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THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUME III
GIOTTO
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
HARBOURS OF ENGLAND
A JOY FOREVER
NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
NEW YORK CHICAGO
THE COMPLETE WORKS
OF
JOHN RUSKIN
VOLUME X
GIOTTO AND HIS WORKS
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE
THE HARBORS OF ENGLAND
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART
(A JOY FOREVER)
LECTURES
ON
ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING
DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH
IN NOVEMBER, 1853.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE v
LECTURE I.
ARCHITECTURE 1
LECTURE II.
ARCHITECTURE 34
ADDENDA TO LECTURES I. AND II. 56
LECTURE III.
TURNER AND HIS WORKS 75
LECTURE IV.
PRE-RAPHAELITISM 100
ADDENDA TO LECTURE IV. 123
LIST OF PLATES.
Facing Page
PLATE I. Figs. 1. 3. and 5. Illustrative diagrams 3
" II. " 2. Windows in Oakham Castle 5
" III. " 4. and 6. Spray of ash-tree, and improvement
of the same on Greek principles 10
" IV. " 7. Window in Dunblane Cathedral 15
" V. " 8. Mediaeval turret 20
" VI. " 9. and 10. Lombardic towers 22
" VII. " 11. and 12. Spires at Coutances and Rouen 25
" VIII. " 13. and 14. Illustrative diagrams 39
" IX. " 15. Sculpture at Lyons 40
" X. " 16. Niche at Amiens 41
" XI. " 17. and 18. Tiger's head, and improvement of
the same on Greek principles 44
" XII. " 19. Garret window in Hotel de Bourgtheroude 51
" XIII. " 20. and 21. Trees, as drawn in the 13th century 81
" XIV. " 22. Rocks, as drawn by the school of Leonardo
da Vinci 83
" XV. " 23. Boughs of trees, after Titian 84
PREFACE.
The following Lectures are printed, as far as possible, just as they
were delivered. Here and there a sentence which seemed obscure has been
mended, and the passages which had not been previously written, have
been, of course imperfectly, supplied from memory. But I am well assured
that nothing of any substantial importance which was said in the
lecture-room, is either omitted, or altered in its signification; with
the exception only of a few sentences struck out from the notice of the
works of Turner, in consequence of the impossibility of engraving the
drawings by which they were illustrated, except at a cost which would
have too much raised the price of the volume. Some elucidatory remarks
have, however, been added at the close of the second and fourth
Lectures, which I hope may be of more use than the passages which I was
obliged to omit.
The drawings by which the Lectures on Architecture were illustrated have
been carefully reduced, and well transferred to wood by Mr. Thurston
Thompson. Those which were given in the course of the notices of schools
of painting could not be so transferred, having been drawn in color; and
I have therefore merely had a few lines, absolutely necessary to make
the text intelligible, copied from engravings.
I forgot, in preparing the second Lecture for the press, to quote a
passage from Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," illustrative of what is
said in that lecture (Sec. 52), respecting the energy of the mediaeval
republics. This passage, describing the circumstances under which the
Campanile of the Duomo of Florence was built, is interesting also as
noticing the universality of talent which was required of architects;
and which, as I have asserted in the Addenda (Sec. 60), always ought to be
required of them. I do not, however, now regret the omission, as I
cannot easily imagine a better preface to an essay on civil architecture
than this simple statement.
"In 1332, Giotto was chosen to erect it (the Campanile), on the ground,
avowedly, of the _universality_ of his talents, with the appointment of
Capo Maestro, or chief Architect (chief Master I should rather write),
of the Cathedral and its dependencies, a yearly salary of one hundred
gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship, under the special
understanding that he was not to quit Florence. His designs being
approved of, the republic passed a decree in the spring of 1334, that
the Campanile should be built so as to exceed in magnificence, height,
and excellence of workmanship whatever in that time had been achieved by
the Greeks and Romans in the time of their utmost power and greatness.
The first stone was laid, accordingly, with great pomp, on the 18th of
July following, and the work prosecuted with vigor, and with such
costliness and utter disregard of expense, that a citizen of Verona,
looking on, exclaimed that the republic was taxing her strength too far,
that the united resources of two great monarchs would be insufficient to
complete it; a criticism which the Signoria resented by confining him
for two months in prison, and afterwards conducting him through the
public treasury, to teach him that the Florentines could build their
whole city of marble, and not one poor steeple only, were they so
inclined."
I see that "The Builder," vol. xi. page 690, has been endeavoring to
inspire the citizens of Leeds with some pride of this kind respecting
their town-hall. The pride would be well, but I sincerely trust that the
tower in question may not be built on the design there proposed. I am
sorry to have to write a special criticism, but it must be remembered
that the best works, by the best men living, are in this age abused
without mercy by nameless critics; and it would be unjust to the public,
if those who have given their names as guarantee for their sincerity
never had the courage to enter a protest against the execution of
designs which appear to them unworthy.
DENMARK HILL, _16th April 1854_.
LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING.
LECTURE I.
ARCHITECTURE.
_Delivered November 1, 1853._
1. I think myself peculiarly happy in being permitted to address the
citizens of Edinburgh on the subject of architecture, for it is one
which, they cannot but feel, interests them nearly. Of all the cities in
the British Islands, Edinburgh is the one which presents most advantages
for the display of a noble building; and which, on the other hand,
sustains most injury in the erection of a commonplace or unworthy one.
You are all proud of your city; surely you must feel it a duty in some
sort to justify your pride; that is to say, to give yourselves a _right_
to be proud of it. That you were born under the shadow of its two
fantastic mountains,--that you live where from your room windows you can
trace the shores of its glittering Firth, are no rightful subjects of
pride. You did not raise the mountains, nor shape the shores; and the
historical houses of your Canongate, and the broad battlements of your
castle, reflect honor upon you only through your ancestors. Before you
boast of your city, before even you venture to call it _yours_, ought
you not scrupulously to weigh the exact share you have had in adding to
it or adorning it, to calculate seriously the influence upon its aspect
which the work of your own hands has exercised? I do not say that, even
when you regard your city in this scrupulous and testing spirit, you
have not considerable ground for exultation. As far as I am acquainted
with modern architecture, I am aware of no streets which, in simplicity
and manliness of style, or general breadth and brightness of effect,
equal those of the New Town of Edinburgh. But yet I am well persuaded
that as you traverse those streets, your feelings of pleasure and pride
in them are much complicated with those which are excited entirely by
the surrounding scenery. As you walk up or down George Street, for
instance, do you not look eagerly for every opening to the north and
south, which lets in the luster of the Firth of Forth, or the rugged
outline of the Castle Rock? Take away the sea-waves, and the dark
basalt, and I fear you would find little to interest you in George
Street by itself. Now I remember a city, more nobly placed even than
your Edinburgh, which, instead of the valley that you have now filled by
lines of railroad, has a broad and rushing river of blue water sweeping
through the heart of it; which, for the dark and solitary rock that
bears your castle, has an amphitheater of cliffs crested with cypresses
and olive; which, for the two masses of Arthur's Seat and the ranges of
the Pentlands, has a chain of blue mountains higher than the haughtiest
peaks of your Highlands; and which, for your far-away Ben Ledi and Ben
More, has the great central chain of the St. Gothard Alps: and yet, as
you go out of the gates, and walk in the suburban streets of that
city--I mean Verona--the eye never seeks to rest on that external
scenery, however gorgeous; it does not look for the gaps between the
houses, as you do here; it may for a few moments follow the broken line
of the great Alpine battlements; but it is only where they form a
background for other battlements, built by the hand of man. There is no
necessity felt to dwell on the blue river or the burning hills. The
heart and eye have enough to do in the streets of the city itself; they
are contented there; nay, they sometimes turn from the natural scenery,
as if too savage and solitary, to dwell with a deeper interest on the
palace walls that cast their shade upon the streets, and the crowd of
towers that rise out of that shadow into the depth of the sky.
[Illustration: Plate I. (Fig. 1., Fig. 3., Fig. 5.)]
2. _That_ is a city to be proud of, indeed; and it is this kind of
architectural dignity which you should aim at, in what you add to
Edinburgh or rebuild in it. For remember, you must either help your
scenery or destroy it; whatever you do has an effect of one kind or the
other; it is never indifferent. But, above all, remember that it is
chiefly by private, not by public, effort that your city must be
adorned. It does not matter how many beautiful public buildings you
possess, if they are not supported by, and in harmony with, the private
houses of the town. Neither the mind nor the eye will accept a new
college, or a new hospital, or a new institution, for a city. It is the
Canongate, and the Princes Street, and the High Street that are
Edinburgh. It is in your own private houses that the real majesty of
Edinburgh must consist; and, what is more, it must be by your own
personal interest that the style of the architecture which rises around
you must be principally guided. Do not think that you can have good
architecture merely by paying for it. It is not by subscribing liberally
for a large building once in forty years that you can call up architects
and inspiration. It is only by active and sympathetic attention to the
domestic and every-day work which is done for each of you, that you can
educate either yourselves to the feeling, or your builders to the doing,
of what is truly great.
