The action of a building, that is to say its standing or consistence,

depends on its good construction; and the first part of the foregoing

volume has been entirely occupied with the consideration of the

constructive merit of buildings: but construction is not their only

technical merit. There is as much of technical merit in their

expression, or in their beauty, as in their construction. There is no

more mechanical or technical admirableness in the stroke of the painter

who covers them with fresco, than in the dexterity of the mason who

cements their stones: there is just as much of what is technical in

their beauty, therefore, as in their construction; and, on the other

hand, there is often just as much intellect shown in their construction

as there is in either their expression or decoration. Now Mr. Fergusson

means by his "Phonetic" division, whatever expresses intellect: my

constructive division, therefore, includes part of his phonetic: and my

expressive and decorative divisions include part of his technical.

Secondly, Mr. Fergusson tries to make the same divisions fit the

_subjects_ of art, and art itself; and therefore talks of technic,

æsthetic, and phonetic, _arts_, (or, translating the Greek,) of artful

arts, sensitive arts, and talkative arts; but I have nothing to do with

any division of the arts, I have to deal only with the merits of

_buildings_. As, however, I have been led into reference to Mr.

Fergusson's system, I would fain say a word or two to effect Mr.

Fergusson's extrication from it. I hope to find in him a noble ally,

ready to join with me in war upon affectation, falsehood, and prejudice,

of every kind: I have derived much instruction from his most interesting

work, and I hope for much more from its continuation; but he must

disentangle himself from his system, or he will be strangled by it;

never was anything so ingeniously and hopelessly wrong throughout; the

whole of it is founded on a confusion of the instruments of man with his

capacities.

Mr. Fergusson would have us take--

"First, man's muscular action or power." (Technics.)

"Secondly, those developments of sense _by_ which _he does!!_ as much

as by his muscles." (Æsthetics.)

"Lastly, his intellect, or to confine this more correctly to its

external action, _his power of speech!!!_" (Phonetics.)

Granting this division of humanity correct, or sufficient, the writer

then most curiously supposes that he may arrange the arts as if there

were some belonging to each division of man,--never observing that every

art must be governed by, and addressed to, one division, and executed by

another; executed by the muscular, addressed to the sensitive or

intellectual; and that, to be an art at all, it must have in it work of

the one, and guidance from the other. If, by any lucky accident, he had

been led to arrange the arts, either by their objects, and the things to

which they are addressed, or by their means, and the things by which

they are executed, he would have discovered his mistake in an instant.

As thus:--

These arts are addressed to the,--Muscles!!

Senses,

Intellect;

or executed by,--Muscles,

Senses!!

Intellect.

Indeed it is true that some of the arts are in a sort addressed to the

muscles, surgery for instance; but this is not among Mr. Fergusson's

technic, but his politic, arts! and all the arts may, in a sort, be said

to be performed by the senses, as the senses guide both muscles and

intellect in their work: but they guide them as they receive

information, or are standards of accuracy, but not as in themselves

capable of action. Mr. Fergusson is, I believe, the first person who has

told us of senses that act or do, they having been hitherto supposed

only to sustain or perceive. The weight of error, however, rests just as

much in the original division of man, as in the endeavor to fit the arts

to it. The slight omission of the soul makes a considerable difference

when it begins to influence the final results of the arrangement.

Mr. Fergusson calls morals and religion "Politick arts" (as if religion

were an art at all! or as if both were not as necessary to individuals

as to societies); and therefore, forming these into a body of arts by

themselves, leaves the best of the arts to do without the soul and the

moral feeling as rest they may. Hence "expression," or "phonetics," is

of intellect only (as if men never expressed their _feelings!_); and

then, strangest and worst of all, intellect is entirely resolved into

talking! There can be no intellect but it must talk, and all talking

must be intellectual. I believe people do sometimes talk without

understanding; and I think the world would fare ill if they never

understood without talking. The intellect is an entirely silent faculty,

and has nothing to do with parts of speech any more than the moral part

has. A man may feel and know things without expressing either the

feeling or knowledge; and the talking is a _muscular_ mode of

communicating the workings of the intellect or heart--muscular, whether

it be by tongue or by sign, or by carving or writing, or by expression

of feature; so that to divide a man into muscular and talking parts, is

to divide him into body in general, and tongue in particular, the

endless confusion resulting from which arrangement is only less

marvellous in itself, than the resolution with which Mr. Fergusson has

worked through it, and in spite of it, up to some very interesting and

suggestive truths; although starting with a division of humanity which

does not in the least raise it above the brute, for a rattlesnake has

his muscular, æsthetic, and talking part as much as man, only he talks

with his tail, and says, "I am angry with you, and should like to bite

you," more laconically and effectively than any phonetic biped could,

were he so minded. And, in fact, the real difference between the brute

and man is not so much that the one has fewer means of expression than

the other, as that it has fewer thoughts to express, and that we do not

understand its expressions. Animals can talk to one another intelligibly

enough when they have anything to say, and their captains have words of

command just as clear as ours, and better obeyed. We have indeed, in

watching the efforts of an intelligent animal to talk to a human being,

a melancholy sense of its dumbness; but the fault is still in its

intelligence, more than in its tongue. It has not wit enough to

systematise its cries or signs, and form them into language.

But there is no end to the fallacies and confusions of Mr. Fergusson's

arrangement. It is a perfect entanglement of gun-cotton, and explodes

into vacuity wherever one holds a light to it. I shall leave him to do

so with the rest of it for himself, and should perhaps have left it to

his own handling altogether, but for the intemperateness of the spirit

with which he has spoken on a subject perhaps of all others demanding

gentleness and caution. No man could more earnestly have desired the

changes lately introduced into the system of the University of Oxford

than I did myself: no man can be more deeply sensible than I of grievous

failures in the practical working even of the present system: but I

believe that these failures may be almost without exception traced to

one source, the want of evangelical, and the excess of rubrical religion

among the tutors; together with such rustinesses and stiffnesses as

necessarily attend the continual operation of any intellectual machine.

The fault is, at any rate, far less in the system than in the

imperfection of its administration; and had it been otherwise, the terms

in which Mr. Fergusson speaks of it are hardly decorous in one who can

but be imperfectly acquainted with its working. They are sufficiently

answered by the structure of the essay in which they occur; for if the

high powers of mind which its author possesses had been subjected to the

discipline of the schools, he could not have wasted his time on the

development of a system which their simplest formulæ of logic would have

shown him to be untenable.

Mr. Fergusson will, however, find it easier to overthrow his system than

to replace it. Every man of science knows the difficulty of arranging a

_reasonable_ system of classification, in any subject, by any one group

of characters; and that the best classifications are, in many of their

branches, convenient rather than reasonable: so that, to any person who

is really master of his subject, many different modes of classification

will occur at different times; one of which he will use rather than

another, according to the point which he has to investigate. I need only

instance the three arrangements of minerals, by their external

characters, and their positive or negative bases, of which the first is

the most useful, the second the most natural, the third the most simple;

and all in several ways unsatisfactory.

But when the subject becomes one which no single mind can grasp, and

which embraces the whole range of human occupation and enquiry, the

difficulties become as great, and the methods as various, as the uses to

which the classification might be put; and Mr. Fergusson has entirely

forgotten to inform us what is the object to which his arrangements are

addressed. For observe: there is one kind of arrangement which is based

on the rational connection of the sciences or arts with one another; an

arrangement which maps them out like the rivers of some great country,

and marks the points of their junction, and the direction and force of

their united currents; and this without assigning to any one of them a

superiority above another, but considering them all as necessary members

of the noble unity of human science and effort. There is another kind of

classification which contemplates the order of succession in which they

might most usefully be presented to a single mind, so that the given

mind should obtain the most effective and available knowledge of them

all: and, finally, the most usual classification contemplates the powers

of mind which they each require for their pursuit, the objects to which

they are addressed, or with which they are concerned; and assigns to

each of them a rank superior or inferior, according to the nobility of

the powers they require, or the grandeur of the subjects they

contemplate.

Now, not only would it be necessary to adopt a different classification

with respect to each of these great intentions, but it might be found so

even to vary the order of the succession of sciences in the case of

every several mind to which they were addressed; and that their rank

would also vary with the power and specific character of the mind

engaged upon them. I once heard a very profound mathematician

remonstrate against the impropriety of Wordsworth's receiving a pension

from government, on the ground that he was "only a poet." If the study

of mathematics had always this narrowing effect upon the sympathies, the

science itself would need to be deprived of the rank usually assigned to

it; and there could be no doubt that, in the effect it had on the mind

of this man, and of such others, it was a very contemptible science

indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is

necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every

order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no

one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and

others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general

meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown around them:

thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible of all the sciences,

has been raised to unjust dignity by Johnson.[100] And the subject is

farther complicated by the question of usefulness; for many of the arts

and sciences require considerable intellectual power for their pursuit,

and yet become contemptible by the slightness of what they accomplish:

metaphysics, for instance, exercising intelligence of a high order, yet

useless to the mass of mankind, and, to its own masters, dangerous. Yet,

as it has become so by the want of the true intelligence which its

inquiries need, and by substitution of vain subtleties in its stead, it

may in future vindicate for itself a higher rank than a man of common

sense usually concedes to it.

Nevertheless, the mere attempt at arrangement must be useful, even where

it does nothing more than develop difficulties. Perhaps the greatest

fault of men of learning is their so often supposing all other branches

of science dependent upon or inferior to their own best beloved branch;

and the greatest deficiency of men comparatively unlearned, their want

of perception of the connection of the branches with each other. He who

holds the tree only by the extremities, can perceive nothing but the

separation of its sprays. It must always be desirable to prove to those

the equality of rank, to these the closeness of sequence, of what they

had falsely supposed subordinate or separate. And, after such candid

admission of the co-equal dignity of the truly noble arts and sciences,

we may be enabled more justly to estimate the inferiority of those which

indeed seem intended for the occupation of inferior powers and narrower

capacities. In Appendix 14, following, some suggestions will be found as

to the principles on which classification might be based; but the

arrangement of all the arts is certainly not a work which could with

discretion be attempted in the Appendix to an essay on a branch of one

of them.

14. DIVISIONS OF HUMANITY.

The reader will probably understand this part of the subject better if

he will take the trouble briefly to consider the actions of the mind and

body of man in the sciences and arts, which give these latter the

relations of rank usually attributed to them.

