CHAPTER IV.

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY.

I. It was stated, in the outset of the preceding chapter, that the value

of architecture depended on two distinct characters: the one, the

impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears

of the natural creation. I have endeavored to show in what manner its

majesty was attributable to a sympathy with the effort and trouble of

human life (a sympathy as distinctly perceived in the gloom and mystery

of form, as it is in the melancholy tones of sounds). I desire now to

trace that happier element of its excellence, consisting in a noble

rendering of images of Beauty, derived chiefly from the external

appearances of organic nature.

It is irrelevant to our present purpose to enter into any inquiry

respecting the essential causes of impressions of beauty. I have partly

expressed my thoughts on this matter in a previous work, and I hope to

develope them hereafter. But since all such inquiries can only be

founded on the ordinary understanding of what is meant by the term

Beauty, and since they presume that the feeling of mankind on this

subject is universal and instinctive, I shall base my present

investigation on this assumption; and only asserting that to be

beautiful which I believe will be granted me to be so without dispute, I

would endeavor shortly to trace the manner in which this element of

delight is to be best engrafted upon architectural design, what are the

purest sources from which it is to be derived, and what the errors to be

avoided in its pursuit.

II. It will be thought that I have somewhat rashly limited the elements

of architectural beauty to imitative forms. I do not mean to assert that

every arrangement of line is directly suggested by a natural object; but

that all beautiful lines are adaptations of those which are commonest in

the external creation; that in proportion to the richness of their

association, the resemblance to natural work, as a type and help, must

be more closely attempted, and more clearly seen; and that beyond a

certain point, and that a very low one, man cannot advance in the

invention of beauty, without directly imitating natural form. Thus, in

the Doric temple, the triglyph and cornice are unimitative; or imitative

only of artificial cuttings of wood. No one would call these members

beautiful. Their influence over us is in their severity and simplicity.

The fluting of the column, which I doubt not was the Greek symbol of the

bark of the tree, was imitative in its origin, and feebly resembled many

caniculated organic structures. Beauty is instantly felt in it, but of a

low order. The decoration proper was sought in the true forms of organic

life, and those chiefly human. Again: the Doric capital was unimitative;

but all the beauty it had was dependent on the precision of its ovolo, a

natural curve of the most frequent occurrence. The Ionic capital (to my

mind, as an architectural invention, exceedingly base) nevertheless

depended for all the beauty that it had on its adoption of a spiral

line, perhaps the commonest of all that characterise the inferior orders

of animal organism and habitation. Farther progress could not be made

without a direct imitation of the acanthus leaf.

Again: the Romanesque arch is beautiful as an abstract line. Its type is

always before us in that of the apparent vault of heaven, and horizon of

the earth. The cylindrical pillar is always beautiful, for God has so

moulded the stem of every tree that it is pleasant to the eyes. The

pointed arch is beautiful; it is the termination of every leaf that

shakes in summer wind, and its most fortunate associations are directly

borrowed from the trefoiled grass of the field, or from the stars of its

flowers. Further than this, man's invention could not reach without

frank imitation. His next step was to gather the flowers themselves, and

wreathe them in his capitals.

III. Now, I would insist especially on the fact, of which I doubt not

that further illustrations will occur to the mind of every reader, that

all most lovely forms and thoughts are directly taken from natural

objects; because I would fain be allowed to assume also the converse of

this, namely, that forms which are _not_ taken from natural objects

_must_ be ugly. I know this is a bold assumption; but as I have not

space to reason out the points wherein essential beauty of form

consists, that being far too serious a work to be undertaken in a bye

way, I have no other resource than to use this accidental mark or test

of beauty, of whose truth the considerations which I hope hereafter to

lay before the reader may assure him. I say an accidental mark, since

forms are not beautiful _because_ they are copied from nature; only it

is out of the power of man to conceive beauty without her aid. I believe

the reader will grant me this, even from the examples above advanced;

the degree of confidence with which it is granted must attach also to

his acceptance of the conclusions which will follow from it; but if it

be granted frankly, it will enable me to determine a matter of very

essential importance, namely, what _is_ or is _not_ ornament. For there

are many forms of so-called decoration in architecture, habitual, and

received, therefore, with approval, or at all events without any venture

at expression or dislike, which I have no hesitation in asserting to be

not ornament at all, but to be ugly things, the expense of which ought

in truth to be set down in the architect's contract, as "For

Monstrification." I believe that we regard these customary deformities

with a savage complacency, as an Indian does his flesh patterns and

paint (all nations being in certain degrees and senses savage). I

believe that I can prove them to be monstrous, and I hope hereafter to

do so conclusively; but, meantime, I can allege in defence of my

persuasion nothing but this fact of their being unnatural, to which the

reader must attach such weight as he thinks it deserves. There is,

however, a peculiar difficulty in using this proof; it requires the

writer to assume, very impertinently, that nothing is natural but what

he has seen or supposes to exist. I would not do this; for I suppose

there is no conceivable form or grouping of forms but in some part of

the universe an example of it may be found. But I think I am justified

in considering those forms to be _most_ natural which are most frequent;

or, rather, that on the shapes which in the every-day world are familiar

to the eyes of men, God has stamped those characters of beauty which He

has made it man's nature to love; while in certain exceptional forms He

has shown that the adoption of the others was not a matter of necessity,

but part of the adjusted harmony of creation. I believe that thus we may

reason from Frequency to Beauty and _vice versa_; that knowing a thing

to be frequent, we may assume it to be beautiful; and assume that which

is most frequent to be most beautiful: I mean, of course, _visibly_

frequent; for the forms of things which are hidden in caverns of the

earth, or in the anatomy of animal frames, are evidently not intended by

their Maker to bear the habitual gaze of man. And, again, by frequency I

mean that limited and isolated frequency which is characteristic of all

perfection; not mere multitude: as a rose is a common flower, but yet

there are not so many roses on the tree as there are leaves. In this

respect Nature is sparing of her highest, and lavish of her less,

beauty; but I call the flower as frequent as the leaf, because, each in

its allotted quantity, where the one is, there will ordinarily be the

other.

IV. The first so-called ornament, then, which I would attack is that

Greek fret, now, I believe, usually known by the Italian name Guilloche,

which is exactly a case in point. It so happens that in crystals of

bismuth formed by the unagitated cooling of the melted metal, there

occurs a natural resemblance of it almost perfect. But crystals of

bismuth not only are of unusual occurrence in every-day life, but their

form is, as far as I know, unique among minerals; and not only unique,

but only attainable by an artificial process, the metal itself never

being found pure. I do not remember any other substance or arrangement

which presents a resemblance to this Greek ornament; and I think that I

may trust my remembrance as including most of the arrangements which

occur in the outward forms of common and familiar things. On this

ground, then, I allege that ornament to be ugly; or, in the literal

sense of the word, monstrous; different from anything which it is the

nature of man to admire: and I think an uncarved fillet or plinth

infinitely preferable to one covered with this vile concatenation of

straight lines: unless indeed it be employed as a foil to a true

ornament, which it may, perhaps, sometimes with advantage; or

excessively small, as it occurs on coins, the harshness of its

arrangement being less perceived.

V. Often in association with this horrible design we find, in Greek

works, one which is as beautiful as this is painful--that egg and dart

moulding, whose perfection in its place and way, has never been

surpassed. And why is this? Simply because the form of which it is

chiefly composed is one not only familiar to us in the soft housing of

the bird's nest, but happens to be that of nearly every pebble that

rolls and murmurs under the surf of the sea, on all its endless shore.

And with that a peculiar accuracy; for the mass which bears the light in

this moulding is _not_ in good Greek work, as in the frieze of the

Erechtheum, merely of the shape of an egg. It is _flattened_ on the

upper surface, with a delicacy and keen sense of variety in the curve

which it is impossible too highly to praise, attaining exactly that

flattened, imperfect oval, which, in nine cases out of ten, will be the

form of the pebble lifted at random from the rolled beach. Leave out

this flatness, and the moulding is vulgar instantly. It is singular also

that the insertion of this rounded form in the hollow recess has a

_painted_ type in the plumage of the Argus pheasant, the eyes of whose

feathers are so shaded as exactly to represent an oval form placed in a

hollow.

VI. It will evidently follow, upon our application of this test of

natural resemblance, that we shall at once conclude that all perfectly

beautiful forms must be composed of curves; since there is hardly any

common natural form in which it is possible to discover a straight line.

Nevertheless, Architecture, having necessarily to deal with straight

lines essential to its purposes in many instances and to the expression

of its power in others, must frequently be content with that measure of

beauty which is consistent with such primal forms; and we may presume

that utmost measure of beauty to have been attained when the

arrangements of such lines are consistent with the most frequent natural

groupings of them we can discover, although, to find right lines in

nature at all, we may be compelled to do violence to her finished work,

break through the sculptured and colored surfaces of her crags, and

examine the processes of their crystallisation.

VII. I have just convicted the Greek fret of ugliness, because it has no

precedent to allege for its arrangement except an artificial form of a

rare metal. Let us bring into court an ornament of Lombard architects,

Plate XII., fig. 7, as exclusively composed of right lines as the other,

only, observe, with the noble element of shadow added. This ornament,

taken from the front of the Cathedral of Pisa, is universal throughout

the Lombard churches of Pisa, Lucca, Pistoja, and Florence; and it will

be a grave stain upon them if it cannot be defended. Its first apology

for itself, made in a hurry, sounds marvellously like the Greek one, and

highly dubious. It says that its terminal contour is the very image of a

carefully prepared artificial crystal of common salt. Salt being,

however, a substance considerably more familiar to us than bismuth, the

chances are somewhat in favor of the accused Lombard ornament already.