3. Well, but, you will answer, you cannot feel interested in
architecture: you do not care about it, and _cannot_ care about it. I
know you cannot. About such architecture as is built nowadays, no mortal
ever did or could care. You do not feel interested in _hearing_ the same
thing over and over again;--why do you suppose you can feel interested
in _seeing_ the same thing over and over again, were that thing even the
best and most beautiful in the world? Now, you all know the kind of
window which you usually build in Edinburgh: here is an example of the
head of one (_fig._ 1), a massy lintel of a single stone, laid across
from side to side, with bold square-cut jambs--in fact, the simplest
form it is possible to build. It is by no means a bad form; on the
contrary, it is very manly and vigorous, and has a certain dignity in
its utter refusal of ornament. But I cannot say it is entertaining. How
many windows precisely of this form do you suppose there are in the New
Town of Edinburgh? I have not counted them all through the town, but I
counted them this morning along this very Queen Street, in which your
Hall is; and on the one side of that street, there are of these windows,
absolutely similar to this example, and altogether devoid of any relief
by decoration, six hundred and seventy-eight.[1] And your decorations
are just as monotonous as your simplicities. How many Corinthian and
Doric columns do you think there are in your banks, and post-offices,
institutions, and I know not what else, one exactly like another?--and
yet you expect to be interested! Nay, but, you will answer me again, we
see sunrises and sunsets, and violets and roses, over and over again,
and we do not tire of _them_. What! did you ever see one sunrise like
another? does not God vary His clouds for you every morning and every
night? though, indeed, there is enough in the disappearing and appearing
of the great orb above the rolling of the world, to interest all of us,
one would think, for as many times as we shall see it; and yet the
aspect of it is changed for us daily. You see violets and roses often,
and are not tired of them. True! but you did not often see two roses
alike, or, if you did, you took care not to put them beside each other
in the same nosegay, for fear your nosegay should be uninteresting; and
yet you think you can put 150,000 square windows side by side in the
same streets, and still be interested by them. Why, if I were to say the
same thing over and over again, for the single hour you are going to let
me talk to you, would you listen to me? and yet you let your architects
_do_ the same thing over and over again for three centuries, and expect
to be interested by their architecture; with a farther disadvantage on
the side of the builder, as compared with the speaker, that my wasted
words would cost you but little, but his wasted stones have cost you no
small part of your incomes.
[Footnote 1: Including York Place, and Picardy Place, but not counting
any window which has moldings.]
[Illustration: PLATE II. (Fig. 2)]
4. "Well, but," you still think within yourselves, "it is not _right_
that architecture should be interesting. It is a very grand thing, this
architecture, but essentially unentertaining. It is its duty to be dull,
it is monotonous by law: it cannot be correct and yet amusing."
Believe me, it is not so. All things that are worth doing in art, are
interesting and attractive when they are done. There is no law of right
which consecrates dullness. The proof of a thing's being right is, that
it has power over the heart; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us. I
do not say that it has influence over all, but it has over a large
class, one kind of art being fit for one class, and another for another;
and there is no goodness in art which is independent of the power of
pleasing. Yet, do not mistake me; I do not mean that there is no such
thing as neglect of the best art, or delight in the worst, just as many
men neglect nature, and feed upon what is artificial and base; but I
mean, that all good art has the _capacity of pleasing_, if people will
attend to it; that there is no law against its pleasing; but, on the
contrary, something wrong either in the spectator or the art, when it
ceases to please. Now, therefore, if you feel that your present school
of architecture is unattractive to you, I say there is something wrong,
either in the architecture or in you; and I trust you will not think I
mean to flatter you when I tell you, that the wrong is _not_ in you, but
in the architecture. Look at this for a moment (_fig._ 2); it is a
window actually existing--a window of an English domestic building[2]--a
window built six hundred years ago. You will not tell me you have no
pleasure in looking at this; or that you could not, by any possibility,
become interested in the art which produced it; or that, if every window
in your streets were of some such form, with perpetual change in their
ornaments, you would pass up and down the street with as much
indifference as now, when your windows are of _this_ form (_fig._ 1).
Can you for an instant suppose that the architect was a greater or
wiser man who built this, than he who built that? or that in the
arrangement of these dull and monotonous stones there is more wit and
sense than you can penetrate? Believe me, the wrong is not in you; you
would all like the best things best, if you only saw them. What is wrong
in you is your temper, not your taste; your patient and trustful temper,
which lives in houses whose architecture it takes for granted, and
subscribes to public edifices from which it derives no enjoyment.
[Footnote 2: Oakham Castle. I have enlarged this illustration from Mr.
Hudson Turner's admirable work on the domestic architecture of England.]
5. "Well, but what are we to do?" you will say to me; "we cannot make
architects of ourselves." Pardon me, you can--and you ought.
Architecture is an art for all men to learn, because all are concerned
with it; and it is so simple, that there is no excuse for not being
acquainted with its primary rules, any more than for ignorance of
grammar or of spelling, which are both of them far more difficult
sciences. Far less trouble than is necessary to learn how to play chess,
or whist, or golf, tolerably,--far less than a school-boy takes to win
the meanest prize of the passing year, would acquaint you with all the
main principles of the construction of a Gothic cathedral, and I believe
you would hardly find the study less amusing. But be that as it may,
there are one or two broad principles which need only be stated to be
understood and accepted; and those I mean to lay before you, with your
permission, before you leave this room.
