Full text of "The seven lamps of architecture"

See other formats

Google

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on Hbrary shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project

to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the

publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we liave taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http : //books . google . com/|

•I

y '

PRESENTED BY

THE MISSES ESTHER CATHARINE,

SUSAN MARY AND JOSEPHINE FRY

FROM THE LIBRARY OF

THE LATE JOSEPH FORREST FRY

AND SUSANNA FRY

{ r V . ': :={ D

THE

SEVEN LAMPS

ARCHITECTURE.

THE

SEVEN LAMPS

ARCHITECTURE

JOHN RUSKIN,

HONORARY STUDENT OP CHRIST CHURCH, AND
HONORARY FELLOW OP CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD,

ETC ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR.

J\r£W EDITION.

GEORCLE ALLEN,
SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT.

1880.

CHI8WICK PRISS : CMAILBS WHITTINCHAM, TOOKS COUKT,

CHANCUtY LAN!.

PREFACE

THE EDITION OF 1880.

I NEVER intended to have republished this book, which has ber
come the most useless I ever wrote ; the buildings it describes
with so much delight being now either knocked down, or scraped
and patched up into smugness and smoothness more tragic than
uttermost ruin.

But I find the public still like the book— ^nd will read it, when
they won't look at what would be really useful and helpful to
them ; — and as the germ of what I have since written is indeed
here, — ^however overlaid with gilding, and overshot, too splashily
and cascade-fashion, with gushing of words, — ^here it is given
again in the old form ; all but some pieces of rabid and utterly
false Protestantism, which are cut out from text and appendix
alike, and may serve still to give the old editions some value
yet, in the eyes of book collectors and persons studious (as the
modem reviewing mind mostly is — ^to its large profit) of mistakes
in general.

The quite first edition, with the original plates, will always, I
venture to say, bear a high price in the market; for its etchings
were not only, every line of them, by my own hand, but bitten

VI PREFACE TO

also, (the last of them in my washhand basin at " La Cloche " of
Dijon,) by myself, with savage carelessness (I being then, as now,
utterly scornful of all sorts of art dependent on blotch, or burr,
or any other " process " than that of steady hand and true line) : —
out of which disdain, nevertheless, some of the plates came into
effects both right and good for their purpose, and will, as I say,
be always hereafter valuable.

The copies of them, made for the second edition by Mr, Cuff,
and here reprinted, are quite as good for all practical illustration,
and much more admirable as pieces of careful and singular en-
graver s skill. For the original method of etching was not easily
imitated by straitforward engraving. When I use the needle-
point directly on the steel, I never allow any burr or mystery of
texture; — (see the plates by my own hand in " Modem
Painters " ; — ) but, in these architectural notes of shadow, I wanted
mere spaces of gloom got easily ; and so used a process shown
me, (I think, by a German engraver — my memory fails me about
it now — ) in which, the ground being laid very soft, a piece of
tissue-paper is spread over it, on which one draws with a hard
pencil — ^seeing, when the paper is lifted, approximately what one
has got of shadow. The pressure of the point removes the wax
which sticks to the tissue-paper, and leaves the surface of the plate
in that degree open to the acid. The effect thus obtained is a
kind of mixture of mezzotint — etching — and lithograph; and,
except by such skill as Mr. Cuff possessed in a peculiar degree,
not to be imitated in any other manner. The vignette frontispiece
is also an excellent piece of work by Mr. Armytage, to whose
skill the best illustrations of " Modem Painters " owe not only
their extreme delicacy but their permanence. Some of his plates,
which I am about to re-issue with portions of the book sepa-
rately, arranged according to their subjects, show scarcely any
loss of brightness for any use hitherto made of them.

But, having now all my plates in my own possession, I will

THE EDITION OF 1880. Vll

take care that none are used past the time they will properly
last ; and even the present editions of these old books can never
become cheap — though they will be, I trust, in time, all suffi-
ciently accessible.

Some short notes are added to the text of "The Seven Lamps,"
now reprinted ; but the text itself (the passages above mentioned
being alone omitted,) is g^ven word for word, and stop for stop : —
It may confirm the reader's assurance on that matter, to know
that I have not even revised the proofs, but left all toil of that
kind to my good publisher, Mr. Allen, and his helpful children,
who have every claim, for what good the reader may get of the
book, to his thanks no less than to mine.

Brantwood,

February z^th^ 1880.

PREFACE

THE FIRST EDITION

The memoranda which form the basis of the following Essay
have been thrown together during the preparation of one of the
sections of the third volume of " Modern Painters." ♦ I once
thought of giving them a more expanded form ; but their utility,
such as it may be, would probably be diminished by farther
delay in their publication, more than it would be increased by
greater care in their arrangement Obtained in every case by
personal observation, there may be among them some details
valuable even to the experienced architect ; but with respect to
the opinions founded upon them I must be prepared to bear the
charge of impertinence which can hardly but attach to the writer
who assumes a dogmatical tone in speaking of an art he has

* The inordinate delay in the appearance of that supplementary volume has,
indeed, been chiefly owing to the necessity under which the writer felt himself,
of obtaining as many memoranda as possible of mediaeval buildings in Italy and
Normandy, now in process of destruction, before that destruction should be con-
summated by the Restorer, or Revolutionist His whole time has been lately
occupied in taking drawings from one side of buildings, of which masons were
knocking down the other ; nor can he yet pledge himself to any time for the
publication of the conclusion of *' Modem Painters ; " he can only promise that
its delay shall not be owing to any indolence on his part

X PREFACE TO

never practised. There are, however, cases in which men feel
too keenly to be silent, and perhaps too strongly to be wrong ;
I have been forced into this impertinence ; and have suffered
too much from the destruction or neglect of the architecture I
best loved, and from the erection of that which I cannot love,
to reason cautiously respecting the modesty of my opposition
to the principles which have induced the scorn of the one, or
directed the design of the other. And I have been the less
careful to modify the confidence of my statements of principles,
because, in the midst of the opposition and uncertainty of our
architectural systems, it seems to me that there is something
grateful in any positive opinion, though in many points wrong,
as even weeds are useful that grow on a bank of sand.

Every apology is, however, due to the reader for the hasty
and imperfect execution of the plates. Having much more
serious work in hand, and desiring merely to render them illus-
trative of my meaning, I have sometimes very completely
failed even of that humble aim ; and the text, being generally
written before the illustration was completed, sometimes naively
describes as sublime or beautiful, features which the plate repre-
sents by a blot I shall be grateful if the reader will in such
cases refer the expressions of praise to the Architecture, and not
to the illustration.

So far, however, as their coarseness and rudeness admit, the
plates are valuable; being either copies of memoranda made
upon the spot, or (Plates IX. and XI.) enlarged and adapted
from Daguerreotypes, taken under my own superintendence.
Unfortunately, the g^eat distance from the ground of the window
which is the subject of Plate IX. renders even the Daguerreotype
indistinct ; and I cannot answer for the accuracy of any of the
mosaic details, more especially of those surrounding the window,
which I rather imagine, in the original, to be sculptured in
relief. The general proportions are, however, studiously pre-

\
THE FIRST EDITION. XI

served ; the spirals of the shafts are counted, and the effect of

the whole is as near that of the thing itself, as is necessary

for the purposes of illustration for which the plate is g^iven.

For the accuracy of the rest I can answer, even to the cracks

in the stones, and the number of them ; and though the

looseness of the drawing, and the picturesque character which

is necessarily given by an endeavour to draw old buildings as I

they actually appear, may perhaps diminish their credit for

architectural veracity, they will do so unjustly.

The system of lettering adopted in the few instances in which
sections have been given, appears somewhat obscure in the re- \

ferences, but it is convenient upon the whole. The line which

marks the direction of any section is noted, if the section be i

symmetrical, by a single letter, as a ; and the section itself by
the same letter with a line over it, — 5. But if the section be
unsymmetrical, its direction is noted by two letters, a. a^, at
its extremities ; and the actual section by the same letters with
lines over them, a. d^, at the correspondent extremities. i

The reader will perhaps be surprised by the small number of 1

buildings to which reference has been made. But it is to be

remembered that the following chapters pretend only to be a ^

statement of principles, illustrated each by one or two examples ; i

not an Essay on European architecture ; and those examples I
have generally taken either from the buildings which I love best,
or from the schools of architecture which, it appeared to me, have
been less carefully described than they deserved. I could as fully,
though not with the accuracy and certainty derived from personal
observation, have illustrated the principles subsequently advanced,
from the architecture of Egypt, India, or Spain, as from that
to which the reader will find his attention chiefly directed, the
Italian Romanesque and Gothic. But my affections, as well as
my experience, led me to that line of richly varied and mag-
nificently intellectual schools, which reaches, like a high watershed

XXI PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

of Christian architecture, from the Adriatic to the Northumbrian
seas, bordered by the impure schools of Spain on the one hand,
and of Germany on the other : and as culminating points and
centres of this chain, I have considered, first, the cities of the Val
d'Amo, as representing the Italian Romanesque and pure Italian
Gothic ; Venice and Verona as representing the Italian Gothic
coloured by Byzantine elements ; and Rouen, with the associated
Norman cities, Caen, Bayeux, and Coutances, as representing the
entire range of Northern architecture from the Romanesque to
Flamboyant.

I could have wished to have given more examples from our
early English Gothic; but I have always found it impossible to
work in the cold interiors of our cathedrals ; while the daily
services, lamps, and fumigation of those upon the Continent,
render them perfectly safe. In the course of last summer I
undertook a pilgrimage to the English Shrines, and began with
Salisbury, where the consequence of a few days' work was a state
of weakened health, which I may be permitted to name among
the causes of the slightness and imperfection of the present
Essay.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Introductory i

Chapter I. The Lamp of Sacrifice 8

II. The Lamp of Truth 29

III. The Lamp of Power 70

IV. The Lamp of Beauty 103

V. The Lamp of life 148

VL The Lamp of Memory 176

VII. The Lamp of Obedience 199

Appendix 1 215

II 218

III 219

IV 220

V 221

■c-

LIST OF PLATES.

PLATE

to face page

I. Ornaments from Rouen, St. Lo, and Venice .
II. Part of the Cathedral of St Lo, Normandy .

III. Traceries from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, and Beauvais

IV. Intersectional Mouldings

V. Capital from the Lower Arcade of the Doge's Palace, Venice

VI. Arch from the Fa9ade of the Church of San Michele at Lucca

VII. Pierced Ornaments from Lisieux, Bayeux, Verona, and Padua

VIIL Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice .

IX. Tracery from the Campanile of Giotto, at Florence.

X. Traceries and Mouldings from Rouen and Salisbury

XI. Balcony in the Campo St Benedetto, Venice .

XII. Fragments from Abbeville, Lucca, Venice, and Pisa

XIII. Portions of an Arcade on the South Side of the Cathedral of Ferrara i68

XrV. Sculptures from the Cathedral of Rouen i73

59
66

97
Titkpage

page 126

. 136

• 155

THE

SEVEN LAMPS

ARCHITECTURE.

INTRODUCTORY.

Some years ago, in conversation with an artist ^ whose works,
perhaps, alone, in the present day, unite perfection of drawing
with resplendence of colour, the writer made some inquiry re-
specting the general means by which this latter quality was most
easily to be attained. The reply was as concise as it was com-
prehensive — " Know what you have to do, and do it" — compre-
hensive, not only as regarded the branch of art to which it tem-
porarily applied, but as expressing the great principle of success
in every direction of human effort; for I believe that failure
is less frequently attributable to either insufficiency of means or
impatience of labour, than to a confused understanding of the
thing actually to be done ; and therefore, while it is properly a
subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, that men propose to
themselves a perfection of any kind, which reason, temperately
consulted, might have shown to be impossible with the means at
their command, it is a more dangerous error to permit the con-
sideration of means to interfere with our conception, or, as is
not impossible, even hinder our acknowledgment of goodness and
perfection in themselves. And this is the more cautiously to be

* Mulready.
B

2 INTRODUCTORY,

afhousm I. remembered ; because, while a man's sense and con-
^^"i2ow science, aided by Revelation, are always enough, if
b^^l^^ earnestly directed, to enable him to discover what is

what is pos* . ^

sibie. right, neither his sense, nor conscience, nor feeling, is

ever enough, because they are not intended, to deter-
mine for him what is possible. He knows neither his
own strength nor that of his fellows, neither the exact
dependence to be placed on his allies nor resistance to
be expected from his opponents. These are questions
respecting which passion may warp his conclusions,
and ignorance must limit them ; but it is his own fault
if either interfere with the apprehension of duty, or
the acknowledgment of right. And, as far as I have
taken cognizance of the causes of the many failures to
which the efforts of intelligent men are liable, more
especially in matters political, they seem to me more
largely to spring from this single error than from all
others, that the inquiry into the doubtful, and in some
sort inexplicable, relations of capability, chance, resis*
tance, and inconvenience, invariably precedes, even if
it do not altogether supersede, the determination of
what is absolutely desirable and just Nor is it any
wonder that sometimes the too cold calculation of our
powers should reconcile us too easily to our short
comings, and even lead us into the fatal error of sup-
posing that our conjectural utmost is in itself well, or,
in other words, that the necessity of offences renders
them inoffensive.

What is true of human polity seems to me not less so of the
distinctively political art of Architecture. I have long felt con-

INTRODUCTORY. 3

vinced of the necessity, in order to its progress, of some determined
effort to extricate from the confused mass of partial traditions
and dogmata with which it has become encumbered during
imperfect or restricted practice, those large principles of right
which are applicable to every stage and style of it. Uniting the
technical and imaginative elements as essentially as humanity
does soul and body, it shows the same infirmly balanced liability
to the prevalence of the lower part over the higher, to the
interference of the constructive, with the purity and simplicity
of the reflective, element This tendency, like every other form
of materialism, is increasing with the advance of the age ; and
the only laws which resist it, based upon partial precedents, and
already r^;arded with disrespect as decrepit, if not with defiance
as tyrannical, are evidently inapplicable to the new forms and
functions of the art, which the necessities of the day demand.
How many these necessities may become, cannot be conjectured ;
they rise, strange and impatient, out of every modem shadow
of change. How far it may be possible to meet them without a
sacrifice of the essential characters of architectural art, cannot
be determined by specific calculation or observance. There is
no law, no principle, based on past practice, which may not be
overthrown in a moment, by the arising of a new condition, or
the invention of a new material ; and the most rational, if not the
only, mode of averting the danger of an utter dissolution of all
that is systematic and consistent in our practice, or of ancient
authority in our judgment, is to cease, for a little while, our
endeavours to deal with the multiplying host of particular abuses,
restraints, or requirements ; and endeavour to determine, as the
guides of every effort, some constant, general, and irrefragable
laws of right — laws, which based upon man's nature, not upon
his knowledge, may possess so far the unchangeableness of the
one, as that neither the increase nor imperfection of the other
may be able to assault or invalidate them.

There are, perhaps, no such laws peculiar to any one art Their
range necessarily includes the entire horizon of man's action.
But they have modified forms and operations belonging to each

INTRODUCTORY,

of his pursuits, and the extent of their authority cannot surely
be considered as a diminution of its weight Those peculiar
aspects of them which belong to the first of the arts, I have
endeavoured to trace in the following pages ; and since, if truly
stated, they must necessarily be, not only safeguards against
every form of error, but sources of every measure of success, I
do not think that I claim too much for them in calling them the
Lamps of Architecture,' nor that it is indolence, in endeavouring
to ascertain the true nature and nobility of their fire, to refuse
to enter into any curious or special questioning of the innu-
merable hindrances by which their light has been too often
distorted or overpowered.

Had this farther examination been attempted, the work would
have become certainly more invidious, and perhaps less useful, as
liable to errors which are avoided by the present simplicity of its
plan. Simple though it be, its extent is too great to admit of any
adequate accomplishment, unless by a devotion of time which the
writer did not feel justified in withdrawing from branches of
inquiry in which the prosecution of works already undertaken
has engaged him. Both arrangement and nomenclature are those
of convenience rather than of system ; the one is arbitrary and
the other illogical : nor is it pretended that all, or even the
greater number of, the principles necessary to the well being
of the art, are included in the inquiry. Many, however, of
considerable importance will be found to develope themselves
incidentally from those more specially brought forward.

Graver apology is necessary for an apparently graver fault.

Aphorism 2. It has bceii just Said, that there is no branch of human

work whose constant laws have not close analogy with
those which govern every other mode of man's exertion.
But, more than this, exactly as we reduce to greater
simplicity and surety any one group of these practical

All practical
laws are the
exponents of
moral ones<

" « The Law is light"
" Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet"

INTRODUCTORY. 5

laws, we shall find them passing the mere condition of
connection or analogy, and becoming the actual expres-
sion of some ultimate nerve or fibre of the mighty laws
which govern the moral world. However mean or in-
considerable the act, there is something in the well
doing of it, which has fellowship with the noblest
forms of manly virtue; and the truth, decision, and
temperance, which we reverently regard as honourable
conditions of the spiritual being, have a representative
or derivative influence over the works of the hand,
the movements of the frame, and the action of the
intellect.

And as thus every action, down even to the drawing of a line
or utterance of a syllable, is capable of a peculiar dignity in the
manner of it, which we sometimes express by saying it is truly
done (as a line or tone is true), so also it is capable of dignity
still higher in the motive of it. For there is no action so slight,
nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled
therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions
may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most
especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. Hence
George Herbert* —

** A servant with this clause
Makes drudgeiy divine ;
Who sweeps a room, as /or thy laws^
Makes that and the action fine.''

Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act or
manner of acting, we have choice of two separate lines of
argument: one based on representation of the expediency or

' George Herbert was too much of an Englishman (and of an Elizabethan
tempered Englishman) to conceive that drudgery could ever be divine in its
own nature, and sometimes, more divine in force than voluntary, e^, John
Knox's labour as a galley slave.

6 INTRODUCTORY.

inherent value of the work, which is often small, and always
disputable ; . the other based on proofs of its relations to the
higher orders of human virtue, and of its acceptableness, so far
as it goes, to Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is
commonly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly the
more conclusive ; only it is liable to give offence, as if there were
irreverence in adducing considerations so weighty in treating sub-
jects of small temporal importance. I believe, however, that no
error is more thoughtless than this. We treat God with irreverence
by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His will
on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority or intelligence
which cannot be troubled with small things. There is nothing
so small but that we may honour God by asking His guidance of it,
or insult Him by taking it into our own hands ; and what is true
of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most
reverently when most habitually : our insolence is in ever acting
without reference to it, our true honouring of it is in its universal
application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of
its sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing ;
but my excuse must be my wish that those words were made the
ground of every argument and the test of every action. We
have them not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in
our memories, nor loyally enough in our lives. The snow, the
vapour, and the stormy wind fulfil His word. Are our acts and
thoughts lighter and wilder than these — that we should forget it ?
I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giving to some passages
the appearance of irreverence, to take the higher line of argument
wherever it appeared clearly traceable : and this, I would ask the
reader especially to observe, not merely because I think it the
best mode of reaching ultimate truth, still less because I think
the subject of more importance than many others ; but because
every subject should surely, at a period like the present, be taken

afhoiiism 5. up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years

Jw ^mLt *^^* approach us is as solemn as it is full of mystery ;

ri^ noHts and the weight of evil against which we have to con-
metaphysics

idle.

INTRODUCTORY. ^

tend, is increasing like the letting out of water. It is
no time for the idleness of metaphysics, or the enter-
tainment of the arts. The blasphemies of the earth
are sounding louder, and its miseries heaped heavier
every day ; and if, in the midst of the exertion which
every good man is called upon to put forth for their
repression or relief, it is lawful to ask for a thought, for
a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any direction
but that of the immediate and overwhelming need, it
is at least incumbent upon us to approach the ques-
tions in which we would engage him, in the spirit
which has become the habit of his mind, and in the
hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness may be
checked by the witlidrawal of an hour, which has
shown him how even those things which seemed
mechanical, indifferent, or contemptible, depend for
their perfection upon the acknowledgment of the
sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, for
which it has become the occupation of his life to
contend.

CHAPTER I.

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

All ftichitec-
ture proposes
anenect oa
the human
mind, not
merely ft ser-
vice to the
human frame.

Aphorism 4. I. Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns

the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that
the sight of them may contribute to his mental health,
power, and pleasure.

It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to distinguish
carefully between Architecture and Building.*

To build, — ^literally, to confirm, — is by common understanding
to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or
receptacle of a considerable size. Thus we have church building,
house building, ship building, and coach building. That one
edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iroti
springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may
be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess
that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever
other name their work may justify : but building does not become
architecture merely by the stability of what it erects ; and it is
no more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it to
receive and contain with comfort a required number of persons
occupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture which
makes a carriage commodious, or a ship swift. I do not, of course,
mean that the word is not often, or even may not be legitimately,
applied in such a sense (as we speak of naval architecture) ; but
in that sense architecture ceases to be one of the fine arts, and it
is therefore better not to run the risk, by loose nomenclature, of

* This distinction is a little stiff and awkward in tenns, but not in thought
And it is perfectly accurate, though stiff, even in terms. It is the addition of
the mental &f>x4 — in the sense in which Plato uses that word in the " Laws " —
which separates architecture from a wasp's nest, a rat hole, or a railway station.

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 9

the confusion which would arise, and has often arisen, from
extending principles which belong altogether to building, into
the sphere of architecture proper.

Let us, therefore, at once confine the name to that art which,
taking up and admitting, as conditions of its working, the neces-
sities and common uses of the building, impresses on its form
certain characters venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unneces-
sary. Thus, I suppose, no one would call the laws architectural
which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a
bastion. But if to the stone facing of that bastion be added an
unnecessary feature^ as a cable moulding, that is Architecture. It
would be similarly unreasonable to call battlements or machi-
colations architectural features, so long as they consist only of an
advanced gallery supported on projecting masses, with open
intervals beneath fcH* offence. But if these projecting masses be
carved beneath into rounded courses, which are useless, and if the
headings of the intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless,
that is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line
so sharply, because there are few buildings which have not some
pretence or colour of being architectural; neither can there be
any architecture which is not based on building, nor any good
architecture which is not based on good building ; but it is per-
fectly easy, and very necessary, to keep the ideas distinct, and to
understand fully that Architecture concerns itself only with those
characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common
use. I say common ; because a building raised to the honour of
God, or in memory of men, has surely a use to which its architec-
tural adornment fits it; but not a use which limits, by any
inevitable necessities, its plan or details.

II. Architecture proper, then, naturally arranges itself under
five heads :—

Devotional ; including all buildings raised for God's service or
honour.

Memorial ; including both monuments and tombs.

Civil ; including every edifice raised by nations or societies, for
purposes of common business or pleasure.

lO THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

Military; including all private and public architecture of
defence.

Domestic ; including every rank and kind of dwelling-place.
Now, of the principles which I would endeavour to develope,
while all must be, as I have said, applicable to every stage
and style of the art, some, and especially those which are ex*
citing rather than directing, have necessarily fuller reference to
one kind of building than another; and among these I would
place first that spirit which, having influence in all, has
nevertheless such especial reference to devotional and memorial
architecture — the spirit which offers for such work precious things,
simply because they are precious ; not as being necessary to the
building, but as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what
is to ourselves desirable. It seems to me, not only that this
feeling is in most cases wholly wanting in those who forward the
devotional buildings of the present day * ; but that it would even
be regarded as a dangerous, or perhaps criminal, principle by
many among us. I have not space to enter into dispute of all
the various objections which may be urged against it — they are
many and specious ; but I may, perhaps, ask the reader's patience
while I set down those simple reasons which cause me to believe
it a good and just feeling, and as well-pleasing to God and
honourable in men, as it is beyond all dispute necessary to the
production of any great work in the kind with which we are at
present concerned.

IIL Now, first, to define this Lamp, or Spirit, of Sacrifice,
clearly. I have said that it prompts us to the offering of precious
things, merely because they are precious, not because they are
useful or necessary. It is a spirit, for instance, which of two
marbles, equally beautiful, applicable and durable, would choose
the more costly, because it was so, and of two kinds of decoration,
equally effective, would choose the more elaborate because it was

' The peculiar manner of selfish and impious ostentation, provoked by the
glassmakers, for a stimulus to trade, of putting up painted windows to be records
of private affection, instead of universal religion, is one of the worst, because
most plausible and proud, hypocrisies of our day.

THE LAMP OK SACRIFICE. II

SO, in order that it might in the same compass present more cost
and more thought It is therefore most unreasoning and enthu-
siastic, and perhaps best negatively defined, as the opposite of
the prevalent feeling of modem times, which desires to produce
the laigest results at the least cost

Of this feeling, then, there are two distinct forms : the first,
the wish to exercise self-denial for the sake of self-discipline
merely, a wish acted upon in the abandonment of things loved or
desired, there being no direct call or purpose to be answered by
so doing; and the second, the desire to honour or please some one
else by the costliness of the sacrifice. The practice is, in the
first case, either private or public ; but most frequendy, and
perhaps most properly, private ; while, in the latter case, the act
is commonly, and with greatest advantage, public. Now, it cannot
but at first appear futile to assert the expediency of self-denial for
its own sake, when, for so many sakes, it is every day necessary
to a fu" greater degree than any of us practise it But I believe
it is just because we do not enough acknowledge or contemplate
it as a good in itself, that we are apt to fail in its duties when
they become imperative, and to calculate, with some partiality,
whether the good proposed to others measures or warrants the
amount of grievance to ourselves, instead of accepting with
gladness the opportunity of sacrifice as a personal advantage.
Be thb as it may, it is not necessary to insist upon the matter
here ; since there are always higher and more useful channels of
self-sacrifice, for those who choose to practise it, than any
connected with the arts«

While in its second branch, that which is especially concerned
with the arts, the justice of the feeling is still more doubtful ; it
depends on our answer to the broad question. Can the Deity be
indeed honoured by the presentation to Him of any material
objects of value, or by any direction of zeal or wisdom which
is not immediately beneficial to men ?

For, observe, it is not now the question whether the fairness
and majesty of a building may or may not answer any moral
purpose ; it is not the result of labour in any sort of which we

12 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

are speaking, but the bare and mere costliness — ^the substance
and labour and time themselves : are these, we ask, independently
of their result, acceptable offerings to God, and considered by
Him as doing Him honour? So long as we refer this question to
the decision of feeling, or of conscience, or of reason merely, it
will be contradictorily or imperfectly answered; it admits of
entire answer only when we have met another and a far different
question, whether the Bible be indeed one book or two, and
whether the character of God revealed in the Old Testament be
other than His character revealed in the New.

IV. Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although the particular
ordinances divinely appointed for special purposes at any given
period of man's history, may be by the same divine authority
abrogated, at another, it is impossible that any character of God,
appealed to or described in any ordinance past or present, can
ever be changed, or understood as changed, by the abrogation of
that ordinance. God is one and the same, and is pleased or
displeased by the same things for ever, although one part of His
pleasure may be expressed at one time rather than another, and
although the mode in which His pleasure is to be consulted may
be by Him graciously modified to the circumstances of men.
Thus, for instance, it was necessary that, in order to the under-
standing by man of the scheme of Redemption, that scheme should
be foreshown from the beginning by the type of bloody sacrifice.
But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice in the time
of Moses than He has now ; He never accepted, as a propitiation
for sin, any sacrifice but the single one in prospective : and that
we may not entertain any shadow of doubt on this subject, the
worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is proclaimed at the
very time when typical sacrifice was most imperatively demanded.
God was a spirit, and could be worshipped only in spirit and in
truth, as singly and exclusively when every day brought its
claim of typical and material service or offering, as now when
He asks for none but that of the heart.

So, therefore, it is a most safe and sure principle that, if in
the manner of performing any rite at any time, circumstances

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 1 3

can be traced which we are either told or may legitimately
conclude, pleased God at that time, those same circumstances
will please Him at all times, in the performance of all rites or
offices to which they may be attached in like manner ; unless
it has been afterwards revealed that, for some special purpose,
it is now His will that such circumstances should be withdrawn.
And this argument will have all the more force if it can be
shown that such conditions were not essential to the completeness
of the rite in its human uses and bearings, and only were added
to it as being in themselves pleasing to God.

V. Now, was it necessary to the completeness, as a type, of the
Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of divine
purposes, that it should cost any thing to the person in whose
behalf it was offered ? On the contrary, the sacrifice which it
foreshowed, was to be God's free gift; and the cost of, or
difficulty of obtaining, the sacrificial type, could only render that
type in a measure obscure, and less expressive of the offering
which God would in the end provide for all men. Yet this
costliness was generally a condition of the acceptableness of the
sacrifice. " Neither will I ofier unto the Lord my God of that
which doth cost me nothii^." * That costliness, therefore, must
be an acceptable condition in all human offerings at all times ;
for if it was pleasing to God once, it must please Him always,
unless directly forbidden by Him afterwards, which it has never
been.

Again, was it necessary to the typical perfection of the Levitical
offering, that it should be the best of the flock ? Doubtless, the
spotlessness of the sacrifice renders it more expressive to the
Christian mind ; but was it because so expressive that it was
actually, and in so many words, demanded by God ? Not at all.
It was demanded by Him expressly on the same grounds on
which an earthly govemour would demand it, as a testimony of
respect " Offer it now unto thy govemour." f And the less
valuable offering was rejected, not because it did not image

* 2 Sam. xuv. 24. Deut xvi. 16, 17.
t Mai. i. 8.

14 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

Christ, nor fulfil the purposes of sacrifice, but because it indicated
a feeling that would grudge the best of its possessions to Him
who gave them ; and because it was a bold dishonouring of God
in the sight of man. Whence it may be infallibly concluded,
that in whatever offerings we may now see reason to present
unto God (I say not what these may be), a condition of their
acceptableness will be now, as it was then, that they should be
the best of their kind.

VI. But farther, was it necessary to the carrying out of the
Mosaical system, that there should be either art or splendour
in the form or services of the tabernacle or temple ? Was it
necessary to the perfection of any one of their typical offices, that
there should be that hanging of blue, and purple, and scarlet ?
those taches of brass and sockets of silver ? that working in cedar
and overlaying with gold ? One thing at least is evident : there
was a deep and awful danger in it ; a danger that the God whom
they so worshipped, might be associated in the minds of the
serfs of Egypt with the gods to whom they had seen similar
gifts offered and similar honours paid. The probability, in our
times, of fellowship with the feelings of the idolatrous Ro-
manist is absolutely as nothing, compared with the danger to
the Israelite of a sympathy with the idolatrous Egyptian ; no
speculative, no unproved danger ; but proved fatally by their fall
during a month's abandonment to their own will ; a fall into the
most servile idolatry; yet marked by such offerings to their
idol as their leader was, in the close sequel, instructed to bid
them offer to God. This danger was imminent, perpetual, and
of the most awful kind : it was the one against which God
made provision, not only by commandments, by threatenings, by
promises, the most urgent, repeated, and impressive; but by
temporary ordinances of a severity so terrible as almost to dim
for a time, in the eyes of His people, His attribute of mercy.
The principal object of every instituted law of that Theocracy,
of every judgment sent forth in its vindication, was to mark
to the people His hatred of idolatry; a hatred written under
their advancing steps, in the blood of the Canaanite, and more

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 1 5

Sternly still in the darkness of their own desolation, when the
children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of Jerusalem,
and the lion tracked his prey in the desert of Samaria.* Yet,
against this mortal danger, provision was not made in one way,
(to man's thoughts the simplest, the most natural, the most
effective,) by withdrawing from the worship of the Divine Being
whatever could delight the sense, or shape the imagination,
or limit the idea of Deity to place. This one way God refused,
demanding for Himself such honours, and accepting for Himself
such local dwelling, as had been paid and dedicated to idol
gods by heathen worshippers. And for what reason ? Was the
glory of the tabernacle necessary to set forth or image His divine
glory to the minds of His people ? What I purple or scarlet
necessary, to the people who had seen the great river of Egypt
run scarlet to the sea, under His condemnation ? What ! golden
lamp and cherub necessary, for those who had seen the fires
of heaven falling like a mantle on Mount Sinai, and its golden
courts opened to receive their mortal lawgiver ? What ! silver
clasp and fillet necessary, when they had seen the silver waves
of the Red Sea clasp in their arched hollows the corpses of
the horse and his rider ? Nay — not so.* There was but one
reason, and that an eternal one ; that as the covenant that He
made with men was accompanied with some external sign of
its continuance, and of His remembrance of it, so the acceptance
of that covenant might be marked and signified by men, in
some external sign of their love and obedience, and surrender of
themselves and theirs to His will ; and that their gratitude to
Him and continual remembrance of Him, might have at once
their expression, and their enduring testimony, in the presenta-
tion to Him, not only of the firstlings of the herd and fold,
not only of the fruits of the earth and the tithe of time,
but of all treasiu'es of wisdom and beauty ; of the thought that

* Lam. ii ii. 2 Kings xvii. 25.

* Yes, — ^very much sa The impression of all temporary vision wears off next
day in the minds of the common people. Continual splendour is necessary and
wholesome for them : and the sacrifices required by Heaven were never useless.

1 6 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

invents, and the hand that labours; of wealth of wood, and weight
of stone ; of the strength of iron, and the light of gold.

And let us not now lose sight of this broad and unabrogated
principle — I might say, incapable of being abrogated, so long
as men shall receive earthly gifts from God. Of all that they
have, His tithe must be rendered to Him, or in so far and in so
much He is forgotten : of the skill and of the treasure, of the
strength and of the mind, of the time and of the toil, offering
must be made reverently ; and if there be any difference between
the Levitical and the Christian offering, it is that the latter may
be just so much the wider in its range as it is less typical
in its meaning, as it is thankful instead of sacrificial. There
can be no excuse accepted because the Deity does not now
visibly dwell in His temple ; if He is invisible it is only through
our failing faith : nor any excuse because other calls are more
immediate or more sacred ; this ought to be done, and not the
other left undone. Yet this objection, as frequent as feeble,
must be more specifically answered.

VII • It has been said — it ought always to be said, for it is true,
— that abetter and more honourable offering is made to our Master
in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowledge of His name,
in the practice of the virtues by which that name is hallowed,
than in material presents to His temple. Assuredly it is so : woe
to all who think that any other kind or manner of offering may
in any wise take the place of these i Do the people need place to
pray, and calls to hear His word ? Then it is no time for smooth-
ing pillars or carving pulpits ; let us have enough first of walls
and roofs. Do the people need teaching from house to house,
and bread from day to day ? Then they are deacons and ministers
we want, not architects. I insist on this, I plead for this ; but
let us examine ourselves, and see if this be indeed the reason for
our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is not be-
tween God's house and His poor : it is not between God's house
and His Gospel, It is between God's house and ours. Have we
no tesselated colours on our floors ? no frescoed fancies on our
roofs ? no niched statuary in our corridors ? no gilded furniture

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 1 7

in our chambers ? no costly stones in our cabinets ? Has even
the tithe of these been offered ? They are, or they ought to be,
the signs that enough has been devoted to the great purposes of
human stewardship, and that there remains to us what we can
spend in luxury ; but there is a greater and prouder luxury than
this selfish one — ^that of bringing a portion of such things as these
into sacred service, and presenting them for a memorial * that oiu*
pleasure as well as our toil has been hallowed by the remem-
brance of Him who gave both the strength and the reward.
And until this has been done, I do not see how such possessions
can be retained in happiness. I do not understand the feeling
which would arch our own gates and pave our own thresholds,
and leave the church with its narrow door and foot- worn sill ; the
feeling which enriches our own chambers with all manner of cost-
liness, and endures the bare wall and mean compass of the temple.
There is seldom even so severe a choice to be made, seldom so
much self-denial to be exercised. There are isolated cases, in
which men's happiness and mental activity depend upon a certain
degree of luxury in their houses ; but then this is true luxury,
felt and tasted, and profited by. In the plurality of instances
nothing of the kind is attempted, nor can be enjoyed; men's
average resources cannot reach it ; and that which they can reach,

gives them no pleasure, and might be spared. It will be seen, aphorism 5.

in the course of the following chapters, that I am no S^J^il^o

advocate for meanness of private habitation. I would to ^nai

^ magnificence.

fain mtroduce into it all magnificence, care, and beauty,
where they are possible; but I would not have that
useless expense in unnoticed fineries or formalities;
cornicing of ceilings and graining of doors, and fringing
of curtains, and thousands such; things which have
become foolishly and apathetically habitual — ^things on
whose common appliance hang whole trades, to which

* Num. zzxL 54. Psa. IzxvL 11.

1 8 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

there never yet belonged the blessing of giving one ray
of real pleasure, or becoming of the remotest or most
contemptible use — ^things which cause half the expense
of life, and destroy more than half its comfort, man-
liness, respectability, freshness, and facility. I speak
from experience : I know what it is to live in a cottage
with a deal floor and roof, and a hearth of mica slate ;
and I know it to be in many respects healthier and
happier than living between a Turkey carpet and
gilded ceiling, beside a steel grate and polished fender.
I do not say that such things have not their place and
propriety ; but I say this, emphatically, that the tenth
part of the expense which is sacrificed in domestic
vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in
domestic discomforts and incumbrances, would, if col-
lectively offered and wisely employed, build a marble
church for every town in England ; such a church as it
should be a joy and a blessing even to pass near in our
daily ways and walks, and as it would bring the light
into the eyes to see from afar, lifting its fair height
above the purple crowd of humble roofs.

VIII. I have said for every town : I do not want a marble
church for every village ; nay, I do not want marble churches at
all for their own sake, but for the sake of the spirit that would
build them. The church has no need of any visible splendours ;
her power is independent of them, her purity is in some degree
opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary is
lovelier than the majesty of an urban temple ; and it may be more
than questioned whether, to the people, such majesty has ever
been the source of any increase of effective piety ^ ; but to the

^ Yes, it may be more than questioned ; it maj be angrily — or sorrowfully —
denied : but never by entirely humble and thoughtful persons. The subject was

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 1 9

builders it has been, and must ever be* It is not the church we
want, but the sacrifice ; not the emotion of admiration, but the
act of adoration ; not the gift, but the giving. And see how much
more charity the full understanding of this might admit, among
classes of men of naturally opposite feelings ; and how much more
nobleness in the work. There is no need to offend by importu-
nate, self-proclaimant splendour. Your gift may be given in an
impresuming way. Cut one or two shafts out of a porphyry whose
predousness those only would know who would desire it to be so
used ; add another month's labour to the under-cutting of a few
capitals, whose delicacy will not be seen nor loved by one beholder
of ten thousand ; see that the simplest masonry of the edifice be
perfect and substantial ; and to those who regard such things, their
witness will be clear and impressive ; to those who regard them
not, all will at least be inoffensive. But do not think the feeling
itself a folly, or the act itself useless. Of what use was that dearly
bought water of the well of Bethlehem with which the king of
Israel slaked the dust of Adullam } yet was it not thus better
than if he had drunk it ? Of what use was that passionate act of
Christian sacrifice, against which, first uttered by the false tongue,
the very objection we would now conquer took a sullen tone for
ever ? * So also let us not ask of what use our offering is to the
church : it is at least better for us than if it had been retained
for ourselves. It may be better for others also : there is, at any
rate, a chance of this ; though we must always fearfully and widely
shun the thought that the magnificence of the temple can mate-
rially add to the efficiency of the worship or to the power of the
ministry. Whatever we do, or whatever we offer, let it not inter-
fere with the simplicity of the one, or abate, as if replacing, the
zeal of the other.*

IX. While, however, I would especially deprecate the imputa-

fiist placed by me, without any remains of Presbyterian prejudice, in the aspect
which it must take on purely rational grounds, in my second Oxford inaugural
lecture.

* John ziL 5.

• Thirteen lines of vulgar attack on Roman-Catholicism are here— with much
gain to the chapter's grace, and purification of its truth— omitted.

so THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

tion of any other acccptableness or usefulness to the gift itself than
that which it receives from the ^irit of its presentation, it may be
well to observe, that there is a lower advantage which never fails
to accompany a dutiful observance of any right abstract principle.
While the first fruits of his possessions were required from the
Isradite as a testimony of fidelity, the payment of those first
fruits was nevertheless rewarded, and that connectedly and speci-
fically, by the increase of those possessions. Wealth, and length
of days, and peace, were the promised and experienced rewards of
his offering, though they were not to be the objects of it* The
tithe paid into the storehouse, was the express condition of the
blessing which there should not be room enough to receive. And
it will be thus always : God never forgets any work or labour of
love ; and whatever it may be of which the first and best portions
or powers have been presented to Him, He will multiply and in-
crease sevenfold. Therefore, though it may not be necessarily the
interest of religion to admit the service of the arts, the arts will
never flourish until they have been primarily devoted to that ser-
vice—devoted, both by architect and employer ; by the one in
scrupulous, earnest, affectionate design ; by the other in expendi-
ture at least more frank, at least less calculating, than that which
he would admit in the indulgence of his own private feelings.
Let this principle be but once fairly acknowledged among us ;
and however it may be chilled and repressed in practice, however
feeble may be its real influence, however the sacredness of it may
be diminished by counter-workings of vanity and. self-interest, yet
its mere acknowledgment would bring a reward ; and with our
present accumulation of means and of intellect, there would be
such an impulse and vitality given to art as it has not felt since
the thirteenth century. And I do not assert this as other than a
natural consequence : I should, indeed, expect a larger measure of
every great and spiritual faculty to be always given where those
faculties had been wisely and religiously employed ; but the im-
pulse to which I refer, would be, humanly speaking, certain ; and
would naturally result from obedience to the two great conditions
enforced by the Spirit of Sacrifice, first, that we should in every

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE- 21

tiling do our best ; and, secondly, that we should consider in-
crease of apparent labour as an increase of beauty in the building.
A few practical deductions from these two conditions, and I
have done.

X. For the first : it is alone enough to secure success, and it

is for want of observing it that we continually faiL We are aphowsm 6.

none of us so good architects as to be able to work j^^axe

. capable of

habitually beneath our strength ; and yet there is not a litue ; and

^ O » -f don't even do

building that I know of, lately raised, wherein it is not ^ii"ie they
sufficiently evident that neither architect nor builder
has done his best. It is the especial characteristic of
modem work. All old work nearly has been hard
work. It may be the hard work of children, of bar-
barians, of rustics; but it is always their utmost.
Ours has as constantly the look of money's worth, of
a stopping short wherever and whenever we can, of
a lazy compliance with low conditions ; never of a fair
putting forth of our strength. Let us have done with
this kind of work at once: cast off every temptation
to it : do not let us degrade ourselves voluntarily, and
then mutter and mourn over our short comings ; let us
confess our poverty or our parsimony, but not belie
our human intellect. It is not even a question of how mucA

we are to do, but of how it is to be done ; it is not a question
of doing more, but of doing better. Do not let us boss our
roofs with wretched, half- worked, blunt-edged rosettes; do not
let us flank our gates with rigid imitations of mediaeval statuary.
Such things are mere insults to common sense, and only unfit us
for feeling the nobility of their prototypes. We have so much,
suppose, to be spent in decoration ; let us go to the Flaxman of his
time, whoever he may be ; and bid him carve for us a single statue,
frieze, or capital, or as many as we can afford, compelling upon

22 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

him the one condition, that they shall be the best he can do ; place
them where they will be of the most value, and be content Our
other capitals may be mere blocks, and our other niches empty.
No matter : better our work unfinished than all bad. It may be
that we do not desire ornament of so high an order : choose, then,
a less developed style, as also, if you will, rougher material ; the
law which we are enforcing requires only that what we pretend
to do and to give, shall both be the best of their kind ; choose,
therefore, the Norman hatchet work, instead of the Flaxman frieze
and statue, but let it be the best hatchet work ; and if you cannot
afford marble, use Caen stone, but from the best bed ; and if not
stone, brick, but the best brick ; preferring always what is good
of a lower order of work or material, to what is bad of a higher ;
for this is not only the way to improve every kind of work, and
to put every kind of material to better use ; but it is more honest
and unpretending, and is in harmony with other just, upright,
and manly principles, whose range we shall have presently to
take into consideration.

XL The other condition which we had to notice, was the value
of the appearance of labour upon architecture. I have spoken of
this before * ; and it is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of
pleasure which belong to the art, always, however, within certain
somewhat remarkable limits. For it does not at first appear
easily to be explained why labour, as represented by materials of
value, should, without sense of wrong or error, bear being wasted ;
while the waste of actual workmanship is always painful, so soon
as it is apparent But so it is, that, while precious materials may,
with a certain profusion and negligence, be employed for the
magnificence of what is seldom seen, the work of man cannot
be carelessly and idly bestowed, without an immediate sense of
wrong ; as if the strength of the living creature were never
intended by its Maker to be sacrificed in vain, though it is well
for us sometimes to part with what we esteem precious of sub-
stance, as showing that in such service it becomes but dross and
dust And in the nice balance between the straitening of effort

• " Mod. Painters," Part I. Sec. i. Chap. 3.

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 23

or enthusiasm on the one hand, and vainly casting it away upon
the other, there are more questions than can be met by any but
very just and watchful feeling. In general it is less the mere
loss of labour that offends us, than the lack of judgment implied
by such loss ; so that if men ccxifessedly work for work's sake,' and
it does not appear that they are ignorant where or how to make
their labour tell, we shall not be grossly offended. On the con-
trary, we shall be pleased if the work be lost in carrying out a
principle, or in avoiding a deception* It, indeed, is a law properly
belonging to another part of our subject, but it may be allowably
stated here, that, whenever, by the construction of a building,
some parts of it are hidden from the eye which are the continua-
tion of others bearing some consistent ornament, it is not well
that the ornament should cease in the parts concealed ; credit is
given for it, and it should not be deceptively withdrawn : as,
for instance, in the sculpture of the backs of the statues of a
temple pediment ; never, perhaps, to be seen, but yet not lawfully
to be left unfinished. And so in the working out of ornaments
in dark or concealed places, in which it is best to err on the side
of completion ; and in the carrying round of string courses, and
other such continuous work ; not but that they may stop some-
times, on the point of going into some palpably impenetrable
recess, but then let them stop boldly and markedly, on some
distinct terminal ornament, and never be supposed to exist where
they do not. The arches of the towers which flank the transepts
of Rouen Cathedral have rosette ornaments on their spandrils, on
the three visible sides ; none on the side towards the rooL The
right of this is rather a nice point for question.

