s which were
deprived of all food except from this source; and have willingly
promulgated the theory, that because all the good architecture that is
now left is expressive of High Church or Romanist doctrines, all good
architecture ever has been and must be so,--a piece of absurdity from
which, though here and there a country clergyman may innocently believe
it, I hope the common sense of the nation will soon manfully quit
itself. It needs but little inquiry into the spirit of the past, to
ascertain what, once for all, I would desire here clearly and forcibly
to assert, that wherever Christian church architecture has been good and
lovely, it has been merely the perfect development of the common
dwelling-house architecture of the period; that when the pointed arch
was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the round arch
was used in the street, it was used in the church; when the pinnacle was
set over the garret window, it was set over the belfry tower; when the
flat roof was used for the drawing-room, it was used for the nave. There
is no sacredness in round arches, nor in pointed; none in pinnacles, nor
in buttresses; none in pillars, nor in traceries. Churches were larger
than most other buildings, because they had to hold more people; they
were more adorned than most other buildings, because they were safer
from violence, and were the fitting subjects of devotional offering: but
they were never built in any separate, mystical, and religious style;
they were built in the manner that was common and familiar to everybody
at the time. The flamboyant traceries that adorn the facade of Rouen
Cathedral had once their fellows in every window of every house in the
market-place; the sculptures that adorn the porches of St. Mark's had
once their match on the walls of every palace on the Grand Canal; and
the only difference between the church and the dwelling-house was, that
there existed a symbolical meaning in the distribution of the parts of
all buildings meant for worship, and that the painting or sculpture was,
in the one case, less frequently of profane subject than in the other. A
more severe distinction cannot be drawn: for secular history was
constantly introduced into church architecture; and sacred history or
allusion generally formed at least one half of the ornament of the
dwelling-house.

Sec. LIV. This fact is so important, and so little considered, that I must
be pardoned for dwelling upon it at some