The arch rested on the architrave, or often rose without interruption directly from the capital. Columns were made in spiral or screw form; the variety of details was oppressive; no rest, no cæsura distinguished their ornamentation. It was, in fact, _an ornamentation over-ornamented_. The technical execution was everywhere splendid, but utterly mechanical; principles were neglected in art, because Roman life had lost even the one guiding principle of its existence--expansion by brutal force. The vulgar in mind and taste will always be charmed by huge and imposing masses, by the richness of the material, the daring of geometrical combination, and by startling feats of mechanical contrivance. The gorgeous mouldings, the friezes of endless decorations, the capitals with their rich foliage, marshalled in precise architectural lines, like Roman legions placed in battle array, have a peculiarly mystic charm for all those, who care more for effect than for taste or severity of style, or more for show than for symmetry and proportion; but if they love the old Roman style, and wish to work in it, let them above all insist on genuine materials. Let them work in real granite, travertin, and marble; let them not work in iron and glass, or in plaster of Paris, instead of Carrara marble; or in wood painted and varnished to represent granite, _lapis lazuli_ (azure-stone), or _giallo antico_. An artist’s first duty is to know and master his material, and not to try and bring about Roman architectural effects with substances that require an altogether different treatment. Whenever we endeavour to shirk this law, we are sure to produce something small and mean, thin and wasted, notwithstanding gorgeous dimensions. Whilst trying to look grand and haughty, substantial and pompous, we tell ‘falsehoods’ in bricks and mortar, in painted friezes, sham columns, and meretricious porticos; and we are then astonished that our artistic product, instead of being admired, is laughed at as a caricature. In Greece the dynamic force was concentrated on the reproduction of _ideal beauty_; in Rome it was exhausted in conquests and politics. Only so long as the moral force of beauty--equivalent to that of virtue--counterbalanced the eccentricities of a wild fantastic imagination, the Greeks were capable of producing models of art. The Romans never cultivated this balance; they disciplined themselves, but in a totally different direction. This technical, mechanical, and military discipline is, at a certain period of an individual’s or a nation’s life, highly necessary, in order to place the bodily and intellectual capacities under the guidance of some authority, although this may be a mere abstraction. The results which may thus be attained, can be studied in Roman art, in spite of all its shortcomings.