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(AFTS EXHIBITION JB BY WILLIAM IS.

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

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﻿﻿GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE: A LECTURE FOR THE ARTS AND CRAFTS EXHIBITION SOCIETY BY WILLIAM MORRIS.﻿﻿Zojuz /V>44fO

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GOTHIC ARCHITECTU REuX

Y the word Archie tecture is ,1 suppose, commonly under / stood the art of or/ namental buildings and in this sense I shall often have to use ft here* Yet I would not If ke you to think of its pro* ductfons merely as well constructs ed and well/proportioned build/ ings, each one of which is handed over by the architect to other ar/ tists to finish, after his designs have been carried out (as we say) by a number of mechanical workers, who are not artists ♦ A true architec/ tural work rather is abuildingduly provided with all necessary furni/ a

856﻿Archi/ ture, decorated with all due oma^ tecture a ment, according to the use, quality, cO'Opera/ and dignity of the building, from tive Art mere mouldings or abstract lines, to the great epical works of sculps ture and painting, which, except as decorations of the nobler form of such buildings, cannot be produced at all	So looked on, awork of arx

chitecture is a harmonious co/op^ erative work of art, inclusive of all the serious arts, all those which are not engaged in the production of mere toys, or of ephemeral pretti' nesses*

OW these works of art are man's expression of the value of life, and also the production of them

2,﻿makes his life of value :& since they No his/ can only be produced by the genera tory of al good/will and help of the public, the lack their continuous production, or the of Art existence of the true Art of Archie tecture, betokens a society which, whatever elements of change it may bear within it, maybe called stable, since it is founded on the happy ex/ ercise of the energies of the most useful part of its population*

HAT the absence of this Art of Architecture may betoken in thelong run it is not easy for us to say: because that lack belongs only to these later times of the world's history,which as yet we cannot fair/ ly see, because they are too near to a 2	3﻿Sense of us; but clearly in the present it indi^ the lack cates a transference of the interest of Art of civilised men from the develops ment of the human & intellectual energies of the race to the develop^ ment of its mechanical energies* If this tendency is to go along the hv gical road of development, it must be said that it will destroy the arts of design and all that is analogous to them in literature; but the logi^ cal outcome of obvious tendencies is often thwarted by the historical development; that is,by what I can call by no better name than the coh lective will of mankind; and unless my hopes deceive me, I should say that this process has already begun, that thereisarevolt on foot against 4﻿the utilitarianism which threatens Revolt

to destroy the Arts; and that it is against

deeper rooted than a mere passing Utilitari'

fashion For myself I do not anism

indeed believe that this revolt can

effect much; so long as the present

state of society lasts; but as I am

sure that great changes which will

bring about a new state of society

are rapidly advancing upon us, I

think it a matter of much import^

ance that these two revolts should

j oin hands,or at least should learn to

understand oneanotherJftheNew

society when it comes (itself the

result of the ceaseless evolution of

countless years of tradition) should

find the world cut off from all tra^

dition of art, all aspiration towards

5﻿Co^ope/' the beauty which man has proved rative that he can create, much time will Art no be lost in running hither & thither mere after the new thread of art; many dream lives will be barren of amanlyplea^ sure which the world can ill afford to lose evenforashort timej^I ask you, therefore, to accept what fol^ lows as a contribution toward the re^ volt against utilitarianism, toward the attempt at catching^up the slem der thread of tradition before it be too late*

OW, that Harmonious Architectural unit,inclu' sive of the arts in general, is no mere dream* I have said that it is only in these later times that it has become extinct: 6﻿until the rise of modern society, Organic no Civilisation, no Barbarism has Art been without it in some form; but it reached its fullest development in the Middle Ages, an epoch real/ ly more remote from our modern habits of life and thought than the older civilisations were, though an important part of its life was car> ried on in our own country by men of our own blood* N evertheless, re/ mote as those times are from ours, if we are ever to have architecture at all, we must take up the thread of tradition there and nowhere else, because that Gothic Architecture is the most completely organic form oftheArtwhich the worldhas seen; the break in the thread of tradition 7﻿Archie tecturcin the past

could only occur there: all the for^ mer developments tended thither^ ward,andtoignorethis fact and at^ tempt to catch up the thread before that point was reached, would be a mere piece of artificiality, betokenx mg,not newbirth,but a corruption into mere whim of the ancient tra^ ditions*

N order to illustrate this po^ sition of mine, I must ask you to allow me to run very briefly over the historical sequence of events which led to Gothic Architecture and its fall, and to pardon me for statin g familiar & elementary facts which are necessary for my purx pose I must admit also that in﻿doing this I must mostly take my illustrations from works that ap' pear on the face of them to belong to the category of ornamental builds ing, rather than that of those com/ plete andinclusive works ofwhich I have spoken* But this incomplete' ness is only on the surface; to those who study them they appear as belonging to the class of complete architectural works; they are lack' ing in completeness only through the consequences of the lapse of time and the folly of men, who did not know what they were, who, pretending to use them, marred their real use as works of art; or in a similar spirit abused thembymak' ing them serve their turn as instru'

9

Archie

tecture

now re'

present^

ed by in'

complete

works﻿Three ments to expresstheir passingpas/ great sion and spite of the hour.

