it is to be carried out with a certainty of success at the first trial,
under new and difficult conditions? The system of the Gothic decorations
took eight hundred years to mature, gathering its power by undivided
inheritance of traditional method, and unbroken accession of systematic
power; from its culminating point in the Sainte Chapelle, it faded
through four hundred years of splendid decline; now for two centuries it
has lain dead--and more than so--buried; and more than so, forgotten, as
a dead man out of mind; do you expect to revive it out of those retorts
and furnaces of yours, as the cloud-spirit of the Arabian sea rose from
beneath the seals of Solomon? Perhaps I have been myself faultfully
answerable for this too eager hope in your mind (as well as in that of
others) by what I have urged so often respecting the duty of bringing
out the power of subordinate workmen in decorative design. But do you
think I meant workmen trained (or untrained) in the way that ours have
been until lately, and then cast loose on a sudden, into unassisted
contentions with unknown elements of style? I meant the precise contrary
of this; I meant workmen as we have yet to create them: men inheriting
the instincts of their craft through many generations, rigidly trained
in every mechanical art that bears on their materials, and familiarized
from infancy with every condition of their beautiful and perfect
treatment; informed and refined in manhood, by constant observation of
all natural fact and form; then classed, according to their proved
capacities, in ordered companies, in which every man shall know his
part, and take it calmly and without effort or doubt,--indisputably
well, unaccusably accomplished, mailed and weaponed _cap-à-pie_ for his
place and function. Can you lay your hand on such men? or do you think
that mere natural good-will and good-feeling can at once supply their
place? Not so: and the more faithful and earnest the minds you have to
deal with, the more careful you should be not to urge them towards
fields of effort, in which, too early committed, they can only be put to
unserviceable defeat.
Nor can you hope to accomplish by rule or system what cannot be done by
individual taste. The laws of color are definable up to certain limits,
but they are not yet defined. So far are they from definition, that the
last, and, on the whole, best work on the subject (Sir Gardiner
Wilkinson’s) declares the “color concords” of preceding authors to be
discords, and _vice versâ_.[128]
Much, therefore, as I love color decoration when it is rightly given,
and essential as it has been felt by the great architects of all periods
to the completion of their work, I would not, in your place, endeavor to
carry out such decoration at present, in any elaborate degree, in the
interior of the Museum. Leave it for future thought; above all, try no
experiments. Let small drawings be made of the proposed arrangements of
color in every room; have them altered on the paper till you feel they
are right; then carry them out firmly and simply; but, observe, with as
delicate execution as possible. Rough work is good in its place, three
hundred feet above the eye, on a cathedral front, but not in the
interior of rooms, devoted to studies in which everything depends upon
accuracy of touch and keenness of sight.
With respect to this finishing, by the last touches bestowed on the
_sculpture_ of the building, I feel painfully the harmfulness of any
ill-advised parsimony at this moment. For it may, perhaps, be alleged by
the advocates of retrenchment, that so long as the building is fit for
its uses (and your report is conclusive as to its being so), economy in
treatment of external feature is perfectly allowable, and will in nowise
diminish the serviceableness of the building in the great objects which
its designs regarded. To a certain extent this is true. You have
comfortable rooms, I hope sufficient apparatus; and it now depends much
more on the professors than on the ornaments of the building, whether or
not it is to become a bright or obscure centre of public instruction.
