I. THE QUARRY 35

English, Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of both. All other orders are varieties of these, or phantasms and grotesques, altogether indefinite in number and species.*

§ 20. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result, until they began to bring the arch into extensive practical service; except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavours to mend it, and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful and often very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity: seized upon the arch as her own: decorated it, and delighted in it: invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful-but very imperfect; in many respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childish light of imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the Bosphorus and the Ægean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes corpse-light. The architecture, like the religion it expressed, sinks into a settled form-a strange, gilded, and embalmed repose; and so would have remained for ever,-so does remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.†¹ But rough wakening was ordained for it.

* Appendix 7: “Varieties of the Orders” [p. 426].

† The reader will find the weak points of Byzantine architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,-Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant.²

¹ [A variant of this passage in the MS. reads:-

“...remained for ever. So does remain: in the spots of the earth where its sleep of death has been undisturbed, amidst the woods of Athos and on the crags of Albania.”]

² [Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant, by the Hon. Robert Curzon, Jun. (afterwards the 14th Baron Zouche, of Harringworth), had been published in 1849. The criticism of Byzantine architecture will be found at pp. xxiv.-xxxiii. of the original edition.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]