Nothing can surpass the
boldness or the simplicity of the plan; and yet, in spite of this
simplicity, the clear detaching of the shafts from the slope of the
spire, and their great height, strengthened by rude cross-bars of stone,
carried back to the wall behind, occasion so great a complexity and play
of cast shadows, that I remember no architectural composition of
which the aspect is so completely varied at different hours of the
day.[10] But the main thing I wish you to observe is, the complete
_domesticity_ of the work; the evident treatment of the church spire
merely as a magnified house-roof; and the proof herein of the great
truth of which I have been endeavoring to persuade you, that all good
architecture rises out of good and simple domestic work; and that,
therefore, before you attempt to build great churches and palaces, you
must build good house doors and garret windows.

[Footnote 10: The sketch was made about ten o'clock on a September
morning.]

[Illustration: PLATE VII. (Fig. 11., Fig. 12.)]

22. Nor is the spire the only ecclesiastical form deducible from
domestic architecture. The spires of France and Germany are associated
with other towers, even simpler and more straightforward in confession
of their nature, in which, though the walls of the tower are covered
with sculpture, there is an ordinary ridged gable roof on the top. The
finest example I know of this kind of tower, is that on the north-west
angle of Rouen Cathedral (_fig._ 12); but they occur in multitudes in
the older towns of Germany; and the backgrounds of Albert Duerer are full
of them, and owe to them a great part of their interest: all these great
and magnificent masses of architecture being repeated on a smaller scale
by the little turret roofs and pinnacles of every house in the town; and
the whole system of them being expressive, not by any means of religious
feeling,[11] but merely of joyfulness and exhilaration of spirit in the
inhabitants of such cities, leading them to throw their roofs high into
the sky, and therefore giving to the style of architecture with which
these grotesque roofs are associated, a certain charm like that of
cheerfulness in a human face; besides a power of interesting the
beholder which is testified, not only by the artist in his constant
search after such forms as the elements of his landscape, but by every
phrase of our language and literature bearing on such topics. Have not
these words, Pinnacle, Tur