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PROGRESS 
 
 ART AND ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 WITH 
 
 PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 
 
 BT 
 
 JOHN P. SEDDON, Architect, 
 
 IIEMBEK OF THE EOYAL INSTITUTE OP BHITISH AECHITECTS, 
 AND OF THE AECHITECTUEAL ASSOCIATION OF LONDOS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 DAVID BOGUE, FLEET STREET. 
 
 M.DCCC.LII. 
 
LONDON : 
 GILBERT 4ND RIVINGTON, I'KlNTEnS, 
 
 ST. John's square. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The substance of the following pages was prepared originally in the form 
 of a consecutive series of papers, to be read before the Architectural 
 Association of London during its subsequent sessions ; and portions have 
 already appeared in several of the professional joui'nals at the time of their 
 delivery : they are now, however, for the first time presented to the pubhc 
 in the manner in which it was always designed that they should be united, 
 and have been hkewise most carefully revised, while many parts have been 
 entirely re-written. The interest attached to the subjects treated of in 
 them has, I apprehend, in nowise become diminished in the interval that 
 has elapsed since the papers were first delivered ; nay, I venture to hope 
 that the principles which are contended for therein have, since that time, 
 gradually leavened both the profession and the public, urged powerfully, 
 as they have been, by authors of whom the age may justly be proud, and 
 whose talents Art may be thankful to have enlisted in her service, in the 
 wake of whom I fear it seems presumption in me to launch so humble a 
 bark ; but as it often happens that an echo is heard when the voice which 
 gave it birth passed unnoticed, so perhaps some may be induced to listen 
 even to my feeble remonstrance, whom prejudice has prevented from 
 receiving the truth from another and a better qucuter ; or at least I hope 
 that as successive blows drive home a wedge into heart of oak, so 
 
 A 2 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 perchance my words, possessing but little power in themselves, may help 
 to fix the truth deeper into the minds of men, and, Uke the chisel of the 
 antiquary, liinder the rust of time from effacing the impression that may 
 have been already made therein. 
 
 Agreeing, however, as I do in the main with such writers, there are 
 points advanced by them in which I cannot entirely concur ; among which 
 are some assertions which have been made upon the question of progress 
 in Architecture, as to the prospects of which I consider too desponding a 
 view has been taken ; so that the glimmering of dawn on the horizon 
 before us is still shrouded from the eyes of many through their continued 
 endeavours to fathom the night mist which has so long been settled around 
 us, and they are ready in consequence to deny us the very power of 
 escaping from the trammels of error and prejudice. Yet I think that 
 wliether we examine the Painting, the Sculpture, or the Architecture of 
 the present day, proofs are to be found therein of at least a higher aim, 
 with somewhat greater skill and knowledge than was the case some few 
 years since. This advance, however, can only be considered as relative to 
 the abject state of degradation in which they then existed, and if \aewed in 
 comparison with almost any of the mouldering relics left to us from what 
 we are pleased to term the dark ages, our boasted civilization is imme- 
 diately and totally eclipsed. 
 
 Whether, then, the movement which has been already made is to be 
 considered " as a springing up of seed, or but a mere shaking among 
 bones," as questioned by Mr. Ruskin ;— whether we may hope to have 
 ever again a U\dng and a true Architecture, suited to our purposes and 
 times, which shall be a medium for the expression of thought, and not a 
 mere childish dihtantcism, — a dull prating in a bygone unknown tongue, — 
 a cold, gaunt, galvanic revivification of the dead ; — is a matter to us of the 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 deepest moment, and one which demands our most careful inquiry. To 
 me, indeed, the signs which I have named wear a more healthy aspect, 
 even though they may not point to an immediate leavening of society in 
 general with the principles of true taste ; the cause of which deficiency is, 
 as I hope to be able to point out, the impotence of the several branches of 
 Alt to produce any very extended influence, consequent upon their isola- 
 tion and the want of sympathy and union of their individual eflforts. I 
 cannot see any reason to think that Art is yet in its dotage, since its 
 destiny has been ever like that of some encroaching sea, that ebbs, indeed, 
 and leaves its shore dank and drear for a time, yet gathers together the 
 strength of its receded waves, and then with renewed force flows again 
 over the rocks from which it had subsided, extending still further its 
 domain over the land ; for we find that it ebbed once when, fallen from its 
 purity and degraded by the luxury it pampered, it no longer in the 
 foreign soil of Rome left a record vigorous and earnest and true of its 
 cravings for beauty and strivings for immortality, as it had done before in 
 the youth of nations in the hands alike of the AssjTian, the Egyptian, and 
 the Greek ; and that it flowed again when, washed in the flood of the 
 bai'baric invasions from the mire it had contracted, it arose strengthened 
 by the holier and far better principle of Christianity, and trustfully, 
 silently, and patiently wrought its onward way afresh, careless of praise, 
 intent only on its mission, soaring heavenward in its might and the single- 
 ness of its aim. Once more, however, did it ebb, leaving tliis its simplicity 
 and faith, and, by looking to itself instead of from itself, became choked 
 by pride and presumption, and sank at length numbed and nigh lifeless 
 into a trance deep almost as death, in that it neither heeded its short- 
 comings nor recked of the rust that consumed it ; then at the period of 
 the Renaissance — as in irony alone we can continue to call it — was the 
 exhumed mummy of Paganism set up in its place, and to this now for 
 three centuries deluded Europe has bowed. But the reign of this folly we 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 trust is nearly over, and the corpse of Classic Art, we hope, will soon be 
 decently re-interred ; for then, and not till then, may we with some reason 
 expect that the tide will flow again, and Art in every branch be advanced 
 to the high position which the vantage gromid of modern times over those 
 that are bygone, in the absence of superstition and the increase of science, 
 should enable her to attain. 
 
 JOHN P. SEDDON. 
 
 Percy Chambers, Percy Street, 
 Bedford Square. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The due Rank of Art corresponding with that of Science, and the liopes and means 
 of attaining thereto ........... 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Unity of Art and the Relation of its several Branches ..... 16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The respective Positions of Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture, and the requisite 
 
 treatment of the latter for the purposes of Architectural Decoration ... 26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Precedents for Architectural Ornament 44 
 
PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DUE RANK OF ART CORRESPONDING WITH THAT OF SCIENCE, 
 AND THE HOPES AND MEANS OF ATTAINING THERETO. 
 
 The whole of the past history of the world, despite the vicissitudes it has 
 undergone, despite the groans of crushed myriads, and the blood shed 
 crying to heaven from all ages, is but the record of that progress which is 
 the universal destiny of man, and which so raises him above the beasts of 
 the earth, which, with all their ciirious crafts and subtle instincts, remain 
 ever as on the morning of their creation. 
 
 The course of this progress has not, however, been at all times self- 
 evident, uniform, nor calmly prosperous ; the sky has not been ever bright 
 above it, nor the flowers every where cheerily springing beneath, but its 
 path has been chequered variously with light and shade ; now obscured 
 by threatening clouds, raised by the crimes and follies of men, and which 
 have brooded darkly over its horizon, till oft some pitUess storm has well- 
 nigh swept back into barbai'ism every vestige of civiUzation, and many a 
 proud nation been, as it were, blotted out from the face of the earth, and 
 all the monuments of its prowess and its pomp buried beneath its ruins. 
 
 B 
 
2 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 Yet amid the fall of successive dynasties and the wreck of whole empires 
 and nations, the beneficent designs of Providence have overruled all events 
 to this end ; and by blending the rude energies of the conquerors with the 
 more polished manners of the conquered, — by nursing freedom in the camp 
 and arts in the cities, — they have prevented the blessings of peace from 
 settling on the lees of luxury ; they have worn away the fatal rust that 
 would else have corroded all the more generous and the better feelings of 
 the soul ; and they have quelled the fierce passions and ennobled the 
 ainbition of the barbarian ; and thus dispelled the mists of superstition, of 
 ignorance and prejudice that oppose the career of civilization, and the 
 development of intellectual, of moral and religious laws. 
 
 Progress then, the crown of the past, the hope of the future, is at 
 once both the noblest privilege and the bounden duty of man. Every 
 faculty that each possesses is capable of infinite improvement, and we 
 must therefore develop the same to the utmost extent in our power. 
 There is a moral obligation upon us to advance ; there can be no halting 
 on the road ; nor is there any resting-place for the slothful. If we are 
 not proceeding onward we are surely going backward ; and the first step 
 in the path of retrogression made by any one of us is not his loss alone, 
 but a fraud upon his fellows. Such then being the universal law to which 
 the world and the things of the world are subject, it has been most wisely 
 ordained, that every passing event and each external object should have a 
 relation to that law, and a purpose to fulfil, which far transcends that 
 momentary one for which alone it might at first seem to have been 
 designed. For this end has God spread around us his marvellous works, 
 — those pages of the book of Nature which is second only to that of his 
 Revelation, and which is written in a language that all people may read, 
 that the meanest capacity may understand, and which is written alike for 
 our instruction and our discipline as for our amusement and delight. 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 3 
 
 The meanest capacity may understand the lessons thus offered to us 
 stamped on the works of nature. The untutored savage may there read 
 if he will the broad laws of order and right : there is a response to these 
 mute teachings within every well-attuned mind. Every man may learn 
 patience, diligence, love and affection, from the example of the beasts of 
 the forest, and even from the insects which crawl upon the ground ; and 
 he may gather thence, as well as from the inanimate things around him, — 
 from the ocean with its restless waves, and from the hills with the waving 
 woods which cover them, — an unfailing evidence of an infinitely higher 
 power and inteUigence than his own ; and he may thus learn to adore a 
 creative wisdom, and to trust in one who hath so apparently cared well for 
 him, and hence be driven to seek a fuller knowledge in the pages of 
 Revelation. But though this be the evident design of the universe in 
 which we dwell, how many of us are there who receive such teaching 
 from it ? Most will not ; and in these days when monotonous rows of 
 melancholy-looking houses are fast swallowing up the suburbs of all our 
 larger cities and manufacturing towns, there are myriads who but rarely 
 are able to obtain a sight of such a thing as a gi"een meadow or forest-tree ; 
 who can only peer through a murky medium at heaven's blue vault above 
 them, and have no opportunity of examining aught but the works of men 
 hke themselves. To such as these therefore the book of nature is as it 
 were a sealed work ; while there are others who pervert its meanings and 
 mistake its teaching, not receiving from it humility, but rather food for 
 their own pride, wresting from it arguments for false Deism. Again : it is 
 not among the more crowded haunts of men that its higher passages are 
 in general displayed. It is only " they that go down into the sea in ships 
 that see the wonders of the deep." It is in the fury of the storm, in the 
 solitude of the desert, or upon the lofty mountain peak, that the visions of 
 the more solemn or awful import are vouchsafed to the few that seek 
 them. To convey therefore to others the memory of such scenes, to 
 
 B 2 
 
4 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 record such manifestations of glory, a faithful witness is needed, — a 
 translation of this book into the ordinary language of life, a means of 
 rendering it intelligible to the weak and the ignorant, and of forcing it 
 upon the attention of the obstinate and the dull. To whomsoever then this 
 task is committed they are bound to give a witness faithful and true ; and 
 to their peril it is if they palm upon the credulous their own sickly imagin- 
 ings in place of what they have seen and heard ; their own paltry com- 
 positions in Ueu of the workings of nature ; their own fancied improvements 
 of her perfect works with their imbecile alterations of her unen-ing laws. 
 
 Art and Science are the Translators of nature : humbly do they 
 both search into her mysteries, and then joyfully publish that which they 
 have therein learnt ; the latter of the principles of her mechanism, the 
 former of her beauty and grace; to the full perception and thankful 
 admiration of which qualities it is their office to educate the mind, that 
 from the contemplation of the wisdom and power of creation it might be 
 led to the due knowledge and reverence of the Creator ; and thus fulfilling 
 so high a portion in the beneficent designs of Providence for the progress 
 of the human race in so far as they are sought with earnestness, thankful- 
 ness, and love, and not merely for their ministry to our selfish comforts, 
 and pleasure, and luxury, do they stand /oremos< among the objects proper 
 for intellectual pursuit. 
 
 While, however. Science, in obedience to this natural law of progress, 
 has in modern times advanced with rapid strides, and extended world-wide 
 its blessings, Art has made no equivalent advance ; most vigorous, it 
 would appear, in the early spring of civilization, in the infancy of nations, 
 and when nursed in the energy of earnest thought and simple utterance, 
 she has withered amid the pomp of luxury and the parade of show, and 
 suffered less from the hand of violence than from gradual neglect and her 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 5 
 
 own misdirected efforts : the path not being so clearly marked out as that 
 of Science, she appears in modern times to have forgotten that progress is 
 expected of her, and has wandered in a retrograde course, hopeless of sur- 
 passing a fancied perfection reached long since, and blindly sun-endered 
 herself to a false exaggerated veneration for the works of antiquity, which 
 has been destructive of all enterprise. 
 
