The Seven Lamps of Architecture

LIBRARY EDITION VOLUME VIII

THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUSKIN

Two thousand and sixty-two copies of this edition—of which two thousand are for sale in England and America—have been printed at the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh, and the type has been distributed.

LIBRARY EDITION THE WORKS OF

JOHN RUSKIN

EDITED BY E. T. COOK

AND

ALEXANDER WEDDERBURN

LONDON GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD NEW YORK: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 1903

LIBRARY EDITION

VOLUME VIII

THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

JOHN RUSKIN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR

LONDON GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD NEW YORK: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1903

CONTENTS TO VOLUME VIII

PAGE

L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS xiii

I NDEX TO THE P LATES xv

I NTRODUCTION TO THIS V OLUME xix

B IBLIOGRAPHICAL N OTE li

A UTHOR’ S P REFACE TO THE F IRST E DITION ( 1849) 3

” ” ” S ECOND E DITION ( 1855) 7

” ” ” E DITION OF 1880 15

The Seven Lamps of Architecture (CONTAINING THE TEXT OF ALL THE EDITIONS):—

INTRODUCTORY 17 CHAP. I. THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 27 II. THE LAMP OF TRUTH 54 III. THE LAMP OF POWER 100 IV. THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 138 V. THE LAMP OF LIFE 190 VI. THE LAMP OF MEMORY 221 VII. THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 248

NOTES BY THE AUTHOR 267

APPENDIX

I. L ETTERS ON The Seven Lamps of Architecture:— 1. TO W. H. HARRISON (APRIL 18, 1849) 275 2. TO GEORGE SMITH (JUNE 5, 1849) 276 278 II. THE MSS. OF The Seven Lamps of Architecture (WITH ADDITIONAL PASSAGES)

III. MINOR Variæ Lectiones 288 ix

x CONTENTS

THE FOLLOWING MINOR RUSKINIANA ARE ALSO INCLUDED IN THIS VOLUME:— PAGE EXTRACTS FROM RUSKIN’S LETTERS TO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER:— THE CERTOSA OF PAVIA (MILAN, JULY 16, 1845) 50 LIBERTY AND REPUBLICANISM (BAVENO, AUGUST 24, 1845) 262 A SKETCH OF THE CA’ FOSCARI (VENICE, SEPTEMBER 17, 1845) 131 RESTORATION AT THE CA’ D’ORO (VENICE, SEPTEMBER 23, 1845) 243 THE GLOOM OF THE LAKES (AMBLESIDE, MARCH 28, 1847) xxv A MEETING OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION (OXFORD, JUNE 27, 1847) xxv ABBEVILLE AND SALISBURY (ABBEVILLE, AUGUST 8, 1848) 188 ENRAPTURED WITH ABBEVILLE (ABBEVILLE, AUGUST 9, 1848) xxix THE CHARM OF NORMANDY (LISIEUX, AUGUST 23, 1848) xxix SKETCHING AT ST. LÔ (SEPTEMBER 16, 21, 1848) 82 THE BEAUTY OF CAUDEBEC (ROUEN, OCTOBER 1, 1848) xxx LIFE AND MANNERS: A CONVERSATION IN A CAFÉ (ROUEN, OCTOBER 2, 262 1848) THE ÆSTHETIC ATTRACTIONS OF ROMAN RITUAL (ROUEN, OCTOBER 9, 267 15, 1848) WORK AT ROUEN (OCTOBER 15, 1848) xxxi A VISIT TO DR. WHEWELL AT TRINITY LODGE (CAMBRIDGE, APRIL 6, 7, xl 1851) KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL (CAMBRIDGE, APRIL 7, 1851) 63 LINCOLN CATHEDRAL (APRIL 10, 1851) 12 EXTRACTS FROM RUSKIN’S LETTERS TO W. H. HARRISON:— FISHERMEN AT DUNBAR (AUGUST 20, 1847) xxvii THE REVISION OF “MODERN PAINTERS” (CROSSMOUNT, SEPTEMBER 18, xxvii 1847) PARIS IN 1848 (CALAIS, OCTOBER 24, 1848) xxxii EXTRACTS FROM RUSKIN’S DIARIES (1846–1849):— A TOMB IN SENS CATHEDRAL (1846) xxii CHAMPAGNOLE (APRIL 19, 1846) 221 BARBAROUS GOTHIC (CHAMBÉRY, APRIL 26, 1846) xxi THE COLLEONE CHAPEL, BERGAMO (MAY 10, 1846) 51 ITALIAN IRON WORK (MAY 10, 1846) 85 INTERSECTIONAL MOULDINGS (CHÂTILLON-SUR-SEINE, SEPTEMBER 23, xxi 1846) VOLATILITY AND LISTLESSNESS (LEAMINGTON, JULY 29, 1847) xxvi A ROUGH SCHEME OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” (? 1846–1847) xxiii SALISBURY CATHEDRAL (1848) 188 NOTES ON NORMAN ARCHITECTURE (CAEN, SEPTEMBER 23, 1848) xxxi COUTANCES CATHEDRAL (1848) xxxi FORM AND COLOUR: NOTES AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM (DECEMBER 20, 178 1848) THE PLATES FOR “THE SEVEN LAMPS” (APRIL 1849) xxxv

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS OF J. J. Ruskin:— ON RUSKIN AT VENICE (MAY 25, 1846) xxiii ON RUSKIN AT SALISBURY (JULY, 1848) xxviii ON RUSKIN AT ABBEVILLE (AUGUST 12, 1848) xxix THE APPEARANCE OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” (VEVAY, MAY 22, 1849) xxxv THE RECEPTION OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” (GENEVA, JULY AND AUGUST, XXXVI 1849)

DESCRIPTIONS OF RUSKIN:— BY MISS MITFORD, IN 1847 xxiv BY DR. FURNIVALL (A REMINISCENCE OF 1848) xxxiv

EXTRACTS FROM RUSKIN’S LETTERS TO HIS PUBLISHER ON THE 1880 EDITION OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” (VARIOUS DATES, AUGUST 1879– xlvii, 17 FEBRUARY 1880)

REVIEWS OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE” xxxvii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (From Drawings by the Author)

TRACERY FROM THE CAMPANILE OF GIOTTO, AT Frontispiece FLORENCE

PLATE

I. ORNAMENTS FROM ROUEN, ST. LÔ, AND VENICE To face page 52

II. PART OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. LÔ, NORMANDY . ” ” 81

III. TRACERIES FROM CAEN, BAYEUX, ROUEN, AND 88 BEAUVAIS ” ”

IV. INTERSECTIONAL MOULDINGS ” ” 96

V. CAPITAL FROM THE LOWER ARCADE OF THE 122 DOGE’S PALACE, VENICE ” ”

VI. ARCH FROM THE FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF SAN 125 MICHELE AT LUCCA ” ”

VII. PIERCED ORNAMENTS FROM LISIEUX, BAYEUX, 128 VERONA, AND PADUA ” ”

VIII. WINDOW FROM THE CA’ FOSCARI, VENICE ” ” 132

IX. TRACERY FROM THE CAMPANILE OF GIOTTO, AT 138 FLORENCE ” ”

X. TRACERIES AND MOULDINGS FROM ROUEN AND 165 SALISBURY ” ”

XI. BALCONY IN THE CAMPO ST. BENEDETTO, VENICE ” ” 175

XII. FRAGMENTS FROM ABBEVILLE, LUCCA, VENICE, 199 AND PISA ” ”

XIII. PORTIONS OF AN ARCADE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF 212 THE CATHEDRAL OF FERRARA ” ”

XIV. SCULPTURES FROM THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN ” ” 216 xiii

xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF THE MS. OF The Seven Between pp. 222 and 223 Lamps of Architecture (CH. VI. § 1) FACSIMILE OF THE BINDING OF THE FIRST AND To face page 185 SECOND EDITIONS

______

Note.—All the numbered illustrations, except No. 9, are reproduced from the plates prepared for the edition of 1855. The frontispiece was engraved by J. C. Armytage from a new drawing made by the author for that edition; the others were re-engraved by R. P. Cuff from the drawings made by the author for the edition of 1849. Plate No. 9 was etched by the author; for particulars, see p. xlix.

INDEX TO THE PLATES

The following list details the subjects of the various figures included in the plates, and gives the pages where they are referred to:—

PLATE I. ORNAMENTS FROM ROUEN, ST. LÔ, AND VENICE:— FIG. 1. NICHE FROM THE CENTRAL GATE OF ROUEN (pp. 52, 123) ” 2. (a) FLOWER WORK FROM THE TRANSEPTS OF ROUEN (pp. 133, 173) (b) FLOWER WORK FROM THE SOUTH DOOR OF ST. LÔ (p. 133) (c) FLOWER WORK FROM CAUDEBEC (p. 133) ” 3. BALL WITH FLOWER WORK FROM THE ARCHITRAVE OF THE CENTRAL GATE OF ST. MARK’S, VENICE (p. 121) ” 4. FINIAL OF THE PEDIMENT GIVEN IN PLATE II., FROM THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. LÔ; BESIDE IT, A NATURAL GROUP OF THISTLELEAVES (p. 122)

PLATE II. PART OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. LÔ, NORMANDY (PP. 81, 122, 211)

PLATE III. TRACERIES FROM CAEN, BAYEUX, ROUEN, AND BEAUVAIS (p. 88 N.):— FIG. 1. TREFOIL, FROM THE ABBAYE AUX HOMMES, CAEN (p. 88) ” 2. SIXFOIL, FROM THE TRANSEPT TOWERS OF ROUEN (p. 88) ” 3. TREFOIL AND QUATREFOIL, FROM COUNTANCES (p. 88) ” 4. MULTIPLICATIONS OF THE SAME FIGURES FROM ONE OF THE NAVE CHAPELS OF ROUEN (p. 88) ” 5. THE SAME, FROM ONE OF THE NAVE CHAPELS OF BAYEUX (p. 88) ” 6. “THE GLORIOUS TYPICAL FROM OF THE CLERESTORY OF THE APSE OF BEAUVAIS” (p. 88)

xvi INDEX TO THE PLATES

PLATE IV. INTERSECTIONAL MOULDINGS (p. 132):— FIG. 1. JUNCTION OF THE MOULDINGS OF THE GABLE AND VERTICAL, IN THE WINDOW OF THE SPIRE OF SALISBURY (p. 94) ” 2. FROM A FLYING BUTTRESS IN THE APSE OF ST. GERVAIS AT FALAISE (p. 97) ” 3. HALF OF THE HEAD OF A DOOR IN THE STADTHAUS OF SURSEE (p. 97) ” 4. EXAMPLE OF DOVETAILING, FROM THE LINTEL OF THE LATERAL DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF PRATO (p. 70) ” 5. DETAIL OF FIG. 4 (p. 71) ” 6. EXAMPLE OF DEXTERITY IN THE FILLING OF SECTIONS, FROM THE WEST GATE OF ROUEN (p. 95) ” 7. ANOTHER EXAMPLE, FROM THE SAME (p. 96) ” 8. JUNCTION OF THE CIRCLES OF THE WINDOW OF THE PALAZZO FOSCARI, VENICE (SEE PLATE VIII.), (pp. 94, 166) PLATE V. CAPITAL FROM THE LOWER ARCADE OF THE DOGE’S PALACE, VENICE (pp. 122, 231) PLATE VI. ARCH FROM THE FAÇADE OF THE CHURCH OF SAN MICHELE, LUCCA(pp. 121, 125, 185, 277) PLATE VII. PIERCED ORNAMENTS FROM LISIEUX, BAYEUX, VERONA AND PADUA:— FIG. 1. SHAFTS AND SPANDREL FROM THE SOUTH-WEST DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF LISIEUX (pp. 93, 125 n., 128) ” 2. QUADRANT OF THE STAR WINDOW OF THE CHAPEL OF SAN PIETRO MARTIRE, ADJOINING STA. ANASTASIA, VERONA (p. 129) ” 3. TREFOILED SHIELD FROM THE CHURCH OF THE EREMITANI, PADUA (pp. 88, 129) ” 4. “FOAM BUBBLES” FROM A SPANDREL AT BAYEUX (p. 129) ” 5. ORNAMENT FROM THE TRANSEPT TOWERS OF ROUEN (p. 129) PLATE VIII. WINDOW FROM THE CA’ FOSCARI, VENICE (PP. 94, 132, 166) PLATE IX. (AND FRONTISPIECE). TRACERY FROM THE CAMPANILE OF GIOTTO, FLORENCE (pp. 126,187)

INDEX TO THE PLATES xvii

PLATE X. TRACERIES AND MOULDINGS FROM ROUEN (PP. 89, 90) AND SALISBURY:— FIG. 1. PANEL DECORATION OF BUTTRESSES OF NORTH DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN (p. 165) ” 2. MOULDINGS OF THE QUATREFOIL ABOVE FIG. 1 (p. 166) ” 3. SECTION, EXPLAINING FIG. 1 (p. 165) ” 4. DETAIL OF MOULDING IN FIG. 1 (p. 165) ” 5. DOG-TOOTH MOULDING FROM SALISBURY CATHEDRAL (p. 172) PLATE XI. BALCONY IN THE CAMPO ST. BENEDETTO, VENICE (p. 175) PLATE XII. FRAGMENTS FROM ABBEVILLE, LUCCA, VENICE AND PISA:— FIG. 1. PILLAR AND SPANDREL FROM A PANEL DECORATION UNDER THE PULPIT OF ST. MARK’S, VENICE (p. 199) ” 2. PATTERNS ON THE COLUMNS OF SAN MICHELE, LUCCA (p. 183) ” 3. WINDOWS IN THE TOWERS OF ABBEVILLE (p. 211) ” 4. ARCH MOULDINGS ON THE PULPIT OF ST. ANDREA AT PISTOJA, BY NICCOLÒ PISANO (p. 200) ” 5. AN EXAMPLE OF VERTICAL PROPORTION FROM THE FLOWER STEM OF THE Alisma Plantago (p. 168) ” 6. SECTION OF JOINT IN THE SAME (p. 169) ” 7. SQUARE PANELLING FROM THE ARCHES OF THE CATHEDRAL OF PISA (pp. 111, 145) ” 8. PATTERN OF THE ARABESQUE ON THE BALCONY SHOWN IN PLATE xi. (p. 175) PLATE XIII. PORTIONS OF AN ARCADE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF FERRARA, ETC.:— FIG. 1. TWO PAIRS OF COLUMNS FROM THE ARCADE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF FERRARA (pp. 171, 212) ” 2. AN ARCH OF THE SAME (p. 212) ” 3. COLUMN, IN “RACK” PATTERN, FROM THE SAME (p. 213) ” 4. A SMALL CAPITAL FROM COUTANCES (p. 122) CATHEDRAL OF ROUEN (pp. 216, 217)

VIII. b

INTRODUCTION TO VOL. VIII

THIS volume, containing The Seven Lamps of Architecture, follows, in the chronological order of Ruskin’s principal works, the second volume of Modern Painters (Vol. IV.). That volume was published in 1846; no further portion of Modern Painters saw the light until 1856. During the intervening decade, the magnum opus was never wholly out of the author’s mind, but its place of precedence was for a while usurped by other thoughts and tasks. “It is curious,” he notes in his diary of 1849, “that in literature the most successful books seem to have been planned as they went on.” Not Ruskin’s books only, but the order in which he wrote them, were planned as he went on, and his mental journeying at no time was free from digressions. At the end of the second volume of Modern Painters, he was rapt in contemplation of “the angel choirs” of the early Italian painters. He followed up that volume by some minor writings on allied subjects to which we shall presently allude; but these were anonymous, and when he next appeared before the public with another volume, it was found to be devoted to the principles and ideals of Gothic architecture. This new study occupied him for seven years, and its results were embodied in five illustrated volumes—The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), The Stones of Venice, vol. i. (1851), Examples of the Architecture of Venice (1851), and The Stones of Venice, vols. ii. and iii. (1853). In resuming here the thread of Ruskin’s literary biography from the Introduction to Vol. IV., we have, then, first to explain how it was that this architectural episode came to interrupt the progress of Modern Painters.

Ruskin did not realise at the time when he started off on his new enterprise how long the interruption was to be. When he was writing The Seven Lamps, he still thought that one more volume would complete Modern Painters;1 while, doubtless, he did not foresee how laborious the studies for his projected work on Venetian architecture would become.2 Hence he felt no hesitation in yielding to a new impulse, or—it were, 1 This is clear from one of the drafts of the Preface to Seven Lamps, given below in Appendix ii., p. 280. 2 The Stones of Venice was announced as being “in preparation” when Seven Lamps was published: see Bibliographical Note below, p. li. xix

xx INTRODUCTION perhaps, better to say—in obeying a new call. He was ever impetuous and enthusiastic; whatever his hand found to do, he began doing with all his might on the instant. In 1845 he had heard a fresh call, and had turned from the study of rocks and clouds to that of Fra Angelico and Tintoret.1 He hurried home full of fervour, and put out the second volume of Modern Painters. But already, as we have seen, another interest was stirring within him. His gift for architectural drawing had greatly developed, and he saw around him on all sides the passing away of beautiful buildings which he felt that he had the capacity to understand and the skill to record.2 It was a question, he said to himself, of now or never. Whilst he was taking drawings from one side of buildings, the “restorers” were knocking down the other.3 Delay would be doubly fatal. He might be too late to record, and his readers would no longer be able to see. Thus the same burning enthusiasm that first threw Ruskin into the defence of Turner, and then into the interpretation of Tintoret, now diverted him to mediæval architecture.4 Perhaps, too, something was due to intellectual reaction. Ruskin had, as we have seen,5 felt severely the strain of the second volume of Modern Painters. Like most great workers, he knew only one form of recreation—a change of work. The close study of architecture may have come as a relief from that of painting. Certain it is that the diary of his continental tour in 18466 is, for the first time, filled as much with notes on stained glass, on sculpture, and on architecture, as with descriptions of scenery or pictorial effects. Something in this latter sort there is;7 he was then finishing, it will be remembered, a revision for the third edition of Modern Painters, vol. i., and in that edition extracts from his diary of 1846 were introduced.8 But the new feature in the diary is the author’s pre-occupation with architectural details. At Venice he was already busy with elaborate measurements of the buildings. He fills many pages, too, with notes on Willis’s recently-published and epoch-making book on 1 Vol. IV. p. xxiv. 2 See Vol. IV. pp. xxvi., 37–41. 3 See below, Preface to First Edition, § 1 n., p. 3. 4 See below, p. 3. 5 Vol. IV. p. xxxix. 6 The itinerary of this tour was as follows:—Milan (April 14), Sens, Dijon (April 17), Champagnole (April 19), Geneva (April 21), Chambéry (April 26), St. Jean de Maurienne (April 27), Turin, Vercelli (May 4), Arona (May 6), Bergamo (May 7), Como, Verona (May 10), Venice (May 14), Padua (May 28), Bologna (June 1), Florence (June 7), Vevay (August 10), Geneva (August 15), Chamouni (August 23), Lucerne (August 31), Troyes, Châtillon-sur-Seine (Sept. 23). The dates are those on which entries happen to be made in the diary. 7 See the extracts given in Prœterita, ii. ch. x. § 190. 8 See Vol. III. pp. 500, 504.

INTRODUCTION xxi The Architecture of the Middle Ages.1 He was reading also Woods’ Letters of an Architect.2 Points which he afterwards developed in The Seven Lamps were already occurring to him. Thus, it was during the tour of 1846, that Ruskin was struck by the system of intersectional mouldings, which he discusses at length in this book as a principal source of corruption in Gothic architecture (ch. ii. §§ 21 seq., pp. 87–99). At Chambéry (April 26) he notes in his diary “a house in the main street here, remarkable as an example of that peculiar domestic Gothic so common in Switzerland, and of which one of the marked features seems to be the intersection of the rib mouldings at the angles, which I consider very ugly.” At Châtillon-sur-Seine (September 23) he recurs to the subject:—

“The architecture all the way from Lucerne—and I suppose from Schaffhausen—here, shows a most distinct connection, here beginning to vanish in more grotesque and purely French form. I should call this architecture, generally, sectional or intersectional, its distinguishing character being that already noted . . . [at Chambéry], that the mouldings, instead of uniting with or arising out of each other, cut each other and form inelegant interstices, or are themselves violently truncated as in my examples taken at Lucerne and Sursee.3 Another most interesting example occurs in the piers of the bridge of Aarburg . . . [reference to a sketch-book], where the sharp angles which meet the current are brought up to square full fronts on which the bridge is superimposed by brackets, composed of three tiers of semi-circular bands or mouldings, whose extremities show their truncations exactly in the manner of the beams of a châlet, from which the idea seems taken.4 At Besançon the style appears in great perfection—more elegant than in Switzerland, but quite as vicious. A grand circular arch near the Post Office is most remarkable both for its side niches, and because its huge crockets are represented as going through its lateral pinnacles . . . [reference to a sketch]. This penetrability is, however, one of the bad characteristics of flamboyant architecture in its last extravagances.”

At Chambéry (April 26), after the notes on the domestic architecture referred to above, he continues:—

“I suppose the cathedral here to be of the same period; its front is remarkable for its hard, square, valueless mouldings, and for the general awkwardness of all its forms. The carving, though somewhat too close 1 See below, pp. xl., 87, 95. 2 See below, p. 206. 3 See the drawing made at Sursee (Fig. 3 in Plate IV.) and the reference to it on p. 97. 4 See below, ch. ii. § 28, p. 97.

xxii INTRODUCTION and knotty, is deeply undercut and good, but it is put in narrow cords on broad bare mouldings, and so is rather hurtful than otherwise. A line of trefoiled foliation runs round the entrance door; but precisely in the place where it is most ineffective, that is to say nearly in the middle of its meagre mouldings, which have no columns nor capitals, but have continuous imposts, the foliation beginning abruptly and unexpectedly at the point; and so looks like a piece of paste-board ornament stuck on. There are no traces of ornament in the blank triangular space, now painted, below, but the two little doors underneath are flat headed or nearly so . . . [reference to a sketch]; the barbarous intersection of the curved by the horizontal moulding is especially painful. The rest of the detail, though not altogether so vicious, is entirely mindless, barred, ponderous, ill put together and exactly like, even to some of the minutiæ of design, that which I used to draw in the blank leaves of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.1 The design at . . . [reference to a sketch] is remarkable for the thoroughly savage introduction of the round ball in the triangle, and for the imposition of the rich bracket abruptly on the meagre moulding. To this barbarism might advantageously be opposed the daring use of the fleur-de-lis at Beauvais, filling up or rather forming a trefoil, in a mode which could not have been thought of but when the spirit of Gothic defied its letter and laws.

So, again, at Sens (April 17) he had written:—

“In one of the side chapels of the Cathedral of Sens there is a most precious tomb of the Cardinal Duprin,2 surrounded on four sides with admirable sculpture, full of most Giottesque invention, and most instructive in the various modes by which expression has been attained through vigorous undercut shadows. All the faces have the look of portraits, and most vigorous ones; a design of the Cardinal in council on one of the shorter sides is exquisite in its variation of vivid gesture, and the figures of the secretary sitting, and the standing figure laying the sceptre on the table, are graceful as Perugino. The horses’ heads also are superb.”

Ruskin on this tour of 1846 was, then, as enthusiastically absorbed in sections and mouldings, as formerly in flowers and rocks, and as busy in drawing doors and windows, as once in making sketches of skies and mountains. But one member of the party felt in this diversion of interest a serious disappointment. We have seen with what pleasurable 1 Now in the British Museum; see Vol. I. p. xxxv. 2 The tomb of Chancellor Duprat (not Duprin) is in the first chapel on the left of the choir.

INTRODUCTION xxiii anticipation Ruskin had dwelt upon the prospect of taking his parents in 1846 over the ground he covered by himself in 1845.1 But his father, who was becoming an old man, had not the mental agility which enabled his son to turn so easily from one enthusiasm to another. In Præterita Ruskin records regretfully, and not without self-reproaches, that he and his father were on this tour not so happily in accord as in earlier years.2 A letter from the elder Ruskin to his old friend W. H. Harrison, among whose papers it has been found, shows the difference in the point of view:—

“He is cultivating art at present (writes J. J. Ruskin from Venice, May 25, 1846), searching for real knowledge, but to you and me this is at present a sealed book. It will neither take the shape of picture nor poetry. It is gathered in scraps hardly wrought, for he is drawing perpetually, but no drawing such as in former days you or I might compliment in the usual way by saying it deserved a frame; but fragments of everything from a Cupola to a Cart-wheel, but in such bits that it is to the common eye a mass of Hieroglyphics—all true—truth itself, but Truth in mosaic.”

The letter is not without its note of pathos to the sympathetic ear, and the writer’s habitual good-sense hits off in a happy phrase the somewhat disjointed nature of Ruskin’s studies. Probably, however, the scheme of The Seven Lamps of Architecture was already beginning to assume shape in the author’s mind. An undated note in the book containing the author’s diary for 1846 and 1847 introduces us to some of his “Lamps;”3 though at this time he seems to have thought of calling them “Spirits”:—

“Expression of emotion in Architecture as Monastic—peaceful—t hreatening—mysterious—proud—enthusiastic. “Expression of ambition—Difficult cutting, vaulting, King’s College, etc., raising of spires, etc. “Consider luscious architecture: how far beautiful. “General style. What constitutes its greatness. First, mere labour; patience, skill and devotion (Sacrifice). Then labour of thinking men; if nothing be lost, nothing valueless; consider if under this head one might not have a “Spirit of Husbandry” (consider also, awe and mystery and their spirit under head of Power). Yet it is fine to see work for work’s sake, or rather for completion of a system sometimes.”

It does not appear, however, that Ruskin had as yet determined on casting his architectural studies into the form of a separate essay. They 1 See Vol. IV. pp. xxv.–xxvii. 2 Præterita, ii. ch. x. §§ 188–189. 3 Compare the later draft below, in Appendix ii., p. 278.

xxiv INTRODUCTION seem to have been originally intended for a part or a section in Modern Painters.1 Ruskin’s diary for the latter part of 1846 is very fragmentary; it shows only that he was still much occupied with architectural subjects, and that he was studying a good deal at the British Museum among the illuminated books and natural history collections (not then removed to South Kensington). His literary production during the next two years (1847, 1848) was small. He suffered a good deal from ill-health and there were other home distractions. His one contribution to literature in 1847 was—as in the case of some of his earlier productions2—the outcome of an affair of the heart. He was a suitor for the hand of Miss Lockhart, a grandchild of Sir Walter Scott. Lockhart had invited Ruskin to write upon Lord Lindsay’s Sketches of the History of Christian Art. He accepted the invitation, more for the daughter’s sake than for that of her father, then editor of the Quarterly. “With my usual wisdom in such matters,” he says, “I went away into Cumberland to recommend myself to her by writing a Quarterly review.”3 The review, which appeared in the number for June 1847, gave Ruskin occasion to cover ground which he had already traversed in the second volume of Modern Painters4 and was presently to occupy in the Seven Lamps.5 In the Lake District, where—had his suit been successful—he thought of taking a house,6 Ruskin made the acquaintance of Miss Mitford, already (as we have seen7) an admirer of Modern Painters. The friendship thus formed lasted throughout her life.8 In a letter of 1847 she gives her first impression of “the Graduate.” “Have you ever read,” she writes to her friend, Mrs. Partridge, “an Oxford Graduate’s letters on art? The author, Mr. Ruskin, was here last week, and is certainly the most charming person that I have ever known. The books are very beautiful, although I do not agree in all the opinions; but the young man himself is just what, if one had a son, one would have dreamt of his turning out, in mind, manner, conversation, everything. I quite longed for you to hear and admire him.”9 In March 1847, Ruskin settled himself at the Salutation Inn, Ambleside,10 with George11 as 1 See Preface, p. 3, and the passage from a MS. in Appendix ii. below, p. 280. 2 See Vol. I. pp. xxxiii., xlvii. 3 Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 192. 4 As, for instance, in the discussion in the review—of Giotto, Orcagna, and Fra Angelico. 5 See below, pp. 50, 63, 103, 121. 6 See Collingwood’s Life, 1900, p. 108. 7 Vol. I. p. xxxviii. 8 Ruskin’s letters to Miss Mitford are collected in a later volume of this edition. 9 Letters of Mary Russell Mitford, Second Series, edited by H. F. Chorley, 1872, vol. i. p. 230. 10 Described in Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 193. 11 See Vol. IV. p. xxiv.

INTRODUCTION xxv companion, to write his review. A letter to his mother shows him in a somewhat despondent mood:—

(Sunday, March 28, 1847).—. . . I finished—and sealed up—and addressed—my last bit of work, last night by ten o’clock—ready to send by to-day’s post—so that my father should receive it with this. I could not at all have done it, had I stayed at home; for even with all the quiet here, I have had no more time than was necessary. For exercise, I find the rowing very useful, though it makes me melancholy with thinking of 1838,1—and the lake, when it is quite calm, is wonderfully sad and quiet: no bright colours—no snowy peaks. Black water—as still as death;—lonely, rocky islets—leafless woods,—or worse than leafless, the brown oak foliage hanging dead upon them; gray sky;—far-off, wild, dark, dismal moorlands; no sound except the rustling of the boat among the reeds. . . . One o’clock.—I have your kind note and my father’s, and am very thankful that you like what I have written, for I did not at all know myself whether it were good or bad.2

Good or bad, it elicited no favouring words from Miss Lockhart, and another letter, written three months later from Oxford (whither Ruskin had gone for the meeting of the British Association), reveals an increasing despondency, indicative too of ill-health:—

(June 27, 1847.)—I am not able to write a full account of all I see, to amuse you, for I find it necessary to keep as quiet as I can, and I fear it would only annoy you to be told of all the invitations I refuse, and all the interesting matters in which I take no part. There is nothing for it but throwing one’s self into the stream, and going down with one’s arms under water, ready to be carried anywhere, or do anything. My friends are all busy, and tired to death. All the members of my section, but especially Forbes, Sedgwick, Murchison, and Lord Northampton—and of course Buckland,3 are as kind to me as men can be; but I am tormented by the perpetual feeling of being in everybody’s way. The recollections of the place, too, and the being in my old rooms, make me very miserable. I have not one moment of profitably spent time to look back to while I was here, and much useless 1 In which year he spent the summer with his parents in the Lake country. 2 This letter and the one following are reprinted from W. G. Collingwood’s Life, 1900, pp. 108–109. 3 Edward Forbes (1815–1854), President of the Geological Society, 1853. Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873), President of British Association, 1833, and of its Geological Section, 1837, 1845, 1853, 1860. Sir Roderick Murchison (1792–1871), President of the Royal Geographical Society, 1843; Director-General of the Geological Survey, 1855. Spencer Alwyne Compton, second Marquis of Northampton (1790–1851), President of the Royal Society, 1838–1849. For Buckland, see Vol. I. p. 211. Ruskin was one of the secretaries of the Geological Section for the Oxford meeting (see Report of the Seventeenth Meeting of the British Association, p. xv.)

xxvi INTRODUCTION labour and disappointed hope; and I can neither bear the excitement of being in the society where the play of mind is constant, and rolls over me like heavy wheels, nor the pain of being alone. I get away in the evenings into the hayfields about Cumnor,1 and rest; but then my failing sight plagues me. I cannot look at anything as I used to do, and the evening sky is covered with swimming strings and eels. My best time is while I am in the Section room, for though it is hot, and sometimes wearisome, yet I have nothing to say,—little to do,—nothing to look at, and as much as I like to hear.

It is not surprising that the receipt of this letter convinced Ruskin’s parents that his health needed serious attention. He was sent accordingly, as in 1841,2 to Leamington for a month’s “cure” under Dr. Jephson. In a characteristic passage in the diary written there, Ruskin speaks of an increasing volatility and listlessness:—

LEAMINGTON, July 29.—As I was walking down the chief street this afternoon, somewhat languid—partly owing to the weather, and partly to a disappointment in the ill-success of a laboured drawing, and partly from causes unknown, I could not help looking into the stationers’ windows for some book to amuse me, though I have now on the table The Guardian and Pamela, and I Promessi Sposi, besides Wordsworth and Dante, and several books on chemistry, and a Quarterly, and Eastlake’s book on oil painting, and George Herbert and Plato. All these came into my mind, and at the same time, very reproachfully, Wordsworth’s account of the poor clergyman, Robert Walker, who “allowed not a moment of recreation except upon a Saturday afternoon, when he indulged himself with a Newspaper, or sometimes with a Magazine.”3 What a foretaste of Paradise to such a man would this room of mine be, this leisure and these books. So I walked past all the stationers, resolved not to encourage any more this continually increasing volatility and listlessness; and yet so far, I have thought since I came home, that much of the poor clergyman’s time being given to labour in the field, and the rest to matters interesting to heart and conscience, left no room for the peculiar lassitude, which continual book occupation can hardly but induce. I will not buy any more books, but I am not sure that I am very wrong in wishing to do so.

Ruskin missed during this year 1847 the stimulus of foreign travel.4 But he went in the late summer to Scotland, and there—“in the 1 A retreat of which Matthew Arnold also was fond: see The Scholar-Gipsy. 2 See Vol. I. pp. xlii., 395 n., 455. 3 Wordsworth’s “Memoir of the Rev. Robert Walker,” in the notes to the Poems, p. 829 of John Morley’s edition (Macmillan). 4 Cf. Vol. I. p. xxx., Vol. II. p. 395; and see above, on p. xxv., his yearning for “bright colours and snowy peaks.”

INTRODUCTION xxvii thistlefield at Crossmount”—he had “wise thoughts and wholesome sleep after them.”1 “Those thoughts,” he adds, “are scattered afterwards up and down in Fors and Munera Pulveris.” Nor are they absent from The Seven Lamps of Architecture, in which book we may find the germs of some of his later teaching in the political economy of art, and catch the first sound of waves of thought and feeling on social questions, afterwards to reverberate more loud and clear.2 Letters written from Scotland to W. H. Harrison contain passages which show the current of Ruskin’s thoughts at this time:—

DUNBAR, August 20, 1847.—. . . I am much better since I left London, getting regular exercise and rest. I hope I shall not again fall into the state I was in all this winter, grievous to myself and stupid to everybody. Still there is a certain amount of spleen, or what else it may more justly be called, mingled with my present feelings which I cannot shake off. I cannot understand how you merry people can smile through the world as you do. It seems to me a sad one—more suffering than pleasure in it, and less of hope than of either—at least if the interpretations set by the most pious people on the Bible be true, and if not, then worse still. But it is woeful to see these poor fishermen toiling all night and bringing in a few casks of herrings each, twice a week or so, and lying watching their nets dry on the cliffs all day; their wives and children abused and dirty—scolding, fighting, and roaring through their unvarying lives. How much more enviable the sea-gulls that, all this stormy day, have been tossing themselves off and on the crags and winds like flakes of snow, and screaming with very joy. Certainly there must be something very wrong about man, when this is so; he could not be the unhappy animal he is but by his own fault.

The fourth edition of Modern Painters, vol. i., was at this time passing through the press, and Harrison relieved Ruskin of all trouble in the matter, who in a letter from Crossmount (Sept. 18) thanks his friend

“for the care and much trouble you have taken these two times respecting my rubbishy book. How sick you must be of reading such stuff again and again! Worse by half than my promenades in the Leamington pump-room—to the tune of an old harp, fiddle, and flute.” 1 See Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 197, where account is given of this visit to his friend William Macdonald, of Crossmount. 2 See below, notes on pp. 218, 264.

xxviii INTRODUCTION Ruskin returned from Scotland in October, and the winter of 1847–1848 was spent quietly at Denmark Hill. His only literary production was a second review for the Quarterly—this time of Sir Charles Eastlake’s Materials for a History of Oil Painting.1 This broke little new ground, though his diaries show that Ruskin read up the subject diligently. For the rest, his months were spent in various branches of study, with a view to the continuation of Modern Painters. The architectural reading was continued; and his note-books show that at this time he made a minute study of Homer, which he afterwards turned to account in the chapter on “Classical Landscape” in Modern Painters, vol. iii. It should be added that his drawing—now, again, mostly devoted to leaves and flowers—was also steadily practised.2 The entries in Ruskin’s diary are at this time few and far between. “My diary has of late,” he says on Dec. 22, 1847, “been in letters to E. C. G.” The initials stand for Euphemia Chalmers Gray. She was the eldest daughter of Mr. George Gray, a lawyer, of Bowerswell, Perth, who was an old friend of Ruskin’s parents. She used to visit them at Herne Hill, and it was for her that Ruskin in 1841 had written The King of the Golden River.3 Ruskin was about ten years her senior in age, and much more so in habits of life and thought. But, for various reasons, a match between Ruskin and her was equally desired by the parents on both sides, and on April 10, 1848, the marriage took place. This was the occasion of the “hurried visit to Scotland in the spring of this year,” mentioned in the Addenda of 1848 to Modern Painters, vol. ii.4 After a short time spent in Scotland and the Lakes, Ruskin returned to Denmark Hill, where the proofs of the second edition of Modern Painters, vol. ii., were awaiting him. He afterwards took his wife to Commemoration at Oxford, and in July his father and mother joined them at Salisbury. “My son,” wrote J. J. Ruskin to Harrison, “occupies himself with the architecture of the Cathedral, a lovely edifice, but I find it very slow.” How hard Ruskin worked is shown by many pages of notes and measurements in his diary. The fruits of his labour are to be seen in many pages of this volume;5 but, as he mentions on p. 6, he was overtaken with a feverish attack, and the projected tour to the cathedrals and abbeys of England had to be abandoned. But Ruskin was not to be put off his cathedrals altogether, and as soon as he had recovered, he 1 Mentioned above in the passage from a diary, on p. xxvi. 2 See Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 199. 3 See Vol. I. p. xlviii. 4 See Vol. IV. p. 341. 5 See pp. 6, 67, 94, 136, 167, 172, 188, 203.

INTRODUCTION xxix started for a tour in Normandy, which resulted in the writing of the present volume.1 “I went to Boulogne,” writes J. J. Ruskin to Harrison on August 12, “and saw my son and his wife off by rail to Abbeville, where he is in his element among cathedrals and tumble-down houses.” This account of the matter is borne out by Ruskin’s letters and diaries. Now that he had again found definite occupation, all his old enthusiasm revived, and he worked indefatigably and with concentration. He was up at 6, he tells his father, to read before breakfast, which was at 8. By 9.30 he was seated in some corner convenient for sketching, or was busy with his measuring rules and note-books. Dinner was at 1.30, and again from 4 to 6 he was sketching. A “couple of crockets” would sometimes occupy him for “upwards of an hour.” His companions were pressed into the service. His wife posted up the diary; George was sometimes sent off to trace panels and bas-reliefs. Ruskin was in a fever to make the most of the time, and to record the beauties that he saw while yet the stones were standing the one on the other:—

“I was dancing round the table this forenoon,” he writes to his father from Abbeville (Aug. 9), “in rapture with the porch here—far beyond all my memories or anticipation—perfectly superb, and all the houses more fantastic, more exquisite than ever; alas! not all, for there is not a street without fatal marks of restoration, and in twenty years it is plain that not a vestige of Abbeville, or indeed of any old French town, will be left. How I pity the poor people who must live then; and myself, for I was too young to understand or feel enough of it till now, when it is all going. I got into a café and have been doing my best to draw the Cathedral porch; but alas, it is not so easily done. I seem born to conceive what I cannot execute, recommend what I cannot obtain, and mourn over what I cannot save.”

The country delighted him no less than the churches:—

“You never saw anything yet in France,” he writes from Lisieux (August 23) “so lovely as this Normandy—just fancy vallies like rich bits of Italy, tufted with elm, poplar, willow, and Spanish chestnut, set between round sweeping grouse hills of purple heather, as bare as Schehallien.2 I think Effie makes the heather grow under her feet. But I never saw such a lovely contrast of purple and green; even in 1 The following was the itinerary: Abbeville (Aug. 8), by Eu to Rouen (Aug. 16), Lisieux (Aug. 23), Falaise (Aug. 25), Mortain (Sept. 1), Avranches, Mont St. Michel (Sept. 8), Coutances (Sept. 12), St. Lô (Sept. 15), Bayeux (Sept. 21), Caen (Sept. 22), Honfleur (Sept. 29), Rouen (Oct. 1), and home by Gisors, Amiens and Paris to Calais (Oct. 24). 2 More correctly Schehallion; at the foot of which mountain was Crossmount.

xxx INTRODUCTION Switzerland, where we have the rose, the green is blacker and not so soft; the sweetest bits of all were the soft flat vale of the Abbaye de Bec, whence came our Archbishops Anselm and Lanfranc, and the approach to this place—rich to excess, with its wooden houses set so quaintly on the hillside, as if it had been all built for pigeons.”

So again, from Rouen (October 1), he writes:—

“We have now very completely seen the country of Normandy, and missed nothing celebrated in architecture except some provincial churches near Caen and the abbey of Jumièges, and although I have never been able to do anything like hard work, I have got as much as is necessary to enable me to speak with confidence of these Norman buildings. The only place that I left quite insufficiently seen was Caudebec, yesterday—where I expected only an interesting little village church and found the richest portals—for delicate workmanship on a small scale—I have yet seen: of a class however which it would have been in vain to have attempted drawing unless I had had another week to spare. Besides this, the scene from the riverside is perfectly glorious; the river as broad as the Rhine, but calm and glassy, with, on the opposite shore, a plain as level as that of Marengo, and as vast, with long lines of poplars and maples, of exquisitely graceful upright trees reflected stem for stem in the broad water, and on the Caudebec side a sweeping theatre of hills as high about as those of the Rhine, but covered, instead of vines, with one mantle of forest. All that I used to say of French trees1 is far below their deserving. Such romantic, far-stretching, graceful successions of group and glade as cover the hills from here to Havre, I never saw in any land.”

The entries in his note-books are severely technical and laboriously detailed. Every church that he visited was described and measured, with accompanying sketches or memoranda. These diaries, note-books, and sketches show very forcibly that Ruskin’s generalisations were founded upon minute study of particular instances. The “personal observation” of which he spoke in the first preface to The Seven Lamps2 as justifying his essay was long and minute. Either at the time of writing, or later when he was considering his architectural essays, he put marginal notes in his diaries indicating the points or principles which the several entries illustrated—such as, in the passage about Chambéry above quoted, “uninventive Gothic,” “decoration without unity,” “intersecting mouldings.” 1 See Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 41; in this edition, Vol. III. p. 238. 2 See below, p. 3, and cf. Appendix ii. p. 280.

INTRODUCTION xxxi Sometimes we see in the diaries the particular instances or accumulation of instances which first suggested a general principle to him:—

(COUTANCES.)—The pillars are built of narrow stones, irregular in size and have clumsy capitals, too square, and of very poor workmanship as thus [sketch]. This proportion, endurable on a low pillar, is abominable on a shaft. (Note this principle—I never thought of it before, that slender shafts must have spreading capitals.1) But even were their capitals good, these pillars are themselves ugly, they have lost all pillar proportion, and yet not become shafts, and they reach just half way up the apse, whose height they destroy instead of raising. Outside of them is a low range of cylindrical pillars, one to each pair of choir columns—forming a double aisle—the innermost aisle is vaulted from and at the height of the choir columns, corresponding to the top of the clerestory of the nave, and this is the finest thing in the cathedral,—beautifully proportioned. The outer aisle is low and crypt-like—with recessed triple windows, lancet, instead of chapels, with detached shafts, as in Christ Church chapter house, very graceful, but the vaulting so complicated that its ribs fall below the capitals of the shafts, and are received on brackets from the shaft (p. 15, smallest note-book), and even this at various heights, so that in one or two cases only the outer roll of the rib comes below the capital, and that passes neatly through the roll at the capital top, like one ring morticed in another, and falls to a bracket just under the capital. The rude trefoil which joins the shafts to the wall is rather picturesque than graceful.

CAEN.—I have just come to-day (23rd Sept.) from the exceedingly simple and noble church of the Abbaye aux Hommes. It has taught me two things. First, that Norman work in purity of form is unsatisfactory, and must either be decorated with colour or wall sculptures; the second, that the peculiar rosette decoration which is characteristic more than anything else of Norman pointed Gothic—as at Coutances, Bayeux, Lisieux and here—originated immediately after the pointed arch was introduced, and may be considered a mark of an unformed Gothic, even in the elaboration in which it exists at Coutances and Bayeux. Here at Caen it co-exists, though crude, with pure Norman mouldings, round pointed arches.

Industrious and indefatigable though he was, Ruskin still felt at the end of his tour that he was only beginning to learn:—

“I still feel,” he writes to his father from Rouen (Oct. 15), when his sojourn there was drawing to a close, “that I leave this place Unseen; this is partly, however, owing to my slowness in taking in; I cannot 1 On this point, see St. Mark’s Rest, § 16.

xxxii INTRODUCTION grasp it. Every time I walk into the Square it is new to me. Still I verily believe that I now know more about it than any English architect, and than most French, and I have improved in my drawing in these three months considerably; the different style of Gothic quite beat me at first, and still it does in a great degree. I have not yet once succeeded in giving the true effect of a highly ornamental flamboyant niche, though I think I have come nearer it than most people.”1

Ruskin’s visit to France was during the exciting period of ‘48, and more than one passage in this volume was coloured by the revolutionary events of that year.2 In a letter to W. H. Harrison, we learn his impressions and reflections:3—

(CALAIS, October 24, 1848.)—. . . So much fêting and fairing and drinking, singing, and swearing I never saw nor heard since I was first in France—but all set off and foiled by an under evidence of distress, degradation and danger, the most utter and immediate: I have been in Paris for two days: it had always a black, rent and patched, vicious and rotten look about its ghastly faubourgs: but to see—as now is seen—all this gloom without the meanest effort at the forced gaiety which once disguised it—deepened by all the open evidences of increasing—universal—and hopeless suffering: and scarred by the unhappy traces of a slaughterous and dishonourable contest—is about as deep and painful a lesson—for those who will receive it—as ever was read by vice in ruin. But the melancholy thing is the piteous complaining of the honest inhabitants—all suffering as much as the most worthless, and not knowing what to do—or where to look. I think the only cheerful face that I saw in Paris was that of Marrast4 the President of the Assembly (whom we saw at the theatre)—a countenance hardly fine, but prepossessing, thoughtful, and hopeful. I saw no other face that did not bear the signs either of melancholy—anxiety—or outwearied dissipation—more 1 In Rouen, as in many other cities of France and Italy, Ruskin’s memory survives in sacristans who love their buildings. “It may be,” says Mr. Theodore Andrea Cook in his account of St. Ouen, “that the old Sacristan, for your good fortune, will be living still to tell you of the greatest Englishman he has ever heard of, John Ruskin, who often looked into that quaint mirror of Holy Water, and watched the strange reflection of the arches soaring upwards in the nave” (The Story of Rouen, 1899, p. 240). 2 See pp. 25, 261–263, 266; and cf. Vol. IV. p. 31 n. 3 Louis Philippe had, it will be remembered, been driven out early in the year, and the Republic proclaimed on the basis of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” and with the promise to find work for all. Reaction against the system of national workshops led to the revolt of eastern Paris in June, and the four days’ battle of the barricades. Theirs assumed the leadership of the party of reaction in the Assembly, and events were drifting towards the election of Louis Napoleon as President (Dec. 10). 4 Marrast (1801–1852) was successively member of the Provisional Government of 1848, Mayor of Paris, and President of the National Assembly.

INTRODUCTION xxxiii or less concealed under a dark indifference. However, it is to be remembered that we were in Paris at what would, under any circumstances, have been a dull period; and that we went into its worst quarters. Its best are however nearly deserted, and in the gardens of the Tuileries, where I have seen the people of an afternoon thronged like ants, and mobs of merry children skipping under and about the trees, we counted the passers-by by twos and threes, and saw nothing dancing but dead leaves. At Rouen, where we stayed about three weeks, the distress though nearly as great, is not so ghastly, and seems to be confined in its severity to the class of workmen. There seems, however, everything to be dreaded both there and at Paris—and the only door of escape seems to be the darkest—that which grapeshot opens. I do not see how another struggle for pillage is avoidable—a simple fight of the poor against the rich—desperate certainly—and likely to be renewed again and again. And the pity of it is that in the midst of all this there are many signs of the best and most patient dispositions borne down by the crowd—or ruined only for want of common humanity and kindness in their former treatment, for now, there is, I believe, nothing available—nothing to be done but by ball cartridge. Vagabonds and ruffians—undisguised—fill the streets, only waiting—not for an opportunity but for the best opportunity of attack. And yet even from the faces of these I have seen the malice and brutality vanish if a few words of ordinary humanity were spoken to them. And if there were enough merciful people in France to soothe without encouraging them, and to give them some—even the slightest—sympathy and help in such honest efforts as they make—few though they be—without telling them of their Rights or their injuries—the country might still be saved. The only hope at present is from the common sense views which have at last been forced on the bourgeoisie—who are, as well as the soldiery, thoroughly sick of the republic, and from the generally clear views of the provincials upon the whole subject—they say the king was a bad one, but better than none.

On his return from France, Ruskin established himself in a house of his own, No. 31 Park Street, Grosvenor Square, and there during the winter wrote The Seven Lamps of Architecture. During the same time he wrote for the Art Journal an account of Samuel Prout,1—the artist whose drawings had first familiarised him with French architecture, and whose work must have occurred to him at every turn in Rouen and Lisieux. The paper on Prout is reserved for publication in this edition, 1 It appeared in the number for March 1849; and was reprinted in On the Old Road (1899, vol. i. §§ 137–148). For a letter of Ruskin’s to Prout, see Vol. III. p. 662. VIII. c

xxxiv INTRODUCTION in connection with Ruskin’s later “Notes” on the same artist; but we may here remark that the paper shows how full was the author’s mind at this period of the destruction of ancient buildings, and of the value, therefore, of all pictorial records of them. A time will come, he said, when Prout’s works “will be cherished with a melancholy gratitude, when the pillars of Venice shall lie mouldering in the salt shallows of her sea, and the stones of the goodly towers of Rouen have become ballast for the barges of the Seine.” A pen-picture of Ruskin at this time of eager activity has been drawn by Dr. Furnivall, who was invited to call at Park Street one Sunday afternoon:—

“After a short chat with the wife, I saw the door open, and John Ruskin walkt softly in. I sprang up at once to take the outstretcht hand, and then and there began a friendship which was for many years the chief joy of my life. Ruskin was a tall, slight fellow, whose piercing frank blue eye lookt through you and drew you to him. A fair man, with rough light hair and reddish whiskers, in a dark blue frock coat with velvet collar, bright Oxford blue stock, black trousers and patent slippers—how vivid he is to me still ! The only blemish in his face was the lower lip, which protruded somewhat: he had been bitten there by a dog in his early youth. But you ceast to notice this as soon as he began to talk. I never met any man whose charm of manner at all approacht Ruskin’s. Partly feminine it was, no doubt; but the delicacy, the sympathy, the gentleness and affectionateness of his way, the fresh and penetrating things he said, the boyish fun, the earnestness, the interest he showd in all deep matters, combined to make a whole which I have never seen equalld.”1

In the case of The Seven Lamps, as in that of the second volume of Modern Painters,2 the book took its author at once a long and a short time to write. It will have been seen from the foregoing pages that in one sense the book occupied Ruskin for three years; he had been thinking of the subject ever since 1846; he had been accumulating materials and sketches, and some sheets at least were written early in 1848.3 But in another sense the book was written, and the illustrations prepared, quickly and under pressure, during the months November 1848 to April 1849. In the first edition, the plates were not only all drawn by the author, but they were also etched by his own hand. It had been announced for publication on his father’s birthday (May 10, 1849), but before that time 1 “Forewords” by F. J. Furnivall, to Two Letters concerning “Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds,” addressed to the Rev. F. D. Maurice in 1851, privately printed, 1890, p. 8. 2 See Vol. IV. p. xxxix. 3 See below, p. 278.

INTRODUCTION xxxv the pressure had once more begun to tell on Ruskin, and he had started, with his parents, for a holiday on the Continent. They left Folkestone on April 18, (from which place Ruskin sent his last revises of the book to W. H. Harrison,1) travelled by the railway to Paris, and thence by their usual route to Dijon on the way to Geneva and Chamouni. The work had for a while to go with them, for the plates were not yet finished—as we learn from an entry in Ruskin’s diary:—

“Slept at Sens (April 25), Thursday Mont Bard, Friday Dijon. All these evenings I was working at my last plate of Giotto. . . . At Dijon I had some difficulty in getting wax and nitric acid, had to flatter a poor engraver, and 1/ persuade a queer chemist, who could hardly put the fraction 5 into ounces.”2

The task of seeing the last revise through the press had been entrusted, as usual, to W. H. Harrison. The following letter to him from J. J. Ruskin, shows the gratitude of father and son for his unfailing help, and describes the enthusiasm with which the family party received their copy of the book:—

(VEVAY, 22nd May 1849.)—Your revision is invaluable and should be coupled with Ballantyne’s press. In fact, if a perfect book be the object, it must be sought for at Spottiswoode’s press with the Harrison Revise, and fortunate are they who can get the latter. We discover no error from beginning to end, save one naming plate 9 for 10, and in one small figure on a plate, both unimportant (both my son’s fault).3 Messrs. Smith and Co. have got up the book in a very liberal and handsome manner—good paper, type and cover. It is in fact a most creditable affair to all concerned—author included, for though I am not likely to be an impartial judge, I must say there is as much contained in the 200 pages as I have at any time met with. The critics may be in any humour they choose. I am satisfied, and they cannot much disturb or alter my opinion. I beg in my son’s name and in Mrs. R.’s and my own, to render you our warmest thanks for your kind assistance, which was of more value almost to my son than could easily be imagined, as the labour of much revision to him seems more 1 See the letter in Appendix i., p. 275. 2 “Revisiting the Hôtel de la Cloche at Dijon in later years, Mr. Ruskin showed me the room where he had ‘bitten’ the last plate in his wash-hand basin, as a careless makeshift for the regular etcher’s bath” (W. G. Collingwood’s Life of Ruskin, 1900, p. 111). “I finished my plate of the Tower of Giotto,” Ruskin elsewhere says, “for the Seven Lamps in the old inn at Sens, which Dickens has described in his wholly matchless way in the last chapter of Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings” (Proserpina, ii. ch. iv., “Giulietta”). 3 These mistakes, with a few others, were corrected in a slip of “Errata” in later copies of the book (see Bibliographical Note, p. li.).

xxxvi INTRODUCTION wearisome than the labour of composition, and if the public are at all pleased with the book, I may say they have got it, by your means, much sooner than it would otherwise have reached them. I have not heard a whisper from a single soul as to whether it is liked or not. It is not a favourable moment for works of this kind. The public mind is in a state of anxiety and agitation about politics and trade, that must prevent it receiving any discussions on the Arts with favour or attention.

A letter from Ruskin himself to W. H. Harrison, already referred to (p. xxxv.), is printed in an Appendix, in further proof of the care and trouble which that faithful friend expended in relieving the author of the drudgery of correction for the press.

The fears of Ruskin’s father that the new book might pass unnoticed in the political pre-occupations of the day were not justified by the event. The successive editions of the two volumes of Modern Painters had by this time established Ruskin’s reputation, and the announcement, in the publisher’s advertisement, of a new work from his pen had excited lively anticipation. “I congratulate you,” wrote Charlotte Brontë, “on the approaching publication of Mr. Ruskin’s new work. If The Seven Lamps of Architecture resemble their predecessor, Modern Painters, they will be no lamps at all, but a new constellation,—seven bright stars, for whose rising the reading world ought to be anxiously agape.”1 As soon as the reviews began to come in, the anxiety of Ruskin’s father was completely laid to rest. During a portion of the tour of 1849, Ruskin went for an expedition to Courmayeur by himself. The following are extracts from letters written to him by his father—sometimes ingenuous in their enthusiasm, sometimes not without their paternal barb:—

(GENEVA, July 29.)—“Miss Tweddale says your book has made a great sensation.” (31st): “Thiers has surprised and delighted the Chamber of Deputies by your doctrine of no such thing as Liberty. I think he has borrowed” . . . (August 4): “The Spectator, which Smith sets great value on, has an elaborate favourable notice on ‘Seven Lamps,’ only ascribing an infirmity of temper, quoting railroad passage in proof.2 Anne was told by American family servant that you were in American paper, and got it for us, the New York Tribune of July 13; first article is your book. They say they are willing to be learners from, rather than critics of, such a book, etc. The Daily News3 (some of the Punch people’s paper) has a capital notice. It begins: 1 This extract is a continuation of a letter already cited: see Vol. IV. p. xxxix. 2 July 28, 1849. 3 July 31, 1849.

INTRODUCTION xxxvii ‘This is a masked battery of seven pieces, which blaze away to the total extinction of the small architectural lights we may boast of, etc., etc.’ ” (August 5): “I have, at a shameful charge of ten francs, got August magazine and Dickens, quite a prohibition for parcels from England. In British Quarterly,1 under Æsthetics of Gothic architecture, they take four works, you first . . . As a critic they almost rank you with Goethe and Coleridge, and in style with Jeremy Taylor.”2

Reference to the periodicals of the time shows that Miss Tweddale did not exaggerate in saying that The Seven Lamps of Architecture “made a great sensation” in literary circles. Reviews in the daily and weekly press were prompt and numerous, and for the most part long and complimentary.3 Thus the Atlas (June 23, 1849) pronounced the book to be

“a noble and splendid production. Faith, truthfulness and thought are stamped on every line of it. When we condemn, we are forced to admire; and when we consider the entire originality of the treatment of the subject we are tempted to pronounce this one of the most striking productions of the age, as well as what it unquestionably is, the most admirable specimen of artistic poetry.”

John Bull (May 26) was another whole-hearted admirer. After referring to the now acknowledged authorship of Modern Painters, and to the position attained by the first two volumes of that work, the reviewer continued:—

“The knowledge of the works of nature, and of the efforts of art, which he brought to bear upon the subject, and the eloquence with which he unfolded his views and enforced his convictions, in that original and powerful work, have done more to elevate the art of painting in the estimation of thoughtful minds, and to impress artists with a sense of the dignity and responsibility of their vocation, when pursued in a right spirit, than all the academy lectures that were ever delivered, or the technical treatises that ever were compiled. In his new work on ‘the first of the arts,’ the Oxford Graduate . . . treats of architecture in a like spirit, and in a broader, freer, and, if anything, a nobler and more impressive manner; for the present work being free from 1 In the number for August 1849, vol. xix. pp. 46–75. The other books noticed in the same article were: An Analysis of Gothic Architecture, by Raphael and J. Arthur Brandon, 2 vols., 1847; An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of Architecture in England, by Thomas Rickman, 5th ed., 1848; and The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornament . . . by Rev. J. M. Neale and Rev. B. Webb: Oxford. 2 These extracts are reprinted from W. G. Collingwood’s Life, 1900, pp. 112–113. With the last passage cited by J. J. Ruskin, cf. Vol. II. p. 531 (account of MS. Book, No. iv.), where there should be a comma after “Taylor.” 3 In addition to the papers cited in the text, reviews appeared in the Builder (May 19), Morning Herald (May 28), Critic (June 1 and 15), Weekly Chronicle (June 3), Morning Post (June 8), Examiner (June 15), Globe (June 14), Inquirer (July 14), Architect and Building Operative (August 9 and 23).

xxxviii INTRODUCTION the controversial element, and the author not needing to descend from the height of his argument to refute and correct the error and ignorance of shallow critics, the view of the whole subject is altogether larger and more lofty, and its exalted tone is sustained throughout, sounding like a hymn to architectural loveliness.”

Ruskin’s heresies on the subject of railways were a stumbling-block to other papers beside the Spectator—to the Builder, for instance, and the Globe; but the reviewer in Britannia (May 26) warned its readers against making light even of Ruskin’s “eccentricities”:—

“We so seldom in these days meet with an author of really original and independent thought, that we may be excused for dwelling at some length on this striking and able volume. Mr. Ruskin’s mind is of that vigorous and searching nature which can be satisfied with nothing less than the elucidation of pure principles in art. He will accept nothing mean because it is showy, nothing vicious because it is common, nothing false because it is specious. . . . He observes and he investigates for himself; and, gaining thus very clear and very decided conceptions, he expresses himself in a strain of copious eloquence, which rivets the mind by its fulness of meaning, and fascinates the fancy by its singular appropriateness of language and richness of imagery. . . . Writing like this is so rare that we cannot expect it to soon become popular; . . . even its eccentricities are most acceptable and wholesome as a stimulus to mental exertion. But we must be careful not to class as eccentricity what at first appears strange and even incomprehensible. It is the distinctive province of original genius to surprise us by the boldness and novelty of its conceptions—to make discoveries which we were not prepared to receive, and which, therefore, we hesitate to adopt; and this is so true that perhaps no author well worth a second reading ever thoroughly satisfied us with a first.”

The monthly and quarterly magazines were equally appreciative of the book. Almost without exception, they noticed it, and added to favourable criticisms long extracts or a careful analysis of the author’s argument.1 His old enemies, however, were not appeased. Blackwood still found Ruskin “verbose, tedious, obscure and extravagant,” and was especially puzzled and sarcastic with his “breaking loose” in so “strange 1 In addition to the reviews quoted in the text, articles on the book appeared in The Art Journal (October 1849, vol. xi. p. 324), the Church of England Quarterly (July 1849, vol. xxvi. pp. 170–188), Sharpe’s London Journal (1849, vol. ix. pp. 252–256), North British Review (February 1850, vol. xii. pp. 309–353), Fraser’s Magazine (February 1850, vol. xli. pp. 151–159), the Anglo-Saxon (April 1850, vol. ii. pp. 319–336, review signed B.S.), Christian Observer (October 1850, vol. l. pp. 684–698), English Review (March 1851, vol. xv. pp. 55–76), North American Review (April 1851, vol. lxxii. pp. 294–316, article by S. G. Brown), Edinburgh Review (October 1851, vol. xciv. pp. 365–403).

INTRODUCTION xxxix a manner” as to test architecture by its influence on the life of the workman.1 The critic of the Athenæum (September 1), though by no means abandoning his facetious hostility to the author, yet confessed that he was sorry when he came to the end of the book:—

“It has given us some violent, yet withal pleasant, exercise. We had been taken up as by some enchanter’s wand—whirled through whole regions of fancy and thought,—now lifted to the skies, now dashed down again,—and in fact on arriving at last on terra firma we scarcely knew to what realms the author had or had not conducted us. . . . On the whole, however, by merely stirring up the subject, and courting an investigation into true and rightful elementary principles, Mr. Ruskin’s work, were it three times as full of eccentricities as it is, must do good, and we hope lasting, service.”

Many architects and architectural writers were, as might be expected, contemptuous or indignant, or both; and Ruskin was denounced as impracticable or mad. A good answer to this line of criticism was supplied at the time in the Ecclesiologist (October 1849, vol. x. pp. 111–120), the organ of the Cambridge Camden Society:—

“It was not to be an architect’s vade mecum that this volume was written; its aim is to discover the mighty principles which made ancient art what it was, and to commend the same to us. And we willingly give our testimony that Mr. Ruskin has with marvellour intelligence and force accomplished this aim.”

More reasonable was the wrath of some of the ecclesiastical journals—such as the Rambler: a “Catholic Journal and Review” (July 1849, vol. iv. pp. 193–201), which fell foul of the author’s “intolerance and over-bearing spirit”—a criticism which, as we shall see, was in after years entirely endorsed by Ruskin himself, who in the case of this book as in that of some others was among the sanest, and not the least severe, of the critics. He would not have quarrelled greatly with the following exhortation with which the Guardian (June 6, 1849) concluded a long and otherwise favourable review:—

“He has himself stated, in impressive and not timid words, that primal necessity, that law of stint and measure, from which even the works of the Divine Architect have not been exempted; which nothing in nature or art can violate, and live. Original and creative powers he has shown—we want 1 September 1851, vol. lxx. pp. 326–348: an article on the new editions of Modern Painters, vols. i. and ii.; the Seven Lamps; Stones of Venice, vol. i. ; and the Construction of Sheepfolds.

xl INTRODUCTION evidence of shaping and directing ones. We want the force and truth of individual thought without the importunity of individual fancy, or the infirmities of individual humour—something which should witness, as every great work does, that its author, from the beginning, had scanned and taken the measure of all his ground—had in the germ descried the whole chain and order of the developed result—had kept, from the first, in firm and steady adjustment, the parts of that whole which was ever present to his mind; and, as it gradually unfolded itself, had never lost hold of the key which regulated its progress—sacrificing what pleased at the moment to what would satisfy hereafter—throwing aside what hung loose and discursive on the main theme, however urgent and keen the present feeling—judging though not coldly, yet seriously—yielding to the enthusiasm of admiration, but jealously guarding his disapprobation from the weak phrases of offended fastidiousness or dislike.”

On the whole the contemporary reviews of The Seven Lamps of Architecture are creditable to the critical fairness and insight of the day; they anticipated what seems likely to be the verdict of posterity. The book, predicted one of the critics, will establish for itself “a place among the standard works of English Literature.”1 Nor was it only with the critics of the press that Ruskin’s volume made a hit. A year or two later, he was invited to the Master’s Lodge at Trinity College, Cambridge, where his architectural studies secured him interesting talks with the great archæological authorities of the day—Whewell himself and Professor Willis. Letters to his father show with what consideration he was treated:—

TRINITY LODGE, Sunday evening [April 6, 1851].

I could not write to you last night. We got here at twenty minutes past five, and there was a large dinner-party at ¼ past six. It is a beautiful house,—far superior to our Dean’s at Christ Church, back rooms with oriel windows deep embayed, plenty of light, and fine dark furniture, carved wood, etc., all very beautiful. . . . Large dinner: heads of colleges, etc., and Professor Willis, with whom I fore-gathered, of course, and enjoyed myself.

Monday [April 7, 1851].

. . . Dr. and Mrs. Whewell are most kind, and delightfully easy to live with—he is marvellously different from our formalist Oxford heads. Everybody fêtes us here exceedingly, and I have had some nice chats with Professor Willis; but I am quite resting—taking no notes and getting as much relaxation as possible. . . . To-morrow we go to Ely, with Dr. Whewell and Professor Willis. 1 Dublin University Magazine (July 1849, vol. xxxiv. pp. 1–14).

INTRODUCTION xli The phrase quoted above from one of the reviews—it “sounds like a hymn to architectural loveliness”—well expresses one quality of The Seven Lamps. Ruskin in later years found fault with the fine writing of the book.1 It was published, we should remember, when the author was thirty years old. It displays, as Professor Norton says, “the ardour and exuberance of comparative youth, alike in its literary style and in the zeal of its moral enthusiasm.”2 There are passages which are perhaps overcharged with ornament; but how many there are also which have imparted to the mind of every reader a fresh interest in mediæval architecture, and invested it with an element of deeper sentiment! There is probably nobody who does not find something to disagree with in The Seven Lamps of Architecture. But many of those who differ from the author most often would find, upon taking a careful inventory of their mental furniture, that they would be much the poorer, in their thoughts and feelings about architecture, if he had never published this book. “No man of feeling,” says Mr. Frederic Harrison, of the peroration to “The Lamp of Sacrifice,” “who has in him the echoes of this funeral sermon, can stand before a great mediæval cathedral without being conscious that it has gained for him a new meaning, a sublimer pathos.”3 Architects as a rule are not among the greatest admirers of the book; they often misunderstand its scope;4 many of the author’s obiter dicta are fanciful or doubtful; he did nothing to conciliate professional opinion, and the ideals he set before the profession were exacting.5 But, as with painters,6 so with architects: Ruskin’s “hymn” has exercised a potent influence in asserting the dignity, and enhancing the reputation, of their art.7 The profession in its corporate capacity showed its appreciation of his services by proposing in 1874 to confer a Gold Medal upon him—an honour which he declined;8 and by passing a vote of condolence with his relatives on the occasion of his death. Mr. J. M. Brydon, Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, in proposing the vote, said that “Mr. Ruskin had been a power in the country for over half a century. In their own particular art probably no man in this 1 See “Advice” of 1880, on p. 17. 2 Introduction to the American “Brantwood Edition,” 1891, p. ix. 3 John Ruskin, in the “English Men of Letters” Series, 1902, p. 60. 4 See above, p. xxxix. 5 See on this point The Two Paths, preface of 1859, where Ruskin discusses the objection of architect-readers to his proposition that architects should be sculptors. 6 See Vol. IV. p. xlvii. 7 See James Fergusson’s History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, 3rd ed., revised by Robert Kerr, F.R.I.B.A., 1891, vol. ii. pp. 123–124. 8 The correspondence which passed on that occasion will be found in a later volume of this edition.

xlii INTRODUCTION age had influenced architects as he had. He was responsible to a great extent for that wave of Venetian Gothic which passed over the country, notable examples of which were to be found in Oxford and in London. He was the man who probably first awakened the English people to a knowledge of what art really meant: art in the life of its people, art in the true sense of the word, as an ennobling faculty which raised men, and induced in them a longing for higher and nobler things. Probably in that connection no work had had more influence and deserved higher commendation, not only to students of architecture, but to all who were striving for culture, than that magnificent book, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, and particularly those chapters which dealt with Truth and with Sacrifice.”1 The influence of The Seven Lamps of Architecture has, however, been something else besides that of “a hymn to architectural loveliness.” Its central idea and many of its leading principles made an epoch in the study of architecture, and exercised considerable influence upon its practice and development. “The present volume,” says Professor Charles Eliot Norton, “is, so far as I know, the first treatise in English to teach the real significance of Architecture as the most trustworthy record of the Life and Faith of nations.” “The book I called The Seven Lamps was to show,” says Ruskin, “that certain right states of temper and moral feeling were the magic powers by which all good architecture had been produced.”2 Ruskin had seized this truth securely, long before he wrote the volume. It is stated—incidentally, though clearly—in his first essay, that on The Poetry of Architecture. Various parallels between that work and the Seven Lamps are cited in notes to the text, but special attention may be called here to the passage in the earlier essay (§ 225 n., Vol. I. p. 168), where Ruskin remarks that in art people “cannot seem what they cannot be”; that a nation which is “modest in feeling, will not be insolent in stone”; that the beauty of architecture must be found “in the pure and animating spirit which keeps it from the coldness of the grave.” This fundamental doctrine, adds Professor Norton, “is sound, and needs to be enforced to-day no less than forty years ago. It is, that in architecture, as well as in the other fine arts, the final test of the excellence of a work is the spirit of which it is the expression, and of which it gives evidence alike in its design and in its execution,—evidence all the more convincing because of its unintentional and inevitable character. The nature of this evidence is set forth with admirable force and clearness in those parts of the volume which treat directly of the principles and the works of 1 Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. vii. (3rd series), p. 116. 2 Crown of Wild Olive, § 65.

