In course of time the laws both of language and construction were more accurately studied; invention was superseded by pedantry; after Poliziano and Alberti came Bembo and Palladio.  In proportion as architects learned more about Vitruvius, and scholars narrowed their taste to Virgil, the style of both became more cramped and formal.  It ceased at last to be possible to express modern ideas freely in the correct Latinity required by cultivated ears, while no room for originality, no scope for poetry of invention, remained in the elaborated method of the architects.  Neo-Latin literature dwindled away to nothing, and Palladio was followed by the violent reactionaries of the barocco mannerism.

In one all-important respect this parallel breaks down.  While the labours of the Latinists subserved the simple process of instruction, by purifying literary taste and familiarising the modern mind with the masterpieces of the classic authors, the architects created a new common style for Europe.  With all its defects, it is not likely that the neo-Roman architecture, so profoundly studied by the Italians, and so anxiously refined by their chief masters, will ever wholly cease to be employed.  In all cases where a grand and massive edifice, no less suited to purposes of practical utility than imposing by its splendour, is required, this style of building will be found the best.  Changes of taste and fashion, local circumstances, and the personal proclivities of modern architects may determine the choice of one type rather than another among the numerous examples furnished by Italian masters.  But it is not possible that either Greek or Gothic should permanently take the place assigned to neo-Roman architecture in the public buildings of European capitals.

FOOTNOTES: 

[10] The question of the genesis of the Lombard style is one of the most difficult in Italian art-history.  I would not willingly be understood to speak of Lombard architecture in any sense different from that in which it is usual to speak of Norman.  To suppose that either the Lombards or the Normans had a style of their own, prior to their occupation of districts from the monuments of which they learned rudely to use the decayed Roman manner, would be incorrect.  Yet it seems impossible to deny that both Normans and Lombards in adapting antecedent models added something of their own, specific to themselves as Northerners.  The Lombard, like the Norman or the Rhenish Romanesque, is the first stage in the progressive mediaeval architecture of its own district.

[11] I use the term Lombard architecture here, as defined above (p. 31, note), for the style of building prevalent in Italy during the Lombard occupation, or just after.

[12] The essential difference between Italy and either Northern France or England, was that in Italy there existed monuments of Roman greatness, which could never be forgotten by her architects.  They always worked with at least half of their attention turned to the past:  nor had they the exhilarating sense of free, spontaneous, and progressive invention.  This point has been well worked out by Mr. Street in the last chapter of his hook on the Architecture of North Italy.