62 Mr, Denison, on Modem Gothic Architecture. [Feb. 11, 



Paul's, or in *' the street of palaces," to be compared with any common 

 three-light window built 600 years ago, or even with a good modern 

 one of the same style revived ? For it is now shown that good modern 

 ones in this style can be built ; and they can be built of any size you 

 want, and in any number, and almost any position. 



I think it is shown too, by these two provincial churches which I 

 have referred to so often for that reason, that " the hidden principles 

 and lost harmonies,'* which Mr. Petit has lately given up looking for 

 in despair, are not too deeply sunk to be recovered by those who have 

 the patience to seek them where they were lost, instead of rambling 

 after them into unknown regions. 



Some of you, I dare say, came here believing that the old 

 Gothic ways have been thoroughly explored already, that the great 

 Gothic revival is progressing charmingly, and that the time is fully 

 come when it should be carried forward into those other unknown 

 regions where the architecture of the future is waiting to be disclosed. 

 If so, I hope your faith has had a shake. And on the other hand, 

 those who have been in the habit of condemning Gothic architecture — 

 on other grounds, I mean, than from mere shallow ignorance and 

 flippancy — may possibly be led to reflect whether a great deal of what 

 you are justly dissatisfied with has any right to be called Gothic 

 architecture at all, and is not rather a flimsy modern figment, a kind 

 of painted skeleton of Gothic without either flesh or spirit. I cannot 

 forget how a great man, whose name you will recognise immediately, 

 said to me, while he was living among the wretched modern Gothic 

 of the new buildings at Cambridge, on my complaining of the new 

 University Library being Italian, and Italian of almost unrivalled 

 badness — " Gothic architecture is obsolete ;" but soon after, when he 

 was translated into the shadow of the great cathedral with which his name 

 will ever be associated, he became one of the warmest admirers and 

 the most zealous and successful restorer of the real Gothic architecture 

 which he then saw before him. Some of that restoration is so well 

 done, that it is not easy to distinguish the new work from the old, and 

 so it is in some other places. That it is not so in all, and that build- 

 ings are continually erected (even where there is not the excuse of 

 stinginess) in which Gothic principles are pretended to be followed, but 

 are really set at defiance, is manifestly not the fault of Gothic architec- 

 ture, but of architects. 



[E. B. D.] 



