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n^^- J
1
' ,'d^ ON
THE NATUEE OF GOTHIC AECHITEGTUBE :
AVO HSBBi:Er OV TEB
TRUE FUNCTIONS
THE WORKMAN IN ART.
/-
JOHN RUSKIN, ESq?f A.M.
Beinff the greaier part qf the SiaOh Chapter qf the Second Volume qf
Mb. RusBiir's ^Stouea of Venice" (3 vol$.y royo^' Sco, £6 15».6rf. .
SmthtMder^^ Co.) here reprinted hy th^fi0i0fPfKflSll^^t^^^
of the Author and hie "^ "
londont
SMITH, ELDEB, & CO., 65, COENHILL.
1854.
Pi-icc Fov/rpence.
ON
THE NATUEE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTUEE :
Am) HEREIN OF THE
TRUE FUNCTIONS OF THE WORKMAN
IN ART.
I SHALL endeaYOur to ^ve the reader in this chapter an idea, at once
broad and definite, of the true nature of Gothic architecture, properly so
called ; not of that of Venice only, but of uniyersal Qothic : for it will be
one of the most interesting parts of our subsequent inquiry, to find out how
far Venetian architecture reached the universal or perfect type of Gothic,
and how far it either fell short of it, or assumed foreign and independent
forms. »
The principal difficulty in doing this arises from the fact that every
building of the GK)thic period differs in some important respect from every
other ; and many include features which, if they occurred in other buildings,
would, not be considered Gothic at all ; so that all we have to reason upon
is merely, if I may be allowed so to express it, a greater or less degree of
Gothicness in each building we examine. And it is this Gothicness, — ^the
character which, according as it is found more or less in a building, makes
it more or less Gothic, — of which I want to define the nature ; and I feel
the same kind of difficulty in doing so which would be encountered by any
one who undertook to explain, for instance, the nature of Bedness, without
any actually red thing to point to, but only orange and purple things.
Suppose he had only a piece of heather and a dead oi^-leaf to do it with.
He might say, the colour which is mixed with the yellow in this oak-lea^
and with the blue in this heather, would be red, if you had it separate ;
but it would be difficult, nevertheless, to make the abstraction perfectly in-
telligible : and it is so in a far greater degree to make the abstraction of
the Gothic character intelligible, because that character itself is made up
of many mingled ideas, and can consist only in their union. That is to
say, pointed arches do not constitute Gothic, nor vaulted roofs, nor flying
buttresses, nor grotesque sculptures ; but all or some of these things, and
many other things with them, when they come together so as to have life.
Observe also, that, in the definition proposed, I shall only endeavour to
analyze the idea which I suppose already to exist in the reader's mind.
"We all have some notion, most of us a very determined one, of the meaning
of the term Gothic ; but I know that many persons have this idea in their
minds without being able to define it : that is to say, understanding
generally that Westminster Abbey is Gothic, and St. Paul's is not, that
Strasburg Cathedral is Gothic, and St. Peter's is not, they have, neverthe-
less, no clear notion of what it is that they recognize in the one or miss in
027 THB NATtrSE 07 GOTHIC ABCHITECTTJBE. S
the other, such as would exiable them to say how £ix the work at West-
minster or Straflburg is good and pnre of its kind ; still less to say of any
nondescript building, like St. James's Palaoe or Windsor Castle, how much
right GbtJiic element there is in it, and how much wanting. And I believe
this inquiry to be a pleasant and profitable one ; and that there will be
found something more than usually interesting in tracing out this grey,
shadowy, many-pinnacled image of the Gothic spirit within us ; and dis-
cerning what fellowship there is between it and our Northern hearts. And
if, at any point of the inquiry, I should interfere with any of the reader's
previously formed conceptions, and use the term Gothic in any sense which
he would not willingly attach to it, I do not ask him to accept, but only to
examine and understand, my interpretation, as necessary to the intelligi-
Inlity of what follows in the rest of the work.
We have, then, the Gothic character submitted to our analysis, just as
^e rough mineral is submitted to that of the chemist, entangled with many
other foreign substances, itself perhaps in no place pure, or ever to be
obtained or seen in purity for more than an instant ; but nevertheless a
thing of definite and separate nature, however inextricable or confused in
appearance. Now observe : the chemist defines his mineral by two separate
kinds of character ; one external, its crystalline form, hardness, lustre, &c. ;
the other internal, the proportions and nature of its constituent atoms.
Exactly in the same manner, we shall find that Gothic architectui*e has
external forms, and internal elements. Its elements are certain mental
tendencies of the builders, legibly expressed in it ; as fancifulness, love of
variety, love of richness, and such others. Its external forms are pointed
arches, vaulted roofs, &c. And unless both the elements and the forms
are there, we have no right to call the style Gothic. It is not enough that it
has the Form, if it have not also the power and life. It is not enough that
it has the Power, if it have not the form. We must therefore inquire into
each of these characters successively ; and determine .first, what is the
Mental Expression, and secondly, what the Material Form, of Gbthic archi-
tecture, properly so called.
^ 1st. Mental Power or Expression. What characters, we have to discover,
did the Gothic builders love, or instinctively express in their work, as dis-
tinguished from all other builders ?
Let us go. back for a moment to our chemistry, and note that, in defining
a mineral by its constituent parts, it is not one nor another of them, that
can make up the mineral, but the union of all : for instance, it is neither
in charcoal, nor in oxygen, nor in lime, that there is the making of chalk,
but in the combination of all three in certain measures ; they are all found
in very different things from chalk, and there is nothing like chalk either
in charcoal or in oxygen, but they are, nevertheless, necessary to its existence.
So in the various mental characters which make up the soul of Gothic.
It is not one or another that produces it ; but their union in certain
measures. Each one of them is found in many other architectures besides
Gothic ; but Gothic cannot exist where they are not found, or, at least,
where their place is not in some way supplied. Only there is this great
diflference between the composition of the mineral, and of the architectl^•al
style, that if we withdraw one of its elements from the stone, its form is
utterly changed, and its existence as such and such a mineral is destroyed;
but if we withdraw one of its mental elements from the Gothic style, it is
only a little less Gothic than it was before, and thje union of two or three
4 ON THE NATURE OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTUEE.
of its elements is enough already to besto-vr a certain Gothicness of character^
vhicli gains in intensity as we add the others, and loses as we again with-
draw them.
I belieroi then, that the characteristic or moral elements of Gtothic are^
the following, placed in the order of their importance ?
1. Savageness.
2. Changefulness.
8. Naturalism.
4. Grotesqueness.
5. Eigidity.
6. Bedundance.
These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building ; as
belonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus : — 1. Savageness,
or Rudeness. 2. liove of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed
Imagination. 5. Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that the
withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic
character of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. I shall
proceed to examine them in their order.
1. Savageness. I am not sure when the word "Gtothic" was first
generically applied to the architecture of the North ; but I presume that,
whatever the date of its original usage, it was intended to imply reproach,
and express the barbaric character of the nations among whom that archi-
tecture arose. It never implied that they were literally of Gothic lineage,
far less that their architecture had been originally invented by the Goths
themselves ; but it did imply that they and their buildings together exhi-
bited a degree of sternness and rudeness, which, in contradistinction to the
character of Southern and Eastern nations, appeared like a perpetual re-
fection of the contrast between the Goth and the Roman in their first en-
counter. And when that fallen Roman, in the utmost impotence of his
luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became the model for the imitation of
civilized Europe, at the close of the so-called Dark ages, the word Gothic
became a term of unmitigated contempt, not unmixed with aversion. From
that contempt, by the exertion of the antiquaries and architects of this
century, Gothic architecture has been sufficiently vindicated ; and perhaps
some among us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its struc-
ture, and sacredness of its expression, might desire that the term of
ancient reproach should be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent
honourableness adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there is no-
need, of such a substitution. As far as the epithet was used scornfully, it
was used falsely ; but there is no reproach in the word, rightly under-
stood ; on the contrary, there is a profound truth, which the instinct of
mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true, greatly and deeply
true, that the architecture of the North is rude and wild ; but it is not
true, that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, or despise. Far other-
wise: I believe it is in this very character that it deserves our pro-
foundest reverence.
The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modem science
have thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount of know-
ledge, but I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enable the
spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical character which exists
between Northern and Southern countries. We know the differences Id
Oir THE NATUBE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTUBE. 9
4etail, but ve have not that broad glance and grasp vhicb would enable
us to to feel them in their fulness. We know that gentians grow on the
Alps, and olives on the Apennines ; but we do not enough conceiye for our-
selves that variegated mosaic of the world's surface which a bird sees in its
migration, that difference between the district of the gentian and of the
•olive which the stork and the swallow see far off, as they lean upon the
sirocco wind. Let us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves even above the
level of their flighty and imagine the Mediterannean lying beneath us like
an irreguhu: lake, and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun :
here and there an angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving
upon the burning field ; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano
smoke, surrounded by its circle of ashes ; but for the most part a great
peacefulness of light, Syria and G-reece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces
of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them,
with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with ter-
raced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses
«f laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green
shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry
sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass farther towards the North,
until we see the orient colours change gradually into a vast belt of rainy
green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France,
and dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths
•of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of
rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreacUng low along
the pasture lands ; and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave
into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a
broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering
into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm,
■and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending tide,
until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill ravines, and the
hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness ; and, at last,
the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white teeth against
us out of the polar twilight. And, having once traversed in thought this
gradation of the zoned iris of the earth in all its material vastness, let us
go down nearer to it, and watch the parallel change in the belt of animid
life : the multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air
and sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone ; striped zebras and
spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and
scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and swift-
ness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and
dusky plumage of the northern tribes ; contrast the Arabian horse with
the Shetiand, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the antelope
with the elk, the bird of paradise with the osprey : and then, submissively
acknowledgmg the great laws by which the earth and all that it bears are
ruled throughout their being, let us not condemn, but rejoice in the expres-
sion by man of his own rest in the statutes of the lands that gave him
birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he sets side by side the burn-
ing gems, and smooths with soft sculpture the jaspar pillars, that are to
reflect a ceaseless sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky : but not with less
reverence let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried
stroke, he smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn
from among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air
6 OSr THt KATCfiE OF GOTHIC ASCHITECTUSS.
the pile of iron bnttresB and nigged vail, instinct vith vork of an imagin-
ation as wild and wayward as the northeni sea ; creations of ungainly
shape and rigid limb, bnt fall of wolfish life ; fierce as the winds that beat^
and changeful as the clouds that shade them.
There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, bnt all dignity
and honourableness : and we should err greviously in refusing either to re-
cognise as an essential character of the existing architecture of the North,
or to admit as a desirable character in that which it yet may be, this wild-
ness of thought, and roughness of work ; this look of mountain brotherhood
between the cathedral and the Alp ; this magnificence of sturdy power,
put forth only the more energetically because the fine finger-touch was
chilled away by the frosty wind, and the eye dimmed by the moor-mist, or
blinded by the hail ; this outspeaking of the strong spirit of men who may
not gather redundant fruitage from ^e earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity
of sunshine, but must break the rock for bread, and cleave the forest for
fire, and show, even in what they did for their delight, some of the hard
habits of the arm and heart that grew on them as they swung the axe or
pressed the plough.
K, however, tibe savageness of Gkthic architecture, merely as an express
sion of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, in some sort,
a noble character, it possesses a higher nobility still, when considered as
an index, not of climate, but of religious principle.
In the 18th and 14 th paragraphs of Chapter XXI. of the firat Tolnme
of this work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament^
properly so called, might be divided into three: — 1. Servile ornament, in
which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely subjected
to the intellect of the higher ; — 2. Constitutional ornament, in whidi the
executive inferior power is, to a certain point, emancipated and inde-
pendent, having a will of its own, yet confessing its inferiority, and ren-
dering obedience to higher powers ; — ^and 3. Bevolutionary ornament, in
which no executive inferiority is admitted at all. I must here explain the
nature of these divisions at somewhat greater length.
Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and
Egyptian ; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek master-
workman was far advanced in knowledge and power above the Assyrian
or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked could endure the
appearance of imperfection in anything ; and, therefore, what ornament
he appointed to be done by those beneatih him, was composed of mere geo^
metrical forms, — balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical foliage, — ^which
could be executed with absolute precision by line and rule, and were as
perfect in their way, when completed, as his own figure sculpture. The
Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less cognizant of accurate form in
anything, were content to allow their figure sculpture to be executed by
inferior workmen, but lowered the metJbod of its treatment to a standard
which every workman could reach, and then trained him by discipline so
rigid, that there was no chance of his falling beneath the standard ap-
pointed. The Greek gave to the lower workman no subject which he could
not perfectly execute. The Assyrian gave him subjecta which he could
only execute imperfectly, but fixed a legal standard for his imperfection.
The workman was, in both systems, a slave.*
* The third kind of oraament, the BeiuuBsance, is that in which the inferior detail
booomes principal, the executor of every minor portion being required to exhibit
ON THE KATITEB OF GOTHIC ABCHITKCTUEB* 7
But in the medueyfJ, or especially ChristiaD, system of ornament, this
slavery is done away with altogether ; Christianity having recognized, in
small things as wdl as great, the individual value of every soul. . But it
not only recognizes its value ; it confesses its imperfection, in only bestow*
ing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unwortfainess. That admission of
lost power and Mien, nature, which the Greek or Ninevite felt to be in-
tensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether refused, the Christian
makes daily and hourly, contemplating tiie fact of it without fear, as tending,
in the end, to Ch)d's greater gloiy. Therefore, to every spirit which Chris-
tlanity summons to her service, her exhortation is : Bo what you can, and
eonfess frankly what you are unable to do ; neither let your effort be
shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession sllenoed for fear of shame.
And it is, perhaps, the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of
architecture, that they tiius receive the results of the labour of inferior
minds ; and out of fragments fall of imperfection, and betraying that im-
perfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable
whole.
^ But the modem English mind has this much in common with that of the
Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion or
^ perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character in the
^ abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the relative dig-
^ Hities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness of the lower nature
to the imperfection of the higher ; not considering that as, judged by such
^ a rule, all the brute animsJs would be preferable to man, because more
^ perfect in their fonctions and kind, and yet are always held inferior to him,
^ so also in the works of man, those which are more perfect in their kind are
^ always yiferior to those which are, in their nature, liable to morefaidts and
^ shortcomings. For the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through
^ the clearness of it ; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things
^' shall be seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and
^ strongly, one year with another ; but the wheat is, according to the greater
^ nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And l^erefore, while
in all things that we see, or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for
^ it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow aocom-
piUshment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress ; not to esteem
^ smooth minuteness above shatteiid majesty ; not to prefer mean victory to
^ honourable defeat ; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may the more
^ surely e^joy the complacency of success. But, above .all, in our dealings
with the souls of other men, we are to take care how we check, by severe re-
' quirement or narrow caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble
issue ; and, still more, how we withheld our admiration fmrn great excel-
lencies, because they are mingled with rough &ults. Now, in the make
and nature of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in
manual labour, there are some powers for better liiings : some tardy imagi-
nation, torpid capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are,
even at the worst ; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are
tardy or torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to
take them in their feebleness, and imless we prize and honour them in their
skill and possess knowledge as great as that which is possessed by the master of the
desi^ ; and in the endeavour to endow him with this skill and knowledge, his own
origmal power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a wearisome exhibi-
tion of well-educated imbecility. We most fully inquire into the nature of this form
of error, when we arrive at the examination of the Benaissance schools.
