all the infinite variety of the Gothic style, its later essential characteristic ornaments flow so innumerable parts, its apparently unconnected but characteristic features, are linked together by some secret analogy or law-just as in the animal creation a particular claw will lead the anatomist to a prophetic anticipation of the whole skeleton. What Dr. Roget has so elegantly described in speaking of the arrangements of nature, and what is perhaps the general law of intellect in all its operations, may be applied to the highest

creations of art :

We have seen that in constructing each of the divisions so established Nature appears to have kept in view a certain definite type, or ideal standard, to which, amidst innumerable modifications, rendered necessary by the varying circumstances and different destinations of each species, she always shows a decided tendency to conform. It would almost seem as if, in laying the foundations of each organised fabric, she had commenced by taking an exact copy of this primitive model, and in building the superstructure had allowed herself to depart from the original plan only for the purpose of accommodation to certain specific and ulterior objects, conformably with the destination of that particular race of created beings. Such, indeed, is the hypothetical principle which under the title of unity of composition has been adopted, and zealously pursued in all its consequences, by many naturalists of the highest eminence on the continent. The hypothesis in question is countenanced, in the first place, by the supposed constancy with which, in all the animals belonging to the same natural group, we meet with the same constituent elements of structure in each respective system of organs, notwithstanding the utmost diversity which may exist in the forms of their organs, and in the uses to which they are applied. Thus Nature has provided for the locomotion of the serpent, not by the creation of new structures foreign to the type of the vertebrata, but by employing the ribs in this new office; and in giving wings to the lizard, she has extended these same bones to serve as supports to the superadded parts. In arming the elephant with tusks, she has merely caused two of the teeth in the upper jaw to be developed into these formidable weapons; and in providing it with an instrument of prehension has only resorted to a greater elongation of the snout.'-Bridgewater Treatise.

insensibly and gradually out of its first elementary principles, as to prove, by internal evidence, their origin from the same indigenous source. The pillars, at first distinct, but close to each other, employed to support at different heights different arches, ribs, and cross-springers, shooting forth from them towards different points, suggested the idea, when for strength they were conglomerated into one single cohering mass, of still giving to that body the appearance of a bundle of separate staves and stalks, even more numerous and slim than before, each branching out, or continued into some one of those arches, or ribs, or springers, also more multiplied and sub-divided, whereby the real addition of strength obtained might yet be combined with greater apparent lightness. The arches, and ribs, and cross-springers themselves shooting forth from the pillars to different points for the support of the roof, and the ridge plates that again branched from these to connect and to steady them, gave the appearance of a multiplication of these members more minute, more variously diverging, converging, and intersecting each other, for the sake of mere ornament, till they grew into all the richest and most complicated combinations of tracery and of arching that covers the walls, fills the windows, and the Catherine wheels, twines into screens, balustrades, and the buttresses; forms corbels and canopies; under the name of tabernacle work adorns the surface; and under that of fan work, is woven round the groins of the richest Gothic edifices.

The apertures of former architectural styles, widened and multiplied; the supports lengthened and compressed; the vast masses, made to hover in air with but slight stays on earth, by the very principle of the pointed style, even where it appeared in its soberest and most subdued shape, suggested the idea of still increasing the surprise produced by these circumstances, by doing away with every remains of solid wall that could be dispensed with; trusting for support to the pillars alone; so situating those pil lars that their angles only should face each other and the spectators, and their sides should fly away from the eye in a diagonal line; subdividing every surface that could not be entirely suppressed into such a number of parts, or perforating it so variously and so ingeniously as to make it light as a film, or transparent as a gauze; and increasing to the utmost the width of every window, and the height of every vault. The number of arches, all pointed, and the curious intersections of their curves (produced by the groins), To believe that, even in the complicated and the complicated plan of Gothic edifices, phenomena of Gothic architecture, all of suggested the idea of creating forms and combithem are developed from one germ is the nations still more varied and complex, by subfirst step to discover that germ, and, by the dividing their sweep into trefoils and quatrefoils, possession of it, to enable ourselves to reand other curious scollopings; by making their produce and create works upon fixed princi- moulding, after showing a convex, exhibit a bend, where feasible, in imitation of the ogive ples of beauty, without risking the blunders concave line, and after turning down, incline into which those must fall who imitate, how-upwards, or finally, as we see them in some of ever accurately, a model which they do not the latest buildings in France, Germany, and understand. Belgium, from their very base, curl up.. Cross springers were even sent down from their 'In the pointed style,' says Mr. Hope, all the highest apex ere they reached their point of in

