they say,
was begun by setting the apex stone and con-
tinuing thence downwards. It surely would
be a useless miracle to handle such big stones
in such a way. Choisy minimizes the story
to mean that the casing was fixed as square
blocks, and dressed to the slope afterwards,
but Howard Vyse long ago pointed out that
the casing was fixed " roughly cut to the
proper angle," and that the fine dressing only
was executed in place, as cleaning-off ; and
this view has been confirmed by Prof, Petrie.

42 ARCHITECTURE
It would have served just as well for con-
venience to leave the casing blocks square
on one side only, or, indeed, to have left such
a step-way, say twenty feet wide, up one side.
We may suppose, then, that one or two per
cent, of the casing was left up in steps
temporarily on the side facing the road by
which the casing-stones arrived.
The final dressing to a fair plane surface
seems to have been done with the assistance
of some scaffolding. Perring says that at
Dahsur there were " puttock holes " in the
casing-stones for supports used when the
dressing- off was done, and the holes had been
very neatly filled up with inserted blocks.
Many of the lower stones in this pyramid
were, he found, joined together by stone
dovetails. The analysis of pyramid con-
struction as given by Choisy is most suggestive.
Although it is only a sketch, it indicates how
these man-made hills had to be built.
At the north pyramid at Dahsur Perring
found the apex stone (the slope was 45°). It
was of one block 4 feet 9 inches high. The
course beneath was of four stones of the same
height, the other courses were less.
A pyramid was not a solitary monument
—
it was supported, like a cathedral, by many
subsidiary buildings and rose within a paved
enclosure; round about was a whole necro-
polis of mastabas A college of priests was

attached to its service, supported by an endow-
ment of lands. The Great Pyramid and its
two companions at Gizeh were built within
a century and probably by one family
—
a father, son, and the latter's grandson.
According to Maspero, the lower rock-hewn
chamber below the Great Pyramid belongs
to an earlier tomb which is embedded in the
superstructure. It has been much discussed
whether this pyramid was built according to
a first design or whether it was enlarged by
successive works. Dr. Borchardt, the archi-
tect to the German mission, gives evidence
to show that it was altered and enlarged.
A recent campaign of excavation by Ger-
mans, Americans and Italians at the pyramid
area has resulted in showing that besides the
temples directly to the east of the several
pyramids there were others in the valley near
the causeways leading up to the pyramids.
The granite temple close to the Sphinx
belonged to the pyramid of Chephren. Prof.
Petrie long ago showed that it was built in
connection with the causeway, and was the
work of Chephren. The interior was lined
with red granite. The exterior was a square
mass, the walls channelled into " false doors
"
and with a paved terrace roof. The Third
Pyramid had a similar second temple, which
had never been completed. In its ruins were
found magnificent statues of Mycerinus. It

44 ARCHITECTURE
is most probable that the Great Sphinx, which
is close to the lower temple of the Second
Pyramid, at the side of the causeway leading
to it, was sculptured out of the rock as the
guardian of the sacred precinct. It is a lion
with the head of King Chephren. The road-
way has paving which is cut into the rock;
it doubtless continued to a water-gate on the
bank of the Nile.
At Abousir a German expedition has
recently carefully explored a group of fifth-
dynasty pyramids. They are of great im-
portance, for the temples and subsidiary
buildings were well preserved, together with
long covered passages which led up from
water-gates. In the Berlin Museum there is
an admirable restored model of these. The
water-gates were noble works with columnar
fronts like Greek propylaea.
A long series of discoveries has demon-
strated how the primitive grave developed
into the mastaba, how the mastaba grew
very large and became transformed into a
step-pyramid, and how that passed almost
accidentally yet inevitably into the true
pyramid, a perfect final form. Such acciden-
tal development leading to such an ordered
end has ever been the law of architectural
growth ; nothing of true worth has ever been
invented of malice prepense. Evolution was
along the line of increasing bulk and the

effort after durability ; these produced the
pyramid.
Within these enormous masses were only
one or two small chambers, one of which con-
tained the sarcophagus. They were reached
by passages planned in a strange way and
defended, so that the sepulchral chamber
should be inaccessible. The pyramid of
Meydum was penetrated by a passage sloping
down from the north side ; beneath the centre
of the work it reached the bottom of a vertical
shaft, which thence ascended to the floor of
the tomb. The external opening in the side
of the pyramid was probably closed by wedged
stones.
At the Great Pyramid the entrance was in
the eighteenth course on the north side. From
it a passage descended into a chamber cut
in the rock. That seemed to be all, except
that about sixty feet from the entrance there
was a great block of granite showing in the
ceiling of the passage. It was too hard to be
cut through, but the old pyramid-breakers
mined a way by the side of it into an ascending
passage. At the upper end other obstructions
barred the way, for the tomb-chamber was
cut off from the passage by four heavy blocks
which had been suspended in suitable cavities.
When the original wr
orkmen withdrew they
removed the props and the blocks fell like
portcullises. Choisy suggests that in so

46 ARCHITECTURE
dealing with great stones the craftmasters
used sandbags, which, slowly giving out their
contents, allowed the stones to fall into their
place gently. In the pyramid of Dahsur the
cavity for the portcullis rose obliquely at the
side, so that the massive sealing stone slid
down the incline and closed the passage, as
was clearly explained by Perring in the
standard English work on the pyramids.
Here the outer end of the passage was closed
by a block adjusted on pivots. The entrance
was so well concealed on the exterior " as to
have escaped the closest examination."
One of the mysteries of these buildings
is why there was all this complexity of con-
trivance, why the passages were not merely
regarded as temporary ways to be built up
solid. Prof. Petrie has suggested that the
passages remained accessible to the priests,
but if so, why was the fine ascending passage
of the Great Pyramid cut off ? Is it not
probable that the endeavour was to confuse
evil spirits ? In any case the problem is
one which is inherently fascinating, especially
to young minds—the mystery of the secret
chamber. Such preoccupations probably
gave birth to the idea of the labyrinth, which
as a device appears on Egyptian scarabs.
Prof. Petrie has lately published a small
ivory tablet of the Twelfth Dynasty on which
a labyrinth is rudely incised.

The twelfth-dynasty pyramid of Illahun
had its entrance in a well forty feet deep, from
which a passage hewn in the rock led to a
chamber from which access was gained to
another chamber of red granite, from the
north wall of which " a strange passage is
cut in the rock, first northward, then west,
then south, then east, and lastly northwards
again, opening into the limestone chamber."
It passed right round the granite chamber
and looked as if it were intended to prove that
there was no other passage.
The interior of the pyramid of Hawara
(Twelfth Dynasty) is described as elaborately
arranged so as to deceive and weary the
spoiler. The mouth was on the ground level
on the south side, a quarter of the length from
the south-west corner. " The original ex-
plorers descended a passage with steps to a
chamber from which apparently th>*e was no
exit. The way consisted of a sliding trap-door,
however, and breaking through this, another
chamber was reached at a higher level. Then
a passage opened to the east closed only with
a wooden door, and leading to another chamber
with a trap-door roof. But in front of the
explorers was a passage carefully plugged up
solid with stone; this they thought would
lead to the prize, and so all the stones were
mined through, only to lead to nothing.
From the second trap-door chamber a passage

48 ARCHITECTURE
led northward to yet a third such chamber.
From that a passage led west to a chamber
with two wells, which seemed as though they
led to the tomb, but both were false. This
chamber also was almost filled with masonry,
which all concealed nothing, but had given
plenty of occupation to the spoilers who
removed it in vain. A filled-up trench in the
floor really led to the sepulchre ; but arriving
there no door was to be found, as the entrance
had been by the roof, an enormous block of
which had been let dowr
n into place to close
the chamber. So at last the way had been
forced by breaking away a hole in the edge
of the glass-hard sandstone roofing-block
and thus reaching the chamber and its
sarcophagi." Prof. Petrie exhibited this year
(1911) a model of a tomb with such small
winding passages, and traps, that he had
indicated the true way by a thread, taking
a hint from the story of Ariadne.
Obelisks are almost as mysterious as
pyramids. The early shrines shown on objects
of the first dynasties often have pairs of masts
or posts standing before their fronts, and the
proper function of obelisks is to stand in
pairs before the great eastern gates of the
temples. Small obelisks have been found in
tombs of the Old Kingdom, but the earliest
of the existing great obelisks belongs to the
Twelfth Dynasty. In the design of the typical

obelisk there has evidently been some borrow-
ing from the pyramid; it is an immensely
tall, double-angled pyramid of one stone.
In the obelisk is embodied another structural
ideal, the delight in balance. The noble
materials which the Egyptian architects con-
trolled made it possible to set up obelisks
over 100 feet high. Their apices were fre-
quently covered with gilt copper, or they were
entirely gilt so as to flash in the sun. They
may have been boundary stones in origin,
but they came to have some symbolic relation
with the sun. They are perfected monoliths,
in part the outcome of an ineradicable
tendency to worship big stones which has
always been one of the forces at work in
Architecture.
In Egypt from the earliest time it had been
customary to bury gifts with the dead and
to make offerings at their tombs. In the
pyramid age the service of the royal tombs
was regularly endowed and each pyramid had
a temple attached to it. The gods had
shrines from the first dynasties or even earlier.
In the British Museum is the inscribed part
of the fourth-dynasty tomb of a priest of the
gods Seker and Tet and overseer of the works
in the palaces and temples. Foundations of
a temple of the first dynasties have been
discovered at Abydos.
The remains recently explored at Hiera-
D

50 ARCHITECTURE
conpolis of a temple built over an earlier
stone-faced mound suggests that the primitive
holy places were shrines set on platforms
in enclosures. The fifth-dynasty temple of
the sun at Abousir had a huge stunted obelisk
set on the top of an almost cubical platform,
the whole enclosed in a court. The fifth-
dynasty pyramid temples at Abousir are
highly developed with courts and colonnades.
A column from the fifth-dynasty temple of
Unas is in the British Museum (fig. 11).
Considerable remains of the temple built by
Pepi in the Sixth Dynasty show that it was
about 50 X 40 feet, with colonnades and stone
gateways. Thus the temple proper had been
developed under the Old Kingdom.
Temples of the Eleventh Dynasty have
lately been explored at Thebes and Deir-el-
Bahri.
The better-known temples belong to the
Eighteenth Dynasty; they were usually of
great size and complexity, and consisted of a
far withdrawn holy place, small and obscure,
approached through a succession of large
courts and columned halls, some open and
others covered by platform ceilings of stone
slabs, all arranged on a central axis which
pointed to the sunrise. Before the outer gates
were obelisks and avenues of statues.
Within all the wall-surfaces were covered
by relief sculptures and paintings, which

followed a traditional arrangement suggesting
a correspondence between the local habitation
of the deity and the universe of which it was
in some way the image.
The temple, says Maspero (1907), "was
built in the image of the earth such as the
Egyptians had imagined. The earth was for
them a sort of flat slab more long than wide,
the sky was a ceiling or vault supported by
four great pillars. The pavement of the
temples represented the earth, the four
angles stood for the pillars, the ceiling,
vaulted at Abydos, or more often flat, corre-
sponded to the sky."
Each point received an appropriate decora-
tion; from the pavement grew vegetation,
and water plants emerged from wr
ater.
Thothmes III had carved the herbs and beasts
of the foreign lands which he had conquered.
The ceiling, painted in dark blue, was strewn
with stars of five points. Sometimes, the sun
and moon were seen floating on the heavenly
ocean escorted by the constellations, and the
months and days. " The ornamentation was
restricted to a small number of subjects,
always the same."
The palaces were much lighter structures
than the temples, and for the most part were
built of brick and wood. With their courts,
gardens, ponds, and dependent buildings they
were enclosed within strong walls. The

52 ARCHITECTURE
ceilings, walls, and plastered floors were gaily
painted with patterns or scenes. The houses
had frequently two or three stories of rooms
having windows of quite modern form. See
a model of a house in the British Museum
with a window divided by a little column,
and another with two-light windows divided
by transoms.
From pre-dynastic time Egyptian towns
were built within strong walls, forming a
square or parallelogram with defensive walk
and battlements above. At Illahun, Prof.
Petrie excavated " an unaltered town of the
Twelfth Dynasty." It was square and walled
and with regular streets. The larger houses
had a court surrounded by columns with a
water-tank in the middle.

CHAPTER IV
EGYPTIAN BUILDING—METHODS AND IDEAS
Besides the better-known pyramids and
temples built of large blocks of stone, the
larger number of common buildings in Egypt
were constructed of mud brick and some
poor and scarce timber. Vaults and arches
are found in Egypt dating from the beginnings
of dynastic rule, and rudimentary domes are
probably as old. They are both primitive.
The arch, as described in books, is an assem-
blage of large stone wedges put together
without cement, remaining stable by the
balance of parts. The arch was not so intro-
duced into architecture. At the simplest, an
arch is the upper part of a horizontal excava-
tion in a mass of clay or gravel—a swift's hole
in a sand bank, for instance. If the opening
be gradually diminished upwards by slanting
or rounding, and if the material is fairly com-
pact, quite a big hole may be made without
the mass falling in. In the simplest building,
a vault is a convex shell of dried clay span-
ning an open space, by gradually bringing
together a rounded continuation of the walls.
53

54 ARCHITECTURE
In building by an aggregation of material like
mud, it seems to be quite natural to bring the
side-walls together into the form of vaults.
Such an " arch " has the properties of a bent
beam—it is strong until it breaks up into
sections ; and every modern arch, so far as it
is made homogeneous by cement is in a sense
a bent beam—that is, the wedges do not act
separately.
About ten years ago there was an interesting
paper on primitive mud architecture in the
Journal of the Geographical Society. Even
the Prairie clogs build little domed structures
and the Esquimaux construct domes of ice.
When the use of mud-walling gave place to
building with sun-dried bricks—that is, to mud
which had been divided up into sections—it
was easily seen that the continuous clay shell-
vault might be successfully imitated in bricks.
A man beginning a clay shell would do so
against an end wall to which his first hand-
fuls would be made to adhere while gradually
rising from the sides. So the builder of
brick vaults in Egypt and Assyria began at
the end by slanting courses up from the sides
so that they leaned against the end wall;
each brick was laid flatwise on the slanting
face left by the last course; it was stuck to
it, as it were, by its broad surface. Thus the
vault was brought along from the end without
any " centring " by making each thin cake

EGYPTIAN BUILDING 55
of mud adhere to and rest against the slanting
course last done. There was no thought of
wedges, the vault was thought of as a con-
tinuous convex shell, although it was executed
by assembling cakes of mud of a uniform size.
The Romans developed this idea of the homo-
geneous vault in their magnificent concrete
construction.
The wedge arch might have had an inde-
pendent origin, for children playing with
stones seem naturally to make experiments in
bridging over voids; r^.-.^.-^w.^r v8 .- 8 >o ..-..?>..,.
but the true arch ;]^iS5^^
of masonry appears :-^S^x^
late, and it seems to 'm tig
have been evolved in ^L eg
Egypt after the brick ** 12.
vault had been built for some two thousand
years.
Prof. Flinders Petrie describes a tomb de-
pendent on a fine first-dynasty mastaba at
Gizeh as vaulted, and Prof. Garstang has
excavated a number of vaulted tombs at
Reququah which he assigns to the Third
Dynasty. These tombs were small oblongs,
sunk in the ground ; the sides had walls, and
they were covered by vaults in which the
bricks were placed edgeways and leaning
back at an angle against the end wall of the
tomb. Sometimes the bricks were roughly
cut to more or less of a wedge shape, and some

58 ARCHITECTURE
of the arches are rudely pointed (fig. 12).
Stone-roofed passages of the Fourth Dynasty
were at times hollowed out into the arch form,
which shows how deeply by this time it must
have got into consciousness.
At the twelfth-dynasty town of the builders
of the pyramid of Illahun, Prof. Petrie found
many arched roofs of brickwork, and the
doorways were always arched.
Small circular " domed " structures of mud
were probably known from the earliest time
in Egypt. At Hieraeonpolis several " shuna,"
or store-pits, of about six feet in diameter
have been found which seemed to have be-
longed to houses of the pre-pyramid age.
Some foundations of isolated circular buildings,
probably granaries, were also discovered. In
the Twelfth Dynasty domes were formed
over the circular chambers within the small
pyramids of this age. They are built of hori-
zontal layers of brickwork, each course being
of less diameter than the one below. They
resemble the beehive tomb at Mycenae, and,
as Choisy remarked, " their likeness to pre-
Hellenic domes cannot be fortuitous.'
9
The
same author, judging from the paintings,
thought it probable that the Egyptians
covered square chambers with mud domes,
which showed externally. This view is con-
firmed by some models of houses of the
Tenth Dynasty found at Rifeh, which show

several varieties of vaulting; in some "the
domed roofs are obvious." One model shows
a terrace-roof with three little rounded cupolas
just emerging through it, like a modern
Eastern house (fig. 13).
The use of rude little domes for granaries
was quite general. According to Perrot and
Chipiez, " the granaries and store-houses were
almost always dome-shaped ... a sketch made
in a tomb at Sakkara shows another form of
granary shaped like a stone bottle "—that
is, it had a sort of knob above the " dome "
;
these knobs are prob-
a b 1 y the f a r - o f
f
originals of lanterns
on domes. It should ric 13
be noticed that these
granary domes were not spherical, but semi-
eggshaped.
At Daphne Prof. Petrie explored the ruins
of a fortress-palace built about 660 B.C. All
that remained was a square mass of brickwork
about 160 feet square; the interior was an
irregular " gridiron " of thick walls, forming
cells about ten to sixteen feet wide. Many
were square, others were oblong; the latter
formed " deep domed chambers or cells, which
were opened from the top." They were much
ruined, but several cells " in the best-preserved
parts showed signs of the springing of domes
in their corners ; the corners are rounded and

58 ARCHITECTURE
gather in towards the vaulting." In answer
to an inquiry, Prof. Petrie wr
as kind enough
to tell me further :
" Egyptian doming of con-
struction chambers is irregular, the sides
contracting inwards while the corner increas-
ingly rounds. For open chambers, I think
the angles in each case are truncated by
placing bricks across them." We have here
the application of domes to square chambers
systematically by means of gradually re-
ducing the angles. However imperfectly
they may have been executed, this is the
system of the " pendentive."
Structures of crude brick were mud-
plastered to protect them from the weather,
and whitewashed and painted in stripes and
simple patterns from the earliest days. Even
some of the pyramids are built of mud brick
cased in stone, that at Illahun has a frame-
work of stone walling filled in with crude
brick. In the Nineteenth Dynasty some
works were executed in baked brick, but it
was not in common use till Hellenistic days.
The baking of clay was, of course, taken
over from pottery. Some bricks enamelled a
lovely blue have been found.
Masonry of all kinds, from rubble to fine
ashlar in large blocks, was in use. It was
bedded in plaster, or in a mortar of plaster,
sand, and pounded brick. The masonry of
the third-dynasty pyramid at Sakkara is set

in mortar. Fine masonry blocks from about
the Twelfth Dynasty were linked by dove-
tailed cramps of stone or wood, or by metal
cramps.
A curious manner of bedding masonry and
brickwork in undulating courses is frequently
found. The masonry at the pyramid of
Sakkara rises towards the angles. Doubtless,
the custom arose, as explained by Choisy,
through building walls with strongly battered
faces the beds of which sloped inwards; this
made a difficulty of bonding at the corners
which the tilting of the angles went far to
obviate.
Other applications of the method are hard
to understand. It was the custom in the
Twelfth Dynasty to build wr
alls in a corrugated
form; thus they got elasticity and stiffness.
The walls of the fortress of El Kab were built
in this way on the west and north sides ; on the
east and south the walls were built in sectional
lengths with vertical
4i
straight joints" at
intervals. These sections were bedded hori-
zontally and in concave curves alternately.
The breaking of the wall into sections allowed
of contraction and expansion under the violent
changes of temperature, and possibly the
undulations contributed to the same end;
where a wall was built on a slope, it was a
provision against sliding.
Egyptian masonry was wrought at times

60 ARCHITECTURE
with astonishing technical ability. Hard stones
like granite, basalt, and diorite were cut by
means of long saws. Howard Vyse noticed
that the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyra-
mid had been cut by a saw. The tubular
drill was also much used, and dishes and bowls
of diorite were turned.
One ideal of the builders was the use of
fine material, and the conquering of intractable
substances; another was accuracy of work-
manship.
Already when the pyramid of Meydum was
built, the idea of accuracy had been carried
so far that the bedding of the stones around
the base varied in level only about a quar-
ter of an inch in the 2000 feet; the joints
are " under y-Juth of an inch." The stones were
finished by the strokes of a small adze. " The
laying out of the base of the pyramid of Khuf
u
is a triumph of skill ; its errors both in length
and in its angles could be covered by placing
one's thumb on them—the casing stones are
so truly square that the film of mortar left
between them is on an average not thicker
than one's thumb-nail." The sepulchral
chamber, of the twelfth-dynasty pyramid of
Hawara was " a marvellous work " ; it re-
sembled a huge tank cut out of a single block
of a hard quartzite sandstone, the internal size
was 22 x 8 feet, and 3 feet of stone were left
all round. The corners were so sharply cut that

at first it seemed that they must have been
jointed; the whole "glassy hard" surface
was polished, It was covered in by separate
blocks.
Prof, Petrie considers that plane surfaces
were tested by bringing them into contact
with a true plane. Of the pyramid of Meydum
he says :
" On the stones may be seen the red
spots of paint left from the testing by a red-
dened trial-plate as on the stones of Khufu,
at Gizeh," This became the Greek method
of " the red canon." Such accuracy of work-
manship is astonishing, and it must depend
on some underlying idea which the builders
sought to realize.
A further development in ideas of per-
fection is found in orientation—the feeling
that the earthly building should be put into
relation with its heavenly prototype the
world-temple. The pyramid at Meydum
fairly corresponds with the four aspects, and
the Great Pyramids of Gizeh are almost per-
fectly adjusted.
In later Egyptian inscriptions relating to
buildings, phrases often occur like "it is
such as the heaven in all its quarters " ;
" firm
as the heavens." The idea must have been
that as the heavens were stable, not to be
moved, so the building put into proper rela-
tion with the universe would acquire a magical
stability. It is recorded that when Akhnaton

62 ARCHITECTURE
founded his new city, four boundary stones
were accurately placed, so that it should be
exactly square.
Minutely careful measurements have demon-
strated that the Egyptians worked according
to schemes of proportion, as part of these
ideas for perfect building. A mastaba of the
Third or Fourth Dynasty at Meydum has a
breadth of 100 and a length of 200 cubits.
Here lines 20*6 inches apart showed exactly
what the cubit was. The slope was an angle
of 4 to 1. Accuracy of form was so much
desired that walls of L form were built out-
side each corner and on these the slope of the
tomb was carefully marked with a red line.
Both the pyramid at Meydum and the
Great Pyramids at Gizeh had such a form
that the vertical height compared with the
measure round about the four sides was, as
we have seen, as 7 to 44.
Here and elsewhere, the several dimensions
of a work were set out with a big standard of
measure so as to avoid fractional parts. This,
indeed, seems to have been the substance of
the idea : the parts were to be of known
dimensions; there were to be no accidental
quantities. "The dimensions of the pyra-
mid of Meydum are 7 and 44 times a length
of 25 cubits. Those of Khufu are 7 and 44
times a length of 40 cubits." That is, one
was set out so that all the dimensions were

multiples of 25 cubits, and the other so
that all were multiples of 40 cubits. At
Dahsur the pyramid was designed on an even
number of cubits, the base being 360 cubits,
and the height 200, while the space walled
in around it was 100 cubits wide. Another
smaller pyramid near by had a base 100 cubits
square.
In the twelfth-dynasty pyramid at Illahun
was a beautifully worked granite sarcopha-
gus of great " accuracy of proportion," each
dimension being a whole number of palms,
with an error of not more than one part in a
thousand.
These results, worked out by actual
measurement, coincide exactly with what is
reported to us of Greek ideas of proportion
—
ideas based on the feeling that an object to be
perfect must have all its dimensions related
according to some scheme of simple measure-
ment which avoids fractional parts. The
builders, it is clear, had before them some
idea of perfection, and endeavoured to realize
a type which should rise above the accidental.
In the Old Testament we find other examples
of a similar mode of thought, both in the
descriptions of the Tabernacle and of EzekiePs
temple. Modern Indian craftsmen seem to
work according to the same tradition.
Perrot gives an interesting example of a
builder's adjustment to disguise irregularity.

64 ARCHITECTURE
The two obelisks before the temple at Luxor
were of different heights owing to some acci-
dent ; one is 85 feet high, the other 78 feet,
" To hide this difference they were set upon
unequal bases, and the shorter obelisk was
placed slightly in advance of the other,"
Such simple modifications show great mastery
over effects which modern people find it
very difficult to apply. A little humouring
of this sort would have made Watts' fine
statue in Kensington Gardens seem to stand
at the centre of the radiating paths, but the
problem was beyond our powers.
It is said that some of the obelisks have
slightly curved instead of plane surfaces,
and that lines in the plans of some of the
temples are laid out in a just perceptible
curve.
This pursuit of the ideal and the typical
must have been related to the dominating
desire for permanence. The inscriptions of the
Pharaohs boast of their having founded
"everlasting stone monuments," in honour of
the gods.
Egyptian sculpture early matured, the
most perfect age was at the end of the Third
Dynasty and the beginning of the Fourth.
The famous scribe and the more beautiful
portraits of Rahotep and the lady Nefert rxe
of this time. Quite recently some magnifi-
cent portrait statues of the pyramid age have

been found in the temple of the Third Pyramid.
Some wonderful bronze statues of the Old
Kingdom have been discovered at Hiera-
conpolis. Besides sculptures in the round,
the Egyptians practised relief sculpture of
exquisite delicacy, and the method of intaglio
relief which was so suitable under the devour-
ing sunshine.
Architectural painting did not consist only
of the well-known friezes of battles and
offerings, but many are of domestic and
pastoral scenes, dancing and hunting pieces,
animals and birds. The most remarkable
are the well-known friezes of ducks of the
pyramid age; the painted plaster pavement
from Tel el Amarna of calves skipping amongst
vegetation; and the ceiling from the palace
of Amenhotep III (c. 1400 B.C.) of grey doves
and red butterflies, flying across a pale-blue
sky.
Besides painting and sculpture, many sorts
of surface decoration were practised, such as
polishing, gilding, the inlaying of wood with
ivory, and of stone with bright-coloured
faience. Casings of bright-green tiles were
applied to walls in the first dynasties. At
Abydos some tiles with figures in relief have
been found which probably adorned a chamber
of the time of Menes.
It is a part of my intention to try to point
out what contributions were made to uni-
E

G6 ARCHITECTURE
versal architecture by the several civilizations
as they arose and passed away, but to do so
of Egypt would be to practically re-write
what has been said : to a large degree
Architecture is an Egyptian art.

CHAPTER V
BABYLONIA AND CRETE—EARLY ART IN
ASIA AND EUROPE
Two other schools of architecture—the
earliest Asiatic style and the earliest European
style—must also be considered, although less
fully. Egypt, Babylonia and Crete were
three centres of early civilization, representing
Africa, Asia and Europe, which from an
early period and for long acted upon one
another.
Little or nothing is known of a primitive
age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the
art of Babylonia was that of a civilized
people. As has been said, there is great
similarity between this art and that of early
dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears
that Egypt borrowed of Asia, rather than the
reverse. If the origins of art in Babylonia were
as fully known as those in Egypt, the story
of architecture might have to begin in Asia
instead of Egypt. The best general account
of Babylonian art has been written by Perrot
and Chipiez. A good English account of
recent discoveries in western Asia was given
67

68 ARCHITECTURE
by Messrs. King and Hall in 1907. Written
records seem to take us back to about 4000 B.C.
Some writers think that metal tools were first
used in Elam ; if this was so it would give
western Asia a strong claim to be the mother-
land of the arts.
A record of great interest only lately de-
ciphered describes how King Gudea (c. 2700)
rebuilt the temple of a high god and trans-
lated his image to it from a yet older temple.
The new building is described as being like
a mountain, terrible and strong as a bull.
The doors were guarded by statues of heroes
and monsters, and facing the rising sun the
emblem of the Sun-god was set up. Within
was a stone tank for water. The temple was
surrounded by dependent buildings in an en-
closed paradise, where trees and flowers grew
around a large lead-lined tank. Here the
birds flew unmolested. The plan of the temple
had been drawn by one of the gods on a tablet
of lapis-lazuli and revealed to the king. On
the appointed day, at the first sight of dawn,
the great god and goddess entered their new
temple, " like a whirlwind, like the rising sun."
Messrs. King and Hall speak of it as having
been an immense building with numerous
shrines and courts, and a high ziggurat, or
temple tower, of several stories, each de-
creasing, one above the other. The little
light that entered the interior through the

BABYLONIA AND CRETE 69
doorway would have been reflected in the
basin of sacred water sunk level with the
floor. The area covered by the buildings
" must have been enormous. 55
They included
dwellings for the priests, shelters for the
sacrificial animals, treasuries, and store-houses
for the produce of the temple lands. It was
evidently a great establishment; a temple of
cathedral rank, not a mere shrine or chamber
of offerings. The emblem of the Sun facing
the east, and the entry of the god to his temple
like the rising sun at dawn, shows that already
this temple was built in correspondence with
the greater world-temple.
If temples were thus highly developed at
this early time in Babylonia, it seems possible
that temples of the gods first appeared in
western Asia, and from thence spread to Egypt
and other countries.
At Nippur remains of an altar and of a
massive brick building in which was an arch
have been found which belong to an age
earlier than the reign of Sargon I, which is
put at about 3800 B.C. An inscribed tablet of
this early age lately found at Telloh records
the capture of a city and the burning of several
temples, " carrying away the silver and preci-
ous stones therefrom,'
5
and destroying the
statues. It would appear that Babylonia
was a land of temples when Egypt was a land
of tombs.

