PREFACE.
LECTURE I.
LECTURE II.
LECTURE III.
LECTURE IV.
LECTURE V.
APPENDIX I.
APPENDIX II.
APPENDIX III.
APPENDIX IV.
APPENDIX V.
PREFACE.
The
following addresses, though spoken at different times, are
intentionally connected in subject; their aim being to set one or two
main principles of art in simple light before the general student,
and to indicate their practical bearing on modern design. The law
which it has been my effort chiefly to illustrate is the dependence
of all noble design, in any kind, on the sculpture or painting of
Organic Form.This
is the vital law; lying at the root of all that I have ever tried to
teach respecting architecture or any other art. It is also the law
most generally disallowed.I
believe this must be so in every subject. We are all of us willing
enough to accept dead truths or blunt ones; which can be fitted
harmlessly into spare niches, or shrouded and coffined at once out of
the way, we holding complacently the cemetery keys, and supposing we
have learned something. But a sapling truth, with earth at its root
and blossom on its branches; or a trenchant truth, that can cut its
way through bars and sods; most men, it seems to me, dislike the
sight or entertainment of, if by any means such guest or vision may
be avoided. And, indeed, this is no wonder; for one such truth,
thoroughly accepted, connects itself strangely with others, and there
is no saying what it may lead us to.And
thus the gist of what I have tried to teach about architecture has
been throughout denied by my architect readers, even when they
thought what I said suggestive in other particulars. "Anything
but that. Study Italian Gothic?—perhaps it would be as well: build
with pointed arches?—there is no objection: use solid stone and
well-burnt brick?— by all means: but—learn to carve or paint
organic form ourselves! How can such a thing be asked? We are above
all that. The carvers and painters are our servants—quite
subordinate people. They ought to be glad if we leave room for them."Well:
on that it all turns. For those who will not learn to carve or paint,
and think themselves greater men because they cannot, it is wholly
wasted time to read any words of mine; in the truest and sternest
sense they can read no words of mine; for the most familiar I can
use—"form," "proportion," "beauty,"
"curvature," "colour"—are used in a sense which
by no effort I can communicate to such readers; and in no building
that I praise, is the thing that I praise it for, visible to them.And
it is the more necessary for me to state this fully; because so-
called Gothic or Romanesque buildings are now rising every day around
us, which might be supposed by the public more or less to embody the
principles of those styles, but which embody not one of them, nor any
shadow or fragment of them; but merely serve to caricature the noble
buildings of past ages, and to bring their form into dishonour by
leaving out their soul.The
following addresses are therefore arranged, as I have just stated, to
put this great law, and one or two collateral ones, in less
mistakeable light, securing even in this irregular form at least
clearness of assertion. For the rest, the question at issue is not
one to be decided by argument, but by experiment, which if the reader
is disinclined to make, all demonstration must be useless to him.The
lectures are for the most part printed as they were read, mending
only obscure sentences here and there. The parts which were trusted
to extempore speaking are supplied, as well as I can remember (only
with an addition here and there of things I forgot to say), in the
words, or at least the kind of words, used at the time; and they
contain, at all events, the substance of what I said more accurately
than hurried journal reports. I must beg my readers not in general to
trust to such, for even in fast speaking I try to use words
carefully; and any alteration of expression will sometimes involve a
great alteration in meaning. A little while ago I had to speak of an
architectural design, and called it "elegant," meaning,
founded on good and well "elected" models; the printed
report gave "excellent" design (that is to say, design
excellingly good),
which I did not mean, and should, even in the most hurried speaking,
never have said.The
illustrations of the lecture on iron were sketches made too roughly
to be engraved, and yet of too elaborate subjects to allow of my
drawing them completely. Those now substituted will, however, answer
the purpose nearly as well, and are more directly connected with the
subjects of the preceding lectures; so that I hope throughout the
volume the student will perceive an insistance upon one main truth,
nor lose in any minor direction of inquiry the sense of the
responsibility which the acceptance of that truth fastens upon him;
responsibility for choice, decisive and conclusive, between two modes
of study, which involve ultimately the development, or deadening, of
every power he possesses. I have tried to hold that choice clearly
out to him, and to unveil for him to its farthest the issue of his
turning to the right hand or the left. Guides he may find many, and
aids many; but all these will be in vain unless he has first
recognised the hour and the point of life when the way divides
itself, one way leading to the Olive mountains—one to the vale of
the Salt Sea. There are few cross roads, that I know of, from one to
the other. Let him pause at the parting of THE TWO PATHS.
LECTURE I.
THE
DETERIORATIVE POWER OF CONVENTIONAL ART OVER NATIONS.
An
Inaugural Lecture, Delivered at the Kensington Museum, January, 1858.
[Footnote:
A few introductory words, in which, at the opening of this lecture, I
thanked the Chairman (Mr. Cockerell), for his support on the
occasion, and asked his pardon for any hasty expressions in my
writings, which might have seemed discourteous towards him, or other
architects whose general opinions were opposed to mine, may be found
by those who care for preambles, not much misreported, in the
Building Chronicle;
with such comments as the genius of that journal was likely to
suggest to it.]
As
I passed, last summer, for the first time, through the north of
Scotland, it seemed to me that there was a peculiar painfulness in
its scenery, caused by the non-manifestation of the powers of human
art. I had never travelled in, nor even heard or conceived of such a
country before; nor, though I had passed much of my life amidst
mountain scenery in the south, was I before aware how much of its
charm depended on the little gracefulnesses and tendernesses of human
work, which are mingled with the beauty of the Alps, or spared by
their desolation. It is true that the art which carves and colours
the front of a Swiss cottage is not of any very exalted kind; yet it
testifies to the completeness and the delicacy of the faculties of
the mountaineer; it is true that the remnants of tower and
battlement, which afford footing to the wild vine on the Alpine
promontory, form but a small part of the great serration of its
rocks; and yet it is just that fragment of their broken outline which
gives them their pathetic power, and historical majesty. And this
element among the wilds of our own country I found wholly wanting.
The Highland cottage is literally a heap of gray stones, choked up,
rather than roofed over, with black peat and withered heather; the
only approach to an effort at decoration consists in the placing of
the clods of protective peat obliquely on its roof, so as to give a
diagonal arrangement of lines, looking somewhat as if the surface had
been scored over by a gigantic claymore.
