Gardner, Percy: The principles of Greek art (London, 1924)

50 PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART chap, hi

qualities of the Greek construction. Human nature is a vast
thing of varied possibilities, and succeeding ages make the
work of this people and period or of that the most important
for progress. We must remember that our ancestors of the
seventeenth century considered a whitewashed barn a more
suitable house of prayer than a gorgeous cathedral. And the
Gothic cathedral, though it embodied the religion of the
northern races, was never appreciated by the ruling powers
of the Roman Church. The age of Napoleon attempted in the
Madeleine to adapt the forms of the Greek temple to Christian
worship. And though the Madeleine and other attempts of
the kind cannot be called successful, it would be rash to say that
when architecture once more succeeds in living fashion to pro-
duce a building really consonant with the religion of the
twentieth century, such a building will owe nothing to the
Parthenon.