The seven lamps of architecture

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

BEQUEST

OF
ANITA D. S. BLAKE

THE

ARCHITECTURE.

LONDOK :

SPOTTISW CODES and SHAW,
New-street- Square.

THE

SEVEN LAMPS

OF

ARCHITECTURE.

BY

JOHN RUSK IN,

AUTHOR OF " MODERN PAINTERS."

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, DRAWN AND ETCHED BY THE AUTHOR.

LONDON :

SMITH, ELDER, AND CO., 65. CORNHILL.
1849.

PREFACE.

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 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

* 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 " Modern Painters ;'' he can only promise that
its delay shall not be owing to any indolence on his part.

VI PREFACE.

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 re-
presents 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 XL) enlarged and adapted
from Daguerreotypes, taken under my own superintendence.
Unfortunately, the great distance from the ground of the window
which is the subject of Plate IX. renders even the Daguerreotype
indistinct ; and I cannot answer for the accuracy of any of the
mosaic details, more especially of those which surround the
window, and which I rather imagine, in the original, to be
sculptured in relief. The general proportions are, however,
studiously preserved ; the spirals of the shafts are counted, and
the effect of the whole is as near that of the thing itself, as is
necessary for the purposes of illustration for which the plate
is given. For the accuracy of the rest I can answer, even to the
cracks in the stones, arid the number of them ; and though the

PREFACE. Vll

looseness of the drawing, and the picturesque character which is
necessarily given by an endeavour to draw old buildings as they
actually appear, may perhaps diminish their credit for archi-
tectural 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
symmetrical, by a single letter ; and the section itself by the same
letter with a line over it, a. — a. But if the section be unsym-
metrical, its direction is noted by two letters, a. a. a2 at its extre-
mities ; and the actual section by the same letters with lines over
them, a. a. «2, at the correspondent extremities.

The reader will perhaps be surprised by the small number of
buildings to which reference has been made. But it is to be
remembered that the following chapters pretend only to be a
statement of principles, illustrated each by one or two examples,
not an essay on European architecture ; and those examples I have
generally taken either from the buildings which I love best, or
from the schools of architecture which, 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
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

Vlll PREFACE.

d'Arno, 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.

PLATE

I. Ornaments from Rouen, St. Lo, and Venice to face page 25

II. Part of the Cathedral of St. Lo, Normandy - 48

III. Traceries from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, and Beauvais - 53

IV. Intersectional Mouldings - 59
V. Capital from the Lower Arcade of the Doge's Palace, Venice 8 1

VI. Arch from the Facade of the Church of San Michele at Lucca 84

VII. Pierced Ornaments from Lisieux, Bayeux, Verona, and Padua 87

VIII. Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice - 88

IX. Tracery from the Campanile of Giotto, at Florence - - 94

X. Traceries and Mouldings from Rouen and Salisbury - - 116

XL Balcony in the Campo St. Benedetto, Venice - 125

XII. Fragments from Abbeville, Lucca, Venice, and Pisa - 143

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

Ferrara - - 155

XIV. Sculptures from the Cathedral of Rouen - 160

CONTENTS.

Page

INTRODUCTORY - 1

CHAPTER I. THE LAMP or SACRIFICE - 7

II. THE LAMP OF TRUTH - 27

III. THE LAMP OF POWER - 63

IV. THE LAMP OF BEAUTY - 94
V. THE LAMP OF LIFE - 136

VI. 'THE LAMP OF MEMORY - 162

VII. THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE - 183

NOTES -------- 199

THE

SEVEN LAMPS

ARCHITECTURE,

ERRATA.

Page vii. line 11. for "a. a. a" read " a. aa"

line 13. for " a. a. a2" read " a. a,
50. bottom line, for " si," read " is."

55! line 16! } for " Pkte n-" read " PIate X'"
58. line 18. for " e d," read " c d."
81. line 12. for "Plate I. fig. 2.," read "Plate I. fig. 3."
92. line 23. for "east," read "west."
101. line 5 from bottom, for " effects," read " affects."
In Plate X. in the section, between a and A, for " a." read " g"

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
remembered ; because, while a man's sense and conscience, aided

B

THE

SEVEN LAMPS

OF

ARCHITECT UKE,

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
remembered ; because, while a man's sense and conscience, aided

B

2 INTRODUCTOKY.

by Revelation, are always enough, if earnestly directed, to enable
him to discover what is right, neither his sense, nor conscience,
nor feeling are ever enough, because they are not intended, to
determine for him what is possible. He knows neither his own
strength nor that of his fellows, neither the exact dependence to
be placed on his allies nor resistance to be expected from his oppo-
nents. 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 acknow-
ledgment 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 in-
explicable, relations of capability, chance, resistance, and incon-
venience, 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 supposing that our conjectural
utmost is in itself well, or, in other words, that the necessity of
offences renders them inoffensive.

What is true of human polity seems to me not less so of the
distinctively political art of Architecture. I have long felt con-
vinced of the necessity, in order to its progress, of some 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

INTRODUCTORY. 3

already regarded 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 modern 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
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.

B 2

4 INTRODUCTORY.

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.
It has been just said, that there is no branch of human work
whose constant laws have not close analogy with those which
govern every other mode of man's exertion. But, more than
this, exactly as we reduce to greater simplicity and surety any
one group of these practical laws, we shall find them passing
the mere condition of connection or analogy, and becoming the
actual expression of some ultimate nerve or fibre of the mighty
laws which govern the moral world. However mean or incon-
siderable 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

INTRODUCTORY. 5

may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most
especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. Hence
George Herbert —

" A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine ;
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine."

Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act or
manner of acting, we have choice of two separate lines of
argument: one based on representation of the expediency or
inherent value of the work, which is often small, and always
disputable ; the other based on proofs of its relations to the
higher orders of human virtue, and of its acceptableness, so far
as it goes, to Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is
commonly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly the
more conclusive ; only it is liable to give offence, as if there were
irreverence in adducing considerations so weighty in treating 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 ?

B 3

6 INTRODUCTORY.

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
up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years that
approach us is as solemn as it is full of mystery ; and the weight
of evil against which we have to contend, is increasing like the
letting out of water. It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics,
or the entertainment 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 questions in which
we would engage him, in the spirit which has become the habit
of his mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness
may be checked by the withdrawal of an hour, which has shown
him how even those things which seemed mechanical, indifferent,
or contemptible, depend for their perfection upon the acknowledg-
ment 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.

I. ARCHITECTURE is the art which so disposes and adorns the
edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them
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 iron
springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may
be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess
that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever
other name their work may justify ; but building does not become
architecture merely by the stability of what it erects ; and it is
no more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it to
receive and contain with comfort a required number of persons
occupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture which
makes a carriage 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
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,

B 4

8 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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 for offence. But if these projecting masses be
carved beneath into rounded courses, which are useless, and if the
headings of the intervals be arched and tref oiled, which is useless,
that is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line
so sharply and simply ; because there are few buildings which have
not some pretence or 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
perfectly 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
architectural 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.

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,

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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 an ignorant, dangerous, or perhaps criminal
principle by many among us. I have not space to enter into
dispute of all the various objections which may be urged against
it — they are many and 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 dis-
pute necessary to the production of any great work in the
kind with which we are at present concerned.

III. Now, first, to define this Lamp, or Spirit, of Sacrifice,
clearly. I have said that it prompts us to the offering of precious
things, merely because they are precious, not because they are useful
or necessary. It is a spirit, for instance, which of two marbles,
equally beautiful, applicable and durable, would choose the more
costly, because it was so, and of two kinds of decoration, equally
effective, would choose the more elaborate because it was so, in
order that it might in the same compass present more cost and
more thought. It is therefore most unreasoning and enthusiastic,
and perhaps best negatively defined, as the opposite of the
prevalent feeling of modern times, which desires to produce the
largest 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

10 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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 frequently, and
perhaps most properly, private ; while, in the latter case, the act
is commonly, and with greatest advantage, public. Now, it cannot
but at first appear futile to assert the expediency of self-denial for
its own sake, when, for so many sakes, it is every day necessary
to a far greater degree than any of us practise it. But I believe
it is just because we do not enough acknowledge or contemplate
it as a good in itself, that we are apt to fail in its duties when
they become 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 this as it may, it is not necessary to insist upon the matter
here ; since there are always higher and more useful channels of
self-sacrifice, for those who choose to practise it, than any
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
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

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 11

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
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

12 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

of the rite in its human uses and bearings, and only were added
to it as being in themselves pleasing to God.

Y. 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 offer unto the Lord my God of that
which doth cost me nothing."* 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 governour would demand it, as a testimony of
respect. "Offer it now unto thy governour." f And the less
valuable offering was rejected, not because it did not image
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.

* 2 Sara. xxiv. 24. Deut, xvi. 16, 17.
f Mai. i. 8.

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 13

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 Romanist
is absolutely as nothing, compared with the danger to the
Israelite of a sympathy with the idolatrous Egyptian l ; 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
sternly still in the darkness of their own desolation, when the
children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of Jerusalem,
and the lion tracked his prey in the dust of Samaria.* Yet,
against this mortal danger, provision was not made in one way,
(to man's thoughts the simplest, the most natural, the most

* Lam. ii. 11. 2 Kings, xvii. 25.

14 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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 ! 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 presentation
to Him, not only of the firstlings of the herd and fold, not only
of the fruits of the earth and the tithe of time, but of all
treasures of wisdom and beauty ; of the thought that invents,
and the hand that labours ; of wealth of wood, and weight of
stone ; of the strength of iron, and of the light of gold.

And let us not now lose sight of this broad and unabrogated
principle — I might say, incapable of being abrogated, so long
as men shall receive earthly gifts from God. Of all that they
have his tithe must be rendered to Him, or in so far and in so
much He is forgotten : of the skill and of the treasure, of the
strength and of the mind, of the time and of the toil, offering
must be made reverently ; and if there be any difference between

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 15

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 a better 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 ! 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
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 our

* Num. xxxi. 54. Psa. Ixxvi. 11.

16 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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, in
the course of the following chapters, that I am no advocate for
meanness of private habitation. I would fain introduce into it
all magnificence, care, and beauty, where they are possible;
but I would not have that useless expense in unnoticed fineries or
formalities; cornicings 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 there never yet
belonged the blessing of giving one ray of real pleasure, or becom-
ing of the remotest or most contemptible use — things which
cause half the expense of life, and destroy more than half its com-
fort, manliness, respectability, freshness, and facility. I speak
from experience : I know what it is to live in a cottage with a
deal floor and roof, and a hearth of mica slate ; and I know it to
be in many respects healthier and happier than living between a
Turkey 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,

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 17

would, if collectively 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 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.2 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 importunate, self-pro-
claimant splendour. Your gift may be given in an unpre-
suming way. Cut one or two shafts out of a porphyry whose
preciousness those only would know who would desire it to be so
used ; add another month's 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 Adullarn ? 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

c

18 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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 interfere
with the simplicity of the one, or abate, as if replacing, the zeal of
the other. That is the abuse and fallacy of Romanism, by which
the true spirit of Christian offering is directly contradicted. The
treatment of the Papists' temple is eminently exhibitory ; it is sur-
face work throughout ; and the danger and evil of their church
decoration lie, not in its reality — not in the true wealth and art of
it, of which the lower people are never cognizant — but in its
tinsel and glitter, in the gilding of the shrine and painting of the
image, in embroidery of dingy robes and crowding of imitated
gems ; all this being frequently thrust forward to the concealment
of what is really good or great in their buildings.3 Of an
offering of gratitude which is neither to be exhibited nor re-
warded, which is neither to win praise nor purchase salvation,
the Romanist (as such) has no conception.

IX. While, however, I would especially deprecate the imputa-
tion of any other acceptableness or usefulness to the gift itself than
that which it receives from the spirit 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
Israelite 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

* John xii. 5.

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 19

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
service — devoted, both by architect and employer ; by the one in
scrupulous, earnest, affectionate design'; by the other in expenditure
at least more frank, at least less calculating, than that which he
would admit in the indulgence of his own private feelings. Let
this principle be but once fairly acknowledged among us ; and
however it may be chilled and repressed in practice, however
feeble may be its real influence, however the sacredness of it may
be 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
thing 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 none of
us so good architects as to be able to work habitually beneath our
strength ; and yet there is not a building that I know of, lately
raised, wherein it is not sufficiently evident that neither architect
nor builder has done his best. It is the especial characteristic
of modern work. All old work nearly has been hard work. It
may be the hard work of children, of barbarians, of rustics ; but
it is always their utmost. Ours has as constantly the look of

c 2

20 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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 much we are to do, but of how it is to be done ; it is not a
question of doing more, but of doing better. Do not let us boss
our roofs with wretched, half- worked, blunt-edged rosettes ; do not
let us flank our gates with rigid imitations of medieval 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 aiford, compelling upon
him the one condition, that they shall be the best he can do ; place
them where they will be of 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

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 21

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 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 confessedly 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

* Mod. Painters, Part I. Sec. 1. Chap. 3.
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22 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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 roof. 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
distant from the eye. Here, again, the principle of honesty must
govern our treatment : we must riot 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, arid 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

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 23

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
above that come the usual and more visible statues and niches.
So in the campanile at Florence, the circuit of bas-reliefs is on its
lowest story ; above that come its statues ; and above them all 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 the work to the distance, the
niches and statues which crown the northern one, at a h eight
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 ornaments
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
perfectly natural and right, the solidity of the foundation being as

* 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.

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24 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

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,
and a rich cornice crowns the whole. In such truly line 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 \vorst fault of all. I do not know any thing more painful
or pitiful than the kind of ivory carving with which the Certosa
of Pa via, and part of the Colleone 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,

Wate 1 .

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 25

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
lens. Hence the greatness of the northern Gothic as contrasted
with vthe 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 overcharged 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.l.), one of the smallest niches of the central
gate of Rouen. That gate I suppose to be the most exquisite
piece of pure flamboyant work existing; for though I have spoken
of the upper portions, especially the receding window, as de-
generate, 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. 4 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-

26 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE.

bleness to contrast, and would be wearisome if universal. They
are but the rests and monotones of the art; it is to its far
happier, far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of
variegated mosaic, charged with wild fancies and dark hosts
of imagery, thicker and quainter than ever filled the depth of
midsummer dream ; those vaulted gates, trellised with close
leaves; those window-labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry
light ; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and dia-
demed 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.

