§ VII. The most usual condition, however, is that unity of the two

members above described, § V., and which may be generally represented by

the archivolt section _a_, Fig. LXX.; and from this descend a family of

Gothic archivolts of the highest importance. For the cornice, thus

attached to the arch, suffers exactly the same changes as the level

cornice, or capital; receives, in due time, its elaborate ogee profile

and leaf ornaments, like Fig. 8 or 9 of Plate XV.; and, when the shaft

loses its shape, and is lost in the later Gothic jamb, the archivolt has

influence enough to introduce this ogee profile in the jamb also,

through the banded impost: and we immediately find ourselves involved in

deep successions of ogee mouldings in sides of doors and windows, which

never would have been thought of, but for the obstinate resistance of

the classical architrave to the attempts of the voussoir at its

degradation or banishment.

[Illustration: Fig. LXX.]

§ VIII. This, then, will be the first great head under which we shall in

future find it convenient to arrange a large number of archivolt

decorations. It is the distinctively Southern and Byzantine form, and

typically represented by the section _a_, of Fig. LXX.; and it is

susceptible of almost every species of surface ornament, respecting

which only this general law may be asserted: that, while the outside or

vertical surface may properly be decorated, and yet the soffit or under

surface left plain, the soffit is never to be decorated, and the outer

surface left plain. Much beautiful sculpture is, in the best Byzantine

buildings, half lost by being put under soffits; but the eye is led to

discover it, and even to demand it, by the rich chasing of the outside

of the voussoirs. It would have been an hypocrisy to carve them

externally only. But there is not the smallest excuse for carving the

soffit, and not the outside; for, in that case, we approach the building

under the idea of its being perfectly plain; we do not look for the

soffit decoration, and, of course, do not see it: or, if we do, it is

merely to regret that it should not be in a better place. In the

Renaissance architects, it may, perhaps, for once, be considered a

merit, that they put their bad decoration systematically in the places

where we should least expect it, and can seldomest see it:--Approaching

the Scuola di San Rocco, you probably will regret the extreme plainness

and barrenness of the window traceries; but, if you will go very close

to the wall beneath the windows, you may, on sunny days, discover a

quantity of panel decorations which the ingenious architect has

concealed under the soffits.

The custom of decorating the arch soffit with panelling is a Roman

application of the Greek roof ornament, which, whatever its intrinsic

merit (compare Chap. XXIX. § IV.), may rationally be applied to waggon

vaults, as of St. Peter's, and to arch soffits under which one walks.

But the Renaissance architects had not wit enough to reflect that people

usually do not walk through windows.

§ IX. So far, then, of the Southern archivolt: In Fig. LXIX., above, it

will be remembered that _c_ represents the simplest form of the

Northern. In the farther development of this, which we have next to

consider, the voussoirs, in consequence of their own negligence or

over-confidence, sustain a total and irrecoverable defeat. That

archivolt is in its earliest conditions perfectly pure and

undecorated,--the simplest and rudest of Gothic forms. Necessarily, when

it falls on the pier, and meets that of the opposite arch, the entire

section of masonry is in the shape of a cross, and is carried by the

crosslet shaft, which we above stated to be distinctive of Northern

design. I am more at a loss to account for the sudden and fixed

development of this type of archivolt than for any other architectural

transition with which I am acquainted. But there it is, pure and firmly

established, as early as the building of St. Michele of Pavia; and we

have thenceforward only to observe what comes of it.

§ X. We find it first, as I said, perfectly barren; cornice and

architrave altogether ignored, the existence of such things practically

denied, and a plain, deep-cut recess with a single mighty shadow

occupying their place. The voussoirs, thinking their great adversary

utterly defeated, are at no trouble to show themselves; visible enough

in both the upper and under archivolts, they are content to wait the

time when, as might have been hoped, they should receive a new

decoration peculiar to themselves.

§ XI. In this state of paralysis, or expectation, their flank is turned

by an insidious chamfer. The edges of the two great blank archivolts are

felt to be painfully conspicuous; all the four are at once beaded or

chamfered, as at _b_, Fig. LXX.; a rich group of deep lines, running

concentrically with the arch, is the result on the instant, and the fate

of the voussoirs is sealed. They surrender at once without a struggle,

and unconditionally; the chamfers deepen and multiply themselves, cover

the soffit, ally themselves with other forms resulting from grouped

shafts or traceries, and settle into the inextricable richness of the

fully developed Gothic jamb and arch; farther complicated in the end by

the addition of niches to their recesses, as above described.

§ XII. The voussoirs, in despair, go over to the classical camp, in hope

of receiving some help or tolerance from their former enemies. They

receive it indeed: but as traitors should, to their own eternal

dishonor. They are sharply chiselled at the joints, or rusticated, or

cut into masks and satyrs' heads, and so set forth and pilloried in the

various detestable forms of which the simplest is given above in Plate

XIII. (on the left); and others may be seen in nearly every large

building in London, more especially in the bridges; and, as if in pure

spite at the treatment they had received from the archivolt, they are

now not content with vigorously showing their lateral joints, but shape

themselves into right-angled steps at their heads, cutting to pieces

their limiting line, which otherwise would have had sympathy with that

of the arch, and fitting themselves to their new friend, the Renaissance

Ruled Copy-book wall. It had been better they had died ten times over,

in their own ancient cause, than thus prolonged their existence.

§ XIII. We bid them farewell in their dishonor, to return to our

victorious chamfer. It had not, we said, obtained so easy a conquest,

unless by the help of certain forms of the grouped shaft. The chamfer

was quite enough to decorate the archivolts, if there were no more than

two; but if, as above noticed in § III., the archivolt was very deep,

and composed of a succession of such steps, the multitude of chamferings

were felt to be weak and insipid, and instead of dealing with the

outside edges of the archivolts, the group was softened by introducing

solid shafts in their dark inner angles. This, the manliest and best

condition of the early northern jamb and archivolt, is represented in

section at fig. 12 of Plate II.; and its simplest aspect in Plate V.,

from the Broletto of Como,--an interesting example, because there the

voussoirs being in the midst of their above-described southern contest

with the architrave, were better prepared for the flank attack upon them

by the shaft and chamfer, and make a noble resistance, with the help of

color, in which even the shaft itself gets slightly worsted, and cut

across in several places, like General Zach's column at Marengo.

§ XIV. The shaft, however, rapidly rallies, and brings up its own

peculiar decorations to its aid; and the intermediate archivolts receive

running or panelled ornaments, also, until we reach the exquisitely rich

conditions of our own Norman archivolts, and of the parallel Lombardic

designs, such as the entrance of the Duomo, and of San Fermo, at Verona.

This change, however, occupies little time, and takes place principally

in doorways, owing to the greater thickness of wall, and depth of

archivolt; so that we find the rich shafted succession of ornament, in

the doorway and window aperture, associated with the earliest and rudest

double archivolt, in the nave arches, at St. Michele of Pavia. The nave

arches, therefore, are most usually treated by the chamfer, and the

voussoirs are there defeated much sooner than by the shafted

arrangements, which they resist, as we saw, in the south by color; and

even in the north, though forced out of their own shape, they take that

of birds' or monsters' heads, which for some time peck and pinch the

rolls of the archivolt to their hearts' content; while the Norman zigzag

ornament allies itself with them, each zigzag often restraining itself

amicably between the joints of each voussoir in the ruder work, and even

in the highly finished arches, distinctly presenting a concentric or

sunlike arrangement of lines; so much so, as to prompt the conjecture,

above stated, Chap. XX. § XXVI., that all such ornaments were intended

to be typical of light issuing from the orb of the arch. I doubt the

intention, but acknowledge the resemblance; which perhaps goes far to

account for the never-failing delightfulness of this zigzag decoration.

The diminution of the zigzag, as it gradually shares the defeat of the

voussoir, and is at last overwhelmed by the complicated, railroad-like

fluency of the later Gothic mouldings, is to me one of the saddest

sights in the drama of architecture.

§ XV. One farther circumstance is deserving of especial note in Plate

V., the greater depth of the voussoirs at the top of the arch. This has

been above alluded to as a feature of good construction, Chap. XI., §

III.; it is to be noted now as one still more valuable in decoration:

for when we arrive at the deep succession of concentric archivolts, with

which northern portals, and many of the associated windows, are headed,

we immediately find a difficulty in reconciling the outer curve with the

inner. If, as is sometimes the case, the width of the group of

archivolts be twice or three times that of the inner aperture, the inner

arch may be distinctly pointed, and the outer one, if drawn with

concentric arcs, approximate very nearly to a round arch. This is

actually the case in the later Gothic of Verona; the outer line of the

archivolt having a hardly perceptible point, and every inner arch of

course forming the point more distinctly, till the innermost becomes a

lancet. By far the nobler method, however, is that of the pure early

Italian Gothic; to make every outer arch a _magnified fac-simile_ of the

innermost one, every arc including the same number of degrees, but

degrees of a larger circle. The result is the condition represented in

Plate V., often found in far bolder development; exquisitely springy and

elastic in its expression, and entirely free from the heaviness and

monotony of the deep northern archivolts.

§ XVI. We have not spoken of the intermediate form, _b_, of Fig. LXIX.

(which its convenience for admission of light has rendered common in

nearly all architectures), because it has no transitions peculiar to

itself: in the north it sometimes shares the fate of the outer

architrave, and is channelled into longitudinal mouldings; sometimes

remains smooth and massy, as in military architecture, or in the simpler

forms of domestic and ecclesiastical. In Italy it receives surface

decoration like the architrave, but has, perhaps, something of peculiar

expression in being placed between the tracery of the window within, and

its shafts and tabernacle work without, as in the Duomo of Florence: in

this position it is always kept smooth in surface, and inlaid (or

painted) with delicate arabesques; while the tracery and the tabernacle

work are richly sculptured. The example of its treatment by colored

voussoirs, given in Plate XIX., may be useful to the reader as a kind of

central expression of the aperture decoration of the pure Italian

Gothic;--aperture decoration proper; applying no shaft work to the

jambs, but leaving the bevelled opening unenriched; using on the outer

archivolt the voussoirs and concentric architrave in reconcilement (the

latter having, however, some connection with the Norman zigzag); and

beneath them, the pure Italian two-pieced and mid-cusped arch, with rich

cusp decoration. It is a Veronese arch, probably of the thirteenth

century, and finished with extreme care; the red portions are all in

brick, delicately cast: and the most remarkable feature of the whole is

the small piece of brick inlaid on the angle of each stone voussoir,

with a most just feeling, which every artist will at once understand,

that the color ought not to be let go all at once.

§ XVII. We have traced the various conditions of treatment in the

archivolt alone; but, except in what has been said of the peculiar

expression of the voussoirs, we might throughout have spoken in the same

terms of the jamb. Even a parallel to the expression of the voussoir may

be found in the Lombardic and Norman divisions of the shafts, by zigzags

and other transverse ornamentation, which in the end are all swept away

by the canaliculated mouldings. Then, in the recesses of these and of

the archivolts alike, the niche and statue decoration develops itself;

and the vaulted and cavernous apertures are covered with incrustations

of fretwork, and with every various application of foliage to their

fantastic mouldings.

