The difference between the Byzantine and the Romanesque arises from the differences of the races and their environments. The art of seaport towns, when Commerce was most largely carried on by sea, much more nearly resembled the art of some great commercial centre on the seaboard than it did that of its own neighbors inland. The art of the seaboard cities in Europe was, then, for many years a borrowed art from the East, as their people were to great extent Eastern colonists. It was carried on with a full knowledge of constructive methods, and a facility in obtaining materials that the inland towns did not possess; and in consequence it is along the seaboard that is to be found the persistence of the Byzantine influence. On the other hand, the interior was peopled by descendants of Ostrogothic tribes mingling with numberless local peoples. Whatever they touch is necessarily crude at first, but constantly gaining as they gain facility in working. A precedent of some kind they must have, and they find it close at hand in the Roman basilicas. Uncertain, from the result of woful experiments, of arches of great span, they pack their columns close together and surmount them with sturdy little arches that have scarcely any thrust. This arcade of heavy columns carrying absurdly disproportionate arches is their only motive, and applied inside between aisles and nave, and outside in successive stories rising one above another. As the masons begin better to understand their art, the span of the arch increases, though a large arch for some time does duty merely as a discharging arch, and has smaller arches beneath and within it. The capitals, at first crude imitations of classic prototypes, soon become the field for the grotesque imagination of the workmen, and each differs from the other and is a mass of light and shade shot with all sorts of uncouth fancies. Wherever, for some constructive reason, a column is omitted against a wall, the capital becomes a corbel, carrying the arches. In many cases the corbels alone are used, and an arcaded corbel course becomes the favorite termination of a wall in the place of a classic entablature. Finally the arches are omitted, and the corbels alone support the eaves. It will be noticed that while the Byzantine decorated the interior of the churches, the Romanesque builder merely constructed the interior and wrought out the most of his design upon the facade. As a large arch was to him for a long time a _tour de force_, he naturally beautified the necessarily large entrance, and the beginning of the development of the beautiful Gothic portals is seen in the early Romanesque churches.