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Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 Author: Various Editor: Robert Chambers and William Chambers Release Date: December 18, 2005 [EBook #17348] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S EDINBURGH *** Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Richard J. Shiffer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c. NO. 432. NEW SERIES. SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1852. PRICE 1-1/2_d._ THE MEDIAEVAL MANIA. History is said to be a series of reactions. Society, like a pendulum, first drives one way, and then swings back in the opposite direction. At present, we may be said to be returning at full speed towards a taste for everything old, neglected, and for ages despised. Science and refinement have had their day, and now rude nature and the elemental are to be in the ascendant. In our boyhood, we learned the Roman alphabet; but youngsters now had need to add a knowledge of black-letter, which is rapidly getting back into fashion. Perfection is only to be found in the darkness and ignorance of the middle ages. It is proper, no doubt, to get rid of what is tame and spiritless in art; and it must be owned that nearly everything that was done in architecture and decoration during the Georgian era was detestable. But it is one thing to reform, and another to revolutionise. Let us by all means go to nature for instruction; but nature under the exercise of cultivated feeling--selecting what tends to ennoble and refine, not that which degrades and sends us back to forms and ideas totally out of place in the nineteenth century, and which, for that very reason, can have nothing but a temporary reign, to be followed in the succeeding age by a violent reaction. On a former occasion, we drew attention to this tendency towards mediaevalism as regards ornamental design, and took the Great
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