This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ...farther details of the St. Mark's Rusticated, from a London club-house. architecture, and also some illustration of the value of the shafts as large jewels, will be found in Appendix 9, "Shafts of St. Mark's." Here I must pass on to the second part of our immediate subject, namely, the inquiry how far the exquisite and varied ornament of St. Mark's fits it, as a temple, for its sacred purpose, and would be applicable in the churches of modern times. We have here evidently two questions: the first, that wide and continually agitated one, whether richness of ornament be right in churches at all; the second, whether the ornament of St. Mark's be of a truly ecclesiastical and Christian character. § Lr. In the first chapter of the ' Seven Lamps of Architecture ' I endeavoured to lay before the reader some reasons why churches ought to be richly adorned, as being the only places in which the desire of offering a portion of all precious things to God could be legitimately expressed. But I left wholly untouched the question whether the church, as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its purposes by possessing it. This question I would now ask the reader to deal with briefly and candidly. The chief difficulty in deciding it has arisen from its being always presented to us in an unfair form. It is asked of us, or we ask of ourselves, whether the sensation which we now feel in passing from our own modern dwelling-house, through a newly built street, into a cathedral of the thirteenth century, he safe or desirable as a preparation for public worship. But we never ask whether that sensation was at all calculated upon by the builders of the cathedral. § Lii. Now I do not say that the contrast of the ancient with the modern...
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