Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/144

 114 Architecture in the Nineteenth Century. Michael, after the design of Rossian Stalian, is the finest structure of the class. The new museum of St. Peters- burg, by Leo von Klenze, is a building of considerable merit. The church of St. Isaac, after a design by a French architect, De Montferrand, is the best ecclesiastical edifice of St. Petersburg. Within the last forty or fifty years a reaction against the rigid copying of classic forms has sprung up, and a revival of mediaeval architecture has supplanted the Greek, if not the Renaissance, style, especially in ecclesiastical buildings. Two great English architects, Sir Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin, were among- the first to depart from the fashion which had so long prevailed, of introducing Greek and Roman forms into every building of importance : the most conspicuous of the early examples of the revived Gothic style in Europe is the new Westminster Palace, or Houses of Parliament, after the design by Barry, and with details largely furnished by Pugin. A great many churches and other public buildings have of late years been erected in various parts of England and some on the Continent in the Gothic style — buttresses and pinnacles once more taking the place of the columns and entablatures of Greek temples. The new Courts of Justice in the Strand, designed by Mr. Street, are certainly the finest examples of this style to be met with in England. The South front is remarkable for its grandeur and fine effect. The Germans adhered longer than the English to the classic style, which they had been originally slow to take up ; and in France the reaction against all antique forms has not been so strong as in England, though very dis- tinctly noticeable. The recent works of Gothic character