But it has more to say for itself, and more to the purpose; namely, that

its main outline is one not only of natural crystallisation, but among

the very first and commonest of crystalline forms, being the primal

condition of the occurrence of the oxides of iron, copper, and tin, of

the sulphurets of iron and lead, of fluor spar, &c.; and that those

projecting forms in its surface represent the conditions of structure

which effect the change into another relative and equally common

crystalline form, the cube. This is quite enough. We may rest assured it

is as good a combination of such simple right lines as can be put

together, and gracefully fitted for every place in which such lines are

necessary.

VIII. The next ornament whose cause I would try is that of our Tudor

work, the portcullis. Reticulation is common enough in natural form, and

very beautiful; but it is either of the most delicate and gauzy texture,

or of variously sized meshes and undulating lines. There is no family

relation between portcullis and cobwebs or beetles' wings; something

like it, perhaps, may be found in some kinds of crocodile armor and on

the backs of the Northern divers, but always beautifully varied in size

of mesh. There is a dignity in the thing itself, if its size were

exhibited, and the shade given through its bars; but even these merits

are taken away in the Tudor diminution of it, set on a solid surface. It

has not a single syllable, I believe, to say in its defence. It is

another monster, absolutely and unmitigatedly frightful. All that

carving on Henry the Seventh's Chapel simply deforms the stones of it.

In the same clause with the portcullis, we may condemn all heraldic

decoration, so far as beauty is its object. Its pride and significance

have their proper place, fitly occurring in prominent parts of the

building, as over its gates; and allowably in places where its legendary

may be plainly read, as in painted windows, bosses of ceilings, &c. And

sometimes, of course, the forms which it presents may be beautiful, as

of animals, or simple symbols like the fleur-de-lis; but, for the most

part, heraldic similitudes and arrangements are so professedly and

pointedly unnatural, that it would be difficult to invent anything

uglier; and the use of them as a repeated decoration will utterly

destroy both the power and beauty of any building. Common sense and

courtesy also forbid their repetition. It is right to tell those who

enter your doors that you are such a one, and of such a rank; but to

tell it to them again and again, wherever they turn, becomes soon

impertinence, and at last folly. Let, therefore, the entire bearings

occur in few places, and these not considered as an ornament, but as an

inscription; and for frequent appliance, let any single and fair symbol

be chosen out of them. Thus we may multiply as much as we choose the

French fleur-de-lis, or the Florentine giglio bianco, or the English

rose; but we must not multiply a King's arms.

IX. It will also follow, from these considerations, that if any one part

of heraldic decoration be worse than another, it is the motto; since, of

all things unlike nature, the forms of letters are, perhaps, the most

so. Even graphic tellurium and felspar look, at their clearest, anything

but legible. All letters are, therefore, to be considered as frightful

things, and to be endured only upon occasion; that is to say, in places

where the sense of the inscription is of more importance than external

ornament. Inscriptions in churches, in rooms, and on pictures, are often

desirable, but they are not to be considered as architectural or

pictorial ornaments: they are, on the contrary, obstinate offences to

the eye, not to be suffered except when their intellectual office

introduces them. Place them, therefore, where they will be read, and

there only; and let them be plainly written, and not turned upside down,

nor wrong end first. It is an ill sacrifice to beauty to make that

illegible whose only merit is in its sense. Write it as you would speak

it, simply; and do not draw the eye to it when it would fain rest

elsewhere, nor recommend your sentence by anything but a little openness

of place and architectural silence about it. Write the Commandments on

the Church walls where they may be plainly seen, but do not put a dash

and a tail to every letter; and remember that you are an architect, not

a writing master.

X. Inscriptions appear sometimes to be introduced for the sake of the

scroll on which they are written; and in late and modern painted glass,

as well as in architecture, these scrolls are flourished and turned

hither and thither as if they were ornamental. Ribands occur frequently

in arabesques,--in some of a high order, too,--tying up flowers, or

flitting in and out among the fixed forms. Is there anything like

ribands in nature? It might be thought that grass and sea-weed afforded

apologetic types. They do not. There is a wide difference between their

structure and that of a riband. They have a skeleton, an anatomy, a

central rib, or fibre, or framework of some kind or another, which has a

beginning and an end, a root and head, and whose make and strength

effects every direction of their motion, and every line of their form.

The loosest weed that drifts and waves under the heaving of the sea, or

hangs heavily on the brown and slippery shore, has a marked strength,

structure, elasticity, gradation of substance; its extremities are more

finely fibred than its centre, its centre than its root; every fork of

its ramification is measured and proportioned; every wave of its languid

lines is love. It has its allotted size, and place, and function; it is

a specific creature. What is there like this in a riband? It has no

structure: it is a succession of cut threads all alike; it has no

skeleton, no make, no form, no size, no will of its own. You cut it and

crush it into what you will. It has no strength, no languor. It cannot

fall into a single graceful form. It cannot wave, in the true sense, but

only flutter: it cannot bend, in the true sense, but only turn and be

wrinkled. It is a vile thing; it spoils all that is near its wretched

film of an existence. Never use it. Let the flowers come loose if they

cannot keep together without being tied; leave the sentence unwritten if

you cannot write it on a tablet or book, or plain roll of paper. I know

what authority there is against me. I remember the scrolls of Perugino's

angels, and the ribands of Raphael's arabesques, and of Ghiberti's

glorious bronze flowers: no matter; they are every one of them vices and

uglinesses. Raphael usually felt this, and used an honest and rational

tablet, as in the Madonna di Fuligno. I do not say there is any type of

such tablets in nature, but all the difference lies in the fact that the

tablet is not considered as an ornament, and the riband, or flying

scroll, is. The tablet, as in Albert Durer's Adam and Eve, is introduced

for the sake of the writing, understood and allowed as an ugly but

necessary interruption. The scroll is extended as an ornamental form,

which it is not, nor ever can be.

XI. But it will be said that all this want of organisation and form

might be affirmed of drapery also, and that this latter is a noble

subject of sculpture. By no means. When was drapery a subject of

sculpture by itself, except in the form of a handkerchief on urns in the

seventeenth century and in some of the baser scenic Italian decorations?

Drapery, as such, is always ignoble; it becomes a subject of interest

only by the colors it bears, and the impressions which it receives from

some foreign form or force. All noble draperies, either in painting or

sculpture (color and texture being at present out of our consideration),

have, so far as they are anything more than necessities, one of two

great functions; they are the exponents of motion and of gravitation.

They are the most valuable means of expressing past as well as present

motion in the figure, and they are almost the only means of indicating

to the eye the force of gravity which resists such motion. The Greeks

used drapery in sculpture for the most part as an ugly necessity, but

availed themselves of it gladly in all representation of action,

exaggerating the arrangements of it which express lightness in the

material, and follow gesture in the person. The Christian sculptors,

caring little for the body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively

on the countenance, received drapery at first contentedly as a veil, but

soon perceived a capacity of expression in it which the Greek had not

seen or had despised. The principal element of this expression was the

entire removal of agitation from what was so pre-eminently capable of

being agitated. It fell from their human forms plumb down, sweeping the

ground heavily, and concealing the feet; while the Greek drapery was

often blown away from the thigh. The thick and coarse stuffs of the

monkish dresses, so absolutely opposed to the thin and gauzy web of

antique material, suggested simplicity of division as well as weight of

fall. There was no crushing nor subdividing them. And thus the drapery

gradually came to represent the spirit of repose as it before had of

motion, repose saintly and severe. The wind had no power upon the

garment, as the passion none upon the soul; and the motion of the figure

only bent into a softer line the stillness of the falling veil, followed

by it like a slow cloud by drooping rain: only in links of lighter

undulation it followed the dances of the angels.

Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble; but it is as an exponent of other

and higher things. As that of gravitation, it has especial majesty,

being literally the only means we have of fully representing this

mysterious natural force of earth (for falling water is less passive and

less defined in its lines). So, again, in sails it is beautiful because

it receives the forms of solid curved surface, and expresses the force

of another invisible element. But drapery trusted to its own merits, and

given for its own sake,--drapery like that of Carlo Dolci and the

Caraccis,--is always base.

XII. Closely connected with the abuse of scrolls and bands, is that of

garlands and festoons of flowers as an architectural decoration, for

unnatural arrangements are just as ugly as unnatural forms; and

architecture, in borrowing the objects of nature, is bound to place

them, as far as may be in her power, in such associations as may befit

and express their origin. She is not to imitate directly the natural

arrangement; she is not to carve irregular stems of ivy up her columns

to account for the leaves at the top, but she is nevertheless to place

her most exuberant vegetable ornament just where Nature would have

placed it, and to give some indication of that radical and connected

structure which Nature would have given it. Thus the Corinthian capital

is beautiful, because it expands under the abacus just as Nature would

have expanded it; and because it looks as if the leaves had one root,

though that root is unseen. And the flamboyant leaf mouldings are

beautiful, because they nestle and run up the hollows, and fill the

angles, and clasp the shafts which natural leaves would have delighted

to fill and to clasp. They are no mere cast of natural leaves; they are

counted, orderly, and architectural: but they are naturally, and

therefore beautifully, placed.

