17 
THE 
GOTHIC STYLE. 
The Castle Character requires massive walls, with very small win- 
dows, if any are allowed to appear externally. The correct imitation of 
this in modern times must produce the effect of a prison. 
The Abbey Character requires lofty and large apertures, almost 
equally inapplicable to a house, although in some few rooms the excess 
of light may be subdued by coloured glass. But in the Abbey Character 
it is only the Chapel, the collegiate Church, the Hall, and the Library, 
which furnish models for a Palace; all the subordinate parts were the 
mean habitation of monks or students, built on so small a scale, and 
with such low ceilings, that they cannot be imitated in a modern Palace, 
without such mixture and modification, as tend to destroy the original 
character: therefore it is necessary now (as it was formerly) to adopt 
the mixed style of Queen Elisabeth’s Gothic for modern Palaces, if 
they must be in any style of what is called Gothic. 
Yet a mixed style is generally imperfect: the mind is not easily re- 
conciled to the combination of forms which it has been used to consider 
distinct, and at variance with each other : it feels an incongruity of cha- 
racter, like an anachronism in the confusion of dates; it is like uniting 
in one object infancy with old age, life with death, or things present 
with things past. 
F 