It was above observed (Appendix 13) that the arts were generally ranked

according to the nobility of the powers they require, that is to say,

the quantity of the being of man which they engaged or addressed. Now

their rank is not a very important matter as regards each other, for

there are few disputes more futile than that concerning the respective

dignity of arts, all of which are necessary and honorable. But it is a

very important matter as regards themselves; very important whether

they are practised with the devotion and regarded with the respect

which are necessary or due to their perfection. It does not at all

matter whether architecture or sculpture be the nobler art; but it

matters much whether the thought is bestowed upon buildings, or the

feeling is expressed in statues, which make either deserving of our

admiration. It is foolish and insolent to imagine that the art which we

ourselves practise is greater than any other; but it is wise to take

care that in our own hands it is as noble as we can make it. Let us take

some notice, therefore, in what degrees the faculties of man may be

engaged in his several arts: we may consider the entire man as made up

of body, soul, and intellect (Lord Lindsay, meaning the same thing, says

inaccurately--sense, intellect, and spirit--forgetting that there is a

moral sense as well as a bodily sense, and a spiritual body as well as a

natural body, and so gets into some awkward confusion, though right in

the main points). Then, taking the word soul as a short expression of

the moral and responsible part of being, each of these three parts has a

passive and active power. The body has senses and muscles; the soul,

feeling and resolution; the intellect, understanding and imagination.

The scheme may be put into tabular form, thus:--

Passive or Receptive Part. Active or Motive Part.

Body Senses. Muscles.

Soul Feeling. Resolution.

Intellect Understanding. Imagination.

In this scheme I consider memory a part of understanding, and conscience

I leave out, as being the voice of God in the heart, inseparable from

the system, yet not an essential part of it. The sense of beauty I

consider a mixture of the Senses of the body and soul.

Now all these parts of the human system have a reciprocal action on one

another, so that the true perfection of any of them is not possible

without some relative perfection of the others, and yet any one of the

parts of the system may be brought into a morbid development,

inconsistent with the perfection of the others. Thus, in a healthy

state, the acuteness of the senses quickens that of the feelings, and

these latter quicken the understanding, and then all the three quicken

the imagination, and then all the four strengthen the resolution; while

yet there is a danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid

feeling may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over shrewd

and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or that the

understanding and imagination together may take place of, or undermine,

the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere bodily frame there is a

delightful perfection of the senses, consistent with the utmost health

of the muscular system, as in the quick sight and hearing of an active

savage: another false delicacy of the senses, in the Sybarite,

consequent on their over indulgence, until the doubled rose-leaf is

painful; and this inconsistent with muscular perfection. Again; there is

a perfection of muscular action consistent with exquisite sense, as in

that of the fingers of a musician or of a painter, in which the muscles

are guided by the slightest feeling of the strings, or of the pencil:

another perfection of muscular action inconsistent with acuteness of

sense, as in the effort of battle, in which a soldier does not perceive

his wounds. So that it is never so much the question, what is the

solitary perfection of a given part of the man, as what is its balanced

perfection in relation to the whole of him: and again, the perfection of

any single power is not merely to be valued by the mere rank of the

power itself, but by the harmony which it indicates among the other

powers. Thus, for instance, in an archer's glance along his arrow, or a

hunter's raising of his rifle, there is a certain perfection of sense

and finger which is the result of mere practice, of a simple bodily

perfection; but there is a farther value in the habit which results from

the resolution and intellect necessary to the forming of it: in the

hunter's raising of his rifle there is a quietness implying far more

than mere practice,--implying courage, and habitual meeting of danger,

and presence of mind, and many other such noble characters. So also in a

musician's way of laying finger on his instrument, or a painter's

handling of his pencil, there are many qualities expressive of the

special sensibilities of each, operating on the production of the habit,

besides the sensibility operating at the moment of action. So that there

are three distinct stages of merit in what is commonly called mere

bodily dexterity: the first, the dexterity given by practice, called

command of tools or of weapons; the second stage, the dexterity or

grace given by character, as the gentleness of hand proceeding from

modesty or tenderness of spirit, and the steadiness of it resulting from

habitual patience coupled with decision, and the thousand other

characters partially discernible, even in a man's writing, much more in

his general handiwork; and, thirdly, there is the perfection of action

produced by the operation of _present_ strength, feeling, or

intelligence on instruments thus _previously_ perfected, as the handling

of a great painter is rendered more beautiful by his immediate care and

feeling and love of his subject, or knowledge of it, and as physical

strength is increased by strength of will and greatness of heart.

Imagine, for instance, the difference in manner of fighting, and in

actual muscular strength and endurance, between a common soldier, and a

man in the circumstances of the Horatii, or of the temper of Leonidas.

Mere physical skill, therefore, the mere perfection and power of the

body as an instrument, is manifested in three stages:

First, Bodily power by practice;

Secondly, Bodily power by moral habit;

Thirdly, Bodily power by immediate energy;

and the arts will be greater or less, cæteris paribus, according to the

degrees of these dexterities which they admit. A smith's work at his

anvil admits little but the first; fencing, shooting, and riding, admit

something of the second; while the fine arts admit (merely through the

channel of the bodily dexterities) an expression almost of the whole

man.

Nevertheless, though the higher arts _admit_ this higher bodily

perfection, they do not all _require_ it in equal degrees, but can

dispense with it more and more in proportion to their dignity. The arts

whose chief element is bodily dexterity, may be classed together as arts

of the third order, of which the highest will be those which admit most

of the power of moral habit and energy, such as riding and the

management of weapons; and the rest may be thrown together under the

general title of handicrafts, of which it does not much matter which are

the most honorable, but rather, which are the most necessary and least

injurious to health, which it is not our present business to examine.

Men engaged in the practice of these are called artizans, as opposed to

artists, who are concerned with the fine arts.

The next step in elevation of art is the addition of the intelligences

which have no connection with bodily dexterity; as, for instance, in

hunting, the knowledge of the habits of animals and their places of

abode; in architecture, of mathematics; in painting, of harmonies of

color; in music, of those of sound; all this pure science being joined

with readiness of expedient in applying it, and with shrewdness in

apprehension of difficulties, either present or probable.

It will often happen that intelligence of this kind is possessed without

bodily dexterity, or the need of it; one man directing and another

executing, as for the most part in architecture, war, and seamanship.

And it is to be observed, also, that in proportion to the dignity of the

art, the bodily dexterities needed even in its subordinate agents become

less important, and are more and more replaced by intelligence; as in

the steering of a ship, the bodily dexterity required is less than in

shooting or fencing, but the intelligence far greater: and so in war,

the mere swordsmanship and marksmanship of the troops are of small

importance in comparison with their disposition, and right choice of the

moment of action. So that arts of this second order must be estimated,

not by the quantity of bodily dexterity they require, but by the

quantity and dignity of the knowledge needed in their practice, and by

the degree of subtlety needed in bringing such knowledge into play. War

certainly stands first in the general mind, not only as the greatest of

the arts which I have called of the second order, but as the greatest of

all arts. It is not, however, easy to distinguish the respect paid to

the Power, from that rendered to the Art of the soldier; the honor of

victory being more dependent, in the vulgar mind, on its results, than

its difficulties. I believe, however, that taking into consideration the

greatness of the anxieties under which this art must be practised, the

multitude of circumstances to be known and regarded in it, and the

subtleties both of apprehension and stratagem constantly demanded by it,

as well as the multiplicity of disturbing accidents and doubtful

contingencies against which it must make provision on the instant, it

must indeed rank as far the first of the arts of the second order; and

next to this great art of killing, medicine being much like war in its

stratagems and watchings against its dark and subtle death-enemy.

Then the arts of the first order will be those in which the Imaginative

part of the intellect and the Sensitive part of the soul are joined: as

poetry, architecture, and painting; these forming a kind of cross, in

their part of the scheme of the human being, with those of the second

order, which wed the Intelligent part of the intellect and Resolute part

of the soul. But the reader must feel more and more, at every step, the

impossibility of classing the arts themselves, independently of the men

by whom they are practised; and how an art, low in itself, may be made

noble by the quantity of human strength and being which a great man will

pour into it; and an art, great in itself, be made mean by the meanness

of the mind occupied in it. I do not intend, when I call painting an art

of the first, and war an art of the second, order, to class Dutch

landscape painters with good soldiers; but I mean, that if from such a

man as Napoleon we were to take away the honor of all that he had done

in law and civil government, and to give him the reputation of his

soldiership only, his name would be less, if justly weighed, than that

of Buonarroti, himself a good soldier also, when need was. But I will

not endeavor to pursue the inquiry, for I believe that of all the arts

of the first order it would be found that all that a man has, or is, or

can be, he can fully express in them, and give to any of them, and find

it not enough.

15. INSTINCTIVE JUDGMENTS.

The same rapid judgment which I wish to enable the reader to form of

architecture, may in some sort also be formed of painting, owing to the

close connection between execution and expression in the latter; as

between structure and expression in the former. We ought to be able to

tell good painting by a side glance as we pass along a gallery; and,

until we can do so, we are not fit to pronounce judgment at all: not

that I class this easily visible excellence of painting with the great

expressional qualities which time and watchfulness only unfold. I have

again and again insisted on the supremacy of these last and shall

always continue to do so. But I perceive a tendency among some of the

more thoughtful critics of the day to forget that the business of a

painter is to _paint_, and so altogether to despise those men, Veronese

and Rubens for instance, who were painters, par excellence, and in whom

the expressional qualities are subordinate. Now it is well, when we have

strong moral or poetical feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as

the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of

small account, the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed,

for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a

just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a _painter_, and it was

wrong of him to paint. He had much better put his morality into sermons,

and his poetry into verse, than into a language of which he was not

master. And this mastery of the language is that of which we should be

cognizant by a glance of the eye; and if that be not found, it is wasted

time to look farther: the man has mistaken his vocation, and his

expression of himself will be cramped by his awkward efforts to do what

he was not fit to do. On the other hand, if the man be a painter indeed,

and have the gift of colors and lines, what is in him will come from his

hand freely and faithfully; and the language itself is so difficult and

so vast, that the mere possession of it argues the man is great, and

that his works are worth reading. So that I have never yet seen the case

in which this true artistical excellence, visible by the eye-glance, was

not the index of some true expressional worth in the work. Neither have

I ever seen a good expressional work without high artistical merit: and

that this is ever denied is only owing to the narrow view which men are

apt to take both of expression and of art; a narrowness consequent on

their own especial practice and habits of thought. A man long trained to

love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico, turns in proud and ineffable

disgust from the first work of Rubens which he encounters on his return

across the Alps. But is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten,

that while Angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was

different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders;--wild seas to be

banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be

drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful

breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick walls

against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands and gross

stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes and

Christmas feasts, which were to be the reward of it; rough affections,

and sluggish imagination; fleshy, substantial, ironshod humanities, but

humanities still; humanities which God had his eye upon, and which won,

perhaps, here and there, as much favor in his sight as the wasted

aspects of the whispering monks of Florence (Heaven forbid it should not

be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and

reapers still). And are we to suppose there is no nobility in Rubens'

masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human

rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by birth, and feeling, and

education, and place; and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? He

had his faults, perhaps great and lamentable faults, though more those

of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister

breeding nor boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in

missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in

him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court,

knight's camp, or peasant's cottage. On the other hand, a man trained

here in England, in our Sir Joshua school, will not and cannot allow

that there is any art at all in the technical work of Angelico. But he

is just as wrong as the other. Fra Angelico is as true a master of the

art necessary to his purposes, as Rubens was of that necessary for his.

