more transferred into
those of stone, which influenced at once the hearts of the people and
the form of the edifice." So true is this, that by a pure and noble
copying of the vegetable beauty which they had seen in their own
clime, the medieval craftsmen went so far--as I have shown you--as to
anticipate forms of vegetable beauty peculiar to tropic climes, which
they had not seen; a fresh proof, if proof were needed, that beauty
is something absolute and independent of man; and not, as some think,
only relative, and what happens to be pleasant to the eye of this man
or that.

But thinking over this matter, and reading over, too, that which Mr.
Ruskin has written thereon in his "Stones of Venice," vol. ii. cap.
vi., on the nature of Gothic, I came to certain further conclusions--
or at least surmises--which I put before you to-night, in hopes that
if they have no other effect on you, they will at least stir some of
you up to read Mr. Ruskin's works.

Now Mr. Ruskin says: "That the original conception of Gothic
architecture has been derived from vegetation, from the symmetry of
avenues and the interlacing of branches, is a strange and vain
supposition. It is a theory which never could have existed for a
moment in the mind of any person acquainted with early Gothic; but,
however idle as a theory, it is most valuable as a testimony to the
character of the perfected style."

Doubtless so. But you must remember always that the subject of my
lecture is Grots and Groves; that I am speaking not of Gothic
architecture in general, but of Gothic ecclesiastical architecture;
and more, almost exclusively of the ecclesiastical architecture of
the Teutonic or northern nations; because in them, as I think, the
resemblance between the temple and the forest reached the fullest
exactness.

Now the original idea of a Christian church was that of a grot--a
cave. That is a historic fact. The Christianity which was passed on
to us began to worship, hidden and persecuted, in the catacombs of
Rome, it may be often around the martyrs' tombs, by the dim light of
candle or of torch. The candles on the Roman altars, whatever they
have been made to symbolise since then, are the hereditary memorials
of that fact. Throughout the North, in these isles as much as in any
land, the idea of the grot was, in like wise, the idea of a church.
The saint or hermit built himself a cell; dark, massive, intended to
exclude light as well as weather; or