Lectures on architecture and painting

LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
AND PAINTING

Fig.

L.o.A.\

Fig. 18
PLATE XI (Figs. 17, 18)

[front.

fcfr.
t

LECTURES ON

ARCHITECTURE AND

PAINTING

BY

JOHN RUSKIN

With 23 illustrations

LONDON

HE WAVERLEY BOOK COMPANY, LTD.
7-8 OLD BAILEY, E.G.

/v

744 s

PREFACE

THE followingLectures 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 impossibility 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 re-
marks 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 care-
fully reduced, and well transferred to wood

vi PREFACE

by Mr. Thurston Thompson. Those which
were given in the course of the notices of
schools of painting could not be so trans-
ferred, having been drawn in colour ; and I
have therefore merely had a few lines, abso-
lutely 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, illustrative of what
is said in that lecture (p. 77) respecting the
energy of the mediaeval republics. This
passage, describing the circumstances under
which the Campanile of the Duomo of Flor-
ence 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. 90), 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 Archi-
tect (chief Master, I should rather write),
of the Cathedral and its dependencies, 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 approved of,
the republic passed a decree in the spring of

PREFACE vii

1334, that the Campanile should be built so
as to exceed in magnificence, height, and ex-
cellence of workmanship whatever in that
kind had been achieved by the Greeks and
Romans in the time of their utmost power
and greatness. The first stone was laid,
accordingly, with great pomp, on the 1 8th 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 criti-
cism which the Signoria resented by confining
him for two months in prison, and after-
wards 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 in-
clined/

I see that The Builder (vol. xi, page 690)
has been endeavouring to inspire the citizens
of Leeds with some pride of this kind respect-
ing 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 remem-
bered 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 public, if those who have given their

viii PREFACE

names as guarantee for their sincerity never
had the courage to enter a protest against
the execution of designs which appear to
them unworthy.

Denmark Hill, i6th April, 1854.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE ,„.... v

I i

II . 51

ADDENDA to I and II . . . .85
III : Turner and his Works . . 1 1 3

IV : Pre-Raphaelitism . . . .'151
ADDENDA to IV . . . . .187
INDEX 193

ILLUSTRATIONS

Face p.
PLATE I, figs, i, 3, and 5: Illustrative

diagrams . . 5

II, fig. 2 : Window in Oakham Castle 8
III, figs. 4 and 6 : Spray of ash-tree, and
improvement of the same
on Greek principles . • • 15
IV, fig. 7 : Window in Dumblane

Cathedral . . 24

V, ,, 8 : Mediaeval turret . 30

VI, figs. 9 and 10 : Lombardic towers 34
VII, ,, ii and 12: Spires at Cou-

tances and Rouen . . 38
VIII, ,, 13 and 14 : Illustrative dia-
grams . . ... 58
IX, fig. 15 : Sculpture at Lyons . 60
X, ,, 1 6 : Niche at Amiens . 62
XI, figs. 17 and 18 : Tiger's head, and
improvement of the same
on Greek principles Frontispiece
XII, fig. 19 : Garret window in Hotel de

Bourgtheroude ... 78

XIII, figs. 20 and 21 : Trees, as drawn in

the 1 3th century . . .122

XIV, fig. 22 : Rocks, as drawn by the

school of Leonardo da Vinci 126
XV, „ 23 : Boughs of trees, after

Titian . 128

LECTURES ON

ARCHITECTURE AND

PAINTING

I THINK myself peculiarly happy in being:
permitted to address the citizens of Edin-
burgh 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 pre-
sents 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
right to be proud of it. That you were born
under the shadow of its two fantastic moun-
tains— 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
1 B

2 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

houses of your Canongate, and the broad
battlements of your castle, reflect honour
upon you only through your ancestors. Be-
fore 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 seriously the influence upon its
aspect which the work of your own hands
has exercised ? I do not say that, even
when you 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 Edinburgh. 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
opening 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

i] ANP PAINTING 3

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 be-
tween the houses, as you do here : it may for
a few moments follow the broken line of the
great Alpine battlements ; but it is only
where they form a background 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 towers that rise out of that
shadow into the depth of the sky.

That is a city to be proud of, indeed ;
and it is this kind of architectural dignity

4 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

which you should aim at, in what you add to
Edinburgh or rebuild in it. For remember,
must_either_help your scenery

it ; whatever you do has an effect of one
kind or the other ; it is never indifferent.
But, above all, remember that it is chiefly
by private, 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 institution, for a city. It is the Canon-
gate, 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 own personal interest
that the style of the architecture which rises
around you must be principally guided. Do
not think that you can have good architec-
ture merely by paying for it. It is not by
. subscribing liberally for a large building once
jin forty years that you can call up architects
..-and inspiration. It is only by active and
; sympathetic attention to the domestic 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

Fig. i

is- 3 FiS- 5

PLATE I (Figs, i, 3, 5)

L.o.A.

[ lace p. 5

I] AND PAINTING 5

about it, and cannot care about it. I know
you cannot. About such architecture as is
built nowadays, 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. i, plate I), 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 utter refusal of orna-
ment. But I cannot say it is entertaining.
How many windows precisely of this form
do you suppose 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 1. And your
decorations are just as monotonous as your

1 Including York Place, and Picardy Place, but
not counting any window which has mouldings.

6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

simplicities. 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 an-
other ? — and yet you expect to be inter-
ested ! 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 appearing 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 nose-
gay, for feao^your nosegay should be un-
interesting ; 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 farther disadvan-
tage on the side of the builder, as compared

i] AND PAINTING 7

with the speaker, that my wasted words
would cost you but little, but his wasted
stones have cost you no small part of youi
incomes.

' Well, but ', you still think within your-
selves, ' it is not right that architecture
should be interesting. It is a very grand
thing, this architecture, but essentially un-
entertaining. 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 delight 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 contrary, something wrong, either in the
spectator or the art, when it ceases to please.
Now, therefore, if you feel that your present

8 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

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, plate II) ; it is a window actually
existing — a window of an English domestic
building 1 — 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 inter-
ested 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 as much indifference as now,
when your windows are of this form (fig. i,
plate I). Can you for an instant suppose
that the architect was a greater or wiser man
who built this, than he who built that ? or
that in the arrangement of these dull and
monotonous stones there is more wit and
sense than you can penetrate ? 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 tem-
per, not your taste ; your patient and trust-
ful temper, which lives in houses whose
architecture it takes for granted, and sub-

1 Oakham Castle. I have enlarged this illustra-
tion from Mr Hudson Turner's admirable work on
the domestic architecture of England.

PLATE II (fig. 2)
Lo.A.\ [face p.

I] AND PAINTING 9

scribes 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 gram-
mar or of spelling, 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 withi
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 understood 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 oiv
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 tq,

C

io LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

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 depends
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 archi-
tecture I do not mean that spurious con-
dition of temple form which was nothing
more than a luscious imitation of the Greek ;
but I mean that architecture in which the
Roman 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. Now the first
point I wish to insist upon is, that the Greek
system, considered merely as a piece of
construction, is weak and barbarous com-
pared with the two others. For instance,
in the case of a large window or door, such
as fig. i , plate I, 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 comparative security ; but

I] AND PAINTING II

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 miser-
ably feeble adjustment of bricks (fig. 3, plate
I)1. 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 obtain single stones, and this circum-
stance alone gives a considerable 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 a principal
entrance so utterly ghastly and oppressive ;
and it is as weak as it is ghastly. The huge
horizontal lintel above the door is already

1 On this subject, see The Builder, vol. xi, p. 709.

•12 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

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 con-
cealed by paint and plaster that the bad
building of the day is thoroughly committed.
The main mischief lies in the strange devices
that are used to support the long horizontal
•cross beams of our larger apartments and
-shops, and the framework of unseen walls ;
girders and ties of cast iron, and props and
wedges, and laths nailed and bolted together,
-on marvellously 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
mystery 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

i] AND PAINTING 13

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 indeed ! Not the less piti-
able. 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 some-
times 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 moment 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 undertaken
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
their 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, disgraceful
to us as they are, for it is, of course, per-

14 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

fectly possible to build a perfectly secure
house or a secure window in the Greek
manner ; but the simple fact is, that in
order to obtain in the cross lintel the same
amount of strength which 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 manner 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 common 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 conse-
quence, merely owing to the adoption of
this bad form ; and that our builders know
so well, that in myriads of instances you
find them actually throwing concealed
arches above the horizontal lintels to take
the weight off them ; and the gabled decora-
tion at the top of some Palladian windows,
is merely the ornamental form resulting
from a bold device of the old Roman builders
to effect the same purpose.

L.o.A.

Fig. 6
PLATE III (Figs. 4, 6)

I] AND PAINTING 15

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. Not the most beautiful
because it is the strongest ; but most beauti-
ful, because its form is one of those which,
as we know by its frequent occurrence in
the work of nature around us, has been
appointed 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 character. 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, plate III) ;
and, by the way, it will furnish us with an
interesting illustration of another error in
modern architectural systems. You know
how fond modern architects, like foolish
modern politicians, are of their equalities,
and similarities ; 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

16 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

the ends of the shoots of the ash are com-
posed of four1 green stalks bearing leaves,
springing 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 begins with a stem for
seven leaves where it should have nine, and
then recollects itself at the last minute, and
puts on another 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 equalities ; and all its grace and power
of pleasing are owing to its doing so, together
with the lovely curves in which its stalks,
thus arranged, spring from the main bough.
Fifr 5» plate I, is a plan of their arrangement
merely, but fig. 4, plate 1 1 1, is the way in which
you are most likely to see them : and observe,
they spring from the stalk precisely as a
Gothic vaulted roof springs, each stalk repre-
senting a rib of the roof, and the leaves its

\ 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.

i] AND PAINTING 17

crossing stones ; and the beauty of each
of those leaves is altogether 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 their lateral ribs at right
angles with the central rib, instead of slop-
ing 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 imagine 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

D

i8 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

and brown sandstone than you are to rubies
or emeralds ? and yet will you tell me you
think them as beautiful ? 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 body, that blood
may be wasted or arrested, and in its stag-
nancy cease to nourish the frame, or in its
disturbed flow affect 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 pres-
sure is removed, 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 beautiful, 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

i] AND PAINTING 19*

every day over your heads ; but you do not
for that reason determine blue to be less or
more beautiful 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 colour is everlastingly
appointed by the Deity to be a source of
delight ; and whether seen perpetually over
your head, or crystallized once in a thousand
years into a single and incomparable stone,
your acknowledgement of its beauty is
equally natural, simple, and instantaneous.
Pardon me for engaging you in a meta-
physical 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 away 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 associa-
tion and of beauty are two entirely distinct
powers — as distinct, for instance, as the
forces of gravitation and electricity. These

20 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

forces may act together, or may neutralize
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 accus-
tomed sight more beautiful, or the strange
one less so. The well known object may
be dearer to you, or you may have dis-
covered charms in it which others cannot ;
but the charm was there before you dis-
covered 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 coun-
tenance depends on fixed laws of form and
expression, and not on the affection you
bear to it, or the degree in which you are
familiarized with it : and so does the beauty
of all other existences.

Now, therefore, I think that, without the
risk of any farther serious objection occur-
ring to you, I may state what I believe to be
the truth — that beauty has been appointed

I] AND PAINTING 21

by the Deity to be one of the elements by
which the human soul is continually sus-
tained ; 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 countenance. On the ether hand,
absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as
perfect beauty ; but degrees of it more or
less distinct 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 does generally, is sure to be
more or less beautiful ; what she 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 occur-
rence 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

22 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

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 19 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 invariably 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 contempla-
tion 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 windows pointed

1 I am at present aware only of one tree, the tulip
tree, which has an exceptional form, and which, I
doubt not, every one will admit, loses much beauty
in consequence. All other leaves, as far as I know,
have the round or pointed arch in the form of the
extremities of their foils.

I] AND PAINTING 23

— why not follow the leaves, and point them
at the bottom also ?

For this simple reason, that, while in archi-
tecture 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 inconvenient for the sake of beauty.
You want the level window sill to lean upon,
or to allow the window to open on a balcony :
the eye and the common sense of the be-
holder require 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 window, and
therefore is at once rejected ; only I beg of
you particularly to observe that the level
sill, although useful, and therefore admitted,
does not therefore become beautiful ; the
eye does not like it so well as the top of the
window, nor does the sculptor like to attract
the eye to it ; his richest mouldings, traceries,
and sculptures are all reserved for the top of
the window, they are sparingly granted to
its horizontal base. And farther, observe,
that when neither the convenience of the
sill, nor the support of the structure, are
any more of moment, as in small windows
and traceries, you instantly have the point
given to the bottom of the window. Do
you recollect the west window of your own
Dumblane Abbey ? If you look in any

24 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

common guide-book, you will find it pointed
out as peculiarly beautiful — it is acknow-
ledged to be beautiful by the most careless
observer. And why beautiful ? Look at
it (fig. 7, plate IV). 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, plate II, above, composed of clusters
of four sharp leaves each, originally pro-
duced 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 common man who
designed that cathedral of Dumblane. I
know not anything so perfect in its sim-
plicity, and so beautiful, as far as it reaches,
in all the Gothic with which I am acquainted.
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 everybody else did at
the time, he went down to the woody bank
of the s\veet river beneath the rocks on which
he was building, and he took up a few of

PLATE IV (Fig. 7)

L.o,A.]

l/ace p. 24

I] AND PAINTING 25

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 or 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 decorated, I shall en-
deavour to show you in my next lecture.
Meantime I must beg of you to consider

E

26 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [r

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 xhave
paused at the wicket gate of some cottage
garden, delighted by the simple beauty of
the honeysuckle porch and latticed window.
Has it ever occurred to you to ask the ques-
tion, what effect the cottage would have up-
on your feelings if it had no roof — 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 beauti-
ful ; 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 literature 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 white-washed walls — nor the
flowery garden — nor the rude fragments of

I] AND PAINTING 27

stones set for steps at the door — nor any
other picturesqueness of the building which
interest 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 feel-
ing. 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 com-
pletely from a cleft in rocks or bower in
woods. It is in its thick impenetrable cover-
lid of close thatch that its whole heart and
hospitality are concentrated. Consider the
difference, in sound, of the expressions ' be-
neath my roof ' and ' within my walls ' —
consider whether you would be best shel-
tered in a shed, with a stout roof sustained
on corner posts, or in an inclosure 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 archi-
tecture— 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 for granted ? You may as well say

28 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

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 ex-
ternal splendour you may give your houses,
you will always feel there is something want-
ing, unless you see their roofs plainly. And
this especially in the north. In southern
architecture the roof is of far less import-
ance ; 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
facade of the square pile, if the roof be not
seen, as handsome as you please, — you may
cover it with decoration, — but there will
always be a heartlessness about it, which you
will not know how to conquer ; above all,
a perpetual 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
throws off snow and rain most completely,
and dries fastest, but obtains the greatest
interior space within walls of a given height,

i] AND PAINTING 29

removes the heat of the sun most effectually
from the upper rooms, and affords most
space for ventilation.