XII. Visibility, however, we must remember, depends, not only
on situation, but on distance; and there is no way in which work is
more painfully and unwisely lost than in its over delicacy on parts

* Obscurely expressed. I meant, if they worked to show their reiq)ect for what
they are doing, and gladness in doing all they can — not in the idea of producing
impossible effects, or impressing the spectator with a quantity of bad, when they
can do nothing that's good. ** Sacrificed," in the next sentence would have beea
a better word than ** lost."

24 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

distant from the eye. Here, again, the principle of honesty must
govern our treatment : we must not work any kind of ornament
which is, perhaps, to cover the whole building (or at least to occur
on all parts of it) delicately where it is near the eye, and rudely
where it is removed from it That is trickery and dishonesty/*
Consider, first, what kinds of ornaments will tell in the distance
and what near, and so distribute them, keeping such as by their
nature are delicate, down near the eye, and throwing the bold and
rough kinds of work to the top ; and if there be any kind which
is to be both near and far off, take care that it be as boldly and
rudely wrought where it is well seen as where it is distant, so
that the spectator may know exactly what it is, and what it is
worth. Thus chequered patterns, and in general such ornaments
as common workmen can execute, may extend over the whole
building ; but bas-reliefs, and fine niches and capitals, should be
kept down ; and the common sense of this will always give a build*
ing dignity, even though there be some abruptness or awkward*
ness in the resulting arrangements. Thus at San Zeno at Verona,
the bas-reliefs, full of incident and interest, are confined to a
parallelogram of the front, reaching to the height of the capitals
of the columns of the porch. Above these, we find a simple, though
most lovely, little arcade ; and above that, only blank wall, with
square face shafts. The whole effect is tenfold grander and better
than if the entire fa9ade had been covered with bad work, and
may serve for an example of the way to place little where we
cannot afford much. So, again, the transept gates of Rouen * are
covered with delicate bas-reliefs (of which I shall speak at greater
length presently) up to about once and a half a man's height ; and

^ There is too much stress kid, throughout this volume, on probity in pic*
turesque treatment, and not enough on probity in material construction. No
rascal will ever build a pretty building, — ^but the common sense, which is the root
of virtue, will have more to say in a strong man's design than his finer sentiments.
In the fulfilment of his contract honourably, there will be more test of his higher
feelings than in his modes of sculpture. But the concluding sentences of the
chapter from this point forward are all quite right, and can't be much better put

* Henceforward, for the sake of convenience, when I name any cathedral town
in this manner, let me be understood to speak of its cathedral church.

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 25

Sibove that come the usual and more visible statues and niches.
So in the campanile at Florence^ the circuit of bas-reliefs is on its
lowest story; above that come its statues; and above them all is
pattern mosaic, and twisted columns, exquisitely finished, like all
Italian work of the time, but still, in the eye of the Florentine,
rough and commonplace by comparison with the bas-reliefs. So
generally the most delicate niche work and best mouldings of the
French Gothic are in gates and low windows well within sight ;
although, it being the very spirit of that style to trust to its
exuberance for effect, there is occasionally a burst upwards and
blossoming unrestrainably to the sky, as in the pediment of the
west front of Rouen, and in the recess of the rose window behind
it, where there are some most elaborate flower-mouldings, all but
invisible from below, and only adding a general enrichment to the
deep shadows that relieve the shafts of the advanced pediment.
It is observable, however, that this very work is bad flamboyant,
and has corrupt renaissance characters in its detail as well as use ;
while in the earlier and grander north and south gates, there
is a very noble proportioning of die work to the distance, the
niches and statues which crown the northern one, at a height
of about one hundred feet from the ground, being alike colossal
and simple ; visibly so from below, so as to induce no deception,
and yet honestly and well finished above, and all that they are
expected to be ; the features very beautiful, full of expression,
and as delicately wrought as any work of the period.

XIII. It is to be remembered, however, that while the orna-
ments in every fine ancient building, without exception so far as I
am aware, are most delicate at the base, they are often in greater
effective quantity on the upper parts. In high towers this is
perfecdy natural and right, the solidity of the foundation being as
necessary as the division and penetration of the superstructure ;
hence the lighter work and richly pierced crowns of late Gothic
towers. The campanile of Giotto at Florence, already alluded to,
is an exquisite instance of the union of the two principles, delicate
bas-reliefs adorning its massy foundation, while the open tracery
of the upper windows attracts the eye by its slender intricacy,

26 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

and a rich cornice crowns the whole. In such truly fine cases
of this disposition the upper work is effective by its quantity and
intricacy only, as the lower portions by delicacy ; so also in the
Tour de Beurre at Rouen, where, however, the detail is massy
throughout, subdividing into rich meshes as it ascends. In the
bodies of buildings the principle is less safe, but its discussion
is not connected with our present subject

XIV. Finally, work may be wasted by being too good for its
material, or too fine to bear exposure; and this, generally a
characteristic of late, especially of renaissance, work, is perhaps
the worst fault of all. I do not know anything more painful
or pitiful than the kind of ivory carving with which the Certosa
of Pavia, and part of the CoUeone sepulchral chapel at Bergamo,
and other such buildings, are incrusted, of which it is not pos-
sible so much as to think without exhaustion; and a heavy
sense of the misery it would be, to be forced to look at it alL
And this is not from the quantity of it, nor because it is bad
work — much of it is inventive and able ; but because it looks
as if it were only fit to be put in inlaid cabinets and velveted
caskets, and as if it could not bear one drifting shower or
gnawing frost. We are afraid for it, anxious about it, and
tormented by it ; and we feel that a massy shaft and a bold
shadow would be worth it all. Nevertheless, even in cases like
these, much depends on the accomplishment of the great ends
of decoration. If the ornament does its duty — if it is ornament,
and its points of shade and light tell in the general effect, we
shall not be offended by finding that the sculptor in his fulness
of fancy has chosen to give much more than these mere points
of light, and has composed them of groups of figures. But
if the ornament does not answer its purpose, if it have no distant,
no truly decorative power ; if, generally seen, it be a mere in-
crustation and meaningless roughness, we shall only be cha*
grined by finding when we look close, that the incrustation
has cost years of labour, and has millions of figures and histories
in it ; and would be the better of being seen through a Stanhope
len& Hence the greatness of the northern Gothic as contrasted

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 27

with the latest Italian. It reaches nearly the same extreme of
detail ; but it never loses. sight of its architectural purpose, never
fails in its decorative power ; not a leaflet in it but speaks, and
speaks far off too ; and so long as this be the case, there is no
limit to the luxuriance in which such work may legitimately and
nobly be bestowed.

XV. No limit : it is one of the affectations of architects to speak
of overchaiged ornament Ornament cannot be overcharged if it
be good, and is always overcharged when it is bad. I have given,
on the opposite page (fig. i .), one of the smallest niches of the
central gate of Rouen. That gate I suppose to be the most ex-
quisite piece of pure flamboyant work existing; for though I have
spoken of the upper portions, especially the receding window, as
degenerate, the gate itself is of a purer period, and has hardly any
renaissance taint There are four strings of these niches (each
with two figures beneath it) round the porch, from the ground
to the top of the arch, with three intermediate rows of larger
niches, far more elaborate ; besides the six principal canopies of
each outer pier. The total number of the subordinate niches
alone, each worked like that in the plate, and each with a dif-
ferent pattern of traceries in each compartment,* is one hundred
and seventy-six. Yet in all this ornament there is not one
cusp, one finial, that is useless — not a stroke of the chisel is in
vain; the grace and luxuriance of it all are visible — ^sensible
rather— even to the uninquiring eye ; and all its minuteness does
not diminish the majesty, while it increases the mystery, of the
noble and unbroken vault. It is not less the boast of some
styles that they can bear ornament, than of others that they can
do without it; but we do not often enough reflect that those
very styles, of so haughty simplicity, owe part of their pleasura-
bleness to contrast, and would be wearisome if imiversal. They
are but the rests and monotones of the art; it is to its far
happier, far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of
variegated mosaic, charged with wild fancies and dark hosts of
imagery, thicker and quainter than ever filled the depth of mid-

• See Appendix II.

28 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

summer dream ; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves ;
those window-labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light;
those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed
tower ; the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith
and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed,
has passed away — all their living interests, and aims, and
achievements. We know not for what they laboured, and we
see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority,
happiness — all have departed, though bought by many a bitter
sacrifice. But of them, and their life and their toil upon the
earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps
of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave
their powers, their honours, and their errors ; but they have left
us their adoration.

CHAP. 11.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

I. There is a marked likeness between the virtue of man and
the enlightenment of the globe he inhabits — ^the same diminishing
gradation in vigour up to the limits of their domains, the same
essential separation from their contraries — ^the same twilight at
the meeting of the two : a something wider belt than the line
where the worid rolls into night, that strange twilight of the
virtues ; that dusky debateable land, wherein zeal becomes im«
patience, and temperance becomes severity, and justice becomes
cruelty, and faith superstition, and each and all vanish into
gloom.

Nevertheless, with the greater number of them, though their
dimness increases gradually, we may mark the moment of their
sunset ; and, happily, niay turn the shadow back by the way by
which it had gone down : but for one, the line of the horizon Is
irregular and undefined ; and this, too, the very equator and
girdle of them all — Truth ; that only one of which there are no
degrees, but breaks and rents continually ; that pillar of the earth,
yet a cloudy pillar ; that golden and narrow line, which the very
powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy and pru-
dence conceal, which kindness and court es modify, which courage
overshadows with his shield, imagination covers with her wings,
and charity dims with her tears. How difficult must the mainte-
nance of that authority be, which, while it has to restrain the hos-
tility of all the worst principles of man, has also to restrain the
disorders of his best — ^which is continually assaulted by the one
and betrayed by the other, and which regards with the same seve-
rity the lightest and the boldest violations of its law I There are
some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the

30 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

estimate of wisdom ; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no
stain.

We do not enough consider this ; nor enough dread the slight

aphojlism 7. and continual occasions of offence against her. We are too

n^dS^ of ™uch in the habit of looking at falsehood in its dark-

^ifmLm est associations, and through the colour of its worst

lying.

purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel
at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious.
We resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treachery, because
they harm us, not because they are untrue. Take the
detraction and the mischief from the untruth, and we
are little offended by it; turn it into praise, and we
may be pleased with it. And yet it is not calumny
nor treachery that do ^^ the largest sum of mischief in
the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt
only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and
softly spoken lie ; the amiable fallacy ; the patriotic lie
of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the
zealous lie of the partizan, the merciful lie of the
friend^ and the careless lie of each man to himself,
that cast that black mystery over humanity, through
which we thank any man who pierces, as we would
thank one who dug a well in a desert ; happy, that the
thirst for truth still remains with us, even when we
have wilfully left the fountains of it.

^^ ^'Do," — ^in the old edition, more grammatically, ''does/' — but, as I get old,
I like to make my own grammar at home. The sentence following, " they are
continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered," must be missed out
of the aphorism. I did not know the world, when I wrote it, as well as Sandro
Botticelli ; but the entire substance of the aphorism is sound, nevertheless, and
most useful. Calumny is, indeed, more invincible than praise : but, at its worst,
less mischievous than fying praise, and that by a long way.

THE lAMP OF TRUTH. 3!

It would be well if moralists less frequently confused the
greatness of a sin with its unpardonableness. The two characters
are altogether distinct The greatness of a fault depends partly
on the nature of the person against whom it is committed, pardy
upon the extent of its consequences. Its pardonableness depends,
humanly speaking, on the degfee of temptation to it. One
class of circimistances determines the weight of the attaching
punishment; the other, the claim to remission of punishment : and
since it is not always easy for men to estimate the relative weight,
nor always possible for them to know the relative consequences,
of crime, it is usually wise in them to quit the care of such nice
measurements, and to look to the other and clearer condition of
culpability, esteeming those faults worst which are committed
under least temptation. I do not mean to diminish the blame
of the injurious and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate
falsity ; yet it seems to me, that the shortest way to check the
darker forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous against
those which have mingled unregarded and unchastised, with the
current of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of
one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as
unintended. Cast them all aside : they may be light and accidental;
but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, for all that ;
and it is better that our hearts should be swept clean of them,
without over care as to which is lai^est or blackest. Speaking
truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice ; it is less
a matter of will than of habit, and I doubt if any occasion can
be trivial which permits the practice and formation of such a

habit To speak and act truth with constancy and aphorisms.

precision is nearly as difficulty and perhaps as merito- u^j^r^""*

rious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty; ^;'^tis

worth them.

and it is a strange thought how many men there are,
as I trust, who would hold to it at the cost of fortune
or life, for one who would hold to it at the cost of a
little daily trouble. And seeing that of all sin there is,

32 THE LAMP OF TRUTH,

perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the Almighty,
no one more " wanting the good of virtue and of being/'
than this of lying, it is surely a strange insolence to fall
into the foulness of it on light or on no temptation, and
surely becoming an honourable man to resolve, that,
whatever semblances or fallacies the necessary course
of his life may compel him to bear or to believe, none
shall disturb the serenity of his voluntary actions, nor
diminish the reality of his chosen delights.

IL If this be just and wise for truth's sake, much more is it
necessary for the sake of the delights over which she has influence.
For, as I advocated the expression of the Spirit of Sacrifice in
the acts and pleasures of men, not as if thereby those acts could
further the cause of religion, but because most assuredly they
might therein be infinitely ennobled themselves, so I would
have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear in the hearts of our
artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the truthful practice of
handicrafts could far advance the cause of truth, but because I
would fain see the handicrafts themselves urged by the spurs
of chivalry : and it is, indeed, marvellous to see what power and
universality there are in this single principle, and how in the
consulting or forgetting of it lies half the dignity or decline of
every art and act of man. I have before endeavoured to show
its range and power in painting ; and I believe a volume, instead
of a chapter, might be written on its authority over all that is
great in architecture. But I must be content with the force
of few and familiar instances, believing that the occasions of its
manifestation may be more easily discovered by a desire to be
true, than embraced by an analysis of truth.

Only it is very necessary in the outset to mark clearly wherein
consists the essence of fallacy, as distinguished from fancy. ^*

*• "Fancy;" before, "supposition," — ^which was a curiously imperfect word
"Fancy," short for "fantasy," now must be taken as including not only great
imaginations, but fond ones, or even foolish and diseased ones— which are never-

THE LAMP OF TRXTTH. 33

III. For it might be at first thought that the whole aphorism 9.
kingdom of imagination was one of deception also. ^^^
Not so : the action of the imagination is a voluntary Sot?**^*^'
summoning of the conceptions of things absent or
impossible ; and the pleasure and nobility of the ima-
gination partly consist in its knowledge and contem-
plation of them as such, i. e. in the knowledge of their
actual absence or impossibility at the moment of their
apparent presence or reality. When the imagination
deceives, it becomes madness. It is a noble faculty so

long as it confesses its own ideality ; when it ceases to
confess this, it is insanity. All the difference lies in
the fact of the confession, in there being no deception.
It is necessary to our rank as spiritual creatures, that
we should be able to invent and to behold what is not ;
and to our rank as moral creatures, that we should
know and confess at the same time that it is not.

IV. Again, it might be thought, and has been thought, that
the whole art of painting is nothing else than an endeavour to
deceive. Not so : it is, on the contrary, a statement of certain
facts, in the clearest possible way. For instance : I desire to
give an account of a mountain or of a rock ; I begin by telling
its shape. But words will not do this distinctly, and I draw its
shape, and say, "This was its shape." Next: I would fain
represent its colour ; but words will not do this either, and I dye
the paper, and say, " This was its colour." Such a process may
be carried on until the scene appears to exist, and a high pleasure
may be taken in its apparent existence. This is a communicated
act of imagination, but no lie. The lie can consist only in an
assertion of its existence (which is never for one instant made,

theless as tnie as the healthiest, so long as we know them to be diseased A
dream is as real a fact, as a vision of reality: deceptive only if we do not recog-
nise it as a dream.

34 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

implied, or believed), or else in false' statements of forms and
colours (which are, indeed, made and believed to our great loss,
continually). And observe, also, that so degrading a thing is
deception in even the approach and appearance of it, that all
painting which even reaches the mark of apparent realisation is
degraded in so doing. I have enough insisted on this point in
another place.

V. The violations of truth, which dishonour poetry and
painting, are thus for the most part confined to the treatment of
their subjects. But in architecture another and a less subtle,
more contemptible, violation of truth is possible ; a direct falsity
of assertion respecting the nature of material, or the quantity
of labour. And this is, in the full sense of the word, wrong ;
it is as truly deserving of reprobation as any other moral
delinquency ; it is unworthy alike of architects and of nations ;
and it has been a sign, wherever it has widely and with toleration
existed, of a singular debasement of the arts ; that it is not a
sign of worse than this, of a general want of severe probity, can
be accounted for only by our knowledge of the strange separation
which has for some centuries existed between the arts and all
other subjects of human intellect, as matters of conscience. This
withdrawal of conscientiousness from among the faculties con-
cerned with art, while it has destroyed the arts themselves, has
also rendered in a measure nugatory the evidence which other-
wise they might have presented respecting the character of the
respective nations among whom they have been cultivated;
otherwise, it might appear more than strange that a nation so
distinguished for its general uprightness and faith as the English,
should admit in their architecture more of pretence, concealment,
and deceit, than any other of this or of past time.

They are admitted in thoughtlessness, but with fatal effect upon
the art in which they are practised. If there were no other causes
for the failures which of late have marked every great occasion
for architectural exertion, these petty dishonesties would be
enough to account for all. It is the first step, and not the least,
towards greatness, to do away with these ; the first, because

THE LAMP or TRUTH. 35

SO evidently and easily in our power. We may not be able to
conunand goody or beautiful, or inventive, architecture ; but we
can command an honest architecture : the meagreness of poverty
may be pardoned, the sternness of utility respected ; but what is
there but scorn for the meanness of deception ?

VI. Architectural Deceits are broadly to be considered under
three heads :—

I St. The suggestion of a mode of structure or support, other
than the true one ; as in pendants of late Gothic roofs.

2nd The painting of surfaces to represent some other material
than that of which they actually consist (as in the n:iarbling of
wood), or the deceptive representation of sculptured ornament
upon them.

3rd. The use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind.

Now, it may be broadly stated, that architecture will be noble
exactly in the degree in which all these false expedients are
avoided. Nevertheless, there are certain degrees of them, which,
owing to their^ frequent usage, or to other causes, have so far
lost the nature of deceit as to be admissible ; as, for instance,
gilding, which is in architecture no deceit, because it is therein
not understood for gold ; while in jewellery it is a deceit, because
it is so understood, and therefore altogether to be reprehended.
So that there arise, in the application of the strict rules of
right, many exceptions and niceties of conscience ; which let us
as briefly as possible examine.

VII. ist Structural Deceits." I have limited these to the
determined and purposed suggestion of a mode of support other
than the true one. The architect is not bound to exhibit
structure ; nor are we to complain of him for concealing it, any
more than we should regret that the outer surfaces of the human
frame conceal much of its anatomy ; nevertheless, that building
will generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye discovers
the great secrets of its structure, as an animal form does, al-
though from a careless, observer they may be concealed* In

" Aesthetic deceits, to the eye and mind, being all that are considered in this
chapter — not practical roguery. See note 10, p. 24.

36 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

the vaulting of a Gothic roof it is no deceit to throw the strength
into the ribs of it, and make the intermediate vault a mere

shell. Such a structure would be presumed by an intelligent
observer, the first time he saw such a roof ; and the beauty of its
traceries would be enhanced to him if they confessed and followed
the lines of its main strength. If, however, the intermediate
shell were made of wood instead of stone, and whitewashed to
look like the rest, — this would, of course, be direct deceit, and
altogether unpardonable.

There is, however, a certain deception necessarily occurring in
Gothic architecture, which relates, not to the points, but to the
manner, of support The resemblance in its shafts and ribs to
the external relations of stems and branches, which has been the
ground of so much foolish speculation, necessarily induces in the
mind of the spectator a sense or belief of a correspondent internal
structure ; that is to say, of a fibrous and continuous strength
from the root into the limbs, and an elasticity communicated
upwards, sufficient for the support of the ramified portions. The
idea of the real conditions, of a great weight of ceiling thrown
upon certain narrow, jointed lines, which have a tendency partly
to be crushed, and partly to separate and be pushed outwards, is
with difficulty received ; and the more so when the pillars would
be, if unassisted, too slight for the weight, and are supported by
external flying buttresses, as in the apse of Beauvais, and other
such achievements of the bolder Gothic. Now, there is a nice
question of conscience in this, which we shall hardly settle but by
considering that, when the mind is informed beyond the possibility
of mistake as to the true nature of things, the afiecting it with a
contrary impression, however distinct, is no dishonesty, but, on
the contrary, a legitimate appeal to the imagination. For instance,
the greater part of the happiness which we have in contemplating
clouds, results from the impression of their having massive,
luminous, warm, and mountain-like surfaces ; and our delight in
the sky frequently depends upon our considering it as a blue
vault. But, if we choose, we may know the contrary, in both
instances ; and easily ascertain the doud to be a damp fog, or a

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 37

drift of snow flakes ; and the sky to be a lightless abyss. There
is, therefore, no dishonesty, while there is much delight, in the
irresistibly contrary impression. In the same way, so long as we
see the stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points
of support in any piece of architecture, we may rather praise than
regret the dexterous artifices which compel us to feel as if there
were fibre in its shafts and life in its branches. Nor is even the
concealment of the support of the external buttress reprehensible,
so long as the pillars are not sensibly inadequate to their duty.
For the weight of a roof is a circumstance of which the spectator
generally has no idea, and the provisions for it, consequently, cir-
cumstances whose necessity or adaptation he could not under-
stand. It is no deceit, therefore, when the weight to be borne
is necessarily imknown, to conceal also the means of bearing it,
leaving only to be perceived so much of the support as is indeed
adequate to the weight supposed. For the shafts do, indeed,
bear as much as they are ever imagined to bear, and the system
of added support is no more, as a matter of conscience, to be
exhibited, than, in the hiunan or any other form, mechanical
provisions for those functions which are themselves unperceived.

But the moment that the conditions of weight are compre-
hended, both truth and feeling require that the conditions of
support should be also comprehended. Nothing can be worse,
either as judged by the taste or the conscience, than affectedly
inadequate supports — suspensions in air, and other such tricks
and vanities. ^^

VIII. With deceptive concealments of structure are to be
classed, though still more blameable, deceptive assumptions of it,
— the introduction of members which should have, or profess to
have, a duty, and have none. One of the most general instances
of this will be found in the form of the flying buttress in late

" Four lines are here suppressed, of attack by Mr. Hope on St Sophia, which
I do not now choose to ratify, because I have never seen St Sophia ; and of
attack by myself on King's College Chapel, at Cambridge, — ^which took no account
of the many charming qualities possessed through its faults, nor of its superiority
to everything else in its style;

38 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

Gothic. The use of that member is, of course, to convey support
from one pier to another when the plan of the building renders
it necessary or desirable that the supporting masses should be
divided into groups; the most frequent necessity of this kind
arising from the intermediate range of chapels or aisles between
the nave or choir walls and their supporting piers. The natural,
healthy, and beautiful arrangement is that of a steeply slopii^
bar of stone, sustained by an arch with its spandril carried
farthest down on the lowest side, and dying into the vertical
of the outer pier; that pier being, of course, not square, but
rather a piece of wall set at right angles to the supported walls,
and, if need be, crowned by a pinnacle to give it greater weight.
The whole arrangement is exquisitely carried out in the choir of
Beauvais. In later Gothic the pinnacle became gradually a
decorative member, and was used in all places merely for the
sake of its beauty. There is no objection to this ; it is just as
lawful to build a pinnacle for its beauty as a tower ; but also the
buttress became a decorative member ; and was used, first, where
it was not wanted, and, secondly, in forms in which it could be of
no use, becoming a mere tie, not between the pier and wall» but
between the wall and the top of the decorative pinnacle, thus
attaching itself to the very point where its thrust, if it made
any, could not be resisted. The most flagrant instance of this
barbarism that I remember, (though it prevails partially in all the
spires of the Netherlands,) is the lantern of St Ouen at Rouen,
where the pierced buttress, having an ogee curve, looks about
as much calculated to bear a thrust as a switch of willow ; and
the pinnacles, huge and richly decorated, have evidently no work
to do whatsoever, but stand round the central tower, like four
idle servants, as they are — heraldic supporters, that central tower
being merely a hollow crown, which needs no more buttressing
than a basket does. In fact, I do not know any thing more
strange or unwise than the praise lavished upon this lantern ; it
is one of the basest pieces of Gothic in Europe ; its flamboyant
traceries being of the last and most degraded forms * ; and its

* See Appendix II.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 39

entire plan and decoration resembling, and deserving little more
credit than, the burnt sugar ornaments of elaborate confectionery.
There are hardly any of the magnificent and serene methods of
construction in the early Gothic, which have not, in the course of
time, been gradually thinned and pared away into these skele-
tons, which sometimes indeed, when their lines truly follow the
structure of the original masses, have an interest like that of
the fibrous framework of leaves from which the substance has
been dissolved, but which are usually distorted as well as ema-
ciated, and remain but the sickly phantoms and mockeries of
things that were ; they are to true architecture what the Greek
ghost was to the armed and living frame ; and the very winds
that whistle through the threads of them, are to the diapasoned
echoes of the ancient walls, as to the voice of the man was the
pining of the spectre.

IX. Perhaps the most fruitfiil source of these kinds of corrup-
tion which we have to guard against in recent times, is one
which, nevertheless, comes in a "questionable shape," and of
which it is not easy to determine the proper laws and limits ; I
mean the use of iron. The definition of the art of architecture,
given in the first Chapter, is independent of its materials.
Nevertheless, that art having been, up to the beginning of the
present century, practised for the most part in clay, stone, or
wood, it has resulted that the sense of proportion and the laws of
structure have been based, the one altogether, the other in great
part, on the necessities consequent on the emplojmient of those
materials ; and that the entire or principal employment of metallic
framework would, therefore, be generally felt as a departure from
the first principles of the art Abstractedly there appears no
reason why iron should not be used as well as wood ; and the
time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws
will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction.
But I believe that the tendency of all present" sympathy and

" " Present " (J.e. of the day in which I wrote), as opposed to the ferruginous
temper which I saw rapidly developing itself, and which, since that day, has
changed our merry England into the Man in the Iron MasL

40 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

association is to limit the idea of architecture to non-metallic
work ; and that not without reason. For architecture being in
its perfection the earliest, as in its elements it is necessarily the
first, of arts, will always precede, in any barbarous nation, the
possession of the science necessary either for the obtaining or
the management of iron. Its first existence and its earliest laws
must, therefore, depend upon the use of materials accessible in
quantity, and on the surface of the earth ; that is to say, clay,
wood, or stone : and as I think it cannot but be generally felt
that one of the chief dignities of architecture is its historical use,
and since the latter is partly dependent on consistency of style,
it will be felt right to retain as far as may be, even in periods of
more advanced science, the materials and principles of earlier
ages.

X. But whether this be granted me or not, the fact is, that
every idea respecting size, proportion, decoration, or construction,
on which we are at present in the habit of acting or judging,
depends on presupposition of such materials : and as I both feel
myself unable to escape the influence of these prejudices, and
believe that my readers will be equally so, it may be perhaps
permitted to me to assume that true architecture does not admit
iron as a constructive material, and that such works as the cast-
iron central spire of Rouen Cathedral, or the iron roofs and
pillars of our railway stations, and of some of our churches, are
not architecture at all. Yet it is evident that metals may, and
sometimes must, enter into the construction to a certain extent,
as nails in wooden architecture, and therefore, as legitimately,
rivets and solderings in stone ; neither can we well deny to the
Gothic architect the power of supporting statues, pinnacles, or
traceries by iron bars ; and if we grant this, I do not see how we
can help allowing Brunelleschi his iron chaia around the dome of
Florence, or the builders of Salisbury their elaborate iron binding
of the central tower. If, however, we would not fall into the
old sophistry of the grains of com and the heap, we must find

Aphorism io. a rule which may enable us to stop somewhere. This rule is,
strucfui^a^^ I think, that metals may be used as a cement^ but not

use of iron.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH, 4 1

as a support. For as cements of other kinds are often
so strong that the stones may easier be broken than
separated, and the wall becomes a solid mass, without
for that reason losing the character of architecture,
there is no reason why, when a nation has obtained
the knowledge and practice of iron work, metal rods
or rivets should not be used in the place of cement,
and establish the same or a greater strength and adhe-
rence, without in any wise inducing departure from the
types and system of architecture before established;
nor does it make any difference, except as to sight-
liness, whether the metal bands or rods so employed
be in the body of the wall or on its exterior, or set as
stays and cross-bands; so only that the use of them
be always and distinctly one which might be super-
seded by mere strength of cement ; as for instance if a
pinnacle or muUion be propped or tied by an iron band,
it is evident that the iron only prevents the separation
of the stones by lateral force, which the cement would
have done, had it been strong enough. But the
moment that the iron in the least degree takes the
place of the stone, and acts by its resistance to crush-
ing, and bears superincumbent weight, or if it acts by
its own weight as a counterpoise, and so supersedes
the use of pinnacles or buttresses in resisting a lateral
thrust, or if, in the form of a rod or girder, it is used to
do what wooden beams would have done as well, that
instant the building ceases, so far as such applications
of metal extend, to be true architecture.**

" Again the word " architecture/' used as implying perfect apx»?» or authority

42 THE I-AMP OF TRUTH.

XL The limit, however, thus determined, is an ultimate one,
and it is well in all things to be cautious how we approach the
utmost limit of lawfulness ; so that, although the employment of
metal within this limit cannot be considered as destroying the
very being and nature of architecture, it will, if extravagant and
frequent, derogate from the dignity of the work, as well as (which
is especially to our present point) from its honesty. For although
the spectator is not informed as to the quantity or strength of the
cement employed, he will generally conceive the stones of the
building to be separable ; and his estimate of the skill of the
architect will be based in great measure on his supposition of this
condition, and of the difficulties attendant upon it : so that it is
always more honourable, and it has a tendency to render the
style of architecture both more masculine and more scientific, to
employ stone and mortar simply as such, and to do as much
as possible with their mere weight and strength, and rather
sometimes to forego a grace, or to confess a weakness, than
attain the one, or conceal the other, by means verging upon
dishonesty.

Nevertheless, where the design is of such delicacy and slight-
ness as, in some parts of very fair and finished edifices, it is
desirable that it should be ; and where both its completion and
security are in a measure dependent on the use of metal, let not
such use be reprehended ; so only that as much is done as may be,
by good mortar and good masonry ; and no slovenly workmanship
admitted through confidence in the iron helps ; for it is in this
license as in that of wine, a man may use it for his infirmities,
but not for his nourishment.

XII. And, in order to avoid an over use of this liberty, it
would be well to consider what application may be conveniently

over materials. No builder has true command over the changes in the crystalline
structure of iron, or over its modes of decay. The definition of iron by the
Delphic oracle, " calamity upon calamity " (meaning iron on the anvil), has only
been in these last days entirely interpreted : and from the sinking of the '* Van-
guard " and " London " to the breaking Woolwich Pier into splinters — ^two days
before I write this note, — the "anarchy of iron" is the most notable fact con-
cerning it. See Appendix III.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 43

made of the dovetailing and various adjusting of stones; for when
any artifice is necessary to help the mortar, certainly this ought
to come before the use of metal, for it is both safer and more honest.
I cannot see that any objection can be made to the fitting of the
stones in any shapes the architect pleases ; for although it would
not be desirable to see buildings put together like Chinese puzzles,
there must always be a check upon such an abuse of the practice
in its difficulty ; nor is it necessary that it should be always ex-
hibited, so that it be understood by the spectator as an admitted
help, and that no principal stones are introduced in positions
apparently impossible for them to retain, although a riddle here
and there, in unimportant features, may sometimes serve to draw
the eye to the masonry, and make it interesting, as well as to
give a delightful sense of a kind of necromantic power in the
architect. There is a pretty one in the lintel of the lateral door
of the cathedral of Prato (Plate IV. fig. 4.) ; where the mainte-
nance of the visibly separate stones, alternate marble and serpen-
tine, cannot be understood until their cross-cutting is seen below.
Each block is, of course, of the form given in fig. 5.

XIII. Lastly, before leaving the subject of structural deceits,
I would remind the architect who thinks that I am unnecessarily

and narrowly limiting his resources or his art, that the highest aphorism n.

greatness and the highest wisdom are shown, the first ^ty of di'

by a noble submission to, the second by a thoughtful ^necesTi^^

bat of ordi-

providence for, certain voluntarily admitted restraints. »^ce-
Nothing is more evident than this, in that supreme
government which is the example, as it is the centre,
of all others. The Divine Wisdom is, and can be,
shown to us only in its meeting and contending with
the difficulties which are voluntarily, and for the sake
of that contest^ admitted by the Divine Omnipotence:
and these difficulties, observe, occur in the form of
natural laws or ordinances, which might, at many

44 THE LAMP OF TRUTH,

times and in countless ways, be infringed with appa-
rent advantage, but which are never infringed, what-
ever costly arrangements or adaptations their obser-
vance may necessitate for the accomplishment of given
purposes. The example most apposite to our present
subject is the structure of the bones of animals. No
reason can be given, I believe, why the system of the
higher animals should not have been made capable, as
that of the Infusoria is, of secreting flint, instead of
phosphate of lime, or, more naturally still, carbon ; so
framing the bones of adamant at once. The elephant
or rhinoceros, had the earthy part of their bones been
made of diamond, might have been as agile and light
as grasshoppers, and other animals might have been
framed, far more magnificently colossal than any that
walk the earth. In other worlds we may, perhaps, see
such creations ; a creation for every element, and
elements infinite. But the architecture of animals
here is appointed by God to be a marble architecture,
not a flint nor adamant architecture ; and all manner
of expedients are adopted to attain the utmost degree
of strength and size possible under that great limita-
tion. The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and
riveted, the leg of the megatherium is a foot thick, and
the head of the myodon has a double skull ; we, in our
wisdom, should, doubtless, have given the lizard a steel
jaw, and the myodon a cast-iron headpiece, and for-
gotten the great principle to which all creation bears
witness, that order and system are nobler things than
power. But God shows us in Himself, strange as it

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 45

may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even
the perfection of Obedience — an obedience to His own
laws: and in the cumbrous movement of those un-
wieldiest of His creatures, we are reminded, even in
His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in
the human creature; ''that sweareth to his own hurt,
and changeth not/'

XIV, 2nd. Surface Deceits. These may be generally defined
as the inducing the supposition of some form of material which
does not actually exist ; as commonly in the painting of wood
to represent marble, or in the painting of ornaments in decep-
tive relief, &c. But we must be careful to observe, that the evil
of them consists always in definitely attempted deception^ and
that it is a matter of some nicety to mark the point where
deception begins or ends.

Thus, for instance, the roof of Milan Cathedral is seemingly
covered with elaborate fan tracery, forcibly enough painted to
enable it, in its dark and removed position, to deceive a careless
observer. This is, of course, gross degradation ; it destroys much
of the dignity even of the rest of the building, and is in the very
strongest terms to be reprehended.

The roof of the Sistine Chapel has much architectural design in
grisaille mingled with the figures of its frescoes ; and the effect
is increase of dignity.

In what lies the distinctive character ?

In two points, principally : — The first, that the architecture is
so closely associated with the figures, and has so grand fellowship
with them in its forms and cast shadows, that both are at once
felt to be of a piece ; and as the figures must necessarily be
painted, the architecture is known to be so too. There is thus
no deception.

The second, that so great a painter as Michael Angelo aphorism 12.
would always stop short, in such minor parts of his Ssw£Sv2!
design, of the degree of vulgar force which would be ^t^s

46 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

aphorism as fiecessarv to induce the supposition of their reality;

piTt of it, the

hSnSis ^^^» strangely as it may sound, would never paint
'^^^^''' badly enough to deceive.

But though right and wrong are thus found broadly
opposed in works severally so mean and so mighty as
the roof of Milan and that of the Sistine, there are
works neither so great nor so mean, in which the limits
of right are vaguely defined, and will need some care
to determine ; care only, however, to apply accurately
the broad principle with which we set out, that no form
nor material is to be deceptively represented.

XV. Evidently, then, painting, confessedly such, is no decep-
tion ; it does not assert any material whatever. Whether it be
on wood or on stone, or, as naturally will be supposed, on plaster,
does not matter. Whatever the material, good painting makes it
more precious ; nor can it ever be said to deceive respecting the
ground of which it gives us no information. To cover brick with
plaster, and this plaster with fresco, is, therefore, perfectly legiti-
mate ; and as desirable a mode of decoration, as it is constant in
the great periods. Verona and Venice are now seen deprived of
more than half their former splendour ; it depended far more on
their frescoes than their marbles. The plaster, in this case, is to be
considered as the gesso ground on panel or canvas. But to cover
brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it
may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood; and is just as con-
temptible a procedure as the other b noble.

It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint everything ?
So long as the painting is confessed — ^yes ; but if, even in the
slightest degree, the sense of it be lost, and the thing painted be
supposed real — no. Let us take a few instances. In the Campo
Santo at Pisa, each fresco is surrounded with a border composed
of flat coloured patterns of great elegance — no part of it in at-
tempted relief. The certainty of flat surface being thus secured,
the figures, though the size of life, do not deceive, and the artist

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 47

thenceforward is at liberty to put forth his whole power, and to
lead us through fields, and groves, and depths of pleasant land-
scape, and soothe us with the sweet clearness of far off sky, and
yet never lose the severity of his primal purpose of architectural
decoration.

In the Camera di Correggio of San Lodovico at Parma, the
trellises of vine shadow the walls, as if with an actual arbour ;
and the groups of children, peeping through the oval openings,
luscious in colour and faint in light, may well be expected every
instant to break through, or hide behind the covert. The grace
of their attitudes, and the evident greatness of the whole work,
mark that it is painting, and barely redeem it from the charge
of falsehood ; but even so saved, it is utterly unworthy to take
a place among noble or legitimate architectural decoration.

In the cupola of the duomo of Parma the same painter has
represented the Assumption with so much deceptive power, that
he has made a dome of some thirty feet diameter look like a
doud-wrapt opening in the seventh heaven, crowded with a rush-
ing sea of angels* Is this wrong ? Not so : for the subject at once
precludes the possibility of deception. We might have taken the
vines for a veritable pergola, and the children for its haunting
n^;azzi ; but we know the stayed cloud and moveless angels
must be man's work ; let him put his utmost strength to it, and
welcome ; he can enchant us, but cannot betray.

We may thus apply the rule to the highest, as well as the
art of daily occiurence, always remembering that more is to be
forgiven to the great painter than to the mere decorative work-
man ; and this especially, because the former, even in deceptive
portions, will not trick us so grossly ; as we have just seen in
Correggio, where a worse painter would have made the thing look
like life at once. There is, however, in room, villa, or garden
decoration, some fitting admission of trickeries of this kind, as
of pictured landscapes at the extremities of alleys and arcades,
and ceilings like skies, or painted with prolongations upwards of
the architecture of the walls, which things have sometimes a
certain luxury and pleasureableness in places meant for idleness.

48 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

and are innocent enough as long as they are regarded as mere
toys.

XVI. Touching the false representation of material, the ques-
tion is infinitely more simple, and the law more sweeping ; all
such imitations are utterly base and inadmissible. It is melan-
choly to think of the time and expense lost in marbling the shop
fronts of London alone, and of the waste of our resources in abso-
lute vanities, in things about which no mortal cares, by which no
eye is ever arrested, unless painfully, and which do not add one
whit to comfort, or cleanliness, or even to that great object of
commercial art — conspicuousness. But in architecture of a higher
rank, how much more is it to be condemned I I have made it a
rule in the present work not to blame specifically ; but I may,
perhaps, be permitted, while I express my sincere admiration of
the very noble entrance and general architecture of the British
Museum, to express also my regret that the noble granite foun-
dation of the staircase should be mocked at its landing by an
imitation, the more blameable because tolerably successful. The
only effect of it is to cast a suspicion upon the true stones below,
and upon every bit of granite afterwards encountered. One feels
a doubt, after it, of the honesty of Memnon himself. But even
this, however derogatory to the noble architecture around it, is
less painful than the want of feeling with which, in our cheap
modern churches, we suffer the wall decorator to erect about the
altar frameworks and pediments daubed with mottled colour, and
to dye in the same fashion such skeletons or caricatures of columns
as may emerge above the pews : this is not merely bad taste ; it
is no unimportant or excusable error which brings even these
shadows of vanity and falsehood into the house of prayer. The
first condition which just feeling requires in church furniture is,
that it should be simple and unaffected, not fictitious nor tawdry.
It may not be in our power to make it beautiful, but let it at least
be pure ; and if we cannot permit much to the architect, do not
let us permit anything to the upholsterer ; if we keep to solid
stone and solid wood, whitewashed, if we like, for cleanliness'
sake, (for whitewash has so often been used as the dress of noble

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 49

things that it has thence received a kind of nobility itself,) it
must be a bad design indeed, which is grossly offensive. I re-
collect no instance of a want of sacred character, or of any marked
and painful ugliness, in the simplest or the most awkwardly built
village church, where stone and wood were roughly and nakedly
used, and the windows latticed with white glass. But the
smoothly stuccoed walls, the flat roofs with ventilator ornaments,
the barred windows with jaundiced borders and dead ground
square panes, the gilded or bronzed wood, the painted iron, the
wretched upholstery of curtains and cushions, and pew heads, and
altar railings, and Birmingham metal candlesticks, and, above all,
the green and yellow sickness of the false marble — disguises all,
observe ; falsehoods all — ^who are they who like these things ?
who defend them ? who do them ? I have never spoken to any
one who did like them, though to many who thought them matters
of no consequence. Perhaps not to religion ; (though I cannot
but believe that there are many to whom, as to myself, such
things are serious obstacles to the repose of mind and temper
which should precede devotional exercises ;) but to the general
tone of our judgment and feeling — ^yes ; for assuredly we shall
r^[ard, with tolerance, if not with affection, whatever forms of
material things we have been in the habit of associating with our
worship, and be little prepared to detect or blame hypocrisy,
meanness, and disguise in other kinds of decoration, when we
suffer objects belonging to the most solemn of all services to be
tricked out in a fashion so fictitious and unseemly.

XVII. Painting, however, is not the only mode in which ma-
terial may be concealed, or rather simulated ; for merely to conceal
is, as we have seen, no wrong. Whitewash, for instance, though
often (by no means always) to be regretted as a concealment, is
not to be blamed as a falsity. It shows itself for what it is,
and asserts nothing of what is beneath it. Gilding has become,
from its frequent use, equally innocent It is understood for
what it is, a film merely, and is, therefore, allowable to any
extent : I do not say expedient : it is one of the most abused
means of magnificence we possess, and I much doubt whether

50 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

any use we ever make of it, balances that loss of pleasure, which^
from the frequent sight and perpetual suspicion of it, we suffer
in the contemplation of any thing that is verily of gold. I think
gold was meant to be seldom seen, and to be admired as a
precious thing ; and I sometimes wish that truth should so far
literally prevail as that all should be gold that glittered, or rather
that nothing should glitter that was not gold. Nevertheless,
Nature herself does not dispense with such semblance, but uses
light for it ; and I have too great a love for old and saintly art to
part with its burnished field, or radiant nimbus ; only it should be
used with respect, and to express magnificence, or sacredness,
and not in lavish vanity, or in sign painting. Of its expedience,
however, any more than that of colour, it is not here the place to
speak ; we are endeavouring to determine what is lawful, not what
is desirable. Of other and less common modes of disguising
surface, as of powder of lapis lazuli, or mosaic imitations of
coloured stones, I need hardly speak. The rule will apply to all
alike, that whatever is pretended, is wrong ; commonly enforced
also by the exceeding ugliness and insufficient appearance of such
methods, as lately in the style of renovation by which half the
houses in Venice have been defaced, the brick covered first with
stucco, and this painted with zigzag veins in imitation of alabaster.
But there is one more form of architectural fiction, which is so
constant in the great periods that it needs respectful judgment
I mean the facing of brick with precious stone.

Aphorism 13. XVIII. It is Well known, that what is meant by a

SSJ^in <^hurch's being built of marble is, in nearly all cases,

vcl^S/*)^^ only that a veneering of marble has been fastened on

The f&cin?

brick with the rough brick wall, built with certain projections to

marble is only

o^^au™ receive it ; and that what appear to be massy stones,

UdmSSb^*^^ are nothing more than external slabs.

Now, it is evident, that, in this case, the question of
right is on the same ground as in that of gilding. If it
be clearly understood that a marble facing does not

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. $1

pretend or imply a marble wall, there is no harm in
it ; and as it is also evident that, when very precious
stones are used, as jaspers and serpentines, it must
become, not only an extravagant and vain increase of
expense, but sometimes an actual impossibility, to
obtain mass of them enough to build with, there is no
resource but this of veneering ; nor is there any thing
to be alleged against it on the head of durability, such
work having been by experience found to last as long,
and in as perfect condition, as any kind of masonry.
It is, therefore, to be considered as simply an art of
mosaic on a large scale, the ground being of brick, or
any other material ; and when lovely stones are to be
obtained, it is a manner which should be thoroughly
understood, and often practised. Nevertheless, as we
esteem the shaft of a column more highly for its being
of a single block, and as we do not regret the loss of
substance and value which there is in things of solid
gold, silver, agate, or ivory ; so I think that walls them-
selves may be regarded with a more just complacency
if they are known to be all of noble substance ; and
that rightly weighing the demands of the two prin-
ciples of which we have hitherto spoken — Sacrifice
and Truth, — we should sometimes rather spare external
ornament than diminish the unseen value and con-
sistency of what we do; and I believe that a better
manner of design, and a more careful and studious,
if less abundant, decoration would follow, upon the
consciousness of thoroughness in the substance. And,
indeed, this is to be remembered, with respect to all the points

52 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

we have examined; that while we have traced the limits of
license, we have not fixed those of that high rectitude which
refuses license. It is thus true that there is no falsity, and much
beauty, in the use of external coloiur, and that it is lawful to
paint either pictures or patterns on whatever surfaces may seem
to need enrichment But it is not less true, that such practices
are essentially unarchitectural ; and while we cannot say that
there is actual danger in an over use of them, seeing that
they have been always used most lavishly in the times of most
noble art, yet they divide the work into two parts and kinds,
one of less durability than the other, which dies away from it
in process of ages, and leaves it, unless it have noble qualities
of its own, naked and bare. That enduring noblesse I should,
therefore, call truly architectural ; and it is not until this has been
secxired, that the accessory power of painting may be called in,
for the delight of the immediate time ; nor this, as I think, until

Aphorism 14. every resource of a more stable kind has been exhausted. The
S^iSTSf ' *"*^ colours of architecture are those of natural stone^
^^^U and I would fain see these taken advantage of to the

DAttural stones.

full. Every variety of hue, from pale yellov^ to purple,
passing through orange, red, and brov^n, is entirely at
our command ; nearly every kind of green and grey is
also attainable ; and with these, and pure white, what
harmonies might we not achieve? Of stained and
variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the kinds
innumerable ; where brighter colours are required, let
glass, and gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic —
a kind of work as durable as the solid stone, and
incapable of losing its lustre by time — ^and let the
painter's work be reserved for the shadowed loggia
and inner chamber. This is the true and faithful way
of building; where this cannot be, the device of ex-
ternal colouring may, indeed, be employed without

^^,^^2,0^^

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 53

dishonour ; but it must be with the warning reflection,
that a time will come when such aids must pass away,
and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness,
dying the death of the dolphin. Better the less bright,
more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of
San Miniato, and the mosaics of St. Mark's, are more
warmly filled, and more brightly touched, by every
return of morning and evening rays ; while the hues of
our cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud ;
and the temples whose azure and purple once flamed
above the Grecian promontories, stand in their faded
whiteness, like snows which the sunset has left cold.