tersection; and made to re-approach the ground had become good for nothing. The Gothic arin drops, without any direct support whatever, chitect restored the reign of order, and rallied suspended and hovering over the heads of the these vague elements in a vertical line. A new living community, as canopies were made to thought, a new idea, was infused into the consurmount statues of saints in stone and marble. ception of such members, which at once gave Lastly, the arches, and pediments, and gables, them connection and fixity. The previous and gablets, and roofs, and spires, and pinnacles, change from classical architecture had been a and broaches, everywhere multiplied, and eve breaking up of the connection of parts, multirywhere sharpened to the utmost, fomenting the plicity without fertility, violation of rules withtaste for the meagre, the angular, and the brok-out gaining of object, degradation, barbarism. en, gave the idea of repeating these dispositions The change now became one of the formation in every ornamental modification in which they of connection; the establishment of arrangewere less useful, until every piece of architecture, ments which were fertile in beautiful and constationary or moveable, from the cathedral to venient combinations, reformation, selection of the stall and the footstool, looked like a bundle the good, rejection of the mere customary. . . . . of faggots, or a mass of conductors.'-p. 431. Some master-spirit seized the principle which reduced all the broken and discordant elements to harmony. It was perceived that, by treating the pier and the arch as a collection of members of the same kind, by substituting fine bundles of moulding for the edges of a perforation in a the vault, and by arranging all the smaller porwall, by carrying leading lines from the floor to tions with reference to the symmetry of the compartment thus produced-by rejecting or subordinating all horizontal entablature, square abacuses, flat tops of arches, rectangular surfaces

This is a long extract; and we do not propose to subscribe to all the criticism which it contains; but it is animated and picturesque, and asserts strongly the axiom which architects must study and bear in mind, that in any perfect work or pure style, however various and dissimilar the parts may be, they must be held together and harmonised all of them by some one predominating principle, and that such a principle does exist in the Gothic as much as in the Grecian.

there was produced a consistent whole. It was seen that the system thus formed presented a harmony in its lines and divisions to the interWhat this germ or fundamental principle nal spectator; was capable of being formed into of these two styles respectively was, has been the boldest and loftiest towers; was susceptible suggested by Mr. Hope, and many other of almost inexhaustible modification, without writers. But no one has placed it forward so prominently as Mr. Whewell. Horizontalism, if the expression may be used, is the characteristic of Grecian; verticalism of the Gothic. Although the full application of these principles has not yet been traced out, we may consider them to be now satisfactorily ascertained, and generally recognized. This is the third great step which has been made towards a just appreciation and revival of true architecture :

-

A leading circumstance,' says Dr. Whewell, in the formation of the Gothic style, is the introduction of vertical arrangements and lines of references in the place of the horizontal members, which predominate in Grecian and Roman architecture. This appears to be the most general and most exact view which we can take of the change; and this view will be found to include several subordinate principles, which have been noticed by various writers.'-p. 215.

any violence to its constituent members, and of almost unbounded decoration, without obscuring its characteristic features; and thus possessed a principle of vitality and unity which made it a style of architecture, as its utility and convenience made it a mode of building.'- Whewell, p. 222.

In this passage, we believe, lies the clue to the whole mystery of Gothic architecture. For a mystery it is and has been; and the lovers of true and elevated art may be congratulated on the restoration of that union between a deep philosophy and creations of taste, without which the former must be unintelligible to the great bulk of mankind, and the latter must degenerate into barbarism and falsity.

