Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/515

 CHAP. I. HALEBID. 449 that the two buildings are at all like one another ; on the contrary, they form the two opposite poles the alpha and omega of architectural design ; but they are the best examples of their class, and between these two extremes lies the whole range of the art. The Parthenon is the best example we know of pure refined intellectual power applied to the production of an architectural design. Every part and every defect is calculated with mathematical exactness, and executed with a mechanical precision that never was equalled. All the curves are hyperbolas, parabolas, or other developments of the highest mathematical forms every optical defect is foreseen and provided for, and every part has a relation to every other part in so recondite a proportion that we feel inclined to call it fanciful, because we can hardly rise to its appreciation. The sculpture is exquisitely designed to aid the perfection of the masonry severe and godlike, but with no condescension to the lower feelings of humanity. The Halebid temple is the opposite of all this. It is regular, but with a studied variety of outline in plan, and even greater variety in detail. All the pillars of the Parthenon are identical, while no two facets of the Indian temple are the same; every convolution of every scroll is different. No two canopies in the whole building are alike, and every part exhibits a joyous exuberance of fancy scorning every mechanical restraint. All that is wild in human faith or warm in human feeling is found portrayed on these walls ; but of pure intellect there is little less than there is of human feeling in the Parthenon. It would be possible to arrange all the buildings of the world between these two extremes, as they tended toward the severe intellectual purity of the one, or to the playful exuberant fancy of the other ; but perfection, if it existed, would be some- where neaV the mean. My own impression is, that if the so-called Gothic architects had been able to maintain for two or three hundred years more the rate of progress they achieved between the nth and the I4th century, they might have hit upon that happy mean between severe constructive propriety and . playful decorative imaginings which would have combined into something more perfect than the world has yet seen. The system, however, as I have endeavoured to point out elsewhere, broke down before it had acquired the requisite degree of refinement, and that hope was blighted never to be revived. If architecture ever again assumes an onward path, it will not be by leaning too strongly towards either of the extremes just named, but by grasping somewhere the happy mean between the two. For our present purpose, the great value of the study of yOL. I. 2 F