CHAPTER II.

THE LAMP OF TRUTH.

I. There is a marked likeness between the virtues of man and the

enlightenment of the globe he inhabits--the same diminishing gradation

in vigor up to the limits of their domains, the same essential

separation from their contraries--the same twilight at the meeting of

the two: a something wider belt than the line where the world rolls into

night, that strange twilight of the virtues; that dusky debateable land,

wherein zeal becomes impatience, and temperance becomes severity, and

justice becomes cruelty, and faith superstition, and each and all vanish

into gloom.

Nevertheless, with the greater number of them, though their dimness

increases gradually, we may mark the moment of their sunset; and,

happily, may turn the shadow back by the way by which it had gone down:

but for one, the line of the horizon is irregular and undefined; and

this, too, the very equator and girdle of them all--Truth; that only one

of which there are no degrees, but breaks and rents continually; that

pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pillar; that golden and narrow line,

which the very powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy

and prudence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage

overshadows with his shield, imagination covers with her wings, and

charity dims with her tears. How difficult must the maintenance of that

authority be, which, while it has to restrain the hostility of all the

worst principles of man, has also to restrain the disorders of his

best--which is continually assaulted by the one, and betrayed by the

other, and which regards with the same severity the lightest and the

boldest violations of its law! There are some faults slight in the sight

of love, some errors slight in the estimate of wisdom; but truth

forgives no insult, and endures no stain.

We do not enough consider this; nor enough dread the slight and

continual occasions of offence against her. We are too much in the habit

of looking at falsehood in its darkest associations, and through the

color of its worst purposes. That indignation which we profess to feel

at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. We resent

calumny, hypocrisy and treachery, because they harm us, not because they

are untrue. Take the detraction and the mischief from the untruth, and

we are little offended by it; turn it into praise, and we may be pleased

with it. And yet it is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest

sum of mischief in the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt

only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie;

the amiable fallacy; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident

lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partizan, the merciful lie

of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast

that black mystery over humanity, through which any man who pierces, we

thank as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert; happy in that

the thirst for truth still remains with us, even when we have wilfully

left the fountains of it.

It would be well if moralists less frequently confused the greatness of

a sin with its unpardonableness. The two characters are altogether

distinct. The greatness of a fault depends partly on the nature of the

person against whom it is committed, partly upon the extent of its

consequences. Its pardonableness depends, humanly speaking, on the

degree of temptation to it. One class of circumstances determines the

weight of the attaching punishment; the other, the claim to remission of

punishment: and since it is not easy for men to estimate the relative

weight, nor possible for them to know the relative consequences, of

crime, it is usually wise in them to quit the care of such nice

measurements, and to look to the other and clearer condition of

culpability; esteeming those faults worst which are committed under

least temptation. I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious

and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity; yet it seems

to me, that the shortest way to check the darker forms of deceit is to

set watch more scrupulous against those which have mingled, unregarded

and unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all.

Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and

another as unintended. Cast them all aside: they may be light and

accidental; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, for all

that; and it is better that our hearts should be swept clean of them,

without over care as to which is largest or blackest. Speaking truth is

like writing fair, and comes only by practice; it is less a matter of

will than of habit, and I doubt if any occasion can be trivial which

permits the practice and formation of such a habit. To speak and act

truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps

as meritorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty; and it is

a strange thought how many men there are, as I trust, who would hold to

it at the cost of fortune or life, for one who would hold to it at the

cost of a little daily trouble. And seeing that of all sin there is,

perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the Almighty, no one more

"wanting the good of virtue and of being," than this of lying, it is

surely a strange insolence to fall into the foulness of it on light or

on no temptation, and surely becoming an honorable man to resolve that,

whatever semblances or fallacies the necessary course of his life may

compel him to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the serenity of his

voluntary actions, nor diminish the reality of his chosen delights.

II. If this be just and wise for truth's sake, much more is it necessary

for the sake of the delights over which she has influence. For, as I

advocated the expression of the Spirit of Sacrifice in the acts and

pleasures of men, not as if thereby those acts could further the cause

of religion, but because most assuredly they might therein be infinitely

ennobled themselves, so I would have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear

in the hearts of our artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the truthful

practice of handicrafts could far advance the cause of truth, but

because I would fain see the handicrafts themselves urged by the spurs

of chivalry: and it is, indeed, marvellous to see what power and

universality there is in this single principle, and how in the

consulting or forgetting of it lies half the dignity or decline of every

art and act of man. I have before endeavored to show its range and power

in painting; and I believe a volume, instead of a chapter, might be

written on its authority over all that is great in architecture. But I

must be content with the force of instances few and familiar, believing

that the occasions of its manifestation may be more easily discovered by

a desire to be true, than embraced by an analysis of truth.

Only it is very necessary in the outset to mark clearly wherein consists

the essence of fallacy as distinguished from supposition.

III. For it might be at first thought that the whole kingdom of

imagination was one of deception also. Not so: the action of the

imagination is a voluntary summoning of the conceptions of things absent

or impossible; and the pleasure and nobility of the imagination partly

consist in its knowledge and contemplation of them as such, i.e. in the

knowledge of their actual absence or impossibility at the moment of

their apparent presence or reality. When the imagination deceives it

becomes madness. It is a noble faculty so long as it confesses its own

ideality; when it ceases to confess this, it is insanity. All the

difference lies in the fact of the confession, in there being _no_

deception. It is necessary to our rank as spiritual creatures, that we

should be able to invent and to behold what is not; and to our rank as

moral creatures that we should know and confess at the same time that

it is not.

IV. Again, it might be thought, and has been thought, that the whole art

of painting is nothing else than an endeavor to deceive. Not so: it is,

on the contrary, a statement of certain facts, in the clearest possible

way. For instance: I desire to give an account of a mountain or of a

rock; I begin by telling its shape. But words will not do this

distinctly, and I draw its shape, and say, "This was its shape." Next: I

would fain represent its color; but words will not do this either, and I

dye the paper, and say, "This was its color." Such a process may be

carried on until the scene appears to exist, and a high pleasure may be

taken in its apparent existence. This is a communicated act of

imagination, but no lie. The lie can consist only in an _assertion_ of

its existence (which is never for one instant made, implied, or

believed), or else in false statements of forms and colors (which are,

indeed, made and believed to our great loss, continually). And observe,

also, that so degrading a thing is deception in even the approach and

appearance of it, that all painting which even reaches the mark of

apparent realization, is degraded in so doing. I have enough insisted on

this point in another place.

V. The violations of truth, which dishonor poetry and painting, are thus

for the most part confined to the treatment of their subjects. But in

architecture another and a less subtle, more contemptible, violation of

truth is possible; a direct falsity of assertion respecting the nature

of material, or the quantity of labor. And this is, in the full sense of

the word, wrong; it is as truly deserving of reprobation as any other

moral delinquency; it is unworthy alike of architects and of nations;

and it has been a sign, wherever it has widely and with toleration

existed, of a singular debasement of the arts; that it is not a sign of

worse than this, of a general want of severe probity, can be accounted

for only by our knowledge of the strange separation which has for some

centuries existed between the arts and all other subjects of human

intellect, as matters of conscience. This withdrawal of

conscientiousness from among the faculties concerned with art, while it

has destroyed the arts themselves, has also rendered in a measure

nugatory the evidence which otherwise they might have presented

respecting the character of the respective nations among whom they have

been cultivated; otherwise, it might appear more than strange that a

nation so distinguished for its general uprightness and faith as the

English, should admit in their architecture more of pretence,

concealment, and deceit, than any other of this or of past time.

