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Title: The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Author: John Ruskin

Release date: April 18, 2011 [eBook #35898]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN
LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE ***

PLATE IX.—(Frontispiece—Vol. V.)
Tracery from the Campanile of Giotto at Florence.

Illustrated Cabinet Edition

The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Lectures on Architecture and Painting
The Study of Architecture

by John Ruskin

Boston
Dana Estes & Company
Publishers

CONTENTS.

SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE.
PAGE
Preface 5

Introduction 9
CHAPTER I.
The Lamp of Sacrifice 15
CHAPTER II.
The Lamp of Truth 34
CHAPTER III.
The Lamp of Power 69
CHAPTER IV.
The Lamp of Beauty 100
CHAPTER V.
The Lamp of Life 142
CHAPTER VI.
The Lamp of Memory 167
CHAPTER VII.
The Lamp of Obedience 188

Notes 203

LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING.
Preface 213
Lecture I. 217
Lecture II. 248

Addenda to Lectures I. and II. 270
Lecture III. Turner and his Works 287
Lecture IV. Pre-Raphaelitism 311
Addenda to Lecture IV. 334

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE.
An Inquiry into the Study of Architecture 339

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE
PLATE PAGE
I. Ornaments from Rouen, St. Lo, and Venice 33
II. Part of the Cathedral of St. Lo, Normandy 55
III. Traceries from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen and Beavais 60
IV. Intersectional Mouldings 66
Capital from the Lower Arcade of the Doge's
V. 88
Palace, Venice
Arch from the Facade of the Church of San
VI. 90
Michele at Lucca
Pierced Ornaments from Lisieux, Bayeux,
VII. 93
Verona, and Padua
VIII. Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice 95
Tracery from the Campanile of Giotto, at
IX. Frontispiece.
Florence.
Traceries and Mouldings from Rouen and
X. 122
Salisbury
XI. Balcony in the Campo, St. Benedetto, Venice 131
Fragments from Abbeville, Lucca, Venice and
XII. 149
Pisa
Portions of an Arcade on the South Side of the
XIII. 161
Cathedral of Ferrara
XIV. Sculptures from the Cathedral of Rouen 165

LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING
Plate I. Figs. 1,3 and 5. Illustrative Diagrams 219
" II. " 2.Window in Oakham Castle 221

and 6. Spray of ash-tree, and
" III. " 4 improvement of the same on Greek 226
Principles
" IV. " 7.Window in Dumblane Cathedral 231
" V. " 8.Mediæval Turret 235
" VI. " 9 and 10. Lombardic Towers 238
" VII. " 11 and 12. Spires at Contances and Rouen 240
" VIII. " 13 and 14. Illustrative Diagrams 253
" IX. " 15.Sculpture at Lyons 254
" X. " 16.Niche at Amiens 255
and 18. Tiger's Head, and improvement of
" XI. " 17 258
the same on Greek Principles
Garret Window in Hotel de
" XII. " 19. 265
Bourgtheroude
and 21. Trees, as drawn in the thirteenth
" XIII. " 20 294
century
Rocks, as drawn by the school of
" XIV. " 22. 296
Leonardo Da Vinci
" XV. " 23.Boughs of Trees, after Titian 298

THE
SEVEN LAMPS
OF
ARCHITECTURE

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."[A] 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 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 illustrative of my meaning, I have
sometimes very completely failed even of that humble aim; and the text,
being generally written before the illustration was completed, sometimes
naïvely describes as sublime or beautiful, features which the plate
represents by a blot. I shall be grateful if the reader will in such cases refer
the expressions of praise to the Architecture, and not to the illustration.

So far, however, as their coarseness and rudeness admit, the plates are
valuable; being either copies of memoranda made upon the spot, or (Plates
IX. and XI.) enlarged and adapted from Daguerreotypes, taken under my
own superintendence. Unfortunately, the 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, and the number of them; and though the looseness of the drawing,
and the picturesque character which is necessarily given by an endeavor to
draw old buildings as they actually appear, may perhaps diminish their
credit for architectural veracity, they will do so unjustly.
The system of lettering adopted in the few instances in which sections have
been given, appears somewhat obscure in the references, but it is
convenient upon the whole. The line which marks the direction of any
section is noted, if the section be symmetrical, by a single letter; and the
section itself by the same letter with a line over it, a.—ā. But if the section
be unsymmetrical, its direction is noted by two letters, a. a. a2 at its
extremities; and the actual section by the same letters with lines over them,
ā. ā. ā2, at the corresponding 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
magnificently 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 d'Arno, as representing the Italian
Romanesque and pure Italian Gothic; Venice and Verona as representing the
Italian Gothic colored 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.

INTRODUCTORY.
Some years ago, in conversation with an artist whose works, perhaps, alone,
in the present day, unite perfection of drawing with resplendence of color,
the writer made some inquiry respecting the general means by which this
latter quality was most easily to be attained. The reply was as concise as it
was comprehensive—"Know what you have to do, and do it"—
comprehensive, not only as regarded the branch of art to which it
temporarily applied, but as expressing the great principle of success in
every direction of human effort; for I believe that failure is less frequently
attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labor, than to a
confused understanding of the thing actually to be done; and therefore,
while it is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, that men
propose to themselves a perfection of any kind, which reason, temperately
consulted, might have shown to be impossible with the means at their
command, it is a more dangerous error to permit the consideration of means
to interfere with our conception, or, as is not impossible, even hinder our
acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in themselves. And this is the
more cautiously to be remembered; because, while a man's sense and
conscience, aided 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 opponents. These are questions
respecting which passion may warp his conclusions, and ignorance must
limit them; but it is his own fault if either interfere with the apprehension of
duty, or the acknowledgment of right. And, as far as I have taken
cognizance of the causes of the many failures to which the efforts of
intelligent men are liable, more especially in matters political, they seem to
me more largely to spring from this single error than from all others, that
the inquiry into the doubtful, and in some sort inexplicable, relations of

capability, chance, resistance, and inconvenience, invariably precedes, even
if it do not altogether supersede, the determination of what is absolutely
desirable and just. Nor is it any wonder that sometimes the too cold
calculation of our powers should reconcile us too easily to our
shortcomings, and even lead us into the fatal error of supposing that our
conjectural utmost is in itself well, or, in other words, that the necessity of
offences renders them inoffensive.
What is true of human polity seems to me not less so of the distinctively
political art of Architecture. I have long felt convinced of the necessity, in
order to its progress, of some determined effort to extricate from the
confused mass of partial traditions and dogmata with which it has become
encumbered during imperfect or restricted practice, those large principles of
right which are applicable to every stage and style of it. Uniting the
technical and imaginative elements as essentially as humanity does soul and
body, it shows the same infirmly balanced liability to the prevalence of the
lower part over the higher, to the interference of the constructive, with the
purity and simplicity of the reflective, element. This tendency, like every
other form of materialism, is increasing with the advance of the age; and the
only laws which resist it, based upon partial precedents, and already
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
endeavors to deal with the multiplying host of particular abuses, restraints,
or requirements; and endeavor 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 endeavored 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 endeavoring to ascertain the true nature and nobility of their
fire, to refuse to enter into any curious or special questioning of the
innumerable hindrances by which their light has been too often distorted or
overpowered.
Had this farther examination been attempted, the work would have become
certainly more invidious, and perhaps less useful, as liable to errors which
are avoided by the present simplicity of its plan. Simple though it be, its
extent is too great to admit of any adequate accomplishment, unless by a
devotion of time which the writer did not feel justified in withdrawing from
branches of inquiry in which the prosecution of works already undertaken
has engaged him. Both arrangements 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 inconsiderable the act, there is something in the

well doing of it, which has fellowship with the noblest forms of manly
virtue; and the truth, decision, and temperance, which we reverently regard
as honorable conditions of the spiritual being, have a representative or
derivative influence over the works of the hand, the movements of the
frame, and the action of the intellect.
And as thus every action, down even to the drawing of a line or utterance of
a syllable, is capable of a peculiar dignity in the manner of it, which we
sometimes express by saying it is truly done (as a line or tone is true), so
also it is capable of dignity still higher in the motive of it. For there is no
action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and
ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may
help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of
all purposes, the pleasing of God. Hence George Herbert—
"A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine."
Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act or manner of acting,
we have choice of two separate lines of 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 subjects of small temporal importance. I believe,
however, that no error is more thoughtless than this. We treat God with
irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His
will on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority or intelligence which
cannot be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small but that we
may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or 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 honoring of it is in its
universal application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its

sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing; but my excuse
must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every argument
and the test of every action. We have them not often enough on our lips, nor
deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in our lives. The snow,
the vapor, and the stormy wind fulfil His word. Are our acts and thoughts
lighter and wilder than these—that we should forget it?
I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giving to some passages the
appearance of irreverence, to take the higher line of argument wherever it
appeared clearly traceable: and this, I would ask the reader especially to
observe, not merely because I think it the best mode of reaching ultimate
truth, still less because I think the subject of more importance than many
others; but because every subject should surely, at a period like the present,
be taken 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
acknowledgment of the sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, for
which it has become the occupation of his life to contend.

THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE.

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 contributes 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, taking up and
admitting, as conditions of its working, the necessities and common uses of

the building, impresses on its form certain characters venerable or beautiful,
but otherwise unnecessary. Thus, I suppose, no one would call the laws
architectural which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a
bastion. But if to the stone facing of that bastion be added an unnecessary
feature, as a cable moulding, that is Architecture. It would be similarly
unreasonable to call battlements or machicolations architectural features, so
long as they consist only of an advanced gallery supported on projecting
masses, with open intervals beneath for offence. But if these projecting
masses be carved beneath into rounded courses, which are useless, and if
the headings of the intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless, that
is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line so sharply and
simply, because there are few buildings which have not some pretence or
color of being architectural; neither can there be any architecture which is
not based on building, nor any good architecture which is not based on
good building; but it is perfectly easy and very necessary to keep the ideas
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 honor of God, or in memory
of men, has surely a use to which its architectural adornment fits it; but not
a use which limits, by any inevitable necessities, its plan or details.
II. Architecture proper, then, naturally arranges itself under five heads:—
Devotional; including all buildings raised for God's service or
honor.
Memorial; including both monuments and tombs.
Civil; including every edifice raised by nations or societies, for
purposes of common business or pleasure.
Military; including all private and public architecture of
defence.
Domestic; including every rank and kind of dwelling-place.
Now, of the principles which I would endeavor to develope, while all must
be, as I have said, applicable to every stage and style of the art, some, and
especially those which are exciting rather than directing, have necessarily
fuller reference to one kind of building than another; and among these I
would place first that spirit which, having influence in all, has nevertheless
such especial reference to devotional and memorial 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 spacious; 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 honorable in men, as it is beyond all dispute necessary
to the production of any great work in the kind with which we are at present
concerned.
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 desired, there being no direct call or
purpose to be answered by so doing; and the second, the desire to honor or
please some one else by the costliness 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 honored by the presentation to
Him of any material objects of value, or by any direction of zeal or wisdom
which is not immediately beneficial to men?
For, observe, it is not now the question whether the fairness and majesty of
a building may or may not answer any moral purpose; it is not the result of
labor in any sort of which we are speaking, but the bare and mere costliness
—the substance and labor and time themselves: are these, we ask,
independently of their result, acceptable offerings to God, and considered
by Him as doing Him honor? So long as we refer this question to the
decision of feeling, or of conscience, or of reason merely, it will be
contradictorily or imperfectly answered; it admits of entire answer only
when we have met another and a far different question, whether the Bible
be indeed one book or two, and whether the character of God revealed in
the Old Testament be other than His character revealed in the New.
IV. Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although the particular ordinances
divinely appointed for special purposes at any given period of man's history,
may be by the same divine authority abrogated at another, it is impossible
that any character of God, appealed to or described in any ordinance past or
present, can ever be changed, or understood as changed, by the abrogation
of that ordinance. God is one and the same, and is pleased or displeased by
the same things for ever, although one part of His pleasure may be
expressed at one time rather than another, and although the mode in which
His pleasure is to be consulted may be by Him graciously modified to the
circumstances of men. Thus, for instance, it was necessary that, in order to
the understanding by man of the scheme of Redemption, that scheme
should be foreshown from the beginning by the type of bloody sacrifice.
But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice in the time of Moses than

He has now; He never accepted as a propitiation for sin any sacrifice but the
single one in prospective; and that we may not entertain any shadow of
doubt on this subject, the worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is
proclaimed at the very time when typical sacrifice was most imperatively
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 of the rite in its human uses and bearings, and only
were added to it as being in themselves pleasing to God.
V. Now, was it necessary to the completeness, as a type, of the Levitical
sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of divine purposes, that it should
cost anything to the person in whose behalf it was offered? On the contrary,
the sacrifice which it foreshowed was to be God's free gift; and the cost of,
or difficulty of obtaining, the sacrificial type, could only render that type in
a measure obscure, and less expressive of the offering which God would in
the end provide for all men. Yet this costliness was generally a condition of
the acceptableness of the sacrifice. "Neither will I offer unto the Lord my
God of that which doth cost me nothing."[B] 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 governor would demand it, as a testimony of respect.
"Offer it now unto thy governor."[C] 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 dishonoring
of God in the sight of man. Whence it may be infallibly concluded, that in
whatever offerings we may now see reason to present unto God (I say not
what these may be), a condition of their acceptableness will be now, as it
was then, that they should be the best of their kind.
VI. But farther, was it necessary to the carrying out of the Mosaical system,
that there should be either art or splendor in the form or services of the
tabernacle or temple? Was it 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 honors paid. The
probability, in our times, of fellowship with the feelings of the idolatrous
Romanist is absolutely as nothing compared with the danger to the Israelite
of a sympathy with the idolatrous Egyptian;1 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.[D] Yet
against this mortal danger provision was not made in one way (to man's

thoughts the simplest, the most natural, the most effective), by withdrawing
from the worship of the Divine Being whatever could delight the sense, or
shape the imagination, or limit the idea of Deity to place. This one way God
refused, demanding for Himself such honors, and accepting for Himself
such local dwelling, as had been paid and dedicated to idol gods by heathen
worshippers; 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 use, 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 labors; of wealth of wood, and
weight of stone; of the strength of iron, and of the light of gold.
And let us not now lose sight of this broad and unabrogated principle—I
might say, incapable of being abrogated, so long as men shall receive
earthly gifts from God. Of all that they have His tithe must be rendered to
Him, or in so far and in so much He is forgotten: of the skill and of the
treasure, of the strength and of the mind, of the time and of the toil, offering
must be made reverently; and if there be any difference between the
Levitical and the Christian offering, it is that the latter may be just so much
the wider in its range as it is less typical in its meaning, as it is thankful
instead of sacrificial. There can be no excuse accepted because the Deity
does not now visibly dwell in His temple; if He is invisible it is only
through our failing faith: nor any excuse because other calls are more

immediate or more sacred; this ought to be done, and not the other left
undone. Yet this objection, as frequent as feeble, must be more specifically
answered.
VII. It has been said—it ought always to be said, for it is true—that a better
and more honorable offering is made to our Master in ministry to the poor,
in extending the knowledge of His name, in the practice of the virtues by
which that name is hallowed, than in material presents to His temple.
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 smoothing pillars
or carving pulpits; let us have enough first of walls and roofs. Do the people
need teaching from house to house, and bread from day to day? Then they
are deacons and ministers we want, not architects. I insist on this, I plead
for this; but let us examine ourselves, and see if this be indeed the reason
for our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is not between God's
house and His poor: it is not between God's house and His Gospel. It is
between God's house and ours. Have we no tesselated colors on our floors?
no frescoed fancies on our roofs? no niched statuary in our corridors? no
gilded 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[E] that our pleasure as well as our toil has been hallowed by the
remembrance of Him who gave both the strength and the reward. And until
this has been done, I do not see how such possessions can be retained in
happiness. I do not understand the feeling which would arch our own gates
and pave our own thresholds, and leave the church with its narrow door and
foot-worn sill; the feeling which enriches our own chambers with all
manner of costliness, 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 becoming of the remotest or most
contemptible use—things which cause half the expense of life, and destroy
more than half its comfort, manliness, respectability, freshness, and facility.
I speak from experience: I know what it is to live in a cottage with a deal
floor and roof, and a hearth of mica slate; and I know it to be in many
respects healthier and happier than living between a Turkey carpet and
gilded ceiling, beside a steel grate and polished fender. I do not say that
such things have not their place and propriety; but I say this, emphatically,
that the tenth part of the expense which is sacrificed in domestic vanities, if
not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in domestic discomforts, and
incumbrances, would, if 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 splendors; her power is independent of them, her purity is in some
degree opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary is lovelier
than the majesty of an urban temple; and it may be more than questioned
whether, to the people, such majesty has ever been the source of any
increase of 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-
proclaiming splendor. Your gift may be given in an unpresuming way. Cut
one or two shafts out of a porphyry whose preciousness those only would
know who would desire it to be so used; add another month's labor to the
undercutting of a few capitals, whose delicacy will not be seen nor loved by
one beholder of ten thousand; see that the simplest masonry of the edifice
be perfect and substantial; and to those who regard such things, their
witness will be clear and impressive; to those who regard them not, all will
at least be inoffensive. But do not think the feeling itself a folly, or the act
itself useless. Of what use was that dearly-bought water of the well of
Bethlehem with which the King of Israel slaked the dust of Adullam?—yet
was not thus better than if he had drunk it? Of what use was that passionate
act of Christian sacrifice, against which, first uttered by the false tongue, the
very objection we would now conquer took a sullen tone for ever?[F] 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 materially 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 surface work throughout; and the danger and evil
of their church decoration lie, not in its reality—not in the true wealth and
art of it, of which the lower 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 rewarded, which is neither to win praise nor purchase
salvation, the Romanist (as such) has no conception.
IX. While, however, I would especially deprecate the imputation 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 specifically, by the increase of those possessions. Wealth,
and length of days, and peace, were the promised and experienced rewards
of his offering, though they were not to be the objects of it. The tithe paid
into the storehouse was the expressed condition of the blessing which there
should not be room enough to receive. And it will be thus always: God
never forgets any work or labor of love; and whatever it may be of which
the first and best proportions or powers have been presented to Him, he will
multiply and increase sevenfold. Therefore, though it may not be
necessarily the interest of religion to admit the service of the arts, the arts
will never flourish until they have been primarily devoted to that service—
devoted, both by architect and employer; by the one in scrupulous, earnest,
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 national consequence: I should, indeed, expect a larger
measure of every great and spiritual faculty to be always given where those
faculties had been wisely and religiously employed; but the impulse to
which I refer, would be, humanly speaking, certain; and would naturally
result from obedience to the two great conditions enforced by the Spirit of
Sacrifice, first, that we should in everything do our best; and, secondly, that
we should consider increase of apparent labor as an increase of beauty in
the building. A few practical deductions from these two conditions, and I
have done.
X. For the first: it is alone enough to secure success, and it is for want of
observing it that we continually fail. We are none of us so good architects as
to be able to work 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 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 mediæval
statuary. Such things are mere insults to common sense, and only unfit us
for feeling the nobility of their prototypes. We have so much, suppose, to be
spent in decoration; let us go to the Flaxman of his time, whoever he may
be, and bid him carve for us a single statue, frieze or capital, or as many as
we can afford, compelling upon him the one condition, that they shall be the
best he can do; place them where they will be of the most value, and be
content. Our other capitals may be mere blocks, and our other niches empty.
No matter: better our work unfinished than all bad. It may be that we do not
desire ornament of so high an order; choose, then, a less developed style,
also, if you will, rougher material; the law which we are enforcing requires
only that what we pretend to do and to give, shall both be the best of their
kind; choose, therefore, the Norman hatchet work, instead of the Flaxman
frieze and statue, but let it be the best hatchet work; and if you cannot afford
marble, use Caen stone, but from the best bed; and if not stone, brick, but
the best brick; preferring always what is good of a lower order of work or
material, to what is bad of a higher; for this is not only the way to improve
every kind of work, and to put every kind of material to better use; but it is
more honest and unpretending, and is in harmony with other just, upright,
and manly principles, whose range we shall have presently to take into
consideration.
XI. The other condition which we had to notice, was the value of the
appearance of labor upon architecture. I have spoken of this before;[G] and
it is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of pleasure which belong to

