210 THE STONES OF VENICE CONSTRUCTION

Northern Gothic, and the whole organisation of its system was destroyed by their unnecessary and lavish application on a diminished scale; until the buttress became actually confused with the shaft, and we find strangely crystallised masses of diminutive buttress applied, for merely vertical support, in the Northern tabernacle-work; while in some recent copies of it the principle has been so far distorted that the tiny buttressings look as if they carried the superstructure on the points of their pinnacles, as in the Cranmer memorial at Oxford.¹ Indeed, in most modern Gothic, the architects evidently consider buttresses as convenient breaks of blank surface, and general apologies for deadness of wall. They stand in the place of ideas, and I think are supposed also to have something of the odour of sanctity about them; otherwise one hardly sees why a warehouse seventy feet high should have nothing of the kind, and a chapel, which one can just get into with one’s hat off, should have a bunch of them at every corner; and worse than this, they are even thought ornamental when they can be of no possible use; and these stupid penthouse outlines are forced upon the eye in every species of decoration; in some of our modern chapels I have actually seen² a couple of buttresses at the end of every pew.

§ 12. It is almost impossible, in consequence of these unwise repetitions of it, to contemplate the buttress without some degree of prejudice; and I look upon it as one of the most justifiable causes of the unfortunate aversion with which many of our best architects regard the whole Gothic school. It may, however, always be regarded with respect, when its form is simple and its service clear; but no treason to Gothic can be greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to enhance the intricacies of structure, or occupy the vacuities of design.

¹ [The “Martyrs” Memorial,” built to commemorate the burning of Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer, was erected in 1851. The design by Sir Gilbert Scott is an imitation of the Eleanor Crosses.]

² [Ed. 1 reads: “; in St. Margaret’s Chapel, West St., there are actually a couple ...” The reference was presumably a mistake, for the chapel thus named cannot be identified, and in ed. 2 the passage was altered as in the text.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]