70 ARCHITECTURE
The results of the excavations carried on
for a dozen years by a German expedition at
the mounds of Babylon have just been pub-
lished by Prof. R. Koldewey. Four temples
were explored. They were of brick, and
consisted of [a number of chambers sur-
rounding a great court which was entered
through towered gateways. The gates had
bronze pivots turning in stone sockets. The
courts were paved with brick covered with
asphalt. The chief chamber or cella gave
evidence that here had been an image of the
goddess. In another temple there were three
parallel halls opening to the courtyard, the
central one being that of the god, while another
one was occupied by his consort.
The temple of Marduk (Baal), attached
to the Tower of Babel, was of great size.
The enclosing wall had a number of towers
channelled into vertical grooves, which were
as characteristic of Babylonian architecture as
of early Egyptian. The chief chamber here
contained a figure of the god seated on a
throne. The great tower was a solid brick
mass, square in places, but there was no evi-
dence to show how the upper part had been
formed.
The Germans have also excavated Assur,
the oldest city of Assyria. Enormous walls,
city-gates and palaces were explored, as well
as the Temple of Assur, which dated from

BABYLONIA AND CRETE Tl
the ninth century B.C. The results have
been published by Dr. Andrae. Here again
the temple consisted of a court surrounded by
a row of many chambers, combined into one
enclosing wall. It was entered by a great
gate, and opposite were large cells between
two stepped towers or ziggurats.
The palace of Nebuchadnezzar (sixth
century) has also been recently uncovered.
It was a huge " castle " with innumerable
courts, halls and chambers. The side walls
of the paved way which led up to it were
decorated with big and splendid figures of
lions made up of coloured glazed tiles.
The chambers in the temples and palaces
were all probably covered by vaults. Layard
found one vaulted chamber entire in the thick-
ness of a great wall. Arched drains and
evidence for barrel-vaulted gateways have
been discovered, and Loftus describes many
graves covered by vaults where the thin bricks
were set " on edge," and leaned back at an
angle in the typical Eastern manner. Flandin
and Loftus thought that there was sufficient
evidence to show that the apartments of the
palaces had also been vaulted. Arches fre-
quently appear on the Assyrian slabs ; on one
of the slabs is represented a group of domes,
some tall and conical and others rounded ; they
have little " lanterns " on their tops. Domes
must have been indigenous by the great

72 ARCHITECTURE
rivers of the East from a very early time;
according to Miss Lowthian Bell, the houses
of the modern mud-built villages of north
Syria and northern Mesopotamia are covered
with conical dome-like roofs like those shown
on the Assyrian slab ; see also the remarks of
Perrot and Chipiez and Choisy on this subject.
The church at Bosra, built in 512, has a tall
dome of a semi -elliptical form; if it is of the
same age as the church it is an interesting
link in the tradition of
dome-building in west-
ern Asia. Fig. 14 is
from Sarre and Herz-
feld's recent volume
on Mesopotamia.
The lower part of
palace walls were
covered by the large
sculptured slabs of
alabaster, a fine collection of which are housed
at the British Museum. Layard says that
they were painted in colours, and many traces
of this are still to be seen on them.
To Mesopotamia we probably owe the
development of cities, great irrigation schemes,
ordered gardens, water supply, the use of
lead and asphalt, drainage and fortress-build-
ing. Bricks may have been made here
earlier than in Egypt ; here the arch may have
been invented. The vault seems first to have

been systematically used in the monumental
structures of Mesopotamia, and here the dome
became prominent.
At Susa an early temple has been found by
De Morgan, built of burnt brick and enamelled
tiles. According to Strzygowski, the original
home of burnt brick vaulted construction and
of the method of balancing big vaults by
smaller ones, was Mesopotamia. The casing
of important external parts of buildings with
enamelled bricks forming figures, was a
striking feature; it culminated in the magni-
ficent frieze of archers now at the Louvre.
In Egypt, as we have seen, coloured faience
was used internally. Fine works of sculpture
have been discovered which date from about
8000 B.C.
On the Assyrian slabs columns are repre-
sented standing on cushion-like bases. Either
these are the originals of the Ionic base or
vice versa. Other bases are sculptured
sphinxes or lions. Possibly by the media-
tion of Roman architecture this was the
source for the beasts carrying columns at the
porches of Romanesque Italian churches.
In the later art of western Asia, Greek
influence strong and constant may be de-
tected. The columns at Persepolis are modi-
fications of the Greek Ionic order, the tomb
of Cyrus is almost pure Greek work, and the
influence of later Hellenistic art spread over

74 ARCHITECTURE
all the Orient. At an earlier time the Assyrian
art of the eight and ninth centuries shows
many resemblances to archaic Greek and
iEgean art. Small columnar erections of
Greek fashion are shown on the slabs at the
British Museum. Even the slabs themselves
probably had a Cretan source, as will appear
below. Again, the rosette decoration, so
common in Assyrian decoration, is the typical
iEgean ornament. These rosettes seem to
have been a decorators' memory of the ends
of round timbers which were built into the
walls as bond.
A third early civilization arose on the
northern shores of the Mediterranean, and in
the islands of the iEgean. Its chief centre
in the second millennium B.C. was Crete.
The pottery and other remnants indicate an
age going back to the time of the early
Egyptian dynasties. Then, as later, there
was communication between the Egyptians
and the people of the iEgean who produced
the first European architecture.
About a century since, drawings made
known in the west some remarkable monu-
ments at Mycenae, which it was seen must be
those which Greek authors had described as
belonging to the heroic age. One was a gate-
way of huge stones in a city wall. Above the
lintel of the gateway a triangular void had
been left to relieve it of the weight and the

space was filled by a sculptured slab. This
was the Lion Gate of Mycense, Another
famous monument was a large circular tomb-
chamber, roofed in beehive form by gathering
the courses of the masonry inwards like a
tall dome set on the ground ; the exterior was
buried in a mound of earth ; a passage to the
door of the chamber was formed in the outer
part of the mound, walled on each side, like
an inlet in the side of a railway embank-
ment. On each side of this door, which again
had a triangular relieving space above it,
were highly-decorated shafts, of which many
fragments were found. The largest pieces
were brought away and, after having been
forgotten in an Irish garden, they were re-
discovered and given to the British Museum,
where a restoration of the gateway is now set
up. The decoration is of very refined work-
manship, consisting of spirals, some of which
have circular sunk centres which were made by
a tubular drill.
At Tiryns a beautiful frieze-like band of
similar work still, when discovered, retained
blue glass inlays in such sinkings. It was soon
seen that this blue glass must be the cyanus
of Homer. The interior of the dome, which
was nearly fifty feet in diameter, was covered
at intervals with holes, and some large bronze
pins were found which show that it must
have been studded with rosettes or stars,

76 ARCHITECTURE
doubtless of gilt bronze. The general idea
thus resembles in some degree the sprinkling
of stars over an Egyptian ceiling, but the lavish
use of bronze, here and elsewhere in art of
this type, was a new gift to architecture of
which the classical Greeks made great use.
At Orchomenos a part of a beautiful ceiling
wrought all over with spiral patterns on
alabaster slabs was found in a similar tomb.
Comparison with Egypt and other methods
of inquiry led to assigning an era to this art
which we may best remember as following on
the year 1500 B.C. Dr. Schliemann discovered
works of a similar type, and others still earlier,
in the citadel of Troy.
Greek legend seemed to point to Crete as
being an important centre in the pre-Homeric
age. In 1900 Sir Arthur Evans bought land
on the site of Knossos, where he soon ex-
cavated a great complex of buildings which
has proved to be a vast palace—almost
certainly the " Labyrinth of Minos." Here
were halls with columns of wood larger above
than below (a quite reasonable thing in
framed construction, like the " legs " of a
modern table), a portico with a double
row of six pillars, wide stairs rising in many
flights, and bathrooms. The chambers had
plastered walls painted with scenes or orna-
ment, and sometimes modelled in low relief
before painting, and many of the walls had

dadoes of gypsum (alabaster) slabs. Evi-
dence was found for windows. There was
walling of fine masonry and of rubble set in
clay, also of crude bricks, and some burnt
brick has been found. The floors were paved
or covered with hard plaster. (That of a hall
at Tiryns was painted with fish on a blue
ground.) The streets were paved and had
built drains, and socketed pipes for drain-
age or water supply have also been found.
Pottery, ivory carvings and gold-work were
all very beautiful.
One characteristic of this iEgean architec-
ture was the use of casing-slabs of alabaster
or stone as dadoes to wr
alls built of inferior
materials. These slabs were frequently put
against the wall alternating with a thicker
stone rebated so as to cover the joints of two
adjoining slabs, a method of construction which
was taken over into the Doric frieze. The
beautiful band found at Tiryns, usually called
the frieze, was of this type, and probably
it was a dado. At Knossos, Sir A. Evans
uncovered the base of a wall which had thick
slabs on both sides linked together through
the wall by short timbers dovetailed into the
slabs. The fine fragments of slabs sculptured
with oxen in the British Museum have similar
indentations for fixing, and these too were
probably part of a dado. Thin slabs of
marble were also used for casing, and even at

78 ARCHITECTURE
this early time some of the painted decora-
tion imitated marble slabs.
Round tombs like that at Mycense have also
been found in Crete. These beehive domes
closely resemble, as has been mentioned, the
chambers in the Egyptian pyramids of the
Twelfth Dynasty, and very much in the art
witnesses to the closest contact with Egypt.
While this Mgesm art gathered from, and
perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals
to the north and west of Europe, where the
productions of the bronze age clearly show
its influence.
A recent visit to the chambered mounds
of Brittany, which have their great stones
crudely ornamented with spirals, has con-
vinced me that they belong to the same
cycle ; and if they, then also our own dolmens,
and New Grange in Ireland. Stonehenge,
which is built of wrought stones, having the
uprights tenoned into the lintels, has in it
something of style ; it is not savage. On this
line of thought we might date it nearer 1000
than 2000 B.C. When, about twelve years
ago, one of the great lintel stones fell, it was
easy to see on the newly exposed surface,
which had rested on the upright stones, that
the shape had been obtained by bruising
off the excess of material, leaving a pitted
surface. The first wave of civilized art in
Europe flowed from the iEgean.

The permanent gifts of this art to the
repertoire of universal architecture appear to
have been important. The following may be
suggested : the moulded capital (the germ of
the Doric order), attached ornamentation of
bronze, the staircase with returning flights, slab
wall-linings, the architrave doorway, rosette
and meander decoration, and naturalism in
ornamentation—in Egypt the wonderfully
natural birds and beasts were not so much
ornament as an attempt to make in the
tombs substitutes of the living creatures,

CHAPTER VI
BUILDING ART IN GREECE—THE EFFORT
AFTER PERFECTION
We have seen that in the islands of the
iEgean and in what became the Greek lands
around its shore there early flourished the first
European style of Architecture. This type
of art has been found in Asia Minor and in
Italy, as well as at Mycenae, Sparta, Athens
itself, and many another Greek site. This is
the art of the heroic age with which the
Homeric poems deal ; it is the background of
Greek art proper. About 1300 B.C. there
were great upheavals and invasions which
almost entirely subverted the JEgean civiliza-
tion, so much so that except for remains of
pottery there still exists hardly any direct
link between iEgean and Greek art. Indeed,
we are not sure as yet whether the iEgean art
was merely an underlying stratum which
influenced Greek art, or whether it is to be
considered as a first phase of Greek art itself.
But it is clear that, whatever change of
population and rulers there may have been,
80

BUILDING ART IN GREECE 81
Greek art is rather the resumption of the old
traditions than a new departure.
If it be asked whether there is any evidence
for continuity other than likeness, the answer
must be yes. In the Homeric poems this
parent art is described with great fidelity, and
to the Greeks of the early historic period it was
evidently a very real ideal. Again, Homer's
ideals are in much the ideals of mature
Greek art. Stonework was to be polished, and
much bronze, gold, and ivory were to be
used. Shining, glistening, wr
ell jointed, are the
favourite epithets.
Many of the early monuments remained in
later days. Thus the great beehive tomb of
Orchomenos was perfect in the time of Pau-
sanias, who speaks of it as the most wonder-
ful building in Greece. In remote districts
Mgean types long persisted. Thus in Phrygia
several roughly sculptured pairs of affronted
lions have been found which evidently follow
the same tradition as the Lion Gate at Mycenae,
but they must be relatively of late date.
Again, on the Phaistos Disc appears a symbol
that is a picture of a little wooden building
such as might be drawn from the fourth-century
Lycian tomb in the British Museum, which
represents a wooden, ark-like structure that
itself was evidently copied from the type
of primitive buildings well known in the
country.
F

82 ARCHITECTURE
When Greece entered on her period of high-
strung life the time of first invention in the
arts was over—the heroes of Craft, like Tubal
Cain and Daedalus, necessarily belong to the
infancy of culture. The phenomenon of
Egypt could not occur again ; the mission of
Greece was rather to settle down to a task
of gathering, interpreting and bringing to per-
fection Egypt's gifts. The arts of civilization
were never developed in water-tight compart-
ments, as is shown by the uniformity of custom
all over the modern world. Further, if any
new nation enters into the circle of culture it
seems that, like Japan, it must " borrow the
capital." The art of Greece could hardly
have been more self-originated than is the
science of Japan. Ideas of the temple and
of the fortified town must have spread from
the East, the square-roomed house, columnar
orders, fine masonry, were all Egyptian, as
were many methods of workmanship and ideals
of proportion. Besides this external source
in a living higher culture, the Greeks found
on their own soil the splendid monuments
of the heroic age. Not only is this true of
architecture, but Greek coins and gems show
close study of primitive prototypes. Even
after the Dorian invasion the craftsmen would
have continued to belong to the old races.
If blood is thicker than water, the land is
thicker than blood. There was yet a third

element which was contributed by the tradi-
tions brought in by the invasions which over-
turned theiEgean civilization : a barbaric strain
which was only controlled and transcended
a few generations before the age of perfec-
tion. About the tenth century B.C. the arts
of Greece began to emerge, in the fifth they
blossomed, and by the end of the millennium
the impulse seems to have been exhausted.
One of the marvels of Greek art history
is the rapidity of the movement through
maturity. Its progress was like a comet's
at the perihelion. After centuries of artistic
rudeness there was a couple of generations of
intense training, then attainment by another
generation, and the beginning of decay at
once followed. The barbaric element gave
vigour—a hard, gem-like quality which is so
marked in all phases of the art. It has been
well said that no art can be classic which has
not been barbaric. The movement of every
great school of art seems to be through a
regular curve.
Many important sculptured works of Doric
architecture erected about 600 B.C. have been
made known to us by excavation. The older
Parthenon at Athens, with its sculptured
pediment, the temple at Assos in Asia
Minor, the temple at Selinus in Sicily, with
sculptural metopes, and the temple recently
discovered at Corcyra in Corfu, are the most

84 ARCHITECTURE
remarkable examples. The last was a large
structure about 150 feet long by 65 feet broad.
The Pediment group was extremely rude, the
principal features being a huge Gorgon in the
middle supported by crouching lions on either
hand. Still earlier works have been found at
Olympia, Sparta, Thermon, and other sites.
At first the temples were built of crude brick
strengthened by timbering ; the columns were
of wood, and the walls had a stone basis to
lift them above the ground. This method of
crude brick construction, it must be remem-
bered, persisted right through antiquity, and
into modern times for secondary purposes,
that is, for the great bulk of building work.
Some at least of these early temples had slop-
ing roofs covered with tiles; others had the
Egyptian and iEgean roof of close-set timber-
ing supporting a thick bed of clay. It has
been suggested by Prof. Ridgeway that
the " span roof," which gave pediments to
the Greek temple, was brought in by the
northern tribes. He quotes Pindar as saying
that the Corinthians were the first to put
gables to their temples. Both types of roof
seem to be mentioned in Homer. A building
with a span roof is shown on the Phaistos
Disc, this is probably the earliest evidence for
it which exists.
As long ago as 1884 Dorpfeld showed the
close connection between the Doric temples

and the structures of Mge&n times, In
later temple construction the base course of
the wrtlls is made double the height of the
other courses. This plinth is derived from
the stone basis under the crude brick walls.
Behind a Greek portico the side walls of the
cella project and are finished with pilaster-like
members called anice. The peculiarity of the
Greek anta is that its return on the flanks
is very narrow as compared to its width in
front. This was a memory of the plank-like
timbers which anciently formed the termina-
tion of the mud-brick walls. The external
colonnade of columns, which is such a magnifi-
cent and characteristic feature of the Greek
temple, seems to have originated in a sort of
verandah added around the cella of primitive
temples to protect its walls. Evidence was
found at Olympia which showed that the
peristyle and the beam above had been of
wood. When we consider types of planning
wr
e again find that the Greeks closely followed
iEgean precedent. At Troy, Tiryns and
Knossos halls with columns have been found
from which the temple plan was easily de-
veloped. The simplest form of columnar hall
is that in which the space is divided in two
by a central row of columns. It is uncertain
whether a building of this type at Troy was
a hall or a temple. The recently excavated
primitive temple at Sparta had such a row of

86 ARCHITECTURE
wooden columns down the centre correspond-
ing to wooden uprights which strengthened
the crude brick walls. At Thermon an archaic
Doric temple has been excavated which was
also of wood and crude brick built in this
form. The great temple at Psestum, which
used to be called the Basilica, is the best-
known example of this type. Here the
longitudinal division is very striking because
a second row of columns was superimposed
on the lower story. Early Ionic temples with
central rows of columns have been found at
Neandria in Asia Minor and at Locri in south-
ern Italy. The latter plainly showed that the
external peristyle was a later addition around
the cella. The Propylaeum, a roofed porch
with pillars in front, is of iEgean and Egyptian
origin.
As has been said, the circular plan of the
Mycensean tombs was probably not an iso-
lated phenomenon. The circular hut must
have been built for many humbler purposes. In
the shrines over the sacred vestal fires of the
Latins the tradition of the hut with the hearth
in the midst was continued. An early Tholos
has recently been excavated at Delphi. It
was about twenty-two feet in diameter and
was surrounded by a ring of thirteen Doric
columns only about eight feet high. It seems
to have been built in the sixth century. The
Skias, which was erected about the same time

at Sparta, by Theodoras of Samos, must have
been of the same form. The tradition was
continued in the fourth century in the beautiful
Tholos at Epidaurus, of which large remains
have been discovered.
Mature Greek architecture had two modes
—
the Doric and the Ionic, names which corre-
spond to native and colonial, or to old and new.
The typical plan of a Doric temple with a cella
having a portico of two columns between
antae is derived from architecture of the
iEgean age. The Doric capital was obviously
developed from the same parent style, as may
be seen by examining the capital from Mycenae
in the British Museum. The curious Doric
frieze of metopes and triglyphs follows the
ancient type of slab and bondstone construc-
tion used for dadoes, the cornice is an eaves-
course of projecting rafter-ends copied into
stone.
In the rich colonies of Asia Minor a compan-
ion type of building to the Doric sprang up
in the Ionian style. It was more slender and
elegant than the masculine Doric order. Its
principal characteristic was a capital which
was not cut from a square block, but from a
block longer one way than the other, the ends
being carved into spirals. The column was
also planted on a base, and did not rise
directly from the pavement as did the Doric,
This base, in origin, was a stone block set under

88 ARCHITECTURE
a wooden post. The Ionic cornice with its
dentils is a translation into stone of the over-
hanging part of a flat roof; in some early
examples the dentils are rounded and close
together, representing the ends of the poles
which supported the flat terrace roof ; in this
form it goes back to JEge&n time and to Egypt.
Until a late time the Ionic entablature had
no frieze, but the cornice rested directly on
the architrave. This was the case even in
the fourth-century temple of Ephesus and at
the Mausoleum. The British Museum restora-
tion of the order of the later monument is
wrong in giving a frieze to the entablature.
The Ionic capital, as has been conclusively
shown, is an adaptation of the Egyptian
Papyrus capital. As a feature of wooden
architecture it may go back to the iEgean
period, but it does not seem to have been
brought into stone temple architecture until
the sixth century. The Ionic column was
frequently used as an isolated support to a
griffin, a statue, or some other object. It
was set up also as a goal post (see the paintings
on the Clazomene sarcophagus in the British
Museum). The high piled-up base, usually
consisting of three spreading courses, suggests
that it was developed as the foundation of a
free standing pillar. The three fasciae of the
Ionic architrave, the fluting and reeding of
columns, and the door architrave set with

rosettes, are all Mge&n and most of them are
Egyptian. Vitruvius says that the temple
built by the architect Chersiphron, about the
middle of the sixth century B.C., was the first
in which the Ionic order was adopted, and
nothing has been discovered which certainly
conflicts with this statement, although an
early Ionic temple at Naucratis has some-
times been thought to be earlier. Large
fragments from the Ephesus temple are in the
British Museum, and a full and interesting
account of it has recently been published.
The restoration set forth in this work is not
altogether satisfactory—for instance, a frag-
ment of a member with an enormous egg and
tongue moulding about sixteen inches deep,
now in the Museum basement, has traces of
a volute at one end which shows that it was
the anta capital, but it does not appear in
the restoration ; it is a pity that such valuable
fragments should be inaccessible. Another
valuable Ionic fragment in the British Museum
is the upper drum of a column from Halicar-
nassus, which is decorated with a band of
palmette ornamentation. This, compared with
the order of the Erechtheum, the early column
from Naucratis, and another early column
found at Locri, shows that this characteristic
was well known from an early time.
A Greek temple, Doric or Ionic, had one
stately chamber (the cella) which was usually

90 ARCHITECTURE
surrounded on the outside by a row, or two
rows, of pillars forming a continuous colonnade
(the peristyle), the simple roof slanted back
from the cornice over the side pillars forming
low pitched gables at the ends (the pediments),
in which were arranged magnificent groups
of sculpture. The materials and workman-
ship were often of the fairest and most perfect
kinds, the walls and columns were of marble,
the blocks of which were wrought so level
that they seem to adhere by contact. No
cement was used, but the stones were linked
together by metal cramps. The stones were
worked flat and square by means of being
tested against a plane surface smeared with
paint, the " red canon " of Euripides. The
roof was laid with marble "tiles" cut thin,
having raised edges and covering pieces. On
the points of the gables were acroteria. The
accessories of the sculptures, such as shields
and spears, were of gilt bronze, the doors of
the same material or of wood inlaid with
ivory. The dazzling surface of the marble
was softened and adorned with delicate
pattern-works in bright paint. The altar of
the temple was outside the eastern door, the
cella was the dwelling of the god by this
altar, around was a sacred precinct con-
taining many smaller buildings, statues and
trees.
Greek architecture at the summit of its

course is represented by the Parthenon at
Athens, erected from c. 447 to 435. It is a
large Doric work built of fine marble, fitted
together with such extreme accuracy that the
joints are hardly visible. A peristyle sur-
rounds the exterior, and there are additional
columns forming deep porticoes at the ends.
The famous frieze, representing a festival pro-
cession of horsemen and others to the temple
itself, was a band along the top of the cella
wall all around under the shelter of the peri-
style. The ceiling of the space between the
cella and the outer columns was of marble
slabs cut into coffers and painted in bright
colours. The roof was of marble tiles. The
metopes of the frieze above the columns were
sculptured with two or three figures in high
relief on each panel. The subjects of these
metopes were the battles of the gods and
giants, the legendary battles of the Greek and
Centaurs, and the war of Troy, making up a
sort of stone Book of Genesis. The pediments
were filled with great compositions of many
figures, one end showing the birth of the
goddess Athene, the special protector of the
city, and the other the story of how she first
took the city under her own protection. In
the first she and her father Zeus appeared in
the middle of a group of the gods ; to the left
Dionysos and an exquisite group of a mother
and daughter —Demeter and Persephone*

92 ARCHITECTURE
To the right are seated the famous three,
usually called the Fates, by general consent
the most beautiful group of sculpture in the
world. One of the figures, the most perfect
of all, is so luxuriously exquisite, and reposes
so languidly, that some foreign critics have
come to think that she must be Aphrodite.
Drill holes on her arm and neck show that
she was richly adorned with a necklace and
bracelets; this and the soft raiment would
seem to confirm the view ; moreover, the figure
corresponds closely to a reclining goddess
sculptured in relief on the frieze which is
known to be Aphrodite. In the interior of
the cella there were rows of columns on either
side supporting the roof, and in the farther
half of the central space rose a colossal figure
of Athene herself. This amazing statue, the
masterwork of Phidias, was formed of casings
of gold and ivory over a wooden core ; spark-
ling precious stones were set as eyes into the
ivory face, and tresses of wrought gold fell
on the shoulders from under a superb helmet.
The goddess stood with her left hand on the
edge of her round shield, carrying on her
extended right hand a winged figure of
Victory. She was the protector of the city
who bestowed victory on the Athenians.
No light entered the temple save from the
great door opposite the figure, which must
have been brightly illuminated by many lamps

suspended about it. With its blazing eyes,
delicate curls of hair, ivory flesh, shining rai-
ment and added adornment of jewellery and
painted details, it went far beyond what we
conceive as sculpture : it must have seemed
a
i;
double " of the goddess . herself, really
dwelling in her temple. A sight of Athene
must have been a tremendous experience.
Even to the modern Renan a visit to the
Acropolis seemed like a revelation of the divine
:
" The whole world seemed barbaric, the
Orient shocked me by its ostentatious pomp
and its impostures, while the majesty of the
best Roman seemed only a pose compared
to the ease and simple nobility of the citizen
who could comprehend what made the beauty
of the Parthenon."
In the great period of the fifth century the
aim after a perfect type led to standardizing
arrangements and forms and endeavouring to
perfect them along a very straight line. But
before the fifth century there are very wide
variations in even the simple Doric type. A
beautiful variety of the Doric capital was
popular in Sicily and southern Italy, which
had a hollow throat under the echinus. One
of the temples at Paestum had a panelled
soffit to the pediment cornice; one of those
at Selinus had big and small cornice blocks
alternately in the lateral cornices. The great
temple at Agrigentum had enormous half-

94 ARCHITECTURE
columns attached to closed elevations; the
scale was too big for it to be built in the
ordinary form. A treasury at Olympia had
columns which had beads between the flutes.
Some temples had all the metopes sculptured,
some only those at the ends. In planning
and proportion there was constant change,
but all was the change of ascending effort, it
was not change to tickle tired eyes.
These are varieties of type, but in the
architecture of Ionia variation of detail was
allowed in the same building. In the sixth-
century temple of Diana at Ephesus all the
base profiles are separately designed, the
shafts have different numbers of flutes, some
even being narrow and wide alternately, and
the Ionic capitals are varied like those in a
Gothic church. Notwithstanding this free-
dom in workmanship, up to about the
time of the completion of the Parthenon,
say 480 B.C., Greek temple architecture
had been a highly conservative—indeed,
a sacred art. Greater perfection and in-
tensity in the working out of a few ancient
forms, rather than variety, was the artistic
ideal. They aimed at perfect form, not at
amusement for the eye. As Morris well said,
there was a reason for everything, even though
that reason might be superstition. The Par-
thenon marked the close of an epoch. Phidias
was the Michael Angelo of the Doric dispensa-

tion. Directly after this culmination a move-
ment set in towards capricious variation
and luxuriant decoration. Ornament which
before had been painted on plain mouldings
was now carved. The S curve, or cyma
recta, was now first introduced as a moulding
in the gutter front of the Propylaea. At this
time the Corinthian capital was evolved as
a highly enriched form of Ionic. The usual
type of tombstone (stele) had been carved
at the top into a fine palmette-like composi-
tion of scrolls springing from tufts of acanthus
;
and the designer of the Corinthian capital
applied this kind of foliage to the Ionic type
of capital. It was an outcome of the general
tendency towards redundant ornamentation,
and further fed that tendency, so that hence-
forward there was a third form of column,
the Corinthian, or luxurious, order. The
earliest-known example, dating probably from
about 420 B.C., was discovered at Bassae,
exactly a century ago. Others hardly later
have been found at Epidaurus, and still
others formed parts of the Philippion at
Olympia, and the monument of Lyiscrates at
Athens.
According to Vitruvius, the Greeks pro-
portioned their buildings so that all the parts
were related to one another; the plan might
be twice as long as broad, the height of the
columns would be likely to have a simple

96 ARCHITECTURE
relation to the diameter, and so on; this, as
we have seen, had been an Egyptian idea, and
is quite natural at an early time, although there
is no reason if a column may be eight or nine
diameters high, why it should not be anything
between the two. The real proportions of a
structure were, of course, determined by tra-
dition, purpose, cost, situation, and materials
;
the rest was a slight modification superimposed
afterwards—a getting rid of the half-inches, as
it were.
Much time has been spent in trying to
elucidate Greek proportions, for the most part
time wasted. The idea of looking for such
proportions has been a most disturbing factor
in the study of Greek buildings, and we hardly
have accurate dimensions of any one in feet
and inches, because the student was set on
evolving some scheme of measures in the
modulus of the diameter. If it didn't fit he
added on a foot or two and said it must be so.
Simplicity, clearness, accuracy, repetition, the
eye can estimate, but it takes no heed of the
accuracy of the relation of eight to one, or the
same with two inches added or taken away.
It is quite an assumption that eight to one
is good for a column; it depends on many
things; the addition or subtraction of two
inches might improve it.
It is quite different with modifications by
curvature and other adjustments made by

Greek masons ; here we have something tan-
gible, if subtle. These modifications may be
used to bring about unity. If, for instance,
the eight columns of a portico incline towards
the axis and there is some adjustment in the
spacing, you do not have one factor repeated
eight times, but together they make up one
whole thing—a portico.
Curvature of lines again furnishes an inter-
mediate between the straight and the rounded,
betwr
een cornices, columns, and sculptures.
It takes off the hardness, as we should say.
It will correct any look of sagging in horizontal
lines, and it varies the lighting on surfaces.
Such adjustments are most natural in a highly
refined school of architecture and need no
explanation.
It is so usual to consider Greek architecture
from the point of view of the evolution of
the temple and of the orders that it may be
well to give a general, if summary, account of
it as building procedure even at the risk of
some repetition. Early walling of crude brick
or rubble was strengthened by beams and posts
of wood. Fine ashlar masonry was built in
Crete at least 2000 years B.C. The early type
of masonry, usually called polygonal, was
occasionally continued in later times, very
accurately executed. The walls of the little
temple at Rhamnus were of this kind, and the
thick marble slabs of the pavement of the
G

