CHAP. XXII.

ARCHITECTURAL RADICALISM. TRUE NATURE OF ARCHITECTURE.COMPARATIVE ANATOMY.*

I MUST now call special attention to Architecture, where the same revolutionary process is going on. We read in the "Edinburgh Lectures" that

'

"it is difficult to overstate the enormity of the ignorance which the popular notion implies, that the nobility of architecture is in the disposition of masses; that architecture is, in fact, the art of proportion.' . . . Proportion is a principle, not of architecture, but of existence: it is by the laws of proportion that stars shine, mountains stand, and rivers flow. . A Gothic Cathedral is properly to be defined as a piece of the most magnificent associative sculpture. . . . Architecture, as distinguished from sculpture, is merely the art of designing sculpture for a particular place, and putting it there on the best principles." (Pp. 113-115.)

Not to waste curiosity on stars shining by rules of proportion, we see now why St. Paul's, Greenwich Hospital, the interior of St. Stephen's Walbrook, the façade of Whitehall, and we might go through a large circuit of other structures, including the Pantheon, the dome of Florence, the temples at

* The substance of this and the three following chapters has already appeared in a series of papers in "The Builder."

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Pæstum, and our own Salisbury Cathedral, are not striking, noble, or legitimate architecture. We see also something of the "enormity of ignorance" that indited the well known lines

"And on thy happy shore a temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee.”

Childe Harold, cant. iv.

And still more of that monstrous account, by the acute Forsyth, of Palladio's palaces:

"Their beauty originates in the design, and is never superinduced by ornament. Their elevations enchant you, not by length and altitude, nor by the materials and sculpture, but by the consummate felicity of their proportions." (Italy, p. 351.)

The enormous ignorance is plain enough. Forsyth and Byron have taken proportion, like all before them, for a sensible quality that charms the eye, and delights the mind, irrespective of any other consideration. Mr. Ruskin has, I was going to say, Cobdenised it: made it nothing else than a mere adaptation of the law of gravity.

It certainly may be, that universal instinct has been in" enormous ignorance" since the Tower of Babel; or I may have, myself, mistaken certain expressions of it that have moved my sympathy; that when, for instance, Mrs. Stowe told us, in her " Sunny Memories,”—“Cathedrals appear to be the most sublime efforts of human genius," and Robert Hall replied to one who asked him what he thought of York Minster," York Minster, sir? why it's enough to

soberise a Bacchanalian,"-both one and other spoke "merely" of associative sculpture; and if asked to explain themselves, would have pointed to a parenthetical mitre, or sundry bunches of trefoil or parsley about the walls.

I may have mistaken others; I think I have not mistaken myself. To my own feelings, the roof of Westminster Hall is one of the most impressive objects the world of architecture can show us. When I walk beneath it—and I take all possible opportunities of doing so I can - I can scarce believe that the power of architecture is even in those efforts of associative sculpture, the angel heads that form the hammer-beams. To my perception, sculpture has little to do with that quaint intricacy of constructive strength, those bold but graceful arches, that majestic series, those mysterious recesses, that alternate light and darkness, above all the stupendous firmament of brooding twilight, of whose solemnities the very angels seem but interpreters.

But what need of personal experience? So far there is no enigma: the one all-subordinating principle of Pre-Raffaellitism stands out distinct. Actual things in their actuality, rather than in the qualities they suggest or develope, are everywhere to be taken for the commanding object, and the imitation of them, religiously scrupulous, as the highest attainment of human art. What wonder if architecture is no longer the disposition of masses, dreamy vistas, majestical pillars, or awful space-but the faithful designing of sculptured objects, and the putting them

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in their several places in accordance with the laws of gravity.

There is enigma; but it is not here. The wonder begins when we turn to other pages of the Institutes. We have proclaimed a revolution. We have cut down symmetry to the gravitating principle; and made indignant declaration of the "enormous ignorance that looked beyond. Have we really done, after all, with symmetry? Go to that no less authoritative work, the "Seven Lamps;" and you shall find a principle, broadly appealed to, as at the very root and base of all architectural practice, which not only assumes "proportion" as a something beyond all mere consideration of stability, but lays down. a law to which, both from its significancy and the confidence with which it is quoted, I must challenge the attention of all lovers of art and architecture.

When men take up a "Lamp of Beauty," they have got, I suppose, beyond" the laws of gravity." Now if they will but take the one I refer to, they will find an order to "knock away a couple of pinnacles at either end of King's College Chapel " enforced by reasoning supposed unanswerable:

"Beasts have four legs. Yes; but legs of different shapes; and with a head between them. So they have a pair of ears, and perhaps a pair of horns; but not at both ends." (Seven Lamps, p. 115.)

And the approval of "fine west fronts" with the same confident appeal:

"The centre is always the principal mass, both in bulk and interest" [query ?], "and the towers are subordinated

to it, as an animal's horns are to its head.” (Ibid. p. 116.)

And, to look beyond proportion, to the great principle, we find the effect no less decisive as to colour.

Single members may sometimes have single colour, as a bird's head is sometimes of one colour and its shoulders of another. An animal is mottled on its breast and back

rarely on its paws or about its eyes; so put your variegation boldly on the flat wall and broad shaft, but be shy of it in the capital and moulding.” (Ibid. p. 127.)

I will not travel a second time over the sentence I have elsewhere noticed *, on " that Greek fret," its remote resemblance to "crystals of bismuth" notwithstanding; and of a common Tudor ornament, on the simple showing that "there is no family relationship between portcullis and beetles' wings; " as also a most eloquent demolition of "Gothic scrolls," on the principle that "there are no ribands in nature,” and that even "grass and sea-weed do not really afford apologetic types."

No doubt it is a grand rule, this analogy of animal and vegetable nature: it needs no prophetic eye to see how conventionalism must fall before it. I shall not scruple to try it by an application or two, perhaps not foreseen by its implicit disciples. Mr. Ruskin has struck out a line: I shall scarce go a step beyond his formulas.

* "Lecture on Art," pp. 26-28. The passages referred to are in the "Seven Lamps," pp. 97. 99. 101.