Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 101.djvu/432

414 and Picardy-place (which are but a continuation of Queen-street), but takes no account of any window which has mouldings. The items are all "ditto ditto" of that not very entertaining single-stone lintel, and the total is six hundred and seventy-eight.

It has commonly been thought that we were paying Edinburgh a high compliment when speaking of her as the. The only doubt was, whether the compliment was not misplaced and extravagant. But, by Mr. Ruskin's philosophy, so far as architecture is concerned, it is no honour, but the reverse, to be thus Hellenised. Greek he cannot away with. The Modern Athens invites him to come and lecture to the Modern Athenians. He goes; accurately counts six hundred and seventy-eight windows of Greek type in one of her streets; and tells her she ought to be ashamed of herself.

Before thus abusing her pride of place, however, he adroitly seeks a favourable hearing by a few flattering words on the lustre of the Firth of Forth, the rugged outline of the Castle Rock, and the historical charm of the Canongate. Nay, even of the New Town he declares, that so far as he is acquainted with modern architecture, he is aware of no streets which, in simplicity and manliness of style, or general breadth and brightness of effect, equal those of this division of the Scottish capital. But he soon turns to criticism of another sort, and produces his "little account" of 678 ut suprà. "And your decorations," he adds, "are just as monotonous as your simplicities. How many Corinthian and Doric columns do you think there are in your banks, and post-offices, institutions, and I know not what else, exactly like one another?" And then he proceeds to enforce the claims of Gothic, with a fervour and an exclusiveness that, to prejudiced Modern Athenians, must have made him seem a Goth with a vengeance.

In his Gothic proselytism he lays stress, with his wonted ingenuity and eloquence, on Nature's suggestion and sanction of the Gothic type. He bids us gather a branch from tree or flower, and mark how every one of its leaves is terminated, more or less, in the form of the pointed arch, and to that form owes its grace and character. And he argues from what we see in the woods and fields around us, that as they are evidently meant for our delight, and as we always feel them to be beautiful, we may assume that the forms into which their leaves are cast are indeed types of beauty, not of extreme or perfect, but average beauty. "And finding that they invariably terminate more or less in pointed arches, and are not square-headed, I assert the pointed arch to be one of the forms most fitted for perpetual contemplation by the human mind; that it is one of those which never weary, however often repeated; and that therefore, being both the strongest in structure, and a beautiful form (while the square head is both weak in structure, and an ugly form), we are unwise ever to build in any other." Whatever he the wroth or this argument from the forms of Nature, it is at the least a one-sided induction—drawn from one department of Nature only. It is a little curious, or instance, to find the lecturer, further on, denouncing the supposition that when Sir [[Author:Walter Scott|Walter Scott] wrote aboutof the Trosachs, he was describing what existed in fact. Hear the