dead empire still sat throned and sceptred. The rites of Christianity were
carried on beneath Agrippa's dome, in Diocletian's baths, in the
Basilicas. No other style but that of the imperial people struck root near
the Eternal City. Among her three hundred churches, Rome can only show one
Gothic building. Further to the north, where German influences were more
potent, the cathedrals still displayed, each after its own kind, a sunny
southern waywardness. Glowing with marbles and mosaics, glittering with
ornaments, where the foliage of the Corinthian acanthus hides the symbols
of the Passion, and where birds and Cupids peep from tangled fruits
beneath grave brows of saints and martyrs; leaning now to the long low
colonnades of the Basilica, now to the high-built arches of the purely
Pointed style; surmounting the meeting point of nave and transept with
Etruscan domes; covering the facade with bas-reliefs, the roof with
statues; raising the porch-pillars upon lions and winged griffins;
flanking the nave with bell-towers, or planting them apart like flowers in
isolation on the open square--these wonderful buildings, the delight and
joy of all who love to trace variety in beauty, and to note the impress of
a nation's genius upon its art, seem, like Italy herself, to feel all
influences and to assimilate all nationalities.

Amid the many styles of architecture contending for mastery in Italy,
three, before the age of the Revival, bid fair to win the battle. These
were the Lombard, the Tuscan Romanesque, and the Gothic. Chronologically
the two former flourished nearly during the same centuries, while Gothic,
coming from without, suspended their development. But chronology is of
little help in the history of Italian architecture; its main features
being, not uniformity of progression, but synchronous diversity and
salience of local type. What remained fixed through all changes in Italy
was a bias toward the forms of Roman building, which eventually in the
Renaissance, becoming scientifically apprehended, determined the taste of
the whole nation.

It is, perhaps, not wholly fanciful to say that, as the Lombards just
failed to mould the Italians by conquest into an united people, so their
architecture fell short of creating one type for the peninsula.[11] From
some points of view the historian might regret that Italy did not receive
that thorough subjugation in the eighth century, which would have broken
down local distinctions