E may divide the his tory or the Art of Archie tecture into two periods, the Ancient & the Me/ diaeval: the Ancient again maybe divided into two styles, the barba/ rian (in the Greek sense) and the classical. We have,then,three great styles to consider? the Barbarian, the Classical, and the Mediaeval. The two former, however, were partly synchronous,&atleast over/ lapped somewhat. When the cur/ tain of the stage of definite history first draws up, we find the small exclusive circle of the highest civil/ isation, which was dominated by 10﻿Hellenic thought & science, fitted Greek with a very distinctive and orderly Classical architectural style* That style ap' pears to us to be, within its limits, one of extreme refinement, & per' haps seemed so to those who ori' ginally practised it* Moreover, it is ornamented with figure^sculpture far advanced towards perfection even at an early period of its exist' ence, and swiftly growing in tech' nical excellence; yet for all that, it is, after all, a part of the general style of architecture of the Barba' rian world, & only outgoes it in the excellence of itsfigure'sculpture & its refinement The bones of it, its merely architectural part, are lit' tie changed from the Barbarian or \\﻿primal building, which is a mere Temple piling or jointing together of ma/ terial, giving one no sense of growth in the building itself and no sense of the possibility of growth in the stylejg?

The one Greek form of building with which we are really familiar, the columnar temple, though ah ways built with blocks of stone, is clearly a deduction from the wood' en god's'house or shrine, which was a necessary part of the equip' ment of the not very remote ances' tors ofthePericlean Greeks;nor had this god's'house changed so much as the city had changed from the Tribe, or the Worship of the City (the true religion of the Greeks) 12﻿from the Worship of the Ances/ Civilize tors of the TribeJn fact, rigid coiv ed Sculps servatism of form is an essential ture on part of Greek architecture as we Barbara know itjS^ From this conservatism ous Ar/ of form thereresulted a jostlingbex chitec^ tween the building and its higher ture ornament* In early days, indeed, when some healthy barbarism yet clung to the sculpture, the discrepx ancy is not felt; but as increasing civ* ilisation demands from the sculps tors more naturalism and less re^ straint, it becomes more and more obvious, and more and more pain^ ful; till at last it becomes clear that sculpture has ceased to be a part of architecture and has become an ex^ traneous art bound to the building *3﻿Greek	by habit or superstition* The form

Narrow* or the ornamental building of the Greeks, then,was very limited,had no capacity in it for development, & tended to divorce from its higher or epical ornament* WTiat is to be said about the spirit of it which ruled that form? jg?This I think; that the narrow superstition of the form of the Greek temple was not a matter of accident, but was the due expression ofthe exclusiveness and aristocratic arrogance ofthe ancient Greek mind, a natural result of which was a demand for pedantic perfection in all the parts and de/ tails of a building; so that the in/ ferior parts of the ornament are so slavishly subordinated to the su/ *4﻿period that no invention or indivi/ duality is possible in them,whence comes a kind of bareness & blanks ness, a rejection in short of all ro/ mance, which does not indeed de/ stroy their interest as relics of past history, but which puts the style of them aside as any possible foun/ dation for the style of the future architecture of the world* It must be remembered also that this at/ tempt at absolute perfection soon proved a snare to Greek architect ture; for it could not be kept up long* It was easy indeed to ensure the perfect execution of a fret or a dentil; not so easy to ensure the perfection of the higher ornament: so that as Greek energy began to *5

Perfect/

ion﻿Roman fall back from its high/water mark, the demand for absolute perfection became rather a demand for abso/ lute plausibility, which speedily dragged the architectural arts into mere Academicism*

