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PLATE IX.—{F7^ontispiece—Yol. V.) Tracery from the Campanile of Giotto at Florence
St. /FC>arl?'6 BMtion
THE
Seven Lamps of Architecture
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE
BY
JOHN RUSKIN
Mitf) 3mu0trati0n!3
BOSTON DANA ESTES & COMPANY
Successors to Estes & Lauriat publishers
Limited to One Thousand Copies, of which this is
m 344
SEP 5 1955
CONTENTS.
SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE.
Preface .......
Introduction ......
CHAPTER I. The Lamp of Sacrifice .....
IS
CHAPTER II, The Lamp of Truth . . . . . . 34
CHAPTER IIL The Lamp of Power ...... 69
CHAPTER IV. The Lamp of Beauty ...... 100
CHAPTER V. The Lamp of Life ....... 142
CHAPTER VL The Lamp of Memory . . ... 167
CHAPTER VII. The Lamp of Obedience ...... 188
Notes ........ 203
LECTURES DN ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING
Preface . . . . , , , . 213
Lecture I. . . . , . . . . 217
Lecture II. ...... . 248
Addenda to Lectures I. and II. . . o . 270
Lecture III. Turner and his Works . . , 287
Lecture IV. Pre-Raphaelitism . . . . • 311
Addenda to Lecture IV. ..... 334
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.
An Inquiry into the Study of Architecture . . 339
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE
PLATE FACE
I. Ornaments from Rouen, St. Lo, and Venice . 33
II. Part of the Cathedral of St. Lo, Normandy . 55
III. Traceries from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen and Beavais 60
IV. Intersectional Mouldings 66
V. Capital from the Lower Arcade of the Doge's
Palace, Venice 88
VI. Arch from the Facade of the Church of San
Michele at Lucca 90
VII. Pierced Ornaments from Lisieux, Bayeux, Verona,
and Padua 93
VIII. Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice . . 95 IX. Tracery from the Campanile of Giotto, at Flor- ence. Frontispiece,
X. Traceries AND Mouldings FROM Rouen AND Salisbury 122
XI. Balcony in the Campo, St. Benedetto, Venice . 131
XII. Fragments from Abbeville, Lucca, Venice and Pisa 149
XIII. Portions of an Arcade on the South Side of the
Cathedral of Ferrara 161
XIV. Sculptures from the Cathedral of Rouen . . 165
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING
Plate I. Figs, i, 3 and 5. Illustrative Diagrams . 219
" II, " 2. Window in Oakham Castle . . .221 " III. " 4 and 6. Spray of ash-tree, AND improvement
of the SAME ON GrEEK PRINCIPLES . 226
PAGE
Plate IV. Fig. 7. Window in Dumblane Cathedral . 231
" V. " 8. Medieval Turret 235
«« VI. " 9 and 10. LOMBARDIC ToWERS ... 238
" VII. " II AND 12. Spires AT CoNTANCEs AND Rouen 240
" VIII. " 13 AND 14. Illustrative Diagrams . . 253 " IX. " 15, Sculpture AT Lyons . . . .254
" X. " 16. Niche at Amiens 255
" XI. *' 17 AND 18. Tiger's Head, and improvement
OF THE same on GREEK PRINCIPLES . 258
" XII. " 19, Garret Window in Hotel de Bourgthe-
ROUDE o 265
" XIII. " 20 AND 21. Trees, as drawn in the thir- teenth CENTURY .... 294
'* XIV. " 22. Rocks, as drawn by the school of Leon- ardo DA Vinci 296
" XV. " 23. Boughs of Trees, after Titian . . 298
THE
SEVEN LAMPS
OF
ARCHITECTURE
PEEFAOE,
The memoranda which form the basis of the following Essay have been thrown together during the preparation of one of the sections of the third volume of " Modern Paint- ers." * I once thought of giving them a more expanded form ; but their utility, such as it may be, would probably be dimin- ished by farther delay in their publication, more than it would be increased by greater care in their arrangement. Obtained in every case by personal observation, there may be among them some details valuable even to the experienced architect ; but with respect to the opinions founded upon them I must be prepared to bear the charge of impertinence which can hardly but attach to the writer who assumes a dogmatical tone in speaking of an art he has never practised. There are, how- ever, cases in which men feel too keenly to be silent, and per- haps too strongly to be wrong ; I have been forced into this impertinence ; and have suffered too much from the destruc- tion or neglect of the architecture I best loved, and from the erection of that which I cannot love, to reason cautiously re-
* The inordinate delay in the appearance of that supplementary vol- ume has, indeed, been chiefly owing to the necessity under which the writer felt himself, of obtaining as many memoranda as possible of mediaeval buildings in Italy and Normandy, now in process of destruction, before that destruction should be consummated by the Restorer or Rev- olutionist. His whole time has been lately occupied in taking drawings from one side of buildings, of which masons were knocking down the other ; nor can he yet pledge himself to any time for the publication of the conclusion of "Modern Painters;" he can only promise that its delay shall not be owing to any indolence on his part.
6 PREFACE.
specting the modesty of my opposition to the principles which have induced the scorn of the one, or directed the design of the other. And I have been the less careful to modify the confidence of my statements of principles, because in the midst of the opposition and uncertainty of our architectural systems, it seems to me that there is something grateful in any positive opinion, though in many points wrong, as even weeds are use- ful that grow on a bank of sand.
Every apology is, however, due to the reader, for the hasty and imperfect execution of the plates. Having much more serious work in hand, and desiring merely to render them illustrative of my meaning, I have sometimes very completely failed even of that humble aim ; and the text, being generally written before the illustration was completed, sometimes naively describes as sublime or beautiful, features which the plate represents by a blot. I shall be grateful if the reader will in such cases refer the expressions of praise to the Archi- tecture, and not to the illustration.
So far, however, as their coarseness and rudeness admit, the plates are valuable ; being either copies of memoranda made upon the spot, or (Plates IX. and XI.) enlarged and adapted from Daguerreotypes, taken under my own superin- tendence. Unfortunately, the great distance from the ground of the window which is the subject of Plate IX. renders even the Daguerreotype indistinct ; and I cannot answer for the accuracy of any of the mosaic details, more especially of those which surround the window, and which I rather imagine, in the original, to be sculptured in relief. The general propor- tions are, however, studiously preserved ; the spirals of the shafts are counted, and the effect of the whole is as near that of the thing itself, as is necessary for the purposes of illustra- tion for which the plate is given. For the accuracy of the rest I can answer, even to the cracks in the stones, and the number of them ; and though the looseness of the drawing, and the picturesque character which is necessarily given by an endeavor to draw old buildings as they actually appear, may perhaps diminish their credit for architectural veracity, they will do so unjustly.
PREFACE. 7
The system of lettering adopted in the few instances in wMch sections have been given, appears somewhat obscure in the references, but it is convenient upon the whole. The line which marks the direction of any section is noted, if the sec- tion be symmetrical, by a single letter ; and the section itself by the same letter with a line over it, a. — a. But if the sec- tion be unsymmetrical, its direction is noted by two letters, a. a. a^ at its extremities ; and the actual section by the same letters with lines over them, a. a. a^ , at the corresponding ex- tremities.
The reader will perhaps be surprised by the small number of buildings to which reference has been made. But it is to be remembered that the following chapters pretend only to be a statement of principles, illustrated each by one or two examples, not an essay on European architecture ; and those examples I have generally taken either from the buildings which I love best, or from the schools of architecture which, if appeared to me, have been less carefully described than they deserved. I could as fully, though not with the accuracy and certainty derived from personal observation, have illustrated the principles subsequently advanced, from the architecture of Egypt, India, or Spain, as from that to which the reader will find his attention chiefly directed, the Italian Romanesque and Gothic. But my affections, as weU as my experience, led me to that line of richly varied and magnificently intellec- tual schools, which reaches, like a high watershed of Christian architecture, from the Adriatic to the Northumbrian seas, bordered by the impure schools of Spain on the one hand, and of Germany on the other : and as culminating points and centres of this chain, I have considered, first, the cities of the Val d'Arno, as representing the Italian Romanesque and pure Italian Gothic ; Venice and Verona as representing the Itahan Gothic colored by Byzantine elements ; and Rouen, with the associated Norman cities, Caen, Bayeux, and Coutances, as rep- resenting the entire range of Northern architecture from the Romanesque to Flamboyant.
I could have wished to have given more examples from our -early English Gothic ; but I have always found it impossible
8 PRE F ACS.
to work in the cold interiors of our cathedrals, while the dailj services, lamps, and fumigation of those upon the Continent, render them perfectly safe. In the course of last summer I undertook a pilgrimage to the English Shrines, and began with Salisbury, where the consequence of a few days' work was a state of weakened health, which I may be permitted to name among the causes of the slightness and imperfection of the present Essay.
mTEODTJCTOEY.
Some years ago, in conversation with an artist whose workSs perhaps, alone, in the present day, unite perfection of drawing with resplendence of color, the writer made some inquiry re- specting the general means by which this latter quality was most easily to be attained. The reply was as concise as it was comprehensive — '• Know what you have to do, and do it " — comprehensive, not only as regarded the branch of art to which it temporarily applied, but as expressing the great principle of success in every direction of human effort ; for I believe that failure is less frequently attributable to either in- sufficiency of means or impatience of labor, than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done ; and therefore, while it is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, that men propose to themselves a perfection ' of any kind, which reason, temperately consulted, might have shown to be impossible with the means at their command, it is a more dangerous error to permit the consideration of means to interfere with our conception, or, as is not impossible, even hinder our acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in themselves. And this is the more cautiously to be remem- bered ; because, while a man's sense and conscience, aided by Kevelation, are always enough, if earnestly directed, to enable him to discover what is right, neither his sense, nor conscience, :ior feeling, are ever enough, because they are not intended, to determine for him what is possible. He knows neither his own strength nor that of his fellows, neither the exact depend- ence to be placed on his allies nor resistance to be expected from his opponents. These are questions respecting which passion may warp his conclusions, and ignorance must limit
10 INTRODUCTORY,
them ; but it is his own fault if either interfere with the ap prehension of duty, or the acknowledgment of right. And, aa far as I have taken cognizance of the causes of the many fail- ures to which the efforts of intelligent men are liable, more especially in matters political, they seem to me more largely to spring from this single error than from all others, that the inquiry into the doubtful, and in some sort inexplicable, re- lations of capability, chance, resistance, and inconvenience, in- variably precedes, even if it do not altogether supersede, the determination of what is absolutely desirable and just. Nor is it any wonder that sometimes the too cold calculation of our powers should reconcile us too easily to our shortcomings, and even lead us into the fatal error of supposing that our conjectural utmost is in itself well, or, in other words, that the necessity of offences renders them inoffensive.
What is true of human polity seems to me not less so of the distinctively political art of Architecture. I have long felt con- vinced of the necessity, in order to its progress, of some de- termined effort to extricate from the confused mass of partial traditions and dogmata with which it has become encumbered during imperfect or restricted practice, those large principles of right which are applicable to every stage and style of it. Uniting the technical and imaginative elements as essentially as humanity does soul and body, it shows the same infirmly balanced liability to the prevalence of the lower part over the higher, to the interference of the constructive, Avith the purity and simplicity of the reflective, element. This tendency, like every other form of materialism, is increasing with the advance of the age ; and the only laws which resist it, based upon partial precedents, and already regarded with disrespect as decrepit, if not with defiance as tyrannical, are evidently in- applicable to the new forms and functions of the art, which the necessities of the day demand. How man}'^ these necessities may become, cannot be conjectured ; they rise, strange and impatient, out of every modern shadow of change. How far it may be possible to meet them without a sacrifice of the es- sential characters of architectural art, cannot be determined by specific calculation or observance. There is no law, no
INTRODUCTORY. 11
principle, based on past practice, which may not be overthrown in a moment, by the arising of a new condition, or the inven- tion of a new material ; and the most rational, if not the only, mode of averting the danger of an utter dissolution of all that is systematic and consistent in our practice, or of ancient au- thority in our judgment, is to cease for a little while, our en- deavors to deal vdth the multiplying host of particular abuses, restraints, or requirements ; and endeavor to determine, as the guides of every effort, some constant, general, and irre- fragable laws of right — laws, which based upon man's nature, not upon his knowledge, may possess so far the unchangeable- ness of the one, as that neither the increase nor imperfection of the other may be able to assault or invalidate them.
There are, perhaps, no such laws peculiar to any one art Their range necessarily includes the entire horizon of man's action. But they have modified forms and operations belong- ing to each of his pursuits, and the extent of their authority cannot surely be considered as a diminution of its weight. Those peculiar aspects of them which belong to the first of the arts, I have endeavored to trace in the following pages ; and since, if truly stated, they must necessarily be, not only safe- guards against every form of error, but sources of every meas- ure of success, I do not think that I claim too much for them in calling them the Lamps of Ai'chitecture, nor that it is indo- lence, in endeavoring to ascertain the true nature and nobihty of their fire, to refuse to enter into any curious or special ques- tioning of the innumerable hindrances by which their light has been too often distorted or overpowered.
Had this farther examination been attempted, the work would have become certainly more invidious, and perhaps less useful, as liable to errors which are avoided by the present simplicity of its plan. Simple though it be, its extent is too great to admit of any adequate accomplishment, unless by a devotion of time which the writer did not feel justified in with- drawing from branches of inquiry in which the prosecution of works already undertaken has engaged him. Both arrange- ments and nomenclature are those of convenience rather than of system ; the one is arbitrary and the other illogical : nor is
12 INTRODUCTORY.
it pretended that all, or even the greater number of, the prfn*
ciples necessary to the well-being of the art, are included in the inquiry. Many, however, of considerable importance will be found to develope themselves incidentally from those more specially brought forward.
Graver apology is necessary for an apparently graver fault. It has been just said, that there is no branch of human work whose constant laws have not close analogy with those which govern every other mode of man's exertion. But, more than this, exactly as we reduce to greater simplicity and surety any one group of these practical laws, we shall find them passiDg the mere condition of connection or analogy, and becoming the actual expression of some ultimate nerve or fibre of the mighty laws which govern the moral world. However mean or inconsiderable the act, there is something in the well doing of it, which has fellowship with the noblest forms of manly virtue ; and the truth, decision, and temperance, which we reverently regard as honorable conditions of the spiritual being, have a representative or derivative influence over the works of the hand, the movements of the frame, and the action of the intellect.
And as thus every action, down even to the drawing of a line or utterance of a syllable, is capable of a peculiar dignity in the manner of it, which we sometimes express by saying it is truly done (as a line or tone is true), so also it is capable of dignity still higher in the motive of it. For there is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore ; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. Hence George Herbert —
"A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine ; Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, Makes that and the action fine."
Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act or manner of acting, we have choice of two separate lines of ar-
INTRODUCTORY. 13
gument : one based on representation of the expediency or inherent value of the work, which is often small, and always disputable ; the other based on proofs of its relations to the higher orders of human virtue, and of its acceptableness, so far as it goes, to Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is commonly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly the more conclusive ; only it is liable to give offence, as if there were irreverence in adducing considerations so weighty in treating subjects of small temporal importance. I believe, however, that no error is more thoughtless than this. We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or in- sult Him by taking it into our own hands ; and what is true of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most reverently when most habitually : our insolence is in ever acting without reference to it, our true honoring of it is in its universal application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing ; but my excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in our lives. The snow, the vapor, and the stormy wind fulfil His word. Ai'e our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these — that we should forget it ?
I have therefore ventiu^ed, at the risk of giving to some passages the appearance of irreverence, to take the higher line of argument wherever it appeared clearly traceable : and this, I would ask the reader especially to observe, not merely because I think it the best mode of reaching ultimate truth, still less because I think the subject of more importance than many others ; but because every subject should surely, at a period like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years that approach us is as solemn aa it is full of mystery ; and the weight of evil against which we
14 INTRODUCTORY.
have to contend, is increasing like the letting out of. water. It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics, or the entertain- ment of the arts. The blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder, and its miseries heaped heavier every day ; and if, in the midst of the exertion which every good man is called upon to put forth for their repression or reUef, it is lawful to ask for a thought, for a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any direction but that of the immediate and overwhelming need, it is at least incumbent upon us to approach the questions in which we would engage him, in the spirit which has become the habit of his mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness may be checked by the withdrawal of an hour which has shown him how even those things which seemed mechanical, indififerent, or contemptible, depend for their perfection upon the acknowledgment of the sacred prin- ciples of faith, truth, and obedience, for which it has become the occupation of his life to contend.
THE
SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE.
CHAPTEK I.
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.
I. Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that the sight oi 1/ them contributes to his mental health, power and pleasure.
It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to distin- guish carefully between Ai'chitecture and Building. 1/
To build, literally to confirm, is by common understanding to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable size. Thus we have church build- ing, house building, ship building, and coach building. That one edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever other name their work may justify ; but building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects ; and it is no more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it to receive and contain with comfort a required number of persons occupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture which makes a carriage com- modious or a ship swift. I do not, of course, mean that the word is not often, or even may not be legitimately, applied in such a sense (as we speak of naval architecture) ; but in that sense architecture ceases to be one of the fine arts, and it is therefore better not to run the risk, by loose nomenclature, of the confusion which would arise, and has often arisen, from
16 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.
extending principles which belong altogether to building, into the sphere of architecture proper.
Let us, therefore, at once confine the name to that art which, taking up and admitting, as conditions of its workingj^ the necessities and common uses of the building, impresses on its form certain characters venerable or beautiful, but other- wise unnecessary. Thus, I suppose, no one would call the laws architectural which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a bastion. But if to the stone facing of that bastion be added an unnecessary feature, as a cable moulding, that is Architecture. It would be similarly unreasonable to call battlements or machicolations architectural features, so long as they consist only of an advanced gallery supported on projecting masses, with open intervals beneath for offence. But if these projecting masses be carved beneath into rounded courses, which are useless, and if the headings of the intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless, that is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line so sharply and simply, because there are few buildings which have not some pretence or color of being architectural ; neither can there be any architecture which is not based on building, nor any good architecture which is not based on good building ; but it is perfectly easy and very necessary to keep the ideas dis- tinct, and to understand fully that Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of. an edifice which are above and beyond its common use. I say common ; because a building raised to the honor of God, or in memory of men, has surely a use to which its architectural adornment fits it ; but not a use which limits, by any inevitable necessities, its plan or details.
n. Architecture proper, then, naturally arranges itself un- der five heads : —
Devotional ; including all buildings raised for God's ser- vice or honor.
Memorial ; including both monuments and tombs.
Civil ; including every edifice raised by nations or societies, for purposes of common business or pleasure.
Military ; including aU private and public architecture of defence.
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. Vt
Domestic ; including every rank and kind of dwelling-place.
Now, of the principles which I would endeavor to develope, while all must be, as I have said, applicable to every stage and style of the art, some, and especially those which are exciting rather than directing, have necessarily fuller reference to one kind of building than another ; and among these I would place first that spirit which, having influence in all, has nevertheless such especial reference to devotional and memorial architec- ture— the spirit which offers for such work precious things sim- ply because they are precious ; not as being necessary to the building, but as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what is to ourselves desirable. It seems to me, not only that this feeling is in most cases wholly wanting in those who for- ward the devotional buildings of the present day ; but that it would even be regarded as an ignorant, dangerous, or perhaps criminal principle by many among us. I have not space to enter into dispute of all the various objections which may be urged against it — they are many and spacious ; but I may, perhaps, ask the reader's patience while I set down those sim- ple reasons which cause me to believe it a good and just feel- ing, and as well-pleasing to God and honorable in men, as it is beyond all dispute necessary to the production of any great work in the kind with which we are at present concerned,
HE. Now, first, to define this Lamp, or Spirit of Sacrifice, clearly. I have said that it prompts us to the offering of precious things merely because they are precious, not because they are useful or necessary. It is a spirit, for instance, which of two marbles, equally beautiful, applicable and durable, would choose the more costly because it was so, and of two kinds of decoration, equally effective, would choose the more elaborate because it was so, in order that it might in the same ^ compass present more cost and more thought. It is therefore most unreasoning and enthusiastic, and perhaps best nega- tively defined, as the opposite of the prevalent feeling of modern times, which desires to produce the largest results at i/ the least cost.
Of this feeling, then, there are two distinct forms : the first,
the wish to exercise self-denial for the sake of self-discipline 2
18 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.
merely, a wisli acted upon in the abandonment of things loved or desired, there being no direct call or purpose to be answered by so doing ; and the second, the desire to honor or please some one else by the costliness oi the sacrifice. The practice is, in the first case, either private or public ; but most frequently, and perhaps most properly, private ; while, in the latter case, the act is commonly, and with greatest advantage, public. Now, it cannot but at first appear futile to assert the expediency of self-denial for its own sake, when, for so many sakes, it is every day necessary to a far greater degree than any of us practise it. But I believe it is just because we do not enough acknowledge or contemplate it as a good in itself, that we are apt to fail in its duties when they become impera- tive, and to calculate, with some partiality, whether the good proposed to others measures or warrants the amount of griev- ance to ourselves, instead of accepting with gladness the op- portunity of sacrifice as a personal advantage. Be this as it may, it is not necessary to insist upon the matter here ; since there are always higher and more useful channels of self- sacrifice, for those who choose to practise it, than any con- nected with the arts.
While in its second branch, that which is especially con- cerned with the arts, the justice of the feeling is still more doubtful ; it depends on our answer to the broad question. Can the Deity be indeed honored by the presentation to Him of any material objects of value, or by any direction of zeal or wisdom which is not immediately beneficial to men ?
For, observe, it is not now the question whether the fair- ness and majesty of a building may or may not answer any moral purpose ; it is not the reiiult of labor in any sort of which we are speaking, but the bare and mere costliness — the substance and labor and time themselves : are these, we ask, independently of their result, acceptable offerings to God, and considered by Him as doing Him honor ? So long as we re- fer this question to the decision of feeling, or of conscience, or of reason merely, it will be contradictorily or imperfectly answered ; it admits of entire answer only when we have met another and a far different question, whether the Bible be
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE, 19
indeed one book or two, and whether the character of God revealed in the Old Testament be other than His character revealed in the New.
IV. Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although the par- ticular ordinances divinely appointed for special purposes at any given j^eriod of man's history, may be by the same divine authority abrogated at another, it is impossible that any char- acter of God, appealed to or described in any ordinance past or present, can ever be changed, or understood as changed, by the abrogation of that ordinance: God is one and the same, and is pleased or displeased by the same things for ever, although one part of His pleasure may be expressed at one time rather than another, and although the mode in which His pleasure is to be consulted may be by Him graciously modified to the circumstances of men. Thus, for instance, it was necessary' that, in order to the understanding by man of the scheme of Redemption, that scheme should be foreshown from the beginning by the type of bloody sacrifice. But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice in the time of Moses than He has now ; He never accepted as a propitiation for sin any sacrifice but the single one in prospective ; and that we may not entertain any shadow of doubt on this subject, the worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is proclaimed at the very time when typical sacrifice was most imperatively de- manded. God was a spirit, and could be worshipped only in spirit and in truth, as singly and exclusively when every day brought its claim of typical and material service or offering, as now when He asks for none but that of the heart.
So, therefore, it is a most safe and sure principle that, if in the manner of performing any rite at any time, circumstances can be traced which we are either told, or may legitimately conclude, pleased God at that time, those same circumstances will please Him at all times, in the performance of all rites or offices to which they may be attached in like manner ; unless it has been afterwards revealed that, for some special purpose, it is now His will that such circumstances should be with drawn. And this argument will have all the more force if it can be shown that such conditions were not essential to the
20 THE LAMP OF SAGUIFIGE.
completeness of the rite in its human uses and bearings, and only were added to it as being in themselves pleasing to God.
V. Now, was it necessary to the completeness, as a type, of the Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of divine purposes, that it should cost anything to the person in whose behalf it was offered ? On the contrary, the sacrifice which it foreshowed was to be God's free gift ; and the cost of, or difficulty of obtaining, the sacrificial type, could only render that type in a measure obscure, and less expressive of the offering which God would in the end provide for all men. Yet this costliness was generally a condition of the accept- ableness of the sacrifice. " Neither will I offer unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing." * That costli- ness, therefore, must be an acceptable condition in all human offerings at all times ; for if it was pleasing to God once, it must please Him always, unless directly forbidden by Him afterwards, which it has never been.
Again, was it necessary to the typical perfection of the Levitical offering, that it should be the best of the flock? Doubtless the spotlessness of the sacrifice renders it more ex- pressive to the Christian mind ; but was it because so expres- sive that it was actually, and in so many words, demanded by God ? Not at all. It was demanded by Him expressly on the same grounds on which an earthly governor would demand it, as a testimony of respect. " Offer it now unto thy governor." f And the less valuable offering was rejected, not because it did not image Christ, nor fulfil the purposes of sacrifice, but be- cause it indicated a feeling that would grudge the best of its possessions to Him who gave them ; and because it was a bold dishonoring of God in the sight of man. Whence it may be infallibly concluded, that in whatever offerings we may now see reason to present unto God (I say not what these may be), a condition of their acceptableness will be now, as it was then, that they should be the best of their kind.
VI. But farther, was it necessary to the carrying out of the Mosaical system, that there should be either art or splendor in the form or services of the tabernacle or temple ? Was it
* 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. Deut. xvi. 16, 17. f M:al. i. 8.
THE LAMP OF SACItlFIGB. 21
necessary to the perfection of any one of their typical offices, that there should be that hanging of blue, and purple, and scarlet? those taches of brass and sockets of silver? that working in cedar and overlaying with gold ? One thing at least is evident : there was a deep and awful danger in it ; a danger that the God whom they so worshipped, might be as- sociated in the minds of the serfs of Egypt with the gods to whom they had seen similar gifts offered and similar honors paid. The probability, in our times, of fellowship with the feelings of the idolatrous Romanist is absolutely as nothing compared with the danger to the Israelite of a sympathy with the idolatrous Egyptian ; ' no sj)eculative, no unproved dan- ger ; but proved fatally by their fall during a month's aban- donment to their own will ; a fall into the most servile idol- atry ; yet marked by such offerings to their idol as their leader was, in the close sequel, instructed to bid them offer to God. This danger was imminent, perpetual, and of the most awful kind : it was the one against which God made provision, not only by commandments, by threatenings, by promises, the most urgent, repeated, and impressive ; but by temporary ordinances of a severity so terrible as almost to dim for a time, in the eyes of His people, His attribute of mercy. The principal object of every instituted law of that Theocracy, of every judgment sent forth in its vindication, was to mark to the people His hatred of idolatry ; a hatred written under their advancing steps, in the blood of the Canaanite, and more sternly still in the darkness of their own desolation, when the children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of Jerusalem, and the lion tracked his prey in the dust of Samaria.* Yet against this mortal danger provision was not made in one way (to man's thoughts the simplest, the most natural, the most effective), by withdrawing from the worship of the Divine Being whatever could delight the sense, or shape the imagination, or limit the idea of Deity to place. This one way God refused, demanding for Himself such honors, and accepting for Himself such local dwelling, as had been paid and dedicated to idol gods by heathen worshippers; * Lam. ii. 11. 2 Kings xvii. 25.
Ss5« THE LAMP OF SACIilFWB.
and for what reason ? Was the glory of the tabernacle neo- essary to set forth or image His divine glory to the minds oi His people? What! purple or scarlet necessary to the peo- ple who had seeH the great river of Egypt run scaiiet to the sea, under His condemnation ? What ! golden lamp and cherub necessary for those who had seen the fires of heaven falling like a mantle on Mount Sinai, and its golden courts opened to receive their mortal lawgiver ? What ! silver clasp and fillet necessary when they had seen the silver waves of the Red Sea clasp in their arched hollows the corpses of the horse and his rider? Nay— not so. There was but one rea- son, and that an eternal one ; that as the covenant that He made with men was accompanied with some external sign of its continuance, and of His remembrance of it, so the accept- ance of that covenant might be marked and signified by use, in some external sign of their love and obedience, and surren- der of themselves and theirs to His will ; and that their grat- itude to Him, and continual remembrance of Him, might have at once their expression and their enduring testimony in the presentation to Him, not only of the firstlings of the herd and fold, not only of the fruits of the earth and the tithe of time, but of all treasures of wisdom and beauty ; of the thought that invents, and the hand that labors ; of wealth of wood, and weight of stone ; of the strength of iron, and of the light of gold.
And let us not now lose sight of this broad and unabrogated principle — I might say, incapable of being abrogated, so long as men shall receive earthly gifts from God. Of all that they have His tithe must be rendered to Him, or in so far and in so much He is forgotten : of the skill and of the treasure, of the strength and of the mind, of the time and of the toil, of- fering must be made reverently ; and if there be any differ- ence between the Levitical and the Christian offering, it is that the latter may be just so much the wider in its range as it is less typical in its meaning, as it is thankful instead of sacrificial. There can be no excuse accepted because the Deity does not now visibly dwell in His temple ; if He is in- visible it is only through our failing faith : nor any excuse
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 23
because other calls are more immediate or more sacred ; this ought to be done, and not the other left undone. Yet this objection, as frequent as feeble, must be more specifically an- swered.
Vn. It has been said — it ought always to be said, for it is true — that a better and more honorable offering is made to our Master in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowledge of His name, in the practice of the virtues by which that name is hallowed, than in material presents to His temple. Assur- edly it is so : woe to all who think that any other kind or man- ner of offering may in any wise take the place of these ! Do the people need place to pray, and calls to hear His word ? Then it is no time for smoothing pillars or carving pulpits ; let us have enough first of walls and roofs. Do the people need teaching from house to house, and bread from day to day? Then they are deacons and ministers we want, not architects. I insist on this, I plead for this ; but let us ex- amine ourselves, and see if this be indeed tbe reason for our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is not between God's house and His poor : it is not between God's house and His Gospel. It is between God's house and ours. Have we no tesselated colors on our floors ? no frescoed fancies on our roofs ? no niched statuary in our corridors ? no gilded furni- ture in our chambers? no costly stones in our cabinets ? Has even the tithe of these been offered ? They are, or they ought to be, the signs that enough has been devoted to the great purposes of human stewardship, and that there remains to us what we can spend in luxury ; but there is a greater and prouder luxury than this selfish one — that of bringing a por- tion of such things as these into sacred service, and present- ing them for a memorial * that our pleasure as well as our toil has been hallowed by the remembrance of Him who gave both the strength and the reward. And until this has been done, I do not see how such possessions can be retained in happiness. I do not understand the feeling which would arch our own gates and pave our own thresholds, and leave the church with its nan*ow door and foot -worn sill ; the feeling which enriches * Num. xxxi. 54. Psa. Ixxvi. 11.
24 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.
our own chambers with all manner of costliness, and endures the bare wall and mean compass of the temple. There is sel* dom even so severe a choice to be made, seldom so much self- denial to be exercised. There are isolated cases, in which men's happiness and mental activity depend upon a certain degree of luxury in their houses ; but then this is true luxury, felt and tasted, and profited by. In the plurality of instances nothing of the kind is attempted, nor can be enjoyed ; men's average resources cannot reach it ; and that which they can reach, gives them no pleasure, and might be spared. It will be seen, in the course of the following chapters, that I am no advocate for meanness of private habitation. I would fain in- troduce into it all magnificence, care, and beauty, where they are possible ; but I w^ould not have that useless expense in un- noticed fineries or formalities ; cornicings of ceilings and grain- ing of doors, and fringing of curtains, and thousands such ; things which have become foolishly and apathetically habitual — things on whose common appliance hang whole trades, to which there never yet belonged the blessing of giving one ray of real pleasure, or becoming of the remotest or most con- temptible use — things which cause half the expense of Ufe, and destroy more than half its comfort, manliness, respectability, freshness, and facility, I speak from experience : I know what it is to live in a cottage with a deal floor and roof, and a hearth of mica slate ; and I know it to be in many respects healthier and happier than living between a Turkey carj^et and gilded ceiling, beside a steel grate and polished fender. I do not say that such things have not their place and pro- priety ; but I say this, emphatically, that the tenth part of the expense which is sacrificed in domestic vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in domestic discomforts, and incumbrances, would, if collectively offered and wisely em- ployed, build a marble church for every town in England ; such a church as it should be a joy and a blessing even to pass near in our daily ways and walks, and as it would bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lifting its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs.
Vni. I have said for every town : I do not want a marble
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 25
cliurch for every village ; nay, I do not want marble churches at all for their own sake, but for the sake of the spirit that would build them. The church has no need of any visible splendors ; her power is independent of them, her purity is in some degree opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary is lovelier than the majesty of an urban temple ; and it may be more than questioned whether, to the people, such majesty has ever been the source of any increase of effec- tive piety ; but to the builders it has been, and must ever be. It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice ; not the emo- tion of admiration, but the act of adoration : not the gift, but the giving.^ And see how much more charity the full un- derstanding of this might admit, among classes of men of naturally opposite feelings ; and how much more nobleness in the work. There is no need to offend by importunate, self- proclaiming splendor. Your gift may be given in an unpre- suming way. Cut one or two shafts out of a porphyry whose preciousness those only would know who would desire it to be so used ; add another month's labor to the undercutting of a few capitals, whose delicacy will not be seen nor loved by one beholder of ten thousand ; see that the simplest masonry of the edifice be perfect and substantial ; and to those who re- gard such things, their witness will be clear and impressive ; to those who regard them not, all will at least be inoffensive. But do not think the feeling itself a folly, or the act itself use- less. Of what use was that dearly bought water of the well of Bethlehem with which the King of Israel slaked the dust of Adullam ? — yet was not thus better than if he had drunk it ? Of what use was that passionate act of Christian sacrifice, against which, first uttered by the false tongue, the very ob- jection Ave would now conquer took a sullen tone for ever ? * So also let us not ask of what use our offering is to the church : it is at least better for us than if it had been retained for our' selves. It may be better for others also : there is, at any rate, a chance of this ; though we must always fearfully and widely shun the thought that the magnificence of the temple can materially add to the efficiency of the worship or to the power * Jonn xii, 5.
26 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.
of the ministry. Whatever we do, or whatever we offer, let it not interfere with the simpHcity of the one, or abate, as if /e- placing, the zeal of the other. That is the abuse and fallacy of Romanism, by which the true spirit of Christian offering is directly contradicted. The treatment of the Papists' temple is eminently exhibitory ; it is surface work throughout ; and the danger and evil of their church decoration lie, not in its reality — not in the true wealth and art of it, of which the lower peo- ple are never cognizant — but in its tinsel and glitter, in the gilding of the shrine and painting of the image, in embroidery of dingy robes and crowding of imitated gems ; all this being frequently thrust forward to the concealment of what is really good or great in their buildings.' Of an offering of gratitude which is neither to be exhibited nor rewarded, which is neither to win praise nor purchase salvation, the Romanist (as such) has no conception,
IX. While, however, I would especially deprecate the im- putation of any other acceptableness or usefulness to the gift itself than that which it receives from the spirit of its presen- tation, it may be well to observe, that there is a lower advan- tage which never fails to accompany a dutiful observance ot any right abstract principle. While the first fruits of his pos- sessions were required from the Israelite as a testimony of fidelity, the payment of those first fruits was nevertheless re- warded, and that connectedly and specifically, by the increase of those possessions. Wealth, and length of days, and peace, were the promised and experienced rewards of his offering, though they were not to be the objects of it. The tithe paid into the storehouse was the expressed condition of the bless- ing which there should not be room enough to receive. And it will be thus always : God never forgets any work or labor of love ; and whatever it may be of which the first and best proportions or powers have been presented to Him, he will multiply and increase sevenfold. Therefore, though it may not be necessarily the interest of religion to admit the service of the arts, the arts will never flourish until they have been primarily devoted to that service — devoted, both by architect and employer ; by the one in scrupulous, earnest, aft'ectionate
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 27
design ; by the other in expenditure at least more frank, at least less calculating, than that which he would admit in the indulgence of his own private feelings. Let this principle be but once fairly acknowledged among us ; and however it may be chilled and repressed in practice, however feeble may be its real influence, however the sacredness of it may be dimin- ished by counter-workings of vanity and self-interest, yet its mere acknowledgment would bring a reward ; and with our present accumulation of means and of intellect, there would be such an impulse and vitality given to art as it has not felt since the thirteenth century. And I do not assert this as other than a national consequence : I should, indeed, expect a larger measure of every great and spiritual faculty to be always given where those faculties had been wisely and relig- iously employed ; but the impulse to which I refer, would be, humanly speaking, certain ; and would naturally result from obedience to the two great conditions enforced by the Spirit of Sacrifice, first, that we should in everything do our best ; and, secondly, that we should consider increase of ap- parent labor as an increase of beauty in the building. A few practical deductions from these two conditions, and I have done.
X. For the first : it is alone enough to secure success, and it is for want of observing it that we continually fail. We are none of us so good architects as to be able to work habitu- ally beneath our strength : and yet there is not a building that I know of, lately raised, wherein it is not sufficiently evident that neither architect nor builder has done his best. It is the especial characteristic of modern work. All old work nearly lias been hard work. It may be the hard work of children, of barbarians, of rustics ; but it is always theif utmost. Ours has as constantly the look of money's worth, of a stopping short wherever and whenever we can, of a lazy compliance with low conditions ; never of a fair putting forth of our strength. Let us have done with this kind of work at once : cast off every temptation to it : do not let us degrade ourselves voluntarily, and then mutter and mourn over our sLort comings ; let us confess our poverty or our parsimony
28 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE,
but not belie our human intellect. It is not even a question of how much we are to do, but of how it is to be done ; it is not a question of doing more, but of doing better. Do not let us boss our roofs with wretched, half- worked, blunt-edged rosettes ; do not let us flank our gates with rigid imitations of mediaeval statuary. Such things are mere insults to common sense, and only unfit us for feeling the nobility of their prototypes. We have so much, suppose, to be spent in decoration ; let us go to the Flaxman of his time, whoever he may be, and bid him carve for us a single statue, frieze or capital, or as many as we can afford, compelling upon him the one condition, that they shall be the best he can do ; place them where they will be of the most value, and be content. Our other capitals may be mere blocks, and our other niches empty. No matter : better our work unfinished than all bad. It may be that we do not desire ornament of so high an order ; choose, then, a less developed style, also, if you will, rougher material ; the law which we are enforcing requires only that what we pretend to do and to give, shall both be the best of their kind ; choose, therefore, the Norman hatchet work, instead of the Flaxman frieze and statue, but let it be the best hatchet work ; and if you cannot afford marble, use Caen stone, but from the best bed ; and if not stone, brick, but the best brick ; preferring always what is good of a lower order of work or material, to what is bad of a higher ; for this is not only the way to improve every kind of work, and to put every kind of material to better use ; but it is more honest and unpretending, and is in harmony with other just, upright, and manly principles, whose range we shall have presently to take into consideration.
XL The other condition which we had to notice, was the value of the appearance of labor upon architecture. I have spoken of this before ; * and it is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of pleasure which belong to the art, always, however, within certain somewhat remarkable limits. For it does not at first appear easily to be explained why labor, as represented by materials of value, should, without sense o^ * Mod. Painters, Part I. Sec. 1, Chap. 3.
I
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 29
wrong or error, bear being wasted ; while the waste of actual workmanship is always painful, so soon as it is apparent. But so it is, that, while precious materials may, with a certain profusion and negligence, be employed for the magnificence of what is seldom seen, the work of man cannot be carelessly and idly bestowed, without an immediate sense of wrong ; as if the strength of the living creature were never intended by its Maker to be sacrificed in vain, though it is well for us sometimes to part with what we esteem precious of sub- stance, ar. showing that in such a service it becomes but dross and dust. And in the nice balance between the straitening of eifort or enthusiasm on the one hand, and vainly casting it away upon the other, there are more questions than can be met by any but very just and watchful feeling. In general it is less the mere loss of labor that offends us, than the lack of judgment implied by such loss ; so that if men confessedly work for work's sake, and it does not appear that they are ig- norant where or how to make their labor tell, we shall not be grossly offended. On the contrary', we shall be pleased if the work be lost in carrying out a principle, or in avoiding a de- ception. It, indeed, is a law properly belonging to another part of our subject, but it may be allowably stated here, that, whenever, by the construction of a building, some parts of it are hidden from the eye which are the continuation of others bearing some consistent ornament, it is not well that the or- nament should cease in the parts concealed ; credit is given for it, and it should not be deceptively withdrawn : as, for in- stance, in the sculpture of the backs of the statues of a temple pediment ; never, perhaps, to be seen, but yet not lawfully to be left unfinished. And so in the working out of ornaments in dark concealed places, in which it is best to err on the side of completion ; and in the carrying round of string courses, and other such continuous work ; not but that they may stop sometimes, on the point of going into some palpably impene- trable recess, but then let them stop boldly and markedly, on some distinct terminal ornament, and never be supposed to exist where they do not. The arches of the towers which flank the transepts of Eouen Cathedral have rosette ornar
30 TEE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.
ments on their spandrils, on the three visible sides ; none on the side towards the roof. The right of this is rather a nice point for question.
Xn. Visibihty, however, we must remember, depends, not only on situation, but on distance ; and there is no way in which work is more painfully and unwisely lost than in its over delicacy on parts distant from the eye. Here, again, the principle of honesty must govern our treatment : we must not work any kind of ornament which is, perhaps, to cover the whole building (or at least to occur on all parts of it) deli- cately where it is near the eye, and rudely where it is removed from it. That is trickery and dishonesty. Consider, first, what kinds of ornaments will tell in the distance and what near, and so distribute them, keeping such as by their nature are delicate, down near the eye, and throwing the bold and rough kinds of work to the top ; and if there be any kind which is to be both near and far off, take care that it be as boldly and rudely wrought where it is well seen as where it is distant, so that the spectator may know exactly what it is, and what it is worth. Thus chequered patterns, and in gen- eral such ornaments as common workmen can execute, may extend over the whole building ; but bas-reliefs, and fine niches and capitals, should be kept down, and the common sense of this will always give a building dignity, even though there be some abruptness or awkwardness, in the resulting arrangements. Thus at San Zeno at Verona, the bas-reliefs, full of incident and interest are confined to a parallelogram of the front, reaching to the height of the capitals of the col- umns of the porch. Above these, w^e find a simple though most lovely, little arcade ; and above that, only blank w^all, with square face shafts. The whole effect is tenfold grander and better than if the entire f ayade had been covered with bad work, and may serve for an example of the way to place little where we cannot afford much. So, again, the transept gates of Rouen * are covered with delicate bas-reliefs (of which I
* Henceforward, for the sake of convenience, when I name any ca* ihedral town in this manner, let me be understood to .speak of its cath© iral church.
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 31
shall speak at greater length presently) up to about once and a half a man's height ; and above that come the usual and more visible statues and niches. So in the campanile at Florence, the circuit of bas-reliefs is on its lowest story ; above that come its statues ; and above them all its pattern mosaic, and twisted columns, exquisitely finished, like all Italian work of the time, but still, in the eye of the Floren- tine, rough and commonplace by comparison with the bas- reliefs. So generally the most delicate niche work and best mouldings of the French Gothic are in gates and low win- dows well within sight ; although, it being the very spirit of that style to trust to its exuberance for eltect, there is occa- sionally a burst upwards and blossoming unrestrainably to the sky, as in the pediment of the west front of Eouen, and in the recess of the rose window behind it, where there are some most elaborate flower-mouldings, all but invisible from below, and only adding a general enrichment to the deep shadows that relieve the shafts of the advanced pediment. It is observable, however, that this very work is bad flamboyant, and has corrupt renaissance characters in its detail as well as use ; while in the earlier and grander north and south gates, there is a very noble proportioning of the work to the dis- tance, the niches and statues which crown the northern one, at a height of about one hundred feet from the ground, being alike colossal and simple ; visibly so from below, so as to in- duce no deception, and jet honestly and well-finished above, and all that they are expected to be ; the features very beau- tiful, full of expression, and as delicately wrought as any work of the period.
XIII. It is to be remembered, however, that while the orna- ments in every fine ancient building, without exception so far as I am aware, are most delicate at the base, they are often in greater efi'ective quantity on the upper parts. In high towers this is perfectly natural and right, the soliditj^ of the foundation being as necessary as the division and penetration of the superstructure ; hence the lighter w^ork and richly pierced crowns of late Gothic towers. The campanile of Giotto at Florence, already alluded to, is an exquisite instance
32 THE LAMP OF nAGIUFIGE.
of the union of the two principles, delicate bas-reliefs adorn- ing its massy foundation, while the open tracery of the upper windows attracts the eye by its slender intricacy, and a rich cornice crowns the whole. In such truly fine cases of thia disposition the upper work is effective by its quantity and in- tricacy only, as the lower portions by delicacy ; so also in the Tour de Beurre at Kouen, where, however, the detail is massy throughout, subdividing into rich meshes as it ascends. In the bodies of buildings the prr .ciple is less safe, but its dis- cussion is not connected with our present subject.
XIV. Finally, work may be wasted, by being too good for its material, or too fine to bear exposure ; and this, generally a characteristic of late, especially of renaissance, work, is per- haps the worst fault of all. I do not know anything more painful or pitiful than the kind of ivory carving with w^hich the Certosa of Pavia, and part of the Colleone sepulchral chapel at Bergamo, and other such buildings, are incrusted, of which it is not possible so much as to think without ex- haustion ; and a heavy sense of the misery it would be, to be forced to look at it at all. And this is not from the quantity of it, nor because it is bad work — much of it is inventive and able ; but because it looks as if it were only fit to be put in inlaid cabinets and velveted caskets, and as if it could not bear one drifting shower or gnawing frost. We are afraid for it, anxious about it, and tormented by it ; and we feel that a massy shaft and a bold shadow would be worth it all. Never- theless, even in cases like these, much depends on the accom- plishment of the great ends of decoration. If the ornament does its duty — if it is ornament, and its points of shade and light tell in the general effect, we shall not be offended by finding that the sculptor in his fulness of fancy has chosen to give much more than these mere points of light, and has composed them of groups of figures. But if the ornament does not answer its purpose, if it have no distant, no truly decorative power ; if generally seen it be a mere incrustation and meaningless roughness, we shaU only be chagrined by finding when we look close, that the incrustation has cost vears of labor, and has millions of figures and histories in it
t
PLATE I.— (Page 33-Vol. V.) Ornaments from Rouen, St. Lo, and Venice
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 3?i
and would be the better of being seen through a Stanhope lens. Hence the greatness of the northern Gothic as con- trasted with the latest Italian. It reaches nearly the same extreme of detail ; but it never loses sight of its architectural purpose, never fails in its decorative power ; not a leaflet in it but speaks, and speaks far off, too ; and so long as this be the case, there is no limit to the luxuriance in which such work may legitimately and nobly be bestowed.
Xy. No limit : it is one of the affectations of architects to speak of overcharged ornament. Ornament cannot be over- charged if it be good, and is always overcharged when it is bad. I have given, on the opposite page (fig. 1), one of the smallest niches of the central gate of Eouen. That gate I suppose to be the most exquisite piece of pure flamboyant work existing ; for though I have spoken of the upper por- tions, especially the receding window, as degenerate, the gate itself is of a purer period, and has hardly any renaissance taint. There are four strings of these niches (each with two figures beneath it) round the porch, from the ground to the top of the arch, with three intermediate rows of larger niches, far more elaborate ; besides the six principal canopies of each outer pier. The total number of the subordinate niches alone, each worked like that in the plate, and each with a different pattern of traceries in each compartment, is one hundred and seventy-six.* Yet in all this ornament there is not one cusp, one finial that is useless — not a stroke of the chisel is in vain ; the grace and luxuriance of it all are visible — sensible rather • — even to the uninquiring eye ; and aU its minuteness does not diminish the majesty, while it increases the mystery, of the noble and unbroken vault. It is not less the boast of some styles that they can bear ornament, than of others that they can do without it ; but we do not often enough reflect that those very styles, of so haughty simplicity, owe part of their pleasurableness to contrast, and would be wearisome if universal. They are but the rests and monotones of the art ; it is to its far happier, far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated mosaic, charged with wild fan- ties and dark hosts of imagery, thicker and quaintei than 0
34 TUB LAMP OF TRUTH,
ever filled the depth of midsummer dream ; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves ; those window-labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light ; those misty masses of mul- titudinous pinnacle and diademed tower ; the only witnesses^ perhaps that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away — all their living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not for what they labored, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness — all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life, and their toil upon the earth, one re- w^ard, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps of deep- wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honors, and their errors ; but they have left us their adoration.
CHAPTEK n.
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
I. There is a marked likeness between the virtues of man and the enlightenment of the globe he inhabits — the same diminishing gradation in vigor up to the limits of their do- mains, the same essential separation from their contraries — the same twilight at the meeting of the two : a something wider belt than the line where the world rolls into night, that strange twilight of the virtues ; that dusky debateable land, wherein zeal becomes impatience, and temperance becomes severity, and justice becomes cruelty, and faith superstition, and each and all vanish into gloom.
Nevertheless, wdth the greater number of them, though their dimness increases gradually, w^e may mark the moment of their sunset ; and, happily, may turn the shadow back by the way by which it had gone down : but for one, the line of the horizon is irregular and undefined ; and this, too, the very equator and girdle of them all — Truth ; that only one of which there are no degrees, but breaks and rents continually , that pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pillar ; that golden and narrow line, which the very powers and virtues that lean upon
THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 35
it bend, which policy and prudence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage overshadows with his shield, imagination covers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears. How difficult must the maintenance of that authority be, which, while it has to restrain th.e hostility of all the worst principles of man, has also to restrain the dis- orders of his best —which is continually assaulted by the one and betrayed by the other, and which regards with the same severity the lightest and the boldest violations of its law! There are some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the estimate of wisdom ; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no stain.
We do not enough consider this ; nor enough dread the slight and continual occasions of offence against her. We are too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in its dark- est associations, and through the color of its worst purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. We resent calumny, hy- pocrisy and treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue. Take the detraction and the mischief from the untruth, and we are little offended by it ; turn it into praise, and we may be pleased with it. And yet it is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest sum of mischief in the world ; they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie ; the amiable fallacy ; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partizan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which any man who pierces, we thanK as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert ; happy in that the thirst for truth still remains with us, even when we have wil- fully left the fountains of it.
It would be well if moralists less frequently confused the greatness of a sin with its unpardonableness. The two charac- ters are altogether distinct. The greatness of a fault depends partly on the nature of the person against whom it is com- mitted, partly upon the extent of its consequences. Its par-
36 TUB LAMP OF TRUTIL
donableness depends, humanly speaking, on the degree ot temptation to it. One class of circumstances determines the weight of the attaching punishment ; the other, the claim to remission of punishment : and since it is not easy for men to estimate the ;i*elntive weight, nor possible for them to know the relative consequences, of crime, it is usually wise in them to quit the care of such nice measurements, and to look to the other and clearer condition of culpability ; esteeming those faults worst which are committed under least tempta- tion. I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity ; yet it seems to me, that the shortest way to check the darker forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous against those which have mingled, unregarded and unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as un- intended. Cast them all aside : they may be light and acci- dental ; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, for all that ; and it is better that our hearts should be swept clean of them, without over care as to which is largest or blackest. Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice ; it is less a matter of will than of habit, and 1 doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the practice and formation of such a habit. To speak and act truth with constancy and pr/cision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty ; and it is a strange thought how many men there jire, as I trust, who would hold to it at the cost of fortune or life, for one who would hold to it at the cost of a little daily trouble And seeing that of all sin there is, perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the Almighty, no one more ''wanting the good of virtue and of being," than this of lying, it is surely a stj'-^inge insolence to fall into the foulness of it on light or on no ternp^ tation, and surely becoming an honorable man to resolve that, whatever semblances or fallacies the necessary course of his life may compel him to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the serenity of his voluntary actions, nor diminish the reality of his chosen deh^jhts.
THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 37
n. If this be just and wise for truth's sake, much more is it necessary for the sake of the dehghts over which she has in- fluence. For, as I advocated the expression of the Spirit of Sacrifice in the acts and pleasures of men, not as if thereby those acts could further the cause of rehgion, but because most assuredly they might therein be infinitely ennobled them- selves, so I would have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear in the hearts of our artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the truthful practice of handicrafts could far advance the cause of truth, but because I would fain see the handicrafts themselves urged by the spurs of chivalry : and it is, indeed, marvellous to see what power and universality there is in this single prin- ciple, and how in the consulting or forgetting of it lies half the dignity or decline of every art and act of man. I have be- fore endeavored to show its range and power in painting ; and I believe a volume, instead of a chapter, might be written on its authority over all that is great in architecture. But I must be content with the force of instances few and familiar, believ-. ing that the occasions of its manifestation may be more easily discovered by a desire to be true, than embraced by an analy- sis of truth.
Only it is very necessary in the outset to mark clearly wherein consists the essence of fallacy as distinguished from supposition.
in. For it might be at first thought that the whole king- dom of imagination was one of deception also. Not so : the action of the imagination is a voluntary summoning of the conceptions of things absent or impossible ; and the pleasure and nobility of the imagination parti}' consist in its knowledge and contemplation of them as such, i.e. in the knowledge of their actual absence or impossibility at the moment of their apparent presence or reality. When the imagination deceives it becomes madness. It is a noble faculty so long as it con- fesses its own ideality ; when it ceases to confess this, it is insanity. All the difference lies in the fact of the confession, in there being no deception. It is necessary to our rank as spiritual creatures, that we should be able to invent and to V^hold what is not ; and to our rank as moral creatures
38 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
that we should know and confess at the same time that it is not.
IV. Again, it might be thought, and has been thought, that the whole art of painting is nothing else than an endeavor to deceive. Not so : it is, on the contrary, a statement of certain facts, in the clearest possible way. For instance : I desire to give an account of a mountain or of a rock ; I begin by telling its shape. But words will not do this distinctly, and I draw its shape, and say, " This was its shape." Next : I would fain represent its color ; but words will not do this either, and I dye the paper, and say, " This was its color." Such a process may be carried on until the scene appears to exist, and a high pleasure may be taken in its apparent existence. This is a communicated act of imagination, but no lie. The lie can consist only in an assertion of its existence (which is never for one instant made, imj^lied, or believed), or else in false state- ments of forms and colors (which are, indeed, made and be- lieved to our great loss, continually). And observe, also, that so degrading a thing is deception in even the approach and appearance of it, that all painting which even reaches the mark of apparent realization, is degraded in so doing. I have enough insisted on this point in another place.
V. The violations of truth, which dishonor poetry and painting, are thus for the most part confined to the treatment of their subjects. But in architecture another and a less sub- tle, more contemptible, violation of truth is possible ; a direct falsity of assertion respecting the nature of material, or the quantity of labor. And this is, in the full sense of the word, wrong ; it is as truly deserving of reprobation as any other moral delinquency ; it is Unworthy alike of architects and of nations ; and it has been a sign, wherever it has widely and with toleration existed, of a singular debasement of the arts ; that it is not a sign of worse than this, of a general want of severe probity, can be accounted for only by our knowledge of the strange separatioi\ which has for some centuries existed between the arts and all other subjects of human intellect, as matters of conscience. This withdrawal of conscientiousness from among the faculties concerned with art, while it has
THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 39
destroyed the arts themselves, has also rendered in a measure nugatory the evidence which otherwise they might have pre- sented respecting the character of the respective nations among whom they have been cultivated ; otherwise, it might appear more than strange that a nation so distinguished for its gen- eral uprightness and faith as the English, should admit in their architecture more of pretence, concealment, and deceit, than any other of this or of past time.
They are admitted in thoughtlessness, but with fatal effect upon the art in which they are practised. If there were no other causes for the failures which of late have marked every great occasion for architectural exertion, these i)etty dishon- esties would be enough to account for all. It is the first step and not the least, towards greatness to do away with these ; the first, because so evidently and easily in our power. We may not be able to command good, or beautiful, or inventive architecture ; but we can command an honest architecture : the meagreness of poverty may be pardoned, the sternness of utility respected ; but what is there but scorn for the mean- ness of deception ?
VI. Architectural Deceits are broadly to be considered un- der three heads : —
1st. The suggestion of a mode of structure or support, other than the true one ; as in pendants of late Gothic roofs.
2d. The painting of surfaces to represent some other ma- terial than that of which they actually consist (as in the mar- bling of wood), or the deceptive representation of sculptured ornament upon them.
3d. The use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind.
Now, it may be broadly stated, that architecture will be noble exactly in the degree in which all these false expedients are avoided. Nevertheless, there are certain degrees of them, which, owing to their frequent usage, or to other causes, have so far lost the - nature of deceit as to be admissible ; as, for instance, gilding, which is in architecture no deceit, because it is therein not understood for gold ; while in jewellery it is a deceit, because it is so understood, and therefore altogether to be reprehended. So that there arise, in the application of
40 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
the strict rules of rigbt, many exceptions and niceties of coDr science ; which let us as briefly as possible examine.
VII. 1st. Structural Deceits. I have limited these to the determined and purposed suggestion of a mode of support other than the true one. The architect is not bound to ex- hibit structure ; nor are we to complain of him for concealing it, any more than we should regret that the outer surfaces of the human frame conceal much of its anatomy ; nevertheless, that building will generally be the noblest, which to an in- telligent eye discovers the great secrets of its structure, as an animal form does, although from a careless observer they may be concealed. In the vaulting of a Gothic roof it is no deceit to throw the strength into the ribs of it, and make the intermediate vault a mere shell. Such a structure would be presumed by an intelligent observer, the first time he saw such a roof ; and the beauty of its traceries would be enhanced to him if they confessed and followed the lines of its main strength. If, however, the intermediate shell were made of wood instead of stone, and whitewashed to look like the rest, — this would, of course, be direct deceit, and altogether un- pardonable.
There is, however, a certain deception necessarily occur- ring in Gothic architecture, which relates, not to the points, but to the manner, of support. The resemblance in its shafts and ribs to the external relations of stems and branches, which has been the ground of so much foolish speculation, necessarily induces in the mind of the spectator a sense or belief of a correspondent internal structure ; that is to say, of a fibrous and continuous strength from the root into the limbs, and an elasticity commuuicated upwards, sufficient for the support of the ramified portions. The idea of the real conditions, of a great weight of ceiling thrown upon certain narrow, jointed lines, which have a tendency partly to be crushed, and partly to separate and be pushed outwards, is with difficulty received ; and the more so when the pillars would be, if unassisted, too slight for the weight, and are sup- ported by external flying buttresses, as in the apse of Beau- vais, and other such achievements of the bolder Gothic. Now^
TEE LAMP OF TRUTH. 41
tiiere is a nice question of conscience in this, which we shall fiardly settle but by considering that, when the mind is in- formed beyond the possibiHty of mistake as to the true nature of things, the affecting it with a contrary impr'jssion, however distinct, is no dishonesty, but on the conti-dry, a legitimate appeal to the imagination. For instance, the greater part of the happiness which we have in contemplating clouds, resulta from the impression of their having massive, luminous, warm, and mountain-Uke surfaces ; and our delight in the sky fre- quently depends upon our considering it as a blue vault. But we know the contrary, in both instances ; we know the cloud to be a damp fog, or a drift of snow flakes ; and the sky to be a lightless abyss. There is, therefore, no dishonesty, while there is much dehght, in the irresistibly contrary impression. In the same way, so long as we see the stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points of support in any piece of architecture, we may rather praise than regret the dextrous artifices which compel us to feel as if there were fibre in its shafts and life in its branches. Nor is even the concealment of the support of the external but- tress reprehensible, so long as the pillars are not sensibly in- adequate to their duty. For the weight of a roof is a circum- stance of which the spectator generally has no idea, and the provisions for it, consequently, circumstances whose neces- sity or adaptation he could not understand. It is no deceit, therefore, when the weight to be borne is necessarily un- known, to conceal also the means of bearing it, leaving only to be perceived so much of the support as is indeed adequate to the weight supposed. For the shafts do, indeed, bear as much as they are, ever imagined to bear, and the system of added support is no more, as a matter of conscience, to be exhibited, than, in the human or any other form, mechanical provisions for those functions which are themselves unper- ceived.
But the moment that the conditions of weight are compre- hended, both truth and feeling require that the conditions of support should be also comprehended. Nothing can be worse, either as judged by the taste or the conscience, thap
i2 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
affectedly inadequate supports — suspensions in air, and othei such tricks and vanities. Mr. Hope wisely reprehends, for this reason, the arrangement of the main piers of St. Sophia at Constantinople. King's College Chapel, Cambridge, is a piece of architectural juggling, if possible still more to be condemned, because less sublime.
Vm. With deceptive concealments of structure are to be i?iassed, though still more blameable, deceptive assumptions of it — the introduction of members which should have, or profess to have, a duty, and have none. One of the most general in- stances of this will be found in the form of the flying buttress in late Gothic. The use of that member is, of course, to con- vey support from one pier to another when the plan of the building renders it necessary or desirable that the supporting masses should be divided into groups, the most frequent neces- sity of this kind arising from the intermediate range of chapels or aisles between the nave or choir walls and their supporting piers. The natural, healthy, and beautiful arrangement is that of a steeply sloping bar of stone, sustained by an arch with its spandril carried farthest down on the lowest side, and dying into the vertical of the outer pier ; that pier being, of course, not square, but rather a piece of wall set at right angles to the supported w^alls, and, if need be, crowned by a pinnacle to give it greater weight. The whole arrangement is exquisitely car- ried out in the choir of Beauvais. In later Gothic the pinnacle became gradually a decorative member, and was used in all places merel}^ for the sake of its beauty. There is no objection to this ; it is just as lawful to build a pinnacle for its beauty as a tower ; but also the buttress became a decorative member ; and was used, first, where it was not wanted, and, secondly, in forms in which it could be of no use, becoming a mere tie, not between the pier and wall, but between the wall and the top of the decorative pinnacle, thus attaching itself to the very point where its thrust, if it made any, could not be resisted. The most flagrant instance of this barbarism that 1 remember (though it prevails partially in all the spires of the Nether- lands), is the lantern of St. Ouen at Eouen, where the pierced buttress, having an ogee curve, looks about as much calculated
TEE LAMI^ OF TRUTH. 43
to bear a thrust as a switch of willow ; and the pinnacles, huge and richly decorated, have evidently no work to do w^hatsoever, but stand round the central tower, like four idle servants, aa they are — heraldic supporters, that central tower being merely a hollow crown, which needs no more buttressing than a basket does. In fact, I do not know anything more strange or unwise than the praise lavished upon this lantern ; it is one of the basest pieces of Gothic in Europe ; its flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms ; ^ and its entire plan and decoration resembling, and deserving little more credit than, the burnt sugar ornaments of elaborate confectionery. There are hardly any of the magnificent and serene constructions of the earl^^ Gothic which have not, in the course of time, been gradually thinned and pared away into these skeletons, which sometimes indeed, when their lines truly follow the structure of the original masses, have an interest like that of the fibrous framework of leaves from which the substance has been dis- solved, but which are usually distorted as well as emaciated, and remain but the sickly phantoms and mockeries of things that were ; they are to true architecture what the Greek ghost was to the armed and living frame ; and the very winds that whis- tle through the threads of them, are to the diapasoned echoes of the ancient w^alls, as to the voice of the man was the pining of the spectre."
IX. Perhaps the most fruitful source of these kinds of cor- ruption which we have to guard against in recent times, is one which, nevertheless, comes in a " questionable shape," and of which it is not easy to determine the proper laws and limits ; I mean the use of iron. The definition of the art of architect- ure, given in the first chapter, is independent of its materials : nevertheless, that art having been, up to the beginning of the present century, practised for the most part in clay, stone, or wood, it has resulted that the sense of proportion and the laws of structure have been based, the one altogether, the other in great part, on the necessities consequent on the employment of those materials ; and that the entire or principal employ- ment of metallic framework would, therefore, be generally felt as a departure from the first principles of the art Abstract-
•M THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
edly there appears no reason why iron should not be used ab well as wood ; and the time is probably near when a new sys- tem of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction. But I believe that the tendency of all present sympathy and association is to limit the idea of architecture to non-metalhc work ; and that not without reason^ For architecture being in its perfection the earliest, as in its elements it is necessarily the first, of arts, will always precedes in any barbarous nation, the possession of the science necessary either for the obtaining or the management of iron. Its first existence and its earliest laws must, therefore, depend upon the use of materials accessible in quantity, and on the surface of the earth ; that is to say, clay, wood, or stone : and as I think it cannot but be generally felt that one of the chief dignities of architecture is its historical use ; and since the latter is partly dependent on consistency of style, it will be felt right to retain as far as may be, even in periods of more advanced science, the materials and princijples of earlier ages.
X. But whether this be granted me or not, the fact is, that every idea respecting size, proportion, decoration, or construc- tion, on which we are at present in the habit of acting or judg- ing, depends on presupposition of such materials : and as I both feel myself unable to escape the influence of these preju- dices, and believe that my readers will be equally so, it may be perhaps permitted to me to assume that true architecture does not admit iron as a constructive material,'' and that such works as the cast-iron central spire of Rouen Cathedral, or the iron roofs and pillars of our railway stations, and of some of our churches, are not architecture at all. Yet it is evident that metals may, and sometimes must, enter into the construc- tion to a certain extent, as nails in wooden architecture, and therefore as legitimately rivets and solderings in stone ; neither can we well deny to the Gothic architect the power of support- ing statues, pinnacles, or traceries by iron bars ; and if we grant this I do not see how we can help allowing Brunelleschi his iron chain around the dome of Florence, or the builders of Salisbury their elaborate iron binding of the central tower. ' If, however, we would not fall into the old sophistry of the
f
TEE LAMP OF TRUTH. 4:5
gi'ains of com and the heap, we must find a rule which may enable us to stop somewhere. This rule is, I think, that metals may be used as a cement but not as a cupjjort. For aa cements of other kinds are often so strong that the stones may easier be broken than separated, and the wall becomes a solid mass without for that reason losing the character of architect- ure, there is no reason why, when a nation has obtained the knowledge and practice of iron work, metal rods or rivets should not be used in the place of cement, and establish the same or a greater strength and adherence, without in any wise inducing departure from the types and system of architecture before established ; nor does it make any difference except as to sighthness, whether the metal bands or rods so employed, be in the body of the wall or on its exterior, or set as stays and cross-bands ; so only that the use of them be always and distinctly one which might be superseded by mere strength of cement ; as for instance if a pinnacle or mullion be propped or tied by an iron band, it is evident that the iron only pre- vents the se^Daration of the stones by lateral force, which the cement would have done, had it been strong enough. But the moment that the iron in the least degree takes the place of the stone, and acts by its resistance to crushing, and bears superincumbent weight, or if it acts by its own weight as a counterpoise, and so supersedes the use of pinnacles or but- tresses in resisting a lateral thrust, or if, in the form of a rod or girder, it is used to do what wooden beams would have done as well, that instant the building ceases, so far as such applications of metal extend, to be true architecture.
XI. The limit, however, thus determined, is an ultimate one, and it is well in all things to be cautious how we approach the utmost limit of lawfulness ; so that, although the employ- ment of metal within this limit cannot be considered as de- stroying the very being and nature of architecture, it will, if, extravagant and frequent, derogate from the dignity of the work, as well as (which is especially to our present point) from its honesty. For although the spectator is not informed as to the quantity or strength of the cement employed, he will gen- erally conceive the stones of the building to be separable:
^ THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
and his estimate of the skill of the architect will be based in a ^•reat measure on his supposition of this condition, and of the dif- ficulties attendant upon it : so that it is always more honorable^ and it has a tendency to render the style of architecture both more masculine and more scientific, to employ stone and mortar simply as such, and to do as much as possible with the weight of the one and the strength of the other, and rather sometimes to forego a grace, or to confess a weakness, than attain the one, or conceal the other, by means verging upon dishonesty.
Nevertheless, where the design is of such deHcacy and slightness as, in some j)arts of very fair and finished edifices, it is desirable that it should be ; and where both its com- pletion and security are in a measure dependent on the use of metal, let not such use be reprehended ; so only that as much is done as may be, by good mortar and good masonry , and no slovenly workmanship admitted through confidence in the iron helps ; for it is in this license as in that of wine, a man may use it for his infirmities, but not for his nourish- ment.
XII. And, in order to avoid an over use of this liberty, it would be well to consider what application may be conven- iently made of the dovetailing and various adjusting of stones ; for when any artifice is necessary to help the mortar, certainly this ought to come before the use of metal, for it is both safer and more honest. I cannot see that any objection can be made to the fitting of the stones in any shapes the archi- tect pleases : for although it would not be desirable to see buildings put together like Chinese puzzles, there must al- ways be a check upon such an abuse of the practice in its difficulty ; nor is it necessary that it should be always ex- hibited, so that it be understood by the spectator as an ad- mitted help, and that no priiicipal stones are introduced in positions apparently impossible /or them to retain, although a riddle here and there, in unimportant features, may some- times serve to draw the eye to the masonry, and make it in- teresting, as well as to give a delightful sense of a kind of necromantic power in the architect. There is a pretty one in the lintel of the lateral door of the cathedral of Prato
THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 47
(Plate IV. fig. 4.) ; where the maintenance of the visibly separate stones, alternate marble and serpentine, cannot be understood until their cross-cutting is seen below. Each block is, of course, of the form given in fig. 5.
XIII. Lastly, before leaving the subject of structural de- ceits, I would remind the architect who thinks that I am un- necessarily and narrowly limiting his resources or his artj that the highest greatness and the highest wisdom are shown, the first by a noble submission to, the second by a thoughtful providence for, certain voluntarily admitted restraints. Noth- ing is more evident than this, in that supreme government which is the example, as it is the centre, of all others. The Divine Wisdom is, and can be, shown to us only in its meeting and contending with the difficulties which are voluntarily, and for the mke of that contest, admitted by the Divine Omnipo- tence : and these difficulties, observe, occur in the form of natural laws or ordinances, w^iich might, at many times and in countless ways, be infringed with apj)arent advantage, but which are never infringed, w^iatever costly arrangements or adaptations their observance may necessitate for the accom- plishment of given purposes. The example most apposite to our present subject is the structure of the bones of animals. No reason can be given, I believe, why the s^'stem of the higher animals should not have been made capable, as that of the Infusoria is, of secreting flint, instead of phosphate of lime, or more naturally still, carbon ; so framing the bones of adamant at once. The elephant or rhinoceros, had the earthy part of their bones been r):iade of diamond, might have been as agile and light as grasshoppers, and other animals might have been framed far more magnificently colossal than any that walk the earth. In other worlds we may, perhaps, see such creations ; a creation for every element, and elements in- finite. But the architecture of animals here, is appointed by God to be a marble architecture, not a flint nor adamant architecture ; and all manner of expedients are adopted to at- tain the utmost degree of strength and size possible under that great limitation. The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and riveted, the leg of the megatherium is a foot thick, and
48 THE LAMP OF TRTJTB.
the head of the myodon has a double skull ; we, in our wib dom, should, doubtless, have given the lizard a steel jaw, and the myodon a cast-iron headpiece, and forgotten the great principle to which all creation bears witness, that order and system are nobler things than power. But God shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative per- fection, but even the perfection of Obedience — an obedience to His own laws : and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of His creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the hu- man creature "that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not."
