§ VII. In order to give greater weight to the vertical buttress piers

which sustain the conducting buttresses, they are loaded with pinnacles,

which, however, are, I believe, in all the buildings in which they

become very prominent, merely decorative: they are of some use, indeed,

by their weight; but if this were all for which they were put there, a

few cubic feet of lead would much more securely answer the purpose,

without any danger from exposure to wind. If the reader likes to ask any

Gothic architect with whom he may happen to be acquainted, to

substitute a lump of lead for his pinnacles, he will see by the

expression of his face how far he considers the pinnacles decorative

members. In the work which seems to me the great type of simple and

masculine buttress structure, the apse of Beauvais, the pinnacles are

altogether insignificant, and are evidently added just as exclusively to

entertain the eye and lighten the aspect of the buttress, as the slight

shafts which are set on its angles; while in other very noble Gothic

buildings the pinnacles are introduced as niches for statues, without

any reference to construction at all: and sometimes even, as in the tomb

of Can Signoria at Verona, on small piers detached from the main

building.

§ VIII. I believe, therefore, that the development of the pinnacle is

merely a part of the general erectness and picturesqueness of northern

work above alluded to: and that, if there had been no other place for

the pinnacles, the Gothic builders would have put them on the tops of

their arches (they often _did_ on the tops of gables and pediments),

rather than not have had them; but the natural position of the pinnacle

is, of course, where it adds to, rather than diminishes, the stability

of the building; that is to say, on its main wall piers and the vertical

piers at the buttresses. And thus the edifice is surrounded at last by a

complete company of detached piers and pinnacles, each sustaining an

inclined prop against the central wall, and looking something like a

band of giants holding it up with the butts of their lances. This

arrangement would imply the loss of an enormous space of ground, but the

intervals of the buttresses are usually walled in below, and form minor

chapels.

[Illustration: Fig. XLII.]

§ IX. The science of this arrangement has made it the subject of much

enthusiastic declamation among the Gothic architects, almost as

unreasonable, in some respects, as the declamation of the Renaissance

architects respecting Greek structure. The fact is, that the whole

northern buttress system is based on the grand requirement of tall

windows and vast masses of light at the end of the apse. In order to

gain this quantity of light, the piers between the windows are

diminished in thickness until they are far too weak to bear the roof,

and then sustained by external buttresses. In the Italian method the

light is rather dreaded than desired, and the wall is made wide enough

between the windows to bear the roof, and so left. In fact, the simplest

expression of the difference in the systems is, that a northern apse is

a southern one with its inter-fenestrial piers set edgeways. Thus, _a_,

Fig. XLII., is the general idea of the southern apse; take it to pieces,

and set all its piers edgeways, as at _b_, and you have the northern

one. You gain much light for the interior, but you cut the exterior to

pieces, and instead of a bold rounded or polygonal surface, ready for

any kind of decoration, you have a series of dark and damp cells, which

no device that I have yet seen has succeeded in decorating in a

perfectly satisfactory manner. If the system be farther carried, and a

second or third order of buttresses be added, the real fact is that we

have a building standing on two or three rows of concentric piers, with

the _roof off_ the whole of it except the central circle, and only ribs

left, to carry the weight of the bit of remaining roof in the middle;

and after the eye has been accustomed to the bold and simple rounding of

the Italian apse, the skeleton character of the disposition is painfully

felt. After spending some months in Venice, I thought Bourges Cathedral

looked exactly like a half-built ship on its shores. It is useless,

however, to dispute respecting the merits of the two systems: both are

noble in their place; the Northern decidedly the most scientific, or at

least involving the greatest display of science, the Italian the

calmest and purest, this having in it the sublimity of a calm heaven or

a windless noon, the other that of a mountain flank tormented by the

north wind, and withering into grisly furrows of alternate chasm and

crag.

§ X. If I have succeeded in making the reader understand the veritable

action of the buttress, he will have no difficulty in determining its

fittest form. He has to deal with two distinct kinds; one, a narrow

vertical pier, acting principally by its weight, and crowned by a

pinnacle; the other, commonly called a Flying buttress, a cross bar set

from such a pier (when detached from the building) against the main

wall. This latter, then, is to be considered as a mere prop or shore,

and its use by the Gothic architects might be illustrated by the

supposition that we were to build all our houses with walls too thin to

stand without wooden props outside, and then to substitute stone props

for wooden ones. I have some doubts of the real dignity of such a

proceeding, but at all events the merit of the form of the flying

buttress depends on its faithfully and visibly performing this somewhat

humble office; it is, therefore, in its purity, a mere sloping bar of

stone, with an arch beneath it to carry its weight, that is to say, to

prevent the action of gravity from in any wise deflecting it, or causing

it to break downwards under the lateral thrust; it is thus formed quite

simple in Notre Dame of Paris, and in the Cathedral of Beauvais, while

at Cologne the sloping bars are pierced with quatrefoils, and at Amiens

with traceried arches. Both seem to me effeminate and false in

principle; not, of course, that there is any occasion to make the flying

buttress heavy, if a light one will answer the purpose; but it seems as

if some security were sacrificed to ornament. At Amiens the arrangement

is now seen to great disadvantage, for the early traceries have been

replaced by base flamboyant ones, utterly weak and despicable. Of the

degradations of the original form which took place in after times, I

have spoken at p. 35 of the "Seven Lamps."

§ XI. The form of the common buttress must be familiar to the eye of

every reader, sloping if low, and thrown into successive steps if they

are to be carried to any considerable height. There is much dignity in

them when they are of essential service; but even in their best

examples, their awkward angles are among the least manageable features

of the Northern Gothic, and the whole organisation of its system was

destroyed by their unnecessary and lavish application on a diminished

scale; until the buttress became actually confused with the shaft, and

we find strangely crystallised masses of diminutive buttress applied,

for merely vertical support, in the northern tabernacle work; while in

some recent copies of it the principle has been so far distorted that

the tiny buttressings look as if they carried the superstructure on the

points of their pinnacles, as in the Cranmer memorial at Oxford. Indeed,

in most modern Gothic, the architects evidently consider buttresses as

convenient breaks of blank surface, and general apologies for deadness

of wall. They stand in the place of ideas, and I think are supposed also

to have something of the odor of sanctity about them; otherwise, one

hardly sees why a warehouse seventy feet high should have nothing of the

kind, and a chapel, which one can just get into with one's hat off,

should have a bunch of them at every corner; and worse than this, they

are even thought ornamental when they can be of no possible use; and

these stupid penthouse outlines are forced upon the eye in every species

of decoration: in St. Margaret's Chapel, West Street, there are actually

a couple of buttresses at the end of every pew.

§ XII. It is almost impossible, in consequence of these unwise

repetitions of it, to contemplate the buttress without some degree of

prejudice; and I look upon it as one of the most justifiable causes of

the unfortunate aversion with which many of our best architects regard

the whole Gothic school. It may, however, always be regarded with

respect when its form is simple and its service clear; but no treason to

Gothic can be greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to

enhance the intricacies of structure, or occupy the vacuities of design.

CHAPTER XVI.

FORM OF APERTURE.

§ I. We have now, in order, examined the means of raising walls and

sustaining roofs, and we have finally to consider the structure of the

necessary apertures in the wall veil, the door and window; respecting

which there are three main points to be considered.

1. The form of the aperture, _i.e._, its outline, its size, and the

forms of its sides.

2. The filling of the aperture, _i.e._, valves and glass, and their

holdings.

3. The protection of the aperture, and its appliances, _i.e._, canopies,

porches, and balconies. We shall examine these in succession.

§ II. 1. The form of the aperture: and first of doors. We will, for the

present, leave out of the question doors and gates in unroofed walls,

the forms of these being very arbitrary, and confine ourselves to the

consideration of doors of entrance into roofed buildings. Such doors

will, for the most part, be at, or near, the base of the building;

except when raised for purposes of defence, as in the old Scotch border

towers, and our own Martello towers, or, as in Switzerland, to permit

access in deep snow, or when stairs are carried up outside the house for

convenience or magnificence. But in most cases, whether high or low, a

door may be assumed to be considerably lower than the apartments or

buildings into which it gives admission, and therefore to have some

height of wall above it, whose weight must be carried by the heading of

the door. It is clear, therefore, that the best heading must be an

arch, because the strongest, and that a square-headed door must be

wrong, unless under Mont-Cenisian masonry; or else, unless the top of

the door be the roof of the building, as in low cottages. And a

square-headed door is just so much more wrong and ugly than a connexion

of main shafts by lintels, as the weight of wall above the door is

likely to be greater than that above the main shafts. Thus, while I

admit the Greek general forms of temple to be admirable in their kind, I

think the Greek door always offensive and unmanageable.

§ III. We have it also determined by necessity, that the apertures shall

be at least above a man's height, with perpendicular sides (for sloping

sides are evidently unnecessary, and even inconvenient, therefore

absurd) and level threshold; and this aperture we at present suppose

simply cut through the wall without any bevelling of the jambs. Such a

door, wide enough for two persons to pass each other easily, and with

such fillings or valves as we may hereafter find expedient, may be fit

enough for any building into which entrance is required neither often,

nor by many persons at a time. But when entrance and egress are

constant, or required by crowds, certain further modifications must take

place.

[Illustration: Fig. XLIII.]

§ IV. When entrance and egress are constant, it may be supposed that the

valves will be absent or unfastened,--that people will be passing more

quickly than when the entrance and egress are unfrequent, and that the

square angles of the wall will be inconvenient to such quick passers

through. It is evident, therefore, that what would be done in time, for

themselves, by the passing multitude, should be done for them at once by

the architect; and that these angles, which would be worn away by

friction, should at once be bevelled off, or, as it is called, splayed,

and the most contracted part of the aperture made as short as possible,

so that the plan of the entrance should become as at _a_, Fig. XLIII.

§ V. Farther. As persons on the outside may often approach the door or

depart from it, _beside_ the building, so as to turn aside as they enter

or leave the door, and therefore touch its jamb, but, on the inside,

will in almost every case approach the door, or depart from it in the

direct line of the entrance (people generally walking _forward_ when

they enter a hall, court, or chamber of any kind, and being forced to do

so when they enter a passage), it is evident that the bevelling may be

very slight on the inside, but should be large on the outside, so that

the plan of the aperture should become as at _b_, Fig. XLIII. Farther,

as the bevelled wall cannot conveniently carry an unbevelled arch, the

door arch must be bevelled also, and the aperture, seen from the

outside, will have somewhat the aspect of a small cavern diminishing

towards the interior.