XIX. The last form of fallacy which it will be remembered we
had to deprecate, was the substitution of cast or machine work
for that of the hand, generally expressible as Operative Deceit.

There are two reasons, both weighty, against this practice :
one, that all cast and machine work is bad, as work ; the other,
that it is dishonest. Of its badness I shall speak in another place,
that being evidendy no efficient reason against its use when other
cannot be had. Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, is
of the grossest kind, is, I think, a sufficient reason to determine
absolute and unconditional rejection of it.

Ornament, as I have often before observed, has two entirely
distinct sources of agreeableness : one, that of the abstract beauty
of its forms, which, for the present, we will suppose to be the same
whether they come from the hand or the machine ; the other, the
sense of human labour and care spent upon it. How great this
latter influence we may perhaps judge, by considering that there
is not a cluster of weeds growing in any cranny of ruin*' which
has not a beauty in all respects nearly equal, and, in some, immea-

^ I do not see any reference to the intention of the opposite plate. It is a
piece of pencil sketch from an old church at St Lo. (I believe the original
drawing is now in America, belonging to my dear friend, Charles Eliot Norton),
and it was meant to show the greater beauty of the natural weeds than of the

54 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

surably superior, to that of the most elaborate sculpture of its
stones : and that all our interest in the carved work, our sense of
its richness, though it is tenfold less rich than the knots of grass
beside it ; of its delicacy, though it is a thousandfold less delicate ;
of its admirableness, though a millionfold less admirable ; results
from our consciousness of its being the work of poor, clumsy,
toilsome man. Its true delightfulness depends on our discover-
ing in it the record of thoughts, and intents, and trials, and heart-
breakings — of recoveries and joyfulnesses of success : all this can
be traced by a practised eye ; but, granting it even obscure, it is
presumed or understood ; and in that is the worth*' of the thing,
just as much as the worth of any thing else we call precious. The
worth of a diamond is simply the understanding of the time it
must take to look for it before it is found ; and the worth of an
ornament is the time it must take before it can be cut It has
an intrinsic value besides, which the diamond has not ; (for a
diamond has no more real beauty than a piece of glass;) but I do
not speak of that at present ; I place the two on the same ground ;
and I suppose that hand-wrought ornament can no more be
generally known from machine work, than a diamond can be
known from paste ; nay, that the latter may deceive, for a moment,
the mason s, as the other the jeweller's, eye ; and that it can be
detected only by the closest examination. Yet exacdy as a
woman of feeling would not wear false jewels, so would a builder
of honour disdain false ornaments. The using of them is just as
downright and inexcusable a lie. You use that which pretends
to a worth which it has not ; which pretends to have cost, and
to be, what it did not, and is not; it is an imposition, a
vulgarity, an impertinence, and a sin. Down with it to the
ground, grind it to powder, leave its ragged place upon the wall,
rather; you have not paid for it, you have no business with
it, you do not want it. [ Nobody wants ornaments in this world,

carved crockets, and the tender harmony of both. Some farther notice is taken
of this plate in the eighteenth paragraph of Chap. V.

" Worth is, of course, used here in the vulgar economists* sense, " cost of pro-
duction," intrinsic value being distinguished from it in the next sentence.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 55

but every body wants integrity. ) All the fair devices that ever
were fancied, are not worth a lie. Leave your walls as bare as
a planed board, or build them of baked mud and chopped straw,
if need be ; but do not rough-cast them with falsehood.

This, then, being our general law, and I hold it for a more
imperative one than any other I have asserted ; and this kind of
dishonesty the meanest, as the least necessary^' ; for ornament is
an extravagant and inessential thing ; and therefore, if fallacious,
utterly base — ^this, I say, being our general law, there are, never-
theless, certain exceptions respecting particular substances and
their uses.

XX. Thus in the use of brick : since that is known to be
originally moulded, there is no reason why it should not be
moulded into diverse forms. It will never be supposed to have
been cut, and, therefore, will cause no deception ; it will have
only the credit it deserves. In flat countries, far from any quarry
of stone, cast brick may be legitimately, and most successfully,
used in decoration, and that elaborate, and even refined. The
brick mouldings of the Palazzo Pepoli at Bologna, and those
which run round the market-place of Vercelli, are among the
richest in Italy. So also, tile and porcelain work, of which the
former is grotesquely, but successfully, employed in the domestic
architecture of France, coloured tiles being inserted in the
diamond spaces between the crossing timbers ; and the latter
admirably in Tuscany, in external bas-reliefs, by the Robbia
family, in which works, while we cannot but sometimes regret
the useless and ill-arranged colours, we would by no means blame
the employment of a material which, whatever its defects, excels
every other in permanence, and, perhaps, requires even greater
skill in its management than marble. For it is not the material,
but the absence of the human labour, which makes the thing

" Again too much fuss and metaphysics about a perfectly simple matter ;
inconclusive besides, for the dishonesty of machine work would cease, as soon as it
became universally practised, of which universality there seems every likelihood
in these days. The subject was better treated subsequently in my address to the
art-students of Mansfield ; which I hope presently to reprint, and sum the condi-
tions of verdict, in the preface to the new edition of my ** Political Economy of Art."

56 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

worthless ; and a piece of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which
has been wrought by the human hand, is worth all the stone in
Carrara, cut by machinery. It is, indeed, possible, and even
usual, for men to sink into machines themselves, so that even
hand-work has all the characters of mechanism ; of the difference
between living and dead hand-work I shall speak presently ; all
that I ask at present is, what it is always in our power to secure
— ^the confession of what we have done, and what we have given ;
so that when we use stone at all,** (since all stone is naturally sup-
posed to be carved by hand,) we must not carve it by machinery ;
neither must we use any artificial stone cast into shape, nor any
stucco ornaments of the colour of stone, or which might in any
wise be mistaken for it, as the stucco mouldings in the cortile of
the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, which cast a shame and
suspicion over every part of the building. But for ductile and
fusible materials, as clay, iron, and bronze, since these will usually
be supposed to have been cast or stamped, it is at our pleasure
to employ them as we will; remembering that they become
precious, or otherwise, just in proportion to the hand-work upon
them, or to the clearness of their reception of the hand-work of

aphomsm 15. their mould. But I believe no cause to have been more
o^^ntotioii active in the degradation of our national feeling for

beauty than the constant use of cast-iron ornaments.
The common iron work of the middle ages was as
simple as it was effective, composed of leafage cut flat
out of sheet iron, and twisted at the workman's will.
No ornaments, on the contrary, are so cold, clumsy,
and vulgar, so essentially incapable of a fine line or
shadow, as those of cast-iron ; and while, on the score
of truth, we can hardly allege any thing against them,
since they are always distinguishable, at a glance, from

^ The sentence now put in a parenthesis is the false assumption which destroys
all the force of the arguments in the last couple of pages. The conclusion given
in Aphorism 15 is, however, wide-based enough, and thoroughly sound.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 57

wrought and hammered work, and stand only for what
they are, yet I feel very strongly that there is no hope
of the progress of the arts of any nation which indulges
in these vulgar and cheap substitutes for real decora-
tion. Their inefficiency and paltriness I shall endea-
vour to show more conclusively in another place;
enforcing only, at present, the general conclusion that,
if even honest or allowable, they are things in which
we can never take just pride or pleasure, and must
never be employed in any place wherein they might
either themselves obtain the credit of being other
and better than they are, or be associated with the
thoroughly downright work to which it would be a
disgrace to be found in their company.

Such are, I believe, the three principal kinds of fallacy by which
architecture is liable to be corrupted ; there are, however, other
and more subtle forms of it, against which it is less easy to guard
by definite law, than by the watchfulness of a manly and unaf-
fected spirit. For, as it has been above noticed, there are certain
kinds of deception which extend to impressions and ideas only ;
of which some are, indeed, of a noble use, as that above referred
to, the arborescent look of lofty Gothic aisles ; but of which the
most part have so much of legerdemain and trickery about them,
that they will lower any style in which they considerably prevail ;
and they are likely to prevail when once they are admitted, being
apt to catch the fancy alike of uninventive architects and feeling-
less spectators ; just as mean and shallow minds are, in other
matters, delighted with the sense of over-reaching, or tickled
with the conceit of detecting the intention to over-reach : and
when subdeties of this kind are accompanied by the display of
such dexterous stone-cutting, or architectural sleight of hand, as
may become, even by itself, a subject of admiration, it is a great
chance if the pursuit of them do not gradually draw us away

58 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

from all regard and care for the nobler character of the art, and
end in its total paralysis or extinction. And against this there
is no guarding, but by stern disdain of all display of dexterity
and ingenious device, and by putting the whole force of our fancy
into the arrangement of masses and forms, caring no more how
these masses and forms are wrought out, than a great painter
cares which way his pencil strikes." It would be easy to give
many instances of the danger of these tricks and vanities ; but I
shall confine myself to the examination of one which has, as I
think, been the cause of the fall of Gothic architecture throughout
Europe. I mean the system of intersectional mouldings, which,
on account of its great importance, and for the sake of the general
reader, I may, perhaps, be pardoned for explaining elementarily.
XXI. I must, in the first place, however, refer to Professor
Willis's account of the origin of tracery, given in the sixth chap-
ter of his " Architecture of the Middle Ages ;" since the pub-
lication of which I have been not a little amazed to hear of any
attempts made to resuscitate the inexcusably absurd theory of
its derivation from imitated vegetable form — inexcusably, I say,
because the smallest acquaintance with early Gothic architecture
would have informed the supporters of that theory of the simple
fact, that, exactly in proportion to the antiquity of the work, the
imitation of such organic forms is less, and in the earliest examples
does not exist at all. There cannot be the shadow of a question,
in the mind of a person familiarised with any single series of con-
secutive examples, that tracery arose from the gradual enlarge-
ment of the penetrations of the shield of stone which, usually
supported by a central pillar, occupied the head of early windows.
Professor Willis, perhaps, confines his observations somewhat too
absolutely to the double sub-arch. I have given, in Plate VI I. fig.
2., an interesting case of rude penetration of a high and simply
trefoiled shield, from the church of the Eremitani at Padua. But
the more frequent and typical form is that of the double sub- arch,

'^ A great painter does care very much, however, which way his pencil strikes ;
and a good sculptor which way his mallet : but in neither of them is the care that
their action may be admired, but that it may be just.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 59

decorated with various piercings of the space between it and the
superior arch ; with a simple trefoil under a round arch, in the
Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen (Plate III. fig. i.); with a very
beautifully proportioned quatrefoil, in the triforium of Eu, and
that of the choir of Lisieux ; with quatrefoils, sixfoils, and sept-
foils, in the transept towers of Rouen, (Plate III. fig. 2.) ; with a
trefoil awkwardly, and very small quatrefoil above, at Coutances
(Plate III. fig. 3.): then, with multiplications of the same
figures, pointed or round, giving very clumsy shapes of the inter-
mediate stone, (fig 4., from one of the nave chapels of Rouen,
fi&« 5-» from one of the nave chapels of Bayeux,) and finally, by
thinning out the stony ribs, reaching conditions like that of the
glorious typical form of the clerestory of the apse of Beauvais,
(fig. 6.).

XXII. Now, it will be noticed that, during the whole of this
process, the attention is kept fixed on the forms of the penetrations,
that is to say, of the lights as seen from the interior, not of the
intermediate stone. All the grace of the window is in the outline
of its light ; and I have drawn all these traceries as seen from
within, in order to show the effect of the light thus treated, at
first in far off and separate stars, and then gradually enlarging,
approaching, until they come and stand over us, as it were,
filling the whole space with their effulgence. And it is in this
pause of the star, that we have the great, pure, and perfect form
of French Gothic ; it was at the instant when the rudeness of
the intermediate space had been finally conquered, when the
light had expanded to its fullest, and yet had not lost its radiant
unity, principality, and visible first causing of the whole, that
we have the most exquisite feeling and most faultless judgments
in the management alike of the tracery and decorations. I have
given, in Plate X., an exquisite example of it, from a panel deco-
ration of the buttresses of the north door of Rouen ; and in order
that the reader may understand what truly fine Gothic work is,
and how nobly it unites fantasy and law, as well as for our imme-
diate purpose, it will be well that he should examine its sections
and mouldings in detail (they are described in the fourth Chapter,

6o THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

{ xxvii.), and that the more carefully , because this design belongs
to a period in which the most important change took place in
the spirit of Gothic architecture, which, perhaps, ever resulted from
the natural progress of any art. That tracery marks a pause
between the laying aside of one great ruling principle, and the
taking up of another; a pause as marked, as clear, as con-
spicuous to the distant view of after times, as to the distant
glance of the traveller is the culminating ridge of the mountain
chain over which he has passed. It was the great watershed of
Gothic art. Before it, all had been ascent ; after it, all was
decline ; both, indeed, by winding paths and varied slopes ; both
interrupted, like the gradual rise and fall of the passes of the
Alps, by great mountain outliers, isolated or branching from the
central chain, and by retrograde or parallel directions of the
valleys of access. But the track of the human mind is traceable
up to that glorious ridge, in a continuous line, and thence down-
wards. Like a silver zone —

'* Flung about carelessly, it shines afar,
Catching the eye in many a broken link,
In many a turn and traverse, as it glides.
And oft above, and oft below appears —
♦ • • • to him who journeys up,
As though it were another.**

And at that point, and that instant, reaching the place that was
nearest heaven, the builders looked back, for the last time, to the
way by which they had come, and the scenes through which their
early course had passed. They turned away from them and their
morning light, and descended towards a new horizon, for a time
in the warmth of western sun, but plunging with every forward
step into more cold and melancholy shade.

XXIII. The change of which I speak, is expressible in few
words ; but one more important, more radically influential, could
not be. It was the substitution of the line for the masSy as the
element of decoration.*

* So completely was this the case, that M. Violet le Due, in his article on

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 6 1

We have seen the mode in which the openings or penetration
of the window expanded, until what were, at first, awkward forms
of intermediate stone, became delicate lines of tracery ; and I
have been careful in pointing out the peculiar attention bestowed
on the proportion and decoration of the mouldings of the window
at Rouen, in Plate X., as compared with earlier mouldings, be-
cause that beauty and care are singularly significant They mark
that the traceries had caught the ^e of the architect Up to that
time, up to the very last instant in which the reduction and
thinning of the intervening stone was consummated, his eye had
been on the openings only, on the stars of light He did not
care about the stone ; a rude border of moulding was all he
needed, it was the penetrating shape which he was watching.
But when that shape had received its last possible expansion,
and when the stone-work became an arrangement of graceful
and parallel lines, that arrangement, like some form in a picture,
unseen and accidentally developed, struck suddenly, inevitably,
on the sight. It had literally not been seen before. It flashed
out in an instant, as an independent form. It became a feature
of the work. The architect took it imder his care, thought over
it, and distributed its members as we see.

Now, the great pause was at the moment when the space and
the dividing stone- work were both equally considered. It did
not last fifty years. The forms of the tracery were seized with
a childish delight in the novel source of beauty ; and the inter-
vening space was cast aside, as an element of decoration, for
ever. I have confined myself, in following this change, to the
window, as the feature in which it is clearest But the transition
is the same in every member of architecture ; and its importance
can hardly be understood, unless we take the pains to trace it in
the universality, of which illustrations, irrelevant to our present
purpose, will be found in the third Chapter. I pursue here the
question of truth, relating to the treatment of the mouldings.

tiaceiy in the '' Dictionnaire d' Architecture," has confined his attention exdusi vdy
to the modifications of the traceiy bar. The subject is examined exhaustively in
my sixth lecture in " Val d'Amo."

flexible.

62 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

Aphorism 16. XXIV. Thc reader will observe that, up to the last
ne'^b^'^- expansion of the penetrations, the stone-work was
im^ned'as necessarily considered, as it actually is, stiffs and un-
yielding. It was so, also, during the pause of which I
have spoken, when the forms of the tracery were still
severe and pure ; delicate indeed, but perfectly firm.

At the close of the period of pause, the first sign of
serious change was like a low breeze, passing through
the emaciated tracery, and making it tremble. It began
to undulate like the threads of a cobweb lifted by the
wind. It lost its essence as a structure of stone. Re-
duced to the slendemess of threads, it began to be
considered as possessing also their flexibility. The
architect was pleased with this his new fancy, and set
himself to carry it out ; and in a little time, the bars of
tracery were caused to appear to the eye as if they had
been woven together like a net. This was a change
which sacrificed a great principle of truth ; it sacrificed
the expression of the qualities of the material ; and,
however delightful its results in their first develop-
ments, it was ultimately ruinous.

For, observe the difference between the supposition
of ductility, and that of elastic structure noticed above
in the resemblance to tree form. That resemblance
was not sought, but necessary; it resulted from the
natural conditions of strength in the pier or trunk,
and slendemess in the ribs or branches, while many of
the other suggested conditions of resemblance were
perfectly true. A tree branch, though in a certain
sense flexible, is not ductile; it is as firm in its own

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 63

form as the rib of stone ; both of them will yield up to

certain limits, both of them breaking when those limits

are exceeded ; while the tree trunk will bend no more

than the stone pillar. But when the tracery is assumed

to be as yielding as a silken cord; when the whole

fragility, elasticity, and weight of the material are to

the eye, if not in terms, denied ; when all the art of the

architect is applied to disprove the first conditions of

his working, and the first attributes of his materials ;

this is a deliberate treachery, only redeemed from the

charge of direct falsehood by the visibility of the stone

surface, and degrading all the traceries it affects exactly

in the degree of its presence.**

X XV. But the declining and morbid taste of the later architects
was not satisfied with thus much deception. They were delighted
with the subde charm they had created, and thought only of
increasing its power. The next step was to consider and represent
the tracery, as not only ductile, but penetrable ; and when two
mouldings met each other, to manage their intersection, so that
one should appear to pass through the other, retaining its
independence ; or when two ran parallel to each other, to re-
present the one as partly contained within the other, and pardy
apparent above it. This form of falsity was that which crushed
the art. The flexible traceries were often beautiful, though they
were ignoble; but the penetrated traceries, rendered, as they
finally were, merely the means of exhibiting the dexterity of the
stone-cutter, annihilated both the beauty and dignity of the

" I beg that grave note be taken of this just condemnation of the essential
character — " the flamboyant "ness— of the architecture which up to this time I
had chiefly, and most affectionately, studied. It is an instance of breaking
through prejudice by reason, of which I have a right to be proud, and which
it is fitting that I should point out, for justification of the trust I constantly
expect from the reader.

64 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

Gothic types. A system so momentous In its consequences
deserves some detailed examination.

XXVI. In the drawing of the shafts of the door at Lisieux,
under the spandril, in Plate VII., the reader will see the mode
of managing the intersection of similar mouldings, which was
universal in the great periods. They melted into each other,
and became one at point of the crossing, or of contact ; and even
the suggestion of so sharp intersection as this of Lisieux is usually
avoided, (this design being, of course, only a pointed form of the
earlier Norman arcade, in which the arches are interlaced, and
lie each over the preceding, and under the following one, as in
Anselm's tower at Canterbury,) since, in the plurality of designs,
when mouldings meet each other, they coincide through some con-
siderable portion of their curves, meeting by contact, rather than
by intersection ; and at the point of coincidence the section of
each separate moulding becomes common to the two thus melted
into each other. Thus, in the junction of the circles of the
window of the Palazzo Foscari, Plate VIII., given accurately in
fig. 8. Plate IV., the section across the line^, is exactly the same
as that across any break of the separated moulding above, as y. It
sometimes, however, happens, that two different mouldings meet
each other. This was seldom permitted in the great periods,
and, when it took place, was most awkwardly managed. Fig. i.
Plate IV. gives the junction of the mouldings of the gable and
vertical, in the window of the spire of Salisbury. That of the
gable is composed of a single, and that of the vertical, of a
double cavetto, decorated with ball flowers ; and the larger single
moulding swallows up one of the double ones, and pushes
forward among the smaller balls with the most blundering and
clumsy simplicity. In comparing the sections it is to be observed
that, in the upper one, the line a b represents an actual vertical
in the plane of the window ; while, in the lower one, the line e d
represents the horizontal, in the plane of the window, indicated
by the perspective line d e.

XXVII. The very awkwardness with which such occurrences
pf difficulty are met by the earlier builder, marks his dislike of the

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 65

system, and unwillingness to attract the eye to such arrangements.
There is another very clumsy one, in the junction of the upper
and sub-arches of the triforium of Salisbury ; but it is kept in
the shade, and all the prominent junctions are of mouldings like
each other, and managed with perfect simplicity. But so soon
as the attention of the builders became, as we have just seen,
fixed upon the lines of mouldings instead of the enclosed spaces,
those lines began to preserve an independent existence wherever
they met; and different mouldings were studiously associated,
in order to obtain variety of intersectional line. We must, how-
ever, do the late builders the justice to note that, in one case,
the habit grew out of a feeling of proportion, more refined than
that of earlier workmen. It shows itself first in the bases of
divided pillars, or arch mouldings, whose smaller shafts had
originally bases formed by the continued base of the central, or
other larger, columns with which they were grouped ; but it being
felt, when the eye of the architect became fastidious, that the
dimension of moulding which was right for the base of a large
shaft, was wrong for that of a small one, each shaft had an inde-
pendent base ; at first, those of the smaller died simply down on
that of the laiger ; but when the vertical sections of both became
complicated, the bases of the smaller shafts were considered to
exist within those of the lai^er, and the places of their emergence,
on this supposition, were calculated with the utmost nicety, and
cut with singular precision ; so that an elaborate late base of a
divided column, as, for instance, of those in the nave of Abbeville,
looks exactly as if its smaller shafts had all been finished to the
ground first, each with its complete and intricate base, and then
the comprehending base of the central pier had been moulded
over them in day, leaving their points and angles sticking out
here and there, like the edges of sharp crystals out of a nodule
of earth. The exhibition of technical dexterity in work of this
kind, is often marvellous, the strangest possible shapes of sections
being calculated to a hair's breadth, and the occurrence of the
under and emergent forms being rendered, even in places where
they are so slight that they can hardly be detected but by the

66 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

touch. It is impossible to render a very elaborate example of
this kind intelligible, without some fifty measured sections ; but
fig. 6. Plate IV. is a very interesting and simple one, from the
west gate of Rouen.** It is part of the base of one of the narrow
piers between its principal niches. The square column k, having
a base with the profile p r, is supposed to contain within itself
another similar one, set diagonally, and lifted so far above the
inclosing one, as that the recessed part of its profile p r shall fall
behind the projecting part of the outer one. The angle of its
upper portion exactly meets the plane of the side of the upper
inclosing shaft 4, and would, therefore, not be seen, unless two
vertical cuts were made to exhibit it, which form two dark lines
the whole way up the shaft. Two small pilasters are run, like
fastening stitches, through the junction, on the front of the shafts.
The sections i, h, taken respectively at the levels k, n, will explain
the hypothetical construction of the whole. Fig. 7. is a base, or
joint rather, (for passages of this form occur again and again, on
the shafts of flamboyant work,) of one of the smallest piers of the
pedestals which supported the lost statues of the porch ; its
section below would be the same as n, and its construction,
after what has been said of the other base, will be at once
perceived.**

XXVIII, There was, however, in this kind of involution,
much to be admired as well as reprehended ; the proportions of

*• Professor Willis was, I believe, the first modem ^o observed and ascer-
tained the lost structural principles of Gothic architecture. His book above re-
ferred to (§ 21) taught me all my grammar of central Gothic, but this grammar of
the flamboyant I worked out for myself, and wrote it here, supposing the state-
ments new : all had, however, been done previously by Professor Willis, as he
afterwards pointed out to me, in his work " On the Characteristic Interpenetra-
tions of the Flamboyant Style.**

" I cannot understand how, in the subsequent illustrations of the principle I
had, during the arrangement of this volume, most prominently in my mind, on
the founding of all beautiful design on natural form, I omitted so forcible a
point as the exact correspondence of these mouldings to the structure of involved
crystals. Perhaps it was because I knew the builders had never looked at, or
thought of, a crystal ; but then I ought to have said so. The omission is the
more strange because I caught the resemblance in the Pisan Gothic — see below.
Chap. IV., § 7 — ^where it is not half so distinct 1

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 67

quantities were always as beautiful as they were intricate ; and,
though the lines of intersection were harsh, they were exquisitely
opposed to the flower-work of the interposing mouldings. But
the fancy did not stop here; it rose from the bases into the
arches ; and there, not finding room enough for its exhibition, it
¥rithdrew the capitals from the heads even of cylindrical shafts,
(we cannot but admire, while we regret, the boldness of the men
who could defy the authority and custom of all the nations of the
earth for a space of some three thousand years,) in order that
the arch mouldings might appear to emerge from the pillar, as at
its base they had been lost in it, and not to terminate on the
abacus of the capital ; then they ran the mouldings across and
through each other, at the point of the arch ; and finally, not
finding their natural directions enough to furnish as many occa-
sions of intersection as they wished, bent them hither and thither,
and cut off their ends short, when they had passed the point of
intersection. Fig. 2. Plate IV., is part of a flying buttress from
the apse of St. Gervais at Falaise, in which the moulding whose
section is rudely g^ven above at f^ (taken vertically through the
pointy^) is carried thrice through itself, in the cross-bar and two
arches ; and the flat fillet is cut off sharp at the end of the cross-
bar, for the mere pleasure of the truncation. Fig. 3. is half of
the head of a door in the Stadthaus of Sursee, in which the shaded
part of the section of the joint, g g, is that of the arch mould-
ing, which is three times reduplicated, and six times intersected
by itself, the ends being cut off when they became unmanageable.
This style is, indeed, earlier exaggerated in Switzerland and Ger-
many, owing to the imitation in stone of the dovetailing of wood,
particularly of the intersecting of beams at the angles of chdlets ;
but it only furnishes the more plain instance of the danger of the
fallacious system which, from the beginning, repressed the
German, and, in the end, ruined the French, Gothic It would
be too painful a task to follow further the caricatures of form
and eccentricities of treatment, which grew out of this single
abuse — the flattened arch, the shrunken pillar, the lifeless orna-
ment, the liny moulding, the distorted and extravagant foliation.

68 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

until the time came when, over these wrecks and remnants,
deprived of all unity and principle, rose the foul torrent of the
renaissance, and swept them all away.

So fell the great dynasty of mediaeval architecture.* It was
because it had lost its own strength, and disobeyed its own laws
— ^because its order, and consistency, and organisation, had been
broken through — that it could oppose no resistance to the rush of
overwhelming innovation. And this, observe, all because it had
sacrificed a single truth. From that one surrender of its integrity,
from that one endeavour to assume the semblance of what it was
not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and decrepitude,
which rotted away the pillars of its supremacy. It was not
because its time was come; it was not because it was
scorned by the classical Romanist, or dreaded by the faithful
Protestant. That scorn and that fear it might have sur-
vived, and lived ; it would have stood forth in stern comparison
with the enervated sensuality of the renaissance ; it would have
risen in renewed and purified honour, and with a new soul, from
the ashes into which it sank, giving up its glory, as it had
received it, for the honour of God — but its own truth was gone,
and it sank for ever. There was no wisdom nor strength left in
it, to raise it from the dust ; and the error of zeal, and the soft^
ness of luxury, smote it down and dissolved it away. It is good
for us to remember this, as we tread upon the bare ground of its
foundations, and stumble over its scattered stones. Those rent
skeletons of pierced wall, through which our sea- winds moan and
murmur, strewing them joint by joint, and bone by bone, along
the bleak promontories on which the Pharos lights came once
from houses of prayer — those grey arches and quiet aisles
under which the sheep of our valleys feed and rest on the turf
that has buried their altars — those shapeless heaps, that are not

" The dosing paragraph is very pretty — ^but, unfortunately — ^nonsense. The
want of truth was only a part, and by no means an influential one, of general
disease. All possible shades of human folly and licentiousness meet in late
Gothic and renaissance architecture, and corrupt, in all directions at once, the arts
which are their exponents.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 69

of the Earth, which lift our fields into strange and sudden banks
of flowers, and stay our mountain streams with stones that are
not their own, have other thoughts to ask from us than those of
mourning for the rage that despoiled, or the fear that forsook
them. It was not the robber, not the fanatic, not the blasphemer,
who sealed the destruction that they had wrought ; the war, the
wrath, the terror, might have worked their worst, and the strong
walls would have risen, and the slight pillars would have started
again, from under the hand of the destroyer. But they could
not rise out of the ruins of their own violated truth.

CHAP. III.

THE LAMP OF POWER.

I. In recalling the impressions we have received from the works
of man, after a lapse of time long enough to involve in obscurity
all but the most vivid, it often happens that we find a strange
pre-eminence and durability in many upon whose strength we
had little calculated, and that points of character which had
escaped the detection of the judgment, become developed under
the waste of memory ; as veins of harder rock, whose places could
not at first have been discovered by the eye, are left salient under
the action of frosts and streams. The traveller who desires to
correct the errors of his judgment, necessitated by inequalities of
temper, infelicities of circumstance, and accidents of association,
has no other resource than to wait for the calm verdict of inter-
posing years ; and to watch for the new arrangements of eminence
and shape in the images which remain latest in his memory ; as
in the ebbing of a mountain lake, he would watch the varying
outline of its successive shore, and trace, in the form of its
departing waters, the true direction of the forces which had cleft,
or the currents which had excavated, the deepest recesses of its
primal bed.

In thus reverting to the memories of those works of architecture
by which we have been most pleasurably impressed, it will gene-
rally happen that they fall into two broad classes : the one
characterised by an exceeding preciousness and delicacy, to which
we recur with a sense of affectionate admiration ; and the other
by a severe, and, in many cases mysterious, majesty, which we
remember with an undiminished awe, like that felt at the presence
and operation of some great Spiritual Power. From about these

THE LAMP OF POWER. 7 1

two groups, more or less harmonised by intermediate examples,
but always distinctively marked by features of beauty or of
power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the memories of
buildings, perhaps, in their first address to our minds, of no in-
ferior pretension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of
less enduring nobility — to value of material, accumulation of
ornament, or ingenuity of mechanical construction. Especial
interest may, indeed, have been awakened by such drciunstances,
and the memory may have been, consequently, rendered tenacious
of particular parts or effects of the structure ; but it will recall
even these only by an active effort, and then without emotion ;
while in passive moments, and with thrilling influence, the images
of purer beauty, and of more spiritual power, will return in a fair
and solemn company ; and while the pride of many a stately
palace, and the wealth of many a jewelled shrine, perish from our
thoughts in a dust of gold, there will rise, through their dimness,
the white image of some secluded marble chapel, by river or
forest side, with the fretted flower-work shrinking under its
arches, as if under vaults of late-fallen snow ; or the vast weari-
ness of some shadowy wall whose separate stones are like moun-
tain foundations, and yet numberless.

II. Now, the difference between these two orders of apho&ism 17.

building is not merely that which there is in nature ^^^'''"

between things beautiful and sublime. It is, also, the S^e^,

difference between what is derivative and original in i^^i^on.

man's work; for whatever is in architecture fair or
beautiful, is imitated from natural forms ; and what is
not so derived, but depends for its dignity upon ar-
rangement and government received from human mind,
becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and
receives a sublimity high in proportion to the power
expressed. All building, therefore, shows man either
as gathering or governing; and the secrets of his
success are his knowing what to gather, and how to

72 THE LAMP OF POWER.

rule. These are the two great intellectual Lamps of

Architecture ; the one consisting in a just and humble

veneration for the works of God upon the earth, and

the other in an understanding of the dominion over

those works which has been vested in man.

III. Besides this expression of living authority and power,
there is, however, a sympathy in the forms of noble building,
with what is most sublime in natural things; and it is the
governing Power directed by this sympathy, whose operation I
shall at present endeavour to trace, abandoning all inquiry into
the more abstract fields of Invention : for this latter faculty, and
the questions of proportion and arrangement connected with its
discussion, can only be righdy examined in a general view of all
the arts ; but its sympathy, in architecture, with the vast con-
trolling powers of Nature herself, is special, and may shortly be
considered ; and that with the more advantage, that it has, of
late, been litde felt or regarded by architects. I have seen, in
recent efforts, much contest between two schools, one affecting
originality, and the other legality — ^many attempts at beauty of
design — ^many ingenious adaptations of construction ; but I have
never seen any aim at the expression of abstract power ; never
any appearance of a consciousness that, in this primal art of man,
there is room for the marking of his relations with the mighdest,
as well as the fairest, works of God ; and that those works them-
selves have been permitted, by their Master and his, to receive
an added glory from their association with earnest efforts of
human thought. In the edifices of Man there should be found
reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which
rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the
avenue — which gives veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell,
and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organisation, — ^but
of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up
her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her
shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky ;
for these» and other glories more than these, refuse not to connect

THE LAMP OF POWER, 73

themselves, in his thoughts, with the work of his own hand ; the
grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some
Cyclopean waste of mural stone; the pinnacles of the rocky
promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into fantastic
semblances of fortress towers ; and even the awful cone of the
far-off mountain has a melancholy mixed with that of its own
solitude, which is cast from the images of nameless tumuli on
white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy clay, into which
chambered cities melt in their mortality.

IV. Let us, then, see what is this power and majesty, which
Nature herself does not disdain to accept from the works of
man ; and what that sublimity in the masses built up by his
coralline-like enei^y, which is honourable, even when transferred
by association to the dateless hills, which it needed earthquakes
to lift, and deluges to mould.

And, first, of mere size : It might not be thought possible to
emulate the sublimity of natural objects in this respect ; nor would
it be, if the architect contended with them in pitched battle. It
would not be well to build pyramids in the valley of Chamouni ;
and St. Peter's, among its many other errors, counts for not the
least injurious its position on the slope of an inconsiderable hill.
But imagine it placed on the plain of Marengo, or like the
Superga of Turin, or like La Salute at Venice ! The fact is,
that the apprehension of the size of natural objects, as well as of
architecture, depends more on fortunate excitement of the ima-
gination than on measurements by the eye ; and the architect has
a peculiar advantage in being able to press close upon the sight
such magnitude as he can command. There are few rocks, even
among the Alps, that have a clear vertical fall as high as the choir
of Beauvais ; and if we secure a good precipice of wall, or a sheer
and unbroken flank of tower, and place them where there are no
enormous natural features to oppose them, we shall feel in them
no want of sublimity of size. And it may be matter of encourage-
ment in this respect, though one also of regret, to observe how
much oftener man destroys natural sublimity, than nature crushes
human power. It does not need much to humiliate a mountain.

74 THE LAMP OF POWER.

A hut will sometimes do it ; I never look up to the Col de Balme
from Chamouni, without a violent feeling of provocation against
its hospitable little cabin, whose bright white walls form a visibly
four-square spot on the green ridge, and entirely destroy all idea
of its elevation. A single villa will often mar a whole landscape,
and dethrone a dynasty of hills ; and the acropolis of Athens,
Parthenon and all, has, I believe, been dwarfed into a model by
the palace lately built beneath it. The fact is, that hills are not
so high as we fancy them, and, when to the actual impression of
no mean comparative size, is added the sense of the toil of manly
hand and thought, a sublimity is reached, which nothing but
gross error in arrangement of its parts can destroy.

V. While, therefore, it is not to be supposed that mere size
will ennoble a mean design, yet every increase of magnitude will
bestow upon it a certain degree of nobleness : so that it is well
to determine at first, whether the building is to be markedly
beautiful, or markedly sublime ; and if the latter, not to be with-
held by respect to smaller parts from reaching largeness of scale ;
provided only, that it be evidently in the architect's power to
reach at least that degree of magnitude which is the lowest at
which sublimity begins, rudely definable as that which will make
a living figure look less than life beside it. It is the misfortune
of most of our modem buildings that we would fain have an
universal excellence in them ; and so part of the funds must go in
painting, part in gilding, part in fitting up, part in painted
windows, part in small steeples, part in ornaments here and there;
and neither the windows, nor the steeple, nor the ornaments, are
worth their materials. For there is a crust about the impressible
part of men's minds, which must be pierced through before they
can be touched to the quick ; and though we may prick at it and
scratch it in a thousand separate places, we might as well have
let it alone if we do not come through somewhere with a deep
thrust : and if we can give such a thrust anywhere, there is no
need of another ; it need not be even so " wide as a church door,"
so that it be enough. And mere weight will do this ; it is a
clumsy way of doing it, but an effectual one, too ; and the apathy

THE LAMP OF POWER. 75

which cannot be pierced through by a small steeple, nor shone
through by a small window, can be broken through in a moment
by the mere weight of a great wall. Let, therefore, the architect
who has not large resources, choose his point of attack first, and,
if he choose size, let him abandon decoration ; for, unless they are
concentrated, and numerous enough to make their concentration
conspicuous, all his ornaments together will not be worth one
huge stone* And the choice must be a decided one, without com-
promise. It must be no question whether his capitals would not
look better with a little carving — ^let him leave them huge as
blocks ; or whether his arches should not have richer architraves
— ^let him throw them a foot higher, if he can ; a yard more
across the nave will be worth more to him than a tesselated
pavement ; and another fathom of outer wall, than an army of
pinnacles.*' The limitation, of size must be only in the uses of
the building, or in the ground at his disposal.

VI. That limitation, however, being by such circumstances
determined, by what means, it is to be next asked, may the actual
magnitude be best displayed ; since it is seldom, perhaps never,
that a building of any pretension to size looks so large as it is.
The appearance of a figure in any distant, more especially in any
upper, parts of it will almost always prove that we have under-
estimated the magnitude of those parts.

It has often been observed that a building, in order to show its
magnitude, must be seen all at once ; — it would, perhaps, be better
to say, must be bounded as much as possible by continuous lines,
and that its extreme points should be seen all at once ; or we may
state, in simpler terms still, that it must have one visible bounding
line from top to bottom, and from end to end. This bounding
line from top to bottom may either be inclined inwards, and the
mass therefore, pyramidical ; or vertical, and the mass form one
grand cliff; or inclined outwards, as in the advancing fronts of

" I admire the simplicity with which aU this good advice was tendered to a
body of men whose occupation for the next fifty years would be the knocking
down every beautiful building they could lay hands on ; and building the largest
quantities of rotten brick wall they could get contracts for.

76 THE LAMP OF POWER.

old houses, and, in a sort, in the Greek temple, and in all build-
ings with heavy cornices or heads. Now, in all these cases, if the
bounding line be violently broken ; if the cornice project, or the
upper portion of the pyramid recede, too violently, majesty will
be lost ; not because the building cannot be seen all at once, — ^for
in the case of a heavy cornice no part of it is necessarily concealed
— ^but because the continuity of its terminal line is broken, and the
length of that linCy therefore, cannot be estimated. But the error
is, of course, more fatal when much of the building is also con-
cealed ; as in the well-known case of the recession of the dome of
St. Peter's, and from the greater number of points of view, in
churches whose highest portions, whether dome or tower, are
over their cross. Thus there is only one point from which the
size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt ; and that is from the
corner of the Via de' Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle,
where it happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the
apse and transepts. In all cases in which the tower is over the
cross, the grandeur and height of the tower itself are lost, because
there is but one line down which the eye can trace the whole
height, and that is in the inner angle of the cross, not easily dis-
cerned. Hence, while, in symmetry and feeling, such designs
may often have pre-eminence, yet, where the height of the tower
itself is to be made apparent, it must be at the west end, or, better
still, detached as a campanile. Imagine the loss to the Lombard
churches if their campaniles were carried only to their present
height over their crosses ; or to the Cathedral of Rouen, if the
Tour de Beurre were made central, in the place of its present
debased spire !

VII. Whether, therefore, we have to do with tower or wall,
there must be one bounding line from base to coping ; and I am
much inclined, myself, to love the true vertical, or the vertical,
with a solemn frown of projection, (not a scowl,) as in the Palazzo
Vecchio of Florence. This character is always given to rocks by
the poets ; with slight foundation indeed, real rocks being little
given to overhanging — ^but with excellent judgment ; for the

THE LAMP OF POWER, 77

sense of threatening conveyed by this form is a nobler character
than that of mere size. And, in buildings, this threatening
should be somewhat carried down into their mass. A mere pro-
jecting shelf is not enough ; the whole wall must, Jupiter like,
nod as well as frown- Hence, I think the propped machicolations
of the Palazzo Vecchio and Duomo of Florence far grander
headings than any form of Greek cornice. Sometimes the pro-
jection may be thrown lower, as in the Doge's palace of Venice,
where the chief appearance of it is above the second arcade ; or it
may become a grand swell from the ground, as the head of a ship
of the line rises from the sea. This is very nobly attained by the
projection of the niches in the third story of the Tour de Beurre
at Rouen.

VIII. What is needful in the setting forth of magnitude in
height, is right also in the marking it in area — ^let it be gathered
well together. It is especially to be noted with respect to the
Palazzo Vecchio and other mighty buildings of its order, how
mistakenly it has been stated that dimension, in order to become
impressive, should be expanded either in height or length, but
not equally : whereas, rather it will be found that those buildings
seem on the whole the vastest which have been gathered up into
a mighty square, and which look as if they had been measured
by the angel's rod, " the length, and the breadth, and the height
of it are equal ; " and herein something is to be taken notice of,
which I believe not to be sufficiently, if at all, considered among
our architects.

Of the many broad divisions under which architecture may be
considered, none appear to me more significant than that into
buildings whose interest is in their walls, and those whose inte-
rest is in the lines dividing their walls. In the Greek temple the
wall is as nothing ; the entire interest is in the detached columns
and the frieze they bear ; in French Flamboyant, and in our de-
testable Perpendicular, the object is to get rid of the wall surface,
and keep the eye altogether on tracery of line : in Romanesque
work and Egyptian, the wall is a confessed and honoured mem-

8o THE LAMP OF POWER.

forward too frequently, as a model of all perfection — ^the Doge's
palace at Venice : its general arrangement, a hollow square ; its
principal fagade, an oblong, elongated to the eye by a range of
thirty- four small arches, and thirty-five columns, while it is sepa-
rated by a richly canopied window in the centre, into two massive
divisions, whose height and length are nearly as four to five ; the
arcades which g^ve it length being confined to the lower stories,
and the upper, between its broad windows, left a mighty surface
of smooth marble, chequered with blocks of alternate rose-colour
and white. It would be impossible, I believe, to invent a more
magnificent arrangement of all that is in building most dignified
and most fair.

X. In the Lombard Romanesque, the two principles are more
fused into each other, as most characteristically in the cathedral
of Pisa : length of proportion, exhibited by an arcade of twenty-
one arches above, and fifteen below, at the side of the nave ; bold
square proportion in the front ; that front divided into arcades,
placed one above the other, the lowest with its pillars engaged,
of seven arches, the four uppermost thrown out boldly from the
receding wall, and casting deep shadows ; the first, above the
basement, of nineteen arches ; the second, of twenty-one; the third
and fourth of eight each ; sixty-three arches in all ; all circular
headed, all with cylindrical shafts, and the lowest with square
panellings, set diagonally under their semicircles, an universal
ornament in this style (Plate XII. fig. 7.) ; the apse a semicircle,
with a semidome for its roof, and three ranges of circular arches
for its exterior ornament ; in the interior of the nave, a range of
circular arches below a circular-arched triforium, and a vast flat
surfcice^ observe, of wall decorated with striped marble above ; the
whole arrangement (not a peculiar one, but characteristic of
every church of the period ; and, to my feeling, the most
majestic ; not perhaps the fairest, but the mightiest type of form
which the mind of man has ever conceived**) based exclusively
on associations of the circle and the square.

" I have never for a moment changed from this judgment, but I have since
seen a mightier type of the same form, — St. Paul's, outside the walls, at Rome. It

THE LAMP OF POWER* 8 1

I am now, however, trenching upon ground which I desire to
reserve for more careful examination, in connection with other
aesthetic questions : but I believe the examples I have given will
justify my vindication of the square form from the reprobation
which has been lightly thrown upon it ; nor might this be done
for it only as a ruling outline, but as occurring constantly in the
best mosaics, and in a thousand forms of minor decoration, which
I cannot now examine ; my chief assertion of its majesty being
always as it is an exponent of space and surface, and therefore
to be chosen, either to rule in their outlines, or to adorn by masses
of light and shade those portions of buildings in which surface
is to be rendered precious or honourable.

XL Thus far, then, of general forms, and of the modes in
which the scale of architecture is best to be exhibited. Let us
next consider the manifestations of power which belong to its
details and lesser divisions.

