truth is, that with the exception of Milan cathedral, which is modern,
exotic, and exceptional, the German, or, to use the common and senseless
expression, the Gothic system of architecture never fairly took root in
Italy. Certainly, the pointed windows and arches of the Florence _duomo_
and its _campanile_ do not constitute it a Gothic church. The square
cornices, vast masses of wall, heavy pilasters, and, in general, the
horizontal outlines and heavy expression of all these churches, have
a character very remote from that of the airy, upspringing, fantastic
German architecture, in which every shaft, arch, vault-girdle, pillar,
window-frame, pinnacle, seems struggling and panting upward with an almost
audible eloquence. This is not the expression of the _duomo_ here. There
is no perpetual _Excelsior_ ringing from point, spire, and turret. On the
contrary, the grave, almost rigid aspect of the ancient _basilica_--the
Roman business-hall, compounded of Greek elements, and transformed into a
Grecian temple--is ever at work repressing that devotional ecstasy which
is the characteristic of the Gothic church. The Italian language in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was like the Italian architecture of
the same period. The different intellectual manifestations, subjected to
the same influences, obeyed one general law. The conquering German mind
of the Dark Ages easily impressed itself where the soil was still virgin.
Throughout _savage_ Europe the dominion was yielded at once to the new
power which succeeded to the decrepit empire of Rome. Gaul, Germany,
Britain, Iberia obeyed instinctively the same impulse. The children born of
that vigorous embrace were of fresh and healthy beauty. The manifestations
of the German mind in the cathedrals of Paris, Cologne, Antwerp are
undimmed and unrivalled. The early German architecture in the actual realms
of Germany is as romantic, energetic, and edifying as its poetry at the
same epoch. A great German cathedral is a religious epic in stone. All the
ornaments, all the episodes, spring from and cluster around one central,
life-giving principle.