米开朗基罗竭尽全力把圣彼得大教堂造得壮观宏大，但实际看上去却反而不是那么大。我知道这听起来很搞笑。你也许会认为，物体越大，看起来也就越大。但实际上并不总是这样。这与比例有关。如果给一棵树照一张照片，你就没法从照片上看出这树到底有多大，除非站着一个譬如人啊、狗啊、房子啊一类的参照物。（这和地图上的比例一样：除非有比例尺，你才能知道一个城镇到底是30英里还是300英里远。）圣彼得大教堂的窗户有普通人身高的四倍。但除非窗户旁站个人，要不然它们就会被认为也就一个人那么高，因为大部分窗户让人看上去就那么高。所以缺少参照物就成了圣彼得大教堂的一个大问题。
米开朗基罗去世很久以后，另外一位建筑师给这座大教堂重新加了一个正面，切断了米开朗基罗那漂亮圆顶的正面视线。他还将正面延长，使教堂呈拉丁式十字形。后来一个叫贝尔尼尼的人在教堂正面加了两条柱廊，或者叫两排柱子。这两排柱子建在大教堂前部的半圆形空地上，环绕两边呈椭圆形。
贝尔尼尼的柱廊非常美观，但是我们没法知道柱廊的大小，就像我们没法知道教堂的大小一样，因为柱廊和大教堂一样，都缺乏参照物。如果仔细看看图片，就会发现广场上有些人。如果以他们为参照物，就能大致看出教堂有多么高大宏伟了。
让我们来看看圣彼得大教堂的平面图，它展现了大教堂的基本模型，图纸的上方则是贝尔尼尼对柱廊的设计。
哥特式柱子与罗马式柱子看起来毫不相同。但是文艺复兴式建筑师将柱子的顶部设计成罗马式柱头。有时侯他们甚至会把罗马式建筑物拆除，但却用它们的柱子来造文艺复兴式建筑物。再看看柱式吧，它们真像罗马式的。
意大利有许多著名的文艺复兴式建筑师，他们给后人留下了许多著名的建筑物，但是我们不得不跳过他们当中的几位，来介绍名叫帕拉迪奥的这个人。帕拉迪奥因赋予柱子一种特殊的用途而出名。这些柱子拔地而起，足有两三层楼那么高。这被称作“帕拉迪奥风格”。帕拉迪奥还写了一本书，专门介绍他的风格，意大利和其他国家的建筑师都发现那很管用。圣彼得大教堂正面的柱子超过两层楼高。
文艺复兴式建筑从意大利传播到其他国家，一直沿用至今。所有的建筑风格都是从更早期衍生而来。文艺复兴式建筑的发展可以追溯到古罗马，但直到全世界都期待更宏伟的建筑物出现时，文艺复兴式建筑风格才被采用。探险家、科学家、思想家们都在引领现代之路，但他们的某些思想也是源于先贤。只有回顾过去，才能展望未来。
THE HOMES OF ENGLAND
英国式住宅
HAVE you ever been locked up？I knew a boy who was locked up by mistake.He hadn’t done anything bad，and he wasn’t locked up in jail.
What the boy had done was to go to a big museum to see the paintings.He walked and walked through gallery after gallery，until his feet hurt and he felt very weary.When he saw a comfortable sofa in one of the rooms he sat down to rest.The sofa was so comfortable that the boy fell fast asleep.
When he woke up，everything was dark.Of course，he was a little frightened.Who wouldn’t be！Great stone statues of Egyptian kings loomed black all around him.He hurried to the door.The door was locked！
He called and yelled and pounded on the door，but the museum had been closed for the night and no one heard him.There was nothing for the poor boy to do but stay there all night.When the doors were unlocked the next morning，you can imagine how surprised the guards were to find a very scared and very hungry boy waiting to get out.
A museum isn’t a comfortable place to live in，even for one night.The boy who got locked up found that out.And almost all the buildings you have read about in this book would make very poor homes.Who would want to live in the Parthenon，or St.Sophia，or the Leaning Tower of Pisa，or Rheims Cathedral？Even the castles and palaces of the Renaissance would be inconvenient for homes without a great number of servants to keep them in order.
Yet from the very earliest times people have had houses to live in Why haven’t these houses been more important in the story of architecture？
One reason is that the houses people live in are not generally built to last as long as a great temple or cathedral.The houses were often built of wood which gradually decayed.Houses wear out just as shoes or ships or shirts do.Old houses are torn down to make room for new ones.Many burn down.So a dwelling as old as a Greek temple would be very hard to find.
Houses that people live in，however，are often more truly interesting than the great celebrated buildings，For instance，I like the everyday houses of England more than I like the big，handsome，famous public buildings built since the English Gothic cathedrals.I believe you may like them more，too.I’ll tell you about them.
Gothic architecture in England had been slowly changing，until the later Gothic buildings were quite different from the early Gothic buildings.By the time Queen Elizabeth began to rule，English Gothic architecture had changed so much that it could hardly be called Gothic any more，so it was given a special name.The English rulers at this time belonged to the Tudor family and the architecture was called Tudor.Tudor architecture was in between Gothic and Renaissance architecture.It came after the true Gothic had died out and before the true Renaissance architecture had come to England.Tudor architecture is the most English of all English architecture.
Manor houses took the place of the medieval castles.Several of the old manor houses of this Tudor period are still standing.They have big bay windows that stick out from the walls，sometimes three stories high.The Tudor windows often had flat tops instead of pointed arch tops like the Gothic，but most of them still had stone tracery in them like the Gothic.
The windows were not arranged in even rows like the windows of the Riccardi Palace in Italy.Wherever a room needed a window，there a window would be put.The chimneys too were put wherever a fireplace was needed，and not just so they would look well from the outside.Often the chimneys were round like columns，instead of being square，and some were twisted like corkscrews.
No.80-1HADDON HALL，A TUDOR HOUSE（都铎式住宅哈顿公馆）The Tudor houses were honest architecture.They were built for comfortable and useful homes，not for show with all the beauty on the outside.That is one thing that makes them so pleasant and homelike to look at.They were built of whatever materialscould be found in the neighborhood，sometimes stone，sometimes brick，sometimespartly wood and plaster.They seem to fit into the landscape as if they had grown there.
Now here’s a paragraph you’ll probably have to read twice because there are so many insides and outsides to it.As the Tudor houses were built for homes，the inside was considered more important than the outside.The outside was not put on like Italian Renaissance outsides，to make a pretty picture.The outside was really just the outside of the inside.But the Renaissance buildings were built for the outside effect.The Renaissance inside was just the inside of the outside.That is really a big difference when you think of it.Does all that mix you up？Then read it once more and probably you can get straightened out.