§ XVIII. I have kept the inquiry into the proper ornament of the

archivolt wholly free from all confusion with the questions of beauty in

tracery; for, in fact, all tracery is a mere multiplication and

entanglement of small archivolts, and its cusp ornament is a minor

condition of that proper to the spandril. It does not reach its

completely defined form until the jamb and archivolt have been divided

into longitudinal mouldings; and then the tracery is formed by the

innermost group of the shafts or fillets, bent into whatever forms or

foliations the designer may choose; but this with a delicacy of

adaptation which I rather choose to illustrate by particular examples,

of which we shall meet with many in the course of our inquiry, than to

delay the reader by specifying here. As for the conditions of beauty in

the disposition of the tracery bars, I see no hope of dealing with the

subject fairly but by devoting, if I can find time, a separate essay to

it--which, in itself, need not be long, but would involve, before it

could be completed, the examination of the whole mass of materials

lately collected by the indefatigable industry of the English architects

who have devoted their special attention to this subject, and which are

of the highest value as illustrating the chronological succession or

mechanical structure of tracery, but which, in most cases, touch on

their æsthetic merits incidentally only. Of works of this kind, by far

the best I have met with is Mr. Edmund Sharpe's, on Decorated Windows,

which seems to me, as far as a cursory glance can enable me to judge, to

exhaust the subject as respects English Gothic; and which may be

recommended to the readers who are interested in the subject, as

containing a clear and masterly enunciation of the general principles by

which the design of tracery has been regulated, from its first

development to its final degradation.

FOOTNOTES:

[91] The architrave is properly the horizontal piece of stone laid

across the tops of the pillars in Greek buildings, and commonly

marked with horizontal lines, obtained by slight projections of its

surface, while it is protected above in the richer orders, by a

small cornice.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE ROOF.

§ I. The modes of decoration hitherto considered, have been common to

the exteriors and interiors of all noble buildings; and we have taken no

notice of the various kinds of ornament which require protection from

weather, and are necessarily confined to interior work. But in the case

of the roof, the exterior and interior treatments become, as we saw in

construction, so also in decoration, separated by broad and bold

distinctions. One side of a wall is, in most cases, the same as another,

and if its structure be concealed, it is mostly on the inside; but, in

the roof, the anatomical structure, out of which decoration should

naturally spring, is visible, if at all, in the interior only: so that

the subject of internal ornament becomes both wide and important, and

that of external, comparatively subordinate.

§ II. Now, so long as we were concerned principally with the outside of

buildings, we might with safety leave expressional character out of the

question for the time, because it is not to be expected that all persons

who pass the building, or see it from a distance, shall be in the temper

which the building is properly intended to induce; so that ornaments

somewhat at variance with this temper may often be employed externally

without painful effect. But these ornaments would be inadmissible in the

interior, for those who enter will for the most part either be in the

proper temper which the building requires, or desirous of acquiring it.

(The distinction is not rigidly observed by the mediæval builders, and

grotesques, or profane subjects, occur in the interior of churches, in

bosses, crockets, capitals, brackets, and such other portions of minor

ornament: but we do not find the interior wall covered with hunting and

battle pieces, as often the Lombardic exteriors.) And thus the interior

expression of the roof or ceiling becomes necessarily so various, and

the kind and degree of fitting decoration so dependent upon particular

circumstances, that it is nearly impossible to classify its methods, or

limit its application.

§ III. I have little, therefore, to say here, and that touching rather

the omission than the selection of decoration, as far as regards

interior roofing. Whether of timber or stone, roofs are necessarily

divided into surfaces, and ribs or beams;--surfaces, flat or carved;

ribs, traversing these in the directions where main strength is

required; or beams, filling the hollow of the dark gable with the

intricate roof-tree, or supporting the flat ceiling. Wherever the ribs

and beams are simply and unaffectedly arranged, there is no difficulty

about decoration; the beams may be carved, the ribs moulded, and the eye

is satisfied at once; but when the vaulting is unribbed, as in plain

waggon vaults and much excellent early Gothic, or when the ceiling is

flat, it becomes a difficult question how far their services may receive

ornamentation independent of their structure. I have never myself seen a

flat ceiling satisfactorily decorated, except by painting: there is much

good and fanciful panelling in old English domestic architecture, but it

always is in some degree meaningless and mean. The flat ceilings of

Venice, as in the Scuola di San Rocco and Ducal Palace, have in their

vast panellings some of the noblest paintings (on stretched canvas)

which the world possesses: and this is all very well for the ceiling;

but one would rather have the painting in a better place, especially

when the rain soaks through its canvas, as I have seen it doing through

many a noble Tintoret. On the whole, flat ceilings are as much to be

avoided as possible; and, when necessary, perhaps a panelled

ornamentation with rich colored patterns is the most satisfying, and

loses least of valuable labor. But I leave the question to the reader's

thought, being myself exceedingly undecided respecting it: except only

touching one point--that a blank ceiling is not to be redeemed by a

decorated ventilator.

§ IV. I have a more confirmed opinion, however, respecting the

decoration of curved surfaces. The majesty of a roof is never, I think,

so great, as when the eye can pass undisturbed over the course of all

its curvatures, and trace the dying of the shadows along its smooth and

sweeping vaults. And I would rather, myself, have a plain ridged Gothic

vault, with all its rough stones visible, to keep the sleet and wind out

of a cathedral aisle, than all the fanning and pendanting and foliation

that ever bewildered Tudor weight. But mosaic or fresco may of course be

used as far as we can afford or obtain them; for these do not break the

curvature. Perhaps the most solemn roofs in the world are the apse

conchas of the Romanesque basilicas, with their golden ground and severe

figures. Exactly opposed to these are the decorations which disturb the

serenity of the curve without giving it interest, like the vulgar

panelling of St. Peter's and the Pantheon; both, I think, in the last

degree detestable.

§ V. As roofs internally may be divided into surfaces and ribs,

externally they may be divided into surfaces, and points, or ridges;

these latter often receiving very bold and distinctive ornament. The

outside surface is of small importance in central Europe, being almost

universally low in slope, and tiled throughout Spain, South France, and

North Italy: of still less importance where it is flat, as a terrace; as

often in South Italy and the East, mingled with low domes: but the

larger Eastern and Arabian domes become elaborate in ornamentation: I

cannot speak of them with confidence; to the mind of an inhabitant of

the north, a roof is a guard against wild weather; not a surface which

is forever to bask in serene heat, and gleam across deserts like a

rising moon. I can only say, that I have never seen any drawing of a

richly decorated Eastern dome that made me desire to see the original.

§ VI. Our own northern roof decoration is necessarily simple. Colored

tiles are used in some cases with quaint effect; but I believe the

dignity of the building is always greater when the roof is kept in an

undisturbed mass, opposing itself to the variegation and richness of the

walls. The Italian round tile is itself decoration enough, a deep and

rich fluting, which all artists delight in; this, however, is fitted

exclusively for low pitch of roofs. On steep domestic roofs, there is no

ornament better than may be obtained by merely rounding, or cutting to

an angle, the lower extremities of the flat tiles or shingles, as in

Switzerland: thus the whole surface is covered with an appearance of

scales, a fish-like defence against water, at once perfectly simple,

natural, and effective at any distance; and the best decoration of

sloping stone roofs, as of spires, is a mere copy of this scale armor;

it enriches every one of the spires and pinnacles of the cathedral of

Coutances, and of many Norman and early Gothic buildings. Roofs covered

or edged with lead have often patterns designed upon the lead, gilded

and relieved with some dark color, as on the house of Jaques Coeur at

Bourges; and I imagine the effect of this must have been singularly

delicate and beautiful, but only traces of it now remain. The northern

roofs, however, generally stand in little need of surface decoration,

the eye being drawn to the fantastic ranges of their dormer windows, and

to the finials and fringes on their points and ridges.

§ VII. Whether dormer windows are legitimately to be classed as

decorative features, seems to me to admit of doubt. The northern spire

system is evidently a mere elevation and exaggeration of the domestic

turret with its look-out windows, and one can hardly part with the

grotesque lines of the projections, though nobody is to be expected to

live in the spire: but, at all events, such windows are never to be

allowed in places visibly inaccessible, or on less than a natural and

serviceable scale.

§ VIII. Under the general head of roof-ridge and point decoration, we

may include, as above noted, the entire race of fringes, finials, and

crockets. As there is no use in any of these things, and as they are

visible additions and parasitical portions of the structure, more

caution is required in their use than in any other features of ornament,

and the architect and spectator must both be in felicitous humor before

they can be well designed or thoroughly enjoyed. They are generally

most admirable where the grotesque Northern spirit has most power; and I

think there is almost always a certain spirit of playfulness in them,

adverse to the grandest architectural effects, or at least to be kept in

severe subordination to the serener character of the prevalent lines.

But as they are opposed to the seriousness of majesty on the one hand,

so they are to the weight of dulness on the other; and I know not any

features which make the contrast between continental domestic

architecture, and our own, more humiliatingly felt, or which give so

sudden a feeling of new life and delight, when we pass from the streets

of London to those of Abbeville or Rouen, as the quaint points and

pinnacles of the roof gables and turrets. The commonest and heaviest

roof may be redeemed by a spike at the end of it, if it is set on with

any spirit; but the foreign builders have (or had, at least) a peculiar

feeling in this, and gave animation to the whole roof by the fringe of

its back, and the spike on its forehead, so that all goes together, like

the dorsal fins and spines of a fish: but our spikes have a dull,

screwed on, look; a far-off relationship to the nuts of machinery; and

our roof fringes are sure to look like fenders, as if they were meant to

catch ashes out of the London smoke-clouds.

§ IX. Stone finials and crockets are, I think, to be considered in

architecture, what points and flashes of light are in the color of

painting, or of nature. There are some landscapes whose best character

is sparkling, and there is a possibility of repose in the midst of

brilliancy, or embracing it,--as on the fields of summer sea, or summer

land:

"Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold,

And on the dews that drench the furze,

And on the silvery gossamers,

_That twinkle into green and gold_."

And there are colorists who can keep their quiet in the midst of a

jewellery of light; but, for the most part, it is better to avoid

breaking up either lines or masses by too many points, and to make the

few points used exceedingly precious. So the best crockets and finials

are set, like stars, along the lines, and at the points, which they

adorn, with considerable intervals between them, and exquisite delicacy

and fancy of sculpture in their own designs; if very small, they may

become more frequent, and describe lines by a chain of points; but their

whole value is lost if they are gathered into bunches or clustered into

tassels and knots; and an over-indulgence in them always marks lowness

of school. In Venice, the addition of the finial to the arch-head is the

first sign of degradation; all her best architecture is entirely without

either crockets or finials; and her ecclesiastical architecture may be

classed, with fearless accuracy, as better or worse, in proportion to

the diminution or expansion of the crocket. The absolutely perfect use

of the crocket is found, I think, in the tower of Giotto, and in some

other buildings of the Pisan school. In the North they generally err on

one side or other, and are either florid and huge, or mean in outline,

looking as if they had been pinched out of the stonework, as throughout

the entire cathedral of Amiens; and are besides connected with the

generally spotty system which has been spoken of under the head of

archivolt decoration.

