Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/19

Rh buildings erected before the date of the first-named king, but, if so, they are small and unimportant, and, indeed, it seems probable that the edifices left by the Romans sufficed for the early wants of the people. Some of these, like the church at Trèves, were built for Christian purposes; while others may have been in wood and have perished. Be that as it may, however, from the time of Charlemagne we can trace the history of the style with tolerable distinctness. A considerable impulse was given to it under the Othos (936–1002), and under the Hohenstaufens (1138–1268) the old round-arched style reached its culminating point of perfection. If any style deserves the name of German it is this, as it was elaborated in the valley of the Rhine, with very little assistance from any other nation beyond the hints obtained from the close connection that then existed between the Germans and the inhabitants of the valley of the Po.

With the house of Hapsburgh (1273) a change came over the spirit of the country. What Germany did in the 18th century was only a repetition of what she had done in the 13th. At the latter epoch she abandoned her native literature, almost her mother tongue—to speak French and to copy French fashions, as at the earlier epoch she forsook her own noble style of art to adopt the French pointed Gothic. Had she thoroughly understood and appreciated the French style, it might have been as well; but it was foreign to her tastes, she had never worked it out from the beginning, and it soon in consequence became exaggerated, and finally degenerated into a display of tricks and tours de force.

By a strange perversion of historical evidence, the Germans have attempted of late years to appropriate to themselves the credit of the invention of the pointed style, calling it in consequence German architecture. The fact being that the pointed style was not only invented but perfected in France long before the Germans thought of introducing it; and when they adopted it, they did so without understanding it, and fell far short of the perfection to which it was carried by the French in all the edifices which they erected in the age of its greatest development in their own country. On the other hand, the Germans may fairly claim the invention of the particular style which prevailed throughout Lombardy and Germany of which we are now speaking. This style, it is true, never was fully developed, and never reached that perfection of finish and completeness which the pointed style attained. Notwithstanding this, it contained as noble elements as the other, and was capable of as successful cultivation, and, had its simpler forms and grander dimensions been elaborated with the same care and taste, Europe might have possessed a higher style of Mediæval architecture than she has yet seen. The task, however, was abandoned before it was half completed, and it is only too probable now that it can never be resumed.