8 OK THE NATUBE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTUBB.
imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is
what we have to do with all our labourers ; to look for the ihfmghtfvl part
of them, and get that out of them, whateyer we lose for it, whateyer faults
and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best that is in them
cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error. Understand this
clearly : . Tou can teach a man to dnw a straight line, and to cut one ; to
strike a curyed line, and to canre it ; and to copy and carve any number of
given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision ; and yoa
find his work perfect of its kind : but if you ask him to think about any of
those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he
stops ; his execution becomes hesitating ; he thinks, and ten to one h»
thinks wrong ; ten to one he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to
his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all
that. He was only a machine before, an animated tool.
And observe, you are put to stem choice in this matter. Tou must
either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. Tou cannot make
both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be
precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out
of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their
aims strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the
energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of them-
selves. All their attention and strength must go to the accomplishment of
the mean act. The eye of the soul must be bent upon the finger-point, and
the soul's force must fill all the invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a
day, that it may not err from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be
worn away, and the whole human being be lost at last — a heap of sawdust,
so far as its intellectual work in this world is concerned ; saved on^ by its
Heart, which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands,
after the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand,
if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tooL
Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing ;
and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness,
all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon
failure, pause after pause : but out comes the whole majesty of him also ;
and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds settling upon
him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will be transfigur-
ation behind and within them.
And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which
you have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and
strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those accu-
rate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of the
seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over
them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was
done so thoroughly. Alas ! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs
of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more degrading
than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be beaten,
chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer flies, and
yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to smother their
souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards the suckling
branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and skin which,
after the worm's work on it, is to see Gk>d, into leathern thongs to yoke
machinery with, — ^this it is to be slavemasters indeed ; and there might be
OXr THS KAIUBB OF QOTHIC ASCHITSCTUBX. 9
mare freedom in Engbuid, though her feadal lords' lightest words were
worth men's lives, and though ti^e blood of the yezed husbandman dropped
in the farrows of her fields, than there is while the animation of her multi-
tudes is sent like fael to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them
k given daily to he wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked into the
eacactness of a line.
And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral
front, where you haTe smiled so often at the fantastie ignorance of the old
SGolptors : ftTamiTW onee more those ugly goblins, and formless m<8isters,
and stem statues, anatomiless and rigid ; but do not moek at them, fSor
they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who struck thd
stone ; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as na lawsy
no charters, no charities can secure ; but which it must be the first aim of
all Europe at this day to regain for her children.
Let me not be thouight to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is -veriJIy
this degradation of the operative into a machine, whidi, more than any
other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere into
vain, inodierent, destructive strnggltng for a freedom of which they cannot
explain the nature to themselveB. Their universal outcry against wealthy
and against nobility, is not forced from them either by the pressnre of
frunine, <a the sting of mortified pride. These do mudk, and have done
much in all ages ; but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as.
ihey are at tlds day. It is not that men are ill fed, but that thqr hare no
pleasure in the work by wbitih. they make their bread, and therefore look
to wealth aa the only means of pieasnre. It is not that men are pained by
the scorn of the upper dasses, but they cannot endure their own ; for they
fed that the kind of labour to which they are condenuied is verily a de*
grading cme, and makes them less than men. Never had the upper dasses
so mudi sympathy with the lower, or charity for them, as they have at
this day, and yet never were they so much hated hy them : fixr, of old, the
separation between the noble and the poor was merely a wall buih by law;
now it is a verttaUe difiierence in level of standing, a predpice between
upper and lower grounds id the field of humanity, and there is pestilential
air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to come when the
nature of right freedom will be undwstood, and when men will see that to
obey anothtf man, to labour for him, yield revwence to him or to his
place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of libtfty, — ^liberty from
care. The man who says to one, Gb, and he goeth, and to another,
Come^ and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and diffi-
culty than the man who obeys him. The movements of the one are hindered
by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by the bridle on his lips :
there is no way by which the burden may be lightened ; but we need not
waSer from the bridle if we do not champ at it. To yield reverence to
another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal is not slavery ; ofkea
it is the noblest state in which a man can live in this world. There is,
indeed, a reverence which is servile, that is to say irrational or selfish : but
there is also noble reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving ; and a
man is never so noble as when he is reverent in this kind ; nay, even if the
ledingpass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is nosed
by it. Which had in reality most of the serf nature in him, — ^the Irish
peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with his musket
muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain servant^
▲ 2
10 ON THE NATUBE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTUBE.
who, 200 years ago, at Inyerkeithmg, gaye up his own life, and the liyes
of his seven sons for his chief ?* — as each fell, calling forth his brother to
the death, "Another for Hector!" And therefore, in all ages and all
countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made by men to each other,
not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and famine, and peril, and
sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been borne willingly in the causes
of masters and kings; for. all these gifts of the heart ennobled the men
who gave not less ^n the men who received them, and nature prompted,
and 8od rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls withering within
them, nnthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognised
abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism, numbered with its
wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes ; — this nature bade not, —
this Qod blesses not, — ^this humanity for no long time is able to endure.
We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized
invention of the division of labour; only we give it a fialse name. It is
not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided ; but the men : — ^Divided
into mere segments of men — ^broken into small fragments and crumbs of
life ; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not
enough to make a pin, or a naO, but exhausts itself in making the point of
a pin, or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly,
to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal
sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magni-
fied before it can be discerned for what it is, — we should think there might
be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from all our manu-
fietcturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,
— ^that we manufacture everything there except men ; we blanch cotton,
and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery ; but to brighten,
to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into
our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging
our myriads can be met only in one way : not by teaching nor preaching,
for to teach them is but to show them tiieir misery, and to preach to them,
if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be met only
by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour
are good for men, raising them, and making them happy ; by a determined
sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only
by the degradation of the workman ; and by equally determined demand
for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.
And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognised, and this
demand to be regulated? Easily: by l^e observance of three broad and
simple rules :
1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely neces-
sary, in the production of which Invention has no share.
. 2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some
practical or noble end.
3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake
of preserving record of great works.
The second of these principles la the only one which directly rises out of
the consideration of our immediate subject ; but I shall briefly explain the
meaning and extent at the first also, reserving the enforcement of the third
for another place.
1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the
production of which invention has no share.
• See the Preface to "The Fair Maid of Perth."
ON THE NATURE OF GOTHIC ASCHITECTTTEE. 11
For instance. Glass beads are ntterl j unnecessary, and there is no design
or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by first
drawing out the glass into rods ; these rods are chopped up into fragments
of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fi:agments are then
rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their work
all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely timed
palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like haU. Neither
they, nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments, have the
smallest occasion for the use of any single human feusulty : and every young
lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the slave-trade, and in a
much more cruel one than that which we have so long been endeavouring
to put down.
But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite invention ;
and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to say for the
beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and not for mere finish of execution,
we are doing good to humanity.
So, again, ^e cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary cases, requires little
exertion of any mental faculty ; some tact and judgment in avoiding flaws, and
80 on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind. Every person who wears
cut jewels merely for the sake of their value is, therefore, a slave-driver.
But the working of the goldsmith, and the various designing of grouped
jewellery and enamel- work, may become the subject of the most noble
human intelligence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase of well-
designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cameos, or enamels, does good
to humanity; and, in work of this kind, jewels may be employed to
heighten its splendour ; and their cutting is then a price paid for tlie attain-
ment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable.
I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but our immediate con-
cern is chiefly with the second, namely, never to demand an exact finish,
when it does not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have only dwelt upon
the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of imperfectness, as admirable,
where it was impossible to get design or thought without it. If you are to
have the thought of a rough and untaught man, you must have it in a
rough and untaught way; but from an educated man, who can without
effort express his thoughts in an educated way, take tiie graceful expres-
sion, and be thankful. Only get the thought, and do not silence the
peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or until you have taught
him his grammar. Grammar and refinement are good things, both, only
be sure of the better thing first. And thus in art, delicate finish is de-
sirable from the greatest masters, and is always given by them. In some
places Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Phidias, Perugino, Turner, all finished
with the most exquisite care ; and the finish they give always leads to the
fuller accomplishment of their noble purposes. But lower men than these
cannot finish, for it requires consummate knowledge to finish consum-
mately, and then we must take their thoughts as they are able to give
them. So the rule is simple : Always look for invention first, and £^r
that, for such execution as will help the invention, and as the inventor is
capable of without painfal effort, and iw more. Above all, demand no
refinement of execution where there is no thought, for that is slaves*
work, imredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only
that the practical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is reason to
be proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sand-paper.
12 ON THE NATUBE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTUBE.
I sli&II only gire one example, which howerer will show the reader what
I mean, from the mannfacture already alluded to, that of glass. Gar
modem glass is exqnisitely clear in its substance, true in its form, accurate
in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamed of it<
The old Venice glass was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, and clumsily
cut, if at all. And the old Yenetian was justly proud of it. For there is
this difference between the English and Venetian wwkman, that the
former thinks only of accurately matching his patterns, and getting his
curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, and becomes a mere
machine for rounding curves and i^arpening edges, while the old Venetian
cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not, but he invented a new
design for every glass that he made, and never moulded a handle or a lip
without a new fancy in it. And therefore, though some Venetian glass is
ugly and clumsy enough, when made by clumsy and uninventive workmen^
other Venetian glass is so lovely in its forms that no price is too great for
it ; and we never see the same form in it twice. Now you cannot have the
finish and the varied form too. If the workman is thinking about his
edges, he cannot be thinking of his design ; if of his design, he cannot
think of his edges. Choose whether you will pay for the lovely form or
the perfect finish, and choose at the same moment whether you will make
the worker a man or a grindstone.
Nay, but the reader interrupts me, — ''If the workman can design
beautifully, I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be taken
away and made a gentleman, and have a studio> and design his gUsstho^
and I will have it blown and cut for him by common workmen, and so I
will have my design and my finish too."
All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions : the
first, that one man^s thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by another
man's hands ; the second, that manual labour is a degradation, when it is
governed by intellect.
On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is
indeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should be
carried out by the labour of others; in this sense I have already defined
the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of manhood by the
hands of childhood. But on a smaller scale, and in a design which cannot
be mathematically defined, one man's thoughts can never be expressed by
another : and the differaice between the spirit of touch of the man who is
inventing, and of the man who is obeying directions, is often all the differ-
ence between a great and a c(»nmon work of art. How wide the separation
is between original and second-hand execution, I shall endeavour to show
elsewhere ; it is not so much to our purpose here as to mark the other and
more fatal error of despising manual labour when governed by intellect ;
for it is no less fiital an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect,
than to value it for its own sake. We are always in these days endea-
vouring to separate the two ; we want one man to be always thinking, and
another to be always working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other
an operative ; whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the
thinker often to be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best
sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other
despising, his brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid
thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only by labour that thought
can be made healthy, and Mily by thought that labour can be made hai^y.
OK TKB ITATVBB OF GOTHIC ASCHITECTUSB. 13
and the two cannot be separated with impumty. It would be well if all of
OS were good handicraftsmen in some kind, and the dishonoor of mannal
labour done away with altogether ; so that though there should stUl be a
trenchant distinction of race betwe^a nobles and commoners, there should
not, among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between
idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal professions.
All professi<H9LS should be liberal, and there should be less pride felt in pecu-
liarity of employment, and more in excellence of achieyemeut. And yet
more, in each several profession, no master should be too proud to do its
hardest work. The painter should grind his own colours ; the architect
work in the mason's yard with his men ; the master-manufstcturer be
himself a more skilful operative than any man in his mills; and the
distinction between one man and another be only in experience and skill,
sad the authority and wealth which these must naturally and justly
obtain.
I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue this
interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader
that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term
'^Gothic'* one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of the
most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble but
an essential one. It seems a femtastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a
most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not
imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For since the architect^
whom we will suppose capable of doing all in perfection, cannot execute
the whole with his own hands, he must either make skves of his workmen
in the old Qreek, and present English fashion, and level his work to a
filave's capacities, which is to degrade it; or else he must take his workmen
as he finds them, and let them show their weaknesses together with their
strength, which will involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole
work as noble as the intellect of the age can make it.
But the pnnciple may be stated more broadly stilL I have confined the
illustration of it to arcMtecture, but I must not leave it as if true of artdii-
tecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely
to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with
average precision and science ; and I have been pleading that any degree of
unskilfulneas should be admitted, so only that the labourer's mind had
joom for expression. But, accui-ately speaking, no good work whatever
can be perfect^ and the demand for j^erfection is always a sign of a nUs-
understanding of the ends of art.
This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no
great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure : that
is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution,
and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it ; besides
that he will always give to the inferior portions of his work only such
Inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he
becomes so usaasbomed. to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he
can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger with himself he will not care
though the beholder be dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one
man who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach
perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he
would take ten years to a picture, and leave it unfinished. And therefore,
if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best.
14 ON THE NATUBE OF OOTHIC ASCHITBCTUBE.
the work will be imperfect, however beantifiil. Of human work none but
whftt is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.*
The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all
that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say,
of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lires is, or can be,
rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The foxglove
blossom, — a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in full bloom, —
is a type of the life of this world. And in all things that live there are certain
irregnlarities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, bnt sources
of beauty. No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side,
no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregu-
larity as they imply change ; and to banish imperfection is to destroy ex-
pression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally
better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been
divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be E£fort, and the law
of human judgment, Mercy.
Accept this then for an universal law, that neither architecture nor any
other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect ; and let us
be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern dearly
as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first cause of the
fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection, in-
capable alike either of being silenced by veneration for greatness, or
softened into forgiveness of simplicity.
Thus far then of the Budeness or Savageness, which is the first mental
element of Gothic architecture. It is an element in many other healthy
architectures also, as in Byzantine and Bomanesque; but true Gothic
cannot exist without it.
The second mental element above named was 0HANOEFin[.Nsss, or variety.
I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to the inv
ferior workman, simply as a duty to him, and as ennobling the architecture
by rendering it more Christian. We have now to consider what reward we
obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, the perpetual variety of
every feature of the building.
Wlierever the workmen is utterly enslaved, the parts of the building
must of course be absolutely like each other ; for the perfection of his
execution can only be reached by exercising Mm in doing one thing, and
giving him nothing else to do. The degree in which the workman is de-
graded may be thus known at a glance, by observing whether the several
parts of the building are similar or not ; and if, as in Greek work, all the
capitals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, then the degradation is
complete; if, as an Egyptian or Ninevite work, though the manner of
executing certain figures is always the same, the order of design is perpetu-
ally varied, the de^iulation is less total ; if, as in Gothic work, there is
perpetual change both in design and execution, the workman must have
been altogether set free.
How much the beholder gains firom the liberty of the labourer may
perhaps be questioned in England, where one of the strongest instincts in
nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us dmre that our
• The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be "perfect." In the most
important portions they indeed approach perfection, but only there. The draperies
are unflnisned, the hair and wool of the a-t^itn^ l ^ are unfinished, and the entire has-
relieft of the firiese are roi^hly cut.
OK THE KATUBE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTTTBE. 15
house windows should pair like our carriage horses, and allows us to yield
our faiih. unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix a form for every-
thing, and forbid variation from it. I would not impeach love of order : it
is one of the most useful elements of the English mind ; it helps us in our
commerce and in all purely practical matters ; and it is in many cases one of
the foundation stones of morality. Only do not let us suppose that lore of
order is love of art. It is true that order, in its highest sense, is one of
the necessities of art, just as time is a necessity of music ; but love of
order has no more to do with our right enjoyment of ardiitecture of
painting, than love of punctuality with the appreciation of an opera.
