I believe, then, that the characteristic or moral elements of Gothic
are the following, placed in the order of their importance:
1. Savageness.
2. Changefulness.
3. Naturalism.
4. Grotesqueness.
5. Rigidity.
6. Redundance.
These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; as
belonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus:--1. Savageness,
or Rudeness. 2. Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed
Imagination. 5. Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that the
withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic
character of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. I
shall proceed to examine them in their order.
1. SAVAGENESS. I am not sure when the word "Gothic" was first
generically applied to the architecture of the North; but I presume
that, whatever the date of its original usage, it was intended to imply
reproach, and express the barbaric character of the nations among whom
that architecture arose. It never implied that they were literally of
Gothic lineage, far less that their architecture had been originally
invented by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they and their
buildings together exhibited a degree of sternness and rudeness, which,
in contradistinction to the character of Southern and Eastern nations,
appeared like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the Goth
and the Roman in their first encounter. And when that fallen Roman, in
the utmost impotence of his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became
the model for the imitation of civilized Europe, at the close of the
so-called Dark Ages, the word Gothic became a term of unmitigated
contempt, not unmixed with aversion. From that contempt, by the
exertion of the antiquaries and architects of this century, Gothic
architecture has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some among
us, in our admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, and
sacredness of its expression, might desire that the term of ancient
reproach should be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent
honourableness, adopted in its place. There is no chance, as there is
no need, of such a substitution. As far as the epithet was used
scornfully, it was used falsely; but there is no reproach in the word,
rightly understood; on the contrary, there is a profound truth, which
the instinct of mankind almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true,
greatly and deeply true, that the architecture of the North is rude and
wild; but it is not true, that, for this reason, we are to condemn it,
or despise. Far otherwise: I believe it is in this very character that
it deserves our profoundest reverence.
The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern science have
thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount of
knowledge, but I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to enable
the spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical character
which exists between Northern and Southern countries. We know the
differences in detail, but we have not that broad glance and grasp
which would enable us to feel them in their fulness. We know that
gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apennines; but we do not
enough conceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic of the world's
surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between the
district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the
swallow see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for a
moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight,
and imagine the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake,
and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here and there an
angry spot of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burning
field; and here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke,
surrounded by its circle of ashes; but for the most part a great
peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like
pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop
nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing
softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense,
mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate
with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of
the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass
farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change
gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of
Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the
Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of
the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky
veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands:
and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty
masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of
gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into
irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm,
and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending
tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from among the hill
ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into
barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets,
deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And,
having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris of
the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it,
and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life; the
multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and
sea, or tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and
spotted leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and
scarlet. Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and
swiftness of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy
covering, and dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the
Arabian horse with the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf
and bear, the antelope with the elk, the bird of paradise with the
osprey: and then, submissively acknowledging the great laws by which
the earth and all that it bears are ruled throughout their being. Let
us not condemn, but rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in
the statutes of the lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with
reverence as he sets side by side the burning gems, and smooths with
soft sculpture the jasper pillars, that are to reflect a ceaseless
sunshine, and rise into a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence
let us stand by him, when, with rough strength and hurried stroke, he
smites an uncouth animation out of the rocks which he has torn from
among the moss of the moorland, and heaves into the darkened air the
pile of iron buttress and rugged wall, instinct with work of an
imagination as wild and wayward as the northern sea; creations of
ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of wolfish life; fierce as the
winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds that shade them.
There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, but all
dignity and honourableness: and we should err grievously in refusing
either to recognize as an essential character of the existing
architecture of the North, or to admit as a desirable character in that
which it yet may be, this wildness of thought, and roughness of work;
this look of mountain brotherhood between the cathedral and the Alp;
this magnificence of sturdy power, put forth only the more
energetically because the fine finger-touch was chilled away by the
frosty wind, and the eye dimmed by the moor-mist, or blinded by the
hail; this outspeaking of the strong spirit of men who may not gather
redundant fruitage from the earth, nor bask in dreamy benignity of
sunshine, but must break the rock for bread, and cleave the forest for
fire, and show, even in what they did for their delight, some of the
hard habits of the arm and heart that grew on them as they swung the
axe or pressed the plough.