UT long before classi/ cal art reached the last depths of that degrada/ tion, it had brought to birth another style of architecture, the Roman style, which to start with was differentiated from the Greek by having the habitual use of the arch forced upon it* To my mind, organic Architecture, Ar/ chitecture which must necessarily grow, dates from the habitual use of the arch, which, taking into con/ 16﻿sideration its combined utility and The beauty, must be pronounced to be Arch thegreatestinventionofthehuman race* Until the time when man not only had invented the arch, but had gathered boldness to use it habitue ally, architecture was necessarily so limited, that strong growth was inv possible to it* It was quite natural that a people should crystallize the first convenient form of building they might happen upon, or, like the Greeks, accept a traditional form without aspiration towards anything more complex or inters esting* Till the arch came into use, building men were the slaves of conditions of climate, materials, kind of labour available, and so

b	I﻿Real aiv forth Jj£jf But once furnished with chitec^ the arch, man has conquered Na^ turebe^ ture in the matter of building; he can defy the rigours of all climates under which men can live with fair comfort: splendid materials are not necessary to him; he can attain a good result from shabby & scrappy materials* Wlien he wants size & span he does not need a horde of war'captured slaves to work for him; the free citizens (if there be any such) can do all that is needed without grindingtheir lives outbex fore their time* The arch can do all that architecture needs, and in turn from the time when the Arch comes into habitual use, the main artistic business of architecture is the de/ ■﻿coration of the Arch; the only sa^ Roman tisfactory style is that which never engi^ disguises its office, but adorns and neering glorifies it j2?This the Roman ar^ chitecture, the first style that used the arch, did not do* It used the arch frankly and simply indeed, in one part of its work, but did not adorn it; this part of the Roman building must, however, be called engineering rather than architect ture, though its massive & simple dignity is a wonderful contrast to the horrible and restless nightmare ofmodern engineering* Intheother side of its work, the ornamental side, Roman buildingusedthearch and adorned it, but disguised its ok fice, and pretended that the struct b 2	19﻿Roman ture of its buildings was still that architect of the lintel, and that the arch bore no weight worth speaking of* For the Romans had no ornamental building of their own (perhaps we should say no art of their own) and therefore fitted their ideas of the ideas of the Greek sculpture^archiV tect on to their own massive builds ing; and as the Greek plastered his energetic & capable civilised sculps ture on to the magnified shrine of his forefathers,so the Roman plas^ tered sculpture, shrine, and all, on to his magnificent engineer's work* In fact, this kind of front^build^ ing or veneering was the main re^ source of Roman ornament; the construction and ornament did not

20﻿interpenetrate; & to us at this date Roman

it seems doubtful if he gained by ornament

hiding with marble veneer the solid

and beautiful construction of his

wall of brick or concrete; since oth/

ers have used marble far better than

he did; but none have built a wall

or turned an arch better jgj? As to

the Roman ornament, it is not in ity

self worth much sacrifice of interest

in the construction: the Greek or**

nament was cruelly limited &con^

ventional; but everything about it

was in its place,& there was a reason

for everything, even though that

reason were founded on supersti^

tion* But the Roman ornamenthas

no more freedom than the Greek,

while it has lost the logic of the lat^

21﻿Execu'

tion

versus

design

ter: it is rich and handsome, & that is all the reason it can give for its existence; nor does its execution and its design interpenetrate* One cannot conceive of the Greek orna^ ment existing apart from the pre^ cision of its execution; but well as the Roman ornament is executed in all important works, one almost wishes it were less well executed, so that some mystery might be ads ded to its florid handsomeness Once again, it is a piece of neces^ sary history, and to criticize it from the point of view of work of toy day would be like finding fault with a geological epoch: and who can help feeling touched by its remnants which show crumbling 22﻿& battered amidst the incongruous The mass of modern houses, amidst the Roman disorder, vulgarity and squalor of Style uv some modern town ? If I have venx organic tured to call your attention to what it was as architecture, it is because of the abuse of it which took place in later times &has even lasted inx to our own anti^architectural days; &becauseitisnecessarytopointout that it has not got the qualities es^ sential to making it a foundation for any possible new/birth of the arts* In its own time it was for cen^ turiesthe only thing that redeemed the academical period of classical art from mere nothingness, and though it may almost be said to have perished before the change

23﻿The first came, yet in perishing it gave some of the	token of the coming change,which

change indeed was as slow as the decay of imperial Rome herself It was in the height of the taxgathering period of the Roman Peace, in the last days of Diocletian (died 313) in the palace of Spalato which he built himself to rest in after he was satiated with rule, that the rebel, Change first showed in Roman art, and that the builders admitted that their false lintel was false, and that the arch could do without it*

HIS was the first obscure beginning of Gothic or or^ game Architecture; hence forth till the beginning of the modern epoch all is growth un/

24﻿interrupted, however slow jg? In^ The deed, it is slow enough at first: Or^ birth of ganic Architecture took two cenx Gothic turies to free itself from the fetters which the Academical ages had cast over it, & the Peace of Rome had vanished before it was free But the full change came at last,

& the architecture was born which logically should have supplanted the primitive linteharchitecture,of which the civilized style of Greece was the last development* Archie tecture was become organic; hence^ forth no academical period was pos^ sible to it, nothing but death could stop its growth*

