Chapter VIII: Section I (3)

To take one prominent instance:—So far as we can judge, the human body is the most perfect of Nature’s works; in it the groundwork of skeleton is never seen, and though it can hardly be said to be anywhere concealed, it is only displayed at the joints or more prominent points of support, where the action of the frame would be otherwise unintelligible. The muscles are disposed not only where they are most useful, but so as to form groups gracefully rounded in outline. The softness and elegance of these are further aided by the deposition of adipose matter, and the whole is covered with a skin which with its beautiful texture conceals the more utilitarian construction of the internal parts. In the trunk of the body the viscera are disposed wholly without symmetry or reference to beauty of any sort—the heart on one side, the liver on the other, and the other parts exactly in those positions and in those forms by which they may most directly and easily perform the essential functions for which they are designed. But the whole is concealed in a perfectly symmetrical sheath of the most exquisitely beautiful outline. It may be safely asserted that a building is beautiful and perfect exactly in the ratio in which the same amount of concealment and the same amount of display of construction is preserved, where the same symmetry is shown as between the right and left sides of the human body—the same difference as between the legs and arms, where the parts are applied to different purposes, and where the same amount of ornament is added, to adorn without interfering with what is useful. In short, there is no principle involved in the structure of man which may not be taken as the most absolute standard of excellence in architecture.

It is in Nature’s highest works that we find the symmetry of proportion most prominent. When we descend to the lower types of animals we lose it to a great extent, and among trees and vegetables generally find it only in a far less degree, and sometimes miss it altogether. In the mineral kingdom among rocks and stones it is altogether absent. So universal is this principle in Nature that we may safely apply it to our criticism on art, and say that a building is perfect as a whole in proportion to its motived regularity, and departs from the highest type in the ratio in which symmetrical arrangement is neglected. It may, however, be incorrect to say that an oak-tree is a less perfect work of creation than a human being, but it is certain that it is lower in the scale of created beings. So it may be said that a picturesque group of Gothic buildings may be as perfect as the stately regularity of an Egyptian or classic temple; but if it is so, it is equally certain that it belongs to a lower and inferior class of design.

This analogy, however, we may leave for the present. The one point which it is indispensable to insist on here is, that man can progress or tend towards success only by following the principles and copying, so far as he can understand them, the processes which Nature employs in her works; but he can never succeed in anything by copying forms without reference to principles. If we could find Nature making trees like stones, or animals like trees, or birds like fishes, or fishes like mammalia, or using any parts taken from one kingdom for purposes belonging to another, it would then be perfectly legitimate for us to use man’s stature as the modulus for a Doric, or woman’s as that of an Ionic column—to build cathedrals like groves, and make windows like leaves, or to estimate their beauty by their resemblance to such objects; but all such comparisons proceed on an entire mistake of what imitation of Nature really means.

It is the merest and most absolute negation of reason to apply to one purpose things that were designed for another, or to imitate them when they have no appropriateness; but it is our highest privilege to understand the processes of Nature. To apply these to our own wants and purposes is the noblest use of human intellect and the perfection of human wisdom.

So instinctively, but so literally, has this correct process of imitating Nature been followed in all true styles of architecture, that we can always reason regarding them as we do with reference to natural objects. Thus, if an architect finds in any quarter of the globe a Doric or Corinthian capital with a few traces of a foundation, he can, at a glance, tell the age of the temple or building to which it belonged. He knows who the people were who erected it, to what purpose it was dedicated, and proceeds at once to restore its porticos, and without much uncertainty can reproduce the whole fabric. Or if he finds a few Gothic bases in situ, with a few mouldings or frusta of columns, by the same process he traces the age, the size, and the purposes of the building before him. A Cuvier or an Owen can restore the form and predicate the habits of an extinct animal from a few fragments of bone, or even from a print of a foot. In the same manner an architect may, from a few fragments of a building, if of a true style of architecture, restore the whole of its pristine forms, and with almost the same amount of certainty. This arises wholly because the architects of former days had correct ideas of what was meant by imitation of Nature. They added nothing to their buildings which was not essential; there was no detail which had not its use, and no ornament which was not an elaboration or heightening of some essential part, and hence it is that a true building is as like to a work of Nature as any production of man’s hands can be to the creations of his Maker.

