Rome fittingly cast off its great fetters, and stood forth in a form which was to be the root of the later architecture of all Europe. The construction which first showed itself in the Great Sewer, at last won for itself a consistent form of decoration in the palace of Diocletian and in the churches of Constantine.

Twin Brethren, the eye rests also on the gigantic vaults of the Basilica of Constantine. We may even catch a distinct glimpse of the huge arcaded mass of the Flavian Amphitheatre, nor do we wholly turn away from the arch of Severus and the small fragments of the disfigured arcades of the Tabularium. All these are Roman works; Greek decorative The history of Roman architecture, as elements are to be traced in all of them; a whole, is still to be written, because the but what stands out in all its boldness, history of Rome itself, as a whole, is still in all its dignity, is the true native art of to be written. Writers who deal with the Rome. That is the art which used the architecture of Rome, or with anything round arch as its constructive feature, else that belongs to Rome, from any of and which could therefore bridge over those special points of view which are and bind together distant spaces which implied in the words " classical," "mewere altogether beyond the reach of the diaval," and "modern," are often doing Greek system of the column and entab-admirable service within their own spelature. When we see the Roman system cial range, but they are not grappling of construction carried out on the mighti- with the subject as a whole. I have now est scale, when, in such a pile as Caracal- to speak only of the buildings of Rome, la's Baths, we see Roman art preparing and not of any of the other aspects of itself to influence the world as purely Roman history; but the same law apGreek art never could do, it is not amiss plies to all. I have put at the head of to remember that at the same moment this article the names of three books men like Ulpian and Paulus were building published within the last twelve years, of up that great fabric of purely Roman Law which the first two are of a very different which was in the like sort to influence character from the third. The volumes the world, to be the source of the juris- of Professor Reber and Mr. Burn are of prudence of modern Europe, and to win the utmost value to the student of Rofor Rome a wider dominion than was man topography and history in every ever won for her by the arms of Julius way that has to do with the buildings of and Trajan. At last the two great ele-classical and pagan Rome. But there ments of revolution drew nigh. New they stop. Alongside of sound and nations were knocking at the gates of scholar-like books like these one would Rome, asking, not to wipe out her name hardly have ventured to mention a book or to destroy her power, but rather to be like that of M. Wey, which does not asthemselves admitted to bear the one and pire to anything higher than pleasant to wield the other. A new creed, born gossipping talk, save for one thing only. in one of her distant provinces, was M. Wey, in his unsystematic rambles, making its way, in the teeth of all oppo- has in one sense bridged over the gap sition, to become the creed of the Roman better than the careful research of the Empire and of all lands which bowed to German and the English scholar. He Roman rule, whether as subjects or as has at least dealt with Pagan temples and disciples. Diocletian might be the per- Christian churches in one volume as secutor of the Church and Constantine parts of one subject. In architectural might be her nursing-father; but both matters, as well as in other matters, we alike were men of the same period; each have to fight against the superstition had a share in the same work. Each that Rome came to an end in 476. This alike marks a stage in the change by superstition, as applied to art, naturally which the chief magistrate of the Roman demands that a wide line should be Commonwealth grew, first into the des-drawn between the heathen basilica potic sovereign girt with the trappings of which Maxentius reared and of which eastern royalty, and then into the foreign King who came to be anointed as Cæsar and Augustus with the rites of a creed of which the first bearers of those names had never heard. Under the line of Emperors from Diocletian to Theodosius the real influence of Rome was not ending, but beginning. And it was in these days too that the architecture of

Constantine took the credit, and the Christian basilica which Constantine reared in readiness for the crowning of his Teutonic successor. From my point of view, we can no more draw any wide line in matters of architecture than we can in matters of law or language or religion. The story is one, without a break, almost without a halting place. The former

part of the tale is imperfect without the | Rome and Christendom. The same powlatter; the latter part is unintelligible er which can call up the Flavian Amphiwithout the former. Rome invented the theatre in its ancient form might also round arch at an early stage of her his- call up the mighty pile of the old Saint tory. She has used it down to our own Peter's, when the crowning place of the day in every stage of her history. But Cæsars had not been swept away for the it was in that stage of her history which gratification of papal vanity. The naris marked by the reigns of Diocletian row prejudices which once looked on and Constantine that she first made the such buildings as these as worthless and round arch the leading feature of an in- barbarous, unworthy of a glance or a dependent and harmonious style of archi- thought from the eye or the mind of tecture. This aspect of Roman history, taste, have surely passed away along with like every other, should be written as one the kindred prejudice which once looked story, and as yet it has not been written as with the same contempt on the wonders one story. I still long to see the history of mediæval skill in our own and in of the genuine Roman buildings of Rome, other northern lands. The early Chrisfrom the first strivings after the arch in tian buildings of Rome and Ravenna the roof of the Tullianum to the church are indeed far from lacking their votaof the third Otto and the house of Cre-ries; they have been in many quarters scentius, traced out as one single volume carefully studied and illustrated, and of the history of art, the later pages of their history has been carefully traced which must not be unkindly torn away out. What is needed is to put them from the earlier.