25﻿Byzan^ tine Art

HE first expression of this freedom is called By> zantine Art, and there is nothingto objeettointhe namejgFFor centuries Byzantium was the centre of it, & its first great work inthatcity(theChurchofthe Holy Wisdom, built by Justinian in the year 540) remains its greatest work* The style leaps into sudden completeness in this most lovely building: for there are few works extant of much importance of ear^ lier date	As to its origin,of course

buildings were raised all through the sickness of classical art, & tradiV tional forms & ways of work were stillinuse,&thesetraditions,which by this time included the forms of 26﻿Roman building, were now in the Its chaiv hands of the Greeks*This Romano* acter Greek building in Greek hands met with traditions drawn from many sources* In Syria, the borderland of so many races & customs, the East mingled with theWest, and Byzan^ tine artwasborn* Its characteristics are simplicity of structure and out** line of mass; amazing delicacy of ornament combined with abhors rence of vagueness: it is bright and clear in colour, pure in line, hating barrenness as much as vagueness; redundant, but not florid, the very opposite of Roman architecture in spirit, though it took so many of its forms & revivified them* Nothing more beautiful than its best works

27﻿has ever been produced by man, but spread of in spite of its stately loveliness and the new quietude, it was the mother of fierce vigour in the days to come, for from its first days in St* Sophia, Gothic architecture has still one thousand years of life before it East and West it overran the world wherx ever men built with history behind them* In the East it mingled with the traditions of the native popular tions, especially with Persia of the Sassanian period, andproducedthe whole body of what we, very ernv neously,call Arab Art (for the Arabs never had any art) from Isphahan to Granada* In the West it settled itself in the parts of Italy that Juss tinian had conquered, notably Ra^ 28﻿venna, and thence came to Venice* The na/ From Italy, or perhaps even from tional Byzantium itself, it was carried in/ styles to Germany & pre/NormanEng/ land,touchingeven Ireland& Scam dinavia* Rome adopted it, and sent it another road through the south of France, where it fell under the in/ fluence of provincial Roman archi/ tecture,& produced a very strong or^ derlyand logical substyle, just what one imagines the ancient Romans might have built, if they had been able to resist the conquered Greeks who took them captive Thence it spread all over France, the first development of the architecture of the most architectural of peoples, and in the north of that country fell 29﻿Nor/ under the influence of the Scandi/ man navian and Teutoni c tribes, & pro/ work duced the last of the round arched Gothic styles, (named by us Nor/ man) which those energetic warri/ ors carried into Sicily, where it min/ gled with the Saracenic Byzantine and produced lovely works* But we know it best in our own country; for Duke William's intrusive monks used it everywhere, and it drove out the native English style deriv/ ed from Byzantium through Ger/

E RE on the verge of a new change, a change of form important enough (though not a change of essence), we may pause to consider 30

many*﻿once more what its essential quails Gothic

ties were It was the first style freedom

since the invention of the arch that

did due honour to it, and instead

of concealing it decorated it in a

logical manner* This was much;

but the complete freedom that it

had won, which indeed was the

source of its ingenuousness, was

more* It had shaken off the fetters

of Greek superstition& aristocracy,

and Roman pedantry, and though

it must needs have had laws to be a

style at all, it followed them of free

will, and yet unconsciously* The

cant of the beauty of simplicity

(i*e*, bareness and barrenness) did

not afflict it: it was not ashamed of

redundancy of material, or supers

I﻿Gothic

handle

ness

abundance of ornament; any more than nature is Slim elegance it could produce^ or sturdy solidity; as its moods went* Material was not its master; but its servant: marx ble was not necessary to its beauty; stone would do; or brick; or timber* In default of carving it would set together cubes of glass or whatso^ ever was shining and fair/hued, & cover every portion of its interiors with a fairy coat of splendour; or would mould mere plaster into im tricacyofworkscarcetobefollowed; but never wearying the eyes with its delicacy and expressiveness of line* Smoothness it loves; the utmost finish that the hand can give; but if material or skill fail, the rougher 32﻿work shall sobe wrought that it also Free sub/* shall please us with its inventive ordinal suggestion jg? For the iron rule of tion the classical period, the acknowx ledged slavery of every one but the great man, was gone, and freedom had taken its place: but harmonic ous freedom* Subordination there is, but subordination of effect, not uniformity of detail; true & neces^ sary subordination, not pedantic*

HE full measure of this freedom Gothic Archie tecture did not gain until i it was in the hands of the workmen of Europe, the gildsmen of the Free Cities, who on many a bloody field proved how dearly they valued their corporate life by the c	33﻿TheWest generous valour with which they goesEast- risked their individual lives in its ward defence* But from the first, the ten-dency was towards this freedom of hand and mind subordinated to the co-operative harmony which made the freedom possible* That is the spirit of Gothic Architecture*

