journey to Italy to study art would follow the steps of the great Overbeck,[22] . . . they would indeed derive inestimable benefit.  Italian art of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries is the beau ideal of Christian purity, and its imitation cannot be too strongly inculcated; but when it forsook its pure, mystical, and ancient types, to follow those of sensual Paganism, it sunk to a fearful state of degradation.”

As a practising architect Pugin naturally received and executed many commissions for Catholic churches.  But the Catholic Church in England did much less, even in proportion to its resources, than the Anglican establishment towards promoting the Gothic revival.  Eastlake says that Pugin’s “strength as an artist lay in the design of ornamental detail”; and that he helped importantly in the revival of the mediaeval taste in stained glass, metal work, furniture, carpets, and paper-hangings.  Several of his works have to do with various departments of ecclesiology; chancel-screens, roodlofts, church ornaments, symbols and costumes, and the like.  But the only one that need here be mentioned is the once very influential “True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture” (1841).  This revival of ecclesiastical Gothic fell in with the reform of Anglican ritual, which was one of the features or sequences of the Oxford movement, and the two tendencies afforded each other mutual support.

Evidence of a newly awakened interest in mediaeval art is furnished by a number of works of a more systematic character which appeared about the middle of the century, dealing not only with architecture, but with the early schools of sculpture and painting.  One of these was “Sketches of the History of Christian Art” (3 vols., 1847) by Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, twenty-fifth Earl of Crawford.  In the preface to the reprint of this book in 1885, Lady Crawford speaks of it as a pioneer in an “early time of unawakened interest.”  Ruskin refers to it repeatedly—­always with respect—­and acknowledges in “Praeterita” that Lord Lindsay knew a great deal more about Italian art than he himself did.  The book reviews in detail the works of Christian builders, sculptors and painters, both in Italy and north of the Alps, from the time of the Roman catacombs and basilicas down to the Renaissance.  It gives likewise a history of Christian mythology, iconography and symbolism; all that great body of popular beliefs about angels, devils, saints, martyrs, anchorites, miracles, etc., which Protestant iconoclasm and the pagan spirit of the cinque-cento had long ago swept into the dust-bin as sheer idolatry and superstition.  Lord Lindsay’s treatment of these matters is reverential, though his own Protestantism is proof against their charm.  His tone is moderate; he has no quarrel with the Renaissance, and professes respect for classical art, which seems to him, however, on a lower spiritual plane than the Christian.