§ X. Employed, however, in moderation, they are among the most

delightful means of delicate expression; and the architect has more

liberty in their individual treatment than in any other feature of the

building. Separated entirely from the structural system, they are

subjected to no shadow of any other laws than those of grace and

chastity; and the fancy may range without rebuke, for materials of their

design, through the whole field of the visible or imaginable creation.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE VESTIBULE.

§ I. I have hardly kept my promise. The reader has decorated but little

for himself as yet; but I have not, at least, attempted to bias his

judgment. Of the simple forms of decoration which have been set before

him, he has always been left free to choose; and the stated restrictions

in the methods of applying them have been only those which followed on

the necessities of construction previously determined. These having been

now defined, I do indeed leave my reader free to build; and with what a

freedom! All the lovely forms of the universe set before him, whence to

choose, and all the lovely lines that bound their substance or guide

their motion; and of all these lines,--and there are myriads of myriads

in every bank of grass and every tuft of forest; and groups of them

divinely harmonized, in the bell of every flower, and in every several

member of bird and beast,--of all these lines, for the principal forms

of the most important members of architecture, I have used but Three!

What, therefore, must be the infinity of the treasure in them all! There

is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of

cathedrals, but suppose we were satisfied with less exhaustive

appliance, and built a score of cathedrals, each to illustrate a single

flower? that would be better than trying to invent new styles, I think.

There is quite difference of style enough, between a violet and a

harebell, for all reasonable purposes.

§ II. Perhaps, however, even more strange than the struggle of our

architects to invent new styles, is the way they commonly speak of this

treasure of natural infinity. Let us take our patience to us for an

instant, and hear one of them, not among the least intelligent:--

"It is not true that all natural forms are beautiful. We may hardly

be able to detect this in Nature herself; but when the forms are

separated from the things, and exhibited alone (by sculpture or

carving), we then see that they are not all fitted for ornamental

purposes; and indeed that very few, perhaps none, are so fitted

without correction. Yes, I say _correction_, for though it is the

highest aim of every art to imitate nature, this is not to be done by

imitating any natural form, but by _criticising_ and _correcting_

it,--criticising it by Nature's rules gathered from all her works,

but never completely carried out by her in any one work; correcting

it, by rendering it more natural, _i.e._ more conformable to the

general tendency of Nature, according to that noble maxim recorded of

Raffaelle, 'that the artist's object was to make things not as Nature

makes them, but as she WOULD make them;' as she ever tries to make

them, but never succeeds, though her aim may be deduced from a

comparison of her efforts; just as if a number of archers had aimed

unsuccessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark were then

removed, we could by the examination of their arrow marks point out

the most probable position of the spot aimed at, with a certainty of

being nearer to it than any of their shots."[92]

§ III. I had thought that, by this time, we had done with that stale,

second-hand, one-sided, and misunderstood saying of Raffaelle's; or that

at least, in these days of purer Christian light, men might have begun

to get some insight into the meaning of it: Raffaelle was a painter of

humanity, and assuredly there is something the matter with humanity, a

few _dovrebbe's_, more or less, wanting in it. We have most of us heard

of original sin, and may perhaps, in our modest moments, conjecture that

we are not quite what God, or nature, would have us to be. Raffaelle

_had_ something to mend in Humanity: I should have liked to have seen

him mending a daisy!--or a pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard seed,

or any other of God's slightest works. If he had accomplished that, one

might have found for him more respectable employment,--to set the stars

in better order, perhaps (they seem grievously scattered as they are,

and to be of all manner of shapes and sizes,--except the ideal shape,

and the proper size); or to give us a corrected view of the ocean; that,

at least, seems a very irregular and improveable thing; the very

fishermen do not know, this day, how far it will reach, driven up before

the west wind:--perhaps Some One else does, but that is not our

business. Let us go down and stand by the beach of it,--of the great

irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is not out of time.

One,--two:--here comes a well-formed wave at last, trembling a little at

the top, but, on the whole, orderly. So, crash among the shingle, and up

as far as this grey pebble; now stand by and watch! Another:--Ah,

careless wave! why couldn't you have kept your crest on? it is all gone

away into spray, striking up against the cliffs there--I thought as

much--missed the mark by a couple of feet! Another:--How now, impatient

one! couldn't you have waited till your friend's reflux was done with,

instead of rolling yourself up with it in that unseemly manner? You go

for nothing. A fourth, and a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder

slow rise, and crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave;

not so fast; not so fast; where are you coming to?--By our architectural

word, this is too bad; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you

in our face besides; and a wave which we had some hope of, behind there,

broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great white table-cloth of

foam all the way to the shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off

it! Alas, for these unhappy arrow shots of Nature; she will never hit

her mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them, into the

ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. Let us send for a Greek

architect to do it for her. He comes--the great Greek architect, with

measure and rule. Will he not also make the weight for the winds? and

weigh out the waters by measure? and make a decree for the rain, and a

way for the lightning of the thunder? He sets himself orderly to his

work, and behold! this is the mark of nature, and this is the thing into

which the great Greek architect improves the sea--

[Illustration]

[Greek: Thalatta, thalatta]: Was it this, then, that they wept to see

from the sacred mountain--those wearied ones?

§ IV. But the sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and were not also the

leaves, and the blades of grass; and, in a sort, as far as may be

without mark of sin, even the countenance of man? Or would it be

pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and numbered on our

foreheads, that we might be known one from the other?

§ V. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art? Have we only to

copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the universe? Not so. We

have work to do upon it; there is not any one of us so simple, nor so

feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the work is not to improve,

but to explain. This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable,

in its whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long

contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach; then

set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him; extricating

it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass; one does not

improve either violet or grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower

visible; and then the human being has to make its power upon his own

heart visible also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has

raised up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And

sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in strange

lights, and display it in a thousand ways before unknown: ways specially

directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which he had to choose

instruments out of the wide armory of God. All this he may do: and in

this he is only doing what every Christian has to do with the written,

as well as the created word, "rightly _dividing_ the word of truth." Out

of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather and set forth

things new and old, to choose them for the season and the work that are

before him, to explain and manifest them to others, with such

illustration and enforcement as may be in his power, and to crown them

with the history of what, by them, God has done for his soul. And, in

doing this, is he improving the Word of God? Just such difference as

there is between the sense in which a minister may be said to improve a

text, to the people's comfort, and the sense in which an atheist might

declare that he could improve the Book, which, if any man shall add

unto, there shall be added unto him the plagues that are written

therein; just such difference is there between that which, with respect

to Nature, man is, in his humbleness, called upon to do, and that which,

in his insolence, he imagines himself capable of doing.

§ VI. Have no fear, therefore, reader, in judging between nature and

art, so only that you love both. If you can love one only, then let it

be Nature; you are safe with her: but do not then attempt to judge the

art, to which you do not care to give thought, or time. But if you love

both, you may judge between them fearlessly; you may estimate the last,

by its making you remember the first, and giving you the same kind of

joy. If, in the square of the city, you can find a delight, finite,

indeed, but pure and intense, like that which you have in a valley among

the hills, then its art and architecture are right; but if, after fair

trial, you can find no delight in them, nor any instruction like that of

nature, I call on you fearlessly to condemn them.

We are forced, for the sake of accumulating our power and knowledge, to

live in cities; but such advantage as we have in association with each

other is in great part counterbalanced by our loss of fellowship with

nature. We cannot all have our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to

meditate in at eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as

far as may be, to replace these; to tell us about nature; to possess us

with memories of her quietness; to be solemn and full of tenderness,

like her, and rich in portraitures of her; full of delicate imagery of

the flowers we can no more gather, and of the living creatures now far

away from us in their own solitude. If ever you felt or found this in a

London Street,--if ever it furnished you with one serious thought, or

one ray of true and gentle pleasure,--if there is in your heart a true

delight in its grim railings and dark casements, and wasteful finery of

shops, and feeble coxcombry of club-houses,--it is well: promote the

building of more like them. But if they never taught you anything, and

never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they

have any mysterious goodness nor occult sublimity. Have done with the

wretched affectation, the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy: for,

as surely as you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is

better than the wood pavement, cut into hexagons; and as surely as you

know the fresh winds and sunshine of the upland are better than the

choke-damp of the vault, or the gas-light of the ball-room, you may

know, as I told you that you should, that the good architecture, which

has life, and truth, and joy in it, is better than the bad architecture,

which has death, dishonesty, and vexation of heart in it, from the

beginning to the end of time.

§ VII. And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your

gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, through the dark gates of

Padua, and let us take the broad road leading towards the East.

It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms, and vine festoons

full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their

clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an embankment above the

Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches

to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows

slowly, but strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that

neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous

banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy twisted for an instant

into its opaque surface, and vanishing, as if something had been dragged

into it and gone down. Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the

dyke on its northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen

trembling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than it did

at first. Presently you pass one of the much vaunted "villas on the

Brenta:" a glaring, spectral shell of brick and stucco, its windows with

painted architraves like picture-frames, and a court-yard paved with

pebbles in front of it, all burning in the thick glow of the feverish

sunshine, but fenced from the high road, for magnificence sake, with

goodly posts and chains; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese

variations, painted red and green; a third composed for the greater

part of dead-wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it, each with a

pea-green blind, and a classical architrave in bad perspective; and a

fourth, with stucco figures set on the top of its garden-wall: some

antique, like the kind to be seen at the corner of the New Road, and

some of clumsy grotesque dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This

is the architecture to which her studies of the Renaissance have

conducted modern Italy.

§ VIII. The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense white the walls

of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change horses. Another dreary

stage among the now divided branches of the Brenta, forming irregular

and half-stagnant canals; with one or two more villas on the other side

of them, but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have

recognised before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin, black, and

rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull water, with what

were once small gardens beside them, kneaded into mud, and with blighted

fragments of gnarled hedges and broken stakes for their fencing; and

here and there a few fragments of marble steps, which have once given

them graceful access from the water's edge, now settling into the mud in

broken joints, all aslope, and slippery with green weed. At last the

road turns sharply to the north, and there is an open space, covered

with bent grass, on the right of it: but do not look that way.

§ IX. Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of the little inn

at Mestre, glad of a moment's rest in shade. The table is (always, I

think) covered with a cloth of nominal white and perennial grey, with

plates and glasses at due intervals, and small loaves of a peculiar

white bread, made with oil, and more like knots of flour than bread. The

view from its balcony is not cheerful: a narrow street, with a solitary

brick church and barren campanile on the other side of it; and some

coventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco about their

windows; and, between them and the street, a ditch with some slow

current in it, and one or two small houses beside it, one with an arbor

of roses at its door, as in an English tea-garden; the air, however,

about us having in it nothing of roses, but a close smell of garlic and

crabs, warmed by the smoke of various stands of hot chestnuts. There is

much vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting certain

wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our baggage: we appease their

rivalry with our best patience, and follow them down the narrow street.

