Α given to the interior of churches. The sec-grees two parallel lines to meet and cover in ond may be seen in the attempt to bind two a space. An elevated pediment is as absurd or three stories of arcades together by one in Grecian as a depressed pediment is absurd shaft running up through them all, and pro- in Gothic. In fact the two ought never to jected from the plane of them, so as to form be confounded; for they have totally different the prominent and leading line in the build-uses, and must be framed in all their deing. Externally this was done by buttresses, tails upon totally different principles. This and internally by the shafts, which are so would be seen at once by taking the gable often found to support the roof. But the fun- of a Gothic house, striking a transverse damental idea of elevation once introduced, it line beneath it, and ornamenting the pedibecame necessary to remodel all the parts of ment as it is ornamented in Grecian, after the building to bring them into accordance the model of the architrave and cornice; with it; and it was in the delicate intuitive or, again, take a Grecian pediment, cut away perception of this accordance, and the skill the transverse line of the architrave, and shave with which it was effected, that we must look off the modillons, dentils, cantalivers, mouldfor the real spirit, from which the perfection ings, and other embellishments which give of Gothic architecture emanated. The exte- prominence and consequence to the cornices, rior of the roof or ceiling being the principal and what becomes of the building? One, in object, this was probably the first part which fact, is regulated by the internal roof, the other required to be adjusted to the new type. by the external architrave; and on this these ceiling either flat and horizontal, or circular differences depend. and barrel-shaped, was felt (this, perhaps, is the only proper word) to be inconsistent with the primary idea of elevation: for either of them compelled the eye to depart from its ascending line, and move in an opposite direction; and perhaps of the two the circular arch was the most inconsistent, because it is not content, like the flat roof, with abruptly cutting short the ascending line. It bent the eye down, and introduced two or three different movements instead of one, by forcing the eye to strike a centre, from which to measure the curve of the arch (that centre being necessarily taken from below), so that the eye was not only not allowed to ascend, but was absolutely depressed-a fact on which depends what is commonly called the heavy, oppressive feeling of a semicircular ceiling. How, then, was the necessity of an inclosed ceiling to be reconciled with the preservation of the ascending line? There was one mode, and one only; and it is exhibited in the follow ing figure of an equilateral triangle placed on But the ascending vertical line being once taken as the leading feature, other parts of the building besides the roof required to be modified to meet it. First, its general outline became changed. Instead of running along the ground, it rose up into towers, and the towers broke away into pinnacles, or shot up into the still more Gothic figure of the spire. Its parts, instead of being symmetrically arranged in mutual correspondence, were clustered in groups of projections, thrown out in apparent disorder from the main fabric, and even studiously diversified, that the eye, instead of indulging the Greek taste for comparing and speculating by a mere intellectual movement, and be carried constantly upwards. process, might be prevented from any lateral A true Gothic taste abhorred that which modcentre and two wings. It never placed the ern Gothic scarcely ever dispenses with, a spectator, like Grecian art, in any one point, but allowed him to move round and about, making every place a centre from which the eye could rise to some lofty apex, and throw the other parts into the Gothic figure of the elevated triangle set upon a parallelopiped. peculiarly Gothic as the truncated triangle is Again, a Grecian pillar with a base is a corEgyptian, and the depressed triangle, the cir- ruption, and a Gothic pillar without one is cle, and the parallelogram are Grecian. It an absurdity; because in pure Grecian the occurs in gables, in spires set upon towers, in eye was to be carried downward and in Gothpinnacles, in the forms of doors and windows, ic upward, and a base necessarily suggests this in the canopies of niches, and is repeated in ascending movement. Again, the pillars of every part-differing from the form of the the Greek style are studiously sunk under the Grecian pediment, when placed over a colon-horizontal cornice. The buttresses of the nade, in this, that the apex of the triangle is Gothic, which correspond with the columns elevated instead of depressed; and elevated, of the Greek in giving both support and alterbecause its use is not, as in Grecian, to meas- nations of light and shade, are placed essenure the equal portions of the horizontal base, tially in projections; and an overhanging but to assist in carrying up the eye according cornice, or indeed any cornice at all, is a corto its original tendency, so as to bring by de-ruption; because it would