In my lectures on the Dome I have said almost as much on Byzantine architecture as is perhaps needful for the purpose of this rapid sketch. I may add, however, that it was a purely or almost purely arcuated style, though yet more pre-eminently a domed style, and most of all a purely Christian style; that it rejoiced in surface decoration, in painting and mosaic, and in marble incrustation and inlay, though, from religious scruples, it discouraged sculpture. It delighted in every form of Oriental splendour, and the representation which its mosaics afford us of its secular buildings, when in full perfection, shows us that, though splendid solemnity characterised its churches, gaiety was a marked element in its more ordinary architecture. It is true that the gradual decay of the Empire caused a decline in the artistic quality of its buildings; yet we must admit its architecture to be one of the boldest and most original of developments; and we owe to Byzantium a heavy debt of gratitude for having kept alight the lamp of art during the long and dreary ages when Western Europe was trampled down by barbarian hordes, its arts destroyed, and its civilisation well-nigh forgotten. It was from this still glimmering lamp that Charlemagne nobly attempted, though almost in vain, to rekindle that of the Western Empire. It was from the same that the three first Othos made a second and more successful effort; it was from thence that the revived art was further aided at the time of the Crusades; and to this source we, in a large degree, owe our modern civilisation. All thanks and honour, then, be to the unfortunate Eastern Empire, which, having performed its work, has now so long been trodden under foot of the Gentiles! As architectural art recovered itself, after the ages of darkness, the later works of old Christian Rome, the still living architecture of Byzantium, and the half-living architecture of the day in Rome itself, formed together the groundwork of the revival. This architecture was all mainly arcuated; and the increased difficulty of obtaining and transporting large blocks of stone tended to render this the necessary element in the reviving style. We know the style which thus rose in Italy. I do not believe myself that much of this is so old as the time of the Lombard kings, but that it was in a much greater degree the work of the Othos--emperors at once of Italy and of Germany--and thus extending the same style from the south of the Alps, across into Germany, and onwards almost to the Baltic. I cannot, in this short lecture, follow up the details of this early Romanesque style; but I beg you to do so for yourselves, and at the same time to make yourselves acquainted with the contemporary architecture of France, in which, subject to many variations, the same feeling will be found to prevail.