XIV. 2d. Surface Deceits. These may be generally defined as the inducing the supposition of some form or material which does not actually exist ; as commonly in the painting of wood to represent marble, or in the painting of ornaments in deceptive rehef, &c. But we must be careful to observe, that the evil of them consists always in definitely attempted deception, and that it is a matter of some nicety to mark the point where deception begins or ends.
Thus, for instance, the roof of Milan Cathedral is seemingly cotered with elaborate fan tracery, forcibly enough painted to enable it, in its dark and removed position, to deceive a care- less observer. This is, of course, gross degradation ; it de- stroys much of the dignity even of the rest of the building, and is in the very strongest terms to be reprehended.
The roof of the Sistine Chapel has much architectural de- sign in grissaille mingled with the figures of its frescoes ; and the effect is increase of dignity.
In what lies the distinctive character ?
In two points, principally : — First. That the architecture is so closely associated with the figures, and has so grand fel- lowship with them in its forms and cast shadows, that bot^ are at once felt to be of a piece ; and as the figures must neces- sarilv be painted, the architecture is known to be so toa There is tlius no deception.
Second. That so great a painter as Michael Angelo would always stop short in such minor parts of his design, of the de<
I
THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 49
gree of vulgar force which would be necessary to induce the supposition of their reality ; and, strangely as it may sound, would never paint badly enough to deceive.
But though right and wrong are thus found broadly opposed in works severally so mean and so mighty as the roof of Milan and that of the Sistine, there are works neither so great nor so mean, in which the limits of right are vaguely defined, and will need some care to determine ; care only, however, to ap- ply accui'ately the broad principle with which we set out, that no form nor material is to be deceptively represented.
XV. Evidently, then, painting, confessedly such, is no de- ception : it does not assert any material whatever. Whether it be on wood or on stone, or, as will naturally be supposed, on plaster, does not matter. Whatever the material, good painting makes it more precious ; nor can it ever be said to deceive respecting ihe ground of which it gives us no informa- tion. To cover brick with plaster, and this plaster with fresco, is, therefore, perfectly legitimate ; and as desirable a mode of decoration as it is constant in the great periods. Verona and Venice are now seen deprived of more than half their former splendor ; it depended far more on their frescoes than their marbles. The plaster, in this case, is to be considered as the gesso ground on panel or canvas. But to cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood ; and is just as contemptible a procedure as the other is noble.
It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint every- thing ? So long as the painting is confessed — yes ; but if, even in the slightest degree, the sense of it be lost, and the thing painted be supposed real — no. Let us take a few in- stances. In the Campo Santo at Pisa, each fresco is sur- rounded with a border composed of flat colored patterns of great elegance — no part of it in attempted relief. The cer- tainty of flat surface being thus secured, the figures, though the size of Hfe, do not deceive, and the artist thenceforward is at liberty to put forth his whole power, and to lead us through fields and groves, and depths of pleasant landscape, and to soothe us with the sweet clearness of far off sky, and yet 4
50 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
never lose the severity of his primal purpose of architectural decoration.
In the Camera di Correggio of San Lodovico at Parma, the trellises of vine shadow the walls, as if with an actual arbor ; and the troops of children, peeping through the oval open- ings, luscious in color and faint in light, may well be ex- pected every instant to break through, or hide behind the covert. The grace of their attitudes, and the evident great- ness of the whole work, mark that it is painting, and barely Redeem it from the charge of falsehood ; but even so saved, it is utterly unworth}^ to take a place among noble or legiti- mate architectural decoration.
In the cupola of the duomo of Parma the same painter has rej)resented the Assumption with so much deceptive power, that he has made a dome of some thirty feet diameter look like a cloud-wrapt opening in the seventh heaven, crowded with a rushing sea of angels. Is this wrong? Not so : for the subject at once precludes the possibility of deception. We might have taken the vines for a veritable pergoda, and the children for its haunting ragazzi ; but we know the stayed clouds and moveless angels must be man's work ; let him put his utmost strength to it and welcome, he can enchant us, but cannot betray.
We may thus apply the rule to the highest, as well as the ar]^ of daily occurrence, always remembering that more is to be forgiven to the great painter than to the mere decorative workman ; and this especially, because the former, even in deceptive portions, wdll not trick us so grossly ; as we have just seen in Correggio, where a worse painter would have made the thing look like life at once. There is, however, in room, villa, or garden decoration, some fitting admission of trickeries of this kind, as of pictured landscapes at the ex- tremities of alleys and arcades, and ceilings like skies, or painted with prolongations upwards of the architecture of the walls, which things have sometimes a certain luxury and pleasureableness in places meant for idleness, and are in- nocent enough as long as they are regarded as mere toys.
XVI. Touching the false representation of material, the
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question is infinitely more simple, and the law more sweep- ing ; all such imitations are utterly base and iuadmissibla It is melancholy to think of the time and expense lost in marbling the shop fronts of London alone, and of the waste of our resources in absolute vanities, in things about which no mortal cares, by which no eye is ever arrested, unless painfully, and which do not add one whit to comfort or clean- liness, or even to that great object of commercial art — con- spicuousness. But in architecture of a higher rank, how much more is it to be condemned ? I have made it a rule in the present work not to blame specifically ; but I may, per- haps, be permitted, w^iile I express my sincere admiration of the very noble entrance and general architecture of the British Museum, to express also my regret that the noble granite foundation of the staircase should be mocked at its landing by an imitation, the more blameable because tolerably' successful. The only effect of it is to cast a suspicion upon the true stones below, and upon every bit of granite after- wards encountered. One feels a doubt, after it, of the honesty of Memnon himself. But even this, however derogatory to the noble architecture around it, is less painful than the want of feeling with which, in our cheap modern churches, we suffer the wall decorator to erect about the altar frame- works and pediments daubed with mottled color, and to dye in the same fashions such skeletons or caricatures of columns as may emerge above the pews ; this is not merely bad taste ; it is no unimportant or excusable error which brings even these shadows of vanity and falsehood into the house of prayer. The first condition which just feeling requires in church furniture is, that it should be simple and unaffected, Qot fictitious nor tawdry. It may be in our power to make it beautiful, but let it at least be pure ; and if we cannot permit much to the architect, do not let us permit anything to the upholsterer ; if we keep to solid stone and solid wood, white- washed, if w^e like, for cleanliness' sake (for whitewash has so often been used as the dress of noble things that it has thence received a kind of nobility itself), it must be a bad design in- deed which is grossly offensive. I recoUect no instance of a
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want of sacred character, or of any marked and painful ugliness, in the simplest or the most awkwardly built village church, where stone and wood were roughly and nakedly used, and the windows latticed with white glass. But the smoothly stuc- coed walls, the flat roofs with ventilator ornaments, the baiTcd windows with jaundiced borders and dead ground square panes, the gilded or bronzed w^ood, the painted iron, the wretched upholstery of curtains and cushions, and pew heads and altar raihngs, and Birmingham metal candlesticks, and, above all, the green and yellow sickness of the false marble — disguises all, observe ; falsehoods all — w^ho are they who like these things ? who defend them ? who do them ? I have never spoken to any one who did like them, though to many who thought them matters of no consequence. Per- haj)s not to religion (though I cannot but believe that there are many to whom, as to myself, such things are serious ob- stacles to the repose of mind and temper which should pre- cede devotional exercises) ; but to the general tone of our judgment and feeling — yes; for assuredly we shall regard, with tolerance, if not with affection, whatever forms of ma- terial things we have been in the habit of associating with our worship, and be little prepared to detect or blame hypocrisy, meanness, and disguise in other kinds of decoration when we suffer objects belonging to the most solemn of all services to be tricked out in a fashion so fictitious and unseemly.
XVn. Painting, however, is not the only raode in which material may be concealed, or rather simulated ; for merely to conceal is, as we have seen, no wrong. Whitewash, for in- stance, though often (by no means always) to be regretted as a concealment, is not to be blamed as a falsity. It shows it- self for what it is, and asserts nothing of what is beneath it. Gilding has become, from its frequent use, equally innocent. It is understood for what it is, a film merely, and is, therefore, allowable to any extent. I do not say expedient : it is one of the most abused means of magnificence we possess, and I much doubt whether any use we ever make of it, balances ithat loss of pleasure, which, from the frequent sight and per- petual suspicion of it, we suffer in the contemplation of any.
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thing that is verily of gold. I think gold was meant to be sel- dom seen and to be admired as a precious thing ; and I some- times wish that truth should so far literally prevail as that all should be gold that glittered, or rather that nothing should glitter that was not gold. Nevertheless, nature herself does not dispense with such semblance, but uses light for it ; and I have too great a iove for old and saintly art to part with its burnished field, or radiant nimbus ; only it should be used with respect, and to express magnificence, or sacredness, and not in lavish vanity, or in sign painting. Of its expedience, however, any more than of that of color, it is not here the place to speak ; we are endeavoring to determine what is lawful, not what is desirable. Of other and less common modes of dis- guising surface, as of powder of lapis lazuli, or mosaic imita- tions of colored stones, I need hardly speak. The rule will apply to all alike, that whatever is pretended, is wrong ; com- monly enforced also by the exceeding ugliness and insufficient appearance of such methods, as lately in the style of renova- tion by which half the houses in Venice have been defaced, the brick covered first with stucco, and this painted with zigzag veins in imitation of alabaster. But there is one more form of architectural fiction, which is so constant in the great periods that it needs respectful judgment. I mean the facing of brick with precious stone.
XVin. It is well known, that what is meant by a church's being built of marble is, in nearly all cases, only that a veneer- ing of marble has been fastened on the rough brick wall, built with certain projections to receive it ; and that what appear to be massy stones, are nothing more than external slabs.
Now, it is evident, that, in this case, the question of right is on the same ground as in that of gilding. If it be clearly understood that a marble facing does not pretend or imply a marble wall, there is no harm in it ; and as it is also evident that, when very precious stones are used, as jaspers and ser- pentines, it must become, not only an extravagant and vain increase of expense, but sometimes an actual impossibility, to obtain mass of them enough to build with, there is no resource but this of veneering ; nor is there anything to be alleged
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against it on the head of durabihty, such work having been by experience found to last as long, and in as perfect condi- tion, as any kind of masonry. It is, therefore, to be considered as simply an art of mosaic on a large scale, the ground being of brick, or any other material ; and when lovely stones are to be obtained, it is a manner which should be thoroughly under- stood, and often practised. Nevertheless, as we esteem the shaft of a column more highly for its being of a single block, and as we do not regret the loss of substance and value which there is in things of solid gold, silver, agate, or ivory ; so I think the walls themselves may be regarded with a more just complacency if they are known to be all of noble substance ; and that rightly weighing the demands of the two principles of which we have hitherto spoken — Sacrifice and Truth, w^e should sometimes rather spare external ornament than dimin- ish the unseen value and consistency of what we do ; and I believe that a better manner of design, and a more careful and studious, if less abundant decoration would follow, upon the consciousness of thoroughness in the substance. And, indeed, this is to be remembered, with respect to all the points we have examined ; that while we have traced the limits of license, we have not fixed those of that high rectitude which refuses license. It is thus true that there is no falsity, and much beauty in the use of external color, and that it is lawful to paint either pictures or patterns on whatever sui'faces may seem to need enrichment. But it is not less ivue, that such practices are essentially unarchitectural ; and while we cannot say that there is actual danger in an over use of them, seeing that they have been always used most lavishly in the times of most noble art, yet they divide the work into two parts and kinds, one of less durability than the other, which dies away from it in pro- cess of ages, and leaves it, unless it have noble qualities of its own, naked and bare. That enduring noblesse I should, there- fore, call truly architectural ; and it is not until this has been secured that the accessory power of painting may be called in, for the delight of the immediate time ; nor this, as I think, until every resource of a more stable kind has been exhausted. The true colors of architecture are those of natural stone, and
PLATE II.— ;Page 55— Vol V.) Part of the Cathedral of St. Lo, Normandy.
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I would fain see these taken advantage of to the full. Everj variety of hue, from pale yellow to purple, passing through orange, red, and brown, is entirely at our command ; nearly every kind of green and gray is also attainable : and with these, and pure white, what harmonies might we not achieve ? Of stained and variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable ; where brighter colors are required, let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic — a kind of work as durable as the solid stone, and incapable of losing its lustre by time — and let the painter's work be reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber. This is the true and faithful way of building ; where this cannot be, the device of external coloring may, indeed, be employed without dishonor ; but it must be with the warning reflection, that a time will come when such aids must pass away, and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dol- phin. Better the less bright, more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of San Miniato, and the mosaics of St. Mark's, are more warmly filled, and more brightly touched, by every return of morning and evening rays ; while the hues of our cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud ; and the temples whose azure and purple once flamed above the Grecian promontories, stand in their faded whiteness, like snows which the sunset has left cold.
XIX. The last form of fallacy which it will be remembered we had to deprecate, was the substitution of cast or machine work for that of the hand, generally expressible as Operative Deceit.
There are two reasons, both weighty, against this practice ; one, that all cast and machine work is bad, as work ; the other, that it is dishonest. Of its badness, I shall speak in another place, that being evidently no efficient reason against its use when other cannot be had. Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, is of the grossest kind, is, I think, a suffi- cient reason to determine absolute and unconditional rejec- tion of it.
Ornament, as I have often before observed, has two en- tirely distinct sources of agreeableness : one, that of the ab-
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stract beauty of its forms, which, for the present, we will suppose to be the same whether they come from the hand or the machine ; the other, the sense of human labor and care spent upon it. How great this latter influence we may per- haps judge, by considering that there is not a cluster of weeds growing in any cranny of ruin which has not a beauty in all respects nearly equal, and, in some, immeasurably superior, to that of the most elaborate sculpture of its stones : and that all our interest in the carved work, our sense of its richness, though it is tenfold less rich than the knots of grass beside it ; of its delicacy, though it is a thousand fold less delicate ; of its admirableness, though a millionfold less admirable ; re- sults from our consciousness of its being the work of poor, clumsy, toilsome man. Its true delightfulness depends on our discovering in it the record of thoughts, and intents, and trials, and heart-breakings — of recoveries and joyfulnesses of success : all this can be traced by a practised eye ; but, grant- ing it even obscure, it is presumed or understood ; and in that is the worth of the thing, just as much as the worth of anything else we call precious. The worth of a diamond is simply the understanding of the time it must take to look for it before it can be cut. It has an intrinsic value besides, which the diamond has not (for a diamond has no more real beauty than a piece of glass) ; but I do not speak of that at present ; I place the two on the same ground ; and I suppose that hand- wrought ornament can no more be generally known from machine work, than a diamond can be known from paste ; nay, that the latter may deceive, for a moment, the mason's, as the other the jeweller's eye ; and that it can be detected only by the closest examination. Yet exactly as a woman of feeling would not wear false jewels, so would a builder of honor disdain false ornaments. The using of them is just as downright and inexcusable a lie. You use that which pretends to a worth which it has not ; which pretends to have cost, and to be, what it did not, and is not ; it is an imposition, a vulgarity, an impertinence, and a sin. Down with it to the ground, grind it to powder, leave its ragged place upon the wall, rather ; you have not paid for it, you
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have no business with it, you do not want it. Nobody wants ornaments in this world, but everybody wants integrity. All the fair devices that ever were fancied, are not worth a he. Leave your walls as bare as a planed board, or build them ot baked mud and chopped straw, if need be ; but do not rough-cast them with falsehood.
This, then, being our general law, and I hold it for a more imperative one than way other I have asserted ; and this kind of dishonesty the meanest, as the least necessary ; for orna- ment is an extravagant and inessential thing ; and, therefore, if fallacious, utterly base — this, I sa^', being our general law, there are, nevertheless, certain exceptions respecting particu- lar substances and their uses.
XX. Thus in the use of brick ; since that is known to be originally moulded, there is no reason why it should not be moulded into diverse forms. It will never be supposed to have been cut, and therefore, will cause no deception ; it will have only the credit it deserv^es. In flat countries, far from any quarry of stone, cast brick may be legitimately, and most successfully, used in decoration, and that elaborate, and even refined. The brick mouldings of the Palazzo Pepoli at Bologna, and those which run round the market-place of Ver- celli, are among the richest in Italy. So also, tile and por- celain work, of which the former is grotesquely, but success- fully, employed in the domestic architecture of France, col- ored tiles being inserted in the diamond spaces between the crossing timbers ; and the latter admirably in Tuscany, in external bas-reliefs, by the Eobbia family, in which works, while we cannot but sometimes regret the useless and ill-ar- ranged colors, we would by no means blame the employment of a material which, whatever its defects, excels every other in permanence, and, perhaps, requires even greater skill in its management than marble. For it is not the material, but the absence of the human labor, which makes the thing worthless ; and a piece of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machinery. It is, indeed, possible, and even usual, for men to sink into machines themselves, bo
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that even hand-work has all the characters of mechanism ; ol the difference between living and dead hand-work I shall speak presently ; all that I ask at present is, what it is always in our power to secure — the confession of what we have done, and what we have given ; so that when we use stone at all, since all stone is naturally supposed to be carved by hand, we must not carve it by machinery ; neither must we use any artificial stone cast into shape, nor any stucco ornaments of the color of stone, or which might in anywise be mistaken for it, as the stucco mouldings in the cor tile of the Palazzo Vec- chio at Florence, which cast a shame and suspicion over every part of the building. But for ductile and fusible materials, as clay, iron, and bronze, since these will usually be supposed to have been cast or stamped, it is at our pleasure to employ them as we will ; remembering that they become precious, or otherwise, just in proportion to the hand-work upon them, or to the clearness of their reception of the hand-work of their mould.
But I believe no cause to have been more active in the degradation of our natural feeling for beauty, than the con- stant use of cast iron ornaments. The common iron work of the middle ages was as simple as it was effective, composed of leafage cut flat out of sheet iron, and twisted at the work- man's will. No ornaments, on the contrary, are so cold, clumsy, and vulgar, so essentially incapable of a fine line, or shadow, as those of cast iron ; and while, on the score of truth, we can hardly allege anything against them, since they are always distinguishable, at a glance, from wrought and ham- mered work, and stand only for what they are, yei I feel very strongly that there is no hope of the progress of the arts of any nation which indulges in these vulgar and cheap substi- tutes for real decoration. Their inefficiency and paltriness I shall endeavor to show more conclusively in another place, enforcing only, at present, the general conclusion that, if even honest or allowable, they are things in which we can never take just pride or pleasure, and must never be employed in any place wherein they might either themselves obtain the credit of being other and better than they are, or be asso<
(
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dated with the downright work to which it would be a dis- grace to be found in their company.
Such are, I beheve, the three principal kinds of fallacy by which architecture is liable to be corrupted ; there are, how- ever, other and more subtle forms of it, against which it is less easy to guard by definite law, than by the watchfulness of a manly and unaffected spirit. For, as it has been above no- ticed, there are certain kinds of deception which extend to impressions and ideas only ; of which some are, indeed, of a noble use, as that above referred to, the arborescent look of lofty Gothic aisles ; but of which the most part have so much of legerdemain and trickery about them, that they will lower any style in which they considerably prevail ; and they are likely to prevail when once they are admitted, being apt to catch the fancy alike of uninventive architects and feelingiess spectators ; just as mean and shallow minds are, in other matters, delighted with the sense of over-reaching, or tickled with the conceit of detecting the intention to over-reach ; and when subtleties of this kind are accompanied by the display of such dextrous stone-cutting, or architectural sleight of hand, as may become, even by itself, a subject of admiration, it is a great chance if the pursuit of them do not gradually draw us away from all regard and care for the nobler char- acter of the art, and end in its total paralysis or extinction. And against this there is no guarding, but by stern disdain of all display of dexterity and ingenious device, and by put- ting the whole force of our fancy into the arrangement of masses and forms, caring no more how these masses and forms are wrought out, than a great painter cares which way his pencil strikes. It would be easy to give many in- stances of the danger of these tricks and vanities ; but I shall confine myself to the examination of one which has, as I think, been the cause of the fall of Gothic architecture throughout Europe. I mean the system of intersectional mouldings, which, on account of its great importance, and for the sake of the general reader, I may, perhaps, be par- doned for explaining elementarily.
XXI I must, in the first place, however, refer to Professor
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Willis's account of the origin of tracery, given in the sixth chapter of his Architecture of the Middle Ages ; since the publication of which I havt been not a little amazed to hear of any attempts made to resuscitate the inexcusably absurd theory of its derivation from imitated vegetable form — inex- cusably, I say, because the smallest acquaintance with early Gothic architecture would have informed the supporters of that theory of the simple fact, that, exactly in proportion to the antiquity of the work, the imitation of such organic forms is less, and in the earliest examples does not exist at all. There cannot be the shadow of a question, in the mind of a person familiarised with any single series of consecutive ex- amples, that tracery arose from the gradual enlargement of the penetrations of the shield of stone which, usually sup- ported by a central pillar, occupied the head of early windows. Professor Willis, perhaps, confines his observations somewhat too absolutely to the double sub-arch, I have given, in Plat Vn. fig. 2, an interesting case of rude penetration of a high and simply trefoiled shield, from the church of the Eremitani at Padua. But the more frequent and typical form is that of the double sub-arch, decorated with various piercings of the space between it and the superior arch ; with a simple trefoil under a round arch, in the Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen^ (Plate III. fig. 1) ; with a very beautifully proportioned qua- tref oil, in the trif orium of Eu, and that of the choir oi Lisieux ; wdth quatrefoils, sixfoils, and septfoils, in the transept- towers of Eouen (Plate III. fig. 2) ; with a trefoil awkwardly, ar?d very small quatrefoil above, at Coutances, (Plate III. fig. 3) < then, with multiplications of the same figures, pointed orroun^?, giv- ing very clumsy shapes of the intermediate stone (fig. 4, from one of the nave chapels of Rouen, fig. 5, from one of the rnve chapels of Bayeaux), and finally, by thinning:: out the stony ribs, reaching conditions like that of the glorious typical form of the clerestory of the apse of Beauvais (fig. 6).
XXn. Now, it will be noticed that, during the whole ol this process, the attention is kept fixed on the forms of th<^ penetrations, that is to say, of tlie lights as seen from the in- terior, not of the intermediate stone. All the grace of the
¥
PLATE ra.-(Pa«e 60-Vol. V.) Traceries from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, and Beavais.
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window is in the outline of its light ; and I have drawn all these traceries as seen from within, in order to show the effect of the light thus treated, at first in far off and separate stars, and then gradually enlarging, approaching, until they come and stand over us, as it were, filling the whole space with their effulgence. And it is in this pause of the star, that we have the great, pure, and perfect form of French Gothic ; it was at the instant when the rudeness of the intermediate space had been finally conquered, when the light had expanded to its fullest, and yet had not lost its radiant unity, principality, and visible first causing of the whole, that we have the most exquisite feeling and most faultless judgments in the manage- ment alike of the tracery and decorations. I have given, in Plate X., an exquisite example of it, from a panel decoration of the buttresses of the north door of Rouen ; and in order that the reader may understand what truly fine Gothic work is, and how nobly it unites fantasy and law, as w^ell as for our immediate purpose, it will be well that he should examine its sections and mouldings in detail (they are described in the fourth Chapter, § xxvii.), and that the more carefully, because this design belongs to a period in which the most important change took place in the spirit of Gothic architecture, which, perhaps, ever resulted from the natural progress of any art. That tracery marks a pause between the laying aside of one great ruling principle, and the taking up of another ; a pause as marked, as clear, as conspicuous to the distant view of after times, as to the distant glance of the traveller is the culminating ridge of the mountain chain over which he has passed. It w^as the great watershed of Gothic art. Before it, all had been ascent ; after it, all was decline ; both, indeed, by winding paths and varied slopes ; both interrupted, like the gradual rise and fall of the passes of the Alps, by great mountain outliers, isolated or branching from the central chain, and by retrograde or parallel directions of the valleys of access. But the track of the human mind is traceable up to that glorious ridge, in a continuous line, and thence down- wards. Like a silver zone —
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"Flung about carelessly, it shines afar, Catching the eye in many a broken link, In many a turn and traverse, as it glides. And oft above, and oft below, appears — * * * * to him who journeys up As though it were another, "
And at that point, and that instant, reaching the place that was nearest heaven, the builders looked back, for the last time, to the way by which they had come, and the scenes through which their early course had passed. They turned away from them and their morning light, and descended to- wards a new horizon, for a time in the warmth of western sun, but plunging with every forward step into more cold and melancholy shade.
XXTTT. The change of which I speak, is inexpressible in few words, but one more important, more radically influential, could not be. It was the substitution of the line for the '\nm^^ as the element of decoration.
We have seen the mode in which the openings or penetra- tion of the window expanded, until what were, at first, awk- ward forms of intermediate stone, became delicate lines of tracery : and I have been careful in pointing out the peculiar attention bestowed on the proportion and decoration of the mouldings of the window at Rouen, in Plate X., as compared with earlier mouldings, because that beauty and care are sin- gularly significant. They mark that the traceries had caught the eye of the architect. Up to that time, up to the very last instant in which the reduction and thinning of the intervening stone was consummated, his eye had been on the openings only, on the stars of light. He did not care about the stone, a rude border of moulding was all he needed, it was the penetrating shape which he was watching. But when that shape had re- ceived its last possible expansion, and when the stone-work became an arrangement of graceful and parallel lines, that arrangement, like some form in a picture, unseen and acciden- tally developed, struck suddenly, inevitably, on the sight. It nad literally not been seen before. It flashed out in an in- stant as an independent form. It became a feature of the
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work. The architect took it under his care, thought over it, and distributed its members as we see.
Now, the great pause was at the moment when the space and the dividing stone-work were both equally considered. It did not last fifty years. The forms of the tracery were seized with a childish delight in the novel source of beauty ; g,nd the intervening space was cast aside, as an element of decoration, for ever. I have confined myself, in following this change, to the window, as the feature in which it is clearest. But the transition is the same in every member of architect- ure ; and its importance can hardly be understood, unless we take the pains to trace it in the universality, of which illustra- tions, irrelevant to our present purpose, will be found in the third Chapter. I pursue here the question of truth, relating to the treatment of the mouldings.
XXIV. The reader will observe that, up to the last expan- sion of the penetrations, the stone- work was necessarily consid- ered, as it actually is, stiff, and unyielding. It was so, also, during the pause of which I have spoken, when the forms of the tracery were still severe and pure ; delicate indeed, but perfectly firm.
At the close of the period of pause, the first sign of serious change was like a low breeze, passing through the emaciated tracery, and making it tremble. It began to undulate like the threads of a cobweb lifted by the wind. It lost its essence as a structure of stone. Reduced to the slenderness of threads, it began to be considered as possessing also their flexibility. The architect was pleased with this his new fancy, and set him- self to carry it out ; and in a little time, the bars of tracery were caused to appear to the eye as if they had been woven together like a net. This was a change which sacrificed a great principle of truth ; it sacrificed the expression of the qualities of the material ; and, however delightful its results in their first developments, it was ultimately ruinous.
For, observe the difference between the supposition of duc- tility, and that of elastic structure noticed above in the resem- blance to tree form. That resemblance was not sought, but necessary ; it resulted from the natural conditions of strength
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in the pier or trunk, and slenderness in the ribs or branches, while many of the other suggested conditions of resemblance were perfectly true. A tree branch, though in a certain sense flexible, is not ductile ; it is as firm in its own form as the rib of stone ; both of them will yield up to certain limits, both of them breaking when those limits are exceeded ; while the tree trunk will bend no more than the stone pilla]-. But when the tracery is assumed to be as yielding as a silken cord ; when the whole fragility, elasticity, and weight of the material are to the eye, if not in terms, denied ; when all the art of the architect is applied to disprove the first conditions of his work- ing, and the first attributes of his materials ; this is a deliber- ate treachery, only redeemed from the charge of direct false- hood by the visibility of the stone surface, and degrading all the traceries it affects exactly in the degree of its presence.
XXV. But the declining and morbid taste of the later ar- chitects, w^as not satisfied with thus much deception. They were delighted with the subtle charm they had created, and thought only of increasing its power. The next step was to consider and represent the tracery, as not only ductile, but penetrable ; and when two mouldings met each other, to manage their intersection, so that one should appear to pass through the other, retaining its independence ; or when two ran parallel to each other, to represent the one as partly con- tained within the other, and partly apparent above it. This form of falsity was that which crushed the art. The flexible traceries were often beautiful, though they were ignoble ; but the penetrated traceries, rendered, as they finally were, merely the means of exhibiting the dexterity of the stone-cutter, an- nihilated both the beauty and dignity of the Gothic types. A system so momentous in its consequences deserves some detailed examination.
XXVI. In the drawing of the shafts of the door at Lisieux, under the spandril, in Plate VII., the reader will see the mode of managing the intersection of similar mouldings, which was universal in the great periods. They melted into each other, and became one at the point of crossing, or of contact ; and even the suggestion of so sharp intersection as this of Lisieux
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is usually avoided (this design being, of course, only a pointed form of the earlier Norman arcade, in which the arches are interlaced, and lie each over the preceding, and under the fol- lowing, one, as in Anselm's tower at Canterbury), since, in the plurality of designs, when mouldings meet each other, they coincide through some considerable portion of their curves, meeting by contact, rather than by intersection ; and at the point of coincidence the section of each separate moulding becomes common to the two thus melted into each other. Thus, in the junction of the circles of the window of the Pa- lazzo Foscari, Plate VIII, given accurately in fig. 8, Plate IV., the section across the line s, is exactly the same as that across any break of the separated moulding above, as «. It some- times, however, happens, that two different mouldings meet each other. This was seldom permitted in the great periods, and, when it took place, was most awkwardly managed. Fig. 1, Plate IV. gives the junction of the mouldings of the gable and vertical, in the window of the spire of Salisbury. That of the gable is composed of a single, and that of the vertical of a double cavetto, decorated with ball-flowers ; and the larger single moulding swallows up one of the double ones, and pushes forward among the smaller balls wdth the most blundering and clumsy simplicity. In comparing the sections it is to be observed that, in the upper one, the line a h rej)re- sents an actual vertical in the plane of the window ; while, in the lower one, the line e d represents the horizontal, in the plane of the window, indicated by the persj)ective line d e.
XXVII. The very awkwardness with which such occur- rences of difficulty are met by the earlier builder, marks his dislike of the system, and unwillingness to attract the eye to such arrangements. There is another very clumsy one, in the junction of the upper and sub-arches of the triforium of Sahsbury ; but it is kept in the shade, and all the prominent junctions are of mouldings like each other, and managed with perfect simplicity. But so soon as the attention of the builders became, as we have just seen, fixed upon the lines of mouldings instead of the enclosed spaces, those lines began to preserve an independent existence wherever they met ; and different mould- 5
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ings were studiously associated, in order to obtain variety of intersectional line. We must, however, do the late builders the justice to note that, in one case, the habit grew out of si feeling of proportion, more refined than that of earlier work- men. It shows itself first in the bases of divided pillars, or arch mouldings, whose smaller shafts had originally bases formed by the continued base of the central, or other larger, columns with which they were grouped ; but it being felt, when the eye of the architect became fastidious, that the dimension of moulding which was right for the base of a large shaft, was wrong for that of a small one, each shaft had an independent base ; at first, those of the smaller died simply down on that of the larger ; but when the vertical sections of both became complicated, the bases of the smaller shafts were considered to exist within those of the larger, and the places of their emer- gence, on this supposition, were calculated with the utmost nicety, and cut with singular precision ; so that an elaborate late base of a divided column, as, for instance, of those in the nave of Abbeville, looks exactly as if its smaller shafts had all been finished to the ground first, each with its complete and intricate base, and then the comprehending base of the central pier had been moulded over them in clay, leaving their points and angles sticking out here and there, like the edges of sharp crystals out of a nodule of earth. The exhibition of technical dexterity in work of this kind is often marvellous, the strangest possible shapes of sections being calculated to a hair's-breadth, and the occurrence of the under and emergent forms being rendered, even in places where they are so slight that they can hardly be detected but by the toach. It is impossible to ren- der a very elaborate example of this kind intelligible, without some fifty measured sections ; but fig. 6, Plate IV. is a very in- teresting and simple one, from the west gate of Rouen. It is part of the base of one of the narrow piers between its princi- pal niches. The square column k, having a base with the pro- file p r, is supposed to contain within itself another similar one, set diagonally, and lifted so far above the inclosing one, as that the recessed part of its profile p r shall fall behind the projecting part of the outer one. The angle of its upper por-
r
PLATE rV".-(Page 66-Vol. V.) Intersectional Mouldings.
THE LAMP OF TRUTH, 67
tion exactly meets the plane of the side of the upper inclosing shaft 4, and would, therefore, not be seen, unless two vertical cuts were made to exhibit it, which form two dark lines the whole way up the shaft. Two small pilasters are run, like fastening stitches, through the junction on the front of the shafts. The sections k n taken respectively at the levels k, ?i, will explain the hypothetical construction of the whole. Fig, 7 is a base, or joint rather (for passages of this form occur again and again, on the shafts of flamboyant work), of one of the smallest piers of the pedestals which support the lost stat- ues of the porch ; its section below would be the same as 7i, and its construction, after what has been said of the other base, will be at once perceived.
XXYIII. There was, however, in this kind of involution, much to be admired as well as reprehended, the proportions of quantities were always as beautiful as they were intricate ; and, though the lines of intersection were harsh, they were exquisitely opposed to the flower-work of the interposing mouldings. But the fancy did not stop here ; it rose from the bases into the arches ; and there, not finding room enough for its exhibition, it withdrew the capitals from the heads even of cylindrical shafts, (we cannot but admire, while we regret, the boldness of the men who could defy the authority and custom of all the nations of the earth for a space of some three thousand years,) in order that the arch mouldings might appear to emerge from the pillar, as at its base they had been lost in it, and not to terminate on the abacus of the capital ; then they ran the mouldings across and through each other, at the point of the arch ; and finally, not finding their natural directions enough to furnish as many occasions of intersection as they wished, bent them hither and thither, and cut off their ends short, when they had passed the point of intersection. Fig. 2, Plate IV. is part of a flying buttress from the apse of St. Gervais at Falaise, in which the moulding whose section is rudely given above at /, (taken vertically through the point f,) is carried thrice through itself, in the cross-bar and two arches ; and the flat fillet is cut off sharp at the end of the cross-bar, for the mere pleasure of the truncation Fig. 3 i»
68 THE LAMP OF TBUTU.
half of the head of a door in the S<:adthaus of Sursee, in which the shaded part of the section of the joint g g, is that of the arch-moulding, which is three times reduplicated, and six times intersected by itself, the ends being cut off when they become unmanageable. This style is, indeed, earlier exag- gerated in Switzerland and Germany, owing to the imitation in stone of the dovetaihng of wood, particularly of the inter- secting of beams at the angles of chalets ; but it only furnishes the more plain instance of the danger of the fallacious system which, from the beginning, repressed the German, and, in the end, ruined the French Gothic. It would be too painful a task to follow further the caricatures of form, and eccen- tricities of treatment, which grow out of this singular abuse — the flattened arch, the shrunken pillar, the lifeless orna- ment, the liny moulding, the distorted and extravagant folia- tion, until the time came when, over these wrecks and rem- nants, deprived of all unity and principle, rose the foul torrent of the renaissance, and swept them all away. So fell the great dynasty of mediaeval architecture. It was because it had lost its own strength, and disobeyed its own laws — because its order, and consistency, and organization, had been broken through — that it could oppose no resistance to the rush of overwhelm- ing innovation. And this, observe, all because it had sacri- ficed a single truth. From that one surrender of its integrity, from that one endeavor to assume the semblance of what it was not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and decrep- itude, which rotted away the pillars of its supremacy. It was not because its time was come ; it was not because it was scorned by the classical Romanist, or dreaded by the faithful Protestant. That scorn and that fear it might have survived, and lived ; it would have stood forth in stern comparison with the enervated sensuality of the renaissance ; it would have risen in renewed and purified honor, and with a new soul, from the ashes into which it sank, giving up its glory, as it had received it, for the honor of God — but its own truth Avas gone, and it sank forever. There was no wisdom nor strength left in it, to raise it from the dust ; and the error of zeal, and *;he softness of luxury smote it down and dissolved it away
THE LAMP OF POWER. 69
It is good for us to remember this, as we tread upon the bare ground of its foundations, and stumble over its scattered stones. Those rent skeletons of pierced wall, through which our sea-winds moan and murmur, strewing them joint by joint, and bone by bone, along the bleak promontories on which the Pharos lights came once from houses of prayer — those grey arches and quiet isles under which the sheep of our valleys feed and rest on the turf that has buried their altars — those shapeless heaps, that are not of the Earth, which lift our fields into strange and sudden banks of flowers, and stay our mountain streams with stones that are not their own, have other thoughts to ask from us than those of mourning for the rage that despoiled, or the fear that forsook them. It was not the robber, not the fanatic, not the Tblasphemer, who sealed the destruction that they had wrought ; the war, the wrath, the terror, might have worked their worst, and the strong walls would have risen, and the slight pillars would have started again, from under the hand of the destroyer. But they could not rise out of the ruins of their own violated truth.
CHAPTER m.
THE LAMP OF POWEE.
I. In recalling the impressions we have received from the works of man, after a lapse of time long enough to involve in obscurity all but the most vivid, it often happens that we find a strange pre-eminence and durability in many upon whose strength we had little calculated, and that points of character which had escaped the detection of the judgment, become de- veloped under the waste of memory ; as veins of harder rock, whose places could not at first have been discovered by the eye, are left salient under the action of frosts and streams. The traveller who desires to correct the errors of his judg- ment, necessitated by inequalities of temper, infelicities of circumstance, and accidents of association, has no other re- source than to wait for the calm verdict of interposing years ; and to watch for the new arrangements of eminence and shap«
70
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in the images wliicli remain latest in his memory ; as in the ebbing of a mountain lake, he would watch the varying out- lines of its successive shore, and trace, in the form of its de- parting waters, the true direction of the forces which had cleft, or the currents which had excavated, the deepest re- cesses of its primal bed.
In thus reverting to the memories of those works of archi tecture by which we have been most pleasurably impressed, it will generally happen that they fall into two broad classes . the one characterized by an exceeding preciousness and deli- cacy, to which we recur with a sense of affectionate admira- tion ; and the other by a severe, and, in many cases, myste- rious, majesty, which we remember with an undiminished awe, like that felt at the presence and operation of some great Spiritual Power. From about these two groups, more or less harmonised by intermediate examples, but always distinc- tively marked by features of beauty or of power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the memories of buildings, per- haps, in their first address to our minds, of no inferior pre- tension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of less enduring nobility — to value of material, accumulation of or- nament, or ingenuity of mechanical construction. Especial interest may, indeed, have been awakened b}^ such circum- stances, and the memory may have been, consequently, ren- dered tenacious of particular parts or effects of the structure ; but it will recall even these only by an active effort, and then without emotion ; while in passive moments, and with thrill- ing influence, the image of purer beauty, and of more spirit- ual power, will return in a fair and solemn company ; and while the pride of many a stately palace, and the wealth of many a jewelled shrine, perish from our thoughts in a dust of gold, there will rise, through their dimness, the white image of some secluded marble chapel, by river or forest side, with the fretted flower- work shrinking under its arches, as if under vaults of late-fallen snow ; or the vast weariness of some shad- owy wall whose separate stones are like mountain foundations, and yet numberless.
n. Now, the difference between these two orders of build*
.'S^
"f" . '^
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ing is not merely that which there is in nature between things beautiful and sublime. It is, also, the difference between what is derivative and original in man's work ; for whatever is in architecture fair or beautiful, is imitated from natural forms ; and what is not so derived, but depends for its dig-*^ nity upon arrangement and government received from human mind, becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and receives a sublimity high in proportion to the power ex-/ pressed. All building, therefore, shows man either as gather- ing or governing : and the secrets of his success are his / knowing what to gather, and how to rule. These are the two great intellectual Lamps of Architecture ; the one consisting in a just and humble veneration for the works of God upon the earth, and the other in an understanding of the dominion over those works which has been vested in man.
in. Besides this expression of living authority and power, there is, however, a sympathy in the forms of noble building, with what is most sublime in natural things ; and it is the governing Power directed by this sympathy, whose opex^ation I shall at present endeavor to trace, abandoning all inquiry into the more abstract fields of invention : for this fatter faculty, and the questions of proportion and arrangement connected with its discussion, can only be rightly examined in a general view of all arts ; but its sympathy, in architecture, with the vast controlling powers of Nature herself, is special, and may shortly be considered ; and that with the more ad- vantage, that it has, of late, been little felt or regarded by architects. I have seen, in recent efforts, much contest between two schools, one affecting originality, and the other legality — many attempts at beauty of design — many ingenious adapta- tions of construction ; but I have never seen any aim at the expression of abstract power ; never any appearance of a con- sciousness that, in this primal art of man, there is room for the marking of his relations with the mightiest, as well as the fairest, works of God ; and that those works themselves have been permitted, by their Master and his, to receive an added glory from their association with earnest efforts of human thouojht. In the edifices of Man there should be found rever-
72 777^ LAMP OF POWER.
ent worship and lollowing, not only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue — which gives veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organization, — but of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky ; for these, and other glories more than these, re- fuse not to connect themselves, in his thoughts, with the work of his own hand ; the grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some Cyclopean waste of mural stone ; the pin- nacles of the rocky promontory arrange themselves, unde- graded, into fantastic semblances of fortress towers ; and even the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a melancholy mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from the images of nameless tumuli on white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy clay, into which chambered cities melt in their mortality'.
IV. Let us, then, see what is this power and majesty, which Nature herself does not disdain to accept from the works of man ; and what that fubhmity in the masses built uj) by his coralline-like energy, which is honorable, even when trans- ferred by association to the dateless hills, which it needed earthquakes to lift, and deluges to mould.
And, first of mere size : It might not be thought possible to emulate the sublimity of natural objects in this respect ; nor would it be, if the architect contended with them in pitched battle. It would not be well to build pyramids in the valley of Chamouni ; and St. Peter's, among its many other errors, counts for not the least injurious its position on the slope of an inconsiderable hill. But imagine it placed on the plain of Marengo, or, like the Superga of Turin, or like La Salute at Venice ! The fact is, that the apprehension of the size of na- tural objects, as well as of architecture, depends more on for- tunate excitement of the imagination than on measurements by the eye ; and the architect has a peculiar advantage in being able to press close upon the sight, such magnitude as he can command. There are few rocks, even among the Alps, that have a clear vertical fall as high as the choir of Beauvais ; and
THE LAMP OF POWER. 73
if we secure a good precipice of wall, or a sheer and unbroken flank of tower, and place them where there are no enormous natural features to oppose them, we shall feel in them no want of sublimity of size. And it may be matter of encouragement in this respect, though one also of regret, to observe how much oftener man destroys natural sublimity, than nature crushes human power. It does not need much to humiliate a moun- tain. A hut will sometimes do it ; I never look up to the Col de Balme from Chamouni, without a violent feeling of provo- cation against its hospitable little cabin, whose bright white walls form a visibly four-square spot on the green ridge, and entirel}^ destroy all idea of its elevation. A single villa will often mar a whole landscape, and dethrone a dynasty of hills, and the Acropolis of Athens, Parthenon and all, has, I believe, been dwarfed into a model by the palace lately built beneath it. The fact is, that hills are not so high as we fancy them, and, when to the actual impression of no mean comparative size, is added the sense of the toil of manly hand and thought, a sublimity is reached, which nothing but gross error in ar- rangement of its parts can destroy.
V. While, therefore, it is not to be supposed that mere size will ennoble a mean design, yet every increase of magnitude will bestow upon it a certain degree of nobleness : so that it is well to determine at first, whether the building is to be markedly beautiful or markedly sublime ; and if the latter, not to be Mdthheld by respect to smaller parts from reaching largeness of scale ; provided onty, that it be evidently in the architect's po>ver to reach at least that degree of magnitude which is the lowest at which sublimity begins, rudely definable as that which will make a living figure look less than life be- side it. It is the misfortune of most of our modern buildings that we would fain have an universal excellence in them ; and so part of the funds must go in painting, part in gilding, part in fitting up, part in painted windows, part in small steeples, part in ornaments here and there ; and neither the windows, nor the steeple, nor the ornaments, are worth their materials. For there is a crust about the impressible part of men's minds, which must be pierced through before they can be touched
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to the quick ; and though we may prick at it and scratch ii in a thousand separate places, we might as well have let it alone if we do not come through somewhere with a deep thrust : and if we can give such a thrust anywhere, there is no need of another ; it need not be even so " wide as a church door," so that it be enough. And mere weight will do this : it is a clumsy way of doing it, but an effectual one, too ; and the apathy which cannot be pierced through by a small steeple, nor shone through by a small window, can be broken through in a moment by the mere weight of a great wall. Let, there- fore, the architect who has not large resources, choose his point of attack first, and, if he choose size, let him abandon decoration ; for, unless they are concentrated, and numerous enough to make their concentration conspicuous, all his orna- ments together would not be worth one huge stone. And the choice must be a decided one, without compromise. It must be no question whether his capitals would not look better with a little carving — let him leave them huge as blocks ; or whether his arches should not have richer architraves — let him throw them a foot higher, if he can ; a yard more across the nave will be worth more to him than a tesselated pavement ; and another fathom of outer wall, than an army of pinnacles. The limitation of size must be only in the uses of the building, or in the ground at his disposal.
VI. That limitation, however, being by such circumstances determined, by what means, it is to be next asked, may the actual magnitude be best displayed ; since it is seldom, per- haps never, that a building of any pretension to size looks so large as it is. The appearance of a figure in any distant, more especially in any upper, parts of it will almost always prove that we have under-estimated the magnitude of those parts.
It has often been observed that a building, in order to show ite magnitude, must be seen all at once. It would, perhaps, be better to say, must be bounded as much as possible by continuous lines, and that its extreme points should be seen all at once ; or we may state, in simpler terms still, that it must have one visible bounding line from top to bottom, and from end to end. This bounding line from top to bottom may
TEE LAMP OF POWER. 75
either be inclined inwards, and the mass, therefore, pyrami- dical ; or vertical, and the mass form one grand cliff ; or in- clined outwards, as in the advancing fronts of old houses, and, in a sort, in the Greek temple, and in all buildings with heavy cornices or heads. Now, in all these cases, if the bounding Une be violently broken ; if the cornice project, or the uiDpei portion of the pyramid recede, too violently, majesty will be lost ; not because the building cannot be seen all at once,— for in the case of a heavy cornice no j)art of it is necessarily concealed — but because the continuity of its terminal line is broken, and the length of that line, therefore, cannot be esti- mated. But the error is, of course, more fatal when much of the building is also concealed ; as in the well-known case of the recession of the dome of St. Peter's, and, from the greater number of points of view, in churches whose highest portions, whether dome or tower, are over their cross. Thus there is only one point from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt ; and that is from the corner of the Via de' Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the apse and transepts. In all cases in which the tower is over the cross, the grandeur and height of the tower itself are lost, because there is but one line down which the eye can trace the whole height, and that is in the inner angle of the cross, not easily discerned. Hence, while, in symmetry and feeling, such designs may often have pre-eminence, yet, where the height of the tower itself is to be made apparent, it must be at the west end, or better still, detached as a campanile. Imagine the loss to the Lombard churches if their campaniles were carried only to their present height over their crosses ; or to the Cathedral of Rouen, if the Tour de Beurre were made central, in the place of its present debased spire !
VII. Whether, therefore, we have to do with tp^yer or wall, there must be one bounding^ J[:i5V2iYQm:base to coping ; and I am much inclined. ,^iyself"to love the true vertical, or the vertical, with a s'^^'iemn frown of projection (not a scowl), as in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. This character is alwaya given to rocks i^^ ^^^ poets ; with slight foundation indeed
76 THE LAMP OP POWER.
real rocks being little given to overhanging — but with excel lent judgment ; for the sense of threatening conveyed by thia form is a nobler character than that of mere size. And, in buildings, this threatening should be somewhat carried down into their mass. A mere projecting shelf is not enough, the Avhole wall must, Jupiter like, nod as well as frown. Hence, I think the propped machicolations of the Palazzo Vecchio and Duomo of Florence far grander headings than any foi-m of Greek cornice. Sometimes the projection may be thrown lower, as in the Doge's palace of Venice, where the chief ap- pearance of it is above the second arcade ; or it may become a grand swell from the ground, as the head of a ship of the line rises from the sea. This is very nobly attained by the projection of the niches in the third story of the Tour de Beurre at Rouen.
Vm. What is needful in the setting forth of magnitude in height, is right also in the marking it in area — let it be gath- ered well together. It is especially to be noted with respect to the Palazzo Vecchio and other mighty buildings of its order, how mistakenly it has been stated that dimension, in order to become impressive, should be expanded either in height or length, but not equally : whereas, rather it will be found that those buildings seem on the whole the vastest which have been gathered up into a mighty square, and which look as if they had been measured by the angels rod, " the length, and the breadth, and the height of it are equal," and herein something is to be taken notice of, which I believe not to be sufficiently, if at all, considered among our archi- tects.
Of the many broad divisions under which architecture may be considered, none appear to me more significant than that into buildings whose interest is in their walls, and those whose int^^st is in the lines dividing their walls. In the Greek temple the walitb SdiiS^tii^i? ' the entire interest is in the detached columns and the frieze '^^^ ^^^^ 5 in French Flamboyant, and in our detestable Perpex.'^^^^^^^' *^^ object is to get rid of the wall surface, and keep th^' ^^^ altogethei on tracery of line ; in Romanesque wOrk ^nd Egyptian, the
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77
wall is a confessed and honored member, and the light is often allowed to fall on large areas of it, variously decorated. [Now, both these principles are admitted by Nature, the one in her woods and thickets, the other in her plains, and cliffs, and waters ; but the latter is pre-eminently the principle of 'power, and, in some sense, of beauty als^ For, whatever in- Ifinity of fair form there may be in the maze of the forest, 'there is a fairer, as I think, in the surface of the quiet lake ; and I hardly know that association of shaft or tracery, for which I would exchange the warm sleep of sunshine on some smooth, broad, human-like front of marble. Nevertheless, if breadth is to be beautiful, its substance must in some sort be beautiful ; and we must not hastily condemn the exclusive resting of the northern architects in divided lines, until at least we have remembered the difference between a blank surface of Caen stone, and one mixed from Genoa and Car- rara, of serpentine with snow : but as regards abstract power and awfulness, there is no question ; without breadth of sur- face it is in vain to seek them, aiid'it matters little, so that the surface be wide, bold and unbroken, whether it be of brick or of jasper ; the light of heaven upon it, and the weight of earth in it, are all we need : for it is singular how forgetful the mind may become both of material and workmanship, if only it have space enough over which to range, and to remind it, however feebly, of the joy that it has in contemplating the flatness and sweep of great plains and broad seas. And it is a noble thing for men to do this with their cut stone or moulded clay, and to make the face of a wall look infinite, and its edge against the sky like an horizon : or even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the play of passing light on its broad surface, and to see by how many artifices and gradations of tinting and shadow, time and storm will set their wild signatures upon it ; and how in the rising or de- clining of the day the unbroken twilight rests long and lu- cidly on its high lineless forehead, and fades away r^^r down its tiers of confused and countless stone.
IX. This, then, being, as I think, one of the ments of sublime architecture, it may be easily
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sarily consequent upon the love of it will be the choice of a form approaching to the square for the main outline.
For, in whatever direction the building is contracted, in that direction the eye will be drawn to its terminal lines ; and the sense of surface will only be at its fullest when those lines are removed, in every direction, as far as possible. Thus the square and circle are pre-eminently the areas of power among those bounded by purely straight or curved lines ; and these, with their relative solids, the cube and sphere, and relative solids of progression (as in the investigation of the laws of proportion I shall call those masses which are generated by the progression of an area of given form along a line in a given direction), the square and cjdindrical column, are the elements of utmost power in all architectural arrangements. On the other hand, grace and perfect proportion require an elongation in some one direction : and a sense of power may be communicated to this form of magnitude by a continuous series of any marked features, such as the eye may be unable to number ; wdiile yet we feel, from their boldness, decision, and simplicity, that it is indeed their multitude which has embarrassed us, not any confusion or indistinctness of form. This expedient of continued series forms the sublimity of arcades and aisles, of all ranges of columns, and, on a smaller scale, of those Greek mouldings, of which, repeated as they now are in all the meanest and most familiar forms of our fur- niture, it is impossible altogether to w^eary. Now, it is evi- dent that the architect has choice of Uvo types of form, each properly associated with its own kind of interest or decora- tion : the square, or greatest area, to be chosen especially when the surface is to be the subject of thought ; and the elongated area, when the divisions of the surface are to be the subjects of thought. Both these orders of form, as I think nearly every other source of power and beauty, are marvel- lously united in that building which I fear to weary the reader "ging forward too frequently, as a model of all perfec- -^ Doge's palace at Venice : its general arrangement, uare ; its principal fayade, an oblong, elongated to ^•ange of thirty-four small arches, and thirty-five
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columns, while it is separated by a richly-canopied window in the centre, into two massive divisions, whose height and length are nearly as four to five ; the arcades which give it length being confined to the lower stories, and the upper, between its broad windows, left a mighty surface of smooth marble, chequered with blocks of alternate rose color and white. It would be impossible, I believe, to invent a more magnificent arrangement of all that is in building most dignified and most fair.
X. In the Lombard Romanesque, the two principles are more fused into each other, as most characteristically in the Cathedral of Pisa : length of proportion, exhibited by an ar- cade of twenty-one arches above, and fifteen below, at the side of the nave ; bold square proportion in the front ; that front divided into arcades, placed one above the other, the lowest with its pillars engaged, of seven arches, the four uppermost thrown out boldly from the receding wall, and casting deep shadows; the first, above the basement, of nineteen arches; the second of twenty-one ; the third and fourth of eight each ; sixty-three arches in all ; all circular headed, all with cylin- drical shafts, and the lowest with square panellings, set diag- onally under their semicircles, an universal ornament in this style (^Plate XTI., fig. 7) ; the apse, a semicircle, with a semi- dome for its roof, and three ranges of circular arches for its exterior ornament ; in the interior of the nave, a range of circular arches below a circular-arched triforium, and a vast flat surface, observe, of wall decorated with striped marble above ; the whole arrangement (not a peculiar one, but char- acteristic of every church of the period ; and, to my feeling, the most majestic ; not perhaps the fairest, but the mightiest type of form which the mind of man has ever conceived) based exclusively on associations of the circle and the square.
I am now, however, trenching upon ground which I desire to reserve for more careful examination, in connection with other aesthetic questions : but I believe the examples I have given will justify my vindication of the square form from the reprobation which has been lightly thrown upon it ; nor might this be done for it only as a ruling outline, but as occurring
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constantly in the best mosaics, and in a thousand forms ol minor decoration, which I cannot now examine ; my chief assertion of its majesty being always as it is an exponent ol space and surface, and therefore to be chosen, either to rule in their outlines, or to adorn by masses of light and shade those portions of buildings in which surface is to be rendered pre- cious or honorable.
XI. Thus far, then, of general forms, and of the modes in which the scale of architecture is best to be exhibited. Let us next consider the manifestations of power which belong to its details and lesser divisions.
The first division we have to regard, is the inevitable one of masonry. It is true that this division may, by great art, be concealed ; but I think it unwise (as well as dishonest) to do so ; for this reason, that there is a very noble character always to be obtained by the opposition of large stones to divided masonry, as by shafts and columns of one piece, or massy lintels and architraves, to wall work of bricks or smaller stones : and there is a certain organization in the management of such parts, like that of the continuous bones of the skeleton, op- posed to the vertebrae, which it is not well to surrender. I hold, therefore, that, for this and other reasons, the masonry of a building is to be shown : and also that, with certain rare exceptions (as in the cases of chapels and shrines of most fin- ished workmanship), the smaller the building, the more neces- sary it is that its masonry should be bold, and vice versa. For if a building be under the mark of average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase its apparent size (too easily measurable) by any proportionate diminution in the scale of its masonry. But it may be often in our power to give it a certain nobility by building it of massy stones, or, at all events, introducing such into its make. Thus it is impossible that there should ever be majesty in a cottage built of brick ; but there is a marked element of sublimity in the rude and irre- gular piling of the rocky walls of the mountain cottages of Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland. Their size is not one whit diminished, though four or five stones reach at their angles from the ground to the eaves, or though a native rock happen
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lo project conveniently, and to be built into the framework of the wall. On the other hand, after a building has once reached the mark of majestic size, it matters, indeed, comparatively little whether its masonry be large or small, but if it be al- together large, it will sometimes diminish the magnitude for want of a measure ; if altogether small, it will suggest ideas of poverty in material, or deficiency in mechanical resource^ besides interfering in many cases with the lines of the design, and delicacy of the workmanship. A very unhappy instance of such interference exists in the fa9ade of the church of St. Madeleine at Paris, where the columns, being built of very small stones of nearly equal size, with visible joints, look as if they were covered with a close trellis. So, then, that masonry will be generally the most magnificent which, without the use of materials systematically small or large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to the conditions and structure of its work, and displays alike its power of dealing with the vastest masses, and of accomplishing its purpose with the smallest, sometimes heaping rock upon rock with Titanic commandment, and anon binding the dusty remnants and edgy splinters into springing vaults and swelling domes. And if the nobility of this confessed and natural masonry were more commonly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by smoothing surfaces and fitting joints. The sums which we waste in chiselling and polishing stones which would have been better left as they came from the quarry would often raise a building a story higher. Only in this there is to be a certain respect for material also : for if we build in marble, or in any limestone, the known ease of the workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly ; it will be well to take advantage of the stone's softness, and to make the design delicate and dependent upon smoothness of chiselled surfaces : but if we build in granite or lava, it is a folly, in most cases, to cast away the labor necessary to smooth it ; it is wiser to make the design granitic itself, and to leave the blocks rudely sqnared. I do not deny a certain splendor and sense of power in the smoothing ol granite, and in the entire subduing of its iron resistance to the human supremacy. But, m most cases, I believe, the labor 6
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and time necessary to do this would be better spent in anothei way ; and that to raise a building to a height of a hundred feet with rough blocks, is better than to raise it to seventy with smooth ones. There i-s also a magnificence in the natural cleayage of the stone to which the art must indeed be great that pretends to be equivalent ; and a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain heart from which it has been rent, ill-exchanged for a glistering obedience to the rule and measure of men. His eye must be dehcate indeed, who would desire to see the Pitti palace polished.
Xn. Next to those of the masonry, we have to consider the divisions of the design itself. Those divisions are, neces- sarily, either into masses of light and shade, or else by traced lines ; which latter must be, indeed, themselves produced by incisions or projections which, in some lights, cast a certain breadth of shade, but which may, nevertheless, if finely enough cut, be always true lines, in distant effect. I call, for instance, such panelling as that of Henry the Seventh's chapel, pure linear division.
Now, it does not seem to me sufficiently recollected, that a wall surface is to an architect simply what a white canvas is to a painter, with this only difference, that the wall has already a sublimity in its height, substance, and other characters already considered, on which it is more dangerous to break than to touch with shade the canvas surface. And, for my own part, I think a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of gesso a fairer thing than most pictures I see painted on it ; much more, a noble surface of stone than most architectural features which it is caused to assume. But however this may be, the canvas and wall are supposed to be given, and it is our craft to divide them.
And the principles on which this division is to be made, are as regards relation of quantities, the same in architecture as in painting, or indeed, in any other art whatsoever, only the painter is by his varied subject partly permitted, partly com pelled, to dispense with the symmetry of architectural light and shade, and to adopt arrangements apparently free and accidental. So that in modes of grouping there is much dif
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ference (though no opposition) between the two arts ; but in rules of quantity, both are ahke, so far forth as their com- mands of means are aUke. For the architect, not being able to secure always the same depth or decision of shadow, nor to add to its sadness by color (because even w^hen color is employed, it cannot follow the moving shade), is compelled to make many allowances, and avail himself of many con- trivances, which the painter needs neither consider nor employ.
Xin. Of these limitations the first consequence is, that positive shade is a more necessary and more sublime thing in an architect's hands than in a painter's. For the latter being able to temper his light with an under-tone throughout, and to make it delightful with sweet color, or awful with lurid color, and to represent distance, and air, and sun, by the depth of it, and fill its whole space with expression, can deal with an enormous, nay, almost with an universal extent of it, and the best painters most delight in such extent ; but as light, with the architect, is nearly always liable to become full and untempered sunshine seen upon solid surface, his only rests, and his chief means of sublimity, are definite shades. So that, after size and weight, the Power of architecture may be said to depend on the quantity (whether measured in space or intenseness) of its shadow ; and it seems to me, that the reality of its works, and the use and influence they have in the daily life of men (as opposed to those works of art with which we have nothing to do but in times of rest or of pleasure) require of it that it should express a kind of human sympathy, by a measure of darkness as great as there is in human life : and that as the great poem and great fiction generally affect us most by the majesty of their masses of shade, and cannot take hold upon us if they affect a continuance of lyric spright- liness, but must be serious often, and sometimes melancholy, else they do not express the truth of this wild world of ours ; so there must be, in this magnificently human art of architec- ture, some equivalent expression for the trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and its mystery : and this it can only give by depth or diffusion of gloom, by the frown upou its
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front, and the shadow of its recess. So that Rembrandtisra is a noble manner in architecture, though a false one in paint- ing ; and I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface. And among the first habits that a young architect should learn, is that of thinking in shadow, not looking at a design in its miserable liny skeleton ; but conceiving it as it will be when the dawn lights it, and the dusk leaves it ; when its stones will be hot and its cran- nies cool ; when the lizards will bask on the one, and the birds build in the other. Let him design with the sense of cold and heat upon him ; let him cut out the shadows, as men dig wells in un watered plains ; and lead along the lights, as a founder does his hot metal ; let him keep the full command of both, and see that he knows how they fall, and where they fade. His paper lines and proportions are of no value : all that he has to do must be done by spaces of light and darkness ; and his business is to see that the one is broad and bold enough not to be swallowed up by twilight, and the other deep enough not to be dried like a shallow pool by a noon-day sun.
And that this may be, the first necessity is that the quanti- ties of shade or light, whatever they may be, shall be throw^n into masses, either of something hke equal weight, or else large masses of the one relieved with small of the other ; but masses of one or other kind there must be. No design that is divided at all, and is not divided into masses, can ever be of the smallest value : this great law respecting breadth, pre- cisely the same in architecture and painting, is so important, that the examination of its two principal applications will include most of the conditions of majestic design on which 1 would at present insist.
XTV. Painters are in the habit of speaking loosely of masses of light and shade, meaning thereby any large spaces of either. Nevertheless, it is convenient sometimes to restrict the term '* mass " to the portions to which proper form be- longs, and to call the field on which such forms are traced, interval. Thus, in foliage with projecting boughs or stems, we have masses of light, with intervals of shade ; and, ia
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light skies with dark clouds upon them, masses of shade with intervals of light.
This distinction is, in architecture, still more necessary ; for there are two marked styles dependent upon it : one in which the forms are drawn with light upon darkness, as in Greek sculpture and pillars ; the other in which they are drawn with darkness upon light, as in early Gothic foliation. Now, it is not in the designer's power determinately to vary degrees and places of darkness, but it is altogether in his power to vary in determined directions his degrees of light. Hence, the use of the dark mass characterises, generally, a trenchant style of design, in which the darks and lights are both flat, and terminated by sharp edges ; while the use of the light mass is in the same way associated with a softened and full manner of design, in which the darks are much warmed by reflected lights, and the lights are rounded and melt into them. The term applied by Milton to Doric bas- relief — "bossy," is, as is generally the case with Milton's epithets, the most comprehensive and expressive of this man- ner, which the English language contains ; while the term which specifically describes the chief member of early Gothic decoration, feuiile, foil or leaf, is equally significative of a flat space of shade.
XV. We shall shortly consider the actual modes in which these two kinds of mass have been treated. And, first, of the light, or rounded, mass. The modes in which relief was se- cured for the more projecting forms of bas-relief, by the Greeks, have been too well described by Mr. Eastlake * to need recapitulation : the conclusion which forces itself upon us from the facts he has remarked, being one on which I shall have occa- sion farther to insist presently, that the Greek workman cared for shadow only as a dark field wheref rom his light figure or de- sign might be intelligibly detached : his attention was concen- trated on the one aim at readableness, and clearness of accent ; and all composition, all harmony, nay, the very vitality and energy of separate groups were, when necessary, sacrificed to plain speaking. Nor was there any predilection for one kind ♦ Literature of the Fine Arts.— Essay on Bas-relief,
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of form rather than another. Rounded forms were, in the columns and principal decorative members, adopted, not for their own sake, but as characteristic of the things represented. They were beautifully rounded, because the Greek habitually did well what he had to do, not because he loved roundness more than squareness ; severely rectilinear forms were asso- ciated with the curved ones in the cornice and triglyph, and the mass of the pillar was divided by a fluting, which, in distant effect, destroyed much of its breadth. What power of light these primal arrangements left, was diminished in successive refinements and additions of ornament ; and continued to di- minish through Roman work, until the confirmation of the circular arch as a decorative feature. Its lovely and simple line taught the eye to ask for a similar boundary of solid form ; the dome followed, and necessarily the decorative masses were thenceforward managed with reference to, and in sympathy Vith, the chief feature of the building. Hence arose, among the Byzantine architects, a system of ornament, entu-ely re- strained within the superfices of curvilinear masses^ on which the light fell with as unbroken gradation as on a dome or col- umn, while the illumined surface was nevertheless cut into details of singular and most ingenious intricacy. Something is, of course, to be allowed for the less dexterity of the work- men ; it being easier to cut down into a solid block, than to arrange the projecting portions of leaf on the Greek capital : such leafy capitals are nevertheless executed by the Byzantines wuth skill enough to show that their preference of the massive form was by no means compulsory, nor can I think it unwise. On the contrary, while the arrangements of line are far more artful in the Greek capital, the Byzantine light and shade are as incontestably more grand and masculine, based on that quality of pure gradation, which nearly all natural objects possess, and the attainment of which is, in fact, the first and most palpable purpose in natural arrangements of grand form. The rolling heap of the thunder-cloud, divided by rents, and multiplied by wreaths, yet gathering them all into its broad, torrid, and towering zone, and its midnight darkness oppo- site ; the scarcely less majestic heave of the mountain side, all
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torn and traversed by depth of defile and ridge of rock, yet never losing the unity of its illumined swell and shadowy de- cline ; and the head of every mighty tree, rich with tracery of leaf and bough, yet terminated against the sky by a true line, and rounded by a green horizon, which, multiplied in the dis- tant forest, makes it look bossy from above ; all these mark, for a great and honored law^, that diffusion of light for which the Byzantine ornaments w^ere designed ; and show us that those builders had truer sympathy with what God made majes- tic, than the self -contemplating and self-contented Greek. I know that they are barbaric in comparison ; but there is a power in their barbarism of sterner tone, a power not sophistic nor penetrative, but embracing and mysterious ; a power faith- ful more than thoughtful, which conceived and felt more than it created ; a power that neither comprehended nor ruled it- self, but w^orked and wandered as it listed, like mountain streams and winds ; and which could not rest in the expression or seizure of finite form. It -could not bury itself in acanthus leaves. Its imagery was taken from the shadows of the storms and hills, and had fellowship with the night and day of the earth itself.
XYI. I have endeavored to give some idea of one of the hollow balls of stone which, surrounded by flowing leafage, occur in varied succession on the architrave of the central gate of St. Mark's at Venice, in Plate I. fig. 2. It seems to me singularly beautiful in its unity of lightness, and delicacy of detail, wdth breadth of light. It looks as if its leaves had been sensitive, and had risen and shut themselves into a bud at some sudden touch, and would presently fall back again into their wild flow. The cornices of San Michele of Lucca, seen above and below^ the arch, in Plate VI., show the eflect of heavy leafage and thick stems an^anged on a surface whose curve is a simple quadrant, the light dying from off them as it turns. It w^ould be difiicult, as I think, to invent anything more noble ; and I insist on the broad character of their ar- rangement the more earnestly, because, afterwards modified by greater skill in its management, it became characteristic of the richest pieces of Gothic design. The capital, given in
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Plate v., is of the noblest period of the Venetian Gothic ; and it is interesting to see the play of leafage so luxuriant, abso- lutely subordinated to the breadth of two masses of light and shade. What is done by the Venetian architect, with a power as irresistible as that of the waves of his surrounding sea, is done by the masters of the Cis-Alpine Gothic, more timidly, and with a manner somewhat cramped and cold, but not less expressing their assent to the same great law. The ice spic- ulse of the North, and its broken sunshine, seem to have image in, and influence on the work ; and the leaves which, under the Italian's hand, roll, and flow, and bow down over their black shadows, as in the weariness of noon-day heat, are, in the North, crisped and frost-bitten, wrinkled on the edges, and sparkling as if with dew. But the rounding of the ruling form is not less sought and felt. In the lower part of Plate I. is the finial of the pediment given in Plate II., from the cathe- dral of St. Lo. It is exactly similar in feeling to the B3'zau- tine capital, being rounded under the abacus by four branches of thistle leaves, w^hose stems, springing from the angles, bend outw^ards and fall back to the head, throwing their jaggy spines down upon the full light, forming two sharp quatre- foils. I could not get near enough to this finial to see with what degree of delicacy the spines were cut ; but I have sketched a natural group of thistle-leaves beside it, that the reader may compare the types, and see with what mastei-y they are subjected to the broad form of the whole. The small capital from Coutances, Plate XIII. fig. tt, which is of earlier date, is of simpler elements, and exhibits the principle still more clearly ; but the St. Lo finial is only one of a thousand instances which might be gathered even from the fully de- veloped flamboyant, the feeling of breadth being retained in minor ornaments long after it had been lost in the main de- sign, and sometimes capriciously renewing itself throughout, as in the cylindrical niches and pedestals which enrich the porches of Caudebec and Pouen. Fig. 1, Plate I. is the sim- plest of those of Rouen ; in the more elaborate there are four projecting sides, divided by buttresses into eight rounded compartments of tracery ; even the whole bulk oi the outer
PLATE V.-(Page 88-Vol. V.)
UPITAL FIIOM THE LOWEII AkCADE OF THE DoGE'S PALACE, YeNICE
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pier is treated with the same feeling ; and though composed partly of concave recesses, party of square shafts, partly of statues and tabernacle work, arranges itself as a whole into one richly rounded tower.
