Note 97 — Chapter XXX

One of the upper stories is also in Gally Knight’s plate represented as merely banded, and otherwise plain: it is, in reality, covered with as delicate inlaying as the rest. The whole front is besides out of proportion, and out of perspective, at once; and yet this work is referred to as of authority, by our architects. Well may our architecture fall from its place among the fine arts, as it is doing rapidly; nearly all our works of value being devoted to the Greek architecture, which is utterly useless to us—or worse. One most noble book, however, has been dedicated to our English abbeys,—Mr. E. Sharpe’s “Architectural Parallels”—almost a model of what I should like to see done for the Gothic of all Europe.