INTRODUCTION xliii architecture. The book is of value alike to the professional architect, and to the intelligent layman who desires to understand the meaning of the monuments in which past generations have embodied their moral history, for the delight, the instruction, and the service of their successors.”1 In the treatment of the several “Lamps,” Ruskin’s book has been equally suggestive. It applied to Architecture the same touchstone of truth and sincerity that he had already employed in Modern Painters. “It shook conventional ideas,” says Mr. Harrison, “to the root, and flung forth a body of new and pregnant ideas.” The book contains much that is disputable; but “the truths were cemented into the foundations, and have stood solid and unshaken for two generations. The law of Truth in Art stands beside Carlyle’s protest against ‘shams’! That a building should look what it is, and be what it is built to serve—no one now dares dispute. That beauty itself comes second to truth, and must be sought in the architecture of Nature herself; . . . all this is now the alphabet of sound art.”2 And The Seven Lamps was among the most potent of school-masters in teaching the letters.3 The main significance of the book, and its general influence thus exerted, are independent of particular fashions in architecture, and are not affected by the dogmatisms, paradoxes, assumptions and preferences of the author on particular points. It should however be noticed further that the appearance of The Seven Lamps exercised considerable influence in strengthening the Gothic Revival then in progress.4 To this matter, further reference will be necessary in later volumes; as also to Ruskin’s influence in the preservation of ancient buildings. He himself in looking back felt only a sense of bitter disappointment and vexation. He measured results by his hopes, and saw nothing but failure in them. But great though the process of restoration and destruction has been during the last two generations, even less would have been spared if it had not been for the principles which he laid down in this volume, and for the passionate enthusiasm with which he enforced them. 1 Preface to the American “Brantwood Edition,” 1891, pp. ix.–x. 2 John Ruskin, 1902, pp. 57–59. 3 According to one of Ruskin’s French critics, his architectural books are the most important: “C’est en étudiant l’architecture, qu’il a écrit le plus de livres, trouvé les pages les plus éloquentes, formulé les idées les plus justes. Les volumes qu’il lui a consacrés forment la partie la plus durable de son œuvre par la minutie des recherches, la profondeur des connaissances techniques” (Le Mouvement idéaliste et social dans la Litterature anglaise au XIXe siécle. John Ruskin. By Jacques Bardoux (Paris: 1900), pp. 300–301). 4 For a discussion of the influence of The Seven Lamps and The Stones of Venice on “the battle of the styles,” see an article by Professor Kerr, entitled “Ruskin and Emotional Architecture,” in the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. vii. (3rd Series), p. 187.

xliv INTRODUCTION To the student of Ruskin The Seven Lamps of Architecture is of further interest for the anticipation of social and political ideas which were afterwards to colour all his work. The book was written, as we have seen, in the stirring times of 1848—of Chartism at home and revolution abroad; his studies of French architecture were made during the progress of the revolution of that year. To earnest and thoughtful minds it must always be matter of desire to establish some harmony between studies in different spheres; to bring into relation conclusions arrived at in one field with things observed in another. This attempt is manifest in many passages of the present volume, and especially in the last chapter. “In these books of mine,” said Ruskin at the end of Modern Painters,1 “their distinctive character, as essays on art, is their bringing everything to a root in human passion or human hope. . . . Every principle of painting which I have stated is traced to some vital or spiritual fact; and in my works on architecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another, is founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the workman—a question by all other writers on the subject of architecture wholly forgotten or despised.” The point was to be made more fully in The Stones of Venice,2 of which (says Ruskin elsewhere) the object was to teach “the dependence of all human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy life of the workman.”3 But the doctrine is implied in much of the argument in the Seven Lamps, and is at the end stated explicitly.4 Ruskin was already proceeding on the lines on which he afterwards based his teaching at Oxford; he was connecting architecture with social reconstruction: “so, from day to day, and strength to strength, you shall build up indeed, by Art, by Thought, and by Just Will, an Ecclesia of England, of which it shall not be said, ‘See what manner of stones are here,’ but ‘See what manner of men.’ ”5

It is curious at first sight that a book, which critical judges have ranked among Ruskin’s principal works, and which in later years has been among the most widely read of them, should be the one in which its author seemed to take least satisfaction, and which he allowed to remain longest out of print. The first edition was published, as we have seen, in 1849. The second edition appeared in 1855. The book was the first of 1 Vol. v. pt. ix. ch. i. § 7. 2 In vol. ii. ch. vi.—“The Nature of Gothic,” afterwards reprinted by William Morris; “the most important chapter in the whole book,” Ruskin calls it (Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 76). 3 Fors Clavigera, Letter 78. 4 See pp. 218, 264. 5 Lectures on Art, § 125.

INTRODUCTION xlv Ruskin’s volumes to appear with illustrations, and these were not in all respects satisfactory. He had in the preface to the first edition apologised for “the hasty and imperfect execution of the Plates.” An author who thus gives his critics a lead in disparagement never lacks those to follow it, and the Morning Herald (May 28, 1849), to quote one example only, declared the illustrations to be “so very rudely executed as to be actually repulsive, and some of them hardly intelligible.” This was the more common criticism, though some of the reviewers perceived the vigour of the workmanship. “Though only rough sketches,” said the Guardian (June 6), “not always so complete as to be entirely clear, they are executed with masterly boldness, and we doubt not, where that is aimed at, masterly accuracy. No one can look at them, at any rate, the second time, without seeing in them what power and life the sketch of a detail may manifest, and learning, in the purity of their roughest, and the decision and sureness of their wildest, lines, the difference between the rudeness of power and perfect knowledge, and the rudeness of confusion and incapacity.” That Ruskin could draw architecture with singular delicacy, has been shown already by reproductions in earlier volumes, and will be shown further in following volumes. But the plates in the first edition of The Seven Lamps were engraved by himself, in soft-ground etching, a process of which he picked up the technique as he went along;1 he executed some of the plates, moreover, in a hurry, and under disadvantageous conditions, biting them in the wash-hand basins of hotel bedrooms. Finding the roughness of his work more blamed, than its vigour and faithfulness appreciated, Ruskin repented of his own slighting reference to them. A letter to his publisher in that sense is here given in Appendix I. (p. 276); and in the first volume of The Stones of Venice (Appendix 8), he said in public a good word for his plates. Though “black, overbitten and hastily drawn,” “their truth,” he protested, “is carried to an extent never before attempted in architectural drawing.” They represented “the architecture itself with its actual shadows at the time of day at which it was drawn, and with every fissure and line of it as they now exist.” But the plates would hardly have served for a second edition (see below, p. xlix.), and this fact may account in part for the original delay in re-issuing the book. When a second edition was contemplated, Ruskin had the illustrations re-engraved, and in one case prepared a new drawing. From 1855 to 1880 no further edition of The Seven Lamps appeared; and for the greater part of those twenty-five years the book was out of print. The author’s disappointment in it, which in part explains this state of things, is sufficiently expressed in the notes of 1880, included in 1 See pp. 16, 279.

xlvi INTRODUCTION this edition. The sectarian bitterness was the principal fault he found with what he calls in one place “this wretched rant of a book.”1 The intolerance and bigotry of occasional passages may justify Ruskin’s later strictures. It is, however, worth noting that the circumstances of the time may have afforded some reason, if not a justification, for his emphasis on such points. The architectural revival of the time was associated in the person of some of its leaders with High Ritualism, and Ruskin may on this account have deemed it desirable to emphasise strongly his Protestant standpoint.2 The sense, above alluded to, that nothing had come of his book,—that modern progress had gone its way, regardless of his preachings3—was another feeling which made him lose interest in the essay. More material considerations may be added. Ruskin was not yet dependent upon his pen for his livelihood, nor were his works pushed by the publisher with as much energy as their subsequent history showed them to be capable of responding to. These circumstances, added to Ruskin’s distaste for mere revision, when he had so many new works in progress or in contemplation, sufficed to send The Seven Lamps out of print for nearly a quarter of a century. In beginning the republication of some of his books in 1871, Ruskin had some idea of reviving portions of the essay,4 but he did not carry it out: The Seven Lamps was not included in his “Works” as then prepared. To Mr. George Allen is due the credit of bringing back The Seven Lamps of Architecture from the position of a scarce book into current literature. In 1878 Ruskin had purchased from Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. all the interest in his plates; and those used for the second edition of Seven Lamps were found to be in excellent condition.5 The book continued to be much asked for, and in default of any re-issue in England the American pirated editions were largely imported. Mr. Allen pointed these facts out to Ruskin, assuring him at the same time that a new edition would financially be an assured success—a factor in the case which had now become of some importance. “We will talk over the new edition,” wrote Ruskin, “which I am really minded to do—now, for several reasons besides the not despicable £1500.” His mood towards the book and the task of revising it, varied, however, not a little, and the business of 1 See p. 194. 2 See in this connection some remarks in The Christian Observer’s review of the book (Oct. 1850, vol. 1. pp. 684–685). 3 See pp. 66, 106, 110, 117, 127, 128, 159, 194, 245. 4 Sesame and Lilies, preface of 1871, § 2. 5 “Steel,” writes Mr. Allen, “was good in those days, and did not want anything more done to it. These steels have stood wonderfully well, and up to the present time (September 1889) have not been retouched” (Note in Wise and Smart’s Bibliography, 1889, i. 15).

INTRODUCTION xlvii putting that sum into the author’s pocket seems to have required a good deal of patience and diplomacy on the publisher’s part. Some extracts from Ruskin’s letters are of interest as illustrating the temper in which the notes of 1880 were written:—

BRANTWOOD, August 1, 1879. MY DEAR ALLEN,—I am very glad you were able to send me this 7 Lamps, while I was in the humour to look at it. I have quite seen what is to be done. The chapters being all paragraphed, I shall put all comments into an Appendix—referring to the paragraphs—and purchasable separately. People who have the book, may thus bind my last comments with it, the copies for separate purchase being printed on paper of the 7 Lamps size. I am much pleased, as I glance at it—by the perfect harmony with Fors! and by the discipline of style—so different from my present manner. The extreme and quite unaffected modesty surprises me! I had no idea I was ever like that ! At present—if any man ventures to say a word in opposition to me, I merely punch his head, and speak no more to him! . . . Ever affectionately yours, J. R.

(August 3) . . . I think the added notes will be interesting, if I could but get Time. I have strength enough for anything yet—if only I had days enough.

From another letter it appears that at this moment the re-arrangement was to include the omission of two plates which Ruskin did not like, and the abstraction of “the pretty frontispiece for another book on Giotto’s Tower.” A few days later, it seemed likely that the whole scheme would be abandoned. Ruskin’s abuse of his old work, whether in private letters or published footnotes, need not, it may be remarked in passing, be taken too seriously. He was fond of running down the books which the public liked best, by way of exalting those which were less popular:—

Aug. 15.—I’ve made myself quite sick and ill in trying to revise 7 L.—The utterly useless twaddle of it—the shallow piety and sonorous talk are very loathsome to me; and I can’t go on with it just now. The actual teaching of it is all right, and some bits are good—but it is all Fool’s Paradise. I can’t be plagued with it more just now. . . . I’ve fifty things in my head (prosody,1 etc.) and ever so many more half in type . . .

The book was accordingly returned to the publisher, who, however, bided his time, and in the autumn Ruskin was inclined to resume work on 1 Elements of English Prosody for use in St. George’s Schools, issued in October 1880.

xlviii INTRODUCTION it. His earlier mood now returned. He found the original book tolerable, and enjoyed writing the new notes. They were completed in November; some additions and a new preface were sent to press in February, and at the end of May the new (third) edition of the book was published. A feature of the 1880 edition was the distinguishing, by means of thicker type, of passages which the author considered especially note-worthy.1 They were called “Aphorisms,” and a concise summary of each was given in a marginal note. By a “grotesque mischance,” Ruskin forgot to explain this novelty in his new Preface, and an “Advice” had to be inserted to repair the omission (see below, p. 17). It is unnecessary to follow here the subsequent history of the book, which is set forth in the Bibliographical Note. It may however be stated generally that The Seven Lamps of Architecture has since 1880 been by far the most widely circulated of Ruskin’s larger books on art.

It remains to explain the arrangement of the book in this edition. The text is, as usual, that last revised by the author; in this case, that of the 1880 edition. It has, however, been made complete by the inclusion of all the original notes. Of these—seventeen in number—twelve were omitted in 1880; they are here restored. (For their arrangement, see notes on pp. liii., 267.) The additional notes of 1880 are distinguished by the insertion of that date at the end. Variations in the text of successive editions are given in footnotes or (in the case of those of little significance) in a supplementary Appendix (p. 288). Again, the Preface of the Second Edition, of which in the 1880 edition some portion was omitted, and some figured as an Appendix, is here given in its entirety. The summaries of the Aphorisms here, as in the 1880 edition, are given as marginal notes; but the black-type, in which the aphoristic passages were then printed, has not been adopted. Ruskin himself did not like it. He admitted in a letter to Mr. Allen (Dec. 5) that the appearance was not “graceful,” and he had discussed various alternatives; such as the use of ordinary type “leaded,” or a marking of the passages “by arrows at the side of the page.” In this uniform edition of Ruskin’s Works, the passages in question are printed in the ordinary type, but a footnote is in each case supplied indicating the words which were put into black-letter in 1880.

The manuscripts, etc., of this volume to which the editors have had access are (1) the MS. of the book, (2) a copy of the second edition corrected by Ruskin for the revised edition of 1880. The latter is referred to in 1 A similar plan was adopted in the reprint in 1887 of the Oxford Lectures on Art (see preface to that edition).

INTRODUCTION xlix footnotes to the text as “The corrected copy.” The MS. is described in Appendix II. (pp. 278–287), where several additional passages are given. Examples of characteristic variations between the MS. and the printed text are given in the footnotes.

A facsimile of a page of the author’s MS. is given between pp. 222 and 223; it is of the well-known description of Champagnole, at the beginning of the chapter on “The Lamp of Memory.”

The plates in this edition are, with the exception of one additional plate, reproductions by photogravure of those prepared for the second edition of 1855. Except in the case of the frontispiece, the scale has been slightly reduced to fit the page of this edition. The original plates of 1849, etched by Ruskin’s own hand, were entrusted by him to Mr. Allen. After careful experiments, they have been found not to be in a fit state for use. It would have been possible to retouch them into some semblance at any rate of their pristine state, but the interest of them, as the author’s own handiwork, would thereby have been destroyed. They have accordingly been broken up. By fortunate chance, however, one unused plate, etched by Ruskin, has been found among those in Mr. Allen’s keeping. It is a second version of Plate IX. (“Tracery of the Campanile of Giotto, Florence”) in the original edition. It differs in two or three respects from the plate used in that edition, and is decidedly stronger and more effective. In the second edition, Plate IX. was cancelled, a frontispiece—engraved by Armytage from a new drawing of the same subject—being substituted. The inclusion of the duplicate plate etched by Ruskin makes the present edition complete, and gives a characteristic example of the author’s handiwork which illustrated the original edition. An index to the plates, added in this edition, will, it is hoped, be found convenient for reference. The remaining illustration is a facsimile (both in colour and in design) of the ornamental binding of the first and second editions.1 E. T. C. 1 For a description of the design, see below, p. 185. VIII. d

Imperial 8vo, pp. xii. +205. The title-page contained the first avowal of the identity of Ruskin with the “Graduate” as the author of Modern Painters. A catalogue of books published by Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co., which was bound up at the end of the volume, announced The Stones of Venice as being “in preparation.” The Preface occupied pp. v.-viii. (here pp. 3–6); the Notes, pp. 199–205 (for the distribution of these here, see pp. liii., 267). Before p. 1 a slip was inserted in some copies containing the following Errata:—

Page vii., line 11, for “a a a2” read “a a2.” ” ” line 13, for “a a a2” read “a a2.” ” 50, bottom line, for “si,” read “is.” ” 54, line 7,} ” 55, line 16,}for “Plate IX.,” read “Plate X.” ” 58, line 18, for “e d,” read “c d.” ” 81, line 12, for “Plate I. fig. 2” read “Plate I. fig. 3.” ” 92, line 23, for “east” read “west.” ” 101, line 5 from bottom, for “effects” read “affects.” In Plate X. in the section, between a and h, for “a ” read “g .” 2 2

There were Fourteen Plates, etched by Ruskin’s own hand; collectors should note that every plate of this original series is distinctly signed in the left-hand corner at the foot “J. R. del et sc.”; they are also all lettered at the foot, “Published by Smith, Elder & Co., London.” The volume was issued in embossed and designed cloth boards of a deep claret colour, with the top edge gilt, and lettered up the back (in ornamental letters), “The Seven Lamps of Architecture.” The design and lettering are here reproduced (p. 185). Published on May 10, 1849, at the price of One Guinea. Copies of this first edition have in recent years fetched in the auction-rooms prices ranging from £2, 17s. 6d. to £5, 5s. according to their condition. li

Imperial 8vo, pp. xx. +205. The addition to the preliminary pages was caused by a new “Preface to the Second Edition,” pp. ix.–xv. (here pp. 7–14). The body of the book was reprinted page for page, though with several alterations in the words (see here, e.g., notes on pp. 30, 55, 62, 135, 147, 239, and list of minor variants in Appendix iii., pp. 288–289). The plates of the first edition were all withdrawn, their place being taken by a new set. The new plates were inserted opposite the same pages as in ed. 1, except that Plate IX. was transferred from its original position to serve as a frontispiece. (This alteration was not noted by the author in revising the text; see below, p. 187.) Plate IX. (of the same subject as before) was engraved by J. C. Armytage from a new drawing by the author. The other plates were re-etched by R. P. Cuff from the original drawings. All the 2nd ed. illustrations are here reproduced. In ed. 2 the plates were all lettered at foot, “Published by Smith, Elder, & Co., London.” The binding was identical with ed. 1. Published on July 23, 1855, at One Guinea. Copies of this second edition have in recent years fetched in the auction-rooms prices ranging from £2, 6s. to £4 10s., according to their condition. Before the book was reprinted in 1880, prices of both the earlier editions were often twice the sums mentioned above.

Imperial 8vo, pp. xvi. +222. A new Preface for this edition occupied pp. v.–vii. (here pp. 15–17); the Preface to the First Edition, pp. ix.–xii. For the treatment in the 1880 edition of the Preface to the Second Edition, see below, p. 7 n. The text of the body of the work was reprinted from ed. 2, with a few omissions (see below, pp. 41, 63) and minor alterations (see, e.g., pp. 85, 180). But thirty-three passages were printed as “aphorisms” in black-letter (“Clarendon”) type, the substance of these aphorisms being given (as in the present volume) in side-headings (see on this subject, p. xlviii., above). It was not until a portion of the edition had been disposed of that Ruskin noticed the fact that his new Preface gave no explanation of this arrangement. In the remaining copies of the edition, a slip was inserted before page 1, called “Advice” and dated “Brantwood, Coniston, May 26th, 1880.”

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE liii This Advice is here reprinted on p. 17. It was succeeded by the following list of Errata:—

The reader is requested to note, and correct at once, the following errata:— P. 5. Last line but one of note; for “in force” read “if forced.” P. 55. Note 19. Of course I did not get the intended preface written. P. 89. Last line but one of note; “or St. Francis” has got slipped into the upper line by mistake—it should come after “George Herbert.” P. 94. Last line but one of the 33rd note. Insert “traceries” after “stupidest.” P. 119. The 43rd note should have referred to the 41st and 44th. P. 144. In note 50, for “or blue” read “on blue.”

This edition contained 55 new notes by the author, printed beneath the text, here distinguished by the date “[1880].” The notes in eds. 1 and 2 were cancelled, except Nos. 4 and 5, which were given in Appendix II.; No. 7, reprinted with alterations as Appendix III.; No. 11, which was given as Appendix IV.; and No. 17, reprinted with additions as Appendix V. (For the arrangement of the notes in the present volume, see below1). Appendix I. in ed. 3 was a reprint of a portion of the Preface to ed. 2 (see below, pp. 7–8 nn.). The plates used in ed. 2 were again employed in ed. 3. The new edition of 1880 was issued in “mottled grey” boards, with the title-page reproduced on the front cover, and a white-paper label on the back which reads: “The | Seven Lamps | of | Architecture | By | John Ruskin | 1880.” Some copies are, however, bound in green cloth, lettered on the back in gilt “Ruskin | The | Seven Lamps | of | Architecture | 1880.” Printed on Whatman’s hand-made paper. Published in May 1880 at the price of Two Guineas (also 75 Large Paper Copies, half-atlas quarto, at four guineas). 1 The following list shows the placing of the notes in successive editions. Eds. 1 and 2 had 17 notes at the end of the text, which were afterwards thus placed (the term “third edition” applies equally, it will be understood, to all subsequent editions until the present one):—

Note 1. Omitted in ed. 3 ; p. 267 in this ed. " 2. " " " " ; p. 40 " " " 3. " " " " ; p. 41 " " " 4. Appendix ii. in ed. 3 ; p. 52 " " " 5. " " " " ; p. 65 " " " 6. Omitted in ed. 3 ; p. 66 " " " 7. Appendix iii. in ed. 3 ; p. 269 " " " 8. Omitted in ed. 3 ; p. 67 " " " 9. " " " " ; p. 88 " " " 10. " " " " ; p. 129 " " " 11. Appendix iv. in ed. 3 ; p. 131 " " " 12. Omitted in ed. 3 ; p. 168 " " " 13. " " " " ; p. 177 " " " 14. " " " " ; p. 185 " " " 15. " " " " ; p. 223 " " " 16. " " " " ; p. 239 " " " 17. Appendix v. in ed. 3 ; p. 271 " "

liv BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Fourth Edition (1883).—This is an exact reprint of the 1880 edition, except that (1) “Fourth Edition” is substituted for “New Edition” on the title-page, and that the date is altered; (2) the errata noticed above are corrected, and (3) the “Advice” becomes a “Note,” inserted immediately after the title-page. Issued in green cloth with white-paper label which reads: “The | Seven Lamps | of | Architecture | By | John Ruskin | 1883.” Published in July 1883 at One Guinea.

Fifth Edition (1886).—Again an exact reprint except for the substitution of “Fifth Edition” on the title-page and the alteration of date. Issued in brown cloth, lettered on the back in gilt “Ruskin | The Seven Lamps | of | Architecture | 1886.” Published in July 1886 at One Guinea. Reprinted in November 1889 (Sixth Edition). Price reduced in July 1900 to 15s.

Crown 8vo, pp. xxii. +401. The text is again a reprint of the 1880 edition. The frontispiece was printed from an electrotype specially prepared for this edition. The other plates were reproduced, on a smaller scale, in photogravure by Messrs. Goupil & Co., worked upon (in nearly all cases) by Mr. George Allen. Issued in the usual cloth boards, lettered across the back “Ruskin | The | Seven Lamps | of | Architecture | George Allen.” The title of the book was placed on the middle of the back instead of at the top, so that this edition does not range exactly (as re-issues of it did) with the corresponding “small editions” of the other works. Published on April 3, 1890, at the price of 7s. 6d. 3000 copies were printed; also 400 copies on Whatman’s hand-made paper (large post 8vo), with the plates on India paper, at 15s. Re-issues of the small edition have been published as follows:—3000 (Sept. 1890), 5000 (May 1891), 3000 (1894), 2000 (1895), 2000 (1897), 2000 (1898), 2000 (1899), 2000 (1900), 2000 (1901), 2000 (1903): (“Thirty-third thousand” on title-page.) The issues of 1894 and subsequent years included the index next described.

Royal 8vo, pp. 32. Issued in white-paper wrappers, with Title on front, and the following “Note” on p. 2:— “This issue is limited as follows:—Two large paper copies on Whatman hand-made paper, uniform with the large paper 1880 edition of the ‘Seven

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE lv Lamps.’ Twenty small paper copies on the like paper, uniform with the ordinary copies of the 1880 edition. Thirty copies uniform with the 1883 (quarto) edition.”

Unauthorised American editions of The Seven Lamps have been very numerous, and in various styles, from a “People’s edition” at 50 cents to a “Beautiful edition” at six dollars. These editions, in some of which the author’s illustrations are shamefully traduced, were often smuggled into this country, and this was one of the considerations which led to his re-issue of the book in 1880. The first American edition was published by John Wiley in 1849 (12mo, pp. 186).

An authorised “Brantwood edition” (uniform with the “small edition” described above), was published at New York in 1891, with an Introduction by Charles Eliot Norton (pp. v.–x.).

An authorised French translation appeared in 1900 in a volume entitled “John Ruskin, La Couronne d’ Olivier sauvage: Les Sept Lampes de l’ Architecture. Traduction de George Elwall” (Paris: Société d’ Edition Artistique). The “Seven Lamps” occupies pp. 83–277; the Introductory Chapter, Prefaces, Notes and Appendices are not included. The illustrations of the 1890 English edition are given.

A German translation by Wilhelm Schoelermann—“Die Sieben Leuchter der Baukunst”—appeared in 1900 as the first volume of “John Ruskin: Ausgewählte Werke in vollständiger Uebersetzung” (Leipzig: Eugen Diederichs). The text followed is that of the 1880 edition; the plates of the 1890 edition are somewhat roughly reproduced. The translator puts together passages from the three prefaces and dates his compost “Coniston, 1880.” He also makes various curtailments in the text, as explained in a “Nachwort” (p. 408). A short index is given, and the translator supplies an introduction (pp. 1–3).

THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE

VII A

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION1 [1849]

§ 1. THE memoranda which form the basis of the following Essay have been thrown together during the preparation of one of the sections of the third volume of Modern Painters.* I once thought of giving them a more expanded form; but their utility, such as it may be, would probably be diminished by farther delay in their publication, more than it would be increased by greater care in their arrangement. Obtained in every case by personal observation, there may be among them some details valuable even to the experienced architect; but with respect to the opinions founded upon them I must be prepared to bear the charge of impertinence which can hardly but attach to the writer who assumes a dogmatical tone in speaking of an art he has never practised. There are, however, cases in which men feel too keenly to be silent, and perhaps too strongly to be wrong; I have been forced into this impertinence; and have suffered too much from the * The inordinate delay in the appearance of that supplementary volume has, indeed, been chiefly owing to the necessity under which the writer felt himself, of obtaining as many memoranda as possible of mediæval buildings in Italy and Normandy,2 now in process of destruction, before that destruction should be consummated by the Restorer, or Revolutionist. His whole time has been lately occupied in taking drawings from one side of buildings, of which masons were knocking down the other; nor can he yet pledge himself to any time for the publication of the conclusion of Modern Painters; he can only promise that its delay shall not be owing to any indolence on his part.

1 [For various drafts of this preface collated from the MSS., and containing some additional information with regard to the preparation of the book, see Appendix ii., pp. 278–281. The Preface was reprinted in the second and later editions. The paragraphs are here numbered for purposes of reference.] 2 [For Ruskin’s tour of 1848 in Normandy, see above, Introduction, p. xxix.] 3

4 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION destruction or neglect of the architecture I best loved, and from the erection of that which I cannot love, to reason cautiously respecting the modesty of my opposition to the principles which have induced the scorn of the one, or directed the design of the other. And I have been the less careful to modify the confidence of my statements of principles, because, in the midst of the opposition and uncertainty of our architectural systems, it seems to me that there is something grateful in any positive opinion, though in many points wrong, as even weeds are useful that grow on a bank of sand. § 2. Every apology is, however, due to the reader for the hasty and imperfect execution of the plates.1 Having much more serious work in hand, and desiring merely to render them illustrative of my meaning, I have sometimes very completely failed even of that humble aim; and the text, being generally written before the illustration was completed, sometimes naïvely describes as sublime or beautiful, features which the plate represents by a blot. I shall be grateful if the reader will in such cases refer the expressions of praise to the Architecture, and not to the illustration. § 3. So far, however, as their coarseness and rudeness admit, the plates are valuable; being either copies of memoranda made upon the spot, or (Plates IX. and XI.) enlarged and adapted from Daguerreotypes,2 taken under my own superintendence. Unfortunately, the great distance from the ground of the window which is the subject of Plate IX. renders even the Daguerreotype indistinct; and I cannot answer for the accuracy of any of the mosaic details, more especially of those surrounding the window, which I rather imagine, in the original, to be sculptured in relief. The general proportions are, however, studiously preserved; the spirals of the shafts are counted, and the effect of the whole 1 [See, however, the letter to the publisher, in Appendix i., p. 276, where Ruskin says that he had been “a little too modest in the Preface.” For particulars of the Plates, see above, Introduction, pp. xxxv., xlv., xlix., and below, Appendix ii., p. 279.] 2 [For a note on Ruskin’s interest in the then new art of photography, see Vol. III. p. 210; and cf. below, p. 13.]

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 5 is as near that of the thing itself, as is necessary for the purposes of illustration for which the plate is given.1 For the accuracy of the rest I can answer, even to the cracks in the stones, and the number of them; and though the looseness of the drawing, and the picturesque character which is necessarily given by an endeavour to draw old buildings as they actually appear, may perhaps diminish their credit for architectural veracity, they will do so unjustly. § 4. The system of lettering adopted in the few instances in which sections have been given, appears somewhat obscure in the references, but it is convenient upon the whole. The line which marks the direction of any section is noted, if the section be symmetrical, by a single letter, as a; and the section itself by the same letter with a line over it,—a. But if the section be unsymmetrical, its direction is noted by two letters, a. a2, at its extremities; and the actual section by the same letters with lines over them, a. a2, at the correspondent extremities. § 5. The reader will perhaps be surprised by the small number of buildings to which reference has been made. But it is to be remembered that the following chapters pretend only to be a statement of principles, illustrated each by one or two examples; not an Essay on European architecture; and those examples I have generally taken either from the buildings which I love best, or from the schools of architecture which, it appeared to me, have been less carefully described than they deserved. I could as fully, though not with the accuracy and certainty derived from personal observation, have illustrated the principles subsequently advanced, from the architecture of Egypt, India, or Spain, as from that to which the reader will find his attention chiefly directed, the Italian Romanesque and Gothic. But my affections, as well as my experience, led me to that line of richly varied and magnificently intellectual schools, which reaches, like a high watershed of Christian 1 [The Plate IX. above referred to is, it must be remembered, the original Plate so numbered, not the frontispiece afterwards substituted for it; a second version of the original Plate IX., more distinct than that used in the first edition, is here given (p. 138): see above, Introduction, p. xlix.]

6 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION architecture, from the Adriatic1 to the Northumbrian seas, bordered by the impure schools of Spain on the one hand, and of Germany on the other: and as culminating points and centres of this chain, I have considered, first, the cities of the Val d’Arno,2 as representing the Italian Romanesque and pure Italian Gothic; Venice and Verona as representing the Italian Gothic coloured by Byzantine elements; and Rouen, with the associated Norman cities, Caen, Bayeux, and Coutances, as representing the entire range of Northern architecture from the Romanesque to Flamboyant. § 6. I could have wished to have given more examples from our early English Gothic; but I have always found it impossible to work in the cold interiors of our cathedrals; while the daily services, lamps, and fumigation of those upon the Continent, render them perfectly safe. In the course of last summer I undertook a pilgrimage to the English Shrines,3 and began with Salisbury, where the consequence of a few days’ work was a state of weakened health, which I may be permitted to name among the causes of the slightness and imperfection of the present Essay. 1 [The MS. has “Mediterranean.”] 2 [Later (1874) the title of Ruskin’s book on Tuscan art.] 3 [See above, Introduction, p. xxviii.]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION1 [1855]

§ 1. SINCE the publication of the First Edition of this work, the pursuit of the inquiries I then proposed to myself has enabled me to speak with certainty upon some subjects, which at the time when the following pages were first arranged, I was obliged to approach with hesitation. I have not, however, except in unimportant particulars, altered the body of the text or added to it. I would only request the reader not to regard it as a complete exponent of the views I am at present engaged in advocating, but rather as an introduction to the more considered and careful statements of those views given in the Stones of Venice, and in my Lectures delivered at Edinburgh.2 § 2. I cannot, however, allow this work to pass a second time through the press, without stating in its preface the most important of all the ultimate principles which I have been able subsequently to ascertain. I found, after carefully investigating the character of the emotions which were generally felt by well-educated people respecting various forms of good architecture, that these emotions might be separated into four general heads:3—

(1.) Sentimental Admiration.—The kind of feeling which most travellers experience on first entering a cathedral by 1 [Not reprinted as such in the edition of 1880; but see Note 3 below. The paragraphs are here numbered for purposes of reference.] 2 [Lectures on Architecture and Painting, delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853.] 3 [Cf. Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. viii. ch. iii. § 3, where this statement is referred to and further illustrated. The portion of this preface—beginning, “I found after carefully investigating . . .” and ending at “The architectural Museum at Westminster is 7

8 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION torchlight, and hearing a chant from concealed choristers; or in visiting a ruined abbey by moonlight, or any building with which interesting associations are connected, at any time when they can hardly see it. (2.) Proud Admiration.—The delight which most worldly people take in showy, large, or complete buildings, for the sake of the importance which such buildings confer on themselves, as their possessors, or admirers. (3.) Workmanly Admiration.—The delight of seeing good and neat masonry, together with that belonging to incipient developments of taste; as, for instance, a perception of proportion in lines, masses, and mouldings. (4.) Artistical and rational Admiration.—The delight taken in reading the sculpture or painting on walls, capitals, friezes, &c.

§ 3. Of these four kinds of feeling I found, on farther inquiry, that the first, or sentimental kind, was instinctive and simple; excitable in nearly all persons, by a certain amount of darkness and slow music in a minor key. That it had good uses, and was of a dignified character in some minds; but that on the whole it was apt to rest in theatrical effect, and to be as well satisfied with the incantation scene in “Robert le Diable,” provided there were enough gauze and feuxfollets, as by the Cathedral of Rheims. That it might generally be appealed to with advantage as a judge of the relative impressiveness of two styles of art, but was wholly unable to distinguish truth from affection in the style it preferred. Even in its highest manifestation, in the great mind of Scott, while it indeed led him to lay his scenes in Melrose

one of the institutions which it appears to me most desirable to enrich in this manner”—was, in the edition of 1880, printed as Appendix I., with the addition of the following preliminary sentences:—

“THE FOUR MODES OF ADMIRATION.—(This piece of analysis, which I find to be entirely accurate, was given in the preface to the second edition. I now place it, without interference from other topics, at the close of the volume, where it may be read, I hope, with clearer understanding than it could have been at the beginning,—and to better purpose.)”]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 9 Abbey and Glasgow Cathedral,1 rather than in St. Paul’s or St. Peter’s, it did not enable him to see the difference between true Gothic at Glasgow, and false Gothic at Abbotsford.2 As a critical faculty, I found it was hardly to be taken into consideration in any reasoning on the higher merits of architecture. § 4. (2.) Proud Admiration.—This kind of applause, so far from being courted, I found ought altogether to be deprecated by the noble architect, and that no building could be really admirable which was not admirable to the poor. So that there was an essential baseness in the Renaissance (i.e. the modern Italian and Greek style), and an essential nobleness in the Gothic, consisting simply in the pride of the one, and the humility of the other. I found the love of largeness, and especially of symmetry, invariably associated with vulgarity and narrowness of mind, so that the person most intimately acquainted with the mind of the monarch to whom the Renaissance architecture owed its principal impulse, describing his principles of religion, states that he “was shocked to be told that Jesus Christ spoke the language of the humble and the poor;” and, describing his taste in architecture, says that he “thought of nothing but grandeur, magnificence, and symmetry.”* § 5. (3.) Workmanly Admiration.—This, of course, though right within certain limits, is wholly uncritical, being as easily satisfied with the worst as with the best building, so that the mortar be laid smoothly. As to the feeling with which it is usually united, namely, a delight in the intelligent observance of the proportions of masses, it is good in all the affairs of life, whether regulating the disposition of dishes at a dinner table,† * Madame de Maintenon, quoted in Quarterly Review, March, 1855, pp. 423–428. She says, afterwards, “He prefers to endure all the draughts from the doors, in order that they may be opposite one another—you must perish in symmetry.” † “At the château of Madame V., the white-headed butler begged madame to apologise for the central flower-basket on the table: ‘He had not had time to study the composition.’ ”—Mrs. Storve’s “Sunny Memories,” lett. 44.

1 [Lay of the Last Minstrel and Rob Roy.] 2 [See Vol. I. p. 163, and Fors Clavigera, Letter 92.]

10 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION of ornaments on a dress, or of pillars in a portico. But it no more constitutes the true power of an architect, than the possession of a good ear for metre constitutes a poet; and every building whose excellence consists merely in the proportion of masses is to be considered as nothing more than an architectural doggrel, or rhyming exercise. § 6. (4.) Artistical and rational Admiration.—I found, finally, that this, the only admiration worth having, attached itself wholly to the meaning of the sculpture and colour on the building. That it was very regardless of general form and size; but intensely observant of the statuary, floral mouldings, mosaics, and other decorations. Upon which, little by little, it gradually became manifest to me that the sculpture and painting were, in fact, the all in all of the thing to be done; that these, which I had long been in the careless habit of thinking subordinate to the architecture, were in fact the entire masters of the architecture; and that the architect who was not a sculptor or a painter,1 was nothing better than a framemaker on a large scale. Having once got this clue to the truth, every question about architecture immediately settled itself without farther difficulty. I saw that the idea of an independent architectural profession was a mere modern fallacy, the thought of which had never so much as entered the heads of the great nations of earlier times; but that it had always, till lately, been understood, that in order to have a Parthenon, one had to get a preliminary Phidias; and to have a Cathedral of Florence, a preliminary Giotto; and to have even a Saint Peter’s at Rome, a preliminary Michael Angelo. And as, with this new light, I examined the nobler examples of our Gothic cathedrals, it became apparent to me that the master workman must have been the person who carved the bas-reliefs in the porches; that to him all others must have been subordinate, and by him all the rest of the cathedral essentially arranged; but that in fact the whole company of builders, always large, were more or less divided into two great flocks of stone-layers, 1 [The point of view here had already been taken by Ruskin in the earliest of his published essays: see Poetry of Architecture, § 1, and the note at Vol. I. p. 5.]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 11 and sculptors; and that the number of sculptors was so great, and their average talent so considerable, that it would no more have been thought necessary to state respecting the master builder that he could carve a statue, than that he could measure an angle, or strike a curve.* § 7. If the reader will think over this statement carefully he will find that it is indeed true, and a key to many things. The fact is, there are only two fine arts possible to the human race, sculpture and painting. What we call architecture is only the association of these in noble masses, or the placing them in fit places. All architecture other than this is, in fact, mere building; and though it may sometimes be graceful, as in the groinings of an abbey roof; or sublime, as in the battlements of a border tower; there is, in such examples of it, no more exertion of the powers of high art, than in the gracefulness of a well-ordered chamber, or the nobleness of a well-built ship of war. All high art consists in the carving or painting natural objects, chiefly figures:1 it has always subject and meaning, never consisting solely in arrangement of lines, or even of colours. It always paints or carves something that it sees or believes in; nothing ideal or uncredited.2 For the most part, it paints and carves the men and things that are visible around it. And as soon as we possess a body of sculptors able, and willing, and having leave from the English public, to carve on * The name by which the architect of Cologne Cathedral is designated in the contracts for the work, is “magister lapicida,” the “master stone-cutter;” and I believe this was the usual Latin term throughout the middle ages. The architect of the fourteenth century portions of Notre-Dame, Paris, is styled in French, merely “premier masson.”3

1 [In his copy for correction, Ruskin here noted in the margin:— “Introductory Aphorism. ‘All great art is either Truth or Praise.’ ” With which aphorism, cf. the heading of The Laws of Fésole, ch. i., “All Great Art is Praise.”] 2 [Cf. Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. vii. § 5, where this passage is referred to and further illustrated.] 3 [So in English documents the architect is often called the latomus or cementarius (mason). The architect of Winchester College, for instance, seems to have been William Winford, chief mason. See on this subject Mr. Wyatt Papworth’s Notes on the Superintendents of English Buildings in the Middle Ages, 1860 (republished in the Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects, vol. iii. 1887), and Mr. A. F. Leach’s History of Winchester College, 1899, pp. 106–109.]

12 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION the façades of our cathedrals portraits of the living bishops, deans, canons, and choristers, who are to minister in the said cathedrals; and on the façades of our public buildings, portraits of the men chiefly moving or acting in the same; and on our buildings, generally, the birds and flowers which are singing and budding in the fields around them, we shall have a school of English architecture. Not till then. § 8. This general principle being understood, there is, I think, nothing in the text which I may not leave in the form in which it was originally written, without further comment, except only the expression of doubt (p. 258) as to the style which ought, at present, to be consistently adopted by our architects. I have now no doubt that the only style proper for modern Northern work, is the Northern Gothic of the thirteenth century, as exemplified, in England, pre-eminently by the cathedrals of Lincoln and Wells,1 and, in France, by those of Paris, Amiens, Chartres, Rheims, and Bourges, and by the transepts of that of Rouen.2 § 9. I must here also deprecate an idea which is often taken up by hasty readers of the Stones of Venice; namely, that I suppose Venetian architecture the most noble of the schools of Gothic. I have great respect for Venetian 1 [For another reference to Wells—of the west front of which it is said that it is “on a scale of perfect power and effectiveness”—see Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 67. Of Lincoln Ruskin wrote to his father (April 10, 1851):— “This is to my mind worth all the English cathedrals I have ever seen put together—far beyond my highest expectations. The Galilee—so called—and porch of the small transept on the south side are quite unique, I think, as examples of pure English Gothic in its richest form; and the façade is noble—so thoroughly fine in colour as well as in design—and no small hill neither which it is set upon; and a delightful old town.” Similarly he wrote at a later date:— “I have always held, and am prepared against all comers to maintain, that the Cathedral of Lincoln is out-and-out the most precious piece of architecture in the British Islands, and roughly speaking, worth any two other cathedrals we have got.” (See a letter published in the daily papers of June 7, 1898, and reprinted in a later volume of this edition).] 2 [Ruskin had seen all these foreign cathedrals on one or other, or several, of his earlier tours. Of Amiens he was to make more detailed study hereafter (see The Bible of Amiens); for Chartres, see Vol. I. p. 377; to Rheims there is a reference in this volume (p. 136); for Bourges, see Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. ii. § 13, ch. vii. § 17; vol. ii. ch. iv. § 44; Lectures on Art, § 165. Rouen was the cathedral specially studied by Ruskin for the purpose of this book; see above, Introduction, p. xxxi.]

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 13 Gothic, but only as one among many early schools. My reason for devoting so much time to Venice, was not that her architecture is the best in existence, but that it exemplifies, in the smallest compass, the most interesting facts of architectural history. The Gothic of Verona is far nobler than that of Venice; and that of Florence nobler than that of Verona. For our own immediate purposes that of Notre-Dame of Paris is noblest of all; and the greatest service which can at present be rendered to architecture, is the careful delineation of the details of the cathedrals above named, by means of photography.1 I would particularly desire to direct the attention of amateur photographers to this task; earnestly requesting them to bear in mind that while a photograph of landscape is merely an amusing toy, one of early architecture is a precious historical document; and that this architecture should be taken, not merely when it presents itself under picturesque general forms, but stone by stone, and sculpture by sculpture; seizing every opportunity afforded by scaffolding to approach it closely, and putting the camera in any position that will command the sculpture, wholly without regard to the resultant distortions of the vertical lines; such distortion can always be allowed for, if once the details are completely obtained. It would be still more patriotic in lovers of architecture to obtain casts2 of the sculptures of the thirteenth century, wherever an opportunity occurs, and to place them where they would be easily accessible to the ordinary workman. The Architectural Museum at Westminster3 is one of the 1 [In the 1880 reprint of a portion of this preface in an Appendix, this passage reads: “. . . the careful delineation of its details from the beginning of the twelfth to the close of the fourteenth century, by means of photography.” Ruskin himself carried out what he here advises, in the cases of Amiens and Giotto’s tower at Florence. Detailed photographs of the former were taken under his orders in connection with The Bible of Amiens; photographs of the latter were published in The Shepherd’s Tower (1881).] 2 [As Ruskin desired to do in the case of St. Mark’s, Venice: see Circular respecting Memorial Studies of St. Mark’s, Venice (1879–1880).] 3 [The Royal Architectural Museum, at 18 Tufton Street, Westminster, was founded in 1851; it is now (1903) amalgamated with the Westminster School of Art. Ruskin himself presented to the Museum some casts which he had procured of the original sculptures of the north-west door of Notre-Dame: see Fors Clavigera, Letter 41.]

14 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION institutions which it appears to me most desirable to enrich in this manner. § 10. I have only to add that the plates of the present volume have been carefully re-etched by Mr. Cuff, retaining, as far as possible, the appearance of the original sketches, but remedying the defects which resulted in the first edition from my careless etching. Of the subject of the ninth plate, I prepared a new drawing, which has been admirably engraved by Mr. Armytage.1 The lettering, and other references, will, I hope, be found more intelligible throughout.2 1 [In ed. 2, and other later eds., the frontispiece.] 2 [Owing to the blackness of the impressions from the plates in ed. 1, the numerals were sometimes difficult to decipher.]

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1880

§ 1. I NEVER intended to have republished this book, which has become the most useless I ever wrote; the buildings it describes with so much delight being now either knocked down, or scraped and patched up into smugness and smoothness more tragic than uttermost ruin.1 But I find the public still like the book—and will read it, when they won’t look at what would be really useful and helpful to them;—and as the germ of what I have since written is indeed here,—however overlaid with gilding, and overshot, too splashily and cascade-fashion, with gushing of words,—here it is given again in the old form; all but some pieces of rabid and utterly false Protestantism,2 which are cut out from text and appendix alike, and may serve still to give the old editions some value yet, in the eyes of book collectors and persons studious (as the modern reviewing mind mostly is—to its large profit) of mistakes in general. § 2. The quite first edition, with the original plates, will always, I venture to say, bear a high price in the market;3 for its etchings were not only, every line of them, by my own hand, but bitten also (the last of them in my washhand basin at “La Cloche” of Dijon,) by myself, with savage carelessness (I being then, as now, utterly scornful of all sorts of art dependent on blotch, or burr, or any other “process” than that of steady hand and true line):—out of which disdain, 1 [Cf. note of 1883 to Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. ch. i. § 7 (Vol. IV. p. 37 of this edition).] 2 [These passages will be found in the footnotes to this edition: see pp. 41, 63. For other references by Ruskin in later years to “the rabid Protestantism” and “pious insolence” of his early books, see Modern Painters, vol. i. Preface to 1873 ed. (Vol. III. p. 54); notes to 1883 ed. of vol. ii. (Vol. IV. pp. 61, 110, 199); and Sesame and Lilies, Preface to 1871 ed.] 3 [See particulars given in the Bibliographical Note above, p. li.] 15

16 PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1880 nevertheless, some of the plates came into effects both right and good for their purpose, and will, as I say, be always hereafter valuable.1 § 3. The copies of them, made for the second edition by Mr. Cuff, and here reprinted, are quite as good for all practical illustration, and much more admirable as pieces of careful and singular engraver’s skill. For the original method of etching was not easily imitated by straightforward engraving. When I use the needle-point directly on the steel, I never allow any burr or mystery of texture;—(see the plates by my own hand in Modern Painters;2—) but, in these architectural notes of shadow, I wanted mere spaces of gloom got easily; and so used a process shown me, (I think, by a German engraver—my memory fails me about it now3—) in which, the ground being laid very soft, a piece of tissue-paper is spread over it, on which one draws with a hard pencil—seeing, when the paper is lifted, approximately what one has got of shadow. The pressure of the point removes the wax which sticks to the tissue-paper, and leaves the surface of the plate in that degree open to the acid. The effect thus obtained is a kind of mixture of mezzotint—etching—and lithograph; and, except by such skill as Mr. Cuff possessed in a peculiar degree, not to be imitated in any other manner. The vignette frontispiece is also an excellent piece of work by Mr. Armytage, to whose skill the best illustrations of Modern Painters4 owe not only their extreme delicacy but their permanence. Some of his plates, which I am about to re-issue with portions of the book separately, arranged according to their subjects, show scarcely any loss of brightness for any use hitherto made of them.5 1 [See above, Introduction, p. xlv.] 2 [See List of Plates in Vols. VI. and VII.] 3 [The engraver was a young Frenchman. See below, p. 279.] 4 [See the author’s Preface to Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V).] 5 [Ruskin intended to issue selections from Modern Painters on mountains, clouds, and trees. Of those on mountains (“In montibus Sanctis”) two parts were issued in 1884–1885, on clouds (“Cœli Enarrant”) a single part in 1885, while of the third section none were published. The issued parts had, however, no plates. See further on this subject, Vol. III. pp. liii., 679.]

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1880 17 But, having now all my plates in my own possession,1 I will take care that none are used past the time they will properly last; and even the present editions of these old books can never become cheap—though they will be, I trust, in time, all sufficiently accessible. § 4. Some short notes are added to the text of The Seven Lamps, now reprinted; but the text itself (the passages above mentioned being alone omitted,) is given word for word, and stop for stop:—it may confirm the reader’s assurance on that matter, to know that I have not even revised the proofs, but left all toil of that kind to my good publisher, Mr. Allen, and his helpful children,2 who have every claim, for what good the reader may get of the book, to his thanks no less than to mine.3 BRANTWOOD, February 25th, 1880.

1 [Ruskin had by this time taken over the entire interest in his books from his former publishers, Messrs, Smith, Elder & Co.] 2 [For some account of Mr. Allen’s “family industry,” at this time at Orpington, see E. T. Cook’s Studies in Ruskin, ch. vii. To a letter from Mr. Allen, containing an expression of gratitude for this tribute, Ruskin replied as follows:—

BRANTWOOD, Feb. 26, 1880.

It is very delightful both to be able to give so much pleasure, of the noblest kind; and to have one’s helpers able to receive it. I hope it is only the beginning of what reward in honour is due to such faithful service . . .] 3 [In the 1880 edition the following is added:— “Advice.—I find that by grotesque mischance, the new preface takes no notice of my reason for printing some passages in the book in a larger type, and numbering them as ‘aphorisms.’ If the reader will attend to them, he will find their serviceableness and security justify this preference; and, these being first well understood, the rest of the book will become also lucid and cogent:—else it might be taken for a mere mist of fine words, and read—practically—in vain.—Brantwood, Coniston, May 26th, 1880.” Then follows a list of errata which “the reader is requested to note and correct at once,” and which are corrected, of course, in all the editions since 1880. For list of them, see above, Bibliographical Note, p. liii. A note at the top of the MS. of this preface shows that it was “knocked off before breakfast.” Much of Ruskin’s work was done in the early morning: see Præterita, ii. ch. vi. § 122, and Eagle’s Nest, § 104.]

VIII. B

INTRODUCTORY1

§ 1. SOME years ago, in conversation with an artist* whose works, perhaps, alone, in the present day, unite perfection of drawing with resplendence of colour,2 the writer made some inquiry respecting the general means by which this latter quality was most easily to be attained. The reply was as concise as it was comprehensive—“Know what you have to do, and do it”—comprehensive, not only as regarded the branch of art to which it temporarily applied, but as expressing the great principle of success in every direction of human effort; for I believe that failure is less frequently attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labour, than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done; and therefore, while it is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, that men propose to themselves a perfection of any kind, which reason, temperately consulted, might have shown to be impossible with the means at their command, it is a more dangerous error to permit the consideration of means to interfere with our conception, or, as is not impossible, even hinder our acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in themselves. And this is the more cautiously to be remembered; because, while a man’s sense and conscience, aided by Revelation, are always enough, if earnestly directed, to enable him to discover what is right, neither his sense, nor conscience, nor feeling, is ever enough, because they are * Mulready [1880].

1 [There are two drafts of this introduction in the MS. Of these one is the MS. of the whole of the text, while the other, headed “Preface,” appears to be a preliminary sketch of the earlier part only. This, which differs largely from the published Introduction, is given below, in Appendix ii., p. 281.] 2 [For other references to Mulready, see Vol. IV. p. 336.] 19

20 INTRODUCTORY not intended, to determine for him what is possible. He knows APHORISM neither his own strength nor that of his fellows, 1. We may always neither the exact dependence to be placed on his know what is allies nor resistance to be expected from his right: but not always what is opponents. These are questions respecting which possible.1 passion may warp his conclusions, and ignorance must limit them; but it is his own fault if either interfere with the apprehension of duty, or the acknowledgment of right. And, as far as I have taken cognizance of the causes of the many failures to which the efforts of intelligent men are liable, more especially, in matters political, they seem to me more largely to spring from this single error than from all others, that the inquiry into the doubtful, and in some sort inexplicable, relations of capability, chance, resistance, and inconvenience, invariably precedes, even if it do not altogether supersede, the determination of what is absolutely desirable and just. Nor is it any wonder that sometimes the too cold calculation of our powers should reconcile us too easily to our shortcomings, and even lead us into the fatal error of supposing that our conjectural utmost is in itself well, or, in other words, that the necessity of offences renders them inoffensive. § 2. What is true of human polity seems to me not less so of the distinctively political art of Architecture. I have long felt convinced of the necessity, in order to its progress, of some determined effort to extricate from the confused mass of partial traditions and dogmata with which it has become encumbered during imperfect or restricted practice, those large principles of right which are applicable to every stage and style of it. Uniting the technical and imaginative elements as essentially as humanity does soul and body, it shows the same infirmly balanced liability to the prevalence of the lower part over the higher, to the interference of the constructive, with 1 [The portion of the text distinguished in the 1880 edition by black-letter type (see above, p. xlviii.) is from “while a man’s sense” down to the end of § 1. The corrected copy (see above, p. xlviii.) first marked this “Aphorism 1” as “2,” a portion of the preface to the first edition being then marked as “Aphorism 1” (see above, p. 11).]

INTRODUCTORY 21 the purity and simplicity of the reflective, element. This tendency, like every other form of materialism, is increasing with the advance of the age; and the only laws which resist it, based upon partial precedents, and already regarded with disrespect as decrepit, if not with defiance as tyrannical, are evidently inapplicable to the new forms and functions of the art, which the necessities of the day demand. How many these necessities may become, cannot be conjectured; they rise, strange and impatient, out of every modern shadow of change. How far it may be possible to meet them without a sacrifice of the essential characters of architectural art, cannot be determined by specific calculation or observance. There is no law, no principle, based on past practice, which may not be overthrown in a moment, by the arising of a new condition, or the invention of a new material; and the most rational, if not the only, mode of averting the danger of an utter dissolution of all that is systematic and consistent in our practice, or of ancient authority in our judgment, is to cease, for a little while, our endeavours to deal with the multiplying host of particular abuses, restraints, or requirements; and endeavour to determine, as the guides of every effort, some constant, general, and irrefragable laws of right—laws, which based upon man’s nature, not upon his knowledge, may possess so far the unchangeableness of the one, as that neither the increase nor imperfection of the other may be able to assault or invalidate them. § 3. There are, perhaps, no such laws peculiar to any one art. Their range necessarily includes the entire horizon of man’s action. But they have modified forms and operations belonging to each of his pursuits, and the extent of their authority cannot surely be considered as a diminution of its weight. Those peculiar aspects of them which belong to the first of the arts, I have endeavoured to trace in the following pages; and since, if truly stated, they must necessarily be, not only safeguards against every form of error, but sources of every measure of success, I do not think that I claim too much for

22 INTRODUCTORY them in calling them the Lamps of Architecture,* nor that it is indolence, in endeavouring to ascertain the true nature and nobility of their fire, to refuse to enter into any curious or special questioning of the innumerable hindrances by which their light has been too often distorted or overpowered. Had this farther examination been attempted, the work would have become certainly more invidious, and perhaps less useful, as liable to errors which are avoided by the present simplicity of its plan. Simple though it be, its extent is too great to admit of any adequate accomplishment, unless by a devotion of time which the writer did not feel justified in withdrawing from branches of inquiry in which the prosecution of works already undertaken has engaged him. Both arrangement and nomenclature are those of convenience rather than of system; the one is arbitrary, and the other illogical; nor is it pretended that all, or even the greater number of, the principles necessary to the well-being of the art, are included in the inquiry. Many, however, of considerable importance will be found to develope themselves incidentally from those more specially brought forward. § 4. Graver apology is necessary for an apparently graver fault. It has been just said, that there is no branch APHORISM 2. of human work whose constant laws have not close All practical analogy with those which govern every other mode laws are the exponents of of man’s exertion. But, more than this, exactly as moral ones.1 we reduce to greater simplicity and surety any one group of these practical laws, we shall find them passing the mere condition of connection or analogy, and becoming the actual expression of some ultimate nerve or fibre of the mighty laws which govern the moral world. However mean or inconsiderable the act, there is something in the well doing of it, which has fellowship with the noblest forms of * “The Law is light.” “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet.” [1880.]2

1 [The aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, was from “It has been just said . . .” down to the end of § 4.] 2 [Proverbs vi. 23; Psalms cxix. 105.]

INTRODUCTORY 23 manly virtue; and the truth, decision, and temperance, which we reverently regard as honourable conditions of the spiritual being, have a representative or derivative influence over the works of the hand, the movements of the frame, and the action of the intellect. § 5. And as thus every action, down even to the drawing of a line or utterance of a syllable, is capable of a peculiar dignity in the manner of it, which we sometimes express by saying it is truly done (as a line or tone is true), so also it is capable of dignity still higher in the motive of it. For there is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. Hence George Herbert*—

“A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,1 Makes that and the action fine.”2

Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act or manner of acting, we have choice of two separate lines of argument: one based on representation of the expediency or inherent value of the work, which is often small, and always disputable; the other based on proofs of its relations to the higher orders of human virtue, and of its acceptableness, so * George Herbert was too much of an Englishman (and of an Elizabethan tempered Englishman) to conceive that drudgery could ever be divine in its own nature, and sometimes, more divine if forced than voluntary, e.g. John Knox’s labour as a galley slave.3 [1880.]

1 [The italics were added in 1880. To the note on this page the author has added in the corrected copy of the second edition a marginal note: “Long note needed.”] 2 [The Temple: “The Elixir.” The “clause” is:—

“Teach me, my God and King, In all things Thee to see, And what I do in any thing To do it as for Thee.”]

3 [See Carlyle On Heroes, Lecture iv. For other references to George Herbert, see notes in Vol. I. pp. 409, 489, and Vol. IV. p. 349.]

24 INTRODUCTORY far as it goes, to Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is commonly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly the more conclusive; only it is liable to give offence, as if there were irreverence in adducing considerations so weighty in treating subjects of small temporal importance. I believe, however, that no error is more thoughtless than this. We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small but that we may honour God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands; and what is true of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most reverently when most habitually: our insolence is in ever acting without reference to it, our true honouring of it is in its universal application. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its sacred words.1 I am grieved to have given pain by so doing; but my excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in our lives.2 The snow, the vapour, and the stormy wind fulfil His word.3 Are our acts and thoughts lighter and wilder than these—that we should forget it? § 6. I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giving to some passages the appearance of irreverence, to take the higher line of argument wherever it appeared clearly traceable: and this, 1 [Of Ruskin’s constant use of Biblical words and phrases, the footnotes in previous volumes have given illustration. See on this subject, Vol. III. p. 674 n., and for a passage which was criticised as “blasphemous,” Vol. III. p. 254. See on the general subject Ruskin et la Bible, by H. J. Brunhes, Paris, 1901.] 2 [The MS. proceeds thus:— “and this will seem to us a graver fault, when we remember the wide definition they have given of the wicked man, not that he does not think of God at all, not that he does not think of God at solemnities and stated times: but that he does not answer continual protection, continual life giving, with continual (purpose?) of obedience and praise:—’God is not in All his thoughts. ’ ” (Psalms x. 4.) With the matter of this paragraph cf. Lectures on Architecture and Painting (1854), Lecture iv., §§ 114 seqq.] 3 [Psalms cxlviii. 8.]

INTRODUCTORY 25 I would ask the reader especially to observe, not merely because I think it the best mode of reaching ultimate truth, still less because I think the subject of more importance than many others; but because every subject should surely, at a period like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years that approach us is as solemn as it is full of APHORISM 3. mystery; and the weight of evil against which we have The arts of our 1 to contend, is increasing like the letting out of water. day must not be luxurious, It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics, or the nor its meta- entertainment of the arts. The blasphemies of the earth physics idle. are sounding louder, and its miseries heaped heavier every day; and if, in the midst of the exertion which every good man is called upon to put forth for their repression or relief, it is lawful to ask for a thought, for a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any direction but that of the immediate and overwhelming need, it is at least incumbent upon us to approach the questions in which we would engage him, in the spirit which has become the habit of his mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness may be checked by the withdrawal of an hour, which has shown him how even those things which seemed mechanical, indifferent, or contemptible, depend for their perfection upon the acknowledgment of the sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, for which it has become the occupation of his life to contend.3 1 [This book was written, it will be remembered, in the year of revolutions abroad and of the Chartist movement at home. Compare a similar reference, written at the same time, in ed. 2 of Modern Painters, vol. ii., Vol. IV. p. 31 n.] 2 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the edition of 1880, is from “The aspect of the years” to the end of § 6.] 3 [For some unpublished material for this Introductory chapter, see Appendix ii., p. 282.]

CHAPTER I

THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE § 1. ARCHITECTURE is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, that the APHORISM sight of them may contribute to his mental health, 4. 1 All architec- power, and pleasure. ture proposes an It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, effect on the human mind, not to distinguish carefully between Architecture and merely a service Building.* to the human 2 To build,—literally, to confirm,3—is by frame. common understanding to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable * This distinction is a little stiff and awkward in terms, but not in thought. And it is perfectly accurate, though stiff, even in terms. It is the addition of

1 [In the MS. these words read first “health, strength, and pleasure;” then “health, happiness, and pleasure,” and finally as in the text. A draft of another opening to this chapter is also among the MS., and runs as follows:— “Architecture is that art which taking up, and admitting as conditions of her working, the necessities and uses of the building, makes it also agreeable to the eye, or venerable, or honourable by the addition of certain useless characters on such principles as I am about to endeavour to develope. “Thus: in devotional buildings; it is not the art of architecture which fits them to receive, and entertain with comfort, a certain required number of persons engaged in religious offices. That is the ecclesiastical builder’s business, not the Architect’s. Though often the first and most essential requirement, it is not the Act of architecture which accomplishes it. It is no more Architecture that builds a convenient church than it is architecture which builds a comfortable carriage, or a safe sailing ship. One receptacle is small and another large, one is of stone and of wood, one stands and another floats—accidental differences these of no consequence whatsoever as regards the idea of Art,—they are all receptacles for people: which must be built on certain scientific principles, and the persons who build them are builders: church builders, coach builders, or ship builders—very able men, sometimes very necessarily able, if they are to build well: much more able than many architects—but not therefore to be called by a wrong name. So also in military works. . . .”] 2 [The aphorism in the text, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is “Architecture is the art . . . power, and pleasure.” Ruskin in The Poetry of Architecture, written eleven years before, had already made this distinction clear: see Vol. I. p. 5.] 3 [The etymology here suggested seems to make some confusion between the Old English word “build,” of which the fundamental senses are “to construct a dwelling,” “to take up one’s abode,” and the Latin synonyms.] 27

28 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE size. Thus we have church building, house building, ship building, and coach building. That one edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever other name their work may justify: but building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects; and it is no more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it to receive and contain with comfort a required number of persons occupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture which makes a carriage commodious, or a ship swift. I do not, of course, mean that the word is not often, or even may not be legitimately, applied in such a sense (as we speak of naval architecture); but in that sense architecture ceases to be one of the fine arts, and it is therefore better not to run the risk, by loose nomenclature, of the confusion which would arise, and has often arisen, from extending principles which belong altogether to building, into the sphere of architecture proper. Let us, therefore, at once confine the name to that art which, taking up and admitting, as conditions of its working, the necessities and common uses of the building, impresses on its form certain characters venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary. Thus, I suppose, no one would call the laws architectural which determine the height of a breastwork or the position of a bastion. But if to the stone facing of that

the mental arch—in the sense in which Plato uses that word in the “Laws”—which separates architecture from a wasp’s nest, a rat hole, or a railway station. [1880.]1

1 [Later passages in the text and notes explain that what Ruskin means by “the mental arch,” is “arrangement and government received from human mind” (ch. iii. § 2, p. 101); “the intellectual Dominion of Architecture” (ch. iv. § 1 n., p. 138); including “authority over materials” (ch. ii. § 10 n., p. 68). For the sense in which Plato thus uses the word arch (or rather the verb arcw) in the Laws, see, e.g., Book ix., 875 D: “Nor can mind, without impiety, be deemed the subject or slave of any man, but rather the ruler of all.” Compare, with the text and note here, the similar distinctions drawn in The Poetry of Architecture, § 133, Vol. I. p. 105. Compare also in Ruskin’s later books, Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 60, The Two Paths, § 106; and see Modern Painters, vol. ii. ch. i. (Vol. IV. p. 35 n.), where Ruskin again defends his “subjection of the constructive to the decorative science of architecture which gave so much offence, to architects capable only of construction, in the Seven Lamps.”]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 29 bastion be added an unnecessary feature, as a cable moulding, that is Architecture. It would be similarly unreasonable to call battlements or machicolations architectural features, so long as they consist only of an advanced gallery supported on projecting masses, with open intervals beneath for offence. But if these projecting masses be carved beneath into rounded courses, which are useless, and if the headings of the intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless, that is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line so sharply, because there are few buildings which have not some pretence or colour of being architectural; neither can there be any architecture which is not based on building, nor any good architecture which is not based on good building; but it is perfectly easy, and very necessary, to keep the ideas distinct, and to understand fully that Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which are above and beyond its common use. I say common; because a building raised to the honour of God, or in memory of men, has surely a use to which its architectural adornment fits it; but not a use which limits, by any inevitable necessities, its plan or details. § 2. Architecture proper, then, naturally arranges itself under five heads:— Devotional; including all buildings raised for God’s service or honour. Memorial; including both monuments and tombs. Civil; including every edifice raised by nations or societies, for purposes of common business or pleasure. Military; including all private and public architecture of defence. Domestic; including every rank and kind of dwelling-place. Now, of the principles which I would endeavour to develope, while all must be, as I have said, applicable to every stage and style of the art, some, and especially those which are exciting rather than directing, have necessarily fuller reference to one kind of building than another; and among these I would place first that spirit which, having influence in all, has nevertheless such especial reference to devotional and memorial

30 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE architecture—the spirit which offers for such work precious things, simply because they are precious; not as being necessary to the building, but as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what is to ourselves desirable. It seems to me, not only that this feeling is in most cases wholly wanting in those who forward the devotional buildings of the present day;* but that it would even be regarded as a dangerous,1 or perhaps criminal, principle by many among us. I have not space to enter into dispute of all the various objections which may be urged against it—they are many and specious; but I may, perhaps, ask the reader’s patience while I set down those simple reasons which cause me to believe it a good and just feeling, and as well-pleasing to God and honourable in men, as it is beyond all dispute necessary to the production of any great work in the kind with which we are at present concerned.2 § 3. Now, first, to define this Lamp, or Spirit, of Sacrifice, clearly. I have said that it prompts us to the offering of precious things, merely because they are precious, not because they are useful or necessary. It is a spirit, for instance, which of two marbles, equally beautiful, applicable and durable, would choose the more costly, because it was so, and of two * The peculiar manner of selfish and impious ostentation, provoked by the glassmakers, for a stimulus to trade, of putting up painted windows to be records of private affection, instead of universal religion, is one of the worst, because most plausible and proud, hypocrisies of our day. [1880.]3

1 [Ed. 1 reads, “as an ignorant, dangerous, or,” etc.] 2 [In the manuscript this concluding sentence is as follows:— “Now as I believe, not only that the feeling is necessary to the production of any great work, which is a minor matter, but that it is a good and holy feeling and one pleasing to God, and of course, therefore, beneficial and exalting to man, I would much desire to be able to enter at some length into an examination of the reasons which may be alleged against it. “I cannot, however, do this in any wise satisfactorily, these hostile reasons being various and many, and my plan and my space permitting me only to state in clear form what I believe to be right, with such of the more manifest reasons for my opinion as may be shortly given; and to show what results would follow from the acceptance of such a principle; so that the desire of such results may lead at once to the discussion and trial of the principle itself by others more competent than I to examine it.”] 3 [The corrected copy has erased:— “Note on selfishness, memorial windows,” etc., and it corrects in the Note:— “provoked” from “invented,” “private” from “our own earthy,” and “universal religion” from “the lives of the saints.”]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 31 kinds of decoration, equally effective, would choose the more elaborate because it was so, in order that it might in the same compass present more cost and more thought. It is therefore most unreasoning and enthusiastic, and perhaps less negatively defined, as the opposite of the prevalent feeling of modern times, which desires to produce the largest results at the least cost. Of this feeling, then, there are two distinct forms: the first, the wish to exercise self-denial for the sake of self-discipline merely, a wish acted upon in the abandonment of things loved or desired, there being no direct call or purpose to be answered by so doing; and the second, the desire to honour or please some one else by the costliness of the sacrifice. The practice is, in the first case, either private or public; but most frequently, and perhaps most properly, private; while, in the latter case, the act is commonly, and with greatest advantage, public. Now, it cannot but at first appear futile to assert the expediency of self-denial for its own sake, when, for so many sakes, it is every day necessary to a far greater degree than any of us practise it. But I believe it is just because we do not enough acknowledge or contemplate it as a good in itself, that we are apt to fail in its duties when they become imperative, and to calculate, with some partiality, whether the good proposed to others measures or warrants the amount of grievance to ourselves, instead of accepting with gladness the opportunity of sacrifice as a personal advantage. Be this as it may, it is not necessary to insist upon the matter here; since there are always higher and more useful channels of self-sacrifice, for those who choose to practise it, than any connected with the arts. While in its second branch, that which is especially concerned with the arts, the justice of the feeling is still more doubtful; it depends on our answer to the broad question, Can the Deity be indeed honoured by the presentation to Him of any material objects of value, or by any direction of zeal or wisdom which is not immediately beneficial to men? For, observe, it is not now the question whether the

32 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE fairness and majesty of a building may or may not answer any moral purpose; it is not the result of labour in any sort of which we are speaking, but the bare and mere costliness—the substance and labour and time themselves: are these, we ask, independently of their result, acceptable offerings to God, and considered by Him as doing Him honour? So long as we refer this question to the decision of feeling, or of conscience, or of reason merely, it will be contradictorily or imperfectly answered; it admits of entire answer only when we have met another and a far different question, whether the Bible be indeed one book or two, and whether the character of God revealed in the Old Testament be other than His character revealed in the New.1 § 4. Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although the particular ordinances divinely appointed for special purposes at any given period of man’s history, may be by the same divine authority abrogated, at another, it is impossible that any character of God, appealed to or described in any ordinance past or present, can ever be changed, or understood as changed, by the abrogation of that ordinance. God is one and the same, and is pleased or displeased by the same things for ever, although one part of His pleasure may be expressed at one time rather than another, and although the mode in which His pleasure is to be consulted may be by Him graciously modified to the circumstances of men. Thus, for instance, it was necessary that, in order to the understanding by man of the scheme of Redemption, that scheme should be foreshown from the beginning by the type of bloody sacrifice. But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice in the time of Moses than He has now; He never accepted, as a 1 [The MS. here has the following passage (afterwards erased) amplifying this argument:— “I cannot but think that a strange feeling which is under various disguises a ruling one with many Christians, that what was acceptable to Jehovah before the scheme of redemption was accomplished is less acceptable when that scheme is fulfilled; that He ever required from man what He is not, even when He does not require it, willing to receive; that Christ came to destroy the law instead of to fulfil it, and that the God whose angel dwelt in the tabernacle of the wilderness was less to be worshipped in spirit and in truth than the God who made His tabernacle the flesh of men.”]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 33 propitiation for sin, any sacrifice but the single one in prospective: and that we may not entertain any shadow of doubt on this subject, the worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is proclaimed at the very time when typical sacrifice was most imperatively demanded. God was a spirit, and could be worshipped only in spirit and in truth,1 as singly and exclusively when every day brought its claim of typical and material service or offering, as now when He asks for none but that of the heart.2 So, therefore, it is a most safe and sure principle that, if in the manner of performing any rite at any time, circumstances can be traced which we are either told or may legitimately conclude, pleased God at that time, those same circumstances will please Him at all times, in the performance of all rites or offices to which they may be attached in like manner; unless it has been afterwards revealed that, for some special purpose, it is now His will that such circumstances should be withdrawn. And this argument will have all the more force if it can be shown that such conditions were not essential to the completeness of the rite in its human uses and bearings, and only were added to it as being in themselves pleasing to God. § 5. Now, was it necessary to the completeness, as a type, of the Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of divine purposes, that it should cost anything to the person in whose behalf it was offered? On the contrary, the sacrifice which it foreshowed, was to be God’s free gift; and the cost of, or difficulty of obtaining, the sacrificial type, could only render that type in a measure obscure, and less expressive of the offering which God would in the end provide for all men. Yet this costliness was generally a condition of the acceptableness of the sacrifice. “Neither will I offer unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing.”* That costliness, therefore, must be an acceptable condition in all human * 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. Deut. xvi. 16, 17.

1 [John iv. 24.] [The MS. reads: “as now when men think they owe Him no service from one Sabbath to another.”] VIII. C

34 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE offerings at all times; for if it was pleasing to God once, it must please Him always, unless directly forbidden by Him afterwards, which it has never been. Again, was it necessary to the typical perfection of the Levitical offering, that it should be the best of the flock? Doubtless, the spotlessness of the sacrifice renders it more expressive to the Christian mind; but was it because so expressive that it was actually, and in so many words, demanded by God? Not at all. It was demanded by Him expressly on the same grounds on which an earthly governour would demand it, as a testimony of respect. “Offer it now unto thy governour.”* And the less valuable offering was rejected, not because it did not image Christ, nor fulfil the purposes of sacrifice, but because it indicated a feeling that would grudge the best of its possessions to Him who gave them; and because it was a bold dishonouring of God in the sight of man. Whence it may be infallibly concluded, that in whatever offerings we may now see reason to present unto God (I say not what these may be), a condition of their acceptableness will be now, as it was then, that they should be the best of their kind. § 6. But farther,1 was it necessary to the carrying out of the Mosaical system, that there should be either art or splendour in the form or services of the tabernacle or temple? Was it necessary to the perfection of any one of their typical offices, that there should be that hanging of blue, and purple, and scarlet? those taches of brass and sockets of silver? that working in cedar and overlaying with gold?2 One thing at least is evident: there was a deep and awful danger in it; a danger that the God whom they so worshipped, might be associated in the minds of the serfs of Egypt with the gods to whom they had seen similar gifts offered and * Mal. i. 8.

