. The Civil engineer and architect's journal, scientific and railway gazette. Architecture; Civil engineering; Science. 1843.] THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. tains of stone, vast gigantic buildings, but not worthy the name of architecture," or Evelyn could say "Gothic architecture is a conges- tion of heavy, dark, melancholy, monkish piles"—vague and inap- propriate expressions, bearing as little assimilation to the style as did the attempts of the architect to the churches he reviled :—since the time when Gough and Carter, and other honoured few, alone upheld the m
. The Civil engineer and architect's journal, scientific and railway gazette. Architecture; Civil engineering; Science. 1843.] THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. tains of stone, vast gigantic buildings, but not worthy the name of architecture," or Evelyn could say "Gothic architecture is a conges- tion of heavy, dark, melancholy, monkish piles"—vague and inap- propriate expressions, bearing as little assimilation to the style as did the attempts of the architect to the churches he reviled :—since the time when Gough and Carter, and other honoured few, alone upheld the merits of our antiquities, how much has the study of our na- tional edifices increased ; and from this study, wonderfully syste- matised within late years, has resulted a high admiration of the old English architects, and of the principles which guided them in their sublime conceptions. Yet, the opinions of the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries have been revived in the nineteenth, and Gothic ar- chitecture treated as devoid of sound principles of proportion and taste. Though no Vitruvius of the middle ages has bequeathed to posterity written rules, and though heights and projections be not governed by modules, the opinion has been gradually growing, and has now reached conviction, that principles of design did exist, and that proportions of parts were observed. In the main principles of design, all styles, having claims to rank as beautiful, agree; and in those principles the medieval architects were consummate masters. In any style of architecture, whose horizontal and vertical lines are of equal number and prominence, we should not expect to find that beautiful effect, which results from an increased importance being given in one of those positions. Thus, while in the Grecian temple the main lines are horizontal, in the Gothic they are vertical; a like principle being observed in each. So when, during the decline of Gothic architecture, the horizontal line came into i
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