CHAPTER VI.

THE NATURE OF GOTHIC.

§ I. If the reader will look back to the division of our subject which

was made in the first chapter of the first volume, he will find that we

are now about to enter upon the examination of that school of Venetian

architecture which forms an intermediate step between the Byzantine and

Gothic forms; but which I find may be conveniently considered in its

connexion with the latter style. In order that we may discern the

tendency of each step of this change, it will be wise in the outset to

endeavor to form some general idea of its final result. We know already

what the Byzantine architecture is from which the transition was made,

but we ought to know something of the Gothic architecture into which it

led. I shall endeavor therefore to give the reader in this chapter an

idea, at once broad and definite, of the true nature of _Gothic_

architecture, properly so called; not of that of Venice only, but of

universal Gothic: for it will be one of the most interesting parts of

our subsequent inquiry, to find out how far Venetian architecture

reached the universal or perfect type of Gothic, and how far it either

fell short of it, or assumed foreign and independent forms.

§ II. The principal difficulty in doing this arises from the fact that

every building of the Gothic period differs in some important respect

from every other; and many include features which, if they occurred in

other buildings, would not be considered Gothic at all; so that all we

have to reason upon is merely, if I may be allowed so to express it, a

greater or less degree of _Gothicness_ in each building we examine. And

it is this Gothicness,--the character which, according as it is found

more or less in a building, makes it more or less Gothic,--of which I

want to define the nature; and I feel the same kind of difficulty in

doing so which would be encountered by any one who undertook to explain,

for instance, the nature of Redness, without any actual red thing to

point to, but only orange and purple things. Suppose he had only a piece

of heather and a dead oak-leaf to do it with. He might say, the color

which is mixed with the yellow in this oak-leaf, and with the blue in

this heather, would be red, if you had it separate; but it would be

difficult, nevertheless, to make the abstraction perfectly intelligible:

and it is so in a far greater degree to make the abstraction of the

Gothic character intelligible, because that character itself is made up

of many mingled ideas, and can consist only in their union. That is to

say, pointed arches do not constitute Gothic, nor vaulted roofs, nor

flying buttresses, nor grotesque sculptures; but all or some of these

things, and many other things with them, when they come together so as

to have life.

§ III. Observe also, that, in the definition proposed, I shall only

endeavor to analyze the idea which I suppose already to exist in the

reader's mind. We all have some notion, most of us a very determined

one, of the meaning of the term Gothic; but I know that many persons

have this idea in their minds without being able to define it: that is

to say, understanding generally that Westminster Abbey is Gothic, and

St. Paul's is not, that Strasburg Cathedral is Gothic, and St. Peter's

is not, they have, nevertheless, no clear notion of what it is that they

recognize in the one or miss in the other, such as would enable them to

say how far the work at Westminster or Strasburg is good and pure of its

kind: still less to say of any non-descript building, like St. James's

Palace or Windsor Castle, how much right Gothic element there is in it,

and how much wanting, And I believe this inquiry to be a pleasant and

profitable one; and that there will be found something more than

usually interesting in tracing out this grey, shadowy, many-pinnacled

image of the Gothic spirit within us; and discerning what fellowship

there is between it and our Northern hearts. And if, at any point of the

inquiry, I should interfere with any of the reader's previously formed

conceptions, and use the term Gothic in any sense which he would not

willingly attach to it, I do not ask him to accept, but only to examine

and understand, my interpretation, as necessary to the intelligibility

of what follows in the rest of the work.

§ IV. We have, then, the Gothic character submitted to our analysis,

just as the rough mineral is submitted to that of the chemist, entangled

with many other foreign substances, itself perhaps in no place pure, or

ever to be obtained or seen in purity for more than an instant; but

nevertheless a thing of definite and separate nature, however

inextricable or confused in appearance. Now observe: the chemist defines

his mineral by two separate kinds of character; one external, its

crystalline form, hardness, lustre, &c.; the other internal, the

proportions and nature of its constituent atoms. Exactly in the same

manner, we shall find that Gothic architecture has external forms, and

internal elements. Its elements are certain mental tendencies of the

builders, legibly expressed in it; as fancifulness, love of variety,

love of richness, and such others. Its external forms are pointed

arches, vaulted roofs, &c. And unless both the elements and the forms

are there, we have no right to call the style Gothic. It is not enough

that it has the Form, if it have not also the power and life. It is not

enough that it has the Power, if it have not the form. We must therefore

inquire into each of these characters successively; and determine first,

what is the Mental Expression, and secondly, what the Material Form, of

Gothic architecture, properly so called.

1st. Mental Power or Expression. What characters, we have to discover,

did the Gothic builders love, or instinctively express in their work, as

distinguished from all other builders?

§ V. Let us go back for a moment to our chemistry, and note that, in

defining a mineral by its constituent parts, it is not one nor another

of them, that can make up the mineral, but the union of all: for

instance, it is neither in charcoal, nor in oxygen, nor in lime, that

there is the making of chalk, but in the combination of all three in

certain measures; they are all found in very different things from

chalk, and there is nothing like chalk either in charcoal or in oxygen,

but they are nevertheless necessary to its existence.

So in the various mental characters which make up the soul of Gothic. It

is not one nor another that produces it; but their union in certain

measures. Each one of them is found in many other architectures besides

Gothic; but Gothic cannot exist where they are not found, or, at least,

where their place is not in some way supplied. Only there is this great

difference between the composition of the mineral, and of the

architectural style, that if we withdraw one of its elements from the

stone, its form is utterly changed, and its existence as such and such a

mineral is destroyed; but if we withdraw one of its mental elements from

the Gothic style, it is only a little less Gothic than it was before,

and the union of two or three of its elements is enough already to

bestow a certain Gothicness of character, which gains in intensity as we

add the others, and loses as we again withdraw them.

§ VI. I believe, then, that the characteristic or moral elements of

Gothic are the following, placed in the order of their importance:

1. Savageness.

2. Changefulness.

3. Naturalism.

4. Grotesqueness.

5. Rigidity.

6. Redundance.

These characters are here expressed as belonging to the building; as

belonging to the builder, they would be expressed thus:--1. Savageness,

or Rudeness. 2. Love of Change. 3. Love of Nature. 4. Disturbed

Imagination. 5, Obstinacy. 6. Generosity. And I repeat, that the

withdrawal of any one, or any two, will not at once destroy the Gothic

character of a building, but the removal of a majority of them will. I

shall proceed to examine them in their order.

§ VII. 1. SAVAGENESS. I am not sure when the word "Gothic" was first

generically applied to the architecture of the North; but I presume

that, whatever the date of its original usage, it was intended to imply

reproach, and express the barbaric character of the nations among whom

that architecture arose. It never implied that they were literally of

Gothic lineage, far less that their architecture had been originally

invented by the Goths themselves; but it did imply that they and their

buildings together exhibited a degree of sternness and rudeness, which,

in contradistinction to the character of Southern and Eastern nations,

appeared like a perpetual reflection of the contrast between the Goth

and the Roman in their first encounter. And when that fallen Roman, in

the utmost impotence of his luxury, and insolence of his guilt, became

the model for the imitation of civilized Europe, at the close of the

so-called Dark ages, the word Gothic became a term of unmitigated

contempt, not unmixed with aversion. From that contempt, by the exertion

of the antiquaries and architects of this century, Gothic architecture

has been sufficiently vindicated; and perhaps some among us, in our

admiration of the magnificent science of its structure, and sacredness

of its expression, might desire that the term of ancient reproach should

be withdrawn, and some other, of more apparent honorableness, adopted in

its place. There is no chance, as there is no need, of such a

substitution. As far as the epithet was used scornfully, it was used

falsely; but there is no reproach in the word, rightly understood; on

the contrary, there is a profound truth, which the instinct of mankind

almost unconsciously recognizes. It is true, greatly and deeply true,

that the architecture of the North is rude and wild; but it is not true,

that, for this reason, we are to condemn it, or despise. Far otherwise:

I believe it is in this very character that it deserves our profoundest

reverence.

