Foreword
A HIS TORY of European architecture in two hundred pages
can achieve its goal only if the reader is prepared to concede
three things.
He must not expect to find a mention of every work and every
architect of importance. If this had been attempted, the space avail-
able would have been filled with nothing but names of architects,
names of buildings and dates. One building must be accepted as
sufficient to illustrate one particular style or one particular point
This means that in the picture which the reader is going to see
gradations are eliminated, and colour is set against colour. He may
regard that as a disadvantage, but he will, it can be hoped, admit
that the introduction of subtler differences would have doubled or
trebled the bulk of the book. Thus the nave of Lincoln will be dis-
cussed but not the nave of Wells, and Sto. Spirito in Florence but
not S. Lorenzo. Whether St. Michael's, Coventry, is really a more
complete or suitable example of a Perpendicular parish church than
Holy Trinity, Hull, the Palazzo Rucellai of the Italian Renaissance
than the Palazzo Strozzi, is of course debatable. Unanimity cannot
be achieved on matters of that kind. Yet, as architectural values can
be appreciated only by describing and analysing buildings at some
length, it was imperative to cut down their number and devote as
much space as possible to those finally retained.
Besides this limitation, two more have proved necessary. It was
out of the question to treat European architecture of all ages from
Stonehenge to the 2oth century, or the architecture of all the
nations which makeup Europe to-day. Neither would, however, be
expected of a volume called European Architecture. The Greek
temple, most readers probably feel, belongs to the civilisation of
Antiquity, not to what we usually mean when we talk of European
civilisation. It will also be agreed, though for quite different reasons,
that the architecture of, say, Bulgaria need not be dealt with in these
pages. The main reasons here are that Bulgaria in the past belonged
to the Byzantine and then to the Russian orbit, and that her im-
portance now is so marginal as to make her omission pardonable.
So everything will be left out of this book that is only of marginal
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