We must not seek for severe discipline and architectonic design.
Instead of one presiding, all-determining idea, we must be prepared to welcome a wealth of separate beauties, wrought out by men of independent genius, whereby each part is made a masterpiece, and many diverse elements become a whole of picturesque rather than architectural impressiveness.
It would not be difficult to extend this kind of criticism to the Duomo of Milan.

Speaking strictly, a more unlucky combination of different styles--the pyramidal facade of Lombard architecture and the long thin lights of German Gothic, for example--a clumsier misuse of ill-appropriated details in the heavy piers of the nave, or a more disastrous adjustment of the monster windows to the main lines of the nave and aisles, could scarcely be imagined.

Yet no other church, perhaps, in Europe leaves the same impression of the marvellous upon the fancy.

The splendour of its pure white marble, blushing with the rose of evening or of dawn, radiant in noonday sunlight, and fabulously fairy-like beneath the moon and stars, the multitudes of statues sharply cut against a clear blue sky, and gazing at the Alps across that memorable tract of plain, the immense space and light-irradiated gloom of the interior, the deep tone of the bells above at a vast distance, and the gorgeous colours of the painted glass, contribute to a scenical effect unparalleled in Christendom.
The two styles, Lombard and Gothic, of which I have been speaking, were both in a certain sense exotic.

Within the great cities the pith of the population was Latin; and no style of building that did not continue the tradition of the Romans, in the spirit of the Roman manner, and with strict observance of its details, satisfied them.