striking instances of the beauty of adaptation of style to locality and
peculiarity of circumstance, that can be met with in the whole range of
architectural investigation. Taken in the abstract, they are utterly
detestable, formal, clumsy, and apparently unnecessary. Their builder
thinks so himself: he hates them as things to be looked at, though he
erects them as things to be depended upon. He has no idea that there is
any propriety in their presence, though he knows perfectly well that
there is a great deal of necessity; and, therefore he builds them.
Where? On rocks whose sides are one mass of buttresses, of precisely the
same form; on rocks which are cut and cloven by basalt and lava dikes
of every size, and which, being themselves secondary, wear away
gradually by exposure to the atmosphere, leaving the intersecting dikes
standing out in solid and vertical walls, from the faces of their
precipices. The eye passes over heaps of scoriæ and sloping banks of
ashes, over the huge ruins of more ancient masses, till it trembles for
the fate of the crags still standing round; but it finds them ribbed
with basalt like bones, buttressed with a thousand lava walls, propped
upon pedestals and pyramids of iron, which the pant and the pulse of the
earthquake itself can scarcely move, for they are its own work; it
climbs up to their summits, and there it finds the work of man; but it
is no puny domicile, no eggshell imagination, it is in a continuation of
the mountain itself, inclined at the same slope, ribbed in the same
manner, protected by the same means against the same danger; not,
indeed, filling the eye with delight, but, which is of more importance,
freeing it from fear, and beautifully corresponding with the prevalent
lines around it, which a less massive form would have rendered, in some
cases, particularly about Etna, even ghastly. Even in the long and
luxuriant views from Capo di Monte, and the heights to the east of
Naples, the spectator looks over a series of volcanic eminences,
generally, indeed, covered with rich verdure, but starting out here and
there in gray and worn walls, fixed at a regular slope, and breaking
away into masses more and more rugged towards Vesuvius, till the eye
gets thoroughly habituated to their fortress-like outlines.
[Illustration: Fig. 10. Petrarch's Villa; Arquà.--1837.]
140. Throughout the whole of this broken country, and, on the summits of
these volcanic cones, rise innumerable villas; but they do not offend
us, as we should have expected, by their attestation of cheerfulness of
life amidst the wrecks left by destructive operation, nor hurt the eye
by non-assimilation with the immediate features of the landscape: but
they seem to rise prepared and adapted for resistance to, and endurance
of, the circumstances of their position; to be inhabited by beings of
energy and force sufficient to decree and to carry on a steady struggle
with opposing elements, and of taste and feeling sufficient to
proportion the form of the walls of men to the clefts in the flanks of
the volcano, and to prevent the exultation and the lightness of
transitory life from startling, like a mockery, the eternal remains of
disguised desolation.
141. We have always considered these circumstances as most remarkable
proofs of the perfect dependence of architecture on its situation, and
of the utter impossibility of judging of the beauty of any building in
the abstract: and we would also lay much stress upon them, as showing
with what boldness the designer may introduce into his building,
undisguised, such parts as local circumstances render desirable; for
there will invariably be something in the nature of that which causes
their necessity, which will endow them with beauty.
142. These, then, are the principal features of the Italian villa,
modifications of which, of course more or less dignified in size,
material or decoration, in proportion to the power and possessions of
their proprietor, may be considered as composing every building of that
class in Italy. A few remarks on their general effect will enable us to
conclude the subject.
143. We have been so long accustomed to see the horizontal lines and
simple forms which, as we have observed, still prevail among the
Ausonian villas, used with the greatest dexterity, and the noblest
effect, in the compositions of Claude, Salvator, and Poussin--and so
habituated to consider these compositions as perfect models of the
beautiful, as well as the pure in taste--that it is difficult to divest
ourselves of prejudice, in the contemplation of the sources from which
those masters received their education, their feelings, and their
subjects. We would hope, however, and we think it may be proved, that in
this case principle assists and encourages prejudice. First, referring
only to the gratification afforded to the eye, which we know to depend
upon fixed mathematical principles, though those principles are not
always developed, it is to be observed, that country is always most
beautiful when it is made up of curves, and that one of the chief
characters of Ausonian landscape is the perfection of its curvatures,
induced by the gradual undulation of promontories into the plains. In
suiting architecture to such a country, that building which least
interrupts the curve on which it is placed will be felt to be most
delightful to the eye.
