that the proposal to build them with pointed arches is met by an
objection on the part of your architects, that you cannot fit them with
comfortable sashes. I beg leave to tell you that such an objection is
utterly futile and ridiculous. I have lived for months in Gothic
palaces, with pointed windows of the most complicated forms, fitted with
modern sashes; and with the most perfect comfort. But granting that the
objection were a true one--and I suppose it is true to just this extent,
that it may cost some few shillings more per window in the first
instance to set the fittings to a pointed arch than to a square
one--there is not the smallest necessity for the _aperture_ of the
window being of the pointed shape. Make the uppermost or bearing arch
pointed only, and make the top of the window square, filling the
interval with a stone shield, and you may have a perfect school of
architecture, not only consistent with, but eminently conducive to,
every comfort of your daily life. The window in Oakham Castle (_fig._ 2)
is an example of such a form as actually employed in the thirteenth
century; and I shall have to notice another in the course of next
lecture.
28. Meanwhile, I have but one word to say, in conclusion. Whatever has
been advanced in the course of this evening, has rested on the
assumption that all architecture was to be of brick and stone; and may
meet with some hesitation in its acceptance, on account of the probable
use of iron, glass, and such other materials in our future edifices. I
cannot now enter into any statement of the possible uses of iron or
glass, but I will give you one reason, which I think will weigh strongly
with most here, why it is not likely that they will ever become
important elements in architectural effect. I know that I am speaking to
a company of philosophers, but you are not philosophers of the kind who
suppose that the Bible is a superannuated book; neither are you of those
who think the Bible is dishonored by being referred to for judgment in
small matters. The very divinity of the Book seems to me, on the
contrary, to justify us in referring _every_ thing to it, with respect
to which any conclusion can be gathered from its pages. Assuming then
that the Bible is neither superannuated now, nor ever likely to be so,
it will follow that the illustrations which the Bible employs are likely
to be _clear and intelligible illustrations_ to the end of time. I do
not mean that everything spoken of in the Bible histories must continue
to endure for all time, but that the things which the Bible uses for
illustration of eternal truths are likely to remain eternally
intelligible illustrations. Now, I find that iron architecture is indeed
spoken of in the Bible. You know how it is said to Jeremiah, "Behold, I
have made thee this day a defensed city, and an iron pillar, and brazen
walls, against the whole land." But I do not find that iron building is
ever alluded to as likely to become _familiar_ to the minds of men; but,
on the contrary, that an architecture of carved stone is continually
employed as a source of the most important illustrations. A simple
instance must occur to all of you at once. The force of the image of the
Corner Stone, as used throughout Scripture, would completely be lost, if
the Christian and civilized world were ever extensively to employ any
other material than earth and rock in their domestic buildings: I firmly
believe that they never will; but that as the laws of beauty are more
perfectly established, we shall be content still to build as our
forefathers built, and still to receive the same great lessons which
such building is calculated to convey; of which one is indeed never to
be forgotten. Among the questions respecting towers which were laid
before you to-night, one has been omitted: "What man is there of you
intending to build a tower, that sitteth not down first and counteth the
cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?" I have pressed upon you,
this evening, the building of domestic towers. You may think it right to
dismiss the subject at once from your thoughts; but let us not do so,
without considering, each of us, how far _that_ tower has been built,
and how truly its cost has been counted.
LECTURE II.
ARCHITECTURE.
_Delivered November 4, 1853._
29. Before proceeding to the principal subject of this evening, I wish
to anticipate one or two objections which may arise in your minds to
what I must lay before you. It may perhaps have been felt by you last
evening, that some things I proposed to you were either romantic or
Utopian. Let us think for a few moments what romance and Utopianism
mean.
First, romance. In consequence of the many absurd fictions which long
formed the elements of romance writing, the word romance is sometimes
taken as synonymous with falsehood. Thus the French talk of _Des
Romans_, and thus the English use the word Romancing.
