It would not be difficult to extend this kind of criticism to the Duomo of
Milan. Speaking strictly, a more unlucky combination of different
styles--the pyramidal façade of Lombard architecture and the long thin
lights of German Gothic, for example--a clumsier misuse of
ill-appropriated details in the heavy piers of the nave, or a more
disastrous adjustment of the monster windows to the main lines of the nave
and aisles, could scarcely be imagined. Yet no other church, perhaps, in
Europe leaves the same impression of the marvellous upon the fancy. The
splendour of its pure white marble, blushing with the rose of evening or
of dawn, radiant in noonday sunlight, and fabulously fairy-like beneath
the moon and stars, the multitudes of statues sharply cut against a clear
blue sky, and gazing at the Alps across that memorable tract of plain, the
immense space and light-irradiated gloom of the interior, the deep tone of
the bells above at a vast distance, and the gorgeous colours of the
painted glass, contribute to a scenical effect unparalleled in
Christendom.

The two styles, Lombard and Gothic, of which I have been speaking, were
both in a certain sense exotic. Within the great cities the pith of the
population was Latin; and no style of building that did not continue the
tradition of the Romans, in the spirit of the Roman manner, and with
strict observance of its details, satisfied them. It was a main feature of
the Renaissance that, when the Italians undertook the task of reuniting
themselves by study with the past, they abandoned all other forms of
architecture, and did their best to create one in harmony with the relics
of Latin monuments. To trace the history of this revived classic
architecture will occupy me later in this chapter; but for the moment it
is necessary to turn aside and consider briefly the secular buildings of
Italy before the date of the Renaissance proper.