98 ARCHITECTURE
sixth-century temple at Ephesus made quite
a crazy patchwork. In fine squared ashlar
the bedding and jointing were very accurate,
and all such masonry was put together with-
out any cement, but the stones were linked
together by metal cramps and dowels. Later
cramps are of the form of a rolled iron girder
H, earlier ones resemble the letter Z if it is
bent a little so that the turns are at right
angles.
Walls were completely dressed down after
erection, and the fluting of columns was then
done. This was probably a late custom, for
the walling stones of the sixth-century
temple at Ephesus are slightly chamfered all
round, evidently for the same purpose of pre-
serving the edges of the blocks. Stones were
frequently hollowed out at their back so as
to reduce their weight. In this way ceiling
beams and lacunars were considerably light-
ened. A cornice stone from Xanthos in the
British Museum is an example. The lacunaria
or masonry ceilings were formed of thick
slabs, with a series of square coffers dug out
of them. In the Theseum and other places
the squares were pierced right through, and
little covering pieces like tiles were set in
rebates. At Bassse the coffers are not square,
but in various proportions of lozenges. At
Priene and the Mausoleum there was only
one big coffer to a columniation, and it was

reduced by a series of over-sailing margins to
a panel of fair size.
If temples were not built of marble, and
comparatively few were, the masonry was
covered by a thin coating of very fine plaster
rubbed down to a smooth face to take the
painting and gilding. More than a hundred
years ago Goethe observed that the temple of
Agrigentum had " been covered with a thin
coating which would please the eye and pre-
serve the stone." The last clause has an
importance which modern builders have for-
gotten. All stonework in our climate ought to
be covered by paint or lime or some protecting
skin, and without it it looks quite raw and
makes one shiver. Plastered temples were
fully coloured with washes and ornamentation.
Marble temples were coloured in part and
picked out with gilding—illuminated as it
were. The triglyphs were usually a bright
blue, also the cornice blocks above ; the spaces
between the latter and the bands were full
red ; ceiling panels were usually blue, with a
gold star, and so on. The margins and
mouldings had delicate little frets and honey-
suckle patterns. Even the figure sculpture
was brightened with gilt bronze and painting
Greek mouldings were very few. There is the
ovolo or echinus of the capital, and a similar
roll or cushion which seems to be an essential
part of a base. The "Egyptian cavetto"

100 ARCHITECTURE
is found in terra-cotta roof casings of an
early date. The most curious moulding when
seen unadorned is the " hawk's beak,
5
'
but it
was always painted into a series of petals ; the
beak part is formed by the turned-over tips
of the petals. The carved egg and tongue
moulding had its origin in the same idea:
it represents a series of petals turned out
and down. Then there is the elegant reversed
cyma moulding, always painted or carved
with a row of leaves, and finally the cyma
recta.
The Greeks restricted themselves in the
main to two types of columns, but there was
much freedom in the use of them. In the
Propylaea, built in the fifth century, directly
after the Parthenon, both kinds were used.
Only a few years ago it was thought that the
caryatid supports at the Erechiheum were
a freak of design, but they were in use in the
sixth century, and probably had even then a
history, for the farther we go back the nearer
we get to a time when statues and pillars
coalesce, and when the pillar was itself a
sacred thing. The sixth-century caryatides
found at Delphi are remarkably like those at
the Erechtheum, so there is no doubt of a
continuity of tradition from the sixth century
onwards. A few years ago a caryatid figure
was discovered at Tralles, of an early manner,
although^rtr^Sas #saO^Tfe«. It was compared

by Collignon with the others of the same type,
and it was seen that it must have derived from
an original work of about 470 B.C. It has
several divergencies from the Erechtheum
type, the most striking of which is that the left
arm was raised and evidently touched the
architrave. On the other hand, there were
many points of resemblance to the " maidens "
of the Erechtheum, and it is clear that all
must have followed one general tradition.
Another very curious architectural member
is the acroterion, which was set on the gables,
sometimes one, and sometimes three. These
were not late ornamental additions, but they
appear to have been essential and important
features from an early age. Primitive builders
seem to have made much of the point of
the gable by crossing the rafters, or by setting
there some animal's head. The developed
form is usually much in the shape of a lyre,
with two strong, horn-like branches, one on
either hand, turning into scrolls and palmettes.
It seems possible that they may derive from
horns of consecration. CockereiPs restora-
tion of that on the temple of iEgina is well
known. The recent excavations have brought
to light other fragments, and as now restored
in the Munich Museum it must be six or seven
feet high. Following on this a restoration
has been made of the great acroteria of the
Parthenon, similar compositions of open

102 ARCHITECTURE
scrolls and acanthus foliage of great size. The
late Ionic temple at Magnesia had similar
acroteria about seven feet high, and others
have been found at Pergamon, having pierced
scroll-work of quite remarkable beauty. The
pairs of acroteria at the lower angles of the
pediments were at times griffins or other
beasts. In later times, large groups of
sculpture formed the central ones. At Delos
these were composed of four or five figures
each. Frequently a Victory was set in this
position.
Roofs were either covered with tiles—that
is, large pantiles with covering rolls—or by
marble copies of the same, wrought and
adjusted with amazing precision. They
either dripped along the eaves, or they were
turned up at the bottom into a sort of low
parapet (later the cymation), having at inter-
vals jutting spouts like toy cannon, or lion's
heads with open mouths. There were hip
roofs at the Propylsea.
Besides the main line of development into
the mature marble architecture of the fifth
and sixth centuries, there must have been
several collateral traditions arising out of
wood and mud-brick construction. At Sparta
there was a shrine plated over with bronze
plates, doubtless on a wooden framework.
The use of a material not impervious to
rain seems to have led to the sheltering of the

side walls by spreading the roof on to an
external colonnade, originally a row of wooden
posts. The walls were also plastered. A
further step with this type of building was to
extend the use of casings like the burnt tiles
of the roof. The early temple at Thermon
had its metopes of painted squares of tiles;
and painted tile casings for the cornices and
pediments had an enormous vogue in Greece,
Sicily, and Italy. The tile-cased type of
building found in Italy and usually called
Etruscan is only a distant wave of the Greek
impulse. A very fine example may be seen,
in the terra-cotta gallery in the British
Museum, of casings which were evidently
nailed over timbers. The use of these terra-
cottas covered with elaborate painted patterns
was later taken over as an adjunct to stone
architecture, and remnants of them have been
found on many sites, at Olympia, at Athens,
at Selinus, at Paestum, and most recently, at
Bassse, where they evidently belonged to an
earlier temple than that built in the fifth
century.
The staircase in the palace of Knossos rises
in five returning flights. At Selinus the temple
has a spiral turret-stair. Careful drainage
works were executed at Knossos with socketed
pipes; and excellent inspection traps of the
fourth century have been found at Priene.
Ample evidence for large windows divided

104 ARCHITECTURE
by mullions has been found in Crete. There
are windows of the fifth century in the Pro-
pylam at Athens, and some delicately orna-
mented fragments of window architraves from
the Erechtheum are in the British Museum,
The Tholos at Epidaurus also had windows.
A late relief at the British Museum shows a
two-light window divided by a mullion
Screens of metal or lattices pierced in slabs of
marble were largely used. The spaces be-
tween the columns of temples were frequently
enclosed in this way. Greek doors were of
wood, bronze, or stone. The wooden doors
seem to have been panelled and of quite a
modern type ; they were studded with bronze
nails and inlaid with ivory and ebony, or had
panels of carved ivory and gold. The marble
doors must have been delightful things; at
the heel they were wrought with a globular
pivot which worked accurately in a cavity.
This part of a door of the fifth century has
lately been found at Argos. There are some
good fragments of later tomb doors in the
Leeds Museum. Heavy doors were made to
open over metal quadrants inlaid in the pave-
ment ; such quadrants were used in the sixth-
century temple at Ephesus, at the Parthenon,
and several other places. At Selinus there
were double quadrants on each side. This and
other indications showed that the open door
had folded flat against the wall, with a little

fiap to cover the ends—exactly like good
modern drawing-room shutters.
I have endeavoured to show how this
" incredible beauty " of Greek architecture
was arrived at by continuous development
from the most humble beginnings. The
Greeks endeavoured to perfect a limited
subject-matter and to create eternal types.
This mysterious Greek architecture was but
one customary way of doing buildings, after
all ; and recent researches have shown that in
origin the forms are barbaric and accidental
—accidental, that is, in the sense that with
other conditions they would have been differ-
ent. There is little aesthetic mystery about
the mud walls and wooden props which be-
came a cella and peristyle, or in the over-
hanging eaves which became a cornice. The
wonderful thing is the Greek spirit, and if we
would share that we should concern ourselves
with perfecting stock-brick walls, chimneys,
and downpipes rather than in designing
pseudodipteral peristyles and Doric triglyphs
—that is, as builders ; as scholars, let us know
all that may be known. An attempt to " de-
sign " in architecture outside need and beyond
custom is like inventing a strange alphabet
which does not correspond to words and
meanings. It is quite easy and quite futile.
Forms are nothing in themselves, they are
only envelopes of the spirit of architecture.

106 ARCHITECTURE
The principal gifts of the Greek builders
to architecture are in the main those of the
ideal and spirit. To them we owe the civic
ideal in architecture. They associated per-
fect sculpture with architecture. The " span
roof " seems first to have been perfected by
them, and they invented regular tiling of
baked clay which afterwards was copied in
marble. They gave us three great types of
column—with the moulded capital (the Doric),
of the bracket type (the Ionic), and with
sculptured foliage (the Corinthian). They
established regular groupings of mouldings, as
in the Ionic cornice; they gave us carved
mouldings decorated with palmettes, scroll-
patterns, meanders, etc., and also modern
types of mosaic floors and panelled doors,
embodying the principle of " framing " wood
together. The Greeks also turned in a lathe
the legs of furniture. To them also we owe
theatres, stoae, and the most perfect types of
tombs. The spiral staircase seems to have
been their invention. The Greeks first freed
the spirit of beauty from the hieratic ; architec-
ture was purged of terror ; they aimed at what
was gracious and lovely.

CHAPTER VII
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS—ENGINEERING
BUILDING
When the great culmination of Greek art
was overpast—that is, when the forces which
had produced it began to be dissipated and
doubt arose—a long lovely evening closed in
over the Greek world. At this time the
architects turned for satisfaction either to
aesthetic design, to variety, to the picturesque,
and to redundancy of ornament, setting aside
the Greek mean and measure in favour of
what might astound ; or, on the other hand,
they sought a basis for their art in science
and public utility. It was at this time, as
Gompertz points out, that great engineering
works were undertaken in the Hellenistic
world. Hippodamus, the planner of new
cities, and Philo, the architect of the arsenal,
were the early leaders in this movement.
It has been said of the latter that " he was
the apostle of the new practical utilitarianism
which heralded the union between architecture
and engineering so characteristic of the last
centuries of Greek art." It was on the wide
107

108 ARCHITECTURE
foundations laid at this time that the mighty
engineering of Rome was reared. Greek
religious art had restricted itself to fine stone-
work and to lintel construction. As Morris
has said, a Greek temple was a refined
Stonehenge, and a larger range of power
might only be obtained by casting back to
mud and brick origins or by borrowing from
other countries. A great new factor in
what I call the " powers " of European
architecture was to be obtained by bringing
in the arch and the vault.
After the conquest of Alexander a new
situation was created in the world of art.
His empire was largely eastern, and his new
capital in Egypt—founded in 832 B.C. —had
necessarily to be built according to the
material conditions present in the country.
It was planned on a regular scheme, having
four great colonnaded streets leading away
from a four-arched structure—a tetrapylcn—
at the centre. Unfortunately Alexandria has
been utterly destroyed, but it may not be
doubted that the major part of the building
there was of brick, vaulted and domed. We
have seen that such building was general in
the valley of the Nile from time immemorial,
and the modern houses of the Delta are still
domed. They have at the top small thimble-
shaped additions which, Prof. Petrie tells
me, are " hoods of bricks to act as cowls,

HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 109
Fig. 15.
backing to the strong winds so as to get a
draught and keeping out rain." (Fig. 15.)
On the famous silver casket of Projecta
in the British Museum, which, it is held,
was probably made in Alexandria about
a.d. 350, a large house is represented which
is roofed with domes rising
from a terrace, and these
domes are of the same form
and have similar cowls to the
modern ones just described
(fig. 16). The domes represented on the
Assyrian slabs, about 1000 years earlier, are
again identical except that they rise higher
and are of greater importance. Alexandria
was built over so many water cisterns that
old travellers tell us that there was a sub-
terranean city beneath the other
one. These cisterns must for
the most part have been vaulted,
like the great cisterns of the
fourth and later centuries at
Constantinople. Prof. Baldwin
Brown, some years ago, called
attention to a passage in a Latin
author, written about 50 B.C., to the following
effect: 'Alexandria is almost entirely safe
from conflagration, because the houses are put
together without any floorings or timber,
and are constructed with vaults, and covered
over with concrete or stone slabs. . • .
^is^i
[j
jfj^^rtanrsr
Fig. 16.

110 ARCHITECTURE
Alexandria is almost completely hollowed
out below ground, and is built over cisterns
communicating with the Nile." Still another
proof of the use of the dome in Hellenistic
times is furnished by the fact that the earliest
cupola known in Europe, the remains of which
exist over a bath at Pompeii, is of the tall,
conical form which seems to have been
traditional in the East, and Pompeii was a
non-Roman city which derived its artistic
impulses from Alexandria.
The perfect arch of masonry, made up of
separate wedges of stone, had been known
in Egypt as early as the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty (sixth century), and doubtless Egypt
was the centre of its distribution. At Per-
gamon, in Asia Minor, evidence of an early
stone vault of Hellenistic time has been
found. Arches have lately been discovered
at the Pirseus, and it seems certain that
they were in general use in the Hellenistic
world before they were introduced to Italy.
In the Ashmolean Museum there is the model
of a late Greek tomb at Cuma which has an
arched doorway (c. 400). Even the pointed
form of arch seems to have been taken over
from early brick construction. Fig. 17 shows
a gateway in the walls of Masada, a strong-
hold by the Dead Sea built by Herod.
The forms of vaults and domes furnish
some indications of architectural heredity.

The early Eastern arch of brick was a tall
semi-ellipse rising gradually from the walls
and turning rapidly at the top. This is a
much more stable form than the semicircular
arch, and could, in many cases at least, be
constructed without any centering. When
we become accustomed to it, it is seen to
be the most beautiful form of arch, for it is
the most perfect and scientific. A difficulty
must have arisen in trans-
lating this form into wrought
stone, for every stone would
have to be cut into a different
form for its place in the
curve. If, however, the curve
is made circular the stone
wedges may all be made
alike. The same is true of
the pointed arch (which arose
as another solution of the
same problem), except that a special stone or
stones have to be worked for the apex.
The arch form at first introduced and loii£
used in Italy must have been the semi-
circular arch of cut masonry. So it was that
the semicircular became the standard form
even for concrete and brick arches when a
new method of construction was brought in.
Roman domes were also built of this profile,
and the tall egg-shaped dome of the East,
which shows prominently on the exterior,
Fig. 17.

112 ARCHITECTURE
was never adopted in Rome. The dome was
brought to the West as a factor of bath-build-
ing. The hot bath was built as a sort of kiln
or oven, and the only domes mentioned by
Vitruvius (who wrote near the beginning of
the first century) are those required for the
hot chambers of the baths. The ruined
cupola of the bath at Pompeii, mentioned
above, was a concreted shell of rubble, very
conical, just the shape of modern domes in
western Asia. (See Miss Jebb's Desert Ways
to Baghdad for a group at Harran which con-
tinue to this day the form of those shown
on the Assyrian monuments.)
Rising from a circular chamber, there was
no difficulty in springing the bath dome from
the walls, but complications arose at the
angles when the dome was applied to a
polygon or a square. We have seen that the
Egyptians had already dealt with this pro-
blem (p. 58). At Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli
there are some approximations to " penden-
tives." Over the octagonal chambers of
the Baths of Caracalla I have seen an inter-
esting solution made by gradually approxi-
mating the octagon to the circle in successive
courses by making the angle more and more
blunt and then rounded, and thus a kind of
intersecting pendentive is formed which makes
the transition easily and is, indeed, a per-
fect solution. At the so-called " Temple of

Minerva Medica " ifc looks (from below) as if
the base of the dome proper were set back
for some little distance over the sides of the
polygon, and thus little projection is required
at the angles, and the transition is slurred
over in the plastering, Here the cornice was
level, and this was probably the case at the
Baths of Caracalla, too—that is, the idea of
the dome with its surface running on into the
angles forming continuous pendentives was
not accepted and the transition was disguised.
In one or two small tombs of the third or
fourth century the dome with regular con-
tinuous pendentives seems to have been
reached in Rome. These pendentives are
the portions of a domical surface which run
on continuously into the angles of a square
or octagonal chamber, forming four or eight
hollowed triangles.
Besides Alexandria, Ephesus (now being
explored by an Austrian expedition), Per-
gamon and many other cities were important
centres of Hellenistic art. At Seleukeia on
the Tigris, built about 300 B.C., the Hellenistic
architects must have come in contact with,
and have absorbed, many of the structural
traditions of Mesopotamia.
In the Hellenistic cities of the East civic
and monumental architecture turned very
soon towards the big and the strange, away
from the proper classical idea of measured
H

114 ARCHITECTURE
perfection. The temple of Ephesus was
rebuilt on an enormous scale in the middle
of the fourth century B.C. It was raised on
a high platform of spreading steps, and the
great columns, nineteen feet in circumference,
were sculptured around the bottom drums.
About the same time the great tomb of Mau-
solus was built at Halicarnassus, which was
to give the name Mausoleum to a whole class
of later structures. Lucian describes it as
" a tomb immense, such that never dead had
a more splendid." It was about 100 x 80 feet
in size. There was a high basement sur-
rounded by the beautiful sculptured frieze
now in the British Museum, then an Ionic
colonnade surmounted above by a pyramid
of steps with a great chariot group at the
apex. At Pergamon the giant altar of Zeus
was erected, the high sculptured basis of which,
in an over-ornate style, is now at Berlin.
Splendid stone theatres had been built in
Greece at the end of the great period. Soon
every Hellenistic city of the East had such a
theatre. The amphitheatre appears to be
a Hellenistic invention. The earliest-known
example is at Pompeii. City colonnades,
baths, and palaces were all developed in
Eastern Hellenistic cities before they appeared
in Rome. So also were the methods of decor-
ation like the use of coloured marbles and
the encrustation of walls with thin slabs,

The apse, which became such a favourite
power in Roman architecture, must be of
Eastern origin, for the half-dome must come
from the land of domes. It appears to have
been known to the Greeks. Michaelis says
that a marble temple of the third century at
Samothrace " anticipates in a singular man-
ner, with its raised choir and rounded apse,
the ground plan of the Christian basilica."
A temple dating back to the sixth century
has been found at Thebes of which " only the
apse remained, recalling the one at Samo-
thrace." Recently some foundations have
been uncovered at Sparta of a very early
age which are said to have had " rude apses,"
whatever that may mean.
To the Hellenistic age we also owe the large
circular type of buildings like the Philippion
at Olympia and the Tholos at Samothrace.
The Pharos at Alexandria, the great light-
house built about 280 B.C., almost appears
to have been the parent of all high and iso-
lated towers. It rose to a great height, of
a square form slightly battered, then there
was a tall octagonal stage, and again a round
one ; on the apex was a statue. Even on the
coast of Britain, at Dover, we had a Pharos
which was in some degree an imitation of
the Alexandrian one. It was a tall octagonal
tower. About thirty feet of it still exist.
The Pharos at Boulogne was as important

11G ARCHITECTURE
as any after that at Alexandria. The round
towers of Ravenna were doubtless inspired
by some of these lighthouses, even if they
were not light-towers themselves. The other
round towers of Europe, as far away as Ire-
land, derive from Ravenna. The Pharos at
Alexandria was repaired by Ibn Tulun, and
it had as great an effect as the prototype of
Eastern minarets as it had for Western
towers.
An aqueduct on arches seems to be indi-
cated on one of the Assyrian slabs in the
British Museum ; from some such source, and
from the great cisterns of Alexandria, into
which the waters of the Nile were brought
at the annual inundation, the Romans
doubtless derived the idea for their wonderful
system of water-supply.
Rome entered into the traditions of this
IleJlenistic art; in fact, Roman art was
one of its branches. A few years ago it was
thought that a gulf separated Greek from
Roman art and the latter was said to derive
in the main from the Etruscans. Now
little is left to the Etruscans as originators,
although they probably first adopted the
Greek traditions and handed them on to the
Romans. For this view see Mr. Frothing-
ham's Roman- Cities. Prof, Pais, an Italian
writer, not only shows the debt of Rome
to Greece in art, especially through the

influence of Syracuse, which had commer-
cial stations at Ischia and elsewhere on the
Italian coast, but he attributes so much to
early Greek influence in other fields that there
is hardly any room left for Etruscan models.
In Sicily and the south of the mainland there
were magnificent schools of Greek archi-
tecture in the rich colonies which had been
founded at an early time, and which competed
in culture with Athens itself. Psestum, not
far from Naples, had a splendid group of
Greek temples such as cannot be matched
anywhere in the mother-country. At Pompeii
the early temple was Greek. In 1896 a temple
found at Conca, . near Antium, was built
in the Greek form about 500 B.C. In the
British Museum is a magnificent specimen
of the ornamental tilework which cased the
temple roof at Lanuvium not far from Rome.
It is Greek in stjde and is obviously an offshoot
of the terra-cotta casings such as have been
found at Olympia, in Sicily, and in South
Italy. The small and late Roman terra-cotta
friezes derived from this type of decoration.
There must have been native traditions
in the background and customs which modified
the plans of temples and dwellings, but the
ideal of architectural expression in early
Italy was Grecian. The Etruscans of Central
Italy imported large quantities of Greek
vases from early times, so much so that the

118 ARCHITECTURE
vases, as a whole, came to be called Etruscan
by those who first discovered them. A large
number of fine Greek bronzes have also
been found in Italy. At the same time the
early dates once assigned to some examples
of masonry with arches in Central Italy, and
called Etruscan, have had to be withdrawn.
The famous vaulted drain, the Cloaca Maxima
in Rome, for instance, it has been shown,
cannot be earlier than the Republican period.
The arch of masonry was probably in general
use in Italy from the fourth century B.C.
Roman art is a form of Hellenistic art im-
posed on a background which was mostly
of Greek origin. Observers of a generation
ago remarking the conflict in mature Roman
architecture between arched construction and
a superficial application of columns and
entablatures, supposed that the arch was
indigenous, and that the orders, taken over
from the Greeks, were violently imposed on
a native style. Exactly the opposite of this
is true. The Greek ideals, as has been shown,
had long been traditional when arch, vault,
and dome were brought in by the Hellenistic
tide. At the time of Roman expansion the
current architecture, having great demands
made on it, could not throw off the old wrap-
pings quickly enough; they were, in fact,
burst by the new engineering spirit, but
vestiges of the old features remained as super-

ficial adornments. This newer and truer
view goes very far to relieve Roman archi-
tecture of the unfavourable criticism which
has been passed upon it. It was not, that is,
primarily a system of arched construction
which at a later time smothered itself under
borrowed bedizenments ; but it was a phase
of Hellenistic art, the result of a transition
from the more primitive to the later type
of building.
What may have been Rome's own contri-
bution to architecture, either in forms or
methods of construction, is almost impossible
to determine. It must, however, be certain
that from the first or second century a.d.,
Rome, having absorbed all that she required,
distanced other competitors. In her monu-
ments, as in her power, she became the mis-
tress city of the world, and drew all famous
artists to her service. I can here only en-
deavour to give some idea of the methods of
Roman construction, of schemes of planning,
and of processes of decoration, as we are
concerned with principles rather than with
individual monuments.
Sun-dried bricks had been the common
building material in Rome from an early
time. The bricks described by Vitruvius are
of this sort. Burnt bricks did not come into
general use until about the second century.
They had been used by the Greeks at the

120 ARCHITECTURE
palace of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and at
the Philippion at Olympia, This material
was probably an importation from the East.
Stone, of course, had always been em-
ployed, both in rubble work and fair wrought
masonry. In the mature Roman style wrought
masonry seems to have been demanded
only for the great monuments, triumphal
arches, theatres, temples, and above all
for the Coliseum. Even the largest domestic
and civil buildings were of plastered brick-
work. It may come as a shock to many
that the greatest buildings of Rome, the
vast Thermae, the palaces of the Palatine,
and even the Pantheon itself, were plastered
externally. In this class of building there
were usually simple stone cornices consisting
of a moulded capping-course on projecting
blocks, the angle one being set in diagonally
;
and the plastered walls were finished with
sunk grooves at intervals dividing the surface
into blocks. At the Pantheon one of the
tiers had pilasters of very slight projection,
which seem all to have been wrought in the
plaster. Portions of the external surfaces
of the baths were finished with mosaics, and
frequently a high plinth, or external dado,
was cased with marble slabs.
The most typical Roman construction was
in concrete, or concreted rubble. It was either
cast into a mould between timbering, or it

was aggregated more like rubble masonry.
In the latter case the stones were still quite
small, so that they were thoroughly drowned
in the cement. To retain this fluid mass
thin surfaces of stone or of brickwork were
raised on each face of the walls, which were
usually of great thickness. It has been said
that such skins would not resist the fluid
pressure of the internal concrete, but it is
easy to answer that they could have been
aided by backing-up gradually on the inside
of the external surfaces (which would be only
raised a foot or two at a time) before the rest
of the wet mass was put in. The Pozzolana
cement used by the Romans had a high bind-
ing power and made a perfect concrete. In
the finer, earlier work of this class the
surfaces of the walls, or rather their skins,
were formed of little squares of stones
roughly about four inches on the face, and
diminishing at the back, so that they held
like nails in the concrete of the mass which
ran into the interspaces. These stones were
set diagonally, the joints forming a network.
It must have been thought that it was easier
to keep the lines in this way, or that the stones
settled down better. In any case there was
no idea of bond, it was simply the application
of a coat of mail to the concrete. When
burnt brick came to be used with concrete
construction, some layers of large, flat tiles
—

122 ARCHITECTURE
they were about eighteen inches square—were
bedded through the walls at every three or
four feet. These layers not only bound the
external and internal skins together, but they
locked up the moisture in the concrete stage
by stage. For if it were too quickly absorbed
into the part already built, or dried out by
the hot sun, the mass would not set properly.
When, still later, the vertical casings were
also of brick it was the custom to form these
in what seems at first a very curious way ; but
it was one which a little examination shows
to have been most simple and practical.
The flat bricks, or tiles, were broken diagonally
into four triangles, and these were set with
the long sides outwards and the points
towards the centre of the wall. Thus the
indented bricks adhered perfectly to the
concrete, which ran into all the interstices, and
there was no need for any other bond. The
triangular bricks were evidently an adapta-
tion of the pointed stones. Vaults and domes
were formed as continuous shells, and were
built in rubble work, in level courses finished
with tiled layers, but without the skins.
They were erected on boarded centrings, but
as the mass brought up from the walls was
homogeneous with them, and as each stratum
must have been set before the next was put
in, the centres did not require to be of great
strength, they were rather a mould than a

support. Sometimes this centring was paved
all over, as it were, with flat tiles which
adhered to the finished vault. Beside the
horizontal layers of brick in these vaults,
roughly built strips of brick running in the
opposite direction usually appear in the vault
surfaces, breaking them up into compart-
ments. They are usually too slight and too
irregular to have much value per se, and
Choisy is, I think, mistaken in regarding
them as ribs. Rather, it seems likely, they
were introduced as hard cores around which
the concrete might set. In any case they
broke up the great viscid mass, and the whole
formed a sort of " armoured concrete." The
great dome of the Pantheon is wholly, or
largely, built of large flat bricks set in level
courses. In some of the large vaults of the
baths rough pottery vases—old wine-jars
—
are embedded. Being round they are very
strong, and, building with such hollow cells,
of course, lightened the structure.
At a late time, probably the third or fourth
century, some vaults were formed of parallel
rows of socketed drain-pipes set up end to
end in the arch form. This custom is found
in North Africa, and the apse vault of the
ancient cathedral of Ravenna was built so
in the fourth or fifth century ; while the dome
of San Vitale, built in the same city in the
sixth century, is formed of layers of pipes

124 ARCHITECTURE
passing in continuous spirals from the base
to the crown of the dome, which shows, as
Rivoira has pointed out, a continuity of the
Roman system. The pipes were embedded
in concrete into one uniform mass.
Roman vaults and domes were banked up
very much at the springing, so that they
showed little to the exterior. The vaults
were usually covered with additional tiled
roofing. Our first idea of the dome is likely
to be that it was invented as a magnificent
architectural feature for the sake of external
dignity, and that it was constructed as a
hollow half-globe of fitted masonry. This
was not the case. Such domes as have been
built of masonry are but playthings. The
great domes were shells of concrete or brick,
covered outside by a sheeting of copper or
lead, or they were plastered over, or protected
by an additional tiled roof. The dome during
the Roman age seems hardly to have been
thought of as a form appearing externally. It
had originated in mud coverings to granaries,
and such humble structures ; and when it was
found convenient to construct it over large
circular buildings only the internal hollow
was considered. The outside was banked up
with abutment to resist spreading to such
a degree that only a flat segment of the
dome showed even at the Pantheon, and
not that in any near view. The construction

of higher cupolas which should dominate
the exteriors of buildings was developed in
Byzantine and Eastern schools, and then
taken over into the Renaissance. The Roman
builders were great and daring constructors,
who applied vaulting under all sorts of con-
ditions in a perfectly free way. One of the
most curious applications wT
as the use of big
conches, or half-domes, over external hemi-
cycles. The builders supported vaults above
colonnades and bent them around circular
ambulatories; they inclined
them at an angle, and inter- &*$*
penetrated two vaults at z**"*® «rr,
x
right angles, forming thus { & € j
the groined vault—a form j£3$|p* v*^*^
that appeared as early as j^^ 44^4
c. 75 B.C. in the Tabularium fig.*18.
in Rome. Domes and conches
were hollowed into gores forming vaults of
a melon shape; others sprang in quadrant
conoids from the four corners of a chamber
something like the general form of the late
English fan-vaulting.
Timber-work was highly developed in roof
trusses of wide span, and the military bridge
represented on the Trajan Column had
big laminated arched-beams. The principle
of trussing seems to have been a Roman
invention.
In their ambitious and complicated struc-

126 ARCHITECTURE
tures the Roman architects seem to have
exhausted all the resources of the art of
planning. It became absolutely emancipated
from precedent, and was pursued as research
into the possibilities of form and combination.
The most accomplished modern French
masters of arrangement can do no more than
recombine Roman elements. All sorts of
types were explored as well for the single
cells as for complex aggregations. Squares,
oblongs, crosses, circles, ellipses, polygons,
sigmas, hemicycles and foiled forms were taken
as bases ; they were modi-
fied by annexes, recesses,
niches, apses. These ele-
ments were then co-ordin-
ated axially, bi-laterally,
Fig. 19. an(j radiating from a
centre. Fig. 18 is the plan of a building in
Rome known as the Temple of Minerva
Medica; Fig. 19 shows two tombs.
All kinds of expedients were adopted foi
continuing vistas, suggesting symmetry and
masking irregularities, both in single build-
ings and in the laying out of cities. An
admirable example of this power is shown
in the laying out of the great colonnaded
street of the city of Gerash. The conditions
of the problem necessitated a decided change
of angle in its course. At the elbow a vast
circular place was constructed around which

the colonnade was continued in a circle, thus
gaining an additional beauty while veiling
the deflection. The architectural display in
the imperial fora in Rome is too magnificent
and complicated to suggest by descriptions.
The best view of this wonderful subject will
be gained by a study of Lanciani's restored
plan of Ancient Rome, Forma Urbis Rornac.
Along with their ability to organize groups
of complicated structures the Roman planners
had the power of rising to a great simplicity.
The Pantheon and the
Basilica of Constantine
are the greatest single
cells ever erected. The
Pantheon, built by Had-
rian, is a superb domed
rotunda about 140 feet
in diameter and as high.
It is surrounded by a wall mass 20 feet
in thickness in which a series of square
and apsidal recesses are, as it were, ex-
cavated, thus considerably increasing the
total diameter. Light is only admitted by an
opening 30 feet across at the zenith of the
dome into this immense reservoir of air,
through which the broad shaft of sunlight
pours and the rain falls upon the porphyry
and marble of the floor (fig. 20). The walls
are encrusted with fine marbles. It is the last
word in the development from the primitive
Fig. 20.

