Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

cathedral is illustrated [fig:12]. Having informed his readers that the remarkable thing
about Salisbury is its unity of design, Britton then chooses to illustrate it from the north
side where trees and houses break up exactly this ‘uniform, regular and systematic’ and
hence un-picturesque appearance. 92
Figure 12 Salisbury Cathedral from The Beauties of England and Wales
In The Cathedral Antiquities Britton has matured. Salisbury is presented in
splendid isolation from its immediate locality, both intellectually and visually. As he now
admitted: ‘Whilst most of the other great churches of England are obscured and almost
enveloped with houses, trees, and walls, that of Salisbury is detached from all extraneous
and disfiguring objects.’ 93 This time, instead of trying to intrude these objects to make
the scene conventionally picturesque as Gilpin would have described it, Britton’s more
developed eye and understanding found the qualities he admired within the architecture
itself, which now appeared in much fuller detail [fig: 13]. In the process the cathedral
ceases to be a feature in a picturesque landscape but becomes instead a landscape in
itself. Approached from the north-east, as Britton shows it:
92
Britton, The Beauties of England and Wales, 21, p. 166.
93
Britton, The Cathedral Antiquities, 2, p. 66.
60