Yet there are other points to be considered. As the building stands at
present, there is a discouraging aspect of parsimony about it. One sees
that the architect has done the utmost he could with the means at his
disposal, and that just at the point of reaching what was right, he has
been stopped for want of funds. This is visible in almost every stone of
the edifice. It separates it with broad distinctiveness from all the
other buildings in the University. It may be seen at once that our other
public institutions, and all our colleges--though some of them simply
designed--are yet _richly_ built, never pinchingly. Pieces of princely
costliness, every here and there, mingle among the simplicities or
severities of the student’s life. What practical need, for instance,
have we at Christchurch of the beautiful fan-vaulting under which we
ascend to dine? We might have as easily achieved the eminence of our
banquets under a plain vault. What need have the readers in the Bodleian
of the ribbed traceries which decorate its external walls? Yet, which of
those readers would not think that learning was insulted by their
removal? And are there any of the students of Balliol devoid of
gratitude for the kindly munificence of the man who gave them the
beautiful sculptured brackets of their oriel window, when three massy
projecting stones would have answered the purpose just as well? In these
and also other regarded and pleasant portions of our colleges, we find
always a wealthy and worthy completion of all appointed features, which
I believe is not without strong, though untraced effect, on the minds of
the younger scholars, giving them respect for the branches of learning
which these buildings are intended to honor, and increasing, in a
certain degree, that sense of the value of delicacy and accuracy which
is the first condition of advance in those branches of learning
themselves.
Your Museum, if you now bring it to hurried completion, will convey an
impression directly the reverse of this. It will have the look of a
place, not where a revered system of instruction is established, but
where an unadvised experiment is being disadvantageously attempted. It
is yet in your power to avoid this, and to make the edifice as noble in
aspect as in function. Whatever chance there may be of failure in
interior work, rich ornamentation may be given, without any chance of
failure, to just that portion of the exterior which will give pleasure
to every passer-by, and express the meaning of the building best to the
eyes of strangers. There is, I repeat, no chance of serious failure in
this external decoration, because your architect has at his command the
aid of men, such as worked with the architects of past times. Not only
has the art of Gothic sculpture in part remained, though that of Gothic
color has been long lost, but the unselfish--and, I regret to say, in
part self-sacrificing--zeal of two first-rate sculptors, Mr. Munro and
Mr. Woolner, which has already given you a series of noble statues, is
still at your disposal, to head and systematize the efforts of inferior
workmen.
I do not know if you will attribute it to a higher estimate than yours
of the genius of the O’Shea family,[129] or to a lower estimate of what
they have as yet accomplished, that I believe they will, as they
proceed, produce much better ornamental sculpture than any at present
completed in the Museum. It is also to be remembered that sculptors are
able to work for us with a directness of meaning which none of our
painters could bring to their task, even were they disposed to help us.
A painter is scarcely excited to his strength, but by subjects full of
circumstance, such as it would be difficult to suggest appropriately in
the present building; but a sculptor has room enough for his full power
in the portrait statues, which are necessarily the leading features of
good Gothic decoration. Let me pray you, therefore, so far as you have
influence with the delegacy, to entreat their favorable consideration of
the project stated in Mr. Greswell’s appeal--the enrichment of the
doorway, and the completion of the sculpture of the West Front. There is
a reason for desiring such a plan to be carried out, of wider reach
than any bearing on the interests of the Museum itself. I believe that
the elevation of all arts in England to their true dignity, depends
principally on our recovering that unity of purpose in sculptors and
architects, which characterized the designers of all great Christian
buildings. Sculpture, separated from architecture, always degenerates
into effeminacies and conceits; architecture, stripped of sculpture, is
at best a convenient arrangement of dead walls; associated, they not
only adorn, but reciprocally exalt each other, and give to all the arts
of the country in which they thus exist, a correspondent tone of
majesty.
