choly and
monkish piles, without any proportion, use, or beauty,'[845] deplorable
instances of pains and cost lavishly expended, and resulting only in
distraction and confusion. Sir Christopher Wren said of the great
cathedrals of the Middle Ages, that they were 'vast and gigantic
buildings indeed, but not worthy the name of architecture.'[846] Even at
such times there were some who were proof against the caprice of
fashionable taste, and who were not insensible to the solemn grandeur of
'high embowed roofs,' 'massy pillars,' and 'storied windows.'[847] Lord
Lyttelton censured the old architecture as 'loaded with a multiplicity
of idle and useless parts,' yet granted that 'upon the whole it has a
mighty awful air, and strikes you with reverence.'[848] Henry VII.'s
Chapel at Westminster was still regarded with admiration as 'that wonder
of the world;'[849] and although people did not quite know what to do
with their cathedrals, and regarded them rather as curiosities, alien to
the times, and heirlooms from a dead past, they did not cease to speak
of them with some pride. But popular taste--so far as architectural
taste can be spoken of as prevalent in any definite form throughout the
greater part of the last century--was all in favour of a 'Palladian' or
'Greek' style. It was a style scarcely adapted to our climate, and
unfavourable to the symbolism of Christian thought, yet capable, in the
hands of a master, of being very grand and imposing. Under weaker
treatment the effect was grievous. There was neither manliness nor
solemnity in the usual run of churches built after the similitude of
'Roman theatres and Grecian fanes.'[850] Maypoles instead of columns,
capitals of no order, and pie-crust decorations--such, exclaimed
Seward,[851] were the too frequent adjuncts of the newly built churches
he saw about him. At the time, however, that Seward wrote, a change had
already begun to show itself in many influential quarters. Even the
'correct classicality' of Sir William Chambers,[852] the leading
architect of the day, met, towards the close of the century, with by no
means the same unquestioning admiration which he had received at an
earlier date. There was division of opinion on fundamental questions of
architectural fitness; and persons could applaud the talents of mediaeval
builders without being considered eccentric. Gray, Mason, Warton, Bishop
Percy, and many others, had contributed in various ways to create in
England a