[65] The reader will understand this in a moment by glancing at [Plate XX.], the last in this volume, where the series 1 to 12 represents the change in one kind of leaf, from the Byzantine to the perfect Gothic.
[66] The best art either represents the facts of its own day, or, if facts of the past, expresses them with accessories of the time in which the work was done. All good art, representing past events, is therefore full of the most frank anachronism, and always ought to be. No painter has any business to be an antiquarian. We do not want his impressions or suppositions respecting things that are past. We want his clear assertions respecting things present.
[67] See the account of the meeting at Talla Linns, in 1682, given in the fourth chapter of the “Heart of Midlothian.” At length they arrived at the conclusion that “they who owned (or allowed) such names as Monday, Tuesday, January, February, and so forth, served themselves heirs to the same if not greater punishment than had been denounced against the idolaters of old.”
[68] See the beautiful description of Florence in Elizabeth Browning’s “Casa Guidi Windows,” which is not only a noble poem, but the only book I have seen which, favoring the Liberal cause in Italy, gives a just account of the incapacities of the modern Italian.
[69] Salisbury spire is only a tower with a polygonal gabled roof of stone, and so also the celebrated spires of Caen and Coutances.
[70] Or by the shaded portions of [Fig. XXIX.] Vol. I.
[71] The reader is not to suppose that Greek architecture had always, or often, flat ceilings, because I call its lintel the roof proper. He must remember I always use these terms of the first simple arrangements of materials that bridge a space; bringing in the real roof afterwards, if I can. In the case of Greek temples it would be vain to refer their structure to the real roof, for many were hypæthral, and without a roof at all. I am unfortunately more ignorant of Egyptian roofing than even of Arabian, so that I cannot bring this school into the diagram; but the gable appears to have been magnificently used for a bearing roof. Vide Mr. Fergusson’s section of the Pyramid of Geezeh, “Principles of Beauty in Art,” Plate I., and his expressions of admiration of Egyptian roof masonry, page 201.
[72] See ‘Athenæum,’ March 5th, 1853.
[73] Late, and chiefly confined to Northern countries, so that the two schools may be opposed either as Early and Late Gothic, or (in the fourteenth century) as Southern and Northern Gothic.
[74] In many of the best French Gothic churches, the groups of figures have been all broken away at the Revolution, without much harm to the picturesqueness, though with grievous loss to the historical value of the architecture: whereas, if from the niche at Verona we were to remove its floral ornaments, and the statue beneath it, nothing would remain but a rude square trefoiled shell, utterly valueless, or even ugly.