The first division we have to regard, is the inevitable one of
masonry. It is true that this division may, by great art, be
concealed ; but I think it unwise (as well as dishonest) to do so ;
for this reason, that there is a very noble character always to be
obtained by the opposition of large stones to divided masonry,
as by shafts and columns of one piece, or massy lintels and
architraves, to wall work of bricks or smaller stones ; and there
is a certain organisation in the management of such parts, like
that of the continuous bones of the skeleton, opposed to the
vertebrae, which it is not well to surrender. I hold, therefore,
that, for this and other reasons, the masonry of a building is to
be shown : and also that, with certain rare exceptions, (as in the
cases of chapels and shrines of most finished workmanship,) the
smaller the building, the more necessary it is that its masonry
should be bold, and vice versd. For if a building be under the
mark of average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase Its
apparent size (too easily measurable) by any proportionate dimi-
nution in the scale of its masonry. But it may be often in our

is a restored building, but nobly and fiuthfully done ; and, so fiEur as I know, the
grandest interior in Europe.

82 THE LAMP OF POWER.

power to give it a certain nobility by building it of massy stones,
or, at all events, introducing such into its make. Thus it is im-
possible that there should ever be majesty in a cottage built of
brick ; but there is a marked element of sublimity in the rude and
irregular piling of the rocky walls of the mountain cottages of
Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland. Their size is not one whit
diminished, though four or five stones reach at their angles from
the ground to the eaves, or though a native rock happen to pro-
ject conveniently, and to be built into the framework of the wall.
On the other hand, after a building has once reached the mark
of majestic size, it matters, indeed, comparatively litde whether
its masonry be large or small, but if it be altogether large, it
will sometimes diminish the magnitude for want of a measure ;
if altogether small, it will suggest ideas of poverty in material,
or deficiency in mechanical resource, besides interfering in many
cases with the lines of the design, and delicacy of the workman-
ship. A very unhappy instance of such interference exists in
the fa9ade of the church of St Madeleine at Paris, where the
columns, being built of very small stones of nearly equal size
with visible joints, look as if they were covered with a close
trellis. So, then, that masonry will be generally the most mag-
nificent which, without the use of materials systematically small
or large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to the con-
ditions and structure of its work, and displays alike its power of
dealing with the vastest masses, and of accomplishing its purpose
with the smallest, sometimes heaping rock upon rock with Titanic
commandment, and anon binding the dusty remnants and edgy
splinters into springing vaults and swelling domes. And if the
nobility of this confessed and natural masonry were more com-
monly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by smoothing
surfaces and fitting joints. The sums which we waste in chiseUing
and polishing stones which would have been better left as they
came from the quarry, would often raise a building a story
higher. Only in this there is to be a certsun respect for material
also : for if we build in marble, or in any limestone, the known
ease of the workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly ;

THE LAMP OF POWER. 83

it will be well to take advantage of the stone's softness, and to
make the design delicate and dependent upon smoothness of
chiselled surfaces : but if we build in granite or lava, it is a folly,
in most cases, to cast away the labour necessary to smooth it ; it
is wiser to make the design granitic itself, and to leave the
blocks rudely squared. I do not deny a certain splendour and
sense of power in the smoothing of granite, and in the entire
subduing of its iron resistance to the human supremacy. But
in most cases, I believe, the labour and time necessary to do this
would be better spent in another way ; and that to raise a building
to a height of a hundred feet with rough blocks, is better than
to raise it to seventy with smooth ones. There is also a magni-
ficence in the natural cleavage of the stone to which the art
must indeed be g^at that pretends to be equivalent ; and a stern
expression of brotherhood with the mountain heart from which
it has been rent, ill-exchanged for a glistering obedience to the
rule and measure of men. His eye must be delicate indeed, who
would desire to see the Pitti palace polished.

XII. Next to those of the masonry, we have to consider the
divisions of the design itself. Those divisions are, necessarily,
either into masses of light and shade, or else by traced lines ;
which latter must be, indeed, themselves produced by incisions
or projections which, in some lights, cast a certain breadth of
shade, but which may, nevertheless, if finely enough cut, be
always true lines, in distant effect. I call, for instance, such
panelling as that of Henry the Seventh's chapel, pure linear
division.

Now, it does not seem to me sufficiently recollected, that a wall
surface is to an architect simply what a white canvas is to a
painter, with this only difference, that the wall has already a
sublimity in its height, substance, and other characters already
considered, on which it is more dangerous to break than to touch
with shade the canvas surface. And, for my own part, I think
a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of gesso a fairer thing than
most pictures I see painted on it ; much more, a noble surface of
stone than most architectural features which it is caused to

84 THE LAMP OF POWER.

assume. But however this may be, the canvas and wall are
supposed to be given, and it is our craft to divide them.

And the principles on which this division is to be made, are,
as regards relation of quantities, the same in architecture as in
painting, or indeed in any other art whatsoever, only the painter
is by his varied subject partly permitted, partly compelled, to
dispense with the symmetry of architectural light and shade, and
to adopt arrangements apparently free and accidental. So that
in modes of grouping there is much difference (though no oppo-
sition) between the two arts ; but in rules of quantity, both are
alike, so far forth as their commands of means are alike. For
the architect not being able to secure always the same depth or
decision of shadow, nor to add to its sadness by colour, (because
even when colour is employed, it cannot follow the moving
shade,) is compelled to make many allowances, and avail himself
of many contrivances, which the painter needs neither consider
nor employ.

XIII. Of these limitations the first consequence is, that positive
shade is a more necessary and more sublime thing in an architect's
hands than in a painter's. For the latter being able to temper his
light with an under tone throughout, and to make it delightful
with sweet colour, or awful with lurid colour, and to represent dis-
tance, and air, and sun, by the depth of it, and fill its whole space
with expression, can deal with an enormous, nay, almost with an
universal, extent of it, and the best painters most delight in such
extent; but as light, with the architect, is nearly always liable to
become full and untempered sunshine seen upon solid surface,
his only rests, and his chief means of sublimity, are definite shades.
So that, after size and weight, the Power of architecture may be
said to depend on the quantity (whether measured in space or
intenseness) of its shadow; and it seems to me, that the reality of
its works, and the use and influence they have in the daily life of
men, (as opposed to those works of art with which we have nothing
to do but in times of rest or of pleasure,) require of it that it
should express a kind of human sympathy, by a measure of dark-
ness as great as there is in human life : and that as the great poem

THE LAMP OF POWER. 85

and great fiction generally affect us most by the majesty of their
masses of shade, and cannot take hold upon us if they affect a
continuance of lyric sprightliness, but must be often serious, and
sometimes melancholy, else they do not express the truth of this
wild world of ours ; so there must be, in this magnificently human
art of architecture, some equivalent expression for the trouble and
wrath of life, for its sorrow and its mystery: and this it can only
give by depth or diffusion of gloom, by the frown upon its front,
and the shadow of its recess. So that Rembrandtism is a noble
manner in architecture, though a false one in painting ; and I do
not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had
mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its
surface. And among the first habits that a young architect should
learn, is that of thinking in shadow, not looking at a design in its
miserable liny skeleton ; but conceiving it as it will be when the
dawn lights it, and the dusk leaves it ; when its stones will be
hot, and its crannies cool ; when the lizards will bask on the one,
and the birds build in the other. Let him design^ with the sense
of cold and heat upon him ; let him cut out the shadows, as men
dig wells in unwatered plains ; and lead along the lights, as a
founder does his hot metal ; let him keep the full command of both,
and see that he knows how they fall, and where they fade. His
paper lines and proportions are of no value : all that he has to do
must be done by spaces of light and darkness ; and his business is
to see that the one is broad and bold enough not to be swallowed
up by twilight, and the other deep enough not to be dried like a
shallow pool by a noon-day sun.

And, that this may be, the first necessity is that the quantities
of shade or light, whatever they may be, shall be thrown into
masses, either of something like equal weight, or else large masses
of the one relieved with small of the other; but masses of one or
other kind there must be. No design that is divided at all, and

" " Let him — let him." All very fine ; but all the while, there wasn't one of
the architects for whom this was written — nor is there one alive now— who could,
or can, so much as shade an egg, or a tallow candle ; how much less an egg-
moulding or a shaft !

86 THE LAMP OF POWER.

yet not divided into masses, can ever be of the smallest value :
this great law respecting breadth, precisely the same in archi-
tecture and painting, is so important, that the examination of its
two principal applications will include most of the conditions of
majestic design on which I would at present insist.

XIV. Painters are in the habit of speaking loosely of masses
of light and shade, meaning thereby any large spaces of either.
Nevertheless, it is convenient sometimes to restrict the term
" mass " to the portions to which proper form belongs, and to
call the field on which such forms are traced, interval. Thus, in
foliage with projecting boughs or stems, we have masses of lights
with intervals of shade ; and, in light skies with dark clouds upon"^
them, masses of shade, with intervals of light.

This distinction is, in architecture, still more necessary; for
there are two marked stjdes dependent upon it : one in which the
forms are drawn with light upon darkness, as in Greek sculpture
and pillars ; the other in which they are drawn with darkness
upon light, as in early Gothic foliation. Now, it is not in the
designer's power determinately to vary degrees and places of
darkness, but it is altogether in his power to vary in determined
directions his degrees of light. Hence the use of the dark mas3
characterises, generally, a trenchant style of design, in which the
darks and lights are both flat, and terminated by sharp edges ;
while the use of the light mass is in the same way associated with
a softened and full manner of design, in which the darks are much
warmed by reflected lights, and the lights are rounded and melt
into them. The term applied by Milton to Doric bas-relief —
" bossy," is, as is generally the case with Milton's epithets, the
most comprehensive and expressive of this manner, which the
English language contains ; while the term which specifically de-
scribes the chief member of early Gothic decoration, feuille, foil
or leaf, is equally significative of a flat space of shade.

XV. We shall shortly consider the actual modes in which these
two kinds of mass have been treated. And, first, of the light, or
rounded, mass. The modes in which relief was secured for the
more projecting forms of bas-relief, by the Greeks, have been too

THE LAMP OF POWER. 87

well described by Sir Charles Eastlake ♦ to need recapitulation ;
the conclusion which forces itself upon us from the facts he has
remarked, being one on which I shall have occasion farther to
insist presently, that the Greek workman cared for shadow only
as a dark field wherefrom his light figure or design might be in-
telligibly detached : his attention was concentrated on the one
aim at readableness and clearness of accent ; and all composition,
all harmony, nay, the very vitality and energy of separate groups
were, when necessary, sacrificed to plain speaking. Nor was
there any predilection for one kind of form rather than another.
Rounded forms were, in the columns and principal decorative
members, adopted, not for their own sake, but as characteristic of
the things represented. They were beautifully rounded, because
the Greek habitually did well what he had to do, not because he
loved roundness more than squareness ; severely rectilinear forms
were associated with the curved ones in the cornice and triglyph,
and the mass of the pillar was divided by a fluting, which, in
distant effect, destroyed much of its breadth. What power of
light these primal arrangements left, was diminished in successive
refinements and additions of ornament ; and continued to diminish
through Roman work, until the confirmation of the circular arch
as a decorative feature. Its lovely and simple line taught the
eye to ask for a similar boundary of solid form ; the dome
followed, and necessarily the decorative masses were thencefor-
ward managed with reference to, and in sympathy with, the chief
feature of the building. Hence arose, among the Byzantine
architects, a system of ornament, entirely restrained within the
superficies of curvilinear masses, on which the light fell with as
unbroken gradation as on a dome or column, while the illumined
surface was nevertheless cut into details of singular and most
ingenious intricacy. Something is, of course, to be allowed for
the less dexterity of the workmen ; it being easier to cut down
into a solid block, than to arrange the projecting portions, of leaf
on the Greek capital : such leafy capitals are nevertheless exe-
cuted by the Byzantines with skill enough to show that their pre-
• " Literature of the Fine Arts." — ^Essay on Bas-relie£

88 THE LAMP OF POWER.

ference of the massive form was by no means compulsory^ nor can
I think it unwise. On the contrary, while the arrangements of
line are far more artful in the Greek capital, the Byzantine light
and shade are as incontestably more grand and masculine, based
on that quality of pure g^dation, which nearly all natural objects
possess, and the attainment of which is, in fact, the first and
most palpable purpose in natural arrangements of grand form.

Aphorism i8. The foiling heap of the thunder-cloud, divided by rents,
^bJn!S7 and multiplied by wreaths, yet gathering them all into
ar^(^t^ce. its broad, torrid, and towering zone, and its midnight

darkness opposite ; the scarcely less majestic heave of
the mountain side, all torn and traversed by depth of
defile and ridge of rock, yet never losing the unity of its
illumined swell and shadowy decline ; and the head of
every mighty tree, rich with tracery of leaf and bough,
yet terminated against the sky by a true line, and
rounded by a green horizon, which, multiplied in the
distant forest, makes it look bossy from above; all
these mark, for a great and honoured law, that diffusion
of light for which the Byzantine ornaments were de-
signed; and show us that those builders had truer
sympathy with what God made majestic, than the self-
contemplating and self-contented Greek. I know that
they are barbaric in comparison ; but there is a power
in their barbarism of sterner tone, a power not sophis-
tic nor penetrative, but embracing and mysterious; a
power faithful more than thoughtful, which conceived
and felt more than it created; a power that neither
comprehended nor ruled itself, but worked and wan-
dered as it listed, like mountain streams and winds;
and which could not rest in the expression or seizure

« i

THE LAMP OF POWER. 89

of finite form. It could not bury itself in acanthus

leaves. Its imagery was taken from the shadows of

the storms and hills, and had fellowship with the night

and day of the earth itself.'^

XVI. I have endeavoured to give some idea of one of the
hollow balls of stone which, surrounded by flowing leafage, occur
in varied succession on the architrave of the central gate of St.
Mark's at Venice, in Plate L fig. 3. It seems to me singularly
beautiful in its unity of lightness, and delicacy of detail, with
breadth of light. It looks as if its leaves had been sensitive, and
had risen and shut themselves into a bud at some sudden touch,
and would presently fall back again into their wild flow. The
cornices of San Michele of Lucca, seen above and below the arch,
in Plate VL, show the efiect of heavy leafage and thick stems
arranged on a surface whose curve is a simple quadrant, the
light dying from ofi* them as it turns. It would be diflicult, as I
think, to invent any thing more noble : and I insist on the broad
character of their arrangement the more eamesdy, because, after-
wards modified by greater skill in its management, it became
characteristic pf the richest pieces of Gothic design. The capital,
given in Plate V., is of the noblest period of the Venetian
Gothic ; and it is interesting to see the play of leafage so luxu-
riant, absolutely subordinated to the breadth of two masses of
light and shade. What is done by the Venetian architect, with
a power as irresistible as that of the waves of his surrounding
sea, is done by the masters of the Cis-Alpine Gothic, more
timidly, and with a manner somewhat cramped and cold, but
not less expressing their assent to the same great law. The

'^ This estimate of Byzantine architecture had been previously formed by Lord
Lindsay — and, I think, by him only ; — ^and it remains, though entirely true, his and
mine only, in written statement, though shared with us by all persons who have
an eye for colour, and sympathy enough with Christianity to care for its fullest
interpretation by Art only : in this sentence of mine, the bit about self-contented
Greeks must be omitted. A noble Greek ^or St Francis jwas as little content
without God, as George Herbert ; and a Byzantine tffos nothing else than a Greek,
— recognizing Christ for Zeus. '

90 THE LAMP OF POWER.

ice spiculae of the North, and its broken sunshine, seem to have
image in, and influence on, the work; and the leaves which,
under the Italian's hand, roll, and flow, and bow down over
their black shadows, as in the weariness of noon-day heat, are,
in the North, crisped and frost-bitten, wrinkled on the edges,
and sparkling as if with dew. But the rounding of the ruling
form is not less sought and felt. In the lower part of Plate I.
is the finial of the pediment given in Plate II., from the cathe-
dral of St. Lo. It is exactly similar in feeling to the Byzantine
capital, being rounded under the abacus by four branches of
thistle-leaves, whose stems, springing from the angles, bend out*
wards and fall back to the head, throwing their jaggy spines down
upon the full light, forming two sharp quatrefoils. I could not get
near enough to this finial to see with what degree of delicacy the
spines were cut ; but I have sketched a natural group of thistle-
leaves beside it, that the reader may compare the types, and see with
what mastery they are subjected to the broad form of the whole.
The small capital from Coutances, Plate XI I L fig. 4., which is of
earlier date, is of simpler elements, and exhibits the principle still
more clearly ; but the St. Lo finial is only one of a thousand in-
stances which might be gathered even from the fully developed
flamboyant, the feeling of breadth being retained in minor orna-
ments, long after it had been lost in the main design, and some-
times capriciously renewing itself throughout, as in the cylindri-
cal niches and pedestals which enrich the porches of Caudebec
and Rouen. Fig. i. Plate I. is the simplest of those of Rouen ;
in the more elaborate there are four projecting sides, divided by
buttresses into eight rounded compartments of tracery ; even the
whole bulk of the outer pier is treated with the same feeling ; and
though composed partly of concave recesses, partly of square
shafts, partly of statues and tabernacle work, arranges itself as a
whole into one richly rounded tower.

XVII. I cannot here enter into the curious questions con-
nected with the management of larger curved surfaces ; into the
causes of the difference in proportion necessary to be observed
between round and square towers ; nor into the reasons why a

THE LAMP OF POWER. 9 1

column or ball may be richly ornamented, while surface decoration
would be inexpedient on masses like the Castle of St Angelo, the
tomb of Cecilia Metdla, or the dome of St Peter s. But what
has been above said of the desirableness of serenity in plane sur-
faces, applies still more forcibly to those which are curved ; and it
is to be remembered that we are, at present, considering how this
serenity and power may be carried into minor divisions, not how
the ornamental character of the lower form may, upon occasion,
be permitted to fret the calmness of the higher. Nor, though
the instances we have examined are of globular or cylindrical
masses chiefly, is it to be thought that breadth can only be
secured by such alone : many of the noblest forms are of subdued
curvature, sometimes hardly visible ; but curvature of some de-
gree there must be, in order to secure any measure of grandeur
in a small mass of light One of the most marked distinctions
between one artist and another, in the point of skill, will be
found in their relative delicacy of perception of rounded surface ;
the full power of expressing the perspective, foreshortening, and
various undulation of such surface is, perhaps, the last and most
difficult attainment of the hand and eye. For instance : there is,
perhaps, no tree which has baffled the landscape painter more
than the common black spruce fin It is rare that we see any
representation of it other than caricature. It is conceived as
if it g^w in one plane, or as a section of a tree, with a set of
boughs symmetrically dependent on opposite sides. It is thought
formal, unmanageable, and ugly. It would be so, if it grew as
it is drawn. But the Power of the tree is not in that chandelier-
like section. It is in the dark, flat, solid tables of leafage, which
it holds out on its strong arms, curved slightly over them like
shields, and spreading towards the extremity like a hand. It is
vain to endeavour to paint the sharp, grassy, intricate leafage,
until this ruling form has been secured ,- and in the boughs that
approach the spectator, the foreshortening of it is like that of
a wide hill country, ridge just rising over ridge in successive
distances ; and the finger-like extremities, foreshortened to ab-
solute bluntness, require a delicacy in the rendering of them like

93 THE LAMP OF POWER*

that of the drawing of the hand of the Magdalene upon the vase
in Mr. Rogers's Titian. Get but the back of that foliage, and
you have the tree ; but I cannot name the artist who has
thoroughly felt it. So, in all drawing and sculpture, it is the
power of rounding, softly and perfectly, every inferior mass which
preserves the serenity, as it follows the truth, of Nature, and which
demands the highest knowledge and skill from the workman. A
noble design may always be told by the back of a single leaf, and
it was the sacrifice of this breadth and refinement of surface for
sharp edges and extravagant undercutting, which destroyed the
Gothic mouldings, as the substitution of the line for the light
destroyed the Gothic tracery. This change, however, we shall
better comprehend after we have glanced at the chief conditions
of arrangement of the second kind of mass; that which is flat,
and of shadow only.

XVIII. We have noted above how the wall surface, composed
of rich materials, and covered with costly work, in modes which
we shall examine in the next Chapter, became a subject of pecu-
liar interest to the Christian architects. Its broad flat lights could
only be made valuable by points or masses of energetic shadow,
which were obtained by the Romanesque architect by means of
ranges of recessed arcade, in the management of which, however,
though all the effect depends u]X)n the shadow so obtained, the
eye is still, as in classical architecture, caused to dwell upon the
projecting coliunns, capitals, and wall, as in Plate VI. But with
the enlargement of the window, which, in the Lombard and
Romanesque churches, is usually little more than an arched slit,
came the conception of the simpler mode of decoration, by pene-
trations which, seen from within, are forms of light, and, from
without, are forms of shade. In Italian traceries the eye is
exclusively fixed upon the dark forms of the penetrations, and
the whole proportion and power of the design are caused to
depend upon them. The intermediate spaces are, indeed, in the
most perfect early examples, filled with elaborate ornament ; but
this ornament was so subdued as never to disturb the simplicity
and force of the dark masses ; and in many instances is entirely

THE LAMP OF POWER. 93

wanting. The composition of the whole depends on the propor-
tioning and shaping of the darks ; and it is impossible that any
thing can be more exquisite than their placing in the head window
of the Giotto campanile, Plate IX., or the Church of Or San
Michele. So entirely does the effect depend upon them, that it
is quite useless to draw Italian tracery in outline ; if with any
intention of rendering its effect, it is better to mark the black
spots, and let the rest alone. Of course, when it is desired to
obtain an accurate rendering of the design, its lines and mould-
ings are enough ; but it often happens that works on architecture
are of little use, because they afford the reader no means of
judging of the effective intention of the arrangements which they
state. No person, looking at an architectural drawing of the
richly foliaged cusps and intervals of Or San Michele, would
understand that all this sculpture was extraneous, was a mere
added grace, and had nothing to do with the real anatomy of the
work, and that by a few bold cuttings through a slab of stone he
might reach the main effect of it all, at once. I have, therefore,
in the plate of the design of Giotto, endeavoured especially to
mark these points oi purpose ; there, as in every other instance,
black shadows of a graceful form lying on the white surface of
the stone, like dark leaves laid upon snow. Hence, as before
observed, the universal name of foil applied to such ornaments.

XIX. In order to the obtaining their full effect, it is evident
that much caution is necessary in the management of the glass.
In the finest instances, the traceries are open lights, either in
towers, as in this design of Giotto's, or in external arcades like
that of the Campo Santo at Pisa or the Doge's Palace at Venice ;
and it is thus only that their full beauty is shown. In domestic
buildings, or in windows of churches necessarily glazed, the glass
was usually withdrawn entirely behind the traceries. Those of
the Cathedral of Florence stand quite clear of it, casting their
shadows in well detached lines, so as in most lights to give the
appearance of a double tracery. In those few instances in which
the glass was set in the tracery itself, as in Or San Michele, the
effect of the latter is half destroyed : perhaps the especial atten-

94 THE LAMP OF POWER.

tion paid by Orcagna to his surface ornament^ was connected
with the intention of so glazing them. It is singular to see, in
late architecture, the glass, which tormented the bolder architects,
considered as a valuable means of making the lines of tracery
more slender ; as in the smallest intervals of the windows of
Merton College, Oxford, where the glass is advanced about two
inches from the centre of the tracery bar, (that in the larger
spaces being in the middle, as usual,) in order to prevent the
depth of shadow from farther diminishing the apparent interval. **
Much of the lightness of the effect of the traceries is owing to
this seemingly unimportant arrangement. But, generally speak-
ing, glass spoils all traceries ; and it is much to be wished that
it should be kept well within them, when it cannot be dispensed
with, and that the most careful and beautiful designs should be
reserved for situations where no glass would be needed."

XX. The method of decoration by shadow was, as far as we
have hitherto traced it, common to the northern and southern
Gothic. But in the carrying out of the system they instantly
diverged. Having marble at his command, and classical decora-
tion in his sight, the southern architect was able to carve the
intermediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to vary his wall
surface with inlaid stones. The northern architect neither knew
the ancient work, nor possessed the delicate material ; and he
had no resource but to cover his walls with holes, cut into foiled
shapes like those of the windows. This he did, often with great
clumsiness, but always with a vigorous sense of composition, and
always, observe, depending on the shadows for effect. Where the
wall was thick and could not be cut through, and the foilings

*' Well noticed ; and, I think, at that time by me only. I do not think this
question of the advance or retreat of the glass has been touched even in M.
Violet-le-Duc's long article on tracery, and I am more pertinacious now in showing
what I have really seen and said, because it has all been so useless. Had it
been acted on, I need not have vindicated my guidance — ^now, I can only
say — " I showed you the right way, though you would not walk in it" See the
following note.

^ Cloisters, for instance. The only fruit I have seen of this exhortation is the
multiplication of the stupidest that can be cut cheapest, as in the cloisters of the
missionary school at Canterbury.

w «

» A »

T •

THE LAMP OF POWER. 95

were large, those shadows did not fill the entire space ; but the
form was, nevertheless, drawn on the eye by means of them, and
when it was possible, they were cut clear through, as in raised
screens of pediment, like those of the west front of Bayeux ; cut
so deep in every case, as to secure, in all but a direct low front
light, great breadth of shadow.

The spandril, given at the top of Plate VII., is from the south-
western entrance of the Cathedral of Lisieux ; one of the most
quaint and interesting doors in Normandy, probably soon to be
lost for ever, by the continuance of the masonic operations which
have already destroyed the northern tower. Its work is alto-
gether rude, but full of spirit; the opposite spandrils have
different, though balanced, ornaments very inaccurately adjusted,
each rosette or star (as the five-rayed figure, now quite defaced,
in the upper portion appears to have been) cut on its own block
of stone and fitted in with small nicety, especially illustrating the
point I have above insisted upon — ^the architect's utter neglect
of the forms of intermediate stone, at this early period.

The arcade, of which a single arch and shaft are given on the
left, forms the flank of the door ; three outer shafts bearing three
orders within the spandril which I have drawn, and each of these
shafts carried over an inner arcade, decorated above with quatre-
foils, cut concave and filled with leaves, the whole disposition
exquisitely picturesque and full of strange play of light and shade.

For some time the penetrative ornaments, if so they may be
for convenience called, maintained their bold and independent
character. Then they multiplied and enlarged, becoming shal-
lower as they did so ; then they began to run together, one
swallowing up, or hanging on to, another, like bubbles in expiring
foam — fig. 4. from a spandril at Bayeux, looks as if it had been
blown from a pipe ; finally, they lost their individual character
altogether, and the eye was made to rest on the separating lines
of tracery, as we saw before in the window ; and then came the
great change and the fall of the Gothic power.

XXI. Figs. 2. and 3., the one a quadrant of the star window
of the little chapel close to St Anastasia at Verona, and the

96 THE LAMP OF POWER.

Other a very singular example from the church of the Eremitani
at Padua, compared with fig. 5., one of the ornaments of the tran*
sept towers of Rouen, show the closely correspondent conditions
of the early Northern and Southern Gothic But, as we have
said, the Italian architects, not being embarrassed for decoration
of wall surface, and not being obliged, like the Northmen, to
multiply their penetrations, held to the system for some time
longer ; and while they increased the refinement of the ornament,
kept the purity of the plan. That refinement of ornament -was
their weak point however, and opened the way for the renais-
sance attack. They fell, like the old Romans, by their luxury,
except in the separate instance of the magnificent school of
Venice. That architecture began with the luxuriance in which
all others expired : it founded itself on the Byzantine mosaic and
fretwork ; and laying aside its ornaments, one by one, while it
fixed its forms by laws more and more severe, stood forth, at
last, a model of domestic Gothic, so grand, so complete, so nobly
systematised, that, to my mind, there never existed an architec-
ture with so stern a claim to our reverence.** I do not except

"^ I have written many passages that are one-sided or incomplete ; and which
therefore are misleading if read without their contexts or development. But I
know of no other paragraph in any of my books so definitely false as this. I did
not know the history of Venice when I wrote it ; and mistook the expression of
the conspiring pride of her later aristocracy, for the temper of the whole nation.
The real strength of Venice was in the twelfth, not the fourteenth centiuy : and
the abandonment of her Byzantine architecture meani her ruin. See the notes
on the destruction of the Ziani Palace in the *' Stones of Venice." Farther, al-
though rendering all this respect to what I suppose to be the self-restraint of
Venetian-Gothic, I had carefully guarded the reader from too high an estimate of
it, in relation to originally purer styles. The following passage, from the preface
to the second edition, has been much too carelessly overlooked by the general
reader : — '' I must here also deprecate an idea which is often taken up by hasty
readers of the ^Stones of Venice'; namely, that I suppose Venetian architecture
the most noble of the schools of Gothic. I have great respect for Venetian
Gothic, but only as one among many early schools. My reason for devoting so
much time to Venice, was not that her architecture is the best in existence, but
that it exemplifies, in the smallest compass, the most interesting facts of architec-
tural history. The Gothic of Verona is far nobler than that of Venice ; and that
of Florence nobler than that of Verona. For our own immediate purposes that
of Notre Dame of Paris is noblest of all."

THE LAMP OF POWER. 97

even the Greek Doric : the Doric had cast nothing away ; the
fourteenth century Venetian had cast away, one by one, for a
succession of centuries, every splendour that art and wealth
could give it. It had laid down its crown and its jewels, its gold
and its colour, like a king disrobing ; it had resigned its exertion,
like an athlete reposing ; once capricious and fantastic, it had
bound itself by laws inviolable and serene as those of Nature
herself. It retained nothing but its beauty and its power ; both
the highest, but both restrained. The Doric flutings were of
irregular number — the Venetian mouldings were unchangeable.
The Doric manner of ornament admitted no temptation ; it was
the fasting of an anchorite — ^the Venetian ornament embraced,
while it governed, all vegetable and animal forms ; it was the
temperance of a man, the command of Adam over creation. I
do not know so magnificent a marking of human authority as the
iron grasp of the Venetian over his own exuberance of imagina-
tion ; the calm and solemn restraint with which, his mind filled
with thoughts of flowing leafage and fiery life, he gives those
thoughts expression for an instant, and then withdraws within
those massy bars and levelled cusps of stone. *

And his power to do this depended altogether on his retaining
the forms of the shadows in his sight Far from carrying the
eye to the ornaments, upon the stone, he abandoned these latter
one by one ; and while his mouldings received the most shapely
order and symmetry, closely correspondent with that of the
Rpuen tracery, (compare Plates IV. and VIII.,) he kept the cusps
within them perfectly flat, decorated, if at all, with a trefoil
(Palazzo Foscari), or fillet (Doge's Palace), just traceable and no
more, so that the quatrefoil, cut as sharply through them aif if it
had been struck out by a stamp, told upon the eye, with all its
four black leaves, miles away. No knots of flowerwork, no
ornaments of any kind, were suffered to interfere with the purity
of its form : the cusp is usually quite sharp ; but slightly trun-
cated in the Palazzo Foscari, and charged with a simple ball in
that of the Doge ; and the glass of the window, where there was

* See Appendix IV.
O

98 THE LAMP OF POWER.

any, was, as we have seen, thrown back behind the stone-work,
that no flashes of light might interfere with its depth. Corrupted
forms, like those of the Casa d'Oro and Palazzo Pisani, and
several others, only serve to show the majesty of the common
design.

XXII. Such are the principal circumstances traceable in the
treatment of the two kinds of masses of light and darkness, in the
hands of the earlier architects ; gradation in the one, flatness in
the other, and breadth in both, being the qualities sought and
exhibited by every possible expedient, up to the period when, as
we have before stated, the line was substituted for the mass, as
the means of division of surface. Enough has been said to
illustrate this, as regards tracery ; but a word or two is still
necessary respecting the mouldings.

Those of the earlier times were, in the plurality of instances,
composed of alternate square and cylindrical shafts, variously
associated and proportioned. Where concave cuttings occur, as in
the beautiful west doors of Bayeux, they are between cylindrical
shafts, which they throw out into broad light. The eye in all
cases dwells on broad surfaces, and commonly upon few.' In
course of time, a low ridgy process is seen emerging along
the outer edge of the cylindrical shaft, forming a line of light
upon it and destroying its gradation. Hardly traceable at
first, (as on the alternate rolls of the north door of Rouen,)
it grows and pushes out as gradually as a budding plant : sharp
at first on the edge; but, becoming prominent, it receives a
truncation, and becomes a definite fillet on the face of the roll.
Not yet to be checked, it pushes forward until the roll itself
becomes subordinate to it, and is finally lost in a slight swell
upon its sides, while the concavities have all the time been
deepening and enlarging behind it, until, from a succession of
square or cylindrical masses, the whole moulding has become a
series of concavities edged by delicate fillets, upon which, (sharp
lines of light, observe,) the eye exclusively rests. While this
has been taking place, a similar, though less total, change has
aflected the flowerwork itself. In Plate I. fig. 2. (^), I have given

THE LAMP OF POWER. 99

two from the transepts of Rouen. It will be observed how abso-
lutely the eye rests on the forms of the leaves, and on the three
berries in the angle, being in light exactly what the trefoil is in
darkness. These mouldings nearly adhere to the stone ; and are
very slightly, though sharply, undercut In process of time, the
attention of the architect, instead of resting on the leaves,
went to the stalks. These latter were elongated {b, from the
south door of St Lo ;) and to exhibit them better, the deep con-
cavity was cut behind, so as to throw them out in lines of light.
The system was carried out into continually increasing intricacy,
until, in the transepts of Beauvais, we have brackets and flam-
boyant traceries, composed of twigs without any leaves at all.
This, however, is a partial, though a sufficiendy characteristic,
caprice, the leaf being never generally banished, and in the
mouldings round those same doors, beautifully managed, but
itself rendered liny by bold marking of its ribs and veins, and
by turning up, and crisping its edges, large intermediate spaces
being always left to be occupied by intertwining stems, (r,
from Caudebec). The trefoil of light formed by berries or acorns,
though diminished in value, was never lost up to the last period
of living Gothic.

XXI I L It is interesting to follow into its many ramifications,
the influence of the corrupting principle ; but we have seen enough
of it to enable us to draw our practical conclusion — a conclusion
a thousand times felt and reiterated in the experience and advice
of every practised artist, but never often enough repeated, never
profoundly enough felt Of composition and invention much has
been written, it seems to me vainly, for men cannot be taught to
compose or to invent ; of these, the highest elements of Power in
architecture, I do not, therefore, speak ; nor, here, of that peculiar
restraint in the imitation of natural forms, which constitutes the
dignity of even the most luxuriant work of the great periods.
Of this restraint, I shall say a word or two in the next
Chapter ; pressing now only the conclusion, as practically useful
as it is certain, that the relative majesty of buildings depends
more on the weight and vigour of their masses, than on any

lOO THE LAMP OF POWER.

Other attribute of their design : mass of everything, of bulk,
of light, of darkness, of colour, not mere sum of any of these, but
breadth of them ; not broken light, nor scattered darkness, nor
divided weight, but solid stone, broad sunshine, starless shade.
Time would fail me altogether, if I attempted to follow out the
range of the principle ; there is not a feature, however apparently
trifling, to which it cannot give power. The wooden fillings of
belfry lights, necessary to protect their interiors from rain, are
in England usually divided into a number of neatly executed
cross-bars, like those of Venetian blinds, which, of course, become
as conspicuous in their sharpness as they are uninteresting in
their precise carpentry, multiplying, moreover, the horizontal lines
which directly contradict those of the architecture. Abroad,
such necessities are met by three or four downright penthouse
roofs, reaching each from within the window to the outside shafts
of its mouldings ; instead of the horrible row of ruled lines, the
space is thus divided into four or five grand masses of shadow,
with grey slopes of roof above, bent or yielding into all kinds of
delicious swells and curves, and covered with warm tones of
moss and lichen. Very often the thing is more delightful than
the stone- work itself, and all because it is broad, dark, and simple.
It matters not how clumsy, how common, the means are, that
get weight and shadow — sloping roof, jutting porch, projecting
balcony, hollow niche, massy gargoyle, frowning parapet ; get
but gloom and simplicity, and all good things will follow in their
place and time ; do but design with the owl's eyes first, and you
will gain the falcon's afterwards.

XXIV. I am grieved to have to insist upon what seems so
simple : it looks trite and common-place when it is written, but
pardon me this : for it is anything but an accepted or understood
principle in practice, and the less excusably forgotten, because
it is, of all the great and true laws of art, the easiest to obey.
The executive facility of complying with its demands cannot be
too earnestly, too frankly, asserted. There are not five men in
the kingdom who could compose, not twenty who could cut, the
foliage with which the windows of Or San Michele are adorned ;

THE LAMP OF POWER. lOI

but there is many a village clergyman who could invent and
dispose its black openings, and not a village mason who could
not cut them. Lay a few clover or woodroof leaves on white
paper, and a little alteration in their positions will suggest
figures which, cut boldly through a slab of marble, would be
worth more window traceries than an architect could draw in a
summer's day. But I know not how it is, unless that our English
hearts have more oak than stone in them, and have more filial
sympathy with acorns than Alps ; but all that we do is small and
mean, if not worse — thin, and wasted, and unsubstantial. It is
not modem work only.; we have built like frogs and mice since
the thirteenth century (except only in our casdes). What a
contrast between the pitiful little pigeon-holes which stand for
doors in the east front of Salisbury, looking like the entrances to
a beehive or a wasp's nest, and the soaring arches and kingly
crowning of the gates of Abbeville, Rouen, and Rheims, or the
rock-hewn piers of Chartres, or the dark and vaulted porches and
writhed pillars of Verona ! Of domestic architecture what need
is there to speak ? How small, how cramped, how poor, how
miserable in its petty neatness is our best! how beneath the mark
of attack, and the level of contempt, that which is common with
us ! What a strange sense of formalised deformity, of shrivelled
precision, of starved accuracy, of minute misanthropy have we,
as we leave even the rude streets of Picardy for the market towns
of Kent! Until that street architecture of ours is bettered,
until we give it some size and boldness, until we give our
windows recess, and our walls thickness, I know not how we
can blame our architects for their feebleness in more important
work ; their eyes are inured to narrowness and slightness : can
we expect them at a word to conceive and deal with breadth
and solidity ? They ought not to live in our cities ; there is that
in their miserable walls which bricks up to death men's imagina-
tions, as surely as ever perished forsworn nun. An architect
should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our
hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a
buttress, and what by a dome. There was something in the old

I02 THE LAMP OF POWER.

power of architecture, which it had from the recluse more than
from the citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with
chief praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, and above
the fury of the populace : and Heaven forbid that for such cause
we should ever have to lay a larger stone, or rivet a firmer bar,
in our England ! But we have other sources of power, in the
imagery of our iron coasts and azure hills ; of power more pure,
nor less serene, than that of the hermit spirit which once lighted
with white lines of cloisters the glades of the Alpine pine, and
raised into ordered spires the wild rocks of the Norman sea ;
which gave to the temple gate the depth and darkness of
Elijah's Horeb cave ; and lifted, out of the populous city, grey
cliffs of lonely stone, into the midst of sailing birds and silent
air.

I03

CHAR IV.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

I. It was stated, in the outset of the preceding Chapter, that the
value of architecture depended on two distinct characters : the
one, the impression it receives from human power ; the other, the
image it bears of the natural creation. I have endeavoured to
show in what manner its majesty was attributable to a sympathy
with the effort and trouble of human life** (a sympathy as distincdy
perceived in the gloom and mystery of form, as it is in the
melancholy tones of sounds). I desire now to trace that happier
element of its excellence, consisting in a noble rendering of images
of Beauty, derived chiefly from the external appearances of organic
nature.

It is irrelevant to our present purpose to enter into any in-
quiry respecting the essential causes of impressions of beauty. I
have partly expressed my thoughts on this matter in a previous
work, and I hope to develope them hereafter. But since all such
inquiries can only be founded on the ordinary understanding of
what is meant by the term Beauty, and since they presume that
the feeling of mankind on this subject is universal and instinc-
tive, I shall base my present investigation on this assumption ;

•• Yes, but that is not what is meant in the 1 7th Aphorism, by " Dominion "
or Government : though, on the embossed cover of the book, I partly implied
it to be, in substituting " Auctoritas " for " Potestas." The intellectual " Do-
minion" of Architecture is treated of partly in the course of the present
chapter, under the heads of Proportion and Abstraction ; and partly in the fifth
chapter, (of which see the opening paragraph. Aphorism 23), — a confusion induced
partly by haste and mismanagement, and partly by excess of management, and
the difficulty I have before confessed, (though I forget where,) of keeping my
Seven Lamps_ firom becoming Eight — or Nine — or even quite a vulgar row of
foot-lights.

I04 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

and only asserting that to be beautiful which I believe will be
granted me to be so without dispute, I would endeavour shortly
to trace the manner in which this element of delight is to be best
engrafted upon architectural design, what are the purest sources
from which it is to be derived, and what the errors to be avoided
in its pursuit

II. It will be thought that I have somewhat rashly limited
the elements of architectural beauty to imitative forms. I do
not mean to assert that every happy arrangement of line is
directly suggested by a natural object; but that all beautiful
lines are adaptations of those which are commonest in the
external creation ; that, in proportion to the richness of their
association, the resemblance to natural work, as a type and help,
must be more closely attempted, and more clearly seen ; and that
beyond a certain point, and that a very low one, man cannot
advance in the invention of beauty, without directly imitating
natural form. Thus, in the Doric temple the triglyph and
cornice are unimitative ; or imitative only of artificial cuttings
of wood. No one would call these members beautiful. Their
influence over us is in their severity and simplicity. The fluting
of the column, which I doubt not was the Greek symbol of the
bark of the tree, was imitative in its origin, and feebly resembled
many canaliculated organic structures. Beauty is instantly felt
in it, but of a low order. The decoration proper was sought in
the true forms of organic life, and those chiefly human. Again :
the Doric capital was unimitative ; but all the beauty it had was
dependent on the precision of its ovolo, a natural curve of the
most frequent occurrence. The Ionic capital (to my mind, as
an architectural invention, exceedingly base,) nevertheless de-
pended for all the beauty that it had on its adoption of a spiral
line, perhaps the commonest of all that characterise the inferior
orders of animal organism and habitation. Farther progress could
not be made without a direct imitation of the acanthus leaf

Again : the Romanesque arch is beautiful as an abstract line.
Its type is always before us in that of the apparent vault of
heaven, and horizon of the earth. The cylindrical pillar is

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. I05

always beautiful, for God has so moulded the stem of every tree
that is pleasant to the eyes. The pointed arch is beautiful ; it
is the termination of every leaf that shakes in summer wind, and
its most fortunate associations are directly borrowed from the
trefoiled grass of the field, or from the stars of its flowers.
Farther than this, man's invention could not reach without frank
imitation. His next step was to gather the flowers themselves,
and wreathe them in his capitals.

III. Now, I would insist especially on the fact, of

which I doubt not that farther illustrations will occur aphorism 19.

to the mind of every reader, that all most lovely forms ^dSd^Stt"

the laws of

and thoughts are directly taken from natural objects; natuna foms.

because I would fain be allowed to assume also the

converse of this, namely, that forms which are not

taken from natural objects must be ugly.^ I know this

is a bold assumption ; but as I have not space to reason out the
points wherein essential beauty of form consists, that being far
too serious a work to be undertaken in a bye way, I have no
other resource than to use this accidental mark or test of beauty,
of whose truth the considerations which I hope hereafter to lay
before the reader may assure him. I say an accidental mark,
since forms are not beautiful because ^ey are copied from Nature;
only it is out of the power of man to conceive beauty without her
aid. I believe the reader will grant me this, even from the
examples above advanced ; the degree of confidence with which
it is granted must attach also to his acceptance of the conclusions
which will follow from it; but if it be g^nted frankly, it will
enable me to determine a matter of very essential importance,
namely, what is or is not ornament For there are many forms
of so called decoration in architecture, habitual, and received,
therefore, with approval, or at all events without any venture at
expression of dislike, which I have no hesitation in asserting to

" The Aphorism is wholly tnie : but the foUowing application of it, often
trivial or false^ See the subsequent notes.

I06 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

be not ornament at all, but to be ugly things, the expense of
which ought in truth to be set down in the architect's contract, as
*' For Monstrification." I believe that we regard these customary
deformities with a savage complacency, as an Indian does his
flesh patterns and paint (all nations being in certain degrees and
senses savage). I believe that I can prove them to be monstrous,
and I hope hereafter to do so conclusively; but, meantime, I can
allege in defence of my persuasion nothing but this fact of their
being unnatural, to which the reader must attach such weight as
he thinks it deserves. There is, however, a peculiar difficulty in
using this proof; it requires the writer to assume, very imperti-
nently, that nothing is natural but what he has seen or supposes
to exist I would not do this ; for I suppose there is no con-
ceivable form or grouping of forms but in some part of the

universe an example of it may be found. But I think I am

Aphorism 20. justified in Considering those forms to be ntost natural

<* nat^^nd "^ which are most frequent ; or, rather, that on the shapes

which is most

easUy and which in the every-day world are familiar to the eyes

ordinarily ^ ^ j

^^' of men, God has stamped those characters of beauty

which He has made it man's nature to love ; while in
certain exceptional forms He has shown that the adop-
tion of the others was not a matter of necessity, but
part of the adjusted harmony of creation. I believe
that thus we may reason from Frequency to Beauty,
and vice versd ; that, knowing a thing to be frequent, we
may assume it to be beautiful ; and assume that which
is most frequent to be most beautiful: I mean, of
course, vist6fy frequent ; for the forms of things which
are hidden in caverns of the earth, or in the anatomy
of animal frames, are evidently not intended by their
Maker to bear the habitual gaze of man.^ And, again,

*' This is an excellent aphorism ; and I am proud of haying so eariy se^i the
danger of anatomical study, so often dwelt on in my later works.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. I07

by frequency I mean that limited and isolated frequency which
is characteristic of all perfection ; not mere multitude : as a rose
is a common flower, but yet there are not so many roses on the
tree as there are leaves. In this respect Nature is sparing of
her highest, and lavish of her less, beauty ; but I call the flower
as frequent as the leaf, because, each in its allotted quantity,
where the one is, there will ordinarily be the other.