§ VI. If, however, beside frequent entrance, entrance is required for

multitudes at the same time, the size of the aperture either must be

increased, or other apertures must be introduced. It may, in some

buildings, be optional with the architect whether he shall give many

small doors, or few large ones; and in some, as theatres, amphitheatres,

and other places where the crowd are apt to be impatient, many doors are

by far the best arrangement of the two. Often, however, the purposes of

the building, as when it is to be entered by processions, or where the

crowd most usually enter in one direction, require the large single

entrance; and (for here again the æsthetic and structural laws cannot be

separated) the expression and harmony of the building require, in nearly

every case, an entrance of largeness proportioned to the multitude which

is to meet within. Nothing is more unseemly than that a great multitude

should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps do, through holes; and

nothing more undignified than the paltry doors of many of our English

cathedrals, which look as if they were made, not for the open egress,

but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides,

the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as possible, to

desire at least the western entrance to be single, partly because no man

of right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and fellowship

in going up to worship, which is suggested by the vast single entrance;

partly because it is at the entrance that the most serious words of the

building are always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the

worshipper; and it is well, that these words should be spoken to all at

once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak repetitions over

minor doors.

In practice the matter has been, I suppose, regulated almost altogether

by convenience, the western doors being single in small churches, while

in the larger the entrances become three or five, the central door

remaining always principal, in consequence of the fine sense of

composition which the mediæval builders never lost. These arrangements

have formed the noblest buildings in the world. Yet it is worth

observing[55] how perfect in its simplicity the single entrance may

become, when it is treated as in the Duomo and St. Zeno of Verona, and

other such early Lombard churches, having noble porches, and rich

sculptures grouped around the entrance.

§ VII. However, whether the entrances be single, triple, or manifold, it

is a constant law that one shall be principal, and all shall be of size

in some degree proportioned to that of the building. And this size is,

of course, chiefly to be expressed in width, that being the only useful

dimension in a door (except for pageantry, chairing of bishops and

waving of banners, and other such vanities, not, I hope, after this

century, much to be regarded in the building of Christian temples); but

though the width is the only necessary dimension, it is well to increase

the height also in some proportion to it, in order that there may be

less weight of wall above, resting on the increased span of the arch.

This is, however, so much the necessary result of the broad curve of the

arch itself, that there is no structural necessity of elevating the

jamb; and I believe that beautiful entrances might be made of every span

of arch, retaining the jamb at a little more than a man's height, until

the sweep of the curves became so vast that the small vertical line

became a part of them, and one entered into the temple as under a great

rainbow.

§ VIII. On the other hand, the jamb _may_ be elevated indefinitely, so

that the increasing entrance retains _at least_ the proportion of width

it had originally; say 4 ft. by 7 ft. 5 in. But a less proportion of

width than this has always a meagre, inhospitable, and ungainly look

except in military architecture, where the narrowness of the entrance is

necessary, and its height adds to its grandeur, as between the entrance

towers of our British castles. This law however, observe, applies only

to true doors, not to the arches of porches, which may be of any

proportion, as of any number, being in fact intercolumniations, not

doors; as in the noble example of the west front of Peterborough, which,

in spite of the destructive absurdity of its central arch being the

narrowest, would still, if the paltry porter's lodge, or gatehouse, or

turnpike, or whatever it is, were knocked out of the middle of it, be

the noblest west front in England.

§ IX. Further, and finally. In proportion to the height and size of the

building, and therefore to the size of its doors, will be the thickness

of its walls, especially at the foundation, that is to say, beside the

doors; and also in proportion to the numbers of a crowd will be the

unruliness and pressure of it. Hence, partly in necessity and partly in

prudence, the splaying or chamfering of the jamb of the larger door will

be deepened, and, if possible, made at a larger angle for the large door

than for the small one; so that the large door will always be

encompassed by a visible breadth of jamb proportioned to its own

magnitude. The decorative value of this feature we shall see hereafter.

§ X. The second kind of apertures we have to examine are those of

windows.

Window apertures are mainly of two kinds; those for outlook, and those

for inlet of light, many being for both purposes, and either purpose, or

both, combined in military architecture with those of offence and

defence. But all window apertures, as compared with door apertures, have

almost infinite licence of form and size: they may be of any shape, from

the slit or cross slit to the circle;[56] of any size, from the loophole

of the castle to the pillars of light of the cathedral apse. Yet,

according to their place and purpose, one or two laws of fitness hold

respecting them, which let us examine in the two classes of windows

successively, but without reference to military architecture, which

here, as before, we may dismiss as a subject of separate science, only

noticing that windows, like all other features, are always delightful,

if not beautiful, when their position and shape have indeed been thus

necessarily determined, and that many of their most picturesque forms

have resulted from the requirements of war. We should also find in

military architecture the typical forms of the two classes of outlet and

inlet windows in their utmost development; the greatest sweep of sight

and range of shot on the one hand, and the fullest entry of light and

air on the other, being constantly required at the smallest possible

apertures. Our business, however, is to reason out the laws for

ourselves, not to take the examples as we find them.

§ XI. 1. Outlook apertures. For these no general outline is determinable

by the necessities or inconveniences of outlooking, except only that the

bottom or sill of the windows, at whatever height, should be horizontal,

for the convenience of leaning on it, or standing on it if the window

be to the ground. The form of the upper part of the window is quite

immaterial, for all windows allow a greater range of sight when they are

_approached_ than that of the eye itself: it is the approachability of

the window, that is to say, the annihilation of the thickness of the

wall, which is the real point to be attended to. If, therefore, the

aperture be inaccessible, or so small that the thickness of the wall

cannot be entered, the wall is to be bevelled[57] on the outside, so as

to increase the range of sight as far as possible; if the aperture can

be entered, then bevelled from the point to which entrance is possible.

The bevelling will, if possible, be in every direction, that is to say,

upwards at the top, outwards at the sides, and downwards at the bottom,

but essentially _downwards_; the earth and the doings upon it being the

chief object in outlook windows, except of observatories; and where the

object is a distinct and special view downwards, it will be of advantage

to shelter the eye as far as possible from the rays of light coming from

above, and the head of the window may be left horizontal, or even the

whole aperture sloped outwards, as the slit in a letter-box is inwards.

The best windows for outlook are, of course, oriels and bow windows, but

these are not to be considered under the head of apertures merely; they

are either balconies roofed and glazed, and to be considered under the

head of external appliances, or they are each a story of an external

semi-tower, having true aperture windows on each side of it.

§ XII. 2. Inlet windows. These windows may, of course, be of any shape and

size whatever, according to the other necessities of the building, and

the quantity and direction of light desired, their purpose being now to

throw it in streams on particular lines or spots; now to diffuse it

everywhere; sometimes to introduce it in broad masses, tempered in

strength, as in the cathedral colored window; sometimes in starry

showers of scattered brilliancy, like the apertures in the roof of an

Arabian bath; perhaps the most beautiful of all forms being the rose,

which has in it the unity of both characters, and sympathy with that of

the source of light itself. It is noticeable, however, that while both

the circle and pointed oval are beautiful window forms, it would be very

painful to cut either of them in half and connect them by vertical

lines, as in Fig. XLIV. The reason is, I believe, that so treated, the

upper arch is not considered as connected with the lower, and forming an

entire figure, but as the ordinary arch roof of the aperture, and the

lower arch as an arch _floor_, equally unnecessary and unnatural. Also,

the elliptical oval is generally an unsatisfactory form, because it

gives the idea of useless trouble in building it, though it occurs

quaintly and pleasantly in the former windows of France: I believe it is

also objectionable because it has an indeterminate, slippery look, like

that of a bubble rising through a fluid. It, and all elongated forms,

are still more objectionable placed horizontally, because this is the

weakest position they can structurally have; that is to say, less light

is admitted, with greater loss of strength to the building, than by any

other form. If admissible anywhere, it is for the sake of variety at the

top of the building, as the flat parallelogram sometimes not

ungracefully in Italian Renaissance.

[Illustration: Fig. XLIV.]

§ XIII. The question of bevelling becomes a little more complicated in

the inlet than the outlook window, because the mass or quantity of light

admitted is often of more consequence than its direction, and often

_vice versâ_; and the outlook window is supposed to be approachable,

which is far from being always the case with windows for light, so that

the bevelling which in the outlook window is chiefly to open range of

sight, is in the inlet a means not only of admitting the light in

greater quantity, but of directing it to the spot on which it is to

fall. But, in general, the bevelling of the one window will reverse that

of the other; for, first, no natural light will strike on the inlet

window from beneath, unless reflected light, which is (I believe)

injurious to the health and the sight; and thus, while in the outlook

window the outside bevel downwards is essential, in the inlet it would

be useless: and the sill is to be flat, if the window be on a level with

the spot it is to light; and sloped downwards within, if above it.

Again, as the brightest rays of light are the steepest, the outside

bevel upwards is as essential in the roof of the inlet as it was of

small importance in that of the outlook window.

§ XIV. On the horizontal section the aperture will expand internally, a

somewhat larger number of rays being thus reflected from the jambs; and

the aperture being thus the smallest possible outside, this is the

favorite military form of inlet window, always found in magnificent

development in the thick walls of mediæval castles and convents. Its

effect is tranquil, but cheerless and dungeon-like in its fullest

development, owing to the limitation of the range of sight in the

outlook, which, if the window be unapproachable, reduces it to a mere

point of light. A modified condition of it, with some combination of the

outlook form, is probably the best for domestic buildings in general

(which, however, in modern architecture, are unhappily so thin walled,

that the outline of the jambs becomes a matter almost of indifference),

it being generally noticeable that the depth of recess which I have

observed to be essential to nobility of external effect has also a

certain dignity of expression, as appearing to be intended rather to

admit light to persons quietly occupied in their homes, than to

stimulate or favor the curiosity of idleness.

FOOTNOTES:

[55] And worth questioning, also, whether the triple porch has not

been associated with Romanist views of mediatorship; the Redeemer

being represented as presiding over the central door only, and the

lateral entrances being under the protection of saints, while the

Madonna almost always has one or both of the transepts. But it would

be wrong to press this, for, in nine cases out of ten, the architect

has been merely influenced in his placing of the statues by an

artist's desire of variety in their forms and dress; and very

naturally prefers putting a canonisation over one door, a martyrdom

over another, and an assumption over a third, to repeating a

crucifixion or a judgment above all. The architect's doctrine is

only, therefore, to be noted with indisputable reprobation when the

Madonna gets possession of the main door.

[56] The arch heading is indeed the best where there is much

incumbent weight, but a window frequently has very little weight

above it, especially when placed high, and the arched form loses

light in a low room: therefore the square-headed window is

admissible where the square-headed door is not.

[57] I do not like the sound of the word "splayed;" I always shall

use "bevelled" instead.

CHAPTER XVII.

FILLING OF APERTURE.

§ I. Thus far we have been concerned with the outline only of the

aperture: we were next, it will be remembered, to consider the necessary

modes of filling it with valves in the case of the door, or with glass

or tracery in that of the window.

