THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE.
I. It has been my endeavor to show in the preceding pages how every form
of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity,
Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing
this, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite
place among those which direct that embodiment; the last place, not only
as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as belonging
to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest; that
principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life its
happiness, Faith its acceptance, Creation its continuance,--Obedience.
Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfaction which
I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first appeared to bear
but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that the conditions of
material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to consider, furnish
a strange proof how false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of
that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty; most treacherous,
indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely
show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible.
There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars
have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have
the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.
In one of the noblest poems[17] for its imagery and its music belonging
to the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in the
aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, having
once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. But with
what strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one noble line of his
invocation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and
acknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less severe
because eternal? How could he otherwise? since if there be any one
principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more
sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the visible creation,
that principle is not Liberty, but Law.
II. The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of
Liberty. Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty
you mean chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect,
subjection of the will; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame of
committing a wrong; if you mean respect for all who are in authority,
and consideration for all who are in dependence; veneration for the
good, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you mean
watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and
perseverance in all toils; if you mean, in a word, that Service which is
defined in the liturgy of the English church to be perfect Freedom, why
do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean license,
and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine, and the
fool equality, by which the proud mean anarchy, and the malignant mean
violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its best and truest
is, Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else
its would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that
obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a measure of license is
necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and
pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their Restraint.
Compare a river that has burst its banks with one that is bound by them,
and the clouds that are scattered over the face of the whole heaven with
those that are marshalled into ranks and orders by its winds. So that
though restraint, utter and unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not
because it is in itself an evil, but only because, when too great, it
overpowers the nature of the thing restrained, and so counteracts the
other laws of which that nature is itself composed. And the balance
wherein consists the fairness of creation is between the laws of life
and being in the things governed and the laws of general sway to which
they are subjected; and the suspension or infringement of either kind of
law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with,
disease; while the increase of both honor and beauty is habitually on
the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of
character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the
catalogue of social virtue is "Loyalty," and the sweetest which men have
learned in the pastures of the wilderness is "Fold."
III. Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to
the majesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of
their obedience to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is less
quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than it is by the sun
and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake
and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any
action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the
question "are its laws strait?" For their severity will probably be
commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labor it
concentrates or whose interest it concerns.
This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art,
above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most
common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of
men, and for its perfection the perseverance of successive generations.
And taking into account also what we have before so often observed of
Architecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life,
and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in
comparison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might
beforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and action
dependent on far more severe laws than theirs; that the license which
they extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by
her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with all
that is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her own
majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man's social
happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light of
experience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish except when
it was subjected to a national law as strict and as minutely
authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and social
relations; nay, even more authoritative than these, because both capable
of more enforcement, as over more passive matter; and needing more
enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, but of
the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks more
loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, in watching the
progress of architecture, we see distinct and general; if, amidst the
counter evidence of success attending opposite accidents of character
and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and indisputably
drawn, it is this; that the architecture of a nation is great only when
it is as universal and as established as its language; and when
provincial differences of style are nothing more than so many dialects.
Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations have been alike
successful in their architecture in times of poverty and of wealth; in
times of war and of peace; in times of barbarism and of refinement;
under governments the most liberal or the most arbitrary; but this one
condition has been constant, this one requirement clear in all places
and at all times, that the work shall be that of a school, that no
individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, accepted
types and customary decorations; and that from the cottage to the
palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden fence
to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the architecture of
the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its
language or its coin.
IV. A day never passes without our hearing our English architects called
upon to be original, and to invent a new style: about as sensible and
necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags
enough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting a
coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about the
fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who
wants a new style of painting or sculpture? But we want some style. It
is of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws and they
be good laws, whether they be new or old, foreign or native, Roman or
Saxon, or Norman or English laws. But it is of considerable importance
that we should have a code of laws of one kind or another, and that code
accepted and enforced from one side of the island to another, and not
one law made ground of judgment at York and another in Exeter. And in
like manner it does not matter one marble splinter whether we have an
old or new architecture, but it matters everything whether we have an
architecture truly so called or not; that is, whether an architecture
whose laws might be taught at our schools from Cornwall to
Northumberland, as we teach English spelling and English grammar, or an
architecture which is to be invented fresh every time we build a
workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be a wonderful
misunderstanding among the majority of architects at the present day as
to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of all wherein it
consists. Originality in expression does not depend on invention of new
words; nor originality in poetry on invention of new measures; nor, in
painting, on invention of new colors, or new modes of using them. The
chords of music, the harmonies of color, the general principles of the
arrangement of sculptural masses, have been determined long ago, and, in
all probability, cannot be added to any more than they can be altered.
