architecture properly so called. Nothing can be more noble or
interesting than the true thirteenth or fourteenth century castle, when
built in a difficult position, its builder taking advantage of every
inch of ground to gain more room, and of every irregularity of surface
for purposes of outlook and defence; so that the castle _sate_ its rock
as a strong rider sits his horse--fitting its limbs to every writhe of
the flint beneath it; and fringing the mountain promontory far into the
sky with the wild crests of its fantastic battlements. Of such castles
we can see no more; and it is just because I know them well and love
them deeply that I say so. I know that their power and dignity consists,
just as a soldier’s consists, in their knowing and doing their work
thoroughly; in their being advanced on edge or lifted on peak of crag,
not for show nor pride, but for due guard and outlook; and that all
their beautiful irregularities and apparent caprices of form are in
reality their fulfilments of need, made beautiful by their compelled
association with the wild strength and grace of the natural rock. All
attempts to imitate them now are useless--mere girl’s play. Mind, I like
girl’s play, and child’s play, in its place, but not in the planning of
military buildings. Child’s play in many cases is the truest wisdom. I
accept to the full the truth of those verses of Wordsworth’s[134]
beginning--
“Who fancied what a pretty sight
This rock would be, if edged around
With living snowdrops?--circlet bright!
How glorious to this orchard ground!
Was it the humor of a child?” etc.
But I cannot apply the same principles to more serious matters, and vary
the reading of the verses into application to the works on Edinburgh
Castle, thus:
“Who fancied what a pretty sight
This rock would be, if edged around
With tiny turrets, pierced and light,
How glorious to this warlike ground!”
Therefore, though I do not know exactly what you have got to do in
Edinburgh Castle, whatever it may be, I am certain the only right way to
do it is the _plain_ way. Build what is needed--chapel, barracks, or
dwelling-house--in the best places, in a military point of view, of dark
stone, and bomb-proof, keeping them low, and within the existing line of
ramparts. That is the rational thing to do; and the inhabitants of
Edinburgh will find it in the end the picturesque thing. It would be so
under any circumstances; but it is especially so in this instance; for
the grandeur of Edinburgh Castle depends eminently on the great,
unbroken, yet beautifully varied parabolic curve in which it descends
from the Round Tower on the Castle Hill to the terminating piece of
impendent precipice on the north. It is the last grand feature of
Edinburgh left as yet uninjured. You have filled up your valley with a
large chimney, a mound, and an Institution; broken in upon the Old Town
with a Bank, a College, and several fires; dwarfed the whole of Princes
Street by the Scott Monument; and cut Arthur’s Seat in half by the
Queen’s Drive. It only remains for you to spoil the curve of your
Castle, and your illustrations of the artistic principle of breadth will
be complete.
It may appear at first that I depart from the rule of usefulness I have
proposed, in entreating for the confinement of all buildings undertaken
within the existing ramparts, in order to preserve the contour of the
outside rock. But I presume that in the present state of military
science, and of European politics, Edinburgh Castle is not a very
important military position; and that to make it a serviceable fortress
or citadel, many additional works would be required, seriously
interfering with the convenience of the inhabitants of the New Town, and
with the arrangements of the Railroad Company. And, as long as these
subordinate works are not carried out, I do not see any use in
destroying your beautiful rock, merely to bring another gun to bear, or
give accommodation to another company. But I both see, and would
earnestly endeavor to advocate, the propriety of keeping the
architecture of the building within those ramparts masculine and simple
in style, and of not allowing a mistaken conception of picturesqueness
to make a noble fortress look like a child’s toy.
Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” December 22, 1871.]
_CASTLES AND KENNELS._
_To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”_
SIR: I was astonished the other day by your article on taverns, but
never yet in my life was so much astonished by anything in print as by
your to-day’s article on castles.[135]
I am a castle-lover of the truest sort. I do not suppose any man alive
has felt anything like the sorrow or anger with which I have watched the
modern destruction by railroad and manufacture, helped by the wicked
improvidence of our great families, of half the national memorials of
England, either actually or in effect and power of association--as
Conway, for instance, now vibrating to ruin over a railroad station. For
Warwick Castle, I named it in my letter of last October, in “Fors
Clavigera,”[136] as a type of the architectural treasures of this
England of ours known to me and beloved from childhood to this hour.
