§80-82. OLDER SOURCES OF ART. 305 



for which they are intended as some others that might he 

 adopted : and the form of a cross is certainly one of the worst 

 for accommodating a large concourse of people, for enabling 

 them to hear the voice of the preacher, or for permitting a 

 large congregation to join in the services of the church. 



81. The dehasement of architecture was gradual, and was 

 only the natural consequence of what had already commenced 

 under the Roman empire ; the various styles which grew out 

 of it heing merely changes in the earlier ones, in different pro- 

 vinces of the Roman empire. They were all modifications of 

 the late Roman ; one varying it in this, another, in that, part ; 

 according to the taste and wants of each country; and the archi- 

 tecture in Rome itself underwent less alteration than in many 

 of the provinces. For it is an error to suppose that the influx 

 of northern invaders introduced the changes in the Roman 

 architecture : they only borrowed and modified what they took ; 

 hut did not originate any of their own. They brought with 

 them no architecture ; and the grandest palace of Attila was of 

 wooden planks and beams. But without the necessity of this 

 proof that the alteration in the style was of native growth, it is 

 sufficient to examine the changes that took place in Roman 

 buildings of various ages, even before the time of Diocletian 

 and Constantine. The vertical line which (as I have had 

 occasion to show, p. 28) dates as early as the first century a.d., 

 was really Roman ; and the long-and-short work of our Saxon 

 churches was the common style of building in villages of 

 North Africa during (and probably long before) the reigns of 

 Justin II. and Justinian. The invasions of the Roman empire 

 hastened, but they were not the origin, of the decline of art. 



82. The same obligation to older sources led to the revival 

 of sculpture and painting, as to new styles of architecture. 

 Both these (which in a particular stage of art are more inti- 

 mately connected with each other than at a more advanced 

 period) show, at one time, the evident traces of their 



x 



