Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/466

450 450 BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. Part II. ings they are attached to, rather than to heighten the general effect. With scarcely an exception also all the Renaissance cathedrals employ internally great sprawling pillars and pilasters, designed for external use by the Romans, which not only diminish the apparent size of the building but produce an effect of unreality and sham utterly fatal to true art. In fact, turn it as we will, and compare it as Ave may with any other buildings of its class, the verdict seems inevitable that Sta. Sophia — internally at least, for we may omit the consideration of the exterior, as unfinislied — is the most perfect and most beautiful church which has yet been erected by any Christian people. When its furniture was complete the verdict would probably have been still more strongly in its favor ; but so few of the buildings described in these pages retain these adjuncts in anything like completeness that they must be withdrawn from both sides and our remarks be confined to the architecture, and that only.

893. Elevation of House at Kifadi. (From De Vogiie.) Scale 20 ft. to 1 in. Domestic Architecture. When the Count De Vogue's book is complete we shall probably be in a position to realize the civil and domestic architecture of Syria 9>^ in the 5th and 6th centuries with a completeness that, a very short time ago, Avould liave been thought im- possible. Owing to the fact that every part of the buildings in the Hauran was in stone, and that they were suddenly deserted on the Mahomedan conquest, never, apparently, to be reoccupied, many of the houses remain perfectly entire to the present day, and in Northern Syria only the roofs are gone. These buildings are so numerous and so interesting that on some future occasion it may be worth while to illustrate them more fully. At present one example must sufKce to explain this class of houses. Generally they seem to have been two stories in height, adorned with verandahs supported by stone columns, the upper having a solid screen-fence of stone about 3 ft. 6 in. high, intended apj>arently as much to secure privacy to the sleeping apartments of the house as protection against falling out. In some instances the lower story is twice the height of the upper, and contained the state apartments