CO
THE COMPLETE WOEKS OF
JOHN RUSKIN VOLUME
1
POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE
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CO
THE COMPLETE WOEKS OF
JOHN RUSKIN VOLUME
1
POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE
.-
i\
{
:
11 'J
A
-^
COLLEGE
\1
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE; OR,
THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE NATIONS OF EUROPE CONSIDERED IN ITS ASSOCIATION WITH NATURAL SCENERY AND NATIONAL CHARACTER.
CONTENTS. PAGE
INTRODUCTION
.
1
PART /.—THE COTTAGE. I.
THE LOWLAND COTTAGE
n.
THE LOWLAND COTTAGE
—ENGLAND — ITALY
AND FKANCE
15
.
in.
THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE — SWITZERLAND
IV.
THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE
V. VI.
II.
III.
IV.
V. VI.
25
— WESTMORELAND
35
A CHAPTER ON CHIMNEYS
THE COTTAGE
— CONCLUDING
45
REMARKS
PART //.—THE I.
7
— LAGO VILLA — LAGO
57
.
VILLA.
THE MOUNTAIN ^^LLA
DI
COMO
THE MOUNTAIN
DI
COMO (CONTINUED)
67 .
.
.80
THE ITALIAN VILLA (CONCLUDED).
—ENGLAND —PRINCIPLES
94
THE LOWLAND VILLA
THE ENGLISH VILLA
104
OF COMPOSITION
THE BRITISH VILLA. -PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. TIVATED,
.
.
.
(THE CUL-
OR BLUE COUNTRY, AND THE WOODED, OR GREEN
country) VII.
118
THE BRITISH VILLA.
126
—PRINCIPLES
OR BROWN country)
OF COMPOSITION.
(THE HILL, 145
LIST OF PLATES.
lo.
1.
Old Windows; from an early sketch by the Author
.
2.
Italian Cottage Gallery, 1846
.
.
.
.
Cottage near 3.
la Cite,
Swiss Cottage, 1837.
Magazine)
.
Val d'Aosta, 1838
Facing Page 13 .
.20 .21
...... ..... ..... ......
(Reproduced from the Architectural 28
4.
Cottage near Altorf, 1835
29
5.
Swiss Chalet Balcony, 1842
32
6.
The Highest House
7.
Chimneys. (Eighteen sketches redrawn from the Architectural Magazine)
8.
in England, at
Malham
Coniston Hall, from the Lake near Brantwood, 1837.
produced from the Architectural Magazine) 9.
Chimney
at Neuchatel;
the distance 10.
Broken Curves.
Old English Mansion, 1837.
Windows.
.
.
50
in
.20
(Redrawn from the Architec98
.
.
.
.
.101
(Reproduced from the Archi.
.
.
,
.116
......
(Three designs, reproduced from the Architec-
tural Magazine) 14.
.
.
(Three diagrams, redrawn from the Archi-
tectural Magazine) 13.
.
......
Petrarch's Villa, Arqua, 1837.
tectural Magazine) 12.
.
48
(Re-
Dent du Midi and Mont Blanc
.
tural Magazine) 11.
.42
.
.
Leading Lines of Villa-Composition. from the Architectural Magazine)
123
(Diagram redrawn .
.
.
164
—
PREFATORY NOTES. work Mr. Ruskin says in his Autobiography: The idea had come into my head in the summer of '37,
Of
'^
this
and, I imagine, rose immediately out of
my
sense of the
Westmoreland and those number of Loudon's November Anyhow, the of Italy. with Introduction opens Architectural Magazine for 1837 contrast between the cottages of
'
to the Poetry of Architecture; or the Architecture of the Nations of Europe considered in its Association with
Natural Scenery and National Character,' by Kata Phusin. I could not have put in fewer, or more inclusive words, the definition of what half my future life was to be spent
According TO Natueb,' was equally expressive of the temper in which I was to discourse alike on that, and every other The adoption of a nom-de-plume at all implied (as subject. also the concealment of name on the first publication of Modern Painters ') a sense of a power of judgment in myself, which it would not have been becoming in a youth of in discoursing of
while the nom-de-plume I chose,
;
'
*
eighteen to claim.
" As
it
is,
.
.
."
these youthful essays,
though deformed by
assumption, and shallow in contents, are curiously right up and already distinguished above to the points they reach ;
most of the literature of the time, for the skill of language, which the public at once felt for a pleasant gift in me." {Prceterita, vol,
I.
chap. 12.)
In a paper on " My First Editor," written in 1878, Mr. Ruskin says of these essays that they " contain sentences nearly as well put together as any I have done since." The Conductor of the Architectural Magazine in review" One series ing the year's work said (December, 1838) of papers, commenced in the last volume and concluded in :
V
—
— PEEFATOEY KOTES.
VI
the present one,
young
the
we
architect.
consider to be of particular value to
We
allude
to
the
'
Poetry of Architecture/ by Kata Phusin. will afford little pleasure to the
architect
who has no
Essays on the These essays
mere builder, or
to
the
principle of guidance but precedent;
They
but for such readers they were never intended.
are
addressed to the young and unprejudiced artist; and their
induce
him
to think
great object
is
reason.
There are some, we
.
who
.
.
to
and
to exercise his
trust, of the rising genera-
from the trammels and and his followers and it is to such alone that we look forward for any real improvement in architecture as an art of design and taste." The essays are in two parts: the first describing the cottages of England, France, Switzerland, and Italy, and giving hints and directions for picturesque cottage-building. The second part treats of the villas of Italy and England with special reference to Como and Windermere and contion,
are able to free themselves
architectural bigotry of Vitruvius
;
;
cludes Avith a discussion of the laws of artistic composition,
and practical suggestions of
interest to the builders of country-
houses. It was the Author's original intention to have proceeded from the cottage and the villa to the higher forms of Architecture but the Magazine to which he contributed was ;
brought to a close shortly after the completion of his chapters on the villa, and his promise of farther studies was not
redeemed until ten years later, by the publication of The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and still more completely in
The Stones
of Venice.
Other papers contributed by Mr. Ruskin to the same Magazine, on Perspective, and on the proposed monument to Sir Walter Scott at Edinburgh, are not included in this volume, as they do not form any part of the series on the Poetry of Architecture.
The
text
Magazine.
is
A
square brackets.
carefully reprinted from the Architectural few additional notes are distinguished by
PREFATOKY XOTES.
A
few of the old
Vll
cuts, necessary to the text, are repro-
duced, and some are replaced by engravings from sketches Possessors of the Architectural Magazine, by the Author. be interested in comparing the wood-cut of the Val d'Aosta (p. 104 of that volume) with the photogravure from the original pencil drawing, which faces It is much to be regretted that the p. 21 of this work. Coniston Hall (fig. 8 p. 50 of this work) original of the has disappeared, and that the Author's youthful record of a scene so familiar to him in later years should be represented only by the harsh lines of Mr. Loudon's engraver. vol. v., will
cottage in
;
THE EDITOR
INTRODUCTION. The
1.
Science of Architecture, followed out to
its full
which have reference It is not merely a only to the creations of human minds. science of the rule and compass, it does not consist only extent, is one of the noblest of those
in the observation of just rule, or of fair proportion:
or ought to be, a science of feeling
more than of
ministry to the mind, more than to the eye.
how much upon its
its
less the
If
we
a
consider
beauty and majesty of a building depend
pleasing certain prejudices of the eye, than upon
rousing certain trains of meditation in the mind,
show
it is,
rule,
moment how many
in a
are involved in
tlie
it
will
intricate questions of feeling
raising of an edifice
;
it
will convince
us of the truth of a proposition, which might at
appeared startling, that no is not a metaphysician. 2.
To
first have can be an architect, who
the illustration of the department of this noble
science which this
man
may
be designated the Poetry of Architecture,
and some future
articles will be dedicated.
It is this
peculiarity of the art which constitutes its nationality; and it
will be
found as interesting as
it is
useful, to trace in the
distinctive characters of the architecture of nations, not only its
adaptation to the situation and climate in which
it
has
and connection with, the prevailing turn of mind by which the nation who first employed it is distinguished. 3. I consider the task I have imposed upon myself the more necessary, because this department of the science, perhaps regarded by some who have no ideas beyond stone and mortar as chimerical, and by others who think nothing necessary but truth and proportion as useless, is at a miserarisen,
but
its
strong similarity
1
to,
THE POETKY OF AKCHITECTUKE.
2
ably low ebb in England.
And what
is
the consequence?
have Corinthian columns placed beside pilasters of no
We
order
at
surmounted by monstrosified
all,
pepper-boxes,
Gothic in form and Grecian in detail, in a building nominally and peculiarly " ISTational " Ave have Swiss cottages, ;
and calumniously so entitled, dropped in the brickfields round the metropolis; and we have staring squarewindowed, flat-roofed gentlemen's seats, of the lath and plaster, mock-magnificent, Eegent's Park description, rising on the woody promontories of Derwentwater.
falsely
4.
How
deeply
is it to
be regretted,
how much
is it to
be
in a country whose school of painting,
wondered though degraded by its system of meretricious coloring, and disgraced by hosts of would-be imitators of inimitable individuals, is yet raised by the distinguished talent of those individuals to a place of well-deserved honor; and the studios of wdiose sculptors are filled with designs of the most pure simplicity, and most perfect animation; the school of at,
that,
architecture should be so miserably debased 5.
There
lamentable.
am
are,
however,
In the
many
first place,
!
reasons
for
a
fact
so
the patrons of architecture
from the lowest more numerous and less capable class The general public, and I say it than those of painting. with sorrow, because I know it from observation, have little (I
speaking of
all classes
of buildings,
to the highest), are a
to do with the encouragement of the school of painting, beyond the power which they unquestionably possess, and
unmercifully use, of compelling our artists to substitute glare for beauty.
Observe the direction of public taste
of our exhibitions.
We
at
any
see visitors at that of the Society of
Painters in Water Colors, passing Tayler with anathemas and Lewis with indifference, to remain in reverence and
admiration before certain amiable white lambs and waterwhose artists shall be nameless. We see them, in the
lilies,
Royal Academy, passing by Wilkie, Turner and Callcott, with shrugs of doubt or of scorn, to fix in gazing and enthusiastic crowds upon kettles-full of witches, and His
INTRODUCTIOX.
6
Majesty's ships so and so lying to in a gale, etc., etc. But these pictures attain no celebrity because the public admire
them, for trusted.
it
is
not to the public that the judginent
is
in-
by our nobility and men that the decision is made, the fame
It is by the chosen few,
of taste and talent,
bestowed, and the artist encouraged. 6.
iSTot so
in architecture.
Every
diffused.
citizen
may
There, the power
a tenement as suits his taste or inclination his vassal,
perpetrate.
and must permit him not only
The palace
is
generally
box himself up in as barbarous ;
the architect
is
to criticise, but to
or the nobleman's seat
may
be raised
and become the admiration of a nation; but the influence of their owner is terminated by the boundary of his estate: he has no command over the adjacent scenery, and the possessor of every thirty acres around him The streets of our cities are examples has him at his mercy. of the effects of this clashing of different tastes and they are in
good
taste,
;
either remarkable for the utter absence of all
attempt at
embellishment, or disgraced by every variety of abomination. 7. Again, in a climate like ours, those few who have knowledge and feeling to distinguish what is beautiful, are frequently prevented by various circumstances from erecting it. John Bull's comfort perpetually interferes with his good taste, and I should be the first to lament his losing so much of his nationality, as to permit the latter to prevail. He cannot put his windows into a recess, without darkening his rooms he cannot raise a narrow gable above his walls, Avithout knocking his head against the rafters; and, worst of all, he cannot do either, without being stigmatized by the awful, inevitable epithet, of " a very odd man." But, though much of the degradation of our present school of architecture is owing to the want or the unfitness of patrons, surely it is ;
yet more attributable to a lamentable deficiency of taste and talent
among our
architects themselves.
a country affording so so
many
causes for
its
we should have any
It is true, that in
encouragement, and presenting absence, it cannot be expected that Michael Angelo Buonarottis, The
little
;;
THE POETRY OF AKCHITECTUEE.
4
is expended in raising " neat " poorand "pretty" charity schools; and, if they ever enter upon a work of higher rank, economy is the order of the day plaster and stucco are substituted for granite and marble; rods of splashed iron for columns of verd-antique and in the wild struggle after novelty, the fantastic is mis-
energy of our architects houses,
:
taken for the graceful, the complicated for the imposing, superfluity of ornament for beauty, and its total absence for simplicity. 8.
But
these disadvantages might in some degree be
all
counteracted,
were
it
these
all
abuses in
some degree prevented,
not for the slight attention paid by our architects to
that branch of the art which I have above designated as the Poetry of Architecture.
All unity of feeling (which
principle of good taste)
we
is
nothing we have pinnacles without but incongruous combination height, windows without light, columns with nothing to the
first
is
neglected;
see
:
sustain,
and buttresses with nothing
to support.
We
have
parish paupers smoking their pipes and drinking their beer
under Gothic arches and sculptured niches and quiet old English gentlemen reclining on crocodile stools, and peeping out of the windows of Swiss chalets. ;
9.
I shall attempt, therefore, to endeavor to illustrate the
principle
from the neglect of which these abuses have arisen
that of unity of feeling, the basis of all grace, the essence of all
as
beauty. it
is
We
shall consider the architecture of nations
influenced by their feelings and manners, as
connected with the scenery in which
it
is
it
is
found, and with
it was erected we shall be led as and the cottage as to the temple and the tower; and shall be more interested in buildings raised by feeling, than in those corrected by rule. We shall commence with the lower class of edifices, proceeding from the roadside to the village, and from the village to the city and, if
the skies under which
much
;
to the street
;
we succeed more
in directing the attention of a single individual
directly
to
this
science of architecture,
most interesting department of the shall not have written in vain.
we
PART I. Ube
Cottage.
THE LOWLAND COTTAGE — ENGLAND, FRANCE, ITALY: THE MOUNTAIN COTTAGE :— SWITZERLAND AND WESTMORELAND: A CHAPTER ON CHIMNEYS: :
AND CONCLUDING REMARKS ON COTTAGE-BUILDING.
THE
POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE. I.
THE LOWLAND COTTAGE—ENGLA:tTD AWD FEANCE. 10. Or all embellishments by which the efforts of man can enhance the beauty of natural scenery, those are the most effective which can give animation to the scene, while the spirit which they bestow is in nnison with its general character.