ET us go on a while with our history : Up to this point the progress had always been from East to West, i*e*, the East carried the West with it; the West must now go to the East to fetch new gain thence	A revival of religionwas

one of the moving causes of energy intheearlyMiddleAgesinEurope, and this religion (with its enthu-34﻿siasm for visible tokens of the ob- The jects of worship) impelled people West in to visit the East, which held the the East centre of that worship Thence arose the warlike pilgrimages of the Crusades amongst races by no means prepared to turn their cheeks to the smiter* True it is that the tendency of the extreme West to seek East did not begin with the days just before the Crusades There was a thin stream of pil-grims setting eastwardlongbefore, and the Scandinavians had found their way to Byzantium, not as pil-grims but as soldiers, and under the name of Veerings a body-guard of their blood upheld the throne of the Greek Kaiser, and many of them, c2	35﻿Pointed returning home, bore with them Gothic ideas of art which were not lost on their scanty but energetic popular tions	But the crusades brought

gain from the East in a far more wholesale manner; and I think it is clear that part of that gain was the idea of art that brought about the change from round ✓arched to pointed Gothic In those days (perhaps in ours also) it was the rule for conquerors settling in any country to assume that there could be no other system of society save that into which they had been born; and accordingly conquered Syria received a due feudal government, with the King of Jerusalem for Suzerain, the one person allowed 36﻿bythc heralds to bear metal on me/ The tal in his coat^armour* Neverthe^ Crusa less, the Westerners who settled in ders this new realm, few in number as they were, readily received impress sions from the art which they saw around them,the Saracenic Byzan^ tine Art, which was, after all, sym/ pathetic with their own minds: & these impressions produced the change* For it is not to be thought that there was any direct borrow^ ing of forms from the East in the gradual change from the rounds arched to the pointed Gothic: there was nothing more obvious at work thantheinfluenceofakindredstyle, whose superior lightness and ele^ gance gave a hint of the road which development might take*

37﻿The new style

ERTAINLY this

change in form, when it came, was a startling one: the pomtecharched Go^ thic when it had grown out of its brief & most beautiful transition, was a vigorous youth indeed* It car^ ried combined strength & elegance almost as far as it could be carried: indeed,sometimes onemightthink it overdid the lightness of effect, as e*g*, in the interior of Salisbury Ca^ thedrab If some abbot or monk of the eleventh century could have been brought back to his rebuilt church of the thirteenth, he might almost have thought that some miracle had taken place: the huge cylindrical or square piers trans^ 38﻿formed into clusters of slim, elegant A starts shafts; the narrow round/headed ling windows supplanted by tall wide change lancets showing the germs of the elaborate traceries of the next cen/ tury, & elegantly glazed with pat/ tern and subjectj^The bold vault spanning the wide nave instead of the flat wooden ceiling ofpast days; the extreme richness of the mould/ mgs with which every member is treated; the elegance and order of the floral sculpture, the grace and good drawing of the imagery: in short, a complete and logical style with no longer anything to apolo/ gise for, claiming homage from the intellect, as well as the imagination of men; the developed Gothic Ar/

39﻿Social	chitecture which has shaken off the

changes trammels of Byzantium as well a:s of Rome, but which has, neverthes less, reached its glorious position step by step with no break and no conscious effort after novelty from the wall of Tiryns & the Treasury of Mycenae*

HIS point of develops ment was attained as midst a period of social conflict, the facts and tens dencies of which, ignored by the historians of the eighteenth cens tury, have been laid open to our view by our modern school of evos lutionary historians* Inthe twelfth century the actual handicraftsmen found themselves at last face to face 40﻿with the development of the earlier The associations of freemen which were craft the survivals from the tribal society gilds of Europe: in the teeth of these exs elusive and aristocratic municipals ties the handicraftsmen had assox dated themselves into guilds of craft, and were claiming their free^ dom from legal and arbitrary op^ pression, and a share in the governs ment of the towns; by the end of the thirteenth century they had conquered the position everywhere & within the next fifty or sixty years the governorsofthefreetowns were the delegates of the craft guilds, and all handicraft was included in their associations* This period of their triumph,marked amidst other 4i﻿The events by the Battle of Courtray, zenith where the chivalry of France turn/ ed their backs in flight before the Flemish weavers, was the period during which Gothic Architecture reached its zenith* It must be ad/ mitted, I think, that during this epoch, as far as the art of beauti/ ful building is concerned, France & England were the architectural countries par excellence;but all over the intelligent world was spread this bright, glittering, joyous art, which had now reached its acme of ele/ gance and beauty; and moreover in its furniture, of which I have spoken above, the excellence was shared in various measure betwixt the coun/ tries of Europe* And let me note 42﻿in passing that the necessarily ordi/ The nary conception of a Gothic interior Gothic as being a colourless whitey/grey garments place dependent on nothingbutthe architectural forms, is about as far from the fact as the corresponding idea of a Greek temple standing in all the chastity of white marble* We must remember, on the contrary, that both buildings were clad, and that the noblest part of their rau ment was their share of a great epic, a story appealing to the hearts and minds of men* And in the Gothic building, especially in the half cen^ tury we now have before us, every part of it, walls, windows, floor, was all looked on as space for the representation of incidents of the 43﻿Thelitex great story of mankind, as it had rary furx presenteditselftothemindsofmen niture then living; & this space was used

