CHAMBERS' EDINBURGH JOURNAL
CONTENTS
THE MEDIÆVAL MANIA.
A LEGEND OF AMEN-CORNER.
DUST-SHOWERS AND RED-RAIN.
THE CITY INQUEST FOR THE POOR.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
SURVEYING VOYAGE OF THE RATTLESNAKE.
A CELEBRATED FRENCH CLOCKMAKER.
SAINT ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA.
A MAN-OF-WAR, OR A MAN OF PEACE.
NOTE TO INTENDING EMIGRANTS.
THE EMIGRANT'S MANUAL.
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, EDITORS OF 'CHAMBERS'SINFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE,' 'CHAMBERS'S EDUCATIONAL COURSE,' &c.
| No. 432. New Series. | SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1852. | Price 1½d. |
THE MEDIÆVAL MANIA.
History is said to be a series of reactions. Society, like a pendulum,first drives one way, and then swings back in the opposite direction.At present, we may be said to be returning at full speed towards ataste for everything old, neglected, and for ages despised. Scienceand refinement have had their day, and now rude nature and theelemental are to be in the ascendant. In our boyhood, we learned theRoman alphabet; but youngsters now had need to add a knowledge ofblack-letter, which is rapidly getting back into fashion. Perfectionis only to be found in the darkness and ignorance of the middle ages.
It is proper, no doubt, to get rid of what is tame and spiritless inart; and it must be owned that nearly everything that was done inarchitecture and decoration during the Georgian era was detestable.But it is one thing to reform, and another to revolutionise. Let us byall means go to nature for instruction; but nature under the exerciseof cultivated feeling—selecting what tends to ennoble and refine, notthat which degrades and sends us back to forms and ideas totally outof place in the nineteenth century, and which, for that very reason,can have nothing but a temporary reign, to be followed in thesucceeding age by a violent reaction.
On a former occasion, we drew attention to this tendency towardsmediævalism as regards ornamental design, and took the GreatExhibition to witness the fact. We have also pointed to that strangephenomenon, the rise anew of monastic institutions among us, longafter their object is accomplished, giving a spectre-like expressionto an obsolete id