438 APPENDIX, 12

prayed and hoped and loved, through all the poverty of the maimed rites which it has retained-to them does the realisation of all their longing desires appear truly ravishing ... Oh! then, what delight! what joy unspeakable! when one of the solemn piles is presented to them in all its pristine life and glory!-the stoups are filled to the brim; the rood is raised on high; the screen glows with sacred imagery and rich device; the niches are filled; the altar is replaced, sustained by sculptured shafts, the relics of saints repose beneath, the Body of our Lord is enshrined on its consecrated stone; the lamps of the sanctuary burn bright; the saintly portratures in the glass windows shine all gloriously; and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the cope chests are filled with orphreyed baudekins; and pix and pax, and chrismatory are there, and thurible and cross.”

One might have put this man under a pix, and left him, one should have thought; but he has been brought forward, and partly received, as an example of the effect of ceremonial splendour on the mind of a great architect. It is very necessary, therefore, that all those who have felt sorrow at this should know at once that he is not a great architect, but one of the smallest possible or conceivable architects: and that by his own account and setting forth of himself. Hear him:

“I believe, as regards architecture, few men have been so unfortunate as myself. I have passed my life in thinking of fine things, studying fine things, designing fine things, and realising very poor ones. I have never had the chance of producing a single fine ecclesiastical building, except my own church, where I am both paymaster and architect, but everything else, either for want of adequate funds or injudicious interference and control, or some other contingency, is more or less a failure ... St. George’s was spoilt by the very instructions laid down by the committee, that it was to hold 3,000 people on the floor at a limited price; in consequence height, proportion, everything, was sacrificed to meet these conditions. Nottingham was spoilt by the style being restricted to lancet,-a period well suited to a Cistercian abbey in a secluded vale, but very unsuitable for the centre of a crowded town ... Kirkham was spoilt through several hundred pounds being reduced on the original estimate; to effect this, which was a great sum in proportion to the entire cost, the area of the church was contracted, the walls lowered, tower and spire reduced, the thickness of walls diminished and stone arches omitted” (Remarks, etc., by A. Welby Pugin: Dolman, 1850).

Is that so? Phidias can niche himself into the corner of a pediment, and Raffaelle expatiate within the circumference of a clay platter, but Pugin is inexpressible in less than a cathedral. Let his ineffableness be assured of this, once for all, that no difficulty or restraint ever happened to a man of real power, but his power was the more manifested in the contending with or conquering it; and that there is no field so small, no cranny so contracted, but that a great spirit can house and manifest itself therein. The thunder that smites the Alp into dust, can gather itself into the width of a golden wire. Whatever greatness there was in you, had it been Buonarroti’s own, you had room enough for it in a single niche; you might have put the whole power of it into two feet cube of Caen stone. St. George’s was not high enough for want of money? But was it want of money that made you put that blunt, overloaded, laborious ogee door into the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that you sunk that tracing of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags?

[Version 0.04: March 2008]