rm.

[Illustration: FIG. 194.--GRAND MOSQUE AT DELHI, BUILT BY SHAH JEHAN.]

The religion and the art of Islam seem destined to live and die
together. Nothing (with the one exception of the suggestion of the
pointed arch to Western Europe at the very moment when Romanesque art
was ripe for a change) has developed itself or appears likely to grow
out of Mohammedan architecture in any part of the wide field to which
the attention of the reader has been directed; and in this respect the
art of the Mohammedan is as exclusive, as intolerant, and as infertile
as his religion. The interest which it must possess in the eyes of a
Western student will rise less from its own charms than from the fact
that it first employed the pointed arch--that feature from which
sprang the glorious series of Western Christian styles to which we
give the name of Gothic. This arch, indeed, appears to have been
discovered by the very beginners of Mohammedan architecture, at a time
when the style was still plastic and in course of growth, and the
beauty of Saracenic art is due to no small extent to the use of it;
but in the employment of this feature the Western architect advanced
much further than the Saracen even at his best could go. The pointed
architecture of the Middle Ages, with its daring construction, its
comprehensive design, its elaborate mouldings, and its magnificent
sculptures, is far more highly developed and more beautiful than that
of the countries which we have been describing, though in its
treatment of the walls it cannot surpass, and indeed did not often
equal, the unrivalled decoration of plane surfaces which forms the
chief glory of Mohammedan art.

[Illustration: FIG. 195.--ENTRANCE TO A MOORISH BAZAAR.]

FOOTNOTES:

[37] The First Crusade lasted from A.D. 1095 to A.D. 1099.

[38] 'Gothic and Renaissance Architecture,' p. 141.

INDEX.

Abbaye aux Dames, Caen, 231
" Hommes, Caen, 230

Abbey, Westminster, 204

Agora, 114

Alhambra, 258, 263

Amphitheatre at Arles, 161
" Nimes, 161
" Pola, 161
" Rome (Coloss.), 158
" Sutri, 148
" Verona, 161

Anthemios of Thralles, _Architect_, 211

Appian Way, 145

Apollodorus of Damascus, _Architect_, 155

Aqueduct at Nimes (Pont du Gard), 171
" from Praeneste to Rome, 145
" at Rome (Aqua Claudia), 171
" " (Anio N