h 
 
 ISTITUTO UNIVERSITARtO OLANDESE A FIRENZE 
 
 IN BRUIKLEEN VAN KUNSTHISTORISCH INSTITUUT 
 
 TE UTRECHT 
 
Zbc flew THniv>etsaI Xibrarg 
 
 THE SEVEN LAMPS 
 
 OF 
 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
THE UNIVERSAL EDITION OF 
 JOHN RUSKIN'S WORKS 
 
 Modern Painters, 5 vols.; with 314 illustrations and 
 plates, and 1 coloured plate. 
 
 The Stones of Venice, 3 vols. ; with 166 illustrations 
 and plates, and 7 coloured plates. 
 
 The Seven Lamps of Architecture ; with 14 plates. 
 
 Lectures on Architecture and Painting; with 23 illus- 
 trations. 
 
 Elements of Drawing ; with 48 illustrations. 
 
 ' Unto this Last '. 
 
 The Two Paths : on Decoration and Manufacture ; 
 with 2 plates and 12 illustrations. 
 
 The Political Economy of Art, subsequently called 
 A Joy for Ever. 
 
 Selections from his Writings. 
 
 The Poetry of Architecture ; with all the original illus- 
 trations. 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, and Notes on Pictures. 
 
 The Harbours of England ; with all the original illus- 
 trations. 
 
 The Elements of Perspective ; with 80 figures. 
 
 Sesame and Lilies. [June 1907. 1 
 
 The illustrations and plates are throughout printed 
 on art paper. 
 
 The other works to follow in course. 
 
, . W -■ J L__ 
 
 ,»A^f.«L 
 
 \/n»/t. 
 
THE SEVEN LAMPS 
 OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 By 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 With Illustrations drawn by the Author 
 
 WITH AN INDEX {n<nv first added) 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS Limited 
 
 New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO 
 
First Edition in the New Universal Library, 
 
 February, 1907. 
 
 Second Impression, March, 1907. 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 C!IAP. 
 
 Introductory 
 
 page 
 
 1 
 
 I. The Lamp of Sacrifice . 
 
 8 
 
 j II. The Lamp of Truth . 
 
 . 31 
 
 III. The Lamp of Power 
 
 . 71 
 
 \ IV. The Lamp of Beauty 
 
 . 10G 
 
 V. The Lamp of Life 
 
 . 154 
 
 VI. The Lamp of Memory 
 
 . 184 
 
 VII. The Lamp of Obedience . 
 
 . 208 
 
 Notes ...... 
 
 . 225 
 
 {ndex ...... 
 
 . 233 
 
 S.L.A. 
 
LIST OF PLATES 
 
 'late To face 
 
 Page 
 I. Ornaments from Rouen, St Lo, and Venice 28 
 II. Part of the Cathedral of St Lo, Normandy 56 
 III. Traceries from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, and 
 
 Beauvais ...... CO 
 
 17. Intersectional Mouldings ... 68 
 
 V. Capital from the Lower Arcade of the Doge's 
 
 Palace, Venice ..... 92 
 
 VI. Arch from the Facade of the Church of San 
 
 Michele at Lucca .... 95 
 
 VII. Pierced Ornaments from Lisieux, Bayeux, 
 
 Verona, and Padua .... 98 
 
 VIII. Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice . 100 
 IX. Tracery from the Campanile of Giotto, at 
 
 Florence ..... Title page 
 
 X. Traceries and Mouldings from Rouen and 
 
 Salisbury ...... 130 
 
 XI. Balcony in the Campo St Benedetto, Venice 140 
 XII. Fragments from Abbeville, Lucca, Venice, 
 
 and Pisa ...... 162 
 
 XIII. Portions of an Arcade on the South Side of 
 
 the Cathedral of Ferrara . . .176 
 
 XIV. Sculptures from the Cathedral of Rouen . 180 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 The memoranda which form the basis of the following 
 Essay have been thrown together during the prepar- 
 ation of one of the sections of the third volume of 
 Modem Painters 1 . I once thought of giving them a 
 more expanded form ; but their utility, such as it 
 may be, would probably be diminished by farther 
 delay in their publication, more than it would be 
 increased by greater care in their arrangement. Ob- 
 tained in every case by personal observation, there 
 may be among them some details valuable even to the 
 experienced architect ; but with respect to the opinions 
 founded upon them I must be prepared to bear the 
 charge of impertinence which can hardly but attach 
 to the writer who assumes a dogmatical tone in speaking 
 of an art he has never practised. There are, however, 
 cases in which men feel too keenly to be silent, and 
 perhaps too strongly to be wrong ; I have been forced 
 
 1 The inordinate delay in the appearance of that supple- 
 mentary volume has, indeed, been chiefly owing to the 
 necessity under which the writer felt himself, of obtaining 
 as many memoranda as possible of mediaeval buildings in 
 Italy and Normandy, now in process of destruction, before 
 that destruction should be consummated by the Restorer, 
 or Revolutionist. His whole time has been lately occupied 
 in taking drawings from one side of buildings, of which 
 masons were knocking down the other ; nor can he yet 
 pledge himself to any time for the publication of the con- 
 clusion of Modern Painters : he can only promise that its 
 delay shall not be owing to any indolence on his part. 
 
x PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITIOX 
 
 into this impertinence ; and have suffered too much 
 from the destruction or neglect of the architecture I 
 best loved, and from the erection of that which I cannot 
 love, to reason cautiously respecting the modesty of my 
 opposition to the principles which have induced the 
 scorn of the one, or directed the design of the other. 
 And I have been the less careful to modify the confi- 
 dence of my statements of principles, because, in the 
 midst of the opposition and uncertainty of our archi- 
 tectural systems, it seems to me that there is some- 
 1 hing grateful in any positive opinion, though in many 
 points wrong, as even weeds are useful that grow on a 
 bank of sand. 
 
 Every apology is, however, due to the reader for 
 the hasty and imperfect execution of the plates. Hav- 
 ing much more serious work in hand, and desiring 
 merely to render them illustrative of my meaning, I 
 have sometimes very completely failed even of that 
 humble aim ; and the text, being generally written 
 before the illustration was completed, sometimes naively 
 describes as sublime or beautiful, features which the 
 plate represents by a blot. I shall be grateful if the 
 reader will in such cases refer the expressions of praise 
 to the Architecture, and not to the illustration. 
 
 So far, however, as their coarseness and rudeness 
 admit, the plates are valuable ; being either copies of 
 memoranda made upon the spot, or (Plates IX and XI) 
 enlarged and adapted from Daguerreotypes, taken 
 under my own superintendence. Unfortunately, the 
 great distance from the ground of the window which 
 is the subject of Plate IX renders even the Daguerro- 
 type indistinct ; and I cannot answer for the accuracy of 
 any of the mosaic details, more especially of those 
 surrounding the window, which I rather imagine, in the 
 original, to be sculptured in relief. The general 
 proportions are, however, studiously preserved; the 
 spirals of the shafts are counted, and the effect of the 
 whole is as near that of the thing itself, as is necessary 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION xi 
 
 for the purposes of illustration for which the plate is 
 given. For the accuracy of the rest I can answer, even 
 to the cracks in the stones, and the number of them ; 
 and though the looseness of the drawing, and the 
 picturesque character which is necessarily given by 
 an endeavour to draw old buildings as they actually 
 appear, may perhaps diminish their credit for archi- 
 tectural veracity, they will do so unjustly. 
 
 The system of lettering adopted in the few instances 
 in which sections have been given, appears somewhat 
 obscure in the references, but it is convenient upon 
 the whole. The line which marks the direction of any 
 section is noted, if the section be symmetrica], by a 
 single letter, as a ; and the section itself b} r the same 
 letter with a line over it — a. But if the section be 
 unsymmetrical, its direction is noted by two letters, 
 a. a 2 , at its extremities ; and the actual section by the 
 same letters with lines over them, a. d 2 , at the corre- 
 spondent extremities. 
 
 The reader will perhaps be surprised by the small 
 number of buildings to which reference has been made. 
 But it is to be remembered that the following chapters 
 pretend only to be a statement of principles, illus- 
 trated each by one or two examples ; not an Essay on 
 European architecture ; and those examples I have 
 generally taken either from the buildings which I love 
 best, or from the schools of architecture which, it 
 appeared to me, have been less carefully described than 
 they deserved. I could as fully, though not with the 
 accuracy and certainty derived from personal ob- 
 servation, have illustrated the principles subsequently 
 advanced, from the architecture of Egypt, India, or 
 Spain, as from that to which the reader will find his 
 attention chiefly directed, the Italian Romanesque 
 and Gothic. But my affections, as well as my experi- 
 ence, led me to that line of richly varied and magni- 
 ficently intellectual schools, which reaches, like a high 
 watershed of Christian architecture, from the Adriatic 
 
xii PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 to the Northumbrian seas, bordered by the impure 
 schools of Spain on the one hand, and of Germany on 
 the other : and as culminating points and centres of 
 this chain, I have considered, first, the cities of the Val 
 d'Arno, as representing the Italian Romanesque and 
 pure Italian Gothic ; Venice and Verona as representing 
 the Italian Gothic coloured by Byzantine elements ; 
 and Rouen, with the associated Norman cities, Caen, 
 Bayeux, and Coutances, as representing the entire 
 range of Northern architecture from the Romanesque 
 to Flamboyant. 
 
 I could have wished to have given more examples 
 from our early English Gothic ; but I have always 
 found it impossible to work in the cold interiors of 
 our cathedrals ; while the daily services, lamps, and 
 fumigation of those upon the Continent, render them 
 perfectly safe. In the course of last summer I under- 
 took a pilgrimage to the English Shrines, and begun 
 with Salisbury, where the consequence of a few days' 
 work was a state of weakened health, which I may be 
 permitted to name among the causes of the slightness 
 and imperfection of the present Essay. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND 
 EDITION 
 
 Since the publication of the first edition of this work, 
 the pursuit of the inquiries I then proposed to myself 
 has enabled me to speak with certainty upon some sub- 
 jects which at the time when the following pages were 
 first arranged, I was obliged to approach with hesita- 
 tion. 
 
 I have not, however, except in unimportant particu- 
 lars, altered the body of the text, or added to it. I 
 would only request the reader not to regard it as a 
 complete exponent of the views I am at present engaged 
 in advocating, but rather as an introduction to the 
 more considered and careful statements of those views 
 given in The Stones of Venice, and in my Lectures 
 delivered at Edinburgh. 
 
 I cannot, however, allow this work to pass a second 
 time through the press, without stating in its preface the 
 most important of all the ultimate principles which I 
 have been able subsequently to ascertain. 
 
 I found, after carefully investigating the character 
 of the emotions which were generally felt by well- 
 educated people respecting various forms of good 
 architecture, that these emotions might be separated 
 into four general heads : 
 
 1. Sentimental Admiration. The kind of feeling 
 which most travellers experience on first entering a 
 cathedral by torchlight, and hearing a chant from 
 concealed choristers ; or in visiting a ruined abbey by 
 moonlight or any building with which interesting 
 
xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 associations are connected, at any time when they can 
 hardly see it. 
 
 2. Proud Admiration. The delight which most 
 worldly people take in showy, large, or complete build- 
 ings, for the sake of the importance which such build- 
 ings confer on themselves, as their possessors, or 
 admirers. 
 
 3. Workmanly Admiration. The delight of seeing 
 good and neat masonry, together with that belonging 
 to incipient developments of taste ; as, for instance, a 
 perception of proportion in lines, masses, and mould- 
 ings. 
 
 4. Artistical and rational Admiration. The delight 
 taken in reading the sculpture or painting on walls, 
 capitals, friezes, etc. 
 
 Of these four kinds of feeling I found, on farther 
 inquiry, that the first, or sentimental kind, was instinc- 
 tive and simple ; excitable in nearly all persons, by a 
 certain amount of darkness and slow music in a minor 
 key. That it had good uses, and was of a dignified 
 character in some minds ; but that on the whole it 
 was apt to rest in theatrical effect, and to be as well 
 satisfied with the incantation scene in Robert le Diable, 
 provided there were enough gauze and feux-follets, 
 as by the Cathedral of Rheims. That it might gener- 
 ally be appealed to with advantage as a judge of the 
 relative impressiveness of two styles of art, but was 
 wholly unable to distinguish truth from affectation 
 in the style it preferred. Even in its highest manifesta- 
 tion, in the great mind of Scott, while it indeed led him 
 to lay his scenes in Melrose Abbey and Glasgow Cathe- 
 dral, rather than in St Paul's or St Peter's, it did not 
 enable him to see the difference between true Gothic 
 at Glasgow, and false Gothic at Abbotsford. As a 
 critical faculty, I found it was hardly to be taken into 
 consideration in any reasoning on the higher merits of 
 architecture. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xv 
 
 2. Proud Admiration. This kind of applause, so 
 far from being courted, I found ought altogether to be 
 deprecated by the noble architect, and that no building 
 could be really admirable which was not admirable to 
 the poor. So that there was an essential baseness in 
 the Renaissance (i.e. the modern Italian and Greek 
 style), and an essential nobleness in the Gothic, con- 
 sisting simply in the pride of the one, and the humilitj'- 
 of the other. I found the love of largeness, and 
 especially of symmetry, invariably associated with 
 vulgarity and narrowness of mind, so that the person 
 most intimately acquainted with the mind of the 
 monarch to whom the Renaissance architecture owed 
 its principal impulse, describing his principles of 
 religion, states that he ' was shocked to be told that 
 Jesus Christ spoke the language of the humble and the 
 poor ' ; and, describing his taste in architecture, says 
 that he ' thought of nothing but grandeur, magnifi- 
 cence, and symmetry '. l 
 
 3. Workmanly Admiration. This, of course, though 
 right within certain limits, is wholly uncritical, being 
 as easily satisfied with the worst as with the best build- 
 ing, so that the mortar be laid smoothly. As to the 
 feeling with which it is usually united, namely, a de- 
 light in the intelligent observance of the proportions of 
 masses, it is good in all the affairs of life, whether 
 regulating the disposition of dishes at a dinner table,' 
 of ornaments on a dress, or of pillars in a portico. But 
 it no more constitutes the true power of an architect, 
 than the possession of a good ear for metre constitutes 
 
 1 Madame de Main tenon, quoted in Quarterly Review, March, 
 1855, pp. 423-8. She says, afterwards: 'He prefers to 
 endure all the draughts from the doors, in order that they 
 may be opposite one another — you must perish in symmetry '. 
 
 2 ' At the chateau of Madame V, the white-headed butler 
 begged madame to apologise for the central flower-basket 
 on the table : " He had not had time to study the com- 
 position ".' — Mrs. Stowe's Sunny Memories, lett. 44. 
 
xvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 a poet ; and every building whose excellence consists 
 merely in the proportion of masses is to be considered 
 as nothing more than an architectural doggrel, or 
 rhyming exercise. 
 
 4. Artistical and rational Admiration. I found 
 finally, that this, the only admiration worth having, 
 attached itself wholly to the meaning of the scupture and 
 colour on the building. That it was very regardless of 
 general form and size ; but intensely observant of the 
 statuary, floral mouldings, mosaics, and other decora- 
 tions. Upon which, little by little, it gradually became 
 manifest to me that the sculpture and painting were, 
 in fact, the all in all of the thing to be done ; that these, 
 which I had long been in the careless habit of thinking 
 subordinate to the architecture, were in fact the entire 
 masters of the architecture ; and that the architect 
 who was not a sculptor or a painter, was nothing better 
 than a frame-maker on a large scale. Having once 
 got this clue to the truth, every question about archi- 
 tecture immediately settled itself without farther 
 difficulty. I saw that the idea of an independent 
 architectural profession was a mere modern fallacy, 
 the thought of which had never so much as entered 
 the heads of the great nations of earlier times ; but that 
 it had always, till lately, been understood, that in order 
 to have a Parthenon, one had to get a preliminary 
 Phidias ; and to have a Cathedral of Florence, a 
 preliminary Giotto ; and to have even a Saint Peter's 
 at Rome, a preliminary Michael Angelo. And as, 
 with this new light, I examined the nobler examples of 
 our Gothic cathedrals, it became apparent to me that 
 the master workman must have been the person who 
 carved the bas-reliefs in the porches ; that to him all 
 others must have been subordinate, and by him all 
 the rest of the cathedral essentially arranged ; but that 
 in fact the whole company of builders, always large, 
 were more or less divided into two great flocks of stone- 
 layers and sculptors ; and that the number of sculptors 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xvii 
 
 was so great, and their average talent so considerable, 
 that it would no more have been thought necessary to 
 state respecting the master builder that he could carve 
 a statue, than that he could measure an angle, or strike 
 a curve l . 
 
 If the reader will think over this statement carefully 
 he will find that it is indeed true, and a key to many 
 things. The fact is, there are only two fine arts possible 
 to the human race, sculpture and painting. What 
 we call architecture is only the association of these in 
 noble masses, or the placing them in fit places. All 
 architecture other than this is, in fact, mere building ; 
 and though it may sometimes be graceful, as in the 
 groinings of an abbey roof ; or sublime, as in the 
 battlements of a border tower ; there is, in such 
 examples of it, no more exertion of the powers of high 
 art, than in the gracefulness of a well-ordered chamber, 
 or the nobleness of a well-built ship of war. 
 
 All high art consists in the carving or painting 
 natural objects, chiefly figures : it has always subject 
 and meaning, never consisting solely in arrangement of 
 lines, or even of colours. It always paints or carves 
 something that it sees or believes in ; nothing ideal or 
 uncredited. For the most part, it paints and carves 
 the men and things that are visible around it. And 
 as soon as we possess a body of sculptors able, and 
 willing, and having leave from the English public, to 
 carve on the facades of our cathedrals portraits of the 
 living bishops, deans, canons, and choristers, who 
 are to minister in the said cathedrals ; and on the 
 facades of our public buildings, portraits of the men 
 chiefly moving or acting in the same ; and on our 
 
 1 The name by which the architect of Cologne Cathedral 
 is des ignated in the contracts for the work is ' magister 
 lapicida ', the ' master stone-cutter ' ; and I believe this 
 was the usual Latin term throughout the middle ages. The 
 architect of the fourteenth century portions of Notre-Dame, 
 Paris, is styled in French, merely ' premier masson '. 
 
xviii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 buildings, generally, the birds and flowers which are 
 singing and budding in the fields around them, we shall 
 have a school of English architecture. Not till then. 
 
 This general principle being understood, there is, I 
 think, nothing in the text which I may not leave in 
 the form in which it was originally written, without 
 further comment, except only the expression of doubt 
 (p. 21S) as to the style which ought, at present, to be 
 consistently adopted by our architects. I have now 
 no doubt that the only style proper for modern northern 
 work, is the Northern Gothic of the thirteenth century, 
 as exemplified, in England, pre-eminently by the 
 cathedrals of Lincoln and Wells, and, in France, by 
 those of Paris, Amiens, Chartres, Rheims, and Bourges, 
 and by the transepts of that of Rouen. 
 
 I must here also deprecate an idea which is often 
 taken up by hasty readers of The Stones of Venice ; 
 namely, that I suppose Venetian architecture the most 
 noble of the schools of Gothic. I have great respect 
 for Venetian Gothic, but only as one among many 
 early schools. My reason for devoting so much time 
 to Venice, was not that her architecture is the best in 
 existence, but that it exemplifies, in the smallest com- 
 pass, the most interesting facts of architectural history. 
 The Gothic of Verona is far nobler than that of Venice ; 
 and that of Florence nobler than that of Verona. 
 For our own immediate purposes that of Notre-Dame 
 of Paris is noblest of all ; and the greatest service 
 which can at present be rendered to architecture, is 
 the careful delineation of the details of the cathedrals 
 above named, by means of photography. I would 
 particularly desire to direct the attention of amateur 
 photographers to this task ; earnestly requesting them 
 to bear in mind that while a photograph of landscape is 
 merely an amusing toy, one of early architecture is a 
 precious historical document ; and that this architec- 
 ture should be taken, not merely when it presents 
 itself under picturesque general forms, but stone by 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xix 
 
 stone, and sculpture by sculpture ; seizing every 
 opportunity afforded by scaffolding to approach it 
 closely, and putting the camera in any position that will 
 command the sculpture, wholly without regard to the 
 resultant distortions of the vertical lines ; such dis- 
 tortion can always be allowed for, if once the details are 
 completely obtained. 
 
 It would be still more patriotic in lovers of architec- 
 ture to obtain casts of the sculptures of the thirteenth 
 century, wherever an opportunity occurs, and to place 
 them where they would be easily accessible to the 
 ordinary workman. The Architectural Museum at 
 Westminster is one of the institutions which it appears 
 to me most desirable to enrich in this manner. 
 
 I have only to add that the Plates of the present 
 Volume have been carefully re-etched by Mr Cuff, 
 retaining, as far as possible, the appearance of the 
 original sketches, but remedying the defects which 
 resulted in the first edition from my careless etching. 
 Of the subject of the 9th Plate I prepared a new 
 drawing, which has been admirably engraved by Mr 
 Armyt age. The lettering, and other references, will, I 
 hope, be found more intelligible throughout. 
 
NOTE 
 
 In the third and following editions the Author named (in the 
 margins of the page*) certain passages of his text A/ h \rism», 
 printing them in clarendon type and numbering them consecutively 
 from 1 to 33. These passages are indicated below : 
 
 Aphorism 1, p. 2, line 1 (while) to end of §. 
 
 2, p. 4, line 30 (It) to p. 5, end of first §. 
 
 3, p. 6, line 31 (The) to p. 7, end of first §. 
 
 4, p. 8, first § (four lines). 
 
 „ 5, p. 18, last line (I speak) to p. 19, end of first J. 
 
 „ 6, p. 22, line 19 (We are) to line 35 (intellect . 
 
 „ 7, p. 32, line 11 (We are) to end of second §. 
 
 „ 8, p. 33, line 27 (To speak) to p. 34, end of first §. 
 
 9, p. 34, line 33 (For it) to p. 35, end of first §. 
 
 10, p. 43, line 11 (This rule) to p. 44, end of first §. 
 „ 11, p. 45, line 28 (the highest) to p. 46, end of §. 
 
 12, p. 47, line 27 (so great) to p. 48, end of first §. 
 ,, 13, p. 52, last line (It is) top. 53, last line but one(substance) 
 
 14, p. 54, line 20 (The true) to p. 55, end of first §. 
 
 15, p. 58, line 17 (But I) to p. 59, end of first §. 
 
 ,, 16, p. 63, last line but three (The reader) to p. 65, end of first ; 
 
 17, p. 72, line 32 (Now) to p. 73, end of first §. 
 
 18, p. 90, line 33 (The rolling) to p. 91, end of first §. 
 
 19, p. 108, line 10 (Now) to line 16 (ugly). 
 
 20, p. 109, line 17 (But) to line 33 (man). 
 
 „ 21, p. 137, line 26 (Leaves) to line 25 (treatment). 
 
 22, p. 140, line 25 (Under) to p. 142, end of first §. 
 
 23, p. 154, line 12 (that things) to p. 155, end of first §. 
 
 24, p. 160, line 27 (It has) to p. 161, end of first §. 
 
 25, p. 177, line 13 (I said) to p. 178, line 14 (handling). 
 
 26, p. 182, line 21 (We have) to p. 183, end of §. 
 
 27, p. 187, line 1 (And if) to end of §. 
 
 28, p. 188, line 6 ( I say) to p. 189, end of first §. 
 
 29, p. 194, line 12 (The idea) to p. 195, end of first §. 
 
 30, p. 195, line 20 (For, indeed) to p. 196, end of first § 
 
 31, p. 203, line 30 (Neither) to p. 205, line 10 (Milan). 
 
 32, p. 208, line 13 (Nor) to end of §. 
 
 33, p. 218, line 27 (It is) to p. 219, line 31 (further). 
 
THE SEVEN LAMPS OF 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Some years ago, in conversation with an artist whose 
 works, perhaps, alone, in the present day, unite per- 
 fection of drawing with resplendence of colour, the 
 writer made some inquiry respecting the general means 
 by which this latter quality was most easily to be 
 attained. The reply was as concise as it was compre- 
 hensive — ' Know what you have to do, and do it ' — 
 comprehensive, not only as regarded the branch of 
 art to which it temporarily applied, but as expressing 
 the great principle of success in every direction of hu- 
 man effort ; for I believe that failure is less frequently 
 attributable to either insufficiency of means or im- 
 patience of labour, than to a confused understanding 
 of a thing actually to be done ; and therefore, while 
 it is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of 
 blame, that men propose to themselves a perfection 
 of any kind, which reason, temperately consulted, 
 might have shown to be impossible with the means at 
 their command, it is a more dangerous error to permit 
 the consideration of means to interfere with our con- 
 ception, or, as is not impossible, even hinder our 
 acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in them- 
 selves. And this is the more cautiously to be remem- 
 
 S.L.A. b 
 
2 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 bered ; because, while a man's sense and conscience, 
 aided by Revelation, are always enough, if earnestly 
 directed, to enable him to discover what is right, neither 
 his sense, nor conscience, nor feeling is ever enough, 
 because they are not intended, to determine for him 
 what is possible. He knows neither his own strength 
 nor that of his fellows, neither the exact dependence 
 to be placed on his allies nor resistance to be expected 
 from his opponents. These are questions respecting 
 which passion may warp his conclusions, and ignorance 
 must limit them ; but it is his own fault if either inter- 
 fere with the apprehension of duty, or the acknowledg- 
 ment of right. And, as far as I have taken cognizance 
 of the causes of the many failures to which the efforts 
 of intelligent men are liable, more especially in matters 
 political, they seem to me more largely to spring from 
 this single error than from all others, that the inquiry 
 into the doubtful, and in some sort inexplicable rela- 
 tions of capability, chance, resistance, and inconveni- 
 ence, invariably precedes, even if it do not altogether 
 supersede, the determination of what is absolutely 
 desirable and just. Nor is it any wonder that some- 
 times the too cold calculation of our powers should 
 reconcile us too easily to our shortcomings, and even 
 lead us into the fatal error of supposing that our con- 
 jectural utmost is in itself well, or, in other words, 
 that the necessity of offences renders them inoffensive. 
 What is true of human polity seems to me not less 
 so of the distinctively political art of Architecture. 
 I have long felt convinced of the necessity, in order 
 to its progress, of some determined effort to extricate 
 from the confused mass of partial traditions and dog- 
 mata with which it has become encumbered during 
 imperfect or restricted practice, those large principles 
 of right which are applicable to every stage and style 
 of it. Uniting the technical and imaginative elements 
 as essentially as humanity does soul and body, it shows 
 the same infirmly balanced liability to the prevalence 
 
INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 of the lower part over the higher, to the interference 
 of the constructive with the purity and simplicity 
 of the reflective element. This tendency, like every 
 other form of materialism, is increasing with the ad- 
 vance of the age ; and the only laws which resist it, 
 based upon partial precedents, and already regarded 
 with disrespect as decrepit, if not with defiance as 
 tyrannical, are evidently inapplicable to the new forms 
 and functions of the art, which the necessities of the 
 day demand. How many these necessities may be- 
 come, cannot be conjectured ; they rise, strange and 
 impatient, out of every modern shadow of change. 
 How far it may be possible to meet them without a 
 sacrifice of the essential characters of architectural 
 art, cannot be determined by specific calculation or 
 observance. There is no law, no principle, based on 
 past practice, which may not be overthrown in a 
 moment, by the arising of a new condition, or the inven- 
 tion of a new material ; and the most rational, if not 
 the only, mode of averting the danger of an utter dis- 
 solution of all that is systematic and consistent in our 
 practice, or of ancient authority in our j udgment, is to 
 cease, for a little while, our endeavours to deal with 
 the multiplying host of particular abuses, restraints, 
 or requirements ; and endeavour to determine, as the 
 guides of every effort, some constant, general, and 
 irrefragable laws of right — laws, which based upon 
 man's nature, not upon his knowledge, may possess 
 so far the unchangeableness of the one, as that neither 
 the increase nor imperfection of the other may be able 
 to assault or invalidate them. 
 
 There are, perhaps, no such laws peculiar to any 
 one art. Their range necessarily includes the entire 
 horizon of man's action. But they have modified 
 forms and operations belonging to each of his pursuits, 
 and the extent of their authority cannot surely be 
 considered as a diminution of its weight. Those 
 peculiar aspects of them which belong to the first of : 
 
4 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 the arts, I have endeavoured to trace in the following 
 pages ; and since, if truly stated, they must necessarily 
 be, not only safeguards against every form of error, 
 but sources of every measure of success, I do not think 
 that I claim too much for them in calling them the 
 Lamps of Architecture, nor that it is indolence, in 
 endeavouring to ascertain the true nature and nobility 
 of their fire, to refuse to enter into any curious or 
 special questioning of the innumerable hindrances 
 by which their light has been too often distorted or 
 overpowered. 
 
 Had this farther examination been attempted, the 
 work would have become certainly more invidious, 
 and perhaps less useful, as liable to errors which are 
 avoided by the present simplicity of its plan. Simple 
 though it be, its extent is too great to admit of any 
 adequate accomplishment, unless by a devotion of 
 time which the writer did not feel justified in with- 
 drawing from branches of inquiry in which the prose- 
 cution of works already undertaken has engaged him. 
 Both arrangement and nomenclature are those of 
 convenience rather than of system ; the one is arbitrary 
 and the other illogical : nor is it pretended that all, 
 or even the greater number of, the principles necessary 
 to the well-being of the art, are included in the inquiry. 
 Many, however, of considerable importance will be 
 found to develop themselves incidentally from those 
 more specially brought forward. 
 
 Graver apology is necessary for an apparently graver 
 f tiult. It has been j ust said, that there is no branch 
 of human work whose constant laws have not close 
 analogy with those which govern every other mode 
 of man's exertion. But, more than this, exactly as we 
 reduce to greater simplicity and surety any one group 
 of these practical laws, we shall find them passing the 
 mere condition of connection or analogy, and becoming 
 the actual expression of some ultimate nerve or fibre 
 of the mighty laws which govern the moral world. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 However mean or inconsiderable the act, there is 
 something in the well doing of it, which has fellowship 
 with the noblest forms of manly virtue ; and the truth, 
 decision, and temperance, which we reverently regard 
 as honourable conditions of the spiritual being, have a 
 representative or derivative influence over the works 
 of the hand, the movements of the frame, and the action 
 of the intellect. 
 
 And as thus every action, down even to the drawing 
 of a line or utterance of a syllable, is capable of a 
 peculiar dignity in the manner of it, which we some- 
 times express by saying it is truly done (as a line or 
 tone is true), so also it is capable of dignity still higher 
 in the motive of it. For there is no action so slight, 
 nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, 
 and ennobled therefore ; nor is any purpose so great 
 but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done 
 as to help it much, most especially that chief of 
 all purposes, the pleasing of God. Hence George 
 Herbert : 
 
 A servant with this clause 
 
 Makes drudgery divine ; 
 Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws, 
 
 Makes that and the action fine. 
 
 Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act 
 or manner of acting, we have choice of two separate 
 lines of argument : one based on representation of the 
 expediency or inherent value of the work, which is 
 often small, and always disputable ; the other based 
 on prcofs of its relations to the higher orders of human 
 virtue., and of its acceptableness, so far as it goes, to 
 Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is com- 
 monly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly 
 the more conclusive ; only it is liable to give offence, 
 as if tliere were irreverence in adducing considerations 
 so weiighty in treating subjects of small temporal im- 
 portance. I believe, however, that no error is more 
 
6 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 thoughtless than this. We treat God with irreverence 
 by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring 
 to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite 
 authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled 
 with small things. There is nothing so small bit that 
 we may honour God by asking His guidance o: it, or 
 insult Him by taking it into our own hands; and 
 what is true of the Deity is equally true of His Revela- 
 tion. We use it most reverently when most habi:ually : 
 our insolence is in ever acting without reference to it, 
 our true honouring of it is in its universal application. 
 I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its 
 sacred words. I am grieved to have given piin by 
 so doing ; but my excuse must be my wish tha: those 
 words were made the ground of every argument and 
 the test of every action. We have them not often 
 enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, 
 nor loyally enough in our lives. The snow, the vapour, 
 and the stormy wind fulfil His word. Are our acts and 
 thoughts lighter and wilder than these — that we should 
 forget it ? 
 
 I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giving to 
 some passages the appearance of irreverence, to take 
 the higher line of argument wherever it appeared clearly 
 traceable : and this I would ask the reader especially 
 to observe, not merely because I think it the best mode 
 of reaching ultimate truth, still less because I think 
 the subject of more importance than many others ; 
 but because every subject should surely, at a period 
 like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or not at 
 all. The aspect of the years that approach us is as 
 solemn as it is full of mystery ; and the weight of evil 
 against which we have to contend, is increasing like 
 the letting out of water. It is no time for the idleness 
 of metaphysics, or the entertainment of the arts. The 
 blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder, and its 
 miseries heaped heavier every day ; and if, in the midst 
 of the exertion which every good man is called upon 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 to put forth for their repression or relief, it is lawful to 
 ask for a thought, for a moment, for a lifting of the 
 finger, in any direction but that of the immediate and 
 overwhelming need, it is at least incumbent upon us 
 to approach the questions in which we would engage 
 him, in the spirit which has become the habit of his 
 mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his use- 
 fulness may be checked by the withdrawal of an hour, 
 which has shown him how even those things which 
 seemed mechanical, indifferent, or contemptible, de- 
 pend for their perfection upon the acknowledgment 
 of the sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, 
 for which it has become the occupation of his life to 
 contend. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 I. Architecture is the art which so disposes and 
 adorns the edifices raised by man, for whatsoever uses, 
 that the sight of them may contribute to his mental 
 health, power, and pleasure. 
 
 It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to 
 distinguish carefully between Architecture and Build- 
 ing. 
 
 To build — literally, to confirm — is by common under- 
 standing to put together and adjust the several pieces 
 of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable size. Thus 
 we have church building, house building, ship building, 
 and coach building. That one edifice stands, another 
 floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes 
 no difference in the nature of the art, if so it may be 
 called, of building or edification. The persons who 
 profess that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, 
 naval, or of whatever other name their work may 
 justify ; but building does not become architecture 
 merely by the stability of what it erects ; and it is no 
 more architecture which raises a church, or which fits 
 it to receive and contain with comfort a required number 
 of persons occupied in certain religious offices, than it 
 is architecture which makes a carriage commodious, 
 or a ship swift. I do not, of course, mean that the 
 word is not often, or even may not be legitimately, 
 applied in such a sense (as we speak of naval archi- 
 tecture) ; but in that sense architecture ceases to be 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 9 
 
 one of the fine arts, and it is theref ore better not to run 
 the risk, by loose nomenclature, of the confusion which 
 would arise, and has often arisen, from extending 
 principles which belong altogether to building, into the 
 sphere of architecture proper. 
 
 Let us, therefore, at once confine the name to that 
 art which, taking up and admitting, as conditions of 
 its working, the necessities and common uses of the 
 building, impresses on its form certain characters 
 venerable or beautiful, but otherwise unnecessary. 
 Thus, I suppose, no one would call the laws architec- 
 tural which determine the height of a breastwork or the 
 position of a bastion. But if to the stone facing of 
 that bastion be added an unnecessary feature, as a 
 cable moulding, that is Architecture. It would be 
 similarly unreasonable to call battlements or machi- 
 colations architectural features, so long as they consist 
 only of an advanced gallery supported on projecting 
 masses, with open intervals beneath for offence. But if 
 these projecting masses be carved beneath into rounded 
 courses, which are useless, and if the headings of the 
 intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless, that 
 is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw 
 the line so sharply, because there are few buildings 
 which have not some pretence or colour of being archi- 
 tectural ; neither can there be any architecture which 
 is not based on building, nor any good architecture 
 which is not based on good building ; but it is perfectly 
 easy, and very necessary, to keep the ideas distinct, 
 and to understand fully that Architecture concerns 
 itself only with those characters of an edifice which 
 are above and beyond its common use. I say common ; 
 because a building raised to the honour of God, or in 
 memory of men, has surely a use to which its architec- 
 tural adornment fits it ; but not a use which limits, 
 by any inevitable necessities, its plan or details. 
 
 II. Architecture proper, then, naturally arranges 
 itself under five heads : 
 
10 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 Devotional ; including all buildings raised for 
 God's service or honour. 
 
 Memorial ; including both monuments and tombs. 
 
 Civil ; including every edifice raised by nations or 
 societies, for purposes of common business or 
 pleasure. 
 
 Military ; including all private and public architec- 
 ture of defence. 
 
 Domestic ; including every rank and kind of dwell- 
 ing-place. 
 
 Now, of the principles which I would endeavour 
 to develop, while all must be, a3 I have said, ap- 
 plicable to every stage and style of the art, some, 
 and especially those which are exciting rather than 
 directing, have necessarily fuller reference to one kind 
 of building than another ; and among these I would 
 place first that spirit which, having influence in all, 
 has nevertheless such especial reference to devotional 
 and memorial architecture — the spirit which offers 
 for such work precious things, simply because they are 
 precious ; not as being necessary to the building, but 
 as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what is to 
 ourselves desirable. It seems to me, not only that this 
 feeling is in most cases wholly wanting in those who 
 f onvard the devotional buildings of the present day ; 
 but that it would even be regarded as a dangerous, or 
 perhaps criminal principle by many among us. I have 
 not space to enter into dispute of all the various ob- 
 jections which may be urged against it — they are many 
 and specious ; but I may, perhaps, ask the reader's 
 patience while I set down those simple reasons which 
 cause me to believe it a good and just feeling, and as 
 well- pleasing to God and honourable in men, as it is 
 beyond all dispute necessary to the production of any 
 great work in the kind with which we are at present 
 concerned. 
 
 III. Now, first, to define this Lamp, or Spirit, of 
 Sacrifice, clearly. I have said that it prompts us to 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 11 
 
 the offering of precious things, merely because they are 
 precious, not because they are useful or necessary. 
 It is a spirit, for instance, which of two marbles, equally 
 beautiful, applicable and durable, would choose the 
 more costly, because it was so, and of two kinds of 
 decoration, equally effective, would choose the more 
 elaborate because it was so, in order that it might in 
 the same compass present more cost and more thought. 
 It is therefore most unreasoning and enthusiastic, and 
 parhaps best negatively defined, as the opposite of the 
 prevalent feeling of modern times, which desires to 
 produce the largest results at the least cost. 
 
 Of this feeling, then, there are two distinct forms : 
 the first, the wish to exercise self-denial for the sake of 
 self-discipline merely, a wish acted upon in the abandon- 
 ment of things loved or desired, there being no direct 
 call or purpose to be answered by so doing ; and the 
 second, the desire to honour or please some one else 
 by the costliness of the sacrifice. The practice is, in 
 the first case, either private or public ; but most 
 frequently, and perhaps most properly, private ; 
 while, in the latter case, the act is commonly, and with 
 greatest advantage, public. Now, it cannot but at 
 first appear futile to assert the expediency of self- 
 denial for its own sake, when, for so many sakes, it 
 is every day necessary to a far greater degree than any 
 of us practise it. But I believe it is just because we 
 do not enough acknowledge or contemplate it as a 
 good hi itself, that we are apt to fail in its duties when 
 they become imperative, and to calculate, with some 
 partiality, whether the good proposed to others measures 
 or warrants the amount of grievance to ourselves, 
 instead of accepting with gladness the opportunity of 
 sacrifice as a personal advantage. Be this as it may, 
 it is not necessary to insist upon the matter here ; 
 since there are always higher and more useful channels 
 of self-sacrifice, for those who choose to practise it, 
 than any connected with the arts. 
 
12 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 While in its second branch, that which is especially 
 concerned with the arts, the justice of the feeling is 
 still more doubtful ; it depends on our answer to the 
 broad question, can the Deity be indeed honoured by 
 the presentation to Him of any material objects of 
 value, or by any direction of zeal or wisdom which 
 is not immediately beneficial to men ? 
 
 For, observe, it is not now the question whether the 
 fairness and majesty of a building may or may not 
 answer any moral purpose ; it is not the result of labour 
 in any sort of which we are speaking, but the bare and 
 mere costliness — the substance and labour and time 
 themselves : are these, we ask, independently of their 
 result, acceptable offerings to God, and considered by 
 Him as doing Him honour ? So long as we refer this 
 question to the decision of feeling, or of conscience, or 
 of reason merely, it will be contradictorily or im- 
 perfectly answered ; it admits of entire answer only 
 when we have met another and a far different 
 question, whether the Bible be indeed one book or 
 two, and whether the character of God revealed in 
 the Old Testament be other than His character revealed 
 in the New. 
 
 IV. Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although 
 the particular ordinances divinely appointed for special 
 purposes at any given period of man's history may 
 be by the same divine authority abrogated at another, 
 it is impossible that any character of God, appealed 
 to or described in any ordinance past or present, can 
 ever be changed, or understood as changed, by the 
 abrogation of that ordinance. God is one and the 
 same, and is pleased or displeased by the same things 
 for ever, although one part of His pleasure may be 
 expressed at one time rather than another, and al- 
 though the mode in which His pleasure is to be con- 
 sulted may be by Him graciously modified to the cir- 
 cumstances of men. Thus, for instance, it was neces- 
 sary that, in order to the understanding by man of the 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 13 
 
 scheme of Redemption, that scheme should be fore- 
 shown from the beginning by the type of bloody sacri- 
 fice. But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice 
 in the time of Moses than He has now ; He never 
 accepted, as a propitiation for sin, any sacrifice but 
 the single one in prospective : and that we may not 
 entertain any shadow of doubt on this subject, the 
 worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is pro- 
 claimed at the very time when typical sacrifice 
 was most imperatively demanded. God was a spirit, 
 and could be worshipped only in spirit and in truth, 
 as singly and exclusively when every day brought its 
 claim of typical and material service or offering, as 
 now when He asks for none but that of the heart. 
 
 So, therefore, it is a most safe and sure principle 
 that, if in the manner of performing any rite at any 
 time, circumstances can be traced which we are either 
 told, or may legitimately conclude, phased God at 
 that time, those same circumstances will please Him 
 at all times, in the performance of all rites or offices 
 to which they may be attached in like manner ; unless 
 it has been afterwards revealed that, for some special 
 purpose, it is now His will that such circumstances 
 should be withdrawn. And this argument will have 
 all the more force if it can be shown that such con- 
 ditions were not essential to the completeness of the 
 rite in its human uses and bearings, and only were 
 added to it as being in themselves pleasing to God. 
 
 V. Now, was it necessary to the completeness, as a 
 type, of the Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as an 
 explanation of divine purposes, that it should cost any 
 thing to the person in whose behalf it was offered ? 
 On the contrary, the sacrifice which it foreshowed, 
 was to be God's free gift ; and the cost of, or diffi- 
 culty of obtaining, the sacrificial type, could only 
 render that type in a measure obscure, and less expres- 
 sive of the offering which God would in the end pro- 
 vide for all men. Yet this costliness was generally a 
 
14 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 condition of the acceptableness of the sacrifice. ' Neither 
 will I offer unto the Lord my God of that which doth 
 cost me nothing '*. That costliness, therefore, must 
 be an acceptable condition in all human offerings at 
 all times ; for if it was pleasing to God once, it must 
 please Him always, unless directly forbidden by Him 
 afterwards, which it has never been. 
 
 Again, was it necessary to the typical perfection of 
 the Levitical offering, that it should be the best of the 
 flock ? Doubtless, the spotlessness of the sacrifice 
 renders it more expressive to the Christian mind ; but 
 was it because so expressive that it was actually, and 
 in so many words, demanded by God ? Not at all. 
 It was demanded by Him expressly on the same grounds 
 on which an earthly governour would demand it, as a 
 testimony of respect. ' Offer it now unto thy gover- 
 nour 'f . And the less valuable offering was rejected, 
 not because it did not image Christ, nor fulfil the pur- 
 poses of sacrifice, but because it indicated a feeling 
 that would grudge the best of its possessions to Him 
 who gave them ; and because it was a bold dishonour- 
 ing of God in the sight of man. Whence it may be 
 infallibly concluded, that in whatever offerings we 
 may now see reason to present unto God (I say not 
 what these may be), a condition of their acceptableness 
 will be now, as it was then, that they should be the 
 best of their kind. 
 
 VI. But farther, was it necessary to the carrying 
 out of the Mosaical system, that there should be either 
 art or splendour in the form or services of the taber- 
 nacle or temple ? Was it necessary to the perfection 
 of any one of their typical offices, that there should be 
 that hanging of blue, and purple, and scarlet ? those 
 taches of brass and sockets of silver ? that working in 
 cedar and overlaying with gold ? One thing at least 
 
 * 2 Sam. xxiv, 24. Deul., xvi, 16, 17. 
 t Mai. i, 8. 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 15 
 
 is evident : there was a deep and awful danger in it ; 
 a danger that the God whom they so worshipped 
 might be associated in the minds of the serfs of Egypt 
 with the gods to whom they had seen similar gifts 
 offered and similar honours paid. The probability, 
 in our times, of fellowship with the feelings of the 
 idolatrous Romanist is absolutely as nothing, com- 
 pared with the danger to the Israelite of a sympathy 
 with the idolatrous Egyptian 1 ; no speculative, no 
 unproved danger ; but proved fatally by their fall 
 during a month's abandonment to their own will ; a 
 fall into the most servile idolatry ; yet marked by such 
 offerings to their idol as their leader was, in the close 
 sequel, instructed to bid them offer to God. This 
 danger was imminent, perpetual, and of the most 
 awful kind : it was the one against which God made 
 provision, not only by commandments, by threaten- 
 ings, by promises, the most urgent, repeated, and 
 impressive ; but by temporary ordinances of a severity 
 so terrible as almost to dim for a time, in the eyes of 
 His people, His attribute of mercy. The principal 
 object of every instituted law of that Theocracy, of 
 every judgment sent forth in its vindication, was to 
 mark to the people His hatred of idolatry ; a hatred 
 written under their advancing steps, in the blood of 
 the Cananite, and more sternly still in the darkness of 
 their own desolation, when the children and the suck- 
 lings swooned in the streets of Jerusalem, and the 
 lion tracked his prey in the dust of Samaria *. Yet, 
 against this mortal danger, provision was not made in 
 one way, (to man's thoughts the simplest, the most 
 natural, the most effective,) by withdrawing from the 
 worship of the Divine Being whatever could delight 
 the sense, or shape the imagination, or limit the idea 
 of Deity to place. This one way God refused, demand- 
 ing for Himself such honours, and accepting for 
 himself such local dwelling, as had been paid and 
 * Lam., ii, 11. 2 Kings, xvii, 25. 
 
16 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 dedicated to idol gods by heathen worshippers. And 
 for what reason ? Was the glory of the tabernacle 
 necessary to set forth or image His divine glory to 
 the minds of His people ? What ! purple or scarlet 
 necessary, to the people who had seen the great river 
 of Egypt run scarlet to the sea, under His condemna- 
 tion ? What ! golden lamp and cherub necessary, 
 for those who had seen the fires of heaven falling like 
 a mantle on Mount Sinai, and its golden courts opened 
 to receive their mortal lawgiver ? What ! silver clasp 
 and fillet necessary, when they had seen the silver 
 waves of the Red Sea clasp in their arched hollows the 
 corpses of the horse and his rider ? Nay — not so. 
 There was but one reason, and that an eternal one ; 
 that as the covenant that He made with men was 
 accompanied with some external sign of its continu- 
 ance, and of His remembrance of it, so the acceptance 
 of that covenant might be marked and signified by 
 men, in some external sign of their love and obedience, 
 and surrender of themselves and theirs to His will ; 
 and that their gratitude to Him and continual remem- 
 brance of Him, might have at once their expression, 
 and their enduring testimony, in the presentation to 
 Him, not only of the firstlings of the herd and fold 
 not only of the fruits of the earth and the tithe of time, 
 but of all treasures of wisdom and beauty ; of the 
 thought that invents, and the hand that labours ; of 
 wealth of wood, and weight of stone ; of the strength 
 of iron, and the light of gold. 
 
 And let us not now lose sight of this broad and 
 unabrogated principle — I might say, incapable of 
 being abrogated, so long as men shall receive earthly 
 gifts from God. Of all that they have, His tithe must 
 be rendered to Him, or in so far and in so much He is 
 forgotten : of the skill and of the treasure, of the 
 strength and of the mind, of the time and of the toil, 
 offering must be made reverently ; and if there be any 
 difference between the Levitical and the Christian 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 17 
 
 offering, it is that the latter may be just so much the 
 wider in its range as it is less typical in its meaning, 
 as it is thankful instead of sacrificial. There can be 
 no excuse accepted because the Deity does not now 
 visibly dwell in His temple ; if He is invisible it is 
 only through our failing faith : nor any excuse because 
 other calls are more immediate or more sacred ; this 
 ought to be done, and not the other left undone. Yet 
 this objection, as frequent as feeble, must be more 
 specifically answered. 
 
 VII. It has been said — it ought always to be said, 
 for it is true, — that a better and more honourable 
 offering is made to our Master in ministry to the poor, 
 in extending the knowledge of His name, in the practice 
 of the virtues by which that name is hallowed, than 
 in material presents to His temple. Assuredly it is 
 ' : woe to all who think that any other kind or man- 
 ner of offering may in any wise take the place of these ! 
 Do the people need place to pray, and calls to hear His 
 word ? Then it is no time for smoothing pillars or 
 carving pulpits ; let us have enough first of walls and 
 roofs. Do the people need teaching from house to 
 house, and bread from day to day ? Then they are 
 deacons and ministers we want, not architects. I 
 insist on this, I plead for this ; but let us examine our- 
 selves, and see if this be indeed the reason for our 
 backwardness in the lesser work. The question is not 
 between God's house and His poor : it is not between 
 God's house and His Gospel. It is between God's 
 house and ours. Have we no tesselated colours on 
 our floors ? no frescoed fancies on our roofs ? no niched 
 statuary in our corridors ? no gilded furniture in our 
 chambers ? no costly stones in our cabinets ? Has 
 even the tithe of these been offered ? They are, or 
 they ought to be, the signs that enough has been 
 devoted to the great purposes of human stewardship, 
 and that there remains to us what we can spend in 
 luxury ; but there is a greater and prouder luxury than 
 
18 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 this selfish one — that of bringing a portion of such 
 things as these into sacred service, and presenting 
 them for a memorial * that our pleasure as well as our 
 toil has been hallowed by the remembrance of Him 
 who gave both the strength and the reward. And 
 until this has been done, I do not see how such posses- 
 sions can be retained in happiness. I do not under- 
 stand the feeling which would arch our own gates and 
 pave our own thresholds, and leave the church with 
 its narrow door and foot-worn sill ; the feeling which 
 enriches our own chambers with all manner of costli- 
 ness, and endures the bare wall and mean compass 
 of the temple. There is seldom even so severe a choice 
 to be made, seldom so much self-denial to be exercised. 
 There are isolated cases, in which men's happiness 
 and mental activity depend upon a certain degree of 
 luxury in their houses ; but then this is true luxury, 
 felt and tasted, and profited by. In the plurality of 
 instances nothing of the kind is attempted, nor can 
 be enjoyed ; men's average resources cannot reach it ; 
 and that which they can reach, gives them no pleasure, 
 and might be spared. It will be seen, in the course 
 of the following chapters, that I am no advocate for 
 meanness of private habitation. I would fain intro- 
 duce into it all magnificence, care, and beauty, where 
 they are possible ; but I would not have that useless 
 expense in unnoticed fineries or formalities ; cornicing 
 of ceilings and graining of doors, and fringing of cur- 
 tains, and thousands such ; things which have become 
 foolishly and apathetically habitual — things on w r hose 
 common appliance hang whole trades, to which there 
 never yet belonged the blessing of giving one ray of 
 real pleasure, or becoming of the remotest or most 
 contemptible use — things which cause half the expense 
 of life, and destroy more than half its comfort, manli- 
 ness, respectability, freshness, and facility. I speak from 
 
 * Num.. xxxi. 54. Psa.. Ixxvi, 11. 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 19 
 
 experience : I know what it is to live in a cottage with 
 a deal floor and roof, and a hearth of mica slate ; and 
 I know it to be in many respects healthier and happier 
 than living between a Turkey carpet and gilded ceiling, 
 beside a steel grate and polished fender. I do not 
 say that such things have not their place and pro- 
 priety ; but I say this, emphatically, that the tenth 
 part of the expense which is sacrificed in domestic 
 vanities, if not absolutely and meaninglessly lost in 
 domestic discomforts and incumbrances, would, if 
 collectively offered and wisely employed, build a 
 marble church for every town in England ; such a 
 church as it should be a joy and a blessing even to pass 
 near in our daily ways and walks, and as it would 
 bring the light into the eyes to see from afar, lifting 
 its fair height above the purple crowd of humble roofs. 
 VIII. I have said for every town : I do not want a 
 marble church for every village ; nay, I do not want 
 marble churches at all for their own sake, but for the 
 sake of the spirit that would build them. The church 
 has no need of any visible splendours ; her power is 
 independent of them, her purity is in some degree 
 opposed to them. The simplicity of a pastoral sanc- 
 tuary is lovelier than the majesty of an urban temple ; 
 and it may be more than questioned whether, to the 
 people, such majesty has ever been the source of any 
 increase of effective piety ; but to the builders it has 
 been, and must ever be. It is not the church we want, 
 but the sacrifice ; not the emotion of admiration, but 
 the act of adoration ; not the gift, but the giving 2 . 
 And see how much more charity the full understanding 
 of this might admit, among classes of men of naturally 
 opposite feelings ; and how much more nobleness in 
 the work. There is no need to offend by importunate, 
 sclf-proclaimant splendour. Your gift may be given 
 in an unpresuming way. Cut one or two shafts out 
 of a porphyry whose preciousness those only would 
 know who would desire it to be so used ; add another 
 
20 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 month's labour to the under-cutting of a few capitals, 
 whose delicacy will not be seen nor loved by one 
 beholder of ten thousand ; see that the simplest 
 masonry of the edifice be perfect and substantial ; and 
 to those who regard such things, their witness will be 
 clear and impressive ; to those who regard them not, 
 all will at least be inoffensive. But do not think the 
 feeling itself a folly, or the act itself useless. Of what 
 use was that dearly bought water of the well of Bethle- 
 hem with which the king of Israel slaked the dust of 
 Adullam ? yet was it not thus better than if he had 
 drunk it ? Of what use was that passionate act of 
 Christian sacrifice, against which, first uttered by the 
 false tongue, the very objection we would now conquer 
 took a sullen tone for ever ? * So also let us not ask 
 of what use our offering is to the church : it is at least 
 better for us than if it had been retained for ourselves. 
 It may be better for others also : there is, at any rate, 
 a chance of this ; though we must always fearfully 
 and widely shun the thought that the magnificence of 
 the temple can materially add to the efficiency of the 
 worship or to the power of the ministry. Whatever 
 we do, or whatever we offer, let it not interfere with 
 the simplicity of the one, or abate, as if replacing, the 
 zeal of the other. That is the abuse and fallacy of 
 Romanism, by which the true spirit of Christian offer- 
 ing is directly contradicted. The treatment of the 
 Papists' temple is eminently exhibitory ; it is surface 
 work throughout ; and the danger and evil of their 
 church decoration altogether, lie, not in its reality — 
 not in the true wealth and art of which the lower people 
 are never cognizant — but in its tinsel and glitter, in 
 the gilding of the shrine and painting of the image, 
 in embroidery of dingy robes and crowding of imitated 
 gems ; all this being frequently thrust forward to the 
 concealment of what is really good or great in their 
 
 * John, xii, 5. 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 21 
 
 buildings 3 . Of an offering of gratitude which is 
 neither to be exhibited nor rewarded, which is neither 
 to win praise nor purchase salvation, the Romanist 
 (as such) has no conception. 
 