27

CHAP. II.

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 world 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, may turn the shadow back by the way by
which it had gone down : but for one, the line of the horizon is
irregular and undefined ; and this, too, the very equator and
girdle of them all — Truth ; that only one of which there are no
degrees, but breaks and rents continually ; that pillar of the earth,
yet a cloudy pillar ; that golden and narrow line, which the very
powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy and pru-
dence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage
overshadows with his shield, imagination covers with her wings,
and charity dims with her tears. How difficult must the mainten-
ance of that authority be, which, while it has to restrain the hosti-
lity 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 ! There are
some faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the

28 THE LAMP OF TKUTH.

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

We do not enough consider this ; nor enough dread the slight
and continual occasions of offence against her. We are too much
in the habit of looking at falsehood in its darkest associations,
and through the colour of its worst 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 does the largest sum of mis-
chief 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 him-
self, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which
any man who pierces, we thank as we would thank one who dug
a well in a desert ; happy in that the thirst for truth still remains
with us, even when we have wilfully left the fountains of it.

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, partly
upon the extent of its consequences. Its pardonableness depends,
humanly speaking, on the degree of temptation to it. One
class of circumstances determines the weight of the attaching
punishment ; the other, the claim to remission of punishment :
and since it is not easy for men to estimate the relative weight,
nor possible for them to know the relative consequences, of crime,
it is usually wise in them to quit the care of such nice measure-
ments, and to look to the other and clearer condition of cul-
pability, 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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 29

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 largest or blackest. Speaking
truth is like writing fair, and comes only by practice ; it is less
a matter of will than of habit, and 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 precision
is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it
under intimidation or penalty ; and it is a strange thought how
many men there 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,
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 neces-
sary 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.

II. 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

30 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

of chivalry : and it is, indeed, marvellous to see what power and
universality there is 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 instances few and familiar, 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 supposition.

III. For it might be at first thought that the whole kingdom
of imagination was one of deception also. Not so : the action
of the imagination is a voluntary summoning of the conceptions
of things absent or impossible ; and the pleasure and nobility
of the imagination partly consist in its knowledge and con-
templation 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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 31

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,
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.

Y. 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 ;
arid 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

32 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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
so evidently and easily in our power. We may not be able to
command good, or beautiful, or inventive architecture ; but we
can command an honest architecture : the rneagreness 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 : —

1st. 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 marbling 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. 1st. Structural Deceits. I have limited these to the de-
termined 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 LAMP OF TRUTH. 33

the great secrets of its structure, as an animal form does,
although from a careless observer they may be concealed. In
the vaulting of a Gothic roof it is no deceit to throw the strength
into the ribs of it, and make the intermediate vault a mere
shell. Such a structure would be presumed by an intelligent
observer, the first time he saw such a roof ; and the beauty of its
traceries would be enhanced to him if they confessed and followed
the lines of its main strength. If, however, the intermediate
shell were made of wood instead of stone, and whitewashed to
look like the rest, — this would, of course, be direct deceit, and
altogether 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

J

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 affecting 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

D

34 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

a blue vault. But we know the contrary, in both instances ;
we know the cloud to be a damp fog, or a drift of snow flakes ;
and the sky to be a lightless abyss. There is, therefore, no dis-
honesty, 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
dextrous artifices which compel us to feel as if there were fibre
in its shafts and life in its branches. Nor is even the concealment
of the support of the external 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 gene-
rally 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 unknown, to conceal also the means of bearing it,
leaving only to be perceived so much of the support as is
indeed adequate to the weight supposed. For the shafts do,
indeed, bear as much as they are ever imagined to bear, and the
system of added support is no more, as a matter of conscience, to
be exhibited, than, in the human or any other form, mechanical
provisions for those functions which are themselves 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. Mr. Hope wisely reprehends, for this reason, the
arrangement of the main piers of St. Sophia at Constantinople.
King's College Chapel, Cambridge, is a piece of architectural jug-
gling, if possible still more to be condemned, because less sublime.

VIII. With deceptive concealments of structure are to be
classed, though still more blarneable, 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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 35

in late 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 sloping bar of stone, sustained by an arch with
its spandril carried farthest down on the lowest side, and
dying into the vertical of the outer pier ; that pier being, of
course, not square, but rather a piece of wall set at right angles
to the supported 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 pin-
nacle 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 mem-
ber; 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 sup-
porters, 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 of the last and most degraded
forms5; and its entire plan and decoration resembling, and deserving

36 THE LAMP OF TKUTH.

little more credit than, the burnt sugar ornaments of elaborate
confectionary. There are hardly any of the magnificent and
serene constructions of the early Gothic which have not, in the
course of time, been gradually thinned and pared away into these
skeletons, which sometimes indeed, when their lines truly follow
the structure of the original masses, have an interest like that of
the fibrous framework of leaves from which the substance has
been 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.6

IX. Perhaps the most fruitful source of these kinds of cor-
ruption which we have to guard against in recent times, is
one which, nevertheless, comes in a " questionable shape," and of
which it is not easy to determine the proper laws and limits ; I
mean the use of iron. The definition of the art of 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 employment 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
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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 37

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 7, 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 chain around the dome of
Florence, or the builders of Salisbury their elaborate iron binding
of the central tower.8 If, however, we would not fall into the
old sophistry of the grains of corn and the heap, we must find
a rule which may enable us to stop somewhere. This rule is,
I think, that metals may be used as a cement but not as a
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

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38 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

has obtained the knowledge and practice of iron work, metal rods
or rivets should not be used in the place of cement, and establish
the same or a greater strength and adherence, without in any
wise inducing departure from the types and system of archi-
tecture before established ; nor does it make any difference
except as to sightliness, whether the metal bands or rods so
employed, be in the body of the wall or on its exterior, or set as
stays and cross-bands ; so only that the use of them be always
and distinctly one which might be superseded by mere strength
of cement ; as for instance if a pinnacle or mullion be propped or
tied by an iron band, it is evident that the iron only 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 crushing, 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.

XI. The limit, however, thus determined, is an ultimate one,
and it is well in all things to be cautious how we approach the
utmost limit of lawfulness ; so that, although the 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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 39

possible with the weight of the one and the strength of the other,
and rather sometimes to forego a grace, or to confess a weakness,
than attain the one, or conceal the other, by means verging upon
dishonesty.

Nevertheless, where the design is of such 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
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 exhibited,
so that it be understood by the spectator as an admitted help, and
that no principal stones are introduced in positions apparently im-
possible for them to retain, although a riddle here and there, in un-
important 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 maintenance of the visibly separate
stones, alternate marble and serpentine, cannot be understood
until their cross-cutting is seen below. Each block is, of course,
of the form given in fig. 5.

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

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40 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

and narrowly limiting his resources or his art, that the highest
greatness and the highest wisdom are shown, the first by a noble
submission to, the second by a thoughtful providence for, certain
voluntarily admitted restraints. 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 times
and in countless ways, be infringed with apparent advantage, but
which are never infringed, whatever costly arrangements or adap-
tations their observance 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 limitation. 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 may seem, not only authori-
ative perfection, but even the perfection of Obedience — an

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 41

obedience to His own laws : and in the cumbrous movement of
those unwieldiest of His creatures we are reminded, even in His
divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the 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 or 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 : — 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.

Second. That so great a painter as Michael Angelo would
always stop short, in such minor parts of his design, of the degree
of vulgar force which would be necessary to induce the supposition
of their reality ; and, strangely as it may sound, would never
paint badly enough to deceive.

But though right and wrong are thus found broadly opposed in
works severally so mean and so mighty as the roof of Milan and
that of the Sistine, there are works neither so great nor so mean,

42 THE LAMP OF TEUTH.

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 deception;
it does not assert any material whatever. Whether it be on wood
or on stone, or, as will naturally be supposed, on plaster, does
not matter. Whatever the material, good painting makes it more
precious ; nor can it ever be said to deceive respecting the ground
of which it gives us no information. To cover brick with plaster,
and this plaster with fresco, is, therefore, perfectly legitimate; and
as desirable a mode of decoration, as it is constant in the great
periods. Verona and Venice are now seen deprived of more than
half their former 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 canvass. But to cover brick
with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it may
look like stone, is to tell a falsehood ; and is just as contemptible
a procedure as the other is noble.

It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint 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 fiat 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
thence forward 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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 43

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
cloud- wrapt opening in the seventh heaven, crowded with a rushing
sea of angels. Is this wrong ? Not so : for the subject at once
precludes the possibility of deception. We might have taken the
vines for a veritable pergola, and the children for its haunting
ragazzi ; but we know the stayed clouds and moveless angels must
be man's work ; let him put his utmost strength to it and welcome,
he can enchant us, but cannot betray.

We may thus apply the rule to the highest, as well as the
art of daily occurrence, 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 por-
tions, 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 pleasure-
ableness in places meant for idleness, and are innocent enough as
long as they are regarded as mere toys.

XVI. Touching the false representation of material, the question
is infinitely more simple, and the law more sweeping ; all such
imitations are utterly base and inadmissible. It is melancholy
to think of the time and expense lost in marbling the shop fronts
of London alone, and of the waste of our resources in absolute
vanities, in things about which no mortal cares, by which no eye
is ever arrested, unless painfully, and which do not add one whit
to comfort, or cleanliness, or even to that great object of commer-

44 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

cial art — conspicuousness. But in architecture of a higher rank,
how much more is it to be condemned ! I have made it a rule in
the present work not to blame specifically ; but I may, 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 foundation of the
staircase should be mocked at its landing by an imitation, the
more blameable because tolerably successful. The only effect of
it is to cast a suspicion upon the true stones below, and upon
every bit of granite afterwards encountered. One feels a doubt,
after it, of the honesty of Memnon himself. But even this, how-
ever 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 un-
important or excusable error which brings even these shadows of
vanity and falsehood into the house of prayer. The first con-
dition 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 any thing 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 things that
it has thence received a kind of nobility itself,) it must be a bad
design indeed, which is grossly offensive. I recollect 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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 45

Birmingham metal candlesticks, and, above all, the green and
yellow sickness of the false marble — disguises all, observe ; false-
hoods 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 regard, 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
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. Never-
theless, 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 ;

46 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

only it should be used with respect, and to express magnificence,
or sacredness, and not in lavish vanity, or in sign painting. Of
its expedience, however, any more than of that of 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.

XVIII. It is well known, that what is meant by a church's being
built of marble is, in nearly all cases, only that a veneering of
marble has been fastened on the rough brick wall, built with
certain projections to receive it; and that what appear to be
massy stones, are nothing more than external slabs.

Now, it is evident, that, in this case, the question of right is
on the same ground as in that of gilding. If it be clearly
understood that a marble facing does not pretend or imply a
marble wall, there is no harm in it ; and as it is also evident
that, when very precious stones are used, as jaspers and serpen-
tines, 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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 47

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 th ink 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 principles of which we have hitherto
spoken — Sacrifice and Truth, we should sometimes rather spare
external ornament than diminish the unseen value and consistency
of what we do ; and I believe that a better manner of design,
and a more careful and studious, if less abundant, decoration
would follow, upon the consciousness of thoroughness in the
substance. And, indeed, this is to be remembered, with respect
to all the points we have examined ; that while we have traced
the limits of license, we have not fixed those of that high rectitude
which refuses license. It is thus true that there is no falsity,
and much beauty, in the use of external colour, 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 secured, that the accessory power of painting may be called
in, for the delight of the immediate time ; nor this, as I think,
until every resource of a more stable kind has been exhausted.
The true colours of architecture are those of natural stone, and
I would fain see these taken advantage of to the full. Every
variety of hue, from pale yellow to purple, passing through
orange, red, and brown, is entirely at our command ; nearly every
kind of green and gray is also attainable ; and with these, and pure
white, what harmonies might we not achieve ? Of stained and

48 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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 external colouring may, indeed, be
employed without 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 evidently no efficient reason against its use when other
cannot be had. Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, is
of the grossest kind, is, I think, a 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-

Published i>,

THE LAMP OF TRUTH, 49

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 delight fulness depends on bur 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 exactly 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 imposi-
tion, 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,
'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.

E

50 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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,
nevertheless, 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 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
si naturally supposed to be carved by hand, we must not carve it

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 51

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 mould-
ings 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 their mould. But I believe no cause to have been
more 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, com-
posed of leafage cut flat out of sheet iron, and twisted at the work-
man's will. No ornaments, on the contrary, are so cold, clumsy,
and vulgar, so essentially incapable of a fine line or shadow, as
those of cast-iron ; and while, on the score of truth, we can hardly
allege any thing against them, since they are always distinguish-
able, at a glance, from 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 decoration. Their
inefficiency and paltriness I shall endeavour to show more con-
clusively 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 subtile forms of it, against which it is less easy to guard
by definite law, than by the watchfulness of a manly and unaf-

52 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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 feelingless
spectators ; just as mean and shallow minds are, in other matters,
delighted with the sense of over-reaching, or tickled with the con-
ceit of detecting the intention to over-reach : and when subtleties
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 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
chapter 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

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THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 53

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 VII. fig. 2.,
an interesting case of rude penetration of a high and simply
trefoiled shield, from the church of the Eremitam at Padua. But
the more frequent and typical form is that of the double sub-arch,
decorated with various piercings of the space between it and the
superior arch ; with a simple trefoil under a round arch, in the
Abbaye aux Hommes,Caen9 (Plate III. fig. 1.); with a very beauti-
fully proportioned quatrefoil, in the triforium of Eu, and that of
the choir of Lisieux ; with quatrefoils, sixfoils, and septfoils, 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 ~f the nave chapels of Rouen,
fig. 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 en-
larging, 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-

E 3

54 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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 judg-
ments in the management alike of the tracery and decorations.
I have given, in Plate IX., an exquisite example of it, from a panel
decoration of the buttresses of the north door of Rouen ; and in
order that the reader may understand what truly fine Gothic
work is, and how nobly it unites fantasy and law, as well as for
our immediate purpose, it will be well that he should examine its
sections and mouldings in detail (they are described in the fourth
Chapter, § xxvii.), and that the more carefully, because this design
belongs to a period in which the most important change took place
in the spirit of Gothic architecture, which, perhaps, ever resulted
from the natural progress of any art. That tracery marks a pause
between the laying aside of one great ruling principle, and the
taking up of another ; a pause as marked, as clear, as conspicuous
to the distant view of after times, as to the distant glance of the
traveller is the culminating ridge of the mountain chain over which
he has passed. It 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 con-
tinuous line, and thence downwards. 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

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 55

nearest heaven, the builders looked back, for the last time, to the
way by which they had corne, 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 mass, as the
element of decoration.