IV. The first so-called ornament, then, which I would attack
is that Greek fret, now, I believe, usually known by the Italian
name Guilloche, which is exactly a case in point. It so happens
that in crystals of bismuth, formed by the unagitated cooling of
the melted metal, there occurs a natural resemblance of it almost
perfect But crystals of bismuth not only are of unusual occur-
rence in every-day life, but their form is, as far as I know, unique
among minerals ; and not only unique, but only attainable by an
artificial process, the metal itself never being found pure. I do
not remember any other substance or arrangement which pre*
sents a resemblance to this Greek ornament ; and I think that I
may trust my remembrance as including most of the arrange-
ments which occur in the outward forms of common and familiar
things. On this ground, then, I allege that ornament to be
ugly ; or, in the literal sense of the word, monstrous ; different
from anything which it is the nature of man to admire : and I
think an uncarved fillet or plinth infinitely preferable to one
covered with this vile concatenation of straight lines : * unless
indeed it be employed as a foil to a true ornament, which it
may, perhaps, sometimes with advantage ; or excessively small,
as it occurs on coins, the harshness of its arrangement being less
perceived.

V. Often in association with this horrible design we find, in
Greek works, one which is as beautiful as this is painful — that
^SS ^^^ ^^^^^ moulding, whose perfection, in its place and way,

* All this is true ; but I had not enough observed when I wrote, the use of the
Greek fret in contrast to curved forms ; as especially on vases, and in the borders
of drapery itself. The use of it large, as on the base of Sanmicheli's otherwise very
noble design of the Casa Grinumi, is always a sign of £uling instinct for beauty.

I08 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

has never been surpassed. And why is this ? Simply because
the form of which it is chiefly composed is one not only familiar
to us in the soft housing of the bird's nest, but happens to be
that of nearly every pebble that rolls and murmurs under the
surf of the sea, on all its endless shore. And that with a peculiar
accuracy ; for the mass which bears the light in this moulding is
not in good Greek work, as in the frieze of the Erechtheum,
merely of the shape of an ^gg. It is flattened on the upper sur-
face, with a delicacy and keen sense of variety in the curve which
it is impossible too highly to praise, attaining exactly that flat-
tened, imperfect oval, which, in nine cases out of ten, will be the
form of the pebble lifted at random from the rolled beach. Leave
out this flatness, and the moulding is vulgar instantly. It is
singular also that the insertion of this rounded form in the hol-
lowed recess has a painted type in the plumage of the Argus
pheasant, the eyes of whose feathers are so shaded as exactly to
represent an oval form placed in a hollow.

VI. It will evidently follow, upon our application of this test
of natural resemblance, that we shall at once conclude that all
perfectly beautiful forms must be composed of curves ; since
there is hardly any common natural form in which it is possible
to discover a straight line. Nevertheless, Architecture, having
necessarily to deal with straight lines essential to its purposes in
many instances and to the expression of its power in others,
must frequently be content with that measure of beauty which is
consistent with such primal forms ; and we may presume that
utmost measure of beauty to have been attained when the
arrangements of such lines are consistent with the most frequent
natural groupings of them we can discover, although, to find
right lines in nature at all, we may be compelled to do violence
to her finished work, break through the sculptured and coloured
surfaces of her crags, and examine the processes of their crystal-
lisation.

VII. I have just convicted the Greek fret of ugliness, because
it has no precedent to allege for its arrangement except an arti-
ficial form of a rare metal. Let us bring into court an ornament

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. lOQ

of the Lombard architects, Plate X 1 1 . fig. 7., as exclusively com-
posed of right lines as the other, only, observe, with the noble
element of shadow added. This ornament, taken from the front
of the Cathedral of Pisa, is universal throughout the Lombard
churches of Pisa, Lucca, Pistoja, and Florence ; and it will be a
grave stain upon them if it cannot be defended Its first apology
for itself, made in a hurry, sounds marvellously like the Greek
one, and highly dubious. It says that its terminal contour is the
very image of a carefully prepared artificial crystal of common
salt Salt being, however, a substance considerably more fami-
liar to us than bismuth, the chances are somewhat in favour of
the accused Lombard ornament already. But it has more to say
for itself, and more to the purpose ; namely, that its main oudine
is one not only of natural crystallisation, but among the very first
and commonest of crystalline forms, being the primal condition
of the occurrence of the oxides of iron, copper, and tin, of the
sulphurets of iron and lead, of fluor spar, &c. ; and that those
projecting forms in its surface represent the conditions of struc-
ture which effect the change into another relative and equally
common crystalline form, the cube. This is quite enough. We
may rest assured it is as good a combination of such simple right
lines as can be put together, and gracefully fitted for every place
in which such lines are necessary.

VI 1 1. The next ornament whose cause I would try is that of
our Tudor work, the portcullis. Reticulation is common enough
in natural form, and very beautiful ; but it is either of the most
delicate and gauzy texture, or of variously sized meshes and un-
dulating lines. There is no family relation between portcullis
and cobwebs or beetles' wings ; something like it, perhaps, may
be found in some kinds of crocodile armour and on the backs of
the Northern divers, but always beautifully varied in size of
mesh. There is a dignity in the thing itself, if its size were ex-
hibited, and the shade given through its bars ; but even these
merits are taken away in the Tudor diminution of it, set on a
solid surface. It has not a single syllable, I believe, to say in its
defence. It is another monster, absolutely and unmitigatedly

no THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

frightful. All that carving on Henry the Seventh's Chapel
simply deforms the stones of it^

In the same clause with the portcullis, we may condemn all
heraldic decoration, so far as beauty is its object Its pride and
significance have their proper place, fitly occurring in prominent
parts of the building, as over its gates ; and allowably in places
where its legendry may be plainly read, as in painted windows,
bosses of ceilings, &c. And sometimes, of course, the forms
which it presents may be beautiful, as of animals, or simple
symbols like the fleur-de-lis; but, for the most part, heraldic
similitudes and arrangements are so professedly and pointedly
unnatural, that it would be difficult to invent anything uglier ;
and the use of them as a repeated decoration will utterly destroy
both the power and beauty of any building. Common sense and
courtesy also forbid their repetition. It is right to tell those who
enter your doors that you are such a one, and of such a rank ;
but to tell it to them again and again, wherever they turn,
becomes soon impertinence, and at last folly. Let, therefore, the
entire bearings occur in few places, and these not considered as
an ornament, but as an inscription ; and for frequent appliance,
let any single and fair symbol be chosen out of them. Thus we
may multiply as much as we choose the French or the Florentine
lily, or the English rose; but we must not multiply a King's arms."^

IX. It will also follow, from these considerations, that if any
one part of heraldic decoration be worse than another, it is the
motto ; since, of all things unlike nature, the forms of letters
are, perhaps, the most so. Even graphic tellurium and felspar
look, at their clearest, anything but legible. All letters are,
therefore, to be considered as frightful things, and to be endured

" True, again ; but a very small matter in comparison with the main faults of
Tudor architecture : and the difference between the rigid bars of the portcullis
and the flexible filaments of Byzantine network is not enough explained.

^ This paragraph is wholly false, and curiously so, for I had seen and loved
good heraldic decoration in Italy before writing it ; but let my detestation of our
Houses of Parliament carry me too far, and without noticing where. Enough
is said in praise of heraldry in my later books to atone for this piece of
nonsense.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. Ill

only upon occasion ; that is to say, in places where the sense of
the inscription is of more importance than external ornament.
Inscriptions in churches, in rooms, and on pictures, are often
desirable, but they are not to be considered as architectural or
pictorial ornaments : they are, on the contrary, obstinate offences
to the eye, not to be suffered except when their intellectual office
introduces them. Place them, therefore, where they will be
read, and there only ; and let them be plainly written, and not
turned upside down, nor wrong end first It is an ill sacrifice
to beauty to make that illegible whose only merit is in its sense.
Write it as you would speak it, simply ; and do not draw the eye
to it when it would fain rest elsewhere, nor recommend your
sentence by anything but a little openness of place and architec*
tural silence about it Write the Commandments on the church
walls where they may be plainly seen, but do not put a dash and
a tail to every letter ; and remember that you are an architect,
not a writing master.**

X. Inscriptions appear sometimes to be introduced for the sake
of the scroll on which they are written ; and in late and modem
painted glass, as well as in architecture, these scrolls are
flourished and turned hither and thither as if they were orna-
mental. Ribands occur frequently in arabesques, — in some of a
high order, too, — ^tying up flowers, or flitting in and out among
the fixed forms. Is there anything like ribands in nature ? It
might be thought that grass and seaweed afforded apologetic
types. They do not There is a wide difference between their
structure and that of a riband. They have a skeleton, an anatomy, a
central rib, or fibre, or framework of some kind or another, which
has a beginning and an end, a root and head, and whose make
and strength affect every direction of their motion, and every line
of their form. The loosest weed that drifts and waves under the

^ All this ninth paragraph is again extremely and extraordinarily wrong: and
it is cuiioas to me, in reviewing the progress of my own mind, to see that while
everybody thought me imaginative and enthusiastic, my only fatal errors were
in over-dxiving conditions of common sense 1 These two paragraphs about
heraldry and writing might have been Mr. Cobden's mistakes — or Mr. John
Brighfs.

112 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

heaving of the sea, or hangs heavily on the brown and slippery
shore, has a marked strength, structure, elasticity, gradation of
substance ; its extremities are more finely fibred than its centre,
its centre than its root : every fork of its ramification is measured
and proportioned; every wave of its languid lines is lovely. It has
its allotted size, and place, and function ; it is a specific creature.
What is there like this in a riband? It has no structure: it is a
succession of cut threads all alike ; it has no skeleton, no make,
no form, no size, no will of its own. You cut it and crush it into
what you will. It has no strength, no languor. It cannot fall
into a single graceful form. It cannot wave, in the true sense,
but only flutter : it cannot bend, in the true sense, but only turn
and be wrinkled. It is a vile thing ; it spoils all that is near its
wretched film of an existence. Never use it. Let the flowers
come loose if they cannot keep together without being tied ;
leave the sentence unwritten if you cannot write it on a tablet or
book, or plain roll of paper. I know what authority there is
against me. I remember the scrolls of Perugino's angels, and
the ribands of Raphael's arabesques and of Ghiberti's glorious
bronze flowers : no matter ; they are every one of them vices and
uglinesses. Raphael usually felt this, and used an honest and
rational tablet, as in the Madonna di Fuligno. I do not say
there is any type of such tablets in nature, but all the difference
lies in the fact that the tablet is not considered as an ornament,
and the riband, or flying scroll, is. The tablet, as in Albert
Durer's Adam and Eve, is introduced for the sake of the writing,
understood and allowed as an ugly but necessary interruption.
The scroll is extended as an ornamental form, which it is not, nor
ever can be.^

XI. But it will be said that all this want of organisation and
form might be affirmed of drapery also, and that this latter is a
noble subject of sculpture. By no means. When was drapery a
subject of sculpture by itself, except in the form of a handker-

^ I had never, at this period, seen any of Sandro Botticelli's scroll work :
but even in him, its use is part of the affectations of his day, — afSsctation itself
becoming lovely in him^ without justifying it in his neighbours.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. II3

thief on urns in the seventeenth century and in some of the baser
scenic Italian decorations ? Drapery, as such, is always ignoble;
it becomes a subject of interest only by the colours it bears, and
the impressions which it receives from some foreign form or force.
All noble draperies, either in painting or sculpture (colour and
texture being at present out of our consideration), have, so far as
they are anything more than necessities, one of two great func-
tions : they are the exponents of motion and of gravitation.
They are the most valuable means of expressing past as well as
present motion in the figure, and they are almost the only means
of indicating to the eye the force of gravity which resists such
motion. The Greeks used drapery in sculpture for the most
part as an ugly necessity, but availed themselves of it gladly in
all representation of action, exaggerating the arrangements of
it which express lightness in the material, and follow gesture
in the person. The Christian Sculptors, caring little for the
body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively on the counte-
nance, received drapery at first contentedly as a veil, but soon
perceived a capacity of expression in it which the Greek had not
seen or had despised. The principal element of this expression
was the entire removal of agitation from what was so pre-
eminently capable of being agitated. It fell from their human
forms plumb down, sweeping the ground heavily, and concealing
the feet ; while the Greek drapery was often blown away from
the thigh. The thick and coarse stuffs of the monkish dresses,
so absolutely opposed to the thin and gauzy web of antique
material, suggested simplicity of division as well as weight of
fall. There was no crushing nor subdividing them. And thus
the drapery gradually came to represent the spirit of repose as it
before had of motion, repose saintly and severe. The wind had
no power upon the garment, as the passion none upon the soul ;
and the motion of the figure only bent into a softer line the still-
ness of the falling veil, followed by it like a slow cloud by droop-
ing rain : only in links of lighter undulation it followed the
dances of the angels.
Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble; but it is as a,n exponent

114 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

of Other and higher things. As that of gravitation, it has especial
majesty, being literally the only means we have of fully repre-
senting this mysterious natural force of earth (for falling water
is less passive and less defined in its lines). So, again, in sails it
is beautiful because it receives the forms of solid curved surface,
and expresses the force of another invisible element. But
drapery trusted to its own merits, and given for its own sake, —
drapery like that of Carlo Dolci and the Caraccis, — ^is always base.

XII. Closely connected with the abuse of scrolls and bands, is
that of garlands and festoons of flowers as an architectural decora-
tion, for unnatural arrangements are just as ugly as unnatural
forms ; and architecture, in borrowing the objects of Nature, is
bound to place them, as far as may be in her power, in such asso-
ciations as may befit and express their origin. She is not to
imitate directly the natural arrangement; she is not to carve
irregular stems of ivy up her columns to account for the leaves at
the top, but she is nevertheless to place her most exuberant vege-
table ornament just where Nature would have placed it, and to
give some indication of that radical and connected structure
which Nature would have given it. Thus the Corinthian capital
is beautiful, because it expands under the abacus just as Nature
would have expanded it ; and because it looks as if the leaves
had one root, though that root is unseen. And the flamboyant leaf
mouldings are beautiful, because they nestle and run up the
hollows, and fill the angles, and clasp the shafts which natural
leaves would have delighted to fill and to clasp. They are no
mere cast of natural leaves : they are counted, orderly, and archi-
tectural : but they are naturally, and therefore beautifully, placed.

XIII. Now I do not mean to say that Nature never uses
festoons : she loves them, and uses them lavishly ; and though
she does so only in those places of excessive luxuriance wherein
it seems to me that architectural types should seldom be sought,
yet a falling tendril or pendent bough might, if managed with
freedom and grace, be well introduced into luxuriant decoration
(or if not, it is not their want of beauty, but of architectural fitness,-
which incapacitates them for such uses). But what resemblance

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 115

to such example can we trace in a mass of all manner of fruit and
flowers^ tied heavily into a long bunch, thickest in the middle, and
pinned up by both ends against a dead wall ? For it is strange
that the wildest and most fanciful of the builders of truly luxuriant
architecture never ventured, so far as I know, even a pendent
tendril ; while the severest masters of the revived Greek permitted
this extraordinary piece of luscious ugliness to be fastened in the
middle of their blank surfaces. So surely as this arrangement is
adopted, the whole value of the flowerwork is lost Who among
the crowds that gaze upon the building ever pause to admire the
flowerwork of St Paul's ? It is as careful and as rich as it can
be, yet it adds no delightfulness to the edifice. It is no part of
it It is an ugly excrescence. We always conceive the building
without it, and should be happier if our conception were not dis-
turbed by its presence. It makes the rest of the architecture
look poverty-stricken, instead of sublime ; and yet it is never
enjoyed itself. Had it been put, where it ought, into the capitals,
it would have been beheld with never-ceasing delight I do not
mean that it could have been so in the present building, for such
kind of architecture has. no business with rich ornament in any
place ; but that if those groups of flowers had been put into
natural places in an edifice of another style, their value would
have been felt as vividly as now their uselessness. What applies
to festoons is still more sternly true of garlands. A garland is
meant to be seen upon a head. There it is beautiful, because
we suppose it newly gathered and joyfully worn. But it is not
meant to be hung upon a wall. If you want a circular ornament,
put a flat circle of coloured marble, as in the Casa Dario and
other such palaces at Venice ; or put a star, or a medallion, or if
you want a ring, put a solid one, but do not carve the images of
garlands, looking as if they had been used in the last procession,
and been hung up to dry and serve next time withered. Why
not also carve pegs, and hats upon them ?

XIV. One of the worst enemies of modem Gothic architecture,
though seemingly an unimportant feature, is an excrescence, as
oflensive by its poverty as the garland by its profusion, the

11$ THE LAMP OF BEAUTT.

dripstone in the shape of the handle of a chest of drawers, which
is used over the square-headed windows of what we call Eliza*
bethan buildings. In the last Chapter, it will be remembered
that the square form was shown to be that of pre-eminent Power,
and to be properly adapted and limited to the exhibition of space
or surface. Hence, when the window is to be an exponent of
power, as for instance in those by M. Angelo in the lower story
of the Palazzo Ricardi at Florence, the square head is the most
noble form they can assume ; but then either their space must be
unbroken, and their associated mouldings the most severe, or else
the square must be used as a final outline, and is chiefly to be
associated with forms of tracery, in which the relative form of
power, the circle, is predominant, as in Venetian, and Floren*
tine, and Pisan Gothic. But if you hresik upon your terminal
square, or if you cut its lines off at the top and turn them out-*
wards, you have lost its imity and space. It is an including form
no longer, but an added, isolated line, and the ugliest possible.
Look abroad into the landscape, and see if you can discover any
one so bent and fragmentary as that of this strange windlass*
looking dripstone. You cannot. It is a monster. It unites
every element of ugliness, its line is harshly broken in itself, and
unconnected with every other; it has no harmony either with
structure or decoration, it has no architectural support, it looks
glued to the wall, and the only pleasant property it has, is the
appearance of some likelihood of its dropping off.

I might proceed, but the task is a weary one, and I think I
have named those false forms of decoration which are most dan^
gerous in our modem architecture as being legal and accepted.
The barbarisms of individual fancy are as countless as they are
contemptible; they neither admit attack nor are. worth it; but
these above named are countenanced^ some by the practice of
antiquity, all by high authority : they have depressed the proudest,
and contaminated the purest schools, and are so established in
recent practice that I write rather for the barren satisfaction of
bearing witness against them, than with hope of inducing any
serious convictions to their prejudice.

THE LAMP OF BSAUTT. II7

XV. Thus far of what is not ornament What ornament is,
will without difficulty be determined by the application of the
same tesL It must consist of such studious arrangements of
form as are imitative or suggestive of those which are com-
monest among natural existences, that being of course the noblest
ornament which represents the highest orders of existence.
Imitated flowers are nobler than imitated stones ; imitated animals,
than flowers ; imitated human form, of all animal forms the noblest.
But all are combined in the richest ornamental work ; and the
rock, the fountain, the flowing river with its pebbled bed, the sea,
the clouds of Heaven, the herb of the field, the fruit-tree bearing
fruit, the creeping thing, the bird, the beast, the man, and the
angel, mingle their fair forms on the bronze of Ghiberti.

Everything being then ornamental that is imitative, I would
ask the reader's attention to a few general considerations, all
that can here be offered relating to so vast a subject ; which, for
convenience sake, may be classed under the three heads of in*
quiry : — ^What is the right place for architectural ornament ?
What is the peculiar treatment of ornament which renders it
architectural ? and what is the right use of colour as associated
with architectural imitative form ?

XVL What is the place for ornament ? Consider first that
the characters of natural objects which the architect can represent
are few and abstract The greater part of those delights by
which Nature recommends herself to man at all times, cannot be
conveyed by him into his imitative work. He cannot make his
grass green and cool and good to rest upon, which in nature is
its chief use to man ; nor can he make his flowers tender and full
of coloiur and of scent, which in nature are their chief powers of
giving joy. Those qualities which alone he can secure are certain
severe characters of form, such as men only see in nature on
deliberate examination, and by the full and set appliance of sight
and thought : a man must lie down on the bank of grass on his
breast and set himself to watch and penetrate the intertwining of
it, before he finds that which is good to be gathered by the
architect. So then while Nature is at all times pleasant to us»

Il8 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

and while the sight and sense of her work may mingle happily
with all our thoughts, and labours, and times of existence, that
image of her which the architect carries away represents what we
can only perceive in her by direct intellectual exertion, and
demands from us, wherever it appears, an intellectual exertion of
a similar kind in order to understand it and feel it It is the
written or sealed impression of a thing sought out, it is the shaped
result of inquiry and bodily expression of thought.

XVI I • Now let us consider for an instant what would be the
effect of continually repeating an expression of a beautiful thought
to any other of the senses at times when the mind could not
address that sense to the understanding of it. Suppose that in
time of serious occupation, of stem business, a companion should
repeat in our ears continually some favourite passage of poetry,
over and over again all day long. We should not only soon be
utterly sick and weary of the sound of it, but that sound would
at the end of the day have so sunk into the habit of the ear that
the entire meaning of the passage would be dead to us, and it
would ever thenceforward require some effort to fix and recover
it. The music of it would not meanwhile have aided the business
in hand, while its own delightfulness would thenceforward be in
a measure destroyed. It is the same with every other form of
definite thought If you violently present its expression to the
senses, at times when the mind is otherwise engaged, that expres-
sion will be ineffective at the time, and will have its sharpness
and clearness destroyed for ever. Much more if you present it
to the mind at times when it is painfully affected or disturbed,
or if you associate the expression of pleasant thought with incon-
gruous circumstances, you will affect that expression thencefor-
ward with a painful colour for ever.

XVIII. Apply this to expressions of thought received by the
eye. Remember that the eye is at your mercy more than the ear.
" The eye, it cannot choose but see." Its nerve is not so easily
numbed as that of the ear, and it is often busied in tracing and
watching forms when the ear is at rest. Now if you present
lovely forms to it when it cannot call the mind to help it in its

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. IIQ

work, and among objects of vulgar use and unhappy position, you
will neither please the eye nor elevate the vulgar object. But
you will fill and weary the eye with the beautiful form, and you
will infect that form itself with the vulgarity of the thing to
which you have violently attached it. It will never be of much
use to you any more ; you have killed, or defiled it ; its fresh-
ness and purity are gone. You will have to pass it through the
fire of much thought before you will cleanse it, and warm it with
much love before it will revive.

XIX. Hence then a general law, of singular importance in the
present day, a law of simple common sense, — ^not to decorate
things belonging to purposes of active and occupied life, j Wher-
ever you can rest, there decorate ; where rest is forbidden, so is
beauty. {| You must not mix ornament with business, any more
than you may mix play. Work first, and then rest Work first,
and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind
ledgers in enamel. Do not thrash with sculptured flails : ^ nor
put bas-reliefs on millstones. What ! it will be asked, are we in
the habit of doing so ? Even so ; always and everywhere. The
most familiar position of Greek mouldings is in these days on
shop fronts. There is not a tradesman's sign nor shelf nor
counter in all the streets of all our cities, which has not upon it
ornaments which were invented to adorn temples and beautify
kings' palaces. There is not the smallest advantage in them
where they are. Absolutely valueless — ^utterly without the power
of giving pleasure, they only satiate the eye, and vulgarise their
own forms. Many of these are in themselves thoroughly good
copies of fine things, which things themselves we shall never, in
consequence, enjoy any more. Many a pretty beading and grace-
ful bracket there is in wood or stucco above our grocers' and
cheesemongers' and hosiers' shops : how is it that the tradesmen

^ " Nor fight with jewelled swords " should have been added The principle
is partial and doubtfid, however. One of the most beautifiil bits of ironwork I
ever saw was an apothecary's pestle and mortar (of the fourteenth century) at
Messina : and a day may come when we shall wisely decorate the stilt of the
plough. The enx>r, however,— observe, — is again on the side of common sense !

I20 THE LAMP OF BEAXTTY.

cannot understand that custom is to be had only by sellii^ good
tea and cheese and cloth, and that people come to them for their
honesty, and their readiness, and their right wares, and not because
they have Greek cornices over their windows, or their names in
large gilt letters on their house fronts ? How pleasurable it would
be to have the power of going through the streets of London,
pulling down those brackets and friezes and large names, restoring
to the tradesmen the capital they had spent in architecture, and
putting them on honest and equal terms, each with his name in
black letters over his door, not shouted down the street from the
upper stories, and each with a plain wooden shop casement, with
small panes in it that people would not think of breaking in order
to be sent to prison ! How much better for them would it be —
how much happier, how much wiser, to put their trust upon their
own truth and industry, and not on the idiocy of their customers.
It is curious, and it says little for our national probity on the one
hand, or prudence on the other, to see the whole system of our
street decoration based on the idea that people must be baited to
a shop as moths are to a candle.

XX. But it will be said that much of the best wooden decora*
tion of the middle ages was in shop fronts. No ; it was in house
fronts, of which the shop was a part, and received its natural and
consistent portion of the ornament In those days men lived, and
intended to live by their shopS) and over them, all their days.
They were contented with them and happy in them : they were
their palaces and castles. They gave them therefore such decora-
tion as made themselves happy in their own habitation, and they
gave it for their own sake. The upper stories were always the
richest, and the shop was decorated chiefly about the door, which
belonged to the house more than to it And when our tradesmen
settle to their shops in the same way, and form no plans respect-
ing future villa architecture, let their whole houses be decorated,
and their shops too, but with a national and domestic decoration.
(I shall speak more of this point in the sixth Chapter.) However,
our cities are for the most part too large to admit of contented
dwelling in them throughout life ; and I do not say there is harm

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 121

in our present system of separating the shop from the dwelling-
house ; only where they are so separated, let us remember that
the only reason for shop decoration is removed, and see that the
decoration be removed also.

XXI| Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present
day is to the decoration of the railroad station.** Now, if there be
any place in the world in which people are deprived of that
portion of temper and discretion which are necessary to the con-
templation of beauty, it is there. It is the very temple of dis-
comfort, and the only charity that the builder can extend to us
is to show us, plainly as may be, how soonest to escape from it
The whole system of railroad travelling is addressed to people
who, being in a hurry, are therefore, for the time being, miser-
able No one would travel in that manner who could help it —
who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, in-
stead of through tunnels and between banks : at least those who
would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult
it at the station. The railroad is in all its relations a matter of
earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. It trans-
mutes a man from a traveller into a living parcel. For the time
he has parted with the nobler characteristics of his humanity for
the sake of a planetary power of locomotion. Do not ask him to
admire anything. You might as well ask the wind. Carry him
safely, dismiss him soon: he will thank you for nothing else.
All attempts to please him in any other way are mere mockery,
and insults to the things by which you endeavour to do so.
There never was more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the
smallest portion of ornament in anything concerned with rail-
roads or near them. Keep them out of the way, take them
through the ugliest country you can find, confess them the miser-
able things they are, and spend nothing upon them but for safety
and speed. Give large salaries to efficient servants, large prices
to good manufacturers, large wages to able workmen ; let the

^ Common sense still 1 — and, this time, indisputable. WeU had it been, for
many a company, and many a traveller, had this 121st page of the ''Seven
Lamps ** been taken for a railway signal

122 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

iron be tough, and the brickwork solidt and the carriages strong. \
The time is perhaps not distant when these first necessities may
not be easily met : and to increase expense in any other direction
is madness. Better bury gold in the embankments, than put
it in ornaments on the stations. Will a single traveller be
willing to pay an increased fare on the South Western, because
the columns of the terminus are covered with patterns from
Nineveh ? — ^he will only care less for the Ninevite ivories in the
British Museum : or on the North Western, because there are old
English-looking spandrils to the roof of the station at Crewe ?
— he will only have less pleasure in their prototypes at Crewe
House. Railroad architecture has, or would have, a dignity of its
own if it were only left to its work. You would not put rings on
the fingers of a smith at his anvil.

XXII. It is not however only in these marked situations that
the abuse of which I speak takes place. There is hardly, at
present, an application of ornamental work, which is not in some
sort liable to blame of the same kind. We have a bad habit of
trying to disguise disagreeable necessities by some form of sudden
decoration, which is, in all other places, associated with such
necessities. I will name only one instance, that to which I have
alluded before — the roses which conceal the ventilators in the
flat roofs of our chapels. Many of those roses are of very
beautiful design, borrowed from fine works : all their grace and
finish are invisible when they are so placed, but their general
form is afterwards associated with the ugly buildings in which they
constantly occur ; and all the beautiful roses of the early French
and English Gothic, especially such elaborate ones as those of the
triforium of Coutances, are in consequence deprived of their plea-
surable influence : and this without our having accomplished the
smallest good by the use we have made of the dishonoured form.
Not a single person in the congregation ever receives one ray
of pleasure from those roof roses ; they are regarded with mere
indifference, or lost in the general impression of harsh emptiness.

XXIII. Must not beauty, then, it will be asked, be sought for
in the forms which we associate with our every-day life ? Yes, if

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY, 1 23

you do it consistently, and in places where it can be calmly seen ;
but not if you use the beautiful form only as a mask and cover-
ing of the proper conditions and uses of things, nor if you thrust
it into the places set apart for toil. Put it in the drawing-room,
not into the workshop ; put it upon domestic furniture, not upon
tools of handicraft All men have sense of what is right in this
matter, if they would only use and apply that sense ; every man
knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would
only ask for it when it does so, and not allow it to be forced
upon him when he does not want it Ask any one of the pas-
sengers over London Bridge at this instant whether he cares
about the forms of the bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell
you, No. Modify these forms of leaves to a less scale, and put
them on his milk-jug at breakfast, and ask him whether he
likes them, and he will tell you, Yes. People have no need of
teaching if they could only think and speak truth, and ask for
what they like and want, and for nothing else : nor can a right
disposition of beauty be ever arrived at except by this common
sense, and allowance for the circumstances of the time and place.
It does not follow, because bronze leafage is in bad taste on the
lamps of London Bridge, that it would be so on those of the
Ponte ddla Trinitk ; nor, because it would be a folly to decorate
the house fronts of Gracechurch Street, that it would be equally
so to adorn those of some quiet provincial town. The question
of greatest external or internal decoration depends entirely on
the conditions of probable repose. It was a wise feeling which
made the streets of Venice so rich in external ornament, for there
is no couch of rest like the gondola. So, again, there is no sub-
ject of street ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain, where
it is a fountain of use ; for it is just there that perhaps the
happiest pause takes place in the labour of the day, when the
pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the bearer
is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the forehead, and the
uprightness of the form declined against the marble ledge» and
the sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with the trickle
of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills.

124 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

What pause is so sweet as that — ^so full of the depth of ancient
days, so softened with the calm of pastoral solitude ?

XXIV. II. Thus far, then, of the place for beauty. We were
next to inquire into the characters which fitted it peculiarly for
architectural appliance, and into the principles of choice and of
arrangement ^ which best regulate the imitation of natural forms
in which it consists. The full answering of these questions
would be a treatise on the art of design : I intend only to say a
few words respecting the two conditions of that art which are
essentially architectural, — Proportion and Abstraction. Neither
of these qualities is necessary, to the same extent, in other fields
of design. The sense of proportion is, by the landscape painter,
frequently sacrificed to character and accident ; the power of
abstraction to that of complete realisation. The flowers of his
foreground must often be unmeasured in their quantity, loose in
their arrangement : what is calculated, either in quantity or dis*
position, must be artfully concealed. That calculation is by the
architect to be prominently exhibited. So the abstraction of few
characteristics out of many, is shown only in the painter's sketch ;
in his finished work it is concealed or lost in completion. Archi-
tecture, on the contrary, delights in Abstraction and fears to
complete her forms. Proportion and Abstraction, then, are the
two especial marks of architectural design as distinguished from
all other. Sculpture must have them in inferior degrees ; leaning,
on the one hand, to an architectural manner, when it is usually
greatest (becoming, indeed, a part of Architecture), and, on the
other, to a pictorial manner, when it is apt to lose its dignity, and
sink into mere ingenious carving.

XXV. Now, of Proportion so much has been written, that I
believe the only facts which are of practical use have been over-
whelmed and kept out of sight by vain accumulations of particular
instances and estimates. Proportions are as infinite (and that in
all kinds of things, as severally in colours, lines, shades, lights,
and forms) as possible airs in music : and it is just as rational an

** Choice, and an^ngement; — the 'dominion" of the 17th Aphorism. See
above, note 35.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 125

attempt to teach a young architect how to proportion truly and
well by calculating for him the proportions of fine works, as it
would be to teach him to compose melodies by calculating the
mathematical relations of the notes in Beethoven's "Adelaide" or
Mozart's "Requiem." The man who has eye and intellect will
invent beautiful proportions, and cannot help it ; but he can no
more tell us how to do it than Wordsworth could tell us how to
write a sonnet, or than Scott could have told us how to plan a
romance. But there are one or two general laws which can be
told : they are of no use, indeed, except as preventives of gross
mistakes, but they are so far worth telling and remembering ; and
the more so because, in the discussion of the subtle laws of Pro-
portion (which will never be either numbered or known), archi-
tects are perpetually forgetting and transgressing the very
simplest of its necessities.

XXVI. Of which the first is, that wherever Proportion exists
at all, one member of the composition must be either larger than,
or in some way supreme over, the rest There is no proportion
between equal things. They can have symmetry only, and
symmetry without proportion is not composition. It is necessary
to perfect beauty, but it is the least necessary of its elements, nor
of course is there any difficulty in obtaining it. Any succession
of equal things is agreeable ; but to compose is to arrange
unequal things, and the first thing to be done in beginning a
composition is to determine which is to be the principal thing.
I believe that all that has been written and taught about propor-
tion, put together, is not to the architect worth the single rule,
well enforced, " Have one large thing and several smaller things,
or one principal thing and several inferior things, and bind them
well together." Sometimes there may be a regular gradation, as
between the heights of stories in good designs for houses ; some-
times a monarch with a lowly train, as in the spire with its
pinnacles : the varieties of arrangement are infinite, but the law
is universal — have one thing above the rest, either by size, or
office, or interest Don't put the pinnacles without the spire.
What a host of ugly church towers have we in England, with

126 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

pinnacles at the corners, and none in the middle I How many
buildings like Kingfs Collie Chapel at Cambridge, looking like
tables upside down, with their four legs in the air ! What ! it
will be said, have not beasts four legs ? Yes, but legs of different
shapes, and with a head between them. So they have a pair of
ears : and perhaps a pair of horns : but not at both ends. Knock
down a couple of pinnacles at either end in King's College
Chapel, and you will have a kind of proportion instantly. So in
a cathedral you may have one tower in the centre, and two at
the west end ; or two at the west end only, though a worse
arrangement : but you must not have two at the west and two at
the east end, unless you have some central member to connect
them ; and even then, buildings are generally bad which have
large balancing features at the extremities, and small connecting
ones in the centre, because it is not easy then to make the centre
dominant The bird or moth may indeed have wide wings, be-
cause the size of the wing does not give supremacy to the wing.
The head and life are the mighty things, and the plumes, how-
ever wide, are subordinate. In fine west fronts with a pediment
and two towers, the centre is always the principal mass, both in
bulk and interest (as having the main gateway), and the towers
are subordinated to it, as an animal's horns are to its head. The
moment the towers rise so high as to overpower the body and
centre, and become themselves the principal masses, they will
destroy the proportion, unless they are made unequal, and one
of them the leading feature of the cathedral, as at Antwerp and
Strasburg. But the purer method is to keep them down in due
relation to the centre, and to throw up the pediment into a steep
connecting mass, drawing the eye to it by rich tracery. This is
nobly done in St. Wulfran of Abbeville, and attempted partly at
Rouen, though that west front is made up of so many unfinished
and supervening designs that it is impossible to guess the real
intention of any one of its builders.

XXVII. This rule of supremacy applies to the smallest as
well as to leading features : it is interestingly seen in the arrange-
ment of all good mouldings. I have given one, on the opposite

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 12 J

page, from Rouen Cathedral ; that of the tracery before distin-
guished as a type of the noblest manner of Northern Gothic
(Chap. 11. § XXII.). It is a tracery of three orders, of which
the first is divided into a leaf moulding, fig. 4. and 6 in the sec-
tion, and a plain roll, also seen in fig. 4. r in the section ; these
two divisions surround the entire window or panelling, and are
carried by two-face shafts of corresponding sections. The second
and third orders are plain rolls following the line of the tracery ;
four divisions of moulding in all : of these four, the leaf moulding
is, as seen in the sections, much the largest ; next to it the outer
roll ; then, by an exquisite alternation, the innermost roll (e), in
order that it may not be lost in the recess, and the intermediate
(d), the smallest Each roll has its own shaft and capital ; and
the two smaller, which in effect upon the eye, owing to the retire-
ment of the innermost, are nearly equal, have smaller capitals
than the two larger, lifted a little to bring them to the same level.
The wall in the trefoiled lights is curved, as from ^ to y in the
section ; but in the quatrefoil it is flat, only thrown back to the
full depth of the recess below so as to get a sharp shadow
instead of a soft one, the mouldings falling back to it in nearly a
vertical curve behind the roll e. This could not, however, be
managed with the simpler mouldings of the smaller quatrefoil
above, whose half section is given from gtog^\ but the architect
was evidently fretted by the heavy look of its circular foils as
opposed to the light spring of the arches below : so he threw its
cusps obliqudy clear fi'om the wall, as seen in fig. 2., attached
to it where they meet the circle, but with their finials
pushed out from their natural level {k, in the section) to that of
the first order {g^, and supported by stone props behind, as seen
in the profile, fig. 2., which I got from the correspondent panel
on the buttress face (fig. i. being on its side), and of which the
lower cusps, being broken away, show the remnant of one of
their props projecting from the wall. The oblique curve thus
obtained in the profile is of singular grace. Take it all in all, I
have never met with a more exquisite piece of varied, yet severe,
proportion and general arrangement (though all the windows of

128 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

the period are fine, and especially delightful in the subordinate
proportioning of the smaller capitals to tht smaller shafts). The
only fault it has is the inevitable misarrangement of the central
shafts ; for the enlargement of the inner roll, though beautiful in
the group of four divisions at the side, causes, in the triple central
shaft, the very awkwardness of heavy lateral members which has
just been in most instances condemned. In the windows of the
choir, and in most of the period, this difficulty is avoided by
making the fourth order a fillet which only follows the foliation,
while the three outermost are nearly in arithmetical progres-
sion of size, and the central triple shaft has of course the
largest roll in front The moulding of the Palazzo Foscari
(Plate VIII., and Plate IV. fig. 8.) is, for so simple a group,
the grandest in effect I have ever seen : it is composed of a
large roll with two subordinates.

XXVI 1 1. It is of course impossible to enter into details of
instances belonging to so intricate a division of our subject, in the
compass of a general essay. I can but rapidly name the chief
conditions of right. Another of these is the connection of Sym-
metry with horizontal, and of Proportion with vertical, division.
Evidently there is in symmetry a sense not merely of equality, but
of balance : now a thing cannot be balanced by another on the
top of it, though it may by one at the side of it. Hence, while
it is not only allowable, but often necessary, to divide buildings,
or parts of them, horizontally into halves, thirds, or other equal
parts, all vertical divisions of this kind are utterly wrong ; worst
into half, next worst in the regular numbers which more betray
the equality. I should have thought this almost the first prin-
ciple of proportion which a young architect was taught : and yet
I remember an important building, recently erected in England,
in which the columns are cut in half by the projecting architraves
of the central windows ; and it is quite usual to see the spires of
modern Gothic churches divided by a band of ornament halfway
up. In all fine spires there are two bands and three parts, as at
Salisbury. The ornamented portion of the tower is there cut in
half, and allowably, because the spire forms the third mass to

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY, 129

which the other two are subordinate : two stories are also equal
in Giotto's campanile, but dominant over smaller divisions below,
and subordinated to the noble third above. Even this arrange-
ment is difficult to treat ; and it is usually safer to increase or
diminish the height of the divisions regularly as they rise, as in
the Doge's Palace, whose three divisions are in a bold geometrical
progression : or, in towers, to get an alternate proportion between
the body, the belfry, and the crown, as in the campanile of St.
Mark's. But, at all events, get rid of equality ; leave that to
children and their card houses : the laws of nature and the
reason of man are alike against it, in arts, as in politics. There
is but one thoroughly ugly tower in Italy that I know of, and that
is so because it is divided into vertical equal parts : — ^the tower
of Pisa.

XXIX. One more principle of Proportion I have to name,
equally simple, equally neglected. Proportion is between three
terms at least. Hence, as the pinnacles are not enough without
the spire, so neither the spire without the pinnacles. All men
feel this, and usually express their feeling by saying that the
pinnacles conceal the junction of the spire and tower. This is
one reason ; but a more influential one is, that the pinnacles
furnish the third term to the spire and tower. So that it is not
enough, in order to secure proportion, to divide a building un-
equally ; it must be divided into at least three parts ; it may be
into more (and in details with advantage), but on a large scale I
find three is about the best number of parts in elevation, and five
in horizontal extent, with freedom of increase to five in the one
case and seven in the other ; but not to more without confusion
(in architecture, that is to say ; for in organic structure the num-
bers cannot be limited). I purpose, in the course of works which
are in preparation, to give copious illustrations of this subject,
but I will take at present only one instance of vertical proportion,
from the flower stem of the common water plantain, Alisma
Plantago. Fig. 5. Plate XII. is a reduced profile of one side of
a plant gathered at random ; it is seen to have five masts, of
which, however, the uppermost is a mere shoot, and we can con-

130 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

sider only their relations up to the fourth. Their lengths are
measured on the line A B, which is the actual length of the
lowest mast abyhCuzbCyhUcd, 'n and A E zz de. If the
reader will take the trouble to measure these lengths and compare
them he will find that, within half a line, the uppermost, A E =4
of A D, A D= I of A C, and ACz=^ofAB; a most subtle
diminishing proportion. From each of the joints spring three
major and three minor branches, each between each ; but the
major branches, at any joint, are placed over the minor branches
at the joint below, by the curious arrangement of the joint itself
— the stem is bluntly triangular ; fig. 6. shows the section of any
joint. The outer darkened triangle is the section of the lower
stem ; the inner, left light, of the upper stem ; and the three
main branches spring from the ledges left by the recession. Thus
the stems diminish in diameter just as they diminish in height.
The main branches (falsely placed in the profile over each other
to show their relations) have respectively seven, six, five, four,
and three arm-bones, like the masts of the stem ; these divisions
being proportioned in the same subde manner. From the joints
of these, it seems to be the plan of the plant that three major and
three minor branches should again spring, bearing the flowers :
but, in these infinitely complicated members, vegetative nature
admits much variety ; in the plant from which these measures
were taken, the full complement appeared only at one of the
secondary joints.

The leaf of this plant has five ribs on each side, as its flower
generally five masts, arranged with the most exquisite grace of
curve ; but of lateral proportion I shall rather take illustrations
from architecture : the reader will find several in the accounts of
the Duomoof Pisa and St Mark's at Venice, in Chap. V. §§ XIV.
— XVI. I give these arrangements merely as illustrations, not
as precedents : all beautiful proportions are unique, they are not
general formulae.

XXX. The other condition of architectural treatment which
we proposed to notice was the abstraction of imitated form.
But there is a peculiar difficulty in touching within these narrow

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. I31

limits on such a subject as this, because the abstraction of which
we find examples in existing art, is partly involuntary ; and it is
a matter of much nicety to determine where it begins to be
purposed. In the progress of national as well as of individual
mind, the first attempts at imitation are always abstract and
incomplete. Greater completion marks the progress of art, abso-
lute completion usually its decline ; whence absolute completion
of imitative form is often supposed to be in itself wrong. But
it is not wrong always, only dangerous. Let us endeavour
briefly to ascertain wherein its danger consists, and wherein its
dignity.

XX XL I have said that all art is abstract in its beginnings ;
that is to say, it expresses only a small number of the qualities
of the thing represented. Curved and complex lines are repre-
sented by straight and simple ones ; interior markings of forms
are few, and much is symbolical and conventional. There is a
resemblance between the work of a great nation, ih this phase,
and the work of childhood and ignorance, which, in the mind of
a careless observer, might attach something like ridicule to it.
The form of a tree on the Ninevite sculptures is much like that
which, some twenty years ago, was familiar upon samplers ; and
the types of the face and figure in early Italian art are susceptible
of easy caricature. On the signs which separate the infancy of
magnificent manhood from every other, I do not pause to insist
(they consist entirely in the choice of the symbol and of the fea-
tures abstracted) ; but I pass to the next stage of art, a condition
of strength in which the abstraction which was begun in incapa-
bility is continued in free will. This is the case, however, in pure
sculpture and painting, as well as in architecture ; and we have
nothing to do but with that greater severity of manner which fits
either to be associated with the more realist art. I believe it
properly consists only in a due expression of their subordination,
an expression varying according to their place and office. The
question is first to be clearly determined whether the architecture
is a frame for the sculpture, or the sculpture an ornament of the
architecture. If the latter, then the first office of that sculpture

132 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

is not to represent the things it imitates, but to gather out of them
those arrangements of form which shall be pleasing to the eye in
their intended places. So soon as agreeable lines and points of
shade have been added to the mouldings which were meagre, or
to the lights which were unrelieved, the architectural work of
the imitation is accomplished ; and how far it shall be wrought
towards completeness or not, will depend upon its place, and upon
other various circumstances. If, in its particular use or position, it
is symmetrically arranged, there is, of course, an instant indication

Aphorism 21. of architectural subjection. But symmetry is not abstrac-

n5"Sh^!^ tion. Leaves may be carved in the most regular order,

^^^ and yet be meanly imitative; or, on the other hand,

they may be thrown wild and loose, and yet be highly

architectural in their separate treatment.^ Nothing can

be less symmetrical than the group of leaves which joins the two
columns in Plate XIII.; yet, since nothing of the leaf character
is given but what is necessary for the bare suggestion of its
image and the attainment of the lines desired, their treatment is
highly abstract It shows that the workman only wanted so
much of the leaf as he supposed good for his architecture, and
would allow no more ; and how much is to be supposed good,
depends, as I have said, much more on place and circumstance
than on general laws. I know that this is not usually thought,
and that many good architects would insist on abstraction in all
cases : the question is so wide and so difficult that I express my
opinion upon it most diffidendy ; but my own feeling is, that a
purely abstract manner, like that of our earliest English work,
does not afford room for the perfection of beautiful form, and that
its severity is wearisome after the eye has been long accustomed
to it. I have not done justice to the Salisbury dog-tooth mould-
ing, of which the effect is sketched in fig. 5., Plate X., but I have
done more justice to it nevertheless than to the beautiful French
one above it ; and I do not think that any candid reader would

«t

This short Aphorism is one of the most important in the book.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 1 33

deny that, piquant and spirited as is that from Salisbury, the
Rouen moulding is, in every respect, nobler. It will be observed
that its S3rmmetry is more complicated, the leafage being divided
into double groups of two lobes each, each lobe of different
structure. With exquisite feeling, one of these double groups is
alternately omitted on the other side of the moulding (not seen
in the Plate, but occupying the cavetto of the section), thus
giving a playful lightness to the whole ; and if the reader will
allow for a beauty in the flow of the curved oudines (espe-
cially on the angle), of which he cannot in the least judge
from my rude drawing, he will not, I think, expect easily to
find a nobler instance of decoration adapted to the severest
mouldings.

