ay, that sooner or later the change was
fully accomplished in every European country, and Renaissance
architecture, modified as climate, materials, habits, or even caprice
suggested, yet the same in its essential characteristics, obtained a
firm footing: this it has succeeded in retaining, though not to the
exclusion of other styles, for now nearly three centuries.

In Italy, Renaissance churches, great and small--from St. Peter's
downwards--and magnificent secular buildings, some, like the Vatican
Palace or the Library of St. Mark at Venice, for public purposes, but
most for the occupation of the great wealthy and princely families,
abound in Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice, Milan, and indeed
every great city.

In France, the transition period was succeeded by a time when vast
undertakings, _e.g._ the Hotel de Ville, the Louvre, the Tuileries,
Versailles, were carried out in the revived style with the utmost
magnificence, and were imitated in every part of the country in the
structures greater or smaller which were then built.

In England, the works of Inigo Jones, and of Wren, are the most famous
works of the developed style, and to the last-named architect we owe a
cathedral second to none in Europe for its beauty of outline, and play
of light and shade. To Germany, and the countries of the north-east
Europe, and to Spain and Portugal on the south, the style also
extended with no very great modification, either of its general forms
or of its details.

ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.

_Plan._

The plan of Renaissance buildings was uniform and symmetrical, and the
picturesqueness of the Gothic times was abandoned. The plans of
churches were not widely different from those in use in Italy before
the revival of classic art took place, but it will be remembered that
these were by no means so irregular or picturesque at any time as the
plans of French and English cathedral churches.

In secular architecture, the vast piles erected in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries by Italian, French, and Spanish architects are
to the last degree orderly in their disposition. They are adapted to a
great variety of purposes, and they display a varying degree of skill.
The palaces of Genoa are, on the one hand, among the cleverest
examples of planning existing; on the other hand, many of the palaces
in France are weak and poor to the last degree. As a rule the scale of
the plan is more considerable than in Gothic work. A very