substitute a leading a vertical parallelogram. This figure is as This is a task which Dr. Whewell has only suggested, and which is well worthy of his inquiring and philosophic mind. It is no less than drawing up for the architect a catalogue of all the forms and combinations which he may be permitted to use, without departing from the simplicity of his original type; and there is no feature in which the Gothic is so superior to the Grecian style as in the fecundity with which it pours out these infinitely various creations from the embryo of the pointed arch. horizontal line instead of a vertical. Again, self contained a number of ideas which were a circular arch is tolerable, though only tolera- gradually developed, and introduced into ble in Grecian, because the depression of the Gothic architecture a wonderful variety of eye, in order to strike a centre, is not entirely peculiar features, without at the same time at variance with the descending line from the destroying its harmony; because all the feacornice; but in Gothic there is nothing at all tures, however distinct, were originally inwith which it can harmonise. Again, a key- cluded or implied in the original fundamental stone in a Grecian arch is appropriate, for its figure. For to repeat it again, however mulbearing is downward: in Gothic it is not en- tiplied the parts and combinations may be, a durable. Again, in Grecian, the supporting whole never loses its unity so long as they pillars must bear a proportion to the weight are all reducible to one common and primary supported; because one of the leading ideas type. One or two of these peculiar features is that of pressure from above. In Gothic, a may be now briefly mentioned. willow wand may throw up into the air a ponderous stone roof; an angel's wing sustain a tower; or a hand, a flower, a female head, bear up an enormous beam; because, as the eye is springing upwards, there is no sense of weight to be overcome. And the Caryatides in Grecian should all bear the impress of pain and resistance; in pure Gothic, except where for other reasons pain is to be expressed, calmness and ease are the characteristics of the living forms, which are to support the structure. Indeed the profuse introduction of living figures, which characterizes the Gothic, The first remarkable combination is that depends on this very circumstance. Life, of the curve and the angle. There are, indeed, power, and energy are the natural associations specimens, as in Worcester cathedral, where with a movement of elevation. In Grecian the converging lines of the window, like those they are out of place; and the very smallness of the gable-ends, are straight, and like those of the figures is in harmony with this idea, as indicating greater ease and power; an effect which is destroyed, when, as in the restoration of the Castle chapel at Dublin, the figures are too much magnified. Again, the same law may be traced even in the minutest details. The foliage used in Grecian properly must curve downwards; that of Gothic is to be thrown up. So the mass and outline of a Grecian building must present horizontal lines; that of a Gothic building springs up into a number of detached points and pinnacles. The windows in a Grecian are placed centrally and in lines, one over the other, to preserve the lateral symmetry. In Gothic, they are purposely placed out of the centre, and offer steps and stages, as it were, for the eye to mount upwards, without tempting it to any lateral movement. And perhaps this may be sufficient to suggest the leading idea of Gothic; without keeping which in view, it will be impossible to understand it as a system, to appreciate its details, or imitate without running into absurdities. But as the moral attributes of Christianity generated a moral tendency in the mind, and that moral tendency vented itself in the adoption of a peculiar line as the basis of its architecture; and this vertical line, when combined with other peculiar circumstances, generated a peculiar figure-so this figure it of a pediment. And the effect is perfectly in harmony with the general style; but the pointed arch was immediately a modification of the circular arch, whether it occurred in the apse, or the roof, or the intersection of arched colonnades, or, as Mr. Hope suggests, in the imposition of small arches upon numerous small pillars, or in filling the deep recesses of doorways with a succession of receding arches, of which the outermost occupied a larger, and the innermost a lesser place; and the smaller architraves were no longer framed round concentric circles, but pressed up for convenience into a point; just as a hoop, if bent to a large circle, may retain the circular form, but if forced into a small one will naturally break, and form an angle.