ARCHITECTURAL REFINEMENTS 
TOURING the past year the art world, not only 
of America but of Italy, France, and England 
as well, has been much agitated by a theory set forth 
with great elaboration of detail and abundance of 
illustration, by Professor Goodyear of the Brooklyn 
Institute of Arts and Sciences, regarding certain ir¬ 
regularities observable in the construction of many 
of the most important buildings of mediaeval times. 
Mr. Goodyear announces the discovery, in short, 
that the builders of that age practiced a system of 
refinements quite similar in intent and effect to those 
which have hitherto been deemed the exclusive prop¬ 
erty of the builders of the Periclean age in Greece. 
By a long series of patient measurements supplement¬ 
ed by the testimony of many carefully taken photo¬ 
graphs, Mr. Goodyear has established the fact that 
there is scarcely a single mediaeval building of im¬ 
portance which does not display surprising and, as 
he claims, intentional variations from the horizon¬ 
tal and vertical in the lines of its walls and arcades; 
and he has demonstrated to his own satisfaction 
that these are the result of the clearest intention on 
the part of the builders, for the purpose above sug¬ 
gested. This theory of Mr. Goodyear’s has found 
some adherents, but has also, among competent 
critics, found some determined opponents. So wide¬ 
spread is the interest which mediaeval architecture 
has always excited, even among the general public, 
that we deem no apology necessary for the repro¬ 
duction of the essential portions of a criticism which 
has recently appeared in the columns of our hon¬ 
ored contemporary the London Architectural Review, 
an excellent journal which is far from being as wide¬ 
ly known in this country as it deserves. 
I he writer, Mr. Edward S. Prior, the most em¬ 
inent mediaevalist of England, is one who, as the 
Builder recently and justly observed, “understands 
the spirit of mediaeval architecture better than most 
men.’’ Mr. Prior’s discussion not only sets forth 
most clearly Professor Goodyear’s contentions in 
detail, but deals with them in such a convincing 
way, with so much charm of manner, and with such 
courteous and gentle, though none the less incisive, 
irony, that his comments may be read with pleasure, 
even where the subject matter of his discussion nec¬ 
essarily diverges into purely technical fields of spec¬ 
ulation. 
The first reflection, says Mr. Prior, that comes to 
an architect when asked to take a new view of med¬ 
iaeval building and accept a new explanation of its 
beauty is a disheartening one. We have for such 
a long time been endeavoring to reproduce these ar¬ 
chitectural masterpieces of the Middle Ages! There 
have now been some five or six successive genera¬ 
tions of architects copying the mediaeval styles, and 
all to no use. Each generation of stylists has had 
no difficulty in showing its predecessors to been have 
futile and superficial. 
A hundred years ago a beginning was made with 
battlements, pinnacles, and ogee curves, and then 
the Wyatts or Wyatvilles seriously copied Salisbury 
to give Hereford a clerestory, and with great applause 
reconstructed abbeys and castles for romantic clients. 
But immediately their successors thought little of 
such efforts, for with Pugin and the ecclesiologists 
the Gothic revival was no scenic romance, but a 
faith! So the tale went on, and not faith alone, 
but a moral purpose was found to lie in foliations 
and vaulted construction—the only question was as 
to the particular phase of mediaeval architecture in 
which the expression was most faithful and most 
moral. The next generation of architects therefore 
studied all and every phase. They measured and 
modelled, till from the offices of Scott, Street, and 
their able pupils came works in which not only the 
superficial aspects, but the very anatomies of medi¬ 
aeval construction were revived with every section 
and every joint exact to the life of some period or 
other. Yet Pearson found he could go one better! 
In the dramatic intensity of his mimicry he rendered 
the hesitating inexpertness of the Romanesque axe- 
choppers and detailed in all its experimenting in¬ 
decision the Gothic advance from the lancet to the 
tracery bar. And now, when one has been to Edin¬ 
burgh,* one must reconsider all this—at any rate 
so the Scotch reviews tell us—all this moral and re¬ 
ligious exaltation, all these learnings of the tape and 
the sketch-book, all this dramatization of mediaeval 
conditions. If Mr. Goodyear’s exhibition means 
anything, it means that we moderns have failed 
dismally failed—to produce any adequate represen¬ 
tation of the mediaeval building. And why ? Be¬ 
cause an unnoticed secret has lain hid behind the 
splendid shapings and bold constructions of the ca¬ 
thedral-builders and all the craft of their masonry. 
The true quality of mediaeval architecture was not 
in such obvious things, but in refinements —in “op¬ 
tical refinements,’’ in “perspective illusions,’’ in 
“horizontal” and “vertical curves,” in “leaning fa¬ 
cades, asymmetries, and obliquities.” A little wear¬ 
ily the architect asks, “Are we, then, to start afresh ? 
Shall we skew our tee-squares, and crook-back our 
set squares ? Shall we draw our elevations with 
the French curves and write ‘deflections’ and ‘bends’ 
in our specifications ? Shall our quantities have it 
thus: 70 ft., extra only, for optical illusion?” We 
are told that already in the States architects are 
doing ' these things. And one feels what a pity 
it is that all this discovery was not promulgated 
♦Professor Goodyear’s photographs were exhibited at Edinburgh. 