But in this sense we had much better use the word falsehood at once. It
is far plainer and clearer. And if in this sense I put anything romantic
before you, pray pay no attention to it, or to me.
30. In the second place. Because young people are particularly apt to
indulge in reverie, and imaginative pleasures, and to neglect their
plain and practical duties, the word romantic has come to signify weak,
foolish, speculative, unpractical, unprincipled. In all these cases it
would be much better to say weak, foolish, unpractical, unprincipled.
The words are clearer. If in this sense, also, I put anything romantic
before you, pray pay no attention to me.
31. But in the third and last place. The real and proper use of the word
romantic is simply to characterize an improbable or unaccustomed degree
of beauty, sublimity, or virtue. For instance, in matters of history, is
not the Retreat of the Ten Thousand romantic? Is not the death of
Leonidas? of the Horatii? On the other hand, you find nothing romantic,
though much that is monstrous, in the excesses of Tiberius or Commodus.
So again, the battle of Agincourt is romantic, and of Bannockburn,
simply because there was an extraordinary display of human virtue in
both these battles. But there is no romance in the battles of the last
Italian campaign, in which mere feebleness and distrust were on one
side, mere physical force on the other. And even in fiction, the
opponents of virtue, in order to be romantic, must have sublimity
mingled with their vice. It is not the knave, not the ruffian, that are
romantic, but the giant and the dragon; and these, not because they are
false, but because they are majestic. So again as to beauty. You feel
that armor is romantic, because it is a beautiful dress, and you are not
used to it. You do not feel there is anything romantic in the paint and
shells of a Sandwich Islander, for these are not beautiful.
32. So, then, observe, this feeling which you are accustomed to
despise--this secret and poetical enthusiasm in all your hearts, which,
as practical men, you try to restrain--is indeed one of the holiest
parts of your being. It is the instinctive delight in, and admiration
for, sublimity, beauty, and virtue, unusually manifested. And so far
from being a dangerous guide, it is the truest part of your being. It is
even truer than your consciences. A man's conscience may be utterly
perverted and led astray; but so long as the feelings of romance endure
within us, they are unerring,--they are as true to what is right and
lovely as the needle to the north; and all that you have to do is to add
to the enthusiastic sentiment, the majestic judgment--to mingle prudence
and foresight with imagination and admiration, and you have the perfect
human soul. But the great evil of these days is that we try to destroy
the romantic feeling, instead of bridling and directing it. Mark what
Young says of the men of the world:--
"They, who think nought so strong of the romance,
So rank knight-errant, as a real friend."
And they are right. True friendship is romantic, to the men of the
world--true affection is romantic--true religion is romantic; and if you
were to ask me who of all powerful and popular writers in the cause of
error had wrought most harm to their race, I should hesitate in reply
whether to name Voltaire, or Byron, or the last most ingenious and most
venomous of the degraded philosophers of Germany, or rather Cervantes,
for he cast scorn upon the holiest principles of humanity--he, of all
men, most helped forward the terrible change in the soldiers of Europe,
from the spirit of Bayard to the spirit of Bonaparte,[15] helped to
change loyalty into license, protection into plunder, truth into
treachery, chivalry into selfishness; and, since his time, the purest
impulses and the noblest purposes have perhaps been oftener stayed by
the devil, under the name of Quixotism, than under any other base name
or false allegation.
[Footnote 15: I mean no scandal against the _present_ Emperor of the
French, whose truth has, I believe, been as conspicuous in the late
political negotiations, as his decision and prudence have been
throughout the whole course of his government.]
33. Quixotism, or Utopianism; that is another of the devil's pet words.
I believe the quiet admission which we are all of us so ready to make,
that, because things have long been wrong, it is impossible they should
ever be right, is one of the most fatal sources of misery and crime from
which this world suffers. Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from
attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection is "Utopian;"
beware of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether.