Experience, I fear, teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily
life are seldom chtiracteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly
possess, the creative powers of art ; there is, however, nothing inconsistent
between the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining our
business habits, and yet folly allowing and enjoying the noblest gifts of
Invention. We already do so, in every other branch of art except archi-
tecture, and we only do not so there because we have been taught that it
would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us that, as there are four
rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture ; we, in our
simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believe them. They in-
form us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian capitals, another
for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, considering that there is also a proper
form for the letters A, B, and 0, think that this also sounds consistent, and
■accept the proposition. Understanding, therefore, that one form of the
said capitals is proper, and no other, and having a conscientious horror
of all impropriety, we allow the architect to provide us with the said
capitals, of the proper form, in such and such a quantity, and in all other
points to take care that the legal forms are observed ; which having donOi
we rest in forced confidence that we are well housed.
But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in the
building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new book or
a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its correct-
ness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same pleasure in its
symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or a skilful piece
of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the pleasure that archi-
tecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of reading a building as
we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the same kind of delight out
of the stones as out of the stanzas, never enters our minds for a moment.
And for good reason ; — There is indeed rhythm in the verses, quite as
strict as the symmetries or rhythm of the architecture, and a thousand
times more beautiful, but there is something else than rhythm. The
verses were neither made to order, nor to match, as the capitals were ;
and we have therefore a kind of pleasure in them other than a sense of
propriety. But it requires a strong effort of common sense to shake our-
selves quit of all that we have been taught for the last two centuries, and
wake to the perception of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new :
that great art, whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does
not say the same thing over and over again ; that the merit of arohi*
tectural, as of every other art, consists in its saying new and different
things; that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in
marble than it is of genius in print ; and that we may, without offending
any laws of good taste, require of an architect^ as we do of a novelist, that
he should be not only correct, but entertuning.
16 ON THE NATUBE OF GOTHIC AXCHITBCTUEE.
Yet all this is tnie, and aelf-evident ; only hidden from ns, as maaj
other self-eYident ihmgfi are, by fidse teaching. Nothing is a great work
of art, for the production of which either rules or mod^ can be giren.
Exactiy so far as ardiitectare works on known roles, and from giTen
models, it is not on art, but a manufacture ; and it is, of the two pro-
eedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to oopy capitals or mould-
ings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than to copy heads and
hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters.
Let us then understand at <Hice, that change or Tariety is as much
a necessity to the human heart and bndn in buildings as in books; thai
there is no merit, thou^ there is some occasional use^ in monotony ; and
tiiat we must no more expect to derire either pleasure or profit from an
architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose pillars are of
one proportion, than we should out of an unirerse in which the clouds were
all c^ one shape, and the trees all of one size.
An<1 this we confess in deeds, though not in words. All the pleasnre
which the peo^de of the nineteenUi oentuiy take in ait, is in picturee,
sculpture, minor objects of Tirtil, or mediaeval architecture, which we
ei\joy under the term pictoresque : no * pleasure is taken anywhere in
modem buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to escape
out of modem cities into natural scenery : hence, as I shall hereafter show,
that peculiar love of landscape which is characteristic of the age. It would
be well, if, in all otha: mattos, we were as ready to put up with what we
dislike, for the sake of compliance with established law, as we are ha
architecture.
How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see when
we come to describe the Eenaissance schools : here we have only to note^
as the second most essential elem^it of the Gothic spirit, that it broke
through that law wherever it found it in existence ; it not <mly dared, but
delighted in, the infringement <^ every servile principle; and invented
a series of forms of which t&e merit was, not merely that they were new^
but that they were capable of perpetual novelty. The pointed arch wa«
not merely a bold variation from the round, but it admitted of miUicmsof
TaiiationB in itself; for the propoxiiaixB of a pointed arch are (^angeab]«
to infinity, while a circular arch is always the same. The grouped shaft
was not merely a bold variation from the single one, but it admitted of
minioBB of variations in its grouping, and in the xMroportions resultant from
its grouping. The introduction of tracery was not only a startling change
in ike treatment of window lights, but admitted endless chaiages in the
interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all living
Cairistian architecture the love of variety exists, the Oothic schook
exhibited that love in culminating energy ; and their influence, wheacevtr
it extended itself may be sooner and farther traced by this chaiacta: thaa
by any other ; the tendency to the adoption of Gk>thic t^rpes being always
first eJiowu by greater irregularity and rich^ variation in the forms of the
architecture it ia about to supersede, long before the appearance of the
pointed arch or of any other recognisable ovtward sign of the Gothic mind.
We must, however, herein note carefully what distiacticm there ia
between a healthy and a diseased love of change ; for as it was in healthy
love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly in consequence
of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In order to understand
this clearly, it will be secessary to consider the different ways in which
OK THE NATTTBB OV GOTHIC ABCHITECT1TSB. IT
diADge and monotony are presented to us in nature ; both haying their nse,
like darkness and light, and the one incaxuible of being enjoyed without the
other : change being most delightful after some prolongation of monotony,
as light appears most brilliant aiter the eyes haye been for some time closed.
I believe that the tme relations of monotony and change may be most
amply understood by observing them in music. We may therein notice,
first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony which there is not
in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all nature. The
greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its monotony ; so also
that of desolate moor and mountain scenery ; and especially the sublimity
of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and rise of an engine beam. So
also there is sublimity in darkness which there is not in light.
Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree,
becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is obliged to
break it in one of two ways : either while tiie air or passage is perpetually
repeated, its notes are variously enriched and harmonized ; or else, after
a certain number of repeated passages, an entirely new passage is intro-
duced, which is more or less delightful according to the length of the
previous monotony. Nature, of course, uses both these kinds of variation
perpetually. The sea-waves, resembling each other in general mass, but
none like its brother in minor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the
first kind ; the great plain, broken by an emergent rock or clnmp of trees,
is a monotony of the second.
Farther : in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, a certain
degree of patien9e is required from the hearer or observer. In the first
ease, he mnst be satisfied to endure with patience the recurrence of the
great masses of sound or form, and to seek for entertainment in a careful
watchfulness of the minor details. In the second case, he must bear
patiently the.infliction of the monotony for some moments, in order to feel
the full refreshment of the change. This is true even of the shortest
musical passage in which the element of monotony is employed. In cases
of more majestic monotony, the patience required is so considerable that it
becomes a kind of pain, — a price paid for the future pleasure.
Again : the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but in the
changes : he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in certain
places or degrees ; that is to say, by his variom employment of it ; but it
is always in the new arrangement or invention that his intellect is shown,
and not in the monotony which relieves it.
Lastly : if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to be
delightfiil, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we are driven
to seek delight in extreme and fimtastic degrees of it. This is the diseased
love of change of which we have above spoken.
From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought
to be, in itself painful to us, just as .darkness is ; that an architecture
which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and, of
those who love it, it may be truly said, **they love darkness rather than
light." But monotony in certain measure, used^ in order to give value to
cbange, and, above all, that trangparent monatonj which, like the shadows
of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly suggested form to be seen
through the body of it, is an essential in architectural as in all other com"
position ; and the endurance of monotony has about the same place in a
healthy mind that the endurance of darkness has : that is to say, as a strong
▲ 3
IS OV THX NATUBB OF GOTHIC ABCSITSCTVBX.
intelleGi will have pleasure in, the Bolenmitiei of storm and twilight, and in
tite- broken and myBterions. lights that gleam among them, rather than in
mere brilliancy, and glare, while a finvolons mind will dread the shadow
and the storm ; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness
of fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while an
infSerior man will not pay the price ; exactly in like manner a great mind
will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome to an
inferior intellect, becaose it has more patience and power of expectation,
and is ready to pay the fall price for the great future pleasure of change.
But in all cases it is not that the noble nature loYes monotony, any more
ikskn it loTes darkness or pain. But it can bear with it, and receiTes
a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a pleasure necessary, to the
well-being of this world ; while those who will not submit to the temporary
sameness, but rush from one change to another, gradually dull the edge of
change itself, and bring a shadow and weariness over the whole world from
whi(^ there is no more escape.
From th^e general uses of rariety in the economy of the worid, we may
at once understand its use and abuse in architecture^ The variety of the
Gothic schools is the more healthy and beantiful, because in many cases it
is entirely unstudied, and results, not from mere love of change, but from
practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic is not only the best,
but the only ratioTud architecture^ as being that which can fit itself most
easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in ite slope of roo^
height of shaft, breadth of arch, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink
into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire,
with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy ; and whenever it finds
occasion for change in ite form or purpose, it submite to it without the
slightest sense of loss either to ite unity or msjesty, — subtle and flexible
like a fiery serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And
it is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered
ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use
and value of what they did; If they wanted a window, they opened one ;
a room, they added one ; a buttress^ they built one ; utterly regardless of
any established conventionalities of external appearance, knowing (as
indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptions of the formal
plan would rather give additional interest to ite symmetry than injure it.
So that, in the best times of Gothic, a useless window would rather have
been opened in an unexpected place, for the sake of the surprise, than
a useftd one forbidden for the sake of symmetry. Every successive archi-
tect, employed upon a great work, built the pieces he added in his own
way, utterly regardless of the style adopted by his predecessors ; and if two
towers were raised in nominal correspondence at the sides of a cathedral
front, one was neariy sure to be different from the other, and in each the
style at the top to be different from the style at the bottom.*
These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part of the
great system of perpetual change which ran liirough every member of
Gothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's inquixy,
as for the buildei^s imagination : change, which in the best schools is
subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful by intermingling of a
noble monotony ; in the more barbaric schools is somewhat fantastic and
* In the eighth chapter we shall see a remarkable mstance of this sacrifioe of sym*
natty to oonvenieiioe in the arrangement of the windows of the Ducal Falaoe.
eV THE NATVBB OP QOTHIC ABCHITSGTUSB. 19
fedandant; bat, in all, a neeeasary aad ooiiBtaat oonditstm of the life of
the sohooL Sometimes the tariety is in one faatnre^ sometimes in anoiiier ;
it JBAj be in the capitals or erockets, in the niches or the traceries, or in
all together, bat in some one or other of the fisatureftU will be found always.
If the mouldings are constant, the surfiEicer scidptore will change ; if the
capitals are of a fixed design, the traeeiies will change; if the traceries an
monotonous, the capitals will change; and if eTon, as in some fine sohooky
the early English for example, thrae is the slightest approximation to ail
nnrarying type of mouddings, ciH)itals^ and floral decoration, the variety is
£Mmd in the disposition of the masses, and in the figure scolpture.
I must now r^er for a moment, before we quit the ccmsideration of this^
the second mental el^m^t of Gothic, to the opening of the third chapteor of
the *^ Seven Lamps of Architecture," in which the distinction was drawa
between mun. gathering and man governing ; between his aooeptaace of tha
sources of delight ftom nature, and biifl development of authoritative or
imaginative power in their amui^ment : for 1h» two mental elements, not
only of Gothic, but of all good architecture, which we have just been
examining, belong to it, and are admirable in it, chiefly as it is^ more than
any other subject of art, the work of man, and the expression of the average
power of man. A picture or poem is often Uttie more than a feeble utter-
ance of man s admiration of something out ol himself ; but architednra
^proaches more to a creation of bis own, bom of his necessities, and exptm^
sive of his nature. It is also, in some sort, the work of the whole nioe»
while the picture or statue is the work of one oidy, m most cases men
highly gifted than his fellows. And therefore we may expect that tiie ikst
two dements of good architecture should be expresnte of some great truths
oommonly belonging to the whole race, and neoesaaiy to be undeittood or
felt by them in all theijf work that they do under the san^ And observe
what they are : the confession of Imperfection^ andJ the cenliMsion of Derare
of Change. The building of the MinI and ike bee needs not express any-^
thing' like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just because we are
something better than birds or bees« our building must confess that we
have not reached the perfection we can imagine, and eannot rest in- the con-
dition we have attained. If we pretend to have reached- either perfeotioii
or satisfaction, we have degraded oorselves and our work. God's woik
only may express that ; but ours may never have that sentence written upon
it, — *' And behold, it was very good." And, observe again, it is not
merely as it renders the edifice a book of various Imowledge, or a min^ of
precious thought, that variety is essentia to its nobleness. The vitid
principle is not the love of Knowledge^ but the love of Ghxmge. It is that
strange disgmetttde of the Gothieq[>irit tha4i is its greatness ; that^restlesa-
ness of the dreaming mlnd^ that wanders hithef and thither funong the
niches, and flickers feverishly around the pinnaeles). and: frets add fades in
labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not satisfied,
nor shall be satisfied* The Greek could stay in hjs triglyph furrow, and
be at peace ; but the work <tf the Gothic heart is firetwork still, and it can*
neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must pass on, sleeplessly, until its
love of change shall be pacified for ever in the change that must come alike
on them that wake and them that sleep.
The third constituent element of the Gk)thic mind was stated to be
Naturalism; that is to say, the love of natural objects for their own sake^.
and the effort to represent them frankly, unconstrained l^ artiBtical'laws* .
id ON THB NATTTBE OP OOTHid ABCHITECTU&7.
This characteristic of the style partly follows in necessary connexion witK
those named abore. For, so soon as the workman is left free to represent
what subjects he chooses, he must look to the nature that is round him for
material, and will endeavour to represent it as he sees it, with more or less'
accuracy according to the skill he possesses, and with much play of fancy,
but with small respect for law. There is, howerer, a marked distinction
between the imaginations of the Western and Eastern races, even when
both are left free ; the Western, or Gothic, delighting most in the repre*'
sentation of facts, and the Eastern (Arabian, Persian, and Chinese) in the
harmony of colours and forms. Each of these intellectual dispositions has
its particular forms of error and abuse, which, though I have often before
stated, I must here again briefly explain ; and this the rather, because the
word Naturalism is, in one of its senses, justly used as a term of reproach,
and the questions respecting the real relations of art and nature are so
many and so confused throughout all the schools of Europe at this day,
that I cannot clearly enunciate any single truth without appearing to admit,
in fellowship with it, some kind of error, unless the reader will bear with
me in entering into such an analysis of the subject as will serve us for
general guidance.
We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement of colours
and lines is an art analogous to the composition * of music, and entirely
independent of the representation of facts. Qood colouring does not neces-'
sarily convey the image of anything but itself. It consists in certain pro*-
portions and arrangements of rays of light, but not in likenesses to anything.
A few touches of certain greys and purples laid by a master^s hand on white
paper, will be good colouring ; as more touches are added beside them, we
knay find out that they were intended to represent a dove's neck, and we
may praise, as the drawing advances, the perfect imitation of the dove's
neck. But the good colouring does not consist in that imitation, but in
the abstract qualities and relations of the grey and purple.
In like manner, as soon as a great sculptor begins to shape his work out
Of the block, we shall see that its lines are nobly arranged, and of noble
character. We may not have the slightest idea for what the forms are
intended, whether they are of man or beast, of vegetation or drapery.
Their likeness to anything does not a£fect their nobleness. They are mag-
nificent forms, and that is all we need care to know of them, in order to
say whether the workman is a good or bad sculptor.
Now the noblest art is an exact union of the abstract value, with the
imitative power, of forms and colours. It is the noblest composition,
used to express the noblest facts. But the human mind cannot in general
unite the two perfections : it either pursues the fact to the neglect of the
composition, or pursues the composition to the neglect of the fact.
Aiid it is intended by the Deity that it tHiovld do this : the best art is
' * I am always afiraid to use this word " Composition ;" it is so utterly misused in
fhe general parlanoe respecting art. Nothing is more common than to hear divisions
•fart into " form, composition, and colour/' or "light and shade and composition,"
or " sentiment and composition," or it matters not what else and composition ; the
iq^eakers in each case attaching a perfectly different meaning to the word, generally
an indistinct one, and always a wrong one. Composition is, m plain Enslish, " pnt-
ting together," and it means the putting together of lines, of forms, of colours, of
ihMes, or of ideas. Painters compose in colour, compose in thoaght, compose in
form, and compose in effect; the word being of use merely in order to express a
soientiflc, disciplined, and inventiye arrangement of any of these, instead of a merely
natural or aoeiaental one.
