296 ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE. Part II. complete our history of the style in Europe, and directly connect the countries on either side of the Alps ; thus concluding the one branch of our subject and introducing the next. Secondly, to take up the Mediaeval Romanesque where we left that style in a previous chapter, and to point out the few remaining peculiarities which have not yet been described. Lastly, to describe the Byzantine art as it was practised in the South of Italy : thus continuing the sequence up to the next book, and leading the history by an easy gradation from the true Gothic of the West to the true Byzantine of the East. Sicily will demand a chapter to herself ; not only because a fourth element is introduced there in the Saracenic — which influenced her style almost as much as it did that of the south of Spain ■^- but be- cause such jDointed Gothic as she possesses was not German, like that of Northern Italy, but derived far more directly from France, under either the Norman or Angiovine dynasties. ,