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 IX., as compared with earlier mouldings, be-
cause that beauty and care are singularly significant. They mark
that the traceries had caught the eye of the architect. Up to that
time, up to the very last instant in which the reduction and
thinning of the intervening stone was consummated, his eye had
been on the openings only, on the stars of light. He did not
care about the stone ; a rude border of moulding was all he
needed, it was the penetrating shape which he was watching.
But when that shape had 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 under his care, thought over
it, and distributed its members as we see.

Now, the great pause was at the moment when the space and
the dividing stone-work were both equally considered. It did
not last fifty years. The forms of the tracery were seized with
a childish delight in the novel source of beauty ; and the inter-
vening space was cast aside, as an element of decoration, for

E 4

56 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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.

XXIV. The reader will observe that, up to the last expansion of
the penetrations, the stone-work was necessarily considered, as it
actually is, stiff, and unyielding. It was so, also, during the pause
of which I have spoken, when the forms of the tracery were still
severe and pure ; delicate indeed, but perfectly firm.

At the close of the period of pause, the first sign of serious
change was like a low breeze, passing through the emaciated
tracery, and making it tremble. It began to undulate like the
threads of a cobweb lifted by the wind. It lost its essence as a
structure of stone. Reduced to the slenderness of threads, it
began to be considered as possessing also their flexibility. The
architect was pleased with this his new fancy, and set 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
developments, 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 slenderness in the ribs or branches, while many
of the other suggested conditions of resemblance were perfectly
true. A tree branch, though in a certain sense flexible, is not
ductile ; it is as firm in its own form as the rib of stone ; both
of them will yield up to certain limits, both of them breaking
when those limits are exceeded ; while the tree trunk will bend no
more than the stone pillar. But when the tracery is assumed to be

THE LAMP OF TRUTH. 57

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.

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

XXVI. In the drawing of the shafts of the door at Lisieux, under
the spandril, in Plate VII., the reader will see the mode of managing
the intersection of similar mouldings, which was universal in the
great periods. They melted into each other, and became one at
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 considerable portion
of their curves, meeting by contact, rather than by intersection ;

58 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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 s, is exactly the same as that across any
break of the separated moulding above, as s. 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. 1. Plate IV. gives the
junction of the mouldings of the gable and vertical, in the window
of the spire of Salisbury. That of the gable is composed of a
single, and that of the vertical of a double cavetto, decorated
with ball-flowers ; and the larger single moulding swallows up one
of the double ones, and pushes forward among the smaller balls
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 de.

XXVII. The very awkwardness with which such occurrences
of difficulty are met by the earlier builder, marks his dislike of the
system, and unwillingness to attract the eye to such arrangements.
There is another very clumsy one, in the junction of the upper-
arid 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, however, 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

Plate IV.

THE LAMP OF TEUTH. 59

by the continued base of the central, or other larger, columns
with which they were grouped ; but it being felt, when the eye of
the architect became fastidious, that the dimension of moulding
which was right for the base of a large shaft, was wrong for that
of a small one, each shaft had an independent base; at first, those of
the smaller died simply down on that of the larger ; but when the
vertical sections of both became complicated, the bases of the smaller
shafts were considered to exist within those of the larger, and
the places of their 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 clay, leaving their points and
angles sticking out here and there, like the edges of sharp crystals
out of a nodule of earth. The exhibition of technical dexterity in
work of this kind, is often marvellous, the strangest possible shapes
of sections being calculated to a hair's-breadth, and the occurrence
of the under and emergent forms being rendered, even in places
where they are so slight that they can hardly be detected but by
the 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 &, 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 in-
closing shaft 4, and would, therefore, not be seen, unless two ver-
tical 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 &, n, taken respectively at the levels k, n, will explain

60 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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 quantities
were always as beautiful as they were intricate ; and, though the
lines of intersection were harsh, they were exquisitely opposed to
the flower-work of the interposing mouldings. But the fancy did
not stop here ; it rose from the bases into the arches ; and there,
not finding room enough for its exhibition, it withdrew the
capitals from the heads even of cylindrical shafts, (we cannot but
admire, while we regret, the boldness of the men who could defy
the authority and custom of all the nations of the earth for a
space of some three thousand years,) in order that the arch
mouldings might appear to emerge from the pillar, as at its base
they had been lost in it, and not to terminate on the abacus of
the capital; then they ran the mouldings across and through
each other, at the point of the arch ; and finally, not finding their
natural directions enough to furnish as many occasions of inter-
section as they wished, bent them hither and thither, and cut off
their ends short, when they had passed the point of intersection.
Fig. 2. Plate IV., is part of a flying buttress from the apse of
St. Gervais at Falaise, in which the moulding whose section is rudely
given above at/, (taken vertically through the point /,) 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, gg, is that of the arch moulding, which is
three times reduplicated, and six times intersected by itself,
the ends being cut off when they become unmanageable. This
style is, indeed, earlier exaggerated in Switzerland and Germany,
owing to the imitation in stone of the dovetailing of wood, par-

THE LAMP OF TRUTIL 61

ticularly of the intersecting of beams at the angles of chalets ;
but it only furnishes the more plain instance of the danger of
the fallacious system which, from the beginning, repressed the
German, and, in the end, ruined the French, Gothic. It would
be too painful a task to follow further the caricatures of form,
and 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,
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 con-
sistency, 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 multi-
tudinous 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 survived, and lived ; it would have stood forth in
stern comparison with the enervated sensuality of the renaissance ;
it would have risen in renewed and purified 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 softness of luxury, srnote 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

62 THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

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 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.

63

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

64 THE LAMP 'OF POWER.

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 inferior pre-
tension, but owing their irnpressiveness to characters of less en-
during nobility — to value of material, accumulation of ornament,
or ingenuity of mechanical construction. Especial interest may,
indeed, have been awakened by such circumstances, and the
memory may have been, consequently, rendered tenacious of par-
ticular 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 weariness of some shadowy
wall whose separate stones are like mountain foundations, and yet
numberless.

II. Now, the difference between these two orders of building
is not merely that which there is in nature between things beau-
tiful and sublime. It is, also, the difference between what is
derivative and original in man's work ; for whatever is in archi-
tecture fair or beautiful, is imitated from natural forms ; and
what is not so derived, but depends for its dignity upon arrange-
ment 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, there-
fore, shows man either as gathering or governing ; and the secrets
of his success are his knowing what to gather, and how to rule.
These are the two great intellectual Lamps of Architecture ; the
one consisting in a just and humble veneration for the works of
God upon the earth, and the other in an understanding of the
dominion over those works which has been vested in man.

THE LAMP OF POWER. 65

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 rightly examined in a general view of all the arts ; but
its sympathy, in architecture, with the vast controlling powers of
Nature herself, is special, and may shortly be considered ; and that
with the more advantage, that it has, of late, been little felt or
regarded by architects. I have seen, in recent efforts, much
contest between two schools, one affecting originality, and the
other legality — many attempts at beauty of design — many
ingenious adaptations of construction; but I have never seen
any aim at the expression of abstract power ; never any appear-
ance of a consciousness that, in this primal art of man, there
is room for the marking of his relations with the mightiest,
as well as the fairest, works of God ; and that those works 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 them-
selves, 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

F

66 THE LAMP OF POWER.

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 energy, 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 Chamouiii ;
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.
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,

THE LAMP OF POWEE. 67

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.

Y. 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 poAver 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 modern buildings that we would fain have an
universal excellence in them ; and so part of the funds must go in
painting, part in gilding, part in fitting up, part in painted
windows, part in small steeples, part in ornaments here and there ;
and neither the windows, nor the steeple, nor the ornaments, are
worth their materials. For there is a crust about the impressible
part of men's minds, which must be pierced through before they
can be touched 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
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

F 2

68 THE LAMP OF POWER.

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 old
houses, and, in a sort, in the Greek temple, and in all buildings
with heavy cornices or heads. Now, in all these cases, if the
bounding 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 line, 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

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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
sense of threatening conveyed by this form is a nobler charac-
ter 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

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70 THE LAMP OF POWEE.

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 interest

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 detestable

Perpendicular, the object is to get rid of the wall surface, arid

keep the eye altogether on tracery of line ; in Romanesque

work and Egyptian, the wall is a confessed and honoured member,

and the light is often allowed to fall on large areas of it, variously

decorated. Now, both these principles are admitted by Nature,

the one in her woods and thickets, the other in her plains,

and cliff's, and waters ; but the latter is pre-eminently the principle

of power, and, in some sense, of beauty also. For, whatever

infinity of fair form there may be in the maze of the forest, there

is a fairer, as I think, in the surface of the quiet lake ; and I hardly

know that association of shaft or tracery, for which I would

exchange the warm sleep of sunshine on some smooth, broad,

human-like front of marble. Nevertheless, if breadth is to be

beautiful, its substance must in some sort be beautiful ; and we

must not hastily condemn the exclusive resting of the northern

THE LAMP OF POWEK. 71

architects in divided lines, until at least we have remembered
the difference between a blank surface of Caen stone, and one
mixed from Genoa and Carrara, of serpentine with snow : but
as regards abstract power and awfulness, there is no question ;
without breadth of surface it is in vain to seek them, and it
matters little, so that the surface be wide, bold, and unbroken,
whether it be of brick or of jasper ; the light of heaven upon it,
and the weight of earth in it, are all we need : for it is singular
how forgetful the mind may become both of material and work-
manship, if only it have space enough over which to range, and
to remind it, however feebly, of the joy that it has in contem-
plating the flatness and sweep of great plains and broad seas.
And it is a noble thing for men to do this with their cut stone
or moulded clay, and to make the face of a wall look infinite, and
its edge against the sky like an horizon : or even if less than
this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the play of passing
light on its broad surface, and to see by how many artifices and
gradations of tinting and shadow, time and storm will set their
wild signatures upon it ; and how in the rising or declining of the
day the unbroken twilight rests long and luridly on its high
lineless forehead, and fades away untraceably down its tiers of
confused and countless stone.

IX. This, then, being, as I think, one of the peculiar elements
of sublime architecture, it may be easily seen how necessarily
consequent upon the love of it will be the choice of a form
approaching to the square for the main outline.

For, in whatever direction the building is contracted, in that
direction the eye will be drawn to its terminal lines; and the
sense of surface will only be at its fullest when those lines are
removed, in every direction, as far as possible. Thus the square
and circle are pre-eminently the areas of power among those
bounded by purely straight or curved lines ; and these, with
their relative solids, the cube and sphere, and relative solids of
progression, (as in the investigation of the laws of proportion
I shall call those masses which are generated by the progression
of an area of given form along a line in a given direction,) the

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72 THE LAMP OF POWER.

square and cylindrical column, are the elements of utmost power
in all architectural arrangements. On the other hand, grace
and perfect proportion require an elongation in some one di-
rection : and a sense of power may be communicated to this form
of magnitude by a continuous series of any marked features,
such as the eye may be unable to number; while yet we feel,
from their boldness, decision, and simplicity, that it is indeed
their multitude which has embarrassed us, not any confusion
or indistinctness of form. This expedient of continued series
forms the sublimity of arcades and aisles, of all ranges of
columns, and, on a smaller scale, of those Greek mouldings,
of which, repeated as they now are in all the meanest and most
familiar forms of our furniture, it is impossible altogether to
weary. Now, it is evident that the architect has choice of two
types of form, each properly associated with its own kind of
interest or decoration : the square, or greatest area, to be chosen
especially when the surface is to be the subject of thought ; and
the elongated area, when the divisions of the surface are to be
subjects of thought. Both these orders of form, as I think nearly
every other source of power and beauty, are marvellously united
in that building which I fear to weary the reader by bringing
forward too frequently, as a model of all perfection — the Doge's
palace at Venice : its general arrangement, a hollow square ; its
principal fa9ade, 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 give it length being confined to the lower stories,
and the upper, between its broad windows left a mighty surface of
smooth marble, chequered with blocks of alternate rose-colour and
white. It would be impossible, I believe, to invent a more magni-
ficent 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-

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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 semi-
circle, 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 surface, observe, of wall decorated with striped marble
above ; the whole arrangement (not a peculiar one, but charac-
teristic of every church of the period; and, to my feeling, the
most majestic ; not perhaps the fairest, but the mightiest type of
form which the mind of man has ever conceived) based exclusively
on associations of the circle and the square.

I am now, however, trenching upon ground which I desire to
reserve for more careful examination, in connection with other
esthetic 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

74 THE LAMP OF POWEK.

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
vertebras, 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 versa. For if a building be under the
mark of average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase its
apparent size (too easily measurable) by any proportionate dimi-
nution in the scale of its masonry. But it may be often in our
power to give it a certain nobility by building it of massy stones,
or, at all events, introducing such into its make. Thus it is 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
project conveniently, and to be built into the framework of the
wall. On the other hand, after a building has once reached the
mark of majestic size, it matters, indeed, comparatively little
whether its masonry be large or small, but if it be 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 fagade of the church of St. Madeleine at Paris, where the
columns, being built of very small stones of nearly equal size

THE LAMP OF POWER. 75

with visible joints, look as if they were covered with a close
trellis. So, then, that masonry will be generally the most magni-
ficent 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 chiselling
and polishing stones which would have been better left as they
came from the quarry, would often raise a building a story
higher. Only in this there is to be a certain respect for material
also : for if we build in marble, or in any limestone, the known
ease of the workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly ;
it will be well to take advantage of the stone's softness, and to
make the design delicate and dependent upon smoothness of
chiselled surfaces : but if we build in granite or lava, it is a folly,
in most cases, to cast away the 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 great that pretends to be equivalent ; and a stern
expression of brotherhood with the mountain heart from which
it has been rent, ill-exchanged for a glistering obedience to the
rule and measure of men. His eye must be delicate indeed, who
would desire to see the Pitti palace polished.