But I would plead for the enrichment of this doorway by portrait
sculpture, not so much even on any of these important grounds, as
because it would be the first example in modern English architecture of
the real value and right place of commemorative statues. We seem never
to know at present where to put such statues. In the midst of the
blighted trees of desolate squares, or at the crossings of confused
streets, or balanced on the pinnacles of pillars, or riding across the
tops of triumphal arches, or blocking up the aisles of cathedrals--in
none of these positions, I think, does the portrait statue answer its
purpose. It may be a question whether the erection of such statues is
honorable to the erectors, but assuredly it is not honorable to the
persons whom it pretends to commemorate; nor is it anywise matter of
exultation to a man who has deserved well of his country to reflect that
he may one day encumber a crossing, or disfigure a park gate. But there
is no man of worth or heart who would not feel it a high and priceless
reward that his statue should be placed where it might remind the youth
of England of what had been exemplary in his life, or useful in his
labors, and might be regarded with no empty reverence, no fruitless
pensiveness, but with the emulative, eager, unstinted passionateness of
honor, which youth pays to the dead leaders of the cause it loves, or
discoverers of the light by which it lives. To be buried under weight of
marble, or with splendor of ceremonial, is still no more than burial;
but to be remembered daily, with profitable tenderness, by the activest
intelligences of the nation we have served, and to have power granted
even to the shadows of the poor features, sunk into dust, still to warn,
to animate, to command, as the father’s brow rules and exalts the toil
of his children. This is not burial, but immortality.
There is, however, another kind of portraiture, already richly
introduced in the works of the Museum; the portraiture, namely, of
flowers and animals, respecting which I must ask you to let me say a few
selfish, no less than congratulatory words--selfish, inasmuch as they
bear on this visible exposition of a principle which it has long been
one of my most earnest aims to maintain. We English call ourselves a
practical people; but, nevertheless, there are some of our best and most
general instincts which it takes us half-centuries to put into practice.
Probably no educated Englishman or Englishwoman has ever, for the last
forty years, visited Scotland, with leisure on their hands, without
making a pilgrimage to Melrose; nor have they ever, I suppose,
accomplished the pilgrimage without singing to themselves the burden of
Scott’s description of the Abbey. Nor in that description (may it not
also be conjectured) do they usually feel any couplets more deeply than
the--
“Spreading herbs and flowerets bright
Glistened with the dew of night.
No herb nor floweret glistened there
But was carved in the cloister arches as fair.”
And yet, though we are raising every year in England new examples of
every kind of costly and variously intended buildings,--ecclesiastical,
civil, and domestic,--none of us, through all that period, had boldness
enough to put the pretty couplets into simple practice. We went on, even
in the best Gothic work we attempted, clumsily copying the rudest
ornaments of previous buildings; we never so much as dreamed of learning
from the monks of Melrose, and seeking for help beneath the dew that
sparkled on their “gude kail” garden.[130]
Your Museum at Oxford is literally the first building raised in England
since the close of the fifteenth century, which has fearlessly put to
new trial this old faith in nature, and in the genius of the unassisted
workman, who gathered out of nature the materials he needed. I am
entirely glad, therefore, that you have decided on engraving for
publication one of O’Shea’s capitals;[131] it will be a complete type of
the whole work, in its inner meaning, and far better to show one of them
in its completeness than to give any reduced sketch of the building.
Nevertheless, beautiful as that capital is, and as all the rest of
O’Shea’s work is likely to be, it is not yet perfect Gothic sculpture;
and it might give rise to dangerous error, if the admiration given to
these carvings were unqualified.
I cannot, of course, enter in this letter into any discussion of the
question, more and more vexed among us daily, respecting the due meaning
and scope of conventionalism in treatment of natural form; but I may
state briefly what, I trust, will be the conclusion to which all this
“vexing” will at last lead our best architects.
The highest art in all kinds is that which conveys the most truth; and
the best ornamentation possible would be the painting of interior walls
with frescos by Titian, representing perfect Humanity in color; and the
sculpture of exterior walls by Phidias, representing perfect Humanity in
form. Titian and Phidias are precisely alike in their conception and
treatment of nature--everlasting standards of the right.
