In my former lectures I have endeavoured to trace out the history of that course of transition by which the rude arcuated architecture which prevailed in Western Christendom, during the dark ages between the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of modern civilisation,--commonly known as the “Romanesque” style,--first emancipated itself from its semi-barbaric character, and became a consistent round-arched style, and subsequently, by a perfectly logical series of changes, resulting from the suggestions partly of scientific construction, and partly of artistic refinement, developed itself into that new, original, and beautiful style which has in more modern times received the very absurd, but now unavoidable, name of _Gothic_ architecture. Having traced this development up to what I consider to be its culminating point--the form which it arrived at towards the end of the thirteenth century--it had been my intention, before I proceeded farther with the historical view of the subject, to have given a series of short practical treatises on several of the more important elements of the style whose history I have traced out; as, for instance, on the principles of Gothic _vaulting_, on _tracery_, on the system of _mouldings_ belonging to the style; on _roofing_; on architectural _carving_ and _sculpture_, etc., etc. Circumstances, however, having rendered it impracticable for me just now to devote to it the time which would be necessary to do justice to these subjects, I purpose on the present occasion to content myself--at the risk (I may say with the _certainty_) of repeating what I have already stated--with an inquiry into the _rationale_ of the style of architecture of which I have been treating. Such an inquiry is the more necessary from the extraordinary contrariety of opinion which we find to exist as to the real character of the style, as well as the external and internal causes of its development. Such opinions assume the most contradictory forms. One class of them may be denominated the _religious_ view of the question. Under this head one party describes it as Christian, and another as Roman Catholic architecture. One attributes to its various parts a deep symbolisation of Christian truth; another discovers in them nothing but the mystic arcana of Romanism; while another cuts the knot by protesting that it is Mahometan architecture. A second class of opinions assumes an _ethnological_ form. Under this head some have thought the style especially English; some pre-eminently German; some, again, in the most exclusive and straitened sense of the term, French; and others (in the widest sense) Teutonic; while the entanglement is again cut through by the champions of the _Saracenic_ claim.