ace which has been in many instances secured in
connection with them. They are rarely of great height or imposing mass
like the early Italian palaces. For the most part they are a good deal
broken up, the surface of the walls is much covered by architectural
features, not usually on a large scale, so that the impression of
extent which really belongs to them is intensified by the treatment
which their architects have adopted.

Orders are frequently introduced and usually correspond with the
storeys of the building. However this may be the storeys are always
well marked. The sky-line also is generally picturesque and telling,
though Versailles and the work of Lescot at the Louvre form an
exception. Rustication is not much employed, and the vast but simple
crowning cornices of the Italian palaces are never made use of. Narrow
fronts like those at Venice, and open arcades or loggias like those of
Genoa, do not form features of French Renaissance buildings; but on
the other hand, much richness, and many varieties of treatment which
the Italians never attempted, were tried, and as a rule successfully,
in France.

Much good sculpture is employed in external enrichments, and a
cultivated if often luxuriant taste is always shown. Many of the
interiors are rich with carving, gilding, and mirrors, but harmonious
coloured decoration is rare, and the fine and costly mosaics of Italy
are almost unknown.

BELGIUM AND THE NETHERLANDS.

These countries afford but few examples of Renaissance. The Town Hall
at Antwerp, an interesting building of the sixteenth century, and the
Church of St. Anne at Bruges, are the most conspicuous buildings; and
there are other churches in the style which are characteristic, and
parts of which are really fine. The interiors of some of the town
halls display fittings of Renaissance character, often rich and
fanciful in the extreme, and bearing a general resemblance to French
work of the same period.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--WINDOW FROM COLMAR. (1575.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--ZEUGHAUS, DANTZIC. (1605.)]

GERMANY AND NORTHERN EUROPE.

Buildings of pure Renaissance architecture, anterior to the nineteenth
century, are scarce in Germany, or indeed in North-east Europe; but a
transitional style, resembling our own Elizabethan, grew up and long
held its ground, so that many picturesque buildings can be met with,
of which the design indicates a fusion of the ideas and features of
Gothic wit