. ON THE NATUBE OF OOTHIC ABCHITECTUBE. 21:
ttot always wanted. Facts are often wanted without art, as in a geological
diagram ; and art often without facts, as in a Tnrkey carpet. And most
men have been made capable of giving either one or the other, but not both ;
only one or two, the very highest, can give both.
- Observe then. Men are universally divided, as respects their artistical
qualifications, into three great classes ; a right, a. left, and a centre. On
the right side are the men of facts, on the left the men of design,* in the
centre the men of both.
The three classes of course pass into each other by imperceptible grada-*
tions. The men of facts are hardly ever altogether without powers of
design ; the men of design are always in some measure cognizant of facts ;
and as each class possesses more or less of the powers of the opposite one,
it approaches to the character of the central class. Few men, even in that
central rank, are so exactly throned on the summit of the crest that they
cannot be perceived to incline in the least one way or the other, embracing
both horizons with their glance. Now each of these classes has, as I above
said, a healthy function in the world, and correlative diseases or unhealthy
functions ; and, when the work of either of them is seen in its morbid
eondition, we are apt to find fault with the class of workmen, instead of
finding fault only with the particular abuse which has perverted their
action.
YHiat, then, are the diseased operations to which the three dasses of
workmen are liable f
Primarily, two ; affecting the two inferior classes :
1st, When either of those two cUsses Despises the other ;
: 2nd, When either of the two classes Envies the other ;
producing, therefore, four forms of dangerous error.
Firsts when the men of facts despise design. This is the error of the
tommon Dutch painters, of merely imitative painters of still life, flowers,
&c., and other men who, having either the gift of aocuilftte imitation or
strong sympathies with nature, suppose that all is done when the imitation
IS perfected or sympathy expressed. A large body of English landscapists
come into this class, including most clever sketchers from nature, who fancy
that to get a sky of true tone, and a gleam of sunshine or sweep of shower
fidthfuUy expressed, is all that can be required of art. These men are
generally themselves answerable for much of their deadness of feeling to
the higher qualities of composition. They probably have not originally the
high gifts of design, but they lose such powers as they originaUy possessed
by despising, and refusing to study, the results of great power of design in
others. Their knowledge, as fiu: as it goes, being accurate, they are
usually presumptuous and self'Conceited, and gradually become incapable
of admiring anything but what is like their own works. They see nothing
in the works of great designers but the fiiults, and do harm almost incal-
culable in the European society of the present day by sneering at the com*
positions of the greatest men of the earlier ages,t because they do not
absolutely tally with their own ideas of '* Nature."
* Desiffn is used in this place as expressive of the power to arnuige lines and colours
nobly, fiy facts, I mean facts perceived by the eye and mind, not fkcts accumulated
by Imowledge. See the chapter on Roman Renaissance (Vol. III. Chap. II.) for tins
distinction.
t ** Earhex" that is to say, pre-Baphaelite a^. Hen of this stamp will praise
Claude, and such other comparatively debased artists; but they cannot taste the work
of the thirteenth century.
22 Oir THB KATUBB OF GOTHIC ASCHITECTUXE.
fPhe second form of error is when the men of derign desfnse ftcts. All
noble design most deal with fkdM to a certain extent^ for there is no food for
it in bnt natnre. The best colonrist invents best by taking hints from
natural colours ; from birds, skies, or groups of figures. And if, in the
delight of inventing fontastie colonr and form, the truths of nature are
wilfully neglected, the intellect becomes eomparatiyely decrepit, and that
state of art results which we find among the Chinese. The Greek de-
signers delighted in the facts of the human form, and became great in
eonsequence ; but the foots of lower natnre were disregarded by them, and
their inferior ornament became, therefore, dead and valueless.
The third form of error is when the men of foots envy design : that is to
say, when, having only imitative powers, tbey refuse to employ those
powers upon the visible world around them ; but, having been taught that
oomposition is the end of art, strive to obtain the inventive powers which
nature has denied them, study nothing bnt the works of reputed deBigners,
and perish in a fungous grow& of pla^arism and laws of aj*t.
Here was the great error of the b^inning of this century ; it is the error
of the meanest kind of men that employ themselves in painting, and it is
the most fatal of all, rendering those who foil into it utterly useless, inca-
pable of helping the world witi^ either truth or fancy, while, in all xHroba-
bility, they deceive it by base resemblances of both, until it hardly
reoognises truth or fancy when they really exist.
The fourth form of error is when the men of design envy facts : that is
to say, when the temptation of closely imitating nature leads them to foiget
their own proper ornamental fixnction, and when they lose the power of the
composition for the sake of graphic truth ; as, for instance, in the hawthorn
moulding so often spoken of round the porch of Bourges Cathedral, which,
though very lovely, might perhaps, as we saw above, have been better, if
the old builder, in his excessive desire to make it look like hawthorn, had
not painted it green.
It is, however, carefully to be noted, that the two morbid conditions to
which the men of facts are liable are much more dangerous and harmful
than those to which the men of design are liable. The morbid state of
men of design iigures themselves only ; that of the men of facts injures the
whole world. The Chinese porcelain-painter is, indeed, not so great a
man as he might be, but he does not want to break everything that is not
porcelain : but the modem Bnglidi foct-hunter, despising design, wants to
destroy everything that does not agree with his own notions of truth, and
becomes the most dangerous and despicable of iconochusts, excited by
egotism instead of religion. Again : the Bourges sculptor, painting his
hawthorns green, did indeed somewhat hurt the e£fect of his own beautiful
design, but did not prevent any one from loving hawthorn : but Sir (George
Beaumont, tiying to make Constable paint grass brown inttead of green,
was setting himself between Constable and nature, blinding the painter, and
blaspheming the work of God.
So much, then, of the diseases of the inferior classes, caused by their
envying or despising each other. It is evident that the men of the central
class cannot be liable to any morbid operation of this kind, they possessing
the powers of both.
But there is another order of diseases which affect all the three ckuenes,
considered with respect to their pursuit of facts. For observe, all the three
classes are in some degree pursuers of facts ; even the men of design not
OK THI NAinmi 07 GOTHIC ABCHITBCTUBB. SS
Imng in any ewe altogetlier independent of eitemal truth. Now, consi-
<dering them all as more or less aotrohers after truth, there is another triple
diyision to be made of them. Srerything presented to them in nature has
'good and evil mingled in it : and sxtiBtB, eon8idered4UB searchers after truth,
«re again to be divided into three great dasses, a right, a left, andaoentre.
Those on tke right perceive, and pursue, the good, and leare the evil :
those in the centre, the greatest, peroenre and pursne the good and evil
together, the -whole thing as it verily is : tiiose on the left perceive and
pursue 4Jie evil, and leave the good.
The first class, I say, take the good and leave the evil. Out of whatever
is inesented to them, they gather what it has of grace, and life, and light,
and holiness, and leave aH, or at least as much as possible, of the rest
undrawn. The fiftces «f their figures express no evil passions ; the skies
of their landscapes are without storm ; the prevalent character of their
colour is brightness, and of their chiaroscuro fulness of light. The early
Italian and Flemish patnters, Angelioo and Hemlaig, Perugino, Franda,
BalbeUe in lus best time, John Bellini, and our own Stothaid, belong
eminently to this dass.
The second, or greatest class, render all that they see in nature unhesi-
tatingly, with a kind of divine grai^ and government of the whole, sympa-
thizing with aU the good, and yet confessing, permitting, and bringing good
out of the evil also. Their suk9ect is in&iite as nature, their colour equally
bskkmced between splendour and sadness, reaching occasionally the highest
degrees of both, luid their ohiarosouo equally bahmced between light
and shade.
The principal men of this class are Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Qiotto,
Tintoret^ and Turner. Baffiielle in his second time, Titian, and £ubens
•are transitional ; the first inclining to the eclectic, and the last two to the
impure class, Ba&elle rarely giving all the evil, Titian and Kubens rarely
blithe good.
The last class pcrcdve and imitate evil only. They cannot draw the
trunk of a tree without blasting and shattering it, nor a sky except covered
with stormy clouds; they delight in the beggazy and brutality of the
human race ; their colour is for the most psrt subdued or lurid, and the
4Si6atest spaces of their pictures ace occupied by darkness.
Happily the examples of this class are seldom seen in perfection.
Salvator Rosa and Caravaggio are the most characteristic : the other men
belonging to it approach towards the central rank by imperceptible grada-
tions, as they perceive and represent more and more o£ good. But Murillo,
•Zuriteran, Camillo Froeaocini, Bembiandt, and Teniers, all belong naturally
to this lower class.
^ Now, observe : the three classes into which artists were previously
divided, of men of fact^ men of design, and men of both, are all of Divine
institution; but of ^ese latter three, the last is in no wise of Divine
institution. It is entirely human, and the men who belong to it have sunk
into it by their own faults. Th^ are, so far forth, either useless or harm-
ful men. It is indeed good thai evil should be occasionally represented,
even in its worst forms, but never that it should be taken delight
in : and the mighty men of the central class will always give us all ^t
ia needful of it ; sometimes, as Hogarth did, dwelling upon it bitterly as
satirists, — but this with the more effect, because they will neither exagge-
xatt it) nor represent it mercilessly, and without the atoning points thai
24 ON THE KATUAB OF OOTHIC ABCHITSCTUSS.
bU evil shows to a Divinely guided glance, eren at its deepest. So thim;
though the third class will always, I fear, in some measure exist, the two
necessary classes are only the first two ; and this is so £u: acknowledged by
the general sense of men, that the basest class has been confounded with
the second ; and painters have been divided commonly only into two ranks,
now known, I believe, throughout Europe by the names which they first
received in Italy, *' Furisti and Naturalist!.*' Since, however, in the exist-
ing state of things, the degraded or evil-loving class, though less defined than
that of the Puristi, is just as vast as it is indistinct, this division has done
infinite dishonour to the great faithful painters of nature : and it has long
been one of the objects I have had most at heart to show that, in reality,
the Purists, in their sanctity, are less separated from these natural painters
than the Sensualists in their foulness ; and that the difference, though less
discernible, is in reality greater, between the man who pursues evil for its
own sake, and him who bears with it for the sake of truth, than betweea
this latter and the man who will not endure it at all.
Let us, then, endeavour briefly to mark the real relations of these three
vast ranks of men, whom I shall call, for convenience in speaking of them»
-Purists, Naturalists, and Sensualists ; not that these terms express their
real characters, but I know no word, and cannot coin a convenient one,
which would accurately express the opposite of Purist ; and I keep the
terms Purist and Naturalist in order to comply, as far as possible, witii the
established usage of language on the Continent. Now, observe : in saying
that nearly everything presented to ns in nature has mingling in it of good
and evil, I do not mean that nature is conceivably improvable, or that any-
thing that God has made could be called evil, if we could see far enough
into its uses, but that, with respect to immediate effects or appearances, it
may be so, just as the hard rind or bitter kernel of a fruit may be an evil
to the eater, though in the one it is the protection of the fruit, and in the
other its continuance. The Purist, therefore, does not mend nature, but
receives from nature and from God that which is good for him ; while the
Sensualist fills himself '* with the husks that the swine did eat."
The three classes may, therefore, be likened to men reaping wheat, of
which the Purists take the fine flour, and the Sensualists the chaff and
straw, but the Naturalists take all home, and make their cake of the one,
and their couch of the other.
For instance. We know more certainly every day that whatever appears
to us harmful in the universe has some beneficent or necessary operation ;
that the storm which destroys a harvest brightens the sunbeams for har-
vests yet unsown, and that the volcano which buries a city preserves a
thousand from destruction. But the evil is not for the time less fearful,
because we have learned it to be necessary ; and we easily understand the
timidity or the tenderness of the spirit which would withdraw itself from
the presence of destruction, and create in its imagination a world of which
the peace should be unbroken, in which the sky should not darken nor the
• sea rage, in which the leaf diould not change nor the blossom wither.
.That man is greater, however, who contemplates with an equal mind the
alternations of terror and of beauty ; who, not rejoicing less beneath the
sunny sky, can bear also to watch the bars of twilight narrowing on the
horizon ; and, not less sensible to the blessing of the peace of nature, can
rejoice in the magnificence of the ordinances by which that peace is pro*
. tected and secured. But separated from both by an immeasurable distance
ON THE STATUSB OF GOTHIC ABCHITEGTUBB. "25
.would be the man wlid delighted in conynlsion and disease for their -own
sake ; who found his daily food in the disorder of nature mingled with the
suffering of humanity; and watched joyfully at the right hand of the
Angel whose appointed work is to destroy as well as to accuse, while the
comers of the house of feasting were struck by the wind from the wil-
derness.
And far more is this true, when the subject of contemplation is humanity
itself. The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly beneficent,
like the chaff and grain of the com ; but none without theii* use, none
without nobleness when seen in balanced unity with the rest of the spirit
which they are charged to defend. The passions of which the end is the
continuance of the race ; the indignation which is to arm it against injus-
tice, or strengthen it to resist wanton injury ; and the fear* which lies at
the root of prudence, reverence, and awe, are all honourable and beautiful,
so long as man is regarded in his relations to the existing world. The
religious Purist, striving to conceive him withdrawn from those relations,
effiices from the countenance the traces of all transitory passion, illumines
it with holy hope and love, and seals it with the serenity of heavenly
peace ; he conceals the forms of the body by the deep-folded garment, or
else represents them under severely chastened types, and would rather
paint them emaciated by the fast, or pale from the torture, than strength-
ened by exertion, or flashed by emotion. But the great Naturalist tikes
the human being in its wholeness, in its mortal as well as its spiritual
strength. Capable of sounding and sympathizing with the whole range
of its passions, he brings one majestic harmony out of them all ; he
represents it fearlessly in all its acts and thoughts, in its haste, its anger, .
its sensuality, and its pride, as well as in its fortitude or fiedth, but makes
it noble in them all ; he casts aside the veil from the body, and beholds
the mysteries of its form like an angel looking down on an inferior crea-
ture : there is nothing which he is reluctant to behold, nothing that he
is ashamed to confess ; with all that lives, triumphing, falling, or suffer-
ing, he claims kindred, either in majesty or in mercy, yet standing, in a
sort, afar off, unmoved even in the deepness of his sympathy ; for the
spirit within him is too thoughtful to be grieved, too brave to be appalled,
and too pure to be polluted.
How far beneath these two ranks of men shall we place, in the scale of
being, those whose pleasure is only in sin or in suffering ; who habitually
contemplate humanity in poverty or decrepitude, fury or sensuality;
whose works are either temptations to its weakness, or triumphs over its
ruin, and recognise no other subjects for thought or admiration than the
subtlety of the robber, the rage of the soldier, or the joy of the Sybarite.
It seems strange, when thus definitely stated, that such a school should
exist. Yet consider a little what gaps and blanks would disfigure our
gallery and chamber walls, in places that we have long approached with
reverence, if every picture, every statue, were removed from them, of
which the subject was either the vice or the misery of mankind, portrayed
without any moral purpose : consider the innumerable groups having
reference merely to various forms of passion, low or high ; dmnken revels
and brawls among peasants, gambling or fighting scenes among soldiers,
•amours and intrigues among every class, brutal battle pieces, banditti
* Not selfish fear, caased by want of trust in God, or of resolution in the soul.
X/ompare " Modem Painters," toL ii. p. 120.
