An argument against its claim to the title has been founded on the theory that the Pointed arch, which is, in some respects, the culminating feature of the style, was not developed spontaneously by our Christian forefathers, but learned by them from the Saracens. As well might it be attempted to sever Grecian architecture from the mythology and traditions of the Greeks, merely because some of its details may find their prototypes in Egypt or Assyria, or to disconnect the native architecture of India from their religion, because its first inspiration seems traceable to the Fire-worshippers of ancient Persia! Even Saracenic architecture itself was an emanation from that of Christian Greece; so that _if_ we are indebted to it for the Pointed arch (a question which I will not now attempt to investigate), she only paid back to the religion from which she had borrowed. No one, however, can study the tendencies of the late Romanesque without seeing that the Pointed arch was becoming every day more necessary to the development of the germ which the rising style contained. The gradually increasing predominance of the vertical over the horizontal, the increase in the height of pillars and jambs demanding a proportionate addition to the arch; the necessities of groined vaulting over oblong spaces, and a hundred other evidences, proved the Pointed arch to be the inevitable result of the already attained developments; and often had it, almost unconsciously, appeared in intersecting arcades. If its systematic adoption can with certainty be traced to the suggestive architecture of the East, surely this does not unchristianise the already Christian architecture of the soldiers of the Cross, who brought the idea home among the spoils won from their unbelieving foes! Is it not rather in the spirit of our religion to receive tribute and homage from all the nations of the earth? And if it may be said of the Christian Church that “Eastern Java there Kneels with the native of the farthest west; And Æthiopia spreads abroad the hand, And worships,” it is equally reasonable to expect of her material temples that “The looms of Ormus, and the mines of Ind, And Saba’s spicy groves, pay tribute there.”