XII. Next to those of the masonry, we have to consider the

76 THE LAMP OF POWER.

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 canvass 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 canvass surface. And, for my own part, I think
a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of gesso a fairer thing than
most pictures I see painted on it ; much more, a noble surface of
stone than most architectural features which it is caused to
assume. But however this may be, the canvass 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
opposition) 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

THE LAMP OF POWER. 77

light with an under tone throughout, and to make it delightful
with sweet colour, or awful with lurid colour, and to represent
distance, and air, and sun, by the depth of it, and fill its whole space
with expression, can deal with an enormous, nay, almost with an
universal, extent of it, and the best painters most delight in such
extent ; but as light, with the architect, is nearly always liable to
become full and untempered sunshine seen upon solid surface,
his only rests, and his chief means of sublimity, are definite shades.
So that, after size and weight, the Power of architecture may be
said to depend on the quantity (whether measured in space or
intenseness) of its shadow ; and it seems to me, that the reality of
its works, and the use and influence they have in the daily life of
men, (as opposed to those works of art with which we have nothing
to do but in times of rest or of pleasure,) require of it that it
should express a kind of human sympathy, by a measure of dark-
ness as great as there is in human life : and that as the great poem
and great fiction generally affect us most by the majesty of their
masses of shade, and cannot take hold upon us if they affect a
continuance of lyric sprightliness, but must be serious often, and
sometimes melancholy, else they do not express the truth of this
wild world of ours ; so there must be, in this magnificently human
art of 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 un watered plains ; and lead along the lights, as a

78 THE LAMP OF POWER.

founder does his hot rnetal ; 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
is not divided into masses, can ever be of the smallest value : this
great law respecting breadth, precisely the same in architecture
and painting, is so important, that the examination of its two prin-
cipal 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 light,
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 styles dependent upon it : one in which the
forms are drawn with light upon darkness, as in Greek sculpture
and pillars ; the other in which they are drawn with darkness
upon light, as in early Gothic foliation. Now, it is not in the
designer's power determinately to vary degrees and places of
darkness, but it is altogether in his power to vary in determined
directions his degrees of light. Hence the use of the dark mass
characterises, generally, a trenchant style of design, in which the
darks and lights are both flat, and terminated by sharp edges ;
while the use of the light mass is in the same way associated with

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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
well described by Mr. Eastlake* to need recapitulation ; the
conclusion which forces itself upon us from the facts he has re-
marked, 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 intel-
ligibly 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

* Literature of the Fine Arts. — Essay on Bas-relief.

80 THE LAMP OF POWEE.

eye to ask for a similar boundary of solid form ; the dome
followed, and necessarily the decorative masses were thence-
forward 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 executed
by the Byzantines with skill enough to show that their preference
of the massive form was by no means compulsory, nor can I
think it unwise. On the contrary, while the arrangements of
line are far more artful in the Greek capital, the Byzantine light
and shade are as incontestibly more grand and masculine, based
on that quality of pure gradation, which nearly all natural objects
possess, and the attainment of which is, in fact, the first and
most palpable purpose in natural arrangements of grand form.
The rolling heap of the thunder-cloud, divided by rents, and
multiplied by wreaths, yet gathering them all into its broad, tor-
rid, 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 designed ; and show us that those builders had truer sym-
pathy 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 sophistic nor penetrative, but embracing and

. K.delet sc.

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mysterious ; a power faithful more than thoughtful, which con-
ceived and felt more than it created; a power that neither
comprehended nor ruled itself, but worked and wandered as it
listed, like mountain streams and winds ; and which could not
rest in the expression or seizure of finite form. It could not
bury itself in acanthus leaves. Its imagery was taken from the
shadows of the storms and hills, and had fellowship with the
night and day of the earth itself.

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 I. fig. 2. 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 VI., show the effect of heavy leafage and thick stems
arranged on a surface whose curve is a simple quadrant, the
light dying from off them as it turns. It would be difficult, as I
think, to invent any thing more noble : and I insist on the
broad character of their arrangement the more earnestly, because,
afterwards modified by greater skill in its management, it became
characteristic of the richest pieces of Gothic design. The capital,
given in Plate V., is of the noblest period of the Venetian
Gothic; and it is interesting to see the play of leafage so
luxuriant, 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 sur-
rounding sea, is done by the masters of the Cis-Alpine Gothic,
more timidly, and with a manner somewhat cramped and cold,
but not less expressing their assent to the same great law.
The ice 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-

G

82 THE LAMP OF POWER.

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 cathedral 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 outwards 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 XIII. 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 instances which
might be gathered even from the fully developed flamboyant,
the feeling of breadth being retained in minor ornaments, long
after it had been lost in the main design, and sometimes capri-
ciously renewing itself throughout, as in the cylindrical niches
and pedestals which enrich the porches of Caudebec and Rouen.
Fig. 1. 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 connected
with the management of larger curved surfaces ; into the causes
of the difference in proportion necessary to be observed between
round and square towers ; nor into the reasons why a column or
ball may be richly ornamented, while surface decoration would
be inexpedient on masses like the Castle of St. Angelo, the tomb
of Cecilia Metella, or the dome of St. Peter's. But what has

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been above said of the desirableness of serenity in plane surfaces,
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 fir. It is rare that we see any
representation of it other than caricature. It is conceived as
if it grew in one plane, or as a section of a tree, with a set of
boughs symmetrically dependent on opposite sides. It is thought
formal, unmanageable, and ugly. It would be so, if it grew as
it is drawn. But the Power of the tree is not in that 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
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

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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 peculiar
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 upon the shadow so obtained, the
eye is still, as in classical architecture, caused to dwell upon the
projecting columns, capitals, and wall, as in Plate VI. But with
the enlargement of the window, which, in the Lombard and Roma-
nesque churches, is usually little more than an arched slit, came
the conception of the simpler mode of decoration, by penetrations
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 wanting.
The composition of the whole depends on the proportioning 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

J.R.iel.et so.

PiiUished "by Smith.Zlder &• C° London

THE LAMP OF POWER. 85

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 mouldings
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 of 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 attention
paid by Orgagna to his surface ornament, was connected with the
intention of so glazing them. It is singular to see, in late archi-
tecture, the glass, which tormented the bolder architects, considered

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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 speaking, 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 decoration
in his sight, the southern architect was able to carve the inter-
mediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to vary his wall surface
with inlaid stones. The northern architect neither knew the an-
cient 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 clum-
siness, 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
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 altogether

THE LAMP OF POWER. 87

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 ex-
quisitely 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 cha-
racter. Then they multiplied and enlarged, becoming shallower 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.

XXL Figs. 2. and 3., the one a quadrant of the star window
of the little chapel close to St. Anastasia at Verona, and the other
a very singular example from the church of the Eremitani at
Padua, compared with fig. 5., one of the ornaments of the transept
towers of Rouen, show the closely correspondent conditions of the
early Northern and Southern Gothic.10 But, as we have said, the
Italian architects, not being embarrassed for decoration of Avail
surface, and not being obliged, like the Northmen, to multiply
their penetrations, held to the system for some time longer ; and
while they increased the refinement of the ornament, kept the
purity of the plan. That refinement of ornament was their weak
point however, and opened the way for the renaissance attack.
They fell, like the old Romans, by their luxury, except in the

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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 architecture with so stern a claim to
our reverence. I do not except 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 unchange-
able. 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 imagination ;
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. n

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 Rouen tracery,
compare Plates IV. and VIII., he kept the cusps within them per-
fectly flat, decorated, if at all, with a trefoil (Palazzo Foscari), or
fillet (Doge's Palace) just traceable and no more, so that the
quatrefoil, cut as sharply through them as if it had been struck

THE LAMP OF POWER. 89

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 truncated in the Palazzo Foscari,
and charged with a simple ball in that of the Doge ; and the glass
of the window, where there was any, was, as we have seen, thrown
back behind the stone- work, that no flashes of light might interfere
with its depth. Corrupted forms, like those of the Casa d'Oro and
Palazzo Pisani, and several others, only serve to show the majesty
of the common design.

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 ex-
hibited 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 stag's horns : sharp
at first on the edge ; but, becoming prominent, it receives
a truncation, and becomes a definite fillet on the face of the roll.
Not yet to be checked, it pushes forward until the roll itself
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

90 THE LAMP OF POWER.

square or cylindrical masses, the whole moulding has become a
series of concavities edged by delicate fillets, upon which, (sharp
lines of light, observe,) the eye exclusively rests. While this
has been taking place, a similar, though less total, change has
affected the flowerwork itself. In Plate I. fig. 2. (a), I have given
two from the transepts of 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 (Z>, 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 sufficiently 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, (c,
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.

XXIII. 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

THE LAMP OF POWER. 91

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
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 arid 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

\)2 THE LAMP OF POWER.

it is, of all the great and true laws of art, the easiest to obey.
The executive facility of complying with its demands cannot be
too earnestly, too frankly, asserted. There are not five men in
the kingdom who could compose, not twenty who could cut, the
foliage with which the windows of Or San Michele are adorned ;
but there is many a village clergyman who could invent and
dispose its black openings, and not a village mason who could
not cut them. Lay a few clover or 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. There are few men in the world who could design
a Greek capital ; there are few who could not produce some
vigour of effect with leaf designs on a Byzantine block : few
who could design a Palladian front, or a flamboyant pediment ;
many who could build a square mass like the Strozzi palace.
But I know not how it is, unless that our English hearts have
more oak than stone in them, and have more filial sympathy
with acorns than Alps; but all that we do is small and mean, if
not worse — thin, and wasted, and unsubstantial. It is not modern
work only ; we have built like frogs and mice since the thirteenth
century (except only in our castles). What a contrast 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 miser-
able 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

THE LAMP OF POWER. 93

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 imagi-
nations, as surely as ever perished forsworn nun. An architect
should live as little in cities as a painter. Send him to our
hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a
buttress, and what by a dome. There was something in the old
power of architecture, which it had from the recluse more than
from the citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with
chief praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, and above
the fury of the populace : and Heaven forbid that for such cause
we should ever have to lay a larger stone, or rivet a firmer bar,
in our England ! But we have other sources of power, in the
imagery of our iron coasts and azure hills ; of power more pure,
nor less serene, than that of the hermit spirit which once lighted
with white lines of cloisters the glades of the Alpine pine, and
raised into ordered spires the wild rocks of the Norman sea ;
which gave to the temple gate the depth and darkness of
Elijah's Horeb cave ; and lifted, out of the populous city, grey
cliffs of lonely stone, into the midst of sailing birds and silent
air.

94

CHAP. 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 distinctly
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
instinctive, I shall base my present investigation on this as-
sumption ; 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

Plate IX

Published by S. ••• &C? London .

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 95

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,) never-
theless depended 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
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 them-
selves, and wreathe them in his capitals.

96 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

III. Now, I would insist especially on the fact, of which I
doubt not that farther illustrations will occur to the mind of every
reader, that all most lovely forms and thoughts are directly taken
from natural objects ; because I would fain be allowed to assume
also the converse of this, namely, that forms which are not taken
from natural objects must be ugly. I know this is a bold assump-
tion ; 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 beauti-
ful because they are copied from nature ; only it is out of the power
of man to conceive beauty without her aid. I believe the reader
will grant me this, even from the examples above advanced ; the
degree of confidence with which it is granted must attach also to
his acceptance of the conclusions which will follow from it ; but
if it be granted frankly, it will enable me to determine a matter
of very essential importance, 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 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 impertinently, that nothing is natural but what he
has seen or supposes to exist. I would not do this ; for I suppose
there is no conceivable form or grouping of forms but in some

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 97

part of the universe an example of it may be found. But I think
I am justified in considering those forms to be most natural which
are most frequent ; or, rather, that on the shapes which in the every-
day world are familiar to the eyes of men, God 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
adoption 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 versa ; that knowing
a thing to be frequent, we may assume it to be beautiful ; and
assume that which is most frequent to be most beautiful : I mean,
of course, visibly frequent ; for the forms of things which are
hidden in caverns of the earth, or in the anatomy of animal
frames, are evidently not intended by their Maker to bear the
habitual gaze of man. And, again, by frequency I mean that
limited and isolated frequency which is characteristic of all
perfection; not mere multitude : as a rose is a common flower,
but yet there are not so many roses on the tree as there are
leaves. 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
occurrence in every-day life, but their form is, as far as I know,
unique among minerals ; and not only unique, but only at-
tainable by an artificial process, the metal itself never being
found pure. I do not remember any other substance or ar-
rangement which presents a resemblance to this Greek ornament ;
and I think that I may trust my remembrance as including most
of the arrangements which occur in the outward forms of common
and familiar things. On this ground, then, I allege that ornament

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to be ugly ; or, in the literal sense of the word, monstrous ; differ-
ent from any thing 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.

Y. Often in association with this horrible design we find, in
Greek works, one which is as beautiful as this is painful — that egg
and dart moulding, whose perfection, in its place and way, has
never been surpassed. And why is this ? Simply because the
form of which it is chiefly composed is one not only familiar to
us in the soft housing of the bird's nest, but happens to be that of
nearly every pebble that rolls and 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 egg. It is flattened on the upper surface, with a delicacy and
keen sense of variety in the curve which it is impossible too highly
to praise, attaining exactly that flattened, imperfect oval, which, in
nine cases out of ten, will be the form of the pebble lifted at random
from the rolled beach. Leave out this flatness, and the moulding
is vulgar instantly. It is singular also that the insertion of this
rounded form in the hollowed 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 per-
fectly 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 consis-
tent with such primal forms ; and we may presume that utmost
measure of beauty to have been attained when the arrangements

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of such lines are consistent with the most frequent natural group-
ings 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 crystallisation.