128 ARCHITECTURE
hut into which light entered by the same
opening from which the smoke escaped.
Probably at the Pantheon also there was
an altar of incense at the centre from which
a wavering column of smoke arose.
The Basilica of Constantine is a mighty
hall of three vaulted bays. It is possible
to group three units together without mere
repetition, for there is a central bay with two
lateral supports. The high vault is borne
by very large piers, the spaces between which
are open to the central area like aisles to a nave.
Above the aisle vaults these dividing piers are
continued up as buttresses sloping towards
the main space. It is 266 feet long and 192
feet wide exclusive of apses. The central span
is 82 feet wide, and the vault rose to a height
of 114 feet. The vault was coffered, and the
floor was largely of red and green porphyry.
The ruin is a tremendous thing. With this
great monument, built early in the fourth
century, must be mentioned the vast vaulted
hall of the Palatine palace, and many vaulted
temples like the temple of Venus and Rome.
The vaulted halls of the baths are better
known. With the buttresses spoken of above
may be mentioned a series of far- projecting
buttresses which support the high terrace
in front of Santa Costanza, Rome.
Roman methods of decoration and surface
finish were as frank, and yet splendid, as their

methods of construction. Casings of marble
were much used either in large slabs arranged
in panels, or in opus sectile, where morsels
of coloured material are cut to shapes and
fitted together in patterns. There were also
mosaics of marble and glass. Gold mosaic
had already been introduced into late Roman
art. Evelyn describes the grotto of the
Sybil which he saw near Baiae as " about
ten paces long ; the side walls and roof retain
still the golden mosaic, though now exceed-
ingly decayed by time." Bronze was largely
used. The roof trusses of the portico of
the Pantheon were bronze, as well as its great
doors, and the exterior of the dome wr
as covered
with gilt bronze plates. Ornamental plaster-
ing was brought to an exquisite delicacy
of over-refinement. Wall-paintings of the
brightest colours were executed with the most
dexterous skill in a medium that has never
been surpassed for this purpose. But neither
the sculpture nor the painting were inspired
by any high meaning; they weary one as
mere routine decoration. All that we owe
to the Romans in architecture may hardly
be recounted. They absorbed all the tradi-
tions of antiquity and renewed them into
modern shape. Their ideal of construction
was the most perfect and generally applicable
that may be imagined. A typical Roman
building was of one piece, an artificial mono-

130 ARCHITECTURE
lith; walls, vaults, floors, are all aggregated
together in the same continuous material,
whether it contained one or many cells. This
is the method of Nature, and it is an idea
which modern architects would do well to
consider. The great architectural question
of to-day is how to build common damp-
proof walls; simple, solid floors; and, above
all, roofs better than the thin slate lids we
are accustomed to. We need neither Greek
nor Gothic, but an efficient method, and all
our preoccupations about " styles " block the
way not only to high utility but to high
expression. Much may be gathered from
the experience of Roman builders: methods
of vaulting in concrete, of building with
pots and pipes, the lining of walls with hollow
tiles, and even such humble devices as the
use of crushed brick in mortar. Vitruvius,
the vague theorist on aesthetics, gives many
valuable hints for the modern builder, as
when he tells us that plastering may be
made to adhere to brickwork which is first
coated over with limewash.
In Roman architecture the engineering
element is paramount. It was this which
broke the moulds of tradition and recast
construction into modern form, and made
it free once more. It is worthy of note that
most of the famous Roman architects were
engineers, even military engineers. Vitruvius,

who was keeper of war engines, says that
to design them fell within the province of
an architect. Trajan's favourite architect
built the great military bridge over the
Danube. In Rome architects were called
machinatores, structores, and magistri. " Archi-
tect " was a more general term which included
workmen. We have to learn from Rome to
re-identify the architect and the engineer.
With all this mechanical perfection it must
be confessed that there remains in the archi-
tectural expression of Roman works some-
thing which is not truly fine. They stand
for force, expansion, splendour, the art was
official, self-satisfied, oppressive. It gives
a voice to matter as Greece had expressed
mind. Rome was lacking in the things of
the spirit. There is little wonder—the first
early wonder at mysteries—left in Roman
art ; the dew of the morning is dried up ; it
is the great Philistine style. The architec-
ture as ever mirrors the soul of the nation.

CHAPTER VIII
EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE SCHOOLS
—
A NEW DEPARTURE
Christian thought must have criticized
current classical art long before any edifices
arose which can he called Christian archi-
tecture. At first the art customs would be
modified by way of simplification, and by
change of spirit, and only slowly would a new
corpus of secondary forms and a fresh
alphabet of ornamentation arise. In the
British Museum is an interesting sarcophagus
of the early fourth century, on which is
sculptured the story of Cupid and Psyche. It
has been counted with the late Roman
antiquities, but it is more probably early
Christian. The silver casket of Projecta be-
fore mentioned has only a few minor marks of
Christian association.
The Christians first met together in houses
and burial chapels; and special buildings for
assembly were probably built in the East
during the second century, certainly early
in the third century. The origin of the
church plan has been endlessly discussed.
132

EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 133
Some, like one of the latest writers, Professor
Lemaire, would derive it entirely from the
atrium and reception-hall of the Roman
house. Some would see other elements taken
over from the temple and the synagogue.
The most typical early church plan consisted
of a forecourt, a nave with pillars, and an
apse. This is the basilican plan. A Roman
basilica, or justice-hall, approximated to this
form, and the word Basilica <mf^.
seems to have had a general
meaning much like our word |
Hall. The civil basilica was |
anciently the public portico '
where the chief magistrates ad-
ministered justice. It was after- j ]
wards enclosed like a temple, f
"
and adapted to various uses.
One custom which is certainly
derived from temple architecture is that of
orientation, or planning the building on an
east-to-west axis. In the isle of Samothrace
a temple has been found wT
hich some writers
have called " the real prototype of the Chris-
tian basilica." Rectangular in plan, it had a
portico with an atrium in front only, and
one principal fa9ade. The interior had three
aisles, and it was closed at the end by a
regular apse, or semicircular niche. The small
temple at Baalbec had a raised " choir
"
above a crypt. Again, the early synagogues

134 ARCHITECTURE
of Palestine were divided into aisles by-
ranges of columns. A second type of church
was planned around a central point in a circle,
octagon, or cross, and derived from tombs.
A third, the cella trichora, probably originated
in burial chapels. These had simple naves,
and a cluster of three apses at the end. The
same form is found in chambers in the palace
of Diocletian at Spalato ; and a mosaic pave-
ment of the same shape was
excavated in England at
Ramsbury many years ago.
Plans of three different types
of churches are given in
Figs. 21, 22 and 23. Fig. 21
is from the foundation of a
basilican church discovered
at Gerash in Syria ; Fig. 22
is a cruciform Byzantine
church from Gortyna, Crete
;
and Fig. 23 is from a round
church at Antepellius in Asia Minor, from a
MS. drawing by Texier. All may be of the
fourth to sixth century.
In the fourth century, after the Peace of the
Church, Christian edifices were built all over
the Empire. The foundations of a small
basilican church were not long ago excavated
at Silchester, near Reading. In Rome several
churches, the chief of which was St. Peter's,
were built during the reign of Constantine,
Fig. 22.

who erected others at holy sites in Palestine.
The most perfect existing early Christian
church is that of the Holy Nativity at Bethle-
hem, built in the year 327 a.d. This is a noble
and impressive building, which stands over a
natural cave, later transformed into a crypt.
The nave has four rows of marble columns,
supporting level lintels, and the transepts, as
well as the east end, have
apses ; that is, it follows
the burial- chapel type in
this particular. The roofs
are of wood. The exterior
is of masonry, severely
plain and austere. The
interior was from the
first adorned with marble
casings, mosaics, and
gilding. In the sixth
century a mosaic of the
Nativity was applied to
the west front, above the narthex. As struc-
ture, all is direct and simple : as architectural
expression, it is serious and sweet. There is
nothing in it which is unlike late Roman art
except the total expression itself. It is the
Roman alphabet in a Christian sentence, it is
modern and universal.
Of the circular type the most perfect
example is Santa Costanza, Rome, built
c. 354. Above a ring of Ionic columns, set
Fig. 23.

136 ARCHITECTURE
in pairs, rises a central part covered by a
dome; this and the vault of the circular aisle
were encrusted with mosaics, some of which
remain. The walls were sheeted over with
thin marble and porphyry, and the drum of
the dome was covered with elaborate devices
in opus sectile, which at this time was a
favourite method of decoration. The ex-
terior of rough brick was plastered ; even the
cornice was plastered except the blocks
(dentils), which were of stone. The
dome was protected by a tiled
roof.
The church tower may be traced
back to the early Christian age, as
R. De Fleury has shown. In the
Victoria and Albert Museum there
are some ivory tablets from the
Werden Casket, which was carved
about 400 a.d. On it appears a church, as a
symbol of Jerusalem, and this church has two
high round towers attached to it; the whole
looks like a Romanesque church of the twelfth
century (fig. 24). There is a somewhat
similar representation on a panel of the beauti-
ful doors of Santa Sabina, Rome, carved
about 500.
A great number of ruined churches of the
fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries exist in Syria
and Asia Minor. In these a return to con-
sider again the first needs of construction is

very marked. All redundance has disap-
peared, and yet all is workmanlike and fit.
The fronts of some of the houses associated
with these churches are made up of a series
of square monolith posts to every floor linked
by big square beams, all of stone. Not-
withstanding the great refusal of ornament
the result is civilized, clear, and in a way
elegant.
In the East, under the sun of Syria and
Egypt, " detail " had been changing, even in
late classical days. At Baalbec and Palmyra
there was a tendency for the customary
modelled carving to
be translated into
two planes, so that
foliage on one general
surface was sharply Fig. 25.
defined on a dark
background. In time this sort of carving
became a continuous fretwork, undercut and
relieved from the ground except for some
attachments here and there. At Bethlehem
the Corinthian capitals of the interior are
very much simplified from their classical
prototypes ; they are rather shaped blocks of
stone with added carving than sculptures of
modelled foliage in high relief. Fig. 25 shows
carving of this type from a church in Asia
Minor.
In the late Roman or Hellenistic buildings

138 ARCHITECTURE
of the East many characteristics are found
which later became general in Byzantine and
Romanesque architecture. Arches sprang
directly from columns without the intervention
of an entablature. Or the entablature was
bent over an arch and thus formed the germ of
all deeply moulded arches. Windows had
arched heads, the " horizontal arch " and
joggled lintel are known, and the bracket, or
console, was frequently used. All or most of
these features are found in the vast palace
which Diocletian built at Spalato. Here is also
a long wall-arcade of small scale and a carved
roll-moulding around a door. These new and
usually simplified methods were adopted by
early Christian builders.
Soon a further change became apparent
which was to transform early Christian into
Byzantine art. This name was taken from
Byzantium, or Constantinople, the capital of
the Eastern Empire from 330, and in the
sixth century the vital centre of the arts.
The simplest mark of the Byzantine style is
to be found in the substitution of the domed
and vaulted church for the wood-roofed
basilica. This change probably had its origin
in Christian Egypt, where domical roofing
seems to have been indigenous, and where
from time to time it would be applied to new
purposes. Of late years it has become more
and more apparent that much of early Chris-

tian art, iconography, symbol and decoration
must have come out of Egj^pt.
In recent times a large number of carved
fragments of Christian churches have been
found in Egypt, including many capitals.
These so resemble the beautiful marble
capitals which are found in Santa Sophia and
other great Byzantine churches that there is
quite obviously some connection between
them. They are of fine white limestone;
although they cannot be dated with cer-
tainty they are often assigned to the fifth
century. In this case they must be the proto-
types of the noble Constantinopolitan capitals.
This is probably the fact, for, although some
are of inferior workmanship, others are of
great beauty, and most of them seem to be
bright, original work and not degraded copies.
Further, this type of capital appears suddenly
full-blown at Constantinople. Byzantine
capitals fall into several well-defined " orders."
There is a bowl-capital covered with fretted
carving, a poor example of which has recently
been brought to the British Museum from
Egypt. Another small bowl-capital decorated
with palm branches, which seems to be a
prototype of those in Santa Sophia, was
sent to England by Prof. Petrie in 1911, and
is now also in the British Museum.
A capital has been recently brought from
Egypt, and added to the Berlin collection,

140 ARCHITECTURE
which is of the greatest importance for the
history of Byzantine art. It is of the bowl
type—of limestone, and quite small. The
workmanship is exquisite, sharp and delicate
beyond any example to be found in Con-
stantinople; it is covered by a network of
foliage detached from the ground by under-
cutting. This capital must have originated
at the centre of inspiration for Byzantine
carving. Another limestone capital of the
..-.., ~ .... bowl type at Berlin,
| where for long they
have earnestly col-
lected specimens of
Byzantine art, is
carved with foliage
of the kind shown
in the frontispiece.
This is a capital at
St. Mark's, Venice ; it bears the monogram of
Justinian, and was probably brought from
Constantinople. But the capital at Berlin and
several other carved stones show that the
curious large-veined leaf was of Coptic origin.
Another class is formed by the basket capitals
which are carved into interlacing bands (fig.
27). The most splendid type of basket
capitals is that which has a panel on each
side containing a sort of a lily, and hence
called the " lily capital " by Ruskin (fig.
26). The lily panel looks more like Coptic
Fig. 26.

W
work than anything else. Several varieties of
basket capital have been found of Egyptian
limestone, but this particular kind of capital,
although examples are in the Cairo Museum,
is always, I believe, of marble. There is an
excellent basket capital of limestone in the
Turin Museum, and there are two or three
small ones in the Berlin Museum. Another
variety is the melon form, a variety of the
bowl class, which,
instead of being cir-
|u^^^
cular under the abacus, %:,^^#'|^%
spreads into an eight- h^%&mM'df?£i
foiled form. A very
fine example of this
is now in the Cairo
Museum ; it has foliage
of the fig-leaf kind
shown in frontispiece,
which, as said above,
is Coptic, but the material is marble. Alto-
gether there is already a great probability
that the school of carving which developed
the noble Byzantine orders was transferred
to Constantinople from Egypt — probably
Alexandria —by Justinian. Prototypes for
some of the decorative ideas can be found
in Hellenistic art—thus the " wind-blown
acanthus," the decorative unit of another
type of capital ; basket work on capitals
;
and animals or birds under the corners of
Fig. 27.

142 ARCHITECTURE
the abacus have been found in Hellenistic
works.
Recently, at El Bagawat in a great oasis,
some ruins of a large cemetery have been
explored. It is so extensive that it has been
called the Christian Pompeii. Probably there
are nearly two hundred burial chapels, a
large number of which have cupolas, many
of which rise from pendentives continuous
with the dome surface, the typical early
Byzantine form. From what has been said
above (p. 108) there is every reason to think
that the building of domes on pendentives
was an old Egyptian custom. The few details
of these chapels show features derived from
ancient Egyptian and Hellenistic sources
;
they are probably not later than the fifth
century. The interiors were decorated by
paintings, much in the style of the Cata-
combs. Another conception of the dome
over a square is shown in some Egyptian
ruins where the vaulting is brought away
from the angles like four half-cones. The
Persian squinch is a modification of this
treatment.
It would be a mistake to try to trace back
all Christian art-origins to Egypt; but, as
the claims of Asia Minor, Syria, and Meso-
potamia have been urged, it is well to point
out that, so far as extant evidence goes, the
claims of the Egyptian school to have led in

the change from Classical to Christian Art
greatly preponderate.
All the remains of Christian buildings in
Egypt have never yet been adequately studied.
A great number of ruined vaulted structures
exist which make it very probable that many
of the constructive methods which character-
ized Byzantine art were taken over from
Egypt. At the Convent of St. Simeon at
Assouan, there are some fine early brick
vaults of a semi-elliptical
form, that is, higher than the
semicircle. Against the main
span are smaller parallel
vaults which bring the work
up to a level terrace. The
great vault at Ctesiphon, in Fio 28.
Persia, and others described
by Miss Bell , at Ukheithar, are so similar to these
Coptic vaults that there must be a common
tradition. It is recorded that Justinian sent
the Persian king, Chosroes, workmen to build
his palace at Ctesiphon; if it be true they
may have gone from Egypt. There must
have been vaulted basilican churches in
Egypt from quite early days. Foundations of
basilicas which had vaulted side aisles have
been found in North Africa. Byzantine
vaults were built in thin bricks set up on edge,
that is par tranches stuck to the part already
done in inclining courses, like the old Egyptian

144 ARCHITECTURE
and Assyrian vaults (fig. 12). In this way
they were built without centring. Covel de-
scribes how, about 1670, domes were still built
without centring.
It was said a score of years ago that there
were probably three hundred ruined churches
in Syria. Some are still nearly complete
—
" the stone white and clean; the eye instinc-
tively looks for workmen, uncertain for a
moment whether they are churches in course
of construction or ruins." All is of wrought
stone, the doors, roofs, and windows of stone
slabs. In the buildings of Syria and Asia
Minor several new methods and ideas were
brought into architecture. Windows with
arched heads are gathered in groups and a
circular light is at times associated with them.
Two round-headed lights with a circular eye
just above were often used in the gable end of
a church. Moulded courses were frequently
set on the walls, especially under rows of
windows; they were made to ramp to other
levels or to bend over windows—that is, they
became string mouldings and edge mouldings.
Corbel tables were in use and a scalloped or
lobed member was introduced over arches.
The ultimate source of this last was the edge
of the scallop shell, which so frequently filled
the hollowed crowns of niches in late Roman
work. This is very important, for through
this adaptation the Roman scallop was the

origin of Gothic cusping. The lobed arch
member is found at Qalb-Louzeh in Syria. It
appears on the great front arch of the Persian
palace at Ctesiphon. At the palace of
Ukheithar the lobed arch becomes quite a
Gothic form, as only a few large lobes were
applied to a pointed arch (fig. 29, I). Hence
the lobed arch passed to the Arabs and Moors,
Fig. 30.
then it was taken up by the Romanesque
builders of South France, and became the
parent form of the great family of cusped
Gothic arches. There is a difference between
what I call the lobed arch and the cusped
arch : in the former the series of scallops are
complete, in the latter there is only a quadrant
or half a foil at the bottom.
The widest difference between ancient and
mediaeval architectures is that one reposes,
the other strives. In mediaeval art features

146 ARCHITECTURE
are grouped, parts are subordinated one to
another, jambs and arches are formed into a
series of recesses. Already, in early Byzantine
and Syrian works, the new idea is seen in
operation, the colonnade of the atrium of
Santa Sophia was cast into groups of three
pillars between square piers. A very remark-
able example of group-
ing and subordination
is found in the recently
discovered church at
Sergiopolis built by
Justinian (fig. 30). The
nave is divided from
the aisles by three
bays formed by big
piers of a cross plan,
and the spaces between
have columns, one in
the middle and two set
against the piers. From
these rise two little
arches, under the main arch which passes
from pier to pier. It might be a Romanesque
work of the twelfth century, but it is of the
sixth century (fig. 31).
Another church in the same city had the
remarkable plan shown in Fig. 32. The west
front of a church built at Nicaea in the first
half of the ninth century has doors with a
series of recessed jambs and arches. An old
Fig. 31.

sketch of a church at Daulis, near Panopaeia
in Asia Minor, shows a barrel vault supported
by a series of transverse arches or ribs rising
from wall piers or imposts (see Fig. 33).
Ribbed vaulting later became important.
The buildings of Syria and Asia Minor are
for the most part of stone, yet the arches of
important churches of the sixth century have
the blunt-pointed form proper to the Egyptian
brick arches, from which they must have been
Fig. 32. Fig. 33.
derived. A group of churches explored a few
years ago at Bin Bir Kilissi in Asia Minor
were assigned an early date by Strzygowski,
but Sir W. Ramsay showed that they were
more probably not earlier than the ninth
century. Some of these were basilican
churches with barrel vaults. Dr. Dawkins
has recently published a vaulted church from
Skyros, which is of the same type, and confirms
the later estimate of age.
There were doubtless some Persian gifts in

148 ARCHITECTURE
early Byzantine art, as silk patterns and cloi-
sonni enamelling, but the architectural in-
fluence was mostly in the opposite direction.
As early Christian art matured over a wide
area several varieties were formed. The best
known was the school of Constantinople in
the age of Justinian, but there were other
schools in Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, which are
gradually being made known to us. It would
be well to keep the term " Byzantine " for the
school of Constantinople and to use some
such word as " Hellenesque " for the whole
group.
Of recent years an acute Byzantine question
has been discussed, which is : What part had
the East in the transformation of architecture
which led up to the Middle Ages, and what
part had Rome ? My own impression is that
a distinction will have to be made between
Byzantine architecture as a method of building
and the same as expressing thought and feeling
through building. There is not much in the
structural system which was not Roman—the
wider Rome of the Empire—although the ex-
pressional results differed so obviously from
that of classical art. Building in brick, the
erection of domes, the encrusting of surfaces
with marble and gilt glass were all Eastern
inventions, but they had all been adopted
into " Roman " art, which passed them on
to Byzantium. In a sense Byzantine art in

Eastern cities inherited such building customs
directly, but yet Rome had intervened, and
we cannot say what would have become of
Hellenistic art without this intervention, or
how much had been brought about by Roman
organization and been stimulated by Roman
patronage.
Late Hellenistic architecture must be con-
sidered Roman to the extent that it had been
absorbed into the Empire, and the Byzantine
structural system derives in the main from
late Hellenistic sources. The spirit, however,
was of the East—Christian, Jewish, Egyptian,
Persian, Greek. There are certainly some
important differences between the building
forms used in Rome itself and Byzantine
customs ; the conception of a roof as a terrace
through which groups of domes emerge from
the interior, seems to be entirely Oriental, and
this was the ruling conception in Byzantine
vault systems. One of the first great churches
at Constantinople, built during the reign of
Justinian, was that dedicated under the invo-
cation of the Holy Apostles. It was cruciform
and was covered by a group of five domes
Such grouping of domes was unknown in
Rome ; it derives from sources such as those
shown in Figs. 13 and 16. It is said that
the Apostles' church was copied from a church
at Ephesus.
In the glorious Church of Santa Sophia at?

150 ARCHITECTURE
Constantinople, built by Justinian from 537,
the great central cupola is surrounded by
lower semi-domes and domes of various sizes,
which heave up one above another like a clus-
ter of bubbles. This Church of Santa Sophia
is one of the great things of all time. It is
very large, yet it is a unit, not an aggregation
of many parts. The central area, over one
hundred feet square, is extended to the east
and the west by great semicircles, which
increase the length of the central hall to over
two hundred. From these hemicycles smaller
apses break out, and along each side of the
central area there are vast aisles supporting
galleries. The size is gigantic, the more so as
Bvzantine churches are small, with this one
exception. The scale and main divisions agree
so closely with the Basilica of Constantine at
Rome, that I think that building must have
been taken as a model of size. We are told
that the architect Anthemius had a brother in
Old Rome. The arches of the interior are
supported on magnificent columns of porphyry
and verde antico marble, the walls are all
plated with a veneering of choice alabaster,
porphyry and marble, and the domes and
vaults wT
ere covered with a vast area of gold-
ground mosaics. The window and door frames
are of marble, the doors of gilt bronze. The
iconostasis and other fittings of the interior
were of silver. The altar was enamelled gold.

After the age of Justinian, the sixth century,
Byzantine art quickly declined in power. The
time of the dispute about images (726-842)
forms an interval between the primary style
and a second age, which began to emerge in
the ninth century and culminated from the
tenth to the twelfth. It continued to exert
itself through the later Middle Ages, and its
traditions are not yet wholly forgotten in the
lands of the Greek Church. To the classical
age of Byzantine art we may set the limits
450 to 850; to the second school 850-1200;
late Byzantine art we may date from 1200
to, say, 1800. During the early Middle Ages
it had great influence on western Europe.
Our William of Malmesbury knew of Santa
Sophia, as " surpassing every edifice in the
world." The second school of Byzantine art
was largely influenced by the Persian ; it be-
came much more rigid and gloomy ; classical
liberality and grace were forgotten in a darker
expression of Byzantinism, although in the
paintings of MSS. an attempt was made to
return to earlier ideals. The churches of this
time were small, and they mostly conformed
to one type of plan.
If a square space is divided into three in
both directions; if at the intersections piers
are built and a dome is set over the central
square while the other compartments are
covered with other domes and vaults variously

152 ARCHITECTURE
disposed ; and if, further, a long porch extend-
ing across the front of the square is added—we
obtain an approximation to the typical church
plan of this time, Usually the central space
was larger than the rest, frequently it was
made octagonal, the dome rising from eight
piers. The small domes of these churches
are often raised on " drums " containing
windows, they have almost become small
octagonal towers.
The strong Eastern influence at work on
later Byzantine architecture is shown by the
fashion of carving bands of stone and of setting
panels of brickwork to imitate Cufic writing.
External brickwork was often arranged in
patterns, a custom which seems to have been
derived from Persia, where most elaborate
arrangements were made in laying the bricks.
Even some Persian domes were built with
chevron patterns on the exterior.
Byzantine builders frequently used the
pointed arch, even in the classical age of the
style. At Kasr ibn Wardan, Asia Minor,
built in 564, the arches and vaults are of
pointed form. The general evolution of the
Byzantine dome was from a hemispherical
shape at Santa Sophia to a tower-like form,
obtained by lifting the cupola proper above a
" drum " pierced with windows. The ques-
tion of the association of windows with the
dome raises some curious points.

The first dome of Santa Sophia, Constanti-
nople, fell, and was rebuilt to a higher curve a
few years after the church was consecrated ; it
fell again in 989 and was again rebuilt. Even
the first work must have had a series of windows
pierced in it above the pendentives. Proco-
pius speaks of the " small openings left at
intervals for the light to come through," and
doubtless they were exactly similar to those
still existing in the semi-domes over the
apses and the hemicycles. In these the
domical surface is continuous from the walls
;
and there is no break in the curve at the
window zone as in the present dome—a result
of later heightening. The idea of putting a
drum to contain windows between the penden-
tives and the cupola may have arisen from
the break in the spherical surface made at
rebuilding the dome of Santa Sophia. At
Kasr ibn Wardan, built in the year after
the first restoration of the dome at Santa
Sophia, a ruined dome exists which has
eight windows, which are pierced alternately
in the pendentives and in the lunettes of wall
between them. The pendentives are of a
curious form, they are not continuations
of the domical surface, but each horizontal
section is a quadrant, so there is no distinct
line of penetration with the walls. The dome
of Santa Sophia at Salonica follows the same
type with modifications; and this becomes

154 ARCHITECTURE
another reason for dating the church later than
the great cathedral of the capital. At St.
Clement's, Ancyra, probably of the seventh
century, the dome has twelve great flutings to
the interior and may have been melon-shaped
outside, but the ruins are not sufficient to
make this sure.
The most splendid and characteristic art
of the Byzantine epoch was that of the mosaic
worker, by which the upper part of the walls
and the vaults and domes were covered by
pictures in bright glittering colour on a golden
background, which fills the whole interior with
reflected lights, continually changing, accord-
ing to the hour and the point of view. Parts
of the exterior, like the gable of the west front,
were also frequently encrusted with mosaics.
At Rome, St. Peter's had its facade adorned
with a mosaic about the year 450. Such an
external mosaic exists at the sixth-century
basilica of Parenzo, near Trieste ; another of
the same age, depicting the Nativity, filled the
west front of the old basilica at Bethlehem.
The fashion was long followed in Rome, and a
beautiful late example is the mosaic of the
enthroned Madonna with the Holy Child,
and the Wise and Foolish Virgins, at S.M. in
Trastevere. In the East the Dome of the
Rock and the mosque at Damascus were
decorated in a similar way. The usual way of
finishing an interior was to line the walls with

slabs of fine marbles, often the two surfaces
revealed by a saw-cut were opened out side
by side, so that the panels showed symmetrical
markings like beast-skins. Parts were treated
yet more extravagantly with encrustations of
sectile work and inlays of mother-of-pearl.
The debt of universal architecture to the
early Christian and Byzantine schools of
builders is very great. They evolved the
church types, they carried far the explora-
tion of domical construction, and made won-
derful balanced compositions of vaults and
domes over complex plans. They formed the
belfry tower from the Pharos and fortifica-
tion towers. We owe to them the idea of the
vaulted basilican church, which, spreading
westward over Europe, made our great vaulted
cathedrals possible. They entirely recast the
secondary forms of architecture :
" the column
was taught to carry an arch," the capital was
reconsidered as a bearing block and became a
feature of extraordinary beauty. The art of
building was made free from formulas, and
architecture became an adventure in building
once more. We owe to them a new type of
moulding, the germ of the Gothic system, by
the introduction of the roll-moulding and their
application of it to " strings " and the margins
of doors. The first arch known to me which
has a series of roll-mouldings is in the palace
of Mshatta. The tendency to cast windows

156 ARCHITECTURE
into groups, the ultimate source of tracery,
and the foiling of arches, has already been
mentioned. We owe to Christian artists the
introduction of delightfully fresh ornamenta-
tion, crisp foliage, and interlaces, and the whole
scheme of Christian iconography.

