estminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Salisbury
Cathedral, and York Minster, ruins such as Melrose and Fountain Abbeys,
Crichton Castle, and a hundred others were impressive witnesses for the
civilization that had built them and must, sooner or later, demand
respectful attention. Hence it is not strange that the Gothic revival
went hand in hand with the romantic movement in literature, if indeed it
did not give it its original impulse.

"It is impossible," says Eastlake,[6] speaking of Walpole, "to peruse
either the letters or the romances of this remarkable man, without being
struck by the unmistakable evidence which they contain of his medieval
predilections. His 'Castle of Otranto' was perhaps the first modern work
of fiction which depended for its interest on the incidents of a
chivalrous age, and it thus became the prototype of that class of novel
which was afterward imitated by Mrs. Radcliffe and perfected by Sir
Walter Scott. The feudal tyrant, the venerable ecclesiastic, the forlorn
but virtuous damsel, the castle itself with its moats and drawbridge, its
gloomy dungeons and solemn corridors, are all derived from a mine of
interest which has since been worked more efficiently and to better
profit. But to Walpole must be awarded the credit of its discovery and
first employment."

Walpole's complete works[7] contain elaborate illustrations and ground
plans of Strawberry Hill. Eastlake give a somewhat technical account of
its constructive features, its gables, buttresses, finials, lath and
plaster parapets, wooden pinnacles and, what its proprietor himself
describes as his "lean windows fattened with rich saints." From this I
extract only the description of the interior, which was "just what one
might expect from a man who possessed a vague admiration for Gothic
without the knowledge necessary for a proper adaptation of its features.
Ceilings, screens, niches, etc., are all copied, or rather parodied, from
existing examples, but with utter disregard for the original purpose of
the design. To Lord Orford, Gothic was Gothic, and that sufficed. He
would have turned an altar-slab into a hall-table, or made a cupboard of
a piscine, with the greatest complacency, if it only served his purpose.
Thus we find that in the north bed-chamber, when he wanted a model for
his chimney-piece, he thought he could not do better than adopt the form
of Bishop Dudley's tomb in Westminster Abbey. He found a pattern for the
pie