XIII. Now I do not mean to say that Nature never uses festoons: she

loves them, and uses them lavishly; and though she does so only in those

places of excessive luxuriance wherein it seems to me that architectural

types should seldom be sought, yet a falling tendril or pendent bough

might, if managed with freedom and grace, be well introduced into

luxuriant decoration (or if not, it is not their want of beauty, but of

architectural fitness, which incapacitates them for such uses). But what

resemblance to such example can we trace in a mass of all manner of

fruit and flowers, tied heavily into a long bunch, thickest in the

middle, and pinned up by both ends against a dead wall? For it is

strange that the wildest and most fanciful of the builders of truly

luxuriant architecture never ventured, so far as I know, even a pendent

tendril; while the severest masters of the revived Greek permitted this

extraordinary piece of luscious ugliness to be fastened in the middle of

their blank surfaces. So surely as this arrangement is adopted, the

whole value of the flower work is lost. Who among the crowds that gaze

upon the building ever pause to admire the flower work of St. Paul's?

It is as careful and as rich as it can be, yet it adds no delightfulness

to the edifice. It is no part of it. It is an ugly excrescence. We

always conceive the building without it, and should be happier if our

conception were not disturbed by its presence. It makes the rest of the

architecture look poverty-stricken, instead of sublime; and yet it is

never enjoyed itself. Had it been put, where it ought, into the

capitals, it would have been beheld with never-ceasing delight. I do not

mean that it could have been so in the present building, for such kind

of architecture has no business with rich ornament in any place; but

that if those groups of flowers had been put into natural places in an

edifice of another style, their value would have been felt as vividly as

now their uselessness. What applies to festoons is still more sternly

true of garlands. A garland is meant to be seen upon a head. There it is

beautiful, because we suppose it newly gathered and joyfully worn. But

it is not meant to be hung upon a wall. If you want a circular ornament,

put a flat circle of colored marble, as in the Casa Doria and other such

palaces at Venice; or put a star, or a medallion, or if you want a ring,

put a solid one, but do not carve the images of garlands, looking as if

they had been used in the last procession, and been hung up to dry, and

serve next time withered. Why not also carve pegs, and hats upon them?

XIV. One of the worst enemies of modern Gothic architecture, though

seemingly an unimportant feature, is an excrescence, as offensive by its

poverty as the garland by its profusion, the dripstone in the shape of

the handle of a chest of drawers, which is used over the square-headed

windows of what we call Elizabethan buildings. In the last Chapter, it

will be remembered that the square form was shown to be that of

pre-eminent Power, and to be properly adapted and limited to the

exhibition of space or surface. Hence, when the window is to be an

exponent of power, as for instance in those by M. Angelo in the lower

story of the Palazzo Ricardi at Florence, the square head is the most

noble form they can assume; but then either their space must be

unbroken, and their associated mouldings the most severe, or else the

square must be used as a finial outline, and is chiefly to be

associated with forms of tracery, in which the relative form of power,

the circle, is predominant, as in Venetian, and Florentine, and Pisan

Gothic. But if you break upon your terminal square, or if you cut its

lines off at the top and turn them outwards, you have lost its unity and

space. It is an including form no longer, but an added, isolated line,

and the ugliest possible. Look abroad into the landscape and see if you

can discover any one so bent and fragmentary as that of this strange

windlass-looking dripstone. You cannot. It is a monster. It unites every

element of ugliness, its line is harshly broken in itself, and

unconnected with every other; it has no harmony either with structure or

decoration, it has no architectural support, it looks glued to the wall,

and the only pleasant property it has, is the appearance of some

likelihood of its dropping off.

I might proceed, but the task is a weary one, and I think I have named

those false forms of decoration which are most dangerous in our modern

architecture as being legal and accepted. The barbarisms of individual

fancy are as countless as they are contemptible; they neither admit

attack nor are worth it; but these above named are countenanced, some by

the practice of antiquity, all by high authority: they have depressed

the proudest, and contaminated the purest schools, and are so

established in recent practice that I write rather for the barren

satisfaction of bearing witness against them, than with hope of inducing

any serious convictions to their prejudice.

XV. Thus far of what is _not_ ornament. What ornament is, will without

difficulty be determined by the application of the same test. It must

consist of such studious arrangements of form as are imitative or

suggestive of those which are commonest among natural existences, that

being of course the noblest ornament which represents the highest orders

of existence. Imitated flowers are nobler than imitated stones, imitated

animals, than flowers; imitated human form of all animal forms the

noblest. But all are combined in the richest ornamental work; and the

rock, the fountain, the flowing river with its pebbled bed, the sea, the

clouds of Heaven, the herb of the field, the fruit-tree bearing fruit,

the creeping thing, the bird, the beast, the man, and the angel, mingle

their fair forms on the bronze of Ghiberti.

Every thing being then ornamental that is imitative, I would ask the

reader's attention to a few general considerations, all that can here be

offered relating to so vast a subject; which, for convenience sake, may

be classed under the three heads of inquiry:--What is the right place

for architectural ornament? What is the peculiar treatment of ornament

which renders it architectural? and what is the right use of color as

associated with architectural imitative form?

XVI. What is the place of ornament? Consider first that the characters

of natural objects which the architect can represent are few and

abstract. The greater part of those delights by which Nature recommends

herself to man at all times, cannot be conveyed by him into his

imitative work. He cannot make his grass green and cool and good to rest

upon, which in nature is its chief use to man; nor can he make his

flowers tender and full of color and of scent, which in nature are their

chief powers of giving joy. Those qualities which alone he can secure

are certain severe characters of form, such as men only see in nature on

deliberate examination, and by the full and set appliance of sight and

thought: a man must lie down on the bank of grass on his breast and set

himself to watch and penetrate the intertwining of it, before he finds

that which is good to be gathered by the architect. So then while Nature

is at all times pleasant to us, and while the sight and sense of her

work may mingle happily with all our thoughts, and labors, and times of

existence, that image of her which the architect carries away represents

what we can only perceive in her by direct intellectual exertion, and

demands from us, wherever it appears, an intellectual exertion of a

similar kind in order to understand it and feel it. It is the written or

sealed impression of a thing sought out, it is the shaped result of

inquiry and bodily expression of thought.

XVII. Now let us consider for an instant what would be the effect of

continually repeating an expression of a beautiful thought to any other

of the senses at times when the mind could not address that sense to the

understanding of it. Suppose that in time of serious occupation, of

stern business, a companion should repeat in our ears continually some

favorite passage of poetry, over and over again all day long. We should

not only soon be utterly sick and weary of the sound of it, but that

sound would at the end of the day have so sunk into the habit of the ear

that the entire meaning of the passage would be dead to us, and it would

ever thenceforward require some effort to fix and recover it. The music

of it would not meanwhile have aided the business in hand, while its own

delightfulness would thenceforward be in a measure destroyed. It is the

same with every other form of definite thought. If you violently present

its expression to the senses, at times when the mind is otherwise

engaged, that expression will be ineffective at the time, and will have

its sharpness and clearness destroyed forever. Much more if you present

it to the mind at times when it is painfully affected or disturbed, or

if you associate the expression of pleasant thought with incongruous

circumstances, you will affect that expression thenceforward with a

painful color for ever.

XVIII. Apply this to expressions of thought received by the eye.

Remember that the eye is at your mercy more than the ear. "The eye it

cannot choose but see." Its nerve is not so easily numbed as that of the

ear, and it is often busied in tracing and watching forms when the ear

is at rest. Now if you present lovely forms to it when it cannot call

the mind to help it in its work, and among objects of vulgar use and

unhappy position, you will neither please the eye nor elevate the vulgar

object. But you will fill and weary the eye with the beautiful form, and

you will infect that form itself with the vulgarity of the thing to

which you have violently attached it. It will never be of much use to

you any more; you have killed or defiled it; its freshness and purity

are gone. You will have to pass it through the fire of much thought

before you will cleanse it, and warm it with much love before it will

revive.

XIX. Hence then a general law, of singular importance in the present

day, a law of simple common sense,--not to decorate things belonging to

purposes of active and occupied life. Wherever you can rest, there

decorate; where rest is forbidden, so is beauty. You must not mix

ornament with business, any more than you may mix play. Work first, and

then rest. Work first and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares,

nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not thrash with sculptured flails: nor

put bas-reliefs on millstones. What! it will be asked, are we in the

habit of doing so? Even so; always and everywhere. The most familiar

position of Greek mouldings is in these days on shop fronts. There is

not a tradesman's sign nor shelf nor counter in all the streets of all

our cities, which has not upon it ornaments which were invented to adorn

temples and beautify kings' palaces. There is not the smallest advantage

in them where they are. Absolutely valueless--utterly without the power

of giving pleasure, they only satiate the eye, and vulgarise their own

forms. Many of these are in themselves thoroughly good copies of fine

things, which things themselves we shall never, in consequence, enjoy

any more. Many a pretty beading and graceful bracket there is in wood or

stucco above our grocers' and cheese-mongers' and hosiers' shops: how it

is that the tradesmen cannot understand that custom is to be had only by

selling good tea and cheese and cloth, and that people come to them for

their honesty, and their readiness, and their right wares, and not

because they have Greek cornices over their windows, or their names in

large gilt letters on their house fronts? how pleasurable it would be to

have the power of going through the streets of London, pulling down

those brackets and friezes and large names, restoring to the tradesmen

the capital they had spent in architecture, and putting them on honest

and equal terms, each with his name in black letters over his door, not

shouted down the street from the upper stories, and each with a plain

wooden shop casement, with small panes in it that people would not think

of breaking in order to be sent to prison! How much better for them

would it be--how much happier, how much wiser, to put their trust upon

their own truth and industry, and not on the idiocy of their customers.

