Besides the Saracenic castles or palaces above mentioned, there are no important civil buildings of Mediæval style in Sicily. There are two cloisters—one at Monreale and the other at Cefalu—both in the style universal in all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, and already described in speaking of those of Elne, Fontifroide, Arles, &c., as well as those of St. John Lateran at Rome. Their general arrangement consists of small but elegant pillars of Corinthian design, in pairs, supporting pointed arches of great beauty of form. In many respects this is a more beautiful mode of producing a cloistered arcade than the series of unglazed windows universally adopted in the North. The Southern method presupposes a wooden or at most a tunnel-vaulted roof, as at Arles, whereas all our best examples have intersecting vaults of great beauty, which indeed is the excuse for the windowed arrangement assumed by them. An intermediate course, like that adopted at Zurich (Woodcut No. 722), would perhaps best reconcile the difficulty; but this was only used during the period of transition from one style to the other. The effect, however, of the cloister at Monreale, with the fountain in one of its divisions, and a certain air of Eastern elegance and richness pervading the whole, is not surpassed by any of the examples on the Continent of its own size, though its dimensions do not allow it to compete with some of the larger examples of France, and especially of Spain. As the employment of the pointed arch so early in Sicily has been much quoted in the controversy regarding the invention of that feature, it may be convenient to state here that the pointed arch was used in the South of France—at Vaison, for instance—at least as early as the 10th century, but only as a vaulting expedient. During the 11th it was currently used in the south, and as far north as Burgundy; and in the 12th it was boldly adopted in the north as a vaulting, constructive and decorative feature, giving rise to the invention of a totally new style of architectural art. It is by no means impossible that the pointed arch was used by the Greek or Pelasgic colonists about Marseilles at a far earlier date, but this can only have been in arches or domes constructed horizontally. These may have suggested its use in radiating vaults, but can hardly be said to have influenced its adoption. Had it not been for the constructive advantages of pointed arches, the Roman circular form would certainly have retained its sway. It is possible, however, that the northern Franks would never have adopted it so completely as they did had they not become familiar with it either in Sicily or the East. When once they had so taken it up, they made it their own by employing it only as a modification of the round-arched forms previously introduced and perfected.