42 Mr, E. B, Denison, [Feb. 11, 



Gothic was verticality, and of Grecian building, horizontality ; which is 

 true enough in a general way, but is fortliwith converted into nonsense and 

 monstrosity by people jumping to the conclusion that the more vertical 

 and " aspiring " (as they like to call it) they can have their buildings 

 the more Gothic they must be. It is always necessary to receive those 

 neat and succinct definitions and comprehensive statements about any- 

 thing with extreme caution. Even when they are exact enough for a 

 general summary, or to describe some wide distinction, as in the case 

 just mentioned, they are utterly unsafe to adopt as rules for criticism, 

 and much less for action. Therefore I shall not attempt to lay down 

 any rules for the proper thickness of walls, or window-tracery and mul- 

 lions. You will find some thicknesses of certain old and new buildings, 

 including the Doncaster churches, in the Lecture before referred to, 

 and others in the second edition of my Lectures on Churchbuilding * 

 I will only mention this fact, which is not given in either of them, 

 that the sectional area of all the mullions in those two churches, 

 except a few in St. George's, which everybody can now see to be too 

 thin, is more than double of some which I measured myself in a large 

 church in London, which is by no means an unfair specimen of a rather 

 ambitious building of very recent erection. 



The same fault is generally noticeable in the woodwork as in the 

 stone of modern buildings ; frequently, and with some architects invari- 

 ably, it is even worse. The clerk of the works told me that an archi- 

 tect looking at the roof of St. James's said it contained just three times 

 as much timber as he should have put in ; no doubt meaning it as a 

 severe censure on our extravagance or ignorance of mechanics : not 

 that modern builders have much to boast of on the score of mechanics ; 

 for a year seldom goes by without two or three new buildings either 

 falling down dead, or having their roofs taken off" to anticipate them. 

 I think these gentlemen may take for granted that the old builders, 

 who knew how to build stone roofs and wooden roofs which are 

 stronger now after five centuries than many that were built last year, 

 knew very well that they were using more materials than were requisite 

 for merely satisfying the mechanical conditions. But they knew also 

 that engineering is not architecture, and that science is not art, though 

 it is involved in it, at least in the art of G othic building, the architec- 

 ture of pointed arches, and vaults, and buttresses, of open roofs, and 

 tall spires ; and why should we not add of domes, — not the low and 

 clumsy Roman or Byzantine dome, incapable of standing on its own 

 base, but the truly scientific and beautiful Indian or Saracenic pointed 

 dome, chiefly built I suppose in horizontal courses, and therefore 

 capable of standing alone, and presenting an outline like a tall Gothic 

 arch standing on its piers, and with a more than Gothic independence 

 of abutment beyond them ? f 



* Also published by Bell and Daldy, Fleet Street, and Brooke and Co , Doncaster. 



t The Gothic effect of some of these high-domed buildings, including even the 



s<iuare parts below, in some lately- published photographic views of Cairo, is very 



