_The Columns._--In basilicas these were of antique type; very often they had actually been obtained by the demolition of older buildings, and when made purposely they were as a rule of the same general character. The same might be said of those introduced into Byzantine buildings, though a divergence from the classic type soon manifested itself, and small columns began to appear as decorative features. In Romanesque buildings the columns are very varied indeed, and shafts are frequently introduced into the decoration of other features. They occur in the jambs of doorways with mouldings or sub-arches springing from them; long shafts and short ones, frequently supporting ornamental arcades, are employed both internally and externally; and altogether that use of the column as a means of decoration, of which Gothic architecture presents so many examples, first began in the Romanesque style. The capitals employed in Romanesque buildings generally depart considerably from the classic type, being based on the primitive cube capital (Fig. 181), but, as a rule, in Eastern as well as in basilican churches, they bear a tolerably close resemblance to classic ones. [Illustration: FIG. 181.--CUBIC CAPITAL.] _The Ornaments_ throughout the whole of the Christian round-arched period are a very interesting subject of study, and will repay close attention. In the basilican style mouldings occur but seldom: where met with, they are all of the profiles common in Roman architecture, but often rudely and clumsily worked. Carving partakes also of classic character, though it is not difficult to detect the commencement of that metamorphosis which was effected in Byzantium, and which can hardly be better described than in the following paragraph from the pen of Sir Digby Wyatt:--"The foliage is founded on ancient Greek rather than on Roman traditions, and is characterised by a peculiarly sharp outline. All ornamental sculpture is in comparatively low relief, and the absence of human and other figures is very marked. Enrichments were almost invariably so carved, by sinking portions only of the surfaces and leaving the arrises and principal places untouched, as to preserve the original constructive forms given by the mason (Fig. 184). The employment of the drill instead of the chisel, so common in debased Roman work, was retained as a very general practice by the Greek carvers, and very often with excellent effect. The foliage of the acanthus, although imitated from the antique, quite changed its character, becoming more geometrical and conventional in its form. That which particularly distinguishes Lombard from Byzantine art is its sculpture abounding with grotesque imagery, with illustrations of every-day life, of a fanciful mythology not yet quite extinct, and allusions, no longer symbolic but direct, to the Christian creed; the latter quality a striking evidence of the triumph of the Roman Church over all iconoclastic adversaries in