1859.] on Modern Gothic Architecture, 59 



beautiful of ruins, St. Mary's Abbey at York, at a time when almost 

 everybody thought, as Lord Palmerston and his adherents still do, that 

 Gothic architecture was a relic of barbarism. And the modern advance 

 of architecture in the only style which has advanced is undoubtedly due 

 in a great degree to the ecclesiologists. But for all that we cannot 

 afford to let either of them be our masters. Architecture is the art of 

 erecting new buildings for use and beauty ; even Mr. Ruskin, with all 

 his love of decoration, puts use and fitness for its purpose as the first 

 condition to be satisfied by a building, though of course not the only 

 one. Archaeology (so far as it relates to our business) deals with the 

 preserving of old buildings; a very good, but a very different thing; 

 and ecclesiology is obviously more different still ; and at any rate it 

 has nothing to do with civil architecture, about which the fight happens 

 to be just now ; for our opponents say that we have carried the ecclesi- 

 astical and eleemosynary position, even the Protestant Dissenters 

 having now joined us in it ; the Romanists alone seem to be discovering 

 that the architecture of Rome after all suits their purposes the best,* 

 and it is remarkable that their modern Gothic buildings are seldom 

 among the best specimens ; there are many better dissenting chapels^ 



I think therefore that everybody who feels interested in the pro- 

 gress of architecture ought to resist all attempts to overwhelm and 

 choke it by either ecclesiastical or antiquarian pedantry. There is 

 nothing like a real example : so there is a certain city where the 

 people of common sense are just now protesting against a scheme for 

 building a set of new stalls within the line of almost the thickest 

 pillars in quite the narrowest cathedral choir in England ; using there- 

 fore less than a third of the entire width of the church for sitting 

 room ; and all for the sake of indulging a vision of four and twenty 

 canons all of a row, who it is hoped will some day occupy them ; and 

 when they do, it is supposed they will not look so imposing if a couple 

 of pillars are allowed to intersect the array as if it is perfectly con- 

 tinuous. And yet the people who do these things talk about the 

 adaptability of Gothic to all forms and all uses. How do they expect 

 anybody to believe it, who is inclined to disbelieve it, when they give 

 him such advantages ? And how are others to fight their battle for 

 them, when they dare not stir a step for themselves to do what would 

 be rational, convenient, and beautiful, (if well done,) because they 

 *' know no precedent for it ? '' 



That is a case of what I call the pedantry of ecclesiology. Here is 

 another of archaeology, perhaps in the most ridiculous form in which it 

 ever presented itself. The well known tower of St. Mary's, Taunton, 

 has ceased to exist. Etiam periere ruince : for not only was the fabric 



* A paragraph to this eflPect has been going round the newspapers on the autho- 

 rity of Dr. Newman ; and it has long appeared to me that nothing could be more 

 natural, as all the authorities agree that Gothic architecture never took any real 

 root in Italy, But these results are a singular end of all the nonsense we used to 

 hear about Gothic being " essentially Popish." We shall see whether pronoancing 

 it essentially barbarous answers any better. 