6. You must all, of course, have observed that the principal
distinctions between existing styles of architecture depend on their
methods of roofing any space, as a window or door for instance, or a
space between pillars; that is to say, that the character of Greek
architecture, and of all that is derived from it, depends on its roofing
a space with a single stone laid from side to side; the character of
Roman architecture, and of all derived from it, depends on its roofing
spaces with round arches; and the character of Gothic architecture
depends on its roofing spaces with pointed arches, or gables. I need
not, of course, in any way follow out for you the mode in which the
Greek system of architecture is derived from the horizontal lintel; but
I ought perhaps to explain, that by Roman architecture I do not mean
that spurious condition of temple form which was nothing more than a
luscious imitation of the Greek; but I mean that architecture in which
the Roman spirit truly manifested itself, the magnificent vaultings of
the aqueduct and the bath, and the colossal heaping of the rough stones
in the arches of the amphitheater; an architecture full of expression of
gigantic power and strength of will, and from which are directly derived
all our most impressive early buildings, called, as you know, by various
antiquaries, Saxon, Norman, or Romanesque. Now the first point I wish to
insist upon is, that the Greek system, considered merely as a piece of
construction, is weak and barbarous compared with the two others. For
instance, in the case of a large window or door, such as _fig._ 1, if
you have at your disposal a single large and long stone you may indeed
roof it in the Greek manner, as you have done here, with comparative
security; but it is always expensive to obtain and to raise to their
place stones of this large size, and in many places nearly impossible to
obtain them at all: and if you have not such stones, and still insist
upon roofing the space in the Greek way, that is to say, upon having a
square window, you must do it by the miserably feeble adjustment of
bricks, _fig._ 3.[3] You are well aware, of course, that this latter is
the usual way in which such windows are now built in England; you are
fortunate enough here in the north to be able to obtain single stones,
and this circumstance alone gives a considerable degree of grandeur to
your buildings. But in all cases, and however built, you cannot but see
in a moment that this cross bar is weak and imperfect. It may be strong
enough for all immediate intents and purposes, but it is not so strong
as it might be: however well the house is built, it will still not stand
so long as if it had been better constructed; and there is hardly a day
passes but you may see some rent or flaw in bad buildings of this kind.
You may see one whenever you choose, in one of your most costly, and
most ugly buildings, the great church with the dome, at the end of
George Street. I think I never saw a building with a principal entrance
so utterly ghastly and oppressive; and it is as weak as it is ghastly.
The huge horizontal lintel above the door is already split right
through. But you are not aware of a thousandth part of the evil: the
pieces of building that you _see_ are all carefully done; it is in the
parts that are to be concealed by paint and plaster that the bad
building of the day is thoroughly committed. The main mischief lies in
the strange devices that are used to support the long horizontal cross
beams of our larger apartments and shops, and the framework of unseen
walls; girders and ties of cast iron, and props and wedges, and laths
nailed and bolted together, on marvelously scientific principles; so
scientific, that every now and then, when some tender reparation is
undertaken by the unconscious householder, the whole house crashes into
a heap of ruin, so total, that the jury which sits on the bodies of the
inhabitants cannot tell what has been the matter with it, and returns a
dim verdict of accidental death.
[Footnote 3: Plate I. On this subject, see "The Builder," vol. xi.
p. 709.]
7. Did you read the account of the proceedings at the Crystal Palace at
Sydenham the other day? Some dozen of men crushed up among the splinters
of the scaffolding in an instant, nobody knew why. All the engineers
declare the scaffolding to have been erected on the best
principles,--that the fall of it is as much a mystery as if it had
fallen from heaven, and were all meteoric stones. The jury go to
Sydenham and look at the heap of shattered bolts and girders, and come
back as wise as they went. Accidental death! Yes, verily; the lives of
all those dozen of men had been hanging for months at the mercy of a
flaw in an inch or two of cast iron. Very accidental indeed! Not the
less pitiable. I grant it not to be an easy thing to raise scaffolding
to the height of the Crystal Palace without incurring some danger, but
that is no reason why your houses should all be nothing but scaffolding.
The common system of support of walls over shops is now nothing but
permanent scaffolding; part of iron, part of wood, part of brick; in
its skeleton state awful to behold; the weight of three or four stories
of wall resting sometimes on two or three pillars of the size of gas
pipes, sometimes on a single cross beam of wood, laid across from party
wall to party wall in the Greek manner. I have a vivid recollection at
this moment of a vast heap of splinters in the Borough Road, close to
St. George's, Southwark, in the road between my own house and London. I
had passed it the day before, a goodly shop front, and sufficient house
above, with a few repairs undertaken in the shop before opening a new
business. The master and mistress had found it dusty that afternoon, and
went out to tea. When they came back in the evening, they found their
whole house in the form of a heap of bricks blocking the roadway, with a
party of men digging out their cook. But I do not insist on casualties
like these, disgraceful to us as they are, for it is, of course,
perfectly possible to build a perfectly secure house or a secure window
in the Greek manner; but the simple fact is, that in order to obtain in
the cross lintel the same amount of strength which you can obtain in a
pointed arch, you must go to an immensely greater cost in stone or in
labor. Stonehenge is strong enough, but it takes some trouble to build
in the manner of Stonehenge: and Stonehenge itself is not so strong as
an arch of the Colosseum. You could not raise a circle of four
Stonehenges, one over the other, with safety; and as it is, more of the
cross-stones are fallen upon the plain of Sarum than arches rent away,
except by the hand of man, from the mighty circle of Rome. But I waste
words;--your own common sense must show you in a moment that this is a
weak form; and there is not at this instant a single street in London
where some house could not be pointed out with a flaw running through
its brickwork, and repairs rendered necessary in consequence, merely
owing to the adoption of this bad form; and that our builders know so
well, that in myriads of instances you find them actually throwing
concealed arches above the horizontal lintels to take the weight off
them; and the gabled decoration, at the top of some Palladian windows,
is merely the ornamental form resulting from a bold device of the old
Roman builders to effect the same purpose.