1. Fillings of doors. We concluded, in the previous Chapter, that doors

in buildings of any importance or size should have headings in the form

of an arch. This is, however, the most inconvenient form we could

choose, as respects the fitting of the valves of the doorway; for the

arch-shaped head of the valves not only requires considerable nicety in

fitting to the arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door,--a

double disadvantage, straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in

opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the eye, that a

door valve with a pointed head is always a disagreeable object. It

becomes, therefore, a matter of true necessity so to arrange the doorway

as to admit of its being fitted with rectangular valves.

§ II. Now, in determining the form of the aperture, we supposed the jamb

of the door to be of the utmost height required for entrance. The extra

height of the arch is unnecessary as an opening, the arch being required

for its strength only, not for its elevation. There is, therefore, no

reason why it should not be barred across by a horizontal lintel, into

which the valves may be fitted, and the triangular or semicircular

arched space above the lintel may then be permanently closed, as we

choose, either with bars, or glass, or stone.

This is the form of all good doors, without exception, over the whole

world and in all ages, and no other can ever be invented.

§ III. In the simplest doors the cross lintel is of wood only, and glass

or bars occupy the space above, a very frequent form in Venice. In more

elaborate doors the cross lintel is of stone, and the filling sometimes

of brick, sometimes of stone, very often a grand single stone being used

to close the entire space: the space thus filled is called the Tympanum.

In large doors the cross lintel is too long to bear the great incumbent

weight of this stone filling without support; it is, therefore, carried

by a pier in the centre; and two valves are used, fitted to the

rectangular spaces on each side of the pier. In the most elaborate

examples of this condition, each of these secondary doorways has an arch

heading, a cross lintel, and a triangular filling or tympanum of its

own, all subordinated to the main arch above.

§ IV. 2. Fillings of windows.

When windows are large, and to be filled with glass, the sheet of glass,

however constructed, whether of large panes or small fragments, requires

the support of bars of some kind, either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood

is inapplicable on a large scale, owing to its destructibility; very fit

for door-valves, which can be easily refitted, and in which weight would

be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars, which, if they

decayed, might let the whole window be blown in before their decay was

observed, and in which weight would be an advantage, as offering more

resistance to the wind.

Iron is, however, fit for window-bars, and there seems no constructive

reason why we should not have iron traceries, as well as iron pillars,

iron churches, and iron steeples. But I have, in the "Seven Lamps,"

given reasons for not considering such structures as architecture at

all.

The window-bars must, therefore, be of stone, and of stone only.

§ V. The purpose of the window being always to let in as much light, and

command as much view, as possible, these bars of stone are to be made

as slender and as few as they can be, consistently with their due

strength.

[Illustration: Fig. XLV.]

Let it be required to support the breadth of glass, _a_, _b_, Fig. XLV.

The tendency of the glass sustaining any force, as of wind from without,

is to bend into an arch inwards, in the dotted line, and break in the

centre. It is to be supported, therefore, by the bar put in its centre,

_c_.

But this central bar, _c_, may not be enough, and the spaces _a c_, _c

b_, may still need support. The next step will be to put two bars

instead of one, and divide the window into three spaces as at _d_.

But this may still not be enough, and the window may need three bars.

Now the greatest stress is always on the centre of the window. If the

three bars are equal in strength, as at _e_, the central bar is either

too slight for its work, or the lateral bars too thick for theirs.

Therefore, we must slightly increase the thickness of the central bar,

and diminish that of the lateral ones, so as to obtain the arrangement

at _f h_. If the window enlarge farther, each of the spaces _f g_, _g

h_, is treated as the original space _a b_, and we have the groups of

bars _k_ and _l_.

So that, whatever the shape of the window, whatever the direction and

number of the bars, there are to be central or main bars; second bars

subordinated to them; third bars subordinated to the second, and so on

to the number required. This is called the subordination of tracery, a

system delightful to the eye and mind, owing to its anatomical framing

and unity, and to its expression of the laws of good government in all

fragile and unstable things. All tracery, therefore, which is not

subordinated, is barbarous, in so far as this part of its structure is

concerned.

§ VI. The next question will be the direction of the bars. The reader

will understand at once, without any laborious proof, that a given area

of glass, supported by its edges, is stronger in its resistance to

violence when it is arranged in a long strip or band than in a square;

and that, therefore, glass is generally to be arranged, especially in

windows on a large scale, in oblong areas: and if the bars so dividing

it be placed horizontally, they will have less power of supporting

themselves, and will need to be thicker in consequence, than if placed

vertically. As far, therefore, as the form of the window permits, they

are to be vertical.

§ VII. But even when so placed, they cannot be trusted to support

themselves beyond a certain height, but will need cross bars to steady

them. Cross bars of stone are, therefore, to be introduced at necessary

intervals, not to divide the glass, but to support the upright stone

bars. The glass is always to be divided longitudinally as far as

possible, and the upright bars which divide it supported at proper

intervals. However high the window, it is almost impossible that it

should require more than two cross bars.

§ VIII. It may sometimes happen that when tall windows are placed very

close to each other for the sake of more light, the masonry between them

may stand in need, or at least be the better of, some additional

support. The cross bars of the windows may then be thickened, in order

to bond the intermediate piers more strongly together, and if this

thickness appear ungainly, it may be modified by decoration.

§ IX. We have thus arrived at the idea of a vertical frame work of

subordinated bars, supported by cross bars at the necessary intervals,

and the only remaining question is the method of insertion into the

aperture. Whatever its form, if we merely let the ends of the bars into

the voussoirs of its heading, the least settlement of the masonry would

distort the arch, or push up some of its voussoirs, or break the window

bars, or push them aside. Evidently our object should be to connect the

window bars among themselves, so framing them together that they may

give the utmost possible degree of support to the whole window head in

case of any settlement. But we know how to do this already: our window

bars are nothing but small shafts. Capital them; throw small arches

across between the smaller bars, large arches over them between the

larger bars, one comprehensive arch over the whole, or else a horizontal

lintel, if the window have a flat head; and we have a complete system of

mutual support, independent of the aperture head, and yet assisting to

sustain it, if need be. But we want the spandrils of this arch system to

be themselves as light, and to let as much light through them, as

possible: and we know already how to pierce them (Chap. XII. § VII.). We

pierce them with circles; and we have, if the circles are small and the

stonework strong, the traceries of Giotto and the Pisan school; if the

circles are as large as possible and the bars slender, those which I

have already figured and described as the only perfect traceries of the

Northern Gothic.[58] The varieties of their design arise partly from the

different size of window and consequent number of bars; partly from the

different heights of their pointed arches, as well as the various

positions of the window head in relation to the roof, rendering one or

another arrangement better for dividing the light, and partly from

æsthetic and expressional requirements, which, within certain limits,

may be allowed a very important influence: for the strength of the bars

is ordinarily so much greater than is absolutely necessary, that some

portion of it may be gracefully sacrificed to the attainment of variety

in the plans of tracery--a variety which, even within its severest

limits, is perfectly endless; more especially in the pointed arch, the

proportion of the tracery being in the round arch necessarily more

fixed.

§ X. The circular window furnishes an exception to the common law, that

the bars shall be vertical through the greater part of their length: for

if they were so, they could neither have secure perpendicular footing,

nor secure heading, their thrust being perpendicular to the curve of the

voussoirs only in the centre of the window; therefore, a small circle,

like the axle of a wheel, is put into the centre of the window, large

enough to give footing to the necessary number of radiating bars; and

the bars are arranged as spokes, being all of course properly capitaled

and arch-headed. This is the best form of tracery for circular windows,

naturally enough called wheel windows when so filled.

§ XI. Now, I wish the reader especially to observe that we have arrived

at these forms of perfect Gothic tracery without the smallest reference

to any practice of any school, or to any law of authority whatever. They

are forms having essentially nothing whatever to do either with Goths or

Greeks. They are eternal forms, based on laws of gravity and cohesion;

and no better, nor any others so good, will ever be invented, so long as

the present laws of gravity and cohesion subsist.

§ XII. It does not at all follow that this group of forms owes its

origin to any such course of reasoning as that which has now led us to

it. On the contrary, there is not the smallest doubt that tracery began,

partly, in the grouping of windows together (subsequently enclosed

within a large arch[59]), and partly in the fantastic penetrations of a

single slab of stones under the arch, as the circle in Plate V. above.

The perfect form seems to have been accidentally struck in passing from

experiment on the one side, to affectation on the other; and it was so

far from ever becoming systematised, that I am aware of no type of

tracery for which a _less_ decided preference is shown in the buildings

in which it exists. The early pierced traceries are multitudinous and

perfect in their kind,--the late Flamboyant, luxuriant in detail, and

lavish in quantity,--but the perfect forms exist in comparatively few

churches, generally in portions of the church only, and are always

connected, and that closely, either with the massy forms out of which

they have emerged, or with the enervated types into which they are

instantly to degenerate.

§ XIII. Nor indeed are we to look upon them as in all points superior to

the more ancient examples. We have above conducted our reasoning

entirely on the supposition that a single aperture is given, which it is

the object to fill with glass, diminishing the power of the light as

little as possible. But there are many cases, as in triforium and

cloister lights, in which glazing is not required; in which, therefore,

the bars, if there be any, must have some more important function than

that of merely holding glass, and in which their actual use is to give

steadiness and _tone_, as it were, to the arches and walls above and

beside them; or to give the idea of protection to those who pass along

the triforium, and of seclusion to those who walk in the cloister. Much

thicker shafts, and more massy arches, may be properly employed in work

of this kind; and many groups of such tracery will be found resolvable

into true colonnades, with the arches in pairs, or in triple or

quadruple groups, and with small rosettes pierced above them for light.

All this is just as _right_ in its place, as the glass tracery is in its

own function, and often much more grand. But the same indulgence is not

to be shown to the affectations which succeeded the developed forms. Of

these there are three principal conditions: the Flamboyant of France,

the Stump tracery of Germany, and the Perpendicular of England.

§ XIV. Of these the first arose, by the most delicate and natural

transitions, out of the perfect school. It was an endeavor to introduce

more grace into its lines, and more change into its combinations; and

the æsthetic results are so beautiful, that for some time after the

right road had been left, the aberration was more to be admired than

regretted. The final conditions became fantastic and effeminate, but, in

the country where they had been invented, never lost their peculiar

grace until they were replaced by the Renaissance. The copies of the

school in England and Italy have all its faults and none of its

beauties; in France, whatever it lost in method or in majesty, it gained

in fantasy: literally Flamboyant, it breathed away its strength into

the air; but there is not more difference between the commonest doggrel

that ever broke prose into unintelligibility, and the burning mystery of

Coleridge, or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is between

the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the flaming undulations

of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that confuse themselves with

the clouds of every morning sky that brightens above the valley of the

Seine.

