242 Contemporary Evolution. 



When we consider the wonderful pulpits of Belgium 

 with their apes and parrots and certain late churches, 

 where the pillars expand above into realistic reproduc- 

 tions of palm-trees, the possibility suggests itself that, 

 but for the classical revival, our churches might have 

 assumed such a realistic botanical and zoological de- 

 velopment as to have become like immense structures 

 of Dresden china transformed into stone, its pillars stone 

 trees, its window-tracery a collection of petrified creepers, 

 its niches grottos, and its altars rocks ! 



If, however, nothing further is to be hoped from 

 gothic, and if we can nevertheless only hope for some- 

 thing new by a more or less continuous development 

 from something old, what is to be our starting point ? 

 As has been said, gothic architecture is essentially 

 pointed, and its raison d'etre is the pointed arch. To 

 obtain a new starting-point, continuous with preceding 

 structures, we must then revert to architecture as it 

 existed before, or independently of, the introduction 

 of the pointed arch. Now, of such architecture we 

 fortunately have abundant examples in Germany, where 

 the pointed arch appeared late, was for a long time 

 sparingly adopted, the pre-existing round-arched or 

 Romanesque style persisting. 



We have in the cathedral of Speyer a magnificent 

 example of this style in its earlier condition, that of 

 excessive strength and stability ; but from this early 