8. But there is a farther reason for our adopting the pointed arch than
its being the strongest form; it is also the most beautiful form in
which a window or door-head can be built. Not the most beautiful because
it is the strongest; but most beautiful, because its form is one of
those which, as we know by its frequent occurrence in the work of Nature
around us, has been appointed by the Deity to be an everlasting source
of pleasure to the human mind.
[Illustration: PLATE III. (Fig. 4., Fig. 6.)]
Gather a branch from any of the trees or flowers to which the earth owes
its principal beauty. You will find that every one of its leaves is
terminated, more or less, in the form of the pointed arch; and to that
form owes its grace and character. I will take, for instance, a spray of
the tree which so gracefully adorns your Scottish glens and crags--there
is no lovelier in the world--the common ash. Here is a sketch of the
clusters of leaves which form the extremity of one of its young shoots
(_fig._ 4); and, by the way, it will furnish us with an interesting
illustration of another error in modern architectural systems. You know
how fond modern architects, like foolish modern politicians, are of
their equalities, and similarities; how necessary they think it that
each part of a building should be like every other part. Now Nature
abhors equality, and similitude, just as much as foolish men love them.
You will find that the ends of the shoots of the ash are composed of
four[4] green stalks bearing leaves, springing in the form of a cross,
if seen from above, as in _fig._ 5, Plate I., and at first you will
suppose the four arms of the cross are equal. But look more closely, and
you will find that two opposite arms or stalks have only five leaves
each, and the other two have seven; or else, two have seven, and the
other two nine; but always one pair of stalks has two leaves more than
the other pair. Sometimes the tree gets a little puzzled, and forgets
which is to be the longest stalk, and begins with a stem for seven
leaves where it should have nine, and then recollects itself at the last
minute, and puts on another leaf in a great hurry, and so produces a
stalk with eight leaves; but all this care it takes merely to keep
itself out of equalities; and all its grace and power of pleasing are
owing to its doing so, together with the lovely curves in which its
stalks, thus arranged, spring from the main bough. _Fig._ 5 is a plan of
their arrangement merely, but _fig._ 4 is the way in which you are most
likely to see them: and observe, they spring from the stalk _precisely
as a Gothic vaulted roof springs_, each stalk representing a rib of the
roof, and the leaves its crossing stones; and the beauty of each of
those leaves is altogether owing to its terminating in the Gothic form,
the pointed arch. Now do you think you would have liked your ash trees
as well, if Nature had taught them Greek, and shown them how to grow
according to the received Attic architectural rules of right? I will try
you. Here is a cluster of ash leaves, which I have grown expressly for
you on Greek principles (_fig._ 6, Plate III.) How do you like it?
[Footnote 4: Sometimes of six; that is to say, they spring in pairs;
only the two uppermost pairs, sometimes the three uppermost, spring so
close together as to appear one cluster.]
9. Observe, I have played you no trick in this comparison. It is
perfectly fair in all respects. I have merely substituted for the
beautiful spring of the Gothic vaulting in the ash bough, a cross
lintel; and then, in order to raise the leaves to the same height, I
introduce vertical columns; and I make the leaves square-headed instead
of pointed, and their lateral ribs at right angles with the central rib,
instead of sloping from it. I have, indeed, only given you two boughs
instead of four; because the perspective of the crossing ones could not
have been given without confusing the figure; but I imagine you have
quite enough of them as it is.
"Nay, but," some of you instantly answer, "if we had been as long
accustomed to square-leaved ash trees as we have been to sharp-leaved
ash trees, we should like them just as well." Do not think it. Are you
not much more accustomed to gray whinstone and brown sandstone than you
are to rubies or emeralds? and yet will you tell me you think them as
beautiful? Are you not more accustomed to the ordinary voices of men
than to the perfect accents of sweet singing? yet do you not instantly
declare the song to be loveliest? Examine well the channels of your
admiration, and you will find that they are, in verity, as unchangeable
as the channels of your heart's blood; that just as by the pressure of a
bandage, or by unwholesome and perpetual action of some part of the
body, that blood may be wasted or arrested, and in its stagnancy cease
to nourish the frame, or in its disturbed flow affect it with incurable
disease, so also admiration itself may, by the bandages of fashion,
bound close over the eyes and the arteries of the soul, be arrested in
its natural pulse and healthy flow; but that wherever the artificial
pressure is removed, it will return into that bed which has been traced
for it by the finger of God.