§ VIII. The charts of the world which have been drawn up by modern

science have thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount

of knowledge, but I have never yet seen any one pictorial enough to

enable the spectator to imagine the kind of contrast in physical

character which exists between Northern and Southern countries. We know

the differences in detail, but we have not that broad glance and grasp

which would enable us to feel them in their fulness. We know that

gentians grow on the Alps, and olives on the Apennines; but we do not

enough conceive for ourselves that variegated mosaic of the world's

surface which a bird sees in its migration, that difference between the

district of the gentian and of the olive which the stork and the swallow

see far off, as they lean upon the sirocco wind. Let us, for a moment,

try to raise ourselves even above the level of their flight, and imagine

the Mediterranean lying beneath us like an irregular lake, and all its

ancient promontories sleeping in the sun: here and there an angry spot

of thunder, a grey stain of storm, moving upon the burning field; and

here and there a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its

circle of ashes; but for the most part a great peacefulness of light,

Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement

into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten

work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and

flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and

orange and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the

burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under

lucent sand. Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see

the orient colors change gradually into a vast belt of rainy green,

where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and

dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of

the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of

rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low

along the pasture lands: and then, farther north still, to see the earth

heave into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with

a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and

splintering into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas,

beaten by storm and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious

pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fail from

among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their

peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron,

sets, deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight.

And, having once traversed in thought its gradation of the zoned iris of

the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, and

watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life: the multitudes of

swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and sea, or tread

the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and spotted leopards,

glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and scarlet. Let us

contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of color, and swiftness of

motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and dusky

plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with the

Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the antelope

with the elk, the bird of paradise with the osprey: and then,

submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth and all

that it bears are ruled throughout their being, let us not condemn, but

rejoice at the expression by man of his own rest in the statutes of the

lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he sets

side by side the burning gems, and smoothes with soft sculpture the

jasper pillars, that are to reflect a ceaseless sunshine, and rise into

a cloudless sky: but not with less reverence let us stand by him, when,

with rough strength and hurried stroke, he smites an uncouth animation

out of the rocks which he has torn from among the moss of the moorland,

and heaves into the darkened air the pile of iron buttress and rugged

wall, instinct with work of an imagination as wild and wayward as the

northern sea; creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of

wolfish life; fierce as the winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds

that shade them.

There is, I repeat, no degradation, no reproach in this, but all dignity

and honorableness; and we should err grievously in refusing either to

recognise as an essential character of the existing architecture of the

North, or to admit as a desirable character in that which it yet may be,

this wildness of thought, and roughness of work; this look of mountain

brotherhood between the cathedral and the Alp; this magnificence of

sturdy power, put forth only the more energetically because the fine

finger-touch was chilled away by the frosty wind, and the eye dimmed by

the moor-mist, or blinded by the hail; this outspeaking of the strong

spirit of men who may not gather redundant fruitage from the earth, nor

bask in dreamy benignity of sunshine, but must break the rock for bread,

and cleave the forest for fire, and show, even in what they did for

their delight, some of the hard habits of the arm and heart that grew on

them as they swung the axe or pressed the plough.

§ IX. If, however, the savageness of Gothic architecture, merely as an

expression of its origin among Northern nations, may be considered, in

some sort, a noble character, it possesses a higher nobility still, when

considered as an index, not of climate, but of religious principle.

In the 13th and 14th paragraphs of Chapter XXI. of the first volume of

this work, it was noticed that the systems of architectural ornament,

properly so called, might be divided into three:--1. Servile ornament,

in which the execution or power of the inferior workman is entirely

subjected to the intellect of the higher:--2. Constitutional ornament,

in which the executive inferior power is, to a certain point,

emancipated and independent, having a will of its own, yet confessing

its inferiority and rendering obedience to higher powers;--and 3.

Revolutionary ornament, in which no executive inferiority is admitted at

all. I must here explain the nature of these divisions at somewhat

greater length.

Of Servile ornament, the principal schools are the Greek, Ninevite, and

Egyptian; but their servility is of different kinds. The Greek

master-workman was far advanced in knowledge and power above the

Assyrian or Egyptian. Neither he nor those for whom he worked could

endure the appearance of imperfection in anything; and, therefore, what

ornament he appointed to be done by those beneath him was composed of

mere geometrical forms,--balls, ridges, and perfectly symmetrical

foliage,--which could be executed with absolute precision by line and

rule, and were as perfect in their way when completed, as his own figure

sculpture. The Assyrian and Egyptian, on the contrary, less cognizant of

accurate form in anything, were content to allow their figure sculpture

to be executed by inferior workmen, but lowered the method of its

treatment to a standard which every workman could reach, and then

trained him by discipline so rigid, that there was no chance of his

falling beneath the standard appointed. The Greek gave to the lower

workman no subject which he could not perfectly execute. The Assyrian

gave him subjects which he could only execute imperfectly, but fixed a

legal standard for his imperfection. The workman was, in both systems, a

slave.[56]

§ X. But in the mediæval, or especially Christian, system of ornament,

this slavery is done away with altogether; Christianity having

recognized, in small things as well as great, the individual value of

every soul. But it not only recognizes its value; it confesses its

imperfection, in only bestowing dignity upon the acknowledgment of

unworthiness. That admission of lost power and fallen nature, which the

Greek or Ninevite felt to be intensely painful, and, as far as might be,

altogether refused, the Christian makes daily and hourly, contemplating

the fact of it without fear, as tending, in the end, to God's greater

glory. Therefore, to every spirit which Christianity summons to her

service, her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what

you are unable to do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of

failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of shame. And it is,

perhaps, the principal admirableness of the Gothic schools of

architecture, that they thus receive the results of the labor of

inferior minds; and out of fragments full of imperfection, and betraying

that imperfection in every touch, indulgently raise up a stately and

unaccusable whole.

§ XI. But the modern English mind has this much in common with that of

the Greek, that it intensely desires, in all things, the utmost

completion or perfection compatible with their nature. This is a noble

character in the abstract, but becomes ignoble when it causes us to

forget the relative dignities of that nature itself, and to prefer the

perfectness of the lower nature to the imperfection of the higher; not

considering that as, judged by such a rule, all the brute animals would

be preferable to man, because more perfect in their functions and kind,

and yet are always held inferior to him, so also in the works of man,

those which are more perfect in their kind are always inferior to those

which are, in their nature, liable to more faults and shortcomings. For

the finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness

of it; and it is a law of this universe, that the best things shall be

seldomest seen in their best form. The wild grass grows well and

strongly, one year with another; but the wheat is, according to the

greater nobleness of its nature, liable to the bitterer blight. And

therefore, while in all things that we see, or do, we are to desire

perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner

thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its

mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered

majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honorable defeat; not to lower

the level of our aim, that we may the more surely enjoy the complacency

of success. But, above all, in our dealings with the souls of other men,

we are to take care how we check, by severe requirement or narrow

caution, efforts which might otherwise lead to a noble issue; and, still

more, how we withhold our admiration from great excellences, because

they are mingled with rough faults. Now, in the make and nature of every

man, however rude or simple, whom we employ in manual labor, there are

some powers for better things: some tardy imagination, torpid capacity

of emotion, tottering steps of thought, there are, even at the worst;

and in most cases it is all our own fault that they _are_ tardy or

torpid. But they cannot be strengthened, unless we are content to take

them in their feebleness, and unless we prize and honor them in their

imperfection above the best and most perfect manual skill. And this is

what we have to do with all our laborers; to look for the _thoughtful_

part of them, and get that out of them, whatever we lose for it,

whatever faults and errors we are obliged to take with it. For the best

that is in them cannot manifest itself, but in company with much error.