It is curious, and it says little for our national probity on the one

hand, or prudence on the other, to see the whole system of our street

decoration based on the idea that people must be baited to a shop as

moths are to a candle.

XX. But it will be said that much of the best wooden decoration of the

middle ages was in shop fronts. No; it was in _house_ fronts, of which

the shop was a part, and received its natural and consistent portion of

the ornament. In those days men lived, and intended to live _by_ their

shops, and over them, all their days. They were contented with them and

happy in them: they were their palaces and castles. They gave them

therefore such decoration as made themselves happy in their own

habitation, and they gave it for their own sake. The upper stories were

always the richest, and the shop was decorated chiefly about the door,

which belonged to the house more than to it. And when our tradesmen

settle to their shops in the same way, and form no plans respecting

future villa architecture, let their whole houses be decorated, and

their shops too, but with a national and domestic decoration (I shall

speak more of this point in the sixth chapter). However, our cities are

for the most part too large to admit of contented dwelling in them

throughout life; and I do not say there is harm in our present system of

separating the shop from the dwelling-house; only where they are so

separated, let us remember that the only reason for shop decoration is

removed, and see that the decoration be removed also.

XXI. Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is to

the decoration of the railroad station. Now, if there be any place in

the world in which people are deprived of that portion of temper and

discretion which are necessary to the contemplation of beauty, it is

there. It is the very temple of discomfort, and the only charity that

the builder can extend to us is to show us, plainly as may be, how

soonest to escape from it. The whole system of railroad travelling is

addressed to people who, being in a hurry, are therefore, for the time

being, miserable. No one would travel in that manner who could help

it--who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, instead

of through tunnels and between banks: at least those who would, have no

sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult it at the station. The

railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest business, to be got

through as soon as possible. It transmutes a man from a traveller into a

living parcel. For the time he has parted with the nobler

characteristics of his humanity for the sake of a planetary power of

locomotion. Do not ask him to admire anything. You might as well ask the

wind. Carry him safely, dismiss him soon: he will thank you for nothing

else. All attempts to please him in any other way are mere mockery, and

insults to the things by which you endeavor to do so. There never was

more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of

ornament in anything concerned with railroads or near them. Keep them

out of the way, take them through the ugliest country you can find,

confess them the miserable things they are, and spend nothing upon them

but for safety and speed. Give large salaries to efficient servants,

large prices to good manufacturers, large wages to able workmen; let the

iron be tough, and the brickwork solid, and the carriages strong. The

time is perhaps not distant when these first necessities may not be

easily met: and to increase expense in any other direction is madness.

Better bury gold in the embankments, than put it in ornaments on the

stations. Will a single traveller be willing to pay an increased fare on

the South Western, because the columns of the terminus are covered with

patterns from Nineveh? He will only care less for the Ninevite ivories

in the British Museum: or on the North Western, because there are old

English-looking spandrils to the roof of the station at Crewe? He will

only have less pleasure in their prototypes at Crewe House. Railroad

architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it were only left

to its work. You would not put rings on the fingers of a smith at his

anvil.

XXII. It is not however only in these marked situations that the abuse

of which I speak takes place. There is hardly, at present, an

application of ornamental work, which is not in some sort liable to

blame of the same kind. We have a bad habit of trying to disguise

disagreeable necessities by some form of sudden decoration, which is, in

all other places, associated with such necessities. I will name only one

instance, that to which I have alluded before--the roses which conceal

the ventilators in the flat roofs of our chapels. Many of those roses

are of very beautiful design, borrowed from fine works: all their grace

and finish are invisible when they are so placed, but their general form

is afterwards associated with the ugly buildings in which they

constantly occur; and all the beautiful roses of the early French and

English Gothic, especially such elaborate ones as those of the triforium

of Coutances, are in consequence deprived of their pleasurable

influence: and this without our having accomplished the smallest good by

the use we have made of the dishonored form. Not a single person in the

congregation ever receives one ray of pleasure from those roof roses;

they are regarded with mere indifference, or lost in the general

impression of harsh emptiness.

XXIII. Must not beauty, then, it will be asked, be sought for in the

forms which we associate with our every-day life? Yes, if you do it

consistently, and in places where it can be calmly seen; but not if you

use the beautiful form only as a mask and covering of the proper

conditions and uses of things, nor if you thrust it into the places set

apart for toil. Put it in the drawing-room, not into the workshop; put

it upon domestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft. All men have

sense of what is right in this manner, if they would only use and apply

that sense; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if

he would only ask for it when it does so, and not allow it to be forced

upon him when he does not want it. Ask any one of the passengers over

London Bridge at this instant whether he cares about the forms of the

bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell you, No. Modify these forms

of leaves to a less scale, and put them on his milk-jug at breakfast,

and ask him whether he likes them, and he will tell you, Yes. People

have no need of teaching if they could only think and speak truth, and

ask for what they like and want, and for nothing else: nor can a right

disposition of beauty be ever arrived at except by this common sense,

and allowance for the circumstances of the time and place. It does not

follow, because bronze leafage is in bad taste on the lamps of London

Bridge, that it would be so on those of the Ponte della Trinita; nor,

because it would be a folly to decorate the house fronts of Gracechurch

Street, that it would be equally so to adorn those of some quiet

provincial town. The question of greatest external or internal

decoration depends entirely on the conditions of probable repose. It was

a wise feeling which made the streets of Venice so rich in external

ornament, for there is no couch of rest like the gondola. So, again,

there is no subject of street ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain,

where it is a fountain of use; for it is just there that perhaps the

happiest pause takes place in the labor of the day, when the pitcher is

rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the bearer is drawn deeply,

and the hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of the form

declined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or

light laugh mixes with the trickle of the falling water, heard shriller

and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet as that--so

full of the depth of ancient days, so softened with the calm of pastoral

solitude?

XXIV. II. Thus far, then, of the place for beauty. We were next to

inquire into the characters which fitted it peculiarly for architectural

appliance, and into the principles of choice and of arrangement which

best regulate the imitation of natural forms in which it consists. The

full answering of these questions would be a treatise on the art of

design: I intend only to say a few words respecting the two conditions

of that art which are essentially architectural,--Proportion and

Abstraction. Neither of these qualities is necessary, to the same

extent, in other fields of design. The sense of proportion is, by the

landscape painter, frequently sacrificed to character and accident; the

power of abstraction to that of complete realisation. The flowers of his

foreground must often be unmeasured in their quantity, loose in their

arrangement: what is calculated, either in quantity or disposition,

must be artfully concealed. That calculation is by the architect to be

prominently exhibited. So the abstraction of few characteristics out of

many is shown only in the painter's sketch; in his finished work it is

concealed or lost in completion. Architecture, on the contrary, delights

in Abstraction and fears to complete her forms. Proportion and

Abstraction, then, are the two especial marks of architectural design as

distinguished from all other. Sculpture must have them in inferior

degrees; leaning, on the one hand, to an architectural manner, when it

is usually greatest (becoming, indeed, a part of Architecture), and, on

the other, to a pictorial manner, when it is apt to lose its dignity,

and sink into mere ingenious carving.

XXV. Now, of Proportion so much has been written, that I believe the

only facts which are of practical use have been overwhelmed and kept out

of sight by vain accumulations of particular instances and estimates.

Proportions are as infinite (and that in all kinds of things, as

severally in colors, lines, shades, lights, and forms) as possible airs

in music: and it is just as rational an attempt to teach a young

architect how to proportion truly and well by calculating for him the

proportions of fine works, as it would be to teach him to compose

melodies by calculating the mathematical relations of the notes in

Beethoven's Adelaide or Mozart's Requiem. The man who has eye and

intellect will invent beautiful proportions, and cannot help it; but he

can no more tell _us_ how to do it than Wordsworth could tell us how to

write a sonnet, or than Scott could have told us how to plan a romance.

But there are one or two general laws which can be told: they are of no

use, indeed, except as preventives of gross mistake, but they are so far

worth telling and remembering; and the more so because, in the

discussion of the subtle laws of proportion (which will never be either

numbered or known), architects are perpetually forgetting and

transgressing the very simplest of its necessities.

XXVI. Of which the first is, that wherever Proportion exists at all, one

member of the composition must be either larger than, or in some way

supreme over, the rest. There is no proportion between equal things.

