Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/134

118 "With the circular churches, and those at Wisby, these wooden churches certainly add a curious and interesting ciiapter to the history of Christian architecture at the early period to which they belong, and are well deserving more attention than they have received. When our knowledge of the examples is more complete we may, pei-haps, be able to trace some curious analogies from even so frail a Style of architecture as that of wood. Something very like these Norwegian churches is found in a' arious parts of Russia. The mosques and other buildings erected in Cashmere and Thibet of the Deodar pinewood are curiously like them. The same forms are found in China 562. Church at Urnes, Norway. and Burmah, and much of the stone architecture of these countries is derived directly from such a wooden architecture as this. It may perhaps only be, that wherever men of cognate race strive to attain a given well-defined object with the same materials, they arrive inevi- tably at similar results. If this should prove to be the case, such a uniformity of style, arising without intercommunication among people so differently situated, would be quite as curious and instructive as if we could trace the steps by which the invention was cai-ried from land to land, and could show that the similarity was produced by one nation adopting it from another, which all research has hitherto tended to prove was in reality the case.