the art, always, however, within certain somewhat remarkable limits. For it
does not at first appear easily to be explained why labor, as represented by
materials of value, should, without sense 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 substance,
as showing that in such a 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 labor that offends us, than the lack of judgment
implied by such loss; so that if men confessedly work for work's sake, and
it does not appear that they are ignorant where or how to make their labor
tell, we shall not be grossly offended. On the contrary, we shall be pleased
if the work be lost in carrying out a principle, or in avoiding a 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 continuation 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 concealed places, in which it is best to err on the side of completion;
and in the carrying round of string courses, and other such continuous work;
not but that they may stop sometimes, on the point of going into some
palpably 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 not
work any kind of ornament which is, perhaps, to cover the whole building
(or at least to occur on all parts of it) delicately where it is near the eye, and
rudely where it is removed from it. That is trickery and dishonesty.
Consider, first, what kinds of ornaments will tell in the distance and what
near, and so distribute them, keeping such as by their nature are delicate,
down near the eye, and throwing the bold and rough kinds of work to the
top; and if there be any kind which is to be both near and far off, take care
that it be as boldly and rudely wrought where it is well seen as where it is
distant, so that the spectator may know exactly what it is, and what it is
worth. Thus chequered patterns, and in general such ornaments as common
workmen can execute, may extend over the whole building; but bas-reliefs,
and fine niches and capitals, should be kept down, and the common sense of
this will always give a building dignity, even though there be some
abruptness or awkwardness, in the resulting arrangements. Thus at San
Zeno at Verona, the bas-reliefs, full of incident and interest are confined to a
parallelogram of the front, reaching to the height of the capitals of the
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 façade had been
covered with bad work, and may serve for an example of the way to place
little where we cannot afford much. So, again, the transept gates of
Rouen[H] 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 its 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 height of about one hundred feet from the
ground, being alike colossal and simple; visibly so from below, so as to
induce no deception, and yet honestly and well-finished above, and all that
they are expected to be; the features very beautiful, full of expression, and
as delicately wrought as any work of the period.
XIII. It is to be remembered, however, that while the 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 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 fine cases of this disposition the upper work is effective by its
quantity and intricacy only, as the lower portions by delicacy; so also in the
Tour de Beurre at Rouen, where, however, the detail is massy throughout,
subdividing into rich meshes as it ascends. In the bodies of buildings the
principle is less safe, but its discussion is not connected with our present
subject.
XIV. Finally, work may be wasted by being too good for its material, or too
fine to bear exposure; and this, generally a characteristic of late, especially
of renaissance, work, is perhaps the worst fault of all. I do not know
anything more painful or pitiful than the kind of ivory carving with which
the Certosa of Pavia, and part of the Colleone sepulchral chapel at
Bergamo, and other such buildings, are incrusted, of which it is not possible
so much as to think without exhaustion; and a heavy sense of the misery it
would be, to be forced to look at it at all. And this is not from the quantity

of it, nor because it is bad work—much of it is inventive and able; but
because it looks as if it were only fit to be put in inlaid cabinets and
velveted caskets, and as if it could not bear one drifting shower or gnawing
frost. We are afraid for it, anxious about it, and tormented by it; and we feel
that a massy shaft and a bold shadow would be worth it all. Nevertheless,
even in cases like these, much depends on the accomplishment of the great
ends of decoration. If the ornament does its duty—if it is ornament, and its
points of shade and light tell in the general effect, we shall not be offended
by finding that the sculptor in his fulness of fancy has chosen to give much
more than these mere points of light, and has composed them of groups of
figures. But if the ornament does not answer its purpose, if it have no
distant, no truly decorative power; if generally seen it be a mere incrustation
and meaningless roughness, we shall only be chagrined by finding when we
look close, that the incrustation has cost years of labor 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 the latest Italian. It reaches nearly the same extreme of detail; but it
never loses sight of its architectural purpose, never fails in its decorative
power; not a leaflet in it but speaks, and speaks far off, too; and so long as
this be the case, there is no limit to the luxuriance in which such work may
legitimately and nobly be bestowed.

PLATE I.—(Page 33—Vol. V)
Ornaments from Rouen, St. Lo, and Venice.
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. 1), 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 degenerate, the gate itself is of a purer period, and has hardly
any renaissance taint. There are four strings of these niches (each with two
figures beneath it) round the porch, from the ground to the top of the arch,
with three intermediate rows of larger niches, far more elaborate; besides
the six principal canopies of each outer pier. The total number of the
subordinate niches alone, each worked like that in the plate, and each with a
different pattern of traceries in each compartment, is one hundred and
seventy-six.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 pleasurableness to contrast, and would be wearisome if
universal. They are but the rests and monotones of the art; it is to its far
happier, far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated
mosaic, charged with wild 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
diademed tower; the only witnesses, perhaps that remain to us of the faith
and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed
away—all their living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not
for what they labored, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory,
wealth, authority, happiness—all have departed, though bought by many a
bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life, and their toil upon the earth, one
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 honors,
and their errors; but they have left us their adoration.

CHAPTER II.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

I. There is a marked likeness between the virtues of man and the
enlightenment of the globe he inhabits—the same diminishing gradation in
vigor up to the limits of their 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
impatience, 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 prudence conceal, which
kindness and courtesy modify, which courage overshadows with his shield,
imagination covers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears. How
difficult must the maintenance of that authority be, which, while it has to
restrain the hostility 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 severity the lightest
and the boldest violations of its law! There are some faults slight in the
sight of love, some errors slight in the estimate of wisdom; but truth
forgives no insult, and endures no stain.

We do not enough consider this; nor enough dread the slight and continual
occasions of offence against her. We are too much in the habit of looking at
falsehood in its darkest associations, and through the color of its worst
purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is
indeed only at deceit malicious. We resent calumny, 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 mischief in the world;
they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it is
the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of
the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the
partizan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to
himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which any man
who pierces, we thank as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert;
happy in that the thirst for truth still remains with us, even when we have
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 measurements, and to look to the other and clearer
condition of culpability; esteeming those faults worst which are committed
under least temptation. I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious
and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity; yet it seems to me,
that the shortest way to check the darker forms of deceit is to set watch
more scrupulous against those which have mingled, unregarded and
unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think
of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended.
Cast them all aside: they may be light and accidental; but they are an ugly
soot from the smoke of the pit, for all that; and it is better that our hearts

should be swept clean of them, without over care as to which is 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
honorable man to resolve that, whatever semblances or fallacies the
necessary course of his life may compel him to bear or to believe, none
shall disturb the serenity of his voluntary actions, nor diminish the reality of
his chosen 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 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 endeavored to show its range and power in
painting; and I believe a volume, instead of a chapter, might be written on
its authority over all that is great in architecture. But I must be content with
the force of instances few and familiar, 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 contemplation of them as such, i.e. in the knowledge of
their actual absence or impossibility at the moment of their apparent
presence or reality. When the imagination deceives it becomes madness. It
is a noble faculty so long as it 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 endeavor to deceive. Not so: it is, on the
contrary, a statement of certain facts, in the clearest possible way. For
instance: I desire to give an account of a mountain or of a rock; I begin by
telling its shape. But words will not do this distinctly, and I draw its shape,
and say, "This was its shape." Next: I would fain represent its color; but
words will not do this either, and I dye the paper, and say, "This was its
color." Such a process may be carried on until the scene appears to exist,
and a high pleasure may be taken in its apparent existence. This is a
communicated act of imagination, but no lie. The lie can consist only in an
assertion of its existence (which is never for one instant made, implied, or
believed), or else in false statements of forms and colors (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 realization, is
degraded in so doing. I have enough insisted on this point in another place.
V. The violations of truth, which dishonor poetry and painting, are thus for
the most part confined to the treatment of their subjects. But in architecture
another and a less subtle, more contemptible, violation of truth is possible; a
direct falsity of assertion respecting the nature of material, or the quantity of
labor. And this is, in the full sense of the word, wrong; it is as truly
deserving of reprobation as any other moral delinquency; it is unworthy
alike of architects and of nations; and it has been a sign, wherever it has

widely and with toleration existed, of a singular debasement of the arts; that
it is not a sign of worse than this, of a general want of severe probity, can be
accounted for only by our knowledge of the strange 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 concerned with art, while it has destroyed the arts
themselves, has also rendered in a measure nugatory the evidence which
otherwise they might have presented respecting the character of the
respective nations among whom they have been cultivated; otherwise, it
might appear more than strange that a nation so distinguished for its general
uprightness and faith as the English, should admit in their architecture more
of pretence, concealment, and deceit, than any other of this or of past time.
They are admitted in thoughtlessness, but with fatal effect upon the art in
which they are practised. If there were no other causes for the failures
which of late have marked every great occasion for architectural exertion,
these petty dishonesties would be enough to account for all. It is the first
step and not the least, towards greatness to do away with these; the first,
because so evidently and easily in our power. We may not be able to
command good, or beautiful, or inventive architecture; but we can
command an honest architecture: the meagreness of poverty may be
pardoned, the sternness of utility respected; but what is there but scorn for
the 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.
2d. 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.
3d. The use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind.
Now, it may be broadly stated, that architecture will be noble exactly in the
degree in which all these false expedients are avoided. Nevertheless, there
are certain degrees of them, which, owing to their frequent usage, or to
other causes, have so far lost the nature of deceit as to be admissible; as, for

instance, gilding, which is in architecture no deceit, because it is therein not
understood for gold; while in jewellery it is a deceit, because it is so
understood, and therefore altogether to be reprehended. So that there arise,
in the application of 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 determined and
purposed suggestion of a mode of support other than the true one. The
architect is not bound to exhibit structure; nor are we to complain of him for
concealing it, any more than we should regret that the outer surfaces of the
human frame conceal much of its anatomy; nevertheless, that building will
generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye discovers the great
secrets of its structure, as an animal form does, 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
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 a blue vault. But we
know the contrary, in both instances; we know the cloud to be a damp fog,
or a drift of snow flakes; and the sky to be a lightless abyss. There is,
therefore, no dishonesty, while there is much 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
generally has no idea, and the provisions for it, consequently, circumstances
whose necessity or adaptation he could not understand. 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 comprehended, 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 juggling, if possible
still more to be condemned, because less sublime.
VIII. With deceptive concealments of structure are to be classed, though
still more blameable, deceptive assumptions of it—the introduction of
members which should have, or profess to have, a duty, and have none. One

of the most general instances of this will be found in the form of the flying
buttress in late 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 pinnacle became
gradually a decorative member, and was used in all places merely for the
sake of its beauty. There is no objection to this; it is just as lawful to build a
pinnacle for its beauty as a tower; but also the buttress became a decorative
member; and was used, first, where it was not wanted, and, secondly, in
forms in which it could be of no use, becoming a mere tie, not between the
pier and wall, but between the wall and the top of the decorative pinnacle,
thus attaching itself to the very point where its thrust, if it made any, could
not be resisted. The most flagrant instance of this barbarism that I
remember (though it prevails partially in all the spires of the Netherlands),
is the lantern of St. Ouen at Rouen, where the pierced buttress, having an
ogee curve, looks about as much calculated to bear a thrust as a switch of
willow; and the pinnacles, huge and richly decorated, have evidently no
work to do whatsoever, but stand round the central tower, like four idle
servants, as they are—heraldic supporters, that central tower being merely a
hollow crown, which needs no more buttressing than a basket does. In fact,
I do not know anything more strange or unwise than the praise lavished
upon this lantern; it is one of the basest pieces of Gothic in Europe; its
flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms;5 and its entire
plan and decoration resembling, and deserving little more credit than, the
burnt sugar ornaments of elaborate confectionery. There are hardly any of
the magnificent and serene constructions of the 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 emaciated, and remain but the sickly
phantoms and mockeries of things that were; they are to true architecture
what the Greek ghost was to the armed and living frame; and the very
winds that 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 corruption 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 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 has obtained the
knowledge and practice of iron work, metal rods or rivets should not be
used in the place of cement, and establish the same or a greater strength and
adherence, without in any wise inducing departure from the types and
system of architecture before established; nor does it make any difference
except as to 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 a
great measure on his supposition of this condition, and of the difficulties
attendant upon it: so that it is always more honorable, and it has a tendency
to render the style of architecture both more masculine and more scientific,
to employ stone and mortar simply as such, and to do as much as possible
with the weight of the one and the strength of the other, and rather
sometimes to forego a grace, or to confess a weakness, than attain the one,
or conceal the other, by means verging upon dishonesty.
Nevertheless, where the design is of such delicacy and slightness 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 impossible for them to retain,
although a riddle here and there, in unimportant features, may sometimes

serve to draw the eye to the masonry, and make it interesting, as well as to
give a delightful sense of a kind of necromantic power in the architect.
There is a pretty one in the lintel of the lateral door of the cathedral of Prato
(Plate IV. fig. 4.); where the 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 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 adaptations 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

forgotten the great principle to which all creation bears witness, that order
and system are nobler things than power. But God shows us in Himself,
strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the
perfection of Obedience—an obedience to His own laws: and in the
cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of His creatures we are reminded,
even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human
creature "that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not."
XIV. 2d. Surface Deceits. These may be generally defined as the inducing
the supposition of some form or material which does not actually exist; as
commonly in the painting of wood to represent marble, or in the painting of
ornaments in deceptive 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 grissaille
mingled with the figures of its frescoes; and the effect is increase of dignity.
In what lies the distinctive character?
In two points, principally:—First. That the architecture is so closely
associated with the figures, and has so grand 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, 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
splendor; it depended far more on their frescoes than their marbles. The
plaster, in this case, is to be considered as the gesso ground on panel or
canvas. But to cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with
joints that it may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood; and is just as
contemptible a procedure as the other is noble.
It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint everything? So long as the
painting is confessed—yes; but if, even in the slightest degree, the sense of
it be lost, and the thing painted be supposed real—no. Let us take a few
instances. In the Campo Santo at Pisa, each fresco is surrounded with a
border composed of flat colored patterns of great elegance—no part of it in
attempted relief. The certainty of flat surface being thus secured, the
figures, though the size of life, do not deceive, and the artist thenceforward
is at liberty to put forth his whole power, and to lead us through fields and
groves, and depths of pleasant landscape, and to soothe us with the sweet
clearness of far off sky, and yet never lose the severity of his primal purpose
of architectural decoration.
In the Camera di Correggio of San Lodovico at Parma, the trellises of vine
shadow the walls, as if with an actual arbor; and the troops of children,
peeping through the oval openings, luscious in color and faint in light, may
well be expected every instant to break through, or hide behind the covert.
The grace of their attitudes, and the evident greatness of the whole work,
mark that it is painting, and barely redeem it from the charge of falsehood;

but even so saved, it is utterly unworthy to take a place among noble or
legitimate architectural decoration.
In the cupola of the duomo of Parma the same painter has represented the
Assumption with so much deceptive power, that he has made a dome of
some thirty feet diameter look like a cloud-wrapt opening in the seventh
heaven, crowded with a rushing sea of angels. Is this wrong? Not so: for the
subject at once precludes the possibility of deception. We might have taken
the vines for a veritable pergoda, and the children for its haunting ragazzi;
but we know the stayed clouds and moveless angels must be man's work;
let him put his utmost strength to it and welcome, he can enchant us, but
cannot betray.
We may thus apply the rule to the highest, as well as the art of daily
occurrence, always remembering that more is to be forgiven to the great
painter than to the mere decorative workman; and this especially, because
the former, even in deceptive portions, will not trick us so grossly; as we
have just seen in Correggio, where a worse painter would have made the
thing look like life at once. There is, however, in room, villa, or garden
decoration, some fitting admission of trickeries of this kind, as of pictured
landscapes at the extremities of alleys and arcades, and ceilings like skies,
or painted with prolongations upwards of the architecture of the walls,
which things have sometimes a certain luxury and pleasureableness in
places meant for idleness, 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 commercial 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, however derogatory to the noble
architecture around it, is less painful than the want of feeling with which, in
our cheap modern churches, we suffer the wall decorator to erect about the
altar frameworks and pediments daubed with mottled color, and to dye in
the same fashions such skeletons or caricatures of columns as may emerge
above the pews; this is not merely bad taste; it is no unimportant or
excusable error which brings even these shadows of vanity and falsehood
into the house of prayer. The first condition which just feeling requires in
church furniture is, that it should be simple and unaffected, not fictitious nor
tawdry. It may be in our power to make it beautiful, but let it at least be
pure; and if we cannot permit much to the architect, do not let us permit
anything to the upholsterer; if we keep to solid stone and solid wood,
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 Birmingham metal candlesticks, and, above all, the green and
yellow sickness of the false marble—disguises all, observe; falsehoods all
—who are they who like these things? who defend them? who do them? I
have never spoken to any one who did like them, though to many who
thought them matters of no consequence. Perhaps not to religion (though I
cannot but believe that there are many to whom, as to myself, such things
are serious obstacles to the repose of mind and temper which should
precede devotional exercises); but to the general tone of our judgment and
feeling—yes; for assuredly we shall 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 material 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 anything that is verily of gold. I think gold was meant to
be seldom seen and to be admired as a precious thing; and I sometimes wish
that truth should so far literally prevail as that all should be gold that
glittered, or rather that nothing should glitter that was not gold.
Nevertheless, nature herself does not dispense with such semblance, but
uses light for it; and I have too great a love for old and saintly art to part
with its burnished field, or radiant nimbus; only it should be used with
respect, and to express magnificence, or sacredness, and not in lavish
vanity, or in sign painting. Of its expedience, however, any more than of
that of color, it is not here the place to speak; we are endeavoring to
determine what is lawful, not what is desirable. Of other and less common
modes of disguising surface, as of powder of lapis lazuli, or mosaic
imitations of colored 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
serpentines, it must become, not only an extravagant and vain increase of
expense, but sometimes an actual impossibility, to obtain mass of them
enough to build with, there is no resource but this of veneering; nor is there
anything to be alleged against it on the head of durability, such work having
been by experience found to last as long, and in as perfect condition, as any
kind of masonry. It is, therefore, to be considered as simply an art of mosaic
on a large scale, the ground being of brick, or any other material; and when
lovely stones are to be obtained, it is a manner which should be thoroughly
understood, and often practised. Nevertheless, as we esteem the shaft of a
column more highly for its being of a single block, and as we do not regret
the loss of substance and value which there is in things of solid gold, silver,
agate, or ivory; so I think the walls themselves may be regarded with a
more just complacency if they are known to be all of noble substance; and
that rightly weighing the demands of the two principles of which we have
hitherto spoken—Sacrifice and Truth, 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 color, 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 colors 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 variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the
kinds innumerable; where brighter colors are required, let glass, and gold
protected by glass, be used in mosaic—a kind of work as durable as the
solid stone, and incapable of losing its lustre by time—and let the painter's
work be reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber. This is the
true and faithful way of building; where this cannot be, the device of
external coloring may, indeed, be employed without dishonor; but it must
be with the warning reflection, that a time will come when such aids must
pass away, and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness, dying
the death of the 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.

