othic no more.

Sec. LXXXIV. And this last clause of the definition is to be more strongly
insisted upon, because it includes multitudes of buildings, especially
domestic, which are Gothic in spirit, but which we are not in the habit
of embracing in our general conception of Gothic architecture;
multitudes of street dwelling-houses and straggling country farm-houses,
built with little care for beauty, or observance of Gothic laws in
vaults or windows, and yet maintaining their character by the sharp and
quaint gables of the roofs. And, for the reason just given, a house is
far more Gothic which has square windows, and a boldly gabled roof, than
the one which has pointed arches for the windows, and a domed or flat
roof. For it often happened in the best Gothic times, as it must in all
times, that it was more easy and convenient to make a window square than
pointed; not but that, as above emphatically stated, the richness of
church architecture was also found in domestic; and systematically "when
the pointed arch was used in the church it was used in the street," only
in all times there were cases in which men could not build as they
would, and were obliged to construct their doors or windows in the
readiest way; and this readiest way was then, in small work, as it will
be to the end of time, to put a flat stone for a lintel and build the
windows as in Fig. VIII.; and the occurrence of such windows in a
building or a street will not un-Gothicize them, so long as the bold
gable roof be retained, and the spirit of the work be visibly Gothic in
other respects. But if the roof be wilfully and conspicuously of any
other form than the gable,--if it be domed, or Turkish, or Chinese,--the
building has positive corruption mingled with its Gothic elements, in
proportion to the conspicuousness of the roof; and, if not absolutely
un-Gothicized, can maintain its character only by such vigor of vital
Gothic energy in other parts as shall cause the roof to be forgotten,
thrown off like an eschar from the living frame. Nevertheless, we must
always admit that it _may_ be forgotten, and that if the Gothic seal be
indeed set firmly on the walls, we are not to cavil at the forms
reserved for the tiles and leads. For, observe, as our definition at
present stands, being understood of large roofs only, it will allow a
conical glass-furnace to be a Gothic building, but will _not_ allow so
much, either of the Duomo of Florence, or the Baptistery o