PROGRESS OF THE ARTS. 365 



the marvellous. " In the construction of their 

 mosques, it was a favourite artifice of the Arabs to 

 sustain immense and ponderous masses of stone by 

 the support of pillars so slender, that the incum- 

 bent weight seemed, as it were, suspended in the 

 air by an invisible hand 7 ." This pleasure in the 

 contemplation of apparent impossibilities is a very 

 general disposition among mankind ; but it appears 

 to belong to the infancy, rather than the maturity 

 of intellect. On the other hand, the pleasure in 

 the contemplation of what is clear, the craving for 

 a thorough insight into the reasons of things, which 

 marks the European mind, is the temper which 

 leads to science. 



6. Treatises on Architecture. No one who has 

 attended to the architecture which prevailed in 

 England, France, and Germany, from the twelfth to 

 the fifteenth century, so far as to comprehend its 

 beauty, harmony, consistency, and uniformity, even 

 in the minutest parts and most obscure relations, 

 can look upon it otherwise than as a remarkably 

 connected and definite artificial system. Nor can 

 we doubt that it was exercised by a class of artists 

 who formed themselves by laborious study and 

 practice, and by communication with each other. 

 There must have been bodies of masters and of 

 scholars, discipline, traditions, precepts of art. How 

 these associated artists diffused themselves over 

 Europe, and whether history enables us to trace 

 them in a distinct form, I shall not here discuss. 



7 Mahometanism Unveiled, ii. 255. 