You have then, observe, two great prin-
ciples, as far as northern architecture is con-
cerned ; 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
interesting fact, that all the loveliest Gothic
architecture in the world is based on the
group of lines 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 sur-
mounted by pure gables of open work. If
you look at the transept porches of Rouen,
or at the great and celebrated porch of the
cathedral of Rheims, or at that of Stras-
bourg, Bayeux, Amiens, or Peterborough,
still you will see that these lovely compo-
sitions are nothing more than richly decor-
ated 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 person-
ally 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.

30 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

which have for many years adorned our
exhibitions. Now, the principal charm of
all those continental street effects is de-
pendent on the houses having high-pitched
gable roofs. In the Netherlands, 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 with various
ornaments, succeeding one another in end-
less perspective along the streets of Antwerp,
Ghent, or Brussels. In Picardy and Nor-
mandy, 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 Abbeville, Rouen, 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
windows, each of the most fantastic and
beautiful form, and crowned with a little
spire or pinnacle. Wherever there is a little
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, plate V \ each in its turn crowned
1 This figure is copied from Prout

PLATE V (Fig 8)

L.O.A.]

[face p. 3°

I] AND PAINTING 31

by a fantastic ornament, covered with
curiously shaped slates or shingles, 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 important
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-point-
ing spire, nor of the theory which has been
founded upon it of the general meaning of
Gothic architecture as expressive 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 unto heaven.' From
that day to this, whenever men have become
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

32 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

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 frequent 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-
building 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 build-
ing a tower in his vineyard, and the beautiful
expressions in Solomon's Song : — ' The tower
of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damas-
cus ' ; 'I am a wall, and my breasts like
towers ' ; you recollect the Psalmist's ex-
pressions of love and delight : ' Go ye round
about Jerusalem ; tell the towers thereof :

i] AND PAINTING 33

mark ye well her bulwarks : consider her
palaces, that ye may tell it to the generation
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 world you have various species of
elevated buildings, the Egyptian pyramid,
the Indian and Chinese pagoda, the Turkish
minaret, and the Christian belfry — all of
them raised either to make a show from a
distance, or to cry from, or swing bells in,
or hang them round, or for some other very
human reason. Thus, when the good
people of Beauvais were building their cathe-
dral, 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 down,
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 heaven-

F

34 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

ward aspiration. 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 1 instead of manufactory chimneys ;
only do not confound a feeling which, though
healthy and right, may be nearly analogous
to that in which you play a cricket-match,
with any feeling allied to your hope of
heaven.

Such being the state of the case with re-
spect 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 Italian bell-tower or campanile.
From the 8th century to the i3th there
was little change in that form 2 : 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 church, in
this form (fig. 9, plate VI), tiled at the top

1 I did not, at the time of the 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.

2 There is a good abstract of the forms of the Italian
campanile, by Mr Papworth, in the Journal of the
Archaeological Institute, March, 1850.

Fig. 10

PLATE VI (Figs. 9, 10)

L o.A.}

[face p. 34

I] AND PAINTING 35

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 between these
and the towers built for military service.
The latter were built as in fig. 10, plate VI,
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 journey, 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 cam-
panile has had a very different influence on
European architecture. Its form in the
plains of Italy and South France being that
just shown you, 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 1. There are probably few in the
room who have not been in some parts of

1 The form establishes itself afterwards in the
plains, in sympathy with other Gothic conditions, as
in the campanile of St Mark's at Venice.

36 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

South Switzerland, and who do not remem-
ber the beautiful effect of the grey 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 de-
coration, generally in putting small pinnacles
at the angles, and piercing the central
pyramid with traceried windows, sometimes,
as at Fribourg and Burgos, throwing it into
tracery altogether : but to do this is invari-
ably 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 Brussels,
the celebrated towers (one, observe, ecclesias-
tical, being the tower of the cathedral, and
the other secular) are formal 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 Lichfield 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 towers of the cathe-
dral of Coutances in Normandy. There is
a dispute between French and English
antiquaries as to the date of the building, the
English being unwilling to admit its com-

I] AND PAINTING 37

plete priority to all their own Gothic. I
have no doubt of this priority 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 contested, to the inven-
tion of pinnacles and arches. I believe the
French nation was, in the I2th and I3th
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 carefully
for you (fig. n, plate VII), and you will see
immediately that they are literally domestic
roofs, with garret windows, executed on a
large scale, and in stone. Their only orna-
ment is a kind of scaly mail, which is nothing
more than the copying in stone of the com-
mon wooden shingles of the house-roof ; and
their security is provided for by 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 sim-

38 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

plicity, the clear detaching of the shafts
from the slope of the spires, 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 architec-
tural composition of which the aspect is so
completely varied at different hours of the
day 1. But the main thing I wish you to
observe is, the complete domesticity of the
work ; the evident treatment 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, you 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 associated with
other towers, even simpler and more straight-
forward 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 north-west angle of Rouen
Cathedral (fig. 12, plate VII) ; but they occur

1 The sketch was made about 10 o'clock on a Sep-
tember morning.

I] AND PAINTING 39

in multitudes in the older towns of Germany ;
and the backgrounds of Albert Diirer are
full of them, and owe to them a great part
of their interest : all these great and magni-
ficent masses of architecture 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 ex-
pressive, not by any means of religious feel-
ing \ but merely of joyfulness and exhilara-

1 Among the various modes in which the archi-
tects, against whose practice my writings are directed,
have endeavoured to oppose them, no charge has been
made more frequently than that of their self-contra-
diction ; 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 instance, in a recent review, though for the most
part both fair and intelligent, 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 devotion 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 keep-
ing 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 speak-
ing 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 decor-
ative features, which are ordinarily the results of
feeling, in the other of structural features, which are
ordinarily 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 scrip-

40 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

tion 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 a human face ; be-
sides 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 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 battle-
ments 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
your poetry and romances ; take away out
of your border ballads the word tower where-

tural 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 furnished the funds for the erection of
the loveliest tower in North France, by paying for
permission to eat butter in Lent.

i] AND PAINTING 41

ever 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 description of Highland scenery
without help from the idea :

Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.

Take away from Scott's romances the word
and the idea turret, and see how much you
would lose. Suppose, for instance, when
young Osbaldistone is leaving Osbaldistone
Hall, instead of saying ' The old clock struck
two from a turret adjoining my bedchamber ',
he had said ' The old clock struck two from
the landing at the top of the stairs ' , what
would become 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 immense time back, all your
public buildings have been built with a row
of pillars supporting a triangular thing called
a pediment. You see this form every day
in your banks and clubhouses, 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 ', had
written ' Each purple peak, each flinty

G

42 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

pediment l '. Would you have thought
the poem improved ? 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 excited
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 which the people of the
1 9th century sacrificed their feelings to
fashions, and their intellects to forms. But
on the other hand, that strange and thrilling
interest with which such words strike you
as are in any wise connected with Gothic

1 It has been objected to this comparison that the
form of the pediment 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
one end of the Trosachs to the other. All their rocks
are heavily rounded, and the introduction of the
word * spire ' is a piece of inaccuracy in description,
ventured merely for the sake of the Gothic image. Far-
ther : 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 ? Be-
cause ' gable ' is a term of vulgar domestic architec-
ture, and therefore destructive of the tone of the
heroic description ; whereas ' pediment ' and ' spire *
are precisely correlative terms, being each the crown-
ing feature in ecclesiastical edifices, and the com-
parison of their effects in the verse is therefore abso-
lutely accurate, logical and just.

I] AND PAINTING 43

architecture — as for instance, Vault, Arch,
Spire, Pinnacle, Battlement, Barbican,
Porch, and myriads of such others, words
everlastingly poetical and powerful 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. Be-
lieve 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 com-
mittees to decide upon the style of the new
building, and as you have never been in the
habit of trusting to your own taste in such
matters, you inquire who is the most cele-
brated, 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 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 handsone ;
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 sub-
scribe, 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

44 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

your streets, you contemplate it, not knowing
what to make of it exactly, but hoping 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 inhabi-
tants of the city of so and so ; and the build-
ing keeps the rain out as well as another, and
you remain in a placid state of impoverished
satisfaction therewith ; 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 fashions of public propriety for an hour
or two, where do you go for it ? Where do
you go to eat strawberries and cream ?
To Roslin Chapel, I believe ; not to the
portico of the last-built institution. What
do you see your children doing, obeying
their own natural 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 Linlith-
gow 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 ' Ro-

I] AND PAINTING 45

mance '. I will do that, if you please, in
the next lecture, for it is a word of greater
weight and authority than we commonly
believe. In the meantime, I will endeavour,
lastly, to show you, not the romantic, but
the plain and practical conclusions which
should follow from the facts I have laid
before you.

I have endeavoured briefly to point out
to you the propriety 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 architecture.

You will all admit that there is neither
romance nor comfort 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 impossibility
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 con-
sistent with due observance of the Doric
order. Then, away with these absurdities ;
and the next house you build, insist upon

46 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

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 refuges 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
in which they would pollute the steps of our
houses by resting 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. ' l 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 that it should 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

1 Isa. Iviii, 7.

I] AND PAINTING 47

the showers of the mountains, and embrace
the rock for want of a shelter.' 1

This, then, is the first use to which your
pointed arches and gable roofs are to be put.
The second is of more personal pleasure-
ableness. 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 your street architecture, as of
additional comfort and delight in the inter-
iors 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 you cannot fit them witi 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 windows of the most compli-
cated forms, fitted with modern sashes ; and
with the most perfect comfort. But grant-
ing that the objection were a true one — and
1 Job xxiv, 6-8.

48 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

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
comfort of your daily life. The window in
Oakham Castle (fig. 2, plate II) is an example
of such a form as actually employed in the
1 3th century; and I shall have to notice
another in the course of next lecture. Mean-
while, I have but one word to say in con-
clusion. Whatever has been advanced in
the course of this evening, has rested on the
assumption that all architecture 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
weight strongly with most here, why it is
not likely that they will ever become im-
portant elements in architectural effort. I
know that I am speaking to a company
of philosophers, but you are not philosophers

I] AND PAINTING 49

of the kind who suppose that the Bible is
a superannuated book ; neither are you of
those who think the Bible is dishonoured by
being referred to for judgment in small
matters. The very divinity of the Book
seems to me, on the contrary, to justify us
in referring every 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. I 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 de-
fenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen
walls, against the whole land '. But I do
not find that iron building is ever alluded
to as likely to become familiar to the minds
of men ; but, on the contrary, that an
architecture of carved stone is continually
employed as a source of the most important
illustrations. A simple instance must occur
to all of you at once. The force of the
image of the Corner Stone, as used through-
out Scripture, would completely be lost, if

H

50 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i

the Christian and civilized world were ever
extensively to employ any 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
perfectly established, we shall be content
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 sufficient to finish 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, with-
out considering, each of us, how far thai
tower has been built, and how truly its cost
has been counted.

II

BEFORE proceeding to the principal subject
of this evening, I wish to anticipate one or
two objections which may arise in your minds
to what I must lay before you. It may
perhaps have been felt by you last evening,
that some things I proposed to you were
either romantic or Utopian. Let us think
for a few moments what romance and
Utopianism mean.

First, romance. In consequence of the
many absurd fictions which long formed the
elements of romance writing, the word
romance is sometimes taken as synonymous
with falsehood. 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 falsehood at once. It is far plainer
and clearer. And if in this sense I put any-
thing romantic before you, pray pay no
attention 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

51

$2 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

word romantic has come to signify weak,
foolish, speculative, unpractical, unprinci-
pled. In all these cases it would be much
better to say 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 characterize an improbable or
unaccustomed degree of beauty, sublimity,
or virtue. For instance, in matters of his-
tory, is not the Retreat 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 Agin-
court is romantic, and of Bannockburn,
simply because there was an extraordinary
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 opponents 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 be-
cause they are false, but because they are
majestic. So again as to beauty. You feel
that armour is romantic, because it is a

ii] AND FAINTING 53

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 feeling 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, unusually 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 and admira-
tion, and you have the perfect human soul.
But the great evil of these days is that we
try to destroy the romantic feeling, instead
of bridling and directing it. Mark what
Young says of the men of the world :

They, who 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

54 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

affection is romantic — true religion is roman-
tic ; 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
Voltaire, or Byron, or the last most ingenious
and most venomous of the degraded philoso-
phers 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 soldiers 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 selfish-
ness ; and, since his time, the purest im-
pulses and the noblest purposes have per-
haps 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 dis-
suading you from attempting to do well, on

1 I mean no scandal against the present emperor of
the French, whose truth has, I believe, been as con-
spicuous in the late political negotiations, as his
decision and prudence have been throughout the
whole course of his government.

ii] AND PAINTING 55

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 impossible, you need not trouble
yourselves about it ; if possible, try for it.
It is very Utopian to hope for the entire doing
away with drunkenness and misery out of
the Canongate ; 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 eminently 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.