XVn. I cannot here enter into the curious questions con- nected with the management of larger curved surfaces ; into the causes of the difference in proportion necessary to be observed between round and square towers ; nor into the reasons why a column or ball may be richly ornamented, while surface decorations would be inexpedient on masses like the Castle of St. Angelo, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or the dome of St. Peter's. But what has been above said of the desireableness of serenity in plane surfaces, applies still more forcibly to those which are curved ; and it is to be remem- bered that we are, at present, considering how this serenity and power may be carried into minor divisions, not how the ornamental character of the lower form may, upon occasion, be permitted to fret the calmness of the higher. Nor, though the instances we have examined are of globular or cylindrical masses chiefly, is it to be thought that breadth can only be secured by such alone : many of the noblest forms are of sub- dued curvature, sometimes hardly visible ; but curvature of some degree there must be, in order to secure any measure of grandeur in a small mass of light. One of the most marked distinctions between one artist and another, in the point of skill, will be found in their relative delicacy of per- ception of rounded surface ; the full power of expressing the perspective, foreshortening and various undulation of such surface is, perhaps, the last and most difficult attainment of the hand and eye. For instance : there is, perhaps, no tree which has baffled the landscape painter more than the com- mon black spruce fir. It is rare that we see any representa- tion of it other than caricature. It is conceived as if it grew in one plane, or as a section of a tree, with a set of boughs symmetrically dependent on opposite sides. It is thought formal, unmanageable, and ugly. It would be so, if it grew as it is drawn. But the power of the tree is not in that chan- delier-like section. It is in the dark, flat, solid tables ol
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leafage, which it holds out on its strong arms, cuiTed slightlj over them like shields, and spreading towards the extremity like a hand. It is vain to endeavor to paint the sharp, grassj^ intricate leafage, until this ruling form has been secured ; and in the boughs that approach the spectator, the foreshort- ening of it is like that of a wide hill country, ridge just rising over ridge in successive distances ; and the finger-like ex- tremities, foreshortened to absolute bluntness, require a deli- cacy in the rendering of them like that of the drawing of the hand of the Magdalene upon the vase in Mr. Kogers's Titian. Get but the back of that foliage, and you have the tree ; but I cannot name the artist who has thoroughly felt it. So, in all drawing and sculj)ture, it is the power of rounding, softly and perfectly, every inferior mass which preserves the seren- ity, as it follows the truth, of Nature, and which demands the highest knowledge and skill from the workman. A noble de- sign may always be told by the back of a single leaf, and it was the sacrifice of this breadth and refinement of surface for sharp edges and extravagant undercutting, which destroyed the Gothic mouldings, as the substitution of the line for the light destroyed the Gothic tracery. This change, however, we shall better comprehend after we have glanced at the chief conditions of arrangement of the second kind of mass ; that which is flat, and of shadow only.
XYIII. AYe have noted above how the wall surface, com- posed of rich materials, and covered with costly work, in modes which we shall examine in the next Chapter, became a subject of peculiar interest to the Christian architects. Its broad flat lights could only be made valuable by j)oints or masses of energetic shadow, which were obtained by the Ro- manesque architect by means of ranges of recessed arcade, in the management of which, however, though aU the eflect de- pends upon the shadow so obtained, the eye is still, as in classical architecture, caused to dwell upon the j)rojecting col- umns, capitals, and wall, as in Plate YI. But with the enlarge- ment of the window, which, in the Lombard and Romanesque churches, is usually little more than an arched slit, came the conception of the simpler mode of decoration, by penetrations
PLATE VI. -(Page 90- Vol. V.) Akch from the Facade of the CnuRcn of San Michel^, at Lucca
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which, seen from within, are forms of light, and, from without, are forms of shade. In Italian traceries the eye is exclusively fixed upon the dark forms of the penetrations, and the whole proportion and power of the design are caused to depend upon them. The intermediate spaces are, indeed, in the most perfect early examples, filled with elaborate ornament ; but this ornament was so subdued as never to disturb the simplic- ity and force of the dark masses ; and in many instances is en- tirely wanting. The composition of the whole depends on the proportioning and shaping of the darks ; and it is impossible that anything can be more exquisite than their placing in the head window of the Giotto campanile, Plate IX., or the church of Or San Michele. So entirely does the effect depend upon them, that it is quite useless to draw Italian tracery in out- line ; if with any intention of rendering its effect, it is better to mark the black spots, and let the rest alone. Of course, w^hen it is desired to obtain an accurate rendering of the de- sign, its lines and mouldings are enough ; but it often hap- pens that works on architecture are of little use, because they afford the reader no means of judging of the effective inten- tion of the arrangements which they state. No person, look- ing at an architectural drawing of the richly foliaged cusps and intervals of Or San Michele, would understand that all this sculpture was extraneous, W'as a mere added grace, and had nothing to do with the real anatomy of the work, and that by a few bold cuttings through a slab of stone he might reach the main effect of it all at once. I have, therefore, in the plate of the design of Giotto, endeavored especially to mark these points of purpose ; there, as in every other in- stance, black shadow^s of a graceful form lying on the white surface of the stone, like dark leaves laid upon snow. Hence,, as before observed, the universal name of foil applied to sucli ornaments.
XIX. In order to the obtaining their full effect, it is evident that much caution is necessary in the management of the glass. In the finest instances, the traceries are open lights, either in towers, as in this design of Giotto's or in external arcades like that of the Campo Santo at Pisa or the Doge's
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palace at Venice ; and it is thus only that their full beauty Is shown. In domestic buildings, or in windows of churches necessarily glazed, the glass was usually withdrawn entirely behind the traceries. Those of the Cathedral of Florence stand quite clear of it, casting their shadows in well detached lines, so as in most lights to give the appearance of a double tracery. In those few instances in which the glass was set in the tracery itself, as in Or San Michele, the effect of the latter is haK destroyed : j)erhaps the especial attention paid by Orgagna to his surface ornament, was connected with the in- tention of so glazing them. It is singular to see, in late archi- tecture, the glass, which tormented the older architects, con- sidered as a valuable means of making the lines of tracery more slender ; as in the smallest intervals of the window s of Merton College, Oxford, w^here the glass is advanced about two inches from the centre of the tracery bar (that in the larger spaces being in the middle, as usual), in order to prevent the depth of shadow from farther diminishing the apparent interval. Much of the lightness of the effect of the traceries is owing to this seemingly unimportant arrangement. But, generally speaking, glass spoils all traceries ; and it is much to be wished that it should be kept well within them, when it can- not be dispensed with, and that the most careful and beauti- ful designs should be reserved for situations where no glass would be needed.
XX. The method of decoration by shadow was, as far as we have hitherto traced it, common to the northern and south- ern Gothic. But in the carrying out of the system they in- stantly diverged. Having marble at his command, and classi- cal decoration in his sight, the southern architect w^as able tc carve the intermediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to vary his wall surface with inlaid stones. The northern architect neither knew the ancient work, nor j)ossessed the delicate material ; and he had no resource but to cover his walls wdth holes, cut into foiled shapes like those of the windows. This he did, often with great clumsiness, but always with a vigor- ous sense of composition, and always, observe, depending on the shadows for effect. Where the wall was thick and could
PLATE VII.-(Page 93-Vol. V.)
PiEiicED Ornaments from Lisieux, Bayeux, Verona, and Padua.
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not be cut through, and the foilings were large, those shadowa did not fill the entire space ; but the form was, nevertheless, drawn on the eye by means of them, and when it was possible, they were cut clear through, as in raised screens of pediment, Hke those on the west front of Bayeux ; cut so deep in every case, as to secure, in all but a direct low front light, great breadth of shadow.
The spandril, given at the top of Plate VII., is from the southwestern entrance of the Cathedral of Lisieux ; one of the most quaint and interesting doors in Normandy, probably soon to be lost forever, by the continuance of the masonic operations which have already destroyed the northern tower. Its work is altogether inide, but full of spirit ; the opposite spandrils have different, though balanced, ornaments very in- accurately adjusted, each rosette or star (as the five-rayed fig- ure, now quite defaced, in the upper portion appears to have been) cut on its own block of stone and fitted in with small nicety, especially illustrating the point I have above insisted upon — the architect's utter neglect of the forms of interme- diate stone, at this early period.
The arcade, of which a single arch and shaft are given on the left, forms the flank of the door ; three outer shafts bear- ing three orders within the spandril which I have drawn, and each of these shafts carried over an inner arcade, decorated above with quatre-foils, cut concave and filled with leaves, the whole disposition exquisitely picturesque and fuU of strange play of light and shade.
For some time the penetrative ornaments, if so they may be for convenience called, maintained their bold and inde- pendent character. Then they multiplied and enlarged, be coming shallower as they did so ; then they began to run to- gether, one swallowing up, or hanging on to, another, like bubbles in expiring foam — fig. 4, from a spandril at Bayeux, looks as if it had been blown from a pipe ; finally, they lost their individual character altogether, and the eye was made to rest on the separating lines of tracery, as we saw before in the window ; and then came the great change and the fall o* the Gothic power.
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XXL Figs. 2 and 3, the one a quadrant of the star windo^ii of the little chapel close to St. Anastasia at Verona, and the other a very singular example from the church of the Eremi- tani at Padua, compared with fig. 5, one of the ornaments o{ the transept towers of Eouen, show the closely correspond- ent conditions of the early Northern and Southern Gothic."* But, as we have said, the Italian architects, not being embar- rassed for decoration of wall surface, and not being obliged, like the Northmen, to multiply their penetrations, held to the system for some time longer ; and while they increased the refinement of the ornament, kept the purity of the plan. That refinement of ornament was their weak point, however, and opened the way for the renaissance attack. They fell, like the old Romans, by their luxury, except in the separate instance of the magnificent school of Venice. That architect- ure began with the luxuriance in which all others expired : it founded itself on the Byzantine mosaic and fretwork ; and laying aside its ornaments, one by one, while it fixed its forms by laws more and more severe, stood forth, at last, a model of domestic Gothic, so grand, so complete, so nobly- systema- tised, that, to my mind, there never existed an architecture with so stern a claim to our reverence. I do not except even the Greek Doric ; the Doric had cast nothing away ; the four- teenth century Venetian had cast away, one by one, for a suc- cession of centuries, every splendor that art and wealth could give it. It had laid down its crown and its jewels, its gold and its color, like a king disrobing ; it had resigned its exer- tion, like an athlete reposing ; once capricious and fantastic, it had bound itself by laws inviolable and serene as those of nature herself. It retained nothing but its beauty and its power ; both the highest, but both restrained. The Doric flutings were of irregular number — the Venetian mouldings were unchangeable. The Doric manner of ornament admit- ted no temptation, it ,was the fastirjg of an anchorite — the Venetian ornament embraced, while it governed, all vegetable and animal forms ; it was the temperance of a man, the com- mand of Adam over creation. I do not know so magnificent a marking of human authority as the iron grasp of the Vene*
PLATE Vin.-(Page 95— Vol. V.) Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice,
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tian over his own exuberance of imagination ; tlie calm and solemn restraint with which, his mind filled with thoughts of flowing leafage and fiery life, he gives those thoughts expres- sion for an instant, and then withdraws within those massy bars and level cusps of stone/ ^
And hiKS power to do this depended altogether on his re« taining the forms of the shadows in his sight. Far from car- rying the eye to the ornaments, upon the stone, he abandoned these latter one by one ; and while his mouldings received the most shapely order and symmetry, closely correspondent with that of the Kouen tracery, compare Plates III. and VHI., he kept the cusps within them perfectly flat, decorated, if at all, with a trefoil (Palazzo Foscari), or fillet (Doge's Palace) just traceable and no more, so that the quatrefoil, cut as sharply through them as if it had been struck out by a stamp, told upon the eye, with all its four black leaves, miles away. No knots of flowerwork, no ornaments of any kind, were suf- fered to interfere with the purity of its form : the cusp is usually quite sharp ; but slightly truncated in the Palazzo Foscari, and charged with a simple bail in that of the Doge ; and the glass of the window^ where there was any, was, as we have seen, thrown back behind the stone-work, that no flashes of light might interfere with its depth. Corrupted forms, like those of the Casa d'Oro and Palazzo Pisani, and several others, only serve to show the majesty of the common design.
XXU. Such are the principal circumstances traceable in the treatment of the two kinds of masses of light and darkness, in the hands of the earlier architects ; gradation in the one, flatness in the other, and breadth in both, being the qualities sought and exhibited by every possible expedient, up to the period when, as we have before stated, the line was substituted for the mass, as the means of division of surface. Enough has been said to illustrate this, as regards tracery ; but a word or two is still necessary respecting the mouldings.
Those of the earlier times were, in the plurality of instances, composed of alternate square and cyhndrical shafts, variousl^^ associated and proportioned. Where concave cuttings occur,
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as in the beautiful west doors of Bayeux, they are between cyHndrical shafts, which they throw out into broad light. The eye in all cases dwells on broad surfaces, and commonly upon few. In course of time, a low ridgy process is seen emerging along the outer edge of the cylindrical shaft, forming a Une of light upon it and destroying its gradation. Hardly traceable at first (as on the alternate rolls of the north door of Kouen), it grows and pushes out as gradually as a stag's horns : sharp at first on the edge ; but, becoming prominent, it receives a truncation, and becomes a definite fillet on the face of the rolL Not yet to be checked, it pushes forward until the roll itself be- comes subordinate to it, and is finally lost in a slight swell upon its sides, while the concavities have all the time been deepen- ing and enlarging behind it, until, from a succession of square or cylindrical masses, the whole moulding has become a series of concavities edged by delicate fillets, upon which (sharp lines of light, observe) the eye exclusively rests. While this has been taking place, a similar, though less total, change has affected the flowerwork itself. In Plate I. fig. 2 (a), I have given two from the transepts of Eouen. It will be observed how absolutely the eye rests on the forms of the leaves, and on the three berries in the angle, being in light exactly what the trefoil is in darkness. These mouldings nearly adhere to the stone ; and are very shghtly, though sharply, undercut. In process of time, the attention of the architect, instead of resting on the leaves, went to the stalks. These latter were elongated {b, from the south door of St. Lo) ; and to exhibit them better, the deep concavity was cut behind, so as to throw them out in lines of light. The system was can-ied out into continually increasing intricacy, until, in the transepts of Beauvais, we have brackets and flamboyant traceries, com- posed of twigs without any leaves at all. This, however, is a partial, though a sufficiently characteristic, capiice, the leaf being never generally banished, and in the mouldings round those same doors, beautifully managed, but itself rendered liny by bold marking of its ribs and veins, and by turning up, and crisping its edges, large intermediate spaces being always left to be occupied by intertwining stems (c, from Caudebec).
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The trefoil of light formed by berries or acorns, though di- minished in value, was never lost up to the last period of living Gothic,
XXIII. It is interesting to follow into its many ramifica- tions, the influence of the corrupting principle ; but we have seen enough of it to enable us to draw our practical conclusion — a conclusion a thousand times felt and reiterated in the ex- perience and advice of every practised artist, but never often enough repeated, never profoundly enough felt. Of composi- tion and invention much has been written, it seems to me vainly, for men cannot be taught to compose or to invent ; of these, the highest elements of Power in architecture, I do not, therefore, speak ; nor, here, of that peculiar restraint in the imitation of natural forms, which constitutes the dignity of even the most luxuriant work of the great periods. Of this restraint I shall say a word or two in the next Chaj)ter ; press- ing now only the conclusion, as practically useful as it is cer- tain, that the relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigor of their masses than on any other attri- bute of their design : mass of everything, of bulk, of light, of dai'kness, of color, not mere sum of any of these, but breadth of them ; not broken light, nor scattered darkness, nor divided weight, but solid stone, broad sunshine, starless shade. Time would fail me altogether, if I attempted to follow out the range of the principle ; there is not a feature, however apparently trifling, to which it cannot give power. The wooden fillings of belfry lights, necessary to protect their interiors from rain, are in England usually divided into a number of neatly exe- cuted cross-bars, like those of Venetian blinds, which, of course, become as conspicuous in their sharpness as they are uninteresting in their precise carpentry, multiplying, more- over, the liorizontal lines which directly contradict those of the architecture. Abroad, such necessities are met by three or four downright penthouse roofs, reaching each from within the window to the outside shafts of its mouldings ; instead of the horrible row of ruled lines, the space is thus divided into four or five grand masses of sliadow, with grey slopes of roof above, bent or yielding into all kinds of delicious swells and 7
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carves, and covered with warm tones of moss and lichen. Verj often the thing is more delightful than the stone-work itself, and all because it is broad, dark, and simple. It matters not how clumsy, how common, the means are, that get weight and shadow — sloping roof, jutting porch, projecting balcony, hol- low niche, massy gargoyle, frowning parapet ; get but gloom and simplicity, and all good things will follow in their place and time ; do but design with the owl's eyes first, and you will gain the falcon's afterwards.
XXrV. I am grieved to have to insist upon what seems so simple ; it looks trite and commonplace when it is written, but pardon me this : for it is anything but an accepted or un- derstood principle in practice, and the less excusably forgot- ten, because it is, of all the great and true laws of art, the easiest to obey. The executive facility of complying with its demands cannot be too earnestly, too frankly asserted. There are not five men in the kingdom who could compose, not twenty who could cut, the foliage with which the windows of Or San Michele are adorned ; but there is many a village clergyman who could invent and dispose its black openings, and not a village mason who could not cut them. Lay a few clover or wood-roof leaves on white paper, and a little altera- tion in their positions will suggest figures which, cut boldly through a slab of marble, would be worth more window tra- ceries than an architect could draw in a summer's day. There are few men in the world who could design a Greek capital ; there are few who could not produce some vigor of effect with leaf designs on Byzantine block : few who could design a Pal- ladian front, or a flamboyant pediment ; many who could build a square mass like the Strozzi palace. But I know not how it is, unless that our English hearts have more oak than stone in them, and have more filial sympathy with acorns than Alps ; but all that we do is small and mean, if not worse — thin, and wasted, and unsubstantial. It is not modern work only ; we have built like frogs and mice since the thirteenth century (except only in our castles). What a contrast be- tween the pitiful little pigeon-holes which stand for doors in the east front of Salisbury, looking like the entrances to a bee*
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liive or a wasp's nest, and the soaring arches and kingly crowning of the gates of Abbeville, Eouen, and Kheims, or the rock-hewn piers of Chartres, or the dark and vaulted porches and writhed pillars of Verona ! Of domestic architecture what need is there to speak ? How small, how cramped, how poor, how miserable in its petty neatness is our best ! how beneath the mark of attack, and the level of contempt, that which is common with us ! What a strange sense of for- malised deformity, of shrivelled precision, of starved accu- racy, of minute misanthropy have we, as we leave even the rude streets of Picardy for the market towns of Kent ! Until that street architecture of ours is bettered, until we give it some size and boldness, until we give our windows recess, and our walls thickness, I know not how we can blame our architects for their feebleness in more important work ; their eyes are inured to narrowness and slightness : can we expect them at a word to conceive and deal with breadth and solidity ? They ought not to live in our cities ; there is that in their miserable walls which bricks up to death men's imaginations, as surely as ever perished forsworn nun. An architect should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome. There was something in the old power of architecture, which it had from the recluse more than from the citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with chief praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, and above the fury of the populace : and Heaven forbid that for such cause we should ever have to lay a larger stone, or rivet a firmer bar, in our England ! But we have other sources of power, in the imagery of our iron coasts and azure hills ; of power more pure, nor less serene, than that of the hermit spirit which once lighted with white lines of cloisters the glades of the Alpine pine, and raised into ordered spires the wild rocks of the Norman sea ; which gave to the temple gate the depth and darkness of Elijah's Horeb cave ; and Hfted, out of the populous city, grey cliffs of lonely stone, into the midst of sailing birds and silent air.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.
I. It was stated, in the outset of the preceding chapter that the value of architecture depended on two distinct char- acters : the one, the impression it receives from human power ; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation. I have endeavored to show in what manner its majesty was attribu- table to a sympathy with the effort and trouble of human Hf e (a sympathy as distinctly perceived in the gloom and mystery of form, as it is in the melancholy tones of sounds). I deske now to trace that happier element of its excellence, consisting in a noble rendering of images of Beauty, derived chiefly from the external appearances of organic nature.
It is irrelevant to our present pui-pose to enter into any in- quiry respecting the essential causes of impressions of beauty. 1 have partly expressed my thoughts on this matter in a pre. vious work, and I hope to develope them hereafter. But since all such inquiries can only be founded on the ordinary under- standing of what is meant by the term Beauty, and since they presume that the feeling of mankind on this subject is univer- sal and instinctive, I shall base my present investigation on this assumption ; and only asserting that to be beautiful which I believe will be granted me to be so without dispute, I would endeavor shortly to trace the manner in which this element of deHght is to be best engrafted upon architectural design, what are the purest sources from which it is to be derived, and what the errors to be avoided in its pursuit.
n. It will be thought that I have somewhat rashly limited the elements of architectural beauty to imitative forms. I do not mean to assert that every arrangement of hne is directly suggested by a natural object ; but that all beautiful lines are adaptations of those which are commonest in the external cre^ ation ; that in proportion to the richness of their association, the resemblance to natural work, as a ij^Q and help, must be more closely attempted, and more clearly seen ; and that be-
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yond a certain point, and that a very low one, man cannot ad- vance in the invention of beauty, without directly imitating natural form. Thus, in the Doric temple, the triglyph and cornice are unimitative ; or imitative only of artificial cuttings of wood. No one would call these members beautiful. Their influence over us is in their severity and simplicity. The fluting of the column, which I doubt not was the Greek s3'^m-= bol of the bark of the tree, was imitative in its origin, and feebly resembled many caniculated organic structures. Beauty is instantly felt in it, but of a low order. The decoration proper was sought in the true forms of organic life, and those chiefly human. Again : the Doric capital was unimitative ; but all the beauty it had was dependent on the precision of its ovolo, a natural curve of the most frequent occiuTence. The Ionic capital (to my mind, as an architectural invention, exceedingly base) nevertheless depended for all the beauty that it had on its adoption of a spiral line, perhaps the com- monest of all that characterise the inferior orders of animal organism and habitation. Farther progress could not be made without a direct imitation of the acanthus leaf.
Again : the Romanesque arch is beautiful as an abstract line. Its type is always before us in that of the apparent vault of heaven, and horizon of the earth. The cylindrical pillar is always beautiful, for God has so moulded the stem of every tree that it is pleasant to the eyes. The pointed arch is beautiful ; it is the termination of every leaf that shakes in summer wind, and its most fortunate associations are directly borrowed from the trefoiled grass of the field, or from the stars of its flowers. Further than this, man's invention could not reach without frank imitation. His next step was to gather the flowers themselves, and wreathe them in his capi- tals.
nX Now, I would insist especially on the fact, of which I doubt not that further illustrations will occur to the mind of every reader, that all most lovely forms and thoughts are di- rectly taken from natural objects ; because I would fain be allowed to assume also the converse of this, namely, that forms which are not taken from natural objects mud be ugly.
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I know this is a bold assumption ; but as I have not space to reason out the points wherein essential beauty of form con- sists, that being far too serious a work to be undertaken in a bye way, I have no other resource than to use this accidental mark or test of beauty, of whose truth the considerations which I hope hereafter to lay before the reader may assure him. I say an accidental mark, since forms are not beautiful because they are copied from nature ; only it is out of the power of man to conceive beauty without her aid. I believe the reader will grant me this, even from the examples above advanced ; the degree of confidence with which it is granted must attach also to his acceptance of the conclusions which will follow from it ; but if it be granted frankly, it will enable me to determine a matter of very essential importance, name- ly, what is or is not ornament. For there are many forms of so-called decoration in architecture, habitual, and received, therefore, with approval, or at all events without any venture at expression or dislike, which I have no hesitation in assert- ing to be not ornament at all, but to be ugly things, the ex- pense of which ought in truth to be set down in the archi- tect's contract, as "For Monstrification." I beheve that we regard these customary deformities with a savage compla- cency, as an Indian does his flesh patterns and paint (all na- tions being in certain degrees and senses savage). I believe that I can prove them to be monstrous, and I hope hereafter to do so conclusively ; but, meantime, I can allege in defence of my persuasion nothing but this fact of their being unnat- ural, to which the reader must attach such weight as he thinks it deserves. , There is, however, a peculiar difficulty in using this proof ; it requires the writer to assume, very im- pertinently, that nothing is natural but what he has seen or supposes to exist. I would not do this ; for I sujDpose there is no conceivable form or grouping of forms but in some part of the universe an example of it may be found. But I think 1 am justified in considering those forms to be most natural which are most frequent ; or, rather, that on the shapes which in the every-day world are familiar to the eyes of men, God lias stamped those characters of beauty which He has made
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it man's nature to love ; while in certain exceptional forms He has shown that the adoi)tion of the others was not a matter of necessity, but part of the adjusted harmony of crea- tion. I believe that thus we may reason from Frequency to Beauty, and vice versa ; that knowing a thing to be frequent, we may assume it to be beautiful ; and assume that which is most frequent to be most beautiful : I mean, of course, visibly frequent ; for the forms of things which are hidden in caverns of the earth, or in the anatomy of animal frames, are evidently not intended by their Maker to bear the habitual gaze of man. And, again, by frequency I mean that limited and isolated frequency which is characteristic of all perfection ; not mere multitude : as a rose is a common flower, but yet there are not so many roses on the tree as there are leaves. ' Li this re- spect Natui'e is sparing of her highest, and lavish of her less, beauty ; but I call the flower as frequent as the leaf, because, each in its allotted quantity, where the one is, there will ordi- narily be the other.
IV. The first so-called ornament, then, which I would at- tack is that Greek fret, now, I believe, usually known by the Italian name Guilloche, which is exactly a case in point. It so happens that in crystals of bismuth formed by the unagi- tated cooling of the melted metal, there occurs a natural re- semblance of it almost perfect. But crystals of bismuth not only are of unusual occurrence in e very-day life, but their form is, as far as I know, unique among minerals ; and not only unique, but only attainable by an artificial process, the metal itself never being found pure. I do not remember any other substance or arrangement which presents a resemblance to this Greek ornament ; and I think that I may trust my re- membrance as including most of the arrangements which occur in the outward forms of common and familiar things. On this ground, then, I allege that ornament to be ugly ; or, in the literal sense of the word, monstrous ; different from anything which it is the nature of man to admire : and I think an uncarved fillet or plinth infinitely preferable to one covered with this vile concatenation of straight lines : unless indeed it be employed as a foil to a true ornament, which it
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may, perhaps, sometimes with advantage ; or excessively small^ as it occurs on coins, the harshness of its arrangement being less perceived.
V. Often in association with this horrible design we find, in Greek works, one which is as beautiful as this is painful — that egg and dart moulding, whose perfection in its place and way, has never been surpassed. And why is this ? Simply because the form of which it is chiefly composed is one not only familiar to us in the soft housing of the bird's nest, but happens to be that of nearly every pebble that rolls and mur- murs under the surf oi the sea, on all its endless shore. And with that a peculiar accuracy ; for the mass which bears the light in this moulding is not in good Greek work, as in the frieze of the Erechtheum, merely of the shape of an egg. It is flattened on the upper surface, with a delicacy and keen sense of variety in the curve which it is impossible too highly' to praise, attaining exactly that flattened, imperfect oval, which, in nine cases out of ten, will be the form of the pebble lifted at random from the rolled beach. Leave out this flat- ness, and the moulding is vulgar instantly. It is singular also that the insertion of this rounded form in the hollow recess has a painted type in the plumage of the Argus pheas- ant, the eyes of whose feathers are so shaded as exactly to represent an oval form placed in a hollow.
VI. It will evidently follow, upon our application of this test of natural resemblance, that we shall at once conclude that all perfectly beautiful forms must be composed of curves ; since there is hardly any common natural form in which it is possible to discover a straight line. Nevertheless, Architect- ure, having necessarily to deal with straight lines essential to its purposes in many instances and to the expression of its power in others, must frequently be content with that meas- ure of beauty which is consistent with such primal forms j and we may presume that utmost measure of beauty to have been attained when the arrangements of such lines are con- sistent with the most frequent natural groupings of them we can discover, although, to find right lines in nature at all, we may be compelled to do violence to her fiuished work, break
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througli the sculptured and colored surfaces of her crags, and examine the processes of their crj'stallisation.
VII. T have just convicted the Greek fret of ugliness, be- cause it has no precedent to allege for its arrangement except an artificial form of a rare metal. Let us bring into court an ornament of Lombard architects, Plate XII., fig. 7, as exclu- sively composed of right lines as the other, only, observe, with the noble element of shadow added. This ornament, taken from the front of the Cathedral of Pisa, is universal through- out the Lombard churches of Pisa, Lucca, Pistoja, and Flo- rence ; and it will be a grave stain upon them if it cannot be defended. Its first apology for itself, made in a hurr}^ sounds marvellously like the Greek one, and highly dubious. It says that its terminal contour is the very image of a care- fully prepared artificial crystal of common salt. Salt being, however, a substance considerably more familiar to us than bismuth, the chances are somewhat in favor of the accused Lombard ornament already. But it has more to say for itself, and more to the purpose ; namely, that its main outline is one not only of natural crystallisation, but among the very first and commonest of crystalline forms, being the primal condition of the occurrence of the oxides of iron, copper, and tin, of the sulphurets of iron and lead, of fluor spar, &c. ; and that those projecting forms in its surface represent the conditions of structure which effect the change into another relative and equally common crystalline form, the cube. This is quite enough. AVe may rest assured it is as good a combination of such simple right lines as can be put together, and gracefully fitted for every place in which such lines are necessary.
Vin. The next ornament whose cause I would try is that of our Tudor work, the portcullis. Beticulation is common enough in natural form, and very beautiful ; but it is either of the most delicate and gauzy texture, or of variously sized meshes and undulating lines. There is no family relation be- tween portcullis and cobwebs or beetles' wings ; something like it, perhaps, may be found in some kinds of crocodile ar- mor and on the backs of the Northern divers, but always beautifully varied in size of mesh. There is a dignity in the
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tiling itself, if its size were exhibited, and the shade given through its bars ; but even these merits are taken away in the Tudor diminution of it, set on a solid surface. It has not a single syllable, I believe, to say in its defence. It is another monster, absolutely and unmitigatedly frightful. All that carving on Henry the Seventh's Chapel simply deforms the stones of it.
In the same clause with the portcullis, we may condemn all heraldic decoration, so far as beauty is its object. Its pride and significance have their proper place, fitly occurring in prominent parts of the building, as over its gates ; and allow- ably in places where its legendary may be plainly read, as in painted windows, bosses of ceilings, &c. And sometimes, of coui'se, the forms which it presents may be beautiful, as of animals, or simple symbols like the fleur-de-lis ; but, for the most part, heraldic similitudes and arrangements are so pro- fessedly and pointedly unnatural, that it would be difficult to invent anything uglier ; and the use of them as a repeated decoration will utterly destroy both the power and beauty of any building. Common sense and courtesy also forbid their repetition. It is right to tell those who enter your doors that you are such a one, and of such a rank ; but to tell it to them again and again, wherever they turn, becomes soon imperti- nence, and at last folly. Let, therefore, the entire bearings occur in few places, and these not considered as an ornament, but as an inscription ; and for frequent appliance, let any sin- gle and fair symbol be chosen out of them. Thus we may multiply as much as we choose the French fleur-de-lis, or the Florentine giglio bianco, or the English rose ; but we must not multiply a King's arms.
IX. It will also follow, from these considerations, that if any one part of heraldic decoration be worse than another, it is the motto ; since, of all things unlike nature, the forms of letters are, perhaps, the most so. Even graphic tellurium and felspar look, at their clearest, anything but legible. All let- ters are, therefore, to be considered as frightful things, and to be endured only upon occasion ; that is to say, in places where the sense of the inscription is of more importance than
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external ornament. Inscriptions in churches, in rooms, and on pictures, are often desirable, but- they are not to be con- sidered as architectural or pictorial ornaments : they are, on the contrary, obstinate offences to the eye, not to be suffered except when their intellectual office introduces them. Place them, therefore, where they will be read, and there only ; and let them be plainly written, and not turned upside down, noi wrong end first. It is an ill sacrifice to beauty to make that illegible whose only merit is in its sense. Write it as you would speak it, simply ; and do not draw the eye to it when it would fain rest elsewhere, nor recommend your sentence by anything but a little openness of place and architectural silence about it. Write the Commandments on the Church walls where they may be plainly seen, but do not put a dash and a tail to every letter ; and remember that you are an ar- chitect, not a writing master.
X. Inscriptions appear sometimes to be introduced for the sake of the scroll on which they are written ; and in late and modern painted glass, as well as in architecture, these scrolls are flourished and turned hither and thither as if they were ornamental. Kibands occur frequently in arabesques, — in some of a high order, too, — tying up flowers, or flitting in and out among the fixed forms. Is there anything like ribands in nature ? It might be thought that gTass and sea- weed afforded apologetic types. They do not. There is a wide difference between their structure and that of a riband. They have a skeleton, an anatomy, a central rib, or fibre, or frame- work of some kind or another, which has a beginning and an end, a root and head, and whose make and strength effects every direction of their motion, and every line of their form. The loosest weed that drifts and waves under the heaving of the sea, or hangs heavily on the brown and slij^pery shore, has a marked strength, structure, elasticity, gradation of sub- stance ; its extremities are more finely fibred than its centre, lis centre than its root ; every fork of its ramification is meas* ured and proportioned ; every wave of its languid lines is love. It has its allotted size, and place, and function ; it is a spe- cific creature. What is there like this in a riband ? It has
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no structure : it is a succession of cut threads all alike ; If has no skeleton, no make, no form, no size, no will of its ownc You cut it and crush it into what you will. It has no strength, no languor. It cannot fall into a single graceful form. It cannot wave, in the true sense, but only flutter : it cannot bend, in the true sense, but only turn and be wrinkled. It is a vile thing ; it spoils all that is near its wretched film of an existence. Never use it. Let the flowers come loose if they cannot keep together without being tied ; leave the sen- tence unwritten if you cannot write it on a tablet or book, or plain roll of paper. I know what authority there is against me. I remember the scrolls of Perugino's angels, and the ribands of Eaphael's arabesques, and of Ghiberti's glorious bronze flowers : no matter ; they are every one of them vices and uglinesses. Raj)hael usually felt this, and used an honest and rational tablet, as in the Madonna di Fuligno. I do not say there is any type of such tablets in nature, but aU the difference lies in the fact that the tablet is not considered as an ornament, and the riband, or flying scroll, is. The tablet, as in Albert Durer's Adam and Eve, is introduced for the sake of the writing, understood and allowed as an ugly but neces- sary interruption. The scroll is extended as an ornamental form, which it is not, nor ever can be.
XI. But it will be said that all this want of organisation and form might be affirmed of drapery also, and that this latter is a noble subject of sculpture. By no means. When was drapery a subject of sculpture by itself, except in the form of a handkerchief on urns in the seventeenth century and in some of the baser scenic Italian decorations ? Drapery, as such, is always ignoble ; it becomes a subject of interest only by the colors it bears, and the impressions which it receives from some foreign form or force. All noble draperies, either in painting or sculpture (color and texture being at present out of our consideration), have, so far as they are anything more than necessities, one of two great functions ; they are the exponents of motion and of gravitation. They are the most valuable means of expressing past as well as present motion in the figui-e, and they are almost the only means ot
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indicating to the eye the force of gravity which resists such motion. The Greeks used drapery in sculpture for the most part as an ugly necessity, but availed themselves of it gladly in all representation of action, exaggerating the arrangements of it which express lightness in the material, and follow gest- ure in the person. The Christian sculptors, caring little for the body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively on the countenance, received drapery at first contentedly as a veil, but soon perceived a capacity of expression in it which the Greek had not seen or had despised. The principal element of this expression was the entire removal of agitation from what was so pre-eminently capable of being agitated. It fell from their human forms plumb down, sweeping the ground heavily, and concealing the feet ; while the Greek drapery was often blown away from the thigh. The thick and coarse stuffs of the monkish dresses, so absolutely opposed to the thin and gauzy web of antique material, suggested simplicity of division as well as weight of fall. There was no crushing nor subdividing them. And thus the drapery gradually came to represent the spirit of repose as it before had of motion, repose saintly and severe. The wind had no power upon the garment, as the passion none upon the soul ; and the motion of the figure only bent into a softer line the stillness of the falling veil, followed by it like a slow cloud by drooping rain : only in links of lighter undulation it followed the dances of the angels.
Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble ; but it is as an ex- ponent of other and higher things. As that of gravitation, it has especial majesty, being literally the only means we have of fully representing this mysterious natural force of earth (for falling water is less passive and less defined in its lines). So, again, in sails it is beautiful because it receives the forms of soHd curved surface, and expresses the force of another in- visible element. But drapery trusted to its own merits, and given for its own sake, — drapery like that of Carlo Dolci and the Caraccis, — is always base.
XII. Closely connected with the abuse of scrolls and bands, is that of garlands and festoons of flowers as an architectural
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decoration, for unnatural arrangements are just as ugly as un- natural forms ; and architecture, in borrowing the objects of nature, is bound to place them, as far as may be in her power, in such associations as may befit and express their origin. She is not to imitate directly the natural arrangement ; she is not to carve irregular stems of ivy up her columns to account for the leaves at the top, but she is nevertheless to place her most exuberant vegetable ornament just where Nature would have placed it, and to give some indication of that radical and con- nected structure which Nature would have given it. Thus the Corinthian capital is beautiful, because it expands under the abacus just as Nature would have expanded it ; and bC" cause it looks as if the leaves had one root, though that root is unseen. And the flamboyant leaf mouldings are beautiful, because they nestle and run up the hollows, and fill the angles, and clasp the shafts which natural leaves would have delighted to fill and to clasp. They are no mere cast of natural leaves ; they are counted, orderly, and architectural : but they are naturally, and therefore beautifully, placed.
Xni. Now I do not mean to say that Nature never uses festoons : she loves them, and uses them lavishly ; and though she does so only in those places of excessive luxuriance wherein it seems to me that architectural types should seldom be sought, yet a falling tendril or pendent bough might, if managed with freedom and grace, be well introduced into luxuriant dec- oration (or if not, it is not their want of beauty, but of archi- tectural fitness, which incapacitates them for such uses). But what resemblance to such example can we trace in a mass of all manner of fruit and flowers, tied heavily into a long bunch, thickest in the middle, and pinned up by both ends against a dead wall ? For it is strange that the wildest and most fanci- ful of the builders of truly luxuriant architecture never ven- tured, so far as I know, even a pendent tendril ; while the severest masters of the revived Greek permitted this extraor- dinary piece of luscious ugliness to be fastened in the middle of their blank surfaces. So surely as this arrangement is adopted, the whole value of the flower w^ork is lost. Who among the crowds that gaze upon the building ever pause to
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admire the flower work of St. Paul's ? It is as careful and as rich as it can be, yet it adds no dehghtfulness to the edifice. It is no part of it. It is an ugly excrescence. We always con- ceive the building without it, and should be happier if our conception were not disturbed by its presence. It makes the rest of the architecture look poverty-stricken, instead of sub- hme ; and yet it is never enjoyed itself. Had it been put, where it ought, into the capitals, it would have been beheld with never-ceasing dehght. I do not mean that it could have been so in the present building, for such kind of architecture has no business with rich ornament in any place ; but that if those groups of flowers had been put into natural places in an edifice of another style, their value would have been felt as viv- idly as now their uselessness. Wliat applies to festoons is still more sternly true of garlands. A garland is meant to be seen upon a head. There it is beautiful, because we suppose it newly gathered and joyfully worn. But it is not meant to be hung upon a wall. If you want a circular ornament, put a flat circle of colored marble, as in the Casa Doria and other such palaces at Venice ; or put a star, or a medallion, or if you want a ring, put a solid one, but do not carve the images of garlands, looking as if they had been used in the last pro- cession, and been hung up to dry, and serve next time with- ered. Why not also carve pegs, and hats upon them ?
XIV. One of the worst enemies of modem Gothic architect- ure, though seemingly an unimportant feature, is an excres- [cence, as offensive by its poverty as the garland by its profu- jion, the diipstone in the shape of the handle of a chest of
:awers, which is used over the square-headed windows of
rhat we call Elizabethan buildings. In the last Chapter,
[t will be remembered that the square form was shown to be
fthat of pre-eminent Power, and to be properly adapted and
limited to the exhibition of space or surface. Hence, when
the window is to be an exponent of power, as for instance in
lose by M. Angelo in the lower story of the Palazzo Eicardi it Florence, the square head is the most noble form they can issume ; but then either their space must be unbroken, and their associated mouldings the most severe, or else the squara
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must be used as a finial outline, and is chiefly to be associated with forms of tracery, in which the relative form of power, the circle, is predominant, as in Venetian, and Florentine, and Pisan Gothic. But if you break upon your terminal square, or if you cut its lines off at the top and turn them outwards, you have lost its unity and sj)ace. It is an including form no longer, but an added, isolated line, and the ugliest possible. Look abroad into the landscape and see if you can discover any one so bent and fragmentary as that of this strange wdnd- lass-looking dripstone. You cannot. It is a monster. It unites every element of ugliness, its line is harshly broken in itself, and unconnected with every other ; it has no harmony either with structure or decoration, it has no architectural sup- port, it looks glued to the wall, and the only pleasant property it has, is the appearance of some likelihood of its dropping off.
I might proceed, but the task is a w^eary one, and I think I have named those false forms of decoration which are most dangerous in our modern architecture as being legal and ac- cepted. The barbarisms of individual fancy are as countless as they are contemptible ; they neither admit attack nor are worth it ; but these above named are countenanced, some by the practice of antiquity, all by high authority : they have de- pressed the proudest, and contaminated the purest schools, and are so established in recent practice that I write rather for the barren satisfaction of bearing witness against them, than with hope of inducing any serious convictions to their prejudice.
XV. Thus far of what is not ornament. What ornament is, will without difficulty be determined by the application of the same test. It must consist of such studious arrangements of form as are imitative or suggestive of those which are com- monest among natural existences, that being of course the noblest ornament which represents the highest orders of ex- istence. Imitated flowers are nobler than imitated stones, imitated animals, than flowers ; imitated human form of all animal forms the noblest. But aU are combined in the richest ornamental work ; and the rock, the fountain, the flowing river with its pebbled bed, the sea, the clouds of
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Heaven, the herb of the field, the fruit-tree bearing fruit, the creeping thing, the bird, the beast, the man, and the angel, mingle their fair forms on the bronze of Ghiberti.
Every thing being then ornamental that is imitative, I would ask the reader's attention to a few general considera- tions, all that can here be offered relating to so vast a subject \ which, for convenience sake, may be classed under the three heads of inquiry : — What is the right place for architectural ornament ? What is the peculiar treatment of ornament which renders it architectural ? and what is the right use of color as associated with architectural imitative form ?
XYL. What is the place of ornament ? Consider first that the characters of natural objects which the architect can represent are few and abstract. The greater part of those delights by which Nature recommends herself to man at all times, cannot be conveyed by him into his imitative work. He cannot make his grass green and cool and good to rest upon, which in nature is its chief use to man ; nor can he make his flowers tender and full of color and of scent, which in nature are their chief powers of giving joy. Those quali- ties which alone he can secure are certain severe characters of form, such as men only see in nature on deliberate exami- nation, and by the full and set appliance of sight and thought : a man must lie down on the bank of grass on his breast and set himself to watch and penetrate the intertwin- ing of it, before he finds that which is good to be gathered by the architect. So then while Nature is at all times pleasant to us, and while the sight and sense of her w^ork may mingle happily with all our thoughts, and labors, and times of exist- ence, that image of her which the architect carries away represents what we can only perceive in her by direct in- tellectual exertion, and demands from us, wherever it appears, an mtellectual exertion of a similar kind in order to under- stand it and feel it. It is the written or sealed impression of a thing sought out, it is the shaped result of inquiry and bodily expression of thought.
XVII. Now let us consider for an instant what would be the effect of continually repeating an expression of a beautiful 8
114 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.
thought to any other of the senses at times when the mind could not address that sense to the understanding of it. Suppose that in time of serious occupation, of stern business, a companion should repeat in our ears continually some favorite passage of poetry, over and over again all day long. We should not only soon be utterty sick and weary of the sound of it, but that sound would at the end of the day have so sunk into the habit of the ear that the entire meaning of the passage would be dead to us, and it would ever thence- forward require some effort to fix and recover it. The music of it w^ould not meanwhile have aided the business iu hand, while its own delightfulness would thenceforward be in a measure destroyed. It is the same with every other form of definite thought. If you violently present its expression to the senses, at times when the mind is otherwise engaged, that expression will be ineffective at the time, and will have its sharpness and clearness destroj^ed forever. Much more if you present it to the mind at times w^hen it is painfully affected or disturbed, or if you associate the expression of pleasant thought wdth incongruous circumstances, you will affect that expression thenceforward with a painful color for ever.
XVin. Apply this to expressions of thought received by the eye. Eemember that the eye is at your mercy more than the ear. " The eye it cannot choose but see." Its nerve is not so easily numbed as that of the ear, and it is often busied in tracing and watching forms when the ear is at rest. Now if you present lovely forms to it when it cannot call the mind to help it in its w^ork, and among objects of vulgar use and unhappy position, you will neither please the eye nor elevate the vulgar object. But you will fill and weary the eye with the beautiful form, and you will infect that form itself with the vulgarity of the thing to which you have violently attached it. It will never be of much use to you any more ; you have killed or defiled it ; its freshness and purity are gone. You wdll have to pass it through the fire of much thought before you wiU cleanse it, and warm it with much love before it wil> revive.
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY, 115
XIX. Hence then a general law, of singular importance in the present day, a law of simple common sense, — not to deco- rate things belonging to purposes of active and occupied life. Wherever you can rest, there decorate ; where rest is forbidden, so is beauty. You must not mix ornament with business, any more than you may mix play. Work first, and then rest. Work first and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not thrash with sculptured flails : nor put bas-reliefs on millstones. What ! it will be asked, are we in the habit of doing so ? Even so ; always and everywhere. The most familiar posi- tion of Greek mouldings is in these days on shop fronts. There is not a tradesman's sign nor shelf nor counter in all the streets of all our cities, wdiich has not upon it ornaments which were invented to adorn temples and beautify kings' palaces. There is not the smallest advantage in them where they are. Absolutely valueless — uttei'ly without the power of giving pleasure, they only satiate the eye, and vulgarise their own forms. Many of these are in themselves thor- oughly good copies of fine things, w^hich things themselves we shall never, in consequence, enjoy any more. Many a pretty beading and graceful bracket there is in wood or stucco above our grocers' and cheese-mongers' and hosiers' shops : how it is that the tradesmen cannot understand that custom is to be had only by selling good tea and cheese and cloth, and that people come to them for their honesty, and their readiness, and their right wares, and not because they have Greek cornices over their window^s, or their names in large gilt letters on their house fronts? how pleasurable it would be to have the power of going through the streets of London, pulling down those brackets and friezes and large names, restoring to the tradesmen the capital they had spent in architecture, and putting them on honest and equal terms, each with his name in black letters over his door, not shouted down the street from the upper stories, and each with a plain wooden shop casement, with small panes in it that peo- ple would not think of breaking in order to be sent to prison ! How much better for them would it be — how muei
116 THE LAMP OF BSAUTY.
happier, how much wiser, to put their trust upon their own truth and industry, and not on the idiocy of their customers. It is curious, and it says little for our national probity on the one hand, or prudence on the other, to see the whole sys- tem of our street decoration based on the idea that people must be baited to a shop as moths are to a candle.
XX. But it will be said that much of the best wooden deco- ration of the middle ages was in shop fronts. No ; it was in house fronts, of which the shop was a part, and received its natural and consistent portion of the ornament. In those days men lived, and intended to live hy their shops, and over them, all their days. They were contented with them and happy in them : they were their palaces and castles. They gave them therefore such decoration as made themselves happy in their own habitation, and they gave it for their own sake. The upper stories were always the richest, and the shop was decorated chiefly about the door, which belonged to the house more than to it. And when our tradesmen settle to their shops in the same way, and form no plans respecting future villa architecture, let their whole houses be decorated, and their shops too, but with a national and domestic decora- tion (I shall speak more of this point in the sixth chapter). However, our cities are for the most part too large to admit of contented dwelling in them throughout life ; and I do not say there is harm in our present system of separating the shop from the dwelling-house ; only where they are so sep- arated, let us remember that the only reason for shop deco- ration is removed, and see that the decoration be removed also.
XXI. Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is to the decoration of the railroad station. Now, if there be any place in the world in which people are de- prived of that portion of temper and discretion which are necessary to the contemplation of beauty, it is there. It is the very temple of discomfort, and the only charity that the builder can extend to us is to show us, plainly as may be, how soonest to escape from it. The whole system of railroad trav- elling is addressed to people who, being in a hurry, are ther©"
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 117
fore, for the time being, miserable. No one would travel in that manner who could help it — who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, instead of through tunnels and between banks : at least those who would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult it at the station. The railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. It transmutes a man from a traveller into a living parcel. For the time he has parted with the nobler characteristics of his humanity for the sake of a planetary power of locomotion. Do not ask him to admire anything. You might as well ask the w^ind. Carry him safely, dismiss him soon : he will thank you for nothing else. All attempts to please him in any other way are mere mockery, and insults to the things by which you endeavor to do so. There never was more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything concerned with railroads or near them. Keep them out of the way, take them through the ugliest country you can find, confess them ■*^^he miserable things they are, and spend nothing upon them out for safety and speed. Give large salaries to efficient ser- vants, large prices to good manufacturers, large wages to able workmen ; let the iron be tough, and the brickwork solid, and the carriages strong. The time is perhaps not distant when these first necessities may not be easily met : and to in- crease expense in any other direction is madness. Better bury gold in the embankments, than put it in ornaments on the stations. Will a single traveller be willing to pay an in- creased fare on the South Western, because the columns of the terminus are covered with patterns from Nineveh ? He will only care less for the Ninevite ivories in the British Mu- seum : or on the North Western, because there are old Eng- lish-looking spandrils to the roof of the station at Crewe ? He will only have less pleasure in their prototypes at Crewe House. Kailroad architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work. You would not put xivnTji on the fingers of a smith at his anvil.
XXn. It is not however only in these marked situations that the abuse of which I speak takes place. There is hai-dly.
118 TUE LAMP OF BEAUTY,
at i^resent, an application of ornamental work, which is not in some sort liable to blame of the same kind. We have a bad habit of trying to disguise disagreeable necessities by some form of sudden decoration, which is, in all other places, associated with such necessities. I will name only one in< stance, that to which I have alluded before — the roses which conceal the ventilators in the flat roofs of our chapels. Many of those roses are of very beautiful design, borrowed from fine works : all their grace and finish are invisible when they are so placed, but their general form is afterwards associated with the ugly buildings in which they constantly occur ; and all the beautiful roses of the early French and English Gothic, especially such elaborate ones as those of the triforium of Coutances, are in consequence deprived of their pleasurable influence : and this without our having accomplished the smallest good by the use we have made of the dishonored form. Not a single person in the congregation ever receives one ray of pleasure from those roof roses ; they are regarded with mere indifference, or lost in the general impression of harsh emptiness.
XXin. Must not beauty, then, it will be asked, be sought for in the forms which we associate with our every-day life ? Yes, if you do it consistently, and in places where it can be calmly seen ; but not if you use the beautiful form only as a mask and covering of the proper conditions and uses of things, nor if you thrust it into the places set apart for toil. Put it in the drawing-room, not into the workshop ; put it upon do- mestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft. All men have sense of what is right in this manner, if they would only use and apply that sense ; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would only ask for it when it does so, and not allow it to be forced upon him when he does not want it. Ask any one of the passengers over London Bridge at this instant whether he cares about the forms of the bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell you, No. Modify these forms of leaves to a less scale, and put them on his milk- jug at breakfast, and ask him. whether he likes them, and he will tell you, Yes. People have no need of teaching if they
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. US
could only think and speak truth, and ask for what they like and want, and for nothing else : nor can a right disposition of beauty be ever arrived at except by this common sense, and allowance for the circumstances of the time and placCo It does not follow, because bronze leafage is in bad taste on the lamps of London Bridge, that it would be so on those of the Ponte della Trinita ; nor, because it would be a folly to decorate the house fronts of Gracechurch Street, that it would be equally so to adorn those of some quiet provincial town. The question of greatest external or internal decoration de- pends entirely on the conditions of probable rej)ose. It was a wise feeling which made the streets of Venice so rich in ex- ternal ornament, for there is no couch of rest like the gondola. So, again, there is no subject of street ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain, where it is a fountain of use ; for it is jn»t there that perhaps the happiest pause takes place in the labor of the day, when the pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the bearer is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of the form declined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with the trickle of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet as that — so full of the depth of ancient days, so soft- ened with the calm of pastoral solitude ?
XXIV. n. Thus far, then, of the place for beauty. We were next to inquire into the characters which fitted it pecu- liarly for architectural appliance, and into the principles of choice and of arrangement which best regulate the imitation [oi natural forms in which it consists. The full answering of i these questions would be a treatise on the art of design : I in- |tend only to say a few words respecting the two conditions of [that art which are essentially architectural, — Proportion and Abstraction. Neither of these qualities is necessary, to the [same extent, in other fields of design. The sense of proportion is, by the landscape painter, frequently sacrificed to character land accident ; the power of abstraction to that of complete ; realisation. The fiowers of his foreground must often be un- ^measured in their quantity, loose in their arrangement : what
120 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY,
is calculated, either in quantity or disposition, must be art* fully concealed. That calculation is by the architect to be prominently exhibited. So the abstraction of few character- istics out of many is shown only in the painter's sketch ; in his finished work it is concealed or lost in completion. Archi- tecture, on the contrary, delights in Abstraction and fears tc complete her forms. Proportion and Abstraction, then, are the two especial marks of architectural design as distinguished from all other. Sculpture must have them in inferior degrees ; leaning, on the one hand, to an architectural manner, when it is usually greatest (becoming, indeed, a part of Architecture), and, on the other, to a pictorial manner, when it is apt to lose its dignity, and sink into mere ingenious carving.
XXV. Now, of Proportion so much has been written, that I believe the only facts which are of practical use have been overwhelmed and kept out of sight by vain accumulations of particular instances and estimates. Proportions are as infinite (and that in all kinds of things, as severally in colors, lines, shades, lights, and forms) as possible airs in music : and it is just as rational an attempt to teach a young architect how to proportion truly and well by calculating for him the propor- tions of fine works, as it would be to teach him to compose melodies by calculating the mathematical relations of the notes in Beethoven's Adelaide or Mozart's Requiem. The man who has eye and intellect will invent beautiful proportions, and cannot help it ; but he can no more tell us how to do it than Wordsworth could tell us how to write a sonnet, or than Scott could have told us how to plan a romance. But there are one or two general laws which can be told : they are of no use. indeed, except as preventives of gross mistake, but they are so far worth teUing and remembering ; and the more so because, in the discussion of the subtle laws of proportion (which will never be either numbered or known), architects are perpet- ually forgetting and transgressing the very simplest of its necessities.
XXVI. Of which the first is, that wherever Proportion exists at all, one member of the composition must be either larger than, or in some way supreme over, the rest. There is no
THE LAMP OF BEAUT F. 12\
proportion between equal things. They can have symmetry only, and symmetry without proportion is not composition. It is necessary to perfect beauty, but it is the least necessary of its elements, nor of course is there any difficulty in obtaining it. Any succession of equal things is agreeable ; but to com- pose is to arrange unequal things, and the first thing to be done in beginning a composition is to determine which is to be the principal thing. I believe that all that has been written and taught about proportion, put together, is not to the architect worth the single rule, well enforced, "Have one large thing and several smaller things, or one principal thing and several inferior things, and bind them well together." Sometimes there may be a regular gradation, as between the heights of stories in good designs for houses ; sometimes a monarch with a lowly train, as in the spire with its pinnacles : the varieties of arrangement are infinite, but the law is uni- versal— have one thing above the rest, either by size, or office, or interest. Don't put the pinnacles without the spire. What a host of ugly church towers have we in England, with pinna- cles at the corners, and none in the middle ! How many buildings like King's College Chapel at Cambridge, looking like tables upside down, with their four legs in the air ! "What ! it will be said, have not beasts four legs ? Yes, but legs of different shapes, and with a head between them. So they have a pair of ears : and perhaps a pair of horns : but not at both ends. Knock down a couple of pinnacles at either end in King's College Chapel, and you will have a kind of propor- tion instantly. So in a cathedral you may have one tower in the centre, and two at the west end ; or two at the west end only, though a worse arrangement : but you must not have two at the west and two at the east end, unless you have some central member to connect them ; and even then, buildings are generally bad which have large balancing features at the extremities, and small connecting ones in the centre, because it is not easy then to make the centre dominant. The bird or moth may indeed have wide wings, because the size of the wing does not give supremacy to the wing. The head and life are the mighty things, and the plumes, howeverT* wide, are sub*
122 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.
ordinate. In nne west fronts with a pediment and two towers, the centre is always the principal mass, both in bulk and in- terest (as having the main gateway), and the towers are sub- ordinated to it, as an animal's horns are to its head. The moment the towers rise so high as to overpower the body and centre, and become themselves the principal masses, they will destroy the proportion, unless they are made unequal, and one of them the leading feature of the cathedral, as at Ant- werp and Strasburg. But the purer method is to keep them down in due relation to the centre, and to throw up the pedi- ment into a steep connecting mass, drawing the eye to it by rich tracery. This is nobly done in St. Wulfran of Abbeville, and attempted partly at Rouen, though that west front is made up of so many unfinished and supervening designs that it is impossible to guess the real intention of any one of its builders. XXVn. This rule of supremacy applies to the smallest as well as to the leading features : it is interestingly seen in the arrangement of all good mouldings. I have given one, on the opposite page, from Rouen cathedral ; that of the tracery be- fore distinguished as a type of the noblest manner of Northern Gothic (Chap. 11. § XXTE.). It is a tracery of three orders, of which the first is divided into a leaf moulding, fig. 4, and h in the section, and a plain roll, also seen in fig. 4, c in the sec- tion ; these two divisions surround the entire window or pan- elling, and are carried by two-face shafts of corresponding sec- tions. The second and third orders are plain rolls following the line of the tracery ; four divisions of moulding in all : of these four, the leaf moulding is, as seen in the sections, much the largest ; next to it the outer roll ; then, by an exquisite alternation, the innermost roll (e), in order that it may not be lost in the recess and the intermediate [d), the smallest. Each roll has its own shaft and capital ; and the two smaller, which in effect upon the eye, owing to the retirement of the inner- most, are nearly equal, have smaller capitals than the two larger, Hfted a little to bring them to the same level. The wall in the tref oiled lights is curved, as from e to/ in the sec- tion ; but in the quatref oil it is flat, only thrown back to the full depth of the recess below so as to get a shai*p shadow in-
PLATE X.-(Page 122-Vol. V.) Traceries and Mouldings from Rouen and Salisbury.
TEE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 123
stead of a soft one, the mouldings falling back to it in nearly a vertical curve behind the roll e. This could not, however, be managed with the simpler mouldings of the smaller qua- trefoil above, whose half section is given from g to g,^ ; but the architect was evidently fretted by the heavy look of its circular foils as opposed to the Hght spring of the arches be- low : so he threw its cusps obhquely clear from the wall, as seen in fig. 2, attached to it where they meet the circle, but with their finials pushed out from the natural level {li, in the section) to that of the first order {g^ and supported by stone props behind, as seen in the profile fig. 2, wdiich I got from the correspondent panel on the buttress face (fig. 1 being on its side), and of w^hich the lower cusps, being broken away, show the remnant of one of their props projecting from the waU. The oblique curve thus obtained in the profile is of singular grace. Take it all in all, I have never met with a more exquisite piece of varied, yet severe, proportioned and general arrangement (though all the windows of the period are fine, and especially delightful in the subordinate propor- tioning of the smaller capitals to the smaller shafts). The only fault it has is the inevitable misarrangement of the cen- tral shafts ; for the enlargement of the inner roll, though beautiful in the group of four divisions at the side, causes, in the triple central shaft, the very awkwardness of heavy lateral members which has just been in most instances con- demned. In the windows of the choir, and in most of the period, this difficulty is avoided by making the fourth order a fiUet which only follows the foliation, while the three outer- most are nearly in arithmetical progression of size, and the cen- tral triple shaft has of coui'se the largest roll in front. The moulding of the Palazzo Foscari (Plate VTIL, and Plate TV. fig. 8) is, for so simple a group, the grandest in effect I have even seen : it is composed of a large roll with two subordi- nates.
XXVIII. It is of course impossible to enter into details of instances belonging to so intricate division of our subject, in the compass of a general essay. I can but rapidly name the chief conditions of right. Another of these is the connection
124 THE LAMP 'OF BEAUTT.
of Symmetry with horizontal, and of Proportion with vertical, division. Evidently there is in symmetry a sense not merel;) of equality, but of balance : now a thing cannot be balanced by another on the top of it, though it may by one at the side of it. Hence, while it is not only allowable, but often neces- sary, to divide buildings, or parts of them, horizontally inlo halves, thirds, or other equal parts, all vertical divisions of this kind are utterly wrong ; worst into half, next worst in the regular numbers which more betray the equality. I should have thought this almost the first principle of proportion which a young architect was taught : and yet I remember an important building, recently erected in England, in which the columns are cut in half b}^ the projecting architraves of the central windows ; tiud it is quite usual to see the spires of modern Gothic churches divided by a band of ornament half way up. In all fine spires there are two bands and three parts, as at Salisbury. The ornamented portion of the tower is there cut in half, and allowably, because the spire forms the third mass to which the other two are subordinate : two sto- ries are also equal in Giotto's campanile, but dominant over smaller divisions below, and subordinated to the noble third above. Even this arrangement is difficult to treat ; and it is usually safer to increase or diminish the height of the divis- ions regularly as they rise, as in the Doge's Palace, w^hose three divisions are in a bold geometrical j^rogression : or, in towers, to get an alternate proportion between the body, the belfry, and the crown, as in the campanile of St. Mark's. But, at all events, get rid of equality ; leave that to children and their card houses : the laws of nature and the reason of man are alike against it, in arts, as in politics. There is but one thoroughly ugly tower in Italy that I know of, and that is so because it is divided into vertical equal parts : the tower of Pisa. '^
XXIX. One more principle of Proportion I have to name, equally simple, equally neglected. Proportion is between three terms at lenM. Hence, as the pinnacles are not enough without the spire, so neither the spire without the pinnacles. All men feel this and usually exj^ress their feeling by saying that
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the pinnacles conceal the junction of the spire and tower. This is one reason ; but a more influential one is, that the pinnacles furnish the third term to the spire and tower. So that it is not enough, in order to secure proportion, to divide a building unequally ; it must be divided into at least three parts ; it may be into more (and in details with advantage), but on a large scale I find three is about the best number ol parts in elevation, and five in horizontal extent, with freedom of increase to five in the one case and seven in the other ; but not to more without confusion (in architecture, that is to say ; for in organic structure the numbers cannot be limited). I purj^ose, in the course of works which are in preparation, to give copious illustrations of this subject, but I will take at present only one instance of vertical proportion, from the flower stem of the common water plantain, AlUma Plantago. Fig. 5, Plate XII. is a reduced profile of one side of a plant gathered at random ; it is seen to have five masts, of which, however, the uppermost is a mere shoot, and we can consider only their relations up to the fourth. Their lengths are measured on the line A B, which is the actual length of the lowest mass a b, A C = b c, AT>—cd, and A'E=d e. If the reader will take the trouble to measure these lengths and compare them, he will find that, within half a line, the upper- most A E=f of A D, A D=| of A C, and A C=| of A B ; a most subtle diminishing proportion. From each of the joints spring three major and three minor branches, each between each ; but the major branches, at any joint, are placed over the minor branches at the joint below, by the curious arrange- ment of the joint itself — the stem is bluntly triangular ; fig. 6 shows the section of any joint. The outer darkened tri- angle is the section of the lower stem ; the inner, left light, of the upper stem ; and the three main branches spring from the ledges left by the recession. Thus the stems diminish in diameter just as ihej diminish in height. The main branches (falsely placed in the profile over each other to show their relations) have respectively seven, six, five, four, and three arm-Dones, like the masts of the stem ; these divisions being proportioned in the same subtle manner. From the joints of
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these, it seems to be the plan of the plant that three majoi and three minor branches should again spring, bearing the flowers : but, in these infinitely complicated members, vege- tative nature admits much variety ; in the plant from which these measures were taken the full complement appeared only at one of the secondary joints.
The leaf of this plant has five ribs on each side, as its flower generally five masts, arranged with the most exquisite grace of curve ; but of lateral proportion I shall rather take illustra- tions from architecture : the reader will find several in the ac- counts of the Duomo at Pisa and St. Mark's at Venice, in Chap. V. §§XIV. — XVI. I give these arrangements merely as illustrations, not as precedents : all beautiful proportions are unique, they are not general formulae.
XXX. The other condition of architectural treatment which we proposed to notice was the abstraction of imitated form. But there is a peculiar difficulty in touching within these nar- row limits on such a subject as this, because the abstraction of which we find examples in existing art, is partly involun- tary ; and it is a matter of much nicety to determine where it begins to be purposed. In the progress of national as well as of individual mind, the first attempts at imitation are al- ways abstract and incomplete. Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline ; w^hence absolute completion of imitative form is often sup- j)osed to be in itself wrong. But it is not wrong always, only dangerous. Let us endeavor briefly to ascertain wherein its danger consists, and wherein its dignity.
XXXI. I have said that all art is abstract in its beginnings ; that is to say, it expresses only a small number of the qualities of the thing represented. Curved and complex lines are repre- sented by straight and simple ones ; interior markings of forms are few, and much is symbolical and conventional There is a resembance between the work of a great nation, in this phase, and the work of childhood and ignorance, which, in the mind of a careless observer, might attach something like ridicule to it The form of a tree on the Ninevite sculptures is much like thai v/hich, some twenty years ago, was f amilinr upon samplers ; and
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the types of the face and figure in early Italian art are suscepti ble of easy caricature. On the signs which separate the inf ancj; of magnificent manhood from every other, I do not pause to insist (they consist entirely in the choice of the sjTnbol and of the features abstracted) ; but I pass to the next stage of art, a condition of strength in which the abstraction which was begun in incapability is continued in free will. This is the case, how- ever, in pure sculpture and painting, as well as in architecture ; and we have nothing to do but with that gTcater severity of manner which fits either to be associated with the more reahst art. I believe it properly consists only in a due expression of their subordination, an expression varying according to their place and office. The question is first to be clearly determined whether the architectui-e is a frame for the sculpture, or the sculpture an ornament of the architecture. If the latter, then the first office of that sculpture is not to represent the things it imitates, but to gather out of them those arrangements of form which shall be pleasing to the eye in their intended places. So soon as agreeable lines and points of shade have been added to the mouldings which w^ere meagTe, or to the lights which were unrelieved, the architectural work of the imitation is ac- complished ; and how far it shall be wrought towards complete- ness or not, wiU depend upon its place, and upon other various circumstances. If, in its particular use or position, it is sym- metrically arranged, there is, of course, an instant indication of architectural subjection. But symmetry is not abstraction. Leaves may be carved in the most regular order, and yet be meanly imitative ; or, on the other hand, they may be thrown wild and loose, and yet be highly architectural in their separate treatment. Nothing can be less symmetrical than the group of leaves which join the two columns in Plate XIII. ; yet, since nothing of the leaf character is given but what is necessary for the bare suggestion of its image and the attainment of the lines desired, their treatment is highly abstract. It shows that the workman only wanted so much of the leaf as he supposed good for his architecture, and would allow no more ; and how much is to be supposed good, depends, as I have said, much more on place and circumstance than on general laws. I know
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that this is not usually thought, and that many good architects would insist on abstraction in all cases : the question is so wide and so difficult that I express my opinion upon it most diffi- dently ; but my own feeling is, that a purely abstract manner, like that of our earliest English work, does not afford room for the perfection of beautiful form, and that its severity is weari- some after the eye has been long accustomed to it. I have not done justice to the Salisbury dog-tooth moulding, of which the effect is sketched in fig. 5, Plate X., but I have done more jus- tice to it nevertheless than to the beautiful French one above it ; and I do not think that any candid reader w^ould deny that, piquant and spirited as is that from Salisbury, the Eouen mould- ing is, in every respect, nobler. It will be observed that its symmetry is more complicated, the leafage being divided into double groups of two lobes each, each lobe of different struct- ure. With exquisite feehng, one of these double groups is alternately omitted on the other side of the moulding (not seeii in the Plate, but occupying the cavetto of the section), thus giving a plaj^ul lightness to the whole ; and if the reader will allow for a beauty in the flow of the curved outlines (especially on the angle), of which he cannot in the least judge from my rude drawing, he will not, I think, expect easily to find a nobler instance of decoration adapted to the severest mouldings.
Now it will be observed, that there is in its treatment a high degTee of abstraction, though not so conventional as that of Sahsbury : that is to say, the leaves have little more than their flow and outhne represented ; they are hardly undercut, but their edges are connected by a gentle and most studied curve with the stone behind ; they have no serrations, no veinings, no rib or stalk on the angle, only an incision grace- fully made towards their extremities, indicative of the central rib and depression. The whole style of the abstraction shows that the architect could, if he had chosen, have carried the imitation much farther, but stayed at this point of his own free will ; and what he has done is also so perfect in its kind, that I feel disposed to accept his authority without question, so far as I can gather it from his works, on the whole subject of abstraction.
(
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XXXII. Happily his opinion is frankly expressed. This moulding is on tlie lateral buttress, and on a level with the top of the north gate ; it cannot therefore be closely seen except from the wooden stairs of the belfry ; it is not intended to be so seen, but calculated for a distance of, at least, forty to fifty feet from the eye. In the vault of the gate itself, half as near again, there are three rows of mouldings, as I think, by the same designer, at all events part of the same plan. One of them is given in Plate I. fig. 2 a. It will be seen that the ab- straction is here infinitely less ; the ivy leaves have stalks and associated fruit, and a rib for each lobe, and are so far under- cut as to detach their forms from the stone ; while in the vine- leaf moulding above, of the same period, from the south gate, serration appears added to other purely imitative characters. Finally, in the animals which form the ornaments of the por- tion of the gate which is close to the eye, abstraction nearly vanishes into perfect sculpture.
XXXin. Nearness to the eye, however, is not the only cir- cumstance which influences architectural abstraction. These very animals are not merely better cut because elose to the eye ; they are put close to the eye that they may, without in- discretion, be better cut, on the noble principle, first I think, clearly enunciated by Mr. Eastlake, that the closest imitation shall be of the noblest object. Farther, since the wildness and manner of growth of vegetation render a bona fide imita- tion of it impossible in sculpture — since its members must be reduced in number, ordered in direction, and cut away from their roots, even under the most earnestly imitative treatment, — it becomes a point, as I think, of good judgment, to pro* portion the completeness of execution of parts to the formahty of the whole ; and since five or six leaves must stand for a tree, to let also five or six touches stand for a leaf. But since the animal generally admits of perfect outline — since its form is detached, and may be fully represented, its sculpture may be more complete and faithful in all its parts. And this prin ciple will be actually found, I believe, to guide the old work men. If the animal form be in a gargoyle, incomplete, and coming out of a block of stone, or if a head only, as for a boss
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or other such partial use, its sculpture will be highly abstract But if it be an entire animal, as a lizard, or a bird, or a squirrel, peeping among leafage, its sculpture will be much farther carried, and I think, if small, near the eye, and worked in a fine material, may rightly be carried to the utmost possi- ble completion. Surely we cannot wish a less finish bestowed on those which animate the mouldings of the south door of the cathedral of Florence ; nor desire that the birds in the capitals of the Doge's palace should be stripped of a single plume.
