Existing thus in the midst of many potent influences, and surrounded by the ruins of past civilisations, the Italians recombined and mingled styles of marked variety.  The Roman, Byzantine, Saracenic, Lombard, and German traditions were blended in their architecture, as the presiding genius of each place determined.  It followed that master-works of rare and subtle invention were produced, while no one type was fully perfected, nor can we point to any paramount Italian manner.  In Italy what was gained in richness and individuality was lost in uniformity and might.  Yet we may well wonder at the versatile appreciation of all types of beauty that these monuments evince.  How strange, for example, it is to think of the Venetians borrowing the form and structure of their temple from the mosques of Alexandria, decking its facade with the horses of Lysippus, and panelling the sanctuary with marbles from the harem-floors of Eastern emperors; while at the other end of Italy, at Palermo, close beside the ruined colonnades of Greek Segesta, Norman kings were embroidering their massive churches with Saracenic arabesques and Byzantine mosaics, interspersing delicate Arabian tracery with rope-patterns and monsters of the deep, and linking Cuphic sentences with Scandinavian runes.  Meanwhile, at Rome, tombs, baths, and theatres had been turned into fortresses.  The Orsini held the Mole of Hadrian; the Savelli ensconced themselves in the Theatre of Marcellus, and the Colonnesi in the Mausoleum of Augustus; the Colosseum and the Arches of Constantine and Titus harboured the Frangipani; the Baths of Trajan housed the Capocci; while the Gaetani made a castle of Caecilia Metella’s tomb.  Under those vast resounding vaults swarmed a brood of mediaeval bravi—­like the wasps that hang their pear-shaped combs along the cloisters of Pavia.  There the ghost of the dead empire still sat throned and sceptred.  The rites of Christianity were carried on beneath Agrippa’s dome, in Diocletian’s baths, in the Basilicas.  No other style but that of the imperial people struck root near the Eternal City.  Among her three hundred churches, Rome can only show one Gothic building.  Further to the north, where German influences were more potent, the cathedrals still displayed, each after its own kind, a sunny southern waywardness.  Glowing with marbles and mosaics, glittering with ornaments, where the foliage of the Corinthian acanthus hides the symbols of the Passion, and where birds and Cupids peep from tangled fruits beneath grave brows of saints and martyrs; leaning now to the long low colonnades of the Basilica, now to the high-built arches of the purely Pointed style; surmounting the meeting point of nave and transept with Etruscan domes; covering the facade with bas-reliefs, the roof with statues; raising the porch-pillars upon lions and winged griffins; flanking the nave with bell-towers, or planting them apart like flowers in isolation on the open square—­these wonderful buildings, the delight and joy of all who love to trace variety in beauty, and to note the impress of a nation’s genius upon its art, seem, like Italy herself, to feel all influences and to assimilate all nationalities.