 IX. While, however, I would especially deprecate 
 the imputation of any other acceptableness or useful- 
 ness to the gift itself than that which it receives from 
 the spirit of its presentation, it may be well to observe, 
 that there is a lower advantage which never fails to 
 accompany a dutiful observance of any right abstract 
 principle. While the first fruits of his possessions were 
 required from the Israelite as a testimony of fidelity, 
 the payment of those first fruits was nevertheless 
 rewarded, and that connectedly and specifically, by 
 the increase of those possessions. Wealth, and length 
 of days, and peace, were the promised and experienced 
 rewards of his offering, though they were not to be the 
 objects of it. The tithe paid into the storehouse, was 
 the express condition of the blessing which there should 
 not be room enough to receive. And it will be thus 
 always : God never forgets any work or labour of 
 love ; and whatever it may be of which the first and 
 best portions or powers have been presented to Him, 
 He will multiply and increase sevenfold. Therefore, 
 though it may not be necessarily the interest of religion 
 to admit the service of the arts, the arts will never 
 flourish until they have been primarily devoted to 
 that service — devoted, both by architect and employer ; 
 by the one in scrupulous, earnest, affectionate design ; 
 by the other in expenditure at least more frank, at 
 least less calculating, than that which he would admit 
 in the indulgence of his own private feelings. Let this 
 principle be but once fairly acknowledged among us ; 
 and however it may be chilled and repressed in practice, 
 however feeble may be its real influence, however the 
 sacredness of it may be diminished by counter- workings 
 of vanity and self-interest, yet its mere acknowledg- 
 ment would bring a reward ; and with our present 
 
22 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 accumulation of means and of intellect, there would 
 be such an impulse and vitality given to art as it 
 has not felt since the thirteenth century. And I 
 do not assert this as other than a natural conse- 
 quence : I should, indeed, expect a larger measure of 
 every great and spiritual faculty to be always given 
 where those faculties had been wisely and religiously 
 employed ; but the impulse to which I refer, would 
 be, humanly speaking, certain ; and would naturally 
 result from obedience to the two great conditions 
 enforced by the Spirit of Sacrifice, first, that we should 
 in every thing do our best ; and, secondly, that we 
 should consider increase of apparent labour as an 
 increase of beauty in the building. A few practical 
 deductions from these two conditions, and I have 
 done. 
 
 X. For the first : it is alone enough to secure suc- 
 cess, and it is for want of observing it that we contin- 
 ually fail. We are none of us so good architects as to 
 be able to work habitually beneath our strength ; and 
 yet there is not a building that I know of, lately raised, 
 wherein it is not sufficiently evident that neither 
 architect nor builder has done his best. It is the 
 especial characteristic of modern work. All old work 
 nearly has been hard work. It may be the hard work 
 of children, of barbarians, of rustics ; but it is always 
 their utmost. Ours has as constantly the look of 
 money's worth, of a stopping short wherever and 
 whenever we can, of a lazy compliance with low con- 
 ditions ; never of a fair putting forth of our strength. 
 Let us have done with this kind of work at once : cast | 
 off every temptation to it : do not let us degrade our-j 
 selves voluntarily, and then mutter and mourn over| 
 our shortcomings ; let us confess our poverty or our 
 parsimony, but not belie our human intellect. It is 
 not even a question of how much we are to do, but of 
 how it is to be done ; it is not a question of doini 
 more, but of doing better. Do not let us boss 01 r 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 23 
 
 roofs with wretched, half- worked, blunt-edged rosettes; 
 do not let us flank our gates with rigid imitations of 
 mediaeval statuary. Such things are mere insults to 
 common sense, and only unfit us for feeling the nobility 
 of their prototypes. We have so much, suppose, to 
 be spent in decoration ; let us go to the Flaxman of 
 his time, whoever he may be ; and bid him carve for 
 us a single statue, frieze, or capital, or as many as we 
 can afford, compelling upon him the one condition, 
 that they shall be the best he can do ; place them 
 where they will be of most value, and be content. 
 Our other capitals may be mere blocks, and our other 
 niches empty. No matter : better our work unfinished 
 than all bad. It may be that we do not desire orna- 
 ment of so high an order : choose, then, a less de- 
 veloped style, as also, if you will, rougher material ; 
 the law which we are enforcing requires only that 
 what we pretend to do and to give, shall both be the 
 best of their kind, choose, therefore, the Norman hatchet 
 work instead of the Flaxman frieze and statue, but let it 
 be the best hatchet work ; and if you cannot afford 
 marble, use Caen stone, but from the best bed ; and 
 if not stone, brick, but the best brick ; preferring always 
 what is good of a lower order of work or material, to 
 what is bad of a higher ; for this is not only the way 
 to improve every kind of work, and to put every kind 
 of material to better use ; but it is more honest and 
 unpretending, and is in harmony with other just, 
 up-right, and manly principles, whose range we shall 
 have presently to take into consideration. 
 
 XI. The other condition which we had to notice, 
 was the value of the appearance of labour upon archi- 
 tecture. I have spoken of this before * ; and it is, 
 indeed, one of the most frequent sources of pleasure 
 which belong to the art, always, however, within cer- 
 tain somewhat remarkable limits. For it does not 
 
 * Modem Painters, Part I, Sec. 1, Chap. 3. 
 
24 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 at first appear easily to be explained why labour, as 
 represented by materials of value, should, without 
 sense of wrong or error, bear being wasted ; while the 
 waste of actual workmanship is always painful, so 
 soon as it is apparent. But so it is, that, while 
 precious materials may, with a certain profusion and 
 n 'gligence, be employed for the magnificence of what 
 is seldom seen, the work of man cannot be carelessly 
 and idly bestowed, without an immediate sense of 
 wrong ; as if the strength of the living creature were 
 never intended by its Maker to be sacrificed in vain, 
 though it is well for us sometimes to part with what 
 we esteem precious of substance, as showing that in 
 such service it becomes but dross and dust. And in 
 the nice balance between the straitening of effort or 
 enthusiasm on the one hand, and vainly casting it 
 away upon the other, there are more questions than 
 can be met by any but very just and watchful feeling. 
 In general it is less the mere loss of labour that offends 
 us, than the lack of judgment implied by such loss ; 
 so that if men confessedly work for work's sake, and it 
 does not appear that they are ignorant where or how to 
 make their labour tell, we shall not be grossly offended. 
 On the contrary, we shall be pleased if the work be 
 lost in carrying out a principle, or in avoiding a decep- 
 tion. It, indeed, is a law properly belonging to another 
 part of our subject, but it may be allowably stated 
 here, that, whenever, by the construction of a building, 
 some parts of it are hidden from the eye which are the 
 continuation of others bearing some consistent orna- 
 ment, it is not well that the ornament shoidd cease 
 in the parts concealed ; credit is given for it, and it 
 should not be deceptively withdrawn : as, for instance, 
 in the sculpture of the backs of the statues of a temple 
 pediment ; never, perhaps, to be seen, but yet not 
 lawfully to be left unfinished. And so in the working 
 out of ornaments in dark or concealed places, in which 
 it is best to err on the side of completion ; and in the 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 25 
 
 carrying round of string courses, and other such con- 
 tinuous work ; not but that they may stop sometimes, 
 on the point of going into some palpably impenetrable 
 recess, but then let them stop boldly and markedly, 
 on some distinct terminal ornament, and never be sup- 
 posed to exist where they do not. The arches of the 
 towers which flank the transepts of Rouen Cathedral 
 have rosette ornaments on their spandrils, on the 
 three visible sides ; none on the side towards the roof. 
 The right of this is rather a nice point for question. 
 
 XII. Visibility, however, we must remember, de- 
 pends, not only on situation, but on distance ; and 
 there is no way in which work is more painfully and 
 unwisely lost than in its over delicacy on parts distant 
 from the eye. Here, again, the principle of honesty 
 must govern our treatment : we must not work any 
 kind of ornament which is, perhaps, to cover the whole 
 building (or at least to occur on all parts of it) deli- 
 cately where it is near the eye, and rudely where it is 
 removed from it. That is trickery and dishonesty. 
 Consider, first, what kinds of ornaments will tell in 
 the distance and what near, and so distribute them, 
 keeping such as by their nature are delicate, down 
 near the eye, and throwing the bold and rough kinds 
 of work to the top ; and if there be any kind which 
 is to be both near and far off, take care that it be as 
 boldly and rudely wrought where it is well seen as 
 where it is distant, so that the spectator may know 
 exactly what it is, and what it is worth. Thus chequered 
 patterns, and in general such ornaments as common 
 workmen can execute, may extend over the whole 
 building ; but bas-reliefs, and fine niches and 
 capitals, should be kept down ; and the common 
 sense of this will always give a building dignity, even 
 though there be some abruptness or awkwardness in 
 the resulting arrangements. Thus at San Zeno at 
 Verona, the bas-reliefs, full of incident and interest, 
 are confined to a parallelogram of the front, reaching 
 
26 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 to the height of the capitals of the columns of the 
 porch. Above these, we find a simple, though most 
 lovely, little arcade ; and above that, onty blank 
 wall, with square face shafts. The whole effect is ten- 
 fold grander and better than if the entire facade had 
 been covered with bad work, and may serve for an 
 example of the way to place little where we cannot 
 afford much. So again, the transept gates of Rouen * 
 are covered with delicate bas-reliefs (of which I shall 
 speak at greater length presently) up to about once 
 and a half a man's height ; and above that come the 
 usual and more visible statues and niches. So in the 
 campanile at Florence, the circuit of bas-reliefs is on 
 its lowest story ; above that come its statues ; and 
 above them all is pattern mosaic, and twisted columns, 
 exquisitely finished, like all Italian work of the time, 
 but still, in the eye of the Florentine, rough and 
 commonplace by comparison with the bas-reliefs. So 
 generally the most delicate niche work and best mould- 
 ings of the French Gothic are in gates and low windows 
 well within sight ; although, it being the very spirit 
 of that style to trust to its exuberance for effect, there 
 is occasionally a burst upwards and blossoming un- 
 restrainably to the sky, as in the pediment of the west 
 front of Rouen, and in the recess of the rose window 
 behind it, where there are some most elaborate flower- 
 mouldings, all but invisible from below, and only 
 adding a general enrichment to the deep shadows that 
 relieve the shafts of the advanced pediment. It is 
 observable, however, that this very work is bad flam- 
 boyant, and has corrupt renaissance characters in its 
 detail as well as use ; while in the earlier and grander 
 north and south gates, there is a very noble proportion- 
 ing of the work to the distance, the niches and statues 
 
 * Henceforward, for the sake of convenience, when I 
 name any cathedral town in this manner, let me he under- 
 stood to speak of its cathedral church. 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 27 
 
 which crown the northern one, at a height of about one 
 hundred feet from the ground, being alike colossal and 
 simple ; visibly so from below, so as to induce no decep- 
 tion, and yet honestly and well finished above, and 
 all that they are expected to be ; the features very 
 beautiful, full of expression, and as delicately wrought 
 as any work of the period. 
 
 XIII. It is to be remembered, however, that while 
 the ornaments in every fine ancient building, without 
 exception so far as I am aware, are most delicate at 
 the base, they are often in greater effective quantity 
 on the upper parts. In high towers this is perfectly 
 natural and right, the solidity of the foundation being 
 as necessary as the division and penetration of the 
 superstructure ; hence the lighter work and richly 
 pierced crowns of late Gothic towers. The campanile 
 of Giotto at Florence, already alluded to, is an exquisite 
 instance of the union of the two principles, delicate 
 bas-reliefs adorning its massy foundation, while the 
 open tracery of the upper windows attracts the eye 
 by its slender intricacy, and a rich cornice crowns the 
 whole. In such truly fine cases of this disposition the 
 upper work is effective by its quantity and intricacy 
 only, as the lower portions by delicacy ; so also in the 
 Tour de Beurre at Rouen, where, however, the detail 
 is massy throughout, subdividing into rich meshes as 
 it ascends. In the bodies of buildings the principle 
 is less safe, but its discussion is not connected with 
 our present subject. 
 
 XI V. Finally, work may be wasted by being too 
 good for its material, or too fine to bear exposure ; 
 and this, generally a characteristic of late, especially 
 of renaissance, work, is perhaps the worst fault of all. 
 I do not know any thing more painful or pitiful than 
 the kind of ivory carving with which the Certosa of 
 Pavia, and part of the Golleone sepulchral chapel at 
 Bergamo, and other such buildings, are incrusted, of 
 which it is not possible so much as to think without 
 
28 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 exhaustion ; and a heavy sense of the misery it would 
 be, to be forced to look at it all. And this is not from 
 the quantity of it, nor because it is bad work — much 
 of it is inventive and able ; but because it looks as if 
 it were only fit to be put in inlaid cabinets and velveted 
 caskets, and as if it could not bear one drifting shower 
 or gnawing frost. We are afraid for it, anxious about 
 it, and tormented by it ; and we feel that a massy 
 shaft and a bold shadow would be worth it all. Never- 
 theless, even in cases like these, much depends on the 
 accomplishment of the great ends of decoration. If 
 the ornament does its duty — if it is ornament, and its 
 points of shade and light tell in the general effect, we 
 shall not be offended by finding that the sculptor in 
 his fulness of fancy has chosen to give much more than 
 these mere points of light, and has composed them of 
 groups of figures. But if the ornament does not answer 
 its purpose, if it have no distant, no truly decorative 
 power ; if, generally seen, it be a mere incrustation 
 and meaningless roughness, we shall only be chagrined 
 by finding when we look close, that the incrustation 
 has cost years of labour, and has millions of figures and 
 histories in it ; and would be the better of being seen 
 through a Stanhope lens. Hence the greatness of the 
 northern Gothic as contrasted with the latest Italian. 
 It reaches nearly the same extreme of detail ; but it 
 never loses sight of its architectural purpose, never 
 fails in its decorative power ; not a leaflet in it but 
 speaks, and speaks far off too ; and so long as this 
 be the case, there is no limit to the luxuriance in which 
 such work may legitimately and nobly be bestowed. 
 
 XV. No limit : it is one of the affectations of archi- 
 tects to speak of overcharged ornament. Ornament 
 cannot be overcharged if it be good, and is always 
 overcharged when it is bad. I have given, in Plate 
 I, fig. 1, one of the smallest niches of the central 
 gate of Rouen. That gate I suppose to be the 
 most exquisite piece of pure flamboj^ant work existing ; 
 

 1 (& M ■ 
 
 Mj ; "*f>' {JkTs-m , nV-' 
 
 
 B p g 
 
 & K, £ 
 
 
 II 
 
 
 U , 
 
 
 A.] 
 
 [feu e /: 28 
 
THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 29 
 
 for though I have spoken of the upper portions, espec- 
 ially the receding window, as degenerate, the gate 
 itself is of a purer period, and has hardly any renais- 
 sance taint. There are four strings of these niches 
 (each with two figures beneath it) round the porch, 
 from the ground to the top of the arch, with three inter- 
 mediate rows of larger niches, far more elaborate ; 
 besides the six principal canopies of each outer pier. 
 The total number of the subordinate niches alone, 
 each worked like that in the plate, and each with a 
 different pattern of traceries in each compartment, 
 is one hundred and seventy-six 4 . Yet in all this 
 ornament there is not one cusp, one finial, that is use- 
 less — not a stroke of the chisel is in vain ; the grace and 
 luxuriance of it all are visible — sensible rather — even 
 to the uninquiring eye ; and all its minuteness does 
 not diminish the majesty, while it increases the mystery, 
 of the noble and unbroken vault. It is not less the 
 boast of some styles that they can bear ornament, than 
 of others that they can do without it ; but we do not 
 often enough reflect that those very styles, of so haughty 
 simplicity, owe part of their pleasurableness to con- 
 trast, and would be wearisome if universal. They 
 are but the rests and monotones of the art ; it is to its 
 far happier, far higher, exaltation that we owe those 
 fair fronts of variegated mosaic, charged with wild 
 fancies and dark hosts of imagery, thicker and quainter 
 than ever filled the depth of midsummer dream ; 
 those vaulted gates, trellised with close leaves ; those 
 window-labyrinths of twisted tracery and starry 
 light ; those misty masses of multitudinous pinnacle 
 and diademed tower ; the only witnesses, perhaps, 
 that remain to us of the faith and fear of nations. All 
 else for which the builders sacrificed, has passed away — 
 all their living interests, and aims, and achievements. 
 We know not for what they laboured, and we see no 
 evidence of their reward. Victory, wealth, authority, 
 happiness — all have departed, though bought by 
 
30 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE 
 
 many a bitter sacrifice. But of them, and their life 
 and their toil upon the earth, one reward, one evidence, 
 is left to us in those gray heaps of deep-wrought stone. 
 They have taken Avith them to the grave their powers, 
 their honours, and their errors ; but they have left 
 us their adoration. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 I. There is a marked likeness between the virtue of 
 man and the enlightenment of the globe he inhabits — 
 the same diminishing gradation in vigour up to the 
 limits of their domains, the same essential separation 
 from their contraries — the same twilight at the meeting 
 of the two : a something wider belt than the line where 
 the world rolls into night, that strange twilight of the 
 virtues ; that dusky debateable land, wherein zeal 
 becomes impatience, and temperance becomes severity, 
 and justice becomes cruelty, and faith superstition, 
 and each and all vanish into gloom. 
 
 Nevertheless, with the greater number of them, 
 though their dimness increases gradually, we may 
 mark the moment of their sunset ; and, happily, may 
 turn the shadow back by the way by which it had 
 gone down : but for one, the line of the horizon is 
 irregular and undefined ; and this, too, the very equator 
 and girdle of them all — Truth ; that only one of which 
 there are no degrees, but breaks and rents continually ; 
 that pillar of the earth, yet a cloudy pillar ; that 
 golden and narrow line, which the very powers and 
 virtues that lean upon it bend, which policy and pru- 
 dence conceal, which kindness and courtesy modify, 
 which courage overshadows with his shield, imagination 
 covers with her wings, and charity dims with her tears. 
 How difficult must the maintenance of that authority 
 be, which, while it has to restrain the hostility of all 
 
32 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 the worst principles of man, has also to restrain the 
 disorders of his best — which is continually assaulted 
 by the one and betrayed by the other, and which 
 regards with the same severity the lightest and the 
 boldest violations of its law ! There are some faults 
 slight in the sight of love, some errors slight in the 
 estimate of wisdom ; but truth forgives no insult, and 
 endures no strain. 
 
 We do not enough consider this ; nor enough dread 
 the slight and continual occasions of offence against 
 her. We are too much in the habit of looking at false- 
 hood in its darkest associations, and through the colour 
 of its worst purposes. That indignation which we 
 profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit 
 malicious. We resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treach- 
 ery, because they harm us, not because they are 
 untrue. Take the detraction and the mischief from 
 the untruth, and we are little offended by it ; turn it 
 into praise, and we may be pleased with it. And yet 
 it is not calumny nor treachery that does the largest 
 sum of mischief in the world ; they are continually 
 crushed, and are felt only in being conquered. But it 
 is the glistening and softly spoken he ; the amiable 
 fallacy ; the patriotic lie of the historian, the provident 
 lie of the politician, the zealous he of the partizan, the 
 merciful lie of the friend, and the careless lie of each 
 man to himself, that cast that black mystery over 
 humanity, through which we thank any man who 
 pierces, as we would thank one who dug a well in a 
 desert ; happy, that the thirst for truth still remains 
 with us, even when we have wilfully left the fountains 
 of it. 
 
 It would be well if moralists less frequently confused 
 the greatness of a sin with its unpardonableness. 
 The two characters are altogether distinct. The great ness 
 of a fault depends partly on the nature of the person 
 against whom it is committed, partly upon the extent 
 of its consequences. Its pardonableness depends, 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 33 
 
 humanly speaking, on the degree of temptation to it. 
 One class of circumstances determines the weight of 
 the attaching punishment ; the other, the claim to 
 remission of punishment : and since it is not always 
 easy for men to estimate the relative weight, nor always 
 possible for them to know the relative consequences, 
 of crime, it is usually wise in them to quit the care of 
 such nice measurements, and to look to the other and 
 clearer condition of culpability, esteeming those faults 
 worst which are committed under least temptation. 
 I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious 
 and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity ; 
 yet it seems to me, that the shortest way to check the 
 darker forms of deceit is to set watch more scrupulous 
 against those which have mingled, unregarded and 
 unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let 
 us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, 
 and another as slight, and another as unintended. 
 Cast them all aside : they may be light and accidental ; 
 but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, 
 for all that ; and it is better that our hearts should be 
 swept clean of them, without over care as to which is 
 largest or blackest. Speaking truth is like writing 
 fair, and comes only by practice ; it is less a 
 matter of will than of habit, and I doubt if any 
 occasion can bo trivial which permits the practice and 
 formation of such a habit. To speak and act truth 
 with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, 
 and perhaps as meritorious, as to speak it under 
 intimidation or penalty ; and it is a strange thought 
 how many men there are, as I trust, who would hold 
 to it at the cost of fortune or life, for one who would 
 hold to it at the cost of a fit tie daily trouble. And 
 seeing that of all sin there is, perhaps, no one more 
 flatly o pposite to the Almighty, no one more ' wanting 
 the good of virtue and of being ', than this of lying, 
 it is suirely a strange insolence to fall into the foulness 
 of it on light or on no temptation, and surely becoming 
 
34 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 an honourable in an to resolve, that, whatever semblances 
 or fallacies the necessary course of his life may compel 
 him to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the serenity 
 of his voluntary actions, nor dimmish the reality of his 
 chosen delights. 
 
 II. If this be just and wise for truth's sake, much 
 more is it necessary for the sake of the delights over 
 which she has influence. For, as I advocated the 
 expression of the Spirit of Sacrifice in the acts and plea- 
 sures of men, not as if thereby those acts could further 
 the cause of religion, but because most assuredly they 
 might therein be infinitely ennobled themselves, so I 
 would have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear in the 
 hearts of our artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the 
 truthful practice of handicrafts could far advance the 
 cause of truth, but because I would fain see the handi- 
 crafts themselves urged by the spurs of chivalry : 
 and it is, indeed, marvellous to see what power and 
 universality there are in this single principle, and how 
 in the consulting or forgetting of it lies half the dignitv 
 or decline of every art and act of man. I have before 
 endeavoured to show its range and power in painting ; 
 and I believe a volume, instead of a chapter, might be 
 written on its authority over all that is great in architec- 
 ture. But I must be content with the force of few 
 and familiar instances, believing that the occasions of 
 its manifestation may be more easily discovered by a 
 desire to be true, than embraced by an analysis of 
 truth. 
 
 Only it is very necessary in the outset to mark 
 clearly wherein consists the essence of fallacy as distin- 
 guished from supposition. 
 
 III. For it might be at first thought that the whole 
 kingdom of imagination was one of deception also. 
 Not so : the action of the imagination is a voluntary 
 summoning of the conceptions of things absent or 
 impossible ; and the pleasure and nobility of the 
 imagination partly consist in its knowledge and con- 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 35 
 
 templation of them as such, i.e. in the knowledge of 
 their actual absence or impossibility at the moment 
 of their apparent presence or reality. When the 
 imagination deceives, it becomes madness. It is a 
 noble faculty so long as it confesses its own ideality ; 
 when it ceases to confess this, it is insanity. All the 
 difference lies in the fact of the confession, in there 
 being no deception. It is necessary to our rank as 
 spiritual creatures, that we should be able to invent 
 and to behold what is not ; and to our rank as moral 
 creatures, that we should know and confess at the same 
 time that it is not. 
 
 IV. Again, it might be thought, and has been thought, 
 that the whole art of painting is nothing else than an 
 endeavour to deceive. Not so : it is, on the contrary, 
 a statement of certain facts, in the clearest possible way. 
 For instance : I desire to give an account of a mountain 
 or of a rock ; I begin by telling its shape. But words 
 will not do this distinctly, and I draw its shape, and 
 say ' Th is was its shape.' Next : I would fain represent 
 its colour ; but words will not do this either, and I dye 
 the paper, and say ' This was its colour.' Such a pro- 
 cess may be carried on until the scene appears to exist, 
 and a high pleasure may be taken in its apparent 
 existence. This is a communicated act of imagination, 
 but no lie. The lie can consist only in an assertion of 
 its existence (which is never for one instant made, 
 implied, or believed), or else in false statements of 
 forms and colours (which are, indeed, made and be- 
 lieved to our great loss, continually). And observe, 
 also, that so degrading a thing is deception in even 
 the approach and appearance of it, that all painting 
 which even reaches the mark of apparent realization, 
 is degraded in so doing. I have enough insisted on this 
 point in another place. 
 
 V. The violations of truth, which dishonour poetry 
 and painting, are thus for the most part confined to 
 the treatment of their subjects. But in architecture 
 
36 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 another and a less subtle, more contemptible, violation 
 of truth is possible ; a direct falsity of assertion 
 respecting the nature of material, or the quantity of 
 labour. And this is, in the full sense of the word, 
 wrong ; it is as truly deserving of reprobation as any 
 other moral delinquency ; it is unworthy alike of archi- 
 tects and of nations ; and it has been a sign, wherever 
 it has widely and with toleration existed, of a singular 
 debasement of the arts ; that it is not a sign of worse 
 than this, of a general want of severe probity, can 
 be accounted for only by our knowledge of the strange 
 separation which has for some centuries existed be- 
 tween the arts and all other subjects of human intellect, 
 as matters of conscience. This withdrawal of con- 
 scientiousness from among the faculties concerned 
 with art, while it has destroyed the arts themselves, 
 has also rendered in a measure nugatory the evidence 
 which otherwise they might have presented respecting 
 the character of the respective nations among 
 whom they have been cultivated ; otherwise, it might 
 appear more than strange that a nation so distin- 
 guished for its general uprightness and faith as the 
 English, should admit in their architecture more of 
 pretence, concealment, and deceit, than any other of 
 this or of past time. 
 
 They are admitted in thoughtlessness, but with fatal 
 effect upon the art in which they are practised. If 
 there were no other causes for the failures which of late 
 have marked every great occasion for architectural 
 exertion, these petty dishonesties would be enough to 
 account for all. It is the first step, and not the least, 
 towards greatness to do away with these ; the first, 
 because so evidently and easily in our power. We 
 may not be able to command good, or beautiful, or 
 inventive architecture ; but we can command an honest 
 architecture : the meagreness of poverty may be 
 pardoned, the sternness of utility respected ; but 
 what is there but scorn for the meanness of deception ? 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 37 
 
 VI. Architectural Deceits are broadly to be con- 
 si It-red under three heads : 
 
 1st. The suggestion of a mode of structure or support, 
 other than the true one ; as in pendants of late Gothic 
 roofs. 
 
 2nd. The painting of surfaces to represent some 
 other material than that of which they actually 
 consist (as in the marbling of wood), or the deceptive 
 representation of sculptured ornament upon them. 
 
 3rd. The use of cast or machine-made ornaments 
 of any kind. 
 
 Now, it may be broadly stated, that architecture will 
 be noble exactly in the degree in which all these false 
 expedients are avoided. Nevertheless, there are cer- 
 tain degrees of them, which, owing to their frequent 
 usage, or to other causes, have so far lost the nature 
 of deceit as to be admissible ; as, for instance, gilding, 
 which is in architecture no deceit, because it is therein 
 not understood for gold ; while in jewellery it is a 
 deceit, because it is so understood, and therefore 
 altogether to be reprehended. So that there arise, 
 in the application of the strict rules of right, many 
 exceptions and niceties of conscience ; which let us as 
 briefly as possible examine. 
 
 VII. 1st. Structural Deceits. I have limited these 
 to the determined and purposed suggestion of a mode 
 of support other than the true one. The architect is 
 not bound to exhibit structure ; nor are we to com- 
 plain of him for concealing it, any more than we should 
 regret that the outer surface of the human frame con- 
 ceal much of its anatomy ; nevertheless, that building 
 will generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent 
 eye discovers the great secrets of its structure, as an 
 animal form does, although from a careless observer 
 they may be concealed. In the vaulting of a Gothic 
 roof it is no deceit to throw the strength into the ribs of 
 it, and make the intermediate vault a mere shell. Such 
 a structure would be presumed by an intelligent obser- 
 
38 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 ver, the first time he saw such a roof ; and the beauty 
 of its traceries would be enhanced to him if they con- 
 fessed and followed the lines of its main strength. 
 If, however, the intermediate shell were made of wood 
 instead of stone, and whitewashed to look like the rest 
 — this would, of course, be direct deceit, and altogether 
 unpardonable. 
 
 There, is, however, a certain deception necessarily 
 occurring in Gothic architecture, which relates, not to 
 the points, but to the manner, of support. The re- 
 semblance in its shafts and ribs to the external relations 
 of stems and branches, which has been the ground of 
 so much foolish speculation, necessarily induces in the 
 mind of the spectator a sense or belief of a correspondent 
 internal structure ; that is to say, of a fibrous and 
 continuous strength from the root into the limbs, and 
 an elasticity communicated upivards, sufficient for the 
 support of the ramified portions. The idea of the real 
 conditions, of a great weight of ceiling thrown upon 
 •certain narrow, jointed lines, which have a tendency 
 partly to be crushed, and partly to separate and be 
 pushed outwards, is with difficulty received ; and the 
 more so when the pillars would be if unassisted, too 
 slight for the weight, and are supported by external 
 flying buttresses, as in the apse of Beauvais, and other 
 such achievements of the bolder Gothic. Now, there 
 is a nice question of conscience in this, which we shall 
 hardly settle but by considering that, when the mind 
 is informed beyond the possibility of mistake as to the 
 true nature of things, the affecting it with a contrary 
 impression, however distinct, is no dishonesty, but, 
 on the contrary, a legitimate appeal to the imagination. 
 For instance, the greater part of the happiness which we 
 have in contemplating clouds, results from the impres- 
 sion of their having massive,luminous,warm, and moun- 
 tain-like surfaces ; and our delight in the sky frequently 
 depends upon our considering it as a blue vault. But, 
 if we choose, we may know the contrary, in both in- 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 39 
 
 stances ; and easily ascertain the cloud to be a damp 
 fog, or a drift of snow flakes ; and the sky to be a 
 lightless abyss. There is, therefore, no dishonesty, 
 while there is much delight, in the irresistibly contrary 
 impression. In the same way, so long as we see the 
 stones and joints, and are not deceived as to the points 
 of support in any piece of architecture, we may rather 
 praise than regret the dexterous artifices which compel 
 us to feel as if there were fibre in its shafts and life hi its 
 branches. Nor is even the concealment of the support 
 of the external buttress reprehensible, so long as the 
 pillars are not sensibly inadequate to their duty. For 
 the weight of a roof is a circumstance of which the 
 spectator generally has no idea, and the provisions 
 for it, consequently, circumstances whose necessity or 
 adaptation he could not understand. It is no deceit, 
 therefore when the weight to be borne is necessarily un- 
 known, to conceal also the means of bearing it, leaving 
 only to be perceived so much of the support as is indeed 
 adequate to the weight supposed. For the shafts do, 
 indeed, bear as much as they are ever imagined to bear, 
 and the system of added support is no more, as a matter 
 of conscience, to be exhibited, than, in the human or any 
 other form, mechanical provisions for those functions 
 which are themselves unperceived. 
 
 But the moment that the conditions of weight are 
 comprehended, both truth and feeling require that the 
 conditions of support should be also comprehended. No- 
 thing can be worse, either as judged by the taste, or the 
 conscience, than affectedly inadequate supports — sus- 
 pensions in air, and other such tricks and vanities. Mr 
 Hope wisely reprehends, for this reason, the arrange- 
 ment of the main piers of St Sophia at Constantinople. 
 King's College Chapel, Cambridge, is a piece of archi- 
 tectural juggling, if possible still more to be condemned, 
 because less sublime. 
 
 VIII. With deceptive concealments of structure are 
 to be classed, though still more blameable, deceptive 
 
40 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 assumptions of it, — the introduction of members which 
 should have, or profess to have, a duty, and have none. 
 One of the most general instances of this will be found 
 in the form of the flying buttress in late Gothic. The 
 use of that member is, of course, to convey support 
 from one pier to another when the plan of the building 
 renders it necessary or desirable that the supporting 
 masses should be divided into groups ; the most fre- 
 quent necessity of this kind arising from the intermedi- 
 ate range of chapels or aisles between the nave or choir 
 walls and their supporting piers. The natural, healthy, 
 and beautiful arrangement is that of a steeply sloping 
 bar of stone, sustained by an arch with its spandril 
 carried farthest down on the lowest side, and dying 
 into the vertical of the outer pier ; that pier being, of 
 course, not square, but rather a piece of wall set at 
 right angles to the supported walls, and, if need be, 
 crowned by a pinnacle to give it greater weight. The 
 whole arrangement is exquisitely carried out in the 
 choir of Beauvais. In later Gothic the pinnacle became 
 gradually a decorative member, and was used in all 
 places merely for the sake of its beauty. There is no 
 objection to this ; it is just as lawful to build a pinnacle 
 for its beauty as a tower ; but also the buttress became 
 a decorative member ; and was used, first, where it 
 was not wanted, and, secondly, in forms in which it 
 could be of no use, becoming a mere tie, not between 
 the pier and wall, but between the wall and the top of 
 the decorative pinnacle, thus attaching itself to the 
 very point where its thrust, if it made any, could not be 
 resisted. The most flagrant instance of this barbarism 
 that I remember (though it prevails partially in all the 
 spires of the Netherlands) is the lantern of St Ouen at 
 Rouen, where the pierced buttress, having an ogee 
 curve, looks about as much calculated to bear a thrust 
 as a switch of willow ; and the pinnacles, huge and 
 richly decorated, have evidently no work to do what- 
 soever, but stand round the central tower, like four 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 41 
 
 idle servants, as they are — heraldic supporters, that 
 central tower being merely a hollow crown, which needs 
 no more buttressing than a basket does. In fact, I do 
 not know any thing more strange or unwise than the 
 praise lavished upon this lantern ; it is one of the 
 basest pieces of Gothic in Europe ; its flamboyant 
 traceries of the last and most degraded forms 5 ; and 
 its entire plan and decoration resembling, and deserv- 
 ing little more credit than, the burnt sugar ornaments 
 of elaborate confectionary. There are hardly any of 
 the magnificent and serene methods of construction in 
 the early Gothic, which have not, in the course of 
 time, been gradually thinned and pared away into 
 these skeletons, which sometimes indeed, when their 
 lines truly follow the structure of the original masses, 
 have an interest like that of the fibrous framework of 
 leaves from which the substance has been dissolved, 
 but which are usually distorted as well as emaciated, 
 and remain but the sickly phantoms and mockeries of 
 things that were ; they are to true architecture what the 
 Greek ghost was to the armed and living frame ; and 
 the very winds that whistle through the threads of 
 them, are to the diapasoned echoes of the ancient walls, 
 as to the voice of the man was the pining of the spectre 6 . 
 IX. Perhaps the most fruitful source of these kinds 
 of corruption which we have to guard against in recent 
 times, is one which, nevertheless, comes in a ' question- 
 able shape ', and of which it is not easy to determine 
 the proper laws and limits ; I mean the use of iron. 
 The definition of the art of architecture, given in the 
 first Chapter, is independent of its materials : Never- 
 theless, that art having been, up to the beginning of the 
 present century, practised for the most part in clay, 
 stone, or wood, it has resulted that the sense of propor- 
 tion and the laws of structure have been based, the 
 one altogether, the other in great part, on the necessities 
 consequent on the employment of those materials ; 
 and that the entire or principal employment of metallic 
 
42 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 framework would, therefore, be generally felt as a de- 
 parture from the first principles of the art. Abstractedly 
 there appears no reason why iron should not be 
 used as well as wood ; and the time is probably near 
 when a new system of architectural laws will be de- 
 veloped, adapted entirely to metallic construction. 
 But I believe that the tendency of all present sympathy 
 and association is to limit the idea of architecture to 
 non-metallic work ; and that not without reason. For 
 architecture being in its perfection the earliest, as in 
 its elements it is necessarily the first, of arts, will 
 always precede, in any barbarous nation, the possession 
 of the science necessary either for the obtaining or the 
 management of iron. Its first existence and its earliest 
 laws must, therefore, depend upon the use of material^ 
 •accessible in quantity, and on the surface of the earth : 
 that is to say, clay, wood, or stone : and as I think it 
 •cannot but be generally felt that one of the chief 
 dignities of architecture is its historical use ; and since 
 the latter is partly dependent on consistency of style, 
 it will be felt right to retain as far as may be, even in 
 periods of more advanced science, the materials and 
 principles of earlier ages. 
 
 X. But whether this be granted me or not, the fact 
 is, that every idea respecting size, proportion, decor- 
 ation, or construction, on which we are at present in 
 the habit of acting or judging, depends on presup- 
 position of such materials : and as I both feel myself 
 unable to escape the influence of these prejudices, and 
 believe that my readers will be equally so, it may be 
 perhaps permitted to me to assume that true archi- 
 tecture does not admit iron as a constructive mater- 
 ial 7 , and that such works as the cast-iron central 
 spire cf Rouen Cathedral, or the iron roofs and 
 pillars of our railway stations, and of some of our j 
 •churcl es, are not architecture at all. Yet it is 
 •evident that metals may, and sometimes must, enter 
 into the construction to a certain extent, as nails in 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 43 
 
 wooden architecture, and therefore as legitimately 
 rivets and solderings in stone ; neither can wc- well 
 deny to the Gothic architect the power of support- 
 ing statues, pinnacles, or traceries by iron bars ; 
 and if we grant this, I do not see how we can 
 help allowing Brunelleschi his iron chain around the 
 dome of Florence, or the builders of Salisbury their 
 elaborate iron binding of the central tower 8 . If, how- 
 ever, we would not fall into the old sophistry of the 
 grains of corn and the heap, we must find a rule which 
 may enable us to stop somewhere. This rule is, I 
 think, that metals may be used as a cement, but not as 
 a support. For as cements of other kinds are often 
 so strong that the stones may easier be broken than 
 separated, and the wall becomes a solid mass, without 
 for that reason losing the character of architecture, 
 there is no reason why, when a nation has obtained 
 the knowledge and practice of iron work, metal rods 
 or rivets should not be used in the place of cement 
 and establish the same or a greater strength and adher- 
 ence, without in any wise inducing departure from the 
 types and system of architecture before established ; 
 nor does it make any difference except as to sightliness, 
 whether the metal bands or rods so employed, be in 
 the body of the wall or on its exterior, or set as stays 
 and cross-bands ; so only that the use of them be 
 always and distinctly one which might be superseded 
 by mere strength of cement ; as for instance if a pin- 
 nacle or mullion be propped or tied by an iron band, it 
 \ is evident that the iron only prevents the separation 
 of the stones by lateral force, which the cement would 
 j have done, had it been strong enough. But the moment 
 that the iron in the least degree takes the place of the 
 I stone, and acts by its resistance to crushing, and bears 
 superincumbent weight, or if it acts by its own weight 
 as a counterpoise, and so supersedes the use of pin- 
 ; nacles or buttresses in resisting a lateral thrust, or if, 
 in the form of a rod or girder, it is used to do what 
 
44 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 wooden beams would have done as well, that instant 
 the building ceases, so far as such applications of metal 
 extend, to be true architecture. 
 
 XI. The limit, however, thus determined, is an 
 ultimate one, and it is well in all things to be cautious 
 how we approach the utmost limit of lawfulness ; so 
 that, although the employment of metal within this 
 limit cannot be considered as destroying the very 
 being and nature of architecture, it will, if extravagant 
 and frequent, derogate from the dignity of the work, 
 as well as (which is especially to our present point) 
 from its honesty. For although the spectator is not 
 informed as to the quantity or strength of the cement 
 employed, he will generally conceive the stones of the 
 building to be separable ; and his estimate of the skill 
 of the architect will be based in great measure on his 
 supposition of this condition, and of the difficulties 
 attendant upon it : so that it is always more honour- 
 able, and it has a tendency to render the style of archi- 
 tecture both more masculine and more scientific, to 
 employ stone and mortar simply as such, and to do as 
 much as possible with their mere weight and strength, 
 and rather sometimes to forego a grace, or to confess 
 a weakness, than attain the one, or conceal the other, 
 by means verging upon dishonesty. 
 
 Nevertheless, where the design is of such delicacy 
 and slightness as, in some parts of very fair and finished 
 edifices, it is desirable that it should be ; and where 
 both its completion and security are in a measure 
 dependent on the use of metal, let not such use be 
 reprehended ; so only that as much is done as may be, 
 by good mortar and good masonry ; and no slovenly 
 workmanship admitted through confidence in the iron 
 helps ; for it is in this license as in that of wine, a man 
 may use it for his infirmities, but not for his nourish- 
 ment. 
 
 XII. And, in order to avoid an over use of this 
 liberty, it would be well to consider what application 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 45 
 
 may be conveniently made of the dovetailing and 
 various adjusting of stones ; for when any artifice is 
 necessary to help the mortar, certainly this ought to 
 come before the use of metal, for it is both safer and 
 more honest. I cannot see that any objection can be 
 made to the fitting of the stones in any shapes the 
 architect pleases ; for although it would not be desir- 
 able to see buildings put together like Chinese puzzles, 
 there must always be a check upon such an abuse of 
 the practice in its difficulty ; nor is it necessary that 
 it should be always exhibited, so that it be understood 
 by the spectator as an admitted help, and that no 
 principal stones are introduced in positions apparently 
 impossible for them to retain, although a riddle here 
 and there, in unimportant features, may sometimes 
 serve to draw the eye to the masonry, and make it 
 interesting, as well as to give a delightful sense of a 
 kind of necromantic power in the architect. There 
 is a pretty one in the lintel of the lateral door of the 
 cathedral of Prato (Plate IV, fig. 4) ; where the main- 
 tenance of the visibly separate stones, alternate marble 
 and serpentine, cannot be understood until their cross- 
 cutting is seen below. Each block is, of course, of the 
 form given in fig. 5. 
 
 XIII. Lastly, before leaving the subject of structural 
 deceits, I would remind the architect who thinks that 
 I am unnecessarily and narrowly limiting his resources 
 or his art, that the highest greatness and the highest 
 wisdom are shown, the first by a noble submission to, 
 the second by a thoughtful providence for, certain 
 voluntarily admitted restraints. Nothing is more 
 evident than this, in that supreme government which 
 is the example, as it is the centre, of all others. The 
 Divine Wisdom is, and can be, shown to us only in its 
 meeting and contending with the difficulties which 
 are voluntarily, and for the sake of that contest, admitted 
 by the Divine Omnipotence : and these difficulties, 
 observe, occur in the form of natural laws or ordinances, 
 
4(5 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 which might, at many times and in countless ways, 
 bo infringed with apparent advantage, but which are 
 never infringed, whatever costly arrangements or 
 adaptations their observance may necessitate for the 
 accomplishment of given purposes. The example 
 most apposite to our present subject is the structure 
 of the bones of animals. No reason can be given, I 
 believe, whjr the sj^stem of the higher animals should 
 not have been made capable, as that of the Infusoria is. 
 of secreting flint, instead of phosphate of lime, or. 
 more naturally still, carbon ; so framing the bones of 
 adamant at once. The elephant or rhinoceros, had 
 the earthy part of their bones been made of diamond, 
 might have been as agile and light as grasshoppers, and 
 other animals might have been framed, far more magni- 
 ficently colossal than any that walk the earth. In 
 other worlds we may, perhaps, see such creations ; a 
 creation for every element, and elements infinite. But 
 the architecture of animals here is appointed by God 
 to be a marble architecture, not a flint nor adamant 
 architecture ; and all manner of expedients are adopted 
 to attain the utmost degree of strength and size 
 possible under that great limitation. The jaw of the 
 ichthyosaurus is pieced and riveted, the leg of the 
 megatherium is a foot thick,and the head of the mylodon 
 has a double skull ; we, in our wisdom, should, doubt- 
 less, have given the lizard a steel jaw, and the mylodon 
 a cast-iron headpiece, and forgotten the great prin- 
 ciple to which all creation bears witness, that order 
 and system are nobler things than power. But God 
 shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only 
 authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of 
 Obedience — an obedience to His own laws : and in 
 the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of His 
 creatures, we are reminded, even in His divine essence, 
 of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature ; 
 ' that sweareth to his own hurt, and change th not.' 
 XIV. 2nd. Surface Deceits. These may be gener- 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 47 
 
 ally defined as the inducing the supposition of some 
 form of material which does not actually exist ; as 
 commonly in the painting of wood to represent marble, 
 or in the painting of ornaments in deceptive relief, 
 etc. But we must be careful to observe that the 
 evil of them consists always in definitely attempted 
 deception, and that it is a matter of some nicety to 
 mark the point where deception begins or ends. 
 
 Thus, for instance, the roof of Milan Cathedral is 
 seemingly covered with elaborate fan tracery, forcibly 
 enough painted to enable it, in its dark and removed 
 position, to deceive a careless observer. This is, of 
 course, gross degradation ; it destroys much of the 
 dignity even of the rest of the building, and is in the 
 very strongest terms to be reprehended. 
 
 The roof of the Sistine Chapel has much architectural 
 design in grisaille mingled with the figures of its 
 frescoes ; and the effect is increase of dignity. 
 
 In what lies the distinctive character ? 
 
 In two points, principally : The first, that the 
 architecture is so closely associated with the figures, 
 and has so grand fellowship with them in its forms and 
 cast shadows, that both are at once felt to be of a 
 piece ; and as the figures must necessarily be painted, 
 the architectural is known to be so too. There is thus 
 no deception. 
 
 The second, that so great a painter as Michael Angclo 
 would always stop short, in such minor parts of his 
 design, of the degree of vulgar force which would be 
 necessary to induce the supposition of their reality ; 
 and, strangely as it may sound, would never paint 
 badly enough to deceive. 
 
 But though right and wrong are thus found broadly 
 opposed in works severally so mean and so mighty as 
 the roof of Milan and that of the Sistine, there are 
 works neither so great nor so mean, in which the limits 
 of right are vaguely defined, and will need some care 
 to determine ; care only, however, to apply accurately 
 
48 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 the broad principle with which we set out, that no form 
 nor material is to be deceptively represented. 
 
 XV. Evidently, then, painting, confessedly such, 
 is no deception ; it does not assert any material what- 
 ever. Whether it be on wood or on stone, or, as will 
 naturally be supposed, on plaster, does not matter. 
 Whatever the material, good painting makes it more 
 precious ; nor can it ever be said to deceive respecting 
 the ground of which it gives us no information. To 
 cover brick with plaster, and this plaster with fresco, 
 is, therefore, perfectly legitimate ; and as desirable 
 a mode of decoration, as it is constant in the great 
 periods. Verona and Venice are now seen deprived 
 of more than half their former splendour ; it depended 
 far more on their frescoes than their marbles. The 
 plaster, in this case, is to be considered as the gesso 
 ground on panel or canvass. But to cover brick with 
 cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it 
 may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood ; and is just 
 as contemptible a procedure as the other is noble. 
 
 It being lawful to paint then, is it lawful to paint 
 everything ? So long as the painting is confessed — 
 yes ; but if, even in the slightest degree, the sense of 
 it be lost, and the thing painted be supposed real — no. 
 Let us take a few instances. In the Campo Santo at 
 Pisa, each fresco is surrounded with a border composed 
 of flat coloured patterns of great elegance — no part 
 of it in attempted relief. The certainty of flat surface 
 being thus secured, the figures, though the size of life, 
 do not deceive, and the artist thenceforward is at 
 liberty to put forth his whole power, and to lead us 
 through fields, and groves, and depths of plea-ant 
 landscape, and soothe us with the sweet clearness of 
 far off sky, and yet never lose the severity of his primal 
 purpose of architectural decoration. 
 
 In the Camera di Coreggio of San Lodovico at Parma, 
 the trellises of vine shadow the walls, as if with an 
 actual arbour ; and the groups of children, peeping 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 49 
 
 through the oval openings, luscious in colour and faint 
 in light, may well be expected every instant to break 
 through, or hide behind the covert. The grace of 
 their attitudes, and the evident greatness of the whole 
 work, mark that it is painting, and barely redeem it 
 from the charge of falsehood ; but even so saved, it is 
 utterly unworthy to take a place among noble or 
 legitimate architectural decoration. 
 
 In the cupola of the duomo of Parma the same 
 painter has represented the Assumption with so much 
 deceptive power, that he has made a dome of some 
 thirty feet diameter look like a cloud-wrapt opening 
 in the seventh heaven, crowded with a rushing sea of 
 angels. Is this wrong ? Not so : for the subject at 
 once precludes the possibility of deception. We might 
 have taken the vines for a veritable pergola, and the 
 children for its haunting ragazzi ; but we know the 
 stayed clouds and moveless angels must be man's 
 work ; let him put his utmost strength to it, and 
 welcome ; he can enchant us, but cannot betray. 
 
 We may thus apply the rule to the highest, as well 
 as the art of daily occurrence, always remembering 
 that more is to be forgiven to the great painter than to 
 to the mere decorative inorkman ; and this especially, 
 because the former, even in deceptive portions, will 
 not trick us so grossly ; as we have just seen in Cor- 
 reggio, where a worse painter would have made the 
 thing look like life at once. There is, however, in 
 room, villa, or garden decoration, some fitting admis- 
 sion of trickeries of this kind, as of pictured landscapes 
 at the extremities of alleys and arcades and ceilings 
 like skies, or painted with prolongations upwards of 
 the architecture of the walls, which things have some- 
 times a certain luxury and pleasureableness in places 
 meant for idleness, and are innocent enough as long as 
 they are regarded as mere toys. 
 
 XVI. Touching the false representation of material, 
 the question is infinitely more simple, and the law 
 
 s.l.a. e 
 
50 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 more sweeping ; all such imitations are utterly base 
 and inadmissible. It is melancholy to think of the 
 time and expense lost in marbling the shop fronts of 
 London alone, and of the waste of our resources in 
 absolute vanities, in things about which no mortal 
 cares, by which no eye is ever arrested, unless pnin- 
 fully, and which do not add one whit to comfort, or 
 cleanliness, or even to that great object of commer- 
 cial art — conspicuousness. But in architecture of a 
 higher rank, how much more is it to be condemned ! 
 I have made it a rule in the present work not to blame 
 specifically ; but I may, perhaps, be permitted, while 
 I express my sincere admiration of the very noble 
 entrance and general architecture of the British 
 Museum, to express also my regret that the noble 
 granite foundation of the staircase should be mocked 
 at its landing by an imitation, the more blameable 
 because tolerably successful. The only effect of it is 
 to cast a suspicion upon the true stones below, and 
 upon every bit of granite afterwards encountered. 
 One feels a doubt, after it, of the honesty of Memnon 
 himself. But even this, however derogatory to the 
 noble architecture around it, is less painful than the 
 want of feeling with whicla* in our cheap modern 
 churches, we suffer the wall decorator to erect about 
 the altar frameworks and pediments daubed with 
 mottled colour, and to dye in the same fashion such 
 skeletons or caricatures of columns as may emerge 
 above the pews : this is not merely bad taste ; it is no 
 unimportant or excusable error which brings even 
 these shadows of vanity and falsehood into the house 
 of prayer. The first condition which just feeling 
 requires in church furniture is, that it should be simple 
 and unaffected, not fictitious nor tawdry. It may 
 not be in our power to make it beautiful, but let 
 it at least be pure ; and if we cannot permit much to 
 the architect, do not let us permit anything to the 
 upholsterer ; if we keep to solid stone and solid wood, 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 51 
 
 whitewashed, if we like, for cleanliness' sake (for 
 whitewash has so often been used as the dress of noble 
 things that it has thence received a kind of nobility 
 itself), it must be a bad design indeed, which is grossly- 
 offensive. I recollect no instance of a want of sacred 
 character, or of any marked and painful ugliness, in 
 the simplest or the most awkwardly built village church, 
 where stone and wood were roughly and nakedly used, 
 and the windows latticed with white glass. But the 
 smoothly stuccoed walls, the flat roofs with ventilator 
 ornaments, the barred windows with jaundiced borders 
 and dead ground square panes, the gilded or bronzed 
 wood, the painted iron, the wretched upholstery of 
 curtains and cushions, and pew heads, and altar railings, 
 and Birmingham metal candlesticks, and, above all, 
 the green and yellow sickness of the false marble — 
 disguises all, observe ; falsehoods all — who are they 
 who like these things ? who defend them ? who do 
 them ? I have never spoken to any one who did like 
 them, though to many who thought them matters of 
 no consequence. Perhaps not to religion (though I can- 
 not but believe that there are many to whom, as to 
 myself, such things are serious obstacles to the repose 
 of mind and temper which should precede devotional 
 exercises) ; but to the general tone of our judgment 
 and feeling — yes ; for assuredly we shall regard, with 
 tolerance, if not with affection, whatever forms of 
 material things we have been in the habit of associating 
 with our worship, and be little prepared to detect or 
 blame hypocrisy, meanness, and disguise in other 
 kinds of decoration, when we suffer objects belonging 
 to the most solemn of all services to be tricked out in a 
 fashion so fictitious and unseemly. 
 
