Having arrived back in Paris, Robert was struck by a passage in the Second Preface
of 1855 :" For our own immediate purposes that of Notre-Dame of Paris is noblest of all;"
Ruskin had wished to correct in this preface to this second edition of the Seven Lamps, published in 1855, the impression he might have given that he put venitian gothic above every other style of architecture
So he writes: "
§ 8.... there is, I think, nothing in the text which I may not leave in the form in which it was originally written, without further comment, except only the expression of doubt (p. 258) as to the style which ought, at present, to be consistently adopted by our architects. I have now no doubt that the only style proper for modern Northern work, is the Northern Gothic of the thirteenth century, as exemplified, in England, pre-eminently by the cathedrals of Lincoln and Wells,1 and, in France, by those of Paris, Amiens, Chartres, Rheims, and Bourges, and by the transepts of that of Rouen.2
§ 9. I must here also deprecate an idea which is often taken up by hasty readers of the Stones of Venice; namely, that I suppose Venetian architecture the most noble of the schools of Gothic. I have great respect for Venetian
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 13
Gothic, but only as one among many early schools. My reason for devoting so much time to Venice, was not that her architecture is the best in existence, but that it exemplifies, in the smallest compass, the most interesting facts of architectural history. The Gothic of Verona is far nobler than that of Venice; and that of Florence nobler than that of Verona. For our own immediate purposes that of Notre-Dame of Paris is noblest of all;
The context of this passage is the following :