Now it will be observed, that there is in its treatment a high
degree of abstraction, though not so conventional as that of
Salisbury : that is to say, the leaves have little more than their
flow and outline represented; they are hardly undercut, but their
edges are connected by a gentle and most studied curve with the
stone behind; they have no serrations, no veinings, no rib or
stalk on the angle, only an incision gracefully made towards their
extremities, indicative of the central rib and depression. The
whole style of the abstraction shows that the architect could, if
he had chosen, have carried the imitation much farther, but stayed
at this point of his own free will ; and what he has done is also
so perfect in its kind, that I feel disposed to accept his authority
without question, so far as I can gather it from his works, on
the whole subject of abstraction.

XXXII. Happily, his opinion is frankly expressed. This
moulding is on the lateral buttress, and on a level with the top
of the north gate : it cannot therefore be closely seen except from
the wooden stairs of the belfry ; it is not intended to be so seen,
but calculated for a distance of, at least, forty to fifty feet from the
eye. In the vault of the gate itself, half as near again, there are
three rows of mouldings, as I think, by the same designer, at all
events part of the same plan. One of them is given in Plate I.
fig. 2. a. It will be seen that the abstraction is here infinitely

134 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

less ; the ivy leaves have stalks and associated fruit, and a rib
for each lobe, and are so far undercut as to detach their forms
from the stone ; while in the vine-leaf moulding above, of the
same period, from the south gate, serration appears added to other
purely imitative characters. Finally, in the animals which form
the ornaments of the portion of the gate which is close to the
eye, abstraction nearly vanishes into perfect sculpture.

XXXIII. Nearness to the eye, however, is not the only cir-
cumstance which influences architectural abstraction. These
very animals are not merely better cut because close to the eye ;
they are put close to the eye that they may, without indiscretion,
be better cut, on the noble principle, first, I think, clearly enun-
ciated by Sir Charles Easdake, that the closest imitation shall be
of the noblest object. Farther, since the wildness and manner of
growth of vegetation render a band fide imitation of it impossible
in sculpture — since its members must be reduced in number,
ordered in direction, and cut away from their roots, even under the
most earnestly imitative treatment, — it becomes a point, as I think,
of good judgment, to proportion the completeness of execution
of parts to the formality of the whole ; and since five or six leaves
must stand for a tree, to let also five or six touches stand for a
leaf. But since the animal generally admits of perfect outline —
since its form is detached, and may be fully represented, its
sculpture may be more complete and faithful in all its parts.
And this principle will be actually found, I believe, to guide the
old workmen. If the animal form be in a gargoyle, incomplete,
and coming out of a block of stone, or if a head only, as for a
boss or other such partial use, its sculpture will be highly ab-
stract. But if it be an entire animal, as a lizard, or a bird, or a
squirrel, peeping among leafage, its sculpture will be much farther
carried, and I think, if small, near the eye, and worked in a fine
material, may righdy be carried to the utmost possible completion.
Surely we cannot wish a less finish bestowed on those which
animate the mouldings of the South door of the cathedral of
Florence ; nor desire that the birds in the capitals of the Doge's
palace should be stripped of a single plume.

THE LAMP OF BEAUT V. 135

XXXIV. Under these limitations, then, I think that aphorism 22.
perfect sculpture may be "^ made a part of the severest ^^^^o^^"
architecture ; but this perfection was said in the outset the^s^^t

architecture.

to be dangerous. It is so in the highest degree ; for the
moment the architect allows himself to dwell on the
imitated portions, there is a chance of his losing sight
of the duty of his ornament, of its business as a part
of the composition, and sacrificing its points of shade
and effect to the delight of delicate carving. And then
he is lost. His architecture has become a mere frame-
work for the setting of delicate sculpture, which had
better be all taken down and put into cabinets. It is
well, therefore, that the young architect should be
taught to think of imitative ornament as of the extreme
of grace in language ; not to be regarded at first, not to
be obtained at the cost of purpose, meaning, force or
conciseness, yet, indeed, a perfection — the least of all
perfections, and yet the crowning one of all — one which
by itself, and regarded in itself, is an architectural
coxcombry,^ but is yet the sign of the most highly-
trained mind and power when it is associated with
others. It is a safe manner, as I think, to design all
things at first in severe abstraction, and to be prepared,
if need were, to carry them out in that form ; then to
mark the parts where high finish would be admissible,
to complete these always with stem reference to their

*' I have written, it will be observed, " sA(nM be," in the marginal definition of
the Aphorism, and I ought to have written it in the text See the next note.

' By no means. I much understated the truth in this matter, and should now
say that sculpture should precede and govern all else. The pediment of iEgina
determines the right — and ends controversy.

136 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

general effect, and then connect them by a graduated
scale of abstraction with the rest. And there is one
safeguard against danger in this process on which I
would finally insist. Never imitate anything but na-
tural forms, and those the noblest, in the completed
parts. The degradation of the cinque cento manner of
decoration was not owing to its naturalism, to its faith-
fulness of imitation, but to its imitation of ugly, i.e.
unnatural things. So long as it restrained itself to
sculpture of animals and flowers, it remained noble.
The balcony, on the opposite page (Plate XI.), from a
house in the Campo St. Benedetto at Venice, shows one
of the earliest occurrences of the cinque cento ara-
besque, and a fragment of the pattern is given in Plate
XII. fig. 8. It is but the arresting upon the stone work
of a stem or two of the living flowers, which are rarely
wanting in the window above (and which, by the by,
the French and Italian peasantry often trellis with
exquisite taste about their casements). This arabesque,
relieved as it is in darkness from the white stone by
the stain of time, is surely both beautiful and pure;
and as long as the renaissance ornament remained in
such forms it may be beheld with unreserved admira-
tion. But the moment that unnatural objects were
associated with these, and armour, and musical instru-
ments, and wild meaningless scrolls and curled shields,
and other such fancies, became principal in its subjects,
its doom was sealed, and with it that of the architec-
ture of the world.

XXXV. III. Our final inquiry was to be into the use of
colour as associated with architectural ornament

* 4

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 1 37

I do not feel able to speak with any confidence respecting the
touching of sculpture with colour. I would only note one point,
that sculpture is the representation of an idea, while architecture
is itself a real thing. The idea may, as I think, be left colourless,
and coloured by the beholder's mind : but a reality ought to
have reality in all its attributes : its colour should be as fixed as
its form. I cannot, therefore, consider architecture as in any-
wise perfect without colour. Farther, as I have above noticed, I
think the colours of architecture should be those of natural stones ;
partly because more durable, but also because more perfect and
graceful. For to conquer the harshness and deadness of tones
laid upon stone or on gesso, needs the mans^ement and discre-
tion of a true painter ; and on this co-operation we must not
calculate in laying down rules for general practice. If Tintoret or
Gioigione are at hand, and ask us for a wall to. paint, we will alter
our whole design for their sake, and become their servants ; but
we must, as architects, expect the aid of the common workman
only ; and the laying of colour by a mechanical hand, and its
toning under a vulgar eye, are far more offensive than rudeness
in cutting the stone. The latter is imperfection only ; the former
deadness or discordance. At the best, such colour is so inferior
to the lovely and mellow hues of the natural stone, that it is
wise to sacrifice some of the intricacy of design, if by so doing
we may emfJoy the nobler material. And if, as we looked to
Nature for instruction respecting form, we look to her also to
learn the management of colour, we shall, perhaps, find that
this sacrifice of intricacy is for other causes expedient

XXXVI. First, then, I think that in making this reference we
are to consider our building as a kind of organised creature ; in
colouring which we must look to the single and separately
organised creatures of Nature, not to her landscape combinations.
Our building, if it is well composed, is one thing, and is to be
coloured as Nature would colour one thing — a shell, a flower, or
an animal ; not as she colours groups of things.

And the first broad conclusion we shall deduce from observance
of natural colour in such cases will be, that it never follows

138 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY,

form, but is arranged on an entirely separate system. What
mysterious connection there may be between the shape of the
spots on an animal's skin and its anatomical system, I do not know,
nor even if such a connection has in anywise been traced : but to
the eye the systems are entirely separate, and in many cases that
of colour is accidentally variable. The stripes of a zebra do not
follow the lines of its body or limbs, still less the spots of a
leopard. In the plumage of birds, each feather bears a part of the
pattern which is arbitrarily carried over the body, having indeed
certain graceful harmonies with the form, diminishing or enlarging
in directions which sometimes follow, but also not unfrequently
oppose, the directions of its muscular lines. Whatever harmonies
there may be, are distinctly like those of two separate musical
parts, coinciding here and there only — never discordant, but
essentially different I hold this, then, for the first great principle
of architectural colour. Let it be visibly independent of form.
Never paint a column with vertical lines, but always cross it
Never give separate mouldings separate colours (I know this is
heresy, but I never shrink from any conclusions, however con-
trary to human authority, to which I am led by observance of
natural principles); and in sculptured ornaments do not paint the
leaves or figures (I cannot help the Elgin frieze) of one colour and
their ground of another, but vary both the ground and the figures
with the same harmony. Notice how Nature does it in a variegated
flower ; not one leaf red and another white, but a point of red and
a zone of white, or whatever it may be, to each. In certain places
you may run your two systems closer, and here and there let
them be parallel for a note or two, but see that the colours and the
forms coincide only as two orders of mouldings do ; the same for
an instant, but each holding its own course. So single members
may sometimes have single colours : as a bird's head is sometimes
of one colour and its shoulders another, you may make your
capital one colour and your shaft another ; but in general the
best place for colour is on broad surfaces, not on the points of
interest in form. An animal is mottled on its breast and back,
rarely on its paws or about its eyes; so put your variegation

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 1 39

boldly on the flat wall and broad shaft, but be shy of it in the
capital and moulding ; in all cases it is a safe rule to simplify
colour when form is rich, and vice versd; and I think it would be
well in general to carve all capitals and graceful ornaments in
white marble, and so leave them.

XXXVII. Independence then being first secured, what kind
of limiting outlines shall we adopt for the system of colour
itself?

I am quite sure that any person familiar with natural objects
will never be surprised at any appearance of care or finish in
them. That is the condition of the Universe. But there is cause
both for surprise and inquiry whenever we see anything like
carelessness or incompletion : that is not a common condition ; it
must be one appointed for some singular purpose. I believe that
such surprise will be forcibly felt by any one who, after studying
carefully the lines of some variegated organic form, will set him-
self to copy with similar diligence those of its colours. The
boundaries of the forms he will assuredly, whatever the object,
have found drawn with a delicacy and precision which no human
hand can follow. Those of its colours he will find in many
cases, though governed always by a certain rude symmetry, yet
irr^^lar, blotched, imperfect, liable to all kinds of accidents and
awkwardnesses. Look at the tracery of the lines on a camp
shell, and see how oddly and awkwardly its tents are pitched. It
is not indeed always so : there is occasionally, as in the eye of the
peacock's plume, an apparent precision, but still a precision far
inferior to that of the drawing of the filaments which bear that
lovely stain ; and in the pliu^ity of cases a degree of looseness
and variation, and, still more singularly, of harshness and violence
in arrangement, is admitted in colour which would be monstrous
in fonn. Observe the difference in the precision of a fish's scales
and of the spots on them.

XXXVIII. Now, why it should be that colour is best seen
under these circumstances I will not here endeavour to deter-
mine ; nor whether the lesson we are to learn from it be that it
is God's will that all manner of delights should never be com-

I40 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

bined in one thing. But the fact is certain, that colour is always
by Him arranged in these simple or rude forms, and as certain
that, therefore, it must be best seen in them, and that we shall
never mend by refining its arrangements. Experience teaches
us the same thing. Infinite nonsense has been written about the
union of perfect colour with perfect form. They never will, never
can be united. Colour, to be perfect, must have a soft outline or a
simple one : (it cannot have a refined one ;) ^ and you will never
produce a good painted window with good figure-drawing in it.
You will lose perfection of colour as you give perfection of line.
Try to put in order and form the colours of a piece of opal.

XXXIX. I conclude, then, that all arrangements of colour, for
its own sake, in graceful forms, are barbarous ; and that, to paint
a colour pattern with the lovely lines of a Greek leaf moulding, is
an utterly savage procedure. I cannot find anything in natural
colour like this : it is not in the bond. I find it in all natural
form — never in natural colour. If, then, our architectural colour
is to be beautiful as its form was, by being imitative, we are
limited to these conditions — to simple masses of it, to zones, as in
the rainbow and the zebra ; cloudings and flamings, as in marble
shells and plumage, or spots of various shapes and dimensions.
All these conditions are susceptible of various degrees of sharp-
ness and delicacy, and of complication in arrangement The zone
may become a delicate line, and arrange itself in chequers and zig-
zags. The flaming may be more or less defined, as on a tulip
leaf, and may at last be represented by a triangle of colour, and
arrange itself in stars or other shapes ; the spot may be also gra-
duated into a stain, or defined into a square or circle. The most
exquisite harmonies may be composed of these simple elements :
some soft and full of flushed and melting spaces of colour; others
piquant and sparkling, or deep and rich, formed of close groups
of the fiery fragments : perfect and lovely proportion may be ex-

^ Omit the sentence in parenthesis. I meant, a sharp or dAxi^d, (not rained)
edge; but even so understanding it, great part of the thirty-eighth and thirty-
ninth paragraphs must be received under much exception and protest, and might
be omitted wholly with no harm to the book.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. I4I

hibited in the relation of their quantities, infinite invention in their
disposition : but, in all cases, their shape will be effective only as
it determines their quantity, and r^^ulates their operation on each
other; points or edges of one being introduced between breadths
of others, and so on. Triangular and barred forms are therefore
convenient, or others the simplest possible ; leaving the pleasure
of the spectator to be taken in the colour, and in that only.
Curved outlines, especially if refined, deaden the colour, and con-
fuse the mind. Even in figure painting the greatest colourists have
either melted their outline away, as often Correggio and Rubens;
or purposely made their masses of imgainly shape, as Titian ; or
placed their brightest hues in costume, where they could get quaint
patterns, as Veronese, and especially Angelico, with whom, how*
ever, the absolute virtue of colour is secondary to grace of line.
Hence, he never uses the blended hues of Correggio, like those
on the wing of the little Cupid, in the '' Venus and Mercury,"
but alvrays the severest tjrpe — the peacock plume. Any of these
men would have looked with infinite disgust upon the leafs^e and
scroll-work which form the ground of colour in our modem
painted windows, and yet all whom I have named were much
infected with the love of renaissance designs. We must also
allow for the freedom of the painter^s subject, and looseness of
his associated lines ; a pattern being severe in a picture, which is
over luxurious upon a building. I believe, therefore, that it is
impossible to be over quaint or angular in architectural colour-
ing ; and thus many dispositions which I have had occasion to
reprobate in form, are, in colour, the best that can be invented.
I have always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the Tudor
style, for this reason, that, having surrendered all pretence to
spaciousness and breadth, — having divided its surfaces by an in-
finite number of lines, it yet sacrifices the only characters which
can make lines beautiful ; sacrifices all the variety and grace
which long atoned for the caprice of the Flamboyant, and adopts,
for its leading feature, an entanglement of cross bars and verti-
cals, showing about as much invention or skill of design as the
reticulation of the bricklayer's sieve Yet this very reticulation

142 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

would in colour be highly beautiful ; and all the heraldry, and
other features which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful
as themes of colour (so long as there are no fluttering or over-
twisted lines in them) ; and this, observe, because, when coloured,
they take the place of a mere pattern, and the resemblance to
nature, which could not be found in their sculptured forms, is
found in their piquant variegation of other surfaces. There is a
beautiful and bright bit of wall painting behind the Duomo of
Verona, composed of coats of arms, whose bearings are balls of
gold set in bars of green (altered blue ?) and white, with cardinal's
hats in alternate squares. This is of course, however, fit only for
domestic work. The front of the Doge's palace at Venice is the
purest and most chaste model that I can name (but one) of the
fit application of colour to public buildings. The sculpture and
mouldings are all white ; but the wall surface is chequered with
marble blocks of pale rose, the chequers being in no wise har-
monized, or fitted to the forms of the windows ; but looking as if
the surface had been completed first, and the windows cut out of
it. In Plate XII. fig. 2, the reader will see two of the patterns
used in green and white, on the columns of San Michele of
Lucca ; every column having a different design. Both are beau-
tiful, but the upper one certainly the best. Yet in sculpture its
lines would have been perfectly barbarous, and those even of the
lower not enough refined.

XL. Restraining ourselves, therefore, to the use of such simple
patterns, so far forth as our colour is subordinate either to archi-
tectural structure, or sculptural form, we have yet one more
manner of ornamentation to add to our general means of effect, —
monochrom design, the intermediate condition between colouring
and carving. The relations of the entire system of architectural
decoration may then be thus expressed :

I. Organic form dominant True, independent sculpture, and
alto-relievo ; rich capitals, and mouldings ; to be elaborate
in completion of form, not abstract, and either to be left in
pure white marble, or most cautiously touched with colour

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 1 43

in points and borders only, in a system not concurrent with
their forms.

2. Organic form sub-dominant Basso-relievo or intaglio. To

be more abstract in proportion to the reduction of depth ;
to be also more rigid and simple in contour ; to be touched
with colour more boldly and in an increased degree, exactly
in proportion to the reduced depth and fulness of form, but
still in a system non-concurrent with their forms.

3. Oi^ranic form abstracted to outline. Monochrom design, still

farther reduced to simplicity of contour, and therefore
admitting for the first time the colour to be concurrent
with its outlines ; that is to say, as its name imports, the
entire figure to be detached in one colour from a ground of
another.

4. Organic forms entirely lost Geometrical patterns or variable

cloudings in the most vivid colour.

On the opposite side of this scale, ascending from the colour
pattern, I would place the various forms of painting which may
be associated with architecture : primarily, and as most fit for
such purpose, the mosaic, highly abstract in treatment, and intro-
ducing brilliant colour in masses ; the Madonna of Torcello being,
as I think, the noblest type of the manner, and the Baptistery of
Parma the richest : next, the purely decorative fresco, like that
of the Arena Chapel ; finally, the fresco becoming principal, as in
the Vatican and Sistine. But I cannot, with any safety, follow
the principles of abstraction in this pictorial ornament; since the
noblest examples of it appear to me to owe their architectural
applicability to their archaic manner; and I think that the
abstraction and admirable simplicity which render them fit media
of the most splendid colouring, cannot be recovered by a volun-
tary condescension. The Byzantines themselves would not, I
think, if they could have drawn the figure better, have used it for
a colour decoration ; and that use, as peculiar to a condition of
childhood, however noble and full of promise, cannot be included
among those modes of adornment which are now legitimate or

144 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

even possible. There is a difficulty in the management of the
painted window for the same reason, which has not yet been met,
and we must conquer that first, before we can venture to consider
the wall as a painted window on a large scale. Pictorial subject,
without such abstraction, becomes necessarily principal, or, at all
events, ceases to be the architect's concern ; its plan must be left
to the painter after the completion of the building, as in the works
of Veronese and Giorgione on the palaces of Venice

XLI. Pure architectural decoration, then, may be considered
as limited to the four kinds above specified ; of which each glides
almost imperceptibly into the other. Thus, the Elgin frieze is a
monochrom ^ in a state of transition to sculpture, retaining, as I
think, the half-cast skin too long. Of pure monochrom, I have
given an example in Plate VI., from the noble front of San Michde
of Lucca. It contains forty such arches, all covered with equally
elaborate ornaments, entirely drawn by cutting out their ground
to about the depth of an inch in the flat white marble, and filling
the spaces with pieces of green serpentine ; a most elaborate mode
of sculpture, requiring excessive care and precision in the fitting
of the edges, and of course double work, the same line needing
to be cut both in the marble and serpentine. The excessive sim-
jjicity of the forms will be at once perceived ; the eyes of the
figures or animals, for instance, being indicated only by a round
dot, formed by a little inlet circle of serpentine, about half an
inch over : but, though simple, they admit often much grace of
curvature, as in the neck of the bird seen above the right*hand
pillar. The pieces of serpentine have fallen out in many places,
giving the black shadows, as seen under the horseman's arm and
bird's neck, and in the semi-circular line round the arch, once filled
with some pattern. It would have illustrated my point better
to have restored the lost portions, but I always draw a thing
exactly as it is, hating restoration of any kind ; and I would
especially direct the reader's attention to the completion of the
forms in the sculptured ornament of the marble cornices, as
opposed to the abstraction of the monochrom figures, of the ball

^ Rather, dichrom or dichroit — ^flesh colour or blue.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 1 45

and cross patterns between the arches, and of the triangular
ornament round the arch on the left.

XLII. I have an intense love for these monochrom figures,
owing to their wonderful life and spirit in all the works on which
I have found them ; nevertheless, I believe that the excessive
degree of abstraction which they imply necessitates our placing
them in the rank of a progressive or imperfect art, and that a
perfect building should rather be composed of the highest sculp-
ture, (organic form dominant and sub-dominant,) associated with
pattern colours on the flat or broad surfaces. And we find, in
fact, that the cathedral of Pisa, which is a higher type than that
of Lucca, exactly follows this condition, the colour being put
in geometrical patterns on its surfaces, and animal forms and
lovely leafage used in the sculptured cornices and pillars. And
I think that the grace of the carved forms is best seen when it
is thus boldly opposed to severe traceries of colour, while the
colour itself is, as we have seen, always most piquant when it is
put into sharp and angular arrangements. Thus the sculpture is
approved and set off by the colour, and the colour seen to the
best advantage in its opposition both to the whiteness and the
grace of the carved marble.

XLIII. In the course of this and the preceding Chapters, I
have now separately enumerated most of the conditions of Power
and Beauty, which, in the outset, I stated to be the grounds of
the deepest impressions with which architecture could affect the
human mind ; but I would ask permission to recapitulate them,
in order to see if there be any building which I may offer as an
example of the unison, in such manner as is possible, of them all.
Glancing back, then, to the beginning of the third Chapter, and
introducing in their place the conditions incidentally determined
in the two previous sections, we shall have the following list of
noble characters :

Considerable size, exhibited by simple terminal lines (Chap.
III. § 6.). Projection towards the top (§ 7.). Breadth of flat
surface (§ 8.). Square compartments of that surface (§ 9.). Varied
and visible masonry (§ 1 1.). Vigorous depth of shadow (§ 13.),

146 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

exhibited especially by pierced traceries (§ 18.). Varied propor-
tion in ascent (Chap. IV. § 28.), Lateral symmetry (§ 28.).
Sculpture most delicate at the base (Chap. I. § 12.). Enriched
quantity of ornament at the top (§ 13.)- Sculpture abstract in
inferior ornaments and mouldings (Chap. IV. § 31.), complete
in animal forms (§ 33.). Both to be executed in white marble
(§ 40.). Vivid colour introduced in fiat geometrical patterns
(§ 39.), and obtained by the use of naturally coloured stone (§ 35.).
These characteristics occur more or less in different buildings,
some in one and some in another. But all together, and all in
their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I
know, only in one building in the world, the Campanile of Giotto
at Florence. The drawing of the tracery of its upper story,
which heads this chapter, rude as it is, will nevertheless g^ve the
reader some better conception of that tower's magnificence than
the thin outlines in which it is usually pourtrayed. In its first
appeal to the stranger's eye there is something unpleasing; a
mingling, as it seems to him, of over severity with over minute*
ness. But let him give it time, as he should to all other con-
summate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to
despise that Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished.
But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon
it from my windows by sunlight and moonlight, and I shall not
soon forget how profound and gloomy appeared to me the savage-
ness of the Northern Gothic, when I afterwards stood, for the
first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. iThe contrast is indeed
strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the rising of those
grey walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren
rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering, rough-
grained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other orna-
ment than the martins' nests in the height of them, and that
bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts
and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight
shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern
sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like a
morning cloud, and chased like a sea shell. And if this be, as I

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 1 47

believe it, the model and mirror of perfect architecture, is there
not something to be learned by looking back to the early life of
him who raised it ? I said that the Power of human mind had
its growth in the Wilderness; much more must the love and the
conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue we have
seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God's daily work, and
an arrested ray of some star of creation, be g^ven chiefly in the
places which He has gladdened by planting there the fir tree and
the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, but among the far
away fields of her lilies, was the child trained who was to raise
that headstone of Beauty above her towers of watch and war.
Remember all that he became ; count the sacred thoughts with
which he filled the heart of Italy ; ask those who followed him
what they learned at his feet ; and when you have numbered his
labours, and received their testimony, if it seem to you that God
had verily poured out upon this His servant no common nor
restrained portion of His Spirit, and that he was indeed a king
among the children of men, remember also that the legend upon
his crown was that of David's: — " I took thee from the sheep-
cote, and from following the sheep."

148

CHAP, V.

THE LAMP OF LIFE.

I. Among the countless analogies by which the nature and rela-
tions of the human soul are illustrated in the material creation,
none are more striking than the impressions inseparably con-
nected with the active and dormant states of matter. I have
elsewhere endeavoured to show, that no inconsiderable part of
the essential characters of Beauty depended on the expression
of vital eneigy in organic things, or on the subjection to such
energy, of things naturally passive and powerless. I need not
here repeat, of what was then advanced, more than the state-

APHORISM23. ment which I believe will meet with general acceptance, that

nobte^r"* things in other respects alike, as in their substance, or

u^e'^r^uilTess uscs, or outward forms, are noble or ignoble in propor-

of Life.

tion to the fulness of the life which either they them-
selves enjoy, or of whose action they bear the evidence,
as sea sands are made beautiful by their bearing the
seal of the motion of the waters. And this is especially
true of all objects which bear upon them the impress of
the highest order of creative life, that is to say, of the
mind of man : they become noble or ignoble in propor-
tion to the amount of the energy of that mind which
has visibly been employed upon them. But most pecu-
liarly and imperatively does the rule hold with respect
to the creations of Architecture, which being properly
capable of no other life than this, and being not essen-
tially composed of things pleasant in themselves, — a6

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 1 49

music of sweet sounds, or painting of fair colours, but
of inert substance, — depend, for their dignity and plea-
surableness in the utmost degree, upon the vivid
expression of the intellectual life which has been con-
cerned in their production.*

II. Now in all other kind of energies except that of man's
mind, there is no question as to what is life, and what is not
Vital sensibility, whether vegetable or animal, may, indeed, be
reduced to so great feebleness, as to render its existence a matter
of question, but when it is evident at all, it is evident as such :
there is no mistaking any imitation or pretence of it for the life
itself; no mechanism nor galvanism can take its place ; nor is any
resemblance of it so striking as to involve even hesitation in the
judgment; although many occur which the human imagination
takes pleasure in exalting, without for an instant losing sight of
the real nature of the dead things it animates; but rejoicing
rather in its own excessive life, which puts gesture into clouds,
and joy into waves, and voices into rocks.

III. But when we begin to be concerned with the energies
of man, we find ourselves instantly dealing with a double
creature. Most part of his being seems to have a fictitious
counterpart, which it is at his peril if he do not cast off and deny.
Thus he has a true and false (otherwise called a living and dead,
or a feigned or unfeigned) faith. He has a true and a false hope,
a true and a false charity, and, finally, a true and a false life. His
true life is like that of lower oiganic beings, the independent
force by which he moulds and governs external things ; it is a
force of assimilation which converts everything around him into
food, or into instruments; and which, however humbly or
obediently it may listen to or follow the guidance of superior
intelligence, never forfeits its own authority as a judging principle,
as a will capable either of obeying or rebelling. His false life is,
indeed, but one of the conditions of death^^ or stupor, but it acts,

• See note 35.

^ Yes ; and therefore had been much better called so simply, without all this

150 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

even when it cannot be said to animate, and is not always easily
known from the true. It is that life of custom and accident in
which many of us pass much of our time in the world ; that life
in which we do what we have not purposed, and speak what
we do not mean, and assent to what we do not understand;
that life which is overlaid by the weight of things external
to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them ; that,
which instead of growing and blossoming under any wholesome
dew, is crystallised over with it, as with hoar-frost, and becomes
to the true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied
agglomeration of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obsti-
nate, and icy, which can neither bend nor grow, but must be
crushed and broken to bits, if it stand in our way. All men are
liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in this sort ; all are partly
encumbered and crusted over with idle matter ; only, if they have
real life in them, they are always breaking this bark away in
noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips upon the
birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength. But,
with all the efforts that the best men make, much of their being
passes in a kind of dream, in which they indeed move, and
play their parts sufficiently, to the eyes of their fellow dreamers,
but have no clear consciousness of what is around them,
or within them; blind to the one, insensible to the other,
vwOpoL I would not press the definition into its darker application
to the dull heart and heavy ear ; I have to do with it only as it
refers to the too frequent condition of natural existence, whether
of nations or individuals, settling commonly upon them in pro-
portion to their age. The life of a nation is usually, like the flow
of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and covered,
at last advancing only by the tumbling over and over of its
frozen blocks. And that last condition is a sad one to look
upon. All the steps are marked most clearly in the arts, and in

metaphor and inaccmate metaphysics. What we carelessly call False hope, or
False charity, is only mistaken hope and mistaken charity. The real question
is only — are we dead or alive? — for, if dead at heart and having only a name to
live in all our actions, we are sowing seeds of death.

THE LAMP OF UFE* I5I

Architecture more than in any other; for it, being especially
dependent, as we have just said, on the warmth of the true life,
is also peculiarly sensible of the hemlock cold of the false : and I
do not know anything more oppressive, when the mind is once
awakened to its characteristics, than the aspect of a dead archi-
tecture. The feebleness of childhood is full of promise and of
interest, — ^the struggle of imperfect knowledge full of energy and
continuity, — but to see impotence and rigidity settling upon the
form of the developed man; to see the types which once had
the die of thought struck fresh upon them, worn flat by over
use; to see the shell of the living creature in its adult form,
when its colours are faded, and its inhabitant perished, — ^this is
a sight more humiliating, more melancholy, than the vanishing
of all knowledge, and the return to confessed and helpless infancy*

Nay, it is to be wished that such return were always possible.
There would be hope if we could change palsy into puerility; but
I know not how far we can become children again, and renew
our lost life. The stirring which has taken place in our architec-
tural aims and interests within these few years, is thought by
many to be full of promise: I trust it is, but it has a sickly
look to me." I cannot tell whether it be indeed a springing of
seed or a shaking among bones; and I do not think the time
will be lost which I ask the reader to spend in the inquiry, how
far all that we have hitherto ascertained or conjectured to be
best in principle, may be formally practised without the spirit or
the vitality which alone could give it influence, value, or delight-
fulness.

IV. Now, in the first place — ^and this is rather an important
point — ^it is no sign of deadness in a present art that it borrows
or imitates, but only if it borrows without paying interest, or if

"* I am glad to see I had so much sense, thus early ; — if only I had had just a
little more, and stopped talking, how much life — of the vividest — I might have
saved from expending itself in useless sputter, and kept for careful pencil work 1
I might have had every bit of St Mark's and Ravenna drawn by this time.
What good this wretched rant of a book can do still, since people ask for it, let
them make of it; — ^but /don't see what it's to be. The only living art now left
in England is Bill-sticking.

152 TH£ LAMP OF LIFE.

it imitates without choice. The art of a great nation, which is
developed without any acquaintance with nobler examples than
its own early efforts furnish, exhibits always the most consistent
and comprehensible growth, and perhaps is regarded usually as
peculiarly venerable in its self-origination. But there is some-
thing to my mind more majestic yet in the life of an architecture
like that of the Lombards, rude and infantine in itself, and sur-
rounded by fragments of a nobler art of which it is quick in
admiration and ready in imitation, and yet so strong in its own
new instincts that it re-constructs and re-arranges every frag-
ment that it copies or borrows into harmony with its own
thoughts, — ^a harmony at first disjointed and awkward, but com-
pleted in the end, and fused into perfect organisation; all the
borrowed elements being subordinated to its own primal, un-
changed, life. I do not know any sensation more exquisite than
the discovering of the evidence of this mag^nificent struggle into
independent existence ; the detection of the borrowed thoughts,
nay, the finding of the actual blocks and stones carved by other
hands and in other ages, wrought into the new walls, with a new
expression and purpose given to them, like the blocks of unsub-
dued rocks (to go back to our former simile) which we find in
the heart of the lava current, great witnesses to the power which
has fused all but those calcined fragments into the mass of its
homogeneous fire.

V. It will be asked. How is imitation to be rendered healthy
and vital ? Unhappily, while it is easy to enumerate the signs of
life, it is impossible to define or to communicate life ; and while
every intelligent writer on Art has insisted on the difference be-
tween the copying found in an advancing or recedent period, none
have been able to communicate, in the slightest degree, the force
of vitality to the copyist over whom they might have influence.
Yet it is at least interesting, if not profitable, to note that two
very distinguishing characters of vital imitation are, its Frankness
and its Audacity: its Frankness is especially singular; there is
never any effort to conceal the degree of the sources of its
borrowing. Raffaelle carries off a whole figure from Masaccio, or

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 153

borrows an entire composition from Perugino, with as much tran-
quillityand simplicity of innocence as a young Spartan pickpocket;
and the architect of a Romanesque basilica gathered his columns
and capitals where he could find them, as an ant picks up sticks.
There is at least a presumption, when we find this frank accept-
ance, that there is a sense within the mind of power capable of
transforming and renewing whatever it adopts ; and too conscious,
too exalted, to fear the accusation of plagiarism, — ^too certain
that it can prove, and has proved, its independence, to be afraid
of expressing its homage to what it admires in the most open and
indubitable way; and the necessary consequence of this sense of
power is the other sign I have named — ^the Audacity of treatment
when it finds treatment necessary, the unhesitating and sweeping
sacrifice of precedent where precedent becomes inconvenient.
For instance, in the characteristic forms of Italian Romanesque,
in which the hypaethral portion of the heathen temple was
replaced by the towering nave, and where, in consequence, the
pediment of the west front became divided into three portions, of
which the central one, like the apex of a ridge of sloping strata
lifted by a sudden fault, was broken away from and raised above
the wings; there remained at the extremities of the aisles two
triangular fragments of pediment, which could not now be filled
by any of the modes of decoration adapted for the unbroken
space ; and the difficulty became greater, when the central por-
tion of the front was occupied by columnar ranges, which could
not, without painful abruptness, terminate short of the extremities
of the wings. I know not what expedient would have been
adopted by architects who had much respect for precedent, under
such circumstances, but it certainly would not have been that of
the Pisan, — ^to continue the range of columns into the pedimental
space, shortening them to its extremity until the shaft of the last
column vanished altogether, and there remained only its capital
resting in the angle on its basic plinth. I raise no question at
present whether this arrangement be graceful or otherwise ; I
allege it only as an instance of a boldness almost without a
parallel, casting aside every received principle that stood in its

154

THE LAMP OF LIFE.

way, and struggling through every discordance and difficulty to
the fulfilment of its own instincts.

VI. Frankness, however, is in itself no excuse for repetition,
nor Audacity for innovation, when the one is indolent and the
other unwise. Nobler and surer signs of vitality must be sought,
— signs independent alike of the decorative or original character
of the style, and constant in every style that is determinedly
progressive,

Of these, one of the most important I believe to be a certain
neglect or contempt of refinement in execution, or, at all events,
a visible subordination of execution to conception, commonly
involuntary, but not unfrequently intentional. This is a point,
however, on which, while I speak confidently, I must at the
same time speak reservedly and carefully, as there would other-
wise be much chance of my being dangerously misunderstood.

Aphorism 24. It has been tfuly observed, and well stated, by Lord

Lindsay, that the best designers of Italy were also the
most careful in their workmanship; and that the
stability and finish of their masonry, mosaic, or other
work whatsoever, were always perfect in proportion to
the apparent improbability of the great designers con-
descending to the care of details among us so despised.
Not only do I fully admit and re-assert this most im-
portant fact, but I would insist upon perfect and most
delicate finish in its right place, as a characteristic of
all the highest schools of architecture, as much as it is
of those of painting. But on the other hand, as perfect
finish belongs to the perfected art, a progressive finish
belongs to progressive art ; and I do not think that any
more fatal sign of a stupor or numbness settling upon
that undeveloped art could possibly be detected, than
that it had been taken aback by its own execution, and
that the workmanship had gone ahead of the design ;

Perfect finish
characterizes
alike the best
architecture
and the best
painting.

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 1 55

while, even in my admission of absolute finish in the
right place, as an attribute of the perfected school, I
must reserve to myself the right of answering in my
own way the two very important questions — what is
finish ? and what is its right place ?

VII. But in illustrating either of these points, we must re-
member that the correspondence of workmanship with thought is,
in existent examples, interfered with by the adoption of the designs
of an advanced period by the workmen of a rude one. All the
beginnings of Christian architecture are of this kind, and the
necessary consequence is of course an increase of the visible
interval between the power of realisation and the beauty of the
idea. We have at first an imitation, almost savage in its rudeness,
of a classical design ; as the art advances, the design is modified
by a mixture of Gothic grotesqueness, and the execution more
complete, until a harmony is established between the two, in
which balance they advance to new perfection. Now during the
whole period in which the ground is being recovered, there will
be found in the living architecture marks, not to be mistaken, of
intense impatience ; a struggle towards something unattained,
which causes all minor points of handling to be neglected ; and a
restless disdain of all qualities which appear either to confess
contentment, or to require a time and care which might be better
spent And, exacdy as a good and earnest student of drawing
will not lose time in ruling lines or finishing backgrounds
about studies which, while they have answered his immediate
purpose, he knows to be imperfect and inferior to what he will do
hereafter, — so the vigour of a true school of early architecture,
which is either working under the influence of high example
or which is itself in a state of rapid development, is very
curiously traceable, among other signs, in the contempt of exact
symmetry and measurement, which in dead architecture are the
most painful necessities.

VIII. In Plate XII. fig. i. I have given a most singular in-
stance both of rude execution and defied symmetry, in the little

156 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

pillar and spandril from a panel decoration under the pulpit of
St Mark's at Venice. The imperfection (not merely simplicity,
but actual rudeness and ugliness) of the leaf ornament will strike
the eye at once : this is general in works of the time, but it is not
so common to find a capital which has been so carelessly cut ; its
imperfect volutes being pushed up one side far higher than on the
other, and contracted on that side, an additional drill hole being
put in to fill the space ; besides this, the member a, of the mould-
ings, is a roll where it follows the arch, and a flat fillet at a ;
the one being slurred into the other at the angle ^, and finally
stopped short altogether at the other side by the most un*
courteous and remorseless interference of the outer moulding :
and in spite of all this, the grace, proportion, and feeling of the
whole arrangement are so great, that, in its place, it leaves nothing
to be desired ; all the science and symmetry in the world could
not beat it In fig. 4. I have endeavoured to give some idea of
the execution of the subordinate portions of a much higher work,
the pulpit of St Andrea at Pistoja, by Nicolo Pisano. It i$
covered with figure sculptures, executed with great care and deli*
cacy ; but when the sculptor came to the simple arch mouldings,
he did not choose to draw the eye to them by over precision of
work or over sharpness of shadow. The section adopted, k^ m, is
peculiarly simple, and so slight and obtuse in its recessions as
never to produce a sharp line ; and it is worked with what at first
appears slovenliness, but is in fact sculptural sketching ; exactly
correspondent to a painter s light execution of a b^kground : the
lines appear and disappear again, are sometimes deep, sometimes
shallow, sometimes quite broken off; and the recession of the
cusp joins that of the external arch at n^ in the most fearless
defiance of all mathematical laws of curvilinear contact

IX. There is something very delightful in this bold expression
of the mind of the great master. I do not say that it is the
" perfect work *' of patience, but I think that impatience is a
glorious character in an advancing school : and I love the
Romanesque and early Gothic especially, because they afford so
much room for it ; accidental carelessnesses of measurement or of

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 157

execution being mingled undistinguishably with the purposed
departures from symmetrical regularity, and the luxuriousness of
perpetually variable fancy, which are eminently characteristic of
both styles. How great, how frequent they are, and how brightly
the severity of architectural law is relieved by their grace and
suddenness, has not, I think, been enough observed ; still less, the
unequal measurements of even important features professing to
be absolutely symmetrical. I am not so familiar with modem
practice as to speak with confidence respecting its ordinary
precision ; but I imagine that the following measures of the
western front of the cathedral of Pisa, would be looked upon by
present architects as very blundering approximations. That front
is divided into seven arched compartments, of which the second,
fourth or central, and sixth contain doors ; the seven are in a
most subtle alternating proportion ; the central being the largest,
next to it the second and sixth, then the first and seventh, lastly
the third and fifth. By this arrangement, of course, these
three pairs should be equal ; and they are so to the eye, but I
found their actual measures to be the following, taken from
pillar to pillar, in Italian braccia, palmi (four inches each), and
inches : —

BraocuL

Palmi.

Inches.

Total in
Inches.

I. Central door

. 8

s=s 192

2. Northern door )

3. Southern door J

. 6

= iS7i

. 6

= 163

4. Extreme northern space

5. Extreme southern space

} ;

• 5
. 6

= 143*
= uH

6. Northern intervals between the doors

} \

= 129

7. Southern intervals between the doors

= 1294

There is thus a difference, severally, between 2, 3 and 4, 5, of
five inches and a half in the one case, and five inches in the
other.

X. This, however, may perhaps be partly attributable to some
accommodation of the accidental distortions which evidently took
place in the walls of the cathedral during their building, as much
as in those of the campanile. To my mind, those of the Duomo

158 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

are far the more wonderful of the two : I do not believe that
a single pillar of its walls is absolutely vertical : the pavement
rises and falls to different heights, or rather the plinth of
the walls sinks into it continually to different depths, the
whole west front literally overhangs, (I have not plumbed it ;
but the inclination may be seen by the eye, by bringing it ihto
visual contact with the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo :)
and a most extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the
southern wall shows that this inclination had begun when the
first story was built. The cornice above the first arcade of that
wall touches the tops of eleven out of its fifteen arches ; but it
suddenly leaves the tops of the four westernmost ; the arches
nodding westward and sinking into the ground, while the cornice
rises (or seems to rise), leaving at any rate, whether by the rise
of the one or the fall of the other, an interval of more than two
feet between it and the top of the western arch, filled by added
courses of masonry. There is another very curious evidence of
this struggle of the architect with his yielding wall in the
columns of the main entrance. (These notices are perhaps some-
what irrelevant to our immediate subject, but they appear to me
highly interesting ; and they, at all events, prove one of the points
on which I would insist, — ^how much of imperfection and variety
in things professing to be symmetrical the eyes of those eager
builders could endure : they looked to loveliness in detail, to
nobility in the whole, never to petty measurements.) Those
columns of the principal entrance are among the loveliest in
Italy; cylindrical, and decorated with a rich arabesque of
sculptured foliage, which at the base extends nearly all round
them, up to the black pilaster in which they are lightly engaged :
but the shield of foliage, bounded by a severe line, narrows to
their tops, where it covers their frontal segment only; thus
giving, when laterally seen, a terminal line sloping boldly
outwards, which, as I think, was meant to conceal the accidental
leaning of the western walls, and, by its exaggerated inclination
in the same direction, to throw them by comparison into a seem-
ing vertical.

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 1 59

XL There is another very curious instance of distortion above
the central door of the west front All the intervals between the
seven arches are filled with black marble, each containing in its
centre a white parallelogram filled with animal mosaics, and the
whole surmounted by a broad white band, which, generally, does
not touch the parallelogram below. But the parallelogram on
the north of the central arch has been forced into an oblique
position, and touches the white band ; and, as if the architect was
determined to show that he did not care whether it did or not,
the white band suddenly gets thicker at that place, and remains
so over the next two arches. And these differences are the more
curious because the workmanship of them all is most finished and
masterly, and the distorted stones are fitted with as much neat-
ness as if they tallied to a hair's breadth. There is no look of
slurring or blundering about it ; it is all coolly filled in, as if the
builder had no sense of anything being wrong or extraordinary ;
I only wish we had a little of his impudence.

XII. Still, the reader will say that all these variations are
probably dependent more on the bad foundation than on the
architect's feeling. Not so the exquisite delicacies of changt in
the proportions and dimensions of the apparently symmetrical
arcades of the west front. It will be remembered that I said
the tower of Pisa was the only ugly tower in Italy, because its
tiers were equal, or nearly so, in height ; a fault this, so contrary
to the spirit of the builders of the time, that it can be considered
only as an unlucky caprice. Perhaps the general aspect of the
west front of the cathedral may then have occurred to the
reader's mind, as seemingly another contradiction of the rule I
had advanced. It would not have been so, however, even had
its four upper arcades been actually equal ; as they are sub-
ordinated to the great seven-arched lower story, in the manner
before noticed respecting the spire of Salisbury, and as is
actually the case in the Duomo of Lucca and Tower of Pistoja.
But the Pisan front is far more subtly proportioned. Not one of
its four arcades is of like height with another. The highest is
the third, counting upwards ; and they diminish in nearly arith-

t6o THE LAMP OF LIFE.

metical proportion alternately ; in the order 3rd, ist, 2nd> 4th.
The inequalities in their arches are not less remarkable : they at
first strike the eye as all equal ; but there is a grace about them
which equality never obtained : on closer observation, it is per-
ceived that in the first row of nineteen arches, eighteen are equal,
and the central one larger than the rest ; in the second arcade,
the nine central arches stand over the nine below, having, like
them, the ninth central one largest But on their flanks, where
is the slope of the shoulder-like pediment, the arches vanish, and
a wedge-shaped frieze takes their place, tapering outwards, in
order to allow the columns to be carried to the extremity of the
pediment ; and here, where the heights of the shafts are so fast
shortened, they are set thicker ; five shafts, or rather four and a
capital, above, to four of the arcade below, giving twenty-one
intervals instead of nineteen. I n the next or third arcade, — ^which,
remember, is the highest,— eight arches, all equal, are given in
the space of the nine below, so that there is now a central shaft
instead of a central arch, and the span of the arches is increased
in proportion to their increased height Finally, in the upper-
most arcade, which is the lowest of all, the arches, the same in
number as those below, are narrower than any of the fa9ade ; the
whole eight going very nearly above the six below them, while
the terminal arches of the lower arcade are surmounted by flank-
ing masses of decorated wall with projecting figures.

