pure

be more correctly described as a return to the Roman arcuated principle, stript of its association with Greek forms and decoration.

The Christian churches were still built upon the model of the Roman basilica, but the proportions were altered. An oblong area broken by two rows of columns into three divisions, the central being the widest, established the division into nave and aisles observed in most large churches and cathedrals, while the apsidal termination, originally containing the seats of the judges and magistrates and the altar for administering oaths, formed a model which was afterwards reproduced in the chancels of Christian churches for the arrangement of the altar and the seats of the clergy.

The difference between the Eastern Byzantine and earlier Western Romanesque was mainly in the ground-plan of the former being in the form. of a Greek cross with four equal arms, while in Romanesque buildings the nave was divided from the choir by a transept, thereby making the groundplan assume the form of a Latin cross—that is, with three short limbs and one long one, the long one forming the nave. This, though the most common, is not the only form, as there are many circular churches of Romanesque workmanship still in existence, principally those of St. Angeli at

Perugia, Nocera dei Pagani in Naples, and San Vitale at Ravenna. This church is much the oldest of the three, and should perhaps be more properly classed as a Byzantine church, but it has been so much altered in modern repairs, and the ancient detail so much disfigured, that it is not easy to ascertain the precise date, though it was most probably built soon after the reign of Justinian (A.D. 540).

The prominent characteristics of the several varieties of Romanesque architecture-whether that of Lombardy, Aquitaine, or Germany, or the so-called Anglo-Saxon of England, or the Norman of Normandy and England-is solidity and rest. In this country it is represented by the so-called Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman styles-both of which exhibit features bespeaking essentially their Roman origin. As it would be impossible in this manual fully to do justice to all the Continental varieties of this style, we will pass on to the developments thereof which took place in our

own country.

English Architecture.

Of the early buildings of the Britons, the ancient inhabitants of this country, we know but little. No doubt stones were used to a large extent in their

cromlechs and temples, as proved by the remains at Stonehenge and Avebury-if these are not really of much older date-but we have no evidence that they were able to work stone, or that their buildings had any pretensions at all to architecture. Indeed in many of their towns the houses were constructed. wholly of wickerwork.

It is, however, extremely improbable that the Britons had anything at all to do with the erection of such structures as those at Stonehenge and Avebury. There is no evidence to show that the ancient Britons were at all capable of rearing such vast fabrics, or that they had any use for them. The fact is, that whatever fanciful conjectures may have been advanced, nothing whatever is known of these and similar monuments but their present existence; they belong to a period of which we have no record, and of which we are very little likely to recover any trace.

Much has been written about the Roman remains that have been found in this country, but they are mostly of a very fragmentary character. The Romans could not erect buildings of such elegance and beauty as the Greeks did before them, or as the English and French have done since; but for substantial and durable buildings none have ever excelled them. Roman walls were generally

H