If, however, the savageness of Gothic architecture, merely as an
expression of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, in
some sort, a noble character, it possesses a higher nobility still,
when considered as an index, not of climate, but of religious
principle.
In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXL of the first volume of
this work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament,
properly so called, might be divided into three:--1. Servile ornament,
in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely
subjected to the intellect of the higher;--2. Constitutional ornament,
in which the executive inferior power is, to a certain point,
emancipated and independent, having a will of its own, yet confessing
its inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;--and 3.
Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admitted
at all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat
greater length.
Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and
Egyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek
master-workman was far advanced in knowledge and power above the
Assyrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked could
endure the appearance of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what
ornament he appointed to be done by those beneath him was composed of
mere geometrical forms,--balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical
foliage,--which could be executed with absolute precision by line and
rule, and were as perfect in their way, when completed, as his own
figure sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less
cognizant of accurate form in anything, were content to allow their
figure sculpture to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the
method of its treatment to a standard which every workman could reach,
and then trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance
of his falling beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to the
lower workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The
Assyrian gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but
fixed a legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in both
systems, a slave.[157]
But in the mediæval, or especially Christian, system of ornament, this
slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having recognized,
in small things as well as great, the individual value of every soul.
But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its imperfection, in
only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of unworthiness. That
admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the Greek or Ninevite
felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be, altogether
refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly contemplating the fact of
it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater glory.
Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her service,
her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are
unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure,
nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is, perhaps, the
principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of architecture, that
they thus receive the results of the labour of inferior minds; and out
of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying that imperfection in
every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and unaccusable whole.
But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of the
Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost completion
or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble character
in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to forget the
relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the perfectness
of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not considering
that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would be
preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind,
and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man,
those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those
which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For
the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness
of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be
seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and
strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to the
greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And
therefore, while in all things that we see or do, we are to desire
perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the
meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in
its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered
majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower
the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency
of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other
men, we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow
caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and,
still more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellencies,
because they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and nature
of every man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labour,
there are some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid
capacity of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the
worst; and in most cases it is all our own fault that they are tardy or
torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take
them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honour them in their
imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is
what we have to do with all our labourers; to look for the _thoughtful_
part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it,
whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best
that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error.
Understand this clearly; You can teach a man to draw a straight line,
and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy
and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and
perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if
you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot
find any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes
hesitating; he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he
makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking
being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a
machine before, an animated tool.
And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must
either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make
both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be
precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that
precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like
cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must
unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make
cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must
go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be
bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the
invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err
from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the
whole human being be lost at last--a heap of sawdust, so far as its
intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart,
which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after
the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if
you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool.
Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth
doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all
his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame,
failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole
majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the
clouds settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark,
there will be transfiguration behind and within them.
And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about which you
have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good and
strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those
accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of
the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over
them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was
done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are
signs of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more
degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be
beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer
flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to
smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting
pollards the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the
flesh and skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God,[158]
into leathern thongs to yoke machinery with,--this it is to be
slave-masters indeed; and there might be more freedom in England,
though her feudal lords' lightest words were worth men's lives, and
though the blood of the vexed husbandman dropped in the furrows of her
fields, than there is while the animation of her multitudes is sent
like fuel to feed the factory smoke, and the strength of them is given
daily to be wasted into the fineness of a web, or racked into the
exactness of a line.
And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral
front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the
old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless
monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock at
them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who
struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being,
such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which it
must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her
children.
Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is verily
this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than any
other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere
into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which
they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry
against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by
the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much,
and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society were
never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill
fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make
their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of
pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper
classes, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind
of labour to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and
makes them less than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy
with the lower, or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yet
never were they so much hated by them: for, of old, the separation
between the noble and the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it
is a veritable difference in level of standing, a precipice between
upper and lower grounds in the field of humanity, and there is
pestilential air at the bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to
come when the nature of right freedom will be understood, and when men
will see that to obey another man, to labour for him, yield reverence
to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of
liberty,--liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth,
and to another, Come, and he cometh,[159] has, in most cases, more sense
of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements
of the one are hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by
the bridle on his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be
lightened; but we need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at
it. To yield reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at
his disposal, is not slavery; often it is the noblest state in which a
man can live in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is
servile, that is to say irrational or selfish: but there is also noble
reverence, that is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so
noble as when he is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling
pass the bounds of mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised
by it. Which had, in reality, most of the serf nature in him,--the
Irish peasant who was lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with
his musket muzzle thrust through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain
servant, who 200 years ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and
the lives of his seven sons for his chief?--as each fell, calling forth
his brother to the death, "Another for Hector!"[160] And therefore, in
all ages and all countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made
by men to each other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and
famine, and peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been
borne willingly in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts
of the heart ennobled the men who gave not less than the men who
received them, and nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But
to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their
whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a
heap of mechanism, numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its
hammer strokes;--this nature bade not,--this God blesses not,--this
humanity for no long time is able to endure.
We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized
invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It
is not, truly speaking; the labour that is divided; but the
men:--Divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments
and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that
is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts
itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a
good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we
could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished,--sand
of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what
it is,--we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the
great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than
their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture
everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel,
and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to
refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our
estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging
our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching,
for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to
them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be
met only by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what
kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy;
by a determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness
as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally
determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling
labour.
And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognized, and
this demand to be regulated? Easily: by the observance of three broad
and simple rules:
1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely
necessary, in the production of which _Invention_ has no share.
2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some
practical or noble end.
3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the
sake of preserving record of great works.
The second of these principles is the only one which directly rises out
of the consideration of our immediate subject; but I shall briefly
explain the meaning and extent of the first also, reserving the
enforcement of the third for another place.
1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the
production of which invention has no share.
For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no
design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by
first drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into
fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are
then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their
work all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely
timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail.
Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods or fuse the fragments,
have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; and
every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the
slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so
long been endeavouring to put down.
But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite
invention; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to
say for the beautiful form, or colour, or engraving, and not for mere
finish of execution, we are doing good to humanity.
So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary cases,
requires little exertion of any mental faculty; some tact and judgment
in avoiding flaws, and so on, but nothing to bring out the whole mind.
Every person who wears cut jewels merely for the sake of their value
is, therefore, a slave-driver.
But the working of the goldsmith, and the various designing of grouped
jewellery and enamel-work, may become the subject of the most noble
human intelligence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase of
well-designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cameos, or enamels,
does good to humanity; and, in work of this kind, jewels may be
employed to heighten its splendour; and their cutting is then a price
paid for the attainment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable.
I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but our immediate
concern is chiefly with the second, namely, never to demand an exact
finish, when it does not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have only
dwelt upon the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of imperfectness,
as admirable, where it was impossible to get design or thought without
it. If you are to have the thought of a rough and untaught man, you
must have it in a rough and untaught way; but from an educated man, who
can without effort express his thoughts in an educated way, take the
graceful expression, and be thankful. Only _get_ the thought, and do
not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good grammar, or until
you have taught him his grammar. Grammar and refinement are good
things, both, only be sure of the better thing first. And thus in art,
delicate finish is desirable from the greatest masters, and is always
given by them. In some places Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Phidias,
Perugino, Turner, all finished with the most exquisite care; and the
finish they give always leads to the fuller accomplishment of their
noble purpose. But lower men than these cannot finish, for it requires
consummate knowledge to finish consummately, and then we must take
their thoughts as they are able to give them. So the rule is simple:
Always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution as
will help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of without
painful effort, and _no more_. Above all, demand no refinement of
execution where there is no thought, for that is slaves' work,
unredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only that the
practical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is reason to be
proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sand-paper.
I shall only give one example, which however will show the reader what
I mean, from the manufacture already alluded to, that of glass. Our
modern glass is exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form,
accurate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamed
of it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, and
clumsily cut, if at all. And the old Venetian was justly proud of it.