Granting that they may be, such additions or alterations are much more
the work of time and of multitudes than of individual inventors. We may
have one Van Eyck, who will be known as the introducer of a new style
once in ten centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some
accidental bye-play or pursuit; and the use of that invention will
depend altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period.
Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, will
take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and will work in
that, and be great in that, and make everything that he does in it look
as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down from heaven. I do
not say that he will not take liberties with his materials, or with his
rules: I do not say that strange changes will not sometimes be wrought
by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But those changes will be
instructive, natural, facile, though sometimes marvellous; they will
never be sought after as things necessary to his dignity or to his
independence; and those liberties will be like the liberties that a
great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance of its rules for
the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, and brilliant
consequences of an effort to express what the language, without such
infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have above
described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and in its
refusal of ancient limitations: so there are in the life of an insect;
and there is great interest in the state of both the art and the insect
at those periods when, by their natural progress and constitutional
power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as that would be both
an uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead of being
contented with a caterpillar's life and feeding on caterpillar's food,
was always striving to turn itself into a chrysalis; and as that would
be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll
restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn itself prematurely into a
moth; so will that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of
supporting itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs
which have been enough for the support and guidance of other arts before
it and like it, is struggling and fretting under the natural limitations
of its existence, and striving to become something other than it is. And
though it is the nobility of the highest creatures to look forward to,
and partly to understand the changes which are appointed for them,
preparing for them beforehand; and if, as is usual with _appointed_
changes, they be into a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing
in the hope of them, yet it is the strength of every creature, be it
changeful or not, to rest for the time being, contented with the
conditions of its existence, and striving only to bring about the
changes which it desires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties for
which its present state is appointed and continued.
V. Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be,
and this is commonly a most merciful and enthusiastic supposition with
respect to either, are ever to be sought in themselves, or can ever be
healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against common laws. We
want neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture already
known are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us: and it
will be time enough to think of changing them for better when we can use
them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want, but
cannot do without; and which all the struggling and raving in the world,
nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, will
never enable us to do without: and these are Obedience, Unity,
Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees of
tastes; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; all
the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which there
is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and the
life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as
efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit
architecture and all art, like other things, to English law.
VI. I say architecture and all art; for I believe architecture must be
the beginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their time
and order; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and
sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health,
depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languish
until that takes the lead, and (this I do not _think_, but I proclaim,
as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety of
society, of an understood and strongly administered legal government)
our architecture _will_ languish, and that in the very dust, until the
first principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal
system of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It
may be said that this is impossible. It may be so--I fear it is so: I
have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it; I simply
know and assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible, English art is
impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting time, and money, and
energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries and treasuries, and
break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the merest
dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere gulph
in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will not
close. And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad step
be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of pottery
and printed stuffs; we shall not reason out art by our philosophy; we
shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, not create it by our
fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out of brick and stone;
but there is a chance for us in these, and there is none else; and that
chance rests on the bare possibility of obtaining the consent, both of
architects and of the public, to choose a style, and to use it
universally.
