Page:Suggestions on the Arrangement and Characteristics of Parish Churches.djvu/32

32 against the vain attempts to make Pagan temples suitable for Christian worship, and the irreverence, to use the words of a distinguished ecclesiastic, of making “naked cupids stand for angels, and sprawling women for the cardinal virtues.” In a word, they prefer the mediæval style, because they esteem it the most perfect architecture the Church has developed for herself; because, when a Church is properly arranged, it is the only style that can be adopted without the perpetration of numberless artistic solecisms; and because it accords best with our climate and materials, and is, consequently, the most economical. I hope that, on a future occasion, some of our members will dwell more at large on these reasons, than time or space permits me to do now.

“But,” it is frequently asked, “why not develop a new style, suitable to our era, and take advantage of the mechanical and scientific improvements of the age?” To this answer is made, that those improvements are made available, and very sensibly influence the character of the revived mediæval style; but that “to invent a new species of architecture, or suddendly to call into being a new development of an old art, is what no individual artist, however gifted, or genius, however powerful, has ever accomplished,” all art being the growth of time, influenced by various external circumstances. But, even if such an unheard-of phenomenon is to appear, before its advent, it is surely prudent to use the best art we possess in the best way we can.

In that species of architecture which we consider the best adapted to our religious edifices, and of which our country yet possesses some admirable remains, there is an almost infinite variety, ranging from the greatest simplicity