Justinian united the whole of Italy to his dominions in 553, and Ravenna thenceforth became the seat of the government of the Greeks. The new basilicas with which the city was speedily adorned introduced the cupola, and employed the block capitals which had been invented at Constantinople, ornamented with foliage in low relief, in imitation of basket work. But before the end of the sixth century, the Lombards came into supreme power, and still more marked improvement supervened in monumental art. As the pious entreaties of his Athenian bride had long before induced Honorius to exert himself in behalf of sacred works, and the daughter of Theodosius, Galla Placidia, a princess greatly afflicted, found consolation in decorating Ravenna with Christian temples; so Theodolinda, daughter of Garibaldus, Duke of Bavaria, and wife of Agilulfus, the fourth Lombard king, persuaded her husband to abjure his Arian heresies, and to protect the arts. Churches and palaces were multiplied, especially in Pavia, which the Lombard kings chose for their usual abode. The seventh century, and a part of the eighth, was a period of comparative tranquillity, and, under the auspices of this new and active race, the architecture of Italy was greatly improved. The Lombards imported no architects from the North, but availed themselves of the men and means furnished by the conquered country, still retaining the Romanesque form, but investing it internally and externally with a profusion of characteristic ornament. Until the seventh century Christian symbols were admitted into the churches with a sparing hand, but now the greatest license seems to have been given to ornamentation of every sort. Not only does architecture, more than all other material things, co-operate in manifesting the fulfillment of those sacred prophecies, in the deep truth of which is rooted the ever-thriving tree of salvation, but it also bears the clearest trace of national character and pursuits. The Lombards were great hunters, and along their wide façades and around their soaring porticoes they built with constructive sculpture all the wild energy of the daring and tumultuous chase. As a compendious abstract of the picturesque in outline, the impressive in substance, and the exciting in association, architecture exercises the magic of romance, where she emulates the majesty of nature, and portrays her myriad forms; when she unites the regulated precisions of human design, with the bold irregularities of divine creation; or when she presents us the hoary reminiscences of past heroes, whose deeds of good and ill gave radiant light or melancholy shadow to the times in which they lived. No thoughtful spirit can unmoved revert to those sons of barbarians who, as the triumphs of supreme art, caused the castle and cathedral to surmount the natural Goliath, in defiance of the giant mountain; when the huge walls, mellowed by time, even to the very tint