 The just consequence of this betrayal of the commission entrusted to 
 her has been that she has lost her due rank in the estimation of men ; nor 
 untU tliis be re-established can there be a hope that she will be enabled to 
 render an account worthy of those far greater advantages we possess at 
 the present day. Upon this point I am tempted to dwell here for an 
 instant, having found that this position which I would claim for Art is in 
 general absolutely denied, and that even a suggestion of her comparative 
 equality with Science is usually ridiculed ; and such an en'or as this widely 
 disseminated throughout society is, I conceive, sufficient to prevent the 
 success of her most strenuous efforts to regain the path of progression 
 from which she has wandered. It need not indeed excite our astonish- 
 ment that those who are intent alone upon the provision for their 
 bodily comforts, and who forget in the pursuit of the means all the 
 objects and ends of theii- existence, should stigmatize Art as unprotit- 
 able ; but there are many even who do turn their attention to subjects 
 of higher moment, who, attracted by the dazzling discoveries of Science, 
 affect to look down from the heights to which she has attained upon 
 her less successful competitor, as beneath serious attention, and suitable 
 only for their amusement ; and hence it is that so far greater a share 
 of the energies of the educated in society are directed into that channel, 
 whUe tliis remains neglected ; so that Art exists, as it were, by toler- 
 ance, and, bereft of a wholesome patronage and judicious criticism, is 
 obliged to pander to all the wavering fancies and fashions of the hour, 
 
6 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 resting not to perfect one of her borrowed types, and daring not to think 
 for hereelf. 
 
 Yet if it be observed how Nature makes use of those quahties of 
 which it has been said Science and Art are the exponents, no precedent 
 will be found in her works for this unjust preference. Whether is it their 
 mechanism or their beauty which is rendered the more apparent, and offered 
 the more freely to our admiration ? Surely that which were the more 
 essential to our happiness would be the oftener presented to our view ; and 
 vet we are not taken every hour behind the scenes to see the subtle 
 methods of her construction, but beauty is showered on all her works : it 
 is the melody of creation which made the morning stars to sing together, 
 which made God to pronounce His work " very good " when He created 
 the trees to be " pleasant to the sight " as well as to yield fruit for food. 
 Now, indeed, it may swell into a grander strain, and now sink into a softer 
 cadence, being not shown forth every where alike, lest our sense of it be 
 blunted and our search for it retarded, but lent only in its fulness for a 
 moment, yet it is ever present as the type of infinite love, as the seal of 
 the Creator set upon His works for our admiration and delight, so that no 
 creature lacks a sufficiency. 
 
 Inasmuch, then, as it is not necessary that the body of man be dis- 
 sected before the pre-eminence of his form can be seen, — inasmuch as it is 
 not needful to have a close acquaintance with the hidden macliinery of 
 bones, of muscles, and ligaments to perceive the gi-ace of outline, the flush 
 of colour or power of expression which are patent on the surface, — inas- 
 much as health was prior to disease, and therefore to surgery which would 
 cure it, — so is Art the elder sister of Science. The latter may, indeed, 
 hke the insect architects of the ocean coral isle, patiently adding fact to 
 fact gleaned by obsei-vation, build again in theory the system of the uni- 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 7 
 
 verse ; yet her work is that of reason and intellect alone, a simple process 
 of induction, and, amid aU the pride of the knowledge thus gained, and 
 the ease of wealth it procures, there is cause for fear lest the affections 
 become blunted, and the faith relaxed, and the heart steeled, so that men 
 take no more notice of the glory of the heavens, save that they drop fat- 
 ness on their fields, or guide theii- vessels through the deep, nor of the 
 bow set in the clouds, but for its prophecy of the seasons ; but the warning 
 voice of Ai't is raised to fix the most transient beam of loveliness that 
 passes over the face of nature, and to stay for the thankful admiration of 
 miUions and tens of millions yet to be born those revelations of gran- 
 deur and beauty which stand as the epochs of a Ufe-time, while she is 
 able further to create beauty for herself, working with the principles she 
 has gleaned from nature, and adding thereto the image of thought. 
 
 The recognition of the rank which I have thus claimed for Art is the 
 first and most essential step which must be made in order to effect its 
 progress ; for then, and not till then, will they who give their lives to its 
 practice approach their liigh duties in neither a vain, nor a trifling, nor a 
 mercenary spu-it, and the pubUc be taught truly to appreciate their labours, 
 justly to criticise and judiciously to patronise them. I shall endeavour in the 
 next chapter to explain how greatly the power of its different branches to 
 make good their title to such claims depends upon their mutual combina- 
 tion and assistance, and how their present state of disunion tends to the 
 degradation of each ; but as it is my present purpose to consider rather 
 the prospects of Architecture than of Art generally, I pass now to review 
 the individual condition of that particular branch, in order that we may 
 ascertain the position in which we ourselves are at present, as w'ell as the 
 route we ought to follow, that, being no longer in danger of working 
 wherefore or whither we know not, we may put our whole energies to the 
 task, and then neither pause to look back nor loiter on the road. 
 
8 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 Architecture combines the character of both Science and Art, and 
 stands therefore in a somewhat anomalous position, since it may advance 
 with rapidity in its former capacity, and yet remain stationary or even 
 retrogi'adc, and that without being observed, in the second ; and thus its 
 health — nay, its life — as an art may decay, till it sink into a mere craft of 
 building. Then it differs from both Painting and Sculpture in being less 
 directly imitative and more creative than they, for the materials with 
 which it has to deal are too rugged and unyielding to allow of closely 
 copying natural forms, and thus it becomes essentially conventional. It 
 works rather with the principles of nature, and the tj'pe which it chooses 
 thence must be engrafted upon and developed together with the idea of 
 the stability of the framework of its structure, and the system of the 
 heaping up and over-arching of its separate stones. Its means of expres- 
 sion also are more hmited than theirs : material abstract beauty or sub- 
 limity is its scope, and that a wide, noble, and sufficient one ; for the 
 limits of its power have not yet been reached by man, nor need we fear 
 they will be, as it is the highest presumption to suppose that we have 
 extended to the utmost one faculty with which we are endowed, — to assert 
 that we have become so wise we cannot be wiser. 
 
 Architecture, then, in the first instance, may err, and has erred, from 
 its character as an art having been subordinated to that of Science : as if 
 its convenience and fitness for the very lowest utilitarian purposes were 
 the all and all required of it, but little thought is in general bestowed 
 upon its power of pleeising and instructing the people, and, if at times a 
 spirit of ostentation has induced a selfish display, it is not held in remem- 
 brance that it is a moral injustice to blot the face of the earth with 
 buildin2;s which are an evesore in the slight of men. The cause of this 
 neglect I believe in a great measure to be that Ai-chitecture is seldom 
 embraced, like Painting and Sculpture, from an ardent love alone, but is 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 9 
 
 SO notoriously coldly and calculatingly entered upon as a respectable 
 profession, and, thus clogged with incompetency, it is kept in a respectable 
 grade of dull mediocrity, in which it is likely to remain until undertaken 
 with a nobler intention than simi^ly to make it pay. It may too and has 
 erred, from its principle of conventionaUty having been forgotten in the 
 attempt after a hteral imitation of the forms of natm-e in its details, instead 
 of such a due ordering of their irregularity and pruning of their wild 
 luxuriance as may render them suitable to its purpose ; — an error which is 
 one of the earliest symptoms of its decline, and rampant in the present 
 day. Architecture has also erred, inasmuch as association and prejudice 
 have fettered it with the arbitrary laws of antiquarianism in its search 
 after abstract beauty and sublimity. Such a catalogue of examples have 
 been deduced from the works of the ancient masters, and fitted together as 
 a puzzle by a child, into a system that their authors never dreamt of, to 
 wliich it has been attempted to bind us into exact compliance, compelling 
 us to a mere reproduction of their facts, and deban-ing us from venturing 
 to the same source whence they drew, lest we should do aught for which 
 we have not precedent, as if precedent diminished the range of invention, 
 and riveted links to a chain confining our liberty, instead of being, as it 
 really is, the adding of man's thought to thought, the gaining of a higher 
 position whence the horizon of our view is extended, and fresh regions 
 of discovery opened, the widening of the sphere of our knowledge, 
 which knowledge is power, given to us for further use, that, having 
 learnt how those great masters applied the types they chose from nature, 
 we may in like manner apply other types for ourselves from the same 
 exhaustless store. 
 
 It IS, however, now generally acknowledged that we have a record of 
 our own to leave,— a transcript of the feehngs of the age to embody in our 
 works ; that we should strive after more than a mere reproduction of those 
 
 c 
 
10 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 of past ages, and ought to effect more than has yet been done. Several 
 voices have ah-eady been raised condemning the practice of following 
 Eg}^tians, Greeks, Romans, and Goths, as fashion might sway, denouncing 
 the false system of copy ism, impugning the all-enslaving authority of 
 antiquity, and urging us to put aside the distorting medium of association : 
 these have bid us to think for ourselves, and not to pilfer the thoughts of 
 our fathers, and thus has been already rent the veil of thick darkness that 
 overshadowed us, and the death-knell rung for the practice of three 
 centuries. Yet the hydra Copyism dies hard ; and though Nature, thus 
 held up as a beacon light, has flashed conviction and astonishment to 
 many of his votaries, who before trusted to the glimmering rays reflected 
 from a past inspiration, there are others who, panic-struck by this trans- 
 ference of their allegiance from the tyranny of antiquarianism to the 
 principles of nature, have endeavoured to stigmatize the act as presump- 
 tion ; yet certainly there was more of presumption in the setting up of 
 man and his rules in their stead. 
 
 Accepting, then, Nature for our guide, as we are bound to do, 
 seeing that we have no other source of inspiration open to us, we need 
 fiirther to know how we shall deduce from her works the principles we 
 require, and in what manner we are to apply them to our conven- 
 tional purposes. Here, then, is the right use of Precedent, which let 
 the architectural student examine well, and then go and do, not the same, 
 but likewise. 
 
 Towards the right comprehension of these principles much practical 
 assistance has been rendered by Mr. Ruskin in "The Seven Lamps of 
 Architecture," as well as in his later work " The Stones of Venice ;'" and 
 yet the brilhancy of the former becomes sadly clouded over where this 
 question of Progress is treated of; so much so that truly " The Lamp of 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. H 
 
 Obedience," the last of the series, is fearfully quenched in gloom; for in 
 it we are forbidden all hope of advancing our art until we can again merge 
 the profession into a band of Freemasons as of old, and " teach our archi- 
 tecture at our schools from Cornwall to Noilhumberland, as we would 
 teach English spelling and EngUsh grammar ;" and it is proclaimed that 
 " until a universal system of form and workmanship be every where adopted 
 and enforced, oui- arcliitecture will languish in the dust ;" — that " the 
 only chance for architecture rests upon the bare possibility of obtaining 
 the consent of architects and the public to choose a style and use it uni- 
 versally;" and this opinion I find is supported by Mr. Ferguson in his 
 work on " the Principles of Beauty in Architecture;" for he also tells us 
 therein that a gradual national improvement of some style, universally 
 chosen and practised, will alone eflfect progress in Art, by the same means 
 as facts are accumulated in physical science, from which, tracing the arts 
 in regular gradation, he concludes that the same causes influence the whole 
 series, and discourages the idea of individual improvement, and proliibits 
 any fi'om practising otherwise than on a general stock design, which alone 
 they might add to, con-ect, or improve. 
 
 Now the essential differences which I have been endeavouring to 
 show, as existing between Science and Art, preclude this wholesale appli- 
 cation of the same laws to both ; and besides, the scheme is utterly 
 opposed to the spuit of the age, and therefore impracticable. The days of 
 feudalism and monastic compulsion are past. Architects are no longer 
 an order of priests, and theii* numbers would prevent them, even did they 
 wish it, fi'om thus combining in so fraternal a manner, and submitting to 
 such a thraldom as this would necessarily be. Mr. Ruskin himself fears 
 its impossibiUty, but asserts that with that he has notliing to do ; yet 
 indeed we have something to do with its possibility, for the present is one 
 
 c 2 
 
12 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 phase in the general development of society, — one page in the histon- of 
 its progress, to wliich the world has not arrived by mere chance. To deny 
 the possibility of further progress in any branch of human skill or know- 
 ledge is to assert that Providence is at fault, which is absurd : we may be 
 sure that we shall never be placed in a position where om- duty should be 
 impossible. Selfish, and depraved, and short-sighted, nor dreaming of 
 such tilings individually, we may be, yet the ways of Pro\-idence are not 
 to be thwarted by our misdeeds ; she has other intentions in view, and 
 will work out her own path in her own manner, and that without our 
 violently recuning to systems of past ages to help her. 
 