56 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

You perhaps fancied that architectural
beauty was a very costly thing. Far from
it. It is architectural ugliness that is costly.
In the modern system of architecture,
decoration is immoderately expensive, be-
cause it is both wrongly placed and wrongly
finished. I say, first wrongly placed.
Modern architects decorate the tops of their
buildings. Mediaeval ones decorated the
bottom 1. 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 continually, by whole-
sale ; and while you are dissuaded, on the
ground of expense, from building beautiful
windows and beautiful doors, you are con-
tinually made to pay for ornaments 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 architecture
in Edinburgh than the street in which so
many of your excellent physicians live —

1 For farther confirmation of this statement, see
the Addenda at the end of this Lecture.

ii] AND PAINTING 57

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 not, I suppose, in the habit of taking
academic and meditative walks on the roofs
of their houses ; and, if not, this balustrade
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 fagades, and
the inhabitants have thus been made to pay
a large sum for a piece of mere decoration.
Whether it does finish the facades satisfac-
torily, 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 economical
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
4O,ooo/., 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,

I

58 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

and the gentlemen of the army — I couldn't
see as what — nor can anybody ; for all this
sculpture is put up at the top of the house,
where the gutter should be, under the cor-
nice. 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, 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 pro-
duce 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 ornaments that have cost you
ten or twelve shillings a foot.

Now the Gothic builders placed their
decoration on a precisely contrary principle,
and on the only rational principle. All their

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

PLATE VIII (Figs. 13, 14)
L.o.A. [fa.ce fi. 58

IT J AND PAINTING 59

best and most delicate work they put on the
foundation of the building, close to the spec-
tator, 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 example will enable you to under-
stand this method of adaptation perfectly.
The lower part of the fa9ade of the cathedral
of Lyons, built either late in the I3th or
early in the I4th century, is decorated with a
series of niches, filled by statues of consider-
able size, which are supported upon pedestals
within about eight feet of the ground. In
general, pedestals 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 enter, 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 (fig. 13, plate VIII), 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 pave-
ment. 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 appears to have been jealous of the
smallest space which was well within the
range of sight ; and the bottom of every
bracket is decorated also — nor that slightly,

60 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

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. 1 3, plate
VIII, four small figures are placed, one in
each foil, and two larger ones in the centre.
I had only time, in passing through the town,
to make a drawing of one of the angles of
these pedestals ; that sketch I have en-
larged, in order that you may have some
idea of the character of the sculpture. Here
is the enlargement of it (fig. 15, plate IX).
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 fragment, literally no larger than a
school-boy 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 a 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

L.o.A.}

PLATE IX (Fig. 15)

[face p. 60

II] AND PAINTING 61

the head of the large figure. You will ob-
serve how beautifully that figure is thus
pointed 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 at this little
diamond crown, with a lock of the hair
escaping from beneath it ; and at the
beautiful way in which the tiny leaf at a is
set in the angle to prevent 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 sculpture like
this ! And every front of our thirteenth
century cathedrals is inwrought with sculp-
ture of this quality ! And yet you quietly
allow yourselves to be told that the men
who thus wrought were barbarians, and that
your architects are wiser and better in cover-
ing your walls with sculpture of this kind
(fig. 14, plate VIII).

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 look like prisons, and
truly are so ; for the worst feature of Greek
architecture is, indeed, not its costliness,
but its tyranny. These square stones are

62 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

not prisons of the body, but graves of the
soul ; for the very men who could do sculp-
ture like this of Lyons for you are here !
still here, in your despised workmen : the
race has not degenerated, it is you who have
bound them down, and buried them beneath
your Greek stones. There would be a
resurrection of them, as of renewed souls,
if you would only lift the weight of these
weary walls from off their hearts 1.

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, plate X) is a sketch of a
niche at Amiens Cathedral, some fifty or
sixty feet high on the facade, and seven or
eight feet wide. Now observe, in the orna-
ment close to the eye, you had six figures
and a whole wreath of roses in the space of a
foot 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

1 This subject is farther pursued in the Addenda at
the end of this Lecture.

L o.A.\

PLATE X (Fig. 16)

\face p. 62

ii] AND PAINTING 63

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
massively and broadly as possible ; and yet,
observe how dexterously he has given you a
sense of delicacy and minuteness 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 orna-
ment would be less effective ; and it is the
very price we pay for finishing our decora-
tions 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 execu-
tion in a watercolour drawing, though that
may be seen as near as you choose, and yet
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

64 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

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 as is 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 fin-
ished ; 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, plate IX, you
have an exquisite group of rose-stems, with
the flowers and buds ; in fig. 16, plate X,
various wild weeds, especially the Geranium
pratense ; in every case you have an ap-
proximation to a natural form, and an un-
ceasing variety of suggestion. But how
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 pur-
pose, and that the architect of the building
in question will forgive me ; for it is just
because it is a good example of the style that
I think it more fair to use it for an example.

ii]. AND PAINTING 65

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 architecture, 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 exe-
cuted on a Greek type or no, it is to be pre-
sumed 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 admir-
able in them, and deserving your most
attentive contemplation. In order, there-
fore, that you might have a fair opportunity
of estimating their beauty, I was desirous
of getting a sketch of a real lion's head to
compare with them, and my friend Mr Mil-

K

66 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [H

lais kindly offered to draw both the one and
the other for me. You have not, however,
at present, a lion in your zoological collec-
tion ; and it being, as you are probably
aware, the first principle of Pre-Raphaelit-
ism, 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, which,
however, will answer my purpose just as
well, in enabling you to compare a piece of
true, faithful, and natural work with modern
architectural sculpture. Here, in the first
place, is Mr Millais' drawing from the living
beast (fig. 17, plate XI). 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. 1 8,
plate XI).

Now we call ourselves civilized and refined
in matters of 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 anything else
so good ! Do not think Mr Millais has
caricatured it. It is drawn with the strictest

ii] AND PAINTING 67

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 ad-
mission of such barbarous types of sculpture
is not merely ridiculous ; it is seriously
harmful to your powers of perceiving truth or
beauty of any kind or at any time. Imagine
the effect on the minds of your children of
having such representations of a lion's head
as this thrust upon them perpetually ; and
consider what a different effect might be
produced upon them if, instead of this barren
and insipid absurdity, every boss on your
buildings were, according to the workman'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 differ-
ence, with respect to the mind of the work-
man himself, between being kept all his life
carving, by sixties, and forties, and thirties,
repetitions of one false and futile model, —
and being sent, for every piece of work he
had to execute, to make a stern and faithful
study from some living creature of God.

And the last consideration enables me to
press this subject on you on far higher
grounds than I have done yet.

68 LECTURES. ON ARCHITECTURE [n

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 kindness 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, how-
ever unimportant, which, by kindly thought,
may not be made to have a beneficial
influence upon others ; and it is impossible
to spend the smallest sum of money, for any
not absolutely necessary purpose, without
a grave responsibility attaching to the
manner of spending it. The object we our-
selves covet may, indeed, be desirable and
harmless, so far as we are concerned, 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-

n] AND PAINTING 69

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 manufacture 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 with-
out giving the time to do it. Let us, how-
ever, only acknowledge the principle ; —
once make up your mind to allow the con-
sideration of the effect of your purchases to
regulate the kind 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 consider it ? and he that keepeth thy
soul, doth not he know 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,

70 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

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 buying
simply what we like best, wholly irrespective
of any good to be done, either to the artist or
to the schools of the country. 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 cup out
of which you drink, and every table oft
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
monotonous 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
like that ; and, secondly, sometimes to
sacrifice a careless preference or fancy to
what you know is for the good of your fellow-

ii] AND PAINTING 71

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 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 water-colour 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 eyesight, nor breaking his back,
but working in ease and happiness. There-
fore if you can like a modest watercolour
better than an elaborate engraving, do.
There may indeed be engravings which are
worth the suffering it costs to produce them ;
but at all events, engravings of public
dinners and laying 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

72 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

the best kind of art. To such persons I
would now especially address myself, fully
admitting the greatness of their difficulty.
It is not an easy thing to acquire a know-
ledge of painting ; and it is by no means a de-
sirable 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 generation 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 much 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 imperfection and rudeness, rather
than in definite error. He does not 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

ii] AND PAINTING 73

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 work-
man 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 multitude, instead of a few.

Nay but, you say, we ourselves shall not
be benefited by the sculpture on the outsider
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

L

74 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [r.

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
mighty choir. In the separate picture, it
is rare that there exists any very high source
of sublime emotion ; but the great con-
certed 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 in-
habited hills — this is a sublimity of which
you can at present form no conception ; and
capable, 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 pleasures — 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 *ach other best. And there
is indeed a charm and sacredness in street
architecture which must be wanting even to
that of the temple : it is a little thing for
men to unite in the forms of a religious ser-
vice, 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,

n] AND PAINTING 75

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 modern times.
We always look upon our houses as mere
temporary 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 than our ancestors ;

76 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

thinking it better to be nobly remembered
than nobly born ; and striving so to live,
that our sons, and our sons' sons, for ages
to come, might still lead their children
reverently to the doors out of which 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 objection 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 oppor-
tunity, 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 expenditures, at present
scattered and unconsidered, into a single 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 ostenta-
tion, much more than sources of intellectual

ii] AND PAINTING 77

pleasure. There are also many evils con-
nected 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 doubt-
ful luxuries, might most wisely and kindly be
thrown into a form which would give per-
petual 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 nobleness 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 poorer than our
ancestors, that we cannot now, in all the
power of 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 medi-
aeval periods, which, according to its ma-
terial and character, is not richly decorated.
But look here (fig. 19, plate XII), look to
what an extent decoration has been carried
in the domestic edifices of a city, I suppose
not much superior in importance, commer-

78 -LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

cially speaking, to Manchester, Liverpool,
or Birmingham — namely, Rouen, in Nor-
mandy. This is a garret window, still
existing there — a garret window built by
William de Bourgtheroude in the early part
of the 1 6th century. I show it 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 ex-
ample of a beautiful use of the pointed
arch, filled by the solid shield of stone, and
enclosing a square casement. It is indeed
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 ruder
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 naturally coloured stones.
I have observed that your Scottish lapi-
daries have admirable taste and skill in the
disposition of the pebbles of your brooches
and other ornaments of dress ; and I have

1 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 Maxwell 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.

L.o.A.}

PLATE XII (Fig. IQ)

[face p. 78

n] AND PAINTING 79

not the least doubt that the genius of your
country would, if directed to this particular
style of architecture, produce works as beau-
tiful as they would be thoroughly national.
The Gothic of Florence, which owes at least
the half of its beauty to the art of inlaying,
would furnish you with exquisite examples ;
its sculpture is indeed the most perfect
which was ever produced by the Gothic
schools ; but, besides this rich sculpture,
all its flat surfaces are inlaid with coloured
stones, much being done with a green ser-
pentine, which forms the greater part of the
coast of Genoa. You have, I believe, large
beds of this rock in Scotland, and other
stones besides, peculiarly Scottish, calcu-
lated to form as noble a school of colour
as ever existed l.

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 conscientiously tell you anything
about architecture but what is at variance
with all commonly received views upon the
subject. I come before you, professedly

1 A series of four examples of designs for windows
was exhibited at this point of the lecture, but I have
not engraved them, as they were hastily made for the
purposes of momentary illustration, and are not such
as 1 choose to publish or perpetuate.

8o LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

to speak of things forgotten or things dis-
puted ; 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
1 6th century, have asked a Roman Catholic
archbishop his opinion of the first reformer.
I deny his jurisdiction ; 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 the 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 architect, before he admitted
the truth of one word that I have said to
you this evening. You must be prepared,
therefore, to hear my opinions attacked
with all the virulence of established interest,
and all the pertinacity of confirmed pre-
judice ; you will hear them made the sub-
jects of every species of satire and invective ;
but one kind of opposition to them you will
never hear ; you will never hear them met

ii] AND PAINTING 81

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 established authority
of ages. Presumption ! Yes, if I had!
spoken on my own authority ; but I have
appealed to two incontrovertible and irre-
fragable 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 archi-
tecture. 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
three hundred years, in their ways of carving:
stones and setting up of pillars, when they
know that they were wrong for twelve hun-
dred years, in their marking how the roads-
divided, that led to Hell and Heaven.

You must expect at first that there will
be difficulties and inconsistencies in carrying
out the new style ; but they will soon be
conquered if you attempt not too much at
once. Do not be afraid of incongruities —
do not think of unities of effect. Introduce
your Gothic line by line and stone by stone ;.
never mind mixing it with your present

M

82 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

architecture ; your existing houses will be
none the worse for having little bits of better
work fitted to them ; bijild a porch, or point
a window, if you can dp nothing else ; and
remember that it is the glory of Gothic archi-
tecture that it can do anything. Whatever
you really and seriously want, Gothic will
do for you ; but it mugt be an earnest want.
It is its pride to accommodate itself to your
needs ; and the one general law under 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 beautiful. 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 determined 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

II] AND PAINTING 83

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 sanctifica-
tion, unless it also had been good and neces-
sary for man. You will allow that oil, and
honey, and balm are good, when David says,
' Let the righteous reprove me ; it shall be
an 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 distorted judgment, since God had 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 Jerusalem,
and addressing to her His most precious and
solemn promises, speaks to her in such words
as these : ' Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with
tempest, and not comforted ' , — What shall

$4 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [n

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 emblem of
spiritual blessing ; for that blessing is added
in the concluding words, ' And all thy chil-
dren shall be taught of the Lord, and great
shall be the peace of thy children '.

