Great as was this school, much was yet wanting to retrieve the golden purity of ancient art; and this, in the succeeding century, was added by Palladio, so far at least, as the severe majesty of the primitive modes could be recovered from a Roman writer, and by the study of Roman exemplars. Palladio is refined, rather than nervous,--elegant, rather than grand; but of all the modern masters, he is the most chaste in design and ornament, prior to more recent knowledge of the fountain of all excellence--the remains of Greece. His school was numerous, at least the masters who followed out his principles; which, spreading over Europe, firmly established the Roman style, banishing a bastard species of Roman Gothic, by which both systems had been disgraced, and their characteristic distinctions confounded. Of the Palladian, or reformed school, Bernini was the last disciple of genius; his circular colonnade, in front of St Peter's, is worthy of its site. With him, and the conceits of Borromini, Italian architecture may almost be said to have ceased. In France, the two Mansards, during the building reign of Louis XIV., have left heavy imitations of the Michael-Angelesque style; still, to the artist writers of that country, the art owes much. It is there more regularly studied than in any other country in Europe; and in one specimen, the façade of the Louvre, the grandest excellence has been attained; but the general character of national building is too fluttering, wanting repose and majesty. From the two schools, the following ten have been selected, under the name of the modern masters, because, in their writings or buildings, the best precepts are obtained. Ranging the names in order of merit, we have Palladio, Scamozzi, Vignola, Alberti, De Lorme, Serlio, Viola, Cataneo, Boullant, Barbaro.