hic buildings of the purer type; nor had sculpture in the North an
equal chance of detaching itself from the niche and tabernacle, which
forced it to remain the slave of architecture. Thus the comparative
defects of Italian Gothic were directly helpful in promoting those very
arts for which the people had a genius unrivalled among modern nations.

It is only necessary to contrast the two finest cathedrals of this style,
those of Siena and Orvieto, with two such buildings as the cathedrals of
Rheims and Salisbury, in order to perceive the structural inferiority of
the former, as well as their superiority for all subordinate artistic
purposes. Long straight lines, low roofs, narrow windows, a facade of
surprising splendour but without a strict relation to the structure of the
nave and aisles, a cupola surmounting the intersection of nave, choir, and
transepts; simple tribunes at the east end, a detached campanile, round
columns instead of clustered piers, a mixture of semicircular and pointed
arches; these are some of the most salient features of the Sienese Duomo.
But the material is all magnificent; and the hand, obedient to the
dictates of an artist's brain, has made itself felt on every square foot
of the building. Alternate courses of white and black marble, cornices
loaded with grave or animated portraits of the Popes, sculptured shrines,
altars, pulpits, reliquaries, fonts and holy-water vases, panels of inlaid
wood and pictured pavements, bronze candelabra and wrought-iron screens,
gilding and colour and precious work of agate and lapis lazuli--the
masterpieces of men famous each in his own line--delight the eye in all
directions. The whole church is a miracle of richness, a radiant and
glowing triumph of inventive genius, the product of a hundred
master-craftsmen toiling through successive centuries to do their best.
All its countless details are so harmonised by the controlling taste, so
brought together piece by piece in obedience to artistic instinct, that
the total effect is ravishingly beautiful. Yet it is clear that no one
paramount idea, determining and organising all these marvels, existed in
the mind of the first architect. In true Gothic work the details that
make up the charm of this cathedral would have been subordinated to one
architectonic thought; they would not have been suffered to assert their
individuality, or to contribute, except as servants, to the whole effect.
The northern Gothic church is l