They are admitted in thoughtlessness, but with fatal effect upon the art

in which they are practised. If there were no other causes for the

failures which of late have marked every great occasion for

architectural exertion, these petty dishonesties would be enough to

account for all. It is the first step and not the least, towards

greatness to do away with these; the first, because so evidently and

easily in our power. We may not be able to command good, or beautiful,

or inventive architecture; but we _can_ command an honest architecture:

the meagreness of poverty may be pardoned, the sternness of utility

respected; but what is there but scorn for the meanness of deception?

VI. Architectural Deceits are broadly to be considered under three

heads:--

1st. The suggestion of a mode of structure or support, other than the

true one; as in pendants of late Gothic roofs.

2d. The painting of surfaces to represent some other material than that

of which they actually consist (as in the marbling of wood), or the

deceptive representation of sculptured ornament upon them.

3d. The use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind.

Now, it may be broadly stated, that architecture will be noble exactly

in the degree in which all these false expedients are avoided.

Nevertheless, there are certain degrees of them, which, owing to their

frequent usage, or to other causes, have so far lost the nature of

deceit as to be admissible; as, for instance, gilding, which is in

architecture no deceit, because it is therein not understood for gold;

while in jewellery it is a deceit, because it is so understood, and

therefore altogether to be reprehended. So that there arise, in the

application of the strict rules of right, many exceptions and niceties

of conscience; which let us as briefly as possible examine.

VII. 1st. Structural Deceits. I have limited these to the determined and

purposed suggestion of a mode of support other than the true one. The

architect is not _bound_ to exhibit structure; nor are we to complain of

him for concealing it, any more than we should regret that the outer

surfaces of the human frame conceal much of its anatomy; nevertheless,

that building will generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye

discovers the great secrets of its structure, as an animal form does,

although from a careless observer they may be concealed. In the vaulting

of a Gothic roof it is no deceit to throw the strength into the ribs of

it, and make the intermediate vault a mere shell. Such a structure would

be presumed by an intelligent observer, the first time he saw such a

roof; and the beauty of its traceries would be enhanced to him if they

confessed and followed the lines of its main strength. If, however, the

intermediate shell were made of wood instead of stone, and whitewashed

to look like the rest,--this would, of course, be direct deceit, and

altogether unpardonable.

There is, however, a certain deception necessarily occurring in Gothic

architecture, which relates, not to the points, but to the manner, of

support. The resemblance in its shafts and ribs to the external

relations of stems and branches, which has been the ground of so much

foolish speculation, necessarily induces in the mind of the spectator a

sense or belief of a correspondent internal structure; that is to say,

of a fibrous and continuous strength from the root into the limbs, and

an elasticity communicated _upwards,_ sufficient for the support of the

ramified portions. The idea of the real conditions, of a great weight of

ceiling thrown upon certain narrow, jointed lines, which have a tendency

partly to be crushed, and partly to separate and be pushed outwards, is

with difficulty received; and the more so when the pillars would be, if

unassisted, too slight for the weight, and are supported by external

flying buttresses, as in the apse of Beauvais, and other such

achievements of the bolder Gothic. Now, there is a nice question of

conscience in this, which we shall hardly settle but by considering

that, when the mind is informed beyond the possibility of mistake as to

the true nature of things, the affecting it with a contrary impression,

however distinct, is no dishonesty, but on the contrary, a legitimate

appeal to the imagination. For instance, the greater part of the

happiness which we have in contemplating clouds, results from the

impression of their having massive, luminous, warm, and mountain-like

surfaces; and our delight in the sky frequently depends upon our

considering it as a blue vault. But we know the contrary, in both

instances; we know the cloud to be a damp fog, or a drift of snow

flakes; and the sky to be a lightless abyss. There is, therefore, no

dishonesty, while there is much delight, in the irresistibly contrary

impression. In the same way, so long as we see the stones and joints,

and are not deceived as to the points of support in any piece of

architecture, we may rather praise than regret the dextrous artifices

which compel us to feel as if there were fibre in its shafts and life in

its branches. Nor is even the concealment of the support of the external

buttress reprehensible, so long as the pillars are not sensibly

inadequate to their duty. For the weight of a roof is a circumstance of

which the spectator generally has no idea, and the provisions for it,

consequently, circumstances whose necessity or adaptation he could not

understand. It is no deceit, therefore, when the weight to be borne is

necessarily unknown, to conceal also the means of bearing it, leaving

only to be perceived so much of the support as is indeed adequate to the

weight supposed. For the shafts do, indeed, bear as much as they are

ever imagined to bear, and the system of added support is no more, as a

matter of conscience, to be exhibited, than, in the human or any other

form, mechanical provisions for those functions which are themselves

unperceived.

But the moment that the conditions of weight are comprehended, both

truth and feeling require that the conditions of support should be also

comprehended. Nothing can be worse, either as judged by the taste or the

conscience, than affectedly inadequate supports--suspensions in air,

and other such tricks and vanities. Mr. Hope wisely reprehends, for this

reason, the arrangement of the main piers of St. Sophia at

Constantinople. King's College Chapel, Cambridge, is a piece of

architectural juggling, if possible still more to be condemned, because

less sublime.

VIII. With deceptive concealments of structure are to be classed, though

still more blameable, deceptive assumptions of it--the introduction of

members which should have, or profess to have, a duty, and have none.

One of the most general instances of this will be found in the form of

the flying buttress in late Gothic. The use of that member is, of

course, to convey support from one pier to another when the plan of the

building renders it necessary or desirable that the supporting masses

should be divided into groups, the most frequent necessity of this kind

arising from the intermediate range of chapels or aisles between the

nave or choir walls and their supporting piers. The natural, healthy,

and beautiful arrangement is that of a steeply sloping bar of stone,

sustained by an arch with its spandril carried farthest down on the

lowest side, and dying into the vertical of the outer pier; that pier

being, of course, not square, but rather a piece of wall set at right

angles to the supported walls, and, if need be, crowned by a pinnacle to

give it greater weight. The whole arrangement is exquisitely carried out

in the choir of Beauvais. In later Gothic the pinnacle became gradually

a decorative member, and was used in all places merely for the sake of

its beauty. There is no objection to this; it is just as lawful to build

a pinnacle for its beauty as a tower; but also the buttress became a

decorative member; and was used, first, where it was not wanted, and,

secondly, in forms in which it could be of no use, becoming a mere tie,

not between the pier and wall, but between the wall and the top of the

decorative pinnacle, thus attaching itself to the very point where its

thrust, if it made any, could not be resisted. The most flagrant

instance of this barbarism that I remember (though it prevails partially

in all the spires of the Netherlands), is the lantern of St. Ouen at

Rouen, where the pierced buttress, having an ogee curve, looks about as

much calculated to bear a thrust as a switch of willow; and the

pinnacles, huge and richly decorated, have evidently no work to do

whatsoever, but stand round the central tower, like four idle servants,

as they are--heraldic supporters, that central tower being merely a

hollow crown, which needs no more buttressing than a basket does. In

fact, I do not know anything more strange or unwise than the praise

lavished upon this lantern; it is one of the basest pieces of Gothic in

Europe; its flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms;[5]

and its entire plan and decoration resembling, and deserving little more

credit than, the burnt sugar ornaments of elaborate confectionery. There

are hardly any of the magnificent and serene constructions of the early

Gothic which have not, in the course of time, been gradually thinned and

pared away into these skeletons, which sometimes indeed, when their

lines truly follow the structure of the original masses, have an

interest like that of the fibrous framework of leaves from which the

substance has been dissolved, but which are usually distorted as well as

emaciated, and remain but the sickly phantoms and mockeries of things

that were; they are to true architecture what the Greek ghost was to the

armed and living frame; and the very winds that whistle through the

threads of them, are to the diapasoned echoes of the ancient walls, as

to the voice of the man was the pining of the spectre.[6]

