1859.] on Modern Gothic Architecture, 39 



If it is necessary to account for such a phenomenon, I should 

 attribute it mainly to the existence of one of the most mischievous 

 delusions ever propagated on this subject — that " ornamentation is the 

 principal part of architecture." Of course its author, or rather its 

 most distinguished advocate (for it had been secretly or openly 

 believed in long before his time) demonstrates its truth with the usual 

 imposing array of axioms and definitions in the most logical and pre- 

 cise form ; and I am far from intending to break in upon that splen- 

 did fabric of reasoning. I will only say of it, that i prefer, as a matter 

 of convenience and simplicity, if not for any other reason, the natural 

 to the non-natural sense of words generally understood ; and therefore 

 I decline accepting for ' a definition of architecture,' that it is the art 

 * of designing sculpture for a particular place,' and placing it there 

 on the ' best principles of building.' Everybody knows that the 

 thing which mankind have agreed to call Architecture, is nothing 

 of the kind, and that definitions of that sort, and all that is built 

 upon them, are a mere rhetorical artifice. And what is of still more 

 consequence, everybody who chooses to use his eyes can see that the 

 great majority of the old buildings, whose grandeur and beauty 

 nobody but Lord Palmerston and his allies now disputes, owe 

 very little of their architectural effect to sculpture, or to anything 

 which would be generally understood by the word ornamentation ; 

 and in this country at any rate, not one to colouring, which is the 

 only alternative to sculpture allowed by the authority in question. 

 Mind, I am not saying anything so absurd as that architecture is not 

 improved by suitable decoration ; but I say that, as a bare matter 

 of fact, a great deal of what is universally admired as architecture 

 of a very high order, much finer than the most highly decorated 

 modern building, is almost or altogether independent of both carving 

 and colouring. 



The contrary theory has led architects and their employers too 

 often to sacrifice everything to ornamentation. That critical and exact 

 eye for beautiful forms and proportions, definable by no rules, and 

 capable of infinite variety, as nature itself shews, which appears to 

 have been possessed by the builders of the 13th century, and by those 

 of this country more than any, but now by hardly the best architects, 

 seems in a fair way for being put out and lost altogether by this vulgar 

 and foolish passion for ornamentation ; the same, I suppose, which has 

 come to treat the female form as nothing better than a frame, or rather 

 as the prop for a frame, to hang out heaps of clothes upon. Look at 

 any of the most extravagant specimens of modern churchbuilding, and 

 consider them apart from their alabaster, and carving, and mosaics, and 

 frescoes ; if their constructional elements and proportions do not strike 

 you as thoroughly base, feeble, and contemptible in comparison with 

 those of five or six centuries ago, all I can say is, that I advise you to 

 study the old examples till they do. 



The day before we laid the first stone of St. James's Church at 

 Doncaster I had to address a meeting of the Yorkshire and Lincoln- 

 shire architectural Societies in and upon the then unfinished church of 