VII. I have just convicted the Greek fret of ugliness, be-
cause it has no precedent to allege for its arrangement except
an artificial form of a rare metal. Let us bring into court an
ornament of the Lombard architects, Plate XII. fig. 7., as ex-
clusively composed of right lines as the other, only, observe,
with the noble element of shadow added. This ornament, taken
from the front of the Cathedral of Pisa, is universal 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 familiar 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 outline is one not only of natural crystallisation, but
among the very first and commonest of crystalline forms, being
the primal condition of the occurrence of the oxides of iron,
copper, and tin, of the sulphurets of iron and lead, of fluor
spar, &c. ; and that those projecting forms in its surface represent
the conditions of structure which effect the change into another
relative and equally common crystalline form, the cube. This
is quite enough. 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.

VIII. 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 undulating lines. There is no family relation

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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 beauti-
fully varied in size of mesh. There is a dignity in the thing
itself, if its size were exhibited, and the shade given through
its bars; but even these merits are taken away in the Tudor
diminution of it, set on a solid surface. It has not a single
syllable, I believe, to say in its defence. It is another monster,
absolutely and unmitigatedly frightful. All that carving on
Henry the Seventh's Chapel simply deforms the stones of it.

In the same clause with the portcullis, we may condemn all
heraldic decoration, so far as beauty is its object. Its pride and
significance have their proper place, fitly occurring in prominent
parts of the building, as over its gates ; and 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 fleur-de-lis, or
the Florentine giglio bianco, or the English rose ; but we must
not multiply a King's arms.

IX. It will also follow, from these considerations, that if any
one part of heraldic decoration be worse than another, it is the
motto ; since, of all things unlike nature, the forms of letters
are, perhaps, the most so. Even graphic tellurium and felspar

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look, at their clearest, anything but legible. All letters are,
therefore, to be considered as frightful things, and to be endured
only upon occasion ; that is to say, in places where the sense of
the inscription is of more importance than 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 archi-
tectural 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
modern 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 sea-weed afforded apologetic
types. They do not. There is a wide difference between their
structure and that of a riband. They have a skeleton, an
anatomy, a central rib, or fibre, or framework of some kind or
another, which has a beginning and an end, a root and head,
and whose make and strength effects every direction of their
motion, and every line of their form. The loosest weed that
drifts and waves under the heaving of the sea, or hangs heavily
on the brown and slippery shore, has a marked strength, struc-
ture, elasticity, gradation of substance ; its extremities are more

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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 un-
written if you cannot write it on a tablet or book, or plain roll
of paper. I know what authority there is against me. I re-
member 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 ex-
tended 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 aifirmed 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-
chief 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),

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have, so far as they are anything more than necessities, one of
two great functions : they are the exponents of motion and of
gravitation. They are the most valuable means of expressing
past as well as present motion in the 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 sculp-
ture for the most part as an ugly necessity, but availed them
selves 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 exclu-
sively on the countenance, received drapery at first contentedly
as a veil, but soon perceived a capacity of expression in it which
the Greek had not seen or had despised. The principal element
of this expression was the entire removal of agitation from what
was so pre-eminently capable of being agitated. It fell from
their human forms plumb down, sweeping the ground heavily,
and concealing the feet ; while the Greek drapery was often
blown away from the thigh. The thick and coarse stuffs of
the monkish dresses, so absolutely opposed to the thin and gauzy
web of antique material, suggested simplicity of division as well
as weight of fall. There was no crushing nor subdividing them.
And thus the drapery gradually came to represent the spirit of
repose as it before had of motion, repose saintly and severe.
The wind had no power upon the garment, as the passion none
upon the soul ; and the motion of the figure only bent into a
softer line the stillness of the falling veil, followed by it like a
slow cloud by drooping rain : only in links of lighter undulation
it followed the dances of the angels.

Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble ; but it is as an exponent
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

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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
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 1 know, even a pendent
tendril ; while the severest masters of the revived Greek permitted

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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 modern Gothic architecture,
though seemingly an unimportant feature, is an excrescence, as
offensive by its poverty as the garland by its profusion, the
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

106 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

power, as for instance in those by M. Angelo in the lower story
of the Palazzo Kicardi 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 Florentine,
and Pisan Gothic. But if you break upon your terminal square,
or if you cut its lines off at the top and turn them outwards, you
have lost its unity and 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 ypu can discover any one so bent
and fragmentary as that of this strange windlass-looking drip-
stone. 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 lias 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 dangerous
in our modern architecture as being legal and accepted. The
barbarisms of individual fancy are as countless as they are con-
temptible ; 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.

XY. Thus far of what is not ornament. What ornament is,
will without difficulty be determined by the application of the
same test. It must consist of such studious arrangements of form
as are imitative or suggestive of those which are commonest among
natural existences, that being of course the noblest ornament
which represents the highest orders of existence. Imitated

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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.

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

XVI. 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 colour 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,
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

108 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

written or sealed impression of a thing sought out, it is the shaped
result of inquiry and bodily expression of thought.

XVII. Now let us consider for an instant what would be the
effect of continually repeating an expression of a beautiful thought
to any other of the senses at times when the mind could not
address that sense to the understanding of it. Suppose that in
time of serious occupation, of stern business, a companion should
repeat in our ears continually some 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 thence-
forward 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
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-

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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. 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
king's 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 conse-
quence, enjoy any more. Many a pretty beading and graceful
bracket there is in wood or stucco above our grocers' and cheese-
mongers' and hosiers' shops : how is it that the tradesmen cannot
understand that custom is to be had only by selling good tea and
cheese and cloth, and that people come to them for their honesty,
and their readiness, and their right wares, and not because they
have Greek cornices over their 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

110 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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
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 LAMP OF BEAUTY. Ill

The whole system of railroad travelling is addressed to people
who, being in a hurry, are therefore, for the time being,
miserable. No one would travel in that manner who could help
it — who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges,
instead of through tunnels and between banks : at least those who
would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult
it at the station. The railroad is in all its relations a matter of
earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. It trans-
mutes a man from a traveller into «, 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
miserable 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 iron be tough, and the brickwork solid, and the carriages
strong. The time is perhaps not distant when these first neces-
sities may not be easily met: and to increase expense in any
other direction is madness. Better bury gold in the embank-
ments, than put it in ornaments on the stations. Will a sino-le

* o

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, be-
cause there are old English-looking spandrils to the roof of the
station at Crewe ? He will only have less pleasure in their proto-
types 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 sm^th at his anvil.

112 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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
pleasurable influence : and this without our having accomplished
the smallest good by the use we have made of the dishonoured
form. Net 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
you do it consistently, and in places where it can be calmly seen ;
but not if you use the beautiful form only as a mask and covering
of the proper conditions and uses of things, nor if you thrust it
into the places set apart for toil. Put it in the drawing-room,
not into the workshop ; put it upon 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 passengers over.
London Bridge at this instant whether he cares about the forms
of the bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell you, No.
Modify these forms of leaves to a less scale, and put them on his

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 113

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 della Trinita ;
nor, because it would be a folly to decorate the house fronts of
Gracechurch Street, that it would be equally so to adorn those of
some quiet provincial town. The question of greatest external or
internal decoration 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 subject 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 de-
clined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word
or light laugh mixes with the trickle of the falling water, heard
shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet
as that — so full of the depth of ancient days, so 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 essen-
ally 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

114 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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.

XXY. 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
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
mistake, 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.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 115

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 proportion, put
together, is not to the architect worth the single rule, well
enforced, " Have one large thing and several smaller things, or
one principal thing and several inferior things, and bind them
well together." Sometimes there may be a regular gradation, as
between the heights of stories in good designs for houses ; 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 pinnacles
at the corners, and none in the middle! How many buildings
like King's College Chapel at Cambridge, looking like tables
upside down, with their four legs in the air! What! it will be
said, have not beasts four legs ? Yes, but legs of different shapes,
and with a head between them. So they have a pair of ears :
and perhaps a pair of horns : but not at both ends. Knock
down a couple of pinnacles at either end in King's College Chapel,
and you will have a kir ] of proportion instantly. So in a
cathedral you may have on e tower in the centre, and two at the
west end ; or two at the west end only, though a worse arrange-
ment : 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

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116 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

dominant. The bird or moth may indeed have wide wings,
because the size of the wing does not give supremacy to the wing.
The head and life are the mighty things, and the plumes, however
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
page, from Rouen cathedral ; that of the tracery before distinguished
as a type of the noblest manner of Northern Gothic (Chap. II.
§ XXII. ). It is a tracery of three orders, of which the first is
divided into a leaf moulding, fig. 4. and b in the section, and a
plain roll, also seen in fig. 4. c 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 retirement of the innermost,
are nearly equal, have smaller capitals than the two larger, lifted

THE LAMT OF BEAUTY. 117

a little to bring them to the same level. The wall in the trefoiled
lights is curved, as from e to/ 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 g to
<72 ; 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 obliquely clear from 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 (A, in the section)
to that of the first order (^2), and supported by stone props
behind, as seen in the profile, fig. 2., which I got from the corre-
spondent panel on the buttress face (fig. 1. 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 the period are fine, and especially delightful in the
subordinate proportioning of the smaller capitals to the 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
progression 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.

XXVIII. It is of course impossible to enter into details of

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118 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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
Symmetry 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 num-
bers which more betray the equality. I should have thought
this almost the first principle of proportion which a young
architect was taught : and yet I remember an important building,
recently erected in England, in which the columns are cut in half
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 half way up. In all fine spires there are
two bands and three parts, as at Salisbury. The ornamented
portion of the tower is there cut in half, and allowably, because
the spire forms the third mass to which the other two are subor-
dinate : two stories are also equal in Giotto's campanile, but
dominant over smaller divisions below, and subordinated to the
noble third above. Even this arrangement is difficult to treat ;
and it is usually safer to increase or diminish the height of the
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.12

XXIX. One more principle of Proportion I have to name,
equally simple, equally neglected. Proportion is between three

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 119

terms at least. Hence, as the pinnacles are not enough with-
out 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
unequally ; it must be divided into at least three parts ; it may be
into more (and in details with advantage), but on a large scale
I find three is about the best number 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 con-
fusion, (in architecture, that is to say; for in organic structure the
numbers 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
consider only their relations up to the fourth. Their lengths are
measured on the line A B, which is the actual length of the
lowest mast a 6, AC — be, AD — cd, and AE — 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, AE— ^
of A D, A D — § of A C, and A 0=-^- of A B ; a most subtle dimi-
nishing 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

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120 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY

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 subtle 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 Duomo of Pisa and St. Mark's at Venice, in Chap. Y. §§ XIV.
— XVI. I give these arrangements merely as illustrations, not as
precedents : all beautiful proportions are unique, they are not
general formula.

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
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 pur-
posed. In the progress of national as well as of individual mind,
the first attempts at imitation are always abstract and incom-
plete. Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute
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.

XXXI. I have said that all art is abstract in its beginnings ;
that is to say, it expresses only a small number of the qualities
of the thing represented. Curved and complex lines are repre-
sented by straight and simple ones ; interior markings of forms
are few, and much is symbolical and conventional. There is a
resemblance between the work of a great nation, in this phase,

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 121

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 oifice. 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 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 unre-
lieved, 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 of architectural sub-
jection. But symmetry is not abstraction. Leaves may be
carved in the most regular order, and yet be meanly imitative ;
or, on the other hand, they may be thrown wild and loose, and
yet be highly architectural in their separate treatment. Nothing
can be less symmetrical than the group of leaves which join the
two columns in Plate XIII. ; yet, since nothing of the leaf character
is given but what is necessary for the bare suggestion of its image

122 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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 diffidently; 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 moulding,
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
deny that, piquant and spirited as is that from Salisbury, the Rouen
moulding is, in every respect, nobler. It will be observed that
its symmetry is more complicated, the leafage being divided into
double groups of two lobes each, each lobe of different 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 outlines (especially on the angle), of
which he cannot in the least judge from my rude drawing, he
will not, I think, expect easily to find a nobler instance of de-
coration 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

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 123

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
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 Mr. Eastlake, that the closest imitation shall be of the
noblest object. Farther, since the wildness and manner of
growth of vegetation render a bon& 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

124 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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, 1 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 rightly 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.

XXXIV. Under these limitations, then, I think that perfect
sculpture may be made a part of the severest architecture ; but
this perfection was said in the outset to be dangerous. It is
so in the highest degree; for the moment the architect allows
himself to dwell on the imitated portions, 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 framework 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

Plate XI

Piibli shed by Smith Elder & C ° London .

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 125

finish would be admissible, to complete these always with stern
reference to their 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 any thing but natural 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 faithfulness 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, from a house in the Campo St. Benedetto at
Venice, shows one of the earliest occurrences of the cinque cento
arabesque, 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 case-
ments). 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 admiration. But the
moment that unnatural objects were associated with these, and
armour, and musical instruments, 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 architecture
of the world.