IX. Perhaps the most fruitful source of these kinds of corruption which

we have to guard against in recent times, is one which, nevertheless,

comes in a "questionable shape," and of which it is not easy to

determine the proper laws and limits; I mean the use of iron. The

definition of the art of architecture, given in the first chapter, is

independent of its materials: nevertheless, that art having been, up to

the beginning of the present century, practised for the most part in

clay, stone, or wood, it has resulted that the sense of proportion and

the laws of structure have been based, the one altogether, the other in

great part, on the necessities consequent on the employment of those

materials; and that the entire or principal employment of metallic

framework would, therefore, be generally felt as a departure from the

first principles of the art. Abstractedly there appears no reason why

iron should not be used as well as wood; and the time is probably near

when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted

entirely to metallic construction. But I believe that the tendency of

all present sympathy and association is to limit the idea of

architecture to non-metallic work; and that not without reason. For

architecture being in its perfection the earliest, as in its elements it

is necessarily the first, of arts, will always precede, in any barbarous

nation, the possession of the science necessary either for the obtaining

or the management of iron. Its first existence and its earliest laws

must, therefore, depend upon the use of materials accessible in

quantity, and on the surface of the earth; that is to say, clay, wood,

or stone: and as I think it cannot but be generally felt that one of the

chief dignities of architecture is its historical use; and since the

latter is partly dependent on consistency of style, it will be felt

right to retain as far as may be, even in periods of more advanced

science, the materials and principles of earlier ages.

X. But whether this be granted me or not, the fact is, that every idea

respecting size, proportion, decoration, or construction, on which we

are at present in the habit of acting or judging, depends on

presupposition of such materials: and as I both feel myself unable to

escape the influence of these prejudices, and believe that my readers

will be equally so, it may be perhaps permitted to me to assume that

true architecture does not admit iron as a constructive material,[7] and

that such works as the cast-iron central spire of Rouen Cathedral, or

the iron roofs and pillars of our railway stations, and of some of our

churches, are not architecture at all. Yet it is evident that metals

may, and sometimes must, enter into the construction to a certain

extent, as nails in wooden architecture, and therefore as legitimately

rivets and solderings in stone; neither can we well deny to the Gothic

architect the power of supporting statues, pinnacles, or traceries by

iron bars; and if we grant this I do not see how we can help allowing

Brunelleschi his iron chain around the dome of Florence, or the builders

of Salisbury their elaborate iron binding of the central tower.[8] If,

however, we would not fall into the old sophistry of the grains of corn

and the heap, we must find a rule which may enable us to stop somewhere.

This rule is, I think, that metals may be used as a _cement_ but not as

a _support_. For as cements of other kinds are often so strong that the

stones may easier be broken than separated, and the wall becomes a solid

mass without for that reason losing the character of architecture, there

is no reason why, when a nation has obtained the knowledge and practice

of iron work, metal rods or rivets should not be used in the place of

cement, and establish the same or a greater strength and adherence,

without in any wise inducing departure from the types and system of

architecture before established; nor does it make any difference except

as to sightliness, whether the metal bands or rods so employed, be in

the body of the wall or on its exterior, or set as stays and

cross-bands; so only that the use of them be always and distinctly one

which might be superseded by mere strength of cement; as for instance if

a pinnacle or mullion be propped or tied by an iron band, it is evident

that the iron only prevents the separation of the stones by lateral

force, which the cement would have done, had it been strong enough. But

the moment that the iron in the least degree takes the place of the

stone, and acts by its resistance to crushing, and bears superincumbent

weight, or if it acts by its own weight as a counterpoise, and so

supersedes the use of pinnacles or buttresses in resisting a lateral

thrust, or if, in the form of a rod or girder, it is used to do what

wooden beams would have done as well, that instant the building ceases,

so far as such applications of metal extend, to be true architecture.

XI. The limit, however, thus determined, is an ultimate one, and it is

well in all things to be cautious how we approach the utmost limit of

lawfulness; so that, although the employment of metal within this limit

cannot be considered as destroying the very being and nature of

architecture, it will, if, extravagant and frequent, derogate from the

dignity of the work, as well as (which is especially to our present

point) from its honesty. For although the spectator is not informed as

to the quantity or strength of the cement employed, he will generally

conceive the stones of the building to be separable and his estimate of

the skill of the architect will be based in a great measure on his

supposition of this condition, and of the difficulties attendant upon

it: so that it is always more honorable, and it has a tendency to render

the style of architecture both more masculine and more scientific, to

employ stone and mortar simply as such, and to do as much as possible

with the weight of the one and the strength of the other, and rather

sometimes to forego a grace, or to confess a weakness, than attain the

one, or conceal the other, by means verging upon dishonesty.

Nevertheless, where the design is of such delicacy and slightness as, in

some parts of very fair and finished edifices, it is desirable that it

should be; and where both its completion and security are in a measure

dependent on the use of metal, let not such use be reprehended; so only

that as much is done as may be, by good mortar and good masonry; and no

slovenly workmanship admitted through confidence in the iron helps; for

it is in this license as in that of wine, a man may use it for his

infirmities, but not for his nourishment.

XII. And, in order to avoid an over use of this liberty, it would be

well to consider what application may be conveniently made of the

dovetailing and various adjusting of stones; for when any artifice is

necessary to help the mortar, certainly this ought to come before the

use of metal, for it is both safer and more honest. I cannot see that

any objection can be made to the fitting of the stones in any shapes the

architect pleases: for although it would not be desirable to see

buildings put together like Chinese puzzles, there must always be a

check upon such an abuse of the practice in its difficulty; nor is it

necessary that it should be always exhibited, so that it be understood

by the spectator as an admitted help, and that no principal stones are

introduced in positions apparently impossible for them to retain,

although a riddle here and there, in unimportant features, may sometimes

serve to draw the eye to the masonry, and make it interesting, as well

as to give a delightful sense of a kind of necromantic power in the

architect. There is a pretty one in the lintel of the lateral door of

the cathedral of Prato (Plate IV. fig. 4.); where the maintenance of

the visibly separate stones, alternate marble and serpentine, cannot be

understood until their cross-cutting is seen below. Each block is, of

course, of the form given in fig. 5.

XIII. Lastly, before leaving the subject of structural deceits, I would

remind the architect who thinks that I am unnecessarily and narrowly

limiting his resources or his art, that the highest greatness and the

highest wisdom are shown, the first by a noble submission to, the second

by a thoughtful providence for, certain voluntarily admitted restraints.

Nothing is more evident than this, in that supreme government which is

the example, as it is the centre, of all others. The Divine Wisdom is,

and can be, shown to us only in its meeting and contending with the

difficulties which are voluntarily, and _for the sake of that contest_,

admitted by the Divine Omnipotence: and these difficulties, observe,

occur in the form of natural laws or ordinances, which might, at many

times and in countless ways, be infringed with apparent advantage, but

which are never infringed, whatever costly arrangements or adaptations

their observance may necessitate for the accomplishment of given

purposes. The example most apposite to our present subject is the

structure of the bones of animals. No reason can be given, I believe,

why the system of the higher animals should not have been made capable,

as that of the _Infusoria_ is, of secreting flint, instead of phosphate

of lime, or more naturally still, carbon; so framing the bones of

adamant at once. The elephant or rhinoceros, had the earthy part of

their bones been made of diamond, might have been as agile and light as

grasshoppers, and other animals might have been framed far more

magnificently colossal than any that walk the earth. In other worlds we

may, perhaps, see such creations; a creation for every element, and

elements infinite. But the architecture of animals _here_, is appointed

by God to be a marble architecture, not a flint nor adamant

architecture; and all manner of expedients are adopted to attain the

utmost degree of strength and size possible under that great limitation.