VII. How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we may
easily determine by the consideration of the necessary modes of teaching
any other branch of general knowledge. When we begin to teach children
writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require absolute
accuracy in the formation of the letters; as they obtain command of the
received modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their falling
into such variations as are consistent with their feeling, their
circumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught to
write Latin, an authority is required of him for every expression he
uses; as he becomes master of the language he may take a license, and
feel his right to do so without any authority, and yet write better
Latin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the same way
our architects would have to be taught to write the accepted style. We
must first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan in
their authority; their modes of construction and laws of proportion are
to be studied with the most penetrating care; then the different forms
and uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a
German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under this
absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admitting not
so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto, or the breadth of a
fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the grammatical forms
and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the expression of them
all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, and apply it to
whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to every practical
purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license might be permitted;
and individual authority allowed to change or to add to the received
forms, always within certain limits; the decorations, especially, might
be made subjects of variable fancy, and enriched with ideas either
original or taken from other schools. And thus in process of time and by
a great national movement, it might come to pass, that a new style
should arise, as language itself changes; we might perhaps come to speak
Italian instead of Latin, or to speak modern instead of old English; but
this would be a matter of entire indifference, and a matter, besides,
which no determination or desire could either hasten or prevent. That
alone which it is in our power to obtain, and which it is our duty to
desire, is an unanimous style of some kind, and such comprehension and
practice of it as would enable us to adapt its features to the peculiar
character of every several building, large or small, domestic, civil, or
ecclesiastical. I have said that it was immaterial what style was
adopted, so far as regards the room for originality which its
developement would admit: it is not so, however, when we take into
consideration the far more important questions of the facility of
adaptation to general purposes, and of the sympathy with which this or
that style would be popularly regarded. The choice of Classical or
Gothic, again using the latter term in its broadest sense, may be
questionable when it regards some single and considerable public
building; but I cannot conceive it questionable, for an instant, when it
regards modern uses in general: I cannot conceive any architect insane
enough to project the vulgarization of Greek architecture. Neither can
it be rationally questionable whether we should adopt early or late,
original or derivative Gothic: if the latter were chosen, it must be
either some impotent and ugly degradation, like our own Tudor, or else a
style whose grammatical laws it would be nearly impossible to limit or
arrange, like the French Flamboyant. We are equally precluded from
adopting styles essentially infantine or barbarous, however Herculean
their infancy, or majestic their outlawry, such as our own Norman, or
the Lombard Romanesque. The choice would lie I think between four
styles:--1. The Pisan Romanesque; 2. The early Gothic of the Western
Italian Republics, advanced as far and as fast as our art would enable
us to the Gothic of Giotto; 3. The Venetian Gothic in its purest
developement; 4. The English earliest decorated. The most natural,
perhaps the safest choice, would be of the last, well fenced from chance
of again stiffening into the perpendicular; and perhaps enriched by some
mingling of decorative elements from the exquisite decorated Gothic of
France, of which, in such cases, it would be needful to accept some well
known examples, as the North door of Rouen and the church of St. Urbain
at Troyes, for final and limiting authorities on the side of decoration.
VIII. It is almost impossible for us to conceive, in our present state
of doubt and ignorance, the sudden dawn of intelligence and fancy, the
rapidly increasing sense of power and facility, and, in its _proper
sense_, of Freedom, which such wholesome restraint would instantly cause
throughout the whole circle of the arts. Freed from the agitation and
embarrassment of that liberty of choice which is the cause of half the
discomforts of the world; freed from the accompanying necessity of
studying all past, present, or even possible styles; and enabled, by
concentration of individual, and co-operation of multitudinous energy,
to penetrate into the uttermost secrets of the adopted style, the
architect would find his whole understanding enlarged, his practical
