100 Remarks on Wilton Church. 
appears almost one whose vocation it was to obstruct Gothie art, or 
at least to maintain the round arch. From the beginning of the 
eleventh to the beginning of the thirteenth century when the Gothie 
pointed arch, in spite of all resistance, made its way into northern 
Italy, and Sienna, and Florence, and Milan cathedrals were ereeted 
—through these 200 years the Lombards were occupied in perfecting 
as far as could be the old round arch—in fighting might and main 
for external flat walls, innocent wholly of buttress—and in producing 
some few ornamental effects distinctly their own. In the course of . 
these 200 years Novara cathedral was built, in which the Basilica 
form is retained, in which the nave is separated from a much longer 
apse than ever belonged to a pure Basilica, by a square space covered 
by a dome within, and a tower without, and in which piers as well 
as columns abound. I mention this last-named fact, because the 
pier rendered needful where the weight of the roof was great, is a 
thoroughly Gothic as well as Byzantine feature, and because in the 
early Basilican church, they are rarely if ever met with. At Novara 
moreover, the windows are all very small, though here and there 
parted by small central shafts, and the round arch is found all 
dominant. Of other examples of this Lombard time, I might name 
S. Ambrogio at Milan, 8. Michele at Pavia, the cathedrals of Parma, 
Moderna and Piacenza, and lastly’ S. Zenone at Verona, wherein 
there are two or three note-worthy Lombard characteristics, for 
instance, the round wheel window surmounting the porch. This 
window, put in, when the rest of the church was built towards the 
end of the twelfth century, and therefore date Lombard, is spoken of 
in an inscription in the Baptistry as a wonder in those times. 
Perhaps it was borrowed from France, for there such windows reached 
their greatest perfection—but at any rate it is also essentially 
Lombard, and appears in our Church, as well as in its model at 
Toscanella. Then again the porch below—yprojecting, and not re- 
cessing as in Gothic churches, flanked by its two columns, supported 
by lions, is peculiarly Lombard. The Lombards were given to 
representation of monsters and animals. We see them worked into 
their capitals, studding here and there their fagades, and lining some- 
times their panellmgs. The sacred emblems the lion, the man, and 
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