XXXIV. Under these limitations, then, I think that per- fect sculpture may be made a part of the severest architecture ; but this perfection was said in the outset to be dangerous. It is so in the highest degree; for the moment the architect allows himself to dwell on the imitated portions, thete is a chance of his losing sight of the duty of his ornament, of its business as a part of the composition, and sacrificing its points of shade and effect to the delight of delicate carving. Aiid then he is lost. His architecture has become a mere frame- work for the setting of delicate sculpture, which had better be all taken do^vn and put into cabinets. It is well, there- fore, that the young architect should be taught to think of imitative ornament as of the extreme of grace in language ; not to be regarded at first, not to be obtained at the cost of pur- pose, meaning, force, or conciseness, yet, indeed, a perfection — the least of all perfections, and yet the crowning one of all — one which by itseK, and regarded in itself, is an architectu- ral coxcombry, but is yet the sign of the most higlily-trained mind and power when it is associated with others. It is a safe manner, as I think, to design all things at first in severe abstraction, and to be prepared, if need were, to carry them out in that form ;^then to mark the parts where high finish 'vould be admissible, to complete these alwaj^s with stern ret erence to their general effect, and then connect them by a graduated scale of abstraction with the rest. And there \h one safeguard against danger in this process on which T svould finally insist. Never imitate anything but natural forms, and those the noblest, in the completed parts. The
PLATE XI. - (Page 131— Vol. V.) Balcony in the CAMro. St Benedetto, Venice.
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degradation of the cinque cento manner of decoration was not owing to its naturalism, to its faitlifulness of imitation, but tc its imitation of ugly, i.e. unnatural things. So long as it re- strained itself to sculpture of animals and flowers, it remained noble. The balcony, on the opposite page, from a house in the Campo St. Benedetto at Venice, shows one of the earhest occurrences of the cinque cento arabesque, and a fragment of the pattern is given in Plate XII. fig. 8. It is but the arrest- ing upon the stone work of a stem or two of the living flowers, which are rarely wanting in the window above (and which, by the by, the French and Italian peasantry often trellis with ex- quisite taste about their casements). This arabesque, relieved as it is in darkness from the white stone by the stain of time, is surely both beautiful and pure ; and as long as the renais- sance ornament remained in such forms it may be beheld with undeserved admiration. But the moment that unnatural ob- jects were associated with these, and armor, and musical in- sti-uments, and wild meaningless scroUs and curled shields, and other such fancies, became principal in its subjects, its doom was sealed, and with it that of the architecture of the world..
XXXV. ni. Our final inquiry was to be into the use of color as associated with architectural ornament.
I do not feel able to speak with any confidence respecting the touching of sculptwe with color. I would only note one point, that sculpture is the representation of an idea, while architecture is itself a real thing. The idea may, as I think, be left colorless, and colored by the beholder's mind : but a reality ought to have reality in all its attributes : its color should be as fixed as its form. I cannot, therefore, consider architecture as in any wise perfect without color. Farther, as I have above noticed, I think the colors of architecture should be those of natural stones ; partly because more durable, but also because more perfect and graceful. For to conquer the harshness and deadness of tones laid upon stone or on gesso, needs the management and discretion of a true painter ; and on this co-operation we must not calculate in laying down rules for general practice. If Tintoret or Giorgione are at hand, and ask us for a wall to paint, we will alter our whole design
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for their sake, and become their servants ; but we must, as architects, expect the aid of the common workman only ; and the laying of color by a mechanical hand, and its toning under a vulgar eye, are far more offensive than rudeness in cutting the stone. The latter is imperfection only ; the former deadness or discordance. At the best, such color is so inferior to the lovely and mellow hues of the natural stone, that it is wise to sacrifice some of the intricacy of design, if by so doing we may employ the nobler material. And if, as we looked to Nature for instruction respecting form, we look to her also to learn the management of color, we shall, perhaps, find that this sacrifice of intricacy is for other causes expedient.
XXXVI. First, then, I think that in making this reference we are to consider our building as a kind of organized creat- ure ; in coloring which we must look to the single and sep- arately organized creatures of Nature, not to her landscape combinations. Our building, if it is well composed, is one thing, and is to be colored as Nature would color one thing — a shell, a flower, or an animal ; not as she colors gi'oups of things.
And the first broad conclusion we shall deduce from observ- ance of natural color in such cases will be, that it never fol- lows form, but is arranged on an entirely separate system. What mysterious connection there may be between the shape of the spots on an animal's skin and its anatomical system, I do not know, nor even if such a connection has in any wise been traced : but to the eye the systems are entirely separate, and in many cases that of color is accidentally variable. The stripes of a zebra do not follow the lines of its body or limbs, still less the spots of a leopard. In the plumage of birds, each feather bears a part of the pattern which is arbitrarily carried over the body, having indeed certain graceful harmo- nies with the form, diminishing or enlarging in directions which sometimes follow, but also not unfrequently oppose, the directions of its muscular lines. Whatever harmonies there may be, are distinctly like those of two separate musical parts, coinciding here and there only — never discordant, but essen- tially different. I hold this, then, for the first great principle
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of architectural color. Let it be visibly independent of form. Never paint a column with vertical lines, but always cross it.'' Nevei give separate mouldings separate colors (I know this is heresy, but I never shrink from any conclusions, however con- trary to human authority, to which I am led by observance of natural principles) ; and in sculptured ornaments I do not paint the leaves or figures (I cannot help the Elgin frieze) of one color and their ground of another, but vary both the ground and the figures with the same harmony. Notice how Nature does it in a variegated flower ; not one leaf red and another white, but a point of red and a zone of white, or what- ever it may be, to each. In certain places you may run your two systems closer, and here and there let them be parallel for a note or two, but see that the colors and the forms coincide only as two orders of mouldings do ; the same for an instant, but each holding its own course. So single members may sometimes have single colors : as a bird's head is sometimes of one color and its shoulders another, you may make your capital of one color and your shaft another ; but in general the best place for color is on broad surfaces, not on the points of interest in form. An animal is mottled on its breast and back, rarely on its paws or about its eyes ; so put your varie- gation boldly on the flat wall and broad shaft, but be shy of it in the capital and moulding ; in all cases it is a safe rule to simplify color w^hen form is rich, and vice versa ; and I think it would be well in general to carve all capitals and graceful ornaments in white marble, and so leave them.
XXXVn. Independence then being first secured, what kind of limiting outUnes shall we adopt for the system of color itseK ?
I am quite sure that any person familiar with natural ob- jects will never be surprised at any appearance of care or finish in them. That is the condition of the universe. But there is cause both for surprise and inquiry whenever we see anything like carelessness or incompletion : that is not a common condi- tion ; it must be one appointed for some singular purpose. I believe that such surprise will be forcibly felt by anj^ one who^ after studying carefully the lines of some variegated organic
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form, will set himself to copy with similar diligence those of its colors. The boundaries of the forms he will assuredly, whatever the object, have found drawn with a delicacy and precision which no human hand can follow. Those of its colors he will find in many cases, though governed always by a certain rude symmetry, yet irregular, blotched, imperfect, liable to all kinds of accidents and awkwardnesses. Look at the tracery of the lines on a camp shell, and see how oddly and awkwardly its tents are pitched. It is not indeed always so : there is occasionally, as in the eye of the peacock's plume, an apparent precision, but still a precision far inferior to that of the drawing of the filaments which bear that lovely stain ; and in the plurality of cases a degree of looseness and variation, and, still more singularly, of harshness and violence in arrange- ment, is admitted in color which would be monstrous in form. Observe the difference in the i)recision of a fish's scales and of the spots on them.
XXXVm. Now, why it should be that color is best seen under these circumstances I will not here endeavor to deter- mine ; nor whether the lesson we are to learn from it be that it is God's will that all manner of delights should never be combined in one thing. But the fact is certain, that color is always by Him arranged in these simple or rude forms, and as certain that, therefore, it must be best seen in them, and that we shall never mend by refining its arrangements. Experience teaches us the same thing. Infinite nonsense has been written about the union of perfect color with perfect form. They never will, never can be united. Color, to be perfect, munt have a soft outhne or a simple one : it cannot have a refined one ; and you will never produce a good painted window with good figure-drawing in it. You wiU lose perfection of color as you give perfection of line. Try to put in order and form the colors of a piece of opal.
XXXIX. I conclude, then, that all arrangements of color, for its own sake, in graceful forms, are barbarous ; and that, to paint a color pattern with the lovely lines of a Greek leaf moulding, is an utterly savage procedure. I cannot find any- tliino- in natural color like this : it is not in the bond. I find
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it in all natural form — never in natural color. If, then, our architectural color is to be beautiful as its form was, by being imitative, we are limited to these conditions — to simple masses of it, to zones, as in the rainbow and the zebra ; cloudings and flamings, as in marble shells and plumage, or spots of various shapes and dimensions. All these conditions are susceptible of various degrees of sharpness and delicac}', and of complication in arrangement. The zone may become a delicate line, and aiTange itself in chequers and zig-zags. The flaming may be more or less defined, as on a tulip leaf, and may at last be represented by a triangle of color, and arrange itself in stars or other shapes ; the spot may be also graduated into a stain, or defined into a square or circle. The most exquisite harmonies may be composed of these simple elements : some soft and full of flushed and melting spaces of color ; others piquant and sparkling, or deep and rich, formed of close groups of the fiery fragments : perfect and lovely proportion may be exhibited in the relation of their quantities, infinite invention in their disposition : but, in all cases, their shape will be effective only as it determines their quantity, and regulates their operation on each other ; points or edges of one being introduced between breadths of others, and so on. Triangular and barred forms are therefore con- venient, or others the simplest possible ; leaving the pleasure of the spectator to be taken in the color, and in that only. Curved outlines, especially if refined, deaden the color, and confuse the mind. Even in figure painting the greatest colorists have either melted their outline away, as often Correggio and Eubens ; or purposely made their masses of un- gainly shape, as Titian ; or placed their brightest hues in cos- tume, where they could get quaint patterns, as Veronese, and especially Angelico, with whom, however, the absolute virtue of color is secondary to grace of line. Hence, he never uses t}ie blended hues of Correggio, like those on the wing of the little Cupid, in the "Venus and Mercury," but always the severest type — the peacock plume. Any of these men would have looked with infinite disgust upon the leafage and scroll- work which form the ground of color in oin* modern painted
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•windows, and yet all whom I have named were much infected with the love of renaissance designs. We must also allow for the freedom of the painter's subject, and looseness of his associated lines ; a pattern being severe in a picture, which is over luxurious upon a building. I believe, therefore, that it is impossible to be over quaint or angular in architectural coloring ; and thus many dispositions w^hich I have had oc- casion to reprobate in form, are, in color, the best that can be invented. I have always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the Tudor style, for this reason, that, having surrendered all pretence to spaciousness and breadth, — having divided its surfaces by an infinite number of lines, it yet sacrifices the only characters which can make lines beautiful ; sacrifices all the variety and grace which long atoned for the caprice of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its leading feature, an en- tanglement of cross bars and verticals, showing about as much invention or skill of design as the reticulation of the brick- layer's sieve. Yet this very reticulation would in color be highly beautiful ; and all the heraldry, and other features which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful as themes of color (so long as there are no fluttering or over-twisted lines in them) ; and this observe, because, when colored, they take the place of a mere pattern, and the resemblance to nature, which could not be found in their sculptured forms, is found in their piquant variegation of other surfaces. There is a beautiful and bright bit of wall painting behind the Duomo of Verona, composed of coats of arms, whose bear- ings are balls of gold set in bars of green (altered blue ?) and white, with cardinal's hats in alternate squares. This is of course, however, fit only for domestic work. The front of the Doge's palace at Venice is the purest and most chaste model that I can name (but one) of the fit application of color to pubhc buildings. The sculpture and mouldings are all white ; but the wall surface is chequered with marble blocks of pale rose, the chequers being in no wise harmonized, or fitted to the forms of the windows ; but looking as if the sur- face had been completed first, and the windows cut out of it. In Plate XIL fig. 2 the reader will see two of the patterns
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used in green and white, on the columns of San Michele of Lucca, every column having a different design. Both are beautiful, but the upper one certainly the best. Yet in sculpt- ure its Hues would have been perfectly barbarous, and those even of the lower not enough refined.
XL. Restraining ourselves, therefore, to the use of such simple patterns, so far forth as our color is subordinate either to architectural structure, or sculptural form, we have yet one more manner of ornamentation to add to our general means of effect, monochrome design, the intermediate condition be- tween coloring and carving. The relations of the entire sys- tem of architectural decoration may then be thus expressed.
1. Organic form dominant. True, independent sculpture, and
alto-relievo ; rich capitals, and mouldings ; to be elaborate in completion of form, not abstract, and either to be left in pure white marble, or most cautiously touched with color in points and borders only, in a system not concur- rent with their forms.
2. Organic form sub-dominant. Basso-rehevo or intaglio. To be more abstract in proportion to the reduction of depth ; to be also more rigid and simple in contour ; to be touched with color more boldly and in an increased de- gree, exactly in proportion to the reduced depth and ful- ness of form, but still in a svstem non-concurrent with their forms.
Organic form abstracted to outline. Monochrome design, still farther reduced to simplicity of contour, and there- fore admitting for the first time the color to be concur- rent with its outlines ; that is to say, as its name imports, the entire figure to be detached in one color from a ground of another. 4. Organic forms entirely lost. Geometrical patterns or vari-
table cloudings in the most vivid color. On the opposite side of this scale, ascending from the color pattern, I would place the various forms of painting which may be associated with architecture : primarily, and as most
¥
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fit for such purpose, the mosaic, highly abstract in treatment^ and introducing brilliant color in masses ; the Madonna of Torcello being, as I think, the noblest type of the manner, and the Baptistery of Parma the richest : next, the purely decora- tive fresco, like that of the Arena Chapel ; finally, the fresco becoming principal, as in the Vatican and Sistine. But I can- not, with any safety, follow the principles of abstraction in this pictorial ornament ; since the noblest examples of it appear to me to owe their architectural applicability to their archaic manner ; and I think that the abstraction and admira- ble simplicity which render them fit media of the most splen- did coloring, cannot be recovered by a voluntary condescen- sion. The Byzantines themselves would not, I think, if they could have drawn the figure better, have used it for a color decoration ; and that use, as peculiar to a condition of child- hood, however noble and full of promise, cannot be included among those modes of adornment which are now legitimate or even possible. There is a difficulty in the management of the painted window for the same reason, which has not yet been met, and we must conquer that first, before we can venture to consider the wall as a painted window on a large scale. Pic- torial subject, without such abstraction, becomes necessarily principal, or, at all events, ceases to be the architect's concern ; its plan must be left to the painter after the completion of the building, as in the works of Veronese and Giorgione on the palaces of Venice.
XLI. Pure architectural decoration, then, may be consid- ered as Hmited to the four kinds above specified ; of which each glides almost imperceptibly into the other. Thus, the Elgin frieze is a monochrome in a state of transition to sculpt- ure, retaining, as I think, the half-cast skin too long. Of pure monochrome, I have given an example in Plate VI., from the noble front of St. Michele of Lucca. It contains forty such arches, all covered with equally elaborate ornaments, en- tirely drawn by cutting out their ground to about the depth of an inch in the flat white marble, and filling the spaces with pieces of green sei-pentine ; a most elaborate mode of sculpt- ure, requiring excessive care and precision in the fitting of
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the edges, and of course double work, the same line needing to be cut both in the marble and serpentine. The excessive sim- pHcity of the forms will be at once perceived ; the eyes of the figures of animals, for instance, being indicated only by a round dot, formed by a little inlet circle of serpentine, about half an inch over : but, though simple, they admit often much grace of curvature, as in the neck of the bird seen above the right hand pillar.'* The pieces of serpentine have fallen out in many places, giving the black shadows, as seen under the horseman's arm and bird's neck, and in the semi-circular line round the arch, once fiUed with some pattern. It would have illustrated my point better to have restored the lost portions, but I always draw a thing exactly as it is, hating restoration of any kind ; and I would especially direct the reader's atten- tion to the completion of the forms in the sculptured orna- ment of the marble cornices, as opposed to the abstraction of the monochrome figures, of the ball and cross patterns between the arches, and of the triangular ornament round the arch on the left.
XLII. I have an intense love for these monochrome figures, owing to their wonderful life and spirit in all the works on which I found them ; nevertheless, I believe that the exces- sive degree of abstraction which they imply necessitates our placing them in the rank of a progressive or imperfect art, and that a perfect building should rather be composed of the highest sculpture (organic form dominant and sub-dominant), associated with pattern colors on the flat or broad surfaces. And we find, in fact, that the cathedral of Pisa, which is a higher type than that of Lucca, exactly follows this conditioUj the color being put in geometrical patterns on its surfaces, and animal-forms and lovely leafage used in the sculptured oornices and pillars. And I think that the grace of the carved forms is best seen when it is thus boldly opposed to severe traceries of color, while the color itself is, as we have seen, always most piquant when it is put into sharp angular ar- rangements. Thus the sculpture is approved and set off by the color, and the color seen to the best advantage in its opposition both to the whiteness and the grace of the carved marble.
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XLIII. In the course of this and the preceding chapters, 1 have now separately enumerated most of the conditions of Power and Beauty, which in the outset I stated to be the grounds of the deepest impressions with which architecture could affect the human mind ; but I would ask permission to recapitulate them in order to see if there be any building which I may offer as an example of the unison, in such man- ner as is possible, of them all. Glancing back, then, to the beginning of the third chapter, and introducing in their place the conditions incidentally determined in the two previous sections, we shall have the following list of noble characters :
Considerable size, exliibitedby simple terminal hues (Chap. III. § 6). Projection towards the top (§ 7). Breadth of flat surface (§ 8). Square compartments of that surface (§ 9). Vaiied and visible masonry (§ 11). Vigorous depth of shadow (§ 13), exhibited especially by pierced traceries (§ 18). Varied proportion in ascent (Chap. IV. § 28) . Lateral symmetry (§ 28). Sculpture most delicate at the base (Chap. I. § 12). Enriched quantity of ornament at the top (§ 13). Sculpture abstract in inferior ornaments and mouldings (Chap, IV. § 31), complete in animal forms (§ 33). Both to be executed in white marble (§ 40). Vivid color introduced in flat geometrical patterns (§ 39), and obtained by the use of naturally colored stone (§ 35).
These characteristics occur more or less in different build- ings, some in one and some in another. But all together, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building in the world, the Campanile of Giotto at Florence. The drawing of the tracery of its upper story, which heads this chapter, rude as it is, will never- theless give the reader some better conception of that tower's magnificence than the thin outlines in which it is usually portrayed. In its first appeal to the stranger's eye there is something unpleasing ; a mingling, as it seems to him, of over severity with over minuteness. But let him give it time, as he should to all other consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to despise that Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows by sunhght anJ
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 141
moonlight, and I shall not soon forget how profound and gloomy appeared to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic, when I afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the rising of those grey walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering, rough-gTained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other ornament than the mar- tins' nests in the height of them, and that bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, colored like a morn- ing cloud, and chased like a sea shell. And if this be, as I be- lieve it, the model and mirror of perfect architecture, is there not something to be learned by looking back to the early Hfe of him who raised it ? I said that the Power of human mind had its growth in the Wilderness ; much more must the love and the conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue we have seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God's daily work, and an arrested ray of some star of creation, be given chiefly in the places which He has gladdened by planting there the fir tree and the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, but among the far away fields of her lilies, was the child trained who was to raise that headstone of Beauty above the towers of watch and war. Remember all that he became ; count the sacred thoughts with which he filled the heart of Italy ; ask those who followed him what they learned at his feet ; and when you have numbered his labors, and received their testimony, if it seem to you that God had verily poured out upon this His servant no common nor restrained portion of His Spirit, and that he was indeed a king among the children of men, remem* ber also that the legend upon his crown was that of David's : — • ^* I took thee from the sheepcote, and from following the sheep."
14:2 THE LAMP OF LIFE,
CHAPTER V.
THE LAMP OF LIFE.
I Among the countless analogies by which the nature and relations of the human soul are illustrated in the material creation, none are more striking than the impressions insep- arably connected with the active and dormant states of matter. I have elsewhere endeavored to show, that no inconsiderable part of the essential characters of Beauty depended on the expression of vital energy in organic things, or on the subjec- tion to such energy, of things naturally passive and powerless. I need not here repeat, of what was then advanced, more than the statement which I believe will meet with general accept- ance, that things in other respects alike, as in their substance, or uses, or outward forms, are noble or ignoble in proportion to the fulness of the life which either they themselves enjoy, or of whose action they bear the evidence, as sea sands are made beautiful by their bearing the seal of the motion of the waters. And this is especially time of all objects which bear upon them the impress of the highest order of creative hfe, that is to say, of the mind of man : they become noble or ig- noble in proportion to the amount of the energy of that mind which has visibly been employed upon them. But most pe- culiarly and imperatively does the rule hold with respect to the creations of Ai'chitecture, which being properly capable of no other life than this, and being not essentially composed of things pleasant in themselves, — as music of sweet sounds, or painting of fair colors, but of inert substance, — depend, for their dignity and pleasurableness in the utmost degree, upon the vivid expression of the intellectual Hfe which has been concerned in their production.
n. Now in all other kind of energies except that of man's mind, there is no question as to what is life, and what is not. "Vital sensibility, whether vegetable or animal, may, indeed, be reduced to so great feebleness, as to render its existence a matter of question, but when it is evident at all, it is evident
THE LAMP OF LIFE. 143
as such : there is no mistaking any imitation or pretence of it for the hfe itself ; no mechanism nor galvanism can take its place ; nor is any resemblance of it so striking as to involve even hesitation in the judgment ; although many occur which the human imagination takes pleasure in exalting, without for an instant losing sight of the real nature of the dead things it animates ; but rejoicing rather in its own excessive life, which puts gesture into clouds, and joy into waves, and voices into rocks.
in. But when we begin to be concerned wdth the energies of man, we find ourselves instantly dealing with a double creat- ure. Most part of his being seems to have a fictitious coun- terpart, which it is at his peril if he do not cast off and deny. Thus he has a true and false (otherwise called a living and dead, or a feigned or unfeigned) faith. He has a true and a false hope, a true and a false charity, and, finally, a time and a false life. His true life is like that of lower organic beings, the independent force by which he moulds and governs exter- nal things ; it is a force of assimilation which converts every- thing around him into food, or into instruments ; and which, however humbly or obediently it may listen to or follow the guidance of superior intelligence, never forfeits its own authority as a judging principle, as a will capable either of obeying or rebelling. His false hfe is, indeed, but one of the conditions of death or stupor, but it acts, even when it cannot be said to animate, and is not always easily known from the true. It is that life of custom and accident in which many of us pass much of our time in the world ; that Hfe in which we do what we have not purposed, and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what we do not understand ; that life which is overlaid by the w^eight of things external to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them ; that, which instead of growing and blossoming under any wholesome dew, is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to the true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits, if it stand in our w^ay
144 THE LAMP OF LIFE.
All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in this sort ; aU are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle matter ; only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking this bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips upon the birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength. But, with all the efforts that the best men make, much of their being passes in a kind of dream, in which they indeed move, and j)lay their parts sufficiently, to the eyes of their fellow-dreamers, but have no clear conscious- ness of what is around them, or within them ; blind to the one, insensible to the other, vwOpou I would not press the definition into its darker application to the dull heart and heavy ear ; I have to do with it only as it refers to the too fre- quent condition of natural existence, whether of nations or in- dividuals, settling commonly upon them in proportion to their age. The life of a nation is usually, like the flow of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and covered, at last advancing only by the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks. And that last condition is a sad one to look upon. All the steps are marked most clearly in the arts, and in Archi- tecture more than in any other ; for it, being especially de- pendent, as we have just said, on the warmth of the true life, is also peculiarly sensible of the hemlock cold of the false ; and I do not know anything more oppressive, when the mind is once awakened to its characteristics, than the aspect of a dead architecture. The feebleness of childhood is full of promise and of interest, — the struggle of imperfect knowledge full of energy and continuity, — but to see impotence and ri- gidity settling upon the form of the developed man ; to see the types which once had the die of thought struck fresh upon them, worn flat by over use ; to see the shell of the living creature in its adult form, when its colors are faded, and its inhabitant perished, — this is a sight more humiliat- ing, more melancholy, than the vanishing of all knowledge, and the retui-n to confessed and helpless infancy.
Nay, it is to be wished that such return were always possi- ble. There would be hope if we could change palsy into puerility ; but I know not how far we can become children
THE LAMP OF LIFE. 145
again, and renew our lost life. The stirring which has taken place in our architectural aim*, and interests within these few years, is thought by many to be full of promise : I trust it is, but it has a sickly look to me. I cannot tell whether it be indeed a springing of seed or a shaking among bones ; and I do not think the time will be lost which I ask the reader to spend in the inquiry, how far all that we have hitherto ascer- tained or conjectured to be the best in principle, may be for- mally practised without the spirit or the vitality which alone could give it influence, value, or delightfulness.
IV. Now, in the first place — and this is rather an important point — it is no sign of deadness in a present art that it borrows or imitates, but only if it borrows without paying interest, or if it imitates without choice. The art of a great nation, which is developed without any acquaintance with nobler examples than its own early efforts furnish, exhibits always the most consistent and comprehensible growth, and perhaps is re- garded usually as peculiarly venerable in its seK-origination. But there is something to my mind more majestic yet in the life of an architecture hke that of the Lombards, rude and in- fantine in itself, and surrounded by fragments of a nobler art of which it is quick in admiration and ready in imitation, and yet so strong in its own new instincts that it re-constructs and re-arranges every fragment that it copies or borrows into har- mony with its own thoughts, — a harmony at first disjointed and awkward, but completed in the end, and fused into per- fect organisation ; all the borrowed elements being subordi- nated to its own primal, unchanged hfe. I do not know any sensation more exquisite than the discovering of the evidence of this magnificent struggle into independent existence ; the detection of Ihe borrowed thoughts, nay, the finding of the ac- tual blocks and stones carved by other hands and in other ages, wrought into the new walls, with a new expression and purpose given to them, like the blocks of imsubdued rocks (to go back to our former simile) which we find in the heart of the lava current, great witnesses to the power which has fused all but those calcined fragments into the mass of its bomogeneoua fire.
10
140 TBE LAMP OF LIFE.
V. It will be asked, How is imitation to be rendered healtt, and vital ? Unhappily, while it is easy to enumerate the signs of life, it is impossible to define or to communicate life ; and while every intelligent ^vriter on Art has insisted on the differ- ence between the copying found in an advancing or recedent period, none have been able to communicate, in the slightest degree, the force of vitality to the copyist over whom they might have influence. Yet it is at least interesting, if not profitable, to note that two very distinguishing characters of vital imitation are, its Frankness and its Audacity ; its Frank- ness is especially singular ; there is never any effort to con- ceal the degree of the sources of its borrowing. Raffaelle carries off a whole figure from Masaccio, or borrows an entire composition from Perugino, with as much tranquillity and simplicity of innocence as a young Spartan pickpocket ; and the architect of a Romanesque basilica gathered his columns and capitals where he could find tliem, as an ant picks uj) sticks. There is at least a presumption, when we find this frank acceptance, that there is a sense within the mind of power capable of transforming and renewing whatever it adopts ; and too conscious, too exalted, to fear the accusation of plagiarism, — too certain that it can prove, and has proved, its independence, to be afraid of expressing its homage to what it admires in the most open and indubitable way ; and the necessary consequence of this sense of power is the other sign I have named — the Audacity of treatment when it finds treatment necessary, the unhesitating and sweeping sacrifice of precedent where precedent becomes inconvenient. For in- stance, in the characteristic forms of Italian Eomanesque, in which the hypaethral portion of the heathen temple was re- placed by the towering nave, and where, in consequence, the pediment of the west front became divided into three portions, of which the central one, like the apex of a ridge of sloping strata lifted by a sudden fault, was broken away from and raised above the wings ; there remained at the extremities of the aisles two triangular fragments of pediment, which could not now be filled by any of the modes of decoration adapted for the unbroken space ; and the difficulty became greater
THE LAMP OF LIFE. 141
wlien the central j)ortion of the front was occupied by colunx nar ranges, which could not, without painful abruptness, ter- minate short of the extremities of the wings. I know not what expedient would have been adopted by architects who had much respect for precedent, under such circumstances, but it certainly would not have been that of the Pisan, — to continue the range of columns into the pedimental space, shortening them to its extremity until the shaft of the last column vanished altogether, and there remained only its capi- tal resting in the angle on its basic plinth. I raise no ques- tion at present whether this arrangement be graceful or other- wise ; I allege it only as an instance of boldness almost without a parallel, casting aside every received principle that stood in its way, and struggling through every discordance and diiffi- culty to the fulfilment of its own instincts.
YI. Frankness, however, is in itself no excuse for repetition, nor audacity for innovation, when the one is indolent and the other unwise. Nobler and surer signs of vitality must be sought, — signs independent alike of the decorative or original character of the style, and constant in every style that is de- terminedly progressive.
Of these, one of the most important I believe to be a cer- tain neglect or contempt of refinement in execution, or, at all events, a visible subordination of execution to conception, commonly involuntary, but not unfrequently intentional. This is a point, however, on which, while I speak confidently, I must at the same time reservedly and carefully, as there would otherwise be much chance of my being dangerously misunderstood. It has been truly observed and well stated by Lord Lindsay, that the best designers of Italy were also the most careful in their workmanship ; and that the stability and finish of their masonry, mosaic, or other work whatsoever, were always perfect in proportion to the apparent improbabil- ity of the great designers condescending to the care of details among us so despised. Not only do I fully admit and re-as- sert this most important fact, but I would insist upon perfect !ind most delicate finish in its right place, as a characteristic ^i all the highest schools of architecture, as much as it is
148 THE LAMP OF LIFE.
those of painting. But on the other hand, as perfect finish belongs to the perfected art, a progressive finish belongs to progressive art ; and I do not think that any more fatal sign of a stupor or numbness settling upon that undeveloped art could possibly be detected, than that it had been taken aback by its own execution, and that the workmanship had gone ahead of the design ; while, even in my admission of absolute finish in the right place, as an attribute of the perfected school, I must reserve to myself the right of answering in my own way the two very important questions, what is finish ? and what is its right place ?
Vn. But in illustrating either of these points, we must remember that the correspondence of workmanship with thought is, in existent examples, interfered with by the adop- tion of the designs of an advanced period by the workmen of a rude one. All the beginnings of Christian architecture are of this kind, and the necessary consequence is of course an increase of the visible interval between the power of realisa- tion and the beauty of the idea. We have at first an imita- tion, almost savage in its rudeness, of a classical design ; as the art advances, the design is modified by a mixture of Gothic grotesqueness, and the execution more complete, until a harmony is established between the two, in which balance they advance to new perfection. Now during the whole period in which the ground is being recovered, there will be found in the Hving architecture marks not to be mistaken, of intense impatience ; a struggle towards something unattained, which causes all minor points of handling to be neglected ; and a restless disdain of all qualities which appear either to confess contentment or to require a time and care which might be better spent. And, exactly as a good and earnest student of drawing will not lose time in ruling lines or finish- ing backgrounds about studies which, while they have an- swered his immediate purpose, he knows to be imperfect and inferior to what he will do hereafter, — so the vigor of a true school of early architecture, which is either working under the influence of high example or which is itself in a state of rapid development, is very curiously traceable, among other
iS" ,) c
PLATE Xn.-(Page 149-Vol. Y.)
PllAGMENTS FROM ABBEVILLE, LuCCA, VENICE. AND PiSA.
i
THE LAMP OF LIFE. 149
signs, in the contempt of exact symmetry and measurement^ which in dead architecture are the most painful necessities.
VIII. In Plate XII. fig. 1 I have given a most singular in- stance both of rude execution and defied symmetry, in the little pillar and spandril from a panel decoration under the pulpit of St. Mark's at Venice. The imperfection (not merely simplicity, but actual rudeness and ugliness) of the leaf orna- ment will strike the eye at once : this is general in works of the time, but it is not so common to find a capital which has been so carelessly cut ; its imperfect volutes being pushed up one side far higher than on the other, and contracted on that side, an additional drill hole being put in to fiU the space ; besides this, the member a, of the mouldings, is a roll where it follows the arch, pnd a flat fillet at a; the one being slurred into the other at the angle 6, and finally stopped short alto- gether at the other side by the most uncourteous and re- morseless interference of the outer moulding : and in spite of all this, the grace, proportion, and feeling of the whole ar- rangement are so great, that, in its place, it leaves nothing to be desired ; aU the science and symmetry in the world could not beat it. In fig. 4 I have endeavored to give some idea of the execution of the subordinate portions of a much higher work, the pulpit of St. Andrea at Pistoja, hj Nicolo Pisano. It is covered with figure sculptures, executed with great care and delicacy ; but when the sculptor came to the simple arch mouldings, he did not choose to draw the eye to them by over precision of work or over shai-pness of shadow. The section adopted, k, m, is peculiarly simple, and so slight and obtuse in its recessions as never to produce a sharp line ; and it is worked with what at first appears slovenliness, but it is in fact sculptural sketching ; exactly con'espondent to a painter's light execution of a background : the lines appear and disap- pear again,. are sometimes deep, sometimes shallow, sometimes quite broken off ; and the recession of the cusp joins that of the external arch at n, in the most fearless defiance of all mathematical laws of curvilinear contact.
IX. There is something very delightful in this bold expres sion of the mind of the great master. I do not say that it isi
150 THE LAMP OF LIFE.
the "perfect work" of patience, but I think that impatience is a ylorious character in an advancing school ; and I love the Romanesque and earl}* Gothic especially, because they afford so much room for it ; accidental carelessness of measurement or of execution being mingled undistinguishably with the purposed departures from symmetrical regularity, and the luxuriousness of perpetually variable fancy, which are emi- nently characteristic of both styles. How great, how fre- quent they are, and how brightly the severity of architectural law is relieved by their grace and suddenness, has not, L think, been enough observed ; still less, the unequal meas- urements of even important features professing to be abso- lutely symmetrical. I am not so familiar with modern prac- tice as to speak with confidence respecting its ordinary precision ; but I imagine that the following measures of the western front of the cathedral of Pisa, would be looked upon by present architects as very blundering approximations. That front is divided into seven arched compartments, of which the second, fourth or central, and sixth contain doors ; the seven are in a most subtle alternating proportion ; the central being the largest, next to it the second and sixth, then the first and seventh, lastly the third and fifth. By this ar- rangement, of course, these three pairs should be equal ; and they are so to the eye, but I found their actual measures to be the following, taken from pillar to pillar, in Italian braccia, palmi (four inches each), and inches : —
Braccia. Palmi. Inches.
Total in Inchea.
1. Central door 8 0 0 = 192
2. Northern door } 6 3 1^ = 157^
3. Southern door f 6 4 3= 163
4. Extreme northern space ) 5 5 3^ = 143^
5. Extreme southern space \ 6 1 0^ = 148^
6. Northern intervals between the doors ^5 3 1 = 129
7. Southern intervals between the doors f 5 2 1^ = 129^
There is thus a difference, severally, between 2, 3 and 4, 5, of five inches and a half in the one case, and five inches in the other.
X. This, however, mav perhaps be partly attributable to
TUE LAMP OF LIFE. 151
some accommodation of the accidental distortions which evi- dently took place in the walls of the cathedral during their building, as much as in those of the camp mile. To my mind, those of the Duomo are far the most wonderful of the two : I do not believe that a single pillar of its walls is absolutely vertical : the pavement rises and falls to different heights, oi ratber the plinth of the walls sinks into it continually to dif- ferent depths, the whole west front literally overhangs (I have not plumbed it ; but the inclination may be seen by the eye, by bringing it into visual contact with the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo) : and a most extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the southern wall shows that this inclination had begun when the first story was built. The cornice above the first arcade of that wall touches the tops of eleven out of its fifteen arches ; but it suddenly leaves the tops of the four westernmost ; the arches nodding westward and sinking into the ground, while the cornice rises (or seems to rise), leaving at any rate, whether by the rise of the one or the fall of the other, an interval of more than two feet between it and the top of the western arch, filled by added courses of masonry. There is another very curious evidence of this struggle of the architect with his yielding wall in the columns of the main entrance. (These notices are perhaps somewhat irrelevant to our immediate subject, but they appear to me highly interest- ing ; and they, at all events, prove one of the points on which I would insist, — how much of imperfection and variety in things professing to be symmetrical the eyes of those eager builders could endure : they looked to loveliness in detail, to nobility in the whole, never to petty measurements.) Those columns of the principal entrance are among the loveliest in Italy ; cylindrical, and decorated with a rich arabesque of sculptured foliage, which at the base extends nearly all round them, up to the black pilaster in which they are lightly en- gaged . but the shield of foliage, bounded by a severe hne, narrows to their tops, where it covers their frontal segment only ; thus giving, when laterally seen, a terminal line sloping boldly outwards, which, as I think, was meant to conceal the accidental leaning of the western walls, and, by its exagger-
152 THE LAMP OF LIFE.
ated inclination in the same direction, to throw them by cok parison into a seeming vertical.
XI. There is another very curious instance of distortion above the central door of the west front. All the intervals be- tween the seven arches are filled with black marble, each con- taining in its centre a white parallelogram filled with animal mosaics, and the whole surmounted by a broad white band, which, generally, does not touch the parallelogram below. But the parallelogram on the north of the central arch has been forced into an oblique position, and touches the white band ; and, as if the architect was determined to show that he did not care whether it did or not, the white band suddenly gets thicker at that place, and remains so over the two next arches. And these differences are the more curious because the workmanship of them all is most finished and masterl}^ and the distorted stones are fitted with as much neatness as if they tallied to a hair's breadth. There is no look of slur- ring or blundering about it ; it is all coolly filled in, as if the builder had no ssnse of anything being wrong or extraordi- nary : I only wish we had a little of his impudence.
XII. Still, the reader will say that all these variations are probably dependent more on the bad foundation than on the architect's feeling. Not so the exquisite delicacies of change in the proportions and dimensions of the apparently symmetri- cal arcades of the west front. It will be remembered that I said the tower of Pisa was the only ugly tower in Italy, because its tiers were equal, or neaily so, in height ; a fault this, so contrary to the spirit of the builders of the time, that it can be considered only as an unlucky caprice. Perhaps the general aspect of the west front of the cathedral may then have occurred to the reader's mind, as seemingly another con- tradiction of the rule I had advanced. It would not have been so, however, even had its four upper arcades been actually e^jual ; as they are subordinated to the great seven-arched lower story, in the manner before noticed respecting the spire of Salisbury, and as is actually the case in the Duomo of Lucca and Tower of Pistoja. But the Pisan front is far more subtly proportioned. Not one of its four arcades ^s of like height
THE LAMP OF LIFE. 153
with another. The highest is the third, counting upwards ; and they diminish in nearly arithmetical proportion alter- nately ; in the order 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 4th. The inequalities in their arches are not less remarkable : they at first strike the eye as all equal ; but there is a grace about them which equality never obtained : on closer observation, it is perceived that in the first row of nineteen arches, eighteen are equal, and the central one larger than the rest ; in the second arcade, the nine central arches stand over the nine below, having, lik<& them, the ninth central one largest. But on their flanks, where is the slope of the shoulder-like pediment, the arches vanish^ and a wedge-shaped frieze takes their place, tapering outwards^ in order to allow the columns to be carried to the extremity of the pediment ; and here, where the heights of the shafts are so far shortened, they are set thicker ; five shafts, or rather four and a capital, above, to four of the arcade below, giving twenty-one intervals instead of nineteen. In the next or thirc^ arcade, — which, remember, is the highest, — eight arches, aU equal, are given in the space of the nine below, so that there is now a central shaft instead of a central arch, and the span of the arches is increased in j)orportion to their increased height. Finally, in the uppermost arcade, which is the lowest of all, the arches, the same in number as those below, are narrower than any of the fayade ; the whole eight going very nearly above the six below them, while the terminal arches of the lower arcade are sunnounted by flanking masses of deco- rated wall with projecting figures.
Xm. Now I call that Living Architecture. There is sensa- tion in every inch of it, and an accommodation to every architectural necessity, with a determined variation in ar- rangement, which is exactly like the related proportions and provisions in the structure of organic form. I have not space to examine the still lovelier proportioning of the external shafts of the apse of this marvellous building. I prefer, lest the reader should think it a peculiar example, to state the struct- ure of another church, the most graceful and grand piece of Romanesque work, as a fragment, in north Italy, that of Sar Giovanni Evangelista at Pistoja.
154
THE LAMP OF LIFE.
The side of that church has three stories of arcade, dimii> ishing in height in bold geometrical proportion, while the arches, for the most part, increase in number in arithmetical, i. e. two in the second arcade, and three in the third, to one in the first. Lest, however, this arrangement should be too formal, of the fourteen arches in the lowest series, that which contains the door is made larger than the rest, and is not in the middle, but the sixth from the West, leaving five on one side and eight on the other. Farther : this lowest arcade is terminated by broad flat pilasters, about half the width of its arches ; but the arcade above is continuous ; only the two extreme arches at the west end are made larger than all the rest, and instead of coming, as they should, into the space of the lower extreme arch, take in both it and its broad pilaster. Even this, however, was not out of order enough to satisfy the architect's eye ; for there were still two arches above to each single one below : so at the east end, where there are more arches, and the eye might be more easily cheated, what does he do but narrow the two extreme lower arches by half a braccio ; while he at the same time slightly enlarged the upper ones, so as to get only seventeen upper to nine lower, instead of eighteen to nine. The eye is thus thoroughly con- fused, and the whole building tlirown into one mass, by the curious variations in the adjustments of the superimposed shafts, not one of which is either exactly in nor positively out of its place ; and, to get this managed the more cunningly, there is from an inch to an inch and a half of gradual gain in the space of the four eastern arches, besides the confessed half braccio. Their measures, counting from the east, I found
as follows : —
Braccia. Palmi. Inches.
1st 3 0 1
2nd 3 0 2
3rd 3 3 2
4tli 3 3 3i
The upper arcade is managed on the same principle ; it looks at first as if there were three arches to each undei pair ; but there are, in reality, only thirty-eight (or thirty-seven, I
THE LAMP OF LIFE. 155
am not quite certain of this number) to the twenty- seven be- low ; and the columns get into all manner of relative posi- tions. Even their, the builder was not satisfied, but must needs carry the irregularity into the spring of the arches, and actually, while the general effect is of a symmetrical arcade, there is not one of the arches the same in height as another ; their tops undulate all along the wall like waves along a harbor quay, some nearly touching the string course above, and others falling from it as much as five or six inches.
XrV. Let us next examine the plan of the west front of St. Mark's at Venice, which, though in many respects imperfect, is in its proportions, and as a piece of rich and fantastic color, as lovely a dream as ever filled human imagination. It may, perhaps, however, interest the reader to hear one opposite opinion upon this subject, and after what has been urged in the preceding jpages respecting proportion in general, more espe- cially respecting the wrongness of balanced cathedral towers and other regular designs, together with my frequent references to the Doge's palace, and campanile of St. Mark's, as models of perfection, and my praise of the former especially as pro- jecting above its second arcade, the following extracts from the journal of Wood the architect, written on his arrival at Venice, may have a pleasing freshness in them, and may show that I have not been stating principles altogether trite or accepted.
" The strange looking church, and the great ugly campanile, could not be mistaken. The exterior of this church sm-jDrises you by its extreme ugliness, more than by anything else."
" The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than anything I have previously mentioned. Considered in detail, I can imagine no alteration to make it tolei able ; but if this lofty wall had been set back behind the two stories of Httle arches, it would havo been a very noble production."
After more observations on " a certain justness of propor- tion," and on the appearance of riches and power in the church, to which he ascribes a pleasing effect, he goes on : " Some per- sons are of opinion that irregularity is a necessary part of its
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excellence. I am decidedly of a contrary opinion, and am con^ vinced that a regular design of the same sort would be far su- perior. Let an oblong of good architecture, but not very showy, conduct to a fine cathedral, which should appear be- tween tioo lofty towers and have two obelisks in front, and on each side of this cathedral let other squares partially open into the first, and one of these extend down to a harbor or sea shore, and you would have a scene which might challenge any thing in existence."
Why Mr. Wood was unable to enjoy the color of St. Mark's, or perceive the majesty of the Ducal Palace, the reader wiU see after reading the two following extracts regarding the Caracci and Michael Angelo.
" The pictures here (Bologna) are to my taste far preferable to those of Venice, for if the Venetian school surpass in color- ing, and, perhaps, in composition, the Bolognese is decidedly superior in drawing and expression, and the Caraccis shine here like Gods."
" What is it that is so much admired in this artist (M. An- gelo) ? Some contend for a grandeur of composition in the lines and disposition of the figures ; this, I confess, I do not comprehend ; yet, while I acknowledge the beauty of certain forms and proportions in architecture, I cannot consistently deny that similar merits may exist in painting, though I am unfortunately unable to appreciate them."
I think these passages very valuable, as showing the effect of a contracted knowledge and false taste in painting upon an architect's understanding of his own art ; and especially with what curious notions, or lack of notions, about proportion, that art has been sometimes practised. For Mr. Wood is by no means unintelligent in his observations generally, and his criti- cisms on classical art are often most valuable. But those who love Titian better than the Caracci, and who see something to admire in Michael Angelo, will, perhaps, be willing to proceed with me to a charitable examination of St. Mark's. For, al- though the present course of European events affords us some chance of seeing the changes proposed by Mr. Wood carried into execution, we may still esteem ourselves fortunate in hav-
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ing first known how it was left "by the builders of the eleventh century.
XV. The entire front is composed of an upper and lowei series of arches, enclosing spaces of wall decorated with mosaic, and supported on ranges of shafts of which, in the lower series of arches, there is an upper range superimposed on a lower. Thus we have five vertical divisions of the fayade ; i.e. two tiers of shafts, and the arched wall they bear, below ; one tier of shafts, and the arched wall they bear, above. In order, how- ever, to bind the two main divisions together, the central lower arch (the main entrance) rises above the level of the gallery and balustrade which crown the lateral arches.
The proportioning of the columns and walls of the lower story is so lovely and so varied, that it would need pages of description before it could be fully understood ; but it may be generally stated thus : The height of the lower shafts, upper shafts, and wall, being severally expressed by a, b, and c, then a: c :: c : b {a being the highest) ; and the diameter of shaft b is generally to the diameter of shaft a as height b is to height a, or something less, allowing for the large plinth which dimin- ishes the apparent height of the upper shaft : and when this is their proportion of widtli, one shaft above is put above one below, with sometimes another upper shaft interposed : but in the extreme arches a single under shaft bears two upper, pro- portioned as truly as the boughs of a tree ; that is to say, the diameter of each upper = J of lower. There being thus the three terms of proportion gained in the lower story, the upper, while it is only divided into two main members, in order that the whole height may not be divided into an even number, has the third term added in its pinnacles. So far of the vertical division. The lateral is still more subtle. There are seven arches in the lower story ; and, calling the central arch a, and counting to the extremity, they diminish in the alternate order a, a, b, d. The upper story has five arches, and two added pinnacles ; and these diminish in regular order, the central being the largest, and the outermost the least. Hence, while one proportion ascends, another descends, like parts in music ; and yet the pyramidal form is secured for the whole,
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and, which was another great point of attention, none of th« shafts of the upper arches stand over those of the lower.
XVI. It might have been thought that, by this plan, enough variety had been secured, but the builder was not satisfied even thus : for — and this is the point bearing on the present part of our subject — always calling the central arch a, and the lateral ones h and c in succession, the northern h and c are consider- ably wider than the southern h and c, but the southern d is as much wider than the northern d, and lower beneath its cornice besides ; and, more than this, I hardly believe that one of the effectively symmetrical members of the fa9ade is actually sym- metrical with any other. I regret that I cannot state the actual measures. I gave up the taking them upon the sj)ot, owing to their excessive complexity, and the embarrassment caused by the yielding and subsidence of the arches.
Do not let it be supposed that I imagine the Byzantine workmen to have had these various principles in their minds as they built. I believe they built altogether from feeling, and that it was because the}^ did so, that there is this marvellous life, changefulness, and subtlety running through their every arrangement ; and that we reason upon the lovely building as we should upon some fair growth of the trees of the earth, that know not their own beauty.
XVn. Perhaps, however, a stranger instance than any I have yet given, of the daring variation of pretended symmetry, is found in the front of the Cathedral of Bayeux. It consists of five arches with steep pediments, the outermost filled, the three central with doors ; and they appear, at first, to diminish in regular proportion from the principal one in the centre. The two lateral doors are very curiously managed. The tympana of their arches are filled with bas-reliefs, in four tiers ; in the lowest tier there is in each a little temple or gate containing the principal figure (in that on the right, it is the gate of Hades with Lucifer). This little temple is carried, like a capital, by an isolated shaft which divides the whole arch at about f of its breadth, the larger portion outmost ; and in that larger por- tion is the inner entrance door. This exact correspondence, in the treatment of both gates, might lead us to expect a corre-
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spondence in dimension. Not at alL The small inner northern entrance measures, in Enghsh feet and inches, 4 ft. 7 in. from jamb to jamb, and the southern five feet exactly. Five inches in five feet is a considerable variation. The outer northern porch measures, from face shaft to face shaft, 13 ft. 11 in., and the southern, 14 ft. 6 in. ; giving a difference of 7 in. on 14^ ft There are also variations in the pediment decorations not less extraordinary.
XVm. I imagine I have given instances enough, though I could multiply them indefinitely, to prove that these variations are not mere blunders, nor carelessnesses, but the result of a fixed scorn, if not dishke, of accuracy in measurements ; and, in most cases, I believe, of a determined resolution to work out an effective symmetry by variations as subtle as those of Na- ture. To what . lengths this principle was sometimes carried, we shall see by the very singular management of the towers of Abbeville. I do not say it is right, still less that it is wrong, but it is a wonderful proof of the fearlessness of a lining archi- tecture ; for, say what we will of it, that Flamboyant of France, however morbid, was as vivid and intense in its animation as ever any phase of mortal mind ; and it would have lived till now, if it had not taken to telling lies. I have before noticed the general difficulty of managing even lateral division, when it is into two equal parts, unless there be some third reconcil- ing member. I shall give, hereafter, more examples of the modes in which this reconciliation is effected in towers with double lights : the Abbeville architect put his sword to the knot perhaps rather too sharply. Vexed by the want of unity between his two windows he literally laid their heads together, and so distorted their ogee curves, as to leave only one of the trefoiled panels above, on the inner side, and three on the outer side of each arch. The arrangement is given in Plate Xn. fig. 3. Associated with the various undulation of flam- boyant curves below, it is in the real tower hardly observed, while it binds it into one mass in general effect. Granting it, however, to be ugly and wrong, I like sins of the kind, for the Bake of the courage it requires to commit them. In plate 11. (part of a small chapel attached to the West front of the
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Cathedral of St. Lo), the reader will see an instance, from the same architecture, of a violation of its own principles, for the sake of a peculiar meaning. If there be any one feature which the flamboyant architect loved to decorate richly, it was the niche — it was what the capital is to the Corinthian order ; yet in the case before us there is an ugly beehive put in the place of the principal niche of the arch. I am not sure if I am right in my interpretation of its meaning, but I have Httle doubt that two figures below, now broken away, once represented an Annunciation ; and on another part of the same cathedral, I find the descent of the Spirit, encompassed by rays of light, represented very nearly in the form of the niche in question ; which appears, therefore, to be intended for a representation of this effulgence, while at the same time it was made a canopy for the delicate figures below. Whether this was its meaning or not, it is remarkable as a daring departure from the com- mon habits of the time.
XIX. Far more splendid is a license taken with the niche decoration of the portal of St. Maclou at Kouen. The sub- ject of the tympanum bas-rehef is the Last Judgment, and the sculpture of the inferno side is carried out with a degree of power whose fearful grotesqueness I can only describe as a minghng of the minds of Orcagna and Hogarth. The de- mons are perhaps even more awful than Orcagna's ; and, in some of the expressions of debased humanity in its utmost despair, the EngHsh painter is at least equalled. Not less wdld is the imagination which gives fury and fear even to the placing of the figures. An e\il angel, poised on the wing, drives the condemned troops from before the Judgment seat ; with his left hand he drags behind him a cloud, which is spreading like a winding-sheet over them all ; but they are urged by him so furiously, that they are driven not merely to the extreme limit of that scene, which the sculptor confined elsewhere within the tympanum, but out of the tympanum and into the niches of the arch ; while the flames that follow them, bent by the blast, as it seems, of the angel's wings, rush into the niches also, and burst up through their tracery, the three lowermost niches being represented as aU on fire, while,
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i S
a o
^ O
C o
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instead of tlieir usual vaulted and ribbed ceiling, tbere is a demon in the roof of each, with his wings folded over it, grin- mng down out of the black shadow.
XX. I have, however, given enough instances of vitahty shown in mere daring, whether wise, as surely in this last in- stance, or inexpedient ; but, as a single example of the Vital- ity of Assimilation, the faculty which turns to its purposes aU. material that is submitted to it, I would refer the reader to the extraordinary columns of the drcade on the south side of the Cathedral of Ferrara. A single arch of it is given in Plate Xin. on the right. Four such columns forming a group, there are interposed two pau's of columns, as seen on the left of the same plate ; and then come another four arches. It is a long arcade of, I suppose, not less than fort}- arches, perhaps of many more ; and in the grace and simphcity of its stilted By- zantine curves I hardly know its equal. Its like, in fancy of column, I certainly do not know ; there being hardly two cor- respondent, and the architect having been ready, as it seems, to adopt ideas and resemblances from any sources whatsoever. The vegetation growing up the two columns is fine, though bizarre ; the distorted pillars beside it suggest images of less agreeable character ; the serpentine aiTangements founded on the usual Byzantine double knot are generally graceful ; but I was puzzled to account for the excessively ugly type of the pillar, fig. 3, one of a group of four. It so happened, fortu- nately for me, that there had been a fair in Ferrara ; and, when I had finished my sketch of the pillar, I had to get out of the way of some merchants of miscellaneous wares, who were removing their stall. It had been shaded by an awning supported by poles, which, in order that the covering might be raised or lowered according to the height of the sun, were composed of two separate pieces, fitted to each other by a rack, in which I beheld the prototype of my ugly pillar. It will not be thought, after what I have above said of the inex- pedience of imitating anything but natural form, that I ad- vance this architect's practice as altogether exemplary ; yet the humility is instructive, which condescended to such sources for motives of thought, the boldness, which could depart so
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far from all established types of form, and the life and feel ing, which out of an assemblage of such quaint and uncouth materials, could produce an harmonious piece of ecclesiastical architecture.
XXI. I have dwelt, however, perhaps, too long upon that form of vitality which is known almost as much by its errors as by its atonements for them. We must briefly note the operation of it, which is always right, and always necessary, upon those lesser details, w^here it can neither be superseded by precedents, nor repressed by proprieties.
I said, early in this essay, that hand-work might always be known from machine-work ; observing, however, at the same time, that it was possible for men to turn themselves into ma- chines, and to reduce their labor to the machine level ; but so long as men work as men, putting their heart into what they do, and doing their best, it matters not how bad workmen they may be, there will be that in the handling which is above all price : it will be plainly seen that some places have been de- Hghted in more than others — that there has been a pause, and a care about them ; and then there Avill come careless bits, and fast bits ; and here the chisel will have struck hard, and there lightly, and anon timidly ; and if the man's mind as w^ell as his heart went with his work, all this will be in the right places, and each part will set off the other ; and the effect of the whole, as compared with the same design cut by a machine or a Hfeless hand, will be like that of poetry well read and deeply felt to that of the same verses jangled by rote. There are many to whom the difference is impei'cej^tible ; but to those who love poetry it is everything — they had rather not hear it at all, than hear it ill read ; and to those who love Ai-- chitecture, the life and accent of the hand are everything. They had rather not have ornament at all, than see it ill cut — deadly cut, that is. I cannot too often repeat, it is not coarse cutting, it is not blunt cutting, that is necessarily bad ; but it is cold cutting — the look of equal trouble everywhere — the smooth, diffused tranquillity of heartless pains — the regularity of a plough in a level field. The chill is more likely, indeed, to show itseK in finished work than in any other — men cool
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and tii'e as they complete : and if completeness is thought to be vested in polish, and to be attainable by help of sand paper, we may as well give the work to the engine-lathe at once. But right finish is simply the full rendering of the intended im- pression ; and high finish is the rendering of a well intended and vivid impression ; and it is oftener got by rough than fine handhng. I am not sure whether it is frequently enough ob- seiTed that sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone ; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. The sculptor must paint with his chisel : half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into the form : they are touches of light and shadow ; and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a hne of light, or a spot of darkness. Li a coarse way, this kind of execution is very marked in old French woodwork; the irises of the eyes of its chimeric monsters being cut boldly into holes, which, variously placed, and always dark, give all kinds of strange and startling expressions, averted and askance, to the fantastic countenances. Perhaps the highest examples of this kind of sculpture-painting are the works of Mino da Fiesole ; then* best effects being reached by strange angular, and seemingly rude, touches of the chisel. The lips of one of the children on the tombs in the church of the Badia, appear only half finished when they are seen close ; yet the expression is farther carried and more ineffable, than in any piece of mar- ble I have ever seen, especially considering its delicacy, and the softness of the child-features. In a sterner kind, that of the statues in the sacristy of St. Lorenzo equals it, and there again by incompletion. I know no example of work in which the forms are absolutely true and complete where such a result is attained ; in Greek sculptures is not even attempted.
XXn. It is evident that, for architectural apphances, such masculine handhng, hkely as it must be to retain its effective- ness when higher finish would be injured by time, must al- ways be the most expedient ; and as it is impossible, eveu were it desirable that the highest finish should be given to the quantity of work which covers a large building, it will be
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understood how precious the intelligence must become, which renders incompletion itself a means of additional expression ; and how great must be the difference, when the touches are rude and few, between those of a careless and those of a re- gardful mind. It is not easy to retain anything of their char- acter in a copy ; yet the reader will find one or two illustra- tive points in the examples, given in Plate XIV., from the bas-reliefs of the north of Rouen Cathedral There are three square pedestals under the three main niches on each side of it, and one in the centre ; each of these being on two sides decorated with five qua tref oiled panels. There are thus sev- enty quatrefoils in the lower ornament of the gate alone, with- out counting those of the outer course round it,, and of the pedestals outside : each quatrefoil is filled with a bas-relief, the whole reaching to something above a man's height. A modern' architect would, of course, have made all the five quatrefoils of each pedestal-side equal : not so the Mediaeval. The general form being apparently a quatrefoil composed of semicircles on the sides of a square, it will be found on ex- amination that none of the arcs are semicircles, and none of the basic figures squares. The latter are rhomboids, having their acute or obtuse angles uppermost according to their larger or smaller size ; and the arcs upon their sides shde into such places as they can get in the angles of the enclosing parallelogram, leaving intervals, at each of the four angles, of various shapes, which are filled each by an animal. The size of the whole panel being thus varied, the two lowest of the five are tall, the next two short, and the uppermost a little higher than the lowest ; while in the course of bas-rehefs which sur- rounds the gate, calling either of the two lowest (which are equal), a, and either of the next two 6, and the fifth and sixth c and d, then d (the largest) : c :: c : a :: « : 6. It is wonderful how much of the grace of the whole depends on these variations. XXni. Each of the angles, it was said, is filled by an ani- mal. There are thus 70 x 4=280 animals, all different, in the mere fiUings of the intervals of the bas-reliefs. Tlu-ee of these intervals, with their beastb, actual size, the curves being traced upon the stone, I have given in Plate XIV.
PLATE XIV.— (Page 165-Vol. V.) Sculptures from the Cathedral of Rouen.
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I say nothing of their general design, or of the lines of the wings and scales, which are perhaps, unless in those of the central dragon, not much above the usual commonplaces of good ornamental work ; but there is an evidence in the features of thoughtfulness and fancy which is not common, at least now-a-days. The upper creature on the left is biting something, the form of which is hardly traceable in the de- faced stone — but biting he is ; and the reader cannot but re- cognise in the peculiarly reverted eye the expression which is never seen, as I think, but in the eye of a dog gnawing some- thing in jest, and preparing to start away with it : the mean- ing of the glance, so far as it can be marked by the mere in- cision of the chisel, will be felt by comparing it with the eye of the couchant figure on the right, in its gloomy and angry brooding. The plan of this head, and the nod of the cap over its brow, are fine ; but there is a Httle touch above the hand especially well meant : the fellow is vexed and puzzled in his maUce ; and his hand is pressed hard on his cheek bone, and the flesh of the cheek is wrinkled under the eye by the pressure. The whole, indeed, looks wretchedly coarse, when it is seen on a scale in which it is naturally compared with deHcate figure etchings ; but considering it as a mere filling of an interstice on the outside of a cathedral gate, and as one of more than three hundred (for in my estimate I did not include the outer pedestals), it proves very noble vitality in the art of the time.
XXIV. I beHeve the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this : Was it done with enjoyment — was the carver happy while he was about it ? It may be the hard- est work possible, and the harder because so much pleasure was taken in it ; but it must have been happy too, or it will not be living. How much of the stone mason's toil this con- dition would exclude I hardly venture to consider, but the condition is absolute. There is a Gothic church lately built near Rouen, vile enough, indeed, in its general composition, but excessively rich in detail ; many of the details are designed with taste, and all evidently by a man who has studied old work closely. But it is all as dead as leaves in December ;
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there is not one tender touch, not one warm stroke, on the whole fa9ade. The men who did it hated it, and were thank- ful when it was done. And so long as they do so they are merely loading your walls with shapes of clay : the garlands of everlastings in Pere la Chaise are more cheerful ornaments. You cannot get the feehng by paying for it — money will not buy life. I am not sure even that you can get it by watching or waiting for it. It is true that here and there a workman may be found who has it in him, but he does not rest con- tented in the inferior work — he struggles forward into an Academician ; and from the mass of available handicraftsmen the power is gone — how recoverable I know not : this only I know, that all expense devoted to sculptural ornament, in the present condition of that power, comes literally under the head of Sacrifice for the sacrifice's sake, or worse. I believe the only manner of rich ornament that is open to us is the geometrical color-mosaic, and that much might result from our strenuously taking up this mode of design. But, at all events, one thing we have in our power— the doing without machine ornament and cast-iron work. All the stamped metals, and artificial stones, and imitation woods and bronzes, over the invention of which we hear daily exultation — all the short, and cheap, and easy ways of doing that whose difficulty is its honor — are just so many new obstacles in oui' already encumbered road. They will not make one of us happier or wiser — they will extend neither the pride of judgment nor the privilege of enjoyment. They will only make us shallower in our under- standings, colder in our hearts, and feebler in our wits. And most justly. For we are not sent into this world to do any thing into which we cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is to be done strenuously ; other work to do for our delight, and that is to be done heart- ily : neither is to be done by halves or shifts, but with a will ; and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all. Perhaps all that we have to do is meant for nothing more than an exercise of the heart and of the will, and is useless in itself ; but, at all events, the little use it has may well be spared if it i« not worth putting our hands and our strength to. It does
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flot become our immortality to take an ease inconsistent with its authority, nor to suffer any instruments with which it can dispense, to come between it and the things it rules : and he who would form the creations of his own mind by any other instrument than his own hand, would, also, if he might, give grinding organs to Heaven's angels, to make their music easier. There is dreaming enough, and eartliiness enough, and sensu- ahty enough in human existence without our turning the few glowing moments of it into mechanism ; and since our hfe must at the best be but a vapor that appears for a httle time and then vanishes away, let it at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, not as the thick darkness that broods over the blast of the Furnace, and rolling of the Wheel
CHAPTEE YI
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I. Among the hours of his life to which the writer looks back with peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulness of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps ; where there is a sense of a great power begin- ning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the lise of the long low lines of piny hills ; the €rst utterance of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained ; and the far-reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters from some far-off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn, No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier
16S TEE LAMP OF MEMORT,
fret the soft Jura pastures ; no splintered heaps of ruin brealj the fair ranks of her forests ; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and changeful ways among her rocks. Pa- tiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well-known beds ; and under the dark quietness of the undis- turbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such company oi joyful flowers as I know not the hke of among all the bless- ings of the earth. It was Spring time, too ; and all were com- ing forth in clusters crowded for very love ; there was room enough for all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulse : and there was the oxalis, troop by troop like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy on the edges — ivy as light and lovely as the vine ; and ever and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in sunny places ; and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, and mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a blossom or two, all showered amidst the golden softness of deep, warm, amber-colored moss. I came out presently on the edge of the ravine ; the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly from beneath, mixed with the singing of the tlirushes among the pine boughs ; and, on the opposite side of the valle^', walled all along as it was by grey cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and with the shadows of the pines flickering upon his plumage from above ; but with a fall of a hundred fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of the gi'een river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam globes moving with him as he flew. It would be diffi- cult to conceive a scene less dependent upon any other interest than that of its own secluded and serious beauty ; but the writer well remembers the sudden blankness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavored, in order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forect of the New Con-
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tinent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its music '^ ; the hills became oppressively desolate ; a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened forest showed how much of their former power had been dependent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory of the imperishable, or con- tinually renewed, creation is reflected from things more pre- cious in their memories than it, in its renewing. Those ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had been dyed by the deep colors of human endurance, valor, and virtue ; and the crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell east- ward over the iron wall of Joux and the four-square keep of Granson.
n. It is as the centralisation and protectress of this sacred influence, that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears ! how many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another ! The ambition of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world : there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture ; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality ; it is well to have, not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of Homer is sur- rounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not so that of Pericles : and the day is coming when we shall con- fess, that we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture than even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. And if indeed there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy in the thought of being re- membered hereafter, which can give strength to present exer- tion, or patience to present endurance, there are two duties respecting national architecture whose importance it is impos- sible to overrate ; the first, to render the architecture of the
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day historical ; and, the second, to preserve, as the most pre- cious of inheritances, that of past ages.
m. It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may truly be said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture ; for it is in becoming memorial or monumental that a true perfec- tion is attained by civil and domestic buildings ; and this partly as they are, with such a view, built in a more stable manner, and partly as their decorations are consequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning.
As regards domestic buildings, there must always be a cer- tain limitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in the hearts, of men ; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is a sanctity in a good man's house wdiich cannot be renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruins : and I beHeve that good men would generally feel this ; and that having spent their lives happily and honorably, they would be grieved at the close of them to think that the place of their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost to sympa- thise in all their honor, their gladness, or their suffering, — that this, with all the record it bare of them, and all of material things that they had loved and ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves upon — was to be swept away, as soon as there was room made for them in the grave ; that no respect was to be shown to it, no affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children ; that though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm monument in the heart and house to them ; that all that they ever treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and comforted them were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear this ; and that, far more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear doing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived like men indeed, their houses would be temples — temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live ; and there must be a strange dis- solution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all tliat homes have given and parents taught, a strange conscious- ness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers' honor, or that
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our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only. And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up in mildewed forwardness out of the kneaded fields about our capital — upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered wood and imitated stone — upon those gloomy rows of formalised minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as solitary as similar — not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sor- row for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply can- kered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground ; that those comfortless and unhonored dwellings are the signs of a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent ; that they mark the time when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual scorn ; when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and live in the hope of for- getting the years that they have lived ; when the comfort, the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt ; and the crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population dif- fer only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less hapjDy choice of their spot of earth ; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change.
IV. This is no slight, no consequenceless evil : it is omi- nous, infectious, and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love their hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonored both, and that they have never acknowledged the true universality of that Christian worship which vvas indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one ; He has an altar in every man's dwelling ; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with what aspect of durabilit;y
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and of completeness, the domestic buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of them de- pends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build our dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligent completion, and with a view to their duration at least for such a period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might be supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction of local interests. This at the least ; but it would be better if, in every possible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensurate rather with their condition at the commencement, than their attain- ments at the termination, of their worldly career ; and built them to stand as long as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand ; recording to their children what they have been, and from what, if so it had been permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtful- ness the small habitation as well as the large, and which in- vests with the dignity of contented manhood the naiTOwnesfe of worldly circumstance.
V. I look to this spirit of honorable, proud, peaceful self- possession, this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one of the chief sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as the very primal source of the great architecture of old Italy and France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, not on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite decoration of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. The most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at the head of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two stories above, three windows in the first, and two in the second. Many of the most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth century architecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind the market-place of Vicenza ; it bears date 1481, and the motto,
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//. n^est. rose. sans, epine ; it has also only a ground floor and two stories, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower-work, and with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiie. The idea that a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be historical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life.
VI. I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely ; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, within and without ; with what degree of likeness to each other in style and manner, I will say presently, under another head ; but, at all events, with such differences as might suit and express each man's character and occupation, and jiartly his history. This right over the house, I conceive, be- longs to its first builder, and is to be respected by his children •, and it would be well that blank stones should be left in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its experi- ence, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and developing, into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom which was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's permission to build and possess a quiet resting- place, in such sweet words as may well close our speaking of these things. I have taken them from the front of a cottage lately built among the green pastures which descend from the village of Grindelwald to the lower glacier : —
*' Mit herzlichem Vertrauen Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi Dieses Haus bauen lassen. Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren Vor allem UngKick und Gefaliren, Und es in Segen lassen stehn Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit Nacb dem himmlischen Paradiese, Wo alle Frommen wohnen, Da wird Gott sie belohnen Mit der Friedenskrone Zu alle Ewigkeit."
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VII. In public buildings the historical purpose should be still more definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture, — I use the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to classical, — that it admits of a rich- ness of record altogether unlimited. Its minute and multi- tudinous sculptural decorations afford means of expressing; either symbolically or literally, all that need be known of na- tional feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed, be usually required than can take so elevated a character ; and much, even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some national bearing or symbol. It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere surface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which the spirit of Gothic architecture admits ; much more in important features — capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of course in all confessed bas-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has in modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean in- deed, but steadfast : that of unmanageable costume ; never- theless, by a sufficiently bold imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may be vanquished ; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpture in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to become a grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, for example, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice. History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning. The large one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to the symbolisation of Abstract Justice ; above it is a sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its treat- ment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject had been entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted the line of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength ; and therefore in the midst of them, entirely without
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relation to them, and indeed actually between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure of Jus- tice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Ai-istotle " che die legge," and one or two other subjects now unintelligible from deca}^ The capitals next in order represent the virtues and vices in succession, as preservative or destructive of national peace and power, concluding with Faith, with the inscription "Fides optima in Deo est." A figure is seen on the opposite side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After these, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds (Plate V.), and then come a series representing, first the various fruits, then tlie national costumes, and then the animals of the various countries subject to Venetian rule.