10. Consider this subject well, and you will find that custom has indeed
no real influence upon our feelings of the beautiful, except in dulling
and checking them; that is to say, it will and does, as we advance in
years, deaden in some degree our enjoyment of all beauty, but it in no
wise influences our determination of what is beautiful, and what is not.
You see the broad blue sky every day over your heads; but you do not for
that reason determine blue to be less or more beautiful than you did at
first; you are unaccustomed to see stones as blue as the sapphire, but
you do not for that reason think the sapphire less beautiful than other
stones. The blue color is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to be a
source of delight; and whether seen perpetually over your head, or
crystallized once in a thousand years into a single and incomparable
stone, your acknowledgment of its beauty is equally natural, simple, and
instantaneous. Pardon me for engaging you in a metaphysical discussion;
for it is necessary to the establishment of some of the greatest of all
architectural principles that I should fully convince you of this great
truth, and that I should quite do away with the various objections to
it, which I suppose must arise in your minds. Of these there is one more
which I must briefly meet. You know how much confusion has been
introduced into the subject of criticism, by reference to the power of
Association over the human heart; you know how often it has been said
that custom must have something to do with our ideas of beauty, because
it endears so many objects to the affections. But, once for all, observe
that the powers of association and of beauty are two entirely distinct
powers,--as distinct, for instance, as the forces of gravitation and
electricity. These forces may act together, or may neutralize one
another, but are not for that reason to be supposed the same force; and
the charm of association will sometimes enhance, and sometimes entirely
overpower, that of beauty; but you must not confound the two together.
You love many things because you are accustomed to them, and are pained
by many things because they are strange to you; but that does not make
the accustomed sight more beautiful, or the strange one less so. The
well-known object may be dearer to you, or you may have discovered
charms in it which others cannot; but the charm was there before you
discovered it, only needing time and love to perceive it. You love your
friends and relations more than all the world beside, and may perceive
beauties in their faces which others cannot perceive; but you feel that
you would be ridiculous in allowing yourselves to think them the most
beautiful persons in the world: you acknowledge that the real beauty of
the human countenance depends on fixed laws of form and expression, and
not on the affection you bear to it, or the degree in which you are
familiarized with it: and so does the beauty of all other existences.
11. Now, therefore, I think that, without the risk of any farther
serious objection occurring to you, I may state what I believe to be the
truth,--that beauty has been appointed by the Deity to be one of the
elements by which the human soul is continually sustained; it is
therefore to be found more or less in all natural objects, but in order
that we may not satiate ourselves with it, and weary of it, it is rarely
granted to us in its utmost degrees. When we see it in those utmost
degrees, we are attracted to it strongly, and remember it long, as in
the case of singularly beautiful scenery or a beautiful countenance. On
the other hand, absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect
beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with
whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated
with what has the nature of virtue and of life.
12. This being so, you see that when the relative beauty of any
particular forms has to be examined, we may reason, from the forms of
Nature around us, in this manner:--what Nature does generally, is sure
to be more or less beautiful; what she does rarely, will either be
_very_ beautiful, or absolutely ugly. And we may again easily determine,
if we are not willing in such a case to trust our feelings, which of
these is indeed the case, by this simple rule, that if the rare
occurrence is the result of the complete fulfillment of a natural law,
it will be beautiful; if of the violation of a natural law, it will be
ugly. For instance, a sapphire is the result of the complete and perfect
fulfillment of the laws of aggregation in the earth of alumina, and it
is therefore beautiful; more beautiful than clay, or any other of the
conditions of that earth. But a square leaf on any tree would be ugly,
being a violation of the laws of growth in trees,[5] and we ought to
feel it so.
[Footnote 5: I am at present aware only of one tree, the tulip tree,
which has an exceptional form, and which, I doubt not, every one will
admit, loses much beauty in consequence. All other leaves, as far as I
know, have the round or pointed arch in the form of the extremities of
their foils.]
13. Now then, I proceed to argue in this manner from what we see in the
woods and fields around us; that as they are evidently meant for our
delight, and as we always feel them to be beautiful, we may assume that
the forms into which their leaves are cast, are indeed types of beauty,
not of extreme or perfect, but average beauty. And finding that they
invariably terminate more or less in pointed arches, and are not
square-headed, I assert the pointed arch to be one of the forms most
fitted for perpetual contemplation by the human mind; that it is one of
those which never weary, however often repeated; and that therefore,
being both the strongest in structure, and a beautiful form (while the
square head is both weak in structure, and an ugly form), we are unwise
ever to build in any other.
[Illustration: PLATE IV. (Fig. 7.)]
14. Here, however, I must anticipate another objection. It may be asked
why we are to build only the tops of the windows pointed,--why not
follow the leaves, and point them at the bottom also?
