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excuse our mentioning them. In page 2, Vicente de Pinzon is said to have sailed with four caravels; page 7, we are told that out of his three ships he lost two.'-A Frenchman would not (p. 136) say, d'être terrible,' but a fin d'être terrible."

The Dutch are said (p. 577) to have instructed their Indian allies in Lutheranism-a very singular conduct in men who were themselves Calvinists. Does this error proceed from excessive familiarity with Portuguese authors, who designate all Protestants as Lutherans?

ART. XII. The Architectural Antiquities of Great_Britain. By J. Britton, F. S. A. London. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme. 1805 to 1810.

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EW objects are more interesting in the progress of civilization, than man rising from his cave, or his hovel of clay and twigs, from habitations of less skilful construction than the chambers of the beaver or the nest of the wren, and applying his strength and sagacity to architectural improvement. He proceeds in his laborious career till he has piled up prodigious masses of materials, which seem to promise a duration as lasting as the soil on which they rest. Not content, however, with bulk and height of structure, which appear to have formed his earliest idea of architectural excellence, he nexts directs his attention to the harmonious and graceful arrangement of component parts; to the ascertainment of the most pleasing proportions; and he finally enriches his fabric with the varied embellishment of a toilsome and finished sculpture.

In such a progress, the invention of the arch must have formed an era of considerable importance: this skilful and secure device has been ascribed, with some probability, to the talents of Archimedes; although it is generally admitted to have been but partially adopted before the time of Hadrian; a degree of strength and ele gance was thus added to the architectural beauties already attained, and the art itself at length appeared to have reached the summit of perfection.

A distaste to the servility of copying, or a despair of equalling, by imitation, the pure and admirable architecture of Greece and Rome, may, probably, have given rise (about the period of the downfal of the Western Empire) to the absurd practice of intermixing with it a greater variety and irregularity of shape, and of loading it with an extravagant richness and wildness of decoration. From the license thus assumed, the Gothic species of building may have ultimately arisen; whether we ascribe its immediate invention

to the fertile imagination of an Oriental people, and to their fondness for some peculiar forms and ornaments previously familiar to them; or agree, with Warburton, in deducing its origin trom the contemplation of the arched grove and the intersecting branches of contiguous trees; or whether, again, we incline to adopt a later theory of its derivation, from the varied combinations of wickerwork which was formerly used, by many nations, in the construction of their humbler dwellings, and even of places consecrated to religion; from whatever germ we may be disposed to trace its growth, it cannot but be deemed a corruption of the architecture already described; but, although a corruption, we may surely say abundat dulcibus vitiis;' and whilst, in the chaster style of Greece and Rome, we can easily imagine a correspondence to the simple majesty of Homer, to the correct embellishment of Virgil, the Gothic may not unaptly be compared to the splendid and fanciful variety of Tasso and Ariosto, to whom, however, the purest and most classical ear refrains not from listening with delight.

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The most ancient architectural remains in this kingdom, which chiefly consist of Druidical structures and towers for defence, are supposed, in several instances at least, to be imitations of oriental buildings; an hypothesis which receives some corroboration from the opinion maintained by Camden, and other distinguished antiquaries, of an early migration into Britain from the East. With Roman arms, Roman arts were introduced; and the architecture of that people appears to have been partially adopted in England, when the country was forsaken by her civilized conquerors, and gradually occupied, after many severe conflicts, by the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. All progress was then effectually checked; the new invaders continued, in the districts which they subdued, the barbarous mode of building to which they had been previously accustomed, and, for more than a hundred years after their inroads into England, their civil and religious edifices were inartificially compacted of timber and covered with rushes. In the middle of the seventh century, however, the Lombard style of architecture was imported from Italy; stone was now employed in the military and larger ecclesiastical buildings, and many of the latter are said to have been even profusely adorned with rich and elegant, though, occasionally, with fanciful and grotesque carvings. We confess ourselves but little disposed to credit all that has been advanced respecting the splendour and decorations of the Anglo-Saxon style; the undoubted specimens of it which remain are extremely rare, rarer we think than is usually suspected; and although a late writer, of acknowledged antiquarian skill, has attempted to ascertain the criteria by which its different eras were distinguished,* yet

* King's Munimenta Antiqua, Vol. iv.

we fear that he has not unfrequently indulged himself in too great a latitude of hypothesis, and, in more instances than one, deduced his conclusions from buildings, or remains, which are by no means proved to be Saxon. As a striking oversight in this respect, we may adduce the church of St. Albans, of which the author in question has greatly availed himself, and the whole of which (as Matthew Paris expressly informs us) was built by Paulus, and dedicated by his successor in the year 1115.* Notwithstanding. however, the impediments to a full and satisfactory elucidation of the subject on which we have touched, there is sufficient reason to believe that no other difference existed between the later AngloSaxon architecture and the Norman which immediately succeeded it, than the greater inassiness of the latter, and a few peculiarities of ornament.