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

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

126 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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 management and discretion
of a true painter ; and on this co-operation we must not calculate
in laying down rules for general practice. If Tintoret or Gior-
gione 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 employ the nobler material. And if, as we looked to
Nature for instruction respecting form, we look to her also to
learn the management of 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 organized creature ; in
colouring which we must look to the single and separately
organized creatures of Nature, not to her landscape combinations.
Our building, if it is well composed, is one thing, arid 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
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

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 127

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.13
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
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 versa ; 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

128 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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 any thing like care-
lessness 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
himself 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
irregular, blotched, imperfect, liable to all kinds of accidents and
awkwardnesses. Look at the tracery of the lines on a camp shell,
and see how oddly and awkwardly its tents are pitched. It is
not indeed always so : there is occasionally, as in the eye of the
peacock's plume, an apparent precision, but still a precision far
inferior to that of the drawing of the filaments which bear that
lovely stain ; and in the plurality of cases a degree of looseness
and variation, and, still more singularly, of harshness and violence
in arrangement, is admitted in colour which would be monstrous
in form. 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 determine ;
nor whether the lesson we are to learn from it be that it is God's
will that all manner of delights should never be combined in one
thing. But the fact is certain, that 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.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 129

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 riot 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 sharpness
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 graduated into
a stain, or defined into a square or circle. The most exquisite
harmonies may be composed of these simple elements : some soft
and full, of flushed and melting spaces of colour ; others piquant
and sparkling, or deep and rich, formed of close groups of the
fiery fragments : perfect and lovely proportion maybe exhibited
in the relation of their quantities, infinite invention in their dis-
position : but, in all cases, their shape will be effective only as
it determines their quantity, and regulates their operation on each
other ; points or edges of one being introduced between breadths
of others, and so on. Triangular and barred forms are therefore
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 ungainly shape, as Titian ; or
placed their brightest hues in costume, where they could get quaint
patterns, as Veronese, and especially Angelico, with whom, how-

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130 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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
always the severest type — the peacock plume. Any of these men
would have looked with infinite disgust upon the leafage and
scroll-work which form the ground of colour in our modern
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 im-
possible to be over quaint or angular in architectural colouring ;
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 spacious-
ness and breadth, — having divided its surfaces by an infinite
number of lines, it yet sacrifices the only characters which can
make lines beautiful ; sacrifices all the variety and grace which
long atoned for the caprice of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its
leading feature, an entanglement of cross bars and verticals, show-
ing about as much invention or skill of design as the reticulation
of the bricklayer's sieve. Yet this very reticulation 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

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 131

wall surface is chequered with marble blocks of pale rose, the
chequers being in no wise harmonized, or fitted to the forms of
the windows ; but looking as if the 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 beautiful, 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,
monochrome design, the intermediate condition between colouring
and carving. The relations of the entire system of architectural
decoration may then be thus expressed.

1. Organic form dominant. True, independent sculpture, and

alto-relievo; rich capitals, and mouldings; to be elaborate
in completion of form, not abstract, and either to be left in
pure white marble, or most cautiously touched with colour
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. Organic form abstracted to outline. Monochrom design, still

farther reduced to simplicity of co tour, and therefore ad-
mitting 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.

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132 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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
introducing 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 arid 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 voluntary 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 even possible. There is a difficulty in the manage-
ment 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
monochrorn 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 St. Michele
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

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 133

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-
plicity 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.14 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 op-
posed to the abstraction of the monochrom figures, of the ball
and cross patterns betAveen the arches, and of the triangular orna-
ment 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 ex-
cessive degree of abstraction which they imply necessitates our
placing them in the rank of a progressive or imperfect art, and
that a perfect building should rather be composed of the highest
sculpture, (organic form dominant and sub-dominant,) asso-
ciated 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. Arid
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

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134 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

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, (§ 11.). Vigorous depth of shadow, (§ 13.),
exhibited especially by pierced traceries, (§ 18.). Varied pro-
portion 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 flat 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 give 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
consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY. 135

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
savageness of the Northern Gothic, when I afterwards stood, for the
first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed
strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the rising of those
grey walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren
rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering, rough-
grained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other ornament
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
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 given chiefly in the
places which He has gladdened by planting there the fir tree and
the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, but among the far
away fields of her lilies, was the child trained who was to raise
that headstone of Beauty above her towers of watch and war.
Remember all that he became ; count the sacred thoughts with
which he tilled 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."

v. 4

136 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

CHAP. V.

THE LAMP OF LIFE.

I. AMONG the countless analogies by which the nature and
relations of the human soul are illustrated in the material
creation, none are more striking than the impressions inse-
parably connected 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 energy 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
statement which I believe will meet with general acceptance,
that things in other respects alike, as in their substance, or uses,
or outward forms, are noble or ignoble in proportion to the
fulness of the life which either they themselves enjoy, or of whose
action they bear the evidence, as sea sands are made beautiful by
their bearing the seal of the motion of the waters. And this is
especially 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 proportion to the amount
of the energy of that mind which has visibly been employed
upon them. But most peculiarly 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
essentially composed of things pleasant in themselves, — as music
of sweet sounds, or painting of fair colours, but of inert sub-
stance,— depend, for their dignity and pleasurableness in the
utmost degree, upon the vivid expression of the intellectual life
which has been concerned in their production.

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 137

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 ani-
mates ; 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 organic
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, 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 over-
laid by the weight of things external to it, and is moulded by
them, instead of assimilating them ; that, which instead of

138 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

growing arid blossoming under any wholesome dew, is crys-
tallised over with it, as with hoar-frost, and becomes to the true
life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration
of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy,
which can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and
broken to bits, if it stand in our way. All men are liable to
be in some degree frost-bitten in this sort ; all are partly en-
cumbered 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,
vioQpoi. 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 proportion to their age. The life of a nation is usually, like
the flow of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid
and covered, at last advancing only by the tumbling over and
over of its frozen blocks. And that last condition is a sad one
to look upon. All the steps are marked most clearly in the
arts, and in 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 architecture. The feebleness of childhood is full of
promise and of interest, — the struggle of imperfect knowledge
full of energy and continuity, — but to see impotence and 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

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 139

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 con-
fessed 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 prin-
ciple, may be formally practised without the spirit or the vitality
which alone could give it influence, value, or delightfulness.

IV. Now, in the first place — and this is rather an important
point — it is no sign of deadness in a present art that it borrows
or imitates, but only if it borrows without paying interest, or if
it imitates without choice. The art of a great nation, which is
developed without any acquaintance with nobler examples than
its own early efforts furnish, exhibits always the most consistent
and comprehensible growth, and perhaps is 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 magnificent struggle
into independent existence ; the detection of the borrowed

140 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

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 unsubdued 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 borrows an
entire composition from Perugino, with as much tranquillity and
simplicity of innocence as a young Spartan pickpocket ; and the
architect of a Romanesque basilica gathered his columns and
capitals where he could find 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 treat-
ment when it finds treatment necessary, the unhesitating and
sweeping sacrifice of precedent where precedent becomes inconve-
nient. For instance, in the characteristic forms of Italian Roman-
esque, in which the hypaethral portion of the heathen temple was
replaced by the towering nave, and where, in consequence, the

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 141

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 portion 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 circum-
stances, 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
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.
It has been truly observed and well stated by Lord Lindsay,
that the best designers of Italy were also the most careful in

142 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

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
condescending to the care of details among us so despised.
Not only do I fully admit and re-assert this most important
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 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 work^
rnanship had gone ahead of the design ; while, even in my ad-
mission 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
remember 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

Plate ill

Publish.

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 143

spent. And, exactly 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 developement, 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. 1. I have given a most singular in-
stance both of rude execution and defied symmetry, in the little
pillar and spandril from a pannel 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 is covered
with figure sculptures, executed with great care and delicacy ; but
when the sculptor came to the simple arch mouldings, he did not
choose to draw the eye to them by over precision of work or over
sharpness of shadow. The section adopted, &, 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

144 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

slovenliness, but is in fact sculptural sketching ; exactly corre-
spondent to a painter's light execution of a background : 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
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 modern
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 : —

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 145

Total in
Braccia. Palmi. Inches. Inches.

1. Central door - -800= 192

2. Northern door 1 -6 3 1| = 157£

3. Southern door J -643= 163

4. Extreme northern space 1 - 5 5 3^ =

5. Extreme southern space J - 6 1 Oi = 148^-

6. Northern intervals between the doors 15 2 1 = 129

7. Southern intervals between the doors J 5 2 1^ =

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
are far the most wonderful of the two : I do not believe that
a single pillar of its walls is absolutely vertical : the pavement
rises and falls to different heights, 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 into
visual contact with the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo:)
and a most extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the
southern wall shows that this inclination had begun when the
first story was built. The cornice above the first arcade of that
wall touches the tops of eleven out of its fifteen arches ; but it
suddenly leaves the tops of the four westernmost ; the arches
nodding westward and sinking into the ground, while the cornice
rises (or seems to rise), leaving at any rate, whether by the rise
of the one or the fall of the other, an interval of more than two
feet between it and the top of the western arch, filled by added
courses of masonry. There is another very curious evidence of
this struggle of the architect with his yielding wall in the
columns of the main entrance. (These notices are perhaps some-
what irrelevant to our immediate subject, but they appear to me
highly interesting ; and they, at all events, prove one of the points

146 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

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 sculp-
tured 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 seeming vertical.

XI. 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 two next 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 change in
the proportions and dimensions of the apparently symmetrical
arcades of the west front. It will be remembered that I said

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 147

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-
metical proportion alternately ; in the order 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 4th.
The inequalities in their arches are not less remarkable : they at
first strike the eye as all equal ; but there is a grace about them
which equality never obtained : on closer observation, it is 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. In the next or third arcade, — which, re-
member, 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

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148 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

the terminal arches of the lower arcade are surmounted by flank-
ing masses of decorated wall with projecting figures.

XIII. 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
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, instead 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

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 149

either exactly in nor positively out of its place ; arid, to get this
managed the more cunningly, there is from an inch to an inch
and a half of gradual gain in the space of the four eastern arches,
besides the confessed half braccio. Their measures, counting
from the east, I found as follows : —

Braccia. Palmi. Inches.
1st 301

2nd - - 3 0 2

3rd 332

4th 3 3 3i

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
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.

XIY. 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 Doges' 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

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150 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

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 church, to
which he ascribes a pleasing effect, he goes on : " Some persons
are of opinion that irregularity is a necessary part of its ex-
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
Gods."

" 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
comprehend ; yet, while I acknowledge the beauty of certain forms

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 151

and proportions in architecture, I cannot consistently deny that
similar merits may exist in painting, though I am unfortunately
unable to appreciate them."

I think these passages very valuable, as showing the effect of
a contracted knowledge and false taste in painting upon an
architect's understanding of his own art ; and especially with
what curious notions, or lack of notions, about proportion, that
art has been sometimes practised. For Mr. Wood is by no means
unintelligent in his observations generally, and his 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 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 fa$ade : 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, b, and c, then a : c : : c : b
(a being the highest) ; and diameter of shaft b is generally
to the diameter of shaft a as height b is to height a, or
something less, allowing for the large plinth which diminishes
the apparent height of the upper shaft : and when this is their

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152 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

proportion of width, one shaft above is put above one below,
with sometimes another upper shaft interposed : but in the
extreme arches a single under shaft bears two upper, pro-
portioned as truly as the boughs of a tree ; that is to say, the
diameter of each upper=f 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, &, d.
The upper story has five arches, and two 'added pinnacles ; and
these diminish in regular order, the central being the largest, and
the outermost the least. Hence, while one proportion ascends,
another descends, like parts in music ; and yet the pyramidal form
is secured for the whole, 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 b and c in succession, the northern b and c are consider-
ably wider than southern b and c, but the southern d is as
much wider than the northern rf, and lower beneath its cornice
besides ; and, more than this, I hardly believe that one of the
effectively symmetrical members of the fa9ade is actually symme-
trical 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 complexity, and the embarrassment caused by
the yielding and subsidence of the arches.

Do not let it be supposed that I imagine the Byzantine
workmen to have had these various principles in their minds
as they built. I believe they built altogether from feeling, and
that it was because they did so, that there is this marvellous

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life, changefulness, and subtlety running through their every
arrangement ; and that we reason upon the lovely building as
we should upon some fair growth of the trees of the earth, that
know not their own beauty.

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 divides the whole arch at
about J- of its breadth, the larger portion outmost ; and in that
larger portion is the inner entrance door. This exact corre-
spondence, 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. 6 in. ; giving a difference of 7 in.
on 14^ 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 effective symmetry by variations as subtle as those of Nature.
To what lengths this principle was sometimes carried, we shall
see by the very singular management of the towers of Abbe-
ville. I do not say it is right, still less that it is wrong, but

154 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

it is a wonderful 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 reconciliation is effected in towers with double lights : the
Abbeville architect put his sword to the knot perhaps rather
too sharply. Vexed by the want of unity between his two
windows, he literally laid their heads together, and so distorted
their ogee curves, as to leave only one of the trefoiled panels
above, on the inner side, and three on the outer side of each arch.
The arrangement is given in Plate XII., fig. 3. Associated with
the various undulation of flamboyant curves below, it is in the
real tower hardly observed, while it binds it into one mass in
general effect. Granting it, however, to be ugly and wrong, I
like sins of the kind, for the 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 Corin-
thian order ; yet in the case before us there is an ugly beehive
put in the place of the principal niche of the arch. I am not sure
if I am right in my interpretation of its meaning, but I have
little doubt that two figures below, now broken away, once repre-
sented an Annunciation ; and on another part of the same cathe-
dral, 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.

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 155

XIX. Far more splendid is a license taken with the niche deco-
ration 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 fear-
ful 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 Judgment
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
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

156 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

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., 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 rack, in which I beheld the prototype of my
ugly pillar. It will not be thought, after what I 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-work might always be
known from machine- work ; observing, however, at the same
time, that it was possible for men to 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

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 157

price : it will be plainly seen that some places have been delighted
in more than others — that there has 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 com-
pared with the same design cut by a machine or a lifeless
hand, will be like that of poetry well read and deeply felt to that
of the same verses jangled by rote. There are many to whom the
difference is 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 Architecture, 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 : arid if completeness
is thought to be vested in polish, and to be attainable by help of
sand paper, we may as well give the work to the engine-lathe at
once. But right finish is simply the full rendering of the intended
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/wm of any thing
in stone ; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the
true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself.
The sculptor must paint with his chisel: half his touches are
not to realize, but to put power into, the form : they are touches
of light and shadow; and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not
to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a 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

158 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

of its chimeric monsters being cut boldly into holes, which,
variously placed, and always dark, give all kinds of strange and
startling expressions, averted and askance, to the fantastic coun-
tenances. Perhaps the highest examples of this kind of sculpture-
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 ^completion. 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
outside: each quatrefoil is filled with a bas-relief, the whole
reaching to something above a man's height. A modern architect

THE LAMP OF LITE. 159

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 two
lowest of the five are tall, the next two short, and the uppermost
a little higher than the lowest ; while in the course of bas-reliefs
which surrounds the gate, calling either of the two lowest, (which
are equal) a, and either of the next two b, and the fifth and sixth
c and dj then d (the largest) : c : : c • a : : a : b. 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 70x4=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
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

160 THE LAMP OF LIFE.

right, in its gloomy and angry brooding. The plan of this head,
and the nod of the cap over its brow, are fine ; but there is a
little 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 Pere 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 — how
recoverable I know not : this only I know, that all expense devoted
to sculptural -ornament, in the present condition of that power,

THE LAMP OF LIFE. 161

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 enjoyment.
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
cannot put our hearts. We have certain work to do for our
bread, and that is to be done strenuously ; other work to do for
our delight, and that is to be done heartily : neither is to be done
by halves and shifts, but with a will ; and what is not worth this
effort is not to be done at all. Perhaps all that we have to do is
meant for nothing more than an exercise of the heart and of the
will, and is useless in itself ; but, at all events, the li ttle 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
inconsistent with its authority, nor to suffer any instruments
with which it can dispense, to come between it and the things it
rules : and he who would form the creations of his own mind by
any other instrument than his own hand, would also, if he might,
give grinding organs to Heaven's angels, to make their music
easier. There is dreaming enough, and earthiriess enough, and
sensuality 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.