For this simple reason, that, while in architecture you are continually
called upon to do what may be _unnecessary_ for the sake of beauty, you
are never called upon to do what is _inconvenient_ for the sake of
beauty. You want the level window sill to lean upon, or to allow the
window to open on a balcony: the eye and the common sense of the
beholder require this necessity to be met before any laws of beauty are
thought of. And besides this, there is in the sill no necessity for the
pointed arch as a bearing form; on the contrary, it would give an idea
of weak support for the sides of the window, and therefore is at once
rejected. Only I beg of you particularly to observe that the level sill,
although useful, and therefore admitted, does not therefore become
beautiful; the eye does not like it so well as the top of the window,
nor does the sculptor like to attract the eye to it; his richest
moldings, traceries, and sculptures are all reserved for the top of the
window; they are sparingly granted to its horizontal base. And farther,
observe, that when neither the convenience of the sill, nor the support
of the structure, are any more of moment, as in small windows and
traceries, you instantly _have_ the point given to the bottom of the
window. Do you recollect the west window of your own Dunblane Abbey? If
you look in any common guide-book, you will find it pointed out as
peculiarly beautiful,--it is acknowledged to be beautiful by the most
careless observer. And why beautiful? Look at it (_fig._ 7). Simply
because in its great contours it has the form of a forest leaf, and
because in its decoration it has used nothing but forest leaves. The
sharp and expressive molding which surrounds it is a very interesting
example of one used to an enormous extent by the builders of the early
English Gothic, usually in the form seen in _fig._ 2, Plate II.,
composed of clusters of four sharp leaves each, originally produced by
sculpturing the sides of a four-sided pyramid, and afterwards brought
more or less into a true image of leaves, but deriving all its beauty
from the botanical form. In the present instance only two leaves are set
in each cluster; and the architect has been determined that the
naturalism should be perfect. For he was no common man who designed that
cathedral of Dunblane. I know not anything so perfect in its simplicity,
and so beautiful, as far as it reaches, in all the Gothic with which I
am acquainted. And just in proportion to his power of mind, that man was
content to work under Nature's teaching; and instead of putting a merely
formal dogtooth, as everybody else did at the time, he went down to the
woody bank of the sweet river beneath the rocks on which he was
building, and he took up a few of the fallen leaves that lay by it, and
he set them in his arch, side by side, forever. And, look--that he might
show you he had done this,--he has made them all of different sizes,
just as they lay; and that you might not by any chance miss noticing the
variety, he has put a great broad one at the top, and then a little one
turned the wrong way, next to it, so that you must be blind indeed if
you do not understand his meaning. And the healthy change and
playfulness of this just does in the stone-work what it does on the tree
boughs, and is a perpetual refreshment and invigoration; so that,
however long you gaze at this simple ornament--and none can be simpler,
a village mason could carve it all round the window in a few hours--you
are never weary of it, it seems always new.
15. It is true that oval windows of this form are comparatively rare in
Gothic work, but, as you well know, circular or wheel windows are used
constantly, and in most traceries the apertures are curved and pointed
as much at the bottom as the top. So that I believe you will now allow
me to proceed upon the assumption, that the pointed arch is indeed the
best form into which the head either of door or window can be thrown,
considered as a means of sustaining weight above it. How these pointed
arches ought to be grouped and decorated, I shall endeavor to show you
in my next lecture. Meantime I must beg of you to consider farther some
of the general points connected with the structure of the roof.
16. I am sure that all of you must readily acknowledge the charm which
is imparted to any landscape by the presence of cottages; and you must
over and over again have paused at the wicket gate of some cottage
garden, delighted by the simple beauty of the honeysuckle porch and
latticed window. Has it ever occurred to you to ask the question, what
effect the cottage would have upon your feelings if it had _no roof_? no
visible roof, I mean;--if instead of the thatched slope, in which the
little upper windows are buried deep, as in a nest of straw--or the
rough shelter of its mountain shales--or warm coloring of russet
tiles--there were nothing but a flat leaden top to it, making it look
like a large packing-case with windows in it? I don't think the rarity
of such a sight would make you feel it to be beautiful; on the contrary,
if you think over the matter, you will find that you actually do owe,
and ought to owe, a great part of your pleasure in all cottage scenery,
and in all the inexhaustible imagery of literature which is founded upon
it, to the conspicuousness of the cottage roof--to the subordination of
the cottage itself to its covering, which leaves, in nine cases out of
ten, really more roof than anything else. It is, indeed, not so much the
whitewashed walls--nor the flowery garden--nor the rude fragments of
stones set for steps at the door--nor any other picturesqueness of the
building which interest you, so much as the gray bank of its heavy
eaves, deep-cushioned with green moss and golden stone-crop. And there
is a profound, yet evident, reason for this feeling. The very soul of
the cottage--the essence and meaning of it--are in its roof; it is that,
mainly, wherein consists its shelter; that, wherein it differs most
completely from a cleft in rocks or bower in woods. It is in its thick
impenetrable coverlet of close thatch that its whole heart and
hospitality are concentrated. Consider the difference, in sound, of the
expressions "beneath my roof" and "within my walls,"--consider whether
you would be best sheltered, in a shed, with a stout roof sustained on
corner posts, or in an inclosure of four walls without a roof at
all,--and you will quickly see how important a part of the cottage the
roof must always be to the mind as well as to the eye, and how, from
seeing it, the greatest part of our pleasure must continually arise.
