LETTER I. LOMBARD AND GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. In the preceding Letters, I have attempted to give you some idea of the Christian Art of Greece and Rome, the aged sovereigns of the elder world; in these that follow, I shall do my best to show you how their heirs, the youthful Europeans, availed themselves of the legacy, threw their own glowing life into the ideas and forms thus bequeathed to them, and either combined them afresh, or created new ones out of the riches of Nature and of their own Souls. I shall divide the ensuing Series into five grand divisions or periods,-the First, and of longest duration, extending from the middle of the sixth to the middle of the fifteenth century, during which Spirit, or Christianity, ruled supreme, and found its chief expression in Architecture, the Second, embracing the latter half of the fifteenth century, during which Christianity battled with the pride of Intellect and resuscitated paganism, while Sculpture was perfected in the struggle, the Third, extending from the close of the fifteenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, which witnessed the results of the struggle, good and bad, in the successive triumphs of Spirit, Intellect, and Sense, Expression, Design, and Colouring, in Painting, the peculiar handmaid and exponent of Christianity, the Fourth, expiring with the eighteenth century, signalised by the various attempts to regenerate Art through Sense and Intellect, Colour and Design,—and the Fifth and last, dating from the commencement of the present century, characterised by a similar revival through Spirit, or Expression, and a recurrence to first principles, to the Christianity and Nationality of Romano-Teutonic Europe. The rise and progress of Sculpture and Painting will of course demand their due consideration under the first as under the later of these periods; meanwhile it is to the development and character of the Lombard and Pointed, or Gothic Architecture, both in Italy and the North, that I address myself in the present Letter. SECTION 1. Lombard Architecture, South and North of the Alps. I need not remind you that the freedom of the North, the civilization of the South, and the Christianity of the East, are the three elements from the commixture of which the character and history of Europe spring, and that Italy was the field where |