§69-71. ONE STYLE AROSE FROM ANOTHER. 289 



cathedrals the majority of them are shelved in the archivolt 

 above, in such a manner that the uppermost figures are almost 

 condemned to stand upon their heads, or when seated on a 

 throne appear ready to fall out upon the passing congregation. 

 Nor are instances of unsuitable positions wanting elsewhere ; 

 and the same disregard for propriety condemned the winged 

 messenger of Victory, on the Eoman arch of triumph, to be 

 squeezed into an uncomfortable spandril which had itself the 

 awkward form of an angle subtended by a segment of a circle. 

 What, indeed, could be expected from any part of a Roman 

 arch of triumph ?— that compound of bad taste, with the 

 lightest part below struggling under a mass of inform ous 

 masonry, often made more monstrous by the colossal and 

 graceless letters of its inscription. Nor do its columns, sup- 

 porting at most a statue, and acting a part totally indepen- 

 dent of the building, diminish its heterogeneous character ; 

 though they are useful in giving us the most convincing proof 

 of the vertical line having first begun in Eoman buildings, and 

 not, as too hastily concluded, in what is called Gothic archi- 

 tecture. For there w T e have the column, with the pedestal it 

 stands on, running upwards and forcing the entablature to 

 project in order to follow its direction ; and the statue above 

 (or the corresponding portion of the attic) carrying the ver- 

 tical line from the ground to the summit of the monument. 

 And the same tendency may be observed in the lines of 

 columns, one over the other, in different stages, which extend 

 the vertical line to the summit of the Coliseum and other 

 buildings. 



71. This is one of many instances of the gradual rise and 

 progress of every kind of architecture, and shows how erroneous 

 is the common notion of certain styles having been " invented." 

 Few styles are really " invented." Each grows up gradually 

 out of an earlier one ; and the Greek, the Roman, the Sara- 

 cenic, the so-called Gothic, and others, were not of independent. 



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