There is no need for it. Things are either possible or impossible--you
can easily determine which, in any given state of human science. If the
thing is impossible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if
possible, try for it. It is very Utopian to hope for the entire doing
away with drunkenness and misery out of the Canongate; but the
Utopianism is not our business--the _work_ is. It is Utopian to hope to
give every child in this kingdom the knowledge of God from its youth;
but the Utopianism is not our business--the _work_ is.
34. I have delayed you by the consideration of these two words, only in
the fear that they might be inaccurately applied to the plans I am going
to lay before you; for, though they were Utopian, and though they were
romantic, they might be none the worse for that. But they are neither.
Utopian they are not; for they are merely a proposal to do again what
has been done for hundreds of years by people whose wealth and power
were as nothing compared to ours;--and romantic they are not, in the
sense of self-sacrificing or eminently virtuous, for they are merely the
proposal to each of you that he should live in a handsomer house than he
does at present, by substituting a cheap mode of ornamentation for a
costly one. You perhaps fancied that architectural beauty was a very
costly thing. Far from it. It is architectural ugliness that is costly.
In the modern system of architecture, decoration is immoderately
expensive, because it is both wrongly placed and wrongly finished. I say
first, wrongly placed. Modern architects decorate the tops of their
buildings. Mediaeval ones decorated the bottom.[16] That makes all the
difference between seeing the ornament and not seeing it. If you bought
some pictures to decorate such a room as this, where would you put them?
On a level with the eye, I suppose, or nearly so? Not on a level with
the chandelier? If you were determined to put them up there, round the
cornice, it would be better for you not to buy them at all. You would
merely throw your money away. And the fact is, that your money _is_
being thrown away continually, by wholesale; and while you are
dissuaded, on the ground of expense, from building beautiful windows and
beautiful doors, you are continually made to pay for ornaments at the
tops of your houses, which, for all the use they are of, might as well
be in the moon. For instance, there is not, on the whole, a more studied
piece of domestic architecture in Edinburgh than the street in which so
many of your excellent physicians live--Rutland Street. I do not know if
you have observed its architecture; but if you will look at it
to-morrow, you will see that a heavy and close balustrade is put all
along the eaves of the houses. Your physicians are not, I suppose, in
the habit of taking academic and meditative walks on the roofs of their
houses; and, if not, this balustrade is altogether useless,--nor merely
useless, for you will find it runs directly in front of all the garret
windows, thus interfering with their light, and blocking out their view
of the street. All that the parapet is meant to do, is to give some
finish to the facades, and the inhabitants have thus been made to pay a
large sum for a piece of mere decoration. Whether it _does_ finish the
facades satisfactorily, or whether the physicians resident in the
street, or their patients, are in anywise edified by the succession of
pear-shaped knobs of stone on their house-tops, I leave them to tell
you; only do not fancy that the design, whatever its success, is an
economical one.
[Footnote 16: For farther confirmation of this statement see the Addenda
at the end of this Lecture.]
35. But this is a very slight waste of money, compared to the constant
habit of putting careful sculpture at the tops of houses. A temple of
luxury has just been built in London for the Army and Navy Club. It cost
L40,000, exclusive of purchase of ground. It has upon it an enormous
quantity of sculpture, representing the gentlemen of the navy as little
boys riding upon dolphins, and the gentlemen of the army--I couldn't see
as what--nor can anybody; for all this sculpture is put up at the top of
the house, where the gutter should be, under the cornice. I know that
this was a Greek way of doing things. I can't help it; that does not
make it a wise one. Greeks might be willing to pay for what they
couldn't see, but Scotchmen and Englishmen shouldn't.
