340 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



through which streamed a rich glow of rainbow light ; their 

 various buttresses and pinnacles, all contributing to 

 strengthen, and at the same time give additional beauty to 

 the exterior ; their clustered columns, airy-like, yet firm ; 

 and, surmounting the whole, the tall spire, piled up to an 

 almost fearful height towards the heavensi are lasting 

 monuments of the genius, scientific skill, and mechanical 

 ingenuity of the artists of those times. That person, who, 

 from ignorance or prejudice, fully supposes there is no 

 architecture but that of the Greeks, would do well to study 

 one of these unrivalled specimens of human skill. In so 

 ■doing, unless he closes his eyes against the evidences of his 

 senses, he cannot but admit that there is far more genius, 

 and more mathematical skill, evinced in one of these 

 cathedrals, than would have been requisite in the construc- 

 tion of the most celebrated of the Greek temples. Though 

 they may not exhibit that simplicity and harmony of pro- 

 portion which Grecian buildings display, they abound in 

 much higher proofs of genius, as is abundantly evinced in 

 the conception and execution of Cathedrals so abounding 

 in unrivalled sublimity, variety, and beauty. 



Gothic architecture, in its purity, was characterized 

 mainly by the.pointed arch. This novel feature in archi- 

 tecture, which, probably, in the hands of artists of great 

 mathematical skill, was suggested by the inefficiency of the 

 Roman arch first used, has given rise to all the superior 

 boldness and picturesqueness of this style compared with 

 the Grecian; for while the Greek artist was obliged to 

 cover his narrow openings with architraves, or solid blocks 

 of stone, resting on columns at short intervals, and filling 

 up the open space, the Gothic artist, by a single span of 

 his pointed arch, resting on distant pillars, kept the whole 



