44 ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING

to them a great part of their interest: all these great and magnificent masses of architecture being repeated on a smaller scale by the little turret roofs and pinnacles of every house in the town; and the whole system of them being expressive, not by any means of religious feeling,* but merely of joyfulness and exhilaration of spirit in the inhabitants of such cities, leading them to throw their roofs high into the sky, and therefore giving to the style of architecture with which these grotesque roofs are associated, a certain charm like that of cheerfulness in a human face; besides a power of interesting the beholder which is testified, not only by the artist in his constant search after such forms as the elements of his landscape, but by every phrase of our language and literature bearing on such topics. Have not these words, Pinnacle, Turret, Belfry, Spire, Tower, a pleasant sound in all your ears? I do not speak of your scenery, I do not ask you how much you feel that it owes to the grey

* Among the various modes in which the architects, against whose practice my writings are directed, have endeavoured to oppose them, no charge has been made more frequently than that of their self contradiction; the fact being, that there are few people in the world who are capable of seeing the two sides of any subject, or of conceiving how the statements of its opposite aspects can possibly be reconcilable.¹ For instance, in a recent review, though for the most part both fair and intelligent, it is remarked, on this very subject

fields with avenues of trees between them, and lanes so loaded with blackberries that the hedge on each side looks like a piece of Florentine mosaic of bright black and red. But I am put out by the weather; it has grown so cold that I can only make rapid notes with greatcoat and gloves on. ... I have pretty well examined this cathedral inside and out, there is not much detail about it, but it is marvellously interesting, a pure and complete example of the very earliest French earliest French Gothic.”

See also the extract from Ruskin’s diary at Coutances, given in Vol. VIII. p. xxxi.]

¹ [For some other remarks on this charge of the reviewers of his architectural works, see Introduction to Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. xlii.). On the general subject of his alleged self-contradiction, see above, Introduction, p. li.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]