ADDENDA TO I AND II

THE delivery of the foregoing lectures ex-
cited, as it may be imagined, considerable
indignation among the architects who hap-
pened 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 philo-
sophy and history of the architecture of the
world, besides meeting every objection, and
reconciling every apparent contradiction,
which might suggest itself to the minds of
hearers with whom, probably, from first to
last, I had not a single exactly correspondent
idea, relating to the matters under discus-
sion, 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 archi-
tecture for some time to come, it may be

65

86 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

useful to state here, and explain in the
shortest possible compass, the main gist of
the propositions which I desire to maintain
respecting that art ; and also to note and
answer, once for all, such arguments as are
ordinarily used by the architects of the
modern school to controvert these propo-
sitions. They may be reduced under six
heads.

1. That Gothic or Romanesque construc-
tion is nobler than Greek construction.

2. That ornamentation is the principal
part of architecture.

3. That ornamentation should be visible.

4. That ornamentation should be natural.

5. That ornamentation should be thought-
ful.

6. And that therefore Gothic ornamenta-
tion is nobler than Greek ornamentation,
and Gothic architecture the only architecture
which should now be built.

Proposition ist. — Gothic or Romanesque
construction is nobler than Greek construction l.

1 The constructive value of Gothic architecture is,
however, far greater than that of Romanesque, as
the pointed arch is not only susceptible 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, for, I believe, the first time,
the meaning and constructive value of the Gothic
cusp in the first volume of the Stones of Venice.
That statement was first denied, and then taken
advantage of, by modern architects ; and, consider-
ing how often it has been alleged that I have no

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 87

That is to say, building an arch, vault, or
dome, is a nobler and more ingenious work
than laying 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 across from bank to bank ;
and, in like manner, it is a nobler and more
ingenious thing to build an arch over a win-
dow, door, or room, than to lay a single flat
stone over the same space.

No architects have ever attempted seri-
ously to controvert this proposition. Some-
times, however, they say that ' of two ways
of doing a thing, the best and most perfect
is not always adopted, for there may
be particular reasons for employing an
inferior one*. This I am perfectly ready to
grant, only let them show their reasons in
each particuar case. Sometimes also they
say, that there is a charm in the simple con-
struction 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 Trinita at Florence, and,
in general, a charm in savageness which

practical knowledge of architecture, it cannot but be
matter of some triumph to me, to find The Builder,
of the 2ist January, 1854, describing, as a new in-
vention, the successful application to a church in
Carlow of the principle which I laid down in the year
1851.

88 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [1,11

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 building 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 exactly
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 congrega-
tion, 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 aesthetic considera-
tions of any kind, and all being done solidly,
securely, and at the smallest necessary cost.

The sacrifice of any of these first require-

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 89

ments to external appearance is a futility
and absurdity. Rooms must not be dark-
ened to make the ranges of windows sym-
metrical. Useless wings 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 Fine 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 about it, otherwise unattain-
able, just as a ship, constructed with simple
reference to its service against powers of
wind and wave, turns out one of the love-
liest 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 immortal ship-
builders ; neither, so long as the mere utility
and constructive merit of the building are
regarded, is architecture to be held a fine
art, or are the names of architects to be
remembered immortally. For any one may
at any time be taught to build a ship, or
(thus far) the house, and there is nothing
deserving of immortality in doing what any-
one may be taught to do.

N

90 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [1,11

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 great works
of architecture in existence are either the
work of single sculptors or painters, or of
societies of 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 sculp-
ture, arranged on the noblest principles of
building, for the service and delight of

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 91

multitudes ; and the proper definition of
architecture, as distinguished from sculp-
ture, is merely ' the art of designing 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 ' archi-
tecture ' is not so much as understood 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 prepared to carry
the principle.

The arguments, or assertions, which they
generally employ against this second propo-
sition and its consequences, are the follow-
ing :—

92 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i,n

First. That the true nobility of architec-
ture consists, not in decoration (or sculpture),
but in the ' disposition of masses ', and that
architecture is, in fact, the * art of propor-
tion '.

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 mas-
ses '. 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 pro-
portion that stars shine, that mountains
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, with-
out involving some reference, whether
taught or instinctive, to the laws of propor-
tion. And in the fine arts, it is impossible
to 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 folds 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 i, 2, 4,
and 8, are precisely the same as the relations

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 93

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 ' disposi-
tion of masses ' is the only thing of import-
ance in the art with which they are ac-
quainted, and fancy therefore that it is
peculiar to that art ; whereas the fact is,
that all great art begins exactly where theirs
ends, with the ' disposition of masses '. The
assertion that Greek architecture, as opposed
to Gothic architecture, is the ' architecture
of proportion ', is another of the results of
the same broad ignorance. 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 proportions 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
nothing but proportion to depend upon.
Gesture is in like manner of more importance

94 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

to a pantomime actor than to a tragedian,
not because his gesture is more refined, but
because he has no tongue. And the propor-
tions of our common Greek work are im-
portant 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 imagination,
nor sacredness, nor any other quality what-
soever in it, 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
multiplied magnificences of membership
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 con-
temptible details ; and not on essential and
large things. Now, in the first place, as soon
as our architects become 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 anything
larger. For although, as both just now, and

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 95

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 object more
completely, and if the powers of concep-
tion are feeble, they get embarrassed by
the inferior members which fall within the
divisions of the larger design 1. 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, whoever can design small things per-
fectly, 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 any-
thing. He may fail from want of taste or
feeling, but not from want of power.

And the real reason why architects are so
eager in protesting against my close examin-
ation of details, is simply that they know
they dare not meet me on that ground.
Being, as I have said, in reality not archi-

1 Thus, in speaking of Pugin's designs, I said
* Expect no cathedrals 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 a bracket, but not to
last them through a church front.

96 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

tects, 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 examining 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 con-
tained, 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 consequence.

Whatever other objections have been
made to this second proposition, arise, as
far as I remember, merely from a confusion
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 l.

i Of course I use the term painting as including
every mode of applying colour.

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 97

One or two important corollaries yet re-
main to be stated. It has just been said
that to sacrifice the convenience of a build-
ing to its external appearance is a futility
and absurdity, 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 ad-
mitted. There is great difficulty in fully
explaining the various bearings of this pro-
position, so as to do away with the 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 wings-
are to be added to balance useful ones, yet
in its ultimate designing, when its sculpture
and colour become precious, 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 admitted in order
to increase the impressiveness, as in nearly
every noble building in the world. But;
the right to do this is dependent upon t he--
actual purpose of the building becoming no-
longer one of utility merely ; as the purpose?
of a cathedral is not so much to shelter the

O

ioo LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

the rest of the buildings being left compara-
tively plain ; in the ducal palace of Venice
the only very careful work is in the lowest
capitals ; and so also the richrless of the
work diminishes upwards in the transepts
of Rouen, and fa9ades of Bayeux, Rheims,
Amiens, Abbeville \ 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
increase the richness towards the top : but
this is done so skilfully that no fine work is
wasted ; and when the spectator ascends
to the higher points of the building, which
he thought were of the most consummate
delicacy, he finds them Herculean in strength
and rough-hewn in style, the really delicate
work being all put at the base. The general
treatment of Romanesque work is to in-
crease the number 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.

1 The church at Abbeville is late flamboyant, but
well deserves, for the exquisite beauty of its porches,
to be named even with the great works of the thir-
teenth century

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 101

The fa9ade 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 effective-
ness ; while in the base modern Gothic of
Milan Cathedral the statues are cut delicately
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 modern buildings, 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 state-
ment given in the Stones of Venice, vol. i,
p. 213 : ' All noble ornament is the expres-
sion 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 nevertheless are en-

ioo LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

the rest of the buildings being left compara-
tively plain ; in the ducal palace of Venice
the only very careful work is in the lowest
capitals ; and so also the richrless of the
work diminishes upwards in the transepts

1 of Rouen, and fa9ades of Bayeux, Rheims,
Amiens, Abbeville l, 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
increase the richness towards the top : but
this is done so skilfully that no fine work is
wasted ; and when the spectator ascends
to the higher points of the building, which
he thought were of the most consummate
delicacy, he finds them Herculean in strength
and rough-hewn in style, the really delicate
work being all put at the base. The general
treatment of Romanesque work is to in-
crease the number 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.

1 The church at Abbeville is late flamboyant, but
well deserves, for the exquisite beauty of its porches,
to be named even with the great works of the thir-
teenth century

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 101

The fa9ade 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 effective-
ness ; while in the base modern Gothic of
Milan Cathedral the statues are cut delicately
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 modern buildings, 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 state-
ment given in the Stones of Venice, vol. i,
p. 213 : ' All noble ornament is the expres-
sion 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 nevertheless are en-

102 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [1,11

tirely unfit for their place, and are the signs
only of a degraded ambition and an ignorant
dexterity. Bad decorators err as easily on
the side of imitating nature, as of forgetting
her ; and the question of the exact degree
in which 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 inferi-
ority.

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 plea-
sure 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

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 103

spots, or bands, or flamings, or any other con-
dition of arrangement favourable to the
colour.

B. Conventionalism by cause of inferiority.
— In general, ornamentation is set upon cer-
tain services, subjected to certain 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 out-
lines, or to rise to the perfection of imitation.
Whole banks of flowers, for instance, cannot
be carved on cathedral fronts, but only nar-
row mouldings, having some of the characters
of banks of flowers. Also, some ornaments
require to be subdued in value, that they
may not interfere with the effect of others ;
and all these necessary inferiorities are at-
tained by means of departing from natural
forms — it being an established law of human
admiration that what is most representative
of nature shall, cceteris paribus, be most
attractive.

All the various kinds of ornamentation,
consisting of spots, points, twisted bands,
abstract curves, and other such, owe their
peculiar character to this conventionalism
' by cause of inferiority '.

C. Conventionalism by cause of means. —
In every branch of art, only so much imita-
tion of nature is to be admitted as is con-
sistent with the ease of the workman and the
capacities of the material. Whatever short-

104 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

comings 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 resist-
ance. On the contrary, they seem to be,
little by little, gliding into an obscure per-
ception 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 in-
stance, we find Mr Huggins, of Liverpool,
lately lecturing upon architecture ' in its
relations to nature and the intellect ' J,
and gravely informing his hearers, that ' in
the middle ages, angels were human figures ' ;
that ' some of the richest ornaments of Solo-
mon'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 plants of

1 See The Builder for January 12, 1854,

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 105

their own country '. 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 of wisdom thus open to them in
nature ', we may expect in due time large
results from the discovery of a source of wis-
dom 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 some-
thing 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 the
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

P

106 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

noble ornamentation is perpetually varied
ornamentation, and that the moment 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 change. Many subordinate archi-
tectural 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 off change in others ; and
a certain monotony or similarity must be
introduced among the most changeful orna-
ments 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 alto-
gether incontrovertible. Apply it to modern
Greek architecture, and that architecture
must cease to exist ; for it depends abso-
lutely on copyism.

The sixth proposition above stated, that
Gothic ornamentation is nobler than Greek
ornamentation, etc., is therefore sufficiently

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 107

proved by the acceptance of this one prin-
ciple, no less important than unassailable.
Of all that I have to bring forward respecting
architecture, this is the one I have most at
heart ; for on the acceptance of this depends
the determination whether the workman
shall be a living, 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 principle in modern and re-
naissance architecture, that I speak of that
architecture with a bitterness which appears
to many readers extreme, while in reality,.
so far from exaggerating, I 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 turn-
ing 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 carving
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
intellectual power or pursuit, and, being un-

io8 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

happy in their work, they rebel against it :
hence one of the worst forms of Unchristian
Socialism. So again, there being now no
nature or variety in architecture, the multi-
tude 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 taste of the existing populace
of London or Paris, as compared with the
temper of the populace of Florence, when
the quarter of Santa Maria Novella received
its title of ' Joyful Quarter ', from the re-
joicings of the multitude at getting a new
picture into their church, better than the
old ones ; — all this difference being exclu-
sively chargeable on the renaissance archi-
tecture. And then, farther, if we remem-
ber, not only the revolutionary ravage of
sacred architecture, but the immeasurably
greater destruction effected by the renais-
sance builders and their satellites, where-
ever they came, destruction so wide-spread
that there is not a town in France or Italy
but it has to deplore the deliberate over-
throw of more than half its noblest monu-
ments, 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

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 109

work, of the Middle Ages l ; 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, norTbroad
enough to embrace, the enormous moral evils
which have risen from them.

I omitted, in preparing the preceding lec-
ture for the press, a passage referring to this
subject, because it appeared to me, in its
place, hardly explained by preceding state-
ments. But I give it here unaltered, as
being, in sober earnest, but too weak to char-
acterize the tendencies of the ' accursed '
architecture of which it speaks.

