(_c_) On parallel lines with this evolution of religious architecture we find, too, the course of _civil construction_, which from its particular point of view imitates and modifies the character of ecclesiastical buildings. In an architecture directed to the uses of citizen life, however, art has less opportunity for display inasmuch as here objects of more restricted character, combined with a great variety of requirements, are more strict in the range of satisfaction presented, and do not suffer beauty to pass beyond mere decoration. Except for the general harmonious disposition of its forms and masses, art is in the main merely able to assert itself in the embellishment of façades, staircases, windows, doors, gables, towers, and the like, and has to do this throughout subject to the condition that the practical purpose of the building is what finally determines everything. In the Middle Ages it is pre-eminently the tower-like form of secure dwellings, which is the fundamental type of structure not merely for particular declivities and summits but also within the towns, where every palace, every private dwelling, as in Italy for example, received the form of a small fortification or keep. Walls, doors, towers, bridges and the like are executed as necessity dictates, and are decorated and embellished by art. Stability and security coupled with a grandiose type of splendour and a vital individuality of single forms and their connecting links constitute the determining factors, to enter into the detail of which would carry us beyond our present purpose. By way of supplement we may in conclusion briefly allude to the art of _gardening_, which does not only create under a wholly novel form an environment for spirit, we may call it a second exterior Nature, but draws the landscape of Nature itself within the operation of its constructive purpose and treats the same architectonically as an environment of buildings. I will only take as an example of what I mean the famous and exceedingly imposing terrace of Sans-souci. In our examination of the genuine art of gardening it is most important to distinguish the _painter's_ point of view of it from that of the _architect._ All that pertains to mere park construction, for instance, is not truly architectonic, no building, that is, with freely disposed natural objects, but an artist's portrayal[109], which leaves the objects in their natural form and aims at imitating wide Nature in its freedom. Everything is here suggested in turn, which finds its glad place in a landscape--whether rocks and the huge rough masses which are their substance, or dales, woods, pastures, meandering brooks, broad streams with their animated banks, still lakes, wreathed round with trees, rushing waterfalls, and everything else of the kind, and is brought together with one total effect. In this way the gardening art of the Chinese embraces entire landscapes together with their islands, rivers, expanding views, and rockeries.