--The Two Styles in Conflict for a Time;
their Respective Characteristics Reviewed--Carvers Become Dependent
upon Architects and Painters--The "Revival" Separates "Designer"
and "Executant."

The prevailing architectural fashion of a time or country, known as its
style, has generally been determined by the influence of more advanced
nations on those of a ruder constitution; each modifying the imported
style to suit its own climatic and social conditions, and imbuing it
with its own individual temperament. The foreign idea was thus developed
into a distinct and national style, which in its turn bore fruit, and
was passed on as an initiative for other nations and new styles. The
current of this influence, generally speaking, trended from east to west
as though following the course of the sun, upon whose light it depended
for the illumination of its beauties.

There are so many styles of architecture, and consequently of carving,
both in wood and other materials, that a history of such a subject would
be a life study in itself, and be quite barren of results except those
of a professional kind. It would include the characteristics of carvings
from every country under the sun, from the earliest times known.
Engravings on boars' tusks found in prehistoric caves, carvings on South
Sea Island canoe paddles, Peruvian monstrosities of terror, the refined
barbarity of India and China, the enduring and monumental efforts of
Egyptian art, and a hundred others, down to times and countries more
within reach. In fact, it would only be another name for a history of
mankind from the beginning of the world.

Nothing could be better for the student's purpose than to begin his
studies of history at that point where the first indication of the
Gothic or medieval period of architecture makes its appearance. For it
was from this great and revolutionary change in the manner of building
that all the subsequent variety of style in carving as well as building
in medieval Europe took its origin. The first rudiments of the great
school of art, which has been broadly classified as having a "Gothic"
origin, began to make their appearance in Byzantium some three or four
centuries after the birth of Christ. This city, said to have been
founded by a colony of Greek emigrants, became the seat of Roman
government in their eastern empire, and is now known as Constantinople:
it contains a noted example of ancient art in the great church o