1 [The corrected copy has a note: “Stones of Venice, ii. ch. 4 § 51”—at which place this passage is referred to, and the further question (here untouched) is raised—namely, “whether the church, as such, stood in need of adornment, or would be better fitted for its purposes by possessing it.”] 2 [Exodus, ch. xxvi.]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 35 similar honours paid. The probability, in our times, of fellowship with the feelings of the idolatrous Romanist is absolutely as nothing, compared with the danger to the Israelite of a sympathy with the idolatrous Egyptian;1 no speculative, no unproved danger; but proved fatally by their fall during a month’s abandonment to their own will; a fall into the most servile idolatry; yet marked by such offerings to their idol as their leader was, in the close sequel, instructed to bid them offer to God. This danger was imminent, perpetual, and of the most awful kind: it was the one against which God made provision, not only by commandments, by threatenings, by promises, the most urgent, repeated, and impressive; but by temporary ordinances of a severity so terrible as almost to dim for a time, in the eyes of His people, His attribute of mercy. The principal object of every instituted law of that Theocracy, of every judgment sent forth in its vindication, was to mark to the people His hatred of idolatry; a hatred written under their advancing steps, in the blood of the Canaanite, and more sternly still in the darkness of their own desolation, when the children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of Jerusalem, and the lion tracked his prey in the desert of Samaria.* Yet, against this mortal danger, provision was not made in one way, (to man’s thoughts the simplest, the most natural, the most effective,) by withdrawing from the worship of the Divine Being whatever could delight the sense, or shape the imagination,2 or limit the idea of Deity to place. This one way God refused, demanding for Himself such honours, and accepting for Himself such local dwelling, as had been paid and dedicated to idol gods by heathen worshippers. And for what reason? Was the glory of the tabernacle necessary to set forth or image His divine glory to the minds of His people? What! purple or scarlet necessary, to the people who had seen the great river of Egypt run scarlet to the sea, under His * Lam. ii. 11. 2 Kings xvii. 25.

1 [See the author’s note at the end of the text, p. 267.] 2 [The MS. reads: “or excite the carnal imagination.”]

36 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE condemnation? What! golden lamp and cherub necessary, for those who had seen the fires of heaven falling like a mantle on Mount Sinai, and its golden courts opened to receive their mortal lawgiver? What! silver clasp and fillet necessary, when they had seen the silver waves of the Red Sea clasp in their arched hollows the corpses of the horse and his rider? Nay—not so.* There was but one reason, and that an eternal one; that as the covenant that He made with men was accompanied with some external sign of its continuance, and of His remembrance of it, so the acceptance of that covenant might be marked and signified by men, in some external sign of their love and obedience, and surrender of themselves and theirs to His will; and that their gratitude to Him and continual remembrance of Him, might have at once their expression, and their enduring testimony, in the presentation to Him, not only of the firstlings of the herd and fold, not only of the fruits of the earth and the tithe of time, but of all treasures of wisdom and beauty; of the thought that invents, and the hand that labours; of wealth of wood, and weight of stone; of the strength of iron, and the light of gold. And let us not now lose sight of this broad and unabrogated principle—I might say, incapable of being abrogated, so long as men shall receive earthly gifts from God. Of all that they have, His tithe must be rendered to Him, or in so far and in so much He is forgotten: of the skill and of the treasure, of the strength and of the mind, of the time and of the toil, offering must be made reverently; and if there be any difference between the Levitical and the Christian offering, it is that the latter may be just so much the wider in its range as it is less typical in its meaning, as it is thankful instead of sacrificial. There can be no excuse accepted because the Deity does not now visibly dwell in His temple; if He is invisible it is only through our failing * Yes,—very much so. The impression of all temporary vision wears off next day in the minds of the common people. Continual splendour is necessary and wholesome for them: and the sacrifices required by Heaven were never useless. [1880.]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 37 faith: nor any excuse because other calls are more immediate or more sacred; this ought to be done, and not the other left undone. Yet this objection, as frequent as feeble, must be more specifically answered. § 7. It has been said—it ought always to be said, for it is true,—that a better and more honourable offering is made to our Master in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowledge of His name, in the practice of the virtues by which that name is hallowed, than in material presents to His temple. Assuredly it is so: woe to all who think that any other kind or manner of offering may in any wise take the place of these! Do the people need place to pray, and calls to hear His word? Then it is no time for smoothing pillars or carving pulpits; let us have enough first of walls and roofs. Do the people need teaching from house to house, and bread from day to day? Then they are deacons and ministers we want, not architects. I insist on this, I plead for this; but let us examine ourselves, and see if this be indeed the reason for our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is not between God’s house and His poor: it is not between God’s house and His Gospel. It is between God’s house and ours. Have we no tesselated colours on our floors? no frescoed fancies on our roofs? no niched statuary in our corridors? no gilded furniture in our chambers? no costly stones in our cabinets? Has even the tithe of these been offered? They are, or they ought to be, the signs that enough has been devoted to the great purposes of human stewardship, and that there remains to us what we can spend in luxury; but there is a greater and prouder luxury than this selfish one—that of bringing a portion of such things as these into sacred service, and presenting them for a memorial* that our pleasure as well as our toil has been hallowed by the remembrance of Him who gave both the strength and the reward. And until this has been done, I do not see how such possessions can be retained in happiness. I do not understand the feeling * Num. xxxi. 54. Psa. lxxvi. 11.

38 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE which would arch our own gates and pave our own thresholds, and leave the church with its narrow door and foot-worn sill; the feeling which enriches our own chambers with all manner of costliness, and endures the bare wall and mean compass of the temple. There is seldom even so severe a choice to be made, seldom so much self-denial to be exercised. There are isolated cases, in which men’s happiness and mental activity depend upon a certain degree of luxury in their houses; but then this is true luxury, felt and tasted, and profited by. In the plurality of instances nothing of the kind is attempted, nor can be enjoyed;1 men’s average resources cannot reach it; and that APHORISM 5. which they can reach, gives them no pleasure, and Domestic might be spared. It will be seen, in the course of the luxury is to be sacrificed to following chapters, that I am no advocate for national mag- meanness of private habitation. I would fain nificence.2 introduce into it all magnificence, care, and beauty, where they are possible; but I would not have that useless expense in unnoticed fineries or formalities; cornicing of ceilings and graining of doors, and fringing of curtains, and thousands such;3 things which have become foolishly 1 [From here to the end of the sentence the MS. reads:— “or even granting its desirableness, yet in mere selfish policy (I am ashamed to name such a motive in conjunction with the one I have been urging hitherto), in mere worldly comparison of resource and result, it would be wiser to unite our means and to build one noble building, ‘a joy for ever ’ to all, than to break them up in private profitlessness.” This passage, it will be seen, contains the germ of much of the lectures in The Political Economy of Art (1857), reprinted in 1880 under the title of A joy for Ever.] 2 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “It will be seen . . .” to the end of § 7.] 3 [An odd sheet of MS. amplifies this passage:— “. . . useless expense in unnoticed fineries—marble chimney-pieces of stone-mason pattern, which neither make a man more warm nor more happy than brick hearths; gilded stucco frames for circular mirrors, projecting into stranger birds with their feathers glued together or chipped off—neither frame nor mirror answering other purpose than that of holding dust and turning the room upside down; silent alabaster timepieces under bell glasses, which have not half the companionship in them of an old clock that would keep time; mahogany tables with bead work and claws which it took the carpenter many an hour to cut, and which were counted by bead and by talon in the upholsterer’s bill, but which are never seen nor cared for from one year’s end to another,—as if one of plain deal with straight legs would not as efficiently sustain either the desk or the dinner;—innumerable expenses in cornicing of ceilings . . .” The subject of graining and marbling and other such “spurious arts” is discussed more at length in Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. i. §§ 39 seqq.]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 39 and apathetically habitual—things on whose common appliance hang whole trades, to which there never yet belonged the blessing of giving one ray of real pleasure, or becoming of the remotest or most contemptible use—things which cause half the expense of life, and destroy more than half its comfort, manliness, respectability, freshness, and facility. I speak from experience: I know what it is to live in a cottage with a deal floor and roof,1 and a hearth of mica slate; and I know it to be in many respects healthier and happier than living between a Turkey carpet and gilded ceiling, beside a steel grate and polished fender. I do not say that such things have not their place and propriety; but I say this, emphatically, that the tenth part of the expense which is sacrificed in domestic vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in domestic discomforts and incumbrances, would, if collectively offered and wisely employed, build a marble church for every town in England; such a church as it should be a joy and a blessing even to pass near in our daily ways and walks, and as it would bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lifting its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs. § 8. I have said for every town: I do not want a marble church for every village; nay, I do not want marble churches at all for their own sake, but for the sake of the spirit that would build them. The church has no need of any visible splendours; her power is independent of them, her purity is in some degree opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanctuary is lovelier than the majesty of an urban temple; and it may be more than questioned whether, to the people, such majesty has ever been the source of any increase of effective piety;* but to the builders it has been, and must ever be. It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the * Yes, it may be more than questioned; it may be angrily—or sorrowfully—denied: but never by entirely humble and thoughtful persons. The subject was first placed by me, without any remains of Presbyterian prejudice, in the aspect which it must take on purely rational grounds, in my second Oxford inaugural lecture.2 [1880.]

1 [As, e.g., in the little inn at Macugnaga in 1845; see Præterita, ii. ch. vii.] 2 [See Lectures on Art, ch. ii. §§ 60–65.]

40 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.* And see how much more charity the full understanding of this might admit, among classes of men of naturally opposite feelings; and how much more nobleness in the work. There is no need to offend by importunate, self-proclaimant splendour. Your gift may be given in an unpresuming way.1 Cut one or two shafts out of a porphyry whose preciousness those only would know who would desire it to be so used; add another month’s labour to the under-cutting of a few capitals, whose delicacy will not be seen nor * Much attention has lately been directed to the subject of religious art, and we are now in possession of all kinds of interpretations and classifications of it, and of the leading facts of its history. But the greatest question of all connected with it remains entirely unanswered, What good did it do to real religion? There is no subject into which I should so much rejoice to see a serious and conscientious inquiry instituted as this; an inquiry, undertaken neither in artistical enthusiasm, nor in monkish sympathy, but dogged, merciless, and fearless. I love the religious art of Italy as well as most men,2 but there is a wide difference between loving it as a manifestation of individual feeling, and looking to it as an instrument of popular benefit. I have not knowledge enough to form even the shadow of an opinion on this latter point, and I should be most grateful to any one who could put it in my power to do so. There are, as it seems to me, three distinct questions to be considered: The first, What has been the effect of external splendour on the genuineness and earnestness of Christian worship? The second, What the use of pictorial or sculptural representations in the communication of Christian historical knowledge, or excitement of affectionate imagination? The third, What the influence of the practice of religious art on the life of the artist? In answering these inquiries, we should have to consider separately every collateral influence and circumstance; and, by a most subtle analysis, to eliminate the real effect of art from the effects of the abuses with which it was associated. This could be done only by a Christian; not a man who would fall in love with a sweet colour or sweet expression, but who would look for true faith and consistent life as the object of all. It never has been done yet, and the question remains a subject of vain and endless contention between parties of opposite prejudices and temperaments.3

1 [The MS. inserts, “Build the walls of marble all through instead of facing with it only . . .”] 2 [The MS. here inserts (afterwards erased), “and I have spent some of the happiest hours of my life among the Franciscans of Fiesolé”—a reference to his sojourn at Florence in 1845; see Vol. IV. p. 352.] 3 [This was note 2 at the end of the text in eds. 1 and 2. It was omitted in later editions. The inquiries thus propounded were touched on by Ruskin throughout his works; his most deliberate statements being contained in the Oxford Lectures on Art just referred to.]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 41 loved by one beholder of ten thousand;1 see that the simplest masonry of the edifice be perfect and substantial; and to those who regard such things, their witness will be clear and impressive; to those who regard them not, all will at least be inoffensive. But do not think the feeling itself a folly, or the act itself useless. Of what use was that dearly bought water of the well of Bethlehem with which the king of Israel slaked the dust of Adullam? yet was it not thus better than if he had drunk it?2 Of what use was that passionate act of Christian sacrifice, against which, first uttered by the false tongue, the very objection we would now conquer took a sullen tone for ever?* So also let us not ask of what use our offering is to the church: it is at least better for us than if it had been retained for ourselves. It may be better for others also: there is, at any rate, a chance of this; though we must always fearfully and widely shun the thought that the magnificence of the temple can materially add to the efficiency of the worship or to the power of the ministry. Whatever we do, or whatever we offer, let it not interfere with the simplicity of the one, or abate, as if replacing, the zeal of the other.† * John xii. 5. [The second question is not in the MS.] † Thirteen lines of vulgar attack on Roman-Catholicism are here—with much gain to the chapter’s grace, and purification of its truth—omitted.3 [1880.]

1 [See further, below, § 11, p. 47.] 2 [2 Samuel xxiii. 16.] 3 [The omitted lines are as follows:— “That is the abuse and fallacy of Romanism by which the true spirit of Christian offering is directly contradicted. The treatment of the Papists’ temple is eminently exhibitory; it is surface work throughout; and the danger and evil of their church decoration altogether, lie, not in its reality—not in the true wealth and art of which the lower people are never cognizant—but in its tinsel and glitter, in the gildings of the shrine and painting of the image, in embroidery of dingy robes and crowding of imitated gems; all this being frequently thrust forward to the concealment of what is really good or great in their buildings.1 Of an offering of gratitude which is neither to be exhibited nor rewarded, which is neither to win praise nor purchase salvation, the Romanist (as such) has no conception.” The note (No. 3 at the end of the text in eds. 1 and 2) was as follows:— 1 “ ‘To the concealment of what is really good or great. ’ ” I have often been surprised at the supposition that Romanism, in its present condition, could either patronise art, or profit by it. The noble painted windows of St. Maclou at Rouen, and many other churches in France, are entirely blocked up

42 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 9. While, however, I would especially deprecate the imputation of any other acceptableness or usefulness to the gift itself than that which it receives from the spirit of its presentation, it may be well to observe, that there is a lower advantage which never fails to accompany a dutiful observance of any right abstract principle. While the first fruits of his possessions were required from the Israelite as a testimony of fidelity, the payment of those first fruits was nevertheless rewarded, and that connectedly and specifically, by the increase of those possessions. Wealth, and length of days, and peace,1 were the promised and experienced rewards of his offering, though they were not to be the objects of it. The tithe paid into the storehouse, was the express condition of the blessing which there should not be room enough to receive. And it will be thus always: God never forgets any work or labour of love; and whatever it may be of which the first and best portions or powers have been presented to Him, He will multiply and increase sevenfold. Therefore, though behind the altars by the erection of huge gilded wooden sunbeams, with interspersed cherubs.” The MS. adds:— “painted red and white. And for the pageantry of Romanism which is said to have so overwhelming an effect upon the faith of many, the chief impression it has always produced on me has been that of wonder that, considering how much depended on it, it should be so marvellously ill-managed for effect.” In the MS. the passage, “in the gildings . . . gems,” ran “in the gilded doll and painted puppet, in the faded riband and dingy lace, in the theatrical robe and imitated jewel,” while the earlier portion of the note is as follows:— “While I admit it to be a question whether art has ever promoted true religion, I have a right to oppose the idea of its having been made efficient in the advancement of abstract Romanism. I am surprised at its not being more frequently observed that real art is of no service to the Romanist. Give him the best and most precious picture in the world, and though he will indeed use it as a piece of furniture behind his candles, and smoke the top of it and drop wax over the bottom of it, yet, as an idol, or even as an historic representation, it is of no use to him whatever until he has cut a hole in it, and put real pewter crowns on the heads of all the saints in it. Give him a Pieta by Michael Angelo, and he will put it in a niche out of the way where it will never be seen; a group of wooden images from the established makers with real lace dresses on them, and highly painted, is what he wants for practical purposes. The noble painted windows of the east end of St. Maclou, St. Vincent, St. Patrice, and other churches in Rouen are concealed behind gilded wooden carvings from twenty to thirty feet across, representing square rays of the sun of the size of oar blades, piercing volumes of smoke, with bunches of suspended cherubs.”] 1 [Proverbs iii. 16. Cf. A Joy for Ever, § 120.]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 43 it may not be necessarily the interest of religion to admit the service of the arts, the arts will never flourish until they have been primarily devoted to that service—devoted,1 both by architect and employer; by the one in scrupulous, earnest, affectionate design; by the other in expenditure at least more frank, at least less calculating, than that which he would admit in the indulgence of his own private feelings. Let this principle be but once fairly acknowledged among us; and however it may be chilled and repressed in practice, however feeble may be its real influence, however the sacredness of it may be diminished by counter-workings of vanity and self-interest, yet its mere acknowledgment would bring a reward; and with our present accumulation of means and of intellect, there would be such an impulse and vitality given to art as it has not felt since the thirteenth century. And I do not assert this as other than a natural consequence: I should, indeed, expect a larger measure of every great and spiritual faculty to be always given where those faculties had been wisely and religiously employed; but the impulse to which I refer, would be, humanly speaking, certain; and would naturally result from obedience to the two great conditions enforced by the Spirit of Sacrifice, first, that we should in everything do our best; and, secondly, that we should consider increase of apparent labour as an increase of beauty in the building. A few practical deductions from these two conditions, and I have done. § 10. For the first: it is alone enough to secure success, and it is for want of observing it that we continually fail. We are none of us so good architects2 as to be able to work habitually beneath our strength; and yet there is not a building that I know of, lately raised, wherein it is not sufficiently evident that neither architect nor builder has done his best. 1 [The MS. reads thus :— “Devoted, not merely directed, not purchased as if for any other purpose, and coldly set to labour with the mason and bricklayer, on the same terms; not offered at the lowest possible price, in the smallest possible quantity, not mercenarily dealt out on the one hand, or parsimoniously bargained for on the other; but devoted, both by architect . . .”] 2 [The MS. inserts, “or sculptors either.”]

44 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE It is the especial characteristic of modern work. All old work nearly has been hard work.1 It may be the hard APHORISM 6. work of children, of barbarians, of rustics; but it is always their utmost. Ours has as constantly the Modern builders are capable of look of money’s worth, of a stopping short little; and don’t wherever and whenever we can, of a lazy even do the little they can.2 compliance with low conditions; never of a fair putting forth of our strength.3 Let us have done with this kind of work at once: cast off every temptation to it: do not let us degrade ourselves voluntarily, and then mutter and mourn over our shortcomings; let us confess our poverty or our parsimony, but not belie our human intellect. It is not even a question of how much we are to do, but of how it is to be done; it is not a question of doing more, but of doing better. Do not let us boss our roofs with wretched, half-worked, blunt-edged rosettes; do not let us flank our gates with rigid imitations of mediæval statuary. Such things are mere insults to common sense, and only unfit us for feeling the nobility of their prototypes. We have so much, suppose, to be spent in decoration; let us go to the Flaxman of his time, whoever he may be;4 and bid him carve for us a single statue, frieze, or capital, or as many as we can afford, compelling upon him the one condition, that they shall be the best he can do; place them where they will be of the most value, and be content. Our other capitals may be mere blocks, and our other niches empty. No matter: better our work unfinished than all bad. It may be that we do not desire ornament of so high an order: choose, then, a less developed style, as also, if you will, rougher material; the law which we are enforcing requires only that what we pretend to do and to give, shall both be 1 [For another side to this truth, that all great art is done easily, see, e.g., Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xvi. § 27, and Letters to J. J. Laing, at pp. 11, 21 of the privately printed Letters on Art and Literature, edited by Thomas J. Wise, 1894 (given in a later volume of this edition).] 2 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “We are none of us . . .” down to “not belie our human intellect.”] 3 [The MS. here reads: “I think a man’s pride as well as his conscience should equally revolt from such voluntary degradation. Cast off . . .”] 4 [See Elements of Drawing, § 257 n., for a further note on Flaxman to some extent qualifying the above.]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 45 the best of their kind; choose, therefore, the Norman hatchet work, instead of the Flaxman frieze1 and statue, but let it be the best hatchet work; and if you cannot afford marble, use Caen stone, but from the best bed; and if not stone, brick, but the best brick; preferring always what is good of a lower order of work or material, to what is bad of a higher; for this is not only the way to improve every kind of work, and to put every kind of material to better use; but it is more honest and unpretending, and is in harmony with other just, upright, and manly principles, whose range we shall have presently to take into consideration.2 1 [John Flaxman, R.A. (1755–1826), first came into repute, it will be remembered, as a modeller of classic and domestic friezes.] 2 [An odd sheet of MS. contains an interesting variant of the foregoing passage:— “. . . What can be so purifying, what so ennobling to every mental power, as its unselfish exercise. If not in any other cause yet surely in that of Religion, petty jealousies and unseemly vanities must in a measure vanish, and the very action of the imagination take place in a pure atmosphere. The mere desire to do our best is enough. (Not to do better than others but our own best for ourselves. The deep trouble and disgrace of envy destroys the creature’s powers: a man may desire to do well, and labour with all his might, and he will not do what he might have done if his purpose be to eclipse another. It must be a calm, humble, happy ambition that will carry us on. We might as well think to get the reflection of a fair landscape in troubled water as a great range of imaginative power in an envious mind. But the will to do the best possible is far different. Art is hard enough when we have this will, but she laughs to scorn our insincere efforts without it. We must begin with the conception—the aim at perfection. But the will to do the best possible, and that for the sake of some other cause than ourselves, is the very temper in which the greatest things are done); and it is exactly this which is the consequence of the Spirit of Sacrifice. For while that Spirit leaves to every man’s conscience the amount of his gift—it dictates positively the single condition that it shall be of his best. And let this condition be as positively observed. Let nothing that is not as good as it can be ever be made a part of church architecture. Whatever stone we build with must be the best stone of the kind; we may not be able to afford marble, then let it be Caen or Portland, but the best bed of either. We may not be able to afford stone; build of brick, but of the best brick, do not let it be said ‘cheaper material will do in this part or in that part ’; it may answer its purpose as material, but it will not answer its purpose as an offering. So in the ornamentation, we may not be able to afford much, but let what is given be beautiful and as far carried as may be. Do not dot the ceilings or finish the leads with wretched, half-worked, blunt-edged, sickly-faced bosses and gargoyles: do not put up miserable imitations of mediæval statuary; we are foolish and weak if we are pleased with such things, they unfit us for feeling the nobility of their prototypes, they are a thousand-fold worse than plain vaults and walls, they are insults alike to religion and common sense, and we are none of us such good architects nor sculptors neither as to be able with impunity to work habitually beneath our strength, and, being able to do little, stop short of that little.”]

46 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 11. The other condition which we had to notice, was the value of the appearance of labour upon architecture. I have spoken of this before;* and it is, indeed, one of the most frequent sources of pleasure which belong to the art, always, however, within certain somewhat remarkable limits. For it does not at first appear easily to be explained why labour, as represented by materials of value, should, without sense of wrong or error, bear being wasted; while the waste of actual workmanship is always painful, so soon as it is apparent. But so it is, that, while precious materials may, with a certain profusion and negligence, be employed for the magnificence of what is seldom seen, the work of man cannot be carelessly and idly bestowed, without an immediate sense of wrong; as if the strength of the living creature were never intended by its Maker to be sacrificed in vain, though it is well for us sometimes to part with what we esteem precious of substance, as showing that in such service it becomes but dross and dust. And in the nice balance between the straitening of effort or enthusiasm on the one hand, and vainly casting it away upon the other, there are more questions than can be met by any but very just and watchful feeling. In general it is less the mere loss of labour that offends us, than the lack of judgment implied by such loss; so that if men confessedly work for work’s sake, † and it does not appear that they are ignorant where or how to make their labour tell, we shall not be grossly offended. On the contrary, we shall be pleased if the work be lost in carrying out a principle, or in avoiding a deception. It, indeed, is a law properly belonging to another part of our subject, but it may be allowably stated here, that, whenever, by the construction of a building, some parts of it are hidden from the eye which are the continuation of others * Modern Painters, Part I. Sec. 1. Chap. 3. [Vol. III. p. 94 of this edition.] † Obscurely expressed. I meant, if they worked to show their respect for what they are doing, and gladness in doing all they can—not in the idea of producing impossible effects, or impressing the spectator with a quantity of bad, when they can do nothing that’s good. “Sacrificed,” in the next sentence, would have been a better word than “lost.” [1880.]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 47 bearing some consistent ornament, it is not well that the ornament should cease in the parts concealed; credit is given for it, and it should not be deceptively withdrawn: as, for instance, in the sculpture of the backs of the statues of a temple pediment; never, perhaps, to be seen, but yet not lawfully to be left unfinished.1 And so in the working out of ornaments in dark or concealed places, in which it is best to err on the side of completion; and in the carrying round of string courses, and other such continuous work; not but that they may stop sometimes, on the point of going into some palpably impenetrable recess, but then let them stop boldly and markedly, on some distinct terminal ornament, and never be supposed to exist where they do not. The arches of the towers which flank the transepts of Rouen Cathedral have rosette ornaments on their spandrels, on the three visible sides; none on the side towards the roof. The right of this is rather a nice point for question. § 12. Visibility, however, we must remember, depends, not only on situation, but on distance; and there is no way in which work is more painfully and unwisely lost than in its 1 [Compare, on this point of finish in sculpture even where it is invisible, Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. i. §§ 42, 43, where Ruskin denounces the heartlessness of the sculptor who stayed his hand in the portrait on a tomb, as soon as he reached a side of the face invisible from below. The “Lamp of Sacrifice” lighted the Greek sculptors of the best time. In the sculptures of the Parthenon the backs which were set against the wall and could never be seen by human eye are nevertheless finished hardly less carefully than the other parts. This practice is notable, whether it were due to a feeling that the truth of the visible could only be secured if the whole work were sculptured, or to “the true love-sacrifice of a genuine artistic soul.” This is the explanation of the sculptor Rietschl, who says:—“It has always filled me with a feeling of tender admiration, that the figures of the Parthenon are as carefully finished behind as before. The artist knew that when these statues had left his hands and studio, no mortal eye could ever see the charming work which his love and diligence had created and cherished. And now, after 2000 years, we are permitted, rather by a happy accident than by historical necessity, to discover the true love-sacrifices of a genuine artistic soul. Why did the artist do that, in doing which he seemed to lose so much time and labour? He did it from a truly godlike creative impulse to call his work into being in full perfection, and for its own sake, as the flower springs up on the lonely uplands to bloom in the wilderness unvisited by man or beast. It serves no animal for food, and yet it is as perfectly developed as the most sumptuous flower in an ornamental garden” (W. C. Perry’s Greek and Roman Sculpture, p. 271). For other illustrations of thi s subject from ancient art, see E. T. Cook’s Popular Handbook to the Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, pp. 307, 451, and cf. the passage from Renan’s “Prayer on the Acropolis” cited below, p. 53. It is interesting to reflect how much of the great art of the world was spent in places where it was never intended to be seen at all, or where it could only be seen with difficulty.]

48 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE over delicacy on parts distant from the eye. Here, again, the principle of honesty must govern our treatment: we must not work any kind of ornament which is, perhaps, to cover the whole building (or at least to occur on all parts of it) delicately where it is near the eye, and rudely where it is removed from it. That is trickery and dishonesty.* Consider, first, what kinds of ornaments will tell in the distance and what near, and so distribute them, keeping such as by their nature are delicate, down near the eye, and throwing the bold and rough kinds of work to the top; and if there be any kind which is to be both near and far off, take care that it be as1 boldly and rudely wrought where it is well seen as where it is distant, so that the spectator may know exactly what it is, and what it is worth. Thus chequered patterns, and in general such ornaments as common workmen can execute, may extend over the whole building; but bas-reliefs, and fine niches and capitals, should be kept down; and the common sense of this will always give a building dignity, even though there be some abruptness or awkwardness in the resulting arrangements. Thus at San Zeno at Verona, the bas-reliefs, full of incident and interest, are confined to a parallelogram of the front, reaching to the height of the capitals of the columns of the porch.2 Above these, we find a simple, though most lovely, little arcade; and above that, only blank wall, with square face shafts. The whole effect * There is too much stress laid, throughout this volume, on probity in picturesque treatment, and not enough on probity in material construction. No rascal will ever build a pretty building,—but the common sense, which is the root of virtue, will have more to say in a strong man’s design than his finer sentiments. In the fulfilment of his contract honourably, there will be more test of his higher feelings than in his modes of sculpture. But the concluding sentences of the chapter from this point forward are all quite right, and can’t be much better put. [1880.]

1 [The MS. reads:— “that it be not only coarse (or rather bold, for no work need be coarse, however simple) but as boldly,” etc.] 2 [Cf. Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 67. The whole of the Addenda to Lectures I. and II. in that book, §§ 57–76, should be compared with this chapter. San Zeno was a favourite church with Ruskin, and is often discussed or illustrated in his books; see, e.g., Plate 17 in Stones of Venice, vol. i., and fig. 42 in Modern Painters, vol. v. Mr. W. M. Rossetti records in his diary (July 6, 1864) that “the custode, a

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 49 is tenfold grander and better than if the entire façade had been covered with bad work, and may serve for an example of the way to place little where we cannot afford much. So again, the transept gates of Rouen* are covered with delicate bas-reliefs (of which I shall speak at greater length presently) up to about once and a half a man’s height; and above that come the usual and more visible statues and niches. So in the campanile at Florence, the circuit of bas-reliefs is on its lowest storey; above that come its statues; and above them all is pattern mosaic, and twisted columns,1 exquisitely finished, like all Italian work of the time, but still, in the eye of the Florentine, rough and commonplace by comparison with the bas-reliefs. So generally the most delicate niche work and best mouldings of the French Gothic are in gates and low windows well within sight; although, it being the very spirit of that style to trust to its exuberance for effect, there is occasionally a burst upwards and blossoming unrestrainably to the sky, as in the pediment of the west front of Rouen, and in the recess of the rose window behind it, where there are some most elaborate flower-mouldings, all but invisible from below, and only adding a general enrichment to the deep shadows that relieve the shafts of the advanced pediment. It is observable, however, that this very work is bad flamboyant, and has corrupt renaissance characters in its detail as well as use; while in the earlier and grander north and south gates, there is a very noble proportioning of the work to the distance, the niches and statues which crown the northern one, at a height of about one hundred feet from the ground, being alike colossal and simple; visibly so from below, so as to induce no deception, and yet honestly and well finished above, and all that they are expected to be; the * Henceforward, for the sake of convenience, when I name any cathedral town in this manner, let me be understood to speak of its cathedral church.

most intelligent young man, who takes the most genuine interest in his church, remembers Ruskin well, and seems to have been imbued with some of his love for the old, hatred of restorations, etc.” “The same custode,” adds Mr. Rossetti, “was still there when I last visited Verona” (Rossetti Papers, 1903, p. 58).] 1 [See Plate ix. (frontispiece, and p. 138).] VIII. D

50 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE features very beautiful, full of expression, and as delicately wrought as any work of the period. § 13. It is to be remembered, however, that while the ornaments in every fine ancient building, without exception so far as I am aware, are most delicate at the base, they are often in greater effective quantity on the upper parts. In high towers this is perfectly natural and right, the solidity of the foundation being as necessary as the division and penetration of the super-structure; hence the lighter work and richly pierced crowns of late Gothic towers. The campanile of Giotto at Florence, already alluded to, is an exquisite instance of the union of the two principles, delicate bas-reliefs adorning its massy foundation, while the open tracery of the upper windows attracts the eye by its slender intricacy, and a rich cornice crowns the whole.1 In such truly fine cases of this disposition the upper work is effective by its quantity and intricacy only, as the lower portions by delicacy; so also in the Tour de Beurre at Rouen,2 where, however, the detail is massy throughout, sub-dividing into rich meshes as it ascends. In the bodies of buildings the principle is less safe, but its discussion is not connected with our present subject. § 14. Finally, work may be wasted by being too good for its material, or too fine to bear exposure; and this, generally a characteristic of late, especially of renaissance, work, is perhaps the worst fault of all. I do not know anything more painful or pitiful than the kind of ivory carving with which the Certosa of Pavia,3 and part of the Colleone sepulchral chapel at 1 [For detailed descriptions and illustration of the Campanile, see Mornings in Florence and The Shepherd’s Tower.] 2 [The S.W. tower is so called because built (1485–1507) with the money paid for dispensations to eat butter in Lent. For drawings of it by Ruskin, see Vol. II. pp. 400, 430.] 3 [For further criticisms of the Certosa, see Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. i. § 35, ch. xx. § 14; review of Lord Lindsay, in On the Old Road, 1899, vol. i. § 41; Aratra Pentelici, § 160; and Præterita, iii. ch. i. § 8. With these passages may be compared Ruskin’s impressions as given in a letter to his father (Milan, July 16, 1845):— “The Certosa which I saw yesterday afternoon is, in elaborateness and quantity of labour, far more marvellous than my recollection of it. In quality of art, far inferior. Its style is singularly bad; it has no monasterial feeling; it seems built for ornament; it reminded me of the architectural designs of things impossible in the Royal Academy. It has a nasty, English, Chelsea Hospital, Hampton Court twang about it; and the details, whose labour is

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 51 Bergamo,1 and other such buildings are incrusted, of which it is not possible so much as to think without exhaustion; and a heavy sense of the misery it would be, to be forced to look at it all. And this is not from the quantity of it, nor because it is bad work—much of it is inventive and able; but because it looks as if it were only fit to be put in inlaid cabinets and velveted caskets, and as if it could not bear one drifting shower or gnawing frost. We are afraid for it, anxious about it, and tormented by it; and we feel that a massy shaft and a bold shadow would be worth it all. Nevertheless, even in cases like these, much depends on the accomplishment of the great ends of decoration. If the ornament does its duty—if it is ornament, and its points of shade and light tell in the general effect, we shall not be offended by finding that the sculptor in his fulness of fancy has chosen to give much more than these mere points of light, and has composed them of groups of figures. But if the ornament does not answer its purpose, if it have no distant, no truly decorative power; if, generally seen, it be a mere incrustation and meaningless roughness, we shall only be chagrined by finding when we look close, that the incrustation has cost years of labour, and has millions of figures

quite overwhelming, only nauseate one from their profusion without even giving a single bit of good, pure, great art. After what I have been among in Florence, it looks all derivative and diluted and made me sick—like the metrical version of the Psalms. It is not barbarous. It is an attempt by people without mind or feeling to imitate what is good. But it is all done to be fine, nothing for a simple or great purpose. One little bit of Florentine cypressed cloister is worth a thousand such buildings, and one little bit of Orcagna is worth centuries of work in such sculpture. I never was so over-whelmed with mediocrity.”] 1 [Of this building (adjoining the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore and now restored) Ruskin gives the following account in his diary of 1846 (May 10):— “The chapel of Colleone is one of the most vicious specimens of 15th century work; the windows of it are filled up with columns, of which,—each being different from the rest, not in decoration, but in all its proportions and thicknesses, some round, some square, some thickest at the top and others beneath,—the effect is as if they had been brought together by accident, while each is individually of vulgar proportion and more like a candlestick than a column; the awkward shafts of the wheel window are singularly offensive; the work itself even in the details is poor; no invention, though abundance of quantity, the want of feeling throughout being singularly enhanced by finding bas-reliefs of Hercules and Hylas, Hercules and the Nemean Lion, and Hercules and the Hydra, mixed up with those of Cain and Abel and the usual scripture subjects. As might be expected from their position, the profane subjects are not classical, nor the scriptural ones religious.”]

52 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE and histories in it; and would be the better of being seen through a Stanhope lens.1 Hence the greatness of the northern Gothic as contrasted with the latest Italian. It reaches nearly the same extreme of detail; but it never loses sight of its architectural purpose, never fails in its decorative power; not a leaflet in it but speaks, and speaks far off too; and so long as this be the case, there is no limit to the luxuriance in which such work may legitimately and nobly be bestowed. § 15. No limit; it is one of the affections of architects to speak of overcharged ornament. Ornament cannot be overcharged if it be good, and is always overcharged when it is bad. I have given, on the opposite page (Fig. 1), one of the smallest niches of the central gate of Rouen. That gate I suppose to be the most exquisite piece of pure flamboyant work existing; for though I have spoken of the upper portions, especially the receding window, as degenerate,2 the gate itself is of a purer period, and has hardly any renaissance taint. There are four strings of these niches (each with two figures beneath it) round the porch, from the ground to the top of the arch, with three intermediate rows of larger niches, far more elaborate; besides the six principal canopies of each outer pier. The total number of the subordinate niches alone, each worked like that in the plate, and each with a different pattern of traceries in each compartment, is one hundred and seventy-six.* Yet in all this ornament there is not one cusp, one finial, that is useless—not a stroke of the chisel is in vain; the grace and luxuriance of it all are visible—sensible rather—even to the * I have certainly not examined the seven hundred and four traceries (four to each niche) so as to be sure that none are alike; but they have the aspect of continual variation, and even the roses of the pendants of the small groined niche roofs are all of different patterns. (I now italicise this last sentence,—for it is the best illustration in the whole book, of the loving and religious labour on which it so frequently insists.)3

1 [A lens of small diameter with two convex faces of different radii enclosed in a metallic tube, invented by the third Earl Stanhope (1753–1816).] 2 [See above, § 12, p. 49.] 3 [This was Note 4, at the end of the book, in the 1st and 2nd eds. The sentence in brackets at the end was added in the 1880 edition, in which the whole note appeared in Appendix ii., the following words introducing it and another note: “The following two notes—fourth and fifth in the old edition—are worth preserving.”]

CH. I THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 53 uninquiring eye; and all its minuteness does not diminish the majesty, while it increases the mystery, of the noble and unbroken vault. It is not less the boast of some styles that they can bear ornament, than of others that they can do without it; but we do not often enough reflect that those very styles, of so haughty simplicity, owe part of their pleasurableness to contrast, and would be wearisome if universal. They are but the rests and monotones of the art; it is to its far happier, far higher, exaltation that we owe those fair fronts of variegated mosaic, charged with wild fancies and dark hosts of imagery, thicker and quainter than ever filled the depth of midsummer dream; those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves; those window-labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry light; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle and diademed tower; the only witnesses, perhaps, that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. All else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away—all their living interests, and aims, and achievements. We know not for what they laboured, and we see no evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, happiness—all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life and their toil upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, is left to us in those gray heaps1 of deep-wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honours, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration.2 1 [The MS. shows that Ruskin here tried other words—first “eminences” and then “shadows,” before finally selecting “heaps.”] 2 [With “The Lamp of Sacrifice” may be compared Wordsworth’s first sonnet on King’s College Chapel, Cambridge:— “Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense, With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned— Albeit labouring for a scanty band Of white-robed Scholars only—this immense And glorious Work of fine intelligence! Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore Of nicely-calculated less or more.” cf. also Renan’s “Prayer on the Acropolis” in his Recollections of My Youth (English ed., 1892, p. 52): “What adds so much to the beauty of the buildings is their absolute honesty and the respect shown to the Divinity. The parts of the building not seen by the public are as well constructed as those which meet the eye; and there are none of those deceptions which, in French churches more particularly, give the idea of being intended to mislead the Divinity as to the value of the offering.”]

CHAPTER II

THE LAMP OF TRUTH § 1. THERE is a marked likeness between the virtue of man and the enlightenment of the globle he inhabits—the same diminishing gradation in vigour up to the limits of their domains, the same essential separation from their contraries—the same twilight at the meeting of the two: a something wider belt than the line where the world rolls into night, that strange twilight of the virtues; that dusky debateable land, wherein zeal becomes impatience, and temperance becomes severity, and justice becomes cruelty, and faith superstition, and each and all vanish into gloom. Nevertheless, with the greater number of them, though their dimness increases gradually, we may mark the moment of their sunset; and, happily, may turn the shadow back by the way by which it had gone down: but for one, the line of the horizon is irregular and undefined; and this, too, the very equator and girdle of them all—Truth; that only one of which there are no degrees, but breaks and rents continually; that pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pillar; that golden and narrow line, which the very powers and virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy and prudence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, which courage overshadows with his shield, imagination covers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears. How difficult must the maintenance of that authority be, which, while it has to restrain the hostility of all the worst principles of man, has also to restrain the disorders of his best—which is continually assaulted by the one and betrayed by the other, and which regards with the same severity the lightest and the boldest violations of its law! There are some faults 54

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 55 slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the estimate of wisdom; but truth forgives no insult, and endures no stain. We do not enough consider this; nor enough dread the slight and continual occasions of offence against her. We are too much in the habit of looking at falsehood in its APHORISM darkest associations, and through the colour of its 7. worst purposes. That indignation which we profess to The guilt and harm of ami feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit able and well malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, and meant lying.1 treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue. Take the detraction and the mischief from the untruth, and we are little offended by it; turn it into praise, and we may be pleased with it. And yet it is not calumny nor treachery that do* the largest sum of mischief in the world; they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it is the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy;2 the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident lie of the politician, the zealous lie of the partizan, the merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each man to himself, that cast that black mystery over humanity, through which we thank any man who pierces,3 as we would thank one who dug a well in a desert; happy, that the thirst for truth * “Do,”—in the old edition, more grammatically, “does,”—but, as I get old, I like to make my own grammar at home. The sentence following, “they are continually crushed, and are felt only in being conquered,” must be missed out of the aphorism. I did not know the world, when I wrote it, as well as Sandro Botticelli;4 but the entire substance of the aphorism is sound, nevertheless, and most useful. Calumny is, indeed, more invincible than praise; but, at its worst, less mischievous than lying praise, and that by a long way. [1880.]

1 [The aphorism in the text, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “We are too much in the habit . . .” down to “left the fountains of it.”] 2 [The MS. has, “the innocent and amiable fallacy.”] 3 [Ed. 1 reads: “through which any man who pierces, we thank as we would . . .”; and, in the next line, reads “happy in that.”] 4 [The reference is to Botticelli’s picture of “Calumny” (based on Lucian’s description of the work of Apelles) in the Uffizi at Florence. A description of the artist’s motive and a photographic reproduction of the picture will be found in A. Streeter’s Botticelli, 1903, pp. 122–126.]

56 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE still remains with us, even when we have wilfully left the fountains of it. It would be well if moralists less frequently confused the greatness of a sin with its unpardonableness. The two characters are altogether distinct. The greatness of a fault depends partly on the nature of the person against whom it is committed, partly upon the extent of its consequences. Its pardonableness depends, humanly speaking, on the degree of temptation to it. One class of circumstances determines the weight of the attaching punishment; the other, the claim to remission of punishment: and since it is not always easy for men to estimate the relative weight, nor always possible for them to know the relative consequences, of crime, it is usually wise in them to quit the care of such nice measurements, and to look to the other and clearer condition of culpability, esteeming those faults worst which are committed under least temptation. I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity; yet it seems to me, that the shortest way to check the darker forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous against those which have mingled, unregarded and unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended. Cast them all aside: they may be light and accidental; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit,1 for all that; APHORISM 8. and it is better that our hearts should be swept Truth cannot clean of them, without over care as to which is be persisted largest or blackest. Speaking truth is like writing in without fair, and comes only by practice; it is less a pains; but is worth them.2 matter of will than of habit, and I doubt if any occasion can be trivial which permits the practice and formation of such a habit. To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it under intimidation 1 [Revelation ix. 2.] 2 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “To speak and act truth . . .” down to the end of § 1.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 57 or penalty; and it is a strange thought how many men there are, as I trust, who would hold to it at the cost of fortune or life, for one who would hold to it at the cost of a little daily trouble. And seeing that of all sin there is, perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the Almighty, no one more “wanting the good of virtue and of being,” than this of lying, it is surely a strange insolence to fall into the foulness of it on light or on no temptation, and surely becoming an honourable man to resolve, that, whatever semblances or fallacies the necessary course of his life may compel him to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the serenity of his voluntary actions, nor diminish the reality of his chosen delights.1 § 2. If this be just and wise for truth’s sake, much more is it necessary for the sake of the delights over which she has influence. For, as I advocated the expression of the Spirit of Sacrifice in the acts and pleasures of men, not as if thereby those acts could further the cause of religion, but because most assuredly they might therein be infinitely ennobled themselves, so I would have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear in the hearts of our artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the truthful practice of handicrafts could far advance the cause of truth, but because I would fain see the handicrafts themselves urged by the spurs of chivalry: and it is, indeed, marvellous to see what power and universality there are in this single principle, and how in the consulting or forgetting of it lies half the dignity or decline of every art and act of man. I have before2 endeavoured to show its range and power in painting; and I believe a volume, instead of a chapter, might be written on its authority over all that is great in architecture. But I must be content with the force of few and familiar instances, believing that the occasions of its manifestation may be more easily discovered by a desire to be true, than embraced by an analysis of truth. 1 [For an earlier draft of the beginning portion of this chapter, see Appendix ii., p. 283.] 2 [The corrected copy adds, “Modern Painters, vol. i.” See especially pt. ii. sec. i. ch. i. (Vol. III. p. 137).]

58 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE Only it is very necessary in the outset to mark clearly wherein consists the essence of fallacy, as distinguished from fancy.* § 3. For it might be at first thought that the whole kingdom of imagination was one of deception also. Not so: APHORISM 9. the action of the imagination is a voluntary The nature summoning of the conceptions of things absent or and dignity of imagination.1 impossible; and the pleasure and nobility of the imagination partly consist in its knowledge and contemplation of them as such, i.e. in the knowledge of their actual absence or impossibility at the moment of their apparent presence or reality. When the imagination deceives, it becomes madness. It is a noble faculty so long as it confesses its own ideality; when it ceases to confess this, it is insanity. All the difference lies in the fact of the confession, in their being no deception. It is necessary to our rank as spiritual creatures, that we should be able to invent and to behold what is not; and to our rank as moral creatures, that we should know and confess at the same time that it is not.2 § 4. Again, it might be thought, and has been thought, that the whole art of painting is nothing else than an endeavour to deceive. Not so: it is, on the contrary, a statement of certain facts, in the clearest possible way. For instance: I desire to give an account of a mountain or of a rock; I begin by telling its shape. But words will not * “Fancy;” before, “supposition,”—which was a curiously imperfect word. “Fancy,” short for “fantasy,” now must be taken as including not only great imaginations, but fond ones, or even foolish and diseased ones—which are nevertheless as true as the healthiest, so long as we know them to be diseased. A dream is as real a fact, as a vision of reality: deceptive only if we do not recognise it as a dream.3 [1880.]

1 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is the whole of § 3.] 2 [The MS. proceeds:— “Hence the same words become truth or falsehood according to the faculties to which they are addressed. Homer’s description of Scylla is truth in the Odyssey; it would have become falsehood if Pliny had quoted it in his Natural History.”] 3 [See the fuller statements on this point in the 1883 edition of Modern Painters, vol. ii.; Vol. IV. p. 222, of this edition.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 59 do this distinctly, and I draw its shape and say, “This was its shape.” Next: I would fain represent its colour: but words will not do this either, and I dye the paper, and say, “This was its colour.” Such a process may be carried on until the scene appears to exist, and a high pleasure may be taken in its apparent existence. This is a communicated act of imagination, but no lie. The lie can consist only in an assertion of its existence (which is never for one instant made, implied, or believed), or else in false statements of forms and colours (which are, indeed, made and believed to our great loss, continually). And observe, also, that so degrading a thing is deception in even the approach and appearance of it, that all painting which even reaches the mark of apparent realization is degraded in so doing. I have enough insisted on this point in another place.1 § 5. The violations of truth, which dishonour poetry and painting, are thus for the most part confined to the treatment of their subjects. But in architecture another and a less subtle, more contemptible, violation of truth is possible; a direct falsity of assertion respecting the nature of material, or the quantity of labour. And this is, in the full sense of the word, wrong; it is as truly deserving of reprobation as any other moral delinquency; it is unworthy alike of architects and of nations; and it has been a sign, wherever it has widely and with toleration existed, of a singular debasement of the arts; that it is not a sign of worse than this, of a general want of severe probity, can be accounted for only by our knowledge of the strange separation which has for some centuries existed between the arts and all other subjects of human intellect, as matters of conscience. This withdrawal of conscientiousness from among the faculties concerned with art, while it has destroyed the arts themselves, has also rendered in a measure nugatory the evidence which otherwise they might have presented respecting the character of the respective nations among whom they have 1 [The corrected copy adds, “Modern Painters, i.” See Vol. III. p. 108.]

60 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE been cultivated; otherwise, it might appear more than strange that a nation so distinguished for its general uprightness and faith as the English, should admit in their architecture more of pretence, concealment, and deceit, than any other of this or of past time. They are admitted in thoughtlessness, but with fatal effect upon the art in which they are practised. If there were no other causes for the failures which of late have marked every great occasion for architectural exertion, these petty dishonesties would be enough to account for all.1 It is the first step, and not the least, towards greatness, to do away with these; the first, because so evidently and easily in our power. We may not be able to command good, or beautiful, or inventive, architecture; but we can command an honest architecture: the meagreness of poverty may be pardoned, the sternness of utility respected; but what is there but scorn for the meanness of deception? § 6. Architectural Deceits are broadly to be considered under three heads:— 1st. The suggestion of a mode of structure or support, other than the true one; as in pendants of late Gothic roofs. 2nd. The painting of surfaces to represent some other material than that of which they actually consist (as in the marbling of wood2), or the deceptive representation of sculptured ornament upon them. 3rd. The use of cast or machine-made ornaments of any kind. Now, it may be broadly stated, that architecture will be noble exactly in the degree in which all these false expendients are avoided. Nevertheless, there are certain degrees of them, which, owing to their frequent usage, or to other causes, have so far lost the nature of deceit as to be admissible; as, for 1 [The MS. adds :— “For it is impossible for an habitual hypocrisy to be banished on a sudden, and thoughts which have been continually moulded in stucco and cast-iron cannot on the instant be solidified into stone.” Special reference was perhaps intended to the Italian frontage added to Buckingham Palace in 1846 by Blore.] 2 [Cf. above, p. 38, and below, § 14, p. 72.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 61 instance, gilding, which is in architecture no deceit, because it is therein not understood for gold; while in jewellery it is a deceit, because it is so understood, and therefore altogether to be reprehended. So that there arise, in the application of the strict rules of right, many exceptions and niceties of conscience; which let us as briefly as possible examine. § 7. 1st. Structural Deceits.* I have limited these to the determined and purposed suggestion of a mode of support other than the true one. The architect is not bound to exhibit structure; nor are we to complain of him for concealing it, any more than we should regret that the outer surfaces of the human frame conceal much of its anatomy; nevertheless, that building will generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye discovers the great secrets of its structure, as an animal form does, although from a careless observer they may be concealed. In the vaulting of a Gothic roof it is no deceit to throw the strength into the ribs of it, and make the intermediate vault a mere shell. Such a structure would be presumed by an intelligent observer, the first time he saw such a roof; and the beauty of its traceries would be enhanced to him if they confessed and followed the lines of its main strength. If, however, the intermediate shell were made of wood instead of stone, and whitewashed to look like the rest,—this would, of course, be direct deceit, and altogether unpardonable.1 There is, however, a certain deception necessarily occuring in Gothic architecture, which relates, not to the points, but to the manner, of support. The resemblance in its shafts and ribs to the external relations of stems and branches, which has been the ground of so much foolish speculation, necessarily induces in the mind of the spectator a sense or * Aesthetic deceits, to the eye and mind, being all that are considered in this chapter—not practical roguery. See note 10 (here note * on p. 48). [1880.]

1 [The MS. here adds but erases this note: “(One of the most difficult questions connected with this subject of structural deceit is that relating to the use of iron.)” See now § 9 of this chapter.] 2 [See, e.g., § 21 below, for the speculation which connected tracery with trees.]

62 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE belief of a correspondent internal structure; that is to say, of a fibrous and continuous strength from the root into the limbs, and an elasticity communicated upwards, sufficient for the support of the ramified portions. The idea of the real conditions, of a great weight of ceiling thrown upon certain narrow, jointed lines, which have a tendency partly to be crushed, and partly to separate and be pushed outwards, is with difficulty received; and the more so when the pillars would be, if unassisted, too slight for the weight, and are supported by external flying buttresses, as in the apse of Beauvais, and other such achievements of the bolder Gothic. Now, there is a nice question of conscience in this, which we shall hardly settle but by considering that, when the mind is informed beyond the possibility of mistake as to the true nature of things, the affecting it with a contrary impression, however distinct, is no dishonesty, but, on the contrary, a legitimate appeal to the imagination.1 For instance, the greater part of the happiness which we have in contemplating clouds, results from the impression of their having massive, luminous, warm, and mountain-like surfaces; and our delight in the sky frequently depends upon our considering it as a blue vault. But, if we choose, we may know the contrary, in both instances; and easily ascertain2 the cloud to be a damp fog, or a drift of snow-flakes; and the sky to be a lightless abyss. There is, therefore, no dishonesty, while there is much delight, in the irresistibly contrary impression. In the same way, so long as we see the stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points of support in any piece of architecture, we may rather praise than regret the dexterous artifices which compel us to feel as if there were fibre in its shafts and life in its branches. Nor is even the concealment of the support of the external buttress reprehensible, so long as the pillars are not sensibly inadequate to their duty. For the weight of a roof is a 1 [The MS. reads: “a very glorious act of, and legitimate appeal to, the imagination.”] 2 [Ed. 1 reads: “But we know the contrary, in both instances; we know the cloud to be . . .”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 63 circumstance of which the spectator generally has no idea, and the provisions for it, consequently, circumstances whose necessity or adaptation he could not understand. It is no deceit, therefore, when the weight to be borne is necessarily unknown, to conceal also the means of bearing it, leaving only to be perceived so much of the support as is indeed adequate to the weight supposed. For the shafts do, indeed, bear as much as they are ever imagined to bear, and the system of added support is no more, as a matter of conscience, to be exhibited, than, in the human or any other form, mechanical provisions for those functions which are themselves unperceived. But the moment that the conditions of weight are comprehended, both truth and feeling require that the conditions of support should be also comprehended. Nothing can be worse, either as judged by the taste or the conscience, than affectedly inadequate supports—suspensions in air, and other such tricks and vanities.* § 8. With deceptive concealments of structure are to be classed, though still more blameable, deceptive assumptions of it,—the introduction of members which should have, or profess * Four lines are here suppressed, of attack by Mr. Hope on St. Sophia, which I do not now choose to ratify, because I have never seen St. Sophia; and of attack by myself on King’s College Chapel, at Cambridge,—which took no account of the many charming qualities possessed through its faults, nor of its superiority to everything else in its style.1 [1880.]

1 [The four lines (in eds. 1 and 2) are :— “Mr. Hope wisely reprehends, for this reason, the arrangement of the main piers of St. Sophia at Constantinople. King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, is a piece of architectural juggling, if possible still more to be condemned, because less sublime.” The book referred to is An Historical Essay on Architecture, by Thomas Hope, 2 vols.: London, 1835 (pp. 125–126). Other references to this book will be found in the review of Lord Lindsay (On the Old Road, 1899, vol. i. § 32) and in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. ii. § 5. For another reference to King’s College Chapel, see below, ch. iv. § 26, p. 164. Writing to his father from Cambridge in 1851 (April 6), Ruskin says: “I have not been out yet, but got a glimpse of King’s College Chapel, which I think uglier even than my remembrance of it;” and again (April 7):— “I have been seeing Cambridge to-day: to as much advantage as bitter, frosty east wind would allow. I think its details far finer than any in Oxford; as a whole it is as far inferior, and I have not said a word too much against King’s College, though it is a finer thing than any of the prints represent it.”]

64 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE to have, a duty, and have none.1 One of the most general instances of this will be found in the form of the flying buttress in late Gothic. The use of that member is, of course, to convey support from one pier to another when the plan of the building renders it necessary or desirable that the supporting masses should be divided into groups; the most frequent necessity of this kind arising from the intermediate range of chapels or aisles between the nave or choir walls and their supporting piers. The natural, healthy, and beautiful arrangement is that of a steeply sloping bar of stone, sustained by an arch with its spandrel carried farthest down on the lowest side, and dying into the vertical of the outer pier; that pier being, of course, not square, but rather a piece of wall set at right angles to the supported walls, and, if need be, crowned by a pinnacle to give it greater weight. The whole arrangement is exquisitely carried out in the choir of Beauvais. In later Gothic the pinnacle became gradually a decorative member, and was used in all places merely for the sake of its beauty. There is no objection to this; it is just as lawful to build a pinnacle for its beauty as a tower; but also the buttress became a decorative member; and was used, first, where it was not wanted, and, secondly, in forms in which it could be of no use, becoming a mere tie, not between the pier and wall, but between the wall and the top of the decorative pinnacle, thus attaching itself to the very point where its thrust, if it made any, could not be resisted. The most flagrant instance of this barbarism that I remember, (though it prevails partially in all the spires of the Netherlands,) is the lantern of St. Ouen at Rouen, where the pierced buttress, having an ogee curve, looks about as much calculated to bear a thrust as a switch of willow; and the pinnacles, huge and richly decorated, have evidently no work to do whatsoever, but stand round the central tower, like four idle servants, as they are—heraldic supporters, that central tower being merely a hollow crown, which needs no more buttressing than a basket does. In fact, 1 [See Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xv. § 10, where the subject of buttresses is more fully discussed.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 65 I do not know any thing more strange or unwise than the praise lavished upon this lantern;1 it is one of the basest pieces of Gothic in Europe; its flamboyant traceries being of the last and most degraded forms:* and its entire plan and decoration resembling, and deserving little more credit than, the burnt sugar ornaments of elaborate confectionery. There are hardly any of the magnificent and serene methods of construction in the early Gothic, which have not, in the course of time, been gradually thinned and pared away into these skeletons, which sometimes indeed, when their lines truly follow the structure of the original masses, have an interest like that of the fibrous framework of leaves from which the substance has been dissolved, but which are usually distorted as well as emaciated, and remain but the sickly phantoms and mockeries of things that were; they are to true architecture what the Greek ghost was to the armed and living frame; and the very winds that whistle through the threads of them, are to the diapasoned echoes * They are noticed by Mr. Whewell2 as forming the figure of the fleur-de-lys, always a mark, when in tracery bars, of the most debased flamboyant. It occurs in the central tower of Bayeux, very richly in the buttresses of St. Gervais at Falaise, and in the small niches of some of the domestic buildings at Rouen. Nor is it only the tower of St. Ouen which is overrated. Its nave is a base imitation, in the flamboyant period, of an early Gothic arrangement; the niches on its piers are barbarisms; there is a huge square shaft run through the ceiling of the aisles to support the nave piers, the ugliest excrescence I ever saw on a Gothic building; the traceries of the nave are the most insipid and faded flamboyant; those of the transept clerestory present a singularly distorted condition of perpendicular; even the elaborate door of the south transept is, for its fine period, extravagant and almost grotesque in its foliation and pendants. There is nothing truly fine in the church but the choir, the light triforium, and tall clerestory, the circle of Eastern chapels, the details of sculpture, and the general lightness of proportion; these merits being seen to the utmost advantage by the freedom of the body of the church from all incumbrance.3

1 [As, for instance, in Murray’s Handbook for France, where it is praised as “a model of grace and delicacy,” and in E. A. Freeman’s History of Architecture, 1849, p. 397, where it is pronounced “inimitable.”] 2 [See p. 168 of Architectural Notes on German Churches . . . To which is now added, Notes written during an Architectural Tour in Picardy and Normandy, by the Rev. W. Whewell: Cambridge, 1835. Ruskin afterwards compared notes in person with the Master of Trinity; see Introduction above, p. xl.] 3 [This was Note 5 in eds. 1 and 2. Note 2 in Appendix ii. of the 1880 edition.] VIII. E

66 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE of the ancient walls, as to the voice of the man was the pining of the spectre.* § 9. Perhaps the most fruitful sources of these kinds of corruption which we have to guard against in recent times, is one which, nevertheless, comes in a “questionable shape,”1 and of which it is not easy to determine the proper laws and limits; I mean the use of iron. The definition of the art of architecture, given in the first Chapter, is independent of its materials. Nevertheless, that art having been, up to the beginning of the present century, practised for the most part in clay, stone, or wood, it has resulted that the sense of proportion and the laws of structure have been based, the one altogether, the other in great part, on the necessities consequent on the employment of those materials; and that the entire or principal employment of metallic framework would, therefore, be generally felt as a departure from the first principles of the art. Abstractedly there appears no reason why iron should not be used as well as wood; and the time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction. But I believe that the tendency of all present † sympathy and association is to limit the idea of architecture to non-metallic work; and that not without reason. For architecture being in its perfection the earliest, as in its elements it is necessarily the first, of arts, will always precede, in any barbarous nation, the possession of the science necessary either for the obtaining or the management of iron. Its first existence and its earliest laws must, therefore, depend upon the use of materials accessible in quantity, and on the surface of the earth; that is to * Compare Iliad, S 219, with Odyssey, W 5–10.2 † “Present” (i.e. of the day in which I wrote), as opposed to the ferruginous temper which I saw rapidly developing itself, and which, since that day, has changed our merry England into the Man in the Iron Mask. [1880.]

1 [Hamlet, i. 4.] 2 [This was Note 6 in eds. 1 and 2, omitted in later eds. The MS. has in place of this note the following passage (see p. 276 below) which explains the references:— “It was a curious fancy of the Greek, that wasting of the voice into a skeleton of sound. Compare the shout of Achilles in the 18th Book of the Iliad with the opening of the 24th of the Odyssey.”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 67 say, clay, wood, or stone: and as I think it cannot but be generally felt that one of the chief dignities of architecture is its historical use, and since the latter is partly dependent on consistency of style, it will be felt right to retain as far as may be, even in periods of more advanced science, the materials and principles of earlier ages. § 10. But whether this be granted me or not, the fact is, that every idea respecting size, proportion, decoration, or construction, on which we are at present in the habit of acting or judging, depends on presupposition of such materials: and as I both feel myself unable to escape the influence of these prejudices, and believe that my readers will be equally so, it may be perhaps permitted to me to assume that true architecture does not admit iron as a constructive material,1 and that such works as the cast-iron central spire of Rouen Cathedral, or the iron roofs and pillars of our railway stations, and of some of our churches, are not architecture at all. Yet it is evident that metals may, and sometimes must, enter into the construction to a certain extent, as nails in wooden architecture, and therefore, as legitimately, rivets and solderings in stone; neither can we well deny to the Gothic architect the power of supporting statues, pinnacles, or traceries by iron bars; and if we grant this, I do not see how we can help allowing Brunelleschi his iron chain around the dome of Florence,2 or the builders of Salisbury* their elaborate iron binding of the central tower. If, however, we would not fall * “This way of tying walls together with iron, instead of making them of that substance and form, that they shall naturally poise themselves upon their buttment, is against the rules of good architecture, not only because iron is corruptible by rust, but because it is fallacious, having unequal veins in the metal, some places of the same bar being three times stronger than others, and yet all sound to appearance.” (Survey of Salisbury Cathedral in 1668, by Sir C. Wren.) For my own part, I think it better work to bind a tower with iron, than to support a false dome by a brick pyramid.3

1 [See the author’s note at the end of the text, p. 269.] 2 [Brunelleschi’s account of the place of iron in his scheme for the cupola may be read in Vasari, vol. i. pp. 432–433 (Bohn’s ed. 1855).] 3 [As in the case in St. Paul’s: see Pugin’s True Principles of Christian Architecture, 1853, p. 8. The above was Note 8 at the end of eds. 1 and 2, omitted in the 1880 and later editions.]

68 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE into the old sophistry of the grains of corn and the heap, we must find a rule which may enable us to stop somewhere. This

APHORISM rule is, I think, that metals may be used as a cement, 10. but not as a support. For as cements of other kinds The proper structural use are often so strong that the stones may easier be of iron.1 broken than separated, and the wall becomes a solid mass, without for that reason losing the character of architecture, there is no reason why, when a nation has obtained the knowledge and practice of iron work, metal rods or rivets should not be used in the place of cement, and establish the same or a greater strength and adherence, without in any wise inducing departure from the types and system of architecture before established; nor does it make any difference, except as to sightliness, whether the metal bands or rods so employed be in the body of the wall or on its exterior, or set as stays and cross-bands; so only that the use of them be always and distinctly one which might be superseded by mere strength of cement; as for instance if a pinnacle or mullion be propped or tied by an iron band, it is evident that the iron only prevents the separation of the stones by lateral force, which the cement would have done, had it been strong enough. But the moment that the iron in the least degree takes the place of the stone, and acts by its resistance to crushing, and bears superincumbent weight, or if it acts by its own weight as a counterpoise, and so supersedes the use of pinnacles or buttresses in resisting a lateral thrust,2 or if, in the form of a rod or girder, it is used to do what wooden beams would have done as well, that instant the building ceases, so far as such applications of metal extend, to be true architecture.* * Again the word “architecture,” used as implying perfect arch, or authority over materials. No builder has true command over the changes

1 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “This rule is . . .” down to the end of § 10.] 2 [The MS. adds:— “Though I am not aware that iron or lead, which would be better, ever has been used in this way, that instant . . .” omitting the words “or if . . . as well.”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 69 § 11. The limit, however, thus determined, is an ultimate one, and it is well in all things to be cautious how we approach the utmost limit of lawfulness; so that, although the employment of metal within this limit cannot be considered as destroying the very being and nature of architecture, it will, if extravagant and frequent, derogate from the dignity of the work, as well as (which is especially to our present point) from its honesty. For although the spectator is not informed as to the quantity or strength of the cement employed, he will generally conceive the stones of the building to be separable; and his estimate of the skill of the architect will be based in great measure on the supposition of this condition, and of the difficulties attendant upon it:1 so that it is always more honourable, and it has a tendency to render the style of architecture both more masculine and more scientific, to employ stone and mortar simply as such, and to do as much as possible with their mere weight and strength, and rather sometimes to forego a grace, or to confess a weakness, than attain the one, or conceal the other, by means verging upon dishonesty.2 in the crystalline structure of iron, or over its modes of decay. The definition of iron by the Delphic oracle, “calamity upon calamity” (meaning iron on the anvil), has only been in these last days entirely interpreted: and from the sinking of the Vanguard and London to the breaking Woolwich Pier into splinters—two days before I write this note,—the “anarchy of iron” is the most notable fact concerning it.3 [1880].

1 [The MS. adds:— “He does not imagine, in wondering at the slightness of the shafts of the window traceries, that there are iron rods through the body of them; nor as he looks up to the slender points of the uppermost pinnacles, that they are supported by stays from the roof. So that . . .”] 2 [The MS. adds:— “There is a pretty little piece of confession of this kind in one of the open traceries which separate the lateral chapels of the cathedral of Coutances (Plate I., fig.—). A little iron would have saved the awkwardness of the prop at a; but the occurrence of this slight disfigurement, while it hardly affects the grace of the principal lines, both fixes the attention upon the difficulty of obtaining so great slenderness, and gives us perfect confidence through the rest of the designs in the simplicity and purity of their structure.” The plate was never more than planned. The MS. adds a note to “introduce about the quatrefoil at Rouen.”] 3 [The 1880 edition here added, “See Appendix III.,” the reference being to the author’s note now given on p. 67, above. The definition of iron by the Delphic oracle is given in Herodotus (i. 68): phma epi phmati keimenon kata toionde ti eikaxwn,

70 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE Nevertheless, where the design is of such delicacy and slightness as, in some parts of very fair and finished edifices, it is desirable that it should be; and where both its completion and security are in a measure dependent on the use of metal, let not such use be reprehended; so only that as much is done as may be, by good mortar and good masonry; and no slovenly workmanship admitted through confidence in the iron helps; for it is in this license as in that of wine, a man may use it for his infirmities, but not for his nourishment. § 12. And, in order to avoid an over use of this liberty, it would be well to consider what application may be conveniently made of the dovetailing and various adjusting of stones; for when any artifice is necessary to help the mortar, certainly this ought to come before the use of metal, for it is both safer and more honest. I cannot see that any objection can be made to the fitting of the stones in any shapes the architect pleases; for although it would not be desirable to see buildings put together like Chinese puzzles, there must always be a check upon such an abuse of the practice in its difficulty; nor is it necessary that it should be always exhibited, so that it be understood by the spectator as an admitted help, and that no principal stones are introduced in positions apparently impossible for them to retain, although a riddle here and there, in unimportant features, may sometimes serve to draw the eye to the masonry, and make it interesting, as well as to give a delightful sense of a kind of necromantic power in the architect. There is a pretty one in the lintel of the lateral door of the cathedral of Prato1 (Plate IV. fig. 4); where the maintenance of the visibly separate stones, alternate marble and serpentine, cannot be

ws epi kakw anqrwpou sidhros aneurtai (“trouble laid upon troubl by the thought that iron had been discovered for the evil of mankind.”) H.M.S. Vanguard, a double-screw iron-clad, was struck by the ram of the Iron Duke and sunk, during a fog off the coast of Wicklow, Sept. 1, 1875. The London, a steamer on her way to Melbourne, foundered in the Bay of Biscay, with the loss of 220 lives, January 11, 1866; for other references to the sinking of the London, see Crown of Wild Olive, § 107, and Aratra Pentelici, § 208.] 1 [Ruskin was at Prato sketching architectural details in 1846, as some notes in his diary show.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 71 understood until their cross-cutting is seen below. Each block is, of course, of the form given in fig. 5. § 13. Lastly, before leaving the subject of structural deceits, I would remind the architect who thinks that I am unnecessarily and narrowly limiting his resources or his art, that the highest greatness and the highest wisdom are shown, the first APHORISM by a noble submission to, the second by a thoughtful 11. providence for, certain voluntarily admitted The inviola 1 bility of Divine restraints. Nothing is more evident than this, in that Law not oj supreme government which is the example, as it is the necessity but of ordinance.2 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,3 admitted by the Divine Omnipotence: and these difficulties, observe, occur in the form of natural laws or ordinances, which might, at many times and in countless ways, be infringed with apparent advantage, but which are never infringed, whatever costly arrangements or adaptations their observance may necessitate for the accomplishment of given purposes. The example most apposite to our present subject is the structure of the bones of animals. No reason can be given, I believe, why 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, more naturally still, carbon; so framing the bones of adamant at once. The elephant and rhinoceros, had the earthy part of their bones been made of diamond, might have been as agile and light as grass-hoppers, and other animals might have been framed, far more magnificently colossal than any that walk the earth. In other worlds we may, perhaps, see such creations; a creation for every element, and elements infinite. But the architecture 1 [On the subject of restraint in art, see ch. iii. § 23, p. 134; ch. vii. §§ 2, 8, pp. 250, 259; cf. Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. ch. x., “Of Moderation, or the Type of Government by Law”; and see General Index, s. “Moderation” and “Restraint.”] 2 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “the highest greatness . . .” down to the end of § 13.] 3 [The words “for the sake of that contest” are not in the MS.]

72 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE of animals here is appointed by God to be a marble architecture, not a flint nor adamant architecture; and all manner of expedients are adopted to attain the utmost degree of strength and size possible under that great limitation. The jaw of the ichthyosaurus is pieced and riveted,1 the leg of the megatherium is a foot thick, and the head of the mylodon2 has a double skull; we, in our wisdom, should, doubtless, have given the lizard a steel jaw, and the mylodon a cast-iron headpiece, and forgotten the great principle to which all creation bears witness, that order and system are nobler things than power. But God shows us in Himself, strange as it may 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 that attribute of uprightness in the human creature; “that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.”3 § 14. 2nd. Surface Deceits. These may be generally defined as the inducing the supposition of some form of material which does not actually exist; as commonly in the painting of wood to represent marble,4 or in the painting of ornaments in deceptive relief,5 etc. But we must be careful to observe, that the evil of them consists always in definitely attempted deception, and that it is a matter of some nicety to mark the point where deception begins or ends. Thus, for instance, the roof of Milan Cathedral is seemingly covered with elaborate fan tracery, forcibly6 enough painted to enable it, in its dark and removed position, to deceive a careless observer. This is, of course, gross degradation; it destroys much of the dignity even of the rest of the building, and is in the very strongest terms to be reprehended. 1 [The MS. adds, “and that of the whale infinitely divided into elastic threads.”] 2 [So, correctly, in ed. 2. Eds. 1 and 1880 read “myodon.” Owen’s monograph on this extinct giant ground-sloth had appeared in 1842.] 3 [Psalms xv. 4.] 4 [Cf. above, p. 38 n.] 5 [See Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. i. § 40.] 6 [The MS. reads: “not very well painted indeed, but well enough . . . to induce deception and require some pains to discover its fictitiousness.”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 73 The roof of the Sistine Chapel has much architectural design in grisaille mingled with the figures of its frescoes; and the effect is increase of dignity. In what lies the distinctive character? In two points, principally:—The first, that the architecture is 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. The second, that so great a painter as Michael Angelo

would always stop short, in such minor parts of his APHORISM design, of the degree of vulgar force which would be 12. Great painting necessary to induce the supposition of their reality; never deceives. and, strangely as it may sound, would never paint (Compare, and add to this badly enough to deceive. aphorism as But though right and wrong are thus found part of it, the fourth broadly opposed in works severally so mean and so paragraph of mightly as the roof of Milan and that of the Sistine, this chapter.)1 there are works neither so great 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 is to be deceptively represented. § 15. Evidently, then, painting, confessedly such, is no deception; it does not assert any material whatever. Whether it be on wood or on stone, or, as naturally will be supposed, on plaster,2 does not matter. Whatever the material, good painting makes it more precious; nor can it ever be said to deceive respecting the ground of which it gives us no information. To cover brick with plaster, and this plaster with fresco, is, therefore, perfectly legitimate; and as desirable a mode of decoration, as it is constant in the great periods. 1 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “so great a painter as Michael Angelo . . .” down to the end of § 14.] 2 [The MS. adds, “or, if ever such things were, on ivory or metal let into the wall.”]