We have been taught in England to think there can be no virtue but in a

loaded brush and rapid hand; but if we can shake our common sense free

of such teaching, we shall understand that there is art also in the

delicate point and in the hand which trembles as it moves; not because

it is more liable to err, but because there is more danger in its error,

and more at stake upon its precision. The art of Angelico, both as a

colorist and a draughtsman, is consummate; so perfect and beautiful,

that his work may be recognised at any distance by the rainbow-play and

brilliancy of it: However closely it may be surrounded by other works of

the same school, glowing with enamel and gold, Angelico's may be told

from them at a glance, like so many huge pieces of opal lying among

common marbles. So again with Giotto; the Arena chapel is not only the

most perfect expressional work, it is the prettiest piece of wall

decoration and fair color, in North Italy.

Now there is a correspondence of the same kind between the technical and

expressional parts of architecture;--not a true or entire

correspondence, so that when the expression is best, the building must

be also best; but so much of correspondence as that good building is

necessary to good expression, comes before it, and is to be primarily

looked for: and the more, because the manner of building is capable of

being determinately estimated and classed; but the expressional

character not so: we can at once determine the true value of technical

qualities, we can only approximate to the value of expressional

qualities: and besides this, the looking for the technical qualities

first will enable us to cast a large quantity of rubbish aside at once,

and so to narrow the difficult field of inquiry into expression: we

shall get rid of Chinese pagodas and Indian temples, and Renaissance

Palladianisms, and Alhambra stucco and filigree, in one great rubbish

heap; and shall not need to trouble ourselves about their expression, or

anything else concerning them. Then taking the buildings which have been

rightly put together, and which show common sense in their structure, we

may look for their farther and higher excellences; but on those which

are absurd in their first steps we need waste no time.

16. STRENGTH OF SHAFTS.

I could have wished, before writing this chapter, to have given more

study to the difficult subject of the strength of shafts of different

materials and structure; but I cannot enter into every inquiry which

general criticism might suggest, and this I believe to be one which

would have occupied the reader with less profit than many others: all

that is necessary for him to note is, that the great increase of

strength gained by a tubular form in iron shafts, of given solid

contents, is no contradiction to the general principle stated in the

text, that the strength of materials is most available when they are

most concentrated. The strength of the tube is owing to certain

properties of the arch formed by its sides, not to the dispersion of its

materials: and the principle is altogether inapplicable to stone shafts.

No one would think of building a pillar of a succession of sandstone

rings; however strong it might be, it would be still stronger filled up,

and the substitution of such a pillar for a solid one of the same

contents would lose too much space; for a stone pillar, even when solid,

must be quite as thick as is either graceful or convenient, and in

modern churches is often too thick as it is, hindering sight of the

preacher, and checking the sound of his voice.

17. ANSWER TO MR. GARBETT.

Some three months ago, and long after the writing of this passage, I met

accidentally with Mr. Garbett's elementary Treatise on Design. (Weale,

1850.) If I had cared about the reputation of originality, I should have

been annoyed--and was so, at first, on finding Mr. Garbett's

illustrations of the subject exactly the same as mine, even to the

choice of the elephant's foot for the parallel of the Doric pillar: I

even thought of omitting, or rewriting, great part of the chapter, but

determined at last to let it stand. I am striving to speak plain truths

on many simple and trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of

what I say has been said before, and am quite willing to give up all

claim to originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any

one cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept what I say, not

as mine, but as the truth, which may be all the world's, if they look

for it. If I remember rightly, Mr. Frank Howard promised at some

discussion respecting the "Seven Lamps," reported in the "Builder," to

pluck all my borrowed feathers off me; but I did not see the end of the

discussion, and do not know to this day how many feathers I have left:

at all events the elephant's foot must belong to Mr. Garbett, though,

strictly speaking, neither he nor I can be quite justified in using it,

for an elephant in reality stands on tiptoe; and this is by no means the

expression of a Doric shaft. As, however, I have been obliged to speak

of this treatise of Mr. Garbett's, and desire also to recommend it as of

much interest and utility in its statements of fact, it is impossible

for me to pass altogether without notice, as if unanswerable, several

passages in which the writer has objected to views stated in the "Seven

Lamps." I should at any rate have noticed the passage quoted above,

(Chap. 30th,) which runs counter to the spirit of all I have ever

written, though without referring to me; but the references to the

"Seven Lamps" I should not have answered, unless I had desired,

generally, to recommend the book, and partly also, because they may

serve as examples of the kind of animadversion which the "Seven Lamps"

had to sustain from architects, very generally; which examples being

once answered, there will be little occasion for my referring in future

to other criticisms of the kind.

The first reference to the "Seven Lamps" is in the second page, where

Mr. Garbett asks a question, "Why are not convenience and stability

enough to constitute a fine building?"--which I should have answered

shortly by asking another, "Why we have been made men, and not bees nor

termites:" but Mr. Garbett has given a very pretty, though partial,

answer to it himself, in his 4th to 9th pages,--an answer which I

heartily beg the reader to consider. But, in page 12, it is made a grave

charge against me, that I use the words beauty and ornament

interchangeably. I do so, and ever shall; and so, I believe, one day,

will Mr. Garbett himself; but not while he continues to head his pages

thus:--"Beauty not dependent on ornament, _or superfluous_ features."

What right has he to assume that ornament, rightly so called, ever was,

or can be, superfluous? I have said before, and repeatedly in other

places, that the most beautiful things are the most useless; I never

said superfluous. I said useless in the well-understood and usual sense,

as meaning, inapplicable to the service of the body. Thus I called

peacocks and lilies useless; meaning, that roast peacock was unwholesome

(taking Juvenal's word for it), and that dried lilies made bad hay: but

I do not think peacocks superfluous birds, nor that the world could get

on well without its lilies. Or, to look closer, I suppose the peacock's

blue eyes to be very useless to him; not dangerous indeed, as to their

first master, but of small service, yet I do not think there is a

superfluous eye in all his tail; and for lilies, though the great King

of Israel was not "arrayed" like one of them, can Mr. Garbett tell us

which are their superfluous leaves? Is there no Diogenes among lilies?

none to be found content to drink dew, but out of silver? The fact is, I

never met with the architect yet who did not think ornament meant a

thing to be bought in a shop and pinned on, or left off, at

architectural toilets, as the fancy seized them, thinking little more

than many women do of the other kind of ornament--the only true

kind,--St. Peter's kind,--"Not that outward adorning, but the inner--of

the heart." I do not mean that architects cannot conceive this better

ornament, but they do not understand that it is the _only_ ornament;

that _all_ architectural ornament is this, and nothing but this; that a

noble building never has any extraneous or superfluous ornament; that

all its parts are necessary to its loveliness, and that no single atom

of them could be removed without harm to its life. You do not build a

temple and then dress it.[101] You create it in its loveliness, and

leave it, as her Maker left Eve. Not unadorned, I believe, but so well

adorned as to need no feather crowns. And I use the words ornament and

beauty interchangeably, in order that architects may understand this: I

assume that their building is to be a perfect creature capable of

nothing less than it has, and needing nothing more. It may, indeed,

receive additional decoration afterwards, exactly as a woman may

gracefully put a bracelet on her arm, or set a flower in her hair: but

that additional decoration is _not_ the _architecture_. It is of

curtains, pictures, statues, things that may be taken away from the

building, and not hurt it. What has the architect to do with these? He

has only to do with what is part of the building itself, that is to say,

its own inherent beauty. And because Mr. Garbett does not understand or

acknowledge this, he is led on from error to error; for we next find him

endeavoring to define beauty as distinct from ornament, and saying that

"Positive beauty may be produced by a studious collation of whatever

will display design, order, and congruity." (p. 14.) Is that so? There

is a highly studious collation of whatever will display design, order,

and congruity, in a skull, is there not?--yet small beauty. The nose is

a decorative feature,--yet slightly necessary to beauty, it seems to me;

now, at least, for I once thought I must be wrong in considering a skull

disagreeable. I gave it fair trial: put one on my bed-room

chimney-piece, and looked at it by sunrise every morning, and by

moonlight every night, and by all the best lights I could think of, for

a month, in vain. I found it as ugly at last as I did at first. So,

also, the hair is a decoration, and its natural curl is of little use;

but can Mr. Garbett conceive a bald beauty; or does he prefer a wig,

because that is a "_studious_ collation" of whatever will produce

design, order, and congruity? So the flush of the cheek is a

decoration,--God's painting of the temple of his spirit,--and the

redness of the lip; and yet poor Viola thought it beauty truly blent;

and I hold with her.

I have answered enough to this count.

The second point questioned is my assertion, "Ornament cannot be

overcharged if it is good, and is always overcharged when it is bad." To

which Mr. Garbett objects in these terms: "I must contend, on the

contrary, that the very best ornament may be overcharged by being

misplaced."

A short sentence with two mistakes in it.

First. Mr. Garbett cannot get rid of his unfortunate notion that

ornament is a thing to be manufactured separately, and fastened on. He

supposes that an ornament may be called good in itself, in the

stonemason's yard or in the ironmonger's shop: Once for all, let him put

this idea out of his head. We may say of a thing, considered separately,

that it is a pretty thing; but before we can say it is a good ornament,

we must know what it is to adorn, and how. As, for instance, a ring of

gold is a pretty thing; it is a good ornament on a woman's finger; not a

good ornament hung through her under lip. A hollyhock, seven feet high,

would be a good ornament for a cottage-garden; not a good ornament for a

lady's head-dress. Might not Mr. Garbett have seen this without my

showing? and that, therefore, when I said "_good_" ornament, I said

"well-placed" ornament, in one word, and that, also, when Mr. Garbett

says "it may be overcharged by being misplaced," he merely says it may

be overcharged by being _bad_.