VTTT. Now, not to speak of any more important public building, let us imagine our own India House adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical sculpture : massively built in the first place ; then chased with bas-reliefs of our Indian bat- tles, and fretted with carvings of Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones ; and the more important members of its deco- ration composed of groups of Indian life and landscape, and prominently expressing the phantasms of Hindoo worship in their subjection to the Cross. Would not one such work be better than a thousand histories ? If, however, we have not the invention necessary for such efforts, or if, which is proba- bly one of the most noble excuses we can offer for our defi- ciency in such matters, we have less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble, than the Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any want of care in the points which in- sure the building's endurance. And as this question is one of great interest in its relations to the choice of various modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it at some length.
IX. The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can be supposed to extend beyond their own genera- tion. They may look to posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labor for its praise : they may trust to
l70 tee lamp of memory,
its recognition of unacknowledged merit, and demand its ju& tice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of practising present econ- omy for the sake of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly recognised motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties ; nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our intended and deliberate usefulness include not only the companions, but the successors, of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our life ; it is a great entail. It belongs as much ta those who are to come after us, and whose names are abeady written in the book of creation, as to us ; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits w^hich it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is one of the appointed conditions of the labor of men that, in proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the har- vest, is the fulness of the fruit ; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of what we have labored for, the more wide and rich wdll be the measure of our success. Men can- not benefit those that are with them as they can benefit those who come after them ; and of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave.
X. Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect, for futurity. Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker ; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, when we build, let
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us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present de- light, nor for present use alone ; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, " See ! this our fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that dee^) sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of ap- proval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength whicli, through the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeli- ness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations ; it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and color, and preciousness of architecture ; and it is not until a build- ing has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shad- ows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these possess of language and of life.
XI. For that period, then, we must build ; not, indeed, re- fusing to ourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesi- tating to follow such portions of character as m?,y depend upon delicacy of execution to the highest perfection of which they are capable, even although we may know that in the course of years such details must perish ; but taking care that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, and that the building shall not depend for its impressiveness upon anything that is perishable. This w^ould, indeed, be the law of good composition under any circumstances, the arrange- 12
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ment of the larger masses being always a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the smaller ; but in archi- tecture there is much in that very treatment which is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the probable effects of time : and (which is still more to be considered) there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else can replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of age only, there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so great as to have become not unfre- quently the subject of especial choice among certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the charac- ter usually and loosely expressed by the term " jDicturesque." It is of some importance to our present purpose to determine the true meaning of this expression, as it is now generally used ; for there is a principle to be developed from that use which, while it has occultly been the ground of much that is true and just in our judgment of art, has never been so far understood as to become definitely serviceable. Probably no word in the language (exclusive of theological expres- sions), has been the subject of so frequent or so prolonged dispute ; yet none remained more vague in their acceptance, and it seems to me to be a matter of no small interest to in- vestigate the essence of that idea which all feel, and (to ap- pearance) with respect to similar things, and yet which every attempt to define has, as I believe, ended either in mere enu- meration of the effects and objects to which the term has been attached, or else in attempts at abstraction more palpably nugatory than any which have disgraced metaphysical investi- gation on other subjects. A recent critic on Art, for instance, has gravely advanced the theory that the essence of the pictu- resque consists in the expression of "universal decay." It would be curious to see the result of an attempt to illustrate this idea of the picturesque, in a painting of dead flowers and decayed fruit, and equally curious to trace the steps of any reasoning which, on such a theory, should account for the picturesquecess of an ass colt as oi)posed to a horse foal. But there is much excuse for even the most utter failure in rea-
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soilings of this kind, since the subject is, indeed, one of the most obscure of all that may legitimately be submitted to human reason ; and the idea is itself so varied in the minds of different men, according to their subjects of study, that no definition can be expected to embrace more than a certain number of its infinitely multiplied forms.
XII. That peculiar character, however, which separates the picturesque from the characters of subject belonging to the higher walks of art (and this is all that is necessary for our present purpose to define), may be shortly and decisively ex- pressed. Picturesqueness, in this sense, is Faradtical Sublim' ity. Of course all sublimity, as well as all beauty, is, in the simple etymological sense, picturesque, that is to say, fit to become the subject of a picture ; and all sublimity is, even in the peculiar sense which I am endeavoring to develope, pict- uresque, as opposed to beauty ; that is to say, there is more picturesqueness in the subject of Michael Angelo than of Pe- rugino, in proportion to the prevalence of the sublime element over the beautiful. But that character, of which the extreme pursuit is generally admitted to be degrading to art, is para- sitical sublimity ; i.e., a sublimity dependent on the accidents, or on the least essential characters, of the objects to which it belongs ; and the picturesque is developed distinctively exactly in proportion to the distance from the centre of thought of those points of character in which the sublimity is found. Two ideas, therefore, are essential to picturesqueness, — the first, that of sublimity (for pure beauty is not picturesque at all, and be- comes so only as the sublime element mixes with it), and the second, the subordinate or parasitical position of that sublim- ity. Of course, therefore, whatever characters of line or shade 'or expression are productive of sublimity, will become pro- ductive of picturesqueness ; what these characters are I shall endeavor hereafter to show at length ; but, among those which are generally acknowledged, I may name angular and broken lines, vigorous oppositions of light and shadow, and grave, ■deep, or boldly contrasted color ; and all these are in a still higher degree effective, when, by resemblance or association, they remind us of objects on w^hich a true and essential sub-
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limity exists, as of rocks or mountains, or stormy clouds oi waves. Now if these characters, or any others of a higher and more abstract sublimity, be found in the very heart and sub- stance of what we contemplate, as the sublimity of Michael Angelo depends on the expression of mental character in his figures far more than even on the noble lines of their arrange- ment, the art which represents such characters cannot be properly called picturesque : but, if they be found in the ac- cidental or external qualities, the distinctive picturesque will be the result.
Xin. Thus, in the treatment of the features of the human face by Francia or Angelico, the shadows are employed only to make the contours of the features thoroughly felt ; and to those features themselves the mind of the observer is exclu- sively directed (that is to say, to the essential characters of the thing represented). All power and all sublimity rest on these ; the shadows are used only for the sake of the features. On the contrary, by Kembrandt, Salvator, or Caravaggio, the features are used for the sake of the shadows ; and the atten- tion is directed, and the power of the painter addressed to characters of accidental light and shade cast across or around those features. In the case of Rembrandt there is often an essential sublimity in invention and expression besides, and always a high degree of it in the light and shade itself ; but it is for the most part parasitical or engrafted sublimity as regards the subject of the painting, and, just so far, pictu- resque.
Xiy. Again, in the management of the sculptures of the Parthenon, shadow is frequently employed as a dark field on which the forms are drawn. This is visibly the case in the metopes, and must have been nearly as much so in the ^^edi- ment. But the use of that shadow is entirely to show the confines of the figures ; and it is to their lines, and not to the shapes of the shadows behind them, that the art and the eye are addressed. The figures themselves are conceived as much as possible in full light, aided by bright reflections ; they are drawn exactly as, on vases, white figures on a dark ground : and the sculptors have dispensed with, or even struggled to
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avoid, all shadows which were not absolutely necessary to the explaining of the form. On the contrary, in Gothic sculpture, the shadow becomes itself a subject of thought. It is con- sidered as a dark color, to be arranged in certain agreeable masses ; the figures are very frequently made even subordinate to the placing of its divisions : and their costume is enriched at the expense of the forms underneath, in order to increase the complexity and variety of the points of shade. There are thus, both in sculpture and painting, two, in some sort, oppo- site schools, of which the one follows for its subject the essen- tial forms of things, and the other the accidental lights and shades upon them. There are various degrees of their con- trariet}" : middle steps, as in the works of Correggio, and all degrees of nobility and of degradation in the several manners ; but the one is always recognised as the pure, and the othei as the picturesque school. Portions of picturesque treatment will be found in Greek work, and of pure and unpicturesque in Gothic ; and in both there are countless instances, as pre- eminently in the works of Michael Angelo, in which shadows become valuable as media of expression, and therefore take rank among essential characteristics. Into these multitudi- nous distinctions and exceptions I cannot now enter, desiring only to prove the broad applicability of the general definition. XV. Again, the distinction will be found to exist, not only between forms and shades as subjects of choice, but between essential and inessential forms. One of the chief distinctions between the dramatic and pictiu*esque schools of sculpture is found in the treatment of the hair. By the artists of the time of Pericles it was considered as an excrescence,"' indicated by few and rude lines, and subordinated in every particular to the principality of the features and person. How completely this was an artistical, not a national idea, it is unnecessary to prove. We need but remember the employment of the Lace- daemonians, reported by the Persian spy on the evening be- fore the battle of Thermopylae, or glance at any Homeiic description of ideal form, to see how purely sculpturesque was the law which reduced the markings of the hair, lest, under the necessary disadvantages of material, they should interfere
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with the distinctness of the personal forms. On the contrary, in later sculpture, the hair receives almost the principal care of the workman ; and while the features and limbs are clum- sily and bluntly executed, the hair is curled and twisted, cut into bold and shadowy projections, and arranged in masses elaborately ornamental : there is true sublimity in the lines and the chiaroscuro of these masses, but it is, as regards the creature represented, parasitical, and therefore picturesque. In the same sense we may understand the application of the term to modern animal painting, distinguished as it has been by peculiar attention to the colors, lustre, and texture of skin ; nor is it in art alone that the definition will hold. In animals themselves, when their sublimity depends upon their muscular forms or motions, or necessary and principal attri- butes, as perhaps more than all others in the horse, we do not call them picturesque, but consider them as peculiarly fit to be associated with pure historical subject. Exactly in proportion as their character of sublimity passes into excres- cences ; — into mane and beard as in the lion, into horns as in the stag, into shaggy hide as in the instance above given of the ass colt, into variegation as in the zebra, or into plumage, — they become picturesque, and are so in art exactly in pro- portion to the prominence of these - excrescential characters It may often be most expedient that they should be promi- nent ; often there is in them the highest degree of majesty, as in those of the leopard and boar ; and in the hands of men Hke Tintoret and Eubens, such attributes become means of deepening the very highest and most ideal impressions. But the picturesque direction of their thoughts is always dis- tinctly recognizable, as clinging to the surface, to the less essential character, and as developing out of this a sublimity different from that of the creature itself ; a sublimity which is, in a sort, common to all the objects of creation, and the same in its constituent elements, whether it be sought in the clefts and folds of shaggy hair, or in the chasms and rents of rocks, or in the hanging of thickets or hill sides, or in the alternations of gaiety and gloom in the variegation of th« shell, the plume, or the cloud.
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XVI. Now, to return to our imraecliate subject, it so hap- pens that, in architecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is most commonly inconsistent with the preservation of original character, and the picturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist in decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in the mere sublimity of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those circumstances of color and form which are universally beloved by the eye of man. So far as this is done, to the ex- tinction of the true characters of the architecture, it is pict- uresque, and the artist who looks to the stem of the ivy in- stead of the shaft of the pillar, is carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice of the hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous sublimity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it than that of any other object whatsoever, that it is an expo nent of age, of that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of a building consists ; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory, having power and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensible beauty, may be consid- ered as taking rank among pure and essential characters ; so essential to my mind, that I think a building cannot be con- sidered as in its prime until four or five centuries have passed over it ; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its details should have reference to their appearance after that period, so that none should be admitted which would suffer material injury either by the weather-staining, or the me- chanical degradation which the lapse of such a period would necessitate.
XVII. It is not my purpose to enter into any of the ques- tions which the application of this principle involves. They are of too great interest and complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits, but this is broadly to be no- ticed, that those styles of architecture which are picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose decoration depends on the aiTangement of
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points of shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly gain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away ; hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always be adopted when the mate- rials to be employed are liable to degradation, as brick, sand- stone, or soft limestone ; and styles in any degree dependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be j)ractised al- together in hard and undecomposing materials, granite ser- pentine, or crystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature of the accessible materials influenced the forma- tion of both styles ; and it should still more authoritatively determine our choice of either.
XVIII. It does not belong to my present plan to consider at length the second head of duty of which I have above spoken ; the preservation of the architecture we possess : but a few words may be forgiven, as especially necessary in mod- ern times. Neither by the public, nor by those who have the care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word resto7^ation understood. It means the most total destruction which a building can suffer : a destruction out of w^hich no remnants can be gathered; a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed. Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter ; it is impossible, as impos- sible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, never can be recalled. Another spirit may be given by another time, and it is then a new building ; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up, and commanded to direct other hands, asnd other thoughts. And as for direct and simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying can there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down ? The whole finish of the work was in the half inch that is gone ; if you attempt to restore that finish, you do it conjecturally ; if you copy what is left, granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or watchfuhiess, or cost can secure it ?), how is the new work better thaL %e old ? There was yet in the old
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some life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had been, and of what it had lost ; some sweetness in the gentle linea which rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute hardness of the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate 14, as an instance of hving work, and suppose the markings of the scales and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall ever restore them ? The first step to restoration (I have seen it, and that again and again, seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa d' Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux), is to dash the old work to pieces ; the second is usually to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can escape de- tection, but in all cases, however careful, and however labored, an imitation still, a cold model of such parts as can be modelled, with conjectural supplements ; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained or even attempted. XIX. Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see nor care ; but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a niass of clay : more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration ! Granted. Look the neces- sity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for destruction. Accept it as such, pull the build- ing down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will ; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. And look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may prevent it. The principle of modem times (a principle which I believe, at least in France, to be systematically acted on by the masons, in order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled down by the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some
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vagrants,) is to neglect buildings first, and restore them after* wards. Take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A few sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care ; guard it as best you may, and at any cost from every influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would jewels of a crown ; set watches about it as if at the gates of a besieged city ; bind it together with iron where it loosens ; stay it with timber where it de- clines ; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid ; better a crutch than a lost limb ; and do this tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must come at last ; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonoriug and false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory. XX. Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak ; my words will not reach those who commit them, and jet, be it heard or not, I must not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past times or not. We have no rigid whatever to touch theiii. They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the genera- tions of mankind who are to follow us. TJie dead have still their right in them : that which they labored for, the praise of achievement or the expression of religious feeling, or whatso- ever else it might be which in those buildings the}' intended to be permanent, we have no right to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to throw down ; but what other men gave their strength, and wealth, and life to accom- plish, their right over does not pass away with their death ; still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in us only. It belongs to all their successors. It may here- after be a subject of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to mill- ions, that we have consulted our present convenience by cast- ing down such buildings as we choose to dispense with. That sorrow, that loss we have no right to inflict. Did the cathe- dral of Avranches belong to the mob who destroyed it, any
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more than it did to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over its foundation ? Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who do violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always ; it matters not whether enraged, or in deliberate folly ; whether countless, or sitting in committees ; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair building is necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so until central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middle- sex ; nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its de- struction. If ever valid, certainly not now when the place both of the past and future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn from us ; thousands who once in their necessarily prolonged travel were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky and slumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life ; and along the iron veina that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertions, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities ; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the city gates. The only influence which can in any wise there take the place of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancient Architecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the formal square, or of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened quay. The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd ; but remember that there will surely be some within the cir- cuit of the disquieted walls who would ask for some other spots than these wherein to walk ; for some other forms to meet their sight familiarly : like him who sat so often where the sun struck from the west, to watch the lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the dark streets of Verona.
iSS THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCS.
CHAPTER Vn.
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.
I. It has been my endeavor to show in the preceding pagei how every form of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the PoHty, Life, History, and Rehgious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing this, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite place among those which direct that embodiment ; the last place, not only as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as belonging to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest ; that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stabil- ity. Life its happiness, Faith its acceptance. Creation its con- tinuance, — Obedience.
Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satis- faction which I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first appeared to bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that the conditions of material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty ; most treach- erous, indeed, of all phantoms ; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the uni- verse. There can never be. The stars have it not ; the earth has it not ; the sea has it not ; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest jDunishment.
In one of the noblest poems'^ for its imagery and its music belonging to the recent school of our literature, the writer lias sought in the aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, having once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. But with what strange fallacy of interpretation ! since in one noble line of his invo- cation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and ac« knowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less se« vere because eternal? How could he otherwise? since il
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there be any one principle more widely tlian another con- fessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another im- printed on every atom, of the visible creation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law.
n. The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty. Then why use the single and misunder- stood word ? If by liberty you mean chastisement of the pas- sions, discipline of the intellect, subjection of the will ; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame of committing a wrong ; if you mean respect for all who are in authority, and consid- eration for all who are in dependence ; veneration for the good, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak ; if you mean watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and perseverance in all toils ; if you mean, in a word, that Service which is defined in the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom, why do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean license, and the reckless mean change ; by which the rogue means rapine, and the fool equality, by which the proud mean anarchy, and the malignant mean violence ? Call it by any name rather than this, but its best and truest is. Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else its would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect ; and thus, while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their Ke- straint. Compare a river that has burst its banks with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered over the face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks and orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself an evil, but only because, when too great, it over- powers the nature of the thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which that nature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists the fairness of creation is be- tween the laws of life and being in the things governed and the laws of general sway to which they are subjected ; and the suspension or infringement of either kind of law, or, literally
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disorder, is equivalent • to, and synonymous with, disease ;. while the increase of both honor and beauty is habitually on the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the sweetest which men have learned in the pastures of the wilder- ne'ss is " Fold."
m. Nor is this all ; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to the majesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of their obedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is less quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the sun and moon ; and the ocean falls and flow^s under influences w^iich the lake and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any action or occupation of men, there is j)erhaps no better test than the question "are its laws strait?" For their se- verity will probably be commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labor it concentrates or whose interest it concerns.
This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art, above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most common ; which requires for its practice the co- operation of bodies of men, and for its perfection the per- severance of successive generations. And taking into account also what we have before so often observed of Architecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life, and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in com- parison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might beforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and action dependent on far more severe laws than theirs ; that the license which they extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by her ; and that, in assertion of the re- lations which she holds with all that is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her own majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's social happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light of experience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish except when it was subjected to a national law as strict and
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as minutely authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and social relations ; nay, even more authoritative than these, because both capable of more enforcement, as over more passive matter ; and needing more enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, but of the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks more loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, in watching the progress of architecture, we see distinct and general ; if, amidst the counter evidence of success attending opposite accidents of character and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and indisputably drawn, it is this ; that the architecture of a nation is great only when it is as universal and as established as its language ; and when pro- vincial differences of style are nothing more than so many dia- lects. Other necessities are matters of doubt : nations have been alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and of wealth ; in times of war and of peace ; in times of bar- barism and of refinement ; under governments the most lib- eral or the most arbitrary ; but this one condition has been constant, this one requirement clear in all places and at all times, that the work shall be that of a school, that no indi- vidual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, accepted types and customary decorations ; and that from the cottage to the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden fence to the fortress wall, every member and feat- ure of the architecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its language or its coin.
IV. A day never passes without our hearing our English architects called upon to be original, and to invent a new style : about as sensible and necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags enough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting a coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about the fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who wants a new style of painting or sculpture ? But we want some style. It is of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws and they be good laws, whether they be new o* old, foreign or native, Koman or Saxon, or Norman or Eng*
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lisli laws. But it is of considerable importance that we should have a code of laws of one kind or another, and that code ac- cepted and enforced from one side of the island to another, and not one law made ground of judgment at York and an- other in Exeter. And in like manner it does not matter one marble splinter whether we have an old or new architecture, but it matters everything whether we have an architecture truly so called or not ; that is, whether an architecture whose laws might be taught at our schools from Cornwall to Nor- thumberland, as we teach English spelling and English gram- mar, or an architecture which is to be invented fresh every time we build a workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be a wonderful misunderstanding among the major- ity of architects at the present day as to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of all wherein it consists. Origi- nality in expression does not depend on invention of new w^ords ; nor originality in poetry on invention of new measures ; nor, in painting, on invention of new colors, or new modes of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of color, the gen- eral principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to any more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such additions or alterations are much more the work of time and of multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck, who will be known as the in- troducer of a new style once in ten centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidental bye-play or pursuit ; and the use of that invention will depend altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period. Originality de- pends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, will take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and will work in that, and be gTeat in that, and make everything that he does in it look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down from heaven. I do not say that he will not take liberties with his materials, or with his rules : I do not say that strange changes will not sometimes be wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But those changes will be in- structive, natural, facile, though sometimes marvellous ; thej
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will never be sought after as things necessary to his dignitj or to his independence ; and those Hberties will be like the hberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance of its rules for the sake of singularity ; but inevitable, uncalculated, and brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language, without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have above described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and in its refusal of ancient limitations : so there are in the life of an insect ; and there is great interest in the state of both the art and the insect at those periods when, by their natural progress and constitu- tional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as that would be both an uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead of being contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding on caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a chrysalis ; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn itself prematurely into a moth ; so will that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs which have been enough for the support and g-uid- a2ice of other arts before it and like it, is struggling and fret- ting under the natural limitations of its existence, and striving to become something other than it is. And though it is the nobility of the highest creatures to look forward to, and partly to understand the changes which are appointed for them, pre- paring for them beforehand ; and if, as is usual with appointed changes, they be into a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the hope of them, yet it is the strength of eveiy creature, be it changeful or not, to rest for the time being, contented with the conditions of its existence, and striving only to bring about the changes which it desires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which its present state is appointed and continued.
V. Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be, and this is commonly a most merciful and en- thusiastic supposition with respect to either, are ever to be sought in themselves, or can ever be healthily obtained by any 13
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struggle or rebellion against common laws. We want neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture already known are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us : and it will be time enough to think of changing them for better when we can use them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want, but cannot do without \ and which all tlie struggling and raving in the world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, will never enable us to do without : and these are Obedience, Unity, Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees of tastes ; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays ; all the sacrifices which w^e are begin- ning to make, all the truth which there is in our English nat- ure, all the power of our English will, and the life of our Euglish intellect, will in this matter be as useless as efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit architecture and all art, like other things, to English law.
VI. I say architecture and all art ; for I believe architecture must be the beginning of arts, and that the others must fol- low her in their time and order ; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health, depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languish until that takes the lead, and (this I do not think, but I proclaim, as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety of society, of an understood and strongly administered legal gov- ernment) our architecture will languish, and that in the very dust, until the first principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal system of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It may be said that this is impossible. It may be so — I fear it is so : I have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it ; I simply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible, Eng- lish art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting time, and money, and energy upon it, and though you ex- haust centuries and treasuries, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the merest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere gulph in which geniua
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after genius will be swallowed up, and it will not close. And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad step be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of pottery and printed stuffs ; we shall not reason out art by our philosophy ; we shall not stumble upon art by our experi- ments, not create it by our fancies : I do not say that we can even build it out of brick and stone ; but there is a chance for us in these, and there is none else ; and that chance rests on the bare possibility of obtaining the consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, and to use it universally.
Vn. How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we may easily determine by the consideration of the neces- sary modes of teaching any other branch of general knowl- edge. When we begin to teach children writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require absolute accuracy in the formation of the letters ; as they obtain command of the received modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their falling into such variations as are consistent with their feel- ing, their circumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught to write Latin, an authority is required of him for every expression he uses ; as he becomes master of the language he may take a license, and feel his right to do so without any authority, and yet write better Latin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the same way our architects would have to be taught to write the accepted style. We must first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan in their authority ; their modes of construction and laws of proportion are to be studied with the most penetrate ing care ; then the different forms and uses of their decora- tions are to be classed and catalogued, as a German gramma- rian classes the powers of prepositions ; and under thia absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work ; admitting not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto, or the breadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the expression of them all ; when we can speak this dead language naturally, and apply it
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to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to every practical purpose of life ; then, and not till then, a license might be permitted ; and individual authority allowed to change or to add to the received forms, always within certain limits ; the decorations, especiallj^, might be made subjects of variable fancy, and enriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools. And thus in process of time and by a great national movement, it might come to pass, that a new style should arise, as language itself changes ; we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak modern instead of old English ; but this would be a mattei of entire indifference, and a matter, besides, which no deter- mination or desire could either hasten or prevent. That alone which it is in our power to obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style of some kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable us to adapt its features to the peculiar character of every several building, large or small, domestic, civil, or ecclesiastical, I have said that it was immaterial what style was adopted, so far as re- gards the room for originality which its developement would admit : it is not so, however, when we take into consideration the far more important questions of the facility of adaptation to general purposes, and of the sympathy with which this or that style would be popularly regarded. The choice of Classical or Gothic, again using the latter term in its broadest sense, may be questionable when it regards some single and consid- erable public building ; but I cannot conceive it questionable, for an instant, when it regards modern uses in general : I cannot conceive any architect insane enough to project the vulgarization of Greek architecture. Neither can it be ration- ally questionable whether we should adopt early or late, origi- nal or derivative Gothic : if the latter were chosen, it must be either some impotent and ugly degradation, like our own Tudor, or else a style whose grammatical laws it would be nearly impossible to limit or arrange, like the French Flam- boyant. We are equally precluded from adopting styles es- sentially infantine or barbarous, however Herculean their in- fancy, or majestic their outlawry, such as our own Norman,
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or the Lombard Komanesque. The choice would lie I think between four styles : — 1. The Pisan Eomanesque ; 2. The early Gothic of the Western Italian Republics, advanced as far and as fast as our art would enable us to the Gothic of Giotto ; 3. The Venetian Gothic in its purest developement ; 4. The English earliest decorated. The most natural, per- haps the safest choice, would be of the last, well fenced from chance of again stiffening into the perpendicular ; and per- haps enriched by some mingling of decorative elements from the exquisite decorated Gothic of France, of which, in such cases, it would be needful to accept some well known ex- amples, as the North door of Rouen and the church of St. Urbain at Troyes, for final and limiting authorities on the side of decoration.
Vin. It is almost impossible for us to conceive, in our pres- ent state of doubt and ignorance, the sudden dawn of intel- ligence and fancy, the rapidly increasing sense of power and facility, and, in its proper sense, of Freedom, which such whole- some restraint would instantly cause throughout the whole circle of the arts. Freed from the agitation and embarrass- ment of that liberty of choice which is the cause of half the discomforts of the world ; freed from the accompanying ne- cessity of studying all past, present, or even possible styles ; and enabled, by concentration of individual, and co-operation of multitudinous energy, to penetrate into the uttermost se- crets of the adopted stj^le, the architect would find his whole understanding enlarged, his practical knowledge certain and ready to hand, and his imagination playful and vigorous, as a child's would be within a walled garden, who would sit down and shudder if he were left free in a fenceless plain. How many and how bright would be the results in every direction of interest, not to the arts merely, but to national happiness and virtue, it would be as dijBficult to preconceive as it would seem extravagant to state : but the first, perhaps the least, of them would be an increased sense of fellowship among our- selves, a cementing of every patriotic bond of union, a proud and happy recognition of our affection for and sympathy with each other, and our willingness in all things to submit our*
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selves to every law that would advance the interest of the com- munity ; a barrier, also, the best conceivable, to the unhappy rivalry of the upper and middle classes, in houses, furniture, and establishments ; and even a check to much of wliat is as vain as it is painful in the oppositions of religious parties it-especting matters of ritual. These, I say, would be tlie first consequences. Economy increased tenfold, as it would be by the simplicity of practice; domestic comforts uninterfered with by the caprice and mistakes of architects ignorant of the . capacities of the styles they use, and all the symmetry and sightliness of our harmonized streets and public buildings, are things of slighter account in the catalogue of benefits. But it would be mere enthusiasm to endeavor to trace them farther. I have suffered myself too long to indulge in the speculative statement of requirements which perhaps we have more immediate and more serious work than to supply, and of feelings which it may be only contingently in our power to recover. I should be unjustly thought unaware of the diffi- culty of what I have proposed, or of the unimportance of the whole subject as compared with many which are brought home to our interests and fixed upon our consideration by the wild course of the present century. But of difficulty and of im- portance it is for others to judge. I have limited myself to the simple statement of what, if we desire to have architecture, we MUST primarily endeavor to feel and do : but then it may not be desirable for us to have architecture at all. There are many who feel it to be so ; many who sacrifice much to that end ; and I am sorry to see their energies wasted and their lives disquieted in vain. I have stated, therefore, the only ways in which that end is attainable, without venturing even to express an opinion as to its real desirableness. I have an opinion, and the zeal with which I have spoken may some- times have betrayed it, but I hold to it with no confidence. I know too well the undue importance which the study that every man follows must assume in his own eyes, to trust my own impressions of the dignity of that of Architecture ; and yet I think I cannot be utterly mistaken in regarding it as at least useful in the sense of a National employment. I am con:-
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firmed in this impression by what I see passing among the states of Europe at this instant. All the horror, distress, and tumult which oppress the foreign nations, are traceable, among the other secondary causes through which God is work- ing out His will upon them, to the simple one of their not having enough to do. I am not blind to the distress among their operatives ; nor do I deny the nearer and visibly active causes of the movement : the recklessness of villany in the leaders of revolt, the absence of common moral principle in the upper classes, and of common courage and honesty in the heads of governments. But these causes themselves are ulti- mately traceable to a deeper and simpler one : the recklessness of the demagogue, the immorality of the middle class, and the effeminacy and treachery of the noble, are traceable in all these nations to the commonest and most fruitful cause of calamity in households — idleness. We think too much in our benev- olent efforts, more multiplied and more vain day by day, of bettering men by giving them advice and instruction. There are few who will take either : the chief thing they need is oc- cupation. I do not mean work in the sense of bread, — I mean work in the sense of mental interest ; for those who either are placed above the necessity of labor for their bread, or who will not w^ork although they should. There is a vast quantity of idle energy among European nations at this time, which ought to go into handicrafts ; there are multitudes of idle semi-gentlemen who ought to be shoemakers and carpenters ; but since they will not be these so long as they can help it, the business of the philanthropist is to find them some other employment than disturbing governments. It is of no use to tell them they are fools, and that they will only make them= selves miserable in the end as well as others : if they have nothing else to do, they will do mischief ; and the man who will not work, and who has no means of intellectual pleasure, is as sure to become an instrument of evil as if he had sold him- self bodily to Satan. I have myself seen enough of the daily life of the young educated men of France and Italy, to ac- count for, as it deserves, the deepest national suffering and degradation ; and though, for the most part, our commerce
200 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.
and our natural habits of industry preserve us from a simi- lar paralysis, yet it would be wise to consider whether the forms of employment which we chiefly adopt or promote, are as well calculated as they might be to improve and elevate us.
We have just spent, for instance, a hundred and fifty mill- ions, with which we have paid men for digging ground from one place and depositing it in another. We have formed a I'lrge class of men, the railway navvies, especially reckless, un- manageable, and dangerous. We have maintained besides (let us state the benefits as fairly as possible) a number of iron founders in an unhealthy and painful employment ; we have developed (this is at le.ist good) a very large amount of me- chanical ingenuity ; and we have, in fine, attained the powet of going fast from one place to another. Meantime we have had no mental interest or concern ourselves in the operationa we have set on foot, but have been left to the usual vanities and cares of our existence. Suppose, on the other hand, that we had employed the same sums in building beautiful houses and churches. We should have maintained the same number of men, not in driving wheelbarrows, but in a distinctly tech- nical, if not intellectual, employment, and those who were more intelligent among them would have been especially happy in that employment, as having room in it for the de- velopement of their fancy, and being directed by it to that ob- servation of beauty which, associated with the pursuit of nat- ui'al science, at present forms the enjoyment of many of the more intelligent manufacturing operatives. Of mechanical in- genuity, there is, I imagine, at least as much required to build a cathedral as to cut a tunnel or contrive a locomotive : we should, therefore, have developed as much science, while the artistical element of intellect would have been added to the gain. Meantime we should ourselves have been made happier and wiser by the interest we should have taken in the work with which we were personally concerned ; and when all was done, instead of the very doubtful advantage of the power of going fast from place to place, we should have had the certain advantage of increased pleasure in stopping at home.
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 201
IX. There are many other less capacious, but more con- Btant, channels of expenditure, quite as disputable in theif beneficial tendency ; and we are, perhaps, hardly enough in the habit of inquiring, with respect to any particular form of luxury or any customary appliance of life, whether the kind of employment it gives to the operative or the dependant be as healthy and fitting an employment as we might otherwise provide for him. It is not enough to find men absolute sub- sistence ; we should think of the manner of life which our demands necessitate ; and endeavor, as far as may be, to make all our needs such as may, in the supply of them, raise, as well as feed, the poor. It is far better to give work w^hich is above the men, than to educate the men to be above their work. It may be doubted, for instance, whether the habits of luxury, w^hich necessitate a large train of men servants, be a wholesome form of expenditure ; and more, whether the pursuits which have a tendency to enlarge the class of the jockey and the groom be a philanthropic form of mental occu- pation. So again, consider the large number of men w^hose lives" are employed by civilized nations in cutting facets upon jewels. There is much dexterity of hand, patience, and inge- nuity thus bestowed, which are simply burned out in the blaze of the tiara, without, so far as I see, bestowing any pleasure upon those who wear or who behold, at all compensatory for the loss of life and mental power which are involved in the employment of the workman. He would be far more healthily and happily sustained by being set to carve stone ; certain qualities of his mind, for which there is no room in his present occupation, would develope themselves in the nobler ; and I believe that most women would, in the end, prefer the pleas- ure of having built a church, or contributed to the adornment of a cathedral, to the pride of bearing a certain quantity of adamant on their foreheads.
X. I could pursue this subject willingly, but I have some strange notions about it which it is perhaps wiser not loosely to set down. I content myself with finally reasserting, what has been throughout the burden of the preceding pages, that whatever rank, or whatever importance, may be attributed oi
202 TEE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.
attached to their immediate subject, there is at least soma value in the analogies with which its pursuit has presented us, and some instruction in the frequent reference of its common- est necessities to the mighty laws, in the sense and scope of which all men are Builders, whom every hour sees laying the stubble or the stone.
I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have checked the course of wdiat might otherwise have been impor- tunate persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all Architecture may be vain, except that which is not made with hands. There is something ominous in the light which has enabled us to look back with disdain upon the ages among whose lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly science, and vigor of worldly effort ; as if we were again at the beginning of days. There is thunder on the ho- rizon as well as dawn. The sun was risen upon the eartt- when Lot entered into Zoar.
NOTES,
Note 1.
Page 21.
*' With the idolatrous Egyptian.'**
The probability is indeed slight in comparison, but it is a probability nevertheless, and one which is daily on the increase. I trust that 1 may not be thought to underrate the danger of such sympathy, though I speak lightly of the chance of it. I have confidence in the central religious body of the English and Scottish people, as being not only untainted with Romanism, but immoveably adverse to it : and, how- ever strangely and swiftly the heresy of the Protestant and victory of the Papist may seem to be extending among us, I feel assured that there are barriers in the living faith of this nation which neither can overpass. Yet this confidence is only in the ultimate faithfulness of a few, not in the security of the nation from the sin and the punishment of partial apostasy. Both have, indeed, in some sort, been committed and suffered already ; and, in expressing my belief of the close connec- tion of the distress and burden which the mass of the people at present sustain, with the encouragement which, in various directions, has been given to the Papist, do not let me be called superstitious or irrational. No man was ever more inclined than I, both by natural disposition and by many ties of early association, to a sympathy with the principles and forms of the Romanist Church ; and there is much in its discipline which conscientiously, as well as sympathetically, I could love and ad- vocate. But, in confessing this strength of affectionate prejudice, surely I vindicate more respect for my firmly expressed belief, that the entire doctrine and system of that Church is in the fullest sense anti- Christian ; that its lying and idolatrous Power is the darkest plague that ever held commission to hurt the Earth ; that all those yearnings for unity and fellowship, and common obedience, which have been the root of our late heresies, are as false in their grounds as fatal in their termination ; that we never can have the remotest fellowship with the utterers of that fearful Falsehood, and live ; that we have nothing to look to from them but treacherous hostility ; and that, exactly in pro- t)ortion to the sternness of our separation from them, will be not onl^
204 NOTES,
the spiritual but the temporal blessings granted by God to this country. How close has been the correspondence hitherto between the degree of resistance to Romanism marked in our national acts, and the honor with which those acts have been crowned, has been sufficiently proved in a short essay by a writer whose investigations into the influence of Religion upon the fate of Nations have been singularly earnest and suc- cessful— a writer with whom I faithfully and firmly believe that Eng- land will never be prosperous again, and that the honor of her arms will be tarnishedj and her commerce blighted, and her national char- acter degraded, until the Romanist is expelled from the place which has impiously been conceded to him among her legislators. " What- ever be the lot of those to whom error is an inheritance, woe be to the man and the people to whom it is an adoption. If England, free above all other nations, sustained amidst the trials which have covered Eu- rope, before her eyes, with burning and slaughter, and enlightened by the fullest knowledge of divine truth, shall refuse fidelity to the com- pact by which those matchless privileges have been given, her condem- nation will not linger. She has already made one step full of danger. She has committed the capital error of mistaking that for a purely polit- ical question which was a purely religious one. Her foot already hangs over the edge of the precipice. It must be retracted, or the empire is but a name. In the clouds and darkness which seem to be deepening on all human policy — in the gathering tumults of Europe, and the feverish discontents at home — it may be even difficult to discern where the power yet lives to erect the fallen majesty of the constitution once more. But there are mighty means in sincerity ; and if no miracle was ever wrought for the faithless and desparing, the country that will help it- self will never be left destitute of the help of Heaven " (Historical Es- says, by the Rev. Dr. Croly, 1842). The first of these essays, "Eng- land the Fortress of Christianity." I most earnestly recommend to the meditation of those who doubt that a special punishment is inflicted by the Deity upon all national crime, and perhaps, of all such crime most instantly upon the betrayal on the part of England of the truth andfaitl* with which she has been entrusted.
Note II.
Page 25.
" Not tlie gift, hut the giving.^
Much attention has lately been directed to the subject of religious art. and we are now in possession ot all kinds of interpretations and classifications of it, and of the leading facts of its history. But the greatest question of all connected with it remains entirely unanswered,
¥
NOTES. 205
What good did it do to real religion ? There is no subject into which I should so much rejoice to see a serious and conscientious inquiry insti' tuted as this ; an inquiry neither undertaken in artistical enthusiasm nor in monkish sympathy, but dogged, merciless and fearless. I love the religious art of Italy as well as most men, but there is a wide differ- ence between loving it as a manifestation of individual feeling, and iooking to it as an instrument of popular benefit. I have not knowledge enough to form even the shadow of an opinion on this latter point, and [ should be most grateful to any one who would put it in my power to do so. There are, as it seems to me, three distinct questions to be con- sidered : the first. What has been the effect of external splendor on the genuineness and earnestness of Christian worship ? the second, What the use of pictorial or sculptural representation in the communication of Christian historical knowledge, or excitement of affectionate imagina- tion ? the third, What the influence of the practice of religious art on the life of the artist ?
In answering these inquiries, we should have to consider separately every collateral influence and circumstance ; and, by a most subtle analysis, to eliminate the real effect of art from the effects of the abuses with which it was associated. This could be done only by a Christian ; not a man who would fall in love with a sweet color or sweet expres- sion, but who would look for true faith and consistent life as the object of all. It never has been done yet, and the question remains a subject of vain and endless contention between parties of opposite prejudices and temperaments.
Note III.
Page 26.
** TotTie concealment of what is really good or great. ^
I HAYE often been surprised at the supposition that Romanism, in its present condition, could either patronise art or profit by it. The noble painted windows of St. Maclou at Rouen, and many other churches in France, are entirely blocked up behind the altars by the erection of huge gilded wooden sunbeams, with interspersed cherubs.
Note IV.
Page 33.
** With different pattern of traceries in eachy
I HAVE certainly not examined the seven hundred and four traceries (four to each niche) so as to be sure that none are alike ; but they have the aspect of continual variation, and even the roses of the pendants of the small groined niche roofs are all of different patterns.
206 NOTES,
Note V. Page 43. ** Its flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms.^^ They are noticed by Mr. Whewell as forming the figure of the lieur-da /is, always a mark, when in tracery bars, of the most debased flamboy- ant. It occurs in the central tower of Bayeux, very richly in the but tresses of St. Gervais at Falaise, and in the small niches of some of the domestic buildings at Rouen. Nor is it only the tower of St. Ouen which is overrated. Its nave is a base imitation, in the flamboyant pe- riod, of an early Gothic arrangement ; the niches on it« piers are bar- barisms ; there is a huge square shaft run through the ceiling of tlie aisles to support the nave piers, the ugliest excrescence I ever saw on a Gothic building ; the traceries of the nave are the most insipid and faded flamboyant ; those of the transept clerestory present a singularly distorted condition of perpendicular ; even the elaborate door of the ■ south transept is, for its fine period, extravagant and almost grotesque in its foliation and pendants. There is nothing truly fine in the church but the choir, the light triforium, and tall clerestory, the circle of East- ern chapels, the details of sculpture, and the general lightness of pro- portion ; these merits being seen to the utmost advantage by the free^ dom of the body of the church from all incumbrance.
Note VI. Page 43. Compare Iliad 2. 1. 219 with Odyssey n. I. 5—10.
Note VII. Page 44. ♦* Does not admit iron as a constructive material.** Except in Chaucer's noble temple of Mars.
" And dounward from an hill under a bent, Ther stood the temple of Mars, armipotent, Wrought all of burned stele, of which th' entree Was longe and streite, and gastly for to see. And thereout came a rage and swiche a vise, That it made all the gates for to rise. The northern light in at the dore shone, • For window on the wall ne was thpr none, Thurgh which men migliten any light discerne The dore was all of athamant eterne,
NOTES. 207
Yclenched overthwart aud ende long With yren tough, and for to make it strong, Every piler the temple to sustene Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene."
The KnighU'8 TaU.
There is, by the bye, an exquisite piece of architectural color just bd« "jore:
" And northward, in a turret on the wall Of alabaster white^ and red corall^ An oratorie riche for to see, In worship of Diane of Chastitee."
Note VIII.
Page 44.
" Tfie Builders of Salisbury.^*
*' This way of tying walls together with iron, instead of making them )f that substance and form, that they shall naturally poise themselves .«pon their buttment, is against the rules of good architecture, not only /because iron is corruptible by rust, but because it is fallacious, having unequal veins in the metal, some places of the same bar being three times stronger than others, and yet all sound to appearance." Survey of Salisbury? Cathedral in 1668, by Sir C. Wren. For my own part, I think it better work to bind a tower with iron, than to support a false dome by a brick pyramid.
Note IX.
Page 60.
Plate III.
In this plate, figures 4, 5, and 6, are glazed windows, but fig. 2 is the open light of a belfry tower, and figures 1 and 3 are in triforia, the lat- ter also occurring filled, on the central tower of Coutances.
Note X.
Page 94.
** Ornaments of the transept towers of Boven.'"
The reader cannot but observe agreeableness, as a mere arrangement of shade, which especially belongs to the " sacred trefoil." I do not think that the element of foliation has been enougli insisted upon in its inti- mate relations with the power of Gothic work. If I were asked what
208 NOTES.
was the most distinctive feature of its perfect style, I should say the Trefoil. It is the very soul of it ; and I think the loveliest Gothic is always formed upon simple and bold tracings of it, taking place betweer the blank lancet arch on the one hand, and the overcharged cinqu© foiled arch on the other.
Note XI.
Page 95.
** And levelled cusps of stone."
The plate represents one of the lateral windows of the third story of the Palazzo Foscari. It was drawn from the opposite side of the Grand Canal, and the lines of its traceries are therefore given as they appear in somewhat distant effect. It shows only segments of the characteristic quatrefoils of the central windows. I found by measurement their con- '^truction exceedingly simple. Four circles are drawn in contact within the large circle. Two tangential lines are then drawn to each opposite pair, enclosing the four circles in a hollow cross. An inner circle struck through the intersections of the circles by the tangents, truncates the cusps.
Note XII.
Page 124.
" Into vertical equal parts.''''
Not absolutely so. There are variations partly accidental (or at least compelled by the architect's effort to recover the vertical), between the sides of the stories ; and the upper and lower story are taller than the rest. There is, however, an apparent equality between five out of the eight tiers.
Note XIIL
Page 133.
'* Never paint a column with vertical lines.''*
It should be observed, however, that any pattern which gives oppo- nent lines in its parts, may be arranged on lines parallel with the main £^ucture. Thus, rows of diamonds, like spots on a snake's back, or the bones on a sturgeon, are exquisitely applied both to vertical and spiral columns. The loveliest instances of such decoration that I know, are the pillars of the cloister of St. John Lateran, lately illustrated by Mr. Digby Wyatt, in his most valuable and faithful work on antique mo-
NOTES, 209
Note XIV.
Page 139.
On the cover of this volume the reader will find some figure outlines of the same period and character, from the floor of San Miniato at Flor- ence. I have to thank its designer, Mr. W. Harrj Rogers, for his intelli- gent arrangement of them, and graceful adaptation of the connecting arabesque. (Stamp on cloth cover of London edition.)
Note XV.
Page 169.
** The flowers lost tlieir light, the river its music.^
Yet not all their light, nor all their music. Compare Modem Paint- ers, vol. ii. sec. 1. chap. iv. § 8.
Note XVL
Page 181.
" By the artists of tlie time of Pericles."
This subordination was first remarked to me by a friend, whose pro- found knowledge of Greek art will not, I trust, be reserved always for the advantage of his friends only : Mr. C. Newton, of the British Mu«
I
Note XVII.
Page 188. ** In one of the noblest poems.'** Coleridge's Ode to France :
' ' Ye Clouds ! that far above me float and pause, Whose pathless march no mortal may control f Ye Ocean-Waves ! that wheresoe'er ye roll, Yield homage only to eternal laws ! Ye Woods ! that listen to the night-birds singing, Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind ! Where, like a man beloved of God, Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy, My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,
210 NOTES.
By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound I O ye loud Waves ! and O ye Forests high !
And O ye Clouds that far above me soared I Thou rising Sun ! thou blue rejoicing Sky I
Yea, everything that is and will be free !
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty. "
Koble Terse, but erring thought : contrast George Herbert :— »
*' Slight those who say amidst their sickly healths, Thou livest by rule. What doth not so but man ? Houses are built by rule and Commonwealths. Entice the trusty sun, if that you can, From his ecliptic line ; beckon the sky. Who lives by rule then, keeps good company.
"* Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack. And rots to nothing at the next great thaw ; Man is a shop of rules : a well-truss'd pack Whose every parcel underwrites a law. Lose not thyself, nor give thy humors way ; God (jave them to thee under lock and >^ev/
LECTURES
ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING
DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH, IN NOVEMBER, 1853.
PEEFAOE,
The following Lectures are printed, as far as possible, just as they were delivered. Here and there a sentence which seemed obscure has been mended, and the passages which had not been previously written, have been, of course imperfectly, supplied from memory. But I am well assured that nothing of any substantial importance, which was said in the lecture- room, is either omitted, or altered in its signification, with the exception only of a few sentences struck out from the notice of the works of Turner, in consequence of the impossi- bility of engraving the drawings by which they were illustrated, except at a cost which would have too much raised the price of the volume. Some elucidatory remarks have, however, been added at the close of the second and fourth Lectures, which I hope may be of more use than the passages which I was obliged to omit.
The drawings by which the Lectures on Architecture were illustrated have been carefully reduced, and well transferred to wood by Mr. Thurston Thompson. Those which were given in the course of the notices of schools of painting could not be so transferred, having been drawn in colour ; and I have therefore merely had a few lines, absolutely necessary to make the text intelligible, copied from engravings.
I forgot, in preparing the second Lecture for the press, to quote a passage from Lord Lindsay's " Christian Art," illus- trative of what is said in that lecture (page 57), respecting the energy of the mediaeval republics. This passage, describing
214 PREFACE.
the circumstances under which the Campanile of the Duoma of Florence was built, is interesting also as noticing the universality of talent which was required of architects ; and which, as I have asserted in the Addenda (p. 65), always ought to be required of them. I do not, however, now regret the omission, as I cannot easily imagine a better preface to an essay on civil architecture than this simple statement.
"In 1332, Giotto was chosen to erect it (the campanile), on the ground, avowedly, of the universality of his talents, with the appointment of Capo Maestro, or chief Ai'chitect (chief Master, I should rather write), of the Cathedral and its de- pendencies, a yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship, under the special understanding that he was not to quit Florence. His designs being ap- proved of, the republic passed a decree in the spring of 1334, that the Campanile should be built so as to exceed in mag- nificence, height, and excellence of workmanship whatever in that kind had been achieved by the Greeks and Eomans in the time of their utmost power and greatness. The first stone was laid, accordingly, with great pomp, on the 18th of July following, and the work prosecuted with vigour, and with such costliness and utter disregard of expense, that a citizen of Verona, looking on, exclaimed that the republic was taxing her strength too far, that the united resources of two great monarchs would be insufficient to complete it ; a criticism which the Signoria resented by confining him for two months in prison, and afterwards conducting him through the public treasury, to teach him that the Florentines could build their whole city of marble, and not one poor steeple only, were they so inclined."
I see that " The Builder," vol. xi. page 690, has been en- deavouring to inspire the citizens of Leeds with some pride
PREFACE. 215
of this kind respecting their town-hall. The pride would be well, but I sincerely trust that the tower in question may not be built on the design there proposed. I am sorry to have to write a special criticism, but it must be remembered that the best works, by the best men living, are in this age abused without mercy by nameless critics ; and it would be unjust to the pubhc, if those who have given their names as guar- antee for their sincerity never had the courage to enter a pro- test against the execution of designs which appear to them unworthy.
Denmark Hill, 16th April, 1854*
LECTURES
ON
ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTIIG.
LECTUKE L
I THINK myself peculiarly happy in being permitted to ad- dress the citizens of Edinburgh on the subject of architecture, for it is one which, they cannot but feel, interests them nearly. Of all the cities in the British Islands, Edinburgh is the one which presents most advantages for the display of a noble building ; and which, on the other hand, sustains most injury in the erection of a commonplace or unworthy one. You are all proud of your city : surely you must feel it a duty in some sort to justify your pride ; that is to say, to give yourselves a rigJit to be proud of it. That you were born under the shadow of its two fantastic mountains, — that you live where from your room windows you can trace the shores of its glittering Firth, are no rightful subjects of pride. You did not raise the mountains, nor shape the shores ; and the historical houses of your Canongate, and the broad battlements of your castle, reflect honour upon you only through your ancestors. Before you boast of your city, before even you venture to call it yours, ought you not scrupulously to weigh the exact share you have had in adding to it or adorning it, to calculate seri- ousiy the influence upon its aspect which the work of your own hands has exercised ? I do not say that, even when you
218 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
regard your city in this scrupulous and testing spirit, you have not considerable ground for exultation. As far as I am acquainted with modern architecture, I am aware of no streets which, in simplicity and manliness of style, or general breadth and brightness of effect equal those of the New Town of Edin- burgh. But yet I am well persuaded that as you traverse those streets, your feelings of pleasure and pride in them are much complicated with those which are excited entirely by the surrounding scenery. As you walk up or down George Street, for instance, do you not look eagerly for every open- ing to the north and south, which lets in the lustre of the Firth of Forth, or the rugged outline of the Castle rock? Take away the sea-waves, and the dark basalt, and I fear you would find little to interest you in George Street by itself. Now I remember a city, more nobly placed even than your Edinburgh, which, instead of the valley that you have now filled by lines of railroad, has a broad and rushing river of blue water sweeping through the heart of it ; which, for the dark and solitary rock that bears your castle, has an amphitheatre of cliffs crested with cypresses and olive ; which, for the two masses of Arthur's Seat and the ranges of the Pentlands, has a chain of blue mountains higher than the haughtiest peaks of your Highlands ; and which, for your far-away Ben Ledi and Ben More, has the great central chain of the St. Gothard Alps : and yet, as you go out of the gates, and walk in the suburban streets of that city — I mean Verona — the eye never seeks to rest on that external scenery, however gorgeous ; it does not look for the gaps between the houses, as you do here : it may for a few moments follow the broken Hne of the great Alpine battlements ; but it is only where they form a back- ground for other battlements, built by the hand of man. There is no necessity felt to dwell on the blue river or the burning hills. The heart and eye have enough to do in the streets of the city itself ; they are contented there ; nay, they sometimes turn from the natural scenery, as if too savage and solitary, to dwell with a deeper interest on the palace walls that cast their shade upon the streets, and the crowd of to"»" ers that rise out of that shadow into the depth of the sky.
F.g. 1
pMZZZI
Fig. 3.
^
-^^-411-
#^
Fig. 5.
PLATE I.— (Page 219— Vol. V.) Illustrative Diagrams.
AND PAINTING. 219
That is a city to be proud of, indeed ; and it is this kind of architectural dignity which you should aim at, in what you add to Edinburgh or rebuild in it. For remember, you must either help your scenery or destroy it ; whatever you do has an effect of one kind or the other ; it is never indif- ferent. But, above all, remember that it is chiefly by pri- vate, not by public, effort that your city must be adorned. It does not matter how many beautiful public buildings you possess, if they are not supported by, and in harmony with, the private houses of the town. Neither the mind nor the eye will accept a new college, or a new hospital, or a new in- stitution, for a city. It is the Canongate, and the Princes Street, and the High Street that are Edinburgh. It is in your own private houses that the real majesty of Edinburgh must consist ; and, what is more, it must be by your ovm personal interest that the style of the architecture which rises around you must be principally guided. Do not think that you can have good architecture merely by paying for it. It is not by subscribing liberally for a large building once in forty years that you can call up architects and inspiration. It is only by active and sympathetic attention to the domes- tic and every day work which is done for each of you, that you can educate either yourselves to the feeling, or your builders to the doing, of what is truly great.
Well but, you will answer, you cannot feel interested in architecture : you do not care about it, and cannot care about it. I know you cannot. About such architecture as is built now-a-days, no mortal ever did or could care. You do not feel interested in hearing the same thing over and over again ; — why do you suppose you can feel interested in seeing the same thing over and over again, were that thing even the best and most beautiful in the world ? Now, you all know the kind of window which you usually build in Edinburgh : here is an example of the head of one [fig. 1. ), a massy lintel of a single stone, laid across from side to side, with bold square-cut jambs — in fact, the simplest form it is possible to build. It is by no means a bad form ; on the contrary, it is very manly and vigorous, and has a certain dignity in its
220 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
utter refusal of ornament. But I cannot say it is entertain* ing. How many windows precisely of this form do you sup- pose there are in the New Town of Edinburgh ? I have not counted them all through the town, but I counted them this morning along this very Queen Street, in which your Hall is ; and on the one side of that street, there are of these windows, absolutely similar to this example, and altogether devoid of any relief by decoration, six hundred and seventy-eight.* And your decorations are just as monotonous as your sim- plicities. How many Corinthian and Doric columns do you think there are in your banks, and post-offices, institutions, and I know not what else, one exactly like another ? — and yet you expect to be interested ! Nay, but, you will answer me again, we see sunrises and sunsets, and violets and roses, over and over again, and we do not tire of them. What ! did you ever see one sunrise like another? does not God vary his clouds for you every morning and every night? though, indeed, there is enough in the disappearing and ap- pearing of the great orb above the rolling of the world, to interest all of us, one would think, for as many times as we shall see it ; and yet the aspect of it is changed for us daily. You see violets and roses often, and are not tired of them. True ! but you did not often see two roses alike, or, if you did, you took care not to put them beside each other in the same nosegay, for fear your nosegay should be uninterest- ing ; and yet you think you can put 150,000 square windows side by side in the same streets, and still be interested by them. Why, if I were to say the same thing over and over again, for the single hour you are going to let me talk to you, would you listen to me? and yet you let your architects do the same thing over and over again for three centuries, and expect to be interested by their architecture ; with a far- ther disadvantage on the side of the builder, as compared with the speaker, that my wasted words would cost you but little, but his wasted stones have cost you no small part of your incomes.
* Including York Place and Picardy Place, hnt not counting any win dow which has mouldings.
Fijr. 2
PLATE II.— (Page 221— Vol. V.) Window in Oakham Castle.
i
AND PAINTING. 281
" Well, but," you still think within yourselves, "it is not right that architecture should be interesting. It is a very grand thing, this architecture, but essentially unentertain- ing. It is its duty to be dull, it is monotonous by law : it cannot be correct and yet amusing."
Believe me, it is not so. All things that are worth doing in art, are interesting and attractive when they are done. There is no law of right which consecrates dulness. The proof of a thing's being right is, that it has power over the heart ; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us. I do not say that it has influence over all, but it has over a large class, one kind of art being fit for one class, and another for another ; and there is no goodness in art which is independent of the power of pleasing. Yet, do not mistake me ; I do not mean that there is no such thing as neglect of the best art, or de- light in the worst, just as many men neglect nature, and feed upon what is artificial and base ; but I mean, that all good art has the capacity of pleasing, if people will attend to it ; that there is no law against its pleasing ; but, on the con- trary, something wrong either in the spectator or the art, when it ceases to please. Now, therefore, if you feel that your present school of architecture is unattractive to you, I say there is something wrong, either in the architecture or in you ; and I trust you will not think I mean to flatter you when I tell you, that the wrong is not in you, but in the architecture. Look at this for a moment [fig. 2.); it is a window actually existing — a window of an English domestic building * — a window built six hundred years ago. You will not tell me you have no pleasure in looking at this ; or that you could not, by any possibility, become interested in the art which produced it ; or that, if every window in your streets were of some such form, with perpetual change in [their ornaments, you would pass up and down the street with J as much indiflerence as now, when your windows are of this form {fig. 1.). Can you for an instant suppose that the archi- tect was a greater or wiser man who built this, than he who
* Oakham Castle. I have enlarged this illustration from Mr. Hudson Turner's admirable work on the domestic architecture of England.
222 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
built that ? or that in the arrangement of these dull and moiiot onous stones there is more wit and sense than you can pene-* trate ? Believe me, the wrong is not in you ; you would all like the best things best, if you only saw them. What is wrong in you is your temper, not your taste ; your patient and trust- ful temper, which lives in houses whose architecture it takes for granted, and subscribes to public edifices from which it derives no enjoyment.
"Well, but what are we to do?" you will say to me ; we cannot make architects of ourselves. Pardon me, you can — and you ought. Architecture is an art for all men to learn, because all are concerned with it ; and it is so simple, that there is no excuse for not being acquainted with its primary rules, any more than for ignorance of grammar or of spell- ing, which are both of them far more difficult sciences. Far less trouble than is necessary to learn how to play chess, or whist, or goff, tolerably, — far less than a schoolboy takes to win the meanest prize of the passing year, would acquaint you with all the main principles of the construction of a Gothic cathedral, and I believe you would hardly find the study less amusing. But be that as it may, there are one or two broad principles which need only be stated to be under- stood and accepted ; and those I mean to lay before you, with your permission, before you leave this room.
You must all, of course, have observed that the principal distinctions between existing styles of architecture depend on their methods of roofing any space, as a window or door for instance, or a space between pillars ; that is to say, that the character of Greek architecture, and of all that is derived from it, depends on its roofing a space with a single stone laid from side to side ; the character of Roman architecture, and of all derived from it, depends on its roofing spaces with round arches ; and the character of Gothic architecture de- pends on its roofing spaces with pointed arches or gables. I need not, of course, in any way follow out for you the mode in which the Greek system of architecture is derived from the horizontal lintel ; but I ought perhaps to explain, that by Roman architecture I do not mean that spurious condition
AND PAINTING. 223
of temple form which was nothing more than a luscious imi- tation of the Greek ; but I mean that architecture in which the Eoman spirit truly manifested itself, the magnificent vaultings of the aqueduct and the bath, and the colossal heaping of the rough stones in the arches of the amphi theatre ; an architecture full of expression of gigantic power and strength of will, and from which are directly derived all our most impressive early buildings, called, as you know, by various antiquaries, Saxon, Norman, or Romanesque. No^v the first point I wish to insist upon is, that the Greek system, considered merely as a piece of construction, is weak and barbarous compared with the two others. For instance, in the case of a large window or door, such as j^^. 1, if you have at your disposal a single large and long stone you may indeed roof it in the Greek manner, as you have done here, with com- parative security ; but it is always expensive to obtain and to raise to their place stones of this large size, and in many places nearly impossible to obtain them at all ; and if you have not such stones, and still insist upon roofing the space in the Greek way, that is to say, upon having a square window, you must do it by the miserable feeble adjustment of bricks, fig. 3.* You are well aware, of course, that this latter is the usual way in which such windows are now built in England ; you are fortunate enough here in the north to be able to ob- tain single stones, and this circumstance alone gives a con- siderable degree of grandeur to your buildings. But in all cases, and however built, you cannot but see in a moment that this cross bar is weak and imperfect. It may be strong enough for all immediate intents and purposes, but it is not so strong as it might be : however well the house is built, it will still not stand so long as if it had been better constructed ; and there is hardly a day passes but you may see some rent or flaw in bad buildings of this kind. You may see one whenever you choose in one of your most costly, and most ugly buildings, the great church with the dome, at the end of George Street. I think I never saw a building with the principal entrance so utterly ghastly and oppressive ; and it is as weak as it is * On this subject see " The Builder," vol. xi. p. 709.
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ghastly. The huge horizontal lintel above the door is alriiadj split right through. But you are not aware of a thousandth part of the evil : the pieces of building that you see are all carefully done ; it is in the parts that are to be concealed by paint and plaster that the bad building of the day is thor- oughly committed. The main mischief lies in the strang£ devices that are used to support the long horizontal cross beams of our larger apartments and shops, and the frame- work of unseen walls ; girders and ties of cast iron, and props and wedges, and laths nailed and bolted together, on mar- vellously scientific principles ; so scientific, that every now and then, when some tender reparation is undertaken by the unconscious householder, the whole house crashes into a heap of ruin, so total, that the jury which sits on the bodies of the inhabitants cannot tell what has been the matter with it, and returns a dim verdict of accidental death. Did you read the account of the proceedings at the Crystal Palace at Sydenham the other day ? Some dozen of men crushed up among the splinters of the scaffolding in an instant, nobody knew why. All the engineers declare the scaffolding to have been erected on the best principles, — that the fall of it is as much a mys- tery as if it had fallen from heaven, and were all meteoric stones. The jury go to Sydenham and look at the heap of shattered bolts and girders, and come back as wise as they went. Accidental death. Yes verily ; the lives of all those dozen of men had been hanging for months at the mercy of a flaw in an inch or two of cast iron. Very accidental in- deed ! Not the less pitiable. I grant it not to be an easy thing to raise scaffolding to the height of the Crystal Palace without incurring some danger, but that is no reason why your houses should all be nothing but scaffolding. The common system of support of walls over shops is now nothing but permanent scaffolding ; part of iron, part of wood, part of brick ; in its skeleton state awful to behold ; the weight of three or four stories of wall resting sometimes on two or three pillars of the size of gas pipes, sometimes on a single cross beam of wood, laid across from party wall to party wall in the Greek manner. I have a vivid recollection at this mo
►
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ment of a vast heap of splinters in the Borough Road, close to St. George's Southwark, in the road between my own house and London. I had passed it the day before, a goodly shop front, and sufficient house above, with a few repairs un- dertaken in the shop before opening a new business. The master and mistress had found it dusty that afternoon, and went out to tea. When they came back in the evening, they found tiieir whole house in the form of a heap of bricks blocking the roadway, with a party of men digging out their cook. But I do not insist on casualties like these, disgrace- ful to us as they are, for it is, of course, perfectly possible to build a perfectly secure house or a secure window in the Greek manner ; but the simple fact is, that in order to ob- tain in the cross lintel the same amount of strength whicli you can obtain in a pointed arch, you must go to an im- mensely greater cost in stone or in labour. Stonehenge is strong enough, but it takes some trouble to build in the man- ner of Stonehenge ; and Stonehenge itself is not so strong as an arch of the Colosseum. You could not raise a circle of four Stonehenges, one over the other, with safety ; and as it is, more of the cross-stones are fallen upon the plain of Sarum than arches rent away, except by the hand of man, from the mighty circle of Rome. But I waste words ; — your own com- mon sense must show you in a moment that this is a weak form ; and there is not at this instant a single street in London where some house could not be pointed out with a flaw running through its brickwork, and repairs rendered necessary in consequence, merely owing to the adoption ol this bad form ; and that our builders know so well, that in myriads of instances you find them actually throwing con- cealed arches above the horizontal lintels to take the weight off them ; and the gabled decoration at the top of some Pal- ladian windows, is merely the ornamental form resulting from a bold device of the old Roman builders to effect the same purpose.
But there is a farther reason for our adopting the pointed arch than its being the strongest form ; it is also the most beautiful form in which a window or door-head can be built
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Not the most beautiful because it is the strongest ; but most beautiful, because its form is one of those which, as we know by its frequent occurrence in the work of nature around us, has been ap}Dointed by the Deity to be an everlasting source of pleasure to the human mind.
Gather a branch from any of the trees or flowers to which the earth owes its principal beauty. You will find that every one of its leaves is terminated, more or less, in the form of the pointed arch ; and to that form owes its grace and char- acter. I will take, for instance, a spray of the tree which so gracefully adorns your Scottish glens and crags — there is no lovelier in the world — the common ash. Here is a sketch of the clusters of leaves which form the extremity of one of its young shoots {fig. 4.) ; and, by the way, it will furnish us with an interesting illustration of another error in modern archi- tectural systems. You know how fond modern architects, like foolish modern politicians, are of their equalities, and simi- larities ; how necessary they think it that each part of a building should be like every other part. Now Nature abhors equality, and similitude, just as much as foolish men love them. You will find that the ends of the shoots of the ash are composed of four * green stalks bearing leaves, spring- ing in the form of a cross, if seen from above, as in fig. 5., Plate I., and at first you will suppose the four arms of the cross are equal. But look more closely, and you will find that two opposite arms or stalks have only five leaves each, and the other two have seven, or else, two have seven, and the other two nine ; but always one pair of stalks has two leaves more than the other pair. Sometimes the tree gets a little puzzled, and forgets which is to be the longest stalk, and be- gins with a stem for seven leaves where it should have nine, and then recollects itself at the last minute, and puts on an- other leaf in a great hurry, and so produces a stalk with eight leaves ; but all this care it takes merely to keep itself out of equahties ; and all its grace and power of pleasing are owing
* Sometimes of six ; that is to say, they spring in pairs ; only the two uppermost pairs, sometimes the three uppermost, spring so close together as to appear one cluster.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 6.
PLATE nr.— (Page 226- Vol. V.)
Spray of Ash-Tree, and Improvement of the Same
ON Greek Principles.
AND PAINTING. 227
to its doing so, together with the lovely curves in which ita stalks, thus arranged, spring from the main bough. Fig. 5. is a plan of their arrangement merely, but fig. 4. is the way in which you are most hkely to see them : and observe, they spring from the stalk precisely as a Gothic vaulted roof springs^ each stalk representing a rib of the roof, and the leaves ita crossing stones ; and the beauty of each of those leaves is al« together owing to its terminating in the Gothic form, the pointed arch. Now do you think you would have liked your ash trees as well, if Nature had taught them Greek, and shown them how to grow according to the received Attic architectural rules of right ? I will try you. Here is a cluster of ash leaves, which I have grown expressly for you on Greek principles (fig. 6., Plate III). How do you like it ?
Observe, I have played you no trick in this comparison. It is perfectly fair in all respects. I have merely substituted for the beautiful spring of the Gothic vaulting in the ash bough, a cross lintel, and then, in order to raise the leaves to the same height, I introduce vertical columns, and I make the leaves square-headed instead of pointed, and theu' lateral ribs at right angles with the central rib, instead of sloping from it. I have, indeed, only given you two boughs instead of four ; because the perspective of the crossing ones could not have been given without confusing the figure ; but I im- agine you have quite enough of them as it is.
Nay, but some of you instantly answer, if we had been as long accustomed to square-leaved ash trees as we have been to sharp-leaved ash trees, we should like them just as well. Do not think it. Are you not much more accustomed to grey whinstone and brown sandstone than you are to rubies or emeralds ? and yet will you tell me you think them as beau- tiful ? Are you not more accustomed to the ordinary voices of men than to the perfect accents of sweet singing ? yet do you not instantly declare the song to be loveliest ? Examine well the channels of your admiration, and you will find that they are, in verity, as unchangeable as the channels of your heart's blood ; that just as by the pressure of a bandage, or by unwholesome and perpetual action of some part of the
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body, that blood may be wasted or arrested, and in its stag* nancy cease to nourish the frame or in its disturbed flow af* feet it with incurable disease, so also admiration itself may by the bandages of fashion, bound close over the eyes and the arteries of the soul, be arrested in its natural pulse and healthy flow ; but that wherever the artificial pressure is re- moved, it will return into that bed which has been traced for it by the finger of God.
Consider this subject well, and you will find that custom has indeed no real influence upon our feelings of the beauti- ful, except in dulling and checking them ; that is to say, it will and does, as we advance in years, deaden in some degree our enjoyment of all beauty, but it in no wise influences our determination of what is beautiful and what is not. You see the broad blue sky every day over your heads ; but you do not for that reason determine blue to be less or more beauti- ful than you did at first ; you are unaccustomed to see stones as blue as the sapphire, but you do not for that reason think the sapphire less beautiful than other stones. The blue col- our is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to be a source of delight ; and whether seen perpetually over your head, or crystallised once in a thousand years into a single and incom- parable stone, your acknowledgment of its beauty is equally natural, simple, and instantaneous. Pardon me for engaging you in a metaphysical discussion ; for it is necessary to the establishment of some of the greatest of all architectural principles that I should fully convince you of this great truth, and that I should quite do aw^ay with the various objections to it, which I suppose must arise in your minds. Of these there is one more which I must briefly meet. You know how much confusion has been introduced into the subject of criticism, by reference to the power of Association over the human heart ; you know how often it has been said that custom must have something to do with our ideas of beauty, because it endears so many objects to the affections. But, once for all, observe that the powers of association and of beauty are two entirely distinct powers, — as distinct, for instance, as the forces of gravitation and electricity. These forces may act
AND PAINTING. 229
together, or may neutralise one another, but are not for that reason to be supposed the same force ; and the charm of association will sometimes enhance, and sometimes entirely overpower, that of beauty ; but you must not confound the two together. You love many things because you are accustomed to them, and are pained by many things because they are strange to you ; but that does not make the accustomed sight more beautiful, or the strange one less so. The well known object may be dearer to you, or you may have discovered charms in it which others cannot ; but the charm was there before you discovered it, only needing time and love to perceive it. You love your friends and relations more than all the world beside, and may perceive beauties in their faces which others cannot perceive ; but you feel that you would be ridiculous in allowing yourselves to think them the most beautiful persons in the world : you acknowledge that the real beauty of the human countenance depends on fixed laws of form and ex- pression, and not on the affection you bear to it, or the degree in which you are familiarised with it : and so does the beauty of all other existences.
