rs of his garden gate in the choir of Ely Cathedral." The ceiling of
the gallery borrowed a design from Henry VII.'s Chapel; the entrance to
the same apartment from the north door of St. Alban's; and one side of
the room from Archbishop Bourchier's tomb at Canterbury. Eastlake's
conclusion is that Walpole's Gothic, "though far from reflecting the
beauties of a former age, or anticipating those which were destined to
proceed from a re-development of the style, still holds a position in the
history of English art which commands our respect, for it served to
sustain a cause which had otherwise been well-nigh forsaken."

James Fergusson, in his "History of the Modern Styles of Architecture,"
says of Walpole's structures: "We now know that these are very
indifferent specimens of the true Gothic art, and are at a loss to
understand how either their author or his contemporaries could ever fancy
that these very queer carvings were actual reproductions of the details
of York Minster, or other equally celebrated buildings, from which they
were supposed to have been copied." Fergusson adds that the fashion set
by Walpole soon found many followers both in church and house
architecture, "and it is surprising what a number of castles were built
which had nothing castellated about them except a nicked parapet and an
occasional window in the form of a cross." That school of bastard Gothic
illustrated by the buildings of Batty Langley, and other early restorers
of the style, bears an analogy with the imitations of old English poetry
in the last century. There was the same prematurity in both, the same
defective knowledge, crudity, uncertainty, incorrectness, feebleness of
invention, mixture of ancient and modern manners. It was not until the
time of Pugin[8] that the details of the medieval building art were well
enough understood to enable the architect to work in the spirit of that
art, yet not as a servile copyist, but with freedom and originality.
Meanwhile, one service that Walpole and his followers did, by reviving
public interest in Gothic, was to arrest the process of dilapidation and
save the crumbling remains of many a half-ruinous abbey, castle, or
baronial hall. Thus, "when about a hundred years since, Rhyddlan Castle,
in North Wales, fell into the possession of Dr. Shipley, Dean of St.
Asaph, the massive walls had been prescriptively used as stone quarries,
to which any neighboring occupier who wanted building material