The Evolution of Architecture. 337 



If I had time I should like at this point to make a brief 

 excursion into the field of Moorish architecture. It has no 

 structural logic that we should desire it. It needs all the 

 beauty of its flat or colored decoration to distract us from 

 the ugliness of its pendentives and other forms which seem 

 to ape the crystalline drippings of some wondrous cave. 

 But the decoration is marvelously beautiful and has an evo- 

 lutionary tale to tell of great/simplicity ; for it is evident 

 that in this decoration we have a survival of textile fabrics 

 hung upon the waU^of^nbsques and palaces. In the wide 

 family connection of those who are only happy when af- 

 fronting some received opinion, there are those who think 

 that all the credit of Gothic architecture belongs to the 

 Mohammedans. These are those who think Bacon wrote 

 Shakspere, and Thomas Paine the Letters of Junius and 

 the Declaration of Independence, and that Jesus of Naza- 

 reth is a poor copy of Gautama Buddha. Unquestionably 

 the Mohammedans used the pointed arch. They had bor- 

 rowed it, as nearly all their architectural forms, from Orien- 

 tal art. Mohammedan architecture is ten times as much 

 indebted to the Christian art of Byzantium as is Christian 

 architecture to it. But nothing could be more absurd than 

 the idea that Gothic architecture came from the borrowings 

 of the pointed arch or from any special fondness for this 

 particular form. Such an idea is of a piece with the old 

 biology which classified animal life by its external forms 

 until Buffon decided that the crocodile was " altogether too 

 terrible an insect " to be classed as one. Gothic architect- 

 ure was another daughter of necessity. "We might never 

 have had it if timber roofs hadn't had such a vile way of 

 burning up. Again we might never have had it if the 

 builders of the eleventh and twelfth centuries could have 

 made as good mortar as the Romans did who built the 

 Pantheon. To replace timber roofing with stone vaulting 

 was the problem of the mediaeval architect. To do that, 

 he strengthened the side-walls of his cathedral. But this 

 device was both costly and insufficient. His next move was 

 to abandon the continuous barrel vault and take to groin- 

 ing, opposite the thrusts of which he placed external but- 

 tresses. This was the Norman Romanesque. Then he 

 perceived that the walls between his buttresses had no func- 

 tional character. They were almost as useless, save to keep 

 out the weather, as the ornamental incrustations of imperial 

 Rome. Thin walls would do this as well as thick, and 