§ XV. The second group of traceries, the intersectional or German group,

may be considered as including the entire range of the absurd forms

which were invented in order to display dexterity in stone-cutting and

ingenuity in construction. They express the peculiar character of the

German mind, which cuts the frame of every truth joint from joint, in

order to prove the edge of its instruments; and, in all cases, prefers a

new or a strange thought to a good one, and a subtle thought to a useful

one. The point and value of the German tracery consists principally in

turning the features of good traceries upside down, and cutting them in

two where they are properly continuous. To destroy at once foundation

and membership, and suspend everything in the air, keeping out of sight,

as far as possible, the evidences of a beginning and the probabilities

of an end, are the main objects of German architecture, as of modern

German divinity.

§ XVI. This school has, however, at least the merit of ingenuity. Not so

the English Perpendicular, though a very curious school also in _its_

way. In the course of the reasoning which led us to the determination of

the perfect Gothic tracery, we were induced successively to reject

certain methods of arrangement as weak, dangerous, or disagreeable.

Collect all these together, and practise them at once, and you have the

English Perpendicular.

[Illustration: Fig. XLVI.]

As thus. You find, in the first place (§ V.), that your tracery bars are

to be subordinated, less to greater; so you take a group of, suppose,

eight, which you make all exactly equal, giving you nine equal spaces in

the window, as at A, Fig. XLVI. You found, in the second place (§ VII.),

that there was no occasion for more than two cross bars; so you take at

least four or five (also represented at A, Fig. XLVI.), also carefully

equalised, and set at equal spaces. You found, in the third place (§

VIII.), that these bars were to be strengthened, in order to support the

main piers; you will therefore cut the ends off the uppermost, and the

fourth into three pieces (as also at A). In the fourth place, you found

(§ IX.) that you were never to run a vertical bar into the arch head; so

you run them all into it (as at B, Fig. XLVI.); and this last

arrangement will be useful in two ways, for it will not only expose both

the bars and the archivolt to an apparent probability of every species

of dislocation at any moment, but it will provide you with two pleasing

interstices at the flanks, in the shape of carving-knives, _a_, _b_,

which, by throwing across the curves _c_, _d_, you may easily multiply

into four; and these, as you can put nothing into their sharp tops, will

afford you a more than usually rational excuse for a little bit of

Germanism, in filling them with arches upside down, _e_, _f_. You will

now have left at your disposal two and forty similar interstices, which,

for the sake of variety, you will proceed to fill with two and forty

similar arches: and, as you were told that the moment a bar received an

arch heading, it was to be treated as a shaft and capitalled, you will

take care to give your bars no capitals nor bases, but to run bars,

foliations and all, well into each other after the fashion of cast-iron,

as at C. You have still two triangular spaces occurring in an important

part of your window, _g g_, which, as they are very conspicuous, and you

cannot make them uglier than they are, you will do wisely to let

alone;--and you will now have the west window of the cathedral of

Winchester, a very perfect example of English Perpendicular. Nor do I

think that you can, on the whole, better the arrangement, unless,

perhaps, by adding buttresses to some of the bars, as is done in the

cathedral at Gloucester; these buttresses having the double advantage of

darkening the window when seen from within, and suggesting, when it is

seen from without, the idea of its being divided by two stout party

walls, with a heavy thrust against the glass.

§ XVII. Thus far we have considered the plan of the tracery only: we

have lastly to note the conditions under which the glass is to be

attached to the bars; and the sections of the bars themselves.

[Illustration: Fig. XLVII.]

These bars we have seen, in the perfect form, are to become shafts; but,

supposing the object to be the admission of as much light as possible,

it is clear that the thickness of the bar ought to be chiefly in the

depth of the window, and that by increasing the depth of the bar we may

diminish its breadth: clearly, therefore, we should employ the double

group of shafts, _b_, of Fig. XIV., setting it edgeways in the window:

but as the glass would then come between the two shafts, we must add a

member into which it is to be fitted, as at _a_, Fig. XLVII., and

uniting these three members together in the simplest way, with a curved

instead of a sharp recess behind the shafts, we have the section _b_,

the perfect, but simplest type of the main tracery bars in good Gothic.

In triforium and cloister tracery, which has no glass to hold, the

central member is omitted, and we have either the pure double shaft,

always the most graceful, or a single and more massy shaft, which is the

simpler and more usual form.

§ XVIII. Finally: there is an intermediate arrangement between the

glazed and the open tracery, that of the domestic traceries of Venice.

Peculiar conditions, hereafter to be described, require the shafts of

these traceries to become the main vertical supports of the floors and

walls. Their thickness is therefore enormous; and yet free egress is

required between them (into balconies) which is obtained by doors in

their lattice glazing. To prevent the inconvenience and ugliness of

driving the hinges and fastenings of them into the shafts, and having

the play of the doors in the intervals, the entire glazing is thrown

behind the pillars, and attached to their abaci and bases with iron. It

is thus securely sustained by their massy bulk, and leaves their

symmetry and shade undisturbed.

§ XIX. The depth at which the glass should be placed, in windows without

traceries, will generally be fixed by the forms of their bevelling, the

glass occupying the narrowest interval; but when its position is not

thus fixed, as in many London houses, it is to be remembered that the

deeper the glass is set (the wall being of given thickness), the more

light will enter, and the clearer the prospect will be to a person

sitting quietly in the centre of the room; on the contrary, the farther

out the glass is set, the more convenient the window will be for a

person rising and looking out of it. The one, therefore, is an

arrangement for the idle and curious, who care only about what is going

on upon the earth: the other for those who are willing to remain at

rest, so that they have free admission of the light of Heaven. This

might be noted as a curious expressional reason for the necessity (of

which no man of ordinary feeling would doubt for a moment) of a deep

recess in the window, on the outside, to all good or architectural

effect: still, as there is no reason why people should be made idle by

having it in their power to look out of window, and as the slight

increase of light or clearness of view in the centre of a room is more

than balanced by the loss of space, and the greater chill of the nearer

glass and outside air, we can, I fear, allege no other structural reason

for the picturesque external recess, than the expediency of a certain

degree of protection, for the glass, from the brightest glare of

sunshine, and heaviest rush of rain.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] "Seven Lamps," p. 53.

[59] On the north side of the nave of the cathedral of Lyons, there

is an early French window, presenting one of the usual groups of

foliated arches and circles, left, as it were, loose, without any

enclosing curve. The effect is very painful. This remarkable window

is associated with others of the common form.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PROTECTION OF APERTURE.

§ I. We have hitherto considered the aperture as merely pierced in the

thickness of the walls; and when its masonry is simple and the fillings

of the aperture are unimportant, it may well remain so. But when the

fillings are delicate and of value, as in the case of colored glass,

finely wrought tracery, or sculpture, such as we shall often find

occupying the tympanum of doorways, some protection becomes necessary

against the run of the rain down the walls, and back by the bevel of the

aperture to the joints or surface of the fillings.

§ II. The first and simplest mode of obtaining this is by channelling

the jambs and arch head; and this is the chief practical service of

aperture mouldings, which are otherwise entirely decorative. But as this

very decorative character renders them unfit to be made channels for

rain water, it is well to add some external roofing to the aperture,

which may protect it from the run of all the rain, except that which

necessarily beats into its own area. This protection, in its most usual

form, is a mere dripstone moulding carried over or round the head of the

aperture. But this is, in reality, only a contracted form of a true

_roof_, projecting from the wall over the aperture; and all protections

of apertures whatsoever are to be conceived as portions of small roofs,

attached to the wall behind; and supported by it, so long as their scale

admits of their being so with safety, and afterwards in such manner as

may be most expedient. The proper forms of these, and modes of their

support, are to be the subject of our final enquiry.

[Illustration: Fig. XLVIII.]

§ III. Respecting their proper form we need not stay long in doubt. A

deep gable is evidently the best for throwing off rain; even a low gable

being better than a high arch. Flat roofs, therefore, may only be used

when the nature of the building renders the gable unsightly; as when

there is not room for it between the stories; or when the object is

rather shade than protection from rain, as often in verandahs and

balconies. But for general service the gable is the proper and natural

form, and may be taken as representative of the rest. Then this gable

may either project unsupported from the wall, _a_, Fig. XLVIII., or be

carried by brackets or spurs, _b_, or by walls or shafts, _c_, which

shafts or walls may themselves be, in windows, carried on a sill; and

this, in its turn, supported by brackets or spurs. We shall glance at

the applications of each of these forms in order.

§ IV. There is not much variety in the case of the first, _a_, Fig.

XLVIII. In the Cumberland and border cottages the door is generally

protected by two pieces of slate arranged in a gable, giving the purest

possible type of the first form. In elaborate architecture such a

projection hardly ever occurs, and in large architecture cannot with

safety occur, without brackets; but by cutting away the greater part of

the projection, we shall arrive at the idea of a plain gabled cornice,

of which a perfect example will be found in Plate VII. of the folio

series. With this first complete form we may associate the rude, single,

projecting, penthouse roof; imperfect, because either it must be level

and the water lodge lazily upon it, or throw off the drip upon the

persons entering.

§ V. 2. _b_, Fig. XLVIII. This is a most beautiful and natural type, and

is found in all good architecture, from the highest to the most humble:

it is a frequent form of cottage door, more especially when carried on

spurs, being of peculiarly easy construction in wood: as applied to

large architecture, it can evidently be built, in its boldest and

simplest form, either of wood only, or on a scale which will admit of

its sides being each a single slab of stone. If so large as to require

jointed masonry, the gabled sides will evidently require support, and an

arch must be thrown across under them, as in Fig. XLIX., from Fiesole.

[Illustration: Fig. XLIX.]

If we cut the projection gradually down, we arrive at the common Gothic

gable dripstone carried on small brackets, carved into bosses, heads, or

some other ornamental form; the sub-arch in such case being useless, is

removed or coincides with the arch head of the aperture.

§ VI. 3. _c_, Fig. XLVIII. Substituting walls or pillars for the

brackets, we may carry the projection as far out as we choose, and form

the perfect porch, either of the cottage or village church, or of the

cathedral. As we enlarge the structure, however, certain modifications

of form become necessary, owing to the increased boldness of the

required supporting arch. For, as the lower end of the gabled roof and

of the arch cannot coincide, we have necessarily above the shafts one of

the two forms _a_ or _b_, in Fig. L., of which the latter is clearly the

best, requiring less masonry and shorter roofing; and when the arch

becomes so large as to cause a heavy lateral thrust, it may become

necessary to provide for its farther safety by pinnacles, _c_.

This last is the perfect type of aperture protection. None other can

ever be invented so good. It is that once employed by Giotto in the

cathedral of Florence, and torn down by the proveditore, Benedetto

Uguccione, to erect a Renaissance front instead; and another such has

been destroyed, not long since, in Venice, the porch of the church of

St. Apollinare, also to put up some Renaissance upholstery: for

Renaissance, as if it were not nuisance enough in the mere fact of its

own existence, appears invariably as a beast of prey, and founds itself

on the ruin of all that is best and noblest. Many such porches, however,

happily still exist in Italy, and are among its principal glories.

