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 mediæval 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.'

Shadows rise around us as we write--dim reproachful shadows of an age of
unspeakable beauty in constructive art, and of (apparently)
unapproachable excellence in design; and the question recurs to us
again--Can we ever hope to compete with thirteenth-century buildings
whilst we lead nineteenth-century lives? It may not be in our
generation, but the time will assuredly come when, as has been well
remarked, 'the living vigour of humanity will break through the monotony
of modern arrangements and assert itself in new forms--forms which may
cause a new generation to feel less regret at being compelled to walk in
straight lines.'