XVI.—ASSOCIATION.

There is one property inherent in the productions of architectural art, which, while it frequently lends to them half their charm, at the same time tends more than anything else to warp and distort our critical judgments regarding them. We seldom can look at a building of any age without associating with it such historical memories as may cling to its walls; and our predilections for any peculiar style of architecture are more often due to educational or devotional associations than to purely artistic judgments. A man must be singularly ignorant or strangely passionless who can stand among the fallen columns of a Grecian temple, or wander through the corridors of a Roman amphitheatre, or the aisles of a ruined Gothic abbey, and not feel his heart stirred by emotions of a totally different class from those suggested by the beauty of the mouldings or the artistic arrangement of the building he is contemplating.

The enthusiasm which burst forth in the 15th century for the classical style of art, and then proved fatal to the Gothic, was not so much an architectural as a literary movement. It arose from the re-discovery—if it may be so called—of the poems of Homer and Virgil, of the histories of Thucydides and Tacitus, of the Philosophy of Aristotle and the eloquence of Cicero. It was a vast reaction against the darkness and literary degradation of the Middle Ages, and carried the educated classes of Europe with it for the next three centuries. So long as classical literature only was taught in our schools, and classical models followed in our literature, classical architecture could alone be tolerated in our buildings, and this generally without the least reference either to its own peculiar beauties, or its appropriateness for the purposes to which it was applied.

A second reaction has now taken place against this state of affairs. The revival of the rites and ceremonies of the mediæval Church, our reverent love of our own national antiquities, and our admiration for the rude but vigorous manhood of the Middle Ages,—all have combined to repress the classical element both in our literature and our art, and to exalt in their place Gothic feelings and Gothic art, to an extent which cannot be justified on any grounds of reasonable criticism.

Unless the art-critic can free himself from the influence of these adventitious associations, his judgments lose half their value; but, on the other hand, to the historian of art they are of the utmost importance. It is because architecture so fully and so clearly expresses the feelings of the people who practised it that it becomes frequently a better vehicle of history than the written page; and it is these very associations that give life and meaning to blocks of stone and mounds of brick, and bring so vividly before our eyes the feelings and the aspirations of the long-forgotten past.

The importance of association in giving value to the objects of architectural art can hardly be overrated either by the student or historian. What has to be guarded against is that unreasoning enthusiasm which mistakes the shadow for the reality, and would force us to admire a rude piece of clumsy barbarism erected yesterday, and to which no history consequently attaches, because something like it was done in some long past age. Its reality, its antiquity, and its weather stains may render its prototype extremely interesting, even if not beautiful; while its copy is only an antiquarian toy, as ugly as it is absurd.

XVII.—NEW STYLE.

There is still one other point of view from which it is necessary to look at this question of architectural design before any just conclusion can be arrived at regarding it. It is in fact necessary to answer two other questions, nearly as often asked as those proposed at the beginning of Section III. “Can any one invent a new style?”—“Can we ever again have a new and original style of architecture?” Reasoning from experience alone, it is easy to answer these questions. No individual has, so far as we know, ever invented a new style in any part of the world. No one can even be named who during the prevalence of a true style of art materially advanced its progress, or by his individual exertion did much to help it forward; and we may safely answer, that as this has never happened before, it is hardly probable that it will ever occur now.

If this one question must be answered in the negative, the other may as certainly be answered in the affirmative, inasmuch as no nation in any age or in any part of the globe has failed to invent for itself a true and appropriate style of architecture whenever it chose to set about it in the right way, and there certainly can be no great difficulty in our doing now what has been so often done before, if we only set to work in a proper spirit, and are prepared to follow the same process which others have followed to obtain this result.

What that process is, may perhaps be best explained by such an example as that of ship-building before alluded to, which, though totally distinct, is still so nearly allied to architecture, as to make a comparison between the two easy and intelligible.

Let us, for instance, take a series of ships, beginning with those in which William the Conqueror invaded our shores, or the fleet with which Edward III. crossed over to France. Next take the vessels which transported Henry VIII. to his meeting with Francis I., and then pass on to the time of the Spanish Armada and the sea fights of Van Tromp and De Ruyter, and on to the times of William III., and then through the familiar examples till we come to such ships as the ‘Wellington’ and ‘Marlborough’ of yesterday, and the ‘Warrior’ or ‘Minotaur’ of to-day. In all this long list of examples we have a gradual, steady, forward progress without one check or break. Each century is in advance of the one before it, and the result is as near perfection as we can well conceive.