knowledge certain and ready to hand, and his imagination playful and
vigorous, as a child's would be within a walled garden, who would sit
down and shudder if he were left free in a fenceless plain. How many and
how bright would be the results in every direction of interest, not to
the arts merely, but to national happiness and virtue, it would be as
difficult to preconceive as it would seem extravagant to state: but the
first, perhaps the least, of them would be an increased sense of
fellowship among ourselves, a cementing of every patriotic bond of
union, a proud and happy recognition of our affection for and sympathy
with each other, and our willingness in all things to submit ourselves
to every law that would advance the interest of the community; a
barrier, also, the best conceivable, to the unhappy rivalry of the upper
and middle classes, in houses, furniture, and establishments; and even a
check to much of what is as vain as it is painful in the oppositions of
religious parties respecting matters of ritual. These, I say, would be
the first consequences. Economy increased tenfold, as it would be by the
simplicity of practice; domestic comforts uninterfered with by the
caprice and mistakes of architects ignorant of the capacities of the
styles they use, and all the symmetry and sightliness of our harmonized
streets and public buildings, are things of slighter account in the
catalogue of benefits. But it would be mere enthusiasm to endeavor to
trace them farther. I have suffered myself too long to indulge in the
speculative statement of requirements which perhaps we have more
immediate and more serious work than to supply, and of feelings which it
may be only contingently in our power to recover. I should be unjustly
thought unaware of the difficulty of what I have proposed, or of the
unimportance of the whole subject as compared with many which are
brought home to our interests and fixed upon our consideration by the
wild course of the present century. But of difficulty and of importance
it is for others to judge. I have limited myself to the simple statement
of what, if we desire to have architecture, we MUST primarily endeavor
to feel and do: but then it may not be desirable for us to have
architecture at all. There are many who feel it to be so; many who
sacrifice much to that end; and I am sorry to see their energies wasted
and their lives disquieted in vain. I have stated, therefore, the only
ways in which that end is attainable, without venturing even to express
an opinion as to its real desirableness. I have an opinion, and the zeal
with which I have spoken may sometimes have betrayed it, but I hold to
it with no confidence. I know too well the undue importance which the
study that every man follows must assume in his own eyes, to trust my
own impressions of the dignity of that of Architecture; and yet I think
I cannot be utterly mistaken in regarding it as at least useful in the
sense of a National employment. I am confirmed in this impression by
what I see passing among the states of Europe at this instant. All the
horror, distress, and tumult which oppress the foreign nations, are
traceable, among the other secondary causes through which God is working
out His will upon them, to the simple one of their not having enough to
do. I am not blind to the distress among their operatives; nor do I deny
the nearer and visibly active causes of the movement: the recklessness
of villany in the leaders of revolt, the absence of common moral
principle in the upper classes, and of common courage and honesty in the
heads of governments. But these causes themselves are ultimately
traceable to a deeper and simpler one: the recklessness of the
demagogue, the immorality of the middle class, and the effeminacy and
treachery of the noble, are traceable in all these nations to the
commonest and most fruitful cause of calamity in households--idleness.
We think too much in our benevolent efforts, more multiplied and more
vain day by day, of bettering men by giving them advice and instruction.
There are few who will take either: the chief thing they need is
occupation. I do not mean work in the sense of bread,--I mean work in
the sense of mental interest; for those who either are placed above the
necessity of labor for their bread, or who will not work although they
should. There is a vast quantity of idle energy among European nations
at this time, which ought to go into handicrafts; there are multitudes
of idle semi-gentlemen who ought to be shoemakers and carpenters; but
since they will not be these so long as they can help it, the business
of the philanthropist is to find them some other employment than
disturbing governments. It is of no use to tell them they are fools, and
that they will only make themselves miserable in the end as well as
others: if they have nothing else to do, they will do mischief; and the
man who will not work, and who has no means of intellectual pleasure, is
as sure to become an instrument of evil as if he had sold himself bodily
to Satan. I have myself seen enough of the daily life of the young
educated men of France and Italy, to account for, as it deserves, the
deepest national suffering and degradation; and though, for the most
part, our commerce and our natural habits of industry preserve us from
a similar paralysis, yet it would be wise to consider whether the forms
of employment which we chiefly adopt or promote, are as well calculated
as they might be to improve and elevate us.
