C. During the third period architecture and sculpture, ornamentation and painting, had soon to yield to a continual use of arms. The proud mistress of the world no more expanded her sway; she was once more busy in decorating her rich palaces, but in care and sorrow, and with an anxious brow, haunted by the necessity for exerting all her powers to keep what she possessed. The provinces had learnt to do without Rome; the consuls and pro-consuls had so well imitated their _divine_ masters, that they thought themselves gods, and the supreme deity, the Imperator, lost his power over them. The State--based on an abstraction--began to vanish like a midnight phantom at daybreak. The one-sided deification of matter, during the old heathen times, had to yield to a totally new mode of feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting. The new times were seeking new forms, and had to pass from a savage state, through that of barbarism, symbolism, and mysticism, into self-consciousness, in order to find such shapes as would express a perfect harmony between spirit and matter. In the meantime, art dragged on its existence in copying what the old masters of Greece and the artists of Rome had done. The chisel, ruler, nay the very stones, trembled in the hands of the artists. They felt that they worked without a basis; that they heaped up blocks to see them soon crumble into the dust; that they constructed streets of pompous columns, some of them 3,500 feet long, to see them empty and deserted; they ornamented, but did it with a heavy heart; their soul was no more in the work. They heard already the deep _spiritual_ whisper of other tidings resounding through the world on one side, and the terrible _temporal_ shout of powerful barbarians, not yet enervated by luxury and licentiousness, armed with swords and iron clubs, on the other. The footsteps of avenging phantoms were heard in the North; the ‘hallelujahs’ of redeemed humanity in the South. This period is ushered in with the triumphal arch of Severus, on which the reliefs are placed without any regard to the architectural arrangement. Caracalla (A.D. 211-217) had baths constructed, with gigantic halls, furnished with 1,600 marble seats, with shady promenades, pompous reading-rooms, and places for games of every variety. This was to be a paradise on earth, to detach men from that _spiritual_ Eden of love and happiness, the gates of which were opened by Christ. In feverish excitement, streets, palaces, basilicæ, halls, market-places, monuments, and whole towns, were built by the heathens. The pomp of worship was increased. Diocletian constructed baths with 2,400 seats; the principal hall was under three cross-vaults, with a span of 80 feet each, resting on granite columns. Sensationalism seized upon both people and artists; a sensationalism tinged with Roman vulgarity. All the principles of architecture, sculpture, and ornamentation were neglected. Columns and arches were mixed together in doleful incongruity.