PLATE II.—(Page 55—Vol. V.)
Part of the Cathedral of St. Lo, Normandy.
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 labor 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, immeasurably superior,
to that of the most elaborate sculpture of its stones: and that all our interest
in the carved work, our sense of its richness, though it is tenfold less rich
than the knots of grass beside it; of its delicacy, though it is a thousand fold
less delicate; of its admirableness, though a millionfold less admirable;
results from our consciousness of its being the work of poor, clumsy,
toilsome man. Its true delightfulness depends on our discovering in it the
record of thoughts, and intents, and trials, and heart-breakings—of
recoveries and joyfulnesses of success: all this can be traced by a practised
eye; but, 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 anything else we call
precious. The worth of a diamond is simply the understanding of the time it
must take to look for it before it can be cut. It has an intrinsic value besides,
which the diamond has not (for a diamond has no more real beauty than a
piece of glass); but I do not speak of that at present; I place the two on the
same ground; and I suppose that hand-wrought ornament can no more be
generally known from machine work, than a diamond can be known from
paste; nay, that the latter may deceive, for a moment, the mason's, as the
other the jeweller's eye; and that it can be detected only by the closest
examination. Yet exactly as a woman of feeling would not wear false
jewels, so would a builder of honor disdain false ornaments. The using of
them is just as downright and inexcusable a lie. You use that which pretends
to a worth which it has not; which pretends to have cost, and to be, what it
did not, and is not; it is an imposition, a vulgarity, an impertinence, and a
sin. Down with it to the ground, grind it to powder, leave its ragged place
upon the wall, rather; you have not paid for it, you have no business with it,
you do not want it. Nobody wants ornaments in this world, but everybody

wants integrity. All the fair devices that ever were fancied, are not worth a
lie. Leave your walls as bare as a planed board, or build them of baked mud
and chopped straw, if need be; but do not rough-cast them with falsehood.
This, then, being our general law, and I hold it for a more imperative one
than any other I have asserted; and this kind of dishonesty the meanest, as
the least necessary; for ornament is an extravagant and inessential thing;
and, therefore, if fallacious, utterly base—this, I say, being our general law,
there are, 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, colored 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 colors, we would by no
means blame the employment of a material which, whatever its defects,
excels every other in permanence, and, perhaps, requires even greater skill
in its management than marble. For it is not the material, but the absence of
the human labor, which makes the thing worthless; and a piece of terra
cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by human hand, is
worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machinery. It is, indeed, possible, and
even usual, for men to sink into machines themselves, so that even hand-
work has all the characters of mechanism; of the difference between living
and dead hand-work I shall speak presently; all that I ask at present is, what
it is always in our power to secure—the confession of what we have done,
and what we have given; so that when we use stone at all, since all stone is
naturally supposed to be carved by hand, we must not carve it by
machinery; neither must we use any artificial stone cast into shape, nor any
stucco ornaments of the color of stone, or which might in anywise be

mistaken for it, as the stucco mouldings in the 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
natural feeling for beauty, than the constant use of cast iron ornaments. The
common iron work of the middle ages was as simple as it was effective,
composed of leafage cut flat out of sheet iron, and twisted at the workman's
will. No ornaments, on the contrary, are so cold, clumsy, and vulgar, so
essentially incapable of a fine line, or shadow, as those of cast iron; and
while, on the score of truth, we can hardly allege anything against them,
since they are always distinguishable, 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 endeavor to show more conclusively in another place,
enforcing only, at present, the general conclusion that, if even honest or
allowable, they are things in which we can never take just pride or pleasure,
and must never be employed in any place wherein they might either
themselves obtain the credit of being other and better than they are, or be
associated with the downright work to which it would be a disgrace to be
found in their company.
Such are, I believe, the three principal kinds of fallacy by which
architecture is liable to be corrupted; there are, however, other and more
subtle forms of it, against which it is less easy to guard by definite law, than
by the watchfulness of a manly and unaffected 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 conceit of detecting the intention to over-reach;
and when subtleties of this kind are accompanied by the display of such
dextrous stone-cutting, or architectural sleight of hand, as may become,
even by itself, a subject of admiration, it is a great chance if the pursuit of
them do not gradually draw us away from all regard and care for the nobler
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 publication of which I have been not a little amazed
to hear of any attempts made to resuscitate the inexcusably absurd theory of
its derivation from imitated vegetable form—inexcusably, I say, because the
smallest acquaintance with early Gothic architecture would have informed
the supporters of that theory of the simple fact, that, exactly in proportion to
the antiquity of the work, the imitation of such organic forms is less, and in
the earliest examples does not exist at all. There cannot be the shadow of a
question, in the mind of a person familiarised with any single series of
consecutive examples, that tracery arose from the gradual enlargement 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 Eremitani at Padua.
But the more frequent and typical form is that of the double sub-arch,
decorated with various piercings of the space between it and the superior
arch; with a simple trefoil under a round arch, in the Abbaye aux Hommes,

Caen9 (Plate III. fig. 1); with a very beautifully 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 intermediate stone (fig. 4, from one
of the nave chapels of Rouen, fig. 5, from one of the nave chapels of
Bayeaux), and finally, by thinning out the stony ribs, reaching conditions
like that of the glorious typical form of the clerestory of the apse of
Beauvais (fig. 6).

PLATE III.—(Page 60—Vol. V.)
Traceries From Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, and Beavais.
XXII. Now, it will be noticed that, during the whole of this process, the attention is kept fixed
on the forms of the penetrations, that is to say, of the lights as seen from the interior, not of the
intermediate stone. All the grace of the window is in the outline of its light; and I have drawn
all these traceries as seen from within, in order to show the effect of the light thus treated, at
first in far off and separate stars, and then gradually enlarging, approaching, until they come
and stand over us, as it were, filling the whole space with their effulgence. And it is in this
pause of the star, that we have the great, pure, and perfect form of French Gothic; it was at the
instant when the rudeness of the intermediate space had been finally conquered, when the
light had expanded to its fullest, and yet had not lost its radiant unity, principality, and visible
first causing of the whole, that we have the most exquisite feeling and most faultless
judgments in the management alike of the tracery and decorations. I have given, in Plate X.,
an exquisite example of it, from a panel 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 continuous 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 nearest heaven, the builders
looked back, for the last time, to the way by which they had come, and the scenes through
which their early course had passed. They turned away from them and their morning light, and
descended towards a new horizon, for a time in the warmth of western sun, but plunging with
every forward step into more cold and melancholy shade.
XXIII. The change of which I speak, is inexpressible 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 X., as compared with earlier
mouldings, because 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 intervening space was cast aside, as an
element of decoration, for ever. I have confined myself, in following this change, to the
window, as the feature in which it is clearest. But the transition is the same in every member
of 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 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 represent 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 the point of
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; 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 c d represents the horizontal, in the plane of the
window, indicated by the perspective line d e.
XXVII. The very awkwardness with which such occurrences of difficulty are met by the
earlier builder, marks his dislike of the system, and unwillingness to attract the eye to such
arrangements. There is another very clumsy one, in the junction of the upper and sub-arches
of the triforium of 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 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 k, having a base with the profile p r, is supposed to contain within
itself another similar one, set diagonally, and lifted so far above the inclosing one, as that the
recessed part of its profile p r shall fall behind the projecting part of the outer one. The angle
of its upper portion exactly meets the plane of the side of the upper inclosing shaft 4, and
would, therefore, not be seen, unless two vertical cuts were made to exhibit it, which form two
dark lines the whole way up the shaft. Two small pilasters are run, like fastening stitches,
through the junction on the front of the shafts. The sections k n taken respectively at the levels
k, n, will explain the hypothetical construction of the whole. Fig. 7 is a base, or joint rather
(for passages of this form occur again and again, on the shafts of flamboyant work), of one of
the smallest piers of the pedestals which support 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.

PLATE IV.—(Page 66—Vol. V.)
Intersectional Mouldings.
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 intersection as they
wished, bent them hither and thither, and cut off their ends short, when they had passed the
point of intersection. Fig. 2, Plate IV. is part of a flying buttress from the apse of St. Gervais at
Falaise, in which the moulding whose section is rudely given above at f, (taken vertically
through the point f,) is carried thrice through itself, in the cross-bar and two arches; and the
flat fillet is cut off sharp at the end of the cross-bar, for the mere pleasure of the truncation.
Fig. 3 is half of the head of a door in the Stadthaus of Sursee, in which the shaded part of the
section of the joint g g, is that of the arch-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, particularly of the intersecting of beams at the angles of châlets; 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 grow out of this singular abuse—the flattened arch, the shrunken pillar, the lifeless
ornament, 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 mediæval
architecture. It was because it had lost its own strength, and disobeyed its own laws—because
its order, and consistency, and organization, had been broken through—that it could oppose no
resistance to the rush of overwhelming innovation. And this, observe, all because it had
sacrificed a single truth. From that one surrender of its integrity, from that one endeavor to
assume the semblance of what it was not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and
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 honor, and with a new soul, from the ashes into which it sank, giving
up its glory, as it had received it, for the honor of God—but its own truth was gone, and it
sank forever. There was no wisdom nor strength left in it, to raise it from the dust; and the
error of zeal, and the softness of luxury smote it down and dissolved it away. It is good for us
to remember this, as we tread upon the bare ground of its foundations, and stumble over its
scattered stones. Those rent skeletons of pierced wall, through which our sea-winds moan and
murmur, strewing them joint by joint, and bone by bone, along the bleak promontories on
which the Pharos lights came once from houses of prayer—those grey arches and quiet isles
under which the sheep of our valleys feed and rest on the turf that has buried their altars—
those shapeless heaps, that are not of the Earth, which lift our fields into strange and sudden
banks of flowers, and stay our mountain streams with stones that are not their own, have other
thoughts to ask from us than those of mourning for the rage that despoiled, or the fear that
forsook them. It was not the robber, not the fanatic, not the 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.

CHAPTER 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 interposing 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 outlines 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 generally happen that they fall into two broad classes: the one
characterized 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 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 pretension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of
less enduring nobility—to value of material, accumulation of ornament, or ingenuity of
mechanical construction. Especial interest may, indeed, have been awakened by such
circumstances, and the memory may have been, consequently, rendered tenacious of particular
parts or effects of the structure; but it will recall even these only by an active effort, and then
without emotion; while in passive moments, and with thrilling influence, the image 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 build-ing is not merely that which there is
in nature between things beautiful and sublime. It is, also, the difference between what is
derivative and original in man's work; for whatever is in architecture fair or beautiful, is
imitated from natural forms; and what is not so derived, but depends for its dignity upon
arrangement and government received from human mind, becomes the expression of the
power of that mind, and receives a sublimity high in proportion to the power expressed. All
building, therefore, shows man either as gathering or governing: and the secrets of his success
are his knowing what to gather, and how to rule. These are the two great intellectual Lamps of
Architecture; the one consisting in a just and humble veneration for the works of God upon
the earth, and the other in an understanding of the dominion over those works which has been
vested in man.
III. Besides this expression of living authority and power, there is, however, a sympathy in the
forms of noble building, with what is most sublime in natural things; and it is the governing
Power directed by this sympathy, whose operation I shall at present endeavor 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 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 appearance 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 themselves 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 organization,—but of that also which reproves the pillars of
the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her
shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky; for these, and other glories
more than these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his thoughts, with the work of his own
hand; the grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some Cyclopean waste of
mural stone; the pinnacles of the rocky promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into
fantastic semblances of fortress towers; and even the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a
melancholy mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from the images of nameless
tumuli on white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy clay, into which chambered cities melt
in their mortality.
IV. Let us, then, see what is this power and majesty, which Nature herself does not disdain to
accept from the works of man; and what that sublimity in the masses built up by his coralline-
like energy, which is honorable, even when transferred by association to the dateless hills,
which it needed earthquakes to lift, and deluges to mould.
And, first of mere size: It might not be thought possible to emulate the sublimity of natural
objects in this respect; nor would it be, if the architect contended with them in pitched battle.

It would not be well to build pyramids in the valley of Chamouni; and St. Peter's, among its
many other errors, counts for not the least injurious its position on the slope of an
inconsiderable hill. But imagine it placed on the plain of Marengo, or, like the Superga of
Turin, or like La Salute at Venice! The fact is, that the apprehension of the size of natural
objects, as well as of architecture, depends more on fortunate excitement of the imagination
than on measurements by the eye; and the architect has a peculiar advantage in being able to
press close upon the sight, such magnitude as he can command. There are few rocks, even
among the Alps, that have a clear vertical fall as high as the choir of Beauvais; and if we
secure a good precipice of wall, or a sheer and unbroken flank of tower, and place them where
there are no enormous natural features to oppose them, we shall feel in them no want of
sublimity of size. And it may be matter of encouragement in this respect, though one also of
regret, to observe how much oftener man destroys natural sublimity, than nature crushes
human power. It does not need much to humiliate a 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, Parthenon and
all, has, I believe, been dwarfed into a model by the palace lately built beneath it. The fact is,
that hills are not so high as we fancy them, and, when to the actual impression of no mean
comparative size, is added the sense of the toil of manly hand and thought, a sublimity is
reached, which nothing but gross error in arrangement of its parts can destroy.
V. While, therefore, it is not to be supposed that mere size will ennoble a mean design, yet
every increase of magnitude will bestow upon it a certain degree of nobleness: so that it is
well to determine at first, whether the building is to be markedly beautiful or markedly
sublime; and if the latter, not to be withheld by respect to smaller parts from reaching
largeness of scale; provided only, that it be evidently in the architect's power to reach at least
that degree of magnitude which is the lowest at which sublimity begins, rudely definable as
that which will make a living figure look less than life beside it. It is the misfortune of most of
our 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 conspicuous, all his
ornaments together would not be worth one huge stone. And the choice must be a decided one,
without compromise. It must be no question whether his capitals would not look better with a
little carving—let him leave them huge as blocks; or whether his arches should not have richer

architraves—let him throw them a foot higher, if he can; a yard more across the nave will be
worth more to him than a tesselated pavement; and another fathom of outer wall, than an army
of pinnacles. The limitation of size must be only in the uses of the building, or in the ground at
his disposal.
VI. That limitation, however, being by such circumstances determined, by what means, it is to
be next asked, may the actual magnitude be best displayed; since it is seldom, 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 concealed; as in the well-known case of the recession
of the dome of St. Peter's, and, from the greater number of points of view, in churches whose
highest portions, whether dome or tower, are over their cross. Thus there is only one point
from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt; and that is from the corner of the Via
de' Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it happens that the dome is seen rising
instantly above the apse and transepts. In all cases in which the tower is over the cross, the
grandeur and height of the tower itself are lost, because there is but one line down which the
eye can trace the whole height, and that is in the inner angle of the cross, not easily discerned.
Hence, while, in symmetry and feeling, such designs may often have pre-eminence, yet, where
the height of the tower itself is to be made apparent, it must be at the west end, or better still,
detached as a campanile. Imagine the loss to the Lombard churches if their campaniles were
carried only to their present height over their crosses; or to the Cathedral of Rouen, if the Tour
de Beurre were made central, in the place of its present debased spire!
VII. Whether, therefore, we have to do with 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 character than that of mere size. And, in buildings, this
threatening should be somewhat carried down into their mass. A mere projecting shelf is not
enough, the 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 projection may be thrown lower, as in the Doge's

palace of Venice, where the chief appearance of it is above the second arcade; or it may
become a grand swell from the ground, as the head of a ship of the line rises from the sea.
This is very nobly attained by the projection of the niches in the third story of the Tour de
Beurre at Rouen.
VIII. What is needful in the setting forth of magnitude in height, is right also in the marking it
in area—let it be gathered well together. It is especially to be noted with respect to the Palazzo
Vecchio and other mighty buildings of its order, how mistakenly it has been stated that
dimension, in order to become impressive, should be expanded either in height or length, but
not equally: whereas, rather it will be found that those buildings seem on the whole the vastest
which have been gathered up into a mighty square, and which look as if they had been
measured by the angel's rod, "the length, and the breadth, and the height of it are equal," and
herein something is to be taken notice of, which I believe not to be sufficiently, if at all,
considered among our architects.
Of the many broad divisions under which architecture may be considered, none appear to me
more significant than that into buildings whose interest is in their walls, and those whose
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, and keep the eye
altogether on tracery of line; in Romanesque work and Egyptian, the wall is a confessed and
honored member, and the light is often allowed to fall on large areas of it, variously decorated.
Now, both these principles are admitted by Nature, the one in her woods and thickets, the
other in her plains, and cliffs, and waters; but the latter is pre-eminently the principle of
power, and, in some sense, of beauty 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 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 workmanship, if only it have space enough over which to range, and to
remind it, however feebly, of the joy that it has in contemplating the flatness and sweep of
great plains and broad seas. And it is a noble thing for men to do this with their cut stone or
moulded clay, and to make the face of a wall look infinite, and its edge against the sky like an
horizon: or even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the play of passing
light on its broad surface, and to see by how many artifices and gradations of tinting and
shadow, time and storm will set their wild signatures upon it; and how in the rising or
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 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 direction: and a
sense of power may be communicated to this form of magnitude by a continuous series of any
marked features, such as the eye may be unable to number; 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 the
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 façade, an oblong, elongated to the eye by
a range of thirty-four small arches, and thirty-five columns, while it is separated by a richly-
canopied window in the centre, into two massive divisions, whose height and length are nearly
as four to five; the arcades which give it length being confined to the lower stories, and the
upper, between its broad windows, left a mighty surface of smooth marble, chequered with
blocks of alternate rose-color and white. It would be impossible, I believe, to invent a more
magnificent arrangement of all that is in building most dignified and most fair.
X. In the Lombard Romanesque, the two principles are more fused into each other, as most
characteristically in the Cathedral of Pisa: length of proportion, exhibited by an arcade of
twenty-one arches above, and fifteen below, at the side of the nave; bold square proportion in
the front; that front divided into arcades, placed one above the other, the lowest with its pillars
engaged, of seven arches, the four uppermost thrown out boldly from the receding wall, and
casting deep shadows; the first, above the basement, of nineteen arches; the second of twenty-
one; the third and fourth of eight each; sixty-three arches in all; all circular headed, all with
cylindrical shafts, and the lowest with square panellings, set diagonally under their
semicircles, an universal ornament in this style (Plate XII., fig. 7); the apse, a semicircle, with
a semi-dome for its roof, and three ranges of circular arches for its exterior ornament; in the
interior of the nave, a range of circular arches below a circular-arched triforium, and a vast flat
surface, observe, of wall decorated with striped marble above; the whole arrangement (not a
peculiar one, but characteristic of every church of the period; and, to my feeling, the most
majestic; not perhaps the fairest, but the mightiest type of form which the mind of man has
ever conceived) based exclusively on associations of the circle and the square.