But if we ask who effected these improvements, or who invented any part of the last-named wonderful fabrics, we must search deep indeed into the annals of the navy to find out. But no one has inquired and no one cares to know, for the simple reason that, like architecture in the Middle Ages, it is a true and living art, and the improvements were not effected by individuals, but by all classes—owners, sailors, shipwrights, and men of science, all working together through centuries, each lending the aid of his experience or of his reasoning.

If we place alongside of this series of ships a list of churches or cathedrals, commencing with Charlemagne and ending with Charles V., we find the same steady and assured progress obtained by the same identical means. In this instance, princes, priests, masons, and mathematicians, all worked steadily together for the whole period, striving to obtain a well-defined result.

In the ship the most suitable materials only are employed in every part, and neither below nor aloft is there one single timber nor spar nor one rope which is superfluous. Nor in the cathedral was any material ever used that was not believed to be the most suitable for its purpose; nor any form of construction adopted which did not seem the best to those who employed it; nor any detail added which did not appear necessary for the purpose it was designed to express? the result being, that we can look on and contemplate both with the same unmitigated satisfaction.

The one point where this comparison seems to halt is, that ship-building never became a purely fine art, which architecture really is. The difference is only one of aim, which it would be as easy to apply to the one art as it has been to the other. Had architecture never progressed beyond its one strictly legitimate object of house-building, it would never have been more near a fine art than merchant ship-building, and palaces would only have been magnified dwelling-places. Castles and men-of-war advanced both one stage further towards a fine art. Size and power were impressed on both, and in this respect they stand precisely equal to one another. Here ship-building halted, and has not progressed beyond, while architecture has been invested with a higher aim. In all ages men have sought to erect houses more dignified and stately than those designed for their personal use. They attempted the erection of dwelling-places for their Gods, or temples worthy of the worship of Supreme Beings; and it was only when this strictly useful art threw aside all shadow of utilitarianism, and launched boldly forth in search of the beautiful and the sublime, that it became a truly fine art, and took the elevated position which it now holds above all other useful arts. It would have been easy to supply the same motive to ship-building. If we could imagine any nation ever to construct ships of God, or to worship on the bosom of the ocean, ships might easily be made such objects of beauty that the cathedral could hardly compete with them.

It is not, however, only in architecture or in ship-building that this progress is essential, for the progress of every art and every science that is worthy of the name is owing to the same simple process of the aggregation of experiences; whether we look to metallurgy or mechanics, cotton-spinning or coining, their perfection is due to the same cause. So also the sciences—astronomy, chemistry, geology—are all cultivated by the same means. When the art or science is new, great men stand forth and make great strides; but when once it reaches maturity, and becomes the property of the nation, the individual is lost in the mass, and a thousand inferior brains follow out steadily and surely the path which the one great intellect has pointed out, but which no single mind, however great, could carry to its legitimate conclusion.

So far as any reason or experience yet known can be applied to this subject, it seems clear that no art or science ever has been or can be now advanced by going backwards, and copying earlier forms, or those applicable to other times or other circumstances; and that progress towards perfection can only be obtained by the united efforts of many steadily pursuing a well-defined object. Whenever this is done, success appears to be inevitable, or at all events every age is perfectly satisfied with its own productions. Where forward progress is the law, it is certain that the next age will surpass the present; but the living cannot conceive anything more perfect than what they are doing, or they would apply it. Everything in any true art is thoroughly up to the highest standard of its period, and instead of the dissatisfied uncertainty in which we are wandering in all matters concerning architecture, we should be exulting in our own productions, and proud in leaving to our posterity the progress we have made, feeling assured that we have paved the way for them to advance to a still higher standard of perfection.

As soon as the public are aware of the importance of this rule, and of its applicability to architecture, a new style must be the inevitable result; and if our civilisation is what we believe it to be, that style will not only be perfectly suited to all our wants and desires, but also more beautiful and more perfect than any that has ever existed before.

XVIII.—PROSPECTS.

