On the Old Road Volume I Part 15

Let us a.s.sume, however, that the architect is always conscientious--always willing, the moment he has done what is strictly necessary for the safety and decorous aspect of the building, to abandon his income, and declare his farther services unnecessary. Let us presume, also, that every one of the two or three hundred workmen who must be employed under him is equally conscientious, and, during the course of years of labor, will never destroy in carelessness what it may be inconvenient to save, or in cunning what it is difficult to imitate.

Will all this probity of purpose preserve the hand from error, and the heart from weariness? Will it give dexterity to the awkward--sagacity to the dull--and at once invest two or three hundred imperfectly educated men with the feeling, intention, and information of the freemasons of the thirteenth century? Grant that it can do all this, and that the new building is both equal to the old in beauty, and precisely correspondent to it in detail. Is it, therefore, altogether _worth_ the old building?

Is the stone carved to-day in their masons' yards altogether the same in value to the hearts of the French people as that which the eyes of St.

Louis saw lifted to its place? Would a loving daughter, in mere desire for gaudy dress, ask a jeweler for a bright fac-simile of the worn cross which her mother bequeathed to her on her deathbed?--would a thoughtful nation, in mere fondness for splendor of streets, ask its architects to provide for it fac-similes of the temples which for centuries had given joy to its saints, comfort to its mourners, and strength to its chivalry?

264. But it may be replied, that all this is already admitted by the antiquaries of France and England; and that it is impossible that works so important should now be undertaken with due consideration and faithful superintendence.

I answer, that the men who justly feel these truths are rarely those who have much influence in public affairs. It is the poor abbe, whose little garden is sheltered by the mighty b.u.t.tresses from the north wind, who knows the worth of the cathedral. It is the bustling mayor and the prosperous architect who determine its fate.

I answer farther, by the statement of a simple fact. I have given many years, in many cities, to the study of Gothic architecture; and of all that I know, or knew, the entrance to the north transept of Rouen Cathedral was, on the whole, the most beautiful--beautiful, not only as an elaborate and faultless work of the finest time of Gothic art, but yet more beautiful in the partial, though not dangerous, decay which had touched its pinnacles with pensive coloring, and softened its severer lines with unexpected change and delicate fracture, like sweet breaks in a distant music. The upper part of it has been already restored to the white accuracies of novelty; the lower pinnacles, which flanked its approach, far more exquisite in their partial ruin than the loveliest remains of our English abbeys, have been entirely destroyed, and rebuilt in rough blocks, now in process of sculpture. This restoration, so far as it has gone, has been executed by peculiarly skillful workmen; it is an unusually favorable example of restoration, especially in the care which has been taken to preserve intact the exquisite, and hitherto almost uninjured sculptures which fill the quatrefoils of the tracery above the arch. But I happened myself to have made, five years ago, detailed drawings of the b.u.t.tress decorations on the right and left of this tracery, which are part of the work that has been completely restored. And I found the restorations as inaccurate as they were unnecessary.

265. If this is the case in a most favorable instance, in that of a well-known monument, highly esteemed by every antiquary in France, what, during the progress of the now almost universal repair, is likely to become of architecture which is unwatched and despised?

Despised! and more than despised--even hated! It is a sad truth, that there is something in the solemn aspect of ancient architecture which, in rebuking frivolity and chastening gayety, has become at this time literally _repulsive_ to a large majority of the population of Europe.

Examine the direction which is taken by all the influences of fortune and of fancy, wherever they concern themselves with art, and it will be found that the real, earnest effort of the upper cla.s.ses of European society is to make every place in the world as much like the Champs Elysees of Paris as possible. Wherever the influence of that educated society is felt, the old buildings are relentlessly destroyed; vast hotels, like barracks, and rows of high, square-windowed dwelling-houses, thrust themselves forward to conceal the hated antiquities of the great cities of France and Italy. Gay promenades, with fountains and statues, prolong themselves along the quays once dedicated to commerce; ball-rooms and theaters rise upon the dust of desecrated chapels, and thrust into darkness the humility of domestic life. And when the formal street, in all its pride of perfumery and confectionery, has successfully consumed its way through wrecks of historical monuments, and consummated its symmetry in the ruin of all that once prompted a reflection, or pleaded for regard, the whitened city is praised for its splendor, and the exulting inhabitants for their patriotism--patriotism which consists in insulting their fathers with forgetfulness, and surrounding their children with temptation.

266. I am far from intending my words to involve any disrespectful allusion to the very n.o.ble improvements in the city of Paris itself, lately carried out under the encouragement of the Emperor. Paris, in its own peculiar character of bright magnificence, had nothing to fear, and everything to gain, from the gorgeous prolongation of the Rue Rivoli.

But I speak of the general influence of the rich travelers and proprietors of Europe on the cities which they pretend to admire, or endeavor to improve. I speak of the changes wrought during my own lifetime on the cities of Venice, Florence, Geneva, Lucerne, and chief of all on Rouen, a city altogether inestimable for its retention of mediaeval character in the infinitely varied streets in which one half of the existing and inhabited houses date from the 15th or early 16th century, and the only town left in France in which the effect of old French domestic architecture can yet be seen in its collective groups.

But when I was there, this last spring, I heard that these n.o.ble old Norman houses are all, as speedily as may be, to be stripped of the dark slates which protected their timbers, and deliberately whitewashed over all their sculptures and ornaments, in order to bring the interior of the town into some conformity with the "handsome fronts" of the hotels and offices on the quay.

Hotels and offices, and "handsome fronts" in general--they can be built in America or Australia--built at any moment, and in any height of splendor. But who shall give us back, when once destroyed, the habitations of the French chivalry and bourgeoisie in the days of the Field of the Cloth of Gold?