Secondly. But, granted that ornament _were_ independent of its position,

and might be pronounced good in a separate form, as books are good, or

men are good.--Suppose I had written to a student in Oxford, "You cannot

have too many books, if they be good books;" and he had answered me,

"Yes, for if I have many, I have no place to put them in but the

coal-cellar." Would that in anywise affect the general principle that

he could not have too many books?

Or suppose he had written, "I must not have too many, they confuse my

head." I should have written back to him: "Don't buy books to put in the

coal-hole, nor read them if they confuse your head; you cannot have too

many, if they be good: but if you are too lazy to take care of them, or

too dull to profit by them, you are better without them."

Exactly in the same tone, I repeat to Mr. Garbett, "You cannot have too

much ornament, if it be good: but if you are too indolent to arrange it,

or too dull to take advantage of it, assuredly you are better without

it."

The other points bearing on this question have already been stated in

the close of the 21st chapter.

The third reference I have to answer, is to my repeated assertion, that

the evidence of manual labor is one of the chief sources of value in

ornament, ("Seven Lamps," p. 49, "Modern Painters," § 1, Chap. III.,) to

which objection is made in these terms: "We must here warn the reader

against a remarkable error of Ruskin. The value of ornaments in

architecture depends _not in the slightest degree_ on the _manual labor_

they contain. If it did, the finest ornaments ever executed would be the

stone chains that hang before certain Indian rock-temples." Is that so?

Hear a parallel argument. "The value of the Cornish mines depends not in

the slightest degree on the quantity of copper they contain. If it did,

the most valuable things ever produced would be copper saucepans." It is

hardly worth my while to answer this; but, lest any of my readers should

be confused by the objection, and as I hold the fact to be of great

importance, I may re-state it for them with some explanation.

Observe, then, the appearance of labor, that is to say, the evidence of

the past industry of man, is always, in the abstract, intensely

delightful: man being meant to labor, it is delightful to see that he

_has_ labored, and to read the record of his active and worthy

existence.

The evidence of labor becomes painful only when it is a _sign of Evil

greater, as Evil, than the labor is great, as Good_. As, for instance,

if a man has labored for an hour at what might have been done by another

man in a moment, this evidence of his labor is also evidence of his

weakness; and this weakness is greater in rank of evil, than his

industry is great in rank of good.

Again, if a man have labored at what was not worth accomplishing, the

signs of his labor are the signs of his folly, and his folly dishonors

his industry; we had rather he had been a wise man in rest than a fool

in labor.

Again, if a man have labored without accomplishing anything, the signs

of his labor are the signs of his disappointment; and we have more

sorrow in sympathy with his failure, than pleasure in sympathy with his

work.

Now, therefore, in ornament, whenever labor replaces what was better

than labor, that is to say, skill and thought; wherever it substitutes

itself for these, or _negatives these by its existence_, then it is

positive evil. Copper is an evil when it alloys gold, or poisons food:

not an evil, as copper; good in the form of pence, seriously

objectionable when it occupies the room of guineas. Let Danaë cast it

out of her lap, when the gold comes from heaven; but let the poor man

gather it up carefully from the earth.

Farther, the evidence of labor is not only a good when added to other

good, but the utter absence of it destroys good in human work. It is

only good for God to create without toil; that which man can create

without toil is worthless: machine ornaments are no ornaments at all.

Consider this carefully, reader: I could illustrate it for you

endlessly; but you feel it yourself every hour of your existence. And if

you do not know that you feel it, take up, for a little time, the trade

which of all manual trades has been most honored: be for once a

carpenter. Make for yourself a table or a chair, and see if you ever

thought any table or chair so delightful, and what strange beauty there

will be in their crooked limbs.

I have not noticed any other animadversions on the "Seven Lamps" in Mr.

Garbett's volume; but if there be more, I must now leave it to his own

consideration, whether he may not, as in the above instances, have made

them incautiously: I may, perhaps, also be permitted to request other

architects, who may happen to glance at the preceding pages, not

immediately to condemn what may appear to them false in general

principle. I must often be found deficient in technical knowledge; I

may often err in my statements respecting matters of practice or of

special law. But I do not write thoughtlessly respecting principles; and

my statements of these will generally be found worth reconnoitring

before attacking. Architects, no doubt, fancy they have strong grounds

for supposing me wrong when they seek to invalidate my assertions. Let

me assure them, at least, that I mean to be their friend, although they

may not immediately recognise me as such. If I could obtain the public

ear, and the principles I have advocated were carried into general

practice, porphyry and serpentine would be given to them instead of

limestone and brick; instead of tavern and shop-fronts they would have

to build goodly churches and noble dwelling-houses; and for every

stunted Grecism and stucco Romanism, into which they are now forced to

shape their palsied thoughts, and to whose crumbling plagiarisms they

must trust their doubtful fame, they would be asked to raise whole

streets of bold, and rich, and living architecture, with the certainty

in their hearts of doing what was honorable to themselves, and good for

all men.

Before I altogether leave the question of the influence of labor on

architectural effect, the reader may expect from me a word or two

respecting the subject which this year must be interesting to all--the

applicability, namely, of glass and iron to architecture in general, as

in some sort exemplified by the Crystal Palace.

It is thought by many that we shall forthwith have great part of our

architecture in glass and iron, and that new forms of beauty will result

from the studied employment of these materials.

It may be told in a few words how far this is possible; how far

eternally impossible.

There are two means of delight in all productions of art--color and

form.

The most vivid conditions of color attainable by human art are those of

works in glass and enamel, but not the most perfect. The best and

noblest coloring possible to art is that attained by the touch of the

human hand on an opaque surface, upon which it can command any tint

required, without subjection to alteration by fire or other mechanical

means. No color is so noble as the color of a good painting on canvas or

gesso.

This kind of color being, however, impossible, for the most part, in

architecture, the next best is the scientific disposition of the natural

colors of stones, which are far nobler than any abstract hues producible

by human art.

The delight which we receive from glass painting is one altogether

inferior, and in which we should degrade ourselves by over indulgence.

Nevertheless, it is possible that we may raise some palaces like

Aladdin's with colored glass for jewels, which shall be new in the annals

of human splendor, and good in their place; but not if they superseded

nobler edifices.

Now, color is producible either on opaque or in transparent bodies: but

form is only expressible, in its perfection, on opaque bodies, without

lustre.

This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable. No perfect or refined

form can be expressed except in opaque and lustreless matter. You cannot

see the form of a jewel, nor, in any perfection, even of a cameo or

bronze. You cannot perfectly see the form of a humming-bird, on account

of its burnishing; but you can see the form of a swan perfectly. No noble

work in form can ever, therefore, be produced in transparent or lustrous

glass or enamel. All noble architecture depends for its majesty on its

form: therefore you can never have any noble architecture in transparent

or lustrous glass or enamel. Iron is, however, opaque; and both it and

opaque enamel may, perhaps, be rendered quite lustreless; and, therefore,

fit to receive noble form.

Let this be thoroughly done, and both the iron and enamel made fine in

paste or grain, and you may have an architecture as noble as cast or

struck architecture even can be: as noble, therefore, as coins can be, or

common cast bronzes, and such other multiplicable things;[102]--eternally

separated from all good and great things by a gulph which not all the

tubular bridges nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centuries cast

into one great bronze-foreheaded century, will ever overpass one inch of.

All art which is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a

piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two of earth which, if

unencumbered by it, would have grown corn or violets, or some better

thing, is _art which proceeds from an individual mind, working through

instruments which assist, but do not supersede, the muscular action of

the human hand, upon the materials which most tenderly receive, and most

securely retain, the impressions of such human labor_.

And the value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of the

quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly expressed

upon it for ever:--

First, of thought and moral purpose;

Secondly, of technical skill;

Thirdly, of bodily industry.

The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace expresses is

very great. So far it is good.

The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single and very

admirable thought of Mr. Paxton's, probably not a bit brighter than

thousands of thoughts which pass through his active and intelligent

brain every hour,--that it might be possible to build a greenhouse

larger than ever greenhouse was built before. This thought, and some

very ordinary algebra, are as much as all that glass can represent of

human intellect. "But one poor half-pennyworth of bread to all this

intolerable deal of sack." Alas!

"The earth hath bubbles as the water hath:

And this is of them."

18. EARLY ENGLISH CAPITALS.

The depth of the cutting in some of the early English capitals is,

indeed, part of a general system of attempts at exaggerated force of

effect, like the "_black_ touches" of second-rate draughtsmen, which I

have noticed as characteristic of nearly all northern work, associated

with the love of the grotesque: but the main section of the capital is

indeed a dripstone rolled round, as above described; and dripstone

sections are continually found in northern work, where not only they

cannot increase force of effect, but are entirely invisible except on

close examination; as, for instance, under the uppermost range of stones

of the foundation of Whitehall, or under the slope of the restored base

of All Souls College, Oxford, under the level of the eye. I much doubt

if any of the Fellows be aware of its existence.

Many readers will be surprised and displeased by the disparagement of

the early English capital. That capital has, indeed, one character of

considerable value; namely, the boldness with which it stops the

mouldings which fall upon it, and severs them from the shaft,

contrasting itself with the multiplicity of their vertical lines.

Sparingly used, or seldom seen, it is thus, in its place, not

unpleasing; and we English love it from association, it being always

found in connection with our purest and loveliest Gothic arches, and

never in multitudes large enough to satiate the eye with its form. The

reader who sits in the Temple church every Sunday, and sees no

architecture during the week but that of Chancery Lane, may most

justifiably quarrel with me for what I have said of it. But if every

house in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane were Gothic, and all had early

English capitals, I would answer for his making peace with me in a

fortnight.

19. TOMBS NEAR ST. ANASTASIA.

Whose they are, is of little consequence to the reader or to me, and I

have taken no pains to discover; their value being not in any evidence

they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic merit as examples of

composition. Two of them are within the gate, one on the top of it, and

this latter is on the whole the best, though all are beautiful; uniting

the intense northern energy in their figure sculpture with the most

serene classical restraint in their outlines, and unaffected, but

masculine simplicity of construction.

