branch of art, which prove how strongly cultivated minds may be impressed with the character and power of these 'unreasonable,' 'clumsy,' 'disproportioned,'' nonsensical,' 'impertinent,' and 'incongruous' buildings which a former age, not without its science and its taste, deemed unworthy of the name of architecture.' Two societies have been recently established at Oxford and at Cambridge for the promotion of the same study, and the example has been followed in several other places. The numerous churches which are rising bear marks already of a similar alteration of feeling. And still more may be found in the restorations which have recently been made both in our cathedrals and in collegiate buildings.-It is to be hoped that something better is indicated by these facts than a mere caprice of fancy. To those who recognise in art a higher beginning and end than an idle, luxurious indulgence of the eyes, and in Gothic architecture indications of thought and feeling of a very peculiar nature, this return to the habits of other days is full of meaning and interest. It proves at least that we are now capable of discerning some element of good in ages, which for the last two centuries we had been accustomed to call days of darkness, but which were, to say the least, the cradle of many of our noblest institutions. And it is something to see reviving among us that filial feeling towards the years which begot us, which delights to own gratitude for the benefits received from them, and to deal reverently even with their faults, rather than to insult them by a perpetual boast of our own superiority. And if, as assuredly is the fact, there is the closest analogy between the creations of art and the movement of higher instincts. within us, we may trace in this altered taste in architecture an alteration in other habits of thought, carrying men back to associations and institutions of a higher kind than those in which we have been living. Even if it were only the result of an increased demand for ecclesiastical buildings, and of an instinctive perception that the characteristics of Gothic architecture (how or why it may not be seen) are more congenial to the religious spirit of Christianity than those of the Grecian, the fact would be well worth notice. We do not say, however, that the mode in which the subject has hitherto been studied is perfectly satisfactory. The theory of it has principally been confined to an inquiry into the origin of the pointed arch-and whatever ingenuity has been displayed here, we agree with Mr. Whewell that it does seem to have been thrown away. Undoubtedly the pointed arch is the most important if not the primary germ of Gothic architecture. It is the idea,' or, if we may use the Platonic word, the 'form from VOL. LXIX. NO. CXXXVII. I from which it chiefly emanated; and, undoubtedly, it may be found lying before the eyes of men in a great variety of objects— in the arching of avenues, the wattling of huts, the intersection of circular arches, and the ribbings of a groined roof. But it lay for ages like every other simple fact in nature, each of which to common men means nothing, and to the eye of genius alone contains a multitude of applications and deductions, only brought out when it comes into contact with certain others, and then becomes as it were fecundated and productive. A philosophical inquirer into the history of science would inquire not by whom or at what time an apple was first seen to drop to the ground, or steam to issue from boiling water, or sand to melt into glass, or hard bodies to produce corresponding impressions upon soft, but under what circumstances these simple facts, dropped like seeds into a suitable soil, became for the first time prolific, and brought forth the theory of gravitation, and the steam-engine, and the telescope, and the printing press. No single fact by itself can produce results. It is combination, seemingly accidental, on which all depends; and this is the proper subject for examination. And thus the question to be asked respecting the pointed arch is this :-under what circumstances and from what state of feeling its appropriateness to answer certain purposes, or to represent certain ideas, began to be felt; and having once been felt, led not only to its general adoption, but a very considerable modification of other features in architecture, so as to bring them into harmony with this established type? What Mr. Hope has said of the introduction of the circular arch into Roman architecture may be repeated of the pointed. A fortuitous concurrence of circumstances has made many a man invent that which he had not the means to apply, nay, of which he saw not even the full use and application. Many a discovery has taken place for the first time at a period when, little wanted, it conferred no distinction on its author, and no advantage on others; when, like a fire kindled without proper fuel to feed the flame, it again went out, or for many ages smouldered in unperceived obscurity, ere fresh wants and fresh means, fanning the latent spark, blew it up into a blaze, when the genius to which it first was owing had already long been forgotten in the darkness of the grave. And thus, for aught we know, it may have fared with the arch. If even by some fortuitous meeting of materials in peculiar relative situations, the embryo of the arch should first have been formed in independent Greece, it there remained in a manner dormant and sterile; it received no development; it became not in her edifices a marked feature, calculated by its importance and resources to change and remodify the whole principle and face of her architecture.'-Hope on Architecture, chap. vii. p. 51. But in the effort to solve what Mr. Whewell also terms 'the frivolous frivolous and insoluble question' of the origin of the pointed arch, as in searching for the philosopher's stone, many valuable discoveries have been made. Buildings have been minutely examined and described, the relations of their details drawn out; and although perhaps too much of the arbitrary and licentious has been shown in fixing chronological dates, an historical outline of the changes which have taken place in Gothic architecture has been traced with sufficient accuracy to form the groundwork of a still deeper investigation. For this we are deeply indebted, among others, to Mr. Rickman. One fact seems likely to meet soon with general acquiescence. From the earliest Egyptian to the corrupt Tudor Gothic a chain of successive transitions may be easily established. Each style was a modification of the one which preceded it, and was not a new and foreign importation from a totally different soil. The Egyptian passed into the Grecian, the Grecian into the Roman, the Roman, as Mr. Hope ingeniously traces it, into the Byzantine, the Lombard, and what is improperly termed the Norman and the Saxon: these again slided gradually into what is still more improperly called Gothic; and the Gothic, through the various stages which Mr. Rickman and others have pointed out, into the mixed and barbarous farrago of the Elizabethan age. Once establish this point-and attention will be turned from a vague, unprofitable speculation as to what singular coincidence first suggested a new creation to the builder's eyes, into a practical study of facts; and those facts will soon lead to the principles which they contain, and without a knowledge of which the facts are by themselves useless. A second point, not less important, is that all the infinite variety of the Gothic style, its 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. To believe that, even in the complicated phenomena of Gothic architecture, all of them are developed from one germ is the first step to discover that germ, and, by the possession of it, to enable ourselves to re-produce and create works upon fixed principles of beauty, without risking the blunders into which those must fall who imitate, however accurately, a model which they do not understand. In the pointed style,' says Mr. Hope, all the later essential characteristic ornaments flow so 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 crossspringers 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 '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 pillars 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), and the complicated plan of Gothic edifices, suggested the idea of creating forms and combinations still more varied and complex, by subdividing their sweep into trefoils and quatrefoils, and other curious scollopings; by making their bend, where feasible, in imitation of the ogive moulding, after showing a convex, exhibit a concave line, and after turning down, incline upwards, or finally, as we see them in some of the latest buildings in France, Germany, and Belgium, from their very base, curl up......... Cross springers were even sent down from their highest apex ere they reached their point of intersection; and made to re-approach the ground in drops, without any direct support whatever, suspended and hovering over the heads of the living community, as canopies were made to surmount statues of saints in stone and marble. Lastly, the arches, and pediments, and gables, and gablets, and roofs, and spires, and pinnacles, and broaches, everywhere multiplied, and everywhere sharpened to the utmost, fomenting the taste for the meagre, the angular, and the broken, gave the idea of repeating these dispositions in every ornamental modification in which they were less useful, until every piece of architecture, stationary or moveable, from the cathedral to the stall and the footstool, looked like a bundle of faggots, or a mass of conductors.'-p. 431. 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. What this germ or fundamental principle of these two styles respectively was has been suggested by Mr. Hope, and many other 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 |