Understand this clearly: You can teach a man to draw a straight line,

and to cut one; to strike a curved line, and to carve it; and to copy

and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and

perfect precision; and you find his work perfect of its kind: but if you

ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find

any better in his own head, he stops; his execution becomes hesitating;

he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong; ten to one he makes a mistake

in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you

have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, an

animated tool.

§ XII. And observe, you are put to stern choice in this matter. You must

either made a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make

both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be

precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that

precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like

cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must

unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make

cogs and compasses of themselves. All their attention and strength must

go to the accomplishment of the mean act. The eye of the soul must be

bent upon the finger-point, and the soul's force must fill all the

invisible nerves that guide it, ten hours a day, that it may not err

from its steely precision, and so soul and sight be worn away, and the

whole human being be lost at last--a heap of sawdust, so far as its

intellectual work in this world is concerned; saved only by its Heart,

which cannot go into the form of cogs and compasses, but expands, after

the ten hours are over, into fireside humanity. On the other hand, if

you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make a tool. Let

him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing;

and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his

roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame,

failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty

of him also; and we know the height of it only, when we see the clouds

settling upon him. And, whether the clouds be bright or dark, there will

be transfiguration behind and within them.

§ XIII. And now, reader, look round this English room of yours, about

which you have been proud so often, because the work of it was so good

and strong, and the ornaments of it so finished. Examine again all those

accurate mouldings, and perfect polishings, and unerring adjustments of

the seasoned wood and tempered steel. Many a time you have exulted over

them, and thought how great England was, because her slightest work was

done so thoroughly. Alas! if read rightly, these perfectnesses are signs

of a slavery in our England a thousand times more bitter and more

degrading than that of the scourged African, or helot Greek. Men may be

beaten, chained, tormented, yoked like cattle, slaughtered like summer

flies, and yet remain in one sense, and the best sense, free. But to

smother their souls within them, to blight and hew into rotting pollards

the suckling branches of their human intelligence, to make the flesh and

skin which, after the worm's work on it, is to see God, into leathern

thongs to yoke machinery with,--this it is to be slave-masters indeed;

and there might be more freedom in England, though her feudal lords'

lightest words were worth men's lives, and though the blood of the vexed

husbandman dropped in the furrows of her fields, than there is while

the animation of her multitudes is sent like fuel to feed the factory

smoke, and the strength of them is given daily to be wasted into the

fineness of a web, or racked into the exactness of a line.

§ XIV. And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old

cathedral front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic

ignorance of the old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins,

and formless monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do

not mock at them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every

workman who struck the stone; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of

being, such as no laws, no charters, no charities can secure; but which

it must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her

children.

§ XV. Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It is

verily this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more

than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations

everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom

of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal

outcry against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them

either by the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These

do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society

were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are

ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make

their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure.

It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but

they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labor to

which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less

than men. Never had the upper classes so much sympathy with the lower,

or charity for them, as they have at this day, and yet never were they

so much hated by them: for, of old, the separation between the noble and

the poor was merely a wall built by law; now it is a veritable

difference in level of standing, a precipice between upper and lower

grounds in the field of humanity and there is pestilential air at the

bottom of it. I know not if a day is ever to come when the nature of

right freedom will be understood, and when men will see that to obey

another man, to labor for him, yield reverence to him or to his place,

is not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty,--liberty from

care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come,

and he cometh, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and

difficulty than the man who obeys him. The movements of the one are

hindered by the burden on his shoulder; of the other, by the bridle on

his lips: there is no way by which the burden may be lightened; but we

need not suffer from the bridle if we do not champ at it. To yield

reverence to another, to hold ourselves and our lives at his disposal,

is not slavery; often, it is the noblest state in which a man can live

in this world. There is, indeed, a reverence which is servile, that is

to say, irrational or selfish: but there is also noble reverence, that

is to say, reasonable and loving; and a man is never so noble as when he

is reverent in this kind; nay, even if the feeling pass the bounds of

mere reason, so that it be loving, a man is raised by it. Which had, in

reality, most of the serf nature in him,--the Irish peasant who was

lying in wait yesterday for his landlord, with his musket muzzle thrust

through the ragged hedge; or that old mountain servant, who, 200 years

ago, at Inverkeithing, gave up his own life and the lives of his seven

sons for his chief?[57]--and as each fell, calling forth his brother to

the death, "Another for Hector!" And therefore, in all ages and all

countries, reverence has been paid and sacrifice made by men to each

other, not only without complaint, but rejoicingly; and famine, and

peril, and sword, and all evil, and all shame, have been borne willingly

in the causes of masters and kings; for all these gifts of the heart

ennobled the men who gave, not less than the men who received them, and

nature prompted, and God rewarded the sacrifice. But to feel their souls

withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an

unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism,

numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes;--this

nature bade not,--this God blesses not,--this humanity for no long time

is able to endure.

§ XVI. We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great

civilized invention of the division of labor; only we give it a false

name. It is not, truly speaking, the labor that is divided; but the

men:--Divided into mere segments of men--broken into small fragments and

crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is

left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts

itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail. Now it is a

good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we

could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished,--sand

of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what

it is,--we should think there might be some loss in it also. And the

great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than

their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this,--that we manufacture

everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and

refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to

refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our

estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our

myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for

to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach to them,

if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can be met only

by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of

labor are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a

determined sacrifice of such convenience, or beauty, or cheapness as is

to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally

determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling

labor.

§ XVII. And how, it will be asked, are these products to be recognized,

and this demand to be regulated? Easily: by the observance of three

broad and simple rules:

1. Never encourage the manufacture of any article not absolutely

necessary, in the production of which _Invention_ has no share.

2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some

practical or noble end.

3. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake

of preserving record of great works.

The second of these principles is the only one which directly rises out

of the consideration of our immediate subject; but I shall briefly

explain the meaning and extent of the first also, reserving the

enforcement of the third for another place.

1. Never encourage the manufacture of anything not necessary, in the

production of which invention has no share.

For instance. Glass beads are utterly unnecessary, and there is no

design or thought employed in their manufacture. They are formed by

first drawing out the glass into rods; these rods are chopped up into

fragments of the size of beads by the human hand, and the fragments are

then rounded in the furnace. The men who chop up the rods sit at their

work all day, their hands vibrating with a perpetual and exquisitely

timed palsy, and the beads dropping beneath their vibration like hail.

Neither they, nor the men who draw out the rods, or fuse the fragments,

have the smallest occasion for the use of any single human faculty; and

every young lady, therefore, who buys glass beads is engaged in the

slave-trade, and in a much more cruel one than that which we have so

long been endeavoring to put down.

But glass cups and vessels may become the subjects of exquisite

invention; and if in buying these we pay for the invention, that is to

say for the beautiful form, or color, or engraving, and not for mere

finish of execution, we are doing good to humanity.

§ XVIII. So, again, the cutting of precious stones, in all ordinary

cases, requires little exertion of any mental faculty; some tact and

judgment in avoiding flaws, and so on, but nothing to bring out the

whole mind. Every person who wears cut jewels merely for the sake of

their value is, therefore, a slave-driver.

