4th, It has often been spoken of as a vice to be too fond of studying _transitional_ styles. This may possibly be true as regards taking them as our models; but I hold the very contrary to be the case as to selecting them as special objects of study. They are the very periods of intellectual energy--the moments of the most intense effort of the human mind. From them we learn what zeal, what determination, what strength of will, what unity of purpose, what patient perseverance are required in working out a great good. The result of the mighty struggle was that, freed from every barbaric or lifeless element, our architects commenced the next century with their course clearly open before them, everything in their power, and no hindrance to the attainment of their object. Would that we could say this of ourselves, whatever may be our views as to _style_! 5th, Then, again, in the style itself of the buildings we have been considering there is much for us to learn. They possess a masculine grandeur, a noble sturdiness of character, an independence of ornament united with a grateful acceptance of its aid, which would supply a wholesome element to any style. A perfected style is often defective in these characteristics. It is toned down to too perfect a symmetry--a too nicely weighed balance of parts: the whole may suggest nothing but harmony, yet the parts are too much lost in the whole; there is too much of the satiety of attainment, and not enough of the excitement of the effort after perfection. The first developments of Pointed architecture produce an excitement on the mind which more perfected examples do not give rise to, and it seems to me that they contain elements which we should not do amiss to instil into our works, as I may have occasion to suggest more practically, if I should continue my course of lectures in this place. 6th, There is something to be learned from the curious history I have traced out of the re-introduction of one classic element--the Corinthian capital--at the moment when all other relics of the architecture of the old world were about to be thrown off. It is a kind of parallel to the revival of classic literature at the same period, on which M. Viollet le Duc remarks:--“It is precisely at the moment when the researches into antique letters, sciences, philosophy, and legislation were pursued with ardour--during the twelfth century--that architecture abandoned the last remnants of antique tradition, to found a new art whose principles are in manifest opposition to those of the arts of antiquity.” “Are we, then,” he proceeds, “to conclude from this that the men of the twelfth century were not consistent with themselves? Quite the contrary; but that which distinguishes the Renaissance of the twelfth from that of the sixteenth century, is this--that the former penetrates into the antique _spirit_, while the latter allows itself to be seduced by the _form_.”