26 OK THE NATUBB OP GOTHIC ABCHITECTTJBE.
cnbjeotB, gluts of totture, a&d death in famine, wreck, or slaughter, for the
sake merely of the exdtement, — that quickening and suppling of the dull
spirit that cannot be gained for it but by bathing it in blood, afterward to
wither back into stained and stiffened apathy ; and then that whole vast
false heaven of sensual passion, full of nymphs, satyrs, graces, goddesses,
and I know nut what, from its high seyenth circle in Oorreggio's Antiope,
down to the Qreciced ballet>dancers and smirking Cupids of the Parisian
upholsterer. Sweep away all this, remorselessly, and see how much art
we should have left.
And yet these are only the grossest manifestations of the tendency of
the school. There are subtler, yet not less certain, signs of it in the
works of men who stand high in the world's list of sacred painters. I
doubt not that the reader was surprised when I named Murillo among the
men of this third rank. Tet, go into the Dulwich Gallery, and meditate
for a little over that much celebrated picture of the two beggar boys, one
eating, lying on the ground, the other standing beside him. We have
among our own painters one who cannot indeed be set beside Murillo as a
painter of Madonnas, for he is a pure Naturalist, and, never having seen a
Madonna, does not paint any ; but who, as a painter of beggar or peasant
boys, may be set beside Murillo, or any one else, — ^W. Hunt. He loves
peasant boys, because he finds them more roughly and picturesquely
dressed, and more healthily coloured, than others. And he paints all that
he sees in them fearlessly ; all the health and humour, and freshness and
vitality, together with such awkwardness and stupidity, and what else of
negative or positive harm there may be in the creature ; but yet so that on
the whole we love it, and find it perhaps even beautiful, or if not, at least
we see that there is capability of good in it, rather than of evil ; and all is
lighted up by a sunshine and sweet colour that makes the smock frock
as precious as cloth of gold. But look at those two ragged and vicious
vagrants that Murillo has gathered out of the street. You smile at firsts
because they are eating so naturally, and their roguery is so complete.
But is there anything else than roguery there, or was it well for the
painter to give his time to the painting of those repulsive and wid^ed chil-
dren? Do you feel moved with any charity towards children as you look
at them ? Are we the least more likely to take any interest in ragged
schools, or help the next pauper child that comes in our way, because the
painter has shown us a cunning beggar feeding greedily ? Mark the choice
of the act. He might have shown hunger in other ways, and given interest
to even this act of eating, by making the face wasted, or the eye wistful.
But he did not care to do this. He delighted merely in the disgusting
manner of eating, the food filling the cheek ; the boy is not hungry, else
he would not tarn round to talk and grin as he eats.
But observe another point in the lower figure. It lies so that the sole
of the foot is turned towards the spectator; not because it would have
lain less easily in another attitude, but that the painter may draw, and
exhibit, the grey dust engrained in the foot. Do not call this the painting
of nature : it is mere delight in foulness. The lesson, if there be any, in
the picture, is not one whit the stronger. We all know that a beggar's
bare foot cannot be clean ; there is no need to thrust its degradation into
the light, as if no human imagination were vigorous enough for its con-
ception.
The position of the Sensualists, in treatment of landscape, is less dis-
OK THI VATXTSB OF GM)THIC ASCHITBCTUSB. 27
iinctly marked than in that of the figare, because even the wildest
passions of nature are noble ; but the inclination is manifested by careless-
ness in marking generic fonn in trees and flowers; by their prefening
49onfu8ed and irregular arrangements of foliage or foreground to symmetrical
and simple grouping ; by their g^ieral choice of such pioturesqueness as
results from decay, diiBOider, and disease, rather than of that which is con-
sistent with the perfection of the things in which it is found ; and by
their imperfect rendering of the elements of strength and beauty in aU
things. I propose to work out this subject fully in the last volume of
** Modem Painters ;'* but I trust that enough has been here said to enable
the reader to understand the relations of the three great classes of artists,
and therefore also the kinds of morbid condition into which the two highet-
(for the last has no other than a morbid condition) are liable to fall. For,
sinee the function of the Naturalists is to represent, as far as may be, the
whole of nature, and of the Purists to represent what is absolutely good
for some special purpose or time, it is evident that both are liable to
error from shortness of sight, and the last also from weakness of judgment.
I say, in the first place, both may err from shortness of sight, from not
seeing all that there is in nature ; seeing only the outsides of things, or
those points of them which bear least on the matter in hand. For
instance, a modem continental Naturalist sees the anatomy of a limb
thoroughly, but does not see its colour against the sky, which latter fact
is to a painter &r the more important of the two. And because it is
always easier to see the surfiiMe than the depth of things, the full sight
of them requiring the highest powers of penetration, sympathy, and
imagination, the world is full of vulgar Naturalists: not Sensualists,
observe, not men who delight in evil ; but men who never see the deepest
good, and who bring discredit on all painting of Nature by the little that
they discover in her. And the Purist, besides being liable to this same
shortsightedness, is liable also to fatal errors of judgment : for he may
think that good which is not so, and that the highest good which is the
least. And thus the world is full of vulgar Purists,* who bring discredit
on all selection by the silliness of their choice ; and this the more, because
the very becoming a Purist is commonly indicative of some slight degree of
weakness, readiness to be offended, or narrowness of understanding of the
ends of tilings ; the greatest men being, in all times of art. Naturalists,
without any exception ; and the greatest Purists being those who approach
nearest to ^e Naturalists, as Benozzo Gozzoli and Perugino. Hence there
is a tendency in the Naturalists to despise the Purists, and in the Purists
* I reserve for another plaoe the full discussion of this interesting subjeot, which
here would have led me too far ; but it must be noted, in passing, that this vulgar
Purism, which rcgects truth, not because it is ricious, but because it is bumble, and
consists not in choosing what is good, but in disguisins what is rough, extends itself
into every species of art. The most definite instance of it is the dressii^ of characters
of peasantry in an opera or ballet scene : and the walls of our exhibitions are full of
works of art which " exalt nature" in the same way, not by revealing what is great in
the heart, but by smoothing what is coarse in the complexion. There is nothing, I
believe, so vulgar, so hopeless, so indicative of an irretrievably base mind, as this
species of Purism. Of healthy Purism carried to the utmost endurable length in this
mrection, exalting the heart first, and the features with it, perhaps the most charac-
teristic instance I can give is Stothard's vijenette to " Jorasse," in Rogers's Italy ; at
least it would be so if it ooold be seen beside a real grouu of Swiss girls. The poems
of Sogers, compared with those of Crabbe, are admirable instances of the healthiest
Purism and healthiest Naturalism in poetry. The first great Naturalists of Christian
art were Orcagna and Giotto.
20 ON THE NATURE OF GOTHIC ABCH^TECTTJBE^
to be offended vith the Naturalists (not 1^lderstanding them, and coA^
founding them with the Sensualists) ; and this is grievously harmful to both.
Of the various forms of resultant mischief it is not here the place to
speak : the reader may already be somewhat wearied with a statement
which has led us apparently so far from our immediate subject. But the
digression was necessary, in order that I might clearly define the sense in
which I use the word Naturalism when I state it to be the third most
essential characteristic of Gothic architecture. I mean that the Gothic
builders belong to the central or greatest rank in both the classifications of
artists which we have just made ; tbat, considering all artists as either
men of design, men of facts, or men of both, the Gothic builders were
men of both ; and that again, considering all artists as either Purista,
Naturalists, or Sensualists, the Gothic builders were Naturalists.
I say first, that the Gothic builders were of that central class whick
unites fact with design ; but that the part of the work which was more
especially their own was the truthfulness. Their power of artistical inven-
tion or arrangement was not greater than that of Romanesque and Byzantine
workmen : by those workmen they were taught the principles, and from
them received their models, of design ; but to the ornamental feeling and
rich fancy of the Byzantine the Gothic builder added a love of fact which
is never found in the South. Both Greek and Roman used conventional
foliage in their ornament, passing into something that was not foliage at all,
knotting itself into strange cup-like buds or clusters, and growing out of
lifeless rods instead of stems ; the Gothic sculptor received these types, at
first, as things that ought to be, jurt as we have a second time received
them ; but he could not rest in them. He saw there was no veracity in
them, no knowledge, no vitality. Do what he would, he could not help
liking the true leaves better ; and cautiously, a little at a time, he put
more of nature into his work, until at last it was all true, retaining, never-
theless, every valuable character of the original well-disciplined and de-
signed arrangement.
Nor is it only in external and visible subject that the Gothic workman
wrought for truth: he is as firm in his rendering of imaginative as of
actual truth ; that is to say, when an idea would have been by a Soman,
or Byzantine, symbolically represented, the Gothic mind realizes it to the
utmost. For instance, the purgatorial fire is represented in the mosaic
of Torcello (Romanesque) as a red stream, longitudinally striped like a
riband, descending out of the throne of Christ, and gradually extending
itself to envelope the wicked. When we are once informed what this
means, it is enough for its purpose; but the Gothic inventor does not
leave the sign in need of interpretation. He makes the fire as like real
fire as he can ; and in the porch of St. Maclou at Rouen the sculptured
flames burst out of the Hades gate, and flicker up, in writhing tongues of
stone, through the interstices of the niches, as if the church itself were on
fire. This is an extreme instance, but it is all the more illustrative of the
entire difference in temper and thought between the two schools of art, and
of the intense love of veracity which influenced the Gothic design.
I do not say that this love of veracity is always healthy in its operation,
I have above noticed the errors into which it falls from despising design ;
and there is another kind of error noticeable in the instance just given, in
which the love of truth is too hasty, and seizes on a surface truth instead
of an inner one. For in representing the Hades fire, it is not the mere
ON THB KATTTBB OF OOTHIC ABCHITSCtUBE. 29
form of the flame whicli needs most to be told, but its nnqnenchableness,
its Divine ordainment and limitation, and its inner fierceness, not physical
and material, but in being the expression of the wrath of G^od. And
these things are not to be told by imitating the fire that flashes out of a
bundle of sticks. If we think over his symbol a little, ^^e shall perhaps
find that the Romanesque builder told more truth in that likeness of a
blood-red stream, flowing between definite shores, and out of God's throne,
and expanding, as if fed by a perpetual current, into the lake wherein the
wicked are cast, than the Gothic builder in those torch-flickerings about
his niches. But this is not to our immediate purpose; I am not at
present to insist upon the &ults into which the love of truth was led in the
later Gothic times, but on the feeling itself, as a glorious and peculiar
eharacteristic of the Northern builders. For, observe, it is not, even in
the above instance, love of truth, but want of thought, which cmiaes the
fault. The love of truth, as such, is good, but when it is misdirected by
thoughtlessness or over-excited by vanity, and either seizes on facts of
small value, or gathers them chiefly that it may boast of its grasp and
apprehension, its work may well become dull or offensive. Yet let us not,
therefore, blame the inherent love of £bm^, but the incautiousness of their
selection, and impertinence of their statement.
I said, in the second place, that Gothic work, when referred to the
arrangement of all art, as purist, naturalist, or sensualist, was naturalist.
This character follows necessarily on its extreme love of truth, prevailing
over the sense of beauty, and causing it to take delight in portraiture of
every kind, and to express the various characters of the human countenance
and form^ as it did the varieties of leaves and the ruggedness of branches.
And this tendency is both increased and ennobled by the same Christian
humility which we saw expressed in the first character of G-othic work,
its rudeness. For as that resulted from a humility which confessed the
imperfection of the workman^ so this naturalist portraiture is rendered
more faithfal by the humility which confesses the imperfection of the
su2|;ecf . The Gh:eek sculptor could neither bear to confess his own feebleness,
nor to tell the faults of the forms that he portrayed. But the Christian
workman, believing that all is finally, to work together for good, freely
confesses both, and neither seeks to ^guise his own roughness of work,
nor his subject's roughness of make. Yet this frankness being joined, for
the most pai't, with depth of religious feeling ia other directions, and
especially with charity, there is sometimes a tendency to Purism in the
best GK)thic sculpture ; so that it frequently reaches great dignity of form
and tenderness of expression, yet never so as to lose the veracity of
portraiture, wherever portraiture is possible : not exalting its kings into
demi'gods, nor its saints into archangels, but giving what kingliness and
sanctity was in them to the full, mixed with due record of their faults;
and thiis in the most part with a great indifference like that of Scripture
history, which sets down, with unmoved and unexcusing resoluteness, the
virtues and errors of all men of whom it speaks, often leaving the reader
to form his own estimate of them, without an indication of the judgment
of the historian. And this veracity is carried out by the Gothic sciUptors
in the minuteness and generality, as well as the equity, of their delineation :
for they do not limit their art to the portraiture of saints and kings, but
introduce the most familiar scenes and most simple subjects ; filling up the
backgrounds cif Scripture histories with vivid and curious representations-
30 ON THE If ATUSB OF GOTHIC ASCHITBCTUBB.
of the eommonest inddenta of daily iiSd, and ovBiEng theouel'VBS of eveiy
oecanon in which, either as a symhol, or an explanation of a Boene or tune,
the things familiar to the eye of the woikman eoold be introdnoed and
made of account. Hence Cbthic acolptore and painting are not only fall of
▼aluable portnulmre of the greatest men, hat oopions records of all the
domestic customs and inferior arts of the ages in which it flourished. *
There is, however, one direction in which the Naturalism of the Gothic work-
men is peculiarly manifested ; and this direction is eyen more characteristic of
the school than the Naturalism itself ; I mean their peculiar fondness for
the forms of vegetation. In rendering the various eircumstancee of daily
life, £|gyptian and Ninevite sculpture is as frank and as diffuse as the Qoifaie.
From the highest pomps of state or triumphs of battle, to the most trivial
domestic arts and amusements, all is taken advantage of to fill the field of
granite with the perpetual interest of a crowded drama ; and the early Lom-
hardic and Romanesque sculpture is equally copious in its desor^on of the
fiimiliar drcumstanoes of war and the chase. But in all the scenes por-
trayed by the workmen of these nations, vegetation ooemrs only as an expla-
natory accessory ; the reed is introduced to mark the course of the river, ov
the tree to mark the covert of the wild beast^ or the ambush of the enemy,
but there is no especial interest in the forma of the vegetation strong enough
to induce them to make it a subject of separate and accurate study. Again,
among the nations who followed the arts of design exclusively, the fonns of
foliage introduced were meagre and general,, and their real intricacy and lifb
were neither admired nor expressed. But to the Qothic workman the living
foliage became a subject of intense affection, and he struggled to render all
its characters with as much aceuxacy as was compatible with the laws of
his design and the nature of his material, not unfrequently tempted in his
enthusiasm to transgress the one and disguise the other.
There is a peculiar significance in this, indicative both of higher civiliza-
tion and gentler temperament, than had before been manifested in architec-
ture. Rudeness, and the love of change, which we have insisted upon as
the first elements of Gothic, are also elements common to all healthy
schools. But here is a softer element mingled with them, peculiar to. the
Gothic itself. The rudeness or ignorance which would have been painfblly
exposed in the treatment of the human form, is still not so great as to pre*>
vent the successful rendering of the wayside herbage ; and the love of
change, which becomes morbid and feveri^ in following the haste of the
hunter, and the rage of the combatant, is at once soothed and satisfied as it
watches the wandering of the tendril, and the budding of the flower. Nor
is this all : the new direction of mental interest marks an infinite change in
the means and the habits of life. The nations whose chief support was in the
chase, whose chief interest was in the battle, whose chief pleasure was in
the banquet, would take small care respecting the shapes of leaves and
flowers ; and notice little in the forms of the forest trees which sheltered
them, except the signs indicative of the wood which would make the
toughest lance, the closest roof, or the clearest fire. The affectionate ob*
aervation of the grace and outward character of vegetation is the sure sign
* The best art either represents the facts of its own day, or, if facts of the past,
ezpreases them with aocessories of the time in which the work was done. AU good
art, representing past events, is therefore full of the most frank anachronism, and
always ou^ht to Be. No painter has any business to be an antiquarian. We do not
want his mipressions or suppofitions respecting things that are past. We want his
olear assertions respecting tmngs present.