Both these styles, which are equally marked by the use of the semicircular arch, are universally deemed, by antiquaries, to be merely a corrupt species of the Roman. But, in the thirteenth century, another mode of building began to prevail in England; the semicircular arch now yielded to the pointed one; the pillars were of more slender and graceful proportions, and frequently clustered; the sculpture was more correct and elegant; and imitations of leaves and flowers were peculiarly prevalent; other ornaments and enrichments were gradually added; groined and fretted roofs, diversified and fantastic munnions, and all the florid and gorgeous decorations which appear in our Gothic edifices from the middle of the fifteenth century to the revival of the Roman architecture. For this revival the nation is primarily indebted to the taste and influence of Hans Holbein. During the period in which he lived, however, but little exultation could be felt in the effect of his interference; we know not of any English buildings, in the restored style of Roman architecture,which are worthy of the slightest applause before the time of Inigo Jones; and in that of Sir Christopher Wren, the architecture of which we are speaking, arrived at the highest pitch of perfection which it has hitherto attained in this country. But, however deserving of admiration their principal works may be, it cannot but be admitted that our pretensions to architectural eminence must rest upon our Gothic, rather than upon our Roman structures; and it must consequently be regretted that the taste and genius which were displaying themselves in the former, during the reign of Henry the Seventh, should have been injudiciously diverted, under his successor, into a different channel. Our latest style of Gothic architecture may possibly be deemed incapa

Vit. xxiii. S. Alban. Abbat. p. 50, 55. Op. fol. (Wats' Edit.) Waltham Abbey Church too, which is asserted by Mr. King to be an unquestionable specimen of the architecture of Edward the Confessor, was re-dedicated (of course after an entire or material re-comstruction) in the year 1242.

ble of improvement; but an opinion of this kind might have been adopted at an earlier stage of our progress with equal pretensions to validity, if it had never been refuted by experiment and perseverance. It is not, perhaps, easy to point out the sources from which additional decorations and beauties might be derived; yet something may be advanced on this point; selections from the Arabesque, from the Oriental, and from the Egyptian style might à probably have been introduced with effect: a hint for the improvement of the entrances of our churches might have been borrowed from our continental neighbours;† a rich and elegant variety in the construction of our towers might have been adopted from the pyramidal steeple of the cathedral at Antwerp; the form of our later 1arch might even have been advantageously changed for that of the era of Henry the Fourth, while the more frequent adoption of the portico, to which the cathedral of Peterborough is so exclusively indebted for its celebrity, might have afforded a stately and magnificent variation in the fronts of our ecclesiastical structures. Such indeed is the perfect freedom of invention indulged to the Gothic style, that no limit can be reasonably affixed to the beautiful varieties into which it might have wandered, had not its progress been so effectually checked by the absurd determination to imitate a class of buildings which we have no prospect of equalling.

The high veneration, lately revived in England, for the pointed style, has excited in some of our antiquaries an eager desire to vindicate to us the invention of that species of architecture, and to substitute the appellation of English,' for that of Gothic,' by which it was reproachfully distinguished, in this country, in the sixteenth century: the attempt, however, has not been successful; and in a work, which has lately supplied a most important desideratum in our architectural researches, an irresistible proof is exhibited of the much more rapid progress of the Gothic style in France than in England; while, for the introduction of it, we appear to be indebted to the Normans, as marks of the Gothic mode of building occur at Caen and Bayeux, which may reasonably be deemed of somewhat higher antiquity than any with which we are acquainted in this island.

But however satisfactorily it may be inferred that the Gothic architecture of England was derived and improved from that of the Continent, yet the origin of the style itself is by no means decisively

An instance of this mixture occurs in the much admired church of Batalha, in Portugal.

As from the splendid and noble doors of the Cathedral at Rheims. The comparative meanness of the doors of our most celebrated cathedrals is peculiarly mortifying. Whittington's Historical Survey of the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of France.

ascertained. A powerful attempt has recently been made (in the valuable work of Mr. Whittington) to revive and confirm the supposition of its invention in the East; a supposition which was started by Wren, accepted by Lowth, and maintained by Warton, and which seems to receive a farther support from the fact, recorded by Matthew Paris,* of the employment of captive Saracens as labourers under European architects. Difficulties, however, still remain the objection, so often urged, of the uncertain date of the more ancient oriental edifices, does not appear to be removed; and we farther perceive in the structures of the East, and in the indubitable remains of the Saracenic style in Spain and Portugal, certain peculiarities in the archest and decorations, something of a very fanciful and luxuriant kind, which is rarely, if ever to be detected in the Gothic architecture of Europe, and which, if that architecture were originally oriental, could scarcely fail to abound. Numerous examples of the forms and ornaments to which we allude are supplied by the publications of Swinburne,‡ of Daniel, and of Salt; and the testimony which is afforded by the first of them to the truth of the foregoing remarks is much too decisive to be omitted. In the buildings,' says Mr. Swinburne, which I have had an opportunity of examining in Spain and Sicily, which are undoubtedly Saracenic, I have never been able to discover any thing from which the Gothic ornaments might be supposed to be copied.'§

It may also be observed that pointed arches are well known to have existed in Europe at a period far earlier than that of the first Crusade; to speak only of our own country-the pointed arch appears even in our Roman remains; it occurs too in Orford Castle, (Suffolk,) and in Chilham Castle, (Kent,) buildings which were certainly erected long before the era of the Holy War, and into which there is no good reason for supposing that the pointed arches were inserted at a later time; other instances might easily be adduced: but it may be urged, and the observation is certainly just, that the shape of the arch forms but one feature among the many which cha

* Ann. 1184, p. 142, (Wats' edition.).

Such, for instance, as the horse-shoe arch; and the regularly and completely indented sides of many of the pointed arches at Benares, and of some at Lucknow.

We would particularly refer to his views of the celebrated palace of Alhambra, in his Travels in Spain.'

The following opinion, though somewhat too strongly expressed, is surely not destitute of weight. But what absolutely decides this question is, the proof brought by Bentham and Grose, that throughout all Syria, Arabia, &c. there is not a Gothic building to be discovered, except such as was raised by the Latin Christians subsequent to the perfection of that style in Europe.' Milner's Antiquities of Winchester, Vol. II. p. 149. Horsley's Britan. Roman. P. 192. No. 5. Fig. xiv. P. 192. No. 67. Fig. iv. P. 192. No. 75. Fig. i.

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