§ X. We have but walked some two hundred yards when we come to a low

wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side

down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black

with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,--it is covered with the

black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be

real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at

first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat

and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any

water we have seen lately, and of a pale green; the banks only two or

three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a

stunted tree; gliding swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as

if they were dragged by upon a painted scene.

Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up the

side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose

patience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea air blows

keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In

front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank; to the west,

the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen

purple shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon,

feebly defined against the afternoon sky,--the Alps of Bassano. Forward

still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate

angles about some low bastions, now torn to pieces and staggering in

ugly rents towards the water,--the bastions of the fort of Malghera.

Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable.

The silver beak cleaves it fast,--it widens: the rank grass of the

banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an

expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we

might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm

southern sky bending over Malamocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing

but what seems a low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to

let the tide through it;--this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above

all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there rises, out of

the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings,

which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be

the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale,

and apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line;

but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black

smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the

belfry of a church.

It is Venice.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] Garbett on Design, p. 74.

APPENDIX.

1. FOUNDATION OF VENICE.

I find the chroniclers agree in fixing the year 421, if any: the

following sentence from De Monaci may perhaps interest the reader.

"God, who punishes the sins of men by war sorrows, and whose ways are

past finding out, willing both to save the innocent blood, and that a

great power, beneficial to the whole world, should arise in a spot

strange beyond belief, moved the chief men of the cities of the Venetian

province (which from the border of Pannonia, extended as far as the

Adda, a river of Lombardy), both in memory of past, and in dread of

future distress, to establish states upon the nearer islands of the

inner gulphs of the Adriatic, to which, in the last necessity, they

might retreat for refuge. And first Galienus de Fontana, Simon de

Glauconibus, and Antonius Calvus, or, as others have it, Adalburtus

Falerius, Thomas Candiano, Comes Daulus, Consuls of Padua, by the

command of their King and the desire of the citizens, laid the

foundations of the new commonwealth, under good auspices, on the island

of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to the mouth of the deep river

now called the Brenta, in the year of Our Lord, as many writers assure

us, four hundred and twenty-one, on the 25th day of March."[93]

It is matter also of very great satisfaction to know that Venice was

founded by good Christians: "La qual citade è stada hedificada da veri e

boni Christiani:" which information I found in the MS. copy of the

Zancarol Chronicle, in the library of St. Mark's.

Finally the conjecture as to the origin of her name, recorded by

Sansovino, will be accepted willingly by all who love Venice: "Fu

interpretato da alcuni, che questa voce VENETIA voglia dire _VENI

ETIAM_, cioè, vieni ancora, e ancora, percioche quante volte verrai,

sempre vedrai nuove cose, enuove bellezze."

2. POWER OF THE DOGES.

The best authorities agree in giving the year 697 as that of the

election of the first doge, Paul Luke Anafeste. He was elected in a

general meeting of the commonalty, tribunes, and clergy, at Heraclea,

"divinis rebus procuratis," as usual, in all serious work, in those

times. His authority is thus defined by Sabellico, who was not likely to

have exaggerated it:--"Penes quem decus omne imperii ac majestas esset:

cui jus concilium cogendi quoties de republica aliquid referri

oporteret; qui tribunos annuos in singulas insulas legeret, a quibus ad

Ducem esset provocatio. Cæterum, si quis dignitatem, ecclesiam,

sacerdotumve cleri populique suffragio esset adeptus, ita demum id ratum

haberetur si dux ipse auctor factus esset." (Lib. I.) The last clause is

very important, indicating the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the

popular and ducal (or patrician) powers, which, throughout her career,

was one of the most remarkable features in the policy of Venice. The

appeal from the tribunes to the doge is also important; and the

expression "decus omne imperii," if of somewhat doubtful force, is at

least as energetic as could have been expected from an historian under

the influence of the Council of Ten.

3. SERRAR DEL CONSIGLIO.

The date of the decree which made the right of sitting in the grand

council hereditary, is variously given; the Venetian historians

themselves saying as little as they can about it. The thing was

evidently not accomplished at once, several decrees following in

successive years: the Council of Ten was established without any doubt

in 1310, in consequence of the conspiracy of Tiepolo. The Venetian

verse, quoted by Mutinelli (Annali Urbani di Venezia, p. 153), is worth

remembering.

"Del mille tresento e diese

A mezzo el mese delle ceriese

Bagiamonte passò el ponte

E per esso fo fatto el Consegio di diese."

The reader cannot do better than take 1297 as the date of the beginning

of the change of government, and this will enable him exactly to divide

the 1100 years from the election of the first doge into 600 of monarchy

and 500 of aristocracy. The coincidence of the numbers is somewhat

curious; 697 the date of the establishment of the government, 1297 of

its change, and 1797 of its fall.

4. S. PIETRO DI CASTELLO.

It is credibly reported to have been founded in the seventh century, and

(with somewhat less of credibility) in a place where the Trojans,

conducted by Antenor, had, after the destruction of Troy, built "un

castello, chiamato prima Troja, poscia Olivolo, interpretato, luogo

pieno." It seems that St. Peter appeared in person to the Bishop of

Heraclea, and commanded him to found in his honor, a church in that spot

of the rising city on the Rialto: "ove avesse veduto una mandra di buoi

e di pecore pascolare unitamente. Questa fu la prodigiosa origine della

Chiesa di San Pietro, che poscia, o rinovata, o ristaurata, da Orso

Participazio IV Vescovo Olivolense, divenne la Cattedrale della Nuova

citta." (Notizie Storiche delle Chiese e Monasteri di Venezia. Padua,

1758.) What there was so prodigious in oxen and sheep feeding together,

we need St. Peter, I think, to tell us. The title of Bishop of Castello

was first taken in 1091: St. Mark's was not made the cathedral church

till 1807. It may be thought hardly fair to conclude the small

importance of the old St. Pietro di Castello from the appearance of the

wretched modernisations of 1620. But these modernisations are spoken of

as improvements; and I find no notice of peculiar beauties in the older

building, either in the work above quoted, or by Sansovino; who only

says that when it was destroyed by fire (as everything in Venice was, I

think, about three times in a century), in the reign of Vital Michele,

it was rebuilt "with good thick walls, maintaining, _for all that_, the

order of its arrangement taken from the Greek mode of building." This

does not seem the description of a very enthusiastic effort to rebuild a

highly ornate cathedral. The present church is among the least

interesting in Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea

on a small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a

wretched suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level of

lifeless grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is extended

before its mildewed façade and solitary tower.

5. PAPAL POWER IN VENICE.

I may refer the reader to the eleventh chapter of the twenty-eighth book

of Daru for some account of the restraints to which the Venetian clergy

were subjected. I have not myself been able to devote any time to the

examination of the original documents bearing on this matter, but the

following extract from a letter of a friend, who will not at present

permit me to give his name, but who is certainly better conversant

with the records of the Venetian State than any other Englishman, will

be of great value to the general reader:--

"In the year 1410, or perhaps at the close of the thirteenth century,

churchmen were excluded from the Grand Council and declared ineligible

to civil employment; and in the same year, 1410, the Council of Ten,

with the Giunta, decreed that whenever in the state's councils matters

concerning ecclesiastical affairs were being treated, all the kinsfolk

of Venetian beneficed clergymen were to be expelled; and, in the year

1434, the RELATIONS of churchmen were declared ineligible to the post of

ambassador at Rome.

"The Venetians never gave possession of any see in their territories to

bishops unless they had been proposed to the pope by the senate, which

elected the patriarch, who was supposed, at the end of the sixteenth

century, to be liable to examination by his Holiness, as an act of

confirmation of installation; but of course, everything depended on the

relative power at any given time of Rome and Venice: for instance, a few

days after the accession of Julius II., in 1503, he requests the

Signory, cap in hand, to ALLOW him to confer the archbishopric of Zara

on a dependant of his, one Cipico the Bishop of Famagosta. Six years

later, when Venice was overwhelmed by the leaguers of Cambrai, that

furious pope would assuredly have conferred Zara on Cipico WITHOUT

asking leave. In 1608, the rich Camaldolite Abbey of Vangadizza, in the

Polesine, fell vacant through the death of Lionardo Loredano, in whose

family it had been since some while. The Venetian ambassador at Rome

received the news on the night of the 28th December; and, on the morrow,

requested Paul IV. not to dispose of this preferment until he heard from

the senate. The pope talked of 'poor cardinals' and of his nephew, but

made no positive reply; and, as Francesco Contarini was withdrawing,

said to him: 'My Lord ambassador, with this opportunity we will inform

you that, to our very great regret, we understand that the chiefs of the

Ten mean to turn sacristans; for they order the parish priests to close

the church doors at the Ave Maria, and not to ring the bells at certain

hours. This is precisely the sacristan's office; we don't know why their

lordships, by printed edicts, which we have seen, choose to interfere in

this matter. This is pure and mere ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and

even, in case of any inconvenience arising, is there not the patriarch,

who is at any rate your own; why not apply to him, who could remedy

these irregularities? These are matters which cause us very notable

displeasure; we say so that they may be written and known: it is decided

by the councils and canons, and not uttered by us, that whosoever forms

any resolve against the ecclesiastical liberty, cannot do so without

incurring censure: and in order that Father Paul [Bacon's correspondent]

may not say hereafter, as he did in his past writings, that our

predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare that

we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we blame it, and

let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the rest, every one may

take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas à Becket, whose festival is

celebrated this very day, suffered martyrdom for the ecclesiastical

liberty; it is our duty likewise to support and defend it.' Contarini

says: 'This remonstrance was delivered with some marks of anger, which

induced me to tell him how the tribunal of the most excellent the Lords

chiefs of the Ten is in our country supreme; that it does not do its

business unadvisedly, or condescend to unworthy matters; and that,

therefore, should those Lords have come to any public declaration of

their will, it must be attributed to orders anterior, and to immemorial

custom and authority, recollecting that, on former occasions likewise,

similar commissions were given to prevent divers incongruities;

wherefore an upright intention, such as this, ought not to be taken in

any other sense than its own, especially as the parishes of Venice were

in her own gift,' &c. &c. The pope persisted in bestowing the abbacy on

his nephew, but the republic would not give possession, and a compromise

was effected by its being conferred on the Venetian Matteo Priuli, who

allowed the cardinal five thousand ducats per annum out of its revenues.

A few years before this, this very same pope excommunicated the State,

because she had imprisoned two churchmen for heinous crimes; the strife

lasted for more than a year, and ended through the mediation of Henry

IV., at whose suit the prisoners were delivered to the French

ambassador, who made them over to a papal commissioner.

