PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION¹

[1874]

1. No book of mine has had so much influence on contemporary art as the Stones of Venice;² but this influence has been possessed only by the third part of it, the remaining two- thirds having been resolutely ignored by the British public. And as a physician would, in most cases, rather hear that his patient had thrown all his medicine out of the window, than that he had sent word to his apothecary to leave out two of its three ingredients, so I would rather, for my own part, that no architects had ever condescended to adopt one of the views suggested in this book, than that any should have made the partial use of it which has mottled our manufactory chimneys with black and red brick, dignified our banks and drapers’ shops with Venetian tracery, and pinched our parish churches into dark and slippery arrangements for the advertisement of cheap coloured glass and pantiles.

2. On last Waterloo day, I was driving through Ealing towards Brentford just as the sun set after the thunderous rain which the inhabitants of the district must very clearly recollect, and as I was watching the red light fade through the gaps left between the rows of new houses which spring up everywhere, nowadays, as unexpectedly as the houses in a pantomime, I was startled by suddenly finding, between me and the evening sky, a piece of Italian Gothic in the style of its best time.

¹ [Headed “Preface to New Edition” in ed. 3. Reprinted as above in all subsequent editions of the complete work. The numbering of the paragraphs is here inserted for convenience of reference.]

² [See on this subject the Introduction to the next volume.]

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[Version 0.04: March 2008]