' Nevertheless, we live in
certain hope of a more practical application of beauty and simplicity of
form, to the wants and requirements of our own day; and we believe that
it is possible to have both cheap and useful buildings, graceful in
form, and harmonious in colour and design.
But notwithstanding our admiration for the buildings of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, we are bound to confess that many of them,
both churches and dwellings, fail too often in essentials. Their
dwellings are often deficient in light and ventilation, and are built
with a lavish expenditure of materials; and their churches sometimes
fail in carrying out the very object for which they were constructed,
viz., the transmission of sound.
Still it is possible--as we have seen at Caen and Bayeux--to have
noble, gothic interiors which do not 'drown the voice' of the preacher;
and it is also possible--as we have seen in many towns in Normandy--to
build ornamental and healthy dwellings at a moderate cost. The
extraordinary adaptability of Gothic architecture over all other styles,
is a subject on which the general public is very ignorant, and with
which it has little sympathy. The mediaeval architect is a sad and
solitary man (who ever met a cheery one?), because his work is so little
understood; yet if he would only meet the enemy of expediency and
ugliness half-way, and condescend to teach us how to build not merely
_economically_, but well at the same time, he would no longer be 'the
waif and stray of an inartistic century.
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