Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/65

 GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORICAL STYLES, 7 For some three centuries this behef held good, till by the opening up of Greece to travel and study towards the end of the eighteenth century, the tradition was modified by the admission of Grecian remains to an equal or supreme place, beside or even above those of Rome. This second phase had not, however, an equal success for divers reasons ; a reaction was at hand in favour of mediaeval ideals, whether in the church, art, or the State. A conscious effort was then made — the most earnestly in England — to modify the current that had been flowing since the year 1500, and some of the results of this attempt may be traced by the student wise enough to follow up the clues indicated in the concluding pages of the English Renaissance style. In acquaint- ing himself with the buildings therein mentioned, he may feel that few of the diverse elements of our complex civilization, at the beginning of the twentieth century, have failed to find some architectural expression.