o, the explanation must be Ruskinian:architecture as a vehicle for the decorative arts, eclectic, didactic;plus a special Burgesian gloss: architecture as fantasy, architectureas fun

Now Burges’s fascination with Islamic art was by nomeans unique. The Paris Exhibitions of 1867 and 1878 had arousedcuriosity about the style,® not least in the mind of Ludwig II ofBavaria.

bout the middle of the nineteenth century two attitudestowards restoration were in conflict: the destructive and theconservative. Burges supported the conservative

urges made.no secret of his admiration for Viollet-le-Duc,at least as regards the Frenchman’s scholarship. He regarded theDictionnaire —‘that wonderful monument of human knowledgeand human industry’” — as quite invaluable.

rench Gothicwas nobler, cheaper and characteristic of the modern age.‘The distinguishing characteristics of the Englishmen of thenineteenth century’, Burges concludes, ‘are our immense railwayand engineering works, our line-of-battle ships, our good andstrong machinery .. . our free constitution, our unfettered press,and our trial by jury... . [No] style of architecture can be moreappropriate to such a people than that which . . . is characterisedby boldness, breadth, strength, sternness, and virility

hereas ‘the French architect of the same periodlooked more to the effect and less to the section; he left moreplain surfaces ... thus his mouldings, where he did use them, havea more telling effect’..

Early French, however, ‘is a style which verynearly answers our conditions, and if we go a little further backand examine what is called the Transition style, as developed inEngland and France, but especially the latter, we shall find almosteverything we want.

In the eyes of ecclesiologists their greatest achievementhad been to rescue the Gothic Revival from the smear of Popery.Pugin — that ‘wonderful man’, as Burges always thought of him— had tainted the movement with a whiff of incense. Ruskinsupplied an anti-papal deodorant.

The repeal of the brick tax in 1850 gave the new fashiona flying sta

Burges’s approach to religion was aesthetic rather thantheological. He was not christened until he was thirteen.

t it is Burges’s collection of medieval MSS which wouldnow be deemed a veritable treasure-hoard.

‘Money,’ he noted firmly, ‘is onlya secondary concern in the production of first-rate works. . . .There are no bargains in art.

y his mid-thirties Burges was — in architectural circles atleast — an international figure. He had travelled more widelythan any of his contemporaries. His learning was incontestable.His eclecticism was more broadly based than any of hisrivals; Romanesque, Gothic, Islamic, Greek, Japanese — evenFlorentine and Francois Premier — were all grist to his mill.His Gothic dreams were images of geniu

e had realised that what wasneeded was a collection of measured medieval details: ‘a sort ofgrammar of thirteenth-century architecture.’

Gothic ‘architecture was (and it always must be) eminently anarchitecture of figures and subjects ... part .. . [of] the greatpoem of Christian art’

urges looked about Victoria’s London, and looked in vainfor colour. Exterior polychromy seemed almost a lost art.’

In other words, the Pre-Raphaelite reaction againstacademicism, and the reaction of Puginian Gothic against thePicturesque, stemmed from a similar — if dog-eared — aestheticimpulse: the pursuit of truth

urges accepted Pre-Raphaelite principles implicitly. Thesehe defined — rather naively — as ‘to copy nature carefully, to usepleasant bright colours, and to give sentiment to the figures’.

The magic of the Orient was certainly part of the HighVictorian Dream.

Such catholicity was too much for most Victorian Goths

‘infinitely better than any eitherin Paris or in London.” And individual mosques were stillmagnificent. Particular houses were still occasionally deckedout in characteristic gold and r

Burges regarded travel as essential for any young architect. ‘Allarchitects should travel,’ he believed, ‘but more especially the art-architect; to him it is absolutely necessary to see how various artproblems have been resolved in different ages by different men.’

ith Clutton he travelled in France in the year of the GreatExhibition, making sketches for Clutton’s book on The Domes

In the early 1850s Burges was known less as an architectthan as an archaeologist.

s an articled pupil, Burges pored over books by JohnCarter and A. W. Pugin.

At the age of seventeenhe was already mixing with the vanguard of the Gothic Revival

sengineer to the Bute Docks at Cardiff, he was in a position tointroduce his son to the greatest patron in the history of theGothic Revival, the 3rd Marquess of Bute.

Alfred Burges was a rich man: he died worth £113,000, mostlyin railway stock. It was he who made possible his son’saesthetic lifestyl

lfred Burges presented hisson with a copy of Pugin’s Con¢rasts on his fourteenth birthday

“That wonderful man, asBurges called him,” was the lodestar of a generation of Goths

t is, therefore, in the realm of political ratherthan artistic theory that we must first look for the origins of HighVictorian aesthetics

High Victorian art and architecture lasted little more thantwenty years: the customary dates are 1851 to 1870

t wasa dream born in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, in thehopelessness of the Hungry Forties

Theirs was a longing — far stronger than mere nostalgia— for a world of magic and fixed values; a yearning for stability inan age of change