 In the arguments I have referred to, it seems taken for granted that 
 the formation of a universal style, after the model of those that have been, 
 is the grand desideratum ; and it may be that the method suggested is the 
 only one by which such result could be attained. But then it is not 
 necessary that such a style should be established in order that architecture 
 may progress. We look not that our painters should give the same 
 features or attitudes to their figures, the same composition or tone of 
 colouring to their pictures ; nor do we ask this monotony of our sculptors : 
 wherefore, then, should it be demanded from us? The day has passed 
 when the works of a nation should be reckoned in the asgresrate, and 
 their growth described as regularly as that of a vegetable. We want 
 neither a new nor a universal style ; it were better that we knew nothing 
 about styles ; the ver}^ name of them is a bane and a hindrance to the 
 architect, however useful to the antiquan,-. Let us leave it to posterity to 
 classify our productions, and be sure that if we work simply, neither 
 copying nor striving for singulaiity, we shall not then so belie the feelings 
 of our age and countn,- but that they must impress themselves upon our 
 work, though we perhaps may see it not. We shall at least do that which 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 13 
 
 shall have an appearance of life, and which, rudely it may be, yet surely, 
 shall pierce to the sympathies of men. Let each architect, then, shun 
 plagiarism as a stain upon his reputation, and then all beauty is common 
 to him ; for columnar architecture, and delicacy of moulding, and pre- 
 cision of symmetry, are not the inalienable property of the Greek, thouo-h 
 his several and pecuHar orders are. Lofty and graceful proportion, 
 vigorous hght and shade, faiiy tracery and fretted vaulting, are not a 
 Gothic patent; though each cathedral, with its own crisp fohage and 
 quaint imagery, and curious penetrations, and varied details, left to us 
 throughout the length and the breadth of our land as a record of the 
 laboiu-, and zeal, and love of their builders, is, as it were, a sign-manual 
 which it is forgery for us to repeat. The well, however, whence they 
 drew is open to us, and we may do more and better than they, since 
 they have shown us how, and we have not all that lesson to learn for 
 ourselves. 
 
 Yet if we cannot and would not compel such a unity of practice 
 throughout the profession, we may and must expect, if we are to look for 
 progress, a far gi-eater degree of consistency in that of its individual 
 members than is usual at present ; for one thought fully carried out is 
 sufficient for a man's life ; nay, it is a legacy he maybe proud to bequeath. 
 Else in pandering to the appetite for novelty, if no two designs of an 
 architect are to resemble each other, there is no help for him but to con- 
 tinue copying the works of others, since he cannot rest to perfect one idea 
 of his own. " The Lamp of Obedience " is a noble one, and necessary to 
 rescue us from restless agitation for novelty, which is as injurious as the 
 opposite extreme. All progress must be founded on what has been done 
 before ; therefore whatever precedent a man selects, let him keep to it and 
 improve thereon to his utmost, not suffering himself to be driven from his 
 
14 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 post by the withering storms of criticism, which ever arise when auijht 
 that has not previous autliority is attempted ' . 
 
 It is upon our own individual improvement that we must depend for 
 progi'css : there is but Uttle use in seeking for new theories for the 
 development of architecture, for the present system is sufficient for our 
 purpose : it is reform, not revolution, we want ; a higher aim and a 
 recognition of the dignity of our art ; a closer study of the forms of nature, 
 by which the taste is refined, and a feeling for beauty obtained which will 
 not desert us when engaged in the sterner studies of the science. And for 
 the comprehension of the principles to be derived from nature, the exercise 
 of common sense, which, unfortunately, is not so universal as its name 
 would appear to signify; for, as Emerson declares, "nothing astonishes 
 men so much as common sense and plain deahng." It is not the sense of 
 the mob, of the multitude, of the majority, of the illiterate, of the savage 
 or the fool; but the term is synonymous with right sense. It is the 
 natural sense, unprejudiced, yet refined by education ; that which, however 
 men may deride it, or act without reference to it, they will at last, when 
 they see it, acknowledge to be better than their own. It is the want of 
 this which kept architecture and the criticism thereof so long in a state of 
 degradation ; for if men would only build a good wall instead of a Gothic 
 wall, it must needs then be right ; or if they would judge of a building 
 by the tests they apply to other tilings, and not allow the style to cloke 
 all manner of ugliness, there would be some hope for the proper 
 appreciation of the art. 
 
 As then in literature it is not well to mince, and pick, and choose 
 
 ' Witness the inane outcry which greeted the early attempts of tlie Pre-Raffaelites in 
 painting, but which is now gradually becoming husi)ed. 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 15 
 
 the words, or cavil about the rounding of a sentence, lest to such minor 
 points we sacrifice the point and pith of the argument ; and as we should 
 rather seek to write with terseness and energy what we have to say, and 
 look to the matter and not to the manner ; so in architecture let us not 
 worry ourselves to be original, nor strive to be peculiar, remembering, to 
 quote Emerson again, that " Genius leaves to novices the gay, the 
 fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierces directly to the simple and 
 the true." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE UNITY OF ART, AND THE RELATION OF ITS SEVERAL 
 
 BRANCHES. 
 
 I HAVE stated in the former chapter that one important cause of the 
 degraded state to which Art has fallen in these days, and of the neglect to 
 which it is subject, arises from the isolation of its several branches and the 
 want of sympathy and union in the efforts of those who follow each 
 respectively. It was after the revived Paganism of the cinque cento period 
 had utterly overwhelmed the purer spirit of Christian art w^hich had 
 preceded it, and firmly established its baneful rule over Europe, that first, 
 since the morning of its birth, the world saw the strange anomaly of Art 
 rejected from all influence over the affairs of mankind. It had been from 
 all time that kings, priests, statesmen, and people owned gladly its sway ; 
 that poUcy and religion disdained not by its means to promote instruc- 
 tion and moraUty ; and that all that is noble and all that is fair and 
 historical in the records of a nation had been connected with its Art ; for 
 then it was universal, and sought with whatever material was at hand to 
 embody the creations of the mind ; whether with the builded masonry of 
 hewn stones in the chiselled block of Parian marble, or witli glowing 
 colour upon the canvas or plastered wall, it mattered not that the means 
 should differ, so that the end accomplished was the same. 
 
 But now^ forsooth, reason, which was falsely deified, needed not the 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 17 
 
 light of imagination, but daslied that friendly beacon to the ground ; the 
 very connexion of Art with common sense and common hfe was severed ; 
 the mass cared not for the matter ; so that, having lost its natural hold 
 on their minds Art had to seek a fictitious one. No longer universal and 
 united, the very bond between its several branches was broken, and each 
 shrank selfishly and grudgingly into its own narrow and contracted sphere. 
 The sculptor abandoned the architect, and the architect the painter, and 
 each strove to monopolize his craft by enveloping it in mj'stery, making 
 it appear hke a species of juggUng, the key to which was in the hands of 
 the initiated alone : each hid, as it were, his lamp under a bushel, while the 
 shades were increasing of that long night of more than three centuries which 
 followed, through the gloom of which some stars indeed shone out brightly 
 with their own genius' light, and yet could impart none around them. 
 
 If, then, now as we think there seems to be a gleam of the dawning, 
 and that some hope of a recurrence to sounder principles of Art is to be 
 traced in many of the public and private buildings being erected around 
 us, distinct from the more ephemeral changes of fashion which previously 
 periodically succeeded each other, and even more hopefully in the earnest 
 efforts of some few of our painters and sculptors, evidencing an increase of 
 power, together with a more serious and intelligent aim, and a more intense 
 study and childhke following of nature ; and while much hope may be 
 gathered therefrom of a gradual leavening and growth of pure taste, yet 
 up to the present time its range has been but limited, and its progress but 
 slow. And the cause which has cramped the one and retarded the other 
 will, I think, be found in the want of attention to the first law which 
 common sense would teach us — namely, that in the unity and felloinship of 
 the several branches of Art lies their potver. 
 
 For it is the province of Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture, to 
 
 D 
 
18 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 embody the whole of the visible qualities of nature, being, as it were, the 
 several dialects of the universal language of Ai-t that address the visual 
 sense, and by which man seeks to convey to his fellows the impressions he 
 receives from the material creation around him ; for which purpose, 
 separately, they are imperfect, and individually incapable of the full 
 rendering of the majesty of nature, since each has the power of setting 
 forth some one or more of her quaUties that he beyond the range of the 
 others ; it is, therefore, by the union of their several efforts alone that her 
 whole excellence can be declared. As the seasons, by their succession, 
 complete the cycle of the year, and by their united influence bring to 
 perfection the fruits of the earth ; as the voice of all created things, 
 weak and faint in themselves, have yet a part peculiar to them- 
 selves in the gi-and chorus of praise to their Maker, without which 
 its harmony would be incomplete; — so in the Arts do their glory 
 and their strength consist in their unity, which combines the efforts 
 of each, and gives purpose to their power and direction to their aim. 
 Thus Architecture embodies but the abstract principles of nature ; re- 
 creating, by means of her laws of construction and geometr}', she gains 
 subUmity by vastness, symmetry, and contrast ; beauty by proportion, 
 harmony, and ornament. She builds up the polished stones of the earth 
 into a music of ^nsible matter, wliich yet is, and must remain, ever but a 
 "frozen music," as it has been called; out of tune with the natural 
 melodies ai'ound, which concentrate every kind of attraction, if she avail 
 not herself of the graces of her sister Arts. Apart from these, her means 
 of expression are very limited, and extend not beyond the simplest emotions 
 of the mind, addressing but few of the sympathies of men ; with no more 
 power than the hspings of a babe, or the gestures of the dumb. But that 
 which she has to say is told from one generation to another, — is told so 
 cleai-ly that men may not but heai" ; and while she shields within her arms 
 the more fragile works of Painting and Sculpture, their voice whose com- 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 19 
 
 pass is greater, blends with and becomes one with her own. History 
 lends its associations, and the wild legends their awe ; and when records 
 have perished, and the voice of tradition is hushed, so long as one stone 
 will stand upon another, time will but add a charm and bedeck the 
 mouldering waUs with the golden hues of the Hchen and the moss ; tiU, 
 beautiful even in death, the last relic is ploughed into dust. 
 
 Then Sculpture and Painting, which, in then- treatment of different 
 aspects of Nature, descend to a closer imitation of her works — the ideal of 
 whose search is not in piinciples, but in the fulness and perfection of 
 things — whose aim is rather recombination than creation, — depend so 
 much for space, material, and opportunity, on this their more enduring 
 sister Art, that isolated from her and from each other, their efforts can be 
 but cramped, small, and perishable, and become too often, as a jewel, lost 
 for want of a setting ; shelved to moulder in the dust of ages ; buried in 
 the naiTow sphere of some gallery, to pamper the pride of perhaps an igno- 
 rant connoisseur, fain thus by his wealth to purchase the eclat of taste. 
 
 " Sculpture," says Sir Charles Eastlake, " had passed the period of 
 its perfection before its connexion with Architecture had ceased ;" and 
 much the same may be said with regard to Painting, since most of the 
 chef-d'oeuvres in that art were executed as decorations to the walls of the 
 churches and monasteries of Italy ; and if age and neglect have sadly 
 dimmed many of then* colours, had it not been for the guardianship of the 
 structures they adorned, they would ere now have been all dispersed or 
 destroyed. 
 
 The bond, then, between these several Fine Arts, tends to enhance 
 and ennoble each, nay, is absolutely necessary to the perfection of either. 
 Yet how seldom in the present day is its value duly recognised ! Artists 
 
 D 2 
 
20 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 of either class are content to grope on blindly in their own narrow course, 
 utterly careless of the aid and sympathy of their fellows. Our buildings 
 are thus mostly left devoid of colour, the want of which is painfully felt in 
 the interior of St. Paul's Cathedral, and in many of our other churches ; 
 while their carving is left, too generally, to little better than masons, or at 
 least has not entered into the original design ; and thus cold, cheerless, 
 and without feeling, they have no charms for the ordinaiy spectator ; for 
 it requires some education of the eye, and a considerable intellectual 
 eflfort, to appreciate the merits of proportion, which are all that are aimed 
 at. Some exceptions there are happily to this rule, among which the 
 admirable sculpture in the pediment of St. George's Hall, Liverpool, may 
 be named, as being the design of the present architect to the building 
 (Professor Cockerell) . 
 
 Again, the Pednter despises Architecture as mechanical — with too 
 much reason at present — till driven perhaps for a back-ground to a 
 picture he stumbles upon Archaeology, and, in avoiding en-ors of chro- 
 nolog}^ violates the first principles of the art. And Sculpture, the line of 
 separation between which and Architecture it were impossible to draw, has 
 yet been rent fi'om it, and, like Atlas raised from earth, it has lost the 
 power it possessed. Now, for the first time, is the niche statueless, and 
 the statue remains shelterless ; while the only combination our clumsiness 
 can conceive, is that wi-etched idea bon-owed fi-om Rome, of hoisting a 
 hero into the clouds, forsooth, to keep him out of sight and out of mind. 
 
