and which, but for that expression, would never, perhaps, have been supposed to exist. In the present case, no doubt, this point could not be pressed very far. Yet St. Peter's and the Vatican, and the great monuments of restored Rome, are witnesses no less to the power of architecture to create and define the imaginative value of the Renaissance papacy, than to the encouragement and inspiration which the papacy contributed to art. Moreover, the character of the papacy in this period was largely formed by the character of its popes; and such men as Pius II., Leo X., and Julius II., were fit patrons of Renaissance architecture, partly for the reason that they were cultivated enthusiasts, awake to the ideals of an art which, quite independently of themselves, had given evidence of its nature, and which was already, in the eyes of all men, an energy so vigorous and splendid, that the popes could conceive no securer means of adding to their fame than by inviting its support.

So, too, with the more particular religious and social movements by which the phases of Renaissance architecture have sometimes been explained. When the Counter-Reformation made its bid for popularity, it erected on every hand churches in the baroque manner frankly calculated to delight the senses and kindle common enthusiasms. Never, perhaps, has architecture been more successfully or more deliber

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ately made the tool of policy than by this brilliant effort which transformed the face of Italy; nor has the psychological insight of the Jesuits been manifested with greater sureness than when it thus enlisted in the service of religion the most theatrical instincts of mankind. But, once more, the very success of the movement was occasioned by the fact, so well appreciated by the Jesuits, that the taste for such an architecture was already there. The readiness of the seicento Italians to respond to an architectural appeal, their delight in such qualities as these baroque churches embodied, are pre-existent facts. achievement of the Jesuits lay in converting these preferences of a still pagan humanity to Catholic uses, aggressively answering the ascetic remonstrance of the Reformation by a still further concession to mundane senses. The artistic significance of the style which the Jesuits employed, remains something wholly independent of the uses to which they put it. To explain the first by the second is to misconstrue the whole matter. To condemn the first on account of the second, as has repeatedly been done, is nothing less than childish.

Somewhat similar objections will apply when the architectural history of Italy is interpreted as the outcome of social changes. The 'increase of wealth,' the rise of great families,' the luxurious habits of a more settled society '-those useful satellites of

architectural history-helped, no doubt, to create the demand which architecture satisfied. But the significant point is precisely that it was to artistic uses that this wealth, this power, and these opportunities, were devoted, and to artistic uses of a particular kind. Rich and flourishing societies have not seldom grown up, and are growing up in our own time, without any corresponding result. Prosperity is a condition of great achievements; it is not their cause. It does not even stand in any fixed relation to their progress. It provides power, but does not, artistically, control its use. The economic conditions which, in Italy, assisted the architecture of the Renaissance to assume such prominence, did not vary with the marked and swift alterations of its style. The style had an orbit, and an impetus, of its own. In Italy nothing is commoner than to find an architectural display wholly disproportionate, and even unrelated, to the social purpose it ostensibly fulfils, and to the importance or prosperity of the individuals or communities responsible for its existence. Princely gates, more imposing than those of a great mansion, lift up their heads in the loneliest places of the Campagna, but nothing glorious goes in. They lead, and have always led, to unpeopled pastures or humble farmsteads. The baroque spirit delighted in this gay inconsequence. It appreciated grandeur for its own sake, æsthetically; and it had a sense of paradox.

In Tuscany, on the other hand, though Cosimo had to rebuke the too lordly schemes of Brunelleschi, and though the Strozzi Palace frowns in unfinished grandeur, the noblest occasions are often met by an exquisite humility of architecture. Yet, chastened as it was to its extreme refinement, this modest style of Tuscany must sometimes have formed the frame to very mediæval manners. A great critic, Professor Wölfflin, reviewing the numerous changes in style which marked the entrance of the Baroque, is content to refer them to a change in 'the Spirit of the time.' Nineteenth century mythology is favourable to the phrase; and the Spirit of the time' is often spoken of as a social power. But the Spirit of the time does not exist independently of the activities which manifest it. It is the atmosphere which results from their combined operation; or it is the influence of the earlier and more spontaneous of these activities as felt by those which come more tardily or more reluctantly into play. Now, among those activities, art and architecture were in Italy ever to the forefront, as spontaneous and vital a preoccupation as existed in the national life. It is hardly philosophical, among a number of parallel manifestations of energy, to explain the stronger by the weaker; yet that is what an appeal to the Spirit of the time,' if it means anything, here implies. When, therefore, we have interpreted a change in architecture by a change in

the Spirit of the time' we have in this case demonstrated a mere tautology.

Nor shall we fare much better in the attempt to find the key to Renaissance architecture in constructive science. There have been occasions when the discovery of a new structural principle, or the use of a new material, has started architectural design upon a path which it has followed, as it were of necessity, unable to desist from its course until the full possibilities of the innovation had been explored. Each step is determined by a scientific logic; and beauty lingers in the art by a fortunate habit, or comes, in some new form, by accident to light. Such, in some sense, was the case with the mediaval Gothic; and so it might be with some future architecture of steel. But such was not the case with the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. No constructive innovation explains the course which it pursued. The dome of Brunelleschi, unquestionably, by its audacity and grandeur, the effective starting-point of the Renaissance, was indeed a great triumph of engineering skill; but it involved no fundamental principle which was not already displayed in the dome of Pisa or the Baptistery of Florence. On the contrary, although the construction of the Renaissance was often vast in extent and courageous in conception, it was at the same time simpler and less scientific than that of the centuries immediately preceding,