[Illustration: Fig. L.]

§ VII. When porches of this kind, carried by walls, are placed close

together, as in cases where there are many and large entrances to a

cathedral front, they would, in their general form, leave deep and

uncomfortable intervals, in which damp would lodge and grass grow; and

there would be a painful feeling in approaching the door in the midst of

a crowd, as if some of them might miss the real doors, and be driven

into the intervals, and embayed there. Clearly it will be a natural and

right expedient, in such cases, to open the walls of the porch wider, so

that they may correspond in slope, or nearly so, with the bevel of the

doorway, and either meet each other in the intervals, or have the said

intervals closed up with an intermediate wall, so that nobody may get

embayed in them. The porches will thus be united, and form one range of

great open gulphs or caverns, ready to receive all comers, and direct

the current of the crowd into the narrower entrances. As the lateral

thrust of the arches is now met by each other, the pinnacles, if there

were any, must be removed, and waterspouts placed between each arch to

discharge the double drainage of the gables. This is the form of all the

noble northern porches, without exception, best represented by that of

Rheims.

§ VIII. Contracted conditions of the pinnacle porch are beautifully used

in the doors of the cathedral of Florence; and the entire arrangement,

in its most perfect form, as adapted to window protection and

decoration, is applied by Giotto with inconceivable exquisiteness in the

windows of the campanile; those of the cathedral itself being all of the

same type. Various singular and delightful conditions of it are applied

in Italian domestic architecture (in the Broletto of Monza very

quaintly), being associated with balconies for speaking to the people,

and passing into pulpits. In the north we glaze the sides of such

projections, and they become bow-windows, the shape of roofing being

then nearly immaterial and very fantastic, often a conical cap. All

these conditions of window protection, being for real service, are

endlessly delightful (and I believe the beauty of the balcony, protected

by an open canopy supported by light shafts, never yet to have been

properly worked out). But the Renaissance architects destroyed all of

them, and introduced the magnificent and witty Roman invention of a

model of a Greek pediment, with its cornices of monstrous thickness,

bracketed up above the window. The horizontal cornice of the pediment is

thus useless, and of course, therefore, retained; the protection to the

head of the window being constructed on the principle of a hat with its

crown sewn up. But the deep and dark triangular cavity thus obtained

affords farther opportunity for putting ornament out of sight, of which

the Renaissance architects are not slow to avail themselves.

A more rational condition is the complete pediment with a couple of

shafts, or pilasters, carried on a bracketed sill; and the windows of

this kind, which have been well designed, are perhaps the best things

which the Renaissance schools have produced: those of Whitehall are, in

their way, exceedingly beautiful; and those of the Palazzo Ricardi at

Florence, in their simplicity and sublimity, are scarcely unworthy of

their reputed designer, Michael Angelo.

CHAPTER XIX.

SUPERIMPOSITION.

§ I. The reader has now some knowledge of every feature of all possible

architecture. Whatever the nature of the building which may be submitted

to his criticism, if it be an edifice at all, if it be anything else

than a mere heap of stones like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large

stone hewn into shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily

resolvable into some of the parts which we have been hitherto

considering: its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small

shafts and roofs; its supporting members into shafts and arches, or

walls penetrated by apertures of various shape, and supported by various

kinds of buttresses. Respecting each of these several features I am

certain that the reader feels himself prepared, by understanding their

plain function, to form something like a reasonable and definite

judgment, whether they be good or bad; and this right judgment of parts

will, in most cases, lead him to just reverence or condemnation of the

whole.

§ II. The various modes in which these parts are capable of combination,

and the merits of buildings of different form and expression, are

evidently not reducible into lists, nor to be estimated by general laws.

The nobility of each building depends on its special fitness for its own

purposes; and these purposes vary with every climate, every soil, and

every national custom: nay, there were never, probably, two edifices

erected in which some accidental difference of condition did not require

some difference of plan or of structure; so that, respecting plan and

distribution of parts, I do not hope to collect any universal law of

right; but there are a few points necessary to be noticed respecting the

means by which height is attained in buildings of various plans, and

the expediency and methods of superimposition of one story or tier of

architecture above another.

§ III. For, in the preceding inquiry, I have always supposed either that

a single shaft would reach to the top of the building, or that the

farther height required might be added in plain wall above the heads of

the arches; whereas it may often be rather expedient to complete the

entire lower series of arches, or finish the lower wall, with a bold

string course or cornice, and build another series of shafts, or another

wall, on the top of it.

§ IV. This superimposition is seen in its simplest form in the interior

shafts of a Greek temple; and it has been largely used in nearly all

countries where buildings have been meant for real service. Outcry has

often been raised against it, but the thing is so sternly necessary that

it has always forced itself into acceptance; and it would, therefore, be

merely losing time to refute the arguments of those who have attempted

its disparagement. Thus far, however, they have reason on their side,

that if a building can be kept in one grand mass, without sacrificing

either its visible or real adaptation to its objects, it is not well to

divide it into stories until it has reached proportions too large to be

justly measured by the eye. It ought then to be divided in order to mark

its bulk; and decorative divisions are often possible, which rather

increase than destroy the expression of general unity.

§ V. Superimposition, wisely practised, is of two kinds, directly

contrary to each other, of weight on lightness, and of lightness on

weight; while the superimposition of weight on weight, or lightness on

lightness, is nearly always wrong.

1. Weight on lightness: I do not say weight on _weakness_. The

superimposition of the human body on its limbs I call weight on

lightness: the superimposition of the branches on a tree trunk I call

lightness on weight: in both cases the support is fully adequate to the

work, the form of support being regulated by the differences of

requirement. Nothing in architecture is half so painful as the apparent

want of sufficient support when the weight above is visibly passive:

for all buildings are not passive; some seem to rise by their own

strength, or float by their own buoyancy; a dome requires no visibility

of support, one fancies it supported by the air. But passive

architecture without help for its passiveness is unendurable. In a

lately built house, No. 86, in Oxford Street, three huge stone pillars

in the second story are carried apparently by the edges of three sheets

of plate glass in the first. I hardly know anything to match the

painfulness of this and some other of our shop structures, in which the

iron-work is concealed; nor, even when it is apparent, can the eye ever

feel satisfied of their security, when built, as at present, with fifty

or sixty feet of wall above a rod of iron not the width of this page.

§ VI. The proper forms of this superimposition of weight on lightness

have arisen, for the most part, from the necessity or desirableness, in

many situations, of elevating the inhabited portions of buildings

considerably above the ground level, especially those exposed to damp or

inundation, and the consequent abandonment of the ground story as

unserviceable, or else the surrender of it to public purposes. Thus, in

many market and town houses, the ground story is left open as a general

place of sheltered resort, and the enclosed apartments raised on

pillars. In almost all warm countries the luxury, almost the necessity,

of arcades to protect the passengers from the sun, and the desirableness

of large space in the rooms above, lead to the same construction.

Throughout the Venetian islet group, the houses seem to have been thus,

in the first instance, universally built, all the older palaces

appearing to have had the rez de chaussée perfectly open, the upper

parts of the palace being sustained on magnificent arches, and the

smaller houses sustained in the same manner on wooden piers, still

retained in many of the cortiles, and exhibited characteristically

throughout the main street of Murano. As ground became more valuable and

house-room more scarce, these ground-floors were enclosed with wall

veils between the original shafts, and so remain; but the type of the

structure of the entire city is given in the Ducal Palace.

§ VII. To this kind of superimposition we owe the most picturesque

street effects throughout the world, and the most graceful, as well as

the most grotesque, buildings, from the many-shafted fantasy of the

Alhambra (a building as beautiful in disposition as it is base in

ornamentation) to the four-legged stolidity of the Swiss Chalet:[60] nor

these only, but great part of the effect of our cathedrals, in which,

necessarily, the close triforium and clerestory walls are superimposed

on the nave piers; perhaps with most majesty where with greatest

simplicity, as in the old basilican types, and the noble cathedral of

Pisa.

§ VIII. In order to the delightfulness and security of all such

arrangements, this law must be observed:--that in proportion to the

height of wall above them, the shafts are to be short. You may take your

given height of wall, and turn any quantity of that wall into shaft that

you like; but you must not turn it all into tall shafts, and then put

more wall above. Thus, having a house five stories high, you may turn

the lower story into shafts, and leave the four stories in wall; or the

two lower stories into shafts, and leave three in wall; but, whatever

you add to the shaft, you must take from the wall. Then also, of course,

the shorter the shaft the thicker will be its _proportionate_, if not

its actual, diameter. In the Ducal Palace of Venice the shortest shafts

are always the thickest.[61]

§ IX. The second kind of superimposition, lightness on weight, is, in

its most necessary use, of stories of houses one upon another, where, of

course, wall veil is required in the lower ones, and has to support wall

veil above, aided by as much of shaft structure as is attainable within

the given limits. The greatest, if not the only, merit of the Roman and

Renaissance Venetian architects is their graceful management of this

kind of superimposition; sometimes of complete courses of external

arches and shafts one above the other; sometimes of apertures with

intermediate cornices at the levels of the floors, and large shafts from

top to bottom of the building; always observing that the upper stories

shall be at once lighter and richer than the lower ones. The entire

value of such buildings depends upon the perfect and easy expression of

the relative strength of the stories, and the unity obtained by the

varieties of their proportions, while yet the fact of superimposition

and separation by floors is frankly told.

§ X. In churches and other buildings in which there is no separation by

floors, another kind of pure shaft superimposition is often used, in

order to enable the builder to avail himself of short and slender

shafts. It has been noted that these are often easily attainable, and of

precious materials, when shafts large enough and strong enough to do the

work at once, could not be obtained except at unjustifiable expense, and

of coarse stone. The architect has then no choice but to arrange his

work in successive stories; either frankly completing the arch work and

cornice of each, and beginning a new story above it, which is the

honester and nobler way, or else tying the stories together by

supplementary shafts from floor to roof,--the general practice of the

Northern Gothic, and one which, unless most gracefully managed, gives

the look of a scaffolding, with cross-poles tied to its uprights, to the

whole clerestory wall. The best method is that which avoids all chance

of the upright shafts being supposed continuous, by increasing their

number and changing their places in the upper stories, so that the whole

work branches from the ground like a tree. This is the superimposition

of the Byzantine and the Pisan Romanesque; the most beautiful examples

of it being, I think, the Southern portico of St. Mark's, the church of

S. Giovanni at Pistoja, and the apse of the cathedral of Pisa. In

Renaissance work the two principles are equally distinct, though the

shafts are (I think) always one above the other. The reader may see one

of the best examples of the separately superimposed story in Whitehall

(and another far inferior in St. Paul's), and by turning himself round

at Whitehall may compare with it the system of connecting shafts in the

Treasury; though this is a singularly bad example, the window cornices

of the first floor being like shelves in a cupboard, and cutting the

mass of the building in two, in spite of the pillars.

