Barry was rebuilding, they did not collaborate
in any further way, and both died before the Houses of Parliament
were completed, in which, as a matter of fact, Barry's designs were
completely ignored. The Reform Club is considered to be the best of
Barry's classical buildings.

Pugin's earlier works were mostly Roman Catholic churches, and they are
acknowledged to be an immense advance on any Gothic work which had been
seen for centuries. In the Roman Catholic Cathedral of S. Chad, at
Birmingham, there is a dignity, loftiness and simplicity surpassed by
few Gothic buildings when that style was at its zenith, and from the
time Pugin designed this building, architecture--notwithstanding our
exhaustive study of archaeology, our immense resources of capital and
labour, our science and labour-saving appliances, and the comparative
accessibility of the finest materials--has neither developed nor advanced.
The most erudite Gothic mason could have possessed but little art
knowledge as compared with the modern architect, and yet with our
learned societies, wonderful libraries, easily obtained photographs and
plans of the best buildings in the world; with writers far superior in
intellectual acquirements to those of the Middle Ages, our vast wealth,
with our tools such as the mediaeval craftsman could never have dreamed
of, and with the experience of twenty centuries to guide us we have
made no advance during more than half a century. Our best architects
acknowledge that until we get a new method of building, originality in
architecture is an impossibility, mainly because all the existing styles
of architecture have been worked out to their legitimate conclusion,
and have been perfected under circumstances and conditions with which
we have entirely broken; the originality in detail which pervades and
permeates our Gothic buildings and gives them the greater part of their
charm, must, of necessity, be out of our reach until we blend the spirit
of what we are pleased to call our practical age, with a certain amount
of that spirit of poetry and romance, religious fervour and devoutness,
which animated the builders and craftsmen of the past.

[Illustration: A Typical Cornish Font.
Probably of the late Norman period. Now at Maker, near Plymouth.]

CHAPTER VIII.

CHURCH FURNITURE AND ORNAMENTS.

The most important part of the internal furniture of a church is the
altar, a name derived from the Latin _altare_, a high