I am now, however, trenching upon ground which I desire to reserve for more careful
examination, in connection with other æsthetic 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
honorable.
XI. Thus far, then, of general forms, and of the modes in which the scale of architecture is best
to be exhibited. Let us next consider the manifestations of power which belong to its details
and lesser divisions.
The first division we have to regard, is the inevitable one of masonry. It is true that this
division may, by great art, be concealed; but I think it unwise (as well as dishonest) to do so;
for this reason, that there is a very noble character always to be obtained by the opposition of
large stones to divided masonry, as by shafts and columns of one piece, or massy lintels and
architraves, to wall work of bricks or smaller stones; and there is a certain organization in the
management of such parts, like that of the continuous bones of the skeleton, opposed to the
vertebræ, 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 versâ. For if a building be under
the mark of average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase its apparent size (too easily
measurable) by any proportionate diminution in the scale of its masonry. But it may be often
in our power to give it a certain nobility by building it of massy stones, or, at all events,
introducing such into its make. Thus it is impossible that there should ever be majesty in a
cottage built of brick; but there is a marked element of sublimity in the rude and 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
workmanship. A very unhappy instance of such interference exists in the façade of the church
of St. Madeleine at Paris, where the columns, being built of very small stones of nearly equal
size, with visible joints, look as if they were covered with a close trellis. So, then, that
masonry will be generally the most magnificent which, without the use of materials
systematically small or large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to the conditions and
structure of its work, and displays alike its power of dealing with the vastest masses, and of
accomplishing its purpose with the smallest, sometimes heaping rock upon rock with Titanic
commandment, and anon binding the dusty remnants and edgy splinters into springing vaults
and swelling domes. And if the nobility of this confessed and natural masonry were more
commonly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by smoothing surfaces and fitting joints.

The sums which we waste in chiselling and polishing stones which would have been better
left as they came from the quarry would often raise a building a story higher. Only in this
there is to be a certain respect for material also: for if we build in marble, or in any limestone,
the known ease of the workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly; it will be well to
take advantage of the stone's softness, and to make the design delicate and dependent upon
smoothness of chiselled surfaces: but if we build in granite or lava, it is a folly, in most cases,
to cast away the labor necessary to smooth it; it is wiser to make the design granitic itself, and
to leave the blocks rudely squared. I do not deny a certain splendor 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 labor 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 magnificence 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 divisions of the design itself. Those
divisions are, necessarily, either into masses of light and shade, or else by traced lines; which
latter must be, indeed, themselves produced by incisions or projections which, in some lights,
cast a certain breadth of shade, but which may, nevertheless, if finely enough cut, be always
true lines, in distant effect. I call, for instance, such panelling as that of Henry the Seventh's
chapel, pure linear division.
Now, it does not seem to me sufficiently recollected, that a wall surface is to an architect
simply what a white canvas is to a painter, with this only difference, that the wall has already a
sublimity in its height, substance, and other characters already considered, on which it is more
dangerous to break than to touch with shade the canvas surface. And, for my own part, I think
a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of gesso a fairer thing than most pictures I see painted on
it; much more, a noble surface of stone than most architectural features which it is caused to
assume. But however this may be, the canvas and wall are supposed to be given, and it is our
craft to divide them.
And the principles on which this division is to be made, are as regards relation of quantities,
the same in architecture as in painting, or indeed, in any other art whatsoever, only the painter
is by his varied subject partly permitted, partly compelled, to dispense with the symmetry of
architectural light and shade, and to adopt arrangements apparently free and accidental. So
that in modes of grouping there is much difference (though no 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 color (because even when color is employed, it cannot follow the moving
shade), is compelled to make many allowances, and avail himself of many contrivances,
which the painter needs neither consider nor employ.
XIII. Of these limitations the first consequence is, that positive shade is a more necessary and
more sublime thing in an architect's hands than in a painter's. For the latter being able to
temper his light with an under-tone throughout, and to make it delightful with sweet color, or

awful with lurid color, and to represent distance, and air, and sun, by the depth of it, and fill its
whole space with expression, can deal with an enormous, nay, almost with an universal extent
of it, and the best painters most delight in such extent; but as light, with the architect, is nearly
always liable to become full and untempered sunshine seen upon solid surface, his only rests,
and his chief means of sublimity, are definite shades. So that, after size and weight, the Power
of architecture may be said to depend on the quantity (whether measured in space or
intenseness) of its shadow; and it seems to me, that the reality of its works, and the use and
influence they have in the daily life of men (as opposed to those works of art with which we
have nothing to do but in times of rest or of pleasure) require of it that it should express a kind
of human sympathy, by a measure of darkness as great as there is in human life: and that as
the great poem and great fiction generally affect us most by the majesty of their masses of
shade, and cannot take hold upon us if they affect a continuance of lyric 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 unwatered plains; and lead along the lights, as
a founder does his hot metal; let him keep the full command of both, and see that he knows
how they fall, and where they fade. His paper lines and proportions are of no value: all that he
has to do must be done by spaces of light and darkness; and his business is to see that the one
is broad and bold enough not to be swallowed up by twilight, and the other deep enough not to
be dried like a shallow pool by a noon-day sun.
And that this may be, the first necessity is that the quantities of shade or light, whatever they
may be, shall be thrown into masses, either of something like equal weight, or else large
masses of the one relieved with small of the other; but masses of one or other kind there must
be. No design that is divided at all, and 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 principal applications will include most of the
conditions of majestic design on which I would at present insist.
XIV. Painters are in the habit of speaking loosely of masses of light and shade, meaning
thereby any large spaces of either. Nevertheless, it is convenient sometimes to restrict the term
"mass" to the portions to which proper form belongs, and to call the field on which such forms
are traced, interval. Thus, in foliage with projecting boughs or stems, we have masses of 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 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 describes 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[I] to need recapitulation: the conclusion which forces itself upon us from the facts he
has remarked, being one on which I shall have occasion farther to insist presently, that the
Greek workman cared for shadow only as a dark field wherefrom his light figure or design
might be intelligibly 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. Bounded forms were, in the columns
and principal decorative members, adopted, not for their own sake, but as characteristic of the
things represented. They were beautifully rounded, because the Greek habitually did well
what he had to do, not because he loved roundness more than squareness; severely rectilinear
forms were associated with the curved ones in the cornice and triglyph, and the mass of the
pillar was divided by a fluting, which, in distant effect, destroyed much of its breadth. What
power of light these primal arrangements left, was diminished in successive refinements and
additions of ornament; and continued to diminish through Roman work, until the confirmation
of the circular arch as a decorative feature. Its lovely and simple line taught the eye to ask for
a similar boundary of solid form; the dome followed, and necessarily the decorative masses
were thenceforward 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 superfices 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 incontestably more grand and masculine, based on that quality of pure gradation, which
nearly all natural objects possess, and the attainment of which is, in fact, the first and most
palpable purpose in natural arrangements of grand form. The rolling heap of the thunder-
cloud, divided by rents, and multiplied by wreaths, yet gathering them all into its broad, torrid,
and towering zone, and its midnight darkness 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 honored law, that diffusion of light for which the Byzantine ornaments
were designed; and show us that those builders had truer sympathy with what God made
majestic, than the self-contemplating and self-contented Greek. I know that they are barbaric
in comparison; but there is a power in their barbarism of sterner tone, a power not sophistic
nor penetrative, but embracing and mysterious; a power faithful more than thoughtful, which
conceived and felt more than it created; a power that neither comprehended nor ruled itself,
but worked and 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 endeavored to give some idea of one of the hollow balls of stone which,
surrounded by flowing leafage, occur in varied succession on the architrave of the central gate
of St. Mark's at Venice, in Plate I. fig. 2. It seems to me singularly beautiful in its unity of
lightness, and delicacy of detail, 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 anything 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 surrounding sea, is done by the masters of the Cis-Alpine Gothic, more
timidly, and with a manner somewhat cramped and cold, but not less expressing their assent to
the same great law. The ice spiculæ of the North, and its broken sunshine, seem to have image
in, and influence on the work; and the leaves which, under the Italian's hand, roll, and flow,
and bow down over their black shadows, as in the weariness of noon-day heat, are, in the
North, crisped and frost-bitten, wrinkled on the edges, and sparkling as if with dew. But the
rounding of the ruling form is not less sought and felt. In the lower part of Plate I. is the finial
of the pediment given in Plate II., from the 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 quatre-foils. I could not get
near enough to this finial to see with what degree of delicacy the spines were cut; but I have
sketched a natural group of thistle-leaves beside it, that the reader may compare the types, and
see with what 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
capriciously 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.

PLATE V.—(Page 88—Vol. V.)
Capital from the Lower Arcade of the Doge's Palace, Venice.
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 decorations would be inexpedient on masses like the Castle of St.

Angelo, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or the dome of St. Peter's. But what has been above said
of the desireableness of serenity in plane surfaces, applies still more forcibly to those which
are curved; and it is to be 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 degree there must be, in order to
secure any measure of grandeur in a small mass of light. One of the most marked distinctions
between one artist and another, in the point of skill, will be found in their relative delicacy of
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 endeavor 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 absolute 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 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.

PLATE VI.—(Page 90—Vol. V.)
Arch from the Façade of the Church of San Michele at Lucca.
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 Romanesque 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 anything can
be more exquisite than their placing in the head window of the Giotto campanile, Plate IX., or
the church of Or San Michele. So entirely does the effect depend upon them, that it is quite
useless to draw Italian tracery in 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, endeavored 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 architecture, the glass, which tormented the older architects, considered
as a valuable means of making the lines of tracery more slender; as in the smallest intervals of
the windows of Merton College, Oxford, where the glass is advanced about two inches from
the centre of the tracery bar (that in the larger spaces being in the middle, as usual), in order to
prevent the depth of shadow from farther diminishing the apparent interval. Much of the
lightness of the effect of the traceries is owing to this seemingly unimportant arrangement.
But, generally 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 intermediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to vary his wall
surface with inlaid stones. The northern architect neither knew the ancient work, nor
possessed the delicate material; and he had no resource but to cover his walls with holes, cut
into foiled shapes like those of the windows. This he did, often with great clumsiness, but

always with a vigorous sense of composition, and always, observe, depending on the shadows
for effect. Where the wall was thick and could not be cut through, and the foilings 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 on the west front of Bayeux; cut so deep in every case, as to secure, in
all but a direct low front light, great breadth of shadow.

PLATE VII.—(Page 93—Vol. V.)
Pierced Ornaments from Lisieux, Bayeux, Verona, and Padua.
The spandril, given at the top of Plate VII., is from the southwestern entrance of the Cathedral
of Lisieux; one of the most quaint and interesting doors in Normandy, probably soon to be lost
forever, by the continuance of the masonic operations which have already destroyed the
northern tower. Its work is altogether rude, but full of spirit; the opposite spandrils have
different, though balanced, ornaments very inaccurately adjusted, each rosette or star (as the
five-rayed figure, now quite defaced, in the upper portion appears to have been) cut on its own
block of stone and fitted in with small nicety, especially illustrating the point I have above
insisted upon—the architect's utter neglect of the forms of intermediate stone, at this early
period.

The arcade, of which a single arch and shaft are given on the left, forms the flank of the door;
three outer shafts bearing three orders within the spandril which I have drawn, and each of
these shafts carried over an inner arcade, decorated above with quatre-foils, cut concave and
filled with leaves, the whole disposition exquisitely picturesque and full of strange play of
light and shade.
For some time the penetrative ornaments, if so they may be for convenience called,
maintained their bold and independent character. Then they multiplied and enlarged,
becoming 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.
XXI. Figs. 2 and 3, the one a quadrant of the star window of the little chapel close to St.
Anastasia at Verona, and the 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 wall surface, and not
being obliged, like the Northmen, to multiply their penetrations, held to the system for some
time longer; and while they increased the refinement of the ornament, kept the purity of the
plan. That refinement of ornament was their weak point, however, and opened the way for the
renaissance attack. They fell, like the old Romans, by their luxury, except in the separate
instance of the magnificent school of Venice. That 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 splendor that art and
wealth could give it. It had laid down its crown and its jewels, its gold and its color, like a
king disrobing; it had resigned its exertion, like an athlete reposing; once capricious and
fantastic, it had bound itself by laws inviolable and serene as those of nature herself. It
retained nothing but its beauty and its power; both the highest, but both restrained. The Doric
flutings were of irregular number—the Venetian mouldings were unchangeable. The Doric
manner of ornament admitted no temptation, it was the fasting of an anchorite—the Venetian
ornament embraced, while it governed, all vegetable and animal forms; it was the temperance
of a man, the command of Adam over creation. I do not know so magnificent a marking of
human authority as the iron grasp of the Venetian over his own exuberance of 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 level cusps of stone.11

PLATE VIII.—(Page 95—Vol. V.)
Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice.
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 III. and VIII., he kept the cusps
within them perfectly flat, decorated, if at all, with a trefoil (Palazzo Foscari), or fillet (Doge's
Palace) just traceable and no more, so that the quatrefoil, cut as sharply through them as if it
had been struck out by a stamp, told upon the eye, with all its four black leaves, miles away.
No knots of flowerwork, no ornaments of any kind, were 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 exhibited by every
possible expedient, up to the period when, as we have before stated, the line was substituted
for the mass, as the means of division of surface. Enough has been said to illustrate this, as
regards tracery; but a word or two is still necessary respecting the mouldings.
Those of the earlier times were, in the plurality of instances, composed of alternate square and
cylindrical shafts, variously associated and proportioned. Where concave cuttings occur, as in
the beautiful west doors of Bayeux, they are between cylindrical shafts, which they throw out
into broad light. The eye in all cases dwells on broad surfaces, and commonly upon few. In
course of time, a low ridgy process is seen emerging along the outer edge of the cylindrical
shaft, forming a line of light upon it and destroying its gradation. Hardly traceable at first (as
on the alternate rolls of the north door of Rouen), it grows and pushes out as gradually as a
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 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 absolutely the eye rests on the forms of the leaves, and on the
three berries in the angle, being in light exactly what the trefoil is in darkness. These
mouldings nearly adhere to the stone; and are very slightly, though sharply, undercut. In
process of time, the attention of the architect, instead of resting on the leaves, went to the
stalks. These latter were elongated (b, from the south door of St. Lo); and to exhibit them
better, the deep concavity 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 flamboyant 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
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 vigor of their
masses than on any other attribute of their design: mass of everything, of bulk, of light, of
darkness, of color, not mere sum of any of these, but breadth of them; not broken light, nor

scattered darkness, nor divided weight, but solid stone, broad sunshine, starless shade. Time
would fail me altogether, if I attempted to follow out the range of the principle; there is not a
feature, however apparently trifling, to which it cannot give power. The wooden fillings of
belfry lights, necessary to protect their interiors from rain, are in England usually divided into
a number of neatly executed cross-bars, like those of Venetian blinds, which, of course,
become as conspicuous in their sharpness as they are uninteresting in their precise carpentry,
multiplying, moreover, the horizontal lines which directly contradict those of the architecture.
Abroad, such necessities are met by three or four downright penthouse roofs, reaching each
from within the window to the outside shafts of its mouldings; instead of the horrible row of
ruled lines, the space is thus divided into four or five grand masses of shadow, with grey
slopes of roof above, bent or yielding into all kinds of delicious swells and curves, and
covered with warm tones of moss and lichen. Very often the thing is more delightful than the
stone-work itself, and all because it is broad, dark, and simple. It matters not how clumsy, how
common, the means are, that get weight and shadow—sloping roof, jutting porch, projecting
balcony, hollow niche, massy gargoyle, frowning parapet; get but gloom and simplicity, and
all good things will follow in their place and time; do but design with the owl's eyes first, and
you will gain the falcon's afterwards.
XXIV. I am grieved to have to insist upon what seems so simple; it looks trite and
commonplace when it is written, but pardon me this: for it is anything but an accepted or
understood principle in practice, and the less excusably forgotten, because it is, of all the great
and true laws of art, the easiest to obey. The executive facility of complying with its demands
cannot be too earnestly, too frankly asserted. There are not five men in the kingdom who
could compose, not twenty who could cut, the foliage with which the windows of Or San
Michele are adorned; but there is many a village clergyman who could invent and dispose its
black openings, and not a village mason who could not cut them. Lay a few clover or wood-
roof leaves on white paper, and a little 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 vigor of effect with leaf designs on
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 miserable in its petty neatness is our best! how
beneath the mark of attack, and the level of contempt, that which is common with us! What a
strange sense of formalised deformity, of shrivelled precision, of starved accuracy, of minute
misanthropy have we, as we leave even the rude streets of Picardy for the market towns of
Kent! Until that street architecture of ours is bettered, until we give it some size and boldness,
until we give our windows recess, and our walls thickness, I know not how we can blame our

architects for their feebleness in more important work; their eyes are inured to narrowness and
slightness: can we expect them at a word to conceive and deal with breadth and solidity? They
ought not to live in our cities; there is that in their miserable walls which bricks up to death
men's imaginations, as surely as ever perished forsworn nun. An architect should live as little
in cities as a painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by
a buttress, and what by a dome. There was something in the old power of architecture, which
it had from the recluse more than from the citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with
chief praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, and above the fury of the populace: and
Heaven forbid that for such cause we should ever have to lay a larger stone, or rivet a firmer
bar, in our England! But we have other sources of power, in the imagery of our iron coasts and
azure hills; of power more pure, nor less serene, than that of the hermit spirit which once
lighted with white lines of cloisters the glades of the Alpine pine, and raised into ordered
spires the wild rocks of the Norman sea; which gave to the temple gate the depth and darkness
of Elijah's Horeb cave; and lifted, out of the populous city, grey cliffs of lonely stone, into the
midst of sailing birds and silent air.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