We have just spent, for instance, a hundred and fifty millions, with
which we have paid men for digging ground from one place and depositing
it in another. We have formed a large class of men, the railway navvies,
especially reckless, unmanageable, and dangerous. We have maintained
besides (let us state the benefits as fairly as possible) a number of
iron founders in an unhealthy and painful employment; we have developed
(this is at least good) a very large amount of mechanical ingenuity; and
we have, in fine, attained the power of going fast from one place to
another. Meantime we have had no mental interest or concern ourselves in
the operations we have set on foot, but have been left to the usual
vanities and cares of our existence. Suppose, on the other hand, that we
had employed the same sums in building beautiful houses and churches. We
should have maintained the same number of men, not in driving
wheelbarrows, but in a distinctly technical, if not intellectual,
employment, and those who were more intelligent among them would have
been especially happy in that employment, as having room in it for the
developement of their fancy, and being directed by it to that
observation of beauty which, associated with the pursuit of natural
science, at present forms the enjoyment of many of the more intelligent
manufacturing operatives. Of mechanical ingenuity, there is, I imagine,
at least as much required to build a cathedral as to cut a tunnel or
contrive a locomotive: we should, therefore, have developed as much
science, while the artistical element of intellect would have been added
to the gain. Meantime we should ourselves have been made happier and
wiser by the interest we should have taken in the work with which we
were personally concerned; and when all was done, instead of the very
doubtful advantage of the power of going fast from place to place, we
should have had the certain advantage of increased pleasure in stopping
at home.
IX. There are many other less capacious, but more constant, channels of
expenditure, quite as disputable in their beneficial tendency; and we
are, perhaps, hardly enough in the habit of inquiring, with respect to
any particular form of luxury or any customary appliance of life,
whether the kind of employment it gives to the operative or the
dependant be as healthy and fitting an employment as we might otherwise
provide for him. It is not enough to find men absolute subsistence; we
should think of the manner of life which our demands necessitate; and
endeavor, as far as may be, to make all our needs such as may, in the
supply of them, raise, as well as feed, the poor. It is far better to
give work which is above the men, than to educate the men to be above
their work. It may be doubted, for instance, whether the habits of
luxury, which necessitate a large train of men servants, be a wholesome
form of expenditure; and more, whether the pursuits which have a
tendency to enlarge the class of the jockey and the groom be a
philanthropic form of mental occupation. So again, consider the large
number of men whose lives are employed by civilized nations in cutting
facets upon jewels. There is much dexterity of hand, patience, and
ingenuity thus bestowed, which are simply burned out in the blaze of the
tiara, without, so far as I see, bestowing any pleasure upon those who
wear or who behold, at all compensatory for the loss of life and mental
power which are involved in the employment of the workman. He would be
far more healthily and happily sustained by being set to carve stone;
certain qualities of his mind, for which there is no room in his present
occupation, would develope themselves in the nobler; and I believe that
most women would, in the end, prefer the pleasure of having built a
church, or contributed to the adornment of a cathedral, to the pride of
bearing a certain quantity of adamant on their foreheads.
X. I could pursue this subject willingly, but I have some strange
notions about it which it is perhaps wiser not loosely to set down. I
content myself with finally reasserting, what has been throughout the
burden of the preceding pages, that whatever rank, or whatever
importance, may be attributed or attached to their immediate subject,
there is at least some value in the analogies with which its pursuit has
presented us, and some instruction in the frequent reference of its
commonest necessities to the mighty laws, in the sense and scope of
which all men are Builders, whom every hour sees laying the stubble or
the stone.
I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have checked
the course of what might otherwise have been importunate persuasion, as
the thought has crossed me, how soon all Architecture may be vain,
except that which is not made with hands. There is something ominous in
the light which has enabled us to look back with disdain upon the ages
among whose lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile when I
hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly
science, and vigor of worldly effort; as if we were again at the
beginning of days. There is thunder on the horizon as well as dawn. The
sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.
NOTES
NOTE I.
Page 21.