If

162 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

CHAP. VI.

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 oif 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
all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 163

shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the wood
anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebula;
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 presently 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 opposite side
of the valley, walled all along as it was by grey cliffs of lime-
stone, 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 foanl
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 15 ; the hills became
oppressively desolate ; a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened
forest showed how much of their former power had been dependent
upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory of the
imperishable, or 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;
and the crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening

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164 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

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
influence, that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the
most serious thought. We may live without her, and worship
without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold
is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which
the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears ! how
many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a
few stones left one upon another! The ambition of the old
Babel builders was well directed for this world : there are but
two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and
Architecture ; and the latter in some sort includes the former,
and is mightier in its reality ; it is well to have, not only what
men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled,
and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of
their life. The age of Homer is surrounded with darkness, his
very personality with doubt. Not so that of Pericles : and the
day is coining when we shall confess, that we have learned more
of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture than
even from her sweet singers or soldier historians. And if indeed
there be any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy in the
thought of being remembered hereafter, which can give strength
to present exertion, or patience to present endurance, there are
two duties respecting national architecture whose importance
it is impossible to overrate : 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
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.

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 165

As regards 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 re-
newed in every tenement that rises on its ruins : and I believe
that good men would 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 them-
selves 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
would be temples — temples which we should hardly dare to injure,
and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live ; and
there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange
unthankfulness 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 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

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166 THE LAMP OF MEMOEY.

difference and without fellowship, 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 great and spreading spirit of popular discontent ;
that they mark the time when every man's aim is to be in some
more elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man's past
life is his habitual scorn ; when men build in the hope of leaving
the places they have built, and live in the hope of 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 without the gain of rest, and of stability
without the luxury of change.

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. Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly
one ; He has an altar in every man's dwelling ; let men look to
it when they rend it lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a
question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual
pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with what
aspect of 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,

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 167

might be supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the
direction of local interests. This at the least ; but it would
be better if, in every possible instance, men built their own
houses on a scale commensurate rather with their condition at
the commencement, than their 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 narrow-
ness 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 architecture of old
Italy and France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities
depends, not on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the che-
rished 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, con-
sisting 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.
riest. rose. sans, epine. ; it has also only a ground floor and two
stories, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower- work,
and with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with
open wings, the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornu-
copias. The idea that a house must be large in order to be well
built, is altogether of modern growth, and is parallel with the

M 4

168 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

idea, that no picture can be historical, except of a size admitting
figures larger than life.

VI. I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to
last, and built to be lovely ; as rich and full of pleasantness as may
be, within and without ; with what degree of likeness to each
other in style and manner, I will say presently, under another
head ; but, at all events, with such differences as might suit and
express each man's character and occupation, and 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 permission to
build and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet words
as may well close our speaking of these things. I have taken
them from the front of a cottage lately built among the green
pastures which descend from the village of Grindelwald to the
lower glacier : —

" Mit herzlichem Vertrauen
Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi
Dieses Haus bauen lassen.
Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren
Vor allem Ungliick und Gefahren,
Und es in Segen lassen stehn
Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit
Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese,
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 classical, — that it admits of a richness of record alto-
gether unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural deco-

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 169

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 archi-
tecture 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 : nevertheless, by a
sufficiently bold imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols,
all such obstacles may be vanquished ; not perhaps in the degree
necessary to produce sculpture in itself satisfactory, but at all
events so as to enable it to become a grand and expressive
element of architectural composition. Take, for example, the
management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice.
History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its
interior, but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning.
The large one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance,
was devoted to the symbolisation of Abstract Justice ; above it
is a sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a
beautiful subjection in its 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

170 TUE LAMP OF MEMORY.

figure of Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle
" che die legge," 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 destructive of national
peace and power, concluding with Faith, with the inscription
" Fides optima in Deo est." A figure is seen on the opposite
side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After these, one or two
capitals are fancifully decorated with birds (Plate V.), and then
come a series representing, first the various fruits, then 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 building,
let us imagine our own India House adorned in this way, by
historical or symbolical sculpture : massively built in the first
place; then chased with bas-reliefs of our Indian 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
expressing the phantasms of Hindoo worship in their subjection
to the Cross. Would not one such work be better than a thousand
histories ? If, however, we have not the invention necessary for
such efforts, or if, which is 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 in-

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 171

terest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell the circle
of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would gladly sup-
port our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial for
the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sake
of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants
may live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations
to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly
recognised motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our
duties ; nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the
range of our intended and deliberate usefulness include, not only
the companions, but the successors, of our pilgrimage. God has
lent us the earth for our life ; it is a great entail. It belongs as
much to those who are to come after us, and whose 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 generally, 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

172 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

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
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, of stern watching, 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 fol-
lowing ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as
it concentrates the sympathy, of nations ; it is in that golden stain
of time, that we are to look for the real light, and 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
a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the smaller ;

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 173

but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which
is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the
probable effects of time : and (which is still more to be considered)
there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else
can replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire.
For though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of
age only, there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and
so great as to have become not unfrequently the subject of
especial choice among certain schools of art, and to have im-
pressed 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 service-
able. Probably no word in the language, (exclusive of theolo-
gical expressions,) has been the subject of so frequent or so
prolonged dispute ; yet none remain more vague in their accep-
tance, 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 appear-
ance) 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 disgraced 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 ex-
pression 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 most obscure of all that may legitimately be submitted to

174 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

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
purpose to define), may be shortly and decisively expressed.
Picturesqueness, in this sense, is Parasitical Sublimity. Of
course all sublimity, as well as all beauty, is, in the simple etymo-
logical 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, is parasitical sublimity ; i. e., a sublimity dependent on the
accidents, or on the least essential characters, of the objects to
which it belongs ; and the picturesque is developed distinctively
exactly in proportion to the distance from the centre of thought
of those points of character in which the sublimity is found. Two
ideas, therefore, are essential to picturesqueness, — the first,
that of sublimity (for pure beauty is not picturesque at all,
and becomes so only as the sublime element mixes with it), and
the second, the subordinate or parasitical position of that sub-
limity. Of course, therefore, whatever characters of line or shade
or expression 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, as of rocks or moun-
tains, or stormy clouds or waves. Now if these characters, or

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 175

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 cannot
be properly called picturesque : but, if they be found in the
accidental or external qualities, the distinctive picturesque will be
the result.

XIII. Thus, in the treatment of the features of the human face
by Francia or Angelico, the shadows are employed only to make
the contours of the features thoroughly felt ; and to those features
themselves the mind of the observer is 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 used for 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 contrary, in Gothic sculpture, the shadow becomes itself a

176 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

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 16, 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
material, they should interfere with the distinctness of the per-

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 177

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 modern 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 often be 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.

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178 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

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 archi-
tecture, 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

THE LAMP OF MEMORY. 179

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 degree
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 forgiven, as especially necessary in modern times. 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 destruction which a building can suffer: a destruc-
tion out of which no remnants can be gathered : a destruction
accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed. Do
not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter ; it is im-
possible, 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 workman,
never can be recalled. Another spirit may be given by another
time, and it is then a new building ; but the spirit of the dead
workman cannot be summoned up, and commanded to direct
other hands, and 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 mysterious suggestion of

H 2

180 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

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, how-
ever careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, a cold model
of such parts as can be modelled, with conjectural supplements ;
and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one instance,
that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, the
utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or
even attempted.

XIX. Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a
Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model of a building
as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of
the old walls within it as your cast might have the skeleton, with
what advantage I neither see nor care : but the old building is
destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had
sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a 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 corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will ;
but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. And
look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may
prevent it. The principle of modern times, (a principle which,
I believe, at least in France, to be systematically acted on by the
masons, in order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen
was pulled down by the magistrates of the town by way of giving

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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 ruin. Watch
an old building with an anxious care ; guard it as best you may,
and at any cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its
stones as you would jewels of a crown ; set watches about it as if at
the gates of a besieged city ; bind it together with iron where it
loosens ; stay it with timber where it declines ; do not care about
the unsightliness of the aid : better a crutch than a lost limb ;
and do this tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a
generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow.
Its evil day must come at last ; but let it come declaredly and
openly, and let no 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 expression
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

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182 THE LAMP OF MEMORY.

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
ground for its destruction. If ever valid, certainly not now,
when the place both of the past and future is too much usurped
in our minds by the restless and discontented present. The very
quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn from us ; thousands
who once in their necessarily prolonged travel were subjected
to an influence, from the silent sky and slumbering fields, more
effectual than known or confessed, now bear with them even there
the ceaseless fever of their life ; and along the iron 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.

183

CHAP. VII.

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

I. IT has been my endeavour to show in the preceding pages hoV
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 crowning 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 satisfac-
tion which I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first
appeared to bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind,
that the conditions of material perfection which it leads me in
conclusion to consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the
conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom
which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phan-
toms ; 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
punishment.

In one of the noblest poems 17 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-

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184 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

pretation ! since in one noble line of his invocation lie 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 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.

II. 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, discipline of
the intellect, subjection of the will; if you mean the fear of
inflicting, the shame of committing, a wrong; if you mean
respect for all who are in authority, and 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
orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and unre-
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 LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 185

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, that exactly in
proportion to the majesty of things in the scale of being, is the
completeness of their obedience to the laws that are set over them.
Gravitation is less quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust
than it is by the sun and moon; and the ocean falls and 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
art, above all others, whose productions are the most vast and
the most common; which requires for its practice the co-
operation of bodies of men, and for its perfection the 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
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 universally important to man, she would set forth, by
her own majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's

186 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

social happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without
the light of experience, conclude, that Architecture never could
flourish except when it was subjected to a national law as strict
and 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 difference 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 :
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

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 187

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
architecture 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. Ori-
ginality 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
Yan 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 bye-play or pursuit ; and the use of that invention
will depend altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of
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

188 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

not take liberties with his materials, or with his rules: I do not
say that strange changes will not sometimes be wrought by hia
efforts, or his fancies, in both. But those changes will be in-
structive, 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 uncomfort-
able and foolish caterpillar which, instead of being contented with
a caterpillar's life and feeding on caterpillar's food, was always striv-
ing to turn itself into a chrysalis ; and as that would be an unhappy
chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll restlessly in its
cocoon, in efforts to turn itself prematurely into a moth ; so will
that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of supporting
itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs which have
been enough for the support and guidance of other arts before it
and like it, is struggling and fretting under the natural limitations
of its existence, and striving to become something other than it is.
And though it is the nobility of the highest creatures to look
forward to, and partly to understand the changes which are
appointed for them, 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 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 ful-
filling to the uttermost the duties for which its present state is
appointed and continued.

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 189

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, are ever to be sought in
themselves, or can ever be healthily obtained by any struggle or
rebellion against common laws. We want neither the one nor
the other. The forms of architecture already known are good
enough for us, and for far better than any of us ; and it will be
time enough to think of changing them for better when we can
use them as they are. But there are some things which we not
only want, but cannot do without ; and which all 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
architecture and all art, like other things, to English law.

VI. I say architecture and all art ; for I believe architecture
must be the beginning of arts, and that the others must 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 architecture.
I think that all will languish until that takes the lead, and (this
I do not think, but I proclaim, as confidently as I would assert
the necessity, for the safety of society, of an understood and
strongly administered legal government) our architecture will
languish, and that in the very dust, until the first principle of
common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal system of
form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It
may be said that this is impossible. It may be so — I fear it is
so : I have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of
it ; I simply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be im-
possible, English art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are

190 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

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 chance rests on the bare possibility of ob-
taining 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
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 ; ad-
mitting not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto, or

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 191

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 it is to say, to every practical purpose of life ; then,
and not till then, a license might be permitted ; and individual
authority allowed to change or to add to the received forms,
always within certain limits; the decorations, 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
modern 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
peculiar character of every several building, large or small,
domestic, civil, or ecclesiastical. I have said that it was im-
material 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 sympathy with which this or that style
would be popularly regarded. The choice of Classical or Gothic,
again using the latter term in its broadest sense, may be
questionable when it regards some single and considerable
public building; but I cannot conceive it questionable, for
an instant, when it regards modern uses in general : I cannot
conceive any architect insane enough to project the vulgarization
of Greek architecture. Neither can it be rationally questionable
whether we should adopt early or late, original or derivative
Gothic; if the latter were chosen, it must be either some im-
potent and ugly degradation, like our own Tudor, or else a style

192 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE'*'

whose grammatical laws it would be nearly impossible to limit
or arrange, like the French Flamboyant. We are equally pre-
cluded from adopting styles essentially infantine or barbarous,
however Herculean their infancy, or majestic their outlawry, such
as our own Norman, or the Lombard Romanesque. The choice
would lie I think between four styles: — 1. The Pisan Ro-
manesque ; 2. The early Gothic of the Western Italian Republics,
advanced as far and as fast as our art would enable us to the
Gothic of Giotto ; 3. The Venetian Gothic in its purest develope-
ment ; 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 en-
riched 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 examples, as the North door
of Rouen and the church of St. Urbain at Troyes, for final and
limiting authorities on the side of decoration.