"In January, 1484, a tournament was in preparation on St. Mark's Square:

some murmurs had been heard about the distribution of the prizes having

been pre-arranged, without regard to the 'best man.' One of the chiefs

of the Ten was walking along Rialto on the 28th January, when a young

priest, twenty-two years old, a sword-cutlers son, and a Bolognese, and

one of Perugia, both men-at-arms under Robert Sansoverino, fell upon a

clothier with drawn weapons. The chief of the Ten desired they might be

seized, but at the moment the priest escaped; he was, however,

subsequently retaken, and in that very evening hanged by torch-light

between the columns with the two soldiers. Innocent VIII. was less

powerful than Paul IV.; Venice weaker in 1605 than in 1484.

"* * * The exclusion from the Grand Council, whether at the end of the

fourteenth or commencement of the following century, of the Venetian

ecclesiastics, (as induced either by the republic's acquisitions on the

main land then made, and which, through the rich benefices they

embraced, might have rendered an ambitious churchman as dangerous in the

Grand Council as a victorious condottiere; or from dread of their

allegiance being divided between the church and their country, it being

acknowledged that no man can serve two masters,) did not render them

hostile to their fatherland, whose interests were, with very few

exceptions, eagerly fathered by the Venetian prelates at Rome, who, in

their turn, received all honor at Venice, where state receptions given

to cardinals of the houses of Correr, Grimani, Cornaro, Pisani,

Contarini, Zeno, Delfino, and others, vouch for the good understanding

that existed between the 'Papalists' and their countrymen. The Cardinal

Grimani was instrumental in detaching Julius II. from the league of

Cambrai; the Cardinal Cornaro always aided the state to obtain anything

required of Leo X.; and, both before and after their times, all

Venetians that had a seat in the Sacred College were patriots rather

than pluralists: I mean that they cared more for Venice than for their

benefices, admitting thus the soundness of that policy which denied them

admission into the Grand Council."

To this interesting statement, I shall add, from the twenty-eighth book

of Daru, two passages, well deserving consideration by us English in

present days:

"Pour être parfaitement assurée contre les envahissements de la

puissance ecclésiastique, Venise commença par lui ôter tout prétexte

d'intervenir dans les affaires de l'Etat; elle resta invariablement

fidèle au dogme. Jamais aucune des opinions nouvelles n'y prit la

moindre faveur; jamais aucun hérésiarque ne sortit de Venise. Les

conciles, les disputes, les guerres de religion, se passèrent sans

qu'elle y prit jamais la moindre part. Inébranlable dans sa foi, elle ne

fut pas moins invariable dans son système de tolérance. Non seulement

ses sujets de la religion grecque conservèrent l'exercise de leur culte,

leurs évêques et leurs prêtres; mais les Protestantes, les Arméniens,

les Mahomitans, les Juifs, toutes les religions, toutes les sectes qui

se trouvaient dans Venise, avaient des temples, et la sépulture dans les

églises n'était point refusé aux hérétiques. Une police vigilante

s'appliquait avec le même soin à éteindre les discordes, et à empêcher

les fanatiques et les novateurs de troubler l'Etat."

* * * * *

"Si on considère que c'est dans un temps où presque toutes les nations

tremblaient devant la puissance pontificale, que les Vénitiens surent

tenir leur clergé dans la dépendance, et braver souvent les censures

ecclésiastiques et les interdits, sans encourir jamais aucun reproche

sur la pureté de leur foi, on sera forcé de reconnaître que cette

république avait dévancé de loin les autres peuples dans cette partie de

la science du gouvernement. La fameuse maxime, 'Siamo veneziani, poi

christiani,' n'était qu'une formule énergique qui ne prouvait point

quils voulussent placer l'intérêt de la religion après celui de l'Etat,

mais qui annonçait leur invariable résolution de ne pas souffrir qu'un

pouvoir étranger portât atteinte aux droits de la république.

"Dans toute la durée de son existence, an milieu des revers comme dans

la prospérité cet inébranlable gouvernement ne fit qu'une seule fois des

concessions à la cour de Borne, et ce fut pour détacher le Pape Jules

II. de la ligue de Cambrai.

"Jamais il ne se relâcha du soin de tenir le clergé dans une nullité

absolue relativement aux affaires politiques; on peut en juger par la

conduite qu'il tint avec l'ordre religieux le plus redoutable et le plus

accoutumé à s'immiscer dans les secrets de l'Etat et dans les intérêts

temporels."

The main points, next stated, respecting the Jesuits are, that the

decree which permitted their establishment in Venice required formal

renewal every three years; that no Jesuit could stay in Venice more than

three years; that the slightest disobedience to the authority of the

government was instantly punished by imprisonment; that no Venetian

could enter the order without express permission from the government;

that the notaries were forbidden to sanction any testamentary disposal

of property to the Jesuits; finally, that the heads of noble families

were forbidden to permit their children to be educated in the Jesuits'

colleges, on pain of degradation from their rank.

Now, let it be observed that the enforcement of absolute exclusion of

the clergy from the councils of the state, dates exactly from the period

which I have marked for the commencement of the decline of the Venetian

power. The Romanist is welcome to his advantage in this fact, if

advantage it be; for I do not bring forward the conduct of the senate of

Venice, as Daru does, by way of an example of the general science of

government. The Venetians accomplished therein what we ridiculously call

a separation of "Church and State" (as if the State were not, in all

Christendom, necessarily also the Church[94]), but _ought_ to call a

separation of lay and clerical officers. I do not point out this

separation as subject of praise, but as the witness borne by the

Venetians against the principles of the Papacy. If they were to blame,

in yielding to their fear of the ambitious spirit of Rome so far as to

deprive their councils of all religious element, what excuse are we to

offer for the state, which, with Lords Spiritual of her own faith

already in her senate, permits the polity of Rome to be represented by

lay members? To have sacrificed religion to mistaken policy, or

purchased security with ignominy, would have been no new thing in the

world's history; but to be at once impious and impolitic, and seek for

danger through dishonor, was reserved for the English parliament of

1829.

I am glad to have this opportunity of referring to, and farther

enforcing, the note on this subject which, not without deliberation, I

appended to the "Seven Lamps;" and of adding to it the following

passage, written by my father in the year 1839, and published in one of

the journals of that year:--a passage remarkable as much for its

intrinsic value, as for having stated, twelve years ago, truths to which

the mind of England seems but now, and that slowly, awakening.

"We hear it said, that it cannot be merely the Roman religion that

causes the difficulty [respecting Ireland], for we were once all Roman

Catholics, and nations abroad of this faith are not as the Irish. It is

totally overlooked, that when we were so, our government was despotic,

and fit to cope with this dangerous religion, as most of the Continental

governments yet are. In what Roman Catholic state, or in what age of

Roman Catholic England, did we ever hear of such agitation as now exists

in Ireland by evil men taking advantage of an anomalous state of

things--Roman Catholic ignorance in the people, Protestant toleration in

the government? We have yet to feel the tremendous difficulty in which

Roman Catholic emancipation has involved us. Too late we discover that a

Roman Catholic is wholly incapable of being safely connected with the

British constitution, as it now exists, _in any near relation_. The

present constitution is no longer fit for Catholics. It is a creature

essentially Protestant, growing with the growth, and strengthening with

the strength, of Protestantism. So entirely is Protestantism interwoven

with the whole frame of our constitution and laws, that I take my stand

on this, against all agitators in existence, that the Roman religion is

totally incompatible with the British constitution. We have, in trying

to combine them, got into a maze of difficulties; we are the worse, and

Ireland none the better. It is idle to talk of municipal reform or

popular Lords Lieutenant. The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is

not strong enough for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a

Republican would not shrink from sending half the misguided population

and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an

industrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you cannot

convert the Irish, nor by other means make them fit to wear the mild

restraints of a Protestant Government. It was, moreover, a strange logic

that begot the idea of admitting Catholics to administer any part of our

laws or constitution. It was admitted by all that, by the very act of

abandoning the Roman religion, we became a free and enlightened people.

It was only by throwing off the yoke of that slavish religion that we

attained to the freedom of thought which has advanced us in the scale of

society. We are so much advanced by adopting and adhering to a reformed

religion, that to prove our liberal and unprejudiced views, we throw

down the barriers betwixt the two religions, of which the one is the

acknowledged cause of light and knowledge, the other the cause of

darkness and ignorance. We are so much altered to the better by leaving

this people entirely, and giving them neither part nor lot amongst us,

that it becomes proper to mingle again with them. We have found so much

good in leaving them, that we deem it the best possible reason for

returning to be among them. No fear of their Church again shaking us,

with all our light and knowledge. It is true, the most enlightened

nations fell under the spell of her enchantments, fell into total

darkness and superstition; but no fear of us--we are too well informed!

What miserable reasoning! infatuated presumption! I fear me, when the

Roman religion rolled her clouds of darkness over the earlier ages, that

she quenched as much light, and knowledge, and judgment as our modern

Liberals have ever displayed. I do not expect a statesman to discuss the

point of Transubstantiation betwixt Protestant and Catholic, nor to

trace the narrow lines which divide Protestant sectarians from each

other; but can any statesman that shall have taken even a cursory

glance at the face of Europe, hesitate a moment on the choice of the

Protestant religion? If he unfortunately knew nothing of its being the

true one in regard to our eternal interests, he is at least bound to see

whether it be not the best for the worldly prosperity of a people. He

may be but moderately imbued with pious zeal for the salvation of a

kingdom, but at least he will be expected to weigh the comparative

merits of religion, as of law or government; and blind, indeed, must he

be if he does not discern that, in neglecting to cherish the Protestant

faith, or in too easily yielding to any encroachments on it, he is

foregoing the use of a state engine more powerful than all the laws

which the uninspired legislators of the earth have ever promulgated, in

promoting the happiness, the peace, prosperity, and the order, the

industry, and the wealth, of a people; in forming every quality valuable

or desirable in a subject or a citizen; in sustaining the public mind at

that point of education and information that forms the best security for

the state, and the best preservative for the freedom of a people,

whether religious or political."

[Illustration: Plate XX.

WALL VEIL DECORATION.

CA' TREVISAN.]

6. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENTS.

There having been three principal styles of architecture in Venice,--the

Greek or Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Renaissance, it will be shown,

in the sequel, that the Renaissance itself is divided into three

correspondent families: Renaissance engrafted on Byzantine, which is

earliest and best; Renaissance engrafted on Gothic, which is second, and

second best; Renaissance on Renaissance, which is double darkness, and

worst of all. The palaces in which Renaissance is engrafted on Byzantine

are those noticed by Commynes: they are characterized by an

ornamentation very closely resembling, and in some cases identical with,

early Byzantine work; namely, groups of colored marble circles inclosed

in interlacing bands. I have put on the opposite page one of these

ornaments, from the Ca' Trevisan, in which a most curious and delicate

piece of inlaid design is introduced into a band which is almost exactly

copied from the church of Theotocos at Constantinople, and correspondent

with others in St. Mark's. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the

treatment of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower

compartment, while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are

visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-branch

plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expanded wings.

Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices "of every clean fowl and of

every clean beast." The color is given with green and white marbles, the

dove relieved on a ground of greyish green, and all is exquisitely

finished.

In Plate I., p. 13, the upper figure is from the same palace (Ca'

Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If we take

five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter being two-thirds

of the diameter next above it, and arrange the circles so proportioned,

in contact with each other, in the manner shown in the plate, we shall

find that an increase quite imperceptible in the diameter of the circles

in the angles, will enable us to inscribe the whole in a square. The

lines so described will then run in the centre of the white bands. I

cannot be certain that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan

design, because it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at

its measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide with

the lines of my eye sketch. The lower figure in Plate I. is from the

front of the Ca' Dario, and probably struck the eye of Commynes in its

first brightness. Salvatico, indeed, considers both the Ca' Trevisan

(which once belonged to Bianca Cappello) and the Ca' Dario, as buildings

of the sixteenth century. I defer the discussion of the question at

present, but have, I believe, sufficient reason for assuming the Ca'

Dario to have been built about 1486, and the Ca' Trevisan not much

later.

7. VARIETIES OF THE ORDERS.

Of these phantasms and grotesques, one of some general importance is

that commonly called Ionic, of which the idea was taken (Vitruvius says)

from a woman's hair, curled; but its lateral processes look more like

rams' horns: be that as it may, it is a mere piece of agreeable

extravagance, and if, instead of rams' horns, you put ibex horns, or

cows' horns, or an ass's head at once, you will have ibex orders, or ass

orders, or any number of other orders, one for every head or horn. You

may have heard of another order, the Composite, which is Ionic and

Corinthian mixed, and is one of the worst of ten thousand forms

referable to the Corinthian as their head: it may be described as a

spoiled Corinthian. And you may have also heard of another order, called

Tuscan (which is no order at all, but a spoiled Doric): and of another

called Roman Doric, which is Doric more spoiled, both which are simply

among the most stupid variations ever invented upon forms already known.

I find also in a French pamphlet upon architecture,[95] as applied to

shops and dwelling houses, a sixth order, the "Ordre Français," at least

as good as any of the three last, and to be hailed with acclamation,

considering whence it comes, there being usually more tendency on the

other side of the channel to the confusion of "orders" than their

multiplication: but the reader will find in the end that there are in

very deed only two orders, of which the Greek, Doric, and Corinthian are

the first examples, and _they_ not perfect, nor in anywise sufficiently

representative of the vast families to which they belong; but being the

first and the best known, they may properly be considered as the types

of the rest. The essential distinctions of the two great orders he will

find explained in §§ XXXV. and XXXVI. of Chap. XXVII., and in the

passages there referred to; but I should rather desire that these

passages might be read in the order in which they occur.

8. THE NORTHERN ENERGY.

I have sketched above, in the First Chapter, the great events of

architectural history in the simplest and fewest words I could; but this

indraught of the Lombard energies upon the Byzantine rest, like a wild

north wind descending into a space of rarified atmosphere, and

encountered by an Arab simoom from the south, may well require from us

some farther attention; for the differences in all these schools are

more in the degrees of their impetuosity and refinement (these

qualities being, in most cases, in inverse ratio, yet much united by the

Arabs) than in the style of the ornaments they employ. The same leaves,

the same animals, the same arrangement, are used by Scandinavians,

ancient Britons, Saxons, Normans, Lombards, Romans, Byzantines, and

Arabians; all being alike descended through classic Greece from Egypt

and Assyria, and some from Phoenicia. The belts which encompass the

Assyrian bulls, in the hall of the British Museum, are the same as the

belts of the ornaments found in Scandinavian tumuli; their method of

ornamentation is the same as that of the gate of Mycenæ, and of the

Lombard pulpit of St. Ambrogio of Milan, and of the church of Theotocos

at Constantinople; the essential differences among the great schools are

their differences of temper and treatment, and science of expression; it

is absurd to talk of Norman ornaments, and Lombard ornaments, and

Byzantine ornaments, as formally distinguished; but there is

irreconcileable separation between Arab temper, and Lombard temper, and

Byzantine temper.

Now, as far as I have been able to compare the three schools, it appears

to me that the Arab and Lombard are both distinguished from the

Byzantine by their energy and love of excitement, but the Lombard stands

alone in his love of jest: Neither an Arab nor Byzantine ever jests in

his architecture; the Lombard has great difficulty in ever being

thoroughly serious; thus they represent three conditions of humanity,

one in perfect rest, the Byzantine, with exquisite perception of grace

and dignity; the Arab, with the same perception of grace, but with a

restless fever in his blood; the Lombard, equally energetic, but not

burning himself away, capable of submitting to law, and of enjoying

jest. But the Arabian feverishness infects even the Lombard in the

South, showing itself, however, in endless invention, with a refreshing

firmness and order directing the whole of it. The excitement is greatest

in the earliest times, most of all shown in St. Michele of Pavia; and I

am strongly disposed to connect much of its peculiar manifestations with

the Lombard's habits of eating and drinking, especially his

carnivorousness. The Lombard of early times seems to have been exactly

what a tiger would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous

imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of

northern mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him

pacing up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking on

the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you have the

Lombardic sculptor. As civilisation increases the supply of vegetables,

and shortens that of wild beasts, the excitement diminishes; it is still

strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons and Rouen; it dies away

gradually in the later Gothic, and is quite extinct in the fifteenth

century.

I think I shall best illustrate this general idea by simply copying the

entries in my diary which were written when, after six months' close

study of Byzantine work in Venice, I came again to the Lombard work of

Verona and Pavia. There are some other points alluded to in these

entries not pertaining to the matter immediately in hand; but I have

left them, as they will be of use hereafter.

"(Verona.) Comparing the arabesque and sculpture of the Duomo here with

St. Mark's, the first thing that strikes one is the low relief, the

second, the greater motion and spirit, with infinitely less grace and

science. With the Byzantine, however rude the cutting, every line is

lovely, and the animals or men are placed in any attitudes which secure

ornamental effect, sometimes impossible ones, always severe, restrained,

or languid. With the Romanesque workmen all the figures show the effort

(often successful) to express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much

fighting, and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally,

straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces and

drawing are in the last degree barbarous. At Venice all is graceful,

fixed, or languid; the eastern torpor is in every line,--the mark of a

school formed on severe traditions, and keeping to them, and never

likely or desirous to rise beyond them, but with an exquisite sense of

beauty, and much solemn religious faith.

"If the Greek outer archivolt of St. Mark's is Byzantine, the law is

somewhat broken by its busy domesticity; figures engaged in every trade,

and in the preparation of viands of all kinds; a crowded kind of London

Christmas scene, interleaved (literally) by the superb balls of leafage,

unique in sculpture; but even this is strongly opposed to the wild war

and chase passion of the Lombard. Farther, the Lombard building is as

sharp, precise, and accurate, as that of St. Mark's is careless. The

Byzantines seem to have been too lazy to put their stones together; and,

in general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four months

in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect _feeling_

here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard surface

ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing can possibly be more

chaste, pure, or solemn."

I have said much of the shafts of the entrance to the crypt of St.

Zeno;[96] the following note of the sculptures on the archivolt above

them is to our present purpose:

"It is covered by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of jesting

subject:--two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a

fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the

foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is

delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the

arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there.

Several capital hunts with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in

them; the leaves, considering the early time, singularly well set, with

the edges outwards, sharp, and deep cut: snails and frogs filling up the

intervals, as if suspended in the air, with some saucy puppies on their

hind legs, two or three nondescript beasts; and, finally, on the centre

of one of the arches on the south side, an elephant and castle,--a very

strange elephant, yet cut as if the carver had seen one."

Observe this elephant and castle; we shall meet with him farther north.

"These sculptures of St. Zeno are, however, quite quiet and tame

compared with those of St. Michele of Pavia, which are designed also in

a somewhat gloomier mood; significative, as I think, of indigestion.

(Note that they are much earlier than St. Zeno; of the seventh century

at latest. There is more of nightmare, and less of wit in them.) Lord

Lindsay has described them admirably, but has not said half enough; the

state of mind represented by the west front is more that of a feverish

dream, than resultant from any determined architectural purpose, or even

from any definite love and delight in the grotesque. One capital is

covered with a mass of grinning heads, other heads grow out of two

bodies, or out of and under feet; the creatures are all fighting, or

devouring, or struggling which shall be uppermost, and yet in an

ineffectual way, as if they would fight for ever, and come to no

decision. Neither sphinxes nor centaurs did I notice, nor a single

peacock (I believe peacocks to be purely Byzantine), but mermaids with

_two_ tails (the sculptor having perhaps seen double at the time),

strange, large fish, apes, stags (bulls?), dogs, wolves, and horses,

griffins, eagles, long-tailed birds (cocks?), hawks, and dragons,

without end, or with a dozen of ends, as the case may be; smaller birds,

with rabbits, and small nondescripts, filling the friezes. The actual

leaf, which is used in the best Byzantine mouldings at Venice, occurs in

parts of these Pavian designs. But the Lombard animals are all _alive_,

and fiercely alive too, all impatience and spring: the Byzantine birds

peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly touch it with their

noses. The cinque cento birds in Venice hold it up daintily, like

train-bearers; the birds in the earlier Gothic peck at it hungrily and

naturally; but the Lombard beasts gripe at it like tigers, and tear it

off with writhing lips and glaring eyes. They are exactly like Jip with

the bit of geranium, worrying imaginary cats in it."

The notice of the leaf in the above extract is important,--it is the

vine-leaf; used constantly both by Byzantines and Lombards, but by the

latter with especial frequency, though at this time they were hardly

able to indicate what they meant. It forms the most remarkable

generality of the St. Michele decoration; though, had it not luckily

been carved on the façade, twining round a stake, and with grapes, I

should never have known what it was meant for, its general form being a

succession of sharp lobes, with incised furrows to the point of each.

But it is thrown about in endless change; four or five varieties of it

might be found on every cluster of capitals: and not content with this,

the Lombards hint the same form even in their griffin wings. They love

the vine very heartily.

In St. Michele of Lucca we have perhaps the noblest instance in Italy of

the Lombard spirit in its later refinement. It is some four centuries

later than St. Michele of Pavia, and the method of workmanship is

altogether different. In the Pavian church, nearly all the ornament is

cut in a coarse sandstone, in bold relief: a darker and harder stone (I

think, not serpentine, but its surface is so disguised by the lustre of

ages that I could not be certain) is used for the capitals of the

western door, which are especially elaborate in their sculpture;--two

devilish apes, or apish devils, I know not which, with bristly

moustaches and edgy teeth, half-crouching, with their hands

impertinently on their knees, ready for a spit or a spring if one goes

near them; but all is pure bossy sculpture; there is no inlaying, except

of some variegated tiles in the shape of saucers set concave (an

ornament used also very gracefully in St. Jacopo of Bologna): and the

whole surface of the church is enriched with the massy reliefs, well

preserved everywhere above the reach of human animals, but utterly

destroyed to some five or six feet from the ground; worn away into large

cellular hollows and caverns, some almost deep enough to render the

walls unsafe, entirely owing to the uses to which the recesses of the

church are dedicated by the refined and high-minded Italians. But St.