 To renew the Gothic canopies and niche-work, so that they should 
 appear as if built yesterday, while the figures of which they were but the 
 covering, are altogether forgotten, is one of the worst among the count- 
 less folUes of that mania for restoration which, hke an epidemic, has 
 spread over the whole face of Europe ; so that those grand monuments of 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 21 
 
 mediaeval piety, which have hitherto escaped the effects of the elements, 
 the ravage of warfare, and the madness of revolution, are now almost 
 every where being palsied in their age by the misguided zeal of their 
 admirers, and stand too often flaunting in an affected freshness of youth, 
 the very ghosts of their former selves, their spirit destroyed, their history 
 falsified, their beauty utterly and irretrievably ruined. In other instances 
 the architects, as they call themselves, who, in France particularly, are 
 thus engaged in deliberately mangUng all the fairest works which have 
 been left to them, place new statues into old niches, like new pieces into 
 old garments, which specimens of their stiff, cramped, sham medisevalism, 
 can only make one sigh devoutly for another revolution to knock them all 
 down again'. 
 
 Yet, though now so continually violated throughout both ancient and 
 mediaeval Art, even in their decline, do we find this principle of common 
 sense to have been obeyed ; whether we look to the stern temples of 
 Egypt, from whose storied walls the colouring has not yet faded, and 
 whose colossi and sphynxes — in their gi-and conventionalism never since 
 suipassed — with their brows bent, and their eyes fixed so calmly as if they 
 would scan eternity, seem as much a part of the architecture as of the 
 sculpture ; as do likewise the human-headed bulls, and the carved slabs, 
 
 ' I know nothing more melancholy than the complacent self-gratulations with which the 
 perpetrators and abettors of such barbarism blazon forth their proceedings. A correspond- 
 ent, in a late nmnber of " The Builder," after insanely preferring the Church of St. Ouen at 
 Rouen to the Cathedral of that city, gloats over the declared intention of the French Govern- 
 ment to restore the latter building. With a fearful reminiscence of the desecration of the 
 fafade of the Church of St. Maclou, the modern work of St. Ouen, and the restoration of 
 Notre Dame, Paris, the Cathedral of Lisieux, the Church of Louviers, and many others in 
 Normandy, I fervently pray that the noble work of Rouen Cathedral may be preserved from 
 a similar fate. I speak not here of a judicious reparation, which is a far different thing. 
 
22 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 the only remnants that can be gleaned of the palaces of Assyria ; or, if we 
 turn to the Parthenon of Athens — which was probably the most perfect 
 instance of the harmonious combination of the three Arts — the temple 
 forming not only a frame for the display of the mythic history of Greece, 
 but each group and ranked procession having its architectural as well as 
 its phonetic part to fulfil, which could not have been effected had Ictinus 
 and Phidias despised or been ignorant of each other's art. 
 
 And if less aesthetically refined than this chef-d'oeuvre of classic Art, 
 yet even more pregnant with feehng and thought, and, therefore, works of 
 a higher order — and showing the ai'cliitect and sculptor to be one, or at 
 least closely united — are some of the best works of the Gothic period. 
 Many complete and noble poems in stone are to be found over the heads 
 of the doorways to the larger churches and cathedrals of France — a posi- 
 tion pecuUarly appropriate to them, as they here must arrest the attention 
 of those about to enter the building, are at a suitable height, and some- 
 what protected from violence and the effects of the weather. 
 
 The same perfect combination of the different branches of Art are 
 likewise to be found among the tombs of the medieeval era, in which 
 lespect they stand in strong contrast to those of the present day, which 
 even, when themselves worthy of notice, are too exclusively of a sculp- 
 tural character. Tliis defect may be noticed in the otherwise exquisite 
 monumental designs by Flaxman now congregated in the hall of University 
 College, London ; in the introduction of the camp-bedstead and mattress, 
 on which the two children by Chantrey are lying, into Lichfield Cathedral ; 
 as in numerous other instances. Whereas those older monuments, richly 
 decorated to a degi'ee which their limited size renders allowable, but which 
 might not be carried over the whole of the buildings which contain them, 
 whose grey and sombre walls make them to glitter like gems in the 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 23 
 
 twilight, their effigies of armed knights he as if in calm and peaceful 
 slumber, now that their warfare is done ; all blazing, like the iris, in 
 burnished mail and enamel, shrouded in gold and vermilion, their altar- 
 tomb for a couch, and canopied by a lacework of stone ; beneath the arch 
 of which there is usually, in the wall monuments of Italy, some subject of 
 an appropriate character painted in fresco, as in that of the Bardi Chapel 
 at St. Croce, where the figure of the wanior himself is represented in 
 complete armour, rising to judgment at the summons of the last trumpet. 
 Other beautiful examples there are in the churches of Verona and 
 Venice, &c. ; but few, if any, surpass in the qualities I have mentioned the 
 tombs which surround the choir of our own Westminster Abbey. 
 
 It were, however, needless to seek further, in Precedent the Text-hook 
 of Art, for confirmation of that principle which we may easily, each for 
 himself, deduce from Nature, her Prototype, namely, that in every object 
 in which perfection is attempted, form, colour, and modelling of surface 
 should be combined ; and therefore that Ai-chitecture, Painting, and 
 Sculpture, which respectively embody these qualities, should likewise be 
 ever united. And as I beUeve that the recognition of this principle would 
 be another considerable step gained towards the restoration of Art, I 
 purpose, in the following pages, to pursue the inquiry into the manner in 
 which Painting and Sculpture should be united to Architecture, so as to 
 become its legitimate ornament ; and shall endeavour to show how Nature 
 is to be studied by the aitist ; how her principles are to be borrowed and 
 her forms imitated, since such is the only means by which man can advance 
 Art to the rank it ought to hold, and to the perfection it is its privilege to 
 reach ; and this, though it be the sole source of his inspiration, is one 
 which is amply sufficient ; for he may range free through all her pastures, 
 as the bee in quest of honey, fearless of ever exhausting their riches ; and 
 with this reflection for his comfort, that even wdiile sucking their sweet- 
 
24 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 ness, he is not robbing her works ; that so far from stealing their charms, 
 he but gives them others in addition, colouring them with the iris of his 
 own imagination, and the tender hues of association, as the sun's dechning 
 beams shed a radiance over the homely meadows which is not their 
 own. It is this interchange which Wordsworth has thus noted in "The 
 Retrospect:" 
 
 " And Nature and her objects beautified 
 These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn 
 They burnished her." 
 
 And again, it is the loss of this sympathy to the objects deprived of 
 it by the death of his friend, that Tennyson laments thus in his " In 
 Memoriam:" — 
 
 " Unwatched the garden bough shall sway, 
 The tender blossom flutter down, 
 Unloved that beech will gather brown, 
 This maple burn itself away ; 
 
 " Unloved, the sunflower, shining fair, 
 Ray round with flames her disk of seed, 
 And many a rose-carnation feed 
 With summer spice the humming air ; 
 
 " Unloved, by many a sandy bar 
 The brook shall babble down the plain. 
 At noon or wliun tlit lesser wain 
 Is twisting round the polar star; 
 
 " Uncared for, gird the windy grove. 
 And flood the haunts of hern and crake ; 
 Or into silver iirrows break 
 The sailing moon in creek and cove ;" 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 25 
 
 For, indeed, what were all the beauty and magnificence of Nature, if not 
 consecrated by the theoretic love of man, which straight lifts it into a 
 higher order of being — translates it from inanimate to animate creation. 
 It may be that every flower, as instinct suggests, enjoys the air it breathes. 
 Yet it can never know the happiness derived of giving as well as receiving, 
 nor fulfil the chief end of its being, if it command not human sympathy 
 and love. It is this, the choice of man, which gives their charm to the 
 carved wreaths that bind the marble capital — that twine up the arches, 
 and clasp together the mouldings, and nestle into their hollows ; while 
 close by, perhaps, its type, the seedling fern, is unfolding its downy volute- 
 like frond, and rustling in the breeze ; or the thistle rears its purple crown 
 with ten times the actual gi*ace of its copy on the stone, yet vainly courting 
 even a share of attention. 
 
 Let, then, the artist bear this in mind for his encouragement — that 
 his time will not be lost in striving to embody some thoughts gathered 
 from the storehouse of Natui'e, for the instruction and pleasure of genera- 
 tions to come. Let him seek diligently to learn here, where alone he can, 
 the broad principles of his Art ; and lay to heart, as the first lesson from 
 her lips, — yea, broider it on his very garment, — that in unity of fellowship 
 is his strength. Let him learn it from the music of the stars, whose 
 circling spheres wheel ever in their orbits, the planets round suns, suns 
 around each other, and system about system, from age to age, in harmony 
 with this law. Or from the fury of the ocean — in the might of its waves, 
 all varying, not two alike, as the leaves of the forest, yet all swayed by 
 the same tide, obedient to the same currents, and driven before the same 
 wind. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE RESPECTIVE POSITIONS OF ARCHITECTURE, PAINTING, AND 
 SCULPTURE, AND THE REQUISITE TREATMENT OF THE LATTER 
 FOR THE PURPOSES OF ARCHITECTURAL DECORATION. 
 
 If we may consider as gi'anted the premise for which I have been con- 
 tending, namely, that a work of Art to be complete requires the combi- 
 nation of Architecture, Painting, and Sculpture, we may pass now to 
 review the position which each of these should occupy, so that there 
 should be no confusion or interference between them, and that neither 
 should unduly predominate to the pi'ejudice or injury of the others. 
 
 And, firstly, of Architecture : this is, as it were, the framework of 
 the whole design ; it should therefore appear to be predominant in all the 
 main structural lines and features ; nor is it well that any mere sculptural 
 accessories should be suffered to break the terminal boundaries of its 
 composition ; and on this ground I believe the Gothic turret or pinnacle 
 to be a more legitimate means of attaining picturcsqueness of outline than 
 the classic acroteria, which besides convey the unpleasant feeling before 
 referred to, of the human figure being placed shelterless upon the most 
 exposed situation. VVlierever it is desired to put statues in such positions, 
 common sense would suggest their being covered with a canopy which 
 may form the pinnacle, as at the Cathedral of St. Mark's, Venice. As to 
 the Renaissance ^'ases, usually stuck upon parapets, if they are not 
 intended to catch the distilled dew of heaven for the use of the inhabitants 
 
PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, &c. 27 
 
 I can conceive no other object for them, and the sooner they are all 
 knocked off the better. The architectural framework should be always 
 left comparatively plain, so that its purpose may be at once proclaimed, 
 and thus relief and repose is obtained for the more enriched portions. 
 This quality may be preserved even in the most elaborate designs, such as 
 at first sight appear to be one efflorescence of ornament, as in the transept 
 end of Evi'eux Cathedral, and most of the fine contemporary flamboyant 
 facades to the Cathedi-als of France, where the main features of the but- 
 tresses, the pediments, and the openings, with their arched canopies, are 
 perfectly distinguishable from the wall surface between them ; whereas in 
 many of the Belgian Hotels de Ville, e. g. that of Louvain, the whole is so 
 equally covered with decoration of the same character, that proportion is 
 destroyed, and the eye wanders over the fi-ittered surface till it becomes 
 fatigued and disgusted. 
 
 Such members as columns and piers, which have to support consider- 
 able weight, require that their apparent solidity should in no wise be 
 interfered with ; and therefore the panels usually sunk in the face of the 
 Renaissance pilasters, and filled with arabesques, are misplaced, and the 
 deeply-cut mouldings of the later Gothic piers inappropriate ; but the 
 clustering of a number of shafts to perform the office of a pier, as in the 
 earher Gothic churches, since they thus bear the superstructure as well as 
 any other arrangement might do, is a legitimate and beautiful idea ; so 
 also are the shallow channellings in the circumference of the Doric pillar, 
 since they run in the direction of the transmitted pressure, and in no 
 degi-ee diminish the strength. No member that has to perform an 
 important part in the construction ought to be disguised as a mere orna- 
 ment ; nor is a miniature copy of any feature in a building to be degraded 
 for such a purpose. Since in the former case the province of Architecture 
 is invaded, for instance, when a crumpled mass of foliage forms a corbel 
 
 E 2 
 
28 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 to receive the vaulting shafts of the roofs, as is sometimes done in the 
 EngHsh decorated Gotliic, and often copied in our modem churches ; in 
 the latter case it becomes the usurper, as when battlements are used to 
 decorate the transoms of a window or the capital of the column, which is 
 frequently to be seen in the perpendicular work of this countr}-. On these 
 gi-ounds, too, we may arraign those fanciful figures — full of life, indeed, 
 and interesting fi-om their sjTnbolism — which bear the columns of the 
 porches to the Lombardesque churches in Italy, such as St. Zeno, at 
 Verona ; also the massy pendants that hang wedged-up, as it were, to the 
 centre of the arches of the grotesque and cavernous porch at Louviers ; 
 while those from the vaulting of the south transept porch at St. Ouen, at 
 Rouen, are still more to be condemned as not havmg the same visible 
 means of support. 
 