_"With the idolatrous Egyptian."_
The probability is indeed slight in comparison, but it _is_ a
probability nevertheless, and one which is daily on the increase. I
trust that I may not be thought to underrate the danger of such
sympathy, though I speak lightly of the chance of it. I have confidence
in the central religious body of the English and Scottish people, as
being not only untainted with Romanism, but immoveably adverse to it:
and, however strangely and swiftly the heresy of the Protestant and
victory of the Papist may seem to be extending among us, I feel assured
that there are barriers in the living faith of this nation which neither
can overpass. Yet this confidence is only in the ultimate faithfulness
of a few, not in the security of the nation from the sin and the
punishment of partial apostasy. Both have, indeed, in some sort, been
committed and suffered already; and, in expressing my belief of the
close connection of the distress and burden which the mass of the people
at present sustain, with the encouragement which, in various directions,
has been given to the Papist, do not let me be called superstitious or
irrational. No man was ever more inclined than I, both by natural
disposition and by many ties of early association, to a sympathy with
the principles and forms of the Romanist Church; and there is much in
its discipline which conscientiously, as well as sympathetically, I
could love and advocate. But, in confessing this strength of
affectionate prejudice, surely I vindicate more respect for my firmly
expressed belief, that the entire doctrine and system of that Church is
in the fullest sense anti-Christian; that its lying and idolatrous Power
is the darkest plague that ever held commission to hurt the Earth; that
all those yearnings for unity and fellowship, and common obedience,
which have been the root of our late heresies, are as false in their
grounds as fatal in their termination; that we never can have the
remotest fellowship with the utterers of that fearful Falsehood, and
live; that we have nothing to look to from them but treacherous
hostility; and that, exactly in proportion to the sternness of our
separation from them, will be not only the spiritual but the temporal
blessings granted by God to this country. How close has been the
correspondence hitherto between the degree of resistance to Romanism
marked in our national acts, and the honor with which those acts have
been crowned, has been sufficiently proved in a short essay by a writer
whose investigations into the influence of Religion upon the fate of
Nations have been singularly earnest and successful--a writer with whom
I faithfully and firmly believe that England will never be prosperous
again, and that the honor of her arms will be tarnished, and her
commerce blighted, and her national character degraded, until the
Romanist is expelled from the place which has impiously been conceded to
him among her legislators. "Whatever be the lot of those to whom error
is an inheritance, woe be to the man and the people to whom it is an
adoption. If England, free above all other nations, sustained amidst the
trials which have covered Europe, before her eyes, with burning and
slaughter, and enlightened by the fullest knowledge of divine truth,
shall refuse fidelity to the compact by which those matchless privileges
have been given, her condemnation will not linger. She has already made
one step full of danger. She has committed the capital error of
mistaking that for a purely political question which was a purely
religious one. Her foot already hangs over the edge of the precipice. It
must be retracted, or the empire is but a name. In the clouds and
darkness which seem to be deepening on all human policy--in the
gathering tumults of Europe, and the feverish discontents at home--it
may be even difficult to discern where the power yet lives to erect the
fallen majesty of the constitution once more. But there are mighty means
in sincerity; and if no miracle was ever wrought for the faithless and
despairing, the country that will help itself will never be left
destitute of the help of Heaven" (Historical Essays, by the Rev. Dr.
Croly, 1842). The first of these essays, "England the Fortress of
Christianity," I most earnestly recommend to the meditation of those who
doubt that a special punishment is inflicted by the Deity upon all
national crime, and perhaps, of all such crime most instantly upon the
betrayal on the part of England of the truth and faith with which she
has been entrusted.
NOTE II.
Page 25.
"_Not the gift, but the giving._"
Much attention has lately been directed to the subject of religious art,
and we are now in possession of all kinds of interpretations and
classifications of it, and of the leading facts of its history. But the
greatest question of all connected with it remains entirely unanswered,
What good did it do to real religion? There is no subject into which I
should so much rejoice to see a serious and conscientious inquiry
instituted as this; an inquiry neither undertaken in artistical
enthusiasm nor in monkish sympathy, but dogged, merciless and fearless.
I love the religious art of Italy as well as most men, but there is a
wide difference between loving it as a manifestation of individual
feeling, and looking to it as an instrument of popular benefit. I have
not knowledge enough to form even the shadow of an opinion on this
latter point, and I should be most grateful to any one who would put it
in my power to do so. There are, as it seems to me, three distinct
questions to be considered: the first, What has been the effect of
external splendor on the genuineness and earnestness of Christian
worship? the second, What the use of pictorial or sculptural
representation in the communication of Christian historical knowledge,
or excitement of affectionate imagination? the third, What the influence
of the practice of religious art on the life of the artist?
