The comparison of contemporary Gothic in England and France covers the subject more accurately than between that of any other countries, for these two nations rivalled each other all along in the solution of the various problems which arose with each step in their progress, while the architects of other countries profited by the results they attained and erected their buildings on Anglo-French principles. The cathedrals of Cologne, in Germany, and Toledo, in Spain, are as fine as any to be found in France or England, but they are neither German nor Spanish in conception and principle, and therefore do not belong to the national architecture of these countries. In Italy, Gothic architecture was never understood as it was in the North, and whenever anything was attempted in direct imitation of Northern principles of design, the result was always hard and mechanical. The true Italian Gothic was of itself often beautiful, but this was almost a separate style, in which the influences of pointed forms, Oriental colour, and the example which the Classical ruins held out so conspicuously on their own soil, were brought together by the Italians so as to form an harmonious whole. In Venice a peculiar development of the style was attained, adapted to the flat elevations of the canal palaces. This arrangement consisted of a consecutive series of arcades, in which the mouldings of each arch were carried up and returned, forming a second and sometimes a third row of lights, replacing, in the play of light and shadow, the forced absence of projections. These arcades were surmounted by horizontal mouldings, and the lines of the cornices and imposts were also horizontal, the Italians never having lost sight of the entablature, which had been dropped in France with the rise of Romanesque architecture and replaced always afterward by the vertical lines which are the prominent one sin of all Northern Gothic buildings. The celebrated Doge’s palace is the foremost of these and ranks amongst the most picturesque buildings in Europe. It is not free, however, from grave defects and is criticised by architects for the top-heavy and injudicious construction, by which a high and rarely pierced wall is sustained by the slenderest of arcades. Most of these palaces are of the fifteenth century and should not perhaps be mentioned first, but as they illustrate the principle of horizontal lines more readily than by reference to the isolated parts of less well-known buildings, they are introduced now.