I have not put letters to the diagram of the lateral arch at page 154,

in order not to interfere with the clearness of the curves, but I shall

always express the same points by the same letters, whenever I have to

give measures of arches of this simple kind, so that the reader need

never have the diagrams lettered at all. The base or span of the centre

arch will always be _a b_; its vertex will always be V; the points of

the cusps will be _c c_; _p p_ will be the bases of perpendiculars let

fall from V and _c_ on _a b_; and _d_ the base of a perpendicular from

the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then _a b_ will always be a span

of the arch, V _p_ its perpendicular height, V _a_ the chord of its side

arcs, _d c_ the depth of its cusps, _c c_ the horizontal interval

between the cusps, _a c_ the length of the chord of the lower arc of the

cusp, V _c_ the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp,

(whether continuous or not,) and _c p_ the length of a perpendicular

from the point of the cusp on _a b_.

Of course we do not want all these measures for a single arch, but it

often happens that some of them are attainable more easily than others;

some are often unattainable altogether, and it is necessary therefore to

have expressions for whichever we may be able to determine.

V _p_ or V _a_, _a b_, and _d c_ are always essential; then either _a c_

and V _c_ or _c c_ and _c p_: when I have my choice, I always take _a

b_, V _p_, _d c_, _c c_, and _c p_, but _c p_ is not to be generally

obtained so accurately as the cusp arcs.

The measures of the present arch are:

Ft. In.

_a b_, 3 ,, 8

V _p_, 4 ,, 0

V _c_, 2 ,, 4-1/2

_a c_, 2 ,, 0-1/4

_d c_, 0 ,, 3-1/2

20. SHAFTS OF DUCAL PALACE.

The shortness of the thicker ones at the angles is induced by the

greater depth of the enlarged capitals: thus the 36th shaft is 10 ft.

4-1/3 in. in circumference at its base, and 10 ,, 0-1/2[103] in

circumference under the fillet of its capital; but it is only 6 ,,

1-3/4 high, while the minor intermediate shafts, of which the thickest

is 7 ,, 8 round at the base, and 7 ,, 4 under capital, are yet on the

average 7 ,, 7 high. The angle shaft towards the sea (the 18th) is

nearly of the proportions of the 36th, and there are three others, the

15th, 24th, and 26th, which are thicker than the rest, though not so

thick as the angle ones. The 24th and 26th have both party walls to

bear, and I imagine the 15th must in old time have carried another,

reaching across what is now the Sala del Gran Consiglio.

They measure respectively round at the base,

The 15th, 8 ,, 2

24th, 9 ,, 6-1/2

26th, 8 ,, 0-1/2

The other pillars towards the sea, and those to the 27th inclusive of

the Piazzetta, are all seven feet round at the base, and then there is a

most curious and delicate crescendo of circumference to the 36th, thus:

The 28th, 7 ,, 3 The 33rd, 7 ,, 6

29th, 7 ,, 4 34th, 7 ,, 8

30th, 7 ,, 6 35th, 7 ,, 8

31st, 7 ,, 7 36th, 10 ,, 4-1/3

32nd, 7 ,, 5

The shafts of the upper arcade, which are above these thicker columns,

are also thicker than their companions, measuring on the average, 4 ,,

8-1/2 in circumference, while those of the sea façade, except the 29th,

average 4 ,, 7-1/2 in circumference. The 29th, which is of course above

the 15th of the lower story, is 5 ,, 5 in circumference, which little

piece of evidence will be of no small value to us by-and-by. The 35th

carries the angle of the palace, and is 6 ,, 0 round. The 47th, which

comes above the 24th and carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran

Consiglio, is strengthened by a pilaster; and the 51st, which comes over

the 26th, is 5 ,, 4-1/2 round, or nearly the same as the 29th; it

carries the party wall of the Sala del Scrutinio; a small room

containing part of St. Mark's library, coming between the two saloons;

a room which, in remembrances of the help I have received in all my

inquiries from the kindness and intelligence of its usual occupant, I

shall never easily distinguish otherwise than as "Mr. Lorenzi's."[104]

I may as well connect with these notes respecting the arcades of the

Ducal Palace, those which refer to Plate XIV., which represents one of

its spandrils. Every spandril of the lower arcade was intended to have

been occupied by an ornament resembling the one given in that plate. The

mass of the building being of Istrian stone, a depth of about two inches

is left within the mouldings of the arches, rough hewn, to receive the

slabs of fine marble composing the patterns. I cannot say whether the

design was ever completed, or the marbles have been since removed, but

there are now only two spandrils retaining their fillings, and vestiges

of them in a third. The two complete spandrils are on the sea façade,

above the 3rd and 10th capitals (_vide_ method of numbering, Chap. I.,

page 30); that is to say, connecting the 2nd arch with the 3rd, and the

9th with the 10th. The latter is the one given in Plate XIV. The white

portions of it are all white marble, the dental band surrounding the

circle is in coarse sugary marble, which I believe to be Greek, and

never found in Venice to my recollection, except in work at least

anterior to the fifteenth century. The shaded fields charged with the

three white triangles are of red Verona marble; the inner disc is green

serpentine, and the dark pieces of the radiating leaves are grey marble.

The three triangles are equilateral. The two uppermost are 1 ,, 5 each

side, and the lower 1 ,, 2.

The extreme diameter of the circle is 3 ,, 10-1/2; its field is slightly

raised above the red marbles, as shown in the section at A, on the left.

A _a_ is part of the red marble field; _a b_ the section of the dentil

moulding let into it; _b c_ the entire breadth of the rayed zone,

represented on the other side of the spandril by the line C _f_; _c d_

is the white marble band let in, with the dogtooth on the face of it;

_b c_ is 7-3/4 inches across; _c d_ 3-3/4; and at B are given two joints

of the dentil (mentioned above, in the chapter on dentils, as unique in

Venice) of their actual size. At C is given one of the inlaid leaves;

its measure being (in inches) C _f_ 7-3/4; C _h_ 3/4; _f g_ 3/4; _f e_

4-3/4, the base of the smaller leaves being of course _f e_ - _f g_ = 4.

The pattern which occupies the other spandril is similar, except that

the field _b c_, instead of the intersecting arcs, has only triangles of

grey marble, arranged like rays, with their bases towards the centre.

There being twenty round the circle, the reader can of course draw them

for himself; they being isosceles, touching the dentil with their

points, and being in contact at their bases: it has lost its central

boss. The marbles are, in both, covered with a rusty coating, through

which it is excessively difficult to distinguish the colors (another

proof of the age of the ornament). But the white marbles are certainly,

in places (except only the sugary dentil), veined with purple, and the

grey seem warmed with green.

A trace of another of these ornaments may be seen over the 21st capital;

but I doubt if the marbles have ever been inserted in the other

spandrils, and their want of ornament occasions the slight meagreness in

the effect of the lower story, which is almost the only fault of the

building.

This decoration by discs, or shield-like ornaments, is a marked

characteristic of Venetian architecture in its earlier ages, and is

carried into later times by the Byzantine Renaissance, already

distinguished from the more corrupt forms of Renaissance, in Appendix 6.

Of the disc decoration, so borrowed, we have already an example in Plate

I. In Plate VII. we have an earlier condition of it, one of the discs

being there sculptured, the others surrounded by sculptured bands: here

we have, on the Ducal Palace, the most characteristic of all, because

likest to the shield, which was probably the origin of the same ornament

among the Arabs, and assuredly among the Greeks. In Mr. Donaldson's

restoration of the gate of the treasury of Atreus, this ornament is

conjecturally employed, and it occurs constantly on the Arabian

buildings of Cairo.

21. ANCIENT REPRESENTATIONS OF WATER.

I have long been desirous of devoting some time to an enquiry into the

effect of natural scenery upon the pagan, and especially the Greek,

mind, and knowing that my friend, Mr. C. Newton, had devoted much

thought to the elucidation of the figurative and symbolic language of

ancient art, I asked him to draw up for me a few notes of the facts

which he considered most interesting, as illustrative of its methods of

representing nature. I suggested to him, for an initiative subject, the

representation of water; because this is one of the natural objects

whose portraiture may most easily be made a test of treatment, for it is

one of universal interest, and of more closely similar aspect in all

parts of the world than any other. Waves, currents, and eddies are much

liker each other, everywhere, than either land or vegetation. Rivers and

lakes, indeed, differ widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from

the angry Northern ocean; but the Nile is liker the Danube than a knot

of Nubian palms is to a glade of the Black Forest; and the Mediterranean

is liker the Atlantic than the Campo Felice is like Solway moss.

Mr. Newton has accordingly most kindly furnished me with the following

data. One or two of the types which he describes have been already

noticed in the main text; but it is well that the reader should again

contemplate them in the position which they here occupy in a general

system. I recommend his special attention to Mr. Newton's definitions of

the terms "figurative" and "symbolic," as applied to art, in the

beginning of the paper.

* * * * *

In ancient art, that is to say, in the art of the Egyptian, Assyrian,

Greek, and Roman races, water is, for the most part, represented

conventionally rather than naturally.

By natural representation is here meant as just and perfect an imitation

of nature as the technical means of art will allow: on the other hand,

representation is said to be conventional, either when a confessedly

inadequate imitation is accepted in default of a better, or when

imitation is not attempted at all, and it is agreed that other modes of

representation, those by figures or by symbols, shall be its substitute

and equivalent.

In figurative representation there is always _impersonation_; the

sensible form, borrowed by the artist from organic life, is conceived to

be actuated by a will, and invested with such mental attributes as

constitute personality.

The sensible _symbol_, whether borrowed from organic or from inorganic

nature, is not a personification at all, but the conventional sign or

equivalent of some object or notion, to which it may perhaps bear no

visible resemblance, but with which the intellect or the imagination has

in some way associated it.

For instance, a city may be figuratively represented as a woman crowned

with towers; here the artist has selected for the expression of his idea

a human form animated with a will and motives of action analogous to

those of humanity generally. Or, again, as in Greek art, a bull may be a

figurative representation of a river, and, in the conception of the

artist, this animal form may contain, and be ennobled by, a human mind.

This is still impersonation; the form only in which personality is

embodied is changed.

Again, a dolphin may be used as a symbol of the sea; a man ploughing

with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman colony. In neither of

these instances is there impersonation. The dolphin is not invested,

like the figure of Neptune, with any of the attributes of the human

mind; it has animal instincts, but no will; it represents to us its

native element, only as a part may be taken for a whole.

Again, the man ploughing does not, like the turreted female figure,

_personify_, but rather _typifies_ the town, standing as the visible

representation of a real event, its first foundation. To our mental

perceptions, as to our bodily senses, this figure seems no more than

man; there is no blending of his personal nature with the impersonal

nature of the colony, no transfer of attributes from the one to the

other.

