Art. 7.-GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE. 1. A History of Renaissance Architecture in England, 1500-1800. By Reginald Blomfield, M.A. Two vols. London: Bell, 1897.

2. The Arts in Early England. By G. Baldwin Brown. Two vols. London: Murray, 1903.

3. Reason in Architecture. By T. G. Jackson, R.A. London: Murray, 1905.

4. Gothic Architecture in England. By Francis Bond. London: Batsford, 1906.

5. Sir Christopher Wren. By Lena Milman. London: Duckworth, 1908.

6. A History of Architectural Development (The Architect's Library). By F. M. Simpson, F.R.I.B.A. Vols. I and II. London: Longmans, 1905, 1909.

7. An Eighteenth Century Correspondence.

Edited by

Lilian Dickins and Mary Stanton. London: Murray, 1910.

THE quarrels of near relations are proverbially the most bitter and persistent; and, in considering the battle of the styles in architecture, which raged so fiercely in days comparatively recent, we are inclined to believe that the common descent of the Gothic and Renaissance styles from Roman models, through divers stages of Lombard and Romanesque development, may be assigned as one of the chief causes of the heats which inflamed the protagonists in those conflicts. The Catholic fervour of Pugin and the sombre dogmatism of Freeman's early writings are now almost forgotten; and only a few middle-aged men recall the days when Ruskin wielded a power strong enough to inflict upon his university the fabric which now enshrines its scientific treasures. If the battle of the styles rages no longer, it is not because the champions have lost faith, but rather because of the attitude of the public, which stares indifferently at architecture good or bad, and cares nothing, seemingly, for the advent of that common-sense style which is to subserve all our needs and compose all our differences at the same time.

The Romans were the architects, just as they were the legislators and the road-makers, of the world at the

time when Europe lay under their domination. At the culminating point of their Empire's grandeur, its towns and cities must have exhibited a spectacle of uniformity worthy of the most potent assimilative force the world has ever known. From the Euphrates to the Pillars of Hercules, city vied with city in the erection of theatres, baths, and temples, all built after one pattern. The Romans showed themselves to be better constructors than artists; by the extended use of the arch they were able to work with inferior materials-they built largely in brick-but Roman buildings impressed by indubitable marks of genius, like the Pantheon, are few. Had they possessed the artistic sense of the Greeks, their architecture would have occupied the first place.

Again, Roman architecture was, from the first, wanting in life. It was the product of a great department of the State, rather than the expression of the soul and sentiment of the people, wanting in grace though sometimes impressive through the grandeur of the mass, which seemed to imply a corresponding greatness in conception. Roman architecture, by the uniformity of its type, was essentially an expression of Roman universality and dominion. The style which emerged after the fall of the Empire was the architecture of individualism, shadowing forth the genius of a world of divers nationalities, and freed for ever from the sway of a single master. With the overthrow of Roman supremacy, Roman architectural traditions perished. Many stately buildings were demolished, and none were built; and it was not till Charlemagne's attempt to revive the arts that any light broke in. Gaul was full of Roman masonry, and the Emperor naturally took this as his model; but masons were wanting, and these he sought from Constantinople as the heir of Rome. In the meantime Byzantine art had taken a distinct line of its own, one little in sympathy with the spirit of the northern invaders; and the seed sown by Charlemagne flourished less from the effects of his eastern embassy than from the spring of religious enthusiasm in the West, and from the comparative order and prosperity of his rule. The new movement spread into Germany and southern France from Lombardy, and, passing through Normandy, crossed the Channel to our shores.

The English division of round-arched Romanesque

into Anglo-Saxon and Norman is arbitrary and needless. The masons who were summoned from Gaul about 680 A.D., to build churches in the Roman fashion, built in Britain as they would have built at home. We find, no doubt, in our earliest structures some slight insular characteristics; but these are largely indications of local or temperamental divergencies such as might well have occurred in France or Germany, and are not important enough to constitute a distinct style. The Norman and Italian masons who built in Britain before the Conquest showed more of this individuality than did those who built after 1066, the hand of the invader being just as heavy in compelling uniformity in architecture as in law or custom. The more marked insular features, like those at Sompting in Sussex, at Wickham in Berks, at Earl's Barton and Barton on Humber, at St Benet's at Cambridge and St Michael's at Oxford, were never repeated after the Conquest.

