There are few scholars who have addressed the Gothic age of art and architecture with the thoroughness of William Whewell, best known for this masterly volume Architectural Notes on German Churches. His notes, then, in regards to the Gothic movement specific to Germany, can be easily applied to the parallel history of all things Gothic in England as well. At any rate, as Whewell would have it, the pointed arch, perhaps the most distinctive Gothic feature common to the decorative churches arose from the necessity of arches of equal height to span vastly disparate widths. This change gradually led to other structural characteristics of Gothic, "in proportion as the idea, or internal principle of unity and harmony in the newer works, became clear and single." Meantime the "characteristic forms" corresponding to the Classical idea were "horizontal, reposing, definite," those corresponding to the Gothic idea were "vertical, aspiring, indefinite." Further more, if there is one feature that unties the entire body of architecture, again, according to William Whewell, it was “the predominant sway of the vertical lines.�
Whewell’s work greatly helped to frame a system that helped define Gothic architecture, so that a kind of Gothic-specific model developed which was of course modified and perfected over time.
Careful not to pin too much on various obvious features, such as the pointed arch, he attempts really to put forth the philosophical aspects of the Gothic, the shortcomings of construction against the much grander and more meaningful principles of harmony.
Meantime, a peer and nemesis, a fabled intellectual called John Ruskin, was busy writing such works as WORKS and MODERN PAINTERS III, which rather than codify any system or meaningful universal structure for others to hold on to, he became obsessed with the notion that the terms Objective and Subjective were poppycock, and with brilliant wit and formidable eloquence, he, John Ruskin, calls into question anything like a systematic uniformity, and in short turns Whewells careful study into a dubious undertaking—a shabby hobby!
An independent group knows as the Camden Society, was organized by some feisty Trinity undergrads who seem to take the methodology of Whewell and strangely couple it with the intellectualizg of Ruskin, and they observed both what had come before and were instrumental in planning on-going renovations to, for example, the Church of Great St. Mary’s, The University Church. Despite gifted men that Whewell admired, adding their own gifts of Ecclesiological brilliance, it all came down to a much too ostentatious pulpit which obscured the altar and therefore, according Whewell, the purist, and managed to completely overlook the core function of the church in the first place and therefore greatly distort critical values. In the end, the political struggle was so intense it came to pass that the renovations, inasmuch as they diluted the fundamental purpose of the Church as a place of worship, as opposed to some architectural show of material pomp and circumstance, were canceled.
In 1838, Whewell coined the poem below, to define once and for all what he deemed to be a true Gothic structure and not some wild out of control nightmare as he referred to the churches of Northern Europe. They should be, he said, “proportion’d, simple, and symmetrical.� And so:
behold! each shaft Bore its own burden in that branched vault, And all that ponderous mass was firm upheld By staves, each staff apportioned to its load. And when again the eye from floor to roof Had traveled up the pillar's side,--behold! Those oblique shafts retired had each its load, Each its due portion of that stony frame, Yet ordered all beneath that pillar'd vault.