For there is this difference between the English and Venetian workman,
that the former thinks only of accurately matching his patterns, and
getting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, and
becomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges; while
the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not,
but he invented a new design for every glass that he made, and never
moulded a handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And therefore,
though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough when made by
clumsy and uninventive workmen, other Venetian glass is so lovely in
its forms that no price is too great for it; and we never see the same
form in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and the varied form
too. If the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking
of his design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose
whether you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and
choose at the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a
grindstone.
Nay, but the reader interrupts me,--"If the workman can design
beautifully, I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be taken
away and made a gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glass
there, and I will have it blown and cut for him by common workmen, and
so I will have my design and my finish too."
All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: the
first, that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by
another man's hands; the second, that manual labour is a degradation,
when it is governed by intellect.
On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is
indeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should
be carried out by the labour of others; in this sense I have already
defined the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of
manhood by the hands of childhood. But on a smaller scale, and in a
design which cannot be mathematically defined, one man's thoughts can
never be expressed by another: and the difference between the spirit of
touch of the man who is inventing, and of the man who is obeying
directions, is often all the difference between a great and a common
work of art. How wide the separation is between original and
second-hand execution, I shall endeavour to show elsewhere; it is not
so much to our purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal error
of despising manual labour when governed by intellect; for it is no
less fatal an error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect,
than to value it for its own sake. We are always in these days
endeavouring to separate the two; we want one man to be always
thinking, and another to be always working, and we call one a
gentleman, and the other an operative; whereas the workman ought often
to be thinking, and the thinker often to be working, and both should be
gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is, we make both ungentle, the one
envying, the other despising, his brother; and the mass of society is
made up of morbid thinkers, and miserable workers. Now it is only by
labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that
labour can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with
impunity. It would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen in
some kind, and the dishonour of manual labour done away with
altogether; so that though there should still be a trenchant
distinction of race between nobles and commoners, there should not,
among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between
idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal
professions. All professions should be liberal, and there should be
less pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence of
achievement. And yet more, in each several profession, no master should
be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his own
colours; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the
master-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in
his mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in
experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must
naturally and justly obtain.
I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue this
interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the reader
that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the term
"Gothic" one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of the
most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a noble
but an _essential_ one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is
nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly
noble which is not imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For
since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all in
perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either
make slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present English
fashion, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to
degrade it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let
them show their weaknesses together with their strength, which will
involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as
the intellect of the age can make it.
But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined the
illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true
of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and
perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work
executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading
that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the
labourer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no
good work whatever can be perfect, and _the demand for perfection is
always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art_.
This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that
no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of
failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his
powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in
trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior
portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and
according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of
dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude
or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be
dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not
acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection,
Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take
ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we
are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the
work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what
is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.[161]
The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to
all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that
is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or
can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent. The
foxglove blossom,--a third part bud, a third part past, a third part in
full bloom,--is a type of the life of this world. And in all things
that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are
not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly
the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no
branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change;
and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion,
to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and
more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed,
that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human
judgment, Mercy.
Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any
other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us
be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern
clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first
cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of
perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for
greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity.
Thus far then of the Rudeness or Savageness, which is the first mental
element of Gothic architecture. It is an element in many other healthy
architectures also, as in Byzantine and Romanesque; but true Gothic
cannot exist without it.
The second mental element above named was CHANGEFULNESS, or Variety.
I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to the
inferior workman, simply as a duty _to him_, and as ennobling the
architecture by rendering it more Christian. We have now to consider
what reward we obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, the
perpetual variety of every feature of the building.
Wherever the workman is utterly enslaved, the parts of the building
must of course be absolutely like each other; for the perfection of his
execution can only be reached by exercising him in doing one thing, and
giving him nothing else to do. The degree in which the workman is
degraded may be thus known at a glance, by observing whether the
several parts of the building are similar or not; and if, as in Greek
work, all the capitals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, then
the degradation is complete; if, as in Egyptian or Ninevite work,
though the manner of executing certain figures is always the same, the
order of design is perpetually varied, the degradation is less total;
if, as in Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in design and
execution, the workman must have been altogether set free.
