This Gothic school is not more remarkable for the elegance of its forms, than the scientific skill with which the essential parts are adjusted. The small quantity of materials employed in edifices of great extent and ele vation, when compared to similar Greek and Roman works, resemble films of net work, or slight frames of timber or iron. To construct edifices of this tion, with small sand stones, so as to be stable and last ing, far surpasses the efforts of ancient artists, whose trust was reposed in the hardness and magnitude of their materials. In Gothic construction, all depended upon the correct adjustment of the bearings and thrusts of the different arches operating in various directions ; not op posed by thick walls, but balanced by each other, and by buttresses and pinnacles, apparently only objects of de coration.
The Greek architects having no arches, had only to arrange perpendicular pressures, and the strength of lin tels from pillar to pillar, and for this their fine marble quarries afforded a material which removed all difficul ties. They had, it is true, the principle of arches in the construction of their timber roofs ; but this was render ed an easy task, by introducing ranges of pillars in the inside of the cells. The architect, therefore, instead of studying the principles of geometrical construction, di rected his whole attention to that magnificence, which consisted in the magnitude and masterly execution of columns and sculptures.
The outlines of the Greek architecture, excepting the roof, were all horizontal or perpendicular; those of the Gothic were perpendicular, or tapering upwards, as the pointed arch, the pinnacle, or spire ; and those were generally constructed with stones of very small dimen sions. In the spire of Salisbury, which (besides the tower) is 180 feet high, the walls are only seven inches thick. It is not improbable, that this pyramidal form was brought from the East or from Egypt, or copied from some Roman remains; as there are instances, be sides the Egyptian pyramids and beautiful obelisks, of the Romans finishing their mausoleums or sepulchres with a small pyramid. There is one of this shape near Terracina, on the confines of the ecclesiastical state, on the side of the highway leading to Naples. It was dis covered by Perro Ligorio in 1573. It seemed to him fully as old as the Appian way, to which it was adjoining. Parallel of the Ancient Architecture with the llfodern, by Rowland Freart.
These spires, one of the most striking features in Gothic architecture, arc, in their purest and most perfect forms, peculiar to England. The finest are those which are lofty, contained within small angles, and which have not their outlines broken by any ornament. In different
parts of England there are many very beautiful spires ; but the most lofty are those at Salisbury, Grantham, and Coventry.
Revival of Roman Architecture.
While, during the latter part of the 15th and begin ning of the 16th century, the ornamental Gothic was car ried to luxuriant extravagance in England, the ancient Roman architecture began to occupy the attention of men of talents in Italy. In 1016, Buscheto, a Greek of the island of Dulichio, constructed the cathedral of Pisa with marble columns and a dome. Ile had many disciples, and was reckoned the founder of modern architecture in Europe. Early in the 15th century, Filippo Bruniles chi, a Florentine, born in 1377, whose ardent and origi nal mind led him to study, and form his taste from the remains of ancient buildings at Rome, undertook and completed the cathedral of Florence with an octagonal cupola of great dimensions, which a convocation of the architects of that age (1420) had pronounced impracti cable. (See Plate CLXXIII.) The completion of this edifice, the example of the other excellent works in which he was employed, and the perusal of the writings of Vitruvius, created a general disposition to this style of architecture. This was increased by the treatise De Rc 3dificatoria, which was shortly after published by Leon Battista Alberti, a learned canon of the metropolitan church of Florence, born in 1398, who also practised ar chitecture. His principal performance is reckoned the new works and embellishments of the church of St Fran cis at Rimini. These circumstances were preparatory to the great undertaking which fixed the epoch of the re vival, and gave to the Christian world a temple, which, in magnitude and variety of parts, far surpassed every Grecian and Roman work of a similar description. Under Julius II. Bramante, a native of the duchy of Urbino, horn in 1444, having been distinguished by his talents in various architectural works at Rome, under Pope Alex ander VI. was employed first to design the great theatre between the old Vatican and Belvidere, and afterwards the plan for St Peter's church ; (See Plate CLXXIV.) and that magnificent structure was carried on under the direction of Raphael de Urbino, the friend, some say the relation, of Bramante. Baldasse Poruzzi, Frater Johannus Jocundus, Antonio Sangallo, :Michael Angelo, Buonar rotti, Guilio Romano, and Giacomo Barozzi, known by the name of Vignola, from a place in the Modenese, where he was born in eminent men planned and conducted many churclits_ and palaces ; and Vignola, from his elaborate publications, and fruitful yet sober in vention, has been not improperly styled the legislator of architecture.