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another line; he was an Italian architect working in Gothic against the grain: real success in such a case was impossible; he did not even succeed so far as his great predecessor Wren did in the like case. Wren despised Gothic, and knew nothing of Gothic detail; but he had the eye of a consummate architect. When constrained to work in Gothic, he caught at once the general conception of what he was to produce. His towers, both at Westminster and at Warwick, have the true Gothic outline, though their details are wretched beyond expression. Sir Charles Barry, on the other hand, has given us a front whose general feeling is Italian, and has overlaid it with Gothic detail of a purity unknown to Sir Christopher. But we must remember, it is twenty years since-twenty years of unspeakable importance in the history of art. Twenty years ago many of our rising architects were children; Mr. Scott himself was far from being what he is now. The true principles of Gothic architecture, above all, of civil Gothic architecture, were then so little known, that we very much doubt whether a better design could then have been had. Sir Charles Barry had at any rate sense enough to preserve him from any monstrous absurdity; he knew that he was building a house and not a church. He did not, like one of his competitors,-whose name we forget, but who afterwards published his designs,-send in a composition which we can only describe as two French cathedrals running full tilt against one another. Of his two towers, indeed, one, we think, is ugly in itself, the other is too ecclesiastical. But these are really small charges to bring against a design now almost a generation old. The building at least proclaims itself to be what it is, a great civil public building. We may be very thankful that it is not a sham minster or a sham castle. But had it been bad with the badness of that yet earlier state of things, even that would prove nothing against Gothic in 1860 in the hands of Mr. Scott. Nothing but wilful blindness can shut its eyes to the fact, that the twenty years of architectural study which have intervened,-we should add, the far greater architectural genius of Mr. Scott,-just make all the difference between the two cases. There is no knowing what may happen; Mr. Scott may fail as well as Sir Charles Barry; but, at any rate, let us be fair and logical. Sir Charles Barry has failed; his failure does not afford the slightest presumption that Mr. Scott will be equally unlucky.

These are the main objections; there are a few more trifling ones, which we may clear off in a very summary way. To admire Gothic art, especially to support Mr. Scott's design, is held to be the badge of a sect or a party; sometimes it would seem political, and sometimes religious. This is a development of the

Popish and Puseyite cry. The odd thing is, that we believe nobody has ever connected Mr. Scott personally with controversy of either kind, though the cry is at once brought up against his partisans. The only time that we ever saw Mr. Scott's name brought into connection with polemics of any kind was when he designed a noble church for the city of Hamburg, and was forthwith attacked by the Ecclesiological party for profaning "the sacred details of Christian art" by their employment in a "Lutheran meeting-house." We should have thought that this little bit of martyrdom was rather a claim upon the sympathies of Exeter Hall. The Gotho-Scottish sect must at least be very elastic; it is indeed a happy family which takes in Lord John Manners, Mr. Beresford Hope, Lord Elcho, Mr. Stirling, and Sir Joseph Paxton, we believe we may add Mr. Pease, to say nothing of the republic of Hamburg. We do not mean to be uncharitable, but we do know what political parties are; we know how very pleasant it is to rake up any thing against those who fill the seats which we have just left. Only suppose Lord John Manners had been a champion of "Tite and the Greeks," would not Lord Palmerston and Lord Llanover have found out that "Scott and the Goths" were exactly the thing that they wanted?

But Gothic is dark, it is irregular, it is too light, it is monotonous, it is foreign, it is an innovation, it is whatever it comes into Lord Palmerston's head to call it. Lord Palmerston, we all know, is the privileged wit of the House of Commons; whatever he says, it is no more than parliamentary etiquette to cheer and to laugh at it. If the noble lord chooses to say that Gothic buildings are necessarily irregular and dark, the remark draws forth "cheers and laughter;" if he says a few minutes after that they are necessarily monotonous and unpleasantly light, the "cheers and laughter" come as naturally as before. We will only stop to remark, that every one who knows any thing about it knows that one great characteristic, one great advantage, of Gothic is its wonderful elasticity in the way of windows. They may be simply of any size or shape that is wanted. If you like mere loopholes, you may have them; if you like to have a wall with more glass than stone in it, you may have that instead; and you need not run into either of these extremes; there are plenty of examples of the true via media. Moreover it is worth noticing, that in nearly all modern buildings, even when making no sort of pretension to Gothic character, we find the mullion, or something equivalent to it, constantly introduced. Whenever extra width and extra light is wanted, the mullion (Lord Palmerston's great agent for the promotion of darkness) is sure to appear. The windows in

the new reading-room of the British Museum are actually of a familiar Romanesque type, and the needful change of detail would at once translate them into Gothic. So it is repeatedly in buildings affecting "classic" character, and in buildings affecting no architectural character at all. The only peculiarity of Gothic is, that it gives these same mullions a more beautiful and appropriate form than any other style. In short, all these objections are simply said for the sake of something to say; they are not arguments, they hardly rise even to the dignity of prejudices. We may dispose of them in the words of a correspondent of the Times: "Let Lord Palmerston only mention the exact quantity of light he wishes to have thrown upon foreign affairs, and Mr. Scott will easily give him that exact quantity, neither more nor less."

We have taken some pains and some space in disposing of misconceptions, because the subject is involved in so many and of such different kinds. When these irrelevant objections are got rid of, the case seems to us very clear, and the positive grounds on which we prefer Gothic may be very concisely set forth. We shall then have one more objection to answer, which, as connected with our own argument, and as not being exactly a popular misconception, we have reserved for that place.