If we turn from these speculations to ask what prospect there is of the public appreciating correctly this view of the matter, or setting earnestly about carrying it out, the answer can hardly be deemed satisfactory; in fact, if it were left to the public, very little progress, except from an utilitarian point of view, would probably be made.

The study of the classical languages, to which so much importance is attached in our public schools, and in our own and most foreign universities, tended at one time in another way to draw attention from the formation of a true style of architecture by fixing it exclusively on Greek and Roman models. The Renaissance in the 15th century, as pointed out above, arose much more from admiration of classic literature than from any feeling for the remains of buildings which had been neglected for centuries, and were far surpassed by those which succeeded them. The same feelings perpetuated by early association are the great cause of the hold that classic art still has on the educated classes in Europe.

On the other hand, the revival of the Gothic style fifty years ago enlisted the sympathy of the clergy, not only in England, but on the continent of Europe, when they arrived at the conclusion that the Gothic style was the one most suited for church-building purposes; and attempted to establish a point that no deviation from Gothic models should be tolerated.

Beyond these there was another class of men who had but little sympathy with Greece or Rome, and still less with mediæval monasticism or feudalism, but who in their own strong sense were inclined to take a more reasonable view of the matter, and these men have for years been erecting in London, Manchester, Leeds, and in other cities of England a series of warehouses and other buildings designed wholly with reference to their uses, and ornamented only in their construction, and which consequently are—as far as their utilitarian purposes will allow—as satisfactory as anything of former days.

In addition to these, and within the last fifteen to twenty years, a very great progress has taken place in domestic architecture, not only in London and its suburbs, but throughout England, where buildings have been erected of a new and an original type, peculiarly applicable to the requirements of English domestic life, and of great variety and picturesque design; and these remarks apply not only to mansions, but to the residences of a much humbler and more simple kind.

In civil engineering, the lowest and most prosaic branch of architectural art, our progress has been brilliant and rapid. Of this no better example can be given than the four great bridges erected over the Thames. The old bridges of Westminster and Blackfriars, and those of Waterloo and London, were erected at nearly equal intervals during one century, and the steady progress which they exhibit is greater than that of almost any similar branch of art during any equal period of time.

In this department our progress is so undeniable that we saw old London Bridge removed without regret, though it was a work of the same age and of the same men who built all our greatest and best cathedrals, and in its own line was quite as perfect and as beautiful as they. But it had outlived its age, and we knew we could replace it by a better—so its destruction was inevitable; and if we had made the same progress in the higher that we have in the lower branches of the building art, we should see a Gothic cathedral pulled down with the same indifference, content to know that we could easily replace it by one far nobler and more worthy of our age and intelligence. No architect during the Middle Ages ever hesitated to pull down any part of a cathedral that was old and going to decay, and to replace it with something in the style of the day, however incongruous that might be; and if we were progressing as they were, we should have as little compunction in following the same course.

In the confusion of ideas and of styles which now prevails, it is satisfactory to be able to contemplate, in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, at least one great building carried out wholly on the principles of Gothic or of any true style of art. No material is used in it which is not the best for its purpose, no constructive expedient employed which was not absolutely essential, and it depends wholly for its effect on the arrangement of its parts and the display of its construction. So essentially is its principle the same which, as we have seen, animated Gothic architecture, that we hardly know even now how much of the design belongs to Sir Joseph Paxton, how much to the contractors, or how much to the subordinate officers employed by the Company. Here, as in a cathedral, every man was set to work in that department which it was supposed he was best qualified to superintend. There was room for every art and for every intellect, and clashing and interference were impossible. This, however, was only the second of the series. The third was entrusted to an Engineer officer, who had no architectural education, and who had never thought twice on the subject before he was set to carry out his very inchoate design for the 1862 Exhibition. He failed of course, for architecture is not a Phonetic art depending on inspiration, but a technic art based on experience. As re-erected on Muswell Hill the building was immensely improved, and far superior to its predecessor, but was burnt down before the public had time to realise its form. As being rebuilt, it probably will be still one step further in advance, and if the series were carried to a hundred, with more leisure and a higher aim, we might perhaps learn to despise many things we now so servilely copy, and might create a style surpassing anything that ever went before. We have certainly more wealth, more constructive skill, and more knowledge than our forefathers; and, living in the same climate and being of the same race, there seems no insuperable difficulty in our doing at least as much if not more than they accomplished.