with the greatest frankness of prox digality, & one may fairly say that wherever a picture could be painted there it wi	tinted.


■8 tecturehad completed its | furniture: Dante, Chau/ & cer, Petrarch; the Gerx man hero balladxepics,the French Romances,the English Forestxbalx lads, that epic of revolt, as it has been called, the Icelandic Sagas, Froissart and the Chroniclers, rex present its literature* Its painting embraces a host of names (of Italy & Flanders chiefly), the two great 44﻿realists Giotto and Van Eyk at their head: but every village has its painter, its carvers, its actors even; every man who produces works of handicraft is an artist* The few pieces of household goods left of its wreckage are marvels of beauty; its woven cloths and embroideries are worthy of its loveliest buildin its pictured and ornamented books would be enough in themselves to make a great period of art, so ex/ cellent as they are in epic intention, in completeness of unerring deco^ ration, and in marvellous skill of hand* In short, those masterpieces of noble building,those specimens of architecture, as we call them, the sight of which makes the holiday 45

Houses hold fur/ niture﻿The crest of the hill

o f our lives tO/day,are the standard of the whole art of those times, and tell the story of all the complete/ ness of art in the heyday of life, as well as that of the sad story which follows* For when anything hu/ man has arrived at quasi/comple/ tion there remains for it decay and death, in order that the new thing maybebornfrom it: and thiswon/ derful,joyousartoftheMiddle^ages could by no means escape its fate* the middle of the four/ teenth century Europe MEM was scourged by that mysterious terror the Black Death (a similar terror to which perhaps waylays the mo/ dern world) and, along with it, the 46﻿no less mysterious pests of Com- Beyond mercialism & Bureaucracy attacks the crest ed us* This misfortune was the turning-point of the Middle Ages; once again a great change was at hand*

HE birth & growth ofthecomingchange was marked by art with all fidelity* Gothic Architecture began to alter its character in the years that immediately followed on the Great Pest; it began to lose its exaltation of style & to suffer a dimunition in the generous wealth of beauty which it gave us in its heyday* In some places, e*g*, England, it grew more crab-47﻿First bed, & even sometimes more com/ years mon/place; in others, as in France, of the it lost order, virility, and purity of change line* But for a longtime yet it was alive and vigorous, & showed even greater capacity than before for a/ dapting itself to the needs of a de/ velopingsociety: nor did the change of style affect all its furniture inju/ riously; some of the subsidiary arts as, e*g*, Flemish tapestry & Eng/ lish wood/carving, rather gained than lost for many years*

T last, with the close of theFifteenth century,the Great Change became obvious; & we must re/ member that it was no superficial change of form, but a change of 48﻿spirit affecting every form inevit/ ably* This change we have some/ what boastfully, and as regards the arts quite untruthfully, called the New Birth* But let us see what it

OCIETY was prepare ingfor a complete recasts ing of its elements: the Mediaeval Society of Sta* tus was in process of transition into the modern Society of Contract* New classes were being formed to fit the new system of production which was at the bottom of this; political life began again with the new birth of bureaucracy ;&politic/ al, as distinguished from natural, nationalities, were being hammer/ 1	49

means*

A new Society﻿ed together for the use of that bu/ rational reaucracy,which was itself a neces/ side of the sity to the new system* And withal change a new religion was being fashioned to fit the new theory of life: in short, the Age of Commercialism was being born*

