Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/552

536 53G SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE. Part III. would, in all probability, have given a more monumental character to their style of architecture. True domes would certainly have been introduced and ap2:)lied, not only to their mosques but to tlieir palaces, and with them all those beautiful arrangements which we find as the invariable accompaniments of domes in the East. Be this as it may, it is on the whole perhaps fortunate that Ave possess in Spain a form of Saracenic art from which all feeling of solemnity, and all aspirations for the future, are wholly banished. No style of architecture is so essentially impressed with the feeling that the enjoyment of the hour is all that should be cared for. It is consequently the gayest, but it is also the most ephemeral, of all the styles of architecture with which we are acquainted.^ ' Xothing need be said here of La Cuba antl La Ziza, and otber buildings in Sicily, which, though usually ascribed to the Moors, are now ascertained to have been built by the Normans after their conquest of the island in the 11th century. They are Moorish in style, it is true, and were probably erected by Moorish artists, but so were many churches and chapels in Spain, as men- tioned above; and I am not aware of any building now extant there which can be safely ascribed to the time when the island was held by the Moslems, or was then erected by them for their own purposes. Till that is ascertained, Sicily of course does not come within the part of our subject which we are now con- sidering.