74 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE Verona and Venice are now seen deprived of more than half their former splendour; it depended far more on their frescoes1 than their marbles. The plaster, in this case, is to be considered as the gesso ground on panel or canvas. But to cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood; and is just as contemptible a procedure as the other is noble.2 It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint everything? So long as the painting is confessed—yes; but if, even in the slightest degree, the sense of it be lost, and the thing painted be supposed real—no. Let us take a few instances. In the Campo Santo at Pisa, each fresco is surrounded with a border composed of flat coloured patterns of great elegance—no part of it in attempted relief. The certainty of flat surface being thus secured, the figures, though the size of life, do not deceive, 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 soothe us with the sweet clearness of far-off sky, and yet never lose the severity of his primal purpose of architectural decoration.3 In the Camera di Correggio of San Lodovico at Parma,4 the trellises of vine shadow the walls, as if with an actual arbour; and the groups of children, peeping through the oval openings, luscious in colour and faint in light, may well be expected every instant to break through, or hide behind the covert. The grace of their attitudes, and the evident greatness of the whole work, mark that it is painting, and barely redeem it from the charge of falsehood; but even so saved, it is utterly unworthy to take a place among noble or legitimate architectural decoration. 1 [See Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 212).] 2 [Cf. The Poetry of Architecture, § 121, Vol. I. p. 95.] 3 [For Ruskin’s account of the frescoes in the Campo Santo, see Modern Painters, vol. ii.; in this ed., Vol. IV. pp. xxxi., 316.] 4 [The Camera di San Paolo, in the convent adjoining San Lodovico, painted by Correggio about the year 1519 for the abbess. An account of the Camera, with reproductions of several of the paintings, is given in ch. viii. of C. Ricci’s Correggio (1896). Ruskin was at Parma in 1845; for his views of Correggio generally, see note in Vol. IV. p. 197.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 75 In the cupola of the duomo of Parma the same painter has represented the Assumption with so much deceptive power, that he has made a dome of some thirty feet diameter look like a cloud-wrapt opening in the seventh heaven, crowded with a rushing sea of angels.1 Is this wrong? Not so: for the subject at once precludes the possibility of deception. We might have taken the vines for a veritable pergola, and the children for its haunting ragazzi; but we know the stayed cloud and moveless angels must be man’s work; let him put his utmost 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 workman; and this especially, because the former, even in deceptive portions, will not trick us so grossly; as we have just seen in Correggio, where a worse painter would have made the thing look like life at once. There is, however, in room, villa, or garden decoration, some fitting admission of trickeries of this kind, as of pictured landscapes at the extremities of alleys and arcades, and ceilings like skies, or painted with prolongations upwards of the architecture of the walls, which things have sometimes a certain luxury and pleasureableness in places meant for idleness, and are2 innocent enough as long as they are regarded as mere toys. § 16. Touching the false representation of material, the question is infinitely more simple, and the law more sweeping; all such imitations are utterly base and inadmissible.3 It is melancholy to think of the time and expense lost in marbling the shop fronts of London alone, 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 1 [See ch. xi. of Ricci’s book. For some other remarks by Ruskin, see Catalogue of the Standard Series, No. 13.] 2 [The MS. has, “are a kind of men’s rabbits on the wall, innocent . . . toys, and not as subjects of art or matters of finish.”] 3 [The MS. inserts, “Whatever the pleasure of those can be is more than I can conceive.”]

76 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE which do not add one whit to comfort, or cleanliness, or even to that great object of commercial art—conspicuousness. But in architecture of a higher rank, how much more is it to be condemned! I have made it a rule in the present work not to blame specifically; but I may, perhaps, be permitted, while I express my 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.1 The only effect of it is to cast a suspicion upon the true stones below, and upon every bit of granite afterwards encountered. One feels a doubt, after it, of the honesty of Memnon2 himself. But even this, however derogatory to the noble architecture around it, is less painful than the want of feeling with which, in our cheap modern churches, we suffer the wall decorator to erect about the altar frameworks3 and pediments daubed with mottled colour, and to dye in the same fashion such skeletons or caricatures of columns as 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 requires in church furniture is, that it should be simple and unaffected, not fictitious nor tawdry. It may not be in our 1 [By 1845 the four sides of the present British Museum, as designed by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A., had been erected, and the old Montagu House removed. Real granite is employed at the bottom on the sides of the principal staircase. The “imitation” refers—as explained in a review of the book at the time, where the criticism is commended (Weekly Chronicle, June 3, 1849)—to imitative granite blocks on which the Egyptian lions then rested at the entrance to the staircase. The lions are now in a different part of the Museum.] 2 [The reference is to the seated “Memnon” (in the Egyptian Gallery of the Museum)—a statue in granite of Amenophis III., who erected the famous statue of himself at Thebes which the Greeks named the statue of Memnon, the fabled King of Egypt slain in the Trojan war. The Memnon in the Museum was excavated by Belzoni (see Vol. III. p. 240).] 3 [For “erect about the altar frameworks . . .” the MS. has “insert the creed and commandments in frameworks . . .” “I do not know (runs a discarded passage) any more striking instances of accepted and tolerated folly in this all-tolerating age than the mode in which we still suffer the wall decorator to erect the creed and commandments over our church altars in wooden pediments—frameworks daubed and splashed with green and red, or yellow and black, nor are we free from the plague even where there is real power and feeling in the architect.”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 77 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 nobility itself,) it must be a bad design indeed, which is grossly offensive. I recollect 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 were roughly and nakedly used, and the windows latticed with white glass. But the smoothly stuccoed walls, the flat roofs with ventilator ornaments, the barred windows with jaundiced borders and dead ground square panes, the gilded or bronzed wood, the painted iron, the wretched upholstery of curtains and cushions, and pew heads, and altar railings, and Birmingham metal candle-sticks, and, above all, the green and yellow sickness of the false marble—disguises all, observe; falsehoods all—who are they who like these things? who defend them? who do them? I have never spoken to any one who did like them, though to many who thought them matters of no consequence. 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 which should precede 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 all services to be tricked out in a fashion so fictitious and unseemly. § 17. Painting, however, is not the only mode in which material may be concealed, or rather simulated; for merely to conceal is, as we have seen, no wrong. Whitewash, for instance, though often (by no means always) to be regretted as a concealment, is not to be blamed as a falsity. It shows itself

78 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 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, and is, therefore, allowable to any extent: I do not say expedient: it is one of the most abused means of magnificence we possess, and I much doubt whether any use we ever make of it, balances that loss of pleasure, which, from the frequent sight and perpetual suspicion of it, we suffer in the contemplation of any thing that is verily of gold. I think gold was meant to be seldom seen, and to be admired as a precious thing; and I sometimes wish that truth should so far literally prevail as that all should be gold that glittered, or rather that nothing should glitter that was not gold. Nevertheless, Nature herself does not dispense with such semblance, but uses light for it; and I have too great a love for old and saintly art to part with its burnished field, or radiant 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 that of colour, it is not here the place to speak; we are endeavouring to determine what is lawful, not what is desirable. Of other and less common modes of disguising surface, as of powder of lapis lazuli, or mosaic imitations of coloured stones, I need hardly speak. The rule will apply to all alike, that whatever is pretended, is wrong; commonly enforced also by the exceeding ugliness and insufficient appearance of such methods, as lately in the style of renovation by which half the houses in Venice have been defaced, the brick covered first with stucco, and this painted with zigzag veins in imitation of alabaster.1 But there is one more form of architectural fiction, which is so constant in the great periods that it needs respectful judgment. I mean the facing of brick with precious stone. § 18. It is well known, that what is meant by a church’s being built of marble is, in nearly all cases, only that a veneering of marble has been fastened on the rough brick wall, built 1 [Ruskin notices this defacement in a letter from Venice (Sept. 10, 1845) given in Vol. IV. p. 41 n.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 79 with certain projections to receive it; and that what appear to be massy stones, are nothing more than external APHORISM slabs. 13. Now, it is evident, that, in this case, the (Expanded afterwards in question of right is on the same ground as in that “Stones of of gilding. If it be clearly understood that a marble Venice.”1) The facing brick with facing does not pretend or imply a marble wall, marble is only a there is no harm in it; and as it is also evident that, great form of Mosaic and when very precious stones are used, as jaspers and perfectly serpentines, it must become, not only an admissible.2 extravagant and vain increase of expense, but sometimes an actual impossibility, to obtain mass of them enough to build with, there is no resource but this of veneering; nor is there anything to be alleged against it on the head of durability, such work having been by experience found to last as long, and in 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 of brick, or any other material; and when lovely stones are to be obtained, it is a manner which should be thoroughly understood, and often practised. Nevertheless, as we esteem the shaft of a column more highly for its being of a single block, and as we do not regret the loss of substance and value which there is in things of solid gold, silver, agate, or ivory; so I think that walls themselves may be regarded with a more just complacency if they are known to be all of noble substance; 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 do; and I believe that a better manner of design, and a more careful and studious, if less abundant, decoration would follow, upon the consciousness of thoroughness in the substance. And, indeed, this is to be remembered, with respect 1 [Vol. ii. ch. iv. § 25.] 2 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “It is well known . . .” down to “upon the consciousness of thoroughness in the substance.”]

80 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 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 colour, 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 practices are essentially unarchitectural; and while we cannot say that there is 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 parts and kinds, one of less durability than the other, which dies away from it in process of ages, 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 APHORISM time; nor this, as I think, until every resource of a 14. The proper more stable kind has been exhausted. The true colours of colours of architecture are those of natural stone, and Architecture are those of I would fain see these taken advantage of to the full. natural stones.1 Every variety of hue, from pale yellow to purple, passing through orange, red, and brown, is entirely at our command; nearly every kind of green and grey is also attainable; and with these, and pure white, what harmonies might we not achieve? Of stained and variegated stone, the quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable; where brighter colours are required, let glass, and gold protected by glass, be used in mosaic—a kind of work as durable as the solid stone, and incapable of losing its lustre by time—and let the painter’s work be reserved for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber. This is the true and faithful way of building; where this cannot be, the device of external colouring may, indeed, be employed without dishonour; but it must be with the warning reflection, that a time will come when such aids must pass away, 1[The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “The true colours of architecture . . .” down to the end of § 18.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 81 and when the building will be judged in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. Better the less bright,1 more enduring fabric. The transparent alabasters of San Miniato, and the mosaics of St. Mark’s, are more warmly filled, and more brightly touched, by every return of 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 the sunset has left cold. § 19. 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 this practice: one, that all cast and machine work is bad, as work; the other, that it is dishonest. Of its badness I shall speak in another place,2 that being evidently no efficient reason against its use when other cannot be had. Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, is of the grossest kind, is, I think, a sufficient reason to determine absolute and unconditional rejection of it. Ornament, as I have often before observed, has two entirely distinct sources of agreeableness: one, that of the abstract beauty of its forms, which, for the present, we will suppose to be the same whether they come from the hand or the machine; the other, the sense of human labour and care spent upon it. How great this latter influence we may perhaps judge, by considering that there is not a cluster of weeds growing in any cranny of ruin* which has not a * I do not see any reference to the intention of the opposite plate. It is a piece of pencil sketch from an old church at St. Lô (I believe the original drawing is now in America, belonging to my dear friend, Charles Eliot Norton3),

1 [The MS. here shows that the author tried the words “exalted,” “elaborate,” “vast,” before he fixed upon “bright.” Below, he omitted, in revising, “grey” before cathedrals; and the words “the temples whose azure and purple” were originally “the temples whose iridescent purple.”] 2 [See below, ch. v. § 21, p. 214.] 3 [The old church is the cathedral. The drawing, a portion of which is engraved, was No. 79 in the catalogue of an Exhibition of Drawings by Ruskin arranged by VIII. F

82 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE beauty in all respects nearly equal, and, in some, immeasurably superior, to that of the most elaborate sculpture of its stones: and that all our interest in the carved work, our sense of its richness, though it is tenfold less rich than the knots of grass beside it; of its delicacy, though it is a thousandfold less delicate; of its admirableness, though a millionfold less admirable; results from our consciousness of its being the work of poor, clumsy, toilsome man. Its true delightfulness depends on our discovering in it the record of thoughts, and intents, and trials, and heart-breakings—of recoveries and joyfulnesses of success: all this can 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 any thing 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 is found; and the worth of an ornament is the time it must take 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 work, than a diamond can be known from paste; nay, that the latter

and it was meant to show the greater beauty of the natural weeds than of the carved crockets, and the tender harmony of both. Some farther notice is taken of this plate in the eighteenth paragraph of Chap. V. [1880.] * Worth is, of course, used here in the vulgar economists’ sense, “cost of production,” intrinsic value being distinguished from it in the next sentence. [1880.]

Professor Norton in America, 1879. Ruskin made the drawing in 1848. He writes to his father from St. Lô (Saturday, Sept. 16):— “I have got a very beautiful subject here, but these architectural pieces take an awful time. I must stay Monday to finish it.” And again on Sept. 21:— “All yesterday was taken up in finishing sketch and writing notes; the sketch has come out successfully even to its last scratch, and I think you will like it. I never saw more graceful fragments than there are about this cathedral, and yet the top is so ugly that I believe had I came in by daylight, instead of night, I should have taken place in the Bayeux diligence without going to look at it.”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 83 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 honour disdain false ornaments. The using of them is just as downright and inexcusable a lie.1 You use that which pretends to a worth which it has not; which pretends 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, you have no business with it, you do not want it. Nobody wants ornaments in this world, but everybody wants integrity. All the fair devices that 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 them with falsehood. This then, being our general law, and I hold it for a more imperative one than any other I have asserted; and this kind of dishonesty, the meanest, as the least necessary;* for2 ornament is an extravagant and inessential thing; and therefore, if fallacious, utterly base—this, I say, being our general law, there are, nevertheless, certain exceptions respecting particular substances and their uses. * Again too much fuss and metaphysics about a perfectly simple matter; inconclusive besides, for the dishonesty of machine work would cease, as soon as it became universally practised, of which universality there seems every likelihood in these days. The subject was better treated subsequently in my address to the art-students of Mansfield, now reprinted in Vol. XI. of my “Works” series (A Joy for Ever).3 [1880.]

1 [The MS. adds, “,and the better the thing is cut the more subtle is the falsehood.”] 2 [The MS. reads: “necessary; for helps in structure and hues in colour are partly of necessity and partly of permission, like the kind of undergirding and colouring which are perhaps allowable in policy or in kindness, but ornament is . . .”] 3 [In the 1880 edition the last words of this note were: “which I hope presently to reprint, and sum the conditions of verdict in the preface to the new edition of my Political Economy of Art.” “Of course I did not get the intended preface written” is added in the list of errata following the Advice of 1880 (above, p. liii.). There was, however, a new preface to the re-issue of 1880. The lecture to the Mansfield Art Class is contained in §§ 166–174 of A Joy for Ever.]

84 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 20. Thus in the use of brick: since that is known to be originally moulded, there is no reason why it should not be moulded into diverse forms. It will never be supposed 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 Vercelli, are among the richest in Italy.1 So also, tile and porcelain work, of which the former is grotesquely, but successfully, employed in the domestic architecture of France, coloured tiles being inserted in the diamond spaces between the crossing timbers; and the latter admirably in Tuscany, in external bas-reliefs, by the Robbia family, in which works, while we cannot but sometimes regret the useless and illarranged colours,2 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 marble. For it is not the material, but the absence of the human labour, which makes the thing worthless; and a piece of terra cotta, or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by the human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by machinery. It is, indeed, possible, and even usual, for men to sink into machines themselves, so that even hand-work has all the characters of mechanism; of the difference between living and dead hand-work I shall speak presently;3 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 we use stone at 1 [The MS. here refers to an unpublished plate, giving the Palazzo Pepoli and Vercelli mouldings, and the title and timber work of a house at Beauvais. For Ruskin’s sketch at Vercelli in 1846, see Vol. I. p. 28. In the bottom corner of the sketch it will be seen that he drew some details of the mouldings.] 2 [For Ruskin’s first impressions of the Robbia work, and his more emphatically expressed dislike of the colouring, see Vol. IV. p. 300 n. For later references, see Aratra Pentelici, § 129; Queen of the Air, § 140; and Relation of Michael Angelo and Tintoret. Ruskin had a Virgin and Child by Luca della Robbia over the mantelpiece of his study at Brantwood.] 3 [See below, p. 214. The MS. adds, “that being no question of mere honesty.”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 85 all,* (since all stone is naturally supposed to be carved by hand,) we must not carve it by machinery; neither must we use any artificial stone cast into shape, nor any stucco ornaments of the colour of stone, or which might in any wise be mistaken for it, as the stucco mouldings in the cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, which cast a shame and suspicion over every part of the building. But for ductile and fusible 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 handwork of their mould. But1 I believe no cause to have been more active in the degradation of our national feeling for beauty than the constant use APHORISM of castiron ornaments. The common iron work of the 15. Cast-iron middle ages was as simple as it was effective, ornamentation composed of leafage cut flat out of sheet iron, and barbarous.2 twisted at the workman’s will.3 No ornaments, on the * The sentence now put in a parenthesis is the false assumption which destroys all the force of the arguments in the last couple of pages. The conclusion given in Aphorism 15 is, however, wide-based enough, and thoroughly sound. [1880.]

1 [The first part of this aphorism (down to “as those of cast-iron”) is not in the MS., which reads instead as follows:— “Thus a coin, which, by the weight of blows, has been forced into close following and accepting of every line of its die, is a nobler thing than a bronze statue which has trickled languidly into its mould (unless it be afterwards highly finished by hand). But my own feeling is that except in brick work, and for purposes of coinage, all moulds are heresies, and everything moulded valueless. I do not see any use nor beauty in cast bronzes; and while, on the score of truth, we can hardly allege anything against them, since they and all other cast work are always distinguishable . . .”] 2 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “But I believe no cause . . .” down to “found in their company.”] 3 [Ruskin discussed iron-work in The Two Paths (1859), in which book the frontispiece gave some beautiful examples. He had begun to study Italian iron-work much earlier. Thus in his 1846 diary he noted:— VERONA, May 10.—I think the iron-work of Italy is even more peculiar and valuable than its stone, especially in balconies. One of its chief features is the constant use of it in leaves instead of bars; sometimes mere broad ribbons bent into the bulging balcony form which I sketched here under the vine (note name of street, Strada degli Amanti); this form I saw at Arona, opposed directly to modern bars, and appearing peculiarly beautiful, partly

86 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE contrary, are so cold, clumsy, and vulgar, so essentially incapable of a fine line or shadow, as those of cast-iron; 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 indulges in these vulgar and cheap substitutes for real decoration. Their inefficiency and paltriness I shall endeavour to show more conclusively in another place;1 enforcing only, at present, the general conclusion that, if even honest or allowable, they are things in which we can never take just pride or pleasure, and must never be employed in any place wherein they might either themselves obtain the credit of being other and better than they are, or be associated with the thoroughly downright work to which it would be a disgrace to be found in their company. Such are, I believe, the three principal kinds of fallacy by which architecture is liable to be corrupted; 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 above noticed,2 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;3 but of which the most part4 have so much of legerdemain and trickery about them, that they will lower any style in which they considerably prevail; and they are

from the original sweetness of its curve, and boldness of light and shade, on the flat surface; partly from the rusting and warming of its weathered colour; partly from the battering of portions into varied form. But a magnificent instance occurs in the railing of a garden of a palace near the church of Sta. Afra of Brescia, where the leaf bronze is cut into three beautiful shrubs with flexible stalks and fruit, which project far beyond the railing; yet with a certain architectural severity about them, and not occupying much space; the greater part of the railing, 30 feet high perhaps, being flatly decorated and gilded, but it is all fine.] 1 [See below, ch. v. p. 214.] 2 [Above, § 7, p. 61.] 3 [Above, ibid., p. 61.] 4 [The MS. inserts, “, while not in strictness to be condemned.”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 87 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 this kind are accompanied by the display of such dexterous stone-cutting, or architectural sleight of hand, as may become, even by itself, a subject of admiration, it is a great chance if the pursuit of them do not gradually draw us away from all regard and care for the nobler character of the art, and end in its total paralysis or extinction. And against this there is no guarding, but by stern disdain of all display of dexterity and 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 cares which way his pencil strikes.* It would be easy to give many instances of the danger of these tricks and vanities; but I shall confine myself to the examination of one which has, as I think, been the cause1 of the fall of Gothic architecture throughout Europe. I mean the system of intersectional mouldings, which, on account of its great importance, and for the sake of the general reader, I may, perhaps, be pardoned for explaining elementarily.2 § 21. I must, in the first place, however, refer to Professor Willis’s account3 of the origin of tracery, given in the sixth chapter of his Architecture of the Middle Ages;4 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, * A great painter does care very much, however, which way his pencil strikes; and a good sculptor which way his mallet: but in neither of them is the care that their action may be admired, but that it may be just. [1880.]

1 [The MS. reads: “the very first and chief cause.”] 2 [Cf. above, Introduction, p. xxi.] 3 [The MS. reads: “clear and irrefragable account.”] 4 [Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, especially of Italy, by R. Willis, M.A., F.R.S. Cambridge, 1835. Ruskin afterwards made the acquaintance of Willis (Jacksonian Professor of Applied Mechanics at Cambridge); see above, Introduction, p. xl.]

88 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE I say, because the smallest acquaintance with early Gothic architecture would have informed the 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 earliest examples does not exist at all.1 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 sub-arch. I have given, in Plate VII. fig. 3,2 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 various piercings of the space between it and the superior arch; with a simple trefoil under a round arch, in the Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen (Plate III. fig. 1); with a very beautifully proportioned quatrefoil, in the triforium of Eu, and that of the choir of Lisieux; with quatrefoils, sixfoils, and septfoils, in the transept towers of Rouen (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 figures, pointed or round, giving very clumsy shapes of the intermediate stone, (fig. 4, from one of the nave chapels of Rouen, fig. 5, from one of the nave chapels of Bayeux), and finally, 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).* § 22. Now, it will be noticed that, during the whole of this process, the attention is kept fixed on the forms of the * In this plate, figures 4, 5 and 6, are glazed windows, but figure 2 is the open light of a belfry tower, and figures 1 and 3 are in triforia, the latter also occurring filled, on the central tower of Coutances.3

1 [See Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xvii. § 9; vol. ii. ch. vi. § 97.] 2 [Misprinted “2” in previous eds.; for another reference to the same fig., see p. 129.] 3 [This was Note 9 at the end of eds. 1 and 2; omitted in later eds.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 89 penetrations, that is to say, of the lights as seen from the interior, not of the intermediate stone. All the grace of the window is in the outline of its light; and I have drawn all these traceries as seen from within, in order to show the effect of the light thus treated, at first in far off and separate stars, and then gradually enlarging, approaching, until they come and stand over us, as it were, filling the whole space with their effulgence. And it is in this pause of the star, that we have the great, pure, and perfect form of French Gothic;1 it was at the instant when the rudeness of the intermediate space had been finally conquered, when the light had expanded to its fullest, and yet had not lost its radiant unity, principality, and visible first causing of the whole, that we have the most exquisite feeling and most faultless judgments in the management alike of the tracery 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 purpose, it will be well that he should examine its sections and mouldings in detail (they are described in the fourth Chapter, § 27), and that the more carefully, because this design belongs to a period in which the most improtant change took place in the spirit of Gothic architecture, which, perhaps, ever resulted from the natural progress of any art.2 That tracery marks a pause 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 over which he has passed. It was the great watershed of 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, 1 [See Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. v. § 22, where the star-like form of the light entering through traceried windows is further discussed.] 2 [See Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 100, where this “instant of momentous change” is again discussed.]

90 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE isolated or branching from the central chain, and by retrograde or parallel directions of the valley of access. But the track of the human mind is traceable up to that glorious ridge, in a continuous line, and 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.”1

And at that point, and that instant, reaching the place that was nearest heaven, the builders looked back, for the last time, to the way by which they 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 with every forward step into more cold and melancholy shade. § 23. The change of which I speak, is expressible 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 the window at Rouen, in Plate X., as compared with earlier mouldings, because that beauty and care are singularly significant. They mark that the traceries had caught the eye of the architect. Up to that time, up to * So completely was this the case, that M. Viollet le Duc, in his article on tracery in the Dictionnaire d’ Architecture,2 has confined his attention exclusively to the modifications of the tracery bar. The subject is examined exhaustively in my sixth lecture in Val d’ Arno. [1880.]

1 [Rogers’ Italy (“The Alps”). The words “Like a silver zone” are also part of the quotation.] 2 [The article is under the heading “Meneau” in vol. vi. of this “noble” work (see Proserpina, ii. ch. 8)—Dictionnaire Raisonné de l’ Architecture Francaise de XI. au XVIe Siècle, by M. Viollet-le-Duc. Paris, 1858.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 91 the very last instant in which the reduction and thinning of the intervening stone was consummated, his eye had been on the openings only, on the stars of light. He did not care about the stone; a 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 been seen before. It flashed out in an instant, as an independent form. It became a feature of the work. The architect took it under his care, thought over it, and distributed its members as we see. Now, the great pause was at the moment when the space and the dividing stone-work were both equally considered. It did not last fifty years. The forms of the tracery were seized 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 myself, in following this change, to the window, as the feature in which it is clearest. But the transition is the same in every member of architecture; and its importance can hardly be understood, unless we take the pains to trace it in the universality, of which illustrations, irrelevant to our present purpose, will be found in the third Chapter. I pursue here the question of truth, relating to the treatment of the mouldings. § 24. The reader will observe that, up to the last expansion of the penetrations, the stone-work was necessarily APHORISM considered, as it actually is, stiff, and unyielding. It 16. was so, also, during the pause of which I have Tracery must never be considered or spoken, when the forms of the tracery were still imagined as severe and pure; delicate indeed, but perfectly flexible.1 firm.2 At the close of the period of pause, the first sign of serious 1 [The aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is the whole of § 24.] 2 [The MS. adds, “Take for one instance of a thousand the north transept of Rouen,” and refers to an intended plate. Four lines below for “cobweb” the MS. has “carpet,” and still further down, “spider’s web” for “net.”]

92 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE change was like a low breeze, passing through the emaciated tracery, and making it tremble. It began to undulate like the threads of a cobweb lifted by the wind. It lost its essence as a structure of stone. Reduced to the slenderness of threads, it began to be considered as possessing also their flexibility. The architect was pleased with this his new fancy, and set himself to carry it out; and in a little time, the bars of tracery were caused to appear to the eye as if they had been woven together like a net.1 This was a change which sacrificed a great principle of truth; it sacrificed the expression of the qualities of the material; and, however delightful its results in their first developments, it was ultimately ruinous. For, observe the difference between the supposition of ductility, and that of elastic structure noticed above in the resemblance to tree form.2 That resemblance was not sought, but necessary; it resulted from the natural conditions of strength in the pier or trunk, and slenderness in the ribs or branches, while many of the other suggested conditions of resemblance were perfectly true. A tree branch, though in a certain sense flexible, is not ductile; it is as firm in its own form as the rib of stone; both of them will yield up to certain limits, both of 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 the eye, if not in terms, denied; when all the art of the architect is applied to disprove the first conditions of his working, and the first attributes of his materials; this is a deliberate treachery, only redeemed from the charge of direct falsehood by the visibility of the stone surface, and degrading all the traceries it affects exactly in the degree of its presence.*3 * I beg that grave note be taken of this just condemnation of the essential character—“the flamboyant” ness—of the architecture which up to this time

1 [Here again an illustration was intended, as the MS. adds, “A glance at the transitional forms associated in plate—will show the progress of the change.”] 2 [See p. 61.] 3 [The MS. again refers to a proposed plate, adding, “Compare the weak and sunken character of the final form (fig.—, pl.—) with the grace of the transitional one (fig.—), where the elastic structure and spring of the stone have not been sacrificed.”]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 93 § 25. 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 two mouldings met each other, to manage their intersection, so that one should appear to pass through the other, retaining its independence; or when two ran parallel to each other, to represent the one as partly contained within the other, and partly apparent above it. This form 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. A system so momentous in its consequences deserves some detailed examination. § 26. In the drawing of the shafts of the door at Lisieux, under the spandrel, in Plate VII., the reader will see the mode of managing the intersection of similar mouldings, which was universal in the great periods. They melted into each other, and became one at the point of crossing, or of contact; and even the suggestion of so sharp intersection as this of Lisieux is usually avoided, (this design being, of course, only a pointed form of the earlier Norman 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

I had chiefly, and most affectionately, studied. It is an instance of breaking through prejudice by reason, of which I have a right to be proud, and which it is fitting that I should point out, for justification of the trust I constantly expect from the reader. [1880.]

94 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE the Palazzo Foscari, Plate VIII., given accurately in fig. 8, Plate IV., the section across the line s, is exactly the same as that across any break of the separated moulding above, as s. It sometimes, however, happens, that two different mouldings meet each other. This was seldom permitted in the great periods, and, when it took place, was most awkwardly managed. Fig. 1, Plate IV., gives the junction of the mouldings of the gable and vertical, in the window of the spire of Salisbury. That of the gable is composed of a single, and that of the vertical, of a double cavetto,1 decorated with ball flowers; and the larger single moulding swallows up one of the double ones, and pushes forward among the smaller balls with the most blundering and clumsy simplicity. In comparing the sections it is to be observed that, in the upper one, the line a b represents an actual vertical in the plane of the window; while, in the lower one, the line e d represents the horizontal, in the plane of the window, indicated by the perspective line d e. § 27. The very awkwardness with which such occurrences of difficulty are met by the earlier builder, marks his dislike of the system, 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 of the builders became, as we have just seen, fixed upon the lines of mouldings instead of the enclosed spaces, those lines began to preserve an independent existence wherever they met; and different mouldings were studiously associated, in order to obtain variety of intersectional line. We must, however, do the late builders the justice to note that, in one case, the habit grew out of a feeling of proportion, more refined than that of earlier workmen. It shows itself first in the bases of divided pillars, or arch mouldings, whose smaller shafts had originally bases formed by the 1 [A moulding whose form is a simple concave.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 95 continual base of the central, or other larger, columns with which they were grouped; but it being felt, when the eye of the architect became fastidious, that the dimension of moulding which was right for the base of a large shaft, was wrong for that of a small one, each shaft had an independent base; at first, those of the smaller died simply down on that of the larger; but when the vertical sections of both became complicated, the bases of the smaller shafts were considered to exist within those of the larger, and the places of their emergence, on this supposition, were calculated with the utmost nicety, and cut with singular precision; so that an elaborate late base of a divided column, as, for instance, of those in the nave of Abbeville, looks exactly as if its smaller shafts had all been finished to the ground first, each with its complete and intricate base, and then the comprehending base of the central pier had been moulded over them in clay, leaving their points and angles sticking out here and there, like the edges of sharp crystals out of a nodule of earth. The exhibition of technical dexterity in work of this kind, is often marvellous, the strangest possible shapes of sections being calculated to a hair’s breadth, and the occurrence of the under and emergent forms being rendered, even in places where they are so slight that they can hardly be detected but by the touch. It is impossible to render a very elaborate example of this kind intelligible, without some fifty measured sections; but fig. 6, Plate IV., is a very interesting and simple one, from the west gate of Rouen.* It is part of the base of one of the narrow piers between its principal niches. The square column k, having a base with the profile p r, is supposed to contain within itself another similar one, set diagonally, and lifted so far * Professor Willis was, I believe, the first modern who observed and ascertained the lost structural principles of Gothic architecture. His book above referred to (§ 21) taught me all my grammar of central Gothic, but this grammar of the flamboyant I worked out for myself, and wrote it here, supposing the statements new: all had, however, been done previously by Professor Willis, as he afterwards pointed out to me, in his work On the Characteristic Interpenetrations of the Flamboyant Style. [1880.]

96 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE above the inclosing one, as that the recessed part of its profile p r shall fall behind the projecting part of the outer one. The1 angle of its upper portion exactly meets the plane of the side of the upper inclosing shaft 4, and would, therefore, not be seen, unless two vertical cuts were made to exhibit it, which form two dark lines the whole way up the shaft. Two small pilasters are run, like fastening stitches, through the junction, on the front of the shafts. The sections k, n, taken respectively at the levels k, n, will explain the hypothetical construction of the whole. Fig. 7 is a base, or joint rather, (for passages of this form occur again and again, on the shafts of flamboyant work,) of one of the smallest piers of the pedestals which supported the lost statues of the porch; its section below would be the same as n, and its construction after what has been said of the other base, will be at once perceived.* § 28. There was, however, in this kind of involution, much to be admired as well as reprehended; the proportions of quantities were always as beautiful as they were intricate; and, though the lines of intersection were harsh, they were exquisitely opposed to the flower-work of the interposing mouldings. But the fancy did not stop here; it rose from the bases into the arches; and there, not finding room enough for its exhibition, it withdrew the capitals from the heads even of cylindrical shafts, (we cannot but admire, while we regret, the boldness of the men who could defy the authority and custom of all the nations of the earth * I cannot understand how, in the subsequent illustrations of the principle I had, during the arrangement of this volume, most prominently in my mind, on the founding of all beautiful design on natural form, I omitted so forcible a point as the exact correspondence of these mouldings to the structure of involved crystals. Perhaps it was because I knew the builders had never looked at, or thought of, a crystal; but then I ought to have said so. The omission is the more strange because I caught the resemblance in the Pisan Gothic—see below, Chap. IV. § 7—where it is not half so distinct! [1880.]

1 [The MS. reads:— “The recession of the upper part of the profile is, however, so much proportionately greater in the enclosed shaft, that while the angle of its lower portion emerges through the plane of the greater one, the angle,” etc., ut sup.]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 97 for a space of some three thousand years,) in order that the arch mouldings might appear to emerge from the pillar, as at its base they had been lost in it, and not to terminate on the abacus of the capital; then they ran the mouldings across and through each other, at the point of the arch; and finally, not finding their natural directions enough to furnish as many occasions of intersection as they wished, bent them hither and thither, and cut off their ends short, when they had passed the point of intersection. Fig. 2, Plate IV., is part of a flying buttress from the apse of St. Gervais at Falaise, in which the moulding whose section is rudely given above at f (taken vertically through the point f,) is carried thrice through itself, in the cross-bar and two arches; and the flat fillet is cut off sharp at the end of the cross-bar, for the mere pleasure of the truncation. Fig. 3 is half of the head of a door in the Stadthaus of Sursee,1 in which the shaded part of the section of the joint, g g, is that of the arch moulding, which is three times reduplicated, and six times intersected by itself, the ends being cut off when they became unmanageable. This style is, indeed, earlier exaggerated in Switzerland and Germany,2 owing to the imitation in stone of the dovetailing of wood, particularly of the intersecting of beams at the angles of châlets;3 but it only furnishes the more plain instance of the danger of the fallacious system which, from the beginning, repressed the German, and, in the end, ruined the French, Gothic. It would be too painful a task to follow further the caricatures of form and eccentricities of treatment, which grew out of this single abuse—the flattened arch, the shrunken pillar, the lifeless ornament, the liny moulding, the distorted and extravagant foliation, until the time came when, over these wrecks and remnants, deprived 1 [Between Olten and Lucerne, one of the many old Swiss towns in which Ruskin had sketched. 2 [See further on this point Ruskin’s review of Lord Lindsay’s Christian Art (On the Old Road, 1899, § 31).] 3 [See on this point the note from Ruskin’s diary of 1846, cited above in the Introduction, p. xxi.] VIII. G

98 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE of all unity and principle, rose the foul torrent of the Renaissance, and swept them all away. So fell the great dynasty of mediæval architecture.* It was because it had lost its own strength, and disobeyed its own laws—because its order, and consistency, and organisation, had been broken through—that it could oppose no resistance to the rush of overwhelming innovation. And this, observe, all because it had sacrificed a single truth. From that one surrender of its integrity, from that one endeavour to assume the semblance of what it was not, arose the multitudinous forms of disease and decrepitude, which rotted away the pillars of its supremacy. It was not because its time was come;1 it was not because it was scorned by the classical Romanist, or dreaded by the faithful Protestant. That scorn and that fear it might have survived, and lived; it would have stood forth in stern comparison with the enervated sensuality of the Renaissance; it would have risen in renewed and purified honour, and with a new soul, from the ashes into which it sank, giving up its glory, as it had received it, for the honour of God—but its own truth was gone, and it sank for ever. There was no wisdom nor strength left in it, to raise it from the dust; and the error of zeal, and the softness of luxury, smote it down and dissolved it away.2 It is good for us to remember this, as we tread upon the bare ground of its foundations, and stumble over its scattered stones. Those rent skeletons of pierced wall, through which our sea-winds moan and murmur, strewing them joint by joint, and bone by bone, along the bleak promontories on which the Pharos lights came * The closing paragraph is very pretty—but, unfortunately—nonsense. The want of truth was only a part, and by no means an influential one, of general disease. All possible shades of human folly and licentiousness meet in late Gothic and Renaissance architecture, and corrupt, in all directions at once, the arts which are their exponents. [1880.]

1 [The MS. inserts, “it was not because it had reached its perfection, or had done its work; it had a culminating point, but not a point so high as it might have reached;”] 2 [See Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. i. § 4, where it is again pointed out that the earlier schools “had lost the strength of their system before they could be struck by the plague” (of the Renaissance).]

CH. II THE LAMP OF TRUTH 99 once from houses of prayer1—those grey arches and quiet aisles under which the sheep of our valleys feed and rest on the turf that has buried their altars—those shapeless heaps, that are not of the Earth, which lift our fields into strange and sudden banks of flowers, and stay our mountain streams with stones that are not their own, have other thoughts to ask from us than those of mourning for the rage that despoiled, or the fear that forsook them. It was not the robber, not the fanatic, not the blasphemer, who sealed the destruction that they had wrought; the war, the wrath, the terror, might have worked their worst, and the strong walls would have risen, and the slight pillars would have started again, from under the hand of the destroyer. But they could not rise out of the ruins of their own violated truth. 1 [Ruskin’s feeling for the ruined abbeys of England, which is expressed in this passage, was heightened, no doubt, by Turner’s drawings of so many of them. Thus, the description of the “rent skeletons of pierced wall,” etc., would well fit either Lindisfarne (Holy Island) or Whitby—both of them Turner subjects (see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xviii. § 6, where Turner’s pilgrimage is described “to the lonely arches of Whitby and the bleak sands of Holy Isle”; and for Lindisfarne, see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 29). “The Scoto-Irish monks who were at this time (seventh century) the great missionaries of Northumbria brought with them from Iona a preference for the solitary coast and its islands. ‘High Whitby’s cloistered pile ’ thus became the first point seen by the seaman in returning to his native shores, and the last he would miss in leaving them; and the lights streaming from its windows must often have served him as a ‘Pharos. ’ ” The bay was known as “Sinus Phari,” from its lighthouse or beacon (see Murray’s Yorkshire, 1874, p. 214). The expression “Pharos light” is used again by Ruskin below in a MS. passage; see p. 256 n., and cf. Sesame and Lilies, § 68. The following description—of “those grey arches and quiet aisles,” etc.—fits any of the Cistercian abbeys of which remains have survived—such as Fountains, Furness, Tintern, Byland, or Kirkstall (before Leeds blackened it); for it was a rule of the order to choose inland valleys and “deserts” (see Monasticon Cistercience, ed. 1892, p. 213). Here, again, many of these were Turner subjects; see, e.g., in Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. ix. § 17, the description of the drawing of Kirkstall, “where the cattle lie in unhindered rest.” The final passage—“those shapeless heaps,” etc.—fits many monastic sites, Cistercian, Benedictine, Cluniac or Augustinian. Perhaps Ruskin was thinking more especially of Rievaulx, on the Rye—once more a Turner subject (see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 29).]

CHAPTER III

THE LAMP OF POWER § 1. IN recalling the impressions we have received from the works of man, after a lapse of time long enough to involve in obscurity all but the most vivid, it often happens that we find a strange pre-eminence and durability in many upon whose strength we had little calculated, and that points of character which had escaped the detection of the judgment, become developed under the waste of memory; as veins of harder rock, whose places could not at first have been discovered by the eye, are left salient under the action of frosts and streams. The traveller who desires to correct the errors of his judgment, necessitated by inequalities of temper, infelicities of circumstance, and accidents of association, has no other resource than to wait for the calm verdict of interposing years; and to watch for the new arrangements of eminence and shape in the images which remain latest in his memory; as in the ebbing of a mountain lake, he would watch the varying outline of its successive shore, and trace, in the form of its departing waters, the true direction of the forces which had cleft, or the currents which had excavated, the deepest recesses of its primal bed. In thus reverting to the memories of those works of architecture by which we have been most pleasurably impressed, it will generally happen that they fall into two broad classes: the one characterised by an exceeding preciousness and delicacy, to which we recur with a sense of affectionate admiration; and the other by a severe, and, in many cases, mysterious, majesty, which we remember with an undiminished awe, like that felt at the presence and operation of some great Spiritual Power. From about these two groups, more or less harmonised by intermediate examples, but always 100

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 101 distinctively marked by features of beauty or of power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the memories of buildings, perhaps, in their first address to our minds, of no inferior pretension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of less enduring nobility—to value of material, accumulation of ornament, or ingenuity of mechanical construction. Especial interest may, indeed, have been awakened by such circumstances, and the memory may have been, consequently, rendered tenacious of particular parts or effects of the structure; but it will recall even these only by an active effort, and then without emotion; while in passive moments and with thrilling influence, the images of purer beauty, and of more spiritual power, will return in a fair and solemn company; and while the pride of many a stately palace, and the wealth of many a jewelled shrine, perish from our thoughts in a dust of gold, there will rise, through their dimness, the white image of some secluded marble chapel, by river or forest side, with the fretted flower-work shrinking under its arches, as if under vaults of late-fallen snow; or the vast weariness of some shadowy wall whose separate stones are like mountain foundations, and yet numberless. § 2. Now, the difference between these two orders of building is not merely that which there is in nature APHORISM between things beautiful and sublime. It is, also, the 17. difference between what is derivative and original in The two 1 intellectual man’s work; for whatever is in architecture fair or powers of beautiful, is imitated from natural forms; and what is Architecture, veneration and not so derived, but depends for its dignity upon dominion.2 arrangement and government received from human mind, becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and receives a sublimity 1 [See Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 40, where this distinction is further dwelt upon. The following sentence in the text is the kernel of much of Ruskin’s teaching. “The law which it has been my effort chiefly to illustrate,” he says in The Two Paths (preface to ed. 1), “is the dependence of all noble design, in any kind, on the sculpture or painting of Organic Form.”] 2 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is the whole of § 2. For the sense of “dominion” in the summary of the aphorism, see above, p. 28 n., and below, p. 138 n.]

102 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE high in proportion to the power expressed. All building, therefore, shows man either as gathering or governing; and the secrets of his success are his knowing what to gather, and how to rule. These are the two great intellectual Lamps of Architecture; the one consisting in a just and humble veneration for the works of God upon the earth, and the other in an understanding of the dominion over those works which has been vested in man. § 3. Besides this expression of living authority and power, there is, however, a sympathy in the forms of noble building, with what is most sublime in natural things; and it is the governing Power directed by this sympathy, whose operation I shall at present endeavour to trace, abandoning all inquiry into the more abstract fields of Invention: for this latter faculty, and the questions of proportion and arrangement connected with its discussion, can only be rightly examined in a general view of all the arts; but its sympathy, in architecture, with the vast controlling powers of Nature herself, is special, and may shortly be considered; and that with the more advantage, that it has, of late, been little felt or regarded by architects. I have seen, in recent efforts, much contest between two schools, one affecting originality, and the other legality—many attempts at beauty of design—many ingenious adaptations of construction; but I have never seen any aim at the expression of abstract power; never any appearance of a consciousness that, in this primal art of man, there is room for the marking of his relations with the mightiest, as well as the fairest, works of God; and that those works themselves have been permitted, by their Master and his, to receive an added glory from their association with earnest efforts of human thought. In the edifices of Man there should be found reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue—which gives veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse that agitates animal organisation,—but of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 103 the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky;1 for these, and other glories more than these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his thoughts, with the work of his own hand; the grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some Cyclopean waste of mural stone; the pinnacles of the rocky promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into fantastic semblances of fortress towers; and even the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a melancholy mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from the images of nameless tumuli on white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy clay, into which chambered cities melt in their mortality. § 4. Let us, then, see what is this power and majesty, which Nature herself does not disdain to accept from the works of man; and what that sublimity in the masses built up by his coralline-like energy, which is honourable, even when transferred by association to the dateless hills, which it needed earthquakes to lift, and deluges to mould. And, first, of mere size: It might not be thought possible to emulate the sublimity of natural objects in this respect; nor would it be, if the architect contended with them in pitched battle. It would not be well to build pyramids in the valley of Chamouni; and St. Peter’s, among its many other errors, counts for not the least injurious its position on the slope of an inconsiderable hill.2 But imagine it placed on the plain of Marengo, or like the Superga of Turin, or3 like La Salute at Venice! The fact is, that the apprehension of the size of natural objects, as well as of architecture, depends more on fortunate excitement of the imagination than on measurements by the eye; and the architect has a peculiar advantage in being able to press close upon the sight such 1 [For “and lifts . . . sky,” the MS. first reads, “and sets the mighty aisles of mountain chasms with pinnacles of pine”—and then as the text, but with “pale gold of the morning sky.”] 2 [Cf. on this point The Poetry of Architecture, §§ 44, 222, Vol. I. pp. 37, 164; and review of Lord Lindsay, On the Old Road, 1899, vol. i. § 30.] 3 [The MS. inserts “best of all.”]

104 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE magnitude as he can command. There are few rocks, even among the Alps, that have a clear vertical fall as high as the choir of Beauvais; and if we secure a good precipice of wall, or a sheer and unbroken flank of tower, and place them where there are no enormous natural features to oppose them, we shall feel in them no want of sublimity of size. And it may be matter of encouragement in this respect, though one also of regret, to observe how much oftener man destroys natural sublimity, than nature crushes human power. It does not need much to humiliate a mountain. A hut will sometimes do it; I never look up to the Col de Balme from Chamouni, without a violent feeling of provocation against its hospitable little cabin, whose bright white walls form a visibly four-square spot on the green ridge, and entirely destroy all idea of its elevation. A single villa will often mar a whole landscape,1 and dethrone a dynasty of hills; and the Acropolis of Athens, Parthenon and all, has, I believe, been dwarfed into a model by the palace lately built beneath it.2 The fact is, that hills are not so high as we fancy them,3 and, when to the actual impression of no mean comparative size, is added the sense of the toil of manly hand and thought, a sublimity is reached, which nothing but gross error in arrangement of its parts can destroy. § 5. While, therefore, it is not to be supposed that mere size will ennoble a mean design, yet every increase of magnitude will bestow upon it a certain degree of nobleness:4 so that it is well to determine at first, whether the building is to be markedly beautiful, or markedly sublime; and if the 1 [See The Poetry of Architecture, § 174, Vol. I. p. 133.] 2 [Ruskin never visited Athens, and this account of the effect of the Royal Palace (built in 1834–1838) as dwarfing the Acropolis can hardly be accepted.] 3 [See The Poetry of Architecture, § 222; Vol. I. p. 165.] 4 [See Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. ii. § 44 n., where a distinction is drawn between “the finished and polished magnitude sought for the sake of pomp” and “the rough magnitude sought for the sake of sublimity.” But see Aratra Pentelici, §§ 145, 146, where Ruskin notes as “one of the primal merits and decencies of Greek work, that it was, on the whole, singularly small in scale . . . And indeed,” he adds, “the best buildings that I know of are thus modest.” He then refers to this passage in the Seven Lamps as seeming, at first, contradictory; but, he says, “you cannot command grandeur by size till you can command grace in minuteness.”]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 105 latter, not to be withheld by respect to smaller parts from reaching largeness of scale; provided only, that it be evidently in the architect’s power to reach at least that degree of magnitude which is the lowest at which sublimity begins, rudely definable as that which will make a living figure look less than life beside it. It is the misfortune of most of our modern buildings that we would fain have an universal excellence in them; and so part of the funds must go in painting, part in gilding, part in fitting up, part in painted windows, part in small steeples, part in ornaments here and there; and neither the windows, nor the steeple, nor the ornaments, are worth their materials. For there is a crust about the impressible part of men’s minds, which must be pierced through before they can be touched to the quick; and though we may prick at it and scratch it in a thousand separate places, we might as well have let it alone if we do not come through somewhere with a deep thrust: and if we can give such a thrust anywhere, there is no need of another; it need not be even so “wide as a church door,” so that it be enough.1 And mere weight will do this; it is a clumsy way of doing it, but an effectual one, too; and the apathy which cannot be pierced through by a small steeple, nor shone through by a small window, can be broken through in a moment by the mere weight of a great wall. Let, therefore, the architect who has not large resources, choose his point of attack first, and, if he chooses size, let him abandon decoration; for, unless they are concentrated, and numerous enough to make their concentration conspicuous, all his ornaments together will not be worth one huge stone. And the choice must be a decided one, without compromise. It must be no question whether his capitals would not look better with a little carving—let him leave them huge as blocks; or whether his arches should not have richer architraves—let him throw them a foot higher, if he can; a yard more across the nave will be worth more to him than a tesselated pavement; and another fathom of outer 1 [Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 1.]

106 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE wall, than an army of pinnacles.* The limitation of size must be only in the uses of the building, or in the ground at his disposal. § 6. That limitation, however, being by such circumstances determined, by what means, it is to be next asked, may the actual magnitude be best displayed; since it is seldom, perhaps never, that a building of any pretension to size looks so large as it is. The appearance of a figure in any distant, more especially in any upper, parts of it will almost always prove that we have under-estimated the magnitude of those parts.1 It has often been observed that a building, in order to show its magnitude, must be seen all at once;—it would, perhaps, be better to say, must be bounded as much as possible by continuous lines, and that its extreme points should be seen all at once; or we may state, in simpler terms still, that it must have one visible bounding line from top to bottom, and from end to end. This bounding line from top to bottom may either be inclined inwards, and the mass therefore, pyramidical; or vertical, and the mass form one grand cliff; or inclined outwards, as in the advancing fronts of old houses, and, in a sort, in the Greek temple, and in all buildings with heavy cornices or heads. Now, in all these cases, if the bounding line be violently broken; if the cornice project, or the upper portion of the pyramid recede, too violently, * I admire the simplicity with which all this good advice was tendered to a body of men whose occupation for the next fifty years would be the knocking down every beautiful building they could lay hands on; and building the largest quantities of rotten brick wall they could get contracts for. [1880.]

1 [The MS. here adds another paragraph:— “The object of the architect, therefore, is in the next place to make the magnitude of his building felt and understood. (Much has been written on this subject which I would not repeat except so far as it seems to me not hitherto to have been thrown into such a simple form as to render it useful and easy to be remembered: almost all that is necessary to be kept in mind is evident to the plainest common-sense, and pardon for stating principles so trite or self-evident will therefore be accorded me by those only who think with me that the common-sense view of the matter is not always that which becomes the first or favourite principle in practice.)” The bracketed passage is, however, deleted.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 107 majesty will be lost; not because the building cannot be seen all at once,—for in the case of a heavy cornice no part of it is necessarily concealed—but because the continuity of its terminal line is broken, and the length of that line, therefore, cannot be estimated. But the error is, of course, more fatal when much of the building is also concealed; as in the well-known case of the recession of the dome of St. Peter’s, and from the greater number of points of view, in churches whose highest portions, whether dome or tower, are over their cross. Thus there is only one point from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt; and that is from the corner of the Via de’ Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the apse and transepts. In all cases in which the tower is over the cross, the grandeur and height of the tower itself are lost, because there is but one line down which the eye can trace the whole height, and that is in the inner angle of the cross, not easily discerned. Hence, while, in symmetry and feeling, such designs may often have pre-eminence, yet, where the height of the tower itself is to be made apparent, it must be at the west end, or, better still, detached as a campanile. Imagine the loss to the Lombard churches if their campaniles were carried only to their present height over their crosses; or to the Cathedral of Rouen, if the Tour de Beurre were made central, in the place of its present debased spire! § 7. Whether, therefore, we have to do with tower or wall, there must be one bounding line from base to coping; and I am much inclined, myself, to love the true vertical, or the vertical, with a solemn frown of projection, (not a scowl,) as in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. This character is always given to rocks by the poets; with slight foundation indeed, real rocks being little given to overhanging1—but with excellent judgment; for the sense of threatening conveyed by this form is a nobler character than that of mere size. And, in buildings, this threatening should be somewhat carried down 1 [On this subject see Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. xvi. (“Precipices”) § 37.]

108 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE into their mass. A mere projecting shelf is not enough; the whole wall must, Jupiter like, nod as well as frown. Hence, I think the propped machicolations of the Palazzo Vecchio and Duomo of Florence far grander headings than any form of Greek cornice. Sometimes the projection may be thrown lower, as in the Doge’s palace of Venice,1 where the chief appearance of it is above the second arcade; or it may become a grand swell from the ground, as the head of a ship of the line rises from the sea. This is very nobly attained by the projection of the niches in the third storey of the Tour de Beurre at Rouen. § 8. What is needful in the setting forth of magnitude in height, is right also in the marking it in area—let it be gathered well together. It is especially to be noted with respect to the Palazzo Vecchio and other mighty buildings of its order, how mistakenly it has been stated that dimension, in order to become impressive, should be expanded either in height or length, but not equally: whereas, rather it will be found that those buildings seem on the whole the vastest which have been gathered up into a mighty square, and which look as if they had been measured by the angel’s rod, “the length, and the breadth, and the height of it are equal;”2 and herein something is to be taken notice of, which I believe not to be sufficiently, if at all, considered among our architects. Of the many broad divisions under which architecture may be considered, none appear to me more significant than that into buildings, whose interest is in their walls, and those whose interest is in the lines dividing their walls. In the Greek temple the wall is as nothing; the entire interest is in the detached columns and the frieze they bear; in French Flamboyant, and in our detestable Perpendicular,3 the object is to get rid of the wall surface, and keep the eye altogether 1 [See Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vii. § 10, where Ruskin refers to this passage in citing a description of the Ducal Palace as “built in the air.”] 2 [Revelation xxi. 16.] 3 [For other expressions of Ruskin’s “detestation,” see Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xvii. §§ 13, 16, ch. xxi. § 29; Val d’ Arno, § 140.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 109 on tracery of line: in Romanesque work and Egyptian, the wall is a confessed and honoured member, and the light is often allowed to fall on large areas of it, variously decorated. Now, both these principles are admitted by Nature, the one in her woods and thickets, the other in her plains, and cliffs, and waters; but the latter is pre-eminently the principle of power, and, in some sense, of beauty also. For, whatever infinity of fair form there may be in the maze of the forest, there is a fairer, as I think, in the surface of the quiet lake; and I hardly know that association of shaft or tracery, for which I would exchange the warm sleep of sunshine on some smooth, broad, human-like front of marble. Nevertheless, if breadth is to be beautiful, its substance must in some sort be beautiful; and we must not hastily condemn the exclusive resting of the northern architects in divided lines, until at least we have remembered the difference between a blank surface of Caen stone, and one mixed from Genoa and Carrara, of serpentine with snow: but as regards abstract power and awfulness, there is no question; without breadth of surface it is in vain to seek them, and it matters little, so that the surface be wide, bold, and unbroken, whether it be of brick or of jasper; the light of heaven upon it, and the weight of earth in it, are all we need: for it is singular how forgetful the mind may become both of material and workmanship, if only it have space enough over which to range, and to remind it, however feebly, of the joy that it has in contemplating the flatness and sweep of great plains and broad seas. And it is a noble thing for men to do this with their cut stone or moulded clay, and to make the face of a wall look infinite, and its edge against the sky like an horizon: or even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful to mark the play of passing light on its broad surface, and to see by how many artifices and gradations of tinting and shadow, time and storm will set their wild signatures upon it; and how in the rising or declining of the day the unbroken twilight rests long and luridly on its high lineless forehead, and fades away untraceably down its tiers of confused and countless stone.

110 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 9. This, then, being, as I think, one of the peculiar elements of sublime architecture, it may be easily seen how necessarily consequent upon the love of it* will be the choice of a form approaching to the square for the main outline. For, in whatever direction the building is contracted, in that direction the eye will be drawn to its terminal lines; and the sense of surface will only be at its fullest when those lines are removed, in every direction, as far as possible. Thus the square and circle are pre-eminently the areas of power among those bounded by purely straight or curved lines; and these, with their relative solids, the cube and sphere, and relative solids of progression, (as in the investigation of the laws of proportion I shall call those masses which are generated by the progression of an area of given form along a line in a given direction,)1 the square and cylindrical column, are the elements of utmost power in all architectural arrangements. On the other hand, grace and perfect proportion require an elongation in some one direction: and a sense of power may be communicated to this form of magnitude by a continuous series of any marked features, such as the eye may be unable to number; while yet we feel, from their boldness, decision, and simplicity, that it is indeed their multitude which has embarrassed us, not any confusion or indistinctness of form. This expedient of continued series forms the sublimity of arcades and aisles, of all ranges of columns, and, on a smaller scale, of those Greek mouldings, of which, repeated as they now are in all the meanest and most familiar forms of our furniture, it is impossible altogether to weary. Now, it is evident that the architect has choice of two types of form, each properly associated with its own kind of interest or decoration: the square, or greatest area, to be chosen especially when the surface is to be the subject of thought; and the elongated area, when the * Yes—I daresay! but how are you first to get the love of it? To love sublime architecture is one thing; to love a sublime dividend or a sublime percentage is another—and to love a large smoking room or billiard room, yet another. [1880.]

1 [See below, ch. iv. §§ 24–29, for some investigation of the laws of proportion.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 111 divisions of the surface are to be subjects of thought. Both these orders of form, as I think nearly every other source of power and beauty, are marvellously united in that building which I fear to weary the reader by bringing forward too frequently, as a model of all perfection—the Doge’s palace at Venice: its general arrangement, a hollow square; its principal facade, an oblong, elongated to the eye by a range of thirty-four small arches, and thirty-five columns, while it is separated by a richly canopied window in the centre, into two massive divisions, whose height and length are nearly as four to five; the arcades which give it length being confined to the lower storeys, and the upper, between its broad windows, left a mighty surface of smooth marble, chequered with blocks of alternate rose-colour and white. It would be impossible, I believe, to invent a more magnificent arrangement of all that is in building most dignified and most fair. § 10. In the Lombard Romanesque, the two principles are more fused into each other, as most characteristically in the cathedral of Pisa:1 length of proportion, exhibited by an arcade of twenty-one arches above, and fifteen below, at the side of the nave; bold square proportion in the front; that front divided into arcades, placed one above the other, the lowest with its pillars engaged, of seven arches, the four uppermost thrown out boldly from the receding wall, and casting deep shadows; the first, above the basement, of nineteen arches; the second, of twenty-one; the third and fourth of eight each; sixty-three arches in all; all circular headed, all with cylindrical shafts, and the lowest with square panellings, set diagonally under their semicircles, an universal ornament in this style (Plate XII., fig. 7); the apse a semicircle, with a semidome for its roof, and three ranges of circular arches for its exterior ornament; in the interior of the nave, a range of circular arches below a circular-arched triforium, and a vast flat surface, observe, of wall decorated with striped marble above; the whole arrangement (not a peculiar one, but 1 [Several pages of Ruskin’s note-book of 1845 are devoted to records of careful measurements, etc., of this cathedral.]

112 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE characteristic of every church of the period; and, to my feeling, the most majestic; not perhaps the fairest, but the mightiest type of form which the mind of man has ever conceived*) based exclusively on associations of the circle and the square. I am now, however, trenching upon ground which I desire to reserve for more careful examination, in connection with other æsthetic questions: but I believe the examples I have given will justify my vindication of the square form from the reprobation which has been lightly thrown upon it; nor might this be done for it only as a ruling outline, but as occurring constantly in the best mosaics, and in a thousand forms of minor decoration, which I cannot now examine; my chief assertion of its majesty being always as it is an exponent of space and surface, and therefore to be chosen, either to rule in their outlines, or to adorn by masses of light and shade those portions of buildings in which surface is to be rendered precious or honourable. § 11. Thus far, then, of general forms, and of the modes in which the scale of architecture is best to be exhibited. Let us next consider the manifestations of power which belong to its details and lesser divisions. The first division we have to regard, is the inevitable one of masonry. It is true that this division may, by great art, be concealed; but I think it unwise (as well as dishonest) to do so; for this reason, that there is a very noble character always to be obtained by the opposition of large stones to divided masonry, as by shafts and columns of one piece, or massy lintels and architraves, to wall work of bricks or smaller stones; and there is a certain organisation in the management of such parts, like that of the continuous bones of the skeleton, opposed * I have never for a moment changed from this judgment, but I have since seen a mightier type of the same form,—St. Paul’s, outside the walls, at Rome. It is a restored building, but nobly and faithfully done; and, so far as I know, the grandest interior in Europe.1 [1880.]

1 [The Church of S. Paolo Fuori le Mura was burnt down on July 16, 1823, the west front and a few other portions alone escaping destruction. It was rebuilt according to the plan and dimensions of the original Basilica, and re-opened in 1854. Ruskin was at Rome in 1872 and 1874.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 113 to the vertebræ, which it is not well to surrender. I hold, therefore, that for this and other reasons, the masonry of a building is to be shown: and also that, with certain rare exceptions, (as in the cases of chapels and shrines of most finished workmanship,) the smaller the building, the more necessary it is that its masonry should be bold, and vice versâ. For if a building be under the mark of average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase its apparent size (too easily measurable) by any proportionate diminution in the scale of its masonry. But it may be often in our power to give it a certain nobility by building it of massy stones, or, at all events, introducing such into its make. Thus it is impossible that there should ever be majesty in a cottage built of brick; but there is a marked element of sublimity in the rude and irregular piling of the rocky walls of the mountain cottages of Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland.1 Their size is not one whit diminished, though four or five stones reach at their angles from the ground to the eaves, or though a native rock happen to project conveniently, and to be built into the framework of the wall. On the other hand, after a building has once reached the mark of majestic size, it matters, indeed, comparatively little whether its masonry be large or small, but if it be altogether large, it will sometimes diminish the magnitude for want of a measure; if altogether small, it will suggest ideas of poverty in material, or deficiency in mechanical resource, besides interfering in many cases with the lines of the design, and delicacy of the workmanship. A very unhappy instance of such interference exists in the façade of the church of St. Madeleine2 at Paris, where the columns, being built of very small stones of nearly equal size with visible joints, look as if they were covered with a close trellis. So then, that masonry will be 1 [See on this subject The Poetry of Architecture, §§ 47 seq., Vol. I. pp. 42 seq.] 2 [Of this church the foundation was laid by Louis XV. in 1764. The works were interrupted by successive political events, and not completed till 1842. There were in consequence several architects, but the church owes its present form mainly to the designs of Couture (1777). Ruskin had seen it in course of completion, and admired it as a good copy of the Greek style: see The Poetry of Architecture, § 225 n., Vol. I. p. 168.] VIII. H

114 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE generally the most magnificent which, without the use of materials systematically small or large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to the conditions and structure of its work, and displays alike its power of dealing with the vastest masses, and of accomplishing its purpose with the smallest, sometimes heaping rock upon rock with Titanic commandment, and anon binding the dusty remnants and edgy splinters into springing vaults and swelling domes. And if the nobility of this confessed and natural masonry were more commonly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by smoothing surfaces and fitting joints. The sums which we waste in chiselling and polishing stones which would have been better left as they came from the quarry, would often raise a building a storey higher. Only in this there is to be a certain respect for material also: for if we build in marble, or in any limestone, the known ease of the workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly; it will be well to take advantage of the stone’s softness, and to make the design delicate and dependent upon smoothness of chiselled surfaces: but if we build in granite or lava, it is a folly, in most cases, to cast away the labour necessary to smooth it; it is wiser to make the design granitic itself, and to leave the blocks rudely squared. I do not deny a certain splendour and sense of power in the smoothing of granite, and in the entire subduing of its iron resistance to the human supremacy.1 But in most cases, I believe, the labour and time necessary to do this would be better spent in another way; and that to raise a building to a height of a hundred feet with rough blocks, is better than to raise it to seventy with smooth ones. There is also a magnificence in the natural cleavage of the stone to which the art must indeed be great that pretends to be equivalent; and a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain heart from which it has been 1 [The MS. adds:— “So only that enough rigidity of form be left to mark this resistance. (In this respect I think the right hand lion of the two Egyptian ones in the British Museum the finest piece of sculpture in the world.)” The reference is to the two red granite lions couchant in the Egyptian Gallery, which once guarded the gate of a brick-built temple or palace in Upper Nubia (see T. Nichols’ Handy-Book of the British Museum, p. 69).]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 115 rent, ill-exchanged for a glistering obedience to the rule and measure of men. His eye must be delicate indeed, who would desire to see the Pitti palace polished.1 § 12. Next to those of the masonry, we have to consider the divisions of the design itself. Those divisions are, necessarily, either into masses of light and shade, or else by traced lines; which latter must be, indeed, themselves produced by incisions or projections which, in some lights, cast a certain breadth of shade, but which may, nevertheless, if finely enough cut, be always true lines, in distant effect. I call, for instance, such panelling as that of Henry the Seventh’s chapel,2 pure linear division. Now, it does not seem to me sufficiently recollected, that a wall surface is to an architect simply what a white canvas is to a painter, with this only difference, that the wall has already a sublimity in its height, substance, and other characters already considered, on which it is more dangerous to break than to touch with shade the canvas surface. And, for my own part, I think a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of gesso a fairer thing than most pictures I see painted on it; much more, a noble surface of stone than most architectural features which it is caused to assume. But however this may be, the canvas and wall are supposed to be given, and it is our craft to divide them. And the principles on which this division is to be made, are, as regards relation of quantities, the same in architecture as in painting, or indeed in any other art whatsoever, only the painter is by his varied subject partly permitted, partly compelled, to dispense with the symmetry of architectural light and shade, and to adopt arrangements apparently free and accidental. So that in modes of grouping there is much difference (though no opposition) between the two arts; but in rules of quantity, both are alike, so far forth as their commands of means are 1 [See Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. ch. x. § 3 n. (Vol. IV. p. 137), where Ruskin opposes the “noble rudeness” of the Pitti Palace to “the useless polish and barbarous rustications of modern times.”] 2 [Erected in 1502–1520: for another reference see below, ch. iv. § 8, p. 146.]

116 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE alike. For the architect not being able to secure always the same depth or decision of shadow, nor to add to its sadness by colour, (because even when colour is employed, it cannot follow the moving shade,) is compelled to make many allowances, and avail himself of many contrivances, which the painter needs neither consider nor employ. § 13. Of these limitations the first consequence is, that positive shade is a more necessary and more sublime thing in an architect’s hands than in a painter’s. For the latter being able to temper his light with an undertone throughout, and to make it delightful with sweet colour, or awful with lurid colour, and to represent distance, and air, and sun, by the depth of it, and fill its whole space with expression, can deal with an enormous, nay, almost with an universal, extent of it, and the best painters most delight in such extent; but as light, with the architect, is nearly always liable to become full and untempered sunshine seen upon solid surface, his only rests, and his chief means of sublimity, are definite shades. So that, after size and weight, the Power of architecture may be said to depend on the quantity (whether measured in space or intenseness) of its shadow;1 and it seems to me, that the reality of its works, and the use and influence they have in the daily life of men, (as opposed to those works of art with which we have nothing to do but in times of rest or of pleasure,) require of it that it should express a kind of human sympathy, by a measure of darkness as great as there is in human life: and that as the great poem and great fiction generally affect us most by the majesty of their masses of shade, and cannot take hold upon us if they affect a continuance of lyric sprightliness, but must be often serious, and sometimes melancholy, else they do not express the truth of this wild world of ours;2 so there must be, in this magnificently human art of architecture, some equivalent expression for the trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and its 1 [Here again Ruskin is developing a principle which he had grasped in his earliest essay on the subject: see The Poetry of Architecture, §§ 28, 121, 180 n., 250 (Vol. I. pp. 22, 95, 138, 183).] 2 [The MS. inserts, but deletes “(how often do we lay down Dante or Homer in terror or in tears).”]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 117 mystery: and this it can only give by depth or diffusion of gloom, by the frown upon its front, and the shadow of its recess. So that Rembrandtism is a noble manner in architecture, though a false one in painting; and I do not believe that ever any building was truly great, unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its surface. And among the first habits that a young architect should learn, is that of thinking in shadow, not looking at a design in its miserable liny skeleton; but conceiving it as it will be when the dawn lights it, and the dusk leaves it;1 when its stones will be hot, and its crannies cool; when the lizards will bask on the one, and the birds build in the other. Let him design* with the sense of cold and heat upon him; let him cut out the shadows, as men dig wells in unwatered plains; and lead along the lights, as a founder does his hot metal; let him keep the full command of both, and see that he knows how they fall, and where they fade. His paper lines and proportions are of no value: all that he has to do must be done by spaces of light and darkness; and his business is to see that the one is broad and bold enough not to be swallowed up by twilight, and the other deep enough not to be dried like a shallow pool by a noon-day sun. And, that this may be, the first necessity is that the quantities of shade or light, whatever they may be, shall be thrown into masses, either of something like equal weight, or else large masses of the one relieved with small of the other; but masses of one or other kind there must be. No design that is divided at all, and yet not divided into masses, can * “Let him—let him.” All very fine; but all the while, there wasn’t one of the architects for whom this was written—nor is there one alive now—who could, or can, so much as shade an egg, or a tallow candle; how much less an egg-moulding or a shaft! [1880.]

1 [One of the reviewers, in noticing this passage, called attention to the neglect of its teaching in some conspicuous buildings of the time: “We know of no building in the metropolis, erected of late years, in which there has been any attempt at producing picturesque or grand effects by means of judicious disposition of light and shade. The new front to Buckingham Palace (1846) dwells in one leaden gloom the whole of the day from its position with regard to the light. The new Houses of Parliament are wretchedly deficient in this particular; indeed chiaroscuro is an art which modern architects seem entirely to ignore” (Weekly Chronicle, June 3, 1849).]

