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

details with ceaseless zeal and perseverance’, it was necessary also to ‘associate them
with the sublimity and benignity of the Christian religion’, in order to achieve a full
appreciation of these ‘wonderful edifices’. 96 It was perhaps peculiar to Britton however
to choose the combination of ‘neatness and sacredness’ as their defining characteristic. 97
Figure 14 Salisbury Cathedral cloisters in The Cathedral
Antiquities
Figure 15 Salisbury Cathedral, by J M W Turner,
c1802
There can be no doubt that Britton remained intensely ‘romantic’, as much
committed to the subjective as the architectural experience of the Gothic even if, in his
anxiety to stimulate his readers’ sensibility, he left almost nothing to their imagination.
His insistence that they should derive every last element of benefit from the cathedral
might have struck even Dr Syntax as pedantically prescriptive. Dealing with the
obstinately uniform and ‘monotonous’ north front he explained how it could still be
enjoyed in a carefully timed visit:
When the morning sun lights up one side of the tower and eastern sides of the transepts, and tips the
pinnacles and other projections with sparkling gleams of brightness. At this time also the recesses are dark
and solemn, which enhances the grandeur, and augments the magnitude of the edifice. In the twilight of
evening, or when the moon is about forty-five degrees above the western horizon, and displays her silvery
96 Britton, The Cathedral Antiquities, 2, p.vii.
97 Britton, The Cathedral Antiquities, 2, p.77.
62