' Accursed, I call it, with deliberate pur-
pose. It needed but the gathering up of a

1 Nothing appears to me much more wonderful,
than the remorseless way in which the educated ignor-
ance, even of the present day, will sweep away an
ancient monument, if its preservation be not abso-
lutely consistent with immediate convenience or
economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considera-
tions, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would
only consider the steps, and the weight of the follow-
ing very simple argument. You allow it is wrong to
waste time, that is, your 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 redeem 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 to those works they gave the best of their
time, intending them for immortality.

no LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [i, n

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
Babylon, — gathered by the Papal Church
in the extremity of her sin ; — raised up by
her, not when she was sending forth her
champions to preach 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 Borgias, raised
first into that mighty temple where the seven
hills slope to the Tiber, that marks by its
massy dome the central spot, where Rome
has reversed the words of Christ, and, as He
vivified the stone to the apostleship, she
petrifies the apostleship 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 wherever 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 thou-

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING in

sands in the cause of Christ, another king
was dragged forth from the gates of his
Renaissance palace, to die, by the hands of
the thousands of his people gathered in an-
other crusade ; or what shall that be called
— whose sign was not the cross, but the
guillotine ? ' l

I have not space here to pursue the sub-
ject farther, nor shall I be able to write any-
thing more respecting architecture for some
time to come. But in the meanwhile, I
would most earnestly desire to leave with
the reader this one subject of 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 comment
on what was precisely and accurately the

1 The character of Renaissance architecture, and
the spirit which dictated its adoption, may be re-
membered 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 18, 1854, to have been 3,246,000?,
money of that period equal, to about seven millions
now (900 ooo/. having been expended in the year 1686
alone). The building is thus notably illustrative 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 fifteen feet of their palace walls.

ii2 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE

most important chapter in the whole book ;
namely, the description of the nature of
Gothic architecture, as involving the liberty
of the workman (vol. n. ch. vi.) 1. 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 accom-
plished for all this. The labourer among
the gravestones of our modern architecture
must yet be raised up, and become a living
soul. Before he can be thus raised, the
whole system of Greek architecture, as prac-
tised in the present day, must be annihi-
lated ; but it will be annihilated, and that
speedily. For truth and judgment are its
declared opposites, and against these no-
thing ever finally prevailed, or shall prevail.

1 An article in Eraser's Magazine, which has ap-
peared since these sheets were sent to press, forms a
solitary exception.

Ill

TURNER AND HIS WORKS

MY object this evening is not so much to give
you any account of the works or the genius
of the great painter whom we have so lately
lost (which it would require rather a year
than an hour to do), 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 prefatory remarks, as
I have little enough at any rate, but will
enter abruptly on my subject.

You are all of you well aware that land-
scape seems hardly to have exercised any
strong influence, as such, on any pagan
nation, or pagan artist. I have no time to
enter into any details 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 ancient,
it is either agriculturally, with the kind of
feeling that a good Scotch farmer has ; sensu-
ally, in the enjoyment of sun or shade, cool
winds or sweet scents ; fearfully, in a mere
na Q

H4 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

vulgar dread of rocks and desolate places,
as compared with the comfort of cities ; or,
finally, superstitiously, in the personifica-
tion or deification of natural powers, gener-
ally with much degradation of their impres-
siveness, as in the paltry fables of Ulysses
receiving the winds in bags from ^Eolus, and
of the Cyclops hammering lightning sharp
at the ends, on an anvil 1. Of course you
will here and there find feeble evidences of
a higher sensibility, chiefly, I think, in Plato,
^Eschylus, Aristophanes, and Virgil. Homer,
though in the epithets he applies to land-
scape always thoroughly graphic, uses the
same epithet for rocks, seas, and trees, from
one end of his poems to the other, evidently
without the smallest interest in any thing of
the kind ; and in the mass of heathen writers,
the absence of sensation 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 re-
member that Horace takes exactly as much
interest in the scenery he is passing through,
as Sancho Panza would have done.

1 Of course I do not mean by calling these fables
* paltry ', to dispute their neatness, ingenuity, or
moral depth ; but only their want of apprehension of
the extent and awfulness of the phenomena intro-
duced. So also in denying Homer's interest in
nature, I do not mean to deny his accuracy of obser-
vation, 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 human interest.

in] AND PAINTING 115

You will find, on the other hand, that the
language of the Bible is specifically distin-
guished from all other early literature, 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 mightiest mountain scenery in
the peninsula of Arabia ; and that scenery
is associated in their minds with the immedi-
ate manifestation and presence of the Divine
Power ; so that mountains for ever after-
wards become invested with a peculiar sacred-
ness in their minds ; while their descendants
being placed in what was then one of the love-
liest 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 with natural
things themselves, as if they had human souls,
which is the especial characteristic of true
love for the works of God. I intended to

n6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

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 antici-
pated in a little book, unpretending, but full
of interest, The Lamp and the Lantern, by
Dr James Hamilton ; and I will therefore
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 is 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 lilies : ' They
toil not, neither do they spin.' Consider
such expressions as, ' The sea saw that, and
fled. Jordan was driven back. The moun-
tains skipped like rams ; and the little
hills 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 in-
spired volume in order to 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 coun-
try that Job inhabited 1. Observe, first, it

1 This passage, respecting the book of Job, was
omitted in the delivery of the Lecture, for want of
time.

in] AND PAINTING 117

was an arable country. The oxen were
ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them.
It was a pastoral country : his substance,
besides camels and asses, was 7,000 sheep. It
was a mountain country, fed by streams
descending from the high snows. ' My
brethren 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 garden ; his roots are
wrapped about the heap, and seeth the place
of stones.' Again: 'Thou shalt be in
league with 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 removed
out of his place.' ' The waters wear the
stones : thou washest away 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

n8 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

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 of landscape. The magnifi-
cent 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 pros-
perity, you have the first great naturalist
the world ever saw, Solomon ; not permitted,
indeed, to anticipate, in writing, the dis-
coveries of modern times, but so gifted as
to show us that heavenly wisdom is mani-
fested as much in the knowledge of the hys-
sop that springeth out of the wall as in
political and philosophical speculation.

The books of the Old Testament, as distin-
guished from all other early writings, are
thus prepared for an everlasting influence
over humanity ; and, finally, Christ Himself,
setting the concluding example to the con-
duct 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 peace-
ful avenues of the mount of Olives, to and
from His work of teaching in the temple.

It would thus naturally follow, both from

in] AND PAINTING 119

the general tone and teaching of the Scrip-
tures, 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, accordingly, 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 transforma-
tion of the cold and lifeless pagan ornament-
ation into vivid imagery of nature. Of
course this manifestation of feeling was
at first checked by the circumstances under
which the Christian religion was dissemin-
ated. The art of the first three centuries
is entirely subordinate — restrained partly
by persecution, partly by a high spirituality,
which cared much more about preaching
than painting ; and then when, under Con-
stantine, Christianity became the religion
of the Roman empire, myriads 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

ix2o LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

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 super-
stitions 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 8th to the 1 1 th century like a seed
in the ground, showing little signs of life, but
still, if carefully examined, changing essen-
tially every day and every hour : at last, in
the 1 2th century, the blade appears above
the black earth ; in the 1 3th, the plant is in
full leaf.

I begin, then, with the I3th century, 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 demonstration of it.

I say, then, that the art of the 1 3th century
is the foundation of all art — nor 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 follow-
ing centuries. The I4th century is pre-

in] AND PAINTING 121

eminently the age of Thought, the I5th the
age of Drawing, and the i6th the age of
Painting.

Observe, first, the I4th 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 nothing to imitate — belong
to this century. I should only confuse
you by giving you the names of marvel-
lous 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
1 5th) felt that they could not rival their
predecessors in invention, but might excel
them in execution. Original thoughts be-
longing to this century are comparatively
rare ; even ^RaEhaej^^idJ^ich^l^Angelo
themselves borrowed all their principal
ideas and plans of pictures from their pre-
decessors ; but they executed them . witlj, 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 1 5th century as the age of Leonardo,
Michael Angelo, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and
Raphael, — pre-eminently the age of Drawing.

The 1 6th century produced the four great-

R

122 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

-e Painters, that is to say, managers of
colour, whom the world has seen ; namely,
Tintoret, Paul Veronese, Titian, and Cor-
reggio. I need not say more to justify my
calling it the age of Painting.

This, then, being the state of things re-
specting art in general, let us next trace the
career of landscape through these centuries.

It was only towards the close of the I3th
century that figure painting began to assume
so perfect a condition as to require some
elaborate suggestion of landscape back-
ground. 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 1 3th century, Giotto, and in the
course of the I4th, Orcagna, sought, for the
first time, to give some resemblance to
nature in their backgrounds, and introduced
behind their figures pieces of true landscape,
formal enough still, but complete in intention,
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

\

Fig. 20

VTTT /TTirro /•>,"> OT^

in] AND PAINTING 123

though in many points enriched above the
work of earlier ages, the Orcagna and Giottol
landscape was a very complete piece of
recipe) was observed for a long period by
their pupils, and may be thus briefly de-
scribed : — 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 from it ; water is blue streaked
with white. The trees are nearly always
composed of clusters of their proper leaves
relieved on a black or dark ground, thus
(fig. 20, plate XIII) x. And observe care-
fully, 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 conven-
tionalism. You will often hear modern
architects defending their monstrous orna-
mentation on the ground that it is ' conven-
tional ', and that architectural ornament
ought to be conventionalized. Remember
when you hear this, that noble convention-
alism is not an agreement between the artist
and spectator that the one shall misrepresent
nature sixty times over, and the other believe

1 Having no memoranda of my own, taken from
Giotto's landscape, I had this tree copied from an
engraving ; but I imagine the rude termination of
the stems to be a misrepresentation. Fig. 21, plate
XIII, is accurately copied from a MS., certainly
executed between 1250 and 1270, and is more truly
characteristic of the early manner

124 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

the misrepresentation sixty times over,
but it is an agreement that certain means
and limitations being prescribed, only that
kind of truth is to be expected which is con-
sistent with those means. For instance,
if Sir Joshua Reynolds had been talking to a
friend about the character 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,
certainly not delicate in outline, nor repre-
senting any of the qualities of the face de-
pendent on rich outline, but getting as much
of the face as in that manner was attain-
able. That is noble conventionalism, and
Egyptian work on granite, or illuminator's
work in glass, is all conventional in the
same sense, but not conventionally false.
The two noblest and truest 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 con-
ditions of noble conventionalism, noticed
more fully in the Addenda to this Lecture ;
but you will find that they always consist
in stopping short of nature, not in falsifying
nature ; and thus in Giotto's foliage, he
stops short of the quantity of leaves on the

in] AND PAINTING 125

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 individ-
ually painted from nature ; while, although
thus simple in plan, the' arrangements of line
in these landscapes of course show the in-
fluence of the master-mind, and sometimes,
where the story requires it, we find 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 with
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

126 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

defined against the sky ; the blue mountains
in the extreme distance were exquisitely
thrown into aerial gradations, and the
sky and clouds were perfect in transparency
and softness. But still there is no real
advance in knowledge of natural objects.
The leaves and flowers are, indeed, admirably
painted, and thrown into various intricate
groupings, such as Giotto could not have
attempted, but the rocks and water are still
as conventional and imperfect as ever,
except only in colour : the forms of rock
in Leonardo's celebrated ' Vierge aux
Rochers ' are literally no better than those
on a china plate. Fig. 22, plate XIV shows
a portion of them in mere outline, 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 beau-
tiful flowers and animals scattered among
the landscape, in the old independent 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 conventionality 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

L.o.A.

PLATE XIV (l«'ig 22)

[face p. 126

in] AND PAINTING 127

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 nature in all things ; retaining, however,
thus much of the old system, that the dis-
tances 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 various shapes
of the cumulus or cirrus, introduced for the
sake of light on the deep blue sky. Tintoret
and Bonifazio introduced more natural
effects into this monotonous landscape :
in their works we meet with showers of rain,
with rainbows, sunsets, bright reflections
in water, and so on ; but still very subordin-
ate, and carelessly worked out, so as not to
justify us in considering their landscape as
forming a class by itself.

Fig 23, plate XV, which is a branch of a
tree from the background of Titian's ' St.
Jerome ', at Milan, compared with fig. 20,
plate XIII, will give you a distinct idea of
the kind of change which took place from
the time of Giotto to that of Titian, and

128 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

you will find that this whole range of land-
scape may be conveniently classed in three
divisions, namely Giottesque, Leonardesque,
and Titianesque ; the Giottesque embracing
nearly all the work of the I4th, the Leonard-
esque that of the I5th, and the Titianesque
that of the i6th century. Now you see
there remained a fourth step to betaken —
the doing away with conventionalism alto-
gether, 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 civilized nations was 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 I7th century struggled forward,
and sank upon the spot it had been endeav-
ouring to attain. The step which should
have freed landscape from conventionalism
was actually taken by Claude and Salvator
Roso, 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
knowledge and feeling of it. For instance,

PLATE XV (Fig. 23)

L.o.A.]

{face p. 128

in] AND PAINTING 129*

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 nature into Paganism, the return of
Paganism in the shape of classical learning;
at once destroyed this love of nature ;.
and at the moment when Claude and Salva-
tor 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 inter- -
ested by the new effects of sunsets over greem
seas, and of tempests bursting on rocky-
mountains, 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 painting was like a scene in a
theatre, viciously and falsely painted through-

S

130 LETTERS ON ARCHITECTURE [in

out, and presenting a deceptive appearance
of truth to nature ; understood, as far as it
went, in a moment, but conveying no accur-
ate knowledge of anything, and, in all its
operations on the mind, unhealthy, hopeless,
and profitless.

It was, however, received with avidity ;
for this main reason, 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 archi-
tectural 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 approx-
imating to that horrible and lifeless condi-
tion 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 upon men, there
was a necessary reaction in favour of the
natural. Men had never lived so utterly
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
sentiment 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

in] AND PAINTING 131

and on the Mall. The essence of pastoral
poetry is the sense of strange delightfulness
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 essentially 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 prob-
ably 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 ridicu-
lous and unnatural refinement is supposed
to exist in rural life, merely because the poet
himself has neither had the courage to en-
dure its hardships, nor the wit to conceive
its realities. If you examine the literature
of the i /th and i8th centuries, you will find
that nearly all its expressions, having refer-
ence to the country, show something of
this kind ; either a foolish sentimentality,
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 ' pur-
ling ' ; birds always ' warbling ' ; mountains

132 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

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 occa-
sional appearance of freshness to the cata-
logue of the sublime and beautiful which de-
scended 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
-combined ignorance and dread of more
: -.sublime scenery ; of 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 Derbyshire man, the other a lowland
traveller, who is as much alarmed, and uses
nearly as many expressions of astonishment,
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, until
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 literature — keeping this

in] AND PAINTING

133

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 affectation of
interest in mountains, clouds, and forests,
yet whenever they write from their heart,
you will find an utter absence of feeling
respecting anything beyond gardens and
grass. Examine, 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 expression of true delight
in sublime nature in any one of them. Per-
haps 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.

