population of the utmost grace and novelty. Nowhere here are we
conscious of the dolorous reverie of the medieval north; it is the fete
of a young nation which is awakening, and, in the gladness of its recent
prosperity, honoring its gods. It has collected capitals, ornaments,
entire columns obtained on the distant shores to which its wars and its
commerce have led it, and these ancient fragments enter into its work
without incongruity; for it is instinctively cast in the ancient mold,
and only developed with a tinge of fancy on the side of finesse and the
pleasing. Every antique form reappears, but reshaped in the same sense
by a fresh and original impulse.
The outer columns of the Greek temple are reduced, multiplied and
uplifted in the air, and from a support have become an ornament. The
Roman or Byzantine dome is elongated and its natural heaviness
diminished under a crown of slender columns with a miter ornament, which
girds it midway with its delicate promenade. On the two sides of the
great door two Corinthian columns are enveloped with luxurious foliage,
calyxes and twining or blooming acanthus; and from the threshold we see
the church with its files of intersecting columns, its alternate courses
of black and white marble and its multitude of slender and brilliant
forms, rising upward like an altar of candelabra. A new spirit appears
here, a more delicate sensibility; it is not excessive and disordered as
in the north, and yet it is not satisfied with the grave simplicity, the
robust nudity of antique architecture. It is the daughter of the pagan
mother, healthy and gay, but more womanly than its mother.
She is not yet an adult, sure in all her steps--she is somewhat awkward.
The lateral facades on the exterior are monotonous; the cupola within
is a reversed funnel of a peculiar and disagreeable form. The junction
of the two arms of the cross is unsatisfactory and so many modernized
chapels dispel the charm due to purity, as at Sienna. At the second
glance however all this is forgotten, and we again regard it as a
complete whole. Four rows of Corinthian columns, surmounted with
arcades, divide the church into five naves, and form a forest. A second
passage, as richly crowded, traverses the former crosswise, and, above
the beautiful grove, files of still smaller columns prolong and
intersect each other in order to uphold in the air the prolongation and
intersection of the quadruple gallery. The ceiling is flat;
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