It is generally desirable to indicate the presence of
animated existence in
a scene of natural
of such existence as shall be
beauty
imbued with the
;
spirit,
but only
and
shall
partake of the essence, of the beauty, which, without
would be dead.
If our object, therefore,
a scene the character of
which
is
is
to
it,
embellish
peaceful and unpretending,
we must not erect a building fit for the abode of wealth or pride. However beautiful or imposing in itself, such an object immediately indicates the presence of a kind of exist-
ence unsuited to the scenery which
which,
own
when
it
it
inhabits
;
and of
a
mind
sought retirement, was unacquainted with
its
ruling feelings, and which consequently excites no sjanpa-
thy in ours
:
but, if
we
erect a dwelling
adapted to the wants, and
which may appear
sufficient for the comfort,
gentle heart and lowly mind,
we have 7
of a
instantly attained our
TJIE
»
object
POETRY OF AECIIITECTUKE.
we have bestowed animation, but we have not
:
dis-
turbed repose. It is for this
11.
bellishments consideration.
reason that the cottage
It
is
which
scenery
natural
of
one of the em-
and
always,
beautiful
is
deserve
attentive
everywhere.
Whether looking out of the woody dingle with its eye-like window, and sending up the motion of azure smoke between the silver trunks of aged trees or grouped among the bright or forming gray clusters cornfields of the fruitful plain along the slope of the mountain side, the cottage always ;
;
gives the idea of a thing to be beloved
:
a quiet life-giving
voice, that is as peaceful as silence itself.
With
12.
these feelings,
we
shall devote
some time
to the
consideration of the prevailing character, and national pecul-
The
of European cottages.
iarities,
principal thing worthy
of observation in the lowland cottage of
The thatch
neatness.
is
England
is its
finished
firmly pegged doAMi, and mathemat-
ically leveled at the edges; and,
though the martin
is
per-
mitted to attach his humble domicile, in undisturbed security, to the eaves, he
may
be considered as enhancing the effect of
the cottage, by increasing tribute to the comfort of
wash
is
and
stainless,
rough surface catches a side light
as a front one
as brightly
gracefully
its
its usefulness, and making it conmore beings than one. The white-
over
the
:
the luxuriant rose
window;
and
the
is
trained
gleaming
lattice,
divided not into heavy squares, but into small pointed dia-
monds, l)reeze,
their
is
thrown half open,
among
glance
that,
as is just
discovered by
its
the green leaves of the sweetbrier, to admit the as
fragrance.
it
passes over the flowers, becomes full of
The
light
wooden porch breaks the
its
projection
;
and
flat
two of wandering honeysuckle spread over the low hatch. A few square feet of garden and a latched wicket, persuading the weary and dusty pedestrian, with expressive eloquence, to lean upon it for an instant and request a drink of water or milk, complete a picture, which, if it be far enough from London to be unspoiled by town sophistications, is a very of the cottage face by
a 1)rancli or
:
EXGLAXD AND FRANCE.
THE COTTAGE
9
The ideas it awakens are agreeits waj.^ and the architecture is all that we want in such a situation. It is pretty and appropriate and if it boasted of any other perfection, it would be at the expense of its propriety.13. Let us now cross the Channel, and endeavor to find perfect thing in able,
;
a
country cottage on the other side,
There are many
difficult matter.
if
we can;
for
it
is
a
villages; but such a thing
an isolated cottage is extremely rare. Let us try one or two of the green valleys among the chalk eminences which sweep from Abbeville to Rouen. Here is a cottage at last, and a picturesque one, which is more than we could say "What then is the difference ? for the English domicile. nonchalance about the French There is a general air of peasant's habitation, which is aided by a perfect want of and rendered more conspicuous everything like neatness by some points about the building which have a look of Half of the neglected beauty, and obliterated ornament. whitewash is worn off, and the other half colored by various mosses and wandering lichens, which have been permitted to vegetate upon it, and which, though beautiful, constitute a kind of beauty from which the ideas of age and decay are as
;
inseparable.
The
fantastically out
tall
roof
of the garret
and underneath
;
had a plain double
lattice, is a
it,
window
stands
where, in England,
deep recess,
flatly
we
arched at
the top, built of solid masses of gray stone, fluted on the
edge; while the brightness of the glass within (if there be any) is lost in shade, causing the recess to appear to the
The door has the same character which is so much broken and disguised as to The prevent it from giving any idea of strength or stability. no roses, or anything else, are entrance is always open wreathed about it several outhouses, built in the same style, give the building extent; and the group (in all probability, the dependency of some large old chateau in the distance) does not peep out of copse, or thicket, or a group of tall and
observer like a dark eye. it is
also of stone,
;
;
[*
Compare Leeturea on ArehUecture and Painting,
T.
§ 16.]
THE POETKY OF ARCHITECTURE.
10
beautiful trees, but stands comfortlessly between two individuals of the columns of long-trunked facsimile elms,
which
keep guard along the length of the public road. 14.
Xow,
how
be observed
let it
perfectly,
how
singularly,
the distinctive characters of these two cottages agree with those of the countries in which they are built; and of the
people for whose use they are constructed.
England
country whose every scene
Its green val-
leys are not
wide
its
;
dewy
of no extent, or, rather, a
more sounding
title
is
in miniature."
hills are
not high
;
and there
forests are
its
has nothing that can pretend to than that of " wood." Its cham-
is
;
we can never
quiet nook and sheltered lane. fore,
is
see
a sense of something inexpressi-
except by the truly English word " snug/'
ble,
a
it
paigns are minutely checkered into fields far at a time
;
is
The English
in
every
cottage, there-
equally small, equally sheltered, equally invisible
at a distance.
15.
But France
is
a country
on
Low, but
a large scale.
sweep away for miles into vast uninterrupted immense forests shadow the country for hundreds of square miles, without once letting through the light of day; its pastures and arable land are divided on the same scale there are no fences we can hardly place ourselves in any spot where we shall not see for leagues around and there is a kind of comfortless sublimity in the size of every scene. long,
hills
champaigns
;
;
;
;
The French large it
cottage, therefore, is on the same scale, equally and desolate looking; but we shall see, presently, that
can arouse feelings which, though they cannot be said to it sublimity, yet are of a higher order than any which
give
can be awakened at the sight of the English cottage. 16. Again, every bit of cultivated ground in England has a finished neatness; the fields are all divided by hedges or fences the fruit trees are neatly pruned the roads beautifully made, etc. Everything is the reverse in France the fields are distinguished by the nature of the crops they ;
;
:
[*
Compare with
this chapter,
Modern Painters,
vol. iv. chap. 1.]
THE COTTAGE
ENGLAND AND FEANCE.
11
bear; the fruit trees are overgrown with moss and mistletoe;
and the roads immeasurably wide, and miserably made. 17. So much for the character of the two cottages, as they assimilate with the countries in which they are found. Let us now see how they assimilate with the character of England is a country of the people by whom they are built. perpetually increasing prosperity and active enterprise but, for that very reason, nothing is allowed to remain till it gets old. Large old trees are cut down for timber old houses are pulled down for the materials and old furniture is laughed Everything is perpetually altered and at and neglected. renewed by the activity of invention and improvement. The cottage, consequently, has no dilapidated look about it it is never suffered to get old; it is used as long as it is comfortable, and then taken down and rebuilt for it was originally ;
;
;
;
;
raised in a style incapable of resisting the ravages of time.
But, in France, there prevail two opposite feelings, both in
which preand that of the modern revolutionists, which destroys unmercifully. Every object has partly the appearance of having been preserved with infinite care from an indefinite age, and partly exhibits the evidence of recent ill-treatment and disfiguration. Primeval forests rear their trunks vast over those of many younger generations growing up beside them the chateau or the palace, showing, by its style of architecture, its venerable age, bears the marks of the cannon-ball, and, from neglect, is withering into desolation. Little is renewed there is little spirit of improvement and the customs which prevailed centuries ago are still taught by the extreme
;
that of the old pedigreed population,
serves unlimitedly
;
;
:
;
The we should have
the patriarchs of the families to their grandchildren.
French
cottage, therefore,
is
just such as
expected from the disposition of
windows,
its
inhabitants its massive whole air and appearance, of venerable age, respected and predilapidation wears an appearance of
broken ornaments,
all tell
the
same
served,
till
at last its
tale
its
;
its
neglect. 18.
Again, the Englishman will sacrifice everything to
;
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE.
12
it, but he has generally also the power of doing so for the English The peasant is, on the average, wealthier than the French.
comfort, and will not only take great pains to secure :
French peasant has no idea of comfort, and therefore makes no effort to secure it. The difference in the character of their inhabitants is, as we have seen, written on the fronts The Englishman is, also, fond of their respective cottages. of display but the ornaments, exterior and interior, with which he adorns his dwelling, however small it may be, are either to show the extent of his possessions, or to contribute to some personal profit or gratification: they never seem desigTied for the sake of ornament alone. Thus, his wife's love of display is shown by the rows of useless crockery in her cupboard and his own by the rose tree at the front door, from which he may obtain an early bud to stick in the buttonhole of his best blue coat on Sundays the honeysuckle Xot is cultivated for its smell, the garden for its cabbages. so in France. There, the meanest peasant, with an equal or ;
;
:
much
greater love of display, embellishes his dwelling as lies in his
what
and
The
agreeable to the eye.
is
shaped beams,
the niche at
;
as
power, solely for the gratification of his feeling of its
corner
is
gable of his roof richly carved
;
is prettily
the
wooden
there be any, are fashioned into grotesque figures even the " air neglige " and general dilapidation of the if
tell a thousand times more agreeably to an eye accustomed to the picturesque, than the spruce preservation of the English cottage. 19. J^o building which we feel to excite a sentiment of
building
mere complacency can be said
when
contrary,
the building
neither astonish by
and when
it is
as to render
its
is
to be in
good
taste.
of such a class, that
beauty, nor impress by
its
the
it
can
sublimity,
likewise placed in a situation so uninteresting
something more than mere
fitness or propriety
necessary, and to compel the eye to expect something
building
On
itself, a
from the
gentle contrast of feeling in that building
exceedingly desirable
and
is
something has passed away, the presence of which would have bestowed ;
if possible, a sense that
ENGLAND AND FRANCE.
THE COTTAGE
on the whole
a deeper interest
The fancy
scene.
diately try to recover this, and,
endeavor,
the
in
13 will
immeMB
obtain
will
the desired effect from an indefinite cause.
NoAv,
20.
French
the
tage cannot please by priety, for
cot-
pro-
its
can only be ad-
it
apted to the ugliness around and,
as
ought
it
to
cannot but be, adapted
How,
beauty.
please to
There
?
to this,
able to please by
it is still less
its
;
and
be,
gayety in
is
then, can it no pretense
appearance,
its
no green flower-pots in ornamental lattices but the substantial style of any orna;
ments
it
may
the
possess,
It-
recessed
windows,
carvings,
and the general
the
stone size
of the whole, unite to produce
I
y
an impression of the buildinghaving once been fit for the residence
prouder
of
inhabi-
having once possessed strength, which is now withered, and beauty, which tants
is
;
of
now
its
This
faded.
of something
lost,
sense
something
which has been, and is not, is what is wanted. The
precisely
imagination
work
made aware a beauty, the
eye
is
is
actively to
set
in an instant
;
and we are
of the presence of
Fig.
I.
Old Windows : from an by the Author.
early sketch
more pleasing because visionary
;
and, while the
pitying the actual humility of the present building.
THE POETEY OF AKCHITECTUEE.
14
mind is admiring mark of dilapidation the
the imagined pride of the past.
Every
increases this feeling; while these very
marks (the fractures of the stone, the lichens of the moldering walls, and the graceful lines of the sinking roof) are all delightful in themselves. 21. Thus, is
we have shown
pretty from
its
that,
while the English cottage
propriety, the French cottage, having the
same connection with
its
climate, country, and people, pro-
duces such a contrast of feeling as bestows on addressing itself to the mind, and
good
taste.
If
we
is
it
a beauty
therefore in perfectly
are asked why, in this instance, good taste
produces only what every traveler feels to be not in the least striking, we reply that, where the surrounding circumstances are unfavorable, the very adaptation to
them which we have
declared to be necessary renders the building uninteresting;
and that, in the next paper, we shall see a very different result from the operations of equally good taste in adapting a cottage Our to its situation, in one of the noblest districts of Europe. subject will be, the Lowland Cottage of North Italy. Oxford,
Sept., 1837.
II.
THE LO^yLAXD COTTAGE— ITALY. " Most musical, most melancholy."
Let
22.
it
not be thought that "we are unnecessarily detain-
ing our readers from the proposed subject, if
we premise
a few remarks on the character of the landscape of the country
we have now
entered. It will always be necessary to obtain knowledge of the distinctive features of a country, before we can form a just estimate of tlie beauties or the errors of its architecture. We wish our readers to imbue themselves as far as may be with the spirit of the clime which
some
we
definite
are
now
away
entering; to cast
all
general ideas; to look
only for unison of feeling, and to pronounce everything wrong
which
them
where they are
color over their
ment 23.
We must make we must throw a peculiar light and imaginations then we will bring their judg-
contrary to the humors of nature.
is
feel
;
into play, for then
We
have
;
it
i3assed, it
will be capable of just operation.
must be observed (in leaving Eng-
land and France for Italy), from comfort to desolation; from excitement, to sadness we have left one country prosperous :
in
its
prime, and another frivolous in
its age,
for one glorious
in its death.
Xow, we have to
prefixed the hackneyed line of II Penseroso
our paper, because
What
it is
a definition of the essence of the
most musical, will always be found most melancholy and no real beauty can be obtained without a touch of sadness. Whenever the beautiful loses its melan-
beautiful.
is
;
choly,
it
We appeal to the memoour observing readers, whether they have treasured
degenerates into prettiness.
ries of all
15
;
THE POETKY OF ARCHITECTURE.
16 lip
any
more than pretty, which has melancholy or a sense of danger either a tinge of
scene, pretending to be
not about
it
the one constitutes the beautiful, the other the sublime. 24, This postulate being gTanted, as we are sure it will
by
most (and we beg to assure those who are refractory or argumentative, that, were this a treatise on the sublime and beautiful, we could convince and quell their incredulity to their entire satisfaction by innumerable instances), we proceed to
remark
here, once for
ian landscape it
should be so
is its
all,
that the principal glory of the Ital-
extreme melancholy.