The fact that we have consciously and deliberately to choose between two styles of architecture is of itself a very singular phenomenon; it is perhaps without parallel in the history of art. In other times new styles have been introduced, and have had to struggle with existing ones; but such a controversy as the present, as far as we know, never occurred before. Unlike every other age, this age has no architecture of its own; if it had, we should say keep to it, develop it, and improve it, but do not desert it for the style either of past ages or of foreign countries. But we have no one universal style. Italian has for two centuries or more been most in fashion, but it has never thoroughly taken root; it has not produced any really English variety of itself, recognisable at once, like the different varieties of Grecian, Romanesque, and Gothic architecture; and though its prevalence has been very great, it has never been quite universal. Gothic has never quite died out; it would be possible to make a catena of Gothic or would-be Gothic buildings stretching from the last days of good Perpendicular to the late Gothic revival. And again, Italian has had other rivals; pure Grecian has been often attempted; Egyptian, Chinese, and Saracenic vagaries have occasionally diversified the scene. That we really have no style may be seen in this. When there is an universal style in a country, it affects the very humblest buildings. When Gothic was prevalent in this country, every thing was Gothic;

the rudest village churches, the meanest cottages, just as much as minsters and palaces. There is abundance of Gothic work up and down the land, so plain and rude that it must have been planned and wrought by the humblest village masons. But the true Gothic character is there as much as in Westminster Hall and Abbey. If there is nothing else, at any rate the doorways are arched, and the windows, where wide enough to need it, are mullioned. Some of the towns and villages of South Wales are full of Gothic houses of this kind, of the very rudest work, but still real Gothic. In Northamptonshire, again, the cottages, even down far into the last century, retained a type which is essentially Gothic. In Jersey, almost to our own day, the commonest gateways and doors were arched, with a round arch, strange to say, and not a pointed one, but with Gothic mouldings or chamfers. In all these cases there was clearly no interference from professional architects; a real style of architecture, rude but quite genuine, lingered on among village masons. But set a village mason, set even a builder of much higher character, to build nowadays without special instructions, and he produces something in no style at all, neither Italian nor Gothic, nor any thing else, but absolutely without architectural character of any kind. His windows are square holes in the wall; his doorway is made of two wooden doorposts and a wooden lintel. There is no one universal living style, in which every one builds naturally without thinking about it. We pick and choose and argue about it; one man likes one style, another another. In such a case it is not to the point to object to revivals, imitations, and so forth. Doubtless it is a pity that we are driven to revive and to imitate, but we cannot help it. We must either imitate the art of other countries or else revive that of past ages of our own, Modern Italian and modern Gothic are each equally imitative; the only question is, which of the two is the most desirable sort of imitation.

We must weigh the merits of the two contending styles in three balances, which we may call the practical, the artistic, and the historical. Of these we hold that Gothic has the advantage certainly in two, perhaps in three, while Italian has not the advantage in any.

The two practical considerations are convenience and cheapness. In point of convenience, we believe that there is no advantage in one more than the other. We believe that you may make a church, a house, a public hall, a Foreign Office, either in Italian or in Gothic, which shall serve its purpose equally well. For, whatever the style be, the building must be built of the size and shape which its purpose requires; and experience shows that buildings may be made of any conceivable size

or shape in either style. If an architect in either style sacrifices practical convenience to some supposed æsthetical requirement, a case is made out against him as an Italian or Gothic architect, but not against either Italian or Gothic architecture.

In point of cheapness, we believe, though the assertion will doubtless in many cases sound like a paradox, that Gothic has the advantage. We take for granted that we are not looking out for absolutely the cheapest sort of building that can be had. If so, our architects of both schools had better shut up their portfolios, and there is nothing to be done but to run up a big brick factory, at the market price per square yard. We take for granted that the question of cheapness merely means, which can give us a building of some real artistic character for the least money. And this we believe Gothic can do rather than Italian. Let us suppose an Italian and a Gothic design of equal costliness; let us even suppose that the Gothic one, as it stands, would be the dearer of the two. Still there is this all-important difference between them: you may take the Gothic design,— Mr. Scott's for instance, or any other good Gothic design,—and strip off every atom of ornament, and still leave it good and pure, however plain, Gothic. Take the Italian design and try the same experiment upon it, and you leave absolutely nothing, or perhaps our friend the brick factory. Gothic will bear to be at once much richer and much plainer than Italian; and our architects are naturally tempted to send in their designs in their best clothes. But those same designs will do, sometimes they will do better, if, in the phrase of a writer we have already quoted, they are stripped stark naked. In short, we may say of Gothic architecture, like the human beauty:

"Induitur, formosa est; exuitur, ipsa forma est."

You may get rid of every one of Mr. Scott's statues, niches, medallions, canopies, crockets, jamb-shafts, floriated capitals, and his design would be-we do not say so good as it is now, but still thoroughly good and thoroughly Gothic. Point your arches, chamfer your edges, and, if the outline is good, that is enough. But you cannot go through any such process with the design of Messrs. Coe and Hofland. It is a fine composition; though, to our taste, a good deal of its merit is derived from its quasiGothic outline. But strip away its engaged columns, its pilasters, its entablatures, its decorative arches, its decorative pediments, its vases, its niches, and its enriched window-cases, and you have no such residuum of good, though plain, architecture left as you would find after the like treatment of Mr. Scott's. To our taste, Mr. Scott's design would not be at all injured by the omission of a good deal of its enrichment; it certainly

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