feminine. "These are the three," says Mr. Louis Sullivan, "the
only three letters from which has been expanded the architectural art,
as a great and superb language wherewith man has expressed, through
the generations, the changing drift of his thoughts."

[Illustration 21: THE LAW OF TRINITY. A ROMAN IONIC ARCADE, BY
VIGNOLE.--THE COLUMN, THE ENTABLATURE, AND THE ARCH CORRESPOND TO LINES
VERTICAL, HORIZONTAL AND CURVED.]

It would be supererogatory to dwell at any length on this "trinity
of manifestation" as the concrete expression of that unmanifest and
mystical trinity, that _three-in-one_ which under various names occurs
in every world-religion, where, defying definition, it was wont
to find expression symbolically in some combination of vertical,
horizontal and curved lines. The anstated cross of the Egyptians
is such a symbol, the Buddhist wheel, and the fylfot or swastika
inscribed within a circle, also those numerous Christian symbols
combining the circle and the cross. Such ideographs have spelled
profound meaning to the thinkers of past ages. We of to-day are not
given to discovering anything wonderful in three strokes of a pen,
but every artist in the weaving of his pattern must needs employ these
mystic symbols in one form or another, and if he employs them with
a full sense of their hidden meaning his work will be apt to gain
in originality and beauty--for originality is a new and personal
perception of beauty, and beauty is the name we give to truth we
cannot understand.

In architecture, this trinity of vertical, horizontal and curved
lines finds admirable illustration in the application of columns and
entablature to an arch and impost construction, so common in Roman and
Renaissance work. This is a redundancy, and finds no justification in
reason, because the weight is sustained by the arch, and the "order"
is an appendage merely; yet the combination, illogical as it is,
satisfies the sense of beauty because the arch effects a transition
between the columns and the entablature, and completes the trinity
of vertical, horizontal and curved lines (Illustration 21). In the
entrances to many of the Gothic cathedrals and churches the same
elements are better because more logically disposed. Here the
horizontal lintel and its vertical supports are not decorative merely,
but really perform their proper functions, while the arch, too, has
a raison d'etre in that it serves to relieve the lintel of the
superin