118 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE ever be of the smallest value: this great law respecting breadth, precisely the same in architecture and painting, is so important, that the examination of its two principal applications will include most of the conditions of majestic design on which I would at present insist. § 14. Painters are in the habit of speaking loosely of masses of light and shade, meaning thereby any large spaces of either. Nevertheless, it is convenient sometimes to restrict the term “mass” to the portions to which proper form belongs, and to call the field on which such forms are traced, interval. Thus, in foliage with projecting boughs or stems, we have masses of light, with intervals of shade; and, in light skies with dark clouds upon them, masses of shade, with intervals of light. This distinction is, in architecture, still more necessary; for there are two marked styles dependent upon it: one in which the forms are drawn with light, upon darkness, as in Greek sculpture and pillars; the other in which they are drawn with darkness upon light, as in early Gothic foliation. Now, it is not in the designer’s power determinately to vary degrees and places of darkness, but it is altogether in his power to vary in determined directions his degrees of light. Hence the use of the dark mass characterises, generally, a trenchant style of design, in which the darks and lights are both flat, and terminated by sharp edges; while the use of the light mass is in the same way associated with a softened and full manner of design, in which the darks are much warmed by reflected lights, and the lights are rounded and melt into them. The term applied by Milton to Doric bas-relief—“bossy,” is, as is generally the case with Milton’s epithets, the most comprehensive and expressive of this manner, which the English language contains;1 while the term which specifically describes 1 [Paradise Lost, i. 716:— “Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did these want Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven.” For Ruskin’s study of Milton’s epithets, see Sesame and Lilies, § 20 seq., and Arrows of the Chace, 1880, ii. 260; for his description of sculpture as “essentially the production of a pleasant bossiness,” see Aratra Pentelici, § 21.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 119 the chief member of early Gothic decoration, feuille, foil or leaf, is equally significative of a flat space of shade. § 15. We shall shortly consider the actual modes in which these two kinds of mass have been treated. And, first, of the light, or rounded, mass. The modes in which relief was secured for the more projecting forms of bas-relief, by the Greeks, have been too well described by Sir Charles Eastlake* to need recapitulation; the conclusion which forces itself upon us from the facts he has remarked, being one on which I shall have occasion farther to insist presently, that the Greek workman cared for shadow only as a dark field wherefrom his light figure or design might be intelligibly detached: his attention was concentrated on the one aim at readableness and clearness of accent; and all composition, all harmony, nay, the very vitality and energy of separate groups were, when necessary, sacrificed to plain speaking. Nor was there any predilection for one kind of form rather than another. Rounded forms were, in the columns and principal decorative members, adopted, not for their own sake, but as characteristic of the things represented. They were beautifully rounded, because the Greek habitually did well what he had to do, not because he loved roundness more than squareness; severely rectilinear forms were associated with the curved ones in the cornice and triglyph, and the mass of the pillar was divided by a fluting, which, in distant effect, destroyed much of its breadth.1 What power of light these primal arrangements left, was diminished in successive refinements and additions of ornament; and continued to diminish through Roman work, until the confirmation of the circular arch as a decorative feature. Its lovely and simple line taught the eye to ask for a similar boundary of solid form; the dome followed, and necessarily the decorative masses were thenceforward managed with reference to, and in sympathy with, the chief feature of the building. Hence arose, among the Byzantine architects, a * “Literature of the Fine Arts.”—Essay on Bas-relief.

1 [Here the MS. adds, “Put a note,” but none was written.]

120 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE system of ornament, entirely restrained within the superficies of curvilinear masses, on which the light fell with as unbroken gradation as on a dome or column, while the illumined surface was nevertheless cut into details of singular and most ingenious intricacy. Something is, of course, to be allowed for the less dexterity of the workmen; it being easier to cut down into a solid block, than to arrange the projecting portions of leaf on the Greek capital: such leafy capitals are nevertheless executed by the Byzantines with skill enough to show that their preference of the massive form was by no means compulsory, nor can I think it unwise. On the contrary, while the arrangements of line are far more artful1 in the Greek capital, the Byzantine light and shade are as incontestably more grand and masculine, based on that quality of pure gradation, which nearly all natural objects possess, and the attainment of which is, in fact, the first and most palpable purpose in natural arrangements of grand form. The rolling heap of the thunder-cloud, divided by APHORISM 18. rents, and multiplied by wreaths, yet gathering The religious nobleness of them all into its broad, torrid, and towering zone, Byzantine and its midnight darkness opposite; the scarcely 2 architecture. less majestic heave of the mountain side, all torn and traversed by depth of defile and ridge of rock, yet never losing the unity of its illumined swell and shadowy decline; and the head of every mighty tree, rich with tracery of leaf and bough, yet terminated against the sky by a true line, and rounded by a green horizon, which, multiplied in the distant forest, makes it look bossy from above; all these mark, for a great and honoured law, that diffusion of light for which the Byzantine ornaments were designed; and show us that those builders had truer sympathy with what God made majestic, than the self-contemplating and self-contented Greek. I know that they are barbaric in comparison; but there is a power in their barbarism of sterner tone, a power not sophistic 1 [The MS. reads “graceful.”] 2 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “The olling heap . . .” down to the end of § 15.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 121 nor penetrative, but embracing and mysterious; a power faithful more than thoughtful, which conceived and felt more than it created; a power that neither comprehended nor ruled itself, but worked and wandered as it listed, like mountain streams and winds; and which could not rest in the expression or seizure of finite form. It could not bury itself in acanthus leaves. Its imagery was taken from the shadows of the storms and hills, and had fellowship with the night and day of the earth itself.* § 16. I have endeavoured to give some idea of one of the hollow balls of stone which, surrounded by flowing leafage, occur in varied succession on the architrave of the central gate of St. Mark’s at Venice, in Plate I. fig. 3. It seems to me singularly beautiful in its unity of lightness, and delicacy of detail, with breadth of light. It looks as if its leaves had been sensitive, and had risen and shut themselves into a bud at some sudden touch, and would presently fall back again into their wild flow. The cornices of San Michele of Lucca,1 seen above and below the arch, in Plate VI., show the effect of heavy leafage and thick stems arranged on a surface whose curve is a simple quadrant, the light dying from off them as it turns. It would be difficult, as I think, to invent any thing more noble: and I insist on the broad character of their arrangement the more earnestly, because, afterwards modified by greater skill in its management, it became characteristic of the richest pieces of Gothic design. The capital,2 given in * This estimate of Byzantine architecture had been previously formed by Lord Lindsay3—and, I think, by him only;—and it remains, though entirely true, his and mine only, in written statement, though shared with us by all persons who have an eye for colour, and sympathy enough with Christianity to care for its fullest interpretation by Art only: in this sentence of mine, the bit about self-contented Greeks must be omitted. A noble Greek was as little content without God, as George Herbert, or St. Francis; and a Byzantine was nothing else than a Greek,—recognizing Christ for Zeus. [1880.]

1 [For other drawings by Ruskin of this church, see Plate 1 in Vol. III.; and Plate 1 in Vol. IV.; and Plate XXI. in Stones of Venice, vol. i.; and for his description of it, Vol. III. p. 206 n.] 2 [It is the eleventh capital of the Ducal Palace, as described in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 94.] 3 [See his Sketches of the History of Christian Art, 1847, vol. i. pp. 62 seq.]

122 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE Plate V., is of the noblest period of the Venetian Gothic; and it is interesting to see the play of leafage so luxuriant,1 absolutely subordinated to the breadth of two masses of light and shade. What is done by the Venetian architect, with a power as irresistible as that of the waves of his surrounding sea, is done by the masters of the Cis-Alpine Gothic, more timidly, and with a manner somewhat cramped and cold, but not less expressing their assent to the same great law. The ice spiculæ2 of the North, and its broken sunshine, seem to have image in, and influence on, the work; and the leaves which, under the Italian’s hand, roll, and flow, and bow down over their black shadows, as in the weariness of noon-day heat, are, in the North, crisped and frost-bitten, wrinkled on the edges, and sparkling as if with dew. But the rounding of the ruling form is not less sought and felt. In the lower part of Plate I. is the finial of the pediment given in Plate II., from the cathedral of St. Lô. It is exactly similar in feeling to the Byzantine capital, being rounded under the abacus by four branches3 of thistle-leaves, whose stems, springing from the angles, bend outwards and fall back to the head, throwing their jaggy spines down upon the full light, forming two sharp quatrefoils. I could not get near enough to this finial to see with what degree of delicacy the spines were cut; but I have sketched a natural group of thistle-leaves beside it, that the reader may compare the types, and see with what mastery they are subjected to the broad form of the whole.4 The small capital from Coutances, Plate XIII., fig. 4, which is of earlier date, is of simpler elements, and exhibits the principle still more clearly; but the St. Lô finial is only one of a thousand 1 [For “so luxuriant,” the MS. has “magnificent as it is in wildness and variety.”] 2 [This is a slip (in all editions) for “spicula”: cf. Vol. III. p. 685.] 3 [For “It is exactly similar . . .” the MS. reads:— “Exactly similar in feeling, it reverses the arrangement of the Byzantine capital—that, square at the top, is rounded to the shaft, this, square at the shaft, is rounded to the abacus by four branches . . .”] 4 [For the use of the thistle in Northern Gothic, see Proserpina, ii. ch. iv. (“Giulietta”), where Ruskin noticed the “consequent, and often morbid, love of thorny points, and insistence upon jagged or knotty intricacies of stubborn vegetation, which is connected in a deeply mysterious way with the gloomier forms of Catholic asceticism.”]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 123 instances which might be gathered even from the fully developed flamboyant, the feeling of breadth being retained in minor ornaments, long after it had been lost in the main design, and sometimes capriciously renewing itself throughout, as in the cylindrical niches and pedestals which enrich the porches of Caudebec1 and Rouen. Fig. 1, Plate I., is the simplest of those of Rouen; in the more elaborate there are four projecting sides, divided by buttresses into eight rounded compartments of tracery; even the whole bulk of the outer pier is treated with the same feeling; and though composed partly of concave recesses, partly of square shafts, partly of statues and tabernacle work, arranges itself as a whole into one richly rounded tower. § 17. I cannot here enter into the curious questions connected with the management of larger curved surfaces; into the causes of the difference in proportion necessary to be observed between round and square towers; nor into the reasons2 why a column or ball may be richly ornamented, while surface decoration would be inexpedient on masses like the Castle of St. Angelo, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or the dome of St. Peter’s. But what has been above said of the desirableness of serenity in plane surfaces, applies still more forcibly to those which are curved; and it is to be remembered that we are, at present, considering how this serenity and power may be carried into minor divisions, not how the ornamental character of the lower form may, upon occasion, be permitted to fret the calmness of the higher. Nor, though the instances we have examined are of globular or cylindrical masses chiefly, is it to be thought that breadth can only be secured by such alone: many of the noblest forms are of subdued curvature, sometimes hardly visible; but curvature of some degree there must be, in order to secure any measure of grandeur in a small mass of light. One of the most marked 1 [For Ruskin’s admiration of the church of Caudebec, see above, Introduction, p. xxx.] 2 [The MS. adds, “(which, however, are traced further in the fourth chapter).” See below, ch. iv. §§ 12 seq.]

124 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE distinctions between one artist and another, in the point of skill, will be found in their relative delicacy of perception of rounded surface; the full power of expressing the perspective, foreshortening, and various undulation of such surface is, perhaps, the last and most difficult attainment of the hand and eye. For instance: there is, perhaps, no tree which has baffled the landscape painter more than the common black spruce fir.1 It is rare that we see any representation of it other than caricature. It is conceived as if it grew in one plane, or as a section of a tree, with a set of boughs symmetrically dependent on opposite sides. It is thought formal, unmanageable, and ugly. It would be so, if it grew as it is drawn. But the Power of the tree is not in that chandelierlike section. It is in the dark, flat, solid tables of leafage, which it holds out on its strong arms, curved slightly over them like shields, and spreading towards the extremity like a hand. It is vain to endeavour to paint the sharp, grassy, intricate leafage, until this ruling form has been secured; and in the boughs that approach the spectator, the foreshortening of it is like that of a wide hill country, ridge just rising over ridge in successive distances; and the finger-like extremities, foreshortened to absolute bluntness, require a delicacy in the rendering of them like that of the drawing of the hand of the Magdalene upon the vase in Mr. Rogers’s Titian.2 Get but the back of that foliage, and you have the tree; but I cannot name the artist who has thoroughly felt it. So, in all drawing and sculpture, it is the power of rounding, softly and perfectly, every inferior mass which preserves the serenity, as it follows the truth, of Nature, and which demands the highest knowledge and skill from the workman. A noble design may always be told by the back of a single leaf, and it was the sacrifice of this breadth and refinement of surface for sharp edges and extravagant undercutting, which destroyed the Gothic mouldings, as the substitution of the line for the light 1 [Ruskin’s “favourite tree”: see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. vi. ch. ix. § 3.] 2 [”Noli me tangere!” now No. 270 in the National Gallery, to which institution Rogers, the poet, bequeathed it in 1855.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 125 destroyed the Gothic tracery. This change, however, we shall better comprehend after we have glanced at the chief conditions of arrangement of the second kind of mass; that which is flat, and of shadow only. § 18. We have noted above how the wall surface, composed of rich materials, and covered with costly work, in modes which we shall examine in the next Chapter, became a subject of peculiar interest to the Christian architects.1 Its broad flat lights could only be made valuable by points or masses of energetic shadow, which were obtained by the Romanesque architect by means of ranges of recessed arcade, in the management of which, however, though all the effect depends upon the shadow so obtained, the eye is still, as in classical architecture, caused to dwell upon the projecting columns, capitals, and wall, as in Plate VI.2 But with the enlargement of the window, which, in the Lombard and Romanesque churches, is usually little more than an arched slit, came the conception of the simpler mode of decoration, 1 [The subject of this paragraph is further dealt with in an unpublished passage:— “The architectural decoration of any space depends of course broadly on the introduction of shade into it, if it be light, and of light if it be shadowed. Given a space of wall to be ornamented within and without the respective necessities are both met by simple penetrations or holes, which, seen from within, are forms of light, and from without are forms of shade. These forms of shade necessary in the actual window, were taken up by the early Gothic architects as features of wall decoration: and many surfaces which it was prepared to render interesting were covered with arrangements of starry or circular forms, cut so deep into the stone as in most lights to seem a broad, if not total interior shade. Where it was possible, as in raised screens of stone, these forms were generally cut through, so as to tell as masses of vigorous dark on the light surfaces, but whether so cut or not, the design and arrangement was based on the form of the spaces so cut out, usually trefoils or quatrefoils, variously grouped and considered, and in more elaborate instances becoming wheel or star windows, the idea being always of dark and beautiful forms placed on a white ground, like clover leaves or woodroof leaves laid on paper, no attention whatever being paid to the shapes of the intermediate light surfaces. The two pediments of the west front of Bayeux (PI.—) and the door of Lisieux (Pl.—) will give a perfect idea of the system, and the proneness for shade in the latter by making the quatrefoils concave is very remarkable.” The Bayeux illustration is not given; but that of Lisieux will be found in Pl. VII. fig. 1.] 2 [With which plate, compare No. 21 in Stones of Venice, vol. i., and see in that vol., ch. xxvii. § 16.]

126 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE by penetrations which, seen from within, are forms of light, and, from without, are forms of shade. In Italian traceries the eye is exclusively fixed upon the dark forms of the penetrations, and the whole proportion and power of the design are caused to depend upon them. The intermediate spaces are, indeed, in the most perfect early examples, filled with elaborate ornament; but this ornament was so subdued as never to disturb the simplicity and force of the dark masses; and in many instances is entirely wanting. The composition of the whole depends on the proportioning and shaping of the darks; and it is impossible that any thing can be more exquisite than their placing in the head window of the Giotto campanile, Plate IX., or the Church of Or San Michele. So entirely does the effect depend upon them, that it is quite useless to draw Italian tracery in outline; if with any intention of rendering its effect, it is better to mark the black spots, and let the rest alone. Of course, when it is desired to obtain an accurate rendering of the design, its lines and mouldings are enough; but it often happens that works on architecture are of little use, because they afford the reader no means of judging of the effective intention of the arrangements which they state. No person, looking at an architectural drawing of the richly foliaged cusps and intervals of Or San Michele, would understand that all this sculpture was extraneous, was a mere added grace, and had nothing to do with the real anatomy of the work, and that by a few bold cuttings through a slab of stone he might reach the main effect of it all, at once. I have, therefore, in the plate of the design of Giotto, endeavoured especially to mark these points of purpose; there, as in every other instance, black shadows of a graceful form lying on the white surface of the stone, like dark leaves laid upon snow. Hence, as before observed, the universal name of foil applied to such ornaments.1 § 19. In order to the obtaining their full effect, it is evident 1 [See further on this subject, Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xi. § 8.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 127 that much caution is necessary in the management of the glass. In the finest instances, the traceries are open lights, either in towers, as in this design of Giotto’s, or in external arcades like that of the Campo Santo at Pisa or the Doge’s Palace at Venice; and it is thus only that their full beauty is shown. In domestic buildings, or in windows of churches necessarily glazed, the glass was usually withdrawn entirely behind the traceries. Those of the Cathedral of Florence stand quite clear of it, casting their shadows in well-detached lines, so as in most lights to give the appearance of a double tracery. In those few instances in which the glass was set in the tracery itself, as in Or San Michele, the effect of the latter is half destroyed: perhaps the especial attention paid by Orcagna to his surface ornament, was connected with the intention of so glazing them. It is singular to see, in late architecture, the glass, which tormented the bolder architects, considered as a valuable means of making the lines of tracery more slender; as in the smallest intervals of the windows of Merton College, Oxford,1 where the glass is advanced about two inches from the centre of the tracery bar, (that in the larger spaces being in the middle, as usual,) in order to prevent the depth of shadow from farther diminishing the apparent interval.* Much of the lightness of the effect of the traceries is owing to this seemingly unimportant arrangement. But, generally speaking, glass spoils all traceries; and it is much to be wished that it should be kept well within them, when it cannot be dispensed with, and that the most careful and * Well noticed; and, I think, at that time by me only. I do not think this question of the advance or retreat of the glass has been touched even in M. Viollet-le-Duc’s long article on tracery, and I am more pertinacious now in showing what I have really seen and said, because it has all been so useless. Had it been acted on, I need not have vindicated my guidance—now, I can only say—“I showed you the right way, though you would not walk in it.” See the following note. [1880.]

1 [The windows are of the same date as the choir, transepts, and ante-chapel, about 1276, except the lower part of the east window. Ruskin made drawings and measurements of these windows during a visit to Oxford in July 1848. The point here made in the text is noted and illustrated at considerable length in his diary.]

128 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE beautiful designs should be reserved for situations where no glass would be needed.* § 20. The method of decoration by shadow was, as far as we have hitherto traced it, common to the northern and southern Gothic. But in the carrying out of the system they instantly diverged. Having marble at his command, and classical decoration in his sight, the southern architect was able to carve the intermediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to vary his wall surface with inlaid stones. The northern architect neither knew the ancient work, nor possessed the delicate material; and he had no resource but to cover his walls with holes, cut into foiled shapes like those of the windows. This he did, often with great clumsiness, but always with a vigorous sense of composition, and always, observe, depending on the shadows for effect. Where the wall was thick, and could not be cut through, and the foilings were large, those shadows did not fill the entire space; but the form was, nevertheless, drawn on the eye by means of them, and when it was possible, they were cut clear through, as in raised screens of pediment, like those of the west front of Bayeux: cut so deep in every case, as to secure, in all but a direct low front light, great breadth of shadow. The spandrel, given at the top of Plate VII., is from the south-western entrance of the cathedral of Lisieux; one of the most quaint and interesting doors in Normandy, probably soon to be lost for ever,1 by the continuance of the masonic operations which have already destroyed the northern tower. Its work is altogether rude, but full of spirit; the opposite spandrels have different, though balanced, ornaments very inaccurately adjusted, each rosette or star (as the five-rayed figure, now quite defaced, in the upper portion appears to * Cloisters, for instance. The only fruit I have seen of this exhortation is the multiplication of the stupidest traceries that can be cut cheapest, as in the cloisters of the missionary school at Canterbury.2 [1880.]

1 [A prophecy of doom not hitherto fulfilled.] 2 [St. Augustine’s College, re-founded by the late Mr. A. J. Beresford Hope in 1844. The buildings, erected from the designs of Butterfield, were completed in 1848, 310 years after the dissolution of the earlier foundation.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 129 have been) cut on its own block of stone and fitted in with small nicety, especially illustrating the point I have above insisted upon—the architect’s utter neglect of the forms of intermediate stone, at this early period. The arcade, of which a single arch and shaft are given on the left, forms the flank of the door; three outer shafts bearing three orders within the spandrel which I have drawn, and each of these shafts carried over an inner arcade, decorated above with quatrefoils, cut concave and filled with leaves, the whole disposition exquisitely picturesque and full of strange play of light and shade. For some time the penetrative ornaments, if so they may be for convenience called, maintained their bold and independent character. Then they multiplied and enlarged, becoming shallower as they did so; then they began to run to gether, one swallowing up, or hanging on to, another, like bubbles in expiring foam—fig. 4, from a spandrel at Bayeux,1 looks as if it had been blown from a pipe; finally, they lost their individual character altogether, and the eye was made to rest on the separating lines of tracery, as we saw before in the window; and then came the great change and the fall of the Gothic power. § 21. Figs. 2 and 3, the one a quadrant of the star window of the little chapel2 close to St. Anastasia at Verona, and the other a very singular example3 from the church of the Eremitani at Padua, compared with fig. 5, one of the ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen,* show the closely * The reader cannot but observe the agreeableness, as a mere arrangement of shade, which especially belongs to the “sacred trefoil.” I do not think that the element of foliation has been enough insisted upon in its intimate relations with the power of Gothic work. If I were asked what was the most distinctive feature of its perfect style, I should say the trefoil. It is the very soul of it; and I think the loveliest Gothic is always formed upon simple and bold tracings of it, taking place between the blank lancet arch on the one hand, and the overcharged cinquefoiled arch on the other.4

1 [Referred to again in Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xxvi. § 9.] 2 [The chapel of San Pietro Martire, which, with the adjacent buildings (now a school), formed part of the convent of Sant’ Anastasia.] 3 [Referred to again in Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xi. § 12.] 4 [Note 10, at the end of the book, in eds. 1 and 2. Omitted in later editions.] VIII. I

130 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE correspondent conditions of the early Northern and Southern Gothic. But, as we have said, the Italian architects, not being embarrassed for decoration of wall surface, and not being obliged, like the Northmen, to multiply their penetrations, held to the system for some time longer; and while they increased the refinement of the ornament, kept the purity of the plan. That refinement of ornament was their weak point however, and opened the way for the renaissance attack. They fell, like the old Romans, by their luxury,1 except in the separate instance of the magnificent school of Venice. That architecture began with the luxuriance in which all others expired: it founded itself on the Byzantine mosaic and fretwork; and laying aside its ornaments, one by one, while it fixed its forms by laws more and more severe, stood forth, at last, a model of domestic Gothic, so grand, so complete, so nobly systematised, that, to my mind, there never existed an architecture with so stern a claim to our reverence.* I do not except even the Greek Doric: the Doric had cast nothing away; the fourteenth century Venetian had cast away, one by one, for a succession of centuries, every splendour that art and wealth could give it. It had laid down its crown and its jewels, its gold and its colour, like a king disrobing: it had resigned its exertion, like an athlete * I have written many passages that are one-sided or incomplete; and which therefore are misleading if read without their contexts or development. But I know of no other paragraph in any of my books so definitely false as this. I did not know the history of Venice when I wrote it; and mistook the expression of the conspiring pride of her later aristocracy, for the temper of the whole nation. The real strength of Venice was in the twelfth, not the fourteenth century: and the abandonment of her Byzantine architecture meant her ruin. See the notes on the destruction of the Ziani Palace in the Stones of Venice [vol. ii. ch. viii.; the “Ziani Palace” = the original Ducal Palace]. Farther, although rendering all this respect to what I suppose to be the self-restraint of Venetian-Gothic, I had carefully guarded the reader from too high an estimate of it, in relation to originally purer styles. The following passage, from the preface to the second edition, has been much too carelessly overlooked by the general reader:—“I must here also deprecate . . . noblest of all.” [1880. For the passage given at length in that edition, because the preface to ed. 2 was not then entirely reprinted, see above, p. 12.]

1 [See the passage from Pliny cited in Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 21).]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 131 reposing; once capricious and fantastic, it had bound itself by laws inviolable and serene as those of Nature herself. It retained nothing but its beauty and its power; both the highest, but both restrained. The Doric flutings were of irregular number—the Venetian mouldings were unchangeable. The Doric manner of ornament admitted no temptation; it was the fasting of an anchorite—the Venetian ornament embraced, while it governed, all vegetable and animal forms; it was the temperance of a man, the command of Adam over creation. I do not know so magnificent a marking of human authority as the iron grasp of the Venetian over his own exuberance of imagination; the calm and solemn restraint with which, his mind filled with thoughts of flowing leafage and fiery life, he gives those thoughts expression for an instant, and then withdraws within those massy bars and levelled cusps of stone.* And his power to do this depended altogether on his retaining the forms of the shadows in his sight. Far from carrying the eye to the ornaments, upon the stone, he abandoned these latter one by one; and while his mouldings received the most shapely order and symmetry, closely correspondent with that of the Rouen tracery, (compare Plates * The plate represents one of the lateral windows of the third storey of the Palazzo Foscari.1 It was drawn from the opposite side of the Grand Canal, and the lines of its traceries are therefore given as they appear in somewhat distant effect. It shows only segments of the characteristic quatrefoils of the central windows. I found by measurement their construction exceedingly simple. Four circles are drawn in contact within the large circle. Two tangential lines are then drawn to each opposite pair, enclosing the four circles in a hollow cross. An inner circle struck through the intersections of the circles by the tangents, truncates the cusps.2

1 [Ruskin spent much time and labour upon drawing this Palace during his sojourn at Venice with J. D. Harding in 1845. He writes to his father (Sept. 17):— “Harding and I shall do the Foscari pretty well between us. I have got the architecture—mouldings, capitals and all. I began it small. Harding said I should frighten the Daguerreotype into fits, and Couttet said: ‘Ça ne le ressemble pas: c’est la même chose. ’ I found it impossible, however, to accomplish it so completely, and am therefore taking large studies of the most interesting part, leaving the rest to sketch in lightly.” For notices of the Palace, see Stones of Venice, Venetian Index, and vol. ii. ch. v. §§ 2, 4, 10, 14.] 2 [Note 11, at the end of the book, in eds. 1 and 2. Appendix iv. in the 1880 and later eds.]

132 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE IV. and VIII.,) he kept the cusps within them perfectly flat, decorated, if at all, with a trefoil (Palazzo Foscari), or fillet (Doge’s Palace), just traceable and no more, so that the quatrefoil, cut as sharply through them as if it had been struck out by a stamp, told upon the eye, with all its four black leaves, miles away. No knots of flowerwork, no ornaments of any kind, were suffered to interfere with the purity of its form: the cusp is usually quite sharp; but slightly truncated in the Palazzo Foscari, and charged with a simple ball in that of the Doge; and the glass of the window, where there was any, was, as we have seen, thrown back behind the stonework, that no flashes of light might interfere with its depth. Corrupted forms, like those of the Casa d’Oro and Palazzo Pisani,1 and several others, only serve to show the majesty of the common design. § 22. Such are the principal circumstances traceable in the treatment of the two kinds of masses of light and darkness, in the hands of the earlier architects; gradation in the one, flatness in the other, and breadth in both, being the qualities sought and exhibited by every possible expedient, up to the period when, as we have before stated, the line was substituted for the mass, as the means of division of surface. Enough has been said to illustrate this, as regards tracery; but a word or two is still necessary respecting the mouldings. Those of the earlier times were, in the plurality of instances, composed of alternate square and cylindrical shafts, variously associated and proportioned. Where concave cuttings occur, as in the beautiful west doors of Bayeux, they are between cylindrical shafts, which they throw out into broad light. The eye in all cases dwells on broad surfaces, and commonly upon few. In course of time, a low ridgy process is seen emerging along the outer edge of the cylindrical shaft, forming a line of light upon it and destroying its gradation. Hardly traceable at first, (as2 on the alternate rolls of the 1 [For these palaces, see Stones of Venice, Venetian Index.] 2 [The MS. for “as” reads “if it has escaped Mr. Whewell’s eye on . . .” For Whewell’s book, see above, p. 65 n.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 133 north door of Rouen,) it grows and pushes out as gradually as a budding plant:1 sharp at first on the edge; but, becoming prominent, it receives a truncation, and becomes a definite fillet on the face of the roll. Not yet to be checked, it pushes forward until the roll itself becomes subordinate to it, and is finally lost in a slight swell upon its sides, while the concavities have all the time been deepening and enlarging behind it, until, from a succession of square or cylindrical masses, the whole moulding has become a series of concavities edged by delicate fillets, upon which, (sharp lines of light, observe,) the eye exclusively rests. While this has been taking place, a similar, though less total, change has affected the flowerwork itself. In Plate I., fig. 2 (a), I have given two from the transepts of Rouen. It will be observed how absolutely the eye rests on the forms of the leaves, and on the three berries in the angle, being in light exactly what the trefoil is in darkness. These mouldings nearly adhere to the stone; and are very slightly, though sharply, undercut. In process of time, the attention of the architect, instead of resting on the leaves, went to the stalks. These latter were elongated (b, from the south door of St. Lô;) and to exhibit them better, the deep concavity was cut behind, so as to throw them out in lines of light. The system was carried out into continually increasing intricacy, until, in the transepts of Beauvais, we have brackets and flamboyant traceries, composed of twigs without any leaves at all. This, however, is a partial, though a sufficiently characteristic, caprice, the leaf being never generally banished, and in the mouldings round those same doors, beautifully managed, but itself rendered liny by bold marking of its ribs and veins, and by turning up, and crisping its edges, large intermediate spaces being always left to be occupied by interwining stems, (c, from Caudebec). The trefoil of light formed by berries or acorns, though diminished in value, was never lost up to the last period of living Gothic. § 23. It is interesting to follow into its many ramifications, 1 [For “a budding plant,” ed. 1 reads “a stag’s horns.”]

134 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE the influence of the corrupting principle; but we have seen enough of it to enable us to draw our practical conclusion—a conclusion a thousand times felt and reiterated in the experience and advice of every practised artist, but never often enough repeated, never profoundly enough felt. Of composition and invention much has been written, it seems to me vainly, for men cannot be taught to compose or to invent; of these, the highest elements of Power in architecture, I do not, therefore, speak; nor, here, of that peculiar restraint in the imitation of natural forms, which constitutes the dignity of even the most luxuriant work of the great periods. Of this restraint,1 I shall say a word or two in the next chapter;2 pressing now only the conclusion, as practically useful as it is certain, that the relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigour of their masses, than on any other attribute of their design: mass of everything, of bulk, of light, of darkness, of colour, not mere sum of any of these, but breadth of them; not broken light, nor scattered darkness, nor divided weight, but solid stone, broad sunshine, starless shade. Time would fail me altogether, if I attempted to follow out the range of the principle; there is not a feature, however apparently trifling, to which it cannot give power. The wooden fillings of belfry lights, necessary to protect their interiors from rain, are in England usually divided into a number of neatly executed cross-bars, like those of Venetian blinds, which, of course, become as conspicuous in their sharpness as they are uninteresting in their precise carpentry, multiplying, moreover, the horizontal lines which directly contradict those of the architecture. Abroad, such necessities are met by three or four downright penthouse roofs, reaching each from within the window to the outside shafts of its mouldings; instead of the horrible row of ruled lines, the space is thus divided into four or five grand masses of shadow, with grey slopes of roof above, bent or yielding into all kinds 1 [The MS. inserts, “connected as it is with the understanding of the most profound laws of organic form.”] 2 [See below, ch. iv., § 13, p. 152.]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 135 of delicious swells and curves, and covered with warm tones of moss and lichen. Very often the thing is more delightful than the stone-work itself, and all because it is broad, dark, and simple. It matters not how clumsy, how common, the means are, that get weight and shadow—sloping roof, jutting porch, projecting balcony, hollow niche, massy gargoyle, frowning parapet; get but gloom and simplicity, and all good things will follow in their place and time; do but design with the owl’s eyes first, and you will gain the falcon’s afterwards. § 24. I am grieved to have to insist upon what seems so simple: it looks trite and commonplace when it is written, but pardon me this: for it is anything but an accepted or understood principle in practice, and the less excusably forgotten, because it is, of all the great and true laws of art, the easiest to obey. The executive facility of complying with its demands cannot be too earnestly, too frankly, asserted. There are not five men in the kingdom who could compose, nor twenty who could cut, the foliage with which the windows of Or San Michele are adorned; but there is many a village clergyman who could invent and dispose its black openings, and not a village mason who could not cut them.1 Lay a few clover or woodroof leaves on white paper, and a little alteration in their positions will suggest figures which, cut boldly through a slab of marble, would be worth more window traceries than an architect could draw in a summer’s day.2 But I know not how it is, unless that our English hearts have more oak than stone in them, and have more filial sympathy with acorns than Alps; but all that we do is small and mean, 1 [There is at least one village clergyman who has acted in the spirit of this passage—namely, the Rev. F. W. Ragg, M.A., Trinity College, Cambridge, Vicar of Marsworth, Bucks. He has carved, with his own hand, the window traceries and capitals of the columns in his church with natural objects of vegetable life, including “kale” leaves; one window is framed entirely with horse-chestnut leaves.] 2 [Ed. 1 here continues:— “There are few men in the world who could design a Greek capital; there are few who could not produce some vigour of effect with leaf designs on a Byzantine block: few who could design a Palladian front, or a flamboyant pediment; many who could build a square mass like the Strozzi Palace.” For the Strozzi Palace, see Vol. IV. p. 137 n.]

136 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE if not worse—thin, and wasted, and unsubstantial. It is not modern work only; we have built like frogs and mice since the thirteenth century (except only in our castles). What a contrast between the pitiful little pigeon-holes which stand for doors in the east front of Salisbury, looking like the entrances to a beehive or a wasp’s nest, and the soaring arches and kingly crowning of the gates of Abbeville, Rouen, and Rheims, or the rock-hewn piers of Chartres, or the dark and vaulted porches and writhed pillars of Verona! Of domestic architecture what need is there to speak? How small, how cramped, how poor, how miserable in its petty neatness is our best! how beneath the mark of attack, and the level of contempt, that which is common with us! What a strange sense of formalised deformity, of shrivelled precision, of starved accuracy, of minute misanthropy have we, as we leave even the rude streets of Picardy for the market towns of Kent! Until that street architecture of ours is bettered, until we give it some size and boldness, until we give our windows recess, and our walls thickness, I know not how we can blame our architects for their feebleness in more important work; their eyes are inured to narrowness and slightness: can we expect them at a word to conceive and deal with breadth and solidity? They ought not to live in our cities; there is that in their miserable walls which bricks up to death men’s imaginations, as surely as ever perished forsworn nun. An architect should live as little in cities as a painter.1 Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome. There was something in the old power of architecture, which it had from the recluse more than from the citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with chief praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, and above the fury of the populace: and Heaven forbid that for such cause we should ever have to lay a larger stone, or rivet a firmer bar, in our 1 [Cf. Lectures on Art, § 123, where Ruskin repeated, “only in more deliberate assertion,” what he wrote “just twenty-two years ago in the . . . Seven Lamps—it is not possible to have any right morality, happiness, or art, in any country where the cities are . . . spots of dreadful mildew, spreading by patches and blotches over the country they consume.”]

CH. III THE LAMP OF POWER 137 England! But we have other sources of power, in the imagery of our iron coasts and azure hills; of power more pure, nor less serene, than that of the hermit spirit which once lighted with white lines of cloisters the glades of the Alpine pine, and raised into ordered spires the wild rocks of the Norman sea; which gave to the temple gate the depth and darkness of Elijah’s Horeb cave;1 and lifted, out of the populous city, grey cliffs of lonely stone, into the midst of sailing birds and silent air. 1 [1 Kings xx. 8, 9.]

CHAPTER IV

THE LAMP OF BEAUTY

§ 1. IT was stated, in the outset of the preceding chapter, that the value of architecture depended on two distinct characters: the one, the impression it receives from human power; the other, the image it bears of the natural creation. I have endeavoured to show in what manner its majesty was attributable to a sympathy with the effort and trouble of human life * (a sympathy as distinctly perceived in the gloom and mystery of form, as it is in the melancholy tones of sounds). I desire now to trace that happier element of its excellence, consisting in a noble rendering of images of Beauty, derived chiefly from the external appearances of organic nature. It is irrelevant to our present purpose to enter into any inquiry respecting the essential causes of impressions of beauty. I have partly expressed my thoughts on this matter in a previous work,1 and I hope to develope them hereafter. But since all such inquiries can only be founded on the ordinary understanding of what is meant by the term Beauty, and * Yes, but that is not what is meant in the 17th Aphorism, by “Dominion” or Government: though, on the embossed cover of the book, I partly implied it to be, in substituting “Auctoritas” for “Potestas.” The intellectual “Dominion” of Architecture is treated of partly in the course of the present chapter, under the heads of Proportion and Abstraction; and partly in the fifth chapter, (of which see the opening paragraph, Aphorism 23),—a confusion induced partly by haste and mismanagement, and partly by excess of management, and the difficulty I have before confessed, (though I forget where,) of keeping my Seven Lamps from becoming Eight—or Nine—or even quite a vulgar row of foot-lights.2 [1880.]

1 [Modern Painters, vol. ii.] 2 [See Fors Clavigera, Letter 5: “I have always a great suspicion of the number Seven; because when I wrote the Seven Lamps of Architecture, it required all the ingenuity I was master of to prevent them becoming Eight, or even Nine, on my hands.”]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 139 since they presume that the feeling of mankind on this subject is universal and instinctive, I shall base my present investigation on this assumption; and only asserting that to be beautiful which I believe will be granted me to be so without dispute, I would endeavour shortly to trace the manner in which this element of delight is to be best engrafted upon architectural design, what are the purest sources from which it is to be derived, and what the errors to be avoided in its pursuit. § 2. It will be thought that I have somewhat rashly limited the elements of architectural beauty to imitative forms. I do not mean to assert that every happy arrangement of line is directly suggested by a natural object; but that all beautiful lines are adaptations of those which are commonest in the external creation; that, in proportion to the richness of their association, the resemblance to natural work, as a type and help, must be more closely attempted, and more clearly seen; and that beyond a certain point, and that a very low one, man cannot advance in the invention of beauty, without directly imitating natural form. Thus, in the Doric temple the triglyph and cornice are unimitative; or imitative only of artificial cuttings of wood. No one would call these members beautiful. Their influence over us is in their severity and simplicity.1 The fluting of the column, which I doubt not was the Greek symbol of the bark of the tree,2 was imitative 1 [In the MS. “their weight, power, and simplicity.”] 2 [Ruskin’s conjecture is more reasonable than the once popular explanation that the flutings were provided for the reception of the spears of persons visiting the temples—a more unsuitable place for them could not be imagined. More probably, their origin may be found in the polygonal column, whose sides received a greater play of light by being hollowed out—a refinement which would not be long unperceived by the Greeks (see Gwilt’s Encyclopædia of Architecture, p. 64). For the “delicate and beautiful effects” of cast shadows, owing to variations in the form of the flutes, see F. C. Penrose’s Investigation of the Principles of Athenian Architecture, ed. 1888, p. 51. A reviewer in commenting upon the above passage suggests further reasons: “This symbolism may have given birth to the flutes; but the beauty which continued their use and made it invariable, and which, as Mr. Ruskin allows, is instantly felt in it, has many accounts better than this to render of itself. The business of the shaft is to support weight; the aim of the Greek architect was to make it express, as well as perform, that business. The mind instinctively attributes motive and ascendant energy to a series of vertically convergent lines, which are checked before reaching their focus. This effect is much increased in the Doric shaft by the gentle swell, or entasis,

140 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE in its origin, and feebly resembled many canaliculated organic structures. Beauty is instantly felt in it, but of a low order. The decoration proper was sought in the true forms of organic life, and those chiefly human. Again: the Doric capital was unimitative; but all the beauty it had was dependent on the precision of its ovolo,1 a natural curve of the most frequent occurrence. The Ionic capital (to my mind, as an architectural invention, exceedingly base,) nevertheless depended for all the beauty that it had on its adoption of a spiral line, perhaps the commonest of all that characterise the inferior orders of animal organism and habitation. Farther progress could not be made without a direct imitation of the acanthus leaf. Again: the Romanesque arch is beautiful as an abstract line. Its type is always before us in that of the apparent vault of heaven, and horizon of the earth. The cylindrical pillar is always beautiful, for God has so moulded the stem of every tree that is pleasant to the eyes. The pointed arch is beautiful; it is the termination of every leaf that shakes in summer wind, and its most fortunate associations are directly borrowed from the trefoiled grass of the field, or from the stars of its flowers. Farther than this, man’s invention could not reach without frank imitation. His next step was to gather the flowers themselves, and wreathe them in his capitals.2 § 3. Now, I would insist especially on the fact, of which I doubt not that farther illustrations will occur to the mind

which accompanies its swift taper; but another, and far more subtle, and at the same time powerful reason, for the fluting is in the capacity of a series of concave surfaces to express an active resistance against, or rather denial of, any tendency to burst and crumble beneath the super-imposed burden. This may, perhaps, seem a refinement; but let the reader compare the fluted Greek with the smooth ‘Roman Doric ’ shaft and he will probably acknowledge that a certain unpleasant effect which always accompanies the last, and which caused the Greeks invariably to flute their shafts, is mainly owing to the absence of any such suggestion of resisting power. That which sounds like an over-refinement when explained to the understanding is often simple enough to the eye” (Edinburgh Review, vol. 94, 1851, p. 380).] 1 Ovolo (from the Italian, meaning “egg-formed”); the name applied to the moulding at the head of the Doric column. The MS. has, instead of this technical term, “its single curved line.”] 2 [For an additional passage here, in the MS., see Appendix ii., p. 285.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 141 of every reader, that all most lovely forms and thoughts are

directly taken from natural objects; because I would APHORISM fain be allowed to assume also the converse of this, 19. All beauty is namely, that forms which are not taken from natural founded on the objects must be ugly.* I know this is a bold laws of natural forms.1 assumption; but as I have not space to reason out the points wherein essential beauty of form consists,2 that being far too serious a work to be undertaken in a bye way, I have no other resource than to use this accidental mark or test of beauty, of whose truth the considerations which I hope hereafter to lay before the reader may assure him. I say an accidental mark, since forms are not beautiful because they are copied from Nature; only it is out of the power of man to conceive beauty without her aid. I believe the reader will grant me this, even from the examples above advanced; the degree of confidence with which it is granted must attach also to his acceptance of the conclusions which will follow from it; but if it be granted frankly, it will enable me to determine a matter of very essential importance, namely, what is or is not ornament. For there are many forms of so called decoration in architecture, habitual, and received, therefore, with approval, or at all events without any venture at expression of dislike, which I have no hesitation in asserting to be not ornament at all, but to be ugly things, the expense of which ought in truth * The aphorism is wholly true; but the following application of it, often trivial or false. See the subsequent notes. [1880.]

1 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “Now, I would insist . . .” down to “must be ugly.”] 2 [In the MS. Ruskin had written here, “to do this has taken me more than three years of thought.” He erased the words, reflecting, no doubt, that his years of thought on the subject were not yet ended. It had, indeed, taken him three years (1843–1846) to write the second volume of Modern Painters, in which he formulated a theory of beauty implying the conclusion here stated; but the illustration of this conclusion was still the task in front of him in the remainder of that work (see Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. xiv. § 24): “The reader must yet remember that our special business in this section of the work is the observance of the nature of beauty, and of the degrees in which the aspect of any object fulfils the laws of beauty stated in the second volume.” With what is said in the text above, compare the passage from The Two Paths cited above, p. 101 n.]

142 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE to be set down in the architect’s contract, as “For Monstrification.” I believe that we regard these customary deformities with a savage complacency, as an Indian does his flesh patterns and paint (all nations being in certain degrees and senses savage). I believe that I can prove them to be monstrous, and I hope hereafter to do so conclusively; but, meantime, I can allege in defence of my persuasion nothing but this fact of their being unnatural, to which the reader must attach such weight as he thinks it deserves. There is, however, a peculiar difficulty in using this proof; it requires the writer to assume, very impertinently, that nothing is natural but what he has seen or supposes to exist. I would not do this; for I suppose there is no conceivable form or grouping of forms but in some part of the

APHORISM universe an example of it may be found. But I 20. think I am justified in considering those forms to That is most “natural” be most natural which are most frequent; or, which is most rather, that on the shapes which in the everyday easily and ordinarily world are familiar to the eyes of men, God has seen.1 stamped those characters of beauty which He has made it man’s nature to love; while in certain exceptional forms He has shown that the adoption of the others was not a matter of necessity, but part of the adjusted harmony of creation. I believe that thus we may reason from Frequency to Beauty, and vice versâ; that, knowing a thing to be frequent, we may assume it to be beautiful; and assume that which is most frequent to be most beautiful: I mean, of course, visibly frequent; for the forms of things which are hidden in caverns of the earth, or in the anatomy of animal frames, are evidently not intended by their Maker to bear the habitual gaze of man.* And, * This is an excellent aphorism; and I am proud of having so early seen the danger of anatomical study, so often dwelt on in my later works.2 [1880.]

1 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “But I think I am justified . . .” down to “the habitual gaze of man.”] 2 [See passages collected in the note in Vol. IV. p. 155, and General Index to this edition.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 143 again, by frequency I mean that limited and isolated frequency which is characteristic of all perfection; not mere multitude: as a rose is a common flower, but yet there are not so many roses on the tree as there are leaves. In this respect Nature is sparing of her highest, and lavish of her less, beauty; but I call the flower as frequent as the leaf, because, each in its allotted quantity, where the one is, there will ordinarily be the other.1 § 4. The first so-called ornament, then, which I would attack is that Greek fret,2 now, I believe, usually known by the Italian name Guilloche,3 which is exactly a case in point. It so happens that in crystals of bismuth, formed by the unagitated cooling of the melted metal, there occurs a natural resemblance of it almost perfect. But crystals4 of bismuth not only are of unusual occurrence in every-day life, but their form is, as far as I know, unique among minerals; and not only unique, but only attainable by an artificial process, the metal itself never being found pure. I do not remember any other substance or arrangement which presents a resemblance to this Greek ornament; and I think that I may trust my remembrance as including most of the arrangements which occur in the outward forms of common and familiar things. On this ground, then, I allege that ornament to be ugly; or, in the literal sense of the word, monstrous; different from anything which it is the nature of man to admire: and I think an uncarved fillet or plinth infinitely preferable to one 1 [See Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xiv. § 41, where this section is referred to, and various other passages in Ruskin’s books to a like purpose are “knit together.”] 2 [Or “key pattern”; of Egyptian origin, and supposed to be symbolical of the labyrinthine temple on Lake Moeris (see an article on “The Lost Soul of Patterns” in Good Words, Sept. 1896; and for the use of the pattern on Greek vases (referred to in Ruskin’s note on the next page), see E. T. Cook’s Handbook to the . . . British Museum, 1903, p. 294). Ruskin in Fors Clavigera, Letter 33, explains its labyrinthine meaning. He once held it, he says, “in especial dislike as the chief means by which bad architects tried to make their buildings look classical,” but it has “a deep meaning, which I did not then know.”] 3 [This is a mistake, as one at least of Ruskin’s critics pointed out at the time: see The Builder, May 19, 1849. The guilloche is the French (not Italian) name for the “cable” pattern, a plaited design forming a series of circular loops: for its history, see J. H. Middleton’s Ancient Gems, p. 15.] 4 [See above, ch. ii. § 27 n., p. 96.]

144 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE covered with this vile concatenation of straight lines:* unless indeed it be employed as a foil to a true ornament, which it may, perhaps, sometimes with advantage; or excessively small, as it occurs on coins, the harshness of its arrangement being less perceived. § 5. Often in association with this horrible design we find, in Greek works, one which is as beautiful as this is painful—that egg and dart moulding,1 whose perfection, in its place and way, has never been surpassed. And why is this? Simply because the form of which it is chiefly composed is one not only familiar to us in the soft housing of the bird’s nest, but happens to be that of nearly every pebble that rolls and murmurs under the surf of the sea, on all its endless shore. And that with a peculiar2 accuracy; for the mass which bears the light in this moulding is not in good Greek work, as in the frieze of the Erechtheum, merely of the shape of an egg. It is flattened on the upper surface, with a delicacy and keen sense of variety in the curve which it is impossible too highly to praise, attaining exactly that flattened, imperfect oval, which, in nine cases out of ten, will be the form of the pebble lifted at random from the rolled beach. Leave out this flatness, and the moulding is vulgar instantly. It is singular also that the insertion of this rounded form in the hollowed recess has a painted type in the plumage of the Argus pheasant,3 the eyes of whose feathers are so shaded as exactly to represent an oval form placed in a hollow. § 6. It will evidently follow, upon our application of this test of natural resemblance, that we shall at once conclude * All this is true; but I had not enough observed when I wrote, the use of the Greek fret in contrast to curved forms; as especially on vases, and in the borders of drapery itself. The use of it large, as on the base of Sanmicheli’s otherwise very noble design of the Casa Grimani,4 is always a sign of failing instinct for beauty. [1880.]

1 [For this pattern, see E. T. Cook’s Handbook to the . . . British Museum, 1903, p. 197.] 2 [The MS. has “peculiar, and, I grieve to say, usually unfollowed, accuracy.”] 3 [A genus of pheasants, natives of Asia, of which one species (A. giganteus) is as large as a turkey.] 4 [For this palace, see Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. ii. § 1.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 145 that all perfectly beautiful forms must be composed of curves; since there is hardly any common natural form in which it is possible to discover a straight line. Nevertheless, Architecture, having necessarily to deal with straight lines essential to its purposes in many instances and to the expression of its power in others, must frequently be content with that measure of beauty which is consistent with such primal forms; and we may presume that utmost measure of beauty to have been attained when the arrangements of such lines are consistent with the most frequent natural groupings of them we can discover, although, to find right lines in nature at all, we may be compelled to do violence to her finished work, break through the sculptured and coloured surfaces of her crags, and examine the processes of their crystallisation. § 7. I have just convicted the Greek fret of ugliness, because it has no precedent to allege for its arrangement except an artificial form of a rare metal. Let us bring into court an ornament of the Lombard architects, Plate XII., fig. 7, as exclusively composed of right lines as the other, only, observe, with the noble element of shadow added. This ornament, taken from the front of the Cathedral of Pisa, is universal throughout the Lombard churches of Pisa, Lucca, Pistoja, and Florence; and it will be a grave stain upon them if it cannot be defended. Its first apology for itself, made in a hurry, sounds marvellously like the Greek one, and highly dubious. It says that its terminal contour is the very image of a carefully prepared artificial crystal of common salt.1 Salt being, however, a substance considerably more familiar to us than bismuth, the chances are somewhat in favour of the accused Lombard ornament already. But it has more to say for itself, and more to the purpose; namely, that its main outline is one not only of natural crystallisation, but among the very first and commonest of crystalline forms, being the primal condition of the occurrence of the oxides of iron, copper, and tin, of the sulphurets of iron and lead, of fluor spar, etc.; and that those projecting forms in its surface 1 [Cf. above, pp. 96 n., 143.] VIII. K

146 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE represent the conditions of structure which effect the change into another relative and equally common crystalline form, the cube. This is quite enough. We may rest assured it is as good a combination of such simple right lines as can be put together, and gracefully fitted for every place in which such lines are necessary. § 8. The next ornament whose cause I would try is that of our Tudor work, the portcullis. Reticulation is common enough in natural form, and very beautiful; but it is either of the most delicate and gauzy texture, or of variously sized meshes and undulating lines. There is no family relation between portcullis and cobwebs or beetles’ wings; something like it, perhaps, may be found in some kinds of crocodile armour and on the backs of the Northern divers, but always beautifully varied in size of mesh. There is a dignity in the thing itself, if its size were exhibited, and the shade given through its bars; but even these merits are taken away in the Tudor diminution of it, set on a solid surface. It has not a single syllable, I believe, to say in its defence. It is another monster, absolutely and unmitigatedly frightful. All that carving on Henry the Seventh’s Chapel simply deforms the stones of it.* In the same clause with the portcullis, we may condemn all heraldic decoration, so far as beauty is its object. Its pride and significance have their proper place, fitly occurring in prominent parts of the building, as over its gates; and allowably in places where its legendry may be plainly read, as in painted windows, bosses of ceilings, etc. And sometimes, of course, the forms which it presents may be beautiful, as of animals, or simple symbols like the fleur-de-lis; but, for the most part, heraldic similitudes and arrangements are so professedly and pointedly unnatural, that it would be difficult to invent anything uglier; and the use of them as a repeated * True, again; but a very small matter in comparison with the main faults of Tudor architecture: and the difference between the rigid bars of the portcullis and the flexible filaments of Byzantine network is not enough explained. [1880.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 147 decoration will utterly destroy both the power and beauty of any building. Common sense and courtesy also forbid their repetition. It is right to tell those who enter your doors that you are such a one, and of such a rank; but to tell it to them again and again, wherever they turn, becomes soon impertinence, and at last folly. Let, therefore, the entire bearings occur in few places, and these not considered as an ornament, but as an inscription; and for frequent appliance, let any single and fair symbol be chosen out of them. Thus we may multiply as much as we choose the French or the Florentine lily, or the English rose;1 but we must not multiply a King’s arms.* § 9. It will also follow, from these considerations, that if any one part of heraldic decoration be worse than another, it is the motto; since, of all things unlike nature, the forms of letters are, perhaps, the most so. Even graphic tellurium and felspar look, at their clearest, anything but legible. All letters are, therefore, to be considered as frightful things,2 and to be endured only upon one occasion; that is to say, in places where the sense of the inscription is of more importance than external ornament. Inscriptions in churches, in rooms, and on pictures, are often desirable, but they are not to be considered as architectural or pictorial ornaments: they are, on the contrary, obstinate offences to the eye, not to be suffered except when their intellectual office introduces them.3 * This paragraph is wholly false, and curiously so, for I had seen and loved good heraldic decoration in Italy before writing it; but let my detestation of our Houses of Parliament carry me too far,4 and without noticing where. Enough is said in praise of heraldry in my later books5 to atone for this piece of nonsense. [1880.]

1 [Ed. 1 reads: “the French fleur-de-lis, or the Florentine giglio bianco, or the English rose.”] 2 [See Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vii. § 21 n., where this passage is referred to and in part revised. With what is said there and here about inscriptions on pictures, contrast Ruskin’s praise of “Carpaccio’s lovely signatures” (St. Mark’s Rest, § 183).] 3 [The MS. reads: “when their wisdom, appositeness, and conciseness strongly plead for them.”] 4 [See Vol. IV. p. 307 n.] 5 [See, for instance, The Eagle’s Nest, ch. x. (“The Heraldic Ordinaries”); The Laws of Fésole, ch. iii. (“The Quartering of St. George’s Shield”); and Cases 1 and 2 in Catalogue of the Rudimentary Series.]

148 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE Place them, therefore, where they will be read, and there only; and let them be plainly written, and not turned upside down, nor wrong end first. It is an ill sacrifice to beauty to make that illegible whose only merit is in its sense. Write it as you would speak it, simply; and do not draw the eye to it when it would fain rest elsewhere, nor recommend your sentence by anything but a little openness of place and architectural silence about it.1 Write the Commandments on the church walls where they may be plainly seen, but do not put a dash and a tail to every letter; and remember that you are an architect, not a writing master.* § 10. Inscriptions appear sometimes to be introduced for the sake of the scroll on which they are written; and in late and modern painted glass, as well as in architecture, these scrolls are flourished and turned hither and thither as if they were ornamental. Ribands occur frequently in arabesques,—in some of a high order, too,—tying up flowers, or flitting in and out among the fixed forms. Is there anything like ribands in nature? It might be thought that grass and seaweed afforded apologetic types. They do not. There is a wide difference between their structure and that of a riband. They have a skeleton, an anatomy, a central rib, or fibre, or framework of some kind or another, which has a beginning and an end, a root and head, and whose make and strength affect every direction of their motion, and every line of their form. The loosest weed2 that drifts and waves under the heaving of the sea, or hangs heavily on the brown and slippery shore, has a marked strength, structure, elasticity, gradation of substance; its extremities are more finely fibred than its centre, its centre * All this ninth paragraph is again extremely and extraordinarily wrong: and it is curious to me, in reviewing the progress of my own mind, to see that while everybody thought me imaginative and enthusiastic, my only fatal errors were in over-driving conditions of common sense! These two paragraphs about heraldry and writing might have been Mr. Cobden’s mistakes—or Mr. John Bright’s. [1880.]

1 [The MS. adds, “as it were,—as you would not introduce a solemn advice with a flourish of trumpets, but with a pause.”] 2 [The MS. reads “dulse” for “weed.”]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 149 than its root: every fork of its ramification is measured and proportioned; every wave of its languid lines is lovely. It has its allotted size, and place, and function; it is a specific creature. What is there like this in a riband? It has no structure: it is a succession of cut threads all alike; it has no skeleton, no make, no form, no size, no will of its own. You cut it and crush it into what you will. It has no strength, no languor. It cannot fall into a single graceful form. It cannot wave, in the true sense, but only flutter: it cannot bend, in the true sense, but only turn and be wrinkled. It is a vile thing; it spoils all that is near its wretched film of an existence.1 Never use it. Let the flowers come loose if they cannot keep together without being tied; leave the sentence unwritten if you cannot write it on a tablet or book, or plain roll of paper.2 I know what authority there is against me. I remember the scrolls of Perugino’s angels, and the ribands of Raphael’s arabesques and of Ghiberti’s glorious bronze flowers:3 no matter; they are every one of them vices and uglinesses. Raphael usually felt this, and used an honest and rational tablet, as in the Madonna di Foligno.4 I do not say there is any type of such tablets in nature, but all the difference lies in the fact that the tablet is not considered as an ornament, and the riband, or flying scroll, is. The tablet, as in Albert Dürer’s Adam and Eve,5 is introduced for the sake of the writing, understood and allowed as an ugly but necessary interruption. The scroll is extended as an ornamental form, which it is not, nor ever can be.* * I had never, at this period, seen any of Sandro Botticelli’s scroll work:6 but even in him, its use is part of the affectations of his day,—affectation itself becoming lovely in him, without justifying it in his neighbours. [1880.]

1 [The MS. reads: “It is a vile thing, a contemptible and abominable thing; it spoils all that is near its insipid, wretched, faded film of an existence.”] 2 [The MS. adds, “which last has always an associative sublimity. I know what I am condemning. I remember . . .”] 3 [On the bronze doors of the Baptistery at Florence: the “gates of Paradise,” Michael Angelo called them.] 4 [In the Vatican Gallery, Rome: painted 1512.] 5 [For a further account of the tablet in this engraving, see Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. iii. § 51.] 6 [Beautiful examples of it occur in “The Nativity” in the National Gallery, No. 1034.]

150 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 11. But it will be said that all this want of organisation and form might be affirmed of drapery also, and that this latter is a noble subject of sculpture. By no means. When was drapery a subject of sculpture by itself, except in the form of a handkerchief on urns in the seventeenth century and in some of the baser scenic Italian decorations? Drapery, as such, is always ignoble; it becomes a subject of interest only by the colours it bears, and the impressions which it receives from some foreign form or force. All noble draperies, either in painting or sculpture (colour and texture being at present out of our consideration), have, so far as they are anything more than necessities, one of two great functions: they are the exponents of motion and of gravitation. They are the most valuable means of expressing past as well as present motion in the figure, and they are almost the only means of indicating to the eye the force of gravity which resists such motion. The Greeks used drapery in sculpture for the most part as an ugly necessity, but availed themselves of it gladly in all representation of action, exaggerating the arrangements of it which express lightness in the material, and follow gesture in the person. The Christian Sculptors, caring little for the body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively on the countenance, received drapery at first contentedly as a veil, but soon perceived a capacity of expression in it which the Greek had not seen or had despised. The principal element of this expression was the entire removal of agitation from what was so preeminently capable of being agitated. It fell from their human forms plumb down, sweeping the ground heavily, and concealing the feet; while the Greek drapery was often blown away from the thigh. The thick and coarse stuffs of the monkish dresses, so absolutely opposed to the thin and gauzy web of antique material, suggested simplicity of division as well as weight of fall. There was no crushing nor subdividing them. And thus the drapery gradually came to represent the spirit of repose as it before had of motion, repose saintly and severe. The wind had no power upon the garment, as the passion none upon the soul; and the motion of the figure only bent

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 151 into a softer line the stillness of the falling veil,1 followed by it like a slow cloud by drooping rain: only in links of lighter undulation it followed the dances of the angels. Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble; but it is as an exponent of other and higher things. As that of gravitation, it has especial majesty, being literally the only means we have of fully representing this mysterious natural force of earth (for falling water is less passive and less defined in its lines). So, again, in sails it is beautiful because it receives the forms of solid curved surface, and expresses the force of another invisible element. But drapery trusted to its own merits, and given for its own sake,—drapery like that of Carlo Dolci and the Caraccis,—is always base. § 12. Closely connected with the abuse of scrolls and bands, is that of garlands and festoons of flowers as an architectural decoration, for unnatural arrangements are just as ugly as unnatural forms; and architecture, in borrowing the objects of Nature, is bound to place them, as far as may be in her power, in such associations as may befit and express their origin. She is not to imitate directly the natural arrangement; she is not to carve irregular stems of ivy up her columns to account for the leaves at the top, but she is nevertheless to place her most exuberant vegetable ornament just where Nature would have placed it, and to give some indication of that radical and connected structure which Nature would have given it.2 Thus the Corinthian capital is beautiful, because it expands under the abacus just as Nature would have expanded it; and because it looks as if the leaves had one root, though that root is unseen. And the flamboyant leaf mouldings are beautiful, because they nestle and run up the hollows, and fill the angles, and clasp the shafts which natural leaves would have delighted to fill and to clasp. They are no mere cast of natural leaves: they are counted, orderly, and architectural: but they are naturally, and therefore beautifully, placed. 1 [The MS. reads: “stillness of its fall.”] 2 [”it” occurs here in the MS. and all eds., but seems not to be required.]

152 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 13. Now I do not mean to say that Nature never uses festoons; she loves them, and uses them lavishly; and though she does so only in those places of excessive luxuriance wherein it seems to me that architectural types should seldom be sought, yet a falling tendril or pendent bough might, if managed with freedom and grace, be well introduced into luxuriant decoration (or if not, it is not their want of beauty, but of architectural fitness, which incapacitates them for such uses). But what resemblance to such example can we trace in a mass of all manner of fruit and flowers, tied heavily into a long bunch, thickest in the middle, and pinned up by both ends against a dead wall? For it is strange that the wildest and most fanciful of the builders of truly luxuriant architecture never ventured, so far as I know, even a pendent tendril; while the severest masters of the revived Greek permitted this extraordinary piece of luscious ugliness to be fastened in the middle of their blank surfaces. So surely as this arrangement is adopted, the whole value of the flowerwork is lost. Who among the crowds that gaze upon the building ever pause to admire the flowerwork of St. Paul’s? It is as careful and as rich as it can be, yet it adds no delightfulness to the edifice. It is no part of it. It is an ugly excrescence. We always conceive the building without it, and should be happier if our conception were not disturbed by its presence. It makes the rest of the architecture look poverty-stricken, instead of sublime; and yet it is never enjoyed itself. Had it been put, where it ought, into the capitals, it would have been beheld with never-ceasing delight. I do not mean that it could have been so in the present building, for such kind of architecture has no business with rich ornament in any place; but that if those groups of flowers had been put into natural places in an edifice of another style, their value would have been felt as vividly as now their uselessness. What applies to festoons is still more sternly true of garlands. A garland is meant to be seen upon a head. There it is beautiful, because we suppose it newly gathered and joyfully worn. But it is not meant to be hung

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 153 upon a wall. If you want a circular ornament, put a flat circle of coloured marble, as in the Casa Dario1 and other such palaces at Venice; or put a star, or a medallion, or if you want a ring, put a solid one, but do not carve the images of garlands, looking as if they had been used in the last procession, and been hung up to dry and serve next time withered. Why not also carve pegs, and hats upon them? § 14. One of the worst enemies of modern Gothic architecture, though seemingly an unimportant feature, is an excrescence, as offensive by its poverty as the garland by its profusion, the dripstone in the shape of the handle of a chest of drawers, which is used over the square-headed windows of what we call Elizabethan buildings. In the last chapter, it will be remembered that the square form was shown to be that of pre-eminent Power,2 and to be properly adapted and limited to the exhibition of space or surface. Hence, when the window is to be an exponent of power,3 as for instance in those by M. Angelo in the lower storey of the Palazzo Riccardi at Florence,4 the square head is the most noble form they can assume; but then either their space must be unbroken, and their associated mouldings the most severe, or else the square must be used as a final outline, and is chiefly to be associated with forms of tracery, in which the relative form of power, the circle, is predominant, as in Venetian, and Florentine, and Pisan Gothic. But if you break upon your terminal square, or if you cut its lines off at the top and turn them outwards, you have lost its unity and space.5 It is an including form no longer, but an added, isolated line, and the ugliest possible. Look abroad into the landscape, 1 [See Plate 1 in Stones of Venice, vol. i.] 2 [See above, p. 110.] 3 [For a passage on windows as expressive of various feelings, see The Poetry of Architecture, § 180, Vol. I. p. 137.] 4 [The Palace itself, begun in 1430, for Cosimo de’Medici, is from the designs of Michelozzo. The windows of the ground floor by Michael Angelo are curious as being the first example of a window-sill supported by consoles, an invention of that great architect.] 5 [The MS. reads: “and turn out their toes, you have lost unity and power and space.”]

154 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE and see if you can discover any one so bent and fragmentary as that of this strange windlass - looking dripstone. You cannot. It is a monster. It unites every element of ugliness, its line is harshly broken in itself, and unconnected with every other; it has no harmony either with structure or decoration, it has no architectural support, it looks glued to the wall, and the only pleasant property it has, is the appearance of some likelihood of its dropping off. I might proceed, but the task is a weary one, and I think I have named those false forms of decoration which are most dangerous in our modern architecture as being legal and accepted. The barbarisms of individual fancy are as countless as they are contemptible; they neither admit attack nor are worth it; but these above named are countenanced, some by the practice of antiquity, all by high authority: they have depressed the proudest, and contaminated the purest schools, and are so established in recent practice that I write rather for the barren satisfaction of bearing witness against them, than with hope of inducing any serious convictions to their prejudice. § 15. Thus far of what is not ornament. What ornament is, will without difficulty be determined by the application of the same test. It must consist of such studious arrangements of form as are imitative or suggestive of those which are commonest among natural existences, that being of course the noblest ornament which represents the highest orders of existence. Imitated flowers are nobler than imitated stones; imitated animals, than flowers; imitated human form, of all animal forms the noblest. But all are combined in the richest ornamental work; and the rock, the fountain, the flowing river with its pebbled bed, the sea, the clouds of Heaven, the herb of the field, the fruit-tree bearing fruit, the creeping thing, the bird, the beast, the man, and the angel, mingle their fair forms on the bronze of Ghiberti.1 Everything being then ornamental that is imitative, I 1 [See above, p. 149.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 155 would ask the reader’s attention to a few general considerations, all that can here be offered relating to so vast a subject; which, for convenience’ sake, may be classed under the three heads of inquiry:—What is the right place for architectural ornament? What is the peculiar treatment of ornament which renders it architectural? and what is the right use of colour as associated with architectural imitative form? § 16. What is the place for ornament? Consider first that the characters of natural objects which the architect can represent are few and abstract. The greater part of those delights by which Nature recommends herself to man at all times, cannot be conveyed by him into his imitative work. He cannot make his grass green and cool and good to rest upon, which in nature is its chief use to man; nor can he make his flowers tender and full of colour and of scent, which in nature are their chief powers of giving joy. Those qualities which alone he can secure are certain severe characters of form, such as men only see in nature on deliberate examination, and by the full and set appliance of sight and thought: a man must lie down on the bank of grass on his breast and set himself to watch and penetrate the intertwining of it, before he finds that which is good to be gathered by the architect. So then while Nature is at all times pleasant to us, and while the sight and sense of her work may mingle happily with all our thoughts, and labours, and times of existence, that image of her which the architect carries away represents what we can only perceive in her by direct intellectual exertion, and demands from us, wherever it appears, an intellectual exertion of a similar kind in order to understand it and feel it. It is the written or sealed impression of a thing sought out, it is the shaped result of inquiry and bodily expression of thought. § 17. Now let us consider for an instant what would be the effect of continually repeating an expression of a beautiful thought to any other of the senses at times when the mind could not address that sense to the understanding of it. Suppose that in times of serious occupation of stern business, a companion should repeat in our ears continually some favourite

156 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE passage of poetry, over and over again all day long. We should not only soon be utterly sick and weary of the sound of it, but that sound would at the end of the day have so sunk into the habit of the ear that the entire meaning of the passage would be dead to us, and it would ever thenceforward require some effort to fix and recover it. The music of it would not meanwhile have aided the business in hand, while its own delightfulness would thenceforward be in a measure destroyed. It is the same with every other form of definite thought. If you violently present its expression to the senses, at times when the mind is otherwise engaged, that expression will be ineffective at the time, and will have its sharpness and clearness destroyed for ever. Much more if you present it to the mind at times when it is painfully affected or disturbed, or if you associate the expression of pleasant thought with incongruous circumstances, you will affect that expression thenceforward with a painful colour for ever.1 § 18. Apply this to expressions of thought received by the eye. Remember that the eye is at your mercy more than the ear. “The eye, it cannot choose but see.”2 Its nerve is not so easily numbed as that of the ear, and it is often busied in tracing and watching forms when the ear is at rest. Now if you present lovely forms to it when it cannot call the mind to help it in its work, and among objects of vulgar use and unhappy position, you will neither please the eye nor elevate the vulgar object. But you will fill and weary the eye with the beautiful form, and you will infect that form itself with the vulgarity of the thing to which you have violently attached it. It will never be of much use to you any more; you have killed, or defiled it; its freshness and purity are gone. You will have to pass it through the fire of much thought before you will cleanse it, and warm it with much love before it will revive. § 19. Hence then a general law, of singular importance in the present day, a law of simple common sense,—not to 1 [With the argument in § 17, compare the letter to The Artist and Amateur’s Magazine, Vol. III. p. 651.] 2 [Wordsworth: Expostulation and Reply.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 157 decorate things belonging to purposes of active and occupied life.1 Wherever you can rest, there decorate; where rest is forbidden, so is beauty. You must not mix ornament with business, any more than you may mix play. Work first, and then rest. Work first, and then gaze, but do not use golden ploughshares, nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not thrash with sculptured flails:* nor put bas-reliefs on millstones. What ! it will be asked, are we in the habit of doing so? Even so; always and everywhere. The most familiar position of Greek mouldings is in these days on shop fronts. There is not a tradesman’s sign nor shelf nor counter in all the streets of all our cities, which has not upon it ornaments which were invented to adorn temples and beautify kings’ palaces. There is not the smallest advantage in them where they are. Absolutely valueless—utterly without the power of giving pleasure, they only satiate the eye, and vulgarise their own forms. Many of these are in themselves thoroughly good copies of fine things, which things themselves we shall never, in consequence, enjoy any more. Many a pretty beading and graceful bracket there is in wood or stucco above our grocers’ and cheesemongers’ and hosiers’ shops: how is it that the tradesmen cannot understand that custom is to be had only by selling good tea and cheese and cloth, and that people come to them for their honesty, and their readiness, and their right wares, and not because they have Greek cornices over their windows, or their names in large gilt letters on their house fronts? How pleasurable it would be to have the power of going through the streets of London, pulling down * “Nor fight with jewelled swords” should have been added. The principle is partial and doubtful, however. One of the most beautiful bits of ironwork I ever saw was an apothecary’s pestle and mortar (of the fourteenth century) at Messina:2 and a day may come when we shall wisely decorate the stilt of the plough. The error, however,—observe,—is again on the side of common sense! See 41st and 44th notes. [1880: now notes* on pp. 148, 159.]

1 [Here, again, Ruskin is developing ideas which he had already expressed in The Poetry of Architecture (§ 64): see Vol. I. p. 56.] 2 [Ruskin was in Sicily in 1874. The apothecaries’ jars, to be met with in old curiosity shops in some of the Sicilian towns, are also of considerable artistic merit.]