It is fitting that
the dead are the nations of Italy
:
her
;
name
and her strength are dwelling with the pale nations underneath the earth ;.the chief and chosen boast of her utmost pride is the hie jacet; she is but one wide sepulcher, and all her And therefore, or, present life is like a shadow or a memory. rather, by a most beautiful coincidence, her national tree is the cypress and whoever has marked the peculiar character which these noble shadowy spires can give to her landscape, lifting their majestic troops of waving darkness from beside the fallen column, or out of the midst of the silence of the shadowed temple and worshipless shrine, seen far and wide over the blue of the faint plain, without loving the dark trees for their sympathy with the sadness of Italy's sweet cemetery shore, is one who profanes her soil with his footsteps. 25. Every part of the landscape is in unison; the same glory of mourning is thrown over the whole the deep blue of the heavens is mingled with that of the everlasting hills, or melted away into the silence of the sapphire sea the pale cities, temple and tower, lie gleaming along the champaign; but how calmly no hum of men no motion of multitude in the midst of them they are voiceless as the city of ashes. ;
;
;
;
!
:
The transparent air is gentle among the blossoms of the orange and the dim leaves of the olive; and the small fountains, which, in any other land, would spring merrily along, sparkling and singing among tinkling j^ebbles, here flow calmly
and
with
some pale font of marble, all beautiful worked bv some unknown hand, lona; aa-o nerveless,
silently into
life,
THE LOWLAND COTTAGE
17
ITALY.
and fall and pass on among wan flowers, and scented copse, throngh cool leaf-lighted caves or gray Egerian grottoes, to join the Tiber or Eridanus, to swell the waves of Xemi, or the Larian Lake. The most minute objects (leaf, flower, and stone), while they
add
to the beauty,
seem
to share in the
sadness, of the Avhole. 26. But, if one principal character of Italian landscape is
We have no simple rusis elevation. no cowslip and buttercup humility of seclusion. Tall mulberry trees, with festoons of the luxuriant vine, purple with ponderous clusters, trailed and trellised between and over them, shade the wide fields of stately Indian corn luxuriance of lofty vegetation (catalpa, and aloe, and olive), ranging itself in lines of massy light along the wan chammelancholy, another ticity of scene,
;
paign, guides the eye
away
to the unfailing wall of
mountain,
no cold long range of shivery gray, but dazzling light of snow, or imdulating breadth of blue, fainter and darker, in infinite variety peak, precipice, and promontory passing away into the wooded hills, each with its tower
Alp or Apennine
;
;
or white village sloping into the plain; castellated battle-
ments cresting their undulations
;
some wide majestic river its breast, and the
gliding along the champaign, the bridge on
on
city
its
shore
;
the
whole
with
canopied
cloudless
azure, basking in mistless sunshine, breathing the silence of
odoriferous 27.
Xow
air.
comes the question.
this pomp memory of dewhat are we naturally
In a country of
of natural glory, tempered with melancholy
parted pride, what are
we
wish for, her most humble edifices those which are most connected with present life least with the past? what are we to consider fitting or beautiful in her to
to expect in the character of
cottage
We
—
;
?
it to be comfortable, when everything and desolation in the works of decay around it betokens man. We do not wish it to be neat, where nature is most But we naturally look for an beautiful, because neglected.
do not expect
elevation of character, a richness of design or form, which,
2
THE POETEY OF ARCHITECTUEE.
18
while the building iar
air
of cottage
is
kept a cottage,
aristocracy
;
may
yet give
a beauty
it
a pecul-
(no matter
how
which may appear to have been once fitted for i!^ow, let the surrounding splendor of scene and climate. The reader who has us fancy an Italian cottage before us. dilajjidated)
traveled in Italy will find
little difiiculty
in recalling one to
and shadow, and its his memory, with its broad and desolagrandeur strange, but not unpleasing mixture of Let us examine its details, enumerate its archition. tectural peculiarities, and see how far it agrees with our preconceived idea of what the cottage ought to be ? lines of light
28.
The
first
remarkable point of the building
is
the roof.
which more agreeThe jorm of the
It generally consists of tiles of very deep curvature, rib it into distinct vertical lines, giving it a far
able surface than that of our flatter tiling.
always excessively flat, so as never to let it and the consequence is, that, while an English village, seen at a distance, appears all red roof, the Italian is all white wall; and therefore, though always bright, is never gaudy. We have in these roofs an excellent example of what should always be kept in mind, that everyroof, however, is
intrude upon the eye
;
thing will be found beautiful, which climate or situation
render useful.
The strong and constant heat
sun would be intolerable
if
admitted
at the
of the Italian
windows
;
and,
therefore, the edges of the roof project far over the walls,
and throw long shadows downwards, so as to keep the upper windows constantly cool. These long oblique shadows on the white surface are always delightful, and are alone sufficient to They are peculiar to the buildgive the building character. ings of Spain and Italy for owing to the general darker color of those of more northerly climates, the shadows of their roofs, however far thrown, do not tell distinctly, and render Another ornamental use of them, not varied, but gloomy. ;
these shadows
is,
that they break the line of junction of the
wall with the roof: a point always desirable, and in every
kind of building, whether we have to do with lead, slate, This object is tile, or thatch, one of extreme difficulty.
THE LOWLAND COTTAGE
19
ITALY.
farther forwarded in the Italian cottage, by putting two or
windows up under the very eaves themselves, which is done for coolness, so that their tops are formed by the roof; and the wall has the appearance of having been termi-
three also
nated by large battlements and roofed over. And, finally, the eaves are seldom kept long on the same level double or treble rows of tiling are introduced long sticks and irregular wood:
;
work
are occasionally attached to them, to assist the festoons
and the graceful irregularity and marked character of the whole must be dwelt on with equal delight by
of the vine
;
the eye of the poet, the artist, or the unprejudiced architect. All, however, is exceedingly
humble
we have not
;
We
with the elevation of character we expected. it however as we proceed.
yet
29. The next point of interest is the window. modern Italian is completely owl-like in his habits.
the daytime he lies idle and inert
met
shall find
The All
but during the night
;
is mere activity of inoccupation. by the temperature of the climate, and partly consequent on the decaying prosperity of the nation, leaves indications of its influence on all his under-
he
all
is
activity, but
it
Idleness, partly induced
takings.
He
prefers
patching up
a
ruin
to
building
a
and hovels, the abodes of inactive, vegetating, brutish poverty, under the protection of aged and ruined, yet stalwart, arches of the Roman amphitheater and the habitations of the lower orders frequently present traces of ornament and stability of material evidently belonging to the remains of a prouder edifice. This is the case sometimes to such a degree as, in another country, would be disagreeable from its impropriety but, in Italy, it corresponds with the general prominence of the features Thus, the eye rests of a past age, and is always beautiful. with delight on the broken moldings of the windows, and house
;
he raises shops
;
;
the sculptured capitals of the corner columns, contrasted, as
they are, the one with the glassless blackness within, the other with the ragged and dirty confusion of drapery around.
The
Italian window, in general,
is
a
mere hole in the thick
;
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE.
20
wall, always well proportioned; occasionally arched at the top,
sometimes with the addition of a
little
rich ornament:
seldom, if ever, having any casement or glass, but
with any bit of striped or colored cloth, which
filled
up
may have
the slightest chance of deceiving the distant observer into the belief that
it is
a legitimate blind.
This keeps
off the sun,
which is the gTeat object. When it is absent, the window becomes a mere black hole, having much the same relation to a glazed window that the
and allows a free circulation of
air,
hollow of a skull has to a bright eye
;
not unexpressive, but
frowning and ghastly, and giving a disagreeable impression of utter emptiness and desolation within. Yet there is character in them: the black dots tell agreeably on the walls at a distance, and have no disagreeable sparkle to disturb the repose of surrounding scenery. Besides, the temperature renders everything agreeable to the eye, which gives it an idea of ventilation. A few roughly constructed balconies, projecting from detached windows, usually break the uniformity of the wall. In some Italian cottages there are wooden galleries, resembling those so frequently seen in '
Switzerland
;
but this
is
not a very general character, except
mountain valleys of Xortli Italy, although sometimes a passage is effected from one projecting portion of a house to another by means of an exterior galler3% These are very delightful objects and when shaded by luxuriant vines, which is frequently the case, impart a gracefulness to the in the
;
building otherwise unattainable. 30.
The next
the building.
striking point
This
is
is
the arcade at the base of
general in cities
;
and, although fre-
quently wanting to the cottage, is present often enough to render it an important feature. In fact, the Italian cottage is usually found in groups. Isolated buildings are rare and the arcade affords an agreeable, if not necessary, shade, in passing from one building to another. It is a still more unfailing feature of the Swiss city, where it is useful in deep snow. But the supports of the arches in Switzerland are
generally square masses of wall, varying in size, separating
'
m
i^^V-
^-f ;:^"
,/
".
•'*-.'^,
%m0'i»^ .
^"4^f^ "g^?*.'^ •^^.J''^--^ 4iAGO DI COMO.
MOU:!^TAIN VILTLA
which the eye passes over ten or twenty miles in one long and the prevailing color of whose borders is, as we
glance,
noticed
when speaking
Italian cottage, blue.
of the
The
white reflections are here excessively valuable, giving space, brilliancy, and transparency and furnish one very powerful ;
apology, even did other objections render an apology neces-
whose reflecand conspicuous situations, always considerable part in the scene, and are therefore things
sary, for the pale tone of the color of the villas, tions,
owing
take a
to their size
to be attentively considered in the erection of such buildings,
particularly in a climate whose calmness renders
its
lakes
Nothing, in fact, can be more beautiful than the intermingling of these bright lines with the darkness of the reversed cypresses seen against the deep azure of the distant hills in the crystalline waters of the lake, of which some one aptly says, " Deep within its azure rest, white villages sleep silently " * or than their quiet for the greater part of the day.
;
columnar perspective, as village after village catches the light, and strikes the image to the very quietest recess of the narrow water, and the very farthest hollow of the" folded hills.
Prom
117. villa in
water
all this, it is
but more doubtful. stantly
appears that the effect of the white
delightful.
The
On
first
when we imagine such
land
it is
objection,
quite as important,
which
pose, the startling glare of effect, induced tint.
But
strikes us in-
a building, is the
by
its
this objection does not strike us Avhen
want of reunsubdued
we
see the
building; a circumstance which was partly accounted for before, in
speaking of the cottage, and which Ave shall presently
see farther cause not to be surprised at.
objection
is,
A
more important
that such whiteness destroys a great deal of
venerable character, and harmonizes tones of surrounding landscape
:
ill
and
with the melancholy
this requires detailed
consideration. [*
A reminiscence
of
two
lines
written by the author in 1833.]
from a poem on the "Lago
di
Como
"
;
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTUEE.
84
118. Paleness of color destroys the majesty of a building;
by hinting
first,
speak of the
and humble material; and,
at a disguised
appearance of age. We shall of the material presently ; but the depriva-
away
secondly, by taking effect
all
tion of apparent antiquity is dependent in a great degree on
and in
the color;
Italy, where, as
ought to point to the past,
we saw
before, everything
is
serious injury, though, for sev-
eral reasons, not so fatal as
might be imagined; for we do
not require, in a building raised as a light summer-house,
wherein
to
while away a few pleasure hours, the evidence of
which the chateau or palace can any beauty. We know that it is originally built more as a plaything than as a monument as the delight of an individual, not the possession of a race; and that the very lightness and carelessness of feeling with which such a' domicile is entered and inhabited by its first builder w^ould demand, to sympathize and keep in unison with them, not the ancestral dignity, without
possess hardly
;
kind of building adapted to excite the veneration of ages, but that which can most gayly minister to the amusement of
For
hours.
all
men
desire to have memorials of their ac-
we only wish that to be remembered which others will not, or cannot perform or experience; and we know that all men can enjoy recreation as much as ourselves. We wish succeeding gentions,
but none of their recreations; inasmuch as
erations to admire our energy, but not even to be aware of
our lassitude rested;
;
how we
to
know when we moved, but not when we how we condescended; and, there-
ruled, not
fore, in the case of the ace, if ers,
we
we
triumphal arch, or the hereditary pal-
are the builders,
we
desire stability
are offended with novelty
:
l)ut in
;
if
the behold-
the case of the villa,
the builder desires only a correspondence with his
beholder, evidence of such correspondence
;
humor
;
the
for he feels that
is most beautiful when it ministers most to pleasure cannot minister to pleasure without perpetual change,
the villa that
it
so as to suit the
of
varying ideas, and humors, and imaginations
it cannot possess this light and variable habit with any appearance of antiquity.
its
inhabitant, and that
THE MOUXTAIX VILLA And, for
119.
ance
a yet
not desirable.
is
LAGO
DI COMO.
b5
more important reason, such appearMelancholy, when it is productive of
accompanied either by loveliness in the object by a feeling of pride in the mind experiencing Without one of these, it becomes absolute pain, which it. all men throw off as soon as they can, and suffer under as Xow, when long as their minds are too weak for the effort. it is accompanied by loveliness in the object exciting it, it forms beauty when by a feeling of pride, it constitutes the pleasure we experience in tragedy, when we have the pride of endurance, or in contemplating the ruin, or the monument, by which we are informed or reminded of the pride of the past. Hence, it appears that age is beautiful only when it is the decay of glorj^ or of power, and memory only delightAll remains therefore of ful when it reposes upon pride.* what was merely devoted to pleasure all evidence of lost enjoyment all memorials of the recreation and rest of the depleasure,
exciting
is
or
it,
;
;
;
parted
;
in a word, all desolation of delight
is
productive of
mere pain, for there is no feeling of exultation connected with it. Thus, in any ancient habitation, we pass with reverence and pleasurable emotion through the ordered armory, where the lances lie, with none to wield through the lofty hall, where the crested scutcheons glow with the honor of the dead but we turn sickly away from the arbor which has no hand to tend it, and the boudoir which has no life to lighten it, and the smooth sward which has no light feet to So it is in the villa the more memory, the dance on it. more sorrow and, therefore, the less adaptation to its present ;
:
:
;
purpose.
expression
But, though cheerful, it should be ethereal in its " spiritual " is a good word, giving ideas of the
:
very highest order of delight that can be obtained in the mere present. * Observe,
we arc not speaking of emotions felt on remembering what ourselves have enjoyed, for then the imagination is productive of pleasure by replacing us in enjoyment, but of the feelings excited in the
we
indifferent spectator,
ment, of which the
by the evident decay of power
first
or desolation of enjoy,
ennobles, the other only harrows, the
spirit.
