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A near quotation from Ruskin’s Milan Cathedral at Works, 2.377 [n/a]:
And slender in proportion fair,
Fretted with Gothic carving well,
Full many a spiry pinnacle.
It is entirely reasonable that Ruskin should change his mind on the basis of greater experience of Gothic, and to argue at Works, 35.117 that he had ‘not yet the taste to discern good Gothic from bad’. But Ruskin was seeking the conditions or laws of beauty (Notebook M2 p.3back) in order to resolve his dispute with the reviewers of Seven Lamps of Architecture, who sided with Woods' opinions about the ugliness of St. Marks and the Ducal Palace. Ruskin argues that Woods and the reviewers saw it as ‘completely the subject of opinion’, and sets that against his own ‘clear conviction that there was a law in this matter; that good architecture might be indisputably discerned and divided from bad’ (Works, 9.55-6). It is difficult to see how the experiences and the thinking which led Ruskin to change his mind differ from the Quaker version of 'theoria' set out by Woods as the basis for his judgments.
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[Version 0.05: May 2008]