If we take three
such plans as those shown in Figs. 26, 27, and 28, typical forms
respectively of the Egyptian, Greek, and Gothic plans, we certainly can
distinguish a special imaginative feeling or tendency in each of them.
In the Egyptian, which I have called the type of "mystery," the plan
continually diminishes as we proceed inward. In the third great
compartment the columns are planted thick and close, so as to leave no
possibility of seeing through the building except along a single avenue
of columns at a time. The gloom and mystery of a deep forest are in it,
and the plan finally ends, still lessening as it goes, in the small and
presumably sacred compartment to which all this series of colonnaded
halls leads up. In the Greek plan there is neither climax nor
anti-climax, only the picturesque feature of an exterior colonnade
encircling the building and surrounding a single oblong compartment. It
is a rationalistic plan, aiming neither at mystery nor aspiration. In
the plan of Rheims (Fig. 28) we have the plan of climax or aspiration;
as in the Egyptian, we approach the sacred portion through a long avenue
of piers; but instead of narrowing, the plan extends as we approach the
shrine. I think it will be recognized, putting aside all considerations
of the style of the superstructure on these plans, that each of them in
itself represents a distinct artistic conception.
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