CHAPTER IX
THE EASTE&N CYCLE
Under the successors of Alexander the
influence of Hellenistic art spread widely
over western Asia and even beyond into
India. At Gandara, on the north-west frontier,
a mixed school of Gneco-Buddhist art was
formed, which subsequently reacted to some
extent on the west. Recent discoveries of
glazed clay images of men and horses in China
show that about a.d. 500 the Western influ-
ence had made itself felt in the Far East. The
Chinese tiled roof doubtless derives from the
Greek roof. In the British Museum there is a
sculptured fragment from the palace of a king
of Armenia built about a.d. 200, which is in
a debased Hellenistic style. In the Victoria
and Albert Museum is a panel from a mosaic
floor of quite ordinary Roman type, brought
from Zeugma in Mesopotamia ; and a rude form
of Roman architecture was used by the
Parthians. Fig. 34 shows some carved orna-
mentation from Gandara of about the first
century. It is very interesting as being one
of the earliest-known examples of a type of
157

158 ARCHITECTURE
interlacing patterns which later became widely
distributed.
Some early Christian churches were built as
far to the east as Nisibis and the Arabian
desert, and as far to the south as Khartoum.
The terrain which came to be occupied by
Saracen conquerors in the seventh century
had, for the most part, long been the scene
of flourishing schools of Hellenistic, Roman
and Hellenesque art.
Primitive Arabian art
itself is quite negligible.
When the new strength
of the followers of the
Prophet was consolidated
with great rapidity into
a rich and powerful em-
Fig. 34. pire> it took over the arts
and artists of the con-
quered lands, extending from North Africa to
Persia. In Egypt the Great Christian School
of Alexandria was in full activity, and in Syria,
Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, other varieties
of Byzantine art were flourishing. In Persia
the type of art of this period is known as
Sassanian; its elements were in part old
Persian, mixed with borrowings from late
Roman and Byzantine sources.
The earliest Arab works, like the Dome of
the Rock and the Mosque of Aksa, in Jeru-
salem, and the Great Mosque at Damascus

THE EASTERN CYCLE 159
(c. 710), are almost perfectly Byzantine build-
ings except for some touch of added energy.
They are the most beautiful works of their
age. Some very interesting and beautiful
early Arab works in Mesopotamia have re-
cently been published by Sarre and Herzfeld.
Fig. 29 (II) shows a cusped arch of the eighth
century from one of the buildings.
Arab ornamentation, as it took on a more
distinct type, about the eighth century, seems
to show some Indian and Chinese influence
derived probably from contacts in Persia.
Even in the wonderful fa§ade of the palace
of Mshatta in Moab, now re-erected in Berlin,
there seems to be a slight trace of Chinese
feeling in the ornamental carving. What
exists is the lower part of the front wall of the
palace, including the central doorway. The
wall is broken by semi-octagonal bastions,
and the whole surface is covered with orna-
mentation, intricate as the pattern of an
Indian shawl. Much of this carving consists
of beasts drinking from vases, or of birds
amongst scrolls of vine pecking at grapes.
Similar designs are found on Christian
ivories wrought in Syria and Egypt in the
sixth century. The origin of this remarkable
building has been much discussed, but the
writer is convinced that it is an Arab work
not earlier than the seventh century, wrought
in the main by Christian artists. In the

160 ARCHITECTURE
Berlin Museum are also some small fragments
of similar work from the castles of Juba and
Choirane which are assigned to the seventh
and eighth centuries ; and other palaces of a
somewhat similar type are now known. The
carvings at the church of Sergiopolis (fig. 30)
are very similar also.
The early mosques were large halls with
many slender columns supporting their roofs.
These halls ran along one side of a courtyard,
and were entered by doors in the long sides.
Domes mark tombs rather than mosques;
indeed it is said that no mosque that was not
at least intended to contain a tomb ever had
a dome. This custom must have been taken
over from the Roman and Christian tradition
of domed tombs. The Cairo domes are of
stone, brick or clay. Those of stone are
usually carved into chevron patterns or bold
arabesque ornamentation. The brick domes
are constructed in level courses without shap-
ing the bricks, the true form being obtained
in the plastering. Some of these are broken
on the outside into a series of big rolls, dimin-
ishing upwards to the centre. Large mud
domes were strengthened by a skeleton of
rough timbers. Some few ruined domes at
Cairo which seem to be of an early date
(probably about 1200) have a lantern on the
top pierced with windows and covered by a
smaller cupola. Here we get the type of the

Renaissance dome. Probably the leaded
domes of St. Mark's, Venice, were suggested
from Arab domes of this kind. Some of the
Cairo domes are built in two shells with webs
of wall between the two, like Brunelleschi's
dome in Florence.
The palace of Ukheithar, explored by
Miss Bell, near the Persian frontier, seems to
be of the eighth or ninth century (fig. 29).
Another similar palace is Kasir-i-Shirin, and
yet another is the palace of Amra, built in
the eighth century.
Fragments of mosaics and paintings from
Castle Amra are in the Berlin Museum ; these
were most probably by Byzantine artists.
All these works are extremely interesting, as
they open up a new field for the study of early
Arab art ; and in all of them Byzantine and
Persian elements are mixed.
The later mosques and tombs of Cairo and
western Asia are wonderfully beautiful. They
have a universal quality; nothing
is barbaric, and little is unintel-
ligible ; the architecture is as lovely
as the word Arabian.
Domes in Cairo are pointed at
the top ; and with a fine instinct for jfaT$$
size, the cornice is not at the true
springing, but many feet below. A rough
approximation to the form of the Cairene
domes has been given thus : Draw a circle,

162 ARCHITECTURE
cut off one quarter of the vertical radius
at the bottom and draw a level line, drop
perpendiculars from the full diameter of the
circle to this line ; from the angles of this base
draw two large arcs tangentially to the circle
and meeting above it in a point.
Persia in the later Middle Ages became the
most brilliant centre of Saracen art. The
buildings of Tabriz, Ispahan, Samarkand,
Sultaniah, and other towns, are many of them
miracles of beauty, strange yet natural, like
things seen in a dream. They have swelling
domes, arched porches, wide and high, tall
round minarets curiously like factory chim-
neys. All the walls are covered with tile-
work painted in boldly drawn patterns. The
Blue Mosque at Tabriz is a wonderful
example of how the utmost splendour may be
controlled into perfect dignity. The lovely
dome of the Medresse at Ispahan is also
wholly cased with tiles having patterns of
bold interlacing curves, throwing off leafage
like a big Persian carpet. These Persian
domes are the most perfect ever built; in
general form they resemble those of Cairo,
but from the horizontal band they usually
swell slightly outward, and the curve returning
passes in almost a straight line to the finial
on the apex. The shape is like that of a
Persian helmet. The pointed form is, of
course, the most easy to construct and the

most stable. Sometimes, as at Bostam and
Koum, they are actual cones—a perfect
constructive form which, curiously, has been
little used. Buddhist communities were ex-
isting in western Asia when the Arabs entered
the lands in the seventh century. Later
again, under the Turkish dynasty (after
1250), artists are said to have been obtained
from China. There is certainly in the art of
Persia and Turkestan an element from the
farther East. Mohammedan art in India is,
of course, a form of the Arabic modified by
local influences. Generally, the Arabian may
be said to be an eastern offshoot of Byzantine
art modified by Persian, Indian and Chinese
elements.
Early and late the Arabian is a style of
great splendour and clearness of expression.
Save for its refusal of human interest in
sculpture and painting, which were ruled out
by the Mohammedan employers, it is one of
the most intellectual styles. All is direct
structure or frank ornamentation, and there
is no survival of misunderstood forms.
The pointed arch was generally adopted,
and often it was much stilted, that is, there
were vertical pieces above the capitals before
the curve began to spring. This may have
arisen from the large use of marble columns,
for in this way a bold, fine opening might be
obtained when the arch rose from com-

164 ARCHITECTURE
paratively short columns. Another develop-
ment of the stilted arch was made by continu-
ing the upper curve below the true spring-
ing, which, of course, made the space less
directly above the capitals, that is, the arch
became of horseshoe form (fig. 36). Nook-
shafts seem to have been first used in Arabic
architecture. They are small shafts set in an
angular recess L at the jambs of doorways
and other openings. Such shafts
might be of small diameter and
very tall, quite different from
the normal classical column.
Byzantine window slabs were
developed into most elaborate
and beautiful lattices, like those
at the mosque of Damascus.
All the lattices of the East,
Indian and Chinese must derive
from the Arab lattice. Minarets—very tall
and slender towers—were built, which compare
in beauty with Western spires. Foiled arches
were carried further in design and handed
to the West by the Moors in Spain. The dome
was perfected as an external architectural
form. Byzantine domes had been covered
with lead, but these were completed in stone
and brick, being sometimes cased over with
brilliant glazed tiles.
These glazed tiles, which were largely used
as external and internal casings, were doubt-
Fia. 36.

less derived from old Persian enamelled
bricks. They were mostly made at Kashan,
and similar " Kashi " decoration has con-
tinued in use until modern days. These
glittering casings of hard enamelled material
are a great architectural invention. There
are many fine specimens of such tiles at the
Victoria and Albert Museum. Marble casings
and mosaics were also extensively used. An
adaptation of Greek gold mosaic was obtained
by making the gilt glass in little tablets
like square biscuits, marked over by deeply
indented lines forming half-inch squares.
Possibly coloured glazing (not painted) was
first made use of to form intricate patterns
set in Arab lattices. The jewelled windows in
the story of Aladdin were doubtless suggested
by brilliant glass. These brightly glazed
lattices are most beautiful. The basis of the
typical Arab patterns is formed by producing
the sides of polygons and stars till they
intersect in many different ways. The germ
of this system is already found in late Roman
works like the ceiling at Baalbec, and many
mosaic pavements,
By the Crusades, by trade, and through
constant contact in Venice, Sicily and Spain,
the Arab style steadily acted on the West,
and its course in the East was parallel to that
of the Romanesque and Gothic styles of the
West,

166 ARCHITECTURE
£-_^t=J ? ~-Ji~^f 5j?i-=i=^-'-
From the first the Arab builder adopted
the pointed arch. At Mshatta in Moab, the
arches, of brick, were acutely pointed. At
the Dome of the Rock (seventh century), the
arches are bluntly pointed as finished with
marble casings, but they are probably truly
pointed in the structure. In the mosque
El Aksa (c. 690) at Jerusalem, the arches
are big and strongly
pointed. In the old
portion of the mosque
of Amr, Cairo (c. 650),
there is a row of
acutely pointed
arches below and
pointed windows over
(fig. 37). The pointed
arch was used in
Byzantine work, but
it was typical of the
Arabian styles, and by the eleventh century
it was widely distributed over Europe and
reached England in the twelfth. As early as
the ninth century the horseshoe form of arch
is common in the painted MSS. of the Christian
Visigoths (fig. 36).
The history of the cusped arch has been
sketched on p. 145, so far as it affected the
West ; it spread also over the farther East. A
screen at Ajmere in India, said to have been
built from 1200 to 1220, has the arch shown
Fig. 37.

in Fig. 38. Venice seems to have received the
cusped arch directly from the Arabs, and not
like the West from the Moors. It is very
curious that in the late Middle
Ages Eastern arches became
low with a quick curve at the
bottom and the rest nearly
straight, like our Tudor arches.
No doubt is possible as Fig. 38.
to the influence of Eastern
patterns on Western art. The rich silks,
especially, had an enormous influence on
wall paintings, on ornamental sculpture,
stained glass, embroideries and other forms of
art. Dr. Rock says : " Coming westward
among us, these much-coveted stuffs brought
with them the several names by which they
were commonly known throughout the East,
whether Greece, Asia Minor, or Persia. Hence,
when we read of Samit, Ciclatoun, Cendal,
Baudakin, and such other terms unknown to
trade now-a-days, we should bear in mind
that we arrive at their derivations and dis-
cover in what countries they were wrought."
In the 1245 Inventory of the Treasury at
St. Paul's is mentioned a piece of red pannus
de aresia embroidered with yellow parrots and
trees, given by William Longespee on his
return from the Holy Land in 1242. In the
Inventory of 1295 three pieces are mentioned
as of opere saracenico. The Exeter inventory

1G8 ARCHITECTURE
mentions several pieces of " Antioch." Ac-
cording to William of Malmesbury, Canute
gave to Glastonbury Abbey a pall woven with
vari-coloured peacocks. The body of St.
Cuthbert was found wrapped in Eastern silks.
For more than a thousand years these
precious works of art have been like a vitaliz-
ing pollen blown on our shores. If we would
set seriously to work in reviving decorative
design the best thing we could do would be
to bring a hundred craftsmen from India to
form a school of practice. Even Renaissance
artists were not able to shut their eyes entirely
to Eastern art—at Venice there was a strong
Arab influence on the minor arts. From
Venice a type of ornamentation spread west-
ward which we still call Arabesque. It was
brought to England by Holbein,

CHAPTER X
ROMANESQUE ART—NEW BLOOD IN
ARCHITECTURE
The age of Romanesque art was the age
of the transition from antiquity to the Middle
Ages, from Roman art to Gothic. The
turning-point of style, as of history, seems to
have been reached when Charlemagne con-
solidated his power. Up to this time the arts
of civilization in Europe had been derived
from the two Romes, but on this side of the
watershed the prospect is towards the Gothic.
From the Coronation of Charlemagne in 800
onwards, to the formation of Gothic art (say
about 1150), the history of architecture is
fairly clear, and the term Romanesque can
be applied without any doubts to this period.
It is much more difficult to give an account of
architecture within the borders of what had
been the Roman Empire, between the early
Christian period and the establishment of
Charlemagne's new empire.
In the fifth century there was a tremendous
upheaval of society and disruption of culture
caused by the folk-migrations and Teutonic
1GD

170 ARCHITECTURE
conquests. At this time, Goths and Franks
spread from the lands east of the Rhine,
through central and western Europe—that is,
over the whole Roman Empire in the West.
The Eastern Empire remained almost un-
touched, but of course not unaffected by the
great change. In the West, Ireland was
isolated from the rest of Christendom.
The Goths, it is true, were already partly
Christianized, and in Italy, Provence and
Spain there was no break in the continuity
of the Church, nor was there in France, for
Clovis, the conqueror, at once adopted
Christianity.
In England, however, there was a long
interval of chaos and only at the end of the
sixth century did the tide of the common
civilization return with the Church. The sixth
century—a twilight time in the West—had
been the most brilliant period of Byzantine
art, the age of Justinian. Santa Sophia was
being built just at the time that the deeds
were wrought, the legends of which form the
story of King Arthur.
In the Eastern Empire there was not only
continuity, but an epoch of power under the
sway of Justinian who more closely attached
Italy to the Byzantine rule.
As the West settled once more it was
natural that Pope Gregory should send his
mission to the England which two centuries

ROMANESQUE ART 171
before had been Britain, a part of the Empire
and a province of the Church ; thus the Rome
of the clergy once more extended to the old
limits.
Architecturally, there were now three strains
of style: the Christian Roman tradition,
sadly broken; Byzantinism, ever more and
more powerful in influence from the sixth to
the tenth century ; and the barbarian element
in the blood and likings of the people.
Until the coronation of Charlemagne the
suzerainty of the Eastern emperors was
acknowledged in Rome and throughout Italy.
Ravenna and the south of the Peninsula
remained attached to the East. The Byzan-
tine genius at this time, say 500 to 800, so
dominated the expression of the arts in Italy
and the West that it would be well to call the
style Byzanto-Romanesque or even Byzan-
tesque.
Cavaliere Rivoira, however, has gone over
the ground with the object of showing that
early Romanesque art in Italy derives directly
from Rome, and he minimizes the influence
of the East. His work has been valuable in
bringing out the variety and richness of
Roman architecture, and in calling attention
to many facts which had been overlooked,
by a re-examination of the monuments. As
I understand his work, his claim for the
direct filiation of Romanesque architecture

172 ARCHITECTURE
from Roman applies almost entirely to con-
struction. That there is a large Eastern ele-
ment in the secondary forms, iconography
and decoration, is not denied. It should be
admitted that he has succeeded in carrying
back to Roman days several ideas which had
hitherto been thought to be Byzantine, and
that he has shown that there was some con-
tinuity from the Roman to the Romanesque
styles. Still the main question seems to stand
very much where it did. That a new spirit
came in with the new decoration no one can
doubt, nor that both were Oriental. The spirit
is the transforming force.
The Byzantesque, or primary Romanesque,
style is only represented in Italy by a few
monuments. In Gaul, at such centres as
Lyons, Vienne, Poitiers, Tours, the arts
would have been practised much as they were
in Italy. In the south of France and Spain
a school of considerable importance was
formed in the Visigothic Kingdom, and there
seems to be some evidence that the first
vaulted churches built in the West were
Visigothic. Another school was formed in
England after about 600.
Mature Romanesque art is Carlovingian
—
the style of the Holy Roman Empire—Lom-
bardic and Frankish. Charlemagne en-
deavoured successfully to form a culture
centre in the heart of his great empire. The

ROMANESQUE ART 173
palace-chapel he built at Aachen has a sixteen-
sided outer wall surrounding a high central
octagon; it is built of stone, the piers and
doorways being of large blocks. Many of
the details, especially the large western door,
the remnants of which are now fully exposed
previous to a restoration, were of late Roman
type. The doorway has a wide stone archi-
trave with a horizontal lintel of almost
normal, late-classical section, and above the
lintel is a semicircular relieving arch. The
impost mouldings and cornices are classical.
The capitals of the shafts are antique ones
brought from Italy. The internal domical
vault was covered with mosaics, doubtless by
artists of the Byzantine school from Rome or
Ravenna. There are some fine bronze railings
forming the balustrade to the gallery story
which surrounds the central area—these seem
to be Byzantine, the doors are bronze, so also
is a large fountain jet in the form of a pine
cone. These last were doubtless made for
the church, and are the first-fruits of the great
bronze-working school of Germany.
Ireland, little affected by the Germanic
incursions, developed a limited school of art,
especially in the decoration of books, with
complicated knotted and spiral patterns which
was not without effect on the Carlovingian
school. On the other hand, the great Arab
conquest of the seventh century must have

174 ARCHITECTURE
forced large numbers of eastern Christian
artists from western Asia, Egypt and northern
Africa into western Europe. Byzantine
artists were easily obtained from Italy or
from Constantinople itself. There was thus
much crossing of artistic blood at this time.
After Charlemagne many of the emperors
were art patrons, and during the Romanesque
period many great Churchmen were also
great artists. At the beginning of the eleventh
century lived Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim,
who formed a school of art in that city, where
many of his works in bronze and precious
metal remain. The famous bronze font at
Liege, made by Ranerius of Huy early in the
twelfth century, clearly derives from this
school. It is a remarkable work, free,
masterly and refined. Dunstan in England
was an ecclesiastical artist of the type of
Bernward. The monk Theophilus, who was
expert in all the artistic crafts of the age and
has left us an invaluable treatise on his
practice, has been identified with Rugerius
of Helmershausen, who was working about
1100.
Painting, ivory-carving, and enamelling were
all highly developed in the German school.
Mosaic floors were laid down, modelled
stucco for figures and ornament was freely
used, and the art of glass painting, it seems
most likely from such evidence as is known,

ROMANESQUE ART 175
was invented or adopted from Byzantine art
by German monastic craftsmen.
From the evidence of carved ivories,
painted books, enamels, and metal work,
it appears that the great body of mediaeval
symbolism in sacred imagery must have
issued from the monastic workshops of
Germany and Lotharingia. We find on these
at an early time ideas which later were widely
spread over mediaeval Europe, such as im-
personations of the Church and the Synagogue.
The Jesse tree also seems to have been in-
vented (or handed on from the Eastern Church)
oy the German monastic artists. On the
enamels of Godefried de Claire of Huy, working
c. 1140-70, we find the Crucifixion accom-
panied by types out of the Old Testament so
exactly like those which are well known in
the stained-glass windows made from about
the middle of the twr
elfth century up to about
1220 that it is clear there must be some
relation one way or the other. The medallion
treatment of these windows seems to be
derived from the tradition of enamel work,
and it appears probable to the present writer
that the windows at St. Denis, the earliest
stained glass now in France, were designed
by an artist of the same school as Godefried
de Claire—perhaps by himself, for he was the
most famous artist of the age.
In building great things were done in

176 ARCHITECTURE
innumerable churches. These usually have
their choirs lifted high above the nave, over
vaulted crypts and reached by many steps.
Frequently the west end as well as the east
had an apse with an altar. Behind the high
altar, in the centre of the choir, rose a colossal
seven-branched candlestick of bronze ; in
the nave was a large corona of lamps which
nearly filled the space from side to side.
The walls and vaults were entirely covered
with paintings—Christ or the Virgin attended
by angels or apostles in the conch of the
apse, and Bible stories in many bands on the
walls. The exteriors had several towers;
usually there was a pair to the east as well
as a pair to the west, the space between the
western towers was often carried up much
higher than the rest of the nave, making with
the towers an important Western work which
is very characteristic of these churches. In
Cologne, a chief centre in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, the Church of St. Mary in
the Capitol, dedicated in 1049, has fine apses
surrounded by ambulatories to the ends of the
transepts as well as the central apse, which
is also surrounded by an ambulatory. This
is a very noble and impressive interior, the
prototype of many mediaeval churches. The
most remarkable German Romanesque church
is St. Gereon at Cologne. This has a large
polygonal body, from each side of which,

ROMANESQUE ART 177
except to the east and the west, opens a large
apsidal niche in the thickness of the wall, and
above these is formed a gallery. At the east
is a long vaulted presbytery, to the west a
big porch, and the central part rises high as a
tower. It is a late Romanesque work, but
it has been thought that the body with its
niches is probably built over Roman founda-
tions ; a recent examination has convinced me
that it is homogeneous in design. We find
similar apsed niches in the Apostles' Church
at Cologne, and the polygonal body with a
gallery story seems to be adapted from
Charlemagne's church at Aachen.
Altogether this building style was magni-
ficent and complete ; in Germany it competed
long with the newer Gothic type of design
developed in France at the end of the twelfth
century.
In North Italy a noble school of mature
Romanesque architecture flourished at this
same time. This " Lombard art " was closely
linked with that of Germany, but the Italian
element in the population, the example of
many antique monuments, contact with the
East through Venice and Pisa, and the com-
mand of marbles as building material, gave
it special characteristics. One curious and
typical feature in Lombardic architecture is
the setting of shafts at doorways on lions.
It is found, I believe, in late Roman work, and
M

178 ARCHITECTURE
the fashion would seem to have been brought
from Assyria. This base is occasionally found
in Germany, as, for instance, the base of the
central pillar of the old cathedral porch at
Goslar. There is a small and imperfect
application of the idea at the south nave door
of Ely Cathedral. In Italy and Germany it
was usual to group the columns of the nave
between square piers. It has been suggested
that it was because at first they used old
marble columns and that possibly they were
scarce ; but it fell in with a general tendency
to form groups, and seems to have been de-
rived from the East (see fig. 30).
In France and Spain other fine schools of
Romanesque art were formed. The condi-
tions varied from centre to centre; here the
Germanic re-barbarization was less complete,
there Roman monuments had greater in-
fluence ; here, again, the current of Byzantine
art flowed more freely, or there was direct
contact with the Arabs.
Nearly everywhere one element in the style
is an attempt to imitate the details of Roman
monuments—monuments which were often
very late and divergent from the classical
type. Thus in the museum at Sens there are
large fragments of a late Roman work carved
redundantly with vine ornamentation, and
such prototypes were readily caught up in
the advancing style. The important question

ROMANESQUE ART 179
in the arts is, Are they developing or degrad-
ing? If they are expanding, hints from
the most diverse sources will be gathered
and recast according to the genius of the
time.
In south-east France successful attempts
were made to vault churches entirely. The
experiments followed two types—continuous
barrel vaults, as Notre Dame du Port at
Clermont, or a series of domes, as at Peri-
gueux. Both these types are ultimately of
Eastern origin (see p. 43), but the barrel-
vault type may have been taken over from
the Visigothic school, while the domical type
was more immediately adopted from Con-
stantinople and the East. Vaulting with domes
spread far north, so that the aisles of the
abbey church of Bernay (c. 1030) are covered
with domes ; at the small church of St. George,
close to Tours, there is a little dome remain-
ing, and doubtless Bernay derived its domed
vaulting from Tours. There was at one time
considerable chance that we should have had
a domed architecture in the North-west. The
form finally adopted was the groined vault
—
that is, one which showr
s an arch in both
directions, so that the windows in the side
walls might rise nearly as high as the vault
itself.
In the eleventh century one of the schools
of building which rapidly developed was that

180 ARCHITECTURE
in Normandy ; step by step the growing power
of the Duchy was reflected in cathedral and
abbey churches, and still more in the vast
military castle-towers of which the Tower of
London is a fine example. It seems to have
had its prototype in the " Tower " of Rouen.
Were these donjon towers contrived by the
Conqueror himself ? Norman architecture
in its advance must have gathered largely
from the Southern schools ; at St. Nicholas,
Caen, the bracketed eaves cornice might be
at Issoire or Le Puy. The banding and
chequering of two different coloured stones,
a favourite device in Norman masonry,
is Southern rather than German. The final
type of plan in which an ambulatory and
chapels surround the apse was derived from
Tours.
Among the contributions made to archi-
tecture in the Romanesque period the first
place must be given to the perfecting of the
Cathedral plan, and, indeed, of its whole
constructive type. The builders of aftei
years had only to refine it to find themselves
on the verge of Gothic. The problems oi
vaulting were worked out to the point where
it became the controlling factor in the scheme,
Ribbed vaulting, a great architectural power,
was either invented by the Romanesque
builders or developed from some Eastern
source. The disposition of towers was tried

ROMANESQUE ART 181
in every possible combination, and the stone
spire was evolved. Some of the most perfect
types were erected in the earliest Gothic
days.
Successful attempts at dome construction
were made over Italian baptisteries and some
of the churches of France and Spain. On
these cupolas the lantern appears which
became a regular feature of the Renaissance
dome. The cupolas over the baptisteries of
Pisa and Florence are remarkable structural
triumphs. That at Pisa reverts to the tall
conical form of the Eastern cupolas. Wren's
structural cone at St. Paul's resembles its
form so closely that it would seem that in
his preliminary studies he had found an
account of the Pisan baptistery. The cupola
at Florence is strengthened by a series of
buttressing walls, which rise at right angles
resting on the cupola and support an outer
pyramid of masonry which is cased over
with marble slabs like paving. It is an
admirable and homogeneous piece of con-
struction. On the apex the lantern sheltered
an open eye in the cupola. This is the proto-
type of the lanterns of Renaissance domes,
their ultimate source is the hood over the
ventilator of early Eastern mud domes (fig.
15).
The general methods of the application
of sculpture to structures was worked out

182 ARCHITECTURE
and most of the types of images and stories
were introduced. Stained glass was per-
fected. The windows which were wrought in
the middle of the twelfth century are more
perfect than any others.