 The proper position for Sculpture is at the junction or intersection of 
 the main arcliitectural features, such as the capitals, mouldings, finials, 
 bosses, and other accessory portions, as statues in the niches or crowning 
 important points, and bas-reliefs withm pediments, panels, &c. If it be 
 carried over large masses of surface, it would appear to usurp the place 
 where colour might be appUed to better advantage ; and it wiU — at least, 
 in some degree — lose its proportional effectiveness and its character as a 
 decoration only to the Architecture. Tlie metopes, frieze, pediment, and 
 acroteria in the classic temple, were its field, the walls being left to the 
 painter. Again, in the best and purest of the Gothic examples, such as 
 the transept ends of Rouen Cathedral, it is treated in the same manner ; 
 for though the lower part of their doorways, with the angular pedestals 
 that flank them, are covered to a considerable height with dehcate bas- 
 reUefs ', they are only the decorations to these principal features, and are 
 
 ' See Frontispiece, figs. 1, 2, 3, and 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 29 
 
 abundantly contrasted by space of jjlain surface above and around, by 
 means of which not one of the well-studied and exquisitely-refined mould- 
 ings and other enrichments is lost in the general effect. 
 
 The double entrance to the south aisle of the nave to Bayeux 
 Cathedral is another example of earlier date showing the same admirable 
 proportion and arrangement, so that I believe it would be impossible 
 either to add or remove with advantage a single ornament. 
 
 In the works of the later Gothic, however, the carving is not so 
 judiciously confined to the principal parts, but covers often the whole of 
 the walling, as in the apse of the Church of St. Sauveur at Caen ^ In our 
 northern climate, where it is in general impracticable to decorate these 
 spaces with colour, it may be expedient at times to give reins to the fancy 
 of the artist, and to trust to the sunshine to gild the projections, and to 
 the mist to flush the recesses with purple, and by the mere force of fretted 
 wall and carved-work, to strike awe into the minds of men. But in such 
 cases the Sculpture will have exceeded the limits of its due subordination ; 
 and this excess can only be tolerated where it arises from fulness of thought 
 and an ungrudging spii'it, conscious that much of the work will be lost, 
 and that it must be less effective in proportion to its quantity, and not if 
 it consist in the mere repetition of the same details — the last resource of 
 poverty of invention — as is too often the case with our English perpen- 
 dicular buildings ; or in that niggard endeavour which is the very incarna- 
 tion of the spirit of modern times — namely, of producing the greatest 
 effect with the le? st expenditure of thought or means. 
 
 Then the place for Colom- is on the flat surfaces — the walls, the 
 
 ' See Frontispiece, fig. 5. 
 
30 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 windows, the bays of the vaulting, the pavement, &c.; whether we give 
 them over as a blank page to the painter ', which it were well often to do, 
 or whether we are content to cover them with quaint patterns and mottled 
 figures. Such principal members in the construction as shafts and vaulting 
 ribs, or those which depend upon the grace of their form as mouldings, 
 ought to be comparatively simple, without much \nvid colouring; cer- 
 tainly they never should be striped with lines running in a vertical 
 direction, which destroy zdl their breadth, and cannot be supported by any 
 authority in nature : lines crossing them, as those used in the decorations 
 of St. Germain de Prfes at Paris, will better develop their form * — zig-zag 
 lines running up them, as seen in the Cathedral of St. Denis, gives the 
 uncomfortable idea of their being elastic. However, the more natural 
 system, as in the stems of plants or trunks of trees, is to keep them of a 
 single colour, which is best effected by the use of marbles — for instance, 
 by the Purbeck marble shafts in the Early-English Gothic. They might, 
 jierhaps, have their colour graduated as they rise or divide into their 
 vaulting ribs, like trees into branches ; such as that exquisite painting of 
 the mountain birch in autumn, whose slender stem gleams amid the then 
 russet wood a line of silver grey, sprayed into ebon twigs, all showered 
 with beads of gold. 
 
 Nor should the Colouring be allowed to interfere with the Sculpture 
 
 ' As suggested to be done in the case of St. Paul's Cathedral, at a meeting during the 
 late session of the Royal Institute of Architects. 
 
 * According to Mr. Ruskin, in his " Lamp of Beauty," " Seven Lamps of Architecture," 
 colour should not develop form, Whereas Mr. Owen Jones, in his Lectures at Marlborough 
 House, states that it is to be used for that particular purpose. I apprehend with the former 
 that the systems are entirely independent and distinct, and never in Nature completely 
 correspond ; but with the latter that they usually in a great degree do mutually develop 
 and enhance each other, and should be so used in Art. 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 31 
 
 any more than with the Architecture ; for its modelling and deUcacy is 
 seen best, or rather seen only, when left in the pure marble or stone. I 
 know nothing that so immediately renders common the finest carving than 
 to gild it, as has been done in the choir of Lisieux Cathedral ; or to daub 
 it with colour, as in many of the churches at Caen, where the noble foUage 
 of the early Gothic, and the richer Flamboyant, alike seem as if just 
 brought from a papier-mache shop ; while the gilded capitals within 
 St. Mark's, Venice, though enriching the general eflfect are not in them- 
 selves improved by the process, as will be seen if they are compared with 
 those on the exterior. The gi'ound of the ornament may, however, at 
 times, receive a tone of colour to relieve the design, if removed far from 
 the eye. In the treatment of colour, it too often happens that attention 
 is bestowed only upon the individual harmony of separate portions or 
 patterns ; whereas, for general effect, the colour should be brought to a 
 focus in one point, and the rest, as it were, toned up to it. Painted 
 glass, by its peculiar brilliancy, or some richly-coloured screen, altar, or 
 other feature, would supply the means of effecting this ; and it will be 
 found that more power will be gained thus, than if equal richness or 
 colours of equal brilUancy were carried over the whole building '. 
 
 Having, then, thus pointed out the several positions which Archi- 
 tecture and its sculptured and coloured decorations should respectively 
 occupy in every perfect work of Art, I desu'e, in conclusion, to add a few 
 observations upon the manner in which the forms of natural objects ought 
 to be imitated in ornament : for I beheve that it is in the design and 
 execution of these details that our own works are particularly deficient : 
 
 ' In the discussion referred to in the note to page 30, it was questioned whether, with 
 painted glass, monochronie designs only or richer colouring should be used. Mr. G. Scott 
 supported the latter opinion, which I believe to be the correct one. 
 
32 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 indeed it would appear from a most general survey of the structures of the 
 present day, that the modern idea of ornament consists in the simply 
 cramming a certain amount of carved work upon the face of a building 
 without reference to its meaning or propriety, to tlie detriment of the 
 pocket of the employer and the profit of that of the employed ; not that it 
 is at any time even supposed that a single person is likely to take delight 
 ill it, the only aim being almost avowedly to attract the eye of the 
 spectator by the general richness of the effect it produces, and to excite 
 his astonishment at the wealth which can afford so lavish a display ; so 
 that the question is reduced to such a problem as this — given the class of 
 building, to find the amount of decoration required : else wherefore is it 
 that the fronts of our streets and squares are lumbered with useless plaster 
 cornices ran at half the height of the houses, to serve as a shelf for 
 dingy sparrows, and the walls weighted with other misapplied members of 
 construction, the greatest use of which is to find triennial work for the 
 painter ? or why should so many of our public buildings have the key- 
 stones of then- arches decorated with the decollated heads of an unfortunate 
 family of sea-gods, till the very fishes might cry out in alarm when a 
 palace is proposed to be erected ? — or why have our blank dreary terraces 
 for ever in tiresome monotony gibbeted over their doors the empty 
 cranium of some grinning idiot, while their square light-holes are left 
 to occur at random in defiance of all feeUng for symmetry and pro- 
 portion ? 
 
 Such instances as these have, alas ! become so common, that they 
 cease to excite the ridicule they deserve ; but when the attention is drawn 
 to them, I think it must be acknowledged that the very object and use of 
 ornament is very generally misunderstood. Thus the late Exhibition of 
 the congregated handiwork of nations showed that the one borrowed idea 
 l)ar excellence of the nineteenth century was the bastard scroll ornament of 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 33 
 
 the French styles of the periods of Francis I., Louis XIV., or, worse still, 
 of Louis XV. I am aware that the want which I am deploring has 
 been already acknowledged, and that strenuous efforts are now being 
 made in several quarters both to teach a better class of design, and to 
 render artisans more capable of executing them ; but the members of 
 the Architectural profession at large have yet to be roused to a sense 
 of the vital importance of such efforts to their own interests ", and to be 
 induced to come forward as a body, as well as each individually, to sup- 
 port these endeavours, as some, though but a very small number com- 
 paratively, have already done. Architects naturally find but Uttle time to 
 design themselves all the details and carvings of their several works, and 
 are obliged often to leave much of these parts to others : of what import- 
 ance then it would be to them to have an intermediate class of art work- 
 men, capable of invention, and skilled in execution, such as must have 
 been those men whose works in the cathedrals of old now excite so great 
 an admiration. Such a class as this is not likely to be obtained unless a 
 proper direction be given to their efforts, nor until they be endued with an 
 intelligent appreciation of the true end and aim of their art, and the best 
 means of attaining the same. 
 
 With the view, therefore, of promoting somewhat this desirable object, 
 I have collected in this work a series of examples of ornament taken 
 from some of the finest of the medigeval buildings, having chosen them 
 with the utmost care, in order that they should present to the reader a 
 
 " The first efforts to promote these ends were made by the Committee of the " Sub- 
 urban Artisan Drawing and Modelling Schools," who, encouraged by the success of tliat 
 which they had established in the North London district, are now endeavouring to extend 
 their operations in other districts, and are likely to be imitated in other parts of the country 
 by the Society of Arts. 
 
 F 
 
34 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 considerable variety of types, while that each should be the most excellent 
 of its class ; and for their further practical utility they are arranged in the 
 chronological order of the buildings on which they occvu", with some short 
 critical remarks appended to them, showing the manner in which they 
 illustrate the principles I have advanced. 
 
 Yet before proceeding to the consideration of these details, it may be 
 well here at once clearly to define what is the true signification of the 
 term Ornament, and briefly to review the general nature thereof; for 
 although the first stroke of a chisel applied to any part of a building for a 
 purpose other than that of practical utility is intended usually to produce 
 ornament, the result is often the reverse. To erect that which is only 
 convenient and suitable in a utilitarian point of view is simply Building ; 
 to do so with due regard to the contrasts and harmonies of proportion 
 and symmctiy is Architecture ; while the fii'st rendering of any con- 
 stractive feature into a fair form, for the sake of that fair form, the 
 application of colour thereto, whether by the an-angement of the mate- 
 rials or by pigments, or the addition of a sculptured representation 
 of any natural object, or only of some abstract quaUty of such object, 
 is Architectural Ornament. Thus, to take a single instance, the cornice 
 at the top of a building is a constructive feature and not an orna- 
 ment, though its moulded profile is so ; a cornice in the middle of a 
 building is not a constructive feature, and must therefore, to have anv 
 pm-posc, have been intended as an ornament; but this it is not, it is 
 only a useless weight hung to the wall, an ugliness and an expense ; and 
 yet there is hardly a row of houses of any pretension in London without 
 one. 
 
 Of ornament, however, restricted as is the term by the definition 
 above given, there are two very diflferent classes, namely, — 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 35 
 
 1. That which depends upon (Esthetic qualities, and aims only at the 
 
 perfection of material beauty. 
 
 2. And that which is phonetic — to use the term adopted by Mr. Fer- 
 
 guson — the object of which is to tell some tale or to express the 
 feehng of dehght that the artist has taken in the subject of his 
 choice, and the aim of this latter is certainly far higher than that 
 of the former. 
 
 Now there is perhaps no gi-eater distinctive difference between the 
 architecture of the two great epochs into which the world's history is 
 broadly divisible than their several treatment of Ornament. 
 
 The art of the classic era strove after, and I believe nearly attained, 
 perfection in the first class which I have named. Conventional and 
 abstract throughout, it could suffer no detail to have an individual ex- 
 pression of its own, which might attract the eye from the contemplation of 
 the complete temple, with the sculptured histories of the friezes and 
 tympana, of which it formed, as it were, a frame. 
 
 But the Mediaeval Architecture, through every vein of which throbbed 
 the new life of Christianity, addressed itself not only to the sense and the 
 intellect of man, but sought fii'st and foremost to touch the more spiritual 
 chords of his being, and to excite the sympathy of his soul. She cast her 
 aim higher than the material excellencies in those matters, and, though 
 she despised not them in themselves, was content with their imperfection, 
 if atoned by the vigour, feeling, energy, and spirit after which she strove. 
 She took full often, indeed, for the capitals of her columns the Corinthian 
 type, but could no longer abide the eternal luonotony of its stilted 
 acanthus leaves, but set them drifting wildly in the summer winds, and 
 
 F 2 
 
;}6 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 pressing forward into the broad sunlight and wreathing themselves into 
 graceful festoons, Uke their prototypes in the fields ; yet amid all this 
 freedom and luxuriance, in all the better class of works, there is a sufficient 
 conventionahsni retained throughout to assert their character as architec- 
 tural ornament, and never, like many modem attempts, would they be 
 mistaken, except for the want of their colouring, for the original plants 
 from which they are imitated. I speak not here of Sculpture, which is of 
 course phonetic in both cases, differing only in that the Christian art 
 expresses the nobler qualities of the mind. If, then, the classic details are 
 not to be arraigned for the want of that apparent life, which might have 
 interfered with the strict subordination which their architecture required, 
 so likewise may we plead for those of the mediaeval works an exemption 
 from the same coiTect symmetry and orderly arrangement which pervade 
 the endless rows of honeysuckle and lotus leaves, of eggs and darts which 
 encircle the temples of Greece, if in the same space the aitists of these 
 have crowded into them ten times the amount of thouerht and imasnnation, 
 and thus enslmned in stone hedges full of the most lovely flowers and 
 foliage. 
 