Art, however, will not be regenerated by buildings so ephemeral as Crystal Palaces or so prosaic as Manchester warehouses, nor by anything so essentially utilitarian as the works of our engineers. The one hope is that having commenced at the bottom, the true system may extend upwards, and come at last to be applied to our palaces and even to churches, and that the whole nation may lend its aid to work out the great problem. The prospect of this being done may seem distant, but as soon as the general significance of the problem is fully appreciated by the public, the result seems inevitable; and with the means of diffusing knowledge which we now possess, we may perhaps be permitted to fancy that the dawn is at hand, and that after our long wanderings in the dark, daylight may again enlighten our path and gladden our hearts with the vision of brighter and better things in art than a false system has hitherto enabled us to attain.

These remarks might easily be extended to any desired length, and in fact this part of the work ought to be enlarged till it equalled the narrative part, if it had any pretension to be a complete treatise on the Art of Architecture. In that case, the static or descriptive part of a treatise on any art is equally important with the dynamic or narrative part. In most instances more so; but in this respect architecture is exceptional, and the narrative form is by far the more important of the two divisions into which the subject naturally divides itself.

If, for instance, any one were writing a treatise on Naval Architecture, it is more than probable that he would not allude to any vessel not afloat at the time of his writing. If he mentioned the triremes of the Romans or the galleys of the Venetians, it would be in an introductory chapter intended for the amusement, not the instruction, of his readers. In like manner, if an engineer undertakes to write on the art of bridge-building, harbour-making, or on roads or canals, he is only careful to cite the best existing examples in use, and would be considered pedantic if he wasted his time, or that of his readers, in recounting what was done in these departments by the Romans or the Chinese. If the fine art architecture was with us as well up to the mark of the intelligence of the day as these more utilitarian branches of the profession, the same course would be the proper one to pursue in writing with regard to it. Unfortunately, however, we have no architecture of our own, and it is impossible to make the various styles in practice either intelligible or interesting, except by tracing them back to their origin, and explaining the steps by which they reached perfection.

If architecture was practised by us on the same principles that guided either the Classic or Gothic architects in their designs, a static treatise on it would not only be the most instructive but the most pleasing form of teaching its elements. Owing, however, to the system of copying which is now the basis of all designs, this is no longer the case, and the consequently abnormal position of the art renders the study of its principles almost impossible, and memory must supply the place of pure reason for their elucidation, thus giving to the narrative branch of the subject a somewhat exaggerated importance, even when looked at from a merely technic point of view.

Besides this, however, the narrative form as applied to Architecture has advantages of its own greater than those of any other art of the same class, inasmuch as it is a great stone book in which most of the nations of the earth have recorded their annals, and written their thoughts, and even expressed their feelings in clearer and truer language than by any other form of utterance. The pyramids and temples of Egypt are a truer expression of the feelings and aspirations of their builders than we can obtain from any other source. The Parthenon at Athens brings the age of Pericles more clearly before our eyes in all its perfection of art than any written page. The Flavian Amphitheatre and the Baths of Caracalla enable us to realise imperial Rome more vividly than even the glowing pages of Tacitus. Our Mediæval cathedrals are a living record of the faith and feelings of peoples, who have left, besides these, but few materials by which one could judge of their aspirations or of their civilisation; while, if we wish to know in what India differed from Europe in those ages, and in what respect she still resembled it, it is to her contemporary temples that we must turn, and they tell us in a language not to be mistaken wherein lay the differences, and still how nearly alike the civilisations at one time were. All this, and infinitely more, we may learn from a record, which, though often ruined and nearly obliterated, never deceives. Where it first was placed, there it still remains to tell to future generations what at that spot, at some previous time, men thought and felt; what their state of civilisation enabled them to accomplish, and to what stage they had attained in their conception of a God.

Besides, however, the advantages to be obtained in an artistic point of view from treating architecture in a narrative rather than in a static form, there is, as pointed out above, still another, which, though of minor importance, still adds immensely to the interest of the subject. It is that, when so treated, the art affords one of the clearest and most certain tests known of the ethnographic relations of people one to another. It may, therefore, be as well, before proceeding further, to explain as briefly as is consistent with intelligibility what is meant by Architectural Ethnography.