Note 1 — Chapter IV

Such seeming exceptions as the noble churches of St. John at Norwich and St. Philip at Arundel, the Duke of Newcastle's sumptuous chapel at Clumber, the impressive church of the Irvingites in Gordon Square, are only satisfactory in so far as they are more or less exact imitations of mediæval Gothic. The cloisters of Fort Augustus Abbey are beautiful because they are reproductions, from A. W. Pugin's note-books, of real live fifteenth-century tracery. The more the modern Gothic architect strives to be original (a hard saying, but a true one), the more certainly he fails. And to see how feebly ineffective even his imitations can be, one need only look at the entrance tower of St. Swithun's Quad at Magdalen, and compare it with the incomparable Founder's Tower immediately opposite.

Let me add that I have no animus against Downside in particular: it is merely an instance taken at random to illustrate my thesis. I had felt just the same, years before, about the first grandiose plans for our own church at Fort Augustus. "Go to Westminster Abbey—you can see it from your windows," I wrote to the architect, "and get an inspiration from that glorious temple of living Gothic. Your elaborate designs have no life, no reality. If they were ever realized among our Highland hills, I should expect some genie of the Arabian Nights to swoop down one day and whisk the whole impossible structure back to Victoria Street!" I still recall the pleasure and approval with which Dom Gilbert Dolan of Downside, one of the most distinguished of modern Benedictine architects, read this letter.