lack of simplicity and sincerity,
the same profusion of debased and meaningless ornament, and there is
an increasing disposition to conceal and falsify the construction by
surface decoration.

The final part of this second or modern architectural cycle lies still
in the future. It is not unreasonable to believe that the movement
toward mysticism, of which modern theosophy is a phase and the
spiritualization of science an episode, will flower out into an
architecture which will be in some sort a reincarnation of and a
return to the Gothic spirit, employing new materials, new methods,
and developing new forms to show forth the spirit of the modern world,
without violating ancient verities.

In studying these crucial periods in the history of European
architecture it is possible to trace a gradual growth or unfolding
as of a plant. It is a fact fairly well established that the Greeks
derived their architecture and ornament from Egypt; the Romans in
turn borrowed from the Greeks; while a Gothic cathedral is a lineal
descendant from a Roman basilica.

[Illustration 2]

[Illustration 3]

The Egyptians in their constructions did little more than to place
enormous stones on end, and pile one huge block upon another. They
used many columns placed close together: the spaces which they spanned
were inconsiderable. The upright or supporting member may be said to
have been in Egyptian architecture the predominant one. A vertical
line therefore may be taken as the simplest and most abstract symbol
of Egyptian architecture (Illustration 2). It remained for the Greeks
fully to develop the lintel. In their architecture the vertical
member, or column, existed solely for the sake of the horizontal
member, or lintel; it rarely stood alone as in the case of an Egyptian
obelisk. The columns of the Greek temples were reduced to those
proportions most consistent with strength and beauty, and the
intercolumnations were relatively greater than in Egyptian examples.
It may truly be said that Greek architecture exhibits the perfect
equality and equipoise of vertical and horizontal elements and these
only, no other factor entering in. Its graphic symbol would therefore
be composed of a vertical and a horizontal line (Illustration 3). The
Romans, while retaining the column and lintel of the Greeks, deprived
them of their structural significance and subordinated them to the
semicircular arch and the semi-cylindrical and hemispherical vault,