Now, therefore, I think that, without the risk of any farther serious objection occurring to you, I may state what I believe to be the truth, — that beauty has been appointed by the Deity to be one of the elements by which the human soul is continually sustained ; it is therefore to be found more or less in all natural objects, but in order that we may not satiate ourselves with it, and weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its utmost degrees. When we see it in those utmost degrees, we are attracted to it strongly, and remember it long, as in the case of singularly beautiful scenery, or a beautiful coun- tenance. On the other hand, absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty ; but degrees of it more or less dis- tinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.
This being so, you see that when the relative beauty of any particular forms has to be examined, we may reason, from the forms of nature around us, in this manner : — what nature
230 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
does generally, is sure to be more or less beautiful ; what slifl does rarely, will either be very beautiful, or absolutely ugly ; and we may again easily determine, if we are not willing in such a case to trust our feelings, which of these is indeed the case, by this simple rule, that if the rare occurrence is the result of the complete fulfilment of a natural law, it will be beautiful ; if of the violation of a natural law, it will be ugly. For instance, a sapphire is the result of the complete and perfect fulfilment of the laws of aggregation in the earth of alumina, and it is therefore beautiful ; more beautiful than clay, or any other of the conditions of that earth. But a square leaf on any tree would be ugly, being a violation of the laws of growth in trees,* and we ought to feel it so.
Now, then, I proceed to argue in this manner from what we see in the woods and fields around us ; that as they are evidently meant for our delight, and as we always feel them to be beautiful, we may assume that the forms into which their leaves are cast are indeed types of beauty, not of extreme or perfect, but average beauty. And finding that they inva- riably terminate more or less in pointed arches, and are not square -headed, I assert the pointed arch to be one of the forms most fitted for perpetual contemplation by the human mind ; that it is one of those which never weary, however often repeated ; and that therefore being both the strongest in structure, and a beautiful form (while the square head is both weak in structure, and an ugly form), we are unwise ever to build in any other.
Here, however, I must anticipate another objection. It may be asked why we are to build only the tops of the win dows pointed, — why not follow the leaves, and point them at the bottom also.
For this simple reason, that, while in architecture you are continually called upon to do what may be unnecessary for the sake of beauty, you are never called upon to do what is
* I am at present aware only of one tree, the tulip tree, whieli has an ex- ceptional form, and which, I doubt not, every one will admit loses much beauty in consequence. All other leaves, so far as I know, have th« round or pointed arch in the form of the extremities of their foils.
Fig. 7.
PLATE IV.— ^Page 230-Vol. V.) Window in Dumblane Cathedral.
AND PAINTING. 231
inconvenient for the sake of beauty. Tou want the level win- dow sill to lean upon, or to allow the window to open on a balcony : the eye and the common sense of the beholder re- quire this necessity to be met before any laws of beauty are thought of ; and besides this, there is in the sill no necessity for the pointed arch as a bearing form ; on the contrary, it would give an idea of weak support for the sides of the win- dow, and therefore is at once rejected fonly I beg of you par- ticularly to observe that the level sill, although useful, and therefore admitted, does not therefore become beautifulJJ the eye does not like it so well as the top of the window, nor does the sculptor like to attract the e^^e to it ; his richest mouldings, traceries, and sculptures are all reserved for the top of the window, they are sparingly granted to its horizon- tal base. And farther, observe, that when neither the con- venience of the sill, nor the support of the structure, are any more of moment, as in small windows and traceries, you in- stantly have the point given to the bottom of the window. Do you recollect the A^^est window of your own Dumblane Abbey? If you look in any common guide-book, you will find it pointed out as peculiarly beautiful, — it is acknowl- edged to be beautiful by the most careless observer. And why beautiful ? Look at it [fig. 7.). Simply because in its great contours it has the form of a forest leaf, and because in its decoration it has used nothing but forest leaves. The sharp and expressive moulding which surrounds it is a very interesting example of one used to an enormous extent by the builders of the early English Gothic, usually in the form seen in fig. 2. above, composed of clusters of four sharp leaves each, originally produced by sculpturing the sides of a four- sided pyramid, and afterwards brought more or less into a true image of leaves, but deriving all its beauty from the botanical form. In the present instance only two leaves are set in each cluster ; and the architect has been determined that the naturalism should be perfect. For he was no com- mon man who designed that cathedral of Dumblane. I know not anything so perfect in its simplicity, and so beautiful, as far as it reaches, in aU the Gothic with which I am acquainted
232 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
And just in proportion to his power of mind, that man was content to work under Nature's teaching ; and instead of putting a merely formal dogtooth, as every body else did at the time, he went down to the woody bank of the sweet river beneath the rocks on which he was building, and he took up a few of the fallen leaves that lay by it, and he set them in his arch, side by side, for ever. And, look — that he might show you he had done this, — he has made them all of different sizes, just as they lay ; and that you might not by any chance miss noticing the variety, he has put a great broad one at the top, and then a little one turned the wrong way, next to it, so that you must be blind indeed if you do not understand his meaning. And the healthy change and playfulness of this just does in the stone-work what it does on the tree boughs, and is a perpetual refreshment and invigoration ; so that, however long you gaze at this simple ornament — and none can be simpler, a village mason could carve it all round the window in a few hours — you are never weary of it, it seems always new.
It is true that oval windows of this form are comparatively rare in Gothic work, but, as you well know, circular oi' wheel windows are used constantly, and in most traceries the apertures are curved and pointed as much at the bottom as the top. So that I believe you will now allow me to proceed upon the assumption, that the pointed arch is indeed the best form into which the head either of door or window can be thrown, considered as a means of sustaining weight above it. How these pointed arches ought to be grouped and deco- rated, I shall endeavour to show you in my next lecture. Meantime I must beg of you to consider farther some of the general points connected with the structure of the roof.
I am sure that all of you must readily acknowledge the charm which is imparted to any landscape by the presence of cottages ; and you must over and over again have paused at the wicket gate of some cottage garden, delighted by the sim- ple beauty of the honeysuckle porch and latticed window. Has it ever occurred to you to ask the question, what effect the cottage would have upon your feelings if it had 7io rooff
AND PAINTING, 233
no visible roof, I mean ; — if instead of the thatched slope, in which the little upper windows are buried deep, as in a nest of straw — or the rough shelter of its mountain shales — or warm colouring of russet tiles — there were nothing but a flat leaden top to it, making it look like a large packing-case with windows in it? I don't think the rarity of such a sight would make you feel it to be beautiful ; on the contrary, if you think over the matter you will find that you actually do owe, and ought to owe, a great part of your pleasure in all cottage scenery, and in all the inexhaustible imagery of litera- ture which is founded upon it, to the conspicuousness of the cottage roof —to the subordination of the cottage itself to its covering, which leaves, in nine cases out of ten, really more roof than anything else. It is, indeed, not so much the whitewashed walls — nor the flowery garden — nor the rude fragments of stones set for steps at the door — nor any other picturesqueness of the building which interests you, so much as the grey bank of its heavy eaves, deep-cushioned with green moss and golden stonecrop. And there is a profound, yet evident, reason for this feeling. The very soul of the cottage — the essence and meaning of it — are in its roof ; it is that, mainly, wherein consists its shelter ; that, wherein it differs most completely from a cleft in rocks or bower in woods. It is in its thick impenetrable coverlid of close thatch that its whole heart and hospitality are concentrated. Consider the difference, in sound, of the expressions " beneath my roof" and "within my walls," — consider whether you would be best sheltered, in a shed, with a stout roof sustained on corner posts, or in an enclosure of four walls without a roof at all, — and you will quickly see how important a part of the cottage the roof must always be to the mind as well as to the eye, and how, from seeing it, the greatest part of our pleasure must continually arise.
^ Now, do you suppose that which is so all-important in a cottage, can be of small importance in your own dwelling- house ? Do you think that by any splendour of architecture — any height of stories — you can atone to the mind for the loss of the aspect of the roof ? It is vain to say you take the roof
234 LECTURES ON ARCHITECrURE
for granted. You may as well say you take a man's kindness for granted, though he neither looks nor speaks kindly. You may know him to be kind in reality, but you will not like him so well as if he spoke and looked kindly also. And whatever external splendour you may give your houses, you will always feel there is something wanting, unless you see their roofa plainly. And this especially in the north. In southern archi tecture the roof is of far less importance ; but here the soul of domestic building is in the largeness and conspicuousness of the protection against the ponderous snow and driving sleet. You may make the f a9ade of the square pile, if the roof be not seen, as handsome as you please, — you may cover it with dec- oration,— but there will always be a heartlessness about it, which you will not know how to conquer ; above all, a per- petual difficulty in finishing the wall at top, which will require all kinds of strange inventions in parapets and pinnacles for its decoration, and yet will never look right.
Now, I need not tell you that, as it is desirable, for the sake of the effect upon the mind, that the roof should be visible, so the best and most natural form of roof in the north is that which will render it most visible, namely, the steep gable ; the best and most natural, I say, because this form not only thrown off snow and rain most completely, and dries fastest, but ob- tains the greatest interior sj^ace within walls of a given height, removes the heat of the sun most effectually from the upper rooms, and affords most space for ventilation.
You have then, observe, two great principles, as far as north- em architecture is concerned ; first, that the pointed arch is to be the means by which the weight of the wall or roof is to be sustained ; secondly, that the steep gable is the form most proper for the roof itself. And now observe this most inter- esting fact, that all the loveliest Gothic architecture in the world is based on the group of Hues composed of the pointed arch and the gable. If you look at the beautiful apse of Amiens Cathedral — a work justly celebrated over all Europe — you will find it formed merely of a series of windows surmounted by pure gables of open work. If you look at the transept porches of Eouen, or at the great and celebrated porch of the cathedral
Fig. 8.
PLATE v.— Page 235— Vol. V.)
Mediaeval Turret.
AND :PAINTIN0. 235
of Kheims, or at that of Strasbourg, Bayeux, Amiens, or Pe« terborough, still you will see that these lovely compositions are nothing more than richly decorated forms of gable over pointed arch. But more than this, you must be all well aware how fond our best architectural artists are of the street effects of foreign cities ; and even those now present who have not per- sonally visited any of the continental towns must remember, I should think, some of the many interesting drawings by Mr. Prout, Mr. Nash, and other excellent draughtsmen, which have for many years adorned our exhibitions. Now, the principal charm of all those continental street effects is dependent on the houses having high-pitched gable roofs. In the Nether- lands and Northern France, where the material for building is brick or stone, the fronts of the stone gables are raised above the roofs, and you have magnificent and grotesque ranges of steps or curves decorated wdth various ornaments, succeeding one another in endless perspective along the streets of Antwerp, Ghent, or Brussels. In Picardy and Normandy, again, and many towns of Germany, where the material for building is principally wood, the roof is made to project over the gables, fringed with a beautifully carved cornice, and casting a broad shadow down the house front. This is principally seen at Abbe- ville, Eouen, Lisieux, and others of the older towns of France. But, in all cases, the effect of the whole street depends on the prominence of the gables ; not only of the fronts towards the streets, but of the sides also, set with small garret or dormer window^s, each of the most fantastic and beautiful form, and crowned with a little spire or pinnacle. "Wherever there is a Httle winding stair, or projecting bow window, or any other irregularity of form, the steep ridges shoot into turrets and small spires, as in fig. 8.*, each in its turn crowned by a fan- tastic ornament, covered with curiously shaped slates or shin- gles, or crested with long fringes of rich ironwork, so that, seen from above and from a distance, the intricate grouping of the roofs of a French city is no less interesting than its actual streets ; and in the streets themselves, the masses of broad shadow which the roofs form against the sky, are a most im- * TMs figure is copied from Prout.
236 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
portant background to the bright and sculptured surfaces of the walls.
Finally, I need not remind you of the effect upon the northern mind which has always been produced by the heaven- pointing spire, nor of the theory which has been founded upon it of the general meaning of Gothic Architecture as ex- pressive of religious aspiration. In a few minutes, you may ascertain the exact value of that theory, and the degree in which it is true.
The first tower of which we hear as built upon the earth, was certainly built in a species of aspiration ; but I do not suppose that any one here will think it was a religious one. " Go to now. Let us build a tower whose top may reach un- to Heaven." From that day to this, whenever men have be- come skilful architects at all, there has been a tendency in them to build high ; not in any religious feeling, but in mere exuberance of spirit and power — as they dance or sing — with a certain mingling of vanity — like the feeling in which a child builds a tower of cards ; and, in nobler instances, with also a strong sense of, and delight in the majesty, height, and strength of the building itself, such as we have in that of a lofty tree or a peaked mountain. Add to this instinct the fre- quent necessity of points of elevation for watch-towers, or of points of offence, as in towers built on the ramparts of cities, and, finally, the need of elevations for the transmission of sound, as in the Turkish minaret and Christian belfry, and you have, I think, a sufficient explanation of the tower-build- ing of the world in general. Look through your Bibles only, and collect the various expressions with reference to tower- building there, and you will have a very complete idea of the spirit in which it is for the most part undertaken. You begin with that of Babel ; then you remember Gideon beating down the Tower of Penuel, in order more completely to humble the pride of the men of the city ; you remember the defence of the tower of Shechem against Abimelech, and the death of Abimelech by the casting of a stone from it by a woman's hand ; you recollect the husbandman building a tower in his vineyard, and the beautiful expressions in Solomon's Song—
AND PAINTING. 237
" The Tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus ; " *'I am a w^all, and my breasts like towers ;" — you recollect the Psalmist's expressions of love and delight, "Go ye round about Jerusalem ; tell the towers thereof : mark ye well her bulwarks ; consider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the gen- eration following." You see in all these cases how completely the tower is a subject of human pride, or delight, or defence, not in anywise associated with religious sentiment ; the towers of Jerusalem being named in the same sentence, not with her temple, but with her bulwarks and palaces. And thus, when the tower is in reality connected with a place of worship, it was generally done to add to its magnificence, but not to add to its religious expression. And over the whole of the w^orld, you have various species of elevated buildings, the Egyptian pyramid, the Indian and Chinese pagoda, the Turkish mina- ret, and the Christian belfry — all of them raised either to make a show from a distance, or to gtj from, or swing bells in, or hang them round, or for some other very human reason. Thus, w^hen the good people of Beauvais were building thei^* cathedral, that of Amiens, then just completed, had excited the admiration of all France, and the people of Beauvais, in their jealousy and determination to beat the people of Amiens, set to work to build a tower to their own cathedral as high as they possibly could. They built it so high that it tumbled dow^n, and they were never able to finish their cathedral at all — it stands a wreck to this day. But you will not, I should think, imagine this to have been done in heavenward aspira- tion. Mind, however, I don't blame the people of Beauvais, except for their bad building. I think their desire to beat the citizens of Amiens a most amiable weakness, and only wish I could see the citizens of Edinburgh and Glasgow inflamed with the same emulation, building Gothic towers * instead of manufactory chimneys ; only do not confound a feeling which, though healthy and right, may be nearly analogous to that in
* I did not, at the time of tlie delivery of these lectures, know how many Gothic towers the worthy Glaswegians have lately built ; that of St. Peter's, in particular, being a most meritorious effort.
238 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
which you play a cricket-match, with any feeling allied to yout Lope of heaven.
Such being the state of the case with respect to tower- building in general, let me follow for a few minutes the changes which occur in the towers of northern and southern architects.
Many of us are familiar with the ordinary form of the Ital- ian bell-tower or campanile. From the eighth century to the thirteenth there was little change in that form : * four-square, rising high and without tapering into the air, story above story, they stood like giants in the quiet fields beside the piles of the basilica or the Lombardic chiu-ch, in this form [fig. 9. ), tiled at the top in a flat gable, with open arches below, and fewer and fewer arches on each inferior story, down to the bottom. It is worth while noting the difference in form be- tween these and the towers built for mihtary service. The latter were buil' as in fig. 10., projecting vigorously at the top over a series of brackets or machicolations, with very small windows, and no decoration below. Such towers as these were attached to every important palace in the cities of Italy, and stood in great circles — troops of towers — around their external walls : their ruins still frown along the crests of every promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far away in the great Lombardic plain, from distances of half-a-day's jour- ney, dark against the amber sky of the horizon. These are of course now built no more, the changed methods of modern warfare having cast them into entire disuse ; but the belfry or campanile has had a very different influence on European architecture. Its form in the plains of Italy and South France being that just shown jon, the moment we enter the valleys of the Alps, where there is snow to be sustained, we find its form of roof altered by the substitution of a steep gable for a flat one. \ There are probably few in the room who have not
* There is a good abstract of the forms of the Italian campanile, by Mr. Papworth, in the Journal of the Archaeological Institute. March, 1850.
I The form establishes itself afterwards in the plains, in sympathy with other Gothic conditions, a£ in the campanile of St. Mark's at Venice
W0m
V ' A, fiV "^jt " ft .11
Fig. 10
Fig. 9.
PLATE VI. -(Page 238— Vol. V.) LOMBAKDIC ToWERfi
AND PAINTING. 239
been in some parts of South Switzerland, and who do not re- member the beautiful effect of the gi'ey mountain churches, many of them hardly changed since the tenth and eleventh centuries, whose pointed towers stand up through the green level of the vines, or crown the jutting rocks that border the valley. From this form to the true spire, the change is slight, and consists in little more than various decoration, generally in putting small pinnacles at the angles, and piercing the cen- tral pyramid with traceried windows, sometimes, as at Fri- bourg and Burgos, throwing it into tracery altogether : but to do this is invariably the sign of a vicious style, as it takes away from the spire its character of a true roof, and turns it nearly into an ornamental excrescence. At Antwerp and Brus- sels, the celebrated towers (one, observe, ecclesiastical, be- ing the tower of the cathedral, and the other secular), are formed by successions of diminishing towers, set one above the other, and each supported by buttresses thrown to the angles of the one beneath. At the English cathedrals of Lich- field and Salisbury, the spire is seen in great purity, only decorated by sculpture ; but I am aware of no example so striking in its entire simplicity as that of the tow^ers of the cathedral of Coutances, in Normandy. There is a dispute be- tween French and English antiquaries as to the date of the building, the English being unwilling to admit its complete priority to all their own Gothic. I have no doubt of this pri- ority myself ; and I hope that the time will soon come when men will cease to confound vanity with patriotism, and will think the honour of their nation more advanced by their own sincerity and courtesy, than by claims, however learnedly con- tested, to the invention of pinnacles and arches. I believe the French nation was, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the greatest in the world ; and that the French not only invented Gothic architecture, but carried it to a perfection which no other nation has approached, then or since : but, however this may be, there can be no doubt that the towers of Coutances, if not the earliest, are among the very earliest, examples of the fully developed spire. I have drawn one of them care- fully for you [fig. 11.), and you will see immediately that they
240 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
are literally domestic roofs, with garret windows, executed on a large scale, and in stone. Their only ornament is a kind of scaly mail, which is nothing more than the copying in stone of the common wooden shingles of the house-roof ; and their security is provided for b}; strong gabled dormer windows, of massy masonry, which, though supported on detached shafts, have weight enough completely to balance the lateral thrusts of the spires.
Nothing can surpass the boldness or the simplicity of the plan ; and yet, in spite of this simplicity, the clear detaching of the shafts from the slope of the spire, and their great height, strengthened by rude cross-bars of stone, carried back to the wall behind, occasions so great a complexity and play of cast shadows, that I remember no architectural composi- tion of which the aspect is so completely varied at different hours of the day.* But the main thing I wish you to observe is, the complete domesticity of the work ; the evident treat- ment of the church spire merely as a magnified house-roof ; and the proof herein of the great truth of which I have been endeavouring to persuade you, that all good architecture rises out of good and simple domestic work; and that, therefore, before you attempt to build great churches and palaces, 3'ou must build good house doors and garret windows. Nor is the spire the only ecclesiastical form deducible from domestic architecture. The spires of France and Germany are associ- ated with other towers, even simpler and more straightforward in confession of their nature, in which, though the walls of the tower are covered with sculpture, there is an ordinary ridged gable roof on the top. The finest example I know of this kind of tower, is that on the northwest angle of Eouen Cathedral {fig. 12.) ; but they occur in multitudes in the vlder towns of Germany ; and the backgrounds of Albert Durer are full of them, and owe to them a great part of their interest : all these great and magnificent masses of architect- ure being repeated on a smaller scale by the little turret roofs and pinnacles of every house in the town ; and the whole system of them being expressive, not by any means of
* The sketch was made about 10 o'clock on a September morning.
Fig. 11.
Fig. 12.
PLATE VII.-(Page 240- Vol. V.) Spires at Coutances and Rouen.
i
AND P Alls TING. 241
religious feeling,* but merely of joyfulness and exhilaration of spirit in the inhabitants of such cities, leading them to throw their roofs high into the sky, and therefore giving to the style of architecture with which these grotesque roofs are associated, a certain charm like that of cheerfulness in the human face ; besides a power of interesting the beholder which is testified, not only by the artist in his constant search after such forms as the elements of his landscape, but by every phrase of our language and literature bearing on such
* Among tlie various modes in wliicli the architects, against whos« practice my writings are directed, have endeavoured to oppose them, no charge has been made more frequently than that of their self-contradic- tion ; the fact being, that there are few people in the world who are capable of seeing the two sides of any subject, or of conceiving how the statements of its opposite aspects can possibly be reconcileable. For in- stance, in a recent review, though for the most part both fair and in- telligent, it is remarked, on this very subject of the domestic origin of the northern Gothic, that " Mr. Ruskin is evidently possessed by a fixed idea, that the Venetian architects were devout men, and that their de- votion was expressed in their buildings ; while he will not allow our own cathedrals to have been built by any but worldly men, who had no thoughts of heaven, but only vague ideas of keeping out of hell, by erecting costly places of worship." If this writer had compared the two passages with the care which such a subject necessarily demands, he would have found that I was not opposing Venetian to English piety ; but that in the one case I was speaking of the spirit manifested in the entire architecture of the nation, and in the other of occasional efforts of superstition as distinguished from that spirit ; and, farther, that in the one case, I was speaking of decorative features which are ordinarily the results of feeling, in the other of structural features, which are or- dinarily the results of necessity or convenience. Thus it is rational and just that we should attribute the decoration of the arches of St. Mark's with scriptural mosaics to a religious sentiment ; but it would be a strange absurdity to regard as an effort of piety the invention of the form of the arch itself, of which one of the earliest and most perfect instances is in the Cloaca Maxima. And thus in the case of spires and towers, it is just to ascribe to the devotion of their designers that dignity which was bestowed upon forms derived from the simplest domestic buildings ; but it is ridiculous to attribute any great refinement of religious feeling, or height of religious aspiration, to those who fup nished the funds for the erection of the loveliest tower in North Fraao^, fey_payiug for permission to eat butter in Lent.
|j3>j^
242 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
topics. Have not these words, Pinnacle, Turret, Belfry, Spire, Tower, a pleasant sound in all your ears ? I do not speak of your scenery, I do not ask you how much you feel that it owes to the grey battlements that frown through the woods of Craig Millar, to the pointed turrets that flank the front of Holyrood, or to the massy keeps of your Crichtoun and Borthwick and other border towers. But look merely through 3"our poetry and romances ; take away out of your border ballads the word tower wherever it occurs, and the ideas connected with it, and what will become of the ballads ? See how Sir Walter Scott cannot even get through a descrip- tion of Highland scenery without help fi'om the idea : —
" Each purple peak, eacli flinty spire^ Was bathed in floods of living fire."
Take away from Scott's romances the word and idea turretj and see how much you would lose. Suppose, for instance, when young Osbaldistone is leaving Osbaldistone Hall, in- stead of saying "The old clock struck two from a turret ad- joining my bedchamber," he had said, "The old clock struck two from the landing at the top of the stair," what would be- come of the passage ? And can you really suppose that what has so much power over you in words has no power over you in reality ? Do you think there is any group of words which would thus interest you, when the things expressed by them are uninteresting ? For instance, you know that, for an im- mense time back, all your public buildings have been built with a row of pillars suj^porting a triangular thing called a pediment. You see this form every day in your banks and clubnouses, and churches and chapels ; you are told that it is the perfection of architectural beauty ; and yet suppose Sir Walter Scott, instead of writing, "Each purple peak, each flinty spire," bad written, "Each purple peak, each flinty * pediment.* " * Would you have thought the poem improved ?
* It has been objected to this comparison that the form of the pedi ment does not properly represent that of the rocks of the Trosachs The objection is utterly futile, for there is not a single spire or pinnacle from ontJ end of the Trosachs to the other. All their rocks are heaviljjf
AND PAINTING. 243
And if not, why would it be spoiled ? Simply because the idea is no longer of any value to you ; the thing spoken of is a nonentity.
These pediments, and stylobates, and architraves never ex- cited a single pleasurable feeling in you — never will, to the end of time. They are evermore dead, lifeless, and useless, in art as in poetry, and though you built as many of them as there are slates on your house-roofs, you will never care for them. They will only remain to later ages as monuments of the patience and pliability with w^hich the i3eoi3le of the nine- teenth century sacrificed their feelings to fashions, and their in- tellects to forms. But on the other hand, that strange and thrilling interest with which such words strike you as are in anywise connected with Gothic architecture — as for instance. Vault, Arch, Spire, Pinnacle, Battlement, Barbican, Porch, and myriads of such others, words everlastingly poetical and pow- erful whenever they occur — is a most true and certain index that the things themselves are delightful to you, and will ever continue to be so. Believe me, you do indeed love these things, so far as you care about art at all, so far as you are not ashamed to confess what you feel about them. In your public capacities, as bank directors, and charity overseers, and administrators of this and that other undertaking or institution, you cannot express your feelings at all. You form commit- tees to decide upon the style of the new building, and as yoiz have never been in the habit of trusting to your own taste in such matters, you inquire who is the most celebrated, that is to say, the most employed architect of the day. And you send for the great Mr. Blank, and the Great Blank sends you
rounded, and the introduction of the word '* spire " is a piece of in accuracy in description, ventured merely for the sake of tfie Gothic image. Farther: it has been said that if I had substituted the word "gable," it would have spoiled the line just as much as the word "pediment," though "gable" is a Gothic word. Of course it would; but why? Because "gable " is a term of vulgar domestic architecture, and there- fore destructive of the tone of the heroic description ; whereas "pedi- ment "and "spire" are precisely correlative terms, being each the crowning feature in ecclesiastical edifices, and the comparison of theiJ effects in the verse is therefore absolutely accurate, logical, and just.
244 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
a plan of a great long marble box with half-a-dozen pillars at one end of it, and the same at the other ; and you look at the Great Blank's great plan in a grave manner, and you daresay it will be very handsome ; and you ask the Great Blank what sort of a blank cheque must be filled up before the great plan can be realized, and you subscribe in a generous " burst of confidence " whatever is wanted ; and when it is all done, and the great white marble box is set up in your streets, you con- template it, not knowing what to make of it exactly, but hop- ing it is all right ; and then there is a dinner given to the Great Blank, and the morning Papers say that the new and handsome building, erected by the great Mr. Blank, is one of Mr. Blank's happiest efforts, and reflects the greatest credit upon the intelligent inhabitants of the city of so and so ; and the building keeps the rain out as well as another, and you remain in a placid state of impoverished satisfaction tlierewith ; but as for having any real pleasure out of it, you never hoped for such a thing. If you really make up a party of pleasure, and get rid of the forms and fashion of public propriety for an hour or two, where do you go for it ? Where do you go to eat strawberries and cream ? To Koslin Chapel, I believe ; not to the portico of the last-built institution. What do you see your children doing, obeying their own nat- ural and true instincts? What are your daughters drawing upon their card-board screens as soon as they can use a pencil ? Not Parthenon fronts, I think, but the ruins of Melrose Abbey, or Linlithgow Palace, or Lochleven Castle, their own pure Scotch hearts leading them straight to the right things, in spite of all that they are told to the contrary. You perhaps call this romantic, and youthful, and foolish. I am pressed for time now, and I cannot ask you to consider the meaning of the word "Komance." I will do that, if you please, in next lecture, for it is a word of greater weight and authority than we commonly believe. In the meantime, I will en deavour, lastly, to show you, not the romantic, but the plain and practical conclusions which should follow from the fact? I have laid before you.
I have endeavoured briefly to point out to you the pro*
AND PAINTING. 245
priety and naturalness of the two great Gothic forms, the pointed arch and gable roof. I wish now to tell you in what way they ought to be introduced into modern domestic archi- tecture.
You will all admit that there is neither romance nor com- fort in waiting at your own or at any one else's door on a windy and rainy day, till the servant comes from the end of the house to open it. You all know the critical nature of that opening — the drift of wind into the passage, the impossi- bility of putting down the umbrella at the proper moment without getting a cupful of water dropped down the back of your neck from the top of the doorway ; and you know how little these inconveniences are abated by the common Greek portico at the top of the steps. You know how the east winds blow through those unlucky couples of pillars, which are all that your architects find consistent with due observance of the Doric order. Then, away with these absurdities ; and the next house you build, insist upon having the pure old Gothic porch, walled in on both sides, with its pointed arch entrance and gable roof above. Under that, you can put down your umbrella at your leisure, and, if you will, stop a moment to talk with your friend as you give him the parting shake of the hand. And if now and then a wayfarer found a moment's rest on a stone seat on each side of it, I believe you would find the insides of your houses not one whit the less comfortable ; and, if you answer me, that were such ref- uges built in the open streets, they would become mere nests of filthy vagrants, I reply that I do not despair of such a change in the administration of the poor laws of this country, as shall no longer leave any of our fellow-creatures in a state m which they would pollute the steps of our houses by rest- ing upon them for a night. But if not, the command to all of us is strict and straight, "When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house.'' * Not to the workhouse, observe, but to thy house : and I say it would be better a thousand-fold, that our doors should be beset by the poor day by day, than * Isai. Iviii. 7.
246 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
that it sliould be written of any one of us, " They reap every one his corn in the field, and they gather the vintage of the wicked. They cause the naked to lodge without shelter, that they have no covering in the cold. They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock, for want of a shelter." '*
This, then, is the first use to which your pointed arches and gable roofs are to be put. The second is of more per- sonal pleasureableness. You surely must all of you feel and admit the delightfulness of a bow window ; I can hardly fancy a room can be perfect without one. Now you have nothing to do but to resolve that every one of your principal rooms shall have a bow window, either large or small. Sustain the projection of it on a bracket, crown it above with a little peaked roof, and give a massy piece of stone sculpture to the pointed arch in each of its casements, and you will have as inexhaustible a source of quaint richness in 3'our street archi- tecture, as of additional comfort and delight in the interiors of your rooms.
Thirdly ; as respects windows which do not project. You will find that the proposal to build them with pointed arches is met by an objection on the part of your architects, that j^ou cannot fit them with comfortable sashes. I beg leave to tell you that such an objection is utterly futile and ridiculous. I have lived for months in Gothic palaces, with pointed win- dows of the most complicated forms, fitted with modern sashes ; and with the most perfect comfort. But granting that the objection were a true one — and I suppose it is true to just this extent, that it may cost some few shillings more per window in the first instance to set the fittings to a pointed arch than to a square one — there is not the smallest necessity for the aperture of the window being of the pointed shape. Make the uppermost or bearing arch pointed only, and make the top of the window square, filling the interval with a stone shield, and you may have a perfect school of architecture, not only consistent with, but eminently conducive to, every com- fort of youi' daily life. The window in Oakham Castle {Jig. 2.) ♦ Job, xxiv. 6—8.
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is an example of such a form as actually employed in the thir-t teenth century ; and I shall have to notice another in the course of next lecture. Meanwhile, I have but one word to say in conclusion. Whatever has been advanced in the course of this evening, has rested on the assumption that all architect- ure was to be of brick and stone ; and may meet with some hesitation in its acceptance, on account of the probable use of iron, glass, and such other materials in our future edifices. I cannot now enter into any statement of the possible uses of iron or glass, but I will give you one reason, which I think will weigh strongly with most here, why it is not likely that they will ever become important elements in architectural effect. I know that I am speaking to a company of philoso- phers, but you are not philosophers of the kind who suppose WM, that the Bible is a superannuated book ; neither are you of Bt those who think the Bible is dishonoured by being referred ^Kto for judgment in small matters. The very divinity of the ^BBook seems to me, on the contrary, to justify us in referring ^B^uer?/ thing to it, with respect to which any conclusion can be ^■(gathered from its pages. Assuming then that the Bible is neither superannuated now, nor ever likely to be so, it will follow that the illustrations which the Bible employs are likely to be clear and intelligible illustrations to the end of time. J do not mean that every thing spoken of in the Bible histories must continue to endure for all time, but that the things which the Bible uses for illustration of eternal truths are likely to remain eternally intelligible illustrations. Now I find that iron architecture is indeed spoken of in the Bible. You know how it is said to Jeremiah, " Behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls, igainst the whole land." But I do not find that iron building Is ever alluded to as likely to become /a wiiZmr to the minds of men ; but, on the contrary, that an architecture of carved stone is continually employed as a source of the most import- ant illustrations. A simple instance must occur to all of you at once. The force of the image of the Corner Stone, as used throughout Scripture, would completely be lost, if the Chris- tian and civiHzed world were ever extensively to employ anjf
248 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
other material than earth and rock in their domestic build* ings ; I firmly believe that they never will ; but that as the laws of beauty are more j)erfectly established, we shall be con- tent still to build as our forefathers built, and still to receive the same great lessons which such building is calculated to convey ; of which one is indeed never to be forgotten Among the questions respecting towers which were laid before you to-night, one has been omitted : " What man is there of you intending to build a tower that sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he have sufiicient to fioish it ? " I have pressed upon you, this evening, the building of domestic towers. You may think it right to dismiss the subject at once from your thoughts ; but let us not do so, without con- sidering, each of us, how far that tower has been built, and how truly its cost has been counted.
LECTUEE n.
Befoee proceeding to the principal subject of this evening, I wish to anticipate one or two objections which may arise iu your minds to what I must lay before you. It may perhaps have been felt by you last- evening, that some things I pro- posed to you were either romantic or Utopian. Let us think for a few moments what romance and Utopianism mean.
iFirst, romance. In consequence of the many absurd fic- tions which long formed the elements of romance writing, the word romance is sometimes taken as synonymous with false- hood. Thus the French talk of Des Romans, and thus the English use the word Romancing.
But in this sense we had much better use the word false hood at once. It is far plainer and clearer. And if in this sense I put anything romantic before you, pray pay no atten tion to it, or to me.
In the second place. Because young people are particularly apt to indulge in reverie, and imaginative pleasures, and to neglect their plain and practical duties the word romantic has come to signify weak, fooHsh, speculative, unpractical, un
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principled. In all these cases it would be much better to sa^ weak, foolish, unpractical, unprincipled. The words are clearer If in this sense, also I put anything romantic before you, pray pay no attention to me.
But in the third and last place. The real and proper use of the word romantic is simply to characterise an improbable or unaccustomed degree of beauty, sublimity, or virtue. For instance, in matters of history, is not the Eetreat of the Ten Thousand romantic ? Is not the death of Leonidas ? of the Horatii? On the other hand, you find nothing romantic, though much that is monstrous, in the excesses of Tiberius or Commodus. So again, the battle of Agincourt is romantic, and of Bannockburn, simply because there was an extraor- dinary display of human virtue in both those battles. But there is no romance in the battles of the last Italian campaign, in which mere feebleness and distrust were on one side, mere physical force on the other. And even in fiction, the oj^po- nents of virtue, in order to be romantic, must have sublimity mingled with their vice. It is not the knave, not the ruffian, that are romantic, but the giant and the dragon ; and these, not because they are false, but because they are majestic. So again as to beauty. You feel that armour is romantic because it is a beautiful dress, and you are not used to it. You do not feel there is anything romantic in the paint and shells of a Sandwich Islander, for these are not beautiful.
So, then, observe, this feehng which you are accustomed to despise — this secret and poetical enthusiasm in all your hearts, which, as practical men, you try to restrain — is indeed one of the holiest parts of your being. It is the instinctive delight in, and admiration for, sublimity, beauty, and virtue, unusu- ally manifested. And so far from being a dangerous guide, it is the truest part of your being. It is even truer than your consciences. A man's conscience may be utterly perverted and led astray ; but so long as the feelings of romance endure within us, they are unerring — they are as true to what is right and lovely as the needle to the north ; and all that you have to do is to add to the enthusiastic sentiment, the majestic judgment — to mingle prudence and foresight with imagination
250 LECTURES ON ARGIIITECTDRE
and admiration, and you have the perfect human soul. But the great evil of these days is that we try to destroy the ro- mantic feeling, instead of bridling and directing it. Mark •what Young says of the men of the world :
*' They, wlio think nought so strong of the romance, So rank knight-errant, as a real friend."
And they are right. True friendship is romantic, to the men of the world — true affection is romantic — true religion is romantic ; and if you were to ask me who of all powerful and popular writers in the cause of error had wrought most harm to their race, I should hesitate in reply whether to name Vol- taire or Byron, or the last most ingenious and most venomous of the degraded philosophers of Germany, or rather Cervantes, for he cast scorn upon the holiest principles of humanity — he, of all men, most helped forward the terrible change in the sol- diers of Europe, from the spirit of Bayard to the spirit of Bonaparte,* helped to change loyalty into license, protection into plunder, truth into treachery, chivalry into selfishness ; and since his time, the purest impulses and the noblest pur- poses have perhaps been oftener stayed by the devil, under the name of Quixotism, than under any other base name or false allegation.
Quixotism, or Utopianism : that is another of the devil's pet words. I believe the quiet admission which we are all of us so ready to make, that, because things have long been wrong, it is impossible they should ever be right, is one of the most fatal sources of misery and crime from which this world suffers. Whenever you hear a man dissuading yon from attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection is "Utopian," beware of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether. There is no need for it. Things are either possible or impossible — you can easily determine which, in any given state of human science. If the thing is
* I mean no scandal against i\iQ present emperor of the French, whose truth has, I believe, been as conspicuous in the late political negotia- tions, as his decision and prudence have been throughout the whole course oi his government.
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impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it ; if pos* Bible, try for it. It is very Utopian to hope for the entire doing away with drunkenness and misery out of the Canon- gate ; but the Utopianism is not our business — the work is. It is Utopian to hope to give every child in this kingdom the knowledge of God from its youth ; but the Utopianism is not our business — the work is.
I have delayed you by the consideration of these two words, only in the fear that they might be inaccurately applied to the plans I am going to lay before you ; for, though they were Utopian, and though they were romantic, they might be none the worse for that. But they are neither. Utopian they are not ; for they are merely a proposal to do again what has been done for hundreds of years by people whose wealth and power were as nothing compared to ours ; — and romantic they are not, in the sense of self-sacrificing or emi- nently virtuous, for they are merely the proposal to each of you that he should live in a handsomer house than he does at present, by substituting a cheap mode of ornamentation for a costly one. You perhaps fancied that architectural beauty was a very costly thing. Far from it. It is architec- tural ugliness that is costly. In the modern system of archi- tecture, decoration is immoderately expensive, because it is both wrongly placed and wrongly finished. I say first, wrongly placed. Modern architects decorate the tops of their buildings. Medieval ones decorated the bottom.* That makes all the difference between seeing the ornament and not seeing it. If you bought some pictures to decorate such a room as this, where would you put them ? On a level with the eye, I suppose, or nearly so ? Not on a level with the chandelier ? If you were determined to put them up there, round the cornice, it would be better for you not to buy them at all. You would merely throw your money away. And the fact is, that your money is being thrown away con- tinually, by wholesale ; and while you are dissuaded, on the ground of expense, from building beautiful windows and
* For farther confirmation of this statement, see the Addenda at the end of this lecture.
252 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
beautiful doors, you are continually made to pay for orna* ments at the tops of your houses, which, for all the use they are of, might as well be in the moon. For instance, there is not, on the whole, a more studied piece of domestic architect- ure in Edinburgh than the street in which so many of your excellent physicians live — Rutland Street. I do not know if you have observed its architecture ; but if you will look at it to-morrow, you will see that a heavy and close balustrade is put all along the eaves of the houses. Your physicians are net, I suppose, in the habit of taking academic and medita- tive walks on the roofs of their houses ; and, if not, this bal- ustrade is altogether useless, — nor merely useless, for you will find it runs directly in front of all the garret windows, thus interfering with their light, and blocking out their view of the street. All that the parapet is meant to do, is to give some finish to the fayades, and the inhabitants have thus been made to pay a large sum for a piece of mere decoration. AVhether it does finish the fayades satisfactorily, or whether the physicians resident in the street, or their patients, are in anywise edified by the succession of pear-shaped knobs of stone on their house-tops, I leave them to tell you, only do not fancy that the design, whatever its success, is an economi- cal one.
But this is a very slight waste of money, compared to the constant habit of putting careful sculpture at the tops of houses. A temple of luxury has. just been built in London, for the army and navy club. It cost £40,000, exclusive of purchase of ground. It has upon it an enormous quantity of sculpture, representing the gentlemen of the navy as little boys riding upon dolphins, and the gentlemen of the army — I couldn't see as what — nor can anybody ; for all this sculpt- ure is put up at the top of the house, where the gutter should be, under the cornice. I know that this was a Greek way of doing things. I can't help it : that does not make it a wise one. Greeks might be willing to pay for what they couldn't see, but Scotchmen and Englishmen shouldn't.
Not that the Greeks threw their work away as we do. As far as I know Greek buildings, their ornamentation*
Fig. 13.
Fig. 14.
PLATE Vin.-(Page 25C— Vol. V.) Illustrative Diagrams.
AJ^D PAINTING. 253
though often bad, is always bold enough and large enough to be visible in its place. It is not putting ornament high that is wrong ; but it is cutting it too fine to be seen, wherever it is. This is the great modern mistake ; you are actually at twice the cost which would produce an impressive ornament, to produce a contemptible one ; you increase the price of your buildings by one-half, in order to mince their decoration into invisibility. Walk through your streets, and try to make out the ornaments on the upper parts of your fine buildings — (there are none at the bottoms of them). Don't do it long, or you will all come home with inflamed eyes, but you will soon discover that you can see nothing but confusion in orna- ments that have cost jou. ten or twelve shillings a foot.
Now the Gothic builders placed their decoration on a pre- cisely contrary principle, and on the only rational principle. All their best and most delicate work they put on the founda- tion of the building, close to the spectator, and on the upper parts of the walls they put ornaments large, bold, and capable of being plainly seen at the necessary distance. A single ex- ample wall enable you to understand this method of adaptation perfectly. The lower part of the fa9ade of the cathedral of Lyons, built either late in the thirteenth or early in the four- teenth century, is decorated with a series of niches, filled by statues of considerable size, which are supported upon pedes- tals within about eight feet of the ground. In general, pedes- tals of this kind are supported on some projecting portion of the basement ; but at Lyons, owing to other arrangements of the architecture into which I have no time to entei', they are merely projecting tablets, or flat-bottomed brackets of stone, projecting from the wall. Each bracket is about a foot and a half square, and is shaped thus [jig. 13.), showing to the spectator, as he walks beneath, the flat bottom of each bracket, quite in the shade, but within a couple of feet of the eye, and lighted by the reflected light from the pavement. The whole of the surface of the wall round the great entrance is covered with bas-relief, as a matter of course ; but the architect ap- pears to have been jealous of the smallest space which was vvell within the range of sigJit ^ and the bottom of every
254 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
bracket is decorated also — nor that slightly, but decorated with no fewer than six figures each, besides a flower border, in a space, as I said, not quite a foot and a half square. The shape of the field to be decorated being a kind of quatrefoil, as shown in fig. 13., four small figures are placed, one in each foil, and two larger ones in the centre. I had only timCj in passing through the town, to make a drawing of one of the angles of these- pedestals ; that sketch I have enlarged, in order that you may have some idea of the character of the sculpture. Here is the enlargement of it [fig. 15.). Now observe, this is one of the angles of the bottom of a pedestal, not two feet broad, on the outside of a Gothic building ; it contains only one of the four little figures which form those angles ; and it shows you the head only of one of the larger figures in the centre. Yet just observe how much design, how much wonderful composition, there is in this mere fragment of a building of the great times ; a frag- ment, literally no larger than a schoolboy could strike off in wantonness with a stick : and yet I cannot tell you how much care has been spent — not so much on the execution, for it does not take much trouble to execute well on so small a scale — but on the design, of this minute fragment. You see it is composed of g, branch of wild roses, which switches round at the angle, embracing the minute figure of the bishop, and terminates in a spray reaching nearly to the head of the large figure. You will observe how beautifully that figure is thus j^ointed to by the spray of rose, and how all the leaves around it in the same manner are subservient to the grace of its action. Look, if I hide one line, or one rosebud, how the whole is injured, and how much there is to study, in the detail of it. Look ^t this little diamond crown, with a lock of the hair escaping from beneath it ; and at the beau- tiful way in which the tiny leaf at a, is set in the angle to pre- vent its harshness ; and having examined this well, consider what a treasure of thought there is in a cathedral front, a hundred feet wide, every inch of which is wrought with sculpt- ure like this ! And every front of our thirteenth century cathedrals is inwrought with sculpture of this quality ! And
Fig. 1,5.
PLATE IX.- (Page 254— Vol. V.)
Sculpture at Lyons.
Fig. 16.
PLATE X,— (Page 255 -Vol. V.) Niche at Amiens.
AND PAINTING. 255
jet you quietly allow yourselves to be told that the men who thus wrought were barbarians, and that your architects are wiser and better in covering your walls with sculpture of this kind {fig. 14. plate 8.).
Walk round your Edinburgh buildings, and look at the height of your eye, what you will get from them. Nothing but square-cut stone — square-cut stone — a wilderness of square-cut stone for ever and for ever ; so that your houses jook like prisons, and truly are so ; for the worst feature of Greek architecture is, indeed, not its costliness, but its tyr- anny. These square stones are not prisons of the body, but graves of the soul ; for the very men who could do sculpture like this of Lyons for you are here ! still here, in your de- spised w^orkmen : the race has not degenerated, it is you who have bound them down, and buried them beneath your Greek stones. There would be a resun'ection of them, as of re- newed souls, if you would only lift the weight of these weary walls from off their hearts.*
But I am leaving the point immediately in question., which, you will remember, was the proper adaptation of ornament to its distance from the eye. I have given you one example of Gothic ornament, meant to be seen close ; now let me give you one of Gothic ornament intended to be seen far off. Here {fig. 16.) is a sketch of a niche at Amiens Cathedral, some fifty or sixty feet high on the fayade, and seven or eight feet wide. Now observe, in the ornament close to the eye, you had six figures and a whole wreath of roses in the space of afoot and a half square ; but in the ornament sixty feet from the eye, you have now only ten or twelve large leaves in a space of eight feet square ! and note also that now there is no attempt whatsoever at the refinement of line and finish of edge which there was in the other example. The sculptor knew, that at the height of this niche, people would not attend to the delicate lines, and that the broad shadows would catch the eye instead. He has therefore left, as you see, rude square edges to his niche, and carved his leaves as
* This subject is farther pursued in the Addenda at the end of thif Lecture.
256 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
massively and broadly as possible ; and yet, observe how dex. terously he has given you a sense of delicacy and mimitenesn in the work, by mingling these small leaves among the large ones, I made this sketch from a photograph, and the spot in which these leaves occurred was obscure ; I have, there- fore, used those of the Oxalis acetosella, of which the quaint form is always interesting.
And you see by this example also what I meant just now by saying, that our own ornament was not only wrongly placed, but wrongly finished. The very qualities which fit this leaf-decoration for due effect upon the eye, are those which would conduce to economy in its execution, A more expensive ornament would be less effective ; and it is the very price we pay for finishing our decorations which spoils our architecture. And the curious thing is, that while you all appreciate, and that far too highly, what is called " the bold style " in painting, you cannot appreciate it in sculpture. You like a hurried, broad, dashing manner of execution in a watercolour drawing, though that may be seen as near as you choose, and 3^et you refuse to admit the nobleness of a bold, simple, and dashing stroke of the chisel in work which is to be seen forty fathoms off. Be assured that " handling " is as great a thing in marble as in paint, and that the power of producing a masterly effect with few touches is as essential in an architect as in a draughtsman, though indeed that power is never perfectly attained except by those who possess the power of giving the highest finish when there is occasion.
But there is yet another and a weightier charge to be brought against our modern Pseudo-Greek ornamentation. It is, first, wrongly placed ; secondly, wrongly finished ; and, thirdly, utterly without meaning. Observe in these two Gothic ornaments, and in every other ornament that ever was carved in the great Gothic times, there is a definite aim at the representation of some natural object. In fig. 15. you have an exquisite group of rose-stems, with the flowers and bads ; in fig. 16., various wild weeds, especially the Geranium pratense ; in every case you have an approximation to a nat- ural form, and an unceasing variety of suggestion But how
AND PAINTING. 257
much of nature have you in your Greek buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have lately built ; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building in question will forgive me ; for it is just be- cause it is a good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair instance ; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the institution on the mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise. It is not his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.
Now, according to the orthodox practice in modern archi- tecture, the most delicate and minute pieces of sculpture on that building are at the very top of it, just under its gutter. You cannot see them in a dark day, and perhaps may never, to this hour, have noticed them at all. But there they are, sixty-six finished heads of lions, all exactly the same ; and, therefore, I suppose, executed on some noble Greek type, too noble to allow any modest Modern to think of improving upon it. But whether executed on a Greek type or no, it is to be presumed that, as there are sixty-six of them alike, and on so important a building as that which is to contain your school of design, and which is the principal example of the Athenian style in modern Athens, there must be something especially admirable in them, and deserving your most attentive con- templation. In order, therefore, that you might have a fair opportunity of estimating their beauty, I was desirous of get- ting a sketch of a real lion's head to compare with them, and my friend Mr. Millais kindly offered to draw both the one and the other for me. You have not, however, at present, a lion in your zoological collection ; and it being, as you are prob- ably aware, the first principle of Pre-Kaphaelitism, as well as essential to my object in the present instance, that no drawing should be made except from nature itself, I was obliged to be content with a tiger's head, whicb^ however, will answer my purpose just as well, in enabling you to compare a piece o1 true, faithful, and natural work with modern architectural
258 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
sculpture. Here, in the first place, is Mr. Millais' drawing from the living beast {fig. 17.). I have not the least fear but that you will at once acknowledge its truth and feel its power. Prepare yourselves next for the Grecian sublimity of the ideal beast, from the cornice of your schools of design. Behold it
(fig. 18.).
Now we call ourselves civilized and refined in matters ol art, but I assure you it is seldom that, in the very basest and coarsest grotesques of the inferior Gothic workmen, anything so contemptible as this head can be ever found. They only sink into such a failure accidentally, and in a single instance ; and we, in our civilization, repeat this noble piece of work threescore and six times over, as not being able to invent any- thing else so good ! Do not think Mr. Millais has caricatured it. It is drawn with the strictest fidelity ; photograph one of the heads to-morrow, and you will find the photograph tell you the same tale. Neither imagine that this is an unusual example of modern work. Your banks and public offices are covered with ideal lions' heads in every direction, and you will find them all just as bad as this. And, farther, note that the admission of such barbarous types of sculpture is not merely ridiculous ; it is seriously harmful to your powers of perceiving truth and beauty of any kind or at any time. Im- agine the effect on the minds of your children of having such representations of a lion's head as this thrust upon them per- petually ; and consider what a different effect might be pro- duced upon them if, instead of this barren and insipid absurd- ity, every boss on your buildings were, according to the w^orkman's best ability, a faithful rendering of the form of some existing animal, so that all their walls were so many pages of natural history. And, finally, consider the difference, with respect to the mind of the workman himself, betweeo being kept all his life carving, by sixties, and forties, and thir^ ties, repetitions of one false and futile model — and being sent, for every piece of work he had to execute, to make a sterr and faithful study from some living creature of God.
And this last consideration enables me to press thi-s sub- ject on you on far higher grounds than I have done yet.
Fig. 18,
PLATE XI.— (Page 25S— Vol. V.)
Tiger's Head, and Improvement op the SamS
ON Greek PuiNcirLES.
AND PAINTING. 259
I have hitherto appealed only to your national pride, or to your common sense ; but surely I should treat a Scottish audience with indignity if I appealed not finally to something higher than either of them — to their religious principles.
You know how often it is difficult to be wisely charitable, to do good without multiplying the sources of evil. You know that to give alms is nothing unless you give thought also ; and that therefore it is written, not '' blessed is he that feedeth the poor," but, "blessed is he that considereth the poor." And you know that a little thought and a little kind- ness are often worth more than a great deal of money.
Now this charity of thought is not merely to be exercised towards the poor ; it is to be exercised towards all men. There is assuredly no action of our social life, however un- important, which, by kindly thought, may not be made to have a beneficial influence upon otliers ; and it is impossible to spend the smallest ^um of money, for any not absolutely necessary purpose, without a grave responsibility attaching to the manner of spending it. The object we ourselves covet may, indeed, be desirable and harmless, so far as we are con- cerned, but the providing us with it may, perhaps, be a very prejudicial occupation to some one else. And then it becomes instantly a moral question, whether we are to indulge our- selves or not. Whatever we wish to buy, we ought first to consider not only if the thing be fit for us, but if the manu- facture of it be a wholesome and happy one ; and if, on the whole, the sum we are going to spend will do as much good spent in this way as it would if spent in any other way. It may be said that we have not time to consider all this before we make a purchase. But no time could be spent in a more important duty ; and God never imposes a duty without giv- ing the time to do it. Let us, however, only acknowledge the principle ; — once make up your mind to allow the consid- eration of the effect of your purchases to regulate the kijid of your purchase, and you will soon easily find grounds enough to decide upon. The plea of ignorance will never take away our responsibilities. It is written, "If thou sayest, Behold we knew it not ; doth not he that pondereth the heart con-
260 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
sider it ? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he kno\f it?"
I could press this on you at length, but I hasten to apply the principle to the subject of art. I will do so broadly at first, and then come to architecture. Enormous sums are spent annually by this country in what is called patronage of art, but in what is for the most part merely buying what strikes our fancies. True and judicious patronage there is indeed ; many a work of art is bought by those who do not care for its possession, to assist the struggling artist, or relieve the unsuccessful one. But for the most part, I fear we are too much in the habit of buy- ing simply what we like best, wholly irrespective of any good to be done, either to the artist or to the schools of the coun- try. Now let us remember, that every farthing we spend on objects of art has influence over men's minds and spirits, far more than over their bodies. By the purchase of every print which hangs on your walls, of every t^up out of which you drink, and every table off which you eat your bread, you are educating a mass of men in one way or another. You are either employing them healthily or un wholesomely ; you are making them lead happy or unhappy lives ; you are leading them to look at nature, and to love her — to think, to feel, to enjoy, — or you are blinding them to nature, and keeping them bound, like beasts of burden, in mechanical and monoto- nous employments. We shall all be asked one day, why we did not think more of this.
Well but, you will say, how can we decide what we ought to buy, but by our likings? You would not have us buy what we don't like ? No, but I would have you thoroughly sure that there is an absolute right and wrong in all art, and try to find out the right, and hke that ; and, secondly, some- times to sacrifice a careless preference or fancy, to w^hat you know is for the good of jowc fellow-creatures. For instance, when you spend a guinea upon an engraving, what have you done ? You have paid a man for a certain number of hours to sit at a dirty table, in a dirty room, inhaling the fumes of nitric acid, stooping over a steel plate, on which, by the help of a magnifying glass, he is, one by one, laboriously cutting
AND PAINTING, 261
out certain notches and scratches, of which the effect is to be the copy of another man's work. You cannot suppose you have done a very charitable thing in this ! On the other hand, whenever you buy a small watercolour drawing, you have employed a man happily and healthily, working in a clean room (if he likes), or more probably still, out in the pure country and fresh air, thinking about something, and learning something every moment ; not straining his eye- sight, nor breaking his back, but working in ease and happi- ness. Therefore if you can like a modest watercolour better than an elaborate engraving, do. There may indeed be en- gravings which are worth the suffering it costs to produce them ; but at all events, engravings of public dinners and lay- ing of foundation stones, and such things, might be dispensed with. The engraving ought to be a first-rate picture of a first-rate subject to be worth buying. Farther, I know that many conscientious persons are desirous of encouraging art, but feel at the same time that their judgment is not certain enough to secure their choice of the best kind of ai't. To 8uch persons I would now especially address myself, fully ad- mitting the greatness of their difficulty. It is not an easy thing to acquire a knowledge of painting ; and it is by no means a desirable thing to encourage bad painting. One bad painter makes another, and one bad painting will often spoil a great many healthy judgments. I could name popular painters now living, who have retarded the taste of their gen- eration by twenty years. Unless, therefore, we are certain not merely that we like a painting, but that we are right in liking it, we should never buy it. For there is one way of spending money which is perfectly safe, and in which we may be absolutely sure of doing good. I mean, by paying for simple sculpture of natural objects, chiefly flowers and animals. You are aware that the possibilities of error in sculpture are muck less than in painting ; it is altogether an easier and simpler art, invariably attaining perfection long before painting, in the progress of a national mind. It may indeed be corrupted by false taste, or thrown into erroneous forms ; but for the most part, the feebleness of a sculptor is shown in imperfec
262 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
tion and rudeness, rather than in definite error. He does vox reach the fineness of the forms of nature ; but he approaches them truly up to a certain point, or, if not so, at all events an honest effort will continually improve him : so that if we set a simple natural form before him, and tell him to copy it, we are sure we have given him a wholesome and useful piece of education ; but if we told him to paint it, he might, with all the honesty in the world, paint it wrongly and falsely, to the end of his days.
So much for the workman. But the workman is not the only person concerned. Observe farther, that when you buy a print, the enjoyment of it is confined to yourself and to your friends. But if you carve a piece of stone, and put it on the outside of your house, it will give pleasure to every person who passes along the street — to an innumerable mul- titude, instead of a few.
Nay but, you say, we ourselves shall not be benefited by the sculpture on the outsides of our houses. Yes, you will, and in an extraordinary degree ; for, observe farther, that architecture differs from painting peculiarly in being an art of accumulation. The prints bought by your friends and hung up in their houses, have no collateral effect with yours : they must be separately examined, and if ever they were hung side by side, they would rather injure than assist each other's effect. But the sculpture on your friend's house unites in effect with that on your own. The two houses form one grand mass — far grander than either separately ; much more if a third be added — and a fourth ; much more if the whole street — if the whole city — join in the solemn harmony of sculpture. Your separate possessions of pictures and prints are to you as if you sang pieces of music with your single voices in your own houses. But your architecture would be as if you all sang together in one might}^ choir. In the sep- arate picture, it is rare that there exists any very high source of sublime emotion ; but the great concerted music of the streets of the city when turret rises over turret, and casement frowns beyond casement, and tower succeeds to tower along the farthest ridges of the inhabited hills, — this is a sublimity
AND PAINTING. 263
of which you can at present form no conception ; and capa- ble, I believe, of exciting almost the deepest emotion that art " can ever strike from the bosoms of men.
And justly the deepest : for it is a law of God and of nature, that your j)leasures — as your virtues — shall be enhanced by mutual aid. As, by joining hand in hand, you can sustain each other best, so, hand in hand, you can delight each other best. And there is indeed a charm and sacredness in street architecture which must be wanting even to that of the tem- ple : it is a little thing for men to unite in the forms of a religious service, but it is much for them to unite, like true brethren, in the arts and offices of their daily lives.
And now, I can conceive only of one objection as likely still to arise in your minds, which I must briefly meet. Your pictures, and other smaller works of art, you can carry with you, wherever you live ; your house must be left behind. Indeed, I believe that the wandering habits which have now become almost necessary to our existence, lie more at the root of our bad architecture than any other character of mod- ern times. We always look upon our houses as mere tempo- rary lodgings. We are always hoping to get larger and finer ones, or are forced, in some way or other, to live where we do not choose, and in continual expectation of changing our place of abode. In the present state of society, this is in a great measure unavoidable ; but let us remember it is an evil ; and that so far as it is avoidable, it becomes our duty to check the impulse. It is not for me to lead you at present into any consideration of a matter so closely touching your private interests and feelings ; but it surely is a subject for serious thought, whether it might not be better for many of us, if, on attaining a certain position in life, we determined, with God's permission, to choose a home in which to live and die,— a home not to be increased by adding stone to stone and field to field, but which, being enough for all our wishes at that period, we should resolve to be satisfied with for •ever. Consider this ; and also, whether we ought not to be more in the habit of seeking honour from our descendants ihau our ancestors ; thinking it better to be nobly remem'
264 LECTURES ON AUCHITECTURB
bered than nobly born ; and striving so to live, that our sons, and our sons' sons, for ages to come, might still lead theii children reverently to the doors out of Avhich we had been carried to the grave, saying, " Look : This was his house : This was his chamber."
I believe that you can bring forward no other serious ob- jection to the principles for which I am pleading. They are so simple, and, it seems to me, so incontrovertible, that I trust you will not leave this room without determining, as you have opportunity, to do something to advance this long- neglected art of domestic architecture. The reasons I have laid before you would have weight, even were I to ask you to go to some considerable expenditure beyond what you at present are accustomed to devote to such purposes ; but nothing more would be needed than the diversion of ex- penditures, at present scattered and unconsidered, into a sin- gle and effective channel. Nay, the mere interest of the money which we are accustomed to keep dormant by us in the form of plate and jewellery, would alone be enough to sustain a school of magnificent architecture. And although, in highly wrought plate, and in finely designed jewellery, noble art may occasionally exist, yet in general both jewels and services of silver are matters of ostentation, much more than sources of intellectual pleasure. There are also many evils connected with them — they are a care to their possessors, a temptation to the dishonest, and a trouble and bitterness to the poor. So that I cannot but think that part of the wealth which now lies buried in these doubtful luxuries, might most wisely and kindly be thrown into a form which would give perpetual pleasure, not to its possessor only, but to thousands besides, and neither tempt the unprincipled, nor inflame the envious, nor mortify the poor ; while, supposing that your own dignity was dear to you, this, you may rely upon it, would be more impressed upon others by the noble* ness of your house-walls than by the glistening of your side- boards.
And even supposing that some additional expenditure were required for this purpose, are we indeed so much poorei
I
Fig. 19.
PLATE Xn —(Page 265 -Vol. V.) Garret Window in Hotel, de BourGTHEuouDE.
I
ANB PAINTING.
265
than our ancestors, that we cannot now, in all the power o! Britain, afford to do what was done by every small republic, by every independent city, in the middle ages, throughout France, Italy, and Germany ? I am not aware of a vestige of domestic architecture, belonging to the great mediaeval pe- riods, which, according to its material and character, is not richly decorated. But look here {fig. 19.), look to what an extent decoration has been carried in the domestic edifices of a city, I suppose not much superior in importance, commer- cially speaking, to Manchester, Liverpool, or Birmingham — namely, Rouen, in Normandy. This is a garret window, still existing there, — a garret window built by William de Bourg- theroude in the early part of the sixteenth century. I show it to you, first, as a proof of what may be made of the features of domestic buildings we are apt to disdain ; and secondly, as another example of a beautiful use of the pointed arch, filled by the solid shield of stone, and enclosing a square casement. It is indee'.l a peculiarly rich and beautiful instance, but it is a type of which many examples still exist in France, and of which many once existed in your own Scotland, of rude work indeed, but admirable always in effect upon the outline of the building.*
I do not, however, hope that you will often be able to go as far as this in decoration ; in fact I would rather recommend a simpler style to you, founded on earlier examples, but, if possible, aided by colour, introduced in various kinds of nat- urally coloured stones. I have observed that your Scottish lapidaries have admirable taste and skill in the disposition of the pebbles of your brooches and other ornaments of dress ; and I have not the least doubt that the genius of your country would, if directed to this particular style of architecture, pro- duce works as beautiful as they would be thoroughly national. The Gothic of Florence, which owes at least the half of its
* One of the most beautiful instances I know of this kind of window is in the ancient house of the Maxwells, on the estate of Sir John Max- well of Polloc. I had not seen it when I gave this lecture, or I should have preferred it, as an example, to that of Rouen, with reference to modern possibilities of imitation.
266 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTUItE
beauty to the art ol inlaying, would furnisli you with exqui site examples ; its sculj)ture is indeed the most perfect which was ever produced by the Gothic schools ; but, besides thia rich sculpture, all its flat surfaces are inlaid with coloured stones, much being done with a green serpentine, which forms the greater part of the coast of Genoa. You have, 1 believe, large beds of this rock in Scotland, and other stones besides, peculiarly Scottish, calculated to form as noble a school of colour as ever existed.*
And, now, I have but two things more to say to you in conclusion.
Most of the lecturers whom you allow to address you, lay before you views of the sciences they profess, which are either generally received, or incontrovertible. I come before you at a disadvantage ; for I cannot conscientious^ tell you any- thing about architecture but what is at variance with all com- monly received views upon the subject. I come before you, professedly to speak of things forgotten or things disputed ; and I lay before you, not accepted principles, but questions at issue. Of those questions you are to be the judges, and to you I appeal. You must not, when you leave this room, if you feel doubtful of the truth of what I have said, refer yourselves to some architect of established reputation, and ask him whether I am right or not. You might as well, had you lived in the 16tli century, have asked a Roman Catholic archbishop his opinion of the first reformer. I deny his juris- diction ; I refuse his decision. I call upon you to be Bereans in architecture, as you are in religion, and to search into these things for yourselves. Remember that, however candid a man may be, it is too much to expect of him, when his career in life has been successful, to turn suddenly on tlio highway, and to declare that all he has learned has been false, and all he has done, worthless ; yet nothing less than such a declaration as this must be made by nearly every existing
* A series of four examples of designs for windows was exhibited at this point of the lectin e. but I have not engraved them, as they were hastily made for the purposes of momentary illustration, and are noJ luch as I choose to publish or perpetuate.
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architect, before lie admitted the truth of one word that I have said to you this evening. You must be prepared, there- fore, to hear my opinions attacked with all the virulence of established interest, and all the pertinacity of confirmed prejudice ; you will hear them made the subjects of every species of satire and invective ; but one kind of opposition to them you will never hear ; you will never hear them met by quiet, steady, rational argument ; for that is the one way in which they cannot be met. You will constantly hear me accused — you yourselves may be the first to accuse me — of presumption in speaking thus confidently against the estab- lished authority of ages. Presumption ! Yes, if I had spoken on my own authority ; but I have appealed to two incontro- vertible and irrefragable witnesses, — to the nature that is around you — to the reason that is within you. And if you are willing in this matter to take the voice of authority against that of nature and of reason, take it in other things also. Take it in religion, as you do in architecture. It is not by a Scottish audience, — not by the descendants of the Reformer and the Covenanter — that I expected to be met with a refusal to believe that the world might possibly have been wrong for fiiree hundred ^^ears, in their ways of carving stones and set- tling up of pillars, when they know that they were wrong for twelve hundred years, in their marking how the roads divided, that led to Hell and Heaven.
You must exj^ect at first that there will be difficulties and [inconsistencies in carrying out the new style ; but the}' will |fioon be conquered if you attempt not too much at once. Do Snot be afraid of incongruities, — do not think of unities of [efifect. Introduce your Gothic line by line and stone by jtone ; never mind mixing it with your present architecture \ Towr existing houses will be none the worse for ha\ing little [bits of better work fitted to them ; build a porch, or point a [^window, if you can do nothing else ; and remember that it is the glory of Gothic architecture that it can do anything. Whatever you really and seriously want, Gothic will do for you ; but it must be an earnest want. It is its pride to ac- commodate itself to your needs ; and the one general law un-
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der which it acts is simply this, — find out what will make you comfortable, build that in the strongest and boldest way, and then set your fancy free in the decoration of it. Don't do anything to imitate this cathedral or that, however beau- tiful. Do what is convenient ; and if the form be a new one, so much the better ; then set your mason's wits to work, to find out some new way of treating it. Only be steadily de- termined that, even if you cannot get the best Gothic, at least you will have no Greek ; and in a few years' time, — in less time than you could learn a new science or a new language thoroughly, — the whole art of your native country will be reanimated.
And, now, lastly. When this shall be accomplished, do not think it will make little difference to you, and that you will be little the happier, or little the better for it. You have at present no conception, and can have none, how much you would enjoy a truly beautiful architecture ; but I can give you a proof of it which none of you will be able to deny. You will all assuredly admit this principle — that whatever temporal things are spoken of in the Bible as emblems of the highest spiritual blessings, must be good things in themselves. You would allow that bread, for instance, would not have been used as an emblem of the word of life, unless it had been good, and necessary for man ; nor water used as the emblem of sanc- tification, unless it also had been good and necessary for man. You will allow that oil, and honey, and balm are good, when David says, "Let the righteous reprove me; it shall bean excellent oil ; " or, " How sweet are thy words unto my taste ; yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth ; " or, when Jeremiah cries out in his weeping, "Is there no balm in Gilead ? is there no physician there ? " You would admit at once that the man who said there was no taste in the literal honey, and no healing in the literal balm, must be of dis- torted judgment, since God has used them as emblems of spiritual sweetness and healing. And how, then, will you evade the conclusion, that there must be joy, and comfort, and instruction in the literal beauty of architecture, when God, descending in his utmost love to the distressed Jerusa-
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lem, and addressing to her his most precious and solemn prom- ises, speaks to her in such words as these : " Oh, thou af- flicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted," — What shall be done to her ? — What brightest emblem of blessing will God set before her ? "Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy foundations with sapphires ; and I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones." Nor is this merely an em- blem of spiritual blessing ; for that blessing is added in the concluding words, ' And all thy children shall be taught oi the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children."
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ADDENDA
TO
LECTUEES I. AND H
The delivery of the foregoing lectures excited, as it may be imagined, considerable indignation among the architects who happened to hear them, and elicited various attempts at reply. As it seemed to have been expected by the writers of these replies, that in two lectures, each of them lasting not much more than an hour, I should have been able completely to discuss the philosophy and history of the architecture of the world, besides meeting every objection, and reconciling every apparent contradiction, which might suggest itself to the niinds of hearers with whom, probably, from first to last, I had not a single exactly correspondent idea, relating to the matters imder discussion, it seems unnecessary to notice any of them in particular. But as this volume may perhaps fall into the hands of readers who have not time to refer to the works in which my views have been expressed more at large, and as I shall now not be able to write or to say anything more about architecture for some time to come, it may be useful to state here, and explain in the shortest possible com- pass, the main gist of the propositions which I desire to main- tuin respecting that art ; and also to note and answer, once for all, such arguments as are ordinarily used by the archi- tects of the modern school to controvert these propositions. They may be reduced under six heads.
1. That Gothic or Romanesque construction is nobler than Greek construction.
2. That ornamentation is the principal part of architecture.
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3. That ornamentation should be visible.