;
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE.
86
120. It seems, then, that for
ance of age
all
these reasons an appear-
not desirable, far less necessary, in the villa
is
existing character must be in unison with its country must appear to be inhabited by one brought up in that In Italy, country, and imbued with its national feelings.
but
its
and
it
especially, though we can even here dispense with one component part of elevation of character, age, we must have Ave must have high feeling, beauty of form, all the others and depth of effect, or the thing will be a barbarism the inhabitant must be an Italian, full of imagination and emo-
—
:
;
tion: a villa inhabited
by an Englishman, no matter how
close its imitation of others, will
We
find, therefore, that
white
always be preposterous. is
not to be blamed in the
villa for destroying its antiquity; neither is
it
reprehensible,
harmonizing ill with the surrounding landscape on the contrary, it adds to its brilliancy, without taking away from We shall consider it as an element of its depth of tone. landscape, more particularly, when we come to speak of as
:
grouping. 121. There remains only one accusation to be answered; viz., that it
hints at a paltry
and unsubstantial material
:
and
this leads us to the second question. Is this material allow-
were distinctly
by the eye to be stucco, there it would be decidedly disagreeable but all the parts to which the eye is attracted are executed in marble, and the stucco merely forms the dead flat of the building, not a single wreath of ornament being formed of it. Its surface is smooth and bright, and altogether avoids what a stone building, when not built of large masses, and uncharged with ornament, always forces upon the attention, the rectangular lines of the blocks, which, however nicely fitted they may be, are " horrible most horrible " There is also a great deal of ease and softness in the angular lines of the stucco, which are never sharp or harsh, like those of stone and it receives shadows with great beauty, a point of infinite importance in this climate giving them lightness and transparency, without any diminution of depth. able
?
If
it
felt
could be no question about the matter, ;
!
!
;
;
THE MOUNTAIN VILLA
LAGO
It is also agreeable to the eye, to pass
DI COMO.
87
from the sharp carving
of the marble decorations to the ease and smoothness of the stucco
;
while the ntter want of interest in those parts which
are executed in
being offensive to the
prevents the humility of the material from
it :
for this passage of the eye
managed with the attention may be drawn
composition
who, that the
the picture which
and
from the marble
is
dexterity of the artist,
is
his subject, leaves the rest so obscured
slightly painted, that the
mind
to the single point of
loses it altogether in its
attention to the principal feature.
122. of
With
away
so
however, that can be alleged in extenuation
all,
its faults,
much
it
cannot be denied that the stucco does take
of the dignity of the building, that, unless
we
enough bestowed by its form and details to counterand a great deal more than counterbalance, the deterioration occasioned by tone and material, the whole edifice must be condemned, as incongruous with the spirit of the climate, and even with the character of its own gardens and apfind
balance,
It remains, therefore,
proach.
Its
selves.
quite
flat,
form
is
to notice the details
simple to a degree
so as to leave the
;
them-
the roof generally
mass in the form of
a parallelo-
piped, in general without wings or adjuncts of any sort.
Somma-Riva [Carlotta] is a good example of this genform and proportion, though it has an arched passage on each side, which takes away from its massiness. This excessive weight of effect would be injurious, if the building were set by itself but, as it always forms the apex of a series of complicated terraces, it both relieves them and gains great Villa
eral
;
dignity by effect of
its
form
own unbroken is
simplicity of
not injured, when, as
is
size.
This general
often the case, an
open passage is left in the center of the building, under tall and well-proportioned arches, supported by pilasters (never by columns). Villa Porro, Lago di Como, is a good example of this method. The arches hardly ever exceed three in number, and these are all of the same size, so that the crowns of the arches continue the horizontal lines of the rest of the building.
Were
the center one higher than the others, these
THE POETKY OF AECHITECTUKE.
bb
would be interrupted, and a great deal of simplicity The covered space under these arches is a delightful, shaded, and breezy retreat in the heat of the day; and the entrance doors usually open into it, so that a current of cool air is obtainable by throwing them open. lines
lost.
123. The building itself consists of three floors: we member no instance of a greater number, and only one
re-
or
two of fewer. It is, in general, crowned with a light balustrade, surmounted by statues at intervals. The windoM^s of the uppermost floor are usually square, often without any architrave. Those of the principal floor are surrounded with broad architraves, but are frequently destitute of frieze or cornice. They have usually flat bands at the bottom, and their aperture is a double square. Their recess is very deej), so as not to let the sun fall far into the interior. The interval between them is very variable. In some of the villas of highest pretensions, such as those on the banks of the Brenta, that of Isola Bella, and others, which do not face the south, it is not much more than the breadth of the two architraves, so that the rooms within are filled with light. When this is the case, the windows have friezes and cornices. But,
when
the building fronts the south, the interval
great, as in the case of the Villa Porro.
is
often very
The ground-floor
windows are frequently
set in tall arches, supported on deeply engaged pilasters as in the Villa Somma-Eiva. The door is not large, and never entered by high steps, as it generally opens on a terrace of considerable height, or on a wide landing-place at the head of a flight of fifty or sixty steps descending through the gardens.
124.
Xow,
it
will be observed, that, in these general forms,
though there is no splendor, there is great dignity. The lines throughout are simple to a degree, entirely uninterrupted by decorations of any kind, so that the beauty of their proporis left visible and evident. We shall see hereafter that ornament in Grecian architecture, while, when well managed, it always adds to its grace, invariably takes away from its majesty; and that these two attributes never can exist to-
tions
THE MOUXTAI2f VILLA getlier
LAGO DI COMO.
By
iu their highest degrees.
decoration,
therefore,
the
Italian
89
the utter absence of
villa,
possessing,
as
it
usually does, great beauty of proportion, attains a degree of
mind
elevation of character, which imjDresses the
ner which
man-
in a
by any consideration of its simple details or moderate size; while, at the same time, it lays so little claim to the attention, and is so subdued in its character, that it is enabled to occupy a conspicuous place in a landscape, without any appearance of intrusion. The glance of the beholder rises from the labyrinth of terrace and arbor beneath, almost weariedly it meets, as it ascends, with a gradual increase of bright marble and simple light, and with a proportionate diminution of dark foliage and complicated shadow, till it rests finally on a piece of simple brilliancy, chaste and unpretending, yet singularly dignified and docs not find its color too harsh, because its form is so simple for color of any kind is only injurious when the it
finds difficult to account for
;
;
:
eye
is
too
much
attracted to
it
;
and,
when
there
is
so
much
quietness of detail as to prevent this misfortune, the building will possess the cheerfulness, without losing the tranquillity,
and
Avill
mind
seem
to
have been erected, and
to be inhabited,
by a
of that beautiful temperament wherein modesty tem-
pers majesty, and gentleness mingles with rejoicing, which,
above all others, is most suited to the essence, and most interwoven with the spirit, of the natural beauty whose peculiar power is invariably repose. 125. So much for its general character. Considered by principles of composition, it will also be found beautiful. Its prevailing lines are horizontal and every artist knows that, where peaks of any kind are in sight, the lines above which they rise ought to be flat. It has not one acute angle in all its details, and very few intersections of verticals with horizontals while all that do intersect seem useful as sup;
;
porting the mass.
The
just application of the statues at the
top is more doubtful, and is considered reprehensible by several high authorities, who, nevertheless, are inconsistent enough to let the balustrade pass uncalumniated, though it is
— THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE.
90
objectionable on exactly the same grounds for, if the statues suggest the inquiry of " What are they doing there ? " the balustrade compels its beholder to ask, " whom it keeps from tumbling over ? " ;
126. their
The
truth
origin from
is,
that the balustrade
a period
when
and
statues derive
was easy access to the there was such access is
there
roof of either temj)le or villa; (that
proved by a passage in the Iphigenia Taurica, line 113, where Orestes speaks of getting up to the triglyphs of a Doric temple as an easy matter ;) and when the flat roofs were used, not, perhaps, as an evening promenade, as in Palestine, but as a place of observation, and occasionally of defense. They were composed of large flat slabs of stone (Kcpa/Ao?,*) peculiarly adapted for walking, one or two of which, when taken up, left an opening of easy access into the house, as in Luke V. 19, and were perpetually used in Greece as missile weapons, in the event of a hostile attack or sedition in the city,
by
parties of old
men, women, and children, who used, as a
matter of course, to retire to the roof as a place of convenient defense. By such attacks from the roof with the Kepafx-o^ the
Thebans were thrown into confusion in Platsa (Thucydides ii.
4.)
So, also,
we
find the roof immediately resorted to
Temple of
in the case of the starving of Pausanias in the
Minerva of the Brazen House, and the aristocratic party at Corcyra 'Ava/Savres Se
e/SaXXov T
;
the prevailing cast of social sentiment, or of natural beauty *
we
find the most perfect schools of architecture have 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 tlie general custom of exposing the head continually to the sun (Herodotus, bk. III. chap. 13) 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 disIt is
thus ihat
arisen in districts
;
torted 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
shapeless columns of colossal
life
;
far into the blackness above huge and immense and immeasurable avenues of ;
—
This was a perfect that is, a marked, enduring, and stone. decided school of architecture, induced by an unchanging and peculiar character of climate. Then in the purer air, and among the more refined
mountain
energies of Greece, architecture rose into a more studied beaut}% equally its school, because fostered in a district not 50 miles square, dependent isles and colonies, all of which were under the same In Rome, it became air, and partook of the same features of landscape. 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 Oiiium " 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 cofllins, with mummies and sphinxes, in nairow cham-
perfect in
and
in its
;
—
bers at the heart of eternal pyramids,'' etc]
—
;
THE LOWLAND VILLA and expression
;
107
ENGLAND.
—there being much — produces strange
and which, therefore,
stinate originality in his mind,
ob-
varieties
more preposterous by 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 dwelling, frequently rendered his love of display
;
still
a love universally felt in
;
;
of the average stamp, to put his villa out of the way, Avhere
nobody would ever
see
it,
or think of
him;
it is
his ambition
every one exclaiming, " What a pretty place whose And he cares very little about the peace which be ? "
to hear
!
can it 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
approach,
little attention.
we have one component
First, in the
may much study
part of effect, which
be called peculiarly our own, and which requires
it can be managed well,— the avenue. It is true that with noble lines timber cresting meet of trees some of the we
before
larger bastions of Continental fortified cities
;
we
see intermi-
nable regiments of mistletoed apple trees flanking the car-
and occasionall}- we approach a turreted chateau * by a broad way, " edged with poplar pale." But, al-
riage road;
lowing ours
all this,
still,
the legitimate glory of the perfect avenue
as will
appear by a
elements which constitute
The
its
little
is
consideration of the
beauty.
was given by the opening of the tangled glades in our most ancient forests. It is rather a 152.
original idea
* 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.
THE POETRY OF AECHITECTUEE.
108
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
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 more than reduce
is
to
quite a mistake to suppose that there
monotonous length of
indeed
line, unless
is it
sublimity in a
be carried to an
extent generally impossible, as in the case of the long walk at
Windsor. From three to four hun'dred 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
in passages of light across
let
the path, and cause the motion of any object across
to
it
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 'Now, this kind of rich and with force wherever it strikes. 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 yeo:
;
men
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 ;
contributed to give our land
Eiigland will have
;
a
name which,
some
its
all,
ancient
in fact, that once
name
in this age of steam
difficulty in keeping.
of "
merry "
and
iron, it
;
THE LOWLAND VILLA 153. This, then,
is
the
first
ENGLAND.
feature
we would
109 direct atten-
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, tion
to,
as characteristic, in the English villa:
for those are rather the adjuncts of the park than the ap-
proach to the building; but of the more laconic avenue, with the two crested columns and the iron gate at
entrance,
its
leading the eye, in the space of a hundred yards or
so, to
the
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 gables of
its
;
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 details,
its varieties,
—
a style fantastic in
and capable of being subjected
to
no rule, but, as which it arose.
we
think, well adapted for the scenery in
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
round several
sides of a court, and, in the larger halls,
in-
terminating in sharply gabled fronts, with broad oriels, divided into very narrow lights by channeled mullions, without decoration of any kind the roof relieved terior
courts,
;
by projecting dormer windows, whose divided into three, terminating in very
lights are generally flat
arches without
cusps, the intermediate edge of the roof being battlemented.
Then we the oriels
ornament introduced at the base of * ranges of short columns, the base of one upon
find wreaths of ;
the capital of another, running *
As
in a beautiful
example
in
up beside them
;
the bases
Brasenose College, Oxford.
— THE POETP.Y OF AECHITECTURE.
110 being very
sometimes decorated with knots of flowercolumns 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.* This portico is carried up to some height above the roof, which is charged with an infinite variety of decorated chimneys.
work;
tall,
—
the
155-.
Xow,
all this is
utterly barbarous as architecture;
but, with the exception of the chimneys, taste
for
;
it
was originally intended for
it
not false in
is
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 tails
;
that
it is
is gratified f with fantastic deprepared, 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 archi-
man, to correspond with the infinite variety of form in the wood architecture of nature. Few surprises can be imaginad more delightful than the breaking out of one tecture of
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. TTe would direct the attention chiefly to the following points in the building
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 and several harsh and cutting ones it is a whole, which
it,
;
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 corre;
sponds with points of English character, with independency, and
its
its
horror of being put out of
humors,
its
its
own way.
* The portico of the [old] Schools and the inner courts of Merton and 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 St.
of the varieties of this mixed [f i.e.
when
ante, § 88.]
the spectator
st3-le.
is
surrounded by woodland scenery.
Vide
THE LOWLAND VILLA 157. x\.gain,
and
ENGLAND.
Ill
a thoroughly domestic building,
it is
cottage-like in
its
homely
prevailing forms, awakening no
ele-
It has none of vated ideas, assuming no nobility of form. the pride, or the grace of beauty, none of the dignity of delight which we found in the villa of Italy but it is a habitation of everyday life, a protection from momentary inconvenience, covered with stiff efforts at decoration, and exactly ;
mind
typical of the
not haughty in
beauty
its
of
its
but domestic in
;
inhabitant
:
not noble in
its taste,
recreation, not pure in its perception of its
pleasures, fond of matter-of-fact
rather than of imagination, yet sparkling occasionally with
odd wit and grotesque
The
association.
