TREES IN ARCHITECTURE 177 



within it. Here is a more intimate relation 

 between architecture and the tree or forest even 

 than that which Kingsley would have liked to 

 see in the case of Gothic architecture. 



This early belief, identifying the most im- 

 portant parts of a building with the god or 

 spirit, has left its impress, in a way that has 

 immediate interest for us, in the vegetable 

 columns of Egypt, which take the form of the 

 lotus, the blue water-lily, the papyrus, and, prob- 

 ably, the iris; and the same employment of 

 vegetable forms in architecture can be traced 

 in other countries. In time, the original signi- 

 ficance of these columns is forgotten, and the 

 column itself becomes merely a part of the 

 structure of the building, having no special 

 sacred character ; though the old form of de- 

 coration lasts on in the capital and in the flut- 

 ing of the shaft. 



Once the original significance of ''the pillar 

 of the house " had been forgotten, the archi- 

 tecture of the earlier civilisations could hardly 

 be felt to bear any marked resemblance to the 

 forest. The great halls of the Egyptian temples 

 are more like caves than woods. In Greece 



the Mycenaean palaces, as the archaeologist 

 13 