134 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

It was in such a state of society that the
landscape of Claude, Caspar Poussin, and
Salvator Rosa attained its reputation. It
is the complete expression on canvas of the
spirit of the time. Claude embodies the
foolish pastoralism, Salvator the ignorant
terror, and Caspar the dull and affected
erudition.

It was, however, altogether impossible
that this state of things could long continue.
The age which had buried itself in formalism
grew weary at last of the restraint ; and the
approach of a new era 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 mani-
fested are Mrs Radcliffe and Rousseau ; 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 al-
together in character from any sentiments
previously traceable in literature. And
then rapidly followed a group of writers, who
expressed, in various ways, the more power-
ful or more pure feeling which had now be-
come one of the strongest instincts of the age.
Of these, the principal is your own Walter
Scott. Many writers, indeed, describe nature

in] AND PAINTING 135

more minutely and more profoundly ; but
none show in higher intensity the peculiar
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 enthusiasm for
rocks, and lakes, and cataracts ; the early
novels show the same instinct in equal
strength wherever he approaches 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 elements 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, together
with those of Caerlaverock and Lochleven
Castles in Guy Mannering and The Abbot,
remain the staple possessions and text-books
of all travellers, not so much for their beauty
or accuracy, as for their exactly expressing
that degree of feeling with which most men in
this century can sympathize.

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 agreeing more or less in this love for
natural scenery.

Now, you will ask me — and you will ask
me most reasonably— how this love of nature

136 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

in modern days can be connected 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 novel-
ists— 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
diseased 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 whose healthy
frame naturally delights in the mountain
spring more than in the wine cup. The
water is not dishonoured by that thirst of
the diseased, nor is nature dishonoured by
the love of the unworthy. That love is,
perhaps, the only saving element in their
minds ; and it still remains an indisputable
truth that the love of nature is a character-
istic 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 necessarily 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

in] AND PAINTING 137

Rousseaus, as well as its Words worths ; but,
on the whole, the feeling with which Robson
drew mountains, and Prout architecture,
with which Fielding draws moors, and
Stanfield sea — is altogether pure, true, and
precious, as compared with that which
suggested the landscape of the i/th century.

Now observe, how simple the whole sub-
ject becomes. You have, first, your great
ancient landscape divided into its three
periods — Giottesque, Leonardesque, Titian-
esque. 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 e
passa ', and then you have, lastly, the pure,
wholesome, simple, modern landscape. You
want a name for that : I will give you 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

T

138 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

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 always willing to take anything
to do that came in his way. He did not
shut himself up in a garret to produce un-
saleable 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 almanacks,
and anything that wanted cheap frontis-
pieces. 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 very dust, to the Grand
Signior of the neighbourhood ; — well, this
Almanack had always such a view of some

in] AND PAINTING 139

Oxford College at the top of it, dedicated, I
think, always to the head of the College ;
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 an-
tiquities of Whalley Abbey. And there was
hardly a gentleman's seat of any importance
in England, towards the close of the last
century, 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 great difference be-
tween Turner and other men. In doing
these drawings for the commonest publi-
cations of the day, and for a remuneration al-
together contemptible, 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 content ; 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

140 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

means at his disposal, he always did his best.
He never let a drawing leave his hands with-
out 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 laboured 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 industry ; 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 able to devote himself to more
consistent study. He never appears
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
excellencies, whatever they were. There
are thus multitudes of pictures by Turner
which are direct imitations of other masters ;
especially of Claude, Wilson, Loutherbourg,
Caspar Poussin, Vandevelde, Cuyp, and
Rembrandt. It has been argued by Mr
Leslie that, because Turner thus in his early

in] AND PAINTING 141

years imitated many of the old masters,
therefore he must to the end of his life
have considered them greater than himself.

The nonsequitur is obvious. I trust there
are few men so unhappy as never to have
learned anything from their inferiors ; and
I fear there are few men so wise as never to
have imitated anything but what was deserv-
ing of imitation. The young Turner, indeed,
would have been more than mortal if, in a
period utterly devoid of all healthy examples
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 pro-
bably 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
facsimiled and published in the form of

142 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

mezzotint engravings, long supposed to be
models of taste in landscape composition.
In order to provoke comparison between
Claude and himself, Turner published a
series of engravings, called the ' Liber
Studiorum ', executed in exactly the same
manner as these drawings of 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 pictures in his
trial of skill with Claude, it would have only
been in the gallery or the palace that the
comparison could have been instituted ; but
now it is in the power of all who are interested

in the matter to make it at their ease.1
* * *

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, Salva-
tor among rocks, and Cuyp on Lowland
rivers ; and, having done this, set himself

1 When this Lecture was delivered, an enlarged
copy of a portion of one of these studies by Claude*
was set beside a similarly magnified portion 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.

in] AND PAINTING 143

to paint the natural scenery of skies, moun-
tains, 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 conventional in all but
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 land-
scape painter who will not at once frankly
confess his obligations to Turner, not, ob-
serve, 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 land-
scape art : and the richness of that art,
with which you are at present surrounded,
and which enables you to open your walls
as it were into so many windows, 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

144 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

trust, in doing so, — the periods of Giotto,
Leonardo, Titian, pastoralism, and Turner.

But Turner's work is yet only begun.
His greatness is, as 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 acknowledgment of his
power ; and through those eyes, now filled
with dust, generations yet unborn will learn
to behold 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, dogmatic. I
did not come here to tell you of my beliefs
or my conjectures ; 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, wrill one day take
his place beside Shakspeare and Verulam,
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 intellect,
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

in] AND PAINTING 145

the three, though not the greatest, Turner
was the most unprecedented in his work.
Bacon did what Aristotle had attempted ;
Shakspeare did perfectly what ^Eschylus
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.

And now let me tell you something of his
personal character. You have heard him
spoken of as ill-natured, and jealous 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 inter-
course with him. I never once heard him
say an unkind thing of a brother artist, and
I 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 other-

U

146 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [m

wise, the expression I am going to quote
to you would have all the more force, be-
cause, as you know, Haydon passed his
whole life in war with the Royal Academy,
of which Turner was one of the most in-
fluential members. Yet in the midst of
one of his most violent expressions of exulta-
tion 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 com-
mittee. 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 committees. But he could do
nobler things than this.

When Turner's picture of Cologne was

ni] AtiD PAINTING 147

exhibited in the year 1826, it was hung
between two portraits, by Sir Thomas
Lawrence, of Lady Wallscourt, and Lady
Robert Manners.

The sky of Turner's picture was exceed-
ingly bright, and it had a most injurious
effect on the colour of the two portraits.
Lawrence naturally felt mortified, and com-
plained 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 exhibition, at the private
vi3w, a friend of Turner's who had seen
the Cologne in all its splendour, led a group
of expectant 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 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 sky,
and utterly spoiled his picture for the time,
and so left it through the exhibition, lest
it should hurt Lawrence's.

You may easily find instances of self-
sacrifice where men have strong motives,
and where large benefits are to be conferred
by the effort, or general admiration obtained

148 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

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 example as this.

Thus much for his jealousy of his brother
artists. You have also heard much of his
niggardliness in money transactions. A
great part of what you have heard is per-
fectly 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 prevented, by their ' delicacy ', from
reporting the kindness of 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,

1 Not the Mr Wells who taught drawing at Addis-
combe. It appears that Turner knew two persons of
the same name, and in the same profession. I am
not permitted to name my authority for the anec
dote, various egotistic ' delicacies ', even in this case,
preventing useful truth from being clearly assured to
the public.

in] AND PAINTING

149

he was deeply affected, and lent money to
the widow until a large sum had accumu-
lated 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 stigmatized as
brutal, and uncharitable, and selfish, and
miserly. How are we to understand these
opposing statements ?

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 himself 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 bearing, and harden-
ing 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

ISO LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [in

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 success. 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. Respect and affection,
if they came at all, came unbelieved, or came
too late. Naturally irritable, though kind
— naturally suspicious, though generous
—the gold gradually became dim, and the
most fine gold changed, or. if not changed,
overcast and clouded. The deep heart
was still beating, but it was beneath a dark
and melancholy 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 jeal-
ousies 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 upon his face in its setting, and
rested there, as he expired.

IV

PRE-RAPHAELITISM

THE subject on which I would desire to
engage your attention this evening, is the
nature and probable result of a certain
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 principles 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 ludicrous name
of * Pre-Raphaelite Brethren1.

You must also be aware that this heresy
has been opposed with all the influence and
all the bitterness of art and criticism ; but
that in spite of these the heresy has gained

151

152 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

ground, and the pictures painted on these
new principles have obtained a most exten-
sive popularity. These circumstances are
sufficiently singular, but their importance
is greater even 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 Raphael'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 be-
tween the principles on which art has been
pursued before and since Raphael ? You
must be aware, that the principal ground
on which the Pre-Raphaelities 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, therefore, 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 ourselves
entitled to look down upon them, and to say

iv] AND PAINTING 153.

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, immeasureably 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
art than that of the i3th century, — it is
altogether another art. Between the two-
there is a great gulph, a distinction 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 1 3th century people
is perfectly true ; but that is not the essen-
tial difference between us and them. We
are different kind of creatures from them, as

x

154 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

different as moths are different from cater-
pillars ; 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 cir-
cumstances, not as you are different from
people who never saw a locomotive engine,
or a Highlander of this century from a High-
lander 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 nations 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
eonsciouness that the world has had essen-
tially a Trinity of ages — the Classical Age,
the Middle Age, the Modern Age ; each of
these embracing 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 Age having its
French and English, Spaniards and Ger-
mans ; but all these distinctions being in

iv] AND PAINTING 155

each case subordinate to the mightier and
broader distinction, between Classicalism,
Medievalism, 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 it exists ; and by doing so we
shall not only arrive at the most just con-
clusions respecting our present subject, but
we shall obtain the means of arriving at
just conclusions respecting many other
things.

Now the division of time which the Pre-
Raphaelites have adopted, in choosing
Raphael as the man whose works mark the
separation between Mediaevalism and Moder-
nism, is perfectly accurate. It has been
accepted as such by all their opponents.

You have, then, the three periods : Classi-
calism, extending to the fall of the Roman
empire ; Mediaevalism, extending from that
fall to the close of the i5th century ; and
Modernism, thenceforward to our days.

And in examining into the spirit of these
three epochs, observe, I don't mean 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 Modernism. Bad
men are like each other in all epochs ; and
in the Roman, the Paduan, or the Parisian,
sensuality and cruelty admit of little dis-

156 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

tinction in the manners of their manifesta-
tion. But among men comparatively vir-
tuous, 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 de-
voted to the service of their country —
all of them dying therein. I mean, Leonidas
in the Classical period, St Louis in the Mediae-
val 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 per-
fect faith in Christ. Nelson had the most
rigid sense of duty, and

You must supply my pause with your
charity.

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 instruments possessed by the other.
They were not essentially 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.

IV] AND PAINTING 157

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
civilization began, with Pagan Faith. Medi-
sevalism began, and continued, wherever
civilization began and continued to confess
Christ. And, lastly, Modernism began and
continues, wherever civilization 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

1 58 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

us professing believers in Christ, and we
trust most of us true ones ? I answer, So
far as we are believers 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 Rhone 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 whatever to do with the Reforma-
tion, or with any of its effects. 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
Italy, 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 class-
ing 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

iv] AND PAINTING 159

For instance, hear this direction to an
upholsterer of the early i3th century.
Under the commands of the sheriff of Wilt-
shire, he is thus ordered to make some
alterations in a room for Henry the Third.
He is to ' wainscot the King's lower cham-
ber, 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 Evange-
lists, and to paint the wainscot of the same
chamber of a green colour, spotted with
gold.1'

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 windows in the King's great Hall
at Northampton, and cause the history of
Lazarus and Dives to be painted in the
same.'

1 Liberate Rolls, preserved in the Tower of
London, and quoted by Mr Turner in his History of
the Domestic Architecture of England.

i6o LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

And so on ; I need not multiply instances.
You see that in all these cases, the furniture
of the King's house is made to confess his
Christianity. It may be imperfect and im-
pure Christianity, 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 to 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
principally for its artistic beauty, either
Christ, or the Virgin, or Lazarus and Dives.
And if a thousand years hence, any curious
investigator were to dig up the ruins of Edin-
burgh, 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 misunder-
stand and calumniate us. We do not, in-
deed, choose to have Dives and Lazarus on
our windows ; but that is not because we
are moderns, but because we are Protestants,
and do not like religious imagery.' 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

iv] AND PAINTING 161

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 anything ? First, to keep under
his body, and bring it into subjection and
perfect strength ; then to take Christ for his
captain, 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, between the ancient word
' devoir ', and modern word ' gloire '. And,
again, ask yourselves what you expect your
own children to be taught at your great
schools and universities. Is it Christian
history, or the histories of Pan and Silenus ?
Your present education, to all intents and
purposes, denies 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,
restrained ? By the confessed fear of God,

Y

162 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

and confessed authority of His law. You
will find that all treaties, laws, transactions
whatsoever, in the Middle Ages, are based
on a confession of Christianity as the leading
rule of life ; that a text of Scripture 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 element in the consultation.
Whatever error might be committed, at
least Christ was openly confessed. Now
what is the custom of your British Parlia-
ment in these days ? You know that
nothing would excite greater manifestations
of contempt and disgust than the slightest
attempt to introduce the authority of Scrip-
ture in a political consultation. That is
denying Christ. It is intensely and pecu-
liarly 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 pro-
fane. Once more, your patience for an
instant. I say, all ancient art was religious ;
that is to say, religion was its first object ;

iv] AND PAINTING 163

private luxury or pleasure its second. I say,
all modern art is profane ; that is, private
luxury or pleasure is its first object ; religion
its second. Now you all know, that any-
thing 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 will not put
up with in it — a second place. He who
offers God a second place, offers Him no place.
And there is another 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
ancienlTart was more religious than modern
art._ There is no question of degree in this
mutter. Ancient art was religious art ;
modern art is profane art ; and between
tJeTtwo the distinction is as firm as between
light and darkness.