With the establishment of the three principles which we have adverted to, there seems now, for the first time, to be a chance of our restoring architecture to the position which it once occupied, and recovering-not And after suggesting some of the corrup- from tradition, which has perished, but by tions and disorders introduced into the Greek the same means of philosophical analysis by the intrusion of the circular arch in the which first developed scientifically the GothRoman style, he proceeds in a very inte- ic style, that knowledge of its capacities, apresting and philosophical manner :—

plications, and resources, which was possessed by the craft of freemasons, but has so long 'Persons were wanted in order to give a new been lost. Of this remarkable institution Mr. principle of unity to that which had lost the old one. The ornaments, openings, windows, pil-Hope has given a most interesting account, lars, which had formerly been governed by the which we wish we had space to extract most imperative rules of horizontal arrangement, (chap. xxi.). But it deserves to be studied had been disbanded, or at least their discipline and illustrated; and however difficult it is to

Our present object, however, is to suggest to those who can devote time and labour to the work, a still further prosecution of the question which Mr. Hope and Mr. Whewell have here proposed, and to trace not only the gradual introduction of the vertical principle into the architecture of the middle ages, but its subsequent expansion, through all its details, into a pure and perfect style.

ascertain such points of history, the view where there are no bells to ring. Mere orwhich he has given is not only consistent nament can never please permanently, bewith acknowledged facts, but explains some cause pleasure by itself cannot be a primary of the most perplexing phenomena in the object with a sensible man either to give or development of Gothic architecture; such to receive. A wrong intention in this point as the regularity of its transitions; the rapid- mars the character of the whole. The moity with which each new modification ment an artist can give no other account of spread into distant countries; the permanent any part of his work than that it is planned analogies visible in it, which enable the archi- to please, he departs from his high function, tect to construct from it almost a science of as associated with philosophers and the comparative anatomy; the depth of mecha-church, in the education and improvement of nical skill and purity of taste displayed in its man, and becomes a mere pander to their arrangement; its connection with religion; enjoyment. On the other hand, in subordiand the sudden corruption which penetrated nation to and furtherance of a higher object, into all its parts as soon as the masonic insti- the artist rightly endeavours to please; even tution was practically destroyed. as in the necessity of sustaining life, nature has annexed a pleasure to the partaking of food, though to eat for the purpose of pleasure is sensual and degrading. In architecture, therefore, whatever is necessary or useful may also be embellished; but the embellishment must not be such as to detract from the use, nor even from the appearance of use. And yet it must be remembered that usefulness has a wide signification. In building it is not confined merely to the parts which hold together the structure; but that which impresses the feelings properly, which excites right and fit emotions, which assists in conveying true ideas, which exhibits good dispositions in the artist,—all this is useful,— and a necessary part of the utility of a building; because the fancy and the feeling are necessary parts of man's nature, and must be acted upon in connection with his intellect and his body. Four bare walls and a thatched roof fill up the utility of a church, if it be a place of meeting solely for beings composed of bodies: but men have also minds; and these walls and this roof should therefore be shaped and coloured into forms, which may symbolise great truths, which may awe, soothe, quiet, or strengthen the feelings of religion; which may exhibit their fellow men by whom such buildings were raised, as themselves, in the attitude of devotion, and as devoting their means and their labours, even lavishly, to the service of Him from whom they derived their all. Everything of this kind comes within the compass of strict utility, because it is useful thus to affect the mind. And yet this utility will be destroyed the moment the production of feeling or the stimulation of the fancy is made an ultimate end; because neither feeling nor fancy are good in themselves, nor to be encouraged, except in reference to a higher end of truth. Thus vastness is an element of the sublime, and the sublime is an element of religion; and in our cathedrals, which were built not only as the type and expression of the whole

It is not enough for us to take one prominent feature, such as the pointed arch, and to denominate any building where it occurs Gothic, or by what other name we choose to distinguish that style. A style is a system of parts, which, however varied and multiplied, yet repeat and continue in all some one primary type and impression, and of which the beauty and harmony consist in their reconciling unity with diversity. And if the following suggestions tend to encourage this inquiry, they will not have been made in vain. One primary rule, then, for all architecture Mr. Pugin in his lectures has treated at some length in its application to Gothic, but without exhausting the subject. For instance, it should be remembered that the object of architecture as an art is primarily utility-it is to procure shelter. If no shelter were required, there would be no houses and no temples. Ornament, indeed, and beauty it both admits and may require; but the ornament must be subservient to utility, or a law of reason is violated, and with a sacrifice of truth there must also be a sacrifice of real beauty. We should thus have none of those amazing exhibitions which Mr. Pugin's amusing sketches, scarcely caricatures, have offered us; no castles with French windows down to the ground; no battlemented walls without space for soldiers to stand behind them; no towers without objects to defend, or stairs to mount to the top; no pinnacles where they load and break down a wall instead of strengthening a buttress; no great abbey-window, where light is not required; and no church turret

