ially modern, and
used with much freedom and spirit. This revival of classic taste in
art is commonly and appropriately called Renaissance. In Italy it took
place so rapidly that there was hardly any transition period.
Brunelleschi, the first great Renaissance architect, began his work as
early as the middle of the fifteenth century, and his buildings, in
which classic details of great severity and purity are employed,
struck, so to speak, a keynote which had been responded to all over
Italy before the close of the fifteenth century.

To other countries the change spread later, and it found them less
prepared to welcome it unreservedly. Accordingly, in France, in
England, and in many parts of Germany, we find a transition period,
during which buildings were designed in a mixed style. In England, the
transition lasted almost through the sixteenth century.

As the century went on, a most picturesque and telling style, the
earlier phases of which are known as Tudor and the later as
Elizabethan, sprang up in England. It betrays in its mixture of Gothic
and classic forms great incongruities and even monstrosities; but it
allows unrestrained play for the fancies, and the best mansions and
manors of the time, such as Hatfield, Hardwick, Burleigh, Bramshill,
and Audley End, are unsurpassed in their picturesqueness and romantic
charm.

The old red-brick, heavily chimneyed, and gabled buildings, with their
large windows divided by bold mullions and transoms, and their simple
noble outlines, are familiar to us all, and so are their
characteristic features. The great hall with its oriel or its bay,
the fine plastered ceiling, supported by heavy beams of timber; the
wide oak staircase, with its carved balusters, and ornamented newel
post, and heavy-moulded handrail; the old wainscoted parlour, with its
magnificent chimney-piece reaching to the ceiling; these are all
essentially English features, and are full of vigour and life, as
indeed the work of every period of transition must almost necessarily
prove.

The transitional period in France produced exquisite works more
refined and elegantly treated than ours, but not so vigorous. Its
manner is known as the Francois Premier (Francis I.) style. No modern
buildings are more profusely ornamented, and yet not spoilt.

In Germany, the Castle of Heidelberg may be named as a well-known
specimen of the transition period, a period over which however we must
not linger. Suffice it to s