Page:Suggestions on the Arrangement and Characteristics of Parish Churches.djvu/10

10 unlicensed and incongruous. Each designer follows his own caprice; one borrows decorations from Pagan antiquities, which have no reference to, and by no means illustrate the character or teaching of the Christian religion, but are rather in direct contradiction to both; another draws from the common domestic or profane buildings of the day.



When the impropriety of these practices is perceived—as, fortunately, it sometimes is—the alteration is somewhat better, but very far from being completely satisfactory. We then meet with misapplied and poorly-executed imitations of the details of mediæval art; as, for example, the introduction of features of great Cathedrals and Collegiate Churches into small parochial Churches and Chapels. From these practices, I think it will be found, arise the irregularities in arrangements,