CHAPTER XI
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS
Although the Saxon and Norman styles
of architecture were contemporary with the
Romanesque art of the Continent it seems
desirable to deal with them particularly. The
study of both the Saxon and Norman periods
of Romanesque art in England has been
neglected. If we had a comprehensive and
fully illustrated account of our early art, it
would be seen that it is for us of extraordinary
[interest and had much of great beauty.
The Romans must have left many churches
in our country, like the one whose foundations
were uncovered in 1892 at Silchester. After
the beginning of the seventh century Christian
churches were erected once more all over the
land. This was at the time when Byzantine
traditions were strong in Rome and through-
out western Europe. The churches generally
were more or less basilican in type, either with
or without aisles according to their size ; they
would have an apse at the east end and an
atrium court at the west. At the close of the
183

184 ARCHITECTURE
seventh century St. Wilfrid built at Hexham
a church in the form of a round tower with
four arms ; and at Athelney King Alfred built
another in the shape of a cross with rounded
ends—that is, a quatrefoil in plan. The abbey
church at Abingdon, erected in 675, was
120 feet long, and rounded at the west end as
well as at the east. The old cathedral of
Canterbury also had this form. It has been
assumed that this church was at first built
with an apse to the west, in the early Roman
manner, by St. Augustine, and that the eastern
apse was built at a later time " to turn the
church around," when the eastern direction
had become customary. This type of plan
may first have arisen in this way ; but many
churches of this form existed in an early time
in North Africa, and the cathedral of Canter-
bury may either have been built at first of this
form, or Augustine's church may have been
entirely rebuilt subsequently. In any case
Abingdon was erected on this plan, and so
was the great church of St. Gall in Switzer-
land, and many later ones in Germany and
France.
A plan drawn in the ninth century of the
church at St. Gall, which shows this form,
is preserved ; it has been doubted whether it
was actually built like this plan, but Addison,
who saw the church before it was destroyed,
seems to describe it so. Possibly the type

SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 185
may have been introduced from England by-
some of the early missionaries to Germany.
Up to about 900, Saxon architecture would
have been in the main based on early Christian
and Byzantine examples, after that time a
Carlovingian influence from the empire would
set in. Already, during the early period, a form
of braided and knotted decoration (fig. 34)
was practised in book decoration and in stone
carving; the same type of ornamentation is
known all over Christendom in the eighth and
ninth centuries, and in Rome itself much
work of the sort is found. In Saxon England
these patterns seem to appear at a very early
date, and they were worked out in infinite
varieties of complexity. It seems likely that
there must be some special cause for this, and
as very similar patterns appear in Coptic MSS.
it is possible that some special Eastern strain
was brought in by early monks, possibly in
the time of Theodore the Archbishop, who was
an Oriental. Some of the carvings of this
type, with which the vine is associated, as on
fragments of crosses in the library of Durham
Cathedral, are of extraordinary beauty, and
cannot be matched, so far as I know, anywhere
else in Europe. Another mystery in regard
to these crosses is the figure sculpture with
which some of them are adorned. The great
cross still standing at Bewcastle, and another
at Ruthwell, are adorned with figure sculptures

186 ARCHITECTURE
of Christ standing on the dragon, of the flight
into Egypt, and of other biblical scenes, which
are most remarkable in the history of mediaeval
sculpture if the crosses are (and there seems to
be little room for doubt) as early as they are
said to be. Rivoira, without arguing the
proofs for an early age, assigns them to the
twelfth century, when figure sculpture in stone
was becoming common in Europe. It may
be remarked that these sculptures a good deal
resemble those of early ivories, and I can only
suggest that a fashion arose here of carving
these crosses like ivories. After the time of
Charlemagne the new school of German
Romanesque must have strongly influenced
our Saxon architecture. The abbey church
of Ramsay, built 968-74, was cruciform, with
a central tower and a smaller one at the west
end. Winchester Cathedral, built in 980,
probably had the same form. It had a crypt,
a fine tower with a weathercock, and a
vestibule. It has been suggested that a
view of the church appears in the background
of one of the illuminations of the Benedictional
of St. Ethelwold, its builder. The churches
at Athelney and Hexham, mentioned above,
must have been very interesting examples of
the central type of plan.
The noble eleventh-century (?) Church of the
Holy Cross at Quimperle in Brittany is a later
and much larger example of the central form,

and possibly the last of the type built in
western Europe. Of Saxon churches existing
wholly or in part, several have apses. That
of the church at Wing is seven-sided, not
rounded, and is thus Eastern rather than
Roman. St. Frideswide, Oxford, had three
parallel apses. Many fine towers exist, of
which that at Barnack is the most beautiful.
This retains a precious little window of an
early type, having a braided lattice pierced
in a thin slab of stone.
On the plan of the church of St. Gall the
towers are shown as circular in plan, like the
earlier towers at Ravenna. The early church
at St. Riquier in north France also had circular
towers. The church at Abingdon which
we have mentioned is described in the tenth
century as having a round tower. The
well-known round towers of Ireland belong
to the same tradition. The famous leaning
tower of Pisa is a late and ornate member of
the same family.
One curious type of plan was that in which,
as Mr. Micklethwaite put it, the tower " itself
is the body of the church," a small addition
to the east made a chancel; or there might
be two extensions, one to the east and the
other to the west. The church of Barton-on-
Humber, where the large Saxon tower and the
western extension remain, was of this type.
Several Norman churches (notably Iffley)

188 ARCHITECTURE
which have only one span, with a tower cover-
ing the space in front of the presbytery, follow
the same tradition. In the centrally planned
churches the central dome or tower might
very wr
ell come to represent the church itself.
According to Enlart, the central tower of a
church was sometimes called domus arce in
early French texts. It seems possible that
when the eleventh-century description of the
Confessor's church at Westminster begins by
saying that the domus arce was very high it
refers to the lantern tower rather than to the
presbytery as is usually supposed.
Several of the Saxon churches which prob-
ably belong to the eleventh century have rude
little pilaster-strips at intervals; these seem
to be derived from the German churches, many
of which have such strips at the angles and at
intervals, but much more systematically done
than the English work. The tower of Somp-
ting church has four gables in German fashion.
Again, the mid-wall shaft with corbel capital
spreading to the thickness of the wall is also
a German, and ultimately a Byzantine, feature.
Two flying angels carved over the chancel arch
of the church at Bradford-on-Avon have their
hands veiled in a manner often found in
Byzantine art of the eleventh century. To
the same age probably belongs the fine stone
crucifix at Romsey Abbey. We may suppose
that it occupied a place on the west gable of

the church similar to the defaced crucifix over
the west door of the church of Headbourn-
worthy, not far away.
A very large number of carved stone crosses,
grave-slabs and fonts, as well as an endless
number of fragments, exist which belong to
the Saxon period. The Alfred Jewel, and other
examples of goldsmiths' work, the coins, the
embroideries from St. Cuthbert's coffin at
Durham, and many wonderful painted books,
all show that in Saxon days
we had here a fine school of
art maintaining close touch
with what was done on the
Continent. Many carved
stones which show a cruder
and more savage type of
art are largely Danish and
Norse, similar types are found in Scandinavia.
The quatrefoil early appears in Saxon work,
and it became such a favourite form that one
is tempted to consider it a Saxon contribution
to European art. The quatrefoil was a cross
with rounded ends, and the form was used in
early Christian fonts. It first appears in the
west on the coins of Offa, 757-96. It occurs
as a frame for little subjects on the Winchester
embroideries, c. 912, now at Durham, and
from the tenth century it is frequently found
in the decorations of English MSS. By the
eleventh century it seems to have been adopted
Fig. 39.

190 ARCHITECTURE
into building, for windows and loopholes of
this form appear in the illuminations of MSS.,
and on the Bayeux tapestry, which is almost
certainly an English work (fig. 39).
The trefoil arch also makes an early and
prominent appearance in Anglo-Saxon works.
It occurs on the Missal of Jumieges, written
in England about 1015 (fig. 40), and, curi-
ously, the earliest regular
trefoil arches I know of
in Norman buildings
were those over some
windows in the destroyed
Salle des Chevaliers at
Jumieges. Trefoil arches
are also represented on
the Bayeux tapestry
(fig. 39). In English
buildings the trefoil is
found on the side door
of Ely Cathedral, and over some sculptured
panels of the twelfth century at Lincoln,
Fig. 41 is a doorway from the east of France.
A remarkable example is the early Gothic
west door of Byland Abbey. The question
arises whether the trefoil arch is a variety of
the Arab lobed arch discussed above, or
whether it originated independently in the
West as half a quatrefoil. On Saracenic
ivories foiled forms are frequently found, and,
on the whole, I am disposed to think that the

foiled arch and the foiled circle are Eastern
features. A remarkable example of the tre-
foil-arch is found in the thirteenth-century
porches of Bourges Cathedral ; here the
bottom lobes are complete, as in Moorish
arches. Still farther north, at Tournay, I
have seen two doorways with trefoil arches
which are distinctly Saracenic.
A strong Saracenic element was absorbed
into Western art in the early Middle Ages.
The bringing over of Arabic numerals is an
example of what may have
happened in the arts. The
most marked instance of Arab
influence is furnished by the
imitation of Cufic writing as
decoration, a fashion which
obtained all over Christendom
in the eleventh and twelfth FigTIl
centuries. The carved wooden
doors of Le Puy are famous because of it, and
the ornament appears in English twelfth-
century decorations of MSS. A sharp, crisp
type of carving which spread over the West
about the middle of the twelfth century seems
to have been imitated from Saracenic ivories.
The pointed arch, as already said, was adopted
from the East, so also was the building of arches
in recessed orders with nook-shafts in the
jambs. Interlacing arches, which became
such a favourite feature in Norman archi-

192 ARCHITECTURE
tecture, are found in a highly developed form
at Cordova in the ninth century. They
appear first in the north as ornamentation
drawn in Saxon books from about a.d. 800.
The cusped arch, or rather the lobed arch
—
for we may have to make a distinction if the
bottom lobe is complete, or if it springs as a
cusp—certainly originated in the East (fig.
29). It was extensively used at Cordova, and
was taken up into the Romanesque building
of the south-east of France. Then it strongly
affected the German school, and passed to
Normandy and England, Small lobed arches
are found on the fajade of Ely Cathedral.
Spire design in the West was probably in-
fluenced to some degree in its development by
the Eastern minaret. The masonry strongly
banded together in two colours, which was so
popular in Italy, may have had an Eastern
origin. Patterns of Eastern stuffs were exten-
sively copiedin Western paintings and carvings.
The painted ceiling of Peterborough Cathedral
looks like an imitation of an Eastern rug. Zig-
zag ornamentation is likely to have been first
copied from Oriental fabrics. It is almost a
general rule that carved decoration imitated
painted ornament. Thus the " tabernacle,"
which became a highly important architectural
feature throughout the Middle Ages, first
appears in painted books as a frame with an
arched top and indications of building above.

It showed that the action of the picture was
within doors.
The Norman form of Romanesque was
introduced into England when Edward the
Confessor rebuilt Westminster Abbey from
about 1050 to 1066. Chroniclers say that no
church like it had before been seen. Some
years ago I suggested that it was probably
copied from the Abbey of Jumieges, and
further research has proved this to be the case.
It seems probable that the king brought
masons from Normandy to build it. The
church was cruciform, with aisles to the nave
and presbytery, which had twr
o bays, and an
apse. The side aisles were also terminated
by apses. Over the crossing was a high tower.
The aisles, and probably the central span as
well, were vaulted. At the west end was a
4
vestibule.
55
The abbey church at Jumieges
had been begun in 1040. In its turn it had
followed the type of the church at Bernay,
begun about 1020. This fine early church, in
a little decayed town half-way between Rouen
and Caen, is now used as a corn store, but it is
a most important monument for the history of
northern architecture. It is cruciform, and
had three apses, which are destroyed.
The three churches just described—Bernay,
Jumieges, Westminster—were planned with
parallel apses. A new and splendid type of
plan, in which the apse is built on columns,
N

194 ARCHITECTURE
and thus opened out to a surrounding
ambulatory, was brought into England at
Canterbury and Winchester about 1075. The
early Norman churches frequently had
galleries in the transepts supported on vaults
at the height of the aisle vaults. This was
so at Jumieges, Westminster, Canterbury, and
probably at Lincoln and elsewhere. This
scheme brought columns into the spaces be-
tween the great crossing piers centrally in
front of each transept; that is, the nave
arcade was continued across the transepts.
This may have given rise to the alternation
of piers and columns frequently found in nave
arcades, or it may have confirmed the tendency
to form groups (see above, p. 146). The
transeptal gallery must have been a remarkable
feature. Sometimes it was reduced to fill a
single bay at the end of each of the transepts.
The triforium story was often formed into a
gallery having a second vaulted roof, being
lighted by a tier of windows above the aisle
windows.
The vestibule at the west front was an
important feature at this time. It is men-
tioned, as we have seen, in the description
of Ethelwold's church at Winchester, built
c. 980, and also at Westminster, built c. 1050.
At Ely and Rury St. Edmunds the western
bays of the churches were treated separately
from the nave. Over the centre stood, in

each case, a large western tower, beneath which
was the entrance ; that is, the base of the tower
formed a great porch. This western bay was
also extended north and south of the general
width of the church, thus giving a very wide
and important fagade. At Winchester, too,
the Norman church, built c. 1080, had a similar
central western tower. At Lincoln Cathedral
the western bay probably formed a fine
vestibule. Tewkesbury Abbey has some indi-
cations of a similar disposition. At Peter-
borough the cathedral was begun with a
vestibule, but before the west front was built
the fashion had passed away, and it was
modified into an enormous open western
porch. Westminster, as built by the Con-
fessor, seems to have had two western towers.
At Exeter two great towers stand over the
transepts.
Some of these Norman churches were
entirely vaulted. The early description of
the Confessor's church at Westminster sug-
gested that it may have had high central vaults
as well as vaulted aisles. The Conqueror's
small chapel in the White Tower is wholly
vaulted. The apse and probably the whole
presbytery at St. Albans were covered by
vaults. The nave of Lincoln Cathedral was
vaulted from 1141. Durham Cathedral,
designed about 1090, appears to have been
prepared for vaulting throughout, and here

196 ARCHITECTURE
the aisle vaults, built about 1095, have ribs.
These may have been the earliest vaults with
regular diagonal ribs ever erected in western
Europe. The type became the characteristic
vault of Gothic architecture, and only a few
years ago ribbed vaulting was thought to be
a special mark of the Gothic style.
At Quimperl£ in Brittany the centre of the
round church is sustained by four large piers,
and the middle space is covered by a vault
having four diagonal arches. It has been
rebuilt, but there seems to be little doubt
that it follows the old form. At Bayeux
Cathedral, dedicated 1077, the space below the
north-west tower is vaulted on two arches
crossing from the centre of the sides, not from
the angles. Both these seem to be earlier
than the vaults at Durham ; and at Montefias-
cone in Italy are some ribbed vaults which
Rivoira claims to have been built in 1032.
At Zara in Dalmatia is a vault on diagonal
ribs which by an inscription is dated 1105.
There are columns in the angles and " from the
capitals spring two heavy diagonal ribs of
plain squared stone underlying a vault which
is almost a dome in construction.
5
?
It is curious that from the first introduction
of ribbed vaulting into England, there was a
tendency to divide the apse vault into three
compartments by two ribs abutting against
the centre of the arch. It was so at Durham.

The early crypt under the south transept at
Christchurch has such ribs in the apse and
not elsewhere. So has the old Norman
church at Birkin, Yorkshire. This fact, taken
together with others, may dispose us to think
that the ultimate source for ribbed vaults
was from Eastern ribbed domes, although the
more general supposition is that they were
first used under the intersections of cross-
vaults.
At the end of the eleventh century there
was a fashion in church-building to dispose
stones of twT
o or more colours in patterns.
The dormitory at Westminster, Worcester
Cathedral, and Exeter Cathedral had alternate
layers in parts of the interior like piers and
arches. The tympana of the triforium arches
at Chichester have three or more colours
arranged in patterns.
The interiors of the great Norman churches
were fully painted with scenes, figures and
patterns. At St. Albans, high up on
the choir walls, are some big figures, and the
arches are covered with bands and zigzags.
At Canterbury one crypt chapel still retains
its entire scheme, covering walls, vaults and
pillars. At Ely, Chichester, Romsey and
other places there are fragments from which
a general scheme may be imagined. A
church was not properly finished, at any time,
until it was painted; and these Norman

198 ARCHITECTURE
churches inherited much of the Byzantine
custom of making the interior into a great
painted Bible. Doorways and other parts
of the exterior were also frequently painted.
Figure sculpture was not in general use until
the end of the twelfth century. The door-
way at Rochester, and the band of sculpture
on the west front of Lincoln, can hardly be
earlier than about 1170.
These mighty Norman churches when fresh
from the hands of the various artists who built
and adorned them must have been very
marvellous works of art.
English Norman building was in the very
front of the advance of architecture leading
up to the Gothic, although in the actual
achievement we fell behind. More great
churches were built in England between 1066
and 1150 than anywhere else. Ribbed vault-
ing, during this time, became much more
common in English churches than on the
Continent, and several other features were
developed here. I may instance the fine
circular chapter house at Worcester ; at
Woodstock there was also a circular chapel,
and a small one still exists at Ludlow Castle.
This tradition seems to have led up to the
characteristic English Chapter house, no
parallel to which is to be found abroad.
Round churches were built by others than
Templars—for example, the round church at

Cambridge, and St. John's, Clerkenwell. Inter-
lacing arcades were also highly developed here.
There is a remarkable example in the wall
arcading at Castle Rising, and at Romsey
there is a triforium opening filled with inter-
lacing arches in which the builders had really
anticipated the invention of bar tracery, if
they had only known it.

CHAPTER XII
GOTHIC BUILDING IN FRANCE—THE ARCHI-
TECTURE OF ENERGY
The form of mediaeval society in Western
Christendom was perfected in the thirteenth
century. This was the great age of theological
philosophy, of monastic expansion, of the
organization of town communities, craft-
guilds and universities, as well as of artistic
fruition. A little earlier society was violent
and architecture inchoate, a little later the
forces of disruption appeared and romantic
Gothic wr
as to give way to merchant Gothic.
The architecture of the right moment
answers in the most extraordinary way to
our general ideas regarding the time ; it is a
crystallization of the Age of Romance.
The early part of the twelfth century was
a time of great architectural ferment when
several of the Romanesque schools of art
seem to have started out in conscious rivalry
to race for the lead. The school of the He
de France took the first place about 1125,
and Paris soon became the centre of mediaeval
200

FRENCH GOTHIC 201
thought and art—the culture capital of Europe.
Out of the intense furnace of ideas was to
run the pure gold of a new style which is
probably the most original of all theories of
building. It is impossible to explain in words
the content of perfect Gothic art. It is
frank, clear, gay; it is passionate, mystical
and tender; it is energetic, clear, sharp,
strong and healthy. It would be a mistake
to try to define it in terms of form alone;
it embodied a spirit, an aspiration, an age.
The ideals of the time of energy and order
produced a manner of building of high in-
tensity, all waste tissue was thrown off, and
the stonework was gathered up into energetic
functional members. These ribs and bars
and shafts are all at bowstring tension. A
mason will tap a pillar to make its stress
audible; we may think of a cathedral as so
" high strung " that if struck it would give
a musical note.
The ground plan of a cathedral was slowly
developed by ceaseless experiment in adjust-
ing the parts so as to obtain maximum effici-
ency. A large French chevet in which a
group of five or seven chapels stand about
the central apse is a triumph of art—
a
perfect thing. A plan is the foundation and
key of the whole construction. The enjoy-
ment of a plan is an aptitude which will hardly
come without considerable comparative study,

202 ARCHITECTURE
but the expert finds in it the theme and plot
of a whole drama of building.
Churches of the first class in the thirteenth
century were built to be covered by stone
vaults, which vaults were membered—that
is, made up of stronger supporting ribs and
thinner webs filling between them; each
" bay " or compartment being a sort of
stone pavilion. These radiating ribs gathered
up the weight and thrust at given points
above tall and slender supports. "The plan-
ning was thus the resultant of a sum of
several exigencies. The site gave one con-
dition, the size another, the necessities of
vaulted construction a third, lighting another,
and so on} Now, especially in a stone-covered
church, the width may not be increased too
recklessly, whereas the addition of length is
easy. Yet obviously an interior may not be
drawn out into too long a tunnel. Lateral
annexes may, however, be added, especially
opposite a central point, and such transepts
not only increase the volume of the building,
but, standing in opposition to the long central
vault, they form supports to it. That this
constructive expedient should also contain
a symbol was a reason for the universality
of the great cruciform church type. The
long rows of arcades which support the vaults
gather up a thrust against the outer end walls.
It thus became reasonable to place towers at

FRENCH GOTHIC 203
the west front, the external termination of
the longest ranks. At the east end the wall,
turning in an apse, forms a kind of horizontal
arch resisting expansion from within. Great
churches frequently have towers also at the
transept ends. The plan of a church was a
thing strictly conditioned. Up to a point in
architectural history, the planning of great
churches, as has been said, was a matter of
experiment, of adjustment and development
within narrow boundaries, and the solution
found was practical, geometrical and tradi-
tional.
This is true equally of the whole structure
;
a great church was not an essay in " design
"
for the satisfaction of " taste," it had been
developed organically, and in the earlier time
especially the organism was sound. When
we speak of organic architecture, of active
stonework and balance of forces, we have
most in mind the mediaeval masons' daring
use of the arch as a means of construction.
The arch at its simplest is a wonderful con-
trivance ; it is a bow always tending to expand.
If you bend a piece of cane into an arch be-
tween two piles of books, the books have to
be heavy enough or they will be pushed
asunder by the elastic bow. An arch is
perfectly safe, and, indeed, inactive, as long
as it is imprisoned, but let the restraining
forces be an ounce too little and it will break

204 ARCHITECTURE
out like water through too weak a dam, and
a moving arch is as terrible as a flood. The
mediaeval builders, when they had found
their theory of construction, did not lock
up their arches in great masses of masonry,
like the Roman architects, but they set arch
to fight arch, until two, four, eight or a dozen
were balanced on one slender pier. They
cross like the jets from a fountain, and spread
like the branches of great trees so that old
writers really thought that the architecture
had been suggested by avenues in a wood.
The branching arches of the high vault
were constantly exercising an expanding
pressure against the walls of the clerestory,
which themselves were suspended above the
tall arches of the interior. To counter-
balance this other arches were built in the
open air, reaching up from the low side walls
of the outer aisles and forming props to the
central span. These flying buttresses, as
they have been well called, were surely an
extraordinary invention. In many French
churches there are two tiers of these, which
spring from tall, heavy pinnacles.
The design of the superstructure of a great
church was conceived as a problem in equili-
brium. The builders made an effort to do all
that might be done in stone, and the possi-
bilities of rearing stones one upon another
were explored to the utmost. The structure,

FRENCH GOTHIC 205
as Morris has well put it, became organic.
This was the law of growth in Gothic archi-
tecture.
The conception of a building as made up
of an inert enclosing wall, pierced with holes
for light, and with a roof quietly resting on
it like a lid, the ruling data for many a noble
building of other days, gave place to the
thought of a structure which should be con-
tinuous throughout, and energetic in every
part. The wall gathered itself up into tense
shafts and piers, from which branched the
ribs of the vault; the windows spread, to
occupy the whole curtain of wall between
the shafts, and in doing so almost inevitably
became many-mullioned and traceried; the
body thus became all post and space, a cage
of stone.
From another point of view a Gothic
cathedral may be compared to a great cargo-
ship which has to attain to a balance between
speed and safety. The church and the ship
were both designed in the same way by a
slow perfecting of parts ; all was effort acting
on custom, beauty was mastery, fitness, size
with economy of material. Originality was
insight for the essential and the inevitable.
Proportion was the result of effort and train-
ing, it was the discovered law of structure,
and it may be doubted if there be any other
basis for proportion than the vitalizing of

206 ARCHITECTURE
necessity. Nothing great or true in build-
ing seems to have been invented in the sense
of wilfully designed. Beauty seems to be
to art as happiness to conduct—it should
come by the way, it will not yield itself to
direct attacks.
A noble building, indeed any work of
art, is not the product of an act of design
by some individual genius, it is the outcome
of ages of experiment. The essence of a
Gothic cathedral is its structure, not its
adornments, though never so beautiful. A
ship, like a cathedral, was decorated, but the
ornament is not necessary to either, it is a
gift over and above. The great ship had
a colossal figurehead, luxuriance of scrolly
carving around the poop, extravagance of
gilding, and profusion of fluttering flags.
The cathedral had much wealth of sculptures,
paintings, stained glass, embroideries, gold
and silver treasure. These things, it is true,
were a part of the means of teaching and of
ritual tradition, but they do not make up
the essential cathedral. In one sense thev
were merely superadded, like the music and
incense ; in another, it is true, they themselves
furnished real data to the builders. Thus a
cathedral, in one aspect, was a stone shrine
made with enamels of storied glass, in another
it had to provide great stone avenues for
stately processions, in which the whispering

FRENCH GOTHIC 207
and wailing organ might speak, and the cloud
of incense might ascend. The cathedral
satisfied all these conditions and others, and the
response to noble requirements became a part
of its own loveliness. Yet, as the ship beneath
the bunting was a balanced structure of wood,
and as the effort was always to get the utmost
result from given means, so the great cathedral
was a balanced structure of stone which found
its perfected form at the limits where men
could do no more. Thus it was that a cathe-
dral was not designed, but discovered, or
" revealed.'
?
Indeed building has been found
out—like speech, writing, the use of metals
—
!
hence a noble architecture is not a thing of
will, of design, of scholarship. A true archi-
tecture is the discovery of the nature of things
in building, a continuous development along
some line of direction imposed by needs,
desires and traditions.
We used to be told that Gothic architecture
was largely the result of the East acting on
the West, mainly through the Crusades ;
Wren thought it should be called Saracenic.
It has been the intermediate fashion to
discard large views, and to work at particular
areas and details, but it is probable that we
shall have to come back a little way towards
the earlier position. We have already spoken
of the transmission of Eastern forms to the
West in and before the twelfth century.

208 ARCHITECTURE
Much of the romance spirit which underlie
the literature and art of the early Midd]
Ages seems to have been born of contact wit
the East ; and the development of the Sarace
schools of art was so parallel with those (
the West that it seems probable, as Pro
Petrie has suggested, that both belong to th
same great cycle.
In all, and behind all forms, Gothic ai
is a spirit, the expression of " an energy c
the soul," and the art refuses to be drive
as a whole under the yoke of any sing]
formula. Attempts are frequently being mad
to measure it by " definition," and the ai
is relentlessly cut down where it does nc
fit this foot-rule, but such attempts are
mere logical pitfall.
In 1140 the abbey church of St. Denis,
few miles from Paris, was begun, and it wa
pushed forward to completion in a few yean
Here the way which was to be followed b
subsequent builders seems to have bee:
found. It is the first building which w
may properly call Gothic. The nobl
cathedrals of Paris, Chartres and Laon soo:
followed ; then the mighty culminating grou
of Amiens, Bourges, Beauvais and Reim
were built, and a host of other churches
smaller, but hardly less lovely.
The Gothic " style " was of course no
merely a manner used for churches alone

FRENCH GOTHIC 209
The castles, town-walls and gates, bridges
and houses, were no less Gothic; sculpture,
painting, stained glass, were all members of
the one art.
With the fourteenth century came over-
)
elaboration and formalism. In the fifteenth
century much of the work done was ex-
tremely artificial and yet it was done with
such enjoyment that it was still fresh and
alive when in the sixteenth century it withered
up in face of a fashion of building brought in
by the Court from Italy.
Among the chief gifts of the great French
Gothic school to the world of architecture
was, first of all, the theory of energetic con-
struction, by which a cathedral became a
stone cage with films of stained glass suspended
in the voids, a marvellous jewelled lantern.
The most characteristic single feature is the
traceried window which sustains this stained
glass in thin bars of stone, vertical below,
and branching in the arch-spaces into inter-
lacing curves. The flying buttress is also a
highly specialized power in this architecture.
The intimate association of sculpture with
the building should be mentioned; especially
in the series of deep-linked porches with their
great statues, lesser imagery and foliage.
The spire was developed into a most remark-
able feature. Only by building stone roofs
at a very steep angle can the rain be resisted,
o

210 ARCHITECTURE
and it is desirable to hang bells high in the
air so that they may speak far. These were
the mechanical justifications for high steeples,
but the rearing of tall landmarks was, of
course, a manifestation of power and pride.
Moreover, they fall in with the most marked
aesthetic delight of the mediaeval builders—
delight in acute or intricate forms silhouetted
against the sky. These spires were pierced
through and through with belfry lights and
foiled openings, and set about with skeleton
pinnacles, so that the most astonishing effects
result when they are seen in sunlight against
blue sky, or all grey in the late evening.
Tracery, pierced parapets, pinnacles, crockets,
" tabernacles," all show a similar liking for
open work seen against the sky. Every
mediaeval town at a distance showed a
fretwork of towers and spires.
The fairy architecture, the glory of the
stained glass, the might of the bells,
the sweet incense, the organ music and the
splendour of the altars and vestments, all
contributed to the most marvellous of all
dramas—mediaeval worship.