The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and riveted, the leg of the

megatherium is a foot thick, and the head of the myodon has a double

skull; we, in our wisdom, should, doubtless, have given the lizard a

steel jaw, and the myodon a cast-iron headpiece, and forgotten the great

principle to which all creation bears witness, that order and system are

nobler things than power. But God shows us in Himself, strange as it may

seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of

Obedience--an obedience to His own laws: and in the cumbrous movement of

those unwieldiest of His creatures we are reminded, even in His divine

essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature "that

sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not."

XIV. 2d. Surface Deceits. These may be generally defined as the inducing

the supposition of some form or material which does not actually exist;

as commonly in the painting of wood to represent marble, or in the

painting of ornaments in deceptive relief, &c. But we must be careful to

observe, that the evil of them consists always in definitely attempted

_deception_, and that it is a matter of some nicety to mark the point

where deception begins or ends.

Thus, for instance, the roof of Milan Cathedral is seemingly covered

with elaborate fan tracery, forcibly enough painted to enable it, in its

dark and removed position, to deceive a careless observer. This is, of

course, gross degradation; it destroys much of the dignity even of the

rest of the building, and is in the very strongest terms to be

reprehended.

The roof of the Sistine Chapel has much architectural design in

grissaille mingled with the figures of its frescoes; and the effect is

increase of dignity.

In what lies the distinctive character?

In two points, principally:--First. That the architecture is so closely

associated with the figures, and has so grand fellowship with them in

its forms and cast shadows, that both are at once felt to be of a piece;

and as the figures must necessarily be painted, the architecture is

known to be so too. There is thus no deception.

Second. That so great a painter as Michael Angelo would always stop

short in such minor parts of his design, of the degree of vulgar force

which would be necessary to induce the supposition of their reality;

and, strangely as it may sound, would never paint badly enough to

deceive.

But though right and wrong are thus found broadly opposed in works

severally so mean and so mighty as the roof of Milan and that of the

Sistine, there are works neither so great nor so mean, in which the

limits of right are vaguely defined, and will need some care to

determine; care only, however, to apply accurately the broad principle

with which we set out, that no form nor material is to be _deceptively_

represented.

XV. Evidently, then, painting, confessedly such, is no deception: it

does not assert any material whatever. Whether it be on wood or on

stone, or, as will naturally be supposed, on plaster, does not matter.

Whatever the material, good painting makes it more precious; nor can it

ever be said to deceive respecting the ground of which it gives us no

information. To cover brick with plaster, and this plaster with fresco,

is, therefore, perfectly legitimate; and as desirable a mode of

decoration as it is constant in the great periods. Verona and Venice are

now seen deprived of more than half their former splendor; it depended

far more on their frescoes than their marbles. The plaster, in this

case, is to be considered as the gesso ground on panel or canvas. But to

cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it

may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood; and is just as contemptible

a procedure as the other is noble.

It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint everything? So long

as the painting is confessed--yes; but if, even in the slightest degree,

the sense of it be lost, and the thing painted be supposed real--no. Let

us take a few instances. In the Campo Santo at Pisa, each fresco is

surrounded with a border composed of flat colored patterns of great

elegance--no part of it in attempted relief. The certainty of flat

surface being thus secured, the figures, though the size of life, do not

deceive, and the artist thenceforward is at liberty to put forth his

whole power, and to lead us through fields and groves, and depths of

pleasant landscape, and to soothe us with the sweet clearness of far off

sky, and yet never lose the severity of his primal purpose of

architectural decoration.

In the Camera di Correggio of San Lodovico at Parma, the trellises of

vine shadow the walls, as if with an actual arbor; and the troops of

children, peeping through the oval openings, luscious in color and faint

in light, may well be expected every instant to break through, or hide

behind the covert. The grace of their attitudes, and the evident

greatness of the whole work, mark that it is painting, and barely redeem

it from the charge of falsehood; but even so saved, it is utterly

unworthy to take a place among noble or legitimate architectural

decoration.

In the cupola of the duomo of Parma the same painter has represented the

Assumption with so much deceptive power, that he has made a dome of some

thirty feet diameter look like a cloud-wrapt opening in the seventh

heaven, crowded with a rushing sea of angels. Is this wrong? Not so: for

the subject at once precludes the possibility of deception. We might

have taken the vines for a veritable pergoda, and the children for its

haunting ragazzi; but we know the stayed clouds and moveless angels must

be man's work; let him put his utmost strength to it and welcome, he can

enchant us, but cannot betray.

We may thus apply the rule to the highest, as well as the art of daily

occurrence, always remembering that more is to be forgiven to the great

painter than to the mere decorative workman; and this especially,

because the former, even in deceptive portions, will not trick us so

grossly; as we have just seen in Correggio, where a worse painter would

have made the thing look like life at once. There is, however, in room,

villa, or garden decoration, some fitting admission of trickeries of

this kind, as of pictured landscapes at the extremities of alleys and

arcades, and ceilings like skies, or painted with prolongations upwards

of the architecture of the walls, which things have sometimes a certain

luxury and pleasureableness in places meant for idleness, and are

innocent enough as long as they are regarded as mere toys.

XVI. Touching the false representation of material, the question is

infinitely more simple, and the law more sweeping; all such imitations

are utterly base and inadmissible. It is melancholy to think of the time

and expense lost in marbling the shop fronts of London alone, and of the

waste of our resources in absolute vanities, in things about which no

mortal cares, by which no eye is ever arrested, unless painfully, and

which do not add one whit to comfort or cleanliness, or even to that

great object of commercial art--conspicuousness. But in architecture of

a higher rank, how much more is it to be condemned? I have made it a

rule in the present work not to blame specifically; but I may, perhaps,

be permitted, while I express my sincere admiration of the very noble

entrance and general architecture of the British Museum, to express also

my regret that the noble granite foundation of the staircase should be

mocked at its landing by an imitation, the more blameable because

tolerably successful. The only effect of it is to cast a suspicion upon

the true stones below, and upon every bit of granite afterwards

encountered. One feels a doubt, after it, of the honesty of Memnon

himself. But even this, however derogatory to the noble architecture

around it, is less painful than the want of feeling with which, in our

cheap modern churches, we suffer the wall decorator to erect about the

altar frameworks and pediments daubed with mottled color, and to dye in

the same fashions such skeletons or caricatures of columns as may emerge

above the pews; this is not merely bad taste; it is no unimportant or

excusable error which brings even these shadows of vanity and falsehood

into the house of prayer. The first condition which just feeling

requires in church furniture is, that it should be simple and

unaffected, not fictitious nor tawdry. It may be in our power to make it

beautiful, but let it at least be pure; and if we cannot permit much to

the architect, do not let us permit anything to the upholsterer; if we

keep to solid stone and solid wood, whitewashed, if we like, for

cleanliness' sake (for whitewash has so often been used as the dress of

noble things that it has thence received a kind of nobility itself), it

must be a bad design indeed which is grossly offensive. I recollect no

instance of a want of sacred character, or of any marked and painful

ugliness, in the simplest or the most awkwardly built village church,

where stone and wood were roughly and nakedly used, and the windows

latticed with white glass. But the smoothly stuccoed walls, the flat

roofs with ventilator ornaments, the barred windows with jaundiced

borders and dead ground square panes, the gilded or bronzed wood, the

painted iron, the wretched upholstery of curtains and cushions, and pew

heads and altar railings, and Birmingham metal candlesticks, and, above

all, the green and yellow sickness of the false marble--disguises all,

observe; falsehoods all--who are they who like these things? who defend

them? who do them? I have never spoken to any one who _did_ like them,

though to many who thought them matters of no consequence. Perhaps not

to religion (though I cannot but believe that there are many to whom, as

to myself, such things are serious obstacles to the repose of mind and

temper which should precede devotional exercises); but to the general

tone of our judgment and feeling--yes; for assuredly we shall regard,

with tolerance, if not with affection, whatever forms of material things

we have been in the habit of associating with our worship, and be little

prepared to detect or blame hypocrisy, meanness, and disguise in other

kinds of decoration when we suffer objects belonging to the most solemn

of all services to be tricked out in a fashion so fictitious and

unseemly.