 It is because I apprehend that the works executed during tliis second 
 great era in the development of Art are the more calculated to infuse into 
 our ornamental artists and workmen those qualities in which they are 
 deficient — namely, life and vigorous feeling, — and because I think that the 
 complete conventionalism which characterizes the details of classic archi- 
 tecture is both less difficult and less desirable to attain than that right 
 degree of abstraction in the imitation of natural objects which is found in 
 the best mediaeval ornament, that I have confined my selection of examples 
 of the latter ; and as in these the Scylla and Charybdis of either class of 
 ornament I have mentioned are avoided, the study of them may prove the 
 means not only of con-ecting that over-conventionalism which is discovered 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 37 
 
 in the almost universal adoption of the rank bastard renaissance scroll- 
 work and much libelled acanthus foliage, but also may prevent the further 
 misdirection of the taste of the multitude by the display in our exhibitions 
 of those absurdly literal copies of various animal and vegetable forms, 
 which are but specimens of useless ingenuity and wasted labour, fitted to 
 excite pity and derision. 
 
 In the first ((esthetic) class of Ornament the following are the prin- 
 cipal qualities requiring notice : — 
 
 1. The choice of the natural Tjrpe. 
 
 2. The degree of Abstraction with which it should be rendered. 
 
 3. Its Adaption to the Material in which it is to be executed. 
 
 4. Proportion, Symmetry, Contrast, and Gradation. 
 
 1 . The choice of the natural Type. — Nature being, as before stated, the 
 sole source of inspiration open to the artist, it follows thence that every 
 idea for ornament must be derived from some one or other of her work. 
 In fulfilling the remaining requirements named above, the form or class of 
 forms selected necessarily becomes more or less conventionalized ; indeed, 
 often so much so, that the original type is hardly recognisable in the 
 ornament to which it has given birth. This result has caused some 
 persons to deny the necessity for any natural type, and to assert the 
 independent originality of the human mind. Mr. Garbett, in his excellent 
 treatise upon "The Principles of Design in Architecture," without going 
 so far as this, yet seems to consider that ornament might be compiled, as 
 it were, simply by attention to the laws of contrast and variety. But 
 those very laws are themselves but laws of nature, and are better observed 
 and more easily earned out by a childlike study and following of her 
 forms ; and their application is, as I apprehend, but one of the requisite 
 
.•J8 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 processes subsequent to the selection of the type. Were ornament the 
 independent creation of man's genius, there would be a greater variety 
 therein than is to be found ; for that of all existing styles represents only 
 the characteristics of some species in either the animal, vegetable, or 
 mineral kingdoms. In Greek ornament, which is perhaps the most con- 
 ventional, the very terms of "honeysuckle," "egg and dart," &c., by 
 which they are popularly called, show that they resemble known natural 
 objects, though it may well be doubted whether those thus named were 
 the precise ones from which those details were originated. The most 
 monstrous chimera of the Renaissance with floridly vegetative tail, and 
 jar from pottery unknown, with issuing nondescript tree, at whose dangling 
 fruit of dolphins and lyres, helmets and shields, the said dragon compla- 
 cently looks, not without interest, is no fresh creature of the imagination, 
 hut only a composition of the fancy from elements already in existence, 
 though distant widely, as they should have remained. We demand, then, 
 under this present head, that ornament do not transgress any of the 
 principles of nature as shown forth in the class rather than the individual 
 specimen imitated : that as the head of a beast is to be placed only upon 
 its shoulders, so neither is a plant, however abstractedly treated, to be 
 placed root uppermost, nor the stalks and fibres shown upon the wrong 
 side of the leaves, — the character of outline, the method of division into 
 leaflets, the flow and elasticity in the structure of foUage, should be care- 
 fully followed, although it is not in all cases necessary or even desirable fo 
 imitate the minor peculiarities of individual specimens. It were well also 
 that thorns be not made to bear grapes, nor thistles supplied with a crop 
 of figs ; and that each tree be allowed to have its own leaves, flower, and 
 fruit, as being preferable to either masks, fiddles, or boots. Nor in re- 
 pressing such conceits is invention unduly trammelled ; for the types 
 which have been already made use of arc but few in comparison with the 
 store yet untouched, since every meadow, hedge-row, and garden, teem 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 39 
 
 with beautiful forms, inviting the choice of the artist, and requiring only 
 an intelligent adaptation to the purposes of ornament. 
 
 2. The degree of Abstraction with which the natural Type is to be 
 rendered. — Architecture being the development of principles in nature, as 
 stability, proportion, symmetry, &c., it is requu-ed of ornament, to be 
 consistent therewith, that it should likewise embody ^rmcipZes, as lightness, 
 elegance, growth, &c., and appear to belong to, and not to be independent 
 of, the structure. Thus it is requisite that the leaves of the capital of a 
 column should appear to be growing therefrom, and that upwards only, 
 and rooted firmly at the necking, not as if they were simply stuck to it 
 or temporarily tied around it ; and, further, the type of foUage they 
 imitate must not be copied too closely, but with a considerable degree of 
 abstraction ; for as the column itself may be said to represent the tree- 
 trunk in its general form and character of a support, while all the surface 
 detail of the bark is omitted or merely suggested by its channelling, if the 
 texture of the foUage be perfectly imitated, it cannot appear to be con- 
 nected with the column. It is therefore essential to the nature of ornament 
 that the copying of its type be not hteral ; and the very first thing which 
 the ornamental artist of the present day has to learn, is when he should 
 stay his hand, and to know when he has done enough ; for his work is not 
 to be complete in itself, but only when viewed in connexion with the whole 
 of which it forms a part ; his province in design is to seize such salient 
 pomts only of the natural type he may have selected, without carrying 
 his imitation so far as to destroy the idea of the material in which it is 
 represented, or detracting from the breadth of light and shade which its 
 character requu'es. 
 
 The degree of abstraction requisite in ornament varies according to 
 its purpose and position : thus, it should be greater where it has to sup- 
 
40 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 port any weight, or has any other visible architectural purpose to perform ; 
 and also where it is distant from the eye the execution should be more 
 simple and bold than when it is to be viewed from a nearer point. It may 
 be less where it is simply wall -decoration, and enclosed in a panel or 
 framework, as it is then sculpture rather than ornament, and the imita- 
 tion may be carried to a much greater extent. But even in such cases it 
 is well to observe the distinction noted by SirC. Eastlake, that the noblest 
 objects should receive the highest degree of execution, and approach the 
 nearest in their resemblance to nature ; and that minor details, in which 
 perfect imitation is more easily rcahzed, should never be allowed to inter- 
 fere with, or rebuke, as it were, the inferiority in the more important 
 parts. In this respect the conventionalism of the Greek temple is 
 deserving of study, since by the imperfect suggestion of vegetable life in 
 the architectural mouldings, enhances the more elaboi'ate imitation of the 
 sculptured pediments and friezes. 
 
 3. The adaptation of Ornament to the Material in which it is executed. 
 — It would seem almost unnecessary to dwell upon a point so obviously 
 demanded by common sense, were it not continually lost sight of in the 
 present day. Thus forms suited only for stone-work are universally 
 copied in cement ; whereas that material, now degraded by its service to 
 sham, might be legitimately decorated, as it was in the timber-constructed 
 houses of old. Wrought iron is copied in the cast metal, which is also 
 ingeniously painted like stone, while decorations in colour are made by 
 means of shadow and perspective to imitate the i)rojection of sculpture. 
 It should be borne in mind that each different material requires a class of 
 decoration peculiar to itself, but which is misplaced when applied to any 
 other : this is ever that which is the simplest and least affected, it being 
 far more difficult, for instance, to carve stone into the semblance of 
 stamped leather work, such as are the wreaths of flowers and fruit of 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT, 41 
 
 Griiiley Gibbons and his followers, than it would have been to have pre- 
 served the breadth and massiveness more suitable to stone ; but the 
 cunning and jugglery of the former are more apt to attract the gaping 
 vulgar, and therefore are practised by those who pander to their curious 
 appetite. 
 
 Proportion, Symmetry, Contrast, and Gradation, are principal 
 among the qualities by which the excellence of Nature is produced ; and 
 the same is likewise the case with that both of Architecture and its Orna- 
 ment. Proportion is requisite to ensure clearness, perspicuity, and unity ; 
 it is also one of the most essential elements of Beauty, inexorably exacting 
 of the utmost corresponding harmony in every member; the slightest 
 alteration of circumstances requires the whole scale to be modified. This 
 faculty of self-adjustment to eveiy change precludes the possibihty of 
 gathering any special rules for our direction in it. The sense of it must 
 be innate, though it may be quickened by an observance of nature, and 
 particularly by a habit of careful drawing from the objects she presents. 
 All attempts to reduce to practical rules this subtle and exquisite quality 
 are useless ; and the impossibility of so doing caused Burke to fall into 
 the extraordinary error of believing that it had nothing to do with beauty. 
 It may be noted, however, that certain ratios are more general, and there- 
 fore better than others ; that it is desirable always for some one portion to 
 predominate over the rest, and yet that this difference be not so great but 
 that they may still bear a due relation to that which thus forms, as it were, 
 their key-note ; and that the want of proportion, namely, the equality of 
 longitudinal or vertical component parts, breeds ever sheer ugliness, since 
 no bond of union can then exist between them. Symmetry, the opposi- 
 tion of halves, the reverse of proportion, as being the correspondence of 
 equal lateral divisions, is an essential element in the beauty of any whole ; 
 nor can there be unity without it. Its presence is not, however, absolutely 
 
 G 
 
42 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 necessaiy in ornament, which, as before said, is not complete in itself. 
 Yet its value in such details is great, and in none more so than in those 
 wildly flowing foliaged capitals of Byzantine and Flamboyant French 
 workmanship, as shown in Plates III. and VII. ; for without the orderly 
 springing of the leaves from their common necking in the former, the 
 power of the wind, which has since drifted them, were unfelt ; and if there 
 lacked the consent of the thomy thistle spines of the Evreux finial to the 
 leaving of those stars of black shadow between them, their rolhng were 
 but disorder, their freedom but license. Contrast of angular and curved 
 forms, of sparkling light and deep shadow, are the source of the energy of 
 the Northern Gothic detail ; while soft Gradation of outUne and surface, 
 of intense sunlight into the quiet depths of the dark recess, secures the 
 breadth which gives the charm to the ornament of the buildings in the 
 South. 
 
 Of the second class of ornament (phonetic) there is little to be 
 taught by rule. The ulterior end of all Art is but to supply a language 
 for the expression of thought ; and if the thought we would convey there- 
 in to our fellow-men be worthy of expression, and this were better attained 
 by the direct violation of any or all of the laws laid down above, willingly 
 is absolution to be granted to genius. Not only, then, are the works of 
 nature fit models for our imitation, but the handiworks of man — otherwise 
 rightly excluded by Mr. Ruskin from iiis category of oi-nament in " The 
 Stones of Venice " — may be used for the same purpose : they become 
 then medals of histoiy, as are the sacred candlesticks and vessels from the 
 spoils of Jerusalem represented on the arch of Titus ; and so may be 
 handed down from generation to generation, with a reahty incapable of 
 reaUzation by other means, the costumes, weapons, implements and 
 utensils of every nation and each successive age. It is, however, to 
 genius alone that such Uberty is allowed, and that simply in the con- 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 43 
 
 fidence that it will not be abused ; for it is certain that by the neglect of 
 these given laws beauty is sacrificed. Such sacrifice may indeed be made 
 at times when compensated by majesty of thought ; but only when to its 
 strength fair beauty is married, may the fuhiess of Nature be accom- 
 plished in Art. 
 
 G 2 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PRECEDENTS FOR ARCHITECTURAL ORNAMENT. 
 
 Tin: selection of the examples in tliis series has been rigidly confined to 
 those sources which embody best the above advanced principles, and which 
 have been the least copiously illustrated ; as to have included specimens 
 of the ornament of each style in its development, various as the countries 
 in which it flourished, would have far exceeded the scope of this work. It 
 is desirable, however, for the right understanding of the whole interest 
 with which these chosen precedents are fraught, that the position they 
 severally hold with reference to the history of Architecture should be 
 clearly set forth : they are, indeed, but some few and isolated links taken 
 at random from its connected chain, but the succession of the styles to 
 which they belong will be seen by the following table : 
 
 Classic Art 
 
 wrecked with the Roman Empire, fused in the crucible of the nomad nations of the earth, 
 sprang up. Phoenix like, thus threefold : 
 
 Christian Roman. 
 
