portion the advantages of an architectural style common
to all forms of building, and adaptable in the highest degree to every
varying purpose of design, from the simplest piece of walling, with the
barest indication of style, to the most elaborate arrangement of masonry
and carving which could be devised to distinguish a stately and
important structure.

Time was, however, preparing a revolution which was destined to sweep
away many old beliefs and established institutions, and with them those
familiar motives and habits of thought, which had long formed the
bountiful source of medieval inspiration and invention. The period
between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the Reformation was
like a fiery furnace, in which the materials for a new world were being
prepared; it was no time for the leisurely enjoyment of the pleasures of
art, which presupposes settled convictions and imperceptible
developments.

About this time many new forms of intellectual activity began to engage
the minds of the more gifted. Speculative philosophy, the opening fields
of science, the imaginative literature of the ancients; these were among
the subjects which, while they enlarged the sphere of individual
thought, destroyed that social ideal which had its roots in a common
belief, and with it, the secret source of all past development in
architecture. With the deep-lying causes and far-reaching effects of the
unrest which disturbed this period, we are not here concerned, beyond
the point where it touches our interest in architecture and sculpture.
That drastic changes were in progress affecting the popular regard for
these arts is undeniable. Educated and illiterate minds became alike
indifferent to the authority of established religion--either they
succumbed to the tyranny of its powerful but corrupt ministers, or stood
out in open rebellion against its disputed dogmas. In either case, that
architecture which had formerly been regarded as the chief symbol of
united faith, shared the neglect of one section or the abhorrence of the
other. That strong sense of beauty, once the common possession of
builders, sculptors, and people, was now between the upper and nether
millstones of fate, being ground into the fine dust which has served for
centuries as the principal ingredient in the manufacture of an endless
succession of moral puddings and pies, known in modern times as "art
criticism."

To earnest minds in all classes at that time, an