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effect cast into often uncouth and eccentric detail. Yet in all this uncouthness and these eccentricities there may be perceived vigour and life, indicative of the state of germination, a casting off, as it were, of an old skin to put on a new one, and after the throes of labour to give birth to an entirely new creation.
As otherwise than an entirely new creation it is impossible to regard mediæval architecture. If it should be necessary in a single word to state what appears to be its dominant sentiment it is possible that the word "aspiration" might, better than any other, convey that elevation of sentiment which induced men to lift their structures as they lifted up their hearts towards the Supreme Power which reigned over them. Men's minds and men's architecture rose together upwards; and as the old predominance of horizontalism had shown men thinking of themselves, and running parallel with the soil, "of the earth, earthy," rather than breaking away from it, so the vertical tendency of the mediæval architect seemed to be expressive of a springing from the world to a something higher and purer.
Men like Pugin, Viollet le Duc, Lassus, De Laborde, Boisserée, Moller, Reichensherger, Puttrich, Otté, Parker, Sharpe, and Ruskin, like Whewell and Willis, and may another zealous student, who have profoundly investigated the principles and practice of the mediæval architects, have found them no less amenable to laws of wise construction and reasonable planning than they have fitted for the expression of the most spiritual beauty. They have admired especially, as we must also, the truth and simplicity, and the honesty (if I may be permitted to borrow from the nomenclature of moral qualities a term applicable to art) with which all materials were used in mediæval ages; the propriety with which ornament was introduced—always developing and never running counter to structure—the unfailing aspect of grace and elegance acquired by the just proportion of support to load, and the true equilibrium of parts.