But the working of the goldsmith, and the various designing of grouped

jewellery and enamel-work, may become the subject of the most noble

human intelligence. Therefore, money spent in the purchase of

well-designed plate, of precious engraved vases, cameos, or enamels,

does good to humanity; and, in work of this kind, jewels may be employed

to heighten its splendor; and their cutting is then a price paid for the

attainment of a noble end, and thus perfectly allowable.

§ XIX. I shall perhaps press this law farther elsewhere, but our

immediate concern is chiefly with the second, namely, never to demand an

exact finish, when it does not lead to a noble end. For observe, I have

only dwelt upon the rudeness of Gothic, or any other kind of

imperfectness, as admirable, where it was impossible to get design or

thought without it. If you are to have the thought of a rough and

untaught man, you must have it in a rough and untaught way; but from an

educated man, who can without effort express his thoughts in an educated

way, take the graceful expression, and be thankful. Only _get_ the

thought, and do not silence the peasant because he cannot speak good

grammar, or until you have taught him his grammar. Grammar and

refinement are good things, both, only be sure of the better thing

first. And thus in art, delicate finish is desirable from the greatest

masters, and is always given by them. In some places Michael Angelo,

Leonardo, Phidias, Perugino, Turner, all finished with the most

exquisite care; and the finish they give always leads to the fuller

accomplishment of their noble purposes. But lower men than these cannot

finish, for it requires consummate knowledge to finish consummately, and

then we must take their thoughts as they are able to give them. So the

rule is simple: Always look for invention first, and after that, for

such execution as will help the invention, and as the inventor is

capable of without painful effort, and _no more_. Above all, demand no

refinement of execution where there is no thought, for that is slaves'

work, unredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only

that the practical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is

reason to be proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and

sandpaper.

§ XX. I shall only give one example, which however will show the reader

what I mean, from the manufacture already alluded to, that of glass. Our

modern glass is exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form,

accurate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamed of

it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inaccurate in all its forms, and

clumsily cut, if at all. And the old Venetian was justly proud of it.

For there is this difference between the English and Venetian workman,

that the former thinks only of accurately matching his patterns, and

getting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, and

becomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges, while

the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not,

but he invented a new design for every glass that he made, and never

moulded a handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And therefore,

though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough, when made by

clumsy and uninventive workmen, other Venetian glass is so lovely in its

forms that no price is too great for it; and we never see the same form

in it twice. Now you cannot have the finish and the varied form too. If

the workman is thinking about his edges, he cannot be thinking of his

design; if of his design, he cannot think of his edges. Choose whether

you will pay for the lovely form or the perfect finish, and choose at

the same moment whether you will make the worker a man or a grindstone.

§ XXI. Nay, but the reader interrupts me,--"If the workman can design

beautifully, I would not have him kept at the furnace. Let him be taken

away and made a gentleman, and have a studio, and design his glass

there, and I will have it blown and cut for him by common workmen, and

so I will have my design and my finish too."

All ideas of this kind are founded upon two mistaken suppositions: the

first, that one man's thoughts can be, or ought to be, executed by

another man's hands; the second, that manual labor is a degradation,

when it is governed by intellect.

On a large scale, and in work determinable by line and rule, it is

indeed both possible and necessary that the thoughts of one man should

be carried out by the labor of others; in this sense I have already

defined the best architecture to be the expression of the mind of

manhood by the hands of childhood. But on a smaller scale, and in a

design which cannot be mathematically defined, one man's thoughts can

never be expressed by another: and the difference between the spirit of

touch of the man who is inventing, and of the man who is obeying

directions, is often all the difference between a great and a common

work of art. How wide the separation is between original and second-hand

execution, I shall endeavor to show elsewhere; it is not so much to our

purpose here as to mark the other and more fatal error of despising

manual labor when governed by intellect; for it is no less fatal an

error to despise it when thus regulated by intellect, than to value it

for its own sake. We are always in these days endeavoring to separate

the two; we want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always

working, and we call one a gentleman, and the other an operative;

whereas the workman ought often to be thinking, and the thinker often to

be working, and both should be gentlemen, in the best sense. As it is,

we make both ungentle, the one envying, the other despising, his

brother; and the mass of society is made up of morbid thinkers, and

miserable workers. Now it is only by labor that thought can be made

healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy, and the two

cannot be separated with impunity. It would be well if all of us were

good handicraftsmen in some kind, and the dishonor of manual labor done

away with altogether; so that though there should still be a trenchant

distinction of race between nobles and commoners, there should not,

among the latter, be a trenchant distinction of employment, as between

idle and working men, or between men of liberal and illiberal

professions. All professions should be liberal, and there should be less

pride felt in peculiarity of employment, and more in excellence of

achievement. And yet more, in each several profession, no master should

be too proud to do its hardest work. The painter should grind his own

colors; the architect work in the mason's yard with his men; the

master-manufacturer be himself a more skilful operative than any man in

his mills; and the distinction between one man and another be only in

experience and skill, and the authority and wealth which these must

naturally and justly obtain.

§ XXII. I should be led far from the matter in hand, if I were to pursue

this interesting subject. Enough, I trust, has been said to show the

reader that the rudeness or imperfection which at first rendered the

term "Gothic" one of reproach is indeed, when rightly understood, one of

the most noble characters of Christian architecture, and not only a

noble but an _essential_ one. It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is

nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly

noble which is _not_ imperfect. And this is easily demonstrable. For

since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all in

perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either

make slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present English

fashion, and level his work to a slave's capacities, which is to degrade

it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let them show

their weaknesses together with their strength, which will involve the

Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as the intellect

of the age can make it.

§ XXIII. But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have

confined the illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it

as if true of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words

imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly

unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I

have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted,

so only that the laborer's mind had room for expression. But, accurately

speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and _the demand for

perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art_.

§ XXIV. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first,

that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of

failure; that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his

powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying

to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior portions

of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and according

to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of

dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude or

anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be dissatisfied

also. I believe there has only been one man who would not acknowledge

this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end

of his vain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a

picture, and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we are to have great

men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be

imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be

perfect, in its own bad way.[58]

§ XXV. The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential

to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body,

that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives

is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent.

The foxglove blossom,--a third part bud, a third part past, a third part

in full bloom,--is a type of the life of this world. And in all things

that live there are certain, irregularities and deficiencies which are

not only signs of life, but sources of beauty. No human face is exactly

the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no

branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and

to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to

paralyse vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more

beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that

the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment,

Mercy.

Accept this then for a universal law, that neither architecture nor any

other noble work of man can be good unless it be imperfect; and let us

be prepared for the otherwise strange fact, which we shall discern

clearly as we approach the period of the Renaissance, that the first

cause of the fall of the arts of Europe was a relentless requirement of

perfection, incapable alike either of being silenced by veneration for

greatness, or softened into forgiveness of simplicity.

Thus far then of the Rudeness or Savageness, which is the first mental

element of Gothic architecture. It is an element in many other healthy

architectures also, as in Byzantine and Romanesque; but true Gothic

cannot exist without it.

§ XXVI. The second mental element above named was CHANGEFULNESS, or

Variety.

I have already enforced the allowing independent operation to the

inferior workman, simply as a duty _to him_, and as ennobling the

architecture by rendering it more Christian. We have now to consider

what reward we obtain for the performance of this duty, namely, the

perpetual variety of every feature of the building.

Wherever the workman is utterly enslaved, the parts of the building must

of course be absolutely like each other; for the perfection of his

execution can only be reached by exercising him in doing one thing, and

giving him nothing else to do. The degree in which the workman is

degraded may be thus known at a glance, by observing whether the several

parts of the building are similar or not; and if, as in Greek work, all

the capitals are alike, and all the mouldings unvaried, then the

degradation is complete; if, as in Egyptian or Ninevite work, though the

manner of executing certain figures is always the same, the order of

design is perpetually varied, the degradation is less total; if, as in

Gothic work, there is perpetual change both in design and execution, the

workman must have been altogether set free.

