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 heavens, 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 