* The truth probably lies not in any one of these theories singly, but in all of them. But little doubt can exist, as was before said, that the pointed arch was formed not directly and solely from the idea of the vertical line, but from the necessity of bringing the circular arch already existing into harmony with it, and that in this effort the curvilinear sections were retained, as richer, more elegant, more fertile in results, and more easy and natural in construction; since the lateral * A curious specimen of this is found in the entrance of the church of San Ciriaco, at Ancona. thrust of the arch, which, according to exist-flowing lines, those lines are to be broken ing principles, must be received upon a pil- and stiffened by fractional folds. If, as in lar, and that a comparatively slight one, was Gothic illuminations, the most capricious fanthus brought more to the perpendicular.cy is allowed to wander into a labyrinth of There is, indeed, in the admission of the shapes, bringing together all the productions curve a slight departure from the type of the of earth and air, still they are to be harmonvertical line because, as it was before said, ized upon the same principle, of superinduin order to form the idea of a curve, the eye cing curves upon angles, and angles upon must pass down from various points in it, to curves. Even the garniture of woodenthe centre, and from thence draw radii to the cuts,' the images of men, and saints, and marcircumference; and thus a descending action tyrs, cast in the flowing mould of nature,. of the eye is introduced which clashes with must be made its predominating tendency. But the advantages of retaining the curve are too great not to balance this defect; and the defect itself is diminished and almost made imperceptible in the purest Gothic, by making the curves of the arches segments of very large circles, and thus reducing them as near as possible to straight lines, and throwing them up nearly vertically, instead of bringing them down horizontally, as in the corrupt Tudor styles. This is one reason why the early English and decorated Gothic styles are purer in the form of their arches than the later. Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire, Sharp-knees, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ankled With long and ghostly shanks,-forms which too, once seen Could never be forgotten!'- Wordsworth. The just and close mixture of these two elements is one of the criteria of a pure Gothic style. A gradual approximation to it may be traced in the various improvements of the art from the heavy Norman (we use the term without approving it) to the decoIn the combination, then, thus formed of rated English; and the sudden degradation of the curve and the angle, is to be found one it by the breaking up of the king's masons of the chief secrets of the Gothic, especially may be seen in the contrast between Bishop of its ornamental features. To preserve this Fox's chantry and the adjoining monuments primary type, a type, we may remember, in Winchester cathedral; where, among kept constantly before the eye, and impressed many other barbarisms, nothing is more condeeply on the mind, as a leading character- spicuous than the separation between the istic of the architecture, because it occurs curve and the angle. As the angle came to repeatedly again and again in the most im- predominate, it formed the style of Elizabeth portant and prominent parts of the interior, and James: as the curve obtained the maswhich, from the nature of Christian worship, tery, it ran wild into the convolutions of the is the most important and prominent part of flamboyant style in France; a curious distincthe building to preserve this primary type, tion, which has been generally observed, but it is necessary in a pure Gothic not only to not satisfactorily accounted for. And if our admit curvilinear as well as angular forms- readers will follow us still farther-from the this was done by the fantastic caprices of the mere outward configuration of the material Elizabethan period-but to blend them to- world to the spirit which lies within it, and gether, so that one should never appear with- of which the outward is not the mere husk out the other being essentially connected or shell, but the shadow and copy, bearing with it. on it everywhere the stamp of a spiritual If the mullions of the window are thrown meaning, to which it is linked by a most up, and bent with the flexibility of an osier mysterious but true analogy-it is to this wand into flowing reticulations, the flowing union of the curve and the angle, that, next lines must be pointed and sharpened with to its vertical and elevating tendency, the cusps. If the corbels and friezes are to be Gothic owes its wonderful power of expres overlaid with foliage, leaves must be chosen, sion. For just as the elevation of a moral which, like the vine and the plants from the feeling or affection instinctively embodies itHoly Land, which are said so often to recur in self in a physical elevation, so the material Gothic, not only have an historical and sym- curve, from the action which it induces on bolical meaning, but in the interlacings of the eye, is the fit representative and suggestheir tendrils, and the aculeated outline of ter of all that is soft, gentle, easy, delicate, their fibres, still unite the angle and the curve. and susceptible, while the angle is the index If pinnacles are shot up in sharp and spiky of the opposite characteristics, and exhibits lances, the ridges are covered with the soft firmness, severity, sternness, pain, and strugclimbing convolutions of the calceolus. If gle. Fanciful as this sounds at first, its proof the drapery of figures is