4. That ornamentation should be natural.
5. That ornamentation should be thoughtful
6. And that therefore Gothic ornamentation is nobler than Greek ornamentation, and Gothic architecture the only archi tecture which should now be built.
Proposition 1st. — Gothic or Romanesque construction is noUei than Greek construction* That is to say, building an arch, vault, or dome, is a nobler and more ingenious work than lay ing a flat stone or beam over the space to be covered. It is, for instance, a nobler and more ingenious thing to build an arched bridge over a stream, than to lay two pine-trunks acrosa from bank to bank ; and, in like manner, it is a nobler and more ingenious thing to build an arch over a window, door, or room, than to lay a single flat stone over the same space.
No architects have ever attempted seriously to controvert this proposition. Sometimes, however, they say that " of two ways of doing a thing, the best and most perfect is not always to be adopted, for there may be particular reasons for em- ploying an inferior one." This I am perfectly ready to grant, only let them show their reasons in each particular case. Sometimes also they say, that there is a charm in the simple construction which is lost in the scientific one. This I am also perfectly ready to grant. There is a charm in Stonehenge which there is not in Amiens Cathedral, and a charm in an Alpine pine bridge which there is not in the Ponte della Trin-
* The constructive value of Gothic architecture is, however, far greater than that of Romanesque, as the pointed arch is not only sus- ceptible of an infinite variety of forms and applications to the weight to be sustained, but it possesses, in the outline given to its masonry at its perfect periods, the means of self-sustainment to a far greater degree than the round arch. I pointed out, I believe, the first time, the mean- ing and constructive value of the Gothic cusp, in page 129 of the first volume of the ''Stones of Venice." That statement was first denied, and then taken advantage of, by modern architects ; and, considering how often it has been alleged that I have no practical knowledge of architecture, it cannot but be matter of some triumph to me, to find the " Builder," of the 21st January, of this year, describing, as a new in- vention, the successful application to a church in Carlow of the princt pie which I laid down in the year 1851.
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ita at Florence, and, in general, a charm in savageness which there is not in science. But do not let it be said, therefore, that savageness is science.
Proposition 2nd. — Ornamentation is the principal part of architecture. That is to say, the highest nobility of a build- ing does not consist in its being well built, but in its being nobly sculptured or painted.
This is always, and at the first hearing of it, very naturally, considered one of my most heretical propositions. It is also one of the most important I have to maintain ; and it must be permitted me to explain it at some length. The first thing to be required of a building — not, observe, the highest thing, but the first thing — is that it shall answer its purposes completely, permanently, and at the smallest expense. If it is a house, it should be just of the size convenient for its owner, containing exactly the kind and number of rooms that he wants, with ex- actly the number of windows he wants, put in the places that he wants. If it is a church, it should be just large enough for its congregation, and of such shape and disposition as shall make them comfortable in it and let them hear well in it. If it be a public office, it should be so disposed as is most convenient for the clerks in their daily avocations ; and so on ; all this being utterly irrespective of external appearance or sosthetic considerations of any kind, and all being done solidly, securely, and at the smallest necessary cost.
The sacrifice of any of these first requirements to external appearance is a futility and absurdity. Kooms must not be darkened to make the ranges of windows symmetrical. Useless wfeigs must not be added on one side to balance useful wings on the other, but the house built with one wing, if the owner has no need of two ; and so on.
But observe, in doing all this, there is no High, or as it is commonly called, Fine Art, required at all. There may be much science, together with the lower form of art, or "handi- craft," but there is as yet no Pine Art. House-building, on these terms, is no higher thing than ship-building. It indeed will generally be found that the edifice designed with this masculine reference to utility, will have a charm aliout it,
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otherwise unattainable, just as a ship, constructed with simple reference to its service against powers of wind and wave, tui-ns but one of the loveliest things that human hands produce. Still, we do not, and properly do not, hold ship-building to be a fine art, nor preserve in our memories the names of immor- sal ship-builders ; neither, so long as the mere utility and con- structive merit of the building are regarded, is architecture to l?e held a fine art, or are the names of architects to be remem- bered immortally. For any one may at any time be taught to build the ship, or (thus far) the house, and there is nothing deserving of immortality in doing what any one may be taught to do.
But when the house, or church, or other building is thus far designed, and the forms of its dead walls and dead roofs are up to this point determined, comes the divine part of the work — namely, to turn these dead walls into living ones. Only Deity, that is to say, those who are taught by Deity, can do that.
And that is to be done by painting and sculpture, that is to say, by ornamentation. Ornamentation is therefore the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject of fine art.
Now observe. It will at once follow from this principle, that a great architect must be a great sculptor or painter.
This is a universal law. No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
The three greatest architects hitherto known in the world were Phidias, Giotto, and Michael Angelo ; with all of whom, architecture was only their play, sculpture and painting their work. All gTeat works of architecture in existence are either the work of single sculptors or painters, or of societies ol sculptors and painters, acting collectively for a series of years. A Gothic cathedral is properly to be defined as a piece of the most magnificent associative sculpture, arranged on the no- })lest principles of building, for the service and delight of multitudes ; and the proper definition of architecture, aa distinguished from sculpture, is merely " the art of design-
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ing sculpture for a particular place, and placing it there on the best principles of building."
Hence it clearly follows, that in modern days we have no architects. The term "architecture" is not so much as un- derstood by us. I am very sorry to be compelled to the dis- courtesy of stating this fact, but a fact it is, and a fact which it is necessary to state strongly.
Hence also it will follow, that the first thing necessary to the possession of a school of architecture is the formation of A school of able sculptors, and that till we have that, nothing we do can be called architecture at all.
This, then, being my second proposition, the so-called "architects" of the day, as the reader will imagine, are not willing to admit it, or to admit any statement which at all involves it ; and every statement, tending in this direction, which I have hitherto made, has of course been met by eager opposition ; opposition which perhaps would have been still more energetic, but that architects have not, I think, till lately, been quite aware of the lengths to which I was pre- pared to carry the principle.
The arguments, or assertions, which they generally employ against this second proposition and its consequences, are the following.
First. That the true nobility of architecture consists, not in decoration (or sculpture), but in the " disposition of masses," and that architecture is, in fact, the " art of proportion."
It is difficult to overstate the enormity of the ignorance which this popular statement implies. For the fact is that all art, and all nature, depend on the "disposition of masses." Painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, depend all equally on the "proportion," whether of colours, stones, notes, or words Proportion is a principle, not of architecture, but of existence. It is by the laws of proportion that stars shine, that moun. tains stand, and rivers flow. Man can hardly perform any act of his life, can hardly utter two words of innocent speech, or move his hand in accordance with those words, without in- volving some reference, whether taught or instinctive, to the laws of proportion. And in the fine arts, it is impossible to
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move a single step, or to execute the smallest and simplest piece of work, without involving all those laws of proportion in their full complexity. To arrange (by invention) the folda of a piece of drapery, or dispose the locks of hair on the head of a statue, requires as much sense and knowledge of the laws of proportion, as to dispose the masses of a cathedral. The one are indeed smaller than the other, but the relations between 1, 2, 4, and 8, are precisely the same as the relations between 6, 12, 24, and 48. So that the assertion that " architecture is par excellence the art of proportion," could never be made except by persons who know nothing of art in general ; and, in fact, never is made except by those architects, who, not being artists, fancy that the one poor aesthetic principle of which they are cognizant is the whole of art. They find that the " disposition of masses " is the only thing of importance in the art with which they are acquainted, and fancy therefore that it is pectixiar to that art ; whereas the fact is, that all great art begins exactly where theirs ends, with the " disposi- tion of masses." The assertion that Greek architecture, as opposed to Gothic architecture, is the " architecture of pro- portion," is another of the results of the same broad igno- rance. First, it is a calumny of the old Greek style itself, which, like every other good architecture that ever existed, depends more on its grand figure sculpture, than on its pro- portions of parts ; so that to copy the form of the Parthenon without its friezes and frontal statuary, is like copying the figure of a human being without its eyes and mouth ; and, in the second place, so far as modern pseudo-Greek work does depend on its proportions more than Gothic work, it does so, not because it is better proportioned, but because it has noth ing but proportion to depend upon. Gesture is in like man- gier of more importance to a pantomime actor than to a trage- dian, not because his gesture is more refined, but because he has no tongue. And the proportions of our common Greek work are important to it undoubtedly, but not because they are or ever can be more subtle than Gothic proportion, but because that work has no sculpture, nor colour, nor imagina- tion, nor sacredness, nor any other quality wha<;i»ioever in it*
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but ratios of measures. And it is difficult to express with sufficient force the absurdity of the supposition that there is more room for refinements of proportion in the relations of seven or eight equal pillars, with the triangular end of a roof above them, than between the shafts, and buttresses, and porches, and pinnacles, and vaultings, and towers, and all other doubly and trebly multipUed magnificences of member- ship which form the framework of a Gothic temple.
Second Reply. — It is often said, with some appearance of plausibility, that I dwell in all my writings on little things and contemptible details ; and not on essential and large things. Now, in the first place, as soon as our architects be- come capable of doing and managing little and contemptible things, it will be time to talk about larger ones ; at present I do not see that they can design so much as a niche or a bracket, and therefore they need not as yet think about any- thing larger. For although, as both just now, and always, I have said, there is as much science of arrangement needed in the designing of a small group of parts as of a large one, yet assuredly designing the larger one is not the easier work of the two. For the eye and mind can embrace the smaller ob- ject more completely, and if the powers of conception are feeble, they get embarrassed by the inferior members which fall ivithin the divisions of the larger design.* So that, of course, the best way is to begin with the smaller features ; for most assuredly, those who cannot design small things cannot design large ones ; and yet, on the other hand, who- ever can design small things perfectly, can design whatever he chooses. The man who, without copying, and by his own true and original power, can arrange a cluster of rose-leaves nobly, can design anything. He may fail from want of taste or feeling, but not from want of power.
* Thus, in speaking of Pugin's designs, I said, "Expect no cathedralp of him ; but, no one, at present, can design a better finial, though he will never design even a finial, perfectly." But even this I said less with reference to powers of arrangement, than to materials of fancy ; for many men have stone enough to last them through a boss or * bracket, but not to last them through a church front.
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And the real reason why architects are so eager in protest ing against my close examination of details, is simply that they know they dare not meet me on that ground. Being, as I have said, in reality yiot architects, but builders, they can indeed raise a large building, with copied ornaments, which^ being huge and white, they hope the public may pronounce " handsome." But they cannot design a cluster of oak-leaves —no, nor a single human figure — no, nor so much as a beast, or a bird or a bird's nest ! Let them first learn to invent as much as will fill a quatrefoil, or point a pinnacle, and then it will be time enough to reason with them on the principles of the sublime.
But farther. The things that I have dwelt upon in exam- ining buildings, though often their least parts, are always in reality their principal parts. That is the principal part of a building in which its mind is contained, and that, as I have just shown, is its sculpture and painting. I do with a build- ing as I do with a man, watch the eye and the lips : when they are bright and eloquent, the form of the body is of little con- sequence.
Whatever other objections have been made to this second proposition, arise, as far as I remember, merely from a con- fusion of the idea of essentialness or primariness with the idea of nobleness. The essential thing in a building, — its first virtue,— is that it be strongly built, and fit for its uses. The noblest thing in a building, and its highest virtue, is that it be nobly sculptured or painted.*
One or two important corollaries yet remain to be stated. It has just been said that to sacrifice the convenience of a building to its external appearance is a futility and absurdityj, and that convenience and stability are to be attained at the smallest cost. But when that convenience has been attained, the adding the noble characters of life by painting and sculpture, is a work in which all possible cost may be wisely admitted. There is great difiiculty in fully explaining the various bearings of this proposition, so as to do away with the
* Of course I use tlie term painting as including every mode of ap plying colour.
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chances of its being erroneously understood and applied For although, in the first designing of the building, nothing is to be admitted but what is wanted, and no useless winga are to be added to balance useful ones, yet in its ultimate designing, when its sculpture and colour become jDrecious, it may be that actual room is wanted to display them, or richer symmetry wanted to deserve them ; and in such cases even a useless wall may be built to bear the sculpture, as at San Michele of Lucca, or a useless portion added to complete the cadences, as at St. Mark's of Venice, or useless height ad- mitted in order to increase the impressiveuess, as in nearly every noble building in the world. But the right to do this is dependent upon the actual j^urpose of the building becom- ing no longer one of utility merely ; as the purpose of a cathedral is not so much to shelter the congregation as to awe them. In such cases even some sacrifice of convenience may ■occasionally be admitted, as in the case of certain forms of pillared churches. But for the most part, the great law is, convenience first, and then the noblest decoration possible ; and this is peculiarly the case in domestic buildings, and such public ones as are constantly to be used for practical purposes.
Proposition 3rd. — Ornamentation should be visible.
The reader may imagine this to be an indisputable posi- tion ; but, practically, it is one of the last which modern architects are likely to admit ; for it involves much more than appears at first sight. To render ornamentation, with all its qualities, clearly and entirely visible in its appointed place on the building, requires a knowledge of effect and a power of design which few even of the best artists possess, and which modern architects, so far from possessing, do not so much as comprehend the existence of. But, without dwelling on this highest manner of rendering ornament "visible," I desire only at present to convince the reader thoroughly of the main fact asserted in the text, that while modern builders decorate the ^ops of buildings, mediaeval builders decorated the bottom. So singular is the ignorance yet prevailing of the first principles of Gothic architecture
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that I saw this assertion marked with notes of interrogation in several of the reports of these Lectures ; although, at Edinburgh, it was only necessary for those who doubted it in have walked to Holy rood Chapel, in order to convince them- selves of the truth of it, so far as their own city was con- cerned ; and although, most assuredly, the cathedrals of Europe have now been drawn often enough to establish the very simple fact that their best sculpture is in their porches, not in their steeples. However, as this great Gothic principle seems yet unacknowledged, let me state it here, once for all, namely, that the whole building is decorated, in all pure and fine examples, with the most exactly studied respect to the powers of the eye ; the richest and most delicate sculpture being put on the walls of the porches, or on the fagade of the building, just high enough above the ground to secure it from accidental, (not from wanton*) injury. The decoration, as it rises, becomes always bolder, and in the buildings of the greatest times generally simpler. Thus at San Zeno, and the duomo of Verona, the only delicate decorations are on the porches and lower walls of the fa9ades, the rest of the builds ings being left comparatively plain ; in the ducal palace of Venice the only very careful work is in the lowest capitals ; and so also the richness of the work diminishes upwards in the transepts of Rouen, and fayades of Bayeux, Kheims, Amiens, Abbeville, f Lyons, and Notre Dame of Paris. But in the middle and later Gothic the tendency is to produce an equal richness of effect over the whole building, or even to in- crease the richness towards the top : but this is done so skil- fully that no fine work is wasted : and when the spectator ascends to the higher points of the building, which he thought Tvere of the most consummate delicacy, he finds them Herculean
* Nothing is more notable in good Gothic than the confidence of its builders in the respect of the people for their work. A great school of architecture cannot exist when this respect cannot he calculated upon, as it would be vain to put fine sculpture within the reach of a popula- tion whose only pleasure would be in defacing it.
f The church at Abbeville is late flamboyant, but well deserves, for the exquisite beauty of its porches, to be named even with the gren* works of the thirteenth century.
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in strength and rough-hewn in style, the really delicate worls being all put at the base. The general treatment of Roman- esque work is to increase the niwiber of arches at the top, which at once enriches and lightens the mass, and to put the finest sculpture of the arches at the bottom. In towers of all kinds and periods the effective enrichment is towards the top, and most rightly, since their dignity is in their height ; but they are never made the recipients of fine sculpture, with, as far as I know, the single exception of Giotto's campanile, which indeed has fine sculpture, but it is at the bottom.
The fayade of Wells Cathedral seems to be an exception to the general rule, in having its principal decoration at the top ; but it is on a scale of perfect power and effectiveness ; while in the base modern Gothic of Milan Cathedral the statues are cut dehcately everywhere, and the builders think it a merit that the visitor must climb to the roof before he can see them ; and our modern Greek and Italian architecture reaches the utmost pitch of absurdity by placing its fine work at the top only. So that the general condition of the thing may be stated boldly, as in the text : the principal ornaments of Gothic buildings being in their porches, and of modem build- ings, in their parapets.
Proposition 4th. — Ornamentation should be natural, — that is to say, should in some degree express or adopt the beauty of natural objects. This law, together with its ultimate reason, is expressed in the statement given in the " Stones of Venice," vol. i. p. 213. : " All noble ornament is the expression of man's delight in God's work."
Observe, it does not hence follow that it should be an exact imitation of, or endeavour in anywise to supersede, God's work. It may consist only in a partial adoption of, and compliance with, the usual forms of natural things, without at all going to the point of imitation ; and it is possible that the point of imitation may be closely reached by ornaments, which never- theless are entirely unfit for their place, and are the signs only of a degraded ambition and an ignorant dexterity. Bad dec- orators err as easily on the side of imitating nature, as of for- getting her ; and the question of the exact degree in which
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imitation should be attempted under given circumstances, is one of the most subtle and difficult in the whole range of criticism. I have elsewhere examined it at some length, and have yet much to say about it ; but here I can only state briefly that the modes in which ornamentation ought to fall short of pure representation or imitation are in the main three, namely, —
A. Conventionalism by cause of colour.
B. Conventionalism by cause of inferiority.
C. Conventionalism by cause of means.
A. Conventionalism by cause of colour. — Abstract colour IS not an imitation of nature, but is nature itself ; that is to say, the pleasure taken in blue or red, as such, considered as hues merely, is the same, so long as the brilliancy of the hue is equal, whether it be produced by the chemistry of man, or the chemistry of flowers, or the chemistry of skies. We deal with colour as with sound — so far ruling the power of the light, as we rule the power of the air, producing beauty not necessarily imitative, but sufficient in itself, so that, wherever colour is introduced, ornamentation may cease to represent natural objects, and may consist in mere spots, or bands, or flamings, or any other condition of arrangement favourable io the colour.
B. Conventionalism by cause of inferiority. — In general, ornamentation is set upon certain services, subjected to cer- tain systems, and confined within certain limits ; so that its forms require to be lowered or limited in accordance with the required relations. It cannot be allowed to assume the free outlines, or to rise to the perfection of imitation. Whole banks of flowers, for instance, cannot be carved on cathedral fronts, but only narrow mouldings, having some of the char- acters of banks of flowers. Also, some ornaments require to be subdued in value, that they may not interfere with the ef- fect of others ; and all these necessary inferiorities are attained by means of departing from natural forms — it being an estab- lished law of human admiration that what is most representa« live of nature shall, cceteris paribus, be most attractive.
All the various kinds of ornamentation, consisting of spots,
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points, twisted bands, abstract curves, and other sucli, ow6 tlieir peculiar character to this conventionaHsm " by cause of inferiority."
C. Conventionalism by cause of means. — In every branch of art, only so much imitation of nature is to be admitted as is consistent with the ease of the workman and the capacities of the material. "Whatever shortcomings are appointed (for they are more than permitted, they are in such cases ap- pointed, and meritorious) on account of the untractableness of the material, come under the head of " conventionalism by cause of means."
These conventionalities, then, being duly understood and accepted, in modification of the general law, that law will be, that the glory of all ornamentation consists in the adoption or imitation of the beauties of natural objects, and that no work can be of high value which is not full of this beauty. To this fourth proposition, modern architects have not ventured to make any serious resistance. On the contrary, they seem to be, little by little, gliding into an obscure perception of the fact, that architecture, in most periods of the world, had sculpture upon it, and that the said sculpture generally did represent something intelligible. For instance, we find Mr. Huggins, of Liverpool, lately lecturing upon architecture " in its relations to nature and the intellect,"^ and gravely inform- ing his hearers, that " in the middle ages, angels were human figures ; " that " some of the richest ornaments of Solomon's temple were imitated from the palm and pomegranate," and that " the Greeks followed the example of the Egyptians in selecting their ornaments from the plards of their own coun- try." It is to be presumed that the lecturer has never been in the Elgin or Egyptian room of the British Museum, or it might have occurred to him that the Egyptians and Greeks sometimes also selected their ornaments from the men of their own country. But we must not expect too much illumination at once ; and as we are told that, in conclusion, Mr. Huggins glanced at " the error of architects in neglecting the fountain oi
* See the " Builder," for January 12, 1854
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wisdom thus open to them in nature," we may expect in due time large results from the discovery of a source of wisdom so unimagined
Proposition 5th. — Ornamentation should be thoughtful. That is to say, whenever you put a chisel or a pencil into a man's hand for the purpose of enabling him to produce beauty, you are to expect of him that he will think about what he is doing, and feel something about it, and that the expression of this thought or feeling will be the most noble quality in what he produces with his chisel or brush, inasmuch as the power of thinking and feeling is the most noble thing in man. It will hence follow that as men do not commonly think the same thoughts twice, you are not to require of them that they shall do the same thing twice. You are to expect another and a different thought of them, as soon as one thought has been well expressed.
Hence, therefore, it follows also that all noble ornamenta- tion is perpetually varied ornamentation, and that the mo- ment you find ornamentation unchanging, you may know that it is of a degraded kind or degraded school. To this law, the only exceptions arise out of the uses of monotony, as a con- trast to a change. Many subordinate architectural mouldings are severely'' alike in their various parts (though never unless they are thoroughly subordinate, for monotony is always deathful according to the degree of it), in order to set ofi change in others ; and a certain monotony or similarity must be introduced among the most changeful ornaments in order to enhance and exhibit their own changes.
The truth of this proposition is self-evident ; for no art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change. To require of an artist that he should always reproduce the same picture, would be not one whit more base than to require of a carver that he should always reproduce the same sculpture.
The principle is perfectly clear and altogether incontroverti- ble. Apply it to modern Greek architecture, and that archi- tecture must cease to exist ; for it depends absolutely on copyism.
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The sixth proposition above stated, that Gothic ornamental lion is nobler than Greek ornamentation, &c., is therefore suffi- ciently proved by the acceptance of this one principle, no less important than unassailable. Of all that I have to bring tor- ward respecting architecture, this is the one I have most at heart ; for on the acceptance of this depends the determina- tion whether the workman shall be a liviug, progressive, and happy human being, or whether he shall be a mere machine, with its valves smoothed by heart's blood instead of oil, — the most pitiable form of slave.
And it is with especial reference to the denial of this prin- ciple in modern and renaissance architecture, that I speak of that architecture with a bitterness which appears to many readers extreme, while in reality, so far from exaggerating, J have not grasp enough of thought to embrace, the evils which have resulted among all the orders of European society from the introduction of the renaissance schools of building, in turning away the eyes of the beholder from natural beauty, and reducing the workman to the level of a machine. In the Gothic times, writing, painting, carving, casting, — it mattered not what, — were all works done by thoughtful and happy men ; and the illumination of the volume, and the car\ing and casting of wall and gate, employed, not thousands, but millions, of true and noble artists over all Christian lands. Men in the same position are now left utterly without intel- lectual power or pursuit, and, being unhappy in their work, they rebel against it ; hence one of the worst forms of Un- christian Socialism. So again, there being now no nature or variety in architecture, the multitude are not interested in it ; therefore, for the present, they have lost their taste for art altogether, so that you can no longer trust sculpture within their reach. Consider the innumerable forms of evil involved in the temper and iaste of the existing populace of London or Paris, as compared with the temper of the populace of Florence, wheji the quarter of Santa Mans Novella received its title of "Joyful Quarter," from the rejoicings of the multi- tude at getting a new picture into their church, better than the old ones ; — all this difference b^ing exclus^ 'ely charge^
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able on the renaissance architecture. And then, farther, if we remember, not only the revolutionary ravage of sacred archi- tecture, but the immeasurably greater destruction effected by the renaissance builders and their satellites, wherever they came, destruction so wide-spread that there is not a town in France or Italy but it has to deplore the deliberate overthrow of more than half its noblest monuments, in order to put up Greek porticoes or palaces in their stead ; adding also all the blame of the ignorance of the meaner kind of men, operating in thousands of miserable abuses upon the frescoes, books, and pictures, as the architects' hammers did on the carved work, of the Middle Ages * ; and, finally, if we examine the influence which the luxury, and, still more, the heathenism, joined with the essential dulness of these schools, have had on the upper classes of society, it will ultimately be found that no expressions are energetic enough to describe, nor broad enough to embrace, the enormous moral evils which have risen from them.
I omitted, in preparing the preceding lecture for the press, a passage referring to this subject, because it appeared to me, in its place, hardly explained by preceding statements. But I give it here unaltered, as being, in sober earnest, but too weak to characterise the tendencies of the " accursed " archi- tecture of which it speaks.
"Accursed, I call it, with deliberate purpose. It needed
* Nothing appears to me much, more wonderful, than the remorseless way in which the educated ignorance, even of the present day, will sweep away an ancient monument, if its preservation be not absolutely consistent with immediate convenience or economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considerations, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would only consider the steps, and the weight of the following very simple argument. You allow it is wrong to waste time, that is, yout own time ; but then it must be still more wrong to waste other people's ,• for you have some right to your own time, but none to theirs. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste the time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of the dead ; for the living can re- deem their time, the dead cannot. But you waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy the works they have left you ; for ta those works they gave the best of their time, intending them for im- mortality.
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but the gathering up of a Babylonish garment to trouble Israel; — these marble garments of the ancient idols of the Gentiles, how many have they troubled? Gathered out of their ruins by the second Bablyon, — gathered by the Papal Church in the extremity of her sin ; — raised up by her, not when she was sending forth her champions to j)reach in the highway, and pine in the desert, and perish in the fire, but in the very scarlet fruitage and fulness of her guilt, when her priests vested themselves not with purple only, but with blood, and bade the cups of their feasting foam not with wine only, but with hemlock ; — raised by the hands of the Leos and the Bor- gias, raised first into that mighty temple where the seven hills slope to the Tiber, that marks by its massy dome the central spot, where Kome has reversed the words of Christ, and, as He vivified the stone to the apostleship, she petrifies the apos- tleship into the stumbling stone ; — exalted there first as if to mark what work it had to do, it went forth to paralyse or to pollute, and w^herever it came, the lustre faded from the streets of our cities, the grey towers and glorious arches of our abbeys fell by the river sides, the love of nature was uprooted from the hearts of men, base luxuries and cruel formalisms were festered and frozen into them from their youth ; and at last, where, from his fair Gothic chapel beside the Seine, the king St. Louis had gone forth followed by his thousands in the cause of Christ, another king was dragged forth from the gates of his Renaissance palace,* to die by the hands of the
* The character of Renaissance architecture, and the spirit which dic- tated its adoption, may be remembered as having been centred and symbolized in the palace of Versailles: whose site was chosen by Louis the Fourteenth, in order that from thence he might not see St. Denis, the burial place of his family. The cost of the palace in 27 years is stated in the '' Builder " for March 18th of this year, to have been 8,246,000i. money of that period, equal to about seven millions now (900,0002. having been expended in the year 1636 alone). The build- ing is thus notably illustrativ^e of the two feelings which were stated in the " Stones of Venice," to be peculiarly characteristic of the Renais- sance spirit, the Pride of State and Fear of Death. Compare the horror of Louis the Fourteenth at the sight of the tower of St. Denis, with the feeling which prompted the Scaligeri at Verona to set their tombs within fiiteen feet of their palace walls.
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thousands of his people gathered in another crusade ; or what shall that be called — whose sign was not the cross, but the guillotine ! "
I have not space here to pursue the subject farther, nor shall I be able to write anything more respecting architecture for some time to come. But in the meanwhile, I w^ould most earnestly desire to leave with the reader this one subject oi thought — '' The Life of the Workman." For it is singular, and far more than singular, that among all the writers who have attempted to examine the principles stated in the " Stones of Venice," not one* has as yet made a single com- ment on what was precisely and accurately the most impor- tant chapter in the whole book ; namely, the description of the nature of Gothic architecture, as involving the liberty of the workman (vol. ii. ch. vi.). I had hoped that whatever might be the prejudices of modern architects, there would have been found some among them quicksighted enough to see the bearings of this principle, and generous enough to support it. There has hitherto stood forward not one.
But my purpose must at last be accomplished for all this. The labourer among the gravestones of our modern architect- ure must yet be raised up, and become a living soul. Before he can be thus raised, the whole system of Greek architecture, as practised in the present day, must be annihilated ; but it yjill be annihilated, and that speedily. For truth and judg- ment are its declared opposites, and against these nothing 5ver finally prevailed, or shall prevail.
LECTUKE m.
TUENER, AND HIS WORKS.
My object this evening is not so much to give you any ac* count of the works or the genius of the great painter whom we have so lately lost (which it would require rather a year
* An article in Fraser's Magazine, which has appeared since these sheets were sent to press, iorms ^ solitary exception.
288 LECTURES ON ARGHITEGTURE
than an hour to do)j as to give you some idea of the position which his works hold with respect to the landscape of other periods, and of the general condition and prospects of the landscape art of the present day. I will not lose time in pref- atory remarks, as I have little enough at any rate, but will enter abruptly on my subject.
You are all of you well aware that landscape seems hardl}^ to have exercised any strong influence, as such, on any pagan nation, or pagan artist. I have no time to enter into any de- tails on this, of course, most intricate and difficult subject ; but I will only ask you to observe, that wherever natural scenery is alluded to by the ancients, it is either agricultu- rally, with the kind of feeling that a good Scotch farmer has ; sensually, in the enjoyment of sun or shade, cool winds or sweet scents ; fearfully, in a mere vulgar dread of rocks and desolate places, as compared with the comfort of cities ; or, finally, superstitiously, in the personification or deification of natural powers generally with much degradation of their impressiveness, as in the paltry fables of Ulysses receiving the winds in bags from ^olus, and of the Cyclops ham- mering lightning sharp at the ends, on an anvil.* Of course you will here and there find feeble evidences of a higher sen- sibility, chiefly, I think, in Plato, ^schylus, Aristophanes, and Virgil. Homer, though in the epithets he applies to land- scape ahvays thoroughly graphic, uses the same epithet for rocks, seas, and trees, from one end of his poem to the other, evidently without the smallest interest in anything of the kind *. and in the mass of heathen writers, the absence of sen- sation on these subjects is singularly painful. For instance, in that, to my mind, most disgusting of all so-called poems, the journey to Brundusium, you remember that Horace takes
* Of course I do not mean by calling these fables ''paltry," to dispute their neatness, ingenuity, or moral depth ; but only their want of ap- prehension of the extent and awfulness of the phenomena introduced. So also, in denying Homer's interest in nature, I do not mean to deny his accuracy of observation, or his power of seizing on the main points of landscape, but I deny the power of landscape over his heart, unless when closely associated with, and altogether subordinate to, some hu« man interest.
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exactly as much interest in the scenery he is passing through, as Sancho Panza would have done.
You will find, on the other hand, that the language of the Bible is specifically distinguished from all other early litera- ture, by its delight in natural imagery ; and that the dealings of God with his people are calculated peculiarly to awaken this sensibility within them. Out of the monotonous valley of Egypt they are instantly taken into the midst of the might- iest mountain scenery in the peninsula of Arabia ; and that scenery is associated in their minds with the immediate mani- festation and presence of the Divine Power ; so that moun- tains for ever afterwards become invested with a peculiar sa- credness in their minds ; while their descendants being placed in what was then one of the loveliest districts upon the earth, full of glorious vegetation, bounded on one side by the sea, on the north by " that goodly mountain " Lebanon, on the south and east by deserts, whose barrenness enhanced by their contrast the sense of the perfection of beauty in their own land, they became, by these means, and by the touch of God's own hand upon their hearts, sensible to the appeal of natural scenery in a way in which no other people were at the time ; and their literature is full of expressions, not only testifying a vivid sense of the power of nature over man, but showing that sympathy ivith natural things themselves, as if they had human souls, which is the especial characteristic of true love of the works of God. I intended to have insisted on this sympathy at greater length, but I found, only two or three days ago, much of what I had to say to you anticipated in a little book, unpretending, but full of interest, "The Lamp and the Lantern," by Dr. James Hamilton ; and I will there- fore only ask you to consider such expressions as that tender and glorious verse in Isaiah, speaking of the cedars on the mountains as rejoicing over the fall of the king of Assyria : *' Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying. Since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller ia come up against us." See what sympathy there is here, as if with the very hearts of the trees themselves. So also in the words of Christ, in his personification of the liHes : " They
290 LEGTUREIS ON ARCHITEGTURE
toil not, neither do the}' spin." Consider such expressions as^ *' The sea saw that, and fled, Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams ; and the little liills like lambs." Try to find anything in profane writing like this ; and note farther that the whole book of Job appears to have been chiefly written and placed in the inspired volume in order tc show the value of natural history, and its power on the human heart. I cannot pass by it without pointing out the evidences of the beauty of the country that Job inhabited.*
Observe, first, it was an arable country. " The oxen were ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them." It was a pas- toral country : his substance, besides camels and asses, was 7,000 sheep. It was a mountain country, fed by streams de- scending from the high snows. "My bretlu'en have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away ; which are blackish by reason of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid : What time they wax warm they vanish : when it is hot they are consumed out of their place." Again : " If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean." Again: "Drought and heat consume the snow waters." It was a rocky country, with forests and verdure rooted in the rocks. "His branch shooteth forth in his gar- den ; his roots are wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place of stones." Again : " Thou shalt be in league Avith the stones of the field." It was a place visited, like the valleys of Switzerland, by convulsions and falls of mountains. " Surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is re- moved out of his place." "The waters wear the stones : thou washest aw^ay the things which grow out of the dust of the earth." "He removeth the mountains and they know not: he overturneth them in his anger." "He putteth forth his hand upon the rock : he overturneth the mountains by the roots : he cutteth out rivers among the rocks." I have not time to go farther into this ; but you see Job's country was one like your own, full of pleasant brooks and rivers, rushing among the rocks, and of all other sweet and noble elements
* This passage, respecting the book of Job, was omitted in the deliv ery of tha Lecture, for want of time.
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of landscape. The magnificent allusions to natural scenery throughout the book are therefore calculated to touch the heart to the end of time.
Then at the central point of Jewish prosperity, you have the first great naturalist the world ever saw, Solomon ; not permitted, indeed, to anticipate, in writing, the discoveries of modern times, but so gifted as to show us that heavenly wisdom is manifested as much in the knowledge of the hyssop that springe th out of the wall as in political and philosophical speculation.
The books of the Old Testament, as distinguished from all other early writings, are thus prepared for an everlasting influence over humanity ; and, finally, Christ himself, setting the concluding example to the conduct and thoughts of men, spends nearly his whole life in the fields, the mountains, or the small country villages of Judea ; and in the very closing scenes of his life, will not so much as sleep within the walls of Jerusalem, but rests at the little village of Bethphage, walking in the morning, and returning in the evening, through the peaceful avenues of the mount of Ohves, to and from hia work of teaching in the temple.
It would thus naturally follow, both from the general tone and teaching of the Scriptures, and from the example of our Lord himself, that wherever Christianity was preached and accepted, there would be an immediate interest awakened in the works of God, as seen in the natural world ; and, accord- ingly, this is the second universal and distinctive character of Christian art, as distinguished from all pagan work, the first being a peculiar spirituality in its conception of the human form, preferring holiness of expression and strength of char- acter, to beauty of features or of body, and the second, as I say, its intense fondness for natural objects — animals, leaves and flowers, — inducing an immediate transformation of the cold and lifeless pagan ornamentation into vivid imagery of nature. Of course this manifestation of feeling was at first checked by the circumstances under which the Christian re- ligion was disseminated. The art of the first three centuries is entirely subordinate, — restrained partly by persecution,
292 LECTUEE8 ON ARCHITECTURBJ
partly by a high spirituality, which cared much more about preaching than painting ; and then when, under Constantino, Christianity became the religion of the Koman empire, myr- iads of persons gave the aid of their wealth and of their art to the new religion, who were Christians in nothing but the name, and who decorated a Christian temple just as they would have decorated a pagan one, merely because the new religion had become Imperial. Then, just as the new art was beginning to assume a distinctive form, down came the northern barbarians upon it ; and all their superstitions had to be leavened with it, and all their hard hands and hearts softened by it, before their art could appear in anything like a characteristic form. The warfare in which Europe was perpetually plunged retarded this development for ages ; but it steadily and gradually prevailed, working from the eighth to the eleventh century like a seed in the ground, showing little signs of life, but still, if carefully examined, changing essentially every day and every hour : at last, in the twelfth century, the blade appears above the black earth ; in the thirteenth, the plant is in full leaf.
I begin, then, with the thirteenth centurj^, and must now make to you a general assertion, which, if you will note down and examine at your leisure, you will find true and useful, though I have not time at present to give you full demonstra- tion of it.
I say, then, that the art of the thirteenth century is the foundation of all art, — not merely the foundation, but the root of it ; that is to say, succeeding art is not merely built upon it, but was all comprehended in it, and is developed out of it. Passing this great century we find three successive branches developed from it, in each of the three following centuries. The fourteenth century is pre-eminently the age of Thought, the fifteenth the age of Drawing, and the six- teenth the age of Painting.
Observe, first, the fourteenth century is pre-eminently the age of thought. It begins with the first words of the poem of Dante ; — and all the great pictorial poems — the mighty series of works in which everything is done to relate, but
I
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nothing to imitate — belong to this century. I should only confuse you by giving you the names of marvellous artists, most of them little familiar to British ears, who adorned this century in Italy ; but you will easily remember it as the age of Dante and Giotto, — the age of Thought.
The men of the succeeding century (the fifteenth) felt that they could not rival their predecessors in invention but might excel them in execution. Original thoughts belonging to this century are comparatively rare ; even Raphael and Michael Angel o themselves borrowed all their principal ideas and plans of pictures from their predecessors ; but they executed them with a precision up to that time unseen. You must understand by the word " drawing," the perfect rendering of forms, whether in sculpture or painting ; and then remember the fifteenth century as the age of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Raphael, — pre-eminently the age of Draiuing.
The sixteenth century produced the four greatest Painters, that is to say, managers of colour, whom the world has seen ', namely, Tintoret, Paul Veronese, Titian, and Correggio. I need not say more to justify my calling it the age of Paint- ing.
This, then, being the state of things respecting art in gen- eral, let us next trace the career of landscape through these centuries.
It was only towards the close of the thirteenth century that fig- ure painting began to assume so perfect a condition as to require some elaborate suggestion of landscape background. Up to that time, if any natural object had to be represented, it was done in an entirely conventional way, as you see it upon Greek vases, or in a Chinese porcelain pattern ; an independent tree or flower being set upon the white ground, or ground of any colour, wherever there was a vacant space for it, without the smallest attempt to imitate the real colours and relations of the earth and sky about it. But at the close of the thirteenth cen- tury, Giotto, and in the course of the fourteenth, Orcagna, sought, for the first time, to give some resemblance to nature in their backgrounds, and introduce behind their figures pieces
294 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
of true landscape, formal enough still, but complete in inten- tion, having foregrounds and distances, sky and water, forests and mountains, carefully delineated, not exactly in their true colour, but yet in colour approximating to the truth. The system which they introduced (for though in many points en- riched above the work of earlier ages, the Orcagna and Giotto landscape was a very complete piece of recipe) was observed for a long period by their pupils, and may be thus briefly described : — The sky is always pure blue, paler at the horizon, and with a few streaky white clouds in it ; the ground is green even to the extreme distance, with brown rocks projecting 'rom it ; water is blue streaked with white. The trees are nearly always composed of clusters of their proper leaves re- lieved on a black or dark ground, thus {fig. 20.).* And ob- serve carefully, with respect to the complete drawing of the leaves on this tree, and the smallness of their number, the real distinction between noble conventionalism and false con- ventionalism. You will often hear modern architects defend- ing their monstrous ornamentation on the gTOund that it is " conventional," and that architectural ornament ought to be conventionalised. Remember when you hear this, that noble conventionalism is not an agreement between the artist and spectator that the one shall misrej^resent nature sixty times over, and the other believe the misrepresentation sixty times over, but it is an agreement that certain means and limitations being prescribed, only that kind of trndh is to be expected which is consistent with those means. For instance, if Sir Joshua Reynolds had been talking to a friend about the char- acter of a face, and there had been nothing in the room but a deal table and an inkbottle — and no pens — Sir Joshua would have dipped his finger in the ink, and painted a portrait on the table with his finger, — and a noble portrait too, cer- tainly not delicate in outline, nor representing any of the
* Having no memoranda of my own taken from Giotto's landscape, I had this tree copied from an engraving ; but I imagine the rude termi- nation of the stems to be a misrepresentation. Fig. 21 is accurately copied from an MS. , certainly executed between 1250 and 1270, and \% more truly characteristic of the early manner.
Fig 21.
PLATE Xin.-(Page 294— Vol. V.)
Trees, as Drawn in the Thirteenth Century.
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qualities of the face dependent on rich outline, but getting aa much of the face as in that manner was attainable. That is noble conventionalism, and Egyptian work on granite, or illu- minator's work in glass, is all conventional in the same sense, but not conventionally false. The two noblest and ti^w'st carved lions I have ever seen, are the two granite ones in the Egyptian room of the British Museum, and yet in them, the lions' manes and beards are represented by rings of solid rock, as smooth as a mirror !
There are indeed one or two other conditions of noble con^ ventionalism, noticed more fully in the Addenda to this Lect- ure ; but 3^ou will find that they always consist in stopping i<hort of nature, not in falsifying nature ; and thus in Giotto's foliage, he stops short of the quantity of leaves on the real tree, but he gives you the form of the leaves represented with perfect truth. His foreground also is nearly always occupied by flowers and herbage, carefully and individually painted from nature ; while, although thus simple in plan, the ar- rangements of line in these landscapes of course show the influence of the master-mind, and sometimes, where the story requires it, we flnd the usual formulae overleaped, and Giotto at Avignon painting the breakers of the sea on a steep shore with great care, while Orcagna, in his triumph of Death, has painted a thicket of brambles mixed Avith teazles, in a manner worthy of the best days of landscape art.
Now from the landscape of these two men to the landscape of Raphael, Leonardo, and Perugino, the advance consists principally in two great steps : The first, that distant objects were more or less invested with a blue colour, — the second, that trees were no longer painted with a black ground, but with a rich dark brown, or deep green. From Giotto's old age, to the youth of Raphael, the advance in and knowledge of, landscape, consisted of no more than these two simple steps ; but the execution of landscape became infinitely more perfect and elaborate. All the flowers and leaves in the foreground were worked out with the same perfection as the features of the figures ; in the middle distance the brown trees were most delicately defined against the sky ; the blue mountains*
296 LEGTUBES ON ARCHITECTUBE
in the extreme distance were exquisitely thrown into aerial gi-adations, and the sky and clouds were perfect in transpar- ency and softness. But still there is no real advance in knowl- edge of natural objects. The leaves and flowers are, indeed, admirably painted, and thrown into various intricate group- ings, such as Giotto could not have attempted, but the rocks and water are still as conventional and imperfect as ever, ex- cept only in colour : the forms of rock in Leonardo's celebrated " Vierge aux Eochers " are literally no better than those on a china plate. Fig. 22. shows a portion of them in mere out- line, with one cluster of the leaves above, and the distant "ideal" mountains. On the whole, the most satisfactory work of the period is that which most resembles missal paint- ing, that is to say, which is fullest of beautiful flowers and animals scattered among the landscape, in the old indepen- dent way, like the birds upon a screen. The landscape of Benozzo Gozzoli is exquisitely rich in incident of this kind.
The first man who entirely broke through the convention- ality of his time, and painted pure landscape, was Masaccio, but he died too young to effect the revolution of which his genius was capable. It was left for other men to accomplish, namely, for Correggio and Titian. These two painters were the first who relieved the foregrounds of their landscape from the grotesque, quaint, and crowded formalism of the early painters ; and gave a close approximation to the forms of nat- ure in all things ; retaining, however, thus much of the old system, that the distances were for the most part painted in deep ultramarine blue, the foregrounds in rich green and brown ; there were no effects of sunshine and shadow, but a generally quiet glow over the whole scene ; and the clouds, though now rolling in irregular masses, and sometimes richly involved among the hills, were never varied in conception, or studied from nature. There were no changes of weather in them, no rain clouds or fair-weather clouds, nothing but va- rious shapes of the cumulus or cirrus, introduced for the sake of light ^n the deep blue sky. Tintoret and Bonifazio intro- duced more natural effects into this monotonous landscape : in their works we meet with showers of rain, with rainbow^
iiiiiiis
*%iP!lifii
Fig. 22.
PLATE XIV. -(Page 296-Vol. V.) Rocks, as Drawn by the School of Leonardo da Vincl
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sunsets, bright reflections in water, and so on ; but still very subordinate, and carelessly worked out, so as not to justify us in considering their landscape as forming a class by it- self.
Fig. 23., which is a branch of a tree from the background of Titian's " St. Jerome," at Milan, compared with fig. 20., will give you a distinct idea of the kind of change which took place from the time of Giotto to that of Titian, and you will find that this whole range of landscape may be conveniently classed in three divisions, namely, Giottesque, Leonardesque, and Titianesque ; the Giottesque embracing nearly all the work of the fourteenth, the Leonardesque that of the fifteenth, and the Titianesque that of the sixteenth century. Now you see there remained a fourth step to be taken, — the doing away with conventionalism altogether, so as to create the perfect art of landscape painting. The course of the mind of Europe was to do this ; but at the very moment when it ought to have been done, the art of all civilised nations w^as paralysed at once by the operation of the poisonous elements of infidelity and classical learning together, as I have endeavoured to show elsewhere. In this paralysis, like a soldier shot as he is just gaining an eminence, the art of the seventeenth century struggled forward, and sank upon the spot it had been en- deavouring to attain. The step which should have freed landscape from conventionaUsm was actually taken by Claude and Salvator Rosa, but taken in a state of palsy, — taken so as to lose far more than was gained. For up to this time, no painter ever had thought of drawing anything, pebble or blade of grass, or tree or mountain, but as well and distinctly as he could ; and if he could not draw it completely, he drew it at least in a way which should thoroughly show his knowl- edge and feeling of it. For instance, you saw in the oak tree of the Giottesque period, that the main points of the tree, the true shape of leaf and acorn, were all there, perfectly and carefully articulated, and so they continued to be down to the time of Tintoret ; both he and Titian working out the separate leaves of their foliage with the most exquisite botanical care. But now observe ; as Christianity had brought this love of nat-
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ure into Paganism, the return of Paganism in the shape of clas^ sical learning at once destroyed this love of nature ; and at the moment when Claude and Salvator made the final effort to paint the effects of nature faithfully, the objects of nature had ceased to be regarded with affection ; so that, while people were amused and interested by the new effects of sunsets over green seas, and of tempests bursting on rocky moun- tains, which were introduced by the rising school, they entirely ceased to require on the one side, or bestow on the other, that care and thought by which alone the beauty of nature can be understood. The older painting had resembled a careful and deeply studied diagram, illustrative of the most important facts ; it was not to be understood or relished without application of serious thought ; on the contrary, it developed and addressed the highest powers of mind belong- ing to the human race ; while the Claude and Salvator paint- ing was like a scene in a theatre, viciously and falsely painted throughout, and presenting a deceptive appearance of truth to nature ; understood, as far as it went, in a moment, but conveying no accurate knowledge of anything, and, in all its operations on the mind unhealthy, hopeless, and profitless.
It was, however, received with avidity ; for this main rea- son, that the architecture, domestic life and manners of the period were gradually getting more and more artificial ; as I showed you last evening, all natural beauty had ceased to be permitted in architectural decoration, while the habits of society led them more and more to live, if possible, in cities ; and the dress, language, and manners of men in general were approximating to that horrible and lifeless condition in which you find them just before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Now, observe : exactly as hoops, and starch, and false hair, and all that in mind and heart these things typify and betray as these, I say, gained u^Don men, there was a necessary re- action in favour of the natural. Men had never lived so ut- terly in defiance of the laws of nature before ; but they could not do this without feeling a strange charm in that which they defied ; and, accordingly, we find this reactionary senti-
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ment expressing itself in a base school of what was called pastoral poetry ; that is to say, poetry written in praise of the country, by men who lived in coffee-houses and on the Mall. The essence of pastoral poetry is the sense of strange delight- fulness in grass, which is occasionally felt by a man who has seldom set his foot on it ; it is essentially the poetry of the cockney, and for the most part corresponds in its aim and rank, as compared with other literature, to the porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses on a chimney-piece as com- pared with great works of sculpture.
Of course all good poetry, descriptive of rural life, is essen- tially pastoral, or has the effect of the pastoral, on the minds of men living in cities ; but the class of poetry which I mean, and which you probably understand, by the term pastoral, is that in which a farmer's girl is spoken of as a "nymph," and a farmer's boy as a " swain," and in which, throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural refinement is supposed to exist in rural life, merely because the poet himself has neither had the courage to endure its hardships, nor the wit to conceive its realities. If you examine the literature of the past cen- tury, you will find that nearly all its expressions, having ref- erence to the country, show something of this kind ; either a foolish sentimentalitv, or a morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most curious ignorance. You will find all its descriptive expressions at once vague and monotonous. Brooks are always "purling;" birds always "w^arbling;" mountains always "• lift their horrid peaks above the clouds ; '* vales always " are lost in the shadow of gloomy woods ; " a few more distinct ideas about haymaking and curds and cream, acquired in the neighbourhood of Richmond Bridge, serving to give an occasional appearance of freshness to the catalogue of the sublime and beautiful which descended from poet to poet ; while a few true pieces of pastoral, like the "Vicar of Wakefield," and Walton's "Angler," relieved the general waste of dulness. Even in these better productions, nothing is more remarkable than the general conception of the country merely as a series of green fields, and the com- bined ignorance and dread of more sublime scenery ; of
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which the mysteries and dangers were enhanced by the difficulties of travelling at the period. Thus in Walton's "Angler," you have a meeting of two friends, one a Derby- shire man, the other a lowland traveller, who is as much alarmed, and uses nearly as many expressions of astonish- ment, at having to go down a steep hill and ford a brook, as a traveller uses now at crossing the glacier of the Col de Geant. I am not sure whether the difficulties which, untiJ late years, have lain in the way of peaceful and convenient travelling, ought not to have great weight assigned to them among the other causes of the temper of the century ; but be that as it may, if you will examine the whole range of its lit- erature— keeping this point in view — I am well persuaded that you will be struck most forcibly by the strange deadness to the higher sources of landscape sublimity which is mingled with the morbid pastoralism. The love of fresh air and green grass forced itself upon the animal natures of men ; but that of the sublimer features of scenery had no place in minds whose chief powers had been repressed by the formalisms of the age. And although in the second-rate writers continually, and in the first-rate ones occasionally, you find an aifectation of interest in mountains, clouds, and forests, yet whenever they write from their heart, you wdll find an utter absence of feeling respecting anything beyond gardens and grass. Ex- amine, for instance, the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne, the comedies of Moliere, and the writings of Johnson and Addison, and I do not think you will find a single expres- sion of true delight in sublime nature in any one of them. Perhaps Sterne's " Sentimental Journey," in its total absence of sentiment on any subject but humanity, and its entire want of notice of anything at Geneva, which might not as well have been seen at Coxwold, is the most striking instance I could give you ; and if you compare with this negation of feeling on one side, the interludes of Moliere in which shepherds and shepherdesses are introduced in court dress, you will have a very accurate conception of the general spirit of the age.
It was in such a state of society that the landscape of Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Eosa attained it?
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reputation. It is the complete expression on canvas of the spirit of the time. Claude embodies the foolish pastoralism, Salvator the ignorant terror, and Gaspar the dull and affected erudition.
It was, however, altogether impossible that this state ol things could long continue. The age which had buried itself in formalism grew weary at last of the restraint ; and the ap- proach of a new asra was marked by the appearance, and the enthusiastic reception, of writers who took true delight in those wild scenes of nature which had so long been despised.
I think the first two writers in whom the symptoms of a change are strongly manifested are Mrs. Radcliffe and Rous- seau ; in both of whom the love of natural scenery, though mingled in the one case with what was merely dramatic, and in the other with much that was pitifully morbid or vicious, was still itself genuine, and intense, differing altogether in character from any sentiments previously traceable in litera- ture. And then rapidly followed a group of writers, who expressed, in various ways, the more powerful or more pure feeling which had now become one of the strongest instincts of the age. Of these, the principal is your own Walter Scott. Many writers, indeed, describe nature more minutely and more profoundly ; but none show in higher intensity the pe- culiar passion for what is majestic or lovely in wild nature, to which I am now referring. The whole of the poem of the "Lady of the Lake" is written with almost a boyish enthu- siasm for rocks, and lakes, and cataracts ; the early novels show the same instinct in equal strength wherever he aj)- proaches Highland scenery ; and the feeling is mingled, observe, with a most touching and affectionate appreciation of the Gothic architecture, in which alone he found the ele» ments of natural beauty seized by art ; so that, to this day his descriptions of Melrose and Holy Island Cathedral, in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel " and " Marmion," as well as of the ideal abbeys in the "Monastery" and "Antiquary," to- gether with those of Caerlaverock and Lochleven Castles in " Guy Mannering " and " The Abbot," remain the staple pos- sessions and text-books of all travellers, not so much for theii
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beauty or accuracy, as for their exactly expressing that degree of feeling with which most men in this century can sympathise.
Together with Scott appeared the group of poets, — Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and, finally, Tennyson, — differing widely in moral principles and spiritual temper, but all agree mg more or less in this love for natural scenery.
Now, you will ask me — and you will ask me most reason- ibly — how^ this love of nature in modern days can be con- nected with Christianity, seeing it is as strong in the infidel Shelley as in the sacred Wordsworth. Yes, and it is found in far worse men than Shelley. Shelley was an honest unbeliever, and a man of warm affections ; but this new love of nature is found in the most reckless and unprincipled of the French novelists, — in Eugene Sue, in Dumas, in George Sand, — and that intensely. How is this ? Simply because the feeling is reactionary ; and, in this phase of it, common to the diseasefl mind as well as to the healthy one. A man dying in the fever of intemperance will cry out for water and that with a bitterer thirst than a man w^iose healthy frame naturally delights in the mountain spring more than in the wine cup. The water is not dishonoured by the thirst of the diseased, nor is nature dishonoured by the love of the unworthy. That love is, per- haps, the only saving element in their minds ; and it still remains an indisputable truth that the love of nature is a characteristic of the Christian heart, just as the hunger for healthy food is characteristic of the healthy frame.
In order to meet this new feeling for nature, there necessa- rily arose a new school of landscape painting. That school, like the literature to which it corresponded, had many weak and vicious elements mixed with its noble ones ; it had its Mrs. Radcliffes and Eousseaus, as well as its Wordsworths ; but, on the whole, the feeling with which Robson drew moun- tains, and Prout architecture, with which Fielding draws mooi^s, and Stanfield sea— is altogether pure, true, and pre- cious, as compared with that which suggested the landsca]:)e of the seventeenth century.
Now observe, how simple the whole subject becomes, i^ou have, first, your great ancient landscape divided into its
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three periods — Giottesque, Leonardesque, Titianesque. Then you have a great gap, full of nonentities and abortions ; a gulph of foolishness, into the bottom of which you may throw Claude and Salvator, neither of them deserving to give a name to anything. Call it "pastoral" landscape, "guarda epassa," and then you have, lastly, the pure, wholesome, simple, mod- ern landscape. You want a name for that : I will give ^''ou one in a moment ; for the whole character and power of that landscape is originally based on the work of one man.
Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in Maiden Lane, London, about eighty years ago. The register of his birth was burned, and his age at his death could only be arrived at by conjecture. He was the son of a barber ; and his father intended him, very properly, for his own profession. The bent of the boy was, however, soon manifested, as is always the case in children of extraordinary genius, too strongly to be resisted, and a sketch of a coat of arms on a silver salver, made while his father was shaving a customer, obtained for him, in reluctant compliance with the admiring customer's advice, the permission to follow art as a profession.
He had, of course, the usual difficulties of young artists to encounter, and they were then far greater than they are now. But Turner differed from most men in this, — that he was al- ways willing to take anything to do that came in his way. He did not shut himself up in a garret to produce unsaleable works of "high art," and starve, or lose his senses. He hired himself out every evening to wash in skies in Indian ink, on other people's drawings, as many as he could, at half-a-crown a-night, getting his supper into the bargain. " What could I have done better ? " he said afterwards : "it was first-rate practice." Then he took to illustrating guide-books and al- manacks, and anything that wanted cheap frontispieces. The Oxford Almanack, published on a single sheet, with a copper- plate at the top of it, consisting of a " View " — you perhaps, some of you, know the kind of print characteristic of the last century, under which the word "View" is always printed in large letters, with a dedication, obsequious to the ver}^ dust, to the Grand Signior of the neighbourhood. — Well, this Al«
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manack had always such a view of some Oxford College at the top of it, dedicated, I think, always to the head of the Col- lege ; and it owed this, its principal decoration, to Turner for many years. I have myself two careful drawings of some old seals, made by him for a local book on the antiquities of Whalley Abbey. And there was hardly a gentleman's seat of any importance in England, towards the close of the last cen- tury, of which you will not find some rude engraving in the local publications of the time, inscribed with the simple name " W. Turner."
There was another gTeat difference between Turner and other men. In doing these drawings for the commonest pub- lications of the day, and for a remuneration altogether con- temptible, he never did his work badly because he thought it beneath him, or because he was ill-paid. There does not exist such a thing as a slovenly drawing by Turner. With what people were willing to give him for his work he was con- tent ; but he considered that work in its relation to himself, not in its relation to the purchaser. He took a poor price, that he might live ; but he made noble drawings, that he might learn. Of course some are slighter than others, and they vary in their materials ; those executed with pencil and Indian ink being never finished to the degree of those which are executed in colour. But he is never careless. According to the time and means at his disposal, he always did his best. He never let a drawing leave his hands without having made a step in advance, and having done better in it than he had ever done before ; and there is no important drawing of the period which is not executed with a total disregard of time and price, and which was not, even then, worth four or five times what Turner received for it.
Even without genius, a man who thus felt and thus la- boured was sure to do great things ; though it is seldom that, without great genius, men either thus feel or thus labour. Turner was as far beyond all other men in intellect as in indus- try ; and his advance in power and grasp of thought was as steady as the increasing light of sunrise.
His reputation was soon so far established that he was abl«
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to devote himself to more consistent study. He never ap< pears literally to have copied any picture ; but whenever any master interested him, or was of so established a reputation that he thought it necessary to study him, he painted pictures of his own subjects in the style of that master, until he felt himself able to rival his exellencies, whatever they were. There are thus multitudes of pictures by Turner which are direct imitations of other masters ; especially of Claude, Wil- son, Loutherbourg, Gaspar Poiissin, Vandevelde, Cuyp, and Rembrandt. It has been argued by Mr. Leslie that, because Turner thus in his early years imitated many of the old mas- ters, therefore he must to the end of his life have considered them greater than himself. The nonsequitur is ob^dous. I trust there are few men so unhappy as never to have learned any- thing from their inferiors ; and I fear there are few men so wise as never to have imitated anything but what was deseiwing of imitation. The young Turner, indeed, would have been more than mortal if, in a period utterly devoid of all healthy exam- ples of landscape art, he had been able at once to see his way to the attainment of his ultimate ends ; or if, seeing it, he had felt himself at once strong enough to defy the authority of every painter and connoisseur whose style had formed the taste of the public, or whose dicta directed their patronage.
But the period when he both felt and resolved to assert his own superiority was indicated with perfect clearness, by his publishing a series of engravings, which were nothing else than direct challenges to Claude — then the landscape painter supposed to be the greatest in the world — upon his own ground and his own terms. You are probably all aware that the studies made by Claude for his pictures, and kept by him under the name of the " Liber Veritatis," were for the most part made with pen and ink, washed over with a brown tint ; and that these drawings have been carefully fac-similed and published in the form of mezzotint engravings, long supposed to be models of taste in landscape composition. In order to provoke comparison between Claude and himself, Turner pub- lished a series of engravings, called the "Liber Studiorum," executed in exactly the same manner as these drawings of
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Claude, — an etching representing what was done with, the pen, while mezzotint stood for colour. You see the notable publicity of this challenge. Had he confined himself to pict- ures in his trial of skill with Claude, it would only have been in the gallery or the palace that the comparison could have been instituted ; but now it is in the power of all wiio are in= terested in the matter to make it at their ease.*
**********
Now, what Turner did in contest with Claude, he did with every other then-known master of landscape, each in his turn. He challenged and vanquished, each in his own peculiar field, Vandevelde on the sea, Salvator among rocks, and Cuyp on Lowland rivers ; and, having done this, set himself to paint the natural scenery of skies, mountains, and lakes, which, until his time, had never been so much as attempted.
He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far surpassed even Titian and Leonardo, the great men of the earlier schools. In their foreground work neither Titian nor Leonardo could be excelled ; but Titian and Leonardo were thoroughly con- ventional in all hut their foregrounds. Turner was equally great in all the elements of landscape, and it is on him, and on his daring additions to the received schemes of landscape art, that all modern landscape has been founded. You will never meet any truly great living landscape painter who will not at once frankly confess his obligations to Turner, not, observe, as having copied him, but as having been led by Turner to look in nature for what he would otherwise either not have discerned, or discerning, not have dared to represent.
Turner, therefore, was the first man who presented us with the type of perfect landscape art : and the richness of that
* When tliis Lecture was delivered, an enlarged copy of a portion of one of these studies by Claude was set beside a similarly magnified por- tion of one by Turner. It was impossible, without much increasing the cost of the publication, to prepare two mezzotint engravings with the care requisite for this purpose : and the portion of the Lecture relating to these examples is therefore omitted. It is however in the power of every reader to procure one or more plates of each series ; and to judge for himself whether the conclusion of Turner's superiority, which is assumed in the next sentence of the text, be a just one or not
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art, with which you are at present surrounded, and which enables you to open your walls as it were into so many win- dows, through which you can see whatever has charmed you in the fairest scenery of your country, you will do well to remember as Turneresque.
So then you have these five periods to recollect — you will have no difficulty, I trust, in doing so, — the periods of Giotto, Leonardo, Titian, pastoralism, and Turner.
But Turner's work is yet only begun. His greatness is, aa yet, altogether denied by many ; and to the full, felt by very few. But every day that he lies in his grave will bring some new acknowledgement of his power ; and through those eyes, now filled with dust, generations yet unborn will learn to be- hold the light of nature.
You have some ground to-night to accuse me of dogmatism. I can bring no proof before you of what I so boldly assert. But I would not have accepted your invitation to address you, unless I had felt that I had a right to be, in this matter, dog- matic. I did not come here to tell you of my beliefs or my conjectiu'es ; I came to tell you the truth which I have given fifteen years of my life to ascertain, that this man, this Turner, of whom you have known so little while he was living among you, will one day take his place beside Shakspeare and Veru- 1am, in the annals of the light of England.
Yes : beside Shakspeare and Verulam, a third, star in that central constellation, round which, in the astronomy of in- tellect, all other stars make their circuit. By Shakspeare, humanity was unsealed to you ; by Verulam the principles of nature ; and by Turner, her aspect. All these were sent to unlock one of the gates of light, and to unlock it for the first time. But of all the three, though not the greatest. Turner was the most unprecedented in his work. Bacon did what Aristotle had attempted ; Shakspeare did perfectly what ^s- chylus did partially ; but none before Turner had lifted the veil from the face of nature ; the majesty of the hills and forests had received no interpretation, and the clouds passed unrecorded from the face of the heaven which they adorned, and of the earth to which they ministered.
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And now let me tell you something of his personal charao ter. You have heard him spoken of as ill-natured, and jeal- ous of his brother artists. I will tell you how jealous he was. I knew him for ten years, and during that time had much familiar intercourse with him. I nemr once heard him say an unkind thing of a brother artist, / never once heard him find a fault with another man's work. I could say this of no other artist whom I have ever known.
But I will add a piece of evidence on this matter of peculiar force. Probably many here have read a book which has been lately published, to my mind one of extreme interest and value, the life of the unhappy artist, Benjamin Haydon. Whatever may have been his faults, I believe no person can read his journal without coming to the conclusion that his heart was honest, and that he does not wilfully misrepresent any fact, or any person. Even supposing otherwise, the expression I am going to quote to you would have all the more force, because, as you know, Haydon passed his whole life in war with the Royal Academy, of which Turner was one of the most influen- tial members. Yet in the midst of one of his most violent ex- pressions of exultation at one of his victories over the Academy, he draws back suddenly with these words : — " But Turner behaved well, and did me justice."
I will give you however besides, two plain facts illustrative of Turner's " jealousy."
You have, perhaps not many of you, heard of a painter of the name of Bird ; I do not myself know his works, but Turner saw some merit in them : and when Bird first sent a picture to the Academy, for exhibition, Turner was on the hanging committee. Bird's picture had great merit ; but no place for it could be found. Turner pleaded hard for it. No, the thing was impossible. Turner sat down and looked at Bird's picture a long time ; then insisted that a place must be found for it. He was still met by the assertion of impracticability. He said no more, but took down one of his own pictures, sent it out of the Academy, and hung Bird's in its place.
Match that, if you can, among the annals of hanging com* mittees. But he could do nobler things than this.
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When Turner's picture of Cologne was exhibited in the year 1826, it was hung between two portraits, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, of Lady Wallscourt, and Lady Kobert Manners.
The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly bright, and it had a most injurious effect on the colour of the two portraits^ Lawrence naturally felt mortified, and complained openly of the position of his pictures. You are aware that artists were at that time permitted to retouch their pictures on the walls of the Academy. On the morning of the opening of the ex- hibition, at the private view, a friend of Turner's who had seen the Cologne in all its splendour, led a group of expec- tant critics up to the picture. He started back from it in consternation. The golden sky had changed to a dun colour. He ran up to Turner, who was in another part part of the room. " Turner, what have you been doing to your picture ? " "Oh," muttered Turner, in a low voice, "poor Lawrence was so unhappy. It's only lamp black. It'll all wash off after the exhibition ! " He had actually passed a wash of lamp black in water colour over the whole sk}^, and utterly spoiled his picture for the time, and so left it through the exhibition, lest it should hurt Lawrences.
You may easily find instances of self-sacrifice where men have strong motives, and where large benefits are to be con- ferred by the effort, or general admiration obtained by it ; but of pure, unselfish, and perfect generosity, showing itself in a matter of minor interest, and when few could be aware of the sacrifice made, you will not easily find such another ex- ample as this.
Thus much for his jealousy of his brother-artists. You have also heard much of his niggardliness in money, transac- tions. A great part of what you have heard is perfectly true, allowing for the exaggeration which always takes place in the accounts of an eccentric character. But there are other parts of Turner's conduct of which you have never heard ; and which, if truly reported, would set his niggardliness in a very different light. Every person from whom Turner exacted a due shilling, proclaimed the exaction far and wide ; but the persons to whom Turner gave hundreds of pounds were pre-
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vented, by their " delicacy," from reporting the kindness o! their benefactor. I may, however, perhaps, be permitted to acquaint you with one circumstance of this nature, creditable alike to both parties concerned.
At the death of a poor drawing master, Mr. Wells, whom Turner had long known, he was deeply affected, and lent money to the widow until a large sum had accumulated. She was both honest and grateful, and after a long period was happy enough to be able to return to her benefactor the whole sum she had received from him. She waited on him with it ; but Turner kept his hands in his pocket. "Keep it," he said "and send your children to school, and to church." He said this in bitterness ; he had himself been sent to neither.
Well, but you will answer to me, we have heard Turner all our lives stigmatised as brutal, and uncharitable, and selfish, and miserly. How are we to understand these opposing state- ments ?
Easily. I have told you truly what Turner was. You have often heard what to most people he appeared to be. Imagine what it was for a man to live seventy years in this hard world, with the kindest heart and the noblest intellect of his time, and never to meet with a single word or ray of sympathy, until he felt himseK sinking into the grave. From the time he knew his true greatness all the world was turned against him : he held his own ; but it could not be without roughness of bear- ing, and hardening of the temper, if not of the heart. No one understood him, no one trusted him, and every one cried out against him. Imagine, any of you, the effect upon your own minds, if every voice that you heard from the human beings around you were raised, year after year, through all your lives, only in condemnation of your efforts, and denial of your suc= cess. This may be borne, and borne easily, by men who have fixed religious principles, or supporting domestic ties. But Turner had no one to teach him in his youth, and no one to love him in his old age. Kespect and affection, if they came at all, came unbelieved, or came too late. Naturally irritable, though kind, — naturally suspicious, though gener- ous,— the gold gradually became dim, and the most fine gold
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changed, or, if not changed, overcast and clouded. The deep heart was still beating, but it was beneath a dark and melan- choly mail between whose joints, however, sometimes the slightest arrows found entrance, and power of giving pain. He received no consolation in his last years, nor in his death. Cut off in great part from all society, — first, by labour, and at last by sickness, — hunted to his grave by the malignities of small critics, and the jealousies of hopeless rivalry, he died in the house of a stranger, — one companion of his life, and one only, staying with him to the last. The window of his death- chamber was turned towards the west, and the sun shone up- on his face in its setting and rested there, as he expired.
LECTUKE IV.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM.
The subject on which I would desire to engage your at- tion this evening, is the nature and probable result of a cer- tain schism which took place a few years ago among our British artists.
This schism, or rather the heresy which led to it, as you are probably aware, was introduced by a small number of very young men ; and consists mainly in the assertion that the principles on which art has been taught for these three hundred years back are essentially wrong, and that the prin- ciples which ought to guide us are those which prevailed before the time of Raphael ; in adopting which, therefore, as their guides, these young men, as a sort of bond of unity among themselves, took the unfortunate and somewhat ludi- crous name of " Pre-Raphaelite " brethren.
You must all be aware that this heresy has been opposed ^ith all the influence and all the bitterness of art and criticism ; but that in spite of these the heresy has gained ground, and the pictures painted on these new principles have 7)btained a most extensive popularity. These cii'cum stances
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are sufficiently singular, but their importance is greater eveu than their singularity ; and your time will certainly not be wasted in devoting an hour to an inquiry into the true nature of this movement.
I shall, first, therefore, endeavour to state to you what the real difference is between the principles of art before and after Eaphael's time, and then to ascertain, with you, how far these young men truly have understood the difference, and what may be hoped or feared from the effort they are making.
First, then, What is the real difference between the prin- ciples on which art has been pursued before and since Eaphael ? You must be aware, that the principal ground on which the Pre-Raphaelites have been attacked, is the charge that they wish to bring us back to a time of darkness and ignorance, when the principles of drawing, and of art in general, were comparatively unknown ; and this attack, there- fore, is entirely founded on the assumption that, although for some unaccountable reason we cannot at present produce artists altogether equal to Raphael, yet that we are on the whole in a state of greater illumination than, at all events, any artists who preceded Raphael ; so that we consider our- selves entitled to look down upon them, and to say that, all things considered, they did some wonderful things for their time ; but that, as for comparing the art of Giotto to that of Wilkie or Edwin Landseer, it would be perfectly ridiculous, — the one being a mere infant in his profession, and the others accomplished workmen.