The most striking characteristic of the superseded insular style is to be found in the curious shaping of certain details which suggests that the hand which here carved stone was also accustomed to work in wood. The short columns in St Michael's, Oxford, and at Earl's Barton resemble turned wooden balusters. In the church of Monkwearmouth, probably the earliest stone church in England, there is rude decoration borrowed from animal forms, one of the door-posts being carved with birds' beaks and serpents. This is probably the first English example of ornamental detail which is peculiarly Norman. In Scandinavia, in France, in Wessex, in Apulia and in Sicily, the Norman mason was wont to decorate his work with some rude semblance of the animals he knew-the cattle he owned, or the wolf he hunted. The ornament on early masonry in England has little variety or fertility of imagination. Some dragons on a capital at Shobdon and in the cloisters at Ely, interlaced snakes at Kilpeck and at Oakham Castle, and certain early fonts, show the animal motif; but, as a rule, decoration is confined to the well-known conventional mouldings.

The progress of the Romanesque style in England was by no means uniform. Various causes served to stimulate the adoption of models brought direct from Normandy

in one region, and to procure their rejection in another. In secluded districts local builders went on with their 'stone carpentry'-as it has been aptly called-all through the reign of William Rufus. In the greater churches and abbeys the new tendencies are apparent; but in the remoter of such buildings the earlier models still persist. Mr Bond points out that the Cathedral of St Davids, founded in 1180, has many characteristics of the early part of the century. On the other hand, anomalies are to be found; for instance, St Bartholomew in Smithfield (1123) is more archaic in style than Norwich or Durham, which were begun some thirty years earlier. But in a time of such prodigious activity irregularities like these are quite natural.

Never before was there known such a marvellous outburst of constructive energy. The Benedictines represented the progressive spirit of ecclesiasticism; and to their credit stands the erection of Durham, Canterbury, Ely, Norwich, Peterborough, Rochester, Winchester and Worcester among the cathedrals, and Battle, Bury St Edmunds, Croyland, Glastonbury, Romsey, St Albans, Selby, Tewkesbury and Westminster among the monastic churches. The secular canons, who had been displaced during Saxon times by the monks, subsequently regained their position; and by the end of the twelfth century they had built or restored the cathedrals of Chichester, Hereford, Wells, Lincoln, Salisbury, Lichfield, Exeter, York and Ripon. To them, rather than to the monks, is due the development of English Gothic on its ultimate lines.

It will help us to perceive what a stupendous task this early church-building must have been in an age of imperfect communication, scanty population, undeveloped resources and unsettled government, if we try to imagine how we, with our constructive machinery brought to the highest pitch, should feel were we called upon to face an undertaking of corresponding magnitude. Few of the workers were qualified to act as master-builders; the majority had their strong arms and little else. As we should reckon, there was little money in the land, which had only just emerged from the most disastrous and exhausting of wars, a war of rival chieftains striving for supremacy. There were no roads save those which

the Romans had left; there was, indeed, little beside the stone in the quarries and the steady resolve to rear therefrom churches worthy to be dedicated to the glory of God. Much has been written and sung concerning the ecstatic impulse which drove the feudal legions of the West to redeem the Holy Sepulchre-a theme replete with poetry and glittering with the sparks which most easily kindle the eloquence of the historian or the poet; but it may be doubted whether the ideal of the Crusader, rushing off to Palestine, was as worthy of celebration as that of the mason who stayed at home to work.

It is probable that more Romanesque buildings were erected in Normandy than in England, although more survive here. When the time came to make a change, the more logical and exact mentality of the Norman prompted him to demolish and begin afresh, whereas the more easy-going English temperament leaned towards compromise, and without a qualm built pointed naves on to Romanesque choirs. Mr Bond remarks that the Norman thoroughness shows itself most strongly in those English districts, such as Norfolk, where the weavers and wool-staplers were prosperous, and where now we find, in what are mere villages, huge churches evidently built de novo.

The close of the Romanesque period is marked by the appearance of the pointed arch, an event which is often instanced as the supreme crisis in architectural construction. The pointed arch was no new discovery; and its universal adoption produced no revolution in building. The crisis had come centuries earlier, in some land where material was only to be found in small masses and of inferior quality, when a primitive builder-he may have been Assyrian, Egyptian, pre-Hellenic Greek, or Etruscan -discovered that, by ranging several small stones in the form of an arch, he could get valid support for a superincumbent mass of masonry without the labour of hoisting the heavy block which had hitherto been necessary as a lintel. Then it was that the doom of trabeate construction was sealed, although the triumph of the arch was not immediate and complete.

Trabeate building in wood, in the earlier stages of architecture, must have been vastly easier than in stone. The beam or lintel, on which the stability of the fabrie