In answering these inquiries, we should have to consider separately
every collateral influence and circumstance; and, by a most subtle
analysis, to eliminate the real effect of art from the effects of the
abuses with which it was associated. This could be done only by a
Christian; not a man who would fall in love with a sweet color or sweet
expression, but who would look for true faith and consistent life as the
object of all. It never has been done yet, and the question remains a
subject of vain and endless contention between parties of opposite
prejudices and temperaments.
NOTE III.
Page 26.
_"To the concealment of what is really good or great."_
I have often been surprised at the supposition that Romanism, In its
present condition, could either patronise art or profit by it. The noble
painted windows of St. Maclou at Rouen, and many other churches in
France, are entirely blocked up behind the altars by the erection of
huge gilded wooden sunbeams, with interspersed cherubs.
NOTE IV.
Page 33.
_"With different pattern of traceries in each."_
I have certainly not examined the seven hundred and four traceries (four
to each niche) so as to be sure that none are alike; but they have the
aspect of continual variation, and even the roses of the pendants of the
small groined niche roofs are all of different patterns.
NOTE V.
Page 43.
"_Its flamboyant traceries of the last and most degraded forms._"
They are noticed by Mr. Whewell as forming the figure of the
fleur-de-lis, always a mark, when in tracery bars, of the most debased
flamboyant. It occurs in the central tower of Bayeux, very richly in the
buttresses of St. Gervais at Falaise, and in the small niches of some of
the domestic buildings at Rouen. Nor is it only the tower of St. Ouen
which is overrated. Its nave is a base imitation, in the flamboyant
period, of an early Gothic arrangement; the niches on its piers are
barbarisms; there is a huge square shaft run through the ceiling of the
aisles to support the nave piers, the ugliest excrescence I ever saw on
a Gothic building; the traceries of the nave are the most insipid and
faded flamboyant; those of the transept clerestory present a singularly
distorted condition of perpendicular; even the elaborate door of the
south transept is, for its fine period, extravagant and almost grotesque
in its foliation and pendants. There is nothing truly fine in the church
but the choir, the light triforium, and tall clerestory, the circle of
Eastern chapels, the details of sculpture, and the general lightness of
proportion; these merits being seen to the utmost advantage by the
freedom of the body of the church from all incumbrance.
NOTE VI.
Page 43.
Compare Iliad [Greek: S]. 1. 219 with Odyssey [Greek: O]. 1. 5-10.
NOTE VII.
Page 44.
"_Does not admit iron as a constructive material._"
Except in Chaucer's noble temple of Mars.
"And dounward from an hill under a bent,
Ther stood the temple of Mars, armipotent,
Wrought all of burned stele, of which th' entree
Was longe and streite, and gastly for to see.
And thereout came a rage and swiche a vise,
That it made all the gates for to rise.
The northern light in at the dore shone,
For window on the wall ne was ther none,
Thurgh which men mighten any light discerne
The dore was all of athamant eterne,
Yclenched overthwart and ende long
With yren tough, and for to make it strong,
Every piler the temple to sustene
Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene."
_The Knighte's Tale._
There is, by the bye, an exquisite piece of architectural color just
before:
"And northward, in a turret on the wall
_Of alabaster white, and red corall_,
An oratorie riche for to see,
In worship of Diane of Chastitee."
NOTE VIII.
Page 44.
_"The Builders of Salisbury."_
"This way of tying walls together with iron, instead of making them of
that substance and form, that they shall naturally poise themselves upon
their buttment, is against the rules of good architecture, not only
because iron is corruptible by rust, but because it is fallacious,
having unequal veins in the metal, some places of the same bar being
three times stronger than others, and yet all sound to appearance."
Survey of Salisbury Cathedral in 1668, by Sir C. Wren. For my own part,
I think it better work to bind a tower with iron, than to support a
false dome by a brick pyramid.
NOTE IX.
Page 60.
PLATE III.
In this plate, figures 4, 5, and 6, are glazed windows, but fig. 2 is
the open light of a belfry tower, and figures 1 and 3 are in triforia,
the latter also occurring filled, on the central tower of Coutances.
NOTE X.
Page 94.