 XVII. Painting, however, is not the only mode in 
 which material may be concealed, or rather simulated ; 
 for merely to conceal is, as we have seen, no wrong. 
 Whitewash, for instance, though often (by no means 
 always) to be regretted as a concealment, is not to be 
 
52 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 blamed as a falsity. Jt shows itself for what it is, 
 and asserts nothing of what is beneath it. Gilding 
 has become, from its frequent use, equally innocent. 
 It is understood for what it is, a film merely, and is. 
 therefore, allowable to any extent : I do not say ex- 
 pedient : it is one of the most abused means of magni- 
 ficence we possess, and I much doubt whether any use 
 we ever make of it, balances that loss of pleasure, 
 which, from the frequent sight and perpetual suspicion 
 of it, we suffer in the contemplation of any thing that 
 is verily of gold. I think gold was meant to be seldom 
 seen, and to be admired as a precious thing ; and ! 
 sometimes wish that truth should so far literally pre- 
 vail as that all should be gold that glittered, or rather 
 that nothing should glitter that was not gold. Never- 
 theless, Nature herself does not dispense with such 
 semblance, but uses light for it ; and I have too great a 
 love for old and saintly art to part with its burnished 
 field, or radiant nimbus ; only it should be used with 
 respect, and to express magnificence, or sacredness, 
 and not in lavish vanity, or in sign painting. Of its 
 expedience, however, any more than of that of colour, 
 it is not here the place to speak ; we are endeavouring 
 to determine what is lawful, not what is desirable. 
 Of other and less common modes of disguising surface, 
 as of powder of lapis lazuli, or mosaic imitations of 
 coloured stones, I need hardly speak. The rule will 
 apply to all alike, that whatever is pretended, is wrong ; 
 commonly enforced also by the exceeding ugliness and 
 insufficient appearance of such methods, as lately in 
 the style of renovation by which half the houses in 
 Venice have been defaced, the brick covered first with 
 stucco, and this painted with zigzag veins in imitation 
 of alabaster. But there is one more form of architec- 
 tural fiction, which is so constant in the great periods 
 that it needs respectful judgment. I mean the facing 
 of brick with precious stone. 
 
 XVIII. It is well known, that what is meant by a 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 53 
 
 church's being built of marble is, in nearly all cases, 
 only that a veneering of marble has been fastened on 
 the rough brick wall, built with certain projections 
 to receive it ; and that what appear to be massy stones, 
 are nothing more than external slabs. 
 
 Now, it is evident, that, in this case, the question of 
 right is on the same ground as in that of gilding. If 
 it be clearly understood that a marble facing does not 
 pretend or imply a marble wall, there is no harm in it ; 
 and as it is also evident that, when very precious stones 
 are used, as jaspers and serpentines, it must become, 
 not only an extravagant and vain increase of expense, 
 but sometimes an actual impossibility, to obtain mass 
 of them enough to build with, there is no resource but 
 this of veneering ; nor is there any thing to be alleged 
 against it on the head of durability, such work having 
 been by experience found to last as long, and in as per- 
 fect condition, as any kind of masonry. It is, there- 
 fore, to be considered as simply an art of mosaic 
 on a large scale, the ground being of brick, or any other 
 material ; and when lovely stones are to be obtained, 
 it is a manner which should be thoroughly understood, 
 and often practised. Nevertheless, as we esteem the 
 shaft of a column more highly for its being of a single 
 block, and as we do not regret the loss of substance 
 and value which there is in things of solid gold, silver, 
 agate, or ivory ; so I think that walls themselves may 
 be regarded with a more just complacency if they are 
 known to be all of noble substance ; and that rightly 
 weighing the demands of the two principles of which 
 we have hitherto spoken — Sacrifice and Truth, we 
 should sometimes rather spare external ornament than 
 diminish the unseen value and consistency of what we 
 do ; and I believe that a better manner of design, 
 and a more careful and studious, if less abundant, de- 
 coration would follow, upon the consciousness of thor- 
 oughness in the substance. And, indeed, this is to be 
 remembered, with respect to all the points we have 
 
54 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 examined ; that while we have traced the limits of 
 license, we have not fixed those of that high rectitude 
 which refuses license. It is thus true that there is no 
 falsity, and much beauty, in the use of external colour, 
 and that it is lawful to paint either pictures or patterns 
 on whatever surfaces may seem to need enrichment. 
 But it is not less true, that such practices are essen- 
 tially unarchitectural ; and while we cannot say that 
 there is actual danger in an over use of them, seeing 
 that they have been always used most lavishly in the 
 times of most noble art, yet they divide the work 
 into two parts and kinds, one of less durability than 
 the other, which die3 away from it in process of ages, 
 and leaves it, unless it have noble qualities of its own, 
 naked and bare. That enduring noblesse I should, 
 therefore, call truly architectural ; and it is not until 
 this has been secured, that the accessory power of 
 painting may be called in, for the delight of the imme- 
 diate time ; nor this, as I think, until every resource of a 
 more stable kind has been exhausted. The true colours of 
 architecture are those of natural stone, and I would fain 
 see these taken advantage of to the full. Every variety 
 of hue, from pale yellow to purple, passing through 
 orange, red and brown, is entirely at our command ; 
 nearly every kind of green and grey is also attainable ; 
 and with these, and pure white, what harmonies might 
 we not achieve ? Of stained and variegated stone, 
 the quantity is unlimited, the kinds innumerable ; 
 where brighter colours are required, let glass, and gold 
 protected by glass, be used in mosaic — a kind of work 
 as durable as the solid stone, and incapable of losing its 
 lustre by time — and let the painter's work be reserved 
 for the shadowed loggia and inner chamber. This is 
 the true and faithful way of building ; where this cannot 
 be, the device of external colouring may, indeed, be 
 employed without dishonour ; but it must be with the 
 warning reflection, that a time will come when such aids 
 must pass away, and when the building will be judged 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 55 
 
 in its lifelessness, dying the death of the dolphin. Bet- 
 ter the less bright, more enduring fabric. The trans- 
 parent alabasters of San Miniato, and the mosaics of 
 St Mark's, are more warmly filled, and more brightly 
 touched, by every return of morning and evening rays ; 
 while the hues of our cathedrals have died like the iris 
 out of the cloud ; and the temples whose azure and 
 purple once flamed above the Grecian promontories, 
 stand in their faded whiteness, like snows which the 
 sunset has left cold. 
 
 XIX. The last form of fallacy which it will be re- 
 membered we had to deprecate, was the substitution 
 of cast or machine work for that of the hand, generally 
 expressible as Operative Deceit. 
 
 There are two reasons, both weighty, against this 
 practice : one, that all cast and machine work is bad, 
 as work ; the other, that it is dishonest. Of its badness 
 I shall speak in another place, that being evidently no 
 efficient reason against its use when other cannot be 
 had. Its dishonesty, however, which, to my mind, 
 is of the grossest kind, is, I think, a sufficient reason to 
 determine absolute and unconditional rejection of it. 
 
 Ornament, as I have often before observed, has two 
 entirely distinct sources of agreeableness : one, that 
 of the abstract beauty of its forms, which, for the pres- 
 ent, we will suppose to be the same whether they come 
 from the hand or the machine ; the other, the sense of 
 human labour and care spent upon it. How great 
 this latter influence we may perhaps judge, by consider- 
 ing that there is not a cluster of weeds growing in any 
 cranny of ruin which has not a beauty of all respects 
 nearly equal, and, in some, immeasurably superior, 
 to that of the most elaborate sculpture of its stones : 
 and that all our interest in the carved work, our sense 
 of its richness, though it is tenfold less rich than the 
 knots of grass beside it ; of its delicacy, though it is 
 a thousandfold less delicate ; of its admirableness, 
 though a millionfold less admirable ; results from our 
 
56 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 consciousness of its being the work of poor, clumsy, 
 toilsome man. Its true delightfulness depends on our 
 discovering in it the record of thoughts, and intents, 
 and trials, and heart-breakings — of recoveries and 
 joy fulnesses of success : all this can be traced by a 
 practised eye ; but, granting it even obscure, it is 
 presumed or understood ; and in that is the worth of 
 the thing, just as much as the worth of any thing else 
 we call precious. The worth of a diamond is simply the 
 understanding of the time it must take to look for it 
 before it is found ; and the worth of an ornament is 
 the time it must take before it can be cut. It has 
 an intrinsic value besides, which the diamond has not 
 (for a diamond ha.s no more real beauty than a piece of 
 glass) ; but I do not speak of that at present ; I place 
 the two on the same ground ; and I suppose that hand- 
 wrought ornament can no more be generally known from 
 machine work, than a diamond can be known from 
 paste ; nay, that the latter may deceive, for a moment, 
 the mason's, as the other the jeweller's, eye ; and that 
 it can be detected only by the closest examination. 
 Yet exactly as a woman of feeling would not wear 
 false jewels, so would a builder of honour disdain false 
 ornaments. The using of them is just as downright 
 and inexcusable a lie. You use that which pretends 
 to a worth which it has not ; which pretends to have 
 cost, and to be, what it did not, and is not ; it is an 
 imposition, a vulgarity, an impertinence, and a sin. 
 Down with it to the ground, grind it to powder, leave 
 its ragged place upon the wall, rather ; you have not 
 paid for it, you have no business with it, you do not 
 want it. Nobody wants ornaments in this world, 
 but everybody wants integrity. All the fair devices 
 that ever were fancied are not worth a lie. Leave your 
 walls as bare as a planed board, or build them of baked 
 mud and chopped straw, if need be ; but do not rough- 
 cast them with falsehood. 
 
 This, then, being our general law, and I hold it for a 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 57 
 
 more imperative one than any other I have asserted ; 
 and this kind of dishonesty the meanest, as the least 
 neeessary ; for ornament is an extravagant and ines- 
 sential thing ; and therefore, if fallacious, utterly base — 
 this, I say, being our general law, there are, neverthe- 
 less, certain exceptions respecting particular substances 
 and their uses. 
 
 XX. Thus in the use of brick : since that is known 
 to be originally moulded, there is no reason why it 
 should not be moulded into diverse forms. It will 
 never be supposed to have been cut, and, therefore, 
 will cause no deception ; it will have only the credit it 
 deserves. In flat countries, far from any quarry of 
 stone, cast brick may be legitimately, and most success- 
 fully, used in decoration, and that elaborate, and even 
 refined. The brick mouldings of the Palazzo Pepoli 
 at Bologna, and those which run round the market- 
 place of Vercelli, are among the richest in Italy. So 
 also, tile and porcelain work, of which the former is 
 grotesquely, but successfully, enqjloycd in the domestic 
 architecture of France, coloured tiles being inserted in 
 the diamond spaces between the crossing timbers ; and 
 the latter admirably in Tuscany, in external bas-reliefs,, 
 by the Robbia family, in which works, while we cannot 
 but sometimes regret the useless and ill- arranged colours, 
 we would by no means blame the employment of a 
 material which, whatever its defects, excels every 
 other in permanence, and, perhaps, requires even greater 
 skill in its management than marble. For it is not the 
 material, but the absence of the human labour, which 
 makes the thing worthless ; and a piece of terra cotta,. 
 or of plaster of Paris, which has been wrought by the 
 human hand, is worth all the stone in Carrara, cut by 
 machinery. It is, indeed, possible, and even usual, for 
 men to sink into machines themselves, so that even hand- 
 work has all the characters of mechanism ; of the 
 difference between living and dead hand-work I shall 
 speak presently ; all that I ask at present is, what it is- 
 
58 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 always in our power to secure — the confession of what 
 Ave have done, and what we have given ; so that when 
 we use stone at all, since all stone is naturally supposed 
 to becarvedbyhand,wemustnot carve it by machinery; 
 neither must we use any artificial stone cast into shape, 
 nor any stucco ornaments of the colour of stone, or 
 which might in any wise be mistaken for it, as the 
 stucco mouldings in the cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio 
 at Florence, which cast a shame and suspicion over 
 every part of the building. But for ductile and fusible 
 materials, as clay, iron, and bronze, since these will 
 usually be supposed to have been cast or stamped, it 
 is at our pleasure to employ them as we will ; remem- 
 bering that they become precious, or otherwise, just 
 in proportion to the hand-work upon them, or to the 
 clearness of their reception of the hand-work of their 
 mould. But I believe no cause to have been more 
 active in the degradation of our national feeling for 
 beauty than the constant use of cast-iron ornaments. 
 The common iron work of the middle ages was as 
 simple as it was effective, composed of leafage cut 
 flat out of sheet iron, and twisted at the workman's 
 will. No ornaments, on the contrary, are so cold, 
 clumsy, and vulgar, so essentially incapable of a fine 
 line or shadow, as those of cast-iron ; and while, on 
 the score of truth, we can hardly allege any thing against 
 them, since they are always distinguishable, at a glance, 
 from wrought and hammered work, and stand only 
 for what they are, yet I feel very strongly that there is 
 no hope of the progress of the arts of any nation which 
 indulges in these vulgar and cheap substitutes for real 
 decoration. Their inefficiency and paltriness I shall 
 endeavour to show more conclusively in another place ; 
 enforcing only, at present, the general conclusion that, 
 if even honest or allowable, they are things in which 
 we can never take just pride or pleasure, and must never 
 be employed in any place wherein they might either 
 themselves obtain the credit of being other and better 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 53 
 
 than they are, or ba associated with the thoroughly 
 downright work to which it would be a disgrace to be 
 found in their company. 
 
 Such are, I believe, the three principal kinds of fallacy 
 by which architecture is liable to be corrupted ; there 
 are, however, other and more subtile forms of it, against 
 which it is less easy to guard by definite law, than by 
 the watchfulness of a manly and unaffected spirit. 
 For, as it has been above noticed, there are certain 
 kinds of deception which extend to impressions and 
 ideas only ; of which some are, indeed, of a noble use, 
 as that above referred to, the arborescent look of lofty 
 Gothic aisles ; but of which the most part have so 
 much of legerdemain and trickery about them, that 
 they will lower any style in which they considerably 
 prevail ; and they are likely to prevail when once they 
 are admitted, being apt to catch the fancy alike of 
 uninventive architects and feelingless spectators ; 
 just as mean and shallow minds are, in other matters, 
 delighted with the sense of over-reaching, or tickled 
 with the conceit of detecting the intention to over- 
 reach : and when subtleties of this kind are accompanied 
 by the display of such dexterous stone-cutting, or archi- 
 tectural sleight of hand, as may become, even by itself, 
 a subject of admiration, it is a great chance if the pur- 
 suit of them do not gradually draw us away from all 
 regard and care for the nobler character of the art, and 
 end in its total paralysis or extinction. And against 
 this there is no guarding, but by stern disdain of all dis- 
 play of dexterity and ingenious device, and by putting 
 the whole force of our fancy into the arrangement of 
 masses and forms, caring no more how these masses 
 and forms are wrought out, than a great painter cares 
 which way his pencil strikes. It would be easy to give 
 many instances of the danger of these tricks and vani- 
 ties ; but I shall confine myself to the examination of one 
 which has, as I think, been the cause of the fall of Gothic 
 Architecture throughout Europe. I mean the system 
 
CO THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 of intersect ion al mouldings, which, on account of its 
 great importance, and for the sake of the general reader, 
 I may,perhaps, be pardoned for explaining elementarily. 
 XXI. I must, in the first place, however, refer to 
 Professor Willis's account of the origin of tracery, 
 given in the sixth chapter of his Architecture of the 
 Middle Ages ; since the publication of which I have 
 been not a little amazed to hear of any attempts made 
 to resuscitate the inexcusably absurd theory of its 
 derivation from imitated vegetable form — inexcusably. 
 I say, because the smallest acquaintance with early 
 Gothic architecture would have informed the suppor- 
 ters of that theory of the simple fact that, exactly 
 in proportion to the antiquity of the work, the imita- 
 tion of such organic forms is less, and in the earliest 
 examples does not exist at all. There cannot be the 
 shadow of a question, in the mind of a person familiar- 
 ized with any single series of consecutive examples, that 
 tracery arose from the gradual enlargement of the 
 penetrations of the shield of stone which, usually sup- 
 ported by a central pillar, occupied the head of early 
 windows. Professor Willis, perhaps, confines his ob- 
 servations somewhat too absolutely to the double 
 sub-arch. I have given, in Plate VII, fig 2, an interest- 
 ing case of rude penetration of a high and simply tre- 
 foiled shield, from the church of the Eremitani at 
 Padua. But the more frequent and typical form is 
 that of the double sub-arch, decorated with various 
 piercings of the space between it and the superior arch ; 
 with a simple trefoil under a round arch, in the Abbaye 
 aux Hommes, Caen 9 (Plate III, fig. 1) ; with a very 
 beautifully proportioned quatrefoil, in the triforium of 
 Eu, and that of the choir of Lisieux ; with quatrefoils, 
 sixfoils, and septfoils, in the transept towers of Rouen 
 (Plate III, fig. 2) ; with a trefoil awkwardly, and very 
 small quatrefoil above, at Coutances (Plate III, 
 fig. 3) : then, with multiplications of the same figures, 
 pointed or round, giving very clumsy shapes of the inter- 
 
./...;. i 
 
 [face /. 60 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 61 
 
 mediate stone (fig. 4, from one of the nave chapels of 
 Rouen, fig. 5, from one of the nave chapels of Bayeux), 
 and finally, by thinning out the stony ribs, reaching 
 conditions like that of the glorious typical form of the 
 clerestory of the apse of Beauvais (fig. (5). 
 
 XXII. Now, it will be noticed that, during the 
 whole of this process, the attention is kept fixed on the 
 forms of the penetrations, that is to say, of the lights 
 as seen from the interior, not of the intermediate stone. 
 All the grace of the window is in the outline of its light ; 
 and I have drawn all these traceries as seen from within, 
 in order to show the effect of the light thus treated, 
 at first in far off and separate stars, and then gradually 
 enlarging, approaching, until they come and stand over 
 us, as it were, filling the whole space with their efful- 
 gence. And it is in this pause of the star, that we have 
 the great, pure, and perfect form of French Gothic ; 
 it was at the instant when the rudeness of the inter- 
 mediate space had been finally conquered, when the 
 light had expanded to its fullest, and yet had not lost 
 its radiant unity, principality, and visible first causing 
 of the whole, that Ave have the most exquisite feeling 
 and most faultless judgments in the management alike 
 of the tracery and decorations. I have given, in Plate 
 X, an exquisite example of it, from a panel decoration 
 of the buttresses of the north door of Rouen ; and in 
 order that the reader may understand what truly fine 
 Gothic work is, and how nobly it unites fantasy and 
 law, as well as for our immediate purpose, it will be 
 well that he should examine its sections and mouldings 
 in detail (they are described in the fourth Chapter, § 
 xxvii), and that the more carefully, because this design 
 belongs to a period in which the most important change 
 took place in the spirit of Gothic architecture, which, 
 perhaps, ever resulted from the natural progress of any 
 art. That tracery marks a pause between the laying 
 aside of one great ruling principle, and the taking up of 
 another ; a pause as marked, as clear, as conspicuous 
 
62 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 to the distant view of after times, as to the distant 
 glance of the traveller is the culminating ridge of the 
 mountain chain over which he has passed. It was the 
 great watershed of Gothic art. Before it, all had been 
 ascent ; after it, all was decline ; both, indeed, by wind- 
 ing paths and varied slopes ; both interrupted, like the 
 gradual rise and fall of the passes of the Alps, by great, 
 mountain outliers, isolated or branching from the 
 central chain, and by retrograde or parallel directions 
 of the valleys of access. But the track of the human 
 mind is traceable up to that glorious ridge, in a con- 
 tinuous line, and thence downwards. Like a silver 
 
 Flung about carelessly, it shines afar, 
 Catching the eye in many a broken link, 
 In many a turn and traverse, as it glides. 
 And oft above, and oft below appears — 
 * * * to him who journeys up, 
 As though it were another. 
 
 And at that point, and that instant, reaching the 
 place that was nearest heaven, the builders looked back, 
 for the last time, to the way by which they had come, 
 and the scenes through which their early course had 
 passed. They turned away from them and their morn- 
 ing light, aud descended towards a new horizon, for a 
 time in the warmth of western sun, but plunging with 
 every forward step into more cold and melancholy 
 shade. 
 
 XXIII. The change of which I speak, is expressible 
 in few words ; but one more important, more radically 
 influential, could not be. It was the substitution of 
 the line for the mass, as the element of decoration. 
 
 We have seen the mode in which the openings or 
 penetration of the window expanded, until what were, 
 at first, awkward forms of intermediate stone, became 
 delicate lines of tracery ; and I have been careful in 
 pointing out the peculiar attention bestowed on the 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH (53- 
 
 proportion and decoration of the mouldings of the 
 window at Rouen, in Plate X, as compared with 
 earlier mouldings, because that beauty and care are 
 singularly significant. They mark that the traceries 
 had caught the eye of the architect. Up to that time, 
 up to the very last instant in which the reduction and 
 thinning of the intervening stone was consummated, 
 his eye had been on the openings only, on the stars of 
 light. He did not care about the stone : a rude border 
 of moulding was all he needed, it was the penetrating 
 shape which he was watching. But when that shape 
 had received its last possible expansion, and when the 
 stone-work became an arrangement of graceful and 
 parallel lines, that arrangement, like some form in a 
 picture, unseen and accidentally developed, struck 
 suddenly, inevitably, on the sight. It had literally 
 not been seen before. It flashed out in an instant, 
 as an independent form. It became a feature of the 
 work. The architect took it under his care, thought 
 over it, and distributed its members as we see. 
 
 Now, the great pause was at the moment when the 
 space and the dividing stone-work were both equally 
 considered. It did not last fifty years. The forms 
 of the tracery were seized with a childish delight in the 
 novel source of beauty ; and the intervening space 
 was cast aside, as an element of decoration, for ever. 
 I have confined myself, in following this change, to 
 the window, as the feature in which it is clearest. But 
 the transition is the same in every member of archi- 
 tecture ; and its importance can hardly be understood, 
 unless we take the pains to trace it in the universality 
 of which illustrations, irrelevant to our present pur- 
 pose, will be found in the third Chapter. I pursue 
 here the question of truth, relating to the treatment 
 of the mouldings. 
 
 XXIV. The reader will observe that, up to the last 
 expansion of the penetration-., the stone-work was. 
 necessarily considered, as it actually is, stiff, and un- 
 
61 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 yielding. It was so, also, during the pause of which 
 I have spoken, when the forms of the tracery were still 
 severe and pure ; delicate indeed, but perfectly firm. 
 
 At the close of the period of pause, the first sign of 
 serious change was like a low breeze, passing through 
 the emaciated tracery, and making it tremble. It 
 began to undulate like the threads of a cobweb lifted 
 by the wind. It lost its essence as a structure of stone. 
 Reduced to the slenderness of threads, it began to be 
 considered as possessing also their flexibility. Tin- 
 architect was pleased with this his new fancy, and set 
 himself to carry it out ; and in a little time, the 
 bars of tracery were caused to appear to the eye as if 
 they had been woven together like a net. This was a 
 change which sacrificed a great principle of truth ; it 
 sacrificed the expression of the qualities of the 
 material ; and, however delightful its results in their 
 first developments, it was ultimately ruinous. 
 
 For, observe the difference between the supposition 
 of ductility, and that of elastic structure noticed above 
 in the resemblance to tree form. That resemblance 
 was not sought, but necessary ; it resulted from the 
 natural conditions of strength in the pier or trunk, and 
 slenderness in the ribs or branches, while many of 
 the other suggested conditions of resemblance were 
 perfectly true. A tree branch, though in a certain 
 sense flexible, is not ductile ; it is as firm in its own 
 form as the rib of stone ; both of them will yield up 
 to certain limits, both of them breaking when those 
 limits are exceeded ; while the tree trunk will bend no 
 more than the stone pillar. But when the tracery is 
 assumed to be as yielding as a silken cord ; when the 
 whole fragility, elasticity, and weight of the material 
 are to the eye, if not in terms, denied ; when all the 
 •art of the architect is applied to disprove the first con- 
 ditions of his working, and the first attributes of his 
 materials ; this is a deliberate treachery, only redeemed 
 from the charge of direct falsehood by the visibility 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH Co 
 
 of the stone surface, and degrading all the traceries it 
 affects exactly in the degree of its presence. 
 
 XXV. But the declining and morbid taste of the 
 later architects was not satisfied with thus much de- 
 ception. They were delighted with the subtle charm 
 they had created, and thought only of increasing its 
 power. The next step was to consider and represent 
 the tracery, as not only ductile, but penetrable ; and 
 when two mouldings met each other, to manage their 
 intersection, so that one should appear to pass through 
 the other, retaining its independence ; or when two 
 ran parallel to each other, to represent the one as 
 partly contained within the other, and partly apparent 
 above it. This form of falsity was that which crushed 
 the art. The flexible traceries were often beautiful, 
 though they were ignoble ; but the penetrated traceries, 
 rendered, as they finally were, merely the means of 
 exhibiting the dexterity of the stone-cutter, annihilated 
 both the beauty and dignity of the Gothic types. A 
 system so momentous in its consequences deserves 
 some detailed examination. 
 
 XXVI. In the drawing of the shafts of the door at 
 Lisieux, under the spandril, in Plate VII, the reader 
 will see the mode of managing the intersection of 
 similar mouldings, which was universal in the great 
 periods. They melted into each other, and became 
 one at point of the crossing, or of contact ; and even 
 the suggestion of so sharp intersection as this of Lisieux 
 is usually avoided (this design being, of course, only a 
 pointed form of the earlier Norman arcade, in which 
 the arches are interlaced, and lie each over the pre- 
 ceding, and under the following one, as in Anselm's 
 tower at Canterbury) since, in the plurality of designs, 
 when mouldings meet each other, they coincide through 
 some considerable portion of their curves, meeting by 
 contact, rather than by intersection ; and at the point 
 of coincidence the section of each separate moulding 
 becomes common to the two thus melted into each 
 
G6 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 other. Thus, in the junction of the circles of the win- 
 dow of the Palazzo Foscari, Plate VIII, given accu- 
 rately in fig. 8, Plate IV, the section across the line s, 
 is exactly the same as that across any break of the 
 separated moulding above, as s. It sometimes, how- 
 ever, happens, that two different mouldings meet each 
 other. This was seldom permitted in the great 
 periods, and, when it took place, was most awk- 
 wardly managed. Fig. 1, Plate IV, gives the junction 
 of the mouldings of the gable and vertical, in the 
 window of the spire of Sa'isbury. That of the gable 
 is composed of a single, and that of the vertical of a 
 double cavetto, decorated with ball flowers ; and the 
 larger single moulding swallows up one of the double 
 ones, and pushes forward among the smaller balls with 
 the most blundering and clumsy simplicity. In com- 
 paring the sections it is to be observed that, in the 
 upper one, the line a b represents an actual vertical in 
 the plane of the window ; while, in the lower one, 
 the line e d represents the horizontal, in the plane of 
 the window, indicated by the perspective line d c. 
 
 XXVII. The very awkwardness with which such 
 occurrences of difficulty are met by the earlier builder, 
 marks his dislike of the system, and unwillingness to 
 attract the eye to such arrangements. There is another 
 very clumsy one, in the junction of the upper- and sub- 
 arches of the triforium of Salisbury ; but it is kept in 
 the shade, and all the prominent junctions are of 
 mouldings like each other, and managed with perfect 
 simplicity. But so soon as the attention of the builders 
 became, as we have just seen, fixed upon the lines of 
 mouldings instead of the enclosed spaces, those lines 
 began to preserve an independent existence wherever 
 they met ; and different mouldings were studiously 
 associated, in order to obtain variety of intersectional 
 line. We must, however, do the late builders the justice 
 to note that, in one case, the habit grew out of a feeling 
 of proportion, more refined than that of earlier work- 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 67 
 
 men. It shows itself first in the bases of divided pillars, 
 or arch mouldings, whose smaller shafts had originally 
 bases formed by the continued base of the central, or 
 other larger, columns with which they were grouped ; 
 but it being felt, when the eye of the architect became 
 fastidious, that the dimension of moulding which was 
 right for the base of a large shaft, was wrong for that 
 of a small one, each shaft had an independent base ; 
 at first, those of the smaller died simply down on that of 
 the larger ; but when the vertical sections of both became 
 complicated the bases of the smaller shafts were con- 
 sidered to exist within those of the larger, and the places 
 of their emergence, on this supposition, were calculated 
 with the utmost nicety, and cut with singular precision ; 
 so that an elaborate late base of a divided column, as, 
 for instance, of those in the nave of Abbeville, looks 
 exactly as if its smaller shafts had all been finished to 
 the ground first, each with its complete and intricate 
 base, and then the comprehending base of the central 
 pier had been moulded over them in clay, leaving their 
 points and angles sticking out here and there, like the 
 edges of sharp crystals out of a nodule of earth. The 
 exhibition of technical dexterity in work of this kind, 
 is often marvellous, the strangest possible shapes of 
 sections being calculated to a hair's breadth, and the 
 occurrence of the under and emergent forms being 
 rendered, even in places where they are so slight that 
 they can hardly be detected but by the touch. It is 
 impossible to render a very elaborate example of this 
 kind intelligible, without some fifty measured sections ; 
 but fig. 6, Plate IV, is a very interesting and simple 
 one, from the west gate of Rouen. It is part of the 
 base of one of the narrow piers between its principal 
 niches. The square column lc, having a base with the 
 profile p r, is supposed to contain within itself another 
 similar one, set diagonally, and lifted so far above the 
 inclosing one, as that the recessed part of its profile p f 
 shall fall behind the projecting part of the outer one. 
 
«68 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 The angle of its upper portion exactly meets the plane 
 ■of the side of the upper inclosing shaft 4, and would, 
 therefore, not be seen, unless two vertical cuts were 
 made to exhibit it, which form two dark lines the whole 
 way up the shaft. Two small pilasters are run, like 
 fastening stitches, through the junction, on the front 
 of the shafts. The sections k, v, taken respectively 
 at the levels 1c, n, will explain the hypothetical con- 
 struction of the whole. Fig. 7 is a base, or joint rather 
 (for passages of this form occur again and again, on 
 the shafts of flamboyant work), of one of the smallest 
 piers of the pedestals which supported the lost statues 
 of the porch ; its section below would be the same as 
 n, and its construction, after what has been said of the 
 ■other base, will be at once perceived. 
 
 XXVIII. There was, however, in this kind of involu- 
 tion, much to be admired as well as reprehended ; the 
 proportions of quantities w T ere always as beautiful as 
 they were intricate ; and, though the lines of inter- 
 section were harsh, they were exquisitely opposed to 
 the flower-work of the interposing mouldings. But 
 the fancy did not stop here ; it rose from the bases 
 into the arches ; and there, not finding room enough 
 for its exhibition, it withdrew the capitals from the 
 heads even of cylindrical shafts (we cannot but admire, 
 while we regret, the boldness of the men who could 
 defy the authority and custom of all the nations of the 
 earth for a space of some three thousand years) in 
 order that the arch mouldings might appear to emerge 
 from the pillar, as at its base they had been lost in it, 
 and not to terminate on the abacus of the capital ; 
 then they ran the mouldings across and through each 
 other, at the point of the arch ; and finally, not finding 
 their natural directions enough to furnish as many 
 occasions of intersection as they wished, bent them 
 hither and thither, and cut off their ends short, when 
 they had passed the point of intersection. Fig. 2, Plate 
 IV, is part of a flying buttress from the apse of St 
 
S.L.A.] 
 
 [face A 
 
THE LAMP OF TRUTH 69 
 
 Gervais at Falaise, in whichthe moulding whose sec- 
 tion is rudely given above at / (taken vertically through 
 the point /) is carried thrice through itself, in the cross- 
 bar and two arches ; and the flat fillet is cut off sharp 
 at the end of the cross-bar, for the mere pleasure of 
 the truncation. Fig. 3 is half of the head of a door in 
 the Stadthaus of Sursee, in which the shaded part of 
 the section of the joint, g g, is that of the arch mould- 
 ing, which is three times reduplicated, and six times 
 intersected by itself, the ends being cut off when 
 they become unmanageable. This style is, indeed, 
 earlier exaggerated in Switzerland and Germany, 
 owing to the imitation in stone of the dovetailing 
 of wood, particularly of the intersecting of beams at 
 the angles of chalets ; but it only furnishes the more 
 plain instance of the danger of the fallacious system 
 which, from the beginning, repressed the German, 
 and, in the end, ruined the French, Gothic. It would 
 be too painful a task to follow further the caricatures 
 of form, and eccentricities of treatment, which grew 
 out of this single abuse — the flattened arch, the 
 shrunken pillar, the lifeless ornament, the liny mould- 
 ing, the distorted and extravagant foliation, until the 
 time came when, over these wrecks and remnants 
 deprived of all unity and principle, rose the foul torrent 
 of the renaissance, and swept them all away. So fell 
 the great dynasty of mediaeval architecture. It was 
 because it had lost its own strength, and disobeyed its 
 own laws — because its order, and consistency, and 
 organization, had been broken through — that it could 
 oppose no resistance to the rush of overwhelming 
 innovation. And this, observe, all because it had 
 sacrificed a single truth. From that one surrender 
 of its integrity, from that one endeavour to assume 
 the semblance of what it was not, arose the multitu- 
 dinous forms of disease and decrepitude, which rotted 
 away the pillars of its supremacy. It was not because 
 its time was come ; it was not because it was scorned 
 
70 THE LAMP OF TRUTH 
 
 by the classical Romanist, or dreaded by the faithful 
 Protestant. That scorn and that fear it might have 
 survived, and lived ; it would have stood forth in stern 
 comparison with the enervated sensuality of the 
 renaissance ; it would have risen in renewed and 
 purified honour, and with a new soul, from the ashes 
 into which it sank, giving up its glory, as it had re- 
 ceived it, for the honour of God — but its own truth 
 was gone, and it sank for ever. There was no wisdom 
 nor strength left in it, to raise it from the dust ; and 
 the error of zeal, and the softness of luxury, smote it 
 down and dissolved it away. It is good for us to 
 remember this, as we tread upon the bare ground of 
 its foundations, and stumble over its scattered stones. 
 Those rent skeletons of pierced wall through which 
 our sea- winds moan and murmur, strewing them joint 
 by joint, and bone by bone, along the bleak promon- 
 tories on which the Pharos lights came once from houses 
 of prayer — those grey arches and quiet aisles under 
 which the sheep of our valleys feed and rest on the 
 turf that has buried their altars — those shapeless heaps, 
 that are not of the Earth, which lift our fields into 
 strange and sudden banks of flowers, and stay our 
 mountain streams with stones that are not their own, 
 have other thoughts to ask from us than those of 
 mourning for the rage that despoiled, or the fear that 
 forsook them. It was not the robber, not the fanatic, 
 not the blasphemer, who sealed the destruction that 
 they had wrought ; the war, the wrath, the terror 
 might have worked their worst, and the strong walls 
 would have risen, and the slight pillars would have 
 started again, from under the hand of the destroyer. 
 But they could not rise out of the ruins of their own 
 violated truth. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 I. In recalling the impressions we have received from 
 the works of man, after a lapse of time long enough to 
 involve in obscurity all but the most vivid, it often 
 happens that we find a strange pre-eminence and 
 durability in many upon whose strength we had little 
 calculated, and that points of character which had 
 escaped the detection of the judgment, became devel- 
 oped under the waste of memory ; as veins of harder 
 rock, whose places could not at first have been dis- 
 covered by the eye, are left salient under the action of 
 frosts and streams. The traveller who desires to 
 correct the errors of his judgment, necessitated by 
 inequalities of temper, infelicities of circumstance, 
 and accidents of association, has no other resource 
 than to wait for the calm verdict of interposing 
 years ; and to watch for the new arrangements 
 of eminence and shape in the images which remain 
 latest in his memory ; as in the ebbing of a mountain 
 lake, he would watch the varying outline of its succes- 
 sive shore, and trace, in the form of its departing waters, 
 the true direction of the forces which had cleft, or the 
 currents which had excavated, the deepest recesses of 
 primal bed. 
 
 In thus reverting to the memories of those works of 
 architecture by which we have been most pleasurably 
 impressed, it will generally happen that they fall into 
 two broad classes : the one characterized by an ex- 
 
72 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 ceeding preciousness and delicacy, to which we recur 
 with a sense of affectionate admiration ; and the other 
 by a severe, and, in many cases mysterious, majesty, 
 which we remember with an undiminished awe, like 
 that felt at the presence and operation of some great 
 Spiritual Power. From about these two groups, more 
 or less harmonized by intermediate examples, but 
 always distinctively marked by features of beauty or of 
 power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the 
 memories of buildings, perhaps, in their first address 
 to our minds, of no inferior pretension, but owing their 
 impressiveness to characters of less enduring nobility — 
 to value of material, accumulation of ornament, or 
 ingenuity of mechanical construction. Especial inter- 
 est may, indeed, have been awakened by such circum- 
 stances, and the memory may have been, consequently, 
 rendered tenacious of particular parts or effects of the 
 structure ; but it will recall even these only by an 
 active effort, and then without emotion ; while in pas- 
 sive moments, and with thrilling influence, the images 
 of purer beauty, and of more spiritual power, will 
 return in a fair and solemn company ; and while the 
 pride of many a stately palace, and the wealth of many 
 a jewelled shrine, perish from our thoughts in a dust 
 of gold, there will rise, through their dimness, the white 
 image of some secluded marble chapel, by river or 
 forest side, with the fretted flower-work shrinking under 
 its arches, as if under vaults of late-fallen snow ; or 
 the vast weariness of some shadowy wall whose separate 
 stones are like mountain foundations, and yet number- 
 less. 
 
 II. Now, the difference between these two orders of 
 building is not merely that which there is in nature be- 
 tween things beautiful and sublime. It is, also, the dif- 
 ference between what is derivative and original in man's 
 work ; for whatever is in architecture fair or beautiful, 
 is imitated from natural forms ; and what is not so 
 derived, but depends for its dignity upon arrangement 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 73 
 
 and government received from human mind, becomes 
 the expression of the power of that niind, and receives 
 a sublimity high in proportion to the power expressed. 
 All building, therefore, shows man either as gathering 
 or governing ; and the secrets of his success are his 
 knowing what to gather, and how to rule. These are 
 the two great intellectual Lamps of Architecture ; the 
 one consisting in a just and humble veneration for the 
 works of God upon the earth, and the other in an under- 
 standing of the dominion over those works which has 
 been vested in man. 
 
 III. Besides this expression of living authority and 
 power, there is, however, a sympathy in the forms of 
 noble building, with what is most sublime in natural 
 things ; and it is the governing Power directed by this 
 sympathy, whose operation I shall at present endeavour 
 to trace, abandoning all inquiry into the more abstract 
 fields of Invention : for this latter faculty, and the 
 questions of proportion and arrangement connected 
 with its discussion, can only be rightly examined in a 
 general view of all the arts ; but its sympathy, in 
 architecture, with the vast controlling powers of 
 Nature herself, is special, and may shortly be con- 
 sidered ; and that with the more advantage, that it 
 has, of late, been little felt or regarded by architects. 
 I have seen, in recent efforts, much contest between two 
 schools, one affecting originality, and the other legality 
 — many attempts at beauty of design — many ingenious 
 adaptations of construction ; but I have never seen any 
 aim at the expression of abstract power ; never any 
 appearance of a consciousness that, in this primal art 
 of man, there is room for the marking of his relations 
 with the mightiest, as well as the fairest, works of God ; 
 and that those works themselves have been permitted, 
 by their Master and his, to receive an added glory 
 from their association with earnest efforts of human 
 thought. In the edifices of Man there should be found 
 reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit 
 
74 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the 
 vault of the avenue — which gives veining to the leaf. 
 and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse that 
 agitates animal organization, — but of that also which 
 reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her 
 barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and 
 lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the 
 pale arch of the sky ; for these, and other glories more 
 than these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his 
 thoughts, with the work of his own hand ; the grey 
 cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds us of some 
 Cyclopean waste of mural stone ; the pinnacles of the 
 rocky promontory arrange themselves, undegraded 
 into fantastic semblances of fortress towers ; and even 
 the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a melancholy 
 mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from 
 the images of nameless tumuli on white sea-shores, and 
 of the heaps of reedy clay, into which chambered cities 
 melt in their mortality. 
 
 IV. Let us, then, see what is this power and majesty, 
 which Nature herself does not disdain to accept from 
 the works of man ; and what that sublimity in the 
 masses built up by his coralline-like energy, which is 
 honourable, even when transferred by association to 
 the dateless hills, which it needed earthquakes to lift, 
 and deluges to mould. 
 
 And, first, of mere size : It might not be thought 
 possible to emulate the sublimity of natural objects in 
 this respect ; nor would it be, if the architect con- 
 tended with them in pitched battle. It would not be 
 well to build pyramids in the valley of Chamouni ; 
 and St Peter's, among its many other errors, counts 
 for not the least injurious its position on the slope 
 of an inconsiderable hill. But imagine it placed on 
 the plain of Marengo, or like the Superga of Turin, 
 or like La Salute at Venice ! The fact is, that 
 the apprehension of the size of natural objects, as 
 well as of architecture, depends more on fortunate 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 75 
 
 excitement of the imagination than on measurements 
 by the eye ; and the architect has a peculiar advantage 
 in being able to press close upon the sight such magni- 
 tude as he can command. There are few rocks, even 
 among the Alps, that have a clear vertical fall as high 
 as the choir of Beauvais ; and if we secure a good 
 precipice of wall, or a sheer and unbroken flank of 
 tower, and place them where there are no enormous 
 natural features to oppose them, we shall feel in them 
 no want of sublimity of size. And it may be matter 
 of encouragement in this respect, though one also of 
 regret, to observe how much oftener man destroys 
 natural sublimity, than nature crushes human power. 
 It does not need much to humiliate a mountain. A 
 hut will sometimes do it ; I never look up to the Col 
 de Balme from Chamouni, without a violent feeling 
 of provocation against its hospitable little cabin, whose 
 bright white walls form a visibly four-square spot on 
 the green ridge, and entirely destroy all idea of its 
 elevation. A single villa will often mar a whole land- 
 scape, and dethrone a dynasty of hills ; and the acro- 
 polis of Athens, Parthenon and all, has, I believe, been 
 dwarfed into a model by the palace lately built beneath 
 it. The fact is, that hills are not so high as we fancy 
 them, and, when to the actual impression of no mean 
 comparative size, is added the sense of the toil of manly 
 hand and thought, a sublimity is reached, which nothing 
 but gross error in arrangement of its parts can destroy. 
 V. While, therefore, it is not to be supposed that mere 
 size will ennoble a mean design, yet every increase of 
 magnitude will bestow upon it a certain degree of noble- 
 ness : so that it is well to determine at first, whether 
 the building is to be markedly beautiful, or markedly 
 sublime ; and if the latter, not to be withheld by 
 respect to smaller parts from reaching largeness of 
 scale ; provided only, that it be evidently in the archi- 
 tect's power to reach at least that degree of magnitude 
 which is the lowest at which sublimity begins, rudely 
 
76 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 definable as that which will make a living figure look 
 less than life beside it. It is the misfortune of most 
 of our modern buildings that we would fain have an 
 universal excellence in them ; and so part of the funds 
 must go in painting, part in gilding, part in fitting up, 
 part in painted windows, part in small steeples, part 
 in ornaments here and there ; and neither the windows, 
 nor the steeple, nor the ornaments, are worth their 
 materials. For there is a crust about the impressible 
 part of men's minds, which must be pierced through 
 before they can be touched to the quick ; and though 
 we may prick at it and scratch it in a thousand separate 
 places, we might as well have let it alone if we do not 
 come through somewhere with a deep thrust : and if 
 we can give such a thrust anywhere, there is no need 
 of another ; it need not be even so ' wide as a church 
 door ', so that it be enough. And mere weight will do 
 this ; it is a clumsy way of doing it, but an effectual 
 one, too ; and the apathy which cannot be pierced 
 through by a small steeple, nor shone through by a 
 small window, can be broken through in a moment by 
 the mere weight of a great wall. Let, therefore, the 
 architect who has not large resources, choose his point 
 of attack first, and, if he choose size, let him abandon 
 decoration; for, unless they are concentrated, and numer- 
 ous enough to make their concentration conspicuous, 
 all his ornaments together will not be worth one huge 
 stone. And the choice must be a decided one, without 
 compromise. It must be no question whether his 
 capitals would not look better with a little carving 
 — let him leave them huge as blocks ; or whether his 
 arches should not have richer architraves — let him 
 throw them a foot higher, if he can ; a yard more across 
 the nave will be worth more to him than a tesselated 
 pavement ; and another fathom of outer wall, than 
 an army of pinnacles. The limitation of size must be 
 only in the uses of the building, or in the ground at his 
 disposal. 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 11 
 
 VI. That limitation, however, being by such circum- 
 stances determined, by what means, it is to be next 
 asked, may the actual magnitude be best displayed ; 
 since it is seldom, perhaps never, that a building of 
 any pretension to size looks so large as it is. The 
 appearance of a figure in any distant, more especially 
 in any upper, parts of it will almost always prove that 
 we have underestimated the magnitude of those parts. 
 
 It has often been observed that a building, in order 
 to show its magnitude, must be seen all at once ; it 
 would, perhaps, be better to say, must be bounded as 
 much as possible by continuous lines, and that its 
 extreme points should be seen all at once ; or we may 
 state, in simpler terms still, that it must have one 
 visible bounding fine from top to bottom, and from 
 end to end. This bounding line from top to bottom 
 may either be inchned inwards, and the mass there- 
 fore, pyramidical ; or vertical, and the mass form 
 one grand cliff ; or inclined outwards, as in the 
 advancing fronts of old houses, and, in a sort, in 
 the Greek temple, and in all buildings with heavy 
 cornices or heads. Now, in all these cases, if the 
 bounding line be violently broken ; if the cornice 
 project, or the upper portion of the pyramid recede, 
 too violently, majesty will be lost ; not because the 
 building cannot be seen all at once — for in the case of a 
 heavy cornice no part of it is necessarily concealed 
 — but because the continuity of its terminal line is 
 broken, and the length of that line, therefore, cannot be 
 estimated. But the error is, of course, more fatal when 
 much of the building is also concealed ; as in the well- 
 known case of the recession of the dome of St Peter's, 
 and from the greater number of points of view, in 
 churches whose highest portions, whether dome or 
 tower, are over their cross. Thus there is only one 
 point from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence 
 is felt ; and that is from the corner of the Via de' 
 Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it 
 
78 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the 
 apse and transepts. In all eases in which the tower is 
 over the cross, the grandeur and height of the tower 
 itself are lost, because there is but one line down which 
 the eye can trace the whole height, and that is in the 
 inner angle of the cross, not easily discerned. Hence, 
 while, in symmetry and feeling, such designs may often 
 have pre-eminence, yet, where the height of the tower 
 itself is to be made apparent, it must be at the west 
 end, or, better still, detached as a campanile. Imagine 
 the loss to the Lombard churches if their campaniles 
 were carried only to their present height over their 
 crosses ; or to the Cathedral of Rouen, if the Tour 
 de Beurre were made central, in the place of its present 
 debased spire ! 
 
 VII. Whether, therefore, we have to do with tower 
 or wall there must be one bounding line from base to 
 coping ; and I am much inclined, myself, to love the 
 true vertical, or the vertical, with a solemn frown of 
 projection (not a scowl), as in the Palazzo Vecchio of 
 Florence. This character is always given to rocks by 
 the poets ; with slight foundation indeed, real rocks 
 being httle given to overhanging — but with excellent 
 judgment ; for the sense of threatening conveyed by 
 this form is a nobler character than that of mere size. 
 And, in buildings, this threatening should be somewhat 
 carried down into their mass. A mere projecting shelf 
 is not enough ; the whole wall must, Jupiter like, nod 
 as well as frown. Hence, I think the propped machi- 
 colations of the Palazzo Vecchio and Duomo of Florence 
 far grander headings than any form of Greek cornice. 
 Sometimes the projection may be thrown lower, as in 
 the Doge's palace of Venice, where the chief appearance 
 of it is above the second arcade ; or it may become 
 a grand swell from the ground, as the head of a ship 
 of the line rises from the sea. This is very nobly 
 attained by the projection of the niches in the third 
 story of the Tour de Beurre at Rouen. 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 7» 
 
 VIII. What is needful in the setting forth of magni- 
 tude in height, is right also in the marking it in area — 
 let it be gathered Avell together. It is especially to be 
 noted with respect to the Palazzo Vecchio and other 
 mighty buildings of its order, how mistakenly it has 
 been stated that dimension, in order to become impres- 
 sive, should be expanded either in height or length, but 
 not equally : whereas, rather it will be found that 
 those buildings seem on the whole the vastest which 
 have been gathered up into a mighty square, and 
 which look as if they had been measured by the angel's 
 rod, ' the length, and the breadth, and the height 
 of it are equal ' ; and herein something is to be taken 
 notice of, which I believe not to be sufficiently, if at all, 
 considered among our architects. 
 
 Of the many broad divisions under which architecture 
 may be considered, none appear to me more significant 
 than that into buildings whose interest is in their 
 walls, and those whose interest is in the lines dividing 
 their walls. In the Greek temple the wall is as nothing ; 
 the entire interest is in the detached columns and the 
 frieze they bear ; in French Flamboyant, and in our 
 detestable Perpendicular, the object is to get rid of the 
 wall surface, and keep the eye altogether on tracery of 
 line ; in Romanesque work and Egyptian, the wall is a 
 confessed and honoured member, and the light is often 
 allowed to fall on large areas of it, variously decorated. 
 Now, both these principles are admitted by Nature, 
 the one in her woods and thickets, the other in her 
 plains, and cliffs, and waters ; but the latter is pre- 
 eminently the principle of power, and, in some sense, 
 of beauty also. For, whatever infinity of fair form 
 there may be in the maze of the forest, there is a fairer, 
 as I think, in the surface of the quiet lake ; and I hardly 
 know that association of shaft or tracery, for which I 
 would exchange the warm sleep of sunshine on some 
 smooth, broad, human-like front of marble. Never- 
 theless, if breadth is to be beautiful, its substance must 
 
80 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 in some sort be beautiful ; and we must not hastily con- 
 demn the exclusive resting of the northern architects 
 in divided lines, until at least we have remembered 
 the difference between a blank surface of Caen stone 
 and one mixed from Genoa and Carrara, of serpentine 
 with snow : but as regards abstract power and awful- 
 ness, there is no question ; without breadth of surface it 
 is in vain to seek them, and it matters little, so that 
 the surface be wide, bold, and unbroken, whether it 
 be of brick or of jasper ; the light of heaven upon it, 
 and the weight of earth in it, are all we need : for it is 
 singular how forgetful the mind may become both of 
 material and workmanship, if only it have space enough 
 over which to range, and to remind it however feebly, 
 of the joy that it has in contemplating the flatness and 
 sweep of great plains and broad seas. And it is a 
 noble thing for men to do this with their cut stone 
 or moulded clay, and to make the face of a wall look in- 
 finite, and its edge against the sky like an horizon : or 
 even if less than this be reached, it is still delightful 
 to mark the play of passing light on its broad surface, 
 and to see by how many artifices and gradations of 
 tinting and shadow, time and storm will set their wild 
 signatures upon it ; and how in the rising or declining 
 of the day the unbroken twilight rests long and luridly 
 on its high lineless forehead, and fades away untrace- 
 ably down its tiers of confused and countless stone. 
 
 IX. This, then, being, as I think, one of the peculiar 
 elements of sublime architecture, it may be easily seen 
 how necessarily consequent upon the love of it will be 
 the choice of a form approaching to the square for the 
 main outline. 
 
 For, in whatever direction the building is contracted, 
 in that direction the eye will be drawn to its terminal 
 lines ; and the sense of surface will only be at its fullest 
 when those lines are removed, in every direction, as 
 far as possible. Thus the square and circle are pre- 
 eminently the areas of power among those bounded 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 81 
 
 by purely straight or curved lines ; and these, with 
 their relative solids, the cube and sphere, and relative 
 solids of progression (as in the investigation of the 
 laws of proportion I shall call those masses which are 
 generated by the progression of an area of given form 
 along a line in a given direction), the square and cylin- 
 drical column, are the elements of utmost power in 
 all architectural arrangements. On the other hand, 
 grace and perfect proportion require an elongation in 
 some one direction : and a sense of power may be com- 
 municated to this form of magnitude by a continuous 
 series of any marked features, such as the eye may be 
 unable to number ; while yet we feel, from their bold- 
 ness, decision, and simplicity, that it is indeed their 
 multitude which has embarrassed us, not any confusion 
 or indistinctness of form. This expedient of continued 
 series forms the sublimity of arcades and aisles, of all 
 ranges of columns, and, on a smaller scale, of those 
 Greek mouldings, of which, repeated as they now are 
 in all the meanest and most familiar forms of our 
 furniture, it is impossible altogether to weary. Now, 
 it is evident that the architect has choice of two types 
 of form, each properly associated with its own kind of 
 interest or decoration : the square, or greatest area, 
 to be chosen especially when the surface is to be the 
 subject of thought ; and the elongated area, when the 
 divisions of the surface are to be subjects of thought. 
 Both these orders of form, as I think nearly every 
 other source of power and beauty, are marvellously 
 united in that building which I fear to weary the reader 
 by bringing forward too frequently, as a model of all 
 perfection — the Doge's palace at Venice : its general 
 arrangement, a hollow square ; its principal facade, 
 an oblong, elongated to the eye by a range of thirty- 
 four small arches, and thirty-five columns, while it is 
 separated by a richly canopied window in the centre, 
 into two massive divisions, whose height and length 
 are nearly as four to five ; the arcades which give it 
 
82 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 length being confined to the lower stories, and the 
 upper, between its broad windows, left a mighty sur- 
 face of smooth marble, chequered with blocks of alter- 
 nate rose-colour and white. It would be impossible, 
 I believe, to invent a more magnificent arrangement 
 of all that is in building most dignified and most fair. 
 
