It has been my endeavour to show in the preceding pages how every form
of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity,
Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing
this, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite
place among those which direct that embodiment; the last place, not
only as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as
belonging to it in the aspect of the 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 poems[169] 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.
The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty.
Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty you mean
chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, subjection
of the will; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame of
committing, a wrong; if you mean respect for all who are in authority,
and consideration for all who are in dependence; veneration for the
good, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you mean
watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and
perseverance in all toils; if you mean, in a word, that Service which
is defined in the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom,
why do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean
license, and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine,
and the fool, equality; by which the proud mean anarchy, and the
malignant mean violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its
best and truest, is Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind
of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is
only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a
measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of
things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all
consist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its banks
with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered over
the face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks
and orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and
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 honour and beauty is habitually on
the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of
character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the
catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the sweetest which men
have learned in the pastures of the wilderness is "Fold."
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 labour it
concentrates or whose interest it concerns.
This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art,
above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most
common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of
men, and for its perfection the 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.
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 colours, or new modes
of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of colour, the
general principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been
determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to any
more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such
additions or alterations are much more the work of time and of
multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck,[170]
who will be known as the introducer of a new style once in ten
centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidental
by-play or pursuit; and the use of that invention 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.
Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be,
and this is commonly a most merciful and enthusiastic supposition with
respect to either, is ever to be sought in itself, or can ever be
healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against common laws. We
want neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture already
known are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us: and it
will be time enough to think of changing them for better when we can
use them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want,
but cannot do without; and which all the struggling and raving in the
world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England,
will never enable us to do without: and these are Obedience, Unity,
Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees of
taste; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; all
the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which
there is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and
the life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as
efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit
architecture and all art, like other things, to English law.
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
treasures, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the
merest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere
gulph in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will
not close. And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad
step be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of
pottery and printed stuffs; we shall not reason out art by our
philosophy; we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, nor
create it by our fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out of
brick and stone; but there is a chance for us in these, and there is
none else; and that chance rests on the bare possibility of obtaining
the consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style,
and to use it universally.
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,[171] 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.
[169] Coleridge's _Ode to France_.
[170] Hubert Van Eyck [1366-1440]. The great Flemish master.
[171] A hollowed moulding. [New Eng. Dict.]