Though the conventionally imitative, the figurative, and the symbolic,

are three distinct kinds of representation, they are constantly combined

in one composition, as we shall see in the following examples, cited

from the art of successive races in chronological order.

In Egyptian art the general representation of water is the

conventionally imitative. In the British Museum are two frescoes from

tombs at Thebes, Nos. 177 and 170: the subject of the first of these is

an oblong pond, ground-plan and elevation being strangely confused in

the design. In this pond water is represented by parallel zigzag lines,

in which fish are swimming about. On the surface are birds and lotos

flowers; the herbage at the edge of the pond is represented by a border

of symmetrical fan-shaped flowers; the field beyond by rows of trees,

arranged round the sides of the pond at right angles to each other, and

in defiance of all laws of perspective.

[Illustration: Fig. LXXI.]

In the fresco, No. 170, we have the representation of a river with

papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag lines arranged

vertically and in parallel lines, so as to resemble herring-bone

masonry, thus. There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding, and in

both each fish is drawn very distinctly, not as it would appear to the

eye viewed through water. The mode of representing this element in

Egyptian painting is further abbreviated in their hieroglyphic writing,

where the sign of water is a zigzag line; this line is, so to speak, a

picture of water written in short hand. In the Egyptian Pantheon there

was but one aquatic deity, the god of the Nile; his type is, therefore,

the only figurative representation of water in Egyptian art. (Birch,

"Gallery of British Museum Antiquities," Pl. 13.) In Assyrian sculpture

we have very curious conventionally imitative representations of water.

On several of the friezes from Nimroud and Khorsabad, men are seen

crossing a river in boats, or in skins, accompanied by horses swimming

(see Layard, ii. p. 381). In these scenes water is represented by masses

of wavy lines somewhat resembling tresses of hair, and terminating in

curls or volutes; these wavy lines express the general character of a

deep and rapid current, like that of the Tigris. Fish are but sparingly

introduced, the idea of surface being sufficiently expressed by the

floating figures and boats. In the representation of these there is the

same want of perspective as in the Egyptian fresco which we have just

cited.

In the Assyrian Pantheon one aquatic deity has been discovered, the god

Dagon, whose human form terminates in a fish's tail. Of the character

and attributes of this deity we know but little.

The more abbreviated mode of representing water, the zigzag line, occurs

on the large silver coins with the type of a city or a war galley (see

Layard, ii. p. 386). These coins were probably struck in Assyria, not

long after the conquest of it by the Persians.

In Greek art the modes of representing water are far more varied. Two

conventional imitations, the wave moulding and the Mæander, are well

known. Both are probably of the most remote antiquity; both have been

largely employed as an architectural ornament, and subordinately as a

decoration of vases, costume, furniture and implements. In the wave

moulding we have a conventional representation of the small crisping

waves which break upon the shore of the Mediterranean, the sea of the

Greeks.

Their regular succession, and equality of force and volume, are

generalised in this moulding, while the minuter varieties which

distinguish one wave from another are merged in the general type. The

character of ocean waves is to be "for ever changing, yet the same for

ever;" it is this eternity of recurrence which the early artist has

expressed in this hieroglyphic.

With this profile representation of water may be compared the sculptured

waves out of which the head and arms of Hyperion are rising in the

pediment of the Parthenon (Elgin Room, No. (65) 91, Museum Marbles, vi.

pl. 1). Phidias has represented these waves like a mass of overlapping

tiles, thus generalising their rippling movement. In the Mæander pattern

the graceful curves of nature are represented by angles, as in the

Egyptian hieroglyphic of water: so again the earliest representation of

the labyrinth on the coins of the Cnossus is rectangular; on later coins

we find the curvilinear form introduced.

In the language of Greek mythography, the wave pattern and the Mæander

are sometimes used singly for the idea of water, but more frequently

combined with figurative representation. The number of aquatic deities

in the Greek Pantheon led to the invention of a great variety of

beautiful types. Some of these are very well known. Everybody is

familiar with the general form of Poseidon (Neptune), the Nereids, the

Nymphs and River Gods; but the modes in which these types were combined

with conventional imitation and with accessory symbols deserve careful

study, if we would appreciate the surpassing richness and beauty of the

language of art formed out of these elements.

This class of representations may be divided into two principal groups,

those relating to the sea, and those relating to fresh water.

The power of the ocean and the great features of marine scenery are

embodied in such types as Poseidon, Nereus and the Nereids, that is to

say, in human forms moving through the liquid element in chariots, or on

the back of dolphins, or who combine the human form with that of the

fish-like Tritons. The sea-monsters who draw these chariots are called

Hippocamps, being composed of the tail of a fish and the fore-part of a

horse, the legs terminating in web-feet: this union seems to express

speed and power under perfect control, such as would characterise the

movements of sea deities. A few examples have been here selected to show

how these types were combined with symbols and conventional imitation.

In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257, engraved (Lenormant et De

Witte, Mon. Céram., i. pl. 27), of which the subject is, Europa crossing

the sea on the back of the bull. In this design the sea is represented

by a variety of expedients. First, the swimming action of the bull

suggests the idea of the liquid medium through which he moves. Behind

him stands Nereus, his staff held perpendicularly in his hand; the top

of his staff comes nearly to the level of the bull's back, and is

probably meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards the

surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle depth is

another dolphin; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and the bottom is

indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are two echini.

On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archéol., iii. pl. 50), we

have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the fulness of details

with which it is made out.

This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in feeling,

that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography now under

consideration. The mosaic lines the floor and sides of a bath, and, as

was commonly the case in the baths of the ancients, serves as a

figurative representation of the water it contained.

On the sides are hippocamps, figures riding on dolphins, and islands on

which fishermen stand; on the floor are fish, crabs, and shrimps.

These, as in the vase with Europa, indicate the bottom of the sea: the

same symbols of the submarine world appear on many other ancient

designs. Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon upheaves the island of Cos

to overwhelm the Giant Polydotes, the island is represented as an

immense mass of rock; the parts which have been under water are

indicated by a dolphin, a shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water

by a goat and a serpent (Lenormant et De Witte, i., tav. 5).

Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the types, for

instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be interpreted without

being viewed in relation to the whole context of mythography to which

they belong. If we find, for example, on one coin of Tarentum a shell,

on another a dolphin, on a third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder

of the town, riding on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this

latter group expresses the idea of the town itself and its position on

the coast, then we know the two former types to be but portions of the

greater design, having been detached from it, as we may detach words

from sentences.

The study of the fuller and clearer examples, such as we have cited

above, enables us to explain many more compendious forms of expression.

We have, for instance, on coins several representations of ancient

harbors.

Of these, the earliest occurs on the coins of Zancle, the modern Messina

in Sicily. The ancients likened the form of this harbor to a sickle, and

on the coins of the town we find a curved object, within the area of

which is a dolphin. On this curve are four square elevations placed at

equal distances. It has been conjectured that these projections are

either towers or the large stones to which galleys were moored still to

be seen in ancient harbors (see Burgon, Numismatic Chronicle, iii. p.

40). With this archaic representation of a harbor may be compared some

examples of the Roman period. On a coin of Sept. Severus struck at

Corinth (Millingen, Sylloge of Uned. Coins, 1837, p. 57, Pl. II., No.

30) we have a female figure standing on a rock between two recumbent

male figures holding rudders. From an arch at the foot of the rock a

stream is flowing: this is a representation of the rock of the Acropolis

of Corinth: the female figure is a statue of Aphrodite, whose temple

surmounted the rock. The stream is the fountain Pirene. The two

recumbent figures are impersonations of the two harbors, Lechreum and

Cenchreia, between which Corinth was situated. Philostratus (Icon. ii.,

c. 16) describes a similar picture of the Isthmus between the two

harbors, one of which was in the form of a youth, the other of a nymph.

On another coin of Corinth we have one of the harbors in a semicircular

form, the whole arc being marked with small equal divisions, to denote

the archways under which the ancient galleys were drawn, _subductæ_; at

the either horn or extremity of the harbor is a temple; in the centre of

the mouth, a statue of Neptune. (Millingen, Médailles Inéd., Pl. II.,

No. 19. Compare also Millingen, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings, 1831,

pp. 50-61, Pl. IV., No. 15; Mionnet, Suppl. vii. p. 79, No. 246; and the

harbor of Ostium, on the large brass coins of Nero, in which there is a

representation of the Roman fleet and a reclining figure of Neptune.)

In vase pictures we have occasionally an attempt to represent water

naturally. On a vase in the British Museum (No. 785), of which the

subject is Ulysses and the Sirens, the Sea is rendered by wavy lines

drawn in black on a red ground, and something like the effect of light

playing on the surface of the water is given. On each side of the ship

are shapeless masses of rock on which the Sirens stand.

One of the most beautiful of the figurative representations of the sea

is the well-known type of Scylla. She has a beautiful body, terminating

in two barking dogs and two serpent tails. Sometimes drowning men, the

_rari nantes in gurgite vasto_, appear caught up in the coils of these

tails. Below are dolphins. Scylla generally brandishes a rudder to show

the manner in which she twists the course of ships. For varieties of her

type see Monum. dell'Inst. Archeol. Rom., iii. Tavv. 52-3.

The representations of fresh water may be arranged under the following

heads--rivers, lakes, fountains.

There are several figurative modes of representing rivers very

frequently employed in ancient mythography.

In the type which occurs earliest we have the human form combined with

that of the bull in several ways. On an archaic coin of Metapontum in

Lucania, (see frontispiece to Millingen, Ancient Coins of Greek Cities

and Kings,) the river Achelous is represented with the figure of a man

with a shaggy beard and bull's horns and ears. On a vase of the best

period of Greek art (Brit. Mus. No. 789; Birch, Trans. Roy. Soc. of

Lit., New Series, Lond. 1843, i. p. 100) the same river is represented

with a satyr's head and long bull's horns on the forehead; his form,

human to the waist, terminates in a fish's tail; his hair falls down his

back; his beard is long and shaggy. In this type we see a combination of

the three forms separately enumerated by Sophocles, in the commencement

of the Trachiniæ.

[Greek: Achelôon legô,

os m' en trisin morphaisin exêtei patros,

phoitôn enargês auros allot' aiolos,

drakôn heliktos, allot' andreiô kytei

bouprôros, ek de daskiou geneiados

krounoi dierrhainonto krênaiou potou].

In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is united at the

waist with the shoulders of a bull's body, in which it terminates. This

occurs on an early vase. (Brit. Mus., No. 452.) On the coins of Oeniadæ

in Acarnia, and on those of Ambracia, all of the period after Alexander

the Great, the Achelous has a bull's body, and head with a human face.