267. It is strange that no one seems to think of this! What do men travel for, in this Europe of ours? Is it only to gamble with French dies--to drink coffee out of French porcelain--to dance to the beat of German drums, and sleep in the soft air of Italy? Are the ball-room, the billiard-room, and the Boulevard, the only attractions that win us into wandering, or tempt us to repose? And when the time is come, as come it will, and that shortly, when the parsimony--or la.s.situde--which, for the most part, are the only protectors of the remnants of elder time, shall be scattered by the advance of civilization--when all the monuments, preserved only because it was too costly to destroy them, shall have been crushed by the energies of the new world, will the proud nations of the twentieth century, looking round on the plains of Europe, disenc.u.mbered of their memorial marbles,--will those nations indeed stand up with no other feeling than one of triumph, freed from the paralysis of precedent and the entanglement of memory, to thank us, the fathers of progress, that no saddening shadows can any more trouble the enjoyments of the future,--no moments of reflection r.e.t.a.r.d its activities; and that the new-born population of a world without a record and without a ruin may, in the fullness of ephemeral felicity, dispose itself to eat, and to drink, and to die?

268. Is this verily the end at which we aim, and will the mission of the age have been then only accomplished, when the last castle has fallen from our rocks, the last cloisters faded from our valleys, the last streets, in which the dead have dwelt, been effaced from our cities, and regenerated society is left in luxurious possession of towns composed only of bright saloons, overlooking gay parterres? If this indeed be our end, yet why must it be so laboriously accomplished? Are there no new countries on the earth, as yet uncrowned by thorns of cathedral spires, untenanted by the consciousness of a past? Must this little Europe--this corner of our globe, gilded with the blood of old battles, and gray with the temples of old pieties--this narrow piece of the world's pavement, worn down by so many pilgrims' feet, be utterly swept and garnished for the masque of the Future? Is America not wide enough for the elasticities of our humanity? Asia not rich enough for its pride? or among the quiet meadowlands and solitary hills of the old land, is there not yet room enough for the spreadings of power, or the indulgences of magnificence, without founding all glory upon ruin, and prefacing all progress with obliteration?

269. We must answer these questions speedily, or we answer them in vain.

The peculiar character of the evil which is being wrought by this age is its utter irreparableness. Its newly formed schools of art, its extending galleries, and well-ordered museums will a.s.suredly bear some fruit in time, and give once more to the popular mind the power to discern what is great, and the disposition to protect what is precious.

But it will be too late. We shall wander through our palaces of crystal, gazing sadly on copies of pictures torn by cannon-shot, and on casts of sculpture dashed to pieces long ago. We shall gradually learn to distinguish originality and sincerity from the decrepitudes of imitation and palsies of repet.i.tion; but it will be only in hopelessness to recognize the truth, that architecture and painting can be "restored"

when the dead can be raised,--and not till then.

270. Something might yet be done, if it were but possible thoroughly to awaken and alarm the men whose studies of archaeology have enabled them to form an accurate judgment of the importance of the crisis. But it is one of the strange characters of the human mind, necessary indeed to its peace, but infinitely destructive of its power, that we never thoroughly feel the evils which are not actually set before our eyes. If, suddenly, in the midst of the enjoyments of the palate and lightnesses of heart of a London dinner-party, the walls of the chamber were parted, and through their gap, the nearest human beings who were famis.h.i.+ng, and in misery, were borne into the midst of the company--feasting and fancy-free--if, pale with sickness, horrible in dest.i.tution, broken by despair, body by body, they were laid upon the soft carpet, one beside the chair of every guest, would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to them--would only a pa.s.sing glance, a pa.s.sing thought be vouchsafed to them? Yet the actual facts, the real relations of each Dives and Lazarus, are not altered by the intervention of the house wall between the table and the sick-bed--by the few feet of ground (how few!) which are indeed all that separate the merriment from the misery.

271. It is the same in the matters of which I have hitherto been speaking. If every one of us, who knows what food for the human heart there is in the great works of elder time, could indeed see with his own eyes their progressive ruin; if every earnest antiquarian, happy in his well-ordered library, and in the sense of having been useful in preserving an old stone or two out of his parish church, and an old coin or two out of a furrow in the next plowed field, could indeed behold, each morning as he awaked, the mightiest works of departed nations moldering to the ground in disregarded heaps; if he could always have in clear phantasm before his eyes the ignorant monk trampling on the ma.n.u.script, the village mason striking down the monument, the court painter daubing the despised and priceless masterpiece into freshness of fatuity, he would not always smile so complacently in the thoughts of the little learnings and petty preservations of his own immediate sphere. And if every man, who has the interest of Art and of History at heart, would at once devote himself earnestly--not to enrich his own collection--not even to enlighten his own neighbors or investigate his own parish-territory--but to far-sighted and _fore_-sighted endeavor in the great field of Europe, there is yet time to do much. An a.s.sociation might be formed, thoroughly organized so as to maintain active watchers and agents in every town of importance, who, in the first place, should furnish the society with a _perfect_ account of every monument of interest in its neighborhood, and then with a yearly or half-yearly report of the state of such monuments, and of the changes proposed to be made upon them; the society then furnis.h.i.+ng funds, either to buy, freehold, such buildings or other works of untransferable art as at any time might be offered for sale, or to a.s.sist their proprietors, whether private individuals or public bodies, in the maintenance of such guardians.h.i.+p as was really necessary for their safety; and exerting itself, with all the influence which such an a.s.sociation would rapidly command, to prevent unwise restoration and unnecessary destruction.

272. Such a society would of course be rewarded only by the consciousness of its usefulness. Its funds would have to be supplied, in pure self-denial, by its members, who would be required, so far as they a.s.sisted it, to give up the pleasure of purchasing prints or pictures for their own walls, that they might save pictures which in their lifetime they might never behold; they would have to forego the enlargement of their own estates, that they might buy, for a European property, ground on which their feet might never tread. But is it absurd to believe that men are capable of doing this? Is the love of art altogether a selfish principle in the heart? and are its emotions altogether incompatible with the exertions of self-denial or enjoyments of generosity?