body of Christians in the diocese, but as the successive generations. And, therefore, the place where, on great festivals, they might all buildings which represent it should represent resort, vastness is appropriate, and produces it in a permanent form. When the booths its effect on the feeling without the sense of in which plays were acted were first exincongruity. But to build a cathedral for a changed for wooden theatres, and wooden smally-populated parish would be idle. It would be an attempt to excite feeling without a groundwork of truth. So also a profusion of real tracery is useful, as expressing the elaborateness and care with which every work of religion was by our ancestors of old, and should be by us now, finished in all its minutiæ and details; but the moment the ornamental parts are either not intrinsically subservient to some high purpose, or are unreal, tawdry, mock, or cheap, they become positive blemishes. Composition tracery, plaster ceilings, imitation stone-work, all those inventions in which modern days so much delight, and the object of which is to disguise real poverty, and to affect a false wealth, are unworthy of any artist building for a great and true purpose, but most unworthy of one who is engaged in a work of religion. In religion it becomes hypocrisy, and shames the builder by the confession that he knows what should be done, but will not make the sacrifice to do it.

theatres afterwards were abandoned for solid masonry, at the public expense, a great moral revolution was indicated. It told that a whole nation, instead of being content with throwing itself into the form of recreation for a few hours at certain intervals, had taken that shape permanently, and intended to transmit it to their posterity. And when the solid fabrics which our ancestors raised for their families were abandoned for brick and lath, and plaster of Paris, it told us that men no longer thought of handing down their family name and house as a permanent heritage. And when the rich ornaments of our churches ceased to be carved out of stone, and were imitated in wood, and paint, and composition, there may be traced at the same time a falling off in that sense of security, and solidity, and eternity, with which the church and the truths belonging to it were invested in the eyes of men who knew no higher duty than to transmit them unimpaired to posterity, and to this sacrificed their all, with the certainty that, through whatever changes of outward things, the church itself would never be allowed to perish.

There is also a peculiar feature in architecture which distinguishes it from the art of dress, and indeed from most other imitative arts. It is essentially a social art. Dress These principles are not mere abstractions, regards the man as an individual; but a but the neglect of them practically destroys house, oixos, represents him at least as a mem- the effect of our best works in architecture. ber of a family. In the very lowest form it They are the cause of the dissatisfaction and is domestic. The moment it is confined to uneasiness, with which not only thoughtful the individual, as in the cell of a hermit, it men but even ignorant spectators regard ceases to be more than an enlarged suit of many buildings which to the mere eye may clothes-a cloak or coat-often in rags, and be almost faultless. For there is an instinctshapeless, and dirty, differing only from man's ive sense of propriety and reality in every ordinary dress in being fixed to one spot. mind. And it is not true, as a great authoriThus a private house represents a family; a ty has said, that in art we are satisfied with church represents a Christian assembly; and contemplating the work without thinking of a guildhall a municipal corporation; and a the artist. On the contrary, the artist himcastle a little army; and a palace a monar-self is one great object in the work. It is as chical state. Society, in all its forms, is typi- embodying the energies and excellences of fied and represented by building;-and it is the human mind, as exhibiting the efforts of because we have lost sight of this fact that genius, as symbolizing high feeling, that we men now propose to build palaces in the most value the creations of art. Without shape of cathedrals; lodges to private-houses design, the representations of art are merely in the form of Grecian temples; churches fantastical; and without the thought of a delike the halls of justice; merchants' villas signer acting upon fixed principles, in aclike feudal castles; family mansions in the cordance with a high standard of goodness form of colleges; and colleges on the plan of and truth, half the charm of design is lost. family mansions. Each builder thinks only of his own whim or fancy, or character, and builds as an individual; whereas, if he were an individual only, he would scarcely think of building at all.