VIII. It is almost impossible for us to conceive, in 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
instantly 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 discomforts of the world ; freed
from the accompanying necessity of studying all past, present,
or even possible styles ; and enabled, by concentration of indi-
vidual, and co-operation of multitudinous energy, to penetrate 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

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

would be an increased sense of fellowship among ourselves, a
cementing of every patriotic bond of union, a proud and happy
recognition of our affection for and sympathy with each other,
and our willingness in all things to submit 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 establishments ; and even
a check to much of what is as vain as it is painful in the oppo-
sitions 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 igno-
rant 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 farther.
I have suffered myself too long to indulge in the speculative state-
ment of requirements which perhaps we have more immediate and
more serious work than to supply, and of feelings which it may
be only contingently in our power to recover. I should be unjustly
thought unaware of the difficulty of what I have proposed, or of
the unimportance of the whole subject as compared with many
which are brought home to our interests and fixed upon our con-
sideration by the wild course of the present century. But of diffi-
culty and of importance it is for others to judge. I have limited
myself to the simple statement of what, if we desire to have archi-
tecture, 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 dis-
quieted 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

o

194 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

trust my own impressions of the dignity of that of Architecture ;
and yet I think I cannot be utterly mistaken in regarding it as at
least useful in the sense of a National employment. I am 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 movement : the reck-
lessness of villany in the leaders of revolt, the absence of common
moral principle in the upper classes, and of common courage and
honesty in the heads of governments. But these causes themselves
are ultimately traceable to a deeper and simpler one : the reckless-
ness 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 thing 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-gentlemen who ought to be shoe-
makers and carpenters ; but since they will not be these so long as
they can help it, the business of the philanthropist is to find them
some other employment than disturbing governments. It is of no
use to tell them they are fools, and that they will only make them-
selves miserable in the end as well as others : if they have nothing
else to do, they will do mischief; and the man who will not work,
and who has no means of intellectual pleasure, is as sure to become
an instrument of evil as if he had sold himself bodily to Satan. » I
have myself seen enough of the daily life of the young educated

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 195

men of France and Italy, to account for, as it deserves, the deepest
national suffering and degradation; and though, for the most
part, our commerce and our natural habits of industry preserve
us from a similar paralysis, yet it would be wise to consider
whether the forms of employment which we chiefly adopt or pro-
mote, are as well calculated as they might be to improve and
elevate us.

We have just spent, for instance, a hundred and fifty mil-
lions, with which we have paid men for digging ground from one
place and depositing it in another. We have formed a large class
of men, the railway navvies, especially reckless, unmanageable,
and dangerous. We have maintained besides (let us state the
benefits as fairly as possible) a number of iron founders in an
unhealthy and painful employment ; we have developed (this is
at 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 main-
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 that
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 ; and when all was done, instead of the very

o 2

196 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

doubtful advantage of the power of going fast from place to place,
we should have had the certain advantage of increased pleasure
in stopping at home.

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
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 the tiara, without, so
far as I see, bestowing any pleasure upon those who wear or who
behold, at all compensatory for the loss of life and mental power
which are involved in the employment of the workman. He
would be far more healthily and happily sustained by being set
to carve stone ; certain qualities of his mind, for which there is
no room in his present occupation, would develope themselves in
the nobler ; and I believe that most women would, in the end,
prefer the pleasure of having built a church, or contributed to
the adornment of a cathedral, to the pride of bearing a certain
quantity of adamant on their foreheads.

X. I could pursue this subject willingly, but I have some
strange notions about it which it is perhaps wiser not loosely to

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE. 197

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 in-
struction in the frequent reference of its commonest necessities
to the mighty laws, in the sense and scope of which all men are
Builders, whom every hour sees laying the stubble or the stone.

I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have
checked the course of what might otherwise have been impor-
tunate persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all
Architecture may be vain, except that which is not made with
hands. There is something ominous in the light which has
enabled us to look back with disdain upon the ages among whose
lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile when
I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of
worldly science, and 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.

NOTES.

1. page 13. " With the idolatrous Egyptian" — The probability is indeed
slight in comparison, but it is a probability nevertheless, and one which is
daily on the increase. I trust that I may not be thought to underrate
the danger of such sympathy, though I speak lightly of the chance of it.
I have confidence in the central religious body of the English and Scot-
tish people, as being not only untainted with Romanism, but immove-
ably adverse to it : and, however strangely and swiftly the heresy of the
Protestant and victory of the Papist may seem to be extending among us,
I feel assured that there are barriers in the living faith of this nation which
neither can overpass. Yet this confidence is only in the ultimate faithful-
ness of a few, not in the security of the nation from the sin and the
punishment of partial apostasy. Both have, indeed, in some sort, been
committed and suffered already ; and, in expressing my belief of the close
connection of the distress and burden which the mass of the people at
present sustain, with the encouragement which, in various directions, has
been given to the Papist, do not let me be called superstitious or irrational.
No man was ever more inclined than I, both by natural disposition and by
many ties of early association, to a sympathy with the principles and
forms of the Romanist Church ; and there is much in its discipline which
conscientiously, as well as sympathetically, I could love and advocate.
But, in confessing this strength of affectionate prejudice, surely I vindicate
more respect for my firmly expressed belief, that the entire doctrine and
system of that Church is in the fullest sense anti- Christian ; that its lying
and idolatrous Power is the darkest plague that ever held commission to
hurt the Earth ; that all those yearnings for unity and fellowship, and
common obedience, which have been the root of our late heresies, are as
false in their grounds as fatal in their termination ; that we never can
have the remotest fellowship with the utterers of that fearful Falsehood,
and live; that we have nothing to look to from them but treacherous
hostility ; and that, exactly in proportion to the sternness of our separation

200 NOTES.

from them, will be not only the spiritual but the temporal blessings
granted by God to this country. How close has been the correspondence
hitherto between the degree of resistance to Romanism marked in our
national acts, and the honour with which those acts have been crowned,
has been sufficiently proved in a short essay by a writer whose investi-
gations into the influence of Religion upon the fate of Nations have
been singularly earnest and successful — a writer with whom I faithfully
and firmly believe that England will never be prosperous again, that the
honour of her arms will be tarnished, and her commerce blighted, and
her national character degraded, until the Romanist is expelled from the
place which has impiously been conceded to him among her legislators.
" Whatever be the lot of those to whom error is an inheritance, woe be to
the man and to the people to whom it is an adoption. If England, free
above all other nations, sustained amidst the trials which have covered
Europe, before her eyes, with burning and slaughter, and enlightened by
the fullest knowledge of divine truth, shall refuse fidelity to the compact
by which those matchless privileges have been given, her condemnation
will not linger. She has already made one step full of danger. She has
committed the capital error of mistaking that for a purely political question
which was a purely religious one. Her foot already hangs over the edge
of the precipice. It must be retracted, or the empire is but a name. In
the clouds and darkness which seem to be deepening on all human policy —
in the gathering tumults of Europe, and the feverish discontents at home —
it may be even difficult to discern where the power yet lives to erect the
fallen majesty of the constitution once more. But there are mighty means
in sincerity ; and if no miracle was ever wrought for the faithless and
despairing, the country that will help itself will never be left destitute of
the help of Heaven." (Historical Essays, by the Rev. Dr. Croly, 1842.)
The first of these essays, " England the Fortress of Christianity," I most
earnestly recommend to the meditation of those who doubt that a special
punishment is inflicted by the Deity upon all national crime, and perhaps,
of all such crime, most instantly upon the betrayal, on the part of England,
of the truth and faith with which she has been entrusted.

2. p. 17. "Not the gift., but the giving" — Much attention has lately
been directed to the subject of religious art, and we are now in possession of
all kinds of interpretations and classifications of it, and of the leading facts
of its history. But the greatest question of all connected with it remains
entirely unanswered, What good did it do to real religion ? There is no
subject into which I should so much rejoice to see a serious and con-

NOTES. 201

scientious inquiry instituted as this; an inquiry, neither undertaken in
artistical enthusiasm nor in monkish sympathy, but dogged, merciless, and
fearless. I love the religious art of Italy as well as most men, but there is
a wide difference between loving it as a manifestation of individual feeling,
and looking to it as an instrument of popular benefit. I have no*
knowledge enough to form even the shadow of an opinion on this latter
point, and I should be most grateful to any one who would put it in my
power to do so. There are, as it seems to me, three distinct questions
to be considered : the first, What has been the effect of external splendour
on the genuineness and earnestness of Christian worship ? the second, What
the use of pictorial or sculptural representation in the communication of
Christian historical knowledge, or excitement of affectionate imagination ?
the third, What the influence of the practice of religious art on the life of
the artist?

In answering these inquiries, we should have to consider separately every
collateral influence and circumstance ; and, by a most subtle analysis, to
eliminate the real effect of art from the effects of the abuses with which it
was associated. This could be done only by a Christian ; not a man who
would fall in love with a sweet colour or sweet expression, but who would
look for true faith and consistent life as the object of all. It never has
been done yet, and the question remains a subject of vain and endless
contention between parties of opposite prejudices and temperaments.

3. p. 18. " To the concealment of what is really good or great" — I have
often been surprised at the supposition that Romanism, in its present
condition, could either patronise art, or profit by it. The noble painted
windows of St. Maclou at Rouen, and many other churches in France, are
entirely blocked up behind the altars by the erection of huge gilded
wooden sunbeams, with interspersed cheruba.

4. p. 25. " With different pattern of traceries in each" — 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.

5. p. 35. " 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,
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

202 NOTES.

at Rouen. Nor is it only the tower of St. Ouen which is overrated. Its nave
is a base imitation, in the flamboyant period, of an early Gothic arrange-
ment ; 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 excres-
cence I ever saw on a Gothic building ; the traceries of the nave are the
most insipid and faded flamboyant ; those of the transept clerestory present
a singularly distorted condition of perpendicular ; even the elaborate door of
the south transept is, for its fine period, extravagant and almost grotesque
in its foliation and pendants. There is nothing truly fine in the church
but the choir, the light triforium, and tall clerestory, the circle of 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 incumbrance.

6. p. 36. Compare Iliad 2. 1. 219. with Odyssey IL 1. 5—10.

V. p. 37. "Does not admit iron as a constructive material" — Except in
Chaucer's noble temple of Mars.

" And dounward from an hill under a bent,
Ther stood the temple of Mars, armipotent,
Wrought all of burned stele, of which th' entree
Was longe and streite, and gastly for to see.
And thereout came a rage and swiche a vise,
That it made all tlie gates for to rise.
The northern light in at the dore shone,
For window on the wall ne was ther none,
Thurgh which men mighten any light discerne.
The dore was all of athamant eterne,
Yclenched overthwart and endelong
With yren tough, and for to make it strong,
Every piler the temple to sustene
Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene."

The Knighte's Tale.

There is, by the bye, an exquisite piece of architectural colour just
before :

" And northward, in a turret on the wall
Of alabaster white, and red corall,
An oratorie riche for to see,
In worship of Diane of Chastitee."

8. p. 37. " The Builders of Salisbury" — " This way of tying walls
together with iron, instead of making them of that substance and form,
that they shall naturally poise themselves upon their buttment, is against the

r
NOTES. 203

rules of good architecture, not only because iron is corruptible by rust, but
because it is fallacious, having unequal veins in the metal, some places of
the same bar being three times stronger than others, and yet all sound to
appearance." (Survey of Salisbury Cathedral in 1668, by Sir C. Wren.
For my own part, I think it better work to bind a tower with iron, than to
support a false dome by a brick pyramid.

9. p. 53. Plate 3. In this plate, figures 4, 5, and 6, are glazed windows,
but fig. 2. is the open light of a belfry tower, and figures 1. and 3. are in
triforia, the latter also occurring filled, on the central tower of Coutances.

10. p. 87. " Ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen" — The reader
cannot but observe the agreeableness, as a mere arrangement of shade,
which especially belongs to the " sacred trefoil." I do not think that the
element of foliation has been enough insisted upon in its intimate relations
with the power of Gothic work. If I were asked what was the most dis-
tinctive feature of its perfect style, I should say the Trefoil. It is the very
soul of it ; and I think the loveliest Gothic is always formed upon simple
and bold tracings of it, taking place between the blank lancet arch on the
one hand, and the overcharged cinquefoiled arch on the other.

11. p. 88. " 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.

12. p. 118. "Into vertical equal parts" — Not absolutely so. There are
variations partly accidental, (or at least compelled by the architect's effort to
recover the vertical,) between the sides of the stories ; and the upper and
lower story are taller than the rest. There is, however, an apparent equality
between five out of the eight tiers.

13. p. 127. " Never paint a column with vertical lines." — It should be
observed, however, that any pattern which gives opponent lines in its parts,
may be arranged on lines parallel with the main structure. Thus, rows of

204 NOTES.

diamonds, like spots on a snake's back, or the bones on a sturgeon, are ex-
quisitely applied both to vertical and spiral columns. The loveliest
instances of such decoration that I know, are the pillars of the cloister of
St. John Lateran, lately illustrated by Mr. Digby "Wyatt, in his most
valuable and faithful work on antique mosaic.

14. p. 133. — On the cover of this volume the reader will find some
figure outlines of the same period and character, from the floor of San
Miniato at Florence. I have to thank its designer, Mr. ~W. Harry
Rogers, for his intelligent arrangement of them, and graceful adaptation
of the connecting arabesque.

15. p. 163. " The flowers lost their light, the river its music." — Yet not
all their light, nor all its music. Compare Modern Painters, vol. ii.
sec. 1. chap. iv. § 8.

16. p. 176. " By the artists of the time of Pericles.91 — This subordination
was first remarked to me by a friend, whose profound knowledge of
Greek art will not, I trust, be reserved always for the advantage of his
friends only : Mr. C. Newton, of the British Museum.

17. p. 183. "In one of the noblest poems." — Coleridge's Ode to
France : —

" Ye Clouds ! that far above me float and pause,

Whose pathless march no mortal may control !

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

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

Have made a solemn music of the wind !
Where, like a man beloved of God,
Through glooms, which never woodman trod,

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

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

And 0 ye Clouds that far above me soared !
Thou rising Sun ! thou blue rejoicing Sky !

Yea, every thing that is and will be free !

Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,

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

NOTES. 205

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

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

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

THE END.

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SPOTTISWOODES and SHAW,
New-street- Square.

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