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 was 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 distinc-
tion between mediaeval and modern art ;
and from that are clearly deducible all other

164 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

essential differences between them. That
is the point I wish to show you, and of that
there can be no dispute. Whether 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 indisputable, 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 1 3th
•century was Christianity. Be it so, still is
the statement true, which is all that is neces-
sary for me now to prove, that art was great
because it was devoted to such religion as
then existed. Grant that Roman Catholi-
cism 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 ruling 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, be-
cause it builds to no God. You have for
instance, in your Edinburgh Library, a Bible
of the 1 3th century, the Latin Bible, com-
monly known as the Vulgate. It contains
the Old and New Testaments, complete
besides the books of Maccabees, the Wisdom
of Solomon, the books of Judith, Baruch, and
Tobit. The whole is written in the most
beautiful black-letter hand, and each book

iv] AND PAINTING 165

begins with 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 ornament-
ing 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 1 500, this entire system
was changed. Instead of the life of Christ,
men had, for the most part, to paint the
lives of Bacchus 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 An-
gelico painting the life of Christ, Benozzo
painting the life of Abraham, Ghirlandajo
painting the life of the Virgin, Giotto paint-
ing the life of St Francis, were worse em-
ployed, or likely to* produce a less healthy

1 66 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

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 hence-
forward I tell you plain facts, which admit
neither of doubt nor dispute by any one who
will take the pains to acquaint himself
with their subject-matter.

When the entire purpose of art was moral
teaching, it naturally took truth for its first
object, and beauty, and the pleasure result-
ing 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 circum-
stances ? and then, having formed their

iv] AND PAINTING 167

conception, they work it out with only a
secondary regard to grace, or beauty, while
a modern painter invariably thinks of the
grace and beauty of his work first, and unites
afterwards as much truth as he can with
its conventional 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 themselves, in the last stages
of corruption1. Now a modern artist, repre-
senting this, would have endeavoured dimly
and faintly to suggest the appearance of the

1 This incident is not of Orcagna's invention, it is
variously represented in much earlier art. There is
a curious and graphic drawing of it, circa 1300, 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 :

' Ich am aferd.'

' Lo, whet ich se ? '

1 Me thinketh hit beth develes thre.'

To which the dead bodies answer :

' Ich wes wel fair.'

4 Such schelt 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 f air ' of the first dead
speaker, seem to mark them & istinctly to be women,
some longer legends below are headed ' primus rex
mortuus ', etc.

168 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

dead bodies, and would have made, or
attempted to make, the countenances of the
three kings variously and solemnly expres-
sive of thought. This would be in his, or
our, view, a poetical and tasteful treatment
of the subject. But Orcagna disdains both
poetry and taste ; he wants the facts only ;
he wishes to give the spectator the same
lesson that the kings had ; and therefore,
instead 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 sup-
pose 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, — bor-
rowed 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.

iv] AND PAINTING 169

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 con-
ceiving graceful form, or more profound
devotion to the beautiful ; but all these
gifts and affections are kept sternly sub-
ordinate 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 certain facts ;
it was perfect enough for that ; and though
always reaching on to greater attainments,
they never suffered their imperfections to
disturb and check them in their immediate
purposes. And this mode of treating all
subjects was persisted in by the greatest men
until the close of the I5th 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 effected, not only in Raphael's time,
but by Raphael's own practice, and by his
practice in the very centre of his available
life.

You remember, doubtless, what high

Z

i;o LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [rv

ground we have for placing the beginning
of human intellectual strength at about the
age of twelve years 1. 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
past the precise centre of his available life,
he was sent for to Rome, to decorate the
Vatican for Pope Julius II, and having until
that time worked exclusively in the ancient
and stern mediaeval manner, he, in the first
chamber which he decorated in that palace,
wrote upon its walls the Mene, Tekel, Uphar-
sin, 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 Theology, presided
over by Christ. And on the side wall of
that same chamber he placed the World or
Kingdom of Poetry, presided 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

1 Luke, ii, 42, 49.

iv] AND PAINTING 171

of the church, and called as the chief repre-
sentative 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 fancy on the one wall, to the same rank as
the objects 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 receive
their wisdom from heaven itself, in the vision
of Gibeon 1, and the lightning of Damascus.
The doom of the arts of Europe went
forth from that chamber, and it was brought
about in great part by the very excellencies
of the man who had thus marked the com-
mencement 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
t)f execution and beauty of form the chief
objects of all artists ; and thenceforward

1 i Kings iii, 5.

1/2 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

execution was looked for rather than thought,
and beauty rather 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 mediae-
val 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 illus-
tration 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 a 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 patiently
and painfully, in the course of three or four
years, attain to the performance of a chalk
head, not much worse than his original, but
still of less value than the paper it is drawn
upon. But the clever child will not, or will
only by force, consent to this discipline.
He finds other means of expressing himself
with his pencil somehow or another ; and
presently you find his paper covered with

iv] AND PAINTING 173

sketches of his grandfather and grand-
mother, and uncles, and cousins, — sketches
of the room, and the house, and the cat, and
the dog, and the country outside, and every-
thing 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 keeping ; 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 evils which have resulted from the
modern regardlessness of truth. Consider,
for instance, its effect on what is called his-
torical painting. What do you at present
mean by historical painting ? Nowadays,
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 paint-
ing 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 suppose our descendants will
care for our imaginations of the events of
former days ? Suppose the Greeks, instead
of representing their own warriors as they

174 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

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 Raphael, had left us no-
thing 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 concerned. What do
we care, they will say, what those 19th-cen-
tury people fancied about Greek and Roman
history ! If they had left us a few plain and
rational sculptures and pictures of their own
battles, and their own men, in their every-
day dress, we should have thanked them.
WTell, 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
historical painters, and the only men who
will produce any effect on their own gener-
ation, or on any other. Wilkie was a histori-
cal painter, Chantrey a historical sculptor,
because they painted, or carved, the verit-

iv] AND PAINTING 175

able 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 multi-
tudes of other painters ruined, from the be-
ginning, 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 Flax-
man, another naturally 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 strad-
dling and frowning behind round shields.
Much good may they do you ! Another
lost mind. And of those who are lost name-
lessly, who have not strength enough even
to make themselves known, the poor pale
students who lie buried for ever in the
abysses of the great schools, no account can
be rendered ; they are numberless.

And the wonderful thing is, that of all
these men whom you now have come to call

i ;6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

the great masters, there was not one who
confessedly did not paint his own present
world, plainly and truly. Homer sang of
what he saw ; Phidias carved what he saw ;
Raphael painted the men of his own time in
their own caps and mantels ; and every
man who has arisen to eminence 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 who 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 Marbles ? And yet in the very
face of these plain, incontrovertible, all-
visible facts, we 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 had been taught
from his youth upwards, and who, what-
ever his eminence may be, has not suffered
much injury in the course of his victory. For

iv] AND PAINTING 17?

observe : this love of what is called ideality
or beauty in preference to truth, operates
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
portrait-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 por-
traiture ; for in the striving after that which
is not in tfreir 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
young man, but a religious man, — and one
who had suffered much from sickness. The
whole dignity of his features and person de-
pended upon the expression of serene, yet
solemn, purpose sustaining a feeble frame ;
and the painter, by way of nattering 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 Wel-
lington at the end of the North Bridge — one
of the thousand equestrian statues of Modern-
ism— studied from the show-riders of the

AA

i;8 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

amphitheatre, with their horses on their
hind legs in the sawdust 1. Do you sup-
pose 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

1 I intended this last sentence of course to apply
to the thousand statues, not definitely to the one in
immediate question, which, though tainted wit > the
modern affectation, and the nearest example of it to
which I could refer an Edinburgh audience, is the
work of a most promising sculptor ; and was indeed
so far executed on the principles asserted 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, ex-
hibiting his riding in his own grounds, would be differ-
ent from his action, or inaction, 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 Creur de Lion,
though, according to the principle just stated, not to
be considered a historical work, is an ideal work of
the trghest beauty and value. Its erection in front cf
Westminster Hall will tend more to educate the
public eye and mind with respect to art than any-
thing we have done in London for centuries.
* * *

April 21, 1854. — I stop the press in order to insert
the following paragraph from to-day's Times : ' THE
STATUE OF COEUR 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 Cceur de Lion.
Sir C. Barry was, we believe, opposed to the cast re-
maining there any longer, and to the putting up of the
statue itself on the same site, because it did not har-
monise with the building. During the day the horse
and figure were removed, and before night the pedestal
was demolished and taken away.'

iv] AND PAINTING 179

bloody slime of the battlefield, and he him-
self sat anxious in his quietness, grieved in
his fearlessness, as he watched, 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 copy them better
than any one else ; they carry off prize after
prize, and yet they hate their work. 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 faith-
fully, and their masters forthwith declare
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 in-
struction. Accidentally, a few prints of the
works of Giotto, a few casts from those of

1 8o LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

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 matter ; 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 victori-
ous. And which will be absolutely and
triumphantly victorious. The great mis-
take 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 ignorance 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-Raphaelites did not draw well, in
the face of the fact, that the principal mem-
ber of their body, from the time he entered the
schools of the Academy, had literally en-
cumbered himself with the medals, given as
prizes for drawing. It was asserted that

iv] AND PAINTING 181

they did not draw in perspective, by men
who themselves knew no more of perspective
than they did of astrology ; it was asserted
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
calumnies or absurdities would tell no more,
and it began to be forced upon men's un-
willing belief that the style of the Pre-
Raphaelites was true and was according to
nature, the last forgery invented respecting
them is, that they copy photographs. You
observe how completely this last piece of
malice 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 produce
a Pre-Raphaelite picture, or anything 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 working every-
thing, down to the most minute detail, from
nature, and from nature only 1. Every

1 Or, where imagination is necessarily trusted to,
by always endeavouring to conceive a fact as it really
was likely to have happened, rather than as it most
prettily might have happened. The various members

182 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

Pre-Raphaelite landscape background is
painted to the last touch, in the open air,
from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaelite
figure, however studied in expression, is a
true portrait of some living person. 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
enormous 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-Raphaelite 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 ordin-
ary and popular forms of artistic graceful-
ness ; while, to all that still lower kind of
prettiness, which regulates the disposition of

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 agreeing 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.

iv] AND PAINTING 183

our scenes upon the stage, and which ap-
pears in our lower art, as in our annuals, our
common-place portraits, and statuary, the
Pre-Raphaelites are not only dead, but they
regard it with a contempt and aversion ap-
proaching to disgust. This character is
absolutely necessary to them in the present
time ; but it, of course, occasionally renders
their work comparatively 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 principles, 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 principles 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 enjoy-
ment of those evanescent effects and dis-
tant sublimities which nothing but the
memory can arrest, and nothing but a daring
conventionalism portray. But for this work
they are not now needed. Turner, the first
and greatest of the Pre-Raphaelites, has
done it already ; he, though his capacity
embraced everything, and though he would
sometimes in his foregrounds paint the spots
upon a dead trout and the dyes upon a but-
terfly's wing, yet for the most part delighted

1 84 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

to begin at that very point where Pre-
Raphaelitism becomes powerless.

Lastly. The habit of constantly carrying
everything up to the utmost point of com-
pletion deadens the Pre-Raphaelites 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
abstracts 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-Raphaelites have enormous powers
of imagination, as well as of realization, and
do not yet themselves know of how much
they would be capable, if they sometimes
worked on a larger scale, and with a less
laborious finish.

With all their faults, their pictures are,
since Turner's death, the best — incompar-
ably the best — on the walls of the Royal
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 state-
ment of all their faults and all their defici-
encies ; not such, you perceive, as are
likely to arrest their progress. The ' magna
est veritas ' was never more sure of accom-

iv] AND PAINTING 185

plishment than by these men. Their adver-
saries have no chance with them. They
will gradually unite their influence with
whatever is true or powerful in the reaction-
ary art of other countries ; and on their
works such a school will be founded as shall
justify the third age of the world's civili-
zation, and render it as great in creation as
it has been in discovery.

And now let me remind you but of one
thing more. As you examine into the career
of historical painting, you will be more and
more struck with the fact I have this even-
ing stated to you, — that none was ever truly
great but that which represented the living
forms and daily deeds of the people among
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 ideality,
nor for beauty of form in a marble image,
but that which educates your children into
living heroes, and binds down the flights
and the fondnesses of the heart into prac-
tical duty and faithful devotion.