_Beneath_ ornamentation, such as men like these could bestow, falls in
various rank, according to its subordination to vulgar uses or inferior
places, what is commonly conceived as ornamental art. The lower its
office, and the less tractable its material, the less of nature it
should contain, until a zigzag
[Illustration: BRITISH FERNS.]
becomes the best ornament for the hem of a robe, and a mosaic of bits of
glass the best design for a colored window. But all these forms of lower
art are to be conventional only because they are subordinate--not
because conventionalism is in itself a good or desirable thing. All
right conventionalism is a wise acceptance of, and compliance with,
conditions of restraint or inferiority: it may be inferiority of our
knowledge or power, as in the art of a semi-savage nation; or restraint
by reason of material, as in the way the glass painter should restrict
himself to transparent hue, and a sculptor deny himself the eyelash and
the film of flowing hair, which he cannot cut in marble: but in all
cases whatever, right conventionalism is either a wise acceptance of an
inferior place, or a noble display of power under accepted limitation;
it is _not_ an improvement of natural form into something better or
purer than Nature herself.
Now this great and most precious principle may be compromised in two
quite opposite ways. It is compromised on one side when men suppose that
the degradation of a natural form which fits it for some subordinate
place is an improvement of it; and that a black profile on a red ground,
because it is proper on a water-jug, is therefore an idealization of
Humanity, and nobler art than a picture of Titian. And it is compromised
equally gravely on the opposite side, when men refuse to submit to the
limitation of material and the fitnesses of office--when they try to
produce finished pictures in colored glass, or substitute the
inconsiderate imitation of natural objects for the perfectness of
adapted and disciplined design.
There is a tendency in the work of the Oxford Museum to err on this last
side; unavoidable, indeed, in the present state of our art-knowledge--and
less to be regretted in a building devoted to natural science than in
any other: nevertheless, I cannot close this letter without pointing it
out, and warning the general reader against supposing that the
ornamentation of the Museum is, or can be as yet, a representation of
what Gothic work will be, when its revival is complete. Far more severe,
yet more perfect and lovely, that work will involve, under sterner
conventional restraint, the expression not only of
[Illustration: From “The Oxford Museum.” p. 89.]
natural form, but of all vital and noble natural law. For the truth of
decoration is never to be measured by its imitative power, but by its
suggestive and informative power. In the annexed spandril of the
iron-work of our roof, for instance, the horse-chestnut leaf and nut are
used as the principal elements of form: they are not ill-arranged, and
produce a more agreeable effect than convolutions of the iron could
have given, unhelped by any reference to natural objects. Nevertheless,
I do not call it an absolutely good design; for it would have been
possible, with far severer conventional treatment of the iron bars, and
stronger constructive arrangement of them, to have given vigorous
expression, not of the shapes of leaves and nuts only, but of their
peculiar radiant or fanned expansion, and other conditions of group and
growth in the tree; which would have been just the more beautiful and
interesting, as they would have arisen from deeper research into nature,
and more adaptive modifying power in the designer’s mind, than the mere
leaf termination of a riveted scroll.
I am compelled to name these deficiencies, in order to prevent
misconception of the principles we are endeavoring to enforce; but I do
not name them as at present to be avoided; or even much to be regretted.
They are not chargeable either on the architect, or on the subordinate
workmen; but only on the system which has for three centuries withheld
all of us from healthy study; and although I doubt not that lovelier and
juster expressions of the Gothic principle will be ultimately aimed at
by us, than any which are possible in the Oxford Museum, its builders
will never lose their claim to our chief gratitude, as the first guides
in a right direction; and the building itself--the first exponent of the
recovered truth--will only be the more venerated the more it is
excelled.
Believe me, my dear Acland,
Ever affectionately yours,
J. RUSKIN.
[From “The Witness” (Edinburgh), September 16, 1857.]
_THE CASTLE ROCK._
DUNBAR, 14_th September_, 1857.
_To the Editor of “The Witness.”_
MY DEAR SIR: As I was leaving Edinburgh this morning, I heard a report
which gave me more concern than I can easily express, and very
sufficiently spoiled the pleasure of my drive here. If there be no truth
in the said report, of course take no notice of this letter; but if
there be real ground for my fears, I trust you will allow me space in
your columns for a few words on the subject.
