rest

The Reading of Ruskin Library Transcript T7A is ‘red’, but ‘rest’ seems preferable. The point is that all Gothic is characterised by an apparent upward movement. It had been made in The Lamp of Truth (Works, 8.61-2):

The resemblance in its shafts and ribs to the external relations of stems and branches, which has been the ground of so much foolish speculation, necessarily induces in the mind of the spectator a sense or belief of a correspondent internal structure, that is to say of a fibrous and continuous strength from the root into the limbs, and an elasticity communicated upwards sufficient for the support of the ramified portions. The ideas of the real conditions of a great weight of ceiling thrown upon certain narrow, jointed lines, which have a tendency partly to be crushed and partly to separate and be pushed outwards, is with difficulty received and the more so when the pillars would be, if unassisted too slight for the weight, and are supported by external flying buttresses, as in the apse of Beauvais, and other such achievements of the bolder Gothic.

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