OK THE VMkTVUE OJT GOTHIC JkBCHITXOTITBB. SI
of a more tranquil and gentle existence, sastained by the gifts, and glad-
dened by the splendour of the earth. In that careful distinction of speoieB,
and richness of delicate and undisturbed organization, which characterize
the Gothic design, there is the history of rural and thoughtful life, influ-
enced by habitual tenderness, and devoted to subtle inquiry; and every
discriminating and delicate touch of the chisel, as it rounds the petal or
guides the branch, is a prophecy of the development of the entire body of
the natural sciences, beginning with that of medicine, of the recovery of
literature, and the establishment of the most necessary principies of domestic
wisdom and national peace.
I have before alluded to the strange and vain suppositLon, that the
original conception of GK>thic architecture had been derived from vegetation^.
— &om the symmetry of avenues, and the interlacing of branches. It is a
supposition which never could have existed for a moment in the mind of
any person acquainted with early Gbthic ; but, however idle as a theory, it
is most valuable as a testimony to the character of the perfected style. It
is precisely because the reverse of this theory is the &ct, because I3ie
(Gothic did not arise out of, but develope itself into» a resembkmce to vege-
tation, that this resemblance is so instructive as an indication of the temper
of the builders. It was no chance suggestion of the form of an arch from,
the bending of a bough, but a gradual and continual discovery of a beauly
in natural forms which could be more and more perfectly transferred inta*
those of stone, that influenced at once the heart of the people, and the form
of the edifice. The Gbthic architecture arose in massy and mountainous
strength, axe-hewn, and ironrbound, block heaved upon block bythemonk's^
enthusiasm and the soldier's force ; and cramped and stanchioned into sudi.
weight of grisly waU, as might bury the anchoret in darkness, and beatbadL
the utmost storm of battle, suffering but by the same narrow crodet tbe
passing of the sunbeam or of the arrow. Gradually, as that monkish en-
thusiasm became more thoughtful, and as the sound of war became more
and more intermittent beyond the gates of the convent or the keep^ the:
stony pillar grew slender and the vaulted roof grew light, till they had
wreathed themselves into the semblance of the summer woods at their fiadresl^
and of the dead field-flowers, long trodden down in blood, sweet monumen-
tal statues were set to bloom for ever, beneath the porch of the temple, oar
the canopy of the tomb.
Nor is it only as a sign of greater gentleness or refinement of mind, but
as a proof of the best possible direction of this refinement, that the teui*
dency of the Gt)thic to the expression of vegetative life is to be admired;
That sentence of Genesis, **I have given thee every green herb for meat,"
like all the rest of the book, has a profound symbolical as well as a litendi
meaning. It is not merely the nourishment of the body, but the food of
the soul, that is intended. The green herb is, of all nature, that which is
most essential to the healthy spiritual life of man. Most of us do not need,
fine scenery ; the precipice and the mountain peak are not intended to be
seen by all men, — perhaps their power is greatest over tiiose who are unao^
customed to them. But trees, and fields, and flowers were made for all, and are
necessary for all. God has connected the labour which is essential to the bodily
sustenance, with the pleasures which are healthiest for the heart ; and while
He made the ground stubborn, He made its herbage fragrant, and its blossoms
fair. The proudest architecture that man can build has no high er honour than
to bear the image and recal the memory of that grass of the field which is^ at
32 OV THB NATURE OF GOTHIC ABOHITECTtTBX.
onoe, the type and the support of his existence ; the goodly bnilding is then
most glorious when it is sculptured into the likeness of the leaves of Para-
dise ; and the great Gothic spirit, as we showed it to be noble in its dis-
quietude, is also noble in its hold of nature ; it is, indeed, like the dove of
Noah, in that she found no rest upon the &ce of the waters, — but like her
in this also, ** Lo, iir hbr mouth was an olive branoh, plucked off."
The fourth essential element of the Gothic mind was abore stated to be
the sense of the Grotbsqub ; but I shall defer the endeavour to define this
most curious and subtle character until we have occasion to examine one
of the divisions of the Renaissance schools, which was morbidly influenced
by it. It is the less necessary to insist upon it here, because every reader
£uniliar with Gothic architecture must understand what I mean, and
will, I believe, have no hesitation in admitting that the tendency to
delight in fantastic and ludicrous, as well as in sublime, images, is a
universal instinct of the Gothic imagination.
The fifth element above named was Riqiditt ; and this character I must
endeavour carefully tu define, for neither the word I have used, nor any
other that I can think of, will express it accurately. For I mean, not
merely stable, but active rigidity ; the peculiar enezigy which gives tension
to movement, and stiffness to resistance, which makes the fiercest light-
ning forked rather than curved, and the stoutest oak-branch angular rather
than bending, and is as much seen in the quivering of the lance as in the
glittering of the ioide.
I have before had occasion to note some manifestations of this
energy or fixedness; but it must be still more attentively considered
here, as it shows itself throughout the whole structure and deco-
ration of Gothic work. Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the
most part, by their own weight and mass, one stone passively incumbent on
another : but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness analo-
gous to that of the bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree ; an elastic tension
and communication of force from part to part, and also a studious expres-
sion of this throughout every visible line of the building. And, in like
manner, the Greek and Egyptian ornament is either mere surface engraving,
as if the fiftce of the wall had been stamped with a seal, or its lines are
flowing, lithe, and luxuriant ; in either case, there is no expression of
energy in the framework of the ornament itself. But the Gothic ornament
stands out in prickly independence, and frosty fortitude, jutting into
crockets, and freezing into pinnacles ; here starting up into a monster, there
germinating into a blossom ; anon knitting itself into a branch, alternately
thorny, bossy, and bristly, or writhed into every form of nervous entangle-
ment ; but, even when most graceful, never for an instant languid, always
quickset ; erring, if at all, ever on the side of brusquerie.
The feelings or habits in the workman which give rise to this character
in the work, are more complicated and various than those indicated by any
other sculptural expression hitherto named. There is, first, the habit of
hard and rapid working ; the industry of the tribes of the North,
quickened by the coldness of the climate, and giving an expression of
sharp energy to all they do, as opposed to the languor of the Southern
trib^ however much of fire there may be in the heart of that
languor, for lava itself may flow languidly. There is also the habit
of finding enjoyment in the signs of cold, which is never found, I
believe^ in the inhabitants of countries south of the Alps. Cold is to them
OK THB NITUBE OF GOTHIC ABCHITE0T17SS. 33
an unredeemed 6vil, to be saffered, and foiigotten as soon as may be ; but
the loDg winter of ihe North foroes the Goth (I mean the EngJiRhmiui,
Prenchmao, Dane, or German), if he would lead a hi^py life at all, to
find sonroes of happiness in fonl weatlier as well as Mr, iaad to rejoice in
the leafiess as well as in Uie shady forest. And this we do with all our
iiearts ; finding perhaps nearly as much contentment by the Christmas fire
as in the summer sunshine, and gaining health and E^zength on the iee-
fifilds of winter, as well as among Uie meadows of spring. So that theie is
nothing adverse or painful to our feelings in the cramped and stiffened
structure of vegetation checked by cold ; and instead of seeking, like the
fiouihem sculptor, to express only the sofibneBS of lea&ge nouri^ed in all
tenderness, and tempted into all luxoiiaiioe by warm winds and glowing
rays, we find pleasure in dwelling upon the crabbed, perverse, and morose
animation of plants that have knownlitile kindnessfrom earth or heaven, but,
iseason after season, bave had their best efforts palmed by ficost, their bri^test
buds buried under snow, and their goodliest limbs lopped by tempest
There are many subtle sympathies and affections which join to confirm
the Gothic mind in this peculiar dioioe of sulgeet ; and when we add to the
Influence of these, the necessitftes eonseqaent upon the employment of a
rougher material, compelling the workman to seek for vigour of ^eot
rather than refinement of texture or aoeuiaey of fi>nn, we have direct and
manifest causes for much of the difference between the northeni and southern
cast of conception : but there are indirect causes holding a £ur more impor-
tant place in the GKithic heart, thoqgh leas immediate in th^ JnAuenofi on
design. Sti-ength of will, independeooe of chaiaoter, resolutenesB of
purpose, impatience of undue control, and that general tendency to set the
individual reason against autilMNril^, and the individual deed against destiny,
which, in the Northern tribes, hais oi^posed itself throm^out all ages to the
langu^ submission, in the Southern, of Uiought to tradition, and purpoee
to fiktality, are all more or less traceable in tibe rigid lines, vigorous and
various masses, and daringly projecting and independent structure ci i^
Iforthem Gothic ornament : while the <9posite feedings are in like manner
legible in the graceful and softly guided waves aad wreathed bands, in
which Southern decoration is constantly disposed ; in its tendency to lose its
independence, and fuse itself into the surface of the masses upon which it
is traced ; and in the expression seen so oft^ in the anangement of those
masses themselves, of an abandomnent of their strei^th to an inevitable
necessity, or a listless repose.
There is virtue in the measure, and error in the excess, of both iheK
charactere of mind, and in both <^ the styles which they have created;
the best architecture, and the best temper, are those which unite tiwm
both ; and this fifth impulse of the Gothic heart is therefore that which
needs most caution in its indulgence. It is more definitely Gt>thie than
any other, but the best Gothic building is not that which is most Gothic : it
ean hardly be too frank in its confession of rudeness, hardly too rich in its
changefulness, hardly too fiiiithful in its naturalism ; but it may go too fior
in its rigidity, aad, like the great Puritan spirit in its extreme, lose itself
either in frivolity of division, or perversity of purpose.* It actually did so
* See the account of the meeting at Talla Linna, in 1682, given in the foorth chapter
of the "Heart of Midlothian." At lencth ihej srriTedftt the ooaofaiaioii that "Uiey
who owned (or allowed) such names aa Monday, Tneadaj, January, Febraary, and ao
forth, aervea themaelTes heirs to the same if not greater punianment than had bee»
denounced against the idolaters of old."
34 OK THE KATTTBB 07 GOTHIC ABCHITECTUBE.
in itB later timefl ; but it is gladdening to remember that in its utmost
nobleness, the rery temper which has been thought most adverse to it, the
Protestant spirit of self-dependence and inquiry, was expressed in its every
line. Faith and aspiration there were, in every Christian eoclesiasticid
building, from the first century to the fifteenth ; but the moral habits to
which England in this age owes the kind of greatness that she has, — the
habits of philosophical investigation, of accurate thought, of domestic
seclusion and independence, of stem self-reliance, and sincere upright
searching into religious truth, — ^were only traceable in the features which
were the distinctive creation of the Gothic schools, in the veined foliage,
and thorny fretwbrk, and shadowy niche, and buttressed pier, and fearless
height of subtle pinnacle and crested tower, sent like an ^'unperplexed
question up to Heaven."*
Last, because the least essential, of the constituent elements of this noble
school, was placed that of Redundance, — ^the uncalculating bestowal of the
wealth of its labour. There is, indeed, much Gl-othic, and that of the best
period, in which this element is hardly traceable, and which depends for
its effect almost exclusively on loveliness of simple design and grace of un-
involved proportion : still, in the most characteristic buildings, a certain
portion of their effect depends upon accumulation of ornament ; and many
of those which have most influence on the minds of men, have attained it
by means of this attribute alone. And, although, by careful study of the
school, it is possible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be better
contented by a few perfect lines than by a whole fafade covered with fret-
work, the building which only satisfies such a taste is not to be considered
the best. For the very first requirement of Gl-othic architecture being,^ as
we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid, and appeal to the admira-
tion, of the [rudest as well as the most refined minds, the richness of the
work is, paradoxical as the statement may appear, a part of its humility.
Ko architecture is so haughty as that wUch is simple ; which refuses to
address the eye, except in a few dear and forceful lines ; which implies, in
offering so little to our regards, that all it has offered is perfect ; and dis-
dains, either by the complexity or the attractiveness of its features, to em-
barrass our investigation, or betray us into delight. That humility which
is the very life of the Gfothic school, is shown not only in the imperfection,
but in the accumulation, of ornament. The inferior rank of the workman
is often shown as much in the richness as the roughness of his work ; and
if the co-operatiion of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart, are to
be receive^ ^^ m^utt be content to allow Hie redundance whidi disguises the
&ilure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the inattentive. T^ere are,
however, far nobler interests mingling, in the Qothic heart, with the rude
love of decorative accumulation : a magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as
if it never could do enough to reach the fulness of its ideal ; an unselfish-
ness of sacrifice, which would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar
than stand idle in the market ; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the
fulness and wealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism
whose operation we have already endeavoured to define. The sculptor who
sought for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quickly and
* See the beautiAal description of Florence in EUzabeth Browning's " Caea Gnidt
Windows," which is not only a noble poem, but the only book I have seen which, fa-
vouring the Liberal cause in Italy, gires a just account of the incapacities of
the modem Italian.
ON THE NATUBS OV GOTHIC ABCHITECTXrBX. 35
deeply feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, nor richness
that of repose ; and every hour which he spent in the study of the minute
and varioos work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly the barrenness of
what was best in that of man : nor is it to be wondered at, that, seeing
her perfect and exquisite creations' poured forth in a profusion which con-
ception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he should think that it ill
became him to be niggiudly of his own rude craftsmanship ; and where he
saw throughout the universe a f&ultless beauty lavished on measureless
spaces of broidered field and blooming mountain, to grudge his poor and
imperfect labour to the few stones that he had raised one upon another,
for habitation or memorial. The years of his life passed away before his
task was accomplished ; but generation succeeded generation with un-
wearied enthusiasm, and the ca&edral front was at last lost in the tapestry
of its traceries, like a rock among the thickets and herbage of spring.
We have now, I believe, obtained a view approaching to completeness of
the various moral or imaginative elements which composed the inner spirit
of Gothic architecture. We have, in the second place, to define its out-
ward form.
Now, as the Gothic spirit is made up of several elements, some of
which may, in particular examx>le8, be wanting, so the Gothic form is
made up of minor conditions of form, some of which may, in particular
examples, be imperfectly developed.
We cannot say, therefore, that a building is either Gothic or not Gothic
in form, any more than we can in spirit. We can only say that it is
more or less Gothic, in proportion to the number of Gothic forms which
it unites.
There have been made lately many subtle and ingenious endeavours to
base the definition of Gothic form entirely upon the roof-vaulting ; endea-
vours which are both forced and futile : for many of the best Gothic build-
ings in the world have roofs of timber, which have no more connexion with
the main structure of the walls of the edifice than a hat has with that of
the head it protects ; and other Gh)thic buildings are merely enclosures of
spaces, as ramparts and walls, or enclosures of s^ens or cloisters, and
have no roofs at all, in the sense in which the word ''roof* is commonly
accepted. But every reader who has ever taken ti^e slightest interest in
architecture must know that there is a great popular impression on this
matter, which maintains itself stiffly in its old form, in spite of all ratioci-
nation and definition; namely, that a fiat lintel from pillar to pillar is
Grecian, a round arch Norman or Romanesque, and a pointed arch Gt>thic.
