These valuable materials have caused much dilapidation, and more buildings have been ruined by rapine, than by the injuries of time. In the works of the Greeks and the Romans, of hewn stone, they appear to have wrought only the beds of the stones, before they were placed in the building, leaving the faces to be worked after the completion of the edifice. By this means, the arisses and the mouldings were preserved from in. jury, and the faces made exactly in the same plane, or surface, which is not gene rally the case in the facings of our mo dern works. Our workmen pass them over in the most slovenly manner, with the greatest indifference, by rounding the stones which happen to project at the joints, which gives them a false and irre gular appearance in sunshine. Ily this means, also, the ancients diminished and fluted their columns, which could not be done with the same accuracy any other way.
After the fall of the Roman empire, the Goths, having now the dominion of those places formerly the seat of the arts, and basing soon become-converts to Christi anity, but having no established rules of their own in the principles of architec ture, either built their churches in the form of the Roman ba.silica, or converted the basilica into churches. Architecture continued (luring their government with little alteration, in the g-eneral forms, from that which had been practised at the de cline of the Roman empire ; but igno rance in proportion, and a depraved taste in the ornamental department, at last de prived their edifices of that symmetry and beauty, which were so conspicuous in the works of the ancients. However, the knowledge of architectural elements was still preserved among them, and of the various fortns of vaulting used by. the Greeks and Romans, they adopted that of g-roins or cross-arching.
Prom what has been said, it will be easy to sbew, that the Goths had no share in the invention of that style of building. which still bears tlteir name. The archi tecture of Italy, at the time they ceased to be a nation, was nothing but debased Roman, which was the archetype for the first Saxon churches erected in this coun try. The term Gothic seems to have ori ginated, in Italy, with the restorers of the Grecian style, and was applied, by the followers of Palladio and Inigo Jones, to all the structures erected in the interval between the beginning of the twelfth and end of the fifteenth centuries, probably with a view to stigmatize those beautiful edifices, and to recover the ancient man ner. This term is therefore of modern ap plication : it was not used in Italy till the pointed style had gained the summit of perfection, nor yet in P.ngland. when this
species of architecture ceased to be in use, and the Grecian restored. This man ner of building, like most other arts, re quired a succession of ages to bring it to maturity, and the principal cause which seems to have effected this WU, that de sire of novelty so inherent in the mind of man to produce something new, and a to tal disregard to the proportions of ancient edifices. Having now traced the Grecian style from the place of its invention to its decline in Italy, we shall follow the steps by which this corrupted ill-proportioned Italian style at last assumed a character so different front the original, as to be come in a few centuries a distinct species of architecture, which not only exhibited beautiful proportions, and elegant deco rations, but also majestic grandettr and sublimity in its fabrication. To do this it will not -be necessary to seek abroad for those successive changoes, as the dif ferent gradations can be distinctly traced at home. The first Saxon churches here were either constructed, with however rude imitation, after models of Roman temples, which we may presume then re Mained in Britain, or by foreigners brought from Rome and Prance. The manner of building at this time was called Roman, the term Gothic not being applied till this end of several centuries.
It has been observed, that a quadran gular walled enclosure, divided in the breadth into three parts, by two colona ded arcades, supporting, on the imposts of the arches, two other opposite higher walls, through which the light descended into the middle put, and upon which the roof rested, was known to the Romans before the Goths appeared in Italy. Now this construction is the general outline of the Saxon, Norman, and the pointed styles of building churches, and is also that form of structure most advantageous for lighting the interior, upon the same plan ; for, though the roof might have been equally well supported by columns, instead of the interior wails, and extend ing those of the exterior to the whole height, the intensity' of light produced from the same number of windows on the sides, thus far removed from the middle of the edifice, would have been greatly diminished. It may also bc farther ob served, that no other form of building was so favourable for vaulting for a vaulted roof could neither have been thrown to the svhole breadth, nor in the three compartments, without walls of enormous thickness, which would not on ly have added to the breadth, but %%mild have been attended with prodigious addi tional expenses.