Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/140

124 people of England generally regarded it with admiration. To them it was the symbol of a superstition from whose influence they gloried in escaping, or the emblem of a feudal tyranny from which they were just emerging into partial freedom. During Elizabeth's reign the struo-gle was hardly over ; the wounds of the combatants were still fresh and bleeding, the anger of the contest had by no means sulDsided, and they looked with hate and abhorrence on whatever recalled the stern realities of the past. We can now afford to look on the Middle Ao-es with far different feelings; our Avounds have long since been healed, and hardly a scar remains. Time has thrown its veil of poetry over what was then a mere prosaic matter of fact, hiding those features which were once so repulsive, and softening much which even now it is impossible to forget. They shrunk from what they felt as a reality ; we cherish it because it has faded into a dream. Bearino- in mind the prevalence of these feelings, we should not be surprised that so soon as classical art was presented to them the people rushed to it with avidity. The world was then ringing with the praise of the newly disseminated poetry of Virgil, the eloquence of Cicero, and the glorious narratives of Livy. A new light was dawning, and the cry arose on all sides, " Away with the Middle Ages, with their superstition and their tyranny. Roman greatness, Roman literature, and Roman art are to regenerate the world ! " We are )iow convinced that the Classical Renaissance was not successful ; but is it quite clear that a Medijeval revival wall not prove even a greater and more 'disastrous mistake? Be this as it may, in the whole range of artistic history it would be difficult to flnd any single monograph that might be made so com- plete in itself, or all the details of which are so well known, as that of Mediaeval art in England. We know its birth and parentage ; we can follow it through youth to the bloom of manhood. We can admire it in the staid maturity of its power, and in the expiring efforts of its failing strength ; and we know the cause of its decay and death. To those who are able to grasp it, no story can be more interesting ; while to those who desire to understand what architecture really is, how it can be cultivated so as to insure success, and by what agencies it is sure to decay and finally to die, no subject is capable of being more instructively treated.