CHAPTER XIII
ENGLISH GOTHIC
English Gothic is an offshoot from the
parent stock of France. There were at least
five moments from 1050 to 1250 when French
styles of building were imported into England,
and besides these there was continuous
influence. From 1050 the Confessor rebuilt the
abbey church of Westminster on the model
of the church at Jumieges, and probably
brought Norman masons here to execute the
work. From 1066 a great outburst of Norman
building followed on the Conquest. In the
first half of the twelfth century the Cistercians
brought in their new ideals of architecture.
In 1174 the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral
was undertaken by a master from Sens.
Henry III began in 1245 to rebuild West-
minster Abbey on the model of the French
churches of the time, especially the cathedrals
of Reims and Amiens. As instances of
general influence we may mention that the
abbey church of Beaulieu, Hampshire, was,
so far as can be judged from the foundations,
practically a copy of that of Clairvaux; at
211

212 ARCHITECTURE
Minster in Kent, and other places on the
south coast, we find the rows of quatrefoils
under string mouldings which are so character-
istic in the architecture of Normandy ; and the
west door of Rochester follows a French type.
Besides all this there were regular com-
mercial exchanges of works of art—black
tomb-slabs and fonts from Tournay : lead fonts
from Normandy : stained glass from Rouen :
enamelled effigies from Limoges : plate from
Paris. The inlaid floor before Becket's shrine
at Canterbury is fine French work, c. 1220.
In turn we exported embroideries, and (after
1350) carved alabaster works.
Henry III loved the architecture of France,
and Robert de Bury, Bishop of Durham in
the fourteenth century, praises Paris as a
Paradise. Wren quite rightly says :
" We
copied Gothic architecture . . . from France,
the fashions of which nation we imitated in
all ages, even when we defied them !
"
A transition leading up to Gothic was very
widespread by the middle of the twelfth
century ; even before this time the master of
the church of Ernulph at Canterbury had
plainly aimed at refinement rather than at
boldness, a turning-point of style. The first
Cistercian architecture at Fountains and
other monastic houses is distinctly of a
transitional character. And it can hardly
be doubted that there was a direct develop-

ENGLISH GOTHIC 213
ment of Gothic in the Cistercian abbeys under
continuous French influence. Recent ex-
amination of Wells Cathedral, which was
being built in 1190, has convinced the writer
that it is built in the Cistercian tradition,
wholly, or almost, free from the influence
of Canterbury. Practically all the details (ex-
cepting the west front) come from Cistercian
sources.
The new fashion of cathedral-building in-
troduced at Canterbury Cathedral as rebuilt
from 1174 rapidly spread over England. The
Cathedral of Lincoln, begun about 1190, shows
close study of Canterbury, and in turn Lincoln
influenced Holyrood. All these had sexpartite
vaults ; that is, beside the two diagonal ribs in
each bay there was a central transverse one
dividing each compartment into six, a favour-
ite French fashion. York, Beverley, and other
churches drew inspiration from Lincoln.
There may have been an independent
Gothic centre in the northern archbishopric.
Ripon Cathedral is said to have been begun by
Archbishop Roger, who ruled from 1154 to
1181. But there is no reason for putting it
so early as Canterbury. Indeed, if it was
only begun by Roger, we may assume that
he did not live to carry it far, and that the
beginning of the work was about the year
1180. Roche Abbey is as early as, or earlier
than, Ripon, and it is probable, on the whole,

214 ARCHITECTURE
that this northern school of Gothic was
developed at the Cistercian centres inde-
pendently of Canterbury, but, of course, as an
offshoot from the Gothic of France. There
is some other evidence for direct French action
on Yorkshire, although it may be that York
followed the lead of Canterbury in turning to
France for new inspiration. However, there is
little that cannot be accounted for by the
Cistercian tradition. A fine sculptured door-
way, fragments of which exist at St. Mary's,
York, is almost accurately French. A splendid
fragment of a stained glass Jesse tree which is
preserved in York Cathedral must have been
almost a duplicate of windows at Chartres and
St. Denis. As such a subject, it may be noted
in passing, belongs to the cycle which would
have filled the eastern windows above the
altar, the fragment doubtless belonged to
one of those which originally lit Roger's
presbytery. At Bridlington, among the frag-
ments, are some remarkable carved capitals
which are in a foreign manner. There is
also in this church a fine black grave-slab
imported from Tournay.
Westminster Abbey, begun in 1245, opened
a second chapter in our English Gothic. Its
windows, which were copied from Reims and
Amiens Cathedrals, were quickly imitated
all over the country. Its flying buttresses,
with their double tiers of arches, were copied

ENGLISH GOTHIC 215
at St. Albans, and its sculptured door was
imitated at Lincoln. The plan was repeated
at Hailes Abbey, and the chapter house and
cloister were closely copied at Salisbury.
The most of our transitional and Early Gothic
works may be classed as belonging to (1) the
Cistercian school ; (2) the Canterbury school
;
(3) the Westminster school.
We must consider in some detail the
characteristics of Gothic building through a
knowledge of which the age of any particular
work may be told at sight. A transition
leading towards Gothic is visible in works
built about 1150, and the Gothic manner of
building lingered on until the middle of the
sixteenth century. We may thus give to the
Gothic style a total period of four centuries.
In 1348-1350 occurred the great plague called
the Black Death, which cast its shadow over
all the arts so that they never recovered their
earlier sweetness and elasticity of style.
From this time Later Gothic begins, and it is
well to remember the date, 1350, as the key
to the chronology of English art. By putting
two centuries in front of it we get 1150, the
date of beginning, and adding two centuries
we obtain 1550 for the death date.
The various criteria of the progress of the
changing style were discriminated after a long
comparison of documents recording works
of building with the fabrics themselves. It

216 ARCHITECTURE
was found that many works recorded as built
in the twelfth century were massive round-
arched buildings lighted by simple windows;
those of the thirteenth century were elegant,
with sharp pointed arches, and so with the
distinctive marks of the rest. Then, from
all these fixed points the general tendency in
the course of architecture could be inferred.
The curve, as it were, of architectural develop-
ment being once laid down, it became easy
to fit buildings of which no record exists into
their proper place. After a time certain
contradictions arose, and some works were
occasionally found at strife with the seeming
testimony of the records. In such cases
either the records may be wrong or misread,
or the examples in question are misunderstood
;
they may have been belated, or have belonged
to an eddy of style. Gradually assurance
grows until an expert considers himself safe
in dating a building at sight, in most cases,
within ten years.
These styles, then, are but lengths marked
off on a continuous chain; there is no dis-
ruption or sudden change anywhere, but a
constant merging of what was into what was
to be. We use the word style, also, in a
larger sense as the Romanesque style, or
the Gothic. A style-development in this
sense, from its infancy to maturity, is the
coming of another summer of art.

ENGLISH GOTHIC 217
The terminology relating to the history of
mediaeval architecture has fallen into some
confusion. Although the matter may be
thought to be only one of words, the present
lack of agreement must be as puzzling and
disheartening to the student as irritating
to the scholar.
Every one acknowledges that where there
has been a process of continuous develop-
ment, as was the case with mediaeval archi-
tecture, all delimitation into periods is arbi-
trary. There may have been quicker and
slower moments of change, but any attempt
to deal with these by tracing them to their
origins results in too great uncertainty and
confusion to make their periods the basis
of a scheme of classification. To take an
illustration : we must cut off the periods of
manhood from youth, and youth from child-
hood, arbitrarily or not at all.
The scheme that has been popular, and
which, I believe, has shown itself to be so
practically useful that it must persist, is
founded upon the necessity of relating some
striking characteristics in the art to the
centuries during which the varieties prevailed.
The terms Early English, Decorated, and
Perpendicular are by themselves, perhaps,
not very satisfactory, but as general descrip-
tions of the most typical forms of archi-
tecture prevailing during the three great

7
218 ARCHITECTURE
centuries of the Mediaeval Period they are
irresistible. We all began to " discriminate
the styles " by making these points firm.
No learner can grasp exactitudes at once in
such questions, and all attempts to make
" Early English" begin, say, in 1174 or 1189,
are quite vain. The student needs first an
anchorage in the centuries, for nothing beside
them is fixed, and unless this is accepted
every writer is drawn into refinements of his
own and anarchy. One quite gratuitous source
of confusion has been found in linking the
styles to the several kings. The date 1189
has been suggested for the beginning of
"Early English" because Richard I began
to reign in that year.
With the forms of art prevailing in the three
great centuries have become firmly associated,
as above said, the names Early English,
Decorated, and Perpendicular. Now by ex-
tending the scheme, again by centuries, we
get from the year 1000 to the year 1600, the
easily remembered series of six periods
thus
—
Eleventh century. . Saxon.
Twelfth century . . Norman.
Thirteenth century . Early English.
Fourteenth century . Decorated.
Fifteenth century . Perpendicular.
Sixteenth century , , Tudor.

ENGLISH GOTHIC 219
There is a slight awkwardness in that three
of these names are descriptive, while the others
are historical, but for the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries it would be easy to follow
the model of " Early English " and to inter-
change (but not substitute) such terms as
Mature English or Middle Pointed with
Decorated, and Late English with Perpen-
dicular.
It has often been rightly pointed out that
the process of change was too rapid for
the characteristics of the architecture of a
whole century to be fully covered by one
descriptive name. " Early English," being a
chronological term, would easily serve for the
thirteenth century, but not so the descriptive
term " Lancet," with which it is frequently
equated. Nor will " Decorated " well serve
for the whole of the fourteenth century,
although it describes the most striking type
of architecture in that century. Taking these
terms, however, as they stand, it appears that,
having fixed the broader terminology for the
centuries, we may go on to say that the more
characteristic forms of the styles so named
are found in every case during the first half
of each century, the latter half being a
transitional era. Thus, Norman to 1150,
Transition to 1200, Early English to 1250,
Transition to 1300, Decorated to 1350, Transi-
tion to 1400, Perpendicular to 1450, Transition

220 ARCHITECTURE
to 1500, Tudor to 1550. It happens that
several secondary terms in current use would
serve to define most of these transitional
half-century periods picturesquely, and with
substantial accuracy. Combining all into an
extended list of twelve periods, we get the
following, which forms a sort of Zodiac of
English architecture. Beginning with the
year 1000, the period 1000-1050 is Saxon;
1050 to 1100 is Early Norman; 1100-1150 is
Mature Norman; the period 1150-1200 is
known as The Transition (for works like
Canterbury we might say First Gothic); 1200-
1250 is Lancet; 1250-1300 is Geometrical;
and 1300-1350 is Curvilinear. For the period
1350-1400 we have no convenient name
other than Late Decorated, unless for the
sake of symmetry we could tolerate some
new term like fretted, or tabernacled, or
Chaucerian Gothic.
" Many subtill compassyngs,
As barbicans and pinnacles;
Imageries and tabernacles
I sawe, and full eke of windowis,
As flakis falling in grete snowis."
The period 1400-1450 is represented by
the Mature Perpendicular, but if this term has
too wide a meaning to be limited to so short
a period, we might use Lancastrian (Henry IV

ENGLISH GOTHIC 221
succeeded in 1400). An old term, Rectilinear,
might well serve for the time from 1450-1500,
or we might also use Yorkist. 1500-1550
was Tudor. Beyond these twelve phases of
mediaeval art in England 1550-1600 was
Elizabethan, 1600-1650 was Renaissance.
The terms Norman, Early English, and the
Transition coming between the two, are
historical and self-explanatory ; the others are
descriptive and need some further elucidation.
Lancet describes the simple pointed windows
in use before compound windows of tracery
were invented. Geometric, which followed,
describes the earliest form of traceried win-
dows, which were designed in simple com-
positions of foiled circles above lancet lights.
The next phase, Curvilinear, or Early Deco-
rated, marks a modification ; the forms flowing
into one another in more complex shapes.
In Late Decorated, a highly ornate style, the
tracery tends to stiffen once more, a number
of vertical lines being introduced. This Late
Decorated, in a word, forms a transition to
the next phase, described from this charac-
teristic as the Perpendicular style. In Late
Perpendicular, or Rectilinear, vertical and
horizontal lines are still more strongly marked,
arches are flattened and enclosed in straight-
sided forms, and the whole surface is often
covered with panelled tracery. The Tudor
style carried on this manner with the growing

222 ARCHITECTURE
intrusion of forms derived from the Renais-
sance architecture of the Continent.
The acceptance of such definitions of terms
will not at all tie the investigator who is
working at the origins of any particular phase
of style. The origin of Perpendicular, for
instance, may be pushed back to 1380, 1360
or 1340; the Decorated can be carried back
into Early English, and Early English into
Norman. When we consider any of these
separately we can enlarge their periods as
much as we like. But in a schedule of the
sequences of styles, Perpendicular, if it is to
mean anything fixed, must be held to begin
at midnight, December 31, 1399. We must
hold that up to that moment enough of the
earlier tradition survived to make Perpen-
dicular-like compositions really only Late
Decorated. In a similar way, summer has
to be violently divided from spring, and spring
from winter, whatever the weather may be
like. When we come to apply any system to
some given example there may sometimes
seem to be a difficulty. Thus, Canterbury
Cathedral, begun in 1174, is certainly Gothic.
However, there is no contradiction in allowing
that sporadic cases of First Gothic fell in
the Transitional Period. If our terms mean
anything fixed, we can somehow contrive to
be precise. The point to get clear is, that a
connection has been established by popular

ENGLISH GOTHIC 223
usage between the three best-known style
names and the thirteenth, fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries.
Parker, in the Concise Glossary (1869),
divides the periods thus : Norman, 1066-
1189; Early English, 1189-1272; Decorated,
1272-1377; Perpendicular, c. 1350-c. 1500.
Sharpe, in his excellent essay, The Seven
Periods of English Architecture (1871), gives
the several styles periods which vary in
length from forty-five to one hundred and
ninety years, and begin and end at dates
which also are quite impossible to remember.
Thus : Saxon, up to 1066 ; Norman, 1066-
1145; Transitional, 1145-1190; Lancet, 1190-
1245; Geometrical, 1245-1315; Curvilinear,
1315-1360; Rectilinear, 1360-1550. To re-
capitulate the results which we may hope to
retain in our memory:
—
The mid-point of Gothic architecture was
in 1350. In 1150 it began, in 1550 it ended.
The first two centuries were the period of
Early Gothic, the last two the period of Late
Gothic. The most characteristic phases of
the Norman, Early English, Decorated, Per-
pendicular, and Tudor styles fell in the
twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and these names may
stand more exactly for the styles as they were
in the first halves of those several centuries.
That this should be so agrees conveniently

224 ARCHITECTURE
with the fact that the main points of beginning
middle and end of the whole span of Goth
fall in the middle of the twelfth, fourteen!
and sixteenth centuries.
The word Gothic was applied at the Renaii
sance to art which was not classical, but
has come to mean the most characterist
mediaeval art in western Europe. An attemp
however, has been made by a distinguishe
writer, in an able study of the style, t
show that English work is not " true Gothic,
and that it has no claim to bear the same nair
as the great French mediaeval art. An
he suggests that it might more properly t
called the Pointed style. It should be ac
mitted that English work is inferior to th
most perfect ogival architecture of Franc*
but it is a mistake to define any class by th
qualities of its highest members. There :
room in the class for better and worse, eve
for good and bad. It is a mistake, also, t
attempt to define Gothic art by a mere arch
tectural formula. The word Gothic applu
to much more than architecture, and Gothi
architecture answered to a spirit, an atmc
sphere, a moment and an environment. ]
is the building style which responded to th
mediaeval civilization in western Europe, th
centre of which was the He de France. Bu
this, of course, was not a centre without
circumference.

ENGLISH GOTHIC 225
The general perception of likeness has led
to giving the name of Gothic to a type of
building the traditions of which spread from
the He de France, Picardy, and Champagne
;
and the word has been in use in England for
three hundred years. If only the culminating
works of the thirteenth century in France
are to be called Gothic, what is the rest to be
named ? May we say Gothic of Burgundy
and of Normandy ? If so, why may we not
say Anglo-Norman, or English Gothic ? That
England was saturated with Frenchness in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries need
not be said. According to a recent French
writer on Chaucer, his inspiration, his outlook
on life, the atmosphere, the framework of
his powers, are French—French of France,
Champagne, or Burgundy, not Norman or
Breton. " His spirit is French, like his name.
He descends in a straight line from our
trouveres, and he has everything except their
tongue."
We have no more claim to call our archi-
tecture Pointed than Gothic, for the logic
of pointed construction was best understood
at the Gothic centre. In England the round
arch lasted long, and as the style grew old
the arches tended to lose their points. As
everything was done better somewhere else,
should English work have any name at all ?
By the use of special definitions, contriving a

226 ARCHITECTURE
" fundamental difference," anything may be
proved.
On the other hand, some English writers
make over-patriotic demands for the inde-
pendence of English Gothic, and we are prone
to date our works too early where it is
not altogether impossible. Thus in Oxford
Cathedral, of which at least a part was dedi-
rated in 1180, most of the carved foliage
jlistinctly appears to be affected by the style
of the work begun in Canterbury in 1174 ;
yet
in recent books we find its beginning put
somewhere near the middle of the century.
Examination of the fabric itself shows that
the small presbytery was first completed as
a separate work, and this is probably all that
was dedicated in 1180. It might have been
begun as late as 1175. Part of the carving
in this presbytery is of an earlier type than
that at Canterbury, but much of it appears
to be later.
The nave of Rochester Cathedral, with its
sculptured west door, is assigned, in the most
recent and thorough study of the subject,
to about 1130, although to the present writer
it appears that it must be thirty or forty years
later. The search for variety of form, which
is obvious in the plans of the nave columns
;
the carving of the fronts of the triforium
arches, which include small foiled panels;
the pointed arch of the passage at triforium

ENGLISH GOTHIC 227
level ; the type of bay design, in which the
triforium story is included in the interior
height of the aisle; the west front, with its
sculptures, dog-tooth ornament, incipient tre-
foil arches, and other points, all show it to
be a transitional work. Whitby Abbey is
said to have been built early in the thirteenth
century, but the wall arcade of the transept
has tracery that cannot be earlier than 1250,
and it may be doubted whether the church
was begun much before the middle of the
century. Important parts of both Fountains
Abbey and Wells Cathedral have also been
pushed too far back. Merton College Chapel
has been dated c. 1270, but it has recently
been shown that it was built from 1294 to
129T.
French authors also make extravagantly
exorbitant demands on their side. Thus,
M. Emile Male has lately annexed all English
stained glass up to the fourteenth century.
Now, the Guthlac roll in the British Museum
is guaranteed by all experts to be an English
work of the latter end of the twelfth century,
and to be a set of designs for stained glass
windows. If technical designs for stained
glass of a high quality like these were made in
England, there must at the same time have
been a school of glass-workers here ; and much
of our thirteenth and fourteenth century glass
is obviously not French.

228 ARCHITECTURE
Dr. M. R. James has given reasons for
thinking that the superb glass of Canterbury
choir was at least designed on a scheme drawn
up in England, and we know that stained glass
was made use of at Durham as early as the
time of Bishop Pudsej^ who glazed the choir
of the cathedral.
The special contributions which were made
by the English school to the traditions of
Mediaeval Gothic art were : the octagonal
chapter house, of which that at Westminster
is the most perfect type ; the working out of
several fine varieties of open timber roofs,
and the early elaboration of curvilinear
tracery, which possibly, to some degree,
reacted in forming the flamboyant stonework
of France, The ruling temper of English
Gothic at its high time is a spirit of sweetness
which contrasts with the soaring grandeur
of the French cathedrals.
The theory of stonework construction at
maximum stress was never perfectly grasped,
but still English work is truly Gothic. To
attempt to prove that it is not, is like
proving that a rustic is no man. It can be
easily done by manipulating definitions, but
he remains a man after all.

CHAPTER XIV
THE RENAISSANCE—ARCHITECTURE OF RHE-
TORIC AND ARCHITECTURE OF FIRST
PRINCIPLES
After the Lombard invasion, and especially
after the establishment of the Empire of
Charlemagne, in the early Middle Ages,
northern Italy was split up into many city-
states which owed allegiance to the German
emperors; the only central power in Italy
was that of the Pope. When the mediaeval
culture, of which Dante was the perfect flower,
matured, Italy was already the most learned
country in Europe. Its artists and scholars
were in daily contact with the monuments of
the past, and they could do no other than look
back to the splendour that was Rome. As
the study of antiquity progressed, it was
perceived that the buildings of the " Dark
Ages " were of an entirely different spirit
from those of Rome. Raphael, an eager
antiquary, called them Gothic, by which he
meant that they had followed on the Gothic
invasions, including in this term alike the
architecture of Theodoric the Goth in the
229

230 ARCHITECTURE
sixth century and that of Countess Matilda
in the twelfth. These things were alien,
barbarous. They were builded evidence oi
the conquest of the true Italians by the
81
Tedeschi."
A revival of national feeling, and of ancient
letters, necessarily carried along with it
an endeavour to resume the ancient and
glorious art of Rome. Thus the Renaissance
in Italy was a " nationalist " movement and
a " modernist " one as well. According to the
new programme of learning every phenomenon
was to be studied and seen as it was. History,
science, antiquities, were all alike branches
of human knowledge. Withal Rome had
never passed out of sight. Theodoric had
issued orders for the protection of the city.
Here and there people still dwelt and wor-
shipped in Roman buildings ; the writings
of Vitruvius had continued to be copied
as a mysterious guide in architecture ; and
such a mediaeval work as the Baptistery at
Florence was almost classical in largeness ol
style and in the antique form of its details.
The Renaissance in Roman Italy was thus
a perfectly natural impulse, and was, indeed,
inevitable. Perhaps if it had taken some
different turning it might have been more
obviously beneficial ; as it was, there was not
only eagerness to learn and to bring back
forgotten powers to architecture, but there

THE RENAISSANCE 231
was eagerness, as well, to forget what the
intervening time had gained. In looking
back, art loses its life.
Outside Italy, in Germany, France, and
England, the movement is less easily under-
stood. The court of the popes was the centre
of European culture, and the fashion to follow
the lead of the most advanced country sprang
up in all the other courts of Europe, so that
a great break with the near past was made.
This revolution was something like that which
has happened in modern Japan. One great
social consequence which such a change must
have, in Europe, or in Japan, is that art
becomes divorced from the people. Art had
been a common aptitude by which customary
needs were satisfied, but after such a disrup-
tion it was understood only by experts and
connoisseurs who themselves only thought
they understood. It is very confusing to
speculate why that which happened, and
" was to be," should be at war with life. The
Renaissance has led to noble expression in
individual arts where there was a second
inspiration as well as that of antiquity—the
sculptures of Michael Angelo, the portraiture
of Velasquez, the landscapes of Claude and
Turner—but in all these direct reference
to Nature comes in at the source. Such
refreshment was excluded from the purview
of the sanctioned architecture in the grand

232 ARCHITECTURE
style. In early times, especially, very beauti-
ful mixed works were wrought, but the Roman
revival as a whole has proved arid and sterile,
nothing grows from it. It may be, but this
is the vaguest theory, that in this second-
hand dealing with Rome the influence of the
East has been too entirely strained out, and
that there must always be a circuit established
between East and West by which art may be
vitalized, as first at the beginning we found
Egypt, Europe, and Mesopotamia reacting
upon one another.
As another consequence of its remoteness
from the people Renaissance art came to be
thought of as a matter of pride and pretty
shapes, of taste and appearance. It was not
generally seen that great art like great science
is the discovery of necessity; although
Leonardo da Vinci—and in a less degree
Wren—did reach this concept of the meaning
of art. To discover this is to reach to the
universal in architecture and to a point of
view which looks on all styles as accidents of
an environment and a moment. All vital
schools, however, knew this instinctively, as
knowing no other. They did not theorize,
but built.
It must, I think, be admitted by those who
have in part understood the great primary
styles, Greek or Gothic, that the Renaissance
is a style of boredom. However beautiful

THE RENAISSANCE 233
single works may be, it tends to be blind,
puffy, and big-wiggy; Louis Quatorze might
have said of the art of his court as he did of the
state, " It is myself/' Its highest inspiration
was good taste, it v/as architect's architecture.
Splendid works were wrought even in the age of
its gloomy maturity by Peruzzi, Michael Angelo,
and Wren, but as a whole it seems to be the art
of an age of Indigestion. There are things in
Nature—a dewy morning, a snowy peak, a
clear stream—which are ever and again more
wonderful than wr
e had remembered. A true
work of art always has something of this
surprising freshness; but the Renaissance as
a whole lacked the spirit of life. Gothic art
witnesses to a nation in training, hunters,
craftsmen, athletes; the Renaissance is the
art of scholars, courtiers, and the connoisseur-
ship of middlemen.
The Renaissance made itself felt in different
centres during the fifteenth century. At
Florence a beautiful mixed style which fol-
lowed traditional spacing and changed only
the forms of cornices and other details, pre-
vailed for a time. In Venice veneering
with marble, inlaying with porphyry and
the use of coloured materials in construction
was long continued from the earlier Byzantine
tradition. Only gradually, and by later
masters like Palladio, was the " true antique ?-
imposed as a dogma; it even seems to have

234 ARCHITECTURE
been held in some half-realized way, that the
" orders " had been specially revealed as the
only absolute architecture; nothing else can
explain the awed devotion of the expounders
and commentators of the text of Vitruvius.
It fell out, however, that the chief works
which had to be built were not columnar
temples, but palaces with enclosing walls.
The chief features of these had necessarily to
be windows, floors, staircases, just the things
for which there was least authority. In
adopting the precedents to these new condi-
tions there was at first considerable ingenuity
which gives an interest to the " style "; but
other factors, like roofs and chimneys, were
suppressed as much as possible as not being
quite respectable; although, to a northern
mind, the roof is the most essential part of
a building
—"roof" and "chimney," indeed,
are almost synonymous with home. As a
whole the building interest, the essential
centre of architecture, gave way to scholar-
ship and taste ; knowledge of precedents took
the place of adventure.
On the other hand it seems as if the men of
the Renaissance first awoke to full conscious-
ness of their environment. The ruins of
Rome existed, but they had hardly been seen
for a thousand years. The wonderful Greek
temples of Psestum appear to have been
unnoticed even until about 1750. Travellers

THE RENAISSANCE 235
passed them by, and shepherds rested in
their shadow, but they seem to have been
taken for granted and observed only as the
goats observed them. The first enthusiasm
of the Renaissance must have been a won-
derful experience, when men like Donatello,
awakening to the idea " We are Romans,"
explored the Forum, and broke into the
chambers of the Great Baths, where they
studied the paintings and found noble marble
statues buried in the debris.
The great gift of the Renaissance would
seem to be the scientific spirit, and we prob-
ably owe to it larger ideas of civic order and
hygiene. The architects brought back many
of the lost powers of their art, and developed
certain factors like the staircase and the
balustrade. The art of engineering advanced
so swiftly that it has since broken away from
the general art of building to the detriment
of both.
On the one hand the Renaissance was a
rhetorical art, but on the other its artists
to some degree reconsidered first principles.
To go back to first principles in architecture
is, we are often told, impossible. Doubtless
it is to do so absolutely, but all schools of archi-
tecture have done it in some degree, and the
Renaissance, in the thought of the greatest
mind of its age, was to include an exhaustive
exploration of the first principles of all arts.

236 ARCHITECTURE
The history of art is full of instances of return
to underlying principles.
Roman architecture, on its structural side,
was largely an art of first principles : the
early Christian and Byzantine schools of build-
ing divested themselves of nearly all that
was formula; and Gothic architecture sprang
up after the Cistercians had brought about
a large return to the structural elements of
building. Modern engineering, the noblest
architectural result of the Renaissance, is
almost entirely an art of first principles.

CHAPTER XV
THE MODERN POSITION
About the middle of the eighteenth century
the first ideal of the Renaissance, the desire
to be Roman, passed away. It had been a
fashion at courts and they tired of it. About
this time the monuments of Greek art were
discovered and described, and at home our
national architecture was rediscovered. Then
soon along the same line of Renaissance—the
essential idea of which is the attempt to pro-
duce an architecture by copying old external
forms—some English architects set about
being Greek, and later others became " Gothic
men." After more than a century of these
mixed efforts to be Roman, Greek and Gothic,
efforts which necessarily fell short of the
earlier Renaissance because they lacked its
conviction and solidity, a still greater anarchy
of style arose. Some clever men varied Greek
by a slight tinge of Egyptian, others attempted
the Dutch house style, and others the Byzan-
tine church style. Some, again, attempted a
Renaissance of Wren's Renaissance, and to-
day others—and this seems to be the last
237

238 ARCHITECTURE
word—endeavour to bring about a Renais-
sance of Professor CockerelPs Greek.
It was very natural for the enthusiastic
medievalists who first studied our national
monuments to suppose that this architecture
was a matter of forms, proportions and details,
and that if these were observed and absorbed,
similar works might be produced out of due
time. When disappointment was felt with
the result of these attempts it was always
proposed to rectify any failing by still closer
study. Not the actual forms, but clever
adaptations of them, " in the spirit of the
original," was to form the basis of the new
departure. Then it was seen that old work
was full of variations which seemed to be
accidents, and our contract workmen were
carefully instructed in jointing, tooling and
texture, so that their work might appear to
have the same old eager mastery; for still it
was thought that if the appearance were
reached the essence itself of Gothicness must
be present.
About 1860 many gifted men seem really
to have thought that they were Gothic archi-
tects, and that they could supply thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth century buildings at
demand. Thus they had little hesitation in
applying the process called " Restoration
"
to our ancient buildings, for, if any part were
imperfect, they could make it good and as it

THE MODERN POSITION 239
ought to be. They always, indeed, saw that
the restorations of other men, and even their
own, were failures as soon as they were
irrevocable, but they always hoped to be
truly Gothic next time. It was not seen that
as no man, by taking observation, may be
a Chinese or an Egyptian artist, so no man
might be Plantagenet or Edwardian at will.
Men of high genius like Victor Hugo, Ruskin
and Morris, early perceived the facts, but the
men who called themselves practical had to
shut their eyes to such disquieting literature.
Ruskin, for instance, in his chapter on " The .
Nature of Gothic " wrote : "Its elements are
certain mental tendencies of the builders I
legibly expressed in it ; it is not enough that
it has the form if it has not also the power/
and the life. . . . Various mental characters
make up the soul of Gothic."
Before passing to consider what might be
done—if anything can be done before the
hour strikes—it is desirable to examine
shortly two aesthetic superstitions about
beauty in architecture which stand in the way
of our attaining it. One is the vague idea
of an abstract and absolute proportion,
whereas true proportion is always changing in
answer to changing conditions. Proportion,
properly, is the resultant of fitness. The
Greeks, as their temple architecture slowly
developed, came to think that a special

240 ARCHITECTURE
virtue attached itself to dimensional simplicity,
that, if every part were related to every other
part by a simple scheme of fractions, a unity
would result, and that the temple in reaching
this unity would become a perfect thing. But
all such ideas necessarily break down where
building becomes more complex and is con-
ditioned by other needs than that of attaining
a sort of sacred perfection. Proportion of
this sort was in truth rather a satisfaction to
the mind than to the eye. Dante found
pleasure in building his poem according to
similar rules. Even to-day something of
the same feeling persists. We know that if
a room is a foot or two out of square, the
irregularity can hardly be seen, and if it is
a few inches only no one will ever notice it,
but, still, we do not like it so. We feel a satis-
faction in saying that a room is a double
square, or 30 x 20, yet it would be just as
good a room if it were 31 X 19. However,
these ideas are definite and clear, and they
can be applied to any simple structure like a
Greek temple. A modern architect might
design a tombstone with certain ratios, if he
cared, but he could hardly try to apply a
preconceived and arbitrary system to larger
problems.
Proportion, then, means either the result
of building according to dimensions having
definite relations one to another, or it means

functional fitness. It might be said,
cc
But
are not some relations more agreeable than
others, even if no exact explanation of them
can be given ? " The answer is twofold—if no
explanation can be given the hoped-for result
might be obtained by an instinct, but it
certainly will not by reasoning about it. And
secondly, what is to be done when such ideas
of proportions and other considerations con-
flict—as they always will do until the eye is
schooled to take its delight in fitness ? For
instance, we may think we like the relation
of window to wall usual in Italian palaces,
but it is unsuitable for darker latitudes. The
right proportion of window to wall is that
which shall give the most suitable light. There
will always be room enough for individual
opinion and for instinctive adjustments, but
to talk of proportion without attempting to
realize what is meant is mere confusion.
The other superstition is that an external
form of beauty may be reached and demon-
strated other than as the sum of many
obviously desirable qualities, such as dur-
ability, spaciousness, order, masterly con-
struction, and a score of other factors needful
to a fine school of building. There is no
beauty beyond these except in the expression
of mind and of the temperament of the soul.
Probably the less that is said about these the
better. The temper of the national soul is
Q