XVII. Painting, however, is not the only mode in which material may be

concealed, or rather simulated; for merely to conceal is, as we have

seen, no wrong. Whitewash, for instance, though often (by no means

always) to be regretted as a concealment, is not to be blamed as a

falsity. It shows itself for what it is, and asserts nothing of what is

beneath it. Gilding has become, from its frequent use, equally innocent.

It is understood for what it is, a film merely, and is, therefore,

allowable to any extent. I do not say expedient: it is one of the most

abused means of magnificence we possess, and I much doubt whether any

use we ever make of it, balances that loss of pleasure, which, from the

frequent sight and perpetual suspicion of it, we suffer in the

contemplation of anything that is verily of gold. I think gold was

meant to be seldom seen and to be admired as a precious thing; and I

sometimes wish that truth should so far literally prevail as that all

should be gold that glittered, or rather that nothing should glitter

that was not gold. Nevertheless, nature herself does not dispense with

such semblance, but uses light for it; and I have too great a love for

old and saintly art to part with its burnished field, or radiant nimbus;

only it should be used with respect, and to express magnificence, or

sacredness, and not in lavish vanity, or in sign painting. Of its

expedience, however, any more than of that of color, it is not here the

place to speak; we are endeavoring to determine what is lawful, not what

is desirable. Of other and less common modes of disguising surface, as

of powder of lapis lazuli, or mosaic imitations of colored stones, I

need hardly speak. The rule will apply to all alike, that whatever is

pretended, is wrong; commonly enforced also by the exceeding ugliness

and insufficient appearance of such methods, as lately in the style of

renovation by which half the houses in Venice have been defaced, the

brick covered first with stucco, and this painted with zigzag veins in

imitation of alabaster. But there is one more form of architectural

fiction, which is so constant in the great periods that it needs

respectful judgment. I mean the facing of brick with precious stone.

XVIII. It is well known, that what is meant by a church's being built of

marble is, in nearly all cases, only that a veneering of marble has been

fastened on the rough brick wall, built with certain projections to

receive it; and that what appear to be massy stones, are nothing more

than external slabs.

Now, it is evident, that, in this case, the question of right is on the

same ground as in that of gilding. If it be clearly understood that a

marble facing does not pretend or imply a marble wall, there is no harm

in it; and as it is also evident that, when very precious stones are

used, as jaspers and serpentines, it must become, not only an

extravagant and vain increase of expense, but sometimes an actual

impossibility, to obtain mass of them enough to build with, there is no

resource but this of veneering; nor is there anything to be alleged

against it on the head of durability, such work having been by

experience found to last as long, and in as perfect condition, as any

kind of masonry. It is, therefore, to be considered as simply an art of

mosaic on a large scale, the ground being of brick, or any other

material; and when lovely stones are to be obtained, it is a manner

which should be thoroughly understood, and often practised.

Nevertheless, as we esteem the shaft of a column more highly for its

being of a single block, and as we do not regret the loss of substance

and value which there is in things of solid gold, silver, agate, or

ivory; so I think the walls themselves may be regarded with a more just

complacency if they are known to be all of noble substance; and that

rightly weighing the demands of the two principles of which we have

hitherto spoken--Sacrifice and Truth, we should sometimes rather spare

external ornament than diminish the unseen value and consistency of what

we do; and I believe that a better manner of design, and a more careful

and studious, if less abundant decoration would follow, upon the

consciousness of thoroughness in the substance. And, indeed, this is to

be remembered, with respect to all the points we have examined; that

while we have traced the limits of license, we have not fixed those of

that high rectitude which refuses license. It is thus true that there is

no falsity, and much beauty in the use of external color, and that it is

lawful to paint either pictures or patterns on whatever surfaces may

seem to need enrichment. But it is not less true, that such practices

are essentially unarchitectural; and while we cannot say that there is

actual danger in an over use of them, seeing that they have been

_always_ used most lavishly in the times of most noble art, yet they

divide the work into two parts and kinds, one of less durability than

the other, which dies away from it in process of ages, and leaves it,

unless it have noble qualities of its own, naked and bare. That enduring

noblesse I should, therefore, call truly architectural; and it is not

until this has been secured that the accessory power of painting may be

called in, for the delight of the immediate time; nor this, as I think,

until every resource of a more stable kind has been exhausted. The true

colors of architecture are those of natural stone, and I would fain

see these taken advantage of to the full. Every variety of hue, from

pale yellow to purple, passing through orange, red, and brown, is

entirely at our command; nearly every kind of green and gray is also

attainable: and with these, and pure white, what harmonies might we not

achieve? Of stained and variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the

kinds innumerable; where brighter colors are required, let glass, and

gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic--a kind of work as durable as

the solid stone, and incapable of losing its lustre by time--and let the

painter's work be reserved for the shadowed _loggia_ and inner chamber.

This is the true and faithful way of building; where this cannot be, the

device of external coloring may, indeed, be employed without dishonor;

but it must be with the warning reflection, that a time will come when

such aids must pass away, and when the building will be judged in its

lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. Better the less bright,

more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of San Miniato, and the

mosaics of St. Mark's, are more warmly filled, and more brightly

touched, by every return of morning and evening rays; while the hues of

our cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud; and the temples

whose azure and purple once flamed above the Grecian promontories, stand

in their faded whiteness, like snows which the sunset has left cold.

[Illustration: PLATE II.--(Page 55--Vol. V.)

PART OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. LO, NORMANDY.]

XIX. The last form of fallacy which it will be remembered we had to

deprecate, was the substitution of cast or machine work for that of the

hand, generally expressible as Operative Deceit.

There are two reasons, both weighty, against this practice; one, that

all cast and machine work is bad, as work; the other, that it is

dishonest. Of its badness, I shall speak in another place, that being

evidently no efficient reason against its use when other cannot be had.

Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, is of the grossest kind, is,

I think, a sufficient reason to determine absolute and unconditional

rejection of it.

Ornament, as I have often before observed, has two entirely distinct

sources of agreeableness: one, that of the abstract beauty of its

forms, which, for the present, we will suppose to be the same whether

they come from the hand or the machine; the other, the sense of human

labor and care spent upon it. How great this latter influence we may

perhaps judge, by considering that there is not a cluster of weeds

growing in any cranny of ruin which has not a beauty in all respects

_nearly_ equal, and, in some, immeasurably superior, to that of the most

elaborate sculpture of its stones: and that all our interest in the

carved work, our sense of its richness, though it is tenfold less rich

than the knots of grass beside it; of its delicacy, though it is a

thousand fold less delicate; of its admirableness, though a millionfold

less admirable; results from our consciousness of its being the work of

poor, clumsy, toilsome man. Its true delightfulness depends on our

discovering in it the record of thoughts, and intents, and trials, and

heart-breakings--of recoveries and joyfulnesses of success: all this

_can_ be traced by a practised eye; but, granting it even obscure, it is

presumed or understood; and in that is the worth of the thing, just as

much as the worth of anything else we call precious. The worth of a

diamond is simply the understanding of the time it must take to look for

it before it can be cut. It has an intrinsic value besides, which the

diamond has not (for a diamond has no more real beauty than a piece of

glass); but I do not speak of that at present; I place the two on the

same ground; and I suppose that hand-wrought ornament can no more be

generally known from machine work, than a diamond can be known from

paste; nay, that the latter may deceive, for a moment, the mason's, as

the other the jeweller's eye; and that it can be detected only by the

closest examination. Yet exactly as a woman of feeling would not wear

false jewels, so would a builder of honor disdain false ornaments. The

using of them is just as downright and inexcusable a lie. You use that

which pretends to a worth which it has not; which pretends to have cost,

and to be, what it did not, and is not; it is an imposition, a

vulgarity, an impertinence, and a sin. Down with it to the ground, grind

it to powder, leave its ragged place upon the wall, rather; you have not

paid for it, you have no business with it, you do not want it. Nobody

wants ornaments in this world, but everybody wants integrity. All the

fair devices that ever were fancied, are not worth a lie. Leave your

walls as bare as a planed board, or build them of baked mud and chopped

straw, if need be; but do not rough-cast them with falsehood.

