reasons for the decline of church architecture.  It had become, for very want of exercise, an almost forgotten art.  In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the work of building churches had been prosecuted with lavish munificence; so much so, that the Reformed Church succeeded to an inheritance more than doubly sufficient for its immediate wants.[840] A period, therefore, of great activity in this respect was followed by one of nearly total cessation.  In England no church was erected of the smallest pretensions to architectural design between the Reformation and the great fire of London in 1666, with the solitary exception of the small church in Covent Garden, erected by Inigo Jones in 1631.[841] ’During the eighty years that elapsed from the death of Henry VIII. to the accession of Charles I., the transition style left its marks in every corner of England in the mansions of the nobility and gentry, and in the colleges and schools which were created out of the confiscated funds of the monasteries; but, unfortunately for the dignity of this style, not one church, nor one really important public building or regal palace, was erected during the period which might have tended to redeem it from the utilitarianism into which it was sinking.  The great characteristic of this epoch was, that during its continuance architecture ceased to be a natural mode of expression, or the occupation of cultivated intellects, and passed into the state of being merely the stock in trade of certain professional experts.  Whenever this is so, ’Addio Maraviglia!’[842] The reign of Puritanism was of course wholly unfavourable to the art; the period of laxity that followed was no less so.  Even Wren, of whose comprehensive genius Englishmen have every reason to speak with pride, formed, in the first instance, a most inadequate conception of what a Christian Church should be.  ’The very theory of the ground plan for a church had died out, when he constructed his first miserable design for a huge meeting-house.’[843]

Before the eighteenth century, Gothic architecture had already fallen into utter disrepute.  Sir Henry Wotton, fresh from his embassies in Venice, had declared that such was the ‘natural imbecility’ of pointed arches, and such ‘their very uncomeliness,’ that they ought to be ’banished from judicious eyes, among the reliques of a barbarous age.’[844] Evelyn, lamenting the demolition by Goths and Vandals of the stately monuments of Greek and Roman architecture, spoke of the mediaeval buildings which had risen in their stead, as if they had no merits to redeem them from contempt—­’congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy and monkish piles, without any proportion, use, or beauty,’[845] deplorable instances of pains and cost lavishly expended, and resulting only in distraction and confusion.  Sir Christopher Wren said of the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages, that they were ’vast and gigantic buildings indeed, but not worthy the name of architecture.’[846]