_"Ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen."_
The reader cannot but observe agreeableness, as a mere arrangement of
shade, which especially belongs to the "sacred trefoil." I do not think
that the element of foliation has been enough insisted upon in its
intimate relations with the power of Gothic work. If I were asked what
was the most distinctive feature of its perfect style, I should say the
Trefoil. It is the very soul of it; and I think the loveliest Gothic is
always formed upon simple and bold tracings of it, taking place between
the blank lancet arch on the one hand, and the overcharged cinquefoiled
arch on the other.
NOTE XI.
Page 95.
"_And levelled cusps of stone._"
The plate represents one of the lateral windows of the third story of
the Palazzo Foscari. It was drawn from the opposite side of the Grand
Canal, and the lines of its traceries are therefore given as they appear
in somewhat distant effect. It shows only segments of the characteristic
quatrefoils of the central windows. I found by measurement their
construction exceedingly simple. Four circles are drawn in contact
within the large circle. Two tangential lines are then drawn to each
opposite pair, enclosing the four circles in a hollow cross. An inner
circle struck through the intersections of the circles by the tangents,
truncates the cusps.
NOTE XII.
Page 124.
"_Into vertical equal parts._"
Not absolutely so. There are variations partly accidental (or at least
compelled by the architect's effort to recover the vertical), between
the sides of the stories; and the upper and lower story are taller than
the rest. There is, however, an apparent equality between five out of
the eight tiers.
NOTE XIII.
Page 133.
"_Never paint a column with vertical lines._"
It should be observed, however, that any pattern which gives opponent
lines in its parts, may be arranged on lines parallel with the main
structure. Thus, rows of diamonds, like spots on a snake's back, or the
bones on a sturgeon, are exquisitely applied both to vertical and spiral
columns. The loveliest instances of such decoration that I know, are the
pillars of the cloister of St. John Lateran, lately illustrated by Mr.
Digby Wyatt, in his most valuable and faithful work on antique mosaic.
NOTE XIV.
Page 139.
On the cover of this volume the reader will find some figure outlines of
the same period and character, from the floor of San Miniato at
Florence. I have to thank its designer, Mr. W. Harry Rogers, for his
intelligent arrangement of them, and graceful adaptation of the
connecting arabesque. (Stamp on cloth cover of _London_ edition.)
NOTE XV.
Page 169.
"_The flowers lost their light, the river its music._"
Yet not all their light, nor all their music. Compare Modern Painters,
vol. ii. sec. 1. chap. iv. SECTION 8.
NOTE XVI.
Page 181.
"_By the artists of the time of Perides._"
This subordination was first remarked to me by a friend, whose profound
knowledge of Greek art will not, I trust, be reserved always for the
advantage of his friends only: Mr. C. Newton, of the British Museum.
NOTE XVII.
Page 188.
"_In one of the noblest poems._"
Coleridge's Ode to France:
"Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause,
Whose pathless march no mortal may control!
Ye Ocean-Waves! that wheresoe'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!
Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds singing.
Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,
Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind!
Where, like a man beloved of God,
Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy,
My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,
Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,
By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound!
O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high!
And O ye Clouds that far above me soared!
Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
Yea, everything that is and will be free!
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
With what deep worship I have still adored
The spirit of divinest Liberty."
Noble verse, but erring thought: contrast George Herbert:--
"Slight those who say amidst their sickly healths,
Thou livest by rule. What doth not so but man?
Houses are built by rule and Commonwealths.
Entice the trusty sun, if that you can,
From his ecliptic line; beckon the sky.
Who lives by rule then, keeps good company.
"Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack,
And rots to nothing at the next great thaw;
Man is a shop of rules: a well-truss'd pack
Whose every parcel underwrites a law.
Lose not thyself, nor give thy humors way;
God gave them to thee under lock and key."
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
2. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version
these letters have been replaced with transliterations.
3. Numbered subscript is represented using underscore. For instance, a_2
indicates letter a with subscript 2.
4. The original text includes certain characters with overline. For this
version, such letters have been preceeded with equals sign enclosed in
square brackets. For instance, [=a] indicates letter a with overline.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven Lamps of Architecture, by John Ruskin