Take, again, the domestic buildings of a convent, and those of the citizens of a great commercial town. Both, it is true, were human residences, and must provide for the common wants of our nature. Yet in one the great principle of the foundation was ascetic gravity and religious mortification; in the other the objects aimed at were hospitality, cheerfulness, and family enjoyment: and in each case the objects were perfectly provided for, as well as expressed in the aspect of the building. Why, then, should we imagine that because our ideas of family comfort are more perfect than in the days of our forefathers, the style of architecture which they so successfully applied to purposes differing so widely one from another will refuse to accommodate itself to a more complete form of one of the same purposes? Yet people continually tell us that Gothic architecture is feudal and monkish! Of course the castle was feudal and the convent monkish: it would have been strange if they had not, seeing that one was built for the feudal lord and the other for monks. But was the town hall or the city residence monkish? Were the warehouses of Nuremberg or the market-halls of Flanders feudal? The idea carries absurdity on the face of it. They were, in fact, built by those very communities who had used their utmost endeavours to overthrow feudalism, and were ever most strenuously opposing its authority and influence.
I have in this, and more especially in my last lecture shown you that the development of Gothic architecture itself was founded, step by step, upon common sense and upon practical considerations. In like manner were these made the great principles which guided its application.
In all classes of building, whether ecclesiastical, military, monastic, civic, domestic, commercial, or rustic, though the architecture was in reality one and the same, the treatment was absolutely and imperatively commanded by the purpose, and the expression followed by instinct. As I have said on other occasions, a Mediæval barn is as good and as true in its architecture as a cathedral; both are essentially in the same style, yet one is as obviously a barn and as absolutely subservient to the requirements of a barn, as the other is a church. One has no windows, but slits of some 4 inches wide, and yet looks as Gothic as the other, which has more window than wall.
Fig. 153.—Warehouses at Nuremburg.
Take, again, two commercial buildings—as the great Cloth Market at Yprès and the huge warehouses at Nuremburg—one for exhibiting manufactures, the other for stowing away goods. The first is, internally, a continuous room or gallery some 30 or 40 feet wide, and (measuring along its several ranges) about 600 or 700 feet long; its entire sides occupied by continuous and uniform ranges of large windows, and the exterior unbroken to express the unity of the interior, and its