36. Not that the Greeks threw their work away as we do. As far as I know
Greek buildings, their ornamentation, though often bad, is always bold
enough and large enough to be visible in its place. It is not putting
ornament _high_ that is wrong; but it is cutting it too fine to be seen,
wherever it is. This is the great modern mistake: you are actually at
twice the cost which would produce an impressive ornament, to produce
a contemptible one; you increase the price of your buildings by
one-half, in order to mince their decoration into invisibility. Walk
through your streets, and try to make out the ornaments on the upper
parts of your fine buildings--(there are none at the bottoms of them).
Don't do it long, or you will all come home with inflamed eyes, but you
will soon discover that you can see nothing but confusion in ornaments
that have cost you ten or twelve shillings a foot.
[Illustration: PLATE VIII. (Fig. 13., Fig. 14.)]
37. Now, the Gothic builders placed their decoration on a precisely
contrary principle, and on the only rational principle. All their best
and most delicate work they put on the foundation of the building, close
to the spectator, and on the upper parts of the walls they put ornaments
large, bold, and capable of being plainly seen at the necessary
distance. A single example will enable you to understand this method of
adaptation perfectly. The lower part of the facade of the cathedral of
Lyons, built either late in the thirteenth or early in the fourteenth
century, is decorated with a series of niches, filled by statues of
considerable size, which are supported upon pedestals within about eight
feet of the ground. In general, pedestals of this kind are supported on
some projecting portion of the basement; but at Lyons, owing to other
arrangements of the architecture into which I have no time to enter,
they are merely projecting tablets, or flat-bottomed brackets of stone,
projecting from the wall. Each bracket is about a foot and a half
square, and is shaped thus (_fig._ 13), showing to the spectator, as he
walks beneath, the flat bottom of each bracket, quite in the shade, but
within a couple of feet of the eye, and lighted by the reflected light
from the pavement. The whole of the surface of the wall round the great
entrance is covered with bas-relief, as a matter of course; but the
architect appears to have been jealous of the smallest space which was
well within the range of sight; and the _bottom_ of every bracket is
decorated also--nor that slightly, but decorated with no fewer than _six
figures each, besides a flower border_, in a space, as I said, _not
quite a foot and a half square_. The shape of the field to be decorated
being a kind of quatre-foil, as shown in _fig._ 13, four small figures
are placed, one in each foil, and two larger ones in the center. I had
only time, in passing through the town, to make a drawing of one of the
angles of these pedestals; that sketch I have enlarged, in order that
you may have some idea of the character of the sculpture. Here is the
enlargement of it (_fig._ 15). Now observe, this is _one_ of the angles
of the bottom of a pedestal, not two feet broad, on the outside of a
Gothic building; it contains only one of the four little figures which
form those angles; and it shows you the head only of one of the larger
figures in the center. Yet just observe how much design, how much
wonderful composition, there is in this mere fragment of a building of
the great times; a fragment, literally no larger than a school-boy could
strike off in wantonness with a stick: and yet I cannot tell you how
much care has been spent--not so much on the execution, for it does not
take much trouble to execute well on so small a scale--but on the
design, of this minute fragment. You see it is composed of a branch of
wild roses, which switches round at the angle, embracing the minute
figure of the bishop, and terminates in a spray reaching nearly to the
head of the large figure. You will observe how beautifully that figure
is thus _pointed to_ by the spray of rose, and how all the leaves around
it in the same manner are subservient to the grace of its action. Look,
if I hide one line, or one rosebud, how the whole is injured, and how
much there is to study in the detail of it. Look at this little diamond
crown, with a lock of the hair escaping from beneath it; and at the
beautiful way in which the tiny leaf at _a_, is set in the angle to
prevent its harshness; and having examined this well, consider what a
treasure of thought there is in a cathedral front, a hundred feet wide,
every inch of which is wrought with sculpture like this! And every front
of our thirteenth century cathedrals is inwrought with sculpture of this
quality! And yet you quietly allow yourselves to be told that the men
who thus wrought were barbarians, and that your architects are
wiser and better in covering your walls with sculpture of this kind
(_fig._ 14, Plate VIII.)