158 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE those brackets and friezes and large names, restoring to the tradesmen the capital they had spent in architecture, and putting them on honest and equal terms, each with his name in black letters over his door, not shouted down the street from the upper storeys, and each with a plain wooden shop casement, with small panes in it that people would not think of breaking in order to be sent to prison! How much better for them would it be—how much happier, how much wiser, to put their trust upon their own truth and industry, and not on the idiocy of their customers. It is curious, and it says little for our national probity on the one hand, or prudence on the other, to see the whole system of our street decoration based on the idea that people must be baited to a shop as moths are to a candle. § 20. But it will be said that much of the best wooden decoration of the middle ages was in shop fronts. No; it was in house fronts, of which the shop was a part, and received its natural and consistent portion of the ornament. In those days men lived, and intended to live, by their shops, and over them, all their days. They were contented with them and happy in them: they were their palaces and castles. They gave them therefore such decoration as made themselves happy in their own habitation, and they gave it for their own sake. The upper storeys were always the richest, and the shop was decorated chiefly about the door, which belonged to the house more than to it. And when our tradesmen settle to their shops in the same way, and form no plans respecting future villa architecture, let their whole houses be decorated, and their shops too, but with a national and domestic decoration. (I shall speak more of this point in the sixth chapter.1) However, our cities are for the most part too large to admit of contented dwelling in them throughout life; and I do not say there is harm in our present system of separating the shop from the dwelling-house; only where they are so separated, let us remember that the only reason for shop decoration is removed, and see that the decoration be removed also. 1 [See below, pp. 225–229.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 159 § 21. Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is to the decoration of the railroad station.* Now, if there be any place in the world in which people are deprived of that portion of temper and discretion which is necessary to the contemplation of beauty, it is there. It is the very temple of discomfort, and the only charity that the builder can extend to us is to show us, plainly as may be, how soonest to escape from it. The whole system of railroad travelling is addressed to people who, being in a hurry, are therefore, for the time being, miserable.1 No one would travel in that manner who could help it—who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, instead of through tunnels and between banks: at least, those who would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult it at the station. The railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. It transmutes a man from a traveller into a living parcel. For the time he has parted with the nobler characteristics of his humanity for the sake of a planetary power of locomotion. Do not ask him to admire anything. You might as well ask the wind. Carry him safely, dismiss him soon: he will thank you for nothing else. All attempts to please him in any other way are mere mockery, and insults to the things by which you endeavour to do so. There never was more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything concerned with railroads or near them. Keep them out of the way, take them through the ugliest country you can find, confess them the miserable things they are, and spend nothing upon them but for safety and speed. Give large salaries to efficient servants, large prices to good manufacturers, large wages to * Common sense still!—and, this time, indisputable. Well had it been, for many a company, and many a traveller, had this 121st page2 of the Seven Lamps been taken for a railway signal. [1880.]

1 [For a contrary opinion on this point see George Eliot’s Life, 1885, vol. iii. p. 15. “Ruskin was never more mistaken,” she writes, “than in asserting that people have no spare time to observe anything in such places.” To which criticism, he would have replied that, if the railway service were perfect, there would be no such time to spare.] 2 [In the edition of 1880.]

160 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE able workmen; let the iron be tough, and the brickwork solid, and the carriages strong. The time is perhaps not distant when these first necessities may not be easily met: and to increase expense in any other direction is madness. Better bury gold in the embankments, than put it in ornaments on the stations. Will a single traveller be willing to pay an increased fare on the South Western, because the columns of the terminus are covered with patterns from Nineveh?—he will only care less for the Ninevite ivories in the British Museum: or on the North Western, because there are old English-looking spandrels to the roof of the station at Crewe?—he will only have less pleasure in their prototypes at Crewe House. Railroad architecture has, or would have, a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work. You would not put rings on the fingers of a smith at his anvil.1 § 22. It is not however only in these marked situations that the abuse of which I speak takes place. There is hardly, at present, an application of ornamental work, which is not in some sort liable to blame of the same kind. We have a bad habit of trying to disguise disagreeable necessities by some form of sudden decoration, which is, in all other places, associated with such necessities. I will name only one instance, that to which I have alluded before—the roses which conceal the ventilators in the flat roofs of our chapels. Many of those roses are of very beautiful design, borrowed from fine works: all their grace and finish are invisible when they are so placed, but their general form is afterwards associated with the ugly buildings in which they constantly occur; and all the beautiful roses of the early French and English Gothic, especially such elaborate ones as those of the triforium of Coutances, are in consequence deprived of their pleasurable influence: and this without our having accomplished the smallest good by the use we have made of the dishonoured form. Not a single person in the congregation ever receives one ray of pleasure from 1 [See, for similar insistence on the uselessness of railroad “architecture,” Munera Pulveris, § 128; Times and Tide, § 83; and the letters on “Our Railway System” (1865), and “Railway Safety” (1870), reprinted in Arrows of the Chace.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 161 those roof roses; they are regarded with mere indifference, or lost in the general impression of harsh emptiness. § 23. Must not beauty, then, it will be asked, be sought for in the forms which we associate with our every-day life? Yes, if you do it consistently, and in places where it can be calmly seen; but not if you use the beautiful form only as a mask and covering of the proper conditions and uses of things, nor if you thrust it into the places set apart for toil. Put it in the drawing-room, not into the workshop; put it upon domestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft. All men have sense of what is right in this matter, if they would only use and apply that sense; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would only ask for it when it does so, and not allow it to be forced upon him when he does not want it. Ask any one of the passengers over London Bridge at this instant whether he cares about the forms of the bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell you, No. Modify these forms of leaves to a less scale, and put them on his milk-jug at breakfast, and ask him whether he likes them, and he will tell you, Yes. People have no need of teaching if they could only think and speak truth, and ask for what they like and want, and for nothing else: nor can a right disposition of beauty be ever arrived at except by this common sense, and allowance for the circumstances of the time and place. It does not follow, because bronze leafage is in bad taste on the lamps of London Bridge, that it would be so on those of the Ponte della Trinità;1 nor, because it would be a folly to decorate the house fronts of Gracechurch Street, that it would be equally so to adorn those of some quiet provincial town. The question of greatest external or internal decoration depends entirely on the conditions of probable repose. It was a wise feeling which made the streets of Venice so rich in external ornament, for there is no couch of rest like the gondola. So, again, there is no subject of street ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain, where it is a fountain of use; 1 [At Florence.] VIII. L

162 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE for it is just there that perhaps the happiest pause takes place in the labour of the day, when the pitcher is rested on the edge of it, and the breath of the bearer is drawn deeply, and the hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of the form declined against the marble ledge, and the sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with the trickle of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet as that—so full of the depth1 of ancient days, so softened with the calm of pastoral solitude? § 24. II. Thus far, then, of the place for beauty. We were next to inquire into the characters which fitted it peculiarly for architectural appliance, and into the principles of choice and of arrangement* which best regulate the imitation of natural forms in which it consists. The full answering of these questions would be a treatise on the art of design:2 I intend only to say a few words respecting the two conditions of that art which are essentially architectural,—Proportion and Abstraction. Neither of these qualities is necessary, to the same extent, in other fields of design. The sense of proportion is, by the landscape painter, frequently sacrificed to character and accident; the power of abstraction to that of complete realization. The flowers of his foreground must often be unmeasured in their quantity, loose in their arrangement: what is calculated, either in quantity or disposition, must be artfully concealed. That calculation is by the architect to be prominently exhibited. So the abstraction of few characteristics out of many, is shown only in the painter’s sketch; in his finished work it is concealed or lost in completion. Architecture, on the contrary, delights in Abstraction and fears to complete her forms. Proportion and Abstraction, then, are the two especial marks of architectural design as distinguished from all other. Sculpture must have them in inferior degrees; leaning, on the one hand, to an architectural manner, when it is usually greatest * Choice, and arrangement;—the “dominion” of the 17th Aphorism. See above, note 35. [1880: note * on p. 138 of this edition.]

1 [The MS. has “stillness” for “depth.”] 2 [See The Two Paths, Lecture iii.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 163 (becoming, indeed, a part of Architecture), and, on the other, to a pictorial manner, when it is apt to lose its dignity, and sink into mere ingenious carving. § 25. Now, of Proportion so much has been written, that I believe the only facts which are of practical use have been overwhelmed and kept out of sight by vain accumulations of particular instances and estimates. Proportions are as infinite (and that in all kinds of things, as severally in colours, lines, shades, lights, and forms) as possible airs in music: and it is just as rational an attempt to teach a young architect how to proportion truly and well by calculating for him the proportions of fine works, as it would be to teach him to compose melodies by calculating the mathematical relations of the notes in Beethoven’s “Adelaïde” or Mozart’s “Requiem.” The man who has eye and intellect will invent beautiful proportions, and cannot help it; but he can no more tell us how to do it than Wordsworth could tell us how to write a sonnet, or than Scott could have told us how to plan a romance. But there are one or two general laws which can be told: they are of no use, indeed, except as preventives of gross mistakes, but they are so far worth telling and remembering; and the more so because, in the discussion of the subtle laws of Proportion (which will never be either numbered or known), architects are perpetually forgetting and transgressing the very simplest of its necessities. § 26. Of which the first is, that wherever Proportion exists at all, one member of the composition must be either larger than, or in some way supreme over, the rest. There is no proportion between equal things. They can have symmetry only, and symmetry without proportion is not composition. It is necessary to perfect beauty, but it is the least necessary of its elements, nor of course is there any difficulty in obtaining it. Any succession of equal things is agreeable; but to compose is to arrange unequal things, and the first thing to be done in beginning a composition is to determine which is to be the principal thing. I believe that all that has been written and taught about proportion, put together, is not

164 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE to the architect worth the single rule, well enforced, “Have one large thing and several smaller things, or one principal thing and several inferior things, and bind them well together.” Sometimes there may be a regular gradation, as between the heights of storeys in good designs for houses; sometimes a monarch with a lowly train, as in the spire with its pinnacles: the varieties of arrangement are infinite, but the law is universal—have one thing above the rest, either by size, or office, or interest. Don’t put the pinnacles without the spire. What a host of ugly church towers have we in England, with pinnacles at the corners, and none in the middle! How many buildings like King’s College Chapel at Cambridge,1 looking like tables upside down, with their four legs in the air! What! it will be said, have not beasts 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. Knock down a couple of pinnacles at either end in King’s College Chapel, and you will have a kind of proportion instantly. So in a cathedral you may have one tower in the centre, and two at the west end; or two at the west end only, though a worse arrangement: but you must not have two at the west and two at the east end, unless you have some central member to connect them; and even then, buildings are generally bad which have large balancing features at the extremities, and small connecting ones in the centre, because it is not easy then to make the centre dominant. The bird or moth may indeed have wide wings, because the size of the wing does not give supremacy to the wing. The head and life are the mighty things, and the plumes, however wide, are subordinate. In fine west fronts with a pediment and two towers, the centre is always the principal mass, both in bulk and interest (as having the main gateway), and the towers are subordinated to it, as an animal’s horns are to its head. The moment the towers rise so high as to overpower the body and centre, and become themselves 1 [See above, p. 63 n.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 165 the principal masses, they will destroy the proportion, unless they are made unequal, and one of them the leading feature of the cathedral, as at Antwerp and Strasburg. But the purer method is to keep them down in due relation to the centre, and to throw up the pediment into a steep connecting mass, drawing the eye to it by rich tracery. This is nobly done in St. Wulfran1 of Abbeville, and attempted partly at Rouen, though that west front is made up of so many unfinished and supervening designs that it is impossible to guess the real intention of any one of its builders. § 27. This rule of supremacy applies to the smallest as well as to leading features; it is interestingly seen in the arrangement of all good mouldings. I have given one, on the opposite page, from Rouen Cathedral; that of the tracery before distinguished as a type of the noblest manner of Northern Gothic (Chap. II. § 23). It is a tracery of three orders, of which the first is divided into a leaf moulding, fig. 4 and b in the section, and a plain roll, also seen in fig. 4, c in the section; these two divisions surround the entire window or panelling, and are carried by two-face shafts of corresponding sections. The second and third orders are plain rolls following the line of the tracery; four divisions of moulding in all: of these four, the leaf moulding is, as seen in the sections, much the largest; next to it the outer roll; then, by an exquisite alternation, the innermost roll (e), in order that it may not be lost in the recess, and the intermediate (d), the smallest. Each roll has its own shaft and capital; and the two smaller, which in effect upon the eye, owing to the retirement of the innermost, are nearly equal, have smaller capitals than the two larger, lifted a little to bring them to the same level. The wall in the trefoiled lights is curved, as from e to f in the section; but in the quatrefoil it is flat, only thrown back to the full depth of the recess below so as to get a sharp shadow instead of a soft one, the mouldings falling back to it in nearly a vertical curve behind 1 [For Ruskin’s affection for this church, see Præterita, i. ch. ix. §§ 179, 181.]

166 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE the roll e. This could not, however, be managed with the simpler mouldings of the smaller quatrefoil above, whose half section is given from g to g2; but the architect was evidently fretted by the heavy look of its circular foils as opposed to the light spring of the arches below: so he threw its cusps obliquely clear from the wall, as seen in fig. 2, attached to it where they meet the circle, but with their finials pushed out from their natural level (h, in the section) to that of the first order (g2), and supported by stone props behind, as seen in the profile, fig. 2, which I got from the correspondent panel on the buttress face (fig. 1 being on its side), and of which the lower cusps, being broken away, show the remnant of one of their props projecting from the wall. The oblique curve thus obtained in the profile is of singular grace. Take it all in all, I have never met with a more exquisite piece of varied, yet severe, proportion and general arrangement (though all the windows of the period are fine, and especially delightful in the subordinate proportioning of the smaller capitals to the smaller shafts). The only fault it has is the inevitable misarrangement of the central shafts; for the enlargement of the inner roll, though beautiful in the group of four divisions at the side, causes, in the triple central shaft, the very awkwardness of heavy lateral members which has just been in most instances condemned. In the windows of the choir, and in most of the period, this difficulty is avoided by making the fourth order a fillet which only follows the foliation, while the three outermost are nearly in arithmetical progression of size, and the central triple shaft has of course the largest roll in front. The moulding of the Palazzo Foscari1 (Plate VIII., and Plate IV., fig. 8) is, for so simple a group, the grandest in effect I have ever seen; it is composed of a large roll with two subordinates. § 28. It is of course impossible to enter into details of instances belonging to so intricate a division of our subject, in the compass of a general essay. I can but rapidly name 1 [See above, pp. 94, 132.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 167 the chief conditions of right. Another of these is the connection of Symmetry with horizontal, and of Proportion with vertical, division. Evidently there is in symmetry a sense not merely of equality, but of balance: now a thing cannot be balanced by another on the top of it, though it may by one at the side of it. Hence, while it is not only allowable, but often necessary, to divide buildings, or parts of them, horizontally into halves, thirds, or other equal parts, all vertical divisions of this kind are utterly wrong; worst into half, next worst in the regular numbers which more betray the equality. I should have thought this almost the first principle of proportion which a young architect was taught: and yet I remember an important building, recently erected in England, in which the columns are cut in half by the projecting architraves of the central windows; and it is quite usual to see the spires of modern Gothic churches divided by a band of ornament half way up. In all fine spires there are two bands and three parts, as at Salisbury. The ornamented portion of the tower is there cut in half, and allowably, because the spire forms the third mass to which the other two are subordinate: two storeys are also equal in Giotto’s campanile, but dominant over smaller divisions below, and subordinated to the noble third above. Even this arrangement is difficult to treat; and it is usually safer to increase or diminish the height of the divisions regularly as they rise, as in the Doge’s Palace, whose three divisions are in a bold geometrical progression; or, in towers, to get an alternate proportion between the body, the belfry, and the crown, as in the campanile of St. Mark’s.1 But, at all events, get rid of equality; leave that to children and their card houses: the laws of nature and the reason of man are alike against it, in arts, as in politics.2 There is but one thoroughly ugly tower in Italy that I know of, and that 1 [See the plate of it in Stones of Venice, vol. i. (No. 6).] 2 [”If there is any one point insisted on throughout my works more frequently than another, that one point,” says Ruskin, “is the impossibility of equality” (Unto this Last, § 54). “Talk of equality” is “stupefaction and fog in the brains” (Munera Pulveris, § 121). See also Time and Tide, §§ 169 seq., “Of Necessary Submission to Authority,” and cf. ibid., § 141; Fors Clavigera, Letter 95; and Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. iv. § 3.]

168 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE is so because it is divided into vertical equal parts:*—the tower of Pisa.1 § 29. One more principle of Proportion I have to name, equally simple, equally neglected. Proportion is between three terms at least. Hence, as the pinnacles are not enough without the spire, so neither the spire without the pinnacles. All men feel this, and usually express their feeling by saying that the pinnacles conceal the junction of the spire and tower. This is one reason; but a more influential one is, that the pinnacles furnish the third term to the spire and tower. So that it is not enough, in order to secure proportion, to divide a building unequally; it must be divided into at least three parts; it may be into more (and in details with advantage), but on a large scale I find three is about the best number of parts in elevation, and five in horizontal extent, with freedom of increase to five in the one case and seven in the other; but not to more without confusion (in architecture, that is to say; for in organic structure the numbers cannot be limited). I purpose, in the course of works which are in preparation,2 to give copious illustrations of this subject, but I will take at present only one instance of vertical proportion, from the flower stem of the common water plantain, Alisma Plantago. Fig. 5, Plate XII., is a reduced profile of one side of a plant gathered at random; it is seen to have five masts, of which, however, the uppermost is a mere shoot, and we can consider only their relations up to the fourth. Their lengths are * Not absolutely so. There are variations partly accidental (or at least compelled by the architect’s effort to recover the vertical) between the sides of the stones; and the upper and lower storey are taller than the rest. There is however an apparent equality in five out of the eight tiers.3

1 [Cf. Vol. I. p. 432.] 2 [The MS. says: “in the parts of Modern Painters which are in preparation.” See Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xiv., where Alisma Plantago is again instanced (§ 23) and illustrated (Fig. 3, Plate 8). Ruskin’s diary of 1847 (under date, Leamington, Aug. 9), shows him studying this water plant, with careful measurements and drawings. He refers to his “special acquaintance” with it in his letter to the Times of May 13, 1851, on the Pre-Raphaelites (Arrows of the Chace, 1880, vol. i. p. 88).] 3 [Note 12, at the end of the book, in eds. 1 and 2. Omitted in later editions.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 169 measured on the line A B, which is the actual length of the lowest mast a b, A C = b c, A D = c d, and A E = d e. If the reader will take the trouble to measure these lengths and compare them he will find that, within half a line, the 5 6 7 uppermost A E = /7 of A D, A D = /8 of A C, and A C = /9 of A B; a most subtle diminishing proportion. From each of the joints spring three major and three minor branches, each between each; but the major branches, at any joint, are placed over the minor branches at the joint below, by the curious arrangement of the joint itself—the stem is bluntly triangular; fig. 6 shows the section of any joint. The outer darkened triangle is the section of the lower stem; the inner, left light, of the upper stem; and the three main branches spring from the hedges left by the recession. Thus the stems diminish in diameter just as they diminish in height. The main branches (falsely placed in the profile over each other to show their relations) have respectively seven, six, five, four, and three arm-bones, like the masts of the stem; these divisions being proportioned in the same subtle manner. From the joints of these, it seems to be the plan of the plant that three major and three minor branches should again spring, bearing the flowers: but, in these infinitely complicated members, vegetative nature admits much variety; in the plant from which these measures were taken, the full complement appeared only at one of the secondary joints. The leaf of this plant has five ribs on each side, as its flower generally five masts, arranged with the most exquisite grace of curve; but of lateral proportion I shall rather take illustrations from architecture: the reader will find several in the accounts of the Duomo of Pisa and St. Mark’s at Venice, in Chap. V. §§ 14–16. I give these arrangements merely as illustrations, not as precedents; all beautiful proportions are unique, they are not general formulæ. § 30. The other condition of architectural treatment which we proposed to notice was the abstraction of imitated form. But there is a peculiar difficulty in touching within these

170 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE narrow limits on such a subject as this, because the abstraction of which we find examples in existing art, is partly involuntary; and it is a matter of much nicety to determine where it begins to be purposed. In the progress of national as well as of individual mind, the first attempts at imitation are always abstract and incomplete. Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline; whence absolute completion of imitative form is often supposed to be in itself wrong. But it is not wrong always, only dangerous. Let us endeavour briefly to ascertain wherein its danger consists, and wherein its dignity. § 31. I have said that all art is abstract in its beginnings; that is to say, it expresses only a small number of the qualities of the thing represented. Curved and complex lines are represented by straight and simple ones; interior markings of forms are few, and much is symbolical and conventional. There is a resemblance between the work of a great nation, in this phase, and the work of childhood and ignorance, which, in the mind of a careless observer, might attach something like ridicule to it. The form of a tree on the Ninevite sculptures is much like that which, some twenty years ago, was familiar upon samplers; and the types of the face and figure in early Italian art are susceptible of easy caricature. On the signs which separate the infancy of magnificent manhood from every other, I do not pause to insist (they consist entirely in the choice of the symbol and of the features abstracted); but I pass to the next stage of art, a condition of strength in which the abstraction which was begun in incapability is continued in free will. This is the case, however, in pure sculpture and painting, as well as in architecture; and we have nothing to do but with that greater severity of manner which fits either to be associated with the more realist art. I believe it properly consists only in a due expression of their subordination, an expression varying according to their place and office. The question is first to be clearly determined whether the architecture is a frame for the sculpture, or the sculpture an ornament of the architecture. If the latter, then

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 171 the first office of that sculpture is not to represent the things it imitates, but to gather out of them those arrangements of form which shall be pleasing to the eye in their intended places. So soon as agreeable lines and points of shade have been added to the mouldings which were meagre, or to the lights which were unrelieved, the architectural work of the imitation is accomplished; and how far it shall be wrought towards completeness or not, will depend upon its place, and upon other various circumstances. If, in its particular use or position, it is symmetrically arranged, there is, of course, an instant

indication of architectural subjection. But symmetry is APHORISM not abstraction. Leaves may be carved in the most 21. Symmetry is regular order, and yet be meanly imitative; or, on the not abstract- other hand, they may be thrown wild and loose, and yet tion.1 be highly architectural in their separate treatment.* Nothing can be less symmetrical than the group of leaves which joins the two columns in Plate XIII.; yet, since nothing of the leaf character is given but what is necessary for the bare suggestion of its image and the attainment of the lines desired, their treatment is highly abstract. It shows that the workman only wanted so much of the leaf as he supposed good for his architecture, and would allow no more; and how much is to be supposed good, depends, as I have said, much more on place and circumstance than on general laws.2 I know that this is not usually thought, and that many good architects would insist on abstraction in all cases: the question is so wide and so difficult that I express my opinion upon it most diffidently; but my own feeling is, that a purely abstract manner, like that of our earliest English work, does not afford room for the perfection of beautiful form, and that its severity is wearisome after the eye has been long accustomed to it. I have not done justice * This short Aphorism is one of the most important in the book. [1880.]

1 [The text of the aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “But symmetry is not . . .” down to “separate treatment.”] 2 [The MS. inserts: “No ornament should be finished that is too far from the eye to permit its fruit to be seen.”]

172 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE to the Salisbury dog-tooth moulding1 of which the effect is sketched in fig. 5, Plate X., but I have done more justice to it nevertheless than to the beautiful French one above it; and I do not think that any candid reader would deny that, piquant and spirited as is that from Salisbury, the Rouen moulding is, in every respect, nobler. It will be observed that its symmetry is more complicated, the leafage being divided into double groups of two lobes each, each lobe of different structure. With exquisite feeling, one of these double groups is alternately omitted on the other side of the moulding (not seen in the Plate, but occupying the cavetto of the section), thus giving a playful lightness to the whole; and if the reader will allow for a beauty in the flow of the curved outlines (especially on the angle), of which he cannot in the least judge from my rude drawing, he will not, I think, expect easily to find a nobler instance of decoration adapted to the severest mouldings. Now it will be observed, that there is in its treatment a high degree of abstraction, though not so conventional as that of Salisbury: that is to say, the leaves have little more than their flow and outline represented; they are hardly undercut, but their edges are connected by a gentle and most studied curve with the stone behind; they have no serrations, no veinings, no rib or stalk on the angle, only an incision gracefully made towards their extremities, indicative of the central rib and depression. The whole style of the abstraction shows that the architect could, if he had chosen, have carried the imitation much farther, but stayed at this point of his own free will; and what he has done is also so perfect in its kind, that I feel disposed to accept his authority without question, so far as I can gather it from his works, on the whole subject of abstraction. § 32. Happily, his opinion is frankly expressed. This moulding is on the lateral buttress, and on a level with the 1 Cf. Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xxiii. § 7, where the English dog-tooth is called “somewhat vulgar in its piquancy when compared with French mouldings of a similar kind.”]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 173 top of the north gate: it cannot therefore be closely seen except1 from the wooden stairs of the belfry; it is not intended to be so seen, but calculated for a distance of, at least, forty to fifty feet from the eye. In the vault of the gate itself, half as near again, there are three rows of mouldings, as I think, by the same designer, at all events part of the same plan. One of them is given in Plate I., fig. 2 a. It will be seen that the abstraction is here infinitely less; the ivy leaves have stalks and associated fruit, and a rib for each lobe, and are so far undercut as to detach their forms from the stone; while in the vine-leaf moulding above, of the same period, from the south gate, serration appears added to other purely imitative characters. Finally, in the animals which form the ornaments of the portion of the gate which is close to the eye, abstraction nearly vanishes into perfect sculpture.2 § 33. Nearness to the eye, however, is not the only circumstance which influences architectural abstraction. These very animals are not merely better cut because close to the eye; they are put close to the eye that they may, without indiscretion, be better cut, on the noble principle, first, I think, clearly enunciated by Sir Charles Eastlake,3 that the closest imitation shall be of the noblest object. Farther, since the wildness and manner of growth of vegetation render a bonâ fide imitation of it impossible in sculpture—since its members must be reduced in number, ordered in direction, and cut away from their roots, even under the most earnestly imitative treatment,—it becomes a point, as I think, of good judgment, to proportion the completeness of execution of parts to the formality of the whole; and since five or six leaves must stand for a tree, to let also five or six touches stand for a leaf. But since the animal generally admits of perfect outline—since its form is detached, and may be fully represented, its sculpture may be more complete and faithful in all its parts. And 1 [The MS. inserts, “as I saw it.”] 2 [The MS. adds, “and all this in a most severe and early time.”] 3 [In his Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts, 1848.]

174 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE this principle will be actually found, I believe, to guide the old workmen. If the animal form be in a gargoyle, incomplete, and coming out of a block of stone, or if a head only, as for a boss or other such partial use, its sculpture will be highly abstract. But if it be an entire animal, as a lizard, or a bird, or a squirrel, peeping among leafage,1 its sculpture will be much farther carried, and I think, if small, near the eye, and worked in a fine material, may rightly be carried to the utmost possible completion. Surely we cannot wish a less finish bestowed on those which animate the mouldings of the South door of the cathedral of Florence; nor desire that the birds in the capitals of the Doge’s palace should be stripped of a single plume.2 § 34. Under these limitations, then, I think that perfect

APHORISM sculpture may be * made a part of the severest 22. architecture; but this perfection was said in the Perfect sculp- 3 ture should be outset to be dangerous. It is so in the highest a part of the degree; for the moment the architect allows himself severest architecture.4 to dwell on the imitated portions, there is a chance of his losing sight of the duty of his ornament, of its business as a part of the composition, and sacrificing its points of shade and effect to the delight of delicate carving. And then he is lost. His architecture has become a mere framework for the setting of delicate sculpture, which had better be all taken down and put into cabinets. It is well, therefore, that the young architect should be taught to think of imitative ornament as of the extreme of grace in language; not to be regarded at first, not to be obtained at the cost of purpose, meaning, force or conciseness, yet, indeed, * I have written, it will be observed, “should be,” in the marginal definition of the Aphorism, and I ought to have written it in the text. See the next note. [1880.]

1 [The MS. adds, “or even if only filling a required space as in Plate XV.” (the original intention being to have a greater number of illustrations).] 2 [For the “bird” capitals, see Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii., Capitals 2 (§ 68), 11 (§ 94), and 34 (§ 126).] 3 [See above, § 30, p. 170.] 4 [This aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, consists of the whole of § 34.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 175 a perfection—the least of all perfections, and yet the crowning one of all—one which by itself, and regarded in itself, is an architectural coxcombry,* but is yet the sign of the most highly-trained mind and power when it is associated with others. It is a safe manner, as I think, to design all things at first in severe abstraction, and to be prepared,1 if need were, to carry them out in that form; then to mark the parts where high finish would be admissible, to complete these always with stern reference to their general effect, and then connect them by a graduated scale of abstraction with the rest. And there is one safeguard against danger in this process on which I would finally insist. Never imitate anything but natural forms, and those the noblest, in the completed parts. The degradation of the cinque cento manner of decoration was not owing to its naturalism, to its faithfulness of imitation, but to its imitation of ugly, i.e. unnatural things. So long as it restrained itself to sculpture of animals and flowers, it remained noble. The balcony, on the opposite page (Plate XI.), from a house in the Campo St. Benedetto at Venice, shows one of the earliest occurrences of the cinque cento arabesque, and a fragment of the pattern is given in Plate XII. fig. 8. It is but the arresting upon the stone work of a stem or two of the living flowers, which are rarely wanting in the window above (and which, by the by, the French and Italian peasantry often trellis with exquisite taste about their casements). This arabesque, relieved as it is in darkness from the white stone by the stain of time, is surely both beautiful and pure; and as long as the renaissance ornament remained in such forms it may be beheld with unreserved admiration. But the moment that unnatural objects were associated with these,2 and armour, and musical instruments, and wild meaningless * By no means. I much understated the truth in this matter, and should now say that sculpture should precede and govern all else. The pediment of Ægina3 determines the right—and ends controversy. [1880.]

1 [Cf. Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xxi. § 9 seq., where this subject is further discussed.] 2 [The MS. inserts, “for the trick of the imitation.”] 3 [Originals at Munich; casts in the British Museum. For Ruskin’s further study of the Æginetan sculptures, see Aratra Pentelici, § 191, and Art of England, § 71.]

176 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE scrolls and curled shields, and other such fancies, became principal in its subjects, its doom was sealed, and with it that of the architecture of the world. § 35. III. Our final inquiry was to be into the use of colour as associated with architectural ornament. I do not feel able to speak with any confidence respecting the touching of sculpture with colour.1 I would only note one point, that sculpture is the representation of an idea, while architecture is itself a real thing. The idea may, as I think, be left colourless, and coloured by the beholder’s mind: but a reality ought to have reality in all its attributes: its colour should be as fixed as its form. I cannot, therefore, consider architecture as in anywise perfect without colour. Farther, as I have above noticed, I think the colours of architecture should be those of natural stones; partly because more durable, but also because more perfect and graceful. For to conquer the harshness and deadness of tones laid upon stone or on gesso, needs the management and discretion of a true painter; and on this co-operation we must not calculate in laying down rules for general practice. If Tintoret or Giorgione are at hand, and ask us for a wall to paint,2 we will alter our whole design for their sake, and become their servants; but we must, as architects, expect the aid of the common workman only; and the laying of colour by a mechanical hand, and its toning under a vulgar eye, are far more offensive than rudeness in cutting the stone. The latter is imperfection only; the former deadness or discordance. At the best, such colour is so inferior to the lovely and mellow hues of the natural stone, that it is wise to sacrifice some of the intricacy of design, if by so doing we may employ the nobler material. And if, as we looked to Nature for instruction respecting form, we look to her also to learn the management of colour, we shall, perhaps, find that this sacrifice of intricacy is for other causes expedient. § 36. First, then, I think that in making this reference we 1 [See on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. ii. ch. iv. § 9, Vol. IV. p. 300.] 2 [Cf. Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 30, Vol. III. p. 212.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 177 are to consider our building as a kind of organised creature; in colouring which we must look to the single and separately organised creatures of Nature, not to her landscape combinations. Our building, if it is well composed, is one thing, and is to be coloured as Nature would colour one thing—a shell, a flower, or an animal; not as she colours groups of things. And the first broad conclusion we shall deduce from observance of natural colour in such cases will be, that it never follows form, but is arranged on an entirely separate system. What mysterious connection there may be between the shape of the spots on an animal’s skin and its anatomical system, I do not know, nor even if such a connection has in anywise been traced:1 but to the eye the systems are entirely separate, and in many cases that of colour is accidentally variable. The stripes of a zebra do not follow the lines of its body or limbs, still less the spots of a leopard. In the plumage of birds, each feather bears a part of the pattern which is arbitrarily carried over the body, having indeed certain graceful harmonies with the form, diminishing or enlarging in directions which sometimes follow, but also not unfrequently oppose, the directions of its muscular lines. Whatever harmonies there may be, are distinctly like those of two separate musical parts, coinciding here and there only—never discordant, but essentially different. I hold this, then, for the first great principle of architectural colour. Let it be visibly independent of form. Never paint a column with vertical lines,* but always cross it. * It should be observed, however, that any pattern which gives opponent lines in its parts, may be arranged on lines parallel with the main structure. Thus, rows of diamonds, like spots on a snake’s back, or the bones of2 a sturgeon, are exquisitely applied both to vertical and spiral columns. The loveliest instances of such decoration that I know, are the pillars of the cloister of St. John Lateran, lately illustrated by Mr. Digby Wyatt,3 in his most valuable and faithful work on antique mosaic.4

1 [The connection traced by students of “bionomics” is rather between the colours of animals and the struggle for existence; for the stripes of the zebra, see Francis Galton’s Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, 1853,p. 306.] 2 [Misprinted “on” in eds. 1 and 2.] 3 [The illustrations referred to are Plate No. 15 in Specimens of the Geometrical Mosaic of the Middle Ages, by Matthew Digby Wyatt, architect (1848).] 4 [Note 13 at the end of the book in eds. 1 and 2; omitted in later editions.] VIII. M

178 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE Never give separate mouldings separate colours (I know this is heresy, but I never shrink from any conclusions, however contrary to human authority, to which I am led by observance of natural principles); and in sculptured ornaments do not paint the leaves or figures (I cannot help the Elgin frieze1) of one colour and their ground of another, but vary both the ground and the figures with the same harmony. Notice how Nature does it in a variegated flower; not one leaf red and another white, but a point of red and a zone of white, or whatever it may be, to each. In certain places you may run your two systems closer, and here and there let them be parallel for a note or two, but see that the colours and the forms coincide only as two orders of mouldings do; the same for an instant, but each holding its own course. So single members may sometimes have single colours; as a bird’s head is sometimes of one colour and its shoulders another, you may make your capital one colour and your shaft another: but in general the best place for colour is on broad surfaces, not on the points of interest in form. 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; in all cases it is a safe rule to simplify colour when form is rich, and vice versâ; and I think it would be well in general to carve all capitals and graceful ornaments in white marble, and so leave them.2 § 37. Independence then being first secured, what kind of limiting outlines shall we adopt for the system of colour itself? 1 [No traces of colour have been discovered on the frieze of the Parthenon; but there is no reason for supposing that it was not treated with colour as the sculptures from Ægina were, on which traces of brilliant colour remained when they were first unearthed. The ground, in the case of friezes, seems to have been painted blue or red; the figures were coloured to bring out the details. See below, § 41, p. 185.] 2 [The idea of this § 36 came to Ruskin from the study of shells, as the following extract from his diary shows:— “Dec. 20 (1848).—I was struck in looking over the shells at Brit. Mus. yesterday, with the difference in the nicety of outline in the patterns of shells and plumage and in their forms themselves. Now, I think that Form properly so called may be considered as a function or exponent either of Growth or of Force, inherent or impressed; and that one of the steps to

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 179 I am quite sure that any person familiar with natural objects will never be surprised at any appearance of care or finish in them. That is the condition of the Universe. But there is cause both for surprise and inquiry whenever we see anything like carelessness or incompletion: that is not a common condition; it must be one appointed for some singular purpose. I believe that such surprise will be forcibly felt by any one who, after studying carefully the lines of some variegated organic form, will set himself to copy with similar diligence those of its colours. The boundaries of the forms he will assuredly, whatever the object, have found drawn with a delicacy and precision which no human hand can follow. Those of its colours he will find in many cases, though governed always by a certain rude symmetry, yet irregular, blotched, imperfect, liable to all kinds of accidents and awkwardnesses. Look at the tracery of the lines on a camp shell, and see how oddly and awkwardly its tents are pitched. It is not indeed always so: there is occasionally, as in the eye of the peacock’s plume, an apparent precision, but still a precision far inferior to that of the drawing of the filaments which bear that lovely stain; and in the plurality of cases a degree of looseness and variation, and, still more singularly, of harshness and violence in arrangement, is admitted in colour which would be monstrous in form. Observe the difference in the precision of a fish’s scales and of the spots on them. § 38. Now, why it should be that colour is best seen under these circumstances I will not here endeavour to determine; nor whether the lesson we are to learn from it be that it is God’s will that all manner of delights should never be combined in one thing. But the fact is certain, that colour is

admiring it or understanding it must be a comprehension of the laws of formation and of the forces to be resisted; that all forms are thus either indicative of lines of energy or pressure or motion, variously impressed or resisted, and are therefore exquisitely abstract and precise. Variegation, on the contrary, is the arbitrary presence or absence of colouring matter, and the beauty is more in the colour than the outline. Hence stains, blotchings, cloudings, etc., in marble, on skins, and so on, and their beauty of irregularity. Impossibility of imitation, even in this bizarrerie, except by great freedom of hand, and then imperfectly.” With the last sentence, cf. the passage from the MS. on p. 181 n.]

180 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE always by Him arranged in these simple or rude forms, and as certain that, therefore, it must be best seen in them, and that we shall never mend by refining its arrangements. Experience teaches us the same thing. Infinite nonsense has been written about the union of perfect colour with perfect form. They never will, never can be united. Colour, to be perfect, must have a soft outline or a simple one: (it cannot have a refined one;)* and you will never produce a good painted window with good figure-drawing in it. You will lose perfection of colour as you give perfection of line. Try1 to put in order and form the colours of a piece of opal. § 39. I conclude, then, that all arrangements of colour, for its own sake, in graceful forms, are barbarous; and that, to paint a colour pattern with the lovely lines of a Greek leaf moulding, is an utterly savage procedure. I cannot find anything in natural colour like this: it is not in the bond.2 I find it in all natural form—never in natural colour. If, then, our architectural colour is to be beautiful as its form was, by being imitative, we are limited to these conditions—to simple masses of it, to zones, as in the rainbow and the zebra; cloudings and flamings, as in marble shells and plumage, or spots of various shapes and dimensions. All these conditions are susceptible of various degrees of sharpness and delicacy, and of complication in arrangement. The zone may become a delicate line, and arrange itself in chequers and zig-zags. The flaming may be more or less defined, as on a tulip leaf, and may at last be represented by a triangle of colour, and arrange itself in stars or other shapes; the spot may be also graduated into a stain, * Omit the sentence in parenthesis. I meant, a sharp or defined (not refined) edge; but even so understanding it, great part of the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth paragraphs must be received under much exception and protest, and might be omitted wholly with no harm to the book. [1880, when the words were first placed in parenthesis.]

1 [For “Try” the MS. reads:— “If you doubt this, ask yourself and answer candidly and thoughtfully whether the disposition of colour be really most perfect in the peacock’s tail or on the dove’s breast, or—which will answer the purpose as well—set yourself to put in order . . .”] 2 [Merchant of Venice, iv. 1.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 181 or defined into a square or circle. The1 most exquisite harmonies may be composed of these simple elements: some soft and full of flushed and melting spaces of colour; others piquant and sparkling, or deep and rich, formed of close groups of the fiery fragments: perfect and lovely proportion may be exhibited in the relation of their quantities, infinite invention in their disposition: but, in all cases, their shape will be effective only as it determines their quantity, and regulates their operation on each other; points or edges of one being introduced between breadths of others, and so on. Triangular and barred forms are therefore convenient, or others the simplest possible; leaving the pleasure of the spectator to be taken in the colour, and in that only. Curved outlines, especially if refined, deaden the colour, and confuse the mind. Even in figure painting the greatest colourists have either melted their outline away, as often Correggio and Rubens; or purposely made their masses of ungainly shape, as Titian; or placed their brightest hues in costume, where they could get quaint patterns, as Veronese, and especially Angelico, with whom, however, the absolute virtue of colour is secondary to grace of line. Hence, he never uses the blended hues of Correggio, like those on the wing of the little Cupid, in the 1 [In place of the text from this point down to the words in § 40, “may then be thus expressed,” the MS. has a rejected paragraph as follows:— “Of these forms architecture can only obtain the clouded and stained arrangements by employing variegated stones. No human hand can cloud colour, except by actual stippling. Taddeo Gaddi and Orcagna tried it often, failing signally, as in the picture by the former in the Academy of Florence. The pedestal of the throne of the Madonna in the picture by Fra Angelico in the Louvre is another wonderful instance of failure. Besides, the practice has been before reprobated for its dishonesty [above, p. 72]. We are therefore limited to the case of variegated marbles and of patterns terminated by severe or simple lines, varying either the flat surfaces of wall or the contours of figures and sculpture in a system not concurrent with their forms, as in ornamental borders of dresses, etc. To these modes of ornament we have to add the conditions intermediate between colouring and carving of monochrom design, and thus I think we shall arrive at the following most prudent disposition of our means of effect.” On this passage being struck out a note was added thus:— “Introduce here about painted windows and cardinals’ hats, Florence mosaic, Doge’s palace pattern.” The picture by Taddeo Gaddi (now commonly assigned to Niccolò di Piero or his son) is an Entombment. In his Florentine note-book of 1845 Ruskin refers to the “gaudily painted marbles of the tomb.” The Fra Angelico in the Louvre is “The Coronation of the Virgin.”]

182 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE “Venus and Mercury,”1 but always the severest type—the peacock plume. Any of these men would have looked with infinite disgust upon the leafage and scroll-work which forms the ground of colour in our modern painted windows, and yet all whom I have named were much infected with the love of renaissance designs. We must also allow for the freedom of the painter’s subject, and looseness of his associated lines; a pattern being severe in a picture, which is over luxurious upon a building. I believe, therefore, that it is impossible to be over quaint or angular in architectural colouring; and thus many dispositions which I have had occasion to reprobate in form, are, in colour, the best that can be invented. I have always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the Tudor style,2 for this reason, that, having surrendered all pretence to spaciousness and breadth,—having divided its surfaces by an infinite number of lines, it yet sacrifices the only characters which can make lines beautiful; sacrifices all the variety and grace which long atoned for the caprice of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its leading feature, an entanglement of cross bars and verticals, showing about as much invention or skill of design as the reticulation of the bricklayer’s sieve. Yet this very reticulation would in colour be highly beautiful; and all the heraldry,3 and other features which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful as themes of colour (so long as there are no fluttering or over-twisted lines in them); and this, observe, because, when coloured, they take the place of a mere pattern, and the resemblance to nature, which could not be found in their sculptured forms, is found in their piquant variegation of other surfaces. There is a beautiful and bright bit of wall painting behind the Duomo of Verona, composed of coats of arms, whose bearings are balls of gold set in bars of green (altered blue?) and white, with cardinals’ hats in alternate squares. This is of course, however, fit only for domestic work. The front of the Doge’s palace at Venice 1 [No. 10 in the National Gallery. For other references to the picture, see Queen of the Air, § 163, and Fors Clavigera, Letter 94.] 2 [See above, p. 146, and below, p. 258.] 3 [Cf. above, p. 147.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 183 is the purest and most chaste model that I can name (but one)1 of the fit application of colour to public buildings. The sculpture and mouldings are all white; but the wall surface is chequered with marble blocks of pale rose, the chequers being in no wise harmonized, or fitted to the forms of the windows; but looking as if the surface had been completed first, and the windows cut out of it. In Plate XII. fig. 2, the reader will see two of the patterns used in green and white, on the columns of San Michele of Lucca;2 every column having a different design. Both are beautiful, but the upper one certainly the best. Yet in sculpture its lines would have been perfectly barbarous, and those even of the lower not enough refined. § 40. Restraining ourselves, therefore, to the use of such simple patterns, so far forth as our colour is subordinate either to architectural structure, or sculptural form, we have yet one more manner of ornamentation to add to our general means of effect,—monochrom design, the intermediate condition between colouring and carving. The relations of the entire system of architectural decoration may then be thus expressed:

1. Organic form dominant. True, independent sculpture, and alto-relievo: rich capitals, and mouldings; to be elaborate in completion of form, not abstract, and either to be left in pure white marble, or most cautiously touched with colour in points and borders only, in a system not concurrent with their forms. 2. Organic form sub-dominant. Basso-relievo or intaglio. To be more abstract in proportion to the reduction of depth; to be also more rigid and simple in contour; to be touched with colour more boldly and in an increased degree, exactly in proportion to the reduced depth and fulness of form, but still in a system non-concurrent with their forms. 1 [Giotto’s Campanile, see below, § 43, p. 187.] 2 [See above, p. 121.]

184 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE 3. Organic form abstracted to outline. Monochrom design, still farther reduced to simplicity of contour, and therefore admitting for the first time the colour to be concurrent with its outline; that is to say, as its name imports, the entire figure to be detached in one colour from a ground of another. 4. Organic forms entirely lost. Geometrical patterns or variable cloudings in the most vivid colour.

On the opposite side of this scale, ascending from the colour pattern, I would place the various forms of painting which may be associated with architecture: primarily, and as most fit for such purpose, the mosaic, highly abstract in treatment, and introducing brilliant colour in masses; the Madonna of Torcello1 being, as I think, the noblest type of the manner, and the Baptistery of Parma2 the richest: next, the purely decorative fresco, like that of the Arena Chapel;3 finally, the fresco becoming principal, as in the Vatican and Sistine. But I cannot, with any safety, follow the principles of abstraction in this pictorial ornament; since the noblest examples of it appear to me to owe their architectural applicability to their archaic manner; and I think that the abstraction and admirable simplicity which render them fit media of the most splendid colouring, cannot be recovered by a voluntary condescension. The Byzantines themselves would not, I think, if they could have drawn the figure better, have used it for a colour decoration; and that use, as peculiar to a condition of childhood, however noble and full of promise, cannot be included among those modes of adornment which are now legitimate or even possible. There is a difficulty in the management of the painted window for the same reason, which has not yet been met, and we must conquer that first, before we can venture to consider the wall as a painted 1 [See Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. ii. § 3, where the mosaic is described.] 2 [See ibid., ch. iv. § 63, where the mosaics of Parma are again referred to.] 3 [Described by Ruskin in detail in his monograph for the Arundel Society, 1853–1860, Giotto and his Works in Padua.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 185 window on a large scale. Pictorial subject, without such abstraction, becomes necessarily principal, or, at all events, ceases to be the architect’s concern; its plan must be left to the painter after the completion of the building, as in the works of Veronese and Giorgione on the palaces of Venice. § 41. Pure architectural decoration, then, may be considered as limited to the four kinds above specified; of which each glides almost imperceptibly into the other. Thus, the Elgin frieze is a monochrom* in a state of transition to sculpture, retaining, as I think, the half-cast skin too long. Of pure monochrom, I have given an example in Plate VI., from the noble front of San Michele of Lucca. It contains forty such arches, all covered with equally elaborate ornaments, entirely drawn by cutting out their ground to about the depth of an inch in the flat white marble, and filling the spaces with pieces of green serpentine; a most elaborate mode of sculpture, requiring excessive care and precision in the fitting of the edges, and of course double work, the same line needing to be cut both in the marble and serpentine.† The excessive simplicity of the forms will be at once perceived; the eyes of the figures or animals, for instance, being indicated only by a round dot, formed by a little inlet circle of serpentine, about half an inch over: but, though simple, they admit often much grace of curvature, as in the neck of the bird seen above the right-hand pillar. The pieces of serpentine * Rather, dichrom or dichroit—flesh colour on blue. [1880: cf. above, § 36, p. 178.] † On the cover of this volume the reader will find some figure outlines of the same period and character, from the floor of San Miniato at Florence. I have to thank its designer, Mr. W. Harry Rogers, for the intelligent arrangement of them, and graceful adaptations of the connecting arabesque.1

1 [This was Note 14 at the end of the book in eds. 1 and 2; omitted in later editions. The cover is now reproduced opposite. The seven “Lamps” become in Latin Religio (Sacrifice), Fides (Truth), Auctoritas (Power)—for the use of the word “Auctoritas” instead of “Potestas,” see ch. iv. § 1 n.—Observantia (Beauty)—the lamp of beauty being, as Ruskin taught, fed by observation of nature—Spiritus (Life), Memoria (Memory), and Obedientia (Obedience). The mosaic of the floor of the nave of San Miniato, forming a band from the west door to the altar, is of black and white marble; arranged in rosettes of lions, birds, griffins, etc.; with a circular portion representing the signs of the Zodiac (dated 1207).]

186 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE have fallen out in many places, giving the black shadows, as seen under the horseman’s arm and bird’s neck, and in the semi-circular line round the arch, once filled with some pattern. It would have illustrated my point better to have restored the lost portions, but I always draw a thing exactly as it is, hating restoration of any kind; and I would especially direct the reader’s attention to the completion of the forms in the sculptured ornament of the marble cornices, as opposed to the abstraction of the monochrom figures, of the ball and cross patterns between the arches, and of the triangular ornament round the arch on the left.1 § 42. I have an intense love for these monochrom figures, owing to their wonderful life and spirit in all the works on which I have found them; nevertheless, I believe that the excessive degree of abstraction which they imply necessitates our placing them in the rank of a progressive or imperfect art, and that2 a perfect building should rather be composed of the highest sculpture, (organic form dominant and sub-dominant,) associated with pattern colours on the flat or broad surfaces. And we find, in fact, that the cathedral of Pisa, which is a higher type than that of Lucca, exactly follows this condition, the colour being put in geometrical patterns on its surfaces, and animal forms and lovely leafage used in the sculptured cornices and pillars. And I think that the grace of the carved forms is best seen when it is thus boldly opposed to severe traceries of colour, while the colour itself is, as we have seen, always most piquant when it is put into sharp and angular arrangements. Thus the sculpture is approved and set off by the colour, and the colour seen to the best advantage 1 [For other descriptions of San Michele, see Vol. III. p. 206 n. A facsimile of another drawing by Ruskin of part of the church is Plate XXI. in Stones of Venice, vol. i., where (Appendix 8) he discusses the sculptures at length, and refers to Plate VI. here as giving “a more faithful impression of the present aspect of the work, and especially of the seats of the horsemen.”] 2 [The MS. reads:— “and that the more, because as they refuse perfection of form on the one hand, so they refuse vividness of colour on the other, for that would render them indistinct and confused, if not ludicrous. I think that a perfect building . . .”]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 187 in its opposition both to the whiteness and the grace of the carved marble. § 43. In the course of this and the preceding chapters, I have now separately enumerated most of the conditions of Power and Beauty, which, in the outset, I stated to be the grounds of the deepest impressions with which architecture could affect the human mind; but I would ask permission to recapitulate them, in order to see if there be any building which I may offer as an example of the unison, in such manner as is possible, of them all. Glancing back, then, to the beginning of the third chapter, and introducing in their place the conditions incidentally determined in the two previous sections, we shall have the following list of noble characters: Considerable size, exhibited by simple terminal lines (Chap. III. § 6). Projection towards the top (§ 7). Breadth of flat surface (§ 8). Square compartments of that surface (§ 9). Varied and visible masonry (§ 11). Vigorous depth of shadow (§ 13), exhibited especially by pierced traceries (§ 18). Varied proportion in ascent (Chap. IV. § 28). Lateral symmetry (§ 28). Sculpture most delicate at the base (Chap. I. § 12). Enriched quantity of ornament at the top (§ 13). Sculpture abstract in inferior ornaments and mouldings (Chap. IV. § 31), complete in animal forms (§ 33). Both to be executed in white marble (§ 40). Vivid colour introduced in flat geometrical patterns (§ 39), and obtained by the use of naturally coloured stone (§ 35). These characteristics occur more or less in different buildings, some in one and some in another. But all together, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building in the world, the Campanile of Giotto at Florence. The drawing of the tracery of its upper storey, which heads this chapter,1 1 [This reference, repeated in the second and later editions, was to Plate IX. in ed. 1, which was given at the beginning of ch. iv. but was omitted in later editions, being replaced by a more delicate plate given as frontispiece. A duplicate version of the original plate (see above, p. xlix.) is here given in its original place, as well as the frontispiece.]

188 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE rude as it is, will nevertheless give the reader some better conception of that tower’s magnificence than the thin outlines in which it is usually pourtrayed. In its first appeal to the stranger’s eye there is something unpleasing; a mingling, as it seems to him, of over severity with over minuteness. But let him give it time, as he should to all other consummate art. I remember well how, when a boy,1 I used to despise that Campanile, and think it meanly smooth and finished. But I have since lived beside it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows by sunlight and moonlight,2 and I shall not soon forget how profound and gloomy appeared to me the savageness of the Northern Gothic,3 when I afterwards stood, for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. The contrast is indeed strange, if it could be quickly felt, between the rising of those grey walls out of their quiet swarded space, like dark and barren rocks out of a green lake, with their rude, mouldering, 1 [Ruskin’s first visit to Florence was in 1840, when he was disappointed with its architecture: see Vol. I. pp. 380, 432.] 2 [See extracts from Ruskin’s letters of 1845, in Vol. IV. pp. 351–352.] 3 [The MS. has “at noon and morning and moving midnight, and I shall not soon forget with what an impression of savage, profound, and gloomy barbarism I was struck, when . . .” The first draft of this passage occurs in Ruskin’s diary of 1848:— “SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.—On the whole, the carving of this cathedral, more especially of the west front, is, as compared with a piece of that of Florence, perfectly savage, and reminds one of the carvings of an Indian’s paddle. What a contrast between the swarded space—all sounding over with nibbling of sheep, and the rising out of it of the grey walls, like old steep rocks out of a green lake, and the weedy and shadowy recesses between the transepts, and the rude, mouldering, massy, rough-grained shafts, and triple lights without tracery or other ornament than the martins’ nests in the height of them;—and that populous, trodden, history-haunted square,—that warm, bright, smooth, marble seat against the wall,—that jaspery variegated surface,—those spiral shafts of glittering mosaic and leafy mouldings, rich with birds and fruit, those fairy traceries of white, faint, crystalline lines of alabaster,—that campanile, coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea shell.” Ruskin had felt something of the same contrast at Abbeville too :— “It is most fortunate that I have come here,” he writes home from Abbeville (Aug. 8, 1848), “straight from Salisbury—not even blunting at Winchester the severe memory of that Gothic; for much as I admired Abbeville porch before, it comes upon me now in such luscious richness,—so full, so fantastic,—so exquisitely picturesque that I seem never to have seen it before.” See also above, ch. iii. § 24, p. 136, and compare the contrast more elaborately drawn in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. iv. §§ 10–14, between a “grim cathedral of England” and St. Mark’s at Venice.]

CH. IV THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 189 rough-grained shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other ornament than the martins’ nests in the height of them, and that bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea shell. And if this be, as I believe it, the model and mirror of perfect architecture, is there not something to be learned by looking back to the early life of him who raised it? I said that the Power of human mind had its growth in the Wilderness; much more must the love and the conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue we have seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God’s daily work, and an arrested ray of some star of creation, be given chiefly in the places which He has gladdened by planting there the fir-tree and the pine. Not within the walls of Florence, but among the far away fields of her lilies, was the child trained who was to raise that headstone of Beauty above her towers of watch and war. Remember all that he became; count the sacred thoughts with which he filled the heart of Italy; ask those who followed him what they learned at his feet; and when you have numbered his labours, and received their testimony, if it seem to you that God had verily poured out upon this His servant no common nor restrained portion of His Spirit,1 and that he was indeed a king among the children of men, remember also that the legend upon the crown was that of David’s:—“I took thee from the sheep-cote, and from following the sheep.”2 1 [Compare the closing words of the chapter on the Ducal Palace in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii.] 2 [2 Samuel vii. 8. Hence, in his account of the Campanile in Mornings in Florence, Ruskin called it “The Shepherd’s Tower.” See the opening sections of Giotto and his Works at Padua for a sketch of his life and work.]

CHAPTER V

THE LAMP OF LIFE § 1. AMONG the countless analogies by which the nature and relations of the human soul are illustrated in the material creation, none are more striking than the impressions inseparably connected with the active and dormant states of matter. I have elsewhere1 endeavoured to show, that no inconsiderable part of the essential characters of Beauty dependend on the expression of vital energy in organic things, or on the subjection to such energy, of things naturally passive and powerless. I need not here repeat, of what was then advanced, more than the statement which I believe APHORISM 23. will meet with general acceptance, that things in All things are other respects alike, as in their substance, or uses, noble in proportion to their or outward forms, are noble or ignoble in fulness of Life.2 proportion to the fulness of the life which either they themselves enjoy, or of whose action they bear the evidence, as sea sands are made beautiful by their bearing the seal of the motion of the waters. And this is especially true of all objects which bear upon them the impress of the highest order of creative life, that is to say, of the mind of man: they become noble or ignoble in proportion to the amount of the energy of that mind which has visibly been employed upon them. But most peculiarly and imperatively does the rule hold with respect to the creations of Architecture, which being properly capable of no other life than this, and being not essentially composed of things pleasant in themselves,—as music of sweet sounds, or painting of fair colours, but of inert 1 [Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. chs. xii.–xiv.] 2 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “that things in other respects alike . . .” down to the end of § 1.] 190

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 191 substance,—depend, for their dignity and pleasurableness in the utmost degree, upon the vivid expression of the intellectual life which has been concerned in their production.* § 2. Now in all other kind of energies except that of man’s mind, there is no question as to what is life, and what is not. Vital sensibility, whether vegetable or animal, may, indeed, be reduced to so great feebleness, as to render its existence a matter of question, but when it is evident at all, it is evident as such: there is no mistaking any imitation or pretence of it for the life itself; no mechanism nor galvanism can take its place; nor is any resemblance of it so striking as to involve even hesitation in the judgment; although many occur which the human imagination takes pleasure in exalting, without for an instant losing sight of the real nature of the dead things it animates; but rejoicing rather in its own excessive life, which puts gesture into clouds, and joy into waves, and voices into rocks.1 § 3. But when we begin to be concerned with the energies of man, we find ourselves instantly dealing with a double creature. Most part of his being seems to have a fictitious counterpart, which it is at his peril if he do not cast off and deny. Thus he has a true and false (otherwise called a living and dead, or a feigned or unfeigned) faith. He has a true and a false hope, a true and a false charity, and, finally, a true and a false life. His true life is like that of lower organic beings, the independent force by which he moulds and governs external things; it is a force of assimilation which converts everything around him into food, or into instruments; and which, however humbly or obediently it may listen to or follow the guidance of superior intelligence, never forfeits its own authority as a judging principle, as a will capable2 either * See note 35. [1880: note * on p. 138 of this edition.]

1 [The MS. adds, “and sympathy into stars,” and above has “superabundant” for “excessive.”] 2 [For the text from “as a will capable” onward, the MS. has:— “as a present and capable will either to obey or to rebel. The very merit of its obedience lies in its not being servile or accidental, but chosen and voluntary. And this true life it is which gives men their distinguishing

192 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE of obeying or rebelling. His false life is, indeed, but one of the conditions of death* or stupor, but it acts, even when it cannot be said to animate, and is not always easily known from the true. It is that life of custom and accident in which many of us pass much of our time in the world; that life in which we do what we have not proposed, and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what we do not understand; that life which is overlaid by the weight of things external to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them; that, which instead of growing and blossoming under any whole-some dew, is crystallised over with it, as with hoar-frost, and becomes to the true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits, if it stand in our way. All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in this sort; all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle matter; only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking this bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips upon the birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength.1 But,2 with all the efforts that the best * Yes; and therefore had been much better called so simply, without all this metaphor and inaccurate metaphysics. What we carelessly call False hope, or False charity, is only mistaken hope and mistaken charity. The real question is only—are we dead or alive?—for, if dead at heart and having only a name to live in all our actions, we are sowing seeds of death. [1880.]

characters, and fits each for his peculiar duty. But the False life is the life of servility and of custom, the life wherein he ceases to have a will properly so called, because he ceases to have thought, the spurious and languid life . . . assimilating them; it is a life which has no root of intellect nor of moral principle, and whose branches, therefore, instead of growing. . . hoar-frost, so that the whole man instead of being a tree is a mere arborescence, a thing with no sap in it, a candied agglomeration of the glitter and edges of other people’s ways and thoughts and fancies, brittle . . .”] 1 [For similar parallels between human vitality and the life of trees, see Ethics of the Dust, § 57, and Proserpina, i. ch. iii.] 2 [A variant in the MS. of the passage from this point to the end of § 3 is as follows: “But woe to those who have not strength to do this, and who go through the world one mingled heap of prejudices and habits and accepted necessities and formalisms, drifted and decaying creatures of internal impulse—moving as puppets and speaking as echoes—thinking as they are told. “Now as the creations of Architecture are peculiarly dependent on the

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 193 men make, much of their being passes in a kind of dream, in which they indeed move, and play their parts sufficiently, to the eyes of their fellow dreamers, but have no clear consciousness of what is around them, or within them; blind to the one, insensible to the other, nwqroi.1 I would not press the definition into its darker application to the dull heart and heavy ear; I have to do with it only as it refers to the too frequent condition of natural existence, whether of nations or individuals, settling commonly upon them in proportion to their age. The life of a nation is usually, like the flow of a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and covered, at last advancing only by the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks. And that last condition is a sad one to look upon. All the steps are marked most clearly in the arts, and in Architecture more than in any other; for it, being especially dependent, as we have just said, on the warmth of the true life, is also peculiarly sensible of the hemlock cold of the false:

expression of mental vitality, so they are peculiarly liable to become the expression of this pseudo-vitality. “Yet do not let it be supposed that I mean any idea of stubbornness or absolute ungovernableness to be attached to the definition of True Vitality. All real life is known by its depending on nourishment from without; by its being rooted in, or traceable to, something precedent to itself; by its being in a certain degree ductile, mobile, alterable, and sensible: only it is not passively so, not slavishly so. It accepts nourishment only of a certain kind, chooses what is good for it, and rejects the rest. It does not clutch everything offered to it with convulsive acquisitiveness—it yields to influence of certain kind—but only in degrees consistent with its own independence. In proportion to its youthfulness, it is yielding to external force, and eager to receive external nourishment: in proportion to its age, it is stable and fruitful. Now there are certains periods in the life of nations and individuals in which this real life is strong and progressive: others in which it is languid and encrusted, like a stream of lava growing cold—others in which it is tending to utter extinction—and yet making some advance like the head of the stream of lava by the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks. At last it ceases altogether, and the pseudo-life takes or may take its place. There is nothing in which these steps are so clearly and consistently manifested as in the Art of nations: and as it has just been said that Architecture is especially dependent on the expression of human vitality—so it is especially liable to be corrupted by the spurious vitality which succeeds it. “The architecture so corrupted—which may be properly described as Dead architecture, of which that of our own day throughout Europe is the most melancholy example, may be always recognised by the absence of certain characters which I shall endeavour to explain; although they are not so strictly defined.”] 1 [The word is used by Plato and other authors in the sense of sluggish, stupid, torpid.] VIII. N

194 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE and I do not know anything more oppressive, when the mind is once awakened to its characteristics, than the aspect of a dead architecture. The feebleness of childhood is full of promise and of interest,—the struggle of imperfect knowledge full of energy and continuity,—but to see impotence and rigidity settling upon the form of the developed man; to see the types which once had the die of thought struck fresh upon them, worn flat by over use; to see the shell of the living creature in its adult form, when its colours are faded, and its inhabitant perished,—this is a sight more humiliating, more melancholy, than the vanishing of all knowledge, and the return to confessed and helpless infancy. Nay, it is to be wished that such return were always possible. There would be hope if we could change palsy into puerility; but I know not how far we can become children again, and renew our lost life. The stirring which has taken place in our architectural aims and interests within these few years,1 is thought by many to be full of promise: I trust it is, but it has a sickly look to me.* I cannot tell whether it be indeed a springing of seed or a shaking among bones; and I do not think the time will be lost which I ask the reader to spend in the inquiry, how far all that we have hitherto ascertained or conjectured to be best in principle, may be formally practised without the spirit or the vitality which alone could give it influence, value, or delightfulness. * I am glad to see I had so much sense, thus early;—if only I had had just a little more, and stopped talking, how much life—of the vividest—I might have saved from expending itself in useless sputter, and kept for careful pencil work! I might have had every bit of St. Mark’s and Ravenna drawn by this time. What good this wretched rant of a book can do still, since people ask for it, let them make of it; but I don’t see what it’s to be. The only living art now left in England is Bill-sticking. [1880.]

1 [Previous to 1848, it must be remembered. Historians of modern British architecture generally take 1851 as the date of a new era: see, e.g., James Fergusson’s History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, vol. i. p. v. But there had been some “stirring” before that date; shown, for instance, in the incorporation (1837) of the Society of British Architects, and in the large amount of interest taken in the rebuilding and decoration of the Houses of Parliament (commenced in 1840). The “Gothic revival” had also been started, in part by the writings of Pugin (for whom, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. app. iii.).]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 195 § 4. Now,1 in the first place—and this is rather an important point—it is no sign of deadness in a present art that it borrows or imitates, but only if it borrows without paying interest, or if it imitates without choice. The art of a great nation, which is developed without any acquaintance with nobler examples than its own early efforts furnish, exhibits always the most consistent and comprehensible growth, and perhaps is regarded usually as peculiarly venerable in its self-origination. But there is something to my mind more majestic yet in the life of an architecture like that of the Lombards, rude and infantine in itself, and surrounded by fragments of a nobler art of which it is quick in admiration and ready in imitation, and yet so strong in its own new instincts that it re-constructs and re-arranges every fragment that it copies or borrows into harmony with its own thoughts,—a harmony at first disjointed and awkward, but completed in the end, and fused into perfect organisation; all the borrowed elements being subordinated to its own primal, unchanged life. I do not know any sensation more exquisite than the discovering of the evidence of this magnificent struggle into independent existence; the detection of the borrowed thoughts, nay, the finding of the actual blocks and stones carved by other hands and in other ages, wrought into the new walls, with a new expression and purpose given to them, like the blocks of unsubdued rocks (to go back to our former simile2) which we find in the heart of the lava current, great witnesses to the power which has fused all but those calcined fragments into the mass of its homogeneous fire. § 5. It will be asked, How is imitation to be rendered healthy and vital? Unhappily, while it is easy to enumerate the signs of life, it is impossible to define or to communicate life; and while every intelligent writer on Art has insisted on the difference between the copying found in an advancing or recedent period, none have been able to communicate, in the 1 [The MS. of the text from here down to middle of § 5 (“inconvenient”) is missing.] 2 [§ 3 above, p. 193.]

196 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE slightest degree, the force of vitality to the copyist over whom they might have influence. Yet it is at least interesting, if not profitable, to note that two very distinguishing characters of vital imitation are, its Frankness and its Audacity: its Frankness is especially singular; there is never any effort to conceal the degree of the sources of its borrowing. Raffaelle carries off a whole figure from Masaccio, or borrows an entire composition from Perugino,1 with as much tranquillity and simplicity of innocence as a young Spartan pickpocket;2 and the architect of a Romanesque basilica gathered his columns and capitals where he could find them, as an ant picks up sticks. There is at least a presumption, when we find this frank acceptance, that there is a sense within the mind of power capable of transforming and renewing whatever it adopts; and too conscious, too exalted, to fear the accusation of plagiarism,3—too certain that it can prove, and has proved, its independence, to be afraid of expressing its homage to what it admires in the most open and indubitable way; and the necessary consequence of this sense of power is the other sign I have named—the Audacity of treatment when it finds treatment necessary, the unhesitating and sweeping sacrifice of precedent where precedent becomes inconvenient. For instance, in the characteristic forms of Italian Romanesque, in which the hypaethral portion of the heathen temple was replaced by the towering nave, and where, in consequence, the pediment of the west front became divided into three portions, of which the central one, like the apex of a ridge of sloping strata lifted by a sudden fault, was broken away from and raised above the wings; there remained at the extremities of the aisles two triangular fragments of pediment, which could not now be filled 1 [Thus the “Expulsion” in the history of Adam and Eve, from Raphael’s design in the Loggie of the Vatican, is borrowed from Masaccio’s fresco in the Brancacci Chapel at Florence, and Raphael’s “Sposalizio” at Milan is generally supposed to be almost a copy of Perugino’s, now at Caen (though this theory has been controverted by Mr. Berenson, in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, April 1896).] 2 [For whose education in thieving for their food—punished only if they were detected in the act—see Xenophon’s Anabasis, 4, 6, 14, and Plutarch’s Lycurgus, 17.] 3 [For Ruskin’s views on the subject of plagiarism, see Modern Painters, vol. iii., author’s Appendix iii.]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 197 by any of the modes of decoration adapted for the unbroken space; and the difficulty became greater, when the central portion of the front was occupied by columnar ranges, which could not, without painful abruptness, terminate short of the extremities of the wings. I know not what expedient would have been adopted by architects who had much respect for precedent, under such circumstances, but it certainly would not have been that of the Pisan,—to continue the range of columns into the pedimental space, shortening them to its extremity until the shaft of the last column vanished altogether, and there remained only its capital resting in the angle on its basic plinth. I raise no question at present whether this arrangement be graceful or otherwise; I allege it only as an instance of a boldness almost without a parallel, casting aside every received principle that stood in its way, and struggling through every discordance and difficulty to the fulfilment of its own instincts. § 6. Frankness, however, is in itself no excuse for repetition, nor Audacity for innovation, when the one is indolent and the other unwise. Nobler and surer signs of vitality must be sought,—signs independent alike of the decorative or original character of the style, and constant in every style that is determinedly progressive.1 Of these, one of the most important I believe to be a certain neglect or contempt of refinement in execution, or, at all events, a visible subordination of execution to conception, commonly involuntary, but not unfrequently intentional. This is a point, however, on which, while I speak confidently, I must at the same time speak reservedly and carefully, as there would otherwise be much chance of my being dangerously misunderstood. It has been truly observed, and well stated, by Lord Lindsay,2 that the best designers of Italy were also the most careful in their workmanship; and that 1 [The MS. adds a note: “Consider Orcagna’s fine workmanship—oppose the studies and sketches, ideas and efforts rudely worked.”] 2 [Sketches of the History of Christian Art, 1847, vol. iii. pp. 148–149; the passage is quoted and commented upon in Ruskin’s review of the book (On the Old Road, 1899, vol. i. § 80).]

198 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE the stability and finish of their masonry, mosaic, or other work whatsoever, were always perfect in proportion to APHORISM 24. the apparent improbability of the great designers Perfect finish condescending to the care of details among us so characterizes alike the best despised. Not only do I fully admit and reassert this architecture most important fact, but I would insist upon perfect and the best painting.1 and most delicate finish in its right place, as a characteristic of all the highest schools of architecture, as much as it is of those of painting.2 But on the other hand, as perfect finish belongs to the perfected art, a progressive finish belongs to progressive art; and I do not think that any more fatal sign of a stupor or numbness settling upon that undeveloped art could possibly be detected, than that it had been taken aback by its own execution, and that the workmanship had gone ahead of the design; while, even in my admission of absolute finish in the right place, as an attribute of the perfected school, I must reserve to myself the right of answering in my own way the two very important questions—what is finish? and what is its right place? § 7. But in illustrating either of these points, we must remember that the correspondence of workmanship with thought is, in existent examples, interfered with by the adoption of the designs of an advanced period by the workmen of a rude one. All the beginnings of Christian architecture are of this kind, and the necessary consequence is of course an increase of the visible interval between the power of realization and the beauty of the idea. We have at first an intimation, almost savage in its rudeness, of a classical design; as the art advances, the design is modified by a mixture of Gothic grotesqueness, and the execution more complete, until a harmony is established between the two, in which balance 1 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “It has been truly observed . . .” down to the end of § 6.] 2 [For a general summary of Ruskin’s views on finish in art, see Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. vii. § 21 n. He there refers to this passage, and to his selection of the Campanile of Giotto, in the preceding chapter (§ 43, p. 187), “as the model and mirror of perfect architecture just on account of its exquisite completion.”]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 199 they advance to new perfection. Now during the whole period in which the ground is being recovered, there will be found in the living architecture marks, not to be mistaken, of intense impatience; a struggle towards something unattained, which causes all minor points of handling to be neglected; and a restless disdain of all qualities which appear either to confess contentment, or to require a time and care which might be better spent. And, exactly as a good and earnest student of drawing will not lose time in ruling lines or finishing backgrounds about studies which, while they have answered his immediate purpose, he knows to be imperfect and inferior to what he will do hereafter,—so the vigour of a true school of early architecture,1 which is either working under the influence of high example or which is itself in a state of rapid development, is very curiously traceable, among other signs, in the contempt of exact symmetry and measurement, which in dead architecture are the most painful necessities. § 8. In Plate XII., fig. 1, I have given a most singular instance both of rude execution and defied symmetry, in the little pillar and spandrel from a panel decoration under the pulpit of St. Mark’s at Venice. The imperfection (not merely simplicity, but actual rudeness and ugliness) of the leaf ornament will strike the eye at once: this is general in works of the time, but it is not so common to find a capital which has been so carelessly cut; its imperfect volutes being pushed up one side far higher than on the other, and contracted on that side, an additional drill hole being put in to fill the space; besides this, the member a of the moulding, is a roll where it follows the arch, and a flat fillet at a; the one being slurred into the other at the angle b, and finally stopped short altogether at the other side by the most uncourteous and remorseless interference of the outer moulding: and in spite of all this, the grace, proportion, and feeling of the whole arrangement are so great, that, in its place, it leaves nothing to be 1 [From here down to almost the end of § 8 (“sometimes”) the MS. is again missing.]

