Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/183

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In the Nineteenth Century. 153 ever humble, was considered complete without a classic portico. This rage for the imitation of classic forms was destined to give way before a passion for the revival of our national style of architecture, which led many, whose sympathies were with mediaeval rather than with antique thought, to reproduce the exquisite Gothic work of the middle ages, which had been so admirably suited to the ornate ritual of the Roman Catholic religion ; and with this desire was associated a reaction against the coldness of Protestant worship and the simplicity of Protestant churches. Once more symbolic painting and sculpture, and the varied accessories of a ritual form of worship, were introduced in Protestant churches, and felt to be in their place ; once more the screen separated the body of the congregation from the clergy, whilst the choir containing the altar was enriched with sculptures of mystic meaning, and glowed with many-coloured sacred pictures. Gothic spires and pinnacles became as common as Greek and Roman pedi- ments had been : but both the resuscitated styles, beautiful and appropriate as they had been as the spontaneous expression of national thought, were too often spiritless, cold, and wanting in vitality, when they were copied to order. To avoid confusion, we propose to notice the chief, first of the Classical, and then of the Gothic buildings of the 19th century. The new church of St. Pancras, built by Inwood between 1819 and 1822, almost immediately after the purchase of the Elgin marbles for the British Museum (1816), is a typical example of revived Greek. The Ionic order employed in it is a copy of the Erechtheum at Athens, also called the temple of Minerva Polias, and a