They can have symmetry only, and symmetry without proportion is not

composition. It is necessary to perfect beauty, but it is the least

necessary of its elements, nor of course is there any difficulty in

obtaining it. Any succession of equal things is agreeable; but to

compose is to arrange unequal things, and the first thing to be done in

beginning a composition is to determine which is to be the principal

thing. I believe that all that has been written and taught about

proportion, put together, is not to the architect worth the single rule,

well enforced, "Have one large thing and several smaller things, or one

principal thing and several inferior things, and bind them well

together." Sometimes there may be a regular gradation, as between the

heights of stories in good designs for houses; sometimes a monarch with

a lowly train, as in the spire with its pinnacles: the varieties of

arrangement are infinite, but the law is universal--have one thing above

the rest, either by size, or office, or interest. Don't put the

pinnacles without the spire. What a host of ugly church towers have we

in England, with pinnacles at the corners, and none in the middle! How

many buildings like King's College Chapel at Cambridge, looking like

tables upside down, with their four legs in the air! What! it will be

said, have not beasts four legs? Yes, but legs of different shapes, and

with a head between them. So they have a pair of ears: and perhaps a

pair of horns: but not at both ends. Knock down a couple of pinnacles at

either end in King's College Chapel, and you will have a kind of

proportion instantly. So in a cathedral you may have one tower in the

centre, and two at the west end; or two at the west end only, though a

worse arrangement: but you must not have two at the west and two at the

east end, unless you have some central member to connect them; and even

then, buildings are generally bad which have large balancing features at

the extremities, and small connecting ones in the centre, because it is

not easy then to make the centre dominant. The bird or moth may indeed

have wide wings, because the size of the wing does not give supremacy to

the wing. The head and life are the mighty things, and the plumes,

however wide, are subordinate. In fine west fronts with a pediment and

two towers, the centre is always the principal mass, both in bulk and

interest (as having the main gateway), and the towers are subordinated

to it, as an animal's horns are to its head. The moment the towers rise

so high as to overpower the body and centre, and become themselves the

principal masses, they will destroy the proportion, unless they are made

unequal, and one of them the leading feature of the cathedral, as at

Antwerp and Strasburg. But the purer method is to keep them down in due

relation to the centre, and to throw up the pediment into a steep

connecting mass, drawing the eye to it by rich tracery. This is nobly

done in St. Wulfran of Abbeville, and attempted partly at Rouen, though

that west front is made up of so many unfinished and supervening designs

that it is impossible to guess the real intention of any one of its

builders.

[Illustration: PLATE X.--(Page 122--Vol. V.)

TRACERIES AND MOULDINGS FROM ROUEN AND SALISBURY.]

XXVII. This rule of supremacy applies to the smallest as well as to the

leading features: it is interestingly seen in the arrangement of all

good mouldings. I have given one, on the opposite page, from Rouen

cathedral; that of the tracery before distinguished as a type of the

noblest manner of Northern Gothic (Chap. II. Sec. XXII.). It is a tracery

of three orders, of which the first is divided into a leaf moulding,

fig. 4, and _b_ in the section, and a plain roll, also seen in fig. 4,

_c_ in the section; these two divisions surround the entire window or

panelling, and are carried by two-face shafts of corresponding sections.

The second and third orders are plain rolls following the line of the

tracery; four divisions of moulding in all: of these four, the leaf

moulding is, as seen in the sections, much the largest; next to it the

outer roll; then, by an exquisite alternation, the innermost roll (_e_),

in order that it may not be lost in the recess and the intermediate

(_d_), the smallest. Each roll has its own shaft and capital; and the

two smaller, which in effect upon the eye, owing to the retirement of

the innermost, are nearly equal, have smaller capitals than the two

larger, lifted a little to bring them to the same level. The wall in the

trefoiled lights is curved, as from _e_ to _f_ in the section; but in

the quatrefoil it is flat, only thrown back to the full depth of the

recess below so as to get a sharp shadow instead of a soft one, the

mouldings falling back to it in nearly a vertical curve behind the roll

_e_. This could not, however, be managed with the simpler mouldings of

the smaller quatrefoil above, whose half section is given from _g_ to

g_2; but the architect was evidently fretted by the heavy look of its

circular foils as opposed to the light spring of the arches below: so he

threw its cusps obliquely clear from the wall, as seen in fig. 2,

attached to it where they meet the circle, but with their finials pushed

out from the natural level (_h_, in the section) to that of the first

order (g_2) and supported by stone props behind, as seen in the

profile fig. 2, which I got from the correspondent panel on the buttress

face (fig. 1 being on its side), and of which the lower cusps, being

broken away, show the remnant of one of their props projecting from the

wall. The oblique curve thus obtained in the profile is of singular

grace. Take it all in all, I have never met with a more exquisite piece

of varied, yet severe, proportioned and general arrangement (though all

the windows of the period are fine, and especially delightful in the

subordinate proportioning of the smaller capitals to the smaller

shafts). The only fault it has is the inevitable misarrangement of the

central shafts; for the enlargement of the inner roll, though beautiful

in the group of four divisions at the side, causes, in the triple

central shaft, the very awkwardness of heavy lateral members which has

just been in most instances condemned. In the windows of the choir, and

in most of the period, this difficulty is avoided by making the fourth

order a fillet which only follows the foliation, while the three

outermost are nearly in arithmetical progression of size, and the

central triple shaft has of course the largest roll in front. The

moulding of the Palazzo Foscari (Plate VIII., and Plate IV. fig. 8) is,

for so simple a group, the grandest in effect I have even seen: it is

composed of a large roll with two subordinates.

XXVIII. It is of course impossible to enter into details of instances

belonging to so intricate division of our subject, in the compass of a

general essay. I can but rapidly name the chief conditions of right.

Another of these is the connection of Symmetry with horizontal, and of

Proportion with vertical, division. Evidently there is in symmetry a

sense not merely of equality, but of balance: now a thing cannot be

balanced by another on the top of it, though it may by one at the side

of it. Hence, while it is not only allowable, but often necessary, to

divide buildings, or parts of them, horizontally into halves, thirds, or

other equal parts, all vertical divisions of this kind are utterly

wrong; worst into half, next worst in the regular numbers which more

betray the equality. I should have thought this almost the first

principle of proportion which a young architect was taught: and yet I

remember an important building, recently erected in England, in which

the columns are cut in half by the projecting architraves of the central

windows; and it is quite usual to see the spires of modern Gothic

churches divided by a band of ornament half way up. In all fine spires

there are two bands and three parts, as at Salisbury. The ornamented

portion of the tower is there cut in half, and allowably, because the

spire forms the third mass to which the other two are subordinate: two

stories are also equal in Giotto's campanile, but dominant over smaller

divisions below, and subordinated to the noble third above. Even this

arrangement is difficult to treat; and it is usually safer to increase

or diminish the height of the divisions regularly as they rise, as in

the Doge's Palace, whose three divisions are in a bold geometrical

progression: or, in towers, to get an alternate proportion between the

body, the belfry, and the crown, as in the campanile of St. Mark's. But,

at all events, get rid of equality; leave that to children and their

card houses: the laws of nature and the reason of man are alike against

it, in arts, as in politics. There is but one thoroughly ugly tower in

Italy that I know of, and that is so because it is divided into vertical

equal parts: the tower of Pisa.[12]

XXIX. One more principle of Proportion I have to name, equally simple,

equally neglected. Proportion is between three terms at _least_. Hence,

as the pinnacles are not enough without the spire, so neither the spire

without the pinnacles. All men feel this and usually express their

feeling by saying that the pinnacles conceal the junction of the spire

and tower. This is one reason; but a more influential one is, that the

pinnacles furnish the third term to the spire and tower. So that it is

not enough, in order to secure proportion, to divide a building

unequally; it must be divided into at least three parts; it may be into

more (and in details with advantage), but on a large scale I find three

is about the best number of parts in elevation, and five in horizontal

extent, with freedom of increase to five in the one case and seven in

the other; but not to more without confusion (in architecture, that is

to say; for in organic structure the numbers cannot be limited). I

purpose, in the course of works which are in preparation, to give

copious illustrations of this subject, but I will take at present only

one instance of vertical proportion, from the flower stem of the common

water plantain, _Alisma Plantago_. Fig. 5, Plate XII. is a reduced

profile of one side of a plant gathered at random; it is seen to have

five masts, of which, however, the uppermost is a mere shoot, and we can

consider only their relations up to the fourth. Their lengths are

measured on the line A B, which is the actual length of the lowest mass

_a b_, A C=_b c_, A D=_c d_, and A E=_d e_. If the reader will take the

trouble to measure these lengths and compare them, he will find that,

within half a line, the uppermost A E=5/7 of A D, A D=6/8 of A C, and A

C=7/9 of A B; a most subtle diminishing proportion. From each of the

joints spring three major and three minor branches, each between each;

but the major branches, at any joint, are placed over the minor branches

at the joint below, by the curious arrangement of the joint itself--the

stem is bluntly triangular; fig. 6 shows the section of any joint. The

outer darkened triangle is the section of the lower stem; the inner,

left light, of the upper stem; and the three main branches spring from

the ledges left by the recession. Thus the stems diminish in diameter

just as they diminish in height. The main branches (falsely placed in

the profile over each other to show their relations) have respectively

seven, six, five, four, and three arm-bones, like the masts of the stem;

these divisions being proportioned in the same subtle manner. From the

joints of these, it seems to be the _plan_ of the plant that three

major and three minor branches should again spring, bearing the flowers:

but, in these infinitely complicated members, vegetative nature admits

much variety; in the plant from which these measures were taken the full

complement appeared only at one of the secondary joints.