[Illustration: PLATE IX. (Fig. 15.)]
[Illustration: PLATE X. (Fig. 16.)]
38. Walk round your Edinburgh buildings, and look at the height of your
eye, what you will get from them. Nothing but square-cut
stone--square-cut stone--a wilderness of square-cut stone forever and
forever; so that your houses look like prisons, and truly are so; for
the worst feature of Greek architecture is, indeed, not its costliness,
but its tyranny. These square stones are not prisons of the body, but
graves of the soul; for the very men who could do sculpture like this of
Lyons for you are here! still here, in your despised workmen: the race
has not degenerated, it is you who have bound them down, and buried them
beneath your Greek stones. There would be a resurrection of them, as of
renewed souls, if you would only lift the weight of these weary walls
from off their hearts.[17]
[Footnote 17: This subject is farther pursued in the Addenda at the end
of this Lecture.]
39. But I am leaving the point immediately in question, which, you will
remember, was the proper adaptation of ornament to its distance from the
eye. I have given you one example of Gothic ornament, meant to be seen
close; now let me give you one of Gothic ornament intended to be seen
far off. Here (_fig._ 16) is a sketch of a niche at Amiens Cathedral,
some fifty or sixty feet high on the facade, and seven or eight feet
wide. Now observe, in the ornament close to the eye, you had _six
figures_ and a whole wreath of roses in the space of _a foot and a half_
square; but in the ornament sixty feet from the eye, you have now only
ten or twelve large _leaves_ in a space of _eight feet square_! and note
also that now there is no attempt whatsoever at the refinement of line
and finish of edge which there was in the other example. The sculptor
knew that, at the height of this niche, people would not attend to the
delicate lines, and that the broad shadows would catch the eye instead.
He has therefore left, as you see, rude square edges to his niche, and
carved his leaves as massively and broadly as possible: and yet, observe
how dexterously he has given you a sense of delicacy and minuteness in
the work, by mingling these small leaves among the large ones. I made
this sketch from a photograph, and the spot in which these leaves
occurred was obscure; I have, therefore, used those of the Oxalis
acetosella, of which the quaint form is always interesting.
40. And you see by this example also what I meant just now by saying,
that our own ornament was not only wrongly placed, but wrongly FINISHED.
The very qualities which _fit_ this leaf-decoration for due effect upon
the eye, are those which would _conduce to economy_ in its execution. A
more expensive ornament would be less effective; and it is the very
price we pay for finishing our decorations which spoils our
architecture. And the curious thing is, that while you all appreciate,
and that far too highly, what is called "the bold style" in painting,
you cannot appreciate it in sculpture. You like a hurried, broad,
dashing manner of execution in a water-color drawing, though that may be
seen as near as you choose, and yet you refuse to admit the nobleness of
a bold, simple, and dashing stroke of the chisel in work which is to be
seen forty fathoms off. Be assured that "handling" is as great a thing
in marble as in paint, and that the power of producing a masterly effect
with few touches is as essential in an architect as in a draughtsman;
though indeed that power is never perfectly attained except by those who
possess the power of giving the highest finish when there is occasion.
41. But there is yet another and a weightier charge to be brought
against our modern Pseudo-Greek ornamentation. It is, first, wrongly
placed; secondly, wrongly finished; and, thirdly, utterly _without
meaning_. Observe in these two Gothic ornaments, and in every other
ornament that ever was carved in the great Gothic times, there is a
definite aim at the representation of some natural object. In _fig._ 15
you have an exquisite group of rose-stems, with the flowers and buds; in
_fig._ 16, various wild weeds, especially the Geranium pratense; in
every case you have an approximation to a natural form, and an unceasing
variety of suggestion. But how much of Nature have you in your Greek
buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have
lately built; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be
thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the
building in question will forgive me; for it is just because it is a
good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an
example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a
fair instance; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the
institution on the Mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as
meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise. It is not
his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.