184 THE STONES OF VENICE I. SAVAGENESS

their place is not in some way supplied. Only there is this great difference between the composition of the mineral and of the architectural style, that if we withdraw one of its elements from the stone, its form is utterly changed, and its existence as such and such a mineral is destroyed; but if we withdraw one of its mental elements from the Gothic style, it is only a little less Gothic than it was before, and the union of two or three of its elements is enough already to bestow a certain Gothicness of character, which gains in intensity as we add the others, and loses as we again withdraw them.

§ 6. I believe, then, that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothic are the following, placed in the order of their importance:

1. Savageness.

2. Changefulness.

3 Naturalism.

4. Grotesqueness.

5. Rigidity.

6. Redundance.

These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; as belonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus:-1. Savageness or Rudeness. 2. Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed Imagination. 5. Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that the withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic character of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. I shall proceed to examine them in their order.

§ 7. (1.) SAVAGENESS. I am not sure when the word “Gothic”¹ was first generically applied to the architecture

¹ [It appears from the passages collected in Dr. Murray’s New English Dictionary, that the term “Gothic,” as applied to architecture, was taken in the first instance from the French, les siècles gothiques denoting the middle or dark ages, and was employed-sometimes, though not universally-with a suggestion of reprobation, to denote any style of building that was not Greek or Roman. The earliest use of the term applied to architecture, given in the Dictionary, is from Evelyn’s Diary (1641): “One of the fairest churches of the Gotiq design I had seene.”]

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