CHAPTER VI 

 TREES IN ARCHITECTURE 



REFERENCE has been made on an 

 earlier page to the unwillingness with 

 which Kingsley had to admit that Gothic archi- 

 tecture had not originated in direct imitation of 

 the forest-aisles. It would, indeed, have been 

 delightful to be able to think that this had been 

 its origin ; and it looks so plausible, so probable, 

 to any one who has not traced the development 

 of architecture, that it is perhaps as yet for 

 many people a not discarded superstition. 



Indeed the defect in the theory is only that 

 it makes the derivation of the vaulted archi- 

 tecture from the forest -aisle too simple and 

 direct. Though we cannot hold our tree-like 

 Northern architecture to have resulted from a 

 conscious imitation of stalwart bole and lofty 

 stem and branching, intermingling boughs, 

 there was a close connexion, in more ways 

 than one, between the natural shelter of the 



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