[Illustration: Fig. 11. Broken Curves.]
144. Let us take then the simple form _a b c d_, interrupting the curve
_c e_ [fig. 11, A]. Now, the eye will always continue the principal
lines of such an object for itself, until they cut the main curve; that
is, it will carry on _a b_ to _e_, and the total effect of the
interruption will be that of the form _c d e_. Had the line _b d_ been
nearer to _a c_, the effect would have been just the same. Now, every
curve may be considered as composed of an infinite number of lines at
right angles to each other, as _m n_ is made up of _o p, p q_, etc.,
(fig. B), whose ratio to each other varies with the direction of the
curve. Then, if the right lines which form the curve at _c_ (fig. A) be
increased, we have the figure _c d e_, that is, the apparent
interruption of the curve is an increased part of the curve itself. To
the mathematical reader we can explain our meaning more clearly, by
pointing out that, taking _c_ for our origin, we have _a c_, _a e_, for
the co-ordinates of _e_, and that, therefore, their ratio is the
equation to the curve. Whence it appears, that, when any curve is broken
in upon by a building composed of simple vertical and horizontal lines,
the eye is furnished, by the interruption, with the equation to that
part of the curve which is interrupted. If, instead of square forms, we
take obliquity, as _r s t_ (fig. C), we have one line, _s t_, an
absolute break, and the other _r s_, in false proportion. If we take
another curve, we have an infinite number of lines, only two of which
are where they ought to be. And this is the true reason for the constant
introduction of features which appear to be somewhat formal, into the
most perfect imaginations of the old masters, and the true cause of the
extreme beauty of the groups formed by Italian villages in general.
145. Thus much for the mere effect on the eye. Of correspondence with
national character, we have shown that we must not be disappointed, if
we find little in the villa. The unfrequency of windows in the body of
the building is partly attributed to the climate; but the total
exclusion of light from some parts, as the base of the central tower,
carries our thoughts back to the ancient system of Italian life, when
every man's home had its dark, secret places, the abodes of his worst
passions; whose shadows were alone intrusted with the motion of his
thoughts; whose walls became the whited sepulchers of crime; whose
echoes were never stirred except by such words as they dared not
repeat;[22] from which the rod of power, or the dagger of passion, came
forth invisible; before whose stillness princes grew pale, as their
fates were prophesied or fulfilled by the horoscope or the hemlock; and
nations, as the whisper of anarchy or of heresy was avenged by the
opening of the low doors, through which those who entered returned not.
[Footnote 22: Shelley has caught the feeling finely:--"The house is
penetrated to its corners by the peeping insolence of the day. When the
time comes the crickets shall not see me."--_Cenci_ [Act II. scene I,
quoted from memory.]]
146. The mind of the Italian, sweet and smiling in its operations, deep
and silent in its emotions, was thus, in some degree, typified by those
abodes into which he was wont to retire from the tumult and wrath of
life, to cherish or to gratify the passions which its struggles had
excited; abodes which now gleam brightly and purely among the azure
mountains, and by the sapphire sea, but whose stones are dropped with
blood; whose vaults are black with the memory of guilt and grief
unpunished and unavenged, and by whose walls the traveler hastens
fearfully, when the sun has set, lest he should hear, awakening again
through the horror of their chambers, the faint wail of the children of
Ugolino,[23] the ominous alarm of Bonatti, or the long low cry of her
who perished at Coll' Alto.
OXFORD, _July, 1838._
[Footnote 23: Ugolino; Dante, _Inferno_ xxxiii. Guido Bonatti, the
astrologer of Forli, _Inferno_ xx., 118. The lady who perished at Coll'
Alto, _i.e._ the higher part of Colle de Val d'Elsa, between Siena and
Volterra--was Sapia; _Purgatorio_, xiii. 100-154.]
IV.
THE LOWLAND VILLA--ENGLAND.
