Fashion, on the plea of
"good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the
paltry gewgaws of a day,--marble ribbons, metallic plumes, a veritable
leprosy of egg-shaped moldings, of volutes, wreaths, draperies, spirals,
fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds, lusty cupids, and bloated cherubs,
which began to ravage the face of art in the oratory of Catherine de
Medici, and destroyed it, two centuries later, tortured and distorted, in
the Dubarry's boudoir.
There are thus, to sum up the points to which we have alluded, three sorts
of scars now disfiguring Gothic architecture; wrinkles and warts upon the
epidermis--these are the work of time; wounds, brutal injuries, bruises,
and fractures--these are the work of revolution, from Luther to Mirabeau;
mutilations, amputations, dislocations of the frame, "restorations,"--
these are the Greek, Roman barbaric work of professors according to
Vitruvius and Vignole. Academies have murdered the magnificent art which
the Vandals produced. To centuries, to revolutions which at least laid
waste with impartiality and grandeur, are conjoined the host of scholastic
architects, licensed and sworn, degrading all they touch with the
discernment and selection of bad taste, substituting the tinsel of Louis
XV.
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