1859.3 ^^ Modern Gothic Architecture, 45 



and elsewhere as the common fallacy of drawings. And although the 

 want of depth in the buttresses at St. George's was painfully apparent 

 at an early stage — but too late to be cured, except at great expense, 

 those of St. James's were only just saved in time, after the foundation 

 had been laid ; and there the consequence of want of depth would have 

 been worse, because it was on depth, and massiveness, and general bold- 

 ness of construction, that the architectural effect of that church, as of 

 all plain ones, had to depend entirely. Mr. Bell has been kind enough 

 to paint for the purpose of this lecture what we may call a bad St. 

 James's ; which, you see, is as like the good one as possible in general 

 dimensions, size of windows, the arcading under the round window, and 

 so forth, except that the details are made as thin and shallow as usual 

 in modern Gothic buildings.* As far as pictures can exhibit the differ- 

 ence of effect, and they ought to be stereographic pictures to do it 

 completely, you can now form some idea of it ; you will form a better 

 if you will compare the building itself with almost any other modern 

 church which you can carry in your eye for the purpose, or if you com- 

 pare any other modern building with almost any old one of the same 

 size. I say almost any old one, because I am well aware that there 

 are a few exceptions, such as the north aisle windows of Bolton Abbey, 

 which are in the flowing decorated style, and are nearly as bad as 

 modern ones, and with which the architects will probably knock you 

 down, unless you are prepared to ask them why they insist upon copy- 

 ing the few exceptionally bad models they can find, and pay no atten- 

 ton to the infinitely greater number of good ones of just the opposite 

 character. And so I leave this topic, adding only the warning (which 

 may not be thrown away upon some people), that there is no relation 

 between external depth of shadow and internal light : on the contrary, 

 since Gothic windows are nearly always splayed as wide as the depth of 

 their setting, and Italian ones never are, deep-set Gothic windows will 

 let more light into a room than Italian ones ojf the same size. • 



The next common modern mistake which I have to notice, is 

 another instance of a truth turned into falsehood by exaggerations. 

 You have all heard or seen how St. Peter's at "Rome fails, from the 

 magnitude of all its parts and details, in producing the proper impres- 

 sion of its size, and you will see in Mr. Fergusson's and Mr. Garbett's 

 books some strong observations on and illustrations of the same want 

 of subdivision of even the Gothic cathedrals on the Continent, into 

 parts of moderate size with a distinct outline to each — an art which 

 was far better understood by the English architects, who knew how to 

 give to our cathedrals an appearance of almost unlimited extent, though 

 they are generally smaller than the foreign ones. Well, all this is 

 perfectly true and right, and it is undoubtedly an architectural blunder 

 to have great size and yet not to get the full effect out of it. But the 

 modern architect interprets this truth to mean, that if you only make 



This cannot be represented in a small drawing; so I do not attempt it. 