Italian obtains his
beauty, as his recreation, with quietness, with few and noble lines,
with great seriousness and depth of thought, with very
rare interruptions to the simple train of feeling.
Englishman's
villa is full of effort
to be playful,
an
it is
:
infinite labor to be
a business
ornamental
:
But
the
with him
he forces his
amusement with fits of contrasted thought, with mingling of minor touches of humor, with a good deal of sulkiness, but with no melancholy and therefore, owing to this last ad;
its
original state, cannot be called
and we ought not
to consider the effect of its pres-
junct,* the building, in beautiful,
ent antiquity, evidence of which
is,
as
was before proved,
generally objectionable in a building devoted to pleasure,f
and
only agreeable here, because united with the
is
memory
of a departed pride. 158. Again,
ments, brisk in roof,
it is
a lifelike building, sparkling in its case-
its air, letting
much
low and comfortable-looking in
dwelling
light in at the walls its
The
door.
and
Italian's
much walled
in, letting out no secrets from the and drowsy in its effect. Just such is the difference between the minds of the inhabitants the one passing away in deep and dark reverie, the other quick and business-like, enjoying its everyday occupations, and active in its is
inside, dreary
;
ordinary engagements. [*
Namely
impulse [f
;
V.
the fact that there
ante, § 23.]
See § 118 seq.J
is
uo melancholy
iu the
English play-
112
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTUKE.
159. Again,
it
is
a regularly planned, mechanical, well-
its parts answering to its opornaments matched with similarity. The Italian (where it has no high pretense to architectural beauty) is a rambling and irregular edifice, varied with uncorresponding masses and the mind of the Italian we find similarly irregular, a thing of various and ungovernable impulse, without fixed principle of action; the Englishman's, regular and uniform in its emotions, steady in its habits, and firm even in its most trivial determinations. 160. Lastly, the size of the whole is diminutive, compared with the villas of the south, in which the effect was always Here the eye is drawn into the investigalarge and general. tion of particular points, and miniature details; just as, in comparing the English and Continental cottages, we found the one characterized by a minute finish, and the other by a massive effect, exactly correspondent with the scale of the features and scenery of their respective localities.
disciplined building; each of
posite,
each of
its
:
161. It appears, then, from a consideration of these several points, that, in our antiquated style of villa architecture,
some national feeling may be discovered; but in any buildings now raised there is no character whatever all is ridiculous imitation, and despicable affectation and it is much to :
;
be lamented, that now,
when
a great deal of public attention
has been directed to architecture on the part of the public, more efforts are not made to turn that attention from mimick-
ing Swiss chalets, to erecting English houses.
We
need not
devote more time to the investigation of purely domestic Eng-
though we hope to derive much instruction and pleasure from the contemplation of buildings partly adapted for defense, and partly for residence. The introduction of the means of defense is, however, a distinction which we do not wish at present to pass over and therefore, in our next paper, we hope to conclude the subject of the villa, by a few remarks on the style now best adapted for lish architecture,
;
English scenery.
V.
THE ENGLISH VILLA.—PRIiTCIPLES OF COMPOSITION. 162. It has lately become a custom,
among
the
more
en-
lightened and refined of metropolitan shopkeepers, to advocate the cause of propriety in architectural decoration,
by
ensconcing their shelves, counters, and clerks in classical ediagreeably ornamented with ingenious devices, typical of
fices,
the class of articles to which the tradesman particularly desires to direct the public attention.
We
find our grocers en-
shrined in temples whose columns are of canisters, and whose pinnacles are of sugar-loaves. soles
under Gothic
portals, with
Our shoemakers shape
their
pendants of shoes, and cano-
and our cheesemongers will, we doubt by raising shops the varied diameters of whose jointed columns, in their address to the eye, shall awaken memories of Staffa, Pnestum, and Palmyra and in their address to the tongaie, shall arouse exquisite associations of remembered flavor, Dutch, Stilton, and pies of "Wellingtons
;
not, soon follow the excellent example,
;
Strachino.
163.
Xow,
this
fit
of taste on the part of our tradesmen
only a coarse form of a disposition inherent in the
is
human
which the eye has been most frequently accustomed, and among which the intellect has formed its habits of action, and the soul its modes of emotion, become agreeable to the thoughts, from their correspondence mind.
Those objects
with their prevailing
to
cast, especially
when
has had any relation to those objects; for
the business of life it is
in the habitual
and necessary occupation that the most painless hours of
exist-
whatever be the nature of that occupation, the memories belonging to it will always be agreeable, and, 113 ence are passed
:
THE POETRY OF AKCHITECTURE.
ll-i
awakening such memories
therefore, the objects
will invari-
ably be found beautiful, whatever their character or form. 164. It
is
thus that taste
memory and beauty ;
is
is tested,
the child and the slave of
not by any fixed standard, but
by the chances of association; so that in every domestic building evidence will be found of the kind of life through which its owner has passed, in the operation of the habits of mind which that life has induced. From the superannuated coxswain,
who
plants his old ship's figure-head in his six square
garden at Bermondsey, to the retired noble, the proud portal of whose mansion is surmounted by the broad shield and the crested gryphon, w^e are all guided, in our purest conceptions, our most ideal pursuit, of the beautiful, by remembrances of active occupation and by principles derived from industry regulate the fancies of our repose. 165. It would be excessively interesting to follow out the investigation of this subject more fully, and to show how the most refined pleasures, the most delicate perceptions, of the creature who has been appointed to eat bread by the sweat of his brow, are dependent upon, and intimately connected with, his hours of labor. This question, however, has no relation to our immediate object, and we only allude to it, that we may be able to distinguish between the two component feet of front
;
parts of individual character
;
the one being the consequence
of continuous habits of life acting upon natural temperdisposition, the other being the humor of characconsequent upon circumstances altogether accidental, tak-
ament and ter,
ing stern effect upon feelings previously determined by the first part of the character laying on, as it were, the finishing ;
touches, and occasioning the innumerable prejudices, fancies,
and
eccentricities, which, modified in every individual to
infinite extent,
166. IS^ow,
form the
we have
be, that of selecting
mind, by preparing
visible veil of the
human
an
heart.
defined the province of the architect to
such forms and colors as shall delight the it
for the operations to
subjected in the building. tecture, can thus prepare
Xow, no it
more
which
it is
to be
forms, in domestic archi-
distinctly than those
which
;
PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION.
ENGLISH VILLA.
correspond closely with the
first,
that
is,
115
and funda-
the fixed
always so uniform in its action, as to induce great simplicity in whatever it designs. Nothing, on the contrary, can be more injurious than the mental, part of character, which
is
humors upon the edifice for the what is fltful in its energy, and petty in its imagination, would destroy all the harmony of parts, all the majesty of the whole would substitute singularity for beauty, amusement for delight, and surprise for veneration. We could name several instances of buildings erected by men of the highest talent, and the most perfect general taste, who slightest influence of the
;
influence of
;
having paid much attention to the first principles of architecture, permitted the humor of their disposition to pre-
yet, not
vail over the
majesty of their
intellect, and, instead of build-
ing from a fixed design, gratified freak after freak, and fancy after fancy, as they were caught by the dream or the desire mixed mimicries of incongruous reality with incorporations of undisciplined ideal awakened every variety of contending feeling and unconnected memory consummated confusion of form by trickery of detail and have left barbarism, where half the world will look for loveliness. 1G7. This is a species of error which it is very difiicult for persons paying superficial and temporary attention to architecture to avoid: however just their taste may be in criticism, it w^ill fail in creation. It is only in moments of ease and amusement that they will think of their villa they make it a mere plaything, and regard it with a kind of petty exultation, which, from its very nature, will give liberty to ;
;
;
:
the light fancy, rather than the deep feeling, of the mind.
It
not thought necessary to bestow labor of thought, and periods of deliberation, on one of the toys of life still less to is
;
undergo the vexation of thwarting wishes, and leaving favorite imaginations, relating to minor points, unfulfilled, for the sake of general effect.
168. This feeling, then,
is
the
first to
rect attention, as the villa architect's chief it
which we would
enemy he
perpetually and provokingly in his way.
:
He
is
di-
will find
requested,
— ;
THE POETRY OF AECHITECTIJRE.
116 perhaps, taste in
by some
situation.
a
man
of great wealth,
points, to
make
nay,
The future proprietor carries him upstairs to his him what he calls his " ideas and materials,"
study, to give
and, in
all
of established
a design for a villa in a lovely
probability, begins
somewhat thus
:
—"
This,
sir, is
a slight note I made it on the spot approach to Villa Reale, near Pozzuoli. Dancing nymphs, you perceive cypresses, shell fountain. I think I should like something like this for :
:
;
the approach
Then,
mine
:
classical,
:
you
perceive, sir
;
elegant, graceful.
made by an American Whee-whaw-Kantamaraw's wigwam, King
sir,
this is a sketch,
friend of of the
Cannibal Islands, I think he said, sir. Log, you observe; Something like scalps, and boa-constrictor skins: curious. this, sir, would look neat, I think, for the front door; don't you ? Then, the lower windows, I've not quite decided upon I think I should but what would you say to Egyptian, sir ? storks like my windows Egyptian, with hieroglyphics, sir I brought and coffins, and appropriate moldings above some from Fountains Abbey the other day. Look here, sir; angels' heads putting their tongues out, rolled up in cabbage ;
:
with a dragon on each side riding on a broomstick, and the devil looking on from the mouth of an alligator, sir.* Odd, I think interesting. Then the corners may be turned by octagonal towers, like the center one in Kenilworth Castle with Gothic doors, portcullis, and all, quite perfect; with leaves,
;
cross slits for arrows, battlements for musketry, machicola-
and a room at the top for drying plums and the conservatory at the bottom, sir, with Virginian creepers up the towers; door supported by sphinxes, holding scrapers in their fore paws, and having their tails prolonged into warm-water pipes, to keep the plants safe in winter, etc." The architect is, without doubt, a little astonished by these ideas and combinations yet he sits calmly down to draw his elevations as if he were a stone-mason, or his employer an architect; and the fabric rises to electrify its beholders. tions for boiling lead,
;
;
acci confer immortality on its perpetrator.
* Actually carved on one
of the groins of Roslin Chapel.
Fig.
12,
Old English Mansion.
1837.
;;
ENGLISH VILLA. 169. This
PEINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION.
117
no exaggeration: we have not only listened
is
to speculations on the probable degree of the future majesty, but contemplated the actual illustrious existence, of several
such buildings, with sufficient beauty in the management of
had supereconomy intended them, and them and had projected to prove that a refined intellect had followed been fancy had projected a Vandalism, only because instead of judgment; with as much nonchalance as is evinced by a perfect poet, who is extemporizing doggerel for a baby full of brilliant points, which he cannot help, and jumbled into confusion, for which he does not care. 170. Such are the first difficulties to be encountered in They must always continue to occur in some villa designs. degree, though they might be met with ease by a determination on the part of professional men to give no assistance whatever, beyond the mere superintendence of construction, unless they be permitted to take the whole exterior design into their own hands, merely receiving broad instructions respecting the style (and not attending to them unless they
some of
their features to
show that an
architect
sufficient taste in their interior
;
like).
They should not make
out the smallest detail, unless
they were answerable for the whole.
In
this case, gentle-
on their own rewere adequate, they would be obliged to surrender the task into more practiced hands and, if they were adequate, if the amateur had paid so much
men
architects
would be thrown
so utterly
sources, that, unless those resources
attention to the art as to be capable of giving the design perfectly, it is probable he
would not
erect anything strikingly
abominable. 171. Such a system (supposing that fully into effect,
it
could be carried
and that there were no such animals
as senti-
mental stone-masons to give technical assistance) might, at first, seem rather an encroachment on the liberty of the subject, inasmuch as it would prevent people from indulging their edificatorial fancies, unless they knew something about the matter, or, as the sufferers would probably complain, from doing what they liked with their own. But the mistake would
;
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE,
118 evidently
lie
in their supposing, as people too frequently do,
that the outside of their house
is
their
own, and that they
have a perfect right therein to make fools of themselves in any manner, and to any extent, they may think proper. This is quite true in the case of interiors every one has an indisputable right to hold himself up as a laughing-stock to the whole ;
circle of his friends
and acquaintances, and
to consult his
own
private asinine comfort by every piece of absurdity which can in
any degree contribute
to the
same but no one has any right ;
to exhibit his imbecilities at other people's expense,
especially, where, as
observation
is
we saw
or to
In England,
claim the public pity by inflicting public pain.
before, the rage for attracting
universal, the outside of the villa
is
rendered,
by the proprietor's own disposition, the property of those who daily pass by, and whom it hourly affects with pleasure or pain. For the pain which the eye feels from the violation of a law to which it has been accustomed, or the mind from the occurrence of anything jarring to its finest feelings, is as distinct as that occasioned by the interruption of the physical economy, differing only inasmuch as it is not permanent and, therefore, an individual has as little right to fulfill his own conceptions by disgusting thousands, as, were his body as impenetrable to steel or poison, as his brain to the effect of
the beautiful or true, he
would have
to decorate his carriage
roads with caltrops, or to line his plantations with upas trees.