§ XXVII. How much the beholder gains from the liberty of the laborer may

perhaps be questioned in England, where one of the strongest instincts

in nearly every mind is that Love of Order which makes us desire that

our house windows should pair like our carriage horses, and allows us

to yield our faith unhesitatingly to architectural theories which fix a

form for everything and forbid variation from it. I would not impeach

love of order: it is one of the most useful elements of the English

mind; it helps us in our commerce and in all purely practical matters;

and it is in many cases one of the foundation stones of morality. Only

do not let us suppose that love of order is love of art. It is true that

order, in its highest sense, is one of the necessities of art, just as

time is a necessity of music; but love of order has no more to do with

our right enjoyment of architecture or painting, than love of

punctuality with the appreciation of an opera. Experience, I fear,

teaches us that accurate and methodical habits in daily life are seldom

characteristic of those who either quickly perceive, or richly possess,

the creative powers of art; there is, however, nothing inconsistent

between the two instincts, and nothing to hinder us from retaining our

business habits, and yet fully allowing and enjoying the noblest gifts

of Invention. We already do so, in every other branch of art except

architecture, and we only do _not_ so there because we have been taught

that it would be wrong. Our architects gravely inform us that, as there

are four rules of arithmetic, there are five orders of architecture; we,

in our simplicity, think that this sounds consistent, and believe them.

They inform us also that there is one proper form for Corinthian

capitals, another for Doric, and another for Ionic. We, considering that

there is also a proper form for the letters A, B, and C, think that this

also sounds consistent, and accept the proposition. Understanding,

therefore, that one form of the said capitals is proper, and no other,

and having a conscientious horror of all impropriety, we allow the

architect to provide us with the said capitals, of the proper form, in

such and such a quantity, and in all other points to take care that the

legal forms are observed; which having done, we rest in forced

confidence that we are well housed.

§ XXVIII. But our higher instincts are not deceived. We take no pleasure

in the building provided for us, resembling that which we take in a new

book or a new picture. We may be proud of its size, complacent in its

correctness, and happy in its convenience. We may take the same pleasure

in its symmetry and workmanship as in a well-ordered room, or a skilful

piece of manufacture. And this we suppose to be all the pleasure that

architecture was ever intended to give us. The idea of reading a

building as we would read Milton or Dante, and getting the same kind of

delight out of the stones as out of the stanzas, never enters our minds

for a moment. And for good reason:--There is indeed rhythm in the

verses, quite as strict as the symmetries or rhythm of the architecture,

and a thousand times more beautiful, but there is something else than

rhythm. The verses were neither made to order, nor to match, as the

capitals were; and we have therefore a kind of pleasure in them other

than a sense of propriety. But it requires a strong effort of common

sense to shake ourselves quit of all that we have been taught for the

last two centuries, and wake to the perception of a truth just as simple

and certain as it is new: that great art, whether expressing itself in

words, colors, or stones, does _not_ say the same thing over and over

again; that the merit of architectural, as of every other art, consists

in its saying new and different things; that to repeat itself is no more

a characteristic of genius in marble than it is of genius in print; and

that we may, without offending any laws of good taste, require of an

architect, as we do of a novelist, that he should be not only correct,

but entertaining.

Yet all this is true, and self-evident; only hidden from us, as many

other self-evident things are, by false teaching. Nothing is a great

work of art, for the production of which either rules or models can be

given. Exactly so far as architecture works on known rules, and from

given models, it is not an art, but a manufacture; and it is, of the two

procedures, rather less rational (because more easy) to copy capitals or

mouldings from Phidias, and call ourselves architects, than to copy

heads and hands from Titian, and call ourselves painters.

§ XXIX. Let us then understand at once, that change or variety is as

much a necessity to the human heart and brain in buildings as in books;

that there is no merit, though there is some occasional use, in

monotony; and that we must no more expect to derive either pleasure or

profit from an architecture whose ornaments are of one pattern, and

whose pillars are of one proportion, than we should out of a universe in

which the clouds were all of one shape, and the trees all of one size.

§ XXX. And this we confess in deeds, though not in words. All the

pleasure which the people of the nineteenth century take in art, is in

pictures, sculpture, minor objects of virtù, or mediæval architecture,

which we enjoy under the term picturesque: no pleasure is taken anywhere

in modern buildings, and we find all men of true feeling delighting to

escape out of modern cities into natural scenery: hence, as I shall

hereafter show, that peculiar love of landscape which is characteristic

of the age. It would be well, if, in all other matters, we were as ready

to put up with what we dislike, for the sake of compliance with

established law, as we are in architecture.

§ XXXI. How so debased a law ever came to be established, we shall see

when we come to describe the Renaissance schools: here we have only to

note, as the second most essential element of the Gothic spirit, that it

broke through that law wherever it found it in existence; it not only

dared, but delighted in, the infringement of every servile principle;

and invented a series of forms of which the merit was, not merely that

they were new, but that they were _capable of perpetual novelty_. The

pointed arch was not merely a bold variation from the round, but it

admitted of millions of variations in itself; for the proportions of a

pointed arch are changeable to infinity, while a circular arch is always

the same. The grouped shaft was not merely a bold variation from the

single one, but it admitted of millions of variations in its grouping,

and in the proportions resultant from its grouping. The introduction of

tracery was not only a startling change in the treatment of window

lights, but admitted endless changes in the interlacement of the tracery

bars themselves. So that, while in all living Christian architecture the

love of variety exists, the Gothic schools exhibited that love in

culminating energy; and their influence, wherever it extended itself,

may be sooner and farther traced by this character than by any other;

the tendency to the adoption of Gothic types being always first shown by

greater irregularity and richer variation in the forms of the

architecture it is about to supersede, long before the appearance of the

pointed arch or of any other recognizable _outward_ sign of the Gothic

mind.

§ XXXII. We must, however, herein note carefully what distinction there

is between a healthy and a diseased love of change; for as it was in

healthy love of change that the Gothic architecture rose, it was partly

in consequence of diseased love of change that it was destroyed. In

order to understand this clearly, it will be necessary to consider the

different ways in which change and monotony are presented to us in

nature; both having their use, like darkness and light, and the one

incapable of being enjoyed without the other: change being most

delightful after some prolongation of monotony, as light appears most

brilliant after the eyes have been for some time closed.

§ XXXIII. I believe that the true relations of monotony and change may

be most simply understood by observing them in music. We may therein

notice, first, that there is a sublimity and majesty in monotony which

there is not in rapid or frequent variation. This is true throughout all

nature. The greater part of the sublimity of the sea depends on its

monotony; so also that of desolate moor and mountain scenery; and

especially the sublimity of motion, as in the quiet, unchanged fall and

rise of an engine beam. So also there is sublimity in darkness which

there is not in light.

§ XXXIV. Again, monotony after a certain time, or beyond a certain

degree, becomes either uninteresting or intolerable, and the musician is

obliged to break it in one or two ways: either while the air or passage

is perpetually repeated, its notes are variously enriched and

harmonized; or else, after a certain number of repeated passages, an

entirely new passage is introduced, which is more or less delightful

according to the length of the previous monotony. Nature, of course,

uses both these kinds of variation perpetually. The sea-waves,

resembling each other in general mass, but none like its brother in

minor divisions and curves, are a monotony of the first kind; the great

plain, broken by an emergent rock or clump of trees, is a monotony of

the second.