But, Sir, I am at this hour endeavoring to find work and food for a boy
of seventeen, one of eight people--two married couples, a woman and her
daughter, and this boy and his sister--who all sleep together in one
room, some 18 ft. square, in the heart of London; and you call upon me
for a subscription to help to rebuild Warwick Castle.
Sir, I am an old and thoroughbred Tory, and as such I say, “If a noble
family cannot rebuild their own castle, in God’s name let them live in
the nearest ditch till they can.”
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN
DENMARK HILL, _Dec._ 20.
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” December 25, 1871.]
_VERONA v. WARWICK._
_To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”_
SIR: Of lodging for poor and rich you will perhaps permit a further word
or two from me, even in your close columns for Christmas morning. You
think me inconsistent because I wanted to buy Verona, and do not want to
restore Warwick.[137]
I wanted, and still want, to buy Verona. I would give half my fortune to
buy it for England, if any other people would help me. But I would buy
it, that what is left of it might not be burned, and what is lost of it
_not_ restored. It would indeed be very pleasant--not to me only, but to
many other sorrowful persons--if things _could_ be restored when we
chose. I would subscribe willingly to restore, for instance, the manger
wherein the King of Judah lay cradled this day some years since, and
not unwillingly to restore the poorer cradle of our English King-maker,
were it possible. But for the making of a new manger, to be exhibited
for the edification of the religious British public, I will not
subscribe. No; nor for the building of mock castles, or mock cathedrals,
or mocks of anything. And the sum of what I have to say in this present
matter may be put in few words.
As an antiquary--which, thank Heaven, I am--I say, “Part of Warwick
Castle is burnt--’tis pity. Take better care of the rest.”
As an old Tory--which, thank Heaven, I am--I say, “Lord Warwick’s house
is burned. Let Lord Warwick build a better if he can--a worse if he
must; but in any case, let him neither beg nor borrow.”
As a modern renovator and Liberal--which, thank Heaven, I am not--I
would say, “By all means let the public subscribe to build a
spick-and-span new Warwick Castle, and let the pictures be touched up,
and exhibited by gaslight; let the family live in the back rooms, and
let there be a _table d’hôte_ in the great hall at two and six every
day, 2_s._ 6_d._ a head, and let us have Guy’s bowl for a dinner bell.”
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, S.E., 24_th_ (for 25_th_) _December._
[From “The Daily Telegraph,” January 19, 1871.]
_“NOTRE DAME DE PARIS.”_
_To the Editor of “The Daily Telegraph.”_
SIR: It may perhaps be interesting to some of your readers, in the
present posture of affairs round Paris, to know, as far as I am able to
tell them, the rank which the Church of Notre Dame holds among
architectural and historical monuments.
Nearly every great church in France has some merit special to itself;
in other countries, one style is common to many districts; in France,
nearly every province has its unique and precious monument.
But of thirteenth-century Gothic--the most perfect architectural style
north of the Alps--there is, both in historical interest, and in
accomplished perfectness of art, one _unique_ monument--the Sainte
Chapelle of Paris.
As examples of Gothic, ranging from the twelfth to the fourteenth
century, the cathedrals of Chartres, Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, and Bourges,
form a kind of cinque-foil round Notre Dame of Paris, of which it is
impossible to say which is the more precious petal; but any of those
leaves would be worth a complete rose of any other country’s work except
Italy’s. Nothing else in art, on the surface of the round earth, could
represent any one of them, if destroyed, or be named as of any
equivalent value.
Central among these, as in position, so in its school of sculpture;
unequalled in that specialty but by the porch of the north transept of
Rouen, and, in a somewhat latter school, by the western porches of
Bourges; absolutely unreplaceable as a pure and lovely source of art
instruction by any future energy or ingenuity, stands--perhaps, this
morning, I ought rather to write, stood[138]--Notre Dame of Paris.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
[From “The Pall Mall Gazette,” March 16, 1872.]