 
 Byzantine. 
 
 
 Arabian. 
 
 
 Early 
 
 Italian Lombard. 
 
 
 
 German Romanesque, 
 
 — Norman. — Late Italian Lombard. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Gothic. 
 
 
 
 French. 
 
 
 English. 
 
 German. 
 
 
 Italian. 
 
 Early Gothic. 
 
 
 Early Gothic. 
 
 Early Gothic. 
 
 
 
 Complete do. 
 
 
 Decorated. 
 
 Complete do. 
 
 Coniplf 
 can. 
 
 ;te Gothic (Tus- 
 Venetian, &c.). 
 
 Flamboyant. 
 
 
 Perpendicular. 
 
 Flamboyant. 
 
 Late do. 
 
 The Renaissance (of Chaos ?), 
 
PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, &-c. 45 
 
 It was so, then, that the first seeds of Art, which, surviving the wreck 
 of the Roman empire, having slumbered dormantly amid the convulsions 
 which then shook the whole of Europe, sprang up as soon as the chilling 
 blasts of that dreary winter season had ceased, and betrayed by their 
 weakly growth that the stock whence they came had been exhausted of all 
 its vigour by the corrupting atmosphere of degraded luxury to which, 
 torn from its native soil of Greece, it had been so long exposed. For if 
 the early Christians of Rome, when constrained no longer to limit their 
 efforts to the narrow space of their catacombs, reared in imitation of the 
 Pagan basilicas some temples not devoid of a certain dignity and simple 
 grandeur, they knew not how to decorate the same. The " Opus Alexan- 
 drinum," the marble mosaic of their pavements, and the " Opus Grseca- 
 nicum," the mosaic of glass which adorned their walls (referred to by 
 Mr. Digby Wyatt), being, as their names import, the introduction of 
 artists from Byzantium, they spoiled the monuments of antiquity of their 
 columns, and fitted them with capitals and bases gathered at random, 
 regardless of the nondescript jumble thus produced. It is evident, there- 
 fore, that this Christian Roman Ait, feebly existent, needed some more 
 vigorous spu'it to be grafted thereon, and that it possessed not the means 
 of its own regeneration. This was presently effected by the infusion of the- 
 rude energy of the Lombard nation, who, ha\ang conquered the fair lands 
 of Italy, set themselves in right earnest to adapt for their own use the 
 civiUzation of the inhabitants ; but meanwhUe another branch of the 
 original stream of Roman Art had, in consequence of the seasonable trans- 
 lation of the seat of empire to Byzantium, been moulded under the 
 influence of the Greeks into a new form — the Byzantine, which may 
 awhile arrest our attention, as much of interest and practical utility may 
 be gleaned therefrom. 
 
 The intrinsic merit of this Byzantine art, too often overlooked or 
 
46 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 undeiTalued, has been ably vindicated by Lord Lindsay, who has pointed 
 out the extent to which the Lombard and subsequent styles were modified 
 by it. Its character is essentially reposeful and contemplative, as seen in 
 the dome and general plan which it bequeathed to sacred Architecture, 
 and in the freedom of its details from the gi-otesquc imagery and monstro- 
 sities of the Lombard sculpture, and in the perfection to which it brought 
 the types of ornament which it borrowed from the classic works, or which 
 itself had derived from those of Nature. St. Vitale at Ravenna, St. Cyriaco 
 at Ancona, St. Fosca at Torcello, and St. Mark's at Venice, are the 
 principal buildings of this class in Italy ; to the last, however, as being by 
 far the most important, I here confine myself. The strange differences in 
 the opinions which have been expressed concerning this building, particu- 
 larly with reference to its facade is a matter of cm-ious interest ; but, as it 
 is a question apart from that under consideration, I pass at once to notice 
 its sculptural ornaments, the transcendent excellence of which I think 
 most will be ready to acknowledge. This excellence consists in the 
 admirable manner in which every detail fulfils its constructive purpose, in 
 the variety, simplicity, and beauty of the several tj^pes employed ; in the 
 manner in which natural objects have been studied and applied by the 
 artists ; and last, but not least, in the mode of their execution. Among 
 the hundreds of its capitals few are closely similar ; for although many 
 have been derived from the Corinthian, in each a different feature thereof 
 has been seized as a means of obtaining character. In one seen from a 
 distance the stems of the leaves throughout are marked by drill-holes 
 only, producing a most sparkhng effect ; in another the acanthus' eyes are 
 arranged into quaint triangles of shadow ; or, again, the leaves have their 
 points brought to meet each other in a series of serrated ridges (Plate IV., 
 fig. 4) ; or they lie folded gracefully around a convex capital, like the 
 packing of a bud in spring (Plate IV., fig. 5). The variety is endless; 
 perhaps most purpose is shown in the group of shafts noticed by Mr. Ruskin, 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 47 
 
 which are set in the recess of the central doorway of the western facade, 
 all the leaves of which are, as it were, blown inwards by a sudden blast of 
 wind (Plate III., fig. 3) . The effect of these is very striking and beautiful ; 
 others, which are exceedingly lovely, have a curious basket-work sur- 
 rounding the lower part of the capital, and cut clear from the bell behind, 
 on which, supporting the angle of the abacus, pigeons are perched. In 
 the several examples which I thus mentioned, and perhaps in the greater 
 number found upon the Church, the character of the foliage is somewhat 
 conventional, although it is throughout treated with the natural flow and 
 freedom of vegetation, contrasting most favourably with the rigid stiffness 
 of the ancient types which have been imitated ; yet in some instances, as 
 in one most exquisite block capital in the recess of the southernmost arch 
 of the western front (Plate IV., fig. 1) actual foliage has been represented 
 with the utmost faithfulness and elaboration consistent with its character 
 as architectural ornament ; here it is the vine wdth its fruit which has been 
 made use of, sculptured with but little relief. Altogether these details of 
 St. Mark's are such that they might be studied with the greatest advantage 
 by artists of the present day, as the qualities in which they excel are 
 precisely those in which we ourselves are deficient ; indeed, I think that 
 the most exquisite piece of foliage ornament which I have ever seen is the 
 band of flowing arabesque encircUng the large arch of central doorway, 
 which has at intervals curious hollow balls or flowers set in the luxuriant 
 leafage (Plate I., figs. 1 and 2), upon some of which also birds are intro- 
 duced, pecking at the fruit. 
 
 But although this Byzantine art was attaining to so high a degree of 
 perfection in these few places, whither it had been introduced from the 
 East, it was prevented by the division of the empire consequent upon the 
 Iconoclastic decree of the Emperor Leo III. from extending itself further 
 in the West ; for in Italy, which was henceforth declared independent of 
 
48 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 Byzantium by the Pope Gregon- II., another style, in most particulars in 
 strong contrast to this, though to a certain extent modified by it, was 
 elsewhere expanding itself under the rule of the Lombards, and which 
 was destined to become the parent of the future styles of the Mediteval 
 ages. 
 
 With all the energy characterizing a youthful civilization, tliis war- 
 like nation revivified the waning art of Rome, and added thereto some 
 elements gleaned from the Eastern style, particularly the feature of the 
 central dome. But their sculptm'cd decorations were completely original 
 and full of intense life and freedom, though, as was natural, rudely exe- 
 cuted. The importance of this style in the histoiy of Art claims for it a 
 passing notice, more than which I am unable to devote to it, since its 
 greatest interest is antiquarian, and the practical utihty of its ornament to 
 us somewhat questionable ; for the principal merit of its details lies in 
 their vigour and imagination, which are qualities not to be communicated 
 by teaching, nor imbibed by the copyist. The Lombard architecture may 
 be divided into that of its earlier and later periods ; the former being the 
 more original and simple, yet presenting the gi-eater fancy and unbridled 
 daring in its sculptures, and revelUng in the most grotesque and humorous 
 imagery and symbolism"; the latter being far more ornate and refined in 
 its chai-acter. It was the former only which extended its influence beyond 
 its own locality ; nor did even this display, elsewhere than in Italy, and 
 perhaps some portions of France, the class of sculptured ornament which 
 I have described. The principal buildings in Lombardy of this period are 
 those of St. Michele at Padua, St. Michele at Pa^■ia, St. Zeno at Verona, 
 
 ' " They are rude, most rude : I plead only that they are life-like, and speak with a 
 tongue wliich those who love the Runic Rhyme, and the traditions of the North, and feel 
 kindred blood warm in their veins, will understand and give ear to." — Lord Lindsay. 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 49 
 
 and San Ambrogio at Milan. Northward of the Alps this style achieved 
 some of its noblest works in Germany, where it studded the banks of the 
 Rhine and the Teutonic capital of Cologne with those stupendous erec- 
 tions which have defied all the storms of war that have swept in such 
 quick succession over the devoted cities they adorn. Chief among these 
 are the cathedrals of Spires, Mentz, and Worms, with the churches of the 
 Apostles, St. Martin, St. Gereon, and others at Cologne, all of which are of 
 a plain character, with but little sculptured ornament, their decorations 
 consisting almost solely of archlet cornices and narrow pilasters, which 
 divide their broad wall suiface into panels, often most exquisitely pro- 
 portioned, and never injuring the general harmony of effect. In some 
 of the buildings, however, which were erected when the style was some- 
 what further advanced, the details are more elaborate. Thus, in the small 
 church at Swartz RheindorfF, on the banks of the Rhine, nearly opposite 
 to Bonn, there are some very beautiful capitals to the columns which 
 support the curious external arcade surrounding the upper church ; they 
 are principally composed of interlacing bands, but some have birds at 
 their several angles. The decorations of the German Romanesque con- 
 form more closely to those of the same style in Italy, such as may be seen 
 upon the church of St. Ambrogio at Milan, rather than to those used in the 
 English Norman, which are generally of a coarser description. Thus, tlie 
 zigzag mouldings- so prevalent in the latter style is rare in Germany. It 
 occurs, however, on portions of the cathedral at Worms. 
 
 In some of the southern and western provinces of France likewise I 
 believe there is a development of Romanesque architecture very similar to 
 that of Italy. To this class belongs the greater portion of the Church of 
 St. Sauveur at Dinan, in Brittany. The lower part of the western facade, 
 which retains, though in a mutdated state, its original character, has three 
 semicircular deeply recessed and richly moulded arches supported by 
 
 H 
 
50 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 shafted jambs, some of the columns to which are twisted, and rest on the 
 figures of animals, while many of the capitals and corbels are sculptured 
 into grotesque figures full of life and energy. The emblematical animals 
 of the four Evangelists pi'oject in high-relief above the arcade, and the 
 arch mouldings terminate in heads above the abaci of the jambs, as at 
 Mentz Cathedral and other German buildings ; and these are evidently 
 features derived directly from Italian works. 
 
 The Romanesque development of Normandy, known to us by the 
 term Norman, and which passed thence into England, is veiy distinct in 
 character from these described. Thus the abbeys of St. Etienne and Notre 
 Dame, at Caen, built by William the Conqueror and his Queen Matilda, 
 presenting the simple and majestic proportions of the German cathedrals, 
 differ from them greatly in plan, and their decorations are more numerous, 
 yet often coarse, as is the huge and ugly fret which disfigures the clere- 
 story of both those churches. In England the style became still richer, 
 and the elaborate doorways like that to Rochester Cathedi-al are almost 
 confined to this country. It were needless to describe their details, which 
 are so well known ; and as I apprehend their eflFect de})ends on quantity 
 and not quality, it would not materially fm-ther my present object. There 
 is, however, a class of ornament desei-ving reraai-k, which is frequent in 
 almost all the developments of the Romanesque style, evidently deduced 
 fi'om the Byzantine, and discontinued when the Gothic architecture pre- 
 vailed in Europe, namely, the sculpture in very low-relief which decorates 
 without disguising or altering the form or outline of the several construc- 
 tive features : it is foimd usually and most characteristically upon the 
 capitals of the columns, as in St. Vitale, at Ravenna, St. Ambrogio, Milan, 
 S:c. It is usually in imitation of basket-work, interlacing bands, or a 
 species of conventional foliage. It has a beautiful and delicate effect, 
 while it is easy of execution, and might be introduced oftener than it is 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 51 
 
 into modem work with advantage, and in place of the more ambitiously 
 salient, but too generally stiff and clumsy imitations of Gothic fohage ; 
 and if natural leaves were orderly arranged in this manner around the 
 curved surfaces, particularly of the interior of a building, and either pro- 
 jecting in bas-relief or shghtly incised, a pleasing and novel method of 
 decoration might be thence developed. The leaves would require to be 
 treated with considerable abstraction, and, when intended to be viewed from 
 a distance, hardly more than the outline should be shown, but that with 
 great delicacy and care ; but in such cases where they would be nearer to 
 the level of the eye the representation might be carried much further. It 
 is the delicacy of this bas-relief sculpture which forms the redeeming 
 feature of the monuments of the cinquecento in Italy, and the period of 
 Francis I. in France, and which, as I have mentioned, are so fi-equently 
 imitated on the productions of almost aU modern nations ; and if for their 
 nonsense combinations were substituted some really careful studies of the 
 exquisite forms of natural objects, treated in the manner I have pointed 
 out, they might have some claim for our admiration. 
 