 X. In the Lombard Romanesque, the two principles 
 are more fused into each other, as most characteristi- 
 cally in the cathedral of Pisa : length of proportion, 
 exhibited by an arcade of twenty-one arches above, 
 and fifteen below, at the side of the nave ; bold square 
 proportion in the front ; that front divided into 
 arcades, placed one above the other, the lowest with 
 its pillars engaged, of seven arches, the four uppermost 
 thrown out boldly from the receding wall, and casting 
 deep shadows ; the first, above the basement, of nine- 
 teen arches ; the second, of twenty-one ; the third and 
 fourth of eight each ; sixty-three arches in all ; all 
 circular headed, all with cylindrical shafts and the 
 lowest with square panellings, set diagonally under 
 their semicircles, an universal ornament in this style 
 (Plate XII, fig. 7) ; the apse a semicircle, with a semi- 
 dome for its roof, and three ranges of circular arches 
 for its exterior ornament ; in the interior of the nave, a 
 range of circular arches below a circular-arched triforium, 
 and a vast flat surface, observe, of wall decorated 
 with striped marble above ; the whole arrangement 
 (not a peculiar one, but characteristic of every church 
 of the period ; and, to my feeling, the most majestic ; 
 not perhaps the fairest, but the mightiest type of form 
 which the mind of man has ever conceived) based ex- 
 clusively on associations of the circle and the square. 
 
 I am now, however, trenching upon ground which 
 I desire to reserve for more careful examination, in 
 connection with other aesthetic questions : but I be- 
 lieve the examples I have given will justify my vindi- 
 cation of the square form from the reprobation which 
 has been lightly thrown upon it ; nor might this be 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 83 
 
 done for it only as a ruling outline, but as occurring 
 constantly in the best mosaics, and in a thousand forms 
 of minor decoration, which I cannot now examine ; 
 my chief assertion of its majesty being always as it is 
 an exponent of space and surface, and therefore to be 
 chosen, either to rule in their outlines, or to adorn by 
 masses of light and shade those portions of buildings 
 in which surface is to be rendered precious or honour- 
 able. 
 
 XI. Thus far, then, of general forms, and of the 
 modes in which the scale of architecture is best to be 
 exhibited. Let us next consider the manifestations of 
 power which belong to its details and lesser divisions. 
 The first division we have to regard is the inevitable 
 one of masonry. It is true that this division may, by 
 great art, be concealed ; but I think it unwise (as well as 
 dishonest) to do so ; for this reason, that there is a 
 very noble character always to be obtained by the 
 opposition of large stones to divided masonry, as by 
 shafts and columns of one piece, or massy lintels and 
 architraves, to wall work of bricks or smaller stones ; 
 and there is a certain organization in the management 
 of such parts, like that of the continuous bones of the 
 skeleton, opposed to the vertebrae, which it is not well 
 to surrender. I hold, therefore, that, for this and 
 other reasons, the masonry of a building is to be 
 shown : and also that, with certain rare exceptions 
 (as in the cases of chapels and shrines of most finished 
 workmanship), the smaller the building, the more 
 necessary it is that its masonry should be bold, and 
 vice versa. For if a building be under the mark of 
 average magnitude, it is not in our power to increase 
 its apparent size (too easily measurable) by any pro- 
 portionate diminution in the scale of its masonry. But 
 it may be often in our power to give it a certain nobility 
 by building it of massy stones, or, at all events, intro- 
 ducing such into its make. Thus it is impossible that 
 there should ever be majesty in a cottage built of 
 
84 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 brick ; but there is a marked element of sublimity 
 in the rude and irregular piling of the rocky walls of 
 the mountain cottages of Wales, Cumberland, and 
 Scotland. Their size is not one whit diminished, 
 though four or five stones reach at their angles from 
 the ground to the eaves, or though a native rock 
 happen to project conveniently, and to be built into 
 the framework of the wall. On the other hand, after 
 a building has once reached the mark of majestic size, 
 it matters, indeed, comparatively little whether its 
 masonry be large or small, but if it be altogether large, 
 it will sometimes dimmish the magnitude for want of a 
 measure ; if altogether small, it will suggest ideas of 
 poverty in material, or deficiency in mechanical re- 
 source, besides interfering in many cases with the lines 
 of the design, and delicacy of the workmanship. A 
 very unhappy instance of such interference exists in 
 the facade of the church of St Madeleine at Paris, 
 where the columns, being built of very small stones of 
 nearly equal size with visible joints, look as if they 
 were covered with a close trellis. So, then, that 
 masonry will be generally the most magnificent which, 
 without the use of materials systematically small or 
 large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to 
 the conditions and structure of its work, and displays 
 alike its power of dealing with the vastest masses, and 
 of accomplishing its purpose with the smallest, some- 
 times heaping rock upon rock with Titanic command- 
 ment, and anon binding the dusty remnants and edgy 
 splinters into springing vaults and swelling domes. 
 And if the nobility of this confessed and natural masonry 
 were more commonly felt, we should not lose the 
 dignity of it by smoothing surfaces and fitting joints. 
 The sums which we waste in chiselling and polishing 
 stones which would have been better left as they came 
 from the quarry, would often raise a building a story 
 higher. Only in this there is to be a certain respect 
 for material also : for if we build in marble, or in any 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 85 
 
 limestone, the known ease of the workmanship will 
 make its absence seem slovenly ; it will be well to take 
 advantage of the stone's softness, and to make the 
 design delicate and dependent upon smoothness of 
 chiselled surfaces : but if we build in granite or lava, 
 it is a folly, in most cases, to cast away the labour 
 necessary to smooth it ; it is wiser to make the design 
 granitic itself, and to leave the blocks rudely squared. 
 I do not deny a certain splendour and sense of power 
 in the smoothing of granite, and in the entire subduing 
 of its iron resistance to the human supremacy. But 
 in most cases I believe, the labour and time necessary 
 to do this, would be better spent in another way ; and 
 that to raise a building to a height of a hundred feet 
 with rough blocks, is better than to raise it to seventy 
 with smooth ones. There is also a magnificence in the 
 natural cleavage of the stone to which the art must 
 indeed be great that pretends to be equivalent ; and 
 a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain 
 heart from which it has been rent, ill-exchanged for a 
 glistering obedience to the rule and measure of men. 
 His eye must be delicate indeed, who would desire to- 
 see the Pitti palace polished. 
 
 XII. Next to those of the masonry, we have to con- 
 sider the divisions of the design itself. Those divisions- 
 are necessarily, either into masses of light and shade, 
 or else by traced lines ; which latter must be, indeed, 
 themselves produced by incisions or projections which, 
 in some lights, cast a certain breadth of shade, but 
 which may nevertheless, if finely enough cut, be always- 
 true lines, in distant effect. I call, for instance, such 
 panelling as that of Henry the Seventh's chapel, pure 
 linear division. 
 
 Now, it does not seem to me sufficiently recollected, 
 that a wall surface is to an architect simply what a. 
 white canvass is to a painter, with this only difference, 
 that the wall has already a sublimity in its height, 
 substance, and other characters already considered, on 
 
86 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 which it is more dangerous to break than to touch with 
 shade the canvass surface. And, for my own part, I 
 think a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of gesso a 
 fairer thing than most pictures I see painted on it ; 
 much more, a noble surface of stone than most archi- 
 tectural features which it is caused to assume. But 
 however this may be, the canvass and wall are sup- 
 posed to be given, and it is our craft to divide them. 
 
 And the principles on which this division is to be 
 made, are, as regards relation of quantities, the same 
 in architecture as in painting, or indeed in any other 
 ■art whatsoever, only the painter is by his varied sub- 
 ject partly permitted, partly compelled, to dispense 
 with the symmetry of architectural light and shade, 
 and to adopt arrangements apparently free and acci- 
 dental. So that in modes of grouping there is much 
 difference (though no opposition) between the two 
 arts ; but in rules of quantity, both are alike, so far 
 forth as their commands of means are alike. For the 
 architect not being able to secure always the same 
 depth or decision of shadow, nor to add to its sadness 
 by colour (because even when colour is employed, it 
 cannot follow the moving shade), is compelled to make 
 many allowances, and avail himself of many contri- 
 vances, which the painter needs neither consider nor 
 ■employ. 
 
 XIII. Of these limitations the first consequence is, 
 that positive shade is a more necessary and more sublime 
 thing in an architect's hands than in a painter's. For 
 the latter being able to temper his light with an under- 
 tone throughout, and to make it delightful with sweet 
 colour, or awful with lurid colour, and to represent 
 distance, and air, and sun, by the depth of it, and fill 
 •its whole space with expression, can deal with an 
 enormous, nay, almost with an universal, extent of it, 
 a,nd the best painters most delight in such extent ; but 
 as light, with the architect, is nearly always liable to 
 become full and untempered sunshine seen upon solid 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 87 
 
 surface, his only rests, and his chief means of sublimity, 
 are definite shades. So that, after size and weight, 
 the Power of architecture may be said to depend on 
 the quantity (whether measured in space or intense- 
 ness) of its shadow ; and it seems to me, that the 
 reality of its works, and the use and influence they have 
 in the daily life of men (as opposed to those works of art 
 with which we have nothing to do but in times of rest 
 or of pleasure), require of it that it should express a 
 kind of human sympathy, by a measure of darkness 
 as great as there is in human life : and that as the 
 great poem and great fiction generally affect us most 
 by the majesty of their masses of shade, and cannot 
 take hold upon us if they affect a continuance of lyric 
 sprightliness, but must be often serious, and some- 
 times melancholy, else they do not express the truth 
 of this wild world of ours ; so there must be, in this 
 magnificently human art of architecture, some equi- 
 valent expression for the trouble and wrath of life, 
 for its sorrow and its mystery : and this it can only 
 give by depth or diffusion of gloom, by the frown upon 
 its front, and the shadow of its recess. So that Rem- 
 brandtism is a noble manner in architecture, though 
 a false one in painting ; and I do not believe that ever 
 any building was truly great, unless it had mighty 
 masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with its 
 surface. And among the first habits that a young 
 architect should learn, is that of thinking in shadow, 
 not looking at a design in its miserable liny skeleton ; 
 but conceiving it as it will be when the dawn lights it, 
 and the dusk leaves it ; when its stones will be hot, 
 and its crannies cool ; when the lizards will bask on 
 the one, and the birds build in the other. Let him 
 design with the sense of cold and heat upon him ; let 
 him cut out the shadows, as men dig wells in unwatered 
 plains ; and lead along the lights, as a founder does 
 his hot metal ; let him keep the full command of both, 
 and see that he knows how they fall, and where they 
 
88 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 fade. His paper lines and proportions are of no value : 
 all that he has to do must be done by spaces of light 
 and darkness ; and his business is to see that the one 
 is broad and bold enough not to be swallowed up by 
 twilight, and the other deep enough not to be dried 
 like a shallow pool by a noon-day sun. 
 
 And, that this may be, the first necessity is that the 
 quantities of shade or light, whatever they may be, 
 shall be thrown into masses, either of something like 
 equal weight, or else large masses of the one relieved 
 with small of the other ; but masses of one or other 
 kind there must be. No design that is divided at all, 
 and yet not divided into masses, can ever be of the 
 smallest value : this great law respecting breadth, 
 precisely the same in architecture and painting, is so 
 important, that the examination of its two principal 
 applications will include most of the conditions of 
 majestic design on which I would at present insist. 
 
 XIV. Painters are in the habit of speaking loosely 
 of masses of light and shade, meaning thereby any 
 large spaces of either. Nevertheless, it is convenient 
 sometimes to restrict the term ' mass ' to the portions 
 to which proper form belongs, and to call the field on 
 which such forms are traced, interval. Thus, in foliage 
 with projecting boughs or stems, we have masses of 
 light, with intervals of shade ; and in light skies with 
 dark clouds upon them, masses of shade, with intervals 
 of light. 
 
 This distinction is, in architecture, still more neces- 
 sary ; for there are two marked styles dependent upon 
 it : one in which the forms are drawn with light upon 
 darkness, as in Greek sculpture and pillars ; the other 
 in which they are drawn with darkness upon light, as 
 in early Gothic foliation. Now, it is not in the de- 
 signer's power determinately to vary degrees and places 
 of darkness, but it is altogether in his power to vary in 
 determined directions his degrees of light. Hence the use 
 of the dark mass characterizes, generally, a trenchant 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 89 
 
 style of design, in which the darks and lights are both 
 Mat, and terminated by sharp edges ; while the use of 
 the light mass is in the same way associated with a 
 softened and full manner of design, in which the darks 
 are much warmed by reflected lights, and the lights are 
 rounded and melt into them. The term applied by 
 Milton to Doric bas-relief — ' bossy ' — is, as is generally 
 the case with Milton's epithets, the most comprehensive 
 and expressive of this manner, which the English 
 language contains ; while the term which specifically 
 describes the chief member of early Gothic decoration, 
 feuille, foil or leaf, is equally significative of a flat space 
 of shade. 
 
 XV. We shall shortly consider the actual modes in 
 which these two kinds of mass have been treated. And, 
 first, of the light, or rounded, mass. The modes in 
 which relief was secured for the more projecting forms 
 of bas-relief, by the Greeks, have been too well de- 
 scribed by Sir Charles Eastlake * to need recapitula- 
 tion ; the conclusion which forces itself upon us from 
 the facts he has remarked, being one on which I shall 
 have occasion farther to insist presently, that the Greek 
 workman cared for shadow only as a dark field where- 
 from his light figure or designs might be intelligibly 
 detached : his attention was concentrated on the one 
 aim at readableness, and clearness of accent ; and all 
 composition, all harmony, nay, the very vitality and 
 energy of separate groups were, when necessary, 
 sacrificed to plain speaking. Nor was there any 
 predilection for one kind of form rather than another. 
 Hounded forms were, in the columns and principal 
 decorative members, adopted, not for their own sake, 
 but as characteristic of the things represented. They 
 were beautifully rounded, because the Greek habitually 
 did well what he had to do, not because he loved 
 roundness more than squareness ; severely rectilinear 
 
 * Literature of the Fine Arts : Essay on Bas-relief. 
 
90 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 forms were associated with the curved ones in the 
 cornice and triglyph, and the mass of the pillar was 
 divided by a fluting, which, in distant effect, destroyed 
 much of its breadth. What power of light these primal 
 arrangements left, was diminished in successive refine- 
 ments and additions of ornament ; and continued to 
 diminish through Roman work, until the confirmation 
 of the circular arch as a decorative feature. Its lovely 
 and simple line taught the eye to ask for a similar 
 boundary of solid form ; the dome followed, and neces- 
 sarily the decorative masses werethenceforwardmanaged 
 with reference to, and in sympathy with, the chief 
 feature of the building. Hence arose, among the 
 Byzantine architects, a system of ornament, entirely 
 restrained within the superficies of curvilinear masses, 
 on which the light fell with as unbroken gradation as 
 on a dome or column, while the illumined surface was 
 nevertheless cut into details of singular and most 
 ingenious intricacy. Something is, of course, to be 
 allowed for the less dexterity of the workmen ; it 
 being easier to cut down into a solid block, than to 
 arrange the projecting portions of leaf on the Greek 
 capital : such leafy capitals are nevertheless executed 
 by the Byzantines with skill enough to show that their 
 preference of the massive form was by no means com- 
 pulsory, nor can I think it unwise. On the contrary, 
 while the arrangements of line are far more artful in 
 the Greek capital, the Byzantine light and shade are 
 as incontestably more grand and masculine, based on 
 that quality of pure gradation which nearly all natural 
 objects possess, and the attainment of which is, in fact, 
 the first and most palpable purpose in natural arrange- 
 ments of grand form. The rolling heap of the thunder- 
 cloud, divided by rents, and multiplied by wreaths, 
 yet gathering them all into its broad, torrid, and tower- 
 ing zone, and its midnight darkness opposite ; the 
 scarcely less majestic heave of the mountain side, all 
 torn and traversed by depth of defile and ridge of rock, 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 91 
 
 yet never losing the unity of its illumined swell and 
 shadowy decline ; and the head of eveiy mighty tree, 
 rich with tracery of leaf and bough, yet terminated 
 against the sky by a true line, and rounded by a green 
 horizon, which, multiplied in the distant forest, makes 
 it look bossy from above ; all these mark, for a great 
 and honoured law, that diffusion of light for which the 
 Byzantine ornaments were designed ; and show us 
 that those builders had truer sympathy with what God 
 made majestic, than the self- contemplating and self- 
 contented Greek. I know that they are barbaric in 
 comparison ; but there is a power in their barbarism of 
 sterner tone, a power not sophistic nor penetrative, but 
 embracing and mysterious ; a power faithful more 
 than thoughtful, which conceived and felt more than 
 it created ; a power that neither comprehended nor 
 ruled itself, but worked and wandered as it listed, like 
 mountain streams and winds ; and which could not 
 rest in the expression or seizure of finite form. It 
 could not bury itself in acanthus leaves. Its imagery 
 was taken from the shadows of the storms and hills, and 
 had fellowship with the night and day of the earth 
 itself. 
 
 XVI. I have endeavoured to give some idea of one 
 of the hollow balls of stone which, surrounded by 
 flowing leafage, occur in varied succession on the archi- 
 trave of the central gate of St Mark's at Venice, in 
 Plate I, fig. 3. It seems to me singularly beautiful 
 in its unity of lightness, and delicacy of detail, with 
 breadth of light. It looks as if its leaves had been sensi- 
 tive, and had risen and shut themselves into a bud at 
 some sudden touch, and would presently fall back again 
 into their wild flow. The cornices of San Michele of 
 Lucca, seen above and below the arch, in Plate VI, 
 show the effect of heavy leafage and thick stems 
 arranged on a surface whose curve is a simple quadrant, 
 the light dying from off them as it turns. It would be 
 difficult, as I think, to invent any thing more noble : 
 
92 TEE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 and I insist on the broad character of their arrange- 
 ment the more earnestly, because, afterwards modified 
 by greater skill in its management, it became character- 
 istic of the richest pieces of Gothic design. The capital, 
 given in Plate V, is of the noblest period of the Venetian 
 Gothic ; and it is interesting to see the play of leafage 
 so luxuriant, absolutely subordinated to the breadth 
 of two masses of light and shade. What is done by 
 the Venetian architect, with a power as irresistible 
 as that of the waves of his surrounding sea, is done by 
 the masters of the Cis-Alpine Gothic, more timidly, 
 and with a manner somewhat cramped and cold, but 
 not less expressing their assent to the same great law. 
 The ice spiculse of the North, and its broken sunshine, 
 seem to have image in, and influence on the work ; 
 and the leaves which, under the Italian's hand, roll, 
 and flow, and bow down over their black shadows, as 
 in the weariness of noon-day heat, are, in the North, 
 crisped and frost-bitten, wrinkled on the edges, and 
 sparkling as if with dew. But the rounding of the ruling 
 form is not less sought and felt. In the lower part of 
 Plate I is the finial of the pediment given in Plate 
 II, from the cathedral of St Lo. It is exactly similar in 
 feeling to the Byzantine capital, being rounded under 
 the abacus by four branches of thistle -leaves, whose 
 stems, springing from the angles, bend outwards and 
 fall back to the head, throwing their jaggy spines 
 down upon the full light, forming two sharp quartre- 
 foils. I could not get near enough to this finial to see 
 with what degree of delicacy the spines were cut ; i 
 but I have sketched a natural group of thistle-leaves 
 beside it, that the reader may compare the types, and 
 see with what mastery they are subjected to the broad 
 form of the whole. The small capital from Coutances | 
 Plate XIII, fig 4, which is of earlier date, is of simpler 
 elements, and exhibits the principle still more clearly ; 
 but the St Lo finial is only one of a thousand instances 
 which might be gathered even from the fully developed 
 
[/ace /. 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 93 
 
 flamboyant, the feeling of breadth being retained in 
 minor ornaments, long after it had been lost in the main 
 design, and sometimes capriciously renewing itself 
 throughout, as in the cylindrical niches and pedestals 
 which enrich the porches of Caudebec and Rouen. 
 Fig. 1, Plate I, is the simplest of those of Rouen ; in 
 the more elaborate there are four projecting sides, 
 divided by buttresses into eight rounded compartments 
 of tracery ; even the whole bulk of the outer pier is 
 treated with the same feeling ; and though composed 
 partly of concave recesses, partly of square shafts, 
 partly of statues and tabernacle work, arranges 
 itself as a whole into one richly rounded tower. 
 
 XVII. I cannot here enter into the curious questions 
 connected with the management of larger curved sur- 
 faces ; into the causes of the difference in proportion 
 necessary to be observed between round and square 
 towers ; nor into the reasons why a column or ball 
 may be richly ornamented, while surface decoration 
 would be inexpedient on masses like the Castle of 
 St Angelo, the tomb of Cecilia Matella, or the dome 
 of St Peter's. But what has been above said of the 
 desirableness of serenity in plane surfaces, applies still 
 more forcibly to those which are curved ; and it is to 
 be remembered that we are, at present, considering 
 how this serenity and power may be carried into minor 
 divisions, not how the ornamental character of the 
 lower form may, upon occasion, be permitted to fret 
 the calmness of the higher. Nor, though the instances 
 we have examined are of globular or cylindrical masses 
 chiefly, is it to be thought that breadth can only be 
 secured by such alone : many of the noblest forms are 
 of subdued curvature, sometimes hardly visible ; but 
 curvature of some degree there must be, in order to 
 secure any measure of grandeur in a small mass of 
 light. One of the most marked distinctions between one 
 artist and another, in the point of skill, will be found in 
 their relative delicacy of perception of rounded surface ; 
 
94 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 the full power of expressing the perspective, fore- 
 shortening and various undulation of such surface is, 
 perhaps, the last and most difficult attainment of the 
 hand and eye. For instance : there is, perhaps, no 
 tree which has baffled the landscape painter more than 
 the common black spruce fir. It is rare that we see any 
 representation of it other than caricature. It is con- 
 ceived as if it grew in one plane, or as a section of a tree, 
 with a set of boughs symmetrically dependent on oppo- 
 site sides. It is thought formal, unmanageable, and 
 ugly. It would be so, if it grew as it is drawn. But 
 the Power of the tree is not in that chandelier-like 
 section. It is in the dark, flat, solid tables of leafage, 
 which it holds out on its strong arms, curved slightly 
 over them like shields, and spreading towards the ex- 
 tremity like a hand. It is vain to endeavour to paint 
 the sharp, grassy, intricate leafage, until this ruling 
 form has been secured ; and in the boughs that approach 
 the spectator, the foreshortening of it is like that of a 
 wide hill country, ridge just rising over ridge in succes- 
 sive distances ; and the finger-like extremities, fore- 
 shortened to absolute bluntness, require a delicacy in 
 the rendering of them like that of the drawing of the 
 hand of the Magdalene upon the vase in Mr Rogers's 
 Titian. Get but the back of that foliage, and you 
 have the tree ; but I cannot name the artist who ha3 
 thoroughly felt it. So, in all drawing and sculpture, 
 it is the power of rounding, softly and perfectly, every 
 inferior mass which preserves the serenity, as it follows 
 the truth, of Nature, and which demands the highest 
 knowledge and skill from the workman. A noble design 
 may always be told by the back of a single leaf, and 
 it was the sacrifice of this breadth and refinement of 
 surface for sharp edges and extravagant undercutting, 
 which destroyed the Gothic mouldings, as the substitu- 
 tion of the line for the light destroyed the Gothic 
 tracery. This change, however, we shall better com- 
 prehend after we have glanced at the chief conditions 
 
.v. /..,/. I 
 
 I fau /•. 95 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 95 
 
 of arrangement of the second kind of mass ; that which 
 is fiat, and of shadow only. 
 
 XVIII. We have noted above how the wall surface, 
 composed of rich materials, and covered with costly 
 work, in modes which we shall examine in the next 
 Chapter, became a subject of peculiar interest to the 
 Christian architects. Its broad flat lights could only 
 be made valuable by points or masses of energetic 
 shadow, which were obtained by the Romanesque 
 architect by means of ranges of recessed arcade, in the 
 management of which, however, though all the effect 
 depends upon the shadow so obtained, the eye is still, 
 as in classical architecture, caused to dwell upon the 
 projecting columns, capitals, and wall, as in Plate VI. 
 But with the enlargement of the window, which, in the 
 Lombard and Romanesque churches, is usually little 
 more than an arched slit, came the conception of the 
 simpler mode of decoration, by penetrations which, 
 seen from within, are forms of light, and, from without, 
 are forms of shade. In Italian traceries the eye is 
 exclusively fixed upon the dark forms of the penetra- 
 tions, and the whole proportion and power of the design 
 are caused to depend upon them. The intermediate 
 spaces are, indeed, in the most perfect early examples, 
 filled with elaborate ornament ; but this ornament 
 was so subdued as never to disturb the simplicity and 
 force of the dark masses ; and in many instances is 
 entirely wanting. The composition of the whole de- 
 pends on the proportioning and shaping of the darks ; 
 and it is impossible that any thing can be more exquisite 
 than their placing in the head window of the Giotto 
 campanile, Plate IX, or the Church of Or San Michele. 
 So entirely does the effect depend upon them, that it is 
 quite useless to draw Italian tracery in outline ; if 
 with any intention of rendering its effect, it is better 
 to mark the black spots, and let the rest alone. Of 
 course, when it is desired to obtain an accurate render- 
 ing of the design, its lines and mouldings are enough ; 
 
96 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 but it often happens that works on architecture are of 
 little use, because they afford the reader no means of 
 judging of the effective intention of the arrangements 
 which they state. No person, looking at an architec- 
 tural drawing of the richly foliaged cusps and intervals 
 of Or San Michele, would understand that all this 
 sculpture was extraneous, was a mere added grace, 
 and had nothing to do with the real anatomy of the 
 work, and that by a few bold cuttings through a slab 
 of stone he might reach the main effect of it all, at once. 
 I have, therefore, in the plate of the design of Giotto, 
 endeavoured especially to mark these points of purpose. 
 there, as in every other instance, black shadows of a 
 graceful form lying on the white surface of the stone, 
 like dark leaves laid upon snow. Hence, as before 
 observed, the universal name of foil applied to such 
 ornaments. 
 
 XIX. In order to the obtaining their full effect, it 
 is evident that much caution is necessary in the manage- 
 ment of the glass. In the finest instances, the traceries 
 are open lights, either in towers, as in this design of 
 Giotto's, or in external arcades like that of the Campo 
 Santo at Pisa or the Doge's Palace at Venice ; and it is 
 thus only that their full beauty is shown. In domestic 
 buildings, or in windows of churches necessarily 
 glazed, the glass was usually withdrawn entirely be- 
 hind the traceries. Those of the Cathedral of Florence 
 stand quite clear of it, casting their shadows in well 
 detached lines, so as in most lights to give the appear- 
 ance of a double tracery. In those few instances in 
 which the glass was set in the tracery itself, as in Or 
 San Michele, the effect of the latter is half destroyed : 
 perhaps the especial attention paid by Orgagna to his 
 surface ornament, was connected with the intention of 
 so glazing them. It is singular to see, in late archi- 
 tecture, the glass, which tormented the bolder archi- 
 tects, considered as a valuable means of making the 
 lines of tracery more slender ; as in the smallest inter- 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 97 
 
 vals of the windows of Merton College, Oxford, where 
 the glass is advanced about two inches from the centre 
 of the tracery bar (that in the larger spaces being in 
 the middle, as usual,) in order to prevent the depth 
 of shadow from farther diminishing the apparent inter- 
 val. Much of the lightness of the effect of the traceries 
 is owing to this seemingly unimportant arrangement. 
 But, generally speaking, glass spoils all traceries ; 
 and it is much to be wished that it should be kept well 
 within them, when it cannot be dispensed with, and 
 that the most careful and beautiful designs should be 
 reserved for situations where no glass would be needed. 
 
 XX. The method of decoration by shadow was, as 
 far as we have hitherto traced it, common to the 
 northern and southern Gothic. But in the carrying 
 out of the system they instantly diverged. Having 
 marble at his command, and classical decoration in his 
 sight, the southern architect was able to carve the inter- 
 mediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to vary his 
 wall surface with inlaid stones. The northern architect, 
 neither knew the ancient work, nor possessed the delicate 
 material ; and he had no resource but to cover his walls 
 with holes, cut into foiled shapes like those of the 
 windows. This he did, often with great clumsiness, 
 but always with a vigorous sense of composition, and 
 always, observe, depending on the shadows for effect. 
 Where the wall was thick and could not be cut through, 
 and the foilings were large, those shadows did not fill 
 the entire space ; but the form was, nevertheless, 
 drawn on the eye by means of them, and when it was 
 possible, they were cut clear through, as in raised screens 
 of pediment, like those of the west front of Bayeux ; 
 cut so deep in every case, as to secure, in all but a direct 
 low front light, great breadth of shadow. 
 
 The spandril, given at the top of Plate VII, is from 
 the south-western entrance of the Cathedral of Lisieux ; 
 one of the most quaint and interesting doors in Nor- 
 mandy, probably soon to be lost for ever, by the con- 
 
 s.l.a. H 
 
98 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 tinuance of the masonic operations which have already 
 destroyed the northern tower. Its work is altogether 
 rude, but full of spirit ; the opposite spandrils have 
 different, though balanced, ornaments very inaccu- 
 rately adjusted, each rosette or star (as the five-rayed 
 figure, now quite defaced, in the upper portion appears 
 to have been) cut on its own block of stone and fitted 
 in with small nicety, especially illustrating the point 
 I have above insisted upon — the architect's utter 
 neglect of the forms of intermediate stone, at this early 
 period. 
 
 The arcade, of which a single arch and shaft are 
 given on the left, forms the flank of the door ; three 
 outer shafts bearing three orders within the spandril 
 which I have drawn, and each of these shafts carried 
 over an inner arcade, decorated above with quartre- 
 foils, cut concave and filled with leaves, the whole 
 disposition exquisitelv picturesque and full of strange 
 play of light and shade. 
 
 For some time the penetrative ornaments, if so they 
 may be for convenience called, maintained their bold 
 and independent character. Then they multiplied 
 and enlarged, becoming shallower as they did so ; 
 then they began to run together, one swallowing up 
 or hanging on to another, like bubbles in expiring foam 
 (fig. 4) from a spandril at Bayeux, looks as if it 
 had been blown from a pipe ; finally, they lost their 
 individual character altogether, and the eye was made 
 to rest on the separating lines of tracery, as we saw 
 before in the window ; and then came the great change 
 and the fall of the Gothic power. 
 
 XXI. Figs. 2 and 3, the one a quadrant of the star 
 window of the little chapel close to St Anastasia at 
 Verona, and the other a very singular example from 
 the church of the Eremitani at Padua, compared with 
 fig 5, one of the ornaments of the transept towers 
 of Rouen, show the closely correspondent conditions 
 of the early Northern and Southern Gothic 10 . But, 
 

 [/ace />. 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 99 
 
 as we have said, the Italian architects, not being em- 
 barrassed for decoration of wall surface, and not being 
 obliged, like the Northmen, to multiply their pentra- 
 tions, held to the system for some time longer ; and 
 while they increased the refinement of the ornament, 
 kept the purity of the plan. That refinement of orna- 
 ment was their weak point however, and opened the 
 way for the renaissance attack. They fell, like the 
 old Romans, by their luxury, except in the separate 
 instance of the magnificent school of Venice. That 
 architecture began with the luxuriance in which all 
 others expired : it founded itself on the Byzantine 
 mosaic and fretwork ; and laying aside its ornaments, 
 one by one, while it fixed its forms by laws more and 
 more severe, stood forth, at last, a model of domestic 
 Gothic, so grand, so complete, so nobly systematized, 
 that, to my mind, there never existed an architecture 
 with so stern a claim to our reverence. I do not except 
 even the Greek Doric : the Doric had cast nothing 
 away ; the fourteenth century Venetian had cast 
 away, one by one, for a succession of centuries, every 
 splendour that art and wealth could give it. It had 
 laid down its crown and its jewels, its gold and its 
 colour, like a king disrobing ; it had resigned its exer- 
 tion, like an athlete reposing ; once capricious and 
 fantastic, it had bound itself by laws inviolable and 
 serene as those of Nature herself. It retained nothing 
 but its beauty and its power ; both the highest, but 
 both restrained. The Doric flutings were of irregular 
 number — the Venetian mouldings were unchange- 
 able. The Doric manner of ornament admitted no 
 temptation ; it was the fasting of an anchorite — the 
 Venetian ornament embraced, while it governed, all 
 vegetable and animal forms ; it was the temperance of 
 a man, the command of Adam over creation. I do 
 not know so magnificent a marking of human authority 
 as the iron grasp of the Venetian over his own exuber- 
 ance of imagination ; the calm and solemn restraint 
 
100 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 with which, his mind filled with thoughts of flowing 
 leafage and fiery life, he gives those thoughts expres- 
 sion for an instant, and then withdraws within those 
 massy bars and levelled cusps of stone 11 . 
 
 And his power to do this depended altogether on his 
 retaining the forms of the shadows in his sight. Far 
 from carrying the eye to the ornaments, upon the stone, 
 he abandoned these latter one by one ; and while his 
 mouldings received the most shapely order and S3^m- 
 metry, closely correspondent with that of Rouen tracery, 
 compare Plates IV and VIII, he kept the cusps within 
 them perfectly flat, decorated, if at all, with a trefoil 
 (Palazzo Foscari), or fillet (Doge's Palace) just traceable 
 and no more, so that the quatrefoil, cut as sharply 
 through them as if it had been struck out by a stamp, 
 told upon the eye, with all its four black leaves, miles 
 away. No knots of flowerwork, no ornaments of any 
 kind, were suffered to interfere with the purity of its 
 form : the cusp is usually quite sharp ; but slightly 
 truncated in the Palazzo Foscari, and charged with a 
 simple ball in that of the Doge ; and the glass of the 
 window, where there was any, was, as we have seen, 
 thrown back behind the stone-work, that no flashes of 
 light might interfere with its depth. Corrupted forms, 
 like those of the Casa d'Oro and Palazzo Pisani, and 
 several others, only serve to show the majesty of the 
 common design. 
 
 XXII. Such are the principal circumstances trace- 
 able in the treatment of the two kinds of masses of 
 light and darkness, in the hands of the earlier archi- 
 tects ; gradation in the one, flatness in the other, and 
 breadth in both, being the qualities sought and exhibited 
 by every possible expedient, up to the period when, as 
 we have before stated, the line was substituted for the 
 mass, as the means of division of surface. Enough has 
 been said to illustrate this, as regards tracery ; but a 
 word or two is still necessary respecting the mouldings. 
 
 Those of the earlier times were, in the plurality of 
 
Plate VIII 
 
 ..I.J 
 
 \Jacc />. 100 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 101 
 
 instances, composed of alternate square and cylindrical 
 shafts, variously associated and proportioned. Where 
 concave cuttings occur, as in the beautiful west doors 
 of Bayeux, they are between cylindrical shafts, which 
 they throw out into broad light. The eye in all cases 
 dwells on broad surfaces, and commonly upon few. In 
 course of time, a low ridgy process is seen emerging 
 along the outer edge of the cylindrical shaft, forming 
 a lino of light upon it and destroying its gradation. 
 Hardly traceable at first (as on the alternate rolls of the 
 north door of Rouen), it grows and pushes out as 
 gradually as a budding plant : sharp at first on the edge ; 
 but, becoming prominent, it receives a truncation, and 
 becomes a definite fillet on the face of the roll. Not 
 yet to be checked, it pushes forward until the roll itself 
 becom3s subordinate to it, and is finally lost in a slight 
 swell upon its sides, while the concavities have all the 
 time be n deepening and enlarging behind it, until, 
 from a succession of square or cylindrical masses, the 
 whole moulding has become a series of concavities 
 edged by delicate fillets, upon which (sharp lines of 
 light, observe) the eye exclusively rests. While this 
 has been taking place, a similar, though less total, 
 change has affected the flowerwork itself. In Plate I, 
 fig. 2 (a), I have given two from the transepts of Rouen. 
 It will be observed how absolutely the eye rests on the 
 forms of the leaves, and on the three berries in the 
 angle, being in light exactly what the trefoil is in dark- 
 ness. These mouldings nearly adhere to the stone ; 
 and are very slightly, though sharply, undercut. In 
 process of time, the attention of the architect, instead 
 of resting on the leaves, went to the stalks. These 
 latter were elongated (b, from the south door of St 
 Lo) ; and to exhibit them better, the deep concavity 
 was cut behind, so as to throw them out in lines of light. 
 The system was carried out into continually increasing 
 intricacy, until, in the transepts of Beauvais, we have 
 brackets and flamboyant traceries, composed of twigs 
 
102 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 without any leaves at all. This, however, is a partial, 
 though a sufficiently characteristic, caprice, the leaf 
 being never generally banished, and in the mouldings 
 round those same doors, beautifully managed, but 
 itself rendered liny by bold marking of it< ribs and 
 veins, and by turning up, and crisping its edges, large 
 intermediate spaces being always left to be occupied by 
 intertwining stems (c, from Caudebec). The trefoil 
 of light formed by berries or acorns, though diminished 
 in value, was never lost up to the last period of living 
 <iothic. 
 
 XXIII. It is interesting to follow into its many 
 ramifications, the influence of the corrupting principle ; 
 but we have seen enough of it to enable us to draw our 
 practical conclusion — a conclusion a thousand times 
 felt and reiterated in the experience and advice of 
 every practised artist, but never often enough repeated, 
 never profoundly enough felt. Of composition and 
 invention much has been written, it seems to me vainly, 
 for men cannot be taught to compose or to invent ; of 
 these, the highest elements of Power in architecture, 
 I do not, therefore, speak ; nor, here, of that peculiar 
 restraint in the imitation of natural forms, which con- 
 stitutes the dignity of even the most luxuriant work 
 of the great periods. Of this restraint, I shall say a 
 word or two in the next Chapter ; pressing now only 
 the conclusion, as practically useful as it is certain, 
 that the relative majesty of buildings depends more on 
 the weight and vigour of their masses, than on any 
 other attribute of their design : mass of everything, of 
 bulk, of light, of darkness, of colour, not mere sum of 
 any of these, but breadth of them ; not broken light, 
 nor scattered darkness, nor divided weight, but solid 
 stone, broad sunshine, starless shade. Time would 
 fail me altogether, if I attempted to follow out the 
 range of the principle ; there is not a feature, however 
 apparently trifling, to which it cannot give power. The 
 wooden fillings of belfry lights, necessary to protect 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 103 
 
 their interiors from rain, are in England usually divided 
 into a number of neatly executed cross-bars, like those 
 of Venetian blinds, which, of course, become as con- 
 spicuous in their sharpness as they are uninteresting 
 in their precise carpentry, multiplying, moreover, the 
 horizontal lines which directly contradict those of the 
 architecture. Abroad, such necessities are met by 
 three or four downright penthouse roofs, reaching each 
 from within the window to the outside shafts of its 
 mouldings ; instead of the horrible row of ruled lines, 
 the space is thus divided into four or five grand masses 
 of shadow with grey slopes of roof above, bent or yield- 
 ing into all kinds of delicious swells and curves, and 
 covered with warm tones of moss and lichen. Very 
 often the thing is more delightful than the stone-work 
 itself, and all because it is broad, dark, and simple. 
 It matters not how clumsy, how common, the means 
 are, that get weight and shadow — sloping roof, jutting 
 porch, projecting balcony, hollow niche, massy gargoyls 
 frowning parapet ; get but gloom and simplicity, and 
 all good things will follow in their place and time ; do 
 but design with the owl's eyes first, and you will gain 
 the falcon's afterwards. 
 
 XXIV. I am grieved to have to insist upon what 
 seems so simple : it looks trite and common-place when 
 it is written, but pardon me this : for it is anything 
 but an accepted or understood principle in practice, 
 and the less excusably forgotten, because it is, of all 
 the great and true laws of art, the easiest to obey. 
 The executive facility of complying with its demands 
 cannot be too earnestly, too frankly, asserted. There 
 are not five men in the Kingdom who could compose, 
 not twenty who could cut, the foliage with which the 
 windows of Or San Michele are adorned ; but there 
 is many a village clergyman who could invest and dis- 
 pose its black openings, and not a village mason who 
 could not cut them. Lay a few clover or woodroof 
 leaves on white paper, and a little alteration in their 
 
104 THE LAMP OF POWER 
 
 positions will suggest figures which, cut boldly through 
 a slab of marble, would be worth more window traceries 
 than an architect could draw in a summer's day. But 
 I know not how it is, unless that our English hearts 
 have more oak than stone in them, and have more 
 filial sympathy with acorns than Alps ; but all that we 
 do is small and mean, if not worse — thin, and wasted, 
 and unsubstantial. It is not modern work only ; we 
 have built like frogs and mice since the thirteenth 
 century (except only in our castles). What a contrast 
 between the pitiful little pigeon-holes which stand for 
 doors in the east front of Salisbury, looking like the 
 entrances to a beehive or a wasp's nest, and the soaring 
 arches and kingly crowning of the gates of Abbeville, 
 Rouen, and Rheims, or the rock-hewn piers of Chartres, 
 or the dark and vaulted porches and writhed pillars of 
 Verona ! Of domestic architecture what need is there 
 to speak ? How small, how cramped, how poor, 
 how miserable in its petty neatness is our best ! how 
 beneath the mark of attack, and the level of 
 contempt, that which is common with us ! What 
 a strange sense of formalized deformity, of shrivelled 
 precision, of starved accuracy, of minute misanthropy 
 have we, as we leave even the rude streets of Picardy 
 for the market towns of Kent ! Until that street 
 architecture of ours is bettered, until we give it 
 some size and boldness, until we give our windows 
 recess, and our walls thickness, I know not how 
 we can blame our architects for their feebleness in 
 more important work ; their eyes are inured to narrow- 
 ness and slightness : can we expect them at a word to 
 conceive and deal with breadth and solidity ? They 
 ought not to live in our cities ; there is that in their 
 miserable walls which bricks up to death men's imagi- 
 nations, as surely as ever perished forsworn nun. An 
 architect should live as little in cities as a painter. 
 Send him to our hills, and let him study there what 
 nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome. 
 
THE LAMP OF POWER 105 
 
 There was something in the old power of architecture, 
 which it had from the recluse more than from the 
 citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with 
 chief praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, 
 and above the fury of the populace : and Heaven forbid 
 that for such cause we should ever have to lay a larger 
 stone, or rivet a firmer bar, in our England ! But we 
 have other sources of power, in the imagery of our 
 iron coasts and azure hills ; of power more pure, nor 
 less serene, than that of the hermit spirit which once 
 lighted with white lines of cloisters the glades of the 
 Alpine pine, and raised into ordered spires the wild rocks 
 ol the Norman sea ; which gave to the temple gate 
 the depth and darkness of Elijah's Horeb cave ; and 
 lifted, out of the populous city, grey cliffs of lonely 
 stone, into the midst of sailing birds and silent air. 
 
CHAPTER TV 
 
 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 I. It was stated, in the outset of the preceding Chapter, 
 that the value of architecture depended on two distinct 
 characters : the one, the impression it receives from 
 human power ; the other, the image it bears of the 
 natural creation. I have endeavoured to show in what 
 manner its majesty was attributable to a sympathy 
 with the effort and trouble of human life (a sympathy 
 as distinctly perceived in the gloom and mystery of 
 form, as it is in the melancholy tones of sounds). I 
 desire now to trace that happier element of its excellence, 
 consisting in a noble rendering of images of Beauty, 
 derived chiefly from the external appearances of 
 organic nature. 
 
 It is irrelevant to our present purpose to enter into 
 any inquiry respecting the essential causes of impres- 
 sions of beauty. I have partly expressed my thoughts 
 ■on this matter in a previous work, and I hope to 
 develop them hereafter. But since all such inquiries 
 can only be founded on the ordinary understanding 
 of what is meant by the term Beauty, and since they 
 presume that the feeling of mankind on this subject 
 is universal and instinctive, I shall base my present 
 investigation on this assumption ; and only asserting 
 that to be beautiful which I believe will be granted 
 me to be so without dispute, I would endeavour shortly 
 to trace the manner in which this element of delight is 
 to be best engrafted upon architectural design, what 
 
 106 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 107 
 
 i are the purest sources from which it is to be derived, 
 and what the errors to be avoided in its pursuit. 
 
 II. It will be thought that I have somewhat rashly 
 limited the elements of architectural beauty to imita- 
 tive forms. I do not mean to assert that every happy 
 arrangement of line is directly suggested by a natural 
 object ; but that all beautiful lines are adaptations of 
 those which are commonest in the external creation ; 
 that in proportion to the richness of their association, 
 the resemblance to natural work, as a type and help, 
 must be more closely attempted, and more clearly 
 seen ; and that beyond a certain point, and that a 
 very low one, man cannot advance in the invention of 
 beauty, without directly imitating natural form. Thus, 
 in the Doric temple the triglyph and cornice are un- 
 imitative ; or imitative only of artificial cuttings of 
 wood. No one would call these members beautiful. 
 Their influence over us is in their severity and simplicity. 
 The fluting of the column, which I doubt not was the 
 Greek symbol of the bark of the tree, was imitative in 
 its origin, and feebly resembled many canaliculated 
 organic structures. Beauty is instantly felt in it, but 
 of a low order. The decoration proper was sought in 
 the true forms of organic life, and those chiefly human. 
 Again : the Doric capital was unimitative ; but all 
 the beauty it had was dependent on the precision of 
 its ovolo, a natural curve of the most frequent occur- 
 rence. The Ionic capital (to my mind, as an architec- 
 tural invention, exceedingly base) nevertheless de- 
 pended for all the beauty that it had on its adoption 
 of a spiral line, perhaps the commonest of all that 
 characterize the inferior orders of animal organism 
 and habitation. Farther progress could not be made 
 without a direct imitation of the acanthus leaf. 
 
 Again : the Romanesque arch is beautiful as an 
 abstract line. Its type is always before us in that of the 
 apparent vault of heaven, and horizon of the earth. The 
 cylindrical pillar is always beautiful, for God has so 
 
108 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 moulded the stem of every tree that is pleasant to the 
 eyes. The pointed arch is beautiful ; it is the ter- 
 mination of every leaf that shakes in summer wind, 
 and its most fortunate associations are directly bor- 
 rowed from the trefoiled grass of the field, or from the 
 stars of its flowers. Farther than this, man's invention 
 could not reach without frank imitation. His next 
 step was to gather the flowers themselves, and wreath 
 them in his capitals. 
 
 III. Now, I would insist especially on the fact, of 
 which I doubt not that farther illustrations will occur 
 to the mind of every reader, that all most lovely forms 
 and thoughts are directly taken from natural objects ; 
 because I would fain be allowed to assume also the 
 converse of this, namely, that forms which are not 
 taken from natural objects must be ugly. I know 
 this is a bold assumption ; but as I have not space 
 to reason out the points wherein essential beauty of form 
 consists, that being far too serious a work to be under- 
 taken in a byway, I have no other resource than to 
 use this accidental mark or test of beauty, of whose 
 truth the considerations which I hope hereafter to lay 
 before the reader may assure him. I say an accidental 
 mark, since forms are not beautiful because they are 
 copied from Nature ; only it is out of the power of 
 man to conceive beauty without her aid. I believe 
 the reader will grant me this, even from the examples 
 above advanced ; the degree of confidence with which 
 it is granted must attach also to his acceptance of the 
 conclusions which will follow from it ; but if it be 
 granted frankly, it 'will enable me to determine a 
 matter of very essential importance, namely, what is 
 or is not ornament. For there are many forms of so- 
 called decoration in architecture, habitual, and received, 
 therefore, with approval, or at all events without any 
 venture at expression of dislike, which I have no 
 hesitation in asserting to be not ornament at all, but 
 to be ugly things, the expense of which ought in 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 109 
 
 truth to be set down in the architect's contract, as 
 ' For Monstrification '. I believe that we regard these 
 customary deformities with a savage complacency, 
 as an Indian does his flesh patterns and paint (all 
 nations being in certain degrees and senses savage). 
 I believe that I can prove them to be monstrous, and 
 I hope hereafter to do so conclusively ; but, meantime, 
 I can allege in defence of my persuasion nothing but 
 this fact of their being unnatural, to which the reader 
 must attach such weight as he thinks it deserves. 
 There is, however, a peculiar difficulty in using this 
 proof ; it requires the writer to assume, very impertin- 
 ently, that nothing is natural but what he has seen or 
 supposes to exist. I would not do this ; for I suppose 
 there is no conceivable form or grouping of forms but 
 in some part of the universe an example of it may be 
 found. But I think I am justified in considering 
 those forms to be most natural which are most frequent ; 
 or, rather, that on the shapes which in the every-day 
 world are familiar to the eyes of men, God has stamped 
 those characters of beauty which He has made it man's 
 nature to love ; while in certain exceptional forms He 
 has shown that the adoption of the others was not a 
 matter of necessity, but part of the adjusted harmony 
 of creation. I believe that thus we may reason from 
 Frequency to Beauty, and vice versa ; that, knowing 
 a thing to be frequent, we may assume it to be beautiful ; 
 and assume that which is most frequent to be most 
 beautiful : I mean, of course, visibly frequent ; for 
 the forms of things which are hidden in caverns of the 
 earth, or in the anatomy of animal frames, are evidently 
 not intended by their Maker to bear the habitual gaze 
 of man. And, again, by frequency I mean that limited 
 and isolated frequency which is characteristic of all 
 perfection ; not mere multitude : as a rose is a common 
 flower, but yet there are not so many roses on the tree 
 as there are leaves. In this respect Nature is sparing 
 of her highest, and lavish of her less, beauty ; but I 
 
110 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 call the flower as frequent as the leaf, because, each in 
 its allotted quantity, where the one is, there will 
 ordinarily be the other. 
 
 IV. The first so-called ornament, then, which I 
 would attack is that Greek fret, now, I believe, usually 
 known by the Italian name Guilloche, which is exactly 
 a case in point. It so happens that in crystals of 
 bismuth, formed by the unagitated cooling of the 
 melted metal, there occurs a natural resemblance of it 
 almost perfect. But crystals of bismuth not only are 
 of unusual occurrence in every-day life, but their form 
 is, as far as I know, unique among minerals, and not 
 only unique, but only attainable by an artificial process, 
 the metal itself never being found pure. I do not 
 remember any other substance or arrangement which 
 presents a resemblance to this Greek ornament ; and 
 I think that I may trust my remembrance as including 
 most of the arrangements which occur in the outward 
 forms of common and familiar things. On this ground, 
 then, I allege that ornament to be ugly ; or, in the 
 literal sense of the word, monstrous ; different from 
 anything which it is the nature of man to admire : 
 and I think an uncarved fillet or plinth infinitely pre- 
 ferable to one covered with this vile concatenation 
 of straight lines : unless indeed it be employed as a 
 foil to a true ornament, which it may, perhaps, some- 
 times with advantage ; or excessively small, as it occurs 
 on coins, the harshness of its arrangement being less 
 perceived. 
 
 V. Often in association with this horrible design 
 we find, in Greek works, one which is as beautiful as 
 this is painful — that egg and dart moulding, whose 
 perfection, in its place and way, has never been sur- 
 passed. And why is this ? Simply because the form 
 of which it is chiefly composed is one not only familiar 
 to us in the soft housing of the bird's nest, but happens 
 to be that of nearly every pebble that rolls and mur- 
 murs under the surf of the sea, on all its endless shore. 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 111 
 
 And that with a peculiar accuracy ; for the mass which 
 bears the light in this moulding is not in good Greek 
 work, as in the frieze of the Erechtheum, merely of 
 the shape of an egg. It is flattened on the upper surface, 
 with a delicacy and keen sense of variety in the curve 
 which it is impossible too highly to praise, attaining 
 exactly that flattened, imperfect oval, which in nine 
 cases out of ten, will be the form of the pebble lifted 
 at random from the rolled beach. Leave out this 
 flatness and the moulding is vulgar instantly, It is- 
 singular also that the insertion of this rounded form 
 in the hollowed recess has a painted type in the plumage 
 of the Argus pheasant, the eyes of whose feathers are 
 so shaded as exactly to represent an oval form placed 
 in a hollow. 
 
 VI. It will evidently follow, upon our application 
 of this test of natural resemblance, that we shall at 
 once conclude that all perfectly beautiful forms must 
 be composed of curves ; since there is hardly any 
 common natural form in which it is possible to discover 
 a straight line. Nevertheless, Architecture, having 
 necessarily to deal with straight lines essential to its 
 purposes in many instances and to the expression of 
 its power in others, must frequently be content with 
 that measure of beauty which is consistent with such 
 primal forms ; and we may presume that utmost 
 measure of beauty to have been attained when the 
 arrangements of such lines are consistent with the 
 most frequent natural groupings of them we can dis- 
 cover, although, to find right lines in nature at all, we 
 may be compelled to do violence to her finished work, 
 break through the sculptured and coloured surfaces 
 of her crags, and examine the processes of their 
 crystallization. 
 
 VII. I have just convicted the Greek fret of ugliness, 
 because it has no precedent to allege for its arrange- 
 ment except an artificial form of a rare metal. Let 
 us bring into court an ornament of the Lombard 
 
112 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 architects, Plate XII, fig. 7, as exclusively composed of 
 right lines as the other, only, observe, with the noble 
 element of shadow added. This ornament, taken 
 from the front of the Cathedral of Pisa, is universal 
 throughout the Lombard churches of Pisa, Lucca, 
 Pistoja, and Florence ; and it will be a grave stain 
 upon them if it cannot be defended. Its first apology 
 for itself, made in a hurry, sounds marvellously like 
 the Greek one, and highly dubious. It says that its 
 terminal contour is the very image of a carefully 
 prepared artificial crystal of common salt. Salt 
 being, however, a substance considerably more familiar 
 to us than bismuth, the chances are somewhat in 
 favour of the accused Lombard ornament already. But 
 it has more to say for itself, and more to the purpose ; 
 namely, that its main outline is one not only of natural 
 crystallization, but among the very first and common- 
 est of crystalline forms, being the primal condition 
 of the occurrence of the oxides of iron, copper, and 
 tin, of the sulphurets of iron and lead, of fluor spar, 
 etc. ; and that those projecting forms in its surface 
 represent the conditions of structure which effect the 
 change into another relative and equally common 
 crystalline form, the cube. This is quite enough. 
 We may rest assured it is as good a combination of 
 such simple right lines as can be put together, and 
 gracefully fitted for every place in which such lines are 
 necessary. 
 