The whisper--I hope I may say, the calumny--regarded certain proceedings
which are taking place at the Castle. It was said to be the architect’s
intention to cut down into the brow of the Castle rock, in order to
afford secure foundation for some new buildings.[132]
Now, the Castle rock of Edinburgh is, as far as I know, simply the
noblest in Scotland conveniently approachable by any creatures but
sea-gulls or peewits. Ailsa and the Bass are of course more wonderful;
and, I suppose, in the West Highlands there are masses of crag more wild
and fantastic; but people only go to see these once or twice in their
lives, while the Castle rock has a daily influence in forming the taste,
or kindling the imagination, of every promising youth in Edinburgh. Even
irrespectively of its position, it is a mass of singular importance
among the rocks of Scotland. It is not easy to find among your mountains
a “craig” of so definite a form, and on so magnificent a scale. Among
the central hills of Scotland, from Ben Wyvis to the Lammermuirs, I know
of none comparable to it; while, besides being bold and vast, its bars
of basalt are so nobly arranged, and form a series of curves at once so
majestic and harmonious, from the turf at their base to the roots of the
bastions, that, as long as your artists have that crag to study, I do
not see that they need casts from Michael Angelo, or any one else, to
teach them the laws of composition or the sources of sublimity.
But if you once cut into the brow of it, all is over. Disturb, in any
single point, the simple lines in which the walls now advance and recede
upon the tufted grass of its summit, and you may as well make a quarry
of it at once, and blast away rock, Castle, and all. It admits of some
question whether the changes made in the architecture of your city of
late years are in every case improvements; but very certainly you cannot
improve the architecture of your volcanic crags by any explosive
retouches. And your error will be wholly irremediable. You may restore
Trinity Chapel, or repudiate its restoration, at your pleasure, but
there will be no need to repudiate restoration of the Castle rock. You
cannot re-face nor re-rivet that, nor order another in a “similar
style.” It is a dangerous kind of engraving which you practise on so
large a jewel. But I trust I am wasting my time in writing of this: I
cannot believe the report, nor think that the people of Edinburgh,
usually so proud of their city, are yet so unaware of what constitutes
its chief nobleness, and so utterly careless of the very features of its
scenery, which have been the means of the highest and purest education
to their greatest men, as to allow this rock to be touched. If the works
are confined to the inside of the wall, no harm will be done; but let a
single buttress, or a single cleft, encumber or divide its outer brow,
and there is not a man of sensibility or sense in Edinburgh who will not
blush and grieve for it as long as he lives.
Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
[From “The Witness” (Edinburgh), September 30, 1857.]
_EDINBURGH CASTLE._
PENRITH, 27_th September._
_To the Editor of “The Witness”_
MY DEAR SIR: I see by some remarks in the _Literary Gazette_[133] on the
letter of mine to which you gave a place in your columns of the 16th,
that the design of the proposed additions to Edinburgh Castle is
receiving really serious consideration. Perhaps, therefore, a few words
respecting the popular but usually unprofitable business of
castle-building may be of some interest to your readers. We are often a
little confused in our ideas respecting the nature of a castle--properly
so called. A “castle” is a fortified dwelling-house containing
accommodation for as many retainers as are needed completely to defend
its position. A “fortress” is a fortified military position, generally
understood to be extensive enough to contain large bodies of troops. And
a “citadel,” a fortified military position connected with a fortified
town, and capable of holding out even if the town were taken.
It is as well to be clear on these points: for certain conditions of
architecture are applicable and beautiful in each case, according to the
use and character of the building; and certain other conditions are in
like manner inapplicable and ugly, because contrary to its character,
and unhelpful to its use.
Now this helpfulness and unhelpfulness in architectural features
depends, of course, primarily on the military practice of the time; so
that forms which were grand, because rational, before gunpowder was
invented, are ignoble, because ridiculous, in days of shell and shot.
The very idea and possibility of the castle proper have passed away with
the arms of the middle ages. A man’s house might be defended by his
servants against a troop of cavalry, if its doors were solid and its
battlements pierced. But it cannot be defended against a couple of
field-pieces, whatever the thickness of its oak, or number of its
arrow-slits.