147. Although, as we have frequently observed, our chief object in these
papers is, to discover the connection existing between national
architecture and character, and therefore is one leading us rather to
the investigation of what is, than of what ought to be, we yet consider
that the subject would be imperfectly treated, if we did not, at the
conclusion of the consideration of each particular rank of building,
endeavor to apply such principles as may have been demonstrated to the
architecture of our country, and to discover the _beau idéal_ of English
character, which should be preserved through all the decorations which
the builder may desire, and through every variety which fancy may
suggest. There never was, and never can be, a universal _beau idéal_ in
architecture, and the arrival at all local models of beauty would be the
task of ages; but we can always, in some degree, determine those of our
own lovely country. We cannot, however, in the present case, pass from
the contemplation of the villa of a totally different climate, to the
investigation of what is beautiful here, without the slightest reference
to styles now or formerly adopted for our own "villas," if such they are
to be called; and therefore it will be necessary to devote a short time
to the observance of the peculiarities of such styles, if we possess
them; or, if not, of the causes of their absence.
148. We have therefore headed this paper "The Villa, England;"
awakening, without doubt, a different idea in the mind of every one who
reads the words. Some, accustomed to the appearance of metropolitan
villas, will think of brick buildings, with infinite appurtenances of
black nicked chimney-pots, and plastered fronts, agreeably varied with
graceful cracks, and undulatory shades of pink, brown, and green,
communicated to the cement by smoky showers. Others will imagine large,
square, many-windowed masses of white, set with careful choice of
situation exactly where they will spoil the landscape to such a
conspicuous degree, as to compel the gentlemen traveling on the outside
of the mail to inquire of the guard, with great eagerness, "whose place
that is;" and to enable the guard to reply with great distinctness, that
it belongs to Squire ----, to the infinite gratification of Squire ----,
and the still more infinite edification of the gentlemen on the outside
of the mail. Others will remember masses of very red brick, quoined with
stone; with columnar porticoes, about one-third of the height of the
building, and two niches, with remarkable looking heads and bag-wigs in
them, on each side; and two teapots, with a pocket-handkerchief hanging
over each (described to the astonished spectator as "Grecian urns")
located upon the roof, just under the chimneys. Others will go back to
the range of Elizabethan gables; but none will have any idea of a fixed
character, stamped on a class of national edifices. This is very
melancholy, and very discouraging; the more so, as it is not without
cause.
149. In the first place, Britain unites in itself so many geological
formations, each giving a peculiar character to the country which it
composes, that there is hardly a district five miles broad, which
preserves the same features of landscape through its whole width.[24]
If, for example, six foreigners were to land severally at Glasgow, at
Aberystwith, at Falmouth, at Brighton, at Yarmouth, and at Newcastle,
and to confine their investigations to the country within twenty miles
of them, what different impressions would they receive of British
landscape! If, therefore, there be as many forms of edifice as there
are peculiarities of situation, we can have no national style; and if we
abandon the idea of a correspondence with situation, we lose the only
criterion capable of forming a national style.[25]
[Footnote 24: Length is another thing: we might divide England into
strips of country, running southwest and northeast, which would be
composed of the same rock, and therefore would present the same
character throughout the whole of their length. Almost all our great
roads cut these transversely, and therefore seldom remain for ten miles
together on the same beds.]
[Footnote 25: It is thus that we find the most perfect schools of
architecture have arisen in districts whose character is unchanging.
Looking to Egypt first, we find a climate inducing a perpetual state of
heavy feverish excitement, fostered by great magnificence of natural
phenomena, and increased by the general custom of exposing the head
continually to the sun (Herodotus, bk. III. chap. 12); so that, as in a
dreaming fever we imagine distorted creatures and countenances moving
and living in the quiet objects of the chamber, the Egyptian endowed all
existence with distorted animation; turned dogs into deities, and leeks
into lightning-darters; then gradually invested the blank granite with
sculptured mystery, designed in superstition, and adored in disease; and
then such masses of architecture arose as, in delirium, we feel crushing
down upon us with eternal weight, and see extending far into the
blackness above; huge and shapeless columns of colossal life; immense
and immeasurable avenues of mountain stone. This was a perfect--that is,
a marked, enduring, and decided school of architecture, induced by an
unchanging and peculiar character of climate. Then in the purer air, and
among the more refined energies of Greece, architecture rose into a more
studied beauty, equally perfect in its school, because fostered in a
district not 50 miles square, and in its dependent isles and colonies,
all of which were under the same air, and partook of the same features
of landscape. In Rome, it became less perfect, because more imitative
than indigenous, and corrupted by the traveling, and conquering, and
stealing ambition of the Roman; yet still a school of architecture,
because the whole of Italy presented the same peculiarities of scene. So
with the Spanish and Moresco schools, and many others; passing over the
Gothic, which, though we hope hereafter to show it to be no exception to
the rule, involves too many complicated questions to be now brought
forward as a proof of it.
