I have no
time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere before now);[206]
but I proceed to apply the principle to ourselves in a more searching
manner.
I notice that among all the new buildings that cover your once wild
hills, churches and schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large
proportion, with your mills and mansions; and I notice also that the
churches and schools are almost always Gothic, and the mansions and
mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely the meaning
of this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When
Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well as churches; and when
the Italian style superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well
as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of Antwerp,
there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brussels; if Inigo
Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an
Italian St. Paul's.[207] But now you live under one school of
architecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doing
this? Am I to understand that you are thinking of changing your
architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your churches
experimentally, because it does not matter what mistakes you make in a
church? Or am I to understand that you consider Gothic a pre-eminently
sacred and beautiful mode of building, which you think, like the fine
frankincense, should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved
for your religious services? For if this be the feeling, though it may
seem at first as if it were graceful and reverent, you will find that,
at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more nor less than
that you have separated your religion from your life.
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