 VIII. The next ornament whose cause I would try 
 is that of our Tudor work, the portcullis. Reticulation 
 is common enough in natural form, and very beautiful ; 
 but it is either of the most delicate and gauzy texture, 
 or of variously sized meshes and undulating lines. 
 There is no family relation between portcullis and 
 cobwebs or beetles' wings ; something like it, perhaps, 
 may be found in some kinds of crocodile armour and 
 on the backs of the Northern divers, but always beau- 
 tifully varied in size of mesh. There is a dignity in 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 113 
 
 the thing itself, if its size were exhibited, and the 
 shade given through its bars ; but even these merits 
 are taken away in the Tudor diminution of it, set on 
 a solid surface. It has not a single syllable, I believe, 
 to say in its defence. It is another monster, abso- 
 lutely and unmitigatedly frightful. All that carving 
 on Henry the Seventh's Chapel simply deforms the 
 stones of it. 
 
 In the same clause with the portcullis, we may 
 condemn all heraldic decoration, so far as beauty is 
 its object. Its pride and significance have their proper 
 place, fitly occurring in prominent parts of the building, 
 as over its gates ; and allowably in places where its 
 legendry may be plainly read, as in painted windows, 
 bosses of ceilings, etc. And sometimes, of course, 
 the forms which it presents may be beautiful, as of 
 animals, or simple symbols like the fleur-de-lis ; but, 
 for the most part, heraldic similitudes and arrange- 
 ments are so professedly and pointedly unnatural, 
 that it would be difficult to invent anything uglier ; 
 and the use of them as a repeated decoration will 
 utterly destroy both the power and beauty of any 
 building. Common sense and courtesy also forbid 
 their repetition. It is right to tell those who enter 
 your doors that you are such a one, and of such a 
 rank ; but to tell it to them again and again, wherever 
 they turn, becomes soon impertinence, and at last 
 folly. Let, therefore, the entire bearings occur in 
 few places, and these not considered as an ornament, 
 but as an inscription ; and for frequent appliance, 
 let any single and fair symbol be chosen out of them. 
 Thus we may multiply as much as we choose the French 
 or the Florentine lily, or the English rose ; but we must 
 not multiply a King's arms. 
 
 IX. It will also follow, from these considerations, 
 that if any one part of heraldic decoration be worse 
 than another, it is the motto ; since, of all things 
 unlike nature, the forms of letters are, perhaps, the 
 
114 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 most so. Even graphic tellurium and felspar look, 
 at their clearest, anything but legible. All letters 
 are, therefore, to be considered as frightful things, 
 and to be endured only upon occasion ; that is to 
 say, in places where the sense of the inscription is of 
 more importance than external ornament. Inscrip- 
 tions in churches, in rooms, and on pictures, are often 
 desirable, but they are not to be considered as archi- 
 tectural or pictorial ornaments : they are, on the 
 contrary, obstinate offences to the eye, not to be 
 suffered except when their intellectual office introduces 
 them. Place them, therefore, where they will be 
 read, and there only ; and let them be plainly written, 
 and not turned upside down, nor wrong end first. It 
 is an ill sacrifice to beauty to make that illegible whose 
 only merit is in its sense. Write it as you would speak 
 it, simply ; and do not draw the eye to it Avhen it would 
 fain rest elsewhere, nor recommend your sentence by 
 anything but a little openness of place and architectural 
 silence about it. Write the Commandments on the 
 church walls where they may be plainly seen, but do 
 not put a dash and a tail to every letter ; and remember 
 that you are an architect, not a writing master. 
 
 X. Inscriptions appear sometimes to be introduced 
 for the sake of the scroll on which they are written ; 
 and in late and modern painted glass, as well as in 
 architecture, these scrolls are flourished and turned 
 hither and thither as if they were ornamental. Ribands 
 occur frequently in arabesques — in some of a high 
 order, too — tying up flowers, or flitting in and out 
 among the fixed forms. Is there anything like ribands 
 in nature ? It might be thought that grass and 
 seaweed afforded apologetic types. They do not. 
 There is a wide difference between their structure 
 and that of a riband. They have a skeleton, an 
 anatomy, a central rib, or fibre, or framework of some 
 kind or another, which has a beginning and an end, a 
 root and head, and whose make and strength affect 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 115 
 
 every direction of their motion, and every line of 
 their form. The loosest weed that drifts and waves 
 under the heaving of the sea, or hangs heavily on the 
 brown and slippery shore, has a marked strength, 
 structure, elasticity, gradation of substance ; its 
 extremities are more finely fibred than its centre, its 
 centre than its root : every fork of its ramification 
 is measured and proportioned ; every wave of its 
 languid lines is lovely. It has its allotted size, and 
 place, and function ; it is a specific creature. What 
 is there like this in a riband ? It has no structure : 
 it is a succession of cut threads all alike ; it has no 
 skeleton, no make, no form, no size, no will of its own. 
 You cut it and crush it into what you will. It has no 
 strength, no languor. It cannot fall into a single 
 graceful form. It cannot wave, in the true sense, but 
 only flutter : it cannot bend, in the true sense, but 
 only turn and be wrinkled. It is a vile thing ; it 
 spoils all that is near its wretched film of an existence. 
 Never use it. Let the flowers come loose if they cannot 
 keep together without being tied ; leave the sentence 
 unwritten if you cannot write it on a tablet or book, or 
 plain roll of paper. I know what authority there is 
 against me. I remember the scrolls of Perugino's 
 angels, and the ribands of Raphael's arabesques and 
 of Ghiberti's glorious bronze flowers : no matter ; they 
 are every one of them vices and uglinesses. Raphael 
 usually felt this, and used an honest and rational 
 tablet, as in the Madonna di Fuligno. I do not say 
 there is any type of such tablets in nature, but all the 
 difference lies in the fact that the tablet is not con- 
 sidered as an ornament, and the riband, or flying 
 scroll, is. The tablet, as in Albert Diirer's Adam and 
 Eve, is introduced for the sake of the writing, under- 
 stood and allowed as an ugly but necessary interruption. 
 The scroll is extended as an ornamental form, which it 
 is not, nor ever can be. 
 
 XL But it will be said that all this want of organiza- 
 
116 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 tion and form might be affirmed of drapery also, and 
 that this latter is a noble subject of sculpture. By no 
 means. When was drapery a subject of sculpture by 
 itself, except in the form of a handkerchief on urns 
 in the seventeenth century and in some of the baser 
 scenic Italian decorations ? Drapery, as such, is 
 always ignoble ; it becomes a subject of interest only 
 by the colours it bears, and the impressions which 
 it receives from some foreign form or force. All noble 
 draperies, either in painting or sculpture (colour and 
 texture being at present out of our consideration) 
 have, so far as they are anything more than necessities, 
 one of two great functions : they are the exponents of 
 motion and of gravitation. They are the most valuable 
 means of expressing past as well as present motion in 
 the figure, and they are almost the only means of 
 indicating to the eye the force of gravity which resists 
 such motion. The Greeks used drapery in sculpture 
 for the most part as an ugly necessity, but availed 
 themselves of it gladly in all representation of action, 
 exaggerating the arrangements of it which express 
 lightness in the material, and follow gesture in the 
 person. The Christian Sculptors, caring little for the 
 body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively on 
 the countenance, received drapery at first contentedly 
 as a veil, but soon perceived a capacity of expression 
 in it which the Greek had not seen or had despised. 
 The principal element of this expression was the entire 
 removal of agitation from what was so pre-eminently 
 capable of being agitated. It fell from their human 
 forms plumb down, sweeping the ground heavily, 
 and concealing the feet ; while the Greek drapery 
 was often blown away from the thigh. The thick and 
 ■coarse stuffs of the monkish dresses, so absolutely 
 opposed to the thin and gauzy web of antique material, 
 suggested simplicity of division as well as weight of 
 fall. There was no crushing nor subdividing them. 
 And thus the drapery gradually came to represent the 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 117 
 
 spirit of repose as it before had of motion, repose saintly 
 and severe. The wind had no power upon the gar- 
 ment, as the passion none upon the soul ; and the 
 motion of the figure only bent into a softer line the 
 stillness of the falling veil, followed by it like a slow 
 cloud by drooping rain : only in links of lighter undula- 
 tion it followed the dances of the angels. 
 
 Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble ; but it is 
 as an exponent of other and higher things. As that 
 of gravitation, it has especial majesty, being literally 
 the only means we have of fully representing this 
 mysterious natural force of earth (for falling water is 
 less passive and less defined in its lines). So, again, 
 in sails it is beautiful because it receives the forms of 
 solid curved surface, and expresses the force of another 
 invisible element. But drapery trusted to its own 
 merits, and given for its own sake — drapery like that 
 of Carlo Dolci and the Caraccis — is always base. 
 
 XII. Closely connected with the abuse of scrolls 
 and bands, is that of garlands and festoons of flowers 
 as an architectural decoration, for unnatural arrange- 
 ments are just as ugly as unnatural forms ; and archi- 
 tecture, in borrowing the objects of Nature, is bound 
 to place them, as far as may be in her power, in such 
 associations as may befit and express their origin. 
 She is not to imitate directly the natural arrangement ; 
 she is not to carve irregular stems of ivy up her columns 
 to account for the leaves at the top, but she is never- 
 theless to place her most exuberant vegetable orna- 
 ment just where Nature would have placed it, and to 
 give some indication of that radical and connected 
 structure which Nature would have given it. Thus the 
 Corinthian capital is beautiful, because it expands under 
 the abacus just as Nature would have expanded it ; 
 and because it looks as if the leaves had one root, 
 though that root is unseen. And the flamboyant 
 leaf mouldings are beautiful, because they nestle and 
 run up the hollows, and fill the angles, and clasp the 
 
118 THE LA3IP OF BEAUTY 
 
 shafts which natural leaves would have delighted to 
 fill and to clasp. They are no mere cast of natural 
 leaves : they are counted, orderly, and architectural : 
 but they are naturally, and therefore beautifully, 
 placed. 
 
 XIII. Now I do not mean to say that Nature never 
 uses festoons : she loves them, and uses them lavishly ; 
 and though she does so only in those places of excessive 
 luxuriance wherein it seems to me that architectural 
 types should seldom be sought, yet a falling tendril or 
 pendent bough might, if managed with freedom and 
 grace, be well introduced into luxuriant decoration 
 (or if not, it is not their want of beauty, but of archi- 
 tectural fitness, which incapacitates them for such 
 uses). But what resemblance to such example can 
 we trace in a mass of all manner of fruit and flowers, 
 tied heavily into a long bunch, thickest in the middle, 
 and pinned up by both ends against a dead wall ? 
 For it is strange that the wildest and most fanciful 
 of the builders of truly luxuriant architecture never 
 ventured, so far as I know, even a pendent tendril ; 
 while the severest masters of the revived Greek per- 
 mitted this extraordinary piece of luscious ugliness 
 to be fastened in the middle of their blank surfaces. 
 So surely as this arrangement is adopted, the whole 
 value of the flowerwork is lost. Who among the 
 crowds that gaze upon the building ever pause to 
 admire the flowerwork of St Paul's ? It is as careful 
 and as rich as it can be, yet it adds no delightfulness 
 to the edifice. It is no part of it. It is an ugly excre- 
 scence. We always conceive the building without it, 
 and should be happier if our conception were not dis- 
 turbed by its presence. It makes the rest of the archi- 
 tecture look poverty-stricken, instead of sublime ; 
 and yet it is never enjoyed itself. Had it been put, 
 where it ought, into the capitals, it would have been 
 beheld with never-ceasing delight. I do not mean that 
 it could have been so in the present building, for such 
 
TUE LAMP OF BEAUTY 119 
 
 kind of architecture has no business with rich ornament 
 in any place ; but that if those groups of flowers had 
 been put into natural places in an edifice of another 
 style, their value would have been felt as vividly 
 as now their uselessness. What applies to festoons is 
 still more sternly true of garlands. A garland is 
 meant to be seen upon a head. There it is beautiful, 
 because we suppose it newly gathered and joyfully worn. 
 But it is not meant to be hung upon a wall. If you 
 want a circular ornament, put a flat circle of coloured 
 marble, as in the Casa Dario and other such palaces at 
 Venice ; or put a star, or a medallion, or if you want 
 a ring, put a solid one, but do not carve the images of 
 garlands, looking as if they had been used in the last 
 procession, and been hung up to dry and serve next 
 time withered. Why not also carve pegs, and hats 
 upon them ? 
 
 XIV. One of the worst enemies of modern Gothic 
 architecture, though seemingly an important feature, 
 is an excrescence, as offensive by its poverty as the 
 garland by its profusion, the dripstone in the shape 
 of the handle of a chest of drawers, which is used 
 over the square-headed windows of what we call 
 Elizabethan buildings. In the last Chapter, it will 
 be remembered that the square form was shown to be 
 that of pre-eminent Power, and to be properly adapted 
 and limited to the exhibition of space or surface. 
 Hence, when the window is to be an exponent of 
 power, as for instance in those by M. Angelo in the 
 lower story of the Palazzo Ricardi at Florence, the 
 square head is the most noble form they can assume ; 
 but then either their space must be unbroken, and 
 their associated mouldings the most severe, or else 
 the square must be used as a final outline, and is chiefly 
 to be associated with forms of tracery, in which the 
 relative form of power, the circle, is predominant, as 
 in Venetian, and Florentine, and Pisan Gothic. But 
 if you break upon your terminal square, or if you cut 
 
120 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 its lines off at the top and turn them outwards, you 
 have lost its unity and space. It is an including form 
 no longer, but an added, isolated line, and the ugliest 
 possible. Look abroad into the landscape, and see if 
 you can discover any one so bent and fragmentary 
 as that of this strange windlass-looking dripstone. 
 You cannot. It is a monster. It unites every element 
 of ugliness, its line is harshly broken in itself, and un- 
 connected with every other ; it has no harmony either 
 with structure or decoration, it has no architectural 
 support, it looks glued to the wall, and the only pleasant 
 property it has, is the appearance of some likelihood 
 of its dropping off. 
 
 I might proceed, but the task is a weary one, and I 
 think I have named those false forms of decoration 
 which are most dangerous in our modern architecture 
 as being legal and accepted. The barbarisms of 
 individual fancy are as countless as they are con- 
 temptible ; they neither admit attack nor are worth 
 it ; but these above named are countenanced, some 
 by the practice of antiquity, all by high authority : 
 they have depressed the proudest, and contaminated 
 the purest schools, and are so established in recent 
 practice that I write rather for the barren satisfaction 
 of bearing witness against them, than with hope of 
 inducing any serious convictions to their prejudice. 
 XV. Thus far of what is not ornament. What orna- 
 ment is, will without difficulty be determined by the 
 application of the same test. It must consist of such 
 studious arrangements of form as are imitative or sug- 
 gestive of those which are commonest among natural 
 existences, that being of course the noblest ornament 
 which represents the highest orders of existence. 
 Imitated flowers are nobler than imitated stones, 
 imitated animals, than flowers ; imitated human 
 form, of all animal forms the noblest. But all are 
 combined in the richest ornamental work ; and the 
 rock, the fountain, the flowing river with its pebbled 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 121 
 
 bed, the sea, the clouds of Heaven, the herb of the 
 field, the fruit-tree bearing fruit, the creeping thing, 
 the bird, the beast, the man, and the angel, mingle 
 their fair forms on the bronze of Ghiberti. 
 
 Everything being then ornamental that is imitative, 
 I would ask the reader's attention to a few general 
 considerations, all that can here be offered relating to 
 so vast a subject ; which, for convenience sake, may- 
 be classed under the three heads of inquiry : What 
 is the right place for architectural ornament ? What 
 is the peculiar treatment of ornament which renders 
 it architectural ? and what is the right use of colour as 
 associated with architectural imitative form ? 
 
 XVI. What is the place for ornament ? Consider 
 first that the characters of natural objects which the 
 architect can represent are few and abstract. The 
 greater part of those delights by which Nature recom- 
 mends herself to man at all times, cannot be conveyed 
 by him into his imitative work. He cannot make his 
 grass green and cool and good to rest upon, which in 
 nature is its chief use to man ; nor can he make his 
 flowers tender and full of colour and of scent, which 
 in nature are their chief powers of giving joy. Those 
 qualities which alone he can secure are certain severe 
 characters of form, such as men only see in nature on 
 deliberate examination, and by the full and set appli- 
 ance of sight and thought : a man must lie down on the 
 bank of grass on his breast and set himself to watch 
 and penetrate the intertwining of it, before he finds 
 that which is good to be gathered by the architect. 
 So then while Nature is at all times pleasant to us, and 
 while the sight and sense of her work may mingle hap- 
 pily with all our thoughts, and labours, and times of 
 existence, that image of her which the architect carries 
 away represents what we can only perceive in her 
 by direct intellectual exertion, and demands from us, 
 wherever it appears, an intellectual exertion of a 
 similar kind in order to understand it and feci it. It 
 
122 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 is the written or sealed impression of a thing sought 
 out, it is the shaped result of inquiry and bodily expres- 
 sion of thought. 
 
 XVII. Now let us consider for an instant what 
 would be the effect of continually repeating an expres- 
 sion of a beautiful thought to any other of the senses at 
 times when the mind could not address that sense to 
 the understanding of it. Suppose that in time of seri- 
 ous occupation, of stern business, a companion should 
 repeat in our ears continually some favourite passage 
 of poetry, over and over again all day long. We should 
 not only soon be utterly sick and weary of the sound of 
 it, but that sound would at the end of the day have so 
 sunk into the habit of the ear that the entire meaning 
 of the passage would be dead to us, and it would ever 
 thenceforward require some effort to fix and recover 
 it. The music of it would not meanwhile have aided 
 the business in hand, while its own delightfulness 
 would thenceforward be in a measure destroyed. It 
 is the same with every other form of definite thought. 
 If you violently present its expression to the senses, 
 at times when the mind is otherwise engaged, that 
 expression will be ineffective at the time, and will have 
 its sharpness and clearness destroyed for ever. Much 
 more if you present it to the mind at times when it is 
 painfully affected or disturbed, or if you associate the 
 expression of pleasant thought with incongruous cir- 
 cumstances, you will affect that expression thence- 
 forward with a painful colour for ever. 
 
 XVIII. Apply this to expressions of thought re- 
 ceived by the eye. Remember that the eye is at your 
 mercy more than the ear. ' The eye, it cannot choose 
 but see.' Its nerve is not so easily numbed as that of 
 the ear, and it is often busied in tracing and watching 
 forms when the ear is at rest. Now if you present 
 lovely forms to it when it cannot call the mind to help 
 it in its work, and among objects of vulgar use and 
 unhappy position, you will neither please the eye nor 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 123 
 
 elevate the vulgar object. But you will fill and weary 
 the eye with the beautiful form, and you will infect 
 that form itself with the vulgarity of the thing to which 
 you have violently attached it. It will never be of 
 much use to you any more ; you have killed, or defiled 
 it ; its freshness and purity are gone. You will have 
 to pass it through the fire of much thought before you 
 will cleanse it, and warm it with much love before it 
 will revive. 
 
 XIX. Hence then a general law, of singular import- 
 ance in the present day, a law of simple common sense — 
 not to decorate things belonging to purposes of active 
 and occupied life. Wherever you can rest, there 
 decorate ; where rest is forbidden, so is beauty. You 
 must not mix ornament with business, any more than 
 you may mix play. Work first, and then rest. Work 
 first, and then gaze, but do not use golden plough- 
 shares, nor bind ledgers in enamel. Do not thrash 
 with sculptured flails : nor put bas-reliefs on millstones. 
 What ! it will be asked, are we in the habit of doing so ? 
 Even so ; always and everywhere. The most familiar 
 position of Greek mouldings is in these days on shop 
 fronts. There is not a tradesman's sign nor shelf nor 
 counter in all the streets of all our cities, which has 
 not upon it ornaments which were invented to adorn 
 temples and beautify king's palaces. There is not the 
 smallest advantage in them where they are. Abso- 
 lutely valueless — utterly without the power of giving 
 pleasure, they only satiate the eye, and vulgarise their 
 own forms. Many of these are in themselves thor- 
 oughly good copies of fine things, which things them- 
 selves we shall never, in consequence, enjoy any more. 
 Many a pretty beading and graceful bracket there is 
 in wood or stucco above our grocers' and cheese- 
 mongers' and hosiers' shops : how is it that the trades- 
 men cannot understand that custom is to be had only 
 by selling good tea and cheese and cloth, and that 
 people come to them for their honesty, and their reach- 
 
124 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 ness, and their right wares, and not because they have 
 Greek cornices over their windows, or their names in 
 large gilt letters on their house fronts ? How pleasur- 
 able it would be to have the power of going through 
 the streets of London, pulling down those brackets 
 and friezes and large names, restoring to the tradesmen 
 the capital they had spent in architecture, and putting 
 them on honest and equal terms, each with his name 
 in black letters over his door, not shouted down the 
 street from the upper stories, and each with a plain 
 wooden shop casement, with small panes in it that 
 people would not think of breaking in order to be sent 
 to prison ! How much better for them would it be — 
 how much happier, how much wiser, to put their trust 
 upon their own truth and industry, and not on the 
 idiocy of their customers. It is curious, and it says 
 little for our national probity on the one hand, or 
 prudence on the other, to see the whole system of 
 our street decoration based on the idea that people 
 must be baited to a shop as moths are to a candle. 
 
 XX. But it will be said that much of the best wooden 
 decoration of the middle ages was in shop fronts. No ; 
 it was in house fronts, of which the shop was a part, 
 and received its natural and consistent portion of the 
 ornament. In those days men lived, and intended to 
 live by their shops, and over them, all their days. They 
 were contented with them and happy in them : they 
 were their palaces and castles. They gave them there- 
 fore such decoration as made themselves happy in 
 their own habitation, and they gave it for their own 
 sake. The upper stories were always the richest, and 
 the shop was decorated chiefly about the door, which 
 belonged to the house more than to it. And when 
 our tradesmen settle to their shops in the same way, 
 and form no plans respecting future villa architecture, 
 let their whole houses be decorated, and their shops 
 too, but with a national and domestic decoration (I 
 shall speak more of this point in the sixth Chapter), 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 125 
 
 However, our cities are for the most part too large to 
 admit of contented dwelling in them throughout life ; 
 and I do not say there is harm in our present system 
 of separating the shop from the dwelling-house ; only 
 where they are so separated, let us remember that the 
 only reason for shop decoration is removed, and see 
 that the decoration be removed also. 
 
 XXI. Another of the strange and evil tendencies 
 of the present day is to the decoration of the railroad 
 station. Now, if there be any place in the world in 
 which people are deprived of that portion of temper 
 and discretion which are necessary to the contemplation 
 of beauty, it is there. It is the very temple of 
 discomfort, and the only charity that the builder can 
 extend to us is to show us, plainly as may be, how 
 soonest to escape from it. The whole system of rail- 
 road travelling is addressed to people who, being in a 
 hurry, are therefore, for the time being, miserable. 
 No one would travel in that manner who could help it 
 — who had time to go leisurely over hills and between 
 hedges, instead of through tunnels and between banks : 
 at least those who would, have no sense of beauty so 
 acute as that we need consult it at the station. The 
 railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest busi- 
 ness, to be got through as soon as possible. It trans- 
 mutes a man from a traveller into a living parcel. For 
 the time he has parted with the nobler characteristics 
 of his humanity for the sake of a planetary power of 
 locomotion. Do not ask him to admire anything. 
 You might as well ask the wind. Carry him safely, 
 dismiss him soon : he will thank you for nothing else. 
 All attempts to please him in any other way are mere 
 mockery, and insults to the things by which you endeav- 
 our to do so. There never was more flagrant nor 
 impertinent folly than the smallest portion of orna- 
 ment in anything concerned with railroads or near 
 them. Keep them out of the way, take them through 
 the ugliest country you can find, confess them the 
 
126 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 miserable things they are, and spend nothing upon 
 them but for safety and speed. Give large salaries to 
 efficient servants, large prices to good manufacturers, 
 large wages to able workmen ; let the iron be tough, 
 and the brickwork sulid, and the carriages strong. 
 The time is perhaps not distant when these first neces- 
 sities may not be easily met : and to increase expense 
 in any other direction is madness. Better bury gold 
 in the embankments, than put it in ornaments on the 
 stations. Will a single traveller be willing to pay an 
 increased fare on the South Western, because the 
 columns of the terminus are covered with patterns 
 from Nineveh ? — he will only care less for the Ninevite 
 ivories in the British Museum : or on the North Western, 
 because there are old English -looking spandrils to the 
 roof of the station at Crewe ? — he will only have less 
 pleasure in their prototypes at Crewe House. Rail- 
 road architecture has, or would have, a dignity of its 
 own if it were only left to its work. You would not 
 put rings on the fingers of a smith at his anvil. 
 
 XXII. It is not however only in these marked situ- 
 ations that the abuse of which I speak takes place. 
 There is hardly, at present, an application of orna- 
 mental work, which is not in some sort liable to blame 
 of the same kind. We have a bad habit of trying to 
 disguise disagreeable necessities by some form of sudden 
 decoration, which is, in all other places, associated 
 with such necessities. I will name only one instance, 
 that to which I have alluded before — the roses which 
 conceal the ventilators in the flat roofs of our chapels. 
 Many of those roses are of very beautiful design, bor- 
 rowed from fine works : all their grace and finish are 
 invisible when they are so placed, but their general 
 form is afterwards associated with the ugly buildings 
 in which they constantly occur ; and all the beautiful 
 roses of the early French and English Gothic, especially 
 such elaborate ones as those of the triforium of Cout- 
 ances, are in consequence deprived of their pleasurable 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 127 
 
 influence : and this without our having accomplished 
 the smallest good by the use we have made of the dis- 
 honoured form. Not a single person in the congrega- 
 tion ever receives one ray of pleasure from those roof 
 roses ; they are regarded with mere indifference, or 
 lost in the general impression of harsh emptiness. 
 
 XXIII. Must not beauty, then, it will be asked, 
 be sought for in the forms which we associate with our 
 every-day life ? Yes, if you do it consistently, and 
 in places where it can be calmly seen ; but not if you 
 use the beautiful form only as a mask and covering of 
 the proper conditions and uses of things, nor if you 
 thrust it into the places set apart for toil. Put it in 
 the drawing-room, not into the workshop ; put it upon 
 domestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft. All 
 men have sense of what is right in this matter, if they 
 would only use and apply that sense ; every man 
 knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if 
 he would only ask for it when it does so, and not allow 
 it to be forced upon him when he does not want it. 
 Ask any one of the passengers over London Bridge at 
 this instant whether he cares about the forms of the 
 bronze leaves on its lamps, and he will tell you, No. 
 Modify these forms of leaves to a less scale, and put 
 them on his milk-jug at breakfast, and ask him whether 
 he likes them, and he will tell you, Yes. People have 
 no need of teaching if they could only think and speak 
 truth, and ask for what they like and want, and for 
 nothing else : nor can a right disposition of beauty be 
 ever arrived at except by this common sense, and 
 allowance for the circumstances of the time and place. 
 It does not follow, because bronze leafage is in bad 
 taste on the lamps of London Bridge, that it would 
 be so on those of the Ponte della Trinita ; nor, because 
 it would be a folly to decorate the house fronts of 
 Gracechurch Street, that it would be equally so tc- 
 adorn those of some quiet provincial town. The ques- 
 tion of greatest external or internal decoration depends. 
 
128 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 entirely on the conditions of probable repose. It was 
 a wise feeling which made the streets of Venice so rich 
 in external ornament, for there is no couch of rest like 
 the gondola. So, again, there is no subject of street 
 ornament so wisely chosen as the fountain, where 
 it is a fountain of use ; for it is just there that per- 
 haps the happiest pause takes place in the labour of 
 the day, when the pitcher is rested on the edge of it, 
 and the breath of the bearer is drawn deeply, and the 
 hair swept from the forehead, and the uprightness of 
 the form declined against the marble ledge, and the 
 sound of the kind word or light laugh mixes with the 
 trickle of the falling water, heard shriller and shriller 
 as the pitcher fills. What pause is so sweet as that — 
 so full of the depth of ancient days, so softened with 
 the calm of pastoral solitude ? 
 
 XXIV. II. Thus far, then, of the place for beauty. 
 We were next to inquire into the characters which 
 fitted it peculiarly for architectural appliance, and into 
 the principles of choice and of arrangement which best 
 regulate the imitation of natural forms in which it 
 consists. The full answering of these questions would 
 be a treatise on the art of design : I intend only to say 
 a few words respecting the two conditions of that art 
 which are essentially architectural — Proportion and 
 Abstraction. Neither of these qualities is necessary, 
 to the same extent, in other fields of design. The 
 sense of proportion is, by the landscape painter, 
 frequently sacrificed to character and accident ; the 
 power of abstraction to that of complete realization. 
 The flowers of his foreground must often be unmeasured 
 in their quantity, loose in their arrangement : what 
 is calculated, either in quantity or disposition, must 
 be artfully concealed. That calculation is by the 
 •architect to be prominently exhibited. So the abstrac- 
 tion of few characteristics out of many is shown 
 only in the painter's sketch ; in his finished work it is 
 concealed or lost in completion. Architecture, on the 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 129 
 
 contrary, delights in Abstraction and fears to complete 
 her forms. Proportion and Abstraction, then, are 
 the two especial marks of architectural design as dis- 
 tinguished from all other. Sculpture must have them 
 in inferior degrees ; leaning, on the one hand, to an 
 architectural manner, when it is usually greatest (be- 
 coming, indeed, a part of Architecture), and, on the 
 other, to a pictorial manner, when it is apt to lose its 
 dignity, and sink into mere ingenious carving. 
 
 XXV. Now, of Proportion so much has been written, 
 that I believe the only facts which are of practical use 
 have been overwhelmed and kept out of sight by vain 
 accumulations of particular instances and estimates. 
 Proportions are as infinite (and that in all kinds of 
 things, as severally in colours, lines, shades, lights, 
 and forms) as possible airs in music : and it is just as 
 rational an attempt to teach a young architect how to 
 proportion truly and well by calculating for him the 
 proportions of fine works, as it would be to teach him 
 to compose melodies by calculating the mathematical 
 relations of the notes in Beethoven's Adelaide or 
 Mozart's Requiem. The man who has eye and intellect 
 will invent beautiful proportions, and cannot help it ; 
 but he can no more tell us how to do it than Words- 
 worth could tell us how to write a sennet, or than Scott 
 could have told us how to plan a romance. But there 
 are one or two general laws which can be told : they 
 are of no use, indeed, except as preventives of gross 
 mistake, but they are so far worth telling and remem- 
 bering ; and the more so because, in the discussion of 
 the subtle laws of proportion (which will never be 
 either numbered or known), architects are perpetually 
 forgetting and transgressing the very simplest of its 
 necessities. 
 
 XXVI. Of which the first is, that wherever Pro- 
 portion exists at all, one member of the composition 
 must be either larger than, or in some way supreme 
 over, the rest. There is no proportion between equal 
 
 S.L.A. K 
 
130 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 things. They can have symmetry only, and symme- 
 try without proportion is not composition. It is 
 necessary to perfect beauty, but it is the least neces- 
 sary of its elements, nor of course is there any diffi- 
 culty in obtaining it. Any succession of equal things 
 is agreeable ; but to compose is to arrange unequal 
 things, and the first thing to be done in beginning a 
 composition is to determine which is to be the principal 
 thing. I believe that all that has been written and 
 taught about proportion, put together, is not to the 
 architect worth a single rule, well enforced, ' Have 
 one large thing and several smaller things, or one 
 principal thing and several inferior things, and bind 
 them well together.' Sometimes there may be a 
 regular gradation, as between the heights of stories 
 in good designs for houses ; sometimes a monarch 
 with a lowly train, as in the spire with its pinnacles : 
 the varieties of arrangement are infinite, but the law 
 is universal — have one thing above the rest, either 
 by size, or office, or interest. Don't put the pinnacles 
 without the spire. What a host of ugly church towers 
 have we in England, with pinnacles at the corners, 
 and none in the middle ! How many buildings like 
 King's College Chapel at Cambridge, looking like 
 tables upside down, with their four legs in the air ! 
 What ! it will be said, have not beasts four legs ? 
 Yes, but legs of different shapes, and with a head 
 between them. So they have a pair of ears : and 
 perhaps a pair of horns : but not at both ends. Knock 
 down a couple of pinnacles at either end in King's 
 College Chapel, and you will have a kind of propor- 
 tion instantly. So in a cathedral you may have one 
 tower in the centre, and two at the west end ; or two 
 at the west end only, though a worse arrangement : 
 but you must not have two at the west and two at 
 the east end, unless you have some central member 
 to connect them ; and even then, buildings are gener- 
 ally bad which have large balancing features at the 
 
,/.l 
 
 \face p. .30 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 131 
 
 extremities, and small connecting ones in the centre, 
 because it is not easy then to make the. centre domin- 
 ant. The bird or moth may indeed have wide wings, 
 because the size of the wing does not give supremacy 
 to the wing. The head and life are the mighty things, 
 and the plumes, however wide, are subordinate. In 
 fine west fronts with a pediment and two towers, the 
 centre is always the principal mass, both in bulk and 
 interest (as having the main gateway), and the towers 
 are subordinated to it, as an animal's horns are to its 
 head. The moment the towers rise so high as to over- 
 power the body and centre, and become themselves 
 the principal masses, they will destroy the proportion, 
 unless they are made unequal, and one of them the 
 leading feature of the cathedral, as at Antwerp and 
 Strasburg. But the purer method is to keep them 
 down in due relation to the centre, and to throw up 
 the pediment into a steep connecting mass, drawing 
 the eye to it by rich tracery. This is nobly done in 
 St Wulfran of Abbeville, and attempted partly at 
 Rouen, though that west front is made up of so many 
 unfinished and supervening designs that it is impos- 
 sible to guess the real intention of any one of its builders. 
 XXVII. This rule of supremacy applies to the 
 smallest as well as to leading features : it is interest- 
 ingly seen in the arrangement of all good mould- 
 ings. I have given one, on Plate X, from Rouen 
 Cathedral ; that of the tracery before distinguished 
 as a type of the noblest manner of Northern Gothic 
 (Chap. II, § XXII). It is a tracery of three orders, of 
 which the first is divided into a leaf moulding, fig. 4, 
 and b in the section, and a plain roll, also seen in fig. 
 4, c in the section ; these two divisions surround the 
 entire window or panelling, and are carried by two- 
 face shafts of corresponding sections. The second 
 and third orders are plain rolls following the line of 
 the tracery ; four divisions of moulding in all : of 
 these four, the leaf moulding is, as seen in the sections, 
 
132 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 much the largest ; next to it the outer roll ; then, by 
 an exquisite alternation, the innermost roll (e), in order 
 that it may not be lost in the recess, and the inter- 
 mediate (d), the smallest. Each roll has its own shaft 
 and capital ; and the two smaller, which in effect upon 
 the eye, owing to the retirement of the innermost, are 
 nearly equal, have smaller capitals than the two larg t, 
 lifted a little to bring them to the same level. The 
 wall in the trefoiled lights is curved, as from e to / in 
 the section ; but in the quatrefoil it is flat, only thrown 
 back to the full depth of the recess below as to so get a 
 sharp shadow instead of a soft one, the mouldings 
 falling back to it in nearly a vertical curve behind the 
 roll e. This could not, however, be managed with the 
 simpler mouldings of the smaller quatrefoil above, 
 whose half section is given from g to g 2 ; but the archi- 
 tect was evidently fretted by the heavy look of its 
 circular foils as opposed to the light spring of the 
 arches below : so he threw its cusps obliquely clear 
 from the wall, as seen in fig. 2, attached to it where 
 they meet the circle, but with their finials pushed out 
 from their natural level (h, in the section) to that of 
 the first order (g 2 ), and supported by stone props 
 behind, as seen in the profile, fig. 2, which I got from 
 the correspondent panel on the buttress face (tig. 1. 
 being on its side), and of which the lower cusps, being 
 broken away, show the remnant of one of their props 
 projecting from the wall. The oblique curve thus 
 obtained in the profile is of singular grace. Take it 
 all in all, I have never met with a more exquisite piece 
 of varied, yet severe, proportion and general arrange- 
 ment (though all the windows of the period are fine, 
 and especially delightful in the subordinate propor- 
 tioning of the smaller capitals to the smaller shafts). 
 The only fault it has is the inevitable misarrangement 
 of the central shafts ; for the enlargement of the inner 
 roll, though beautiful in the group of four divisions at 
 the side, causes, in the triple central shaft, the very 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 133 
 
 awkwardness of heavy lateral members which has just 
 been in most instances condemned. In the windows of 
 the choir, and in most of the period, this difficulty is 
 avoided by making the fourth order a fillet which only 
 follows the foliation, while the three outermost are 
 nearly in arithmetical progression of size, and the 
 central triple shaft has of course the largest roll in 
 front. The moulding of the Palazzo Foscari (Plate 
 VIII, and Plate IV, fig 8) is, for so simple a group, 
 the grandest in effect I have ever seen : it is composed 
 of a large roll Avith two subordinates. 
 
 XXVIII. It is of course impossible to enter into 
 details of instances belonging to so intricate a divi- 
 sion of our subject, in the compass of a general essay. 
 I can but rapidly name the chief conditions of right. 
 Another of these is the connection of Symmetry with 
 horizontal, and of Proportion with vertical, division. 
 Evidently there is in symmetry a sense not merely of 
 equality, but of balance : now a thing cannot be 
 balanced by another on the top of it, though it may 
 by one at the side of it. Hence, while it is not only 
 allowable, but often necessary, to divide buildings, or 
 parts of them, horizontally into halves, thirds, or 
 other equal parts, all vertical divisions of this kind 
 are utterly wrong ; worst into half, next worst in the 
 regular numbers which more betray the equality. I 
 should have thought this almost the first principle 
 of proportion which a young architect was taught : 
 and yet I remember an important building, recently 
 erected in England, in which the columns are cut in 
 half by the projecting architraves of the central win- 
 dows ; and it is quite usual to see the spires of modern 
 Gothic churches divided by a band of ornament half- 
 way up. In all fine spires there are two bands and 
 three parts, as at Salisbury. The ornamented portion 
 of the tower is there cut in half, and allowably, because 
 the spire forms the third mass to which the other two 
 are subordinate : two stories are also equal in Giotto's 
 
134 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 campanile, but dominant over smaller divisions below, 
 and subordinated to the noble third above. Even 
 this arrangement is difficult to treat ; and it is 
 usually safer to increase or diminish the height of the 
 divisions regularly as they rise, as in the Doge's Palace, 
 whose three divisions are in a bold geometrical pro- 
 pression : or, in towers, to get an alternate proportion 
 between the body, the belfry, and the crown, as in the 
 campanile of St Mark's. But, at all events, get rid of 
 equality ; leave that to children and their card houses ; 
 the laws of nature and the reason of man are alike 
 against it, in arts, as in politics. There is but one 
 thoroughly ugly tower in Italy that I know of, and 
 that is so because it is divided into vertical equal 
 parts : the tower of Pisa 12 . 
 
 XXIX. One more principle of Proportion I have 
 to name, equally simple, equally neglected. Pro- 
 portion is between three terms at least. Hence, as 
 the pinnacles are not enough without the spire, so 
 neither the spire without the pinnacles. All men feel 
 this, and usually express their feeling by saying that 
 the pinnacles conceal the junction of the spire and 
 tower. This is one reason ; but a more influential 
 one is, that the pinnacles furnish the third term to 
 the spire and tower. So that it is not enough, in 
 order to secure proportion, to divide a building un- 
 equally ; it must be divided into at least three parts ; 
 it may be into more (and in details with advantage), 
 but on a large scale I find three is about the best 
 number of parts in elevation, and five in horizontal 
 extent, with freedom of increase to five in the one case 
 and seven in the other ; but not to more without 
 confusion (in architecture, that is to say ; for in organic 
 structure the numbeps cannot be limited). I pur- 
 pose, in the course of works which are in preparation, 
 to give copious illustrations of this subject, but I will 
 take at present only one instance of vertical proportion, 
 from the flower stem of the common water plantain, 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 135 
 
 Alisma Plantago. Fig, 5, Plate XII, is a reduced 
 profile of one side of a plant gathered at random ; 
 it is seen to have five masts, of which, however, the 
 uppermost is a mere shoot, and we can consider only 
 their relations up to the fourth. Their lengths are 
 measured on the line A B, which is the actual length of 
 the lowest mast ab, AC = be, AD = cd, and A E = d e. 
 If the reader will take the trouble to measure these 
 lengths and compare them he will find that, within 
 half a line, the uppermost, A E = | of A D, 
 A D = f of A C, and A C = £ of A B ; a' most subtle 
 diminishing proportion. From each of the joints 
 spring three major and three minor branches, each 
 between each ; but the major branches, at any 
 joint, are placed over the minor branches at the 
 joint below, by the curious arrangement of the 
 joint itself — the stem is bluntly triangular ; fig. 6 
 shows the section of any joint. The outer dark- 
 ened triangle is the section of the lower stem ; the 
 inner, left light, of the upper stem ; and the three 
 main branches spring from the ledges left by the reces- 
 sion. Thus the stems diminish in diameter just as 
 they diminish in height. The main branches (falsely 
 placed in the profile over each other to show their 
 relations) have respectively seven, six, five, four, and 
 three arm- bones, like the masts of the stem ; these 
 divisions being proportioned in the same subtle manner. 
 From the joints of these it seems to be the plan of the 
 plant that three major and three minor branches 
 should again spring, bearing the flowers : but, in these 
 infinitely complicated members, vegetative nature 
 admits much variety ; in the plant from which these 
 measures were taken, the full complement appeared 
 only at one of the secondary joints. 
 
 The leaf of this plant has five ribs on each side, as 
 its flower generally five masts, arranged with the most 
 exquisite grace of curve ; but of lateral proportion 
 I shall rather take illustrations from architecture ; 
 
136 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 the reader will find several in the accounts of the 
 Duomo of Pisa and St Mark's at Venice, in Chap. V, 
 §§ XIV — XVI. I give these arrangements merely 
 as illustrations, not as precedents : all beautiful pro- 
 portions are unique, they are not general formula?. 
 
 XXX. The other condition of architectural treat- 
 ment which we proposed to notice was the abstraction 
 of imitated form. But there is a peculiar difficulty 
 in touching within these narrow limits on such a sub- 
 ject as this, because the abstraction of which we find 
 examples in existing art is partly involuntary ; and 
 it is a matter of much nicety to determine where it 
 begins to be purposed. In the progress of national 
 as well as of individual mind, the first attempts at 
 imitation are always abstract and incomplete. Greater 
 completion marks the progress of art, absolute com- 
 pletion usually its decline ; whence absolute completion 
 of imitative form is often supposed to be in itself 
 wrong. But it is not wrong always, only dangerous. 
 Let us endeavour briefly to ascertain wherein its 
 danger consists, and wherein its dignity. 
 
 XXXI. I have said that all art is abstract in its 
 beginnings ; that is to say, it expresses only a small 
 number of the qualities of the thing represented. 
 Curved and complex lines are represented by straight 
 and simple ones ; interior markings of forms are few, 
 and much is symbolical and conventional. There is 
 a resemblance between the work of a great nation, in 
 this phase, and the work of childhood and ignorance, 
 which, in the mind of a careless observer, might attach 
 something like ridicule to it. The form of a tree on 
 the Ninevite sculptures is much like that which, some 
 twenty years ago, was familiar upon samplers ; and 
 the types of the face and figure in early Italian art are 
 susceptible of easy caricature. On the signs which 
 separate the infancy of magnificent manhood from every 
 other, I do not pause to insist (they consist entirely 
 in the choice of the symbol and of the features abs- 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 137 
 
 tracted) ; but I pass to the next stage of art, a con- 
 dition of strength in which the abstraction which was 
 begun in incapability is continued in free will. This 
 is the case, however, in pure sculpture and painting, as 
 well as in architecture ; and we have nothing to do 
 but with that greater severity of manner which fits 
 either to be associated with the more realist art. I 
 believe it properly consists only in a due expression of 
 their subordination, an expression varying according 
 to their place and office. The question is first to be 
 clearly determined whether the architecture is a frame 
 for the sculpture, or the sculpture an ornament of the 
 architecture. If the latter, then the first office of 
 that sculpture is not to represent the things it imitates, 
 but to gather out of them those arrangements of form 
 which shall be pleasing to the eye in their intended 
 places. So soon as agreeable lines and points of shade 
 have been added to the mouldings which were meagre, 
 or to the lights which were unrelieved, the architec- 
 tural work of the imitation is accomplished ; and 
 how far it shall be wrought towards completeness or 
 not, will depend upon its place, and upon other various 
 circumstances. If, in its particular use or position, it 
 is symmetrically arranged, there is, of course, an 
 instant indication of architectural subjection. But 
 symmetry is not abstraction. Leaves may be carved 
 in the most regular order, and yet be meanly imitative ; 
 or, on the other hand, they may be thrown wild and 
 loose, and yet be highly architectural in their separate 
 treatment. Nothing can be less symmetrical than the 
 group of leaves which joins the two columns in Plate 
 XIII ; yet, since nothing of the leaf character is given 
 but what is necessary for the bare suggestion of its 
 image and the attainment of the lines desired, their 
 treatment is highly abstract. It shows that the work- 
 man only wanted so much of the leaf as he supposed 
 good for his architecture, and would allow no more ; 
 and how much is to be supposed good, depends, as I 
 
138 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 have said, much more on place and circumstance 
 than on general laws. I know that this is not usually 
 thought, and that many good architects would insist 
 on abstraction in all cases : the question is so wide 
 and so difficult that I express my opinion upon it most 
 diffidently ; but my own feeling is, that a purely 
 abstract manner, like that of our earliest English 
 work, does not afford room for the perfection of beau- 
 tiful form, and that its severity is wearisome after 
 the eye has been long accustomed to it. I have not 
 done justice to the Salisbury dog-tooth moulding, of 
 which the effect is sketched in fig. 5, Plate X, but I 
 have done more justice to it nevertheless than to the 
 beautiful French one above it ; and I do not think 
 that any candid reader would deny that, piquant and 
 spirited as is that from Salisbury, the Rouen moulding 
 is, in every respect, nobler. It will be observed that 
 its symmetry is more complicated, the leafage being 
 divided into double groups of two lobes each, each 
 lobe of different structure. With exquisite feeling, 
 one of these double groups is alternately omitted on 
 the other side of the moulding (not seen in the Plate, 
 but occupying the cavetto of the section), thus giving 
 a playful lightness to the whole ; and if the reader 
 will allow for a beauty in the flow of the curved out- 
 lines (especially on the angle) of which he cannot in 
 the least judge from my rude drawing, he will not, 
 I think, expect easily to find a noble instance of decora- 
 tion adapted to the severest mouldings. 
 
 Now it will be observed, that there is in its treat- 
 ment a high degree of abstraction, though not so con- 
 ventional as that of Salisbury : that is to say, the 
 leaves have little more than their flow and outline 
 represented ; they are hardly undercut, but their 
 edges are connected by a gentle and most studied 
 curve with the stone behind ; they have no serrations, 
 no veinings, no rib or stalk on the angle, only an in- 
 cision gracefully made towards their extremities, indi- 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 139 
 
 cative of the central rib and depression. The whole 
 style of the abstraction shows that the architect 
 could, if he had chosen, have carried the imitation 
 much farther, but stayed at this point of his own free 
 will ; and what he has done is also so perfect in its kind, 
 that I feel disposed to accept his authority without 
 question, so far as I can gather it from his works, on 
 the whole subject of abstraction. 
 
 XXXII. Happily his opinion is frankly expressed. 
 This moulding is on the lateral buttress, and on a level 
 with the top of the north gate : it cannot therefore 
 be closely seen except from the wooden stairs of the 
 belfry ; it is not intended to be so seen, but calculated 
 for a distance of, at least, forty to fifty feet from the 
 eye. In the vault of the gate itself, half as near again, 
 there are three rows of mouldings, as I think, by the 
 same designer, at all events part of the same plan. 
 One of them is given in Plate I, fig. 2, a. It will be 
 seen that the abstraction is here infinitely less ; the 
 ivy leaves have stalks and associated fruit, and a rib 
 for each lobe, and are so far undercut as to detach 
 their forms from the stone ; while in the vine-leaf 
 moulding above, of the same period, from the south 
 gate, serration appears added to other purely imitative 
 characters. Finally, in the animals which form the 
 ornaments of the portion of the gate which is close to the 
 eye, abstraction nearly vanishes into perfect sculpture. 
 
 XXXIII. Nearness to the eye, however, is not the 
 only circumstance which influences architectural ab- 
 straction. These very animals are not merely better 
 cut because close to the eye ; they are put close to the 
 eye that they may, without indiscretion, be better 
 cut, on the noble principle, first, I think, clearly enun- 
 ciated by Sir Charles Eastlake, that the closest imita- 
 tion shall be of the noblest object. Farther, since the 
 wildness and manner of growth of vegetation render 
 a bona fide imitation of it impossible in sculpture — 
 since its members must be reduced in number, ordered 
 
140 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 in direction, and cut away from their roots, even under 
 the most earnestly imitative treatment — it becomes a 
 point, as I think, of good judgment, to proportion the 
 completeness of execution of parts to the formality 
 of the whole ; and since five or six leaves must stand 
 for a tree, to let also five or six touches stand for a 
 leaf. But since the animal generally admits of perfect 
 outline — since its form is detached, and may be fully 
 represented, its sculpture may be more complete and 
 faithful in all its parts. And this principle will be 
 actually found, I believe, to guide the old workmen. 
 If the animal form be in a gargoyle, incomplete, and 
 coming out of a block of stone, or if a head only, as for 
 a boss or other such partial use, its sculpture will be 
 highly abstract. But if it be an entire animal, as a 
 lizard, or a bird, or a squirrel, peeping among leafage, 
 its sculpture will be much farther carried, and I think, 
 if small, near the eye, and worked in a fine material, 
 may rightly be carried to the utmost possible comple- 
 tion. Surely we cannot wish a less finish bestowed on 
 those which animate the mouldings of the South door of 
 the cathedral of Florence ; nor desire that the birds 
 in the capitals of the Doge's palace should be stripped 
 of a single plume. 
 
 XXXIV. Under these limitations, then, I think 
 that perfect sculpture may be made a part of the 
 severest architecture ; but this perfection was said 
 in the outset to be dangerous. It is so in the highest 
 degree ; for the moment the architect allows himself 
 to dwell on the imitated portions, there is a chance of 
 his losing sight of the duty of his ornament, of its busi- 
 ness as a part of the composition, and sacrificing its 
 points of shade and effect to the delight of delicate 
 carving. And then he is lost. His architecture has 
 become a mere framework for the setting of delicate 
 sculpture, which had better be all taken down and 
 put into cabinets. It is well, therefore, that the young 
 architect should be taught to think of imitative orna- 
 
,1.1 
 
 [face />. 140 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 141 
 
 ment as of the extreme of grace in language ; not to 
 be regarded at first, not to be obtained at the cost of 
 purpose, meaning, force or conciseness, yet, indeed, a 
 perfection — the least of all perfections, and yet the 
 crowning one of all — one ■which by itself, and regarded 
 in itself, is an architectural coxcombry, but is yet the 
 sign of the most highly-trained mind and power when 
 it is associated with others. It is a safe manner, as I 
 think, to design all things at first in severe abstraction, 
 and to be prepared, if need were, to carry them out in 
 that form ; then to mark the parts where high finish 
 would be admissible, to complete these always with 
 stern reference to their general effect, and then connect 
 them by a graduated scale of abstraction with the rest. 
 And there is one safeguard against danger in this process 
 on which I would finally insist. Never imitate any- 
 thing but natural forms, and those the noblest, in the 
 completed parts. The degradation of the cinque cento 
 manner of decoration was not owing to its naturalism, 
 to its faithfulness of imitation, but to its imitation of 
 ugly, i.e. unnatural things. So long as it restrained 
 itself to sculpture of animals and flowers, it remained 
 noble. The balcony figured in Plate XI, from a 
 house in the Campo St Benedetto at Venice, shows 
 one of the earliest occurrences of the cinque cento 
 arabesque, and a fragment of the pattern is given in 
 Plate XII, fig 8. It is but the arresting upon the stone 
 work of a stem or two of the living flowers, which are 
 rarely wanting in the window above (and which, by 
 the by, the French and Italian peasantry often trellis 
 with exquisite taste about their casements). This 
 arabesque, relieved as it is in darkness from the white 
 stone by the stain of time, is surely both beautiful and 
 pure ; and as long as the renaissance ornament re- 
 mained in such forms it may be beheld with unreserved 
 admiration. But the moment that unnatural objects 
 were associated with these, and armour, and musical 
 instruments, and wild meaningless scrolls and curled 
 
142 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 shields, and other such fancies, became principal in its 
 subjects, its doom was sealed, and with it that of the 
 architecture of the world. 
 
 XXXV. III. Our final inquiry was to be into the 
 use of colour as associated with architectural ornament. 
 
 I do not feel able to speak with any confidence 
 respecting the touching of sculpture with, colour. I 
 would only note one point, that sculpture is the 
 representation of an idea, while architecture is itself a 
 real thing. The idea may, as I think, be left colourless, 
 and coloured by the beholder's mind : but a reality 
 ought to have reality in all its attributes : its colour 
 should be as fixed as its form. I cannot, therefore, 
 consider architecture as in any wise perfect without 
 colour. Farther, as I have above noticed, I think 
 the colours of architecture should be those of natural 
 stones ; partly because more durable, but also because 
 more perfect and graceful. For to conquer the harsh- 
 ness and deadness of tones laid upon stone or on gesso, 
 needs the management and discretion of a true painter ; 
 and on this co-operation we must not calculate in laying 
 down rules for general practice. If Tintoret or Gior- 
 gione are at hand, and ask us for a wall to paint, we 
 will alter our whole design for their sake, and become 
 their servants ; but we must, as architects, expect the 
 aid of the common workman only ; and the laying of 
 colour by a mechanical hand, and its toning under a 
 vulgar eye, are far more offensive than rudeness in 
 cutting the stone. The latter is imperfection only ; 
 the former deadness or discordance. At the best 
 such colour is so inferior to the lovely and mellow hues 
 of the natural stone, that it is wise to sacrifice some of 
 the intricacy of design, if by so doing we may employ 
 the nobler material. And if, as we looked to 
 Nature for instruction respecting form, we look to her 
 also to learn the management of colour, we shall, 
 perhaps, find that this sacrifice of intricacy is for other 
 causes expedient. 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 143 
 
 XXXVI. First, then, I think that in making this 
 reference we are to consider our building as a kind of 
 organized creature ; in colouring which we must look 
 to the single and separately organized creatures of 
 Nature, not to her landscape combinations. Our 
 building, if it is well composed, is one thing, and is to 
 be coloured as Nature would colour one thing — a 
 shell, a flower, or an animal ; not as she colours groups 
 of things. 
 
 And the first broad conclusion we shall deduce from 
 observance of natural colour in such cases will be 
 that it never follows form, but is arranged on an en- 
 tirely separate system. What mysterious connection 
 there may be between the shape of the spots on an 
 animal's skin and its anatomical system, I do not know, 
 nor even if such a connection has in anywise been 
 traced : but to the eye the systems are entirely separate, 
 and in many cases that of colour is accidentally vari- 
 able. The stripes of a zebra do not follow the lines of its 
 body or limbs, still less the spots of a leopard. In the 
 plumage of birds, each feather bears a part of the pat- 
 tern which is arbitrarily carried over the body, having 
 indeed certain graceful harmonies with the form, 
 diminishing or enlarging in directions which sometimes 
 follow, but also not unfrequently oppose, the directions 
 of its muscular lines. Whatever harmonies there may 
 be, are distinctly like those of two separate musical 
 parts, coinciding here and there only — never discord- 
 ant, but essentially different. I hold this, then, for 
 the first great principle of architectural colour. Let it 
 be visibly independent of form. Never paint a column 
 with vertical lines, but always cross it 13 . Never give 
 separate mouldings separate colours (I know this is 
 heresy, but I never shrink from any conclusions, how- 
 ever contrary to human authority, to which I am led 
 by observance of natural principles) ; and in sculp- 
 tured ornaments do not paint the leaves or figures 
 (I cannot help the Elgin frieze) of one colour and their 
 
144 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 ground of another, but vary both the ground and the 
 figures with the same harmony. Notice how Nature 
 does it in a variegated flower ; not one leaf red and 
 another white, but a point of red and a zone of white, 
 or whatever it may be, to each. In certain places 
 you may run your two systems closer, and here and 
 there let them be parallel for a note or two, but see that 
 the colours and the forms coincide only as two orders 
 of mouldings do ; the same for an instant, but each 
 holding its own course. So single members may some- 
 times have single colours : as a bird's head is sometimes 
 of one colour and its shoulders another, you may make 
 your capital one colour and your shaft another ; but 
 in general the best place for colour is on broad surfaces, 
 not on the points of interest in form. An animal is 
 mottled on its breast and back, rarely on its paws or 
 about its eyes ; so put your variegation boldly on the 
 flat wall and broad shaft, but be shy of it in the capital 
 and moulding ; in all cases it is a safe rule to simplify 
 colour when form is rich, and vice versa ; and I think 
 it would be well in general to carve all capitals and 
 graceful ornaments in white marble, and so leave them. 
 
 XXXVII. Independence then being first secured, 
 what kind of limiting outlines shall we adopt for the 
 system of colour itself ? 
 
 I am quite sure that any person familiar with natural 
 objects will never be surprised at any appearance of 
 care or finish in them. That is the condition of the 
 Universe. But there is cause both for surprise and 
 inquiry whenever we see anything like carelessness or 
 incompletion : that is not a common condition ; it 
 must be one appointed for some singular purpose. I 
 believe that such surprise will be forcibly felt by any 
 •one who, after studying carefully the lines of some varie- 
 gated organic form, will set himself to copy with similar 
 diligence those of its colours. The boundaries of the 
 forms he will assuredly, whatever the object, have found 
 drawn with a delicacy and precision which no human 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 145 
 
 hand can follow. Those of its colours he will find in 
 many cases, though governed always by a certain rude 
 symmetry, yet irregular, blotched, imperfect, liable 
 to all kinds of accidents and awkwardnesses. Look 
 at the tracery of the lines on a camp shell, and see how 
 oddly and awkwardly its tents are pitched. It is not 
 indeed always so : there is occasionally, as in the eye of 
 the peacock's plume, an apparent precision, but still 
 a precision far inferior to that of the drawing of the 
 filaments which bear that lovely stain ; and in the 
 plurality of cases a degree of looseness and variation, 
 and, still more singularly, of harshness and violence in 
 arrangement, is admitted in colour which would be 
 monstrous in form. Observe the difference in the pre- 
 cision of a fish's scales and of the spots on them. 
 
 XXXVIII. Now, why it should be that colour is 
 best seen under these circumstances I will not here 
 endeavour to determine ; nor whether the lesson we 
 are to learn from it be that it is God's will that all 
 manner of delights should never be combined in one 
 thing. But the fact is certain, that colour is always by 
 Him arranged in these simple or rude forms, and as 
 certain that, therefore, it must be best seen in them, and 
 that we shall never mend by refining its arrangements. 
 Experience teaches us the same thing. Infinite non- 
 sense has been written about the union of perfect colour 
 with perfect form. They never will, never can be 
 united. Colour, to be perfect, must have a soft outline 
 or a simple one : it cannot have a refined one ; and you 
 will never produce a good painted window with good 
 figure-drawing in it. You will lose perfection of colour 
 as you give perfection of line. Try to put in order and 
 form the colours of a piece of opal. 
 
 XXXIX. I conclude, then, that all arrangements 
 of colour, for its own sake, in graceful forms, are bar- 
 barous ; and that, to paint a colour pattern with the 
 lovely lines of a Greek leaf moulding, is an utterly 
 savage procedure. I cannot find anything in natural 
 
 S.L.A. L 
 
146 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 colour like this : it is not in the bond. I find it in al! 
 natural form — never in natural colour. If, then, our 
 architectural colour is to be beautiful as its form was, 
 by being imitative, we are limited to these conditions — 
 to simple masses of it, to zones, as in the rainbow and 
 the zebra ; cloudings and flamings, as in marble shells 
 and plumage, or spots of various shapes and dimen- 
 sions. All these conditions are susceptible of various 
 degrees of sharpness and delicacy, and of complication 
 in arrangement. The zone may become a delicate line, 
 and arrange itself in chequers and zig-zags. The 
 flaming may be more or less defined, as on a tulip leaf, 
 and may at last be represented by a triangle of colour, 
 and arrange itself in stars or other shapes ; the spot 
 may be also graduated into a stain, or defined into a 
 square or circle. The most exquisite harmonies may 
 be composed of these simple elements ; some soft 
 and full, of flushed and melting spaces of colour ; 
 others piquant and sparkling, or deep and rich, formed 
 of close groups of the fiery fragments : perfect and 
 lovely proportion may be exhibited in the relation of 
 their quantities, infinite invention in their disposition : 
 but, in all cases, their shape will be effective only as 
 it determines their quantity, and regulates their opera- 
 tion on each other ; points or edges of one being intro- 
 duced between breadths of others, and so on. Trian- 
 gular and barred forms are therefore convenient, or 
 others the simplest possible ; leaving the pleasure of 
 the spectator to be taken in the colour, and in that 
 only. Curved outlines, especially if refined, deaden the 
 colour, and confuse the mind. Even in figure painting 
 the greatest colourists have either melted their outline 
 away, as often Correggio and Rubens ; or purposely 
 made their masses of ungainly shape, as Titian ; or 
 placed their brightest hues in costume, where they 
 could get quaint patterns, as Veronese, and especially 
 Angelico, with whom, however, the absolute virtue of 
 colour is secondary to grace of line. Hence, he never 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 147 
 
 uses the blended hues of Correggio, like those on 
 the wing of the little Cupid, in the ' Venus and Mercury', 
 but ahvaj's the severest type — the peacock plume. 
 Any of these men would have looked with infinite 
 disgust upon the leafage and scroll-work which form 
 the ground of colour in our modern painted windows, 
 and yet all whom I have named were much infected 
 with the love of renaissance designs. We must also allow 
 for the freedom of the painter's subject, and looseness 
 of his associated lines ; a pattern being severe in a pic- 
 ture, which is over luxurious upon a building. I be- 
 lieve, therefore, that it is impossible to be over quaint 
 or angular in architectural colouring ; and thus many 
 dispositions which I have had occasion to reprobate in 
 form, are, in colour, the best that can be invented. I 
 have always, for instance, spoken with contempt of the 
 Tudor style, for this reason, that, having surrendered all 
 pretence to spaciousness and breadth — having divided 
 its surfaces by an infinite number of lines, it yet sacri- 
 fices the only characters which can make lines beautiful ; 
 sacrifices all the variety and grace which long atoned 
 for the caprice of the Flamboyant, and adopts, for its 
 leading feature, an entanglment of cross bars and ver- 
 ticals showing about as much invention or skill of 
 design as the reticulation of the bricklayer's sieve. 
 Yet this very reticulation would in colour be highly 
 beautiful ; and all the heraldry, and other features 
 which, in form, are monstrous, may be delightful as 
 themes of colour (so long as there are no fluttering or 
 over-twisted lines in them) ; and this observe, because, 
 when coloured, they take the place of a mere pattern, 
 and the resemblance to nature, which could not be 
 found in their sculptured forms, is found in their 
 piquant variegation of other surfaces. There is a beauti- 
 ful and bright bit of wall painting behind the Duomo 
 Verona, composed of coats of arms, whose bearings are 
 balls of gold set in bars of green (altered blue ?) and 
 white, with cardinal's hats in alternate squares. This 
 
148 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 is of course, however, fit only for domestic work. The 
 front of the Doge's palace at Venice is the purest and 
 most chaste model that I can name (but one) of the fit 
 application of colour to public buildings. The sculp- 
 ture and mouldings are all white ; but the wall surface is 
 chequered with marble blocks of pale rose, the chequers 
 being in no wise harmonized, or fitted to the forms of 
 the windows ; but looking as if the surface had been 
 completed first, and the windows cut out of it. In Plate 
 XII, fig. 2, the reader will see two of the patterns used 
 in green and white, on the columns of San Michele 
 of Lucca ; every column having a different design. Both 
 are beautiful, but the upper one certainly the best. Yet 
 in sculpture its lines would have been perfectly barbar- 
 ous, and those even of the lower not enough refined. 
 XL. Restraining ourselves, therefore, to the use of 
 such simple patterns, so far forth as our colour is sub- 
 ordinate either to architectural structure, or sculptural 
 form, we have yet one more manner of ornamentation 
 to add to our general means of effect, monochrom 
 design, the intermediate condition between colouring 
 and carving. The relations of the entire system of 
 architectural decoration may then be thus expressed : 
 
 Organic form dominant. True, independent sculp- 
 ture, and alto-relievo ; rich capitals, and mould- 
 ings ; to be elaborate in completion of form, not 
 abstract, and either to be left in pure white marble, 
 or most cautiously touched with colour in points 
 and borders only, in a system not concurrent with 
 their forma. 
 
 Organic form sub-dominant. Basso-relievo or in- 
 taglio. To be more abstract in proportion to the 
 reduction of depth ; to be also more rigid and 
 simple in contour ; to be touched with colour more 
 boldly and in an increased degree, exactly in pro- 
 portion to the reduced depth and fulness of form, 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 149 
 
 but still in a system non-concurrent with their 
 forms. 
 
 3. Organic form abstracted to outline. Monochrom 
 
 design, still farther reduced to simplicity of con- 
 tour, and therefore admitting for the first time the 
 colour to be concurrent with its outlines ; that is 
 to say, as its name imports, the entire figure to be 
 detached in one colour from a ground of another. 
 
 4. Organic forms entirely lost. Geometrical patterns 
 
 or variable cloudings in the most vivid colour. 
 
 On the opposite side of this scale, ascending from 
 the colour pattern, I would place the various forms of 
 painting which may be associated with architecture : 
 primarily, and as most fit for such purpose, the mosaic, 
 highly abstract in treatment, and introducing brilliant 
 colour in masses ; the Madonna of Torcello being, as 
 I think, the noblest type of the manner, and the Bap- 
 tistery of Parma the richest : next, the purely decora- 
 tive fresco, like that of the Arena Chapel ; finally, the 
 fresco becoming principal, as in the Vatican and Sistine. 
 But I cannot, with any safety, follow the principles of 
 abstraction in this pictorial ornament ; since the 
 noblest examples of it appear to me to owe their 
 architectural applicability to their archaic manner ; 
 and I think that the abstraction and admirable sim- 
 plicity which render them fit media of the most splen- 
 did colouring, cannot be recovered by a voluntary 
 condescension. The Byzantines themselves would 
 not I think, if they could have drawn the figure 
 better, have used it for a colour decoration ; and that 
 use, as peculiar to a condition of childhood, however 
 noble and full of promise, cannot be included among 
 those modes of adornment which are now legitimate 
 or even possible. There is a difficulty in the manage- 
 ment of the painted window for the same reason, which 
 has not yet been met, and we must conquer that first, 
 before we can venture to consider the wall as a painted 
 
150 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 window on a large ccale. Pictorial subject, without 
 such abstraction, becomes necessarily principal, or 
 at all events, ceases to be the architect's concern ; its 
 plan must be left to the painter after the completion 
 of the building, as in the works of Veronese and Gior- 
 gione on the palaces of Venice. 
 
 XLI. Pure architectural decoration, then, may be 
 considered as limited to the four kinds above specified ; 
 of which each glides almost imperceptibly into the 
 other. Thus, the Elgin frieze is a monochrom in a 
 state of transition to sculpture, retaining, as I think, 
 the half-cast skin too long. Of pure monochrom I 
 have given an example in Plate VI, from the noble 
 front of St Michele of Lucca. It contains forty such 
 arches, all covered with equally elaborate ornaments, 
 entirely drawn by cutting out their ground to about 
 the depth of an inch in the flat white marble, and filling 
 the spaces with pieces of green serpentine ; a most 
 elaborate mode of sculpture, requiring excessive care 
 and precision in the fitting of the edges, and of course 
 double work, the same line needing to be cut both in the 
 marble and serpentine. The excessive simplicity of 
 the forms will be at once perceived ; the eyes of the 
 figures or animals, for instance, being indicated only 
 by a round dot, formed by a little inlet circle of ser- 
 pentine, about half an inch over : but, though simple, 
 they admit often much grace of curvature, as in 
 the neck of the bird seen above the right-hand pillar. 
 The pieces of serpentine have fallen out in many places, 
 giving the black shadows, as seen under the horseman's 
 arm and bird's neck, and in the semi-circular line round 
 the arch, once filled with some pattern. It would have 
 illustrated my point better to have restored the lost 
 portions, but I always draw a thing exactly as it is, 
 hating restoration of any kind ; and I would especi- 
 ally direct the reader's attention to the completion of 
 the forms in the sculptured ornament of the marble 
 cornices, as opposed to the abstraction of the mono- 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 151 
 
 chrom figures, of the ball and cross patterns between 
 the arches, and of the triangular ornament round the 
 arch on the left. 
 
 XLII. I have an intense love for these monochrom 
 figures, owing to their wonderful life and spirit in all 
 the works on which I have found them ; nevertheless, 
 I believe that the excessive degree of abstraction which 
 they imply necessitates our placing them in the rank 
 of a progressive or imperfect art, and that a perfect 
 building should rather be composed of the highest 
 sculpture (organic form dominant and sub-dominant), 
 associated with pattern colours, on the flat or broad 
 surfaces. And we find, in fact, that the cathedral of 
 Pisa, which is a higher type than that of Lucca, exactly 
 follows this condition, the colour being put in geo- 
 metrical patterns on its surfaces, and animal forms and 
 lovely leafage used in the sculptured cornices and pillars. 
 And I think that the grace of the carved forms is best 
 seen when it is thus boldly opposed to severe traceries 
 of colour, while the colour itself is, as we have seen, 
 always most piquant when it is put into sharp and 
 angular arrangements. Thus the sculpture is approved 
 and sent off by the colour, and the colour seen to the 
 best advantage in its opposition both to the whiteness 
 and the grace of the carved marble. 
 
 XLIII. In the course of this and the preceding 
 Chapters, I have now separately enumerated most of 
 the conditions of Power and Beauty, which, in the 
 outset, I stated to be the grounds of the deepest im- 
 pressions with which architecture could affect the 
 human mind ; but I would ask permission to recapitu- 
 late them, in order to see if there be any building 
 which I may offer as an example of the unison, in such 
 manner as is possible, of them all. Glancing back, 
 then, to the beginning of the third Chapter, and intro- 
 ducing in their place the conditions incidentally deter- 
 mined in the two previous sections, we shall have the 
 following list of noble characters : 
 
152 THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 
 
 Considerable size, exhibited by simple terminal lines 
 (Chap. Ill, § 8). Projection towards the top (§ 7). 
 Breadth of flat surface (§ 8). Square compartments 
 of that surface (§ 9). Varied and visible masonry 
 (§ 11). Vigorous depth of shadow (§ 13), exhibited 
 especially by pierced traceries (§ 18 ). Varied pro- 
 portion in ascent (Chap. IV, § 28). Lateral symmetry 
 (§ 28). Sculpture most delicate at the base (Chap 1, 
 § 12). Enriched quantity of ornament at the top (§ 13). 
 Sculpture abstract in inferior ornaments and mouldings 
 (Chap. IV, § 31), complete in animal forms (§ 33). 
 Both to be executed in white marble (§ 40). Vivid 
 colour introduced in flat geometrical patterns (§ 39), 
 and obtained by the use of naturally coloured stone 
 (§ 35). 
 
 These characteristics occur more or less in different 
 buildings, some in one and some in another. But all 
 together, and all in their highest possible relative 
 degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one build- 
 ing in the world, the Campanile of Giotto at Florence. 
 The drawing of the tracery of its upper story, which 
 heads this chapter, rude as it is, will nevertheless 
 give the reader some better conception of that tower's 
 magnificence than the thin outlines in which it is 
 usually pourtrayed. In its first appeal to the stranger's 
 eye there is something unpleasing ; a mingling, as it 
 seems to him, of over severity with over minuteness. 
 But let him give it time, as he should to all other con- 
 summate art. I remember well how, when a boy, I 
 used to despise that Campanile, and think it meanly 
 smooth and finished. But I have since lived beside 
 it many a day, and looked out upon it from my windows 
 by sunlight and moonlight, and I shall not soon forget 
 how profound and gloomy appeared to me the savage- 
 ness of the Northern Gothic, when I afterwards stood, 
 for the first time, beneath the front of Salisbury. The 
 contrast is indeed strange, if it could be quickly felt, 
 between the rising of those grey walls out of their quiet 
 
THE LAMP OF BEAUTY 153 
 
 swarded space like dark and barren rocks out of a 
 green lake, with their rude, mouldering, rough-grained 
 shafts, and triple lights, without tracery or other orna- 
 ment than the martins' nest in the height of them, and 
 that bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, 
 those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so 
 faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly 
 traced in darkness on the pallor of the Eastern sky, 
 that serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like 
 a morning cloud, and chased like a sea shell. And if 
 this be, as I believe it, the model and mirror of perfect 
 architecture, is there not something to be learned by 
 looking back to the early life of him who raised it ? 
 I said that the Power of human mind had its growth 
 in the Wilderness ; much more must the love and the 
 conception of that beauty, whose every line and hue 
 we have seen to be, at the best, a faded image of God's 
 daily work, and an arrested ray of some star of creation, 
 be given chiefly in the places which He has gladdened 
 by planting there the fir tree and the pine. Not 
 within the walls of Florence, but among the far away 
 fields of her lilies, was the child trained who was to 
 raise that headstone of Beauty above her towers of 
 watch and war. Remember all that he became ; count 
 the sacred thoughts with which he filled the heart of 
 Italy ; ask those who followed him what they learned 
 at his feet ; and when you have numbered his labours, 
 and received their testimony, if it seem to you that 
 God had verily poured out upon this His servant no 
 common nor restrained portion of His Spirit, and that 
 he was indeed a king among the children of men, re- 
 member also that the legend upon his crown was that 
 of David's : ' I took thee from the sheep-cote, and from 
 following the sheep.' 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 I. Among the countless analogies by which the nature 
 and relations of the human soul are illustrated in the 
 material creation, none are more striking than the 
 impressions inseparably connected with the active and 
 dormant states of matter. I have elsewhere endeav- 
 oured to show, that no inconsiderable part of the 
 essential characters of Beauty depended on the expres- 
 sion of vital energy in organic things, or on the subjec- 
 tion to such energy, of things naturally passive and 
 powerless. I need not here repeat, of what was then 
 advanced, more than the statement which I believe 
 will meet with general acceptance, that things in other 
 respects alike, as in their substance, or uses, or out- 
 ward forms, are noble or ignoble in proportion 
 to the fulness of the life which either they them- 
 selves enjoy, or of whose action they bear the 
 evidence, as sea sands are made beautiful by their 
 bearing the seal of the motion of the waters. And this 
 is especially true of all objects which bear upon them 
 the impress of the highest order of creative life, that 
 is to say, of the mind of man : they become noble or 
 ignoble in proportion to the amount of the energy of 
 that mind which has visibly been employed upon them. 
 But most peculiarly and imperatively does the rule 
 hold with respect to the creations of Architecture, which 
 being properly capable of no other life than this, and 
 being not essentially composed of things pleasant in 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 155 
 
 themselves — as music of sweet sounds, or painting of 
 fair colours, but of inert substance — depend, for their 
 dignity and pleasurablcness in the utmost degree, upon 
 the vivid expression of the intellectual life which has 
 been concerned in their production. 
 
 11. Now in all other kind of energies except that of 
 man's mind, there is no question as to what is life, and 
 what is not. Vital sensibility, whether vegetable or 
 animal, may, indeed, be reduced to so great feebleness, 
 as to render its existence a matter of question, but 
 when it is evident at all, it is evident as such : there 
 is no mistaking any imitation or pretence of it for the 
 life itself ; no mechanism nor galvanism can take it3 
 place ; nor is any resemblance of it so striking as to 
 involve even hesitation in the judgment ; although 
 many occur which the human imagination takes 
 pleasure in exalting, without for an instant losing sight 
 of the real nature of the dead things it animates ; but 
 rejoicing rather in its own excessive life, which puts 
 gesture into clouds, and joy into waves, and voices into 
 rocks. 
 
 II. But when we begin to be concerned with the 
 energies of man, we find ourselves instantly dealing 
 with a double creature. Most part of his being 
 seems to have a fictitious counterpart, which it is at his 
 peril if he do not cast off and deny. Thus he has a 
 true and false (otherwise called a living and dead, or 
 a feigned or unfeigned) faith. He has a true and a 
 false hope, a true and a false charity, and, finally, a 
 true and a false life. His true life is like that of lower 
 organic beings, the independent force by which he 
 moulds and governs external things ; it is a force of 
 assimilation which converts everything aroimd him 
 into food, or into instruments ; and which, however 
 humbly or obediently it may listen to or follow the 
 guidance of superior intelligence, never forfeits its own 
 authority as a judging principle, as a will capable either 
 of obeying or rebelling. His false life is, indeed, but 
 
156 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 one of the conditions of death or stupor, but it acts, 
 even when it cannot be said to animate, and is not 
 easily known from the true. It is that life of custom 
 and accident in which many of us pass much of our 
 time in the world ; that life in which we do what we 
 have not purposed, and speak what we do not mean, 
 and assent to what we do not understand ; that life 
 which is overlaid by the weight of things external to 
 it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating 
 them ; that, which instead of growing and blossoming 
 under any wholesome dew, is crystallized over with it, 
 as with hoar-frost, and becomes to the true life what 
 an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration 
 of thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, 
 and icy, which can neither bend nor grow, but must 
 be crushed and broken to bits, if it stand in our way. 
 All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten in 
 this sort ; all are partly encumbered and crusted over 
 with idle matter ; only, if they have real life in them, 
 they are always breaking this bark away in noble 
 rents, until it becomes, like the black strips upon the 
 birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength. 
 But, with all the efforts that the best men make, much 
 of their being passes in a kind of dream, in which 
 they indeed move, and play their parts sufficiently 
 to the eyes of their fellow dreamers, but have no clear 
 consciousness of what is around them, or within them ; 
 blind to the one, insensible to the other, rwBpot. I 
 would not press the definition into its darker applica- 
 tion to the dull heart and heavy ear ; I have to do with 
 it only as it refers to the too frequent condition of 
 natural existence, whether of nations or individuals, 
 settling commonly upon them in proportion to their 
 age. The life of a nation is usually, like the flow of 
 a lava stream, first bright and fierce, then languid and 
 covered, at last advancing only by the tumbling over 
 and over of its frozen blocks. And that last condition 
 is a sad one to look upon. All the steps are marked 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 157 
 
 most clearly in the arts, and in Architecture more than 
 in any other ; for it, being especially dependent, as 
 we have just said, on the warmth of the true life, is 
 also peculiarly sensible of the hemlock cold of the 
 false : and I do not know anything more oppressive, 
 when the mind is once awakened to its characteristics, 
 than the aspect of a dead architecture. The feebleness 
 of childhood is full of promise and of interest — the 
 struggle of imperfect knowledge full of energy and 
 continuity — but to see impotence and rigidity settling 
 upon the form of the developed man ; to see the types 
 which once had the die of thought struck fresh upon 
 them, worn flat by over use ; to see the shell of the 
 living creature in its adult form, when its colours are 
 faded, and its inhabitant perished — this is a sight more 
 humiliating, more melancholy, than the vanishing of 
 all knowledge, and the return to confessed and helpless 
 infancy. 
 
 Nay, it is to be wished that such return were always 
 possible. There would be hope if we could change 
 palsy into puerility ; but I know not how far we can 
 become children again, and renew our lost life. The 
 stirring which has taken place in our architectural aims 
 and interests within these few years, is thought by 
 many to be full of promise : I trust it is, but it has a 
 sickly look to me. I cannot tell whether it be indeed 
 a springing of seed or a shaking among bones ; and I 
 do not think the time will be lost which I ask the reader 
 to spend in the inquiry, how far all that we have hitherto 
 ascertained or conjectured to be best in principle, may 
 be formally practised without the spirit or the vitality 
 which alone could give it influence, value, or delightful- 
 ness. 
 
 IV. Now, in the first place — and this is rather an 
 important point — it is no sign of deadness in a present 
 art that it borrows or imitates, but only if it borrows 
 without paying interest, or if it imitates without choice. 
 The art of a great nation, which is developed without 
 
158 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 any acquaintance with nobler examples than its own 
 early efforts furnish, exhibits always the most consistent 
 and comprehensible growth, and perhaps is regarded 
 usually as peculiarly venerable in its self-origination. 
 But there is something to my mind more majestic yet 
 in the life of an architecture like that of the Lombards, 
 rude and infantine in itself, and surrounded by frag- 
 ments of a nobler art of which it is quick in admiration 
 and ready in imitation, and yet so strong in its own 
 new instincts that it re-constructs and re-arranges every 
 fragment that it copies or borrows into harmony with 
 its own thoughts — a harmony at first disjointed and 
 awkward, but completed in the end, and fused into 
 perfect organization ; all the borrowed elements being 
 subordinated to its own primal, unchanged, life. I 
 do not know any sensation more exquisite than the 
 discovering of the evidence of this magnificent struggle 
 into independent existence ; the detection of the bor- 
 rowed thoughts, nay, the finding of the actual blocks 
 and stones carved by other hands and in other ages, 
 wrought into the new walls, with a new expression and 
 purpose given to them, like the blocks of unsubdued 
 rocks (to go back to our former simile) which we find 
 in the heart of the lava current, great witnesses to the 
 power which has fused all but those calcined fragments 
 into the mass of its homogeneous fire. 
 
 V. • It will be asked, How is imitation to be rendered 
 healthy and vital ? Unhappily, while it is easy to 
 enumerate the signs of life, it is impossible to define 
 or to communicate life ; and while every intelligent 
 writer on Art has insisted on the difference between 
 the copying found in an advancing or recedent period, 
 none have been able to communicate, in the slightest 
 degree, the force of vitality to the copyist over whom 
 they might have influence. Yet it is at least interest- 
 ing, if not profitable, to note that two very distinguish- 
 ing characters of vital imitation are, its Frankness and 
 its Audacity : its Frankness is especially singular ; 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 159 
 
 there is never any effort to conceal the degree of 
 the sources of its borrowing. Raffaelle carries off a 
 whole figure from Masaccio, or borrows an entire com- 
 position from Perugino, with as much tranquillity 
 and simplicity of innocence as a young Spartan pick- 
 pocket ; and the architect of a Romanesque basilica 
 gathered his columns and capitals where he could find 
 them, as an ant picks up sticks. There is at least a 
 presumption, when we find this frank acceptance, that 
 there is a sense within the mind of power capable of 
 transforming and renewing whatever it adopts ; and 
 too conscious, too exalted, to fear the accusation of 
 plagiarism, — too certain that it can prove, and has 
 proved, its independence, to be afraid of expressing 
 its homage to what it admires in the most open and 
 indubitable way ; and the necessary consequence of 
 this sense of power is the other sign I have named — 
 the Audacity of treatment when it finds treatment 
 necessary, the unhesitating and sweeping sacrifice of 
 precedent where precedent becomes inconvenient. For 
 instance, in the characteristic forms of Italian Roman- 
 esque, in which the hypaethral portion of the heathen 
 temple was replaced by the towering nave, and where, 
 in consequence, the pediment of the west front became 
 divided into three portions, of which the central one, 
 like the apex of a ridge of sloping strata lifted by a 
 sudden fault, was broken away from and raised above 
 the wings ; there remained at the extremities of the 
 aisles two triangular fragments of pediment, which 
 could not now be filled by any of the modes of decor- 
 ation adapted for the unbroken space ; and the diffi- 
 culty became greater when the central portion of the 
 front was occupied by columnar ranges, which could 
 not, without painful abruptness, terminate short of 
 the extremities of the wings. I know not what expedi- 
 ent would have been adopted by architects who 
 had much respect for precedent, under such circum- 
 stances, but it certainly would not have been that of 
 
1G0 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 the Pisan, — to continue the range of columns into the 
 pedirnental space, shortening them to its extremity 
 until the shaft of the last column vanished altogether, 
 and there remained only its capital resting in the angle 
 on its basic plinth. I raise no question at present 
 whether this arrangement be graceful or otherwise ; 
 I allege it only as an instance of a boldness almost 
 without a parallel, casting aside every received prin- 
 ciple that stood in its way, and struggling through 
 every discordance and difficulty to the fulfilment of its 
 own instincts. 
 
 VJ. Frankness, however, is in itself no excuse for 
 repetition, nor Audacity for innovation, when the one 
 is indolent and the other unwise. Nobler and surer 
 signs of vitality must be sought, — signs independent 
 alike of the decorative or original character of the style, 
 and constant in every style that is determinedly pro- 
 gressive. 
 
 Of these, one of the most important I believe to be 
 a certain neglect or contempt of refinement in execution 
 or, at all events, a visible subordination of execution 
 to conception, commonly involuntary, but not un- 
 frequently intentional. This is a point, however, on 
 which, while I speak confidently, I must at the same 
 time speak reservedly and carefully, as there would 
 otherwise be much chance of my being dangerously 
 misunderstood. It has been truly observed, and 
 well stated, by Lord Lindsay, that the best designers 
 of Italy were also the most careful in their workman- 
 ship ; and that the stability and finish of their masonry, 
 mosaic, or other work whatsoever, were always perfect 
 in proportion to the apparent improbability of the 
 great designers condescending to the care of details 
 among us so despised. Not only do I fully admit 
 and re-assert this most important fact, but I would 
 insist upon perfect and most delicate finish in its right 
 place, as a characteristic of all the highest schools of 
 architecture, as much as it is of those of painting. But 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 161 
 
 on the other hand, as perfect finish belongs to the 
 perfected art, a progressive finish belongs to progres- 
 sive art ; and I do not think that any more fatal sign 
 of a stupor or numbness settling upon that undeveloped 
 art could possibly be detected, than that it had been 
 taken aback by its own execution, and that the work- 
 manship had gone ahead of the design ; while, even 
 in my admission of absolute finish in the right place, as 
 an attribute of the perfected school, I must reserve 
 to myself the right of answering in my own way the 
 two very important questions — what is finish ? and 
 what is its right place ? 
 
 VII. But in illustrating either of these points, we 
 must remember that the correspondence of workman- 
 ship with thought is, in existent examples, interfered 
 with by the adoption of the designs of an advanced 
 period by the workmen of a rude one. All the begin- 
 nings of Christian architecture are of this kind, and 
 the necessary consequence is of course an increase of 
 the visible interval between the power of realization and 
 the beauty of the idea. We have at first an imitation, 
 almost savage in its rudeness, of a classical design ; 
 as the art advances, the design is modified by a 
 mixture of Gothic grotesqueness, and the execution 
 more complete, until a harmony is established 
 between the two, in which balance they advance to 
 new perfection. Now during the whole period in 
 which the ground is being recovered, there will be 
 found in the living architecture marks, not to be mis- 
 taken, of intense impatience ; a struggle towards some- 
 thing unattained, which causes all minor points of 
 handling to be neglected ; and a restless disdain of all 
 qualities which appear either to confess contentment, 
 or to require a time and care which might be better 
 spent. And, exactly as a good and earnest student 
 of drawing will not lose time in ruling lines or finishing 
 backgrounds about studies which, while they have 
 answered his immediate purpose, he knows to be 
 
162 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 imperfect and inferior to what he -will do hereafter — 
 so the vigour of a true school of early architecture, 
 which is either working under the influence of high 
 example or which is itself in a state of rapid develop- 
 ment, is very curiously traceable, among other signs, 
 in the contempt of exact symmetry and measurement, 
 which in dead architecture are the most painful neces- 
 sities. 
 
 VII. In Plate XII, fig. 1, I have given a most singular 
 instance both of rude execution and defied symmetry, 
 in the little pillar and spandril from a panel decoration 
 under the pulpit of St Mark's a.t Venice. The imper- 
 fection (not merely simplicity, but actual rudeness and 
 ugliness) of the leaf ornament will strike the eye at 
 once : this is general in works of the time, but it is not 
 so common to find a capital which has been so carelessly 
 cut ; its imperfect volutes being pushed up one side 
 far higher than on the other, and contracted on that 
 side, an additional drill hole being put in to fill the 
 space ; besides this, the member a, of the mouldings, 
 is a roll where it follows the arch, and a flat fillet at 
 a ; the one being slurred into the other at the angle b, 
 and finally stopped short altogether at the other side 
 by the most uncourteous and remorseless interference 
 of the outer moulding : and in spite of all this, the 
 grace, proportion, and feeling of the whole arrangement 
 are so great, that, in its place it leaves nothing to be 
 desired ; all the science and symmetry in the world 
 could not beat it. In fig. 4 I have endeavoured to 
 give some idea of the execution of the subordinate 
 portions of a much higher work, the pulpit of St Andrea 
 at Pistoja, by Nicolo Pisano. It is covered with 
 figure sculptures, executed with great care and delicacy ; 
 but when the sculptor came to the simple arch mould- 
 ings, he did not choose to draw the eye to them by over 
 precision of work or over sharpness of shadow. The 
 section adopted, k, m, is peculiarly simple, and so slight 
 and obtuse in its recessions as never to produce a sharp 
 

 
 Plate XII 
 
 |/(dt' /. 1 6.: 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 1G3 
 
 line ; and it is worked with what at first appears sloven- 
 liness, but is in fact sculptural sketching ; exactly 
 correspondent to a painter's light execution of a back- 
 ground : the lines appear and disappear again, are 
 sometimes deep, sometimes shallow, sometimes quite 
 broken off ; and the recession of the cusp joins that 
 of the external arch at n, in the most fearless defiance 
 of all mathematical laws of curvilinear contact. 
 
 IX. There is something very delightful in this bold 
 expression of the mind of the great master. I do not 
 say that it is the ' perfect work ' of patience, but I think 
 that impatience is a glorious character in an advancing 
 school : and I love the Romanesque and early Gothic 
 especially, because they afford so much room for it ; 
 accidental carelessness of measurement or of execution 
 being mingled undistinguishably with the purposed 
 departures from symmetrical regularity, and the 
 luxuriousness of perpetually variable fancy, which 
 are eminently characteristic of both styles. How 
 great, how frequent they are, and how brightly the 
 severity of architectural law is relieved by their grace 
 and suddenness, has not, I think, been enough observed ; 
 still less, the unequal measurements of even important 
 features professing to be absolutely symmetrical. I 
 am not so familiar with modern practice as to speak 
 with confidence respecting its ordinary precision ; 
 but I imagine that the following measures of the 
 western front of the cathedral of Pisa, would be looked 
 upon by present architects as very blundering approxi- 
 mations. That front is divided into seven arched 
 compartments, of which the second, fourth or central, 
 and sixth contain doors ; the seven are in a most 
 subtle alternating proportion ; the central being the 
 largest, next to it the second and sixth, then the first 
 and seventh, lastly the third and fifth. By this arrange- 
 ment, of course, these three pairs should be equal ; 
 and they are so to the eye, but I found their actual 
 measures to be the following, taken from pillar to 
 
164 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 pillar, in Italian braccia, palmi (four inches each), and 
 inches : — 
 
 Total in 
 Braccia Palmi Inches Inches 
 
 1. Central door . .8 = 192 
 
 2. Northern door 1-6 3 1} = 157J 
 
 3. Southern door / . 6 4 3 =163 
 
 4. Extreme northern \ 
 
 space . .1.5 5 3} = 143} 
 6. Extreme southern f 
 
 space . . ) ' . 6 1 0} = 148} 
 
 6. Northern intervals \ 
 
 between the doors .5 2 1 = 129 
 
 7. Southern intervals I 
 
 between the doors 5 2 1} ~ 129} 
 
 There is thus a difference, severally, between 2, 3 and 
 4, 5, of five inches and a half in the one case, and five 
 inches in the other. 
 
 X. This, however, may perhaps be partly attributable 
 to some accommodation of the accidental distortions 
 which evidently took place in the walls of the cathedral 
 during their building, as much as in those of the cam- 
 panile. To my mind, those of the Duomo are far the 
 more wonderful of the two : I do not believe that a 
 single pillar of its walls is absolutely vertical : the 
 pavement rises and falls to different heights, or rather 
 the plinth of the walls sinks into it continually to 
 different depths, the whole west front literally overhangs 
 (I have not plumbed it ; but the inclination may be 
 seen by the eye, by bringing it into visual contact with 
 the upright pilasters of the Campo Santo) : and a most 
 extraordinary distortion in the masonry of the southern 
 wall shows that this inclination had begun when the 
 first story Avas built. The cornice above the first 
 arcade of that wall touches the tops of eleven out of its 
 fifteen arches ; but it suddenly leaves the tops of the 
 four western- most ; the arches nodding westward and 
 sinking into the ground, while the cornice rises 
 (or seems to rise), leaving at any rate, whether by 
 the rise of the one or the fall of the other, an in- 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 165 
 
 terval of more than two feet between it and the 
 top of the western arch, filled by added courses 
 of masonry. There is another very curious evidence 
 of this struggle of the architect with his yielding 
 wall in the columns of the main entrance. (These 
 notices are perhaps somewhat irrelevant to our 
 immediate subject, but they appear to me highly inter- 
 esting ; and they, at all events, prove one of the points 
 on which I would insist — how much of imperfection 
 and variety in things professing to be symmetrical the 
 eyes of those eager builders could endure : they looked 
 to loveliness in detail, to nobility in the whole, never 
 to petty measurements). Those columns of the 
 principal entrance are among the loveliest in Italy ; 
 cylindrical, and decorated with a rich arabesque of 
 sculptured foliage, which at the base extends nearly all 
 round them, up to the black pilaster in which they 
 are lightly engaged : but the shield of foliage, bounded 
 by a severe line, narrows to their tops, where it covers 
 their frontal segment only ; thus giving, when laterally 
 seen, a terminal line sloping boldly outwards, which, 
 as I think, was meant to conceal the accidental leaning 
 of the western walls, and, by its exaggerated inclination 
 in the same direction, to throw them by comparison 
 into a seeming vertical. 
 
 XL There is another very curious instance of dis- 
 tortion above the central door of the west front. All 
 the intervals between the seven arches are filled with 
 black marble, each containing in its centre a white 
 parallelogram filled with animal mosaics, and the 
 whole surmounted by a broad white band, which, 
 generally, does not touch the parallelogram below. 
 But the parallelogram on the north of the central arch 
 has been forced into an oblique position, and touches 
 the white band ; and, as if the architect was deter- 
 mined to show that he did not care whether it did or 
 not, the white band suddenly gets thicker at that 
 place, and remains so over the next two arches. And 
 
166 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 these differences are the more curious because the 
 workmanship of them all is most finished and masterly, 
 and the distorted stones are fitted with as much neat- 
 ness as if they tallied to a hair's breadth. There is no 
 look of slurring or blundering about it ; it is all coolly 
 filled in, as if the builder had no sense of anything being 
 wrong or extraordinary ; I only wish we had a little 
 of his impudence. 
 
 XII. Still, the reader will say that all these varia- 
 tions are probably dependent more on the bad found- 
 ation than on the architect's feeling. Not so the 
 exquisite delicacies of change in the proportions and 
 dimensions of the apparently symmetrical arcades of 
 the west front. It will be remembered that I said the 
 tower of Pisa was the only ugly tower in Italy, because 
 its tiers were equal, or nearly so, in height ; a fault 
 this, so contrary to the spirit of the builders of the 
 time, that it can be considered only as an unlucky 
 caprice. Perhaps the general aspect of the west front 
 of the cathedral may then have occurred to the reader's 
 mind, as seemingly another contradiction of the rule I 
 had advanced. It would not have been so, however, 
 even had its four upper arcades been actually equal ; as 
 they are subordinated to the great seven-arched lower 
 story, in the manner before noticed respecting the 
 spire of Salisbury, and as is actually the case in the 
 Duomo of Lucca and Tower of Pistoja. But the Pisan 
 front is far more subtly proportioned. Not one of 
 its four arcades is of like height with another. The 
 highest is the third, counting upwards ; and they 
 diminish in nearly arithmetical proportion alternately ; 
 in the order 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 4th. The inequalities in 
 their arches are not less remarkable : they at first strike 
 the eye as all equal ; but there is a grace about them 
 which equality never obtained : on closer observation, 
 it is perceived that in the first row of nineteen arches, 
 eighteen are equal, and the central one larger than the 
 rest ; in the second arcade, the nine central arches 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 167 
 
 stand over the nine below, having, like them, the 
 ninth central one largest. But on their Hanks, where 
 is the slope of the shoulder-like pediment, the arches 
 vanish, and a wedge-shaped frieze takes their place, 
 tapering outwards, in order to allow the columns to 
 be carried to the extremity of the pediment ; and here, 
 where the heights of the shafts are so fast shortened, 
 they are set thicker ; five shafts, or rather four and a 
 capital, above, to four of the arcade below, giving 
 twenty-one intervals instead of nineteen. In the next 
 or third arcade — which, remember, is the highest — 
 eight arches, all equal, are given in the space of the 
 nine below, so that there is now a central shaft instead 
 of a central arch, and the span of the arches is increased 
 in proportion to their increased height. Finally, in 
 the uppermost arcade, which is the lowest of all, the 
 arches, the same in number as those below, are narrower 
 than any of the facade ; the whole eight going 
 very nearly above the six below them, while the ter- 
 minal arches of the lower arcade are surmounted by 
 flanking masses of decorated wall with projecting 
 figures. 
 
 XIII. Now I call that Living Architecture. There 
 is sensation in every inch of it, and an accommodation 
 to every architectural necessity, with a determined 
 variation in arrangement, which is exactly like the 
 related proportions and provisions in the structure 
 of organic form. I have not space to examine the still 
 lovelier proportioning of the external shafts of the 
 apse of this marvellous building. I prefer, lest the 
 reader should think it a peculiar example, to state 
 the structure of another church, the most graceful 
 and grand piece of Romanesque work, as a fragment, 
 in north Italy, that of San Giovanni Evangelista, at 
 Pistoja. 
 
 The side of that church has three stories of arcade, 
 diminishing in height in bold geometrical proportion, 
 while the arches, for the most part, increase in number 
 
168 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 in arithmetical, i. e. two in the second arcade, and 
 three in the third, to one in the first. Lest, however, 
 this arrangement should be too formal, of the fourteen 
 arches in the lowest series, that which contains the 
 door is made larger than the rest, and is not in the 
 middle, but the sixth from the west, leaving five on 
 one side and eight on the other. Farther : this lowest 
 arcade is terminated by broad flat pilasters, about 
 half the width of its arches ; but the arcade above is 
 continuous ; only the two extreme arches at the west 
 end are made larger than all the rest, and instead of 
 coming, as they should, into the space of the lower 
 extreme arch, take in both it and its broad pilaster. 
 Even this, however, was not out of order enough to 
 satisfy the architect's eye ; for there were still two 
 arches above to each single one below : so, at the east 
 end, where there were more arches, and the eye might 
 be more easily cheated, what does he do but narrow 
 the two extreme lower arches by half a braccio ; while 
 he at the same time slightly enlarged the upper ones, 
 so as to get only seventeen upper to nine lower, instead 
 of eighteen to nine. The eye is thus thoroughly con- 
 fused, and the whole building thrown into one mass, by 
 the curious variations in the adjustments of the super- 
 imposed shafts, not one of which is either exactly in, 
 or positively out of, its place ; and, to get this managed 
 the more cunningly, there is from an inch to an inch and 
 a half of gradual gain in the space of the four eastern 
 arches, besides the confessed half braccio. Their 
 measures, counting from the east, I found as follows : 
 
 1st 
 2nd 
 3rd 
 4th .. . 
 
 The upper arcade is managed on the same principle : 
 it looks at first as if there were three arches to each 
 
 Braccia 
 
 Palmi 
 
 Inches 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 3 
 
 3* 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 109 
 
 under pair ; but there are, in reality, only thirty-eight (or 
 thirty -seven, I am not quite certain of this number) to 
 the twenty-seven below ; and the columns get into all 
 manner of relative positions. Even then, the builder 
 was not satisfied, but must needs carry the irregularity 
 into the spring of the arches, and actually, while the 
 general effect is of a symmetrical arcade, there is not 
 one of the arches the same in height as another ; 
 their tops undulate all along the wall like waves along 
 a harbour quay, some nearly touching the string course 
 above, and others falling from it as much as five or 
 six inches. 
 
 XIV. Let us next examine the plan of the west 
 front of St Mark's at Venice, which, though in many 
 respects imperfect, is in its proportions, and as a piece 
 of rich and fantastic colour, as lovely a dream as ever 
 filled human imagination. It may, perhaps, however, 
 interest the reader to hear one opposite opinion upon 
 this subject ; and after what has been urged in the 
 preceding pages respecting proportion in general, more 
 especially respecting the wrongness of balanced cathe- 
 dral towers and other regular designs, together with 
 my frequent references to the Doge's palace, and 
 campanile of St Mark's, as models of perfection, and 
 my praise of the former especially as projecting above 
 its second arcade, the following extracts from the 
 journal of Wood the architect, written on his arrival 
 at Venice, may have a pleasing freshness in them, and 
 may show that I have not been stating principles 
 altogether trite or accepted. 
 
 ' The strange looking church, and the great ugly 
 campanile, could not be mistaken. The exterior of this 
 church surprises you by its extreme ugliness, more 
 than by any thing else.' 
 
 ' The Ducal Palace is even more ugly than any thing 
 I have previously mentioned. Considered in detail, 
 I can imagine no alteration to make it tolerable ; but 
 if this lofty wall had been set back behind the two 
 
170 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 stories of little arches, it would have been a very noble 
 production.' 
 
 After more observations on ' a certain justness of 
 proportion ', and on the appearance of riches and 
 power in the church, to which he ascribes a pleasing 
 effect, he goes on : ' Some persons are of opinion that 
 irregularity is a necessary part of its excellence. I am 
 decidedly of a contrary opinion, and am convinced 
 that a regular design of the same sort would be far 
 superior. Let an oblong of good architecture, but not 
 very showy, conduct to a fine cathedral, which should 
 appear between tivo lofty towers and have two obelisks 
 in front, and on each side of this cathedral let other 
 squares partially open into the first, and one of these 
 extend down to a harbour or sea shore, and you would 
 have a scene which might challenge any thing in 
 existence.' 
 
 Why Mr Wood was unable to enjoy the colour of 
 St Mark's, or perceive the majesty of the Ducal palace, 
 the reader will see after reading the two following 
 extracts regarding the Caracci and Michael Angelo. 
 
 ' The pictures here (Bologna) are to my taste far 
 preferable to those of Venice, for if the Venetian school 
 surpass in colouring and, perhaps, in composition, the 
 Bolognese is decidedly superior in drawing and expres- 
 sion, and the Caraccis shine here like Gods.'' 
 
 ' What is it that is so much admired in this artist 
 (M. Angelo) ? Some contend for a grandeur of com- 
 position in the lines and disposition of the figures ; 
 this, I confess, I do not comprehend ; yet, while I 
 acknowledge the beauty of certain forms and propor- 
 tions in architecture, I cannot consistently deny that 
 similar merits may exist in painting, though I am 
 unfortunately unable to appreciate them.' 
 
 I think these passages very valuable, as showing the 
 effect of a contracted knowledge and false taste in 
 painting upon an architect's understanding of his own 
 art ; and especially with what curious notions, or lack 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 171 
 
 of notions, about proportion, that art has been some- 
 times practised. For Mr Wood is by no means unin- 
 telligent in his observations generally, and his criticisms 
 on classical art are often most valuable. But those 
 who love Titian better than the Caracci, and who see 
 something to admire in Michael Angelo, will, perhaps, 
 be willing to proceed with me to a charitable examin- 
 ation of St Mark's. For, although the present course 
 of European events affords us some chance of seeing 
 the changes proposed by Mr Wood carried into execu- 
 tion, we may still esteem ourselves fortunate in having 
 first known how it was left by the builders of the 
 eleventh century. 
 
 XV. The entire front is composed of an upper and 
 lower series of arches, enclosing spaces of wall decor- 
 ated with mosaic, and supported on ranges of shafts of 
 which, in the lower series of arches, there is an upper 
 range superimposed on a lower. Thus we have five 
 vertical divisions of the facade ; *. e. two tiers of shafts, 
 and the arched wall they bear, below ; one tier of shafts 
 and the arched wall they bear, above. In order, how- 
 ever, to bind the two main divisions together, the 
 central lower arch (the main entrance) rises above 
 the level of the gallery and balustrade which crown the 
 lateral arches. 
 
 The proportioning of the columns and walls of the 
 lower story is so lovely and so varied, that it would 
 need pages of description before it could be fully under- 
 stood ; but it may be generally stated thus : The 
 height of the lower shafts, upper shafts, and wall, being 
 severally expressed by a, b, and c, then a: c : : c : b 
 (a being the highest) ; and diameter of shaft b is 
 generally to the diameter of shaft a as height b is to 
 height o, or something less, allowing for the large 
 plinth which diminishes the apparent height of the 
 upper shaft : and when this is their proportion of 
 width, one shaft above is put above one below with 
 sometimes another upper shaft interposed : but in 
 
172 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 the extreme arches a single under shaft bears two upper, 
 proportioned as truly as the boughs of a tree ; that is 
 to say, the diameter of each upper = | of lower. There 
 being thus the three terms of proportion gained in the 
 lower story, the upper, while it is only divided into 
 two main members, in order that the whole height 
 may not be divided into an even number, has the third 
 term added in its pinnacles. So far of the vertical 
 division. The lateral is still more subtle. There are 
 seven arches in the lower story ; and, calling the cen- 
 tral arch a, and counting to the extremity, they dimin- 
 ish in the alternate order, a, c, b, d. The upper story 
 has five arches, and two added pinnacles ; and these 
 diminish in regular order, the central being the largest, 
 and the outermost the least. Hence, while one pro- 
 portion ascends, another descends, like parts in music ; 
 and yet the pyramidal form is secured for the whole, 
 and, which was another great point of attention, none 
 of the shafts of the upper arches stand over these of 
 the lower. 
 
 XVI. It might have been thought that, by this 
 plan, enough variety had been secured, but the builder 
 was not satisfied even thus : for — and this is the point 
 bearing on the present part of our subject — always 
 calling the central arch a, and the lateral ones b and c 
 in succession, the northern b and c are considerably 
 wider than southern b and c, but the southern d is as 
 much wider than the northern d, and lower beneath its 
 cornice besides ; and, more than this, I hardly believe 
 that one of the effectively symmetrical members of 
 the facade is actually symmetrical with any other. I 
 regret that I cannot state the actual measures. I gave 
 up the taking them upon the spot, owing to their 
 excessive complexitj', and the embarrassment caused 
 by the yielding and subsidence of the arches. 
 
 Do not let it be supposed that I imagine the Byzantine 
 workmen to have had these various principles in their 
 minds as they built. I believe they built altogether 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 173 
 
 from feeling, and that it was because they did so, that 
 there is this marvellous life, changefulness, and subtlety- 
 running through their every arrangement ; and that 
 we reason upon the lovely building as we should upon 
 some fair growth of the trees of the earth, that know 
 not their own beauty. 
 
 XVII. Perhaps, however, a stranger instance than 
 any I have yet given, of the daring variation of pre- 
 tended symmetry, is found in the front of the Cathedral 
 of Bayeux. It consists of five arches with steep pedi- 
 ments, the outermost filled, the three central with 
 doors ; and they appear, at first, to diminish in regular 
 proportion from the principal one in the centre. The 
 two lateral doors are very curiously managed. The 
 tympana of their arches are filled with bas-reliefs in 
 four tiers ; in the lowest tier there is in each a little 
 temple or gate containing the principal figure (in that 
 on the right, it is the gate of Hades with Lucifer). 
 This little temple is carried, like a capital, by an isolated 
 shaft which divides the whole arch at about § of its 
 breadth, the larger portion outmost ; and in that 
 larger portion is the inner entrance door. This exact 
 correspondence, in the treatment of both gates, might 
 lead us to expect a correspondence in dimension. Not 
 at all. The small inner northern entrance measures, 
 in English feet and inches, 4 ft. 7 in. from jamb to 
 jamb, and the southern, 5 ft. exactly. Five inches in 
 five feet is a considerable variation. The outer 
 northern porch measures, from face shaft to face shaft, 
 13 ft. 11 in., and the southern, 14 ft. 6 in. ; giving a 
 difference of 7 in. on 14J ft. There are also variations 
 in the pediment decorations not less extraordinary. 
 
 XVIII. I imagine I have given instances enough, 
 though I could multiply them indefinitely, to prove that 
 these variations are not mere blunders, nor carelessnesses, 
 but the result of a fixed scorn, if not dislike, of accuracy 
 in measurements ; and, in most cases, I believe, of a 
 determined resolution to work out an effective sym- 
 
174 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 metry by variations as subtle as those of Nature. To 
 what lengths this principle was sometimes carried, we 
 shall see by the very singular management of the 
 towers of Abbeville. I do not say it is right, still less 
 that it is wrong, but it is a wonderful proof of the fear- 
 lessness of a living architecture ; for, say what we will 
 of it, that Flamboyant of France, however morbid, was 
 as vivid and intense in its animation as ever any phase 
 of mortal mind ; and it would have lived till now, if 
 it had not taken to telling lies. I have before noticed 
 the general difficulty of managing even lateral division, 
 when it is into two equal parts, unless there be some 
 third reconciling member. I shall give, hereafter, 
 more examples of the modes in which this recon- 
 ciliation is effected in towers with double lights : the 
 Abbeville architect put his sword to the knot, perhaps 
 rather too sharply. Vexed by the want of unity be- 
 tween his two windows, he literally laid their heads 
 together, and so distorted their ogee curves, as to leave 
 only one of the tre -foiled panels above, on the 
 inner side, and three on the outer side of each 
 arch. The arrangement is given in Plate XII, fig. 
 3. Associated with the various undulation of flam- 
 boyant curves below, it is in the real tower hardly 
 observed, while it binds it into one mass in general 
 effect. Granting it, however, to be ugly and wrong, 
 I like sins of the kind, for the sake of the courage 
 it requires to commit them. In Plate II (part of 
 a small chapel attached to the west front of the 
 Cathedral of St Lo), the reader will see an instance, 
 from the same architecture, of a violation of its own 
 principles for the sake of a peculiar meaning. If there 
 be any one feature which the flamboyant architect 
 loved to decorate richly, it was the niche — it was what 
 the capital is to the Corinthian order ; yet in the case 
 before us there is an ugly beehive put in the place of 
 the principal niche of the arch. I am not sure if I am 
 right in my interpretation of its meaning, but I have 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 175 
 
 littb doubt that two figures below, now broken away, 
 once represented an Annunciation ; and on another 
 part of the same cathedral, I find the descent of the 
 Spirit, encompassed by rays of light, represented very 
 nearly in the form of the niche in question ; which 
 appears, therefore, to be intended for a representation 
 of this effulgence, while at the same time it was made 
 a canopy for the delicate figures below. Whether this 
 was its meaning or not, it is remarkable as a daring 
 departure from the common habits of the time. 
 
 XIX. Far more splendid is a license taken with the 
 niche decoration of the portal of St Maclou at Rouen. 
 The subject of the tympanum bas-relief is the Last 
 Judgment, and the sculpture of inferno side is carried 
 out with a degree of power whose fearful grotesque- 
 ness I can only describe as a mingling of the minds of 
 Orcagna and Hogarth. The demons are perhaps even 
 more awful than Orcagna's ; and, in some of the ex- 
 pressions of debased humanity in its utmost despair, 
 the English painter is at least equalled. Not less wild 
 is the imagination which gives fury and fear even to 
 the placing of the figures. An evil angel, poised on 
 the wing, drives the condemned troops from before the 
 Judgment seat ; with his left hand he drags behind 
 him a cloud, which he is spreading like a winding-sheet 
 over them all ; but they are urged by him so furiously, 
 that they are driven not merely to the extreme limit 
 of that scene, which the sculptor confined elsewhere 
 within the tympanum, but out of the tympanum and 
 into the niches of the arch ; while the flames that follow 
 them, bent by the blast, as it seems, of the angel's 
 wings, rush into the niches also, and burst up through 
 their tracery, the three lowermost niches being re- 
 presented as all on fire, while, instead of their usual 
 vaulted and ribbed ceiling, there is a demon in the roof 
 of each, with his wings folded over it, grinning down 
 out of the black shadow. 
 
 XX. I have, however, given enough instances of 
 
176 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 vitality shown in mere daring, whether wise, as surely 
 in this last instance, or inexpedient ; but, as a single 
 example of the Vitality of Assimilation, the faculty 
 which turns to its purposes all material that is sub- 
 mitted to it, I would refer the reader to the extra- 
 ordinary columns of the arcade on the south side of the 
 Cathedral of Ferrara. A single arch of it is given in 
 Plate XIII on the right. Four such arches forming a 
 group, there are interposed two pairs of columns, as 
 seen on the left of the same plate ; and then come 
 another four arches. It is a long arcade of, I suppose, 
 not less than forty arches, perhaps of many more ; and in 
 the grace and simplicity of its stilted Byzantine curves 
 I hardly know its equal. Its like, in fancy of column, 
 I certainly do not know ; there being hardly two corre- 
 spondent, and the architect having been ready, as it 
 seems, to adopt ideas and resemblances from any sources 
 whatsoever. The vegetation growing up the two 
 columns is fine, though bizarre ; the distorted pillars 
 beside it suggest images of less agreeable character ; 
 the serpentine arrangements founded on the usual 
 Byzantine double knot are generally graceful ; but I 
 was puzzled to account for the excessively ugly type 
 of the pillar, fig. 3, one of a group of four. It so hap- 
 pened, fortunately for me, that there had been a fair 
 in Ferrara ; and, when I had finished my sketch of 
 the pillar, I had to get out of the way of some mer- 
 chants of miscellaneous wares, who were removing 
 their stall. It had been shaded by an awning sup- 
 ported by poles, which, in order that the covering might 
 be raised or lowered according to the height of the sun, 
 were composed of two separate pieces, fitted to each 
 other by a rack, in which I beheld the prototype of my 
 ugly pillar. It will not be thought, after what I have 
 above said of the inexpedience of imitating anything 
 but natural form, that I advance this architect's prac- 
 tice as altogether exemplary ; yet the humility is 
 instructive, which condescended to such sources for 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 177 
 
 motives of thought, the boldness, which could depart 
 so far from all established types of form, and the life 
 and feeling, which out of an assemblage of such quaint 
 and uncouth materials, could produce an harmonious 
 piece of ecclesiastical architecture. 
 
 XXI. I have dwelt, however, perhaps, too long 
 upon that form of vitality which is known almost as 
 much by its errors as by its atonements for them. We 
 must briefly note the operation of it, which is always 
 right, and always necessary, upon those lesser details, 
 where it can neither be superseded by precedents, nor 
 repressed by proprieties. 
 
 I said, early in this essay, that hand-work might 
 always be known from machine-work ; observing, 
 however, at the same time, that it was possible for 
 men to turn themselves into machines, and to reduce 
 their labour to the machine level ; but so long as men 
 work as men, putting their heart into what they do, 
 and doing their best, it matters not how bad workmen 
 they may be, there will be that in the handling which 
 is above all price : it will be plainly seen that some 
 places have been delighted in more than others — that 
 there have been a pause, and a care about them ; and 
 then there will come careless bits, and fast bits ; and 
 here the chisel will have struck hard, and there lightly, 
 and anon timidly ; and if the man's mind as well as 
 his heart went with his work, all this will be in the right 
 places, and each part will set off the other ; and the 
 effect of the whole, as compared with the same design 
 cut by a machine or a lifeless hand, will be like that of 
 poetry well read and deeply felt to that of the same 
 verses jangled by rote. There are many to whom the 
 difference is imperceptible ; but to those who love 
 poetry it is everything — they had rather not hear it 
 at all, than hear it ill read ; and to those who love 
 Architecture, the life and accent of the hand are every- 
 thing. Thev had rather not have ornament at all, 
 than see it ill cut — deadly cut, that is. I cannot too 
 
178 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 often repeat, it is not coarse cutting, it is not blunt 
 cutting, that is necessarily bad ; but it is cold cutting 
 — the look of equal trouble everywhere — the smooth, 
 diffused tranquillity of heartless pains — the regularity 
 of a plough in a level field. The chill is more likely, 
 indeed, to show itself in finished work than in any 
 other — men cool and tire as they complete : and if 
 completeness is thought to be vested in polish, and to 
 be attainable by help of sand paper, we may as well 
 give the work to the engine lathe at once. But right 
 finish is simply the full rendering of the intended 
 impression ; and high finish is the rendering of a well 
 intended and vivid impression ; and it is oftener got 
 by rough than fine handling. I am not sure whether 
 it is frequently enough observed that sculpture is not 
 the mere cutting of the form of any thing in stone ; it 
 is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true 
 form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. 
 The sculptor must paint with his chisel : half his 
 touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the 
 form : they are touches of light and shadow ; and 
 raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an 
 actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or 
 a spot of darkness. In a coarse way, this kind of 
 execution is very marked in old French woodwork ; the 
 irises of the eyes of its chimeric monsters being cut 
 boldly into holes, which, variously placed, and always 
 dark, give all kinds of strange and startling expressions, 
 averted and askance, to the fantastic countenances. 
 Perhaps the highest examples of this kind of sculpture- 
 painting are the works of Mino da Fiesole ; their best 
 effects being reached by strange angular, and seem- 
 ingly rude, touches of the chisel. The lips of one 
 of the children on the tombs in the church of the Badia 
 appear only half finished when they are seen close; 
 yet the expression is farther carried, and more ineffable, 
 than in any piece of marble I have ever seen, especi- 
 ally considering its delicacy, and the softness of the 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 179 
 
 child-features. In a sterner kind, that of the statues 
 in the sacristy of St Lorenzo equals it, and there again 
 by incompletion. I know no example of work in which 
 the forms are absolutely true and complete where such 
 a result is attained ; in Greek sculptures it is not even 
 attempted. 
 
 XXII. It is evident that, for architectural appliances, 
 such masculine handling, likely as it must be to retain 
 its effectiveness when higher finish would be injured 
 by time, must always be the most expedient ; and as 
 it is impossible, even were it desirable, that the highest 
 finish should be given to the quantity of work which 
 covers a large building, it will be understood how 
 precious the Intelligence must become, which renders 
 incompletion itself a means of additional expression ; 
 and how great must be the difference, when the 
 touches are rude and few, between those of a careless 
 and those of a regardful mind. It is not easy to retain 
 anything of their character in a copy ; yet the reader 
 will find one or two illustrative points in the examples, 
 given in Plate XIV, from the bas-reliefs of the north 
 door of Rouen Cathedral. There are three square 
 pedestals under the three main niches on each side of 
 it, and one in the centre ; each of these being on two 
 sides decorated with five quatrefoiled panels. There 
 are thus seventy quatrefoils in the lower ornament 
 of the gate alone, without counting those of the outer 
 course round it, and of the pedestals outside : each 
 quatrefoil is filled with a bas-relief, the whole 
 reaching to something above a man's height. A 
 modern architect would, of course, have made all 
 the five quatrefoils of each pedestal-side equal : not 
 so the Mediaeval. The general form being appar- 
 ently a quatrefoil composed of semicircles on the sides 
 of a square, it will be found on examination that none 
 of the arcs are semicircles, and none of the basic 
 figures squares. The latter are rhomboids, having 
 their acute or obtuse angles uppermost according 
 
180 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 to their larger or smaller size ; and the arcs upon 
 their sides slide into such places as they can get in the 
 angles of the enclosing parallelogram, leaving intervals, 
 at each of the four angles, of various shapes, which 
 are filled each by an animal. The size of the whole 
 panel being thus varied, the lowest two of the five are 
 tall, the next two short, and the uppermost a little 
 higher than the lowest ; while in the course of bas- 
 reliefs which surrounds the gate, calling either of the 
 lowest two (which are equal) a, and either of the next 
 two b, and the fifth and sixth c and d, then d (the 
 largest) : c : : c : a : : a : b. It is wonderful how much 
 of the grace of the whole depends on these variations. 
 
 XXIII. Each of the angles, it was said, is filled 
 by an animal. There are thus 70 X 4 = 280 animals, 
 all different, in the mere fillings of the intervals of 
 the bas-reliefs. Three of these intervals, with their 
 beasts, actual size, the curves bring traced upon the 
 stone, I have given in Plate XIV. 
 
 I say nothing of their general design, or of the lines 
 of the wings and scales, which are perhaps, unless 
 in those of the central dragon, not much above the 
 usual commonplaces of good ornamental work ; but 
 there is an evidence in the features of thoughtfulness 
 and fancy which is not common, at least nowadays. 
 The upper creature on the left is biting something, the 
 form of which is hardly traceable in the defaced stone — 
 but biting he is ; and the reader cannot but recognize 
 in the peculiarly reverted eye the expression which is | 
 never seen, as I think, but in the eye of a dog gnawing 
 something in jest, and preparing to start away witi 
 it : the meaning of the glance, so far as it can be markec 
 by the mere incision of the chisel, will be felt by com-j 
 paring it with the eye of the couchant figure on the 
 right, in its gloomy and angiy brooding. The plan! 
 of this head, and the nod of the cap over its brow,| 
 are fine ; but there is a little touch above the hand I 
 especially well meant : the fellow is vexed and puzzledl 
 
5 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 181 
 
 in his malice ; and his hand is pressed hard on his 
 cheek bone, and the flesh of the cheek is wrinkled 
 under the eye by the pressure. The whole, indeed, 
 looks wretchedly coarse, when it is seen on a scale in 
 which it is naturally compared with delicate figure 
 etchings ; but considering it as a mere filling of an 
 interstice on the outside of a cathedral gate, and as 
 one of more than three hundred (for in my estimate I 
 did not include the outer pedestals), it proves very 
 noble vitality in the art of the time. 
 
 XXIV. I believe the right question to ask, respecting 
 all ornament, is simply this : Was it done with enjoy- 
 ment — was the carver happy while he was about it ? 
 It may be the hardest work possible, and the harder 
 because so much pleasure was taken in it ; but it must 
 have been happy too, or it will not be living. How 
 much of the stone mason's toil this condition would 
 exclude I hardly venture to consider, but the condition 
 is absolute. There is a Gothic church lately built near 
 Rouen, vile enough, indeed, in its general composition, 
 but excessively rich in detail ; many of the details 
 are designed with taste, and all evidently by a man 
 who aas studied old work closely. But it is all as dead 
 as leaves in December ; there is not one tender touch, 
 not one warm stroke, on the whole facade. The men 
 who did it hated it, and were thankful when it was 
 done And so long as they do so they are merely 
 loading your walls with shapes of clay : the garlands 
 of everlastings in Pere la Chaise are more cheerful 
 ornanents. You cannot get the feeling by paying 
 for h — money will not buy life. I am not sure even 
 that you can get it by watching or waiting for it. It 
 is trie that here and there a workman may be found 
 who has it in him, but he does not rest contented in 
 the hferior work — he struggles forward into an Acade- 
 mician ; and from the mass of available handicrafts- 
 men the power is gone — how recoverable I know not : 
 this >nly I know, that all expense devoted to sculptural 
 
182 THE LAMP OF LIFE 
 
 ornament, in the present condition of that power, 
 comes literally under the head of Sacrifice for the 
 sacrifice's sake, or worse. I helieve the only manner 
 of rich ornament that is open to us is the geometrical 
 colour-mosaic, and that much might result from our 
 strenuously taking up this mode of design. But, 
 at all events, one thing we have in our power — the 
 doing without machine ornament and cast-iron work. 
 All the stamped metals, and artificial stones, and 
 imitation woods and bronzes, over the invention 
 of which we hear daily exultation — all the short, and 
 cheap, and easy ways of doing that whose difficulty is 
 its honour — are just so many new obstacles in our 
 already encumbered road. They will not make one 
 of us happier or wiser — they will extend neither the 
 pride of judgment nor the privilege of enjoyment. 
 They will only make us shallower in our understandings, 
 colder in our hearts, and feebler in our wits. And 
 most justly. For we are not sent into this world to 
 do anything into which we cannot put our hearts. 
 We have certain work to do for our bread, and that is 
 to be done strenuously ; other work to do for our 
 delight, and that is to be done heartily : neither is to 
 be done by halves and shifts, but with a will ; and 
 what is not worth this effort is not to be done at all. 
 Perhaps all that we have to do is meant for nothing 
 more than an exercise of the heart and of the will, and 
 is useless in itself ; but, at all events, the little use it 
 has may well be spared if it is not worth putting our 
 hands and our strength to. It does not become 
 our immortality to take an ease inconsistent with its 
 authority, nor to suffer any instruments with which 
 it can dispense, to come between it and the things 
 it rules : and he who would form the creations of his 
 own mind by any other instrument than his own hand, 
 would also, if he might, give grinding organs to 
 Heaven's angels, to make their music easier. There 
 is dreaming enough, and earthiness enough, and 
 
THE LAMP OF LIFE 183 
 
 sensuality enough in human existence, without our 
 turning the few glowing moments of it into mechanism ; 
 and since our life must at the best be but a vapour 
 that appears for a little time and then vanishes away, 
 let it at least appear as a cloud in the height of Heaven, 
 not as the thick darkness that broods over the blast 
 of the Furnace, and rolling of the Wheel. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 I. Among the hours of his life to which the writer 
 looks back with peculiar gratitude, as having been 
 marked by more than ordinary fulness of joy or 
 clearness of teaching, is one passed, now some years 
 ago, near time of sunset, among the broken masses 
 of pine forest which skirt the course of the Ain, above 
 the village of Champagnole, in the Jura. It is a spot 
 which has all the solemnity, with none of the savage- 
 ness, of the Alps ; where there is a sense of a great 
 power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of 
 a deep and majestic concord in the rise of the long 
 low lines of piny hills ; the first utterance of those 
 iiii'rhty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly 
 lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the 
 Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained ; and 
 the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed 
 each other, like the long and sighing swell which 
 moves over quiet waters from some far off stormy sea. 
 And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast 
 monotony. The destructive forces and the stern 
 expression of the central ranges are alike withdrawn. 
 No frost- ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of ancient 
 glacier fret the soft Jura pastures ; no splintered 
 heaps of ruin break the fair ranks of her forests ; no 
 pale, defiled, or furious rivers rend their rude and 
 changeful ways among her rocks. Patiently, eddy by 
 eddy, the clear green streams wind along their well- 
 
 184 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 185 
 
 known beds ; and under the dark quietness of the 
 undisturbed pines, there spring up, year by year, such 
 company of joyful flowers as I know not the like of 
 among all the blessings of the earth. It was spring 
 time, too ; and all were coming forth in clusters crowded 
 for very love ; there was room enough for all, but 
 they crushed their leaves into all manner of strange 
 shapes only to be nearer each other. There was the 
 wood anemone, star after star, closing every now and 
 then into nebulae ; and there was the oxalis, troop by 
 troop, like virginal processions of the Mois de Marie, 
 the dark vertical clefts in the limestone choked up 
 with them as with heavy snow, and touched with ivy 
 on the edges — ivy as light and lovely as the vine ; 
 and, ever and anon, a blue gush of violets, and cowslip 
 bells in sunny places ; and in the more open ground, 
 the vetch, and comfrey, and mezereon, and the small 
 sapphire buds of the Polygala Alpina, and the wild 
 strawberry, just a blossom or two, all showered amidst 
 the golden softness of deep, warm, amber- coloured 
 moss. I came out presently on the edge of the ravine : 
 the solemn murmur of its waters rose suddenly from 
 beneath, mixed with the singing of the thrushes among 
 the pine boughs ; and, on the opposite side of the 
 valley, walled all along as it was by grey cliffs of 
 limestone, there was a hawk sailing slowly off their 
 brow, touching them nearly with his wings, and 
 with the shadows of the pines flickering upon his 
 plumage from above ; but with a fall of a hundred 
 fathoms under his breast, and the curling pools of the 
 green river gliding and glittering dizzily beneath him, 
 their foam globes moving with him as he flew. It 
 would be difficult to conceive a scene less dependent 
 upon any other interest than that of its own secluded 
 and serious beauty ; but the writer well remembers 
 the sudden blankness and chill which were east upon 
 it when he endeavoured, in order more strictly to arrive 
 at the sources of its impressiveness, to imagine it, for a 
 
186 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 moment, a scene in some aboriginal forest of the New 
 Continent. The flowers in an instant lost their light, 
 the river its music 14 ; the hills became oppressively 
 desolate ; a heaviness in the boughs of the darkened 
 forest showed how much of their former power had 
 been dependent upon a life which was not theirs, 
 how much of the glory of the imperishable, or continually 
 renewed, creation is reflected from things more precious 
 in their memories than it, in its renewing. Those 
 ■ever springing flowers, and ever flowing streams had 
 been dyed by the deep colours of human endurance, 
 valour, and virtue ; and the crests of the sable bills 
 that rose against the evening sky received a deeper 
 worship, because their far shadows fell eastward over 
 the iron wall of Joux, and the four-square keep of 
 Granson. 
 
 II. It is as the centralization and protectress of 
 this sacred influence, that Architecture is to be regarded 
 by us with the most serious thought. We m.ay live 
 without her, and worship without her, but we cannot 
 remember without her. How cold is all history, how 
 lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living 
 nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears ! — 
 how many pages of doubtful record might we not often 
 spare, for a few stones left one upon another ! The 
 ambition of the old Babel builders was well directed 
 for this world : there are but two strong conquerors 
 of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture ; 
 and the latter in some sort includes the former, and 
 is mightier in its reality : it is well to have, not only 
 what men have thought and felt, but what their hands 
 have handled, and their strength wrought, and their 
 eyes beheld, all the days of their life. The age of 
 Homer is surrounded with darkness, his very personal- 
 ity with doubt. Not so that of Pericles : and the 
 day is coming when we shall confess, that we have 
 learned more of Greece out of the crumbled fragments 
 of her sculpture than even from her sweet singers or 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 187 
 
 soldier historians. And if indeed there be any profit 
 in our knowledge of the past, or any joy in the thought 
 of "being remembered hereafter, which can give strength 
 to present exertion, or patience to present endurance, 
 there are two duties respecting national architecture 
 whose importance it is impossible to overrate : the 
 first, to render the architecture of the day, historical ; 
 and, the second, to preserve, as the most precious of 
 inheritances, that of past ages. 
 
 III. It is in the first of these two directions that 
 Memory may truly be said to be the Sixth Lamp of 
 Architecture ; for it is in becoming memorial or monu- 
 mental that a true perfection is attained by civil and 
 domestic buildings ; and this partly as they are, with 
 such a view, built in a more stable manner, and partly 
 as their decorations are consequently animated by a 
 metaphorical or historical meaning. 
 
 As regards domestic buildings, there must always 
 be a certain limitation to views of this kind in the power, 
 as well as in the hearts, of men ; still I cannot but 
 think it an evil sign of a people when their houses 
 are built to last for one generation only. There is a 
 sanctity in a good man's house which cannot be re- 
 newed in every tenement that rises on its ruins : and 
 I believe that good men would generally feel this ; 
 and that having spent their lives happily and honour- 
 ably, they would be grieved, at the close of them, to 
 think that the place of their earthly abode, which 
 had seen, and seemed almost to sympathize in, all 
 their honour, their gladness, or their suffering, — 
 that this, with all the record it bare of them, and all 
 of material things that they had loved and ruled over, 
 and set the stamp of themselves upon — was to be 
 swept away, as soon as there was room made for them 
 in the grave ; that no respect was to be shown to it, 
 no affection felt for it, no good to be drawn from it by 
 their children ; that though there was a monument in 
 the church, there was no warm monument in the hearth 
 
188 TEE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 and house to them ; that all that they ever treasured 
 was despised, and the places that had sheltered and 
 comforted them were dragged down to the dust. I 
 say tha,t a good man would fear this ; and that, far 
 more, a good son, a noble descendant, would fear 
 doing it to his father's house. I say that if men lived 
 like men Indeed, their houses would be temples — 
 temples which we should hardly dare to injure, and in 
 which it would make us holy to be permitted to live ; 
 and there must be a strange dissolution of natural 
 affection, a strange unthankfulness for all that homes 
 have given and parents taught, a strange consciousness 
 that we have been unfaithful to our fathers' honour, 
 or that our own lives are not such as would make our 
 dwellings sacred to our children, when each man would 
 fain build to himself, and build for the little revolution 
 of his own life only. And I look upon those pitiful 
 concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in 
 mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about 
 our capital — upon those thin, tottering, foundation- 
 less shells of splintered wood and imitated stone — upon 
 those gloomy rows of formalized minuteness, alike 
 without difference and without fellowship, as solitary 
 as similar — not merely with the careless disgust of an 
 offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated 
 landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the 
 roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered 
 when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground ; 
 that those comfortless and unhonoured dwellings are 
 the signs of a great and spreading spirit of popular 
 discontent ; that they mark the time when every 
 man's aim is to be in some more elevated sphere than 
 his natural one, and every man's past life is his habitual 
 scorn ; when men build in the hope of leaving the 
 places they have built, and live in the hope of forgetting 
 the years that they have lived ; when the comfort, 
 the peace, the religion of home have ceased to be felt ; 
 and the crowded tenements of a struggling and restless 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 189 
 
 population differ only from the tents of the Arab or 
 the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of 
 heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth ; 
 by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, 
 and of stability without the luxury of change. 
 
 IV. This is no slight, no consequenceless evil ; it 
 is ominous, infectious, and fecund of other fault and 
 misfortune. When men do not love their hearths, 
 nor reverence their thresholds, it is a sign that they have 
 dishonoured both, and that they have never acknow- 
 ledged the true universality of that Christian worship 
 which was indeed to supersede the idolatry, but not 
 the piety, of the pagan. Our God is a household God, 
 as well as a heavenly one ; He has an altar in every 
 man's dwelling ; let men look to it when they rend 
 it lightly and pour out its ashes. It is not a question 
 of mere ocular delight, it is no question of intellectual 
 pride, or of cultivated and critical fancy, how, and 
 with what aspect of durability and of completeness, 
 the domestic buildings of a nation shall be raised. It 
 is one of those moral duties, not with more impunity 
 to be neglected because the perception of them depends 
 on a finely toned and balanced conscientiousness, to 
 build our dwellings with care, and patience, and fond- 
 ness, and diligent completion, and with a view to their 
 duration at least for such a period as, in the ordinary 
 course of national revolutions, might be supposed 
 likely to extend to the entire alteration of the direction 
 of local interests. This at the least ; but it would 
 be better if, in every possible instance, men built their 
 own houses on a scale commensurate rather with their 
 condition at the commencement, than their attain- 
 ments at the termination, of their worldly career ; and 
 built them to stand as long as human work at its 
 strongest can be hoped to stand ; recording to their 
 children what they had been, and from what, if so it 
 had been permitted them, they had risen. And when 
 houses are thus built, we may have that true domestic 
 
190 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 architecture, the beginning of all other, which does not 
 disdain to treat with respect and thoughtfulness the 
 small habitation as well as the large, and which invests 
 with the dignity of contented manhood the narrowness 
 of worldly circumstance. 
 
 V. I look to this spirit of honourable, proud, peace- 
 ful self-possession, this abiding wisdom of contented 
 life, as probably one of the chief sources of great 
 intellectual power in all ages, and beyond dispute as 
 the very primal source of the great architecture of old 
 Italy and France. To this day, the interest of their 
 fairest cities depends, not on the isolated richness of 
 palaces, but on the cherished and exquisite decoration 
 of even the smallest tenements of their proud periods. 
 The most elaborate piece of architecture in Venice is a 
 small house at the head of the Grand Canal, consisting 
 of a ground floor with two stories above, three windows 
 in the first and two in the second. Many of the 
 most exquisite buildings are on the narrower canals, 
 and of no larger dimensions. One of the most inter- 
 esting pieces of fifteenth century architecture in North 
 Italy, is a small house in a back street, behind the 
 market place of Vicenza ; it bears date 1481, and the 
 motto, II . rCest . rose . sans . epine . ; it has also only 
 a ground floor and two stories, with three windows 
 in each, separated by rich flower- work, and with 
 balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle 
 with open wings, the lateral ones by winged griffins 
 standing on cornucopia?. The idea that a house 
 must be large in order to be well built, is altogether 
 of modern growth, and is parallel with the idea, that 
 no picture can be historical, except of a size admit- 
 ting figures larger than life. 
 
 VI. I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling 
 houses built to last, and built to be lovely ; as rich 
 and full of pleasantness as may be, within and with- 
 out ; with what degree of likeness to each other in 
 style and manner, I will say presently, under another 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 191 
 
 head ; but, at all events, with such differences as 
 might suit and express each man's character and 
 occupation, and partly his history. This right over 
 the house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, 
 and is to be respected by his children ; and it would 
 be well that blank stones should be left in places, 
 to be inscribed with a summary of his life and of its 
 experience, raising thus the habitation into a kind of 
 monument, and developing, into more systematic 
 instructiveness, that good custom which was of old 
 universal, and which still remains among some of the 
 Swiss and Germans, of acknowledging the grace of 
 God's permission to build and possess a quiet resting- 
 place, in such sweet words as may well close our 
 speaking of these things. I have taken them from 
 the front of a cottage lately built among the green 
 pastures which descend from the village of Grindeiwald 
 to the lower glacier : 
 
 Mit herzlichem Vertrauen 
 Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi 
 Dieses Haus bauen lassen. 
 Der liebe Gott woll uns bowahren 
 Vor allem Ungluck und Gefahren, 
 Und es in Segen lassen stehn 
 Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit 
 Nach dom himmlischen Paradiese, 
 Wo alle Frommen wohnen, 
 Da wird Gott sie belohnen 
 Mit der Fridenskrone 
 Zu alle Ewigkeit. 
 
 VII. In public buildings the historical purpose 
 should be still more definite. It is one of the advan- 
 tages of Gothic architecture — I use the word Gothic 
 in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to 
 classical — that it admits of a richness of record alto- 
 gether unlimited. Its minute and multitudinous 
 sculptural decorations afford means of expressing, 
 either symbolically or literally, all that need be known 
 o: national feeling or achievement. More decoration 
 
192 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 will, indeed, be usually required than can take so 
 elevated a character ; and much, even in the most 
 thoughtful periods, has been left to the freedom of 
 fancy, or suffered to consist of mere repetitions of 
 some national bearing or symbol. It is, however, 
 generally unwise, even in mere surface ornament, to 
 surrender the power and privilege of variety which 
 the spirit of Gothic architecture admits ; much more 
 in important features — capitals of columns or bosses, 
 and string-courses, as of course in all confessed bas- 
 reliefs. Better the rudest work that tells a story or 
 records a fact, than the richest without meaning. 
 There should not be a single ornament put upon great 
 civic buildings, without some intellectual intention. 
 Actual representation of history has in modern times 
 been checked by a difficulty, mean indeed, but stead- 
 fast ; that of unmanageable costume : nevertheless, 
 by a sufficiently bold imaginative treatment, and 
 frank use of symbols, all such obstacles may be van- 
 quished ; not perhaps in the degree necessary to 
 produce sculpture in itself satisfactory, but at all 
 events so as to enable it to become a grand 
 and expressive element of architectural composition. 
 Take, for example, the management of the capitals 
 of the ducal palace at Venice. History, as such, 
 was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, 
 but every capital of its arcades was filled with mean- 
 ing. The large one, the corner stone of the whole, 
 next the entrance, was devoted to the symbolization 
 •of Abstract Justice ; above it is a sculpture of the 
 Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful 
 subjection in its treatment to its decorative purpose. 
 The figures, if the subject had been entirely composed 
 of them, would have awkwardly interrupted the line 
 •of the angle, and diminished its apparent strength ; 
 and therefore in the midst of them, entirely without 
 relation to them, and indeed actually between the 
 ■executioner and interceding mother, there rises the 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 193 
 
 ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and 
 continues the shaft of the angle, and whose leaves 
 above overshadow and enrich the whole. The capital 
 below bears among its leafage a throned figure of 
 Justice, Trajan doing justice to the widow, Aristotle 
 ' che die legge ', and one or two other subjects now 
 unintelligible from decay. The capitals next in order 
 represent the virtues and vices in succession, as pre- 
 servative or destructive of national peace and power, 
 concluding with Faith, with the inscription ' Fides 
 optima in Deo est '. A figure is seen on the opposite 
 side of the capital, worshipping the sun. After these, 
 one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with 
 birds (Plate V), and then come a series representing, 
 first the various fruits, then the national costumes, 
 and then the animals of the various countries subject 
 to Venetian rule. 
 
 VIII. Now, not to speak of any more important 
 public building, let us imagine our own India House 
 adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical sculp- 
 ture : massively built in the first place ; then chased 
 with bas-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted 
 with carvings of Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental 
 stones ; and the more important members of its 
 decoration composed of groups of Indian life and 
 landscape, and prominently expressing the phantasms 
 of Hindoo worship in their subjection to the Cross. 
 Would not one such work be better than a thousand 
 histories ? If, however, we have not the invention 
 necessary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one 
 of the most noble excuses we can offer for our defi- 
 ciency in such matters, we have less pleasure in talking 
 about ourselves, even in marble, than the Continental 
 natons, at least we have no excuse for any want of 
 care in the points which insure the building's endur- 
 ance. And as this question is one of great interest 
 in its relations to the choice of various modes of decora- 
 ton, it will be necessary to enter into it at some length. 
 
 S.L.A. O 
 
194 TEE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 IX. The benevolent regards and purposes of men 
 in masses seldom can be supposed to extend beyond 
 their own generation, They may look to posterity 
 as an audience, may hope for its attention and labour 
 for its praise : they may trust to its recognition of 
 unacknowledged merit, and demand its justice for 
 contemporary wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, 
 and does not involve the slightest regard to, or con- 
 sideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers 
 we would fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and 
 by whose authority we would gladly support our 
 presently disputed claims. The idea of self-denial 
 for the sake of posterity, of practising present economy 
 for the sake of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests 
 that our descendants may live under their shade, or of 
 raising cities for future nations to inhabit, never, I 
 suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly recog- 
 nised motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less 
 our duties ; nor is our part fitly sustained upon the 
 earth, unless the range of our intended and deliberate 
 usefulness include, not only the companions but the 
 successors, of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the 
 earth for our life ; it is a great entail. It belongs as 
 much to those who are to come after us, and whose 
 names are already written in the book of creation, 
 as to us ; and we have no right, by anything that T\e 
 do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, 
 or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power 
 to bequeath. And this the more, because it is one 
 of the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, 
 in proportion to the time between the seed-sowing 
 and the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit ; and that 
 generally, therefore, the farther off we place our aim, 
 and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses 
 of what we have laboured for, the more wide and 
 rich will be the measure of our success. Men cannot 
 benefit those that are with them as they can benefit 
 those who come after them ; and of all the pulpits 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 195 
 
 from which human voice is ever sent forth, there 
 is none from which it reaches so far as from the 
 grave. 
 
 X. Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such 
 respect, for futurity. Every human action gains in 
 honour, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard 
 to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the 
 quiet and confident patience, that, above all other 
 attributes, separate man from man, and near him to 
 his Maker ; and there is no action nor art, whose 
 majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, 
 when we build, let us think that we build for ever. 
 Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use 
 alone ; let it be such work as our descendants will 
 thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, 
 that a time is to come when those stones will be held 
 sacred because our hands have touched them, and 
 that men will say as they look upon the labour and 
 wrought substance of them, ' See ! — this our fathers 
 did for us ' . For, indeed, the greatest glory of a build- 
 ing is not in its stones, nor in its gold. Its glory is 
 in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of 
 stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of 
 approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls 
 that have long been washed by the passing waves of 
 humanity. It is in their lasting witness against men, 
 in their quiet contrast with the transitional character 
 of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse 
 of seasons and times, and the decline and birth of 
 dynasties, and the changing of the face of the earth, 
 and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured 
 shapeliness for a time insuperable, connects forgotten 
 and following ages with each other, and half constitutes 
 the identity, as it concentrates the sympathy, of 
 nat.ons : it is in that golden stain of time, that we are 
 to bok for the real light, and colour, and preciousness 
 of t-rchitecture ; and it is not until a building has 
 assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with 
 
196 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its 
 walls have been witnesses of suffering, and its pillars 
 rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence, 
 more lasting as it is than that of the natural objects 
 of the world around it, can be gifted with even so much 
 as these possess, of language and of life. 
 
 XI. For that period, then, we must build ; not, 
 indeed, refusing to ourselves the delight of present 
 completion, nor hesitating to follow such portions of 
 character as may depend upon delicacy of execution, 
 to the highest perfection of which they are capable, 
 even although we may know that in the course of 
 years such details must perish ; but taking care that 
 for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, 
 and that the building shall not depend for its impres- 
 siveness upon anything that is perishable. This 
 would, indeed, be the law of good composition under 
 any circumstances, the arrangement of the lai-ger 
 masses being always a matter of greater importance 
 than the treatment of the smaller ; but in architecture 
 there is much in that very treatment which is skilful 
 or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the 
 probable effects of time : and (which is still more to 
 be considered) there is a beauty in those effects them- 
 selves, which nothing else can replace, and which it 
 is our wisdom to consult and to desire. For though 
 hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentiment of 
 age only, there is an actual beauty in the marks of it, 
 such and so great as to have become not unfrequently 
 the subject of especial choice among certain schools 
 of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the 
 character usually and loosely expressed by the term 
 * picturesque '. It is of some importance to our pre- 
 sent purpose to determine the true meaning of this 
 expression, as it is now generally used ; for there is 
 a principle to be developed from that use which, while 
 it has occultly been the ground of much that is true 
 and just in our judgment of art, has never been so far 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 197 
 
 understood as to become definitely serviceable. Pro- 
 bably no word in the language (exclusive of theological 
 expressions) has been the subject of so frequent or so 
 prolonged dispute ; yet none remain more vague in 
 their acceptance, and it seems to me to be a matter 
 of no small interest to investigate the essence of that 
 idea which all feel, and (to appearance) with respect 
 to similar things, and yet which every attempt to 
 define has, as I believe, ended either in mere enumera- 
 tion of the effects and objects to which the term has 
 been attached, or else in attempts at abstraction more 
 palpably nugatory than any which have disgraced 
 metaphysical investigation on other subjects. A 
 recent critic on Art, for instance, has gravely advanced 
 the theory that the essence of the picturesque consists 
 in the expression of ' universal decay '. It would be 
 curious to see the result of an attempt to illustrate 
 this idea of the picturesque, in a painting of dead 
 flowers and decayed fruit ; and equally curious to 
 trace the steps of any reasoning which, on such a 
 theory, should account for the picturesqueness of an 
 ass colt as opposed to a horse foal. But there is much 
 excuse for even the most utter failure in reasonings of 
 this kind, since the subject is, indeed, one of the most 
 obscure of all that may legitimately be submitted to 
 human reason ; and the idea is itself so varied in the 
 minds of different men, according to their subjects of 
 study, that no definition can be expected to embrace 
 more than a certain number of its infinitely multiplied 
 forms. 
 
 XII. That peculiar character, however, which 
 separates the picturesque from the characters of sub- 
 ject belonging to the higher walks of art (and this is all 
 that it is necessary for our present purpose to define), 
 may be shortly and decisively expressed. Picturesque- 
 ness, in this sense, is Parasitical Sublimity. Of course 
 all sublimity, as well as all beauty is, in the simple 
 etymological sense, picturesque, that is to say, fit to 
 
198 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 become the subject of a picture ; and all sublimity is, 
 even in the peculiar sense which I am endeavouring 
 to develop, picturesque, as opposed to beauty ; that 
 is to say, there is more picturesqueness in the subject 
 of Michael Angelo than of Perugino, in proportion to 
 the prevalence of the sublime element over the beau- 
 tiful. But that character, of which the extreme 
 pursuit is generally admitted to be degrading to art, 
 is parasitical sublimity ; i.e. a sublimity dependent 
 on the accidents, or on the least essential characters 
 of the objects to which it belongs ; and the picturesque 
 is developed distinctively exactly in proportion to the 
 distance from the centre of thought of those points of 
 character in which the sublimity is found. Two ideas, 
 therefore, are essential to picturesqueness — the first, 
 that of sublimity (for pure beauty is not picturesque 
 at all, and becomes so only as the sublime element 
 mixes with it), and the second, the subordinate or 
 parasitical position of that sublimity. Of course, 
 therefore, whatever characters of line or shade or 
 expression are productive of sublimity, will become 
 productive of picturesqueness : what these characters 
 are I shall endeavour hereafter to show at length ; 
 but, among those which are generally acknowledged, 
 I may name angular and broken lines, vigorous oppo- 
 sitions of light and shadow, and grave, deep, or boldly 
 contrasted colour ; and all these are in a still higher 
 degree effective, when, by resemblance or association, 
 they remind us of objects on which a true and essen- 
 tial sublimity exists, as of rocks or mountains, or 
 stormy clouds or waves. Now if these characters, 
 or any others of a higher and more abstract sublimity, 
 be found in the very heart and substance of what 
 we contemplate, as the sublimity of Michael Angelo 
 depends on the expression of mental character in his 
 figures far more than even on the noble lines of their 
 arrangement, the art which represents such characters 
 cannot be properly called picturesque : but if they 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 199 
 
 be found in the accidental or external qualities, the 
 distinctive picturesque will be the result. 
 
 XIII. Thus, in the treatment of the features of the 
 human face by Francia or Angelico, the shadows are 
 employed only to make the contours of the features 
 thoroughly felt ; and to those features themselves the 
 mind of the observer is exclusively directed (that is to 
 say, to the essential characters of the thing repre- 
 sented). All power and all sublimity rest on these ; 
 the shadows are used only for the sake of the features. 
 On the contrary, by Rembrandt, Salvator, or Cara- 
 vaggio, the features are used for the sake of the shadows ; 
 and the attention is directed, and the power of the 
 painter addressed, to characters of accidental light 
 and shade cast across or around those features. In 
 the case of Rembrandt there is often an essential 
 sublimity in invention and expression besides, and 
 always a high degree of it in the light and shade itself, 
 but it is, for the most part, parasitical or engrafted 
 sublimity as regards the subject of the painting, and, 
 just so far, picturesque. 
 
 XIV. Again, in the management of the sculptures 
 of the Parthenon, shadow is frequently employed as 
 a dark held on which the forms are drawn. This is 
 visibly the case in the metopes, and must have been 
 nearly as much so in the pediment. But the use of 
 that shadow is entirely to show the confines of the 
 figures ; and it is to their lines, and not to the shapes 
 of the shadows behind them, that the art and the eye 
 are addressed. The figures themselves are conceived, 
 as much as possible, in full light, aided by bright 
 reflections ; they are drawn exactly as, on vases, white 
 figures on a dark ground ; and the sculptors have 
 dispensed with, or even struggled to avoid, all shadows 
 which were not absolutely necessary to the explaining 
 of the form. On the contrary, in Gothic sculpture, 
 the shadow becomes itself a subject of thought. It 
 is considered as a dark colour, to be arranged in certain 
 
200 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 agreeable masses ; the figures are very frequently 
 made even subordinate to the placing of its divisions : 
 and their costume is enriched at the expense of the 
 forms underneath, in order to increase the complexity 
 and variety of the points of shade. There are thus, 
 both in sculpture and painting, two, in some sort, 
 opposite schools, of which the one follows for its sub- 
 ject the essential forms of things, and the other the 
 accidental lights and shades upon them. There are 
 various degrees of their contrariety : middle steps, 
 as in the works of Correggio, and all degrees of nobility 
 and of degradation in the several manners : but the 
 one is always recognized as the pure, and the other as 
 the picturesque school. Portions of picturesque 
 treatment will be found in Greek work, and of pure 
 and unpicturesque in Gothic ; and in both there are 
 countless instances, as pre-eminently in the works of 
 Michael Angelo, in which shadows become valuable 
 as media of expression, and therefore take rank among 
 essential characteristics. Into these multitudinous 
 distinctions and exceptions I cannot now enter, desir- 
 ing only to prove the broad applicability of the general 
 definition. 
 
 XV. Again, the distinction will be found to exist, 
 not only between forms and shades as subjects of 
 choice, but between essential and inessential forms. 
 One of the chief distinctions between the dramatic and 
 picturesque schools of sculpture is found in the treat- 
 ment of the hair. By the artists of the time of Pericles 
 it was considered as an excrescence 15 , indicated by 
 few and rude lines, and subordinated, in every particu- 
 lar, to the principality of the features and person. 
 How completely this was an artistical, not a national 
 idea, it is unnecessary to prove. We need but remem- 
 ber the employment of the Lacedaemonians, reported 
 by the Persian spy on the evening before the battle 
 of Thermopylae, or glance at any Homeric description 
 of ideal form, to see how purely sculpturesque was the 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 201 
 
 law which reduced the markings of the hair, lest, under 
 the necessary disadvantages of material, they should 
 interfere with the distinctness of the personal forms. 
 On the contrary, in later sculpture, the hair receives 
 almost the principal care of the workman ; and, while 
 the features and limbs are clumsily and bluntly exe- 
 cuted, the hair is curled and twisted, cut into bold and 
 shadowy projections, and arranged in masses elabor- 
 ately ornamental : there is true sublimity in the lines 
 and the chiaroscuro of these masses, but it is, as re- 
 gards the creature represented, parasitical, and there- 
 fore picturesque. In the same sense we may under- 
 stand the application of the term to modern animal 
 painting, distinguished as it has been by peculiar atten- 
 tion to the colours, lustre, and texture of skin ; nor 
 is it in art alone that the definition will hold. In 
 animals themselves, when their sublimity depends upon 
 their muscular forms or motions, or necessary and 
 principal attributes, as perhaps more than all others 
 in the horse, we do not call them picturesque, but 
 consider them as peculiarly fit to be associated with 
 pure historical subject. Exactly in proportion as their 
 character of sublimity passes into excrescences ; — 
 into mane and beard as in the lion, into horns as in the 
 stag, into shaggy hide as in the instance above given 
 of the ass colt, into variegation as in the zebra, or into 
 plumage, — they become picturesque, and are so in 
 art exactly in proportion to the prominence of these 
 excrescential characters. It may often be most ex- 
 pedient that they should be prominent ; often there is 
 in them the highest degree of majesty, as in those of the 
 leopard and boar ; and in the hands of men like Tin- 
 toret and Rubens, such attributes become means of 
 deepening the very highest and most ideal impressions. 
 But the picturesque direction of their thoughts is 
 always distinctly recognizable, as clinging to the sur- 
 face, to the less essential character, and as developing 
 out of this a sublimity different from that of the crea- 
 
202 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 ture itself ; a sublimity which is, in a sort, common to 
 all the objects of creation, and the same in its consti- 
 tuent elements, whether it be sought in the clefts and 
 folds of shaggy hair, or in the chasms and rents of 
 rocks, or in the hanging of thickets or hill sides, or in 
 the alternations of gaiety and gloom in the variegation 
 of the shell, the plume, or the cloud. 
 
 XVI. Now, to return to our immediate subject, it 
 so happens that, in architecture, the superinduced and 
 accidental beauty is most commonly inconsistent with 
 the preservation of original character, and the pictur- 
 esque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist 
 in decay. Whereas, even when so sought, it consists 
 in the mere sublimity of the rents, or fractures, or 
 stains, or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture 
 with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those 
 circumstances of colour and form which are universally 
 beloved by the eye of man. So far as this is done, to 
 the extinction of the true characters of the architec- 
 ture, it is picturesque, and the artist who looks to the 
 stem of the ivy instead of the shaft of the pillar, is 
 carrying out in more daring freedom the debased sculp- 
 tor's choice of the hair instead of the countenance. 
 But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the 
 inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous sub- 
 limity of architecture has just this of nobler function 
 in it than that of any other object whatsoever, that 
 it is an exponent of age, of that in which, as has been 
 said, the greatest glory of the building consists ; and, 
 therefore, the external signs of this glory, having power 
 and purpose greater than any belonging to their mere 
 sensible beauty, may be considered as taking rank 
 among pure and essential characters ; so essential to 
 my mind, that I think a building cannot be considered 
 as in its prime until four or five centuries have passed 
 over it ; and that the entire choice and arrangement 
 of its details should have reference to their appearance 
 after that period, so that none should be admitted 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 203 
 
 which would suffer material injury either by the 
 weather-staining, or the mechanical degradation which 
 the lapse of such a period would necessitate. 
 
 XVII. It is not my purpose to enter into any of 
 the questions which the application of this principle 
 involves. They are of too great interest and com- 
 plexity to be even touched upon within my present 
 limits, but this is broadly to be noticed, that those 
 styles of architecture which are picturesque in the 
 sense above explained with respect to sculpture, that 
 is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrange- 
 ment of points of shade rather than on purity of out- 
 line, do not suffer, but commonly gain in richness of 
 effect when their details are partly worn away ; hence 
 such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should 
 always be adopted when the materials to be employed 
 are liable to degradation, as brick, sandstone, or soft 
 limestone ; and styles in any degree dependent on 
 purity of line, as the Italian Gothic, must be practised 
 altogether in hard and undecomposing materials, 
 granite, serpentine, or crystalline marbles. There 
 can be no doubt that the nature of the accessible 
 materials influenced the formation of both styles ; 
 and it should still more authoritatively determine our 
 choice of either. 
 
 XVIII. It does not belong to my present plan to 
 consider at length the second head of duty of which 
 I have above spoken ; the preservation of the archi- 
 tecture we possess : but a few words may be forgiven, 
 as especially necessary in modern times. Neither 
 by the public, nor by those who have the care of public 
 monuments, is the true meaning of the word restoration 
 understood. It means the most total destruction 
 which a building can suffer : a destruction out of 
 which no remnants can be gathered : a destruction 
 accompanied with false description of the thing de- 
 stroyed. Do not let us deceive ourselves in this im- 
 portunt matter ; it is impossible, as impossible as to 
 
204 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been 
 great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have 
 above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that 
 spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the 
 workman, never can be recalled. Another spirit may 
 be given by another time, and it is then a new build- 
 ing ; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be 
 summoned up, and commanded to direct other hands, 
 and other thoughts. And as for direct and simple 
 copying, it is palpably impossible. What copying can 
 there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch 
 down ? The whole finish of the work was in the half 
 inch that is gone ; if you attempt to restore that 
 finish, you do it conjecturally ; if you copy what is 
 left, granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or 
 watchfulness, or cost can secure it), how is the new 
 work better than the old ? There was yet in the old 
 some life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had 
 been, and of what it had lost ; some sweetness in the 
 gentle lines which rain and sun had wrought. There 
 can be none in the brute hardness of the new carving. 
 Look at the animals which I have given in Plate XIV, 
 as an instance of living work, and suppose the mark- 
 ings of the scales and hair once worn away, or the 
 wrinkles of the brows, and who shall ever restore them ? 
 The first step to restoration (I have seen it, and that 
 again and again — seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, 
 seen it on the Casa d'Oro at Venice, seen it on the 
 Cathedral of Lisieux) is to dash the old work to pieces ; 
 the second is usually to put up the cheapest and basest 
 imitation which can escape detection, but in all cases, 
 however careful, and however laboured, an imitation 
 still, a cold model of such parts as can be modelled, 
 with conjectural supplements ; and my experience 
 has as yet furnished me with only one instance, that 
 of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, 
 the utmost degree of fidelity which is possible, has 
 been attained, or even attempted. 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 205 
 
 XIX. Do not let us talk then of restoration. The 
 thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make 
 a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your 
 model may have the shell of the old walls within it as 
 your cast might have the skeleton, with what advan- 
 tage I neither see nor care : but the old building is 
 destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than 
 if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a 
 mass of clay : more has been gleaned out of desolated 
 Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan. But, 
 it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration ! 
 Granted. Look the necessity full in the face, and 
 understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for 
 destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, 
 throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast 
 of them, or mortar, if you will ; but do it honestly, 
 and do not set up a Lie in their place. And look that 
 necessity in the face before it comes, and you may 
 prevent it. The principle of modern times (a principle 
 which, I believe, at least in France, to be systematically 
 acted on by the masons, in order to find themselves 
 work, as the abbey of St Ouen was pulled down by 
 the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to 
 some vagrants) is to neglect buildings first, and restore 
 them afterwards. Take proper care of your monu- 
 ments, and you will not need to restore them. A few 
 sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead 
 leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, 
 will save both roof and walls from ruin. Watch 
 an old building with an anxious care ; guard it as best 
 you may, and at any cost, from every influence of 
 dilapidation. Count its stones as you would jewels of 
 a crown ; set watches about it as if at the gates of a 
 besieged city ; bind it together with iron where it 
 loosens ; stay it with timber where it declines ; do not 
 care about the unsightliness of the aid : better a crutch 
 than a lost limb ; and do this tenderly, and rever- 
 ently, and continually, and many a generation will 
 
206 THE LAMP OF MEMORY 
 
 still be born and pass away beneath its shadow. Its 
 evil day must come at last ; but let it come declaredly 
 and openly, and let no dishonouring and false substi- 
 tute deprive it of the funeral offices of memory. 
 