thoroughly in their true relation with regard to the buildings which went before them and to the buildings which followed them. The steps by which the arrangements of the earliest churches grew out of the arrangements of pagan buildings have been already often traced out; but it

The many works, chiefly the result of German scholarship, by which the topography and early history of Rome have been so largely illustrated during the last forty years deal of course largely with the buildings of all dates; but their object is hardly to supply a connected is no less needful to show the steps by history of architecture at Rome. But the which both the system of construction and minute and splendidly illustrated volume the architectural detail of the so-called of Professor Reber is specially devoted classical period changed into the constructo the buildings of the city, and it deals tion and the detail of what the classical elaborately with their architectural detail. purist is tempted to look on as the barbarIn Mr. Burn's book also, the buildings oc- ous Romanesque. In architecture, as in cupy, though not an exclusive, yet a prom- everything else, the works of the true inent, place, and they are largely illus- Middle Age, the time when two worlds trated by engravings. And both the stood side by side, is the time which, in German and the English writer give us the view of universal history, has an inalso an introduction specially devoted to terest beyond all other times. But with a sketch of the origin and growth of Ro- regard to architecture, just as with reman architecture down to the point at gard to other things, it is exactly the pewhich they unluckily stop. Both books riod which is least studied and least ungive the result of real research and sound derstood. It is neglected because of that scholarship, but of course the work of very transitional character which gives it Professor Reber, as specially devoted to its highest interest. There is a classical the buildings, treats their details in a school and there is a mediæval school; more elaborate and technical way. And each studies the works of its own favourif Professor Reber is a little too believ-ite class in the most minute detail; but ing as to the traditions of early times, it the intermediate period, the period whose is a fault which does little damage in a works tie together the works on each work which by its nature is almost whol- side of it into one unbroken series, is ly concerned with the remains of the his- looked on by both parties as lying withtorical ages. Our only complaint is that out its range. The classical purist looks so diligent an inquirer and so clear an on a basilican church as something hopeexpositor did not go on further. It lessly barbarous-something put towould surely not have been a task un-gether out of fragments ruthlessly plunworthy of his powers to have given the same skill with which he has traced out the buildings of earlier times to trace out the first estate of the head church of

dered from buildings of a better age. He sees a sign of degraded taste in the greatest step in advance which architecture ever took since the arch itself was

an

side of it.

brought to perfection, in that bold stroke time of Augustus or Trajan. And this of genius by which Diocletian's architect belief is strengthened by the fact that, in at Spalato first called into being a consist- the subsidiary arts, in painting, sculpture, ent round-arched style. On the other and the like, the later time really was a hand there is, or was a few years back, a time of decline. But when we once take school which looked on the old Saint in the position which the age of DiocleJohn's and the old Saint Peter's as build- tian and Constantine holds in universal ings only half escaped from paganism, history, we shall at once see that it is exand which professed itself grieved to see actly the age in which great architectural Ionic or Corinthian capital placed, developments were to be looked for. It even in an architectural treatise, side by is certain, as the ornaments of the arch of side with what it was pleased to call Constantine prove, that in Constantine's "the sacred details of Christian art." day the mere art of sculpture had gone By these "sacred details" were meant down not a little since the days of Trajan. the details of the architecture of England, It is certain also that the bricks of the age France, and Germany from the thirteenth of Constantine are not so closely and to the sixteenth centuries. Between two regularly fitted together as the bricks of such sets of narrow prejudices as these, the age of Nero. But there is no absurdthe buildings of the intermediate time, the ity in holding that, while the arts of the time when the true Roman construction sculptor and of the bricklayer went down, was throwing off its incongruous Grecian the art of the architect might go up. If mask, have, for the most part, fared but we allow that the chief merit of architecbadly. A small special school gave itself ture is consistency, that the constructive to their study, but they have been cast and the decorative system should go hand aside by the two larger schools on either in hand, architecture was certainly advancing, while the subsidiary arts were I have more than once, in different decaying. Through the whole "classical ways, tried to set forth the seeming para-period construction and decoration were dox that the architecture of the so-called kept asunder: the construction was Ro"classic" days of Rome is really a tran- man; the decoration was Greek. It was sition from the Grecian, the pure style of only in buildings which needed little or the entablature, to the Romanesque, the no decoration that the inconsistency is fully developed style of the round arch. avoided. In an amphitheatre the Greek The case is perfectly plain. The Greek elements are so secondary that they do architecture works its main constructive not force themselves on the eye; the features, the column and the entablature, half columns have sunk into something into its main ornamental features. The like the pilasters of a Romanesque buildRomanesque architecture also works its ing, and the general effect is that of a main constructive features, the round consistent round-arched style. In some arch and the piers or columns on which amphitheatres, and in bridges and aqueit rests, into its main ornamental features. ducts, the Greek ornamental features vanThe classical Roman, coming between ish altogether, and we see the Roman the two, does not follow this universal law construction standing out in all its grand of all good architecture. Sometimes, as and simple majesty. Buildings of this in most of the temples, it simply imitates kind are the direct parents of the plainer Greek forms in other buildings it com- and more massive forms of Romanesque, monly uses the round arch as the princi- such as we see in many of the great pal constructive feature, but masks it, as churches of Germany. But such a style far as it can, under a system of decora- as this is essentially plain, essentially tion borrowed from the Greek construc- massive, and there are places where tion. This inconsistency marks the clas- buildings are wanted which are at once sical Roman style as an imperfect and transitional style. The difficulty in accepting this doctrine comes from two causes. Till men have learned to take wide views of history as a whole, it is hard for them to believe that the time of the seeming decline of Rome was really the time of her new birth. It is hard for them to believe that the time of Diocletion and Constantine was, in architecture or in anything else, an advance on the

