Gothic, or more properly, pointed architecture, which sprang up with the Christian religion, reached a point of great perfection about the thirteenth century; a period when the most magnificent churches and cathedrals of England and Germany were erected. These wonderful structures, reared by an almost magical skill and contrivance, with their richly groined roofs of stone supported in mid-air; their beautiful and elaborate tracery and carving of plants, flowers, and animate objects; their large windows, through which streamed a rich glow of rainbow light; their various buttresses and pinnacles, all contributing to strengthen, and at the same time give additional beauty to the exterior; their clustered columns, airy-like, yet firm; and, surmounting the whole, the tall spire, piled up to an almost fearful height towards the heavens, are lasting monuments of the genius, scientific skill, and mechanical ingenuity of the artists of those times. That person, who, from ignorance or prejudice, fully supposes there is no architecture but that of the Greeks, would do well to study one of these unrivalled specimens of human skill. In so doing, unless he closes his eyes against the evidences of his senses, he cannot but admit that there is far more genius, and more mathematical skill, evinced in one of these cathedrals, than would have been requisite in the construction of the most celebrated of the Greek temples. Though they may not exhibit that simplicity and harmony of proportion which Grecian buildings display, they abound in much higher proofs of genius, as is abundantly evinced in the conception and execution of Cathedrals so abounding in unrivalled sublimity, variety, and beauty.