200 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE desired; all the science and symmetry in the world could not beat it. In fig. 4 I have endeavoured to give some idea of the execution of the subordinate portions of a much higher work, the pulpit of St. Andrea at Pistoja, by Nicolo Pisano.1 It is covered with figure sculptures, executed with great care and delicacy; but when the sculptor came to the simple arch mouldings, he did not choose to draw the eye to them by over precision of work or over sharpness of shadow. The section adopted, k, m, is peculiarly simple, and so slight and obtuse in its recessions as never to produce a sharp line; and it is worked with what at first appears slovenliness, but is in fact sculptural sketching; exactly correspondent to a painter’s light execution of a background: the lines appear and disappear again, are sometimes deep, sometimes shallow, sometimes quite broken off; and the recession of the cusp joins that of the external arch at n, in the most fearless defiance of all mathematical laws of curvilinear contact. § 9. There2 is something very delightful in this bold expression of the mind of the great master. I do not say that it is the “perfect work” of patience,3 but I think that impatience is a glorious character in an advancing school: and I love the Romanesque and early Gothic especially, because they afford so much room for it; accidental carelessnesses of measurement or of execution being mingled undistinguishably with the purposed departures from symmetrical regularity, and the luxuriousness of perpetually variable fancy, which are eminently characteristic of both styles. How great, how frequent they are, and how brightly the severity of architectural law is relieved by their grace and suddenness, has not, I think, been enough observed; still less, the unequal measurements of even important features professing to be absolutely symmetrical. I am not so familiar with modern practice as to speak with confidence respecting its ordinary precision; but I imagine 1 [See Vol. IV. p. 300 n. for another reference to the Pistoja pulpit. Niccolò Pisano’s pulpit at Pisa is described and illustrated in Val d’ Arno.] 2 [The variants of the MS. of §§ 9 seqq. down almost to the end of the chapter are fewer and less important than usual.] 3 [James i. 4.]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 201 that the following measures of the western front of the cathedral of Pisa, would be looked upon by present architects as very blundering approximations. That front is divided into seven arched compartments, of which the second, fourth or central, and sixth contain doors; the seven are in a most subtle alternating proportion; the central being the largest, next to it the second and sixth, then the first and seventh, lastly the third and fifth. By this arrangement, of course, these three pairs should be equal; and they are so to the eye, but I found their actual measures to be the following, taken from pillar to pillar, in Italian braccia, palmi (four inches each), and inches:1— Total in Bracci Palmi. Inches. Inches. a. 1. Central door 8 0 0 192 = 2. Northern door 6 3 1½ 157½ = 3. Southern door 6 4 3 163 4. Extreme northern space 5 5 3½ 143½ = 5. Extreme-southern space 6 1 0½ 148½ = 6. Northern intervals between the 5 2 1 129 doors = 7. Southern intervals between the 5 2 1½ 129½ doors =

There is thus a difference, severally, between 2, 3 and 4, 5, of five inches and a half in the one case, and five inches in the other. § 10. This, however, may perhaps be partly attributable to some accommodation of the accidental distortions which evidently took place in the walls of the cathedral during their building, as much as in those of the campanile. To my mind, those of the Duomo are far the more wonderful of the two; I do not believe that a single pillar of its walls is absolutely vertical: the pavement rises and falls to different heights, or rather the plinth of the walls sinks into it continually to different depths, the whole west front literally overhangs, (I have not plumbed it; but the inclination may be seen by the eye, by bringing it into visual contact with the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo:) and a most extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the southern wall shows that this inclination had 1 [See below, p. 275, for an allusion to this table of measurements.]

202 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE begun when the first storey was built. The cornice above the first arcade of that wall touches the tops of eleven out of its fifteen arches; but it suddenly leaves the tops of the four westernmost; the arches nodding westward and sinking into the ground, while the cornice rises (or seems to rise), leaving at any rate, whether by the rise of the one or the fall of the other, an interval of more than two feet between it and the top of the western arch, filled by added courses of masonry. There is another very curious evidence of this struggle of the architect with his yielding wall in the columns of the main entrance. (These notices are perhaps somewhat irrelevant to our immediate subject, but they appear to me highly interesting; and they, at all events, prove one of the pointson which I would insist,—how much of imperfection and variety in things professing to be symmetrical the eyes of those eager builders could endure; they looked to loveliness in detail, to nobility in the whole, never to petty measurements.) Those columns of the principal entrance are among the loveliest in Italy; cylindrical, and decorated with a rich arabesque of sculptured foliage, which at the base extends nearly all round them, up to the black pilaster in which they are lightly engaged: but the shield of foliage, bounded by a severe line, narrows to their tops, where it covers their frontal segment only; thus giving, when laterally seen, a terminal line sloping boldly outwards, which, as I think, was meant to conceal the accidental leaning of the western walls, and, by its exaggerated inclination in the same direction, to throw them by comparison into a seeming vertical. § 11. There is another very curious instance of distortion above the central door of the west front. All the intervals between the seven arches are filled with black marble, each containing in its centre a white parallelogram filled with animal mosaics, and the whole surmounted by a broad white band, which, generally, does not touch the parallelogram below. But the parallelogram on the north of the central arch has been forced into an oblique position, and touches the white band; and, as if the architect was determined to show

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 203 that he did not care whether it did or not, the white band suddenly gets thicker at that place, and remains so over the next two arches. And these differences are the more curious because the workmanship of them all is most finished and masterly, and the distorted stones are fitted with as much neatness as if they tallied to a hair’s breadth. There is no look of slurring or blundering about it; it is all coolly filled in, as if the builder had no sense of anything being wrong or extraordinary; I only wish we had a little of his impudence. § 12. Still, the reader will say that all these variations are probably dependent more on the bad foundation than on the architect’s feelings. Not so the exquisite delicacies of change in the proportions and dimensions of the apparently symmetrical arcades of the west front. It will be remembered that I said the tower of Pisa was the only ugly tower in Italy,1 because its tiers were equal, or nearly so, in height, a fault this, so contrary to the spirit of the builders of the time, that it can be considered only as an unlucky caprice. Perhaps the general aspect of the west front of the cathedral may then have occurred to the reader’s mind, as seemingly another contradiction of the rule I had advanced. It would not have been so, however, even had its four upper arcades been actually equal; as they are subordinated to the great seven-arched lower storey, in the manner before noticed respecting the spire of Salisbury,2 and as is actually the case in the Duomo of Lucca and Tower of Pistoja. But the Pisan front is far more subtly proportioned. Not one of its four arcades is of like height with another. The highest is the third, counting upwards; and they diminish in nearly arithmetical proportion alternately; in the order 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 4th. The inequalities in their arches are not less remarkable: they at first strike the eye as all equal; but there is a grace about them which equality never obtained: on closer observation, it is perceived that in the first row of nineteen arches, eighteen are equal, and the central one larger than the rest; in the second arcade, 1 [See above, p. 168.] 2 [See above, p. 167.]

204 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE the nine central arches stand over the nine below, having, like them, the ninth central one largest. But on their flanks, where is the slope of the shoulder-like pediment, the arches vanish, and a wedge-shaped frieze takes their place, tapering outwards, in order to allow the columns to be carried to the extremity of the pediment; and here, where the heights of the shafts are so fast shortened, they are set thicker; five shafts, or rather four and a capital, above, to four of the arcade below, giving twenty-one intervals instead of nineteen. In the next or third arcade,—which, remember, is the highest, eight arches, all equal, are given in the space of the nine below, so that there is now a central shaft instead of a central arch, and the span of the arches is increased in proportion to their increased height. Finally, in the uppermost arcade, which is the lowest of all, the arches, the same in number as those below, are narrower than any of the façade; the whole eight going very nearly above the six below them, while the terminal arches of the lower arcade are surmounted by flanking masses of decorated wall with projecting figures. § 13. Now I call that Living Architecture. There is sensation in every inch of it, and an accommodation to every architectural necessity, with a determined variation in arrangement, which is exactly like the related proportions and provisions in the structure of organic form. I have not space to examine the still lovelier proportioning of the external shafts of the apse of this marvellous building. I prefer, lest the reader should think it a peculiar example, to state the structure of another church, the most graceful and grand piece of Romanesque work, as a fragment, in north Italy, that of San Giovanni Evangelista, at Pistoja.1 The side of that church has three storeys of arcade, diminishing in height in bold geometrical proportion, while the arches, for the most part, increase in number in arithmetical, i.e. two in the second arcade, and three in the third, to one in the first. Lest, however, this arrangement should be 1 [For another reference to this church in the same sense, see Stones of Venice vol. i. ch. xix. § 10.]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 205 too formal, of the fourteen arches in the lowest series, that which contains the door is made larger than the rest, and is not in the middle, but the sixth from the West, leaving five on one side and eight on the other. Farther: this lowest arcade is terminated by broad flat pilasters, about half the width of its arches; but the arcade above is continuous; only the two extreme arches at the west end are made larger than all the rest, and instead of coming, as they should, into the space of the lower extreme arch, take in both it and its broad pilaster. Even this, however, was not out of order enough to satisfy the architect’s eye; for there were still two arches above to each single one below: so, at the east end, where there were more arches, and the eye might be more easily cheated, what does he do but narrow the two extreme lower arches by half a braccio; while he at the same time slightly enlarged the upper ones, so as to get only seventeen upper to nine lower, instead of eighteen to nine. The eye is thus thoroughly confused, and the whole building thrown into one mass, by the curious variations in the adjustments of the superimposed shafts, not one of which is either exactly in, or positively out of, its place; and to get this managed the more cunningly, there is from an inch to an inch and a half of gradual gain in the space of the four eastern arches, besides the confessed half braccio. Their measures, counting from the east, I found as follows:—

Braccia. Palmi. Inches. 1st 3 0 1 2nd 3 0 2 3rd 3 3 2 4th 3 3 3½

The upper arcade is managed on the same principle: it looks at first as if there were three arches to each under pair; but there are, in reality, only thirty-eight (or thirty-seven, I am not quite certain of this number) to the twenty-seven below; and the columns get into all manner of relative positions. Even then, the builder was not satisfied, but must needs carry the irregularity into the spring of the arches, and

206 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE actually, while the general effect is of a symmetrical arcade, there is not one of the arches the same in height as another; their tops undulate all along the wall like waves along a harbour quay, some nearly touching the string course above, and others falling from it as much as five or six inches. § 14. Let us next examine the plan of the west front of St. Mark’s at Venice, which, though in many respects imperfect, is in its proportions, and as a piece of rich and fantastic colour, as lovely a dream as ever filled human imagination.1 It may, perhaps, however, interest the reader to hear one opposite opinion upon this subject; and after what has been urged in the preceding pages respecting proportion in general, more especially respecting the wrongness of balanced cathedral towers and other regular designs, together with my frequent references to the Doge’s palace, and campanile of St. Mark’s,2 as models of perfection, and my praise of the former especially as projecting above its second arcade, the following extracts from the journal of Woods3 the architect, written on his arrival at Venice, may have a pleasing freshness in them, and may show that I have not been stating principles altogether trite or accepted. “The strange looking church, and the great ugly campanile, could not be mistaken. * * * The exterior of this church surprises you by its extreme ugliness, more than by any thing else.” “The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than any thing I have previously mentioned. Considered in detail, I can imagine no alteration to make it tolerable; but if this lofty wall had been set back behind the two storeys of little arches, it would have been a very noble production.” 1 [Ruskin returned to this subject of the proportions of the façade of St. Mark’s in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. v. §§ 11, 12.] 2 [See above, pp. 111, 167.] 3 [The name is misprinted “Wood” in all previous editions. The references are to Joseph Woods (1776–1864), architect and botanist, whose Letters of an Architect from France, Italy, and Greece appeared in two volumes in 1828. The passages cited in § 14 will be found (1) in vol. i. pp. 255, 256 (asterisks have in this edition been inserted where Ruskin omitted words); (2) i. 261; (3) i. 262: (4) i. 280; (5) i. 427 (asterisks here inserted). Woods’ opinion of St. Mark’s is referred to again in Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. iv. § 28.]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 207 After more observations on “a certain justness of proportion,” and on the appearance of riches and power in the church, to which he ascribes a pleasing effect, he goes on: “Some persons are of opinion that irregularity is a necessary part of its excellence. I am decidedly of a contrary opinion, and am convinced that a regular design of the same sort would be far superior. Let an oblong of good architecture, but not very showy, conduct to a fine cathedral, which should appear between two lofty towers and have two obelisks in front, and on each side of this cathedral let other squares partially open into the first, and one of these extend down to a harbour or sea shore, and you would have a scene which might challenge any thing in existence.” Why Mr. Woods was unable to enjoy the colour of St. Mark’s, or perceive the majesty of the Ducal palace, the reader will see after reading the two following extracts regarding the Caracci and Michael Angelo. “The pictures here (Bologna) are to my taste far preferable to those of Venice, for if the Venetian school surpass in colouring and, perhaps, in composition, the Bolognese is decidedly superior in drawing and expression, and the Caraccis shine here like gods.” “What is it that is so much admired in this artist (M. Angelo)? * * * Some contend for a grandeur of composition in the lines and disposition of the figures; this, I confess, I do not comprehend; yet, while I acknowledge the beauty of certain forms and proportions in architecture, I cannot consistently deny that similar merits may exist in painting, though I am unfortunately unable to appreciate them.” I think these passages very valuable, as showing the effect of a contracted knowledge and false taste in painting upon an architect’s understanding of his own art; and especially with what curious notions, or lack of notions, about proportion, that art has been sometimes practised. For Mr. Woods is by no means unintelligent in his observations generally, and his criticisms on classical art are often most valuable. But those who love Titian better than the Caracci, and who see something

208 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE to admire in Michael Angelo, will, perhaps, be willing to proceed with me to a charitable examination of St. Mark’s. For, although1 the present course of European events2 affords us some chance of seeing the changes proposed by Mr. Woods carried into execution, we may still esteem ourselves fortunate in having first known how it was left by the builders of the eleventh century.3 § 15. The entire front is composed of an upper and lower series of arches, enclosing spaces of wall decorated with mosaic, and supported on ranges of shafts of which, in the lower series of arches, there is an upper range superimposed on a lower. Thus we have five vertical divisions of the façade; i.e. two tiers of shafts, and the arched wall they bear, below; one tier of shafts, and the arched wall they bear, above. In order, however, to bind the two main divisions together, the central lower arch (the main entrance) rises above the level of the gallery and balustrade which crown the lateral arches. The proportioning of the columns and walls of the lower storey is so lovely and so varied, that it would need pages of description before it could be fully understood; but it may be generally stated thus: The height of the lower shafts, upper shafts, and wall, being severally expressed by a, b, and c, then a : c :: c : b (a being the highest); and diameter of shaft b is generally to the diameter of shaft a as height b is to height a, or something less, allowing for the large plinth which diminishes the apparent height of the upper shaft: and when this is their proportion of width, one shaft above is put above one below, with sometimes another upper shaft interposed: but in the extreme arches a single under shaft bears two upper, proportioned as truly as the boughs of a tree; that is to say, the 2 diameter of each upper = /3 of lower. There being 1 [The MS. is again missing from here to the end of the first paragraph of § 15 (“arches”).] 2 [The date was 1848–1849, when the first war of Italian independence was in progress. In 1849, soon after this book appeared, the Austrians besieged and re-took Venice.] 3 [For the dates of St. Mark’s, see Stones of Venice, vol. i. (preface to ed. 1), and vol. ii. ch. iv. § 5.]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 209 thus the three terms of proportion gained in the lower storey, the upper, while it is only divided into two main members, in order that the whole height may not be divided into an even number, has the third term added in its pinnacles. So far of the vertical division. The lateral is still more subtle. There are seven arches in the lower storey; and, calling the central arch a, and counting to the extremity, they diminish in the alternate order, a, c, b, d. The upper storey has five arches, and two added pinnacles; and these diminish in regular order, the central being the largest, and the outermost the least. Hence, while one proportion ascends, another descends, like parts in music; and yet the pyramidal form is secured for the whole, and, which was another great point of attention, none of the shafts of the upper arches stand over those of the lower. § 16. It might have been thought that, by this plan, enough variety had been secured, but the builder was not satisfied even thus: for—and this is the point bearing on the present part of our subject—always calling the central arch a, and the lateral ones b and c in succession, the northern b and c are considerably wider than southern b and c, but the southern d is as much wider than the northern d, and lower beneath its cornice besides; and, more than this, I hardly believe that one of the effectively symmetrical members of the façade is actually symmetrical with any other. I regret that I cannot state the actual measures. I gave up the taking them upon the spot, owing to their excessive complexity, and the embarrassment caused by the yielding and subsidence of the arches. Do not let it be supposed that I imagine the Byzantine workmen to have had these various principles in their minds as they built. I believe they built altogether from feeling, and that it was because they did so, that there is this marvellous life, changefulness, and subtlety running through their every arrangement; and that we reason upon the lovely building as we should upon some fair growth of the trees of the earth, that know not their own beauty. § 17. Perhaps, however, a stranger instance than any I have yet given, of the daring variation of pretended symmetry, III. O

210 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE is found in the front of the Cathedral of Bayeux. It consists of five arches with steep pediments, the outermost filled, the three central with doors; and they appear, at first, to diminish in regular proportion from the principal one in the centre. The two lateral doors are very curiously managed. The tympana of their arches are filled with bas-reliefs in four tiers; in the lowest tier there is in each a little temple or gate containing the principal figure (in that on the right, it is the gate of Hades with Lucifer). This little temple is carried, like a capital, by an isolated shaft 2/ which divides the whole arch at about 3 of its breadth, the larger portion outmost; and in that larger portion is the inner entrance door. This exact correspondence, in the treatment of both gates, might lead us to expect a correspondence in dimension. Not at all. The small inner northern entrance measures, in English feet and inches, 4 ft. 7 in. from jamb to jamb, and the southern, 5 ft. exactly. Five inches in five feet is a considerable variation. The outer northern porch measures, from face shaft to face shaft, 13 ft. 11 in., and the southern, 14 ft. 6 in.; giving a difference of 7 in. on 14½ ft. There are also variations in the pediment decorations not less extraordinary. § 18. I imagine I have given instances enough, though I could multiply them indefinitely, to prove that these variations are not mere blunders, nor carelessnesses, but the result of a fixed scorn, if not dislike, of accuracy in measurements; and, in most cases, I believe, of a determined resolution to work out an effective symmetry by variations as subtle as those of Nature. To what lengths this principle was sometimes carried, we shall see by the very singular management of the towers of Abbeville. I do not say it is right, still less that it is wrong, but it is a wonderful proof of the fearlessness of a living architecture; for, say what we will of it, that Flamboyant of France, however morbid, was as vivid and intense in its animation as ever any phase of mortal mind; and it would have lived till now, if it had not taken to telling lies.1 I have before noticed the general difficulty of managing 1 [See above, concluding §§ of ch. ii., pp. 87–99.]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 211 even lateral division,1 when it is into two equal parts, unless there be some third reconciling member. I shall give, hereafter, more examples of the modes in which this reconciliation is effected in towers with double lights:2 the Abbeville architect put his sword to the knot perhaps rather too sharply. Vexed by the want of unity between his two windows, he literally laid their heads together, and so distorted their ogee curves, as to leave only one of the trefoiled panels above, on the inner side, and three on the outer side of each arch. The arrangement is given in Plate XII., fig. 3. Associated with the various undulation of flamboyant curves below, it is in the real tower hardly observed, while it binds it into one mass in general effect. Granting it, however, to be ugly and wrong, I like sins of the kind, for the sake of the courage it requires to commit them. In Plate II. (part of a small chapel attached to the West front of the Cathedral of St. Lô), the reader will see an instance, from the same architecture, of a violation of its own principles for the sake of a peculiar meaning. If there be any one feature which the flamboyant architect loved to decorate richly, it was the niche—it was what the capital is to the Corinthian order; yet in the case before us there is an ugly beehive put in the place of the principal niche of the arch. I am not sure if I am right in my interpretation of its meaning, but I have little doubt that two figures below, now broken away, once represented an Annunciation; and on another part of the same cathedral, I find the descent of the Spirit, encompassed by rays of light, represented very nearly in the form of the niche in question; which appears, therefore, to be intended for a representation of this effulgence, while at the same time it was made a canopy for the delicate figures below. Whether this was its meaning or not, it is remarkable as a daring departure from the common habits of the time. § 19. Far more splendid is a license taken with the niche decoration of the portal of St. Maclou at Rouen. The subject 1 [See above, ch. iv. §§ 28, 29, pp. 166–169.] 2 [To this subject, however, Ruskin forgot to revert.]

212 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE of the tympanum bas-relief is the Last Judgment, and the sculpture of the Inferno side is carried out with a degree of power whose fearful grotesqueness I can only describe as a mingling of the minds of Orcagna and Hogarth. The demons are perhaps even more awful than Orcagna’s;1 and, in some of the expressions of debased humanity in its utmost despair, the English painter is at least equalled. Not less wild is the imagination which gives fury and fear even to the placing of the figures. An evil angel, poised on the wing, drives the condemned, troops from before the Judgment seat; with his left hand he drags behind him a cloud, which he is spreading like a winding-sheet over them all; but they are urged by him so furiously, that they are driven not merely to the extreme limit of that scene, which the sculptor confined elsewhere within the tympanum, but out of the tympanum and into the niches of the arch; while the flames that follow them, bent by the blast, as it seems, of the angel’s wings, rush into the niches also, and burst up through their tracery, the three lowermost niches being represented as all on fire, while, instead of their usual vaulted and ribbed ceiling, there is a demon in the roof of each, with his wings folded over it, grinning down out of the black shadow. § 20. I have, however, given enough instances of vitality shown in mere daring, whether wise, as surely in this last instance, or inexpedient; but, as a single example of the Vitality of Assimilation, the faculty which turns to its purposes all material that is submitted to it, I would refer the reader to the extraordinary columns of the arcade on the south side of the Cathedral of Ferrara.2 A single arch of it is given in Plate XIII. on the right [fig. 2]. Four such arches forming a group, there are interposed two pairs of columns, as seen on the left of the same plate [fig. 1]; and then come another four arches. It is a long arcade of, I suppose, 1 [For references to Orcagna’s demons, see Modern Painters, vol. ii., in Vol. IV. pp. 159, 201 of this edition.] 2 [For another reference to these shafts, see Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xxvi. § 14.]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 213 not less than forty arches, perhaps of many more; and in the grace and simplicity of its stilted Byzantine curves I hardly know its equal. Its like, in fancy of column, I certainly do not know; there being hardly two correspondent, and the architect having been ready, as it seems, to adopt ideas and resemblances from any sources whatsoever. The vegetation growing up the two columns is fine, though bizarre; the distorted pillars beside it suggest images of less agreeable character; the serpentine arrangements founded on the usual Byzantine double knot are generally graceful; but I was puzzled to account for the excessively ugly type of the pillar, fig. 3, one of a group of four. It so happened, fortunately for me, that there had been a fair in Ferrara; and, when I had finished my sketch of the pillar, I had to get out of the way of some merchants of miscellaneous wares, who were removing their stall. It had been shaded by an awning supported by poles, which, in order that the covering might be raised or lowered according to the height of the sun, were composed of two separate pieces, fitted to each other by a rack, in which I beheld the prototype of my ugly pillar. It will not be thought, after what I have above said of the inexpedience of imitating anything but natural form, that I advance this architect’s practice as altogether exemplary; yet the humility is instructive, which condescended to such sources for motives of thought, the boldness, which could depart so far from all established types of form, and the life and feeling, which out of an assemblage of such quaint and uncouth materials, could produce an harmonious piece of ecclesiastical architecture. § 21. I have dwelt, however, perhaps, too long upon that form of vitality which is known almost as much by its errors as by its atonements for them. We must briefly note the operation of it, which is always right, and always necessary, upon those lesser details, where it can neither be superseded by precedents, nor repressed by proprieties.

214 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE I said, early in this essay, that hand-work might always be known from machine-work;1 observing, however, APHORISM 25. at the same time, that it was possible for men to All good work turn themselves into machines, and to reduce their must be free hand-work.2 labour to the machine level; but so long as men Compare § 24. work as men, putting their heart into what they do, and doing their best, it matters not how bad workmen they may be, there will be that in the handling which is above all price: it will be plainly seen that some places have been delighted in more than others—that there have been a pause, and a care about them; and then there will come careless bits, and fast bits; and here the chisel will have struck hard, and there lightly, and anon timidly; and if the man’s mind as well as his heart went with his work, all this will be in the right places, and each part will set off the other; and the effect of the whole, as compared with the same design cut by a machine or a lifeless hand, will be like that of poetry well read and deeply felt to that of the same verses jangled by rote. There are many to whom the difference is imperceptible; but to those who love poetry it is everything—they had rather not hear it at all, than hear it ill read; and to those who love Architecture, the life and accent of the hand are everything. They had rather not have ornament at all, than see it ill cut—deadly cut, that is. I cannot too often repeat, it is not coarse cutting, it is not blunt cutting, that is necessarily bad; but it is cold cutting—the look of equal trouble everywhere—the smooth, diffused tranquillity of heartless pains—the regularity of a plough in a level field. The chill is more likely, indeed, to show itself in finished work than in any other—men cool and tire as they complete: and if completeness is thought to be vested in polish, and to be attainable by help of sand paper, we may as well give the work to the engine lathe at once. 1 [See above, ch. ii. §§ 19, 20, pp. 81, 84.] 2 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “I said, early in this essay . . .” down to “oftener got by rough than by fine handling.”]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 215 But right finish is simply the full rendering of the intended impression; and high finish is the rendering of a well intended and vivid impression; and it is oftener got by rough than fine handling. I am not sure whether it is frequently enough observed that sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of any thing in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. The sculptor must paint with his chisel: half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form: they are touches of light and shadow; and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness. In a coarse way, this kind of execution is very marked in old French woodwork; the irises of the eyes of its chimeric monsters being cut boldly into holes, which, variously placed, and always dark, give all kinds of strange and startling expressions, averted and askance, to the fantastic countenances. Perhaps the highest examples of this kind of sculpture-painting are the works of Mino da Fiesole; their best effects being reached by strange angular, and seemingly rude, touches of the chisel. The lips of one of the children on the tombs in the church of the Badia,1 appear only half finished when they are seen close; yet the expression is farther carried, and more ineffable, than in any piece of marble I have ever seen, especially considering its delicacy, and the softness of the child-features. In a sterner kind, that of the statues in the sacristy of St. Lorenzo2 equals it, and there again by incompletion. I know no example of work in which the forms are absolutely true and complete where such a result is attained; (in Greek sculptures it is not even attempted.*) * The sentence in parenthesis is entirely false; all the rest of the paragraph true and important. The manner of the Greek in chiselling has since been examined at length in my Aratra Pentelici. [1880, when the words were placed in parenthesis.]

1 [See the description, from Ruskin’s note-book of 1845, given in Vol. IV. p. 280 n.] 2 [For Ruskin’s admiration of these works by Michael Angelo, see Modern Painters, vol. ii., Vol. IV. p. 282 of this edition.]

216 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 22. It is evident that, for architectural appliances, such masculine handling, likely as it must be to retain its effectiveness when higher finish would be injured by time, must always be the most expedient; and as it is impossible, even were it desirable, that the highest finish should be given to the quantity of work which covers a large building, it will be understood how precious the Intelligence must become, which renders incompletion itself a means of additional expression; and how great must be the difference, when the touches are rude and few, between those of a careless and those of a regardful mind. It is not easy to retain anything of their character in a copy; yet the reader will find one or two illustrative points in the examples, given in Plate XIV., from the basreliefs of the north door of Rouen Cathedral. There are three square pedestals under the three main niches on each side of it, and one in the centre; each of these being on two sides decorated with five quatrefoiled panels. There are thus seventy quatrefoils in the lower ornament of the gate alone, without counting those of the outer course round it, and of the pedestals outside: each quatrefoil is filled with a bas-relief, the whole reaching to something above a man’s height. A modern architect would, of course, have made all the five quatrefoils of each pedestal-side equal: not so the Mediæval. The general form being apparently a quatrefoil composed of semicircles on the sides of a square, it will be found on examination that none of the arcs are semicircles, and none of the basic figures squares. The latter are rhomboids, having their acute or obtuse angles uppermost according to their larger or smaller size; and the arcs upon their sides slide into such places as they can get in the angles of the enclosing parallelogram, leaving intervals, at each of the four angles, of various shapes, which are filled each by an animal. The size of the whole panel being thus varied, the lowest two of the five are tall, the next two short, and the uppermost a little higher than the lowest; while in the course of bas-reliefs which surrounds the gate, calling either of the lowest two (which are equal) a, and either of the next two b, and the fifth and sixth c and d, then d

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 217 (the largest) : c :: c : a :: a : b. It is wonderful how much of the grace of the whole depends on these variations. § 23. Each of the angles, it was said, is filled by an animal. There are thus 70 x 4=280 animals, all different, in the mere fillings of the intervals of the bas-reliefs.1 Three of these intervals, with their beasts, actual size, the curves being traced upon the stone, I have given in Plate XIV. I say nothing of their general design, or of the lines of the wings and scales, which are perhaps, unless in those of the central dragon, not much above the usual commonplaces of good ornamental work; but there is an evidence in the features of thoughtfulness and fancy which is not common, at least now-a-days. The upper creature on the left is biting something, the form of which is hardly traceable in the defaced stone—but biting he is; and the reader cannot but recognise in the peculiarly reverted eye the expression which is never seen, as I think, but in the eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and preparing to start away with it: the meaning of the glance, so far as it can be marked by the mere incision of the chisel, will be felt by comparing it with the eye of the couchant figure on the right, in its gloomy and angry brooding. The plan of this head, and the nod of the cap over its brow, are fine; but there is a little touch above the hand especially well meant: the fellow is vexed and puzzled in his malice; and his hand is pressed hard on his cheek bone, and the flesh of the cheek is wrinkled under the eye by the pressure. The whole,2 indeed, looks wretchedly coarse, when it is seen on a scale in which it is naturally compared with delicate figure etchings; but considering it as a mere filling of an interstice on the outside of a cathedral gate, and as one of more than three hundred (for in my estimate I did not include the outer pedestals), it proves very noble vitality in the art of the time. 1 [For some further calculations and measurements with regard to these carvings, see Theodore Andrea Cook’s Story of Rouen, 1899, pp. 122–124.] 2 [The MS. reads :— “. . . pressure. The dragon in the centre, ready for a spring, is very fierce and fine, the wrinkles about the mouth especially. There indeed seems nothing remarkable in it when it is seen . . .”]

218 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 24. I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this: Was it done with enjoyment—was the carver happy while he was about it?1 It may be the hardest work possible, and the harder because so much pleasure was taken in it; but it must have been happy too, or it will not be living. How much of the stone mason’s toil this condition would exclude I hardly venture to consider, but the condition is absolute. There is a Gothic church lately built near Rouen,2 vile enough, indeed, in its general composition, but excessively rich in detail; many of the details are designed with taste, and all evidently by a man who has studied old work closely. But it is all as dead as leaves in December; there is not one tender touch, not one warm stroke on the whole façade. The men who did it hated it, and were thankful when it was done. And so long as they do so they are merely loading your walls with shapes of clay: the garlands of everlastings in Père la Chaise are more cheerful ornaments. You cannot get the feeling by paying for it—money will not buy life. I am not sure even that you can get it by watching or waiting for it. It is true that here and there a workman may be found who has it in him, but he does not rest contented in the inferior work—he struggles forward into an Academician; and from the mass of available handicraftsmen the power is gone—how recoverable I know not: this only I know, that all expense devoted to sculptural ornament, in the present condition of that power, comes literally under the head of Sacrifice for the sacrifice’s sake, or worse.3 1 [Here Ruskin approaches a side of the question which he was afterwards to develop: see “The Nature of Gothic,” Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi. § 12, and the summary of his architectural teaching in Fors Clavigera, Letter 78: “the dependence of all human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy life of the workman.” Cf. Introduction, above, p. xliv.] 2 [The pilgrimage church of N. D. de Bonsecours, 2 miles from Rouen, built in 1840–1842 in the style of the thirteenth century.] 3 [The MS. inserts:— “(for dead ornament is to my mind the most dismal mourning that a building can wear). I am grieved, therefore, when I hear of any attempts at the building of florid Gothic; we have it not in us, and it will need severe discipline before we gain it.” The bracketed passage is struck out. Below, for “stamped metals” the MS. has “stamped leathers.”]

CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 219 I believe the only manner of rich ornament that is open to us is the geometrical colour-mosaic, and that much might result from our strenuously taking up this mode of design. But, at all events, one thing we have in our power—the doing without machine ornament and cast-iron work. All the stamped metals, and artificial stones, and imitation woods and bronzes, over the invention of which we hear daily exultation—all the short, and cheap, and easy ways of doing that whose difficulty is its honour—are just so many new obstacles in our already encumbered road. They will not make one of us happier or wiser—they will extend neither the pride of judgment nor the privilege of enjoyment. They will only make us shallower in our understandings, colder in our hearts, and feebler APHORISM in our wits. And most justly. For we are not sent into 26. this world to do any thing into which we cannot put “Whatsoever thy hand find- our hearts. We have certain work to do for our bread, eth to do, do it and that is to be done strenuously; other work to do with thy might;” and no other for our delight, and that is to be done heartily: neither might.1 is to be done by halves and shifts, but with a will; and what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all. Perhaps all that we have to do is meant for nothing more than an exercise of the heart and of the will, and is useless in itself; but, at all events, the little use it has may well be spared if it is not worth putting our hands and our strength to. It does not become our immortality to take an ease inconsistent with its authority, nor to suffer any instruments with which it can dispense, to come between it and the things it rules: and he who would form the creations of his own mind by any other instrument than his own hand, would also, if he might, give grinding organs to Heaven’s angels, to make their music easier. There is dreaming enough, and earthiness enough, and sensuality enough in human existence, without our 1 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “We have certain work to do . . .” down to the end of the chapter.]

220 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE turning the few glowing moments of it into mechanism; and since our life must at the best be but a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes away,1 let it at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, not as the thick darkness that broods over the blast of the Furnace, and rolling of the Wheel. 1 [James iv. 14.]

CHAPTER VI

THE LAMP OF MEMORY § 1. AMONG the hours of his life to which the writer looks back with peculiar gratitude, as having been marked by more than ordinary fulness of joy or clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years ago, near time of sunset, among the broken masses of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain, above the village of Champagnole, in the Jura.1 It is a spot 1 [The first note of the impressions recorded in this section occurs in Ruskin’s diary of 1846:— “CHAMPAGNOLE, April 19.—. . . I have been walking in the woods beside the river on the ascent towards St. Laurent, and I have never seen anything like the luxuriance of the wood anemone and oxalis; I think Shelley’s “pearled Arcturi of the earth” would apply better to the anemone than the daisy, for the star shape is seen more definitely at a little distance, and reminded me over and over again of constellations. The oxalis is, however, the more exquisite flower, two or three vertical and dark clefts in the limestone being filled with them as with snow, and touched with ivy besides, like the rock of Titian’s St. Jerome, ivy lighter and lovelier in leaf than ours, one wreath of it upon a pine trunk looking like vine; and the ground all blue with violets besides, and cowslips in sunny clusters, and wild strawberries, though these had only come into blossom on one high rock in the more open sunshine, and raspberries (these rarer) all on cushions of moss richer than I ever saw even among the Alps, with clusters of beech stem and ash—chiefly the latter, glittering among the solemn pine trunks; and in the more open ground the vetch and comfrey and mezereon, and a lovely four-petaled lilac flower in clusters on a long stalk, and the delicate blue flower that I found on the granite rocks of the Glacier des Bois, though this seemed not in a place of its liking. And when I got to the edge of the ravine, and an abrupt one it is enough (seen on the right in the dark sketch of yesterday in the little book), and commanded the steep and far ridges of the higher Jura, there was a hawk sailing slowly along the opposite cliff, just off the brow of it so as to get the deep river under him, and the solemn roar of the water came up from beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pine branches. I felt it more than usual, but it struck me suddenly how utterly different the impression of such a scene would be, if it were in a strange land, and in one without history; how dear to the feeling is the pine of Switzerland compared to that of Canada. I have allowed too little weight to these deep sympathies, for I think if that pine forest had been among the Alleghenys, or if the stream had been Niagara, I should only have looked at them with intense melancholy and desire for home.”] Shelley’s line—“Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth”—occurs in the poem of 1820, entitled “The Question.” For Ruskin’s fondness for the Oxalis acetosella, see Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 9 n. (Vol. III. p. 175 of this edition, and

221

222 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE which has all the solemnity, with none of the savageness, of the Alps; where there is a sense of a great power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained; and the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters from some far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the stern expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forest; no pale, defiled, or furious rivers send their rude and changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well-known beds; and under the dark quietness of the undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of among all the blessings of the earth. It was spring time, too; and all were coming forth in clusters crowded for very love; there was room enough for all, but they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the wood anemone, star after star, closing every now and then into nebulæ; and there was the oxalis, troop by troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie,1 the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up with them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy on the edges—ivy as light and

cf. Vol. IV. p. 172 n.). For Titian’s “St. Jerome,” see Vol. III. p. 180, Vol. IV. p. 247. The “little book” mentioned in line 20 of the extract is of course one of Ruskin’s sketch-books. With the general sentiment of § 1 contrast Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. ch. iv. § 8 (Vol. IV. p. 71 and n.), and cf. as to the power of local associations, The Two Paths, § 12 (“Stand fast, Craig Ellachie”). See also Præterita, i. ch. ix. § 191, where Ruskin refers to the connection between admiration of natural beauty and human sympathy.] 1 [Ruskin on his continental journeys must often have seen the processions of girls in white frocks with blue ribbons in honour of the Virgin with which every Catholic church, even in the poorest and most remote districts, celebrates the first of May. In later years he initiated a May Queen Festival at Whitelands Training College.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 223 lovely as the vine; and, ever and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip bells in sunny places; and in the more open ground, the vetch, and comfrey, and mezereon, and the small sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the wild strawberry, just a blossom or two, all showered amidst the golden softness of deep, warm, amber-coloured moss. I came out presently on the edge of the ravine: the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly from beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among the pine boughs; and, on the opposite side of the valley, walled all along as it was by grey cliffs of limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off their brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and with the shadows of the pines flickering upon his plumage from above; but with the fall of a hundred fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of the green river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, their foam globes1 moving with him as he flew. It would be difficult to conceive a scene less dependent upon any other interest than that of its own secluded and serious beauty; but the writer well remembers the sudden blankness and chill which were cast upon it when he endeavoured, in order more strictly to arrive at the sources of its impressiveness, to imagine it, for a moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New Continent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, the river its music;* the hills became oppressively desolate; a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened forest showed how much of their former power had been dependent upon a life which was not theirs, how much of the glory of the imperishable, or continually renewed, creation is reflected from things more precious in their memories than it, in its renewing.2 Those ever springing flowers and ever flowing streams had * Yet not all their light, nor all its music. Cf. Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. 1, chap. iv. sub. sec. 8.3

1 [An expression much in favour with Ruskin in his earlier pieces: see references collected at Vol. II. p. 62 n.] 2 [The MS. has, “things whose memorial is more precious than their being.” And below, “dyed and made sacred by . . .”] 3 [This was note 15 at end of the book in eds 1 and 2; omitted in later editions. The note was an afterthought of the author; see letter to W. H. Harrison, in Appendix i., p. 276.]

224 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, valour, and virtue; and the crests of the sable hills that rose against the evening sky received a deeper worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over the iron walls of Joux, and the four-square keep of Granson.1 § 2. It is as the centralisation and protectress of this sacred influence, that Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought. We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her.2 How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!—how many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another! The ambition of the old Babel builders was well directed for this world:3 there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality: it is well to have, not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personality with doubt. Not so that of Pericles: and the day is coming when we shall confess, that we have learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments of her sculpture than even4 from her sweet singers or soldier historians.5 And if indeed there be 1 [The present Fort de Joux—erected in 1877 after the blowing up by dynamite of the old one—commands the pass of La Cluse, on the line from Pontarlier to Neuchâtel. The old fort was the prison (1803) of Toussaint l’Ouverture, when carried off from St. Domingo by command of Napoleon. For the Castle of Granson (Grandson)—now a cigar factory—and its interest for Ruskin, see his Poems, Vol. II. p. 433 of this edition.] 2 [The MS. adds, “remember, that is to say, with the full revivifying sense of the past.”] 3 [Genesis xi. 4: “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”] 4 [So in all the editions; but Ruskin may have written “ever.”] 5 [The MS. thus continues:— “The desire for an individual, personal immortality in men’s memories is perhaps one of the most generally developed forms of human pride. Men sacrifice their lives to it continually. But the desire for a national immortality is with us as vague as the more selfish passion is distinct. Perhaps men doubt the liability of a nation to death, but if it have no architecture, it may be said to die daily. And if indeed . . .”]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 225 any profit in our knowledge of the past, or any joy in the thought of being remembered hereafter, which can APHORISM give strength to present exertion, or patience to present 27. Architecture endurance, there are two duties respecting national is to be made architecture whose importance it is impossible to historical and preserved as overrate: the first, to render the architecture of the day, such.1 historical; and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of inheritances, that of past ages. § 3. It is in the first of these two directions that Memory may truly be said to be the Sixth Lamp of Architecture; for it is in becoming memorial or monumental that a true perfection is attained by civil and domestic buildings; and this partly as they are, with such a view, built in a more stable manner, and partly as their decorations are consequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning. As regards domestic buildings, there must always be a certain limitation to views of this kind in the power, as well as in the hearts, of men; still I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only. There is a sanctity in a good man’s house which cannot be renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruins: and I believe that good men would generally feel this; and that having spent their lives happily and honourably, they would be grieved, at the close of them, to think that the place of their earthly abode, which had seen, and seemed almost to sympathise in, all their honour, their gladness, or their suffering,—that this, with all the record it bare of them, and of all material things that they had loved and ruled over, and set the stamp of themselves upon—was to be swept away, as soon as there was room made for them in the grave; that no respect was to be shown to it, no affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by their children; that though there was a monument in the church, there was no warm monument in the hearth and house to them; that all that they ever 1 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “And if indeed there be any profit . . .” down to the end of § 2.] VIII. P

226 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE treasured was despised, and the places that had sheltered and comforted them were dragged down to the dust. I say that a good man would fear this; and that, far more, a good APHORISM 28. son, a noble descendant, would fear doing it to his The sanctity father’s house. I say that if men lived like men of home, for good men.1 indeed, their houses would be temples—temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in which it would make us holy to be permitted to live; and there must be a strange dissolution of natural affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes have given and parents taught, a strange consciousness that we have been unfaithful to our fathers’ honour, or that our own lives are not such as would make our dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution of his own life only.2 And I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital—upon those thin, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered wood and imitated stone—upon those gloomy rows of formalised minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as solitary as similar—not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground; that those comfortless and unhonoured dwellings are the signs of a great and spreading spirit of popular discontent; that they mark the time when every man’s aim is to be in some more elevated sphere than his natural one, and every man’s past life is his habitual scorn; when men build in the hope of leaving the places they have built, and live in the hope of forgetting the years that they have lived; when the comfort, the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt; and the crowded 1 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “I say that if men lived . . .” down to the end of § 3.] 2 [To the sentiment of this passage Ruskin often recurred; see, for instance, Lectures on Architecture and Painting, § 50, and Lectures on Art, § 122.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 227 tenements of a struggling and restless population differ only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change. § 4. This is no slight, no consequenceless evil; it is ominous, infections, and fecund of other fault and misfortune. When men do not love their hearths, nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have dishonoured both, and that they have never acknowledged the true universality of that Christian worship which was indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man’s dwelling; let men look to it when they rend it lightly and pour out its ashes.1 It is not a question of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and with what aspect of durability and of completeness, the domestic buildings of a nation shall be raised. It is one of those moral duties, not with more impunity to be neglected because the perception of them depends on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to build our dwellings with care, and patience, and fondness, and diligent completion, and with a view to their duration at least for such a period as, in the ordinary course of national revolutions, might be supposed likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction of local interests. This at the least; but it would be better if, in every possible instance, men built their own houses on a scale commensurate rather with their condition at the commencement, than their attainments at the termination, of their worldly career; and built them to stand as long as human work at its strongest can be hoped to stand; recording to their children what they had been, and from what, if so it had been permitted them, they had risen. And when houses are thus built, we may have that true domestic 1 [Cf. Sesame and Lilies, § 68: “So far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, . . . so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, of Home.”]

228 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE architecture, the beginning of all other, which does not disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the small habitation as well as the large, and which invests with the dignity of contented manhood the narrowness of worldly circumstance. § 5. I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peaceful self-possession, this abiding wisdom of contented life, as probably one of the chief sources of great intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as the very primal source of the great architecture of old Italy and France. To this day, the interest of their fairest cities depends, not on the isolated richness of palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite decoration of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. The most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a small house at the head of the Grand Canal, consisting of a ground floor with two storeys above, three windows in the first, and two in the second.1 Many of the most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, and of no larger dimensions. One of the most interesting pieces of fifteenth century architecture in North Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind the market-place of Vicenza;2 it bears date 1481, and the motto, Il. n’est. rose. sans. épine.; it has also only a ground floor and two storeys, with three windows in each, separated by rich flower-work, and with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiæ. The idea that a house must be large in order to be well built, is altogether of modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be historical, except of a size admitting figures larger than life. § 6. I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as may be, within and without; with what degree of likeness to each other in style and manner, I will say presently, under 1 [The Palazzo Contarini-Fasan, remarkable “as showing how much beauty and dignity may be bestowed on a very small and unimportant dwelling-house”: see Stones of Venice, vol. iii., Venetian Index.] 2 [The Casa Pigafetta, in the Contrada della Luna. The actual inscription is, “Il n’est rose sans espines,” and “K. L. Augusti.” It was inhabited by the celebrated navigator Antonio Pigafetta, one of the companions of Magellan. The family still exists at Vicenza.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 229 another head;1 but, at all events, with such differences as might suit and express each man’s character and occupation, and partly his history. This right over the house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respected by his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be left in places, to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its experience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of monument, and developing, into more systematic instructiveness, that good custom which was of old universal, and which still remains among some of the Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of God’s permission to build and possess a quiet resting-place, in such sweet words as may well close our speaking of these things. I have taken them from the front of a cottage lately built among the green pastures which descend from the village of Grindelwald to the lower glacier :—

“Mit herzlichem Vertrauen Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi Dieses Haus bauen lassen. Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren Vor allem Unglück und Gefahren, Und es in Segen lassen stehn Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese, Wo alle Frommen wohnen, Da wird Gott sie belohnen Mit der Friedenskrone Zu alle Ewigkeit.”2

§ 7. In public buildings the historical purpose should be still more definite. It is one of the advantages of Gothic architecture,—I use the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to classical,—that it admits of a richness of record altogether unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations afford means of expressing, either symbolically or literally, all that need be known 1 [See below, ch. vii. § 3, pp. 251–252.] 2 [The inscription may be thus literally translated:—“With heartfelt trust Have Johannes Mooter and Maria Rubi Had this house built. The dear God will shield us From all misfortune and danger, And let it stand in blessedness On the journey, through this time of sorrow, To the heavenly Paradise, Where all good people dwell, There will God reward them With the Crown of Peace To all eternity.”]

230 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE of national feeling or achievement. More decoration will, indeed, be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and much, even in the most thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of some national bearing or symbol.1 It is, however, generally unwise, even in mere surface ornament, to surrender the power and privilege of variety which the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in important features—capitals of columns or bosses, and string-courses, as of course in all confessed bas-reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention. Actual representation of history has in modern times been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but steadfast; that of unmanageable costume:2 nevertheless, by a sufficiently bold imaginative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may be vanquished; not perhaps in the degree necessary to produce sculpture in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to become a grand and expressive element of architectural composition. Take, for example, the management of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice. History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, but every capital of its arcades was filled with meaning.3 The large one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to the symbolisation of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its treatment to its decorative purpose. The figures, if the subject had been entirely composed of them, would have awkwardly interrupted 1 [The MS. continues:— “Everything under such circumstances depends upon the beauty, and much on the simplicity of the emblem itself. The giglio rosso of Florence may be set as thick over a wall surface as lilies in their own field; so might our own rose, as richly as it studs its native briar, but we must beware of multiplying a Queen’s Arms.” See above, Chap. iv. § 8, p. 147.] 2 [Cf., in the case of portrait painting, Modern Painters, vol. ii., Vol. IV. p. 189 of this edition.] 3 [For further account of the capitals here described, see Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 231 the line of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength; and therefore in the midst of them, entirely without relation to them, and indeed actually between the executioner and interceding mother, there rises the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the whole. The capital below bears among its leafage a throned figure of Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle “che die legge,” and one or two other subjects now unintelligible from decay.1 The capitals next in order represent the virtues and vices in succession, as preservative or destructive of national peace and power, concluding with Faith, with the inscription “Fides optima in Deo est.” A figure is seen on the opposite side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After these, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds (Plate V.), and then come a series representing, first the various fruits, then the national costumes, and then the animals of the various countries subject to Venetian rule.2 § 8. Now, not to speak of any more important public building, let us imagine our own India House3 adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical sculpture: massively built in the 1 [This is capital No. 36 in the Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 127, where the inscription is given as “Aristot * * che die lege” (“Aristotle who declares law”).] 2 [The MS. continues (with reference to a further intended illustration):— “I have given one of the simplest of the first capitals in fig.—. I am sorry that I have not a drawing of its opposite side, for the group of figs. which appear upon it are expressed with peculiar truth, though by few and simple lines. They look flaccid and breaking with ripeness. The peaches have tried the sculptor, but they are like peaches; and the modesty of the intitular inscription above is altogether unnecessary.” The capital here referred to is No. 27 in the description in the Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. viii. § 125, where Ruskin says that the names of the various fruits are inscribed above them, “somewhat unnecessarily, and with certainly as much disrespect to the beholder’s intelligence as the sculptor’s art.”] 3 [The old East India House in Leadenhall Street, pulled down in 1862, was in the classical style, with a portico of six large Ionic fluted columns on a raised basement. The pediment was an emblematic sculpture representing the commerce of the East protected by the King of Great Britain. The new Government Offices, including the India Office, were, it will be remembered, built—after a long “battle of the styles”—by Scott and Digby Wyatt in the Italian style. A good many sculptured figures were introduced—representing in the case of the India Office, various Indian tribes, with busts of British Indian worthies. A characteristic letter from Ruskin (August 18, 1859) on the battle of the styles above referred to is included in the privately printed volume of Letters upon Subjects of General Interest to Various Correspondents, 1892, p. 23, reprinted in a later volume of this edition.]

232 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE first place; then chased with bas-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings of Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones; and the more important members of its decoration composed of groups of Indian life and landscape, and prominently expressing the phantasms of Hindoo worship in their subjection to the Cross.1 Would not one such work be better than a thousand histories?2 If, however, we have not the invention necessary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one of the most noble excuses we can offer for our deficiency in such matters, we have less pleasure in talking about ourselves, even in marble, than the Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any want of care in the points which insure the building’s endurance. And as this question is one of great interest in its relations to the choice of various modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it at some length. § 9. The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can be supposed to extend beyond their own generation. They may look to posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labour for its praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit, and demand its justice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would gladly support our presently disputed claims. The idea APHORISM . 29. of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of The earth is an practising present economy for the sake of entail, not a possession. debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our Compare § 20.3 descendants may live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly recognised motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties; 1 [A subject which would be of special interest to the author of Salsette and Elephanta: see Vol. II. p. 100.] 2 [The MS. adds, “and make that be felt and beheld which words can only record?”] 3 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “The idea of self-denial . . .” down to the end of § 9.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 233 nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our intended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the companions but the successors of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is one of the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, in proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of what we have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the measure of our success. Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can benefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so far as from the grave. § 10. Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect, for futurity. Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, when we build, let us think that we build for ever. Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say as they look upon the labour and wrought substance of them, “See! this our fathers did for us.”1 For, indeed, the greatest glory of a building is not in its stones, 1 [It will be remembered that the general title chosen by Ruskin for the projected series, of which “The Bible of Amiens” was alone completed, was “Our Fathers have told us.”]

234 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE nor in its gold.1 Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of APHORISM voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious 2 30. sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten and following ages with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of nations: it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much as these possess, of language and of life. § 11. For that period, then, we must build; not, indeed, refusing to ourselves the delight of present completion, nor hesitating to follow such portions of character as may depend upon delicacy of execution to the highest perfection of which they are capable, even although we may know that in the course of years such details must perish; but taking care that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, and that the building shall not depend for its impressiveness upon any thing that is perishable. This would, indeed, be the law of 1 [The MS. adds “,it is not in its fair columns or fine front.”] 2 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “For, indeed, the greatest glory . . .” down to the end of § 10. In his Notes on Prout and Hunt (1879), Ruskin reprinted in an Appendix this § 10, and also §§ 16, 17; and referring (Preface, § 23) to their justification of the love of ruggedness in buildings—“dependent on just reverence for signs of antiquity,”—added that “openness of joint and roughness of masonry are not exclusively signs of age or decay,” and that he “did not at that time enough insist on the propriety, and even the grace, of such forms of literal ‘rustication ’ as are compelled by coarseness of materials.”]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 235 good composition under any circumstances, the arrangement of the larger masses being always a matter of greater importance than the treatment of the smaller; but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the probable effects of time: and (which is still more to be considered) there is a beauty in those effects themselves, which nothing else can replace, and which it is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For though, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of age only, there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, such and so great as to have become not unfrequently the subject of especial choice among certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the character usually and loosely expressed by the term “picturesque.” It is of some importance to our present purpose to determine the true meaning of this expression, as it is now generally used; for there is a principle to be developed from that use which, while it has occultly been the ground of much that is true and just in our judgment of art, has never been so far understood as to become definitely serviceable. Probably no word in the language, (exclusive of theological expressions,) has been the subject of so frequent or so prolonged dispute; yet none remain more vague in their acceptance, and it seems to me to be a matter of no small interest to investigate the essence of that idea which all feel, and (to appearance) with respect to similar things, and yet which every attempt to define has, as I believe, ended either in mere enumeration of the effects and objects to which the term has been attached, or else in attempts at abstraction more palpably nugatory than any which have disgraced metaphysical investigation on other subjects. A recent critic on Art, for instance, has gravely advanced the theory that the essence of the picturesque consists in the expression of “universal decay.”1 It would be curious to see the result 1 [The passage as copied out in Ruskin’s diary is as follows:—“Universal decay is the essence of the picturesque. In landscape, therefore, the picturesque stands in the same relation to the beautiful and sublime that the pathetic does to them in poetry.”]

236 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE of an attempt to illustrate this idea of the picturesque, in a painting of dead flowers and decayed fruit; and equally curious to trace the steps of any reasoning which, on such a theory, should account for the picturesqueness of an ass colt as opposed to a horse foal. But there is much excuse for even the most utter failure in reasonings of this kind, since the subject is, indeed, one of the most obscure of all that may legitimately be submitted to human reason; and the idea is itself so varied in the minds of different men, according to their subjects of study, that no definition can be expected to embrace more than a certain number of its infinitely multiplied forms. § 12. That peculiar character, however, which separates the picturesque from the characters of subject belonging to the higher walks of art (and this is all that it is necessary for our present purpose to define), may be shortly and decisively expressed. Picturesqueness, in this sense, is Parasitical Sublimity.1 Of course all sublimity, as well as all beauty, is, in the simple etymological sense, picturesque, that is to say, fit to become the subject of a picture; and all sublimity is, even in the peculiar sense which I am endeavouring to develope, picturesque, as opposed to beauty; that is to say, there is more picturesqueness in the subject of Michael Angelo than of Perugino, in proportion to the prevalence of the sublime element over the beautiful.2 But that character, of which the extreme pursuit is generally admitted to be degrading to art, is parasitical sublimity; i.e. a sublimity dependent on the accidents, or on the least essential characters, of the objects to which it belongs; and the picturesque is developed distinctively exactly in proportion to the distance from the centre of thought of those points of character in which the sublimity is found. Two ideas, therefore, are essential to picturesqueness,—the first, that of sublimity (for pure beauty is not picturesque at all, and becomes so only as the sublime 1 [Cf. Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. iii. § 35, and Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. i.] 2 [The MS. adds the following footnote:— “I admit this distinction, however, only as between things included and including. High beauty cannot exist without, and includes, sublimity. Sublimity does not necessarily include beauty.”]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 237 element mixes with it), and the second, the subordinate or parasitical position of that sublimity. Of course, therefore, whatever characters of line or shade or expression are productive of sublimity, will become productive of picturesqueness; what these characters are I shall endeavour hereafter to show at length;1 but, among those which are generally acknowledged, I may name angular and broken lines, vigorous oppositions of light and shadow, and grave, deep, or boldly contrasted colour; and all these are in a still higher degree effective, when, by resemblance or association, they remind us of objects on which a true and essential sublimity exists, as of rocks or mountains, or stormy clouds or waves. Now if these characters, or any others of a higher and more abstract sublimity, be found in the very heart and substance of what we contemplate, as the sublimity of Michael Angelo depends on the expression of mental character in his figures far more than even on the noble lines of their arrangement, the art which represents such characters cannot be properly called picturesque: but, if they be found in the accidental or external qualities, the distinctive picturesque will be the result. § 13. Thus, in the treatment of the features of the human face by Francia or Angelico, the shadows are employed only to make the contours of the features thoroughly felt; and to those features themselves the mind of the observer is exclusively directed (that is to say, to the essential characters of the thing represented). All power and all sublimity rest on these; the shadows are used only for the sake of the features. On the contrary, by Rembrandt, Salvator, or Caravaggio, the features are used for the sake of the shadows; and the attention is directed, and the power of the painter addressed, to characters of accidental light and shade cast across or around those features. In the case of Rembrandt there is often an essential sublimity in invention and expression besides, and always a high degree of it in the light and shade itself; but it is, for 1 [A promise partly fulfilled in the Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. iii. §§ 35–37, and in the later volumes of Modern Painters, but a good deal of Ruskin’s materials on the sublime was not embodied in his published works: see Vol. IV., Appendix i., pp. 368–371.]

238 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE the most part, parasitical or engrafted sublimity as regards the subject of the painting, and, just so far, picturesque. § 14. Again, in the management of the sculptures of the Parthenon, shadow is frequently employed as a dark field on which the forms are drawn. This is visibly the case in the metopes, and must have been nearly as much so in the pediment. But the use of that shadow is entirely to show the confines of the figures; and it is to their lines, and not to the shapes of the shadows behind them, that the art and the eye are addressed. The figures themselves are conceived, as much as possible, in full light, aided by bright reflections; they are drawn exactly as, on vases, white figures on a dark ground; and the sculptors have dispensed with, or even struggled to avoid, all shadows which were not absolutely necessary to the explaining of the form. On the contrary, in Gothic sculpture, the shadow becomes itself a subject of thought. It is considered as a dark colour, to be arranged in certain agreeable masses; the figures are very frequently made even subordinate to the placing of its divisions: and their costume is enriched at the expense of the forms underneath, in order to increase the complexity and variety of the points of shade. There are thus, both in sculpture and painting, two, in some sort, opposite schools, of which the one follows for its subject the essential forms of things, and the other the accidental lights and shades upon them. There are various degrees of their contrariety: middle steps, as in the works of Correggio, and all degrees of nobility and of degradation in the several manners: but the one is always recognised as the pure and the other as the picturesque school. Portions of picturesque treatment will be found in Greek work, and of pure and unpicturesque in Gothic; and in both there are countless instances, as pre-eminently in the works of Michael Angelo, in which shadows become valuable as media of expression, and therefore take rank among essential characteristics. Into these multitudinous distinctions and exceptions I cannot now enter, desiring only to prove the broad applicability of the general definition.

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 239 § 15. Again, the distinction will be found to exist, not only between forms and shades as subjects of choice, but between essential and inessential forms. One of the chief distinctions between the dramatic and picturesque schools of sculpture is found in the treatment of the hair. By the artists of the time of Pericles* it was considered as an excrescence, indicated by few and rude lines, and subordinated, in every particular, to the principality of the features and person. How completely this was an artistical, not a national idea, it is unnecessary to prove. We need but remember the employment of the Lace-dæmonians, reported by the Persian spy on the evening before the battle of Thermopylæ,1 or glance at any Homeric description of ideal form, to see how purely sculpturesque was the law which reduced the markings of the hair, lest, under the necessary disadvantages of material, they should interfere with the distinctness of the personal forms. On the contrary, in later sculpture,2 the hair receives almost the principal care of the workman; and, while the features and limbs are clumsily and bluntly executed, the hair is curled and twisted, cut into bold and shadowy projections, and arranged in masses elaborately * This subordination was first remarked to me by a friend, to whose profound knowledge of Greek art I owe many obligations: Mr. C. Newton, now Consul at Mitylene.3

1 [Herodotus, vii. 208. The Persian spy saw, among the Lacedæmonians, “some of the men practising athletic exercises and some combing their long hair.” Which things he reported to the King: “for they have a custom which is as follows;—whenever they are about to put their lives in peril, then they attend to the arrangement of their hair.”] 2 [For “in later sculpture” the MS. has “in Roman work, and in greater degree as that extreme of contrariety is approached,” and again in § 16, for “the debased sculptor’s choice” the MS. has “the Roman choice.”] 3 [Note 16 at the end of the book in eds. 1 and 2; omitted in later editions. In ed. 1 the note reads :— “This subordination was first remarked to me by a friend, whose profound knowledge of Greek art will not, I trust, be reserved always for the advantage of his friends only: Mr. C. Newton, of the British Museum.” For Ruskin’s friendship for Sir Charles Thomas Newton, D. C. L., LL. D., K. C. B., see Præterita, ii. ch. viii. § 155. Newton entered the Museum in 1840 as assistant in the department of antiquities, and Ruskin often visited him there (see Vol. IV., Introduction, p. xx., and see Stones of Venice, vol. i., Appendix 21). In 1851 Newton was appointed Vice-Consul at Mitylene, and he remained in the East for ten years, carrying on his famous excavations. In ed. 2 Ruskin’s note was, therefore, altered as shown above. From 1861 to 1885 he was Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Museum. In 1861 he married the distinguished painter, Ann Mary, daughter of Joseph Severn and sister of Mr. Arthur Severn; her portrait, painted by herself, is in the National Portrait Gallery.]

240 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE ornamental: there is true sublimity in the lines and the chiaroscuro of these masses, but it is, as regards the creature represented, parasitical and therefore picturesque.1 In the same sense we may understand the application of the term to modern animal painting, distinguished as it has been by peculiar attention to the colours, lustre, and texture of skin; nor is it in art alone that the definition will hold. In animals themselves, when their sublimity depends upon their muscular forms or motions, or necessary and principal attributes, as perhaps more than all others in the horse, we do not call them picturesque, but consider them as peculiarly fit to be associated with pure historical subject. Exactly in proportion as their character of sublimity passes into excrescences;—into mane and beard as in the lion, into horns as in the stag, into shaggy hide as in the instance above given of the ass colt,2 into variegation as in the zebra, or into plumage,—they become picturesque, and are so in art exactly in proportion to the prominence of these excrescential characters. It may be often most expedient that they should be prominent; often there is in them the highest degree of majesty, as in those of the leopard and boar; and in the hands of men like Tintoret and Rubens, such attributes become means of deepening the very highest and most ideal impressions. But the picturesque direction of their thoughts is always distinctly recognisable, as clinging to the surface, to the less essential character, and as developing out of this a sublimity different from that of the creature itself; a sublimity which is, in a sort, common to all the objects of creation, and the same in its constituent elements, whether it be sought in the clefts and folds of shaggy hair, or in the chasms and rents of rocks, or in the hanging of thickets or hill sides, or in the alternations of gaiety and gloom in the variegation of the shell, the plume, or the cloud. § 16. Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens that, in architecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is most commonly inconsistent with the preservation 1 [For other references to the treatment of hair in art, see Vol. IV. p. 328.] 2 [See above, § 11, p. 236.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 241 of original character, and the picturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist in decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in the mere sublimity of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those circumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by the eye of man. So far as this is done, to the extinction of the true characters of the architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who looks to the stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculptor’s choice of the hair instead of the countenance. But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous sublimity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it than that of any other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, of that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of the building consists; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory, having power and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere sensible beauty, may be considered as taking rank among pure and essential characters; so essential to my mind, that I think a building cannot be considered as in its prime until four or five centuries have passed over it; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its details should have reference to their appearance after that period, so that none should be admitted which would suffer material injury either by the weatherstaining, or the mechanical degradation which the lapse of such a period would necessitate. § 17. It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which the application of this principle involves. They are of too great interest and complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits,1 but this is broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture which are picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of points of shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but 1 [The MS. adds, “(and I am besides engaged at present with the proof of general principles only, which I hope to apply hereafter).”] VIII. Q

242 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE commonly gain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away; hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always be adopted when the materials to be employed are liable to degradation, as brick, sandstone, or soft limestone; and styles in any degree dependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be practised altogether in hard and undecomposing materials, granite, serpentine, or crystalline marbles. There can be no doubt that the nature of the accessible materials influenced the formation of both styles; and it should still more authoritatively determine our choice of either. § 18. It does not belong to my present plan to consider at length the second head of duty of which I have above spoken; the preservation of the architecture we possess: APHORISM 31. but a few words may be forgiven, as especially Restoration, so necessary in modern times. Neither by the public, called, is the worst manner of nor by those who have the care of public Destruction.1 monuments, is the true meaning of the word restoration understood. It means the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed.* Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled. Another spirit may be given by another time, and it is then a new building; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up, and commanded to direct other hands, and other thoughts. And as for direct and simple copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying can there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down? The * False, also, in the manner of parody,—the most loathsome manner of falsehood. [1880.]

1 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “Neither by the public, . . .” down to “than ever will be out of re-built Milan” in § 19.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 243 whole finish of the work was in the half inch that is gone; if you attempt to restore that finish, you do it conjecturally; if you copy what is left, granting fidelity to be possible, (and what care, or watchfulness, or cost can secure it,) how is the new work better than the old? There was yet in the old some life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had been, and of what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which rain and sun had wrought. There can be none in the brute hardness of the new carving. Look at the animals which I have given in Plate XIV., as an instance of living work, and suppose the markings of the scales and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall ever restore them? The first step to restoration, (I have seen it, and that again and again—seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa d’ Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,)1 is to dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all cases, however careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, a cold model of such parts as can be modelled, with conjectural supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or even attempted.2 1 [For the destructive “restoration” of the Baptistery at Pisa, see Ruskin’s letter of 1845, cited in Vol. IV. p. 38. In another letter he describes the process at the Casa d’ Oro :— “(VENICE, Sept. 23, 1845).—You cannot imagine what an unhappy day I spent yesterday before the Casa d’Oro—vainly attempting to draw it while the workmen were hammering it down before my face. It would have put me to my hardest possible shifts at any rate,—for it is intolerably difficult, and the intricacy of it as a study of colour unconceivable. If I had had the whole Grand Canal to myself to do it, it would have been no more than I wanted, but fancy trying to work while one sees the cursed plasterers hauling up beams and dashing in the old walls and shattering the mouldings, and pulling barges across your gondola bows and driving you here and there, up and down and across; and all the while with the sense that now one’s art is not enough to be of the slightest service, but that in ten years more one might have done such glorious things.” Ruskin was at Lisieux in 1848; he mentions above the destructive restoration of the northern tower (p. 128).] 2 [The Palais de Justice, begun 1493, was restored, and added to, 1842–52. Some portion of the work done in those years is now (1903) being removed, and the building

244 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE § 19. Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as your cast might have the skeleton, with what advantage I neither see nor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a mass of clay: more has been gleaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan. But, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place. And look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may prevent it. The principle of modern times, (a principle which, I believe, at least in France, to be systematically acted on by the masons, in order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled down by the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants,)1 is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. A few sheets of lead put in time upon a roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls from ruin. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Count its stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at the gates of a besieged city; bind it together

“restored” (in the better sense of the word) to its original design. See, for its history, Theodore Andrea Cook’s Story of Rouen, pp. 277 seq.] 1 [The reference is to the destructive “restoration” of the church in the years 1846–52, when the two flanking towers of the west front—set diagonally and carried up only for 50 feet, with three deep-set portals—were pulled down, and the front was rebuilt by Viollet-le-Duc, who made no attempt to follow the original design. A drawing of the original west front is given at p. 236 of T. A. Cook’s Story of Rouen, where also full particulars of the building and its history will be found.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 245 with iron where it loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid: better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its evil day must come at last; but let it come declaredly and openly, and let no dishonouring and false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory.1 § 20. Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to speak; my words will not reach those who commit them,* and yet, be it heard or not, I must not leave the truth unstated, that it is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past times or not. We have no right whatever to touch them. They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow us. The dead have still their right in them: that which they laboured for, the praise of achievement or the expression of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might be which in those buildings they intended to be permanent, we have no right to obliterate. What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to throw down; but what other men gave their strength and wealth and life to accomplish, their right over does not pass away with their death; still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in us only. It belongs to all their successors. It may hereafter be a subject of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have consulted our present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose to dispense with. That sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict. Did the cathedral of Avranches belong * No, indeed!—any more wasted words than mine throughout life, or bread cast on more bitter waters, I never heard of. This closing paragraph of the sixth chapter is the best, I think, in the book,—and the vainest. [1880.]

1 [The MS. adds, “Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof” (Psalm cii. 14).]

246 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE to the mob who destroyed it, any more than it did to us, who walk in sorrow to and fro over its foundation?1 Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who do violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always; it matters not whether enraged, or in deliberate folly; whether countless, or sitting in committees; the people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair building is necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so until Central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex: nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruction. If ever valid, certainly not now, when the place both of the past and future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and discontented present. The very quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn from us; thousands who once in their necessarily prolonged travel were subjected to an influence, from the silent sky and slumbering fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear with them even there the ceaseless fever of their life; and along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the city gates. The only influence which can in any wise there take the place of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancient Architecture.2 Do not part with it for the sake of the formal square, or of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly street nor opened quay. The pride of a city is not in these. Leave them to the crowd; but 1 [The old cathedral, one of the noblest in Normandy, was pulled down, to prevent its falling, in 1799. All traces of the church were swept away, except only a broken column, marking the spot where Henry II. of England did penance before the Papal Legates in 1172 for the murder of Becket.] 2 [Cf. Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. xxx. § 6, where this function of Architecture in modern life is further dwelt upon.]

CH. VI THE LAMP OF MEMORY 247 remember that there will surely be some within the circuit of the disquieted walls who would ask for some other spots than these wherein to walk; for some other forms to meet their sight familiarly: like him who sat so often where the sun struck from the west, to watch the lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the places where their fathers lay at rest, at the meeting of the dark streets of Verona.1 1 [For the first of these allusions to Dante, see Rogers’s Italy (“Florence”) and Turner’s vignette; the second allusion is to Dante in exile, at the court of Can Grande, and to the tombs of the Scaligers (see Verona and its Rivers).]