 Having followed the development of the early Lombard architecture 
 in the northern countries of Europe, it is necessary to return for an 
 instant to that of its second period in Italy, which was of a richer descrip- 
 tion, and less rude and grotesque in its sculpture than the former, and 
 which exercised but Uttle influence beyond the Alps, where the Gothic 
 style was then struggling into an independent existence. Its archivolt 
 and cornice mouldings, with circular profiles, as at St. Michele, Lucca, 
 beneath which the ornament is incised, are very exquisite. These might 
 be less appropriate in a country which lacks the brilUant sun of Italy to 
 give them their due effect. But the perforated decorations of the abaci 
 and other parts might, I imagine, be even more suitable to works in this 
 cUmate, since a sufiicient depth of incision would secure shadow enough 
 
 H 2 
 
52 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 to mark strongly their outline ; and it is no slight recommendation for 
 such ornaments, that one may trust even an ordinary workman to execute 
 them from careful drawings, with some confidence that they are not likely 
 to be utterly marred by blunt and feelingless cutting, as is the case with 
 Jill work in projection from the surface. 
 
 Upon the debated origin of the Gothic style I care not to dwell, nor 
 yet to trace with painful accuracy the divisions into which anti{[uarians 
 have somewhat arbitrarily portioned it ; and although in the above table 
 I have noted those usually recognized, I would not that the wondrous 
 unity which to my mind forms its principal element should be disturbed. 
 Suffice it here that its growth was gradual ; it was ever in a state of 
 transition, and in curious correspondence with its own degree of advance- 
 ment is its chosen type of ornament ; for, while battling still with the 
 lingering semicircular arch, and thioughout its early stage, the swathed 
 bud and opening frond appear the favourite models ; afterward the perfect 
 foliage of the vine, the oak, the hawthorn, the maple, &c., take their place ; 
 and in its dechning age the jagged tliistle, flowing wildly, and often bent 
 backward in lassitude, is the type used principally in the Flamboyant. In 
 Plate V. I have placed together a number of examples of the early German 
 Gothic ornament. Figs. 8, 9, 10, and 11, indeed, belong to the transi- 
 tional period from the Romanesque : the porch to Maestricht Cathedral, 
 from which the latter are taken, is a most interesting work of that class. 
 Its arches are semicirculai-, but the foliage decorations to the mouldings of 
 its deeply splayed jambs are almost identical, except in dehcacy of exe- 
 cution, with those which aftenvards were prevalent in the exquisite earlv 
 Gotliic of Normandy. Apparently, therefore, this character of detail was 
 soon developed in Germany, and attained gi-eat excellence there ; the 
 capitals from Bacharach shown in the Plate, are very beautiful. Gothic 
 architecture, however, did not long retain this character in that countr}-, 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 
 
 53 
 
 but degenerated, as I cannot but think, into the wiry cast-iron like style, 
 devoid of all breadth, seen in the cathedrals of Strasburg, Friburg, and 
 Cologne, the churches at Oberwesel and Oppenheim, on the Rhine, and 
 the ruins of St. Werner's Chapel, at Bacharach, on not one of which have 
 I seen a single detail that I cared to sketch. Their principal merit con- 
 sists in their lofty proportions, and slender muUioned choir windows. 
 Both the French and English Gothic structures are to my mind far finer 
 than these ; but the former excel in their sculptured details. The ex- 
 amples, however, given in the Plates are taken entirely from the cathedrals 
 and churches in Normandy wliich combine the character of botli. The 
 
 Capital from Rouen Cathedral. 
 
 annexed woodcut is from the southern doorway to west front of Rouen 
 Cathedral, the mouldings of which are of a remarkably early and 
 massive character, probably not much later than the porch at Maastricht. 
 
54 
 
 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 The figs. 1, 2, and 3, Plate VI., and figs. 1, 2, and 3, Plate VII., are of 
 the more developed early Gothic, as also are these details, Nos. 2 to 8, 
 from the Cathedral of Coutances. 
 
 Nos. 2 and 3, Spandrel disks from the triforium, Coutances Cathedral. 
 ,, 4 and 5, Bosses from south porch to nave aisle, ditto. 
 „ C and 8, Capitals from the interior, ditto. 
 » 7, Capitals from north porch to nave aisle, ditto. 
 
 These several examples the student may compare with the fohage 
 ornament in Lincoln and Salisbury Cathedrals, which are of much the 
 same date, and I think he will find them to be less conventional and more 
 varied and delicate in their execution. There are, however, at Llandaff 
 Cathedi-al, in Glamorganshire, some finely swathed capitals of somewhat 
 similar character to those in Normandy. Generally the English Early 
 Gothic detail tells well from a distance, but is rather coarse for nearer 
 work. Plate VI., fig. 4, is the head of a beautiful doorway in the south 
 
side to the choir of 
 the church at Tour 
 en Bessin, near 
 Bayeux, now disused 
 and blocked up : it 
 is of rather more ad- 
 vanced Gothic, and 
 the treatment is 
 most perfect, carry- 
 ing out exactly the 
 principles I have ad- 
 vanced ; the natural 
 type is easily dis- 
 cernible, rendered 
 architectural by the 
 symmetry of its 
 arrangement, suffi- 
 ciently abstract, yet 
 delicate in its exe- 
 cution. In the 
 English decorated 
 Gothic the orna- 
 ment generally errs 
 by its too close imi- 
 tation of Nature, as 
 in the earlier lancet 
 style it had been 
 too conventional. 
 This doorway is here 
 shown entire. 
 
 The spandrils 
 shown in Plate 
 
 Door to Church Choir, Tour en Bessin, Normandy. 
 
56 
 
 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, 
 
 VIII., figs. 1,2, 3, and 4, arc from the north transept of Rouen Cathe- 
 dral, which is one of the noblest specimens of the complete Gothic. The 
 capitals a and b are from 
 the Cathedral of Lisieux. 
 
 Then followed the period 
 of the decline of this style, 
 glorious still in many re- 
 spects. If in England we 
 may boast of noble struc- 
 tures thereof, with both towers and vaultings, which, despite many faults, 
 are unrivalled, and in Germany and Belgium we may find grand works 
 whose picturesqueness and daring atone for their want of purity 
 and completeness, — in the Flamboyant of France alone can the detail 
 arrest our attention. In Plate VII., fig. 4, as 
 well as in the annexed woodcut, is shown some 
 of the magnificent ornament for which, as before 
 mentioned, the thistle has formed the type ; and in 
 Plate VIII., fig. 5, is given the head of one of the 
 lofty lancet apse windows from the church of St. 
 Sauveur, at Caen ; and in Plate IX. the staircase 
 recess in the wall of the same church, in both of 
 which there is much that is worthy of attention, 
 particularly the rich fringe of cusps which deco- 
 rate their arches. 
 
 Crocket from St. Sau- 
 veur, Caen. 
 
 In Plates X. XI. and XII. I liave put together sundry details from 
 buildings in Italy, executed with more or less Gothic influence, but in the 
 manner pecuhar to the soutii, their treatment being bossy in character, in 
 order to gain great breadth of light and shade. Not being so intimately 
 
WITH PRECEDENTS FOR ORNAMENT. 57 
 
 acquainted with the ItaUan as with the Northern work, I venture not to 
 express a decided opinion thereon, but I am incHned to think the Domestic 
 Gothic Architecture of Italy is unrivalled for its purpose, and that its detail, 
 e.g. of the Doge's Palace, is some of the finest in the world ; but that the 
 ecclesiastical architecture, although likewise possessing exquisite parts and 
 ornament, is, as a style, to be ranked below its prototype beyond the Alps. 
 
 The life which characterized and ennobled the luxuriant detail of the 
 late Gothic did not continue to prevail throughout the whole period of its 
 decline ; for the decay is visible sooner in the ornament than in the 
 architecture itself. Thus in the finely designed central portal to the 
 western fayade of the Cathedral at Rouen, by close examination, a growing 
 clumsiness may be detected, and heavier and more rounded forms may be 
 seen to take the place of the former crisp and sharply executed thistle-like 
 foliage. In the church at Louviers, in Normandy, this degraded character 
 is still further discernible, so much so that the modern restored portions 
 do not seem far inferior to the original work, which can never be the case 
 with the earlier and superior class ; but the difference between these 
 Flamboyant details may be descried at a glance by the most superficial 
 observer in the decoration of the two apsides of the church of St. Sauveur 
 at Caen, which picturesquely abut upon the mam street ; they are similar 
 in design, having the lancet-arched windows, which in the eai-lier apse are 
 fringed with beautiful foliaged cusped tracery (see Frontispiece); but in 
 the later one the detail appears to have been already ItaUanized, and has 
 become exceedingly coarse and lumpy in comparison with the other ; yet 
 the inanities which disfigure the eastern end of the church of St. Pierre, 
 overhanging the river bank in the same city, both within and without the 
 choir, are, if possible, of a worse description, and not much better gene- 
 rally is the ornament upon the Gothic buildings of Belgium, or upon the 
 cathedral at Milan and the contemporary structures in Italy. 
 
58 PROGRESS IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE, &c. 
 
 Here, then, may be fitly concluded this present series of Precedents, 
 as it is not my intention to pursue further the chaotic jumble of " monkey 
 styles " which followed the decay of Gothic Architecture, and the 
 inundation of Europe by the torrent of the Renaissance ; during which 
 period, indeed, much exquisite workmanship was wasted in nonsense 
 carvings upon such works as the tomb of the Cardinal D'Amboise in the 
 Lady Chapel of Rouen Cathedral, and upon the vaunted mausolea of the 
 same date in Italy, — with these I profess to have no sympathy, and shall 
 feel more than satisfied if by the present attempt I shall have assisted ever 
 so humbly to undermine their baleful influence upon the works of the 
 present day, and to prepare the way for what is more worthy of the Art 
 and Architecture of the nineteenth century. 
 
LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 PLATE 
 
 I. Byzantine, figs. 1 and 2 are ball flowers from foliage scroll on the architrave to 
 central doorway in western fa9ade of St. Mark's Cathedral, Venice. Fig. 3, 
 capital from the external upper story on the south side of ditto. 
 
 II. Byzantine, fig. 1, capital to column of screen dividing south aisle from nave of ditto. 
 Figs. 2, 3, and 4, capitals from upper range of columns to vestibule, ditto. 
 
 III. Byzantine, fig. 1, capital to disengaged column within vestibule, ditto. Fig. 2, 
 
 capital to column in choir, wholly gilt, ditto. Fig. 3, capital to columns flanking 
 central doorway, ditto. 
 
 IV. Byzantine, figs. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, sundry capitals firom the exterior, ditto. 
 
 V. Early German Gothic, figs. 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7, from the Church at Bacharach, on the 
 Rhine. Figs. 2, 3, and 8, from the Church of St. Gereon, Cologne. Figs. 9 
 and 10, angle base spurs from porch to Maestricht Cathedral. Fig. 11, mould- 
 ing from west door to Church at Boppard, on the Rhine. 
 
 VI. Early French Gothic, figs. 1 and 3 from Norrey Church, near Caen, Normandy. 
 Fig. 2 from Lisieux Cathedral, ditto. Fig. 4, door-head to south aisle to choir 
 of Church at Tour en Bessin, near Bayeux, ditto. 
 
 VII. Early French Gothic, fig. 1, capital firom Coutances Cathedral, ditto. Fig. 2, boss 
 from Norrey Church, ditto. Fig. 3, capital from Bayeux Cathedral. 
 Flamboyant, fig. 4, finial to sacristy door, Evreux Cathedral, ditto. 
 
<)0 LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 PLATE 
 
 Vin. Complete French Gothic, figs. 1, 2, 3, and 4, spandril ornaments from north transept 
 of Rouen Cathedral. 
 Flamboyant, fig. 5, lancet window-head from apse to Church of St. Sauveur, Caen. 
 
 IX. Flamboyant, fig. 1, upper part of a curious external recess with staircase in wall, 
 ditto, ditto. 
 
 X. Transition to Gothic from Byzantine, fig. 1, internal cornice from Chapel attached to 
 
 St. Mark's, Venice. 
 Transition to Gothic from Arabian, fig. 2, external string course from Ca' Loredan, 
 
 Grand Canal, ditto. 
 Venetian Gothic, figs. 3, 4, and 5, fragments of foliage from capitals to lower columns 
 
 Doge's Palace, ditto. 
 
 XI. Venetian Gothic, third capital from the Porta della Carta, next the Piazzetta, Doge's 
 Palace. 
 
 XII. Venetian Gothic, figs. 1, 2, and 5, portions of foliage from capitals of upper range ot 
 columns, ditto. Fig. 3, capital from a Palace in Milan. 
 
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