is impossible to do more than indicate the general tendencies in
different countries. But there are certain defined characteristics an
observance of which will make clear to any reader various fundamental
principles by which it is easy to determine the approximate age and
style of works.

In the first place, the great general rule of treatment of stone
in the North and in the South is to be mentioned. In the Northern
countries, France, Germany, and England, the stone which was employed
for buildings and their decorations was obtainable in large blocks
and masses; it was what, for our purposes, we will call ordinary
stone, and could be used in the solid; therefore it was possible
for carving in the North to be rendered as deeply and as roundly as
the sculptor desired. In Southern countries, however, and chiefly in
Italy, the stone used for building was not ordinary, but semi-precious
stone. Marble, porphyry, and alabaster were available; and the use
of such material led to a different ideal in architecture and
decoration,--that of incrustation instead of solid piling. These
valuable stones of Italy could not be used, generally speaking,
in vast blocks, into which the chisel was at liberty to plough as
it pleased; when a mass of marble or alabaster was obtained, the
aesthetic soul of the Italian craftsman revolted against shutting
up all that beauty of veining and texture in the confines of a
solid square, of which only the two sides should ever be visible,
and often only one. So he cut his precious block into slices: made
slabs and shallow surfaces of it, and these he laid, as an outward
adornment to his building, upon a substructure of brick or rubble.

It is easy to perceive, then, the difference of the problem of the
sculptors of the North and the South. The plain, solid Northern
building was capable of unlimited enrichment by carving; this carving,
when deeply cut, with forcible projection, acted as a noble
embellishment in which the principal feature was a varied play of
light and shade; the stone having little charm of colour or texture
in itself, depended for its beauty entirely upon its bold relief,
its rounded statuary, and its well shaped chiselled ornament. The
shallow surface, already beautiful, both in colour and texture,
in the Southern building material, called only for enrichment in
low relief: ornament only slightly raised from the level or simply
perforating the thin slab of glowing stone on which i