178 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



reconstructs them for us, and the temples of 

 the classical era, are the same in principle as 

 the buildings of Egypt. The brick buildings 

 of Babylonia and Assyria, with their vaulted 

 roofs, are still further removed from even re- 

 mote resemblance to the woodland ; and in the 

 arched, vaulted and domed buildings of Rome 

 no such suggestion was possible. 



It did become possible when the roof was 

 carried upon vaulting-ribs, branching out from 

 wall and column, and almost inevitably calling 

 the form of the tree to mind. But the grace- 

 ful, tree-like vaulting of Gothic architecture 

 was only arrived at by experiment after experi- 

 ment, carried on with blocks of stone, in order 

 to effect a practical not a poetic improvement 

 in the building ; and the earliest ribbed vaults 

 furnish no suggestion of branches starting out 

 from parent stems. It was because he knew 

 this that Kingsley renounced with a sigh the idea 

 that ''the high embower'd roof"- — in Milton's 

 phrase — of the Gothic cathedral had been 

 imitated from the groves in which the heathen 

 ancestors of the Gothic builders had worshipped. 



But the builders did see the resemblance 

 of their work to the forest-aisle ; and, having 