273. I make this appeal at the risk of incurring only contempt for my Utopianism. But I should forever reproach myself if I were prevented from making it by such a risk; and I pray those who may be disposed in any wise to favor it to remember that it must be answered at once or never. The next five years determine what is to be saved--what destroyed. The restorations have actually begun like cancers on every important piece of Gothic architecture in Christendom; the question is only how much can yet be saved. All projects, all pursuits, having reference to art, are at this moment of less importance than those which are simply protective. There is time enough for everything else. Time enough for teaching--time enough for criticising--time enough for inventing. But time little enough for saving. Hereafter we can create, but it is now only that we can preserve. By the exertion of great national powers, and under the guidance of enlightened monarchs, we may raise magnificent temples and gorgeous cities; we may furnish labor for the idle, and interest for the ignorant. But the power neither of emperors, nor queens, nor kingdoms, can ever print again upon the sands of time the effaced footsteps of departed generations, or gather together from the dust the stones which had been stamped with the spirit of our ancestors.

THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE IN OUR SCHOOLS.[57]

274. I suppose there is no man who, permitted to address, for the first time, the Inst.i.tute of British Architects, would not feel himself abashed and restrained, doubtful of his claim to be heard by them, even if he attempted only to describe what had come under his personal observation, much more if on the occasion he thought it would be expected of him to touch upon any of the general principles of the art of architecture before its princ.i.p.al English masters.

But if any more than another should feel thus abashed, it is certainly one who has first to ask their pardon for the petulance of boyish expressions of partial thought; for ungraceful advocacy of principles which needed no support from him, and discourteous blame of work of which he had never felt the difficulty.

275. Yet, when I ask this pardon, gentlemen--and I do it sincerely and in shame--it is not as desiring to retract anything in the general tenor and scope of what I have hitherto tried to say. Permit me the pain, and the apparent impertinence, of speaking for a moment of my own past work; for it is necessary that what I am about to submit to you to-night should be spoken in no disadvantageous connection with that; and yet understood as spoken, in no discordance of purpose with that. Indeed there is much in old work of mine which I could wish to put out of mind.

Reasonings, perhaps not in themselves false, but founded on insufficient data and imperfect experience--eager preferences, and dislikes, dependent on chance circ.u.mstances of a.s.sociation, and limitations of sphere of labor: but, while I would fain now, if I could, modify the applications, and chasten the extravagance of my writings, let me also say of them that they were the expression of a delight in the art of architecture which was too intense to be vitally deceived, and of an inquiry too honest and eager to be without some useful result; and I only wish I had now time, and strength and power of mind, to carry on, more worthily, the main endeavor of my early work. That main endeavor has been throughout to set forth the life of the individual human spirit as modifying the application of the formal laws of architecture, no less than of all other arts; and to show that the power and advance of this art, even in conditions of formal n.o.bleness, were dependent on its just a.s.sociation with sculpture as a means of expressing the beauty of natural forms: and I the more boldly ask your permission to insist somewhat on this main meaning of my past work, because there are many buildings now rising in the streets of London, as in other cities of England, which appear to be designed in accordance with this principle, and which are, I believe, more offensive to all who thoughtfully concur with me in accepting the principle of Naturalism than they are to the cla.s.sical architect to whose modes of design they are visibly antagonistic. These buildings, in which the mere cast of a flower, or the realization of a vulgar face, carved without pleasure by a workman who is only endeavoring to attract attention by novelty, and then fastened on, or appearing to be fastened, as chance may dictate, to an arch, or a pillar, or a wall, hold such relation to n.o.bly naturalistic architecture as common sign-painter's furniture landscapes do to painting, or commonest wax-work to Greek sculpture; and the feelings with which true naturalists regard such buildings of this cla.s.s are, as nearly as might be, what a painter would experience, if, having contended earnestly against conventional schools, and having a.s.serted that Greek vase-painting and Egyptian wall-painting, and Mediaeval gla.s.s-painting, though beautiful, all, in their place and way, were yet subordinate arts, and culminated only in perfectly naturalistic work such as Raphael's in fresco, and t.i.tian's on canvas;--if, I say, a painter, fixed in such faith in an entire, intellectual and manly truth, and maintaining that an Egyptian profile of a head, however decoratively applicable, was only n.o.ble for such human truth as it contained, and was imperfect and ign.o.ble beside a work of t.i.tian's, were shown, by his antagonist, the colored daguerreotype of a human body in its nakedness, and told that it was art such as that which he really advocated, and to such art that his principles, if carried out, would finally lead.

276. And because this question lies at the very root of the organization of the system of instruction for our youth, I venture boldly to express the surprise and regret with which I see our schools still agitated by a.s.sertions of the opposition of Naturalism to Invention, and to the higher conditions of art. Even in this very room I believe there has lately been question whether a sculptor should look at a real living creature of which he had to carve the image. I would answer in one sense,--no; that is to say, he ought to carve no living creature while he still needs to look at it. If we do not know what a human body is like, we certainly had better look, and look often, at it, before we carve it; but if we already know the human likeness so well that we can carve it by light of memory, we shall not need to ask whether we ought now to look at it or not; and what is true of man is true of all other creatures and organisms--of bird, and beast, and leaf. No a.s.sertion is more at variance with the laws of cla.s.sical as well as of subsequent art than the common one that species should not be distinguished in great design. We might as well say that we ought to carve a man so as not to know him from an ape, as that we should carve a lily so as not to know it from a thistle. It is difficult for me to conceive how this can be a.s.serted in the presence of any remains either of great Greek or Italian art. A Greek looked at a c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l or a cuttlefish as carefully as he looked at an Olympic conqueror. The eagle of Elis, the lion of Velia, the horse of Syracuse, the bull of Thurii, the dolphin of Tarentum, the crab of Agrigentum, and the crawfish of Catana, are studied as closely, every one of them, as the Juno of Argos, or Apollo of Clazomenae.