OW some of us think that all this was a source of misery & degradation to the world at the time, that it is still causing misery and degradation, and that as a system it is bound to give place to a better one* Yet we admit that it had a bene/ ficent function to perform; that a/ midst all the ugliness & confusion which it brought with it, it was ane/ cessary instrument forthe develop/ 50﻿ment of freedom of thought and The it/

the capacities of man; for the sub^ rational

jugation of nature to his material side

needs* This Great Change, I say,

was necessary and inevitable, and

on this side, the side of commerce

and commercial science and poli^

tics, was a genuine new birth* On

this side it did not look backward

butforward:therehadbeennothing

like it in past history; it was founds

ed on no pedantic model; necessity,

not whim, was its craftsmaster*

UT, strange to say, to this living body of social, political,religious,scienti/ fic New Birth was bound the dead corpse of a past art* On every other side it bade men look d2	51﻿The past forward to some change or other, slays the were it good or bad: on the side of present art, with the sternest pedagogic ut> terance,itbade men lookbackward across the days of the “ Fathers and famous men that begat them,” and in scorn of them, to an art that had been dead a thousand years before* Hitherto from the very beginning the past was past, all of it that was not alive in the present, uncom sciously to the men of the present* Henceforth the past was to be our present, and the blankness of its dead wall was to shut out the fu^ ture from us There are many artists at present who do not suffix ciently estimate the enormity, the portentousness of this change, and 52﻿how closely it is connected with Beauty the Victorian Architecture of the lost brick box and the slate lid, which helps to make us the dullards that we arejg?How on earth could peo^ pie's ideas of beauty change so? you may sayjS^Well, was it their ideas of beauty that changed? Was it not rather that beauty, however unconsciously, was no longer an object of attainment with the men of that epoch ?

HIS used once to puzzle me in the presence of one of the so-called master^ pieces of the New Birth, the revived classical style, such a building as St* Paul's in London, for example* I have found it diffi'

53﻿A strange cult to put myself in the frame of story mind which could accept such a work as a substitute for even the latest and worst Gothic building* Such taste seemed to me like the taste of a man who should prefer his lady-love bald But now I know that it was not a matter of choice on the part of any one then alive who had an eye for beau' ty: if the change had been made on the grounds of beauty it would be wholly inexplicable; but it was not so* In the early days of the Renais' sance there were artists possessed of the highest qualities; but those great men (whose greatness, mind you, was only in work not carried out by co/operation, painting and 54﻿sculpture for the most part) were really but the fruit of the blossom/ ing/time,the Gothic period; as was abundantly proved by the succeeds mg periods of the Renaissance, which produced nothing but in/ anity and plausibility in all the arts A few individual artists were great truly; but artists were no longer the masters of art, be/ cause the people had ceased to be artists: its masters were pedants* St* Peter's in Rome, St* Paul's in London, were not built to be beau/ tiful, or to be beautiful and conve/ nient* They were not built to be homes of the citizens in their mo/ ments of exaltation, their supreme grief or supreme hope, but to be 55

Pedants rule art﻿Donnish proper, respectable, and therefore buildings to snow the due amount of cultiva^ tion, and knowledge of the only peoples & times that in the minds of their ignorant builders were not ignorant barbarians* They were built to be the homes of a decent unenthusiastic ecclesiasticism, of those whom we sometimes call Dons now/'a/days* Beauty and ro^ mancewere outside the aspirations of their builders j£jj? Nor could it have been otherwise in those days; for,once again,architectural beauty is the result of the harmonious and intelligentco'operationofthewhole body of people engaged in produce ing the work of the workman; and by the time that the changeling 56﻿New Birth was grown to be a vigorous imp, such workmen no longer existed* By that time Eu-rope had begun to transform the greatarmyofartist-craftsmen,who had produced the beauty of her ci-ties, her churches, manor-houses & cottages, into an enormous stock of human machines, who had little chance of earning a bare livelihood if they lingered over their toil to think ofwhat they were doing: who were not asked to think, paid to think, or allowed to thinkjS^That invention we have, I should hope, about perfected by this time, and it must soon give place to a new one/Which is nappy; for aslongas the invention is in use you need not 57

The craftsmen turned into machines﻿What trouble yourselves about architect can we ture, since you will not get it, as the common expression of our life, that is as a genuine thing*

UT at present I am not going to say anything a/ bout direct remedies for the miseries of the New Birth; I can only tell you what you ought to do if you can I want you to see that from the brief his/ toric review of the progress of the Arts it results that to/day there is only one style of Architecture on which it is possible to found a true living art, which is free to adapt it/ self to the varying conditions of so/ dal life, climate, and so forth, and that that style is Gothic architec/ 58﻿ture*The greater part of what we What now call architecture is but an im/ was the itation of an imitation of an imita^ Greek tion, the result of a tradition of dull Xemple respectability, or of foolish whims without root or growth in them.

ETus look atan instance of pedantic retrospection employed in the service of art* A Greek column nartemple whenit was a real thing, was a kind of holy railing built round a shrine: these things the people of that day wanted, & they naturally took the form of a Greek Temple under the climate of Greece & given the mood of its peoplejg?