The leaf of this plant has five ribs on each side, as its flower

generally five masts, arranged with the most exquisite grace of curve;

but of lateral proportion I shall rather take illustrations from

architecture: the reader will find several in the accounts of the Duomo

at Pisa and St. Mark's at Venice, in Chap. V. Sec.Sec. XIV.-XVI. I give these

arrangements merely as illustrations, not as precedents: all beautiful

proportions are unique, they are not general formulae.

XXX. The other condition of architectural treatment which we proposed to

notice was the abstraction of imitated form. But there is a peculiar

difficulty in touching within these narrow limits on such a subject as

this, because the abstraction of which we find examples in existing art,

is partly involuntary; and it is a matter of much nicety to determine

where it begins to be purposed. In the progress of national as well as

of individual mind, the first attempts at imitation are always abstract

and incomplete. Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute

completion usually its decline; whence absolute completion of imitative

form is often supposed to be in itself wrong. But it is not wrong

always, only dangerous. Let us endeavor briefly to ascertain wherein its

danger consists, and wherein its dignity.

XXXI. I have said that all art is abstract in its beginnings; that is to

say, it expresses only a small number of the qualities of the thing

represented. Curved and complex lines are represented by straight and

simple ones; interior markings of forms are few, and much is symbolical

and conventional. There is a resemblance between the work of a great

nation, in this phase, and the work of childhood and ignorance, which,

in the mind of a careless observer, might attach something like ridicule

to it. The form of a tree on the Ninevite sculptures is much like that

which, come twenty years ago, was familiar upon samplers; and the types

of the face and figure in early Italian art are susceptible of easy

caricature. On the signs which separate the infancy of magnificent

manhood from every other, I do not pause to insist (they consist

entirely in the choice of the symbol and of the features abstracted);

but I pass to the next stage of art, a condition of strength in which

the abstraction which was begun in incapability is continued in free

will. This is the case, however, in pure sculpture and painting, as well

as in architecture; and we have nothing to do but with that greater

severity of manner which fits either to be associated with the more

realist art. I believe it properly consists only in a due expression of

their subordination, an expression varying according to their place and

office. The question is first to be clearly determined whether the

architecture is a frame for the sculpture, or the sculpture an ornament

of the architecture. If the latter, then the first office of that

sculpture is not to represent the things it imitates, but to gather out

of them those arrangements of form which shall be pleasing to the eye in

their intended places. So soon as agreeable lines and points of shade

have been added to the mouldings which were meagre, or to the lights

which were unrelieved, the architectural work of the imitation is

accomplished; and how far it shall be wrought towards completeness or

not, will depend upon its place, and upon other various circumstances.

If, in its particular use or position, it is symmetrically arranged,

there is, of course, an instant indication of architectural subjection.

But symmetry is not abstraction. Leaves may be carved in the most

regular order, and yet be meanly imitative; or, on the other hand, they

may be thrown wild and loose, and yet be highly architectural in their

separate treatment. Nothing can be less symmetrical than the group of

leaves which join the two columns in Plate XIII.; yet, since nothing of

the leaf character is given but what is necessary for the bare

suggestion of its image and the attainment of the lines desired, their

treatment is highly abstract. It shows that the workman only wanted so

much of the leaf as he supposed good for his architecture, and would

allow no more; and how much is to be supposed good, depends, as I have

said, much more on place and circumstance than on general laws. I know

that this is not usually thought, and that many good architects would

insist on abstraction in all cases: the question is so wide and so

difficult that I express my opinion upon it most diffidently; but my own

feeling is, that a purely abstract manner, like that of our earliest

English work, does not afford room for the perfection of beautiful form,

and that its severity is wearisome after the eye has been long

accustomed to it. I have not done justice to the Salisbury dog-tooth

moulding, of which the effect is sketched in fig. 5, Plate X., but I

have done more justice to it nevertheless than to the beautiful French

one above it; and I do not think that any candid reader would deny that,

piquant and spirited as is that from Salisbury, the Rouen moulding is,

in every respect, nobler. It will be observed that its symmetry is more

complicated, the leafage being divided into double groups of two lobes

each, each lobe of different structure. With exquisite feeling, one of

these double groups is alternately omitted on the other side of the

moulding (not seen in the Plate, but occupying the cavetto of the

section), thus giving a playful lightness to the whole; and if the

reader will allow for a beauty in the flow of the curved outlines

(especially on the angle), of which he cannot in the least judge from my

rude drawing, he will not, I think, expect easily to find a nobler

instance of decoration adapted to the severest mouldings.

Now it will be observed, that there is in its treatment a high degree of

abstraction, though not so conventional as that of Salisbury: that is to

say, the leaves have little more than their flow and outline

represented; they are hardly undercut, but their edges are connected by

a gentle and most studied curve with the stone behind; they have no

serrations, no veinings, no rib or stalk on the angle, only an incision

gracefully made towards their extremities, indicative of the central rib

and depression. The whole style of the abstraction shows that the

architect could, if he had chosen, have carried the imitation much

farther, but stayed at this point of his own free will; and what he has

done is also so perfect in its kind, that I feel disposed to accept his

authority without question, so far as I can gather it from his works, on

the whole subject of abstraction.

XXXII. Happily his opinion is frankly expressed. This moulding is on the

lateral buttress, and on a level with the top of the north gate; it

cannot therefore be closely seen except from the wooden stairs of the

belfry; it is not intended to be so seen, but calculated for a distance

of, at least, forty to fifty feet from the eye. In the vault of the gate

itself, half as near again, there are three rows of mouldings, as I

think, by the same designer, at all events part of the same plan. One of

them is given in Plate I. fig. 2 _a_. It will be seen that the

abstraction is here infinitely less; the ivy leaves have stalks and

associated fruit, and a rib for each lobe, and are so far undercut as to

detach their forms from the stone; while in the vine-leaf moulding

above, of the same period, from the south gate, serration appears added

to other purely imitative characters. Finally, in the animals which form

the ornaments of the portion of the gate which is close to the eye,

abstraction nearly vanishes into perfect sculpture.

XXXIII. Nearness to the eye, however, is not the only circumstance which

influences architectural abstraction. These very animals are not merely

better cut because close to the eye; they are put close to the eye that

they may, without indiscretion, be better cut, on the noble principle,

first I think, clearly enunciated by Mr. Eastlake, that the closest

imitation shall be of the noblest object. Farther, since the wildness

and manner of growth of vegetation render a bona fide imitation of it

impossible in sculpture--since its members must be reduced in number,

ordered in direction, and cut away from their roots, even under the most

earnestly imitative treatment,--it becomes a point, as I think, of good

judgment, to proportion the completeness of execution of parts to the

formality of the whole; and since five or six leaves must stand for a

tree, to let also five or six touches stand for a leaf. But since the

animal generally admits of perfect outline--since its form is detached,

and may be fully represented, its sculpture may be more complete and

faithful in all its parts. And this principle will be actually found. I

believe, to guide the old workmen. If the animal form be in a gargoyle,

incomplete, and coining out of a block of stone, or if a head only, as

for a boss or other such partial use, its sculpture will be highly

abstract. But if it be an entire animal, as a lizard, or a bird, or a

squirrel, peeping among leafage, its sculpture will be much farther

carried, and I think, if small, near the eye, and worked in a fine

material, may rightly be carried to the utmost possible completion.

Surely we cannot wish a less finish bestowed on those which animate the

mouldings of the south door of the cathedral of Florence; nor desire

that the birds in the capitals of the Doge's palace should be stripped

of a single plume.

XXXIV. Under these limitations, then, I think that perfect sculpture may

be made a part of the severest architecture; but this perfection was

said in the outset to be dangerous. It is so in the highest degree; for

the moment the architect allows himself to dwell on the imitated

portions, there is a chance of his losing sight of the duty of his

ornament, of its business as a part of the composition, and sacrificing

its points of shade and effect to the delight of delicate carving. And

then he is lost. His architecture has become a mere framework for the

setting of delicate sculpture, which had better be all taken down and

put into cabinets. It is well, therefore, that the young architect

should be taught to think of imitative ornament as of the extreme of

grace in language; not to be regarded at first, not to be obtained at

the cost of purpose, meaning, force, or conciseness, yet, indeed, a

perfection--the least of all perfections, and yet the crowning one of

all--one which by itself, and regarded in itself, is an architectural

coxcombry, but is yet the sign of the most highly-trained mind and power

when it is associated with others. It is a safe manner, as I think, to

design all things at first in severe abstraction, and to be prepared, if

need were, to carry them out in that form; then to mark the parts where

high finish would be admissible, to complete these always with stern

reference to their general effect, and then connect them by a graduated

scale of abstraction with the rest. And there is one safeguard against

danger in this process on which I would finally insist. Never imitate

anything but natural forms, and those the noblest, in the completed

parts. The degradation of the cinque cento manner of decoration was

not owing to its naturalism, to its faithfulness of imitation, but to

its imitation of ugly, i.e. unnatural things. So long as it restrained

itself to sculpture of animals and flowers, it remained noble. The

balcony, on the opposite page, from a house in the Campo St. Benedetto

at Venice, shows one of the earliest occurrences of the cinque cento

arabesque, and a fragment of the pattern is given in Plate XII. fig. 8.

