8. THE CINQUE-CENTO STYLE. We shall now proceed to speak of that rapid and universal change which caused the rejection of pointed or Gothic architecture, and the adoption, in some superficial degree, of the styles of ancient Greece and Rome. This sudden desertion of all that had been the most admired, and the most carefully perfected, has been assigned by some to the accidental discovery of some of the master-pieces of ancient literature, which had long lain hidden in monastic libraries, and of some specimens of ancient art, rescued from beneath the soil of Rome. By others it has been considered as the necessary consequence of a returning taste for the literature and the fine arts of the ancients. It has been likewise attributed to the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, which drove many Greeks from their homes, and by their means introduced into the Latin empire the fondness for ancient architecture, which those Greeks are supposed to have preserved. The most reasonable of these suppositions is that which ascribes the change to a revival of industry, trade, and public spirit, and of whatever else might lead the way, as in ancient Greece, for a prevailing taste for literature and the fine arts. The spirit of liberty was abroad; men were beginning to throw off the shackles which had bound them down in ignorance and inaction, and a knowledge of ancient art was no longer confined to the dwellers in monasteries, and kept a secret there. As the wealth and skill of the laity increased, the number of important fabrics, unconnected with religion, increased also: and as the church, about the era of the especial preeminence of the pointed style, began to decline in power and resources, and those agents of the Pope and of the church, whom we have already spoken of, the masonic bodies, were either expelled or withdrawn from most of the stations they formerly occupied; we see here sufficient to account for the extensive change which took place in the feelings and tastes of people in general. Nor is it surprising that a reversion should take place to those ancient and comparatively simple models of Greece and Rome, at a time when the expulsion of the free-masons, who had so deeply studied the pressure and counter-pressure of the most complicated arches, left the less skilful architects imperfectly acquainted with the mysteries of the pointed style. But as this attempt at a resumption of ancient style was rather the effect of an inability on the part of the architects to continue building after the pointed fashion than owing to any real love for the antique, so we find their works to have been of an inferior description, exhibiting in one edifice a collection of patterns of the different ancient orders, instead of a consistent following out of any one of them. Those buildings which retained most of the Lombard style, and thus had not departed so widely from the Roman character, were at first left to preserve their peculiar minuteness of general proportion and other characteristics, and only received in their minor details an appearance more directly assimilating them with pagan Rome. excavations of ancient baths, and other structures, had brought to light those sculptured imitations of animal and vegetable life which had formerly taken the place of better ornaments; and these, which were called grotesques from being found in grottoes, were imitated on every panel and frieze and entablature, while richer ornaments were added in bronze, porphyry, &c. These ornaments were applied without much discrimination, whatever might be the character or purpose of the building. This attempted imitation of the antique has been called, from the era in which it flourished in Italy, the CINQUE-CENTO style. Among the most celebrated architects in this style may be named Brunelleschi, the first restorer of it, Bramante, Leon Baptista Alberti, and Pietro Lombardo.

The

The abandonment of pointed arches, and the return to the ancient orders of architecture, begun in Italy, soon crossed the Alps, and entered successively France, Spain, Germany, and England. In the last-mentioned country, the cinque-cento style did not develope itself till a century and a half after Brunelleschi had begun the restoration of the antique in Italy. The new or revived style was at first employed only in the members and details of the edifice, while the old was retained in all the general elements of the composition. It appears to have been the custom to commit the design and construction of the buildings to native artists, while foreign innovation was displayed in the mere ornamental details. From the time of the Reformation, a method of building had been gradually adopted, which is usually called Tudor Architecture, or Tudor Gothic,

and which has been styled the illegitimate offspring of the Grecian and the Gothic. It was inferior in elegance to the one, and in magnificence to the other, but it combined a degree of security with domestic comfort, peculiarly suitable to those times. Of the generally picturesque effect of this style, notwithstanding its wildness and oddity, a modern writer of acknowledged taste thus speaks-The baron's picturesque hall seemed the offspring of the soil, and in harmony with the accompaniments. The hill, the river, the groves, the rocks, and the residence, seemed all to have risen into existence at once. Tower was heaped upon tower; there was a wilderness of pinnacles and crowstepped peaks; jealous windows barred and doublebarred with iron; passages which led to nothing; ridges of roofs as sharp as knives, on which no snow could lie; projection overlooking projection, to throw the rain from the face of the wall and casements at the very summit of the edifice." But this, as well as the purer Gothic, was now to give way for the introduction of the Cinque cento or Italian style. The first examples of this style in England were shown at Oxford, in the five orders piled one above another in the front of the public schools, and in the monuments of Elizabeth, and Mary Queen of Scots, in Westminster abbey; all very inferior to the works of that style in Italy. Inigo Jones was the first in England who gave an example of a single colossal order, and this was in the church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden; while Michael Angelo was the first who had, long previously to this, resumed the colossal style in Italy.