Idealism, so far from being contrary to special truth, is the very abstraction of speciality from everything else. It is the earnest statement of the characters which make man man, and c.o.c.kle c.o.c.kle, and flesh flesh, and fish fish. Feeble thinkers, indeed, always suppose that distinction of kind involves meanness of style; but the meanness is in the treatment, not in the distinction. There is a n.o.ble way of carving a man, and a mean one; and there is a n.o.ble way of carving a beetle, and a mean one; and a great sculptor carves his scarabaeus grandly, as he carves his king, while a mean sculptor makes vermin of both. And it is a sorrowful truth, yet a sublime one, that this greatness of treatment cannot be taught by talking about it. No, nor even by enforced imitative practice of it. Men treat their subjects n.o.bly only when they themselves become n.o.ble; not till then. And that elevation of their own nature is a.s.suredly not to be effected by a course of drawing from models, however well chosen, or of listening to lectures, however well intended.

Art, national or individual, is the result of a long course of previous life and training; a necessary result, if that life has been loyal, and an impossible one, if it has been base. Let a nation be healthful, happy, pure in its enjoyments, brave in its acts, and broad in its affections, and its art will spring round and within it as freely as the foam from a fountain; but let the spring of its life be impure, and its course polluted, and you will not get the bright spray by treatises on the mathematical structure of bubbles.

277. And I am to-night the more restrained in addressing you, because, gentlemen--I tell you honestly--I am weary of all writing and speaking about art, and most of my own. No good is to be reached that way. The last fifty years have, in every civilized country of Europe, produced more brilliant thought, and more subtle reasoning about art than the five thousand before them, and what has it all come to? Do not let it be thought that I am insensible to the high merits of much of our modern work. It cannot be for a moment supposed that in speaking of the inefficient expression of the doctrines which writers on art have tried to enforce, I was thinking of such Gothic as has been designed and built by Mr. Scott, Mr. b.u.t.terfield, Mr. Street, Mr. Waterhouse, Mr. G.o.dwin, or my dead friend, Mr. Woodward. Their work has been original and independent. So far as it is good, it has been founded on principles learned not from books, but by study of the monuments of the great schools, developed by national grandeur, not by philosophical speculation. But I am entirely a.s.sured that those who have done best among us are the least satisfied with what they have done, and will admit a sorrowful concurrence in my belief that the spirit, or rather, I should say, the dispirit, of the age, is heavily against them; that all the ingenious writing or thinking which is so rife amongst us has failed to educate a public capable of taking true pleasure in any kind of art, and that the best designers never satisfy their own requirements of themselves, unless by vainly addressing another temper of mind, and providing for another manner of life, than ours. All lovely architecture was designed for cities in cloudless air; for cities in which piazzas and gardens opened in bright populousness and peace; cities built that men might live happily in them, and take delight daily in each other's presence and powers. But our cities, built in black air which, by its acc.u.mulated foulness, first renders all ornament invisible in distance, and then chokes its interstices with soot; cities which are mere crowded ma.s.ses of store, and warehouse, and counter, and are therefore to the rest of the world what the larder and cellar are to a private house; cities in which the object of men is not life, but labor; and in which all chief magnitude of edifice is to inclose machinery; cities in which the streets are not the avenues for the pa.s.sing and procession of a happy people, but the drains for the discharge of a tormented mob, in which the only object in reaching any spot is to be transferred to another; in which existence becomes mere transition, and every creature is only one atom in a drift of human dust, and current of interchanging particles, circulating here by tunnels underground, and there by tubes in the air; for a city, or cities, such as this no architecture is possible--nay, no desire of it is possible to their inhabitants.

278. One of the most singular proofs of the vanity of all hope that conditions of art may be combined with the occupations of such a city, has been given lately in the design of the new iron bridge over the Thames at Blackfriars. Distinct attempt has been there made to obtain architectural effect on a grand scale. Nor was there anything in the nature of the work to prevent such an effort being successful. It is not edifices, being of iron, or of gla.s.s, or thrown into new forms, demanded by new purposes, which need hinder its being beautiful. But it is the absence of all desire of beauty, of all joy in fancy, and of all freedom in thought. If a Greek, or Egyptian, or Gothic architect had been required to design such a bridge, he would have looked instantly at the main conditions of its structure, and dwelt on them with the delight of imagination. He would have seen that the main thing to be done was to hold a horizontal group of iron rods steadily and straight over stone piers. Then he would have said to himself (or felt without saying), "It is this holding,--this grasp,--this securing tenor of a thing which might be shaken, so that it cannot be shaken, on which I have to insist." And he would have put some life into those iron tenons. As a Greek put human life into his pillars and produced the caryatid; and an Egyptian lotus life into his pillars and produced the lily capital: so here, either of them would have put some gigantic or some angelic life into those colossal sockets. He would perhaps have put vast winged statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron rails with their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, holding with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of lovely thoughts would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, animal or human, would have signified, either in symbol or in legend, whatever might be gracefully told respecting the purposes of the work and the districts to which it conducted. Whereas, now, the entire invention of the designer seems to have exhausted itself in exaggerating to an enormous size a weak form of iron nut, and in conveying the information upon it, in large letters, that it belongs to the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company. I believe then, gentlemen, that if there were any life in the national mind in such respects, it would be shown in these its most energetic and costly works. But that there is no such life, nothing but a galvanic restlessness and covetousness, with which it is for the present vain to strive; and in the midst of which, tormented at once by its activities and its apathies, having their work continually thrust aside and dishonored, always seen to disadvantage, and overtopped by huge ma.s.ses, discordant and destructive, even the best architects must be unable to do justice to their own powers.

