h Museum, are the same as the
belts of the ornaments found in Scandinavian tumuli; their method of
ornamentation is the same as that of the gate of Mycenae, and of the
Lombard pulpit of St. Ambrogio of Milan, and of the church of Theotocos
at Constantinople; the essential differences among the great schools are
their differences of temper and treatment, and science of expression; it
is absurd to talk of Norman ornaments, and Lombard ornaments, and
Byzantine ornaments, as formally distinguished; but there is
irreconcileable separation between Arab temper, and Lombard temper, and
Byzantine temper.

Now, as far as I have been able to compare the three schools, it appears
to me that the Arab and Lombard are both distinguished from the
Byzantine by their energy and love of excitement, but the Lombard stands
alone in his love of jest: Neither an Arab nor Byzantine ever jests in
his architecture; the Lombard has great difficulty in ever being
thoroughly serious; thus they represent three conditions of humanity,
one in perfect rest, the Byzantine, with exquisite perception of grace
and dignity; the Arab, with the same perception of grace, but with a
restless fever in his blood; the Lombard, equally energetic, but not
burning himself away, capable of submitting to law, and of enjoying
jest. But the Arabian feverishness infects even the Lombard in the
South, showing itself, however, in endless invention, with a refreshing
firmness and order directing the whole of it. The excitement is greatest
in the earliest times, most of all shown in St. Michele of Pavia; and I
am strongly disposed to connect much of its peculiar manifestations with
the Lombard's habits of eating and drinking, especially his
carnivorousness. The Lombard of early times seems to have been exactly
what a tiger would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous
imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of
northern mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him
pacing up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking on
the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you have the
Lombardic sculptor. As civilisation increases the supply of vegetables,
and shortens that of wild beasts, the excitement diminishes; it is still
strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons and Rouen; it dies away
gradually in the later Gothic, and is quite extinct in the fifteenth
century.

I think I shall best illustrate this g