_MR. RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE: A DEFENCE._
_To the Editor of “The Pall Mall Gazette.”_
SIR: I receive many letters just now requesting me to take notice of the
new theory respecting Turner’s work put forward by Dr. Liebreich in his
recent lecture at the Royal Institution.[139] Will you permit me to
observe in your columns, once for all, that I have no time for the
contradiction of the various foolish opinions and assertions which from
time to time are put forward respecting Turner or his pictures? All that
is necessary for any person generally interested in the arts to know
about Turner was clearly stated in “Modern Painters” twenty years ago,
and I do not mean to state it again, nor to contradict any
contradictions of it. Dr. Liebreich is an ingenious and zealous
scientific person. The public may derive much benefit from consulting
him on the subject of spectacles--not on that of art.
As I am under the necessity of writing to you at any rate, may I say
further that I wish your critic of Mr. Eastlake’s book[140] on the
Gothic revival would explain what he means by saying that my direct
influence on architecture is always wrong, and my indirect influence
right; because, if that be so, I will try to exercise only indirect
influence on my Oxford pupils. But the fact to my own notion is
otherwise. I am proud enough to hope, for instance, that I have had some
direct influence on Mr. Street; and I do not doubt but that the public
will have more satisfaction from his Law Courts[141] than they have had
from anything built within fifty years. But I have had indirect
influence on nearly every cheap villa-builder between this[142] and
Bromley; and there is scarcely a public-house near the Crystal Palace
but sells its gin and bitters under pseudo-Venetian capitals copied from
the Church of the Madonna of Health or of Miracles. And one of my
principal notions for leaving my present house is that it is surrounded
everywhere by the accursed Frankenstein monsters of, _in_directly, my
own making.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.
_March_ 15.
[From “The Pall Mall Gazette,” March 21, 1872.]
_MR. RUSKIN’S INFLUENCE: A REJOINDER._
_To the Editor of “The Pall Mall Gazette.”_
SIR: I am obliged by your critic’s reply to my question, but beg to
observe that, meaning what he explains himself to have meant, he should
simply have said that my influence on temper was right, and on taste
wrong; the influence being in both cases equally “direct.” On questions
of taste I will not venture into discussion with him, but must be
permitted to correct his statement that I have persuaded any one to
prefer Venetian to English Gothic. I have stated that Italian--chiefly
Pisan and Florentine--Gothic is the noblest school of Gothic hitherto
existent, which is true; and that one form of Venetian Gothic deserves
singular respect for the manner of its development. I gave the mouldings
and shaft measurements of that form,[143] and to so little purpose, that
I challenge your critic to find in London, or within twenty miles of it,
a single Venetian casement built on the sections which I gave as normal.
For Venetian architecture developed out of British moral consciousness I
decline to be answerable. His accusation that I induced architects to
study sculpture more, and what he is pleased to call “expressional
character” less, I admit. I should be glad if he would tell me what,
before my baneful influence began to be felt, the expressional character
of our building was; and I will reconsider my principles if he can point
out to me, on any modern building either in London or, as aforesaid,
within twenty miles round, a single piece of good sculpture of which the
architect repents, or the public complains.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
_March_ 21.
[From “The Liverpool Daily Post,” June 9, 1877.]
_MODERN RESTORATION[144]_
VENICE, 15_th April_, 1877.
MY DEAR SIR: It is impossible for any one to know the horror and
contempt with which I regard modern restoration--but it is so great
that it simply paralyzes me in despair,--and in the sense of such
difference in all thought and feeling between me and the people I live
in the midst of, almost makes it useless for me to talk to them. Of
course all restoration is accursed architect’s jobbery, and will go on
as long as they can get their filthy bread by such business. But things
are worse here than in England: you have little there left to
lose--here, every hour is ruining buildings of inestimable beauty and
historical value--simply to keep stone-lawyers[145] at work. I am
obliged to hide my face from it all, and work at other things, or I
should die of mere indignation and disgust.
Ever truly yours,
J. RUSKIN.
[From “The Kidderminster Times,” July 28, 1877.]
_RIBBESFORD CHURCH._
BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE,
_July_ 24, 1877.
_To the Editor of “The Kidderminster Times.”_
SIR: It chanced that, on the morning of the Sunday, when the appearances
of danger in the walls of Ribbesford Church began seriously to manifest
themselves (according to the report in your columns of the 21st
inst.),[146] I was standing outside of the church, listening to the
singing of the last hymn as the sound came through the open door (with
the Archer Knight sculptured above it), and showing to the friend who
had brought me to the lovely place the extreme interest of the old
perpendicular traceries in the freehand working of the apertures.