CHAPTER VII

THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE1 § 1. IT has been my endeavour to show in the preceding pages how every form of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing this, I have named a principle to which I would now assign a definite place among those which direct that embodiment; the last place, not only as that to which its own humility would incline, but rather as belonging to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest; that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stability, Life its happiness, Faith its acceptance, Creation its continuance,—Obedience. Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfaction which I have found in the pursuit of a APHORISM 32. subject that at first appeared to bear but slightly on There is no such thing as the grave interests of mankind, that the conditions liberty.2 of material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty:3 most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason 1 [There are two MSS. relating to opening passages of this chapter; one is that of the text as published; the other contains two portions of an earlier draft, for which see Appendix ii., p. 286.] 2 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “Nor is it the least . . .” down to “our heaviest punishment.”] 3 [To illustrate this doctrine fully from Ruskin’s other works would be to refer to them all. He learnt the lesson of the “phantom,” he tells us, in the nursery. He wanted “to touch the tea-urn which was boiling merrily.” His mother bade him keep his fingers back, but he did not obey, and she said, “Let him touch it, Nurse.” “That was my first lesson in the meaning of the word Liberty” (The Story of Arachne, § 3, in Verona and its Rivers, 1894, p. 35). In his reflections on politics, induced by the reading of Italian history, the lesson was re-inforced. See the letter of 1845 quoted below, p. 262. And so in the most deliberate writings of his later period: “Liberty—of which nothing but evil ever comes, or can come” (Lectures on Art, § 184).] 248

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 249 might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment. In one of the noblest poems1 for its imagery and its music belonging to the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in the aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, having once loved, he has seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. But with what strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one noble line of his invocation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and acknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less severe because eternal. How could be otherwise? since if there be any one principle more widely than another confessed by every utterance, or more sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the visible creation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law. § 2. The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he meant the Law of Liberty. Then why use the single and misunderstood word? If by liberty you mean chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, subjection of the will; if you mean the fear of inflicting, the shame of committing a wrong; if you mean respect for all who are in authority, and consideration for all who are in dependence; veneration for the good, mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak; if you mean watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all pleasures, and perseverance in all toils; if you mean, in a word, that Service which is defined in the liturgy of the English Church to be perfect Freedom,2 why do you name this by the same word by which the luxurious mean license,3 1 [See author’s note below, at end of the text, p. 271.] 2 [The Second Collect, for Peace, in the Order for Morning Prayer.] 3 [So Milton in the second of his sonnets, “On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises:”— “That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood, And still revolt when Truth would set them free. Licence they mean when they cry Liberty; For who loves that must first be wise and good.”

250 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE and the reckless mean change; by which the rogue means rapine, and the fool, equality;1 by which the proud mean anarchy, and the malignant mean violence? Call it by any name rather than this, but its best and truest is Obedience. Obedience is, indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only granted that obedience may be more perfect; and thus, while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit the individual energies of things, the fairness and pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its banks with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that are scattered over the face of the whole heaven with those that are marshalled into ranks and orders by its winds. So that though restraint, utter and unrelaxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in itself an evil, but only because, when too great, it overpowers the nature of the thing restrained, and so counteracts the other laws of which that nature is itself composed. And the balance wherein consists the fairness of creation is between the laws of life and being in the things governed, and the laws of general sway to which they are subjected; and the suspension or infringement of either kind of law, or, literally, disorder, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, disease; while the increase of both honour and beauty is habitually on the side of restraint (or the action of superior law) rather than of character (or the action of inherent law). The noblest word in the catalogue of social virtue is “Loyalty,” and the sweetest which men have learned in the pastures of the wilderness is “Fold.”2 § 3. Nor is this all; but we may observe, that exactly in proportion to the majesty of things in the scale of being, is the completeness of their obedience to the laws that are set over them.3 Gravitation is less quietly, less instantly obeyed by a 1 [See above, ch. iv. § 28, p. 167.] 2 [See Stones of Venice, vol. iii. ch. ii. § 87, where some modifications of the Lamp of Obedience are stated.] 3 [See Queen of the Air, § 148, where the common house-fly is taken as the best type of “a perfectly free creature”; and The Two Paths, § 191, where the fish is similarly instanced.]

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 251 grain of dust than it is by the sun and moon; and the ocean falls and flows under influences which the lake and river do not recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better test than the question “are its laws strait?” For their severity will probably be commensurate with the greatness of the numbers whose labour it concentrates or whose interest it concerns. This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case of that art, above all others, whose productions are the most vast and the most common; which requires for its practice the co-operation of bodies of men, and for its perfection the perseverance of successive generations. And, taking into account also what we have before so often observed of Architecture, her continual influence over the emotions of daily life, and her realism, as opposed to the two sister arts which are in comparison but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we might beforehand expect that we should find her healthy state and action dependent on far more severe laws than theirs: that the license which they extend to the workings of individual mind would be withdrawn by her; and that, in assertion of the relations which she holds with all that is universally important to man, she would set forth, by her own majestic subjection, some likeness of that on which man’s social happiness and power depend. We might, therefore, without the light of experience, conclude, that Architecture never could flourish except when it was subjected to a national law as strict and as minutely authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, policy, and social relations; nay, even more authoritative than these, because both capable of more enforcement, as over more passive matter; and needing more enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of another, but of the common authority of all. But in this matter experience speaks more loudly than reason. If there be any one condition which, in watching the progress of architecture, we see distinct and general; if, amidst the counter-evidence of success attending opposite accidents of character and circumstance, any one conclusion may be constantly and indisputably drawn, it is this;

252 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE that the architecture of a nation is great only when it is as universal and as established as its language; and when provincial differences of style are nothing more than so many dialects. Other necessities are matters of doubt: nations have been alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty and of wealth; in times of war and of peace; in times of barbarism and of refinement; under governments the most liberal or the most arbitrary; but this one condition has been constant, this one requirement clear in all places and at all times, that the work shall be that of a school, that no individual caprice shall dispense with, or materially vary, accepted types and customary decorations; and that from the cottage to the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and from the garden fence to the fortress wall, every member and feature of the architecture of the nation shall be as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as its language or its coin.1 § 4. A day never passes without our hearing our English architecture called upon to be original, and to invent a new style:2 about as sensible and necessary an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had rags enough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a new mode of cutting a coat. Give him a whole coat first, and let him concern himself about the fashion of it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. Who wants a new style of painting or sculpture? But we want some style. It is of marvellously little importance, if we have a code of laws and they be good laws, whether they be new or old, foreign or native, Roman or Saxon, or Norman, or English laws. But it is of considerable importance that we should have a code of laws of one kind or another, and that 1 [Here, as so often, Ruskin in revising made the endings of his paragraphs more effective. The MS. shows that in the first draft he continued: “and its principles as openly and undisputingly acknowledged as those of its criminal legislation.” With the idea in § 3, cf. the preface to St. Mark’s Rest.] 2 [In the second fragment of MS. above referred to (p. 248 n.) this passage runs:— “A day does not pass, a lecture is never recorded in our public journals without some call upon English architects to do something of their own—to be original—to create an English style, and to perform other feats and marvels of a novel description . . .” Cf. Two Paths, § 102, where Ruskin again chastises “the perpetual, empty, idle, incomparably idiotic talk about the necessity of some novelty in architecture.”]

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 253 code accepted and enforced from one side of the island to another, and not one law made ground of judgment at York and another in Exeter. And in like manner it does not matter one marble splinter whether we have an old or new architecture, but it matters everything whether we have an architecture truly so called or not; that is, whether an architecture whose laws might be taught at our schools from Cornwall to Northumberland, as we teach English spelling and English grammar, or an architecture which is to be invented fresh every time we build a workhouse or a parish school. There seems to me to be a wonderful misunderstanding among the majority of architects of the present day as to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of all wherein it consists. Originality in expression does not depend on invention of new words; nor originality in poetry on invention of new measures; nor, in painting, on invention of new colours, or new modes of using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of colour, the general principles of the arrangement of sculptural masses, have been determined long ago, and, in all probability, cannot be added to any more than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, such additions or alterations are much more the work of time and of multitudes than of individual inventors. We may have one Van Eyck, who will be known as the introducer of a new style once in ten centuries, but he himself will trace his invention to some accidental by-play or pursuit;1 and the use of that invention will depend altogether on the popular necessities or instincts of the period. Originality depends on nothing of the kind. A man who has the gift, will take up any style that is going, the style of his day, and will work in that, and be great in that, and make everything that he does in it look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come down from heaven. I do not say that he will not take liberties with his materials, or with his rules: I do not say that strange changes will not 1 [Ruskin had at this time been reviewing Eastlake’s History of Oil Painting; for the traditional account of Van Eyck’s accidental discovery of the method, see that review, in On the Old Road, 1899, vol. i. § 116.]

254 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE sometimes be wrought by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But those changes will be instructive, natural, facile, though sometimes marvellous; they will never be sought after as things necessary to his dignity or to his independence; and those liberties will be like the liberties that a great speaker takes with the language, not a defiance of its rules for the sake of singularity; but inevitable, uncalculated, and brilliant consequences of an effort to express what the language, without such infraction, could not. There may be times when, as I have above described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, and in its refusal of ancient limitations: so there are in the life of an insect; and there is great interest in the state of both the art and the insect at those periods when, by their natural progress and constitutional power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as that would be both an uncomfortable and foolish caterpillar which, instead of being contented with a caterpillar’s life and feeding on caterpillar’s food, was always striving to turn itself into a chrysalis; and as that would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie awake at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to turn itself prematurely into a moth; so will that art be unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of supporting itself on the food, and contenting itself with the customs, which have been enough for the support and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is struggling and fretting under the natural limitations of its existence, and striving to become something other than it is. And though it is the nobility of the highest creatures to look forward to, and partly to understand the changes which are appointed for them, preparing for them beforehand; and if, as is usual with appointed changes, they be into a higher state, even desiring them, and rejoicing in the hope of them, yet it is the strength of every creature, be it changeful or not, to rest, for the time being, contented with the conditions of its existence, and striving only to bring about the changes which it desires, by fulfilling to the utter-most the duties for which its present state is appointed and continued.

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 255 § 5. Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good though both may be, and this is commonly a most merciful and enthusiastic supposition with respect to either, is ever to be sought in itself, or can ever be healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion against common laws. We want neither the one nor the other. The forms of architecture already known are good enough for us, and for far better than any of us: and it will be time enough to think of changing them for better when we can use them as they are. But there are some things which we not only want, but cannot do without; and which all the struggling and raving in the world, nay more, which all the real talent and resolution in England, will never enable us to do without: and these are Obedience, Unity, Fellowship, and Order. And all our schools of design, and committees of taste; all our academies and lectures, and journalisms, and essays; all the sacrifices which we are beginning to make, all the truth which there is in our English nature, all the power of our English will, and the life of our English intellect, will in this matter be as useless as efforts and emotions in a dream, unless we are contented to submit architecture and all art, like other things, to English law. § 6. I say architecture and all art; for I believe architecture must be the beginning of arts, and that the others must follow her in their time and order; and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting and sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, though many the health, depends upon that of our architecture. I think that all will languish until that takes the lead, and (this I do not think, but I proclaim, as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the safety of society, of an understood and strongly administered legal government) our architecture will languish, and that in the very dust, until the first principle of common sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal system of form and workmanship be everywhere adopted and enforced. It may be said that this is impossible. It may be so—I fear it is so: I have nothing to do with the possibility or impossibility of it; I simply know and assert the necessity of it. If it be impossible,

256 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE English art is impossible. Give it up at once. You are wasting time, and money, and energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries and treasuries, and break hearts for it, you will never raise it above the merest dilettanteism. Think not of it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere gulph in which genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will not close.1 And so it will continue to be, unless the one bold and broad step be taken at the beginning. We shall not manufacture art out of pottery and printed stuffs: we shall not reason out art by our philosophy; we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, nor create it by our fancies: I do not say that we can even build it out of brick and stone; but there is a chance for us in these, and there is none else; and that chance rests on the bare possibility of obtaining the consent, both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, and to use it universally. § 7. How surely its principles ought at first to be limited, we may easily determine by the consideration of the necessary 1 [The MS. continues here as follows:— “We have had two in the present century, two magnificent and mighty—William Blake and J. M. W. Turner. I do not speak of the average genius of the higher ranks of human mind, of that glitter and play of dominant capacity which in all ages is the adornment and light of each living department of literature and of art. We have seen many of those light waves of the wide human sea, and we shall have their like again in the renewed swelling of its tides. I speak not of them, but of the Great Pharoses of the moving wilderness, those towering and solitary beacons whose tops are seen from above, and beyond the morning cloud and the evening horizon. We have had only two of these built for us; two men who if they had been given to us in a time of law, and of recognized discipline, if they had had either teaching in their youth, or reverence in their manhood, might have placed our age on a level with the proudest periods of creative art. But what have they done for us? The influence of the one is felt as much as the weight of last winter’s snow: and that of the other has been so shortened by our dulness, and distorted by our misapprehension, that it may be doubted whether it has wrought among us more of good or of evil.” The passage is of interest as showing Ruskin’s appreciation of Blake (1757–1827) at a time when the cult of the poet-painter had not yet arisen. (Gilchrist’s Life did not appear till 1863.) In Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xvi. § 10 n., Ruskin refers to Blake as “sincere, but full of wild creeds and somewhat diseased in brain.” In the Elements of Drawing, § 157, his “Book of Job” is included among “Things to be Studied.” In the Eagle’s Nest, § 21, Blake’s poetry is referred to as “the words of a great and wise mind . . . and sometimes giving forth in fiery aphorism some of the most precious words of existing literature.” But he was “driven into discouraged disease” (Ariadne Florentina, Appendix i., where he is again coupled with Turner); he lived in “a conscientious agony of beautiful purpose and warped power” (Queen of the Air, § 159). For other references to him, see The Cestus of Aglaia, §§ 4, 59, and Fors Clavigera, Letter 74.]

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 257 modes of teaching any other branch of general knowledge. When we begin to teach children writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require absolute accuracy in the formation of the letters; as they obtain command of the received modes of literal expression, we cannot prevent their falling into such variations as are consistent with their feeling, their circumstances, or their characters. So, when a boy is first taught to write Latin, an authority is required of him for every expression he uses; as he becomes master of the language he may take a license, and feel his right to do so without any authority, and yet write better Latin than when he borrowed every separate expression. In the same way our architects would have to be taught to write the accepted style. We must first determine what buildings are to be considered Augustan in their authority; their modes of construction and laws of proportion are to be studied with the most penetrating care; then the different forms and uses of their decorations are to be classed and catalogued, as a German grammarian classes the powers of prepositions; and under this absolute, irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work; admitting not so much as an alteration in the depth of a cavetto, or the breadth of a fillet. Then, when our sight is once accustomed to the grammatical forms and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the expression of them all; when we can speak this dead language naturally, and apply it to whatever ideas we have to render, that is to say, to every practical purpose of life; then, and not till then, a license might be permitted, and individual authority allowed to change or to add to the received forms, always within certain limits; the decorations, especially, might be made subjects of variable fancy, and enriched with ideas either original or taken from other schools. And thus, in process of time, and by a great national movement, it might come to pass that a new style should arise, as language itself changes; we might perhaps come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak modern instead of old English; but this would be a matter of entire indifference, and a matter, besides, which no determination or desire could VIII. R

258 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE either hasten or prevent. That alone which it is in our power to obtain, and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous style of some kind, and such comprehension and practice of it as would enable us to adapt its features to the peculiar character of every several building, large or small, domestic, civil, or ecclesiastical. I have said that it was immaterial what style was adopted, so far as regards the room for originality which its development would admit: it is not so, however, when we take into consideration the far more important questions of the facility of adaptation to general purposes, and of the sympathy with which this or that style would be popularly regarded. The choice of Classical or Gothic, again using the latter term in its broadest sense, may be questionable when it regards some single and considerable public building;1 but I cannot conceive it questionable, for an instant, when it regards modern uses in general: I cannot conceive any architect insane enough to project the vulgarization of Greek architecture. Neither can it be rationally questionable whether we should adopt early or late, original or derivative Gothic; if the latter were chosen, it must be either some impotent and ugly degradation, like our own Tudor, or else a style whose grammatical laws it would be nearly impossible to limit or arrange, like the French Flamboyant. We are equally precluded from adopting styles essentially infantine or barbarous, however Herculean their infancy, or majestic their outlawry, such as our own Norman, or the Lombard Romanesque. The choice would lie I think between four styles:—1. The Pisan Romanesque; 2. The early Gothic of the Western Italian Republics, advanced as far and as fast as our art would enable us to the Gothic of Giotto; 3. The Venetian Gothic in its purest development; 4. The English earliest decorated. The most natural, perhaps the safest choice, would be of the last, well fenced from chance of again stiffening into the perpendicular; and perhaps enriched by some mingling of decorative elements from the 1 [See above, note 3 on p. 231.]

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 259 exquisite decorated Gothic of France, of which, in such cases, it would be needful to accept some well-known examples, as the North door of Rouen1 and the church of St. Urbain at Troyes,2 for final and limiting authorities on the side of decoration. § 8. It is almost impossible for us to conceive, in our present state of doubt and ignorance, the sudden dawn APHORISM of intelligence and fancy, the rapidly increasing sense 33. of power and facility, and, in its proper sense, of The glory and use of Freedom, which such wholesome restraint would restraint.3 instantly cause throughout the whole circle of the arts. Freed from the agitation and embarrassment of that liberty of choice which is the cause of half the discomforts of the world; freed from the accompanying necessity of studying all past, present, or even possible styles; and enabled, by concentration of individual, and co-operation of multitudinous energy, to penetrate into the uttermost secrets of the adopted style, the architect would find his whole understanding enlarged, his practical knowledge certain and ready to hand, and his imagination playful and vigorous, as a child’s would be within a walled garden,4 who would sit down and shudder if he were left free in a fenceless plain. How many and how bright would be the results in every direction of interest, not to the arts merely, but to national happiness and virtue, it would be as difficult to preconceive as it would seem extravagant to state: but the first, perhaps the least, of 1 [For which see above, pp. 89, 216.] 2 [The Church of St. Urbain was founded by Pope Urban IV., son of a shoemaker of Troyes (1261–1266) on the site of his father’s house. It was never finished beyond the choir and nave, and has now been restored. Ruskin went to Troyes on his way home in 1846, and made “notes on the external tracery of St. Urbain, which fixed that church for me as the highest type of Gothic construction, and took me off all Italian models for the next four years” (Præterita, ii. ch. x. § 191). M. Viollet le Duc endorses Ruskin’s opinion of the church. “L’église S. Urbain est certainement,” he says, “la dernière limite à laquelle la construction de pierre puisse atteindre, et, comme composition architectonique, c’est un chef-d’œuvre.” It contains, also, some fine glass, which Ruskin noted in his diary.] 3 [The text of this aphorism, in black-letter in the 1880 edition, is from “It is almost impossible for us . . .” down to “endeavour to trace them further.”] 4 [As was the case with Ruskin himself as a child, within the walled garden at Herne Hill: see Præterita, vol. i. ch. ii. (“Herne Hill Apple Blossoms”).]

260 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE them would be an increased sense of fellowship among ourselves, a cementing of every patriotic bond of union, a proud and happy recognition of our affection for and sympathy with each other, and our willingness in all things to submit ourselves to every law that could advance the interest of the community; a barrier, also, the best conceivable, to the unhappy rivalry of the upper and middle classes, in houses, furniture, and establishments; and even a check to much of what is as vain as it is painful in the oppositions of religious parties respecting matters of ritual. These, I say, would be the first consequences. Economy increased tenfold, as it would be by the simplicity of practice; domestic comforts uninterfered with by the caprice and mistakes of architects ignorant of the capacities of the styles they use, and all the symmetry and sightliness of our harmonized streets and public buildings, are things of slighter account in the catalogue of benefits. But it would be mere enthusiasm to endeavour to trace them farther.* I have suffered myself too long to indulge in the speculative statement of requirements which perhaps we have more immediate and more serious work than to supply, and of feelings which it may be only contingently in our power to recover. I should be unjustly thought unaware of the difficulty of what I have proposed, or of the unimportance of the whole subject as compared with many which are brought home to our interests and fixed upon our consideration by the wild course of the present century. But of difficulty and of importance it is for others to judge. I have limited myself to the simple statement of what, if we desire to have architecture, we MUST primarily endeavour to feel and do: but then it may not be desirable for us to have architecture at all. There are many who feel it to be so; many who sacrifice much to that end; and I am sorry to see * I am well content to close my thirty-three aphorisms with this most comprehensive one;—and my fifty-five notes with this still more comprehensive reduction of them to practice for the modern reader:—Build nothing that you can possibly help,—and let no land on building leases. [1880.]

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 261 their energies wasted and their lives disquieted in vain. I have stated, therefore, the only ways in which that end is attainable, without venturing even to express an opinion as to its real desirableness. I have an opinion, and the zeal with which I have spoken may sometimes have betrayed it, but I hold to it with no confidence. I know too well the undue importance which the study that every man follows must assume in his own eyes, to trust my own impressions of the dignity of that of Architecture; and yet I think I cannot be utterly mistaken in regarding it as at least useful in the sense of a National employment. I am confirmed in this impression by what I see passing among the states of Europe at this instant. All the horror, distress, and tumult which oppress the foreign nations, are traceable, among the other secondary causes through which God is working out His will upon them, to the simple one of their not having enough to do.1 I am not blind to the distress among their operatives; nor do I deny the nearer and visibly active causes of the movement: the recklessness of villainy in the leaders of revolt, the absence of common moral principle in the upper classes, and of common courage and honesty in the heads of governments. But these causes themselves are ultimately traceable to a deeper and simpler one: the recklessness of the demagogue, the immorality of the middle class, and the effeminacy and treachery of the noble, are traceable in all these nations to the commonest and most fruitful cause of calamity in households—idleness. We think too much in our benevolent efforts, more multiplied and more vain day by day, of bettering men by giving them advice and instruction. There are few who will take either: the chief thing they need is occupation. I do not mean work in the sense of bread,—I mean work in the sense of mental interest;2 for those who either 1 [For Ruskin’s observations to this effect, see his lines “Written among the Basses Alpes” (1845), Vol. II. p. 238; and the passage from his letter from France quoted below, p. 263.] 2 [Ruskin’s political views were already, it will be seen, beginning to take their ultimate shape, and to wear a positive, as well as a negative, aspect. He was opposed to Liberty in the sense of absence of restraint, but he was beginning to see the

262 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE are placed above the necessity of labour for their bread, or who will not work although they should. There is a vast quantity of idle energy among European nations at this time, which ought to go into handicrafts; there are multitudes of idle semi-gentlemen who ought to be shoemakers and carpenters; but since they will not be these so long as they can help it, the business of the philanthropist is to find them some other employment than disturbing governments. It is of no use to tell them they are fools, and that they will only make themselves miserable in the end as well as others: if they have nothing else to do, they will do mischief; and the man who will not work, and who has no means of intellectual pleasure, is as sure to become an instrument of evil as if he had sold himself bodily to Satan. I have myself seen enough of the daily life of the young educated men of France and Italy,1 to account for, as it deserves, the deepest national necessity of Liberty in the positive sense of freedom to make the best of themselves, secured to the citizens of a state by wise government. He was not satisfied either with the republican short cuts of 1848, of which he witnessed the effects in France in that year, or with benevolent despotism, such as he had studied in Florence in 1845. The passage in the text is illustrated by a letter written to his father in that year :— “BAVENO, Aug. 24, 1845.—. . . I wanted to explain what I meant by saying, a letter or two back, that I was getting more republican. I didn’t, you see, mean more of liberty man—of all curses that poor, vicious, idiotic man can suffer, liberty is perhaps the greatest; but if one can be made to govern oneself, the exertion required to do so brings out a fine creature. Of all governments I have ever seen at work, that of Florence seems to me at present the worst; and it is in its form, not in its head, for the Duke [Leopold II.] is a good sort of person enough. The people are quiet under him and happy; so are the frogs and the lice; and there is about as much mind and worthiness in the one as in the other. I have heard it said that if the fields of a country are well cultivated and its markets well supplied (and they are at Florence), the government was assuredly good. But it is not enough to make a government good, that its markets be well supplied—if it has turned its people into vegetables.”] 1 [Ruskin often made notes of his observation of such points in his letters home and in his diaries. The following passage in a letter to his father from Rouen (Oct. 2, 1848) will serve as an example:— “Certainly I saw nothing good at Caen. I went to a café, to get my sketching, regularly. The first day I went there, about eleven o’clock, in the upper room (sanded all over to conceal spitting) there followed me upstairs a party of five young men, decently enough dressed, who sat down to drink beer, smoke, and play at cards. We all continued our occupations for about an hour and a half, when one of them having risen and come to the window to see what I was about, I put aside my drawing (after allowing him to see it) and began conversation by saying what a happy country France was or must

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 263 suffering and degradation; and though, for the most part, our commerce and our national habits of industry preserve us from a similar paralysis, yet it would be wise to consider whether the forms of employment which we chiefly adopt or promote, are as well calculated as they might be to improve and elevate us. We have just spent, for instance, a hundred and fifty millions, with which we have paid men for digging ground from one place and depositing it in another. We have formed a large class of men, the railway navvies, especially reckless, unmanageable, and dangerous. We have maintained besides (let us state the benefits as fairly as possible) a number of ironfounders in an unhealthy and painful employment; we have developed (this is at least good) a very large amount of mechanical ingenuity; and we have, in fine, attained the power of going fast from one place to another. Meantime we have had no mental interest or concern ourselves in the operations we have set on foot, but have been left to the usual vanities and cares of our existence. Suppose, on the other hand, that we had employed the same sums in building beautiful houses and churches. We should have maintained

be—in comparison of England—where the young men could afford the time and the money to spend in cafés from eleven to one, who with us would be compelled to work for their bread. He blushed considerably, and said it always happened more on Saturday, which was a kind of holiday. ‘Then, ’ I said, ‘on Sunday—to-morrow—of course you go to church. ’ ‘Jamais, ’ he answered, but not in a spirit of bravado: on the contrary, looking fidgetty and uncomfortable. ‘Never at all? ’ I said. ‘Jamais. ’ ‘Then, I suppose you do not believe in God. ’ ‘Oh yes, certainly. ’ ‘Well, but then do not the priests tell you that you should go to church? ’ ‘Ah yes, but enfin, ce n’est pas la coutume içi. ’ ‘Well, ’ I said, looking all the while very innocent, and as if I asked for information—’then, of course you say your prayers in the morning and when you go to bed? ’ He looked round at this to his companions who were still drinking their beer, but had left off their game at cards to listen. The question was received with a laugh indeed, but not an insolent one (as I expected); they seemed very much astonished and a good deal ashamed and partly puzzled to know what I was at, and partly amused at the evident discomfort of the person immediately addressed, who replied hesitatingly, ‘Non, non, nous ne prions jamais, c’est à dire—enfin—on fait la prière quand on est triste. ’ ” Ruskin carried his missionary enterprise further, and meeting the same young man again a day or two after, “ventured to suggest to him that he would find the Bible a very interesting book, and . . . reading it quite as entertaining as card-playing in the morning.”]

264 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE the same number of men, not in driving wheelbarrows, but in a distinctly technical, if not intellectual employment; and those who were more intelligent among them would have been especially happy in that employment, as having room in it for the development of their fancy, and being directed by it to that observation of beauty which, associated with the pursuit of natural science, at present forms the enjoyment of many of the more intelligent manufacturing operatives. Of mechanical ingenuity, there is, I imagine, at least as much required to build a cathedral as to cut a tunnel or contrive a locomotive: we should, therefore, have developed as much science, while the artistical element of intellect would have been added to the gain. Meantime we should ourselves have been made happier and wiser by the interest we should have taken in the work with which we were personally concerned; and when all was done, instead of the very doubtful advantage of the power of going fast from place to place, we should have had the certain advantage of increased pleasure in stopping at home. § 9. There are many other less capacious, but more constant, channels of expenditure, quite as disputable in their beneficial tendency; and we are, perhaps, hardly enough in the habit of inquiring, with respect to any particular form of luxury or any customary appliance of life, whether the kind of employment it gives to the operative or the dependant be as healthy and fitting an employment as we might otherwise provide for him. It is not enough to find men absolute subsistence; we should think of the manner of life which our demands necessitate; and endeavour, as far as may be, to make all our needs such as may, in the supply of them, raise, as well as feed, the poor.1 It is far better to give work which is above the men, than to educate the men to be above their work. It may be doubted, for instance, whether the habits of luxury, which necessitate a large train of men servants, be a wholesome form of expenditure; and more, whether the pursuits 1 [The leading ideas in Ruskin’s political economy here begin, it will be seen, to show themselves. This passage contains the keynote of much of it.]

CH. VII THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 265 which have a tendency to enlarge the class of the jockey and the groom be a philanthropic form of mental occupation. So again, consider the large number of men whose lives are employed by civilised nations in cutting facets upon jewels. There is much dexterity of hand, patience and ingenuity thus bestowed, which are simply burned out in the blaze of the tiara, without, so far as I see, bestowing any pleasure upon those who wear or who behold, at all compensatory for the loss of life and mental power which are involved in the employment of the workman. He would be far more healthily and happily sustained by being set to carve stone; certain qualities of his mind, for which there is no room in his present occupation, would develope themselves in the nobler; and I believe that most women would, in the end, prefer the pleasure of having built a church, or contributed to the adornment of a cathedral, to the pride of bearing a certain quantity of adamant on their foreheads. § 10. I could pursue this subject willingly, but I have some strange notions about it which it is perhaps wiser not loosely to set down. I content myself with finally reasserting, what has been throughout the burden of the preceding pages, that whatever rank, or whatever importance, may be attributed or attached to their immediate subject, there is at least some value in the analogies with which its pursuit has presented us, and some instruction in the frequent reference of its commonest necessities to the mighty laws, in the sense and scope of which all men are Builders, whom every hour sees laying the stubble or the stone. I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and often have checked the course of what might otherwise have been importunate persuasion, as the thought has crossed me, how soon all Architecture may be vain, except that which is not made with hands.1 There is something ominous in the light which has enabled us to look back with disdain upon the ages 1 [2 Corinthians v. 1.]

266 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE among whose lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I could smile when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, at the new reach of worldly science, and vigour of worldly effort; as if we were again at the beginning of days. There is thunder on the horizon as well as dawn. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.1 1 [Genesis xix. 23.]

NOTES BY THE AUTHOR1

NOTE 1 (p. 35, above)2

“With the Idolatrous Egyptian.”—The probability is indeed slight in comparison, but it is a probability nevertheless, and one which is daily on the increase. I trust that I may not be thought to underrate the danger of such sympathy, though I speak lightly of the chance of it. I have confidence in the central religious body of the English and Scottish people, as being not only untainted with Romanism, but immovably adverse to it: and, however strongly and swiftly the heresy of the Protestant and victory of the Papist may seem to be extending among us, I feel assured that there are barriers in the living faith of this nation which neither can overpass.3 Yet this confidence is only in the ultimate faithfulness of a few, not in the security of the nation from the sin and punishment of partial apostacy. Both have, indeed, in some sort, been committed and suffered already; and, in expressing my belief of the close connection of the distress and burden which the mass of the people at present sustain, with the encouragement which, in various directions, has been given to the Papist, do not let me be called superstitious or irrational.4 No man was ever more inclined than I, both by natural disposition and by many ties of early association, to a sympathy with the principles and forms of the Romanist Church;5 and there is much in its discipline which conscientiously,

1 [In editions 1 and 2, the text was followed by seventeen “Notes.” In the edition of 1880 these were omitted, with the exception of five which were recast, with additions, in the form of Appendices. In this edition the shorter notes have been given under the text (viz. Notes 2–6, and 8–16, in eds. 1 and 2). The other three, which are long, and which, in two cases, were added to in the edition of 1880, are for better convenience given separately here.] 2 [”1, page 13” in eds. 1 and 2. Omitted as “a piece of rabid Protestantism” from later editions.] 3 [The MS. adds, “although not having been yet audaciously enough assailed, the strength of those rock foundations has not been felt.”] 4 [Ruskin, as he says in the opening words of Præterita, was “a violent Tory of the old school”—a description which perhaps needs correction in view of some of his later opinions, but which certainly seems borne out by the tone of this note of 1848–1849. The “encouragement given in various directions to the Papist” refers presumably to Catholic Emancipation (1829), and the Maynooth grant (1845).] 5 [This statement is somewhat surprising in view of Ruskin’s strictly Protestant bringing-up; but foreign travel had readily given him sympathy with the æsthetic side of Roman Catholicism. This appears very strongly in the diary of 1848:— “(ROUEN, October 15). The church service of this afternoon in the cathedral was, I suppose, the last at which we shall be present this journey in a Romanist church; and it has perhaps contributed more to my former 267

268 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE as well as sympathetically, I could love and advocate. But in confessing this strength of affectionate prejudice, surely I vindicate more respect for my firmly expressed belief, that the entire doctrine and system of that Church is in the fullest sense anti-Christian; that its lying and idolatrous Power is the darkest plague that ever held commission to hurt the Earth; that all those yearnings for unity and fellowship, and common obedience, which have been the root of our late heresies, are as false in their grounds as fatal in their termination; that we never can have the remotest fellowship with the utterers of that fearful falsehood, and live; that we have nothing to look to from them but treacherous hostility; and that, exactly in proportion to the sternness of our separation from them, will be not only the spiritual but the temporal blessings granted by God to this country. How close has been the correspondence hitherto between the degree of resistance to Romanism marked in our national acts, and the honour with which those acts have been crowned, has been sufficiently proved in a short essay by a writer whose investigations into the

ideas of the propriety of splendour of music and architecture in religious service than any at which I have been present of the kind; the congregation full and attentive; the archbishop coming down with his attendants, as usual, to his seat opposite the pulpit, and thence blessing the people; the sermon relating the good that religious men and prelates had done to the city; its text, ‘Blessed are the people who have the Lord for their God’; the singing afterwards most saintly and sublime. I felt convinced that freed from abuses, this mode of service was the right one, and that if bishops were bishops indeed, and priests priests indeed,—if the doctrines of purgatory and bought absolution, of Mariolatry, and of the vicarianism of the Pope,—above all, if dishonesty and doing evil that good might come and doctrines of salvation by works were cast out of the Church, and the Bible made free to the people,—that all these proud pillars and painted casements, all these burning lamps and smoking censers, all these united voices and solemn organ peals had their right and holy use in this their service, and that all these white-robed priests and young troops of novice and chorister could be, and ought to be, devoted to their lofty duties and separated from the common world without offence—yes, and with high honour, before God. As I never before felt so assured of all this, so, on the other hand, I never more strongly felt the non-importance of all these things as subjects of dispute or of law. In some respects they are little other than matters of taste in religion, certainly not to be enforced upon those whose vulgarity they offend, but still less to be refused to, or blamed in, those whom they edify.” So also in a letter to his father (Rouen, Oct. 9):— “We have a French Protestant service in the morning, and at 3 in the afternoon we go to vespers in the cathedral. Now, vespers are very nearly our English evening service magnificently chanted; we have the Psalms just as in our cathedrals, only in Latin; then the Magnificat, nobly sung; then some altar chanting and then the sermon; all the priests, novices, etc., coming down from the altar, and the Archbishop from his throne, to sit before the pulpit—his crozier and the crucifix held before him by two priests in white stoles, and the little choristers, Paul Veronese like, with their crimson caps, grouped round him; all which gives me intense pleasure. We sit close to him, hear an excellent sermon, receive his blessing with the rest of the congregation—I at least very thankfully, and then after some more lovely passages of chanting, we come out into the grey cathedral porch—I trust none the worse for an hour so spent, whatever the portion of the congregation may be who leave that porch for the planked passages of the theatre door.”]

NOTES BY THE AUTHOR 269 influence of Religion upon the fate of Nations have been singularly earnest and successful—a writer with whom I faithfully and firmly believe that England will never be prosperous again, that the honour of her arms will be tarnished, and her commerce blighted, and her national character degraded, until the Romanist is expelled from the place which has impiously been conceded to him among her legislators. “Whatever be the lot of those to whom error is an inheritance, woe be to the man and to the people to whom it is an adoption. If England, free above all other nations, sustained amidst the trials which have covered Europe, before her eyes, with burning and slaughter, and enlightened by the fullest knowledge of divine truth, shall refuse fidelity to the compact by which those matchless privileges have been given, her condemnation will not linger. She has already made one step full of danger. She has committed the capital error of mistaking that for a purely political question, which was a purely religious one. Her foot already hangs over the edge of the precipice. It must be retracted, or the Empire is but a name. In the clouds of darkness which seem to be deepening on all human policy—in the gathering tumults of Europe, and the feverish discontents at home—it may be even difficult to discern where the power yet lives to erect the fallen majesty of the constitution once more. But there are mighty means in sincerity; and if no miracle was ever wrought for the faithless and despairing, the country that will help itself will never be left destitute of the help of Heaven.” (Historical Essays, by the Rev. Dr. Croly,1 1842.) The first of these essays, “England the Fortress of Christianity,” I most earnestly recommend to the meditation of those who doubt that a special punishment is inflicted by the Deity upon all national crime, and perhaps of all such crime, most instantly on the betrayal, on the part of England, of the truth and the faith with which she has been entrusted.2

NOTE 2 (p. 67 above).3

“Does not admit iron as a constructive material.”—Except in Chaucer’s noble temple of Mars.

In the former editions, a note on the structural use of iron quoted Chaucer’s description of the temple of Mars; but only in the Chaucer English, which few readers quite understand, and which I certainly do not always myself. I rewrite it now in as familiar spelling as may be, with a little bit of needful explanation.

“And downward from a hill under a bent There stood the temple of Mars armipotent, Wrought all of burnëd steel; of which th’ entree Was long, and strait, and ghastly for to see. 5. And thereout came a rage, and such a vise That it made all the gatës for to rise. The Northern light in at the door shone, For window on the wall ne was there none,

1 [For Croly, see Vol. I. pp. 409, 445.] 2 [Ruskin expresses the same opinion on Catholic Emancipation in The Stones of Venice, vol. i. ch. i. § 11.] 3 [”7, p. 37” in eds. 1 and 2. Appendix III. in 1880 and later editions.]

270 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE Through which men mighten any light discerne. 10. The door was all of adamant eterne, Yclenched overthwart and endelong With iron tough, and for to make it strong, Every pillar, the temple to sustene, 14. Was tun-great, of iron bright and sheene.” (The Knight’s Tale, l. 1983 of “The Canterbury Tales.”)

Line 1. “Bent.” In glossary, the ‘bending, ’ or declivity, of a hill. Properly, I believe, the hollow cut out by the sweep of a stream. Just the place where they put milldams or chimneys on the streams above Sheffield, for grinding knives or bayonets. Line 3. “Burnëd steel.” Twice hardened in the fire. Line 5. “Vise.” I am not sure what the word means; but the general sense is, that such a blast came out of the building, that it lifted the gates, underneath, as a portcullis is lifted. Line 7. “The Northern light.” Flickering, furious, and cheerless—the only light that is ever seen by the soul purposed for war. Line 10. “Adamant.” Diamond: the jewel which means sable in heraldry. The Northern light is conceived as shining through it. Line 14. “Tun-great.” As large round as a cask. Note, finally, the absolute carelessness of all great poets, whether their images be common or not,—so only they be clear.

There is, by-the-bye, an exquisite piece of architectural colour just before:

“And northward, in a turret on the wall Of alabaster white, and red corall, An oratorie riche for to see, In worship of Diane of Chastitee.”1

1 [The note as printed above is from the 1880 edition. Eds. 1 and 2 read:—“Except in Chaucer’s noble temple of Mars (quotation as above, though differently spelt: see below). There is, by-the-bye, . . . Chastitee.” The following is the quotation from Chaucer as printed in eds. 1 and 2 :— “And dounward from an hill under a bent, Ther stood the temple of Mars, armipotent, Wrought all of burned stele, of which th’ entree Was longe, and streite, and gastly for to see. And thereout came a rage, and swiche a vise That it made all the gates for to rise. The northern light in at the dore shone, For window on the wall ne was ther none, Thurgh which men mighten any light discerne. The dore was all of athamant eterne, Yclenched overthwart and endelong With yren tough, and for to make it strong, Every piler, the temple to sustene, Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene.” (The Knightes Tale.)

NOTES BY THE AUTHOR 271

3 (p. 249 above).1

“In one of the noblest poems.”—Coleridge’s Ode to France:—

“Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, Whose pathless march no mortal may control!a Ye Ocean-Waves! that wheresoe’er ye roll, Yield homage only to eternal laws!b Ye Woods ! that listen to the night-birds singing,c Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,d Save when your own imperious branches swinging,e Have made a solemn music of the wind! Where, like a man beloved of God,f Through glooms, which never woodman trod,g How oft, pursuing fancies holy, My moonlight way o’er flowering weeds I wound, Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,h By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! O ye loud Waves ! and O ye Forests high ! And O ye Clouds that far above me soared ! Thou rising Sun ! thou blue rejoicing Sky !ik Yea, every thing that is and will be free ! Bear witness for me, wheresoe’er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored The spirit of divinest Liberty.” a If controlled by God, are they therefore more free? b Is the ship they bear less noble in obeying those, and her captain also?—and does she gain dignity in disobeying her helm? c Pure nonsense. d Why midway, any more than at the top, or the bottom? e Is it honourable then to be imperious, but not to be obedient—and what are the branches imperative of? to what? f Nonsense again. We are not more like “men beloved of God,” when we walk in a wood, than when we walk out of one. g Are woodmen naturally profane persons? h Holiness, and Inspiration of an unguessable height, claimed perhaps too confidently, for the fancies of a moonlight walk, among rude shapes and unconquerable noises. I k The rising sun has not been before noticed; nor does it appear why the author considers it more “free” in rising than setting. Of all objects in Creation, the sun is the last which any rational person would think of as moving in “the spirit of divinest Liberty,” or could wish that it should be permitted to do so.2

Noble verse, but erring thought: contrast George Herbert:—

“Slight those who say amidst their sickly healths, Thou livest by rule. What doth not so but man? Houses are built by rule, and Commonwealths. Entice the trusty sun, if that you can, From his ecliptic line; beckon the sky. Who lives by rule, then, keeps good company.”

1 [”17, p. 183” in eds. 1 and 2. “Appendix V.” in later editions.] 2 [These notes were added in the 1880 edition. For another criticism of Coleridge, see Vol. IV. pp. 391–393.]

272 THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE “Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack, And rots to nothing at the next great thaw; Man is a shop of rules; a well-truss’d pack Whose every parcel underwrites a law. Lose not thyself, nor give thy humours way; God gave them to thee under lock and key.”1

1 [The Church Porch, stanzas 23 and 24. In the last line but one, the better reading is “Loose” for “Lose.” The quotation from Herbert was an after-thought of the author’s; see letter in Appendix i. below, p. 276.]

APPENDIX

I. LETTERS ON “THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE”

I. TO W. H. HARRISON 2. TO GEORGE SMITH

II. THE MSS. OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE” (WITH ADDITIONAL PASSAGES)

III. MINOR “VARIÆ LECTIONES”

273 VIII. S

LETTERS ON “THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE”

1. TO W. H. HARRISON1

FOLKESTONE, Saturday [April 18, 1849]. DEAR MR. HARRISON,—I now return you the whole of the sheets—carefully compared in every part: but there are one or two matters which will I am sorry to say cause you more trouble than I had the slightest intention—elastic as my conscience is—of inflicting upon you. I shall not again so miscalculate my powers of revision as to leave all—at the last—upon my kind friend’s shoulders, as I have done now, though after so often feeling the advantage of your assistance in the detection of errors, I feel I shall hardly be able to trust anything to the press that has not passed through your hands. To begin at the beginning, I have added a footnote to the Preface and titles for list of Plates. You will find the places of the Plates which I could not fix marked on the slips. 2ndly, I enclose a proof of a new page, 51, of which I tried to cancel the first copy. Would you kindly compare p. 52 with the last revise thereof and make it correspond. I have looked over the new p. 51; it is all right. 3rd. In slips E. and G.2 note that braccias should be braccia, the Italian plural, unless there is some difference in the words for the arm and the measure; and I have altered Sixths into Palmi, only I am not quite sure whether the four-inch measure is the Palmo—perhaps Mr. Williams can tell you this at once, or furnish you with some book of Italian measures. The inches ought also—if there is any difference between Italian and English inches—to be specified as Italian. Please notice this particularly—arranging the names above the measures as you and Mr. Williams think best, remembering that there go six of the [Palmi?] to the 24-inch braccio. 4th. Please don’t put Note 1, Note 2, but only 1 and 2, etc. Then, Note 63 1 [For W. H. Harrison, see Vol. I. p. xlviii.; and in this volume, p. xxvii. above. The present letter is here given as an example of many of the kind, referring to the various books, and editions of books, which Harrison saw through the press for Ruskin. The “Mr. Williams” referred to was for many years employed as a literary assistant in the firm of Smith, Elder & Co. It was to him that Charlotte Brontë addressed the letter cited at Vol. IV. p. xxxix., and above, p. xxxvi.] 2 [See ch. v. § 9, p. 201.] 3 [Note * on p. 66.] 275

276 APPENDIX does not read nicely; I want it put simply thus—Compare Iliad Σ 1 with Odyssey Ω 5–10—putting Sigma and Omega for numbers of books—and the lines: only I haven’t an Iliad to find the line. Can you find the Shout of Achilles from the wall, or can Mr. Williams?—and put the line—that in the Odyssey is all right—line 5 to 10. Then, you will find a reference in chap. 6, § 1, note 14, which must be added.1 Thus:—

15, p.—“The Flowers lost their light, the river its music.” Yet not all their light—nor all its music. Compare Modern Painters, Vol. II. Chap. .ss. .

Now this Chapter and ss. my good friend Mr. H. only can find for me; it is the Chapter headed—“Various Theories concerning Ideas of Beauty”—(by-the-by I am not quite sure if it be in first volume or second), and the paragraph is the beginning of the passage about association—the paragraph ending “wrath, ravage, and misery of man.” Then Notes 14 and 15 have to be made 15, 16; and finally as Mr. Coleridge must not have it his own way at the end, would you add on this:— Noble verse but erring thought: contrast George Herbert. . . . [Quotation as in note on p. 271 above.] That will do better for a finish. I am quite tired, dear Mr. H.: good-bye—and a thousand thanks to you and remembrances to all, Ever yours, J. RUSKIN.

2. TO G. SMITH2

GENEVA, June 5th (1849). MY DEAR SIR,—I have seen with much pleasure the favourable notices of the Lamps in the London Journals; for, considering the way in which the book clashes with many wide interests and received opinions, I had not hoped for so kind a reception of it; but as none of the reviewers appear to have understood the purpose and value of the illustrations,3 I think it right that you at least should have it in your power to give some answer to any verbal objections that may be made to their apparent rudeness. I have been a little too modest in the Preface—and had calculated too much on the reader’s discovery of what I ought to have told him; namely, that though indeed many portions of the plates on which I spent considerable time, have, owing to the softness of the steel, ended in “a blot,” yet, such as they are, they are by far the most sternly faithful records of the portions of architecture they represent which have ever yet been published; and I am 1 [See ch. vi. § 1, p. 223.] 2 [The late Mr. George Murray Smith, who at this time was assuming management of the publishing business of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. The letter is here reprinted from the privately printed volume, Letters upon Subjects of General Interest from John Ruskin to Various Correspondents, 1892, pp. 8–12. Its contents should be compared with Stones of Venice, vol. i. Appendix 8, where a similar defence of the original plates in The Seven Lamps is given.] 3 [See, however, the review cited above, p. xlv.]

LETTERS ON “THE SEVEN LAMPS” 277 persuaded that in course of time, this severe truth will give them a value far higher than that which is at present set upon plates of more delicate execution. Few persons have any idea of the inaccuracy of architectural works generally. That of Gally Knight,1 for instance, has been frequently referred to authoritatively respecting the architecture of Italy; yet in the plate, in that work, of the church of San Michele of Lucca, the ornaments on the walls between the arches have been drawn entirely out of the draughtsman’s head; flourishes of the pencil being substituted for the monochrome figures. The degree of fidelity of the drawing in Plate VI. of the Seven Lamps of a single arch of this church, I can only illustrate to you by a particular instance. Just above the head of the strange long-eared quadruped at the top of the arch, the sloping border of the block of stone out of which he is cut is seen to become thicker, and to be divided by a line which looks like a mistake. In that place, the block of serpentine above did not fit exactly into its place, and the builder has fitted in a thin wedge-shaped bit of marble to fill up the gap, which is marked by the double line. In like manner, it will be noticed that the partition between this quadruped and the horseman in front of him is double, while all the other partitions are single bars of marble—this also is fact. Such a degree of accuracy as this may perhaps at first appear ludicrous—but I have always held it for a great principle that there are no degrees of truth; and from habit I have made it just as easy to myself to draw a thing truly as falsely. The accuracy of the other plates, excepting those specified as taken from somewhat obscure Daguerreotypes, is not less; and I believe a time will come when even their execution will be thought better of than it is at present. That, however, I contentedly leave to public judgment. One point by-the-bye should be noticed, that, as the plates are all of fragments, I did not think it necessary to risk losing some of their accuracy by reversing them on the steel—and they are therefore reversed in the impression.

I remain, my dear Sir, Very truly yours, J. RUSKIN. 1 [The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy from the time of Constantine to the Fifteenth Century, by Henry Gally Knight, F.R.S., F.S.A.; 2 vols., 1842. The illustration of San Michele, Lucca, is Plate 14 in vol. ii.]

THE MSS. OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE” WITH ADDITIONAL PASSAGES

THE MSS. to which the editors have had access in the preparation of this volume are (1) the MS. of the book, together with various sheets of earlier drafts, (2) a copy of the second edition (1855), corrected by Ruskin for the revised edition of 1880. Both of these are now the property of an American collector, who purchased them from Mr. George Allen in 1902. A detailed collation of all differences between the MSS. and the printed text was, however, made before the MSS. were parted with, and this collation has been repeatedly used in the present volume. A reproduction of a page of the MS. is also given (p. 222). One or two of the early sheets are headed “Sutton Bonnington, Lough-borough” (Yorkshire), having, as it would seem, been written there, when Ruskin was travelling to Scotland in the spring of 1848. On the back of one of these sheets is a draft of the scheme for the whole book, which bears out the author’s statement (see above, p. 138 n.) of the difficulty he had to keep the number of the “lamps” down to seven. This is the scheme:1— Lamp of Sacrifice. ” ” Truth. ” ” Beauty. ” ” Purity—Power? majesty, etc., in severe lines and simplicity. Palazzo Vecchio. Civic buildings in grandeur, etc. Doge’s Palace, Palazzo Pitti, Strozzi, Warwick Castle, and Italian towers, etc. ” ” Obedience? Order? in composition, subordination of parts, etc. Necessity of universal return to Early English, if anything to be done in England—head of obedience, then freedom for fancy in details. Type: North transept of Rouen. 1 [Cf. the much earlier note given above in the Introduction, p. xxiii.] 278

THE MSS. OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” 279 Lamp of History. Veneration for past works as well as record in new ones. Class under this, Ambition? Under this certainly place Age, Picturesqueness, etc. (The picturesque not in decay; head of donkey and horse, decayed apple and sound one.) ” ” Life. Various character of buildings. Vitality in ornament.

Some additional passages from the MS. have already been given (e.g. pp. 38, 45, 125, 192), and examples of interesting variations have been supplied, in notes under the text. It remains in this Appendix to give such longer passages as seem to be of interest.

PREFACE

The following are the preliminary drafts of the Preface (to edition 1) referred to on p. 3 n. The MS. (it should be explained) contains three drafts of the opening portion of this preface. The longest (a) is the original of the preface to the first edition, but after the 4th paragraph, ending “at the correspondent extremities,” (above, p. 5) the following passage is added:—

“I have to thank M. de Marvy,1 a young French artist, whose works will probably be soon known and highly esteemed among us, for much valuable information on the subject of engraving, of which I wish that I had made better use.”

The MS. does not contain the final paragraph beginning “I could have wished,” but concludes with adding (after the word “Flamboyant”) “and Salisbury, as a fair type of the early English, and early English decorated.” In the second MS. (b) the first two sentences are almost identical with (a); but in the next sentence the words “obtained in every case” down to “the opinions founded upon them” (above, p. 3) are left out, and the MS. proceeds as follows:—

“I am prepared to bear the charge of impertinence, which can hardly but attach to the writer who assumes an attitude of authority in his remarks upon the practice even of a single art—much more of several. But there are some things respecting which men feel too strongly to be silent; and, I think, some also on which they feel too strongly to be wrong; I have been grieved into this impertinence, and have suffered too much from the destruction of the Buildings that I loved, and the despite done to the Painters that I reverenced, to reason cautiously respecting either the modesty or the probable advantage of my appearance in their Defence. 1 [Louis Marvy, born 1815, a pupil of Jules Dupré, engraved several pictures after Rembrandt, Corot, etc. He died in 1850.]

280 APPENDIX “It has, however, been justly said, that any traveller who would set down simply and exactly what he had heard and seen, could hardly fail of noting some matters which might interest many wiser than himself, and I believe that at least in the always personal observations which are scattered through the following pages, there may be something of value even to the experienced architect. “But as for the opinions with which they are associated, I have set them down first because I could not help it; and secondly because in the midst of the opposite and uncertain principles which appear in our present architecture, a positive appearance of any kind has, I think, a pleasantness about it, and perhaps some usefulness, even though it be wrong; as even weeds are of use that grow on a bank of sand. I have, however, some right to speak upon this subject, as I have loved architecture—to my much sorrow,1 more than most men, and passed more time among the older examples of it than the professional occupations of the architect commonly leave to him.”

The third MS. (c) is as follows:—

“The observations which form the subject of the following pages were originally thrown together in the preparation of one of the sections of the concluding volume of Modern Painters. Finding, however, that they assumed so independent a character as somewhat to interfere with the symmetry of the more comprehensive essay, and believing also that the course of the abuses which they deprecate is so rapid, and the urgency of the needs which they represent so immediate, that their usefulness, if any, would be materially diminished by any further delay in their publication, the writer has permitted them to appear in a separate form. “He has to express his obligations to a young French engraver, M. de Marvy, whose works will probably be soon, as they deserve, well known to the public, for the communication to him of the means by which he has been enabled to engrave nine out of the twelve of the illustrations of the volume,2 entirely with his own hand, and to render them very nearly facsimiles of drawings in every instance made on the spot, with care more scrupulous than he has found usual, even in architects’ drawings, to preserve not only the proportions, but the true light and shadow of their subjects. In one or two cases, details or arrangements of chiaroscuro which were incomplete in the author’s memoranda, have been supplied by reference to daguerreotypes taken under his superintendence. “(The three line engravings are from the author’s drawings Plate etched by him and finished by Mr. J. C. Armytage, Plates and by Mr. Armytage and Mr. J. Cousen.) “He has only further to express his regret that the delay in the publication of the volume of which the present chapters were intended to form a part, should be prolonged, but the time requisite for the 1 [See, for instance, p. xxix. above, and Vol. IV. p. 41 n.] 2 [The number of plates was, however, ultimately 14, all of which (in the first edition) were etched by Ruskin himself. The three line engravings referred to above were not included.]

THE MSS. OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” 281 arrangement of evidence only to be obtained by research in many branches of physical science as well as of art, and the care especially necessary in the statement of views liable to no ordinary share of opposition, render such delay altogether unavoidable.”

INTRODUCTION

Next we may notice the preliminary draft of the Introduction to the work, referred to on p. 19 n.:—

“It is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, when men propose to themselves the attainment of a perfection, in any kind, which experience or reason, had either been temperately consulted, would have shown to be impossible under the conditions of their action, or with the means at their disposal. But it is a more dangerous, because a less ridiculous error, to permit the consideration of human means, or even of natural limitations, to interfere with the abstract conception, or hinder the reverent acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in themselves. Nor can any enterprise be wisely conducted, nor any object in the highest degree of its capabilities attained, unless the understanding of the nature and nobility of the end precede, and be kept distinct from, all consideration of the means and materials thereunto: so that doubtfulness of the one may not cause indistinctness of the other. For the fewer and feebler these means may be, the more necessary it is that they should be used with discretion, and precision, and energy, which can only be when the perfectness of the thing to be reached is absolutely proposed, and when the entire admirableness and difficulty of what is to be done are comprehended. I find, however, that in their discussions of operations in which the powers of man are the instruments, most writers, desiring to show their wisdom by an accurate, and their humility by a modest estimate of their instruments, and thus encumbering themselves with considerations of facts which no single experience can be long enough, nor any human experience authoritative enough, absolutely to arrange or to value, have lost sight of those general and simple principles of right and of desirableness, to which a man’s sense and conscience, aided by Revelation, are in all subjects faithful guides, and which, if set fairly enough and often enough in their simplicity before the eyes and the thoughts of men, would at all events give true direction to their powers—unknown as well as known—rendering therefore their success surer and higher; yet teaching humility better by their absolute unattainableness than the ignoble calculation which sets before the sight nothing but what the hand can reach, and contemplates rather the decrepitude of the limb than the reward of the journey. “To regulate the aims, is a nobler work than to order or husband the powers, of men, and a work which must be done the first; accepting always as a certain truth, that when approach to an object is impossible there is crime in desire, and when approach is possible,

282 APPENDIX in despondence. There is also the further danger attendant on the habit of too coldly calculating our power; not only that our short-comings may be greater, but that we may be more easily reconciled to them, and even led into the error—fatal especially in moral subjects, of thinking that what is man’s utmost is in itself well, that evil is diminished by its apparent compulsoriness, or in other words, that the necessity of offences renders them inoffensive.”

Following the above, on the same sheet of white quarto, is this note:—“Then introduce apology for bringing arguments from divine things, showing that all principles that are worth anything must be drawn from them.” The apology in question will be found in the text (see above, p. 24).

The following unpublished passage, headed “Introductory 2,” is also among the MS. sheets of the “Introductory” chapter. Its main ideas are given in the second and third paragraphs of the text (see pp. 20–22 above):—

“. . . ruling necessities, to be interfered with by too minute a calculation of the impediments of which their removed position prevents them from justly estimating the magnitude. Every analogy of arduous practical life directs us to this division of function: and as the fisherman contending with waves and currents, leaves his comrade on the cliff to mark for him the movements of the shoals, and the soldier descending into conflict concerns himself only with the point of earth which he has to hold or to win, leaving to another the direction of his energy and disposal of his life, so must all men in their struggles with difficulty of whatever kind either submit themselves to guidance from those who are not so engaged or else are not encircled by its intricacies, or, to their great loss, become themselves alternately soldier and leader, and alternately labour and consider, as the traveller involved among the rifts of a glacier must concern himself for a time only with his extrication from a gulf or his passage of a chasm, and then pause to calculate his advances, and determine the most prudent direction of renewed effort. Nor in the accepting of divided duty, must we forget the frequent need of that charity on both sides which forgives to those who direct their sometimes slight and inconsiderate estimate of obstacles they have not to encounter: and to those who execute, the failure or discouragement which may seem to such inconsideration unaccountable or premature. “It is not therefore to ask respect for the theories of right which are advanced in the following pages, but to ask pardon for their apparent wildness and disregard of probable means for their working out, that I remind the reader of the peculiar necessity of due observance of their principles in subjects uniting the technical and imaginative elements so essentially as the Art of Architecture, uniting them as closely as humanity does the soul and body: but with a more infirmly balanced liability to prevalence of the Lower part over the Higher, and of the nice embarrassments of the Constructive over the purity and simplicity of the Reflective Element. It is not, I repeat, to ask respect for the theories—let the reader test them as mercilessly as he will; if they be

THE MSS. OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” 283 true or right I have no fear of their not being acknowledged, else I should contradict what I have just said, that every man’s sense and feeling are enough to determine for him what is right, or in other words, that the candid theorist’s is the easiest and perhaps least honourable of all necessary work. But in order to account for the simplicity with which that work has been attempted, and for the speculative breadth of the greater number of the positions which I have taken, I can only allege my conviction of the necessity of extricating from the confused mass of partial traditions and dogmata with which the art has been encumbered by its unconsidered practice, those large principles of right which are applicable to every stage, style and rank of it; which demand no conditions, imply no limitations, and which in brief I believe to be so verily the roots and head-most springs of all architectural success, that the highest measures of that success are attributable to this influence, and the lowest, without it, impossible. I do not think that I claim too much for these in calling them the Lamps of . . .” (continued as in the text, p. 22 above).

CHAPTER II The following seems to be a rejected draft of the opening portions of the second Chapter:—

“There is not a more dangerous enemy to the practice of any virtue than an over regard, or even an habitual reference, to its results. Indeed it is in strictness of language not virtue, but worldly wisdom, with whose biddings we comply, when our object is the award which has been divinely assigned to the doing of duty; instead of the duty itself. This is both confessed and comprehended in deeds of charity or of devotion. The love is the virtue, not the act or exhibition of love; and although love cannot exist without acting, yet the act would be useless if the act were caused by any other motive than love. And the love is as much a virtue when it is fruitless as when it is effectual. This is the first and most trite of moral principles. Yet with respect to the virtue of truthfulness we are apt to lose sight of its essence as a character well pleasing and divine; and to regard only its necessity in the dealings of men with each other; so that deception which is not harmful is sometimes called innocent. Nevertheless truth is to be sought for its own sake as much as charity: and a breach of truth is criminal in itself, even though attended by no evil consequences, as a breach of charity is criminal, though not manifested in malignant action. I trust that there is no occasion for me to argue this point, when simply stated, and yet in consequence of our not often enough contemplating it, there has arisen such a laxness and flexibility in our practice of truthfulness, as frequently to leave the very estates of honour and dishonour divided only by a blind path. How much of evil has arisen in the world from the mere neglect, not the determined violation, but the idle and flippant regardlessness of truth in minor matters, I may more wisely leave the reader to consider than myself

284 APPENDIX pretend to preach; observing this only, that no matter can indeed be trifling, and no occasion contemptible, which affords opportunity for the exercise of so noble a virtue as truthfulness; that to speak truth with care, constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty; and that (sic) which I trust, there are men in the world, many, who would hold to truth at the cost of future or life, there are few who hold to it at the cost of a little daily care, thought and self-sacrifice. Now this should not be, for seeing that there is of all sins no one more flatly opposite to the Almighty, no one more ‘wanting the good of virtue and of being ‘ than this of lying, it must be a very singular and refined insolence and folly to fall into the foulness of it on small and light temptation; much more in sport and for pleasure: and therefore above all things it is becoming a man of honour to see that no trace of lying enter into those noble pleasures to which he looks for teaching as well as for rest, especially into such as are connected with the arts, for though it may remain a matter of disputation how far concealments and deceits may be tolerable or necessary in war or policy, or in the government of inferior creatures, or of nations, or in stern necessities and difficulties, it can be no matter of dispute whether they are tolerable in our pleasures: all pleasures which depend upon them must be base, and with all severity to be condemned and avoided. It needs, however, some acuteness and discretion to determine in such subjects” [here this passage breaks off].

CHAPTER III

A half sheet of foolscap is with the MS., containing a rejected portion of one of the opening paragraphs of Chapter III., as follows:—

“It will be well, therefore, to endeavour to follow in reasoning what the involuntary action of Memory would seem to suggest, and to see what are indeed the universal roots of this enduring nobility; not distracting ourselves, if possible, by any considerations of the styles of places or epochs; nor permitting reference to mechanical construction, except where the perception of it seems to be an element of the feelings in question. These two branches of feeling, based on the acknowledgment of power, and on the sense of beauty, are evidently not incompatible though distinct. The former often includes the latter and has precedence of it; and as regards the spectator, it is a nobler thing to reverence the work of the master spirit than to delight in the fairness of the external form; and as regards the architect, the expression of majesty depends exclusively upon dispositions of his own ordering, that of beauty frequently upon imitations of natural objects made lovely to his mind and for his choice. “What, then, let us first ask, are the essential characters of that architecture which has for its chief object the awakening of the sense of awe or veneration? “And much it is to be desired that the understanding of these noble characters were commoner among architects than it is.”

THE MSS. OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” 285 Another sheet has the following fragment:—

“I believe, therefore, that we may broadly assume, that a building, if it have merit at all, will have one of these two characters distinctively developed; and that by fixing our attention upon one or other of them, and striving to realise it alone in our designs, we shall succeed better than by endeavouring to unite the two in a perfect splendour; and this not only because in the work of nature herself they have different places and functions, but because Architecture has herself two forms of energy: one imitative, in which she copies natural organic forms as being able to imagine none fairer; the other disposing and modifying such forms to her own will; and it is this last action which gives to her work that spirituality which seems to me its most awful attribute. Without, therefore, entering into any question of the nature of the sublime or beautiful, but assuming those natural appearances and forms to be such which are generally so esteemed, let us observe what peculiar conditions of both these characters result in architecture from its governing power on the one hand, and imitative choice on the other. “When this modifying power is displayed together with a choice of the natural forms or resemblances which most harmonize with it, we have a majesty nearly as great” [here this passage breaks off].

CHAPTER IV

The following paragraph in the MS. was omitted from the printed text of chapter iv. §§ 1, 2 (see above, p. 140):—

“This incapability of human invention to advance without aid from natural form is especially shown, it seems to me, in the failures which attend any attempt to ornament features of a size larger than those of which nature furnishes decorated examples. We may find a striking instance in the difficulty, noticed already in the third chapter, of ornamenting large curvilinear surfaces. Of small masses, spherical or oval or cylindrical, or otherwise bounded by curved superficies, nature has furnished us with innumerable examples decorated with the most lavish richness: and for his ball or boss or rosette, or finial or column, the architect has ready to his hand millions of models in the family of the Radiata1 and Molluscs, and in starry and globular vegetables, in the star fishes, the echini, the sea anemones, the crabs and sponges, in all the genera of the rose, in the pine cone and apple, in the artichoke, thistle, and thousands more, together with every forest stem which ivy clasps or briony climbs; there is not a sea wave but casts on shore, not a ray of light but colours and opens for him, some new model of perfect form. But let him beware how he magnifies these from their ordained proportion. I do not know any mistakes so common or so fatal as that unhappy idea (which I have combated in another place2) 1 [See Vol. IV. p. 95 n.] 2 [Modern Painters, vol. ii. sec. i. chap. vi. § 10 n., Vol. IV. p. 103.]

286 APPENDIX that the proportions or forms of a small thing are good for a great one. It is a most palpable yet a most prevalent absurdity. Every right form, whether in nature or in art, is fitted to a given size, and becomes monstrous if it is expanded. You must not surround your columns, because they are twelve feet in diameter, with ivy leaves two feet long; you must not build a dome three hundred feet from the ground on the pattern of an artichoke1 or a sea urchin. If nature has furnished no decorated example of a similar size, you cannot decorate at all. Your invention will be of no use to you; you will have to divide your object into parts, and treat those parts separately, or if you leave it a mass, to let that mass alone. And this is precisely what takes place in the case of large curvilinear surfaces. Every attempt to adorn them has failed, and the rich patterns of the domes of the Caliphs would look contemptible beside the plain roofs of Sta. Maria del Fiore and St. Paul’s. Yet if you are not content with the rude tiles and grey metal, you may do better if you will look to your teacher’s work. Nature builds domes though she does not decorate them, some dark, indeed, and stern, like those that stand on bases of black pillars above the valleys of Auvergne;2 but some most light and fair. Watch the lines of snow wreath and gradations of sunset shadow on the front of the Dome du Goûter or Mont Blanc du Tacul,3 and consider how near you might come to them with a pure dome of rosy marble.”

In another sheet of MS. part of the above runs thus:—

“If nature has furnished you with no decorated example on a similar or approximate scale, you must either divide the object into bold parts and treat those parts separately, or else leaving it a mass treat it with a surface decoration independent of its form, as in interior mosaics or frescoes. And as this method is especially inexpedient on the outside of domes, their interior being like a panorama surface susceptible of effects of extended space, while their exterior is always of marked outline and of definite light and shade, so that their specific form cannot be conquered, every attempt,” etc.

CHAPTER VII

The following passages were written for Chapter VII., “The Lamp of Obedience”:—

“If it be true, as I have sometimes feared it is, that Poetry is gradually losing her power over our hearts, I should look for the cause of her diminished dominion less to an alteration in the tendencies of popular thought or the channels of national enthusiasm, than to her 1 [The MS. first reads “pineapple.”] 2 [Ruskin travelled in Auvergne in 1840 (see Præterita, ii. ch. ii. § 22). He here recalls the characteristic volcanic domes or craters of the district; cf. the Letter to Dale, “the volcanic cliffs and black lavas of Auvergne” (Vol. I. p. 377).] 3 [See the descriptions of these cited in Vol. III. pp. xxvi.-xxvii.]

THE MSS. OF “THE SEVEN LAMPS” 287 own abuse of an influence whose continuance from the beginning depended, as to the end it must depend, upon the purity and justice with which she enshrined truth and directed emotion. And in nothing more has her forfeiture of her own privileges and betrayal of her mission been more singularly evident than in the constancy with which her words have been dedicated to the setting forth in every colour that could either adorn it or disguise, that worst and wildest phantom of mental hallucination, that most treacherous and subtle dream of all that entrap the unregulated desires of men—Liberty! “Most subtle indeed of all dreams—and least substantial, for the feeblest ray of reason might show us that not only its attainment but its Being is impossible. There is no such Thing in the Universe, there never can be. The Stars have it not. The Earth has it not. The Sea has it not—the Pestilences and Tempests of the Air have it not! And we men have the mockery and imagination of it sometimes only for our worst and most merciless Punishment. “In one of the noblest poems, for its imagery and its music, belonging to the recent school of our own Literature, the writer has caught from the contemplation of inanimate nature, the fire which kindles his pain of this wild and fatal abstraction. But with what strange fallacy of Interpretation—for if there be any one principle more widely preached than another—more deeply proved—more strenuously exhibited—more unconditionally and absolutely accepted—by every atom of visible or demonstrable creation; that principle is not Liberty, but Law. And as I have already asserted, and shall afterwards endeavour more certainly to show, while a certain degree of apparent freedom is necessary to admit of the sufficient individuality in the markings and energies of things” [here the draft breaks off; the passage was re-written in the text, see above, pp. 248–249]. “Of the laws belonging to its excellence, and more especially where numbers are to be concerned in its production or practice—the licence which is left to the workings of individual minds is more severely withdrawn. In this respect architecture is greater than other arts—greater in proportion to the severity of her laws: for it is owing to her noble relations with all that is universally important to men: with the daily life, the polity, the history and the religious faith of nations, that it is, and imperatively, a condition of her very existence that she should accept and show forth figured and embodied in her forms and systems—those great principles of Obedience and of Loyalty to which their life owes its happiness—their polity its power—their History its pride, and their Faith its Acceptance. “Without, therefore, the light of experience—without any aid but that of the simplest evidence of reason—we might firmly conclude . . .” [continued as in the text, above, p. 251].

III

MINOR “VARIÆ LECTIONES”

A LL the more important variations between the various editions have already been given in footnotes to the text. For the sake of completeness, the remaining variations are here given. A few quite obvious misprints, and some trifling variations in spelling and punctuation, are not, however, enumerated. Nor are the errata noted in ed. 1 (see p. li. above), and again in 1880 ed. (see p. liii. above) here repeated.

Preface to First Edition, § 4, line 5, ed. 1 omits “as a“; and in line 6, reads “a.—a,” instead of “—a.”

Preface to Second Edition, line 17, in the reprint of part of this preface in the 1880 and later eds., the word “have” was inserted between “I” and “found.” § 2, third line from end, 1880 ed. reads “artistic” for “artistical” (and so below, § 6, line 1). Ch. i. § 4, line 19, small ed. (1890 and later) reads erroneously “perspective” for “prospective.” § 8 (in the omitted passage, see note on p. 41), ed. 1 omits the word “altogether” after “church decoration.” Ch. ii. § 2, line 18, ed. 1 reads “the force of instances few and familiar”; § 8, line 23, “buttress” not italicised in ed. 1; line 41, “being” omitted in eds. 1 and 2; § 11, line 17, for “their mere weight and strength,” ed. 1 reads “the weight of the one and the strength of the other”; § 14, lines 19 and 25, ed. 1 omits “The” before “first” and “second”; § 17, line 24, ed. 1 inserts “of” between “than” and “that”; § 31, the words “since all stone . . . by hand,” not bracketed in eds. 1 and 2; § 28, line 46, eds. 1 and 2 have not a new paragraph at “So fell the great dynasty . . .” Ch. iii. § 2, line 10, ed. 1 has a full stop after “at once”; § 13, lines 23, 24, for “often serious” ed. 1 reads “serious often”; § 15, line 5, for “Sir Charles Eastlake” ed. 1 reads “Mr.” Ch. iv. § 10, line 13, for “affect” ed. 1 reads “effects”; 8 lines from end, all previous eds. misread “Fuligno” for “Foligno”; § 33, line 6, for “Sir Charles Eastlake” ed. 1 reads “Mr.” § 39, line 20, eds. 1 and 2 have a comma after “full.” 288

MINOR “VARIÆ LECTIONES” 289 Ch. v. § 1, line 3, for “inseparably” ed. of 1880 reads incorrectly “inseparable”; § 6, line 25, ed. 1 omits “of” before “those of painting.” § 21, line 17, for “have” ed. 1 reads “has”; line 33, eds. 1 and 2 do not italicise “cold”; seventh line from end, for “the lowest two” ed. 1 reads “the two lowest.” Ch. vii. § 5, lines 3 and 4, for “is ever to be sought in itself” ed. 1 reads “are . . . in themselves.”

END OF VOLUME VIII

VIII. T

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