to be dropped in and illustration lie before us all. Look at a - human face, and intuitively we derive from lowing the outlines of the pointed arch: for it notions of moral feelings connected with those forms will be appropriate to the style it. If a novelist would describe a character, which repeat and harmonize with the forms he paints the lines of the face; he makes naturally delineated by the eye in the percepthem angular or flowing, according as he tion of the primary and most prominent would represent a man or a woman, a Bru- figure. tus or an Alexander, a martyr or an angel. Whenever then two lines meet in a point, There is an architecture in the face formed the eye, to become sensible of the angle, canout of curves and angles, by which we read not stop at the apex, but must proceed onthe soul within. The slightest touch, by wards beyond the point of intersection extruding one or the other, will alter the whole expression; and it is by attending to these that physiognomists study, and artists thus in reality describing a cross of which embody, the secret movements of our feel- two limbs are expressed and real, and the ings. Let curves predominate, as in Gre- other two are imaginary and invisible. The cian art, and its creations flow out into ex- attention of the reader must be drawn to this pressions of ease, indulgence, weakness, and fact, because it will lead to another remarkaluxury. Let angles prevail, as in Egyptian ble characteristic of the Gothic style. It art, and they become severe, stiffened, and may indeed be safely asserted that no line formal, exhibiting everywhere the pressure whatever, not even a straight one, is perof an external force, thwarting and intruding ceived by the eye without its thus crossing on the natural action of the mind. Let another. Certainly, in tracing a circle, the them both be united, as in the best German eye must revert from various points in the school, and especially in that which is now circumference to the centre, and this centre rising up at Munich, and we possess the true it must find by striking two radii across each combination; and the power of modifying other: but this process is not prominently matter so as to express faithfully a right men- brought forward in the circle as it is in the tal constitution, in which freedom and obedi-pointed arc: the angle is here the spot to ence, law and spontaneity, external control which the eye is elevated, and on which it and internal action, relaxation and self-denial, finally rests: it occupies the principal place enjoyment and duty, order and ease, pain in the process, and thus fixes on the mind an and pleasure, are blended inseparably and impression which forms a leading type of the eternally, and each preserved in its due sub- style. Observe then how repeatedly the ordination and proportion. cross, and the cross with ascending lines, apThis is the second characteristic which pears in Gothic-not only in the grand outrenders Gothic architecture peculiarly ap- line of the building, but in the lateral projecpropriate to the exhibition of a true Christi- tions of the smaller transepts, chapels, and anity. And little as we may be inclined to buttresses: it crowns the spire, it fills the suspect such an analogy, its rise and decay, roof with intersections, the windcws with the changes which it passed through in vari- ramifying tracery, the pavement with diago ous countries and at different periods, are no nal lines, the glass with diagonal diamonds. unfit representation of the religious history of The panels run into each other; double the mind. Mr. Pugin has made a mistake planes of ornament cross and intertwine with in calling it Catholic architecture--in the each other: vistas are opened on each side of sense which he gives to the word--meaning pillared aisles, cutting and shooting across in by it Papal. St. Peter's and the Jesuits' every direction. Instead of being perplexed, churches at Rome are the proper types and like the Greeks, with the transverse lines, representatives of Papal art: vast, brilliant, which must occur in the simplest buildings, gaudy, full of pretension, appealing directly even in the cuttings of the masonry, and still and servilely to the imagination, frittered in- more, where pillars are introduced, in the to incongruous details, which it is vainly en- divarication of the colonnades, and most of. deavoured to hold together by a composition all, when projections are to be thrown out as rationalistic in reality, while it aspires to an transepts laterally from the main buildingassumption of religion: in fact a republica- the Gothic architect even luxuriated in the tion of heathen architecture without its sim- interlacings of his work. It cuts itself at plicity, and emblematic of a heathen mind, every angle. He prefers rubble to squared veiled under the garb of Christianity. stone; roofs brought prominently forward in Another important and peculiar Gothic gables to flattened cornices; a point of view combination is to be found in the figure of which strikes the junction of the transept and the cross. To understand this, it is necessary the nave to that from any other external to trace out the real action of the eye in fol- point; square to round towers, and