2}0 I'ARXH.Ut. 



street, and in most of them the representatives of the old families 

 occupy one or perhaps two floors, whilst the remainder of the 

 building is let out in tenements to twenty or thirty minor people. 



Their designs are splendid in conception and noble in pro- 

 portions. The staircase, for example, of the Municipal Palace is 

 20 or 25 feet in width, ascending from a grand courtyard, leading 

 to splendid landings, on to which large and spacious rooms open. 

 Italian palaces gave rise to French chateaux ; and the style 

 travelled into Germany and Spain, and became what is now 

 known as the Renaissance, and in each country it was absorbed 

 and modelled to suit the tastes of the people. In France, where 

 they pirated the ideas of the more refined Italians, they fashioned 

 what they took, like children pulling the beautiful forms to 

 pieces as in wanton play, and re-formed them without reference 

 to construction More often splendid Italian invention was 

 frittered away in puerile efforts with grotesque details, encumber- 

 ing without helping the construction of the objects they were 

 intended to ornament. 



In Germany the more rugged character of the people asserted 

 itself by transforming the designs so as to make it often difficult 

 to recognise their origin. 



In England the Renaissance was less seriously felt, except in 

 very large and important works. The details were so scantily 

 ornamented, and the feeling so cold with which they borrowed 

 them, that England may be said to have been the least affected 

 by the style of any country in Europe, and to have lost much of 

 its beauty in consequence. 



Italy, the great country of the Renaissance, was the one in 

 which it originated, and there it remained until the universal 

 decay of taste in Europe annihilated its beauty. 



In the XVI. and XVII. centuries the style however travelled, 

 and the artists who built the Italian houses were in many cases 

 lent by the Prince or Pope, their employers, to the creators of 

 important buildings abroad. Thus it moved with the men who 

 UM-d it, and in this way England, last of all among civilised 

 nations, came to copy or assimilate as much as she could of the 