279. But, gentlemen, while thus the mechanisms of the age prevent even the wisest and best of its artists from producing entirely good work, may we not reflect with consternation what a marvelous ability the luxury of the age, and the very advantages of education, confer on the unwise and ign.o.ble for the production of attractively and infectiously _bad_ work? I do not think that this adverse influence, necessarily affecting all conditions of so-called civilization, has been ever enough considered. It is impossible to calculate the power of the false workman in an advanced period of national life, nor the temptation to all workmen, to _become_ false.

280. First, there is the irresistible appeal to vanity. There is hardly any temptation of the kind (there cannot be) while the arts are in progress. The best men must then always be ashamed of themselves; they never can be satisfied with their work absolutely, but only as it is progressive. Take, for instance, any archaic head intended to be beautiful; say, the Attic Athena, or the early Arethusa of Syracuse. In that, and in all archaic work of promise, there is much that is inefficient, much that to us appears ridiculous--but nothing sensual, nothing vain, nothing spurious or imitative. It is a child's work, a childish nation's work, but not a fool's work. You find in children the same tolerance of ugliness, the same eager and innocent delight in their own work for the moment, however feeble; but next day it is thrown aside, and something better is done. Now, in this careless play, a child or a childish nation differs inherently from a foolish educated person, or a nation advanced in pseudo-civilization. The educated person has seen all kinds of beautiful things, of which he would fain do the like--not to add to their number--but for his own vanity, that he also may be called an artist. Here is at once a singular and fatal difference. The childish nation sees nothing in its own past work to satisfy itself. It is pleased at having done this, but wants something better; it is struggling forward always to reach this better, this ideal conception. It wants more beauty to look at, it wants more subject to feel. It calls out to all its artists--stretching its hands to them as a little child does--"Oh, if you would but tell me another story,"--"Oh, if I might but have a doll with bluer eyes." That's the right temper to work in, and to get work done for you in. But the vain, aged, highly-educated nation is satiated with beautiful things--it has myriads more than it can look at; it has fallen into a habit of inattention; it pa.s.ses weary and jaded through galleries which contain the best fruit of a thousand years of human travail; it gapes and shrugs over them, and pushes its way past them to the door.

281. But there is one feeling that is always distinct; however jaded and languid we may be in all other pleasures, we are never languid in vanity, and we would still paint and carve for fame. What other motive have the nations of Europe to-day? If they wanted art for art's sake they would take care of what they have already got. But at this instant the two n.o.blest pictures in Venice are lying rolled up in outhouses, and the n.o.blest portrait of t.i.tian in existence is hung forty feet from the ground. We have absolutely no motive but vanity and the love of money--no others, as nations, than these, whatever we may have as individuals. And as the thirst of vanity thus increases, so the temptation to it. There was no fame of artists in these archaic days.

Every year, every hour, saw someone rise to surpa.s.s what had been done before. And there was always better work to be done, but never any credit to be got by it. The artist lived in an atmosphere of perpetual, wholesome, inevitable eclipse. Do as well as you choose to-day,--make the whole Borgo dance with delight, they would dance to a better man's pipe to-morrow. _Credette Cimabue nella pittura, tener lo campo, et ora ha Giotto il grido._ This was the fate, the necessary fate, even of the strongest. They could only hope to be remembered as links in an endless chain. For the weaker men it was no use even to put their name on their works. They did not. If they could not work for joy and for love, and take their part simply in the choir of human toil, they might throw up their tools. But now it is far otherwise--now, the best having been done--and for a couple of hundred years, the best of us being confessed to have come short of it, everybody thinks that he may be the great man once again, and this is certain, that whatever in art is done for display, is invariably wrong.

282. But, secondly, consider the attractive power of false art, completed, as compared with imperfect art advancing to completion.

Archaic work, so far as faultful, is repulsive, but advanced work is, in all its faults, attractive. The moment that art has reached the point at which it becomes sensitively and delicately imitative, it appeals to a new audience. From that instant it addresses the sensualist and the idler. Its deceptions, its successes, its subtleties, become interesting to every condition of folly, of frivolity, and of vice. And this new audience brings to bear upon the art in which its foolish and wicked interest has been unhappily awakened, the full power of its riches: the largest bribes of gold as well as of praise are offered to the artist who will betray his art, until at last, from the sculpture of Phidias and fresco of Luini, it sinks into the cabinet ivory and the picture kept under lock and key. Between these highest and lowest types, there is a vast ma.s.s of merely imitative and delicately sensual sculpture;--veiled nymphs--chained slaves--soft G.o.ddesses seen by roselight through suspended curtains--drawing room portraits and domesticities, and such like, in which the interest is either merely personal and selfish, or dramatic and sensational; in either case, destructive of the power of the public to sympathize with the aims of great architects.

283. Gentlemen,--I am no Puritan, and have never praised or advocated puritanical art. The two pictures which I would last part with out of our National Gallery, if there were question of parting with any, would be t.i.tian's Bacchus and Correggio's Venus. But the n.o.ble naturalism of these was the fruit of ages of previous courage, continence, and religion--it was the fullness of pa.s.sion in the life of a Britomart. But the mid-age and old age of nations is not like the mid-age or old age of n.o.ble women. National decrepitude must be criminal. National death can only be by disease, and yet it is almost impossible, out of the history of the art of nations, to elicit the true conditions relating to its decline in any demonstrable manner. The history of Italian art is that of a struggle between superst.i.tion and naturalism on one side, between continence and sensuality on another. So far as naturalism prevailed over superst.i.tion, there is always progress; so far as sensuality over chast.i.ty, death. And the two contests are simultaneous. It is impossible to distinguish one victory from the other. Observe, however, I say victory over superst.i.tion, not over religion. Let me carefully define the difference. Superst.i.tion, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose pa.s.sions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes some places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay to him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superst.i.tion. And religion is the belief in a Spirit whose mercies are over all His works--who is kind even to the unthankful and the evil; who is everywhere present, and therefore is in no place to be sought, and in no place to be evaded; to whom all creatures, times, and things are everlastingly holy, and who claims--not t.i.thes of wealth, nor sevenths of days--but all the wealth that we have, and all the days that we live, and all the beings that we are, but who claims that totality because He delights only in the delight of His creatures; and because, therefore, the one duty that they owe to Him, and the only service they can render Him, is to be happy. A Spirit, therefore, whose eternal benevolence cannot be angered, cannot be appeased; whose laws are everlasting and inexorable, so that heaven and earth must indeed pa.s.s away if one jot of them failed: laws which attach to every wrong and error a measured, inevitable penalty; to every rightness and prudence, an a.s.sured reward; penalty, of which the remittance cannot be purchased; and reward, of which the promise cannot be broken.