This, then, being our general law, and I hold it for a more imperative

one than any other I have asserted; and this kind of dishonesty the

meanest, as the least necessary; for ornament is an extravagant and

inessential thing; and, therefore, if fallacious, utterly base--this, I

say, being our general law, there are, nevertheless, certain exceptions

respecting particular substances and their uses.

XX. Thus in the use of brick; since that is known to be originally

moulded, there is no reason why it should not be moulded into diverse

forms. It will never be supposed to have been cut, and therefore, will

cause no deception; it will have only the credit it deserves. In flat

countries, far from any quarry of stone, cast brick may be legitimately,

and most successfully, used in decoration, and that elaborate, and even

refined. The brick mouldings of the Palazzo Pepoli at Bologna, and those

which run round the market-place of Vercelli, are among the richest in

Italy. So also, tile and porcelain work, of which the former is

grotesquely, but successfully, employed in the domestic architecture of

France, colored tiles being inserted in the diamond spaces between the

crossing timbers; and the latter admirably in Tuscany, in external

bas-reliefs, by the Robbia family, in which works, while we cannot but

sometimes regret the useless and ill-arranged colors, we would by no

means blame the employment of a material which, whatever its defects,

excels every other in permanence, and, perhaps, requires even greater

skill in its management than marble. For it is not the material, but the

absence of the human labor, which makes the thing worthless; and a piece

of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by human

hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machinery. It is,

indeed, possible, and even usual, for men to sink into machines

themselves, so that even hand-work has all the characters of mechanism;

of the difference between living and dead hand-work I shall speak

presently; all that I ask at present is, what it is always in our power

to secure--the confession of what we have done, and what we have given;

so that when we use stone at all, since all stone is naturally supposed

to be carved by hand, we must not carve it by machinery; neither must we

use any artificial stone cast into shape, nor any stucco ornaments of

the color of stone, or which might in anywise be mistaken for it, as the

stucco mouldings in the cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence,

which cast a shame and suspicion over every part of the building. But

for ductile and fusible materials, as clay, iron, and bronze, since

these will usually be supposed to have been cast or stamped, it is at

our pleasure to employ them as we will; remembering that they become

precious, or otherwise, just in proportion to the hand-work upon them,

or to the clearness of their reception of the hand-work of their mould.

But I believe no cause to have been more active in the degradation of

our natural feeling for beauty, than the constant use of cast iron

ornaments. The common iron work of the middle ages was as simple as it

was effective, composed of leafage cut flat out of sheet iron, and

twisted at the workman's will. No ornaments, on the contrary, are so

cold, clumsy, and vulgar, so essentially incapable of a fine line, or

shadow, as those of cast iron; and while, on the score of truth, we can

hardly allege anything against them, since they are always

distinguishable, at a glance, from wrought and hammered work, and stand

only for what they are, yet I feel very strongly that there is no hope

of the progress of the arts of any nation which indulges in these vulgar

and cheap substitutes for real decoration. Their inefficiency and

paltriness I shall endeavor to show more conclusively in another place,

enforcing only, at present, the general conclusion that, if even honest

or allowable, they are things in which we can never take just pride or

pleasure, and must never be employed in any place wherein they might

either themselves obtain the credit of being other and better than they

are, or be associated with the downright work to which it would be a

disgrace to be found in their company.

Such are, I believe, the three principal kinds of fallacy by which

architecture is liable to be corrupted; there are, however, other and

more subtle forms of it, against which it is less easy to guard by

definite law, than by the watchfulness of a manly and unaffected spirit.

For, as it has been above noticed, there are certain kinds of deception

which extend to impressions and ideas only; of which some are, indeed,

of a noble use, as that above referred to, the arborescent look of lofty

Gothic aisles; but of which the most part have so much of legerdemain

and trickery about them, that they will lower any style in which they

considerably prevail; and they are likely to prevail when once they are

admitted, being apt to catch the fancy alike of uninventive architects

and feelingless spectators; just as mean and shallow minds are, in other

matters, delighted with the sense of over-reaching, or tickled with the

conceit of detecting the intention to over-reach; and when subtleties of

this kind are accompanied by the display of such dextrous stone-cutting,

or architectural sleight of hand, as may become, even by itself, a

subject of admiration, it is a great chance if the pursuit of them do

not gradually draw us away from all regard and care for the nobler

character of the art, and end in its total paralysis or extinction. And

against this there is no guarding, but by stern disdain of all display

of dexterity and ingenious device, and by putting the whole force of our

fancy into the arrangement of masses and forms, caring no more how these

masses and forms are wrought out, than a great painter cares which way

his pencil strikes. It would be easy to give many instances of the

danger of these tricks and vanities; but I shall confine myself to the

examination of one which has, as I think, been the cause of the fall of

Gothic architecture throughout Europe. I mean the system of

intersectional mouldings, which, on account of its great importance, and

for the sake of the general reader, I may, perhaps, be pardoned for

explaining elementarily.

XXI. I must, in the first place, however, refer to Professor Willis's

account of the origin of tracery, given in the sixth chapter of his

Architecture of the Middle Ages; since the publication of which I have

been not a little amazed to hear of any attempts made to resuscitate the

inexcusably absurd theory of its derivation from imitated vegetable

form--inexcusably, I say, because the smallest acquaintance with early

Gothic architecture would have informed the supporters of that theory of

the simple fact, that, exactly in proportion to the antiquity of the

work, the imitation of such organic forms is less, and in the earliest

examples does not exist at all. There cannot be the shadow of a

question, in the mind of a person familiarised with any single series of

consecutive examples, that tracery arose from the gradual enlargement of

the penetrations of the shield of stone which, usually supported by a

central pillar, occupied the head of early windows. Professor Willis,

perhaps, confines his observations somewhat too absolutely to the double

sub-arch. I have given, in Plate VII. fig. 2, an interesting case of

rude penetration of a high and simply trefoiled shield, from the church

of the Eremitani at Padua. But the more frequent and typical form is

that of the double sub-arch, decorated with various piercings of the

space between it and the superior arch; with a simple trefoil under a

round arch, in the Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen[9] (Plate III. fig. 1); with

a very beautifully proportioned quatrefoil, in the triforium of Eu, and

that of the choir of Lisieux; with quatrefoils, sixfoils, and septfoils,

in the transept towers of Rouen (Plate III. fig. 2); with a trefoil

awkwardly, and very small quatrefoil above, at Coutances, (Plate III.

fig. 3); then, with multiplications of the same figures, pointed or

round, giving very clumsy shapes of the intermediate stone (fig. 4, from

one of the nave chapels of Rouen, fig. 5, from one of the nave chapels

of Bayeaux), and finally, by thinning out the stony ribs, reaching

conditions like that of the glorious typical form of the clerestory of

the apse of Beauvais (fig. 6).

[Illustration: PLATE III.--(Page 60--Vol. V.)

TRACERIES FROM CAEN, BAYEUX, ROUEN, AND BEAVAIS.]