The violation of general feelings would thus be uneven were their consultation productive of continued To no one is the vexation to the individual: but it is not. 172.
just,
architecture of the exterior of a dwelling-house of so little
consequence as to comfort, and
its
its
inhabitant.
condition
may
Its material
may
affect his
touch his pride; but, for
architecture, his eye gets accustomed to
it
its
in a week, and,
after that, Hellenic, Barbaric, or Yankee, are all the
same
to
name of Home. Even the conceit of living in a chalet, or a wigwam, or a pagoda, cannot retain its influence for six months over the weak the domestic feelings, are all lost in the one
minds which alone can
feel
it
;
and the monotony of existence
:
ENGLISH VILLA. becomes
to
PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION.
them exactly what
it
119
would have been had they
never inflicted a pang upon the unfortunate spectators, whose
unaccustomed eyes shrink daily from the impression
to
which
they have not been rendered callous by custom, or lenient by false taste.
when they allude only how much more when referring
173. If these considerations are just to buildings in the abstract, to
them
as materials of composition, materials of infinite
The
power, to adorn or destroy the loveliness of the earth. nobler scenery of that earth habitants
:
it is
belongs, to feed
but
it
the inheritance of
not merely for the few to
from
among
whom
it
all
her in-
temporarily
upon like horses, be the school of the minds which
like swine, or to stable
has been appointed to
are kingly
is
their fellows, to excite the highest ener-
humanity, to furnish strength to the lordliest intellect, and food for the holiest emotions of the human soul. The
gies of
presence of life
is,
indeed, necessary to
congenial with
its
character
;
and that
its
beauty, but of life
life is
not congenial
which thrusts presumiDtuously forward, amidst the calmness of the universe, the confusion of its own petty interests and groveling imaginations, and stands up w^ith the insolence of a moment, amid the majesty of all time, to build baby fortifications upon the bones of the world, or to sweep the copse from the corrie, and the shadow from the shore, that fools may risk, and gamblers gather, the spoil of a thousand summers. 174. It should therefore be remembered by every proprietor of land in hill country, that his possessions are the means of a peculiar education, otherwise unattainable, to the artists,
and in some degree
to the literary
men, of his country
;
that,
even in this limited point of view, they are a national possession, but much more so when it is remembered how many thousands are perpetually receiving from them, not merely
a transitory pleasure, but such thrilling perpetuity of pure
emotion, such lofty sid^ject for scientific speculation, and such
deep lessons of natural religion, as only the work of a Deity can impress, and only the spirit of an immortal can feel
THE POETEY OF AECHITECTTJEE.
120
thej should remember that the slightest deformity, the most contemptible excrescence, can injure the effect of the noblest natural scenery, as a note of discord can annihilate the expression of the purest
worms
harmony
;
not restore, create or consecrate
man
every
in the power of what angels could and that the right, which
that thus
it is
to conceal, to destroy, or to violate, ;
unquestionably possesses, to be an
ass, is
extended
who are innocent in idiotism, not to the more malicious clowns, who thrust their degraded motley conspicuously forth amidst the fair colors of earth, and mix only, in public, to those
their incoherent cries with the melodies of eternity, break with their inane laugh upon the silence which Creation keeps where Omnipotence passes most visibly, and scrabble over with the characters of idiocy the pages that have been written
by the
finger of God.
175. These feelings all
we would endeavor
impress upon
to
persons likely to have anything to do with embellishing,
as it is called, fine natural scenery
as they might, in
;
some
degree, convince both the architect and his employer of the
danger of giving free play to the imagination in cases
in-
volving intricate questions of feeling and composition, and
might persuade the designer of the necessity of looking, not to his
own
acre of land, or to his
the whole mass of forms
which he
is
own
peculiar tastes, but to
and combination of impressions with
surrounded.
176. Let us suppose, however, that the design entirely to the architect's discretion.
mestic architecture, the chief object in
Being its
is
yielded
a piece of do-
exterior design will
we saw before, it most distinctly by corresponding with the first part of
be to arouse domestic feelings, which, as will do
character.
Yet
spond with
its
it is still
situation
;
more necessary and hence
that
it
should corre-
arises another difficulty,
the reconciliation of correspondence with contraries it
is
;
for such,
deeply to be regretted, are too often the individual's
mind, and the dwelling-place it chooses. The polished courtier brings his refinement and duplicity with him to ape the Arcadian rustic in Devonshire the romantic rhymer takes a ;
PKINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION.
ENGLISH VILLA.
window looking
plastere4 habitation, with one back
121
into the
Green Park; the soft votary of luxury endeavors to rise at seven, in some Ultima Thule of frosts and storms; and the rich stock-jobber calculates his percentages
among
dingles and woody shores of Westmoreland.
When
he must, of course, content him-
tect finds this to be the case, self
the soft
the archi-
with suiting his design to such a mind as ought to be
where the intruder's
is
;
for the feelings which are so
much
at
variance with themselves in the choice of situation, will not be
found
too critical of their domicile,
however
little
suited to
their temper.
aim at something employer into general conversation observe the bent of his disposition, and the habits of his mind notice every manifestation of fixed opinions, and then trans177. If possible, however, he should
more he should draw ;
his
;
;
much
of the feeling he has observed This he should do, not because the general spectator will be aware of the aptness of the building, which, knowing nothing of its inmate, he cannot be nor to please the individual himself, which it is a chance if any simple desigii ever will, and who never will find out how well his character has been fitted but because a portrait is always more spirited than a composed countenance and because this study of human passions will bring a degTee of energy, unity, and originality into every one of his desig-ns (all of which will necessarily be different), so simple, so domestic, and so lifelike, as to strike every spectator with an interest and a sympathy, for which he will be utterly unable to account, and to impress on him a perception of something more ethereal than stone or carving, somewhat similar to that which some will remember having felt disagreeably in their childhood, on looking at any old house authentically haunted. fer to his architecture as
as is distinct in its operation.
;
;
;
The
architect will forget in his study of life the formalities
him
of science,
and, while his practiced eye will prevent
from erring
in technicalities, he will advance, with the ruling
feeling, which, in masses of
mind,
is
nationality, to the con-
ception of something truly original, yet perfectly pure.
THE POETRY OF ARCHITECTURE.
122 178.
He
will also find bis advantage in having obtained
a guide in the invention of decorations of wbicb, as
we
shall
show, we would have many more in English villas than economy at present allows. Candidus * complains, in his Note
Book, that Elizabethan architecture is frequently adopted, it is easy, with a pair of scissors, to derive a zigzag ornament from a doubled piece of paper. But we would fain hope that none of our professional architects have so far lost sight of the meaning of their art, as to believe that roughening
because
stone mathematically
is
bestowing decoration, though we are
too sternly convinced that they believe
mankind
to be
shortsighted by at least thirty yards than they are
;
more
for they
think of nothing but general effect in their ornaments, and lay on their flower-work so carelessly, that a good substantial captain's biscuit, with the small holes left by the penetration
of the baker's four fingers, encircling the large one which testifies
of the forcible passage of his thumb, would form quite
as elegant a rosette as
179.
Xow,
there
is
hundreds now perpetuated in stone. nothing which requires study so close,
or experiment so frequent, as the proper designing of orna-
ment.
For
given; but,
mined, the
its
use and position some definite rules
when
may
be
the space and position have been deter-
lines of curvature, the breadth, depth,
and sharp-
ness of the shadows to be obtained, the junction of the parts
of a group, and the general expression, will present questions for the solution of which the study of years will sometimes scarcely be sufficient
;
f for they depend upon the feeling of is nothing like perfection in
the eye and hand, and there
decoration, nothing which, in all probability, might not,
farther consideration, be improved.
Xow,
in cases in
by which
the outline and larger masses are determined by situation, the
[*
A contributor
to tlie " Architectual
Magazine."]
f For example, we would allow one of the modern builders of Gothic chapels a month of invention, and a botanic garden to work from, with perfect certainty that he would not, at the expiration of the time, be able to present us with one design of leafage equal in beauty to hundreds we could point out in the capitals and niches of Melrose and Roslin,
u
CQ
e
the spectator as an admitted help, and that
is
it
no principal stones
are introduced in positions apparently impossible for retain,
necessary
understood by
them
to
although a riddle here and there, in imimjjortant fea-
may sometimes serve to draw the eye to the masonry, and make it interesting, as well as to give a delightful sense of There is a a kind of necromantic power in the architect. pretty one in the lintel of the lateral door of the cathedral of Prato (Plate lY. fig. 4.) where the maintenance of the visibly separate stones, alternate marble and serpentine, cannot be tures,
;
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
40
understood until their cross-cutting is,
of course, of the
foi-ni
given in
is
seen below.
Each block
lig. 5.
XIII. Lastly, before leaving the subject of structural de-
would i-euiind the architect who thinks that I am un and narrowly limiting his resom-ces or his art, that the highest greatness and the highest wisdom are shown, the first by a noble submission to, the second by a. thoughtful Noj^rovidence for, certain voluntarily admitted restraints. thing is more evident than this, in that supreme government ceits, I
necessarily
which is the example, as it is the centre, of all others. The Divine Wisdom is, and can be, shown to us only in its meeting and contending with the difficulties which are voluntarily, and for the sake of that contest^ admitted by the Divine Omnipoand these difficulties, observe, occur in the form of tence natural laws or ordinances, which might, at many times and in :
countless ways, be
apparent advantage, but
infringed with
.which are never infringed, whatever costly arrangements or adaptations their observance may necessitate for the accom-
plishment of given purposes.
our present subject
is
The example most
apposite to
the structure of the bones of animals.
1^0 reason can be given, I believe, Avhy the system of the
higher animals should not have been made capable, as that of the Infusoria is, of secreting flint, instead of phosphate of lime, or
adamant pai't
more
naturally
still,
carbon
;
so
framing the bones of
The elephant or rhinoceros, had the earthy bones been made of diamond, might have been
at once.
of their
and light as grasshoppers, and other animals might have been framed far more magnificently colossal than any In other worlds we may, perhaps, see that walk the earth. for every element, and elements increation such creations a of animals here, is appointed bj architecture finite. But the God to be a marble architecture, not a fiint nor adamant archias agile
;
and all manner of expedients are adopted to attain the utmost degree of strength and size possible under that The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and great limitation. riveted, the leg of the megatherium is a foot thick, and the head of the myodon has a double skull; we, in our wisdom. tecture
;
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
41
should, doubtless, have given the lizard a steel jaw, and the
mjodon
a east-iron headpiece,
which
ple to
all
and forgotten the great
But God shows us
are nobler things than power.
strange as
may
it
princi-
creation bears witness, that order and system in
HimseK,
seem, not only authoritative perfection, but
—
even the perfection of Obedience an obedience to His own laws and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of His creatures we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of :
sweareth to his
XIV.
human
uprightness in the
that attribute of
own
"that
creature
hurt and changeth not."
These may be generally defined
2d. Surface Deceits.
inducing the supposition of some form or material which
as the
does not actually exist
;
as
commonly
in the painting of
wood
ornaments
decep-
to represent marble, or in the painting of tive relief, &c.
them
evil of
and that
it is
But we must be
careful to observe, that the
consists always in definitely
a matter of
in
some nicety
to
attempted deception,
mark the point where
dece])tion begins or ends. Tluis, for instance, the roof of
covered with elaborate fan enable
it,
in its
This
observer.
much
Milan Cathedral
ti-acery, forcibly
is
seemingly
enough painted
to
dark and removed position, to deceive a careless is,
of
course, gross degradation
;
it
destroys
of the dignity even of the rest of the building, and
is
in
the very strongest terms to be repreliended.
The
roof of the Sistine Chapel has
much
sign in grissaille mingled with the figures of
the effect
is
In v/hat
architectural deits
frescoes
;
and
increase of dignity. lies
the distinctive character
?
—
First. That the architecture is In two points, principally so closely associated with the figures, and has so grand fellowship with them in its forms and cast shadows, that both are at once felt to be of a piece and as the figures must necessarily be painted, the architecture is known to be so too. There is :
;
thus no deception.
Second. That so great a painter as Michael Angelo would
always stop short in such minor parts of his design, of the degree of vulgar force which would be necessary to induce the
;
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
42
of their reality
Bn]')position
;
and, strangely as
may
it
sound,
wonld never paint badly enough to deceive. Bnt though right and wrong are thus found broadly opposed in works severally so mean and so mighty as the roof of Milan :ind that of the Sistine, there ai-e works neither so gieat nor so mean, in which the limits of right are vaguely defined, and will need some care to determine care only, however, to apply accurately the broad principle with which we set out, that no ;
form nor material
XV. ception
is
to be deceptively represented.
Evidently, then, painting, confessedly such, it
:
be on wood or on stone, plaster, does
makes
nor can
;
specting the ground of which
it
it
material,
on good painting
ever be said to deceive
as
it
and
as desirable a
seen dej)rived of
more than
mode of
is,
there-
decoration
Verona and Venice
constant in the great periods.
it is
now
;
re-
To
gives us no information.
cover brick with plaster, and this plaster with fresco, fore, perfectly legitimate
de-
naturally be supposed,
Whatever the
more precious
it
or, as will
not matter.
no
is
Whether it
does not assert any material whatever.
are
half their former splendor
dejiended far more on their frescoes than their marbles.
The
be considered as the gesso ground on But to cover brick with cement, and to di^^de
plaster, in this case, is to
panel or canvas. this
cement with
falsehood is
;
and
joints that it
is
may
look like stone,
is
to tell a
just as contemptible a procedure as the other
noble.
being lawful to paint then,
It
is it
lawful to paint every-
—yes
but if, even and the thing in the slightest degree, the sense of it be lost, Let us take a few instances. painted be supposed. real no. In the Campo Santo at Pisa, each fresco is surrounded with a border composed of flat colored patterns of great elegance no thing
?
So long
as the painting is
confessed
;
—
—
part of
it
in
attempted
relief.
The
certainty of
flat
surface
life, do not and the artist thenceforward is at liberty to put forth his whole power, and to lead us through fields and groves, and depths of pleasant landscape, and to soothe us with the sweet clearness of far off sky, and yet never lose the severity of his
being thus secured, the figures, though the size of deceive,
primal purpose of architectural decoration.
;
THE LAMP OF TRUTFr. In the Camera
43
Correggio of San Lodovico
di
vine shadow the walls, as
at
Panna, the
with an actual arbor and the troops of children, peeping through the oval openings, luscious in color and faint in light, may well be expected every trellises of
instant
to break through,
or hide
if
behind the covert.
The
grace of their attitudes, and the evident greatness of the whole
work, mark that
it is
charge of falsehood to take a jjlace
;
painting,
and barely redeem
but even so saved,
among noble
it is
it
utterly
from the unworthy
or legitimate architectural decora-
tion.
In the cupola of the duomo of Parma the same painter has represented the Assumption Math so much deceptive power,
made a dome
that he has
of
some
thirty feet diameter look like
a cloud-wrapt opening in the seventh heaven, crowded with a
rushing sea of angels.
Is this
wrong ?
Not
so
:
for the sub-
We might have taken the vines for a veritable pergoda, and the children for its haunting ragazzi but we know the stayed clouds and moveless angels must be man's work let him put his utmost ject at once precludes the possibility of deception.
;
;
strength to
it
and welcome, he can enchant
us,
but cannot
betray.
