At all times there have been somewhere
peoples who knew enough of building to mould its utility into forms of
beauty, and the history of architecture may be read more continuously
than that of any other art. It is a history of constant change and of
continuous development, each people and each age forming out of the old
elements a new style which should express its mind, and each style
reaching its point of greatest distinctiveness only to begin a further
transformation into something else; but is it a history of progress?
Building, indeed, has progressed at one time or another. The Romans,
with their domes and arches, were more scientific builders than the
Greeks, with their simple post and lintel, but were they better
architects? We of to-day, with our steel construction, can scrape the
sky with erections that would have amazed the boldest of mediaeval
craftsmen; can we equal his art? If we ask where in the history of
architecture do its masterpieces appear, the answer must be: "Almost
anywhere." Wherever men have had the wealth and the energy to build
greatly, they have builded beautifully, and the distinctions are less
between style and style or epoch and epoch than between building and
building: The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of
another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the
Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens.
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