ITALIAN VERSUS GOTHIC 27 



seen it ; monarchs and wealthy nobles had even brought foreign 

 craftsmen over to exercise their skill in the northern parts of 

 Europe. The Italian manner was a novelty in this land of 

 Gothic traditions, it was unlike anything to which England was 

 accustomed. But the new fashion became popular. Employers 

 demanded the novel detail in their houses ; the foreign artists 

 were not numerous, and so the English workmen had to supply 

 the best imitation they could contrive on a scanty training. 

 Here came the opportunity for the bookmakers. They showed 

 the way in which Italian buildings were designed ; they 

 illustrated the " Orders " which gave those buildings their 

 distinctive character so far as appearance went ; they showed 

 how classic detail might be applied or perverted to meet the 

 exigencies of buildings which had a Gothic parentage. The 

 books, therefore, were published in order to help designers who 

 aimed at working in the new classic style. 



The effect, of course, was to foster that style at the expense 

 of the native Gothic. It is true that books were not widely 

 distributed ; there was not in those days the rapid dissemination 

 of ideas that there is in our own. But if anyone wanted a book 

 about building, he could only find such as dealt with classic 

 architecture. Hence in a short time the operations which had 

 hitherto been thought of as building, began to be thought of as 

 Architecture, and the only architecture that was formulated 

 was classic architecture. The idea of that art became in- 

 separably connected in the minds of men with classic expressions 

 of it. Thus it came about that in the course of half a century 

 people of culture regarded all Gothic buildings even the noblest 

 as barbarous, and not worthy the name of Architecture. 1 The 

 " Gothic order," as it was called, was merely a " fantastic and 

 licentious manner of building." 



It was only a small proportion of the actual workmen who 

 were able to study books ; the rest picked up the new manner 

 from such foreigners as they met, from work which they saw 

 as they moved about, and occasionally, perhaps, from verbal 

 description. Some worked all their lives on the old lines. One 

 result of the difficulty of imbuing the workmen with the requisite 

 knowledge was that some of the men whose duty it was to 

 overlook buildings the surveyors made a point of studying 



1 Evelyn's "Account of Architects and Architecture." 