Now, that this progress has in some things taken place is perfectly true ; but it is true also that this progress is by no means the main thing to be noticed respecting ancient and modern art ; that there are other circumstances, connected with the change from one to the other, immeasurably more important, and which, until very lately, have been altogether lost sight of.
The fact is, that modern art is not so much distinguished from old art by greater skill, as by a radical change in temper. The art of this day is not merely a more knowing
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art than that of the thirteenth century, — it is altogether another art. Between the two there is a great gulph, a dis- tinction for ever ineffaceable. The change from one to the other was not that of the child into the man, as we usually consider it ; it was that of the chrysalis into the butterfly. There was an entire change in the habits, food, method of existence, and heart of the whole creature. That we know more than thirteenth-century people is perfectly true ; but that is not the essential difference between us and them. We are different kind of creatures from them, — as different as moths are different from caterpillars ; and different in a certain broad and vast sense, which I shall try this evening to explain and prove to you ; — different not merely in this or that result of minor circumstances, — not as you are different from people who never saw a locomotive engine, or a High- lander of this century from a Highlander of 1745 ; — different in a far broader and mightier sense than that, in a sense so great and clear, that we are enabled to separate all the Christian na- tions and tongues of the early time from those of the latter time, and speak of them in one group as the kingdoms of the Middle Ages. There is an infinite significance in that term, which I want you to dwell upon and work out ; it is a term which we use in a dim consciousness of the truth, but without fully penetrating into that of which we are conscious. I want to deepen and make clear to you this consciousness that the world has had essentially a Trinity of ages — the Classical Age, the Middle Age, the Modern Age ; each of these embra- cing races and individuals of apparently enormous separation in kind, but united in the spirit of their age, — the Classical Age having its Egyptians and Ninevites, Greeks and Romans, — the Middle Age having its Goths and Franks, Lombards and Italians, — the Modern Ages having their French and EngHsh, Spaniards and Germans ; but all these distinctions being in each case subordinate to the mightier and broader distinction, between Classicalism, Medicevalism, and Modernism.
Now our object to-night is indeed only to inquire into a matter of art ; but we cannot do so properly until we consider this art in its relation to the inner spirit of the age in which
314 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
it exists ; and by doing so we shall not only arrive at the most just conclusions respecting our present subject, but we shalJ obtain the means of arriving at just conclusions respecting many other things.
Now the division of time which the Pre-Kaphaelites have adopted, in choosing Kaphael as a man whose works mark the separation between Medisevalisra and Modernism, is per- fectly accurate. It has been accepted as such by all their opponents.
You have, then, the three periods : Classicalism, extending to the fall of the Roman empire ; Medisevalism, extending from that fall to the close of the fifteenth century ; and Mod- ernism, thenceforward to our days.
And in examining into the spirit of these three epochs, observe, I don't i^ean to compare their bad men, — I don't mean to take Tiberius as a type of Classicalism, nor Ezzelin as a type of Mediaevalism, nor Robespierre as a type of Mod- ernism. Bad men are like each other in all epochs ; and in the Roman, the Paduan, or the Parisian, sensuality and cruelty admit of little distinction in the manners of their manifestation. But among men comparatively virtuous, it is important to study the phases of character ; and it is into these only that it is necessary for us to, inquire. Consider therefore, first, the essential difference in character between three of the most devoted military heroes whom the three great epochs of the world have produced, — all three devoted to the service of their country, — all of them dying therein. I mean, Leonidas in the Classical period, St. Louis in the Mediaeval period, and Lord Nelson in the Modern period.
Leonidas had the most rigid sense of duty, and died with the most perfect faith in the gods of his country, fulfilling the accepted prophecy of his death. St. Louis had the most rigid sense of duty, and the most perfect faith in Christ. Nelson had the most rigid sense of duty, and^
You must supply my pause with your Qhoxiiy.
Now you do not suppose that the main difference between. Leonidas and Nelson lay in the modern inventions at the command of the one, as compared with the imperfect military
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mstruments possessed by the other. They were not essen- tially different, in that the one fought with lances and the other with guns. But they were essentially different in the whole tone of their religious belief.
By this instance you may be partially prepared for the bold statement I am going to make to you, as to the change which constitutes modernism. I said just now that it was like that of the worm to the butterfly. But the changes which God causes in his lower creatures are almost always from worse to better, while the changes which God allows man to make in himself are very often quite the other way ; like Adam's new arrangement of his nature. And in saying that this last change was like that of a chrysalis, I meant only in the com- pleteness of it, not in the tendency of it. Instead of from the worm to the butterfly, it is very possible it may have been from the butterfly to the worm.
Have patience with me for a moment after I tell you what I believe it to have been, and give me a little time to justify my words.
I say that Classicalism began, wherever civilisation began, with Pagan Faith. Medisevalism began, and continued, wher- ever civilisation began and continued to confess Christ. And, lastly. Modernism began and continues, wherever civilisation began and continues to deny Christ.
You are startled, but give me a moment to explain. What, you would say to me, do you mean to tell us that we deny Christ ? we who are essentially modern in every one of our principles and feelings, and yet all of us professing believers in Christ, and we trust most of us true ones? I answer, So far as we are behevers indeed, we are one with the faithful of all times, — one with the classical believer of Athens and Ephesus, and one with the mediaeval believer of the banks of the Khone and the valleys of the Monte Viso. But so far as, in various strange ways, some in great and some in small things, we deny this belief, in so far we are essentially infected with this spirit, which I call modernism.
For observe, the change of which I speak has nothing what- ever to do with the Reformation, or with any of its effects.
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It is a far broader thing than the Reformation. It is a change which has taken place, not only in reformed England, and reformed Scotland ; but in unreformed France, in unreformed Itaty, in unreformed Austria. I class honest Protestants and honest Roman Catholics for the present together, under the general term Christians ; if you object to their being so classed together, I pray your pardon, but allow me to do so at present, for the sake of perspicuity, if for nothing else ; and so classing them, I say that a change took place, about the time of Raphael, in the spirit of Roman Catholics and Protestants both ; and that change consisted in the denial of their religious belief, at least in the external and trivial affairs of life, and often in far more serious things.
For instance, hear this direction to an upholsterer of the early thirteenth century. Under the commands of the sheriff of Wiltshire, he is thus ordered to make some alterations in a room for Henry the Third. He is to "wainscot the King's lower chamber, and to paint that wainscot of a green colour, and to put a border to it, and to cause the heads of kings and queens to be painted on the borders ; and to paint on the walls of the King's upper chamber the story of St. Margaret, Virgin, and the four Evangelists, and to paint the wainscot of the same chamber of a green colour, spotted with gold." *
Again, the sheriff of Wiltshire is ordered to "put two small glass windows in the chamber of Edward the King's son ; and put a glass window in the chamber of our Queen at Clarendon ; and in the same window cause to be painted a Mary with her Child, and at the feet of the said Mary, a queen with clasped hands."
Again, the sheriff of Southampton is ordered to "paint the tablet beside the King's bed, with the figures of the guards of the bed of Solomon, and to glaze with white glass the win- dows in the King's great Hall at Southampton, and cause the history of Lazarus and Dives to be painted in the same."
And so on ; I need not multiply instances. You see that in all these cases, the furniture of the King's house is made
* Liberate Rolls, preserved in tlie Tower of London, and quoted b^ Mr. Turner in bis History of the Domestic Arcbitecture of England.
i
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to confess liis Christianity. It may be imperfect and impure Cliristianit}', but such as it might be, it was all that men had then to live and die by ; and you see there was not a pane of glass in their windows, nor a pallet by their bedside that did not confess and proclaim it. Now, when you go home tc your own rooms, supposing them to be richly decorated at all, examine what that decoration consists of. You will find Cupids, Graces, Floras, Dianas, Jupiters, Junos. But you will not find, except in the form of an engraving, bought prin- cipally for its artistic beauty, either Christ, or the Virgin, or Lazarus and Dives. And if a thousand years hence, any curi- ous investigator were to dig up the ruins of Edinburgh, and not know your history, he would think you had all been born heathens. Now that, so far as it goes, is denying Christ ; it is pure Modernism.
No, you will answer me, "you misunderstand and calum- niate us. We do not, indeed, choose to have Dives and Laz- arus on our windows ; but that is not because we are moderns, but because we are Protestants, and do not like religious im- agery." Pardon me : that is not the reason. Go into any fashionable lady's boudoir in Paris, and see if you will find Dives and Lazarus there. You will find, indeed, either that she has her private chapel, or that she has a crucifix in her dressing room ; but for the general decoration of the house, it is all composed of Apollos and Muses, just as it is here.
Again. What do you suppose was the substance of good education, the education of a knight, in the Middle Ages? What was taught to a boy as soon as he was able to learn any- thing ? First, to keep under his body, and bring it into sub- jection and perfect strength ; then to take Christ for his cap- tain, to live as always in his presence and, finally, to do his devoir — mark the word — to all men ? Now, consider first, the difference in their influence over the armies of France, be- tween the ancient word ''devoir," and modern word "gloire." And, again, ask yourselves what you expect your own chil- dren to be taught at your great schools and universities. Is it Christian history, or the histories of Pan and Silenus?
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Your present education, to all intents and purposes, deniei Christ, and that is intensely and peculiarly modernism.
Or, again, what do you suppose was the proclaimed and understood principle of all Christian governments in the middle ages ? I do not say it was a principle acted up to, or that the cunning and violence of wicked men had not too often their full sway then, as now ; but on what principles were that cunning and violence, so far as was possible, re- strained ? By the confessed fear of God, and confessed author- ity of his law. You will find that all treaties, laws, transac- tions whatsoever, in the middle ages, are based on a confession of Christianity as the leading rule of life ; that a text of Script- ure is held, in all public assemblies, strong enough to be set against an appearance of expediency ; and although, in the end, the expediency might triumph, yet it was never without a distinct allowance of Christian principle, as an efficient ele- ment in the consultation. Whatever error might be commit- ted, at least Christ was openly confessed. Now what is the custom of your British Parliament in these days? You know that nothing would excite greater manifestations of contempt and disgust than the slightest attempt to introduce the au- thority of Scripture in a political consultation. That is deny- ing Christ. It is intensely and peculiarly modernism.
It would be easy to go on showing you this same thing in many more instances ; but my business to-night is to show you its full effect in one thing only, namely, in art, and I must come straightway to that, as I have little enough time. This, then, is the great and broad fact which distinguishes modern art from old art ; that all ancient art was religious, and all modern art is 'profane. Once more, your patience for an instant. I say, all ancient art was religious ; that is to say, religion was its first object ; private luxury or pleasure its second. I say, all modern art is profane ; that is, private lux- luy or pleasure is its first object ; religion its second. Now you all know, that anything which makes religion its second object, makes religion no object. God will put up with a great many things in the human heart, but there is one thing he wijl not put up with in it — a second place. He who offers
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God a second place, offers him no place. And there is an- other mighty truth which you all know, that he who makes religion his first object, makes it his whole object : he has no other work in the world than God's work. Therefore I do not say that ancient art was more religious than modern art. There is no question of degree in this matter. Ancient art was religious art ; modern art is profane art ; and between the two the distinction is as firm as between light and dark- ness.
Now, do not let what I say be encumbered in your minds with the objection, that you think art ought not to be brought into the service of religion. That is not the question at present — do not agitate it. The simple fact is, that old art loas brought into that service, and received therein a peculiar form ; that modern art is not brought into that service, and has received in consequence another form; that this is the great distinction between mediseval and modern art ; and from that are clearly deducible all other essential differences be- tween them. That is the point I wish to show you, and of that there can be no dispute. Wliether or not Christianity be the purer for lacking the service of art, is disputable — and I do not mean now to begin the dispute ; but that art is the impurer for not being in the service of Christianity, is indisput- able, and that is the main point I have now to do with.
Perhaps there are some of you here who would not allow that the religion of the thirteenth century was Christianity. Be it so, stiU is the statement true, which is all that is necessary for me now to prove, that art was great because it was de- voted to such religion as then existed. Grant that Eoman Catholicism was not Christianity — grant it, if you will, to be the same thing as old heathenism, — and still I say to you, whatever it was, men lived and died by it, the ruHng thought of all their thoughts.; and just as classical art was greatest in building to its gods, so mediaeval art was great in building to its gods, and modern art is not great, because it builds to no God. You have for instance, in your Edinburgh Library, a Bible of the thirteenth century, the Latin Bible, commonly known as the Vulgate. It contains the Old and New Testaments
320 LECTURED ON ARCHITECTURE
complete, besides the books of Maccabees, the Wisdom o! Solomon, the books of Judith, Baruch, and Tobit. The whole is written in the most beautiful black-letter hand, and each book begins wdth an illuminated letter, containing three or four figures, illustrative of the book which it begins. Now, whether this were done in the service of true Christianity or not, the simple fact is, that here is a man's lifetime taken up in writing and ornamenting a Bible, as the sole end of his art ; and that doing this either in a book, or on a wall, was the common artist's life at the time ; that the constant Bible reading and Bible thinking which this work involved, made a man serious and thoughtful, and a good workman, because he was always expressing those feelings which, whether right or wrong, were the groundwork of his whole being. Now, about the year 1500, this entire system was changed. Instead of the life of Christ, men had, for the most part, to paint the lives of Bac- chus and Venus ; and if you walk through any public gallery of pictures by the "great masters," as they are called, you will indeed find here and there what is called a Holy Family, painted for the sake of drawing pretty children, or a pretty woman ; but for the most part you will find nothing but Floras, Pomonas, Satyrs, Graces, Bacchanals, and Banditti. Now you will not declare — you cannot believe, — that Angelico painting the life of Christ, Benozzo painting the life of Abra- ham, Ghirlandajo painting the life of the Virgin, Giotto paint- ing the life of St. Francis, were worse employed, or likely to produce a less healthy art, than Titian painting the loves of Venus and Adonis, than Correggio painting the naked Antiope, than Salvator painting the slaughters of the thirty years' war ? If you will not let me call the one kind of labour Christian, and the other unchristian, at least you will let me call the one moral, and the other immoral, and that is all I ask you to admit.
Now observe, hitherto I have been telling you what you may feel inclined to doubt or dispute ; and I must leave you to consider the subject at your leisure. But henceforward I tell you plain facts, which admit neither of doubt nor dispute by any one who will take the pains to acquaint himself witk their subject-matter.
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When the entire purpose of art was moral teaching, it nat- urally took truth for its first object, and beauty, and the pleasure resulting from beauty, only for its second. But when it lost all purpose of moral teaching, it as naturally took beauty for its first object, and truth for its second.
That is to say, in all they did, the old artists endeavoured in one way or another, to express the real facts of the subject or event, this being their chief business : and the question they first asked themselves was always, how would this thing, or that, actually have occurred ? what would this person, or that, have done under the circumstances ? and then, having formed their <3onception, they work it out with only a second- ary regard to grace, or beauty, while a modern painter inva- riably thinks of the grace and beauty of his work first, and unites afterwards as much truth as he can with its conven- tional graces. I will give you a single strong instance to make my meaning plainer. In Orcagna's great fresco of the Triumph of Death, one of the incidents is that three kings,* when out hunting, are met by a spirit, which, desiring them to follow it, leads them to a churchyard, and points out to them, in open coffins, three bodies of kings such as them- selves, in the last stages of corruption. Now a modern artist, representing this, would have endeavoured dimly and faintly
* This incident is not of Orcagna's invention ; it is various!}' repre- sented in much earlier art. There is a curious and graphic drawing of it, circa 1800, in the MS. Arundel 83. Brit. Mus., in which the three dead persons are walking, and are met by three queens, who severally utter the sentences,
"Icham aferd."
" Lo, whet ich se ? "
*' Me thinketh hit beth develes thre."
To which the dead bodies answer, —
" Ich wes wel fair." ** Such sclielt ou be." ** For Godes love, be wer by me." It is curious, that though the dresses of the living persons, and the •' I was well fair " of the first dead speaker, seem to mark them dis- tinctly to be women, some longer legends below are headed " primus rex mortuus," &c.
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to suggest the appearance of the dead bodies, and would have made, or attempted to make, the countenances of the three kings variously and solemnly expressive of thought. This would be in his, or our, view, a poetical and tasteful treat- ment of the subject. But Orcagna disdains both poetry and taste ; he wants the facts only ; he wishes to give the siDCcta- tor the same lesson that the kings had ; and therefore, in- stead of concealing the dead bodies, he paints them with the most fearful detail. And then, he does not consider what the three kings might most gracefully do. He considers only what they actually in all probability would have done. He makes them looking at the coffins with a startled stare, and one holding his nose. This is an extreme instance ; but you are not to suppose it is because Orcagna had naturally a coarse or prosaic mind. Where he felt that thoughtfulness and beauty could properly be introduced, as in his circles of saints and prophets, no painter of the middle ages is so grand. I can give you no better proof of this, than the one fact that Michael Angelo borrowed from him openly, — borrowed from him in the principal work which he ever executed, the Last Judgment, and borrowed from him the principal figure in that" work. But it is just because Orcagna was so firmly and unscrupulously true, that he had the power of being so great when he chose. His arrow went straight to the mark. It was not that he did not love beauty, but he loved truth first.
So it was with all the men of that time. No painters ever had more power of conceiving graceful form, or more -^vo- found devotion to the beautiful ; but all these gifts and affec- tions are kept sternly subordinate to their moral purpose ] and, so far as their powers and knowledge went, they either painted from nature things as they were, or from imagination things as they must have been.
I do not mean that they reached any imitative resemblance to nature. They had neither skill to do it, nor care to do it. Their art was conventional and imperfect, but they considered it only as a language wherein to convey the knowledge of cer- tain facts ; it was perfect enough for that ; and though always reaching on to greater attainments, they never suffered their
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imperfections to disturb and check them in their immediate purposes. And this mode of treating all subjects was per- sisted in by the greatest men until the close of the fifteenth century.
Now so justly have the Pre-Raphaelites chosen their time and name, that the great change which clouds the career of mediaeval art was affected, not only in Eaphael's time, but by Eaphael's own practice, and by his practice in the very centre of his available life.
You remember, doubtless, what high ground we have for placing the beginning of human intellectual strength at about the age of twelve years.* Assume, therefore, this period for the beginning of Raphael's strength. He died at thirty-seven. And in his twenty-fifth year, one half-year only passed the pre- cise centre of his available life, he was sent for to Eome, to decorate the Vatican for Pope Julius II., and having until that time w^orked exclusively in the ancient and stern mediaeval manner, he, in the first chamber which he decorated in that palace, wrote upon its wall the Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, of the Arts of Christianity.
And he wrote it thus : On one wall of that chamber he placed a picture of the World or Kingdom of Tlieolog-y, pre- sided over by Christ. And on the side waU of that same chamber he placed the World or Kingdom of Poetry, pre- sided over by Apollo. And from that spot, and from that hour, the intellect and the art of Italy date their degradation.
Observe, however, the significance of this fact is not in the mere use of the figure of the heathen god to indicate the domain of poetry. Such a symbolical use had been made of the figures of heathen deities in the best times of Christian art. But it is in the fact, that being called to Rome especially to adorn the palace of the so-called head of the church, and called as the chief representative of the Christian artists of his time, Raphael had neither religion nor originality enough to trace the spirit of poetry and the spirit of philosophy to the inspiration of the true God, as well as that of theology ; but that, on the contrary, he elevated the creations of fmxcy on the * Luke ii. 42, 49.
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one wall, to the same rank as the object of faith upon the other , that in deliberate, balanced, opposition to the Rock of the Mount Zion, he reared the rock of Parnassus, and the rock of the Acropolis ; that, among the masters of poetry we find him enthroning Petrarch and Pindar, but not Isaiah nor David, and for lords over the domain of philosophy we find the masters of the school of Athens, but neither of those greater masters by the last of whom that school was rebuked, — those who received their wisdom from heaven itself, in the vision of Gibeon,* and the lightning of Damascus.
The doom of the arts of Europe went forth from that cham- ber, and it was brought about in great part by the very ex- cellencies of the man who had thus marked the commence- ment of decline. The perfection of execution and the beauty of feature which were attained in his works, and in those of his great contemporaries, rendered finish of execution and beauty of form the chief objects of all artists ; and thenceforward exe- cution was looked for rather than thought, and beauty rathet than veracity.
And as I told you, these are the two secondary causes of the decline of art ; the first being the loss of moral purpose. Pray note them clearly. In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, execution the second ; in modern art execution is the first thing, and thought the second- And again, in mediaeval art, truth is first, beauty second ; in modern art, beauty is first, truth second. The mediaeval principles led up to Raphael, and the modern principles lead down from him.
Now, first, let me give you a familiar illustration of the difference with respect to execution. Suppose you have to teach two children drawing, one thoroughly clever and active- minded, the other dull and slow ; and you put before them Jullien's chalk studies of heads — etudes d deux crayons — and desire them to be copied. The dull child will slowly do your bidding, blacken his paper and rub it white again, and pa- tiently and painfully, in the course of three or four years, at- tain to the performance of a chalk head, not much worse than his original, but still of less value than the paper it is * 1 Kings, iii. 5.
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drawn upon. But the clever child will not, or will only by force, consent to this discipline. He finds other means ol expressing himself with his pencil somehow or another ; and presently you find his paper covered with sketches of his grandfather and grandmother, and uncles and cousins, — sketches of the room, and the house, and the cat, and the dog, and the country outside, and everything in the world he can set his eyes on ; and he gets on, and even his child's work has a value in it — a truth which makes it worth keep- ing ; no one knows how precious, perhaps, that portrait of his grandfather may be, if any one has but the sense to keep it till the time when the old man can be seen no more up the lawn, nor by the wood. That child is working in the middle- age spirit — the other in the modern spirit.
But there is something still more striking in the evila which have resulted from the modern regardlessness of truth. Consider, for instance, its effect on what is called historical painting. What do you at present mean by historical paint- ing ? Now-a-days, it means the endeavouring, by the power of imagination, to portray some historical event of past days. But in the middle ages, it meant representing the acts of their own days ; and that is the only historical painting worth a straw. Of all the wastes of time and sense which modernism has invented — and they are many — none are so ridiculous as this endeavour to represent past history. What do you sup- pose our descendants will care for our imaginations of the events of former days ? Suppose the Greeks, instead of rep- resenting their own warriors as they fought at Marathon; had left us nothing but their imaginations of Egyptian battles ; and suppose the Italians, in like manner, instead of portraits of Can Grande and Dante, or of Leo the Tenth and Eaphael, had left us nothing but imaginary portraits of Pericles and Miltiades ? What fools we should have thought them ! how bitterly we should have been provoked with their folly ! And that is precisely what our descendants will feel towards us, so far as our grand historical and classical schools are con- cerned. What do we care, they will say, what those nine- teenth century people fancied about Greek and Roman his-
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tory ! If they had left us a few plain and rational sculpture and pictures of their own battles, and their own men, in theii everyday dress, we should have thanked them. Well, but, you will say, we have left them portraits of our great men, and paintings of our great battles. Yes, you have indeed, and that is the only historical painting that you either have or can have ; but you don't call that historical painting. You don't thank the men who do it ; you look down upon them and dissuade them from it, and tell them they don't belong to the grand schools. And yet they are the only true his- torical painters, and the only men who will produce any effect on their own generation, or on any other. Wilkie was an historical painter, Chantrey an historical sculptor, because they painted, or carved, the veritable things and men they saw, not men and things as they believed they might have been, or should have been. But no one tells such men they are historical painters, and they are discontented with what they do ; and poor Wilkie must needs travel to see the grand school, and imitate the grand school, and ruin himself. And you have had multitudes of other painters ruined, from the beginning, by that grand school. There was Etty, naturally as good a painter as ever lived, but no one told him what to paint, and he studied the antique, and the grand schools, and painted dances of nymphs in red and yellow shawls to the end of his days. Much good may they do you ! He is gone to the grave, a lost mind. There was Flaxman, another natu- rally great man, with as true an eye for nature as Raphael, — he stumbles over the blocks of the antique statues — wanders in the dark valley of their ruins to the end of his days. He has left you a few outlines of muscular men straddling and frowning behind round shields. Much good may they do you ! Another lost mind. And of those who are lost name- lessly, w^ho have not strength enough even to make them^ selves known, the poor pale students who lie buried for ever in the abysses of the great schools, no account can be ren- dered ; they are numberless.
And the wonderful thing is, that of all these men whom you now have come to call the great masters, there was not one
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who confessedly did not paint his own present world, plainly and truly. Homer sang of what he saw ; Phidias carved what he saw ; Eaphael painted the men of his own time in their own caps and mantles ; and every man who has arisen to emi- nence in modern times has done so altogether by his working in their way, and doing the things he saw. How did Reynolds rise? Not by painting Greek women, but by painting the glorious little living ladies this, and ladies that, of his own time. How did Hogarth rise ? Not by painting Athenian follies, but London follies. Who are the men w^ho have made an impression upon you yourselves, — upon your own age ? I suppose the most popular painter of the day is Landseer. Do you suppose he studied dogs and eagles out of the Elgin Mar- bles ? And yet in the very face of these plain, incontroverti- ble, all- visible facts, w^e go on from year to year with the base system of Academy teaching, in spite of which every one of these men have risen : I say in spite of the entire method and aim of our art-teaching. It destroys the greater number of its pupils altogether ; it hinders and paralyses the greatest. There is not a living painter whose eminence is not in spite of everything he has been taught from his youth upwards, and "who, whatever his eminence may be, has not suffered much injury in the course of his victory. For observe : this love of what is called ideality or beauty in preference to truth, oper- ates not only in making us choose the past rather than the present for our subjects, but it makes us falsify the present when we do take it for our subject. I said just now that por- trait-painters were historical painters ; — so they are ; but not good ones, because not faithful ones. The beginning and end of modern portraiture is adulation. The painters cannot live but by flattery ; we should desert them if they spoke honestly. And therefore we can have no good portraiture ; for in the striving after that which is not in their model, they lose the inner and deeper nobleness which is in their model. I saw not long ago, for the first time, the portrait of a man whom I knew well, — a j'oung man, but a religious man, — and one w^ho had suffered much from sickness. The whole dignity of hia features and person depended upon the expression of serene.
328 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
yet solemn, purpose sustaining a feeble frame ; and the painter by way of flattering him, strengthened him, and made him athletic in body, gay in countenance, idle in gesture ; and the whole power and being of the man himself were lost. And this is still more the case with our public portraits. You have a portrait, for instance, of the Duke of Wellington at the end of the North Bridge, — one of the thousand equestrian statues of Modernism, — studied from the showriders of the amphitheatre, with their horses on their hindlegs in the saw- dust.* Do you suppose that was the way the Duke sat when your destinies depended on him ? when the foam hung from the lips of his tired horse, and its wet limbs were dashed with the bloody slime of the battlefield, and he himself sat anxious in his quietness, grieved in his fearlessness, as he watched,
* I intended this last sentence of course to apply to the thousand stat- aes, not definitely to the one in immediate question, which, though tainted with the modern affectation, and the nearest example of it to which I could refer an Edinburgh audience, is the work of a most prom- ising sculptor ; and was indeed so far executed on the principles as- serted in the text, that the Duke gave Mr. Steele a sitting on horseback, in order that his mode of riding might be accurately represented. This, however does not render the following remarks in the text nugatory, as it may easily be imagined that the action of the Duke, exhibiting his riding in his own grounds, would be different from his action, or inac- tion, when watching the course of a battle.
I must also make a most definite exception in favour of Marochetti, who seems to me a thoroughly great sculptor ; and whose statue of Cceur de Lion, though, according to the principle just stated, not to be consid- ered an historical work, is an ideal work of the highest beauty and value. Its erection in front of Westminster Hall will tend more to educate the public eye and mind with respect to art, than anything we have done in London for centuries.
:^ H/i ■if m 1ft *
April 21st. — I stop the press in order to insert the following para- graph from to-day's Times: — "The Statue of Cceur De Lion.— Yesterday morning a number of workmen were engaged in pulling down the cast which was placed in New Palace Yard of the colossal equestrian statue of Richard Coeur de Lion. Sir C. Barry was, we believe, opposed to the cast remaining there any longer, and to the putting up of the statue itself on the same site, because it did not harmonize with thf building. During the day the horse and figure were removed, and be* fore night the pedestal was demolished and taken awav. "
I
AND PAINTING. 329
scythe-stroke by scythe-stroke, the gathering in of the harvest of death ? You would have done something had you thus left his image in the enduring iron, but nothing now.
But the time has at last come for all this to be put an end to ; and nothing can well be more extraordinary than the way in which the men have risen who are to do it. Pupils in the same schools, receiving precisely the same instruction which for so long- a time has paralysed every one of our painters, — these boys agree in disliking to copy the antique statues set before them. They copy them as they are bid, and they cojoy them better than any one else, they carry off prize after prize, and yet they hate their w^ork. At last they are admitted to study from the life ; they find the life very different from the antique, and say so. Their teachers tell them the antique is the best, and they mustn't copy the life. They agree among themselves that they like the life, and that copy it they will. They do copy it faithfully, and their masters forthwith de- clare them to be lost men. Their fellow-students hiss them whenever they enter the room. They can't help it ; they join hands and tacitly resist both the hissing and the instruction. Accidentally, a few prints of the works of Giotto, a few casts from those of Ghiberti, fall into their hands, and they see in these something they never saw before — something intensely and everlastingly true. They examine farther into the mat- ter ; they discover for themselves the greater part of what I have laid before you to-night ; they form themselves into a body, and enter upon that crusade which has hitherto been victorious. And which will be absolutely and triumphantly victorious. The great mistake which has hitherto prevented the public mind from fully going with them must soon be corrected. That mistake was the supposition that, instead of wishing to recur to the principles of the early ages, these men wished to bring back the ignorance of the early ages. This notion, grounded first on some hardness in their earlier works, which resulted — as it must always result — from the downright and earnest effort to paint nature as in a looking- glass, was fostered partly by the jealousy of their beaten com- petitors, and partly by the pure, perverse, and hopeless igno-
S30 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
ranee of the whole body of art-critics, so called, connected with the press. No notion was ever more baseless or more ridiculous. It was asserted that the Pre-Eaphaelites did not draw well, in the face of the fact, that the principal membef of their body, from the time he entered the schools of the Academy, had literally encumbered himself with the medals, given as prizes for drawing. It w^as asserted that they did not draw in perspective, by men who themselves knew no more of perspective than they did of astrology ; it was as- serted that they sinned against the appearances of nature, by men who had never drawn so much as a leaf or a blossom from nature in their lives. And, lastly, when all these cal- umnies or absurdities would tell no more, and it began to be forced upon men's unwilling belief that the style of the Pre- Eaphaelites was true and was according to nature, the last forgery invented respecting them is, that they copy photo- graphs. You observe how completely this last piece of mal- ice defeats all the rest. It admits they are true to nature, though only that it may deprive them of all merit in being so. But it may itself be at once refuted by the bold challenge to their opponents to ^^roduce a Pre-Raphaelite picture, or any- thing like one, by themselves copying a photograph.
Let me at once clear your minds from all these doubts, and at once contradict all these calumnies.
Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute uncompromising truth in all that it does, obtained by work- ing everything, down to the most minute detail, from nat- ure, and from nature only.* Every Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is painted to the last touch, in the open air, from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite figure, however stud- ied in expression, is a true portrait of some living person.
* Or, where imagination is necessarily trusted to, bj always endeavour- ing to conceive a fact as it really was likely to have happened, rather than as it most prettily might have happened. The various members of the school are not all equally severe in carrying out its principles, some of them trusting their memory or fancy very far ; only all agree- ing in the effort to make their memories so accurate as to seem like por« traiture, and their fancy so probable as to seem like memory.
AND PAINTING. 331
Every minute accessory is painted in the same manner. And one of the chief reasons for the violent opposition with which the school has been attacked by other artists, is the enor- mous cost of care and labour which such a system demands from those who adopt it in contradistinction to the present slovenly and imperfect style.
This is the main Pre-Kaphaelite principle. But the battle which its supporters have to fight is a hard one ; and for that battle they have been fitted by a very peculiar character.
You perceive that the principal resistance they have to make is to that spurious beauty, whose attractiveness had tempted men to forget, or to despise, the more noble quality of sincerity : and in order at once to put them beyond the power of temptation from this beauty, they are, as a body, characterized by a total absence of sensibility to the ordinary and popular forms of artistic gracefulness ; while, to all that still lower kind of prettiness, which regulates the disposition of our scenes upon the stage, and which appears in our lower art, as in our annuals, our common-place portraits, and statu- ary, the Pre-Kaphaelites are not only dead, but they regard it with a contempt and aversion approaching to disgust. This character is absolutely necessary to them in the present time ; but it, of course, occasionally renders their work compara- tively unpleasing. As the school becomes less aggressive, and more authoritative, — which it will do, — they will enlist into their ranks men who will work, mainly, upon their prin- ciples, and yet embrace more of those characters which are generally attractive, and this great ground of offence will be removed.
Again ; you observe that, as landscape painters, their prin- ciples must, in great part, confine them to mere foreground work ; and singularly enough, that they may not be tempted away from this work, they have been born with comparatively little enjoyment of those evanescent effects and distant sub- limities which nothing but the memory can arrest, and noth- ing but a daring conventionalism portray. But for this work they are not needed. Turner had done it before them ; he, thought his ^apaj^ity embraced everything, and though he
332 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
would sometimes, in his foregrounds, paint the spots upon a dead trout, and the dyes upon a butterfly's wing, yet for the most part dehghting to begin at that very point where Pre- Eaphaelitism becomes powerless.
Lastly. The habit of constantly carrying everything up to the utmost point of completion deadens the Pre-Eaphaelitea in general to the merits of men who, with an equal love of truth up to a certain point, yet express themselves habitually with speed and power, rather than with finish, and give ab- stracts of truth rather than total truth. Probably to the end of time artists will more or less be divided into these classes, and it will be impossible to make men like Millais understand the merits of men like Tintoret ; but this is the more to be regretted because the Pre-Eaphaelites have enormous powers of imagination, well as of realisation, and do not yet them- selves know of how much they would be capable, if they some- times worked on a larger scale, and with a less laborious fin- ish.
With all their faults, their pictures are, since Turner's death, the best — incomparably the best — on the walls of the Eoyal Academy ; and such works as Mr. Hunt's Claudio and Isabella have never been rivalled, in some respects never approached, at any other period of art.
This I believe to be a most candid statement of all their faults and all their deficiencies ; not such, you perceive, as are likely to arrest their progress. The " magna est Veritas " was never more sure of accomplishment than by these men. Their adversaries have no chance with them. They will grad- ually unite their influence with whatever is true or powerful in the reactionary art of other countries ; and on their works such a school will be founded as shall justify the third age of the world's civilisation, and render it as great in creation as it has been in discovery.
And now let me remind you but of one thing more. Aa you examine into the career of historical painting, you will be more and more struck with the fact I have this evening stated to you, — that none was ever truly great but that which repre- sented the living forms and daily deeds of the people among
AND PAINTING. 333
■whom it arose ; — that all precious historical work records, not the past but the present. Remember, therefore, that it is not so much in buying pictures, as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideaUty, nor for beauty of form in a marble image ; but that which educates your children into li\dng heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion.
334 LECTURES ON ABCmTECTURE
ADDEIsTDA
TO
THE FOUKTH LECTURE.
I COULD not enter, in a popular lecture, upon one intricate and difficult question, closely connected with the subject of Pre-Raphaelitism — namely, the relation of invention to obser- vation ; and composition to imitation. It is still less a question to be discussed in the compass of a note ; and I must defer all careful examination of it to a future opportunity. Never theless, it is impossible to leave altogether unanswered the first objection which is now most commonly made to the Pre- Raphaelite work, namely, that the principle of it seems ad- verse to all exertion of imaginative power. Indeed, such an objection sounds strangely on the lips of a public who have been in the habit of purchasing for hundreds of pounds, small squares of Dutch canvas, containing only servile imitations of the coarsest nature. It is strange that an imitation of a cow's head by Paul Potter, or of an old woman's by Ostade, or of a scene of tavern debauchery by Teniers, should be pur- chased and proclaimed for high art, while the rendering of the most noble expressions of human feeling in Hunt's Isabella, or of the loveliest English landscape, haunted by sor- row, in Millais' Ophelia, should be declared "puerile." But, strange though the utterance of it be, there is some weight in the objection. It is true that so long as the Pre-Raphael- ites only paint from nature, however carefully selected and grouped, their pictures can never have the characters of the highest class of compositions. But, on the other hand, the shallow and conventional arrangements commonly called " compositions " by the artists of the present day, are in-
AND PAINTING. 335
finitely farther from great art than the most patient work of the Pre-RaphaeHtes. That work is, even in its humblest form, a secure foundation, capable of infinite superstructure ; a reality of true value, as far as it reaches, while the common artistical effects and groupings are a vain effort at superstruct^ ure without foundation — utter negation and fallacy from beginning to end.
But more than this, the very faithfulness of the Pre-Raph- aelites arises from the redundance of their imaginative power. Not only can all the members of the school compose a thou- sand times better than the men who pretend to look down upon them, but I question whether even the greatest men of old times possessed more exhaustless invention than either Millais or Rossetti ; and it is partly the very ease with which they invent which leads them to despise invention. Men who have no imagination, but have learned merely to produce a spurious resemblance of its results by the recipes of composi- tion, are apt to value themselves mightily on their concoctive science ; but the man whose mind a thousand living imagi- nations haunt, every hour, is apt to care too little for them ; and to long for the perfect truth which he finds is not to be come at so easily. And though I may perhaps hesitatingly admit that it is possible to love this truth of reality too intensely, yet I have no hesitation in declaring that there is no hope for those who despise it, and that the painter, whoever he be, who despises the pictures already produced by the Pre-Raphael- ites, has himself no capacity of becoming a great painter of any kind. Paul Veronese and Tintoret themselves, without desiring to imitate the Pre-Raphaelite work, would have looked upon it with deep respect, as John Bellini looked on that of Albert Durer ; none but the ignorant could be unconscious of its truth, and none but the insincere regardless of it. How far it is possible for men educated on the severest Pre- Raphaelite principles to advance from their present style into that of the great schools of composition, I do not care to in- quire, for at this period such an advance is certainly not de- sirable. Of great compositions we have enough, and more than enough, and it would be well for the world if it were
336 LECTURES OS ABCHITECTUBE
willing to take some care of those it has. Of pure and manl^ truth, of stern statement of the things done and seen around us daily, we have hitherto had nothing. And in art, as in all other things, besides the literature of which it speaks, that sentence of Carlyle is inevitably and irreversibly true : — " Day after day, looking at the high destinies which yet await litera- ture, which literature will ere long address herself with more decisiveness than ever to fulfil, it grows clearer to us that the proper task of literature lies in the domain of Belief, within which, poetic fiction, as it is charitably named, will have to take a quite new figure, if allowed a settlement there. "Whereby were it not reasonable to prophecy that this exceed- ing great multitude of novel writers and such like, must, in a new generation, gradually do one of two things, either retire into nurseries, and work for children, minors, and semifatu- ous persons of both sexes, or else, what were far better, sweep their novel-fabric into the dust cart, and betake them, with such faculty as they have, to understand and record what is true, of which surely there is and for ever will be a whole infinitude unknown to us, of infinite importance to us. Poetry will more and more come to be understood as nothing but higher knowledge, and the only genuine Romance for grown persons. Reality."
As I was copying this sentence, a pamphlet was put into my hand, written by a clergyman, denouncing " Woe, woe, woe ! to exceedingly young men of stubborn instincts calling themselves Pr e- Raphael ites." *
I thank God that the Pre-Raphaelites are young, and that strength is still with them, and life, with all the war of it, still in front of them. Yet Everett Millais is this year of the exact age at which Raphael painted the Disputa, his greatest work ; Rossetti and Hunt are both of them older still, — nor is there one member of the body so young as Giotto, when he was chosen from among the painters of Italy to decorate the Vati-
* Art, its Constitution and Capacities, &c. by the Rev. Edward Young. M.A. The phrase " exceedingly young men, of stubborn instincts," be' Ing twice quoted (carefully excluding the context) from my pamphlet »n Pre-Raphaelitism.
AND PAINTING. 337
can. But Italy, in her great period, knew her great men, and did not " despise their youth." It is reserved for England to insult the strength of her noblest children — to wither their warm enthusiasm early into the bitterness of patient battle, and leave to those whom she should have cherished and aided, no hope but in resolution, no refuge but in disdain.
Indeed it is woeful, when the young usurp the place, or de- spise the wisdom, of the aged ; and among the many dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest. But with whom is the fault ? Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had not lost its honour ; nor did childhood ever refuse its reverence, except where age had forgotten correction. The cry, "Go up thou bald head," will never be heard in the land which remembers the precept, "See that ye despise not one of these little ones;" and al- though indeed youth may become despicable, when its eager hope is changed into presumption, and its progressive power into arrested pride, there is something more despicable still, in the old age which has learned neither judgment nor gen- tleness, which is weak without charity, and cold without dis« cretion.
AN INQUIRY
INTO SOME OF
THE CONDITIONS AT PRESENT AFFECTING
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE
IN OUR SCHOOLS
Read at the Ordinary General Meeting of the Royal Institute of British Architects y May 15, 1865.
m:
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.
I SUPPOSE there is no man who, permitted to address, for the first time, the Institute of British Architects, would not feel himself abashed and restrained, doubtful of his claim to be heard by them, even if he attempted only to describe what had come under his personal observation, much more if on the occasion he thought it would be expected of him to touch upon any of the general principles of the art of archi- tecture before its principal Enghsh masters.
But if any more than another should feel thus abashed, it fe certainly one who has first to ask their pardon for the petu- lance of boyish expressions of partial thought ; for ungraceful advocacy of principles which needed no support from him, and discourteous blame of work of which he had never felt the difficulty.
Yet, when I ask this pardon, gentlemen — and I do it sin- cerely and in shame — it is not as desiring to retract anything in the general tenor and scope of what I have hitherto tried to say. Permit me the pain, and the apparent impertinence, of speaking for a moment of my own past work ; for it is necessary that what I am about to submit to you to-night should be spoken in no disadvantageous connection with that ; and yet understood as spoken in no discordance of pui-pose with that. Indeed, there is much in old work of mine which I could wish to put out of mind. Reasonings, perhaps not in themselves false, but founded on insufficient data and imperfect experience — eager preferences, and dislikes, depend- ent on chance circumstances of association, and limitations of sphere of labour : but, while I would fain now, if I could.
M2 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.
modify the applications, and chasten the extravagance of my writings, let nie also say of them that they were the expres- sion of a delight in the art of architecture which was too intense to be vitally deceived, and of an inquiry too honest and eager to be without some useful result ; and I only wish I had now time, and strength, and power of mind, to carry on more worthily, the main endeavour of my early work That main endeavour has been throughout to set forth the life of the individual human spirit as modifying the applica- tion of the formal laws of architecture, no less than of all other arts ; and to show that the power and advance of this art, even in conditions of former nobleness, were dependent on its just association with sculpture as a means of expressing the beauty of natural forms : and I the more boldly ask your permission to insist somewhat on this main meaning of my past work, because there are many buildings now rising in the streets of London, as in other cities of England, w^hich appear to be designed in accordance with this principle, and which are, I believe, more offensive to all who thoughtfully concur with me in accepting the principle of Naturalism than they are to the classical architect to whose modes of design they are visibly antagonistic. These buildings, in which the mere cast of a flower, or the realization of a vulgar face, carved without pleasure by a workman who is only endeav- ouring to attract attention by novelty, and then fastened on, or appearing to be fastened, as chance may dictate, to an arch, or a pillar, or a wall, hold such relation to nobly naturalistic architecture as common sign-painter's furniture landscapes do to painting, or commonest wax-work to Greek sculpture ; and the feelings with which true naturalists regard such buildings of this class are, as nearly as might be, what a painter would experience, if, having contended earnestly against conventional schools, and having asserted that the Greek vase-painting, and Egyptian wall-painting, and Mediae^ val glass-painting, though beautiful, all, in their place and way, were yet subordinate arts, and culminated only in per- fectly naturalistic work such as Raphael's in fresco, and Titian s on canvas ; — if, I say, a painter, fixed in such faith
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 343
in an entire, intellectual, and manly truth, and maintaining that an Egyptian profile of a head, however decoratively ap- plicable, was only noble for such human truth as it contained, and was imperfect and ignoble beside a work of Titian's, were shown, by his antagonist, the colored daguerreotj-pe of a human body in its nakedness, and told that it was art such a.s that which he really advocated, and to such art that his principles, if carried out, would finally lead.
And because this question lies at the very root of the or- ganization of the system of instruction for our youth, I vent- ure boldly to express the surprise and regret with w^hich I see our schools still agitated by assertions of the opposition of Naturalism to Invention, and to the higher conditions of art. Even in this very room I believe there has lately been question whether a sculptor should look at a real living creature of which he had to carve the image. I would answer in one sense, — no ; that is to say, he ought to carve no living creature while he still needs to look at it. If we do not know what a human body is like, we certainly had better look, and look often, at it, before w^e carve it ; but if we already know the human likeness so well that we can carve it by light of memory, we shall not need to ask whether we ought now to look at it or not ; and what is true of man is true of all other creatures and organisms — of bird, and beast, and leaf. No assertion is more at variance with the laws of classical as weU as of subsequent art than the common one that species should not be distinguished in great design. We might as well say that we ought to carve a man so as not to know him from an ape, as that we should carve a lily so as not to know it from a thistle. It is difficult for me to conceive how this can be asserted in the presence of any remains either of great Greek or Italian art. A Greek looked at a cockle-shell or a cuttle-fish as carefully as he looked at an Olympic conqueror. The eagle of Elis, the lion of Velia, the horse of Syracuse, the bull of Thurii, the dolphin of Tarentum, the crab of Agrigen- tum, and the crawfish of Catana, are studied as closely, every one of them, as tlie Juno of Argos, or Apollo of Clazomenae. Idealism, so far from being contrary to special truth, is the
344 THE STUDY OF ARCHITEGTURB.
very abstraction of specialty from everything else. It is the earnest statement of the characters which make man man, and cockle cockle, and flesh flesh, and fish fish. Feeble thinkers indeed, always suppose that distinction of kind in- volves meanness of style ; but the meanness is in the treat- ment, not in the distinction. There is a noble way of carving a man, and a mean one ; and there is a noble way of carving a beetle, and a mean one ; and a great sculptor carves his scarabaeus gTandly, as he carves his king, while a mean sculptor makes vermin of both. And it is a sorrowful truth, yet a sublime one, that this greatness of treatment cannot be taught by talking about it. No, nor even by enforced imita- tive practice of it. Men treat their subjects nobly only when they themselves become noble ; not till then. And that ele- vation of their own nature is assuredly not to be effected by a course of drawing from models, however well chosen, or of listening to lectures, however well intended.
Art, national or individual, is the result of a long course of previous life and training ; a necessary result, if that life has been loyal, and an impossible one, if it has been base. Let a nation be healthful, happy, pure in its enjoyments, brave in its acts, and broad in its affections, and its art will spring round and within it as freely as the foam from a fountain ; but let the springs of its life be impure, and its course pol- luted, and you will not get the bright spray by treatises on the mathematical structure of bubbles.
And I am to-night the more restrained in addressing you, because, gentlemen— I tell you honestly — I am weary of all writing and speaking about art, and most of my own. No good is to be reached that way. The last fifty years have, in every civilized country of Europe, produced more brilliant thought, and more subtle reasoning about art, than the five thousand before them ; and what has it all come to ? Do not let it be thought that I am insensible to the high merits of much of our modern work. It cannot be for a moment sup- posed that in speaking of the inefficient expression of the doctrines which writers on art have tried to enforce, I was thinking ^f such Gothic as has been designed and built by
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 345
Mr. Scott, Mr. Butterfielcl, Mr. Street, Mr. Waterhouse, Mr. Godwin, or my dead friend, Mr. Woodward. Their work has been original and independent. So far as it is good, it has been founded on principles learned not from books, but by study of the monuments of the great schools, developed by national grandeur, not by philosophical speculation. But I am entirely assured that those who have done best among us are the least satisfied with what they have done, and will admit a sorrowful concurrence in my belief that the spirit, or rather, I should say, the dispirit, of the age, is heavily against them ; that all the ingenious writing or thinking which is so rife amongst us has failed to educate a public capable of taking true pleasure in any kind of art, and that the best designers never satisfy their own requirements of themselves, unless by vainly addressing another temper of mind, and providing for another manner of life, than ours. All lovely architecture was designed for cities in cloudless air ; for cities in which piazzas and gardens opened in bright populousness and peace ; cities built that men might live happily in them, and take delight daily in each other's pres- ence and powders. But our cities, built in black air, which, by its accumulated foulness, first renders all ornament invisi- ble in distance, and then chokes its interstices with soot ; cities which are mere crowded masses of store, and ware- house, and counter, and are therefore to the rest of the world what the larder and cellar are to a private house ; cities in which the object of men is not life, but labour ; and in which all chief magnitude of edifice is to enclose machin- ery ; cities in which the streets are not the avenues for the passing and procession of a happy people, but the drains for the discharge of a tormented mob, in which the only object in reaching any spot is to be transferred to another ; in which existence becomes mere transition, and every creature is only one atom in a drift of human dust, and current of inter- changing particles, circulating here by tunnels under ground, and there by tubes in the air ; for a city, or cities, such as this, no architecture is possible — nay, no desire of.it is pos- sible to their inhabitants.
346 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.
One of the most singular proofs of the vanity of all hope that conditions of art may be combined with the occupations of such a city, has been given lately in the design of the new iron bridge over the Thames at Blackf riars. Distinct attempt has been there made to obtain architectural effect on a grand scale. Nor was there anything in the nature of the work to prevent such an effort being successful. It is not an edifice's being of iron, or of glass, or thrown into new forms, de- manded by new purposes, which need hinder its being beau- tiful. But it is the absence of all desire of beauty, of all joy in fancy, and of all freedom in thought. If a Greek, or Egyp- tian, or Gothic architect had been required to design such a bridge, he would have looked instantly at the main conditions of its structure, and dwelt on them with the delight of imag- ination. He would have seen that the main thing to be done was to hold a horizontal group of iron rods steadily and straight over stone piers. Then he would have said to him- self (or felt without saying), " It is this holding, — this grasp, — this securing tenor of a thing which might be shaken, so that it cannot be shaken, on which I have to insist." And he would have put some life into those iron tenons. As a Greek put human life into liis pillars and produced the caryatid ; and an Egyptian lotos life into his pillars, and pro- duced the lily capital : so here, either of them would have put some gigantic or some angelic life into those colossal sockets. He would perhaps have put vast winged statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron rails with their hands ; or monstrous eagles, or serpents holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, holding with teeth. Thou- sands of grotesque or of lovely thoughts would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, animal or human, would have signified, either in symbol or in legend, whatever might be gracefully told respecting the purposes of the work and the districts to which it conducted. Whereas, now, the en- tire invention of the designer seems to have exhausted itself in exaggerating to an enormous size a weak form of iron nut, and in conveying the information upon it, in large letters
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTUBE. 347
that it belongs to the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company. I believe, then, gentlemen, that if there were any life in the national mind in such respects, it would be shown in these its most energetic and costly works. But tliat there is no such life, nothing but a galvanic restlessness and cov- etousness, with which it is for the present vain to strive ; and in the midst of which, tormented at once by its activities and its apathies, having their work continually thrust aside and dishonoured, always seen to disadvantage, and overtopped by huge masses, discordant and destructive, even the best archi- tects must be unable to do justice to their own powers.
But, gentlemen, while thus the mechanisms of the age pre- vent even the wisest and best of its artists from producing entirely good work, may we not reflect with consternation what a marvellous ability the luxury of the age, and the very advantages of education, confer on the unwise and ignoble for the production of attractively and infectiously had work. I do not think that this adverse influence, necessarily affecting all conditions of so-called civilization, has been ever enough considered. It is impossible to calculate the power of the false workman in an advanced period of national life, nor the temptation to all workmen to become false.
First, there is the irresistible appeal to vanity. There is hardly any temptation of the kind (there cannot be) Avhile the arts are in progress. The best men must then always be ashamed of themselves ; they never can be satisfied with their work absolutely, but only as it is progressive. Take, for in- stance, any archaic head intended to be beautiful ; say, the Attic Athena, on the early Arethusa of Syracuse. In that, and in all archaic work of promise, there is much that is inefficient, much that to us appears ridiculous — but nothing sensual, nothing vain, nothing spurious or imitative. It is a child's work, a childish nation's work, but not a fool's work. You find in children the same tolerance of ugliness, the same eager and innocent delight in their own work for the moment, how- ever feeble ; but next day it is thrown aside, and something better is done. Now, in this careless play, a child or a child- ish nation differs inherently from a foolish educated person,
348 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.
or a nation advanced in pseudo-civilization. The educated person has seen all kinds of beautiful things, of which he would fain do the like — not to add to their number — but for his own vanity, that he also may be called an artist. Here is at once a singular and fatal difference. The childish nation sees nothing in its own past work to satisfy itself. It i? pleased at having done this, but wants something better ; it is struggling forward always to reach this better, this ideal conception. It wants more beauty to look at, it wants more subject to feel. It calls out to all its artists — stretching its hands io them as a little child does — "Oh, if you would but tell me another story," — " Oh, if I might but have a doll with bluer eyes." That's the right temper to work in, and to get work done for you in. But the vain, aged, highly-educated nation is satiated with beautiful things — it has myriads more than it can look at ; it has fallen into a habit of inattention ; it passes weary and jaded through galleries which contain the best fruit of a thousand years of human travail ; it gapes and shrugs over them, and pushes its way past them to the door. But there is one feeling that is always distinct ; however jaded and languid we may be in all other pleasures, we are never languid in vanity, and we would still paint and carve for fame. What other motive have the nations of Europe to-day ? If they wanted art for art's sake, they would take care of what they have already got. But at this instant the two noblest pictures in Venice are lying rolled up in out-houses, and the noblest portrait of Titian in existence is hung forty feet from the ground. We have absolutely no motive but vanity and the love of money — no others, as nations, than these, whatever we may have as individuals. And as the thirst of vanity thus increases, so the temptation to it. There was no fame of ar- tists in these archaic days. Every year, every hour, saw some one rise to surpass what had been done before. And there was always better work to be done, but never any credit to be got by it. The artist lived in an atmosphere of perpetual, wholesome, inevitable eclipse. Do as well as you choose tO' day, — make the whole Borgo dance with delight, they would dance to a better man's pipe to-morrow. Credette Gimahue
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 849
nella pittura, tener lo campo, et ora ha Giotto il gride. This was the fate, the necessary fate, even of the strongest. They could only hope to be remembered as links in an endless chain. For the weaker men it was no use even to put their name on their works. They did not. K they could not work for joy and for love, and take their part simply in the choir of human toil, they might throw up their tools. But now it is far otherwise — now, the best having been done — and for a couple of hundred years, the best of us being confessed to have come short of it, everybody thinks that he may be the great man once again ; and this is certain, that whatever in art is done for display, is invariably wrong.
But, secondly, consider the attractive power of false art, completed, as compared with imperfect art advancing to com- pletion. Archaic work, so far as faultful, is repulsive ; but advanced work is, in all its faults, attractive. The moment that art has reached the point at which it becomes sensitively and delicately imitative, it appeals to a new audience. From that instant it addresses the sensualist and the idler. Its de- ceptions, its successes, its subtleties, become interesting to every condition of folly, of frivolity, and of vice. And this new audience brings to bear upon the art in which its foolish and wicked interest has been unhappily awakened, the full power of its riches : the largest bribes of gold as well as of praise are offered to the artist who will betray his art, until at last, from the sculpture of Phidias and fresco of Luini, it sinks into the cabinet ivory and the picture kept under lock and key. Between these highest and lowest types, there is a vast mass of merely imitative and delicately sensual sculpt- ure ; veiled nymphs — chained slaves — soft goddesses seen by rose-light through suspended curtains — drawing-room por- traits and domesticities, and such like, in which the interest is either merely personal and selfish, or dramatic and sensa- tional ; in either case, destructive of the power of the public to sympathize with the ayns of great architects.
Gentlemen, I am no Puritan, and have never praised or ad- vocated Puritanical art. The two pictures which I would last part with out of our National Gallery, if there were question
350 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.
of parting with any, would be Titian's Bacchus and Corregi gio's Venus. But the noble naturalism of these was the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and religion — it waa the fulness of passion in the life of a Britomart. But the mid age and old age of nations is not like the mid age or old age of noble women. National decrepitude must be criminal. National death can only be by disease, and yet it is almost impossible, out of the history of the art of nations, to elicit the true conditions relating to its decline in any demonstra- ble manner. The history of Italian art is that of a struggle between superstition and naturalism on one side, between continence and sensuality on another. So far as naturalism prevailed over superstition, there is always progress ; so far as sensuality over chastity, death. And the two contests are simultaneous. It is impossible to distinguish one victory from the other. Observe, however, I say victory over super- stition, not over religion. Let me carefully define the differ- ence. Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man ; who is present in some places, not in others ; who makes some places holy, and not others ; who is kind to one person, unkind to another ; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay to him, or praise you refuse to him ; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colours, is the essence of superstition. And religion is the belief in a Spirit whose mercies are over all His works — who is kind even to the unthankful and the evil ; who is everywhere present, and therefore is in no place to be sought, and in no place to be evaded ; to whom all creat- ures, times, and things are everlastingly holy, and who claims — not tithes of wealth, nor sevenths of days — but all the wealth that we have, and all the days that we live, and all the beings that we are, but^who claims that totality because He dehghts only in the delight of His creatures ; and because, therefore, the one duty that they owe to Him, and the only serv^ice they can render Him, is to be happy. A
THE STUDY OF ABCHITECTURB. 351
Spirit, therefore, whose eternal benevolence cannot, be an- gered, cannot be appeased ; whose laws are everlasting and inexorable, so that heaven and earth must indeed pass away if one jot of them failed : laws which attach to every wrong and error a measured, inevitable penalty ; to every rightness and prudence, an assured reward ; penalty, of which the re- mittance cannot be purchased ; and reward, of which the promise cannot be broken.
And thus, in the history of art, we ought continually to en- deavour to distinguish (while, except in broadest lights, it is impossible to distinguish) the work of religion from that of superstition, and the work of reason from that of infidelity. Religion devotes the artist, hand and mind, to the service of the gods ; superstition makes him the slave of ecclesiastical pride, or forbids his work altogether, in terror or disdain. Religion perfects the form of the divine statue ; superstition distorts it into ghastly grotesque. Religion contemplates the gods as the lords of healing and life, surrounds them with glory of affectionate service, and festivity of pure human beauty. Superstition contemplates its idols as lords of death, appeases them with blood, and vows itself to them in torture and solitude. Religion proselytizes by love, superstition by war ; religion teaches by example, superstition by persecu- tion. Religion gave granite shrine to the Egyptian, golden temple to the Jew, sculptured corridor to the Greek, pillared aisle and frescoed wall to the Christian. Superstition made idols of the splendours by which religion had spoken : rever- enced pictures and stones, instead of truths ; letters and laws instead of acts ; and for ever, in various madness of fantastic desolation, kneels in the temple while it crucifies the Christ.
On the other hand, to reason resisting superstition, we owe the entire compass of modern energies and sciences : the healthy laws of life, and the possibilities of future progress. But to infidelity resisting religion (or which is often enough the case, taking the mask of it), we owe sensuality, cruelty and war, insolence and avarice, modern political economy, life by conservation of forces, and salvation by every man's look- ing after his own interests ; and generally, whatsoever of guilty
352 THE STUDY OF ARCHITEGTURK
and folly, and death, there is abroad among us. And ot the two, a thousand-fold rather let us retain some colour of super- stition, so that we may keep also some strength of religion^ than comfort ourselves with colour of reason for the desolation of godlessness. I would say to every youth who entered our schools — be a Mahometan, a Diana-worshipper, a Fire-wor- shipper, Eoot-worshipper, if you will ; but at least be so much a man as to know what worship means. I had rather, a mili* ion-fold rather, see you one of those " quibus hgec nascuntur in hortis numina," than one of those quibus hsec no?i nascuntui in cordibus lumina ; and who are, by everlasting oi-phanage, divided from the Father of Spirits, who is also the Father of lights, from whom cometli every good and perfect gift.
" So much of man," I say, feeling profoundly that all right exercise of any human gift, so descended from the Giver of good, depends on the primary formation of the character of true manliness in the youth, — that is to say, of a majestic^ grave, and deliberate strength. How strange the words sound ; how little does it seem possible to conceive of majesty, and gravity, and deliberation in the daily track of modern life. Yet, gentlemen, we need not hope that our work will be ma- jestic if there is no majesty in ourselves. The word "manly " has come to mean practically, among us, a schoolboy's char- acter, not a man's. "We are, at our best, thoughtlessly impetu- ous, fond of adventure and excitement ; curious in knowledge for its novelty, not for its system and results ; faithful and af- fectionate to those among whom we are by chance cast, but gently and calmly insolent to strangers ; we are stupidly con- scientious, and instinctively brave, and always ready to cast away the lives we take no pains to make valuable, in causes of which we have never ascertained the justice. This is our high« est type — notable peculiarly among nations for its gentleness, together with its courage ; but in lower conditions it is es- pecially liable to degradation by its love of jest and of vulgar sensation. It is against this fatal tendency to vile play that we have chiefly to contend. It is the spirit of Milton's Comus ; bestial itself, but having power to arrest and paralyze all who eome within its influence, even pure creatures sitting helpless,
TEE STUDY OF ARGHITEGTTJRW. 353
mocked by it on their marble thrones. It is incompafciblBf not only with all greatness of character, but with all true glad- ness of heart, and it develops itself in nations in proportion to their degradation, connected with a peculiar gloom and a singular tendency to play with death, which is a morbid reac- tion from the morbid excess.
A book has lately been published on the Mythology of the Bhine, with illustrations by Gustave Dore. The Rhine god is represented in the vignette title-page with a pipe in one hand and a pot of beer in the other. You cannot have a more complete type of the tendency which is chiefly to be dreaded in this age than in this conception, as opposed to any possi- bility of representation of a river-god, however playful, in the mind of a Greek painter. The example is the more notable because Gustave Dore's is not a common mind, and, if bom in any other epoch, he would probably have done valuable (though never first-rate) work ; but by glancing (it wilLbe im- possible for you to do more than glance) at his illustrations of Balzac's " Contes Drolatiques," you will see further how this " drolatique," or semi-comic mask, is, in the truth of it, the mask of a skull, and how the tendency to burlesque jest is both in France and England only an effervescence from the cloaca maocima of the putrid instincts which fasten themselves on national sin, and are in the midst of the luxury of European capitals, what Dante meant when he wrote, quel mi sveglio col puzzo, of the body of the Wealth-Siren ; the mocking levity ftnd mocking gloom being equally signs of the death of the <}oul ; just as, contrariwise, a passionate seriousness and pas- sionate joyfulness are signs of its full Kfe in works such as those of Angelico, Luini, Ghiberti, or La Robbia.
It is to recover this stem seriousness, this pure and thrill- ing joy, together with perpetual sense and spiritual presence, that all true education of youth must now be directed. This Beriousness, this passion, this universal human religion, are the first principles, the true roots of all art, as they are of all doing, of all being. Get this vis viva first and all great work will follow. Lose it, and your schools of art will stand among utber living schools as the frozen corpses stand by the wind*
354 THE STIJDT OF ARCHITECTURE,
mg stair of the St. Michael's Convent of Mont Cenis, holding their hands stretched out under their shrouds, as if beseech- ing the passer-by to look upon the wasting of their death.
And all the higher branches of technical teaching are rain without this ; nay, are in some sort vain altogether, for they are superseded by this, "irou may teach imitation, because the meanest man can imitate ; but you can neither teach ideal- ism nor composition, because only a great man can choose, conceive, or compose ; and he does all these necessarily, and because of his nature. His greatness is in his choice of things, in his analysis of them ; and his combining powers involve the totality of his knowledge in life. His methods of observa- tion and abstraction are essential habits of his thought, con- ditions of his being. If he looks at a human form he recog- nises the signs of nobility in it, and loves them — hates what- ever is diseased, frightful, sinful, or designant of decay. All ugliness, and abortion, and fading away ; all signs of vice and foulness, he turns away from, as inherently diabolic and horrible ; all signs of unconquered emotion he regrets, as weaknesses. He looks only for the calm purity of the human creature, in living conquest of its passions and of fate.
That is idealism ; but you cannot teach any one else that preference. Take a man who likes to see and paint the gam- bler'§ rage ; the hedge-ruffian's enjoyment ; the debauched soldier's strife ; the vicious woman's degradation ; — take a man fed on the dusky picturesque of rags and guilt ; talk to him of principles of beauty ! make him draw what you will, how you will, he will leave the stain of himself on whatever he touches. You had better go lecture to a snail, and tell it to leave no slime behind it. Try to make a mean man com«» pose ; you will find nothing in his thoughts consecutive on proportioned — nothing consistent in his sight — nothing in hig fancy. He cannot comprehend two things in relation at once — how much less twenty ! How much less all ! Everything is uppermost with him in its turn, and each as large as the rest ; but Titian or Veronese compose as tranquilly as they would speak — inevitably. The thing comes to them so— they see it so — rightly, and in harmony : they will not tallj
THE S1UD7 OF ARCHITECTURE. 355
to you of composition, hardly even understanding how lower people see things otherwise, but knowing that if they do see otherwise, there is for them the end there, talk as you will.
I had intended, in conclusion, gentlemen, to incur such blame of presumption as might be involved in offering some hints for present practical methods in architectural schools, but here again I am checked, as I have been throughout, by a sense of the uselessness of all minor means and helps, with- out the establishment of a true and broad educational sys- tem. My wish would be to see the profession of the archi- tect united, not with that of the engineer, but of the sculp- tor. I think there should be a separate school and university course for engineers, in which the principal branches of study connected with that of practical building should be the phys- ical and exact sciences, and honours should be taken in mathematics ; but I think there should be another school and university course for the sculptor and architect in which lit- erature and philosophy should be the associated branches of study, and honours should be taken in Uteris humaniorihus, and I think a young architect's examination for his degree [iov mere pass), should be much stricter than that of youths intending to enter other professions. The quantity of scholarship necessary for the efficiency of a country clergy- man is not great. So that he be modest and kindly, the main truths he has to teach may be learned better in his heart than in books, and taught in very simple English. The best physicians I have known spent very little time in their libraries ; and though my lawyer sometimes chats with me over a Greek coin, I think he regards the time so spent in the light rather of concession to my idleness than as helpful to his professional labours.
But there is no task undertaken by a true architect of which the honourable fulfilment will not require a range of knowledge and habitual feeling only attainable by advanced scholarship.
Since, however, such expansion of system is, at present, beyond hope, the best we can do is to render the studies undertaken in our schools thoughtful, reverent, and refined.
356 TEE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.
according to our power. Especially it should be our aim to prevent the minds of the students from being distracted by models of an unworthy or mixed character. A museum is one thing — a school another ; and I am persuaded that as the efficiency of a school of literature depends on the mastering a few good books, so the efficiency of a school of art will depend on the understanding a few good models. And so strongly do I feel this that I would, for my own part, at once consent to sacrifice my personal predilections in art, and to Tote for the exclusion of all Gothic or Mediaeval models what- soever, if by this sacrifice I could obtain also the exclusion of Byzantine, Indian, Renaissance-French, and other more or less attractive but barbarous work ; and thus concentrate the mind of the student wholly upon the study of natural form, and upon its treatment by the sculptors and metal workers of Greece, Ionia, Sicily, and Magna Grsecia, between 500 and 350 B.C., but I should hope that exclusiveness need not be carried quite so far.
I think Donatello, Mino of Fiesole, the Robbias, Ghiberti^ Verrocchio, and Michael Angelo, should be adequately repre- sented in our schools — together with the Greeks — and that a few carefully chosen examples of the floral sculpture of the North in the thirteenth century should be added, with espe- cial view to display the treatment of naturalistic ornament in subtle connection with constructive requirements ; and in the course of study pursued with reference to these models, as ol admitted perfection, I should endeavour first to make the student thoroughly acquainted with the natural forms and characters of the objects he had to treat, and then to exercise him in the abstraction of these forms, and the suggestion of these characters, under due sculptural limitation. He should first be taught to draw largely and simplj^ ; then he should make quick and firm sketches of flowers, animals, drapery, and figures, from nature, in the simplest terms of line, and light, and shade ; always being taught to look at the organic actions and masses, not at the textures or accidental effects of shade ; meantime his sentiment respecting all these things §hould be cultivated by close and constant inquiry into their
THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE. 357
mythological significance and associated traditions; then, knowing the things and creatures thoroughly, and regarding them through an atmosphere of enchanted memory, ha should be shown how the facts he has taken so long to learn are summed up by a great sculptor in a few touches : how those touches are invariably arranged in musical and decora- live relations ; how every detail unnecessary for his purpose is refused ; how those necessary for his purpose are insisted upon, or even exaggerated, or represented by singular arti- fice, when literal representation is impossible ; and how all this is done under the instinct and passion of an inner com- manding spirit which it is indeed impossible to imitate, but possible, perhaps, to share.
Perhaps ! Pardon me that I speak despondingly. For my own part, I feel the force of mechanism and the fury of avaricious commerce to be at present so irresistible, that I have seceded from the study not only of architecture, but nearly of all art ; and have given myself, as I would in a besieged city, to seek the best modes of getting bread and water for its multitudes, there remaining no question, it seems to me, of other than such grave business for the time. But there is, at least, this ground for courage, if not for hope : As the evil spirits of avarice and luxury are directly contrary to art, so, also, art is directly contrary to them, and according to its force expulsive of them and medicinal against them ; so that the establishment of such schools as I have ventured to describe — whatever their immediate suc- cess or ill-success in the teaching of art — would yet be the di- rectest method of resistance to those conditions of evil among which our youth are cast at the most critical period of their lives. We may not be able to produce architecture, but, at the least, we shall resist vice. I do not know if it has been observed that while Dante rightly connects architecture, aa the most permanent expression of the pride of humanity, whether just or unjust, with the first cornice of Purgatory, he indicates its noble function by engraving upon it, in perfect sculpture, the stories which rebuke the errors and purify the t)urposes of noblest souls. In the fulfilment of such function.
43303^'^
558 THE STUDY OF ARCBITECTURSi.
literally and practically, here among men, is the only real use or pride of noble architecture, and on its acceptance or sur- render of that function it depends whether, in future, the cities of England melt into a ruin more confused and ghastly than ever storm wasted or wolf inhabited, or purge and exalt themselves into true habitations of men, whose walls shall bf Safety, and whose gates shall be Praise.
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NA 2250 .R75 1890 SMC Ruskin, John, The seven lamps of architecture ST. Mark's ed.
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