octagonal to either. And here is a third point in which from the mode in which the primary ogee of the Gothic is properly a Christian style: it the Gothic is suggested, that it is nowhere so is sy mbolical. Symbolism undoubtedly led properly introduced as in a vertical plane, the Church to select the cross itself as the where the eye may pass up to the extremity. chief model of its external building; and to But there is another problem still more indesire to place it prominently before the eye teresting-why is it that this singularly beau. in many of the parts. And symbolism in all tiful curve, which is claimed by the Gothic art is a great excellence, perhaps its essence. style as so peculiarly its own, can never apArt is (and it cannot be repeated too often) pear with propriety on the external configuthe translation of mind into matter, as phi- ration of a building? losophy is the translation of matter into mind. The Turrets of the bad Tudor style, as in Its object is to place before the eye of sense, Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and in King's and therefore before the poor, the ignorant, College, Cambridge, and the Great Tom the unthinking, the child, and the peasant, Tower at Christ Church, Oxford, exhibit it great truths which by the abstractions of abundantly in this position; but an eye even reason they can never reach. It addresses moderately accustomed to the details of Goitself also to the feelings; and nature, as if thic must feel that it is out of place, where it for this very purpose, has established the strikes against the sky. Intrinsically it is closest harmony and analogy between the beautiful, but it does not harmonize with a moral and the physical sensations; between the impressions produced by the action of the eye and the ear, and those which seem to have their seat more deeply in the mysteries of the soul. And there can be no pure art, which has not thus its basis in truth; no good building, which does not of itself tell the tale of its destination, and embody in material types the intellectual doctrines which led to its creation, and raise those emotions and feelings which harmonize with and deepen them. pure Gothic style. And yet the same line curving over an arch, and running up into a rich finial, as in the tombs in Hereford Cathedral, is one of the most exquisite constructions of Gothic art. Even when introduced by itself, as the line which throws up a canopy, as in some few niches, it is not out of place, though still less beautiful. The reason probably is this:-and it may determine several minute but not unimportant questions respecting the application of the ogee --in the type from which it is drawn, that is, in Thirdly From the fact just mentioned, the line followed by the eye in tracing the that the eye in tracing the pointed arch crosses pointed arch, the eye will traverse either the and continues the line at the point of section, interior, that is the concave side of the curve, coupled with the original ascending tendency or the convex. If it traverses the concave, of the vertical line, arises a third beautiful when stopped suddenly at the apex it will form, the ogee line. Let the reader follow run up perpendicularly, suddenly, and to no the curve of a Gothic arch slowly, and he great height. The second limb of the curve will find that the moment his eye has passed will be comparatively short; and this therethe арех, it has a natural tendency not only to continue it, but to continue it with an effort to mount upwards, so as to bend back the curve and run it up vertically, thus pro ducing the ogee figure یہ , or that fore will be no improper figure for such ogee lines as are introduced in the support of canopies; and even then, it may be added, they can only be used with propriety on a small scale in minute but rich ornamental work, because there is an obviously false architecture, that is, an architecture which sets at defiance which approaches more or less to Hogarth's the law of gravitation, in making such a flowline of beauty. The ease and grace of this ing line the support of any weight. If, on flowing outline account for the appropriate the other hand, the eye traverses the curve ness of a vast detail of ornament, particularly on the convex side, the line which it draws in foliage, which might otherwise seem too is one which really is bent down and curved delicate and easy for the severity and rigidity forcibly, in opposition to the ascending tenof an angular Gothic. And a comparison dency, over the convex of the arch. It climbs of it with the ellipse, which is the fa- up, as it were, against a resistance, and it is vourite Grecian curve, and beyond which not till it has mastered the projection, and is the Greek scarcely ventured further from the set free by the termination at the regularity of the circle, might perhaps de- it is allowed to shoot up freely; more freely termine many points of distinction in one of and with more pleasure from having been the most important but most mysterious previously chained down and confined, and questions in architecture, the science of Gre- therefore running up into a more elevated cian and Gothic Mouldings. It might appear limb. For this reason, in the most beautiful арех, that |