We
may
thus apply the rule to the highest, as well as the
art of daily occurrence,
always remembering that more
is
to
be
forgiven to the great painter than to the mere decorative work-
man
;
and
this especially, because the former,
even in decep-
we have just seen would have made the thing
tive portions, will not trick us so grossly
;
as
where a worse painter once. There is, however, in room, villa, or garden decoration, some fitting admission of trickeries of this
in Correggio,
look like
life at
kind, as of pictured landscapes at the extremities of alleys and
and ceilings like skies, or painted with pi-olungations upwards of the architecture of the walls, which things have sometimes a certain luxury and pleasureableness in places meant for idleness, and are innocent enough as long as they are regarded as mere toys. XYI. Touching the false representation of material, the question is infinitely more simple, and the law more sweeping; all such imitations are uttcrlv base and iiiadmissible. It is arcades,
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
44
lost in marbling and of the waste of our resources in absolute vanities, in things about which no mortal cares, by which no eye is ever arrested, unless painfully, and whicli do not add one whit to comfort, or cleanliness, or even conspicuousness. to that great object of commercial art But
melancliolj to tliink of
the shop fronts of
tlie
London
time and expense
alone,
—
in architecture of a higher rank,
condemned to
blame
specifically
my
I express
made
I have
?
;
how much more
is it
a rule in the present
it
to be
work not
but I may, perhaps, be permitted, while
sincere admiration of the very noble entrance and
general architecture of the British
Museum,
to express also
my
regret that the noble granite foundation of the staircase should
be mocked
at its
landing by an imitation, the more blameable
because tolerably successful.
upon the
suspicion ite
The only
effect of it is to cast a
tnie stones below, and upon every bit of gran-
afterwards encountered.
honesty of Memnon himself. to the noble architecture
One
feels a doubt, after
it,
of the
But even this, however derogatory
around
it, is
of feeling with which, in our cheap
less jjainful
than the want
modern churches, we
suffer
the wall decorator to erect about the altar frameworks and
and to dye in the same may emerge above the pews this is not merely bad taste it is no unimportant or excusable error which brings even these shadows of vanity and falsehood into the house of prayer. The first condition which just feeling requii-es in church furniture is, that it should be simple and unaffected, not fictitious nor tawdry. It ma)' be in our power to make it beautiful, but let it at least be pure and if we cannot permit much to the architect, do not let us permit anything to the upholsterer if we keep to solid stone and solid wood, whitewashed, if we like, for cleanliness' sake (for whitewash has so often been used as the dress of noble things that it has thence received a kind of pediments daubed with mottled
color,
fashions such skeletons or caricatures of columns as :
;
;
;
must be a bad design indeed, which is grossly no instance of a want of sacred character, or of any marked and painful ugliness, in the simplest or the most awkwardly built village church, where stone and wood nobility itself), offensive.
it
I recollect
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
46
were roughly and nakedly used, and tlie windows latticed with white glass. But the smoothly stuccoed walls, the flat roofs with ventilator ornaments, the barred windows with jaundiced borders and dead gi-ound square panes, the gilded or bronzed w^ood, the painted iron, the wretched upholstery of curtains
and cushions, and pew heads and altar railings, and Birmingham metal candlesticks, and, above all, the green and yellow sickness of the false marble disguises all, observe falsehoods
all
—who
—
are they
defend them ? who do them ? like them, though to
who did
who
like
;
these
things?
who
I have never spoken to
any one
many who thought them
matters
Perhaps not to religion (though I cannot but believe that there are many to whom, as to myself, such things are serious obstacles to the repose of mind and temper of no consequence.
which should i^recede devotional exercises) but to the general tone of our judgment and feeling yes; for assuredly we shall regard, with tolerance, if not with affection, whatever forms of material things we have been in the habit of associating with our worship, and be little prepared to detect or blame hypocrisy, meanness, and disguise in other kinds of decoration when we suffer objects belonging to the most solemn of ail ;
—
services to be tricked out in a fashion so fictitious and unseemly.
Painting, however, is not the only mode in which may be concealed, or rather simulated for merely to Whitewash, for inis, as we have seen, no wrong.
XYII. material conceal
;
though often (by no means always) to be regretted as a It shows is not to be blamed as a falsity. itself for what it is, and asserts nothing of what is beneath it. Gilding has become, from its frequent use, equally innocent. It is understood for what it is, a film merely, I do not say and is, therefore, allowable to any extent. means of magit is one of the most abused expedient nificence we possess, and I much doubt whether any use we ever make of it, balances that loss of jjleasure, which, from the frequent sight and perpetual suspicion of it, we suffer in I think the contemplation of anything that is verily of gold. gold was meant to be seldom seen and to be admired as a prestance,
concealment,
:
;
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
46
and
sometimes wish that truth shonld so far should be gold that glittered, or rather that nothing should glitter that was not gold. Nevercious thing
;
I
literally prevail as that all
theless,
nature herself does not dispense with such semblance,
and I have too great a love for old and nimbus only it should be used with respect, and to express magnificence, or sacredness, and not in lavish vanity, or in sign painting. Of its expedience, however, any more than of that of color, it is not here the place to speak we are endeavoring to determine what is lawful, not what is desirable. Of other and less but uses light for
it
;
saintly art to part with its burnished field, or radiant
;
common modes lazuli,
speak.
tended,
of disguising
of
surface, as
powder of
lapis
or mosaic imitations of colored stones, I need hardly
The is
rule will apply to
wi'ong
;
all alike,
commonly enforced
that whatever
also
is
pre-
by the exceeding
ugliness and insufficient appearance of such methods, as lately
by which half the houses in Venice have been defaced, the brick covered first with stucco, and this But there painted with zigzag veins in imitation of alabaster. is one more form of architectural fiction, which is so constant I mean in the great ]3eriods that it needs respectful judgment. precious stone. the facing of brick with in the style of renovation
XYIII.
It is well
being built of marble
known, that what is,
is
meant
in nearly all cases,
b}' a
church's
only that a veneer-
ing of marble has been fastened on the rough brick wall, built
with certain projections to receive it and that what appear to 1)0 massy stones, are nothing more than external slabs. ;
]!Tow,
it is
evident, that, in
tliis
case, the question of right
on the same ground as in that of gilding. If it be clearly understood that a marble facing does not pretend or imply a marble wall, there is no harm in it and as it is also e\adent that, when very precious stones are used, as jaspers and sei-pentines, it must become, not only an extravagant and vain increase of expense, but sometimes an actual impossibility, to obtain mass of them enough to build with, there is no resource is
;
is there anything to be alleged on the head of durability, such work having been by
but this of veneering; nor against
it
THE LAMP OF TRUTH. experience found to
last as long,
and in
47
as perfect condition, as
any kind of masonry. It is, therefore, to be considered as simply an art of mosaic on a large scale, the ground being and when lovely stones are to of brick, or any other material ;
be obtained,
it is
a
manner which should be thorouglily under-
and often practised. Nevertheless, as we esteem the column more highly for its being of a single block, we do not regret the loss of substance and value which
stood,
shaft of a
and
as
there
is
in things
of solid gold,
I think that walls themselves
agate, or
silver,
ivory; so
may be regarded with a more known to be all of noble sub-
complacency if they are and that rightly weighing the demands of the two principles of which we have hitherto spoken Sacrifice and Truth, we should sometimes rather spare external ornament than diminish the unseen value and consistency of what we just
stance
;
—
manner of design, and a more abundant decoration would follow, upon the consciousness of thoroughness in the substance. And, indeed, this is to be remembered, with respect to all the points we have examined that while we have traced the limits of license, we have not fixed those of that high rectitude which refuses license. It is thus true that there is no falsity, and much beauty in the use of external color, and that it is lawful to paint either pictures or patterns on whatever surfaces may seem to need enrichment. But it is not less true, that such do
;
and
I believe that a better
careful and studious,
if less
;
practices are essentially unarchitectural that there
is
;
and while we cannot say
actual danger in an over use of them, seeing that
they have been always used most lavishly in the times of most noble art, yet they divide the work into two ]3arts and kinds,
one of
less durability
than the other, which dies away from
it
and leaves it, unless it have noble qualities of its own, naked and bare. That enduring noblesse I should, therefore, call truly architectural and it is not until this has been secured that the accessory power of painting may be called in, for the delight of the immediate time nor this, as I think, until every resource of a more stable kind has been exhausted. in process of ages,
;
;
Tlie true colors of architecture are those of natural stone, and
;
THE LAMP OF TEUTH.
48
full. Every pale yellow to purple, from passing through variety of hue, orange, red, and brown, is entirely at our command nearly every kind of green and gray is also attainable and with tliese, and pure white, what harmonies might we not achieve ? Of stained and variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable where brighter colors are required, let a kind of glass, and gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic work as durable as the solid stone, and incapable of losing its and let the painter's work be reserved for the lustre by time shadowed loggia and inner chamber. This is the true and where this cannot be, the device of faithful way of building external coloring may, indeed, be employed without dishonor but it must be with the warning reflection, that a time will come when such aids must pass away, and when the building
I would fain see these taken advantage of to the
;
:
;
—
—
;
be judged in
will
lifelessness,
its
Better the less bright,
dolphin.
dying the death of the
more enduring
fabric.
The
transparent alabasters of San Miniato, and the mosaics of St.
warmly filled, and more brightly touched, by morning and evening rays while the hues of our cathedrals have died like the iris out of the cloud and the temples whose azure and purple once flamed above the Grecian promontories, stand in their faded whiteness, like snows which
Mark's, are more everj^ return of
;
;
the sunset has left cold.
XIX. The last form of fallacy which it will be remembered we had to deprecate, was the substitution of cast or machine work
for that of the hand, generally expressible as Operative
Deceit.
There are two reasons, both weighty, against one, that all cast and machine that
dishonest.
it is
place, that
when
my
Of
its
is
is
bad, as
this practice
work
;
the other,
badness, I shall speak in another
being evidently no
other cannot be had.
mind,
work
eflicient reason
Its dishonesty,
of the grossest kind,
is,
against its use however, which, to
I think, a sufiicient reason
and unconditional rejection of it. Ornament, as I have often before observed, has two entirely
to determine absolute
dl'^tinet
sources of agreeableness
:
one, that
of
the
abstract
Plate
II
THE LAMP OF TRUTH. beauty of
its
forms, which, for the present,
49
we
will suppose to
be the same wliether they come from the hand or the machine
human
the other, the sense of
How
great this latter influence
considering that there
upon
labor and care spent
we may perhaps
;
it.
judge, by
not a cluster of weeds growing in any
is
cranny of ruin which has not a beauty in
all
respects nearly
immeasurably superior, to that of the mosx, elaborate sculpture of its stones and that all our interest in th» carved work, our sense of its richness, though it is tenfold less equal, and, in some,
:
rich than the knots of grass beside it is
a thousandfold less delicate
a millionfold less admirable its
;
;
it
of
;
its
of
its
delicacy,
though
admirableness, though
from our consciousness of
results
being the work of poor, clumsy, toilsome man.
delightfulness depends on our discovering in
it
Its true
the record of
—
and heart-breakings of reall this ca7i be traced by a practised eye but, granting it even obscure, it is presumed or understood and in that is the worth of the thing, just as much as the worth of anything else we call precious. The worth of a diamond is simply the understanding of the time it must take to look for it before it can be cut. It has an intrinsic value besides, which the diamond has not (for a diamond has no more real beauty than a piece of glass) but I do not speak of that at present I place the two on the same ground and I suppose that hand-wrought ornament can no more be generally known from machine M'ork, than a diamond can be known from paste nay, that the latter may deceive, for a moment, the mason's, as the other the jeweller's eye and that it can be detected only by the closest examination. Yet exactly as a woman of feeling would not wear false jewels, so would a builder of honor disdain false ornaments. The usinij of them is just as downright and inexcusable a lie. You use that which pretends to a worth which it has not which pi-etends to have cost, and to be, what it did not, and is not it is an imposition, a vulgarity, an impertinence, and a sin. Down with it to the ground, grind it to powder, leave its ragged place upon the wall, rather you have not paid for it, ycju have thoughts, and intents, and
trials,
coveries and joy fulnesses of success
:
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
50
no business with
it,
you do not want
it.
Nobody wants
inents in this world, but everybody wants integrity.
orna-
All the
ever were fancied, are not worth a lie. Leave your walls as bare as a planed board, or build them of baked mud and chopped straw, if need be but do not rough-cast fair devices that
;
them with
falsehood.
This, then, being our general laM% and I hold
imperative one than any other I have asserted
;
it
of dishonesty the meanest, as the least necessary
ment
is
an extravagant and inessential thing
fallacious, utterly base
—
this, I say,
are, nevertheless, certain
;
for a
and ;
this
more kind
for orna-
and, therefore,
if
being our general law, there
exceptions respecting particular sub-
stances and their uses.
XX. Thus
in the use of brick
;
since that
is
known
to be
no reason why it should not be moulded into diverse forms. It will never be supjjosed to have been cut, and, therefore, will cause no deception it will have only the credit it deserves. In flat countries, far from any quarry of stone, cast brick may be legitimately, and most successfully, used in decoration, and that elaborate, and even refined. The brick mouldings of the Palazzo Pepoli at Bologna, and those which run round the market-place of Yercelli, are among the richest in Italy. So also, tile and porcelain work, of which the former is grotesquely, but successfully, employed in the domestic architecture of France, colored tiles being inserted in the diamond spaces between the crossing timbers and the latter admirably in Tuscany, in external basreliefs, by the Robbia family, in which works, while we cannot but sometimes regret the useless and ill-arranged colors, we would by no means blame the employment of a material which, whatever its defects, excels every other in permanence, and, perhaps, requires even greater skill in its management than For it is not the material, but the absence of the marble. human labor, which makes the thing worthless and a piece of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machi It is, indeed, possible, and even usual, for men to sink nerj. originally moulded, there
is
;
;
;
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
61
hand-work has all the mechanism of tlie difference between living and dead hand- work I shall speak presently all that I ask at present is, what it is always in our power to secure the confession of what we have done, and what we have given so that when into machines themselves, so that even
characters of
;
;
— ;
we
stone at
lise
all,
since
all
stone
is
naturally supposed to be
we must not carve it by machinery neither must we use any artificial stone cast into shape, nor any stucco ornaments of the color of stone, or which might in anywise be mistaken for it, as the stucco mouldings in the cortile of the Palazzo Yecchio at Florence, which cast a shame and suspicion But for ductile and fusible over every part of the building. materials, as clay, iron, and bronze, since these will usually be supposed to have been cast or stamped, it is at our pleasure to employ them as we will remembering that they become precious, or otherwise, just in proportion to the hand-work upon them, or to the clearness of their reception of the hand-work carved by hand,
;
;
of their mould.
