187							176
                                                                      
                                                                      Bouges 10th April.  I feel more and more as I compare this wonderful
                                                                      Gothic with the Italian how natural and inevitable would
                                                                      be the prejudice of either nation in favour of their own - 
                                                                      how in each country - the powers of invention and f[g]ancy
                                                                      have existed in an almost equal development - how, wheerebe
                                                                      wherever these exist - coupled with general greatness of
                                                                      mind and religious faith a great architecture exists,
                                                                      which it is utterly futile to condemn or criticise because
                                                                      it is not in this rule or in that, because it is not class
                                                                      -ical in its mouldings - or natural in its structure.
                                                                      Now, ehenever fancy fails and affectation and infidelity
	This naturalism is carried as far as it can be - for I see           appear, mean architecture  follows be it in France Italy
that all these leaves whose imitative forms are so beau-              or Germany:  This is the leading point I must develope.
tiful, have been painted of a bright verdigris green.                 Naturalism	It is curious to compare the Naturalism of this Gothic and
This is plainly seen in the mediate porch, with stoning of            of all frank early un[i]imitative work, with the
Stephen:  (when a fa[i]t St Paul sits in the corner and one mn        sophistication of Palladio the dweller in the woods de-
is pulling his clothes over his head to give into St                  corates the temple of God with a scukpture of his triumph
Paul’s charge)  and it may form another ground of distinc-            over their savage hearts and with branches of hawthorn
tion from Byzantine work, when the colour was a rainbow               and oak and wild rose:  the degraded noblesse of Venice
play with gold not imitative at all.                                  decorated their houses also with the sources of their
                                                                      pleasures, with grinning masques and sculptured nusical
                                                                      instruments.
                                                                      Nave piers.  On No 188 is a general account of them, compare No 1892
                                                                      190 when sections and profile.

[Version 0.05: May 2008]