Michele of Lucca is wrought entirely in white marble and green

serpentine; there is hardly any relieved sculpture except in the

capitals of the shafts and cornices, and all the designs of wall

ornament are inlaid with exquisite precision--white on dark ground; the

ground being cut out and filled with serpentine, the figures left in

solid marble. The designs of the Pavian church are encrusted on the

walls; of the Lucchese, incorporated with them; small portions of real

sculpture being introduced exactly where the eye, after its rest on the

flatness of the wall, will take most delight in the piece of substantial

form. The entire arrangement is perfect beyond all praise, and the

morbid restlessness of the old designs is now appeased. Geometry seems

to have acted as a febrifuge, for beautiful geometrical designs are

introduced amidst the tumult of the hunt; and there is no more seeing

double, nor ghastly monstrosity of conception; no more ending of

everything in something else; no more disputing for spare legs among

bewildered bodies; no more setting on of heads wrong side foremost. The

fragments have come together: we are out of the Inferno with its weeping

down the spine; we are in the fair hunting-fields of the Lucchese

mountains (though they had their tears also),--with horse, and hound,

and hawk; and merry blast of the trumpet.--Very strange creatures to be

hunted, in all truth; but still creatures with a single head, and that

on their shoulders, which is exactly the last place in the Pavian church

where a head is to be looked for.

My good friend Mr. Cockerell wonders, in one of his lectures, why I give

so much praise to this "crazy front of Lucca." But it is not crazy; not

by any means. Altogether sober, in comparison with the early Lombard

work, or with our Norman. Crazy in one sense it is: utterly neglected,

to the breaking of its old stout heart; the venomous nights and salt

frosts of the Maremma winters have their way with it--"Poor Tom's a

cold!" The weeds that feed on the marsh air, have twisted themselves

into its crannies; the polished fragments of serpentine are spit and

rent out of their cells, and lie in green ruins along its ledges; the

salt sea winds have eaten away the fair shafting of its star window into

a skeleton of crumbling rays. It cannot stand much longer; may Heaven

only, in its benignity, preserve it from restoration, and the sands of

the Serchio give it honorable grave.

In the "Seven Lamps," Plate VI., I gave a faithful drawing of one of its

upper arches, to which I must refer the reader; for there is a marked

piece of character in the figure of the horseman on the left of it. And

in making this reference, I would say a few words about those much

abused plates of the "Seven Lamps." They are black, they are overbitten,

they are hastily drawn, they are coarse and disagreeable; how

disagreeable to many readers I venture not to conceive. But their truth

is carried to an extent never before attempted in architectural drawing.

It does not in the least follow that because a drawing is delicate, or

looks careful, it has been carefully drawn from the thing represented;

in nine instances out of ten, careful and delicate drawings are made at

home. It is not so easy as the reader, perhaps, imagines, to finish a

drawing altogether on the spot, especially of details seventy feet from

the ground; and any one who will try the position in which I have had to

do some of my work--standing, namely, on a cornice or window sill,

holding by one arm round a shaft, and hanging over the street (or canal,

at Venice), with my sketch-book supported against the wall from which I

was drawing, by my breast, so as to leave my right hand free--will not

thenceforward wonder that shadows should be occasionally carelessly

laid in, or lines drawn with some unsteadiness. But, steady, or infirm,

the sketches of which those plates in the "Seven Lamps" are fac-similes,

were made from the architecture itself, and represent that architecture

with its actual shadows at the time of day at which it was drawn, and

with every fissure and line of it as they now exist; so that when I am

speaking of some new point, which perhaps the drawing was not intended

to illustrate, I can yet turn back to it with perfect certainty that if

anything be found in it bearing on matters now in hand, I may depend

upon it just as securely as if I had gone back to look again at the

building.

It is necessary that my readers should understand this thoroughly, and I

did not before sufficiently explain it; but I believe I can show them

the use of this kind of truth, now that we are again concerned with this

front of Lucca. They will find a drawing of the entire front in Gally

Knight's "Architecture of Italy." It may serve to give them an idea of

its general disposition, and it looks very careful and accurate; but

every bit of the ornament on it is _drawn out of the artist's head_.

There is not _one line_ of it that exists on the building. The reader

will therefore, perhaps, think my ugly black plate of somewhat more

value, upon the whole, in its rough veracity, than the other in its

delicate fiction.[97]

[Illustration: Plate XXI.

WALL VEIL DECORATION.]

As, however, I made a drawing of another part of the church somewhat

more delicately, and as I do not choose that my favorite church should

suffer in honor by my coarse work, I have had this, as far as might be,

fac-similied by line engraving (Plate XXI.). It represents the southern

side of the lower arcade of the west front; and may convey some idea of

the exquisite finish and grace of the whole; but the old plate, in the

"Seven Lamps," gives a nearer view of one of the upper arches, and a

more faithful impression of the present aspect of the work, and

especially of the seats of the horsemen; the limb straight, and well

down on the stirrup (the warrior's seat, observe, not the jockey's),

with a single pointed spur on the heel. The bit of the lower cornice

under this arch I could not see, and therefore had not drawn; it was

supplied from beneath another arch. I am afraid, however, the reader has

lost the thread of my story while I have been recommending my veracity

to him. I was insisting upon the healthy tone of this Lucca work as

compared with the old spectral Lombard friezes. The apes of the Pavian

church ride without stirrups, but all is in good order and harness here:

civilisation had done its work; there was reaping of corn in the Val

d'Arno, though rough hunting still upon its hills. But in the north,

though a century or two later, we find the forests of the Rhone, and its

rude limestone cotes, haunted by phantasms still (more meat-eating,

then, I think). I do not know a more interesting group of cathedrals

than that of Lyons, Vienne, and Valencia: a more interesting indeed,

generally, than beautiful; but there is a row of niches on the west

front of Lyons, and a course of panelled decoration about its doors,

which is, without exception, the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic

I ever beheld, and with which I know nothing that is even comparable,

except the work of the north transept of Rouen, described in the "Seven

Lamps," p. 159; work of about the same date, and exactly the same plan;

quatrefoils filled with grotesques, but somewhat less finished in

execution, and somewhat less wild in imagination. I wrote down hastily,

and in their own course, the subjects of some of the quatrefoils of

Lyons; of which I here give the reader the sequence:--

1. Elephant and castle; less graphic than the St. Zeno one.

2. A huge head walking on two legs, turned backwards, hoofed; the

head has a horn behind, with drapery over it, which ends in

another head.

3. A boar hunt; the boar under a tree, very spirited.

4. A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its own tail,

which ends in a head.

5. A dragon with a human head set on the wrong way.

6. St. Peter awakened by the angel in prison; full of spirit, the

prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch, the angel eager, St.

Peter startled, and full of motion.

7. St. Peter led out by the angel.

8. The miraculous draught of fishes; fish and all, in the small

space.

9. A large leaf, with two snails rampant, coming out of nautilus

shells, with grotesque faces, and eyes at the ends of their

horns.

10. A man with an axe striking at a dog's head, which comes out of

a nautilus shell: the rim of the shell branches into a stem

with two large leaves.

11. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian; his body very full of arrows.

12. Beasts coming to ark; Noah opening a kind of wicker cage.

13. Noah building the ark on shores.

14. A vine leaf with a dragon's head and tail, the one biting the

other.

15. A man riding a goat, catching a flying devil.

16. An eel or muraena growing into a bunch of flowers, which turns

into two wings.

17. A sprig of hazel, with nuts, thrown all around the quatrefoils

with a squirrel in centre, apparently attached to the tree only

by its enormous tail, richly furrowed into hair, and nobly

sweeping.

18. Four hares fastened together by the ears, galloping in a circle.

Mingled with these grotesques are many _sword_ and _buckler_

combats, the bucklers being round and conical like a hat; I

thought the first I noticed, carried by a man at full gallop on

horseback, had been a small umbrella.

This list of subjects may sufficiently illustrate the feverish character

of the Northern Energy; but influencing the treatment of the whole there

is also the Northern love of what is called the Grotesque, a feeling

which I find myself, for the present, quite incapable either of

analysing or defining, though we all have a distinct idea attached to

the word: I shall try, however, in the next volume.

9. WOODEN CHURCHES OF THE NORTH.

I cannot pledge myself to this theory of the origin of the vaulting

shaft, but the reader will find some interesting confirmations of it in

Dahl's work on the wooden churches of Norway. The inside view of the

church of Borgund shows the timber construction of one shaft run up

through a crossing architrave, and continued into the clerestory; while

the church of Urnes is in the exact form of a basilica; but the wall

above the arches is formed of planks, with a strong upright above each

capital. The passage quoted from Stephen Eddy's Life of Bishop Wilfrid,

at p. 86 of Churton's "Early English Church," gives us one of the

transformations or petrifactions of the wooden Saxon churches. "At Ripon

he built a new church of _polished stone_, with columns variously

ornamented, and porches." Mr. Churton adds: "It was perhaps in bad

imitation of the marble buildings he had seen in Italy, that he washed

the walls of this original York Minster, and made them 'whiter than

snow.'"

10. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA.

The very cause which enabled the Venetians to possess themselves of the

body of St. Mark, was the destruction of the church by the caliph for

the _sake of its marbles_: the Arabs and Venetians, though bitter

enemies, thus building on the same models; these in reverence for the

destroyed church, and those with the very pieces of it. In the somewhat

prolix account of the matter given in the Notizie Storiche (above

quoted) the main points are, that "il Califa de' Saraceni, per

fabbricarsi un Palazzo presse di Babilonia, aveva ordinato che dalle

Chiese d' Cristiani si togliessero i più scelti marmi;" and that the

Venetians, "videro sotto i loro occhi flagellarsi crudelmente un

Cristiano per aver infranto un marmo." I heartily wish that the same

kind of punishment were enforced to this day, for the same sin.

11. RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE.

I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me to be

suspected of having changed. The calmer tone of the second volume of

"Modern Painters," as compared with the first, induced, I believe, this

suspicion, very justifiably, in the minds of many of its readers. The

difference resulted, however, from the simple fact, that the first was

written in great haste and indignation, for a special purpose and

time;--the second, after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in

inquiries which could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued; my

opinions remaining then, and remaining now, altogether unchanged on the

subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther doubt of

them may be entertained by any who may think them worth questioning, I

shall here, once for all, express them in the plainest and fewest words

I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner is not only the greatest (professed)

landscape painter who ever lived, but that he has in him as much as

would have furnished all the rest with such power as they had; and that

if we put Nicolo Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the

group, he would cut up into Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others,

by uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough stated.

