Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosopher's church, Gothic art, Saxon art,
the clumsy round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic
symbolism by which Nicholas Flamel paved the way for Luther, papal unity,
schism, Saint-Germain des Pres, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, are all
confounded, combined and blended in Notre Dame. This central and
generative church is a kind of chimera among the old churches of Paris; it
has the head of one, the limbs of another, the trunk of a third, something
of all.
Considering here Christian European architecture only, that younger sister
of the grand piles of the Orient, we may say that it strikes the eye as a
vast formation divided into three very distinct zones or layers, one
resting upon the other; the Roman zone, (the same which is also known
according to place, climate, and species, as Lombard, Saxon, and
Byzantine. There are the four sister forms of architecture, each having
its peculiar character, but all springing from the same principle, the
semicircular arch,) the Gothic zone, the zone of the Renaissance, which
may be called the Greco-Roman.
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