lighter and more enriched. The beginnings of a light and ornamental roundarched style showed themselves when the arch was first allowed to spring directly from the capital of the column. We now have for the first time a pure and consistent round-arched style, better suited for the inside of a church or hall or other large building than the massive arches of the amphitheatre and the aqueduct. And when the column and arch were once es

tablished as the main constructive fea- | the transplanted art of Greece; we call tures, they naturally supplied a new sys- up before our eyes the full splendour of tem of decoration. As arched buildings the vast expanse of colonnades, the had once been inconsistently decorated ranges of temples and palaces and basilwith ornamental columns and entabla-icas, which covered the hills and valleys tures, they could now be consistently of Rome. Imagination fails as it strives decorated with ornamental arcades. We to conceive the spreading forest of marsee the beginning of this system as early ble which gathered round the soaring as the church of Saint Apollinaris at column from which the sculptured form Classis; and from thence, diverging at of Trajan looked down on his mighty one time into the wilder and ruder forms works. And yet, if we could see them in of Lorsch and Earls Barton, it grows into their splendour, an eye accustomed to the endless decorative arcades of Pisa other forms of art might perhaps grow and Lucca, and into the more moderate weary of the endless repetition of one use of the same kind of enrichment in idea. We might feel that we had had the Romanesque of Normandy and Eng- more than enough of the stiff forms of land. Thus it was that Romanesque grew the Grecian portico; we might weary of up. Change the form of the arch, de- horizontal lines, of flat roofs, however vise a system of mouldings and other or- rich with bronze or gilding. We might naments which suit the new form of arch, long to see the unvaried outline broken and Romanesque changes into Gothic. by the spreading cupolas of Byzantium, The hall of Spalato is thus the true be- by the tall campaniles of mediæval Italy, ginning of every later form of good and or by the heaven-piercing spires of Gerconsistent architecture. It is the imme- many and England. We might feel too diate parent of Durham and Pisa; it is that, after all, the splendours of Rome the more distant parent of Westminster were not Roman, that the conqueror had and Amiens. simply decked himself out in the borrowed plumes of conquered Hellas. In such a mood, we might turn away from the Temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, from the vast Julian Basilica at its foot, to those works in which somewhat of a Roman spirit showed itself beneath the mask and varnish of the foreign system of ornament. A plain arch of brick, even if put together with the utmost skill of the days of Nero, is in itself a far less beautiful object than a fluted column crowned by a Corinthian capital. But on the soil of Rome the arch of brick is native, and the Corinthian capital is foreign. A day was to come when the foreign form of beauty was to be pressed into the service of the native form of construction; but that day was still far distant. The two forms still stood side by side, either standing wholly apart or else welded into one whole by a process of union much like that which was delighted in by the mythical Etruscan tyrant.* We might mark, as we still mark, with more of wonder than of pleasure, the attempt of

On the whole, the course of the earlier stages of this long history can be nowhere so well studied as in Rome. Ravenna has its own charm and its own lesson. It has a perfectly unique collection of buildings of an age of which there are few buildings elsewhere. In the later forms of Romanesque Rome is far less rich than Pisa and Lucca, or than Milan and Pavia; and of Gothic, even of Italian Gothic, there is at Rome all but an absolute lack. But nowhere else can we find the same store of pagan and early Christian buildings standing side by side. Nowhere therefore can we so well trace out the steps by which the inconsistent classical Roman style was improved into the consistent Romanesque. We start from the very beginning. We have seen in Rome the invention —one of the many independent inventions of the arch itself. But, as far as we can see, Rome failed to make the most of her own invention. If we had any perfect buildings of the time of the Kings and of the early Republic, we should be better able to follow out our subject. But, as far as we can see, the charm of Greek art, the ex-gilian Mezentius: quisite loveliness of Greek forms, cut short all native effort in this as in other

ways.

