By the Rev. Dacres Olivier, M.A. 99 
the form of the cross is hardly perceptible, but from the time of 
Justinian onwards it obtained, as it deserved, more prominence. 
Only, in Rome and the West it was distinctly the Latin and not the 
Greek cross, the Italian of the south—and indeed of the north—being 
decidedly conservative in regard to their Basilica and loving to pro- 
duce in their churches wherever they built them—its feature of 
length. 
I trust that I have now in some degree pointed out the condition 
of church architecture in Italy at the time to which I now desire to 
pass, the time when the Lombards arrived in the north of Italy, or 
rather perhaps at the time when they had exchanged their character 
of newly-come invaders for that of an established, though short-lived 
kingdom: which can hardly, I suppose, be said to have been the 
case before the early part of the seventh century. 
They found established as the prevalent model of the Christian 
church, the Basilican form: they found in the west part of Italy a 
circular church, and the Greek cross form, here and there : they found 
also the cupola adopted as the crown, so to speak, of the cross so 
employed, though such instances were at this time, exceedingly rare. 
And what did the Lombards import? If we speak of the 
Lombards as Lombards, as members I mean of that vast barbarian 
horde which overran Europe at the conclusion of the fifth century, 
and to whom the Goths of ill fame, were nearly related, I really 
do not know that they imported anything; the Lombards being 
conquered by the Franks, and collapsing towards the end of the 
eighth century, and there being strictly speaking, no one authentic 
monument of their time, in the shape of a church existing. Butif 
by the Lombards is meant the men of that part of Italy to which 
the name of Lombardy or something like it, is attached throughout 
the middle ages, the men of the district of which Turin and Venice 
form the two northern, and Viterbo, and Ancona, the two southern 
corners, if the medizval architects of this glorious district formed 
architecturally speaking, the Lombard school, why then—to these 
Longobards, as they were formerly called, we owe the finest works 
of art existing in the world 
But it is not so, Architecturally speaking the Lombard school 
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