284. And thus, in the history of art, we ought continually to endeavor to distinguish (while, except in broadest lights, it is impossible to distinguish) the work of religion from that of superst.i.tion, and the work of reason from that of infidelity. Religion devotes the artist, hand and mind, to the service of the G.o.ds; superst.i.tion makes him the slave of ecclesiastical pride, or forbids his work altogether, in terror or disdain. Religion perfects the form of the divine statue, superst.i.tion distorts it into ghastly grotesque. Religion contemplates the G.o.ds as the lords of healing and life, surrounds them with glory of affectionate service, and festivity of pure human beauty. Superst.i.tion contemplates its idols as lords of death, appeases them with blood, and vows itself to them in torture and solitude. Religion proselytes by love, superst.i.tion by war; religion teaches by example, superst.i.tion by persecution. Religion gave granite shrine to the Egyptian, golden temple to the Jew, sculptured corridor to the Greek, pillared aisle and frescoed wall to the Christian. Superst.i.tion made idols of the splendors by which Religion had spoken: reverenced pictures and stones, instead of truths; letters and laws, instead of acts, and forever, in various madness of fantastic desolation, kneels in the temple while it crucifies the Christ.

285. On the other hand, to reason resisting superst.i.tion, we owe the entire compa.s.s of modern energies and sciences; the healthy laws of life, and the possibilities of future progress. But to infidelity resisting religion (or which is often enough the case, taking the mask of it), we owe sensuality, cruelty, and war, insolence and avarice, modern political economy, life by conservation of forces, and salvation by every man's looking after his own interest; and, generally, whatsoever of guilt, and folly, and death, there is abroad among us. And of the two, a thousand-fold rather let us retain some color of superst.i.tion, so that we may keep also some strength of religion, than comfort ourselves with color of reason for the desolation of G.o.dlessness. I would say to every youth who entered our schools--Be a Mahometan, a Diana-wors.h.i.+per, a Fire-wors.h.i.+per, Root-wors.h.i.+per, if you will; but at least be so much a man as to know what wors.h.i.+p means. I had rather, a million-fold rather, see you one of those "quibus haec nasc.u.n.tur in hortis numina," than one of those "quibus haec _non_ nasc.u.n.tur in cordibus lumina"; and who are, by everlasting orphanage, divided from the Father of Spirits, who is also the Father of lights, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift.

286. "So much of man," I say, feeling profoundly that all right exercise of any human gift, so descended from the Giver of good, depends on the primary formation of the character of true manliness in the youth--that is to say, of a majestic, grave, and deliberate strength. How strange the words sound; how little does it seem possible to conceive of majesty, and gravity, and deliberation in the daily track of modern life. Yet, gentlemen, we need not hope that our work will be majestic if there is no majesty in ourselves. The word "manly" has come to mean practically, among us, a schoolboy's character, not a man's. We are, at our best, thoughtlessly impetuous, fond of adventure and excitement; curious in knowledge for its novelty, not for its system and results; faithful and affectionate to those among whom we are by chance cast, but gently and calmly insolent to strangers: we are stupidly conscientious, and instinctively brave, and always ready to cast away the lives we take no pains to make valuable, in causes of which we have never ascertained the justice. This is our highest type--notable peculiarly among nations for its gentleness, together with its courage; but in lower conditions it is especially liable to degradation by its love of jest and of vulgar sensation. It is against this fatal tendency to vile play that we have chiefly to contend. It is the spirit of Milton's Comus; b.e.s.t.i.a.l itself, but having power to arrest and paralyze all who come within its influence, even pure creatures sitting helpless, mocked by it on their marble thrones. It is incompatible, not only with all greatness of character, but with all true gladness of heart, and it develops itself in nations in proportion to their degradation, connected with a peculiar gloom and a singular tendency to play with death, which is a morbid reaction from the morbid excess.

287. A book has lately been published on the Mythology of the Rhine, with ill.u.s.trations by Gustave Dore. The Rhine G.o.d is represented in the vignette t.i.tle-page with a pipe in one hand and a pot of beer in the other. You cannot have a more complete type of the tendency which is chiefly to be dreaded in this age than in this conception, as opposed to any possibility of representation of a river-G.o.d, however playful, in the mind of a Greek painter. The example is the more notable because Gustave Dore's is not a common mind, and, if born in any other epoch, he would probably have done valuable (though never first rate) work; but by glancing (it will be impossible for you to do more than glance) at his ill.u.s.trations of Balzac's "Contes Drolatiques," you will see further how this "drolatique," or semi-comic mask is, in the truth of it, the mask of a skull, and how the tendency to burlesque jest is both in France and England only an effervescence from the _cloaca maxima_ of the putrid instincts which fasten themselves on national sin, and are in the midst of the luxury of European capitals, what Dante meant when he wrote "quel mi sveglio col puzzo," of the body of the Wealth-Siren; the mocking levity and mocking gloom being equally signs of the death of the soul; just as, contrariwise, a pa.s.sionate seriousness and pa.s.sionate joyfulness are signs of its full life in works such as those of Angelico, Luini, Ghiberti, or La Robbia.

It is to recover this stern seriousness, this pure and thrilling joy, together with perpetual sense of spiritual presence, that all true education of youth must now be directed. This seriousness, this pa.s.sion, this universal human religion, are the first principles, the true roots of all art, as they are of all doing, of all being. Get this _vis viva_ first and all great work will follow. Lose it, and your schools of art will stand among other living schools as the frozen corpses stand by the winding stair of the St. Michael's Convent of Mont Cenis, holding their hands stretched out under their shrouds, as if beseeching the pa.s.ser by to look upon the wasting of their death.

288. And all the higher branches of technical teaching are vain without this; nay are in some sort vain altogether, for they are superseded by this. You may teach imitation, because the meanest man can imitate; but you can neither teach idealism nor composition, because only a great man can choose, conceive, or compose; and he does all these necessarily, and because of his nature. His greatness is in his choice of things, in his a.n.a.lysis of them, and his combining powers involve the totality of his knowledge in life. His methods of observation and abstraction are essential habits of his thought, conditions of his being. If he looks at a human form he recognizes the signs of n.o.bility in it, and loves them--hates whatever is diseased, frightful, sinful, or _designant_ of decay. All ugliness, and abortion, and fading away; all signs of vice and foulness, he turns away from, as inherently diabolic and horrible; all signs of unconquered emotion he regrets, as weaknesses. He looks only for the calm purity of the human creature, in living conquests of its pa.s.sions and of fate. That is idealism; but you cannot teach anyone else that preference. Take a man who likes to see and paint the gambler's rage; the hedge-ruffian's enjoyment; the debauched soldier's strife; the vicious woman's degradation;--take a man fed on the dusty picturesque of rags and guilt; talk to him of principles of beauty! make him draw what you will, how you will, he will leave the stain of himself on whatever he touches. You had better go lecture to a snail, and tell it to leave no slime behind it. Try to make a mean man compose; you will find nothing in his thoughts consecutive or proportioned--nothing consistent in his sight--nothing in his fancy. He cannot comprehend two things in relation at once--how much less twenty! How much less all!

Everything is uppermost with him in its turn, and each as large as the rest; but t.i.tian or Veronese compose as tranquilly as they would speak--inevitably. The thing comes to them so--they see it so--rightly, and in harmony: they will not talk to you of composition, hardly even understanding how lower people see things otherwise, but knowing that if they _do_ see otherwise, there is for them the end there, talk as you will.

289. I had intended, in conclusion, gentlemen, to incur such blame of presumption as might be involved in offering some hints for present practical methods in architectural schools, but here again I am checked, as I have been throughout, by a sense of the uselessness of all minor means, and helps, without the establishment of a true and broad educational system. My wish would be to see the profession of the architect united, not with that of the engineer, but of the sculptor. I think there should be a separate school and university course for engineers, in which the princ.i.p.al branches of study connected with that of practical building should be the physical and exact sciences, and honors should be taken in mathematics; but I think there should be another school and university course for the sculptor and architect, in which literature and philosophy should be the a.s.sociated branches of study, and honors should be taken _in literis humanioribus_; and I think a young architect's examination for his degree (for mere pa.s.s), should be much stricter than that of youths intending to enter other professions. The quant.i.ty of scholars.h.i.+p necessary for the efficiency of a country clergyman is not great. So that he be modest and kindly, the main truths he has to teach may be learned better in his heart than in books, and taught in very simple English. The best physicians I have known spent very little time in their libraries; and though my lawyer sometimes chats with me over a Greek coin, I think he regards the time so spent in the light rather of concession to my idleness than as helpful to his professional labors.

But there is no task undertaken by a true architect of which the honorable fulfillment will not require a range of knowledge and habitual feeling only attainable by advanced scholars.h.i.+p.

290. Since, however, such expansion of system is, at present, beyond hope, the best we can do is to render the studies undertaken in our schools thoughtful, reverent, and refined, according to our power.

Especially, it should be our aim to prevent the minds of the students from being distracted by models of an unworthy or mixed character. A museum is one thing--a school another; and I am persuaded that as the efficiency of a school of literature depends on the mastering a few good books, so the efficiency of a school of art will depend on the understanding a few good models. And so strongly do I feel this that I would, for my own part, at once consent to sacrifice my personal predilections in art, and to vote for the exclusion of all Gothic or Mediaeval models whatsoever, if by this sacrifice I could obtain also the exclusion of Byzantine, Indian, Renaissance-French, and other more or less attractive but barbarous work; and thus concentrate the mind of the student wholly upon the study of natural form, and upon its treatment by the sculptors and metal workers of Greece, Ionia, Sicily, and Magna Graecia, between 500 and 350 B.C. But I should hope that exclusiveness need not be carried quite so far. I think Donatello, Mino of Fiesole, the Robbias, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, and Michael Angelo, should be adequately represented in our schools--together with the Greeks--and that a few carefully chosen examples of the floral sculpture of the North in the thirteenth century should be added, with especial view to display the treatment of naturalistic ornament in subtle connection with constructive requirements; and in the course of study pursued with reference to these models, as of admitted perfection, I should endeavor first to make the student thoroughly acquainted with the natural forms and characters of the objects he had to treat, and then to exercise him in the abstraction of these forms, and the suggestion of these characters, under due sculptural limitation. He should first be taught to draw largely and simply; then he should make quick and firm sketches of flowers, animals, drapery, and figures, from nature, in the simplest terms of line, and light and shade; always being taught to look at the organic, actions and ma.s.ses, not at the textures or accidental effects of shade; meantime his sentiment respecting all these things should be cultivated by close and constant inquiry into their mythological significance and a.s.sociated traditions; then, knowing the things and creatures thoroughly, and regarding them through an atmosphere of enchanted memory, he should be shown how the facts he has taken so long to learn are summed by a great sculptor in a few touches; how those touches are invariably arranged in musical and decorative relations; how every detail unnecessary for his purpose is refused; how those necessary for his purpose are insisted upon, or even exaggerated, or represented by singular artifice, when literal representation is impossible; and how all this is done under the instinct and pa.s.sion of an inner commanding spirit which it is indeed impossible to imitate, but possible, perhaps, to share.