It is but the arresting upon the stone work of a stem or two of the

living flowers, which are rarely wanting in the window above (and which,

by the by, the French and Italian peasantry often trellis with exquisite

taste about their casements). This arabesque, relieved as it is in

darkness from the white stone by the stain of time, is surely both

beautiful and pure; and as long as the renaissance ornament remained in

such forms it may be beheld with undeserved admiration. But the moment

that unnatural objects were associated with these, and armor, and

musical instruments, and wild meaningless scrolls and curled shields,

and other such fancies, became principal in its subjects, its doom was

sealed, and with it that of the architecture of the world.

[Illustration: PLATE XI.--(Page 131--Vol. V.)

BALCONY IN THE CAMPO, ST. BENEDETTO, VENICE.]

XXXV. III. Our final inquiry was to be into the use of color as

associated with architectural ornament.

I do not feel able to speak with any confidence respecting the touching

of _sculpture_ with color. I would only note one point, that sculpture

is the representation of an idea, while architecture is itself a real

thing. The idea may, as I think, be left colorless, and colored by the

beholder's mind: but a reality ought to have reality in all its

attributes: its color should be as fixed as its form. I cannot,

therefore, consider architecture as in any wise perfect without color.

Farther, as I have above noticed, I think the colors of architecture

should be those of natural stones; partly because more durable, but also

because more perfect and graceful. For to conquer the harshness and

deadness of tones laid upon stone or on gesso, needs the management and

discretion of a true painter; and on this co-operation we must not

calculate in laying down rules for general practice. If Tintoret or

Giorgione are at hand, and ask us for a wall to paint, we will alter our

whole design for their sake, and become their servants; but we must, as

architects, expect the aid of the common workman only; and the laying of

color by a mechanical hand, and its toning under a vulgar eye, are far

more offensive than rudeness in cutting the stone. The latter is

imperfection only; the former deadness or discordance. At the best, such

color is so inferior to the lovely and mellow hues of the natural stone,

that it is wise to sacrifice some of the intricacy of design, if by so

doing we may employ the nobler material. And if, as we looked to Nature

for instruction respecting form, we look to her also to learn the

management of color, we shall, perhaps, find that this sacrifice of

intricacy is for other causes expedient.

XXXVI. First, then, I think that in making this reference we are to

consider our building as a kind of organized creature; in coloring which

we must look to the single and separately organized creatures of Nature,

not to her landscape combinations. Our building, if it is well composed,

is one thing, and is to be colored as Nature would color one thing--a

shell, a flower, or an animal; not as she colors groups of things.

And the first broad conclusion we shall deduce from observance of

natural color in such cases will be, that it never follows form, but is

arranged on an entirely separate system. What mysterious connection

there may be between the shape of the spots on an animal's skin and its

anatomical system, I do not know, nor even if such a connection has in

any wise been traced: but to the eye the systems are entirely separate,

and in many cases that of color is accidentally variable. The stripes of

a zebra do not follow the lines of its body or limbs, still less the

spots of a leopard. In the plumage of birds, each feather bears a part

of the pattern which is arbitrarily carried over the body, having indeed

certain graceful harmonies with the form, diminishing or enlarging in

directions which sometimes follow, but also not unfrequently oppose, the

directions of its muscular lines. Whatever harmonies there may be, are

distinctly like those of two separate musical parts, coinciding here and

there only--never discordant, but essentially different I hold this,

then, for the first great principle of architectural color. Let it be

visibly independent of form. Never paint a column with vertical lines,

but always cross it.[13] Never give separate mouldings separate colors

(I know this is heresy, but I never shrink from any conclusions, however

contrary to human authority, to which I am led by observance of natural

principles); and in sculptured ornaments I do not paint the leaves or

figures (I cannot help the Elgin frieze) of one color and their ground

of another, but vary both the ground and the figures with the same

harmony. Notice how Nature does it in a variegated flower; not one leaf

red and another white, but a point of red and a zone of white, or

whatever it may be, to each. In certain places you may run your two

systems closer, and here and there let them be parallel for a note or

two, but see that the colors and the forms coincide only as two orders

of mouldings do; the same for an instant, but each holding its own

course. So single members may sometimes have single colors: as a bird's

head is sometimes of one color and its shoulders another, you may make

your capital of one color and your shaft another; but in general the

best place for color is on broad surfaces, not on the points of interest

in form. An animal is mottled on its breast and back, rarely on its paws

or about its eyes; so put your variegation boldly on the flat wall and

broad shaft, but be shy of it in the capital and moulding; in all cases

it is a safe rule to simplify color when form is rich, and vice versa;

and I think it would be well in general to carve all capitals and

graceful ornaments in white marble, and so leave them.

XXXVII. Independence then being first secured, what kind of limiting

outlines shall we adopt for the system of color itself?

I am quite sure that any person familiar with natural objects will never

be surprised at any appearance of care or finish in them. That is the

condition of the universe. But there is cause both for surprise and

inquiry whenever we see anything like carelessness or incompletion: that

is not a common condition; it must be one appointed for some singular

purpose. I believe that such surprise will be forcibly felt by any one

who, after studying carefully the lines of some variegated organic

form, will set himself to copy with similar diligence those of its

colors. The boundaries of the forms he will assuredly, whatever the

object, have found drawn with a delicacy and precision which no human

hand can follow. Those of its colors he will find in many cases, though

governed always by a certain rude symmetry, yet irregular, blotched,

imperfect, liable to all kinds of accidents and awkwardnesses. Look at

the tracery of the lines on a camp shell, and see how oddly and

awkwardly its tents are pitched. It is not indeed always so: there is

occasionally, as in the eye of the peacock's plume, an apparent

precision, but still a precision far inferior to that of the drawing of

the filaments which bear that lovely stain; and in the plurality of

cases a degree of looseness and variation, and, still more singularly,

of harshness and violence in arrangement, is admitted in color which

would be monstrous in form. Observe the difference in the precision of a

fish's scales and of the spots on them.

XXXVIII. Now, why it should be that color is best seen under these

circumstances I will not here endeavor to determine; nor whether the

lesson we are to learn from it be that it is God's will that all manner

of delights should never be combined in one thing. But the fact is

certain, that color is always by Him arranged in these simple or rude

forms, and as certain that, therefore, it must be best seen in them, and

that we shall never mend by refining its arrangements. Experience

teaches us the same thing. Infinite nonsense has been written about the

union of perfect color with perfect form. They never will, never can be

united. Color, to be perfect, _must_ have a soft outline or a simple

one: it cannot have a refined one; and you will never produce a good

painted window with good figure-drawing in it. You will lose perfection

of color as you give perfection of line. Try to put in order and form

the colors of a piece of opal.

XXXIX. I conclude, then, that all arrangements of color, for its own

sake, in graceful forms, are barbarous; and that, to paint a color

pattern with the lovely lines of a Greek leaf moulding, is an utterly

savage procedure. I cannot find anything in natural color like this: it

is not in the bond. I find it in all natural form--never in natural

color. If, then, our architectural color is to be beautiful as its form

was, by being imitative, we are limited to these conditions--to simple

masses of it, to zones, as in the rainbow and the zebra; cloudings and

flamings, as in marble shells and plumage, or spots of various shapes

and dimensions. All these conditions are susceptible of various degrees

of sharpness and delicacy, and of complication in arrangement. The zone

may become a delicate line, and arrange itself in chequers and zig-zags.

The flaming may be more or less defined, as on a tulip leaf, and may at

last be represented by a triangle of color, and arrange itself in stars

or other shapes; the spot may be also graduated into a stain, or defined

into a square or circle. The most exquisite harmonies may be composed of

these simple elements: some soft and full of flushed and melting spaces

of color; others piquant and sparkling, or deep and rich, formed of

close groups of the fiery fragments: perfect and lovely proportion may

be exhibited in the relation of their quantities, infinite invention in

their disposition: but, in all cases, their shape will be effective only

as it determines their quantity, and regulates their operation on each

other; points or edges of one being introduced between breadths of

others, and so on. Triangular and barred forms are therefore convenient,

or others the simplest possible; leaving the pleasure of the spectator

to be taken in the color, and in that only. Curved outlines, especially

if refined, deaden the color, and confuse the mind. Even in figure

painting the greatest colorists have either melted their outline away,

as often Correggio and Rubens; or purposely made their masses of

ungainly shape, as Titian; or placed their brightest hues in costume,

where they could get quaint patterns, as Veronese, and especially

Angelico, with whom, however, the absolute virtue of color is secondary

to grace of line. Hence, he never uses the blended hues of Correggio,

like those on the wing of the little Cupid, in the "Venus and Mercury,"

but always the severest type--the peacock plume. Any of these men would

have looked with infinite disgust upon the leafage and scrollwork which

form the ground of color in our modern painted windows, and yet all

whom I have named were much infected with the love of renaissance

designs. We must also allow for the freedom of the painter's subject,

and looseness of his associated lines; a pattern being severe in a

picture, which is over luxurious upon a building. I believe, therefore,

that it is impossible to be over quaint or angular in architectural

coloring; and thus many dispositions which I have had occasion to

reprobate in form, are, in color, the best that can be invented. I have

always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the Tudor style, for this

reason, that, having surrendered all pretence to spaciousness and

breadth,--having divided its surfaces by an infinite number of lines, it

yet sacrifices the only characters which can make lines beautiful;

sacrifices all the variety and grace which long atoned for the caprice

of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its leading feature, an entanglement

of cross bars and verticals, showing about as much invention or skill of

design as the reticulation of the bricklayer's sieve. Yet this very

reticulation would in color be highly beautiful; and all the heraldry,

and other features which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful as

themes of color (so long as there are no fluttering or over-twisted

lines in them); and this observe, because, when colored, they take the

place of a mere pattern, and the resemblance to nature, which could not

be found in their sculptured forms, is found in their piquant

variegation of other surfaces. There is a beautiful and bright bit of

wall painting behind the Duomo of Verona, composed of coats of arms,

whose bearings are balls of gold set in bars of green (altered blue?)

and white, with cardinal's hats in alternate squares. This is of course,

however, fit only for domestic work. The front of the Doge's palace at

Venice is the purest and most chaste model that I can name (but one) of

the fit application of color to public buildings. The sculpture and

mouldings are all white; but the wall surface is chequered with marble

blocks of pale rose, the chequers being in no wise harmonized, or fitted

to the forms of the windows; but looking as if the surface had been

completed first, and the windows cut out of it. In Plate XII. fig. 2 the

reader will see two of the patterns used in green and white, on the

columns of San Michele of Lucca, every column having a different design.