17. Now, do you suppose that which is so all-important in a cottage, can
be of small importance in your own dwelling-house? Do you think that by
any splendor of architecture--any height of stories--you can atone to
the mind for the loss of the aspect of the roof? It is vain to say you
take the roof for granted. You may as well say you take a man's kindness
for granted, though he neither looks nor speaks kindly. You may know him
to be kind in reality, but you will not like him so well as if he spoke
and looked kindly also. And whatever external splendor you may give your
houses, you will always feel there is something wanting, unless you see
their roofs plainly. And this especially in the north. In southern
architecture the roof is of far less importance; but here the soul of
domestic building is in the largeness and conspicuousness of the
protection against the ponderous snow and driving sleet. You may make
the facade of the square pile, if the roof be not seen, as handsome as
you please,--you may cover it with decoration,--but there will always be
a heartlessness about it, which you will not know how to conquer; above
all, a perpetual difficulty in finishing the wall at top, which will
require all kinds of strange inventions in parapets and pinnacles for
its decoration, and yet will never look right.
Now, I need not tell you that, as it is desirable, for the sake of the
effect upon the mind, that the roof should be visible, so the best and
most natural form of roof in the north is that which will render it
_most_ visible, namely, the steep gable: the best and most natural, I
say, because this form not only throws off snow and rain most
completely, and dries fastest, but obtains the greatest interior space
within walls of a given height, removes the heat of the sun most
effectually from the upper rooms, and affords most space for
ventilation.
18. You have then, observed, two great principles, as far as northern
architecture is concerned; first, that the pointed arch is to be the
means by which the weight of the wall or roof is to be sustained;
secondly, that the steep gable is the form most proper for the roof
itself. And now observe this most interesting fact, that all the
loveliest Gothic architecture in the world is based on the group of
lines composed of the pointed arch and the gable. If you look at the
beautiful apse of Amiens Cathedral--a work justly celebrated over all
Europe--you will find it formed merely of a series of windows surmounted
by pure gables of open work. If you look at the transept porches of
Rouen, or at the great and celebrated porch of the Cathedral of Rheims,
or that of Strasbourg, Bayeux, Amiens, or Peterborough, still you will
see that these lovely compositions are nothing more than richly
decorated forms of gable over pointed arch. But more than this, you must
be all well aware how fond our best architectural artists are of the
street effects of foreign cities; and even those now present who have
not personally visited any of the continental towns must remember, I
should think, some of the many interesting drawings by Mr. Prout, Mr.
Nash, and other excellent draughtsmen, which have for many years adorned
our exhibitions. Now, the principal charm of all those continental
street effects is dependent on the houses having high-pitched gable
roofs. In the Netherlands, and Northern France, where the material for
building is brick or stone, the fronts of the stone gables are raised
above the roofs, and you have magnificent and grotesque ranges of steps
or curves decorated with various ornaments, succeeding one another in
endless perspective along the streets of Antwerp, Ghent, or Brussels. In
Picardy and Normandy, again, and many towns of Germany, where the
material for building is principally wood, the roof is made to project
over the gables, fringed with a beautifully carved cornice, and casting
a broad shadow down the house front. This is principally seen at
Abbeville, Rouen, Lisieux, and others of the older towns of France. But,
in all cases, the effect of the whole street depends on the prominence
of the gables; not only of the fronts towards the streets, but of the
sides also, set with small garret or dormer windows, each of the most
fantastic and beautiful form, and crowned with a little spire or
pinnacle. Wherever there is a little winding stair, or projecting bow
window, or any other irregularity of form, the steep ridges shoot into
turrets and small spires, as in _fig._ 8,[6] each in its turn crowned by
a fantastic ornament, covered with curiously shaped slates or shingles,
or crested with long fringes of rich ironwork, so that, seen from above
and from a distance, the intricate grouping of the roofs of a French
city is no less interesting than its actual streets; and in the streets
themselves, the masses of broad shadow which the roofs form against the
sky, are a most important background to the bright and sculptured
surfaces of the walls.
[Footnote 6: This figure is copied from Prout.]
19. Finally, I need not remind you of the effect upon the northern mind
which has always been produced by the heaven-pointing spire, nor of the
theory which has been founded upon it of the general meaning of Gothic
architecture as expressive of religious aspiration. In a few minutes,
you may ascertain the exact value of that theory, and the degree in
which it is true.
[Illustration: PLATE V. (Fig. 8.)]