Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/874

 708 The Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal. [May, reached its climax in the thirteenth century, and may be said to have received no improvements since. Says a writer upon the subject — more particularly of the French Gothic style : " It is in the cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries .... that we find the noblest development of the Gothic style. " Everything tended to make them so. The nation was united in the effort — all the science, all the arts, all the learning of the times was centered in the church. In it, and that almost exclusively, the sculptor, the painter, the historian, the moralist and the divine, all found scope for the expression of their ideas on the sculptured walls, porches and niches, or the painted windows of the cathedrals — the churches of the people." Religious sentiment of the most ele- vated character found its best exponent in the Gothic cathedrals of those times. The attempt of the Greeks to leave the impress of their faith upon their architec- ture was entirely successful, and in their structures we read the history of a beautiful mythology, — a scheme of diving which, though founded on prin- ciples of unenlightened heathenism, was full of a certain awe-inspiring beauty ; but when we turn to the contemplation of a Gothic cathedral we comprehend at a glance that it belongs to another epoch, — that it has been built by the light of a noble religious era. A divine inspiration has here manifested itself, and touched the whole work with a radiance which lifts it far above the loftiest aspirations of Grecian paganism. The architectural works which pre- cede, and those which follow, the Christian era, form two utterty distinct pages of history, — two pages which, while they are alike instructive, lead the mind into widely divergent channels and enunciate, one the blind adoration of the Pagan, — the other the enlightened faith of the Christian. But enough, for the present, of these reflections ; we cannot pause longer over them, nor stop to ponder the innumerable and prolific, suggestions which they evoke, but must pass on to the consideration of other branches of the subject in hand. We deem it scarcely necessary to enter at any length upon the subject of Climate as an architectural influence. The dullest mind contains sufficient capacity of reflection to comprehend the absolute control which the tempera- ture and atmospheric peculLirities of a country or section must exert upon its edifices. Those edifices, whether intended for residence, worship, business or amuse- ment, or built with a view to more external adornment, must conform to the requirements of the climate of the region in which the}' stand. The Hottentot beneath his frail shelter of palm, possesses a house which, in some respects, compares favorably with the most elaborate conceptions of cul- tured Greece or powerful Rome. In its quality of originality we mus£ assuredly " award it the palm," over styles which many cynics of the present day deem only imported copies of Egyptian and other ideas ; and besides being pre- eminently suited to the climate, it has many admirable points and character- istics, albeit substantiality is not one of them. The Esquimaux makes himself equally comfortable in his cabin of ice-blocks, which, though possessing (when in the region of the North Pole) that last named quality in which the Hottentot's shelter is so deficient, would disappear quite as rapidly under an Indian sun, as would the palm hut in an Arctic storm. This climatic influence, of which we have cited the extreme examples, is felt at every latitude to an extent precisely proportionate to the distance of that parallel of latitude from the equator or the pole, being varied, of course, by the atmospheric and other differences of longitude.