Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/135

Rh Bk. VI. Ch. L ENGLAND. 119 BOOK YI. CHAPTER I. I N T R O D ir C T O R Y. ENGLAND. IT is perhaps not too much to assert that during the Middle Ages architecture was practised in England with even greater success than among any of the contemporary nations. In beauty of detail and elegance of proportion the English cathedrals generally surpass their Continental rivals. It is only in dimensions and mechanical construc- tion that they are sometimes inferior. So lovingly did the people of this country adhere to the Art, that the Gothic forms clung to the soil long after they had been superseded on the Continent by the classical Renaissance ; and the English returned to their old love long before other nations had got over their contemjDt for the rude barbarism of their ancestors. It is now more than a century since Horace Walpole conceived the idea of reproducing the beauties of York Minster and Westminster Abbey in a lath-and-plaster villa at Strawberry Hill. The attempt, as we now know, was ridiculous enough ; but the result on the Arts of the country most important. From that day to this, Gothic villas, Gothic lodges, and Gothic churches have been the fashion — at first timidly, and wonderfully misunderstood, but now the rage, and with an almost perfect power of imitation. The result of this revived feeling for Mediaeval art Avhich interests us most in this place is, that every Gothic building in the country has been carefully examined and its peculiarities noticed. All the more im- portant examples have been drawn and published, their dates and histories ascertained as far as possible, and the whole subject rendered complete and intelligible. The only difficulty that remains is, that the works in which the illustrations of English art are contained range over 70 or 80 years — the early ones published before the subject was properly understood ; and that they are in all shapes and sizes, from the most ponderous folios to the most diminutive of duodecimos. Their number, too, is legion, and they therefore often go over the