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were successively reared, in which the perfect type of fully developed First Pointed architecture, was carried to perfection.
We in England followed closely, if we did not occasionally lead our contemporaries, and, in cathedrals which time will not permit me now to dwell upon in detail, such as those of Salisbury, Wells, Lincoln, Westminster, &c. we attained no less beauty in perfect mediæval architecture, than did the inhabitants of any other country in Europe.
The monuments of Italy were naturally slower to exhibit the influence of this, which may be characterized as a strictly ecclesiastical, style of Gothic architecture. Owing probably to their being already provided, from the remains of antiquity reused and recombined, at a very early date, with structures suitable for the performance of the most magnificent rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church, the Italians had no longer, as the faithful in most of the other countries of Europe had, occasion to construct vast new eficies in response to imperative national demands. Hence although, as in churches such as that of Sta Caterina at Pisa, Sta Anastasia at Verona, St Andrea at Vercelli, in the Baptistery and Campo Santo at Pisa, as in the cathedrals at Orvieto, Sienna, Milan, and Ferrara, in the conventual churches of San Domenico at Bologna and Perugia, Santa Chiara at Naples, San Francesco at Assisi, and many others, spread over the face of the country, the Italians shewed themselves ready enough to adopt the details, proportions, and many of the beauties of trans-Alpine mediævality, they never exhibited the same general readiness to adopt the Gothic type, and standard of form, which marked the peoples of England, Germany, Spain, and France.
As a recompense however, and as an indication of their practical superiority, they endowed architecture continually with new technical processes, and the rarest perfection of excellence in religious sculpture and painting.
We in England failed probably to adopt many of these