§ XI. But this superimposition of lightness on weight is still more

distinctly the system of many buildings of the kind which I have above

called Architecture of Position, that is to say, architecture of which

the greater part is intended merely to keep something in a peculiar

position; as in light-houses, and many towers and belfries. The subject

of spire and tower architecture, however, is so interesting and

extensive, that I have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it,

and, at all events, cannot enter upon it here: but this much is enough

for the reader to note for our present purpose, that, although many

towers do in reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central towers of

cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the real structure of

the best and strongest, are the elevation of gradually diminishing

weight on massy or even solid foundation. Nevertheless, since the tower

is in its origin a building for strength of defence, and faithfulness of

watch, rather than splendor of aspect, its true expression is of just so

much diminution of weight upwards as may be necessary to its fully

balanced strength, not a jot more. There must be no light-headedness in

your noble tower: impregnable foundation, wrathful crest, with the vizor

down, and the dark vigilance seen through the clefts of it; not the

filigree crown or embroidered cap. No towers are so grand as the

square-browed ones, with massy cornices and rent battlements: next to

these come the fantastic towers, with their various forms of steep roof;

the best, not the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high; last of

all in my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns, though

these, of course, are fittest for ecclesiastical purposes, and capable

of the richest ornament. The paltry four or eight pinnacled things we

call towers in England (as in York Minster), are mere confectioner's

Gothic, and not worth classing.

§ XII. But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point of chief

necessity,--that they shall seem to stand, and shall verily stand, in

their own strength; not by help of buttresses nor artful balancings on

this side and on that. Your noble tower must need no help, must be

sustained by no crutches, must give place to no suspicion of

decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, look forth for tidings,

or to point to heaven: but it must have in its own walls the strength to

do this; it is to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by other

bulwarks; to rise and look forth, "the tower of Lebanon that looketh

toward Damascus," like a stern sentinel, not like a child held up in its

nurse's arms. A tower may, indeed, have a kind of buttress, a

projection, or subordinate tower at each of its angles; but these are to

its main body like the satellites to a shaft, joined with its strength,

and associated in its uprightness, part of the tower itself: exactly in

the proportion in which they lose their massive unity with its body and

assume the form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the tower

loses its dignity.

§ XIII. These two characters, then, are common to all noble towers,

however otherwise different in purpose or feature,--the first, that they

rise from massy foundation to lighter summits, frowning with battlements

perhaps, but yet evidently more pierced and thinner in wall than

beneath, and, in most ecclesiastical examples, divided into rich open

work: the second, that whatever the form of the tower, it shall not

appear to stand by help of buttresses. It follows from the first

condition, as indeed it would have followed from ordinary æsthetic

requirements, that we shall have continual variation in the arrangements

of the stories, and the larger number of apertures towards the top,--a

condition exquisitely carried out in the old Lombardic towers, in which,

however small they may be, the number of apertures is always regularly

increased towards the summit; generally one window in the lowest

stories, two in the second, then three, five, and six; often, also,

one, two, four, and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing, not at

present to our purpose. We may sufficiently exemplify the general laws

of tower building by placing side by side, drawn to the same scale, a

mediæval tower, in which most of them are simply and unaffectedly

observed, and one of our own modern towers, in which every one of them

is violated, in small space, convenient for comparison. (Plate VI.)

[Illustration: Plate VI.

TYPES OF TOWERS.

BRITISH VENETIAN.]

§ XIV. The old tower is that of St. Mark's at Venice, not a very perfect

example, for its top is Renaissance, but as good Renaissance as there is

in Venice; and it is fit for our present purpose, because it owes none

of its effect to ornament. It is built as simply as it well can be to

answer its purpose: no buttresses; no external features whatever, except

some huts at the base, and the loggia, afterwards built, which, on

purpose, I have not drawn; one bold square mass of brickwork; double

walls, with an ascending inclined plane between them, with apertures as

small as possible, and these only in necessary places, giving just the

light required for ascending the stair or slope, not a ray more; and the

weight of the whole relieved only by the double pilasters on the sides,

sustaining small arches at the top of the mass, each decorated with the

scallop or cockle shell, presently to be noticed as frequent in

Renaissance ornament, and here, for once, thoroughly well applied. Then,

when the necessary height is reached, the belfry is left open, as in the

ordinary Romanesque campanile, only the shafts more slender, but severe

and simple, and the whole crowned by as much spire as the tower would

carry, to render it more serviceable as a landmark. The arrangement is

repeated in numberless campaniles throughout Italy.

§ XV. The one beside it is one of those of the lately built college at

Edinburgh. I have not taken it as worse than many others (just as I have

not taken the St. Mark's tower as better than many others); but it

happens to compress our British system of tower building into small

space. The Venetian tower rises 350 feet,[62] and has no buttresses,

though built of brick; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built

of stone, but is supposed to be incapable of standing without two huge

buttresses on each angle. The St. Mark's tower has a high sloping roof,

but carries it simply, requiring no pinnacles at its angles; the British

tower has no visible roof, but has four pinnacles for mere ornament. The

Venetian tower has its lightest part at the top, and is massy at the

base; the British tower has its lightest part at the base, and shuts up

its windows into a mere arrowslit at the top. What the tower was built

for at all must therefore, it seems to me, remain a mystery to every

beholder; for surely no studious inhabitant of its upper chambers will

be conceived to be pursuing his employments by the light of the single

chink on each side; and, had it been intended for a belfry, the sound of

its bells would have been as effectually prevented from getting out as

the light from getting in.

§ XVI. In connexion with the subject of towers and of superimposition,

one other feature, not conveniently to be omitted from our

house-building, requires a moment's notice,--the staircase.

In modern houses it can hardly be considered an architectural feature,

and is nearly always an ugly one, from its being apparently without

support. And here I may not unfitly note the important distinction,

which perhaps ought to have been dwelt upon in some places before now,

between the _marvellous_ and the _perilous_ in apparent construction.

There are many edifices which are awful or admirable in their height,

and lightness, and boldness of form, respecting which, nevertheless, we

have no fear that they should fall. Many a mighty dome and aërial aisle

and arch may seem to stand, as I said, by miracle, but by steadfast

miracle notwithstanding; there is no fear that the miracle should cease.

We have a sense of inherent power in them, or, at all events, of

concealed and mysterious provision for their safety. But in leaning

towers, as of Pisa or Bologna, and in much minor architecture, passive

architecture, of modern times, we feel that there is but a chance

between the building and destruction; that there is no miraculous life

in it, which animates it into security, but an obstinate, perhaps vain,

resistance to immediate danger. The appearance of this is often as

strong in small things as in large; in the sounding-boards of pulpits,

for instance, when sustained by a single pillar behind them, so that one

is in dread, during the whole sermon, of the preacher being crushed if a

single nail should give way; and again, the modern geometrical

unsupported staircase. There is great disadvantage, also, in the

arrangement of this latter, when room is of value; and excessive

ungracefulness in its awkward divisions of the passage walls, or

windows. In mediæval architecture, where there was need of room, the

staircase was spiral, and enclosed generally in an exterior tower, which

added infinitely to the picturesque effect of the building; nor was the

stair itself steeper nor less commodious than the ordinary compressed

straight staircase of a modern dwelling-house. Many of the richest

towers of domestic architecture owe their origin to this arrangement. In

Italy the staircase is often in the open air, surrounding the interior

court of the house, and giving access to its various galleries or

loggias: in this case it is almost always supported by bold shafts and

arches, and forms a most interesting additional feature of the cortile,

but presents no peculiarity of construction requiring our present

examination.

We may here, therefore, close our inquiries into the subject of

construction; nor must the reader be dissatisfied with the simplicity or

apparent barrenness of their present results. He will find, when he

begins to apply them, that they are of more value than they now seem;

but I have studiously avoided letting myself be drawn into any intricate

question, because I wished to ask from the reader only so much attention

as it seemed that even the most indifferent would not be unwilling to

pay to a subject which is hourly becoming of greater practical interest.

Evidently it would have been altogether beside the purpose of this essay

to have entered deeply into the abstract science, or closely into the

mechanical detail, of construction: both have been illustrated by

writers far more capable of doing so than I, and may be studied at the

reader's discretion; all that has been here endeavored was the leading

him to appeal to something like definite principle, and refer to the

easily intelligible laws of convenience and necessity, whenever he found

his judgment likely to be overborne by authority on the one hand, or

dazzled by novelty on the other. If he has time to do more, and to

follow out in all their brilliancy the mechanical inventions of the

great engineers and architects of the day, I, in some sort, envy him,

but must part company with him: for my way lies not along the viaduct,

but down the quiet valley which its arches cross, nor through the

tunnel, but up the hill-side which its cavern darkens, to see what gifts

Nature will give us, and with what imagery she will fill our thoughts,

that the stones we have ranged in rude order may now be touched with

life; nor lose for ever, in their hewn nakedness, the voices they had of

old, when the valley streamlet eddied round them in palpitating light,

and the winds of the hill-side shook over them the shadows of the fern.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] I have spent much of my life among the Alps; but I never pass,

without some feeling of new surprise, the Chalet, standing on its

four pegs (each topped with a flat stone), balanced in the fury of

Alpine winds. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the chief use

of the arrangement is not so much to raise the building above the

snow, as to get a draught of wind beneath it, which may prevent the

drift from rising against its sides.

[61] Appendix 20, "Shafts of the Ducal Palace."

[62] I have taken Professor Willis's estimate; there being discrepancy

among various statements. I did not take the trouble to measure the

height myself, the building being one which does not come within the

range of our future inquiries; and its exact dimensions, even here,

are of no importance as respects the question at issue.

CHAPTER XX.

THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT.

§ I. We enter now on the second division of our subject. We have no more

to do with heavy stones and hard lines; we are going to be happy: to

look round in the world and discover (in a serious manner always,

however, and under a sense of responsibility) what we like best in it,

and to enjoy the same at our leisure: to gather it, examine it, fasten

all we can of it into imperishable forms, and put it where we may see it

for ever.

This is to decorate architecture.

§ II. There are, therefore, three steps in the process: first, to find

out in a grave manner what we like best; secondly, to put as much of

this as we can (which is little enough) into form; thirdly, to put this

formed abstraction into a proper place.

And we have now, therefore, to make these three inquiries in succession:

first, what we like, or what is the right material of ornament; then how

we are to present it, or its right treatment; then, where we are to put

it, or its right place. I think I can answer that first inquiry in this

Chapter, the second inquiry in the next Chapter, and the third I shall

answer in a more diffusive manner, by taking up in succession the

several parts of architecture above distinguished, and rapidly noting

the kind of ornament fittest for each.