XXII. Now, it will be noticed that, during the whole of this process,

the attention is kept fixed on the forms of the penetrations, that is to

say, of the lights as seen from the interior, not of the intermediate

stone. All the grace of the window is in the outline of its light;

and I have drawn all these traceries as seen from within, in order to

show the effect of the light thus treated, at first in far off and

separate stars, and then gradually enlarging, approaching, until they

come and stand over us, as it were, filling the whole space with their

effulgence. And it is in this pause of the star, that we have the great,

pure, and perfect form of French Gothic; it was at the instant when the

rudeness of the intermediate space had been finally conquered, when the

light had expanded to its fullest, and yet had not lost its radiant

unity, principality, and visible first causing of the whole, that we

have the most exquisite feeling and most faultless judgments in the

management alike of the tracery and decorations. I have given, in Plate

X., an exquisite example of it, from a panel decoration of the

buttresses of the north door of Rouen; and in order that the reader may

understand what truly fine Gothic work is, and how nobly it unites

fantasy and law, as well as for our immediate purpose, it will be well

that he should examine its sections and mouldings in detail (they are

described in the fourth Chapter, Sec. xxvii.), and that the more carefully,

because this design belongs to a period in which the most important

change took place in the spirit of Gothic architecture, which, perhaps,

ever resulted from the natural progress of any art. That tracery marks a

pause between the laying aside of one great ruling principle, and the

taking up of another; a pause as marked, as clear, as conspicuous to the

distant view of after times, as to the distant glance of the traveller

is the culminating ridge of the mountain chain over which he has passed.

It was the great watershed of Gothic art. Before it, all had been

ascent; after it, all was decline; both, indeed, by winding paths and

varied slopes; both interrupted, like the gradual rise and fall of the

passes of the Alps, by great mountain outliers, isolated or branching

from the central chain, and by retrograde or parallel directions of the

valleys of access. But the track of the human mind is traceable up to

that glorious ridge, in a continuous line, and thence downwards. Like a

silver zone--

"Flung about carelessly, it shines afar,

Catching the eye in many a broken link,

In many a turn and traverse, as it glides.

And oft above, and oft below, appears--

* * * * to him who journeys up

As though it were another."

And at that point, and that instant, reaching the place that was nearest

heaven, the builders looked back, for the last time, to the way by which

they had come, and the scenes through which their early course had

passed. They turned away from them and their morning light, and

descended towards a new horizon, for a time in the warmth of western

sun, but plunging with every forward step into more cold and melancholy

shade.

XXIII. The change of which I speak, is inexpressible in few words, but

one more important, more radically influential, could not be. It was the

substitution of the _line_ for the _mass_, as the element of decoration.

We have seen the mode in which the openings or penetration of the window

expanded, until what were, at first, awkward forms of intermediate

stone, became delicate lines of tracery: and I have been careful in

pointing out the peculiar attention bestowed on the proportion and

decoration of the mouldings of the window at Rouen, in Plate X., as

compared with earlier mouldings, because that beauty and care are

singularly significant. They mark that the traceries had _caught the

eye_ of the architect. Up to that time, up to the very last instant in

which the reduction and thinning of the intervening stone was

consummated, his eye had been on the openings only, on the stars of

light. He did not care about the stone, a rude border of moulding was

all he needed, it was the penetrating shape which he was watching. But

when that shape had received its last possible expansion, and when the

stone-work became an arrangement of graceful and parallel lines, that

arrangement, like some form in a picture, unseen and accidentally

developed, struck suddenly, inevitably, on the sight. It had literally

not been seen before. It flashed out in an instant as an independent

form. It became a feature of the work. The architect took it under his

care, thought over it, and distributed its members as we see.

Now, the great pause was at the moment when the space and the dividing

stone-work were both equally considered. It did not last fifty years.

The forms of the tracery were seized with a childish delight in the

novel source of beauty; and the intervening space was cast aside, as an

element of decoration, for ever. I have confined myself, in following

this change, to the window, as the feature in which it is clearest. But

the transition is the same in every member of architecture; and its

importance can hardly be understood, unless we take the pains to trace

it in the universality, of which illustrations, irrelevant to our

present purpose, will be found in the third Chapter. I pursue here the

question of truth, relating to the treatment of the mouldings.

XXIV. The reader will observe that, up to the last expansion of the

penetrations, the stone-work was necessarily considered, as it actually

is, _stiff_, and unyielding. It was so, also, during the pause of which

I have spoken, when the forms of the tracery were still severe and pure;

delicate indeed, but perfectly firm.

At the close of the period of pause, the first sign of serious change

was like a low breeze, passing through the emaciated tracery, and making

it tremble. It began to undulate like the threads of a cobweb lifted by

the wind. It lost its essence as a structure of stone. Reduced to the

slenderness of threads, it began to be considered as possessing also

their flexibility. The architect was pleased with this his new fancy,

and set himself to carry it out; and in a little time, the bars of

tracery were caused to appear to the eye as if they had been woven

together like a net. This was a change which sacrificed a great

principle of truth; it sacrificed the expression of the qualities of the

material; and, however delightful its results in their first

developments, it was ultimately ruinous.

For, observe the difference between the supposition of ductility, and

that of elastic structure noticed above in the resemblance to tree form.

That resemblance was not sought, but necessary; it resulted from the

natural conditions of strength in the pier or trunk, and slenderness in

the ribs or branches, while many of the other suggested conditions of

resemblance were perfectly true. A tree branch, though in a certain

sense flexible, is not ductile; it is as firm in its own form as the rib

of stone; both of them will yield up to certain limits, both of them

breaking when those limits are exceeded; while the tree trunk will bend

no more than the stone pillar. But when the tracery is assumed to be as

yielding as a silken cord; when the whole fragility, elasticity, and

weight of the material are to the eye, if not in terms, denied; when all

the art of the architect is applied to disprove the first conditions of

his working, and the first attributes of his materials; _this_ is a

deliberate treachery, only redeemed from the charge of direct falsehood

by the visibility of the stone surface, and degrading all the traceries

it affects exactly in the degree of its presence.

XXV. But the declining and morbid taste of the later architects, was not

satisfied with thus much deception. They were delighted with the subtle

charm they had created, and thought only of increasing its power. The

next step was to consider and represent the tracery, as not only

ductile, but penetrable; and when two mouldings met each other, to

manage their intersection, so that one should appear to pass through the

other, retaining its independence; or when two ran parallel to each

other, to represent the one as partly contained within the other, and

partly apparent above it. This form of falsity was that which crushed

the art. The flexible traceries were often beautiful, though they were

ignoble; but the penetrated traceries, rendered, as they finally were,

merely the means of exhibiting the dexterity of the stone-cutter,

annihilated both the beauty and dignity of the Gothic types. A system so

momentous in its consequences deserves some detailed examination.

XXVI. In the drawing of the shafts of the door at Lisieux, under the

spandril, in Plate VII., the reader will see the mode of managing the

intersection of similar mouldings, which was universal in the great

periods. They melted into each other, and became one at the point of

crossing, or of contact; and even the suggestion of so sharp

intersection as this of Lisieux is usually avoided (this design being,

of course, only a pointed form of the earlier Norman arcade, in which

the arches are interlaced, and lie each over the preceding, and under

the following, one, as in Anselm's tower at Canterbury), since, in the

plurality of designs, when mouldings meet each other, they coincide

through some considerable portion of their curves, meeting by contact,

rather than by intersection; and at the point of coincidence the section

of each separate moulding becomes common to the two thus melted into

each other. Thus, in the junction of the circles of the window of the

Palazzo Foscari, Plate VIII., given accurately in fig. 8, Plate IV., the

section across the line _s_, is exactly the same as that across any

break of the separated moulding above, as [=s]. It sometimes, however,

happens, that two different mouldings meet each other. This was seldom

permitted in the great periods, and, when it took place, was most

awkwardly managed. Fig. 1, Plate IV. gives the junction of the mouldings

of the gable and vertical, in the window of the _spire_ of Salisbury.