And the old popular notion, as far as it goes, is perfectly right, and can
never be bettered. The most striking outward feature in all Gothic archi-
tecture is, that it is composed of pointed arches, as in Bomanesque that it
is in like manner composed of round ; and this distinction would be quite
as clear, thou^ the roofs were taken off every cathedral in Europe. And
yet, if we examine carefully into the real force and meaning of the term
** roof," we shall perhaps be able to retain the old popular idea in a defini-
tion of Gothic architecture which shall also express whatever dependence
that architecture has upon true forms of roofing.
In Chap. XIII. of the first volume, the reader will remember that roofs
were considered as generally divided into two parts : the roof proper, that is
to say, the shell, vault, or ceiling, internally visible ; and the roof-mask,
which protects this lower roof from the weatiier. In some buildings these
do OK THE NATURE OP GOTHIC AECHITECTTTEE.
parts are united in one framework ; but, in most, they are more or less
independent of each other, and in nearly all Qothic bnildings there is aoon-
aiderable interval between them.
Now it will often happen, as above noticed, that owing to the nature of
the apartments required, or the materials at hand, the roof proper may be
flat, cored, or domed, in buildings which in their walls employ pointed
arches, and are, id the straitest sense of the word, Gbthic in all other
respects. Tet so far forth as the roofing alone is concerned, they are not
Gothic unless the pointed arch be the principal form adopted either in the
stone vaulting or the timbers of the roof proper.
I shall say then, in the first place, tiiat ** Gothic architecture is that
which uses, if possible, the pointed arch in the roof proper." This is the
first step in our definition.
Secondly* Although there maybe manyadyisablo or necessary forms for
the lower roof or ceiling, there is, in cold countries exposed to rain and
snow, only one advisal^e form for iJie roof-mask, and that is the gable, for
this alone will throw off both rain and snow from all parts of its surface as
speedily as possible. Snow can lodge on the top of a dome, not on the
ridge of a gable. And thus, as £ar as roofing is concerned, the gable is a
far more essential feature of Northern architecture than the pointed -rault,
for the one is a thorough necessity, the other often a graceful oonven-
tionality ; the gable occurs in the timber roof of every dwelling-house and
every cottage, but not the vault ; and the gable built on a polygonal or
circular plan, is the origin of the turret and spire ;* and all the so-called
aspiration of Gothic architecture is, as above noticed (Vol. I. Chap. XII.
§ VI.), nothing more than its developement. So that we must add to our
definition another clause, which will be, at present, by &r the most impor-
tant, and it will stand thus : '* Gothic architecture is that which uses the
pointed arch for the roof proper, and the gable for the roof-mask."
And here, in passing, let us notice a principle as true in architecture as
in morals. It is not the compelled, but the wUftd, transgression of law
which corrupts the character. Sin is not in the act, but in tiie choice. It
is a law for Gk)thic architecture, that it shall use the pointed arch for its
roof proper; but because, in many cases of domestic building, this
becomes impossible for want of room (the whole height of the apart-
ment being required every where), or in various other ways inconvenient,
flat ceilings may be used, and yet the Gh)thic shall not lose its purity.
But in the roof-mask, th^ can be no necessity nor reason for a change of
form : the gable is the best ; and if any other — dome, or bulging crown, or
whatsoever else — ^be employed at all, it must be in pure caprice, and wilful
transgression of law. And wherever, therefore, this is done, the Gothic
has lost its character ; it is pure Gothic no more.
And this last clause of the definition is to be more strongly insisted
upon, because it includes multitudes of buildings, especially domestic,
which are Gothic in spirit, but which we are not in the habit of embracing in
our general conception of Gothic architecture ; multitudes of street dwelling-
houses, and straggling country farm-houses, built with little care for
beauty, or observance of Gothic laws in vaults or windows, and yet main
taioing their character by the sharp and quaint gables of the roofs. And,
for the reason just given, a house is £bt more Gothic which has square
* Salisbury spire is oi^ a tower with a polygonal gabled roof of stone, and so also
' "^"lited spires of daen and Coutaooes.
ON THE BTATUEB OF GOTHIC ABCHITZCTITSE. 37
windows, and a boldly gabled roof, than one which has pointed arches for
the windows, and a domed or flat roof. For it often happened in the best
Gothic times, as it must in all times, that it was more easy and convenient
to make a window square than pointed : not but that, as above emphatically
stated, the richness of church architecture was also found in domestic;
and systematically **when the pointed arch was used in the church it was
used in the street^'' only in all times there were cases in which men could
not build as they would, and were obliged to construct their doors or
windows in the readist way ; and this readiest way was then, in small
work, as it will be to the end of
time, to put a flat stone for & Pig. VIII.
lintel, and build the windows as
in Fig. Vin. ; and the occurrence
of such windows in a building or
a street will not un-Gt>thicize
them, so long as the bold gable
Toof be retained, and the ^irit of
the work be visibly Gothic in
other respects. But if the roof
be wilfully and conspicuously of any other form than the gable, — ^if it be
domed, or Turkish, or Chinese, — ^the building has positive corruption
mingled with its Cbthic elements, in proportion to the conspicuousness of
the roof; and, if not absolutely un-Gothicized, can maintain its character
only by such vigour of vital Gothic energy in other parts as shall cause the
roof to be forgotten, thrown off like an eschar from the living frame.
KeverthelesB, we must always admit that it may be forgotten, and that if
the Gothic seal be indeed set firmly on the walls, we are not to cavil at
the forms reserved for the tiles and leads. For, observe, as our definition
at present stands, being understood of large roofs only, it will allow a
conical glass-furnace to be a Gothic building; but will not allow so
much, either of the Duomo of Florence, or the Baptistery of Pisa. We
must either mend it, therefore, or understand it in some broader sense.
And now, if the reader will look back to the fifth paragraph of Chap.
Ill, VoL I., he will find that I carefully extended my definition of a roof
80 as to include more than is usually understood by the term. It was there
said to be the covering of a space, narrow or wide. It does not in the
least signify, with respect to the real nature of the covering, whether the
space protected be two feet wide^ or ten ; though in the one case we call
the protection an arch, in the other a vault or roof. But the real point to
be considered isy the manner in which this protection stands, and not whe-
ther it is narrow or broad. We call the vaulting of a bridge "an arch,"
because it is narrow with respect to the river it crosses ; but if it were
built above us on the ground, we should call it a waggon vault, because
then we should feel the breadth of it. The real question is the nature of
the curve, not the extent of space over which it is carried : and this is
more the ease with respect to Gothic than to any other architecture ; for,
in the greater number of instances, the form of the roof is entirely depen-
dent on the ribs ; the domical shells being ctmstmcted in all kinds of
inclinations, quite indeterminable by the eye, and all that is definite in
their character being fixed by the curves of the ribs.
Let us then consider our definition as including the narrowest arch, or
tracery bar, as well as the broadest roof, and it will be nearly a perfect one.
Fig. X.
38 ON THE NATUBE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTUBE.
Fig. DC For the fact is, that all good Qothic is nothing more than
the development, in various ways, and on every conceivable
scale, of the group formed by the pointed arch for the
bearing line bdow, and the gaUe for the protecting line
above ; and from the huge, grey, shaly slope of the
cathedral roof, with its elastic pointed vaults beneath,
to the slight crown-like points that enrich the smallest
niche of its doorway, one law and one expression will be
found in all. The modes of support and of decoration
are infinitely various, but the real
character of the building, in all
good Gfothic, depends upon the single
lines of the gable over the pointed
arch. Fig. IX., endlessly rearranged
or repeated. G?he larger woodcut,
Fig. X., represents three character-
istic conditions of the treatment of
the group ; a, from a tomb at Verona
(1328) ; by one of the lateral porches
at Abbeville ; c, one of tiie up
permost points of the great western
facade of Bouen Cathedral ; both
these last being, I believe, early
work of the fifteenth century. The
forms of the pure early English
and French Gothic are too well
known to need any notice ; my
reason will appear presently for
choosing, by way of example, these
somewhat rare conditions.
But, first, let us try whether we
cannot get the forms of the other
great architectures of the world
broadly expressed by relations of
the same lines into which we have
compressed the Qothic. We may
easily do this if the reader will first
allow me to remind him of the true
nature of the pointed arch, as it was
expressed in § x. Chap. X. of the
first volume. It was said there,
that it ought to be called a *' curved
gable," for, strictly speaking, an
* * arch" cannot be * * pointed.'* The
so-called pointed arch ought always
to be considered as a gable, with its
sides curved in order to enable them
to bear pressure from without.
Thus considering it, there are but
three ways in which an interval
between piers can be bridged, — ^the
three ways represented by a b and
ON THB KATXSBB OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTUBS.
39
c, Fig. XL, A, the lintel; b,
the ronnd arch; o, the gable.
All the architects in the world
will never discover any other ways
of bridging a space than these
three ; they may vary the curve of
the arch, or cnrve the sides of the
gable, or break them ; bat in doing
this they are merely modifying or
subdividing, not adding to the
generic forms.
Now there are three good archi-
tectures in the world, and there
never can bo more, correspondent to
each of these three simple ways of
covering in a space, which is the
original function of all architectures.
And those three ai'chitectures are
pure exactly in proportion to the
simplicity and directness with which c
they express the condition of roof-
ing on which they are founded. They have many interesting varieties,
according to their scale, manner of decoration, and character of the nations
by whom tiiey are practised, but all their varieties are finally referable
to the three great heads —
A, Greek : Architecture of the Fig. XI.
Lintel.
B, Komanesque: Architecture
of the Eound Arch.
c, Qothic: Architecture of the
Gable. a b o
The three names, Greek, Komanesque, and Gothic, are indeed inaccu-
rate when used in this vast sense, because they imply national limitations ;
but the three architectures may nevertheless not unfitly receive their
names from those nations by whom they were carried to the highest perfec-
tion. We may thus briefly state their existing varieties.
A. Grbbk : Lintel Architecture. The worst of the three ; and, con-
mdered, with reference to stone construction, always in some measure
barbarous. Its simplest tyx)e is Stonehenge; its most refined, the Par-
thenon ; its noblest, the Temple of Eamak.
In the hands of the Egyptian, it is sublime ; in those of the Greek, pure ;
in those of the Boman, rich ; and in those of the Renaissance builder,
effeminate.
B. BoMANBSQUB *. Bouud-arch Architecture. Never thoroughly deve-
loped until Christian times. It falls into two great branches, Eastern and
Western, or Byzantine and Lombardic ; changing respectively in process of
time, with certain helps from each other, into Arabian Gothic, and Teu-
tonic Gothic. Its most perfect Lombardic type is the Duomo of Pisa ; its
most perfect Byzantine type (I believe), St. Mark's at Venice. Its highest
glory is, that it has no corruption. It perishes in giving birth to another
architecture as noble as itself.
(n ^
40 Oir THE NATirSS OT GOTHIC ABCHITSCTrBB.
0. Gothic : Architecture of the Gable. The daughter of the Boman-
esque; and, like the Bomanesqne, divided into two great branches.
Western and Eastern, or Pure Gothic and Arabian Gothic ; of which the
latter is called Gothic, only because it has many €K>thic forms, pointed
arches, vaults, &c., but its spirit remains Bysantine, more especially in
the form of the ro<^-maak, of which with respect to these three great fiuni*
lies, we have next to determine the tyjMcal form.
For, observe, the distinctions we have hitiierto beeii stating depend on the
form of the stones first laid from pier to pier ; tiiat is to say, of the simplest
condition of rooHs proper. Adding the relations of the roof-mask to these
lines, we shall have the perfect type of form for each school.
Tig- TTT, In theGreek, the Western
A
j^
Bomanesque^ and Western
Gothie, the roof-mask is
the gable; in the Eastern
Bomanesqne, and Eastern
y\. €K>thic, it is the d<Mne : but
' N I have not studied the roof-
ing ci either of these last two
groups, and shall not venture
to generalize them in a dia-
^ gram. But the three groups,
in the hands of the Western builders, may be thus simply represented r
o, Fig. XII., Greek;* 5, Western Bomanesque; e, Western, or true,
Gothic.
Now, observe, first, that the relation of the roof-mask to tlie roof proper,,
in the Greek type, forms that pediment which gives its most striking
character to the temple, and .is the principal recipient of its sculptural
decoration. The relation of these lines, therefore, is just as important in
the Greek as in the Gothic schools.
Secondly, ihe reader must observe the d^erenee of steepness in the
Bomanesque and Gothic gables. This is not an unimportant distinction,
nor an undecided one. The Bomanesque gable does not pass gradually
into the more elevated form ; there is a great gulf between the two : the
whole effect of all Southern architecture being dependent upon the use of
the flat gable, and of all Northern upon that of the acute. I need not
here dwdl upon the difference between the lines of an Italian village, or
the flat tops of most Italian towers, and the peaked gables and spires of
the North, attaining their most fantastic developement, I believe, in Bel-
gium : but it may be well to state the law of separation, namely, that a
6k)thie gable mtut have all its angles acute, and a Bomanesque one
mwt have the upper one obtuse : or, to give the reader a simple practical
rule, take any gable^ a or b. Fig. XIII., on the next page, and strike a semi-
* The reader is not to snppose that Greek arehiteotiire had ahniye, <nr often, flat
ceiHngs, becaose I call its lintel the roof pKHMr. He mast remember I alwa^ use
these tenns of the first simple arrangements of materials that bridee a space ; brmging
in tfa« real roof afterwards, if I can. In the ease of Greek temples it wonld be yain
to refer their stmctare to the real roof, for many wore hnMsthrai, and without a noi
at aQ. I am onfortunatefy more ignorant of Egjrptian roofing than even of Arabian, so
that I cannot brine this school into the diagram; bat the gable appears to have been
macn^ently used for a bearing roof. See Mr. Fergnsson's sectum of the Fpimid
of eeeseh, "Principles of Beauty in Art," Plate L, and his ezpresaiODS of admiratioa
of Egyptian roof masonry, page 201.
ON THE NA,TTTSE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTtTBE.
Fig. XIII.
41
circle onits base ; if its top rises
aboTe the semicircle, as at h,
it is a Gothic gable ; if it falls
beneath it, a Romanesque one ;
bnt the best forms in each
group are those which are
distinctly- steep, or distinctly
low. In the figure, / is, per-
haps, the ayerage of Euman-
esque slope, and g of Gotiiic.
But although we do not find
a transition from, one school
into the other in the slope of
the gables, there is often a
confusion between the two / 9
schools in the association of the
gable with the arch below it. It has just been stated that the pure Ro-
manesque condition is the round arch under the low gable, a, Fig. XIV.
and the pure GK)thic condition is the pointed arch under the high gable, 6.
But in the passage from one style to the other, we sometimes find the
conditions reversed ; the pointed arch under a low gable, as d, or the
two round arch under a high gable, as c. The form d occurs in the tombs
of Yerona, and c in the doors of Venice.
Fig. XIV.
r\
We have thus determined the relation of Gbthic to the other archi-
tectures of the world, as fScur as regards the main lines of its construction ;
but there is still one word which needs to be added to our definition of its
form, with respect to a part of its decoration, which rises out of that
construction. We have seen that the first condition of its form is,
that it shall have pointed arches. When Gothic is perfect, therefore,
it will follow that the pointed arches must be built in the strongest
possible manner.
Now, if the reader wiU look back to Chapter XI. of Vol. I., he will
find the subject of the masonry of the pointed arch discussed at length,
and l^e conclusion deduced, that of all possible forms of the pointed^rch
(a certain weight of material being given), that generically represent^ at
e,. Fig. XV., on the next page, is the strongest. In fact, the reader
Ojr THE KATITSE OT GOTHIC ABGHITBCTtrBS.
