xxx INTRODUCTION

His own work so wretchedly? At the moment, whistling wind, calm luminous sky, and the black Devil cloud all contending for mastery.”

“April 21, 1876, ST. ALBANS.-Yesterday down here, enjoying Joanie’s and Arfie’s pleasure-fierce balck sky, and storm.”

“April 26, NEWARK.-Really quite bright, with the fine spire misty in morning light and domestic smoke only; at ten minutes to six, all clear and sweet; earlier, some rosy clouds across the spire behind, very heavenly. How different had they crossed a chimney! Yesterday here from Grantham, through terrific hail storm, at least sleet, hail, and wind, which Crawley thought would have upset the carriage. Ran down to see castle; pouring shower drove me under bridge. Lightning, sharp and bright, in black thundercloud, as we drove to Southwell, and in morning at Grantham.

“I am aghast at the vile state of English mind which the transition from Earliest English shows. Grantham is a wonderful church in proportion, and its early traceries are as fine as Rouen; its spire magnificently set on its four enormous piers, buttresses in exquisite proportion, and the two little gables on the ends of aisles cocked thus [sketch] towards it, with a difference of (I should think) between 8 feet and 9 on the sides, or at least 60 and 45 in angles. All this very fine; but the later window and door in centre have ball flowers, the most interesting I ever saw in quaint medlar-like twist and sourness (a base of oak leaves on right side of door, as if rolled up together by the wind, quite exquisite, and the ball flowers, not one like another, either varied in set of trefoil and depth [sketch], or richly carved and wreathed. Then along under the cornice on north side are the most monstrous and loathsome heads in clownish stupidity of leer, stare, squint, and grin, as in a seasickness of a ship of fools and diabolic swine, dying of cholera, that ever I saw in art; only just a little removed by a trace of humour, picturesqueness, and knotting into bosses and lumps from the last grotesques of Venice. Six or seven heads all in a heap at one place. Then, at Southwell, the utter stupidity of the heads meant to be human; the miserable attempts to be subtle without knowledge, and dexterous without feeling; the essentially hard, coarse, and vile touch through all the agony and vanity of Chinese effort; and the palpable inability to carve the body of any thing (that of men, never attempted-all English Gothic is mere boss and decapitation); and the beasts, mere logs with legs for lions, or ropes with scales for serpents-utterly gross and humiliating to one’s English soul.”

“May 2.-Yesterday a happy day at Ripon and Fountains. Truly nothing like that ever seen by me-showing what St. George can do. Variable rain and sunshine on its violets and anemones, but always the malignant power abiding; a grand thundrous sunset on bridge and shingle of the Swale.”

[Version 0.04: March 2008]