XI 1 1. Now I call that Living Architecture. There is sen-
sation in every inch of it, and an accommodation to every archi-
tectural necessity, with a determined variation in arrangement,
which is exactly like the related proportions and provisions in the
structure of organic form. I have not space to examine the
still lovelier proportioning of the external shafts of the apse
of this marvellous building. I prefer, lest the reader should
think it a peculiar example, to state the structure of another
church, the most graceful and grand piece of Romanesque work,
as a fragment, in north Italy, that of San Giovanni Evangelista,
at Pistoja.

The side of that church has three stories of arcade, diminishing

THE LAMP OF LIFE. l6l

in height in bold geometrical proportion, while the arches, for the
most part, increase in number in arithmetical, i.e. two in the
second arcade, and three in the third, to one in the first. Lest,
however, this arrangement should be too formal, of the fourteen
arches in the lowest series, that which contains the door is made
larger than the rest, and is not in the middle, but the sixth from
the West, leaving five on one side and eight on the other.
Farther : this lowest arcade is terminated by broad flat pilasters,
about half the width of its arches ; but the arcade above is con-
tinuous ; only the two extreme arches at the west end are made
larger than all the rest, and instead of coming, as they should,
into the space of the lower extreme arch, take in both it and its
broad pilaster. Even this, however, was not out of order enough
to satisfy the architect's eye ; for there were still two arches
above to each single one below : so, at the east end, where there
were more arches, and the eye might be more easily cheated,
what does he do but narrow the two extreme lower arches by
half a braccio ; while he at the same time slightly enlarged the
upper ones, so as to get only seventeen upper to nine lower, in-
stead of eighteen to nine. The eye is thus thoroughly confused,
and the whole building thrown into one mass, by the curious
variations in the adjustments of the superimposed shafts, not one
of which is either exactly in, or positively out of, its place ; and,
to get this managed the more cunningly, there is from an inch to
an inch and a half of gradual gain in the space of the four eastern
arches, besides the confessed half braccio. Their measures,
counting from the east, I found as follows : —

ISt

2nd

3'd

4th

The upper arcade is managed on the same principle : it looks
at first as if there were three arches to each under pair; but
there are, in reality, only thirty-eight (or thirty-seven, I am not

1 62 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

quite certain of this number) to the twenty-seven below ; and the
columns get into all manner of relative positions. Even then,
the builder was not satisfied, but must needs carry the irregularity
into the spring of the arches, and actually, while the general effect
is of a symmetrical arcade, there is not one of the arches the
same in height as another; their tops undulate all along the wall
like waves along a harbour quay, some nearly touching the string
course above, and others falling from it as much as five or six
inches.

XIV. Let us next examine the plan of the west front of St
Mark's at Venice, which, though in many respects imperfect, is
in its proportions, and as a piece of rich and fantastic colour,
as lovely a dream as ever filled human imagination. It may,
perhaps, however, interest the reader to hear one opposite opinion
upon this subject; and after what has been urged in the preceding
pages respecting proportion in general, more especially respecting
the wrongness of balanced cathedral towers and other regular
designs, together with my frequent references to the Doge's palace,
and campanile of St. Mark's, as models of perfection, and my
praise of the former especially as projecting above its second
arcade, the following extracts from the journal of Wood the
architect, written on his arrival at Venice, may have a pleasing
freshness in them, and may show that I have not been stating
principles altogether trite or accepted.

" The strange looking church, and the great ugly campanile,
could not be mistaken. The exterior of this church surprises
you by its extreme ugliness, more than by any thing else."

" The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than any thing I have
previously mentioned. Considered in detail, I can imagine no
alteration to make it tolerable ; but if this lofty wall had been set
back behind the two stories of little arches, it would have been a
very noble production."

After more observations on "a certain justness of proportion,"
and on the appearance of riches and power in the chur<^h, to
which he ascribes a pleasing effect, he goes on : '* Some persons
are of opinion that irregularity is a necessary part of its ex-

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 1 63

cellence. I am decidedly of a contrary opinion, and am con-
vinced that a regular design of the same sort would be far
superior. Let an oblong of good architecture, but not very
showy, conduct to a fine cathedral, which should appear between
two lofty towers and have two obelisks in front, and on each side
of this cathedral let other squares partially open into the first,
and one of these extend down to a harbour or sea shore, and
you would have a scene which might challenge any thing in
existence."

Why Mr. Wood was unable to enjoy the colour of St. Mark's,
or perceive the majesty of the Ducal palace, the reader will see
after reading the two following extracts regarding the Caracci
and Michael Angelo.

" The pictures here (Bologna) are to my taste far preferable
to those of Venice, for if the Venetian school surpass in colouring
and, perhaps, in composition, the Bolognese is decidedly superior
in drawing and expression, and the Caraccis shine here like
Godsr

"What is it that is so much admired in this artist (M.
Angelo) ? Some contend for a grandeur of composition in the
lines and disposition of the figures ; this, I confess, I do not com-
prehend; yet, while I acknowledge the beauty of certain forms
and proportions in architecture, I cannot consistently deny that
similar merits may exist in painting, though I am unfortunately
unable to appreciate them."

I think these passages very valuable, as showing the effect of
a contracted knowledge and false taste in painting upon an archi-
tect's understanding of his own art; and especially with what
curious notions, or lack of notions, about proportion, that art has
been sometimes practised. For Mr. Wood is by no means unintel-
ligent in his observations generally, and his criticisms on classical
art are often most valuable. But those who love Titian better
than the Caracci, and who see something to admire in Michael
Angelo, will, perhaps, be willing to proceed with me to a charitable
examination of St. Mark's. For, although the present course of
European events affords us some chance of seeing the changes

1 64 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

proposed by Mr. Wood carried into execution, we may still esteem
ourselves fortunate in having first known how it was left by the
builders of the eleventh century.

XV. The entire front is composed of an upper and lower series
of arches, enclosing spaces of wall decorated with mosaic, and
supported on ranges of shafts of which, in the lower series of
arches, there is an upper range superimposed on a lower. Thus
we have five vertical divisions of the fa9ade; i.e. two tiers of shafts,
and the arched wall they bear, below ; one tier of shafts, and the
arched wall they bear, above. In order, however, to bind the two
main divisions together, the central lower arch (the main entrance)
rises above the level of the gallery and balustrade which crown
the lateral arches.

The proportioning of the columns and walls of the lower story
is so lovely and so varied, that it would need pages of description
before it could be fully understood ; but it may be generally stated
thus : The height of the lower shafts, upper shafts, and wall, being
severally expressed by a^ 6, and ^, then a\ c::c\b {a being the
highest) ; and diameter of shaft 6 is generally to the diameter of
shaft a as height b is to height a, or something less, allowing for
the large plinth which diminishes the apparent height of the upper
shaft : and when this is their proportion of width, one shaft above
is put above one below, with sometimes another upper shaft inter-
posed : but in the extreme arches a single under shaft bears two
upper, proportioned as truly as the boughs of a tree; that is to
say, the diameter of each upper = ■§■ of lower. There being thus
the three terms of proportion gained in the lower story, the upper,
while it is only divided into two main members, in order that the
whole height may not be divided into an even number, has the
third term added in its pinnacles. So far of the vertical division.
The lateral is still more subtle. There are seven arches in the
lower story; and, calling the central arch a, and counting to
the extremity, they diminish in the alternate order, a, c, 6, cL
The upper story has five arches, and two added pinnacles; and
these diminish in regular order, the central being the lai^est, and
the outermost the least. Hence, while one proportion ascends.

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 1 65

another descends, like parts in music ; and yet the pyramidal form
is secured for the whole, and, which was another great point of
attention, none of the shafts of the upper arches stand over those
of the lower.

XVI. It might have been thought that, by this plan, enough
variety had been secured, but the builder was not satisfied even
thus: for — and this is the point bearing on the present part of
our subject — always calling the central arch a, and the lateral
ones d and c in succession, the northern 6 and c are considerably
vrider than southern 6 and ^, but the southern dis as much wider
than the northern d, and lower beneath its cornice besides ; and,
more than this, I hardly believe that one of the effectively sym-
metrical members of the facade is actually symmetrical with any
other. I regret that I cannot state the actual measures. I gave
up the taking them upon the spot, owing to their excessive com-
plexity, and the embarrassment caused by the yielding and sub-
sidence of the arches.

Do not let it be supposed that I imagine the Byzantine work-
men to have had these various principles in their minds as they
built I believe they built altogether from feeling, and that it
was because they did so, that there is this marvellous life, change-
fulness, and subtlety running through their every arrangement;
and that we reason upon the lovely building as we should upon
some fair growth of the trees of the earth, that know not their
own beauty.

XVII. Perhaps, however, a stranger instance than any I have
yet given, of the daring variation of pretended symmetry, is
found in the front of the Cathedral of Bayeux. It consists of
five arches with steep pediments, the outermost filled, the three
central with doors ; and they appear, at first, to diminish in regular
proportion from the principal one in the centre. The two lateral
doors are very curiously managed. The tympana of their arches
are filled with bas-reliefs in four tiers ; in the lowest tier there is
in each a little temple or gate containing the principal figure (in
that on the right, it is the gate of Hades with Lucifer). This
little temple is carried, like a capital, by an isolated shaft which

1 66 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

divides the whole arch at about -I of its breadth, the larger por-
tion outmost ; and in that larger portion is the inner entrance
door. This exact correspondence, in the treatment of both
gates, might lead us to expect a correspondence in dimension.
Not at all. The small inner northern entrance measures, in
English feet and inches, 4 ft 7 in. from jamb to jamb, and the
southern, 5 ft. exactly. Five inches in five feet is a considerable
variation. The outer northern porch measures, from face shaft
to face shaft, 13 ft. 11 in., and the southern, 14 ft 6in. ; giving a
difference of 7 in. on 14I ft. There are also variations in the
pediment decorations not less extraordinary.

XVIII. I imagine I have given instances enough, though I
could multiply them indefinitely, to prove that these variations
are not mere blunders, nor carelessnesses, but the result of a fixed
scorn, if not dislike, of accuracy in measurements ; and, in most
cases, I believe, of a determined resolution to work out an effec-
tive symmetry by variations as subde as those of Nature. To
what lengths this principle was sometimes carried, we shall see
by the very singular management of tlje towers of Abbeville. I
do not say it is right, still less that it is wrong, but it is a wonder*
ful proof of the fearlessness of a living architecture ; for, say what
we will of it, that Flamboyant of France, however morbid, was
as vivid and intense in its animation as ever any phase of mortal
mind ; and it would have lived till now, if it had not taken to
telling lies. I have before noticed the general difficulty of
managing even lateral division, when it is into two equal parts,
unless there be some third reconciling member. I shall give,
hereafter, more examples of the modes in which this reconcilia-
tion is effected in towers with double lights : the Abbeville
architect put his sword to the knot perhaps rather too sharply.
Vexed by the want of unity between his two windows, he literally
laid their heads together, and so distorted their ogee curves, as
to leave only one of the trefoiled panels above, on the inner side,
and three on the outer side of each arch. The arrangement is
given in Plate XII., fig. 3. Associated with the various undula-
tion of flamboyant curves below, it is in the real tower hardly

THE LAMP OF LIFE, 1 67

observed, while it binds it into one mass in general effect
Granting it, however, to be ugly and wrong, I like sins of the
kind, for the sake of the courage it requires to commit them. In
Plate II. (part of a small chapel attached to the West front of
the Cathedral of St Lo), the reader will see an instance, from the
same architecture, of a violation of its own principles for the sake
of a peculiar meaning. If there be any one feature which the
flamboyant architect loved to decorate richly, it was the niche —
it was what the capital is to the Corinthian order ; yet in the case
before us there is an ugly beehive put in the place of the prin-
cipal niche of the arch. I am not sure if I am right in my inter-
pretation of its meaning, but I have little doubt that two figures
below, now broken away, once represented an Annunciation ;
and on another part of the same cathedral, I find the descent of
the Spirit, encompassed by rays of light, represented very nearly
in the form of the niche in question ; which appears, therefore, to
be intended for a representation of this effulgence, while at the
same time it was made a canopy for the delicate figures below.
Whether this was its meaning or not, it is remarkable as a daring
departure from the common habits of the time.

XIX. Far more splendid is a license taken with the niche de-
coration of the portal of St. Maclou at Rouen. The subject of
the tympanum bas-relief is the Last Judgment, and the sculpture
of the inferno side is carried out with a degree of power whose
fearful grotesqueness I can only describe as a mingling of the
minds of Orcagna and Hogarth. The demons are perhaps even
more awful than Orcagna's ; and, in some of the expressions of
debased humanity in its utmost despair, the English painter is at
least equalled. Not less wild is the imagination which gives fury
and fear even to the placing of the figures. An evil angel, poised
on the wing, drives the condemned troops from before the Judg-
ment seat ; with his left hand he drags behind him a cloud, which
he is spreading like a winding-sheet over them all ; but they are
urged by him so furiously, that they are driven not merely to the
extreme limit of that scene, which the sculptor confined elsewhere
within the tympanum, but out of the tympanum and into the

1 68 THE LAMP OF LIFE,

niches of the arch ; while the flames that follow them, bent by the
blast, as it seems, of the angel's wings, rush into the niches
also, and burst up through their tracery, the three lowermost
niches being represented as all on fire, while, instead of their
usual vaulted and ribbed ceiling, there is a demon in the roof of
each, with his wings folded over it, grinning down out of the
black shadow.

XX. I have, however, given enough instances of vitality shown
in mere daring, whether wise, as surely in this last instance, or
inexpedient ; but, as a single example of the Vitality of Assimi-
lation, the faculty which turns to its purposes all material that
is submitted to it, I would refer the reader to the extraordinary
columns of the arcade on the south side of the Cathedral of
Ferrara. A single arch of it is given in Plate XIII. on the right
Four such arches forming a group, there are interposed two pairs
of columns, as seen on the left of the same plate ; and then come
another four arches. It is a long arcade of, I suppose, not less
than forty arches, perhaps of many more ; and in the grace and
simplicity of its stilted Byzantine curves I hardly know its equal.
Its like, in fancy of column, I certainly do not know; there being
hardly two correspondent, and the architect having been ready,
as it seems, to adopt ideas and resemblances from any sources
whatsoever. The vegetation growing up the two columns is fine,
though bizarre ; the distorted pillars beside it suggest images of
less agreeable character ; the serpentine arrangements founded on
the usual Byzantine double knot are generally graceful ; but I
was puzzled to account for the excessively ugly type of the pillar,
fig- 3-1 one of a group of four. It so happened, fortunately for
me, that there had been a fair in Ferrara; and, when I had
finished my sketch of the pillar, I had to get out of the way of
some merchants of miscellaneous wares, who were removing their
stall. It had been shaded by an awning supported by poles,
which, in order that the covering might be raised or lowered
according to the height of the sun, were composed of two separate
pieces, fitted to each other by a racky in which I beheld the pro-
totype of my ugly pillar. It will not be thought, after what I

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 1 69

have above said of the inexpedience of imitating anything but
natural form, that I advance this architect's practice as altogether
exemplary ; yet the humility is instructive, which condescended
to such sources for motives of thought, the boldness, which could
depart so far from all established types of form, and the life and
feeling, which out of an assemblage of such quaint and uncouth
materials, could produce an harmonious piece of ecclesiastical
architecture.

XXI. I have dwelt, however, perhaps, too long upon that form
of vitality which is known almost as much by its errors as by its
atonements for them. We must briefly note the operation of it,
which is always right, and always necessary, upon those lesser
details, where it can neither be superseded by precedents, nor
repressed by proprieties.

I said, early in this essay, that hand-woric might aphorism 25.

always be known from machine- work ; observing, how- ^f^^JJ^*

ever, at the same time, that it was possible for men to ^^^§'34.

turn themselves into machines, and to reduce their

labour to the machine level ; but so long as men work

as men, putting their heart into what they do, and

doing their best, it matters not how bad workmen they

may be, there will be that in the handling which is

above all price : it will be plainly seen that some places

have been delighted in more than others — ^that there

have been a pause, and a care about them; and then

there will come careless bits, and fast bits; and here

the chisel will have struck hard, and there lightly, and

anon timidly; and if the man's mind as well as his

heart went with his work, all this will be in the right

places, and each part will set ofF the other; and the

effect of the whole, as compared with the same design

cut by a machine or a lifeless hand, will be like that of

170 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

poetry well read and deeply felt to that of the same
verses jangled by rote. There are many to whom the
difference is imperceptible; but to those who love
poetry it is everything — ^they had rather not hear it at
all, than hear it ill read ; and to those who love Archi-
tecture, the life and accent of the hand are everything.
They had rather not have ornament at all, than see it
ill cut — deadly cut, that is. I cannot too often repeat,
it is not coarse cutting, it is not blunt cutting, that is
necessarily bad ; but it is cold cutting — ^the look of equal
trouble everywhere — the smooth, diffused tranquillity
of heartless pains — ^the regularity of a plough in a level
field. The chill is more likely, indeed, to show itself
in finished work than in any other — men cool and tire
as they complete : and if completeness is thought to
be vested in polish, and to be attainable by help of
sand paper, we may as well give the work to the engine
lathe at once. But right finish is simply the full ren-
dering of the intended impression; and high finish is
the rendering of a well intended and vivid impression ;
and it is oftener got by rough than fine handling*

I am not sure whether it is frequently enough observed that
sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of any thing in
stone ; it is the cutting of the ^ect of it. Very often the true
form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. The
sculptor must paint with his chisel : half his touches are not to
realize, but to put power into, the form: they are touches of
light and shadow; and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to
represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light,
or a spot of darkness. In a coarse way, this kind of execution
is very marked in old French woodwork ; the irises of the eyes
of its chimeric monsters being cut boldly into holes, which,

THE LAMP OF LIFE. I7I

variously placed, and always dark, give all kinds of strange and
starding expressions, averted and askance, to the fantastic coun-
tenances. Perhaps the highest examples of this kind of sculp-
ture-painting are the works of Mino da Fiesole; their best
effects being reached by strange angular, and seemingly rude,
touches of the chisel. The lips of one of the children on the
tombs in the church of the Badia, appear only half finished
when they are seen close ; yet the expression is farther carried,
and more ineffable, than in any piece of marble I have ever
seen, especially considering its delicacy, and the softness of the
child-features. In a sterner kind, that of the statues in the
sacristy of St. Lorenzo equals it, and there again by incom-
pletion. I know no example of work in which the forms are
absolutely true and complete where such a result is attained;
(in Greek sculptures it is not even attempted.*')

XXII. It is evident that, for architectural appliances, such
masculine handling, likely as it must be to retain its effectiveness
when higher finish would be injured by time, must always be
the most expedient ; and as it is impossible, even were it desirable,
that the highest finish should be given to the quantity of work
which covers a large building, it will be understood how precious
the Intelligence must become, which renders incompletion itself a
means of additional expression ; and how great must be the differ-
ence, when the touches are rude and few, between those of a care-
less and those of a regardful mind. It is not easy to retain any-
thing of their character in a copy ; yet the reader will find one or
two illustrative points in the examples, given in Plate XIV., from
the bas-reliefs of the north door of Rouen Cathedral. There are
three square pedestals under the three main niches on each side
of it, and one in the centre ; each of these being on two sides
decorated with five quatrefoiled panels. There are thus seventy
quatrefoils in the lower ornament of the gate alone, without
counting those of the outer course round it, and of the pedestals

" The sentence in parenthesis b entirely &lse ; all the rest of the paragraph
trae and important The manner of the Greek in chiselling has since been ex-
amined at length in my *' Aiatra PentelicL''

172 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

outside: each quatrefoil is filled with a bas-relief, the whole
reaching to something above a man's height A modem architect
would, of course, have made all the five quatrefoils of each
pedestal-side equal: not so the Mediaeval. The general form
being apparently a quatrefoil composed of semicircles on the
sides of a square, it will be found on examination that none of
the arcs are semicircles, and none of the basic figures squares.
The latter are rhomboids, having their acute or obtuse angles
uppermost according to their larger or smaller size ; and the arcs
upon their sides slide into such places as they can get in the
angles of the enclosing parallelogram, leaving intervals, at each
of the four angles, of various shapes, which are filled each by an
animal. The size of the whole panel being thus varied, the lowest
two of the five are tall, the next two short, and the uppermost
a little higher than the lowest ; while in the course of bas-rdiefs
which surrounds the gate, calling either of the lowest two (which
are equal) a, and either of the next two ^, and the fifth and sixth
4: and dy then cl (the largest) : c :: c : a :: a : i. It is won-
derful how much of the grace of the whole depends on these
variations.

XXIII. Each of the angles, it was said, is filled by an animal.
There are thus 70 x 4 = 280 animals, all different, in the mere
fillings of the intervals of the bas-reliefs. Three of these inter-
vals, with their beasts, actual size, the curves being traced upon
the stone, I have given in Plate XIV.

I say nothing of their general design, or of the lines of the
wings and scales, which are perhaps, unless in those of the
central dragon, not much above the usual commonplaces of good
ornamental work ; but there is an evidence in the features of
thoughtfulness and fancy which is not common, at least now-a-
days. The upper creature on the left is biting something, the
form of which is hardly traceable in the defaced stone — ^but
biting he is ; and the reader cannot but recognise in the pecu-
liarly reverted eye the expression which is never seen^ as I think,
but in the eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and pre-
paring to start away with it : the meaning of the glance, so far

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 1 73

as it can be marked by the mere incision of the chisel, will be
felt by comparing it with the eye of the couchant figure on the
righti in its gloomy and angry brooding. The plan of this head,
and the nod of the cap over its brow, are fine ; but there is a
litde touch above the hand especially well meant : the fellow is
vexed and puzzled in his malice; and his hand is pressed hard on
his cheek bone, and the flesh of the cheek is wrinkled under the
eye by the pressure. The whole, indeed, looks wretchedly coarse,
when it is seen on a scale in which it is naturally compared with
delicate figure etchings ; but considering it as a mere filling of
an interstice on the outside of a cathedral gate, and as one of
more than three hundred (for in my estimate I did not include
the outer pedestals), it proves very noble vitality in the art of the
time.

XXIV. I believe the right question to ask, respecting all orna-
ment, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment — ^was the
carver happy while he was about it } It may be the hardest work
possible, and the harder because so much pleasure was taken in
it ; but it must have been happy too, or it will not be living*
How much of the stone mason's toil this condition would exclude
I hardly venture to consider, but the condition is absolute.
There is a Gothic church lately built near Rouen, vile enough,
indeed, in its general composition, but excessively rich in detail ;
many of the details are designed with taste, and all evidently by
a man who has studied old work closely. But it is all as dead as
leaves in December ; there is not one tender touch, not one warm
stroke, on the whole fa9ade. The men who did it hated it, and
were thankful when it was done. And so long as they do so they
are merely loading your walls with shapes of clay : the garlands
of everlastings in P^re la Chaise are more cheerful ornaments.
You cannot get the feeling by paying for it — money will not buy
life. I am not sure even that you can get it by watching or
waiting for it It is true that here and there a workman may be
found who has it in him, but he does not rest contented in the
inferior work — ^he struggles forward into an Academician ; and
from the mass of available handicraftsmen the power is gone —

174 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

how recoverable I know not : this only I know, that all expense
devoted to sculptural omamenti in the present condition of that
power, comes literally under the head of Sacrifice for the sacrifice's
sake, or worse. I believe the only manner of rich ornament that
is open to us is the geometrical colour-mosaic, and that much
might result from our strenuously taking up this mode of design.
But, at all events, one thing we have in our power — ^the doing
without machine ornament and cast-iron work. All the stamped
metals, and artificial stones, and imitation woods and bronzes, over
the invention of which we hear daily exultation — all the short,
and cheap, and easy ways of doing that whose difficulty is its
honour — are just so many new obstacles in our already encumbered
road. They will not make one of us happier or wiser — they will
extend neither the pride of judgment nor the privilege of enjoy-
ment They will only make us shallower in our understandings,
colder in our hearts, and feebler in our wits. And most justly.
For we are not sent into this world to do any thing into which we

APHousMa6. cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do for

th^w*^ our bread, and that is to be done strenuously; other

ddtwith ^ work to do for our delight, and that is to be done

thy might ;"

and no other heartily: neither is to be done by halves and shifts,

might.

but with a will ; and what is not worth this effort is
not to be done at all. Perhaps all that we have to do
is meant for nothing more than an exercise of the heart
and of the will, and is useless in itself; but, at all
events, the little use it has may well be spared if it is
not worth putting our hands and our strength to. It
does not become our immortality to take an ease incon-
sistent with its authority, nor to suffer any instruments
with which it can dispense, to come between it and the
things it rules : and he who would form the creations
of his own mind by any other instrument than his ovm
hand, would also, if he might, give grinding organs to

THE LAMP OF LIFE, 1 75

Heaven's angels, to make their music easier. There
is dreaming enough, and earthiness enough, and sen-
suality enough in human existence, without our turning
the few glowing moments of it into mechanism ; and
since our life must at the best be but a vapour that
appears for a little time and then vanishes away, let it
at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, not
as the thick darkness that broods over the blast of the
Furnace, and rolling of the Wheel.

176

CHAP. VL

THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

I. Among the hours of his life to which the writer looks back
with peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than
ordinary fulness of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed,
now some years ago, near time of sunset, among the broken
masses of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain, above
the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot which
has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the
Alps ; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be
manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in
the rise of the long low lines of piny hills ; the first utterance of
those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted
and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their
strength is as yet restrained ; and the far reaching ridges of
pastoral mountain succeed each other, like the long and sighing
swell which moves over quiet waters from some far off stormy sea.
And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast monotony.
The destructive forces and the stern expression of the central
ranges are alike withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered
paths of ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures ; no splintered
heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forests ; no pale, defiled,
or furious rivers rend their rude and changeful ways among her
rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind
along their well-known beds ; and under the dark quietness of
the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such company
of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the blessings
of the earth. It was spring time, too ; and all were coming forth
in clusters crowded for very love ; there was room enough for

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. IJJ

all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange
shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the wood
anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulae ;
and there was the oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal processions
of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the limestone
choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy
on the edges — ^ivy as light and lovely as the vine ; and, ever and
anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in sunny places ;
and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, and
mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina,
and the wild strawberry, just a blossom or two, all showered
amidst the golden softness of deep, warm, amber-coloured moss*
I came out presendy on the edge of the ravine : the solemn
murmur of its waters rose suddenly from beneath, mixed with the
singing of the thrushes among the pine boughs ; and, on the oppo-
site side of the valley, walled all along as it was by grey cliffs of
limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off their brow, touching
them nearly with his wings, and with the shadows of the pines
flickering upon his plumage from above ; but with a fall of a
hundred fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of the
green river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam
globes moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to
conceive a scene less dependent upon any other interest than that
of its own secluded and serious beauty ; but the writer well
remembers the sudden blankness and chill which were cast upon
it when he endeavoured, in order more strictly to arrive at the
sources of its impressiveness, to imagine it, for a moment, a scene
in some aboriginal forest of the New Continent The flowers in
an instant lost their light, the river its music ; the hills became
oppressively desolate ; a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened
forest showed how much of their former power had been depen-
dent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory of
the imperishable, or continually renewed, creation is reflected from
things more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing.
Those ever springing flowers, and ever flowing streams had been
dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue;

A A

17^ I'HE LAMP OF MEMORY.

and the crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening
sky received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell east-
ward over the iron wall of Joux» and the four-square keep of
Granson.

II. It is as the centralisation and protectress of this sacred in-
fluence, that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most
serious thought We may live without her, and worship without
her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all his-
tory, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living
nation writes, and the uncomipted marble bears! — how many-
pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few
stones left one upon another ! The ambition of the old Babel
builders was well directed for this world : there are but two strong
conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture ;
and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in
its reality : it is well to have, not only what men have thought
and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength
wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The
age of Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality
with doubt Not so that of Pericles : and the day is coming
when we shall confess, that we have learned more of Greece out
of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture than even from her

Aphorism 27. sweet singers or soldier historians. And if indeed there be
^ "tobT^e ^'^y profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy in
pl^?ired as the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can

such.

give strength to present exertion, or patience to present
endurance, there are two duties respecting national
architecture whose importance it is impossible to over-
rate: the first, to render the architecture of the day,
historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most
precious of inheritances, that of past ages.

III. It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may
truly be said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture ; for it is
in becoming memorial or monumental that a true perfection is

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. l^<^

attained by civil and domestic buildings ; and this partly as they
are, with such a view, built in a more stable manner, and partly
as their decorations are consequently animated by a metaphorical
or historical meaning.

As r^rards domestic buildings, there must always be a certain
limitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in the
hearts, of men ; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people
when their houses are built to last for one generation only.
There is a sanctity in a good man's house which cannot be
renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruins : and I believe
that good men wotdd generally feel this ; and that having spent
their lives happily and honourably, they would be grieved, at the
close of them, to think that the place of their earthly abode,
which had seen, and seemed almost to sympathise in, all their
honour, their gladness, or their suffering, — ^that this, with all the
record it bare of them, and all of material things that they had
loved and ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves upon —
was to be swept away, as soon as there was room made for them
in the grave ; that no respect was to be shown to it, no affection
felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children ; that
though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm
monument in the hearth and house to them ; that all that they
ever treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered
and comforted them were dragged down to the dust I say that
a good man would fear this ; and that, far more, a good son,
a noble descendant, would fear doing it to his father's house.

I say that if men lived like men indeed, their houses afhousmss.

would be temples— temples which we should hardly ^^^''foj

dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy s*^"**"-

to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange

dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankful-

ness for all that homes have given and parents taught,

a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful

to our fathers* honour, or that our own lives are not

l80 THE LAMP OF MEMORY*

such as would make our dwellings sacred to our
children, when each man would fain build to himself,
and build for the little revolution of his own life only.
And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and
clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of
the kneaded fields about our capital — upon those thin,
tottering, foundationless shells of splintered wood and
imitated stone — upon those gloomy rows of formalised
minuteness, alike without difference and without fel-
lowship, as solitary as similar — not merely with the
careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with
sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful
foreboding that the roots of our national greatness
must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely
struck in their native ground; that those comfortless
and unhonoured dwellings are the signs of a g^eat and
spreading spirit of popular discontent ; that they mark
the time when every man's aim is to be in some more
elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man's
past life is his habitual scorn ; when men build in the
hope of leaving the places they have built, and live in
the hope of forgetting the years that they have lived ;
when the comfort, the peace, the religion of home have
ceased to be felt; and the crowded tenements of a
struggling and restless population differ only from the
tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy
openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice
of their spot of earth ; by their sacrifice of liberty with-
out the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury
of change.

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. l8l

IV. This is no slight, no consequenceless evil ; it is ominous,
infectious, and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men
do not love their hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a
sign that they have dishonoured both, and that they have never
acknowledged the true universality of that Christian worship
which was indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not the piety, of
the pagan. Oiu* God is a household God, as well as a heavenly
one ; He has an altar in every man's dwelling ; let men look to
it when they rend it lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a
question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual
pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with what
aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic buildings
of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, not
with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of
them depends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness,
to build our dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and
diligent completion, and with a view to their duration at least for
such a period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions,
might be supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the
direction of local interests. This at the least ; but it would be
better if, in every possible instance, men built their own houses
on a scale commensurate rather with their condition at the com-
mencement, than their attainments at the termination, of their
worldly career ; and built them to stand as long as human work
at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to their children
what they had been, and from what, if so it had been permitted
them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may
have that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other,
which does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness
the small habitation as well as the large, and which invests with
the dignity of contented manhood the narrowness of worldly
circumstance.

V. I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peaceful self-pos-
session, this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one
of the chief sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and
beyond dispute as the very primal source of the great architec-

1 82 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

ture of old Italy and France. To this day, the interest of their
fairest cities depends, not on the isolated richness of palaces, but
on the cherished and exquisite decoration of even the smallest
tenements of their proud periods. The most elaborate piece of
architecture in Venice is a small house at the head of the Grand
Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two stories above, three
windows in the first, and two in the second. Many of the most
exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger
dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth
century architecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back
street, behind the market-place of Vicenza ; it bears date 1481,
and the motto, II. n'esi. rose, sans .Spine.; it has also only a
ground floor and two stories, with three windows in each, sepa-
rated by rich flower-work, and with balconies, supported, the
central one by an eagle with open wings, the lateral ones by
winged griffins standing on comucopiae. The idea that a house
must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of modem
growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be his-
torical, except of a size admitting figures laiger than life.

VL I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to
last, and built to be lovely ; as rich and full of pleasantness as
may be, within and without ; with what d^^ee of likeness to
each other in style and manner, I will say presently, under
another head ; but, at all events, with such differences as might
suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly
his history. This right over the house, I conceive, belongs to
its first builder, and is to be respected by his children ; and it
would be well that blank stones should be left in places, to be
inscribed with a summary of his life and of its experience, raising
thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and developing,
into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom which
was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the
Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God's per-
mission to build and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet
words as may well close our speaking of these things. I have
taken them from the front of a cottage lately built among the

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 183

green pastures which descend from the village of Grindelwald
to the lower glacier : —

** Mit heizlichem Vertrauen
Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi
Dieses Haus bauen lassen.
Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren
Vor allem Ungliick und Gefahren,
Und es in Segen lassen stehn
Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit
Nach dem himmlischen Paradiesei
Wo alle Frommen wohnen.
Da wird Gott sie belohnen
Mit der Friedenskrone
Zu alle Ewigkeit**

VII. In public buildings the historical purpose should be still
more definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture,
— I use the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly
opposed to dassital, — ^that it admits of a richness of record alto-
gether unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural deco-
rations afford means of expressing, either symbolically or literally,
all that need be known of national feeling or achievement. More
decoration will, indeed, be usually required than can take so ele-
vated a character; and much, even in the most thoughtful periods,
has been left to the freedom of fancy, or suffered to consist of
mere repetitions of some national bearing or symbol. It is,
however, generally unwise, even in mere surface ornament, to
surrender the power and privilege of variety which the spirit of
Gothic architecture admits ; much more in important features —
capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of course in
all confessed bas-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells a
story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There
should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings,
without some intellectual intention. Actual representation of
history has in modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean
indeed, but steadfast ; that of unmanageable costume : neverthe-
less, by a sufficiently bold imaginative treatment, and frank use
of symbols, all such obstacles may be vanquished ; not perhaps in

184 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

the degree necessary to produce sculpture in itself satisfactory,
but at all events so as to enable it to become a grand and expres-
sive element of architectural composition. Take, for example^
the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice.
History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its
interior, but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning.
The large one, the comer stone of the whole, next the entrance,
was devoted to the symbolisation of Abstract Justice ; above it
is a sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a
beautiful subjection in its treatment to its decorative purpose*
The figures, if the subject had been entirely composed of them,
would have awkwardly interrupted the line of the angle, and
diminished its apparent strength ; and therefore in the midst of
them, entirely without relation to them, and indeed actually
between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises the
ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the
shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and
enrich the whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a
throned figure of Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow,
Aristotle " che die l^ge," and one or two other subjects now
unintelligible from decay. The capitals next in order represent
the virtues and vices in succession, as preservative or destruc-
tive of national peace and power, concluding with Faith, with
the inscription " Fides optima in Deo est" A figure is seen on
the opposite side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After
these, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds
(Plate v.), and then come a series representing, first the various
fruits, then the national costumes, and then the animals of the
various countries subject to Venetian rule.

VIII. Now, not to speak of any more important public build-
ing, let us imagine our own India House adorned in this way, by
historical or symbolical sculpture : massively built in the first
place ; then chased with bas-reliefs of our Indian battles, and
fretted with carvings of Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental
stones ; and the more important members of its decoration com-
posed of groups of Indian life and landscape, and prominently

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 1 85

expressing the phantasms of Hindoo worship in their subjection
to the Cross. Would not one such work be better than a thou-
sand histories ? If, however, we have not the invention neces-
sary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one of the most
noble excuses we can offer for our deficiency in such matters, we
have less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble,
than the Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any
want of care in the points which insure the building's endurance.
And as this question is one of great interest in its relations to
the choice of various modes of decoration, it will be necessary
to enter into it at some length.

IX. The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses
seldom can be supposed to extend beyond their own generation.
They may look to posterity as an audience, may hope for its
attention, and labour for its praise : they may trust to its recog-
nition of unacknowledged merit, and demand its justice for
contemporary wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, and
does not involve the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the
interest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell the
circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would gladly

support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self- aphorism 29.
denial for the sake of posterity, of practising present ^^*S?^t
economy for the sake of debtors yet unborn, of planting c^^^i^.
forests that our descendants may live under their shade,
or of raising cities for future nations to inhabit, never,
I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly recog-
nised motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less
our duties; nor is our part fitly sustained upon the
earth, unless the range of our intended and deliberate
usefulness include, not only the companions but the
successors of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the
earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as
much to those who are to come after us, and whose

B B

1 86 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

names are already written in the book of creation, as
to us ; and we have no right, by any thing that we do
or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties,
or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power
to bequeath. And this the more, because it is one of
the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, in
proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and
the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit ; and that gene-
rally, therefore, the farther off we place our aim, and
the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of
what we have laboured for, the more wide and rich
will be the measure of our success. Men cannot
benefit those that are with them as they can benefit
those who come after them ; and of all the pulpits from
which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none
from which it reaches so far as from the grave.

X. Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect, for
futurity. Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all
true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is
the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all
other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his
Maker ; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may
not measure by this test Therefore, when we build, let us think
that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for
present use alone ; let it be such work as our descendants will
thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a
time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because
our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look
upon the labour and wrought substance of them, " See ! this our

Aphorism 30. fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a

building is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory

is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness.

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 1 87

of Stem w&tching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even
of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls
that have long been washed by the passing waves of
humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men,
in their quiet contrast with the transitional character
of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse
of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of
dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth,
and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured
shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten
and following ages with each other, and half consti-
tutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of
nations : it is in that golden stain of time, that we are
to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness
of architecture; and it is not until a building has
assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with
the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its
walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars
rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence,
more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects
of the world around it, can be gifted with even so
much as these possess, of language and of life.

XI. For that period, then^ we must build; not indeed, refusing
to ourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesitating to
follow such portions of character as may depend upon delicacy
of execution to the highest perfection of which they are capable,
even although we may know that in the course of years such
details must perish ; but taking care that for work of this kind
we sacrifice no enduring quality, and that the building shall not
depend for its impressiveness upon any thing that is perishable.
This would, indeed, be the law of good composition under any
circumstances, the arrangement of the larger masses being always

1 88 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the smaller ;
but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which
is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the pro-
bable effects of time : and (which is still more to be considered)
there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else
can replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire.
For though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of
age only, there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so
great as to have become not unfrequently the subject of especial
choice among certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon
those schools the character usually and loosely expressed by the
term " picturesque." It is of some importance to our present
purpose to determine the true meaning of this expression, as it is
now generally used ; for there is a principle to be developed from
that use which, while it has occultly been the ground of much
that is true and just in our judgment of art, has never been so far
understood as to become definitely serviceable. Probably no
word in the language, (exclusive of theological expressions,) has
been the subject of so frequent or so prolonged dispute ; yet
none remain more vague in their acceptance, and it seems to me
to be a matter of no small interest to investigate the essence of
that idea which all feel, and (to appearance) with respect to
similar things, and yet which every attempt to define has, as I
believe, ended either in mere enumeration of the effects and
objects to which the term has been attached, or else in attempts
at abstraction more palpably nugatory than any which have dis-
graced metaphysical investigation on other subjects. A recent
critic on Art, for instance, has gravely advanced the theory that
the essence of the picturesque consists in the expression of
"universal decay." It would be curious to see the result of an
attempt to illustrate this idea of the picturesque, in a painting of
dead flowers and decayed fruit ; and equally curious to trace the
steps of any reasoning which, on such a theory, should account
for the picturesqueness of an ass colt as opposed to a horse foal.
But there is much excuse for even the most utter failure in
reasonings of this kind, since the subject is, indeed, one of the

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 1 89

most obscure of all that may legitimately be submitted to human
reason ; and the idea is itself so varied in the minds of different
men, according to their subjects of study, that no definition can
be expected to embrace more than a certain number of its
infinitely multiplied forms.

XII. That peculiar character, however, which separates the
picturesque from the characters of subject belonging to the higher
walks of art (and this is all that it is necessary for our present pur-
pose to define), may be shortly and decisively expressed. Pic-
turesqueness, in this sense, is Parasitical Sublimity. Of course
all sublimity, as well as all beauty is, in the simple etymological
sense, picturesque, that is to say, fit to become the subject of a
picture ; and all sublimity is, even in the peculiar sense which I
am endeavouring to develope, picturesque, as opposed to beauty ;
that is to say, there is more picturesqueness in the subject of
Michael Angelo than of Perugino, in proportion to the prevalence
of the sublime element over the beautiful. But that character, of
which the extreme pursuit is generally admitted to be degrading
to art, v& parasitical sublimity; Le.^ a sublimity dependent on the
accidents, or on the least essential characters, of the objects to
which it belongs ; and the picturesque is developed distinctively
exactly in proportion to the distance from the centre of thought of
those points of charcu:ter in which the sublimity is found. Two
ideas, therefore, are essential to picturesqueness, — the first, that of
sublimity (for pure beauty is not picturesque at all, and becomes
so only as the sublime element mixes with it), and the second,
the subordinate or parasitical position of that sublimity. Of
course, therefore, whatever characters of line or shade or expres-
sion are productive of sublimity, will become productive of
picturesqueness : what these characters are I shall endeavour
hereafter to show at length ; but, among those which are generally
acknowledged, I may name angular and broken lines, vigorous
oppositions of light and shadow, and grave, deep, or boldly con-
trasted colour ; and all these are in a still higher degree effective,
when, by resemblance or association, they remind us of objects on
which a true and essential sublimity exists, a$ of rocks or moun-

I90 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

tains, or stormy clouds or waves. Now if these characters, or
any others of a higher and more abstract sublimity, be found in
the very heart and substance of what we contemplate, as the sub-
limity of Michael Angelo depends on the expression of mental
character in his figures far more than even on the noble lines of
their arrangement, the art which represents such characters can-
not be properly called picturesque: but, if they be found in the
accidental or external qualities, the distinctive picturesque will be
the result

X 1 1 L Thus, in the treatment of the features of the human face
by Francia or Ang^ico, the shadows are employed only to make
the contours of the features thoroughly felt ; and to those features
themselves the mind of the observer is exclusively directed (that
is to say, to the essential characters of the thing represented).
All power and all sublimity rest on these ; the shadows are used
only for the sake of the features. On the contrary, by Rembrandt,
Salvator, or Caravaggio, the features are yysedfor the sake of the
shadows; and the attention is directed, and the power of the painter
addressed, to characters of accidental light and shade cast across or
around those features. In the case of Rembrandt there is often an
essential sublimity in invention and expression besides, and always
a high degree of it in the light and shade itself; but it is, for the
most part, parasitical or engrafted sublimity as regards the subject
of the painting, and, just so far, picturesque.

XIV. Again, in the management of the sculptures of the
Parthenon, shadow is frequently employed as a dark field on
which the forms are drawn. This is visibly the case in the
metopes, and must have been nearly as much so in the pediment
But the use of that shadow is entirely to show the confines of
the figures ; and it is to their lines ^ and not to the shapes of the
shadows behind them, that the art and the eye are addressed.
The figures themselves are conceived, as much as possible, in full
light, aided by bright reflections; they are drawn exactly as, on
vases, white figures on a dark ground; and the sculptors have
dispensed with, or even struggled to avoid, all shadows which
were not absolutely necessary to the explaining of the form. On

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 191

the contrary, in Gothic sculpture, the shadow becomes itself a
subject of thought. It is considered as a dark colour, to be
arranged in certain agreeable masses; the figures are very fre«
quently made even subordinate to the placing of its divisions :
and their costume is enriched at the expense of the forms
underneath, in order to increase the complexity and variety of
the points of shade. There are thus, both in sculpture and
painting, two, in some sort, opposite schools, of which the one
follows for its subject the essential forms of things, and the
other the accidental lights and shades upon them. There are
various degrees of their contrariety: middle steps, as in the
works of Correggio, and all degrees of nobility and of degradation
in the several manners: but the one is always recognised as the
pure, and the other as the picturesque school. Portions of
picturesque treatment will be found in Greek work, and of pure
and unpicturesque in Gothic ; and in both there are countless
instances, as pre-eminently in the works of Michael Angelo, in
which shadows become valuable as media of expression, and
therefore take rank among essential characteristics. Into these
multitudinous distinctions and exceptions I cannot now enter,
desiring only to prove the broad applicability of the general
definition.

