The architecture of humanism; a study in the history of taste

68 THE

ARCHITECTUREOF

HUMANISM

their

bidding a change was wrought

throughout

Europe,

assuddenasitwascomplete.

Inamoment

every valleyhad been dejected,

thestraightmade

crooked,

andtheplainplacesrough.

The

changeinarchitecturewasnotslowtofollow.

Here,asthelastchapter

showed,

a

romanticsense

of

history,treating styles assymbols, couldlookwith

equal

favourontheGothicandtheGreek,andhad

provoked a

romantic revival of both. But

the

romantic sense of

Nature weighted the balance

in

favour

of the mediaeval. The Gothicbuilders be-

longed to the

'noblysavage' north,and hadbuilt

against a background of forest and tempest. The

Greeks

stoodforreason,civilisation,andcalm. More

thanthis,a

certain

'

natural

'

qualitybelonged

tothe

Gothicstyleitself. LikeNature,itwasintricateand

strange

;

in detail realistic, in composition it was

bold,

accidental andirregular, like thecomposition

of the

physical world,i^Among

the causes of the

Gothicrevival,thepoetryofNature,thatcastonall

such

qualitiesits transforminglight, may

certainly

begivenan

importantplace.

|

uTheinfluenceofthesenseofNatureuponbuilding

did not

exhaust itself in the

taste for Gothic. In

Englandtheregrewupadomesticarchitecturewhich

attaches itselftonohistoric styleand
attemptsno

definite

design.

It

is

applied, like the Georgian

manner

before

it,indifferentlytothecottage

and

the