Permit me to say, with reference to the proposed restoration of the
church, that no modern architect, no mason either, can, or would if they
could, “copy” those traceries. They will assuredly put up with
geometrical models in their place, which will be no more like the old
traceries than a Kensington paper pattern is like a living flower.
Whatever else is added or removed, those traceries should be replaced as
they are, and left in reverence until they moulder away. If they are
already too much decayed to hold the glass safely (which I do not
believe), any framework which may be necessary can be arranged to hold
the casements within them, leaving their bars entirely disengaged, and
merely kept from falling by iron supports. But if these are to be
“copied,” why in the world cannot the congregation pay for a new and
original church, to display the genius and wealth of the nineteenth
century somewhere else, and leave the dear old ruin to grow gray by
Severn side in peace?
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
HANG
_CIRCULAR[147] RESPECTING MEMORIAL STUDIES OF ST. MARK’S,
VENICE, NOW IN PROGRESS UNDER MR. RUSKIN’S DIRECTION._
_This circular will be given to visitors to the Old Water-color
Society’s Exhibition, Pall Mall East, or on application to the Fine Art
Society,_ 148 _New Bond Street._
My friends have expressed much surprise at my absence from the public
meetings called in defence of St. Mark’s. They cannot, however, be too
clearly certified that I am now entirely unable to take part in exciting
business, or even, without grave danger, to allow my mind to dwell on
the subjects which, having once been dearest to it, are now the sources
of acutest pain. The illness which all but killed me two years ago[148]
was not brought on by overwork, but by grief at the course of public
affairs in England, and of affairs, public and private alike, in Venice;
the distress of many an old and deeply regarded friend there among the
humbler classes of the city being as necessary a consequence of the
modern system of centralization, as the destruction of her ancient civil
and religious buildings.
How far forces of this national momentum may be arrested by protest, or
mollified by petition, I know not; what in either kind I have felt
myself able to do has been done two years since, in conjunction with one
of the few remaining representatives of the old Venetian noblesse.[149]
All that now remains for me is to use what time may be yet granted for
such record as hand and heart can make of the most precious building in
Europe, standing yet in the eyes of men and the sunshine of heaven.
The drawing of the first two arches of the west front, now under threat
of restoration, which, as an honorary member of the Old Water-color
Society, I have the privilege of exhibiting in its rooms this year,
shows with sufficient accuracy the actual state of the building, and the
peculiar qualities of its architecture.[150] The principles of that
architecture are analyzed at length in the second volume of the “Stones
of Venice,” and the whole façade described there with the best care I
could, in hope of directing the attention of English architects to the
forms of Greek sculpture which enrich it.[151] The words have been
occasionally read for the sound of them; and perhaps, when the building
is destroyed, may be some day, with amazement, perceived to have been
true.
In the mean time, the drawing just referred to, every touch of it made
from the building, and left as the color dried in the spring mornings of
1877, will make clear some of the points chiefly insisted on in the
“Stones of Venice,” and which are of yet more importance now.[152] Of
these, the first and main ones are the exquisite delicacy of the work
and perfection of its preservation to this time. It seems to me that the
English visitor never realizes thoroughly what it is that he looks at in
the St. Mark’s porches: its glittering confusion in a style unexampled,
its bright colors, its mingled marbles, produce on him no real
impression of age, and its diminutive size scarcely any of grandeur. It
looks to him almost like a stage scene, got up solidly for some sudden
festa. No mere guide-book’s passing assertion of date--this century or
the other--can in the least make him even conceive, and far less feel,
that he is actually standing before the very shafts and stones that were
set on their foundations here while Harold the Saxon stood by the grave
of the Confessor under the fresh-raised vaults of the first Norman
Westminster Abbey, of which now a single arch only remains standing. He
cannot, by any effort, imagine that those exquisite and lace-like
sculptures of twined acanthus--every leaf-edge as sharp and fine as if
they were green weeds fresh springing in the dew, by the
Pan-droseion[153]--were, indeed, cut and finished to their perfect grace
while the Norman axes were hewing out rough zigzags and dentils round
the aisles of Durham and Lindisfarne. Or nearer, in what is left of our
own Canterbury--it is but an hour’s journey in pleasant Kent--you may
compare, almost as if you looked from one to the other, the grim
grotesque of the block capitals in the crypt with the foliage of these
flexile ones, and with their marble doves--scarcely distinguishable
from the living birds that nestle between them. Or, going down two
centuries (for the fillings of the portico arches were not completed
till after 1204), what thirteenth-century work among our gray limestone
walls can be thought of as wrought in the same hour with that wreath of
intertwined white marble, relieved by gold, of which the tenderest and
sharpest lines of the pencil cannot finely enough express the surfaces
and undulations? For indeed, without and within, St. Mark’s is not, in
the real nature of it, a piece of architecture, but a jewelled casket
and painted reliquary, chief of the treasures in what were once the
world’s treasuries of sacred things, the kingdoms of Christendom.
