I. ARCHITECTURE 39

wreck to this day.¹ But you will not, I should think, imagine this to have been done in heavenward aspiration. Mind, however, I don’t blame the people of Beauvais, except for their bad building. I think their desire to beat the citizens of Amiens a most amiable weakness, and only wish I could see the citizens of Edinburgh and Glasgow inflamed with the same emulation, building Gothic towers* instead of manufactory chimneys. Only do not confound a feeling which, though healthy and right, may be nearly analogous to that in which you play a cricket-match, with any feeling allied to your hope of heaven.

20. Such being the state of the case with respect to tower-building in general, let me follow for a few minutes the changes which occur in the towers of northern and southern architects.

Many of us are familiar with the ordinary form of the Italian bell-tower or campanile. From the eighth century to the thirteenth there was little change in that form: † four-square, rising high and without tapering into the air, story above story, they stood like giants in the quiet fields beside the piles of the basilica or the Lombardic church, in this form (fig. 9), tiled at the top in a flat gable, with open arches below, and fewer and fewer arches on each inferior story, down to the bottom. It is worth while noting the difference in form between these and the towers built for

* I did not, at the time of the delivery of these lectures, know how many Gothic towers the worthy Glaswegians have lately built: that of St. Peter’s, in particular, being a most meritorious effort.2

† There is a good abstract of the forms of the Italian campanile, by Mr. Papworth, in the Journal of the Archæological Institute, March 1850.

¹ [The cathedral of Beauvais was commenced in 1225, and the design of its founders and architects, excited to emulation by the splendour of Amiens, which had been begun in 1220, was to surpass in vastness and magnificence all other Gothic edifices. The choir is the loftiest in the world, the elevation of the roof above the pavement being 153 feet, 13 feet higher than that of Amiens. The roof and central tower fell in 1284. A later Gothic tower, 455 feet high, also tumbled down (in 1573). A distant view of Beauvais (“Light in the West”) is Plate 66 in Modern Painters, vol. v.]

² [The church referred to is St. Peter’s Free Church, situated at the corner of Mains Street and Waterloo Street; it was designed by the late Mr. Charles Wilson, of Glasgow.]

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