I. It was stated, in the outset of the preceding chapter, that the value of architecture depended
on two distinct characters: the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other,
the image it bears of the natural creation. I have endeavored to show in what manner its
majesty was 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 inquiry 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 assumption; and only asserting that to be beautiful which I believe will
be granted me to be so without dispute, I would endeavor shortly to trace the manner in which
this element of 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 arrangement of line is directly suggested
by a natural object; but that all beautiful lines are adaptations of those which are commonest
in the external creation; that in proportion to the richness of their association, the resemblance
to natural work, as a type and help, must be more closely attempted, and more clearly seen;
and that beyond a certain point, and that a very low one, man cannot advance in the invention
of beauty, without directly imitating natural form. Thus, in the Doric temple, the triglyph and
cornice are unimitative; or imitative only of artificial cuttings of wood. No one would call
these members beautiful. Their influence over us is in their severity and simplicity. The fluting
of the column, which I doubt not was the Greek symbol of the bark of the tree, was imitative
in its origin, and feebly resembled many caniculated organic structures. Beauty is instantly felt
in it, but of a low order. The decoration proper was sought in the true forms of organic life,
and those chiefly human. Again: the Doric capital was unimitative; but all the beauty it had
was dependent on the precision of its ovolo, a natural curve of the most frequent occurrence.
The Ionic capital (to my mind, as an architectural invention, exceedingly base) nevertheless
depended for all the beauty that it had on its adoption of a spiral line, perhaps the 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 it is pleasant to the eyes. The
pointed arch is beautiful; it is the termination of every leaf that shakes in summer wind, and its
most fortunate associations are directly borrowed from the trefoiled grass of the field, or from
the stars of its flowers. Further than this, man's invention could not reach without frank
imitation. His next step was to gather the flowers themselves, and wreathe them in his
capitals.
III. Now, I would insist especially on the fact, of which I doubt not that further illustrations
will occur to the mind of every reader, that all most lovely forms and thoughts are 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 assumption; but as I have not space to reason out the points wherein essential beauty of
form consists, that being far too serious a work to be undertaken in a bye way, I have no other
resource than to use this accidental mark or test of beauty, of whose truth the considerations
which I hope hereafter to lay before the reader may assure him. I say an accidental mark, since
forms are not beautiful because 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 or 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 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 versâ; 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 attainable by an artificial process, the metal itself never being found
pure. I do not remember any other substance or arrangement which presents a resemblance to
this Greek ornament; and I think that I may trust my 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 to be ugly; or, in the literal sense of the word, monstrous;
different from anything which it is the nature of man to admire: and I think an uncarved fillet
or plinth infinitely preferable to one covered with this vile concatenation of straight lines:
unless indeed it be employed as a foil to a true ornament, which it may, perhaps, sometimes
with advantage; or excessively small, as it occurs on coins, the harshness of its arrangement
being less perceived.
V. Often in association with this horrible design we find, in Greek works, one which is as
beautiful as this is painful—that 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 with that a peculiar accuracy; for the mass which bears the light in this moulding is
not in good Greek work, as in the frieze of the Erechtheum, merely of the shape of an egg. It
is flattened on the upper surface, with a delicacy and keen sense of variety in the curve which
it is impossible too highly to praise, attaining exactly that flattened, imperfect oval, which, in
nine cases out of ten, will be the form of the pebble lifted at random from the rolled beach.
Leave out this flatness, and the moulding is vulgar instantly. It is singular also that the
insertion of this rounded form in the hollow recess has a painted type in the plumage of the
Argus pheasant, the eyes of whose feathers are so shaded as exactly to represent an oval form
placed in a hollow.
VI. It will evidently follow, upon our application of this test of natural resemblance, that we
shall at once conclude that all perfectly beautiful forms must be composed of curves; since
there is hardly any common natural form in which it is possible to discover a straight line.
Nevertheless, Architecture, having necessarily to deal with straight lines essential to its
purposes in many instances and to the expression of its power in others, must frequently be
content with that measure of beauty which is consistent with such primal forms; and we may
presume that utmost measure of beauty to have been attained when the arrangements of such
lines are consistent with the most frequent natural groupings of them we can discover,
although, to find right lines in nature at all, we may be compelled to do violence to her

finished work, break through the sculptured and colored surfaces of her crags, and examine
the processes of their crystallisation.
VII. I have just convicted the Greek fret of ugliness, because it has no precedent to allege for
its arrangement except an artificial form of a rare metal. Let us bring into court an ornament of
Lombard architects, Plate XII., fig. 7, as exclusively 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 favor of the accused Lombard ornament already. But it has more to
say for itself, and more to the purpose; namely, that its main outline is one not only of natural
crystallisation, but among the very first and commonest of crystalline forms, being the primal
condition of the occurrence of the oxides of iron, copper, and tin, of the sulphurets of iron and
lead, of fluor spar, &c.; and that those projecting forms in its surface represent the conditions
of structure which effect the change into another relative and equally common crystalline
form, the cube. This is quite enough. 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 between portcullis and cobwebs or beetles' wings; something like it, perhaps,
may be found in some kinds of crocodile armor and on the backs of the Northern divers, but
always beautifully varied in size of mesh. There is a dignity in the thing itself, if its size were
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 legendary
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 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 architectural silence
about it. Write the Commandments on the Church walls where they may be plainly seen, but
do not put a dash and a tail to every letter; and remember that you are an 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 ornamental. 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, structure, elasticity, gradation of substance;
its extremities are more finely fibred than its centre, its centre than its root; every fork of its
ramification is measured and proportioned; every wave of its languid lines is love. It has its
allotted size, and place, and function; it is a specific creature. What is there like this in a
riband? It has no structure: it is a succession of cut threads all alike; it has no skeleton, no
make, no form, no size, no will of its own. You cut it and crush it into what you will. It has no
strength, no languor. It cannot fall into a single graceful form. It cannot wave, in the true
sense, but only flutter: it cannot bend, in the true sense, but only turn and be wrinkled. It is a
vile thing; it spoils all that is near its wretched film of an existence. Never use it. Let the
flowers come loose if they cannot keep together without being tied; leave the sentence
unwritten if you cannot write it on a tablet or book, or plain roll of paper. I know what
authority there is against me. I remember the scrolls of Perugino's angels, and the ribands of
Raphael's arabesques, and of Ghiberti's glorious bronze flowers: no matter; they are every one
of them vices and uglinesses. Raphael usually felt this, and used an honest and rational tablet,
as in the Madonna di Fuligno. I do not say there is any type of such tablets in nature, but all
the difference lies in the fact that the tablet is not considered as an ornament, and the riband,
or flying scroll, is. The tablet, as in Albert Durer's Adam and Eve, is introduced for the sake of

the writing, understood and allowed as an ugly but necessary interruption. The scroll is
extended as an ornamental form, which it is not, nor ever can be.
XI. But it will be said that all this want of organisation and form might be affirmed of drapery
also, and that this latter is a noble subject of sculpture. By no means. When was drapery a
subject of sculpture by itself, except in the form of a handkerchief on urns in the seventeenth
century and in some of the baser scenic Italian decorations? Drapery, as such, is always
ignoble; it becomes a subject of interest only by the colors it bears, and the impressions which
it receives from some foreign form or force. All noble draperies, either in painting or sculpture
(color and texture being at present out of our consideration), have, so far as they are anything
more than necessities, one of two great functions; they are the exponents of motion and of
gravitation. They are the most valuable means of expressing past as well as present motion in
the figure, and they are almost the only means of indicating to the eye the force of gravity
which resists such motion. The Greeks used drapery in sculpture for the most part as an ugly
necessity, but availed themselves of it gladly in all representation of action, exaggerating the
arrangements of it which express lightness in the material, and follow gesture in the person.
The Christian sculptors, caring little for the body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively on
the 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
representing this mysterious natural force of earth (for falling water is less passive and less
defined in its lines). So, again, in sails it is beautiful because it receives the forms of solid
curved surface, and expresses the force of another invisible element. But drapery trusted to its
own merits, and given for its own sake,—drapery like that of Carlo Dolci and the Caraccis,—
is always base.
XII. Closely connected with the abuse of scrolls and bands, is that of garlands and festoons of
flowers as an architectural decoration, 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 associations as may befit and express their origin. She is not to
imitate directly the natural arrangement; she is not to carve irregular stems of ivy up her
columns to account for the leaves at the top, but she is nevertheless to place her most
exuberant vegetable ornament just where Nature would have placed it, and to give some
indication of that radical and 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 architectural: 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 I know, even a pendent tendril; while the
severest masters of the revived Greek permitted this extraordinary piece of luscious ugliness
to be fastened in the middle of their blank surfaces. So surely as this arrangement is adopted,
the whole value of the flower work is lost. Who among the crowds that gaze upon the building
ever pause to admire the flower work 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 disturbed
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 colored
marble, as in the Casa Doria and other such palaces at Venice; or put a star, or a medallion, or
if you want a ring, put a solid one, but do not carve the images of garlands, looking as if they
had been used in the last 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 Elizabethan buildings. In the last Chapter, it will
be remembered that the square form was shown to be that of pre-eminent Power, and to be
properly adapted and limited to the exhibition of space or surface. Hence, when the window is
to be an exponent of power, as for instance in those by M. Angelo in the lower story of the
Palazzo Ricardi at Florence, the square head is the most noble form they can assume; but then
either their space must be unbroken, and their associated mouldings the most severe, or else
the square must be used as a finial outline, and is chiefly to be associated with forms of
tracery, in which the relative form of power, the circle, is predominant, as in Venetian, and
Florentine, and Pisan Gothic. But if you break upon your terminal square, or if you cut its

lines off at the top and turn them outwards, you have lost its unity and space. It is an including
form no longer, but an added, isolated line, and the ugliest possible. Look abroad into the
landscape and see if you can discover any one so bent and fragmentary as that of this strange
windlass-looking dripstone. You cannot. It is a monster. It unites every element of ugliness, its
line is harshly broken in itself, and unconnected with every other; it has no harmony either
with structure or decoration, it has no architectural support, it looks glued to the wall, and the
only pleasant property it has, is the appearance of some likelihood of its dropping off.
I might proceed, but the task is a weary one, and I think I have named those false forms of
decoration which are most dangerous in our modern architecture as being legal and accepted.
The barbarisms of individual fancy are as countless as they are contemptible; they neither
admit attack nor are worth it; but these above named are countenanced, some by the practice
of antiquity, all by high authority: they have depressed the proudest, and contaminated the
purest schools, and are so established in recent practice that I write rather for the barren
satisfaction of bearing witness against them, than with hope of inducing any serious
convictions to their prejudice.
XV. Thus far of what is not ornament. What ornament is, will without difficulty be determined
by the application of the same test. It must consist of such studious arrangements of form as
are imitative or suggestive of those which are commonest among natural existences, that being
of course the noblest ornament which represents the highest orders of existence. Imitated
flowers are nobler than imitated stones, imitated animals, than flowers; imitated human form
of all animal forms the noblest. But all are combined in the richest ornamental work; and the
rock, the fountain, the flowing river with its pebbled bed, the sea, the clouds of Heaven, the
herb of the field, the fruit-tree bearing fruit, the creeping thing, the bird, the beast, the man,
and the angel, mingle their fair forms on the bronze of Ghiberti.
Every thing being then ornamental that is imitative, I would ask the reader's attention to a few
general considerations, all that can here be offered relating to so vast a subject; which, for
convenience sake, may be classed under the three heads of inquiry:—What is the right place
for architectural ornament? What is the peculiar treatment of ornament which renders it
architectural? and what is the right use of color as associated with architectural imitative
form?
XVI. What is the place of ornament? Consider first that the characters of natural objects which
the architect can represent are few and abstract. The greater part of those delights by which
Nature recommends herself to man at all times, cannot be conveyed by him into his imitative
work. He cannot make his grass green and cool and good to rest upon, which in nature is its
chief use to man; nor can he make his flowers tender and full of color and of scent, which in
nature are their chief powers of giving joy. Those 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 labors, and times of existence, that image of her which the architect carries
away represents what we can only perceive in her by direct intellectual exertion, and demands

from us, wherever it appears, an intellectual exertion of a similar kind in order to understand it
and feel it. It is the written or sealed impression of a thing sought out, it is the shaped result of
inquiry and bodily expression of thought.
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 favorite 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
expression will be ineffective at the time, and will have its sharpness and clearness destroyed
forever. 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 incongruous
circumstances, you will affect that expression thenceforward with a painful color 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
freshness 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.
Wherever you can rest, there decorate; where rest is forbidden, so is beauty. You must not mix
ornament with business, any more than you may mix play. Work first, and then rest. Work first
and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not thrash
with sculptured flails: nor put bas-reliefs on millstones. What! it will be asked, are we in the
habit of doing so? Even so; always and everywhere. The most familiar position of Greek
mouldings is in these days on shop fronts. There is not a tradesman's sign nor shelf nor
counter in all the streets of all our cities, which has not upon it ornaments which were
invented to adorn temples and beautify kings' palaces. There is not the smallest advantage in
them where they are. Absolutely valueless—utterly without the power of giving pleasure, they
only satiate the eye, and vulgarise their own forms. Many of these are in themselves
thoroughly good copies of fine things, which things themselves we shall never, in
consequence, enjoy any more. Many a pretty beading and graceful bracket there is in wood or
stucco above our grocers' and cheese-mongers' and hosiers' shops: how it is that the tradesmen
cannot understand that custom is to be had only by selling good tea and cheese and cloth, and

that people come to them for their honesty, and their readiness, and their right wares, and not
because they have Greek cornices over their windows, or their names in large gilt letters on
their house fronts? how pleasurable it would be to have the power of going through the streets
of London, pulling down those brackets and friezes and large names, restoring to the
tradesmen the capital they had spent in architecture, and putting them on honest and equal
terms, each with his name in black letters over his door, not shouted down the street from the
upper stories, and each with a plain wooden shop casement, with small panes in it that people
would not think of breaking in order to be sent to prison! How much better for them would it
be—how much happier, how much wiser, to put their trust upon their own truth and industry,
and not on the idiocy of their customers. It is curious, and it says little for our national probity
on the one hand, or prudence on the other, to see the whole system of our street decoration
based on the idea that people must be baited to a shop as moths are to a candle.
XX. But it will be said that much of the best wooden decoration 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 decoration as made themselves
happy in their own habitation, and they gave it for their own sake. The upper stories were
always the richest, and the shop was decorated chiefly about the door, which belonged to the
house more than to it. And when our tradesmen settle to their shops in the same way, and form
no plans respecting future villa architecture, let their whole houses be decorated, and their
shops too, but with a national and domestic 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 contemplation of beauty, it is
there. It is the very temple of discomfort, and the only charity that the builder can extend to us
is to show us, plainly as may be, how soonest to escape from it. The whole system of railroad
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 transmutes a man from a traveller into a living parcel. For the time he has parted
with the nobler characteristics of his humanity for the sake of a planetary power of
locomotion. Do not ask him to admire anything. You might as well ask the 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 endeavor to do so. There
never was more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in
anything concerned with railroads or near them. Keep them out of the way, take them through
the ugliest country you can find, confess them 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
necessities may not be easily met: and to increase expense in any other direction is madness.
Better bury gold in the embankments, than put it in ornaments on the stations. Will a single
traveller be willing to pay an increased fare on the South Western, because the columns of the
terminus are covered with patterns from Nineveh? He will only care less for the Ninevite
ivories in the British Museum: or on the North Western, because there are old English-looking
spandrils to the roof of the station at Crewe? He will only have less pleasure in their
prototypes at Crewe House. Railroad architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it
were only left to its work. You would not put rings on the fingers of a smith at his anvil.
XXII. It is not however only in these marked situations that the abuse of which I speak takes
place. There is hardly, at present, an application of ornamental work, which is not in some sort
liable to blame of the same kind. We have a bad habit of trying to disguise disagreeable
necessities by some form of sudden decoration, which is, in all other places, associated with
such necessities. I will name only one instance, that to which I have alluded before—the roses
which conceal the ventilators in the flat roofs of our chapels. Many of those roses are of very
beautiful design, borrowed from fine works: all their grace and finish are invisible when they
are so placed, but their general form is afterwards associated with the ugly buildings in which
they constantly occur; and all the beautiful roses of the early French and English Gothic,
especially such elaborate ones as those of the triforium of Coutances, are in consequence
deprived of their pleasurable influence: and this without our having accomplished the smallest
good by the use we have made of the dishonored form. Not a single person in the
congregation ever receives one ray of pleasure from those roof roses; they are regarded with
mere indifference, or lost in the general impression of harsh emptiness.
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 manner, if they would only use and
apply that sense; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would
only ask for it when it does so, and not allow it to be forced upon him when he does not want
it. Ask any one of the passengers over London Bridge at this instant whether he cares about
the forms of the bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell you, No. Modify these forms of
leaves to a less scale, and put them on his milk-jug at breakfast, and ask him whether he likes
them, and he will tell you, Yes. People have no need of teaching if they 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 labor of the day, when the pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the
bearer is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of the form
declined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with
the trickle of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so
sweet as that—so full of the depth of ancient days, so softened with the calm of pastoral
solitude?
XXIV. II. Thus far, then, of the place for beauty. We were next to inquire into the characters
which fitted it peculiarly for architectural appliance, and into the principles of choice and of
arrangement which best regulate the imitation of natural forms in which it consists. The full
answering of these questions would be a treatise on the art of design: I intend only to say a
few words respecting the two conditions of that art which are essentially architectural,—
Proportion and Abstraction. Neither of these qualities is necessary, to the same extent, in other
fields of design. The sense of proportion is, by the landscape painter, frequently sacrificed to
character and accident; the power of abstraction to that of complete realisation. The flowers of
his foreground must often be unmeasured in their quantity, loose in their arrangement: what is
calculated, either in quantity or disposition, 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.
Architecture, on the contrary, delights in Abstraction and fears to complete her forms.
Proportion and Abstraction, then, are the two especial marks of architectural design as
distinguished from all other. Sculpture must have them in inferior degrees; leaning, on the one
hand, to an architectural manner, when it is usually greatest (becoming, indeed, a part of
Architecture), and, on the other, to a pictorial manner, when it is apt to lose its dignity, and
sink into mere ingenious carving.
XXV. Now, of Proportion so much has been written, that I believe the only facts which are of
practical use have been overwhelmed and kept out of sight by vain accumulations of particular
instances and estimates. Proportions are as infinite (and that in all kinds of things, as severally
in colors, lines, shades, lights, and forms) as possible airs in music: and it is just as rational an
attempt to teach a young architect how to proportion truly and well by calculating for him the
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 Adelaïde 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 proportion (which will never be either numbered or known), architects are perpetually
forgetting and transgressing the very simplest of its necessities.
XXVI. Of which the first is, that wherever Proportion exists at all, one member of the
composition must be either larger than, or in some way supreme over, the rest. There is no
proportion between equal things. They can have symmetry only, and symmetry without
proportion is not composition. It is necessary to perfect beauty, but it is the least necessary of

its elements, nor of course is there any difficulty in obtaining it. Any succession of equal
things is agreeable; but to compose is to arrange unequal things, and the first thing to be done
in beginning a composition is to determine which is to be the principal thing. I believe that all
that has been written and taught about proportion, put together, is not to the architect worth
the single rule, well enforced, "Have one large thing and several smaller things, or one
principal thing and several inferior things, and bind them well together." Sometimes there may
be a regular gradation, as between the heights of stories in good designs for houses;
sometimes a monarch with a lowly train, as in the spire with its pinnacles: the varieties of
arrangement are infinite, but the law is 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 kind of proportion instantly. So in a cathedral
you may have one tower in the centre, and two at the west end; or two at the west end only,
though a worse arrangement: but you must not have two at the west and two at the east end,
unless you have some central member to connect them; and even then, buildings are generally
bad which have large balancing features at the extremities, and small connecting ones in the
centre, because it is not easy then to make the centre dominant. The bird or moth may indeed
have wide wings, 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.