A jewelled casket, every jewel of which was itself sacred. Not a slab of
it, nor a shaft, but has been brought from the churches descendants of
the great Seven of Asia, or from the Christian-Greek of Corinth, Crete,
and Thrace, or the Christian-Israelite in Palestine--the central
archivolt copied from that of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the
opposing lions or phœnixes of its sculptures from the treasury of
Atreus and the citadel of Tyre.
Thus, beyond all measure of value as a treasury of art, it is also,
beyond all other volumes, venerable as a codex of religion. Just as the
white foliage and birds on their golden ground are descendants, in
direct line, from the ivory and gold of Phidias, so the Greek pictures
and inscriptions, whether in mosaic or sculpture, throughout the
building, record the unbroken unity of spiritual influence from the
Father of light--or the races whose own poets had said “We also are his
offspring”--down to the day when all their gods, not slain, but changed
into new creatures, became the types to them of the mightier Christian
spirits; and Perseus became St. George, and Mars St. Michael, and Athena
the Madonna, and Zeus their revealed Father in Heaven.
In all the history of human mind, there is nothing so wonderful, nothing
so eventful, as this spiritual change. So inextricably is it interwoven
with the most divine, the most distant threads of human thought and
effort, that while none of the thoughts of St. Paul or the visions of
St. John, can be understood without our understanding first the imagery
familiar to the Pagan worship of the Greeks; on the other hand, no
understanding of the real purport of Greek religion can be securely
reached without watching the translation of its myths into the message
of Christianity.
Both by the natural temper of my mind, and by the labor of forty years
given to this subject in its practical issues on the present state[154]
of Christendom, I have become, in some measure, able both to show and to
interpret these most precious sculptures; and my health has been so far
given back to me that if I am at this moment aided, it will, so far as I
can judge, be easily possible for me to complete the work so long in
preparation. There will yet, I doubt not, be time to obtain perfect
record of all that is to be destroyed. I have entirely honest and able
draughtsmen at my command; my own resignation[155] of my Oxford
Professorship has given me leisure; and all that I want from the
antiquarian sympathy of England is so much instant help as may permit
me, while yet in available vigor of body and mind, to get the records
made under my own overseership, and registered for sufficient and true.
The casts and drawings which I mean to have made will be preserved in a
consistent series in my Museum at Sheffield, where I have freehold
ground enough to build a perfectly lighted gallery for their reception.
I have used the words “I want,” as if praying this thing for myself. It
is not so. If only some other person could and would undertake all this,
Heaven knows how gladly I would leave the task to him. But there is no
one else at present able to do it: if not now by me, it can never be
done more.--And so I leave it to the reader’s grace.
J. RUSKIN.
All subscriptions to be sent to Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington,
Kent.
POSTSCRIPT.[156]
By the kindness of the Society of Painters in Water-colors I am
permitted this year, in view of the crisis of the fate of the façade of
St. Mark’s, to place in the exhibition-room of the Society ten
photographs, illustrative of its past and present state. I have already
made use of them, both in my lectures at Oxford and in the parts of
_Fors Clavigera_ intended for Art-teaching at my Sheffield Museum; and
all but the eighth are obtainable from my assistant, Mr. Ward (2 Church
Terrace, Richmond), who is my general agent for photographs, either
taken under my direction (as here, Nos. 4, 9, and 10), or specially
chosen by me for purposes of Art Education. The series of views here
shown are all perfectly taken, with great clearness, from the most
important points, and give, consecutively, complete evidence respecting
the façade.
They are arranged in the following order: