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SARONY €r cs LitH . N r

LECTURES

ON

AECHITECTURE AND PAINTIIG,

DELIVEKED AT EDINBUBGH,

m NOVEMBEE, 1853.

BY JOHN RIJ^KIN,
AUTHOR OF ** THE STONES OF VENICE,'* " SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECT UBB," " MODEHIT
PAINTERS," ETC.

NEW YORK:
WILEY & HALSTED,
No. 881 BEOADWAT.
1856.

PRINTED BY
R. CBAIGHEAIi.
53 Vesey St. \. Y.

PREFACE.

The following Lectures are printed, as far as possible, just
as they were delivered. Here and there a sentence which
seemed obscure has beon mended, and the passages which had
not been previously written, have been, of course imperfectly,
supplied from memory. But I am well assured that nothing of
any substantial importance, which was salt, 'in the lecture-room,
is either omitted, or altered in its signification, with the excep
tion only of a few sentences struck out from the notice of the
works of Turner, in consequence of the impossibility of engraving
the drawings by which they were illustrated, except at a cost
which would have too much raised the price of the volume.
Some elucidatory remarks have, however, been added at the
close of the second and fourth Lectures, which I hope may be
of more use than the passages which I was obliged ttf omit.

iv PREFACE.
The drawings by which the Lectures on Architecture were
Illustrated have been carefully reduced, and well transferred to
wood by Mr. Thurston Thompson. Those which were given it
the course of the notices of schools of painting could not be so
transferred, having been drawn in colour ; and I have therefore
merely had a few lines, absolutely necessary to make the text
intelligible, copied from engravings.
I forgot, in preparing the second Lecture for the press, to
quote a passage from Lord Lindsay's " Christian Art," illustrar
tive of what is said in that lecture (page 81), respecting the
energy of the mediaeval republics. This passage, describing the
circumstances under which the G3,mpanUe of the Duomo of
Florence was built, is interesting also as noticing the univer
sality of talent which was required of architects ; and which, as
I have asserted in the Addenda (p. 93), always ought to be
required of them. I do not, however, now regret the omis
sion, as I cannot easily imagine a better preface to an essay on
civil architecture than this simple statement.
"In 1332, Giotto was chosen to erect it (the campanile), on
the ground, avowedly, of the universality of his talents, with the
appointment of Capo Maestro, or chief Architect (chief Master,
I should rather write), of the Cathedral aud its dependencies, a
yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of
citizenship, under the special understanding that he was not to

PREFACE. V
(j[iTit Florence. His designs being approved of, the republic
passed a decree in the spring of 1334, that the Campanile should
be built so as to exceed in magnificence, height, and excellence
of workmanship whatever in that kind had been achieved by the
Greeks and Romans in the time of their utmost power and
greatness. The first stone was laid, accordingly, with great
pomp, on the 18th of July following, and the work prosecuted
with vigour, and with such costliness and utter disregard of
expense, that a citizen of Yerona, looking on, exclaimed, that
the republic was taxing her strength too far, that the united
resources of two great monarchs would be insufficient to com
plete it ; a criticism which the Signoria resented by confining
him for two months in prison, and afterwards conducting him
through the public treasury, to teach him that the Florentines
could build their whole city of marble, and not one poor steeple
only, were they so inclined."
I see that " The Builder," vol. xi. page 690, has been endea
vouring to inspire the citizens of Leeds with some pride of this
kind respecting their town-hall. The pride would be well, but I
sincerely trust that the tower in question may not be built on the
design there proposed. I am sorry to have to write a special
criticism, but it must be remembered that the best works, by the
best men living, are in this age abused without mercy by name
less critics ; and it would be unjust to the public, if those who

vi PREFACE.
have given their names as guarantee for their sincerity never
had the courage to enter a protest against the execution of
designs which appear to them unworthy.

Denmart Hill,
16th April, 18£i.,

CONTENTS.

Page
PKEIAUE  iil
Lbctttbb I.  9
Lecture II  ..•••56
Addenda to Lectures I. and II. ...... 88
Lecture m. Turner and his "Works  115
Lecture IV. Pre-Raphaelitism . ...... 151
Addenda to Lecture rV. . ...... 1-84

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Plate I. Figs. 1. 3. and 5. Illustrative diagrams.
IL " 2. Window in Oakham Castle.
III. " 4. and 6. Spray of ash- tree, and improvement of the
same on Greek principles.
IV. " 7. Window in Dumblane Cathedral.
V. " 8 Mediaeval turret. ,
VI. " 9. and 10. Lombardic towers.
VII.' " 11. and 12. Spires at Coutances and Rouen.
vm. " 13. and 14. Illustrative diagrams.
IX. " 15. Sculpture at Lyons.
X. " 16. Niche at Amiens.
" - XI. " 17. and 18. Tiger's head, and improvement of the same
on Greek principles.
XII. " 19. Garret window in Hotel de Bourgtheroude.
Xin. " 20. and 21, Trees, as drawn in the 13th century.
XIV. " 22. Rocks, as drawn by the school of Leonardo da VinoL
XV. " 23. Boughs of trees, after Titian.

LECTURES

ON

AECHITECTURE AID PAIITII&.

LECTURE I.

I THINK myself peculiarly happy in being permitted fo
address the citizens of Edinburgh on the subject of archi
tecture, for it is one which, they cannot but feel, interests
them nearly. Of all the cities in the British Islands,
Edinburgh is the one which presents most advantages for
the display of a nobl^ building ; and which, on the other
hand, sustains most injury in the erection of a common
place or unworthy one. You are all proud of your city :
surely you must feel it a duty in some sort to justify your
pride ; that is to say, to give yourselves a right to be proud
of it. That you were born under the shadow of its two
fantastic mountains, — that you live where from your room
windows ^ou can trace the shores of its glittering Firth,
are no rightful subjects of pride. You did not raise the
mountains, nor shape the shores ; and the historical houses

10 LEGTUEES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I
of your Canongate, and the broad battlements of your cas
tie, reflect honour upon you only through your a^icEstors.
Before you boast of your city, before even you ventflfe to
call it ijours, ought you not scrupulously to weigh the exact
share you have had in adding to it or adorning it, to calcu
late seriously the influence upon its aspect which the work
of your own hands has exercised ? I do not say that, even
when you regard your city in this scrupulous and testing
spirit, you have not considerable ground for exultation.
As far as I am acquainted with modern architecture, I am
aware of no streets which, in simplicity and manliness of
style, or general breadth and brightness of effect, equal-
those of the New Town of Edinburgh. But yet I am well
persuaded that as you traverse those streets, your feelings
of pleasure and pride in them are much complicated with
those which are excited entirely by the surrounding scenery.
As you walk up or down George Street, for instance, do
you not look eagerly for every opming to the north and
south, which lets in the lustre of the Firth of Forth,, or the
rugged outline of the Castle rock ? Take away the sea-
waves, and the dark basalt, and I fear you would find little
to interest you in George Street by itself. Now I remem
ber a city, more nobly placed even than your Edinburgh,
which, instead of the valley that you have now filled by
lines of railroad, has a broad and rushing river of blue
water sweeping through the heart of it ; which, for the
dark and solitary rock that bears your castle, has an am-

Lect. L] AND PAINTING. i 1
phitheatre of cliffs crested with cypresses and olive ; which,
for the two masses of Arthur's Seat and the ranges of the
Pentlands, has a chain of blue mountains higher than the
haughtiest peaks of your Higlilands ; and which, for your
far-away Ben Ledi and Ben More, has the great central
chain of the St. Gothard Alps : and yet, as you go out of
the gates, and walk in the suburban streets of that city — I
mean Verona — the eye never seeks to rest on that external
scenery, however gorgeous ; it does not look for the gaps
between the houses, as you do here : it may for a few
moments follow the broken line of the great Alpine battle
ments ; but it is only where they form a backgrountj. for
other battlements, built by the hand of man. There is no
necessity felt to dwell on the blue river or the burning
hills. The heart and eye have enough to do in the streets
of the city itself ; they are contented there ; nay, they
sometimes turn from the natural scenery, as if too savage
and solitary, to dwell with a deeper interest on the palace
walls that cast their shade upon the streets, and the crowd
of towers that rise out of that shadow into the depth of tho
sky. That is a city to be proud of, indeed ; and it is this kind
of architectural dignity which you should aim at, in what
you add to Edinburgh or rebuild in it. For remember, you
must either help your scenery or destroy it ; whatever you
do has an effect of one kind or the other ; it is nevet indif
ferent. But, above all, remember that it is chiefly by pri

12 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [^eot. L
vate, not by public, effort that your city must be adorned;
It does not matter how many beautiful public buildings you
possess, if they are not supported by, and in harmony with,
the private houses of the town. Neither the mind nor the
eye will accept a new college, or a new hospital, or a new
institution, for a city. It is the Canongate, and the
Princes Street, and the High Street that are Edinburgh.
It is in your own private houses that the real majesty of
Edinburgh must consist ; and, what is more, it must be by
your own personal interest that the style of the architec
ture which rises around you must be principally guide(|,
Do not think that you can have good architecture merely
by paying for it. It is not by subscribing liberally for a
large building once in forty years that you can call up
architects and inspiration. It is only by active and sym
pathetic attention to the domestic and every day work
which is done for each of you, that you. can educate either
yourselves to the feeling, or your builders to the doing, of
what is truly great.
Well but, you will answer, you cannot feel interested in
architecture : you do not care about it, and cannot care
about it. I know you cannot. About such*architecture
as is built no)v-a-days, no mortal ever did or could care.
You do not feel interested in hearing the same thing over
and over again ; — why»do you suppose you can feel inter
ested in seeing the same thing over and over again, were
that thing even the best and most beautiful in the world ?

Leot. I.] AND PAINTING. 1 3
Now, you all know the kind of window which you usually
build in Edinburgh : here is an example of the head of one
(fig 1.), a massy lintel of a single stone, laid across from
side to side, with bold square-cut jambs — in fact, the sim
plest form it is possible to build. It is by no means a bad
form ; on the contrary, it is very manly and vigorous, and
has a certain dignity in its utter refusal of ornament. But
I cannot say it is entertaining. How many windows pre
cisely of this form do you suppose there are in the New
Town of Edinburgh ? I have not counted them all through
the town, but I counted them this morning along this very
Queen Street, in which your Hall is ; and on the one side
of that Street, there are of these windows, absolutely simi
lar to this example, and altogether devoid of any relief by
decoration, six hundred and seventy-eight.* And your
decorations are just as monotonous as your simplicities.
How many Corinthian and Doric columns do you think
there are in your banks, and post-offices, institutions, and
I know not what else, one exactly like another ? — and yet
vou expect to be interested ! Nay, but, you will answer
me again, we see sunrises and sunsets, and violets and
roses, over and over again, and we do not tire of them.
What ! did you ever see one sunrise like another ? does not
God vary his clouds for you every morning and every night ?
though, indeed, there is enough in the disappearing and
* Including York Place, and Picardy Place, but not counting any win
dow which has mouldings.

14 -. LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [LeoI. I
appearing of the great orb above .the rolling of the world,
to interest all of us, one would think, for as many times as
we shall see it ; and yet the aspect of it is changed for us
daily. You see violets and roses often, and are not tired
of them. True ! but you did not often see two roses alike,
or, if you did, you took care not to put them beside each
other in the same nosegay, for fear your nosegay should
be uninteresting; and yet you think you can put 150,000
square windows side by side in the same streets, and still
be interested by them. Why, if I were to say the same
thing over and over again, for the single hour you are going
to let me talk to you, would you listen to me ? and yet you
let your architects do the same thing over and over again
for three centuries, and expect to be interested by their
architecture ; with a farther disadvantage on the side ot the
builder, as compared with the speaker, that my wasted
words would cost you but little, but his wasted stones have
cost you no small part of your incomes.
" Well, but," you still think within yourselves, " it is not
right that architecture should be interesting. It is a very
grand thing, this architecture, but essentially unentertain- ,
ing. It is its duty to be dull, it is monotonous by law : it
cannot be correct and yet amusing."
Believe me, it is not so. All things that are worth doing
in art, arc interesting and attractive when they are tijcmc.
There is no law of right which consecrates dulness. ¦' The
proof of a thing's being right is, that it has power over the

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 15
heart ; that it excites us, wins us, or helps us. I- do not
say that it has influence over all, but it has over a large
class, one kind of art being fit for one class, and another
for another ; and there is no goodness in art which is inde
pendent of the power of pleasing. Yet, do not mistake
me ; I do not mean that there is no such thing as neglect
of the best art, or dehght in the worst, just as many men
neglect nature, and feed upon what is artificial and base ;
but I mean, that all good art has the capacity of pleasing,
if people will attend to it ; that there is no law against its
pleasing ; but, on the contrary, something wrong either in
the spectator or the art, when it ceases to please. Now,'
therefore, if you feel that your present school of architecture
is unattractive to you, I say there is something wrong, either
in the architecture or in you ; and I trust you will not think
I mean to flatter you when I tell you, that the wrong is not
in you, but in the architecture. Look at this for a moment
(fig. 2.) ; it is a window actually (existing — a window of an
English domestic building* — a window built six hundred
years ago. You will not' tell m.e you have no pleasure in
looking at this ; or that you could not, by any possibility, be
come interested in the art which produced it ; or that, if
every window in your streets were of some such form, with
perpetual change in their ornaments, you would pass up and
down the street with as much indifference as now, when your
* Oakham Castle. I have enlarged this illustration from Mr. Hudson
Turner's admirable work on the domestic architecture of England.

16 ¦ LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I
windows are of this form (fig. 1.). Can you for an instant
suppose that the architect was a greater or wiser man who
built this, than he who built that 1 or that in the arrange
ment of these dull and monotonous stones there is more wit
and sense than you can penetrate 1 Believe me, the wrong
is not in you ; you would all like the best things best, if you
jnly saw them. What is wrong in you is your temper, not
your taste ; your patient and trustful temper, which hves
in houses whose architecture it takes for granted, and sub
scribes to public edifices from which it derives no enjoyment.
" Well, but what are we to do ?" you will say to me ;
we cannot make architects of ourselves. Pardon me, you
can — and you ought. Architecture is an art for all men
to learn, because all are concerned with it ; and it is so
simple, that there is no excuse for not being acquainted
with its primary rules, any more than for ignorance..-o/
grammar or of spelling, which are both of them far more
difficult sciences. Far less trouble than is necessary to
learn how to play chess, or whist, or goff", tolerably, — far
less than a schoolboy takes to win the meanest prize of
the passing year, would acquaint you with all the main
principles of the construction of a Gothic cathedral, and I
believe you would hardly find the study less amusing.
But be that as it may, there are one or two broad princi
ples which need only be stated to be understood and
accepted ; and those I mean to lay before you, with your
permission, before you leave this room.

Lect. I] AND PAINTING. 17
You must all, of course, have observed that the principal
distinctions between existing styles of architecture depend
on their methods of roofing any space, as a window or
door for instance, or a space between pillars ; that is to
say, that the character of Greek architecture, and of all
that is derived from it, depends on its roofing a space witli
a single stone laid from side to side ; th^ character of
Roman architecture, and of all derived from it, depends
on its roofing spaces with round arches ; and the character
of Gothic architecture depends on its roofing spaces withj
pointed' arches or gables. I need not, of course, in any
way follow out for you the mode in which the Greek sys
tem of architecture is derived from the horizontal lintel ;
but I Ought perhaps to explain, that by Roman ai:chitecture
I do not mean that spurious condition of temple form
which was nothing more than a luscious imitation of the
Greek ; but I mean that architecture in which the Roman
spirit truly manifested itself, the magnificent vaultings of
the aqueduct and the bath, and the colossal heaping of the
rough stones in the arches of the amphitheatre ; an archi-j
lecture full of expression of gigantic power and strength
of will, and from which are directly derived all our most
impressive early buildings, called, as you know, by various
antiquaries, Saxon, Nbrman, or Romanesque. Now the
first point I wish to insist upon is, that the Greek system, i
considered merely as a piece of construction, is weak and
barbarous compared with the two others. For instance,

18 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTUEE [Lect. L
in the case of a large window or door, such &sfig. 1 , if you
have at your disposal a single large and long stone you
may indeed roof it in the Greek manner, as you have done
here, with comparative security ; but it is always expen
sive to obtain and to raise to their place stones of this
large size, and in many places nearly impossible to obtain
them at all; and if you have not such stones, and still
insist upon roofing the space in the Greek way, that is to
say, upon having a square window, you must do it by the
miserable feeble adjustinent of bricks, fig. 3.* You are
well aware, of course, that this latter is the usual way in
which such windows are now built in England ; you are
fortunate enough here in the north to be able to obtain
single stones, and this circumstance alone gives a con
siderable degree of grandeur to your buildings. But in all
cases, and however built, you cannot but see in a moment
that this cross bar is weak and imperfect. It may be
strong enough for all immediate intents and purposes, but
it. is not so strong as it might be : however well the house
is built, it will still not stand so long as if it had been
better constructed ; and there is hardly a day passes but
you may see sorae rent or flaw in bad buildings of this
kind. You may see one whenever you choose, in one of
your most costly, and most ugly buildings, the great
church with the dome, at the end of George Street. I
think I never saw a building with the principal entrance
• On this subject, see " The Builder," vol. xi. p. 709.

Lect. L] AND PAINTING. ^ 19
SO utterly ghastly and oppressive ; and it is as weak as it
is ghastly. The huge horizontal lintel above the door is
already split right through. But you are not aware of a
thousandth part of the evil : the pieces'of building that you
see are all carefully done ; it i& in the parts that are to be
concealed by paint and plaster that the bad building of the
day is thoroughly committed. The main mischief lies in
the strange devices that are used to support the long hori
zontal cross beams of our larger apartpients and shops, and
the framework of unseen walls ; girders and ties of cast iron,
and props and wedges, and laths nailed and bolted together,
on marvellously scientific principles ; so scientific, that
every now and theft, when some tender reparation is under
taken by the unconscious householder, the whole house
crashes into a heap of ruin, so total, that the jury which sits
on the bodies of the inhabitants cannot teU what has been
the matter with it, and returns a dim verdict of accidental
death. Did you read the account of the proceedings at
the Crystal Palace at Sydenham the other day? Some
dozen of men crushed up among the splinters of the
scaffolding in ah instant, nobody knew why. All the
engineers declare the scafTolding to have been erected on
the best principles, — ^that the fall of it is as much a mys
tery as if it had fallen from heaven, and were all meteoric
stones. The jury go to Sydenham and look at the heap
of shattered bolts and girders, and come back as wise as
they went. Accidental death ! Yes verily ; the lives of

20 , LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I
all those dozen of men had been hanging for months at
the mercy of a flaw in an inch or two of cast iron. Very
accidental indeed ! Not the less pitiable. I grant it not
to be an easy thing to raise scaffolding to the height of
the Crystal Palace without incurring some danger, but
that is no reason why your houses should all be nothing
but scaffolding. The common system of support of walls
over shops is now nothing but permanent scaffolding; pkrt
of iron, part of wood, part of brick ; in its skeleton state
awful to behold ; the weight of three or four stories of
wall resting sometimes on two or three pillars of the size
of gas pipes, sometimes on a single cross beam of wood,
laid across from party wall to party wall in the Greek
manner. I have a vivid recollection at this moment of a
vast heap of splinters in the Borough Road, close to St.
George's Southwark, in the road between my own house
and London. I had passed it the day before, a goodly
shop front, and sufficient house above, with a few repairs
undertaken in the shop before opening a new business.
The master and mistress had found it dusty that afternoon,
and went out to tea. When they came back in the even
ing, they found their whole house in the form of a heap
of bricks blocking the roadway, with a party of men
digging out their cook. But I do not insist on casualties
like these, disgraceful to us as they are, for it is, of course,
perfectly possible to build a perfectly secure house or a
secure window in the Greek manner ; but the simple fact

Lect. L] and PAINTING. 21
is, that in order to obtain in the cross lintel the same
amount of strength which you can obtain in a pointed arch,
you must go to- an immensely greater cost in stone or in
labour. "Stonehenge is strong enough, but it takes some
trouble to build in the manner of Stonehenge ; and Stone
henge itself is not so, strong as an arch of the Colosseum
You could not raise a circle of four Stpnehenges, one over
the other, with safety ; and as it is, more of the cross-
stones are fallen upon the plain pf Sarum than arches
rent away, except by the hand of man, from the mighty
circle of Rome. But I waste words ; — your own common
sense must show you in a moment that this is a weak
form ; and there is not at this instant a single street in
London where some house could not be pointed out with
a flaw running through its brickwork, and repairs rendered
necessary in consequence, merely owing to the adoption
of this bad form ; and that our builders know so well, that
in myriads of instances you find them actually throwing
concealed arches above the horizontal lintels to take the
weight off them; and the gabled decoration at the top of
some Palladian windows, is merely the ornamental form
resulting from a bold device of the old Roman builders to
effect the same purpose.
But there is a farther reason for our adopting the point
ed arch than its being the strongest form; it is also the
most beautiful form in which a window or door-head can
be built. Not the mpst beautiful because it is the strong-

22 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I
est ; but most beautiful, because its form is one of those
which, as we know by its frequent occurrence in the work
of nature around us, has been appointed by the Deity to
be an everlasting source of pleasure to the human mind.
Gather a branch from any of the trees or flowers to
which the earth owes its principal beauty. You will find
that every one of its leaves is terminated, more or less, in
the form of the pointed arch ; and to that form owes its
grace and character. I will take, for instance, a spray of
the tree which so gracefully adorns your Scottish glens
and crags — -there is no lovelier in the world— the common
ash. Here is a sketch of the clusters of leaves which
form the extremity of one of its young shoots (fig. 4.) ;
and, by the way, it will furnish us with an i teresting illus
tration of another error in modern architectural systems.
You know how fond modern architects, like foolish modern
politicians, are of their equalities, and similarities ; how
necessary they think it that each part of a building should
be like every other part. Now Nature abhors equality,
and similitude, just as much as foolish men love them.
You will find that the ends of the shoots of the ash are
composed of four* green stalks bearing leaves, springing in
the form of a cross, if seen frora above, as in fig. 5., Plate
I., and at first you will suppose the four arms of the cross
* Sometimes of six ; that is to say, they spring in pairs ; only the two
uppermost pairs, sometimes the three uppermost, spring so close together
as to appear one cluster. '«*

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 23
are equal. But look more closely, and you will find that
two opposite arms or stalks have only five leaves each, and
the other two have seven, or else, two have seven, and the
other two nine ; but always one pair of stalks has two
leaves more than the other pair. Sometimes the tree gets
a little puzzled; and forgets which is to be the longest stalk,
and begins with a stem for seven leaves where it should
have nine, and then recollects itself at the last minute, and
puts on another leaf in a great hurry, and so produces a
stalk with eight leaves ; but all this care it takes merely
to keep itself out of equalities ; and all its grace and power
of pleasing are owing to its doing so,- together with the
lovely curves in which its stalks, thus arranged, spring from
the main bougbp Fig. 5. is a plan of their arrangement
merely, hnXfig. 4. is the way in which you are most likely
to see them : and observe, they spring from the stalk pre-
cisely as a Gothic vaulted roof springs, each stalk repre
senting a rib of the roof, and the leaves its crossing stones
and the beauty of each of those leaves is altogether owing
to its terminating in the Gothic form, the pointed arch.
Now do you think you would have liked your ash trees as
well, if Nature had taught them Greek, and shown them
how to grow according to the received Attic architectural
rules of right ? I will try you. Here is a cluster of ash
leaves, which I have grown expressly for you on Greek
principles (fig. 6., Plate III.) How do you like it ?
Observe, I have played you no trick in this comparison.

24 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. 1.
It is perfectly fair in all respects. I have merely substi
tuted for the beautiful spring of the Gothic vaulting in the
ash bough, a cross lintel, and then, in order to raise the
leaves to the same height, I introduce vertical columns, and
I make the leaves square-headed instead of pointed, and
their lateral ribs at right angles with the central rib, instead
of sloping from it. I have, indeed, only given you two
boughs instead of four ; because the perspective of the
crossing ones could not have been given without confusing
the figure ; but I imagine you have quite enough of them
as it is.
Nay, but some of you instantly answer, if we had -been
as long accustomed to square-leaved ash trees as we have
been to sharp-leaved ash trees, we should like them just as
well. Do not think it. Are you not much more accus
tomed to grey whinstone and brown sandstone than you
are to rubies or emeralds ? and yet will you tell me you
think them as beautiful ? Are you not more accustomed
to the ordinary voices of men than to the perfect accents
of sweet singing ? yet do you not instantly declare the song
to be loveliest ? Examine well the channels of your ad
miration, and you will find that they«are, in verity, as un-.
changeable as the channels of your heart's blood; that
just as by the pressure of a bandage, or by unwholesome.
and perpetual action of some part of the body, that blood*
may be wasted or arrested, and in its stagnancy cease to
nourish the frame or in its disturbed flow affect it with in-

Lkct. L] and PAINTING. 25
curable disease, s=o also admiration itself may, by the ban
dages of fashion, bound close over the eyes and the arte
ries of the soul, be arrested in its natural pulse and healthy
flow ; but that wherever the artificial pressure is removed,
it will return into that bed which has been traced for it by
the finger of God.
Consider this subject well, and you vnll find that cus
tom has indeed no real influence upon our feelings of the
beautiful, except in dulling and checking them; that is to
say, it will and does, as we advance in years, deaden in
some degree our enjoyment of all beauty, but it in no
wise influences our determination of what is beautiful and
what is not. You see the broad blue sky every day over
your heads ; but you do not for that reason determine
blue to be less or more beautiful than you did at first ;
you are unaccustomed to see stones as blue as the
sapphire, but you do-?not for that reason think the
sapphire less beautiful than other stones. The blue
colour is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to be a
source of delight ; and whether seen perpetually over
your head, or crystallised once in a thousand years into a
single and incomparable stone, your acknowledgment of
its beauty is equally natural, simple, and instantaneous.
Pardon me for engaging you in a metaphysical discussion ;
for it is necessary to the establishment of son.e of the
greatest of all architectural principles that I should fully
convince you of this great iruth, and that 1 should quite
2

26 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE ILect. 1,
do away with the various objections to it, which I suppose
must arise in your minds. Ol these tnere is one more
-which I must briefly meet. You know how much con
fusion has been introduced into the subject of criticism, hy
reference to the power of Association over thu human
heart ; you know how often it has been said that custom
must have something to do with our ideas of beauty,
because it endears so many objects to the affections.
But, once for all, observe that the powers of association
and of beauty are two entirely distinct powers, — as dis
tinct, for instance, as the forces of gravitation and elec
tricity. These forces may act together, or may neutralise
one another, but are not for that reason to be supposed
the same force ; and the charm, of association will some
times enhance, and soaj^times entirely overpower, that of
beauty ; but ya\i must not confound the two together.
You love many things because .you are accustomed, to
them, and are pained by many things because they are
strange to you ; but that does not rnake the accustomed
sight more beautiful, or the strange one less so. The
well known object may be dearer to you, or you may
have discovered charms in it which others cannot ; but
the charm was there before you discovered it, only need
ing time and love to perceive it^ You love your friends
and relations more than all the world beside, and may
perceive beauties in their faces which others cannot
perceive; bufc you feel that you would be ridiculous in

Lect. L] AND PAINTING. 27
allowing yourselves to think them the most beautiful
persons in the world : you acknowledge that the real
beauty of the human countenance depends on fixed laws
of form and expression, and not on the affection you bear
to it, o^^irhe degree in which you are famiharised with it :
and so ^oes the beauty of all other existences.
Now, therefore, I think that, without the risk of any
farther serious objection occurring to you, I may state
what I believe to be- the truth, — that beauty has been
appointed bjr the Deity to be one of the elements by
which the human soul is continually sustained ; it is
therefore to be found more or less in all natural objects,
but in order that we may not satiate ourselves with it, and
weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its utmost degrees
When we see it in those utmost degrees, we are attracted
to it strongly, and remember it long, as in the case of
singularly beautiful scenery, or a beautiful countenance.
On the other hand, absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely
as perfect beauty ; but degrees of it more or less distinct
are associated with whatever has the nature of death and
sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature
of virtue and of life.
This being so, you see that when the relative beauty of
any particular forms has to be examined, we may reason,
from the forms of nature around us, in this manner : —
what nature does generally, is sure to be more or less
beautiful ; what she does rarely, will either be very beaiir

28 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect.-' L
tiful, or absolutely ugly ; and we may again easily deter
mine, if we are not willing in such a case to trust our
feelings, which of these is indeed the case, by this simple
rule, that if the rare occurrence is the result of the
complete fulfilment of a natural law, it will be beautiful ;
if of the violation of a natural law, it will be ugly. For
instance, a sapphire is the result of the complete and
perfect fulfilment of the laws of aggregation in the earth
of alumina, and it is therefore beautiful ; more beautiful
than clay, or any other of the conditions of that earth.
But a square leaf on any tree would be ugly, being a
violation of the laws of growth in trees,* and we ought to
feel it so.
Now, then, I proceed to argue in this manner frofn what
we see in the woods and fields around us ; that as they are
evidently meant for our delight, and as we always feel them
to be beautiful, we may assume that the forms into which
their leaves are cast are indeed types of beauty, not of ex
treme or perfect, but average beauty. And finding that
they invariably terminate more or less in pointed arches,
and are not square-headed, I assert the pointed arch to be
one of the forms most fitted for perpetual contemplation
by the human mind ; that it is one of those which never
* I am at present aware only of one tree, the tulip tree, which has an
exceptional form, and which, I doubt not, every one will admit, loses much
beauty in consquence. AU other leaves, so far as I know, have the round
or pointed arch in the form of the extremeties of their foils.

Lect. L] . AND PAINTING. 29
weary, however often repeated ; and that therefore, being
both the strongest in structure, and a, beautiful form (while
the square head is both weak in structure, and an ugly
form), we are unwise ever to build in any other.
Here, however, I must anticipate another objection. It
may be asked why we are to build only the tops of the
windows pointed, — why not follow the leaves, and point
them at the bottom also.
For this simple reason, that, while in architecture you
are continually called upon, to do what may be. unnecessary
for the sake of beauty, you are never called upon to do
what is inconvenient for the sake of beauty. You want
the level window sill to lean upon, or to allow the window
to open on a balcony : the eye and the common sense of
the beholder require this necessity to be met before any
laws of beauty are thought of; and besides this, there is
in the sill no necessity for the pointed arch as a bearing
form ; on the contrary, it would give an idea of weak sup
port for the sides of the window, and therefore is at once
rejected ; only I beg of you particularly to observe that
the level sill, although useful, and therefore admitted, does
not therefore become beautiful ; the eye does not like it so
well as the top of the window, nor does the sculptor like
to attract the eye to it ; his richest mouldings, traceries, and
sculptures are all reserved for the top of the window, they
are sparingly granted to its horizontal base. And farther,
observe, that when neither the convenience of the sill, nor

30 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. L
the support of the structure, are any mor6 of moment, as
in small windows and traceries, you instantly have the
..point given to the bottom of the window. Do you recol
lect the west window of your own Dumblane Abbey ? If
you look in any common guide-book, you will find it
pointed out as peculiarly beautiful, — it is acknowledged tc
be beautiful by me most careless observer. And why
beautiful? Look at it (fig. 7). Simply because in its
great contours it has the form of a forest leaf, and be
cause in its decoration it has used nothing but forest
leaves. The sharp and expressive moulding which sur
rounds it is a very interesting example of one used to an
enormous extent by the builders of the early English
Gothic, usually in the form seen in fig. 2. above, composed
of clusters of four sharp leaves each, originally produced
by sculpturing the sides of a four-sided pyramid, and after
wards brought more or less into a true image of leaves,
but deriving all its beauty from the botanical form. In
the present instance only two leaves are set in each clus
ter ; and the architect has been determined that the natU'^
ralism should be perfect. For he was no common man
who designed that cathedral of Dumblane. I know not
anything so perfect in its simplicity, and so beautiful, as
far as it reaches, in all the Gothic with which I am ac
quainted. And just in proportion to his power of mind,
that man was content to work under Nature's teaching ;
and instead of putting a merely formal dogtooth, as every

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 31
body else did at the time, he went down to the woody
bank of the sweet river beneath the rocks on which he
was building, and he took up a few of the fallen leaves
that lay by it, and he set them in his arch, side by side,
for ever. And, loakr^-that he might show you he had
done this, — he has made them all of different sizes, just as
they lay ; and that you might not by any chance miss
noticing the variety, he has put a great broad one at the
top, and then a httle one turned the wrong way, next to it,
so that you must be blind indeed if you do not understand
his meaning. And the healthy change and playfulness of
this just does in the stonerwork what it does on the tree
boughs, and is a perpetual refreshment and invigoration ;
so that, however long you gaze at this simple ornament-^
and none can be simpler, a village mason could carve it
all round the window in a few hours- — ^you are never weary
qf it, it seems always new.
It is true that oval windows of this form are compara
tively rare in Gothic work, but, as you well know, circular
or wheel windows are used constantly, and in most trace
ries the apertures are curved and pointed as much at the
bottom as the top. So that I believe you will now allow
me to proceed upon the assumption, that the pointed arch
is indeed the best form into which the head either of door
or window can be thrown, considered as a means of sus
taining weight above it. How these pointed arches ought
to be grouped and decorated, I shall endeavour to show

32 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I
you in my next lecture. Meantime I must beg of you to
consider farther some of the general points connected with
the structure of the roof.
I am sure that all of you must readily acknowledge the
charm which is imparted to any landscape by the presence
of cottages; and you must over and over again have
paused at the wicket gate of some cottage garden,
delighted by the simple beauty of the honeysuckle porch
and latticed window. Has it ever occurred to you to ask
the question, what effect the cottage would have upon
your feelings if it had no roof? no visible roof, I mean ; — if
instead of the thatched slope, in which the little upper
windows are buried deep, as in a nest of straw — or the
rough shelter of its mountain shales— or warm colouring
of russet tiles — ^there were nothing but a flat leaden top to
it, making it look like a large packing-case with windows
in it ? I don't think the rarity of such a sight would make
you feel it to be beautiful; on the contrary, if you think
over the matter you will find that you actually do owe,
?ind ought to owe, a great part of your pleasure in all cot
tage scenery, and in all the inexhaustible imagery of litera
ture which is founded upon it, to the conspicuousness of
the cottage roof — ^to the subordination of the cottage itself
to its covering, which leaves, in nine cases out of ten, really
more roof than anything else. It is, indeed, not so much
the whitewashed walls — nor the flowery garden — ^nor the,
rude fragments of stones set for steps at the door — ^nor

Lect. LJ AND PAINTING. 33
any other picturesqueness of the building which interest
you, so much as the grey bank of its heavy eaves, deep-
cushioned with green moss and golden stonecrop. And
there is a profound, yet evident, reason for this feeling
The very soul of the cottage — ^the essence and meaning
of it — are in its roof; it is that, mainly, wherein consists
its shelter ; that, wherein it differs most completely from
a cleft in rocks or bower in woods. It is in its thick
impenetrable coverlid of close thatch that its whole heart
and hospitality are concentrated. Consider the difference,
in sounds of the expressions "beneath my roof" and
"within my wails," — consider whether you would be best
sheltered, in a shed, with a stout roof sustained on corner
posts, or in an enclosure of four walls without a roof at
all, — and you will quickly see how important a part of the
cottage the roof must always be to the mind as well as to
the eye, and how, from seeing it, the greatest part of our
pleasure must continually arise.
Now, do you suppose that which is so all-important in
a cottage, can be of small importance in your own dwel-
ling-hoUse ? Do you think that by any splendour of archi
tecture — any height of stories— ryou can atone to the mind
for the loss of the aspect of the roof? It is vain to say
you take the roof for granted. You may as well say you
take a man's -kindness for granted, though he neither looks
nor speaks kiiidly. You may know him to be kind in
reality, but you will not like him so well as if he spoke

34 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I,
and looked kindly also. And whatever external splendour
you may give your houses, you will always feel there is
something wanting, unless you see their roofs plainly.
And this especially in the north. In southern architecture
the roof is of far less importance ; but here the soul of
domestic building is in the largeness and conspicuousness
of the protection against the ponderous snow and driving
sleet. You may make the facade of the square pile, if the
reof be not seen, as handsome as you please, — you may
cover it with decoration, — ^but there will always be a heart-
lessness about it, which you will not know how to con
quer ; above all, a perpetual difficulty in finishing the wall
at top, which will require all kinds of strange inventions
in parapets and pinnacles for its decoration, and yet will
never look right.
Now, I need not tell you that, as it is desirable, for the
sake of the effect upon ihe mind, that the roof should be
visible, so the best and most natural form of roof in the
north is that which will render it most visible, namely, the
steep gable ; the best and most natural, T say, becauise
this form not only throws off snow and rain most com
pletely, and dries fastest, but obtains the greatest interior
space within walls of a given height, removes the heat of
the sun most effectually from the upper rooms, and affords
most space for ventilation.
You have then, observe, two great principles, as far as
northern architecture is concerned ; first, that the pointed

Leot. L] and PAINTING- 35
arch is to be the means by which the weight of the wall
or roof is to be sustained; secondly, that the steep gable
is the form most proper for the roof itself. And now
observe this most interesting fact, that all the loveliest
Gothic architecture in the world is based on the gi'oiip pf
lines composed of the pointed arch and the gable. If you
look at the beautiful apse of Amiens Cathedral — a work
justly celebrated over all Europe — you will find it formed
merely of a series of windows surmounted by pure gables
of open work. If you look at the transept porches pf
Rouen, or at the great and celebrated porch of the
cathedral of Rheims, or at that pf Strasbourg, Bayeux,
Amiens, or Peterborough, still you will see that these
lovely compositions are nothing more than richly deco
rated forms of gable over pointed arch. But more than
this, you must be all well aware how fond our best
architectural artists are of the street effects of foreign
cities ; and even those now present who have not per
sonally visited any of the cojitin^ntal towns must remem
ber, I should think, some of the mary interesting
drawings by Mr. Prout, Mr. Nash, and other excellent
draughtsmen, which have for many years adorned our
exhibitions. Now, the prineipal charm of all those con
tinental street effects is dependent on the houses having
high-pitched gable roofs. In the NjetherlaTOls and
Northern France, where the material for building is
brick or stone, the fronts pf the stpne gables are raised

36 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Leot. 1.
above the roofs, and you have magnificent and grotesque
ranges of steps or curves decorated with various orna
ments, succeeding one another in endless perspective
along the streets of Antwerp, Ghent, or Brussels. In
Picardy and Normandy, again, and many tovras of. Ger
many, where the material for building is principally wood,-
the roof is made to project over the gables, fringed with a
beautifully carved cornice, and casting a broad shadow
down the house front. This is principally seen at Abbe
ville, Rouen, Lisieux, and others of the older towns of
France. But, in all cases, the effect of the whole street
depends on the prominence of the gables ; not only of
the fronts towards the streets, but of the sides also, set
with small garret or dormer windows, each of the most
fantastic and beautiful form, and crowned with a little
spire or pinnacle. Wherever there is a little winding
stair, or projecting bow window, or any other irregularity
of fprm, the steep ridges shoot into turrets and small
spires, as in^^^g" 8.*, each in its turn crowned by a fantastic
ornament, covered with curiously shaped slates or shinglesj
or crested with long fringes of rich ironwork, so that, seen
from above and from a distance, the intricate grouping of
the roofs of a French city is no less interesting than its
actual streets ; and in the streets themselves, the masses
of broad shadow which the roofs form against the sky, are
* This figure is copied from Prout.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 37
a most important background to the bright and sculptured
surfaces of the walls.
Finally. I need not remind you of the effect upon the
northern mind which has always been produced by the
heaven-pointing spire, nor of the theory which has been
founded upon it of the general meaning of Gothic Archi
tecture as expressive of rehgous aspiration. In a few
minutes, you may ascertain the exact value of that theory,;
and the degree in which it is true.
The first tower of which we hear as built upon the
earth, was certainly built in a species of -aspiration ; but
I do not suppose that any one here will think it was a
religious one. " Go to now. Let us build a tower whose
top may reach unto Heaven." From that day to this,;'
whenever men have become skilful architects at all, there)
has been a tendency in them to build high; not in any!
religious feeling, but in mere exuberance of spirit and
power — as they dance or sing— with a certain mingling of
vanity — like the feeling in which a child builds a tower of
cards ; and, in nobler instances, with also a strong sense
of, and delight in the majesty, height, and strength of the
building itself, such as we have in that of a lofty tree or i
a peaked mountain. Add to this instinct the frequent
necessity of points of elevation for watch-towers, or of
points of offence, as in towers built on the ramparts ot
cities, and, finally, the need of elevations for the trans
mission of sound, as in the Turkish minaret and Christian

38 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lbct. I
belfry, and you have, I think, a -sufficient explanation of
the tower-building of the world in general. Look through
your Bibles only, and collect the various expressions with
reference to tower-building there, and you will have a
very complete idea of the spirit in which it is for the most
part undertaken. You begin with that of Babel ; then
you remember Gideon beating down the Tower of Peniuel,
in order more completely to humble the pride of the meii
of the city ; you remember the defence of the tower of
Shechem against Abimelech, and the death of Abimelech
by the casting of a stone from it by a woman's hand ; you
recollect the husbandman building a tower in his vineyard,
and the beautiful expressions in Solomon's Song-?-" The
Tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus ;"
" I am a wall, and my breasts like towers ;"-^you
recollect the Psalmist's expressions of love and delight,
" Go ye round about Jerusalem ; tell the towers thereof :
mark ye well her bulwarks ; consider her palaces, that ye
may tell it to the generation following." You see in all
these cases how completely the tower is a subjecit of
human pride, or delight, or defence, not in anywise asso
ciated with religious sentiment ; the towers of Jerusalem
being named in the same sentence, not with her temple,
but with her bulwarks and palaces. And thus, when, the
tower is in reality connected with a place of worship, it
was generally done to add to its magnificeSice, but not to
add to its religious expression. And oyex the whpl^ of

Leot. I;] AND PAINTING. 39
the world, you have various species of elevated buildings,
the Egyptian pyrai»iid, the Indian and Chinese pagoda,
the Turkish minaret, and the Christian belfry — all of
them raised either to make a show from a distance, or tc
cry from, or swing beas in,' or hang them round, or for
some other very iiuman reason. Thus, when the good
people of Beauvais were building their cathedral, that of
Amiens, then just completed, had excited the admiration
of all FraDce, and.lbe people of Beauvais, in their jealousy
and determination to beat the people of Amiens, set. to
work to build a tower to their own cathedral as high as
they possibly could. They built it so high that it tumbled
down, 9,nd they were never able to finish their cathedral
at all — it stands a wreck to this day. But you will not, I
should think, imagine this to have 'been done in heaven
ward aspiration. Mind, however, I don't blame the people
of Beauvais, except for their bad building. I think their
desire to beat the citizens of Amiens a most amiable
weakness, and only wish I could see the citizens of Edin
burgh and Glasgow .inflamed with the same emulation,
building Gothic towers* instead of manufactory chimneys ;
only do not confound a feeling which, though healthy and
right, may be nearly analogous to that in which you play
a cripketimatch, with any feeling allied to your hope of
heaven. * I did not, at the time of the delivery of these lectures, know how
many Gothic towers the worthy Glaswegians have lately built : that of
St, Peter'd, in particular, being a most meritorioas effort.

40 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. 1
Such being the state of the case with respect to tower
building in general, let me follow for a few minutes the
chano-es which occur in the towers of northern and southerr
architects. Many of us are familiar with the ordinary form of the
Italian bell-tower or campanile. From the eighth century
to the thirteenth there was little change in that form:*
four-square, rising high and without tapering into the air,
story above story, they stood like giants in the quiet fields
beside the piles of the basilica or the Lombardic church,
in this form (fig. 9.), tiled at the top in a flat gable, with
open arches below, and fewer and fewer arches on each
inferior story, down to the bottom. It is worth while
noting the difference in form between these and the towers
built for military service. The latter were built as in fig.
10., projecting vigorously at the top over a series of
brackets or machicolations, with very small windows, and
no decoration below. Such towers as these were attached
to every important palace in the cities of Italy, and stood
in great circles — troops of towers — around their external
walls : their ruins still frown along the crests of every
promontory of the Apennines, and are seen from far away
in the great Lombardic plain, from distances of half-a-day'a
journey, dark against the amber sky of the horizon. These
are of course now built no more, the changed methods of
• There U a good abstract of the forms of the Italian campanile, by Mr
Papworth, in the Journal of the Archasologlcal Institute, March 1850.

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 41
modern warfare having cast them into entire disuse ; but
the belfry or campanile has "had a very different influence
on European architecture. Its form in the plains of Italy
and South France being that just shown you, the moment
we enter the valleys of the Alps, where there is snow to
be sustained, we find its form of roof altered by the sub
stitution of a steep gable for a flat one.* There are
probably few in the room who have not been in some parts
of South Switzerland, and who do not remember the beau
tiful effect of the grey mountain churches, many of them
hardly changed since the tenth &id eleventh- centuries,
whose pointed, towers stand up through the green level of
the vines, or crown the jutting rocks that border the valley.
From this form to the true spire, the change is slight, and
consists in little more than various decoration, generally in
putting small pinnacles at the angles, and piercing the
central pyramid with traceried windows, sometimes, as at
Fribourg and Burgos, throwing it into tracery altogether :
but to do this is invariably the sign of a vicious style, as
it takes away from the spire its character of a true roof,
and turns it nearly into an ornamental excrescence. At
Antwerp and Brussels, the celebrated towers (one, observe,
ecclesiastical, being the tower of the cathedral, and the
other secular), are formed by successions of diminishing
towers, set one above Jthe other, and each supported by
* The form establishes itself afterwards in the plains, in sympathy with
other Gothic conditions, as in the campanile of St. Mark's at Venice.

42 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I
buttresses thrown to the angles of the one beneath. Al
the English cathedrals of Lichfield and Salisbury, the spire
is seen in great purity, only decorated by sculpture ; but I
am aware of no example so striking in its entire simplicity
as that of the towers of the cathedral of Coutances in Nor-
mandy. There is a dispute between French and English
antiquaries as to the date of the building, the Eng
lish being unwilling to admit its complete priority
to all their own Gothic. I have no doubt of this
priority myself ; and I hope that the- time will soon come
when men will cease to*confound vanity vrith patriotism,
and will think the honour of their nation more advanced
by their own sincerity and courtesy, than by claims, how
ever learnedly contested, to the invention of pinnacles and
arches. I believe the French nation was, in the 12th and
13th centuries, the greatest in the world ; and that the
French not only invented Gothic architecture, but carried
it to a perfection which no other nation has approached;
then or since : but, however this may be, there can be no
doubt that the towers of Coutances, if not the earliest, are
among the very earliest, examples of the fully developed
spire. I have drawn one of them carefully for you (fig.
1 1 .), and you will see immediately that they are literally
domestic roofs, with garret windows, executed on a large
scale, and in stone. Their only ornament is a kind of
scaly mail, which is nothing more than the copying in stone
of the common wooden shingles of the house-roof,; and

Lect. 1 '1 AND PAINTIN13. 43
tJieir security is provided for by strong gabled dormer
windows, of massy masonry, which, though supported on
detached shafts, have weight enough completely to balance
the lateral thrusts of the spires.
Nothing can sui^ass the boldness or the simplicity of
the plan ; and yet, in spite of this simplicity, the clear
detaching of the shafts from the slope of the spire, and
their great height, strengthened by rude cross-bars of stone,
carried back to the wall behind, occasions so great a com
plexity and play of cast shadows, that I remember no
architectural composition of which the aspect is so com
pletely varied at different hours of the day.* But the
main thing I wish you to observe is, the completely domes
ticity of the work ; the evident treatment of the church
spire merely as a magnified house-roof; and the proof
herein of the great truth of which I have been endeavour
ing to persuade you, that all good architecture rises out
of good and simple domestic work ; and that, therefore,
befor« you attempt to build great churches and palaces,
you must build good house doors and garret windows.
Nor is the spire the only ecclesiastical form deducible from
domestic architecture. The spires of France and Ger
many are associated with other towers, even simpler and
more straightforward in confession of their nature, in
which, though the walls of the tower are covered with
sculpture, there is an ordinary ridged gable roof on the
* The sketch was mad« about 10 o'clock on a. 'September morning.

44 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I
top. The finest example I know of this kind of tower, is
that on the north-west angle of Rouen Cathedral (fig. 12.);
but they occur in multitudes in the older towns of Ger
many ; and the backgrounds of Albert Durer are full of
them, and owe to them a great part of their interest : all
these great and magnificent masses of architecture being
repeated on a smaller scale by the little turret roofs and
pinnacles of every house in the iown; and the whole
system of them being expressive, not by any means of
religious feehng,* but merely of joyfulness and exhilaration
* Among the various modes in which the architects, against whose
practice my writings are directed, have endeavoured to oppose them, no
charge has been made more frequently than that of their self-contradiction ;
the fact being, that there are few people in the world who are capable of
seeing the two sides of any subject, or of conceiving how the statements
of its opposite aspects can possibly be recoucileable. For instance, in a
recent review, though for the most part both fair and intelligent, it is
remarked, on this very subject of the domestic origin of the northern
Gothic, that " Mr. Ruskin is evidently possessed by a fixed idea, that the
Venetian architects were devout men, and that their devotion was express
ed in their buildings | while he will not allow our own cathedrals to have
been built by any but worldly men, who had no thoughts of heaven, but
only vague ideas of keeping out of hell, by erecting costly places of
worship." If this writer had compared the two passages with the care
which such a subject necessarily demands, he would have found that I was
not opposing Venetian to English piety ; but that in the one case I was
speaking of the spirit manifested in the entire architecture of the nation,
and in the other of occasional efforts of superstition as distinguished from
that spirit ; and, farther, that in the one case, I was speaking of decorative
features, which are ordinarily the results of feeling, in the other of struo-

Leot. L] AND PAINTING. 45
of spirit in the inhabitants of such cities, leading them to
throw their roofs high into the sky, and therefore giving to
the style of architecture with which these grotesque roofs
are associated, a certain charm like that of cheerfulness
in the human face ; besides a power of interesting the
beholder which is testified, not only by the artist in his
constant search after such forms as the elements of his
landscape, but by every phrase of our language and litera
ture bearing on such topics. Have not these words.
Pinnacle, Turret, Belfry, Spire, Tower, a pleasant sound
in all your ears ? I do not speak of your scenery, I do not
ask you how much you feel that it owes to the grey battle
ments that frown through the woods of Craig Millar, to
the pointed turrets that flank the front of Holyrood, or to
the massy keeps of your Crichtoun and Berth wick -and
other border towers. But look merely through your
poetry and romances ; take away out of your border
tural features, which are ordinarily the results of necessity or convenience.
Thus it is rational and just that we should attribute the decoration of the
arches of St. Mark's with scriptural mosaics to a religious sentiment ; but
it would be a strange absurdity to regard as an effort of piety the invention
of the form of the arch it«elf, of which one of the earliest and most per
fect instances is in the Cloaca Maxima. And thus in the case of spires
and towers, it is just to ascribe to the devotion of, their designers that
dignity which was bestowed upon forms derived from the simplest domestic
buildings ; but it is ridiculous to attribute any great refinement of reli
gious feeling, or height of religious aspiration, to those who furnished the
funds for the erection of the loveliesttower in North France, by paying
for permission to eat butter in Lent.

46,- '¦'' LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
ballads the word tower wherever it occurs, and the ideas
'connected with it, and what will become of the ballads !
See how Sir Walter Scott cannot even get through a
description of Highland scenery without help from the
idea : — " Each purple peak, each flinty .^pire.
Was bathed in floods of living fire." '
Take away from Scott's romances the word and idea
turret, and see how much you would lose. Suppose, for
instance, when young Osbaldistone is leaving Osbaldi-
stone Hall, instead of saying " The old clock struck two
from a turret adjoining my bedchamber," he had said,
" The old clock struck two from the landing at the top of
the Stair," what would become of the passage ? And can
you really suppose that what has so much power over you
in words has no power over you in reality ? Do you think
there is any group of words which would thus interest
you, when the things expressed by them are uninteresting?
For instance, you know that, for an immense time back,
all your public buildings have been built with a row of
pillars supporting a triangular, thing called a pediment.
You see this form every day in your banks and clubhouseSj
and churches and chapels ; you are told that it is the
perfection of architectural beauty ; and yet suppose Sir
Walter Scott, instead of writing, " Each purple peak, each
flinty spire," had written, " Each purple peak, each flinty

Lkct. L] AND PAINTING. ^^•^ 47^V ':fA
'pediment.'"* Would you have thought the poem ihit^;' ^\,. "^'Z
proved? And if not, why would it be spoiled? Simply* \
because the idea is no longer of any value to you ; the
thing spoken of is a nonenity.
These pediments, and s*ylobates, and architraves never
excited a single plieasnrable feeling in you — never will, to
the end of time. They are evermore dead, lifeless, and
useless, in art as in poetry, and though you built as many
of them as lAiere are slates on your house-roofs, you will
never care for them. They will pnly remain to later age^
as monuments of the patience and pliability with which the
people of the 19th century sacrificed their feelings to fash
ions, and their intellects to forms. But on the other hand,
that strange and thrilling interest with which such words
strike you as are in any wise connected with Gothic archi-
* It has been objected to this comparison that the form of the pediment
does not properly represent that of the rocks of the TroSachs. The objec
tion is utterly futile, for there is not a single spire or pinnacle from one
end of the Trosachs to the other. All their rocks are heavily rounded,
and the introduction of the word "spire" is a piece of inaccuracy in
description, ventured merely for the sake of the Gothic image. Farther :
it has been said that if I had substituted the word " gable," it would have
spoiled the line just as much as the word " pediment," though " gable is a
Gothic word. Of course it would ; but why ? Because " gaWe" is a term
of -VTilgar domestic architecture, and therefore destructive of the tbne of
the heroic description; whereas "pediment" and "spire" are precisely
coiTelative terms, being each the crowmn^eature in ecclesiastical edificus,
and the comparison of their effects ia the verse is therefore absolutely
tcciOfttei logical, and just.

48 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. L
lecture— as for instance. Vault, Arch, Spire Pinnacle,
Battlement, Barbican, Porch, and myriads of such others^
words everlastingly poetical and powerful whenever they
occur, — is a most true and certain index that the things
themselves are delightful to you, and will ever continue to
be so. Believe me, joji do indeed love these things, so far
as you care about art at all, so far as you are not ashamed
to confess what you feel about them. In your pubhcj
capacities, as bank directors, and charity overseers, and
administrators of this and that other undertaking or insti
tution, you cannot express your feelings at all. You form
committees to decide upon the style of the new building,
and as you have never been in the habit of trusting to your
own taste in such matters, you inquire who is the most
celebrated, that is to say, the most employed architect of
the day. And you send for the great Mr. Blank, and tho
Great Blank sends you a plan of a great long marble box
with half-a-dozen pillars at one end of it, and the same at
the other ; and you look at the Great Blank's great plan in
a grave manner, and you daresay it will be very handsome ;
and you ask the Great Blank what sort of a blank cheque
must be filled up before the great plan can be realized;
and you subscribe in a generous " burst of confidence "
whatever is wanted ; and when it is all done, and the great
white marble box is set up in your streets, you contemplate
it, not knowing what to make of it exactly, but hoping it is
all right ; and then there is a dinner given to the Great

Lect. L] and painting. 49
Blank, and the morning Papers say that the new and hand
some building, erected by the great Mr. Blank, is one of
Mr. Blank's happiest efforts, and reflects the greatest credit
upon the intelligent inhabitants of the city of so and so ;
and the building keeps the raiii out as well as another, and
you remain in a placid state of impoverished satisfaction
therewith ; but as for having any real pleasure out of it,
you never hoped for such a thing. If you really make up
a party of pleasure, and get rid of the forms and fashion
of public propriety for an hour or two, where do you go
for it ? Where do you go to eat strawberries and cream ?
To Roslin Chapel, I believe ; not to the portico of the last-
built institution. What do you see your children doing,
obeying their own natural and true instincts ? What are
your daughters drawing upon their card-board screens as
soon as they can use a pencil ? Not Parthenon frPtits I
think, but the ruins of Melrose Abbey, or Linlithgow
Palace, or Lochleven Castle, their own pure Scotch hearts
leading them straight to the right things, in spite of all that
they are told to the contrary. You perhaps call this roman
tic, and youthful, and foolish. I am pressed for time now,
and I cannot ask you to consider the meaning of the word
" Romance." I will do that, if you please, in next lecture,
for it is a word of greater weight and auth'brity than we
commpnly believe. In the meantime, I will endeavour,
lastly, to show you, not the romantic, but the plain and
3

50 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. L
practical conclusions which should follow from the facts I
have laid before you.
,1 have endeavoured briefly to point out to you the pro
priety and naturalness of the two great Gothic forms, the
pointed arch and gable roof. I wish now to tell you in
what way they ought to be introduced into modern domes
tic architecture.
You will all admit that there is neither romance nor
comfort in waiting at your own or at any one else's door
on a windy and rainy day, till the servant comes from the
end of the house to open it. You all know the critical
nature of that opening — the drift of wind into the passage,
the impossibility of putting down the umbrella at the pro
per moment without getting a cupful of water dropped
down the back of your neck from the top of the doorway ;
and you know how little these inconveniences are abated
by the common Greek portico at the top of the steps.
You know how the east winds blow through those unlucky
couples of pillars, which are all that your architects find
consistent with due observance of the Doric order. Then,
away with these absurdities ; and the next house you build,
insist upon having the pure old Gothic porch, walled in on
both sides, with its pointed arch entrance and gable roof
above. Under that, you can put down ypur umbrella^ at
ypur leisure, and, if ypu will, stpp a moment to talk with
your friend as you give him the parting shake of the hand.

Lkct. I] AND P^UNTING. 51
And if now and then a wayfarer found a moment's rest on
a stone seat on each side of it, I believe you would find the
insides of your houses not one whit the less comfortable ;
and, if you answer me, that were such refuges built in the
open streets, they would become mere nests of filthy va
grants, I reply that I do not despair of such a change in
the administration of the poor laws of this country, as shall
no longer leave any of our fellow-creatures in a state in
which they would pollute the steps of our houses by rest
ing upon them for a night. But if not, the command to
all of us is strict and straight, " When thou seest the naked,
that thou cover him, and that thou bring the poor that are
cast out to thy house,"* Not to the workhouse, observe,
but to thy house : and I say it would be better a thousands
fold, that our doors should be beset by the poor day by day,
than that it should be written of any one of us, " They
reap every one his corn in the field, and they gather the
vintage of the wicked. They cause the naked to lodge
without shelter, that they have no covering in the cold.
They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and em
brace the rock, for want of a shelter."!
This, then, is the first use to which your pointed arches
and gable roofs are to be put. The second is of more
personal pleasureableness. You surely must all of you
feel and admit the delightfulness of a bow window ; I can
hardly fancy a room can be perfect without one. Now
• IboL IvJiL 7. t Job, xxiv. 6—8.

52 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. I.
you have nothing to do but to resolve that every one of
your principal rooms shall have a bow window, either large
or small. Sustain the projection of it on a bracket, crown
it above with a little peaked roof, and give a massy piece
of stone sculpture to the pointed arch in each of its case
ments, and you will have as inexhaustible a source of
quaint richness in your street architecture, as of additional
comfort and delight in the interiors of your rooms.
Thirdly ; as respects windows which do not project.
You will find that the proposal to build them with pointed
arches is met by an objection on the part of your archi
tects, that you cannot fit them with comfortable sashes.
I beg leave to tell you that siich an objection is utterly
futile and ridiculous. I have lived for months in Gothic
palaces, with pointed windows of the most complicated
forms, fitted with modern sashes ; and with the most per
fect comfort. But granting that the objection were a true
one — and I suppose it is true to just this extent, that it
may cost some few shillings more per window in the first
instance to set the fittings to a pointed arch than to a
square one — there is not the smallest necessity for the
aperture of the window being of the pointed shape.
Make the uppermost or bearing arch pointed only, and'
make the top of the window square, filling the interval
with a stone shield, and you may have a perfect school of
architecture, not only consistent with, but eminently ccn-
ducive tQ,.§yery comfprt pf ypur daily life. The window

Lect. I.] AND PAINTING. 53
in Oakham Castle (fig. 2.) is an example of such a form
as actually employed in the 13th century; and 1 shall
have to notice another in the course of next lecture.
Meanwhile, I have but one word to say in conclusion.
Whatever has been advanced in the course of this evening,
has rested on the assumption that all architecture was to
be of brick and stone ; and may meet with some hesitation
in its acceptance, on account of the probable use of iron,
glass, and such other materials in our future edifices. I
cannot now enter into any statement of the possible uses
of iron or glass, but I will give you one reason, which I
think will weigh strongly with most here, why it is not
likely that they will ever become important elements in
architectural effect. I know that I am speaking to a
company of philosophers, but you are not philosophers of
the kind who suppose that the Bible is a superannuated
book; neither are you of those who think the Bible is dis
honoured by being referred to for judgment in small mat
ters. The very divinity of the Book seems to me, on the
contrary, to justify us in referring every thing to it, with
respect to which any conclusion can be gathered from its
pages. Assuming then that the Bible is neither superan
nuated now, nor ever likely to be so, it will follow that the
illustrations which the Bible employs are likely to he clear
and intelligible illustrations to the end of time. I do not
mean that every thing spoken of in the Bible histories
must continue tp endure for all time, but that the things

54 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. L
which the Bible uses for illustration of eternal truths are
likely to remain eternally intelligible illustrations. Now,
I find that iron architecture is indeed spoken of in the!
Bible. You know how it is said to Jeremiah, " Behold, I
have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pil
lar, and brazen walls, against the whole land." But I do
not find that iron building is ever alluded to as likely to
become familiar to the minds of men ; but, on the con
trary, that an architecture of carved stone is continually
employed as a source of the most important illustrations.
A simple instance must occur to all of you at once. The
force of the image of the CPrner Stpne, as used through
out Scripture, would completely be lost, if the Christian
and civilized world were ever extensively to employ any
other material than earth and rock in their domestic build
ings ; I firmly believe that they never will ; but that as
the laws of beauty are more perfectly established, we shall
be content still to build as our forefathers built, and still
to receive the same great lessons which such building is
calculated to convey ; of which one is indeed never to be
forgotten. Among the questions respecting towers which
were laid before you to-night, one has been omitted:
" What man is there of you intending to build a tower,
that sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether
he have sufficient to finish it ?" I have pressed upon you,
this evening, the building of domestic towers. You may
think it right to dismiss the subject at once from your

Lbct. 1.3 AND PAINTING. Cfi
thoughts ; but let us not do so, without considering, each
of us, how far that tower has been built, and how truly its
cost has been counted.

Sb LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. VL

LECTURE II.
Before proceeding to the principal subject df this
evening, I wish to anticipate one or two objections which
may arise in your minds to what I must lay before you.
It may perhaps have been felt by you last evening, that
some things I proposed to you were either romantic or
Utopian. Let us think for a few moments what romance
and Utopianism mean.
First, romance. In consequence of the many absurd
fictions which long formed the elements of romance writ
ing, the word romance is sometimes taken as synonymous
with falsehood. Thus the French talk of Des Romans,
and thus the English use the word Romancing.
But in this sense we had much better use the word
falsehood at once. It is far plainer and clearer. And if
m this sense I put anything romantic before you, pray
pay no attention to it, or to me.
In the second place. Because young people are par
ticularly apt to indulge in reverie, and imaginative plea
sures, and to neglect their plain and practical duties, the

Lect. n.] AND PAINTING. 57
word romantic has come to signify weak, foolish, specu
lative, unpractical, unprincipled. In all these cases it
would be much better to say weak, foolish, unpractical,
unprincipled. The words are clearer. If in this sense,
also, I put anything romantic before you, pray pay no
attention to me.
But iu the third and last place. The real and proper
use of the word romantic is simply to characterise an im
probable or unaccustomed degree of beauty, sublimity, or
virtue. For instance, in matters of history, is not the
Retreat of the Ten Thousand romantic ? Is not the death
of Leonidas ? of the Horatii ? On the other hand, you
find nothing romantic, though much that is monstrous^ in
the excesses of Tiberius or Commodus. So again, the
battle of Agincourt is romantic, and of Bannockburn,
simply because there was an extraordinary display of
human virtue in both those battles. But there is no
romance in the battles of the last Italian campaign, in
which mere feebleness and distrust were on one side, mere
physical force on the other. And even in fiction, the op
ponents of virtue, in order to be romantic, must have sub
limity mingled with their vice. It is not the knave, not
the ruffian, that are romantic, but the giant and the
dragon ; and these, not because they are false, but be
cause they are majestic. So again as to beauty. You
feel that armour is romaptic because it is a beautiful
dress, and you are not used to it. You do not feel there
3*

58 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. D.
is anything romantic in the paint and shells of a Sandwich
Islander, for these are not beautiful.
So, then, observe, this feeling which you are ac^
customed to despise — ^this secret and poetical enthusiasm
in all your hearts, which, as practical men, you try to
restrain — is indeed one of the holiest parts of your being.
It is the instinctive -delight in, and admiration- for, sub
limity, beauty, and virtue, unusually manifested.' And so
far from being a dangerous guide, it is the truest part of
your being. It is even truer than your consciences. A
mEtfi's conscience may be utterly perverted and led astray ;
but so long as the feelings of romance endure within us,
they are unerring — they are as true to what is right and
lovely as the needle to the north ; and all that you have
to do is to add to the enthusiastic sentiment, the majestic
judgment — to mingle prudence and foresight with imagin
ation and admiration, and you have the perfect human
soul. But the great evil of these days is that we try to
destroy the romantic feeling, instead of bridling and
directing it. Mark what Young says of the men of the
world : " They, who think nought so strong of the romance,
So rank knight-errant, as a real friend."
And they are right. True friendship is romantic, to the
men of the world — true affection is romantic — true re
ligion is romantic ; and if you were to ask me who of all

LBCT.n.] AND PAINTING, 59
powerful and popular writers in the cause of error had
wrought most harm to their race, I should hesitate in
reply whether tP name Vpltaire or Byron, or the last most
ingenious and most venomous of the degraded philoso
phers of Germany, or rather Cervantes, for he cast
scorn upon the holiest principles of humanity — he, of all
men, most helped forward the terrible change in the sol
diers of Europe, from the spirit of Bayard to the spirit of
Bonaparte*, helped to change loyalty into license, protec
tion into plunder, truth into treachery, chivalry into sel
fishness ; and since his time-, the purest impulses and the
noblest purposes have perhaps been oftener stayed by the
devil, under the name of Quixotism, than under any other
base name Pr false allegatipn.
Quixotism, or Utopianism : that is another of the devil's
pet words. I believe the quiet admission .which we are all
of us so ready to make, that, because things have long
been wrong, it is impossible they should ever be right, is
one of the most fatal sources of misery and crime from
which this world suffers. Whenever you hear a man dis
suading you from attempting to dp w^ell, on the ground
that perfection is " Utopian," beware of that man. Cast
the word out of your dictionary altogether. There is no
• I mean no scandal against the present epiperor of the French, whose
truth has, I believe, been as conspicuous in the late political negotiations,
as his decision and prudence have lieen throughout the whole course of bit
govornment

60 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lijct. II.
need for it. Things are either possible pr imppssible-^ypji
can easily determine which, in any given state of human
science. If the thing is impossible, you need not trouble
yourselves about it ; if possible, try for it. It is very Uto
pian to hope for the entire doing away with drunkenness
and misery out of the Canongate ; but the Utopianism is
not our business — the •work is. It is Utopian to hope to
give every child in this kingdom the knowledge of God
from its youth ; but the Utopianism is not our business'-rr-
the work is.
I have delayed you by the consideration of these two
words, only in the fear that they might be inaccurately
applied to the plans I am going to lay before you; for,
though they were Utopian, and though they were romantic,
they might be none the worse for that. But they are
neither. Utopian they are not ; for they are merely a
proposal to do again what has been done fur hundreds of
years by people whose wealth and power were as nothing
compared to ours ; — and romantic they are not, in the
sense of self-sacrificing or eminently virtuous, for they are
merely the propogal to each of ypu that he should live in
a handsomer house than he does at present, by substituting
a cheap mode of ornamentation for a costly one. You
perhaps fancied that architectural beauty was a very costly
thing. Far from it. It is architectural ugliness that is
costly. In the modern system of architecture, decoration
is immoderately expensive, because it is both wrongly;

LECT. IL] AND PAINTING. 6l
placed and wrongly finished, I say first, wrongly placed.
Modern architects decorate the tops of their buildings.
Mediaeval ones decorated the bottom.* That makes all
the difference between seeing the ornament and not seeing
it. If you bought some pictures to decorate such a room
as this, where would you put them ? On a level with the
eye, I suppose, or nearly so ? Not on a level with the
chandelier? If you were determined to put them up
there, round the cornice, it would be better for you not to
buy them at all. You would merely throw your money
away. And the fact is, that your money is being thrown
away continually, by wholesale ; and while you are dis
suaded, on the ground of expense, from building beautiful
windows and beautiful doors, you are continually made to
pay for ornaments at the tops of yPur houses, which, for
all the use they are of, might as well be in the moon. For
instance, there is not, on the whole, a more studied piece
of domestic architecture in Edinburgh than the street in
which so many of your excellent physicians live — Rutland
Street. I do not know if you have observed its architec
ture ; but if you will look at it to-morrow, you will see
that a heavy and close balustrade is put all along the eaves
of the houses. Your physicians are not, I suppose, in the
habit of taking academic and meditative walks on the
roofs of their houses ; and, if not, this balustrade is alto-
* For farther confirmation of this statement. See the Addenda at the
end of this lecture.

62 LECTUBES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IT.
gether useless, — nor merely useless, for you will find it
runs directly in front of all the garret windows, thus inter
fering with their light, and blocking out their view of the
street. All that the parapet is meant to do, is to give
some finish to the facades, and the inhabitants have- thus
been made to pay a large sum for a piece of mere decora-
tion. Whether it does finish the fapades satisfactorily, or
whether the physicians resident in the street, or their
patients, are in anywise edified by the succession of pear-
shaped knobs of stone on their house-tops, I leave them
to tell you, only do not fancy that the design, whatever its
success, is an econcmiical one.
But this is a very slight waste of money, compared to
the constant habit of putting careful sculpture at the tops
of houses. A temple of luxury has just been built in
London, for the army and navy club. It cost £40,000,
exclusive of purchase of ground. It has upon it an
enormous quantity of sculpture, representing the gentle
men of the navy as little boys riding upon dolphins, and
the gentlemen of the army — I couldn't see as what — aqi
can anybody ; for all this sculpture is put up at the top of
the house, where the gutter should be, under the cornice.
I know that this was a Greek way of doing things,' I •
can't help it : that does not make it a wise one. Greeks
might be willing to pay for what they couldn't see, but
Scotchmen and Englishmen shouldn't.
Not that the Greeks threw their work away as we do.

Lkct. n.] AND PAINTING. 63
As far as I know Greek buildings, their ornamentation,
though often bad, is always bold enough and large enough
to be visible in its place. It is not putting ornament high
that is wrong ; but it is cutting it too fine to be seen,
wherever it -is. This is the great modern mistake; you
are actually at twice the cost which would produce an
impressive ornament, to produce a contemptible one ; you
increase the price of your buildings by one-half, in order
to mince their decoration into invisibility. Walk through
your streets, and try to make out the ornaments on the
upper parts of your fine buildings — (there are none at the
bottoms of them.) Don't do it long, or you will all come
home with inflamed eyes, but yon will soon discover that
you can see nothing but confusion in ornaments thcit have
cost you ten or twelve shillings a foot.
Now the Gothic builders placed their decoration on
a precisely contrary principle, and on the only rational
principle. All their best and most delicate work they put
on the foundation of the building, close to the spectator,
and on the upper parts of the walls they put ornaments
large, bold, and capable of being plainly seen at the
necessary distance. A single example will enable you to
understand this method of adaptation perfectly. The
lower part of the fa9ade of the cathedral of Lyons, built
either late in the 18th or early in the 14th century, is
decorated with a series of niches, filled by statues of con
siderable size, which are supported upon pedestals within

64 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [LaCT..il
about eight feet of the ground. In general, pedestals of
this kind are supported on some projecting pprtion of the
basement; but at Lyons, owing to other arrangementsof
the architecture into which 1 have no time to enter, they
are merely projecting tablets, or flat-bottomed brackets of
stone, projecting from the wall. Each bracket is about a
foot and a half square, and is shaped thus (_^^. 13.), show
ing to the spectator, as he walks beneath, the flat bottom
of each bracket, quite in the shade, but within a couple of
feet of the eye, and lighted by the reflected' hght from the
oavementi The whole of the surface of the wall round
the great ejitrance is- covered with bas-relief, as a matteis
of course ; but the architect appears to have been jealous
of the smallest space which was well within the range of
sight ; and the bottom of every bracket is decorated also —
nor that slightly, but decorated with no fewer than six
figures each, besides a flower border, in a space, as I said,
not quite afoot and a half square. The shape of the field
to be decorated being a kind of quatrefoil, as shown in fig.
13., four small figures are placed, one in each foil, and
two larger ones in the centre. I had only time, in passing
through the town, to make a drawing of one of the angles
of these pedestals ; that sketch I have enlarged, in order
that you may have some idea of the character of the
sculpture. Here is the enlargement of it (fig. 15.). Now
observe, this is one of the angles, of the bottom of a
pedestal, not two feet broad, on the outside pf a Gpthic

Leot, n.] AND PAINTING, 65
building; it contains only one of the four little figures
which form those angles ; and it shows you the head only
of one of the larger figures in the centre. Yet just
observe how much design, how much wonderful compo
sition, there is in this mere fragment of a building of the
great times ; a fragment, literally no larger than a school
boy coulr^;,trike off in wantonness with a stick : and yet
I cannot tell you how much care has been spent — not so
much on the execution, for it does not take much trouble
to execute well on so small a scale— but on the design, of
this minute fragment. You see it is composed of a branch
of wild roses, which switches round at the angle, embrac
ing the minute figure of the bishop, and terminates in a
spray reaching nearly to the head of the large figure.
You will observe how beautifully that figure is thus
pointed to by the spray of rose, and how all the leaves
around it in the same manner are subservient to the grace
of its action. Look, if I hide one line, or one rosebud,
how the whole is injured, and how much there is to study
in the detail of it. Look at this little diamond crown,
with a lock of the hair escaping from beneath it ; and at^
the beautiful way in which the tiny leaf at a, is set in the
angle to prevent its harshness ; and having examined this
well, consider what a treasure of thought there is in a
cathedral front, a hundred feet wide, every inch of which
is wrought with sculjffure like this ! And every front of
our thirteienth century cathedrals is inwrought with sculp-

66 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. II
ture of this quality ! And yet you quietly allow your-
selves to be told that the men who thus wrought were
barbarians, and that your architects are wiser arid better
in covering your Walls with sculpture of this kind (fig. 14.
plate 8.).
Walk round your Edinburgh buildings, and look at the-
height of your eye, what you will get from them.. Nothing
but square-cut stone — square-cut stone — a wilderness of
square-cut stone for ever and for ever ; so that your houses
look like prisons, and truly are so ; for the worst feature
of Greek architecture is, indeed, not its costliness, but its
tyranny. These square stones are not prisons of the body,
but graves of the soul ; for the very men who could do
sculpture like this of Lyons for you are here ! still here, in
your despised workmen : the race has not degenerated, it
is you who have bound them down, and buried them be- .
neath your Greek stones. There would be a resurrection
of them, as of renewed souls, if you would only lift the
weight of these weary walls from off their hearts.*
But I am leaving the point immediately in question,
which, you will remember, was the proper adaptation of
ornament to its distance from the eye. I have given you
one example of Gothic ornament, meant to be seen close ;/
now let me give you one of Gothic ornament intended to
be seen far off. Here (fig. 16.) is a sketch of a niche at
* This subject is farther pursued in the Addenda at the end of thi»
Lecture.

Lect, n.] AND PAINTING. 67
Amiens Cathedral, some fifty or sixty feet high on the
fa9ade, and seven or eight feet wide. Now observe, in the
ornament close to the eye, you had six figures and a whole
wreath of roses in the space of a foot and a half square ;
but in the ornament sixty feet from the eye, you have now
only ten or twelve large leaves in a space of eight feet
square ! and note also that now there is no attempt what
soever at the refinement of line and finish of edge which
there was in the other example. The sculptor knew, that
at the height of this niche, people would not attend to the
delicate lines, and that the broad shadows would catch the
eye instead. He has therefore left, as you see, rude square
edges to his niche, and carved his leaves as massively and
broadly as possible ; and yet, observe how dexterously he
has given you a sense of delicacy and minuteness in the
work, by mingling these small leaves among the large ones,
I made this sketch from a photograph, and the spot in
which these leaves occurred was obscure ; I have, there
fore, used those of the Oxalis acetosella, of which the
quaint form is always interesting.
And you see by this example also what I meant just now
by saying, that our own ornament was not only wrongly
placed, but wrongly finished. The very qua,Hties which
fit this leaf-decoration for due effect upon the eye, are
those which would conduce to economy in its execution. A
more expensive ornament would be less effective ; and it
is the very price we pay for finishing our decorations which

68 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. E
spoils our architecture. And the curious thing is, that
while you all appreciate, and that far too highly, what is
called "the bold style" in painting, you cannot appreeiats.
it. in sculpture. You like a hurried, broad, dashing manner
of execution in a watercolour drawing, though that may be
seen as near as you choose, and yet you refuse to admit
the nobleness of a bold, simple, and dashing .stroke of the
chisel in work which is to be seen forty fathoms off. Be
assured that "handling" is as great a thing in marble as in
paint, and that the power of producing a masterly effect
with few touches is as essential in an architect as in a
draughtsman, though indeed that power is never perfectly
attained except by those who possess the power of giving
the highest finish when there is occasion.
But there is yet another and a weightier charge to be
brought against our modern Pseudo-Greek ornamentation.
It is, first, wrongly placed; secondly, wrongly finished;
and, thirdly, utterly without meaning. Observe in these,
two Gothic ornaments, and in every other ornament that
ever was carved in the great Gothic times, there is a defi-.
nite aim at the representation of some natural object. In
fig. 15. you have an exquisite group of rose-stems, with.
the flowers and buds ; in fig. 16., various wild weedsj
especially the Geranium pratense ; in every case you have
an approximation to a natural form, and an unceasing
variety of suggestion. But how much of nature have you
in your Greek buildings ? I will show you, taking for

LBCT.n.] AND PAINTING. 69
an example the best you have lately built ; and, in doing
so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have
any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building
in question will forgive me ; for it is just because it is a
good example of the style that I think it more fair to use
it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the
kind, it would not be a fair instance ; and I hope, there
fore, that in speaking of the institution on the mound, just
in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a
comphment to its architect than otherwise. It is not his
fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.
Now, according to the orthodox practice in modern archi
tecture, the most delicate and minute pieces of sculpture
on that building are at the very top of it, just under its
gutter. You cannot see them in a dark day, and perhaps
may never, to this hour, have noticed them at all. But
there they are : sixty-six finished heads of lions, all ex
actly the same ; and, therefore, I suppose, executed on
some noble Greek type, too noble to allow any modest
Modern to think of improving upon it. But whether exe
cuted on a Greek type or no, it is to be presumed that, as
there are sixty-six of them alike, and on so important a
building as that which is to contain your school of design,
and which is the principal example of the Athenian style
in modern Athens, there must be something especially
admirable in them, and deserving your most attentive con
templation. In order, therefore, that you might have a

70 LECTURES ON ABGHITECTURE [Lect. II,
fair opportunity of estimating their beauty, I was desirous
of getting a sketch of a real lion's head to compare with
them, and my friend Mr. Millais kindly offered to draw
both the one and the other for me. You have not, how
ever, at present, a lion in your zoological collection ; and
it being, as you are probably aware, the first principle of
Pre-Raphaelitism, as well as essential to my object in the
present instance, that no drawing should be made except
from nature itself, I was obliged to be content with. a
tiger's head, which, however, will answer my purpose just
as well, in enabling yoii to compare a piece of truQj- faith
ful, and natural work with modern, architectural sculpture.
Here, in the first place, is Mr. Millais' drawing from the
living beast (fig. 17.). I have not the least fear but that
yoii will at once acknowledge its truth and feel its power.
Prepare yourselves next for the Grecian sublimity of the
ideal beast, from the cornice of your schools of design.
Behold it.(_%. 18.). ,
Now we call ourselves civilized and refined in matters
of art, but I assure you it is seldom that, in the very basest
and coarsest grotesques of the inferior Gothic workmen,
anything so contemptible as this head can be ever found.
They only sink into such a failure accidentally, and in a
single instance ; and we, in our civilization, repeat this
noble piece of work threescore and six times over, as not
being able to invent anything else so good ! Do not think
Mr. Millais has caricatured it. It is drawn with the

Lect. IL] AND PAINTING. 71
strictest fidelity ; photograph one of the heads to-morrow,
and you will find the photograph tell you the same tale.
Neither imagine that this is an unusual example of mo
dern work. Your banks and public offices are covered
with ideal lions' heads in every direction, and you will find
them all just as bad as this. And, farther, note that the
admission of such barbarous types of sculpture is not
merely ridiculous ; it is seriously harmful to your powers
of perceiving' truth or beauty of any kind or at any time.
Imagine the effect on the minds of your children of having
such representations of a lion's head as this thrust upon
them perpetually ; and consider what a different effect
might be produced upon them if, instead of this barren and
insipid absurdity, every boss on your buildings were, ac
cording to the workman's best ability, a faithful rendering
of the form of some existing animal, so that all their walls
were so many pages of natural history. And, finally,
consider the difference, with respect to the mind of the
workman himself, between being kept all nis life carving,
by sixties, and forties, and thirties, repetitions of one false
and futile model — -and being sent, for every piece of work
he had to execute, to make a stern and faithful study from
some living creature of God.
And this last consideration enables me to press this sub
ject on you on far higher grounds than I have done yet.
I have hitherto appealed only to your national pride, or
to your commpn sense ; but surely I shpuld treat a Scpt-

72 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Leoi'. IL
tish audience with indignity if I appealed not finally to
something higher than either of them — to their religious
principles. You know how often it is difficult to be wisely chari'
table, to do good without multiplying the sources of evil
You know that to give alms is nothing unless you give
thought also ; and that therefore it is written, mt
" blessed is he that feedeth the poor," but, " blessed is he
that considereth the poor," And you know that a little
thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a
great deal of money.
Now this charity of thought is not merely to be exerr
cised towards the poor ; it is to be exercised towards all
men. There is assuredly no action of our social life,
however unimportant, which, by kindly thought, may not
be made to have a beneficial influence upon others ; and
I it is impossible to spend the smallest sum of money, for
¦ any not absolutely necessary purpose, without a grave
responsibility attaching to the manner of spending it. The
object we ourselves covet may, indeed, be desirable and
harmless, so far as we are concerned, but the providing
us with it may, perhaps, be a very prejudicial occupation
to some one else. And then it becomes instantly a moral
question, whether we are to indulge ourselves or not.
Whatever we wish to buy, we ought first tp opnsider not
pnly if the thing be fit for us, but it the manutactuie of it
be a wholespme and happy pne ; and if, pn the whple, the

Lbct. II.] AND PAINTING. 73
sum we are going to spend will do as much good spent in
this way as it would if spent in any other way. It may
be said that we have not time to consider all this before
we malce a purchase. But no time could be spent in a
more important duty ; and God never imposes a duty
without giving the time to do it." Let us, however, only
acknowledge the principle ; — once make up your mind to
allow the consideration of the effect of your purchases to
regulate the kind of your purchase, and you will soon
easily find grounds enough to decide upon. The plea of
ignorance will never take away our responsibilities. It is
written, " If thou sayest, Behold we knew it not ; doth
not he that pondereth the heart consider it ? and he that
keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it ?"
I could press this on you at length, but I hasten to
apply the principle to the subject of art. I will do so
broadly at first, and then com.e to architecture. Enormous
sums are spent annually by this country in what is called
patronage of art, but in what is for the most part merely
buying what strikes our fancies. True and judicious
patronage there is indeed ; many a work of art is bought
by those who do not care for its possession, to assist the
struggling artist, or relieve the unsuccessful one. But for
the most part, I fear we are too much in the habit of
buying simply what we like best, wholly irrespective of
any good to be done, either to the artist or tosthe schools
of the country. Now let us remember, that every farthing

74 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IT.
we spend on objects of art has influence over men s minds
and spirits, far more than over their bodies. By the
purchase of every print which hangs on your walls, of
every cup out of which you drink, and every table off
which you eat your bread, you are educating a mass cf
men in one way or another. You are either employing
them healthily or unwholesomely ; you are making them
lead happy or unhappy lives ; you are leading them to
look at nature, and to love her — to think, to feel, to enjoy,
— or you are blinding thera to nature, and keeping them
bound, like beasts of burden, in mechanical and monoto
nous employments. We shall all be asked one day, why
we did not think more of this.
Well but, you will say, how can we decide what we
ought to buy, but by our likings ? You would not have
us buy what we don't like ? No, but I would have you
thoroughly sure that there is an absolute right and wrong
in all art, and try to find out the right, and like that ; and,
secondly, sometimes to sacrifice a careless preference ' or
fancy, to what you know is for the good of your fellow-
creatures. For instance, when you spend a guinea upon
an engraving, what have you done ? You have paid a man
for a certain number of hours to sit at a dirty table, in a
dirty room, inhaling the fumes of nitric acid, stooping over
a steel plate, on which, by the help of a magnifying glass,
he is, one by one, laboriously cutting out certain notches
and scratches, of which the effect is to be the copy of

Lkct. II.] AND PAINTING. 75
another man's work. You cannot suppose you have done
a very charitable thing in -this ! On the other hand, when
ever you buy a small watercolour drawing, you have
employed a man happily and healthily, working in a clean
room (if he likes), or more probably still,- out in the pure
country and fresh air, thinking about something, and
learning something every moment ; not straining his eye
sight, nor breaking his back, but working in ease and
happiness. Therefore if you. can like a modest water-
colour better than an elaborate engraving, do. There
may indeed be engravings which are worth the suffering
it costs to produce them ; but at all events, engravings of
public dinners and laying of foundation stones, and such
things, might be dispensed with. The engraving ought to
be a first-rate picture of a first-rate subject to be worth
buying. Farther, I know that many conscientious persons
are desirous of encouraging art, but feel at the same time
that their judgment is not certain enough to secure their
choice of the best kind of art. To such persons I would
now especially address myself, fully admitting the great-.
ness of their difficulty. It is not an easy thing to acquire
a knowledge of painting ; and it is by no means a desira
ble thing to encourage bad painting. One bad painter
makes another, and one bad painting will often spoil a
great many healthy judgments. I could name popular
painters now living, who have retarded the taste pf their

76 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. E
generation by twenty years. Unless, therefore,, we are
certain not merely that we like a painting, but that we are
right in liking it, we should never buy it. For there is one
way of spending money which is perfectly safe, and in
which we may be absolutely sure 9f doing good. I meani
by paying for simple sculpture of natural objects, chiefly
flowers and animals. You are aware that thepossibilities
of error in sculpture are much less than in painting ; it is
altogether an easier and simpler art, invariably attaining
perfection long before painting, in the progress of a national
mind. It may indeed be corrupted by false taste; or
thrown into erroneous forms ; but for the most part, the
feebleness of a sculptor is shown in imperfection and rude
ness, rather than in definite error. He does not reach the
fineness of the forms of nature ; but he approaches them
truly up to a certain point, or, if not so, at all events an
honest effort will continually improve him : so that if we
set a simple natural form before him, and tell him to copy
it, we are sure we have given him a wholesome and useful
piece of education ; but if we told him to paint it, he
might, with all tlie honesty in the world, paint it wrongly
and falsely, to the end of his days.
So much for the workman. But the workman is not
the only person concerned. Observe farther, that when
you buy a print, the enjoyment of it is confined to your
self and to your friends. But if you carve a piece of stone,

Lect. H.] and PAINTING. 77
and put it on the outside of your house, it will give pleasure
to every person who passes along the street — to an innu
merable multitude, instead of a few.
Nay but, you say, we ourselves shall not be benefited
by the sculpture on the outsides of our houses. Yes, you
will, and in an extraordinary degree ; for, observe farther,
that architecture differs from painting peculiarly in being
an art of accumulation. The prints bought by your friends
and hung up in their houses, have no collateral effect
with yours : they must be separately examined, and if
ever they were hung side by side, they would rather injure
than assist each other's effect. But the sculpture on your
friend's house unites in effect with that on your own.
The two houses form one grand mass-r-^far grander than
either separately ; much more if a third be added — and a
fourth ; much more if the whole street — if the whole city — :
join in the solemn harmony of sculpture. Your separate
possessions of pictures and prints are to you as if you sang
pieces of music with your single voices in your own houses.
But your architecture would be as if you all sang together
in one mighty choir. In the separate picture, it is rare
that there exists any very high source of sublime emotion ;
but the great concerted music of the streets of the city,
when turret rises over turret, and casement frowns beyond
casement, and tower succeeds to tower along the farthest
ridges of the inhabited hills, — this is a sublimity of which
you can at present form no conception ; and capable, I

78 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lbct. II.
beheve, of exciting almost the deepest emotion that art can
ever strike from the bosoms of men.
And justly the deepest : for it is a law of God and of
nature, that your pleasures — as your virtu es^-shall be en
hanced by mutual aid. As, by joining hand in hand, you
can sustain each other best, so, hand in hand, you can
delight each other best. And there is indeed a charm and
sacredness in street architecture which must be wanting
even to that of the temple : it is a little thing for men to
unite in the forms of a religious service, but it is much for
them to unite, like true brethren, in the arts and offices of
their daily lives.
And now, I can conceive only of one objection as likely
still to arise in your minds, which ^I must briefly meet.
Your pictures, and other smaller works of art, you can
carry with you, wherever you live ; your house must be
left behind. Indeed, I believe that the wandering habits
which have row become almost necessary to our existence,
lie more at the root of our bad architecture than any other
character of modern times. We always look upon our
houses as mere temporary lodgings. We are always
hoping to get larger and finer ones, or are forced, in some
way or other, to live where we do not choose, and in con
tinual expectation of changing our place of abode. In the
present state of society, this is in a great measure unavoida
ble ;, but let us remember it is an evil ; and that so far as it
is avoidable, it becomes our duty to check the impulse

Lbct. U.] and PAINTING. 79
It is not for me to lead you at present into any considera
tion of a matter so closely touching your private interests
and feelings ; but it surely is a subject for serious thought,
whether it might not be better for many of us, if, on at
taining a certain position in life, we determined, with God's
permission, to choose a home in which to live and die, — a
home not to be increased by adding stone to stone and
field to field, but which, being enough for all our wishes
at that period, we should resolve to be satisfied with for
ever. Consider this ; and also, whether we ought not to
be more in the habit of seeking honour from our descend
ants than our ancestors ; thinking it better to be nobly
remembered than nobly born ; and striving so to live, that
our sons, and our sons' sons, for ages to come, might still
lead their children reverently to the doors out of which we
had been carried to the grave, saying, " Look : This was
his house : This was his chamber."
I believe that you can bring forward no other serious
objection to the principles for which I am pleading. They
are so simple, and, it seems to me, so incontrovertible,.jthat
I trust you will not leave this room without determining,
as you have opportunity, to do something to advance this
long-neglected art of domestic architecture. The reasons
1 have laid before you would have weight, even were I to
ask you to go to some considerable expenditure beyond
what you at present are accustomed to devote to such pur
poses ; but nothing more would be needed than the diver-

80 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Leot. II
sion of expenditures, at present scattered and unconsidered,
into a single and effective channel. Nay, the mere inter
est of the money which we are accustomed to keep dor
mant *y us in the form of plate and jewellery, would
alone be enough to sustain a school of magnificent archi
tecture. And although, in highly wrought plate, and in
finely designed jewellery, noble art may occasionally exist,
yet in general both jewels and services of silver are mat
ters of ostentation, much more than sources of intellectual
pleasure. There are also many evils connected with
them — they are a care to their possessors, a temptation. to
the dishonest, and a trouble and bitterness to the poor. So
that I cannot but think that part of the wealth which now
lies buried in these doubtful luxuries, might most wisely
and kindly be thrown into a form which would give per
petual pleasure, not to its possessor only, but to thousands
besides, and neither tempt the unprincipled, nor inflartie
the envious, nor mortify the poor ; while, supposing that
your own dignity was dear to you, this, you may rely upon
it, would be more impressed upon others by the nobleness
of your house- walls than by the glistening of your side
boards. And even supposing that some additional expenditure
were required for this purpose, are we indeed so much.
poorer than our ancestors, that we cannot now, in all the
power of Britain, afford to do what was done by every
small repubhc, by every independent city, in the middle

Lect. H.] AND PAINTING. 81
ages, throughout France, Italy, and Germany ? I am not
aware of a vestige of domestic architecture, belonging to
the great mediaeval periods, which, according to its mate
rial and character, is not richly decorated. But look here
(fig. 19.), look to what an extent decoration has been car
ried in the domestic edifices of a city, I suppose not much
superior in importance, commercially speaking, to Man
chester, Liverpool, or Birmingham-^namely, Rouen, in
Normandy, This is a. garret window, still existing there, —
a garret window built by William de Bourgtheroude in the
early part of the 16th century- I show it to you, first, as
a proof of what may be made of the features of domestic
buildings we are apt to disdain ; and secondly, as another
example of a beautiful use of the pointed arch, filled by
the solid shield of stone, and enclosing a square casement.
It is indeed a peculiarly rich and beautiful instance, but it
is a type of which many examples still exist in France, and
of which many once existed in your own Scotland, of ruder
work indeed, but admirable always in effect upon the out
line of the building.*
I do not, however, hope that you will often be able to go
as far as this in decoration ; in fact I would rather recom-
* One of the most beautiful instances I know of this kind of window is
in the ancient house of the Maxwells, on the estate of Sir John Maxwell
of PoUoc, I had not seen it when I gave this lecture, or I should have
preferred It, as an example, to that of Rouen, with reference to moderui
poBsibilities of imitation.

82 LECTURES ON AECHITECTURE [LecT. H
mend a simpler style to you, founded on earlier examples ;
but, if possible, aided by colour, introduced in various
kinds of naturally coloured stones. I have observed that
your" 'Sottish lapidaries have admirable taste and skill in
the disposition of the pebbles of your brooches and other
orriamehts of dress ; and I have not the least doubt that
the genius of your country would, if directed to this par
ticular style of architecture, produce works as beautiful as
they would be thoroughly national. The Gothic of Flo
rence, which owes at least the half of its beauty to the
art of inlaying, would furnish you with exquisite exam
ples ; its sculpture is indeed the most perfect which was
ever produced by the Gothic schools ; but, besides this
rich sculpture, all its flat surfaces are inlaid with coloured
stones, much being done with a green serpentine, which
forms the greater part of the coast of Genoa. You have,
I believe, large beds of this rock in Scotland, and other
stones besides, peculiarly Scottish, calculated to form as
noble a school of colour as ever existed.*
And, now, I have but two things more to say to you in
conclusion. :
Most of the lecturers whom you allow to address you,
lay before you views of the sciences they profess, which
* A series of four examples of designs for windows was exhibited at
this point of the lecture, but I have not engraved them, as they were has
tily made for the purposes of momentary illustration, and are not such as
I choose to publish or perpetuate.

Lect. IL] AND PAINTING. 83
are either generally received, or incontrovertible. I come
before you at a disadvantage ; for I cannot conscientiously
tell you anything about architecture but what is at vari
ance with all commonly received views upon the subject.
I come before you, professedly to speak of things forgotten
or things disputed ; and I lay before you, not accepted
principles, but questions at issue. Of those questions you
are to be the judges, and to you I appeal. You must not,
when you leave this room, if you feel doubtful of the truth
of what I have said, refer yourselves to some architect of
established reputation, and ask him whether I am right or
not. You might as well, had you lived in the 16th cen
tury, have asked a Roman Catholic archbishop his opinion
of the first reformer. I deny his jurisdiction ; I refuse his
decision. I call upon you to be Bereans in architecture,
as you are in religion, and to search into these things for
yourselves. Remember that, however candid a man may
be, it is too much to expect of him, when his career in
life has been successful, to turn suddenly on the highway,
and to declare that all he has learned has been false, and
all he has done, worthless ; yet nothing less than such a
declaration as this must be made by nearly every existing
architect, before he admitted the truth of one word that I
have said to you this evening. You must be prepared,
therefore, to hear my opinions attacked with all the viru
lence of established interest, and all the pertinacity of
confirmed prejudice ; you will hear them made the subjects

84 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lbct.' II.
of every species of satire and invective ; but one kind of
opposition to them you will never hear ; you Will never
hear them met by quiet, steady, rational argument ; for
that is 'the one way in which they cannoi be "met. You
will constantly hear me accused — ^you yourselves may be
the first to accuse me — of presumption in speaking'thus
confidently against the established authority of ages.
Presumption ! Yes, if I had spoken on my own author
ity ; but I have appealed to two incontrovertible and irre
fragable witnesses,^to the^^nature that is around you — to
the reason that is within you. And if you are willing in
this matter to take the voice of authority against that of
nature and of reason, take it in other things also. Take
it in religion, as you do in architecture. It is not by a
Scottish audience, — not by the descendants of the Re
former and the Covenanter — that I expected" to be met
with a refusal to believe that the world might possibly
have been wrong for three hundred years, in their ways of
carving stones and setting up of pillars, when they know
that they were wrong for twelve hundred years, in their
marking how the roads divided, that led to Hell and
Heaven. You must expect at first that there will be difficulties
and inconsistencies in carrying out the new style ; but
they will soon be conquered if you attempt not too much
at once. Do not be afraid of incongruities, — do not think
of unities of effect. Introduce ypur Gpthic line by line

Lect. n.] AND PAINTING. 85
and stone by stone ; never mind mixing it with your
present architecture ; your existing houses will be none
the worse for having little bits of better work fitted to
them ; build a porch, or point a window, if you ican do
nothing else ; and remember that it is the glory of Gothic
architecture that it can do anything. Whatever you really
and seriously want, Gothic will ¦ do for you ; but it must
be an earnest want. It is its pride to accommodate itself
to your needs ; and the one general law under which it acts
is simply this, — ^find out what will make you comfortable,
build, that in the strongest and boldest way, and then set
your fancy free in the decoration of it. Don't do anything
to imitate this cathedral or that, however beautiful. Do
what is convenient ; and if the form be a new one, so
much the better ; then set your mason's wits to work, to
find out some new way of treating it. Only be steadily
determined that, even if you cannot get the best Gothic,
at least you will have no Greek ; and in a few years' time,
— ^in less time than you could learn a new science or a
new language thoroughly, — the whole art of your native
country will be reanimated.
And, now, lastly. When this shall be accomplished,
dp not think it will make little difference to you, and that
you will be little the happier, or little the better for it.
You have at present no conception, and can have none,
how much you would enjoy a truly beautiful architecture ;
but I can give you a proof of it which none of you will be

86 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Leci. IL
able to deny. You will all assuredly admit this principle
— that whatever temporal things are spoken of in the Bible
as emblems of the highest spiritual blessings,' must be
good things in themselves. You would allow that bread,
for instance, would not have been used as an emblem of
the word of^life, unless it had been good, and necessary
for man ; nor water used as the emblem of sanctification,
unless it also, had been good and necessary for man. You
will allow that oil, and honey, and balm are good, when
David says, " Let the righteous reprove me ; it shall be
an excellent oil ;" or, " How sweet are thy words unto my
taste ; yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth ;" or, when
Jeremiah cries out in his weeping, " Is there no balm in
Gilead ? is there no physician there ?" You would admit
at once that the man who said there was no taste in the
literal honey, and ho healing in the literal balm, must be
of distorted judgment, since God had used them as emblems
of spiritual sweetness and healing. And how, then, will
you evade the conclusion, that there must be joy, and
comfort, and instruction in the literal beauty of archi
tecture, when God, descending in his utmost love to the
distressed Jerusalem, and addressing to her his most
precious and solemn promises, speaks to her in such
words as these : " Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with tempest,
and not comforted," — What shall be done to her ? — What
brightest emblem of blessing will God set before her?
" Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy

Lect. H.] and PAINTING. 87
foundations with sapphires ; and I will make thy windows
of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders
of pleasant stones." Nor is this merely an emblem of
spiritual blessing; for that blessing is added in the con
cluding words, " And all thy children shall be taught of
the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy children."

88 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [ADDEUBi.

ADDENDA

LECTURES I. AND II.

The delivery of the foregoing lectures excited, as it may
be imagined, considerable indignation among the architects
who happened to hear them, and elicited various attempts
at reply. As it seemed to have been expected by the
writers of these replies, that in two lectures, each of them
lasting not much more than an hour, I should have been
able completely to discuss the philosophy and history of
the architecture of the world, besides meeting every
objection, and reconciling every apparent contradiction,
which might suggest itself to the minds of hearers with
whom, probably, from first to last, I had not a single
exactly correspondent idea, relating to the matters under
discussion, it seems unnecessary to notice any of them in
particular. But as this volume may perhaps fall into the
hands of readers whp have npt time tP refer' tP the works

Addenda.] AND FAINTING. 89
in which my views have been expressed more at large, and
as I shall now not be able to write or to say anything more
about architecture for some time to come, it may be useful
to state here, and explain in the shortest possible compass,
the main gist of the propositions which I desire to maintain
respecting that art ; and also to note and answer, once for
all, such arguments as are ordinarily used .by the architects
of the modern school to controvert these propositions.
They may be reduced under six heads.
1. That Gothic or Romanesque construction is nobler
than Greek construction.
2. That ornamentation is the principal part of archi
tecture. 3. That ornamentation should be visible.
4. That oBnamentation should be natural.'
5, That ornamentation should be thoughtful,
6, And that therefore Gothic ornamentation is nobler
than Greek ornamentation, and Gothic architecture the
only architecture which should now be built.
Proposition 1st. — Gothic or Romanesque construction is
nobler than Greek construction.* That is to say, building
* The constructive value of Gothic architecture is, however, far greater
than that of Romanesque, as the pointed arch is not only susceptible of
an infinite variety of forms and applications to the weight to be sustained,
but it possesses, in the outline given to its masonry at its perfect periods,
the means of self-sustainment to a far greater degree than the round arch.
I pointed out, for, I believe, the first time, the meaning and constructive

90 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addend*.
an arch, vault, or dome, is a nobler and more ingenious
work than laying a flat stone or beam over the Space to
be covered It is, for instance, a nobler_and more inge
nious thing to build an arched bridge over a stream, than
to lay two pine-trunks across from bank to bank ; and, in
like manner, it is a nobler and raore ingenious thing to
build an arch over a window, door, or room, than to lay a
single flat stone over the same space.
No architects have ever attempted seriously to contro
vert this proposition. Sometimes, however, they say that
" of two ways of doing a thing, the best and most perfect
is not always to be adopted, for there may be particular
reasons for employing an inferior one." This I am per
fectly ready to grant, only let them show their reasons in
each particular case. Sometimes also they say, that there
is a charm in the simple construction which is lost in the
scientific one. This I am also perfectly ready to grant.
There is a charm in Stonehenge which there is not in
Amiens Cathedral, and a charm in an Alpine pine bridge
which there is not in the Ponte della Trinita at Florence,
and, in general, a charm in savageness which there is not
value of the Gothic cusp, in page 129 of the flrst volume of the " Stones
of Venice." That statement was first denied, and then taken advantage
of, by modern architects ; aud, considering how often it has been alleged
that I have no practical knowledge of architecture, it cannot but he
matter of some triumph to me, to find the " Builder," of the 21st January,
of this year, describing, as a new invention, the successful application to
a church in Carlow of the principle which I laid down in the year 1851.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 91
in science. But do not let it be said, therefore, that
savageness is science.
Proposition 2nd. — Ch-namentation is the pj-incipal part of
architecture. That is to say, the highest nobility of a
building does not consist in its being well built, but in its
being nobly sculptured or painted.
This is always, and at the first hearing of it, very natu
rally, considered one of my most heretical propositions.
It is also one of the most important I have to maintain ,
and it must be permitted me to explain it at some length.
The first thing to be required of a building — ^not, observe,
the highest thing, but the first thing — ^is that it shall answer
its purposes completely, permanently, and at the smallest
expense. If it is a house, it should be just of the size
convenient for its owner, containing exactly the kind and
number of rooms that he wants, with exactly the number
of windows he wants, put in the places that he wants. If
it is a church, it should be just large enough for its con
gregation, and of such shape and disposition as shall make
them comfortable in it and let them hear well in it. If
it be a public office, it should be so disposed as is most
convenient for the clerks in their daily avocations ; and so
on ; all this being utterly irrespective of external appear
ance or aesthetic considerations of any kind, and all being
done solidly, securely, and at the smallest necessary cost.
The sacrifice of any of these first requirements to ex
ternal appearance is a futility and absurdity. Rooms

92 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Adde.W,
must not" be darkened to make the ranges of windows
symmetrical. Useless wings must not be added on one
side to balance useful wings on the other, but the house
built with one wing, if the owner has no need of two ;
and so on.
But observe, in doing all this, there is no High, or as it
is commonly called. Fine Art, required at all. There may
be much science, together with the lower form of art, or
"handicraft," but there is as yet no Fine Art. House
building, on these terms, is no higher thing than ship
building. It indeed will generally be found that the edi
fice designed with this masculine reference to utility, will
have a charm about it, otherwise unattainable, jiist as a
ship, constructed with simple reference to its service
against powers of wind and wave, turns out one of the
loveliest things that human hands produce. Still, we do
not, and properly do net, hold ship-building to be a fine
art, nor preserve in our memories the names of immortal
ship-builders ; neither, so long as the mere utility and
constructive merit of the building are regarded, is archi
tecture to be held a fine art, or are the names of architects
to be remembered immortally. For any one may at any
time be taught to build the ship, or (thus far) the houses
and there is nothing deserving of immortality in doing
what any one may be taught to do.
But when the house, or church, or other building, is thus
far designed, and the forms pf its dead walls and dead

ADDBiNDA.] AND PAINTING. 93
roofs are up to this point determined, comes the divine
part of the work — namely, to turn these dead walls into
hving ones. Only Deity, that is to say, those who are
taught by Deity, can do that.
And that is to be done by painting and sculpture, that
is to say, by ornamentation. Ornamentation is therefore
the principal part of architecture, considered as a subject
of fine art.
/Now observe. It will at once follow from this prin
ciple, that a great architect must be a great sculptor or
•painter. This is a universal law. No person who is not a great
Sculptor or painter caw be an architect. If he is not a
sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.
- The three greatest architects hitherto known in the
world were Phidias, Giotto, and Michael Angelo ; with all
of whom, architecture was only their play, sculpture and
painting their work. All great works of architecture in
existence are either the work of single sculptors or paint
ers, or of societies of sculptors and painters, acting col-
lectively for a series of years. A Gothic cathedral is
properly to be definedas'a piece of the most magnificent
associative sculpture, arranged on the noblest principles
of building, for the service and delight of multitudes' ; and
the proper definition of architecture, as distinguished from
sculpture, is merely " the art of designing sculpture for a
particular place, and placing it there on the best prin
ciples of building."

94 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda
Hence it clearly follows, that in modern days we have
no architects. The term "architecture" is not so much as
understood by us. I am very sorry to be compelled to the
discourtesy of stating this fact, but a fact it is, and a fact
which it is necessary to state strongly.
Hence also it will follow, that the first thing necessary
to the possession of a school of architecture is the forma
tion of a school of able sculptors, and that till we have
that, nothing we do can be called architecture at all. "
This, then, being my second proposition, the so-called
" architects" of the day, as the reader will imagine, are
not willing to admit it, or to admit any statement which
at all involves it ; and every statement, tending in this
direction, which I have hitherto made, has of. course been
met by eager opposition ; opposition which perhaps would
have been still more energetic, but that architects have
not, I think, till lately, been quite aware of the lengths to
which I was prepared to carry the principle.
The arguments, or assertions, which they generally era-
ploy against this second proposition and its consequences,
are the following.
First. That the true nobility of architecture consists,
not in decoration (or sculpture), but in the " disposition of
masses," and that architecture is, in fact, the " art of pro-
portion." It is difficult to overstate the enormity of the ignoranoB:
which this popular statement implies. For the fact is,
that all art, and all nature, depend on the " disposition; of

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 95
masses." Painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, depend
all equally on the " proportion," m hether of colours,
stones, notes, or words. Proportion is a principle, not of
architecture, but of existence. It is by the laws of pro
portion that stars shine, that mountains stand, and rivers
flow. Man can hardly perform any act of his life, can
hardly utter two words of innocent speech, or move his
hand in accordance with those words, without involving
some reference, whether taught or instinctive, to the laws
of proportion. And in the fine arts, it is impossible to
move a single step, or to execute the smallest and
simplest piece of work, without involving all those laws
of proportion in their full complexity. To arrange (by
invention) the folds of a piece of drapery, or dispose the
locks of hair on the head of a statue, requires as much
sense and knowledge of the laws of proportion, as to
dispose the masses of a cathedral. The one are indeed
smaller than the other, but the relations between 1, 2, 4,
and 8, are precisely the same as the relations between 6,
12, 24, and 48. So that the assertion that "architecture
is par excellence the art of proportion," could never be
made except by persons who know nothing of art in
general; and, in fact, never is made except by those
architects, who, not being artists, fancy that the one poor
aesthetic principle of which they are cognizant is the
whole of art. They find that the " disposition of masses"
is the only thing of importance in the art with which they

96 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
are acquainted, and fancy therefore that it is pecuhar to
that art ; whereas the fact is, that all great art begins ex
actly where theirs, ends, with the " disposition of masses."
The assertion that Greek architecture, as opposed' to
Gothic architecture, is the " architecture of proportion,";
is another of the results of the same broad ignorance.
"First, it is a calumny of the old Greek style itseff,, which,
like every pther good architecture that ever existed, de
pends more on its grand figure sculpture, than on its pro-
(portions of parts ; so that J;o copy the form of, the Par.l|ifo
non without its friezes and frontal statuary, is like copying
the figure of a human being without its eyes and mouth ;
and, in the second place, so far as modern pseudo-Greek
work does depend on its proportions more than Gothic
work, it does so, not because it is. better proportioned, but
because it has nothing but proportion to depend upon.
Gesture is in like manner of' more importance to a panto
mime actor than to a tragedian, not because his gesture is
more refined, but because he has no tongue. And the pro
portions of our common Greek work are important to it
undoubtedly, but not because they are or ever can be more
subtle than Gothic proportion, but because that -work has
no sculpture, nor colour, nor imagination, nor sacredness,
nor any other quahty whatsoever in it, but ratios of
measures. And it is difficult to express with sufficient
force the absurdity of the supposition that there is more
room for refinements of proportion in the relations of seven

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 97
or eight equal pillars, with the triangular end of a foof
above thein, than between the shafts, and buttresses, and
porches, and pinnacles, and vaultings, and towers, and all
other doubly and trebly multiplied magnificences of mem
bership which form the framework of a Gothic temple.
Second Reply. — It is often said, with some appearance
of plausibihty, that I dwell in all my writings on httle
things and contemptible details ; and not on essential and
large things. Now, in the first place, as soon as our ar
chitects become capable of doing and managing little and
contemptible things, it will be time to talk about larger
ones ; at present I do not see that they can design so much
as a niche or a bracket, and therefore they need not as yet
think about anything larger. For although, as both just
now, and always, I have said, there is as much science of
arrangement needed in the designing of a small group- of
parts as of a large one, yet assuredly designing the larger
one is not the easier work of the two. For the eye and
mind can embrace the smaller object more completely, and
if the powers of conception are feeble, they get embar
rassed by the inferior members which fall within the di'vi-
sions of the larger design.* So that, of course, the best
¦ * Thus, in speaking of Pugin's designs, I said, " Expect no cathedrals
of him ; but no one, at present, can design a better finial, though he will
never design even a finial, perfectly.'' But even this I said less with re
ference to powers of arrangement, than to materials of fancy ; for many
men have stone enough to last them through a boss 6r a bracket, but not
10 last them through a oaurcb Iroav. 5

98 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addebda.
way is to begin with the smaller features ; for most assur
edly, those who cannot design small things cannot design
large ones ; and yet, on the other hand, whoever can de
sign small things perfectly, can design whatever he chooses.
The man who, without copying, and by his- own true and
original power, can arrange a cluster of rose-leaves nobly,
can design anything. He may fail from want of taste or
feeling, but not from want of power.
And the real reason why architects are so eager in pro
testing against my close examination of details, is sim
ply that they know they dare not meet me on that
ground. Being, as I have said, in reality not architects, but
builders, they caij indeed raise a large building, with
copied ornaments^ which, being huge and white, they hope
the public may pronounce " handsome." But they cannot
design a cluster of oak-leaves — no, nor a single human
figure — no, nor so much as a beast, or a bird, or a bird's
nest ! Let them first learn to invent as much as will fill a
quatrefoil, or point a pinnacle, and then it will be time
enough to reason with them on the principles of the sub
lime. But farther. The things that I have dwelt upon in
examining buildings, though often their least parts, are
always in reality their principal parts. That is the prin
cipal part of a building in which its mind is contained, and
that, as I have iust shown, is its sculpture and painting,
1 do with a buiJding as I do 'vith a man- watch the e-ye

Admnda.] and painting. 93
and the lips : when they are bright and eloquent, the form
of the body is of little consequence.
Whatever other objections have been made to this second
proposition, arise, as far as I remember, merely from a
confusion of the idea of essentialness or primariness with
the idea of nobleness. The essential thing in a building,
— its first virtue,; — is that it be strongly built, and fit for
its uses. The noblest thing in a buiMing, and its highest
virtue, is that it be nobly sculptured or painted.*
One or two important corollaries yet remain to be stated.
It has just been said that to sacrifice the convenience of a
building to its external a'ppearance is a futility and absurdity,
and that convenience and stability are to be attained at the
smallest cost. But when that convenience has been
attained, the adding the noble characters of life by painting
and sculpture, is a work in which all possible cost may be
wisely admitted. There is great difficulty in fully explain
ing the various bearings of this proposition, so as to do
away with the chances of its being erroneously understood
and applied. For although, in the first designing of the
building, nothing is to be admitted but what is wanted, and
no useless vvings are to be added to balance useful ones,
yet in its ultimate designing, when its sculpture and colour
become precious, it may be that actual room is wanted to
display them, or richer symmetry wanted to deserve them ;
• Of course I use the term painting as including every mode of applying
colour.

100 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addexda.
and in such cases even a useless wall may be built to beat
the sculpture, as at San Michele of Lucca, or a useless
portion added to complete the cadences, as at St. Mark's
of Venice, or useless height admitted in order to increase
the impressiveness, as in nearly every noble building in
the world. But the right to do this is dependent upon the
actual purpose of the building becoming no longer one of
utility merely ; as the purpose of a cathedral is not so
much to shelter the congregation as to awe them. In such
cases even some sacrifice of conveniences may occasionally
be admitted, as in the case of certain forms of pillared
churches. But for the most part, the great law is, con
venience first, and then the noblest decoration possible;
and this is peculiarly the case in domestic buildings, and
such public ones as are constantly to be used for practical
purposes. Proposition 3rd. — Ornamentation should be visible.
The reader may imagine this to be an indisputable
position ; but, practically, it is one of the last which
modern architects are likely to admit ; for it involves
much more than appears at first sight. To render orna
mentation, with all its qualities, clearly and entirely visible
in its appointed place on the building, requires a know
ledge of eff3ct and a power of design which few even of
the best artists possess, and which modern architects, sp
far from possessing, do not so inu(.h as compreuend the
existence of. But, without dwelling on this highest

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 10]
manner of rendering ornament " visible," I desire only at
present to convince the reader thoroughly of the main
fact asserted in the text, that while modern builders
decorate the tops of buildings, mediaeval builders decorated
the bottom. So singular is the ignorance yet prevailing
of the first principles of Gothic architecture, that I saw
this assertion marked with notes of interrogation in several
of the reports of these Lectures ; although, at Edinburgh,
it was only necessary for those who doubted it to have
walked to Holyrood Chapel, in order to convince them
selves of the truth of it, so far as their own city was
concerned ; and although, most assuredly, the cathedrals
of Europe have now been drawn often enough to establish
the very simple fact that their best sculpture is in their
porches, not in their steeples. However, as ¦• this great
Gothic principle seems yet unacknowledged, let me state it
here, once for all, namely, that the whole building is
decorated, in all pure and fine examples, with the most
exactly studied respect to the powers of the eye ; the
richest and most delicate sculpture being put on the walls
of the porches, or on the fapade of the building, just high
enough above the ground to secure it from accidental, (not
from wanton*) injury. The decoration, as it rises, becomes
* Nothing is more notable in good Gothic than the confidence of its
builders in the respect of the people for their work. A great school of
architecture cannot exist when this respect cannot be calculated upon, as
it would be vain to put fine sculpture within the reach of a population
whose only pleasure would be iu defacing it.

102 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
always bolder, and in the buildings of the greatest times,
generally simpler. Thus at San Zeno, and the duomo of
Verona, the only delicate decorations are on the porches
and lower walls of the fafades, the rest of the buildings
being left comparatively plain ; in the ducal palace of
Venice the only very careful work is in the lowest capitals;'
and so also the richness of the work diminishes upwards
in the transepts of Rouen, and facades of Bayeux,- Rheims,
Amiens, Abbeville,* Lyons, and Notre Dame of Paris.
But iil the middle and later Gothic the tendency is to
produce an equal richness of effect oyer the whole building,
or even to increase the richness towards the top : but this
is done so skilfully that no fine work is w^asted : and when
the spectator ascends to the higher points of the building,
which he thought were of the most consummate delicacy,
he finds them Herculean in strength and rough-hewn in
style, the really delicate work being all put at the base.
The general treatment of Romanesque work is to increase
the number of arches at the top, which at once enriches
and lightens the mass, and to put the finest sculpture
of the arches at the bottom. In towers of all kinds and
periods the effective enrichment is towards the top, and
most rightly, since their dignity is in their height ; but
they are never made the recipients of fine sculpture, with,
* The church at Abbeville is late flamboyant, but well deserves, for the
exquisite beauty of its porches, to be named even with the great worb
of the thirteenth century.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 103
as far as I know, the single exception of Giotto's cam
panile, which indeed has fine sculpture, but it is at the
bottom. The fapade of Wells Cathedral seems to be an exception
to the general rule, in having its principal decoration at
the top ; but it is on a scale of perfect ppwer and effec
tiveness ; while in the base medern Gpthic pf Milan
Cathedral the statues are cut delicately everywhere, and
the builders think it a merit that the visitor must climb to
the roof before he can see them ; and our modern Greek
and Italian architecture reaches the utmost pitch of
absurdity by placing its fine work at the top only. So that
the general condition of the thing may be stated boldly, as
in the text : the principal ornaments of Gothic buildings
being in their porches, and of modern buildings, in their
parapets. Proposition 4th. — Ornamentation should be natural, —
that is to say, should in some degree express or adopt the
beauty of natural objects. This law, together with its
ultimate reason, is expressed in the statement given in the
" Stones of Venice," vol. i. p. 213. : "All noble ornament
is the expression of man's delight in God's work."
Observe, it does not hence follow that it should be an
exact imitation of, or endeavour in anywise to supersede,
God's work. It may consist only in a partial adoption of,
and compliance with, the usual forms of natural things,
without at all going to the point of imitation ; and it i.«

104 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [^dden^a.
possible that thepoiht of imitation may be closely reached
by ornaments, which nevertheless are entirely unfit for
their place, and are the signs only of a degraded ambition
and an ignorant dexterity. Bad decorators err as easily
on the side of imitating nature, as of forgetting, her ; and
the question of the exact degree in which imitation should
be attempted upder given circumstances, is one of the
most subtle and difficult in the whole range of criticism,
I have elsewhere examined it at some length, and have yet
much to say abput it ; but hei^e I can only state briefly
that the modes in which ornamentation ought to fall short
of pure representation or imita,tipn, are in the main three,
namely, —
A. Conventionalism by cause of colour.
B. Conventionalism by cause of inferiority.
C. Conventionalism by cause of means,
A, Conventionalism by cause of colour, — Abstract
colour is not an imitation of nature, but w nature itself ;
that is to say, the pleasure taken in blue or red, as such,
considered as hues merely, is the same, so long as the
brilliancy of the hue is equal, whether it be produced
by the chemistry of man, or the chemistry pf flowers, or
the chemistry pf skies. We deal with colour as with
sound — so far ruling the power of the light, as we rule the
power of the air, producing beauty not necessarily imita
tive, but sufficient in itself, so that, wherever colour is
introduced, ornamentation may cease to represent natural

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 105
objects, and may consist in mere spots, or bands, or
flamings, or any other condition of arrangement favourable
to the colour.
B. Conventionalism by cause of inferiority. — In general,
ornamentation is set upon certain services, subjected to
certain systems, and confined within certain limits ; so
that its forms require to be lowered or limited in accord
ance with the required relations. It cannot be allowed to
assume the free outlines, or to rise to the perfection of
imitation. Whole banks of flowers, for instance, cannot
be carved on cathedral fronts, but only narrow mouldings,
having some of the characters of banks of flowers. Also,
some ornaments require to be subdued in value, that they
may not interfere with the effect of others ; and all these
necessary inferiorities are attained by means of departing
from natural forms — it being an established law of human
admiration that what is most representative of nature
shall, ccBteris paribus, be most attractive.
All the various kinds of ornamentation, consisting of
spots, points, twisted bands, abstract curves, and other
such, owe their peculiar character to this conventionahsrn
" by cause of inferiority,"
C, Conventionalism by cause of means, — In every
branch of art, only so much imitation of nature is to be
admitted as is consistent with the ease of the workman
and the capacities of the material. Whatever short
comings are appointed (for they are more than permitted,
5*

106 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda,
they are in such cases appointed, and meritorious) on
account of the untractableness of the material, come under
the head of " Conventionalism by cause of means."
These conventionalities, then, being duly understood
and accepted, in modification of the general law, that law
will be, that the glory of all ornamentation consists in the
adoption or imitation of the beauties of natural objects, and
that no work can be of high value which is not full of this
beauty. To this fourth proposition, modern architects
have not ventured to make any serious resistance. On
the contrary, they seem to be, little by little, gliding into
an obscure perception of the fact, that architecture, in
most periods of the world, had sculpture upon it, and that
the said sculpture generally did represent something
intelligible. For instance, we find Mr. Huggins, of
Liverpool, lately lecturing upon architecture "In its
relations to nature and the intellect,"* and gravely inform
ing his hearers, that " in the middle ages, angels were
human figures ;" that " some of the richest ornaments of
Solomon's temple Were imitated from the palm and pome
granate," and that " the Greek's followed the example of
the Egyptians in selecting their ornaments from the plants
of their own country." It is to be presumed that the
lecturer has never been in the Elgin or Egyptian room of
the British Museum, or it might have occurred to hira
that the Egyptians and Greeks sometimes also selected
? See the " Builder," for January 12, 1854.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 107
their ornaments from the men of their own country. But
we must not expect too much illumination at once ; and
as we are told that, in conclusion, Mr. Huggins glanced at
" the error of architects in neglecting the fountain of
wisdom thus open to them in nature," we may expect in
due time large results from the discovery of a source of
wisdom so unimagihed.
Proposition 5th. — Ornamentation should be thoughtful.
That is to say, whenever you put a chisel or a pencil into
a man's hand for the purpose of enabling him to produce
beauty, you are to expect of him that he will think about
what he is doing, and feel something about it, and that
the expression of this thought or feeling will be the most
noble quality in what he produces with his chisel or brush,
inasmuch as the power of thinking and feeling is the most
noble thingan man. It will hence follow that as men do
not coramonly think the same thoughts twice, you are not
to require of them that they shall do the same thing twice •
You are to expect another and a different thought of them,
as soon as one thought has been well expressed.
Hence, therefore, it follows also that all noble orna
mentation is perpetually varied ornamentation, and that
the moment you find ornamentation unchanging, you may
know that it is of a degraded kind or degraded schopl.
To this law, the only exceptions arise out of the uses of
monotony, as a contrast to a change. Many subordinate
architectural mouldings are severely alike in their various

108 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
parts (though never unless they are thoroughly subor
dinate, for monotony is always deathful according to the
degree of it), in order to set off change in others ; and a
certain monotony or similarity must be introduced among
the most changeful ornaments in order tp enhance and
exhibit their own changes.
' The truth of this proposition is self-evident ; for no art
can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and
no art is capable of expressing thought which does not
change. To require of an artist that he should always re
produce the same picture, would be not one whit more
base than to require of a carver thiat he should always re
produce ,the same sculpture.
"" The principle is perfectly clear and altogether incontro
vertible. Apply it to modern Greek architecture, and
that architecture must cease to exist ; for it depends abso
lutely on copyism.
The sixth proposition abpve stated, that Gothic ornctT
mentation is nobler than Greek m-namentation, &c., is there-
fpre sufficiently proved by the acceptance of this one prin
ciple, no less important than unassailable. Of all th^t I
have to bring forward respecting architecture, this is tb^
one I have mpSt at heart ; for on the acceptaijce of this
depends the determination whether the workman shall be a,
living, progressive, and happy human being, or wliether he
shall be a mere machipe, with its valves smoothed by he#'|
l^lopd injtead, of pil,-r:tbei. most pitiable fprm of sj^y^

ApipiNBA.] . AND PAINTING. 109
And it is with especial reference to the denial of this
principle in modern and renaissance architecture, that I
speak of that architecture with a bitterness which appears
to many readers extreme, while in reality, so far from
exaggerating, I have not grasp enough of thought tp em
brace, the evils which have resulted among all the orders
'pf European society from the introduction of the renais
sance schools of building, in turning away the eyes of the
beholder from natural beauty, and reducing the workman
to the level of a machine. In the Gothic times, writing,
painting, carving, casting, — it mattered not what, — were
all works done by thoughtful and happy men ; and the
illumination of the volume, and the carving and casting
of wall and gate, employed, not thousands, but millions,
of true and noble artists over all Christian lands. Men in
the same position are now left utterly without intellectual
power or pursuit, and, being unhappy in their work, they
rebel against it ; hence one of the worst forms of Unchris
tian Socialism. So again, there being now no nature or
variety in architecture, the multitude are not interested in
it ; therefore, for the present, they have lost their taste for
art altogether, so that you can no longer trust sculpture
within their reach. Consider the innumerable forms of
evil involved in the temper and taste of the existing popu
lace of London or Paris, as compared with the temper of
the populace of Florence, when the quartei: of Santa
Maria Novella received its title of " Joyful Quarter," from

llO LECTURES ON AECHITECTURE [AoDBSDi
the rejoicings of the multitude at getting a new picture
into their church, better than the old ones ; — all this differ
ence being exclusively chargeable on the renaissance archi
tecture. And then, farther, if we remember, not only the
revolutionary ravage of sacred architecture, but the im
measurably greater destruction effected by the renaissance
builders and their satellites, wherever they came, destruc
tion so wide-spread that there is not a town in France or
Italy but it has to deplore the deliberate overthrow of more
than half its noblest monuments, in order to put up Greek
porticoes or palaces in their stead ; adding also all the
blame of the ignorance of the meaner kind of men, oper
ating in thousands of miserable abuses uppn the frescoes,
books, and pictures, as the architects' hammers did on the
carved work, of the Middle Ages* ; and, finally, if we ex-
* Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, than the remorseless wsy
in which the educated ignorance, even of the present day, will sweep away
an ancient monument, if its preservation be not absolutely consistent with
immediate convenience or economy. Putting aside all antiquarian cgn-
siderations, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would only consider
the steps, and the weight of the following very simple argument. You
allow it is wrong to waste time, that is, your own time ; but then it must
be still more wrong to waste other people'-s ; for-you have some right to
your own time, but none to theirs. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste
the time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of
the dead ; for the living cau redeem their time, the dead cannot. But you
waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy the works they
have left you ; for to those works they gave the best of their time, intend
ing them for immortality.

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. Ill
amine the influence which the luxury, and, still more, the
heathenism, joined with the essential dulness of these
schools, have had on the upper classes of society, it will
ultimately be found that no expressions are energetic
enough to describe, nor broad enough to embrace, the
enormous moral evils which have risen from them.
I omitted, in preparing the preceding lecture for the
press, a passage referring to this subject, because it
appeared to me, in its place, hardly explained by pre
ceding statements. But I give it here unaltered, as being,
in sober earnest, but too weak to characterise the tenden
cies of the " accursed"- architecture of which it speaks.
" Accursed, I call it, with deliberate purpose. It
needed but the gathering up of a Babylonish garment
to trouble Israel ; — these marble garments of the ancient
idols of the Gentiles, how many have they troubled !
Gathered out of their ruins by the second Babylon, —
gathered by the Papal Church in the extremity of her
sin ; — raised up by her, not when she was sending forth
her champions to preach in the highway, and pine in the
desert, and perish in the fire, but in the very scarlet fruit
age and fulness of her guilt, when her priests vested them
selves not with purple only, but with blood, and bade the
cups of their feasting foam not with wine only, but with
hemlock ; — raised by the hands of the Leos and the
Borgias, raised first into that mighty temple where the
seven hills slope to the Tiber, that marks by its massy

'113 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda,
dome the central spot, where Rome has reversed the
words' of Christ, and, as He vivified the stone to the
apostleship, she petrifies the apostleship intp the stumbling
stone ; — exalted there first as if to mark what work it had
to do, it went forth to paralyse or to pollute, and wherever
it came, the lustre faded from the streets of pur cities, the
grey towers and glorious arches of our abbeys fell by the
river sides, the love of nature was uprooted from the
hearts of men, base luxuries and cruel formalisms were
festered and frozen into them from their youth ; and at
last, where, from his fair Gothic chapel beside the Seine,
the king St. Louis had gone forth, followed by his thou
sands in the cause of Christ, another king was dragged
forth from the gates of his Renaissance palace,* to die by
the hands of the thousands of his people gathered in
* The character of Renaissance architecture, and the spirit which diotiif
ted its adoption, may be remembered as having been centred and symbolized
in the palace of Versailles : whose site was chosen by Louis the Fourteenth',
in order that from thence he might not see St. Denis, the burial place of
his femily. The cost of the palace in 27 years is statcS in the " Builder "
for March 18th of this year, to have been 3,246,000?. money of that period,
equal to about seven milEons now (900,0007. having been expended in the
year 1686 alone). The building is thus notably illustrative of the two
feelings which were stated in the "Stones of Yenice," to be peculiarly
characteristic of the Renaissance spirit, the Pride of State and Fear of
Death. Compare the horror of Louis the Fourteenth at the sight of the
tower of St. Denis, with the feeling which prompted the Scaligeri at Yerons
to set their tombs within fifteen feet of their ps^lace walls.

v..

¦I 4^fii.^

¦*-s . -,>¦

^.v-\-

Addenda.] AND PAINTING, \ ,.iA -'U •*' v.
another crusade; or what shall that be calleclTJ'tw.jiios^S^ ^f** i
sign was not the cross, but the guillotine ?" . V •¦t\y |C' *^fl
I have not space here to pursue the subject farthll-f >*
nor shall I be able to write anything more respecting
architecture for some time to come. But in the mean
while, I would most earnestly desire to leave with the
reader this one subject of thought — ".The Life of the
Workman." For it is singular, and far more than singular.
that among all the writers who have attempted to examine
the principles stated in the " Stones of Venice," not one*
has as yet made a single comment on what was precisely
and accurately the most important chapter in the whole
book ; namely, the description of the nature of Gothic
architecture, as involving the liberty of the workman (vol.
ii. ch. vi.). I had hoped that whatever might be the*
prejudices of modern architects, there would have been
found some among them quicksighted enough to see the
bearings of this principle, and generous enough to support
it. There has hitherto stood forward not one.
But my purpose must at last be accomplished for all
this. The labourer among the gravestones of our modern
architecture must yet be raised up, and become a living
soul. Before he can be thus raised, the whole system of
Greek architecture, as practised in the present day, must

* An article in Fraser's Magazine, which has appeared since these sheets
were sent to press, forms a,solitary exception.

114 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda
be annihilated ; but it will he annihilated, and that speed
ily. For truth and judgment are its declared opposites,
and against these nothing ever finally prevailed, or shall
prevail.

Lect. HI.] AND PAINTING. 1 1 5

LECTURE IIL
TURNER, AND HIS WORKS.
My object this evening is not so much to give you any
account of the works or the genius of the great painter
whom we have so lately lost (which it would require rather
a year than an hour to do), as to give you some idea of
the position which his works hold with respect to the land
scape of other periods, and of the general condition and
prospects of the landscape art of the present day. I will
not lose time in prefatory remarks, as I have little enough
at any rate, but will enter abruptly on my subject.
You are all of you well aware that landscape seems
hardly to have exercised any strong influence, as such, on
any pagan nation, or pagan artist. I have no time to enter
into any details on this, of course, most intricate and diffi
cult subject ; but I will only ask you to observe, that
wherever natural scenery is alluded to by the ancients, it
is either agriculturally, with the kind of feeling that a
good Scotch farmer has ; sensually, in the enjoyment of
sun or shade, cool winds or sweet scents ; fearfully, in a

6 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. UI
mere vulgar dread of rocks and desolate places, as, com
pared with the comfort of cities ; or, finally, superstitiously,
in the personification or deification of natural powers,
generally with much degradation of their impressiveness,
as in the paltry fables of Ulysses receiving the winds ii
bags from .^olus, and of the Cyclops hammering lightning
sharp at the ends, on an anvil.* Of course you will here
and there find feeble evidences of a higher sensibility,
chiefly, I think, in Plato, .Sschylus, Aristophanes, and
Virgil. Homer, though in the epithets he applies to land
scape always thoroughly graphic, uses the same epithet for
rocks, seas, and trees, from one end of his poem to the
other, evidently without the smallest interest in anything
of the kind ; and in the mass of heathen writers, the
absence of sensation on these subjects is singularly painful.
For instance, in that, to my mind, most disgusting of all
so-called poems, the journey to Brundusium, you remember
that Horace takes exactly as much interest in the scenery
he is passing through, as Sancho Panza ¦would have done,
You will find, on the other hand, that the language of
* Of course I do not mean by caUing these fables " paltry," to dispute
their neatness, ingenuity, or moral depth ; but only their want of appre
hension of the extent and awfulness of the phenomena introduced. So
also, in denying Homer's interest in nature, I do not mean to deny his
accuracy of observation, or his power of seizing on the main points of
landscape, but I deny the power of landscape over his heart, unle^ when
alosely associated with, and altogether subordinate to, some human
interest.

Leot. m.] AND PAINTING. 117
the Bible is specifically distinguished from all other early
literature, by its delight in natural imagery ; and that the
dealings of God with his people are calculated peciiliarly
to awaken this sensibility within them. Out of the mono
tonous valley of Egypt they are instantly taken into the
midst of the mightiest mountain scenery in the peninsula
of Arabia ; and that scenery is associated in their minds
with the immediate manifestation and presence of the
Divine Power ; so that mountains for ever afterwards
become invested with a peculiar sacredness in their minds ;
while their descendants being placed in what was then one
of the loveliest districts upon the earth, full of glorious
vegetation, bounded on one side by the sea, on the north
by " that goodly mountain " Lebanon, on the south and
east by deserts, whose barrenness enhanced by their con
trast the sense of the perfection of beauty in their own
land, they became, by these means, and by the touch of
God's own hand upon their hearts, sensible to the appeal
of natural scenery in a way in which no other people were
at the time ; and their literature is full of expressions, not
only testifying a vivid sense of the power of nature over
man, but showing that sympathy with natural things them
selves, as if they had human souls, which is the especial
characteristic of true love of the works of God, I
intended to have ^insisted on this sympathy at greater
length, but I found, only two or three days ago, much of
what I had to say to you anticipated in a little bopk,

118 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Leot. IE
unpretending, but. full of interest, " The Lamp and the
Lantern," by Dr. James Hamilton ; and; I will therefore
only ask you to consider such expressions as that tendei
and glorious verse in Isaiah, speaking of the cedars on the
mountains as rejoicing over the fall of the king of Assyria :
" Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the- cedars of Leba
non, saying. Since thou art gone down to the grave, no
feller is come up against us." See what sympathy there
is here, as if with the very hearts of the trees themselves.
So also in the words of Christ, in his personification of
the lilies : " They toil not, neither do they spin." Con
sider such expressions as, " .The sea saw that, and fled.
Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like
rams; and the little hills like, lambs." Try to find' any
thing in profane writing like this; and note - farthei' that
the whole book of Job appears to have been chiefly written
and placed in the inspired volume in order to show the
value of natural history, and its power on the human heart.
I cannot pass by it without pointing out the evidences of
the beauty of the country that Job inhabited. *
Observe, first, it was an arable country. " The oxen
jyere ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them." It
was a pastoral country : his substance, besides camels and
asses, was 7000 sheep. It was a mountain country, fed
by streams descending from the high snows. " My breth-
• This passage, respecting the book of Job, was omitted in the deliveij
of the Lecture, for want of time.

Lect. m.] AND PAINTING^ 119
ren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream
of brooks they pass away ; which are blackish by^eason
of the ice, and wherein the snow is hid : What time they
wax warm they vanish : when it is hot they are consumed
out of their place." Again : " If I wash myself with snow
water, and make my hands never so clean." Again :
"Drought and heat consume the snow waters." It was a
rocky country, with forests and verdure rooted in the rocks.
" His branch shooteth forth in his garden ; hi^ roots are
wrapped about the heap, and seet)i the place of stones."
Again : " Thou. shalt be in league with the stones of the
field." It was a place visited, like the valleys of Switzer
land, by convulsions and falls of mountains. " Surely the
mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is
removed out of his place." " The waters wear the stones :
thou washest away the|hings which grow out of the dust
of the earth," " He removeth the mountains and they
know not : he overturneth them in his anger." " He put-
teth forth his hand upon the rock : he overturneth the
mountains by the roots : he cutteth out rivers among the
rocks." I have uot time to go farther into this ; but you
see Job's country was one like your own, full of pleasant
brooks and rivers, rushing among the rocks, and of all
other sweet and noble elements of landscape. The mag
nificent allusions to natural scenery throughout the book
are therefore calculated to touch the heart to the end of
time.

120 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Leot.III.
Then at the central point of Jewish prosperity, you have
the firist great naturalist the world ever saw, Solomon ;
not permitted, indeed, to anticipate, in writing, the disco
veries of modern times, but so gifted as to show us that
heavenly wisdom is manifested as much in the knowledge
of the hyssop that springeth out of the wall as in political
and philosophical speculation.
The books of the Old Testament, as distinguished from
all otherlfarly writings, are thus prepared for an everlast
ing influence over humanity ; and, finally, Christ himself,
setting the concluding example to the conduct and thoughts
of men, spends nearly his whole life in the fields, tlie moun
tains, or the small country villageis of Judea ; and in the
very closing scenes of his life, will not so much as sleep
within the walls of Jerusalem, but rests at the little vil
lage of Bethphage, walking in the morning, and returning
in the evening, through the peaceful avenues of the mount
of Olives, to and from his work of teaching in the temple.
It would thus naturally follow, both from the general
tone and teaching of the Scriptures, and from the example
of our Lord himself, that wherever Christianity wds
preached and accepted, there would be an immediate in
terest awakened in the works of God, as seen in the natu
ral world ; and, accordingly, this is the second universal
and distinctive character of Christian art, as distinguished
from all pagan work, the first being a peculiar spirituality
in its conception of the human form, preferring holiness of

Lect. in.] AND PAINTING. 12.1
expression and strength of character, to beauty of features
or of body, and the second, as I say; its intense fondness
for natural objects — animals, leaves and flowers, — inducing
an immediate transformatipn pf the ccld and lifeless pagan
ornamentation into vivid imagery of nature. Of course
this manifestation of feeling was at first checked by the
circumstances under which the Christian rehgion was dis
seminated. The art of the first three centuries is eptirely
subordinate, — restrained partly by persecution^partly by
a high spirituality, which cared much more about preach
ing than painting ; and then when, under Constantine,
Christianity became the religion of the Roman empire,
myriads of persons gave the aid of their wealth and of
their art to the new religion, who were Christians in noth
ing but the name, and who decorated a Christian temple
just as they would have decorated a pagan one, merely
because the new religion had become Imperial. Then,
just as the new art was beginning to assume a distinctive
form, down came the northern barbarians upon it ; and all
their superstitions had to be leavened with it, and all their
hard hands and hearts softened by it, before their art could
appear in anything like a characteristic form. The warfare
in which Europe was perpetually plunged retarded this
development for ages ; but it steadily and gradually pre
vailed, working from the 8th to the 11th century like a
seed in the ground, showing little signs of life, but still, if
carefully examined, changing essentially every day and
6

122 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. m
every hour : at last, in the 12th century, the blade appears
above the blaisk earth ; in the 13th, the plant is in full
leaf. I begin, then, with the 13th century, and must now
make to you a general assertion, which, if you will note
down and examine at your leisure, you will find true and
useful, though I have not time at present to give you full
demqjjBtration of it.
I sa^^ then, that the art of the 13th century is the foun
dation of all art, — nor merely the foundation, but, the root
of it ; that is to say, succeeding art is not merely built
upon it, but was all comprehended in it, and is developed
out of it. Passing this great century we find three suc
cessive branches developed from it, in each of the three
following centuries. The 14th century is pre-eminently
the age of Thought, the '\^th the age of Drawing, and the
16th the age of Painting. S
Observe, first, the 14th century is pre-eminently the age
of thought. It begins with the first words of the poem of
Dante ; — and all the great pictorial poems — the mighty ;
series of works in which everything is done to relate, but
nothing to imitate — belong to this century. I should only
confuse you by giving you the names of marvellous artists, :
most of them little familiar to British ears, who adorned
this century in Italy ; but you will easily remember it as
the age of Dante and Giotto, — the age of Thought. \
The men of the succeeding century (the 15th) felt that

Lect. lip AND PAINTING. 123
they could not rival their predecessors in invention, but
raight excel them in execution. Original thoughts belong
ing to this century are comparatively rare ; even Raphael
and Michael Angelo themselves borrowed all their prin
cipal ideas and plans of pictures from their pl-edecessors ;
but they executed them with a precision up to that time
unseen. You must understand by the word " drawing,"
the perfect rendering of forms, whether in sculpture or
painting; and then remember the 15th century as tlie
age of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and
Raphael, — pre-eminently the age of Drawing.
The 16th century produced the four greatest Painters,
that is to say, managers of colour, whom the world has
seen ; namely, Tintoret, Paul Veronese, Titian, and Cor-
reggio. I need not say more to justify my calling it the
age of Painting.
This, then, being the state of things respecting, art in
general, let us next trace the career of landscape through
these centuries.
It was only towards the close of the 13th century that
figure painting began to assume so perfect a condition as
to require some elaborate suggestion of landscape back
ground. Up to that time, if any natural object had to be
represented, it was done in an entirely conventional way, i
as you see it upon Greek vases, or in a Chinese porcelain
pattern ; an independent tree or flower being set upon the
white ground, or ground of any colour, wherever there

124 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE ffesci, HI.
was a vacant space for it, without the smallest attempt to
imitate the real colours and relations of the earth and sky
about it. But at the close of the 13th century, Giotto,
and in the course of the 14th, Orcagna, sought, for the
first time, to give some resemblance to nature in their
backgrounds, and introduced behind their figures pieces
of true landscape, formal enough still, but complete in
intention, having foregrounds and distances, sky and
water, forests and mountains, carefully delineated, not
exactly in their true colour, but yet in colour approximat
ing to the truth. The system which they introdiiced (for
though in many points enriched above the work of earlier
ages, the Orcagna and Giotto landscape was a very com
plete piece of recipe) was observed for a long period by
their pupils, and may be thus briefly described: — The sky
is always pure blue, paler at the horizon, and with a few
streaky white clouds in it ; the ground is green even to
the extreme distance, with brown rocks projecting from
it ; water is blue streaked with white. The trees are
nearly always composed of clusters of their proper leaves
relieved on a black or dark ground, thus (fig. 20.).* And
observe carefully, with respect to the complete drawing ,
* Having no memoranda of my owTU, taken from Giotto's landscape, I
had this tree copied from an engraving ; but I imagine the rude termina
tion of the stems to be a misrepresentation- Fig. 21 is accurately copied,
from an MS., certainly executed between 1260 and 1270, and is more tmlj
characteristic of the early manner.

Lect.HL] and PAINTESTG. 125
of the leaves on this tree, and the smallness of their
number, the real distinction between noble convention
alism and false conventionalism. You will often hear
modern architects defending their monstrous ornament
ation on the ground that it is " conventional," and that
architectural ornament ought to be conventionalised.
Remember when you hear this, that noble convention
alism is not an agreement between the artist and spectator
that the one shall misrepresent nature sixty times over,
and the other believe the misrepresentation sixty times
over, but it is an agreement that certain means and
limitations being prescribed, only that kind of truth is to
be expected which is consistent with those means. For
instance, if Sir Joshua Reynolds had been talking to a
friend about the character,of a ..face, and there had been
nothing in the room but^a deal table and an inkbottle—
and no pens — Sir Joshua would have dipped his finger in
the ink, and painted a portrait on the table with his
finger, — and a noble portrait too, certainly not delicate in
outline, nor representing any of the qualities of the face
dependent on rich outline, but getting as much of the face
as in that manner was attainable. That is noble conven
tionalism, and Egyptian work on granite, or illuminator's
work in glass, is all conventional in the same sense, but
not conventionally false. The two noblest and truest
carved lions I have ever seen, are the two granite ones in
the Egyptian room of the British Museum, and yet in

126 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [LbolIE
them, the lions' manes ancj beards are represented by
rings of solid rock, as smooth as a mirror !
There are indeed one or two other conditions of noble
conventionalism, noticed more fully in thI Addenda to this
Lecture ; but you will find that they always consist in
stopping short of naturej not in falsifying nature ; and thus
in Giotto's foliage, he stops short of the quantity of leaves
on the real tree, but he gives_you the form of the leaves
represented with perfect truth. His foreground also is
nearly always occupied by flowers and herbage, carefully
and individually painted from nature ; while, although thus
simple in plan, the arrangements of line in these landscapes
of course show the influence of the master-mind, and
sometimes, where the story requires it, we find the usual
formulae overleaped, and Giotto at Avignon painting the
breakers of the sea on a steep shore with great care, while
Orcagna, in his Triumph of Death, has painted a thicket
of brambles mixed with teazles, in a manner worthy of the
best days of landscape art.
Now from the landscape of these two men to the land
scape of Raphael, Leonardo, and Perugino, the advance
consists principally in two great steps : The first, that dis
tant objects were' more or less invested with a blue colour,
— the second, that trees were no longer painted with a
black ground, but with a rich dark brown, or deep green.
From Giotto's old age, to the youth of Raphael, the
advance in and knowledge of, landscape, consisted of no

Lect. m.] AND PAINTING. 12'5
more than these two simple steps ; but the execution of
landscape became infinitely more perfect and elaberate.
All the flowers and leaves in the foreground were worked
out with the same perfection as the features of the figures ;
in the middle distance the brown trees were most delicately
defined against the sky ; the blue mountains in the extreme
distance were exquisitely thrown into aerial gradations,
and the sky and clouds were perfect in transparency and
softness. But still there is no real advance in knowledge
of natural objects. The leaves and flowers are, indeed,
admirably painted, and thrown into various intricate group
ings, such as Giotto could not have attempted, but the
rocks and water are still as conventional and imperfect as
ever, except only in colour : the forms of rock in Leonar
do's celebrated " Vierge aux Rochers" are literally no
better than those on a china plate. Fig. 22. shows a
portion of them in mere outline, with one cluster of the
leaves above, ani the distant " ideal" mountains. On the
whole, the most satisfactory work of the period is that
which most resembles missal painting, that is to= say, which
is fullest of beautiful flowers and animals scattered among
the landscape, in the old independent way, like the birds
upon a screen. The landscape of Benozzo Gozzoli is
exquisitely rich in incident of this kind.
The first man who entirely broke through the conven
tionality- of his timQ, and painted pure landscape, was
Masaccio, but 1 e died too young to effect the revolution

128 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Le(jt. IXI-
of which his genius was capable. It was left for other
men to accomplish, namely, for Correggio and Titian.
These two painters were the first who relieved the fore-
grounds of their landscape from the grotesque, quaint, and
crowded formalism of the early painters ; and gave a close
approximation to the forms of nature in all things ; retain
ing, however, thus much of the old system, that the dis
tances were for the most part painted in deep ultramarine
blue, the foregrounds in rich green and brown ; there were
no effects of sunshine and shadow, but a generally quiet
glow over the whole scene; and the clouds, though now
rolling in irregular masses, and sometimes richly involved
among the hills, were never varied in conception, or studied
from nature. There were no changes of weather in them,
no rain clouds or fair-weather clouds, nothing but various
shapes of the cumulus or cirrus, introduced for the sake of
light on the deep blue sky. Tintoret and B^mifazio intro
duced more natural effects into this monotonous landscape :
in their works we meet with showers of rain, with rain
bows, sunsets, bright reflections in water, and so on ; but
still very subordinate, and carelessly worked out, so as not
to justify us in considering their landscape as forming a
class by itself.
Fig. 23., which is a branch of a tree from the back
ground of Titian's " St. Jerome," at Milan, compared with
fig. 20., will give you a distinct idea pf the kind of change
which took place from the time of Giotto to that of Titian'

Lbct. HI.] AND PAINTING. 129
and you will find that this whole range of landscape may
be conveniently classed in three divisions, namely, Giot
tesque, Leonardesque, and Titianesque ; the Giottesque
embracing nearly all the work of the 14th, the Leonard
esque that of the 15th, and the Titianesque tKat of the ICth
century. Now you see there remained a fourth step to be
taken, — the doing away with conventionalism altogether,
so as to create the perfect art of landscape painting. The
course of the mind pf Europe was to do this ; but at the
very moment when it ought to have been done, the art of
all civilised nations was paralysed at once by the opera
tion of the poisonous elements of infidelity and classical
learning together, as I have endeavoured to show else
where. In this paralysis, like, a soldier shot as he is
just gaining an an eminence, the art of the 17th century
struggled forward, and sank upon the spot it had been
endeavouring to attain. The step which should have
freed landscape from conventionalism was actually taken
by Claude and Salvator Rosa, but taken in a state of
palsy, — taken so as to lose far more than was gained.
For up to this time, no painter ever had thought of drawing
anything, pebble or blade of grass, or tree or mountain,
but as well and distinctly as he could ; and if he could
not draw it completely, he drew it at least in a way which
should thoroughly show his knowledge and feeling of it.
For instance, you saw in the oak tree of the Giottesque
6*

130 ' LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect.IU
period, that the main points of the tree, the true shape of
leaf and acorn, were all there, perfectly and carefully
articulated, and so they continued to be down to the time
of Tintoret ; both he and Titian working out the separate
leaves of their foliage with the most exquisite botanical
care. But now observe ; as Christianity had brought this
love of nature into Paganism, the return of Paganism in
the shape of classical learning at once destroyed this love
of nature ; and at the moment when Claude and Salvator
made the final effort to paint the effects of nature faith
fully, the objects of nature had ceased to be regarded with
affection ; so that, while people were amused and inter
ested by the new effects of sunsets over green seas, and
of tempests bursting on rocky mountains, which were
introduced by the rising school, they entirely ceased to
require on the one side, or bestow on the other, that care
and thought by which alone the beauty of nature can be
understood. The older painting bad resembled a careful
and deeply studied diagram, illustrative of the most
important facts ; it was not to be understood or relished
without application of serious thought ; on the contrary,
it developed and addressed the highest powers of mind
belonging to the human race ; while the Claude arid
Salvator painting was like a scene in a theatre, viciously
and falsely painted throughout, and presenting a deceptive
appearance of truth to nature ; understood, as far as it

LECT.IU.] AND PAINTING. 131
went, in a moment, but conveying no accurate knowledge
of anything, and, in all its operations on the mind,
unhealthy, hopeless, and profitless.
It was, however, received with avidity ; for this main
reason, that the architecture, domestic life and manners
of the period were gradually getting more and more
artificial ; as I showed you last evening, all natural beauty
had ceased to be permitted in architectural decoration,
while the habits of society led them more and more to
live, if possible, in cities ; and the dress, language, and
manners of men in general were approximating to that
horrible and lifeless condition in which you find them just
before the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Now, observe : exactly as hoops, and starch, and false
nair, and- all that in mind and heart these things typify and ,
betray, as these, I say, gained upon men, there was a
necessary reaction in favour of the natural. Men had
never hved so utterly in defiance of the laws cf nature
before ; but they could not do this without feeling a
strange charm in that which they defied ; and, accordingly
we find this reactionary sentiment expressing itself in a
base school of what was called, pastoral poetry ; that is to
say, poetry written in praise pf the country, by men who
hved in coffee-houses and on the Mall. The essence of
pastoral poetry is the sense of strange delightfulness in
grass, which is occasionally felt by a man who has seldom
set his foot on it; it is essentially the poetry of 'the

132 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Leot. in,
cockney, and for the most part corresponds in its aim and
rank, as compared with other literature, to the porcelain
shepherds and shepherdesses on a chimney-piece as com
pared with great works of sculpture.
Of course all good poetry, descriptive of rural life, is
e-ssentially pastoral, or has the effect of the pastoral, on
the minds of men living in cities; but the class of poetry
which I mean, and which you probably understand, by the
term pastoral, is that in which a farmer's girl is spoken
of as a " nymph," and a farmer's boy as a " swain," and
in which, throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural refinement
is supposed to exist in rural life, merely because the poet
himself has neither had the courage to endure its hard
ships, nor the wit to conceive its realities. If yoii examine
the literature of the past century, you will find that nearly
all its expressions, having reference to the country, show
something of this kind ; either a foolish sentimentality, or
a morbid fear, both pf course coupled with the most
curious ignorance. You will find all its descriptive expres
sions at once vague and monotonous. Brooks are always
"purling;" birds always "warbling;" mountains always
" lift their horrid peaks above the clouds ;" vales always
" are 'lost in the shadow of gloomy woods ;" a few more
distinct ideas about haymaking and curds and cream,
acquired in the neighbourhood of Richmond Bridge, serving
to give an occasional appearance of freshness to the cata
logue of the subhme and beautiful which descended from

Lect. HI.] AND PAINTING. 133
poet to poet ; while a few true pieces of pastoral, like the
"Vicar of Wakefield," and Walton's "Angler," reheved
the general waste of dulness. Even in these better pro
ductions, nothing is more remarkable than the general
conception of the country merely as a series of green
fields, and the combined ignorance and dread of more
sublime scenery ; of which the mysteries and dangers
were enhanced by the difficulties of travelling at the
period. Thus in Walton's " Angler," you have a meeting
of two friends, one a Derbyshire man, the other a lowland
traveller, who is as much alarmed, and uses nearly as
many expressions of astonishment, at having to go down
a steep hill and ford a brook, as a traveller uses now at
crossing the glacier of the Col de Geant. I am not sure
whether the difficulties which, until late years, have lain
in the way of peaceful and convenient travelling, ought
not to have great weight assigned to them among the
other causes of the temper of the century ; but be that as
it may, if you will examine the whole range of its litera
ture — keeping this point in view — I am well persuaded
that you will be struck most forcibly by the strange dead-
ness to the higher sources of landscape sublimity which is
mingled with the morbid pastorahsm. The love of fresh
air and green grass forced itself upon the animal natures
of men ; but that of the sublimer features of scenery had
no place in minds whose chief powers had been repressed
by the formalisms of the age. And although in the

134 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect.IU,
second-rate writers continually, and in the first-rate ones
occasionally, you find an affectation of interest in moun
tains, clouds, and forests, yet whenever they write from
their heart, you will find an utter absence of feeling
respecting anything beyond gardens and grass. Examine,
for instance, the novels of Smollett, Fielding, and Sterne,
the comedies of Moliere, and the writings of Johnson and
Addison, and I do not think you will find a single expres
sion of true delight in sublime nature in any one of them.
Perhaps Sterne's " Sentimental Journey," in its total
absence of sentiment on any subject but humanity, and
its entire want of notice of anything at Geneva, which
might not as well have been seen at Coxwold, is the most
striking instance I could give you ; and if you compare
with this negation of feeling On one side, the interludes
of Mohere, in which shepherds and shepherdesses are
introduced in court dress, you will have a very accurate
conception of the general spirit of the age.
It was in such a state of society that the landscape of
Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa attained its
reputation. It is the complete expression on canvas of the
spirit of the time. Claude embodies the foolish pastoral-
ism, Salvator the ignorant terror, and Gaspar the dull and
affected erudition.
It was, however, altogether impossible that thi? state
of things could long continue. The age which had buried
itself in formalism grew weary at la.'st of the restraint ¦

Leot. HI.] AND PAINTING. 136
and the approach of a new aera was marked by the appear
ance, and the enthusiastic reception, of writers who took
true dehght in those wild scenes of nature which had so
long been despised.
I think the first two writers in whom the symptoms of
a change are strongly manifested are Mrs. Radcliffe and
Rousseau ; in both of whom the love of natural scenery,
though mingled in the one case with what was merely
dramatic, and in the other with much that was pitifully
morbid or vicious, was still itself genuine, and intense, dif
fering altogether in character from any sentiments previ
ously traceable in literature. And then rapidly followed a
group of writers, who expressed, in various ways, the more
powerful or more pure feeling which had now become one
of the strongest instincts of the age. Of these, the prin
cipal is your own^ Walter Scott. Many writers, indeed,
describe nature more minutely and more profoundly ; but
none show in higher intensity the peculiar passion for what
is majestic or lovely in wild nature, to which I am now
referring. The whole of the poem of the " Lady of the
Lake" is written with almost a boyish enthusiasm for
rocks, and lakes, and cataracts ; the early novels show the
same instinct in equal strength wherever he approaches
Highland scenery ; and the feeling is mingled, observe,
with a most touching and affectionate appreciation of the
Gothic architecture, in which alone he found the elements
of natural beauty seized by art ; so that, to this day, his

136 LECTURES ON ARCHITBCTURE [Lect.IU
descriptions of Melrose and Holy Island Cathedral, in the
"Lay of the Last Minstrel" and " Marmion," as well as
of the ideal abbeys in the " Monastery" and " Antiquary,"
tOD-ether with those of Caerlaverock and,. Lochleven
Castles in " Guy Mannering" and " The Abbot," remain
the staple possessions and text-books of all travellers, not
so much for their beauty or accuracy, as for their exactly
expressing that degree of feeling with which most men in
this century can sytnpathise.
Together with Scott appeared the group of poets,T—
Byron,- Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and, finally, Tenny
son, — differing widely in moral principles and spiritual
temper, but all agreeing more or less in this love, for
natural scenery.
Now, you will ask me — and you will ask me most .
reasonably — how this love of nature in modern days can
be connected with Christianity, seeing it is as strong in
the infidel Shelley as in the sacred Wordsworth. Yes,
and it is found in far worse men than Shelley. Shelley was
an honest unbeliever, and a man of warm affections ; but
this new love of nature is found in the most reckless and
unprincipled of the French novelists, — in Eugene Sue, in
Dumas, in George Sand, — and that intensely. How is
this 1 Simply because the feeling is reactionary% and, in
this phase of it, common to the diseased mind as well as
to the healthy one. A man dying in the fever of intem
perance will cry out for water, and that with a bitterer

LECT.m.] AND PAINTING. 137
thirst than a man whose healthy frame naturally delights
in the mountain spring more than in the wine cup. The
water is not dishonoured by the thirst of that diseased, nor
is nature dishonoured by the love of the unworthy. That
love is, perhaps, the only sa'ving element in their minds ;
and it still remains an indisputable truth that the -love of
nature is a characteristic of the Christian heart, just as the
hunger for healthy food is characteristic of the healthy
frame. In order to meet this new feeling for nature, there ne
cessarily arose a new school of landscape painting. That
school, hke the literature to which it corresponded, had
many weak and vicious elements mixed with its noble
ones ; it had its Mrs. Radcliffes and Rousseaus, as well as
its Wordsworths ; but, on the whole, the feeling with which
Robson drew mountains, and Prout architecture, with
which Fielding draws moors, and Stanfield sea — is alto^
gether pure, true, and precious, as compared with that
which suggested the landscape of the 17th century.
Now observe, how simple the whole subject becomes.
¥o\i have, first, your great ancient landscape divided into
its three periods — Giottesque, Leonardesque, Titianesque.
Then you have a great gap, full of nonentities and abor
tions ; a gulph of foohshness, into the bottom of which you
may throw Claude and Salvator, neither of them deserv
ing to give a name to anything. Call it " pastoral " land
scape, "guarda e passa," and then you have, lastly, the

138 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lbct. IH.
pure, wholesome, simple, modern landscape. You want a
name for that : I will give you one in a moment ; for the
whole character and power of that landscape is originally
based on the work of one man.
Joseph Mallord WiUiam Turner was born in Maiden
Lane, London, about eighty years ago. The register of
his birth was. burned, and his age at his death could only
be arrived at by conjecture. He was the son of a barber;
and his father intended him, very properly, for his own
profession. The bent of the boy was, however, soon mani
fested, as is always the case in children of extraordinary
genius, too strongly to be resisted, and a sketch of a coat
of arms on a silver salver, made while his father was shav
ing a customer, obtained for him, in reluctant\compliance
with the admiring customer's advice, the permission to fol
low art as a profession.
He had, of course, the usual difficulties of young artists
to encounter, arid they were then far greater than they are
now. But Turner differed from most men in this,' — that
he was always willing to take anything to do that came
in his way. He did not shut himself up in a garret to
produce unsaleable works of "high art," and starve, or
lose his senses. He hired himself out every evening to
wash in skies Mn Indian ink, on other people's drawings,
as many as he could, at half-a-crown a-tiight, getting his
supper into the bargain. "What could I have done bet
ter?" he said afterwards: "it was first-rate practice."

Lect. HL] AND PAUSTING. 139
Then he took to illustrating guide-books and almanacks,
and anything that wanted cheap frontispieces. The Ox
ford Almanack, published on a single sheet, with a copper
plate at the top of it, consisting of a " View " — ^you per
haps, some of you, know the kind of print characteristic
of the last century, under which the word " View " is
always printed in large letters, with a dedication, obse
quious to the very- dust, to the Grand Siguier of the
neighbourhood. — Well, this Almanack had always such a'
view of some Oxford College at the top of it, dedicated, I
think, always to the head of the College ; and it owed
this, its principal decoration, to Turner for many years.
I have myself two careful drawings of some old seals,
made by him for a Ipcal book on the antiquities of Whal-
ley Abbey. And there was hardly a gentleman's seat of
any importance in England, towards the close of the last
century, of which you will not find some rude engraving
in the local publications of the time, inscribed with the
simple name " W. Turner."
There was another great difference between Turner and
other men. In doing these drawings for the commonest
publications of the day, and for a remuneration altogether
contemptible, he never did his work badly because he
thought it beneath him, or because he was ill-paid. There
does not exist such a thing as a slovenly drawing by
Turner. With what people were willing to give him for
his work he was content ; but he considered that work in

140 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IH.
its relation to himself, not in its relation to the purchaser.
He took a poor price, that he might live; but he made
noble drawings, that he might learn. Of course some are
slighter than others, and they vary in their materials;
those executed with pencil and Indian ink being never
finished to the degree of those which are executed in
colour. But he is never careless. According to the time
and means at his disposal, he always did his best. He
never let a drawing leave his hands without having made
a step in advance, and having done better in it than be had
ever done before ; and there is no important drawing of the
period which is not executed with a total disregard of time
and price, and which was not, even then, worth four or
five times what Turner received for it.
Even without genius, a man who thus felt and thus
laboured was sure to do great things ; though it is seldom
that, without great genius, men either thus feel or thus
labour. Turner was as far beyond all other men in intel
lect as in industry ; and his advance in power and grasp
of thought was as steady as the increasing light of sun
rise. His reputation was soon so far established that he was
able to devote himself to more consistent study. He
never appears literally to have copied any picture ; but
whenever any master interested him, or was of so esta
blished a reputation that he thought it necessary to study
him, he painted pictures of his own subjects in the style

LECT.m.] AND PAINTING. 141
of that master, until he felt himself able to rival his excel
lencies, whatever they were. There are thus raultitudes
of pictures by Turner which are direct imitations of other
masters ; especially of Claude, Wilson, Loutherbourg,
Gaspar Poussin, Vandevelde, Cuyp"^, and Rembrandt. It
has been argued by Mr. Leslie that, because Turner thus
in his early years imitated many of the old masters, there
fore he must to the end of his life have considered them
greater than himself. The nonsequitur is obvious. I trust
there are few men so unhappy as never to have learned
anything from their inferiors ; and I fear there are few
men so wise as never to have imitated anything but what
was deserving of imitation. The young Turner, indeed,
would have been more than mortal if, in a period utterly
devoid of all healthy examples of landscape art, he had
been able at once to see his way to the attainment of his
ultimate ends ; or if, seeing it, he had felt himself at once
strong enough to defy the authority of every painter and
connoisseur whose style had formed the taste of the public,
or whose dicta directed their patronage.
But the period when he both felt and resolved to asserl?-
his own superiority was indicated with perfect clearness,
by his publishing a series , of engravings, which were
nothing else than direct challenges to Claude — then the
landscape painter supposed to be the greatest in the world
-^upon his own ground and his own terms. You are pro
bably all aware that the studies made by Claude for his

142 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [LeclIIL
pictures, and kept by him under the name of the " Liber
Veritatis," were for the most part made with pen and ink,
washed over with a brown tint ; and that these drawings
have been carefully fac-similed and published in the form
of mezzotint engravings, long supposed to be models of
taste in landscape composition. In order to provoke com
parison between Claude and himself. Turner published a
series of engravings, called the " Liber Studiorum," exe
cuted in exactly the same manner as these drawings of
Claude, — an etching representing what was done with the
pen, while mezzotint stood for colour. You see the nota
ble publicity of this challenge. Had he confined himself
to pictures in his trial of skill with Claude, it would only
have been in the gallery or the palace that the comparison
could have been instituted ; but now it is in the power of
all who are interested in the matter to make it at their
ease.'* Now, what Turner did in contest with Claude, he did
* When this Lecture was delivered, an enlarged copy of a portion of
one of these studies by Claude was set beside a similarly magniiied portion
of one by Turner. It was impossible, without much increasing the cost of
the publication, to jjrepare two mezzotint engravings with the care requisite
for this purpose : and the portion of the Lecture relating to these examples •
is therefore omitted. It ig however in the power of every reader to procure
one or more plates of each series ; and to judge for himself whether the
conclusion of Turner's superiority, which is assumed in the next sentence
of the text, be a just one or not.

LECT.m.] AND PAINTING. 143
with every other then-known master of landscape, each in
liis turn. He challenged and vanquished, each in his own
pecuhar field, Vandevelde on the sea, Salvator among
rocks, and Cuyp on Lowland rivers ; and, having done
this, set himself to paint the natural scenery of skies,
mountains, and lakes, which, until his time, had never
been so much as attempted.
He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far surpassed even
Titian and Leonardo, the great men of the earlier schools.
In their foreground work neither Titian nor Leonardo
could be excelled ; but Titian and Leonardo were thor
oughly conventional in all but their foregrounds. Turner
was equally great in all the elements of landscape, and it
is on him, and on his daring additions to the received
schemes of landscape art, that all modern landscape has
been founded. You will never meet any truly great lining
landscape painter who will not at once frankly confess his
obligations to Turner, not, observe, as having copied him,
but as having been led by Turner to look in nature for
what he would otherwise either not have discerned, or
discerning, not have dared to represent
Turner, therefore, was the first man who presented us
with the type of perfect landscape art : and the richness
of that art, with which you are at present surrounded, and
which enables you to open your Walls as it were into so
many Tvindows, through which you can see whatever has

144 - LECTURES ON AECmTECTURE [Lect.IU,
charmed you in the fairest scenery of your country, you
will do well to remember as Turneresque. '
So then you have these five periods to recollect — you
will have no difficulty, I trust, in doing so,^-the periods of
Giotto, Leonardo, Titian, pastorahsm, and Turner.
But Turner's wprk is yet only begun. His greatness is,
as yet, altogether denied by many>; and to the full, felt by
very few. But eyery day that he lies in his grave will
¦bring some new acknowledgment of his power, and
through those eyes, now filled with dust, generations yet
unborn will learn to behold the light of nature.
You have some ground io-night to accuse me of dogma
tism. I can bring no proof before you of what I so boldly
assert. But I would not have accepted your invitation to
address you, unless I had felt that I had a right to be, in
this matter, dogmatic. I did not come here to tell you of
my beliefs or my conjectures ; I came to tell you the truth
which I have given fifteen years of my life to ascertain,
that this man, this Turner, of whom you have known so
little while he was living among you, will one day take his
place beside Shakspeare and Verulam, in the annals of the
hght of England.
Yes : beside Shakspeare and Verulam, a third star in
that central constellation, round which, in the astronomy
of intellect, all other stars make their circuit. By Shak
speare, humanity was unsealed to you; by Verulam the

LecxIH.] and painting. 145
principles of nature ; and by Turner, her c^ect. All these
were sent to unlock one of the gates of light, and to un
lock it for the first time. But of all the three, though not
the greatest. Turner was the most unprecedented in his
work. Bacon did what Aristotle had attempted ; Shak
speare did perfectly what iEschylus did .partially ; but none
before Turner had lifted the veil from the face of nature ;
the majesty of the hills and forests had received no inter
pretation, and the clouds passed unrecorded from the face
of the heaven ¦which they adorned, and of the earth to
which they ministered.
And now let me tell you something of his personal cha
racter. You have heard him spoken of as ill-natured, and
jealous of his brother artists. I will tell you how jealous
he was. I knew him for ten years, and during that time
had much familiar intercourse with him. I never once
heard him say an unkind thing of a brother artist, and I
never once heard him find a fault with another man's work.
I could say this of no other artist whom I have ever
known. But I will add a piece of evidence on this matter of
pecuhar force. Probably* many here have read a book
which has been lately published, to my mind one of ex
treme interest and value, the life of the unhappy artist,
Benjamin Haydon. Whatever may have been his faults,
I believe no person can read his journal without coming to
the conclusion that his heart was honest, and that he does
7

146 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Leot.III.
not wilfully misrepresent any fact, or any person. Even
supposing otherwise, the expression I am' going to quote to'
you would have all the more force, because, as you know,
Haydon passed his whole hfe in war with the Royal
Academy, of which Turner was one of the most influential
members. Yet in the midst of one of his most violent
expressions of exultation at one of his victories over the
Academy, he draws back suddenly with these words :^-
" But Turner behaved well, and did me justice."
I will give you however besides, two plain facts illustra
tive of Turner's "jealousy."
You have, perhaps not many of you, heard of a painter
of the name of Bird ; I do not myself know his works,
but Turner saw some merit in them : and when Bird first
sent a picture to the Academy, for exhibition. Turner was
on the hanging committee. Bird's picture had great-
merit ; but no place for it could be found. Turner pleaded
hard for it. No, the thing was impossible. Turner sat
down and looked at Bird's picture a long time; then
insisted that a place must be found for it. He was stiH
met by the assertion of impracticability. He said no more,
but took down one of his own pictures, sent it out of the
Academy, and hung Bird's in its place.
Match that, if you can, among the annals of hanging
committees. But he could do nobler things than this.
When Turner's picture of Cologne was exhibited in the
year 1S26, it was hung between two pprtraits, by Sil

Lect.IU.] AND PAINTING. ¦ 147
Thomas Lawrence, of liady Wallscourt, and Lady Robert
Manners. The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly bright, and
it had a most injurious effect on the colour of the two
portraits. Lawrence naturally felt mortified, and com
plained ppenly of the position of bis pictures. You are
aware that artists were at that time permitted to retouch
their pictures on the walls of the Academy. On the
morning of the opening of the exhibition, at th^ private
view, a friend, of Turner's who had seen the Cologne in
all its splendor, led a group of expectant critics up to the
picture. He started back from it in consternation. The
golden, sky had changed to a dun colour. He ran up to
Turner, who was in another part pf the room. " Turner,
what have you been doing to your picture ?" " Oh,"
Kiiittered Turner, in a Ipw voice, " poor Lawrence was so
unhappy. It's only lamp black. It'll all wash off after
the exhibition !" He had actually passed a wash of lamp
black in water colour over the whole sky, and utterly
spoiled his picture for the time, and so left it through the
exhibition, lest it should hurt Lawrences.
, You may easily find instances of self-sacrifice where
men hSve strong motives, and where large benefits are to
be conferred by the effort, or general admiration obtained
by it; but of pure, unselfish, and, perfect generosity,
showing itself in a matter of minor interest, and when few
could be aware of the sacrifice made, you will npt easily
find such an ether example as this.

148 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect.IU
Thus much for his jealousy of his brother- artists. You
have also heard much of his niggardliness in money
transactions. A great part of what you have heard is
perfectly true, allowing for the exaggeration which always
takes place in the accounts of an eccentric character.
But there are other parts of Turner's conduct of which
you have never heard ; and which, if truly reported, would
set his niggardliness in a very different light. Every
person from whom Turner exacted a due shillings pro
claimed the exaction far and wide ; but the persons to
whom Turner gave hundreds of pounds were preventedj
by their "delicacy," from reporting .the kindness of their
benefactor. I may, however, perhaps, be permitted tp
acquaint you with one circumstance of this nature, credit
able alike to both parties concerned.
At the death of a poor drawing master, Mr. Wells,
whom Turner had long known, he was deeply affected,
and lent money to the widow until a large sura had
accumulated. She was both honest and grateful, and after
a long period was happy enough to be able to return to
her benefactor the whole sum she had received from him.
She waited on him with it ; but Turner kept his hands in
his pocket. " Keep it," he said, " and seiid your children
to school, and to church." He said this in bitterness ; be
had himself been sent to neither.
Well, but you will answer to me, we have heard Turner
all our lives stigmatised as brutal^ and uneharitable, and

Lect.IU.] AND PAINTING. 149
selfish, and miserly. How are we to understand these
opposing statements ?
Easily. I have told you truly what Turner was. You
have often heard what to most people he appeared to be.
Imagine what it was for a man to live seventy years in
this hard world, with the kindest heart and the noblest
intellect of his time, and never to meet with a single word
or ray of sympathy, until he felt himself sinking into the
grave. From the time he knew his true greatness all the
world was turned against him : he held his own ; but it
could not be without roughness of bearing, and hardening
of the temper, if not of the heart. No one understood
him, no one trusted him, and every one cried out against
him. Imagine, any of you, the effect upon your own
minds, if every voice that you heard from the human beings
around you were raised, year after year, through all your
lives, only in condemnation of your efforts, and denial of
your success. This may be borne, and borne easily, by
men who have fixed religious principles, or supporting
domestic ties. But Turner had' no one to teach him in
his youth, and no one to love him in his old age. Respect
and affection, if they came at all, came unbelieved, or
came too late. Naturally irritable, though kind,— naturally
suspicious, though generous,— the gold gradually became
dim, and the most fine gold changed, or, if not changed,
overcast and clouded. The deep heart was still' beating,
but it was beneath a dark and melancholy mail between

150 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect.IU.
whose joints, however, sometimes the slightest arrows
found entrance, and power of giving pain. He received
no consolation in his last years, nor in his death. Cut off
in great part from all society, — first, by labour, and at last
by sickness,— hunted to his grave by the malignities of
small critics, and the jealousies of hopeless rivalry, he
died in the house of a stranger, — one companion of his
life, and one only, staying with him to the last. The
window of his death-chamber was turned towards the
west, and the sun shone upon his face in its setting,- and
rested there, as he expired.

Lmt.IY.I and painting. 151

LECTURE IV,

PRE-RAPHAELITISM.

The subject on which I would desire to engage your
attention this evening, is the nature and probable result
of a certain schism which took place a few years ago
among our British artists.
This schism, or rather the heresy which led to it, as
you are probably aware, was introduced by a small
number of very young men ; and consists mainly in the
assertion that the principles on which art has been taught
for these three hundred years back are essentially wrong,
and that the principles which ought to guide us are those
which prevailed before the time of Raphael ; in adopting
which, therefore, as their guides, these young men, as a
sort of bond of unity among themselves, took the unfortu
nate and somewhat ludicrous name of "Pre-Raphaelite"
brethren. You must all be aware that this heresy has been opposed
with all the influence and all the bitterness of art and
criticism ; but that in spite of these the heresy has gained

152 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV
ground, and the pictures painted on these new principles
have obtained a most extensive popularity. These circum
stances are sufficiently singular, but their importance is
greater even than their singularity ; and your time will
certainly not be wasted in devoting an hour to an inquiry
into the true nature of this movement.
I shall, first, therefore, endeavour to state to you what
the real difference is between the principles of art before
and after Raphael's time, and then to ascertain, with you,
how far these young men truly have understood the
difference, and what may be hoped or feared from the^
effort they are making.
First, then. What is the real difference between the
principles on which art has been pursued before and since
Raphael ? You must be aware, that the principal ground
on which the Pre-Raphaelites have been attacked, is the
charge that they wish to bring us back to a time of dark
ness and ignorance, when the principles of drawing, and
of art in general, were comparatively unknown ; and this
attack, therefore, is entirely founded on the assumption
that, although for some unaccountable reason we cannot at
present produce artists altogether equal to Raphael, yet
that we are on the whole in a state of greater illumination
than, at all events, any artists who preceded Raphael; so
that we consider ourselves entitled to look down upon
them, and to say that, all things considered, they did sorae
wonderful things for their time ; but that, as for comparing

Lect. IV,] . A^D FAINTING. 153
the art of Giotto to that of Wilkie or Edwin Landseer, it
lyould be perfectly ridiculous, — the one being a mere infant
in hjs profession, and the others accomphshed workmen.
Now, that this progress has in some things taken place
is perfectly true ; but it is true also that this progress is
by no means the main thing to be noticed respecting
ancient and modern art ; that there are other circumstan
ces, connected with the change from one to the other, im
measurably more important, and which, until very lately,
have been altogether lost sight of.
The fact is, that modern art is not so much distin
guished from old art by greater skill, as by a radical
change in temper. The art of this day is not merely a
more knowing art than that of the 13th century, — it is
altogether another art. Between the two there is a great
gulph, a di.stinction for ever ineffaceable. The change
from one to the other was not that of tljie child into the
man, as we usually consider, ij ; it was that of the chrysalis
into the butterfly. There was an entire change in the
habits, food, method of existence, and Jieart, of the whole
creature. That we know more than 13th-century people
is perfectly true ; but that is not the essential difference
hetween us and them. We are different kind pf creatures
from them, — as different as moths are different from cater
pillars ; and different in a certain broad arjd vast sense,
which I shall try this evening to explain and prove to
you ; — different not merely in this or that result pf minpr
7*

154 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lbct. IV.
circumstances, — not as you are different frorri people who
never saw a locomotive engine, or a Highlander of this
century from a Highlander of 1745 ; — different in a far
broader and mightier sense than that, in a sense so great
and clear, that we are enabled to separate all the Chris
tian nations and tongues of the early time from those of
the latter time, and speak of them in one grbtip as the
kingdoms of the Middle Ages. There is an infinite signifi
cance in that term, which I want you to dwell upon and
work out ; it is a term which we use in a dim conscious
ness of the truth, but without fully penetrating into that of
which we are conscious. I want to deepen and make
clear to you this consciousness that the world has had
essentially a Trinity of ages — the Classical Age, the Mid
dle Age, the Modern Age ; each of these embracing races
and individuals of apparently enormous separation in kind,
but united in the spirit of their age, — the Classical Age
having its Egyptians and Ninevites, Greeks and Romans, —
the Middle age having its Goths and Franks, Lombards
and Italians, — the Modern Ages having their French and
English, Spaniards and Germans ; but all "these distinc
tions being in each case subordinate to the mightier and
broader distinction, between Classicalism, Medicevalistn,
and Modernism.
Now our object to-night is indeed only to inquire into a
matter of art ; but we cannot do so properly until we con
sider this art in its relation to the inner spirit of the age in

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 155
which it exists ; and by doing so we shall not only arrive at
the most just conclusions respecting our present subject,
hut we shall obtain the means of arriving at just conclu
sions respecting many other things.
Now the division of time which the Pre-Raphaelites
have adopted, in choosing Raphael as the man whose
works mark the separation between Mediffivalism and Mod
ernism, is perfectly accurate. It has been accepted as such
by all their opponents.
You have, then, the three periods : Classicalism, extend
ing to the fall of the Roman empire ; Mediavahsm, extend-"
ing from that fall to the close of the 15th century ; and
Modernism, thenceforward to our days.
And in examining into the spirit of these three epochs,
observe, I don't mean to compare their bad men, — I don't
mean to take Tiberius as a type of Classicalism, nor Ezze-
lin as a type of Mediaevalism, nor Robespierre as a type
of Modernism. Bad men are hke each other in all epochs ;
and in the Roman, the Paduan, or the Parisian, sensuality
and cruelty admit of little distinction in the manners of
their manifestation. But among men comparatively vir
tuous, it is important to study the phases of character ;
and it is into these only that it is necessary for us to
inquire. Consider therefore, first, the essential difference
in character between three of the most devoted military
heroes whom the three great epochs of the world have
produced^ — all three devoted to the service of their coun

156 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lbct. IV.
try, — all of them dying therein. I mean, Leonidas in the
Classical period, St. Louis in the Mediaeval period, and
Lord Nelson in the Modern period.
Leonidas had the most rigid sense of duty, and died
with the most perfect faith in the gods of his country,
fulfilling the accepted prophecy of his death. St. Louis
had the most rigid sense of duty, and the most perfect
faith in Christ. Nelson had the most rigid sense of duty,
and 
You must supply my pause with your charity.
Now you do not suppose that the main difference be
tween Leonidas and Nelson lay in the modern inventions
at the command of the one, as compared with the imper
fect military instruments possessed by the other. They
were not essentially different, in that the one fought with
lances and the other with guns. But they were essen
tially different in the whole tone of their religious belief.-
By this instance you may be partially prepared for the
bold statement I am going to make to you, as to the change
which constitutes modernism. I said just now that it was
like that of the worm to the butterfly. But the changes
which God causes in his lower creatures are almost always
from worse to better, while the changes which God allows
man to make in himself are very often quite the other way ;
like Adam's new arrangement of his nature. And in say
ing that this last change was like that of a chrysalis, I
meant only in the cpmpleteness of it, not in the- tendency

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 157
f^it. Instead of from the worm to the butterfly, it is very
possible it may have been from the butterfly to the worm.
Have patience with me for a moment after I tell you
what I believe it to have been, and give me a httle time to
justify my words.
I say that Classicalism began, wherever civilisation
began, with Pagan Faith. Mediaevalism began, and con
tinued, wherever civilisation began and continued to con
fess Christ, And) lastly, Modernism began and continues,
wherever civilisation began and continues to deny Christ.
You are startled, but give me a moment to explain.
What, you would say to me, do you mean to tell us that
we deny Christ ? we w,ho are essentially modern in every
one of our principles and feelings, and yet all of us pro-
fessilig believers in Christ, and we trust most of us true
ones? I answer. So far as we are believers indeed, we
are one with the faithful of all times, — one with the clas
sical believer of Athens and Ephesus, and one with the
mediaeval believer of the banks of the Rhone and the
Tallies of the Moiite Viso. But so far as, in various,
strange ways, some in great and some in small things, we
deny this belief, in so far we are essentially infected with
this spirit, which I call modernism.
For observe, the change of which I speak has nothing-
whEjitever to do with the Reformation, or with any of its
effects, it is a far broader thing than the Reformation.
It is a change which has taken place, not only in reformed

158 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lbct. IV
England, and reformed Scotland; but in unreformed
France, in unreformed Italy, in unreformed Austria. I
class honest Protestants and honest Roman Catholics for
the present together, under the general term Christians;
if you object to their being so classed together, Ipray your
pardon, but allow me to do so at present, for the sake of
perspicuity, if for nothing else ; and so classing them, I
say that a change took place, about the time of Raphael,
in the spirit of Roman Catholics and Protestants both ;
and that change consisted in the denial of their religious
belief, at least in the external and trivial affairs of life, and
often in far more serious things.
For instance, hear this direction to an upholsterer of the
early 13th century. Under the commands of the sheriff
of Wiltshire, he is thus ordered to make some alterations
in a room for Henry the Third. He is to " wainscot the
King's lower chamber, and to paint that wainscot of a
green colour, and to put a border to it, and to cause the
heads of kings and queens to be painted on the borders ;
and to paint on the Walls of the King's upper chamber the
story of St. Margaret, Virgin, and the four Evangehstsy
and to paint the wainscot of the same chamber of a green
colour, spotted with gold." *
Again, the sheriff of Wiltshire is ordered to "put two
small glass windows in the chamber of Edward the King's
* Liberate Rolls, preserved in the Tower of London, and quoted by Mr.
Turner in his History of the Domestic Architecture of England.

Lbct.IV.] and painting. 159
son ; and put a glass window in the chamber of our Queen
at Clarendon ; and in the same window cause to be painted
a Mary with her Child, and at the feet of the said Mary,
a queen with clasped hands."
Again, the sheriff of Southampton is ordered to " paint
the tablet beside the King's bed, with the figures of the
guards of the bed of Solomon, and to glaze with white
glass the windows in the King's great Hall at Northamp
ton, and cause the history of Lazarus and Dives to be
paintied in the same."
And so on ; I need not multiply instances. You see
that in all these cases, the furniture of the King's house is
made to confess his Christianity. It may be imperfect
and impure Christianity, but such as it might be, it was
all that men had then to live and die by; and you see
there was not a pane of glass in their windows, nor a pal
let by their bedside that did not confess and proclaim it.
Now, when ybu go home to your own rooms, supposing
them to be richly decorated at all, examine what that
decoration consists of. You will find Cupids, Graces,
Floras, Dianas, Jupiters, Junos. But you will not find,
except in the form of an engraving, bought principally for
its artistic beauty, either Christ, or the Virgin, or Lazarus
and Dives. And if a thousand years hence, any curious
investigator were to dig up the ruins of Edinburgh, and
not know your history, he would think you had all been

160 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
born heathens,. Now that, so far as it goes, is denying
Christ; it is pure Modernism. %
No, you will answer me, "you misunderstand and
calumniate us. We do not, indeed, choose tp have Dives
and Lazarus on our windows ; but that is not because we
are moderns, but because we are Protestants, and do not
like religious imagery." Pardon me : that is not the
reason. Go into any fashionable lady's boudoir in Paris,
and see if you will find Dives and Laza"rus there. You
will find, indeed, either that she has her private chapel, or
that she has a crucifix in her dressing room ; but for the
general decoration of the house, it, is all composed of
Apollos and Muses, just as it is here.
Again. What dp you suppose was the substance of
good education, the education of a knight, in the- Middle
.Ages 1 What was taught to a boy as soon as he was able
to learn anything? First, to keep under his body, and
bring it into subjection and perfect strength ; then to take
Christ for his captain, to live as always in his presence
and, finally, to do his devoir — mark the word — to all men'
Now, consider first, the difference in their influence over
the armies of France, between the ancient word "devoir,"
and modern word " gloire." And, again, ask yourselves
what you expect your own children to be taught at your
great schools and universities. Is it Christian history, or
the histories of Pan and Silenus ? Your present educa*

LM.IV.] AND PAMTLNG. 16'
tion, to all intents and purposes, denies Christ, and that la
intensely and peculiarly modernism.
Or, again, what dp you suppose was the proclaimed and
understood principle of all Christian governments in the
middle ages ? I do not say it was a principle acted up to,
or that the cunning and viplence of w icked men had not
too, often their full sway then, as now ; but on what prin
ciples were that cunning and violence, so far as was
possible, restrained I By the confessed fear of God, and
confessed authority of his law. You will find that all
treaties, laws, transactions whatsoever, in the middle ages,
are based on .a confession of Christianity as the leading
mle of life ; that a text of Scripture is held, in all public
assemblies, strong enough lo be set against an appearance
of expediency ; and although, in the end, the expediency
might triumph, yet it was never without a distinct allow
ance of Christian principle,, as an efficient element in the
consultation. Whatever error might be committed, at
least Christ was openly confessed. Now what is the
custom of your British Parhament in these days ? You
know that nothing would excite greater manifestations of
qontemptand disgust than the shghtest attempt to intro
duce -the authority of Scripture in a pohtical consultation.
That is denying ChrisJ;. It is intensely and peculiarly
modernism. It would he easy to go on showing you this same thing
in many more instances; but my business tp-night is tP

162 LECTURES ON ARCEITECTURB [Leot. IV
show you its full effect in one thing only, namely, in art,
and I must come straightway to that, as I have little
enough time. This, then, is the great and broad fact
which distinguishes modern art from old art ; that Ml
ancient art was religious, and all modern art is profane.
Once more, your patience for an iiistant. I say, allancient
art was religious ; that is to say, religion was its first
object ; private luxury or pleasure its second. I say, all
modern art is profane ; that is, private luxury or pleasure
is its first object ; rehgion its second. Now you all know,
that anything which makes rehgion its second object,
makes rehgion no object. God will put up with a great
many things in the human heart, but there is one thing he
will not put up with in it — a second place. He who offers
God a secPnd place, offers him no place. And there is
another mighty truth which you all know, that he who
makes religion his first object, makes it his whole object:
he has no other work ip the world than God's work.
Therefore I do not say that ancient art was more religious
than modern art. There is no question of degree in this'
matter. Ancient art was religious art ; modern art is
profane art ; and between the two the distinction is as firm
as between light and darkness.
Now, do not let what I say be encumbered in youi
minds with the objection, that you think art ought not to
be brought into the service of religion. That is not the
question at present — do not agitate it. The simple fact is,

Lbct. IV.] AND PAINTING. 163
that old art was brought into that service, and received
therein a peculiar form ; that modern art is not brought
into that service, and has received in consequence another
form ; that this is the great distinction between mediaeval
and modern art ; and from that are clearly deducible all
other essential differences between them. That is the
point I wish to show you, and of that there can be no
dispute. Whether or not Christianity be the purer for
lacking the service of art, is disputable — and I do not
mean now to begin the dispute ; but that art is the impurer
for not being in the service of Christianity, is indisputable,
and that is the main point I have now to do with.
Perhaps there are some of you here who would not
allow that the religion of the 13th century was Christiani
ty. Be it so, still is the statement true, which is all that
is necessary for me now to prove, that art was great be
cause it was devoted to such religion as then existed.
Grant that Roman Catholicism was not Christianity —
grant it, if you will, to be the same thing as old heathen
ism, — and still I say to you, whatever it was, men lived
and died by it, the ruling thought of all their thoughts ;
and just as classical art was greatest in building to its gods,
so mediaeval art was great in building to its godis, and
modern art is not great, because it builds to no God. You
have for instance, in your Edinburgh Library, a Bible ol
the 13th century, the Latin Bible, commonly known as the
Vulgate. It contains the Old and New Testaments, com-

164 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV
plete, besides the books of Maccabees, the Wisdom of
Solomon, the books of Judith, Baruch, and Tobit. The
whole is written in the most beautiful black-letter hand,
and each book begins with an illuminated letter, containing
three or four figures, illustrative of the book which it
begins. Now, whether this were done in the service of
true Christianity or not, the simple fact is, that here is a
man's lifetime taken up in writing and ornamenting a
Bible, as the sole end of his art ; and that: doing this either
in a book, or on a wall, was the common artist's life at the
time ; that the constant Bible reading and Bible thinking
which this work involved, made a man serious and thought
ful, and' a good workman, because he was always express
ing those feelings which, whether right or wrong, were the
groundwork of hi$ whole being. Now, about the year
1 500, this entire system was changed. Instead of the hfe
of Christ, men had, for the most part, to paint the lives of
Bacchus and Venus ; and if you walk through any public
gallery of pictures by the "great masters," as they are
called, you will indeed find here and there what is called a
Holy Family, painted for the sake of drawing pretty chil
dren, or a pretty woman ; but for the most part you will
find nothing but Floras, Pomonas, Satyrs, Graces, Baccha
nals, and Banditti. Now you will not declare — you cannot
believe,-^that Angelico painting the life of Christ, Benozzo"
painting the life of Abraham, Ghirlandajo painting the life
of the Virgin, Giotto painting the life of St. Francis, were

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 165
worse employed, or likely to .produce a less healthy art,
than Titian painting the Ipves of Venus and Adonis, than
Gorreggio painting the naked Antiope, than Salvator paint
ing the slaughters of the thirty years' war ? If you will
not let me call the one kind of labour Christian, and the
other unchristian, at least you will let me call the one
moral, and the other immoral, and that is all I ask you to .
admit. Now observe, hitherto I have been telling you what you
may feel inclined to doubt or dispute; and I must leave
you to consider the subject at your leisure. But hence
forward I tell you plain facts, which admit neither of doubt
nor dispute by any one who will take the pains to acquaint
himself with their subject-matter.
When the entire purpose of art was moral teaching, it
naturally took truth for its first object, and beauty, and
the pleasure resulting from -beauty, only for its second.
But when it lost all purpose of moral teaching, it as
naturally took beauty for its first object, and truth for its
second. That is to say, in all they did, the old artists endea
voured, in one way or another, to express the real facts of
the subject or event, this being their chief business : and
the question they first asked themselves was always, how
would this thing, or that, actually have occurred? what
would this person, or that, have done under the circum
stances? and then, having formed their conception, they

166 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV
work it out with only a secondary regard to grace, or
beauty, while a modern painter invariably thinks of the
grace and beauty of his work first, and unites afterwards
as much truth as he can with its conventional graces. I
will give you a single strong instance to make my meaning
plainer. In Orcagna's great fresco of the Triumph of
Death, one of the incidents is that three kings,* when.out
hunting, are met by a spirit, which, desiring them to follow
it, leads them to a churchyard, and points out tp them, in
open coffins, three bodies of kings such, as themselves, in
the last stages of corruption. Now a modern artist, repre
senting this, would have endeavoured .dimly and- faintly to
suggest the appearance of the dead bodies, and would have
* This incident is not of Orcagna's invention ; it is variously represented
in much earlier art. There is a curious and graphic drawing of it, circa
1300, in the MS. Arundel 83. Brit. Mus,, in which the three dead persdns
are walking, and are met by three queens, who severally utter the sen
tences, " Ich am aferd."
" Lo, whet ich se ?"
" Me thinketh hit beth develes thre."
To which the dead bodies answer ,—
" Ich wes wel fair."
" Such schelt ou be,"
'' For Godes love, be wer by me."
It is curious, that though the dresses of the living persons, and the "I
was "well fair " of the first dead speaker, seem to mark them distinctly to
be women, some longer legends belbw are headed "primus rex mortuus,"

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTUS'G. 167
made, or attempted to malce, the cPunten ances of the three
kings variously and solemnly expressive of thought. This
would be in his, or our, view, a -poetical and tasteful treat
ment of the subject. But Orcagna disdains both poetry
and taste ; he wants the facts only ; he wishes to give the
spectator the same lesson that the kings had ; and there
fore, instead of concealing the dead bodies, he paints them
with the most fearful detail. And then, he does not con
sider what the three kings might most gracefully do. He
considers only what they actually in all probability would
have done. He makes them looking at the coffins with a
startled stare, and one holding his nose. This is an ex
treme instance; but you are not to suppose it is because
Orcagna had naturally a coarse or prosaic mind. Where
he felt that thoughtfulness and beauty could properly be
introduced, as in his circles of saints and prophets, no
painter of the middle ages is so grand. I can give you no
better proof of this, than the one fact that Michael Angelo
borrowed from hira openly, — ^borrowed from him in the prin
cipal work which he ever executed, the Last Judgment,
and borrowed from him the principal figure in that work.
But it is just because Orcagna was so firmly and unscru
pulously true, that he had the power of being so great
when he chose. His arrow went straight to the mark.
It was not that he did not love beauty, but he loved truth
first. So it was with all the men of that time. No painters

168 LECTURES ON ARCmTECTURE [Lbct. IV
ever had more powPr of conceiving graceful form, or more
profound devotion to the beautiful ; but all these gifts and
affections are kept sternly subordinate to their moral
purpose ; and, so far as 1;heir powers and knowledge went,
they either painted from nature things as they were, or
from imagination things as they must have been.
I do not mean that' they reached any imitative resem
blance to nature. They had neither skill to do it, nor care
to do it. Their art was conventional and imperfect, but
they considered it only as a language wherein to convey
the knowledge of certain facts ; it was perfect enough for
that ; and -though always reaching on to greater attain
ments, they never suffered their imperfections to disturb
and check them in. their immediate purposes. And this
mode of treating all subjects was persisted in by the
greatest men until the close of the 15th century.
Now so justly have the Pre-Raphaehtes chosen their time
and name, that the great change which clouds the career
of mediaeval art was effected, not only in Raphael's time,
but by Raphael's own practice, and by his practice in the
very centre of his available life.
You remember, doubtless, what high ground we have
for placing the beginning of human intellectual strength
at about the age of twelve years.* Assume, therefoIBi
this period for the beginning of Raphael's strength. He
died at thirty-seven. And in his twenty-fifth year, one
* Luke ii. 42, 49.

Lect.IV.] and PAINTING. 169
half-year only past the precise centre of his available life,
he was sent for to Rome, to decerate the Vatican fpr Pope
Juhus IL, and having until that time worked exclusively
in the ancient and stern mediaeval manner, he, in the first
chamber which he decorated in that palaGe,-wrote upon
its wall the Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, of the Arts of
Christianity. And he wrote it thus : On one wall of that chamber he
placed a picture of the World or Kingdom of Theology,
presided over by Christ. And on the side wall of that
same chamber he placed the World or Kingdom of Poetry,
presided over by Apollo. And from that spot, and from
that hour, the intellect and the art of Italy date their
degradation. Observe, however, the significance of this fact is not in
the mere use of the figure of the heathen god to indicate
the domain pf poetry. Such a symbolical use had beeij
made of the figures of heathen deities in the best, times pf
Christian art. But it is in the fact, that being called to
Rome especially to adorn the palace of the so-called -head
of the church, and called as the chief representative of the
Christian artists of bis time, Raphael had neither religion
nor originality enough to trace the spirit of poetry and the
spirit of philosophy to the. inspiration of the true God, as
well as that of theology ; but that, on the contrary, he
elevated the creations of fancy on the one wall, to the same
rank as the object of faith upon the other; that in deliberate,
8

170 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV.
balanced, opposition to the Rock of the Mount Zion, he
reared the rock of Parnassus, and the rock of the Acropolis;
that, among the masters of poetry we find him enthroning
Petrarch and Pindar, but not Isaiah nor David, and for
lords over the domain of philosophy we find the masters
of the school of Athens, but neither of those greater
masters' by the last of whom that school was rebuked, —
those who received their wisdom from heaven itself, in the
vision of Gibeon,* and the hghtning of Damascus.
The doom of the arts of Europe went forth from that
chamber) and it was brought about in great part by the
very excellencies of the man who had thus marked the
commencement of decline. The perfection of execution '
and the beauty of feature which were attained in his
works, and in those of his great contemporaries, rendered
finish of execution and beauty of form the chief objects of
^11 artists; and thenceforward execution was looked for
rather than thought, and beauty rather than veracity, > •
And as I told you, these are the two secondary causes
of the decline of art ; the first being the loss of moral
purpose. Pray note them clearly. In mediaeval art,
thought is the first thing, execution the second ; in modern
art execution is the first thing, and thought the second.
And again, in mediaeval art, truth is first, beauty second ;
in modern art, beauty is first, truth second. The mediaeval
* 1 Kings, iii. 5.

LscT.IV.] AND PAINTING. 171
principles led up to Raphael, and the modern principles
lead dofmn from him.
Now, first, let me give you a familiar illustration of the
difference with respect to execution. Suppose you have
to teach two children drawing, one thoroughly clever and
active-minded, the other dull and slow; and you put
before thera ' JuUien's chalk studies of heads — etudes c
deux croyonff— and desire them to be copied. The dull
child will slowly do your bidding, blacken his paper and
rub it white again, and patiently and painfully, in the
course of three or four yeao-s, attain to the performance of
a chalk head, not much worse than his original, but still
of less value than the paper it is drawn upon. But the
clever child will not, or will only by force, consent to this
discipline. He finds other means of expressing himself
with his pencil somehow or another ; and presently you
find his paper covered with sketches of his grandfather
and grandmother, and uncles, and cousins, — sketches of
the room, and the house, and the cat, and the dog, and
the country outside, and everything in the world he can
set his eyes on ; and he gets on, and even his child's work
has a value in it — a truth which makes it worth keeping ;
no one knows how precious, perhaps, that portrait of his
grandfather may be, if any one has but the sense to keep •
it till the time when the old man can be seen no more up
the lawn, nor by the wood. That child is working in the
middle-age spirit — the other in the modern spirit.

172 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE .[Lect. IV
But there is something still more striking in the evils
which have resulted from the modern regardlessness of
truth. Consider, for instance, its effect on what is called
historical painting. What do you at present mean by
histprical painting ? Now-a-days, it means the endeavour
ing, by the power of imagination, to portray some histori
cal event of past days. But in the middle ages, it meant
representing the acts of their own days ; and that is the
only historical painting worth a straw. Of all the wastes
of time and sense which modernism has invented — and
they are many — none are so ridiculous as this endeavour
to represent past history. What do ypu suppose our
descendants will care for our imaginations of the events
of former days ? Suppose the Greeks, instead of repre
senting their own warriors as they fought at Marathon,
had left us nothing but their imaginations of Egyptian
battles ; and suppose the Italians, in like manner, instead
of pprtraits of Can Grande and Dante, or of Leo the
Tenth and Raphael, had left us nothing but imaginary
portraits of Pericles and Miltiades ? What fools we should
have thought them ! bow bitterly we should have been
provoked with their folly ! And that is precisely what our
descendants will feel towards us, so far as our grand his
torical and classical schools are concerned. What do we
care, they will say, what those 19th century people fancied
abput Greek and Roman history ! If they had left us a
few plain and rational sculptures and pictures of their own

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. - 173
battles, and their own men, in their everyday dress, we
should have thanked them. Well, but, you will say, we
have left them portraits of our great men, and paintings
of our great battles. Yes, you have indeed, and that is
the only historical painting that you either have or can
have ; but you don't call that historical painting. You
don't thank the men who do it ; you look down upon them
and dissuade them from it, and tell them they don't belong
to the grand schools. And yet they are the only true his
torical painters, and the only men who will produce any
effect on their own generation, or on any other. Wilkie
was an historical painter, Chantrey an historical sculptor,
because they painted, or carved, the veritable things and
men they saw, not men and thiiigs as they believed they
might have been, or should have been. But no one tells
such men they are historical painters, and they are discon
tented with what they do ; and poor Wilkie must needs
travel to see the grand school, and imitate the grand
school, and ruin himself. And you have had multitudes
of other painters ruined, from the beginning, by that grand
school. There was Etty, naturally as good a painter as
ever lived, but no one told him what to paint, and he
studied the antique, and the grand schools, and. painted
dances of nymphs in red and yellow shawls to the end of
his days.- Much good may they do you ! He is gone to
the grave, a lost mind. There was Flaxman, another
naturally great man, with as true an eye for nature as

174 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV
Raphael, — he stumbles over the blocks of the antique
statues — wanders in the dark valley of their ruins to the
end of his days. He has left you a few outlines of mus
cular men straddling and frowning behind round shields.
Much good may they do you ! Another lost mind. And
of those who are lost namelessly, who have not strength
enough even to make themselves known, the poor pale
students who lie buried for ever in the abysses of the great
schools, no account can be rendered ; they are numberless.
And the wonderful thing is, that of all these men whom
you now have come to call the great masters, there was
not one who confessedly did not paint his own present
world, plainly and truly. Homer sang of what he saw ;'
Phidias carved what he saw ; Raphael painted the men of
his own time in their own caps and mantles ; and every
man who has arisen to eminence in modern times has done
so altogether by his working in their way, and doing the
things he saw. How did Reynolds rise ? Not by painting
Greek women, but by painting the glorious little living
ladies this, and ladies that, of his own time. How did
Hogarth rise ? Not by painting Athenian follies, but Lon
don follies. Who are the men who have made an impres
sion upon you yourselves, — upon your' own age? I sup
pose the most popular painter of the day is Landseer. Do
you suppose he studied dogs and eagles out of the Elgin
Marbles ? And yet in the very face of these plain, incon
trovertible, all-visible facts, we go on frpm year tP year

Lbct. IV.] AND PAINTING. 175
with the base system of Academy teaching, in spite of
which every one of these men have risen : I say in spite
of the entire method and aim of our art-teaching. Il
destroys the greater number of its pupils altogether; it
hinders and paralyses the greatest. There is not a living
painter whose eminence is not in spite of everything he
has been taught from his youth upwards, and who, what
ever his eminence may be, has not suffered much injury in
the course of his victory. For observe : this love of what
is called ideality or beauty in preference to truth, operates
not only in making us choose the past rather than the
present for our -subjects, but it makes us falsify the present
when we do take it for our subject. I said just now that
portrait-painters were historical painters; — so they are;
but not good ones, because not faithful ones. The begin
ning and end of modern portraiture is adulation. The
painters cannot hve but by flattery ; we should desert
them if they spoke honestly. And therefore we can have
no good portraiture ; for in the striving after that which is
not in their model, they lose the inner and deeper nobleness
which is in their model. I saw not , long ago, for the first .
time, the portrait of a man whom I knew well, — a young
man, but a religious man, — and one who had suffered
much from sickness. The whole dignity of his features
and person depended upon the expression of serene, yet
solemn, purpose sustaining a feeble frame ; and the painter,
by way of flattering him, strengthened, him, and made hi no

176 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lbct. IV.
athletic in body, gay in countenance, idle in gesture ; and
the whole- power and being of the man himself were lost
And this is still more the case with our public portraits
You have a portrait, for instance, of the Duke of Welling
ton at the end of the North Bridge,^one of the thousand
equestrian statues of Modernism, — studied from the show-
riders of the araphitheatre, with their horses on their hind-
legs in the saw-dust.* Do you suppose that was the way
* I intended this last sentence of course to apply to the thousand statues,
not definitely -to the one in immediate question, which, though tainted
with the modem affectation, and the nearest example of it to which I
could refer an Edinburgh audience, is the work of a most promising
sculptor ; aud was indeed so far executed on the principles asserted in the
text, that the Duke gave Mr. Steele a sitting on horseback, in. order that.
his mode of riding might be accurately represented. This, however does
not render the following jemarks in the text nugatory, as it may easily be
imagined that the action of the Duke, exhibiting his riding in his own
grounds, would be different from his action, or inaction, when watching
the course of a battle.-
I must also make a most definite exception in favour of Marochetti, who
seems to me a thoroughly great sculptor ; and whose statue of Coeur de
Lion, though, according to the principle just stated, not to be considered
an historical work, is au ideal work of the highest beauty and value. Its
erection in front of Westminister Hall will tend" more to educate the
public eye and mind -with respect to art, than anything we have done in
London for centuries.
******
April 21st. — I stop the press in order to insert the following paragraph
from to-day's Times :— " The Statue of Cceub De Lion.— Yesterday morn
ing a number of workmen were engaged iu pulling do-nr;! the cast -ivhic>

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 177
the Duke sat when your destinies depended on him ? when
the foam hung from the lips of his tired horse, and its wet
limbs were dashed with the bloody slime of the battle ¦
field, and he himself sat anxious in his quietness, grieved
in his fearlessness, as he watched, scythe-stroke by scythe-
stroke, the gathering in of the harvest of deatn ? You
would have done something had you thus left his image in
the enduring iron, but nothing now.
But the time has at last come for all this to be put an
end to ; and nothing can well be more extraordinary than
the way in which the men have risen who are to do it.
Pupils in the same schools, receiving precisely the same
instruction which for so long a time has paralysed every
one of our painters, — these boys agree in disliking to copy
the antique statues set before them. They copy them as
they are bid, and they copy them better than any one else,
they carry off prize after prize, and yet they hate their
work. At last they are admitted to study from, the life ;
they find the life very different from the antique, and say
so. Their teachers tell them the antique is the best, and
they mustn't copy the life. They agree among themselves
was placed in New Palace Yard of the colossal equestrian statue of Richard
Coeur de Lion. Sir C. Barry was, we believe, opposed to the cast remain
ing there any longer, and to the putting up of the statue itself on the
same site, because it did not harmonize with the building. During the
day the horse and figure were removed, and before night the pedestal was
demolished and taken away." 8*

17S LECTURES ON ARCHITBCTURE [Lect. IV
that they like the life, and that copy it they will. They
do copy it faithfully, and their masters forthwith declare
them to be lost men. Their fellow-students hiss them
whenever they enter the room. They can't help it ; they
join hands and tacitly resist both the- hissing and the
instruction. Accidentally, a few prints of the works of
Giotto, a few casts from those of Ghiberti, fall into their
hands, and they see in these something they never saw
before — something intensely and everlastingly true. They
examine farther into the matter ; they discover for them
selves the greater part of what I have laid before you to
night ; they form themselves into a body, and enter upon
that crusade which has hitherto been victorious. And
which will be absolutely and triumphantly victorious.
The great mistake which has hitherto prevented the public
mind from fully going with them raust soon be corrected.
That mistake was the supposition that, instead of wishing
to recur to the principles of the early ages, these raen
wished to bring back the ignorance of the early ages.
This notion, grounded first on some hardness in their
earlier works, which resulted — as it must always result —
frofti the downright and earnest effort to paint nature as in
a looking-glass, was fostered partly by the jealousy of their
beaten competitors, and partly by the pure, perverse, and
hopeless ignorance of the whole body of art-critics, so
called, connected with the press. No notion was ever
more baseless or more ridiculous. It was asserted that

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 179
the Pre-Raphaelites did not draw well, in the face of the
fact, that the principal member pf their body, from the
time he entered the schools of the Academy, had hterally
encumbered himself with the medals, given as prizes foi
drawing, It was asserted that they did not draw in per
spective, by men who themselves knew no more of per
spective than they did of astrology ; it was asserted that
they sinned against the appearances of nature, by men
who had never drawn so much as a leaf or a blossom from
nature in their lives. And, lastly, when all these calum
nies or absurdities would tell no more, and it began to be
forced upon men's unwilling belief that the style of the
Pre-Raphaelites was true and was according to nature, the
last forgery invented respecting them is, that they copy
photographs. You observe how completely this last piece
of malice defeats all the rest. It admits they are true to
nature, though only that it may deprive them of all merit
in being sp. But it may itself be at once refuted by the
bold , challenge to their opponents to produce a Pre-
Raphaelite picture, or anything like one, by themselves
copying a photograph.
Let me at once clear your minds from all theSe doubts,
and at once contradict all these calumnies.
Pre-Raphaelitism has but one principle, that of absolute,
uncompromising truth in all that it does, obtained by
working everything, down tp the mpst minute detail, frpm

180 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [LSct. IV
nature, and from nature only.* Every Pre-Raphaelite
landscape background is painted to the last touch, in the
open air, from the thing itself. Every Pre-Raphaehte
figure, however studied in expression, is a true portrait of
some living persoi^. Every minute accessory is painted in
the same manner. And one of the chief reasons for the
violent opposition with which the school has been attacked
by other artists, is the enormous cost of care and labbui
which such a system demands from those who adopt it,
in contradistinction to the present slovenly and imperfect
style. This is the main Pre-Raphaelite principle. But the
battle which its supporters have to fight is a hard one;
and for that battle they have been fitted by a very peculiar
character. You perceive that the principal resistance they have to
make is to that spurious beauty, whose attractiveness had
tempted men to forget, or to despise, the moro noble
quality of sincerity : and in order at once to put them
* Or, where imagination is necessarily trusted to, by always endeavour
ing to conceive a fact as it really was likely to have happened, rather than
as it most prettily might have happened. The various members of the
school are not all equally severe in carrying out its principles, some of
them trusting their memory or fancy very far ; only all agreeing in the
effort to make their memories so accurate as to seem like portraiture, and
their fancy so probable as to seem like memory.

Lect. IV.] AND PAINTING. 181
beyond the power of temptation from this beauty, they
are, as a body, characterized by a total absence of sensi
bility to the ordinary and popular forms of artistic grace
fulness ; while, to all that still lower kind of prettiness,
which regulates the disposition of our .scenes upon the
stage, and which appesirs in our lower art, as in our
annuals, our common-place portraits, and statuary, the
PreTRaphaelites are not only dead, but they regard it with
a contempt and aversion approaching to disgust. This
character is absolutely necessary to them in the present
time ; but it, of course, occasionally renders their work
comparatively unpleasing. As the school becomes less
aggressive, and raore authoritative, — which it will do, —
they will enhst into their ranks men who will wprk,
mainly, upon their principles, and yet embrace more of
those characters which are generally attractive, and this
great ground of offence will be removed.
Again ; you observe that, as landscape painters, their
principles must, in great part, confine them to mere fore
ground work ; and singularly enough, that they may not
be tempted away from this work, they have been borne
with comparatively httle enjoyment of those evanescent
effects and distant sublimities which nothing but the
memory can arrest, and nothing but a daring conven
tionalism portray. But for this work they are not needed
Turner had done it before them ; he, though his capacity
embraced everything, and though he would sometimes, in

182 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Lect. IV
his foregrounds, paint the spots upon a dead trout, and the
dyes upon a butterfly's wing, yet for the most part
delighting to begin at that very point where Pre-Raphael
itism becomes powerless.
Lastly. The habit of constantly carrying everything
up to the utmost point pf completion deadens the Pre-
Raphaelites in general to the merits of men who, with an
equal love of truth up to a eertain point, yet express them
selves habitually with speed and power, rather than with
finish, and give abstracts of truth rather than total truth.
Probably to the end of time artists will more or less be
divided into these classes, and it will be impossible to
make men like Millais understaujd fhe merits of men like,,
1 intoret ; but this is the more to be regretted because the
Pre-Raphaelites have enormous powers of imagination, as
well as of realisation, and do not yet themselves know of
how much they would be capable, if they sometimes
worked on a larger scale, and with a less laborious finish.
With all their faults, their pictures are, since Turner's
death, the best — incomparably the best — on the walls of
the Royal Academy; and siich works as Mr. Hunt's
Claudio and Isabella have never been rivalled, in some
respects never approached, at any other period of art.
This I believe to be a most candid statement of all their
faults and all their deficiencies ; not such, you perceive,
as are likely to arrest their progress. The " magna est
Veritas" was never more sure of acccmplishment than by

Lect, IV.] AND PAINTING. 183
these men. Their adversaries have no chance with them.
They will gradually unite their influence with whatever
is true or powerful in the reactionary art of other countries ;
and on their works such a school will be founded as shall
justify the third age of the world's civilisation, and render
it as great in creation as it has been in discovery.
And now let rae remind you but of one thing more. As
you examine into the career of historical painting, you
will be more and more struck with the fact I have this
evening stated to you, — that none was ever truly great
but that which represented the living forms and daily
deeds of the people among whom it arose ; -^that all
precious historical ,work records, not the past but the
present. Remember, therefore, that it is not so much in
buying pictures, as in being pictures, that you can encour
age a noble school, jThe best patronage of art is not that
which seeks for the p]eas.ures of sentiment in a vague
ideahty, nor for beauty of form in a marble image ; but
that which educates your children into living heroes, and
binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart intP
practical duty and faithful devotion./

ADDENDA

TO
THE FOURTH LECTURE.

I COULD not enter, in a popular lecture, upon one
imtricate and difficult question, closely connected with the
subject of Pre-Raphaelitism — ^namely, the relation of
invention to observation ; and compo^tion tp imitation.
It is still less a question to be discussed in the compass
of a note ; and I must defer all careful examination of it
to a future opportunity. Nevertheless, it is impossible to
leave altogether unanswered the first objection which is
now most comraonly made to the Pre-Raphaelite work,
namely, that the principle of it seems adverse to all
exertion of imaginative power. Indeed, such an objection
sounds strangely on the lips of a public who have been in
the habit of purchasing, for 'hundreds of pounds, small
squares of Dutch canvas, containing only servile imitations

Adbenda.] and PAINTING. 185
of the coarsest nature. It is strange that an imitation pf
a cow's head by Paul Potter, or of an old woman's by
Ostade, or pf a scene of tavern debauchery by Teniers,
should be purchased and proclaimed for high art, while
the rendering of the most noble expressions of human
-feeUng in Hunt's Isabella, or of the loveliest Enghsh land-
scape, haunted by sorrow, in Millais' Ophelia, should be
declared "puerile." But, strange though the utterance
of it be, there is some weight in the objection. It is true
that so long as the Pre-Raphaelites only paint from
nature, however carefully selected and grouped, their '
pictures can never have the characters of the highest class
of compositions. But, on the other hand, the shallow and
conventional arrangements commonly called " composi
tions" by the artists of the present day, are infinitely
farther from great art than the most patient work of the
Pre-Raphaelites. -That work is, even in its humblest
form, a secure foundation, capable of infinite superstruc
ture ; a reality of true value, as far as it reaches, while
the common artistical effects and groupings are a vain
effort at superstructure without foundation — ^utter negation
and fallacy from beginning to end.
But more than this, the very faithfulness of the Pre-
Raphaelites arises from the redundance of their imagina
tive power. Not only can all the members of the school
compose a thousand times better than the men who pretend
to look down upon them, but I question whether even the

186 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Adbenda
greatest men of old limes possessed more exhaustless
invention than either Millais or Rossetti ; and it is partly
the very ease with which they invent which leads them to
despise invention. Men who have no imagination, but
have learned merely to produce a spurious resemblance of
its results by the recipes of composition, are apt to value
themselves mightily on their concoctive science ; but the
man whose mind a thousand living imaginations haunt,
every hour, is apt to care too little for, them ; and to long
for the perfect truth which he finds is not to be come at so
easily. And though I may perhaps hesitatingly admit that
it is possible to love this truth of reahty too intensely, yet
I have no hesitation in declaring that there is no hope for
those who despise it, and that the painter, whoever he be,
who despises the pictures already produced by the Pre-
R'dphaelites, has himself no capacity of becoming a great
painter of any kind. Paul Veronese and Tintoret them-.,
selves, without desiring to imitate the Pre-Raphaelite
work, would have looked upon it with deep respect, as
John Bellini looked on that of Albert Durer ; none but
the ignorant could be unconscious of its truth, and none
but the insincere regardless of it. How far it is possible
for men educated on the severest Pre-Raphaelite principles
to advance from their present style into that of the great
schools of composition, I do not care to inquire, for at thij
period such an advance is certainly not desirable. Of
great compositions we have enough, and more than enough,

Addenda.] AND PAINTING. 187
and it would be well for the world if it were willing tp
take some care of those it has. Of pure and manly truth,
of stern statement of the things done and seen around us
daily, we have hithertp had nothing. And in art, as in all
other things, besides the literature of which it speaks, that
sentence of Carlyle is inevitably and irreversibly true : —
" Day after day, looking at the high destinies which yet
await literature, which literature will ere long address
herself with more decisiveness than ever to fulfil,' it grows
clearer to us that the proper task of literature lies in the
domain of Belief, within which, poetic fiction, as it is
charitably named, will have to take a quite new figure, if
allowed a settlement there. Whereby were it not reason
able to prophecy that this exceeding great multitude of
novel writers and such like, must, in a new generation,
gradually do one of two things, either rietire into nurseries,
and work for children, minors, and semifatuous persons of
both sexes, or else, what were far better, sweep their
novel-fabric into the dust cart, and betake them. With such
faculty as they have, to understand and record what is true,
of which surely there is and for ever will be a whole
infinitude unknown to us, of infinite importance to us.
Poetry will more and more come to be understood as
nothing but higher knowledge, and the only genuine
Romance for grown persons, Reahty."
As I was copying this sentence, a pamphlet was put
into my hand, written by a clergyman, denouncing " Woa

188 LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE [Addenda.
woe, woe ! to exceedingly young men of stubborn instincts,
calhng themselves Pre-Raphaelites." *
I thank God that the Pre-Raphaelites are young, and
that strength is still with them, and hfe, with all the war
of it, still in frpnt of them. Yet Everett Millais is this
year of the exact age at which Raphael painted the
Disputa, his greatest work ; Rossetti and Hunt are both
of them older still, — nor is there one member of the body
so young as Giotto, when he was chosen from among the
painters of Italy to decorate the Vatican. But Italy, in
her great period, knew her great men, and did not " despise
their youth." It is reserved for England to insult the
strength of her noblest children — to wither their warm
enthusiasm early into the bitterness of patient battle, and
leave to those whom she should have cherished and aided,
no hope but in resolution, no refuge but in disdain.
Indeed it is woeful, when the young usurp the place,
or despise the wisdom, of the aged ; and among the many
dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence
of youth are among the darkest. But with whom is the
fault ? Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had
not lost its honour; nor did childhood ever refuse its
reverence, except where age had forgotten correction.
* Art, its Constitution and Capacities, &c. by the Rev. Edward Young,
M.A. The phrase " exceedingly young men, of stubborn instincts," being
twice quoted (carefully excluding tho context) from my pamphlet on Pre-
Raphaelitism.

Adbenda.] AND PAINTING. 189
The cry, " Go up thou bald head," will never be heard in
the land which remembers the precept, " See that ye
despise not one of these little ones ;" and although indeed
y^ttth may become despicable, when its eager hope is
changed into presumption,- and its progressive power into
arrested pride, there is spmething more despicable still, in
the old age which has learned neither judgraent nor gentle
ness, which is weak without charity, and cold without
discretion.

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