But do we want those things r If so,

I should like to know what for* And

59﻿Do we if we pretend we do and so force a want it ? Greek Temple on a modern city, we produce such a gross piece of ugly absurdity as you may see span/ ningthe Lochs at Edinburgh jg?In these islands we want a roof and walls with windows cut in them; & these things a GreekTemple does not pretend to give us*

ILL a Roman building allow us to have these necessaries? Well, only on the terms that we are to be ashamed of wall, roof, & win/ dows,& pretend that we haven't got either of them, but rather a whim/ sical attempt at the imitation of a GreekTemple*

60﻿ILLaneo/classicalbuih WTiat is ding allow us these nex a Gothic cessities ? Pretty much building? on the same terms as the Roman one; except when it is rather more than half Gothic* It will force us to pretend that we have neither roof, walls, nor windows, nothingbutan imitation of the Ro^ man travesty of a Greek Temple*

O w a Gothic building has walls that it is not a^ shamed of; and in those walls you may cut win^ dows whereveryouplease; &,ifyou please may decorate them to show that you are not ashamed of them; our windows, which you must ave, become one of the great beau^ ♦

■﻿ties of your house, and youhave no glory of longer to make a lesion in logic in wall and order not to sit in pitchy darkness in your own house, as in the sham sham/Roman style; your window, I say, is no longer a concession to human weakness, anugly necessity (generally ugly enough in all con** science) but a glory of the art of Building* As for the roof in the sham style: unless the building is im fectedwith Gothic common sense, you must pretend that you are liv/ mg in a hot country which needs nothing but an awning, and that it never rains or snows in these is/ lands* Whereas in a Gothic build/ mg the roof both within and with/ out (especially within, as is most﻿meet) is the crown of its beauties, the abiding place of its brainjg§F

3G AIN, consider the ex-terior of our buildings, ^ that part of them that is common to all passers-

by, and that no man can turn into private property unless he builds amidst an inaccessible park* The original of our neo-classic architect ture was designed for marble in a bright dry climate, which only weathers it to a golden tone* Do we really like a neo-classic build-ing weather-beaten by the roughness of hundreds of English winters from October to June ? And on the other hand, can any of us fail to be touched by the weather edsur-^3

Building and climate﻿The beauty of age

face of a Gothic building which has escaped the restorers' hands ? Do we not clearly know the latter to be a piece of nature, that more excellent mood of nature that uses the hands and wills of men as instruments of creation ?

jg^jNDEED time would fail me to go into the many I sides of the contrast be^

S&1 tween the Architecture a! which is a mere pedantic „ — Si imitation of what was once alive, and that which after a de^ velopment of long centuries has still in it, as I think, capacities for fresh developments, since its life was cut short by an arbitrary recurs rence to a style which had long lost 64﻿all elements of life and growth J§r Once for all, then, when the mo/ dern world finds that the eclectic cism of the present is barren and fruitless, and that it needs and will have a style of architecture which, I must tell you once more, can only be as part of a change as wide and deep as that which destroyed Feu/ dalism; when it has come to that conclusion, the style of architect ture will have to be historic in the true sense; it will not be able to dispense with tradition; it cannot begin at least with doing some/ thing quite different from anything that has been donebefore; yetwhat' ever the form of it may be, the spir/ it of it will be sympathy with the e	65

The new style﻿needs and aspirations of its own founda/ time, not simulation of needs & as^ pirations passed away*Thus it will remember the history of the past, make history in the present, and teach history in the future* As to the form of it, I see nothing for it but that the form, as well as the spirit, must be Gothic; an organic style cannot spring out of an eclectic one, but only from an organic one* In the future, therefore, our style of architecture must be Gothic Archie tecture

N D meanwhile of the world demanding archie tecture, what are we to do ? Meanwhile ? After all, is there any meanwhile ? Are we 66﻿not now demanding Gothic Aiv chitecture and crying for the fresh N ew Birth ? o me it seems so* It is true that the world is uglier nowthan it was fifty years ago; but then people thought that ugliness a desirable thing, and looked at it with complacency as a sign of civi' lisation, which no doubt it is* Now we are no longer complacent, but are grumbling in a dim unorganis' ed manner* We feel a loss, and un/ less we are very unreal and helpless we shall presently begin to try to supply that loss Art cannot be dead so long as we feel the lack of it, I say: and though we shall pro' bably try many roundabout ways for filling up the lack; yet we shall

Fruitful

discon^

tent﻿End of at last be driven into the one right slavish way of concluding that in spite of work all risks, & all losses, unhappy and slavish work must come to an end* In that day we shall take Gothic Architecture by the hand, & know it for what it was and what it is*

This paper, first spoken as a lees ture at the New Gallery, for the Arts& Crafts Exhibition Society, in the year 1889, was printed by the Kelmscott Press during the Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the New Gallery, Regent Street, London, 1893.

Sold by William Morris, Kelms^ cott Press, Upper Mall, Hammer/ smith*

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