onal limitations;
but the three architectures may nevertheless not unfitly receive their
names from those nations by whom they were carried to the highest
perfections. We may thus briefly state their existing varieties.

Sec. LXXXIX. A. GREEK: Lintel Architecture. The worst of the three; and,
considered with reference to stone construction, always in some measure
barbarous. Its simplest type is Stonehenge; its most refined, the
Parthenon; its noblest, the Temple of Karnak.

In the hands of the Egyptian, it is sublime; in those of the Greek,
pure; in those of the Roman, rich; and in those of the Renaissance
builder, effeminate.

B. ROMANESQUE: Round-arch Architecture. Never thoroughly developed until
Christian times. It falls into two great branches, Eastern and Western,
or Byzantine and Lombardic; changing respectively in process of time,
with certain helps from each other, into Arabian Gothic and Teutonic
Gothic. Its most perfect Lombardic type is the Duomo of Pisa; its most
perfect Byzantine type (I believe), St. Mark's at Venice. Its highest
glory is, that it has no corruption. It perishes in giving birth to
another architecture as noble as itself.

C. GOTHIC: Architecture of the Gable. The daughter of the Romanesque;
and, like the Romanesque, divided into two great branches, Western and
Eastern, or pure Gothic and Arabian Gothic; of which the latter is
called Gothic, only because it has many Gothic forms, pointed arches,
vaults, &c., but its spirit remains Byzantine, more especially in the
form of the roof-mask, of which, with respect to these three great
families, we have next to determine the typical form.

Sec. XC. For, observe, the distinctions we have hitherto been stating,
depend on the form of the stones first laid from pier to pier; that is
to say, of the simplest condition of roofs proper. Adding the relations
of the roof-mask to these lines, we shall have the perfect type of form
for each school.

[Illustration: Fig. XII.]

In the Greek, the Western Romanesque, and Western Gothic, the roof-mask
is the gable: in the Eastern Romanesque, and Eastern Gothic, it is the
dome: but I have not studied the roofing of either of these last two
groups, and shall not venture to generalize them in a diagram. But the
three groups, in the hands of the Western builders, may be thus simply
represented: _a_, Fig. XII., Greek;[71] _b_, Western Romanesque; _c_,
Western, or true, Gothic.

Now, observe, first, that the