(_γ_) We may fix as the pervading type by which the house of God is generally and with particular reference to its sections characterized that of the free rise and running up into _pinnacles_, whether they be built up by means of the arch or straight lines. In classical architecture, where we find columns and piers with superimposed beams is the fundamental form, rectangularity and the office of support is the feature of importance. For the construction superimposed at right angles marks in a definite way that it is supported. And even though the beams do in their turn carry the roofing, the surfaces of this latter portion incline to one another in an obtuse angle. In such a construction we find no trace of a genuine tendency to points and a soaring up: we find simply repose and support. In the same way, too, a circular arch, which extends in a continuous and equally gradated incline from one column to another, and is referable to one and the same centre, rests on its substructure of support. In romantic architecture, however, we no longer find the relation of support simply and rectangularity the fundamental form, but rather we have before us the fact that all that is enclosed either on its interior or exterior side independently springs upward, and, without the secure and express distinction between the relationship of weight and support, concentrates in a point. This pre-eminently free striving upwards and tendency to inclines that run to culminating points is what constitutes here the essential determinant, by virtue of which either acute-angled triangles with a more slender or broader base or pointed arches appear, both of which aspects stand out most obviously in the characterization of Gothic architecture. (_b_) Moreover, the obligations of spiritual devotion and exaltation, regarded as a cultus, bring before us a variety of definite conditions and features which cannot be fully met on the exterior of the building in the open halls or forecourts of a temple, but can only be satisfied within the house of God itself. If, therefore, in the case of the temple of classical architecture it is the external form which is of most importance, and we find it remaining by means of the colonnades more independent of the interior construction, romantic architecture presents a contrast to this not merely in the fact that the interior of the building is more essentially important, for the reason that the whole purports to be simply an enclosure, but also in this, that the interior permeates the very form of the exterior throughout, and determines its specific shape and mode of articulation. In this connection we will, in order to examine the matter more closely, first make an entrance into the interior, and working outwards therefrom endeavour to elucidate the exterior.