Sir Christopher Wren, who is said to have been inferior to Inigo Jones in invention, but greatly his superior in the perfect unity and elegance of his designs, had the best possible opportunity of exercising his talent at the restoration of Charles the Second, and at a period when the metropolis had been cleared of its crowded buildings by the destructive fire of 1666. The noble and magnificent cathedral of St. Paul stands as the memorial of his greatness, and as an instance of the consistent application of the style we are now considering. During the reigns of Charles the Second, of William and Mary, of Anne, (Wren's constant friend and patroness,) and the commencement of the reign of George the First, he carried on this great work and was enabled to finish it according to the model he had commenced with, though not without much interruption and interference on the part of those who were little qualified to judge of the merit of his work. As a reward for these persevering exertions, and for the disininterested spirit which actuated him throughout, he was dismissed from his office of surveyor-general to the royal buildings, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, and the fortyninth of his holding the appointment, and a young architect of little skill or talent, named Benson, was appointed in his roon. "The length of his life," says Walpole, "enriched the reign of several princes, and disgraced the last of them." Of that grand monument of his fame, St. Paul's Cathedral, there is already some account in a former volume of this work*, illustrated by a view of the west front of the edifice. We subjoin a view of the cathedral in its northern aspect, with Cunningham's remarks, who places this building first in outward majesty, and second in internal grandeur, amongst the churches of Christendom. "Buried amidst a thick piled city-hampered as its architect had felt himself in planning the western front to suit that narrow aperture called Ludgate Hulcomposed as it is of free-stone, and not of marble, and stained with all impurities of sea-coal smoke-St. Paul's never fails to fill the mind of the commonest beholder with admiration at its exquisite unity, and varied and boundless magnificence. To construct a small work, pleasing at once from its beauty and neatness, is something; but to conceive and unite the many distant and distinct parts of such an immense pile as this into one complete whole, tying them together with that magic band which is at once their ornament and security, like the sculptured key-stone of a triumphal arch, requires a master spirit.

"Foreign censure, as well as native praise, has been exhausted on St. Paul's; and above all, the Abbé May has distinguished himself by his abuse of the masterpiece of Wren. His fastidious severity might easily be shown by precedents which all bow to, by reference to geometrical rules of construction which must be obeyed, and by the difficulties which the stone presented to be frivolous or unfounded. The coupled columns of the grand portico, m

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particular, have been censured, both by the Abbé and one of our own critics, according to whom the Corinthian capitals, sitting in pairs, injure and obscure each other, and, when viewed obliquely, seem in confusion from the mixture of profiles. If we judge by bits there will be room enough for such criticism in any human work, but it is the general result we must look to, for to that the great artist lent all his thoughts. If we take this portico as a detached work of art, the eye will require all parts to be seen, and will consider the coupled columns as contrary to the strict rules of the profession, since they obscure at least one side of the capital; but look at the portico in its place, as forming a small portion of a majestic pile, in which there are many porticos, straight and circular, and we see at once that it has been devised with a view to the general effect, and could not well be otherwise than it is without positive injury. Single columns, I am convinced, would seem weak and unequal to the task these have to perform. The tradition of Portland states that stones could not be shipped large enough for the frieze of a portico with single columns, while another story points to the desire of the clergy to have a column for each apostle within a space which could not contain the number without having them coupled. The recessed portico of the second story is a portico for doves and angels, for no earthly being without wings can approach it; but this criticism affects nearly all the architecture of modern times, and the error, if such it be, must be ascribed partly to the object in view and partly to the nature of the materials. The perpendicular portion of the dome, which rises over roof and tower, and can be seen as far as Windsor one way and the sea another, has been more justly complained of as much too plain: it is deficient in light and shade. As Wren has borrowed not very sparingly from the designs of Inigo Jones, he might have formed a dome of a richer pattern. I am afraid to mention what I suspect to be true, that he was alarmed at adding abutments to the dome, lest the increase of weight might be injurious; yet, to secure it, he cut a deep groove or channel in the stone all round, and laid in this a double band or chain of massy iron, strongly linked together at every ten feet, and run flush with lead and hammered smooth and fair. This, though perfectly solid and firm, and employed in Salisbury steeple and St. Peter's dome, is upon his own principles a defect in the construction. The entire structure may be accused of want of massiveness, and of that severe dignity which prevails in so many of the classic fabrics. It is an union of small parts, and relies more upon its geometrical combinations for keeping it together

than on the solid strength of its masonry, and the gravity of its materials. The chief fault, however, is an invisible one. Though the stones are hewn with the greatest nicety, and the masonry seems all firm and compact, yet the mortar which should unite the whole into one solid mass, is in many places decayed, and become as dust. This is the case even with some of those massive piers against which the public monuments are erected. When the outer line of stone is cut through, the mortar comes gushing out in dust at the aperture. The sand is sharp and good, but the lime, like too much of the lime used in London, has been deficient in strength."

Since the time of Sir Christopher Wren, the Cinque-cento style has been applied with more or less taste to the different public and private edifices of this country. For so much are the refinements of civilized life extended amongst us, that men are no longer satisfied with the view of beauty and magnificence in edifices set apart for ecclesiastical and civil purposes, or to admire at a distance the splendour of palatial edifices, but are emulous of transferring to their own habitations that harmony of construction and elegance of decoration which are so productive of pleasure and pleasurable emotions. Thus, the aid of architecture is sought everywhere, and, in many cases unfortunately, without a true perception of those principles which constitute its chief value. Thus the Grecian, Roman, and Gothic styles, are made use of, or even blended, without taste or discrimination, and it will be difficult at some future period to designate intelligibly the architecture of the present time. "Were architecture, as a fine art," (says Elmes,) "equally well understood by the nobility and gentry, by the literary and scientific world, and by the more opulent of the middle classes of England, as it was by the nobility and gentry of the Italian States, and the opulent merchants of Florence, and other commercial cities of modern Italy, a pure and classical style of architecture, and a refined taste in all our arts and manufactures, would equally predominate, and equally embellish the palaces, the streets, the villas, and the mansions of England, as they did the palaces, the piazzas, and the villas of Italy."

Having now bestowed some attention on the houses of rude nations, and having sketched the prominent features of architecture, the reader will be prepared to accompany us in a tour over the civilized world, in order to bestow a few hasty glances on those dwellings which have had the benefit of science, art, and industry in their construction, modified however by the climate and by the manners and customs of their inhabitants.