The mature Gothic Revival, as has been said, is more anti-Picturesque than Picturesque, at least in the realm of theory; as a writer in _The Ecclesiologist_ expressed the matter succinctly, ‘The true picturesque derives from the sternest utility.’ Yet the revived Gothic could only be expected to appeal widely to architects and to a public who had long fully accepted the Picturesque point of view. All its irregularity and variety of silhouette, its plastically complex organization and its colouristic decoration, its textural exploitation of various traditional and even near-rustic materials is profoundly opposed to the clear and cool ideals of Romantic Classicism, but fully consonant with the Picturesque. The significance of the English Gothic Revival of the thirties and forties is manifold, and no two critics will agree how to assess it. Certainly the functional doctrines of the Revival and its renewed devotion to honest expression of real construction remain of great importance, even though much of this runs parallel to—if, indeed, it does not follow from—the more rationalistic aspects of Romantic Classical theory. In this way the Revival made a positive historical contribution, if not perhaps as new and original a one as has sometimes been maintained in recent years. Negatively, the English Gothic Revival was clearly of very great effectiveness as a solvent, not only of the rigidities and conventionalities of Romantic Classicism, but also of the older and deeper Classical traditions that had been revived by the Renaissance and maintained for several centuries. The lack of an equally effective solvent on the Continent helps to explain why the revolutionary developments of the next period, particularly in the domestic and in the commercial fields, were so largely Anglo-American.