greatest perfection at the time when the true
energy and prosperity of the people who had invented it were at their
culminating point. Many of these various styles of architecture were
good, considered in relation to the times and races which gave birth to
them; but none were absolutely good or perfect, or fitted for the
practice of all future time.

The advent of Christianity for the first time rendered possible the full
development of the soul of man, and therefore the full development of
the arts of man.

Christianity gave birth to a new architecture, not only immeasurably
superior to all that had preceded it, but demonstrably the best
architecture that _can_ exist; perfect in construction and decoration,
and fit for the practice of all time.

This architecture, commonly called "Gothic," though in conception
perfect, like the theory of a Christian character, never reached an
actual perfection, having been retarded and corrupted by various adverse
influences; but it reached its highest perfection, hitherto manifested,
about the close of the thirteenth century, being then indicative of a
peculiar energy in the Christian mind of Europe.

In the course of the fifteenth century, owing to various causes which I
have endeavored to trace in the preceding pages, the Christianity of
Europe was undermined; and a Pagan architecture was introduced, in
imitation of that of the Greeks and Romans.

The architecture of the Greeks and Romans themselves was not good, but
it was natural; and, as I said before, good in some respects, and for a
particular time.

But the imitative architecture introduced first in the fifteenth
century, and practised ever since, was neither good nor natural. It was
good in no respect, and for no time. All the architects who have built
in that style have built what was worthless; and therefore the greater
part of the architecture which has been built for the last three hundred
years, and which we are now building, is worthless. We must give up this
style totally, despise it and forget it, and build henceforward only in
that perfect and Christian style hitherto called Gothic, which is
everlastingly the best.

This is the theorem of these volumes.

In support of this theorem, the first volume contains, in its first
chapter, a sketch of the actual history of Christian architecture, up to
the period of the Reformation; and, in the subsequent chapters, an
analysis of the entire system of the laws of arc