Kg. XV. can see in a moment that the
weakness of the pointed arch is
in its flanks, and that by merely
thickening them gradually at
this point all chance of fractnre
is remoTed. Or, perhaps, more
simply stUl : — Suppose a gable
built of stone, as at a, and
pressed upon firom without by a
weight in the direction of the
arrow, clearly it would be liable
to &11 in, as at 6. To preyent
this, we make a pointed arch
of it, as at c/ and now it cannot
faU inwards, but if pressed upon
from aboTe may give wslj out-
wards, as at d. But at last we
build it as at 0, and now it can
neither fall out nor in.
The forms of arch thus ob-
tained, with a pointed projection
called a cusp on each side,
must for ever be delightfal to
the human mind, as beiog ex-
pressive of the utmost strength
and permanency obtainable with
c a given mass of material. But
it was not by any such process of
reasoning, nor with any reference to laws of construction, that the cusp
was originally invented. It is merely the special application to the arch
of the great ornamental system of Foliation ; or the adaptation of the forms
of leafage which has been above insisted upon as the principal characteristic of
Gothic Naturalism. This love of foliage
was exactly proportioned, in its inten-
sity, to the increase of strength in the
Qotiiic spirit : in the Southern Gk>thic it
is soft leafage that is most loved;
in the Northern, thorny leafage. And
if we take up any Northern illuminated
manusoript of the great Gothic time,
we shall find eveiy one of its leaf oma*
ments surrounded by a thorny structure
laid round it in gold or in colour;
sometimes apparently copied &ithfully
from the prickly development of the
root of the leaf in the thistle, running
along the stems and braaches exactly
as the thistle leaf does along its own
stem, and with sharp spines proceeding
from the points, as in Fig. XYI. At
other times, and for the most part in
work of the thirteenth century, the
Fig. XVI.
OS THX KATtTBB 07 GOTHIC ABCHITXCTUBB. 42
golden ground takes the fonn of pure and seyere cnsps, sometimes en-
closing ^e leaves, sometimes filling up the forks of the branches (as in the
example fig. 1. Plate I. Vol: III.), passing imperceptibly from the distinctly
Kg. XVII.
T^etable condition (in which it is
just as certainly representative of
the thorn, as other parts of the de-
sign are of the bud, leaf, and fruit)
into the crests on the necks, or the
membranous sails of the wings,
of serpents, dragons, and other
grotesques, as in Fig. XVIL, and
into rich and vagae fantasies of
curvature; among which, however,
the pure cusped system of the
pointed arch is continually dis-
cernible, not accidentally, but de-
signedly indicated, and connecting
itself with the liteiallyarchitectural
portions of the design.
The system, then, of what is
called Foliation, whether simple, as in the cusped arch, or complicated,
as in tracery, rose out of this love of leafage ; not that the form of the arch
is intended to imitcUe a leaf, but to be invested with the same cJiaracters of
hecmty which the designer had discovered in the leaf. Observe, there is a
wide difference between these two intentions. The idea that large Gothic
structure, in arches and roofs, was intended to imitate vegetation is, i&
above noticed, untenable for an instant in the front of facts. But the
GK)thic builder perceived that, in the leaves which he copied for his minor
decorations, there was a peculiar beauty, arising from certain characters
of curvature in outline, and certain methods of subdivision and of radiation
in structure. On a small scale, in his sculptures and his missal-painting,
he copied the leaf or thorn itself; on a la^e scale he adopted from it its
Abstract sources of beauty, and gave the same kinds of curvatures and the
same species of subdivision to the outline of his arches, so far as was con-
sistent with their strength, never, in any single instance, suggesting the
resemblance to leafikge by irregularity <tf outline^ but keeping the structure
perfectly simple, and, as we have seen, so consistent with the best principles
of masonry, that in the finest Gothic designs of arches, which are always
m^Ze-cusped (the cinquefoiled arch being licentious, though in early work
often very lovely), it is literally impossible, without consulting the context
of the building, to say whether the ousps have been added for the sake of
beauty or of strength ; nor, though in mediaeval architecture l&ey were, I
believe, assuredly first employed in mere love of their picturesque form, am
I absolutely certain that their earliest invention was not a structural effort.
For the earliest cusps with which I am acquainted are those used in the
vaults of the great galleries of the Serapeum, discovered in 1850 by M.
ACaniette at Memphis, and described by Colonel Hamilton in a paper read
in February last before the Royal Society of Literature.* The roofs of its
galleries were admirably shown in Colonel Hamilton's drawings made to
scale upon the spot, and their profile is a cusped round arch, perfectly pure
* See " Atheiueun," Maroh 61^, 1S63.
4A OTS THE NATUBB OF GOTHIC ABCHITBCTUBB.
and simple; but whether thrown into this form for the sake of strength or
of grace, I am unable to say.
It is evident, howerer, that the structural advantage of the cusp is
available only in the case of arches on a comparatively small scale. If the
arch becomes very large, the projections under the flanks must become too
ponderous to be secure ; the suspended weight of stone would be liable to
break off, and such arches are therefore never constructed with heavy
cusps, but rendered secure by general mass of masonry ; and with ad-
ditional appearance of support may be thought necessary (sometimes a
considerable degree of actual support) is given by means of tnicery.
Of what I stated in the second chapter of the *^ Seven Lamps" respect-
ing the nature of tracery, I need repeat here only this much, that it bisgan
in the use of penetrations through the stonework of windows or walls, cut
into forms which looked like stars when seen from within, and like leaves
when seen from without ; the name foil or feuille being universally applied
to the separate lobes of their extremities, and the pleasure received from
them bemg the same as that which we feel in the triple, quadruple, or
Pig. XVIII. other radiated leaves of vegeta-
tion, joined with the percep-
tion of a severely geometrical
order and symmetry. A few
of the most common forms are
represented, unconfused by ex-
terior mouldings, in Fig. XYIII.
and the best traceries are no-
thing more than close clusters
of such forms, with mouldings
following their outlines.
The term "foliated," there-
fore, is equally descriptive of
the most perfect conditions both
of the simple arch and of the
traceries by which, in ' later
Gothic, it is filled; and this
foliation is an essential charac-
ter of the style. No Gothic is
either good or characteristic,
which is not foliated either in
its arches or apertures. Some-
times the bearing arches are
foliated, and the ornamentation
above composed of figure sculp-
I ture ; sometimes the bearing
arches are plain, and the orna-
mentation above them is com-
posed of foliated apertures.
But the element of foliation must enter somewhere, or the style is imper-
fect. And our final definition of Gothic will, therefore, stand thus : —
** Foliated Architecture, which uses the pointed arch for the roof proper,
and the gable for the roof-mask. "
And now there is but one point more to be examined, and we have done.
Foliation, while it is the most distinctive and peculiar, is also the easiest
Pig. XVIII. •
AAAA
%f# ntn %i# «
^^^^^^ ^^^^^m^ ^^^^^^m^
OK T,HS KATUBE OF GOTHIC ABCHITECTUBE.
45
method of decoratdon which Gothic architecture possesses ; and, although
in the disposition of the proportions and forms of foils, the most noble imagi-
nation may be shown, yet a builder without imagination at all, or any
other faculty of design, can produce some e£fect upon the mass of his work
by merely covering it with foolish foliation. Throw any number of crossmg
Ihies together at random, as _ ^j^
in Fig. XIX., and fill all irig.AiA.
their squares and oblong
openings with quatrefoils and
cinquefoils, and you will im-
mediately have what will
stand, with most people, for
very satisfactory Gothic. The
slightest possible acquaint-
ance with existing forms will
enable any architect to vary
his patterns of foliation with
as much ease as he would
those of a kaleidoscope, and
to produce a building which
the present European public
will think magnificent, though
there may not be, from foun-
dation to coping, one ray of
invention, or any other intel-
lectual merit, in the whole
mass of it. But floral deco-
ration, and the disposition of
mouldings, require some skill and thought ; and, if they are to be agreeable
at all, must be verily invented, or accurately copied. They cannot be
drawn altogether at random, without becoming so commonplace as to involve
detection ; and although, as I have just said, the noblest imagination may
be shown in the disposition of traceries, there is far more room for its play
and power when those traceries are associated with floral or animal orna-
ment ; and it is probable, d priori, that, wherever true invention exists,
such ornament will be employed in profusion.
Now, all Gothic may be divided into two vast schools, one early, the
other late ;* of which the former, noble, inventive, and progressive, uses
the element of foliation moderately, that of floral and figure-scxdpture deco-
ration profusely ; the latter, ignoble, uninventive, and declining, uses
foliation immoderately, floral and figure-sculpture subordinately. The two
schools touch each other at that instant of momentous change, dwelt upon
in the ** Seven Lamps," chap. ii. p. 64, a period later or earlier in dif-
ferent districts, but which may be broadly stated as the middle of the
fourteenth century ; both styles being, of course, in their highest excellence
at the moment when they meet ; the one ascending to the point of junction,
the other declining from it, but, at first, not in any marked degree, and
only showing the characters which justify its being above called, generically,
ignoble, as its declension reaches steeper slope.
* Late, and chiefly confined to northern countries, so that the two schools may be
opposed either as Early and Late Gothic, or (in the fourteenth century) as Southern
and Northern Gothic.
46
Oir THE Ni-TUBE OP €K>THIC ABCHITXCTtrBE.
Of these two great sdiools, the first uses foliation only in large and
simple masses, and oovezs the minor members, cnsps, &e., of that foliation
with Tarions scolptore. The hitter decorates folktion itself with min<»r
foliation, and breaks its traceries into endless and lace-like subdivision of
tracery.*
We have now, I believe, obtained a sufficiently accnrate knowledge both
of the spirit and form of Gothic architecture; but it may, perhaps, be
useful to the general reader, if, in conclusion, I set down a few plain and
practical rules for determining, in every instance, whether a given building
be good Gothic or not, and, if not Gbthic, whether its architecture is of a
kind which will probably reward the pains of careful examination.
First. Look if the roof rises in a steep gable, high above the walls. If
it does not do this, there is something wrong; the building is not quite
pure Gothic, or has been altered.
Secondly. Look if the principal windows and doors have pointed arches
with gables over them. If not pointed arches, the building is not Gothic ;
if they have not any gables over them, it is either not pure, or not first-
te.
If, however, it has the steep roof, the pointed arch,
Ilg. XX. and gable all united, it is nearly certain to be a Gothic
building of a very fine time.
Thirdly. Look if the arches are cusped, or aper-
tures foliated. If the building has met the first two
conditions, it is sure to be foliated somewhere ; but,
if not everywhere, the parts which are unfoliated
are imperfect, unless they are large bearing arches,
or small and sharp arches in groups, forming a kind
of foliation by their own multiplicity, and relieved
by sculpture and rich mouldings. The upper win-
dows, for instance, in the east end of Westminster Abbey
are imperfect for want of foliation. If there be no
foliation anywhere, the building is assuredly im-
perfect Gothic.
• The superiority of the Early, or Surface-Gothic, \rill
be oom^etely fielt, when we compare it with the more de-
graded jLinear schools, as, for instance, with our own En^
glish Perpendicular. The ornaments of a Veronese niche,
which I hietTe before used as an example, are by no means
amon^ the best of their school, yet they will serve our pur-
pose tor such a comparison. That of its pinnacle is com-
posed of a single upright flowering plant, of which the stem
shoots up through the centres ot tne leaves, and bears a
pendent blossom, somewhat like that of the imperial Ifly.
The leaves are thrown back from the stem with sinstQar
grace and freedom, and foreshortened, as if by a skilful
painter, in the shallow marble relief. Their arran^ment is
roughly shown in the little woodcut at the side (Fig. XX.) ;
and if the reader will simply try the experiment for himself,
— first, of covering a piece of paper with crossed lines, as if
for accounts, and filling all the interstices with any foliation
that comes into his head, as in Fig. XIX. p. 46 ; and then,
of trying to fill the point of a gable with a piece of leafage
like that in Fig. Xa., putting the figure itself aside,->ha
will presently find that more thought and invention are
required to design this single minute pinnacle, than to
cover acres of ground with En^^ish perpendicular.
OH THB NAT0BB OF GOTHIC ASCHITECTUBB. 47
Pourtihly. If the building meets all the fiist thme ooiifitioiiB, look if its
arches in general, whether of windows and doors, or of minor ornamentation,
are carried on true thafts vjvtk bases and capkals. If they are, then the
building is assuredly of the finest €K>tiiic style. It may still, perhaps, be
an imitation, a feeble copy, or a bad example, of a noble style ; but the
manner of it, having met all these four conditions, is assuredly first-rate.
If its apertures have not shafts and capitals, look if they are plain open-
ings in the walls, studiously simple, and unmoulded at the sides. If so, the
building may still be of t^e finest Gothic, adapted to some domestic or
military service. But if the sides of the window be moulded, and yet there
are no capitals at the spring of the arch, it is assuredly of an inferior
school.
This is all that is necessary to determine whether the building be of a
fine Gothic style. The next tests to be applied are in order to discover
whether it be good architecture or not : for it may be very impure Gothic,
and yet very noble architecture ; or it may be very pure Gothic, and yet, if
a copy, or originally raised by an ungifted builder, very bad architecture.
If it belong to any of the great schools of colour, its criticism becomes as
complicated, and needs as much care, as that of a piece of music, and no
general rules for it can be given ; but if not —
First. See if it looks as if it had been built by strong men ; if it has the
sort of roughness, and largeness, and nonchalanoe, mixed in places with the
exquisite tenderness which seems always to be the sign-manual of the
broad vision, and massy power of men who can see past the work they are
doing, and betray here and there something like disdain for it. If the
builSng has this character, it is much alr^y in its favour ; it will go
hard but it proves a noble one. If it has not this, but is altogether accu-
rate, minute, and scrupulous in its workmanship, it must belong to either
the very best or the very worst of schools : the very best, in which exqui-
site design is wrought out with untiring and conscientious care, as in the
Giottesque GK)thic ; or the yery worst, in which mechanism has taken the
place of demgn. It is more likely, in general, that it should belong to the
worst than the best : so that, on the whole, very accurate workmanship is
to be esteemed a bad sign ; and if there is nothing remarkable about the
building but its precision, it may be passed at once with contempt.
Secondly. Observe if it be irregular, its different parts fitting themselves
to different purposes, no one caring what becomes of them, so that they
do their work. If one part always answers accurately to another part, it is
sure to be a bad building; and the greater and more conspicuous the
irregularities, the greater the chauces are that it is a good one.
Thirdly. Observe if all the traceries, capitals, and other ornaments are
of perpetually varied design. If not, the work is assuredly bad.
Lastly. Read the sculpture. Preparatory to reading it, you will have
to discover whether it is legible (and, if legible, it is nearly certain to be
worth reading). On a good building the sculpture is always so set, and on
such a scale, that at the ordinary distance from which the edifice is seen,
the sculpture shall be thoroughly intelligible and interesting. In order to
accomplish this the uppermost statues wUl be ten or twelve feet high, and the
upper ornamentation will be colossal, increasing in fineness as it descends,
till on the foundation it will often be wrought as if for a precious cabinet in
a king's chamber ; but the spectator will not notice that the upper sculptures
48 ON THE KATUBE OF OOTHIC ABCHHteCTTTBE.
are colossal. He -will merely feel that he can see them plainly, and make
them all ont at his ease.
And, having ascertained this, let him set himself to read them. Thence-
forward the criticism of the building is to be conducted precisely on the
same principles as that of a book ; and it must depend on the knowledge,
feeling, and not a little on the industry and perseverance of the reader,
wheUier, even in the case of the best works, he either perceive them to be
great, or feel them to be entertaining.
[The profits ariiinj from the mle of this pamphlet mil he offered to the
Working Men's College, 81, Red Lion Squarey London.]
.<:
#<f^.
Kenny, Trinter, 5, Hcathcock Court, Strand.