In this variety of the type the human element is almost absorbed, as in

the first variety cited above, the coin of Metapontum, the bull portion

of the type is only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears to

the human head. On the analogy between these, varieties in the type of

the Achelous and those under which the metamorphoses of the marine

goddess Thetis are represented, see Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb. ii. pp.

106-113. It is probable that, in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and

also of the Achelous, the singular combinations and transformations are

intended to express the changeful nature of the element water.

Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are represented by

this combination of the bull and human form, which maybe called, for

convenience, the Androtauric type. On the coins of Sicily, of the

archaic and also of the finest period of art, rivers are most usually

represented by a youthful male figure, with small budding horns; the

hair has the lank and matted form which characterises aquatic deities in

Greek mythography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the

head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always represented

standing, never reclining.

The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium, in Magna

Græcia, has been considered, with great probability, a representation of

this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which are of a very early period,

the head of the bull is turned round; on those of Thurium, he stoops his

head, butting: the first of these actions has been thought to symbolise

the winding course of the river, the second, its headlong current. On

the coins of Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the

adjunct of dolphins and other fish in the exergue of the coin. The

ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or pebbles. This

probably represents the river bank. Two bulls' head occur on the coins

of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Burgon that

the two rivers of the place are expressed under this type.

The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclining

position, though probably not so much employed in earlier Greek art as

the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar to us, from its

subsequent adoption in Roman mythography. The earliest example we have

of a reclining river-god is in the figure in the Elgin Room commonly

called the Ilissus, but more probably the Cephissus. This occupied one

angle in the western pediment of the Parthenon; the other Athenian

river, the Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe being represented by a

male and female figure in the opposite angle; this group, now destroyed,

is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678.

It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition first led

the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position. The head of

the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether he had bull's

horns, like the Sicilian figures already described. His form is

youthful, in the folds of the drapery behind him there is a flow like

that of waves, but the idea of water is not suggested by any other

symbol. When we compare this figure with that of the Nile (Visconti,

Mus. Pio Clem., i., Pl. 38), and the figure of the Tiber in the Louvre,

both of which are of the Roman period, we see how in these later types

the artist multiplied symbols and accessories, ingrafting them on the

original simple type of the river-god, as it was conceived by Phidias in

the figure of the Ilissus. The Nile is represented as a colossal bearded

figure reclining. At his side is a cornucopia, full of the vegetable

produce of the Egyptian soil. Round his body are sixteen naked boys, who

represent the sixteen cubits, the height to which the river rose in a

favorable year. The statue is placed on a basement divided into three

compartments, one above another. In the uppermost of these, waves are

flowing over in one great sheet from the side of the river-god. In the

other two compartments are the animals and plants of the river; the

bas-reliefs on this basement are, in fact, a kind of abbreviated

symbolic panorama of the Nile.

The Tiber is represented in a very similar manner. On the base are, in

two compartments, scenes taken from the early Roman myths; flocks,

herds, and other objects on the banks of the river. (Visconti, Mus. P.

Cl. i., Pl. 39; Millin, Galerie Mythol., i. p. 77, Pl. 74, Nos. 304,

308.)

In the types of the Greek coins of Camarina, we find two interesting

representations of Lakes. On the obverse of one of these we have, within

a circle of the wave pattern, a male head, full face, with dishevelled

hair, and with a dolphin on either side; on the reverse a female figure

sailing on a swan, below which a wave moulding, and above, a dolphin.

On another coin the swan type of the reverse is associated with the

youthful head of a river-god, inscribed "Hipparis" on the obverse. On

some smaller coins we have the swan flying over the rippling waves,

which are represented by the wave moulding. When we examine the chart of

Sicily, made by the Admiralty survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a

lake through which the river Hipparis flows.

We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina represented both

their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan flying over the

waves would represent a lake; the figure associated with it being no

doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place: the head, in a circle of

wave pattern, may express that part of the river which flows through the

lake.

Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issuing from a

lion's head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., taf.

CXXXIV.), where Hercules stands, receiving a shower-bath from a hot

spring at Thermæ in Sicily. On the coins of Syracuse the fountain

Arethusa is represented by a female head seen to the front; the flowing

lines of her dishevelled hair suggest, though they do not directly

imitate, the bubbling action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which

it rises is symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type

presents a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle

of wave pattern described above.

These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek

mythography. In the art of the Roman period, the same kind of figurative

and symbolic language is employed, but there is a constant tendency to

multiply accessories and details, as we have shown in the later

representations of harbors and river-gods cited above. In these crowded

compositions the eye is fatigued and distracted by the quantity it has

to examine; the language of art becomes more copious but less terse and

emphatic, and addresses itself to minds far less intelligent than the

refined critics who were the contemporaries of Phidias.

Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining male figures,

generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in their hands, and

leaning on urns from which water is flowing. On the coins of many Syrian

cities, struck in imperial times, the city is represented by a turreted

female figure seated on rocks, and resting her feet on the shoulder of a

youthful male figure, who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms,

and who is sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Müller

(Denkmäler d. A. Kunst, i., taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind

in the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins.

On the column of Trajan there occur many rude representations of the

Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in their military

expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured wavy lines, in which

boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli, Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4) this

rude conventional imitation is combined with a figure. In a recess in

the river bank is a reclining river-god, terminating at the waist. This

is either meant for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the

river, and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have

here figurative representation blended with conventional imitation.

On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav. 15) a storm of

rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius, who has a vast

outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the Townley collection, in

the British Museum, is a Roman helmet found at Ribchester in Lancashire,

with a mask or vizor attached. The helmet is richly embossed with

figures in a battle scene; round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair

in the forehead is so treated as to give the idea of waves washing the

base of the turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of

a town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great battle

was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant. London, iv., Pl.

1-4).

In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori, Inscript.

Ant. Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female figures, one of whom is

certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the earth; another, Thetis, or the

sea; the centre of the three seems to represent Aphrodite associated, as

on the coins of Camarina, with the element of fresh water.

This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an arched veil.

Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows a tall water plant,

and below the swan other water plants, and a stork seated on a _hydria_,

or pitcher, from which water is flowing. The swan, the stork, the water

plants, and the _hydria_ must all be regarded as symbols of fresh water,

the latter emblem being introduced to show that the element is fit for

the use of man.

Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures of nymphs

reclining with urns, or standing holding before them a large shell.

One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is the mosaic

of Palestrina (Barthélemy, in Bartoli, Peint. Antiques) which may be

described as a kind of rude panorama of some district of Upper Egypt, a

bird's-eye view, half man, half picture, in which the details are

neither adjusted to a scale, nor drawn according to perspective, but

crowded together, as they would be in an ancient bas-relief.

22. ARABIAN ORNAMENTATION.

I do not mean what I have here said of the Inventive power of the Arab

to be understood as in the least applying to the detestable

ornamentation of the Alhambra.[105] The Alhambra is no more

characteristic of Arab work, than Milan Cathedral is of Gothic: it is a

late building, a work of the Spanish dynasty in its last decline, and

its ornamentation is fit for nothing but to be transferred to patterns

of carpets or bindings of books, together with their marbling, and

mottling, and other mechanical recommendations. The Alhambra ornament

has of late been largely used in shop-fronts, to the no small detriment

of Regent Street and Oxford Street.

23. VARIETIES OF CHAMFER.

Let B A C, Fig. LXXII., be the original angle of the wall. Inscribe

within it a circle, _p_ Q N _p_, of the size of the bead required,

touching A B, A C, in _p_, _p_; join _p_, _p_, and draw B C parallel to

it, touching the circle.

Then the lines B C, _p p_ are the limits of the possible chamfers

constructed with curves struck either from centre A, as the line Q _q_,

N _d_, _r u_, _g c_, &c., or from any other point chosen as a centre in

the direction Q A produced: and also of all chamfers in straight lines,

as _a b_, _e f_. There are, of course, an infinite number of chamfers to

be struck between B C and _p p_, from every point in Q A produced to

infinity; thus we have infinity multiplied into infinity to express the

number of possible chamfers of this species, which are peculiarly

Italian chamfers; together with another singly infinite group of the

straight chamfers, _a b_, _e f_, &c., of which the one formed by the

line _a b_, passing through the centre of the circle, is the universal

early Gothic chamfer of Venice.

Again. Either on the line A C, or on any other lines A _l_ or A _m_,

radiating from A, any number of centres may be taken, from which, with

any radii not greater than the distance between such points and Q, an

infinite number of curves may be struck, such as _t u_, _r s_, N _n_

(all which are here struck from centres on the line A C). These lines

represent the great class of the northern chamfers, of which the number

is infinity raised to its fourth power, but of which the curve N _n_

(for northern) represents the average condition; the shallower chamfers

of the same group, _r s_, _t u_, &c., occurring often in Italy. The

lines _r u_, _t u_, and _a b_ may be taken approximating to the most

frequent conditions of the southern chamfer.

[Illustration: Fig. LXXII.]

It is evident that the chords of any of these curves will give a

relative group of rectilinear chamfers, occurring both in the North and

South; but the rectilinear chamfers, I think, invariably fall within the

line Q C, and are either parallel with it, or inclined to A C at an

angle greater than A C Q, and often perpendicular to it; but never

inclined to it at an angle less than A C Q.

24. RENAISSANCE BASES.

The following extract from my note-book refers also to some features of

late decoration of shafts.

"The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most interesting examples of

Renaissance work in Venice. Its fluted pillars are surrounded each by a

wreath, one of vine, another of laurel, another of oak, not indeed

arranged with the fantasticism of early Gothic; but, especially the

laurel, reminding one strongly of the laurel sprays, powerful as well as

beautiful, of Veronese and Tintoret. Their stems are curiously and

richly interlaced--the last vestige of the Byzantine wreathed work--and

the vine-leaves are ribbed on the surfaces, I think, nearly as finely as

those of the Noah,[106] though more injured by time. The capitals are

far the richest Renaissance in Venice, less corrupt and more masculine

in plan, than any other, and truly suggestive of support, though of

course showing the tendency to error in this respect; and finally, at

the angles of the pure Attic bases, on the square plinth, are set

couchant animals; one, an elephant four inches high, very curiously and

cleverly cut, and all these details worked with a spirit, finish, fancy,

and affection quite worthy of the middle ages. But they have all the

marked fault of being utterly detached from the architecture. The

wreaths round the columns look as if they would drop off the next

moment, and the animals at the bases produce exactly the effect of mice

who had got there by accident: one feels them ridiculously diminutive,

and utterly useless."