How much the beholder gains from the liberty of the labourer may
perhaps be questioned in England, where one of the strongest instincts
in nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us desire that
our house windows should pair like our carriage horses, and allows us
to yield our faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix a
form for everything, and forbid variation from it. I would not impeach
love of order: it is one of the most useful elements of the English
mind; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely practical matters;
and it is in many cases one of the foundation stones of morality. Only
do not let us suppose that love of order is love of art. It is true
that order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of art,
just as time is a necessity of music; but love of order has no more to
do with our right enjoyment of architecture or painting, than love of
punctuality with the appreciation of an opera. Experience, I fear,
teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily life are seldom
characteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly possess,
the creative powers of art; there is, however, nothing inconsistent
between the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining our
business habits, and yet fully allowing and enjoying the noblest gifts
of Invention. We already do so, in every other branch of art except
architecture, and we only do _not_ so there because we have been taught
that it would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us that, as there
are four rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture;
we, in our simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believe
them. They inform us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian
capitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, considering
that there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, think
that this also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition.
Understanding, therefore, that one form of the said capitals is proper,
and no other, and having a conscientious horror of all impropriety, we
allow the architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the proper
form, in such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take care
that the legal forms are observed; which having done, we rest in forced
confidence that we are well housed.
But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure in the
building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new book
or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its
correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same
pleasure in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or
a skilful piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the
pleasure that architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of
reading a building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the
same kind of delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never
enters our minds for a moment. And for good reason;--There is indeed
rhythm in the verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of
the architecture, and a thousand times more beautiful, but there is
something else than rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor
to match, as the capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of
pleasure in them other than a sense of propriety. But it requires a
strong effort of common sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we
have been taught for the last two centuries, and wake to the perception
of a truth just as simple and certain as it is new: that great art,
whether expressing itself in words, colours, or stones, does _not_ say
the same thing over and over again; that the merit of architectural, as
of every other art, consists in its saying new and different things;
that to repeat itself is no more a characteristic of genius in marble
than it is of genius in print; and that we may, without offending any
laws of good taste, require of an architect, as we do of a novelist,
that he should be not only correct, but entertaining.
Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many
other self-evident things are, by false teaching. Nothing is a great
work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be
given. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and from
given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture; and it is, of the
two procedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to copy
capitals or mouldings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than
to copy heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters.
Let us then understand at once that change or variety is as much a
necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books; that
there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in monotony;
and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or profit
from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and whose
pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in
which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size.
And this we confess in deeds, though not in words. All the pleasure
which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in pictures,
sculpture, minor objects of virtù, or mediæval architecture, which we
enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere in
modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to
escape out of modern cities into natural scenery: hence, as I shall
hereafter show, that peculiar love of landscape, which is
characteristic of the age. It would be well, if, in all other matters,
we were as ready to put up with what we dislike, for the sake of
compliance with established law, as we are in architecture.
How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see when we
come to describe the Renaissance schools; here we have only to note, as
the second most essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it broke
through that law wherever it found it in existence; it not only dared,
but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle; and
invented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that they
were new, but that they were _capable of perpetual novelty_. The
pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it
admitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of a
pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is
always the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from
the single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its
grouping, and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The
introduction of tracery was not only a startling change in the
treatment of window lights, but admitted endless changes in the
interlacement of the tracery bars themselves. So that, while in all
living Christian architecture the love of variety exists, the Gothic
schools exhibited that love in culminating energy; and their influence,
wherever it extended itself, may be sooner and farther traced by this
character than by any other; the tendency to the adoption of Gothic
types being always first shown by greater irregularity, and richer
variation in the forms of the architecture it is about to supersede,
long before the appearance of the pointed arch or of any other
recognizable _outward_ sign of the Gothic mind.
We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there is
between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in
healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly
in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In
order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the
different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in
nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one
incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most
delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most
brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed.
I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may be most
simply understood by observing them in music. We may therein notice
first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony, which there
is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all
nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its
monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and
especially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and
rise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness which
there is not in light.
Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain degree,
becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is
obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage
is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and
harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an
entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful
according to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of course,
uses both these kinds of variation perpetually. The sea-waves,
resembling each other in general mass, but none like its brother in
minor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the first kind; the great
plain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of
the second.
Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, a
certain degree of patience is required from the hearer or observer. In
the first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience the
recurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek for
entertainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. In the
second case, he must bear patiently the infliction of the monotony for
some moments, in order to feel the full refreshment of the change. This
is true even of the shortest musical passage in which the element of
monotony is employed. In cases of more majestic monotony, the patience
required is so considerable that it becomes a kind of pain,--a price
paid for the future pleasure.
Again: the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but in the
changes: he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in
certain places or degrees; that is to say, by his _various_ employment
of it; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that his
intellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it.
Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to
be delightful, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we are
driven to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is
the diseased love of change of which we have above spoken.
From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought to
be, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is; that an architecture
which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and of
those who love it, it may be truly said, "they love darkness rather
than light." But monotony in certain measure, used in order to give
value to change, and above all, that _transparent_ monotony, which,
like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly
suggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential in
architectural as in all other composition; and the endurance of
monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the endurance
of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will have
pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken
and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere
brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and
the storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of
fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while
an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great
mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome
to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of
expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future
pleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble nature
loves monotony, anymore than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear
with it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a
pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those who
will not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to
another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow
and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape.
From these general uses of variety in the economy of the world, we may
at once understand its use and abuse in architecture. The variety of
the Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because in many
cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from the mere love of
change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view Gothic
is not only the best, but the _only rational_ architecture, as being
that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble.
Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, or
disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a
hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded
grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change
in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of
loss either to its unity or majesty,--subtle and flexible like a fiery
serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one
of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered
ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the
real use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window, they
opened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly
regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance,
knowing (as indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptions
of the formal plan would rather give additional interest to its
symmetry than injure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, a
useless window would rather have been opened in an unexpected place for
the sake of the surprise, than a useful one forbidden for the sake of
symmetry. Every successive architect, employed upon a great work, built
the pieces he added in his own way, utterly regardless of the style
adopted by his predecessors; and if two towers were raised in nominal
correspondence at the sides of a cathedral front, one was nearly sure
to be different from the other, and in each the style at the top to be
different from the style at the bottom.
These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part of the
great system of perpetual change which ran through every member of
Gothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's
inquiry as for the builder's imagination: change, which in the best
schools is subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful by
intermingling of a noble monotony; in the more barbaric schools is
somewhat fantastic and redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constant
condition of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is in one
feature, sometimes in another; it may be in the capitals or crockets,
in the niches or the traceries, or in all together, but in some one or
other of the features it will be found always. If the mouldings are
constant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of a
fixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries are
monotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, as in some fine
schools, the early English for example, there is the slightest
approximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floral
decoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and
in the figure sculpture.
I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the consideration of
this, the second mental element of Gothic, to the opening of the third
chapter of the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, in which the distinction
was drawn (§ 2) between man gathering and man governing; between his
acceptance of the sources of delight from nature, and his development
of authoritative or imaginative power in their arrangement: for the two
mental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good architecture,
which we have just been examining, belong to it, and are admirable in
it, chiefly as it is, more than any other subject of art, the work of
man, and the expression of the average power of man. A picture or poem
is often little more than a feeble utterance of man's admiration of
something out of himself; but architecture approaches more to a
creation of his own, born of his necessities, and expressive of his
nature. It is also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while the
picture or statue are the work of one only, in most cases more highly
gifted than his fellows. And therefore we may expect that the first two
elements of good architecture should be expressive of some great truths
commonly belonging to the whole race, and necessary to be understood or
felt by them in all their work that they do under the sun. And observe
what they are: the confession of Imperfection, and the confession of
Desire of Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs not
express anything like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just
because we are something better than birds or bees, our building must
confess that we have not reached the perfection we can imagine, and
cannot rest in the condition we have attained. If we pretend to have
reached either perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves
and our work. God's work only may express that; but ours may never have
that sentence written upon it,--"And behold, it was very good." And,
observe again, it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book of
various knowledge, or a mine of precious thought, that variety is
essential to its nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of
_Knowledge_, but the love of _Change_. It is that strange _disquietude_
of the Gothic spirit that is its greatness; that restlessness of the
dreaming mind, that wanders hither and thither among the niches, and
flickers feverishly around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in
labyrinthine knots and shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not
satisfied, nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph
furrow, and be at peace; but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork
still, and it can neither rest in, nor from, its labour, but must pass
on, sleeplessly, until its love of change shall be pacified for ever in
the change that must come alike on them that wake and them that
sleep....