291. Perhaps! Pardon me that I speak despondingly. For my own part, I feel the force of mechanism and the fury of avaricious commerce to be at present so irresistible, that I have seceded from the study not only of architecture, but nearly of all art; and have given myself, as I would in a besieged city, to seek the best modes of getting bread and water for its mult.i.tudes, there remaining no question, it seems, to me, of other than such grave business for the time. But there is, at least, this ground for courage, if not for hope: As the evil spirits of avarice and luxury are directly contrary to art, so, also, art is directly contrary to them; and according to its force, expulsive of them and medicinal against them; so that the establishment of such schools as I have ventured to describe--whatever their immediate success or ill success in the teaching of art--would yet be the directest method of resistance to those conditions of evil among which our youth are cast at the most critical period of their lives. We may not be able to produce architecture, but, at the least, we shall resist vice. I do not know if it has been observed that while Dante rightly connects architecture, as the most permanent expression of the pride of humanity, whether just or unjust, with the first cornice of Purgatory, he indicates its n.o.ble function by engraving upon it, in perfect sculpture, the stories which rebuke the errors and purify the purposes of n.o.blest souls. In the fulfillment of such function, literally and practically, here among men, is the only real use of pride of n.o.ble architecture, and on its acceptance or surrender of that function it depends whether, in future, the cities of England melt into a ruin more confused and ghastly than ever storm wasted or wolf inhabited, or purge and exalt themselves into true habitations of men, whose walls shall be Safety, and whose gates shall be Praise.

NOTE.--In the course of the discussion which followed this paper the meeting was addressed by Prof. Donaldson, who alluded to the architectural improvements in France under the Third Napoleon, by Mr.

George Edmund Street, by Prof. Kerr, Mr. Digby Wyatt, and others. The President then proposed a vote of thanks to Mr. Ruskin, who, in acknowledging the high compliment paid him, said he would detain the meeting but a few minutes, but he felt he ought to make some attempt to explain what he had inefficiently stated in his paper; and there was hardly anything said in the discussion in which he did not concur: the supposed differences of opinion were either because he had ill-expressed himself, or because of things left unsaid. In the first place he was surprised to hear dissent from Professor Donaldson while he expressed his admiration of some of the changes which had been developed in modern architecture. There were two conditions of architecture adapted for different climates; one with narrow streets, calculated for shade; another for broad avenues beneath bright skies; but both conditions had their beautiful effects. He sympathized with the admirers of Italy, and he was delighted with Genoa. He had been delighted also by the view of the long vistas from the Tuileries. Mr. Street had showed that he had not sufficiently dwelt on the distinction between near and distant carving--between carving and sculpture. He (Mr. Ruskin) could allow of no distinction. Sculpture which was to be viewed at a height of 500 feet above the eye might be executed with a few touches of the chisel; opposed to that there was the exquisite finish which was the perfection of sculpture as displayed in the Greek statues, after a full knowledge of the whole nature of the object portrayed; both styles were admirable in their true application--both were "sculpture"--perfect according to their places and requirements. The attack of Professor Kerr he regarded as in play, and in that spirit he would reply to him that he was afraid a practical a.s.sociation with bricks and mortar would hardly produce the effects upon him which had been suggested, for having of late in his residence experienced the transition of large extents of ground into bricks and mortar, it had had no effect in changing his views; and when he said he was tired of writing upon art, it was not that he was ashamed of what he had written, but that he was tired of writing in vain, and of knocking his head, thick as it might be, against a wall. There was another point which he would answer very gravely. It was referred to by Mr. Digby Wyatt, and was the one point he had mainly at heart all through--viz., that religion and high morality were at the root of all great art in all great times. The instances referred to by Mr. Digby Wyatt did not counteract that proposition. Modern and ancient forms of life might be different, nor could all men be judged by formal canons, but a true human heart was in the breast of every really great artist.

He had the greatest detestation of anything approaching to cant in respect of art; but, after long investigation of the historical evidence, as well as of the metaphysical laws bearing on this question, he was absolutely certain that a high moral and religious training was the only way to get good fruits from our youth; make them good men first, and only so, if at all, they would become good artists. With regard to the points mooted respecting the practical and poetical uses of architecture, he thought they did not sufficiently define their terms; they spoke of poetry as rhyme. He thanked the President for his definition to-night, and he was sure he would concur with him that poetry meant as its derivation implied--"the _doing_." What was rightly done was done forever, and that which was only a crude work for the time was not poetry; poetry was only that which would recreate or remake the human soul. In that sense poetical architecture was separated from all utilitarian work. He had said long ago men could not decorate their shops and counters; they could decorate only where they lived in peace and rest--where they existed to be happy. There ornament would find use, and there their "doing" would be permanent. In other cases they wasted their money if they attempted to make utilitarian work ornamental. He might be wrong in that principle, but he had always a.s.serted it, and had seen no reason in recent works for any modification of it. He thanked the meeting sincerely for the honor they had conferred upon him by their invitation to address them that evening, and for the indulgence with which they had heard him.--ED.

FOOTNOTES:

[52] pamphlet, the full t.i.tle of which was "The Opening of the Crystal Palace Considered in some of its Relations to the Progress of Art," by John Ruskin, M.A. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1854.--ED.