188 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

Add to these influences, purely physical, those dependent on the superstitions and political constitution; of the over-flowing multitude of “populous No”; on their condition of prolonged peace-their simple habits of life-their respect for the dead-their separation by incommunicable privilege and inherited occupation-and it will be evident to the reader that Lord Lindsay’s broad assertion of the expression of “the Ideal of Sense or Matter”¹ by their universal style, must be received with severe modification, and is indeed thus far only true, that the mass of Life supported upon that fruitful plain could, when swayed by a despotic ruler in any given direction, accomplish by mere weight and number what to other nations had been impossible, and bestow a pre-eminence, owed to mere bulk and evidence of labour, upon public works which among the Greek republics could be rendered admirable only by the intelligence of their design.

19. Let us, for the present omitting consideration of the debasement of the Greek types which took place when their cycle of achievement had been fulfilled, pass to the germination of Christian architecture, out of one of the least important elements of those fallen forms-one which, less than the least of all seeds, has risen into the fair branching stature under whose shadow we still dwell.

The principal characteristics of the new architecture, as exhibited in the Lombard cathedral, are well sketched by Lord Lindsay:-

“The three most prominent features, the eastern aspect of the sanctuary, the cruciform plan, and the soaring octagonal cupola, are borrowed from Byzantium-the latter in an improved form-the cross with a difference-the nave, or arm opposite the sanctuary, being lengthened so as to resemble the supposed shape of the actual instrument of suffering, and form what is now distinctively called the Latin Cross. The crypt and absis, or tribune, are retained from the Romish basilica, but the absis is generally pierced with windows, and the crypt is much loftier and more spacious, assuming almost the appearance of a subterranean church. The columns of the nave,

¹ [Above, § 12, p. 182.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]