Both are beautiful, but the upper one certainly the best. Yet in

sculpture its lines would have been perfectly barbarous, and those even

of the lower not enough refined.

XL. Restraining ourselves, therefore, to the use of such simple

patterns, so far forth as our color is subordinate either to

architectural structure, or sculptural form, we have yet one more manner

of ornamentation to add to our general means of effect, monochrome

design, the intermediate condition between coloring and carving. The

relations of the entire system of architectural decoration may then be

thus expressed.

1. Organic form dominant. True, independent sculpture, and

alto-relievo; rich capitals, and mouldings; to be elaborate in

completion of form, not abstract, and either to be left in pure

white marble, or most cautiously touched with color in points and

borders only, in a system not concurrent with their forms.

2. Organic form sub-dominant. Basso-relievo or intaglio. To be more

abstract in proportion to the reduction of depth; to be also more

rigid and simple in contour; to be touched with color more boldly

and in an increased degree, exactly in proportion to the reduced

depth and fulness of form, but still in a system non-concurrent

with their forms.

3. Organic form abstracted to outline. Monochrome design, still

farther reduced to simplicity of contour, and therefore admitting

for the first time the color to be concurrent with its outlines;

that is to say, as its name imports, the entire figure to be

detached in one color from a ground of another.

4. Organic forms entirely lost. Geometrical patterns or variable

cloudings in the most vivid color.

On the opposite side of this scale, ascending from the color pattern, I

would place the various forms of painting which may be associated with

architecture: primarily, and as most fit for such purpose, the mosaic,

highly abstract in treatment, and introducing brilliant color in masses;

the Madonna of Torcello being, as I think, the noblest type of the

manner, and the Baptistery of Parma the richest: next, the purely

decorative fresco, like that of the Arena Chapel; finally, the fresco

becoming principal, as in the Vatican and Sistine. But I cannot, with

any safety, follow the principles of abstraction in this pictorial

ornament; since the noblest examples of it appear to me to owe their

architectural applicability to their archaic manner; and I think that

the abstraction and admirable simplicity which render them fit media of

the most splendid coloring, cannot be recovered by a voluntary

condescension. The Byzantines themselves would not, I think, if they

could have drawn the figure better, have used it for a color decoration;

and that use, as peculiar to a condition of childhood, however noble and

full of promise, cannot be included among those modes of adornment which

are now legitimate or even possible. There is a difficulty in the

management of the painted window for the same reason, which has not yet

been met, and we must conquer that first, before we can venture to

consider the wall as a painted window on a large scale. Pictorial

subject, without such abstraction, becomes necessarily principal, or, at

all events, ceases to be the architect's concern; its plan must be left

to the painter after the completion of the building, as in the works of

Veronese and Giorgione on the palaces of Venice.

XLI. Pure architectural decoration, then, may be considered as limited

to the four kinds above specified; of which each glides almost

imperceptibly into the other. Thus, the Elgin frieze is a monochrome in

a state of transition to sculpture, retaining, as I think, the half-cast

skin too long. Of pure monochrome, I have given an example in Plate VI.,

from the noble front of St. Michele of Lucca. It contains forty such

arches, all covered with equally elaborate ornaments, entirely drawn by

cutting out their ground to about the depth of an inch in the flat white

marble, and filling the spaces with pieces of green serpentine; a most

elaborate mode of sculpture, requiring excessive care and precision in

the fitting of the edges, and of course double work, the same line

needing to be cut both in the marble and serpentine. The excessive

simplicity of the forms will be at once perceived; the eyes of the

figures of animals, for instance, being indicated only by a round dot,

formed by a little inlet circle of serpentine, about half an inch over:

but, though simple, they admit often much grace of curvature, as in the

neck of the bird seen above the right hand pillar.[14] The pieces of

serpentine have fallen out in many places, giving the black shadows, as

seen under the horseman's arm and bird's neck, and in the semi-circular

line round the arch, once filled with some pattern. It would have

illustrated my point better to have restored the lost portions, but I

always draw a thing exactly as it is, hating restoration of any kind;

and I would especially direct the reader's attention to the completion

of the forms in the _sculptured_ ornament of the marble cornices, as

opposed to the abstraction of the monochrome figures, of the ball and

cross patterns between the arches, and of the triangular ornament round

the arch on the left.

XLII. I have an intense love for these monochrome figures, owing to

their wonderful life and spirit in all the works on which I found them;

nevertheless, I believe that the excessive degree of abstraction which

they imply necessitates our placing them in the rank of a progressive or

imperfect art, and that a perfect building should rather be composed of

the highest sculpture (organic form dominant and sub-dominant),

associated with pattern colors on the flat or broad surfaces. And we

find, in fact, that the cathedral of Pisa, which is a higher type than

that of Lucca, exactly follows this condition, the color being put in

geometrical patterns on its surfaces, and animal-forms and lovely

leafage used in the sculptured cornices and pillars. And I think that

the grace of the carved forms is best seen when it is thus boldly

opposed to severe traceries of color, while the color itself is, as we

have seen, always most piquant when it is put into sharp angular

arrangements. Thus the sculpture is approved and set off by the color,

and the color seen to the best advantage in its opposition both to the

whiteness and the grace of the carved marble.

XLIII. In the course of this and the preceding chapters, I have now

separately enumerated most of the conditions of Power and Beauty, which

in the outset I stated to be the grounds of the deepest impressions with

which architecture could affect the human mind; but I would ask

permission to recapitulate them in order to see if there be any building

which I may offer as an example of the unison, in such manner as is

possible, of them all. Glancing back, then, to the beginning of the

third chapter, and introducing in their place the conditions

incidentally determined in the two previous sections, we shall have the

following list of noble characters:

Considerable size, exhibited by simple terminal lines (Chap. III. Sec. 6).

Projection towards the top (Sec. 7). Breadth of flat surface (Sec. 8). Square

compartments of that surface (Sec. 9). Varied and visible masonry (Sec. 11).

Vigorous depth of shadow (Sec. 13), exhibited especially by pierced

traceries (Sec. 18). Varied proportion in ascent (Chap. IV. Sec. 28). Lateral

symmetry (Sec. 28). Sculpture most delicate at the base (Chap. I. Sec. 12).

Enriched quantity of ornament at the top (Sec. 13). Sculpture abstract in

inferior ornaments and mouldings (Chap. IV. Sec. 31), complete in animal

forms (Sec. 33). Both to be executed in white marble (Sec. 40). Vivid color

introduced in flat geometrical patterns (Sec. 39), and obtained by the use

of naturally colored stone (Sec. 35).

These characteristics occur more or less in different buildings, some in

one and some in another. But all together, and all in their highest

possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one

building in the world, the Campanile of Giotto at Florence. The drawing

of the tracery of its upper story, which heads this chapter, rude as it

is, will nevertheless give the reader some better conception of that

tower's magnificence than the thin outlines in which it is usually

portrayed. In its first appeal to the stranger's eye there is something

unpleasing; a mingling, as it seems to him, of over severity with over

minuteness. But let him give it time, as he should to all other

consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I used to despise that

Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since

lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows by

sunlight and moonlight, and I shall not soon forget how profound and

gloomy appeared to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic, when I

afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury.

The contrast is indeed strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the

rising of those grey walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark

and barren rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering,

rough-grained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other

ornament than the martins' nests in the height of them, and that bright,

smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy

traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes

are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern sky, that

serene height of mountain alabaster, colored like a morning cloud, and

chased like a sea shell. And if this be, as I believe it, the model and

mirror of perfect architecture, is there not something to be learned by

looking back to the early life of him who raised it? I said that the

Power of human mind had its growth in the Wilderness; much more must the

love and the conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue we have

seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God's daily work, and an

arrested ray of some star of creation, be given chiefly in the places

which He has gladdened by planting there the fir tree and the pine. Not

within the walls of Florence, but among the far away fields of her

lilies, was the child trained who was to raise that headstone of Beauty

above the towers of watch and war. Remember all that he became; count

the sacred thoughts with which he filled the heart of Italy; ask those

who followed him what they learned at his feet; and when you have

numbered his labors, and received their testimony, if it seem to you

that God had verily poured out upon this His servant no common nor

restrained portion of His Spirit, and that he was indeed a king among

the children of men, remember also that the legend upon his crown was

that of David's:--"I took thee from the sheepcote, and from following

the sheep."