 XX. Of more wanton or ignorant ravage it is vain to 
 speak ; my words will not reach those who commit 
 them, and yet, be it heard or not, I must not leave the 
 truth unstated, that it is again no question of expe- 
 diency or feeling whether we shall preserve the build- 
 ings of past times or not. We have no rigid whatever 
 to touch them. They are not ours. They belong 
 partly to those who built them, and partly to all the 
 generations of mankind who are to follow us. The 
 dead have still their right in them : that which they 
 laboured for, the praise of achievement or the expres- 
 sion of religious feeling, or whatsoever else it might be 
 which in those buildings they intended to be per- 
 manent, we have no right to obliterate. What we have 
 ourselves built, we are at liberty to throw down ; but 
 what other men gave their strength and wealth and 
 life to accomplish, their right over does not pass away 
 with their death : still less is the right to the use of 
 what they have left vested in us only. It belongs to 
 all their successors. It may hereafter be a subject of 
 sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have 
 consulted our present convenience by casting down 
 such buildings as we choose to dispense with. That 
 sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict. Did the 
 cathedral of Avranches belong to the mob who de- 
 stroyed it, any more than it did to us, who walk in 
 sorrow to and fro over its foundation ? Neither does 
 any building whatever belong to those mobs who do 
 violence to it. For a mob it is, and must be always ; 
 it matters not whether enraged, or in deliberate folly ; 
 whether countless, or sitting in committees ; the 
 people who destroy anything causelessly are a mob, and 
 Architecture is always destroyed causelessly. A fair 
 building is necessarily worth the ground it stands 
 
THE LAMP OF MEMORY 207 
 
 upon, and will be so until Central Africa and America 
 shall have become as populous as Middlesex ; nor is 
 any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruc- 
 tion. If ever valid, certainly not now, when the 
 place both of the past and future is too much usurped 
 in our minds by the restless and discontented present. 
 The very quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn 
 from us ; thousands who once in their necessarily 
 prolonged travel were subjected to an influence, from 
 the silent sky and slumbering fields, more effectual 
 than known or confessed, now bear with them even 
 there the ceaseless fever of their life ; and along the 
 iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat 
 and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and 
 faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through 
 those throbbing arteries into the central cities ; the 
 country is passed over like a green sea by narrow 
 bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer 
 crowds upon the city gates. The only influence which 
 can in any wise there take the place of that of the woods 
 and fields, is the power of ancient Architecture. Do 
 not part with it for the sake of the formal square, 
 or of the fenced and planted walk, nor of the goodly 
 street nor opened quay. The pride of a city is not in 
 these. Leave them to the crowd ; but remember 
 that there will surely be some within the circuit of the 
 disquieted walls who would ask for some other spots 
 than these wherein to walk ; for some other forms to 
 meet their sight familiarly : like him who sat so often 
 where the sun struck from the west, to watch the lines 
 of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like 
 tho.se, his Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from 
 their palace chambers, the places where their fathers, 
 lay at rest at the meeting of the dark streets of Verona. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 I. It has been my endeavour to show in the preceding 
 pages how every form of noble architecture is in some 
 sort the embodiment of the Polity, Life, History, and 
 Religious Faith of nations. Once or twice in doing 
 this, I have named a principle to which I would now 
 assign a definite place among those which direct that 
 •embodiment ; the last place, not only as that to which 
 its own humility would incline, but rather as belonging 
 to it in the aspect of the crowning grace of all the rest : 
 that principle, I mean, to which Polity owes its stabi- 
 lity, Life its happiness, Faith its acceptance, Creation 
 its continuance — Obedience. 
 
 Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious 
 satisfaction which I have found in the pursuit of a 
 subject that at first appeared to bear but slightly on 
 the grave interests of mankind, that the conditions of 
 material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to 
 consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the con- 
 ception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous 
 phantom which men call Liberty : most treacherous, in- 
 deed, of all phantoms ; for the feeblest ray of reason 
 might surely show us, that not only its attainment, 
 but its being, was impossible. There is no such thing 
 in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it 
 not ; the earth has it not ; the sea has it not ; and we 
 men have the mockery and semblance of it only 
 for our heaviest punishment. 
 
 208 
 
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 201) 
 
 In one of the noblest poems 16 for its imagery and 
 its music belonging to the recent school of our litera- 
 ture, the writer has sought in the aspect of inanimate 
 nature the expression of that Liberty which, having 
 once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes 
 of darkness. But with what strange fallacy of inter- 
 pretation ! since in one noble line of his invocation 
 he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and 
 acknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not 
 less severe because eternal. How could he other- 
 wise ? since if there be any one principle more widely 
 than another confessed by every utterance, or more 
 sternly than another imprinted on every atom, of the 
 visible creation, that principle is not Liberty, but Law. 
 
 II. The enthusiast would reply that by Liberty he 
 meant the Law of Liberty. Then why use the single 
 and misunderstood word ? If by liberty you mean 
 chastisement of the passions, discipline of the intellect, 
 subjection of the will ; if you mean the fear of inflict- 
 ing, the shame of committing, a wrong ; if you mean 
 respect for all who are in authority, and consideration 
 for all who are in dependence ; veneration for the good, 
 mercy to the evil, sympathy with the weak ; if you 
 mean watchfulness over all thoughts, temperance in all 
 pleasures, and perseverance in all toils ; if you mean, 
 in a word, that Service which is defined in the liturgy 
 of the English church to be perfect Freedom, why do 
 you name this by the same word by which the luxuri- 
 ous mean license, and the reckless mean change ; by 
 which the rogue means rapine, and the fool, equality ; 
 by which the proud mean anarchy, and the malignant 
 mean violence ? Call it by any name rather than this, 
 but its best and truest, is Obedience. Obedience is, 
 indeed, founded on a kind of freedom, else it would 
 become mere subjugation, but that freedom is only 
 granted that obedience may be more perfect ; and 
 thus, while a measure of license is necessary to exhibit 
 the individual energies of things, the fairness and 
 
 S.L.A. p 
 
210 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 pleasantness and perfection of them all consist in their 
 Restraint. Compare a river that has burst its banks 
 with one that is bound by them, and the clouds that 
 are scattered over the face of the whole heaven with 
 those that are marshalled into ranks and orders by 
 its winds. So that though restraint, utter and unre- 
 laxing, can never be comely, this is not because it is in 
 itself an evil, but only because, when too great, it over- 
 powers the nature of the thing restrained, and so coun- 
 teracts the other laws of which that nature is itself 
 composed. And the balance wherein consists the fair- 
 ness of creation is between the laws of life and being 
 in the things governed, and the laws of general sway 
 to which they are subjected ; and the suspension or 
 infringement of either kind of law, or, literally, dis- 
 order, is equivalent to, and synonymous with, disease ; 
 while the increase of both honour and beauty is habi- 
 tually on the side of restraint (or the action of superior 
 law) rather than of character (or the action of inher- 
 ent law). The noblest word in the catalogue of social 
 virtue is ' Loyalty ', and the sweetest which men have 
 learned in the pastures of the wilderness is ' Fold '. 
 
 III. Nor is this all ; but we may observe, that 
 exactly in proportion to the majesty of things in the 
 scale of being, is the completeness of their obedience 
 to the laws that are set over them. Gravitation is less 
 quietly, less instantly obeyed by a grain of dust than 
 it is by the sun and moon ; and the ocean falls and 
 flows under influences which the lake and river do not 
 recognize. So also in estimating the dignity of any 
 action or occupation of men, there is perhaps no better 
 test than the question ' are its laws strait ? ' For 
 their severity will probably be commensurate with the 
 greatness of the numbers whose labour it concentrates 
 or whose interest it concerns. 
 
 This severity must be singular, therefore, in the case 
 of that art, above all others, whose productions are 
 the most vast and the most common ; which requires 
 
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 211 
 
 for its practice the co-operation of bodies of men, and 
 for its perfection the perseverance of successive genera- 
 tions. And, taking into account also what we have 
 before so often observed of Architecture, her continual 
 influence over the emotions of daily life, and her realism, 
 as opposed to the two sister arts which are in compari- 
 son but the picturing of stories and of dreams, we 
 might beforehand expect that we should find her 
 healthy state and action dependent on far more severe 
 laws than theirs : that the license which they extend 
 to the workings of individual mind would be with- 
 drawn by her ; and that, in assertion of the relations 
 which she holds with all that is universally important 
 to man. she would set forth, by her own majestic 
 subjection, some likeness of that on which man's 
 social happiness and power depend. We might, there- 
 fore, without the light of experience, conclude, that 
 Architecture never could flourish except when it was 
 subjected to a national law as strict and as minutely 
 authoritative as the laws which regulate religion, 
 policy, and social relations ; nay, even more authorita- 
 tive than these, because both capable of more enforce- 
 ment, as over more passive matter ; and needing more 
 enforcement, as the purest type not of one law nor of an- 
 other, but of the common authority of all. But in 
 this matter experience speaks more loudly than reason. 
 If there be any one condition which, in watching the 
 progress of architecture, we see distinct and general ; 
 if, amidst the counter-evidence of success attending 
 opposite accidents of character and circumstance, any 
 one conclusion may be constantly and indisputably 
 drawn, it is this ; that the architecture of a nation is 
 great only when it is as universal and as established 
 as its language ; and when provincial differences of 
 style are nothing more than so many dialects. Other 
 necessities are matters of doubt : nations have been 
 alike successful in their architecture in times of poverty 
 and of wealth ; in times of war and of peace ; in times 
 
212 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 of barbarism and of refinement ; under governments 
 the most liberal or the most arbitrary ; but this one 
 condition has been constant, this one requirement clear 
 in all places and at all times, that the work shall be 
 that of a school, that no individual caprice shall dis- 
 pense with, or materially vary, accepted types and 
 customary decorations ; and that from the cottage to 
 the palace, and from the chapel to the basilica, and 
 from the garden fence to the fortress wall, every 
 member and feature of the architecture of the nation 
 shall be as commonly current, as frankly accepted, as 
 its language or its coin. 
 
 IV. A day never passes without our hearing our 
 English architects called upon to be original, and to 
 invent a new style : about as sensible and necessary 
 an exhortation as to ask of a man who has never had 
 rags enough on his back to keep out cold, to invent a 
 new mode of cutting a coat. Give him a whole coat 
 first, and let him concern himself about the fashion of 
 it afterwards. We want no new style of architecture. 
 Who wants a new style of painting or sculpture ? But 
 we want some style. It is of marvellously little import- 
 ance, if we have a code of laws and they be good laws, 
 whether they be new or old, foreign or native, Roman 
 or Saxon, or Norman, or English laws. But it is 
 of considerable importance that we should have a code 
 of laws of one kind or another, and that code accepted 
 and enforced from one side of the island to another, 
 and not one law made ground of judgment at York 
 and another in Exeter. And in like manner it does 
 not matter one marble splinter whether we have an old 
 or new architecture, but it matters everything whether 
 we have an architecture truly so called or not ; that is, 
 whether an architecture whose laws might be taught 
 at our schools from Cornwall to Northumberland, as 
 we teach English spelling and English grammar, or 
 an architecture which is to be invented fresh every 
 time we build a workhouse or a parish school. There 
 
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 213 
 
 seems to me to be a wonderful misunderstanding 
 among the majority of architects of the present day as 
 to the very nature and meaning of Originality, and of 
 all wherein it consists. Originality in expression does 
 not depend on invention of new words ; nor originality 
 in poetry on invention of new measures ; nor, in paint- 
 ing, on invention of new colours, or new modes of 
 using them. The chords of music, the harmonies of 
 colour, the general principles of the arrangement of 
 sculptural masses, have been determined long ago, 
 and, in all probability, cannot be added to any more 
 than they can be altered. Granting that they may be, 
 such additions or alterations are much more the work 
 of time and of multitudes than of individual inventors. 
 We may have one Van Eyck, who will be known as the 
 introducer of a new style once in ten centuries, but 
 he himself will trace his invention to some accidental 
 by-play or pursuit ; and the use of that invention will 
 depend altogether on the popular necessities or instincts 
 of the period. Orginality depends on nothing of the 
 kind. A man who has a gift, will take up any style 
 that is going, the style of his day, and will work in that, 
 and be great in that, and make everything that he does 
 in it look as fresh as if every thought of it had just come 
 down from heaven. I do not say that he will not take 
 liberties with his materials, or with his rules : I do not 
 say that strange changes will not sometimes be wrought 
 by his efforts, or his fancies, in both. But those changes 
 will be instructive, natural, facile, though some- 
 times marvellous ; they will never be sought after as 
 things necessary to his dignity or to his independence; 
 and those liberties will be like the liberties that a great 
 speaker takes with the language, not a defiance of its 
 rules for the sake of singularity ; but inevitable, uncal- 
 culated, and brilliant consequences of an effort to ex- 
 press what the language, without such infraction, 
 could not. There may be times when, as I have above 
 described, the life of an art is manifested in its changes, 
 
214 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 and in its refusal of ancient limitations : so there are 
 in the life of an insect ; and there is great interest in the 
 state of both the art and the insect at those periods 
 when, by their natural progress and constitutional 
 power, such changes are about to be wrought. But as 
 that would be both an uncomfortable and foolish cater- 
 pillar which, instead of being contented with a cater- 
 pillar's life and feeding on caterpillar's food, was always 
 striving to turn itself into a chrysalis ; and as that 
 would be an unhappy chrysalis which should lie awake 
 at night and roll restlessly in its cocoon, in efforts to 
 turn itself prematurely into a moth ; so will that art be 
 unhappy and unprosperous which, instead of support- 
 ing itself on the food, and contenting itself with the 
 customs, which have been enough for the support 
 and guidance of other arts before it and like it, is 
 struggling and fretting under the natural limitations of 
 its existence, and striving to become something other 
 than it is. And though it is the nobility of the highest 
 creatures to look forward to, and partly to understand 
 the changes which are appointed for them, preparing 
 for them beforehand ; and if, as is usual with appointed 
 changes, they be into a higher state, even desiring them, 
 and rejoicing in the hope of them, yet it is the strength 
 of every creature, be it changeful or not, to rest for the 
 time being, contented with the conditions of its exist- 
 ence, and striving only to bring about the changes 
 which it desires, by fulfilling to the uttermost the duties 
 for which its present state is appointed and continued. 
 V. Neither originality, therefore, nor change, good 
 though both may be, and this is commonly a 
 most merciful and enthusiastic supposition with 
 respect to either, is ever to be sought in itself, or can 
 ever be healthily obtained by any struggle or rebellion 
 against common laws. We want neither the one nor the 
 other. The forms of architecture already known are 
 good enough for us, and for far better than any 
 of us ; and it will be time enough to think of changing! 
 
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 215 
 
 them for better when we can use them as they are. 
 But tiere are some things which we not only want, 
 but cmnot do without ; and which all the struggling 
 and riving in the world, nay more, which all the 
 real ttlent and resolution in England, will never enable 
 us to do without : and these are Obedience, Unity, 
 Fellovship, and Order. And all our schools of design, 
 and 'ommittees of taste ; all our academies and 
 lectures, and journalisms, and essays ; all the sacrifices 
 which we are beginning to make, all the truth which 
 there is in our English nature, all the power of our 
 Englisu will, and the life of our English intellect, will 
 in this matter be as useless as efforts and emotions 
 in a cbeam, unless we are contented to submit architec- 
 ture aid all art, like other things, to English law. 
 
 VI. I say architecture and all art ; for I believe 
 archit;cture must be the beginning of arts, and that 
 the otiers must follow her in their time and order ; 
 and I think the prosperity of our schools of painting 
 and sculpture, in which no one will deny the life, 
 thougi many the health, depends upon that of our 
 archittcture. I think that all will languish until that 
 takes be lead, and (this I do not think, but I proclaim, 
 as confidently as I would assert the necessity, for the 
 safety of society, of an understood and strongly admin- 
 isterec legal government) our architecture will languish, 
 and tlat in the very dust, until the first principle of 
 comtnm sense be manfully obeyed, and an universal 
 systen of form and workmanship be everywhere 
 adopted and enforced. It may be said that this is 
 impossible. It may be so — I fear it is so : I have 
 nothirg to do with the possibility or impossibility of 
 it ; I dimply know and assert the necessity of it. If 
 it bo inpossible, English art is impossible. Give it up 
 at on:e. You are wasting time, and money, and 
 energy upon it, and though you exhaust centuries and 
 treasures, and break hearts for it, you will never 
 raise i above the merest dilettanteism. Think not of 
 
216 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 it. It is a dangerous vanity, a mere gulph in which 
 genius after genius will be swallowed up, and it will 
 not close. And so it will continue to be, unless the 
 one bold and broad step be taken at the beginning. We 
 shall not manufacture art out of pottery and printed 
 stuffs ; we shall not reason out art by our philosophy ; 
 we shall not stumble upon art by our experiments, nor 
 create it by our fancies : I do not say that we can even 
 build it out of brick and stone ; but there is a chance 
 for us in these, and there is none else ; and that chance 
 rests on the bare possibility of obtaining the consent, 
 both of architects and of the public, to choose a style, 
 and to use it universally. 
 
 VII. How surely its principles ought at first to be 
 limited, we may easily determine by the consideration 
 of the necessary modes of teaching any other branch 
 of general knowledge. When we begin to teach children 
 writing, we force them to absolute copyism, and require 
 absolute accuracy in the formation of the letters ; 
 as they obtain command of the received modes of 
 literal expression, we cannot prevent their falling into 
 such variations as are consistent with their feeling, 
 their circumstances, or their characters. So, when a 
 boy is first taught to write Latin, an authority is 
 required of him for every expression he uses : as he 
 becomes master of the language he may take a license, 
 and feel his right to do so without any authority, and 
 yet write better Latin than when he borrowed every 
 separate expression. In the same way our architects 
 would have to be taught to write the accepted style. 
 We must first determine what buildings are to be con- 
 sidered Augustan in their authority ; their modes of 
 construction and laws of proportion are to be studied 
 with the most penetrating care ; then the different 
 forms and uses of their decorations are to be classed 
 and catalogued, as a German grammarian classes the 
 powers of prepositions ; and under this absolute, 
 irrefragable authority, we are to begin to work ; ad- 
 
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 217 
 
 mitting not so much as an alteration in the depth of a 
 cavetto, or the breadth of a fillet. Then, when our 
 sight is once accustomed to the grammatical forms 
 and arrangements, and our thoughts familiar with the 
 expression of them all ; when we can speak this dead 
 language naturally, and apply it to whatever ideas we 
 have to render, that is to say, to every practical purpose 
 of life ; then, and not till then, a license might be per- 
 mitted, and individual authority allowed to change 
 or to add to the received forms, always within eertain 
 limits ; the decorations, especially, might be made 
 subjects of variable fancy, and enriched with ideas 
 either original or taken from other schools. And 
 thus, in process of time and by a great national move- 
 ment, it might come to pass that a new style should 
 arise, as language itself changes ; we might perhaps 
 come to speak Italian instead of Latin, or to speak 
 modern instead of old English ; but this would be a 
 matter of entire indifference, and a matter, besides, 
 which no determination or desire could either hasten or 
 prevent. That alone which it is in our power to obtain, 
 and which it is our duty to desire, is an unanimous 
 style of some kind, and such comprehension and 
 practice of it as would enable us to adapt its features 
 to the peculiar character of every several building, large 
 or small, domestic, civil, or ecclesiastical. I have said 
 that it was immaterial what style was adopted, so far 
 as regards the room for originality which its develop- 
 ment would admit : it is not so, however, when we 
 take into consideration the far more important questions 
 of the facility of adaptation to general purposes, and 
 of the sympathy with which this or that style would 
 be popularly regarded. The choice of Classical or 
 Gothic, again using the latter term in its broadest 
 sense, may be questionable when it regards some 
 single and considerable public building ; but I cannot 
 conceive it questionable, for an instant, when it re- 
 gards modern uses in general : I cannot conceive any 
 
218 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 architect insane enough to project the vulgarization 
 of Greek architecture. Neither can it be rationally 
 questionable whether we should adopt early or late, 
 original or derivative Gothic ; if the latter were chosen, 
 it must be either some impotent and ugly degradation, 
 like our own Tudor, or else a style whose grammatical 
 laws it would be nearly impossible to limit or arrange, 
 like the French Flamboyant. We are equally precluded 
 from adopting styles essentially infantine or barbarous, 
 however Herculean their infancy, or majestic their 
 outlawry, such as our own Norman, or the Lombard 
 Romanesque. The choice would lie I think between 
 four styles : 1. The Pisan Romanesque ; 2. The early 
 Gothic of the Western Italian Republics, advanced as 
 far and as fast as our art would enable us to the Gothic 
 of Giotto ; 3. The Venetian Gothic in its purest 
 development ; 4. The English earliest decorated. The 
 most natural, perhaps the safest choice, would be of 
 the last, well fenced from chance of again stiffening 
 into the perpendicular ; and perhaps enriched by some 
 mingling of decorative elements from the exquisite 
 decorated Gothic of France, of which, in such cases, it 
 would be needful to accept some well known examples, 
 as the North door of Rouen and the church of St 
 Urbain at Troyes, for final and limiting authorities on 
 the side of decoration. 
 
 VIII. It is almost impossible for us to conceive, in 
 our present state of doubt and ignorance, the sudden 
 dawn of intelligence and fancy, the rapidly increasing 
 sense of power and facility, and, in its proper sense, of 
 Freedom, which such wholesome restraint would in- 
 stantly cause throughout the whole circle of the arts. 
 Freed from the agitation and embarrassment of that 
 liberty of choice which is the cause of half the discom- 
 forts of the world ; freed from the accompanying 
 necessity of studying all past, present, or even possible 
 styles ; and enabled, by concentration of individual, 
 and co-operation of multitudinous energy, to penetrate 
 
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 219 
 
 into the uttermost secrets of the adopted style, the 
 architect would find his whole understanding en- 
 larged, his practical knowledge certain and ready to 
 hand, and his imagination playful and vigorous, as a 
 child's would be within a walled garden, who would 
 sit down and shudder if he were left free in a fenceless 
 plain. How many and how bright would be the results 
 in every direction of interest, not to the arts merely, but 
 to national happiness and virtue, it would be as difficult 
 to preconceive as it would seem extravagant to state : 
 but the first, perhaps the least, of them would be an 
 increased sense of fellowship among ourselves, a cement- 
 ing of every patriotic bond of union, a proud and happy 
 recognition of our affection for and sympathy with each 
 other, and our willingness in all things to submit 
 ourselves to every law that could advance the in- 
 terest of the community ; a barrier, also, the best 
 conceivable, to the unhappy rivalry of the upper and 
 middle classes, in houses, furniture, and establishments ; 
 and even a check to much of what is as vain as it is 
 painful in the oppositions of religious parties respecting 
 matters of ritual. These, I say, would be the first 
 consequences. Economy increased tenfold, as it 
 would be by the simplicity of practice ; domestic 
 comforts uninterfered with by the caprice and mistakes 
 of architects ignorant of the capacities of the styles 
 they use, and all the symmetry and sightliness of our 
 harmonized streets and public buildings, are things 
 of slighter account in the catalogue of benefits. But 
 it would be mere enthusiasm to endeavour to trace 
 them farther. I have suffered myself too long to 
 indulge in the speculative statement of requirements 
 which perhaps we have more immediate and more serious 
 work than to supply, and of feelings which it may be 
 only contingently in our power to recover. I should 
 be unjustly thought unaware of the difficulty of what 
 I have proposed, or of the unimportance of the whole 
 subject as compared with many which are brought 
 
220 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 home to our interests and fixed upon our consideration 
 by the wild course of the present century. But of 
 difficulty and of importance it is for others to judge. 
 I have limited myself to the simple statement of what, 
 if we desire to have architecture, we must primarily 
 endeavour to feel and do : but then it may not be 
 desirable for us to have architecture at all. There are 
 many who feel it to be so ; many who sacrifice much to 
 that end ; and I am sorry to see their energies wasted 
 and their lives disquieted in vain. I have stated, 
 therefore, the only ways in which that end is attainable, 
 without venturing even to express an opinion as to 
 its real desirableness. I have an opinion, and the 
 zeal with which I have spoken may sometimes have 
 betrayed it, but I hold to it with no confidence. I know 
 too well the undue importance which the study that 
 every man follows must assume in his own eyes, to 
 trust my own impressions of the dignity of that of 
 Architecture ; and yet I think I cannot be utterly 
 mistaken in regarding it as at least useful in the sense 
 of a National employment. I am confirmed in this 
 impression by what I see passing among the states of 
 Europe at this instant. All the horror, distress, and 
 tumult which oppress the foreign nations, are traceable, 
 among the other secondary causes through which God 
 is working out His will upon them, to the simple one 
 of their not having enough to do. I am not blind to 
 the distress among their operatives ; nor do I deny 
 the nearer and visibly active causes of the movement : 
 the recklessness of villainy in the leaders of revolt, the 
 absence of common moral principle in the upper classes, 
 and of common courage and honesty in the heads 
 of governments. But these causes themselves are 
 ultimately traceable to a deeper and simpler one : the 
 recklessness of the demagogue, the immorality of the 
 middle class, and the effeminacy and treachery of the 
 noble, are traceable in all these nations to the com- 
 monest and most fruitful cause of calamity in house- 
 
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 221 
 
 holds — idleness. We think too much in our benevo- 
 lent efforts, more multiplied and more vain day by 
 day, of bettering men by giving them advice and 
 instruction. There are few who will take either ; the 
 chief thing they need is occupation. I do not mean 
 work in the sense of bread, — I mean work in the sense 
 of mental interest ; for those who either are placed 
 above the necessity of labour for their bread, or who 
 will not work although they should. There is a vast 
 quantity of idle energy among European nations at 
 this time, which ought to go into handicrafts ; there 
 are multitudes of idle semi-gentlemen who ought to be 
 shoe-makers and carpenters ; but since they will not 
 be these so long as they can help it, the business of the 
 philanthropist is to find them some other employment 
 than disturbing governments. It is of no use to tell 
 them they are fools, and that they will only make 
 themselves miserable in the end as well as others : 
 if they have nothing else to do, they will do mischief ; 
 and the man who will not work, and who has no means 
 of intellectual pleasure, is as sure to become an instru- 
 ment of evil as if he had sold himself bodily to Satan. 
 I have myself seen enough of the daily life of the young 
 educated men of France and Italy, to account for, as 
 it deserves, the deepest national suffering and degra- 
 dation ; and though, for the most part, our commerce 
 and our natural habits of industry preserve us from a 
 similar paralysis, yet it would be wise to consider 
 whether the forms of employment which we chiefly 
 adopt or promote, are as well calculated as they might 
 be to improve and elevate us. 
 
 We have just spent, for instance, a hundred and 
 fifty millions, with which we have paid men for digging 
 ground from one place and depositing it in another. 
 We have formed a large class of men, the railway 
 navvies, especially reckless, unmanageable, and dan- 
 gerous. We have maintained besides (let us state the 
 benefits as fairly as possible) a number of iron founders 
 
222 TEE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 in an unhealthy and painful employment ; we have 
 developed (this is at least good) a very large amount 
 of mechanical ingenuity ; and we have, in fine, attained 
 the power of going fast from one place to another. 
 Meantime we have had no mental interest or concern 
 ourselves in the operations we have set on foot, but 
 have been left to the usual vanities and cares of our 
 existence. Suppose, on the other hand, that we had 
 employed the same sums in building beautiful houses 
 and churches. We should have maintained the same 
 number of men, not in driving wheelbarrows, but in a 
 distinctly technical, if not intellectual, employment ; 
 and those who were more intelligent among them would 
 have been especially happy in that employment, as 
 having room in it for the development of their fancy, 
 and being directed by it to that observation of beauty 
 which, associated with the pursuit of natural science, 
 at present forms the enjoyment of many of the more 
 intelligent manufacturing operatives. Of mechanical 
 ingenuity, there is, I imagine, at least as much required 
 to build a cathedral as to cut a tunnel or contrive a 
 locomotive : we should, therefore, have developed 
 as much science, while the artistical element of intellect 
 would have been added to the gain. Meantime we 
 should ourselves have been made happier and wiser by 
 the interest we should have taken in the work with 
 which we were personally concerned ; and when all 
 was done, instead of the very doubtful advantage of the 
 power of going fast from place to place, we should have 
 had the certain advantage of increased pleasure in 
 stopping at home. 
 
 IX. There are many other less capacious, but more 
 constant, channels of expenditure, quite as disputable 
 in their beneficial tendency ; and we are, perhaps, 
 hardly enough in the habit of inquiring, with respect 
 to any particular form of luxury or any customary 
 appliance of life, whether the kind of employment it 
 gives to the operative or the dependant be as healthy and 
 
THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 223 
 
 fitting an employment as we might otherwise provide for 
 him. It is not enough to find men absolute subsistence ; 
 we should think of the manner of life which our demands 
 necessitate ; and endeavour, as far as may be, to make 
 all our needs such as may, in the supply of them, raise, 
 as well as feed, the poor. It is far better to give work 
 which is above the men, than to educate the men to be 
 above their work. It may be doubted, for instance, 
 whether the habits of luxury, which necessitate a 
 large train of men servants, be a wholesome form of 
 expenditure ; and more, whether the pursuits which 
 have a tendency to enlarge the class of the jockey and 
 the groom be a philanthropic form of mental occupa- 
 tion. So again, consider the large number of men 
 whose lives are employed by civilized nations in cutting 
 facets upon jewels. There is much dexterity of hand, 
 patience, and ingenuity thus bestowed, which are simply 
 burned out in the blaze of the tiara, without, so far as I 
 see, bestowing any pleasure upon those who wear or 
 who behold, at all compensatory for the loss of life and 
 mental power which are involved in the employment 
 of the workman. He would be far more healthily 
 and happily sustained by being set to carve stone ; 
 certain qualities of his mind, for which there is no 
 room in his present occupation, would develop them- 
 selves in the nobler ; and I believe that most women 
 would, in the end, prefer the pleasure of having built 
 a church, or contributed to the adornment of a cathedral, 
 to the pride of bearing a certain quantity of adamant 
 on their foreheads. 
 
 X. I could pursue this subject willingly, but I have 
 some strange notions about it which it is perhaps wiser 
 not loosely to set down. I content myself with finally 
 reasserting, what has been throughout the burden of 
 the preceding pages, that whatever rank, or whatever 
 importance, may be attributed or attached to their 
 immediate subject, there is at least some value in the 
 analogies with which its pursuit has presented us, and 
 
224 THE LAMP OF OBEDIENCE 
 
 some instruction in the frequent reference of its com- 
 monest necessities to the mighty laws, in the sense 
 and scope of which all men are Builders, whom every 
 hour sees laying the stubble or the stone. 
 
 I have paused, not once nor twice, as I wrote, and 
 often have checked the course of what might other- 
 wise have been importunate persuasion, as the thought 
 has crossed me, how soon all Architecture may be vain, 
 except that which is not made with hands. There 
 is something ominous in the light which has enabled 
 us to look back with disdain upon the ages among 
 whose lovely vestiges we have been wandering. I 
 could smile when I hear the hopeful exultation of many, 
 at the new reach of worldly science, and vigour cf 
 worldly effort ; as if we were again at the beginning 
 of days. There is thunder on the horizon as well as 
 dawn. The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot 
 entered into Zoar. 
 
NOTES 
 
 1. page 15. ' With the idolatrous Egyptian ' : The proba- 
 bility is indeed slight in comparison, but it is a probability 
 nevertheless, and one which is daily on the increase. I 
 trust that I may not be thought to underrate the danger 
 of such sympathy, though I speak lightly of the chance of 
 it. I have confidence in the central religious body of the 
 English and Scottish people, as being not only untainted 
 with Romanism, but immoveably adverse to it ; and, how- 
 ever strangely and swiftly the heresy of the Protestant 
 and victory of the Papist may seem to be extending among 
 us, I feel assured that there are barriers in the living faith 
 of this nation which neither can overpass. Yet this confi- 
 dence is only in the ultimate faithfulness of a few, not in 
 the security of the nation from the sin and the punishment 
 of partial apostasy. Both have, indeed, in some sort, been 
 committed and suffered already ; and, in expressing my 
 belief of the close connection of the distress and burden 
 which the mass of the people at present sustain, with the 
 encouragement which, in various directions, has been given 
 to the Papist, do not let me be called superstitious or irra- 
 tional. No man was ever more inclined than I, both by 
 natural disposition and by many ties of early association, 
 to a sympathy with the principles and forms of the Romanist 
 Church ; and there is much in its discipline which con- 
 scientiously, as well as sympathetically, I could love and 
 advocate. But, in confessing this strength of affectionate 
 prejudice, surely I vindicate more respect for my firmly 
 expressed belief, that the entire doctrine and system of that 
 Church is in the fullest sense anti-Christian ; that its lying 
 and idolatrous Power is the darkest plague that ever held 
 commission to hurt the Earth ; that all those yearnings for 
 unity and fellowship, and common obedience, which have 
 been the root of our late heresies, are as false in their grounds 
 as fatal in their termination ; that we never can have the 
 remotest fellowship with the utterers of that fearful False- 
 hood, and live ; that we have nothing to look to from them 
 
 S.L.A. 225 Q 
 
226 NOTES 
 
 but treacherous hostility ; and that, exactly in proportion 
 to the sternness of our separation from them, will be not 
 only the spiritual but the temporal blessings granted by 
 God to this country. How close has been the correspond- 
 ence hitherto between the degree of resistance to Romanism 
 marked in our national acts, and the honour with which 
 those acts have been crowned, has been sufficiently proved 
 in a short essay by a writer whose investigations into the 
 influence of Religion upon the fate of Nations have been 
 singularly earnest and successful — a writer with whom I 
 faithfully and firmly believe that England will never be pros- 
 perous again, that the honour of her arms will be tarnished, 
 and her commerce blighted, and her national character 
 degraded, until the Romanist is expelled from the place 
 which has impiously been conceded to him among her legis- 
 lators. ' Whatever be the lot of those to whom error is an 
 inheritance, woe be to the man and to the people to whom 
 it is an adoption. If England, free above all other nations, sus- 
 tained amidst the trials which have covered Europe, before 
 her eyes, with burning and slaughter, and enlightened by 
 the fullest knowledge of divine truth, shall refuse fidelity to 
 the compact by which those matchless privileges have been 
 given, her condemnation will not linger. She has already 
 made one step full of danger. She has committed the capital 
 error of mistaking that for a purely political question which 
 was a purely religious one. Her foot already hangs over 
 the edge of the precipice. It must be retracted, or the 
 empire is^buta name. In the clouds and darkness which seem 
 to be deepening on all human policy — in the gathering 
 tumults of Europe, and the feverish discontents at home — 
 it may be even difficult to discern where the power yet lives 
 to erect the fallen majesty of the constitution once more. 
 But there are mighty means in sincerity ; and if no miracle 
 was ever wrought for the faithless and despairing, the country 
 that will help itself will never be left destitute of the help of 
 Heaven.' (Historical Essays, by the Rev. Dr. Croly, 1 842). 
 The first of these essays, England the Fortress of Christian- 
 ity, I most earnestly recommend to the meditation of those 
 who doubt that a special punishment is inflicted by the Deity 
 upon all national crime, and perhaps, of all such crime, most 
 instantly upon the betrayal, on the part of England, of the 
 truth and faith with which she has been entrusted. 
 
 2. p.^lQ. 'Not the gift, but the giving ' .- Much attention 
 has lately been directed to the subject of re ligious art, and 
 we are now in possession of all kinds of interpretations 
 and classifications of it, and of the leading fact s of its history. 
 But the greatest question of all connected w ith it remains 
 
NOTES 227 
 
 entirely unanswered, What good did it do to real religion ? 
 There is no subject into which I should so much rejoice to 
 see a serious and conscientious inquiry instituted as this ; 
 an inquiry, undertaken neither in artistical enthusiasm nor 
 in monkish sympathy, but dogged, merciless, and fearless. 
 I love the religious art of Italy as well as most men, but 
 there is a wide difference between loving it as a manifesta- 
 tion of individual feeling, and looking to it as an instrument 
 of popular benefit. I have not knowledge enough to form 
 even the shadow of an opinion on this latter point, and I 
 should be most grateful to any one who would put it in my 
 power to do so. There are, as it seems to me, three distinct 
 questions to be considered : the first, What has been the 
 effect of external splendour on the genuineness and earnest- 
 ness of Christian worship ? the second, What is the 
 us,3 of pictorial or sculptural representation in the com- 
 munication of Christian historical knowledge, or excitement 
 of affectionate imagination ? the third, What the influence 
 of the practice of religious art on the life of the artist ? 
 
 In answering these inquiries, we should have to consider 
 separately every collateral influence and circumstance ; 
 and, by a most subtle analysis, to eliminate the real effect 
 of art from the effects of the abuses with which it was 
 associated. This could be done only by a Christian ; not 
 a man who would fall in love with a sweet colour or sweet 
 expression, but who would look for true faith and consistent 
 life as the object of all. It never has been done yet, and the 
 question remains a subject of vain and endless contention 
 between parties of opposite prejudices and temperaments. 
 
 3. p. 21. ' To the concealment of what is really good or 
 great ' : I have often been surprised at the supposition 
 that Romanism, in its present condition, could either patron- 
 ise art, or profit by it. The noble painted windows of St 
 Maclou at Rouen, and many other churches in France, are 
 entirely blocked up behind the altars by the erection of 
 huge gilded wooden sunbeams, with interspersed cherubs. 
 
 4. p. 29. ' With different pattern of traceries in each ' : 
 I have certainly not examined the seven hundred and four 
 traceries (four to each niche) so as to be sure that none are 
 alike : but they have the aspect of continual variation, and 
 even the roses of the pendants of the small groined niche 
 roofs are all of different patterns. 
 
 5. p. 4 1 . ' Its flamboyant traceries of the last and most 
 degraded forms ' : They are noticed by Mr. Whewell as 
 
228 NOTES 
 
 forming the figuro of the fleur-de-liSi always a mark, when 
 in tracery bars, of the most debased flamboyant. It occurs 
 in the central tower of Bayeux, very richly in the buttresses 
 of St Gervais at Falaise, and in the small niches of some of 
 the domestic buildings at Rouen. Nor is it only the tower 
 of St Ouen which is overrated. Its nave is a base imita- 
 tion, in the flamboyant period, of an early Gothic arrange- 
 ment ; the niches on its piers are barbarisms ; there is a 
 huge square shaft run through the ceiling of the aisles to 
 support the nave piers, the ugliest excrescence I ever saw 
 on a Gothic building ; the traceries of the nave are the most 
 insipid and faded flamboyant ; those of the transept cleres- 
 tory present a singularly distorted condition of perpendicu- 
 lar ; even the elaborate door of the south transept is, for its 
 fine period, extravagant and almost grotesque in its folia- 
 tion and pendants. There is nothing truly fine in the church 
 but the choir, the light triforium, and tall clerestory, the 
 circle of Eastern chapels, the details of sculpture, and the 
 general lightness of proportion, these merits being seen to 
 the utmost advantage by the freedom of the body of the 
 church from all incumbrance. 
 
 6. p. 41. Compare Iliad 2, 1. 219, with Odyssey ft 
 11, 5-10. 
 
 7. p. 42. ' Does not admit iron as a constructive material ' : 
 Except in Chaucer's noble temple of Mars. 
 
 And dounward from an hill under a bent, 
 
 Ther stood the temple of Mars, armi potent, 
 
 Wrought all of burned stele, of which th' entree 
 
 Was longe and streite, and gastly for to see. 
 
 And thereout came a rage and swiche a vise, 
 
 That it made all the gates for to rise. 
 
 The northern light in at the dore shone, 
 
 For window on the wall ne was ther none, 
 
 Thurgh which men mighten any light discerne. 
 
 The dore was all of athamant eterne, 
 
 Yclenched overthwart and endelong 
 
 With yren tough, and for to make it strong. 
 
 Every piler the temple to sustene 
 
 Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene. 
 
 — The Knighte's Tale. 
 
 There is, by the bye, an exquisite piece of architectural 
 colour just before : 
 
 And northward, in a turret on the wall 
 0/ alabaster white, and red corall, 
 An oratorie riche for to see, 
 In worship of Diane of Chastitee. 
 
NOTES 229 
 
 8. p. 43. ' The Builders of Salisbury ' : ' This way of 
 tying walls together with iron, instead of making them of 
 that substance and form, that they shall naturally poise 
 themselves upon their buttment, is against the rules of 
 good architecture, not only because iron is corruptible by 
 rust, but because it is fallacious, having unequal veins in 
 t lie metal, some places of the same bar being three times 
 stronger than others, and yet all sound to appearance.' 
 (Survey of Salisbury Cathedral in 1668, by Sir C. Wren.) 
 For my own part, I think it better work to bind a tower with 
 iron, than to support a false dome by a brick pyramid. 
 
 9. p. 60. Plate 3 : In this plate figures 4, 5, and 6 are 
 glazed windows, but fig. 2 is the open light of a belfry tower, 
 and figures 1 and 3 are in triforia, the latter also occurring 
 filled, on the central tower of Coutances. 
 
 10. p. 98. ' Ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen ' ; 
 The reader cannot but observe the agreeableness, as a mere 
 arrangement of shade, which especially belongs to the 
 ' sacred trefoil.' I do not think that the element of folia- 
 tion has been enough insisted upon in its intimate relations 
 with the power of Gothic work. If I were asked what was 
 the most distinctive feature of its perfect style, I should say 
 the Trefoil. It is the very soul of it ; and I think the love- 
 liest Gothic is always formed upon simple and bold tracings 
 of it, taking place between the blank lancet arch on the 
 one hand, and the overcharged cinquefoiled arch on the other. 
 
 11. p. 100. ' And levelled cusps of stone ' .• The plate repre- 
 sents one of the lateral windows of the third story of the 
 r.dazzo Foscari. It was drawn from the opposite side of 
 the Grand Canal, and the lines of its traceries are therefore 
 given as they appear in somewhat distant effect. It shows 
 oiily segments of the characteristic quatrefoils of the central 
 wmdows. I found by measurement their construction ex- 
 ceedingly simple. Four circles are drawn in contact within 
 the large circle. Two tangential lines are then drawn to 
 each opposite pair, enclosing the four circles in a hollow 
 cross. An inner circle, struck through the intersections of 
 the circles by the tangents, truncates the cusps. 
 
 12. p. 134. ' Into vertical equal parts' : Not absolutely 
 sc. There are variations partly accidental (or at least 
 compelled by the architect's effort to recover the vertical) 
 between the sides of the stories ; and the upper and 
 
230 NOTES 
 
 iowar story are talier than the rest. There is, however, an 
 apparent equality between five out of the eight tiers. 
 
 13. p. 143. ' Never paint a column with vertical lines ' : 
 It should be observed, however, that any pattern wliich 
 gives opponent lines in its parts, may be arranged on lines 
 parallel with the main structure. Thus, rows of diamonds, 
 like spots on a snake's back, or the bones on a sturgeon, are 
 exquisitely applied both to vertical and spiral columns. The 
 loveliest instances of such decoration that I know, are the 
 pillars of the cloister of St John Lateran, lately illustrated 
 by Mr Digby Wyatt, in his most valuable and faithful work 
 on antique mosaic. 
 
 14. p. 186. ' The flowers lost their light, the river its 
 music ' : Yet not all their light, nor all its music. Compare 
 Modern Painters, vol ii. sec. 1, chap. iv. § 8. 
 
 15. p. 200. ' By the artists of the time of Pericles ' : 
 This subordination was first remarked to me by a friend, to 
 whose profound knowledge of Greek art I owe many obliga- 
 tions : Mr. C. Newton, now Consul at Mitylene. 
 
 16. p. 209. 'In one of the noblest poems' : Coleridge's 
 Ode to France : 
 
 Ye Clouds I that far above me float and pause, 
 Whose pathless march no mortal may control 1 
 Ye Ocean Waves ! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, 
 
 Yield homage only to eternal laws 1 
 
 Ye Woods 1 that listen to the night-birds singing, 
 Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined. 
 
 Save when your own imperious branches swinging, 
 Have made a solemn music of the wind 1 
 
 Where, like a man beloved of God, 
 
 Through glooms, which never woodman trod, 
 How oft, pursuing fancies holy. 
 
 My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, 
 Inspired, beyond the gue3s of folly. 
 
 By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound I 
 
 O ye loud Waves 1 and O ye Forests high 1 
 And O ye Clouds that far above me soared 1 
 
 Thou rising Sun 1 thou blue rejoicing Sky ! 
 Yea, every thing that is and will be free I 
 Bear witness far me, wheresoe' er ye be, 
 With what deep worship I have still adored 
 The spirit of divine.it Libsrty. 
 
 Noble verse, but erring thought : contrast George Her- 
 bert : 
 
NOTES 231 
 
 Slight those who say amidst their sickly healths. 
 Thou livest by rule. What doth not so but man ? 
 Houses are built by rule, and Commonwealths. 
 Entice the trusty sun, if that you can, 
 From his ecliptic line ; beckon the sky. 
 Who lives by rule, then, keeps good company. 
 
 Who keeps no guard upon himself is slack. 
 And rots to nothing at the next great thaw ; 
 Man is a shop of rules : a well-truss'd pack 
 Whose every parcel underwrites a law. 
 Lose not thyself, nor give thy humours way ; 
 God gave them to thee under lock and key. 
 
 The End 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbeville, 131 
 Abstraction, 128 
 Agreeableness, sources of, in 
 
 ornament, 55 
 Animals, architecture of, 46 
 Anselm's Tower, Canter- 
 bury, 65 
 Antwerp Cathedral, 131 
 Architectural deceits, 37 
 Architecture, a political art, 
 2 ; to be distinguished 
 from building, 8 ; the five 
 heads of, 10 ; value of ap- 
 pearance of labour upon, 
 23 ; ornament in, 28 
 sqq. ; violations of truth 
 in, 36 ; metallic con- 
 struction in, 42 ; of 
 animals, 46 ; nobleness in, 
 54 ; fall of medieval, 69 ; 
 imitates natural forms, 
 72 ; broad divisions of, 
 79 ; and painting, 87 ; 
 mass and interval in, 88 ; 
 domestic, 104 ; and 
 primal forms, 111; orna- 
 mentation in, 121 ; pro- 
 portion and abstraction 
 in, 128 sqq. ; colour and 
 form in, 143 ; system of 
 decoration in, 148 sqq. ; 
 finish in, 160 ; living, 167 ; 
 and memory, 186 ; and 
 posterity, 194 ; preserva- 
 tion and restoration in, 
 203 sqq. ; and law, 215 ; 
 and national employment, 
 220. 
 
 Area, 79 
 
 Art, life and deadness in, 157 
 Audacity in imitation, 159 
 Authority in style, 216 
 Avranches, cathedral, 206 
 
 Beauty, 106 ; and frequency, 
 
 109 
 Beauvais, cathedral, 40, 75 
 Bologna, Palazzo Pepoli at, 
 
 57 
 Bounding-line, 77 
 British Museum, 50 
 Brunekeschi, 43 
 Building and architecture, 8 
 Byzantine architecture, 90 
 
 Caen, Abbaye aux Hommes 
 
 at, 60 
 Certosa, of Pavia, 27 
 Champagnole, reminiscence 
 
 of, 184 
 Chaucer, quoted, 228 
 Church furniture, 50 
 Cinque cento, 141 
 Cis-Alpine Gothic, 92 
 Clouds, philosophy of art of, 
 
 38 
 Coleridge, quoted, 230 
 Colleone chapel at Bergamo, 
 
 27 
 Colour, how attained, 1 ; in 
 
 sculpture, 142 ; and form, 
 
 141 
 Colour-mosaic, 182 
 Concavities, 101 
 Conscientiousness in art, 36 
 Conspicuousness, 50 
 
234 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ccrreggio, 1*6, 200 
 
 Coutances, 60 
 
 Coxcombrv, architectural, 
 
 141 
 ( Irystals, 1 10 
 Cube, the, 112 
 Curves, 111 
 
 Decoration, law of, 123 ; 
 
 system of, 148 
 Derivative and original, 72 
 Design, divisions of, 85 
 Deuteronomy, quoted, 14 
 Diffusion of light, 91 
 Domestic Gothic, 90 
 Doric and Venetian styles, 
 
 99 
 Dovetailing, 45 
 Drapery, 1 1 6 
 Ductility, <>4 
 Diirer, 1 15 
 
 Eastlake, Sir Charles, 89, 
 
 139 
 Energies of man, duality in, 
 
 155 
 Enjoyment, the test of, 181 
 Erechtheum, 111 
 Eu, 60 
 
 Failure, philosophy of, 1 
 
 Festoons, 117 
 
 Finish, 160 
 
 Florence, campanile of 
 
 Giotto at, 26 siq. ; 
 
 Palazzo Vecchio at, 58 
 Flying buttress, 40 
 Foil, 96 
 'Fold', 210 
 
 Frankness in imitation, 158 
 French Flamboyant, 79, 218 
 French Gothic, 61, 69 
 Frequency, 109 
 
 Garlands, 117 
 Gesso, 86 
 Ghiberti, 115, 121 
 
 Gilding, 52 
 
 Gi >rgione, 142 
 
 Giotto's campanile, 26 sqq. 
 
 Glass, management of, 96 
 
 God in human affairs, re- 
 verential reference to, 6 ; 
 offerings to, 12 ; obeys 
 His own laws. 4t> 
 
 Gothic architecture, causes 
 of fall of, 59 
 
 Gravitation, 116 
 
 Greek fret, 110 
 
 Height, 79 
 
 Heraldic decoration, 113 
 Herbert, George, quoted, 5, 
 231 
 
 Historical purpose, in public 
 
 buildings, 191 
 Honesty, principle of, 25 
 Hope, Mr, 39 
 House-fronts, 124 
 
 Idleness, 220-1 
 
 Idolatry, 15 
 
 Imagination, action of, 34 ; 
 distinguished from de- 
 ception, 35 
 
 Imitation, how to be ren- 
 dered vital, 158 
 
 Imitation jewellery, 56 
 
 Imitative forms, 107 
 
 Impatience, value of, 163 
 
 India House, 193 
 
 Inscriptions, 114 
 
 Intersectional mouldings, 60 
 
 Invention, 73 
 
 Iron, use of, 41 
 
 Italian tracjries, 95 
 
 John, quoted. 20 
 
 Kinys, quoted, 15 
 King's College Chapel, 39, 
 130 
 
 Lamentations, quoted, 15 
 
INDEX 
 
 235 
 
 Law essential to art, etc., 215 
 
 Laws of right, irrefragable, 
 ,•{ 
 
 Levitieal sacrifice, considera- 
 tions of the, 13 sqq. 
 
 Liberty, 208 
 
 Lies, kinds of, 32 
 
 Lindsay, Lord, 160 
 
 Line and mass, in decora- 
 tion, 62 
 
 Linear division, 85 
 
 Lisieux, 60, 204 
 
 Living architecture, 167 
 
 Lombard Romanesque, 82 
 
 London Bridge, 127 
 
 London shops, 124 
 
 Loyalty, 210 
 
 Lucca, or San Michele, 91, 
 95, 96, 103 
 
 Malachi, quoted, 14 
 
 Marble facing, 53 
 
 Masonry, 83 
 
 Mass, 88 ; and majesty, 102 
 
 Material, false representa- 
 tion of, 49 
 
 Merton College, 97 
 
 Metals, architectural laws of, 
 43 
 
 Michael Angelo, 47, 200 
 
 Milan Cathedral, 47 
 
 Milton, 89 
 
 Ministry to the poor, 17 
 
 Mino da Picsole, 178 
 
 Modem Painters, quoted, 23 
 
 Modern work, characteristic 
 inadequacy of, 22 
 
 Monochr >m figures, 151 
 
 Monstrification, 109 
 
 Moral and practical, con- 
 nexion between their 
 spheres, 4 
 
 Motto in heraldic decor- 
 ation, the, 1 13 
 
 Mouldings, LOO 
 
 Nature and Architecture, 73 
 
 Northern Gothic, 131 
 
 Numbers, quoted, 18 
 
 Operative deceit, 55 
 ' Ornament cannot be over- 
 charged ', 28 
 Ornament, the place for, 121 
 
 Padua, Eremitani at, 60, 
 98 
 
 Painted Window, the, 149 
 
 Painting, legitimate sub- 
 jects of, 48 
 
 Parasitical sublimity, 197 
 
 Parma, Camera di Correggio 
 at, 48 
 
 Parthenon, sculptures of, 
 199 
 
 Perpendicular, 79 
 
 Perugino, 115 
 
 ' Picturesque ', 196 
 
 Pisa, Campo Santo at, 48, 
 96 ; cathedral, 82, 163 ; 
 tower of, 134, 166 ; Bap- 
 tistery at, 204 
 
 Plagiarism, 159 
 
 Plantain, 134 
 
 Poetry and architecture 
 conquer forgetfulness, 186 
 
 Portcullis, the, 112 
 
 Positive shade in painting 
 and architecture, 86 
 
 Posterity, 194 
 
 Prato cathedral, 45 
 
 Proportion, 128 
 
 Psalms, quoted, 18 
 
 Railroad-station, the, 125 
 Railways, consequences of, 
 
 221-2 
 Raphael, 115 
 Rembrandtism, 87 
 Restoration, 203 sqq. 
 Reticulation, 112, 147 
 Riband, the, 114 
 Romanism, abuse and fallacy 
 
 of, 20, 22 VG 
 
233 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Rouen, cathedral, illustra- 
 tions from, 25, 28, 42, 
 131; Palais de Justice at, 
 204 
 
 Rubens, 146, 201 
 
 St. Maclou at Rouen, 175, 
 
 227 
 St. Madeleine at Paris, 84 
 St. Ouen at Rouen, 40 
 St. Paul's Cathedral, 118 
 St. Peter's at Rome, 74, 
 
 93 
 St. Sophia, Constantinople, 
 
 39 
 Samuel, quoted, 14 
 Self -sacrifice, 11 
 Serenity, 93 
 
 Shadow, decoration by, 97 
 Shop-fronts, 50 
 Sin, moral considerations of, 
 
 32 
 Sistine chapel, 47 
 Size, rules of, 76 
 Sky, philosophy of art of, 
 
 39 
 Spruce fir, 94 
 Strasburg, 131 
 Structural deceits, 37 
 Subordination, 137 
 Support, conditions of, 39 
 Surface deceits, 46 
 
 Sympathy, in architecture, 
 73 
 
 Thinking in shadow, 87 7 
 
 Tintoret, 142, 201 
 
 Titian, 146 
 
 Tour de Beurre, Rouen, l, 27 
 
 Tracery, rise of, 60 
 
 Tudor style, 147 
 
 Unseen work, 24 
 
 Van Eyck, 213 
 
 Veneering, 53 
 
 Venetian Gothic, 92 
 
 Venice, Doge's palace at, t, 81, 
 96 ; house in Campo>o St 
 Benedetto at, 141 ; hthouse 
 at head of Grand CfOanal 
 at, 190 
 
 Vercelli, 57 
 
 Verona, 25, 98 
 
 Veronese, 146 
 
 Vicenza, house at, 190 
 
 Visibility, 25 
 
 Whitewash, 51 
 Willis, Professor, 60 
 Window, as exponent t 
 
 power, 119 
 Wood, J., 169 
 Wyatt, Mr Digby, 230 
 
 of 
 
?L~Ri4rf*r/; 
 
GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 
 
 3 3125 00598 1747 
 
The Seven 
 Lamps 
 
 of 
 
 Architecture 
 
 ^£XXB 
 
 Routledgc