364 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



val between the admirable cathedrals of Salisbury, 

 Amiens, Cologne, and the mechanical treatises of 

 Stevinus, is not less than three hundred years. 

 During this time, men were advancing towards 

 science, but in the meantime, and perhaps from 

 the very beginning of the time, art had begun to 

 decline. The buildings of the fifteenth century, 

 erected when the principles of mechanical support 

 were just on the verge of being enunciated in 

 general terms, exhibit those principles with a far 

 less impressive simplicity and elegance than those 

 of the thirteenth. We may hereafter inquire whe- 

 ther we find any other examples to countenance the 

 belief, that the formation of Science is commonly 

 accompanied by the decline of Art. 



The leading principle of the style of the Gothic 

 edifices was, not merely that the weights were sup- 

 ported, but that they were seen to be so ; and that 

 not only the mechanical relations of the larger 

 masses, but of the smaller members also, were dis- 

 played. Hence we cannot admit as an origin or 

 anticipation of the Gothic, a style in which this 

 principle is not manifested. I do not see, in any of 

 the representations of the early Arabic buildings, 

 that distribution of weights to supports, and that 

 mechanical consistency of parts, which elevates 

 them above the character of barbarous architecture. 

 Their masses are broken into innumerable members, 

 without subordination or meaning, in a manner 

 suggested apparently by caprice and the love of 