The effect of diminutiveness is, I think, chiefly owing to there being

no other groups of figures near them, to accustom the eye to the

proportion, and to the needless choice of the largest animals,

elephants, bears, and lions, to occupy a position so completely

insignificant, and to be expressed on so contemptible a scale,--not in a

bas-relief or pictorial piece of sculpture, but as independent figures.

The whole building is a most curious illustration of the appointed fate

of the Renaissance architects,--to caricature whatever they imitated,

and misapply whatever they learned.

25. ROMANIST DECORATION OF BASES.

I have spoken above (Appendix 12) of the way in which the Roman Catholic

priests everywhere suffer their churches to be desecrated. But the worst

instances I ever saw of sacrilege and brutality, daily permitted in the

face of all men, were the uses to which the noble base of St. Mark's was

put, when I was last in Venice. Portions of nearly all cathedrals may be

found abandoned to neglect; but this base of St. Mark's is in no obscure

position. Full fronting the western sun--crossing the whole breadth of

St. Mark's Place--the termination of the most noble square in the

world--the centre of the most noble city--its purple marbles were, in

the winter of 1849, the customary _gambling tables_ of the idle children

of Venice; and the parts which flank the Great Entrance, that very

entrance where "Barbarossa flung his mantle off," were the counters of a

common bazaar for children's toys, carts, dolls, and small pewter spoons

and dishes, German caricatures and books of the Opera, mixed with those

of the offices of religion; the caricatures being fastened with twine

round the porphyry shafts of the church. One Sunday, the 24th of

February, 1850, the book-stall being somewhat more richly laid out than

usual, I noted down the titles of a few of the books in the order in

which they lay, and I give them below. The irony conveyed by the

juxtaposition of the three in Italics appears too shrewd to be

accidental; but the fact was actually so.

Along the edge of the white plinth were a row of two kinds of books,

Officium Beatæ Virg. M.; and Officium Hebdomadæ sanctæ, juxta Formam

Missalis et Breviarii Romani sub Urbano VIII. correcti.

Behind these lay, side by side, the following:

Don Desiderio. Dramma Giocoso per Musica.

Breve Esposizione della Carattere di vera Religione.

On the top of this latter, keeping its leaves open,

La Figlia del Reggimento. Melodramma comica.

_Carteggio di Madama la Marchesa di Pompadour, ossia

raccolta di Lettere scritte della Medesima._

_Istruzioni di morale Condotta per le Figlie._

_Francesca di Rimini. Dramma per Musica._

Then, a little farther on, after a mass of plays:--

Orazioni a Gesu Nazareno e a Maria addolorata.

Semiramide; Melodramma tragico da rappresentarsi nel Gran Teatro

il Fenice.

Modo di orare per l'Acquisto del S. Giubileo, conceduto a tutto il

Mondo Cattolico da S. S. Gregorio XVI.

Le due illustre Rivali, Melodramma in Tre Atti, da rappresentarsi

nel nuovo Gran Teatro il Fenice.

Il Cristiano secondo il Cuore di Gesu, per la Pratica delle sue

Virtu.

Traduzione dell'Idioma Italiana.

La chiava Chinese; Commedia del Sig. Abate Pietro Chiari.

La Pelarina; Intermezzo de Tre Parti per Musica.

Il Cavaliero e la Dama; Commedia in Tre Atti in Prosa.

I leave these facts without comment. But this being the last piece of

Appendix I have to add to the present volume, I would desire to close

its pages with a question to my readers--a statistical question, which,

I doubt not, is being accurately determined for us all elsewhere, and

which, therefore, it seems to me, our time would not be wasted in

determining for ourselves.

There has now been peace between England and the continental powers

about thirty-five years, and during that period the English have visited

the continent at the rate of many thousands a year, staying there, I

suppose, on the average, each two or three months; nor these an inferior

kind of English, but the kind which ought to be the best--the noblest

born, the best taught, the richest in time and money, having more

leisure, knowledge, and power than any other portion of the nation.

These, we might suppose, beholding, as they travelled, the condition of

the states in which the Papal religion is professed, and being, at the

same time, the most enlightened section of a great Protestant nation,

would have been animated with some desire to dissipate the Romanist

errors, and to communicate to others the better knowledge which they

possessed themselves. I doubt not but that He who gave peace upon the

earth, and gave it by the hand of England, expected this much of her,

and has watched every one of the millions of her travellers as they

crossed the sea, and kept count for him of his travelling expenses, and

of their distribution, in a manner of which neither the traveller nor

his courier were at all informed. I doubt not, I say, but that such

accounts have been literally kept for all of us, and that a day will

come when they will be made clearly legible to us, and when we shall see

added together, on one side of the account book, a great sum, the

certain portion, whatever it may be, of this thirty-five years'

spendings of the rich English, accounted for in this manner:--

To wooden spoons, nut-crackers, and jewellery, bought at Geneva, and

elsewhere among the Alps, so much; to shell cameos and bits of mosaic

bought at Rome, so much; to coral horns and lava brooches bought at

Naples, so much; to glass beads at Venice, and gold filigree at Genoa,

so much; to pictures, and statues, and ornaments, everywhere, so much;

to avant-couriers and extra post-horses, for show and magnificence, so

much; to great entertainments and good places for seeing sights, so

much; to ball-dresses and general vanities, so much. This, I say, will

be the sum on one side of the book; and on the other will be written:

To the struggling Protestant Churches of France, Switzerland, and

Piedmont, so much.

Had we not better do this piece of statistics for ourselves, in time?

FOOTNOTES:

[93] Ed. Venetis, 1758, Lib. I.

[94] Compare Appendix 12.

[95] L'Artiste en Bâtiments, par Louis Berteaux: Dijon, 1848. My

printer writes at the side of the page a note, which I insert with

thanks:--"This is not the first attempt at a French order. The

writer has a Treatise by Sebastian Le Clerc, a great man in his

generation, which contains a Roman order, a Spanish order, which the

inventor appears to think very grand, and a _new_ French order

nationalised by the Gallic cock crowing and clapping its wings in

the capital."

[96] The lower group in Plate XVII.

[97] One of the upper stories is also in Gally Knight's plate

represented as merely banded, and otherwise plain: it is, in

reality, covered with as delicate inlaying as the rest. The whole

front is besides out of proportion, and out of perspective, at once;

and yet this work is referred to as of authority, by our architects.

Well may our architecture fall from its place among the fine arts,

as it is doing rapidly; nearly all our works of value being devoted

to the Greek architecture, which is _utterly useless_ to us--or

worse. _One_ most noble book, however, has been dedicated to our

English abbeys,--Mr. E. Sharpe's "Architectural Parallels"--almost a

model of what I should like to see done for the Gothic of all

Europe.

[98] Except in the single passage "tell it unto the Church," which

is simply the _extension_ of what had been commanded before, i.e.,

tell the fault first "between thee and him," then taking "with thee

one or two more," then, to all Christian men capable of hearing the

cause: if he refuse to hear their common voice, "let him be unto

thee as a heathen man and publican:" (But consider how Christ

treated both.)

[99] One or two remarks on this subject, some of which I had

intended to have inserted here, and others in Appendix 5, I have

arranged in more consistent order, and published in a separate

pamphlet, "Notes on the Construction of Sheep-folds," for the

convenience of readers interested in other architecture than that of

Venetian palaces.

[100] Not, however, by Johnson's _testimony_: Vide Adventurer, No.

39. "Such operations as required neither celerity nor strength,--the

low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, _digesting

dictionaries_, or accumulating compilations."

[101] We have done so--theoretically; just as one would reason on

the human form from the bones outwards: but the Architect of human

form frames all at once--bone and flesh.

[102] Of course mere multiplicability, as of an engraving, does not

diminish the intrinsic value of the work; and if the casts of

sculpture could be as sharp as the sculpture itself, they would hold

to it the relation of value which engravings hold to paintings. And,

if we choose to have our churches all alike, we might cast them all

in bronze--we might actually coin churches, and have mints of

Cathedrals. It would be worthy of the spirit of the century to put

milled edges for mouldings, and have a popular currency of religious

subjects: a new cast of nativities every Christmas. I have not heard

this contemplated, however, and I speak, therefore, only of the

results which I believe are contemplated, as attainable by mere

mechanical applications of glass and iron.

[103] I shall often have occasion to write measures in the current

text, therefore the reader will kindly understand that whenever they

are thus written, 2 ,, 2, with double commas between, the first

figures stand for English feet, the second for English inches.

[104] I cannot suffer this volume to close without also thanking my

kind friend, Mr. Rawdon Brown, for help given me in a thousand ways

during my stay in Venice: but chiefly for his direction to passages

elucidatory of my subject in the MSS. of St. Mark's library.

[105] I have not seen the building itself, but Mr. Owen Jones's work

may, I suppose, be considered as sufficiently representing it for

all purposes of criticism.

[106] The sculpture of the Drunkenness of Noah on the Ducal Palace,

of which we shall have much to say hereafter.

* * * * *

CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.

Footnote [31] 'Greek porticos' changed to 'Greek porticoes'.

Page 42: '§ XL. It is not' corrected to '§ XI. It is not'.

Page 161: Added 'r' to 'timbe' in 'long stone or piece of timbe'.

Page 180: 'XII. 2. Inlet' corrected to '§ XII. 2. Inlet'.

Page 237: 'rererence' changed to 'reference' in 'How is ornament to be

treated with rererence'.

Page 247: '§ XIV. Now this is' corrected to '§ XIX. Now this is'.

Page 273: 'no' changed to 'not' in 'a peculiar look, which I can no

otherwise describe'.

Page 333: comma changed to period at the paragraph ending with

'separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly definable'.

Page 370: 'two-thsrds' corrected to 'two-thirds'.

Page 397: 'bodly' corrected to 'bodily' in 'merely through the channel

of the bodly dexterities'.

Page 398: 'calld' corrected to 'called' in 'Men engaged in the practice

of these are calld artizans'.

Page 401: 'necesary' corrected to 'necessary' in 'as Rubens was of that

necesary for his'.

Page 406: Space placement corrected in 'I found it a sugly at last' to

'I found it as ugly at last'.

Page 423: 'Milligen' corrected to 'Millingen' in 'Compare also Milligen,

Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings'.

Page 433: space between 'rappresent' and 'arsi' removed in 'Tre Atti, da

rappresent arsi'.

Page 433: 'del' corrected to 'dell' in 'Traduzione del' Idioma

Italiana'.