B R

ADDENDA TO IV

I COULD not enter, in a popular lecture,
upon one intricate and difficult ques-
tion, closely connected with the subject of
Pre-Raphaelitism — namely, the relation of
invention to observation ; 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. Nevertheless, it is
impossible to leave altogether unanswered
the first objection which is now most com-
monly made to the Pre-Raphaelite work,
namely, that the principle of it seems adverse
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 purchased and pro-
claimed for high art, while the rendering of
the most noble expressions of human feeling

187

188 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

in Hunt's Isabella, or of the loveliest English
landscape, haunted by sorrow, 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-Raphaelites only
paint from nature, however carefully selected
and grouped, their pictures can never have
the characters of the highest class of com-
positions. But on the other hand, the
shallow and conventional arrangements
commonly called ' compositions ' by the
artists of the present day, are infinitely
farther from great art than the most patient
work of the Pre-Raphaelites. That work
is, even in its humblest form, a secure found-
ation, 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 superstructure
without foundation — utter negation and
fallacy from beginning to end. But more
than this, the very faithfulness of the Pre-
Raphaelites 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 pre-
tend to look down upon them, but I ques-
tion 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

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 189

who have no imagination, but have learned
merely to produce a spurious resemblance
of its results by the recipes of composition,
are apt to value themselves mightily on
their concoctive science ; but the man whose
mind a thousand living imaginations 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 pro-
duced by the Pre-Raphaelites, 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 Diirer ; 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 inquire, for at this period such an
advance is certainly not desirable. Of great
compositions we have enough, and more
than enough, and it would be well for the
world if it were willing to take some care of

IQO LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

those it has. Of pure and manly truth, of
stern statement of the things done and seen
around us daily, we have hitherto had no-
thing. 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
taik of literature lies in the domain of BE-
LIEF, 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 prophesy
that this exceeding great multitude of novel
writers and such like, must, in a new gener-
ation, gradually do one of two things, either
retire into nurseries, and work for children,
minors, and semifatuous 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 pam-
phlet was put into my hand, written by a

ADDENDA] AND PAINTING 191

clergyman, denouncing ' Woe, woe, woe !
to exceedingly young men of stubborn in-
stincts, calling themselves Pre-Raphaelites Jl.

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 Vatican.
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 despise 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 hon-
our ; nor did childhood ever refuse its rever-

1 Art, its Constitution and Capacities, etc., by the
Rev. Edward Young, M.A. The prhase ' exceedingly
young men, of stubborn instincts ', being twice
quoted (carefully excluding the context) from my
pamphlet on Pre-Raphaelitism.

192 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [iv

ence, except where age had forgotten cor-
rection. The cry ' Go up thou bald head '
will never be heard in the land which re-
members the precept, ' See that ye despise
not one of these little ones ' ; and although
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 gentleness, which is weak
without charity, and cold without discretion.

THE END

INDEX

Abbeville, 30, 100 (and
n.)

Abbot, The, 135

Acropolis, 171

Addison, 133

Aeschylus, 114, 145

Agincourt, Battle of, 52

Alms, The giving of,
nothing without

thought, 68

Alps, Valleys of the, 35

Amiens, 100 ; cathedral
29> 33> 87 ; apse of, 29

Angelico, 165

Antiquary, The, 135

Antwerp, 30, $*>

Apennines, 35

Arabia, 115

Arch, Pointed, 23-6, 29

Architecture, Study of,
easy, 9

Aristophanes, 114

Aristotle, 145

Army and Navy Club,
cost of, 57

Art, Good, has the capa-
city of pleasing, 7 ;
principles of, before
and after Raphael's
time, 152 ; difference
between modern and
old, 153 ; Ancient, was
religious art, 163

Arthur's seat, 3
Ash leaf, 15, 17
Athens, 158 ; modern,

65
Austria, 158

Babel, Tower of, 31, 32
Babylon, no
Bannockburn, Battle of,

52

Basilica, 34
Bayeux, 100 ; cathedral,

29

Bellini, John, 189
Ben Ledi, 3
Ben More, 3
Benozzo, 165

T ^le, The, 49

Bird, Turner's kindness

to, 146

Birmingham, 78
Bonifazio, 127
Bv rough Road, London,

Bourgtheroude, William

de, 78
Britain, 77

British Museum, The, 124
Brussels, 30, 36
Burgos, 36
Byron, Lord, 54, 135
3 c c

194

INDEX

Caerlaverock Castle, 135
Campanile, The, 34 (and

n.)

Canongate, 2, 4, 55
Carlyle, Thomas, 190
Castle Rock, 2
Cervantes, 54
Chantrey, 174
Chinese pagoda, 33
Christ, 1 1 8, 157, 162
Christianity, 160, 164 ;
brought love of Na-
ture into paganism,
129
Classical, middle, and

modern age, 154
Classicalism began with

pagan faith, 157
Claude, 128, 129, 134.
137, 140, 141, 142, 143
Col de Geant, Glacier of

the, 132
Colosseum, 14
Commodus, 52
Conventionalism by
cause of colour, 102-3 5
by cause of inferiority,
105 ; by cause of
means, 103-4
Correggio, 122, 126, 166
Cottages, 26-7
Coutances in Normandy,

Cathedral of, 36
Coxwold, 133
Crichtoun and Borth-
wick, Massy keeps of,
40

Crystal Palace, The, 12
Custom has no real influ-
ence upon our feelings
of the beautiful, 18-20
Cuyp, 140, 142

Dante, 121, 174
Doric order, 45
Dumas, 136

Dumblane Abbey, 23, 24
Diirer, Albert, 39, 189

Edinburgh, 1-5, 34, 99 ;
buildings, 61

Egypt, 115

Egyptian pyramid, 33

Elgin marbles, 176

England, 158

English gothic, Early, 24

Engravings and water-
colours, comparison
between production
of, 71

Ephesus, 158

Etty, 175

Ezzelin, 155

Fielding, Copley, 137
Fielding, Henry, 133
Firth of Forth, i, 2
Flaxman, 175
Florence, 108 ; Ponte

della Trinita at, 87
France, 38, 77, 78, 158 ;

South, 35
Fribourg, 36
French Revolution, 130

Gable, 29

Geneva, 133

Genoa, 79

George Street, Edin-
burgh, 2, I

Germany, 38, 39, 77

Ghent, 30

Ghiberti, Lorenzo, 121

Ghirlandajo, 165

Giotto, 90, . 121, 122,
123 (and n.), 125, 126,
127, 153. 165, i79» 191

Glasgow, 34 (and n.)

Gothic, 1 6-7; vaulting
of ash leaf, 17 ; forms

INDEX

of pointed arch and
gable roof, 45-8 ;
architecture, 31, 42,
93 ; can do anything,
82 ; porch, 46 ; of
Florence, 79 ; orna-
mentation, 62, 64 ; is
nobler than Greek or-
namentation, io6-7;or
Romanesque construc-
tion is nobler than
Greek construction,
86-8

Gozzoli, Benozzo, 126
Greek buildings, 58 ;
architecture, 9, 10, n,

61, 93

Guy Manner ing, 135

Hamilton, Dr. James, 116
Haydon, Benjamin, 145,

146

Hogarth, 176
Holyrood Chapel, 40, 99
Homer, 114 ; sang of

what he saw, 176
Honour to be sought

from descendants

rather than ancestors,

75

Horace, 114
Huggins, Mr., 104, 105
Hunt, Holman, 191 ; his

* Claudio and Isabella,'

184, 188

Indian pagoda, 33

Iron and glass unlikely
to become important
elements in architec-
tural effort, 48

Italy, Plains of, 35, 77,
158

Jeremiah, 49, 83

Jerusalem, 83,

tower of, 33
Job, 116
Johnson, Dr., 133

Keats, John, 135

Lady of the Lake, The,i$5

Lay of the Last Minstrel,
The, 135

Landscape, small influ-
ence of, on pagan
nations or artists, 113;
background starts
towards end of thir-
teenth century, 122 ;
the three divisions of,
Giottesque, Leonard-
esque, Titianesque,
128, 137 ; painting,
five periods of, I43~4

Landseer, Edwin, 153,
176

Lawrence, Sir Thomas,
Turner's kindness to,

147

Leaves, 22-6

Lebanon, 115, aif> ;
tower of, 32

Leo X. Pope, 174

Leonardo, 121, 125, 143

Leonidas, 52, 156

Leslie, Mr., 140

Liber Studiorum, 142

Lichfield Cathedral, 36

Linlithgow Palace, 44

Lisieux, 30

Liverpool, 78

Lochleven Castle, 44, 135

London, 108

Loutherbourg, 140

Lyons, 62, 100 ; cathe-
dral of, 59

Manchester, 78

D D

1 96

INDEX

Marathon, 174
Marmion, 135
Marochetti, 178 (n.)
Masaccio, 126
Maxwell, Sir John, of

Pollock, 78 (n.)
Mediaevalism confesses

Christ, 157

Melrose, 135 ; abbey, 44
Michael Angelo, 90, 121,

1 68
Middle ages, 162 ; carved

work of the, 109
Milan, 127 ; cathedral,

101
Millais, J. E., 65, 66,

184, 188 ; his ' Ophe-
lia,' 188
Miltiades, 174
Modernism, 162, 173,

177 ; denies Christ,

157

Moliere, 133
Monastery, The, 135
Monte Viso, 158

Nash, Mr., 129
Nelson, 156
Netherlands, 30
Norman architecture, 10
Normandy, 30
Northern France, 30
Notre-Dame of Paris,
100

Oakham Castle, 8 (n.)
Orcagna, 122, 123, 125,
167 (n.), 168 ; his fresco
' The Triumph of
Death,' 167

Ornamentation, modern
pseudo-Greek, 64 ; is
the principal part of
architecture, 88-98 ;
should be visible, 98-

101 ; should be natural,
101-5 ; should be
thoughtful, 105-6

Ostade, 187

Oxford Almanack, The,
138

Painters, Bad, retard
taste, 72

Pap worth, Mr., 34 (n.)

Paris, 1 08

Parnassus, 171

Pastoral poetry, essence
of, 131

Pentland Hills, 3

Penuel, Tower of, 32

Pericles, 174

Perugino, 125

Peterborough Cathedral,
29

Petrarch, 171

Phidias, 90 ; carved
what he saw, 176

Picardy, 30

Picardy Place, Edin-
burgh, 5 (n.)

Pindar, 171

Plato, 114

Pleasures and virtues
enhanced by mutual
aid, 74

Portraiture, Modern, the
beginning and end of
is adulation, 177

Potter, Paul, 187

Poussin, Caspar, 134,140

Powers of association
and beauty entirely
distinct, 19-22

Pre-Raphaelites,i5i, 155,
169, 180, 181, 184,
187, 188, 189 ; then-
landscape, 182

Princes St., Edinburgh, 4

Prout, Samuel, 29, 30
(n.), 137

Pugin, 95 (n.)

INDEX

197

Queen Street, Edin-
burgh, 5

Radcliffe, Mrs., 134

Raphael, 121, 125, 158,
169, 174, 175 ; de-
corates the Vatican
for Pope Julius II,
170 ; painted the men
of his own time, 176 ;
his ' Disputa,' 191

Reformation, The, 158

Rembrandt, 140

Renaissance architec-
ture, character of, in
(n.)

Retreat of the ten thou-
sand, 52

Reynolds, Sir Joshua,
124

Rheims, 100 ; cathedral
of, 29

Rhone, 158

Richmond Bridge, 132

Robespierre, 155

Robson, 137

Roman architecture, 14

Romanesque architec-
ture, 10

Romance and Utopian-
ism, meaning of, 51-5

Roslin Chapel, 44

Rossetti, D. G., 188, 191

Rouen, 78, 100 ; cathe-
dral, 38 ,

Rousseau, 134

Rutland Street, Edin-
burgh, 57

St. Gothard Alps, 3

St. Louis, no, 156

St. Mark's at Venice, 35

(n.), 39 (n.)» 97
Salisbury Cathedral, 36
Salvator Rosa, 128, 129,

134, 137, 142, 166
Sand, George, 136

Saxon architecture, 10
San Michele of Lucca, 97
San Zeno, 99
Scotland, 78, 79, 158
Scott, Sir Walter, 134,

135
iulr

Sculpture an art of accu-
mulation, 73 ; six
main propositions of,
86

Seine, no

Sentimental Journey, The,

133
Shakespeare, comparison

of with Turner, 144
Shechem, Tower of, 32
Shelley, P. B., 135, 136
Smollett, Tobias, 133
Solomon, 118
Stanfield, 137
Sterne, Laurence, 133
Stonehenge, 14, 87
Stones of Venice, The, 86

(n.), ioi

Strasbourg Cathedral, 29
Sue, Eugene, 136
Switzerland, South, 36 ;

valleys of, 117

Teniers, 187

Tennyson, Alfred, 135

Tiber, no

Tiberius, 52, 155

Tintoret, 122, 127, 129,
184, 189

Titian, 122, 126, 127,
129, 143, 166 ; his
* St. Jerome,' 127

Tower-building, 31, sqq.

Turkish minaret, 33

Turner, J. M. W., 137-
50 ; first man to pre-
sent type of perfect
landscape art, 143 ;
obligation of modern
landscape artists to,
143 ; comparison of,

298

INDEX

with Shakespeare and
Verulam, 144-5 ; first
and greatest of the
pre-Raphaelites, 183

Vandevelde, 140, 142
Voltaire, 54
Verona, 3, 99
Veronese, Paul, 122, 189
Versailles, Palace of, in

(n.)
Verulam, comparison of,

with Turner, 144-5
Vicar of Wakefield, The,

132
Virgil, 144

Walton's Angler, 132

Wellington, Duke of,
177, 178 (and n.)

Wells, Turner's kind-
ness to the widow of,
148-9

Wells Cathedral, 101

Whalley Abbey, 139

Wilkie, 153, 174

Wilson, 140

Windows, English, n

Wordsworth, 135, 136

York Place, Edinburgh,

5 (n.)

Young, Edward, 53
Young, Rev. Edward,

191 (n.)

,__LWSDI>PRINTING|
WORKS FROME-

ET

r

ore

. l' 8

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

N Ruskin, John

744.5 Lectures on architecture

R8354 and painting

1920

7S