And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year 1845, the best;

and believe that those persons who only like his early pictures do not,

in fact, like him at all. They do _not_ like that which is essentially

_his_. They like that in which he resembles other men; which he had

learned from Loutherbourg, Claude, or Wilson; that which is indeed his

own, they do not care for. Not that there is not much of his own in his

early works; they are all invaluable in their way; but those persons who

can find no beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot

distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier

pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I think his pictures

painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest; and that his

entire power is best represented by such pictures as the Temeraire, the

Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others, painted exactly at the time when

the public and the press were together loudest in abuse of him.

Turner. Tintoret.

Massaccio.

John Bellini.

Albert Durer.

Giorgione.

Paul Veronese.

Titian.

Rubens.

Correggio.

Orcagna.

Benozzo Gozzoli.

Giotto.

Raffaelle.

Perugino.

I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above, _professed_

landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I should hardly have put

Gainsborough. The landscape of the great figure painters is often

majestic in the highest degree, and Tintoret's especially shows exactly

the same power and feeling as Turner's. If with Turner I were to rank

the historical painters as landscapists, estimating rather the power

they show, than the actual value of the landscape they produced, I

should class those, whose landscapes I have studied, in some such order

as this at the side of the page:--associating with the landscape of

Perugino that of Francia and Angelico, and the other severe painters of

religious subjects. I have put Turner and Tintoret side by side, not

knowing which is, in landscape, the greater; I had nearly associated in

the same manner the noble names of John Bellini and Albert Durer; but

Bellini must be put first, for his profound religious peace yet not

separated from the other, if but that we might remember his kindness to

him in Venice; and it is well we should take note of it here, for it

furnishes us with a most interesting confirmation of what was said in

the text respecting the position of Bellini as the last of the religious

painters of Venice. The following passage is quoted in Jackson's "Essay

on Wood-engraving," from Albert Durer's Diary:

"I have many good friends among the Italians who warn me not to eat or

drink with their painters, of whom several are my enemies, and copy my

picture in the church, and others of mine, wherever they can find them,

and yet they blame them, _and say they are not according to ancient art,

and therefore not good_. Giovanni Bellini, however, has praised me

highly to several gentlemen, and wishes to have something of my doing:

he called on me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for

him, for which, he said, he would pay me well. People are all surprised

that I should be so much thought of by a person of his reputation: he is

very old, but is still the best painter of them all."

A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance painters,

side by side with the good old Venetian, who was soon to leave them to

their own ways. The Renaissance men are seen in perfection, envying,

stealing, and lying, but without wit enough to lie to purpose.

12. ROMANIST MODERN ART.

It is of the highest importance, in these days, that Romanism should be

deprived of the miserable influence which its pomp and picturesqueness

have given it over the weak sentimentalism of the English people; I call

it a miserable influence, for of all motives to sympathy with the Church

of Rome, this I unhesitatingly class as the basest: I can, in some

measure, respect the other feelings which have been the beginnings of

apostasy; I can respect the desire for unity which would reclaim the

Romanist by love, and the distrust of his own heart which subjects the

proselyte to priestly power; I say I can respect these feelings, though

I cannot pardon unprincipled submission to them, nor enough wonder at

the infinite fatuity of the unhappy persons whom they have

betrayed:--Fatuity, self-inflicted, and stubborn in resistance to God's

Word and man's reason!--to talk of the authority of the Church, as if

the Church were anything else than the whole company of Christian men,

or were ever spoken of in Scripture[98] as other than a company to be

taught and fed, not to teach and feed.--Fatuity! to talk of a separation

of Church and State, as if a Christian state, and every officer therein,

were not necessarily a part of the Church,[99] and as if any state

officer could do his duty without endeavoring to aid and promote

religion, or any clerical officer do his duty without seeking for such

aid and accepting it:--Fatuity! to seek for the unity of a living body

of truth and trust in God, with a dead body of lies and trust in wood,

and thence to expect anything else than plague, and consumption by worms

undying, for both. Blasphemy as well as fatuity! to ask for any better

interpreter of God's Word than God, or to expect knowledge of it in any

other way than the plainly ordered way: if _any_ man will do he shall

know. But of all these fatuities, the basest is the being lured into the

Romanist Church by the glitter of it, like larks into a trap by broken

glass; to be blown into a change of religion by the whine of an

organ-pipe; stitched into a new creed by gold threads on priests'

petticoats; jangled into a change of conscience by the chimes of a

belfry. I know nothing in the shape of error so dark as this, no

imbecility so absolute, no treachery so contemptible. I had hardly

believed that it was a thing possible, though vague stories had been

told me of the effect, on some minds, of mere scarlet and candles, until

I came on this passage in Pugin's "Remarks on articles in the

Rambler":--

"Those who have lived in want and privation are the best qualified to

appreciate the blessings of plenty; thus, those who have been devout and

sincere members of the separated portion of the English Church; who have

prayed, and hoped, and loved, through all the poverty of the maimed

rites which it has retained--to them does the realisation of all their

longing desires appear truly ravishing. * * * Oh! then, what delight!

what joy unspeakable! when one of the solemn piles is presented to them,

in all its pristine life and glory!--the stoups are filled to the brim;

the rood is raised on high; the screen glows with sacred imagery and

rich device; the niches are filled; the altar is replaced, sustained by

sculptured shafts, the relics of the saints repose beneath, the body of

Our Lord is enshrined on its consecrated stone; the lamps of the

sanctuary burn bright; the saintly portraitures in the glass windows

shine all gloriously; and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the

cope chests are filled with orphreyed baudekins; and pix and pax, and

chrismatory are there, and thurible, and cross."

One might have put this man under a pix, and left him, one should have

thought; but he has been brought forward, and partly received, as an

example of the effect of ceremonial splendor on the mind of a great

architect. It is very necessary, therefore, that all those who have felt

sorrow at this should know at once that he is not a great architect,

but one of the smallest possible or conceivable architects; and that by

his own account and setting forth of himself. Hear him:--

"I believe, as regards architecture, few men have been so unfortunate as

myself. I have passed my life in thinking of fine things, studying fine

things, designing fine things, and realising very poor ones. I have

never had the chance of producing a single fine ecclesiastical building,

except my own church, where I am both paymaster and architect; but

everything else, either for want of adequate funds or injudicious

interference and control, or some other contingency, is more or less a

failure. * * *

"St. George's was spoilt by the very instructions laid down by the

committee, that it was to hold 3000 people on the floor at a limited

price; in consequence, height, proportion, everything, was sacrificed to

meet these conditions. Nottingham was spoilt by the style being

restricted to lancet,--a period well suited to a Cistercian abbey in a

secluded vale, but very unsuitable for the centre of a crowded

town. * * *

"Kirkham was spoilt through several hundred pounds being reduced on the

original estimate; to effect this, which was a great sum in proportion

to the entire cost, the area of the church was contracted, the walls

lowered, tower and spire reduced, the thickness of walls diminished, and

stone arches omitted." (Remarks, &c., by A. Welby Pugin: Dolman, 1850.)

Is that so? Phidias can niche himself into the corner of a pediment, and

Raffaelle expatiate within the circumference of a clay platter; but

Pugin is inexpressible in less than a cathedral? Let his ineffableness

be assured of this, once for all, that no difficulty or restraint ever

happened to a man of real power, but his power was the more manifested

in the contending with, or conquering it; and that there is no field so

small, no cranny so contracted, but that a great spirit can house and

manifest itself therein. The thunder that smites the Alp into dust, can

gather itself into the width of a golden wire. Whatever greatness there

was in you, had it been Buonarroti's own, you had room enough for it in

a single niche: you might have put the whole power of it into two feet

cube of Caen stone. St. George's was not high enough for want of money?

But was it want of money that made you put that blunt, overloaded,

laborious ogee door into the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that

you sunk the tracery of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in

parsimony that you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of

diseased crockets? or in pecuniary embarrassment that you set up the

belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, which nobody can

ever reach nor look out of? Not so, but in mere incapability of better

things.

I am sorry to have to speak thus of any living architect; and there is

much in this man, if he were rightly estimated, which one might both

regard and profit by. He has a most sincere love for his profession, a

heartily honest enthusiasm for pixes and piscinas; and though he will

never design so much as a pix or a piscina thoroughly well, yet better

than most of the experimental architects of the day. Employ him by all

means, but on small work. Expect no cathedrals from him; but no one, at

present, can design a better finial. That is an exceedingly beautiful

one over the western door of St. George's; and there is some spirited

impishness and switching of tails in the supporting figures at the

imposts. Only do not allow his good designing of finials to be employed

as an evidence in matters of divinity, nor thence deduce the

incompatibility of Protestantism and art. I should have said all that I

have said above, of artistical apostasy, if Giotto had been now living

in Florence, and if art were still doing all that it did once for Rome.

But the grossness of the error becomes incomprehensible as well as

unpardonable, when we look to what level of degradation the human

intellect has sunk at this instant in Italy. So far from Romanism now

producing anything greater in art, it cannot even preserve what has been

given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheritance half so

grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art wherever the Romanist

priesthood gets possession of it. It amounts to absolute infatuation.

The noblest pieces of mediæval sculpture in North Italy, the two

griffins at the central (west) door of the cathedral of Verona, were

daily permitted to be brought into service, when I was there in the

autumn of 1849, by a washerwoman living in the Piazza, who tied her

clothes-lines to their beaks: and the shafts of St. Mark's at Venice

were used by a salesman of common caricatures to fasten his prints upon

(Compare Appendix 25); and this in the face of the continually passing

priests: while the quantity of noble art annually destroyed in

altarpieces by candle-droppings, or perishing by pure brutality of

neglect, passes all estimate. I do not know, as I have repeatedly

stated, how far the splendor of architecture, or other art, is

compatible with the honesty and usefulness of religious service. The

longer I live, the more I incline to severe judgment in this matter, and

the less I can trust the sentiments excited by painted glass and colored

tiles. But if there be indeed value in such things, our plain duty is to

direct our strength against the superstition which has dishonored them;

there are thousands who might possibly be benefited by them, to whom

they are now merely an offence, owing to their association with

idolatrous ceremonies. I have but this exhortation for all who love

them,--not to regulate their creeds by their taste in colors, but to

hold calmly to the right, at whatever present cost to their imaginative

enjoyment; sure that they will one day find in heavenly truth a brighter

charm than in earthly imagery, and striving to gather stones for the

eternal building, whose walls shall be salvation, and whose gates shall

be praise.

13. MR. FERGUSSON'S SYSTEM.

The reader may at first suppose this division of the attributes of

buildings into action, voice, and beauty, to be the same division as Mr.

Fergusson's, now well known, of their merits, into technic, æsthetic and

phonetic.

But there is no connection between the two systems; mine, indeed, does

not profess to be a system, it is a mere arrangement of my subject, for

the sake of order and convenience in its treatment: but, as far as it

goes, it differs altogether from Mr. Fergusson's in these two following

respects:--