§ XXXV. Farther: in order to the enjoyment of the change in either case,

a certain degree of patience is required from the hearer or observer. In

the first case, he must be satisfied to endure with patience the

recurrence of the great masses of sound or form, and to seek for

entertainment in a careful watchfulness of the minor details. In the

second case, he must bear patiently the infliction of the monotony for

some moments, in order to feel the full refreshment of the change. This

is true even of the shortest musical passage in which the element of

monotony is employed. In cases of more majestic monotony, the patience

required is so considerable that it becomes a kind of pain,--a price

paid for the future pleasure.

§ XXXVI. Again: the talent of the composer is not in the monotony, but

in the changes: he may show feeling and taste by his use of monotony in

certain places or degrees; that is to say, by his _various_ employment

of it; but it is always in the new arrangement or invention that his

intellect is shown, and not in the monotony which relieves it.

Lastly: if the pleasure of change be too often repeated, it ceases to be

delightful, for then change itself becomes monotonous, and we are driven

to seek delight in extreme and fantastic degrees of it. This is the

diseased love of change of which we have above spoken.

§ XXXVII. From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and

ought to be, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is; that an

architecture which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead

architecture; and, of those who love it, it may be truly said, "they

love darkness rather than light." But monotony in certain measure, used

in order to give value to change, and, above all, that _transparent_

monotony which, like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner

of dimly suggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an

essential in architectural as in all other composition; and the

endurance of monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that

the endurance of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect

will have pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the

broken and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere

brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and

the storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of

fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while

an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great

mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome

to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of

expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future

pleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble nature

loves monotony, any more than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear

with it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a

pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those who will

not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to

another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow

and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape.

§ XXXVIII. From these general uses of variety in the economy of the

world, we may at once understand its use and abuse in architecture. The

variety of the Gothic schools is the more healthy and beautiful, because

in many cases it is entirely unstudied, and results, not from the mere

love of change, but from practical necessities. For in one point of view

Gothic is not only the best, but the _only rational_ architecture, as

being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or

noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch,

or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into

a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded

grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change

in its form or purpose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of

loss either to its unity or majesty,--subtle and flexible like a fiery

serpent, but ever attentive to the voice of the charmer. And it is one

of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered

ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real

use and value of what they did. If they wanted a window, they opened

one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly

regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance,

knowing (as indeed it always happened) that such daring interruptions of

the formal plan would rather give additional interest to its symmetry

than injure it. So that, in the best times of Gothic, a useless window

would rather have been opened in an unexpected place for the sake of the

surprise, than a useful one forbidden for the sake of symmetry. Every

successive architect, employed upon a great work, built the pieces he

added in his own way, utterly regardless of the style adopted by his

predecessors; and if two towers were raised in nominal correspondence at

the sides of a cathedral front, one was nearly sure to be different from

the other, and in each the style at the top to be different from the

style at the bottom.[59]

§ XXXIX. These marked variations were, however, only permitted as part

of the great system of perpetual change which ran through every member

of Gothic design, and rendered it as endless a field for the beholder's

inquiry, as for the builder's imagination: change, which in the best

schools is subtle and delicate, and rendered more delightful by

intermingling of a noble monotony; in the more barbaric schools is

somewhat fantastic and redundant; but, in all, a necessary and constant

condition of the life of the school. Sometimes the variety is in one

feature, sometimes in another; it may be in the capitals or crockets, in

the niches or the traceries, or in all together, but in some one or

other of the features it will be found always. If the mouldings are

constant, the surface sculpture will change; if the capitals are of a

fixed design, the traceries will change; if the traceries are

monotonous, the capitals will change; and if even, as in some fine

schools, the early English for example, there is the slightest

approximation to an unvarying type of mouldings, capitals, and floral

decoration, the variety is found in the disposition of the masses, and

in the figure sculpture.

§ XL. I must now refer for a moment, before we quit the consideration of

this, the second mental element of Gothic, to the opening of the third

chapter of the "Seven Lamps of Architecture," in which the distinction

was drawn (§ 2) between man gathering and man governing; between his

acceptance of the sources of delight from nature, and his developement

of authoritative or imaginative power in their arrangement: for the two

mental elements, not only of Gothic, but of all good architecture, which

we have just been examining, belong to it, and are admirable in it,

chiefly as it is, more than any other subject of art, the work of man,

and the expression of the average power of man. A picture or poem is

often little more than a feeble utterance of man's admiration of

something out of himself; but architecture approaches more to a creation

of his own, born of his necessities, and expressive of his nature. It is

also, in some sort, the work of the whole race, while the picture or

statue are the work of one only, in most cases more highly gifted than

his fellows. And therefore we may expect that the first two elements of

good architecture should be expressive of some great truths commonly

belonging to the whole race, and necessary to be understood or felt by

them in all their work that they do under the sun. And observe what they

are: the confession of Imperfection and the confession of Desire of

Change. The building of the bird and the bee needs not express anything

like this. It is perfect and unchanging. But just because we are

something better than birds or bees, our building must confess that we

have not reached the perfection we can imagine, and cannot rest in the

condition we have attained. If we pretend to have reached either

perfection or satisfaction, we have degraded ourselves and our work.

God's work only may express that; but ours may never have that sentence

written upon it,--"And behold, it was very good." And, observe again,

it is not merely as it renders the edifice a book of various knowledge,

or a mine of precious thought, that variety is essential to its

nobleness. The vital principle is not the love of _Knowledge_, but the

love of _Change_. It is that strange _disquietude_ of the Gothic spirit

that is its greatness; that restlessness of the dreaming mind, that

wanders hither and thither among the niches, and flickers feverishly

around the pinnacles, and frets and fades in labyrinthine knots and

shadows along wall and roof, and yet is not satisfied, nor shall be

satisfied. The Greek could stay in his triglyph furrow, and be at peace;

but the work of the Gothic heart is fretwork still, and it can neither

rest in, nor from, its labor, but must pass on, sleeplessly, until its

love of change shall be pacified for ever in the change that must come

alike on them that wake and them that sleep.

§ XLI. The third constituent element of the Gothic mind was stated to be

NATURALISM; that is to say, the love of natural objects for their own

sake, and the effort to represent them frankly, unconstrained by

artistical laws.

This characteristic of the style partly follows in necessary connexion

with those named above. For, so soon as the workman is left free to

represent what subjects he chooses, he must look to the nature that is

round him for material, and will endeavor to represent it as he sees it,

with more or less accuracy according to the skill he possesses, and with

much play of fancy, but with small respect for law. There is, however, a

marked distinction between the imaginations of the Western and Eastern

races, even when both are left free; the Western, or Gothic, delighting

most in the representation of facts, and the Eastern (Arabian, Persian,

and Chinese) in the harmony of colors and forms. Each of these

intellectual dispositions has its particular forms of error and abuse,

which, though I have often before stated, I must here again briefly

explain; and this the rather, because the word Naturalism is, in one of

its senses, justly used as a term of reproach, and the questions

respecting the real relations of art and nature are so many and so

confused throughout all the schools of Europe at this day, that I

cannot clearly enunciate any single truth without appearing to admit, in

fellowship with it, some kind of error, unless the reader will bear with

me in entering into such an analysis of the subject as will serve us for

general guidance.

§ XLII. We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement of

colors and lines is an art analogous to the composition[60] of music,

and entirely independent of the representation of facts. Good coloring

does not necessarily convey the image of anything but itself. It

consists in certain proportions and arrangements of rays of light, but

not in likenesses to anything. A few touches of certain greys and

purples laid by a master's hand on white paper, will be good coloring;

as more touches are added beside them, we may find out that they were

intended to represent a dove's neck, and we may praise, as the drawing

advances, the perfect imitation of the dove's neck. But the good

coloring does not consist in that imitation, but in the abstract

qualities and relations of the grey and purple.

