ory of her sister cities. But such fragments as
are still left in their lonely squares, and in the corners of their
streets, so far from being inferior to the buildings of Venice, are even
more rich, more finished, more admirable in invention, more exuberant in
beauty. And although, in the North of Europe, civilization was less
advanced, and the knowledge of the arts was more confined to the
ecclesiastical orders, so that, for domestic architecture, the period of
perfection must be there placed much later than in Italy, and considered
as extending to the middle of the fifteenth century; yet, as each city
reached a certain point in civilization, its streets became decorated
with the same magnificence, varied only in style according to the
materials at hand, and temper of the people. And I am not aware of any
town of wealth and importance in the middle ages, in which some proof
does not exist, that, at its period of greatest energy and prosperity,
its streets were inwrought with rich sculpture, and even (though in
this, as before noticed, Venice always stood supreme) glowing with color
and with gold. Now, therefore, let the reader,--forming for himself as
vivid and real a conception as he is able, either of a group of Venetian
palaces in the fourteenth century, or, if he likes better, of one of the
more fantastic but even richer street scenes of Rouen, Antwerp, Cologne,
or Nuremberg, and keeping this gorgeous image before him,--go out into
any thoroughfare, representative, in a general and characteristic way,
of the feeling for domestic architecture in modern times; let him, for
instance, if in London, walk once up and down Harley Street, or Baker
Street, or Gower Street; and then, looking upon this picture and on
this, set himself to consider (for this is to be the subject of our
following and final inquiry) what have been the causes which have
induced so vast a change in the European mind.

Sec. II. Renaissance architecture is the school which has conducted
men's inventive and constructive faculties from the Grand Canal to Gower
Street; from the marble shaft, and the lancet arch, and the wreathed
leafage, and the glowing and melting harmony of gold and azure, to the
square cavity in the brick wall. We have now to consider the causes and
the steps of this change; and, as we endeavored above to investigate the
nature of Gothic, here to investigate also the nature of Renaissance.

Sec. III. Although Renaissance architectur