PLATE X.—(Page 122—Vol. V.)
Traceries and Mouldings from Rouen and Salisbury.
XXVII. This rule of supremacy applies to the smallest as well as to the leading features: it is interestingly
seen in the arrangement of all good mouldings. I have given one, on the opposite page, from Rouen cathedral;
that of the tracery 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 a little to bring them to the same
level. The wall in the trefoiled lights is curved, as from e to f 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 g2; 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 the natural level (h, in the section) to that of the first

order (g2) and supported by stone props behind, as seen in the profile fig. 2, which I got from the
correspondent panel on the buttress face (fig. 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, proportioned 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 even seen: it is composed of a large roll with two subordinates.
XXVIII. It is of course impossible to enter into details of instances belonging to so intricate division of our
subject, in the compass of a general essay. I can but rapidly name the chief conditions of right. Another of
these is the connection 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 numbers which
more betray the equality. I should have thought this almost the first principle of proportion which a young
architect was taught: and yet I remember an important building, recently erected in England, in which the
columns are cut in half 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 subordinate: two stories are also equal in
Giotto's campanile, but dominant over smaller divisions below, and subordinated to the noble third above.
Even this 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 terms at least. Hence, as the pinnacles are not enough without the spire, so neither the spire
without the pinnacles. All men feel this and usually express their feeling by saying that the pinnacles conceal
the junction of the spire and tower. This is one reason; but a more influential one is, that the pinnacles furnish
the third term to the spire and tower. So that it is not enough, in order to secure proportion, to divide a
building 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 confusion (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
mass a b, A C=b c, A D=c d, and A E=d e. If the reader will take the trouble to measure these lengths and
compare them, he will find that, within half a line, the uppermost A E=5/7 of A D, A D=6/8 of A C, and A
C=7/9 of A B; a most subtle diminishing proportion. From each of the joints spring three major and three
minor branches, each between each; but the major branches, at any joint, are placed over the minor branches

at the joint below, by the curious arrangement of the joint itself—the stem is bluntly triangular; fig. 6 shows
the section of any joint. The outer darkened triangle is the section of the lower stem; the inner, left light, of
the upper stem; and the three main branches spring from the ledges left by the recession. Thus the stems
diminish in diameter just as they diminish in height. The main branches (falsely placed in the profile over
each other to show their relations) have respectively seven, six, five, four, and three arm-bones, like the masts
of the stem; these divisions being proportioned in the same 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 at Pisa and St. Mark's at Venice, in Chap. V. §§ XIV.-XVI. I
give these arrangements merely as illustrations, not as precedents: all beautiful proportions are unique, they
are not general formulæ.
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 purposed. In the progress of national as well as of
individual mind, the first attempts at imitation are always abstract and incomplete. Greater completion marks
the progress of art, 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 endeavor briefly to
ascertain wherein its danger consists, and wherein its dignity.
XXXI. I have said that all art is abstract in its beginnings; that is to say, it expresses only a small number of
the qualities of the thing represented. Curved and complex lines are represented 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, 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, come 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 features abstracted); but I pass to the next stage of art, a condition of strength in which the
abstraction which was begun in incapability is continued in free will. This is the case, however, in pure
sculpture and painting, as well as in architecture; and we have nothing to do but with that greater severity of
manner which fits either to be associated with the more realist art. I believe it properly consists only in a due
expression of their subordination, an expression varying according to their place and office. The question is
first to be clearly determined whether the architecture is a frame for the sculpture, or the sculpture an
ornament of the architecture. If the latter, then the first office of that sculpture is not to represent the things it
imitates, but to gather out of them those arrangements of form which shall be pleasing to the eye in their
intended places. So soon as agreeable lines and points of shade have been added to the mouldings which were
meagre, or to the lights which were unrelieved, the architectural work of the imitation is accomplished; and
how far it shall be wrought towards completeness or not, will depend upon its place, and upon other various
circumstances. If, in its particular use or position, it is symmetrically arranged, there is, of course, an instant
indication of architectural subjection. But symmetry is not abstraction. Leaves may be carved in the most
regular order, and yet be meanly imitative; or, on the other hand, they may be thrown wild and loose, and yet
be highly architectural in their separate treatment. Nothing can be less symmetrical than the group of leaves
which join the two columns in Plate XIII.; yet, since nothing of the leaf character is given but what is
necessary for the bare suggestion of its image and the attainment of the lines desired, their treatment is highly
abstract. It shows that the workman only wanted so much of the leaf as he supposed good for his architecture,
and would allow no more; and how much is to be supposed good, depends, as I have said, much more on
place and circumstance than on general laws. I know 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 decoration adapted to the severest mouldings.
Now it will be observed, that there is in its treatment a high degree of abstraction, though not so conventional
as that of Salisbury: that is to say, the leaves have little more than their flow and outline represented; they are
hardly undercut, but their edges are connected by a gentle and most studied curve with the stone behind; they
have no serrations, no veinings, no rib or stalk on the angle, only an incision gracefully made towards their
extremities, indicative of the central rib and depression. The whole style of the abstraction shows that the
architect could, if he had chosen, have carried the imitation much farther, but stayed at this point of his own
free will; and what he has done is also so perfect in its kind, that I feel disposed to accept his authority
without question, so far as I can gather it from his works, on the whole subject of abstraction.
XXXII. Happily his opinion is frankly expressed. This moulding is on the lateral buttress, and on a level with
the top of the north gate; it cannot therefore be closely seen except from the wooden stairs of the belfry; it is
not intended to be so seen, but calculated for a distance of, at least, forty to fifty feet from the eye. In the vault
of the gate itself, half as near again, there are three rows of mouldings, as I think, by the same designer, at all
events part of the same plan. One of them is given in Plate I. fig. 2 a. It will be seen that the abstraction is
here infinitely 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 circumstance 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 enunciated
by Mr. Eastlake, that the closest imitation shall be of the noblest object. Farther, since the wildness and
manner of growth of vegetation render a bona fide imitation of it impossible in sculpture—since its members
must be reduced in number, ordered in direction, and cut away from their roots, even under the most earnestly
imitative treatment,—it becomes a point, as I think, of good judgment, to proportion the completeness of
execution of parts to the formality of the whole; and since five or six leaves must stand for a tree, to let also
five or six touches stand for a leaf. But since the animal generally admits of perfect outline—since its form is
detached, and may be fully represented, its sculpture may be more complete and faithful in all its parts. And
this principle will be actually found. I believe, to guide the old workmen. If the animal form be in a gargoyle,
incomplete, and coining 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 abstract. But if it be an entire animal, as a lizard, or a bird, or a squirrel, peeping
among leafage, its sculpture will be much farther carried, and I think, if small, near the eye, and worked in a
fine material, may rightly be carried to the utmost 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 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 anything 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 casements). This
arabesque, relieved as it is in darkness from the white stone by the stain of time, is surely both beautiful and
pure; and as long as the renaissance ornament remained in such forms it may be beheld with undeserved
admiration. But the moment that unnatural objects were associated with these, and armor, 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.

PLATE XI.—(Page 131—Vol. V.)
Balcony in the Campo, St. Benedetto, Venice.

XXXV. III. Our final inquiry was to be into the use of color as associated with architectural ornament.
I do not feel able to speak with any confidence respecting the touching of sculpture with color. I would only
note one point, that sculpture is the representation of an idea, while architecture is itself a real thing. The idea
may, as I think, be left colorless, and colored by the beholder's mind: but a reality ought to have reality in all
its attributes: its color should be as fixed as its form. I cannot, therefore, consider architecture as in any wise
perfect without color. Farther, as I have above noticed, I think the colors of architecture should be those of
natural stones; partly because more durable, but also because more perfect and graceful. For to conquer the
harshness and deadness of tones laid upon stone or on gesso, needs the management and discretion of a true
painter; and on this co-operation we must not calculate in laying down rules for general practice. If Tintoret or
Giorgione are at hand, and ask us for a wall to paint, we will alter our whole design for their sake, and
become their servants; but we must, as architects, expect the aid of the common workman only; and the
laying of color by a mechanical hand, and its toning under a vulgar eye, are far more offensive than rudeness
in cutting the stone. The latter is imperfection only; the former deadness or discordance. At the best, such
color is so inferior to the lovely and mellow hues of the natural stone, that it is wise to sacrifice some of the
intricacy of design, if by so doing we may employ the nobler material. And if, as we looked to Nature for
instruction respecting form, we look to her also to learn the management of color, we shall, perhaps, find that
this sacrifice of intricacy is for other causes expedient.
XXXVI. First, then, I think that in making this reference we are to consider our building as a kind of
organized creature; in coloring 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, and is to be
colored as Nature would color one thing—a shell, a flower, or an animal; not as she colors groups of things.
And the first broad conclusion we shall deduce from observance of natural color 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 any wise been traced: but to the eye the systems are entirely separate, and in many cases
that of color is accidentally variable. The stripes of a zebra do not follow the lines of its body or limbs, still
less the spots of a leopard. In the plumage of birds, each feather bears a part of the pattern which is arbitrarily
carried over the body, having indeed certain graceful 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 color. Let it be visibly independent of form. Never paint a column with vertical lines, but always
cross it.13 Never give separate mouldings separate colors (I know this is heresy, but I never shrink from any
conclusions, however contrary to human authority, to which I am led by observance of natural principles);
and in sculptured ornaments I do not paint the leaves or figures (I cannot help the Elgin frieze) of one color
and their ground of another, but vary both the ground and the figures with the same harmony. Notice how
Nature does it in a variegated flower; not one leaf red and another white, but a point of red and a zone of
white, or 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 colors and the forms coincide only as two orders
of mouldings do; the same for an instant, but each holding its own course. So single members may sometimes
have single colors: as a bird's head is sometimes of one color and its shoulders another, you may make your
capital of one color and your shaft another; but in general the best place for color is on broad surfaces, not on
the points of interest in form. An animal is mottled on its breast and back, rarely on its paws or about its eyes;
so put your 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 color when form is rich, and vice versâ; 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 color itself?
I am quite sure that any person familiar with natural objects will never be surprised at any appearance of care
or finish in them. That is the condition of the universe. But there is cause both for surprise and inquiry

whenever we see anything like carelessness or incompletion: that is not a common condition; it must be one
appointed for some singular purpose. I believe that such surprise will be forcibly felt by any one who, after
studying carefully the lines of some variegated organic form, will set himself to copy with similar diligence
those of its colors. The boundaries of the forms he will assuredly, whatever the object, have found drawn with
a delicacy and precision which no human hand can follow. Those of its colors he will find in many cases,
though governed always by a certain rude symmetry, yet irregular, blotched, imperfect, liable to all kinds of
accidents and awkwardnesses. Look at the tracery of the lines on a camp shell, and see how oddly and
awkwardly its tents are pitched. It is not indeed always so: there is occasionally, as in the eye of the peacock's
plume, an apparent precision, but still a precision far inferior to that of the drawing of the filaments which
bear that lovely stain; and in the plurality of cases a degree of looseness and variation, and, still more
singularly, of harshness and violence in arrangement, is admitted in color 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 color is best seen under these circumstances I will not here endeavor 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 color is always by Him arranged in these
simple or rude forms, and as certain that, therefore, it must be best seen in them, and that we shall never mend
by refining its arrangements. Experience teaches us the same thing. Infinite nonsense has been written about
the union of perfect color with perfect form. They never will, never can be united. Color, to be perfect, must
have a soft outline or a simple one: it cannot have a refined one; and you will never produce a good painted
window with good figure-drawing in it. You will lose perfection of color as you give perfection of line. Try to
put in order and form the colors of a piece of opal.
XXXIX. I conclude, then, that all arrangements of color, for its own sake, in graceful forms, are barbarous;
and that, to paint a color pattern with the lovely lines of a Greek leaf moulding, is an utterly savage
procedure. I cannot find anything in natural color like this: it is not in the bond. I find it in all natural form—
never in natural color. If, then, our architectural color is to be beautiful as its form was, by being imitative, we
are limited to these conditions—to simple masses of it, to zones, as in the rainbow and the zebra; cloudings
and flamings, as in marble shells and plumage, or spots of various shapes and dimensions. All these
conditions are susceptible of various degrees of sharpness and 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 color, and arrange itself in
stars or other shapes; the spot may be also graduated into a stain, or defined into a square or circle. The most
exquisite harmonies may be composed of these simple elements: some soft and full of flushed and melting
spaces of color; others piquant and sparkling, or deep and rich, formed of close groups of the fiery fragments:
perfect and lovely proportion may be exhibited in the relation of their quantities, infinite invention in their
disposition: but, in all cases, their shape will be effective only as it determines their quantity, and regulates
their operation on each other; points or edges of one being introduced between breadths of others, and so on.
Triangular and barred forms are therefore convenient, or others the simplest possible; leaving the pleasure of
the spectator to be taken in the color, and in that only. Curved outlines, especially if refined, deaden the color,
and confuse the mind. Even in figure painting the greatest colorists have either melted their outline away, as
often Correggio and 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, however, the absolute virtue of color 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 scrollwork which form the ground of color 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 impossible to be over quaint or angular in
architectural coloring; and thus many dispositions which I have had occasion to reprobate in form, are, in
color, the best that can be invented. I have always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the Tudor style, for
this reason, that, having surrendered all pretence to spaciousness and breadth,—having divided its surfaces by
an infinite number of lines, it yet sacrifices the only characters which can make lines beautiful; sacrifices all

the variety and grace which long atoned for the caprice of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its leading feature,
an entanglement of cross bars and verticals, showing about as much invention or skill of design as the
reticulation of the bricklayer's sieve. Yet this very reticulation would in color be highly beautiful; and all the
heraldry, and other features which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful as themes of color (so long as
there are no fluttering or over-twisted lines in them); and this observe, because, when colored, they take the
place of a mere pattern, and the resemblance to nature, which could not be found in their sculptured forms, is
found in their piquant variegation of other surfaces. There is a beautiful and bright bit of wall painting behind
the Duomo of Verona, composed of coats of arms, whose 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 color to public buildings. The sculpture and mouldings are all white; but the
wall surface is chequered with marble blocks of pale rose, the chequers being in no wise 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 color is
subordinate either to architectural structure, or sculptural form, we have yet one more manner of
ornamentation to add to our general means of effect, monochrome design, the intermediate condition between
coloring 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 color 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 color
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. Monochrome design, still farther reduced to simplicity
of contour, and therefore admitting for the first time the color to be concurrent with its
outlines; that is to say, as its name imports, the entire figure to be detached in one color from
a ground of another.
4. Organic forms entirely lost. Geometrical patterns or variable cloudings in the most vivid
color.
On the opposite side of this scale, ascending from the color pattern, I would place the various forms of
painting which may be associated with architecture: primarily, and as most fit for such purpose, the mosaic,
highly abstract in treatment, and introducing brilliant color in masses; the Madonna of Torcello being, as I
think, the noblest type of the manner, and the Baptistery of Parma the richest: next, the purely decorative
fresco, like that of the Arena Chapel; finally, the fresco becoming principal, as in the Vatican and Sistine. But
I cannot, with any safety, follow the principles of abstraction in this pictorial ornament; since the noblest
examples of it appear to me to owe their architectural applicability to their archaic manner; and I think that
the abstraction and admirable simplicity which render them fit media of the most splendid coloring, 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 color 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 management of the painted window for the
same reason, which has not yet been met, and we must conquer that first, before we can venture to consider

the wall as a painted window on a large scale. Pictorial subject, without such abstraction, becomes necessarily
principal, or, at all events, ceases to be the architect's concern; its plan must be left to the painter after the
completion of the building, as in the works of Veronese and Giorgione on the palaces of Venice.
XLI. Pure architectural decoration, then, may be considered as limited to the four kinds above specified; of
which each glides almost imperceptibly into the other. Thus, the Elgin frieze is a monochrome in a state of
transition to sculpture, retaining, as I think, the half-cast skin too long. Of pure monochrome, I have given an
example in Plate VI., from the noble front of St. Michele of Lucca. It contains forty such arches, all covered
with equally elaborate ornaments, entirely drawn by cutting out their ground to about the depth of an inch in
the flat white marble, and filling the spaces with pieces of green serpentine; a most elaborate mode of
sculpture, requiring excessive care and precision in the fitting of the edges, and of course double work, the
same line needing to be cut both in the marble and serpentine. The excessive simplicity of the forms will be at
once perceived; the eyes of the figures of animals, for instance, being indicated only by a round dot, formed
by a little inlet circle of serpentine, about half an inch over: but, though simple, they admit often much grace
of curvature, as in the neck of the bird seen above the right hand pillar.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 opposed to the abstraction of the monochrome figures, of the ball and cross patterns
between the arches, and of the triangular ornament round the arch on the left.
XLII. I have an intense love for these monochrome figures, owing to their wonderful life and spirit in all the
works on which I found them; nevertheless, I believe that the excessive degree of abstraction which they
imply necessitates our placing them in the rank of a progressive or imperfect art, and that a perfect building
should rather be composed of the highest sculpture (organic form dominant and sub-dominant), associated
with pattern colors on the flat or broad surfaces. And we find, in fact, that the cathedral of Pisa, which is a
higher type than that of Lucca, exactly follows this condition, the color being put in geometrical patterns on
its surfaces, and animal-forms and lovely leafage used in the sculptured cornices and pillars. And I think that
the grace of the carved forms is best seen when it is thus boldly opposed to severe traceries of color, while the
color itself is, as we have seen, always most piquant when it is put into sharp angular arrangements. Thus the
sculpture is approved and set off by the color, and the color seen to the best advantage in its opposition both
to the whiteness and the grace of the carved marble.
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 proportion in ascent
(Chap. IV. § 28). Lateral symmetry (§ 28). Sculpture most delicate at the base (Chap. I. § 12). Enriched
quantity of ornament at the top (§ 13). Sculpture abstract in inferior ornaments and mouldings (Chap. IV. §
31), complete in animal forms (§ 33). Both to be executed in white marble (§ 40). Vivid color introduced in
flat geometrical patterns (§ 39), and obtained by the use of naturally colored stone (§ 35).
These characteristics occur more or less in different 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 portrayed. In its first appeal to the stranger's eye there is

something unpleasing; a mingling, as it seems to him, of over severity with over minuteness. But let him give
it time, as he should to all other consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to despise that
Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked
out upon it from my windows by 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, colored 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 the towers of watch and war. Remember all that he became;
count the sacred thoughts with which he filled the heart of Italy; ask those who followed him what they
learned at his feet; and when you have numbered his labors, and received their testimony, if it seem to you
that God had verily poured out upon this His servant no common nor restrained portion of His Spirit, and that
he was indeed a king among the children of men, remember also that the legend upon his crown was that of
David's:—"I took thee from the sheepcote, and from following the sheep."

