Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/661

Rh there would appear to be no connection between a Gothic cathedral and a Greek temple, beyond the facts that both were buildings of stone, and both had been dedicated to religious worship; yet that one has been evolved out of the other is a matter of simple demonstration. We can supply all the links of the chain by referring to edifices still standing, the times and circumstances of the erection of many of which have been detailed by the general historian.

To find the source from which the European nations have derived the art of building in stone, we must look to the land of the Pharaohs. From Egypt the craft passed to Greece, and from the Greeks it was taken up by the Romans, to be by them disseminated through the north and west of Europe in the process of colonization. The similarity, in regard to the constructive parts of the ancient Greek buildings to some of those found in Egypt of older date, affords strong confirmation of the tradition that the Greeks borrowed the art from the Egyptians. The Greeks, however, in adopting it added a new feature, the pediment, and the reason for this addition is easy to find. Egypt is practically rainless. All the protection from the climate required in a palace or temple in such a country is shelter from the sun by day and from the cold by night, and for this a flat roof, supported by walls, or pillars with architraves, is quite sufficient; but, when, as in all European countries, rain has to be taken into account, a slanting roof becomes a necessity. The Greeks, with their eye for symmetry, provided for this by forming the roof with a central ridge, at an obtuse angle, from which it sloped down equally on either side. The triangular space thus formed at the end of the building above the architrave was occupied by the pediment, and this part of the facade, which owed its birth to the exigencies of climate, was thenceforth regarded as so essential to the artistic completeness of the work that it was said that if a temple were to be erected in the celestial regions, where rain would not be possible, the pediment could not be omitted.

Both the Egyptians and the Greeks were satisfied with bridging over the openings of doors and windows, and the spaces between columns, by means of the architrave, a mode of construction which involved the necessity of using long blocks of stone. But the Romans, whose enterprise took a wider range, were not content to labor under such restrictions. In their engineering works they were familiar with the principle whereby blocks of comparatively small size, arranged in a semicircular form, can be made to hold together without support from beneath, except at the two ends of the series, by being arranged in the form of a semicircle; and, applying this principle to architecture, they not only gave to art a freedom it never before enjoyed, but conferred on it a new element of beauty. The arch, unknown to the Greeks—or, if known, not made use of in their temples—and employed by the Romans in the first instance from utilitarian motives, has ever