When, however, we use the term “national,” we do not usually refer to these local varieties, but rather wish to express the general fact that, in our own country and amidst the family of European nations, those styles which were generated during the rise of our own civilisation are more national than the revived architecture of the ancient world. Each country has its own local variety; but the whole is one style, and that style is our own. While reviving this style, then, though we make in each country our own phase of it our groundwork, we must not permit either the narrow prejudices of friends, or the taunts of critics, to lead us into the folly of rejecting any of the really noble and valuable elements of our style, in whatever country they may have been generated. I will close my too protracted lecture with a quotation from that admirable writer and accomplished architect I have so often referred to. He thus describes the leading practical principles of the architecture to which the transition we have been tracing out was the pioneer:-- “From the commencement of the thirteenth century architecture developed itself after a method completely new, in which all the parts deduced themselves--the one from the other--with an imperious rigour. Now, it is by the change of method that revolutions in sciences and arts commence. The construction commands the form; the piers destined to bear several arches divide themselves into as many columns as there are arches; these columns are of a diameter more or less substantial, according to the load which will rest upon them, rising side by side with them to the vaults which they have to sustain, their capitals assuming an importance proportioned to this charge. The arches are slight or thick, composed of one or more ranges of voussoirs, as dictated by their function. The walls, becoming unnecessary, in great structures disappear completely, and are replaced by window-openings decorated with stained glass. Every necessity becomes a motive of decoration. The roofs, the leading off of the water, the introduction of light, the means of access and circulation to the different stages of the building--even less important matters, such as iron-work, lead-work, ties, props, the means of warming and ventilation, not only are not concealed, as is so often done in our buildings since the sixteenth century, but are, on the contrary, frankly acknowledged, and contribute, by their ingenious combination and the taste which ever presides over their execution, to the enrichment of the architecture.[35] In a beautiful edifice of the commencement of the thirteenth century, splendid as we may think it, there is not an ornament to be spared, for each ornament is but the consequence of requirement satisfied.” LECTURE IV. The Thirteenth Century.