CHAPTER V.

THE LAMP OF LIFE.

I. Among the countless analogies by which the nature and relations of the human soul are illustrated in the
material creation, none are more striking than the impressions inseparably connected with the active and
dormant states of matter. I have elsewhere endeavored to show, that no inconsiderable part of the essential
characters of Beauty depended on the expression of vital energy in organic things, or on the 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 colors, but of inert substance,—
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.
II. Now in all other kind of energies except that of man's mind, there is no question as to what is life, and
what is not. Vital sensibility, whether vegetable or animal, may, indeed, be reduced to so great feebleness, as
to render its existence a matter of question, but when it is evident at all, it is evident as such: there is no
mistaking any imitation or pretence of it for the life itself; no mechanism nor galvanism can take its place; nor
is any resemblance of it so striking as to involve even hesitation in the judgment; although many occur which
the human imagination takes pleasure in exalting, without for an instant losing sight of the real nature of the
dead things it animates; but rejoicing rather in its own excessive life, which puts gesture into clouds, and joy
into waves, and voices into rocks.
III. But when we begin to be concerned with the energies of man, we find ourselves instantly dealing with a
double creature. Most part of his being seems to have a fictitious counterpart, which it is at his peril if he do
not cast off and deny. Thus he has a true and false (otherwise called a living and dead, or a feigned or
unfeigned) faith. He has a true and a false hope, a true and a false charity, and, finally, a true and a false life.
His true life is like that of lower 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 overlaid by the
weight of things external to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them; that, which instead of
growing and blossoming under any wholesome dew, is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and
becomes to the true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of thoughts and habits
foreign to it, brittle, 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
encumbered and crusted over with idle matter; only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking

this bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips upon the birch tree, only a witness of their
own inward strength. But, with all the efforts that the best men make, much of their being passes in a kind of
dream, in which they indeed move, and play their parts sufficiently, to the eyes of their fellow-dreamers, but
have no clear consciousness of what is around them, or within them; blind to the one, insensible to the other,
νωθροι. 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 in its adult form, when its colors are faded, and its inhabitant
perished,—this is a sight more humiliating, more melancholy, than the vanishing of all knowledge, and the
return to confessed and helpless infancy.
Nay, it is to be wished that such return were always possible. There would be hope if we could change palsy
into puerility; but I know not how far we can become children again, and renew our lost life. The stirring
which has taken place in our architectural 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 the best in principle, 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 something to my mind more majestic yet in the life of
an architecture like that of the Lombards, rude and infantine in itself, and surrounded by fragments of a
nobler art of which it is quick in admiration and ready in imitation, and yet so strong in its own new instincts
that it re-constructs and re-arranges every fragment that it copies or borrows into harmony with its own
thoughts,—a harmony at first disjointed and awkward, but completed in the end, and fused into perfect
organisation; all the borrowed elements being subordinated to its own primal, unchanged 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 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 between the copying found in an advancing or recedent period,
none have been able to communicate, in the slightest degree, the force of vitality to the copyist over whom
they might have influence. Yet it is at least interesting, if not profitable, to note that two very distinguishing
characters of vital imitation are, its Frankness and its Audacity; its 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 acceptance, that there is a sense within the mind of power capable of transforming and renewing
whatever it adopts; and too conscious, too exalted, to fear the accusation of plagiarism,—too certain that it
can prove, and has proved, its independence, to be afraid of expressing its homage to what it admires in the
most open and indubitable way; and the necessary consequence of this sense of power is the other sign I have
named—the Audacity of treatment when it finds treatment necessary, the unhesitating and sweeping sacrifice
of precedent where precedent becomes inconvenient. For instance, in the characteristic forms of Italian
Romanesque, in which the hypaethral portion of the heathen temple was replaced by the towering nave, and
where, in consequence, the pediment of the west front became divided into three portions, of which the
central one, like the apex of a ridge of sloping strata lifted by a sudden fault, was broken away from and
raised above the wings; there remained at the extremities of the aisles two triangular fragments of pediment,
which could not now be filled by any of the modes of decoration adapted for the unbroken space; and the
difficulty became greater when the central 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 circumstances, but it
certainly would not have been that of the Pisan,—to continue the range of columns into the pedimental space,
shortening them to its extremity until the shaft of the last column vanished altogether, and there remained
only its capital resting in the angle on its basic plinth. I raise no question at present whether this arrangement
be graceful or otherwise; I allege it only as an instance of 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 reservedly and carefully, as there would otherwise be much chance of my being dangerously
misunderstood. It has been truly observed and well stated by Lord Lindsay, that the best designers of Italy
were also the most careful in their workmanship; and that the stability and finish of their masonry, mosaic, or
other work whatsoever, were always perfect in proportion to the apparent 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 workmanship had gone ahead of the design;
while, even in my admission of absolute finish in the right place, as an attribute of the perfected school, I
must reserve to myself the right of answering in my own way the two very important questions, what is
finish? and what is its right place?
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 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
vigor of a true school of early architecture, which is either working under the influence of high example or
which is itself in a state of rapid development, is very curiously traceable, among other signs, in the contempt
of exact symmetry and measurement, which in dead architecture are the most painful necessities.

PLATE XII.—(Page 149—Vol. V.)
Fragments From Abbeville, Lucca, Venice, and Pisa.
VIII. In Plate XII. fig. 1 I have given a most singular instance both of rude execution and defied symmetry, in
the little pillar and spandril from a panel decoration under the pulpit of St. Mark's at Venice. The imperfection
(not merely simplicity, but actual rudeness and ugliness) of the leaf 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 mouldings, is a roll where
it follows the arch, and a flat fillet at a; the one being slurred into the other at the angle b, and finally stopped
short altogether at the other side by the most uncourteous 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 endeavored 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, k, m, is peculiarly simple,
and so slight and obtuse in its recessions as never to produce a sharp line; and it is worked with what at first
appears slovenliness, but it is in fact sculptural sketching; exactly correspondent 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 carelessness of measurement or of execution being mingled undistinguishably with the purposed
departures from symmetrical regularity, and the luxuriousness of perpetually variable fancy, which are
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:—

Braccia. Palmi. Inches. Total in inches.
1. Central door 8 0 0 = 192
2. Northern door 6 3 1½ = 157½
3. Southern door 6 4 3 = 163
4. Extreme northern space 5 5 3½ = 143½
5. Extreme southern space 6 1 0½ = 148½
6. Northern intervals between the doors 5 2 1 = 129
7. Southern intervals between the doors 5 2 1½ = 129½

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 somewhat irrelevant to our immediate subject, but they appear to me highly interesting; and they, at
all events, prove one of the points on which I would insist,—how much of imperfection and variety in things

professing to be symmetrical the eyes of those eager builders could endure: they looked to loveliness in
detail, to nobility in the whole, never to petty measurements.) Those columns of the principal entrance are
among the loveliest in Italy; cylindrical, and decorated with a rich arabesque of sculptured foliage, which at
the base extends nearly all round them, up to the black pilaster in which they are lightly engaged: but the
shield of foliage, bounded by a severe line, narrows to their tops, where it covers their frontal segment only;
thus giving, when laterally seen, a terminal line sloping boldly outwards, which, as I think, was meant to
conceal the accidental leaning of the western walls, and, by its exaggerated inclination in the same direction,
to throw them by comparison into a 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 neatness 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 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 subordinated to the great seven-arched lower story, in the manner before
noticed respecting the spire of Salisbury, and as is actually the case in the Duomo of Lucca and Tower of
Pistoja. But the Pisan front is far more subtly proportioned. Not one of its four arcades is of like height with
another. The highest is the third, counting upwards; and they diminish in nearly arithmetical 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 perceived that in the first row of nineteen arches, eighteen are equal, and the central one
larger than the rest; in the second arcade, the nine central arches stand over the nine below, having, 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 far shortened, they
are set thicker; five shafts, or rather four and a capital, above, to four of the arcade below, giving twenty-one
intervals instead of nineteen. In the next or third arcade,—which, remember, is the highest,—eight arches, all
equal, are given in the space of the nine below, so that there is now a central shaft instead of a central arch,
and the span of the arches is increased in proportion to their increased height. Finally, in the uppermost
arcade, which is the lowest of all, the arches, the same in number as those below, are narrower than any of the
façade; the whole eight going very nearly above the six below them, while the terminal arches of the lower
arcade are surmounted by flanking masses of decorated wall with projecting figures.
XIV. Now I call that Living Architecture. There is sensation in every inch of it, and an accommodation to
every architectural 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 continuous; only
the two extreme arches at the west end are made larger than all the rest, and instead of coming, as they
should, into the space of the lower extreme arch, take in both it and its broad pilaster. Even this, however, was
not out of order enough to satisfy the architect's eye; for there were still two arches above to each single one
below: so at the east end, where there are more arches, and the eye might be more easily cheated, what does
he do but narrow the two extreme lower arches by half a braccio; while he at the same time slightly enlarged
the upper ones, so as to get only seventeen upper to nine lower, instead of eighteen to nine. The eye is thus
thoroughly confused, and the whole building thrown into one mass, by the curious variations in the
adjustments of the superimposed shafts, not one of which is either exactly in nor positively out of its place;
and, to get this managed the more cunningly, there is from an inch to an inch and a half of gradual gain in the
space of the four eastern arches, besides the confessed half braccio. Their measures, counting from the east, I
found as follows:—

Braccia. Palmi. Inches.
1st 3 0 1
2nd 3 0 2
3rd 3 3 2
4th 3 3 3½

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 harbor quay, some nearly touching the string course above, and
others falling from it as much as five or six inches.
XIV. Let us next examine the plan of the west front of St. Mark's at Venice, which, though in many respects
imperfect, is in its proportions, and as a piece of rich and fantastic color, as lovely a dream as ever filled
human imagination. It may, perhaps, however, interest the reader to hear one opposite opinion upon this
subject, and after what has been urged in the preceding pages respecting proportion in general, more
especially respecting the wrongness of balanced cathedral towers and other regular designs, together with my
frequent references to the Doge's palace, and campanile of St. Mark's, as models of perfection, and my praise
of the former especially as projecting above its second arcade, the following extracts from the journal of
Wood the architect, written on his arrival at Venice, may have a pleasing freshness in them, and may show
that I have not been stating principles altogether trite or accepted.
"The strange looking church, and the great ugly campanile, could not be mistaken. The exterior of this church
surprises you by its extreme ugliness, more than by anything else."
"The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than anything I have previously mentioned. Considered in detail, I can
imagine no alteration to make it 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 excellence. I am decidedly of a contrary opinion, and am convinced 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
harbor or sea shore, and you would have a scene which might challenge any thing in existence."

Why Mr. Wood was unable to enjoy the color of St. Mark's, or perceive the majesty of the Ducal Palace, the
reader 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 coloring, 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 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 façade; 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 the diameter of shaft b is generally to the diameter of shaft a as height b is to height a, or
something less, allowing for the large plinth which diminishes the apparent height of the upper shaft: and
when this is their proportion of width, one shaft above is put above one below, with sometimes another upper
shaft interposed: but in the extreme arches a single under shaft bears two upper, proportioned as truly as the
boughs of a tree; that is to say, the diameter of each upper = 2/3 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, b, d. The upper story
has five arches, and two added pinnacles; and these diminish in regular order, the central being the largest,
and the outermost the least. Hence, while one proportion ascends, another descends, like parts in music; and
yet the pyramidal form is secured for the whole, 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 considerably wider than the
southern b and c, but the southern d is as much wider than the northern d, and lower beneath its cornice
besides; and, more than this, I hardly believe that one of the effectively symmetrical members of the façade is
actually symmetrical with any other. I regret that I cannot state the actual measures. I gave up the taking them
upon the spot, owing to their excessive 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 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 2/3 of its breadth, the larger
portion outmost; and in that larger portion is the inner entrance door. This exact correspondence, in the
treatment of both gates, might lead us to expect a correspondence in dimension. Not at all. The small inner
northern entrance measures, in English feet and inches, 4 ft. 7 in. from jamb to jamb, and the southern five
feet exactly. Five inches in five feet is a considerable variation. The outer northern porch measures, from face
shaft to face shaft, 13 ft. 11 in., and the southern, 14 ft. 6 in.; giving a difference of 7 in. on 14 ½ 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 Abbeville. I do not say it is right, still less that it is wrong,
but it is a wonderful proof of the fearlessness of a 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 Corinthian order; yet in the case
before us there is an ugly beehive put in the place of the principal niche of the arch. I am not sure if I am right
in my interpretation of its meaning, but I have little doubt that two figures below, now broken away, once
represented an Annunciation; and on another part of the same cathedral, I find the descent of the Spirit,
encompassed by rays of light, represented very nearly in the form of the niche in question; which appears,
therefore, to be intended for a representation of this effulgence, while at the same time it was made a canopy
for the delicate figures below. Whether this was its meaning or not, it is remarkable as a daring departure
from the common habits of the time.
XIX. Far more splendid is a license taken with the niche decoration of the portal of St. Maclou at Rouen. The
subject of the tympanum bas-relief is the Last Judgment, and the sculpture of the inferno side is carried out
with a degree of power whose fearful grotesqueness I can only describe as a mingling of the minds of
Orcagna and Hogarth. The demons are perhaps even more awful than Orcagna's; and, in some of the
expressions of debased humanity in its utmost despair, the English painter is at least equalled. Not less wild is
the imagination which gives fury and fear even to the placing of the figures. An evil angel, poised on the
wing, drives the condemned troops from before the Judgment seat; with his left hand he drags behind him a
cloud, which is spreading like a winding-sheet over them all; but they are urged by him so furiously, that they

are driven not merely to the extreme limit of that scene, which the sculptor confined elsewhere within the
tympanum, but out of the tympanum and into the niches of the arch; while the flames that follow them, bent
by the blast, as it seems, of the angel's wings, rush into the niches also, and burst up through their tracery, the
three lowermost niches being represented as 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.

PLATE XIII.—(Page 161—Vol. V.)
Portions of an Arcade on the South Side of the Cathedral of Ferrara.
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 Assimilation, 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 columns forming a group, there are interposed two pairs of columns, as seen on the left of the same
plate; and then come another four arches. It is a long arcade of, I suppose, not less than forty arches, perhaps
of many more; and in the grace and simplicity of its stilted Byzantine curves I hardly know its equal. Its like,
in fancy of column, I certainly do not know; there being hardly two correspondent, and the architect having
been ready, as it seems, to adopt ideas and resemblances from any sources whatsoever. The vegetation
growing up the two columns is fine, though bizarre; the distorted pillars beside it suggest images of less
agreeable character; the serpentine arrangements founded on the usual Byzantine double knot are generally
graceful; but I was puzzled to account for the excessively ugly type of the pillar, fig. 3, 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 labor to the
machine level; but so long as men work as men, putting their heart into what they do, and doing their best, it
matters not how bad workmen they may be, there will be that in the handling which is above all price: it will
be plainly seen that some places have been 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 compared
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: and if completeness is
thought to be vested in polish, and to be attainable by help of sand paper, we may as well give the work to the
engine-lathe at once. But right finish is simply the full rendering of the intended impression; and high finish
is the rendering of a well intended and vivid impression; and it is oftener got by rough than fine handling. I
am not sure whether it is frequently enough observed that sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of
anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in
the least like itself. The sculptor must paint with his chisel: half his touches are not to realize, but to put
power into the form: they are touches of light and shadow; and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent
an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness. In a coarse way, this kind of
execution is very marked in old French woodwork; the irises of the eyes of its chimeric monsters being cut
boldly into holes, which, variously placed, and always dark, give all kinds of strange and startling
expressions, averted and askance, to the fantastic countenances. Perhaps the highest examples of this kind of
sculpture-painting are the works of Mino da Fiesole; 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
incompletion. I know no example of work in which the forms are absolutely true and complete where such a
result is attained; in Greek sculptures is not even attempted.
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 difference, when the touches
are rude and few, between those of a careless and those of a regardful mind. It is not easy to retain anything 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 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 would, of course, have
made all the five quatrefoils of each pedestal-side equal: not so the Mediæval. 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 d, then d (the largest): c::c:a::a:b. It is wonderful
how much of the grace of the whole depends on these variations.
XXIII. Each of the angles, it was said, is filled by an animal. There are thus 70 x 4=280 animals, all different,
in the mere fillings of the intervals of the bas-reliefs. Three of these intervals, with their beasts, actual size,
the curves being traced upon the stone, I have given in Plate XIV.

PLATE XIV.—(Page 165—Vol. V.)
Sculpture from the Cathedral of Rouen.
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 peculiarly reverted eye the expression which is never seen, as
I think, but in the eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and preparing 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 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 ornament, 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 façade. 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 Père
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, comes literally under the head of Sacrifice for the sacrifice's sake, or worse. I believe the only manner
of rich ornament that is open to us is the geometrical color-mosaic, and that much might result from our
strenuously taking up this mode of design. But, at all events, one thing we have in our power—the doing
without machine ornament and cast-iron work. All the stamped metals, and artificial stones, and imitation
woods and bronzes, over the invention of which we hear daily exultation—all the short, and cheap, and easy
ways of doing that whose difficulty is its honor—are just so many new obstacles in 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 or shifts, but with a will; and
what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all. Perhaps all that we have to do is meant for nothing more
than an exercise of the heart and of the will, and is useless in itself; but, at all events, the little use it has may
well be spared if it 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 earthiness 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 vapor 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.

