1859.] on Modem Gothic Architecture. 35 



There is another simply practical matter, affecting not only this, 

 but all other questions of public buildings in the Gothic style, of 

 which, therefore, I say a few words. Mr. Tite, of the Royal Ex- 

 change, and some other classical architecture gentlemen, still go on 

 asserting, as if it were an undoubted fact, that Gothic architecture is 

 necessarily dark, expensive, inconvenient, and difficult to ventilate ; 

 that sash windows are better than Gothic windows, and so forth 

 People who hear all this, and know that Mr. Tite was an active mem- 

 ber of the Committee which sat and reported last year in favour of 

 selecting the architect from among the prizemen, but distinctly 

 repudiated the doctrine that either the first or the second should be 

 taken unless the Government thought fit, of course have no idea that 

 Mr. Tite heard several architects, who were themselves not Gothic men, 

 admit before the Committee, that the Gothic style is not inferior to the 

 other in any one of those respects, and also heard Mr. Scott explain that 

 his windows are sash windows, and that they are not smaller, but larger, 

 than those of the very buildings in the Italian style which had been 

 referred to as models, and than the windows in the rival plans. It may 

 be natural for Lord Palmerston and Mr. Coningham to talk in that 

 way about Gothic darkness ; but Mr. Tite is an architect, and there- 

 fore cannot possibly be ignorant that there are numbers of Gothic 

 buildings in which the windows are even wider than the wall between 

 them, and that the same is the case in no other style that ever existed. 



However, I cannot afford more time to this preliminary topic, which 

 having casually presented itself, you could hardly expect me to pass it 

 without notice. I had intended otherwise to decline altogether dis- 

 cussing the relative merits of Gothic and Classical, or Renaissance 

 architecture ; first, because the subject is thoroughly exhausted in 

 argument, until some new facts accrue to found new arguments upon ; 

 and secondly, because I have not much belief in anybody's opinion on 

 a question of taste being altered by argument. The fact is, that 

 opinions on artistic questions are hardly ever founded on the reasons 

 which are given for them, but the opinions are formed first, and the 

 reasons are invented afterwards to justify or enforce them. Accord- 

 ingly, that which passes for logic in matters of art, however well 

 executed it may be in point of style, is generally constructed out of 

 definitions and axioms carefully framed to bear out some foregone con- 

 clusion — of analogies from nature, which the next writer cites for just 

 the opposite purpose — of nicknames, either of praise or blame, which 

 assume what is pretended to be proved, and all washed down by copious 

 draughts of assertion that all this is as true and certain as that " iron 

 has an affinity for oxygen." In order to avoid exposing myself to the 

 same censure, I do not mean to " prove" anything that I am going to 

 say, or to give any reasons for it, except that I have arrived at certain 

 conclusions or opinions from experience and observation, which you 

 can verify for yourselves. 



I do not mean even to claim the merit of novelty for them. Most 

 of them have been in substance published before, both by myself and 

 by others. But what I have to say about them is, that within the 



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