The final, or fourth state being only in some sort a repetition of
the first, it would be reasonable to look for a certain correspondence
between Egyptian and Gothic architecture, and such a correspondence
there is, though it is more easily divined than demonstrated. In
both there is the same deeply religious spirit; both convey, in some
obscure yet potent manner, a sense of the soul being near the surface
of life. There is the same love of mystery and of symbolism; and in
both may be observed the tendency to create strange composite figures
to typify transcendental ideas, the sphinx seeming a blood-brother to
the gargoyle. The conditions under which each architecture flourished
were not dissimilar, for each was formulated and controlled by small
well-organized bodies of sincerely religious and highly enlightened
men--the priesthood in the one case, the masonic guilds in the
other--working together toward the consummation of great undertakings
amid a populace for the most part oblivious of the profound and subtle
meanings of which their work was full. In Mediæval Europe, as in
ancient Egypt, fragments of the Ancient Wisdom--transmitted in the
symbols and secrets of the cathedral builders--determined much of
Gothic architecture.

The architecture of the Renaissance period, which succeeded the
Gothic, corresponds again, in the spirit which animates it, to Greek
architecture, which succeeded the Egyptian, for the Renaissance as
the name implies was nothing other than an attempt to revive Classical
antiquity. Scholars writing in what they conceived to be a Classical
style, sculptors modeling Pagan deities, and architects building
according to their understanding of Vitruvian methods succeeded
in producing works like, yet different from the originals they
followed--different because, animated by a spirit unknown to the