CHAPTER 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-off stormy sea. And there is a deep
tenderness pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern expression of the central ranges
are alike withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures;
no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forests; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude
and changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well-
known beds; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such
company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the blessings of the earth. It was Spring time,
too; and all were coming forth in clusters crowded for very love; there was room enough for all, but they
crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the wood
anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulæ: and there was the oxalis, troop by troop like
virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as
with heavy snow, and touched with ivy on the edges—ivy as light and lovely as the vine; and ever and anon, a
blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in sunny places; and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey,
and mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a blossom or
two, all showered amidst the golden softness of deep, warm, amber-colored moss. I came out presently on the
edge of the ravine; the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly from beneath, mixed with the singing of
the thrushes among the pine boughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled all along as it was by grey
cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and
with the shadows of the pines flickering upon his plumage from above; but with a fall of a hundred fathoms
under his breast, and the curling pools of the green river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam
globes moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to conceive a scene less dependent upon any other
interest than that of its own secluded and serious beauty; but the writer well remembers the sudden blankness
and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavored, 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 music15; 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 colors of human endurance, valor, and virtue; and the crests of the
sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell
eastward 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 coming 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.
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 renewed 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 honorably, they would be grieved at the close of them to think that the place of their
earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost to sympathise in all their honor, their gladness, or their
suffering,—that this, with all the record it bare of them, and all of material things that they had loved and
ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves upon—was to be swept away, as soon as there was room made for
them in the grave; that no respect was to be shown to it, no affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it
by their children; that though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm monument in the heart
and house to them; that all that they ever treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and
comforted them were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear this; and that, far more, a
good son, a noble descendant, would fear doing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived like men
indeed, their houses would be temples—temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would
make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange 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' honor, 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 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
unhonored dwellings are the signs of a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent; that they mark the
time when every man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man's past
life is his habitual scorn; when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and live in the
hope of 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
dishonored 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, 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 have been,
and from what, if so it had been permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may have
that true domestic architecture, the beginning of all other, which does not disdain to treat with respect and
thoughtfulness the small habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of contented
manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance.
V. I look to this spirit of honorable, proud, peaceful self-possession, this abiding wisdom of contented life, as
probably one of the chief sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as the very
primal source of the great architecture of old Italy and France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities
depends, not on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite decoration of even the
smallest tenements of their proud periods. The most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house
at the head of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two stories above, three windows in the first,
and two in the second. Many of the most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger
dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth century architecture in North Italy, is a small
house in a back street, behind the market-place of Vicenza; it bears date 1481, and the motto, Il. n'est. rose.
sans. épine; 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 cornucopiæ. The idea that a house must be large in order to be well built, is
altogether of modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be historical, except of a size
admitting figures larger than life.
VI. I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of
pleasantness as may be, within and without; with what degree of likeness to each other in style and manner, I
will say presently, under another head; but, at all events, with such differences as might suit and express each
man's character and occupation, and 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 Unglück 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 altogether unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations
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 elevated a character; and
much, even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of fancy, or suffered to consist of
mere repetitions of some national bearing or symbol. It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere surface
ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much
more in important features—capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of course in all confessed
bas-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There
should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention. Actual
representation of history has in modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean 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
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 composed of groups of Indian life and landscape, and
prominently expressing the phantasms of Hindoo worship in their subjection to the Cross. Would not one
such work be better than a thousand histories? If, however, we have not the invention necessary for such
efforts, or if, which is 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 labor for its
praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit, and demand its justice for contemporary
wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the
interest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority
we would gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea of self-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 anything 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 labor 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 labored 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 honor, in
grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and
confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and
there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, when we build, let us
think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as
our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those
stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the
labor and wrought substance of them, "See! this our fathers did for us." For, indeed, the greatest glory of a
building is not in its stones, or in its gold. Its glory is in its Age, and in that 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 following ages
with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations; it is in that
golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and color, and preciousness of architecture; and it is
not until a 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 anything 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; 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 impressed upon those schools the
character usually and loosely expressed by the term "picturesque." It is of some importance to our present
purpose to determine the true meaning of this expression, as it is now generally used; for there is a principle
to be developed from that use which, while it has occultly been the ground of much that is true and just in our
judgment of art, has never been so far understood as to become definitely serviceable. Probably no word in
the language (exclusive of theological expressions), has been the subject of so frequent or so prolonged
dispute; yet none remained more vague in their acceptance, and it seems to me to be a matter of no small
interest to investigate the essence of that idea which all feel, and (to appearance) with respect to similar

things, and yet which every attempt to define has, as I believe, ended either in mere enumeration of the effects
and objects to which the term has been attached, or else in attempts at abstraction more palpably nugatory
than any which have 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 expression of
"universal decay." It would be curious to see the result of an attempt to illustrate this idea of the picturesque,
in a painting of dead flowers and decayed fruit, and equally curious to trace the steps of any reasoning which,
on such a theory, should account for the picturesqueness of an ass colt as opposed to a horse foal. But there is
much excuse for even the most utter failure in reasonings of this kind, since the subject is, indeed, one of the
most obscure of all that may legitimately be submitted to human reason; and the idea is itself so varied in the
minds of different men, according to their subjects of study, that no definition can be expected to embrace
more than a certain number of its infinitely multiplied forms.
XII. That peculiar character, however, which separates the picturesque from the characters of subject
belonging to the higher walks of art (and this is all that is necessary for our present purpose to define), may be
shortly and decisively expressed. Picturesqueness, in this sense, is Parasitical Sublimity. Of course all
sublimity, as well as all beauty, is, in the simple etymological sense, picturesque, that is to say, fit to become
the subject of a picture; and all sublimity is, even in the peculiar sense which I am endeavoring 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 sublimity.
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 endeavor hereafter to show at length;
but, among those which are generally acknowledged, I may name angular and broken lines, vigorous
oppositions of light and shadow, and grave, deep, or boldly contrasted color; and all these are in a still higher
degree effective, when, by resemblance or association, they remind us of objects on which a true and essential
sublimity exists, as of rocks or mountains, or stormy clouds or waves. Now if these characters, or any others
of a higher and more abstract sublimity, be found in the very heart and substance of what we contemplate, as
the sublimity 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 subject of thought. It is considered as a dark color, to be
arranged in certain agreeable masses; the figures are very frequently made even subordinate to the placing of
its divisions: and their costume is enriched at the expense of the forms underneath, in order to increase the
complexity and variety of the points of shade. There are thus, both in sculpture and painting, two, in some
sort, 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 Lacedæmonians, reported by the Persian
spy on the evening before the battle of Thermopylæ, 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 personal forms. On the contrary,
in later sculpture, the hair receives almost the principal care of the workman; and while the features and limbs
are 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 sublimity in the lines and the chiaroscuro of these
masses, but it is, as regards the creature represented, parasitical, and therefore picturesque. In the same sense
we may understand the application of the term to modern animal painting, distinguished as it has been by
peculiar attention to the colors, lustre, and texture of skin; nor is it in art alone that the definition will hold. In
animals themselves, when their sublimity depends upon their muscular forms or motions, or necessary and
principal 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 impressions. 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.
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 color and form which are
universally beloved by the eye of man. So far as this is done, to the extinction of the true characters of the
architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who looks to the stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar,
is carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor's choice of the hair instead of the countenance.
But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous sublimity
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 a building consists; and, therefore,

the external signs of this glory, having power and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensible
beauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure and essential character; 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 explained
with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of points of shade
rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but commonly gain in richness of effect when their details are
partly worn away; hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always be adopted when
the 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 practised 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 destruction 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 impossible, as
impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That
which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye
of the 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 what it had been, and of what it had
lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute
hardness of the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate 14, as an instance of living
work, and suppose the markings of the scales and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who
shall ever restore them? The first step to restoration (I have seen it, and that again and again, seen it on the
Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa d' Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux), is to dash the old
work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection,
but in all cases, however careful, and however labored, an imitation still, a cold model of such parts as can be
modelled, with conjectural supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one instance,
that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has
been attained or even attempted.
XIX. Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model
of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as your cast
might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see nor care; but the old building is destroyed, and that
more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a 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
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 dishonoring 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 labored 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 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 exertions, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the
central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in
continually closer crowds upon the city gates. The only influence which can in any wise there take the place
of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancient Architecture. Do not part with it for the sake of the
formal square, or of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened quay. The pride of a city
is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; but remember that there will surely be some within the 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.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.

I. It has been my endeavor to show in the preceding pages how every form of noble architecture is in some
sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing this, I
have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite place among those which direct that
embodiment; the last place, not only as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as belonging
to it in the aspect of the 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 satisfaction 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 phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but
its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the
earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest
punishment.

In one of the noblest poems17 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 interpretation! since in
one noble line of his invocation he has contradicted 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 its would become
mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a
measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and
perfection of them all consist in their 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 unrelaxing, can never be
comely, this is not because it is in itself an evil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature of
the thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which that nature is itself composed. And the
balance wherein consists the fairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in the things governed
and the laws of general sway to which they are subjected; and the suspension or infringement of either kind of
law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, disease; while the increase of both honor

and beauty is habitually on the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of character (or the
action of inherent law). The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the sweetest
which men have learned in the pastures of the 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 recognize. 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 labor it concentrates or whose interest it
concerns.
This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art, above all others, whose productions are the
most vast and the most common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of men, and for its
perfection the perseverance 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 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 indisputably drawn, it is this; that the architecture of
a nation is great only when it is as universal and as established as its language; and when provincial
differences of style are nothing more than so many dialects. Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations
have been alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and of wealth; in times of war and of
peace; in times of barbarism and of refinement; under governments the most liberal or the most arbitrary; but
this one condition has been constant, this one requirement clear in all places and at all times, that the work
shall be that of a school, that no individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, accepted types and
customary decorations; and that from the cottage to the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from
the garden fence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the architecture of the nation shall be as
commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its language or its coin.
IV. A day never passes without our hearing our English architects called upon to be original, and to invent a
new style: about as sensible and necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags enough
on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting a coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him
concern himself about the fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who wants a new
style of painting or sculpture? But we want some style. It is of marvellously little importance, if we have a
code of laws and they be good laws, whether they be new 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 at the present day as to the very nature and meaning of
Originality, and of all wherein it consists. Originality in expression does not depend on invention of new

words; nor originality in poetry on invention of new measures; nor, in painting, on invention of new colors, or
new modes of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of color, the general principles of the
arrangement of sculptural masses, have been determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to
any more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such additions or alterations are much more the
work of time and of multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck, who will be known
as the introducer of a new style once in ten centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some
accidental 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 not
take liberties with his materials, or with his rules: I do not say that strange changes will not sometimes be
wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But those changes will be instructive, natural, facile, though
sometimes marvellous; they will never be sought after as things necessary to his dignity or to his
independence; and those liberties will be like the liberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a
defiance of its rules for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, and brilliant consequences of an
effort to express what the language, without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have
above described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and in its refusal of ancient limitations: so
there are in the life of an insect; and there is great interest in the state of both the art and the insect at those
periods when, by their natural progress and constitutional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But
as that would be both an uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead of being contented with a
caterpillar's life and feeding on caterpillar's food, was always striving to turn itself into a chrysalis; and as that
would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to
turn itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of supporting
itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs which have been enough for the support and
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 fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for which its present state is appointed and continued.
V. Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be, and this is commonly a most merciful
and enthusiastic 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 tastes; 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 impossible, English art is impossible.

Give it up at once. You are wasting time, and money, and energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries
and treasuries, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the merest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It
is a dangerous vanity, a mere gulph in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will not close.
And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad step be taken at the beginning. We shall not
manufacture art out of pottery and printed stuffs; we shall not reason out art by our philosophy; we shall not
stumble upon art by our experiments, not create it by our fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out of
brick and stone; but there is a chance for us in these, and there is none else; and that chance rests on the bare
possibility of obtaining the consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, and to use it
universally.
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 construction 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; admitting not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto, or the breadth of a fillet. Then, when
our sight is once accustomed to the grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the
expression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, and apply it to whatever ideas we
have to render, that is to say, to every practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license might be
permitted; and individual authority allowed to change or to add to the received forms, always within certain
limits; the decorations, 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
immaterial what style was adopted, so far as regards the room for originality which its developement would
admit: it is not so, however, when we take into consideration the far more important questions of the facility
of adaptation to general purposes, and of the 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
impotent and ugly degradation, like our own Tudor, or else a style whose grammatical laws it would be nearly
impossible to limit or arrange, like the French Flamboyant. We are equally precluded from adopting styles
essentially infantine or barbarous, however Herculean their infancy, or majestic their outlawry, such as our
own Norman, or the Lombard Romanesque. The choice would lie I think between four styles:—1. The Pisan
Romanesque; 2. The early Gothic of the Western Italian Republics, advanced as far and as fast as our art
would enable us to the Gothic of Giotto; 3. The Venetian Gothic in its purest developement; 4. The English
earliest decorated. The most natural, perhaps the safest choice, would be of the last, well fenced from chance
of again stiffening into the perpendicular; and perhaps enriched by some mingling of decorative elements
from the exquisite decorated Gothic of France, of which, in such cases, it would be needful to accept some
well known 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 individual, 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 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 would 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 oppositions of religious parties respecting matters of ritual. These, I say, would be the first
consequences. Economy increased tenfold, as it would be by the simplicity of practice; domestic comforts
uninterfered with by the caprice and mistakes of architects ignorant of the capacities of the styles they use,
and all the symmetry and sightliness of our harmonized streets and public buildings, are things of slighter
account in the catalogue of benefits. But it would be mere enthusiasm to endeavor to trace them farther. I
have suffered myself too long to indulge in the speculative statement of requirements which perhaps we have
more immediate and more serious work than to supply, and of feelings which it may be only contingently in
our power to recover. I should be unjustly thought unaware of the 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 consideration by the wild course of the present century. But of difficulty and of importance it is for
others to judge. I have limited myself to the simple statement of what, if we desire to have architecture, we
MUST primarily endeavor to feel and do: but then it may not be desirable for us to have architecture at all.
There are many who feel it to be so; many who sacrifice much to that end; and I am sorry to see their energies
wasted and their lives disquieted in vain. I have stated, therefore, the only ways in which that end is
attainable, without venturing even to express an opinion as to its real desirableness. I have an opinion, and the
zeal with which I have spoken may sometimes have betrayed it, but I hold to it with no confidence. I know
too well the undue importance which the study that every man follows must assume in his own eyes, to trust
my own impressions of the dignity of that of 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 recklessness
of villany in the leaders of revolt, the absence of common moral principle in the upper classes, and of
common courage and honesty in the heads of governments. But these causes themselves are ultimately
traceable to a deeper and simpler one: the recklessness of the demagogue, the immorality of the middle class,
and the effeminacy and treachery of the noble, are traceable in all these nations to the commonest and most
fruitful cause of calamity in households—idleness. We think too much in our 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 labor 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 shoemakers and carpenters; but since they will not be these so long as they can help it, the
business of the philanthropist is to find them some other employment than disturbing governments. It is of no
use to tell them they are fools, and that they will only make themselves miserable in the end as well as others:
if they have nothing else to do, they will do mischief; and the man who will not work, and who has no means

of intellectual pleasure, is as sure to become an instrument of evil as if he had sold himself bodily to Satan. I
have myself seen enough of the daily life of the young educated 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 promote, are as well calculated as they might be to improve
and elevate us.
We have just spent, for instance, a hundred and fifty millions, with which we have paid men for digging
ground from one place and depositing it in 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 maintained 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 ingenuity, there is, I
imagine, at least as much required to build a cathedral as to cut a tunnel or contrive a locomotive: we should,
therefore, have developed as much science, while the artistical element of intellect would have been added to
the gain. Meantime we should ourselves have been made happier and wiser by the interest we should have
taken in the work with which we were personally concerned; and when all was done, instead of the very
doubtful advantage of the power of going fast from place to place, we should have had the certain advantage
of increased pleasure in stopping at home.
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 endeavor, as far as may be, to make all our needs such as may, in the supply of them, raise, as
well as feed, the poor. It is far better to give work 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 set down. I content myself with finally reasserting, what has been throughout the burden of the
preceding pages, that whatever rank, or whatever importance, may be attributed or attached to their
immediate subject, there is at least some value in the analogies with which its pursuit has presented us, and
some instruction in the frequent reference of its commonest 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 importunate persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all Architecture may be vain,

except that which is not made with hands. There is something ominous in the light which has enabled us to
look back with disdain upon the ages among whose lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile
when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly science, and vigor of worldly effort;
as if we were again at the beginning of days. There is thunder on the horizon as well as dawn. The sun was
risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.

NOTES

Note I.

Page 21.

"With the idolatrous Egyptian."
The probability is indeed slight in comparison, but it is a probability nevertheless, and one which is daily on
the increase. I trust that 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 Scottish people, as being
not only untainted with Romanism, but immoveably 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 faithfulness of a few, not in the security of the nation from the sin and the punishment of partial
apostasy. Both have, indeed, in some sort, been committed and suffered already; and, in expressing my belief
of the close 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 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 honor with which those acts have
been crowned, has been sufficiently proved in a short essay by a writer whose investigations into the
influence of Religion upon the fate of Nations have been singularly earnest and successful—a writer with
whom I faithfully and firmly believe that England will never be prosperous again, and that the honor 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 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.

Note II.

Page 25.

"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 conscientious 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 not
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 splendor on the genuineness and earnestness of
Christian worship? the second, What the use of pictorial or sculptural representation in the communication of
Christian historical knowledge, or excitement of affectionate 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 color 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.

Note III.

Page 26.

"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
cherubs.

Note IV.

Page 33.

"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.

Note V.

Page 43.

"Its flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms."
They are noticed by Mr. Whewell as forming the figure of the 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 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
arrangement; the niches on its piers are barbarisms; there is a huge square shaft run through the ceiling of the
aisles to support the nave piers, the ugliest excrescence I ever saw on a Gothic building; the 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.

Note VI.

Page 43.
Compare Iliad Σ. 1. 219 with Odyssey Ω. 1. 5—10.

Note VII.

Page 44.

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

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

The Knighte's
Tale.
There is, by the bye, an exquisite piece of architectural color 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."

Note VIII.

Page 44.

"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 rules of good architecture, not only because iron is
corruptible by rust, but because it is fallacious, having unequal veins in the
metal, some places of the same bar being three times stronger than others,

and yet all sound to appearance." Survey of Salisbury Cathedral in 1668, by
Sir C. Wren. For my own part, I think it better work to bind a tower with
iron, than to support a false dome by a brick pyramid.

Note IX.

Page 60.

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

Note X.

Page 94.

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

Note XI.

Page 95.

"And levelled cusps of stone."

The plate represents one of the lateral windows of the third story of the
Palazzo Foscari. It was drawn from the opposite side of the Grand Canal,
and the lines of its traceries are therefore given as they appear in somewhat
distant effect. It shows only segments of the characteristic quatrefoils of the
central windows. I found by measurement their 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.

Note XII.

Page 124.

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

Note XIII.

Page 133.

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

Note XIV.

Page 139.
On the cover of this volume the reader will find some figure outlines of the
same period and character, from the floor of San Miniato at Florence. I have
to thank its designer, Mr. W. Harry Rogers, for his intelligent arrangement
of them, and graceful adaptation of the connecting arabesque. (Stamp on
cloth cover of London edition.)

Note XV.

Page 169.

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

Note XVI.

Page 181.

"By the artists of the time of Perides."
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.

Note XVII.

Page 188.

"In one of the noblest poems."

Coleridge's Ode to France:
"Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may control!
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 O ye Clouds that far above me soared!
Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
Yea, everything that is and will be free!
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest Liberty."
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 humors way;
God gave them to thee under lock and key."

FOOTNOTES:
[A] 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 mediæval buildings in Italy and
Normandy, now in process of destruction, before that destruction should be
consummated 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.
[B] 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. Deut. xvi. 16, 17.
[C] Mal. i. 8.
[D] Lam. ii. 11. 2 Kings xvii. 25.
[E] Num. xxxi. 54. Psa. lxxvi. 11.
[F] John xii. 5.
[G] Mod. Painters, Part I. Sec. 1, Chap. 3.
[H] 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.
[I] Literature of the Fine Arts.—Essay on Bas-relief.

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