Last, because the least essential, of the constituent elements of this
noble school, was placed that of REDUNDANCE,--the uncalculating
bestowal of the wealth of its labour. There is, indeed, much Gothic,
and that of the best period, in which this element is hardly traceable,
and which depends for its effect almost exclusively on loveliness of
simple design and grace of uninvolved proportion; still, in the most
characteristic buildings, a certain portion of their effect depends
upon accumulation of ornament; and many of those which have most
influence on the minds of men, have attained it by means of this
attribute alone. And although, by careful study of the school, it is
possible to arrive at a condition of taste which shall be better
contented by a few perfect lines than by a whole façade covered with
fretwork, the building which only satisfies such a taste is not to be
considered the best. For the very first requirement of Gothic
architecture being, as we saw above, that it shall both admit the aid,
and appeal to the admiration, of the rudest as well as the most refined
minds, the richness of the work is, paradoxical as the statement may
appear, a part of its humility. No architecture is so haughty as that
which is simple; which refuses to address the eye, except in a few
clear and forceful lines; which implies, in offering so little to our
regards, that all it has offered is perfect; and disdains, either by
the complexity of the attractiveness of its features, to embarrass our
investigation, or betray us into delight. That humility, which is the
very life of the Gothic school, is shown not only in the imperfection,
but in the accumulation, of ornament. The inferior rank of the workman
is often shown as much in the richness, as the roughness, of his work;
and if the co-operation of every hand, and the sympathy of every heart,
are to be received, we must be content to allow the redundance which
disguises the failure of the feeble, and wins the regard of the
inattentive. There are, however, far nobler interests mingling, in the
Gothic heart, with the rude love of decorative accumulation: a
magnificent enthusiasm, which feels as if it never could do enough to
reach the fulness of its ideal; an unselfishness of sacrifice, which
would rather cast fruitless labour before the altar than stand idle in
the market; and, finally, a profound sympathy with the fulness and
wealth of the material universe, rising out of that Naturalism whose
operation we have already endeavoured to define. The sculptor who
sought for his models among the forest leaves, could not but quickly
and deeply feel that complexity need not involve the loss of grace, nor
richness that of repose; and every hour which he spent in the study of
the minute and various work of Nature, made him feel more forcibly the
barrenness of what was best in that of man: nor is it to be wondered
at, that, seeing her perfect and exquisite creations poured forth in a
profusion which conception could not grasp nor calculation sum, he
should think that it ill became him to be niggardly of his own rude
craftsmanship; and where he saw throughout the universe a faultless
beauty lavished on measureless spaces of broidered field and blooming
mountain, to grudge his poor and imperfect labour to the few stones
that he had raised one upon another, for habitation or memorial. The
years of his life passed away before his task was accomplished; but
generation succeeded generation with unwearied enthusiasm, and the
cathedral front was at last lost in the tapestry of its traceries, like
a rock among the thickets and herbage of spring.
[157] The third kind of ornament, the Renaissance, is that in which
the inferior detail becomes principal, the executor of every minor
portion being required to exhibit skill and possess knowledge as
great as that which is possessed by the master of the design; and
in the endeavour to endow him with this skill and knowledge, his
own original power is overwhelmed, and the whole building becomes a
wearisome exhibition of well-educated imbecility. We must fully
inquire into the nature of this form of error, when we arrive at
the examination of the Renaissance schools. [Ruskin.]
[158] Job xix, 26.
[159] _Matthew_ viii, 9.
[160] Vide Preface to _Fair Maid of Perth_. [Ruskin.]
[161] The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be "perfect".
In the most important portions they indeed approach perfection,
but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and wool
of the animals are unfinished, and the entire bas-reliefs of the
frieze are roughly cut. [Ruskin.]