242 ARCHITECTURE
likely to operate best in silence. Little could
be gained by disquisitions on purpose, fitness,
unity, vigour, simplicity, dignity, generosity
and intelligibility. Qualities like these rising
to joy and fervour, or sweetness and gaiety,
all tell in the result for beauty—they are all
the stuff from which beauty is made—but
the mere semblance of rapture and intensity
are abhorrent. Experience seems to show
that much aesthetic intention is destructive.
No art can long outlast it, for art should
deal with higher and deeper things, realities
which will force their own expression.
We know those too capricious monuments
which popular insight has well named
" Follies." All modern buildings have too
much that is merely capricious. Little in
ancient architecture was " designed." Things
designed by a single mind are mostly " sports,"
which must quickly perish. Only that which
is in the line of development can persist.
Greek temples and Gothic cathedrals were
built traditionally according to custom. Even
the sites—those wonderful sites of temples
and cathedrals—were not selected because
the building would " look well " there. The
sites were sacred from remote time or they
were pointed out by some oracular dictum.
Alike on the Cape of Sunium, the cliffs of
Selinus, and the Acropolis rock of Athens, or
on the plain of Psestum and the muddy flat

of Ephesus, the Greeks indifferently founded
their great temples. Nothing looks well that
has been done for " look." It seems right at
first, but quickly the doing becomes diseased.
Only by being intensely real can we get back
wonder into building once more. We have
this awe of a ship, a bridge, a machine. Why
should that ancient thing, a house, have be-
come so vulgar and pretentious ? It seems to
be the result of " good taste."
One rather confusing element is the question
of decoration. Here, again, much may be
accepted as obvious; casings and inlays of
finer material, the glitter of gold, harmonious
change of colour, some little intricacy of work-
manship, and, above all, stories in painting
and sculpture. The commonplaces of ordin-
ary architectural " ornamentation " cannot be
justified; at their origin these things had a
meaning, and most generally patterns were
simplified pictures. " Plastic art has gone
through a process of mental evolution far
higher than the futile pleasure of decoration."
Ample materials for ornamentation exist
which are universal and modern without our
calling for more hundreds of miles of " egg
and tongue " or more acres of " vermicula-
tion." These are such methods as the
introduction of precious material, and changes
of colour, plaitings and frets of lines, forms
simplified from Nature, sculptured stories

244 ARCHITECTURE
inscriptions; we don't make enough use of
inscriptions. After all, we must remember
that beauty may be unadorned, and it is
possible that ornamentation, which arises in
such arts as tattooing, belongs to the infancy
of the world, and it may be that it will
disappear from our architecture as it has
from our machinery. Why should we wish
for a sham Jacobean house more than for
motor-car in the style of a sedan chair ?
When a better modern architecture is to
emerge, we shall necessarily find a greater
interest in it and a sounder basis of criticism.
In the days when the cathedrals were built,
people were as concerned about them as we
are about cricket. The arts can only flourish
when there is a common interest in them, and
constant criticism by all—that is, by all people
except critics.
When the series of Renaissance styles reach
their end, we may expect that on the then
existing basis, whether it may be sham Greek
or sham Gothic, a movement will be imper-
ceptibly entered on which will transform the
chaos into another order.
The Renaissance was self-conscious, but
moderns are conscious that they are self-
conscious. In the arts there seem to be only
three possible courses open to us: (1) that
we may be able to determine our way and
come to some agreement, and thus build up

a fully conscious architecture, free and fine;
(2) or there may be some turn in civilization,
quick or slow, which by a change of conditions
will compel a change in the arts; (8) or
there remains the treadmill of stylemongering
—successive fashions of little party cries and
their enthusiasms, now for imitation Gothic,
then for the national Renaissance, and a
return to Roman and Greek once more.
Supposing that we could as reasonable men
make a stand, and guide development, there
is much which obviously requires to be done.
One of the first things—there are so many
—
should be a greater public demand for sub-
stantial and convenient buildings. In this
respect our big cities fall far short of many
second-rate towns on the Continent. Except
for a hundred or two of buildings, London
needs to be rebuilt from end to end. No
writer on economics has yet told us what are
the limits to expenditure in public arts,
whether a beautiful city is an investment,
or an extravagance. The modern political
economy of quantity should be corrected by
a political economy of quality.
Writers who have set out theories of cor-
porate life talk much of utilities, but they often
have a very narrow view of what makes a
utility; and the blind may lead the blind
down so steep a place that they drive those
who have eyes along with them. According

246 ARCHITECTURE
to Plutarch, Pericles entered on the rebuilding
of Athens as the best means of wisely dis-
tributing wealth among the people, and it is
somewhat curious that the first systematic
writer on political economy was the Greek
architect, Hippodamus of Miletus, in the fifth
century B.C.
Sir Christopher Wren asserts :
" Archi-
tecture has its political use; public buildings
being the ornament of a country, it establishes
a nation ; draws people and commerce ; makes
the people love their native country, which
passion is the great original of all great actions
in the commonwealth. The emulation of
the Greek cities was the true cause of their
greatness. The obstinate valour of the Jews,
occasioned by the love of their temple, was
a cement that held that people together for
many ages through infinite changes."
If ever we are to have a time of architecture
again, it must be founded on a love for the
city, a worship of home and nation. No plant-
ing down of a few costly buildings, ruling some
straight streets, provision of fountains, or
setting up of a number of stone and bronze
dolls, is enough without the enthusiasm for
corporate life and common ceremonial. Every
noble city has been a crystallization of the
contentment, pride and order of the com-
munity. A period of architecture is the time
of a flowing tide.

If the municipalities would spend less on
" art," and more on requiring fine quality
in all ordinary forms of workmanship the
situation would soon be improved. Cleaner
streets and tidier railway stations would be
better than all the knowledge of all the styles.
An endeavour to better the city in inducing
civic patriotism would be sure in due time to
bring a fit method of expression. When we
see how powerful is an idea—the cause, order,
form—to boys, it does seem possible that men
too may organize themselves into lovers of
the city, seekers after discipline.
With increased demand for buildings fit
for modern cities must be undertaken the
more systematic education of architects. Our
education for the most part has been archaeo-
logical, with the result that we now stand
timidly at the centre of a score of roads, and
we seem to know all about all of them, but we
do not know which to take, although the
fairest horizon might be reached if we could
go in one direction long enough.
It has been a wasteful system, too regard-
less of results, or too regardful of wrong
results. It is absurd, for instance, that the
writer should have been allowed to study
cathedrals from Kirkwall to Rome and from
Quimper to Constantinople ; it would be far
better to have an equivalent knowledge of
steel and concrete construction.

248 ARCHITECTURE
Now that all the styles on earth have been
surveyed and accounted for historically, what
is wanted is a new type of classification by
essential differences of structure, an account
of the powers of architecture, a new science of
building morphology. To forget the past
would be as foolish as to ignore the future.
Behind is custom, as in front is adventure.
Great building types should be investigated
as structural problems, the temple, basilica,
theatre, baths, church, town hall, hospital,
bridge, and the city as a whole.
Further, the several factors of building,
the powers of architecture, require to be
investigated one by one—the wall, the column,
the floor, the roof, the buttress, the arch,
vault and dome. We want especially for our
own country a record of existing building
methods and traditions of workmanship, as
they are still carried on in their several
localities in relation to the materials at hand
;
as Yorkshire walling and stone dressing—
I
which is still quite beautiful in out-of-the-way
parts; Norfolk thatching, Essex plastering,
Kentish tiling. Finally, we need a true science
of architecture, a sort of architectural biology
which shall investigate the unit cell and all
the possibilities of combination.
Modern armoured concrete is only a higher
power of the Roman system of construction.
If we could sweep away our fear that it is

an inartistic material, and boldly build a
railway station, a museum, or a cathedral,
wide and simple, amply lighted, and call in our
painters to finish the walls, we might be inter-
ested in building again almost at once. This
building interest must be aroused. We have
to aim at a standard of ordinary good quality
;
damp, cracked and leaky " architecture
"
must give way to houses as efficient as a
bicycle.
Our great difficulty is lack of spontaneous
agreement ; an expressive form of art is only
reached by building out in one direction
during a long time. No art that is only one
man deep is worth much; it should be a
thousand men deep. We cannot forget our
historical knowledge, nor would we if we
might. The important question is, Can it be
organized and directed, or must we continue
to be betrayed by it ? The only agreement
that seems possible is agreement on a scientific
basis, on an endeavour after perfect structural
efficiency. If we could agree on this we
need not trouble about beauty, for that
would take care of itself. Our survey should
have shown us that there is not one absolute
external form of beauty, but rather an endless
series of changing modes in which the uni-
versal spirit of beauty may manifest itself
;
that, indeed, change of the form is one of the
conditions of its continuance. In Egyptian

250 ARCHITECTURE
architecture power, wonder, terror, are ex-
pressed ; in the Greek, serenity, measure and
balance, fairness; in the Roman, force and
splendour; in the Byzantine, solemnity,
mystery, adoration; in the Romanesque,
strife and life ; in the Arab, elasticity, intricacy
and glitter, a suggestion of fountain spray
and singing birds; in the Gothic, intensity,
swiftness, a piercing quality, an architecture
not only of stone, but of stained glass, bells
and organ music. Beauty is the complexion
of health, to reach it we must put aside our
preoccupation about different sorts of rouge.
We are always agonizing about design, but
design, as Rodin has said, is as nothing com-
pared to workmanship. Any one may see
a beautiful landscape composition, but it
needs a Turner to paint it. A rearing horse
is a living statue, but the difficulty is to carve
like Phidias. A skilful architect may design
the lines of a cathedral bigger than Bourges,
and embodying several excellent new ideas,
before his breakfast, but there is little virtue
in writing " 700 feet long," or in planning
three transepts instead of one, or in making
the chapels quatrefoils instead of octagonal;
these are nothing compared to great building
skill.
Through the ages when architecture was
a direct and developing art, architects were
masters of building, engineers, masons and

carpenters, in immediate contact with
materials. Experiment must be brought back
once more as the centre of architecture, and
architects must be trained as engineers are
trained. It cannot be genius that is lacking to
us. An age that can produce Watts' Physical
Energy, Madox Brown's Manchester paintings,
and the Forth Bridge, should be able to pro-
duce anything—anything that is, except the
Tower Bridge as well.
Modern works like the Nile dam, the magni-
ficent railway viaduct at Morlaix, and the
Rhine bridge at Cologne, need no apology.
We must learn from France, Germany and
Switzerland how worthily to finish engineering
structures ; most of our English works are too
crude and raw.
The modern way of building must be flexible
and vigorous, even smart and hard. We must
give up designing the broken-down picturesque
which is part of the ideal of make-believe.
The enemy is not science, but vulgarity, a
pretence to beauty at second hand. We have
to awaken the civic ideal and to aim first at
the obvious commonplaces of cleanliness,
order and neatness. Much has to be done,
it is a time of beginning as well as of making
an end.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
General. —J. Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Stones
of Venice, etc. The best general histories are by A. Choisy
in French, Diirm in German, and Russell Sturgis in
English. See also works by J. Fergusson, F. M. Simpson,
and Banister Fletcher.
Egypt, —J. Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt; G. Foucart,
Histoire de Vordre Lotiforme ; Perrot and Chipiez, History
of Art, etc. ; W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Revolutions of
Civilization, Egyptian Arts and Crafts, Meydum, etc. ;
J. E. Perring, The Pyramids of Gizeh ; A. Choisy, VArt
de Bdtir chez les Egyptiens.
Babylon and Assyria. —Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art,
etc. ; G. C, C. Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization; W.
Andrae, Der Anu-Adad-Tempel in Assur.
Crete and Mycenjs. —Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art,
etc. ; R. M. Burrows, Discoveries in Crete ; Sir A. Evans,
articles in the Annual of the British Sclwol at Athens,
1900, etc.
Greece. —Anderson and Spiers, Architecture of Greece and
Home, with a full bibliography ; A. Marquand, Greek
Architecture; W. R. Lethaby, Greek Buildings in the,
• British Museum.
Rome. —J. H. Middleton, Remains of Ancient Rome ; A. Choisy,
VArt de Bdtir chez les Romains (and see Greece).
Early Christian. —H. M. Leclercq, Manuel aVArclUologic
Chretienne, with a full bibliography ; A. Perate, UArch to -
logic Chretienm ; A. L. Frothingham, The Monuments of
Christian Rome; H. Crosby Butler, Architecture and
other Arts, etc. ; Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom, etc. ; Sir
W. Ramsey and Miss Lowthian Bell, The Thousand and
One Churches; 0. M. Kaufmann, Die Menasstadt, etc.;
T. D. Lowrie, Christian Art and Archceology.
253

254 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Byzantine. —0. M. Dalton, Byzantine Art; Ch. Diehl,
Manuel d'Art Byzantine : A. Van Millingen, The Churches
of Constantinople, etc. ; Schultz and Barnsley, The
Monastery of St. Luke, etc.
The East. —Saladin and Migeon, Manuel oVArt Musulman
;
F. Sarre, Bankmaler Persischer Baukunst ; Sarre and
Herzfeld, Archdologische Reise im Euphrat, etc.
Romanesque. —G. J. Rivoira, Lomoardic Architecture;
Rohault de Fleury, La Messe ; Cattaneo, Architecture in
Italy from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century ; A. Venturi,
Storia delV, Arte Italiana.
Saxon, Etc. —Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England;
J. R. Anderson, The Early Christian Monuments of
Scotland; J. Romilly Allen, The Monumental History of
tlie British Church, etc.
Gothic.—C. Enlart, Manuel de VArchdologie Francaise ; G. H.
Moore, Development of Gothic Architecture; E. S. Prior,
A Histm*y of Gothic Art in England; A. K. Porter,
Mediaeval Architecture; E. Viollet le Due, Dictionnaire
Raisonne', etc. ; F. Bond, Gothic Architecture in England
;
Sir G. G. Scott, Lectures on the Rise, etc., of Mediaeval
Art
The Renaissance. —W. J. Anderson, Architecture of the
Renaissance in Italy ; C. H. Moore, CJiaracter of Renais-
sance Architecture; Reg. T. Blomfield, A History of
Renaissance Architecture in England, A History of Renais-
sance Architecture in France ; "W. H. "Ward, The Archi-
tecture of the Renaissance in France.
Some Small Volumes. —The best introductory books for
Egyptian, Greek and Early Christian Art are the Guides
to the several departments of the British Museum. Parker's
Concise Glossary of Gothic Architecture and T. D. Atkinson's
English Architecture are useful handbooks. See also
G. H. West's Gothic Architecture in England and France.
For the Renaissance, see Reg. T. Blomfield's Smaller
History of Renaissance Architecture^

INDEX
ACROTERIA, 101 r*'
Apses, 115
Arches, Egyptian, 53 ;
pointed, 56,
111, 152, 163, 166; Babylonian,
71 ; Greek, 110 ; cueped, 144, 164,
166, 189 ; Byzantine, 147 ; horse-
shoe, 164
Architecture, morphology of, 8,
248; powers of, 9, 15, 65, 108,
135, 209, 248 ; true classification
of, 9 ; and chauge, 9 ; definition
of, 9 ; and building, 10 ; and
decoration, 13, 243 ; and magic,
13, 18 ; lost elements of, 14 ;
and materials, 15 ; origins of,
18 ; and need, 18 ; wooden, 25,
81 ; Homeric, 80 ; first prin-
ciples in, 135 ; beauty in, 241,
249
Basilicas, 115, 128
Baths, 114
Bricks, 15, 53 ; burnt, 58, 119
Brickwork, undulating, 59
Bronze, use of, 76, 102, 174
Buildings, round, 24, 86, 115
;
square, 24
Carpentry, 25, 125
Caryatides, 100
Chronology, Egyptian, 21; English,
215 ff.
Churches, 133, 176, 183, 187
Columns, early, 14 ; origins of, 26,
30 ; Assyrian, 73 ; Ionic, 73
;
Cretan, 76 ; Doric, 87, 100 ; By-
zantine, 137 ff.
Concrete, 120, 130
Decoration, origins of, 16, 27 ;
naturalism in, 79 ; Cufic, 152
;
Arab, 159
Design, 105, 107, 203, 204, 242, 243
Domes, 54, 56 ff., 71, 75, 78, 108,
122, 142, 147, 152, 153, 160, 162,
179, 181
Doors, 104, 150
Engineering, 107, 130, 235, 260
Factory chimneys, 12
Fortifications, Egyptian, 52 ; Assy-
rian, 72
Friezes, 75, 91
Gables, 84, 90
Ideals, Egyptian, 61, 64 ; Greek,
81, 93, 96, 106 ; Roman, 107, 126,
131 ; Gothic, 201 ; Renaissance,
229, 232
Labyrinths, 46, 76
Masonry, wrought, first use of, 30 ;
pyramid, 37, 40, 58 ; accuracy of,
60, 62 ; Cretan, 77 ; Greek, 97
Mastabas, 25, 34 ff.
Monoliths, 49
Mosaics, 120, 129, 136, 154, 165
Mouldings, origin of, 28 ; Greek,
99, 106 ; Byzantine, 144, 155
Obelisks, 48, 64
Origins, of architecture, 18 ; of
deooration, 16, 27 ; of square
building, 24 ; of columns, 26, 30 ;
of mouldings, 28 ; of pyramids,
44 ; of labyrinths, 46 ; of temples,
49, 82 ; of arches, 53, 72 ; of
vaults, 53, 72 ; of domes, 54 ; of
cities, 72 ; of drainage, 72 ; of
bricks, 72 ; of slab-ceilings, 74 ;
of rosettes, 74 ; of Doric frieze,
77 ; of Greek art, 82 ; of the
plinth, 85 ; of the peristyle, 85 ;
255

256 INDEX
of Greek orders, 87, 95 ; of the
- cornice, 88 ; of cusping, 144
Orientation, 61
Painting, Egyptian, 33, 34, 50, 65
;
Cretan, 76; Greek, 90, 99; Roman,
129 ; Romanesque, 192, 197
Palaces, Egyptian, 51 ; Babylonian,
71, 72
Pattern, 16, 165, 107, 192
Planning, 126, 156, 180, 184, 193
Plastering, 120, 129
Prehistoric art, 19
Proportion, 62 ff., 95, 205, 239
Pyramids, 81, 35 ff., 44 ; angles of,
*38 ; durability of, 40 ; size of,
40 ; casing stones of, 40, 41 ;
courts of, 41 ; cost of, 41 ; origin
of, 44 ; hidden chambers of, 45 flf.
Quatrefoil, the, 189
Roofs and ceilings, stone, 50, 76
Round buildings, 24, 66, 115
Sandbags, use of, 46
Sculpture, Egyptian, 32, 64 ; Baby-
lonian, 73 ; Greek, 91 ; Roman-
esque, 181 ; Saxon, 185 ; Gothic,
209
Sx^hinx, the, 44
Square buildings, 24
Stained glass, 175, 182, 209, 214,
227
Staircases, 79, 103, 106
Stars on ceiling, 36, 75
Stonehenge, 14, 78
Symbolism, 51, 61
Temples, Egyptian, 49, symbolism
of, 51 ; Babylonian, 70 ; Greek,
82
Theatres and amphitheatres, 114
Tiles, glazed, 36, 58, 65, 73, 164;
Roof-, 90, 91, 102, 157; casings
of, 108, 117
Towers, 115, 136, 187
Towns, Egyptian, 52
Variety in detail, 94
Vaults, Egyptian, 53 ; Babylonian,
71 ; Hellenistic, 108, 122 ; Byzan-
tine, 143, 155 ; Romanesque, 179,
180, 195 ; Gothic, 196, 198, 202
Walls, leaning, 25 ; recesses in, 28 ;
Greek, 98
Whitewash, 58, 99
Windows, 52, 103, 144, 150, 104
Ziggurats, 71
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FRANCE OF TO-DAY. By Albert Thomas.
HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. By R. S. Rait, M.A.
SOUTH AMERICA. By Prof. W. R. Shepherd.
MASTER MARINERS. By J. R. Spears.
NAPOLEON. By Herbert Fisher, M.A.
3

Literature and *Art
2. SHAKESPEARE
By John Masefield. " The book is a joy. We have had half-a-
dozen more learned books on Shakespeare in the last few years, but
not one so wise."
—
27. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN
By G. H. Mair, M.A. "Altogether a fresh and individual book."
—Observer.
35. LANDMARKS IN FRENCHLITERATURE
By G. L. Strachey. "Short handbooks on great subjects are
among the most difficult tasks that a man of letters can undertake,
and Mr Strachey is to be congratulated on his courage and success.
It is difficult to imagine how a better account of French Literature
could be given in two hundred and fifty small pages than he has
given here."
—
The Times.
39. ARCHITECTURE
By Prof. W. R. Lethaby. (Over forty Illustrations.) "Popular
guide-books to architecture are, as a rule, not worth much. This
volume is a welcome exception."
—
Building News. "Delightfully
bright reading. "
—
Christian World.
AT>. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MEDIAEVAL.
By Prof. W. P. Ker, M.A.
45. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
By L. Pearsall Smith, M.A.
In Preparation
ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL. By Miss Jane Harrison
LL.D., D.Litt.
THE RENAISSANCE. By Mrs R. A. Taylor.
ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE. By Roger E.
Fry, M.A.
ENGLISH COMPOSITION. By Prof. Wm. T. Brewster.
GREA T WRITERS OF AMERICA. By Prof. W. P. Trent
and Prof. J. Erskine.
GREAT WRITERS OF RUSSIA. By C. T. Hagberg
Wright, LL.D.
THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY. By Prof. J. G.
Robertson. M.A., Ph.D.
4

7- MODERN GEOGRAPHY
By Dr Marion Newbigin. (Illustrated.) "Geography, again:
what a dull, tedious study that was wont to be ! . . . But Miss
Marion Newbigin invests its dry bones with the flesh and blood
of romantic interest, taking stock of geography as a fairy-book of
science
.
"
—Daily Telegraph.
9. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS
By Dr D. H. Scott, M.A., F.R.S., late Hon. Keeper of the
Jodrell Laboratory, Kew. (Fully illustrated.) "The information
which the book provides is as trustworthy as first-hand knowledge
can make it. . . . Dr Scott's candid and familiar style makes the
difficult subject both fascinating and easy."
—
Gardeners' Chronicle.
17. HEALTH AND DISEASE
By W. Leslie Mackenzie, M.D., Local Government Board,
Edinburgh. "The science of public health administration has
had no abler or more attractive exponent than Dr Mackenzie.
He adds to a thorough grasp of the problems an illuminating
style, and an arresting manner of treating a subject often dull
and sometimes unsavoury."
—
Economist.
18. INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS
By A. N. Whitehead, Sc.D., F.R.S. (With Diagrams.) " Mr
Whitehead has discharged with conspicuous success the task he
is so exceptionally qualified to undertake. For he is one of our
great authorities upon the foundations of the science, and has
the breadth of view which is so requisite in presenting to the
reader its aims. His exposition is clear and striking."
—
West-
minster Gazette.
19. THE ANIMAL WORLD
By Professor F. W. Gamble, D.Sc, F.R.S. With Introduction
by Sir Oliver Lodge. (Many Illustrations.) "A delightful and
instructive epitome of animal (and vegetable) life. ... A most
fascinating and suggestive survey."
—
Morning Post.
20. EVOLUTION
By Professor J. Arthur Thomson and Professor Patrick Geddes.
"A many-coloured and romantic panorama, opening up, like no
other book we know, a rational vision of world-development."
—
Belfast News-Letter.
22. CRIME AND INSANITY
By Dr C. A. Mercier, F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., Author of "Text-
Book of Insanity," etc. " Furnishes much valuable information
from one occupying the highest position among medico -legal
psychologists. "—Asylum News.

28. PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
By Sir W. F. Barrett, F.R.S., Professor of Physics, Royal College
of Science, Dublin, 1873-1910. "As a former President of the
Psychical Research Society, he is familiar with all the developments
of this most fascinating branch of science, and thus what he has to
say on thought-reading, hypnotism, telepathy, crystal-vision, spirit-
ualism, divinings, and so on, will be read with avidity."
—
Dundee
Courier.
31. ASTRONOMY
By A. R. Hinks, M.A., Chief Assistant, Cambridge Observatory.
"Original in thought, eclectic in substance, and critical in treat-
ment. . . . No better little book is available."
—
School World.
32. INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE
By J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., Regius Professor of Natural
History, Aberdeen University. "For those who have not yet
become possessed of the Library, this would form an appropriate
introduction. Professor Thomson's delightful literary style is well
known ; and here he discourses freshly and easily on the methods of
science and its relations with philosophy, art, religion, and practical
life. "
—
A berdeen Journal,
36. CLIMATE AND WEATHER
By H. N. Dickson, D.Sc.Oxon., M.A., F.R.S.E., President of
the Royal Meteorological Society ; Professor of Geography in
University College, Reading. (With Diagrams.) "The author
has succeeded in presenting in a very lucid and agreeable manner
the causes of the movement of the atmosphere and of the more
stable winds. The information throughout appears to be reliable,
and is certainly conveyed in an attractive form."
—
Manchester
Guardian.
41. ANTHROPOLOGY
By R. R. Marett, M.A., Reader in Social Anthropology in Oxford
University. "An absolutely perfect handbook, so clear that a child
could understand it, so fascinating and human that it beats fiction
1
to a frazzle.'
"
—
Morning Leader.
44. THE PRINCIPLES OF PHYSIOLOGY
By Prof. J. G. McKendrick, M.D.
46. MATTER AND ENERGY
By F. Soddv, M.A., F.R.S.
49. PSYCHOLOGY, THE STUDY OF
BEHAVIOUR
By Prof. W. McDougall, F.R.S., M.B.
In Preparation
ELECTRICITY. By Dr Gisbert Kapp.
CHEMISTRY. Py Prof. R. Meldola, F.R.S.
THE MAKING OF THE EAR TH. By Prof. J. W. Gregory,
F R S
THE MINERAL WORLD. By Sir T. H. Holland, K.C.I. E.,
D.Sc.
THE HUMAN BODY By Dr A. Keith, M.D., F.R.C.S.
PLANT LIFE. By Prof. J. B. Farmer, F.R.S.
6

Philosophy and "Religion
15. MOHAMMEDANISM
By Prof. D. S. Margoliouth, M. A., D.Litt. "This generous
shilling's worth of wisdom. ... A delicate, humorous, and most
responsible tractate by an illuminative professor."
—
Daily Mail.
40. THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY
By the Hon. Bertrand Russell, F.R.S. "A book that the
•
man in the street ' will recognise at once to be a boon. . . . Con-
sistently lucid and non-technical throughout."
—
Christian World.
47. BUDDHISM
By Mrs Rhys Davids, M.A.
50. NONCONFORMITY: ITS ORIGIN AND
PROGRESS
By Principal W. B. Selbie, M.A.
In Preparation
THE OLD TESTAMENT. By Prof. George Moore, D.D.,
LL.D.
BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. By
R. H.Charles, D.D.
THE MAKING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By Prof.
B. W. Bacon, Litt.D., D.D.
COMPARA TIVE RELIGION. By Prof. J. Estlin Carpenter,
D.Litt.
A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT. By Prof.
J. B. Bury, LL.D.
ETHICS. By G. E. Moore.
MISSIONS. By Mrs Creighton.
Social Science
i. PARLIAMENT
Its History, Constitution, and Practice. By Sir Courtenay P.
Ilbert, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., Clerk of the House of Commons. "The
best book on the history and practice of the House of Commons
since Bagehot's '
Constitution.'"— Yorkshire Post.
c. THE STOCK EXCHANGE
By F. W. Hirst, Editor of "The Economist." "A little treatise
which to anunfinancial mind must be a revelation. . . . The book
is as clear, vigorous, and sane as Bagehot's '
Lombard Street,' than
which there is no higher compliment."
—
Morning Leader.
6. IRISH NATIONALITY
By Mrs J. R. Green. "As glowing as it is learned. No book
could be more timely."
—
Daily News. " A powerful study. . . . A
magnificent demonstration of the deserved vitality of the Gaelic
spirit."
—
Freeman s Journal.

io. THE SOCIALIST MOVEMENT
ByJ.RamsayMacDonalDjM.P. "Admirably adapted for the pur-
pose of exposition."— The Times. " Mr MacDonald is a very lucid
exponent. . . . The volume will be of great use in dispelling illusions
about the tendencies of Socialism in' this country."— The Nation.
ii. CONSERVATISM
By Lord Hugh Cecil, M.A., M.P.
16, THE SCIENCE OF WEALTH
By J. A. Hobson, M.A. "Mr J. A. Hobson holds an unique
position among living economists. . . . The text-book produced is
altogether admirable. Original, reasonable, and illuminating."
—
The Nation.
21. LIBERALISM
By L. T. Hobhouse, M.A., Professor of Sociology in the University
of London. "A book of rare quality. . . . We have nothing but
praise for the rapid and masterly summaries of the arguments from
first principles which form a large part of this book."
—
Westminster
Gazette.
24. THE EVOLUTION OF INDUSTRY
By D. H. Macgregor, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in
the University of Leeds. " A volume so dispassionate in terms may
be read with profit by all interested in the present state of unrest."
—Aberdeen Journal.
26. AGRICULTURE
By Prof. W. Somerville, F.L.S.
30. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH LA IV
By W. M. Geldart, M.A., B.C.L., Vinerian Professor of English
Law at Oxford. " Contains a very clear account of the elementary
principles underlying the rules of English law ; and we can recom-
mend it to all who wish to become acquainted with these elementary
principles with a minimum of trouble."
—
Scots Law Times.
38. THE SCHOOL
An Introduction to the Study of Education.
By J. J. Findlay, M.A., Ph.D., Professor of Education in
Manchester University. "An amazingly comprehensive volume.
... It is a remarkable performance, distinguished in its crisp,
striking phraseology as well as its inclusiveness of subject-matter."
—Morning Post.
In Preparation
THE EVOL UTION OF CITIES. By Prof. Patrick Geddes.
ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. By Prof. S. J.
Chapman •
COMMONSENSE IN LA W. By Prof. P. Vinogradoff, D.C.L.
THE CIVIL SERVICE. By Graham Wallas, M.A.
MISSIONS. By Mrs Creighton.
PRACTICAL IDEALISM. By Maurice Hewlett.
NEWSPAPERS. By G. B. Dibblee.
ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE. By E. N. Bennett, M.A.
London: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
And of all Bookshops a?id Bookstalls.

_- II
f
f
3407
1
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^
THE INSTITUTE OF MEDIAEVAL STUl>.*>
W& 10 ELMSLEY PLACE
TORCmr<:>&, CANADA,
« 3407
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