§ III. I said in chapter II. § XIV., that all noble ornamentation was

the expression of man's delight in God's work. This implied that there

was an _ig_noble ornamentation, which was the expression of man's

delight in his _own_. There is such a school, chiefly degraded classic

and Renaissance, in which the ornament is composed of imitations of

tilings made by man. I think, before inquiring what we like best of

God's work, we had better get rid of all this imitation of man's, and be

quite sure we do not like _that_.

§ IV. We shall rapidly glance, then, at the material of decoration hence

derived. And now I cannot, as I before have done respecting

construction, _convince_ the reader of one thing being wrong, and

another right. I have confessed as much again and again; I am now only

to make appeal to him, and cross-question him, whether he really does

like things or not. If he likes the ornament on the base of the column

of the Place Vendôme, composed of Wellington boots and laced frock

coats, I cannot help it; I can only say I differ from him, and don't

like it. And if, therefore, I speak dictatorially, and say this is base,

or degraded, or ugly, I mean, only that I believe men of the longest

experience in the matter would either think it so, or would be prevented

from thinking it so only by some morbid condition of their minds; and I

believe that the reader, if he examine himself candidly, will usually

agree in my statements.

§ V. The subjects of ornament found in man's work may properly fall into

four heads: 1. Instruments of art, agriculture, and war; armor, and

dress; 2. Drapery; 3. Shipping; 4. Architecture itself.

1. Instruments, armor, and dress.

The custom of raising trophies on pillars, and of dedicating arms in

temples, appears to have first suggested the idea of employing them as

the subjects of sculptural ornament: thenceforward, this abuse has been

chiefly characteristic of classical architecture, whether true or

Renaissance. Armor is a noble thing in its proper service and

subordination to the body; so is an animal's hide on its back; but a

heap of cast skins, or of shed armor, is alike unworthy of all regard or

imitation. We owe much true sublimity, and more of delightful

picturesqueness, to the introduction of armor both in painting and

sculpture: in poetry it is better still,--Homer's undressed Achilles is

less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles, though Phidias would

rather have had him naked; in all mediæval painting, arms, like all

other parts of costume, are treated with exquisite care and delight; in

the designs of Leonardo, Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armor sometimes

becomes almost too conspicuous from the rich and endless invention

bestowed upon it; while Titian and Rubens seek in its flash what the

Milanese and Perugian sought in its form, sometimes subordinating

heroism to the light of the steel, while the great designers wearied

themselves in its elaborate fancy.

But all this labor was given to the living, not the dead armor; to the

shell with its animal in it, not the cast shell of the beach; and even

so, it was introduced more sparingly by the good sculptors than the good

painters; for the former felt, and with justice, that the painter had

the power of conquering the over prominence of costume by the expression

and color of the countenance, and that by the darkness of the eye, and

glow of the cheek, he could always conquer the gloom and the flash of

the mail; but they could hardly, by any boldness or energy of the marble

features, conquer the forwardness and conspicuousness of the sharp

armorial forms. Their armed figures were therefore almost always

subordinate, their principal figures draped or naked, and their choice

of subject was much influenced by this feeling of necessity. But the

Renaissance sculptors displayed the love of a Camilla for the mere crest

and plume. Paltry and false alike in every feeling of their narrowed

minds, they attached themselves, not only to costume without the person,

but to the pettiest details of the costume itself. They could not

describe Achilles, but they could describe his shield; a shield like

those of dedicated spoil, without a handle, never to be waved in the

face of war. And then we have helmets and lances, banners and swords,

sometimes with men to hold them, sometimes without; but always chiselled

with a tailor-like love of the chasing or the embroidery,--show helmets

of the stage, no Vulcan work on them, no heavy hammer strokes, no Etna

fire in the metal of them, nothing but pasteboard crests and high

feathers. And these, cast together in disorderly heaps, or grinning

vacantly over keystones, form one of the leading decorations of

Renaissance architecture, and that one of the best; for helmets and

lances, however loosely laid, are better than violins, and pipes, and

books of music, which were another of the Palladian and Sansovinian

sources of ornament. Supported by ancient authority, the abuse soon

became a matter of pride, and since it was easy to copy a heap of cast

clothes, but difficult to manage an arranged design of human figures,

the indolence of architects came to the aid of their affectation, until

by the moderns we find the practice carried out to its most interesting

results, and, as above noted, a large pair of boots occupying the

principal place in the bas-reliefs on the base of the Colonne Vendôme.

§ VI. A less offensive, because singularly grotesque, example of the

abuse at its height, occurs in the Hôtel des Invalides, where the dormer

windows are suits of armor down to the bottom of the corselet, crowned

by the helmet, and with the window in the middle of the breast.

Instruments of agriculture and the arts are of less frequent occurrence,

except in hieroglyphics, and other work, where they are not employed as

ornaments, but represented for the sake of accurate knowledge, or as

symbols. Wherever they have purpose of this kind, they are of course

perfectly right; but they are then part of the building's conversation,

not conducive to its beauty. The French have managed, with great

dexterity, the representation of the machinery for the elevation of

their Luxor obelisk, now sculptured on its base.

§ VII. 2. Drapery. I have already spoken of the error of introducing

drapery, as such, for ornament, in the "Seven Lamps." I may here note a

curious instance of the abuse in the church of the Jesuiti at Venice

(Renaissance). On first entering you suppose that the church, being in a

poor quarter of the city, has been somewhat meanly decorated by heavy

green and white curtains of an ordinary upholsterer's pattern: on

looking closer, they are discovered to be of marble, with the green

pattern inlaid. Another remarkable instance is in a piece of not

altogether unworthy architecture at Paris (Rue Rivoli), where the

columns are supposed to be decorated with images of handkerchiefs tied

in a stout knot round the middle of them. This shrewd invention bids

fair to become a new order. Multitudes of massy curtains and various

upholstery, more or less in imitation of that of the drawing-room, are

carved and gilt, in wood or stone, about the altars and other theatrical

portions of Romanist churches; but from these coarse and senseless

vulgarities we may well turn, in all haste, to note, with respect as

well as regret, one of the errors of the great school of Niccolo

Pisano,--an error so full of feeling as to be sometimes all but

redeemed, and altogether forgiven,--the sculpture, namely, of curtains

around the recumbent statues upon tombs, curtains which angels are

represented as withdrawing, to gaze upon the faces of those who are at

rest. For some time the idea was simply and slightly expressed, and

though there was always a painfulness in finding the shafts of stone,

which were felt to be the real supporters of the canopy, represented as

of yielding drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the

tenderness of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the scholars

of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were unable to invent;

and the quiet curtained canopy became a huge marble tent, with a pole in

the centre of it. Thus vulgarised, the idea itself soon disappeared, to

make room for urns, torches, and weepers, and the other modern

paraphernalia of the churchyard.

§ VIII. 3. Shipping. I have allowed this kind of subject to form a

separate head, owing to the importance of rostra in Roman decoration,

and to the continual occurrence of naval subjects in modern monumental

bas-relief. Mr. Fergusson says, somewhat doubtfully, that he perceives a

"_kind_ of beauty" in a ship: I say, without any manner of doubt, that a

ship is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of the

noblest; nor do I know any lines, out of divine work, so lovely as those

of the head of a ship, or even as the sweep of the timbers of a small

boat, not a race boat, a mere floating chisel, but a broad, strong, sea

boat, able to breast a wave and break it: and yet, with all this beauty,

ships cannot be made subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in particular

delight beneath the pediments of the Admiralty; nor does scenery of

shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroying it:

witness the base of the Nelson pillar. It may be, and must be sometimes,

introduced in severe subordination to the figure subject, but just

enough to indicate the scene; sketched in the lightest lines on the

background; never with any attempt at realisation, never with any

equality to the force of the figures, unless the whole purpose of the

subject be picturesque. I shall explain this exception presently, in

speaking of imitative architecture.

§ IX. There is one piece of a ship's fittings, however, which may be

thought to have obtained acceptance as a constant element of

architectural ornament,--the cable: it is not, however, the cable

itself, but its abstract form, a group of twisted lines (which a cable

only exhibits in common with many natural objects), which is indeed

beautiful as an ornament. Make the resemblance complete, give to the

stone the threads and character of the cable, and you may, perhaps,

regard the sculpture with curiosity, but never more with admiration.

Consider the effect of the base of the statue of King William IV. at the

end of London Bridge.

§ X. 4. Architecture itself. The erroneous use of armor, or dress, or

instruments, or shipping, as decorative subject, is almost exclusively

confined to bad architecture--Roman or Renaissance. But the false use of

architecture itself, as an ornament of architecture, is conspicuous even

in the mediæval work of the best times, and is a grievous fault in some

of its noblest examples.

It is, therefore, of great importance to note exactly at what point this

abuse begins, and in what it consists.

§ XI. In all bas-relief, architecture may be introduced as an

explanation of the scene in which the figures act; but with more or less

prominence in the _inverse ratio of the importance of the figures_.

The metaphysical reason of this is, that where the figures are of great

value and beauty, the mind is supposed to be engaged wholly with them;

and it is an impertinence to disturb its contemplation of them by any

minor features whatever. As the figures become of less value, and are

regarded with less intensity, accessory subjects may be introduced, such

as the thoughts may have leisure for.

Thus, if the figures be as large as life, and complete statues, it is

gross vulgarity to carve a temple above them, or distribute them over

sculptured rocks, or lead them up steps into pyramids: I need hardly

instance Canova's works,[63] and the Dutch pulpit groups, with

fishermen, boats, and nets, in the midst of church naves.

If the figures be in bas-relief, though as large as life, the scene may

be explained by lightly traced outlines: this is admirably done in the

Ninevite marbles.

If the figures be in bas-relief, or even alto-relievo, but less than

life, and if their purpose is rather to enrich a space and produce

picturesque shadows, than to draw the thoughts entirely to themselves,

the scenery in which they act may become prominent. The most exquisite

examples of this treatment are the gates of Ghiberti. What would that

Madonna of the Annunciation be, without the little shrine into which she

shrinks back? But all mediæval work is full of delightful examples of

the same kind of treatment: the gates of hell and of paradise are

important pieces, both of explanation and effect, in all early

representations of the last judgment, or of the descent into Hades. The

keys of St. Peter, and the crushing flat of the devil under his own

door, when it is beaten in, would hardly be understood without the

respective gate-ways above. The best of all the later capitals of the

Ducal Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the

richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by a small

emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs us, is "Numa

Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e chiese."

§ XII. Shipping may be introduced, or rich fancy of vestments, crowns,

and ornaments, exactly on the same conditions as architecture; and if

the reader will look back to my definition of the picturesque in the

"Seven Lamps," he will see why I said, above, that they might only be

prominent when the purpose of the subject was partly picturesque; that

is to say, when the mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment

from the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not from the

heart of the thing itself.

