208 THE STONES OF VENICE II. CHANGEFULNESS

be well, if in all other matters, we were as ready to put up with what we dislike, for the sake of compliance with established law, as we are in architecture.

§ 31. How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see when we come to describe the Renaissance schools; here we have only to note, as a second most essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it broke through that law wherever it found it in existence; it not only dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle; and invented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that they were new, but that they were capable of perpetual novelty. The pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it admitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of a pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the interlacement of the tracery bars themselves.¹ So that, while in all living Christian architecture the love of variety

a very interesting connexion between it and Modern Painters. The first part of this book will give an account of the effect of Christianity in colouring and spiritualising Roman or Heathen architecture [the Byzantine influence, see Vol. IX. p. 36]. The second and third parts [now the second] will give an account of the Transition to Gothic, with a definition of the nature and essence of the Gothic style. The fourth part, of the decline of all this back into Heathenism, and of the reactionary symptoms attending the course of the relapse, of which the strongest has been the development of landscape painting. For, so long as the Gothic and other fine architecture existed, the love of Nature, which was an essential and a peculiar feature of Christianity, found expression and food enough in them-vide Seven Lamps [Vol. VIII. p. 246], Stones, vol. i. [Vol. IX. p. 70], the whole of chap. 20, and chap. 30, § 6 [ibid., p. 411]. But when the Heathen architecture came back, this love of Nature, still happily existing in some minds, could find no more food there-it turned to landscape painting and has worked gradually up into Turner. The last part of this book, therefore, will be an introduction to the last of Modern Painters.”

Ruskin it will be observed, still hoped to finish that work in one more part.]

¹ [Yet such interlacement was a characteristic of Gothic in its decline, rather than in its perfection: see Seven Lamvs, ch. ii. §§ 22 seq. (Vol. VIII. pp. 88 seq.]

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