Contrasts, or a Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages, and Corresponding Buildings of the Present Day: Shewing the Present Decay of Taste; Accompanied by Appropriate Text (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Contrasts, or a Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages, and Corresponding Buildings of the Present Day: Shewing the Present Decay of Taste; Accompanied by Appropriate Text

The author gladly avails himself of the opportunity afforded him by the publica tion of this edition, to enlarge the text, and correct some important errors which appeared in the original publication. When this work was first brought out, the very name of Christian art was almost unknown, nor had the admirable works of Montalembert and Rio appeared on the subject. It is not by any means surprising that the author, standing almost alone in the principles he was advocating, should have adopted some incorrect views, in the investigation of a subject involved in so many perplexing difficulties: the theory he adopted was right in the main point, but indistinctly developed. He was perfectly correct in the abstract facts, that pointed architecture was produced by the Catholic faith, and that it was destroyed in England by the ascendency of Protestantism but he was wrong in treating Protestantism as a primary cause, instead of being the effect of some other more powerful agency, and in ascribing the highest state of architectural excellence to the ecclesiastical buildings erected immediately previous to the change of religion as, although immeasurably excelling the debased productions of the Elizabethan period, they still exhibited various symptoms of the decay of.

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