That of the gable is composed of a single, and that of the vertical of a

double cavetto, decorated with ball-flowers; and the larger single

moulding swallows up one of the double ones, and pushes forward among

the smaller balls with the most blundering and clumsy simplicity. In

comparing the sections it is to be observed that, in the upper one, the

line _a b_ represents an actual vertical in the plane of the window;

while, in the lower one, the line _c d_ represents the horizontal, in

the plane of the window, indicated by the perspective line _d e_.

XXVII. The very awkwardness with which such occurrences of difficulty

are met by the earlier builder, marks his dislike of the system, and

unwillingness to attract the eye to such arrangements. There is another

very clumsy one, in the junction of the upper and sub-arches of the

triforium of Salisbury; but it is kept in the shade, and all the

prominent junctions are of mouldings like each other, and managed with

perfect simplicity. But so soon as the attention of the builders became,

as we have just seen, fixed upon the lines of mouldings instead of the

enclosed spaces, those lines began to preserve an independent existence

wherever they met; and different mouldings were studiously associated,

in order to obtain variety of intersectional line. We must, however, do

the late builders the justice to note that, in one case, the habit grew

out of a feeling of proportion, more refined than that of earlier

workmen. It shows itself first in the bases of divided pillars, or arch

mouldings, whose smaller shafts had originally bases formed by the

continued base of the central, or other larger, columns with which they

were grouped; but it being felt, when the eye of the architect became

fastidious, that the dimension of moulding which was right for the base

of a large shaft, was wrong for that of a small one, each shaft had an

independent base; at first, those of the smaller died simply down on

that of the larger; but when the vertical sections of both became

complicated, the bases of the smaller shafts were considered to exist

within those of the larger, and the places of their emergence, on this

supposition, were calculated with the utmost nicety, and cut with

singular precision; so that an elaborate late base of a divided column,

as, for instance, of those in the nave of Abbeville, looks exactly as if

its smaller shafts had all been finished to the ground first, each with

its complete and intricate base, and then the comprehending base of the

central pier had been moulded over them in clay, leaving their points

and angles sticking out here and there, like the edges of sharp crystals

out of a nodule of earth. The exhibition of technical dexterity in work

of this kind is often marvellous, the strangest possible shapes of

sections being calculated to a hair's-breadth, and the occurrence of the

under and emergent forms being rendered, even in places where they are

so slight that they can hardly be detected but by the touch. It is

impossible to render a very elaborate example of this kind intelligible,

without some fifty measured sections; but fig. 6, Plate IV. is a very

interesting and simple one, from the west gate of Rouen. It is part of

the base of one of the narrow piers between its principal niches. The

square column _k_, having a base with the profile _p r_, is supposed to

contain within itself another similar one, set diagonally, and lifted so

far above the inclosing one, as that the recessed part of its profile

[=p] r shall fall behind the projecting part of the outer one. The angle

of its upper portion exactly meets the plane of the side of the upper

inclosing shaft 4, and would, therefore, not be seen, unless two

vertical cuts were made to exhibit it, which form two dark lines the

whole way up the shaft. Two small pilasters are run, like fastening

stitches, through the junction on the front of the shafts. The sections

[=k] [=n] taken respectively at the levels _k_, _n_, will explain the

hypothetical construction of the whole. Fig. 7 is a base, or joint

rather (for passages of this form occur again and again, on the shafts

of flamboyant work), of one of the smallest piers of the pedestals which

support the lost statues of the porch; its section below would be the

same as [=n], and its construction, after what has been said of the

other base, will be at once perceived.

[Illustration: PLATE IV.--(Page 66--Vol. V.)

INTERSECTIONAL MOULDINGS.]

XXVIII. There was, however, in this kind of involution, much to be

admired as well as reprehended, the proportions of quantities were

always as beautiful as they were intricate; and, though the lines of

intersection were harsh, they were exquisitely opposed to the

flower-work of the interposing mouldings. But the fancy did not stop

here; it rose from the bases into the arches; and there, not finding

room enough for its exhibition, it withdrew the capitals from the heads

even of cylindrical shafts, (we cannot but admire, while we regret, the

boldness of the men who could defy the authority and custom of all the

nations of the earth for a space of some three thousand years,) in order

that the arch mouldings might appear to emerge from the pillar, as at

its base they had been lost in it, and not to terminate on the abacus of

the capital; then they ran the mouldings across and through each other,

at the point of the arch; and finally, not finding their natural

directions enough to furnish as many occasions of intersection as they

wished, bent them hither and thither, and cut off their ends short, when

they had passed the point of intersection. Fig. 2, Plate IV. is part of

a flying buttress from the apse of St. Gervais at Falaise, in which the

moulding whose section is rudely given above at [=f], (taken vertically

through the point _f_,) is carried thrice through itself, in the

cross-bar and two arches; and the flat fillet is cut off sharp at the

end of the cross-bar, for the mere pleasure of the truncation. Fig. 3

is half of the head of a door in the Stadthaus of Sursee, in which the

shaded part of the section of the joint _g g_, is that of the

arch-moulding, which is three times reduplicated, and six times

intersected by itself, the ends being cut off when they become

unmanageable. This style is, indeed, earlier exaggerated in Switzerland

and Germany, owing to the imitation in stone of the dovetailing of wood,

particularly of the intersecting of beams at the angles of chalets; but

it only furnishes the more plain instance of the danger of the

fallacious system which, from the beginning, repressed the German, and,

in the end, ruined the French Gothic. It would be too painful a task to

follow further the caricatures of form, and eccentricities of treatment,

which grow out of this singular abuse--the flattened arch, the shrunken

pillar, the lifeless ornament, the liny moulding, the distorted and

extravagant foliation, until the time came when, over these wrecks and

remnants, deprived of all unity and principle, rose the foul torrent of

the renaissance, and swept them all away. So fell the great dynasty of

mediaeval architecture. It was because it had lost its own strength, and

disobeyed its own laws--because its order, and consistency, and

organization, had been broken through--that it could oppose no

resistance to the rush of overwhelming innovation. And this, observe,

all because it had sacrificed a single truth. From that one surrender of

its integrity, from that one endeavor to assume the semblance of what it

was not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and decrepitude, which

rotted away the pillars of its supremacy. It was not because its time

was come; it was not because it was scorned by the classical Romanist,

or dreaded by the faithful Protestant. That scorn and that fear it might

have survived, and lived; it would have stood forth in stern comparison

with the enervated sensuality of the renaissance; it would have risen in

renewed and purified honor, and with a new soul, from the ashes into

which it sank, giving up its glory, as it had received it, for the honor

of God--but its own truth was gone, and it sank forever. There was no

wisdom nor strength left in it, to raise it from the dust; and the error

of zeal, and the softness of luxury smote it down and dissolved it

away. It is good for us to remember this, as we tread upon the bare

ground of its foundations, and stumble over its scattered stones. Those

rent skeletons of pierced wall, through which our sea-winds moan and

murmur, strewing them joint by joint, and bone by bone, along the bleak

promontories on which the Pharos lights came once from houses of

prayer--those grey arches and quiet isles under which the sheep of our

valleys feed and rest on the turf that has buried their altars--those

shapeless heaps, that are not of the Earth, which lift our fields into

strange and sudden banks of flowers, and stay our mountain streams with

stones that are not their own, have other thoughts to ask from us than

those of mourning for the rage that despoiled, or the fear that forsook

them. It was not the robber, not the fanatic, not the blasphemer, who

sealed the destruction that they had wrought; the war, the wrath, the

terror, might have worked their worst, and the strong walls would have

risen, and the slight pillars would have started again, from under the

hand of the destroyer. But they could not rise out of the ruins of their

own violated truth.