In like manner, as soon as a great sculptor begins to shape his work out

of the block, we shall see that its lines are nobly arranged, and of

noble character. We may not have the slightest idea for what the forms

are intended, whether they are of man or beast, of vegetation or

drapery. Their likeness to anything does not affect their nobleness.

They are magnificent forms, and that is all we need care to know of

them, in order to say whether the workman is a good or bad sculptor.

§ XLIII. Now the noblest art is an exact unison of the abstract value,

with the imitative power, of forms and colors. It is the noblest

composition, used to express the noblest facts. But the human mind

cannot in general unite the two perfections: it either pursues the fact

to the neglect of the composition, or pursues the composition to the

neglect of the fact.

§ XLIV. And it is intended by the Deity that it _should_ do this; the

best art is not always wanted. Facts are often wanted without art, as in

a geological diagram; and art often without facts, as in a Turkey

carpet. And most men have been made capable of giving either one or the

other, but not both; only one or two, the very highest, can give both.

Observe then. Men are universally divided, as respects their artistical

qualifications, into three great classes; a right, a left, and a centre.

On the right side are the men of facts, on the left the men of

design,[61] in the centre the men of both.

The three classes of course pass into each other by imperceptible

gradations. The men of facts are hardly ever altogether without powers

of design; the men of design are always in some measure cognizant of

facts; and as each class possesses more or less of the powers of the

opposite one, it approaches to the character of the central class. Few

men, even in that central rank, are so exactly throned on the summit of

the crest that they cannot be perceived to incline in the least one way

or the other, embracing both horizons with their glance. Now each of

these classes has, as I above said, a healthy function in the world, and

correlative diseases or unhealthy functions; and, when the work of

either of them is seen in its morbid condition, we are apt to find fault

with the class of workmen, instead of finding fault only with the

particular abuse which has perverted their action.

§ XLV. Let us first take an instance of the healthy action of the three

classes on a simple subject, so as fully to understand the distinction

between them, and then we shall more easily examine the corruptions to

which they are liable. Fig. 1 in Plate VI. is a spray of vine with a

bough of cherry-tree, which I have outlined from nature as accurately as

I could, without in the least endeavoring to compose or arrange the

form. It is a simple piece of fact-work, healthy and good as such, and

useful to any one who wanted to know plain truths about tendrils of

vines, but there is no attempt at design in it. Plate XIX., below,

represents a branch of vine used to decorate the angle of the Ducal

Palace. It is faithful as a representation of vine, and yet so designed

that every leaf serves an architectural purpose, and could not be spared

from its place without harm. This is central work; fact and design

together. Fig. 2 in Plate VI. is a spandril from St. Mark's, in which

the forms of the vine are dimly suggested, the object of the design

being merely to obtain graceful lines and well proportioned masses upon

the gold ground. There is not the least attempt to inform the spectator

of any facts about the growth of the vine; there are no stalks or

tendrils,--merely running bands with leaves emergent from them, of which

nothing but the outline is taken from the vine, and even that

imperfectly. This is design, unregardful of facts.

Now the work is, in all these three cases, perfectly healthy. Fig. 1 is

not bad work because it has not design, nor Fig. 2 bad work because it

has not facts. The object of the one is to give pleasure through truth,

and of the other to give pleasure through composition. And both are

right.

What, then, are the diseased operations to which the three classes of

workmen are liable?

§ XLVI. Primarily, two; affecting the two inferior classes:

1st, When either of those two classes Despises the other:

2nd, When either of the two classes Envies the other; producing,

therefore, four forms of dangerous error.

First, when the men of facts despise design. This is the error of the

common Dutch painters, of merely imitative painters of still life,

flowers, &c., and other men who, having either the gift of accurate

imitation or strong sympathies with nature, suppose that all is done

when the imitation is perfected or sympathy expressed. A large body of

English landscapists come into this class, including most clever

sketchers from nature, who fancy that to get a sky of true tone, and a

gleam of sunshine or sweep of shower faithfully expressed, is all that

can be required of art. These men are generally themselves answerable

for much of their deadness of feeling to the higher qualities of

composition. They probably have not originally the high gifts of design,

but they lose such powers as they originally possessed by despising, and

refusing to study, the results of great power of design in others. Their

knowledge, as far as it goes, being accurate, they are usually

presumptuous and self-conceited, and gradually become incapable of

admiring anything but what is like their own works. They see nothing in

the works of great designers but the faults, and do harm almost

incalculable in the European society of the present day by sneering at

the compositions of the greatest men of the earlier ages,[62] because

they do not absolutely tally with their own ideas of "Nature."

§ XLVII. The second form of error is when the men of design despise

facts. All noble design must deal with facts to a certain extent, for

there is no food for it but in nature. The best colorist invents best by

taking hints from natural colors; from birds, skies, or groups of

figures. And if, in the delight of inventing fantastic color and form

the truths of nature are wilfully neglected, the intellect becomes

comparatively decrepit, and that state of art results which we find

among the Chinese. The Greek designers delighted in the facts of the

human form, and became great in consequence; but the facts of lower

nature were disregarded by them, and their inferior ornament became,

therefore, dead and valueless.

§ XLVIII. The third form of error is when the men of facts envy design:

that is to say, when, having only imitative powers, they refuse to

employ those powers upon the visible world around them; but, having been

taught that composition is the end of art, strive to obtain the

inventive powers which nature has denied them, study nothing but the

works of reputed designers, and perish in a fungous growth of plagiarism

and laws of art.

Here was the great error of the beginning of this century; it is the

error of the meanest kind of men that employ themselves in painting, and

it is the most fatal of all, rendering those who fall into it utterly

useless, incapable of helping the world with either truth or fancy,

while, in all probability, they deceive it by base resemblances of both,

until it hardly recognizes truth or fancy when they really exist.

§ XLIX. The fourth form of error is when the men of design envy facts;

that is to say, when the temptation of closely imitating nature leads

them to forget their own proper ornamental function, and when they lose

the power of the composition for the sake of graphic truth; as, for

instance, in the hawthorn moulding so often spoken of round the porch of

Bourges Cathedral, which, though very lovely, might perhaps, as we saw

above, have been better, if the old builder, in his excessive desire to

make it look like hawthorn, had not painted it green.

§ L. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that the two morbid

conditions to which the men of facts are liable are much more dangerous

and harmful than those to which the men of design are liable. The morbid

state of men of design injures themselves only; that of the men of facts

injures the whole world. The Chinese porcelain-painter is, indeed, not

so great a man as he might be, but he does not want to break everything

that is not porcelain; but the modern English fact-hunter, despising

design, wants to destroy everything that does not agree with his own

notions of truth, and becomes the most dangerous and despicable of

iconoclasts, excited by egotism instead of religion. Again: the Bourges

sculptor, painting his hawthorns green, did indeed somewhat hurt the

effect of his own beautiful design, but did not prevent any one from

loving hawthorn: but Sir George Beaumont, trying to make Constable paint

grass brown _instead_ of green, was setting himself between Constable

and nature, blinding the painter, and blaspheming the work of God.

§ LI. So much, then, of the diseases of the inferior classes, caused by

their envying or despising each other. It is evident that the men of the

central class cannot be liable to any morbid operation of this kind,

they possessing the powers of both.

But there is another order of diseases which affect all the three

classes, considered with respect to their pursuit of facts. For observe,

all the three classes are in some degree pursuers of facts; even the men

of design not being in any case altogether independent of external

truth. Now, considering them _all_ as more or less searchers after

truth, there is another triple division to be made of them. Everything

presented to them in nature has good and evil mingled in it: and

artists, considered as searchers after truth, are again to be divided

into three great classes, a right, a left, and a centre. Those on the

right perceive, and pursue, the good, and leave the evil: those in the

centre, the greatest, perceive and pursue the good and evil together,

the whole thing as it verily is: those on the left perceive and pursue

the evil, and leave the good.