[The comparison of Egyptian architecture with delirious visions seems to
be an allusion to De Quincey's passage in "The Pains of Opium"--the last
paper in "the Confessions of an Opium-Eater"--where, after describing
Piranesi's _Dreams_, he tells how he fancied he was "buried for a
thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow
chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids," etc.]]
150. Another cause to be noticed is the peculiar independence of the
Englishman's disposition; a feeling which prompts him to suit his own
humor, rather than fall in with the prevailing cast of social sentiment,
or of natural beauty and expression; and which, therefore,--there being
much obstinate originality in his mind,--produces strange varieties of
dwelling, frequently rendered still more preposterous by his love of
display; a love universally felt in England, and often absurdly
indulged. Wealth is worshiped in France as the means of purchasing
pleasure; in Italy, as an instrument of power; in England, as the means
"of showing off." It would be a very great sacrifice indeed, in an
Englishman of the average stamp, to put his villa out of the way, where
nobody would ever see it, or think of _him_; it is his ambition to hear
every one exclaiming, "What a pretty place! whose can it be?" And he
cares very little about the peace which he has disturbed, or the repose
which he has interrupted; though, even while he thus pushes himself into
the way, he keeps an air of sulky retirement, of hedgehog independence,
about his house, which takes away any idea of sociability or good-humor,
which might otherwise have been suggested by his choice of situation.
151. But, in spite of all these unfortunate circumstances, there are
some distinctive features in our English country houses, which are well
worth a little attention. First, in the approach, we have one component
part of effect, which may be called peculiarly our own, and which
requires much study before it can be managed well,--the avenue. It is
true that we meet with noble lines of timber trees cresting some of the
larger bastions of Continental fortified cities; we see interminable
regiments of mistletoed apple trees flanking the carriage road; and
occasionally we approach a turreted château[26] by a broad way, "edged
with poplar pale." But, allowing all this, the legitimate glory of the
perfect avenue is ours still, as will appear by a little consideration
of the elements which constitute its beauty.
[Footnote 26: Or a city. Any one who remembers entering Carlsruhe from
the north by the two miles of poplar avenue, remembers entering the most
soulless of all cities, by the most lifeless of all entrances.]
152. The original idea was given by the opening of the tangled glades in
our most ancient forests. It is rather a curious circumstance that, in
those woods whose decay has been most instrumental in forming the bog
districts of Ireland, the trees have, in general, been planted in
symmetrical rows, at distances of about twenty feet apart. If the
arrangement of our later woods be not quite so formal, they at least
present frequent openings, carpeted with green sward, and edged with
various foliage, which the architect (for so may the designer of the
avenue be entitled) should do little more than reduce to symmetry and
place in position, preserving, as much as possible, the manner and the
proportions of nature. The avenue, therefore, must not be too long. It
is quite a mistake to suppose that there is sublimity in a monotonous
length of line, unless indeed it be carried to an extent generally
impossible, as in the case of the long walk at Windsor. From three to
four hundred yards is a length which will display the elevation well,
and will not become tiresome from continued monotony. The kind of tree
must, of course, be regulated by circumstances; but the foliage must be
unequally disposed, so as to let in passages of light across the path,
and cause the motion of any object across it to change, like an
undulating melody, from darkness to light. It should meet at the top, so
as to cause twilight, but not obscurity; and the idea of a vaulted roof,
without rigidity. The ground should be green, so that the sunlight may
tell with force wherever it strikes. Now, this kind of rich and shadowy
vista is found in its perfection only in England: it is an attribute of
green country; it is associated with all our memories of forest freedom,
of our wood-rangers, and yeomen with the "doublets of the Lincoln
green;" with our pride of ancient archers, whose art was fostered in
such long and breezeless glades; with our thoughts of the merry chases
of our kingly companies, when the dewy antlers sparkled down the
intertwined paths of the windless woods, at the morning echo of the
hunter's horn; with all, in fact, that once contributed to give our land
its ancient name of "merry" England; a name which, in this age of steam
and iron, it will have some difficulty in keeping.