Rome, in her most brilliant days, failed to form a native architecture, just as she failed to form a native literature. We gaze with admiration on the exquisite examples which Rome has to show of

I need hardly quote the description of the Vir"Mortua quinetiam jungebat corpora vivis." Certainly nothing can be more truly living than the Pantheon, while the Greek portico had become some grand conception of the really Roman part of the thing very nearly dead, with the unfluted columns, the disproportionate pediment, and the frieze where-undoubtedly very much for the convenience of historians -the name of a living man took the place once allotted to the sculptured forms of gods and heroes.

brought to perfection, in that bold stroke time of Augustus or Trajan. And this of genius by which Diocletian's architect belief is strengthened by the fact that, in at Spalato first called into being a consist- the subsidiary arts, in painting, sculpture, ent round-arched style. On the other and the like, the later time really was a hand there is, or was a few years back, a time of decline. But when we once take school which looked on the old Saint in the position which the age of DiocleJohn's and the old Saint Peter's as build- tian and Constantine holds in universal ings only half escaped from paganism, history, we shall at once see that it is exand which professed itself grieved to see actly the age in which great architectural an Ionic or Corinthian capital placed, developments were to be looked for. It even in an architectural treatise, side by is certain, as the ornaments of the arch of side with what it was pleased to call Constantine prove, that in Constantine's "the sacred details of Christian art." day the mere art of sculpture had gone By these "sacred details" were meant down not a little since the days of Trajan. the details of the architecture of England, It is certain also that the bricks of the age France, and Germany from the thirteenth of Constantine are not so closely and to the sixteenth centuries. Between two regularly fitted together as the bricks of such sets of narrow prejudices as these, the age of Nero. But there is no absurdthe buildings of the intermediate time, the ity in holding that, while the arts of the time when the true Roman construction sculptor and of the bricklayer went down, was throwing off its incongruous Grecian the art of the architect might go up. If mask, have, for the most part, fared but we allow that the chief merit of architecbadly. A small special school gave itself ture is consistency, that the constructive to their study, but they have been cast and the decorative system should go hand aside by the two larger schools on either in hand, architecture was certainly adside of it. vancing, while the subsidiary arts were I have more than once, in different decaying. Through the whole "classical " ways, tried to set forth the seeming para- period construction and decoration were dox that the architecture of the so-called kept asunder: the construction was Ro"classic" days of Rome is really a tran- man; the decoration was Greek. It was sition from the Grecian, the pure style of only in buildings which needed little or the entablature, to the Romanesque, the no decoration that the inconsistency is fully developed style of the round arch. avoided. In an amphitheatre the Greek The case is perfectly plain. The Greek elements are so secondary that they do architecture works its main constructive not force themselves on the eye; the features, the column and the entablature, half columns have sunk into something into its main ornamental features. The like the pilasters of a Romanesque buildRomanesque architecture also works its ing, and the general effect is that of a main constructive features, the round consistent round-arched style. In some arch and the piers or columns on which amphitheatres, and in bridges and aqueit rests, into its main ornamental features. ducts, the Greek ornamental features vanThe classical Roman, coming between ish altogether, and we see the Roman the two, does not follow this universal law construction standing out in all its grand of all good architecture. Sometimes, as and simple majesty. Buildings of this in most of the temples, it simply imitates kind are the direct parents of the plainer Greek forms in other buildings it com- and more massive forms of Romanesque, monly uses the round arch as the princi- such as we see in many of the great pal constructive feature, but masks it, as churches of Germany. But such a style far as it can, under a system of decora- as this is essentially plain, essentially tion borrowed from the Greek construc- massive, and there are places where tion. This inconsistency marks the clas- buildings are wanted which are at once sical Roman style as an imperfect and lighter and more enriched. The begintransitional style. The difficulty in ac- nings of a light and ornamental roundcepting this doctrine comes from two arched style showed themselves when the causes. Till men have learned to take arch was first allowed to spring directly wide views of history as a whole, it is from the capital of the column. We now hard for them to believe that the time of have for the first time a pure and consistthe seeming decline of Rome was really ent round-arched style, better suited for the time of her new birth. It is hard for the inside of a church or hall or other them to believe that the time of Diocle- large building than the massive arches of tion and Constantine was, in architecture the amphitheatre and the aqueduct. And or in anything else, an advance on the when the column and arch were once es