§ LII. The first class, I say, take the good and leave the evil. Out of

whatever is presented to them, they gather what it has of grace, and

life, and light, and holiness, and leave all, or at least as much as

possible, of the rest undrawn. The faces of their figures express no

evil passions; the skies of their landscapes are without storm; the

prevalent character of their color is brightness, and of their

chiaroscuro fulness of light. The early Italian and Flemish painters,

Angelico and Hemling, Perugino, Francia, Raffaelle in his best time,

John Bellini, and our own Stothard, belong eminently to this class.

§ LIII. The second, or greatest class, render all that they see in

nature unhesitatingly, with a kind of divine grasp and government of the

whole, sympathizing with all the good, and yet confessing, permitting,

and bringing good out of the evil also. Their subject is infinite as

nature, their color equally balanced between splendor and sadness,

reaching occasionally the highest degrees of both, and their chiaroscuro

equally balanced between light and shade.

The principal men of this class are Michael Angelo, Leonardo, Giotto,

Tintoret, and Turner. Raffaelle in his second time, Titian, and Rubens

are transitional; the first inclining to the eclectic, and the last two

to the impure class, Raffaelle rarely giving all the evil, Titian and

Rubens rarely all the good.

§ LIV. The last class perceive and imitate evil only. They cannot draw

the trunk of a tree without blasting and shattering it, nor a sky except

covered with stormy clouds: they delight in the beggary and brutality of

the human race; their color is for the most part subdued or lurid, and

the greatest spaces of their pictures are occupied by darkness.

Happily the examples of this class are seldom seen in perfection.

Salvator Rosa and Caravaggio are the most characteristic: the other men

belonging to it approach towards the central rank by imperceptible

gradations, as they perceive and represent more and more of good. But

Murillo, Zurbaran, Camillo Procaccini, Rembrandt, and Teniers, all

belong naturally to this lower class.

§ LV. Now, observe: the three classes into which artists were previously

divided, of men of fact, men of design, and men of both, are all of

Divine institution; but of these latter three, the last is in no wise of

Divine institution. It is entirely human, and the men who belong to it

have sunk into it by their own faults. They are, so far forth, either

useless or harmful men. It is indeed good that evil should be

occasionally represented, even in its worst forms, but never that it

should be taken delight in: and the mighty men of the central class will

always give us all that is needful of it; sometimes, as Hogarth did,

dwelling upon it bitterly as satirists,--but this with the more effect,

because they will neither exaggerate it, nor represent it mercilessly,

and without the atoning points that all evil shows to a Divinely guided

glance, even at its deepest. So then, though the third class will

always, I fear, in some measure exist, the two necessary classes are

only the first two; and this is so far acknowledged by the general sense

of men, that the basest class has been confounded with the second; and

painters have been divided commonly only into two ranks, now known, I

believe, throughout Europe by the names which they first received in

Italy, "Puristi and Naturalisti." Since, however, in the existing state

of things, the degraded or evil-loving class, though less defined than

that of the Puristi, is just as vast as it is indistinct, this division

has done infinite dishonor to the great faithful painters of nature: and

it has long been one of the objects I have had most at heart to show

that, in reality, the Purists, in their sanctity, are less separated

from these natural painters than the Sensualists in their foulness; and

that the difference, though less discernible, is in reality greater,

between the man who pursues evil for its own sake, and him who bears

with it for the sake of truth, than between this latter and the man who

will not endure it at all.

§ LVI. Let us, then, endeavor briefly to mark the real relations of

these three vast ranks of men, whom I shall call, for convenience in

speaking of them, Purists, Naturalists, and Sensualists; not that these

terms express their real characters, but I know no word, and cannot coin

a convenient one, which would accurately express the opposite of Purist;

and I keep the terms Purist and Naturalist in order to comply, as far as

possible, with the established usage of language on the Continent. Now,

observe: in saying that nearly everything presented to us in nature has

mingling in it of good and evil, I do not mean that nature is

conceivably improvable, or that anything that God has made could be

called evil, if we could see far enough into its uses, but that, with

respect to immediate effects or appearances, it may be so, just as the

hard rind or bitter kernel of a fruit may be an evil to the eater,

though in the one is the protection of the fruit, and in the other its

continuance. The Purist, therefore, does not mend nature, but receives

from nature and from God that which is good for him; while the

Sensualist fills himself "with the husks that the swine did eat."

The three classes may, therefore, be likened to men reaping wheat, of

which the Purists take the fine flour, and the Sensualists the chaff and

straw, but the Naturalists take all home, and make their cake of the

one, and their couch of the other.

§ LVII. For instance. We know more certainly every day that whatever

appears to us harmful in the universe has some beneficent or necessary

operation; that the storm which destroys a harvest brightens the

sunbeams for harvests yet unsown, and that the volcano which buries a

city preserves a thousand from destruction. But the evil is not for the

time less fearful, because we have learned it to be necessary; and we

easily understand the timidity or the tenderness of the spirit which

would withdraw itself from the presence of destruction, and create in

its imagination a world of which the peace should be unbroken, in which

the sky should not darken nor the sea rage, in which the leaf should not

change nor the blossom wither. That man is greater, however, who

contemplates with an equal mind the alternations of terror and of

beauty; who, not rejoicing less beneath the sunny sky, can bear also to

watch the bars of twilight narrowing on the horizon; and, not less

sensible to the blessing of the peace of nature, can rejoice in the

magnificence of the ordinances by which that peace is protected and

secured. But separated from both by an immeasurable distance would be

the man who delighted in convulsion and disease for their own sake; who

found his daily food in the disorder of nature mingled with the

suffering of humanity; and watched joyfully at the right hand of the

Angel whose appointed work is to destroy as well as to accuse, while the

corners of the House of feasting were struck by the wind from the

wilderness.

§ LVIII. And far more is this true, when the subject of contemplation is

humanity itself. The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly

beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn; but none without their

use, none without nobleness when seen in balanced unity with the rest

of the spirit which they are charged to defend. The passions of which

the end is the continuance of the race; the indignation which is to arm

it against injustice, or strengthen it to resist wanton injury; and the

fear[63] which lies at the root of prudence, reverence, and awe, are all

honorable and beautiful, so long as man is regarded in his relations to

the existing world. The religious Purist, striving to conceive him

withdrawn from those relations, effaces from the countenance the traces

of all transitory passion, illumines it with holy hope and love, and

seals it with the serenity of heavenly peace; he conceals the forms of

the body by the deep-folded garment, or else represents them under

severely chastened types, and would rather paint them emaciated by the

fast, or pale from the torture, than strengthened by exertion, or

flushed by emotion. But the great Naturalist takes the human being in

its wholeness, in its mortal as well as its spiritual strength. Capable

of sounding and sympathizing with the whole range of its passions, he

brings one majestic harmony out of them all; he represents it fearlessly

in all its acts and thoughts, in its haste, its anger, its sensuality,

and its pride, as well as in its fortitude or faith, but makes it noble

in them all; he casts aside the veil from the body, and beholds the

mysteries of its form like an angel looking down on an inferior

creature: there is nothing which he is reluctant to behold, nothing that

he is ashamed to confess; with all that lives, triumphing, falling, or

suffering, he claims kindred, either in majesty or in mercy, yet

standing, in a sort, afar off, unmoved even in the deepness of his

sympathy; for the spirit within him is too thoughtful to be grieved, too

brave to be appalled, and too pure to be polluted.