And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in the death of Nelson

in Trafalgar Square, we may yet most heartily enjoy the sculpture of a

storm in one of the bas-reliefs of the tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the

church of St. Eustorgio at Milan, where the grouping of the figures is

most fancifully complicated by the undercut cordage of the vessel.

§ XIII. In all these instances, however, observe that the permission to

represent the human work as an ornament, is conditional on its being

necessary to the representation of a scene, or explanation of an action.

On no terms whatever could any such subject be independently admissible.

Observe, therefore, the use of manufacture as ornament is--

1. With heroic figure sculpture, not admissible at all.

2. With picturesque figure sculpture, admissible in the degree of its

picturesqueness.

3. Without figure sculpture, not admissible at all.

So also in painting: Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel, would not

have willingly painted a dress of figured damask or of watered satin;

his was heroic painting, not admitting accessories.

Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Vandyck, would be very sorry to

part with their figured stuffs and lustrous silks; and sorry, observe,

exactly in the degree of their picturesque feeling. Should not _we_ also

be sorry to have Bishop Ambrose without his vest, in that picture of the

National Gallery?

But I think Vandyck would not have liked, on the other hand, the vest

without the bishop. I much doubt if Titian or Veronese would have

enjoyed going into Waterloo House, and making studies of dresses upon

the counter.

§ XIV. So, therefore, finally, neither architecture nor any other human

work is admissible as an ornament, except in subordination to figure

subject. And this law is grossly and painfully violated by those curious

examples of Gothic, both early and late, in the north, (but late, I

think, exclusively, in Italy,) in which the minor features of the

architecture were composed of _small models_ of the larger: examples

which led the way to a series of abuses materially affecting the life,

strength, and nobleness of the Northern Gothic,--abuses which no

Ninevite, nor Egyptian, nor Greek, nor Byzantine, nor Italian of the

earlier ages would have endured for an instant, and which strike me with

renewed surprise whenever I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century

Northern Gothic, associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite

feeling and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges, Amiens,

Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon, may be noted as

conspicuous in error: small models of feudal towers with diminutive

windows and battlements, of cathedral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed

with temple pediments and nondescript edifices of every kind, are

crowded together over the recess of the niche into a confused fool's cap

for the saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free from the

taint of this barbarism until the Renaissance period, when it becomes

rampant in the cathedral of Como and Certosa of Pavia; and at Venice we

find the Renaissance churches decorated with models of fortifications

like those in the Repository at Woolwich, or inlaid with mock arcades in

pseudo-perspective, copied from gardeners' paintings at the ends of

conservatories.

§ XV. I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all ornament is

base which takes for its subject human work, that it is utterly

base,--painful to every rightly-toned mind, without perhaps immediate

sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable enough when we _do_ think

of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for admiration, is a

miserable self-complacency, a contentment in our own wretched doings,

when we might have been looking at God's doings. And all noble ornament

is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of man's delight in

God's work.

§ XVI. For observe, the function of ornament is to make you happy. Now

in what are you rightly happy? Not in thinking of what you have done

yourself; not in your own pride, not your own birth; not in your own

being, or your own will, but in looking at God; watching what He does,

what He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yourself to His will.

You are to be made happy by ornaments; therefore they must be the

expression of all this. Not copies of your own handiwork; not boastings

of your own grandeur; not heraldries; not king's arms, nor any

creature's arms, but God's arm, seen in His work. Not manifestation of

your delight in your own laws, or your own liberties, or your own

inventions; but in divine laws, constant, daily, common laws;--not

Composite laws, nor Doric laws, nor laws of the five orders, but of the

Ten Commandments.

§ XVII. Then the proper material of ornament will be whatever God has

created; and its proper treatment, that which seems in accordance with

or symbolical of His laws. And, for material, we shall therefore have,

first, the abstract lines which are most frequent in nature; and then,

from lower to higher, the whole range of systematised inorganic and

organic forms. We shall rapidly glance in order at their kinds; and,

however absurd the elemental division of inorganic matter by the

ancients may seem to the modern chemist, it is one so grand and simple

for arrangements of external appearances, that I shall here follow it;

noticing first, after abstract lines, the imitable forms of the four

elements, of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, and then those of animal

organisms. It may be convenient to the reader to have the order stated

in a clear succession at first, thus:--

1. Abstract lines.

2. Forms of Earth (Crystals).

3. Forms of Water (Waves).

4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays).

5. Forms of Air (Clouds).

6. (Organic forms.) Shells.

7. Fish.

8. Reptiles and insects.

9. Vegetation (A.) Stems and Trunks.

10. Vegetation (B.) Foliage.

11. Birds.

12. Mammalian animals and Man.

It may be objected that clouds are a form of moisture, not of air. They

are, however, a perfect expression of aërial states and currents, and

may sufficiently well stand for the element they move in. And I have put

vegetation apparently somewhat out of its place, owing to its vast

importance as a means of decoration, and its constant association with

birds and men.

§ XVIII. 1. Abstract lines. I have not with lines named also shades and

colors, for this evident reason, that there are no such things as

abstract shadows, irrespective of the forms which exhibit them, and

distinguished in their own nature from each other; and that the

arrangement of shadows, in greater or less quantity, or in certain

harmonical successions, is an affair of treatment, not of selection. And

when we use abstract colors, we are in fact using a part of nature

herself,--using a quality of her light, correspondent with that of the

air, to carry sound; and the arrangement of color in harmonious masses

is again a matter of treatment, not selection. Yet even in this separate

art of coloring, as referred to architecture, it is very notable that

the best tints are always those of natural stones. These can hardly be

wrong; I think I never yet saw an offensive introduction of the natural

colors of marble and precious stones, unless in small mosaics, and in

one or two glaring instances of the resolute determination to produce

something ugly at any cost. On the other hand, I have most assuredly

never yet seen a painted building, ancient or modern, which seemed to me

quite right.

§ XIX. Our first constituents of ornament will therefore be abstract

lines, that is to say, the most frequent contours of natural objects,

transferred to architectural forms when it is not right or possible to

render such forms distinctly imitative. For instance, the line or curve

of the edge of a leaf may be accurately given to the edge of a stone,

without rendering the stone in the least _like_ a leaf, or suggestive of

a leaf; and this the more fully, because the lines of nature are alike

in all her works; simpler or richer in combination, but the same in

character; and when they are taken out of their combinations it is

impossible to say from which of her works they have been borrowed, their

universal property being that of ever-varying curvature in the most

subtle and subdued transitions, with peculiar expressions of motion,

elasticity, or dependence, which I have already insisted upon at some

length in the chapters on typical beauty in "Modern Painters." But, that

the reader may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from

different sources, I have drawn, as accurately as I can, on the opposite

plate, some ten or eleven lines from natural forms of very different

substances and scale: the first, _a b_, is in the original, I think, the

most beautiful simple curve I have ever seen in my life; it is a curve

about three quarters of a mile long, formed by the surface of a small

glacier of the second order, on a spur of the Aiguille de Blaitière

(Chamouni). I have merely outlined the crags on the right of it, to show

their sympathy and united action with the curve of the glacier, which is

of course entirely dependent on their opposition to its descent;

softened, however, into unity by the snow, which rarely melts on this

high glacier surface.

The line _d c_ is some mile and a half or two miles long; it is part of

the flank of the chain of the Dent d'Oche above the lake of Geneva, one

or two of the lines of the higher and more distant ranges being given in

combination with it.

[Illustration: Plate VII.

ABSTRACT LINES.]

_h_ is a line about four feet long, a branch of spruce fir. I have taken

this tree because it is commonly supposed to be stiff and ungraceful;

its outer sprays are, however, more noble in their sweep than almost any

that I know: but this fragment is seen at great disadvantage, because

placed upside down, in order that the reader may compare its curvatures

with _c d_, _e g_, and _i k_, which are all mountain lines; _e g_, about

five hundred feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn; _i k_, the

entire slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley

of Chamouni, a line some three miles long; _l m_ is the line of the side

of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper; _n o_, one of

the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a paper Nautilus; _p_, a

spiral, traced on the paper round a Serpula; _q r_, the leaf of the

Alisma Plantago with its interior ribs, real size; _s t_, the side of a

bay-leaf; _u w_, of a salvia leaf; and it is to be carefully noted that

these last curves, being never intended by nature to be seen singly, are

more heavy and less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen

as independent lines. But all agree in their character of changeful

curvature, the mountain and glacier lines only excelling the rest in

delicacy and richness of transition.

§ XX. Why lines of this kind are beautiful, I endeavored to show in the

"Modern Painters;" but one point, there omitted, may be mentioned

here,--that almost all these lines are expressive of action of _force_

of some kind, while the circle is a line of limitation or support. In

leafage they mark the forces of its growth and expansion, but some among

the most beautiful of them are described by bodies variously in motion,

or subjected to force; as by projectiles in the air, by the particles of

water in a gentle current, by planets in motion in an orbit, by their

satellites, if the actual path of the satellite in space be considered

instead of its relation to the planet; by boats, or birds, turning in

the water or air, by clouds in various action upon the wind, by sails in

the curvatures they assume under its force, and by thousands of other

objects moving or bearing force. In the Alisma leaf, _q r_, the lines

through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different

expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those

which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the

shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its

point. Circular curves, on the contrary, are always, I think, curves of

limitation or support; that is to say, curves of perfect rest. The

cylindrical curve round the stem of a plant binds its fibres together;

while the _ascent_ of the stem is in lines of various curvature: so the

curve of the horizon and of the apparent heaven, of the rainbow, etc.:

and though the reader might imagine that the circular orbit of any

moving body, or the curve described by a sling, was a curve of motion,

he should observe that the circular character is given to the curve not

by the motion, but by the confinement: the circle is the consequence not

of the energy of the body, but of its being forbidden to leave the

centre; and whenever the whirling or circular motion can be fully

impressed on it we obtain instant balance and rest with respect to the

centre of the circle.

Hence the peculiar fitness of the circular curve as a sign of rest, and

security of support, in arches; while the other curves, belonging

especially to action, are to be used in the more active architectural

features--the hand and foot (the capital and base), and in all minor

ornaments; more freely in proportion to their independence of structural

conditions.

§ XXI. We need not, however, hope to be able to imitate, in general

work, any of the subtly combined curvatures of nature's highest

designing: on the contrary, their extreme refinement renders them unfit

for coarse service or material. Lines which are lovely in the pearly

film of the Nautilus shell, are lost in the grey roughness of stone; and

those which are sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the

substance of incumbent marble. Of all the graceful lines assembled on

Plate VII., we shall do well to be content with two of the simplest. We

shall take one mountain line (_e g_) and one leaf line (_u w_), or

rather fragments of them, for we shall perhaps not want them all. I will

mark off from _u w_ the little bit _x y_, and from _e g_ the piece _e

f_; both which appear to me likely to be serviceable: and if hereafter

we need the help of any abstract lines, we will see what we can do with

these only.