XV. Again, the distinction will be found to exist, not only
between forms and shades as subjects of choice, but between
essential and inessential forms. One of the chief distinctions
between the dramatic and picturesque schools of sculpture is
found in the treatment of the hair. By the artists of the time
of Pericles it was considered as an excrescence, indicated by
few and rude lines, and subordinated, in every particular, to the
principality of the features and person. How completely this
was an artistical, not a national idea, it is unnecessary to prove.
We need but remember the employment of the Lacedaemonians,
reported by the Persian spy on the evening before the battle of
Thermopylae, or glance at any Homeric description of ideal form,
to see how purely sculpturesque was the law which reduced the
markings of the hair, lest, under the necessary disadvantages of

192 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

material, they should interfere with the distinctness of the per-
sonal forms. On the contrary, in later sculpture, the hair re-
ceives almost the principal care of the workman ; and, while the
features and limbs are clumsily and bluntly executed, the hair is
curled and twisted, cut into bold and shadowy projections, and
arranged in masses elaborately ornamental : there is true sub-
limity in the lines and the chiaroscuro of these masses, but it is, as
regards the creature represented, parasitical, and therefore pictu-
resque. In the same sense we may understand the application of
the term to modem animal painting, distinguished as it has been
by peculiar attention to the colours, lustre, and texture of skin ;
nor is it in art alone that the definition will hold. In animals
themselves, when their sublimity depends upon their muscular
forms or motions, or necessary and principal attributes, as
perhaps more than all others in the horse, we do not call them
picturesque, but consider them as peculiarly fit to be associated
with pure historical subject Exactly in proportion as their
character of sublimity passes into excrescences ; — into mane and
beard as in the lion, into horns as in the stag, into shaggy hide
as in the instance above given of the ass colt, into variegation
as in the zebra, or into plumage, — ^they become picturesque,
and are so in art exactly in proportion to the prominence of these
excrescential characters. It may be often most expedient that
they should be prominent; often there is in them the highest
degree of majesty, as in those of the leopard and boar ; and in
the hands of men like Tintoret and Rubens, such attributes
become means of deepening the very highest and most ideal im-
pressions. But the picturesque direction of their thoughts is
always distinctly recognizable, as clinging to the surface, to the
less essential character, and as developing out of this a sublimity
different from that of the creature itself; a sublimity which is,
in a sort, common to all the objects of creation, and the same in
its constituent elements, whether it be sought in the clefts and
folds of shaggy hair, or in the chasms and rents of rocks, or in the
hanging of thickets or hill sides, or in the alternations of gaiety
and gloom in the variegation of the shell, the plume, or the cloud.

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 1 93

XVI. Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens
that, in architecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is
most commonly inconsistent with the preservation of original
character, and the picturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and
supposed to consist in decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it
consists in the mere sublimity of the rents, or fractures, or stains,
or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture with the work of
Nature, and bestow upon it those circumstances of colour and
form which are universally beloved by the eye of man. So far
as this is done, to the extinction of the true characters of the
architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who looks to the stem
of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is carrying out in more
daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice of the hair instead
of the countenance. But so far as it can be rendered consistent
with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous sub-
limity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it than
that of any other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of
age, of that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of the
building consists ; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory,
having power and purpose greater than any belonging to their
mere sensible beauty, may be considered as taking rank among
pure and essential characters ; so essential to my mind, that I
think a building cannot be considered as in its prime until four
or five centuries have passed over it ; and that the entire choice
and arrangement of its details should have reference to their
appearance after that period, so that none should be admitted
which would suffer material injury either by the weather-staining,
or the mechanical degradation which the lapse of such a period
would necessitate.

XVII. It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions
which the application of this principle involves. They are of too
great interest and complexity to be even touched upon within my
present limits, but this is broadly to be noticed, that those styles
of architecture which are picturesque in the sense above ex-
plained with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose decoration
depends on the arrangement of points of shade rather than on

c c

194

THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly gain in richness of
effect when their details are partly worn away ; hence such styles,
pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always be adopted
when the materials to be employed are liable to degradation, as
brick, sandstone, or soft limestone ; and styles in any d^^ree
dependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be prac-
tised altogether in hard and undecomposing materials, granite,
serpentine, or crystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that
the nature of the accessible materials influenced the formation
of both styles ; and it should still more authoritatively determine
our choice of either.

XVIII. It does not belong to my present plan to consider at
length the second head of duty of which I have above spoken ;
the preservation of the architecture we possess : but a few
words may be foi^ven, as especially necessary in modem times.

Aphorism 31. Neither by the public, nor by those who have the care

of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word
restoration understood. It means the most total destruc-
tion which a building can suffer: a destruction out of
which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction
accompanied with false description of the thing de-
stroyed.^ Do not let us deceive ourselves in this
important matter; it is impossible^ as impossible as to
raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been
great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have
above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit
which is given only by the hand and eye of the work-
man, never can be recalled. Another spirit may be
given by another time, and it is then a new building ;
but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be sum-
moned up, and commanded to direct other hands, and

Restoration,
so called, is
the worst
manner of
Destruction.

False, also, in the manner of parody, — the most loathsome manner of false-

hood.

THE LAMP OF MEMORY* 1 95

Other thoughts. And as for direct and simple copying,
it is palpably impossible. What copying can there be
of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down ?
The whole finish of the work was in the half inch that
is gone ; if you attempt to restore that finish, you do it
conjecturally ; if you copy what is left, granting fidelity
to be possible, (and what care, or watchfulness, or cost
can secure it,) how is the new work better than the
old ? There was yet in the old some life, some myste-
rious suggestion of what it had been, and of what it
had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which
rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in
the brute hardness of the new carving. Look at the
animals which I have given in Plate 14., as an instance
of living work, and suppose the markings of the scales
and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows,
and who shall ever restore them? The first step to
restoration, (I have seen it, and that again and again
— seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa
d' Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,)
is to dash the old work to pieces ; the second is usually
to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can
escape detection, but in all cases, however careful, and
however laboured, an imitation still, a cold model of
such parts as can be modelled, with conjectural supple-
ments; and my experience has as yet furnished me
with only one instance, that of the Palais de Justice
at Rouen, in which even this, the utmost degree of
fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or even
attempted.

196 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

XIX. Do not let us talk then of restoration. The
thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make
a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your
model may have the shell of the old walls within it as
your cast might have the skeleton, with what advan-
tage I neither see nor care: but the old building is
destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than
if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a
mass of clay : more has been gleaned out of desolated
Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan. But,

it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration ! Granted.
Look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own
terms. It is a necessity for destruction. Accept it as such, pull
the building down, throw its stones into neglected comers, make
ballast of them, or mortar, if you will ; but do it honesdy, and do
not set up a Lie in their place. And look that necessity in the
face before it comes, and you may prevent it. The principle of
modem times, (a principle which, I believe, at least in France, to
be systematically acted on by the masons^ in order to find them-
selves work, as the abbey of St Ouen was pulled down by the
magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants,)
is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take
proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore
them. A few sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few
dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will
save both roof and walls from min. Watch an old building with
an anxious care ; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from
every influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would
jewels of a crown ; set watches about it as if at the gates of a
besieged city ; bind it together with iron where it loosens ; stay
it with timber where it declines ; do not care about the unsight-
liness of the aid : better a crutch than a lost limb ; and do this
tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation
will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 1 97

must come at last ; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let
no dishonouring and false substitute deprive it of the funeral
offices of memory.

XX. Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak ;
my words will not reach those who commit them," and yet, be it
heard or not, I must not leave the truth unstated, that it is again
no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve
the buildings of past times or not. We have no right whatever
to touch them. They are not ours. They belong partly to those
who built them, and partly to all the generations of mankind who
are to follow us. The dead have still their right in them : that
which they laboured for, the praise of achievement or the expres-
sion of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might be which in
those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have no right
to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to
throw down ; but what other men gave their strength and wealth
and life to accomplish, their right over does not pass away with
their death : still less is the right to the use of what they have left
vested in us only. It belongs to all their successors. It may
hereafter be a subject of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions,
that we have consulted our present convenience by casting down
such buildings as we choose to dispense with. That sorrow, that
loss, we have no right to inflict. Did the cathedral of Avranches
belong to the mob who destroyed it, any more than it did to us,
who walk in sorrow to and fro over its foundation ? Neither does
any building whatever belong to those mobs who do violence to
it. For a mob it is, and must be always ; it matters not whether
enraged, or in deliberate folly ; whether countless, or sitting in
committees ; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a
mob, and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair
building is necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will
be so until Central Africa and America shall have become as
populous as Middlesex ; nor is any cause whatever valid as a

" No, indeed i — any more wasted words than mine throughout life, or bread
cast on more bitter waters, I never heard of. This closing paragraph of the
sixth chapter is the best, I think, in the book, — ^and the vainest

198 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

ground for its destructioiL If ever valid, certsunly not now,
when the place both of the past and future is too much usurped
in our minds by the restless and discontented present The very
quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn from 11s ; thousands
who once in their necessarily prolonged travel were subjected
to an influence, from the silent sky and slumbering fields, more
effectual than known or confessed, now bear with them even there
the ceaseless fever of their life ; and along the iron veins that
traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery
pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality
is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central
cities ; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow
bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds
upon the city gates. The only influence which can in any wise
there take the place of that of the woods and fields, is the power
of ancient Architecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the
formal square, or of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the
goodly street nor opened quay. The pride of a city is not in these.
Leave them to the crowd ; but remember that there will surely
be some within the circuit of the disquieted walls who would
ask for some other spots than these wherein to walk ; for some
other forms to meet their sight familiarly : like him who sat so
often where the sun struck from the west, to watch the lines of
the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his
Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers,
the places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the
dark streets of Verona.

199

CHAP. VII.

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

I. It has been my endeavour to show in the preceding pages how
every form of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment
of the Polity, Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations* Once
or twice in doing this, I have named a principle to which I would
now assign a definite place among those which direct that
embodiment; the last place, not only as that to which its own
humility would incline, but rather as belonging to it in the aspect
of the crowhing grace of all the rest : that principle, I mean, to
which Polity owes its stability. Life its happiness, Faith its
acceptance. Creation its continuance, — Obedience.

Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious aphorism 32.
satisfaction which I have found in the pursuit of a '^^l^''
subject that at first appeared to bear but slightly on "'*'^'^-
the grave interests of mankind, that the conditions of
material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to
consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the con-
ception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous
phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous,
indeed, of all phantoms ; for the feeblest ray of reason
might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but
its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in
the universe. There can never be. The stars have it
not ; the earth has it not ; the sea has it not ; and we
men have the mockery and semblance of it only for
our heaviest

200 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

In one of the noblest poems* for its imagery and its music
belonging to the recent school of our literature, the writer has
sought in the aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that
Liberty which, having once loved, he had seen among men in its
true dyes of darkness. But with what strange fallacy of inter-
pretation ! since in one noble line of his invocation he has con-
tradicted the assumptions of the rest, and acknowledged the
presence of a subjection, surely not less severe because eternal.
How could he otherwise? since j if there be any one principle
more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more
sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the visible
creation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law. 'I

IL The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the
Law of Liberty. Then why use the single and misunderstood
word? If by liberty you mean chastisement of the passions, dis-
cipline of the intellect, subjection of the will ; if you mean the fear
of inflicting, the shame of committing, a wrong ; if you mean
respect for all who are in authority, and consideration for all
who are in dependence ; veneration for the good, mercy to the
evil, sympathy with the weak ; if you mean watchfulness over all
thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and perseverance in all
toils ; if you mean, in a word, that Service which is defined in
the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom, why do
you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean
license, and the reckless mean change ; by which the rogue means
rapine, and the fool, equality; by which the proud mean anarchy,
and the malignant mean violence ? Call it by any name rather
than this, but its best and truest, is Obedience. Obedience is,
indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere
subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may
be more perfect; and thus, while a measure of license is necessary
to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and
pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their Restraint
Compare a river that has burst its banks with one that is bound
by them, and the clouds that are scattered over the face of the
whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks and

• See Appendix V.

THE LAMP OP OBEDIENCE. 20I

orders by its wiiids. So that though restraint, utter and anre^
laxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself an
evil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature
of the thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which
that nature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists
the fairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in
the things governed, and the laws of general sway to which they
are subjected ; and the suspension or infringement of either kind
of law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous
with, disease; while the increase of both honour and beauty is
habitually on the side of restraint (or the action of superior law)
rather than of character (or the action of inherent law). The
noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is " Loyalty," and
the sweetest which men have learned in the pastures of the
wilderness is *' Fold."

III. Nor is this all; but we may observe, diat exactly ill
proportion to the majesty of things in the scale of being, is the
completeness of their obedience to the laws that are set over them.
Gravitation is less quiedy, less instantly obeyed by a grain of
dust than it is by the sun and moon ; and the ocean falls and flows
under influences which the lake and river do not recognise. So
also in estimating the dignity of any action or occupation of men,
there is perhaps no better test than the question " are its laws
strait ?'* For their severity will probably be commensurate with
the greatness of the numbers whose labour it concentrates or
whose interest it concerns.

This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that
arty above all others, whose productions are the most vast and
the most common; which requires for its practice the co*
operation of bodies of men, and for its perfection the perse-
verance of successive generations. And, taking into account
also what we have before so often observed of Architecture, her
continual influence over the emotions of daily life, and her
realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in comparison
but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might beforehand
expect that we should find her healthy state and action dependent

D D

202 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

on far more severe laws than theirs : that the license which they
extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn
by her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with
all that is universaUy important to man, she would set forth, by
her own majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's
social happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, with-
out the light of experience, conclude, that Architecture never could
flourish except when it was subjected to a national law as strict
and as minutely authoritative as the laws which regulate religion,
policy, and social relations ; nay, even more authoritative than
these, because both capable of more enforcement, as over more
passive matter ; and needing more enforcement, as the purest type
not of one law nor of another, but of the common authority of all.
But in this matter experience speaks more loudly than reason.
If there be any one condition which, in watching the progress of
architecture, we see distinct and general ; if, amidst the counter-
evidence of success attending opposite accidents of character and
circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and indispu-
tably drawn, it is this ; that the architecture of a nation is great
only when it is as universal and as established as its language ; and
when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so many
dialects. Other necessities are matters of doubt : nations have
been alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and
of wealth ; in times of war and of peace ; in times of barbarism and
of refinement ; under governments the most liberal or the most
arbitrary; but this one condition has been constant, this one
requirement clear in all places and at all times, that the work
shall be that of a school^ that no individual caprice shall dispense
with, or materially vary, accepted types and customary decorations ;
and that from the cottage to the palace, and from the chapel to
the basilica, and from the garden fence to the fortress wall,
every member and feature of the architecture of the nation shall
be as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its language or
its coin.

IV. A day never passes without our hearing our English
architects called upon to be original, and to invent a new style :

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE; ZO^

about as sensible and necessary an exhortation as to ask of a
man who has never had rags enough on his back to keep out cold,
to invent a new mode of cutting a coat Give him a whole coat
first, and let him concern himself about the fashion of it after-
wards. We want no new style of architecture. Who wants a
new style of painting or sculpture ? But we want some style.
It is of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws
and they be good laws, whether they be new or old, foreign or
native, Roman or Saxon, or Norman, or English laws. But it is
of considerable importance that we should have a code of laws of
one kind or another, and that code accepted and enforced from
one side of the island to another, and not one law made ground
of judgment at York and another in Exeter. And in like manner
it does not matter one marble splinter whether we have an old
or new architecture, but it matters everything whether we have
an architecture truly so called or not ; that is, whether an archi-
tecture whose laws might be taught at our schools from Cornwall
to Northumberland, as we teach English spelling and English
grammar, or an architecture which is to be invented fresh every
time we build a workhouse or a parish school. There seems to
me to be a wonderful misunderstanding among the majority of
architects of the present day as to the very nature and meaning
of Originality, and of all wherein it consists. Originality in
expression does not depend on invention of new words; nor
originality in poetry on invention of new measures ; nor, in
painting, on invention of new colours, or new modes of using
them. The chords of music, the harmonies of colour, the general
principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been
determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to
any more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be,
such additions or alterations are much more the work of time and
of multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one
Van Eyck, who will be known as the introducer of a new style
once in ten centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to
some accidental by-play or pursuit ; and the use of that invention
^11 depend altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of

204 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

the period Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man
who has the gift, will take up any style that is going, the style of
his day, and will work in that, and be great in that, and make
everything that he does in it look as fresh as if every thought of
it had just come down from heaven. I do not say that he will
not take liberties with his materials, or with his rules : I do not
say that strange changes will not sometimes be wrought by his
efforts, or his fancies, in both. But those changes will be instruc-
tive, natural, facile, though sometimes marvellous; they will
never be sought after as things necessary to his dignity or to his
independence ; and those liberties will be like the liberties that a
great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance of its rules
for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, and
brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language,
without such infraction, could not There may be times when,
as I have above described, the life of an art is manifested in its
changes, and in its refusal of ancient limitations : so there are in
the life of an insect ; and there is great interest in the state of
both the art and the insect at those periods when, by their natural
progress and constitutional power, such changes are about to be
wrought But as that would be both an uncomfortable and
foolish caterpillar which, instead of being contented with a cater*
pillar's life and feeding on caterpillar's food, was always striving
to turn itself into a chrysalis ; and as that would be an unhappy
chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll restlessly in its
cocoon, in efibrts to turn itself prematurely into a moth ; so will
that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of support-
ing itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs^
which have been enough for the support and guidance of other
arts before it and like it, is struggling and fretting under the
natural limitations of its existence, and striving to become some-
thing other than it is. And though it is the nobility of the
highest creatures to look forward to, and pardy to understand
the changes which are appointed for them, preparing for them
beforehand ; and if, as is usual with appointed changes, they be
into a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the hope

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 20$

of them, yet it is the strength of every creature, be it changeful
or not, to rest, for the time being, contented with the conditions
of its existence, and striving only to bring about the changes
which it desires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which
its present state is appointed and continued.

V. Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though
both may be, and this is commonly a most merciful and enthu-
siastic supposition with respect to either, is ever to be sought in
itself, or can ever be healthily obtained by any struggle or rebel-
lion against common laws. We want neither the one nor the
other. The forms of architecture already known are good
enough for us, and for far better than any of us ; and it will be
time enough to think of changing them for better when we can
use them as they are. But there are some things which we not
only want, but cannot do without ; and which all the struggling
and raving in the world, nay more, which all the real talent and
resolution in England, will never enable us to do without : and
these are Obedience, Unity, Fellowship, and Order, And all our
schools of design, and committees of taste ; all our academies and
lectures, and journalisms, and essays ; all the sacrifices which we
are beginning to make, all the truth which there is in our English
nature, all the power of our English will, and the life of our
English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as efforts and
emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit archi-
tecture and all art, like other things, to English law.

VI. I say architecture and all art ; for I believe architecture
must be the beginning of arts, and that the others must follow
her in their time and order ; and I think the prosperity of our
schools of painting and sculpture, in which no one will deny the
life, though many the health, depends upon that of our archi-
tecture. I think that all will languish until that takes the lead,
and (this I do not tAinA, but I proclaim, as confidently as I would
assert the necessity, for the safety of society, of an understood
and strongly administered legal government) our architecture
zoill languish, and that in the very dust, until the first principle
of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal system of

^06 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE:

form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It
may be said that this is impossible. It may be so — I fear it is
so : I have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of
it ; I simply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be im-
possible, English art is impossible. Give it up at once. You
are wasting time, and money, and energy upon It, and though you
exhaust centuries and treasuries, and break hearts for it, you will
never raise it above the merest dilettanteism. Think not of it
It is a dangerous vanity, a mere gulph in which genius after
genius will be swallowed up, and it will not close. And so it will
continue to be, unless the one bold and broad step be taken at the
beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of pottery and
printed stuffs ; we shall not reason out art by our philosophy ;
we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, nor create it
by our fancies : I do not say that we can even build it out of
brick and stone ; but there is a chance for us in these, and there
is none else ; and that chanpe rests on the bare possibility of
obtaining the consent, both of architects and of the public, to
choose a style, and to use it universally.

VII. How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we
may easily determine by the consideration of the necessary modes
of teaching any other branch of general knowledge. When we
begin to teach children writing, we force them to absolute
copyism, and require absolute accuracy in the formation of the
letters ; as they obtain command of the received modes of literal
expression, we cannot prevent their falling into such variations
as are consistent with their feeling, their circumstances, or their
characters. So, when a boy is first taught to write Latin, an
authority is required of him for every expression he uses : as he
becomes master of the language he may take a license, and feel
his right to do so without any authority, and yet write better
Latin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the
same way our architects would have to be taught to write the
accepted style. We must first determine what buildings are to
be considered Augustan in their authority ; their modes of con-
struction and laws of proportion are to be studied with the most

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 207

penetrating care; then the different forms and uses of their
decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a German
grammarian classes the powers of prepositions ; and under this
absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work ; admit-
ting not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto, or
the breadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed
to the grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts
familiar with the expression of them all ; when we can speak this
dead language naturally, and apply it to whatever ideas we have
to render, that is to say, to every practical purpose of life ; then,
and not tiU then, a license might be permitted, and individual
authority allowed to change or to add to the received forms,
always within certain limits ; the decoradons, especially, might
be made subjects of variable fancy, and enriched with ideas either
original or taken from other schools. And thus, in process of
time and by a great national movement, it might come to pass
that a new style should arise, as language itself changes ; we
might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak
modem instead of old English ; but this would be a matter of
entire indifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination
or desire could either hasten or prevent That alone which it is
in our power to obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an
unanimous style of some kind, and such comprehension and
practice of it as would enable us to adapt its features to the pecu-
liar character of every several building, large or small, domestic,
civil, or ecclesiastical. I have said that it was immaterial what
style was adopted, so far as regards the room for originality
which its developement would admit : it is not so, however, when
we take into consideration the far more important questions of
the facility of adaptation to general purposes, and of the sym-
pathy with which this or that style would be popularly r^^ded.
The choice of Classical or Gothic, again using the latter term in
its broadest sense, may be questionable when it regards some
single and considerable public building ; but I cannot conceive it
questionable, for an instant, when it regards modem uses in
general : I cannot conceive any architect insane enough to pro-

2o8 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

ject the vulgarization of Greek architecture. Neither can it be
rationally questionable whether we should adopt early or Iate»
original or derivative Gothic ; if the latter were chosen, it must
be either some impotent and ugly degradation, like our own
Tudor, or else a style whose grammatical laws it would be nearly
impossible to limit or arrange, like the French Flamboyant. We
are equally precluded from adopting styles essentially infantine
or barbarous, however Herculean their infancy, or majestic their
oudawry, such as our own Norman, or the Lombard Romanesque^
The choice would lie I think between four styles :^-i. The Pisan
Romanesque ; 2. The early Gothic of the Western Italian Re-
publics, advanced as far and as fiast as our art would enable us to
the Gothic of Giotto ; 3. The Venetian Gothic in its piu*est
developement ; 4. The English earliest decorated. The most
natural, perhaps the safest choice, would be of the last, well
fenced from chance of again stiffening into the perpendicular;
and perhaps enriched by some mingling of decorative elements
from the exquisite decorated Gothic of France, of which, in
such cases, it would be needful to accept some well-known ex-^
amples, as the North door of Rouen and the church of St
Urbain at Troyes, for final and limiting authorities on the side
of decoration.

Aphorism 33. VIII. It Is almost impossible for us to conceive, in
Itd^^f our present state of doubt and ignorance, the sudden

dawn of intelligence and fancy, the rapidly increasing
sense of power and facility, and, in its proper sense^ of
Freedom, which such wholesome restraint would in-
stantly cause throughout the whole circle of the arts.
Freed from the agitation and embarrassment of that
liberty of choice which is the cause of half the dis-
comforts of the world ; freed from the accompanying
necessity of studying all past, present, or even possible
styles; and enabled, by concentration of individual,
and co-operation of multitudinous energy, to penetrate.

and use of
restraint

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 2t09

into the uttermost secrets of the adopted style, the
architect would find his whole understanding enlarged,
his practical knowledge certain and ready to hand, and
his imagination playful and vigorous, as a child's would
be within a walled garden, who would sit down and
shudder if he were left free in a fenceless plain. How
many and how bright would be the results in every
direction of interest, not to the arts merely, but to
national happiness and virtue, it would be as difficult
to preconceive as it would seem extravagant to state :
but the first, perhaps the least, of them would be an
increased sense of fellowship among ourselves, a ce«
menting of every patriotic bond of union, a proud and
happy recognition of our affection for and sympathy
with each other, and our willingness in all things to
submit ourselves to every law that could advance the
interest of the community; a barrier, also, the best
conceivable, to the unhappy rivalry of the upper and
middle classes, in houses, furniture, and establish-
ments ; and even a check to much of what is as vain
as it is painful in the oppositions of religious parties
respecting matters of ritual. These, I say, would be
the first consequences. Economy increased tenfold,
as it would be by the simplicity of practice ; domestic
comforts uninterfered with by the caprice and mistakes
of architects ignorant of the capacities of the styles
they use, and all the symmetry and sightliness of our
harmonized streets and public buildings, are things of
slighter account in the catalogue of benefits. But it
would be mere enthusiasm to endeavour to trace them

E E

210 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

farther.^ I have suffered myself too long to indulge in the

speculative statement of requirements which perhaps we have
more immediate and more serious work than to supply, and of
feelings which it may be only contingently in our power to re-
cover. I should be unjustly thought unaware of the difficulty of
what I have proposed, or of the unimportance of the whole sub-
ject as compared with many which are brought home to our
interests and fixed upon our consideration by the wild course of
the present century. But of difficulty and of importance it is for
others to judge. I have limited myself to the simple statement
of what, if we desire to have architecture, we must primarily
endeavour to feel and do : but then it may not be desirable for
us to have architecture at all. There are many who feel it to be
so ; many who sacrifice much to that end ; and I am sorry to see
their energies wasted and their lives disquieted in vain. I have
stated, therefore, the only ways in which that end is attainable,
without venturing even to express an opinion as to its real
desirableness. I have an opinion, and the zeal with which I
have spoken may sometimes have betrayed it, but I hold to it
with no confidence. I know too well the undue importance which
the study that every man follows must assume in his own eyes,
to trust my own impressions of the dignity of that of Architec-
ture ; and yet I think I cannot be utterly mistaken in regarding
it as at least useful in the sense of a National employment I am
confirmed in this impression by what I see passing among the
States of Europe at this instant All the horror, distress, and
tumult which oppress the foreign nations, are traceable, among
the other secondary causes through which God is working out
His will upon them, to the simple one of their not having enough
to do. I am not blind to the distress among their operatives ;
nor do I deny the nearer and visibly active causes of the move-
ment : the recklessness of villany in the leaders of revolt, the

* I am well content to dose my thirty-three aphorisms with this most compre-
hensive one ;— and my fifty-five notes with this still more comprehensive reduction
of them to practice for the modem reader : — Build nothing that you can possibly
help, — and let no land on building leases.

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 211

absence of common moral principle in the upper classes, and of
common courage and honesty in the heads of governments. But
diese causes themselves are ultimately traceable to a deeper and
simpler one : the reddessness of the demagogue, the immorality of
the middle class, and the effeminacy and treachery of the noble,
are traceable in all these nations to the commonest and most
fruitful cause of calamity in households — ^idleness. We think
too much in our benevolent efforts, more multiplied and more
vain day by day, of bettering men by giving them advice and
instruction. There are few who will take either : the chief diing
they need is occupation. I do not mean work in the sense of
bread, — I mean work in the sense of mental interest ; for those
who either are placed above the necessity of labour for their
bread, or who will not work although they should. There is a
vast quantity of idle energy among European nations at this
time, which ought to go into handicrafts ; there are multitudes of
idle semi-gendemen who ought to be shoemakers and cairpenters ;
but since they will not be these so long as they can help it, the
business of the philanthropist is to find them some other em-
ployment than disturbing governments. It is of no use to tell
them they are fools, and that they will only make themselves
miserable in the end as well as others : if they have nothing else
to do, they will do mischief; and the man who will not work, and
who has no means of intellectual pleasure, is as sure to become
an instrument of evil as if he had sold himself bodily to Satan. I
have myself seen enough <^ the daily life of the young educated
men of France and Italy, to account for, as it deserves, the deepest
national sufifering and degradation; and though, for the most
part, our commerce and our natural habits of industry preserve
us from a similar paralysb, yet it would be wise to consider
whether the forms of employment which we chiefly adopt or pro-
mote, are as well calcidated as they might be to improve and
elevate us.

We have just spent, for instance, a hundred and fifty millions,
with which we have paid men for digging ground from one place
and depositing it in smother. We have formed a kurge class of

212 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

men, the railway navvies, especially reckless, unmanageable, and
dangerous. We have maintained besides (let us state the bene-
fits as fairly as possible) a number of iron founders in an unhealthy
and painful employment; we have developed (this is at least
good) a very large amount of mechanical ingenuity; and we
have, in fine, attained the power of going fast from one place to
another. Meantime we have had no mental interest or concern
ourselves in the operations we have set on foot, but have been
left to the usual vanities and cares of our existence. Suppose,
on the other hand, that we had employed the same sums in
building beautiful houses and churches. We should have rnain^
tained the same number of men, not in driving wheelbarrows,
but in a distinctly technical, if not intellectual employment ; and
those who were more intelligent among them would have been
especially happy in that employment, as having room in it for
the developement of their fancy, and being directed by it to diat
observation of beauty which, associated with the pursuit of
natural science, at present forms the enjoyment of many of the
more intelligent manufacturing operatives. Of mechanical in*
genuity, there is, I imagine, at least as much required to build a
cathedral as to cut a tunnel or contrive a locomotive : we should,
therefore, have developed as much science, while the artistical
element of intellect would have been added to the gain. Mean-
time we should ourselves have been made happier and wiser by
the interest we should have taken in the work with which we
were personally concerned jl and when all was done, instead of
the very doubtful advantage of the power of going fast from
place to place, we should have had the certain advantage of in-
creased pleasure in stopping at home. I

IX. There are many other less capacious, but more constant,
channels of expenditure, quite as disputable in their beneficial
tendency ; and we are, perhaps, hardly enough in the habit of
inquiring, with respect to any particular form of luxury or any
customary appliance of life, whether the kind of employment it
gives to the operative or the dependant be as healthy and fitting
an employment as we might otherwise provide for him, It is

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 1213

not enough to find men absolute subsistence ; we should think of
the manner of life which our demands necessitate ; and endeavour,
as far as may be, to make all our needs such as may, in the supply
of them, raise, as well as feed, the poor. It is far better to give
work which is above the men, than to educate the men to be
above their work* It may be doubted, for instance, whether the
habits of luxury, which necessitate a large train of men servants,
be a wholesome form of expenditure ; and more, whether the
pursuits which have a tendency to enlarge the class of the jockey
and the groom be a philanthropic form of mental occupation. So
again, consider the large number of men whose lives are employed
by civilized nations in cutting facets upon jewels. There is much
dexterity of hand, patience, and ingenuity thus bestowed, which
are simply burned out in the blaze of die tiara, without, so far as
I see, bestowing any pleasure upon those who wear or who behold,
at all compensatory for the loss of life and mental power which
are involved in the employment of the workman. He would be
far more healthily and happily sustained by being set to carve
stone ; certain qualities of his mind, for which there is no room
in his present occupation, would develope themselves in the
nobler ; and I believe that most women would, in the end, prefer
die pleasure of having built a church, or contributed to the
adornment of a cathedral, to the pride of bearing a certain quan-
tity of adamant on their foreheads.

X. I could pursue this subject willingly, but I have some
strange notions about it which it is perhaps wiser not loosely to
set down. I content myself with finally reasserting, what has
been throughout the burden of the preceding pages, that what-
ever rank, or whatever importance, may be attributed or attached
to their immediate subject, there is at least some value in the
analogies with which its pursuit has presented us, and some
instruction in the frequent reference of its commonest neces-
sities to the mighty laws, in die sense and scope of which all
men are Builders, whom every hour sees laying the stubble or
the stone.

I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have

214 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

checked the course of what might othenriae have been impw-
tunate persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all
Architecture may be vain, except that which is not made with
hands. There is something ominous in the light which has
enabled us to look back with disdain upon the ages among whose
lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could snule when
I hear the hopeful exultaticm of many, at the new reach of
worldly science, and vigour of worldly effort ; as if we were
again at the beginning of days. There is thunder on the hori*
zon as well as dawn. The sun was risen upon the earth when
Lot entered into Zoar.

APPENDIX L

The Four Modes of Admiration.— (This piece of analysis, which
I find to be entirely accurate was g^ven in the preface to the second
edition. I now place it, without interference from other topics, at the
close of the volume, where it may be read, I hope, with clearer under-
standing than it could have been at the b^inning, — and to better
purpose.)

I HAVE found, after carefully investigating the character of the emotions
which were generally felt by well-educated people respecting various
forms of good architecture, that these emotions might be separated into
four general heads : —

1. Sentimental Admiration. — ^The kind of feeling which most travellers
experience on first entering a cathedral by torchlight, and hearing a chant
from concealed choristers ; or in visiting a ruined abbey by moonlight, or
any building with which interesting associations are connected, at any
time when they can hardly see it

2. Proud Admiration. — ^The delight which most worldly people take in
showy, laige, or complete buildings, for the sake of the importance which
such buildings confer on themselves, as their possessors, or admirers.

3* Workmanly Admiration. — ^The delight of seeing good and neat
masonry, tc^ether with that belonging to incipient developments of
taste ; as, for instance, a perception of proportion in lines, masses, and
mouldings.

4. Artistic and rational Admiration. — The delight taken in reading
the sculpture or painting on walls, capitals, friezes, &c

Of these four kinds of feeling I found, on farther inquiry, that the first,
or sentimental kind, was instinctive and simple ; excitable in nearly all
persons, by a certain amount of darkness and slow music in a minor key.
That it had good uses, and was of a dignified character in some minds ;
but that on the whole it was apt to rest in theatrical effect, and to be as
well satisfied with the incantation scene in ** Robert le Diable," provided
there were enough gauze and feux-foUets, as by the Cathedral of Rheims.
That it might generally be appealed to with advantage as a judge of the

3l6 APPENDICES.

relative impressiveness of two styles of art, but was wholly unable to dis-
tinguish truth from affectation in the style it preferred Even in its highest
manifestation, in the great mind of Scott, while it indeed led him to lay
his scenes in Melrose Abbey and Glasgow Cathedral, rather than in St.
Paul's or St. Peter's, it did not enable him to see the difference between
true Gothic at Glasgow, and false Gothic at Abbotsford As a critical
faculty, I found it was hardly to be taken into consideration in any
reasoning on the higher merits of architecture.

2. Proud Admiration. — ^This kind of applause, so far from being courted,
I found ought altogether to be deprecated by the noble architect, and
that no building could be really admirable which was not admirable to
the poor. So that there was an essential baseness in the Renaissance
(i. e. the modem Italian and Greek style), and an essential nobleness in
the Gothic, consisting simply in the pride of the one, and the humility of
the other. I found the love of largeness, and especially cli symmetry^ invari-
ably associated with vulgarity and narrowness of mind, so that the person
most intimately acquainted with the mind of the monarch to whom the
Renaissance architecture owed its principal impulse, describing his
principles of religion, states that he ^ was shocked to be told that Jesus
Christ spoke the language of the humble and the poor ; " and, describing
his taste in architecture, says that he '' thought of nothing but grandeur,
magnificence, and symmetry." *

3. Workmanly Admiration. — ^This, of course, though right within
certain limits, is wholly uncritical, being as easily satisfied with the worst
as with the best building, so that the mortar be laid smoothly. As to the
feeling with which it is usually united, namely, a delight in the intelligent
observance of the proportions of masses, it is good in all the affairs of life,
whether regulating the disposition of dishes at a dinner tablet, of orna-
ments on a dress, or of pillars in a portico. But it no more constitutes
the true power of an architect, than the possession of a good ear for metre
constitutes a poet ; and every building whose excellence consists merely
in the proportion of masses is to be considered as nothing more than an
architectural doggrel, or rhyming exercise.

4. Artistic and rational Admiration. — I found, finally, that this, the
only admiration worth having, attached itself wholly to the meaning of
the sculpture and colour on the building. That it was very r^ardless of
general form and size ; but intensely observant of the statuary, floral
mouldings, mosaics, and other decorations. Upon which, little by little,

* Madame de Maintenon, quoted in Quarterly Review, March, 1855, pp. 433 — 428.
She says, afterwards, ^ He prefers to endure all the draughts fiom the doors, in order
that they may be opposite one another— :^^t# must perish in symmetry^

\ *' At the ch&teau of Madame V., the white-headed butler begged madame to apolo-
gise for the central flower-basket on the table : ' He had not had time to study the
composition.' " — Mrs, Stow^s ** Sunny Memories/^ lett. 44.

APPENDICES. 217

it gradually became manifest to me tliat the sculpture and painting were,
in fact, the all in all of the thing to be done ; that these, which I had long
been in the careless habit of thinking subordinate to the architecture,
were in fact the entire masters of the architecture ; and that the architect
who was not a sculptcM* or a painter, was nothing better than a frame-
maker on a large scale. Having once got this clue to the truth, every
question about architecture imimediately settled itself without farther
difficulty. I saw that the idea of an independent architectural profession
was a mere modem fallacy, the thought of which had never so much as
entered the heads of the great nations of earlier times ; but that it had
always, till lately, been understood, that in order to have a Parthenon,
one had to get a (preliminary Phidias; and to have a Cathedral of
Florence, a preliminary Giotto; and to have even a Saint Peter's at
Rome^ a preliminary Michael Angelo. And as, with this new light, I
examined the nobler examples of our Gothic cathedrals, it became appa-
rent to me that the master workman must have been the person who
carved the bas-reliefs in the porches ; that to him all others must have
been subordinate, and by him all the rest of the cathedral essentially
arranged ; but that in fact the whole company <^ builders, always large,
were more or less divided into two great flocks of stone-layers, and
sculptors ; and that the number of sculptors was so great, and their
average talent so considerable, that it would no more have been thought
necessary to state respecting the master builder that he could carve a
statue, than that he could measure an angle, or strike a curve.*

If the reader will think over this statement carefully he will find that
it is indeed true, and a key to many things. The fact is, there are only
two fine arts possible to the human race, sculpture and painting. What
we call architecture is only the association of these in noble masses, or
the placing them in fit places. All architecture other than this is, in fact,
mere building; and though it may sometimes be graceful, as in the
groinings of an abbey roof; or sublime, as in the battlements of a border
tower ; there is, in such examples of it, no more exertion of the powers
of high art, than in the gracefulness of a well-ordered chamber, or the
nobleness of a well-built ship of war.

All high art consists in the carving or painting natural objects, chiefly
figures : it has always subject and meaning; never consisting solely in
arrangement of lines, or even of colours. It always paints or carves
something that it sees or believes in ; nothing ideal or uncredited. For
the most part, it paints and carves the men and things that are visible

* The name by which the architect of Cologne Cathedral is designated in the con-
tracts for the work, is *^ magister lapicida," the ^ master stone-cutter ;" and I believe
this was the usual Latin term throughout the middle ages. The architect of the four-
teenth century portions of Notre-Dame^ Paris, is styled in French, merely ** premier

masson."

F F

2 1 8 APPENDICES*

around it. And as soon as we possess a body of sculptors able, and
willing, and having leave from the English public, to carve on the facades
of our cathedrals portraits of the living bishops, deans, canons, and
choristers, who are to minister in the said cathedrals ; and on the fa9ades
of our public buildings, portraits of the men chiefly moving or acting in
the same ; and on our buildings, generally, the birds and flowers which
are singing and budding in the fields around them, we shall have a school
of English architecture. Not till then.

The greatest service which can at present be rendered to architecture,
is the careful delineation of its details from the beginning of the I2th
to the close of the 14th century, by means of photography. I would
particularly desire to direct the attention of amateur photographers to
this task ; earnestly requesting them to bear in mind that while a photo-
graph of landscape is merely an amusing toy, one of early architecture is
a precious historical document; and that this architecture should be
taken, not merely when it presents itself under picturesque general forms,
but stone by stone, and sculpture by sculpture ; seizing every opportunity
afforded by scaffolding to approach it closely, and putting the camera in
any position that will command the sculpture, wholly without regard to
the resultant distortions of the vertical lines ; such distortion can always
be allowed for, if once the details are completely obtained.

It would be still more patriotic in lovers of architecture to obtaia casts
of the sculptures of the thirteenth century, wherever an opportunity
occurs, and to place them where they would be easily accessible to the
ordinary workman. The Architectural Museum at Westminster is one
of the institutions which it appears to me most desirable to enrich in this
manner.

APPENDIX II.

The following two notes— fourth and fifth in the old edition — ^are worth
preserving.

P. 27. " With different pattern of traceries in eack*^ — I have certainly
not examined the seven hundred and four traceries (four to each niche)
so as to be sure that none are alike; but they have the aspect of continual
variation, and even the roses of the pendants of the small groined niche roofs
are all of different patterns. (I now italicize this last sentence, — for it is
the best illustration in the whole book, of the loving and religious labour
on which it so frequently insists.)

P. 38. ** Its flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms^^ —
They are noticed by Mr. Whewell as forming the figure of the fleur-de-lis,

APPENDICES. 219

always a mark, when in tracery bars, of the most debased flamboyant It
occurs in the central tower of Bayeux, very richly in the buttresses of St.
Gervais at Falaise, and in the small niches of some of the domestic
buildings at Rouen. Nor is it only the tower of St Ouen which is over-
rated. Its nave is a base imitation, in the flamboyant period, of an early
Gothic arrangement ; the niches on its piers are barbarisms ; there is a
huge square shaft run through the ceiling of the aisles to support the nave
piers, the ugliest excrescence I ever saw on a Gothic building ; the tra-
ceries of the nave are the most insipid and faded flamboyant; those of the
transept clerestory present a singularly distorted condition of perpen-
dicular ; even the elaborate door of the south transept is, for its fine
period, extravagant and almost grotesque in its foliation and pendants.
There is nothing truly fine in the church but the choir, the light triforium,
and tall clerestory, the circle of Eastern chapels, the details of sculpture,
and the general lightness of proportion ; these merits being seen to the
utmost advantage by the freedom of the body of the church from all in-
cumbrance.

APPENDIX III.

P. 42. ** Does not admit iron as a constructive material^ — Except in
Chaucer's noble temple of Mars.

In the former editions, a note on the structural use of iron quoted
Chaucer's description of the temple of Mars ; but only in the Chaucer
English, which few readers quite understand, and which I certainly do
not always myself. I re-write it now in as familiar spelling as may be,
with a little bit of needful explanation.

** And downward frma a hill under a bent

There stood the temple of Mars armipotent,

Wrought all of bumM steel ; of which th' entree

Was long, and strait, and ghastly for to see.
5. And thereout came a rage, and such a vise

That it made all the gatSs for to rise.

The Northern light in at the door shone,

For window on the wall ne was there none^

Through which men mighten any light disceme.
10. The door was all of adamant eteme,

Ydenched overthwart and endelong

With iron tough, and for to make it strong.

Every pillar, the temple to sustene^
14. Was tun-great, of iron bright and sheene.*

(The Knighfs TaU, /. 1983 0/ " The Canterbury TaUs!")

220 AFPENDICES.

Line i. ''Bent'* In glossary, the 'bending/ or declivity, of a hilL
Properly, I believe, the hoUow cut out by the sweep of a stream. Just
the place where they put milldams or chimneys on the streams above
Sheffield, for grinding knives or bayonets.

Line 3. " Burned steel." Twice hardened in the fire.

Line 5. " Vise." I am not sure what the word means; but the general
sense is, that such a blast came out of the building, that it lifted the gates,
underneath, as a portcullis is lifted.

Line 7. " The Northern light" Flickering, furious, and dieerless— the
only light that is ever seen by the soul purposed for war.

Line la ''Adamant" Diamond: the jewel which means sable in
heraldry. The Northern light is conceived as shining through it

Line 14. " Tun-great" As large round as a cask.

Note, finally, the absolute carelessness of all great poets, whether
their images be common or not; — so only they be clear.

There is, by the bye, an exquisite piece of architectural colaur just

before:

** And northward, in a turret on the wall
0/ alabaster whiie^ and r$d carail^
An oratorie riche for to see.
In worship of Diane of Chastitee.''

APPENDIX IV.

P. 97. " And levelled cusps of stone!* — ^The plate represents one of the
lateral windows of the third story of the Palazzo Foscari. It was drawn
from the opposite side of the Grand Canal, and the lines of its traceries
are therefore given as they appear in somewhat distant effect It shows
only segments of the characteristic quatrefoils of the central windows. I
found by measurement their construction exceedingly simple. Four
circles are drawn in contact within the large circle. Two tangential lines
are then drawn to each opposite pair, enclosing the four circles in a hollow
cross. An inner circle struck through the intersections of the circles by
the tangents, truncates the cusps.

APPENDICES. 221

APPENDIX V.

p. 200. " In me of the noblest poems!^ — Coleric^'s Ode to France : —

^ Ye Qouds ! that far above me float and pause,

Whose pathless march no mortal may control ! '

Ye Ocean-Waves ! that wheresoever ye roll.
Yield homage only to eternal laws ! ^
Ye Woods ! that listen to the night-birds singing,'

Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,^
Save when your own imperious branches swinging,*

Have made a soleom music of the wind I
Where, like a man beloved of God,'
Through glooms, which never woodman trod,'

How oft, pursuing fismcies holy.
My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound.

Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,^
By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound !
O ye loud Waves 1 and O ye Forests high !

And O ye Clouds that far above me soared I
Thou rising Sun ! thou blue rejoicing Sky ! ' ^

Yea, every thing that is and will be free !

Bear witness for me, wheresoever ye be,

With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest Liberty.**

Noble verse, but erring thought : contrast George Herbert : —

^ Slight those who say amidst their sickly healths,
Thou hvest by rule. What doth not so but man ?
Houses are built by rule, and Commonwealths.
Entice the trusty sun, if that you can.
From his ecliptic line ; beckon the sky.
Who lives by rule then, keeps good company.

* If controlled by God, are they therefore more free ?

^ Is the ship they bear less noble in obeying those, and her captain also ? — and does
she gain dignity in disobeying her helm ?

* Pure nonsense.

' Why midway, any more than at the top, or the bottom ?

* Is it honourable then to be imperious, but not to be obedient — and what are the
branches imperative of? to what ?

' Nonsense again. We are not more like ^ men beloved of God," when we walk in
a wood, than when we walk out of one.

> Are woodmen naturally profane persons ?

^ Holiness, and Inspiration of an unguessable height, claimed perhaps too con-
fidently, for the fancies of a moonlight walk, among rude shapes and unconquerable
noises.

' ^ The rising sun has not been before noticed ; nor does it appear why the author
considers it more ''free" in rising than setting. Of all objects in Creation, the sun is
the last which any rational person would think of as moving in '^the spirit of divinest
Liberty,** or could wish that it should be permitted to do so.

222 APPENDICES.

*'' Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack,
And rots to nothing at the next great thaw ;
Man is a shop of rules : a well-truss'd pack
Whose every parcel underwrites a law.
Lose not thyself, nor give thy humours way ;
God gave them to thee undo: lock and key."

THE END.

CHISWICK PRESS : — CHARLES WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "The seven lamps of architecture"

See other formats