But
I believe
no cause to have been more active
in the
degradation of our natural feeling for beauty, than the constant use of cast iron ornaments.
The common
iron
work of the
middle ages was as simple as it was effective, composed of leafage cut flat out of sheet iron, and twisted at the workman's will. Xo ornaments, on the contrary, are so cold, clumsy, and vulgar, so essentially incapable of a fine line, or shadow, as
and while, on the score of truth, we can hardly allege anything against them, since they are always distinguishable, at a glance, from wrought and hammered work, and stand only for what they are, yet I feel very strongly that there is no hope of the progress of the arts of any nation which those of cast iron
;
indulges in these vulgar and cheap substitutes for real decoration.
Their inefficiency and paltriness I shall endeavor to in another place, enforcing only, at
show more conclusively
present, the general conclusion that, if even honest or allowable,
they are things in which
we
can never take just pride or
and must never be employed in any place wherein they might either themselves obtain the credit of being other pleasure,
;
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
52
and better than they are, or be associated with the downright to which _it would be a disgrace to be found in their com-
work
pany.
Such are, I believe, the three principal kinds of fallacy by which architecture is liable to be cornipted there are, however, other and more subtle forms of it, against which it is less easy to guard by definite law, than by the watchfulness of a manly and unaffected spirit. For, as it has been abov^e noticed, there are certain kinds of deception which extend to impressions and ideas only of which some are, indeed, of a noble use, as that above referred to, the arborescent look of lofty Gothic aisles but of which the most part have so much of legerdemain and trickery about them, that they will lowfer any style in which they considerably prevail; and they are likely to prevail when once they are admitted, being apt to catch the fancy alike of uninventive architects and feelingless spectators just as mean and shallow minds are, in other matters, delighted ;
;
;
with the sense of over-reaching, or tickled with the conceit of detecting the intention to over-reach
and when
;
subtleties of
kind are accompanied by the display of such dextrous stone-cutting, or architectural sleight of hand, as may become, this
even by
itself,
the pursuit of
a subject of admiration,
it
is
a great chance if
them do not gradually draw us away from
regard and care for the nobler character of the its total
And
paralysis or extinction.
guarding, but
by
art,
all
and end in
against this there
no and
is
stern disdain of all display of dexterity
ingenious device, and by putting the whole force of our fancy into the arrangement of masses
and forms, caring no more how
these masses and forms are wrought out, than a great painter
which way his pencil strikes. It would be easy to give instances of the danger of these tricks and vanities but I shall confijie myself to the examination of one which has, as I tiiink, been the cause of the fall of Gothic architecture
cares
many
throughout Europe.
;
I
mean the system
mouldings, which, on account of
its
of intersectional
great importance, and for
the sake of the general reader, I may, perhaps, be pardoned for
explaining elementarily.
Plata HI
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
XXI.
53
I must, in the first place, however, refer to Profes-
sor Wilhs's account of tlie origin of tracery, given in the sixth
chapter of his Architecture of the Middle Ages; since the publication of
which
I
have been not a
little
amazed
to hear of
any attempts made to resuscitate the inexcusably absurd theory of its derivation from imitated vegetable form inexcusably, 1
—
say, because the smallest acquaintance
tecture
would have informed
tlie
with early Gothic archi-
supporters of that theory of
the simple fact, that, exactly in proportion to the antiquity of the work, the imitation of such organic forms
is less, and in the There cannot be the shadow of a question, in the mind of a person familiarised with any single series of consecutive examples, that tracery arose from the gradual enlargement of the penetrations of the shield of stone which, usually supported by a central pillar, occupied the head of early windows. Professor Willis, perhaps, confines his observations somewhat too absolutely to the double subarch. I have given, in Plate VII. fig. 2, an interesting case of rude penetration of a high and simply trefoiled shield, from the church of the Eremitani at Padua. But the more frequent and typical form is that of the double sub-arch, decorated with
earliest
examples does not exist
at
all.
various piercings of the space between
with a simple
under a round
ti-efoil
it
and the superior arch
arch, in the
;
Abbaye aux
Hommes, Caen^ (Plate III. fig. 1); with a very beautifully proportioned quatrefoil in the trifoi'ium of Eu, and that of the choir of Lisieux with quatrefoils, sixfoils, and septfoils, in the ;
Eouen (Plate III. fig. 2); with a trefoil awkwardly, and very small quatrefoil above, at Coutances, (Plate III. fig. 3) then, with multiplications of the same fig-
transept towers of
;
ures, pointed or round, giving very
clumsy shapes of the interfrom one of the nave chapels of Eouen, from one of the nave chapels of Bayeaux), and finally,
mediate stone fig.
5,
(fig. 4,
by thinning out the stony ribs, reaching conditions like that of the glorious typical form of the clerestory of the apse of Beauvais
(fig. 6).
XXII. this process,
Now,
it
will be noticed that,
the attention
is
during the whole of kept fixed on the forms of the
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
54 penetrations, that
is
to say, of the lights as seen
rior,
not of the intermediate stone.
dow
is
in the outline of its light
traceries as seen
from within,
;
and I have drawn
in order to
light thus treated, at first in far off
show the
and separate
gradually enlarging, approaching, until they
over
us, as it
And
it is
from the
inte-
All the grace of the winall
these
effect of the
stars,
and then
come and stand
were, filling the whole space with their effulgence.
in this pause of the star, that
and perfect form of French Gothic
;
it
we have was
the great, pure,
at the instant
when
the rudeness of the intermediate space had been finally conquered,
not
when
the light had expanded to
lost its radiant unity, principality,
its fullest,
and
and yet had
visible first causing
we have the most exquisite feeling and most judgments in the management alike of the ti'acery and decorations. I have given, in Plate X., an exquisite example of it, from a panel decoration of the buttresses of the north door of Rouen and in order that the reader may understand what truly fine Gothic work is, and how nobly it unites fantasy and law, as well as for our immediate j3urpose, it will be well that he should examine its sections and mouldings in detail (they are described in the fourth Chapter, § xxvii.), and of the whole, that
faultless
;
that the
more
carefully, because this design belongs to a period
in which the most important change took place in the spirit of
Gothic architecture, which, perhaps, ever resulted from the That tracery marks a pause natural progress of any art.
between the laying aside of one great ruling principle, and the taking up of another a pause as marked, as clear, as conspicuous to the distant view of after times, as to the distant glance of the traveller is the culminating ridge of the mountain chain It was the great watershed of over which he has passed. Gothic art. Before it, all had been ascent after it, all was decline; both, indeed, by winding paths and varied slopes; both interrupted, like the gradual rise and fall of the passes of the Alps, by great mountain outliers, isolated or branching from ;
;
the central chain, and by retrograde or parallel directions of the valleys of access.
But the track of the human mind
is
—
—
:
THE LAMP OF TRUTH. traceable
up
55
and
to that glorious ridge, in a continuous line,
thence downwards.
Like a silver zone
"Flung about
carelessly', it
shines afar,
Catching the eye in many a broken link, In many a turn and traverse, as it glides. And oft above, and oft below, appears * * * * to him who journeys up As though it were another."
And
at that point,
and that
instant, reaching the place that
was
nearest heaven, the builders looked back, for the last time, to
way bj which thej had come, and the scenes through which their early course had passed. They turned away from them and their morning light, and descended towards a new horizon, for a time in the warmth of western sun, but plunging the
with every forward step into more cold and melancholy shade. XXIII. The change of which I speak, is inexpressible in
few words, but one more important, more radically influential, could not be. It was the substitution of the line for the mass, as the
element of decoration.
We have seen the mode in which the openings or penetration of the
window expanded,
until
what were,
at first,
awkward
forms of intermediate stone, became delicate lines of tracery and I have been careful in pointing out the peculiar attention
bestowed on the proportion and decoration of the mouldings of window at Eouen, in Plate X,, as compared with earlier
the
mouldings, because that beauty and care are singularly cant.
They mark
that the traceries
Up to that time, up to
architect.
had caught
the very
signifi-
the eye of the
last instant in
which
the reduction and thinning of the intervening stone was con-
summated, of light.
his eye
He
had been on the openings only, on the
did not care about the
stone,
a
stars
rude border
of moulding was
all he needed, it was the penetrating shape which he was watching. But when that shape had received its last possible expansion, and when the stone-work became an arrangement of graceful and parallel lines, that arrangement, like some form in a picture, unseen and accidentally developed, struck suddenly, inevitably, on the sight. It had literally not
Jeen seen be^'^re.
It flashed out
in
an instant
as
an indepen-
THE LAMP OF TKUTH.
56
dent form. took
it
It
became
The
a feature of the work.
under his care, thought over
we see. Now, the great pause was
it,
architect
and distributed
its
mem-
bers as
at the
moment when
the space
and the dividing stone-work were both equally considered. It The forms of the tracery were seized did not last lifty years. with a childish delight in the novel source of beauty and the intervening space was cast aside, as an element of decoration, ;
for ever.
I have confined
myseK,
in following this change, to
the window, as the feature in which transition
the same in every
is
member
clearest.
it is
of architecture
importance can hardly be understood, unless to trace
it
we
But the and its
;
take the pains
which illustrations, irrelevant be found in the third Chapter. I
in the universality, of
to our present purpose, will
pursue here the question of truth, relating to the treatment of the mouldings.
XXIV.
The reader
will observe that,
up
to the last
expan
sion of the penetrations, the stone-work was necessarily consi-
and unyielding. It was so, also, during the pause of which I have spoken, when the forms of the tracery were still severe and pure; delicate indeed, but
dered, as
actually
it
is, stiff,
perfectly firm.
At
the close of the period of pause, the
first
sign of serious
change was like a low breeze, passing through the emaciated It began to undulate like the tracery, and making it tremble. It lost its essence as threads of a cobweb lifted by the vrind. Reduced to the slenderness of threads, a structure of stone. it
began
to be considered as possessing also their flexibility.
was pleased vnth this his new fancy, and set himout and in a little time, the bars of tracery wei-e to the eye as if they had been woven together appear caused to This was a change which sacrificed a great principU like a net.
The
architect
self to carry
of truth;
it
it
;
sacrificed the expression of the qualities of the mate-
however delightful its results in their first developments, it was ultimately ruinous. For, observe the difference between the supposition of ductilitv. and that of elastic structure noticed above in the resem-
rial
;
and,
THE LAMP OF TRUTH.
57
That resemblance was not sought, but from the natural conditions of strength trunk, and slenderness in the ribs or branches,
blauce to tree form. necessary
;
in the pier
while
resulted
it
many
oi*
of the other suggested conditions of resemblance
were perfectly flexible, is
A
true.
not ductile
;
though in a certain sense own form as the rib yield up to certain limits, both of
tree branch,
it is
as firm
in its
both of them will them breaking when those limits are exceeded while the tree trunk will bend no more than the stone pillar. But when the tracery is assumed to be as yielding as a silken cord when the whole fragility, elasticity, and weight of the material are to of stone
;
;
;
the eye, chitect
if
is
and the
not in terms, denied
applied to disprove the first
;
when
first
all
the art of the ar-
conditions of his working,
attributes of his materials
this
;
is
a deliberate
redeemed from the charge of direct falsehood by the visibility of the stone surface, and degrading all the
treachery, only
traceries
it
affects exactly in the
degree of
its
presence.
XXY.
But the declining and morbid taste of the later architects, was not satisfied with thus much deception. They were delighted with the subtle charm they had created, and thought only of increasing its power. The next step was to consider and represent the tracery, as not only ductile, but penetrable and when tAvo mouldings met each other, to man;
age their intersection, so that one should appear to pass through the other, retaining
its
independence
;
or
when two ran
parallel
to each other, to rej^resent the one as partly contained within
the other, and partly apparent above
it.
This foi-m of
falsity
was that which crushed the art. The flexible traceries were often beautiful, though they were ignoble but the penetrated traceries, rendered, as they finally were, merely the means of ;
exhibiting the dexterity of the stone-cutter, annihilated both
the beauty and dignity of the Gothic types.
mentous
in its
A system so
mo-
consequences deserves some detailed examination,
XXYI. In the drawing of the shafts of the door at Lisieux, under the spandril, in Plate VII., the reader will see the mode of
managing the
intersection of similar mouldings,
universal in the great periods.
They melted
which \\m
into each other.
THE LAMP OF TKUTH.
58
and became one at tlie point of crossing, or of contact and even the suggestion of so sharp intersection as tliis of Lisieux ;
is
usually avoided (this design being, of course, only a pointed
form of the earlier !N^orman arcade, in which the arches are interlaced, and lie each over the preceding, and under the following, one, as in Anselm's tower at Canterbury), since, in the plurality of designs, when mouldings meet each other, they coincide through some considerable portion of their curves, meeting by contact, rather than by intersection and at the point of coincidence the section of each separate moulding becomes common to the two thus melted into each other. ;
Thus, in the junction of the circles of the window of the Palazzo Foscari, Plate YIII., given accurately in lY., the section across the line across
s^ is
Plate
fig. 8,
exactly the same as that
any break of the separated moulding above,
as
i.
It
sometimes, liowever, happens, that two different mouldings
meet each
This was seldom permitted in the great pe-
other.
riods, and,
when
it
took place, was most awkwardly managed.
Fig. 1, Plate lY. gives the junction of the mouldings of the
gable and vertical, in the
That of the gable
is
window
of the spire of Salisbury.
composed of a
single,
and that of the
vertical of a double cavetto, decorated with ball-flowers
the larger single moulding swallows
up one
;
and
of the double ones,
and pushes forward among the smaller balls with the most In comparing the sections
blundering and clumsy simplicity. it
is
to be observed that, in tlie
upper one, the
sents an actual vertical in the plane of the
the lower one, the line e
d
a h repre-
line
window
;
while, in
represents the horizontal, in the
plane of the window, indicated by the perspective line
XXYIT. The
d
e.
very awkwardness with which such occur-
met by the earlier builder, marks his and unwillingness to attract the eye to such arrangements. There is another very clumsy one, in the junction of the upper and sub-arches of the triforium of Salisbury but it is kept in the shade, and all the prominent junctions are of mouldings like each other, and managed with perfect simplicity. But so soon as the attention o-f