o the church-building of Holland in the middle ages, as one
notes in the remarkable church of Deventer. In the main, however, if we
except the Groote Kerk at Rotterdam, St. Janskerk at Gouda, the
archbishop's church at Utrecht, and the splendid edifice at Dordrecht,
there is nothing in Holland architecturally great.

IV

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF RHENISH ARCHITECTURE

It cannot be claimed that the church-building of one nation was any more
thorough or any more devoted than that of any other. All the great
church-building powers of the middle ages were, it is to be presumed,
possessed of the single idea of glorifying God by the building of houses
in his name.

"To the rising generation," said the editor of the _Architectural
Magazine_ in 1838, "and to it alone do we look forward for the real
improvement in architecture as an art of design and taste."

"The poetry of architecture" was an early and famous theme of Ruskin's,
and doubtless he was sincere when he wrote the papers that are included
under that general title; but the time was not then ripe for an
architectural revolution, and the people could not, or would not, revert
to the Gothic or even the pure Renaissance--if there ever was such a
thing. We had, as a result, what is sometimes known as early Victorian,
and the plush and horsehair effects of contemporary times.

In general, the churches of Germany, or at least of the Rhine provinces,
are of a species as distinct from the pure Gothic, Romanesque, or
Renaissance as they well can be. Except for the fact that of recent
years the _art nouveau_ has invaded Germany, there is little mediocrity
of plan or execution in the ecclesiastical architecture of that country,
although of late years all classes of architectural forms have taken on,
in most lands, the most uncouth shapes,--church edifices in
particular,--they becoming, indeed, anything but churchly.

The Renaissance, which spread from Italy just after the period when the
Gothic had flowered its last, came to the north through Germany rather
than through France, and so it was but natural that the Romanesque
manner of building, which had come long before, had a much firmer
footing, and for a much longer period, in Germany, than it had in
France. Gothic came, in rudimentary forms at any rate, as early here as
it did to France or England; but, with true German tenacity of purpose,
her builders clung to the round-arched style of openings long after the
e