hich Mr. Ruskin says so well:--

"It is gladdening to remember that, in its utmost nobleness, the very
temper which has been thought most averse to it, the Protestant temper
of self-dependence and inquiry, were expressed in every case. Faith
and aspiration there were in every Christian ecclesiastical building
from the first century to the fifteenth: but the moral habits to which
England in this age owes the kind of greatness which she has--the
habits of philosophical investigation, of accurate thought, of
domestic seclusion and independence, of stern self-reliance, and
sincere upright searching into religious truth,--were only traceable
in the features which were the distinctive creations of the Gothic
schools, in the varied foliage and thorny fretwork, and shadowy niche,
and buttressed pier, and fearless height of subtle pinnacle and
crested tower, sent 'like an unperplexed question up to heaven.'"

So says Mr. Ruskin. I, for one, endorse his gallant words. And I think
that a strong proof of their truth is to be found in two facts, which
seem at first paradoxical. First, that the new Roman Catholic churches
on the Continent--I speak especially of France, which is the most highly
cultivated Romanist country--are, like those which the Jesuits built in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, less and less Gothic. The
former were sham-classic; the latter are rather of a new fantastic
Romanesque, or rather Byzantinesque style, which is a real retrogression
from Gothic towards earlier and less natural schools. Next, that the
Puritan communions, the Kirk of Scotland and the English Nonconformists,
as they are becoming more cultivated--and there are now many highly
cultivated men among them--are introducing Gothic architecture more and
more into their churches. There are elements in it, it seems, which do
not contradict their Puritanism; elements which they can adapt to their
own worship; namely, the very elements which Mr. Ruskin has discerned.

But if they can do so, how much more can we of the Church of England? As
long as we go on where our medieval forefathers left off; as long as we
keep to the most perfect types of their work, in waiting for the day when
we shall be able to surpass them, by making our work even more
naturalistic than theirs, more truly expressive of the highest
aspirations of humanity: so long we are reverencing them, and that latent
Protestantism in the