But we must not be led farther from the immediate object before us, which is to follow out the line opened by Mr. Hope and Mr. Whewell, and suggest some extension of their observations. It is evident, at the first Again, society is not merely the association glance, that there is a peculiar character in of one generation, but of many-nay, of all the Gothic, which distinguishes it from the

Egyptian, Moorish, Greek, and Chinese styles | sunset. And yet these are so harmonized. of architecture; that this character is not and arranged that they rarely strike, though confined to the pointed arch, for the foliage they always please. Colouring, in fact, is a of a Greek capital, or the fluting of a Doric mere sensual quality; it involves, comparapillar, would be as inappropriate to a Gothic tively, little or no perception of relation, and building as a circular arch. No style is so therefore little exercise of thought, and adremarkable as the Gothic for the multiplicity dresses itself exclusively to produce feeling. of its details and parts, and for the variety of It should therefore be always made subordiits characteristic features. Vastness, infinity, nate to figures, as figures should be subormystery, richness, lightness, solidity, gloom, dinate to expression. intricacy, irregularity, elevation--are all But, secondly, configuration being the characteristics of the Gothic; and these ef- principal business of architecture, it is evifects are produced by a number of details, dent that figures themselves, however varimouldings, columns, arches, windows, tra- ous, must be resolvable into lines; and cery, groining of roofs, corbels, canopies, and these elementary lines will perhaps supply niches, grotesque carvings, painted glass, pin- us with a key to the different styles of archinacles, turrets, and spires, with accessories of tecture. They may then be reduced into various kinds. Now both these character- five; two curves, one of them convex, istic expressions, and these forms by which and the other concave ; and three the expression is produced, differ much one straight; one of them horizontal —, the with the other. There is, for instance, no other perpendicular, and the third obobvious analogy between a pointed arch and lique. No other simple elementary line a clustered column-between a Gothic capi- can be found beyond these; and the theory tal and a groined roof-nor between a battle- which we wish to suggest is, that in each of mented tower and painted glass; and yet these is to be found the germ of a peculiar every one will acknowledge that each of these style. Five styles may be enumerated as are appropriate to a Gothic building, and in- remarkably distinguished from each other in appropriate to a Grecian. A great architect, their characteristic forms-the Saracenic, it is said, did indeed once propose to put a the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Greek, and Grecian portico before the front of old St. the so-called Gothic. There is none perhaps Paul's, and to erect the dome of St. Paul's in which is not a corruption or a combination the centre of Westminster Abbey-both of some one or more of these; and if it projects, happily for the incredulous, being could be shown that peculiar circumstances still, we believe, upon record. But, under in the history and association of each people the auspices of our new architectural socie- and period, in which these styles were introties, it is to be hoped that not even a village duced, had directed attention severally to churchwarden could now be found to perpe- particular lines, as symbolical of certain trate such enormities. And when it is asked ideas, or as the natural expression of certain why are they enormities? this is the very feelings, or incidentally from mere utility; question which we propose to ask ourselves. What is there in common between all these various portions of certain buildings, which renders their construction productive of unity, harmony, and beauty? If this is discovered, we shall have ascertained the true principle of Gothic architecture; and, having ascertained this, we shall possess a true touchstone, by which to try and criticise it in all its various periods and combinations.

and again, that other peculiar circumstances had led to the connection with them of certain figures, so that it should be natural for each of them severally to spring out, and develope themselves in certain forms rather than in others, just as the same simple fact in natural science will, according to accidental association, run out in one mind into one train of thought, and in another mind into another-we may then have gained some step towards the formation of a true philosophical theory--true, because profound, and profound because true-in the science and the taste of architecture.

Now it is evident, in the first place, that the effects of architecture must depend on the combination of figures. Colouring, indeed, is important; but it is so chiefly as bringing out figures. Perhaps in itself it To enter into the whole field of this inshould never be made an object of direct con- quiry is beyond our limits at present: but if sciousness, either in building or any art. It any one will turn to drawings of Chinese should be felt without being perceived. buildings, he will recognize at once, and in Nothing can be more gorgeous in reality than the roof as the most prominent part, which, the colouring of nature: the deep blue of the sky and the sea, the rich dyes of foliage, and even of soil, particularly when lighted up at

as involving the utility of the edifice, is the most important, and therefore gives the character to the rest, the constant recurrence