RURAL CHURCHES. 667 
unscientific; and that which is illogical, and unsound in 
principle. can never be acceptable in art. 
Timber lends itself more readily to picturesque and 
ornamental construction than does stone, but the character 
of embellishment required for one material is entirely un- 
fitted for the other; yet, as most of the timber buildings of 
the Middle Ages ieee passed away, while the stone one: 
remain, it appeared to the modern copyist of medieval work. 
that if he wished to reproduce Gothic buildings in wood, 
there was no alternative but to copy the stone churches 
which still exist. 
ft is true that all medieval designers were not artists: 
still the architectural remains which have come down to the 
present day show that the greater number of them must 
have been men with intense artistic feeling, and certainly 
the standard of public taste was keener, and more exacting, 
than anything which now exists. 
I do not say that medieval designers never imitated stone 
construction—because the unbalanced mind has existed in 
all ages—but I do say that such imitation was not the 
rule, and where it did occur, the result was not such an 
outrageous offence against good taste as is an every-day 
occurrence with modern work. if medieval architecture 
possesses one quality more than another, it is the feeling of 
truth, and the sense of propriety which pervades their 
designs. 
This state of things was the result of a constant striving 
after architectural perfection. Medieval architects had not 
the literary reserve we possess, they had not the same 
facilities for travel, and—in England at all events—they 
had few examples of historic buildings with which to com- 
pare their own designs; yet, during that period which we 
regard as the living era of Gothic art. we see a constant 
growth towards a higher type, and a higher ideal. Original 
errors and falsehoods are abandoned. Symmetry and pro- 
portion were improved, until at last their buildings seemed 
to testify in every detail that they were erected to suit 
only the special purpose for which they were used, and that 
they could not have been built so satisfactorily in any other 
material, at any other time, or in any other locality. 
During Saxon times, many stone churches were built with 
rubble, faced at intervals with vertical stone quoins and 
pilasters—stone posts, in fact. 
It is possible that these posts, which were generally only 
“shiners,” may have been copies of Roman pilasters, yet 
it is far more probable that they were imitations of the 
wood construction preyalent at that time. Examples of 