153. This, then, is the first feature we would direct attention to, as
characteristic, in the English villa: and be it remembered, that we are
not speaking of the immense lines of foliage which guide the eye to some
of our English palaces, for those are rather the adjuncts of the park
than the approach to the building; but of the more laconic avenue, with
the two crested columns and the iron gate at its entrance, leading the
eye, in the space of a hundred yards or so, to the gables of its gray
mansion. A good instance of this approach may be found at Petersham, by
following the right side of the Thames for about half a mile from
Richmond Hill; though the house, which, in this case, is approached by a
noble avenue, is much to be reprehended, as a bad mixture of imitation
of the Italian with corrupt Elizabethan; though it is somewhat
instructive, as showing the ridiculous effect of statues out of doors in
a climate like ours.
154. And now that we have pointed out the kind of approach most
peculiarly English, that approach will guide us to the only style of
villa architecture which can be called English,--the Elizabethan, and
its varieties,--a style fantastic in its details, and capable of being
subjected to no rule, but, as we think, well adapted for the scenery in
which it arose. We allude not only to the pure Elizabethan, but even to
the strange mixtures of classical ornaments with Gothic forms, which we
find prevailing in the sixteenth century. In the most simple form, we
have a building extending round three sides of a court, and, in the
larger halls, round several interior courts, terminating in sharply
gabled fronts, with broad oriels, divided into very narrow lights by
channeled mullions, without decoration of any kind; the roof relieved by
projecting dormer windows, whose lights are generally divided into
three, terminating in very flat arches without cusps, the intermediate
edge of the roof being battlemented. Then we find wreaths of ornament
introduced at the base of the oriels;[27] ranges of short columns, the
base of one upon the capital of another, running up beside them; the
bases being very tall, sometimes decorated with knots of flower-work;
the columns usually fluted,--wreathed, in richer examples, with
ornament. The entrance is frequently formed by double ranges of those
short columns, with intermediate arches, with shell canopies, and rich
crests above.[28] This portico is carried up to some height above the
roof, which is charged with an infinite variety of decorated chimneys.
[Footnote 27: As in a beautiful example in Brasenose College, Oxford.]
[Footnote 28: The portico of the [old] Schools and the inner courts of
Merton and St. John's Colleges, Oxford; an old house at Charlton, Kent;
and Burleigh House, will probably occur to the mind of the architect, as
good examples of the varieties of this mixed style.]
155. Now, all this is utterly barbarous as architecture; but, with the
exception of the chimneys, it is not false in taste; for it was
originally intended for retired and quiet habitations in our forest
country, not for conspicuous palaces in the streets of the city; and we
have shown, in speaking of green country, that the eye is gratified[29]
with fantastic details; that it is prepared, by the mingled lights of
the natural scenery, for rich and entangled ornament, and would not only
endure, but demand, irregularity of system in the architecture of man,
to correspond with the infinite variety of form in the wood architecture
of nature. Few surprises can be imagined more delightful than the
breaking out of one of these rich gables, with its decorated entrance,
among the dark trunks and twinkling leaves of forest scenery. Such an
effect is rudely given in fig. 12. We would direct the attention chiefly
to the following points in the building:--
[Footnote 29: [_i.e._ when the spectator is surrounded by woodland
scenery. _Vide ante_, § 88.]]
156. First, it is a humorist, an odd, twisted, independent being, with a
great deal of mixed, obstinate, and occasionally absurd originality. It
has one or two graceful lines about it, and several harsh and cutting
ones; it is a whole, which would allow of no unison with any other
architecture; it is gathered in itself, and would look very ugly indeed,
if pieces in a purer style of building were added. All this corresponds
with points of English character, with its humors, its independency, and
its horror of being put out of its own way.