Page:Alexis de Chateauneuf - The Country House.djvu/29

 hand an acquaintance with continental Gothic alone will furnish no idea of the peculiar character of the English perpendicular class. The Renaissance style which is fraught with so much plasticity and variety, springs also but from one root. In like manner as it is impossible for a botanist to understand all the species of one particular family without tracing all that are found in different parts of the globe; so too, is it impossible to become acquainted with the power of any one style of architecture without a similar comparative study of all its specimens, as exhibited in the works of different nations which have adopted it. To the north of Europe must justly be allowed the merit of having exhausted the whole circuit of Gothic architecture, and the application of its principles; this was certainly not accomplished in Italy. It is therefore on this side of the Alps that we observe many of the motives and principles of the Gothic retained to a very late period not disturbed, as was the case in Italy, by types from the antique. At the same time it must be admitted, that when the style founded upon this latter, began to find its way northwards, the two sister arts, painting and sculpture, though they followed in the train of architecture, did not strike root very deeply, but were for the most part treated capriciously and mechanically as mere handicrafts; and this was especially the case in England. It is therefore remarked with some truth, that the Renaissance style is characterized in Italy by greater delicacy and beauty than elsewhere; in France and the Low countries by greater richness, and in England by capriciousness and extravagance. Lest, however, the term itself, Renaissance, should be thought too loose and vague, it may be proper to define it as used to signify "that style which everywhere succeeded immediately to the Gothic."

In Italy, this first period of the proper application of the antique terminates with the tendency of Michael Angelo, to destroy the true proportions of his buildings by colossal details; on the other parts of the continent it disappeared in consequence of the diffusion of M. Angelo's taste by the Jesuits; and in England it terminated at the time of Wren. Accordingly, this architectural period extends very little beyond a single century, commencing in other countries about the time when it was already on the decline in Italy.

In what I have just been stating, I must be understood to allude to one uniform aim, namely, the free appropriation and adaptation of the elements of the antique style to modern purposes; consequently it is evident that the so-called Elizabethan style is only one of the links of a progressive series of such attempts. You must, therefore, admit that architecture which is capable of producing independent works out of its own resources, and from its own