hampered them. It forbade them to
look Nature freely and lovingly in the face. It forbade them--as one
glaring example--to know anything truly of the most beautiful of all
natural objects--the human form. They were tempted perpetually to
take Nature as ornament, not as basis; and they yielded at last to
the temptation; till, in the age of Perpendicular architecture, their
very ornament became unnatural again; because conventional, untrue,
meaningless.

But the creed for which they worked was dying by that time, and
therefore the art which expressed it must needs die too. And even
that death, or rather the approach of it, was symbolised truly in the
flatter roof, the four-centred arch, the flat-topped tower of the
fifteenth-century church. The creed had ceased to aspire: so did
the architecture. It had ceased to grow: so did the temple. And
the arch sank lower; and the rafters grew more horizontal; and the
likeness to the old tree, content to grow no more, took the place of
the likeness to the young tree struggling toward the sky.

And now--unless you are tired of listening to me--a few practical
words.

We are restoring our old cathedral stone by stone after its ancient
model. We are also trying to build a new church. We are building
it--as most new churches in England are now built--in a pure Gothic
style.

Are we doing right? I do not mean morally right. It is always
morally right to build a new church, if needed, whatever be its
architecture. It is always morally right to restore an old church,
if it be beautiful and noble, as an heirloom handed down to us by our
ancestors, which we have no right--I say no right--for the sake of
our children, and of our children's children, to leave to ruin.

But are we artistically, aesthetically right? Is the best Gothic fit
for our worship? Does it express our belief? Or shall we choose
some other style?

I say that it is; and that it is so because it is a style which, if
not founded on Nature, has taken into itself more of nature, of
nature beautiful and healthy, than any other style.

With greater knowledge of nature, both geographical and scientific,
fresh styles of architecture may and will arise, as much more
beautiful, and as much more natural, than the Gothic, as Gothic is
more beautiful and natural than the Norman. Till then we must take
the best models which we have; use them; and, as it were, use them up
and exhaust them. By that time we may